How Bad is Venus in Her Fall in Virgo?

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today we're going to take a look at Venus entering her fall in the sign of Virgo. We're going to talk specifically about why ancient astrologers thought that this was a difficult placement for Venus, but I'm also going to take a look at some of the positive things that tend to come up when Venus is in the sign. Got some horoscopes for you, so hopefully this will be a well-rounded way of looking at Venus's upcoming stay in Virgo. I'll map out the timeline for you as well. So that's our agenda for the day.

But before we get into it, as always, remember to like and subscribe, share your comments and your reflections. It takes two seconds to subscribe, and it's free to do so. It really helps us sustain and grow what we're doing here. So thank you in advance for that. You can find transcripts of any of these daily talks always on the website nightlightastrology.com Let's head over there. I am really excited to announce that my book release party is happening this evening. So, if you'd like to attend, go to the events tab, click on book release party, you can sign up and register, it's free.

I'm going to be reading from my book, talking about creative writing, talking about storytelling, and giving some tips for people who might want to get started writing their own stories, especially if those are personal stories, and it can be very therapeutic to write out some of our stories. We're going to talk about that, as well as kind of celebrate the launch of my book, The Oracle Speaks, which you can find on the shop page. If you go to my books, scroll down, you'll find The Oracle Speaks right there. Buy it from our website, it helps us more so than if you go to Amazon, but if you're outside the US, of course, you have to use Amazon, because our press doesn't ship internationally, unfortunately. But at the bottom, you'll also find my first book, in case you're interested in that. The second edition is out, that's kind of cool.

The other thing I want to promote today is go to monthly webinars, you'll see that my talk for July, The Dark side of astrology, speaking of a planet in her fall, and a lot of misunderstandings that can happen around difficult dignity conditions. This talk is all about some of the hardest things that astrologers look at, or that we all tend to get freaked out by: malefic planets, eclipses, and retrogrades. We're going to talk about those things, try to understand why they can be legitimately difficult, and then also talk about what the positives are. I like to give these talks so that we can understand the roots of these subjects and why they were, how they have come to be known as difficult, because that really helps once you understand that it doesn't, it goes from superstition and fear to real understanding, and that's the goal of this talk.

So, you can't, if you can't make it live when you register, you get the recording either way, so hope to see some of you there, but otherwise, last but not least, every day at Nightlight there's free meditation. I say this every day on the channel, just so that people know it's a resource that's there. Click on the community quiet link, you can join us for meditation seven days a week. It's a really lovely community. I've been really glad to be spending time with a lot of you and getting to know you. It's a real sweet group. It's nice to sit together every morning. All right. On that note, let's put in Chepso on the screen and take a look at this upcoming planetary transit.

Now, Venus, as we are talking today, Wednesday, July 8, Venus is in the sign of Leo, still kind of culminating here. It's actually going to cross Regulus in the next couple of days here as it gets to about zero Virgo, so the ingress is marked by the conjunction to a powerful royal fixed star that that alone makes the entrance maybe a little a little flashier than you might expect for Venus entering her fall, but anyhow Venus enters the sign of Virgo right here on Friday, July 10. It's really sort of between, you can see this between Thursday early morning and Friday that it happens. So, if I rotate the wheel a little bit, let's go hour by hour, we'll see that Venus actually enters about Thursday tomorrow at Thursday, July 9, at about 1:30pm The point, though, is that you will be able to, you'll be able to feel this tomorrow and Friday as the real kind of first, the grand entrance, the grand opening.

So then, if we take this forward just a little bit longer, Venus flies through the signs of the zodiac pretty quickly, so July 9 all the way to right here, we're at about August 6, just a little under a month, so that means though that kind of the middle of the summer here in the Northern Hemisphere, I guess it's the middle of the winter for you in the Southern Hemisphere, you've got, you've got a nice like long stay from Venus in a difficult place. It's important while that's happening, rather than just throwing our arms up and going, "Oh my god, you know, it's the worst thing in the world. Venus, when is when is she going to leave this terrible place? That kind of astrology doesn't really help us. You know, I mean, I guess we can kind of joke and vent about things like that, which I do too. And it's, it's can be fun, but the point is we want to have understanding, and understanding is understanding is really everything.

