Venus Report, 2nd Gate of Ascension
The Cultural Context
Of this moment
Venus emerged from the underworld and became visible as an Evening Star as early as May 3rd in California. She was visible in most other areas by May 6th. Instead of using a chart to track the Venus Cycle with the traditional 15 degrees of separation, we use the Living Night Sky to inform our practice. This tells us from an embodied place when and how we are most likely to be impacted by a planet’s influence. And so in Shamanic Astrology, we are at the second visible Venus/Moon Conjunction and are now going to transitioning from the Root Chakra where we reconnected with our Holy Innocent Child, to the Sacral Chakra Gateway where we will plug into the Holographic Womb of the Cosmos. The center of our own Feminine Energy. Here in the Cosmic Womb the seed of all potential exists. To Remember more about the structure of the cycle, and the flow of gateways, read last month’s post here. The key words for this month are; Openness, Senses, Feeling Navigation, Cycles of Time, Eternity, Being, Allowing, Magic, Surrender, Ritual, Creativity, Art, Music, Receptivity, Trust, Release, Ecstasy, and Pleasure. AND we will feel into the places where these things meet with “Stimulation”.
What is the Sacral Chakra?
The sacral chakra, or Svadhisthana, is the center of our emotional, creative, and sexual energy. Located three inches below your belly button above our genitals, the sacral chakra is associated with the color orange, and it regulates the energy associated with passion, pleasure, and sensuality.
This swirling vortex of energy is also where our feminine essence is manufactured and housed. It must be said that all people have within them both feminine and masculine energy. We aren’t speaking to gender here. We are speaking to the Alpha and the Omega. The seed and the holographic womb. The Universal law of creation. Each of us, like the a Scarab Beetle, has the ability to be a creator god. Yet somewhere along the way we have forgotten our power, the veil has covered us. My goal, with the help of the Venus Cycle, is to help us remember, so we can rise together.
Roberta Orpwood
Wanting to fully acquaint myself with this Gateway, I recently had the opportunity to attend a “Pleasure Meditation”. I know that sounds absolutely wild to most ears in our patriarchal, puritan, society. Believe me, I went through my own process of deconstruction as I had to release layers of conditioning to be with the experience fully. However, I realized before it began that if I couldn’t fully surrender, I would get nothing out of it. So I let go of control and allowed myself to be fully present with my own desire. I knew I’d be writing about ecstasy this month, and wanted to come from a fully embodied place. In the meditation we were led to stay in one place for a full twenty minutes, and instructed to be intentional, soft, and slow, and most importantly not to climax, but rather just to be with the experience. I left the session feeling so connected and juiced up. I had the full body knowing that pleasure is the undeniable Holy Grail of the work we are all here to do. That it created a fountain from which all other manifestations flowed. And if I allowed it, and continued with the practice, I might just be able to manifest in quantum because the downloads that followed were instantaneous and easeful. When we let desire lead, and create from THAT PLACE, the creativity is off the charts. Pleasure is a frequency. Desire is a frequency. Beloveds, this month I invite you to tune into these frequencies and RIDE their sign wave all the way home.
I want to express that we aren’t working with consciousness through the mind this month. We aren’t working with the spiritual principles of consciousness either. Rather we are working with how our senses inform our experience. How we discern through the different centers of the body. How WE KNOW. There is an exquisite intelligence alive in our senses. The Ancients didn’t believe that we had 5 senses, they believed we had 360. We are looking at opening up all 360 channels of perception. And then observe how we process and compost incoherent energy on a physical level. We are letting our desire create the map and lead us home. We are taking up as much space as we WANT to, unapologetically. We are dissolving our boundaries, melting into the spaces we previously felt were too taboo to venture if our curiosity leads us there. We are saying YES to new experiences. We are saying YES to Shakti coming home. When we activate this dimension of energy, other dimensions of life open up.
So many people have thrown in the towel around Pleasure. Desire is practically a dirty word. We are messaged from a young age that hard work, and determination are the values that we should embrace. And that people who spend a lot of time living into their desires, seeking pleasure are just hedonists who don’t take life seriously. They can’t be role models. They are lazy fools who have fallen out of favor with “God”. So it is no wonder this brings up and out very old, stagnant, dare I say ancestral debris. Compassion with self is a necessary ingredient on our journey this month.
