Venus and the Divine Feminine
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by Robert Ohotto

I am talking about the current Venus retrograde that we are experiencing which began on July 27th.

As we look together at this moment in time, astronomically we can observe that the planet Venus appears to be going backward in the sky because of her orbit and the Earth’s orbit around the Sun creating the phenomenon of retrogression—which is the apparent movement of Venus going backward in the sky. To understand what this means astrologically and soulfully, let’s first investigate the planet Venus as an archetypal force.

The Archetypal Venus
It is through Venus that we discover the archetype of ‘relationship’ itself. And though relationships definitely are within the domain of Venus, we must not forget that we are living in a patriarchal time that does not make room for Goddesses, and our Judeo-Christian culture has stripped away the earthy nature of Venus as a component of experiencing the Divine through an authentic embodiment of our sensuality/sexuality. And without this Goddess integrated holistically into our psyches, our models of relationship are in dire need of deeper investigation…
Psychologically, for most of us our relationship models are formed from the primary relationship that we encounter between our parents. They are our Gaia and Ouranos. It’s usually around five years of age we begin to recognize that our parents are engaging in the emotional dance of relationship. Though we've been most aware of our mother since we were born (as she primarily attended to our emotional security early on) now we are coming to understand deeper levels of our father’s role in our development, and most importantly, we are being imprinted psychologically with the relationship model in which our parents are participating.
On a subtle level we are picking up that our parents are relating to each other in a way that establishes their individual relationships to self-esteem. Self-esteem is in fact a crucial component of the planetary archetype of Venus.
If you study the Greek myths of Aphrodite, you will begin to discover that, as the Goddess of love, she was not interested in loving others through a victim or savior mentality. She wasn’t interested in mothering or rescuing anyone, rather she was most desirous of partners who allowed her to experience her own pleasure and beauty through them. (As opposed to a lunar relationship which seeks fusion of identity with another in a maternal way.)

Aphrodite/Venus was competitive and jealous of other Goddesses and mortal women. In one mythological example, Psyche (a mortal) possesses such beauty that she is compared to Aphrodite by others; something Aphrodite can’t tolerate, which leads to Aphrodite's plotting Psyche’s end!
This competitive killer instinct speaks to the darker aspects of this archetype, which manifest when it is blocked and are quite noticeable in our current culture ethos. If we can’t affirm ourselves and live congruent to an internalized sense of our true value, we are more prone to maneuvering in unethical, externalized, and immoral ways to attain more surface levels of affirmation; while clinging to surface values. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what do we do when the eyes of our beholder do not see our beauty? What if our own eyes do not see our beauty? How do we affirm ourselves? How do we define what beauty is?

In that regard, I must reiterate that we live in a cultural ethos bereft of an authentic feminine Goddess energy. Most notably, we have lost touch with Venus, this beautiful Goddess of self-affirmation through sensuality, embodiment, relationships, and pleasure; you sure don’t see that in The Virgin Mary! How many people do you know that can really articulate and own what turns them on? Can you? Why not?
Sexuality indeed falls under the province of Venus, though not as a procreative act (the Moon) or need to dominate another (Mars) per se, rather a way to experience our own embodiment and pleasure. In becoming integrated in mind, body, and spirit we must connect to our senses, bodies, and the Earth. As a culture we have barely grasped the deeper spiritual elements of sexuality, let alone let ourselves openly experience how it can affirm our lives, something the Kama Sutra sought to elucidate.
Some 4000 years ago, as the Patriarchy swept in, Goddesses began to lose their prominence and place in the world and in us; their temples were destroyed, and many women became the possessions of men.

And now we are left with mainly darker faces of Venus, which is no doubt due to our current disconnection from the Divine as a feminine and earthly force. It’s been my observation that the only way that we--as a culture and as individuals, especially women--can access this fundamental part of ourselves is through the more destructive archetypal forms of the Goddess because she is culturally being help captive in the shadow.
For example, as many women seek to accomplish the various current social standards of beauty, many seem unconscious that they are aspiring to embody a beauty standard that men, for the most part, have created for them; a standard that often results in self-hate and demands gratuitous plastic surgery, not to mention other considerable health risks. I doubt that women one day held a convention and decided exclusively as women that breast implants and surgical face-lifts were good ideas!
Venus wouldn’t stand for such a thing--unless such impulses came from an inner vision of beauty and value of self. Nor would she let herself be owned by anyone.
If you are a man, don’t think that you are off of the hook! In an astrological birth chart, everyone has a Venus (and a masculine Mars energy for that matter). Thus we all have to form a relationship with this energy as part of our sacred contract. Yep, Venus is a Goddess that demands that men form an inner relationship with her principle, as well, instead of projecting her onto women whom they may then seek to own as a way of recapturing a disowned part of themselves.