It's sort of all we have in astrology to make sure that we're living in a meaningful cosmos, and not just one that's, you know, always tripping out on good or bad information that we're consuming with astrology and. Just kind of roller coaster riding our way through life, one transit after another. Let me adjust my screen, so we've got some - we have some horoscopes. I've got to do these are like kind of quick hitting horoscopes today, more like lightning round horoscopes. But what I want to talk about first are five things to watch for that, these are five legitimate reasons that Venus can be so difficult in the sign of Virgo. Okay, so we're going to start there. My classic list of five things to watch for, but all of this is trying to sort of legitimize what makes this placement difficult.

Now, the assignment of planetary rulers is elaborate and really fascinating. In fact, the webinar series that I'm working on for 2027 is all about understanding the zodiac, one sign at one sign at a time, in terms of how the sign likely became affiliated with the planets that it is affiliated with, rulership and exaltation, and the kind, in the case of some signs. So, it'll be a nice tour through the zodiac we're taking next year, but one of the things that becomes really important is that we understand planetary pairings, so planetary dyads or pairings are baked into the logic of the zodiac, and when it comes to Venus and her fall in the sign of Virgo, she's said to be in her fall, because it is the place where Mercury is exalted, and where Mercury is exalted, Venus is depressed, and where Venus is exalted in the opposite sign of Pisces, there Mercury is in its fall, or its depression.

So, where Venus is exalted, Mercury is depressed, and this logic was said to be fundamental to the language of ancient astrology, so when we think about all the, you know, the everything hermetic, the astrology being the science of Hermes works through opposites and tensions of opposites, so when we think about Venus in her fall. We're not just saying that's generically bad. What we mean is that Venus has a sort of natural high point, and that high point of her archetypal expression is that the end of winter and beginning of spring, when life in the sensual sexual proliferation of life and spring, sort of metaphorically, and the light of the solar year is about to take over. It's rising up out of the darkness, and Venus comes sort of flooding through the gates, and she's exalted in Pisces, a very romantic, uplifting sign that moves us toward the light.

So naturally, she's in her fall in a period of time in which the solar year is ushering us into darkness, and she's descending into the underworld. This is Mercury's place, Mercury being one of the gods naturally associated with the entrance into the underworld. Mercury astronomically rises up in the sky and then dives back down into the underworld. Not surprisingly, Hermes was a god that was constantly going in and out of the underworld. No other gods could really do that. So we have a planet in Mercury at this at the very end of summer in the Northern Hemisphere ushering us into the underworld of the solar year and the in that place where Mercury is naturally has an ease moving between worlds and realms Venus descending out of the space of life and light and into dark, so to speak.

That's a difficult place for her. I mean, think, think, for example, of how beautiful a garden looks, and think about how kind of sad it is when the garden starts drying up and dying. You know, it's not to say that Venus can't get along in Virgo, that's not at all what we're saying. We're trying to understand a natural tension that exists. Another way that ancient astrologers have of putting the tension between Mercury and Venus is according to their natural makeups, not just the sign qualities. So, for example, Venus is sensual, Mercury is more rational, and ancient astrologers said that the reason for this was the reason for their opposition was because the sensual and the rational don't always get along, and I always like to use the example, like imagine that you're at dinner with someone, and you're, you're, you know, you're, you're attracted to them, and you want to get to know them, and they're sitting there fussing over how much everything's going to cost on the menu, they're analyzing, critiquing, nervous, and you're just like, oh man, could you just relax, and could we just enjoy now.

On the other hand, someone who is floating through life and has no careful, thoughtful, rational discernment, could you know it's like, well, glad that you're enjoying life, but you're not so grounded, you're not so, you're not such a critical thinker. This could drive Mercury nuts. So, the two planets are, it's not that one's obviously better than another, it's that they have a natural tension, the sensual, the rational, they don't always. Get along easily, so keep in mind that anytime we're talking about Venus and Virgo in the list that we're looking at today, all of them are really Venus, Mercury tensions. Now, if we're aware of those tensions and we work with them, they're all deeply educational, because all planetary oppositions and all the dignity languages are all of the dignity language is based on these oppositions.

