Once-in-a-lifetime (if that)

Okay so a couple weeks ago I asked you what happened in Taylor Swift's chart when she got famous (not mega-famous but regular-famous) that is pretty interesting, at least to me. The answer: Venus went retrograde by progression. This is a phenomenon that doesn't happen to most people, because Venus is the least retrograde planet we have (it goes retrograde when it is passing us). Per google: Venus is retrograde for 40-41 days every 19 months.

In case you're new, progressions are a predictive method of astrology otherwise known as "a day for a year" in which the first however-many days of your life after birth correspond eerily with your life path, and they work both as what are called secondary progressions, where you account for the actual movement of things in the sky for the first however-many days, or solar arc progressions, where you move your entire chart at the same speed the sun moves, as though your chart is on a dial, with your original chart as the reference point. Both work very well as predictive methods. You find major life events in progressions, and your progressions need to agree with your transits in order to make action happen, so if your transits have marriage energy but your progressions have breakup energy, progressions will carry the day.

So what does it mean to have a planet (any planet) go retrograde or turn direct by progression? A lot. This should scream at you if/when you see it. If it's a direct planet turning retrograde, what that means is that energy you've expressed externally your whole life gets internalized instead: you keep it to yourself more. If it's the other way around, you have a sheltered or cocooned planet having to go public, and that's awkward and takes some time to learn to navigate.

In late 2005, Taylor Swift's Venus went retrograde by progression, which I would argue in her case likely just gave her endless ammo for songwriting, because a retrograde Venus likes to think things through and not necessarily tell you what's going on in there. Obviously this does not mean that she was unable to have relationships, but what it does mean is that in 2045 or 2046, that retrograde Venus turns direct and a few years after that it's much more smooth sailing on Venus things for her. But possibly less to write lyrics about.

This does not happen to most people. I remember when I was first learning encountering a woman who was separated from her husband and just completely over relationships. Venus turned retrograde by progression that year. "You're gonna need to learn to do relationships differently now because you're going to be more introspective about them" was not welcome information. Since it's a rare thing to have happen, no one has written a comprehensive Venus Changes Direction by Progression Survival Guide. There's probably a small audience for one.

Mercury goes retrograde three times a year, so it's way more common to look up your progressions and find a retrograde Mercury. Don't freak out about that, or about any of this, it's just destabilizing when a planet changes direction by progression because either you're used to keeping the energy to yourself and suddenly you're feeling the need to share things OR you're used to using the energy to socialize and you don't really want to anymore.

There's a crude and inexact way to find out if you're impacted by planets changing direction, which is to go to the planetary speed ephemeris and look up your birth year and month, find your birthday, and start counting (unless you are a vampire your birth year will be listed). When energy goes retrograde the planet in question turns gray and when it's direct it's white. So if you see a planet turn gray, count from your birthday up to the day in question, and if you count to 16, you were 16 years old when that planet changed direction, so you were going to feel that slowdown a few years before you were 16, but you would really feel it the year you were 16.

Progressions are really useful but you have to be somewhat well-versed in astrology to make much sense of them, because they are a layering tool and they reflect way more what's happening on the inside than what's happening on the outside. They often provide a reason when you feel weird for an extended period of time but can't put your finger on why that is.