When you have Venus retrograde in your natal chart, your karmic history includes believing you failed someone you love.
You may feel compelled to go to extremes for those you care about in this life because you’re afraid of failing them.
This can include enabling them, tolerating unkind behavior, feeling you need to earn love to prove yourself to make up for your past.
It’s important to release guilt you carry and trust yourself so that you can create healthy loving relationships.
You also had lives where you didn’t feel valued and you’re now learning how to heal these experiences and believe you’re loveable.
When you struggle to believe you’re loved you tend to distort the intentions of others. It’s hard to receive love if you don’t believe you’re worth loving. You may also label unhealthy behavior as proof of love.
The retrograde can express itself in a variety of ways, these are just a few. Most importantly, retrogrades are not a curse. They are announcements and in this case that you’re learning to value yourself in a deep and meaningful way. I repeatedly see people with Venus retrograde develop healthy relationships and live abundant lives.
Natal VenusRx 💖✨
I just shared a few beliefs brought into this life with Venus retrograde in a natal chart. Most importantly, know that you’re not doomed by a retrograde. It’s an intention to heal in this life.
You are lovable. You are worthy of love and the love in your heart is priceless.
Venus is a powerful undercurrent to everything you are in this life and everything you do.
Venus is love. Human love. It’s how you express what matters to you while human. Loving is a core purpose we all have here.
Venus is what you value, what matters to you, how you set priorities, how you express love and feel love.
Venus is money, because money is one of the ways we assign value. Venus is key to understanding your relationship with money, how you get it, save it, spend it.
Look at Venus when you look at everything in your chart, even if there is no aspect, because Venus is integral to knowing what’s important to you and that impacts everything.
The more you understand what and how you love, the clearer you get on your priorities, the more effectively you focus your energy on living a rewarding life.
You can get caught up in doing things for many reasons that have nothing to do with what matters most to you. Habit, fear, obligation are a few.
Just as you periodically need to purge through your stuff, it’s helpful to take inventory of your life.
How do you spend your time and energy? Who do you spend it with? How do you get money? What do you do with it?
One way to deepen your understanding of astrology is to try to see in your chart what you know about yourself. Instead of looking at your chart and trying to figure it out, let’s do the opposite.
Take a minute and describe your values, how you love, what makes you feel loved, your relationship with money, and then look at Venus in your chart and see if you can make a connection to what you came up with and your Venus placement.
If you feel confused about how to start, try this. Look at the sign your Venus is in and describe the sign in whatever way you can then see if you can match any of that with what you came up with about how you love.
If you’re still confused, that’s okay. Astrology is a language and everyone reading this post has a different fluency level. You’ll get there.
@karmicastrology on Instagram
Venus 💖✨
Venus is love in human form. It’s who, what and how you love. It’s how you prioritize and assign value. Understanding Venus in your natal chart helps you to prioritize what matters to you.
Moon contacts in synastry is one way of seeing karmic connections between people.
Moon
These connections can show shared experiences in other lives between the two people or they can show karmic issues with mom that are being stimulated by the relationship.
Either way, moon contacts in synastry show that your relationship with that person reaches into your karmic past.
I use the same orbs for synastry as I do natal aspects: 7 degrees for conjunction, square, trine opposition and 3 degrees for sextile and quincunx. Looser aspects are read a little differently than tighter ones.
I often get questions about why I use the orbs I do. Bottom line is that in my 40+ year experience reading thousands of charts, wider orbs do not convey the specific aspect meaning.
Remember, everything in your chart is connected even if isn’t aspected. This is why the deep and specific meaning of any placement comes from the context of the whole chart.
Every placement is a part of the whole that is you. It may be easier to see how pieces that share house or sign placements have a connection, just know that your life is the connection between in your chart.
For example, your north node may not aspect anything, but there is a thread of connection to it throughout your chart because it’s where you are heading in this life and everything in your chart has a play in that.
So much to explore about the moon in your chart. Swipe above for some comments on synastry and aspects.
