Staring at the Sun: Venus Direct

By ERIC FRANCIS

TUESDAY, JUNE 29 (or early Wednesday in the UK) Venus stations to direct motion in the 10th degree of Gemini. With this event we reach another significant cosmic acupuncture point amongst many this season -- that is, astrology with the potency to affect each of us, and all of us, in a particularly deep and noticeable way.

This event is not the end of the current Venus experience. Venus stationed retrograde (that is, apparently stopped and began moving backwards as it began to pass by the Earth) on May 17 in late Gemini. The 17 degrees that she then traced in reverse through our zodiac as she passed between the Earth and the Sun will now be played out in forward motion between today and August 2, when Venus enters new territory for the first time since the retrograde began.

This time through she is the wiser for having experienced the direct transit of the Sun, and we are changed people as a result of having lived through the experiences that event represented in our lives. Think back both on the past two months and the entire year for clues; sense what is different about this year in your life that stands apart or is distinctive from any other.

The energy of an inner planet stationing to direct movement can feel like something untangling, or like stalled energy releasing. The stationing process can come with a variety of sensations and psychic experiences, but they will very likely have a palpable intensity, focus, pain or sense of losing control. This can reach quite deep into the psyche. Yet as you will read in a few moments, Venus is drawing in what you might call deep-consciousness material from the outer solar system.

Third Phase of Venus Cycle

This is round three of Venus traversing these degrees of Gemini in the past few months. A retrograde process involves a planet advancing forward through a stretch of degrees; stopping and tracing those same degrees in reverse (the retrograde); and stopping and going forward through those same degrees for a third time. The stations (or stopping points) themselves often represent tense, intense moments that raise the crux of the situation to awareness.

If you are mindful of what you experience and think the next 72 hours you will get some solid information about what this Venus retrograde means for you personally; what you have here is my interpretation. You can channel this information directly without the help of astrology or astrologers.

Note also that Venus completes crossing degrees 10 thru 27 of Gemini on Aug. 2, making a stunning opposition to the Galactic Core (where this process began in May), and then entering ever-sensitive and evocative Cancer on Aug. 7. The Cancer ingress is another turning point in this same story (particularly given that the first degree of Cancer is not only deeply personal but has also been reliably sensitive to issues involving the Iraq war and Sept. 11).

The peak of this process occurred June 8 with the Venus transit of the Sun. This truly unusual event, which had not occurred for more than 12 decades, sets this Venus retrograde apart from scores of others in modern times. Bear in mind that Venus is retrograde least of all the planets, about 8% of the time (compared to Pluto, for example, which is retrograde more than 40% of the time). So her retrograde is something of a boutique item in any event.

The next Venus transit of the Sun is in June 2012, suggesting that we are now in a distinct phase of time leading directly to the 2012 era and whatever that represents. Twenty-twelve is a vital point in both Mayan astrology and ever increasingly in Western mysticism and even pop culture. Many books have been written about it, beginning (to my knowledge) in the mid 1970s, and they continue to appear. The prevailing folklore, which appears to have some basis in reality, is that the Mayan calendar's long count of about 1.8 million days 'ends' at the Winter Solstice of 2012. The question is what this represents to us; it has been portrayed as representing everything from the ascension, to a cataclysm, to a leap beyond technology, to the 'end of the world', which is itself a symbolic event.

Meantime, as of June 15, Venus has risen as the morning star (called the helical rise) -- which was considered the time to go to war by the Mayans. According to my Mayan astrology advisor, Venus has two aspects in this system of astrology -- the yin aspect when she is the evening star (earlier in the retrograde, but before the conjunction of Venus to the Sun) and the yang aspect when she is the morning star (after the conjunction finally being visible enough to see before the Sun rises). In between the two phases, Venus is too close to the Sun to see. We are now in the yang or male phase.

Except for one little thing. Many of us got a very good look at Venus at the exact moment of the conjunction; most everyone in the Western world, South America, Oz and much of developed Asia and Africa saw photos. It is extremely rare for so many people to see such an infrequent astronomical event; none so rare that I know of is actually visible.

Gemini-Sagittarius

As this event unfolds across Gemini-Sagittarius, we are presented with the image of a confrontation of ideology and, perhaps, the promise of reconciliation. And we are surely witnessing the confrontation right now, as both Christian and Islamic fundamentalists wage Jihad on one another. In the States, the presidential campaign is heating up, and scores of millions of dollars (that could, for example, be used to feed people) are being spent by political candidates attacking one another.

As the campaigns reach their endgame (of course, at the point of a gun, under the constant threat of terrorism), the country is likely to become hotly polarized over the war. At the same time there is an enormous underground energy source of concern about this situation; think back to the protests of February 2003 which took place in every major center in the Western world, including numerous U.S. cities.

The Gemini-Sagittarius axis where this event is unfolding is an unusual section of space. When facing toward Sagittarius from Gemini, one gazes into the galaxy toward the core of the Milky Way. When facing Gemini, one looks out into open intergalactic space.

