Venus enters Aquarius shortly before 10 am EST (14:51:00 UTC) tomorrow, Dec. 7, as if to teach a lesson. The instructive principle being referred to here will not be readily apparent in a chart for the ingress. Instead, this particular teaching will become evident only through the unique context time and patience can provide.
Broadly speaking, you would not be far off to say that Venus will convey an advocacy of patience when it leaves Capricorn behind and moves on to Aquarius. It would be even more accurate, however, to perceive an exhortation towards a long view.
A big part of the message Venus will carry into Aquarius has to do with its astrological complement: Mars. For astrologers, the relationship between Venus and Mars is not a contest for supremacy. It is instead a cyclical dynamic symbolically seeking equilibrium, which never repeats in quite the same way. As with most astrological cycles, the synodic period germane to Venus and Mars both ends and begins with a conjunction.
Speaking very roughly for the sake of simplicity, Venus and Mars come together in the same degree of the same sign to form a conjunction aspect every other year. Periodically, there are exceptions. Last year was a particularly special case. Venus and Mars conjoined three times in three different signs during 2015.
In 2017, Venus and Mars will return to form by conjoining just once. As is also more usual, their conjunction next year will take place when Venus (the fleeter of the two) catches Mars from behind to meet for a day before moving on to begin their next cycle. Were you to look at the chart for tomorrow’s Venus ingress all by itself, you might easily conclude that the next such merger of Venus and Mars was close at hand. That’s because Mars is also currently in Aquarius.
Indeed, when Venus reaches the first degree of Aquarius tomorrow, Mars will be only a bit more than 20 degrees ahead. If you consider that Mars takes roughly twice as long as Venus does to make one circuit of all 12 zodiac signs, and if you had only tomorrow’s ingress chart to look at, you could easily jump to an errant conclusion: that Venus and Mars would meet up as early as next month. In fact, the one exact 2017 conjunction from Venus and Mars will not take place until Oct. 5 — basically ten months from now.
That’s because Venus is even now slowing down on its way to station retrograde in Aries on March 4. By that time, Mars will have turned the usual tables and pulled away from Venus, almost (but not quite) catching up by the end of January.
When it comes to life themes that resonate with the yin-yang motif of Venus and Mars, you might want to keep their impending almost-but-not-quite in mind. What now seems like a done deal in the making could actually be only the beginning of either a merry or exhausting chase, which will not be resolved until late next year. Better to play the long game and enhance the possibility of merry.
Just as important for those of you who practice or aspire to astrology is to remember that one chart does not contain all the pertinent information needed to interpret its given moment. It’s also vital to consistently consult your trusty ephemeris and other resources so as to see how one event fits not only into the spatial context of the whole sky, but also into the temporal context an entire cycle — even an entire life.
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