You’ve Got Venus All Wrong! Prepping for the Real Venus Retrograde in Aries

Hey, everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/]. Today, we are going to unpack all of the little nuances and features of Venus's Synodic Cycle with the sun. We're going to do this because Venus is about to turn retrograde, and people have some unanimous things that are said about Retrogrades that are just not true and also that lack a nuanced understanding of the full Synodic Cycle of Venus.

So this is like a very brief crash course in some of the features of the webinar that I just taught on Venus, Venus's Synodic Cycle. By the way, I'll show you how you can purchase the full two-hour talk if you want, and also show you how you can purchase a master class, which is about 10 hours worth of talks on the subject. But today, we're gonna do a little crash course on Venus's cycle and tell you why Venus Retrogrades don't just unanimously mean one thing. You can't just talk about them in a simplistic way, like relationships will fall apart, or blah, blah, blah. You can't talk about any retrograde cycle that way, for that matter.

But hopefully, this will be useful. And then I'm also going to give you some tangible things to watch for—five things to watch for, given Venus retrograde in Aries, which is coming up. So that is our agenda for today. Before we get into it, remember to like and subscribe. We're seeing if we can't get to 80,000 subscribers on the channel. We did some research this year and found out that there are a lot of people who watch regularly but are not yet subscribed. It's free to do so, and it really does help us grow in very tangible ways. So we really deeply appreciate it when you do that, helping us reach our goal.

You can find transcripts of any of these daily talks on the website, which is Nightlightastrology.com. We have an in-person event here in Minneapolis coming up that I want to show you guys. If you go to Nightlightastrology.com and go to in-person events, you're going to see that we are hosting a spring equinox gathering on Saturday, March 8, just prior to the spring equinox. We're doing this a little bit early because my kids have spring break and we'll be traveling, so we're doing this a little bit early, but we are going to focus on and meditate on the spring equinox from the Zodiacal perspective, take a little time together to do some movement and meditation, and just hang out in community space.

We really enjoyed our winter solstice gathering. It's free to join, so you just press the RSVP button. Come join us on Saturday night, bring a friend. It should be a really fun event in Minneapolis. We are not doing this online, so this is only for people who are in the Twin Cities area or want to make a little drive to join us. Go up to the events page, click on speaker series. You will also see that in the month of March, coming up soon, we have three new guest speakers giving talks on interesting subjects. These are all free. They're free because of the Kickstarter, and the success of the Kickstarter, we are able to pay these wonderful people, give them a space to grow their work, and give you really interesting talks on specialized topics in astrology.

So these are going to be some great talks coming up. You can always see the new seasonal Speaker Series talks on that page. Also, be sure to check out the need-based astrology readings. If you haven't seen this yet, you also helped us build this service through the Kickstarter. These are tiered reading prices with some of our staff and promising students from our programs to give you some flexible pricing for an astrology reading. So all good stuff to check out.

And then, last but not least, go over to the events page, click on live talks. You'll see that on March 6, my next live webinar, a monthly webinar, is coming up on the third house. If you want to learn more about this house that was called the Temple of the Moon, and why, check that webinar out coming up very soon on March 6.

All right, so now that we have gone through some of our promotions for the day, let's put the real-time clock up and take a look at Venus's upcoming retrograde.

So, yeah, Venus Retrogrades occur about every year and a half. I think it's around 18 months or so. So every year and a half, we get a retrograde from Venus. But that retrograde doesn't just mean one thing, and it is not one isolated event. There are many stages and phases, even within a retrograde, that have different meanings. So I'm going to give you like a very brief crash course in the Synodic Cycle of Venus today.

And we're doing this because, as you can see, this coming Saturday, March 1, Venus will be stationing to turn retrograde. And so that means that we are entering into a very important turning point within the Synodic Cycle of Venus. Let's give some context to that, and then I'll give you five things to watch for, given Venus's initial retrograde in Aries, some of the basic themes that you can watch for during the retrograde period.

So in order to do this, what I am going to do, and by the way, before I go on, I should say this: the plan for the rest of the week is to do a monthly overview for the month of March tomorrow, and then Friday, we're doing horoscopes for the month of March. Because I forgot that this month has fewer days—I always forget February sneaks up on me. So here, the last couple of days of the week, we'll do a monthly overview for March, and then horoscopes for March. Today, we're going to just kind of dive into Venus's cycle a little bit more.

