Venus Set on Fire

During the Venus cazimi, during which that planet meets with the Sun in an exact conjunction, Venus will be flooded with the full power of the Light of our Solar system.

In a strange way, a cazimi reminds me of the Greek myth of Zeus and Semele, a princess of Thebes who was the mother of Dionysus. While Semele was pregnant with Dionysus, Zeus’ wife Hera manipulated her into doubting his divinity, leading Semele to force Zeus to show himself to her in his full glory. As Zeus revealed himself — a sky god, a crack of lightning, a surge of power — Semele caught fire and perished. (Incidentally, Zeus saved the unborn Dionysus, sewed him into his leg and carried him to term, which is the origin of his epithet “Twice Born” Dionysus — a resurrected god.)

While the Sun isn’t associated with Zeus (or lightning), the image of getting close enough to witness the full strength of such power only to catch fire and die seems…apt during a cazimi.

Jupiter and Semele by Gustave Moreau, 1895

Google this on your own and zoom in, it’s wild

I mention all this because it’s important to understand the Sun as it’s the only way to truly understand Leo. A zodiac sign gets its deepest characteristics from its ruling planet, and Leo is ruled by the Sun. And this Venus retrograde is in Leo. This Venus cazimi is in Leo. And as I write this, the Sun is also in Leo.

The Sun is the source of light and heat in our Solar system.

It is also the center, the one celestial object everything else orbits around. Without it, the other planets wouldn’t exist. It affects the seasons, and has the power to give us life here on Earth. It is also the only star.

And so, in astrology, the Sun represents identity, ego, visibility, leadership, vision, self-expression, outward intelligence (i.e. the conscious mind), warmth, and loyalty.

It’s a beacon, something others are naturally drawn to, and people with deep Solar signatures in their natal charts simply have star power.

An overwhelming number of celebrities, politicians, and others that exist in the spotlight are either Leos (the one sign of the zodiac the Sun claims as its child), or have otherwise super Solar charts.

That’s what makes Leos innately warm and sunny, loyal, magnetic, creative, and deeply focused on the self. Depending on the rest of their chart and their life experience, any given Leo Sun person can display these characteristics in a positive, evolved fashion…or not.

Even if you’re not a Leo, your Sun sign offers a lot of information about those topics by describing how, why, and where you express yourself — how you shine.

It’s your core identity, the part of you that people fully understand only after they get to know you. Due to the Sun’s light,  it’s how you see the world and also how you’re perceived by others. And as the Sun is the center, its qualities are what sustains the other planets and indicates what you need to stay in balance, how to keep the whole operation running smoothly.

Of course, that also ties the Sun to ego and self-involvement.

Building a henge, are we?

Additionally (for obvious reasons), in ancient astrology the Sun is connected to the King — the Sun actually is the King.

The ancient Mesopotamians even had a well-documented ritual called the Substitution of the King, performed when the Sun was in a position of astrological vulnerability, such as during an eclipse. To avoid some heinous fate, the true King would symbolically give up his throne, and a new King, often a slave or other powerless person, would be coronated. The true King would go into hiding for a while, ostensibly to give the cosmos a chance to chill out, and was eventually reinstated. The substitute King was then put to death; crisis averted.

While literal Kings aren’t in fashion these days, King symbolism continues to be very potent and, what’s more, ancient astrologers conceptualized a cazimi as having the rare privilege of a private audience with the King.

Wait wait wait, back up — who cares about the Sun? Let alone KINGS? We’re supposed to be talking about Venus right?

The Tablet of Shamash, Ancient Babylonian, c. 888 - 855 BC

Well, if the cosmic principle of love, beauty, value, harmony, and justice (i.e. VENUS) was about to be inundated with the full power of something, shouldn’t we understand what she’s up against? Shouldn’t we know what type of energy she’s about to be flooded with?

In Leo, Venus is beholden to the Sun’s desires.

And as the Sun is also in Leo, this Venus retrograde is an extremely, extremely Solar situation (at least until the Sun moves into Virgo). It’s Leo on Leo on Leo. It’s major KING energy.

That’s why this Venus retrograde has been about what we want — not in a purely basic instinct Martial way, but in a rational, Solar, visionary way.

