Venus enters Taurus shortly before 8:36 pm EDT tonight (00:35:32 UTC Saturday). Venus entering Taurus is not all that remarkable by itself. It happens roughly once a year (as it did in March of 2015, May of 2014 and April of 2013, for example) on a predictable schedule.

It is worthwhile, however, to discern the unique context of the Venusian ingress into Taurus this year and at this time. That discernment would naturally begin with the fact that astrologers consider Venus to rule (or, alternatively, have dominion in) Taurus as well as Libra.

A planet returning to its home sign is a significant event for astrologers. The nature of the planet in question is considered to be strongly expressed with a minimum of inhibition where it rules the roost.

The nature of Venus has a lot of upside. Venus corresponds directly with how the ancients believed beauty and truth to be synonymous. According to  the prominent and revered astrologer Robert Hand, Venus is also “a Yin planet.” Mr. Hand goes on to assert that, “In its highest manifestation, Venus is love.” Additionally, the essence behind the meaning of words like ‘abundance’, ‘values’, ‘ease’ and ‘receptive’ are commonly associated with what is also the brightest planet in the sky.

As a matter of fact, Venus is so bright that it distinguishes itself among planets as the only object besides the Sun and Moon capable of casting shadows here on Earth. Given its intrinsic and distinguishing brightness, it is appropriate to note that Venus is basically invisible right now. That’s because Venus is currently lost in the solar glare as it moves to go behind the Sun from our perspective. Later this year, Venus will reappear in the West after sunset, but its long tenure in the East before dawn earlier this year is essentially over.

What’s more, Venus is moving around the zodiac pretty quickly right now — at a pace of more than one degree per day. Taking into account the fact that Mercury’s apparent motion is quite slow at this time because of retrograde, it means that Venus is currently the swiftest object in our sky except for the Moon. Unlike Mercury, however, the nature of Venus as it manifests in your life is not intimately or usually related to speed.

All of which raises a pertinent question: Is the upside of Venus more or less likely to manifest during this year’s tenure in Taurus if it is also out of sight and relatively fleet at the same time?

As usual, the answer has a lot to do with you. Astrology is not destiny. Destiny has to do with the choices you make, as well as your own, personal nature. Astrology does not happen to you. It is made to happen, or not. Hence, what happens during the time Venus spends in Taurus this year will depend a lot on whether its nature is seen through you and supported by how you live your life.

In order to do your part to bring love, truth, beauty, ease and abundance to the world while Venus traverses its Taurus dominion until May 24, it might help to think of yourself as performing Venus much as musicians perform a song.

Many popular songs (at least) include chord patterns that repeat in cycles, just like planets move in cycles. Commonly those cycles periodically return to where they started after being resolved. That’s what musicians usually mean when they “bring it on home” before concluding in such a way as to leave those in the audience feeling a satisfying sense of closure at the end of a song. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to bring Venus on home in a similar way.

The Spring Reading is now published. You may order all 12 signs here or choose your individual signs here for immediate access. You may listen to a free audio introduction here now.

Fortunately, you can get some help bringing Venus home to Taurus from the resources Planet Waves has to offer. First off, there is Eric’s 2016 Spring Reading, which features what is essentially the counterpoint to Venus at this time: the retrograde of Mars.

Additionally, to help you hear and harmonize with the proverbial music of the spheres for the rest of this year and beyond, you can become a Core Community Member of Planet Waves for what amounts to a song, when you compare the subscription price to, say, what it costs to see a symphony, opera or rock show nowadays.

While you can always choose to bring Venus home on your own, there is no experience as empowering or satisfying as performing in concert with others. That’s what Planet Waves offers as a resource free of the dissonance of corporate advertising. For it is only readers who choose to pitch in as they can afford to do that will keep Planet Waves going around to come around home to you.

Offered In Service

By Amanda Painter

Have you noticed anything going particularly awry, or any near misses that got your attention in the last couple days or so? I’m especially referring to anything that involves communication, travel, your electronic devices or even interactions that have involved your body (and your responses to it).