So let me—I'm going to get rid of everything in our chart perspective, except for Venus and the Sun. The word synodic comes from the word Synod, which means like an assembly or adjoining together. So for ancient astrologers, the sun, who was emblematic of the archetypal source—meaning the place that all of the archetypes come from, which is something like the mind of the universe or the mind of God, whichever word you feel, I guess, more comfortable with—at any rate, the synodic cycles of the planets were thought of as almost like cycles of a planetary archetype being directed in our lives through the will of the divine mind, and going through cycles of death and rebirth that configure with the lifespan of that direction for our life and those desires and ambitions and experiences and karma.

So there's a kind of evolutionary thrust to a Synodic Cycle that has to do with the going out from the sun and coming back to the sun that is implied. This is really important because every phase of that cycle has a different meaning. Now, there are some debates as to how to map that cycle out between modern astrologers and ancient astrologers. I'm going to give you the version I learned from traditional astrology. But that's not to say there's only one way of looking at the cycle. I tend to believe, because this is a divinatory system, that there are many different ways we can look at the cycle, but let's go back in time.

We're going to go back to the time when these two planets came together and were in their conjunction. This is always going to happen when Venus is conjoining the sun in direct motion. That superior conjunction of the Sun happens when Venus is on the other side of the Earth, the other side of the sun from the Earth, so farthest away from the Earth. Anyway, this would bring Venus into contact with the sun around June 6 of 2024—actually, we can back it up just a little bit. June 5, June 4, they were starting to travel together in their cazimi. They do it so for a couple of days. So the very early part of June 2024, at any rate, is when these two planets conjoined.

So that begins the cycle. And at this time, that cazimi moment—when Venus is in direct motion—a way to think about it is that there is a very seamless, powerful way in which purpose, signified by the sun—plot, ambition, purpose, the things that we are motivated to do, the course of action. It's kind of like the hero's journey—the sun is so when Venus is at the heart of the sun, that is establishing a very strong, clear sense of Venusian purpose. It's like Venus is being infused with new life, new intentions, new direction. So that's the way of thinking about the cazimi in direct motion that starts a new cycle.

Some modern astrologers like to use the Venus retrograde inferior conjunction with the Sun as the starting point. Like I said, you can play with the cycle in different ways, but the bottom line is, from this moment forward, what starts happening is Venus goes in direct motion, and we'll get into a separation range from the sun. And once that separation range is about 15 degrees, when it reaches that space, then we're in a really interesting position here. You can see that this appearance of Venus as the morning or as the evening star would have taken place. And this is about 15 degrees of separation. You can see Venus at 20 Leo, the sun at 5 Leo. This is by the end of July.

So in this phase, Venus is starting to bring forth from invisibility—in a relatively unconscious space—the intentions and new direction of the cycle. So you can track these out, and it is incredible to watch, especially as they dance across different houses, different topics of the birth chart by transit. But in this moment, you often have Venus making an appearance as carrying something into the light of conscious awareness or into an externalized form, or through an event or circumstance. She will suddenly appear in a very strong and dramatic way, often having gestated and come from the conjunction earlier that would have taken place, in this case, in early June.

So this appearance phase is really important, and often announces things that have been invisible. It brings them forth, somehow, into manifestation. However, there's also a kind of youthful immaturity. You get the feeling that this Venus is new, young, flashy, bright on the scene, fresh, but may have a way to go to fully blossom or mature. And these are all symbolic ways of thinking about the life cycle that can apply and show up symbolically in many different ways.

Now, let's—I like to say, like I use this example in the class I taught the other day—a newly appearing Venus as an evening star is like a young girl who's being discovered as a real talent with her singing voice. When you get Venus maximally elongated as a bright, luminous, slow-moving evening star, very high up in the evening sky, it's more like now she's matured into royalty. Now she's Taylor Swift. Now she has moved into a space where she's fully blossomed and matured. This is what happens next for Venus.

Venus is going to move toward her maximum Eastern elongation. What that means is that we are basically saying this: so Venus is in the evening star position. So the sun is setting right here, and Venus is high up in the evening sky right now. Venus is about 31 degrees away from the sun, in front of the sun in zodiacal motion. Her maximum elongation is between 45 and 47 degrees when she's getting into this space. It's like more of a fully realized, maturing Venus in the nocturnal feminine space.