🌙 The moon is historical, irrational, and part of your essential nature. If you have any Cancer placements in your chart, you may tend to hang on to issues and beliefs associated with that part of yourself. This also goes for whichever house Cancer rules in your chart.
🌙 As you’ve been learning astrology, what has your moon revealed to you? How had it helped you to understand others?
Mars is our vitality. It’s the energy of passion. Mars gets us to take action.
When you are ignoring or suppressing your Mars, you may find yourself focusing on what other people are doing versus putting your energy into going after what you want.
If you find yourself feeling chronically annoyed, that could be a sign that your Mars feels stuck.
If you keep thinking about how someone else should or shouldn’t be living some part of their life, that could be your inner self screaming for you to pay attention to your own desires.
The essence of Mars is desire and passion. Mars is what you want. It’s your ability to be thrilled and excited. It’s the energy of your physical body, and it’s what moves you to action.
From Instagram
Clear expression of Mars includes feeling energized and taking inspired action. If you believe your Mars is stuck or could use a boost, look at how it’s placed in your natal chart and consider how you can support it.
🤎 If you’re feeling that chronic annoyance, ask yourself what you’re not tending to in your life. If you keep thinking about what someone else is doing wrong, be open to seeing what you need to do differently.
🤎 Your Mercury, Venus and Mars are about your personal human experience. Up level your life by healing your mindset (Mercury) owning your priorities (Venus) and are being willing to take action (Mars) that moves you into the natural flow of life.
🤎 If you’re struggling to glean something from your chart, remember that you have a direct line to your soul without it. You can get all your answers from the source of you 24/7. Nurture that inner dialogue.
Saturn is our karmic contract. It’s what we agreed to do in exchange for the opportunity to live this life. Saturn is time and space. It is our human experience, how we define ourselves in this time and space. Saturn rules boundaries, limits, structure, and our mastery of our earthly existence. Saturn also shows our father in the birth chart.
Saturn pic from NASA
Your karmic history with Saturn shows how you derive security and stability so that you can build the life you want. Look at Saturn in your chart for insight into where you came in needing to learn about boundaries and what makes you feel safe.
Saturn in the first house often feels they had to grow up fast by being given inappropriate levels of responsibility. They often feel they can only rely on themselves and are invested in having people see them as responsible. They have lessons around setting limits, learning to delegate.
Saturn in the second is often about self-reliance, self-worth, boundaries for self-care. It can be about understanding what is enough, what defines your true needs, experiencing security by having enough, understanding your responsibility about meeting your needs and where your responsibility to the needs of others begins and ends.
Saturn in the third house includes reliable communication, the effects your words have on others, when and how you have a responsibility to communicate, to use your voice responsibly.
Saturn in the fourth often includes learning to create a supportive family or family like support system, healthy limits with family, family commitments, protecting the environment and creating a home that feels safe.
Saturn in the fifth is about creativity, play, children, fun, romance, risks. Saturn here is often about balancing responsibility and healthy limits while giving yourself the security you need to take risks. This includes owning up to responsibility in a way that gives you choice and freedom versus creating obligations you come to resent.
Saturn in the 6th usually includes lessons around how to be of service without feeling subservient i.e., how to come from a place grounded in abundant self care versus guilt or obligation. Service can include both healing and service of others as well as helping others see the need for healthy boundaries.
Saturn shows what you agreed to do in this life. This includes lessons and tasks about bringing order, healthy limits, exploring security, responsibility and timing to the area of life (house) where Saturn is placed in your natal chart.
Saturn in the 7th house includes lessons around boundaries in personal relationships, being connected but not enmeshed, timing, limits, what feels safe, supported versus obligated.
Saturn in the 8th has lessons with learning to be vulnerable, and how to set healthy limits in intimate relationships. Your task may be to help others learn to do this as well, or help others deal with loss or to see how they can shift from feeling like a victim.
Saturn in the 9th is about spiritual growth, travel, higher education, religion, philosophy, and social justice. Saturn here often involves a need to expand your mind and explore the limits of righteousness. At some point you’ll need to ask yourself if you’d rather be right or experience joy, be right or live in peace.
