Pass go

The good news is Venus is in Virgo now and out of its retrograde shadow. What does that mean? During any retrograde period, a planet essentially gets trapped in a confined space: in this case it was 12 - 28° Leo, and only things associated with that confined space could occur to us all in the Venus realm. I vividly remember in July when Venus was stopping at 28° Leo to go retrograde, thinking to myself "welp, can't do anything about that" because Venus wasn't going anywhere, and in fact there was the Pluto-Neptune—> Venus yod in place for two weeks, so some of us got seriously stuck there for a while, relationally. Pre-retrograde, Venus hit 12° Leo in mid-June: now it's October, so it's been a while since it moved anywhere new. We're out of Monopoly jail now.

So what happened this round? An uptick in celebrity divorces, that's for sure. That's a very typical, obvious face of Venus retrograde: people decide they can't stick it out for the long haul. Discord is normal and to be expected when Venus goes nuts. But the most interesting stories are always amongst the Venus-ruled, meaning people with Libra and Taurus rising. My friend who is Libra rising was planning to send her toddler son to daycare for the first time during the retrograde. There was a clerical error and the daycare thought he was an infant, and they had space for an infant, not a toddler. So she went through the rollercoaster of emotions about all of the changes daycare would bring, then brought her son to daycare for the first time only to take him home again due to him being the wrong size. But guess what: he goes to daycare this week, two months later, when Venus is forward-moving and out of its (stupid) shadow. When your ruling planet is retrograde, things like this happen through no fault of your own and tend to iron themselves out post-retrograde. It's like clockwork. For the rest of us, Venus retrograde is relational and financial discord, and for Venus-ruled people, it's life upheavals like this. Every time! That's why I go so hard on this point.

Oh, and the money of mine that went missing over the retrograde found its correct home this past week—that doesn't seem like a coincidence, either.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I have an active Uranus transit to my sun right now, and Venus opposed my sun thrice during the retrograde period, the second opposition (the backwards one) sent me to math jail, where in order to do a goal (a sun concept), I had to learn algebra, which I did with an unhealthy amount of reckless abandon (I have issues and we are talking 5+ hours of math a day for 5 weeks). When I scheduled my college equivalency exam, I realized that Venus would be opposing my sun for the third and final time, and I would have the best chance of passing if I waited until post-opposition, when the process would likely be more complete. I did pass the test, but it was the opposite of a triumph. My level of consternation went to 1,000 when I realized that the planet of (so-called) *love* was making me do something I *hate.* In reality, when you have a major outer planet transit, ANY planetary interaction with the affected planet can set things like this off. Even the moon (you've probably noticed I ignore moon transits because they last like 5 hours, but they're just as potent as anything else at setting off a chain of events). So it seemed like a Venus transit, but Venus was just exacerbating the existing Uranus situation. The Venus transit is over but I am still learning things very much against my will. I'd be happy to describe what I've learned in detail to you if you're having trouble sleeping.

The purest form of Venus retrograde, especially in Leo, is rethinking who and what you love, and making decisions accordingly. Some of ya'll did that, and it's becoming more obvious as Venus is leaving its shadow: what does life look like now? TBD, but at least we're in new territory.