The morning star

Yesterday morning, Saturday 24 October, at 11:40 Perth time, Venus passed directly between the earth and the Sun.

You could not see it.

Venus was lost in the Sun’s glare, and she will stay lost for about a week.

Then, early in November, if you are up before dawn and look low in the east, she will be there again.

The morning star.

For most of this year Venus has been the evening star, the bright one in the west after sunset. Yesterday she went into the Sun, and she comes out the other side as the star of the morning.

Same planet.

Different sky.

This is the heart of a Venus retrograde, and it is the part almost nobody writes about.

The oldest story we have about Venus is the story of the descent.

In ancient Sumer they called her Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, and they watched her do exactly this. They wrote the story on clay tablets nearly four thousand years ago.

Inanna goes down into the underworld to visit her sister.

At each of the seven gates on the way down, she has to give something up. Her crown at the first gate. Her necklace at the next. Her robe at the last.

She arrives at the bottom with nothing.

And then, after three days, she comes back up, and in the way the story is usually told, she takes every piece back on the way, one gate at a time.

They were describing what they saw in the sky.

Venus vanishing into the Sun, and coming back as the morning star.

They were also describing what it feels like to be you, about three weeks into a Venus retrograde.

Here is the teaching.

Since 3 October you have been going down through the gates.

Every relationship you have has been asked to take something off. The assumption, the habit, the role you play, the compromise you made years ago and never looked at.

Yesterday was the bottom.

The point where Venus is closest to us, and furthest from showing her face.

And that is why it matters, because from here, everything comes back.

Slowly.

One gate at a time.

Over the next three weeks you will get back what you love, and you will get it back knowing what it is worth, because you had to put it down to find out.

Some of it you will not pick up again.

That is the point of the gates.

Now, two more things happen today and tomorrow, and they fit.

At 5:00 this afternoon Venus walks backwards out of Scorpio, the deep end, and back into Libra, the room where two people meet. The underworld part of the review is done, and the second half is about what you actually do with what you found.

And tomorrow, Monday, at 12:10 Perth time, the Moon is full in Taurus, which is also Venus’s sign. I will write about it on Tuesday.

So the sky this weekend is almost entirely about her.

I have been sitting with this cycle for forty years, and I still find the morning star moving.

She goes all the way down, and she comes back brighter.

You will be your own teacher. You will be your own guide. All I will do is help you to remember what you already know.

So, the practice for this week.

Sit somewhere quiet, and ask what you have had to put down this month.

Write it on a piece of paper.

Then ask which of those things you want back, and which you are glad to leave at the gate.

What did you leave at the gate this month?

There is more teaching like this in The Library, and every daily post is in Daily Posts. If you would like guidance on your own path, see Readings.