Venus Retrograde in Scorpio
Venus retrograde began on October 3, 2026, and I was in Glastonbury. I woke up the next morning to the most spectacular sunrise. Glastonbury had transformed into Avalon. A layer of fog blanketed the ground as though an ocean, making the hilltops look like scattered islands and the Tor a major island. It was mystical and otherworldly.
Avalon derives from the Welsh afal (“apple”) and afallen (“apple tree”), so “Avalon” = “Isle of Apples.”
Venus and the Apple
There is an apple orchard sitting at the bottom of the Tor. It’s to the left staircase. It’s a special place; not laid out in lines like a farm, but like a garden, messy and natural. A place to be, a sanctuary… the Garden of the Hesperides.
The Garden of the Hesperides was a garden where the golden apples of Aphrodite were guarded by the Hesperides, daughters of Hesperus — the evening star. Why was it guarded? Because it held a special tree… the tree of eternal life.
As I descended the stairs into the fog-filled underworld, I found myself accompanied by two women. At the bottom, they stopped in front of the gate to the apple orchard and performed a ritual; I’m not sure what it was for… but they moved in each direction, saying, “shooo. Shooo. Shoo.”
Were they the daughter of Hesperus? – the guardian nymphs.
While I found their ritual odd, an even odder thing happened. Later I went into the apple orchard with my friend Lyn, and as we walked through the gates to leave, just in the spot they performed their ritual, I heard Lyn say “shooshooshoo”. She had not been with me earlier, did not meet them and knew nothing of the ritual happening. A little later, in the evening, near another gate just feet away from that particular gate- the first gate to enter the Tor- we made fire and sat around with instruments. A man named Joi shared his instruments with us… Shakers and drums, and we sang. At one point he began to sing made-up words. And suddenly he did it too… “shooo shoo shoo”!
Had we all become guardians of the Orchard? To me, they had picked up the frequency of the words, which continued to ring through the air and make them audible.
Venus in her evening aspect is called Hesperus. The apple is Venus’s fruit. It symbolizes love, beauty and the sacred feminine. Cut the apple lengthwise, and you will find a five-pointed star, the geometry of Venus over her 8-year cycle. Each point of the five-pointed star represents the petals of the flower. The inner five loops represent the five Venus retrogrades in the cycle, and the five outer petals, the Venus superior conjunctions. This is a time when she doesn’t make a retrograde loop, but she does disappear for a few months, returning as the evening star.
Evening Star is where Venus is now. She is Hesperus. In two more days, she will disappear, and by the end of the month she will return as the morning star.
The Descent of Venus.
Venus is always close to the Sun. As she travels across the sky during the day, both Venus and Mercury are always there with her. It is only when the Sun has just risen or has just set that we can see Venus. When Venus gets too close to the Sun, she disappears, but she is still there, only in the underworld.
The underworld: a time of testing.
Now, I’ve been told that the apple orchard at the Tor is a community orchard, but when I googled if you can pick the apples, it said it’s owned by the National Trust and “not really”… which to me meant… it’s a grey area. There were a lot of perfectly fine fallen apples. These apples are apparently meant for cider and not desserts, and I picked up some of those apples, both fallen and off the tree. It felt as though I was meant to. That I was given permission by the fairies, Venus and Land…
Today, I made just three turnovers, not for their dessert value but their energetic value – the orchard sits on the Michael and Mary lines. In Celtic tradition, a dragon or serpent guarded the holy orchard – I often think those dragons/serpents were, in fact, energy lines.
Apples and Serpents
The garden is a symbol of perfection, and when Eve ate the apple, she and Adam, who took a bite too, were tossed out of the garden. Their story is about temptation, following God’s precepts and self-control. Are apples the fruit of the knowledge of evil? Or eternal life? Venus retrograde is about those tests.
Venus retrograde Tests
Venus is love and beauty and fertility, but she can also be jealous, vain, superficial and manipulative. In Scorpio, she is particularly susceptible to jealousy and manipulation. In Scorpio, it also brings up themes of power and our shadow.
Venus will conjunct the Sun on October 24th at 0 Scorpio, a critical degree. There will also be an important asteroid there with them – Achilles. Achilles was a mortal/divine hybrid. His mother dipped him in the river Styx in order to make him immortal. But she held him by the heel, and this part made him subject to mortality. In astrology, Achilles symbolizes the area in our life that can lead to our downfall or demise. It’s our weak spot. As Achilles joins Venus and the Sun at this critical degree, we will be tested. What is our Achilles heel? How do we deal with that shadow?
Is eating the apple good or bad?
In Avalon, it is good. It grants wisdom, immortality and a passage to the otherworld. As part of the Grail elixir — golden apples melted in the Grail cup produced a drink that brought “wholeness, wisdom and immortality.” It is said that the apple is fairy food, a bridge between mortal and divine worlds. To eat it is to accept the goddess’s gift. But in Christianity, the apple is very different, and so are the snakes that guard the tree – Eve, snakes and apples spell our downfall.
Yet there is a fine line between good and bad, right and wrong… and often it’s all about perspective. My perspective on the words “shoohooshoo” was mine. From my friend’s perspective, she spoke those words to catch her breath. At the fire, she didn’t hear these words sung by Joi… And another thing happened at the fire. A man showed up telling us that as he walked down the Tor, he decided to give up smoking. He gave us tobacco and then went to his car and came back with cake, dates, olives and a joint. Temptations he was releasing, each of us faced with our own temptations… one took the tobacco, another the joint, someone else the dates, and I took the chocolate cake. But every single one of these is a vice or also a virtue – tobacco, chocolate and cannabis are culturally sacred in some cultures.
But did you notice the wordplay I did with myself about taking the apples? The National Trust (official authority) may have said no. But the fairies (the guardians of the land) said yes… The real test was how I dealt with my own perspective, shadow and integrity…
I was tempted to tell you I took only the fallen apples – in case someone from the National Trust read this. It would be wrong from their perspective. The test was not the right or wrongness of taking the apples or eating the apples, but the lie I was tempted to tell.
Telling a lie would have changed the energy of the apple. The temptation to lie was my shadow. So that the National Trust wouldn’t find out. So that you wouldn’t think lowly of me if you had an opinion. So that so that so that…
The test for me was not about right or wrong, as there are many perspectives… but to be in integrity with my choices. Not to lie, and to accept the inherited shadow of my choice.
“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.” ― August Wilson
As I take a bite of my turnover, I accept this Venusian gift into my body. It has given me the wisdom to help me navigate the underworld and my own personal tests!
I’ve recently released lecture #3 on the moons of our solar system. In the Tychos and Binary Star Astrology, Venus is a moon. Venus (and Mercury) display moon phases, and in the ancient world of Egypt they were both considered moon deities. I explore the idea that their moon phases were perhaps known in the ancient world. At the inferior conjunction, when she is closer to Earth, in front of the Sun and is like a New Moon, we explore how this happens in the Binary Star Astrology model.
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