*A note before you continue….this isn’t a Gateway that you should work with if you aren’t willing to confront your feelings, or are unwilling to feel them all the way through. The practices herein will create movement within the energetic body. They will bring us face to face with the truth. They have the power to shake things loose. So working within the sacral chakra energies should be undertaken with a level of reverence for what we might find in the areas we’ve shut down due to trauma, past hurts, and undigested emotions. They all live here.
The Astrology
Flame Bilyue
Fortunately, this Venus/Moon Gate occurs at 3:00 am (est) on June 12th, just after two powerful eclipses. Eclipses are evolutionary turning points. Portals of change. Where shadow of the past, and magically, shadow of the future comes up to inform us of where we need to transform. So there is an opening now to rewrite our outdated stories around pleasure, and desire. To reclaim them from a Patriarchal Society who has foolishly relegated them to the useless pile. Sisters and Brothers, I am here to tell you we are dangerously out of balance around this topic. Woman are shutting down, and Men have lost touch with the Sacredness of Erotic Sensuality, instead focusing their efforts on Climax, and not all of the sensation that leads up to it. I’m not just speaking about sex here. Apply this all metaphorically. Because sex in this case is acting as the microcosm of the macrocosm. But all is not lost. Whenever things are pushed to the extreme they become more palpable, more tangible. We can reclaim our sovereignty over our desire. We can go BIG LOVE here.
We are getting a big assist from the cosmos to do this work. As Venus makes her conjunction with the Moon in the sign of Cancer on June 12th, she is also connecting with Uranus in Taurus by an alignment called a sextile. These alignments are thought to be supportive of the evolutionary directives of the energy the two archetypes create. Venus is quintessentially about Desire Leading, and our longing for the Goddess, while Uranus is a disruptor. His work is all around liberating us from societal conditioning.
Cancer is the sign of Birth into the physical form. The Sun moves into Cancer at the Summer Solstice of June 21st, however Venus and Mars have already made the energetic ground fertile by traveling through Cancer earlier this month. For the next several months we work with the energies of involution. Down and into the body. While the light simultaneously wanes from the day. We get to explore together what it is to be a fully embodied human. Universal Law is always working with two energies. Two spirals that create a vortex. One spiraling up from the south, (center of earth) and one spiraling down from the north. So while the earth's energies will be with involution as we make our way around the celestial equator, the Venus Cycle is in an Ascent Phase, or an up and out evolution phase. This is another big assist from the cosmos because it allows us to work with the principle of balance. The breath into dual opposing, spinning, waveforms from the Great Central Sun. The breath out into the four directions. Creation occurs as two opposing wave forms come together. From form to formless. In and out. As above, so below. Cancer, and Capricorn, form the pause, or still point in the center of our knowing.
Further, Mars, God of Sex, and Sovereignty, is moving into Leo on day of the Venus Moon Gate and will remain here for the entire month. Leo is a sign that delights in the experience of being a creator as an end to itself. They are playful, and like to experiment, making it up as they go. And they can do that because they are strongly connected to gut level instinct. They empower others through their radiance, and sees through to the quality of soul in all people. As a fire sign Mars here has the ability to burn away antiquated storylines around desire, and pleasure as gateways to creativity.
Mercury is getting has been retrograde in his own sign of Gemini this month. Which means we may be on the Eclipse Playground and find that traditional modes of communication are failing us. This retrograde will give us an opportunity to experiment with non-representational language. For instance when we see a round, red fruit, on a tree, we call that “apple”. “Apple” is representational language. It represents the round, red fruit we are speaking about. Non-representational language encompasses all the other mediums on which we communicate. Body language, energy, facial expression, tone, actions, silence, what we say between the words, etc. Charades is a game played entirely in the arena nuanced expression. If you find yourself tongue tied in the shadow lands you might find an ally here. Many people believe that the ancients didn’t use spoken language. Rather they were so turned on and dialed in that they were able to connect without spoken words. That seems wild to me, impossible to sustain even, but it is a powerful practice if you have someone willing to engage in it with you. Especially here at this gateway.
