The Goddess & Your Unique Healing Path
Venus Retrograde 2025
This Venus Rx is tied up in a real tangle of planets, retrogrades, nodes and eclipses. As you can see by the timeline below there’s a lot going on. I love it when one thing leads to another — so to speak, especially things like an ingress just as the sign’s lord switches direction. Such as when Venus turns retrograde as the Moon transits, and like when Jupiter is retrograde the entire time Venus is in Pisces the first time, and then turns direct literally a couple of hours after Venus leaves Pisces.
The clusters of activity tell me something special is brewing in the sky.
Timeline
- 4 Feb first Ingress into Aries
- 24 February Mars (sign ruler) turns direct.
- 2 March — Venus station retrograde at 10 Aries (conjunct Moon).
- 12 March — Mercury joins Venus at 8 Aries
- 13 March approx Venus under the beams (becomes invisible)
- 14 March — Lunar eclipse at 23 Pisces
- 16 Mercury turns rx at 9 Aries
- 23 March — Venus cazimi at 2 Aries
- 25 March — Mercury cazimi at 4 Aries
- 28 March — 2nd Venus ingress into Pisces conjunction Neptune
- 30 March — New Moon solar eclipse at 9 Aries
- 3 April — approximate, Venus gradually becomes visible as the morning star.
- 4 April — Venus Rx conjunction dragons head (NN) with Mercury Rx at 26 Pisces
- 6 to 9 April Venus Rx conjunct Saturn at 25 degrees Pisces
- 13 April — Venus station direct at 24 Pisces
- 18 to 22 April — Venus conjunct NN 25 Pisces then Saturn separating by 28 April
- 2 May — Venus second ingress into Aries
- 3 to 4 May Venus conjunct Neptune
- 16 May — Venus beyond shadow, rx complete.
The Feminine-Yin Self
Venus is our feminine self, our yin or receptive self — be you man, woman or anywhere between. A Venus wound in your chart might look like Venus in a sign of her detriment or fall, or hard aspects from Saturn, Pluto or Mars, or 12th or 8th house.
In my chart she is in the 8th house Capricorn and rules 12th and 5th houses, which is enough. But there are many nuances to consider — see below for more help on this.
And if the wounded woman-self within wants to be seen and loved and healed, then you may be about to embark on this underworld journey too.
Wounded woman-self?
A wounded Venus shows up most obviously in our relationships, our loves and our friendships, as well as peace, joy, beauty, money, nature, creativity, connection and harmony and all the lovely things. The things we love the most. The people we love, the people that love us.
A wounded Venus blocks all these good things off. Like we don’t deserve them, we don’t deserve love, we don’t deserve nice things. Our creativity doesn’t flow or feel good, we feel isolated or unloved, the joy of life has gone.
The Descent of Inanna — Allegory for Venus Rx
Our modern concept of Venus has ancient roots and branches that spread from Inanna and Ishtar, to Isis and to Demeter and Persephone.
The Inanna story is truly terrifying. She is stripped of all her power objects one by one, as she walks through the gates leading down into the underworld. Down and down she goes and once she hits rock bottom she is nothing more than skin and bones. There’s nothing left.
She is skin bag hung up on a hook to dry.
But then something miraculous happens. Twin benevolent beings, the homunculi come and sprinkle her with water. Gradually she comes back to life. Then she is reborn into a different world and she sees things very differently.
The entire story — one of the oldest known written stories, is extraordinary. Read more about it here, and here.
The Healing Journey ~ Cycles of Death & Rebirth
The cycle of death and rebirth as an allegory for the healing journey is well known in Jungian practice.
So a transiting Venus retrograde can trigger a personal death and rebirth moment just as likely as a Neptune or Saturn. These two beauties are there too, this time.
What do I mean about death and rebirth?
Something like this: With old trauma (abuse, cPTSD in particular) there are layers of release. A layer of dark, buried feelings begin to surface, triggered by something that happens. A process of witnessing and allowing helps the release process and then we can begin to connect more deeply with our inner self. Sometimes it’s too hard and we can’t go on. We might feel so profoundly rotten we wish we were dead.
