If you are feeling a shift in your personal relationship with larger entities, you are not alone. Venus and the prodigal asteroid Vesta are moving into a position that symbolically empowers you to act on that feeling. Vesta leaves Aquarius behind and enters Pisces shortly before 3 am EST tomorrow morning. Twelve hours later, Venus will have departed Capricorn to enter Aquarius.
Venus and Vesta concurrently changing signs is a vital part of an ongoing rearrangement in the cosmic deck. Their role is to help you avoid getting lost in the shuffle. As usual, a little awareness will go a long way to help you work with the modulating energy pattern. Developing that consciousness can begin with an understanding of how the simultaneous ingressions of Vesta and Venus fit in with a bigger picture.
We are in the midst of a larger shuffle right now. An intense eclipse cycle has just concluded, implying a change of pattern. Additionally, a Mercury retrograde in Sagittarius is all but in the can, indicating a revised perspective. Sun enters Capricorn on either Wednesday or Thursday, depending on where you are, initiating a new season. Luna conjoins the Sun on Christmas Eve for a Capricorn New Moon, and Jupiter stations out of retrograde the very next day with a consequence that all the major planets will be in direct motion until February. The net effect of the larger shuffle is to put a temporary emphasis on the last three signs of the zodiac (Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces), and on planets outside the main asteroid belt, with Venus and Vesta providing personal access to the very old and very big.
Vesta represents service, perhaps the most personal access to simply being, by giving of your self. In its new sign, Vesta’s archetype will come under the influence of not just one, but two orthodox ruling planets. Jupiter is traditionally associated with Pisces and its probable expression will be an expansion of service into devotion. Neptune is the modern ruler of Pisces and its influence promises to dissolve the distinction between servant and served. The support of two large, outer planets indicates that Vesta’s symbolic flame will soon burn all the brighter, illuminating beyond individual boundaries to the trans-personal and even the historical. The only question is our ability to follow the expanding circle of light into the epochal, facing a greater circumference of darkness, without losing ourselves in the bargain. Another sign of dual rulership, Aquarius, may hold the key.
Aquarius represents an individual’s relationship to the collective. The transition from Capricorn to Aquarius takes Venus from the nearly unequivocal domain of Saturn to a sign traditionally ruled by Saturn, but it is not a lateral move. Uranus, the modern ruler of Aquarius, offers a means by which we can re-vision the sign as well as the archetype of any planet in its realm. But it has to be a conscious choice, one that resonates with the central choice that defines our era: whether to serve a structure that no longer serves us.
Saturn is about the structures we build to survive. That is not in any way a bad thing, but it is necessarily limiting. As the traditional ruler of Aquarius, Saturn governs the structured relationship between individual and collective, sometimes called a social contract, the exchange of dedication for definition. Through that ancient arrangement, we humans have long purchased an improved chance for survival with the coin of acquiescence. We now have reason to consider whether that arrangement has become irreparably and unavoidably dysfunctional, ironically and literally threatening our continued existence. Uranus can help with that and Venus can help us help ourselves.
In the words of Robert Hand, “Uranus challenges the rigid structures in life that most people work so hard to build.” If you have chosen instead to embrace those structures over the nine months that have elapsed since the last time Venus was in Aquarius, ask yourself, are you better off? How much of you has been mined and extracted? Are you in fact being consumed by what you have worked so hard to build? With the receptive archetype of Venus about to return to Aquarius, you will have an opportunity to be receptive to the paradigm of Uranus governing your relationship with the collective instead of Saturn, while there is still some of you left.
If you are reading this, you are alive. If you are alive, you exist, and that is a precious gift. That gift confers a great power to serve. Vesta tells us that the power of service will presently expand our being to merge with what we serve and expand our influence beyond our being. That makes it very important to choose carefully. The rest of the solar system agrees. We are about to embark upon a new season, imbued of a fresh pattern and informed by a restored perspective. As new cycles begin and the planets move forward together once again, be receptive to the re-visioning that Venus can endow and open to challenge that which no longer serves you.
Offered In Service
Thank you, dear Len. And thank you Be, for your beautiful, resonant post. Blessings to you too. xx
“Are you in fact being consumed by what you have worked so hard to build?…[Y]ou will have an opportunity to be receptive…while there is still some of you left.”
I, too, feel the shifting as the shedding continues trying to get back to the essentials. It is a detox process, and to some extent for me, has involved physical symptoms of muscle spasms and stomach discontent. At least I can recognize what is coming to the surface, mainly thanks to the wise words here at PW.
But, come Sunday, all major planets will be moving forward. Is this the noodge in the shift to get us all moving forward, lighter in being? I am heartened by the message of service through Vesta, and reminded of the motto of Rotary International. Rotary today is a reflection of the changes of a century, having moved from a men’s lunch club intended promote each other’s businesses in Chicago in 1903 to the world’s oldest and larget service organization, with women members and progarms for health, peace and young people. If you look past the good old boys’ image, the weekly lunches, the infamous singing, and other oddities, it is an organization about service that is much larger than the individuals, much larger than the local club. Seems appropriate (at least for me having spent more than a decade as an active Rotarian) to recall the motto of Rotary: Service about self.
Thanks, Len, for some very powerful prose for reflection at this solstice and New Moon.
JannKinz
be: Thank you. Nobody works the yods like you do.
I do Len, I do feel the shift. I’ve been feeling it for days now and you have so delicately expressed the process and the nuances of how the goddesses Venus and Vesta play their part. I so appreciate that quality in you. There’s another sweet influence that’s been taking place and now that the Sun has reached the GC, I believe we might be able to connect to it’s place in the shifting process.
The Uranian point Vulcanus and the asteroid Achilles have both been in the sign of Cancer at 27+. Both are retrograde, both represent a vulnerablity; the masculine expression of woundedness, and both in a sign most vulnerable. With the nebulous, unconscious expression of Neptune being sextile the Galactic Center which is always waiting for a way to express it’s wisdom directly, the Sun has provided that conscious contact today. The Sun sextile Neptune forms yet another yod, this time with the wounded Achilles and Vulcanus at the focal point. There is a directive in this configuration to comfort and heal the wounds, especially those related to family.
Vesta in her conjunction to Neptune (and Chiron) has partaken of the yod’s influence to heal and comfort, while Venus in opposition to the focal point(s) provides a balancing energy from the structure of society, including the government. This surely has been part of the influence for Americans as they bring their warriors home from war at last.
There are many ways we have used this energy in a personal way I’m hoping. With all that is happening so fast and furiously, we surely can find some time to express this gentle and loving energy with our own families. I would say to all the PW family, thank you for what you have provided here in spite of your personal disappointments and setbacks; a place where comfort, comradeship and comedy can be shared with friends without fear of rejection. Bless you all for making it so.
be