Juniper-branch heart at Prout’s Neck, Maine. Photo by Amanda Painter.

Mercury stations retrograde in Taurus today, April 28, at about 1:20 pm EDT (17:20 UTC). It will remain in apparent retrograde motion until May 22.

This means we’ve been in the ‘storm’ phase these last few days (and will be for a couple more); this is the phase of time around a planetary station when things can feel especially tricky. You might have already gotten clues about some themes and dynamics this Mercury retrograde will be asking you to review.

Mercury in Taurus emphasizes the body-mind connection, including the information you receive about your own state of mind (and emotions) through your senses, thanks to Taurus being ruled by Venus. And as luck would have it, Venus itself will join Mercury, the Sun and asteroid Vesta in Taurus Friday night, just before 8:36 pm EDT (00:36 UTC Saturday).

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By Amanda Moreno

I once again find myself in upstate New York assisting at two five-day Deep Memory Process modules — and I once again find myself a ball of exhausted gratitude that there are people in the world courageous enough to plunge into the depths of the soul and face what is found there. A sense of quiet humility fills me as I lean into the fact that as part of my path in life, I get to hold space for and witness these profound journeys.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

The Deep Memory Process work is focused on healing core traumas — an action I believe to be an integral step in moving our ‘civilization’ into a sustainable, life-affirming paradigm.

It is multidimensional in that it is addressing the physical, emotional and mental energy bodies and the wounds accumulated there over vast lengths of time. Relying on the theories and understandings of reincarnation explored in so many great religions, it is the only modality I know of that is a form of past-life soul retrieval — it helps to heal soul fragmentation and loss over time.

Deep Memory Process focuses on our basic complexes as can be seen in our everyday speech and affects. Just fill in the blank: “I always…” or “I never…” There you have a complex and a past-life script that, according to this work, is still with you today. I always have to do it alone. I never have enough. I always seem to get stuck. More information on the process can be found in an article I published here last fall.

Heading into this Mercury retrograde period we have five planets moving backwards in the sky — at least from our point of view. One thing that my dear Deep Memory Process teacher is known to say is that sometimes we have to move back to go forward — have to regress to progress. Right now it seems as if the combination of retrograde Mars and Mercury in particular are emphasizing this concept and inviting us to use the energy constructively by plunging into our unfinished business. This is especially true in light of the fact that Mars is reviewing the areas of our lives most prominently affected by Saturn’s retrograde last summer.

Tonight I sat in the living room of the old colonial-style house where I’ve been staying with 20 other folks for the past week. Our conversation ran the gamut of fascinating topics, and ended up in a discussion of different energetic and bodywork healing styles. Someone discussed the nuances of craniosacral work, a modality that led them to understand there are some things that can be cleared out of the subtle bodies quite rapidly, and without any awareness on the part of the client in the session. This was mentioned as a counterpoint to other forms of work during which the client is able to track the healing, be it through feeling or vision or the recollection of memories from the present life or the past.

There are, however, some memories or complexes or wounds that cannot be healed for you by another person, or without your conscious awareness. There are some wounds that need to be worked through and released in a more cathartic and conscious manner.

For example: I have had chronic issues with one part of my body in the form of seemingly sporadic tension and pain that is sometimes triggered by stress. I went to my energy healer dude during an acute episode to see if he could help out with whatever was going on. He responded by spending some time working with the spot and then telling me that there was nothing he could do for it — it was something I had to fix myself.

During another episode, I took the issue to a massage therapist who is also an energy healer. I didn’t mention what the other healer had said, but got the same response from her — there was nothing she could do. I needed to heal it myself.

Some time later, I was in a regression session in which I remembered or ‘relived’ the experience of a hot poker being jabbed into that very spot. In another session, I ‘experienced’ having been stabbed there. In another session, I located a cord to another person that had been attached there. Although occasionally my conscious mind wonders about the weird realms I visit for healing, the proof is always in the proverbial pudding — and the healing is profound.

