Peacemaking Versus Peacekeeping: Venus Trines Neptune-Chiron and Enters the Retrograde Shadow at 27 Libra

This might be a controversial assertion, but I don't think the sign of Libra alone is all that skilled in the creation of peace. Libra is the peacekeeper, maybe. But peacemaker? Peace creator? No.

Libra can often maintain, through it's slick social skills and airy diplomacy, a form of peace that has already been established, but getting to a state of real peace often involves getting into it, and Libra is a sign that, especially when squared by Cancer or Capricorn, prefers to avoid that unpleasantness.

This avoidance is problematic because getting to a real state of peace often involves complex and longstanding disputes, injustices, imbalances, hurts, and oppressions that have been hidden, covered over, smoothed over, let slide, reinforced - made worse, in fact, by Libra's glossing over of realities and nervous insistence on everything staying nicey nice.

Slapping a Band-aid on it and forcing a phony handshake over drinks without addressing underlying issues is not the recipe for true, longstanding justice or the peace that stems from that. Keeping everything Libra light and pleasant isn't really the goal when you get right down to it - getting to the root of the discord and injustice is, as well as to a mutual understanding of what caused and continues to cause this so it can be addressed and the chains broken.

The drawing up and divining sign of Scorpio, then, becomes instrumental in the process of peace creation. The road to peace might be initiated in cardinal air Libra, but it's fixed water Scorpio that digs in and takes the process beneath the surface, where it needs to go to be crystallized.

It's the catalytic power of expressing the raw human experiences of millenia of oppression on this planet, especially the emotional realities, that starts the process toward real peace, equality and harmony. If we can't get to and express the core realities, we don't get to any real healing, peace or understanding.

With Scorpio, there is right and wrong, good and evil, just and unjust - and these cut-and-dry distinctions can make Libra, which at times searches for common ground that does not exist, very uncomfortable. This is part of the reason why Venus, Libra's ruling planet, is considered to be in its detriment in Scorpio.

Well, folks, this is where we're headed as Venus crosses the threshold of its retrograde shadow September 5, entering Scorpio September 8 and not leaving until January 7, 2011. This is part of the massive challenge we're facing as Venus, Mars and Eros, and by October the Sun and Mercury, follow Pallas Athene through Scorpio post-cardinal t-square initiations. The deep cardinal initiations now require an even deeper recalibration process. We tunnel to the core of the situations, get to those ever-elusive brass tacks and break up past-related stagnance, spurring new pathways, new relational dynamics and the alchemical fusing of new partnerships as we enter 2011.

Scorpio is a sign that is, or rather, can become, fully aware of core realities and hidden dynamics, especially of the domination/subjugation variety. Skilled Scorpionic types (whether that be a strong Scorpio contingent, a strong Pluto, a strong 8th house or a combination) can feel a subtle energetic disruption most other people wouldn't have the radar to pick up, and they can follow that disruption right to the often stinking-to-high-heaven root cause, sussing out how things are going to go from there with sheer intuition.

They can understand the root causes of behaviour that other people would write off as bizarre or extreme - especially when that behaviour is an expression of collectively-reinforced repressive/oppressive dynamics. Scorpio understands that at a certain level of collective denial, the pressure on individuals cannot be contained any longer, and it erupts.

So people working in the Scorpionic realms are aware of underlying dynamics that other people are not - or refuse to be. They know the subtext, and this leaves them experiencing and transmuting way more than their equal share. In societies in full-blown denial of the fact that most of their wealth, comfort, power and prosperity (their privilege, period) come from the reinforced suffering of other living things, this means they often have to do their special brand of energy work without proper outlets or assistance in dealing with it - despite the collective origins.

Scorpio knows that things left unaddressed and festering too long, with a false and cloying Libra nicey nice facade thrown over top like cheap perfume, will eventually lead to the powder keg blowing in much more damaging ways. Unlike other signs that can slough them off or explain them away, the energetic disturbances and warning signs stick with Scorpio like thorns until it works them bit-by-bit to the surface to do their catalytic thing, and then out of the system. From experience, Scorpio knows that if there is discord or an 'off' feeling, there is generally a reason for it that needs to be addressed. So it attempts to address...even when those around it are doing everything in their power to stuff it back down and look the other way.

