Venus is getting beat up in Scorpio and so can you
it can all be overwhelming! that's normal!
New Moon in Sagittarius: Aside from the recent move of Venus into Scorpio, there’s not a lot of significant movement this week. However, we do have a New Moon on Tuesday, December 12.
It’s the beginning of a new cycle, planting of a seed. This happens in Sagittarius, the mutable, fiery centaur. Sagittarius has a tendency to fire his arrow wildly when provoked (or just encouraged) in even the slightest way, so this New Moon is a chance to set some clear intentions for this next cycle of Sagittarian lunations. The Full Moon in Sagittarius is going to happen on May 2, 2024, so whatever you plan next Tuesday will have until May 2 to come to fruition.
The limits of vulnerability and what to do with them.
Last week I mentioned that Venus was moving into Scorpio on Monday, 12/4. This is one of those movements in the sky that is Bad™ but that happens every year and, happening with a small inner planet like Venus, is far from catastrophic. Still, something doesn’t have to be a catastrophe to ruin your day.
When Venus enters Scorpio, she’s in foreign territory. For the ancient cultures where this kind of astrology grew, being in a foreign land where you aren’t welcome is Bad™. You might not speak the language, your family isn’t known there, you probably have no legal rights to protect you from being taken into bondage or harmed in other ways. This is the symbolism behind a planet entering a sign of its detriment, like Venus entering Scorpio.
On a psychological level (which is a modern way of looking at things), we might say that this is a Venus who is hampered in acting out the ~Venus Imperative~ i.e. loving, creating, bonding, connecting, generating. Stephen Arroyo says of this placement, “Supposing one has Venus in Scorpio (another “detriment”), the demands, insatiable emotional needs, and intense desires of Scorpio tend to interfere with the expression of affection and with the free exchange of love feelings with another person.” So from a modern, psychological perspective, this time each year is infused with some heightened tension between what our world demands us to love and what we can love. This times out very well this year with the winter holidays and the demands that family, partners, and capitalism puts onto us.
An interesting way to consider how planetary energies might manifest in astrology is to look at charts of people who carry those planetary arrangements. I’ve been angling for a good reason to write about Frank Ocean for a while, and, unsurprisingly, it turns out his chart is an excellent one for describing the current astro dynamics.
There are a lot of minor differences between how Venus is operating in his chart and the chart today. Focusing on one specific difference is helpful for understanding Frank’s Venus in Scorpio and what that looks like for the rest of us.
In today’s chart, Venus and Mars can’t see each other, as they’re in signs right next to each other (Venus in Scorpio, Mars in Sagittarius). In Frank’s chart, even though Mars is in a sign right next to Venus, it’s a sign that Venus is responsible for. This makes them guests of each other, responsible for each other, beholden to each other.
In Frank, we might see this interesting, dynamic relationship that connects the First House (of self) and the Twelfth House (of darkness, difficulty, enemies) as an illustration of the depth and enigmatic nature of his public persona. But, notably, he doesn’t see himself as all that enigmatic. In his words: “I think the whole idea of me as a recluse is absurd ’cause I’m in the streets like all the time. I’m outside all the time, I’m traveling the world all the time.”
I like to think about this difference between his self perception of his seclusion and the world’s as illustrative of his First House/Twelfth House connection. While we might think he’s squirreled away all the time, he sees how what he’s doing in that private space is intimately and loudly connected to the world outside. The Venus in Scorpio brings the intensity, the emotional depth and the Mars in Libra communicates it out with confidence. When he released Blonde the day after his final studio album with Def Jam, he did so after working on it in complete secret for months and months. Virtually no one else knew about his project, but it became one of his most successful, changing his career trajectory and the trajectory of American music. That’s the blend of confidence, privacy, depth, and intensity that his Venus in Scorpio delivers via his Mars in Libra.
So what does this mean for you? For the astrology of the next three-ish weeks until Venus moves out of Scorpio on December 30, what does Venus feel like? In short: like the intensity of a Frank Ocean song without the outlet of Mars in Libra. This is a Venus that is going through it, overwhelmed by the mass of emotion that Scorpio provides. Like Arroyo says, “the demands, insatiable emotional needs, and intense desires of Scorpio tend to interfere with the expression of affection and with the free exchange of love feelings”. You might feel that your relationships are drawing deep gulps from your emotional wells. Scorpio has plenty of water to give, but that doesn’t mean it’s comfortable for you.
So, a lesson from Frank Ocean: you don’t have to give away anything you don’t want to. I don’t mean in the “you don’t owe anyone ANYTHING” way. I mean it in the sense that to be there for someone, to be strong for someone, doesn’t mean that you have to empty yourself out. There’s value in holding back at times and only sharing what is necessary. You don’t have to give it all away. Obviously, I turn to Frank Ocean to explain this, in an admittedly old interview with W Magazine:
Venus in Scorpio can be an invitation to explore those fantasies, to identify what it is that you don’t want to share, and to instead share what feels right. This season demands connection and creation with intention. Without awareness of what you’re giving out, you might think your well is endless (Scorpio feels that way), but nothing really is.
We all have our limits and this astrological arrangement is as good an invitation as any to reflect on your abilities to monitor your limits and protect yourself within them.
Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.
