Venus Retrograde Cazimi
On entering the heart of the sun & why people hate astrology
TBH, I understand why some people hate astrology. As it has become memeified, “astrology” is all about personality, about how Virgos might cut their burritos in half, about how being born at a certain time of year makes a person “flaky” or “stubborn” or “eccentric.” Though this kind of astrologese has reached a peak saturation in “culture” (which correlates to the conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune in Pisces later this year), actual astrology is still mostly misunderstood—even by people who are very intelligent and spiritual, by people who think deeply about what it is to be alive!
Astrology can be a personality quiz or a word game to figure out the motives of your bullshit artist ex. That’s not the whole of it, but it can be that. It’s a method of divination to get you in touch with your gurus, your guides or your higher self. But astrology is not meant to be a god or guru in its own right. Those who fall out with astrology often want it to save them. That’s like saying “Lesson 1 of Beginner French on DuoLingo is going to radicalize my life.” (Spoiler alert: This is not Emily in Paris. Nothing is ever that easy.)
Like our favorite songs, horoscopes are meant to delight. Forecasts are meant to be sketches, not a finished masterpiece. Astrology doesn’t work just because we want it to work. We have to listen to it. One of my best friends got a breast reduction this week and her daily horoscope by Susan Miller said she would feel like “a weight had been lifted.” This made her laugh: a nod to alignment calming her before surgery. I might laugh when I hear a song from the Garden State soundtrack at the very moment I run into a childhood friend in the teen girl section of my hometown Target. “They’re playing our song,” she says. It can be deep but it can also be quite silly. Synchronicity is key. Like music, astrology resonates. Like music, astrology is a language of time. There’s rhythm. It’s communication. When you don’t want to listen, turn it off. When you want to dance, turn it up. It’s that simple.
Astrology helps us communicate our experiences in a cyclic way, deprioritizing beginnings and endings. Nothing’s ever really over. Our lives wax and wane and get more complicated. Even when a cycle (or a symphony) resolves, it doesn’t “end.” Motifs fade away but the melody stays in our head. When I’d feel stuck in acting class in college, in a stalemate with my scene partner, unable to figure out how to ground into the world of The Lady of Larkspur Lotion or breathe into the scene, the clichéd refrain of my teachers was always, “Get it up on its feet.” To learn astrology and to incorporate the language and the practice into your life requires putting it on its feet. It’s lovely and it’s uncomfortable. Right now Venus is retrograde, a perfect time to engage in this kind of reflective process.
(I was obsessed with this Porches song in January 2018, a time period which is currently echoing. Porches (aka Aaron Maine), like me, is from a small town on the edge of the woods in Northern Westchester County. Also worth noting.)
Venus—planet of love, connection and strategy—is cazimi tomorrow (January 8, 2022), entering the heart of the sun. This marks the halfway point in her retrograde journey which began on December 19 and goes through January 29. When Venus meets the sun during a retrograde, it’s called an inferior conjunction because Venus is crossing over the side of the Sun closest to the Earth. The exact aspect occurs tomorrow (January 8) at 7:47 PM ET and is when Venus transitions from being an evening star to a morning star. Evening star Venus is unbothered. Morning star Venus is hungry. We’re entering an “I want” era.
Tomorrow’s Venus cazimi is not only the middle of this current 40 day retrograde cycle, but it is also the middle of a 584 day cycle, an 8 year cycle and even a 40 year cycle for Venus. After working through the brilliant These Are Our Stories workbook for Venus Retrograde in Capricorn by Pallas Augustine (which I recommend you all check out & purchase if you want to get serious about embodying astrology), and having a few major a ha moments of my own, I’m working with accepting this cazimi as a central hub of many journeys.
For me, this Venus Retrograde is happening in my 4th house of home, family, ancestry and private space. I knew things would be bubbling up in regards to my relationship with specific members of my family of origin as well as with the people who make up my chosen family. Just before the Retrograde began on December 17th, I had dinner with a childhood friend who I hadn’t seen since the Before Times. She’s truly a major part of my personal history, a true 4th house person. I’ve known her since third grade and we even briefly lived together (in a frat house in Los Angeles which is … another story). When she got in touch, I thought “How perfect!” I thought the same thing when I caught a glimpse of my crush from Church Youth Group (circa the early 00’s) wandering around the picturesque downtown of the town where I’m not quite from while I was visiting my family for Christmas. This is what I expected to happen.
What I didn’t expect was the dreams. Every night of this Venus Retrograde, I’ve been taken on fantastical journeys with ex-roommates, old neighbors and classmates from K-12, catching glimpses of all the spaces I’ve called home and sitting with them. These dreams are helping me peel the onion to the deeper levels of this Venusian journey.