These oppositions can also represent secret harmonies, unions, and cooperation, and so every planet in its fall has the potential for an amazing synthesis of its oppositional tension. So, for example, a lot of the people, a lot of people have noted that there are many great athletes with Mars in its fall in Cancer, and they'll use this sometimes to say, well, that, that means that you know there's nothing to this dignity category, because clearly, you know, Michael Phelps or Leno Messi or what's the.. oh, is it Nadal or Federer? I can't remember, it's one of the.. one of the.. one of the tennis stars. They have Mars in Cancer, and it's like, yes, but you know, there's.. there are great examples.

I think it was in the case of Messi. Hold on, let me check my notes. Right, so it was Messi at age 11. Messi stopped growing, and doctors diagnosed him with growth hormone deficiency, predicting he would only reach a height of four feet seven inches. Necessary medical treatment cost $1,000 a month, and he had to endure, administer painful nightly injections into his own legs to stimulate his growth. The point is not usually that Mars, in its fall in Cancer, for example, means that you can't become a great athlete. It usually means that there will be certain kinds of real difficulties prohibiting limiting factors that have to be overcome, a planet in its a planet in a dignity is describing a dynamic process with certain kinds of tensions that will play out in patterned realities that we live and experience, and not just one, but many different storylines at different times in our life.

Those tensions make the story, so for example, you know, I had one of my bodybuilding coaches was severely bullied as a kid and super scrawny, and then he decided to go to a gym with, he was like a cousin or a brother or something. Anyway, he decided to go to a gym, and all these like bodybuilders sort of took him in and started helping him grow and get bigger, and he ended up becoming a professional bodybuilder who won many high-level competitions. The point is not all Mars in Cancer means you can't ever do anything. It means that there are certain kinds of moon Mars tensions that have to be overcome. For example, you're sensitive, sweet, soft, a little feminine, a little scrawny, you're getting beat up, right? There's the Mars moon tension, and, but you can overcome that, and you know, and so all of this is just to use a different dignity category, or different dignity example to illustrate the same point.

Dignities are not static conditions, because humans aren't static conditions, they describe environmental tensions that play out karmically in certain areas of our life, and you may never want to use that language with a client, because they may apply something to themselves statically. They may end up, you know, if you say you have Venus in your fall, they might think, "Great, I'm screwed, or, you know, they might, they might not understand that it's simply describing certain kinds of intent tensions that are innate in life itself, right? So, the sensual and the rational, that we all just know that's a tension, it can be a tension that doesn't mean it can't be synthesized or harmonized either. But if you're someone who has struggles with Venus and Virgo, you're going to note that they follow along these lines. So, let's take a look at them.

Number one would be paralysis by analysis. I mean, usually this happens with Venus when it comes to over analyzing relationships, instead of allowing affection, love, trust, surrender to the other to just flow forth naturally. There can be a tendency to be scrutinizing and analyzing every single interaction to the point where intimacy, love, flow, trust are just blocked. You might be looking for flaws in your partner rather than appreciating their strengths. You may have chronic insecurity that makes it difficult to connect. You can turn intimacy into constant problem solving or nitpicking, and you may feel that love has to be earned through improvement, either your improvement or their improvement, but it's this kind of Mercury-Venus tension that can show up and make this placement difficult.

Does that mean you're screwed? No, but if you've ever had to work through that kind of tension, now you know why Venus in this particular sign is said to be difficult, because it produces. Kind of tension that doesn't mean that it's solely difficult either. Number two would be perfectionism replacing pleasure, so Venus enjoys whatever is sweet, beautiful, harmonious, and Virgo is as a Mercury ruled sign tends to endlessly refine things and make them better, improve them, analyze them, scrutinize them like a craftsman, right. So that could mean, though, that you never feel satisfied or satiated with things that are supposed to provide pleasure. You might have a difficult time relaxing with sex, you might have a difficult time just enjoying your food without calorie counting.

I mean, all of these are just examples, and some more extreme than another, but you might have difficulty even just receiving compliments or affection, or giving it, because it's just, it's you're too in your head or nervous, that can happen, and you can always be, you can be kind of like constantly tweaking things rather than just enjoying them, so just, and that can be just around pleasure, doesn't even necessarily have to be around other people, so the next one is that Mercury likes systems and duties and measurable outcomes. Mercury is a god of marketplaces, exchange rates, back and forths, and and money. Mercury was a planet associated with money.