So you get a very feminine Venus, and one that is much more mature and sort of solid and well-developed. And that can also mean that the karma is ripening or developing, which is maybe a more neutral way of thinking about it, right? But also, there is a very real way in which sometimes you see a much healthier, more capable, sort of robust Venus in terms of the gifts that she brings. Anyway, there are different ways of thinking about it, but this is the Venus that is slowly maturing, and this is where we often see the symbolism of something that's much more well-established and firmly set in with respect to the karma Venus represents.

Now, what's going to happen is, we call this the maximum Eastern elongation because she's basically moving higher in the sky toward the east, but she's going to reach a limit to how far she can go before she starts to retrograde and starts pulling back toward the sun. That typically happens around 45 to 47 degrees. It's like that's the farthest away we're gonna get. So let's see how that happens.

So right now, Venus is what, 33, 34, 35 degrees away. Right now, she's about 36 degrees away. And let's see if we can keep—yeah. So now we've got 22, 32, 37, right? So it keeps on like this, then it gets to 45, and then what happens is, once it reaches that maximum elongation, right? Now, we've got Venus 42 degrees away from the sun, if you count it like this, and then it's gonna—it's gonna reach this place where it can't get any further. So that's the maximum Eastern elongation.

As soon as it gets to that space, it's gonna sort of start slowing down a little bit, and that's where we come to the place that we find ourselves. Now, that distance is starting to be collapsed as Venus is brighter and more luminous, but also slowing down. And then the station and retrograde happens. This is one way of understanding this: that Venus, whatever Venus brought forth from that conjunction where it was infused with a new intention or direction from the sun, is now reaching a place of maximal expression. And so after it reaches that place, it has bared its karmic fruit. That means that it's fully realized something.

But now, what's going to happen is what has been gained will be given back. The insight will lead to a change of priorities or direction—that when something realizes, when something is ripe, karmically, the fruit is taken and received, and then a change begins to occur. And that in the life cycle of a tree, you think about the fruit being ripe, falling off the tree, and then beginning the decomposition process. We use similar metaphors when we talk about the moon cycle in the sort of last quarter harvesting moment. This is, in a way, a kind of last quarter moment for Venus as she's realized something, and that realization, or that blossoming of the Venusian karma, is now ready for a kind of death phase, or a letting go, or a releasing or a transformation that begins to occur because we've reached the culmination.

Because the culminating moment then turns us—so that culminating moment, for many people, is expressed especially in a cardinal sign, a cardinal fire sign like Aries, will be expressed as a sudden, dramatic flipping or reversing of circumstance or plot line. But this is only applicable right around the time that Venus stations and turns retrograde. So give it maybe like a week prior to the station and maybe like a week after the initial retrograde—that little window of time is the specific time in which reversals, breakdowns, more dramatic, sudden shifts of plot tend to occur, especially again in a cardinal sign.

Now, when that shift happens, it's characterized by something like being reversed or flipped, or a change or a turn or a delay or a setback or an illness or a crisis, and the language traditionally is more crisis-laden, just for this particular period. The rest of the retrograde is not really talked about that way. So it's important that we understand that the entirety of the retrograde is not all about everything falling apart and blah, blah, blah. It's usually only this initial part of the process that is associated with the culmination of a karma, and then the releasing of that karma, which creates a kind of flip, reversal, sometimes setbacks, delays, or surprises.

This part of any retrograde cycle is often—I would use the word Uranian to describe it a little bit because of the kind of suddenness, which, again, just to reiterate, is amplified by the fact that this retrograde is happening in a cardinal sign. The tropical signs, like Aries, are turning points, like dramatic, pivotal turning points. So this has a little bit more drama built into it because of the sign quality that Venus is in. Either way, when that reversal of circumstance happens, it is because we are initiating a process of resetting the archetypal ideal directions, ambitions, intentions that Venus is going to take on as it dies back into the sun.

So that's kind of what's happening on an evolutionary level, you might say. Now, what takes place is you back Venus into the sun, and once Venus comes to within about 15 degrees of the sun, now we're watching that karma kind of slowly but steadily burn off. So the flip or the reversal is a sort of dramatic shift that announces that karma has ripened, that situation is done. We're going in a slightly different direction now, or whatever the case may be.

And then when we get into the invisibility of Venus and the combustion, which happens within eight degrees—invisibility within 15, combustion within eight—then what we're going through is a process where that karma is sometimes painfully, sort of fully letting go. There's a long process involved of the release, but that sort of super dramatic point where it feels like everything is suddenly falling apart, dramatically shifting, is really only appropriate for the initial phase of the station to retrograde.