Venus is the archetypal force that urges us to discover and identify what we value and give form to that through personal choices, thus laying the foundation of our authenticity. Our choices in love, beauty, and life are often the real evidence of what we value most and least in life--values are what we live, not necessarily what say we believe. So, do you value yourself? Does it show in your choices every day?
With these questions, and some of archetypal principles outlined, we are now moving toward the themes of this Venus retrograde, and the questions that we should be asking ourselves during this time.

Venus Retrograde in Virgo/Leo
Venus retrogrades do not occur with the same regularity of Mercury. In fact, Venus goes retrograde about every 564 days – which is about every year and a half, and then stays retrograde for approximately forty days, whereas Mercury stays retrograde for only twenty one days and does so three times a year. What this means in terms of experiencing the Venus retrograde cycle is that it can be a bit jarring for the psyche, as its retrograde energy in less familiar to the usual collective and personal psychic rhythm we experience with other planetary archetypal cycles.

That said, on July 27th Venus appeared to stand still in the sky, and then began to move backwards in the early degrees of the zodical sign Virgo. Take a moment and think about what was going on in your life then, and what has transpired since then that is relative to the archetypal energy of Venus that I’ve already mentioned. What issues surfaced two weeks or so ago that dealt with love, affirmation, money, emotional resources, values, and expression of your sexuality?
As she went retrograde, Venus was wearing a Virgo garment which means she first began her retrograde alchemy by instructing us to begin a deep process of discrimination against that which does not serve our holism (Virgo) in the area of relationship models, values, and inner integrity. In addition, if we look to the word ‘Virgo’ which is Latin for ‘virgin’ we can find some other themes to this initial retrograde energy.
The word ‘virgin’ originally had little to do with sex. We find that its original context and usage was to denote women who could not be possessed by a man through marriage because they were in allegiance to and owned by the divine through which they gave service (which sometimes was sexual!). Quite simply, virgins were originally priestesses and harlots of temples. Thus being a virgin had nothing to do with chastity, rather it implied that a woman could not be owned by a man; she was off limits and solely possessed herself to allow the Divine to flow through her unimpeded, in a pure way. So can you imagine what Venus’ brief retrograde in Virgo was bringing up for many folks two weeks ago?? How about the Sacred Prostitute archetype for starters!

Nonetheless, your own personal relationship with Venus and her retrograde cycles demands that you come to know what is personally right and wrong for you as you continue to mature into your authenticity and how that is measured against the values that society and culture feeds you daily. Thus, this retrograde period brings with it a time during which we all must reassess where in our lives our values are in need of refreshing. I think it’s important to recognize the ways we are continually told by our media and culture that we should continue to find value in the same thing for the whole of our lives. For example, we are told to keep valuing our youth and fight aging; keep valuing your affiliation with a political party—even if they prove themselves unworthy of your allegiance via corrupted values; keep valuing your wedding vows, though they were taken by an older version of yourself that has grown beyond them; keep valuing the stability of your job though it has become claustrophobic.

Each Venus retrograde asks us to take forty days and deeply look at our values and their relevance to our soul’s current needs in a certain area of our life. And with Venus currently retrograding back into the zodiacal sign of Leo (which precedes Virgo), the discord we may be feeling signifies the amount of distance that has formed between our ego and the fundamental core passions, values, and higher creative inspirations of our soul. In synchronicity, Venus is retrograding over the degrees of Leo that Saturn just traversed, highlighting our deepest needs to source our sovereignty (capacity to creatively rule our lives) from within while having just animated further issues to come this fall when Saturn crosses into Virgo.
As the whole planet experiences the retrograde, I feel that this is also a time of global review of Venus’ themes. One can already see issues of international diplomacy (relationships and values) being heightened. The United States is currently negotiating a review of what is considered diplomatic in the Middle East, most notably with Iran. We need to pay attention here folks, because we must be conscious of what is necessary to maintain a national sense of integrity. At this crucial time all democratic nations are being called on to define what their core values of diplomacy are, and whether the choices they make will indeed reflect a true democratic world view. Will we really respect the sovereignty (Leo) other nations as a fundamental principle of democracy? Or only do so when it’s convenient for our nationalist agendas?
In some astrological texts, there have been many correlations made between the later half of the Venus retrograde period, and serious mistakes made by world leaders. We are now entering the later half of the Venus retrograde as the Venus joins up with the Sun in Leo today (August 17th), demarcating the mid-point of the cycle. Let’s hope our world leaders are guided to hold the line of democratic integrity…hell, let’s do better than hope, let’s pray!

Personally this means that you should be attentive to the Venus’ themes that are now more obvious to you in your life, as they will reach a crescendo in about a week’s time when Venus then emerges from its alignment with the Sun to become the ‘morning star’ again, which you will be able to visibly see in the morning sky by mid-September.

I have so far seen this retrograde affect the various personal and professional relationships of my friends and clients by awakening them to the realization that they currently are engaged in relationships that do not adequately support their own values and needs to be fully expressive and self-possessed. So many are currently planning a much needed exit strategy!

Namaste,
Robert Ohotto
www.myss.com