Venus's Grand Arrival to Leo!

6.7.15


Effective immediately (as of Fri Jun 5), benefic goddess Venus is now in bold, beautiful Leo! Ready to flagrantly flaunt your heart's fondnesses? This is not a time to be demure, but to love big.

Hope you like a little drama and pluck, pomp and circumstance, with your relational interminglings. Or more than a little. Or much more than that! If you're going to express an interest or affinity, you might as well make a memorable impression—or a full technicolor spectacle!

Please inform the media with the appropriate press releases, bugle calls, ticker-tape parades, and fireworks displays: This visit to Leo is massive news for Venus. Though Venus ordinarily zooms through a sign in about three-to-four weeks, Venus will be in Leo for nearly four months! With the exception of a couple weeks of dipping ahead into Virgo (Jul 18-31), Venus stays in Leo until early October! That's a good reason to acclimate ourselves to a sunnier, showier, more sensational interpersonal vibe… and to unapologetically use exclamation points with reckless abandon!

Whenever a planet stalls in a particular zone of the zodiac-wheel for a much-longer-than-usual span, the culprit is a retrograde. Yes, it's true: Venus will be going retrograde about seven weeks from now, beginning on Jul 25 and stretching through Sep 6. Venus retrogrades are notorious for bringing back unfinished relationship business; flashing us glimpses of previously unconsidered romantic, friend, and/or collaborator prospects, which may prove to be either fleeting mirages or life-changing left-turns; and presenting other interpersonal conditions which inspire us to reexamine what we really value most in our alliances and affiliations. Venus retrogrades can also deliver rascally financial dealings ('am I getting a fantastic bargain, or being taken for a ride?!?'), artistic revisionings, and personal-appearance makeovers.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We have some time before we're drenched in all that.

For now, it's enough to start with an awareness of Venus-in-Leo's propensity to trump up the narrative impact of developments which involve our intimate connections, social bonds, creative expressions, and/or resource investments and allocations. Leo, the only sign ruled by our solar system's star (that is, the Sun), naturally orients its life-events into an enthralling story—whether a fairy-tale, a hero's-journey, a legendary saga, or an ironic tragedy worthy of the great Greek playwrights' envy—which situates itself in the center.

This first-person narrativizing move is not necessarily born out of a bloated egocentrism (though, admittedly, sometimes it is), but because Leo is sincerely moved to share what it has gained and grown from, as a result of its experience of being itself. I show you I want to connect by expressing qualities about myself—challenges I've confronted, insights I've earned, blessings I've enjoyed, emotions I've felt—which you might understand, relate to, and/or seek solace from. I demonstrate I care by giving freely, from my heart, of myself. I want you to like me because I've offered myself to you and you like what I've offered.

In Leo, therefore, Venus is less accommodating and other-person-centered than in many of its other guises. Venus in Leo has a more forthright, coming-on-strong character… and wants to make sure the object of our admiration is well aware that we admire them. Rather than responsively playing to what the other person might want out of a situation, Venus in Leo is far likelier to attempt to impress a suitor with a grand gesture, an attention-grabbing flourish, or a not-very-subtle come-on. As we're under Venus-in-Leo's influence, our encounters and reactions take on an exaggerated sense of importance. ('Self-importance,' one might correctively add.)

When this Venus is functioning at its best—because we've come together with someone with whom we have genuine mutual affinity, affection, and/or attraction—every interaction we enjoy takes on this epic quality. We eagerly sit on the edge of our seats, awaiting the next twist! We sing our love from the rooftops! Our life-force is vitalized by the union… and we feel more ourselves than ever!

And when it's not? The dark side of Venus in Leo exposes the ego-blindness in our modes of interrelating. We cannot see how we're being perceived by the other person as clearly as we see our own feelings and desires. We want to 'be liked' more than we want to sincerely connect, in a reciprocally appreciative manner, with someone specifically well-suited to us. We set ourselves up for the inevitable downward plunge ('written in the stars' by those troublemaking Fates) through our inability and/or refusal to see the scene from any other angle than our own, then end up devastated when a shocking turn reveals a different truth. Woe is me! Woe is me! Why doesn't anything ever work out… for me?!?!?

In any case, with Venus in Leo, our social and relational activities are rarely boring… even as, at the same time, the elevated levels of bombast and ego-attachment which come along with it can become overbearing and tiresome.

Speaking of this overbearing, exaggeratory potential, let's not forget Jupiter is still in Leo, too, until mid-August… which means Venus is headed towards a Jupiter conjunction in Leo (on Jul 1), and then retrogrades back into a second one (on Aug 4). A conjunction between these two traditional benefics (or 'good-fortune' planets) is typically interpreted as a concentration of positive energy. But whenever Jupiter is involved, there's also a corresponding risk of suffering the effects of excess. And when we add in both the Leo influence and the impending Venus-retrograde factor, this coming-together of Venus and Jupiter augurs a very high likelihood of 'too much of a good thing' overreaches, missteps, and challenges.

As if that weren't enough, let's also not forget Jupiter remains in trine to Uranus in Aries, with a third-and-final exact hit happening on Jun 22, further increasing the disruptive potential in too hasty or contrarian a move, even as it supports our taking chances on behalf of our own liberation-of-self. Venus, too, will trine Uranus three times during its time in Leo (exact on Jun 28, Aug 19, and Sep 22), making it easier for us to shake up our relational status-quo, loosen ties, and/or defy convention… in order to dive into something more immediately compelling or self-gratifying, hotter-and-heavier, vitally invigorating. Whether these departures will lead to something enduring, or merely serve to unstick us from stale circumstances, remains to be seen. A moment's impulse is what propels such decisions.

The most challenging consequences of these swift and/or sensational self-gratifying Venus-in-Leo choices come courtesy of Saturn, who retrogrades back into Scorpio (after having been in Sagittarius since late Dec of last year) on Jun 14, just in time to move into a tense Venus square. One of the main lessons of Saturn's transit through Scorpio involves attaining the proper balance of emotional intensity and passion in our lives. We certainly don't want to ignore our deepest drives or desires, just to play it safe, or we end up settling for a flat or superficial existence. Yet, if we follow all our passions to their logical extreme, without caution or thoughtful hesitance, we can find ourselves overwhelmed by the resultant complications… unable to maintain the stable components of a sane sustainable life because we're dealing with constant tumult.

From this context, Saturn in Scorpio will serve as the disciplinary foil, then, attempting to keep in line Venus-in-Leo's propensity to overlook potentially complicating consequences in its embrace of immediately self-celebrating associations and affairs. Dare we allow our ego's yearning for excitement, acknowledgment, or spectacle to assume unmitigated reign over our behavior, we may be unduly opening a more bedeviling can-of-worms than we'd realized… with all the corresponding tangles, hindrances, headaches, and upsets that our willful oversimplification of the situation had kept us from responsibly considering in advance.