Well Venus Retrograde is upon us. With it’s conjunction to Pluto as well as the other challenging aspects in the star forecast it’s safe to say the next 40 days will be pretty heavy. Any issues with self-worth, relationships, love, etc that you’ve buried deep within yourself or dealing with for the past two years will be rising to the surface. Anything connected to past friends or lovers who you have lose ends with or haven’t been applying the lessons their connection taught you may be popping back up for some. It will be an emotional period of retrospection to say the least. However, this is also a great time to take back control in areas of your life that’ve felt out of control, restructure your outlook on your finances and make a deeper commitment to understanding yourself. It’s important to remain grounded and reflect during this transit. Afterall, retrogrades are here to help us rest, observe and grow. So here are a few journal prompts and rituals to help you stay sane throughout this time.
Shadow work prompts:
Shadow work is a guided journaling technique that helps you go deep within to single out the root of a behavior, thought process, etc. It can be a very emotional process so remember to give yourself grace and as much time as you need to work through it. Once you have a clearer understanding of where an action or belief is coming from it’ll be easier to reconstruct this into something healthy and beneficial for you. It’s basically a Dummy’s Guide to personal growth!
-What has the past two years taught me about love? About the way I view and act in relationships?
-Are there any lessons these people taught me that I’ve stopped applying to my personal relationships? Why have I stopped applying these lessons?
-How do I self-sabotage in relationships? What trauma or experiences is this action rooted in?
-Am I happy with myself? Am I using my relationships for external validation because I do not value myself?
-What toxic behaviors did I act on in this relationship? Am I still behaving the same way in my current ones?
-What have my relationships over the past two years been like? Were they fulfilling me, supporting me? Why do I feel that way?
-How do I view love? Is it a give and take? Something I fear? Something that completes me? Are those views healthy or am I putting too much emphasis on another person to heal me?
simple(ish) rituals to keep the snakes away;
Remember to cleanse your space before you perform any ritual or spell and to thank the energies you invoke to assist you. It’s also a great idea to reground yourself after a ceremony. The simplest way to go about this is envisioning a protective, peaceful, grounding light growing around you until it fully encompasses your aura. These are rituals you should only perform for yourself. Dear all my baneful witches out there, remember that meddling with someone’s energy/connection can and will result in karmic backlash. No matter how powerful you think you are, you cannot escape karma for casting baneful magic on someone without permission from the universe—if you don’t understand what that means, I’m sorry but you shouldn’t be practicing baneful magick in the first place. Always, always, always do your research before doing any kind of spell work.
-Cord cutting:
You’ll need two candles, string, salt and any other herbs or objects whose properties center around banishment and cleansing. Start by cleansing your space and making a salt ring around where your candles will be. Carve your name into one candle and the name or situation you wish to cut ties from in the other. Place your candles about an inch apart inside your salt/herb ring and tie your string around them. Light your candles while stating “with unconditional love and the betterment of all parties involved I severe the cords that tie us” as the candles and eventually the string burn focus on releasing their/that energy and finding forgiveness for not only them but also yourself.
-Separation ritual:
You’ll need a piece of paper and an envelope. On either side of the paper you’ll want to write your name and the person you wish to keep away from you. Tear the paper in half and put them in the envelope with the torn edges facing away from each other. Place this envelope anywhere and check it periodically to make sure the torn edges stay separated.
-Banishing jar;
You’ll need a jar, red pepper flakes, black salt, railroad stakes, full moon water, cloves, alyssum, anise, juniper, cactus, yarrow, thyme, sulfur, vinegar or any other ingredients with banishing properties. Charge your ingredients with the specific intent you wish to invoke from them. Mix your ingredients in the jar, add a manifesto for what you’re banishing; this could be a specific person or energy you wish to banish as well as overall protection from negativity. Seal your jar with black wax and leave it on your altar or near the front door.