June 14th Uranus at 13 degrees Taurus is squaring Saturn at 13 degrees Aquarius. This transit is all about evolution. In fact, because this transit happens three times this year, it makes all of 2021 an evolutionary turning point. Saturn/Uranus is the embodiment of “the old” vs “the new”. Saturn wants to conserve the old way of being, while Uranus wants to push through a revolution of liberation and change. Together they are working to create that change at a pace that is sustainable. Which for me, I am happy about. Aside from the environment, which needs immediate action, evolution that happens too fast can be extremely jarring to the energetic body. So the push pull they are creating, is actually going to serve us in the long run, however uncomfortable it may feel in the immediate.
Venus at 23 Cancer makes a trine to Neptune at 23 Pisces on the 21st of June. This is going to be a great place to notice what we authentically long for. The longing Venus creates is a kind of tension. She provides a longing that is never quite attainable. It’s a longing that leads us right into the heart of our desire. If we attain the thing we are craving, another longing comes in to fill that space. Paradoxically, authenticity and illusion both spring from this well. So it’s important to use our feeling navigation to sense which edge we are on. This transit will really provide ample space for us to drop into all of this tension by offering the medicine of dream discovery. For instance if we LONG for a better relationship with our mother, or for a partner to come in, this is an invitation to drop into the dream world and clear any incoherence in the desire.
On June 23rd Venus at 26 degrees Cancer makes and opposition to Pluto in Capricorn. Oppositions highlight the way these two energies relate. How they feed one another when they are both vying to be fully self-expressed. Pluto wants to dig deep underground. To go through a process of catharsis by unearthing underworld material, while Venus wants to Sense, Feel, Touch, and Be. Together the invitation is to feel through ALL THE WAY anything that Pluto may be excavating. Feel the uncomfortability, or the pleasure you deem inappropriate. Ride the wave to completion. Whatever you do, don’t cut the feelings that arise short from their full expression. There is a huge opportunity that awaits those who stay the course.
The Work
Alexandra Florschutz
One of the primary ways to harness our Shakti Fire, a portal into the work of this Venus/Moon Gate, is to understand the inherent power of infinite cycles. That everything has a beginning, middle and end. Or rather a birth, culmination, and death. When we can master letting go of the old even before the new has made itself consciously known to us, trusting the cyclic return of creation that always comes, we have placed ourselves in a position of extreme power. The Blood Mysteries, and the cycle of feminine wisdom is housed in this Gateway. For those who join us on our Venus Journey that begins in the New Year, we will dive deeply into this experiential topic that allows us to tap our intuitive potential, and reclaim our power and sovereignty. Our birthright as creator beings.
This month we are working to see if we can find the distinction between when we are at perfect rest, flowing with the rhythms of the universe, and when a stimulating force comes into our field, activating our creative juices, compelling us to erect structure around them. A stimulating force can be anything. The good, bad, and ugly. We learn through contrast just as powerfully as we learn through right action. So we are giving ourselves FULL PERMISSION to be with whatever comes up that activates us. It’s all food for alchemy. In this way, we can FEEL energetically when our creations are no longer serving us and have become an energetic burden to carry. We need to understand the feeling impetus indicating that it’s time to put that piece back to rest. There is a whole body of work around deconstructing our conditioning and ending self-limiting belief patterns so that we are totally primed for creation that is part of the cycle. This month our focus is to notice the sensations around when something is complete within your system. Or when something is ready to come through you and the ground for creation is fertile. The focus of our entire Venus Cycle Journey is this full body alchemical process around death and resurrection, power, sovereignty, and creation. Mastering the fact that energy itself can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed.
