Flowers For Venus

My Venus return this year came with her stationing retrograde by exact degree on my natal Venus. As someone with Venus in Aries—also retrograde at the time of my birth—it felt befitting to share a bit about our lady of the evening sky and to offer some easily incorporable plant-supported wisdom for her current retrograde cycle.

For those newer to the language of astrology, Venus is one of the skyward benefics commonly associated with love, romance, beauty, values, and pleasure. Every 18 months, Venus stations retrograde and invites us into a contemplative period on matters of love, relationships, aesthetics, pleasure, devotion, our values, and loving service. Today is an especially potent moment in her retrograde cycle, where she conjoins the Sun in the sky by exact degree. This conjunction is called a Venus cazimi. When a planet is cazimi, the planet’s energy is said to be amplified by the energy of the Sun. This moment is opportune for gaining insights, planting the seeds of our intentions, and listening deeply to what is being illuminated for us during this part of Venus’ cycle.

Venus In Aries

Venus’ retrograde arc this year has been unfurling in the sign of Aries. Ruled by Mars, Aries is this context can be understood as a sign of passion, action, independence, and initiation. Since March 1st, contemplations of how we love, how we assert our desires, whether or not we are aligning to our values when asserting our needs, and how we take initiative within our connections have been at the forefront of our experience.

Retrograde cycles offer abundant opportunities to recalibrate our relationship to self, other, and life as a whole. Yet, they can also come with a sense of feeling challenged, stalled, unexpectedly surprised, and incredibly tender. According to essential dignity—which speaks to the condition of a planet in a particular sign—Venus in Aries is said to be in detriment. While this may sound bleak, planets in detriment offer us the opportunity to harness the creative potential of a planet in unconventional ways and to work with the traditional ruler of the sign in which the planet is placed—in this case, Mars.

This retrograde period is a Mars-tinged confrontation with the places we’ve dimmed our light in order to receive love and acceptance. Aries fuels our primal instincts—our hunger for life, our will to create, our capacity to initiate from the depth of our passion, and our ability to stand boldly in our truth. Old relationships, familiar patterns and situations from the past, and default ways of coping with tension can resurface during this part of the Venus cycle to show us how much we have grown and to reveal where we still have growing to do.

Venus retrograde in Aries asks us . . .

Are my actions aligned to my heart and to my deepest values?

Am I expressing my desires clearly, or am I building resentment because I fear rejection?

Is my sense of self-worth rooted in external validation or in the brilliance of my own inner flame?

Am I pursuing relationships that honor my Soul’s deepest knowing?

How can I prioritize pleasure, passion, and joy in my life?

The spiral dance of Venus . . .

One of the aspects of Venus I find most captivating is the sacred geometry that she creates through her synodic cycles over the course of her 8 year dance. The first time I dove deeply into this aspect of Venus was in a class with Arielle Guttman, who taught about the Venus Star—a pentagram created by the sequential conjunctions of Venus and the Sun, the Venus cazimi. I remember Arielle saying, “Astrology, in general, could be called sacred geometry.” When I examine the Venus pattern—what some have termed the Rose of Venus—my herbalist and flower essence practitioner sensibilities are brought into communion with the many planetary / plant correlations that this geometry evokes.

Here are some herbal and vibrational allies that can support us during this Venus retrograde cycle . . .

Wild Rose Flower Essence

This essence is one that I work with regularly in my sessions with clients. Wild Rose helps to reawaken our passion for life and holds us tenderly as we re-harmonize with Divine Love and our innermost hearts. It can help us when we feel disillusioned or in need of reconnection to our heart’s knowing, our joy, our creative essence, and our intuition. It stokes the flames of our inspiration and clarifies our sense of boundaries in a way that is uniquely characteristic of the Rose family in plant medicine. This is my number one suggestion in helping our inner rhythms resound with those of the Rose of Venus as she asks us to realign in service of love, harmony, beauty, pleasure, and ecstatic flourishing.

The Lover’s Tea

A sensual tea to remember the Beloved within All. Suitable as a daytime tea, this ceremonial blend was formulated to deeply nourish the spiritual heart, open the way for greater pleasure and fuller embodied presence, support gentle journeying in meditation, inspire creative expression, evoke deeper connection with feminine energy, encourage greater self-love, open the Heart within one’s relationships, and bring the lilting song of spring and renewal to the central channel of the body. A wonderful tea to enjoy with a lover, with friends, or alone and in devotion to the dance of Lover and Beloved within. You can purchase this tea through the apothecary here.

Yarrow Flower Essence

This flower essence strengthens our boundaries with self and other and connects us with the clarity of being that is our essence nature. A beneficial ally for the process of addiction alchemy and for those who desire to have boundaries with behaviors that are no longer nourishing life—patterns that are often illuminated by Venus during her retrograde cycle. This essence is especially protective for highly sensitive souls and energetically-attuned beings and surrounds us with a shield of light quite similar to Venus and her present envelopment in the heart of the Sun.

Motherwort + Rose + Tulsi Tea

This tea can be made at home with three potent herbal allies who together share an affinity for this portion of Venus’ retrograde cycle. Motherwort offers us lion-hearted courage in the face of change and fear. Rose unfurls abounding love and invokes Venusian beauty. Tulsi offers protection by clarifying us home to our center. Together, these herbs support gentle heart opening, offer soothing to the nervous system, open the way for us to soften because we know our strength, and invite forth emotional coherence. Always make sure to source your herbs with care—making sure they are organically grown or ethically wildcrafted— and support your local apothecary whenever possible!

♡

If you desire to go deeper with Venus and with the flowers, I am here to support you. I often weave astrological insights and cycles into Flower Essence Devotionals and am currently accepting new clients. Schedule an introductory call to begin our 1:1 journey together.

I wish you abundant blessings for the duration of this potent time in Venus’ synodic cycle. May her medicine open in you like Wild Roses, and may you know how loved and how sacred you are.

P.S. If you are local to Boulder, Colorado . . .

Consider joining us at Harmonic Bloom, where we will explore the sacred geometry of Life by connecting with flower essences (like Yarrow, mentioned above!) and sound healing in a gently opening, deeply integrative communal journey. Three essences over the course of three sessions — April 18th (Artemisia), May 2nd (Yarrow), and May 17th (Lupine) ❀