With Saturn in the 10th house you may find yourself seeking a calling, feeling a need to understand your role and your unique contribution to the world. While you do need to demonstrate that you are responsible, you are also learning about the limits of perfectionism.
Saturn in 11th usually has some need to get behind causes and experience connection. They may help bring order to group activity and may tend to spread themselves too thin, and need to learn they limits about how much of themselves they can invest at any given time.
Saturn in the 12th is about the strength of compassion while learning the limitations of rescuing others. Lessons around feeling grounded in this earthly existence and fully embracing it while also being connected to life beyond this one.
Venus is how we give and receive love and rules every way in which we assign value. Venus opposes Mars early in the month, then continues with a series of squares to Jupiter, Pluto, Saturn and ends with an opposition to Uranus. All these challenging aspects to Venus urge us to get clear about our priorities and to ask ourselves what really matters to us.
So this month, intention is everything.
While transits are experienced most strongly if they touch your natal chart, there is such a strong theme this month, it feels like most people will feel this in some way.
These Venus transits are challenging us to become fully aware of our priorities and intentions. The confrontations we may experience this month are opportunities to learn why we may put a lot of energy into something and not get what we want, or when we get it feel as though it doesn’t fulfill us as the way we thought it would. We are facing ways we believe life isn’t fair, where we believe our choices are limited or non-existent, we are seeing how relationships may be out of balance and how we have isolated ourselves from people and things we love.
Our intentions can dominate our experiences and often override the stories we tell ourselves and the actions we take in the world. One example I use often is this: imagine that you are doing a favor for someone, but you feel so put out by it and resentful while doing it that instead of the person feeling helped or supported by you they feel awful. They feel like a burden, like they are worthless or helpless and wish they hadn’t asked you or you hadn’t offered. What you do for them may even fall apart and end up not being that helpful. Chances are you told yourself that you wanted to help, and some part of you did, but it was a cover story for your deeper intention that came from a place of guilt, obligation or something other than the pure desire to help.
This month, Venus is pulling back the curtain and showing us what we truly value and who is really there for us. We are seeing where love is in our lives, what we value, and where we actually want to be, what we want to do, and how we derive our worth.
We’re also revisiting balance in relationships and seeing where they may be one-sided. This includes both relationships where we do not ask for enough and where we give little of ourselves.
We are being challenged to be honest about what we really value so that we stop putting our energy into what we tell ourselves is important, and instead focus on what and who we truly love.
Some of this may not be easy, but facing it is worth it.
It’s worth taking the time to get a pair of shoes that really fit your feet. You can quickly buy a pair that look good and you tell yourself will work, but your feet won’t participate in the lie. The shoes may work out okay for a short time, but eventually your feet will feel the pain of your choice and make you regret buying them.
Denial always has an expiration date.
This month Venus is urging you to be honest with yourself about what matters to you. If there is any area in your life where you are pretending that something or someone is in alignment with your values, but is not, you’ll feel the friction and it will be a bit harder to pretend.
The good news is that the pain of disappointment or fear that you may feel opens the door to more of what you really love. You gain the focus and willingness you need to bring more of what you love into your life.
We all need grounding. We’re human. We all have the Sun and Saturn in our charts.
Pictured: garnets in a septarian bowl, sitting on a slab of petrified wood
The sun is our human identity in this life and shows us what makes us feel sane, grounded into who we want to be this time. Saturn is our humanity. It’s time and space, how we define ourselves here. It’s our societal structures, our ability to set boundaries, perceive limitations and experience our humanity. Living a spiritually driven path includes embracing our humanity. I used to travel a lot. Just counting plane rides it’s several hundred trips, then there’s road trips, and I moved to Europe twice. I got the most out of my travels by going local, going to the places unique to the area versus the same chains I had at home. If you feel stuck, scared, or in a funk, try sinking into your humanity and see what insight your Sun and Saturn can give you. They help you understand who you aspire to be and what you need to do along the way. They also help ground you in a way that can help propel you to action. It can be easier to get moving when you feel the ground beneath you is solid, and not so easy to run when what’s beneath you is rocky and shaking. You’re here, in a body, being human. Even if this year has dragged on for you I promise you, once you’ve lived a lot of years you’ll feel their speed and sometimes wish you could slow them down, just a little.