Through psychodrama, I removed the poker and other projectiles lodged in the spot, and was able to understand the wound with greater depth. I also received insight into steps I could take moving forward to care for the physical part of the body, as well as the emotional wounds that seemed to get stuck there. I addressed the reasons for the cords, and in healing spaces sent love through them to help them dissolve. I also dialogued with the figures I’d been connected to for so long. Sometimes the spot still gets a little grouchy, but I’m always able to resolve it on my own by tuning in and connecting the dots and listening to what is going on there.

Next week marks the 30th anniversary of my dad’s death. The event is in its Saturn return. My dad died in a car accident when I was six while Saturn toured my 4th house of family and home.

As Saturn has once again swept through this territory, forcing me to do a lot of emotional restructuring and self-parenting, I’ve been quite immersed in healing wounds related to that early life imprint of sudden, shocking loss. I have been using regression therapy to help understand the ways that incident in this life served as a kind of trigger through which many similar lifetime wounds converged. My own astrological beliefs include the theory that in the 30 or so years leading up to the first Saturn return, much of our karma is being re-imprinted.

The Spring Reading is now published. You may order all 12 signs here or choose your individual signs here for immediate access. You may listen to a free audio introduction here now.

Now that Mars is retrograding through that same territory, it’s clear that the core desires I will be revisiting have to do with family, home and emotional wellbeing. My dad’s death was also surrounded by scandal that was slowly revealed over time, involving a corrupt and high-ranking judge — a figure who might be associated with Saturn and Sagittarius — and a cover-up.

As the anniversary approaches, my mom is considering somehow going public with the ‘truth’ of the story — at least the truth as we have pieced together over the past three decades, and through reports she received when she hired a private investigator a few years after the fact. Here we can see the potential arising symbolism as Mars leaves Sagittarius and enters Scorpio.

As I wait and see what my mom decides, I am awed at the ways the symbolism of the stars is playing out so literally in my life, and grateful to have the support of incredible healers, a strong inner core and the wisdom of the stars. As I head into another five days of helping people to revisit and remember the past in order to move forward, I’m going to try to remember the importance of doing the work myself as well, and of using this energy constructively rather than going with my first instinct — which was to run and hide. We live in a time of such great possibility for change. Why squander the opportunities?

What is called a ‘zoom’ on your smart phone is not the genuine article. The zoom lens on a conventional camera is a mechanical device that ‘telescopes’ back and forth to change the focal length of the lens. The zoom on a smart phone is just a software program that takes the central portion of the image you’re seeing and enlarges it.

The example of an actual, mechanical zoom compared to a ‘fake’ (digital) zoom is an example of the distinctions to be made in the astrology this week. Your life will go on if you don’t know the difference. If quality matters, however, knowing the difference is important.

Billions of people all over the world continue living day-to-day without knowing anything about what’s going on with astrology. Nearly all of us, however, have had the experience of reading a horoscope (to cite just one example) that puts everything into a better perspective, improving the quality of life.

That’s because astrology is not fortune telling. Your fortune cannot be told by anybody or any system. Fortunes are made. The nature of your fortune, to the extent you make it, will be mostly determined by how aware you are and what choices you make. That’s where astrology comes in.

First off, astrology makes you aware that you are part of a system — the solar system. Unlike the objective detachment of science, which can leave you feeling alone and isolated in a big universe, astrology makes you the subject. Because you are the subject of an ethical astrologer’s work, you are the focus. As the focus, you get a perspective that can help you make a difference for you.

That perspective begins with the understanding that any part of any system (solar or otherwise) will tell you something about any other part of the system, and also will tell you about the system as a whole. With the awareness conferred by an astrologer’s interpretation of your part in the solar system comes data you can use when it comes time to make choices. Going back to our original example, knowing the difference between a mechanical zoom lens and the digital facsimile will provide you with information that will help you to choose the appropriate option when it comes time to take a quality photograph.