-Release the past ritual;
All you’ll need is a piece of paper and a white candle. Start by lighting your candle with the intention of purification. On your paper write what you wish to release; go into detail how it’s affected you both negatively and positively, why you need to release and what your life will look like without it. If you are releasing a person, write them a letter; pour everything into it. End your writings with a mantra along the lines of “with harm to none and of no ill will I release you but keep your lessons, thank you” and meditate with it. You can even visualize all the energy this situation or person holds within you going into that paper. When you’re ready, burn your paper(s) with the candle’s flame. From here you can either bury the ashes off your property or flush them down the toilet.
-Abundance manifestation;
Use your personal discernment on whether or not you should be manifesting during this time. Everybody’s craft and personal rules are different, however I see these transits as a perfect time to manifest more stable abundance into your life. Any luck, abundant, protective, money drawing herbs or oils will do. You can use these ingredients to dress a candle or mix them into a jar spell. Write down what you wish to manifest, be very specific and write it as though it’s already yours. Remember we do not, and I cannot stress this enough, but do not manifest a particular person. Ethics aside, just like one-sided love spells all you’re doing is creating an obsession spell and messing with free will. If you wish to manifest love during this time instead describe the type of love you wish to manifest into your life. Remember to end it with “at harm to none and free will to all” when manifesting. That being said, since this is a major period of personal growth your focus should solely be on bettering yourself and your finances. This transit may cause cardinal Venus’ to yearn for love so I wanted to clarify this golden rule for my baby witches. Take a moment to meditate with your manifestations, envision what they’d look like, what they’d feel like, pour all that energy into your paper. From here you can either place everything within a container and seal it with a green candle or light your dressed candle on top of your paper. Discard your spell away from your property, burying it in the ground to stabilize and solidify the outcome.
-Simple grounding techniques;
This one is like the grounding light visualization stated before, except we’re going to your happy place. Fully emerge yourself in it. What can you hear? What can you feel? What do you smell, taste? Envision how this happy place interacts with all five senses and meditate. Let your thoughts flow as you sit there, take in whatever sights are around you. Take as much time as you need in there and focus on pulling your energy back into you. While doing this exercise people you’ve called your energy back from may appear; simply ask them to leave or mentally push them from this place. Every interaction you have with someone is an energy exchange. That’s why this method is great for centering yourself, taking back your energy and protecting your aura. There are also tons of helpful guided meditations on YouTube that will take you through similar practices.
-Self-love rituals;
There’s plenty of ways to go about this. Again this retrograde should be focused on you, your self worth and reflecting on the roles you play in your relationships; both platonic and romantic. You can’t truly be happy within a relationship if you are not happy with yourself. You can’t be enough for someone else if you are not enough for yourself. These are the lessons Venus Retrograde teaches us, with it happening within the sign of Capricorn there’s an even bigger emphasis on how solid our self-view is. My personal favorite for a self-love “spell” is a ritual bath. I have a recipe or two posted under my “magicae” highlight on Instagram for this, but you can use the same herbs to dress a candle, make a jar spell, aromatherapy, etc. The best ingredients for self-love, in my opinion, are cinnamon, vanilla beans, yarrow, rose petals, honey, chamomile and motherwort. The significance of candle colors varies person to person and is based on what that color invokes in you but pink is a universal color for self-love, as well as copper.
A lot of astrologers like to fear monger with major transits, like Venus retrograde, but at the end of the day it’s simply an opportunity for personal growth. This retrograde in Capricorn, with its aspects to Pluto, Mars, etc will be putting a huge emphasis on our stability. Since Capricorn in Venus likes to focus on stability, status, power dynamics, what others can bring to the table for them, etc, these traits will play a part in how we view ourselves as well as our close relationships in life. With this aspect it’s easy to be too hard on yourself during periods of introspection so remember to give yourself grace. Not everything has to be rationalized, fulfillment is more important than success and you don’t need to control everything for your life to feel stable. Like everything else in this world, you get to choose whether or not you’d like to entertain this energy. Be open to life’s changes, sure in yourself and pay attention to any issues that flare up in your connections; it’ll all be okay. Blessed be witchlings.
Dani Catherine J 