Blog
by Steven Forrest
Venus turned retrograde on December 21st, right on the Winter Solstice. Those two pregnant moments coinciding is a rare event and it tells me that we should pay a lot of attention to the strong Venusian signature on the coming year.
On January 11, that retrograde Venus conjuncts the Sun at 21°12' of Capricorn. It remains retrograde for the usual forty-day period, finally turning direct on the last day of January at 13°33' Capricorn.
The Sun-Venus alignment on the 11th is called an “inferior conjunction.” Despite the term, there’s nothing wrong with it! “Inferior” here only means that Venus is directly between the Earth and the Sun. On the other side of its orbit, Venus again aligns with the Sun, but this time with the Sun between us and Venus.
Venus turns retrograde on May 15. It makes a station on June 27 and after that will be in direct motion until the end of 2013. None of this is earth-shaking. Venus moves fast and unless you are in diapers and weigh about the same as a Thanksgiving turkey, you’ve been through this kind of Venus event before. Venus’s synodic cycle runs about 584 days and it spends about forty of them in retrograde condition. In other words, Venus is retrograde for a little over a month out of every year and a half or so. An interesting subject, but no big deal.
