A few days ago Venus slowed and turned retrograde in Leo. Her apparent movement backward lasts for 40 days or so, until the beginning of September. If Venus in Leo is our inner queen, now we are called to find that sovereignty within us. It’s easy to default to finding our Venus outside of ourselves, in our relationships, and in what others reflect back to us. But Venus in Leo is self-willed, self-focused, and learning to value herself. Venus in Leo brings her whole heart, her whole self, to all whom she is in relationship with. I’m still pondering that archetype of the queen, of the ordering of our inner realm as I wrote in my previous post on Venus and Mars in Leo. And inevitably I’m wondering about the goddesses who embody this energy.
Battle goddess
For the Romans, Venus was a goddess of battle as well as a goddess of love. As Venus Victrix, she ruled over success in battle as well as victory in love, surely a Leo energy. We might not think of Venus, queen of affection and beauty, in the context of Martian battle. But a battle is a relationship too, a confrontation can only happen if there’s something to confront. Antagonism can be just as compelling as affection, if not more so. Battle is also a dynamic of self and other, perhaps the most othered of all.
That said, I’m not keen on the symbolism of battle and conquest. It’s been prevalent in the west for way too long and really hasn’t led to a healthy world. So perhaps Venus Victrix, retrograde in creative Leo, is asking us to re-work that dynamic. To focus on power from within rather than power over. Othering implies that we value one side – generally, the one we consider ours – and disempower the other. So there is something here about how we exercise power within our own queendom, both with others and within ourselves.
Perhaps claiming and valuing our own power means that we don’t have to externalize it or meet it in others. We no longer need someone to battle against. But sometimes we need to acknowledge the reality of a battle or struggle. Sometimes confrontation is needed to heal a wound or right a wrong. In that case, Venus’s tendency towards harmony and people-pleasing can keep us trapped. We need to cauterize the wound before we can move on and come back into right relationship.
Venus retrograde in Leo is not people-pleasing, but self-pleasing. She asks what does a relationship look like where we centre our own desires, our own values. Where we don’t compromise, but meet each other as our fullest selves.
Solar goddess
With Venus in fiery Leo, the sign ruled by the sun, I’ve also been considering the solar goddesses. There are more of them than modern paganism and occult thinking might have us believe. In the Norse Eddas, the sun goddess Sunna is referred to as the “fair bride of heaven” (quoted in this book, which is full of inspiration) – a Venusian description if ever I heard one. Northern mythologies often have sun goddesses, the sun being a more nurturing and welcoming energy further from the equator.
In my meditations on Venus this last week, I’ve been seeing a fire goddess, clothed in flame. Here is the archetype of the Burning Woman, finding her voice again after years of suppression. When a planet turns retrograde, it takes on less obvious forms, more maverick symbolism. It breaks us out of the “usual” ways of working with that archetype. Which is often exactly what we need.
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