Image: Your spirit guide for this Venus retrograde, the incomparable Audre Lorde
We are headed into a couple of weeks of intense Venus retrograde activity, and I’ll unpack the astrology of that momentarily. Before I do, sometimes it’s nice to have a mantra, or a simple guiding principle, when the astrological weather gets big and loud. We might borrow a nice mantra for the next many days ahead from Audre Lorde, who wrote in Uses of the Erotic, that “the considered phrase “It feels right to me,” acknowledges the strength of the erotic into a true knowledge.”
It feels right to me.
What a good way to approach the next couple of weeks. Use it as a question. Say it and see how it resonates. Measure situations with it. Maybe while things are ramping up today and tomorrow, write down what this phrase even means.
Venus retrograde is a time when we all get a little lost about Venusian things like relationships, appearances, art, and desires, in order to find ourselves in a new relationship to those things at the end of a journey. And Audre Lorde is a good angel to have on our shoulders during this retrograde because she understands the deep political and personal power of engagement, flow states, and embodied knowledge. She turns the word erotic into a delightfully wide net and usefully casts it over many different states of being and doing. And she’s doing this to say something so important and so simple. You know when it’s good. You know when whatever you are doing is loving and right. You do not need an insightful political analysis–you know it in your body. It feels right.
This kind of knowing is an important part of this Venus retrograde because it is happening in the fixed fire sign of Leo, and has significant input from both abundant Jupiter and shocking Uranus in the earthiest of earth signs, Taurus. Imagine your heart backtracking to find your bones. Imagine the torch you are carrying reconnecting to your ancestral land. Imagine radical acts of love that come out of knowing what feels right. Over the next couple of weeks, these themes will be particularly active as Venus gets a sharp crack of the wake-up stick from revolutionary Uranus, followed by a rebirth or a flash of insight from the Sun, followed by participation in what we could call “the newest new Moon ever,” right on the heels of Venus’ meeting with the Sun. There is just so much potential to find out what you really like. What that relationship really is. Who is really holding you. What is truly beautiful. And the way you might find that is by getting some clarity about some very solid, fixed things like what the right boundary is. What you genuinely can lay on the line. What you are secure enough to risk for love. How much you can carry for your beloved. How much responsibility you can take.
What feels right.
I would definitely prepare to be surprised by what winds up feeling right! A Venus retrograde in fixed Leo with all this activity from Uranus in Taurus is likely to shake up things that appear to be quite settled. And I am not necessarily saying that everything that happens over the next week and a half or two weeks is going to feel right. Not at all. What I am saying is that we will get information about what does feel right. What feels right might not be what other people want. It might not be the nice thing to do. It might not be the thing you said you were going to do. Conversely, it might not feel like “self care,” rest, indulgence, or any of the usual ways we think about feeling good. What feels right might feel like being someone’s rock, shouldering a burden, helping someone out, or taking real responsibility. And it might not be what is happening! Some might very well find themselves doing what does not feel right. Some of us will find themselves defending a boundary, because they are being taken advantage of. Others of us will find that a boundary that once felt crucial to our survival now feels unloving and unnecessary. Some will realize that we are bearing something that we need to put down. Others will realize that they aren’t carrying enough of their own weight, or that they can carry more at this time, and therefore should. Because it feels right to do more.
Whatever happens, when it comes to Venusian topics like love, relationships, and agreements–ask yourself.
Does this feel right to me?
And be prepared to act on the answer, especially if it surprises you.
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