As the personal planets pass through this sign during the last quarter of 2010, the Scorpio area of people's charts is going to be lit up, stirred up, churned up, and everyone will be an honourary Scorpionic. Everyone will be an energy detective, a psychic sleuth, an alchemical surgeon, plumbing the watery depths of our interpersonal relationships. Yes, we're all going to get a big old dose of Scorpio now and for the next four months - even the professional deniers. Things are going to be coming to the surface. Mm hm. Boy, are they. Especially by the time the Sun shines its light in Scorpio and conjoins Venus October 28.

Scorpio is a sign that, at a certain point, simply cannot put up with any more bullshit - even when the people around it are happy to keep shovelling away. At a certain point, there is no more absorption of other people's garbage or denial or unconsciousness possible. At a certain point, Scorpio has been left holding one too many bags and has had one too many loads of crap dumped in its lap.

We're at that point now.

The magical purging and transmutation skills can only handle so much overload by those who are shirking their own responsibilities, and lines in the sand will be drawn here. We work on drawing those lines until the Sun-Venus conjunction October 28, and then we turn our attention to implementing them.

Scorpio reads the signs. It knows that small events and behaviours and comments and vibes are the tip of the iceberg with roots to much larger issues.

As Venus, Eros and Mars move through late Libra and into Scorpio (Venus September 8, Mars September 14, Eros September 15), the signs point to a massive uncovering, examination, purging and recalibrating in relational dynamics. There is some seriously rotten stuff being passed around by some seriously unconscious people...or maybe they're fully conscious of what they're doing, after all.

Retrogrades involve course corrections. Venus retrogrades involves course corrections in relationships, having needs met and money.

Read the signs in your own life, especially in relationships, and be proactive in following them to the roots and making changes as the retrograde progresses.

Whatever isn't right is keeping you from what is. Be brave. Prune your relations how they need to be pruned. Speak up. Don't look the other way and increase the already massive pressure on our relations at this point in human history. Release some of the pressure by earnestly digging in to the thorny issues that will be thrown up by this potent little transit of Scorpio and Venus retrograde.

Draw water and draw water and draw water again until it runs clear. Get closer and closer to your core truth, your core reality, and speak it, no matter what anyone else has to say about it. (If it evokes a "You're so negative/bitter/dark" reaction from a New Ager, you're in good standing.) Interact from that place so you will find yourself, at the end of this Venus retrograde, interacting with people who are closer to compatibility with your authentic soul self.

If you feel comradery, support those around you who are attempting to work some of those nasty thorns the collective refuses to acknowledge to the surface - especially when it deals with the dark feminine perspective. Help clear the path a little if you can for those who are struggling to bring some long-neglected aspects of the collective to the surface, pushing through immense constriction and opposition. Don't just put another boot in their face like most will.

Run the Via Combusta gauntlet by reading the signs in the human relations around you and avoiding the detritus that is not your's to deal with. There are plenty of energetic traps we can step around and emotional meltdowns we can avoid during this time if we masterfully heed our Scorpionic intuition.

Nowhere will these dynamics be more apparent in the relations and energy dynamics between men and women/the masculine and feminine.

Imbalanced and oppressive energy dynamics and power structures have been reinforced here for so long that most people do not even recognize them anymore. Feminism is an antiquated concept, right? No need for that any longer. We're EQUAL now.

So very conditioned the people are to accept the unacceptable and then smile about it...

Within the context of the tail-end Piscean era, we have the task of airing grievances that haven't been properly aired in centuries or millenia possibly, grievances that have all the subtlety and difficulty in expression you would expect from such complex, compressed and covered-over energy. Getting to the nitty gritty perspectives of the parties or groups involved and working outward from there toward peace is a time-and-energy-consuming, emotionally difficult, back-and-forth, hard-won process. Again, one that Libra is often not all that keen on taking on.

Saturn transiting Libra, though, is going to force the maturation of that sign's expression through challenges of this nature.

