From March 6th through April 17th, Venus is traveling retrograde (i.e. backwards) through our skies. The Venus retrograde period is a time for reevaluating your relationships and your capacity for love. While Venus is retrograde, notice the places where you are drawn into your relationships’ darkness and notice the ways you might find increased intimacy there.
The retrograde journey of Venus is depicted in the Mesopotamian tale of the descent of Inanna into the underworld. It is the story of a journey into the dark places in relationship, an attempt to recover lost love. During her descent, Inanna was stopped seven times, at seven gates. Each time, she had to remove one item from her person and leave it behind so she could go on. Any or all of these items might have symbolic meaning for your explorations during this Venus retrograde period.
At The Sixth Gate, the Gatekeeper Demands Inanna’s Breastplate
A breastplate is armor for the heart. It is self-protection against life’s discomfort and pain. The armored heart feels no pain, but it also feels no love. Love cannot penetrate the hard exterior.
The human heart is meant to be soft and penetrable. Relationship is not a battleground.
The Gatekeeper Asks:
Are you ready to simply open your heart and share your true feelings with your partner? Can you let their true feelings in? Are you willing to be hurt? Can you find yourself in the middle of battle, wake up and realize it’s not a battleground, then courageously take off the armor?
To truly share with a partner is to adventure into chaotic realms where control is no longer possible. It is sometimes terrifying and sometimes exhilarating. The breastplate is the ultimate armor. It represents a simple refusal to open your heart, to feel, to be vulnerable. On Inanna’s journey, it’s one of the last things to go.
For more about Inanna’s journey and what happened at the other gates, look at Venus Retrograde: Descent Into Love’s Darkness. I’ll post about the seventh and last gate in about a week.
