There is much potent astrology swirling about.  Moving through my own life, I’ve still been perched as ever watching the present transits express themselves through others, interacting with the visible valence of their natal blueprints, even frothing to the top of events on the world stage.  Today saw the second of summer’s three squares from Venus, retrograde in Leo, to Uranus in Taurus take place.

While the goddess of love, beauty and art is in retrograde, the second square to Uranus perfected today — the star of Aphrodite interacting with ‘the Breaker’ planet, one whom scholar and astrologer Richard Tarnas fancied is better suited by the name Prometheus.  One way or another, Uranus is not known for the gravitational malaise of Saturn or the existential pressure cooker of shame-excising Pluto — its disruption happens so swiftly that sometimes an overall emotional climate is not registered in the lingering sense; there is just life before and after ‘the event.’

One might see the interaction between Venus, planet of grace and social harmony, and Uranus, planet of the electric upheaval and erratic uprising, express itself in the news by way of boat dock discord, or big diva demands bringing calls for cancelation.  These more obvious cultural mirrors of the aspect aside, I’ve been reflecting on the other nuanced transits that have filled the stage of Venus’ retrograde through Leo thus far.

It’s not unheard of for relationships to cohere, to break apart, or for old narratives to revisit during Venus retrogrades.  It made me think of something I’d written down right about six months ago in February, during that rather sobering conjunction of Venus and Saturn in Aquarius that spanned January 22nd to February 15th, 2023, mere weeks before Saturn departed its own cold territories for the first time in half a decade.

It was but a handful of words from the jungian analyst Joseph Lee: “Sometimes, Eros must be courted.”

To receive, to experience harmony, to cultivate love, does not always arise organically; to cultivate anything implies effort, and sometimes these efforts can feel like swimming upstream.  In other moments, disruption of these things is meant to happen, and occupies its rightful moment — and then, incredibly, the moment is over, and we get back to the kind of playfulness that the Sun so adores, even Venus seeming slower in retrograde movement through the Sun’s home.

A couple weeks ago I wrote of Venus in Leo, and the value put on ‘exchange of light between two parties’ — recognizing, bearing witness to each other’s divinity.  Recent days have held a number of unique if not brief interactions with Venus, ranging from stoic and saturnian to electric and uranian in flavor — ones which mitigate those acts of witnessing each other with dignity.

Remember that Full Moon in Aquarius last Tuesday afternoon, and a couple fleeting oppositions that formed the next day?  Not only Mercury in Virgo’s brief staring contest with Saturn in Pisces — the task of communicating the ineffable, or reconciling earthly and otherworldly — but also that momentary opposition between the waning Moon in Aquarius, and Venus in Leo on her seemingly backwards jaunt.

Said lunation, and the Full Moon in Capricorn last month, were the first Saturn-ruled full moons to be dispatched by a Saturn outside its home signs since the end of 2017 — the star of Kronos having traversed its cardinal earth home of Capricorn and fixed air familiarity of Aquarius between mid-December of that year and early March 2023.

Last week saw a Full Moon in Aquarius across from the Sun in Leo — our star in the sign of warm centrality, Luna in the sign of distant ‘otherness.’  The Moon in the sign of ‘the Truth is Out There’, and the Sun in the sign of but ‘I am right here.’

While Venus is the only angular ‘traditional’ in my chart, and decently supported by aspect, the seven Saturn-ruled planets in me (including that Venus in Aquarius, no doubt) recognize that our thought patterns are not always conducive to the coherence of love, or the cultivation of vulnerability beyond our distant perches.  Saturn knows all about that guarded problem.  It’s one of the ultimate, ongoing works of life — to let someone else in and love them continually.

It reminds me of a joke I once heard Whitney Cummings tell several years back.  She and a man with whom she shared a romance were walking, and as they were walking he tripped — she watched in slow-motion as she ‘fell out of love with him instantly.’  Already knowing that she’s a Virgo, I laughed at more than just the immediate joke, and also saw a bit of my own Cap-ishness.

Maybe it’s both Mercury’s critique and Saturn’s contempt for weakness, but something about a few of the earthier, airier homes is more likely to want people arrived in their completion.  Not just seen in a potential to be nurtured, or a connection to grow, but immaculate, statuesque, the elusive external already poised and reflecting that internal ideal.

Interactions with Saturn-ruled placements in Capricorn or Aquarius can beg a bridging of the gap, an opening of the heart.  With more uranian interactions — like the present square between Venus’ grace and Prometheus’ dissent — sometimes we expedite growth with frictional demands for greater understanding.  Uranus is the ‘liberation frequency,’ the quick ‘aha’ moment that crystallizes a moving forward, one which lights up the nurture of looking back.

With Uranus transits, it is important to give those you care about some latitude.  Uranus is ‘the freewheeler,’ and events can lead a number of directions hard to legislate for.  Communicating with discretion when faced with the floodgates of chaotic feelings is key.  It is baffling, but sometimes our deliberate efforts — to court, to cultivate, whether in creativity or in love — are just the medicine… other times they run counter to the organic openings from which these things spontaneously arise.  Or are broken apart!

—A.B.

[ feature art by Fernand Khnopff ]