Venus Direct, Venus Descent

Dougal Kirkland, Gates to the Underworld

Descent of the Goddess

Venus Turns direct and begins her alchemical journey of descent on January 29th. Priestesses, healers, midwives, and women who live in relationship to the land, have long had a special relationship with this Planet. Today, I want to look at how we harness Venus’ cycle to help bring us into a deeper relationship with the mystery. And ultimately into a deeper connection with the truth. 

You may be asking yourself what unique women’s wisdom does Venus hold aside from the archetypal understanding of being the Goddess of Love and Beauty? Because for many women, that is as deep as the relationship with Venus goes. 

But I assert that together with her Dark Sister, Eris-kagel she is the Goddess in all of her emanations. Dark and Light. Immanent and Transcendent. She has the ability to transform and transmute, to unfold and evolve, to embody any face of the Goddess along this infinite cycle. Venus holds the keys to the mysteries of life, death, and rebirth. The edges, and threshold places, that many never dare to go. She symbolizes the fractal nature of reality. Cycles within cycles, the unfoldment of time as a cyclical, non-linear device. And seeded firmly in the sign of Chronos, (Capricorn) our task this round is to throw off the collective distortions around how we relate to time as an adversary, not an ally. 

It’s my belief that Venus not only initiates us into deeper levels of the mystery. But deeper levels of the truth. She reveals the inherent universal cycle of entropy and syntropy. Growth and Decay. And each unique Venus Cycle points to one area or subject of this full toroidal cycle. In Capricorn it focuses us on the truth and illusion of time, and its relationship to life and death. If we buy into the illusion that life should always be growing, and evolving only towards more goodness, more comfort, more accumulation, and more safety, we are being duped. Bound to fall from a state of grace. Wholly unprepared for how to rise after the fall. 

The earth is always in some state of fallenness, dissolution, and decay. Everything in time ends, everything is subject to entropy. Every form that has been manifest, eventually disappears. And because of this everything is subject to distortion. All things are in a state of flux. Nothing is static. So when we create a life that has the external as the state of its orientation. We have a difficult time with the concept of change and impermanence. Death and decay are a normal, and healthy part of evolution. With a healthy embodied approach we see our place and role in the cosmos in a more truthful light. We know we are here to do our piece of the work, in our corner of the world. To contribute to the evolution of a much greater story, and cycle. 

The Story of Inanna's Descent to the Underworld is a Venus Star Story. I will link below if you want to read about how the sacred astronomy of Venus’ cycle is related to Inanna’s Hymn. 

Essentially, it is a Heroine’s Journey. A journey towards immanence, embracing our naked humanity.  It is a cyclical curriculum around Internal Orientation. And how it is our inner warrioress who breaks the lining of the cocoon with the power of our hard-won wings, not some external force who tore the cocoon open for us. 

Metamorphosis Jacky Garritson

I also think it’s important to note that Inanna willingly agrees to go to the underworld. There was not an external force that pulled her under. This has been another huge Venus lesson for me. If I allow myself to go down when the first note of descent is strummed, I do not get violently pulled underneath. (not that life doesn’t ever pull us under violently. But there is something around practicing a willing underworld journey again and again, that helps prepare us for the sudden, unexpected ones)

For Inanna, in order to descend, she passes through seven gates, and at each gate is met by a gate guardian who asks her to remove one vestment of her royal ME, or her royal garments. The ME are tools of power and authority. Something that she believes helps her do her job as the Queen of Heaven and Earth to the fullest. So for Inanna, it is a real sacrifice to willingly part with these vestiges that aid her in maintaining order and control. In other words she is entering the unknown, sacrificing her ability to bend life to her will. 

This part of her story symbolizes the loss of control. A powerful initiation for anyone. Who are we when we aren’t able to control the outcome of our lives? When our will is no longer effective to create the life we want?

I want to stop here and discuss how I see the energetics of the descent cycle in modern life. For me, I envision the gates to the underworld much as one might envision a well. Wells, which are governed by the Feminine create a fantastic analogy for a descent journey.

If someone were to throw me into a well, and I wasn’t willing to venture there, I might throw all my extremities to the side to avoid hitting the “rock bottom”.  I’d jutt my arms and legs towards the walls, splayed out, grasping to secure myself,  just above the bottom of its seawood filled swamp, with tendrils that may wrap around my legs and arms to pull me under. Then I’d have to focus all my energy on this static position, to hold myself just above metaphorical submersion. There is no upward trajectory without first going all the way down. So now I’m stuck. 

I believe this vision of getting stuck in a well, overlays nicely onto the energetic components of life in consensus reality. We put into place a multitude of measures in order to avoid the murky darkness. We’ve painted the underworld, the place of grief, hysteria, madness, depression, insanity, keening, total disoreintation, death, murder, blood, sex, and destruction, as an area of life to be avoided at all costs. Even up to the point in which we might employ pharmaceuticals to keep us locked just above the entrance to the River Styx. 