As I said, this Venus cazimi is not only the center of the 40 day retrograde cycle, it’s also the halfway point of the 584 day Venus cycle which began when Venus met the Sun in Aries on March 26, 2021. Just a few weeks before that cazimi, I moved into my first ever solo apartment. I signed a lease for 18 months. For me, this is a big deal.
Since 2018 (and really since 2016), all I’ve done is move and for the last few years, it’s been at Christmas—first from Brooklyn to Los Angeles (Christmas 2018) then from staying with my parents back to Brooklyn (Christmas 2019) then out of Brooklyn and back to staying with my parents (Christmas 2020). As this Venus Retrograde began in late December, I felt a constant worry, like I was forgetting something. My body expected that we’d be packing my Prius to the brim with all of my belongings and driving off somewhere, that I’d lack any essentials beyond a Chemex (my prized possession), a pair of embroidered work pants by Rachel Antonoff and some delicate Japanese soup spoons. But in March, I broke that cycle.
Now I have too much furniture to fit everything I own into my Prius. There’s a bed frame, a full length mirror, a couch and a bookcase that caused so much distress during installation that I almost had to give up on this whole “living somewhere” thing. The bookcase is bolted to the wall and I’m here until my lease is up. This middle for me is about processing what it’s like to stay—specifically in New York but also anywhere—not for a scene or a show or an unrequited love but for myself.
In one of my retrograde dreams, an acquaintance from high school delivered a riveting but unsolicited soliloquy about all the cons of living in New York City. Dream Me told her that it wasn’t the city I hate, just my apartment building.
To peel back the onion one more time, this Venus cazimi is also the halfway point of an 8 year cycle. One that began on January 8, 2018 and won’t complete until January 2026. It was around this time that I was first becoming unavoidably disgruntled with everything in my life. I was miserable working in arts admin and desperate to shed the identity of a theatre artist. I felt trapped and was taking out my stress on everything that reminded me of my failures, including the city itself.
Months before this cazimi in the Fall of 2017, I made a vision board with images of Montréal and PJ Harvey and hoped the goddess would just take the wheel and figure it out. I hosted a wholesome birthday party for Capricorn Queen Jenny Lewis (featuring a screening of Troop Beverly Hills) at my apartment on January 7, 2018, trying to grab onto joy. The only other thing that grounded me was my yearlong Hellenistic Astrology class on Monday nights.
When I began studying astrology, I never thought I’d become a professional. But it was that week in early January 2018 when I announced I was offering readings. At first for a low sliding scale rate or for some drinks or dinner in exchange. Now, astrology has become a major part of my art practice. It has become my business. I’m considering where I want to take it next. Through my constant moving (both across the country and to the suburbs in greater or lesser forms of distress), I realized that it wasn’t the location that was the problem, it was my attitude. My practice was majorly disrupted every time I packed everything into my Prius and drove away.
In my natal chart, I have Saturn conjunct Neptune in Capricorn (pragmatic idealism & fantastical structures) anchoring everything else in my nativity from the 4th house of home, family, lineage and privacy. There are lessons I need to learn from where I live and traditions I need to cultivate. Longevity is a given. What if I stop digging up the seeds and starting over every time things get too hard? This was one of the major lessons of my Saturn Return from late 2017 through the end of 2020. The field I’m cultivating is a swamp now but eventually there will be a harvest. How can I make like a Capricorn and find luxury in patience? This is what I’m asking as I sip my tea and stay.
What’s been coming up for you in this middle time? How is this moment in conversation with the events of March 2021 or January 2018? How is this turning point different than the one you experienced in January 2014? (Book a reading with me here if you want to dive into this together.)This might have to do with Venus (love, money, connection) or the house that Capricorn rules in your chart, but it also might have to do with something else entirely. The one thing Astrology does require—which is yet another reason it frustrates—is the ability to remember where you’ve been and how you’ve experienced it. Astrology works to predict the future and assess the present moment but it works better when you’re willing to remember some songs from the past. When you tap into the melody and synchronicity, there lies the good stuff.
“A weight has been lifted.”
“They’re playing our song.”
Astrology isn’t here to tell you how to live your life. It’s here to give language to how you’re already living your life. Like any form of divination, it offers solutions and remedies equal to your ability to accept and engage with them. I understand why some people hate astrology, but TBH, I’m not sure I’d be living without it.
“Astrology is the language of time.” Beautifully put, so well said! This resonates so deeply.