Venus retrograde horoscopes
This Libra season, Venus is going retrograde in Scorpio. Scorpio is the missed step in our collective developmental path with North Node in Aquarius and South Node in Leo. Scorpio says go within and go deep, past what’s difficult and painful to find what’s real and authentic. From there, we learn to inhabit a more stable and more principled relationship to our true selves. And from there, we can explore and embrace our unique, unconventional selves without relying on external validation to tell us what to think or to tell us who we are.
Venus represents our capacity to embody our values, our relationships skills, inherent gifts and talents, as well as our material resources and what we transact for. However, Venus is in her detriment in Scorpio. While Venus wants to relate and come off well to others, Scorpio, on the other hand, doesn’t care to be liked. One way to think of Venus in Scorpio is the phrase “going deep to find softness,” as in, going beneath the facade or what is socially acceptable, in order to connect with the more tender parts that sitting with those difficult emotions can reveal and soften.
In her retrograde form, Venus in Scorpio may have us reflecting on or re-evaluating an area of life where we succeed by going deep and confronting the shadow side of ourselves and of human nature.
See below for how Venus Retrograde will affect your sign (for the most accurate horoscope, look at your Rising sign, but Sun signs and Moon signs also work)
Aries
Scorpio represents the missed step on your path of growth from self-indulgent impulse and pleasure-seeking into leaning into collective purpose.
Venus in Scorpio asks you to do the hard and messy work within your shared life and interdependent resources, maybe exploring your own psychological depths and emotional imprints from your childhood conditioning that show up in your adult attachments.
This retrograde cycle may have you exploring the ways you unhealthily attach, particularly to people or things that cause big or difficult emotions, and how that might be the missing step to living in a more collectively oriented way that is more in line with your true social values.
Mantra: “I untangle myself from messy entanglements in order to live more fully amongst others that share my values.”
Taurus
Scorpio represents the missed step between moving away from your need for external validation to a public identity where you can stand on your unique principles.
Whereas, you tend to oversimplify or focus only on what is on the surface, Venus in Scorpio asks you to notice how you attract the right partners or significant others that add a level of depth and intensity to your life. Venus in Scorpio may show you how others are the key to understanding what is authentic and real for you and what is worth taking a public stance for, even if it’s not pretty or popular.
This retrograde cycle may have you in conflict with significant others or partners or experiencing difficulties brought about by significant others, maybe through an experience of relational crisis or breakdown. You may grow in your ability to confront challenges in your relationships with others. This is the missing step in moving away from defining yourself in a superficial or self-indulgent way to carving out a public path for yourself based on principles that are worth the relational or reputational risk.
Mantra: “My most significant relationships challenge me to mature into the person who knows what’s real and what matters and can live in line with my principles.”
Gemini
Scorpio represents the missed step between seeking validation in what’s colloquial and the growth that comes from broadening your horizons by following your highest-mind.
Venus in Scorpio asks you to convert your many ideas into work that is useful to others, maybe exploring what skills you’re cultivating and the people you work with or for. This could also mean exploring your rituals and routines of daily life that allow you to cultivate a more authentic connection to your daily responsibilities.
This retrograde cycle may have you exploring the ways that you pour yourself into work or your habits, particularly work or habits that ask you to go deep, confront the shadow side of humanity or your own nature, or that require total commitment from you. Through this exploration, you may see how turning ideas into practical skills is the missing step to moving away from the chatter or noise of daily life, into following a more organized moral code or belief system that guides the good works you perform.
Mantra: “I embrace the power of my daily rituals, routines, and work in order to uncover the true impact of the higher moral codes I choose to follow.”
Cancer
Scorpio represents the missed step between living in a selfish or self indulgent way and/or needing external recognition to validate your inherent gifts, and the growth that comes from giving and receiving from the collective that sustains you.
Venus in Scorpio is asking you to reflect and reassess what gives you pleasure and makes you feel valued in ways that money can’t buy. This could mean re-examining relationships with romantic interests, children, hobbies, or your relationship to your own inner-child.
This retrograde cycle could bring up past heartbreaks or rain checks to fun plans that might have you reckoning with what really brings you joy and feeds your soul and who the real ones are that you can share your most authentic and tender parts with. Through this reckoning, you burn through the superficial and connect with your authentic self in a way that allows you to recognize those that help meaningfully sustain you.
Mantra: “I value myself as the creative project of my life and only invest in those that can meet me in my most tender places.”
Leo
Scorpio represents the missed step between your need for attention and validation as an individual and the growth that comes from finding and partnering with the right others who share and embody your values.
Venus in Scorpio asks you to go into your more private spaces of emotional belonging or even going back to your origins or the people that you come from. This retrograde cycle may have you exploring your relationship to your family of origin or to the role you played in your childhood home, maybe confronting past traumas or survival mechanisms that might now be counterproductive.
The beauty of Venus in Scorpio could be learning that your pain points can be alchemized into your superpowers, allowing you to build an anchor for yourself based on radical authenticity, commitment, and psychological depth. In doing so, you shine your brilliance in a way that attracts the right others who can not only hold space for you, but allow you to live out your true values in partnership.
Mantra: “I rise like a Phoenix from the depths that forged me in order to attract the right others that can hold my brilliance.”
