Venus Retrograde in Aries: Radical Self-Love

Venus retrograde: Reorienting According to Our Core Values

Venus has been in Aries since February 4. During this time, she has invited us to own our desires, make courageous relationship choices, and invest more into our passions and personal self-actualization journey.

In the past few days, Venus gradually slowed down until she came to a standstill. From now on, Venus will slowly appear to move backward and travel again on the first degrees of Aries and the final degrees of Pisces, where she was transiting in late January and the first few days of February.

Venus is the planet that spends the least amount of time in apparent backward motion: her retrograde is a very relevant event. Moreover, Mars recently ended his retrograde, which was also a significant one for romantic matters. With both relationship planets going retrograde so close together, we are clearly being called to revolutionize how we show up in our interpersonal connections and break free from past conditioning and programming about love, sex, and relating. This is a time to question our relating habits as well as what we expect from relationships, both consciously and unconsciously.  

Venus retrograde in Aries: Radical Self-Love

In Aries, Venus emphasizes the inner tension we all experience, to some degree, between our desire for connection and intimacy and our desire for independence and space. We have an opportunity to deepen our exploration of these themes during Venus’ retrograde period in the sign and after Venus enters Aries for the second time, on April 30.

Venus retrograde is an opportunity for us to reorient according to our deepest truths, values, and desires. This transit always brings us on an inner journey of reevaluation of our value systems, relationships, and financial habits: it is an invitation to question why we are drawn toward certain experiences and not others, why we attract and are attracted by specific types of people.

In Aries, Venus retrograde brings the spotlight on redefining our relationship with our desires, our instincts, and our physicality. This transit is an opportunity to transform the one relationship that determines the quality of all the others: the relationship we have with ourselves.

Venus retrograde in the sign of the Ram is an invitation to reconnect with what lights us up, with what we feel passionate about, with what feels nourishing, pleasurable, and energizing, and commit to embracing radical self-love.

Venus’ Descent into the Underworld

A couple of weeks ago, Venus reached her maximum brilliance as an Evening Star, shining at her brightest in the sky: she is now getting closer to the Sun and gradually fading from our view. Her final appearance before disappearing into the underworld will be on March 19. The symbolism of Venus becoming temporarily invisible has inspired many ancient myths and tales: her descent is a symbol of a death and rebirth journey, particularly tied to feminine initiations and rites of passage. 

The Sumerians told the myth of Inanna, the Goddess who descended into the underworld to meet her grieving sister Ereshkigal. To do so, Inanna had to pass through seven gates and, in each of them, she had to leave something behind, a symbol of her power or identity.

At the final gate, she stood naked and powerless before Ereshkigal, who sentenced her to death. Her body was hung on a hook and left in the underworld for three days and three nights before she was revived and allowed to return to the world above. This symbolism emphasizes the necessity of surrendering to darkness, of learning to stay in the void, of fully allowing the death of the old self before trying to transform or birth ourselves anew. 

While Venus remains hidden from our view, we are invited into our personal underworld. This is a time to sit with our shadows, unravel the patterns that shape our relationships, and honor the cycles that are coming to an end. This is a time to pause, to be still, to get clear on what we are ready to release and allow what is waiting to be reborn to slowly emerge from the shadows.

Preparing for the New Venus Cycle

On March 26, Venus will rise as a Morning Star and become visible again to our sight. This event invites us to move forward and begin anew, integrating the wisdom gained during our descent and embodying the lessons learned in the underworld.

The current Venus cycle, which started on August 13, 2023, comes to an end on March 22, 2025, when retrograde Venus and the Sun meet at 2º of Aries. We can compare the current phase of the Venus cycle to the Dark or Balsamic phase of the Moon cycle: we are wrapping up a chapter of our lives and this is a time of closure, healing, transition, and farewell to our old selves. 

This current Venus cycle began in Leo, and it can be meaningful to reflect on changes that have taken place in our relationship to creativity, art, play, romance, and self-expression.

As we prepare to welcome the New Venus cycle, we have an opportunity to look back to the past months, to the experiences we have had, the lessons we learned. The invitation for us is to acknowledge the transformations we have undergone and release anything that no longer aligns with our evolving values so that we can move forward with greater clarity and a renewed commitment to self-love. Happy, abundant and blessed month of March!