Two days ago, on December 24, Venus joined Capricorn, precisely one month after her Morning Setting. The nocturnal benefic is now invisible, covered by the solar light, under the beams of the Sun, gradually losing individuality and moving towards a stronger combustion. This is the phase in which she ceases to be Phosphoros, the morning star, and goes dark before returning as Hesperos. Venus is undergoing purification, following a path of increasing interiority; and, as the conjunction of January 8 with the Sun and Mars approaches, so too does the brief enthronement in the cazimi. In that instant, the goddess sits upon the throne of the diurnal luminary and her qualities become temporarily elevated to their highest expression. But, before and after, she remains obscured, timid, operating in secrecy.
This invisible condition affects the Venusian domain. Relationships, affections, unions and even disputes are withdrawn from common visibility. Eros hides beneath the rays, because Venus, a moist planet and lover of the nocturnal sky, loses her freedom in the dry heat of the Sun. We find her subject to a revealing solar force that works against her nature, as she somber, movement, plasticity and moisture. It is a time when marriages or love affairs seek shelter from the public and foreign gaze, as if the great Eye were watching too closely. In Capricorn this sensation intensifies, because the cold and dry cardinal Earth adds yet another level of containment. We have Sun and Mars as hot and dry bodies that compress her by aplication, and the sign itself is an arid landscape, creating a triple dryness that removes flexibility and expression from the Venusian principle.
Capricorn brings with it the question of its ruler. Saturn, who governs the sign, is in the final degrees of Pisces, the closing stage of its 29-year cycle. It is a period of dissolution, as if the planet were tearing off the skin it has worn for three decades, fading into the ending and mutable Jupiterian waters. The structuring and consolidating force of Saturn is weakened in a moist, nocturnal, soluble sign, poorly suited to uphold the melancholic weight of Earth. This means that, although Venus stands in a sign that is traditionally firm, the foundation of its ruler is unstable. The ground is more fluid than it appears, and Venus’ passage through Capricorn does not find the usual solidity.
Also, exactly when the conjunction with the Sun and Mars takes place, the three-planet meeting in Capricorn will receive an opposition from retrograde Jupiter in Cancer, a frontal collision between two cardinal principles: the Cardinal Earth of Capricorn and the Cardinal Water of Cancer. It is as though the great diurnal benefic were adding, through the brute force of the 180-degree opposition, a measure of moisture drawn from the zodiacal Nadir, even if in a relationship of shock and friction between two passive elements, Earth and Water, each asserting its own axis of reception and containment. Which, at the very least, tempers this Capricornian-Saturnian-solar dryness with some water from the phlegmatic lunar spring.
Adding to that, the relationship between Pisces (where Saturn stands) and Capricorn (his sign) is a sextile, providing a measure of support. There is communication between ruler and sign, albeit fragile. Venus’ transit through Capricorn during this winter presents itself as afflicted, concealed, and worked from within. It is forced interiorisation, an attempt to protect the moist principle in a dry climate. In this passage, Chthonic Aphrodite manifests, the one who in Antiquity received subterranean cult, bound to the underworld, to telluric forces, and to the pact between body and destiny. She is not the Aphrodite of the foam, but the one who descends before she rises, sheltering the moist fire within the Saturnian mountain. She awaits the exact moment when the heart of the Sun, in cazimi, returns to her voice, brilliance, and potency, so that she may rise again as Hesperos soon.
Kύριε ελέησον