When it comes time to get some quality astrology, there is no place like right here at Planet Waves. For example, one big focus this week is the Mercury retrograde that begins on Thursday shortly before 1:20 pm EDT (17:19:40 UTC). Nearly any other source of astrological information will simply dish you the same old cookbook astrology that has rarely (if ever) been useful in helping you make a life of better quality for yourself.

The astrologers at Planet Waves, however, go the extra mile. This particular Mercury retrograde will not be the same-old, in part because of the context in which it is taking place. An important part of that context is the fact that several other planets (most notably Mars) are retrograde at the same time, which does not happen every year.

Therefore, to make the most of this particular Mercury retrograde in this particular year, you might want to take a look at Eric’s 2016 Spring Reading. With its sharp and specific focus on both Mars and you, the Spring Reading could very well make this the Mercury Retrograde you turn your fortune around from cookbook-level fare to something of gourmet quality, for a lot less than the price of a gourmet meal.

Another thing that will make this particular Mercury retrograde special is that Mercury will be moving across its own heliocentric node in the process. What does that mean for you? It means that you will be able to start planning now to see Mercury move across the face of the Sun on May 9, when retrograde Mercury reaches the degree of Taurus where its node is located. It will be an event without temporal equal since May of 1970, not to be even approximated again until May of 2095.

The Spring Reading is now published. You may order all 12 signs here or choose your individual signs here for immediate access. You may listen to a free audio introduction here now.

The reason you will want to plan for the Mercury transit is that looking at the Sun without the proper protection for your eyes can be dangerous. Also, your smart phone will almost certainly be of insufficient quality to take a photograph.

Granted, your life will go on whether or not you see Mercury’s solar transit, but if kids yet unborn ask you to tell them about it someday, being able to provide an eyewitness account (and even a photograph) could make a big difference in your relationship with them.

Furthermore, if you become a member of the Planet Waves Core Community before May 9, you will be able to provide those same kids with the collective perspective of perhaps the only astrological website that knows enough to inform you of such a distinctive event far enough in advance that you can make some good fortune out of it.

The Mercury transit will, in essence, be an eclipse. From an astrologer’s point of view, that means Mercury (which, among other things, represents your mind and its means of expressing itself) will be symbolically merging with the Sun (which, among other things, corresponds to consciousness) on May 9. As with biological forms of merger, the potential of this transit will be to yield progeny.

From astrology’s perspective the most meaningful offspring of Mercury’s transit of the Sun will be those (like you) both conscious and mindful of distinctions that most people will never know or care about. That awareness will in turn distinguish you, providing the means to live as a conscious and mindful part of a grand system, and thus experiencing a quality of existence most people will never know.

Offered In Service   

By Sarah Taylor

“On the individual level, the Devil[‘s] … silence can suggest secret desires. These may be sexual desires, but they also may be desires for a different life, or for more passion in a life that has become dull. Often we do not know our own desires. Habit and fear and social conditioning hide them from our conscious awareness. In order to reach the total awareness shown in the later trumps [Major Arcana], we need to explore the dark areas of ourselves.” [Rachel Pollack, The Haindl Tarot — The Major Arcana]

Seven of Cups, The Devil, Seven of Wands from the Haindl Tarot deck, created by Hermann Haindl. Click on the image for a larger version.

At the centre of this week’s reading sits The Devil.

To the left and the right are two Seven cards; alternatives; a choice point, if you can take a moment to gather your wherewithal to know that you do, indeed, have a choice. It’s not a choice between The Devil and something else. The Devil is here regardless. The choice is in how you choose to approach The Devil and what it means — and how it can be applied in your life.

So let’s get a clearer idea of what The Devil means in the context of this reading, and what it does not mean. Clarity is nothing if not focussed intention, and here your intention is your great ally in a reading that is entirely liberating at its core. It is, in effect, the liberation of you.

I started out this article with a quote by a living tarot legend, Rachel Pollack. In the quote, she writes about “secret desires.” What we tend to do in our world with secret desires is to mask them with fear, so that we never go near them.

