an art syllabus for venus retrograde

Happy Venus Rx, beloveds.

I’m not gonna lie: this is actually one of my favorite transits. Strange, you might think, since it so often heralds heartache (break ups are a Venus Rx signature). But the same energy that forces us to admit the real state of our human relationships also invites us to reconsider our relationship to art.

Venus isn’t just love — she’s all things beautifying and harmonizing and unifying.

She is art and culture.

And so for artists and writers, Venus Rx is a powerful time to re-commit to our artistic practice, to re-define our values about the human-made in a time of AI, and to rediscover what kind of art we are drawn to make in this present moment.

for example: megastar country singer Zach Bryan and his band all wore Free Palestine shirts at their Gillette show last night

Here’s the thing about Venus in Scorpio: she gives no fucks.

Or rather, she VERY MUCH gives a fuck about what she cares about, and refuses to allocate any fucks to people who would get in her way or tell her to pipe down.

In Scorpio, Venus is making art with Mars’ tools (Mars rules Scorpio). She’s spicy, raunchy, and has no problem being angry on main. She refuses to feel shame about what is done to her.

This is the journalism being put out by the women-led Cornell Daily Sun. This is the political writing of Venus in Scorpio native Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day and the satire of Venus in Scorpio native Jane Austen, who used biting humor to illuminate women’s oppression.

This is a transit for:

prioritizing the marginalized
bringing what is abject to the center
making art about that which makes capital-S Society uncomfortable.

Perhaps my favorite celebrity example of a Venus in Scorpio is Cardi B, who has been unabashedly, unapologetically herself — even way back when she was starting out in 2017:

Venus in Scorpio is an invitation to all of us to give the middle finger to the respectability politics that keep us playing it safe.

Because my primary goal as an astrologer is always to help you connect what’s happening in the sky to what it actually looks like in practice in your writing life, I’m offering an Art Syllabus for each rising sign, including: