For two days I dreamed that I caught a man in the act of stealing my wallet, phone, and keys—my identity, essentially— and that he was arrested and forced to return my possessions. These were triumphant, and triumphantly bald, dreams. Last night I dreamed someone stole my wallet—a pleasing, lemony yellow—and replaced it with a neon-green fannypack, neon green being one of the few shades I will never, ever embrace though I do in fact own such a horror. (It’s handy.) In the second part of the dream, I found a pair of denim jeans that elegantly nipped in my waist and made my ass a buttercup dream. I laid them aside for a pair of 90-style mom jeans that made my ass an endlessly flat expanse of Midwestern mall terrain.
Which is to say that, yes, Venus finally went retrograde yesterday. I’ve been whining about its shadow since early September, but only now is the planet really moving backward. Lasting unofficially until the end of the year (officially it goes direct November 16), the retrograde is taking place in Scorpio, which imparts lessons about old wounds and hidden meanings, and Libra, which is ruled by Venus and thus a hot mess when mommy takes a breather.
We can expect the usual Venus retrograde challenges: impaired aesthetic and erotic judgment, heavy lifting in matters of the heart, unwelcome blasts from the past, financial and beauty snafus. But this time we’ll be confronting our Venus demons first hand. Our bitterness. Our trust issues. How fear and disappointment has misshapen us. And, especially for female-identified and/or -bodied persons, our rage.
Sounds like fun? Omgoddess, it really isn’t. But along the way we may release old sorrows, emotional scars, and intimacy obstacles, and that’s no small thing. Neither is the fact that the patriarchy is about to take a serious hit. Beware the rage of a billion broads!
On a personal level, this retrograde finishes up at the exact degree of my moon in Libra, so a neon green fannypack will be the least of my problems. (Readers may have observed I’ve already been hurtling head-long into Venus shadows this fall.) That doesn’t mean I’m out of the running so much as learning big lessons. If you want to learn your own, feel free to schedule a Ruby Intuition reading. This is just what my work is for.