Venus retrograde occurs in the same sign every 8 years. Venus retrograde in sidereal Pisces occurred in 2009, 2001, 1993, 1985, 1977, etc. The last time Venus was retrograde was in Cancer in 2015.
All of the signs and placements of transits in this post are calculated using the sidereal zodiac, lahiri ayanamsa. Please use this guide to create your sidereal chart so that you can follow along.
On Venus
Venus is the magnet that draws that which is separate together. It’s our drive to unify with another and others. Venus is how we come to consensus. Its sign placement tells the story of what attracts us to another and what attracts others to us. Venus is love, pleasure, sex, creativity, relationships, us/we, social status, aesthetics, art, music.
Looking to the ruler of the sign where Venus is retrograde can fill in the color where black and white explanations fall short. In Pisces she is exalted, ruled by Jupiter.
In a Jupiter ruled sign, Venus answers to our sense of generosity, integrity, and abundance of heart. Venus in Pisces doesn’t seek pleasure for the sake of satisfaction. It seeks an emotional consensus for the sake of the unity of people, things, and ideas. Sometimes that does have a sacrificial air to it, but Jupiter’s sign placement gives context.
Dates
The wisdom available via astrology is about the cycles they illuminate for us. As planets pass over certain points in the zodiac at their appointed times, they carve a story of significance in our lives.
As I shared in the weekly astrology post Mars has been leading the charge ahead being the first planet to move through each sign this year.
- January 20, 2017 – Mars entered Pisces, the day of the US Presidential inauguration
- January 23, 2017 – Mars reached the degree of where Venus will station direct, 2 Pisces
- February 15, 2017 – Mars reached the degree where Venus will station retrograde, 19 Pisces
These dates bookend the preface to your Venus Rx story. You can think of the things that happened then as a preface. The changes and events of that time period set you up for the next 6 weeks of the Venus retrograde.
These are the dates for Venus’ retrograde cycle for 2017:
- January 29, 2017, 2 Pisces – Venus enter its retrograde shadow
- March 7, 2017, 19 Pisces – Venus is stationary retrograde
- April 15, 2017, 2 Pisces – Venus is stationary direct
- May 19, 2017, 19 Pisces – Venus leaves its retrograde shadow
Venus Retrograde 2009
March 8, 2009 Venus stationed retrograde at 21 Pisces. Venus stationed direct at 5 Pisces on April 18, 2009. That year was the last time we had the opportunity to get intimate with Venus as she carved a narrative and illuminated lessons in the Pisces area of our charts.
In 2009, Jupiter was in Capricorn where it is in the sign of its fall. Jupiter is exalted in the sign opposite Capricorn, Cancer.
The purpose finding, meaning seeking, and generosity of Jupiter is well manifested in Cancer. One’s inner compass and primal connection to their emotional experience guides them towards integrity and abundance of heart. In Cancer Jupiter’s vision of life and meaning is palpable in the body. It honors the legacy of kindred ties without sacrificing personal experience.
But when Jupiter is in Capricorn our need for synthesization of our personal experience is subject to hierarchies of power. We tussle with existing structures, traditions, and authority as we find our way to the truth about the world that resonates deepest with what we’ve experienced. It becomes easy to sacrifice our own eyes and perceptions for what has already been established as truth.
When Jupiter was in Capricorn in 2009, Venus in Pisces was subject to our need to negotiate the power dynamics that informed our core values and beliefs. So, as you craft the narrative of your 2017 Venus Rx story think back to 2009 and the ways you struggled and negotiated with authority and power structures in your relationships and involvement in community.
Venus Retrograde 2017
This year Venus in Pisces is governed by Jupiter in Virgo, another sign of Jupiter’s debility. I’ve written about Jupiter’s transit through Virgo on Twitter and on this blog.
Virgo is the calculator, scribe, and translator. Jupiter’s truth seeking is subject to the facts and figures that are countable and accountable when in Virgo. Because Virgo is the sign opposite Pisces, this creates a special tension within this retrograde phase of Venus.
Here are some keywords for this opposition:
- Venus in Pisces – Jupiter in Virgo
- Big picture love – Detailed values
- Consuming relationships – Distinct perspectives
- Romantic love – Statistic backed beliefs
The challenge with the opposition is getting caught up with one side over the other. Are we sacrificing love and opportunities for intimacy by being too focused on the details of how our relationships reflect what we want? Or do we avoid thinking about, communicating, and defining our core values because we fear the implications it would have on our ability to find love and connect with others?
Then (2009) and Now (2017)
If we take on the task of connecting the dots between what we learned then and what we can learn now, we have the opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive to the lessons of this current retrograde.
Venus retrograde of 2009 challenged the integrity of our authority over ourselves as it concerns our relationships, creativity, and expression/seeking of pleasure. Now we are tasked with highlighting the integrity of our core values and our ability to define them and communicate them.
During 2009’s retrograde, we were pulled down and grounded by external expectations and prescribed ways of contextualizing our relationships. 2017’s retrograde directs our focus towards the details of our core values and how they inform our relationships, choice of partners, artistic expression, and pleasure seeking.
- What are your core values?
- Can you communicate them clearly?
- Have you written them down?
- How do your current and past relationships measure up against your core values as you identify them now?
I keep seeing the image of an accountant doing a line by line assessment of who we say we are and what we believe, and how that lines up with our choice of partners. I’m seeing each of our hearts pulled between the drive to connect and the need to measure our love and evaluate its effectiveness in being a proxy for what we believe.
I hope that you are able to take the questions here and reflect on them as we venture through this retrograde period. These are perfect prompts for those of you who journal. And I’d love to hear your feedback and where you stand on these issues on Twitter. This is a conversation I’m looking forward to having with you.