Virgo
Scorpio represents the missed step between existential ruminations over legacy and purpose and the growth that comes from embodying your principles by living them out through your daily work.
Venus in Scorpio asks you to translate the lofty narratives in your head into ideas that you can meaningfully exchange with others. Scorpio advises that what may sound good when locked in the secrecy or privacy of your inner world may need to be revised and tested through actual exchange with others.
This retrograde cycle could have you experiencing missed connections or experiencing opportunities to re-evaluate and re-assess how you use your voice, what meaning you want to transmit into the world around you, and the weight of your words, especially words you use to connect with your social environment. This reassessment could help you better translate how real-life context can burn through what’s fake in undefined ambition in order to expose the real work that needs to be done and that only you can do.
Mantra: “I lean into my real life connections in order to seek out and find the good work that needs to be done.”
Libra
Scorpio represents the missed step between pouring yourself into the collective and the growth that comes from centering your own joy as the creative purpose of your life.
Venus in Scorpio asks you to take stock of what is yours and yours alone in terms of your inherent skills and talents that you trade for material abundance and the material resources you need, desire, and earn in order to sustain yourself.
This retrograde cycle may have you exploring your relationship to money and materiality as a form of self-worth, maybe coming to terms with what you truly want or desire from your material life or comforts. By doing this, you may better relate to yourself as someone who exists to enjoy life, not just pour into others or to the cause.
Mantra: “I learn to accept the good things in life that I’ve earned in order to center myself as a being deserving of joy.”
Scorpio
Scorpio represents the missed step between wanting a career or public image that brings you external validation and the growth that comes from embracing your unique and progressive values in your private or domestic life.
Venus in Scorpio asks that you embrace your own probing and intense nature that you use to attract only those who are worthy of your brilliance and your total commitment. You're not meant for everyone, and that is your gift.
This retrograde cycle might have you in conflict with those around you, or have your somewhat dark or reserved nature misunderstood by others. These interpersonal misunderstandings are asking you to come to terms with the fact that your specific flavor needs the right audience and the right partners. In doing so, you can create spaces of emotional belonging for yourself where your more tender parts, maybe the quirky or unconventional parts, can be safe to express.
Mantra: “I’m okay with living my true self in order to create a foundation of true belonging for myself.”
Sagittarius
Scorpio represents the missed step between staying in high-minded or esoteric philosophy and embracing the growth that comes from making knowledge useful through exchange with the world around you.
Venus in Scorpio asks you to connect with the more spiritual aspects of your morality, not just following the correct beliefs, but connecting to a more universal sense of connection and empathy with the world around you and the people in it. This retrograde cycle may have you suppressing or internalizing your emotions, maybe processing difficult emotions or having to hide your true feelings for some reason. Reflecting in quiet spaces with your more difficult emotions can help you unlock a deeper and more universal source of empathy and feeling that you can use to connect with a wider array of people.
Mantra: “I sit with my uncomfortable emotions in order to access a more universal feeling that I use to connect with humanity.”
Capricorn
Scorpio represents the missed step between seeking validation by pouring yourself into your joint ventures or codependent relationships and the growth that comes from owning and claiming what is uniquely yours and yours alone.
Venus in Scorpio asks you to connect with a community of like-minded people who share your vision for the world and collective aspirations. This retrograde cycle may have you in disputes or conflict with your friend groups or associates or when striving for goals within a collective. The retrograde lesson is to learn to separate your own skills, gifts, and talents from that of the collective or from an enmeshed or self-sacrificial way of being. In doing so, you connect with your unique and inherent worth and the value you have, not just for others, but also for yourself.
Mantra: “Conflict in my collective world allows me to separate what I personally want and need from the wants and needs of the collective, so I may connect with what is uniquely mine.”
Aquarius
Scorpio represents the missed step between projecting your own need to shine or need for validation onto others and the growth that comes from embracing your own unique and unconventional style.
Venus in Scorpio asks you to embrace opportunities in your professional life, career, or business. This retrograde cycle might have you re-evaluating your professional goals or career aspirations, especially if your current professional goals don’t feel aligned or like a fit, or if you’re experiencing power struggles with bosses or authority figures. This re-evaluation could help illuminate where the “you” needs to stand out by standing on your values, principles, and unique perspective in relation to others in order to achieve your public purpose.
Mantra: “I follow my own North Star and carve out an identity rooted in my unique and authentic self.”
Pisces
Scorpio represents the missed step between performing good works for external validation and sitting in quiet and still spaces in order to connect with your more inner and authentic self that does not need to perform.
Venus in Scorpio asks you to pursue higher terrains and your more esoteric beliefs, especially if your beliefs involve the occult or exploring the more intense psychological aspects of human nature. This retrograde cycle might have you questioning some of those beliefs or bring delays to long-distance travel plans or study plans in a way that might make you question what it is you truly believe in. This questioning and potential clarification of the higher truths you choose to follow connects you, not just to your true beliefs, but to true spirituality, connection with inner wisdom in quiet and still spaces, away from the spotlight.
Mantra: “When I lean into what it is that I truly believe in, I release attachment to performance, and instead, embrace connection to the true self cultivated in stillness.”
