Venus in Exaltation to Soften the Edges

Venus enters Pisces, the sign of its exaltation, on April 5 (2:31 p.m. CST) where it will remain until May 2. This is the love, money, and relationship planet in a sign it thoroughly enjoys being in, and we love it when the love planet is enjoying itself!

Venus in Pisces taps us into the universe's love and guidance at a heart level, and it elevates our interpersonal relationships, placing them within the context of their ultimate spiritual purpose.

Venus in Pisces is soft, it's sensitive, it's sweet, it's kind, it's glowing with love and compassion for all the living creatures on this planet.

So the love is flowing this month - in interpersonal relationships, from psychic communication and connections, from dreams, from guides, and from loving spirit itself.

Venus transiting Pisces for the month of April works to soothe and smooth some of rough edges and tough angles of this cardinal Grand Cross-flavoured month - and yes, there are plenty of rough edges and tough angles to navigate.

With Venus transiting Pisces, we're more strongly aware of our personal relationship with spirit and with the loving guidance that seems to come to us when we need it most. We're tapped in to the broader spiritual meaning and purpose of some of the interpersonal connections in our lives - including the most challenging ones - and it is from this point of increased understanding that we relate.

Ultimately, the people and relationships the universe brings our way have a broader meaning. We're doing something important here on this planet - though we can sometimes lose sight of that in the day-to-day struggle - and we're here doing it together. Our hands are clasped, we walk together, though our physical bodies may be miles (or lifetimes) apart.

With Venus transiting Pisces, it is easier to grasp and to experience the spiritual purpose of human lives and relationships. We can see and sense the etheric connections that link us, that weave us into the same web of love, beauty, meaning, and togetherness.

It's true that we are experiencing levels of suffering on this planet that need not exist. It's true that we are experiencing suffering that is being intentionally brought down upon us. Because of this, this suffering seems to have no real purpose, no necessity.

Venus in Pisces helps us to see the struggles, the pain, and the suffering as part of the same whole, alleviating us from our isolated sorrow about the state of it all. Anyone with a loving heart feels sorrow about the levels of suffering being experienced on this planet, and anyone with a loving heart desires to alleviate that suffering wherever possible. This is not sorrow that anyone bears alone. With Venus transiting Pisces, we are aware of how these struggles and challenges link us to every human being that has walked this Earth and to every human being who one day will.

Our hearts are wide open when Venus is transiting Pisces, and we have to take it all - the joy, the love, the beauty, the meaning, along with the struggles, the pain, the challenges, and the disappointments.

We are also challenged, at the change of the eras, to love smarter - without detrimental self-sacrifice, without foolishness, without denial, without delusion - and these challenges are with us throughout the month. As Venus moves to a conjunction to wounded healer Chiron in Pisces on April 20, we are becoming aware of the areas where we have been too open-hearted, too trusting, too giving, too go-with-the-flow, and part of our healing process now involves tightening those areas up while applying new boundaries.

Overall, however, Venus in Pisces brings some beautiful water magic and some delightful relational flow this month.

Venus will conjunct Neptune in Pisces April 11, and our hearts are full to the brim, overcome with the beauty of these odd little lives together on this odd little planet. (Though the Moon in Virgo opposing certainly works to keep our feet on the ground. Nothing like a few irritating details from mundane life to step on that Neptune buzz!)

Lesser Benefic Venus in Pisces then forms a gorgeous trine to Greater Benefic Jupiter in Cancer on April 17. This, too, has hearts and emotions singing, as we are so very sensitive to all that is going on around us.

At the same time, Venus will sextile Pluto in Capricorn (April 18), bringing a sense of shared struggle and loving collective effort to the battle for survival on this planet in the face of capital, finance, corporate business, and Global Government run amok.

Finally, on April 24, Venus in Pisces will form a trine to Saturn Rx in Scorpio, and we gratefully surrender some of the deep, dark realities we are uncovering to their place within the whole. Under this Venus-Saturn trine, we are better able to keep an open and loving heart in the face of the intense emotional, psychological, and financial struggles we are facing on the planet. We are able to bring even the darkest and bleakest of realities back to the loving whole, back to the spiritual intent under the ultimate responsibility of God, spirit, or our higher powers.

This is a trine that can lighten the load at a time, following the exact cardinal Grand Cross April 20 - 23, when we may feel as if we are breaking under the pressure. It brings us some much-needed love. If we've given it everything we had to give, if we have not shirked, we will likely receive a loving boost from the universe here, along with some rejuvenation at the heart level that increases our gratitude for these oh-so-brief lifetimes on this planet, no matter how difficult they may be.

The underlying spiritual framework of our relationships and of our human societies is peeking at us this month in delightful ways. We may come to understand more fully how we fit into the broader web of human relationships, and we may start to see new meaning and importance in some of the small, daily interactions we often erroneously shrug off as meaningless. Those who are most invisible and taken for granted in our societies are often some of the most important players, acting as glue that holds complex webs of relationships together.

The struggles of others are tugging at our hearts this month, and we are made aware that, despite the strong sense of isolation often present these days, we do not struggle alone. We all shoulder the burdens of the human condition at this time. 

Use this Venus in Pisces transit to connect with others on a spiritually loving level, even if invisibly.

When you're feeling stressed - and oh boy, are there some stressful points this month - take a moment to check back in with the force that loves you. Under these Venus-fueled water trines, I don't believe support or assistance will be too far away. 

Understand that we are here together for such a very short time. In light of this, love each other in spite of any foibles, in spite of the pain we must endure to love one another on this planet. Forgive everything you can, but don't accept even a lick of mistreatment. Don't keep your heart wide open in areas that have brought you devastation.

Love smarter, not harder. But love, just the same.

And one final note:

Contributing to the "Venus in Pisces easing trend," communication planet Mercury moves out of Pisces, the sign of its detriment, and into Aries on April 7 (9:35 a.m.). This gets sluggish connections firing again, decreases the possibility of miscommunication and misunderstanding, and allows information and conversation to start moving in a much snappier way.