Venus Cazimi; Pregnant With Possibility

We are in a brief three week sweet spot this month that will culminate with a Venus cazimi on October 22. There’s magic in the moment the Sun & Venus unite, cazimi means heart of the Sun and when it includes Venus it is a time for wishes and cultivating our heart’s desire. This is the second Venus cazimi of the year, the other happened in January when Venus was retrograde, symbolically in the underworld. Now we are at the time when Venus will reemerge as an evening star. 

This is a highly significant Venus cazimi conjunction, it is the first time that it has taken place in Libra since 1771. Another indicator of change.

Venus, who is at home in the sign of Libra, is the planet of beauty as well as love. It is a planet of magnetism, drawing things(people, experiences) toward us. When this is in flow, we experience a sense of awe and wonder and sense an embodiment of our glorious connection to life itself: We feel in tune with the universe. 

When I was contemplating this Cazimi the Empress card in the tarot sprang to mind. A symbol of fertility, the Empress is a beautiful, full-figured woman with a peaceful aura about her. On her head, she wears a crown of twelve stars, showing her connection with the mystical realm and the cycles of the natural world (the twelve months of the year and the twelve planets). Her robe is patterned with pomegranates, symbolic of fertility, and sits upon a luxurious array of cushions and flowing red velvet. One cushion features the symbol of Venus, the planet of love, creativity, fertility, beauty and grace. She signifies abundance and being surrounded by life’s pleasures. She is at peace.

And she is the epitome of liminal space. We forget that liminal space is gestational space. When we are standing at what feels like a standstill straddling the crossroads, at that space in between, we are pregnant with possibility just like the Empress even though we may not realize yet that we are carrying the seeds of new life because at this stage it is embryonic.

Gestational space is powerful and yet primal. In the early stages of pregnancy it doesn’t appear on the outside that much is happening but new life is being formed. Initially at the molecular level even before someone knows that they are pregnant they are teeming with life. 

To me pregnancy is such a powerful metaphor for our experience of growth, change and our evolving life. A pregnant woman needs to nourish and care for herself to ensure the health of her unborn child. We too need to care for and nourish our hopes and dreams to ensure their health. You can’t hurry the development new life. If a baby is born prematurely its survival is at risk. It needs time to gestate. To develop. You can’t rush that process, you have to trust it. In the same manner we have to trust the process of how our life is both growing and unfolding. Like it or not we can’t rush it along, even when it becomes uncomfortable. When a woman goes into labor it is powerful, primal and beyond her control. Unless a c-section is scheduled even the timing of labor is not of her choosing. Something new is being born and she couldn’t stop it if she tried. The new life itself has taken over. 

This is a fertile time. Use it to nourish what is gestating within. While you can launch something new in the next three weeks, Mars the planet of movement and motivation (and Venus’ lover)
is already slowing and will retrograde beginning October 30 through January 12. It is after Mars goes direct that things will begin to more fully move forward. 

We are carrying something, something that is embryonic. Through we may all be at differing stages of development, it is a creative space and in the same way a mother supports the developing child in the womb the best thing you can do right now is nourish yourself. Trust that the creative child, the new life, that you are carrying can do the work of becoming on its own if we just take the actions to support it by caring for ourselves.

I have a few more spaces left in the Thresholds workshop that begins this Sunday. This class was designed to harness the energy of this gestational time. This class is for any one who feels that they are poised at a crossroad, is out to have a breakthrough in their creativity and self expression, willing to initiate a courageous conversation with themselves on behalf of leaving behind what it’s time to leave behind (whatever is no longer enlivening) and is hungry to step out onto new ground of aliveness in their life, particularly as we head into the New Year.

I will email out a ritual for the Venus cazimi shortly after the Full Moon this weekend (Which is a glorious lunation more about that on Saturday) but want to encourage you to begin to contemplate what you would wish to draw into your life, what you would wish to create in the month’s ahead in preparation.