The Devil is a convenient and highly effective mythos that relegates those fear-enwrapped desires to a place we lock out of our consciousness. We erect fire and brimstone around it; we place warning signs on its perimeter; we construct belief systems to defend against its breach. Yes. There is much set up in our world to make sure we never go there.

Why? Why don’t we go there? Maybe personal freedom feels like too much to bear in a world that is constantly asking for your obedience, your conformity. Maybe liberation is risky. It certainly risks the status quo. It absolutely risks you beginning to feel and experience feelings and experiences that may be — well, inconvenient. Who knows what you might want to change when you understand the changes effected in you? “Oh! The places you’ll go!”

But as you contemplate The Devil, you can know this: what is implied in the reading is the previous card, Temperance. In some way, you have been through a period of learning to balance, to hold the tension of opposites without swinging one way or the other in an attempt to resolve them. You know what it means to mature into a sense of equilibrium.

You, journeyer, are supremely equipped to meet the central card in front of you now. It wouldn’t have appeared if you weren’t.

The Devil is there, as are the desires within you that it’s calling to your attention. Those desires may be connected with sex and sexuality. They may be creative. They may feel subversive — as if following them will overthrow regimes. They will almost certainly feel taboo. Yet, yes, you’re supremely equipped to meet them.

And the two cards on either side suggest the ways these desires are often met. They are your choice point.

On the left is the Seven of Cups, also entitled “The Illusions of Success.” The Seven of Cups speaks of an imbalance in the watery, emotional areas of life, and also of the one true path out of it. In the Rider-Waite Smith version of the Seven of Cups, the protagonist — you — faces seven divinely sent choices. But in truth there is only one choice to be made: the central, shrouded figure enveloped in a red glow.

The figure is the mystery. It is the release into trust. Everything else is window-dressing. To be caught up in the other cups is to be caught up in appearances. Victories may be sweet, but deliver little. The jewellery turns out to be paste. The tower turns to ivory. The dragon, the head, and the snake are two-dimensional.

The Spring Reading is now published. You may order all 12 signs here or choose your individual signs here for immediate access. You may listen to a free audio introduction here now.

And then there’s the card on the right, the Seven of Wands: “Courage.”

The courage to look within. The courage to stop resisting what is so vibrantly seeking expression in you (and damn the nay-sayers). The courage to call into question the boundaries and parameters that you have placed around the forbidden. The courage to explore what “desire” means to you.

Important, important: the trust that you have earned the ability to do this because you know what it is like to lose balance, and what it feels like to hold it; and the support you can ask for from trusted others who reflect your truth back to you without distortion or agenda. Those who have your best interests at heart. Those who love and accept you without any need to make you different.

It’s time to come out of the closet. What, you didn’t know you were in there? Then ask yourself where you hold yourself back, or where you feel the resistance of what no longer serves you. Ask your body where it wants to take you, trusting that it, your heart, and your mind are able guides (who will also tell you when you’re off-track).

Feel the freedom of your choices, your self-responsibility, and your desires. When you come to know yourself, and you stand in your own integrity, they will show you where you need to be.

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As you know, Planet Waves produces exceptional content every day on its blog. It is current, relevant, engaging, enlightening (I learned everything I know about astrology simply from reading the site regularly), and for many it is a place to hear, and to be heard.

I’ve always been inspired by the editorial decision not to include ads with this exceptional content; and the reason Planet Waves is able to continue to do this is through Eric’s renowned reports, and by building up a community of subscribers who support the site through a small monthly payment.

If you haven’t considered doing so yet, check in and see what a Planet Waves Core Community membership offers — unlimited access to all Planet Waves blog content is a great start, along with a members’-only horoscope mailed to you on Mondays! Eric has also just released his 2016 Spring Reading. In a new video format, it will equip you with invaluable information to get through the current Mars retrograde season. Change is afoot, and a companion is a huge help. Consider PW your online companion through the cosmic weather for the next few months, and beyond.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Seven of Cups (Venus in Scorpio), The Devil (Capricorn), Seven of Wands (Mars in Leo)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.