THE LOW DOWN:

Years ago during a Venus transit I had the revelation that pleasure and joy are two very separate beasts, that feeling sensually good is a poor cousin to feeling soulfully joyful. The last 40 days Venus — the planetary goddess of pleasure, money, love and fun — travelled in her every two year retrograde motion in the sky. Here is what I learned as she rappelled fearlessly into the Capricorn underworld of my natal 12th house to find some treasure just for me.

1. Pleasure will not always bring me joy, but real joy is always pleasurable.
2. Crones will always inspire me to new heights of magic so hang with them more often!
3. Money does grow on trees, but first you have to plant the damn money tree.

Here’s how these lessons landed on the threshold of this Venus journey through the 12th house of my chart, a place Venus had not done her retrograde dance since late 2013/early 2014.

(PS: Want to know more about the meaning of the 12th house check out this blog post OR download my free Meanings of the 12 houses PDF here.)

THE JOY FACTOR vs THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

I am a pleasure slut. When I was born, Venus sat in earthy Taurus conjunct the asteroid for over-the-top orgiastic pleasure, Dionysus. Love of wine and fire hot spicy food, ecstatic dance, tantric sex (back in the day) and more, have lead me down a path post-puberty, of revelry and excess. In this retrograde I dreamed one night Venus came to me with these words, “pleasure will not always bring joy, but joy will always bring pleasure.” I took heed. I have asked myself, is this a joyful activity a main dish bringing a side of pleasure, or is it just pleasure (sometimes joyful, but not necessarily).

The poem I wrote years ago reflects this same lesson, still being learned at age 59, but admittedly not with the same intensity — this was written with a killer hangover after a friends birthday party devolved into total drunken drama (not by me, but even just watching it, brought this poem to existence).

After the Party

I woke one day
to the first sober
light, the glint
of truth
in a dull
sky.

This light,
bore no warmth,
no hint
of benevolence.

Instead, inglorious,
the dawn cast a cold
brilliance, a harsh
reminder of what
was lost.

All the abandon
in the world,
all the revelry
cannot forever
keep me –with the
lure of pleasure—
from joy.

This masquerade
never really began.
I dreamed the mask
and in the steel
of this new day,
I awake faceless.

I always thought
God was kinder.

May 16, 2010

CRONES R COOL

When I was a little kid the house next door — which shared a fenceless yard — was inhabited by a crone. Mrs Neil, to me, was ancient and more importantly, mean. She yelled at my sisters and me more than once for playing near her gardens, or crossing though the expanse of her property to short-cut to ours. Lifelong I had a strange cut off rule of women friends no older than a decade from my age.

This Venus retrograde delivered more than a dozen women to my readings sessions over the age of 70, most mid-to-late 70s or 15 to 20 years older than me. These women were all powerhouses. Alert, lively, inspiring, and above all, living a life filled with purpose. I got the message loud and clear — at 59, this is MY future over the next two decades. Venus was giving me a trailer of what is possible in the movie of my life. And as a cronelet myself I’ve decided to make some friends in 2022 IRL (in real life) who are just like these wise women dynamo clients two decades ahead of me!

MONEY TREE 101

I dreamed one night in the thick of the Venus retrograde, around about the time she crossed paths with Pluto for a second time at Christmas, that I had a money tree. My dad used to always say to my sisters and me, “Money doesn’t grow on trees, you girls.” I think he got that from working his ass off as a pharmacist with his own store in a career that generated money but no joy.

I took this lesson with me for years, seeing the role model of money earnings tied to withering away of my fathers vitality and life spark. The solution was simple: don’t work too hard and find money from other sources — which in my case turned out to be lucky real estate timing and a bit of an inheritance.

Four years ago, I broke the spell of this false equation — that if I worked hard, I’d be unhappy. I found working hard at something I loved doing and now I make a six figure income as a professional astrologer. But the money tree dream, this was something new. Money Goddess Venus showed me that money windfalls come too, readily, when we plant the money tree in the right soil and at the right time.

This dream is still incubating within me. I am not sure where it will lead me. But here’s the cool synchronicity that followed this dream. Within two days. I got a message on my phone that Air b n B had deposited several hundred dollars into my bank account for a booking someone had cancelled on a property I was hosting. This made no sense! I have not had a property for rent for two years!

Here’s what happened. i was mysteriously reimbursed for a last minute cancelation from 2018. What the F? I am still not sure if that was a double payment and the money will exit my account just as quickly as it arrived, but the fact isL Venus tells me in a dream that windfalls happen from the money tree and voila, inbound money lands in my bank account two days later!

So there you have it. Three lessons I learned this Venus retrograde in Capricorn, December 19 to January 29th. I hope some of what i learned, might inspire you too.

PS: Falling From Grace by astrologer Louise Edington is a deep dive into the way Venus retrograde brings us inward, into the heart of the less fluffy side of Venus, the “Gravity, gravitous, grounding commitment, time, elderhood, elder wisdom.” I love her take on Venus — she’s a Venus astrology maven!