Marcus Akinlana
A really good metaphor for this Gateway was recently offered by one of my teachers, Perri Chase, who was relaying a story she heard from someone in the Pachamama Alliance. On a trip to Peru, an indigenous elder came to her and asked, “Where are your women? When we need firewood, we tell the men to go and cut firewood. When they have brought us enough, we tell them “that’s enough”. Meaning as the mature feminine, they “notice” what is needed. They initiate the masculine action of obtaining it. They take only what they need to create the energetic exchange. And when they have exactly what they need, they tell the men to stop, in perfect trust that the next time they need firewood, they will be able to begin the cycle again and exactly what they need will be provided. They aren’t greedy, take more than they need, then justify it with inequitable policies. And they don’t take less, making themselves small and insignificant to prove what a good person they are. The indigenous elder had noticed that our society was completely out of balance with greed, and perceived powerlessness.
Additionally, we are also looking at what it is to live in a state of openness, vs collapse. As humans, we long to connect and commune with each other and the world around us. In fact this is the very thing that feeds us energetically. We long to experience a state of oneness. A return to the womb. It is thought that people who are addicted to mind altering substances are looking for a return to the state of perfect unity we experience before coming into physical form. Our world primarily functions within the masculine energetic which prizes action, hard work, discipline, accomplishment, and success. People today are collapsing under the weight and pressure of such an unnatural system. We must give ourselves full permission to open into trust. To surrender, receive, to rest. I understand all of the reasons why that’s difficult. To do that we must unlearn everything we’ve learned thus far about our gender. So going back to the body, I invite you this month to tune into where and when you become tense, contracted, and are grasping for control. Recently I read an article in a Holistic Journal that highlighted new research about an increasingly common diagnosis. Dr’s who are studying the chronic pain condition called Fibromyalgia have recently proposed that one underlying cause for sufferers could be that they experience such constant adrenaline stimulation it is causing their bodies to take on a hypervigilant posture. Their muscles are getting the message that they must stay contracted. What can we say about a society in which it’s citizen’s feel called to hold their bodies in a hypervigilant state that it causes them to manifest an ongoing autoimmune dis-ease? I believe the collapse is actually a way to force the individual to REST when they aren’t able to heed or hear the earlier warnings the body is sending. So the practice is to learn what helps YOUR body open. It is go on your own sacred scavenger hunt to find what you need to let the walls down. This isn’t about building more walls so you can feel safe behind an increasingly protected fortress. This is about what you can do to feel safe without the walls. Flexing your trust muscles, enforcing energetic boundaries that allow you to open. As such we are learning to employ the principles of polarity, and paradox. Let down the walls but enforce energetic boundaries? That sounds like a conundrum. Like we are being asked to do something conflicting. Instead it is a paradox, where one thing unlocks another. Polarity and paradox are both principles of alchemy.
One of the things I’ve noticed recently in Spiritual Community is that Archetypes are gaining popularity. Which, as an Archetypal Astrologer, I love to see. Exploring Archetypes often helps us look at places within ourselves that would be too challenging if we went directly into our own emotional experiences. However, I notice that collectively we are only exploring “empowering” archetypes. This is useful as we seek to hold ever expanding states of being, but is it balanced? As I deepen into Venus’ Mystery School Teachings, I am increasingly feeling led to explore the polarity between archetypes at each Chakra Gateway, so I have a more holistic context around the ways I seek to evolve my outdated patterns.
Archetypes themselves are just a recurring bundle of patterns. So is our current identity. So I’ve begun to relate to archetypes as energy frequencies. The archetype polarity at the sacral chakra is the frequency of the Martyr/ Empress.
Martyr’s have a relatively low level of energy reserve. I’m not talking about the amount of energy they have on a given day. But rather how much uncomfortability they can hold if they are pushed emotionally. They often shut down quickly. And live their lives in a rather contracted state because they are denying themselves the full range of joy and pleasure that life has to offer. Martyr’s often believe that by being in service to others they can earn love. They can often suffer for years in total misery before changing their patterns. They take over-responsibility for others problems, and over-give of their energy and resources. As a result they often feel victimized if they don’t receive the love and affection they were vying for and resentment builds. This frequency is a strategy for approval. They often find this approval in a culture that perpetuates the idea that selfless service and suffering are the qualities of a valuable human.