A lot of people commonly associate Venus with money, but that's due to the conflation of Venus with Taurus in the second house of the 12 letter alphabet. Mercury was more commonly associated with marketplaces and exchanges and things like that that were rooted in business or commerce. So the point is that Mercury likes transactions. What that can mean is that Venus and Virgo tends to keep score, or it expresses love primarily through fixing or helping, and almost getting stuck in patterns, like sort of codependent patterns of fixing or helping each other, and you can feel appreciated only when useful, or you can appreciate someone else only when they're being sort of practically useful, and that can make it hard to just enjoy the beingness and presence of another living soul. You know, these are all potential patterns.

Number four is self-criticism. Like Venus is just about the pleasure and the harmonizing principle within ourselves. Can I harmonize disparate parts of myself. Can I harmonize the voice in my head? Can my inner life feel like music that I like listening to? Well, it's hard for that to happen if we're constantly self-criticizing, perfecting, refining ourselves. It can be hard to just enjoy ourselves. Another one, number five, would be just general Mercury seeks a kind of rational understanding or certainty, not like dogmatic like Jupiter, but it just wants to understand and know how things work and function, and Venus is going to flourish a lot more through trust, nuance, suggestion, receptivity, surrender.

It's a bit more like a dance, and Mercury is a bit more like a tech technician. It's not that the two can't go together, it's just can the technician and the dancer sort of flow together, you know? Can the technique flow? Can the flow be technical? I think there's always the possibility that those two things can work together, but it does take work. All right. Well, those are just like very basic Venus in Virgo problems that we tend to run into, but there's three positives we could look for as well. I just wrote these down just to give like some counterpoints. Okay, so one of the things I love about Venus and Virgo people in general, my daughter has Venus in Virgo, is devotion and care.

Let me just show you something. So, this is a drawing that my daughter did of that guitar right there. You can see the guitar in the background. So, she was in here for one of our morning meditations, and I like her to be in here, and she doesn't have to sit and meditate, but she can sit and draw. This is on our Silent Sunday meetings. So she comes in, and I just like her to be.. I want her to be exposed to meditating people, and like the group share. It's really cool. She learns a lot from it, but she can draw. So she drew me this, and when she was in Italy, my wife took a little pilgrimage with the girls to Italy. It was a, they, this was a long, long process, a lot of anticipation, and my wife was really hoping that it would be a sacred time, because they were going there with a teacher of hers, who's both an herbalist and a painter, and while they were there, they did, they did a lot of sharing about art, and they were, you know, as most, I think it was like mostly grown, it was mostly grown women's.

My two daughters were the youngest girls there, and the teacher asked them to share something about themselves that they wanted to change, and summer my. Daughter with Venus and Virgo, she said, I want to change every time I look at something that I make with my art, it's never good enough, and I know that I will, I have to keep getting better, but I like, really don't like my work, and you know, my mom and dad will tell me that I'm being too hard on myself, so I really don't want to be so hard on myself about my artwork, and so this is a very Venus in Virgo thing. So she made this, and I thought it was really cool, because when she made this, and I said it's really beautiful, do you like it? And she looked at me, and she said, I do, because she's working on it, right. How can.. and I talked to her about this. Both my wife and I did.

We said, when you have devotion and care for things like your drawing, or your guitar playing, or your craft as an astrologer, you're always trying to get better, and you can always look and see how things could get better, but because you're coming from the heart, because you're coming from a place of care and devotion and tenderness and attentiveness to something that love can be, it can be less, you could, there's less like measurable results attached, you know. It's like she can look at this now. She couldn't do this a few months ago, and she can look and see what needs improving. She's seven, right? So she can what needs improving in her work, but now she has more capacity to love it as well.

