Venus goes retrograde this month, stationing on Oct 5^th at 10 Scorpio. She dips back into Libra on Halloween and won’t go direct again until the middle of November. Venusian retrogrades are relatively rare; and as transit-trackers know, the rarer the event, the more important the lesson.

The five weeks of Venus’ backwards motion give us the chance to deeply consider some relationship issues we usually take for granted.

Sweetness

Everything under Venusian rulership, from personal relationships to recreational activities, is up for review. Venus governs the sweetness in our lives, literally (dessert) and figuratively: activities that feed us emotionally, people with whom we have satisfying connections.

During October, while Venus is still in Scorpio, our approach to intimacy is up for review. This means plumbing our own depths to identify inadvertent patterns we’re in, with partners and close friends. Not just ways of acting, but ways of feeling.

Pay particular attention during Venus’s unusually long square with Mars during the middle of the month (especially when Mercury gets involved, `10/15^th-19^th), and during the Venus-Sun conjunction on the 26^th.

We’re being challenged to locate, name and confront our habits of the heart.

Sex vs. intimacy

Scorpio is linked with sex in popular astrology, and Venus in this placement can definitely get the hormones flowing. But it’s not about bodies. Scorpio’s a water sign; it’s not interested in physicality for its own sake.

What Venus in Scorpio is after is connection, on an emotional and psychological level. This placement is drawn to sex because of the vibe it creates: a feeling of psychic merger. If all goes well, sexual situations offer us a degree of depth that isn’t available in other forms of relating. At best, it opens us up to personal transformation. That’s what Scorpio’s in it for.

In our era, this deeper aspiration of Venus in Scorpio is usually unconscious, one reason why its retrogradation is so valuable. The transit helps us understand why superficial relating is unsatisfying (not that it always is; it’s just not what Venus in Scorpio wants). This can forestall a lot of disappointment in the intimacy department.

At its highest, this Venus transit gets us in touch with the laws of attraction that lead to profound union.