Image By: Pozzo sacro di Santa Cristina

But Venus is here to demonstrate a different energetic cycle. One in which we willingly relinquish our vestments of power and control. And instead enter the underworld willingly. We tuck in our extremities and dive head first when we hear the call. 

When in the underworld, total disillusionment sets in. We rage at our lack of power, our inability to will the world into existence. We are bowed low before Erishkagel, the Queen of Death. Inanna’s Dark Sister. To face all that we detest about ourselves, all that is unreal, or untrue. All of the masks we still wear begin to melt off of our face, old identities die, and our vestments distort reality. 

Then, just when we can smell the loamy earth of her throne room floor, we are slayed. Hung on a meat hook. Totally surrendered to the greater story that wants to live through us. In this part of Inanna’s story she has a few allies (I like to think they are part of her sisterhood, or brotherhood) that come to her aid and sprinkle her for sixty days and nights with the water and bread of life. Nourishing her back life. Only this time, this new life is in alignment with truth. Because everything as we knew and understood it has been stripped away. Crazy gives way to sober reality and connection to the deepest truth.

I wrote a piece the other day, meditating on Venus in Capricorn, the skeleton, and the relationship between the carcass and the Vulture. Divine Harmony, another fabulous astrologer, and devotee of the Feminine commented “ the latin name of a vulture is, cathartes aura- the golden purifier. She eats death to purify life (and back in the days made it so less bacteria was circulated in the environment because of the unique way her digestive system works). In Egypt vultures were seen as the Great Primordial Mother and were thought to only be female- and to give birth by parthenogenesis.” I will link that short piece below for those who are interested. I loved her vivid description of eating death, to purify life. It’s a fantastic analogy for what descent and underworld experiences are. 

In that short piece, I was also meditating on our relationship to time. The desire to call in a “New Earth” reality right now. And how for me, Venus in Capricorn is pointing us another direction; DOWN. Instead of looking towards the future, and jumping ahead in the timeline, I think she is asking us to do the work of picking every last scrap off of the bones. To eat, digest, alchemize, and fully transmute the story we are currently in before moving on to the sparkly paradise of a new world. 

Michelle Kortabawi Wilk

Our relationship to time is often like that. Feeling the discomfort of the moment, and instead energetically leaning forward, grabbing onto the future. The mind, almost in a stance of  reaching, grasping for the next thing to end the discomfort of now. 

There are a few keys indicated for a successful Venus in Capricorn Descent Journey. Because it is around the nature of time, the challenge is to stay present, and love your life and your place in the story as it is now. Without additions or subtractions. We are human, and we have to love the body, and the experience of being human. Its a part of why we all came here. 

So, instead of leaning forward energetically, in a stance of doing, sit back, and root down. Saturn, the planet that rules Capricorn, represents the root chakra. So the work as we descend is to root firmly into the back body. Into a stance of being. There is nothing to do on the descent journey but shed the vestments of power and will and illusion anyways. 

The second key is to go willingly, consciously, and be surrendered to the process of being pulled under. As time is one of our focal points, we remember that it is cyclical, and trying to interrupt the cycle of traveling between worlds, as feminine mystics do, only results in stagnation, and interrupts our creative flow. So meditating on the cyclical nature of time, life, death, and rebirth, and their gifts are all jewels that can be excavated with this cycle. 

THE ASTROLOGY

Venus stations direct on January 29th. And mere hours after her station, she meets with the Moon at 10:07 pm, which creates the first gateway of descent at the crown chakra, Here, Venus removes the first of the Seven ME, her Shuggura, Crown of the Steppe. 

EMBODIMENT RITUAL 

If you wish to embody the astrology, and commune deeply with Venus, on January 29th, it might be lovely to create a ritual in which you remove your own crown. 

For the ritual, you will need something to symbolize a crown, perhaps some kind of headdress. Sit quietly with Venusian Descent Journey Playlist, and meditate on what your crown means to you. Walk around your ceremonial space feeling yourself as the Queen of Heaven and Earth, having all of the authority of a Goddess. How would she stand? How would she hold her body? What does it feel like to be in the body of a Queen? And to have a powerful tool that bends the will of the universe? Look in the mirror, linger on your eyes. Meet your gaze directly for a minute or more. Then, remove your Crown. Sink down to the floor in a sitting position for another minute. What does it feel like to loose your crown, your vestment of power?

Come into a comfortable position with a journal and a pen. Take some time to write about your experience. Keep this journal on hand for further reflections around the “Crown Chakra” that come up.

PLAYLIST

This Spotify playlist is perfect for creating a “Descent of the Goddess” mood.