So when Venus and Virgo can infuse craft and perfection and meticulous, careful discerning, you know that kind of thoughtful. How is this working? Could I make it better? What's wrong with it? How do I purify it and marry that to love, genuine, caring, sweet, sensitive love? That's a really amazing hidden potential of Venus and Virgo. You will find few people as deeply devoted to craft and as in love with it, and in love with the attention to detail and the actual process of improving at something, but the ones who have perfected the care, the grace, the surrender, the forgiveness, often Venus and Virgo, do a very famous example of someone who's had that kind of highly perfectionistic crafts woman vibe is Martha Stewart, who has Venus in Virgo, and I, for a long time, I worked there was someone in my programs who worked for her, and you know, said it was kind of a lifelong journey of hers to be more devoted to her art and less hard on herself, or you know, the teams creating things that she was softening as she aged. That doesn't surprise me. Anyway, all right, let's go to the next one.

Refined taste and craft, so if Virgo and Mercury, as an archetypal pair, can like to improve things, kind of like the editor and the careful analyzer and reviser, artistic editing anything that beautifies with a craftsman's touch and eye, learning skills that require patience, refinement, almost like I think of what I, what comes to my mind is like needle point, is that a thing? Needle point sounds like it's a thing, or maybe it's weaving, sewing, there's like precision along with grace when these two, when the tension of Venus and Mercury work together with this placement. You have, I mean, listen, the hands down, the best hair stylist that I've ever known in my life, someone who came through Nightlight did my wife's hair for our wedding, Venus in Virgo, just an incredible craftsman.

He was like Vogue's hair stylist of the year multiple times, or something like that. It was very high in terms of his notoriety as a stylist, and he came through Nightlight, we did some trades for my wife's hair for the wedding, he came to the wedding too, it was really nice, but he had such refined craftsmanship, and in his age too, like we talked about his Venus in Virgo a number of times, and he would, he would say, like it's taken me a long time to like relax with it, but when you do, my God, what a actually like some, some incredibly fine artists, you know what I mean, like just really refined taste craft, whatever they touch over time, and it usually does sort of take time for the soft edges to wear down or. Be some disappointments or need for forgiveness and grace and learning a little bit more of the flowy side, but yeah, all right.

Number three would be wise discernment. So, Venus and Virgo usually gets good at understanding what nourishes, what drains, what deserves commitment, and what should be sort of lovingly declined, so Venus and Virgo, at its best, ends up being a very discerning planet when it comes to relationships, when it comes to pleasure, when it comes to navigating the details of things, and becoming like really graceful and sort of sophisticated with respect to marrying the mind and the sensual body together, that really is the promise of this placement. However, I will say what makes me, I guess, a traditional astrologer is that I rarely see people with this placement who have found that balance without having to go through some of the struggles of the tension, and that's why I think it's appropriate to keep the dignity category around, because it's really just philosophical at the end of the day, it's, it's nothing more than talking about different kinds of opposites that, and some opposites kind of bang their heads more than others.

As long as we can accept that, and you know, really be careful with the way we use the language, that we're not scaring people, that's important. If we're going to use that language with someone we're working with, we better explain what it means, because people can walk away and you know, end up end up having fear or feeling discouraged or something. Anyway, so I've got some quick hitting horoscopes for you. Let's add these in to kind of round things out. We're starting with Aries that places Virgo in the sixth. Again, these are just sort of quick hitter, quick hitters, I would say, you know, improving work relationships without becoming overly critical, maybe bringing more pleasure into daily routines, worker health habits, avoiding perfectionism or resentment in any kind of service or daily work or responsibilities.

Those are some of the things that come to my mind for Venus in your sixth, if you're an Aries now, if you're Sun Taurus or rising Taurus, then we're talking about the fifth house. I wonder about creativity without judging the outcome. Romantic benefits from being thoughtful and careful, attentive to details rather than having impossible expectations. I would say playfulness needs to be playful rather than just productive. These are some things that come to my mind around Venus and her fall in the house of creativity. Also, your relationship with your kids, children, especially daughters with Venus. Sometimes, all right, Gemini rising in the fourth house, Venus in Virgo, creating greater harmony at home, practical care and service in the home, releasing unrealistic expectations of other people, or healing maybe self-esteem wounds that have some history in the family, beautifying your living space without maybe obsessing over perfection.

