Goddess in a Business Suit (Venus in Capricorn)

Goddess in a Business Suit

     On December 10th Venus moved into Capricorn, and she'll be there until January 3rd. This transit happens once a year, but this year she will be joining up with Pluto right around the holidays. There are many things happening in the stars this month, and Venus, as an inner, faster moving planet plays a trigger role in the greater unfolding narratives. In this post, I will explain some of the archetypes associated, how you can expect this energy to play out, and give some advice on how to navigate the transit. 

Formal Venus

     Venus is the planet that embodies the astrological conception of the feminine. Venus is the receptive and magnetic part of human interaction. If you boil down the interplay between humans as push and pull, Venus is the pull to the push of Mars. Venus beautifies, enhances, sensitizes and attracts. Capricorn is the sign of the heights, of ambition, and material mastery. Capricorn pushes to organize things on a practical level so that they're efficient, effective, and enduring. Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, so there's a certain amount of restriction inherent in the sign. There's the knowledge of what's socially acceptable, and what personal needs must be restricted in order for the whole to be better organized. When Venus puts on her business suit, (by moving into Capricorn) her work becomes more formalized, inhibited, and limited.

     Imagine Venus in Capricorn as the head of human resources in a large corporation. In this particular case, her workload involves managing the relationships within the company. With such a role, her own needs take a back seat to the needs of the company culture. There are expectations of growth in some areas, and places where there need to be cutbacks. These decisions of where to put resources and where to withdraw them is tough on Venus. She would love to simply give resources freely and set up everyone in the company with bonuses, but she has a budget. That budget is the time and emotional resources that are available. When Venus is in Capricorn, people have to make the decisions on who to invest time and energy into in their relationships.

     So the real work of this transit is to realistically assess our own relationships, our own emotional resources and figure out how to allocate them.

Boardroom Showdown!

     Venus transits can sometimes pass almost unnoticed, but this one in particular is very powerful because it is heavily involved with corporate crisis. Uranus and Pluto, two of the heavyweight slow moving outer planets are involved in a tug of war that's lasted the last four years. To stick with the metaphor, Pluto is the C.E.O. of the corporation, and is very uninterested in the lives of the employees, what their feelings are, or what their needs are. The C.E.O. is only interested in the profit and loss statement, and how healthy the company is fundamentally. Uranus is the head of research and development, and is at work on all the new products that could make or break the company. Many of these new products are challenging the culture of the company, and may even lead to a loss of control by the C.E.O. in the direction that the company is going. 

     So there is a lot of stress in the boardroom, and Venus is at the table trying to figure out how to manage the expectations of these two heavyweights at the table. She is trying to do something well above her pay grade that she's never been trained for. To put it in very human terms, Venus is working to balance the desire for unrestrained creativity in all departments, and loyalty to the C.E.O. that runs the company because she wants to keep her job. 

     The way this plays out in personal relationships is that relationships feel very uncertain and stressed and strained at this point. In many ways people are putting on social masks in their relationships to keep up the appearance of everything working effectively. But on the inner level, there's a drive for freedom in relationship, and a desire to cut out those people that limit or restrict that freedom. This drive for freedom often means a breakdown or transformation in relationships, and that means that many are on both sides of the equation. The drive for freedom triggers a need to control to keep the status quo. Security vs. freedom is an age-old question, and our personal relationships are going to be part of the battlefield between these two forces in the coming weeks. 

Tips of the Trade

     So, in the midst of all this pressure, what should be done? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the metaphor of a company can still help. One of the best ways to handle this transit is to really go through your relationships and make a profit and loss statement for each. What are you getting and what are you giving? What is the level of freedom in that relationship and what is the level of security? If you're in the red in a relationship, it's a good time to give that relationship a boost, or set that person free. If someone is in the red with you it's a very good idea to either let that relationship go or renegotiate the terms so that's it is productive.