The Venus in Libra trines to Neptune-Chiron in Aquarius September 4/5, carried into the Venus retrograde and repeated not-quite-exactly as Venus stations direct November 18, will start to show anyone who has the courage to look how based in wounding illusion, coercion and domination many of the current versions of "peace" really are. Scratch the surface, and you will see a much different story.

With vigilance and the skillful use of the Scorpio energy, the catalyzing power of the truth about these facades can really gain traction.

On the other side of the coin, though, people will be using the trine energy to reinforce more of the same, creating the illusion of common ground where it does not exist. Watch for this personally and on the global stage, and don't allow yourselves to be drawn in. Any false bridges begun now will be dissolved (or blown up?) in early January when Venus, coming out the the Scorpio retrograde, squares Neptune-Chiron - but be very careful what you let pass until then.

With Neptune-Chiron involved, these dynamics will be highly apparent in the New Age paradigm. Where all is love and light until someone speaks a truth that doesn't fit into the carefully-manufactured and artificially-sustained world of pseudo-harmony.

Here we find the labelling and explaining away of anyone who has a difficult perspective or voice - one the generally socially privileged, white people populating the New Age cannot accept lest it burst their collective bubbles - as bitter, negative, self-hating or whatever makes them feel better and able to divide off, ostacize and alienate that which disturbs them.

It will become crystal clear to those with the eyes to see how New Age labelling, agenda-pushing, and pseudo-spiritual elitism has led to people getting farther and farther from their real voices - and from the honest expression of their experiences that will really start to get things done on this planet.

Keeping people speaking bland, ineffectual New Age 101 ideology on heavy-rotation, huffing dirty Neptunian false light energy until they're light-headed, and desperately looking for some sort of easy out is purposeful, of course. As is bullying people into abandoning their true experiences, their true voices, and the work of bringing the words of their experiences to the collective...

For a group of people who profess to shine so much light, they sure like to skip over the darkest corners, don't they?

I had an experience recently with one of the edgy brand of New Agers. This individual mis-represented himself to me as someone who shared my perspective so he could use me to publicly voice his own dissatisfactions with certain elements of the New Age establishment while keeping himself safely within its confines, never risking his status with the NA in crowd.

This experience showed me yet again how desperate the New Age establishment is to sustain itself into Aquarius, as the Piscean Age paradigm dries up. How devious its methods are in leeching new sources of energy from outside the New Age herd. It also reminded me how potent the New Age embedding really is - to the point that people can't (or won't) recognize it in themselves, though it boggles my mind how that could be.

The discord, the injustice, the swallowed oppressions are just thrown into the dumpster to be added to the trash heap. Fill one landfill of emotional/energetic garbage and just move on to another one.

But again, we're at tail-end Pisces, and the landfills are full to overflowing. There's no more room to throw away and worry about another day. Another day is here. Actually, it was here last week.

The work as Venus, Eros and Mars enter Scorpio is in the subtle, energetic realms. In the unspoken and the unseen...but felt. In the everyday relational oppressions and power imbalances. In the anger we rightfully experience and too often swallow. In the oppressions people stay silent about or gain benefit from...and thereby reinforce. In the falsity people accept and allow and reinforce to stay socially acceptable and likeable. The areas upon which people refuse to shine a light...

I can feel it coming. Can you?



September 4/5 - Venus in Libra trine Chiron-Neptune in Aquarius (26/27 degrees)
September 5 - Venus enters retrograde shadow (27 Libra)
September 8 - Venus enters Scorpio
September 14 - Mars enters Scorpio
September 15 - Eros enters Scorpio
October 8 - Venus stations retrograde (13 Scorpio)
October 19 - Ceres conjunct Pluto (2 Capricorn)
October 28 - Sun conjunct Venus (5 Scorpio) - discharge point
November 7 - Venus re-enters Libra
November 18 - Venus stations direct (27 Libra)
November 29 - Venus re-enters Scorpio
December 19 - Venus leaves retrograde shadow (13 Scorpio)
January 7, 2011 - Venus enters Sagittarius