Those are some of the things that come to my mind. There, let's go to Cancers, put it in the third house, or talking about speaking with kindness to yourself or others rather than with criticism, writing, learning, teaching, and anything that can receive sort of graceful refinement around those topics. I would say that overthinking, reading too much into words, and learning, learning the art of grace flow and thoughtful communication wherever there needs to be more of it. All right, let's go to Leo Rising. So this puts Venus in the second house. Oh, and one.. sorry, I need to back up a second, one more thing, for Cancers: relationships with siblings. Watch for those now. Leo rising, we put Venus in the second, so maybe refining or shifting spending habits, not getting into scarcity mode, appreciating what you already have versus focusing on what you don't, and let your finances, or your kind of your material assets rest on, rest on more than just productivity or usefulness.

Like, can you, what is it? What does enjoyment of your own material assets look like? You know, sometimes it's about simpler things or fewer things that can be more enjoyable. All right, Virgo, I would just say be gentle with yourself, refine your image, but don't chase perfection. This first house of identity, you can, you can be more authentic. authentic, authentic, authentic is attractive right now. Becoming flawless, becoming perfect, that's not the goal. So, being gentle with yourself, refining your beauty, your, your identity, your appearance, without. About becoming perfectionistic and allowing grace and ease to heal places where maybe there's a lack of self-esteem. All right, for Libra is the 12th house. I wonder about unconscious material and love relationships, self-worth coming to mind, a little bit of solitude here for healing practice, practicing compassion instead of self-criticism.

Looking at hidden shadows in love, sex, marriage, relationships, looking at what friends or relationships really have your back and which are undermining you. All right, for Scorpios, the 11th house of friends, allies, groups, benefactors, friendships, or groups may be beneficial right now, but there may be some themes of practical support and reliability. You want to avoid unrealistic expectations within communities or groups. You want to be thinking about your long-term dreams, goals, and aspirations, but not rooting them in chasing perfection, and thinking about which friends or allies are picking you up and lifting you up versus letting you down, but also learning to accept the faults and flaws, all groups, all people, all friends will have them all right.

For Sagittarius, Venus is in Virgo in the 10th house over the next month. We think about improving professional relationships through things like diplomacy, competence, recognition may come through being both thoughtful and artful at the same time. Your career doesn't have to be flawless to be meaningful or productive, or for you to receive support, or even promotion. What can you improve in your work, or your career? But maybe without, again, without chasing perfection, without criticism, and lack of self-esteem being primary drivers of your work or yourself or your public image. All right, Capricorns, we're in the ninth house, so we're talking about Venus there, maybe refining your philosophy, your topic of learning, education, religion, love, maybe growing through study, pilgrimage, and meaningful learning or spiritual practice, but it is here too, about letting what you're learning soften, and I could see there being an emphasis here on things like sacred sexuality, love, grace, surrender as healing remedies for places where there's too much hardness or a lack of self love, and I would also say that you might want to be balancing discernment right now with an openness to different views or perspectives.

All right, so for Aquarius, we're looking at the house of entanglements with other people, so shared assets or resources may require careful negotiation or balancing. There may be some difficult things coming up in relationships, given the exchanges that are taking place there - time, money, energy, sex, emotion, resources. What's being given? What's being taken? What's the back and forth, there might be some lessons around those things right now, but also I would say intimacy is going to deepen through honesty rather than transactional analysis, honesty, vulnerability, care, you want to avoid overthinking or keeping emotional score. Let's go to Pisces seventh house, so relationships, healthy discernment rather than idealization comes to my mind. Appreciate partners as they are, instead of trying to improve them.

Self criticism, self esteem, criticism of others, criticism directed toward you, the demon of perfectionism in relationships might have to be exercised right now, but building lasting, caring bonds with others through patience, care, devotion, attention to detail, without, without things drifting into critique or criticism, all right. Again, just some kind of quick hitting horoscopes today. I just jotted down notes, and really just wanted to say a few things, so that we have a little bit of orientation for your birth charts. But hopefully today was educational, you learned a little bit about Venus and Virgo, you got to see cool art, I mean, come on. So, anyway, hope you're having a good one.

And don't forget tonight, book release party. I hope to see some of you there, share a little bit of my new book, share a few principles of memoir writing, in case you're interested. That's what I went to graduate school and studied, so I think I've got some good ideas for you. If you're thinking about writing some of your own stories down, I'm. Want some tips on how to get started. All right. Hope you're having a good one. Bye, everyone.