Another Big Freaking Wave
We are nearing the home stretch of this Venus Retrograde cycle and I must say, I am not the same me that entered this cycle back on July 22nd. I’ve been riding the wave as much as I have been able to, allowing an organic evolution to occur, following the breadcrumbs, and going with the flow, and here I am immersed in politics once more.
I checked. The last time Venus was retrograde in Leo was July 31st-September 6th of 2015, exactly when I jumped into the Bernie Sanders campaign for the first time with both feet. Huh, it’s so fascinating to move through a cycle and then look back at the last time this cycle played out and witness the parallels.
Then it was national politics. Now it is local.
“Think globally and act locally”. It’s taken me some time to get here.
I have always been interested in politics, but there was a period of time, after protesting the Bush/Gore debacle of an election at Daley Plaza in Chicago back in 2000 that I took on the belief that politics were “beneath me” as a spiritual muckety-muck, or that I was somehow adding to the duality by participating (ugh! I am still making amends for spreading this piece of programmed disinformation).
So I sat it all out until the summer of 2007, also when Venus was retrograde in Leo, when it became clearest (not that I ever had any doubt about it) that the Bush Administration and their cohorts had wrecked the financial reality (along with so much else) for many in this country. I started participating in an online housing forum. They were tracking the beginnings of the crash, something I had known was going to happen by the spring of 2005 as I looked around at the overinflation occurring in the housing market in Northern California at the time.
My neighbor back then who had just put a lot of money into rehabbing a home he’d bought for way too much said to me, “Aren’t you and Jon going to buy something? You better get in now.”
Me, “We are going to wait until the market crashes.”
Him, panicked voice, “The market is never going to crash because there will always be someone else more stupid than I am to buy.”
I, recognizing I had hit a sore spot in him, nodded, smiled, and changed the subject.
My engagement then, 2007, was only in voting and celebrating any wins by those on the more progressive side of the spectrum while continuing to recognize that until the corporations (I’m talking multinational) were defanged and divested of their power and influence, we were headed into an oligarchy. Interesting (horrifying) to see that this is now true. We are living in a CEO and high-stakeholder run oligarchy bent on hoarding as much as they can for themselves as the wealth gap increases and the world burns and floods, as more and more people starve and become unhoused, as the 99% of us experience increased suffering. They must be removed from power and replaced by an actual democracy.
I can only hope that once Pluto makes its way back into Aquarius for good on November 19, 2024, this will begin to happen.
But Bernie, when he announced in May of 2015, I got excited. And when the opportunity to get involved presented itself, I got more excited. And when I am this excited by something, I jump, even while afraid, which I was at the time. What were my fears? That it was somehow wrong for me as a “whatever I am” to get actively involved in politics and loudly take a side AND that the Sanders campaign would look at me, a channel for The Pleiadians and Faeries among other things, and think I was a kook and that it would not be appropriate for them to allow me to represent the campaign.
My fears — really only an extension of my insecurities and a foundational fear of rejection and abandonment in any spectrum, political, relational, spiritual, everything.
My fear of rejection kept me from pursuing my dream of acting to the fullest extent I could have at the time, seeking comfort in working on projects with people I knew who offered me parts and work, rarely auditioning outside of that comfort zone, and definitely not seeking an agent. I acted and directed a lot back then but never fully put myself out there.
If I track all the way back to the Venus Retrograde in Leo of 1983, I can see where the stage was set for this. I did not audition for the fall high school play. It was “Death of a Salesman”, and I knew there was no part in it for me. I had gained some weight since playing the ingénue, and our director would never have cast a fat girl in a main role (with the exception of moms and grandmothers, perhaps, and this I would be mostly relegated to for the rest of my high school theater life, fulfilling my mother’s words that I would be typecast). Things at home had gotten progressively worse that summer with my stepfather going into full-blown psychosis at the time (this is my layperson diagnosis, there was no actual help, so this is what I think happened). I was barely surviving and could not handle the idea of auditioning just to be rejected, so I sat them out.
The fun and excitement of “Arsenic and Old Lace” just six months prior had disappeared into the reaches of my memories, and I would never have a theater experience like that in high school again. I would rediscover it in college, in an environment with teachers and directors who supported and loved me, but high school theater became a black hole of rejection, disappointment, and abuse, even as I did pursue it once more in the winter of 1983 all the way through my senior year.
Hmmmm, I had not thought I would be writing about acting at all when I started this piece. Clearly, I am still sorting through my history as an actor/director coupled with my jump into life as a channel/healer with politics somehow in here as well.
This is Venus in Retrograde, no matter the sign, a trip down memory road of all loves and losses. Excuse me for a moment while I put my head down and cry.
Ah yes, a super/blue moon in Pisces is upon us, contributing to the well of tears I am unable to stanch at this time. My heart is still broken over this dream not realized even as I live a life of fulfillment and happiness.
My rising sign is in Leo, so when Venus retrogrades their way through it, my attention is always drawn to my outward expression, both through my own lens and via the lens of how others see me.
It was in 1975, during the first Venus Retrograde in Leo cycle I can recall, the one prior happened when I was six months old, that I first noticed I was not thin, primarily because it was relentlessly pointed out to me by my parents, other kids, other relatives, pretty much everyone in my sphere with some exceptions, my younger sister being one of them. She never commented on my weight, and she was skinny, as in SKINNY. I was eight years old at the time and put on the first of many, many diets. It was also during this window that my parents’ relationship began its slow march toward divorce.
My happiest Venus Retrograding through Leo experience occurred in the summer of 1999. Jon and I were newly in love, I was starting to experience some successes in the spiritual realm, and a new me had emerged.
It’s always a few months after Venus has gone direct that I truly grok the changes as a result. I look forward to looking back around November/December of this year.
If I were a psychic, I might even predict a run for some kind of office OR a return to acting during the Venus Retrograde in Leo of 2031. I can’t wait to see what happens.
The moon will be full in Pisces exactly at 6:35pm Pacific Time tomorrow, August 30th.
I am taking a moment here to wish all of you in the path of Hurricane Idalia safety and protection. The moon could add to the intensity of the storm. I experience a particular kind of exhaustion related to upcoming flooding events, and I am currently feeling this one.
Venus stations direct, just a few days later, on September 3rd at 6:30pm Pacific Time.
May you continue to reflect on all that you love. I wish you healing of any wounds that have reopened.
Originally published at https://noraherold.substack.com.
Please subscribe to my substack for more regular articles, stories, essays, and transcribed excerpts. I am currently only sharing some of my work on Medium
