Venus in Capricorn Cycle January 1998
On or about January 22, 1998, Venus began a new 584 day “synodic” cycle.* Depending on your location and the visibility of the horizon, Venus appeared brightly and dramatically just before sunrise over the Eastern horizon. This is called the Venus heliacal rise, meaning to rise with the Sun.
The Sumerians, Babylonians, and Meso-Americans, among many others, began the Venus cycle with the heliacal rise. Experiential and shamanically oriented astrologers, who literally follow the hermetic dictum, “As Above, So Below, As Without, So Within,” also use the visible earth-centered Venus cycle as the basis for interpretation and archetypal awareness.
In January, 1998, Venus rose in the sign of Capricorn (22 degrees), beginning a new 584 day journey of the world feminine principle: the goddess for women, and the animas, or internal source of creativity and eros, for men. In Shamanic Astrology, the suggested imagery for the Capricorn Venus archetype is: the responsible woman administering her domain, the elder, the matriarch herself, she who knows and implements the law. Capricorn is the archetypal “overtone” for the entire 584 days following the January heliacal rise of Venus. A nearly identical Venus cycle occurred eight years ago with the heliacal rise of Venus, on January 25, 1990, at 25 degrees Capricorn. The next Venus cycle in Capricorn begins January 20, 2006. (For additional information and suggested uses of the amazing magical cycles of Venus from the synodic and shamanic perspective, see the February issue of the Mountain Astrology, Feb 1997.)
The current Venus cycle began June 1996 in Gemini and completes, in January, when Venus begins her new cycle in Capricorn. Gemini and Capricorn overtones are quite different. Whereas Capricorn expresses as the tribal elder, responsibly administering her domain, Gemini is the eternal youth, trickster, heyokah-coyote woman.
More information about the significant dates for the current cycle are forth coming. Some suggested ways to work with this cycle are as follows. Gain awareness and celebrate the seven or eight Venus/Moon conjunctions in the morning and evening skies. Create ceremonies for the underworld times. Notice how this works in the lives of friends and clients. See for yourself if it works to use the seven chakras. I welcome your feedback. These are the times to drape new stories and a new mythos on the planetary cycles.
.*Note: “Synodic” is from the Greek word synodos, meaning meeting. I am using this word to indicate the cyclical meeting of a planet when it returns to a given starting point as seen from the Earth, in this case heliacal rise to heliacal rise.