As Venus completes the retrograde process in Gemini, she opposes for the third time a series of outer planets and galactic points now in Sagittarius; and she has her back to open space. The oppositions -- particularly to two galactic points in Sagittarius -- make everything associated with Venus seem bigger and deeper. Opposition means confrontation: a face to face meeting, or in this case, series of meetings, and they all involve ideas, collective thinking, deep dark secrets, power, and because Venus and Pluto are involved, sex.

Collectively (just flipping through the television channels) notice that we are in the midst of a colossal confrontation between truth and lies, light and dark, themes of a global nature and the poison of total self-absorption. We have the government caught red-handed running a franchise of sex abuse torture prisons with our tax dollars, presumably on our karmic tab.

These facts reach deep into us as outer events internalized. Yet at the same time, this same astrology is evoking some inner process that would be occurring even if we had no contact with the media. The abused and degraded spirit of nature herself, meets her oppressors, her conditioning forces, her most trusted mentors, and her galactic origins face to face.

Ixion and Quaoar

Venus stations this week in close opposition to two newly named outer planets that are now in Sagittarius, Ixion and Quaoar. I'm going to skip discussion of the mythology because I've covered it many times, and stick to the delineations. Together, these two planets represent the darkest face of the abuse that takes place in families: be it physical violence, psychological abuse, or rape and incest. For the sake of most discussions, the differences between these kinds of abuse are not as meaningful as one might imagine; the dynamics are very similar in terms of the results they create. The most important thing necessary for healing seems to be the awareness that something was actually wrong. Therefore often the more subtle kinds of abuse are deeply damaging because they occur without our knowledge.

With these factors placed in Sagittarius, we add the dimension of abuse perpetuated by religion and religious ideology, and, in addition, how this expresses itself in families.

Of these two energies, Ixion brings the theme of dark, abusive and most of all unrepentant behavior. It is the 'unredeemable' aspect of human nature and 'that which we are all capable of'. I am going to presume that Ixion is a kind of ascended master whose job it is to assist us in healing the damage that was done.

Quaoar introduces the theme of family patterns of any shade. This is to say, any family pattern can come under the purview of Quaoar. These are patterns that existed before we were born and into which, as members of a family system, we were integrated without really noticing. When you think of Quaoar, think of picking up a dance by feeling the rhythm of the music. The movements become natural, and that is how we integrate emotionally into our family of origin.

One of the distortions of Quaoar is that we think what we're experiencing around us began with us; with our birth; that we (in being born) are the point of beginning. In reality the dance goes back countless generations, to the beginning of humanity. The other distortion of Quaoar is an inner-outer boundary question: what plays out in the life of an adult is a picture of what has happened around that child growing up.

These patterns may relate to circumstances and emotions surrounding our mother's pregnancy (particularly in situations involving adoption), feelings about sex that permeate the family, attitudes toward children, and the general psychological climate of the household. Far more often than not, these circumstances are mean and negligent toward children at best, and at worst, outright contemptuous. Simply put, we grow up being abused (often by the circumstances of our parents' lives), thus not only expecting to be abused but emotionally set up for it. Then it 'just seems to happen'. I define abuse here broadly; Alice Miller points out that all of Western society is inherently abusive to children. Thus we all carry the resulting patterns and act them out in our lives unconsciously (or not).

Abuse can involve being left unparented for long periods of time when you needed help, love or warmth; it can include being made to sleep in a crib in a separate room from your parents as an infant. It can involve the way you are spoken to, or violence you are exposed to in your environment.

Abuse passes guilt from the guilty to the innocent. It's often those who are innocent of any specific wrongdoing who suffer from guilt complexes, and it's very often the attackers of various shades who seem to live with impunity and free of remorse; this is what happens to their guilt complex -- it becomes attack rather than guilt. It is projected. Fundamentally guilt and attack are the same thing, played out two ways. Guilt is self-attack.

This is worth pondering. Attackers blame their victims and teach them self-blame; they were once attacked; society participates in the chain reaction. Thus is the victim also a victim of conditioned self-reproach, from which a vast number of people in our society suffer. Despite many popular theories to the contrary, most of them proffered by religion, people are victimized in this world. Religion (and I include much of spirituality here) for its part often perpetuates the process by teaching us that the difficulty we experienced growing up is our own fault.

This is the rather shocking thing that most 'old age' and much 'new age' religion have in common. They both usually possess some notion of original sin, which is allegedly absolved by guilt. There are exceptions, but they are rare.

An Overview of Abuse Legacy

The thing with carrying an abuse legacy is that it rarely feels like, 'Oh, I was so abused growing up'. In fact we are lucky when it does; when we know right from wrong. Rather, the most damage is done in my view when we cannot tell that what we went through was wrong or painful. One of the subtle points of sexual abuse is that it does not need to involve inappropriate touching. Psychic attack, control, inappropriate comments, or being constantly sexually stalked count, too. If these things are perpetuated by one parent or responsible adult and ignored by another, their impact can be compounded by a sense of betrayal.

The results of this treatment have many effects. For example, they can manifest in adults as the sense of being perpetually stuck. Or they can appear as being caught in painful patterns of relationship that seem impossible to break. One common pattern is going from an abusive family of origin to mean, vindictive marriages or partnerships -- which somehow get defined as love and come to represent love, and in which we are stuck (much like a child in his or her family).

Often residual abuse feels like inexplicable guilt that never seems to go away. Guilt can go to a deeper level, which could feel like guilt about being alive; this is shame. Shame is the sense that one is always wrong, no matter what, not in theory but in being.

Sexual or emotional abuse can express itself as the inability to combine intimacy and sex; the inability to experience orgasm; or total confusion between sex and power. There can be the feeling that sex is one's only power. There is also the very common experience that sex is absolutely necessary for approval or as a condition of love and affection. There can be the recurring experience of being raped. There can be the associated feeling of forced surrender.

As a cousin of rape, there can be the feeling of sexual encounters always having some enormous power imbalance. Along these lines, any form of confusion between pleasure and pain is most likely abuse legacy, particularly the deep-seated kind of confusion that so many people experience today. This often leads to people experiencing pain as pleasure: a kind of masochistic existence. And with all its tantalizing reach but don't touch conditioning, our culture certainly is based on masochism.

Abuse legacy can also feel like constantly living one's life as a charlatan. Or, it can appear as the state of constantly living someone else's life, or like one has no life of one's own -- and will never get one; that such is impossible.

There can be the sense that everything is a secret, and that revealing one's inner depth will be in some way catastrophic.

And, most common of all, there can be a major crisis of resolving one's relationships with one's parents. In this respect, every relationship can show up with parent-child dynamics rather than adult-adult dynamics.

I've noticed another phenomenon, which I call the 'restricted area' experience. The image came to me when a journalism source was describing a forest in the southern United States surrounded by a high chain-link fence. Nobody seemed to notice or mind; there was just this fence in the forest blocking off a vast area. The land was owned by Monsanto. God knows what was inside.

But this reminded me of myself. Within myself, I had not noticed that the restricted area was even there, but when I came to the perimeter I realized I had been living with it inside myself all my life unconsciously; that there was this huge area within my psyche that was banned from my awareness and which I could not enter. It was shocking to discover. I was at a point in my own personal work where it seemed like time to cut the fence and go into that zone at whatever cost.

I have had help: from friends, from therapists, from colleagues, from the people who come to me for help and then offer me such insights into our collective condition. While it may seem poetic that this must be a solitary journey to revelation, I think that is the biggest, most abusive lie of all. We are in this together. We need one another and it is time to help one another, and to ask for help.

In the Vortex

On a collective level, we are looking directly into a restricted area right now with the continued revelation of abuse in United States and United Kingdom war zones around the world, and the compelling written evidence that this was approved of up to the top levels of government. We are witnessing the normal behavior of our civilization, and we are feeling it affect us.

The recent events of Venus have occurred in Gemini, which is an extremely intelligent sign and one associated with language and tangible events. By intelligent sign, I mean we can look to our charts and wherever we find Gemini discover a trove of vivid intelligence. At the same time, Venus, I believe, is the planet of intelligence. For the next 18 months (until Venus goes retrograde in Aquarius exactly conjunct Chiron in December 2005) we have Venus that is carrying the energy of language, ideas, and expression. We have Venus that can look at both sides of the issue and that strives to embrace and resolve dualism. We have access to an unusual new degree of emotional intelligence that can be made cognitive; of which we can simply be aware.

The question we face is what to do about what we notice and discover, and I must admit we do not have many choices in the current social climate. Our culture has been slanted so long in the direction of ignoring problems of this nature that we have few methods available for dealing with problems once they arise. And these we will need to create.

There are three particular concerns I see, really. One is that those who discover a need for healing from what was done to them often feel like they have few options, and this is complicated by the fact that when trust has been injured it is difficult to repair. And like all injuries, wounds to trust have a tendency to repeat. How do we know who can really help us? This takes bravery and it takes research. It takes the willingness to make mistakes and to risk being hurt in order to get well. As one client said last week, it takes trusting strangers.

A second problem is that people who have perpetuated abuse of any kind have few places to go for help. While I have met many women who have been raped, I have never met a man who admitted to being a rapist*. Being an attacker is almost always the result of having been attacked. As long as it is not safe for the people who perpetuate these hurts to seek out help or open up about their own condition and the events that led to their own pain, we will still live with the situation and its many underlying causes.

The third problem is confusion. We are a very confused society and many of us are very confused individuals. We are also overwhelmed by the problems of our world and the complexities of our lives. I speak for myself here as well as what I see outside me; it takes most of my energy to sort out and work out what has happened to me, and what happens to me, in life; to make some sense of the world in which I live, while trying to get my needs met.

It can be extremely lonely inside that fence. Or outside it for that matter.

So often we are taught to look away from our pain and the damage that was done to us. So often we feel we're given little choice but to shut down and put on armor.

We have other choices. We have one another. The past is gone, if we begin right here, right now. ++

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*Strictly speaking this is not true. I did have drinks one night with Eldridge Cleaver and his book publishers just before he died. Cleaver was the Black Panther leader who admitted to many rapes in his writing (see the book Soul on Ice if you are curious). But we did not discuss this issue or even allude to it.