13.05.2020

Our Queen of Stars has taken her leave of this mad world, disappearing from our skies and into her underworld. Her retrograde in Gemini for forty days and forty nights is a withdrawal to reconsider and reconfigure, as she courts her wild twin in mercurial territory.Venus' underworld journey is the tale of Inanna's descent, an ancient mythology that hums yet in our cells. This journey strips us of lavish accoutrement and extra flesh, so we may sing a new skin over our bones. It does not sidestep the heart's darknesses nor avoid the whole of its truth. And it delivers us anew, stripped of all that does not matter and dripping in the understanding only gleaned from the shadowlands.Venus in her twin skin is a witty wonder and a chameleon with a penchant for reinvention and an eagle eye on what comes next. In revision mode, she turns her values over in her mind's eye and heart's hands. Musing upon who and what and why she loves. Cultivating her next life above ground, her imaginal cells buzzing and weaving in the darkness.The last time Venus reposed in Gemini was mid 2012, the end times before this. She could well be playing a similar hand but in a world still shook up, this rx is a welcome turn away and within. Thus can it deftly connect us to what matters most, now. And allow us to grieve what has been lost, sacrificed on the altar of what will arrive to take its place in our hearts.Every Venus retrograde should come with a warning. Her rx brings all the exes to the yard so plead isolation to avoid the grandest sinkhole of this transit. Bedding down the past is a metaphor, darklings. Don't sleep with your revision test.Bat your lashes instead at the steady stream of quiksilver ideas, random genius and tangents galore shimmering in the periphery. This rx will be a little batshit and a lot of strange. There is creative boon on offer to the mutable, those willing and able to morph or experiment. In a year built on our ability to switch gears at a moment's notice in the grand cause of evolution, every rx is a rethink under the influence.There is treasure waiting to be excavated in the dark caverns of your heart. Venus' descent can show you the way.Photography by Tim WalkerWords c. Kerrie Basha 2020