Exclusively for Vogue Scandinavia's Society members, astrologer Clarisse Monahan of Venus in Retrograde charts each month's most powerful cosmic shifts, breaking down exactly how to understand, navigate and benefit from them
Poor Venus. In terms of its upcoming astrological transits, the next two months could be particularly rough for our planet of romance, luxury, and beauty. We should take note of its travails, since an ill-placed Venus could very well betoken a bit of doom and gloom for us in matters of the heart.
Our saga begins September 10th. Planet Love falls from the grace of Libra, where it’s in rulership, into its “detriment” in Scorpio. A planet in detriment means that its natural strengths have a harder time expressing themselves, like when, say, the delicate flavours of halibut carpaccio get smothered in barbecue sauce.
It’s easy to see why Venus occupies this subordinate position in Scorpio. Venus brings attraction, pleasure, harmony, ease, and beauty into our lives. Scorpio drags these Venusian themes into much heavier territory: intimacy, vulnerability, possession, jealousy, trust, sex, power, and shared resources. Venus fosters play. Scorpio insists on processing. Venus flirts. Scorpio festers.
So, Venus in Scorpio can take the pleasant surface of a relationship and ask: But what is happening underneath? Scorpio fixates on things. Stews. Suspects. Probes. Reads between the lines.
Over the next few weeks, Scorpio's paranoid-hermeneutic excess in relation to debilitated Venus might impact our lives in a few fundamental ways. What felt like a light-hearted Venusian attraction could morph into something slightly more obsessive. Where a paramour’s lack of texting once felt liberating, it might now strike us as suspicious. Where we were feeling financially at ease, we might now become fixated on spending and saving.
Over the next few weeks, Scorpio's paranoid-hermeneutic excess in relation to debilitated Venus might impact our lives in a few fundamental ways
Clarisse Monahan
If this doesn’t sound great, we add insult to injury on October 3: Venus stations retrograde and begins apparently moving backwards through the zodiac. Astrologically, when this retrograde motion happens, that planet’s normal functioning can get weird. During Venus Retrograde, issues related to romance, love, harmony, pleasure, money, beauty, and attraction can suddenly feel compromised, awkward, uncertain, or dysfunctional.
The fact that this happens in Scorpio will only intensify this retrograde period. It’s not just that we have Venus going retrograde. It’s also beginning its cycle in one of its most challenging signs. The silver lining in all this? We shouldn’t just think about retrogrades as a lost cause and submit ourselves to romantic purgatory. Rather, retrogrades invite periods of review, return, recalibration, and reconsideration.
So Venus Retrograde asks us to review some very basic Venusian questions.
Relationships: Are my relationships giving me what I actually need? If not, recalibrate.
Value: Have I been giving too much value to something—or not enough?
Desire: Are the things I’ve been pursuing still attractive to me?
And then there is an important turning point in this Venus Retrograde cycle.
On October 25, Venus keeps reversing back out of Scorpio and re-enters Libra, the sign it rules. So, there’s almost a narrative built into this retrograde. Venus begins in difficult Scorpio territory, goes backwards through it, and eventually finds its way home to Libra, the sign of balance, harmony, and equilibrium (all qualities with which Venus resonates). After going into the Scorpio underworld of our desires and relationships, the question arises: what do we want to rebalance?
From late October until mid-November, Venus will be retrograding in Libra. After this long heroine’s journey, it finally stations direct in the sign of the Scales on November 13, bringing that roughly 40-day transit to an end.