We’re creating a vision of the love in our lives. We’re deciding what will work best for us, what will sustain the rest of the crew. What will allow us to develop into the best version of ourselves. We’re turning up the volume on listening to our own hearts.

And while choosing ourselves is incredibly important, it also means that, at  the same time, we’re not choosing others, and we’re not being chosen by others. So it’s been a bit of a mess.

The Venus retrograde cycle lasts for 40 days and 40 nights. (I know.) It’s also associated with the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Inanna’s descent into the Underworld.

In this myth, Inanna —a goddess of both love and war — chooses to enter the Underworld to attend Ereshkigal’s (her sister and the Queen of the Underworld) husband’s funeral. To reduce an epic, 4,000 year-old myth to its bones, essentially Inanna descends into the Underworld dressed in several magical garments that represent her glory and power. Inanna must relinquish one of these items as she passes through each of the seven gates of the Underworld and, by the time she sees her sister, she has been stripped naked. However, the judges of the Underworld sentence Inanna to death for her audacity; her corpse hangs on a hook for three days and nights. A few gods are troubled by this and through their attempts to save Inanna, she is brought back to life…but with a catch: she has to choose someone to take her place in the Underworld if she’s to be allowed back upstairs. Several options are presented to her, but she refuses as each is in rags and clearly mourning her death…with the exception of Inanna’s lover, Dumuzi, who is lavishly dressed and hanging out with concubines. The enraged Inanna curses Dumuzi to the Underworld in her stead and begins the journey back to the land of the living. Oh, and the whole thing takes 40 days and 40 nights.

Inanna, as depicted on the Burney Relief

The first half of Venus retrograde corresponds to Inanna’s descent into the Underworld, during which she is stripped of her garments of power and put to death, and the second half represents her resurrection and journey back to the living world.

Those first 20 days are usually when our symbolic garments of power are taken from us: we experience breakups, have difficult conversations, even witness public scandals (the affair between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, both Leos, was revealed during a Venus retrograde in Leo, AS AN EXAMPLE) — we run the absolute gamut of relationship experiences, anything you can think of, and their themes tend to correlate with the sign Venus is retrograde in.

This time around, we’re being stripped of Leonine ego- and pride-based reactions and desires, and when that happens, who even are we?

What is our identity, especially when viewed through the lens of our relationships? We’re reviewing the past and are consciously attempting to unveil a new vision of what we want out of our relationships. And because this is Leo, our self-love and self-worth and all sorts of other words with “self” at the front are also being put under inspection.

That’s the first half. And then the Venus cazimi arrives, always at the exact midpoint of the retrograde cycle. It’s the moment of death and also the moment of resurrection. The moment when Inanna chooses herself.

This is where we’re at right now.

The Sun is about to reveal its full power and glory. This is especially true as the Sun is in its home sign of Leo. You will have a brief chance to bask in its brilliance, its literal and symbolic illumination — what will you see? What solutions will reveal themselves? What warmth and joy and playfulness will you find? What vision of ourselves do we want to cultivate and project to those in our orbit? How will you be resurrected?

And the most important question of all: will you allow the full gory, the beautiful force, the absolute dream of that golden vision of the future…to scare the shit out of you so hard you catch fire and perish?!

Once you see all of that, then you can begin a hopeful ascent back to the world of the living. The second half of Venus retrograde should be much easier. Much clearer.

Though dramatic, ultimately Leo is an optimistic and resilient sign. The deepest cuts during this Venus retrograde will likely slice up your ego, not your spirit. Once you understand what your self needs at this juncture, you can better envision (and thus consciously create) a much better relationship landscape for yourself armed with these recently hard-earned, heart-based truths.

Some of us will feel this more than others — it depends on your individual chart. But, the thing about Venus retrogrades is that they involve your relationships, and even if you’re relaxed about your love life, you can still get dragged into the drama by others!

Astrology is simply a language; a compilation of archetypes you can fit together to acquire quite a lot of information. What something means is dependent on the observations of astrologers from thousands of years ago, connecting the dots until the patterns they recorded had undeniable meanings.

It’s not a coincidence you’re going through exactly what you’re going through right now. Look at it a gift from the universe and use it wisely.