The Empress/Emperor is the embodiment of both worldly power and earthly pleasure. It is the archetype of people who love feeling well and who thoroughly enjoy life. She is a fully Sovereign Queen who allows her desire to lead her. She is has ample energy because she exercises strong boundaries and has created her own system of alchemy. She understands friction is food for her evolution so she takes the opportunity to fully integrate emotionally challenging situations. She knows when enough is enough so she never becomes too self indulgent. Always operating from her center of truth, honesty is her compass and guide.
*Because of the massive distortions society has heaped upon the feminine, our pleasure, and our desire, clearing this energetic center can be tricky, and for most will take longer than a month. We will lay out the practices for you here. You can continue them throughout the entire Venus Cycle. Remember we are working with Kundalini Energy. We want to gently coax it awake, rather than stimulate it all at once.
Practices and Concepts
Patron Goddesses
Inanna- Sumerian Goddess of Heaven and Earth, Love, Sex, Fertility and War. She was that Culture’s Great Mother.
Oshun, goddess of luxury and pleasure, sexuality and fertility, beauty and love, the river and fresh water
Bastet: goddess of felines, love, protection, perfume, beauty, and dance.
Aine, Irish goddess of love, summer, wealth, and sovereignty; possibly originally a sun goddess
Lakshmi goddess of wealth, fortune, power, luxury, beauty, fertility, and auspiciousness.
Freya, goddess of love/sex, beauty, magic, war, and death
Key Words
Openness, Senses, Feeling Navigation, Cycles of Time, Eternity, Being, Allowing, Magic, Surrender, Ritual, Creativity, Art, Music, Receptivity, Trust, Release, Ecstasy, and Pleasure
Totem Animal
To the Ancient Egyptians, the Scarab Beetle was a symbol of Death and Resurrection. It was widely thought at the time that the Beetle did not need a counterpart to lay eggs, thus it became a symbol of parthenogenesis. Parthenogenesis simply means that one has the ability to create something without a partner. They contain both the seed and the egg within themselves. The alpha and the omega. Mary’s Virgin Birth is seen outside of Christianity as an act of Parthenogenesis. There were many Gods who used parthenogenesis to create. And so, the Scarab Beetle is a reminder that we do not need to wait for someone to come along and help us manifest our dreams. We can begin to create them RIGHT NOW!!
SOUND
Sound is an integral part of creation. Most Holy Texts read “in the beginning was the word, and the word was with god, and the word was god”. It is widely thought “the word” when translated means “sound”. That the word sent a vibration into the great nothing. The vibration created. The vibration created form. It created Heaven and Earth. So to begin bringing creative energy into field, work hands on with sound. Get an embodied experience with how sound could be the genesis of creation. You can use crystal singing bowls, Tibetan bowls, bells, instruments, tuning forks, or just tone with your voice. For me, humming is an especially powerful way to bring the Universal Laws of Creation into the body.
Crystals that open and activate the second chakra include:
Orange and coral calcite
Citrine
Orange carnelian
Orange adventurine
If your second chakra is overactive, stones that can be used to soothe it:
Orange carnelian
Snowflake obsidian
Amber
Purple gemstones like amethyst, quartz and tourmaline
Additional Practices
Practice Emotional Catharsis. Go all the way into emotions until they are finished holding a charge.
Explore healthy creative self-expression. Find a practice like dancing, drawing, writing, crafting, singing, etc that allows you to get your creative juices flowing. Stay through with the project until completion. Just pick one for this month and commit to it if this feels overwhelming.
Identify Sexual Blockages. This is a big one. If you feel shut down, this is a good time to begin a practice of self-pleasure. There are many guides you can find on how to begin a healthy practice.
Become Mindful of your emotional triggers as these create massive blocks to any manifestation work you are engaged in.
Explore the root of any addictions or compulsive behavior, as these too result in blockages.
Explore the use of non-representational language. Non-representational language encompasses all the other mediums on which we communicate. Body language, energy, facial expression, tone, actions, silence, what we say between the words, etc. Charades is a game played entirely in the arena nuanced expression. Grab a partner and see how far you get.