Courage is required to surrender to this process, to gather up the lost fragments of our feminine self. Think of the homunculi. Help is always there in timely, or tiny ways.
This is shadow work. This is how we evolve, heal, transform and grow. How we find our true and real selves beneath the disregulation and trauma.
I don’t believe there are shortcuts. And it can be your life’s work, this healing path.
Goddess Wisdom
How do we invite more goddess into our hearts and into our lives? One way is to track her cycles, the same way we would track the lunar cycles. A journal is very helpful, and while there, write some love letters to yourself and to your magnificent feminine.
Venus Rx 2025 has echos to the previous Aries retrograde 8 years ago (May 2017). It also marks the beginning of a new Venus cycle, and a new Star Point at the Cazimi (conjunct the Sun).
Venus is Cazimi at 2 Aries. The Cazimi is the power moment for the feminine, when life is breathed into the corpse-like goddess and she begins to rise. Literally she rises into the sky before the Sun as the morning star. She is reborn, more powerful and brighter than before, as the evening star.
For us it means we are renewed and empowered once again. We are not the same, things look different. Depression lifts, our energy, joy, creativity and inspiration returns, we receive money and gifts unexpectedly, we understand what we are meant to be doing.
To understand the themes of the cycle and receive the opportunity that is offered consider what the goddess, the feminine, means to you. Where is Venus in your chart? What houses does she rule? And what aspects does she make?
And because I love the way symbolism can be like a key to the portal of infinite wisdom here are more resources.
Your Venus Star Point
To map your Venus Star Points go to Ariel Gutman’s page here.
If you have a star point in Aries it will resonate with this one currently underway, especially if it is in the first, fourth, tenth or seventh houses. If you need help email me or drop a comment.
The Chandra Symbol
ARIES 3
The outer casing of the Great Pyramid being removed.
Candor, stark naked honesty. Getting rid of all false coverings, going for what counts. You are sharply intent upon getting at the truth and staying on the truth. Self-disclosure. An extraordinary aptitude for reality, you are the world’s most direct person, willing to be seen and known unequivocally. The jackhammer treatment. Blunt, brutal, and straightforward. Devoid of charm or grace, but right on the mark, gutsy and truly incorrigible.
The First Decan of Aries
And from the incredible T Susan Chang, a description of the first decan of Aries:
Enter the patriarchy
Mars ruling this first decan of the year, as he will rule the last, in his diurnal domicile sign of Aries, making this the most martial of decans. (Mars also rules the first decan of his nocturnal domicile sign, Scorpio, the 5 of Cups.) Thus we see themes of fire, light, sun, and heat. If there is a more ‘masculine’ card than the 2 of Wands in the minor arcana, I don’t know what it is. Although as readers we sometimes prefer to be delicate about things, let’s not mince words: the Tower is a phallic symbol and a testament to the maleness of Mars. The ram of Mars’ diurnal sign, Aries, is perhaps most famous for his head-butting, macho conflicts with others over territory and mating rights. Although Pamela Colman Smith’s figure appears to be serenely looking over a world of possibilities, don’t be fooled! The energy fueling this card is rutting, dominating, spoiling for a fight. There will be breakages, conquests, and headaches for all. In the image of a man holding a globe in his hand, we see a precursor to colonization.‘Audacie, fortitudinis, altitudinis et inverecundie’
Images of this decan are consistent, depicting an armed warrior. Themes of red and black, the colors of Mars, run through them. Sometimes he wields an axe, sometimes a sword. Sometimes he is described as restless, sometimes as angry. The Latin edition of the Picatrix describes him as “audacie, fortitudinis, altitudinis et inverecundie”: bold, strong, tall, and shameless. The 2 of Wands is locked and loaded, ready for battle and sex. We’ve all seen men carried away by the spirit of combat and the spirit of desire, and the truth is that those two are not so very different.The Lord of Dominion does not question, equilibriate, or second-guess. The Ram doesn’t pause and say, “Why don’t we use our words?!” No — he smashes headfirst into his opponent, and you get the sense that if he didn’t have an opponent, he’d simply smash his head into the nearest tree.
Love and best wishes on your healing path ~ Anna Marie x
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