When a planet retrogrades it tends to deepen its vibration by retracing the recent past.

Something may have been left undone, unresolved or not yet finalised and you are getting a second chance to correct any loose ends.

The effect of retrogrades are much more noticeable with the personal planets Mercury, Venus and Mars, as they play in service to the identity or the ‘ego’ so we will feel them on a much more subjective level.

Unfortunately Venus gets thrown too easily into the superficial basket and many just look at her just as a means of getting what they want in relationships, money, shopping and looking cute.

Our shallow natures can easily turn Venus into a ‘Kardashian’ avoiding her true nature which can be rather confronting on the level of our personal value, security and connections.

Her retrograde back into Leo gives us another go at how well we have expressed her frequency through genuine love and generosity to others. Has your insecure self made it ‘all about you’ lately at the expense of understanding the feelings of another, or have you got to the stage where you are gracious enough to express your love easily and kindly, realising you have more than enough to share.

To get a clearer sense of the essence of Venus and what she may be reminding us of, it is best to go a little deeper into her true nature.

Venus is the Goddess of love, beauty, attraction and grace. Classically she represents the feminine principle in both sexes and the sensual side of our natures.

She is the only planet that makes an almost perfect circle around the Sun and creates the most glorious flowered patterns as she dances with Earth during her rotation.

Yet underneath her attractive and romantic surface is a profound desire and this desire is represented by ‘a feeling’.

Venus is a feeling that we all yearn for. The closest word we have for this sensation is the feeling of serenity. She embodies the deepest form of peace imaginable, which is experienced solely on a personal level here on the earth plane. The need for this feeling can often be very strong considering serenity seems fairly simplistic, yet our desire for this Venusian sensation can take us down some pretty intense roads.

This is the feeling that arises from a kiss when in love, the breathtaking colours of a magnificent sunset, a warm scented bath after a long day and the taste of melted chocolate of your tongue. It is the feeling of relief when finding your wallet intact after it going missing for 2 days and the feeling of a big bear hug from a dear friend you haven’t seen in ages.

This wonderful feeling stems from Venus’ desire to blend on a vibrational level. No other planet is more conscious of alignment than Venus. By bringing things into accord and harmonising energies, Venus creates a sense of ease which then triggers that feeling of the peace and calm that we are all looking for.

This is most noticeable with the blending of sound by combining harmonic chords and with the eye’s connection to visual beauty. The merging of their energies creates a vibration of harmony and comfort. This is where the expression ‘easy on the eye’ originates.

Venus is also synonymous with ‘what we love’ as we align ourselves smoothly with certain areas of our lives. She is also the Goddess of Attraction, another way recognising vibrational alignment magnetically.

Energetic alignment is happening everyday with the connection of the eye to art and design, and with the senses via smells, sounds, textures and tastes, and of course the alignment between two hearts and minds within the context of relationship.

Unfortunately in our everyday lives this need for harmony is faced with discord as we erroneously equate peace with our need to survive. We feel we cannot be peaceful until we are safe. This stems from our belief in separation. This belief then disconnects us from our innate safely, taking us out of alignment with our true selves and with Source energy.

Because of this, the Venus energy becomes fraught with the fear and is now taken to the extreme, aiming directly at our personal security, safety and self-worth.

We begin to scramble externally at things to bring us comfort and to keep us safe. We grab for money, a lover, even more Botox, anything that will stop us feeling insecure. We begin to live in a world of inner chaos where it is totally unsafe to be ourselves. This misalignment has us feeling out of whack, unbalanced and it starts to threaten our livelihood.

We lose touch with being able to connect easily with others, we stop noticing colours, music, tastes and touch we begin to live in a world of black and white. We forget what is truly important and valuable about ourselves and others and our self-worth begins to free fall.

It feels as though we could ‘die’ if no one loves us, if we are deemed worthless or thought of as insignificant, yet this is exactly what we will attract into our lives by the fears created by not owning our Venus.

Equating our peace with survival unplugs us from life. It flies in the face of Venus’ need to blend by making us feel alone, detached and unloved. It disengages us from our talents, gifts, lovers, money, beauty, value and love for life.

Venus’ alignment with life is innately part of who we are; it is not something we need to search for. It is part of our essential natures, here for us to enjoy and to feel safe with. It is primarily experienced in two ways, through relationship and through value. With relationship, she rules our relationship to all things including with ourselves. It wants us to have a healthy relationship with our bodies, our talents and our minds.

She flourishes in personal relationships by finding a sense of calm and ease with the blending of minds through understanding and hearts through love and sympathy.

Within the context of intimate relationships she governs what you may find attractive in a partner as well as the qualities you may need to own to maintain healthy relationships. She is also helpful with attracting people into our lives as teachers with how we play our Venus energy.

Venus’ alignment with what she values is most evident in the material world, where she handles our relationship with worth and security. This includes our relationship with money and possessions as well as our level of self-value and how we value others. This is where Venus can be at her most challenged, as our fears concerning survival and self-esteem are at their most potent here.

Venus truly is the Goddess of Love. We need her in our lives, she makes us recognise how beautiful this planet really is and how incredibly magnificent we all are. Her hope for us all is to calm down, connect to each other without fear, glorify in our value and to bring peace into the lives of as many people as we can.