This next phase can be about the deeper process of release or letting go, which is usually much more steady and constant than it is sudden. So that's a different nuance that's important to apply. And this part of the retrograde is easily the most difficult—the retrograde, the station to retrograde through the combustion—because this is the phase where something is dying, right? But the second phase of the retrograde is not at all the same, because it's usually about something in the process of rebirth, and that's what happens next.

So we move this along to the cazimi. You're going to see that cazimi taking place on March 22. So March 1 to the 22nd—the initial phase might be a little shocking, unsettling, disruptive, a little Uranian in the suddenness of the flip of circumstance or reversal or setback, but then you get through that deeper alchemical process of the Venusian karma burning off and resetting. The cazimi then resets and offers new life. It is a regenerative, usually kind of inspired and momentum-shifting event, and there's still a lot of retrograde left.

So we can't go thinking that the rest of the retrograde is going to be the same as the first part, because this is a rebirth that's occurred at the cazimi. From this moment on, we then track the retrograde of Venus as Venus is separating from the sun. We don't think about that as combust and debilitated as much as we think about it as slowly bringing forth the new significations of a new cycle, which will announce themselves in our life in a very Yang-like fashion, as Venus rises as the Morning Star, and that will again happen when the two planets are about 15 degrees apart and Venus comes into visibility again.

Now, Venus is bringing forth as a kind of herald, an assertive new image or ideal standard or archetypal direction for life within the significations of Venus. So Venus is reborn and bringing forth something new. And that process of moving from the rebirth into the visibility of that rebirth, so to speak, is taking place from the conjunction retrograde through the appearance of the Morning Star. So that second part of the retrograde is not at all like the first part, which is typically more difficult.

Right now, when we take that forward, the last part, of course, will be that they get very far apart. Venus turns direct, and you're seeing the maturation of that new Venus, of that fresh Venus, of that Venus who's asserting something new. And it matures as it stations and turns direct. It becomes very luminous and high up in the sky as the Morning Star, and slower in motion. It becomes weightier, it starts establishing itself, and then gradually, right, very gradually, that new Venus will pick up speed, and it will start moving in direct motion closer to the sun again.

That's a long process, which is why we only get these Retrogrades every 18 months. So as you're seeing this—like, we're not going to see Venus going back through combustion and death again for quite some time. Let me go forward by weeks, just to speed this up a little bit so we don't get Venus into the range of invisibility again until right about here. This is November of 2025—towards the end, towards the end of this year, 2025.

Venus's direct motion will carry it back to invisibility again, which then implies that Venus is going through a death. And quite frankly, this is another difficult part of Venus's phase, because this part can be as dramatic as the combustion retrograde, or even in some—not as usually dramatic and sudden as the station retrograde. But it is another death that Venus is going through when she goes into invisibility and becomes combust, and then the next Synodic Cycle reset moment occurs right about here. This is January 5 of 2026.

At that moment now, Venus is once again being renewed. And this time, Venus's new image, new archetypal standard or direction for our lives will slowly start to emerge in the evening star position, which is typically like a much more fully matured version of the initial rewrite that happened through the retrograde conjunction. And that's because Venus is more comfortable in the evening star position and goes from new and fresh and sort of Yang in her expression of her life cycle into a more fully mature, socially integrated and harmonized version of herself in the evening star position where she has more dignity.

So the point is that the entirety of her cycle is something that if you learn how to track, you will soon realize that talking about Retrogrades generically is just not very good—it's not a good idea. The reason that it's not a good idea is because the full life of the cycle has to be studied and tracked to realize the implications of the first part of the retrograde versus the second part of the retrograde, the one kind of conjunction versus another, a morning star versus an evening star, a fully matured Evening Star versus one that's just about to turn retrograde. Every little nuance and phase of the cycle gives us a different kind of Venus.

So that's a crash course. It may have been very technical for some of you, maybe for some of you that went over your head. You had a hard time tracking it, but I wanted to present it today, if for no other reason than to make sure that people know that you can't just unanimously talk about a retrograde as though it's the same thing. The station to retrograde is very different from the maximum elongation—like a maximally elongated Venus. That's not real close yet to turning retrograde within, say, a few days, is a very mature and very strong and often very positive Venus compared to those three degrees prior to retrograde, where you can often anticipate that something is about to get flipped, or that there will be a kind of Uranian shift with respect to that karma.

You can do this by transit as well. Notice the difference between fully mature Venus phase and the Venus retrograde, the Venus stationing to retrograde. Notice the difference between the Venus retrograde moment and the eight degrees of combustion prior to conjunction. They're very different experiences. And then notice the entirely different kind of Venus that you get from the retrograde inferior conjunction all the way through its station direct. That Venus is very, very different from the first part of the retrograde.

So nuance—we need to, like, diversify our astrological palettes and understand phasal dynamics because they become crucial to tracking cycles and making them more meaningful and less generic. Anyway, let me give you now five things to watch for, given that Venus is in Aries, and these should be applicable in terms of the kinds of changes that Venus brings, especially from the station retrograde through the combustion.

By the way, that station retrograde through the combustion—let me just give you the time period for that. This would be the kinds of shifts or changes implied by the change of direction all the way through the conjunction. So let's go forward to here—we are again on Saturday, Venus stationing so March 1 slash 2, all the way through the cazimi on March 22. This period of time that constitutes sort of the three weeks of March here. These are the things that I would watch for.

One is that Venus is in her own bound in the sign of Aries and is turning retrograde in a Mars-ruled sign. So it may be that a kind of matured Venusian karma is now asserting something. I want to do this. I want to make this kind of change. Watch for an assertive Venus. Assertive Venus because she's in her own bound and because she's in the sign of Aries, the cardinal sign of fire and Mars. So this may be a change that is less about Venus feeling helpless to circumstance and more about a change that Venus herself is initiating or prompting or asserting. Think about it that way. See if it gets you anywhere.

Number two, Venus may be initiating a revision. I desire something, I want something, I prefer something, I value something, I like this, I don't like that. And because of this, I want to revise something. I want to revisit something.

Number three would be that Venus is leading the way for a paradigmatic change. The reason I say that is that this Venus retrograde basically initiates the rest of the activity of the month in the sign of Aries, which includes a Mercury Retrograde, a couple of cazimi with the sun, the sun entering Aries, a solar eclipse in Aries, Neptune entering Aries, eventually Saturn entering Aries. Because Venus is in her own bound and initiating the first movement of all of these Aries movements, it makes me wonder if this isn't the—you know, I use this in the monthly overview—like, if this isn't the face that launched 1000 ships, if this is not Helen of Troy, if there isn't some way in which Venus is leading the way for a kind of very fiery paradigmatic change, and the Venus retrograde may be sort of like the battering ram that is bringing forth a much, much broader, significant kind of shift or change of direction that's more paradigmatic than even just a Venus-based change of taste or value, or something. It's like, she's just the tip of the iceberg, or something like that.

Number four, it could be that something Venusian—a desire, a piece of art, a relationship, something Venusian—is temporarily delayed or set back, and you have to kind of go through a process before you can get back on track. That would be very—just think of Venusian things that get temporarily sort of hung up on something.

And then finally, would be the most obvious one I saved for last—I sort of buried the lead—which is that there can be powerful shifts or changes in relationships. I would specifically look at power dynamics, the give and take, the ability to lead and the ability to follow, and the ability to shift back and forth seamlessly between those dynamics within relationships will probably be featured here. Things like jealousy, needing to win, needing to be on top, needing to be number one, can infect and destroy a relationship. And this is a Venus retrograde that might focus on some level on the power differentials or dynamics in our relationship.

So that's how I would think about that. Those are some basic takeaways that you might watch for between, let's say, the first of the month and the 22nd. Those things may be pronounced, but from the 22nd onward, think more about what you've learned during this phase, or the kind of breakdown and revision of Venusian karma taking place as now bringing forth something new. And it's more about that newness and that rebirth on the retrograde conjunction, the inferior conjunction, and the rest of the retrograde forward.

Now, that timeline—let me just give you really quick as well. So the conjunction takes place March 22. Venus, then bringing forth into the Morning Star position, that newness is essentially taking place as the morning star appearance is happening here. What—right around here? So, you know, you've got like around April 1 that Venus starts to appear as the morning star in Pisces, and then that kind of direct motion happens by the middle of April.

So think about that as you know—late March through mid-April, Venus, then carrying forth the rebirth of the cycle and bringing forth a new direction for Venus. Okay, so I hope this was a useful exploration today. Don't forget, tomorrow, we will be looking at the overview for the month of March, and then we'll be doing horoscopes on Friday. I hope you're having a good one, and we'll see you again soon. Bye, everyone.