Transits show what outside energies will or won’t do for us. They affect us most when they connect to or trigger pieces in our natal or progressed charts.
Think about dramatic world events, they do not have the same impact on everyone.
This can be a great time for you to re-evaluate how and where you spend your energy.
Are you pouring energy into things that no longer matter to you?
Do you feel like you can’t stop investing your energy in something or someone, because you believe it will mean you wasted all the previous effort?
Are you ignoring what matters to you now?
Mars is your vitality, physicality, sexuality, ambitions, life force …
This is an amazing time to honestly re-evaluate how and where you express your energy through all areas of life, especially the areas Mars connects with in your chart. Consider everything …
⭐️ your presence, where you show up
⭐️ your money and resources
⭐️ how you communicate
⭐️ repetitive thoughts
⭐️ how you spend your time
⭐️ how you care for yourself and others
⭐️ causes that matter to you
⭐️ what you read, who you hang out with
⭐️ who you follow on social media
Put your energy into the life you want.
Ride the Mars energy wave and your life can accelerate in the direction you want.
I didn’t realize until I came here to post that it’s been a year since I updated the blog. I’m not going to make any promises on frequency this time, though I am back to doing readings again so the odds favor more postings. Truth be told, though I am endlessly fascinated with astrology, it usually takes some external nudge to get me back here writing. Clients are often that nudge.
Today I want to discuss moon speed.
Do you know your moon speed? If not, then you’re in luck, because I have a moon speed calculator you can have for free to easily figure it out.
Let’s back up though and first talk about why moon speed matters.
The moon is your temperament, it’s your capacity to respond emotionally, to nurture and be nurtured. It shows your beliefs about women, mothering and family that you brought into this life. It’s how you react moment to moment. The moon is not rational, it’s all about feelings.
You may be used to looking at sun signs for compatibility and while there’s value in that, the moon informs you about what it’s like to hang out with that person, to live with them or go on a road trip with them.
The speed of the moon when you were born gives insight into the speed with which you process your emotions. Other things in the chart will color this a bit, but in general, it helps to explain why you function the way you do. If your moon is slow, you need more time than most to process your feelings. If it’s fast, then you zip through them quickly and if it’s average, then you are more able to adapt to the extremes.
Ever wonder why you have no patience, or why you feel as if someone you care about is taking your feelings too lightly? The answers could be in looking at moon speeds.
Saturn rules time and space. It’s how we define our human existence. In your natal chart, it shows how you relate to structure, security, routine, limitations, commitment, and what you agreed to do for the opportunity to live this life. All the planets signify energy in the natal chart. Though they are all amazing in their own way, Saturn is sometimes seen very negatively. People focus on “limitations” and see Saturn as a very strict parent. It’s important to remember that none of the energies are inherently good or bad. Venus is loving energy, but can also be associated with extreme selfishness and vanity. Mars is passion and vitality, but can also be hostile and violent. All the energies are present in us and our lives. Understanding how we work best with them is how we experience the best versions of them.
Saturn is how we define ourselves in this body, in this place and time here on earth. Being in a body, having our immortal, limitless spirit in the confines of a body, let’s us experience this world. Limitations and structure can give us opportunities, as well as support. Looking at Saturn in your chart, it’s placement and aspects to it, gives insight into what area of life you are deriving security from in this life. It can show you where and how you are learning to set limits and what you have to contribute to the world.
While studying Astrology, I discovered that every planet has a beauty and brilliance. Every energy is magnificent and can flow through our lives in a way that elevates and improves our time here. Embracing and understanding each energy guides us to their most healthy and positive expressions.
Saturn creates the doors we can choose to open and walk through so that we may make real our most desired imaginings and discover love, joy, adventure, connection, transformation and peace.
