About halfway through our trip to Ireland, my sister said that she fully expected we would roll into the car rental return and the car wouldn’t have a top and it would burst into flames as we rolled back onto the lot. It was just that sort of trip.
Before the pandemic, I asked my sister to go to Scotland with me. She agreed but the trip itinerary morphed into a Scottish, Welsh and Irish trip in the fall of 2020. Cue the Perseus gylph (♇♄) appearing in the astrological weather in January 2020 and that trip never happened. In December 2022, she called me and said she was ready to go to Ireland and we would do Scotland later. We were going to go in early July but after discussion the only twelve days that would work for both of us was from August 17 to August 29.
I wrote the title of the article and the first two paragraphs and set up the title Venus retrograde. Then I got word that my father’s only sibling, his sister, had died about 40 minutes after I had written those parts of the article. It wasn’t expected so fast. This is the end of an era in my family. My aunt was the last one of her generation. My father died in 1995 a month shy of his 49th birthday. The 2023 Leo venus retrograde has been about the release of the dead.
Venus Retrograde
The 2023 Leo retrograde cazimi on August 13, 2023 had a T-square between the karmic nodes of the moon with an apex retrograde Capricorn Pluto. Letting go of the dead whether people, habits or the karmic situations we are in was the major theme of this retrograde. Back in February 2023, my musical tastes took a dive toward the minor key. My Spotify playlist started on February 15 with new additions made up to August 8. My husband said I was listening to much darker music than usual. As I sit and listen to that playlist I made of this music (think Fauré’ Pavane Op. 50, Litvinovsky’s Procession du crepuscule, Mozart’s Lacrimosa), I’m noticing that it has already started to seem passe for today. All of a sudden, the minor key just seems to heavy. The dirge will soon end and there is new life upon us with all its attendant higher notes. The pain of Pluto transits comes from holding on. Releasing the dead allows for life’s rebirth.
The phoenix bird burns off the old bird so that a new bird is born from the ashes of the old. The phoenix is the highest expression of Scorpio. It isn’t a happy experience but there is great meaning with the end of life and the beginning of new life.
The Sister Trip to Ireland
My sister and I spoke quite a bit about dad. She got emotional thinking about the past. The dad of a friend of her oldest daughter had died suddenly and it reminded her of losing our dad a month before I turned 18 and when she was just 11. We are half sisters and dad had left when I was two and divorced my mom when I was three. Me, her and my half-brother all have Taurus Chiron. Unexpected loss of stability. In the trip horoscope, the retrograde (past) Pisces (lost) Saturn (father) in the 11th house (trauma). The past traumatic loss of our father. Although I won’t go into detail, it was eyeopening for me to realize how much more she had suffered as a result of him dying. It saddened me. My earlier loss of him through divorce and a subsequent loss of my religious community had better prepared me for the ultimate loss of his death. Although it took me years, I made peace with his absence from my life around the age of 32.
We went to Ireland to have fun (Leo Sun) in the 5th but lingering was the trauma caused by the loss of dad. I hope that our conversations helped her but I’m not sure they did. He loved Civil War reenacting and had been in the Irish Brigade and sung Irish songs while in the hospital. That last fact was told to me by my aunt just as we were preparing to go. A major part of the astrology of the trip was clearly about us having these conversations.
The trip wasn’t elected but I had looked over the expected horoscope and prepared mentally to play the role of Mars while my sister would play Venus. I’m an Aries Moon and she is a Libra Moon so that wouldn’t be strange for either of us. Saturn had other ideas in mind as we got delayed just enough to switch to me being the Libra Ceres with my sister playing the role of the retrograde Capricorn Pluto. It took me a bit to decide who had been Ceres and who had been Pluto but it was the Sabian symbols that finally convinced me that my sister was Pluto.
The Theme of the Angry Chicken & Being Accountable for Misdemeanors
My sister noticed that there were a lot of angry chickens. Really it was birds not chickens but she was right, I just hadn’t noticed. Her trip had many more bird experiences than mine. She walked the Dark Hedges and heard the crows. The Sabian symbol of Pluto is “a large aviary”. I had put on the itinerary a falconry experience. She told me that she wasn’t looking forward to it because she doesn’t like birds. The hawk I flew immediately killed a small bird flying nearby and when she flew him he hit her in the face four times with his wing. The owl also smacked her in the face too. I loved the experience but I doubt it was in her top five. Everywhere she pointed out angry birds. They strutted around and we even found them in art. While in Dublin, the pigeons spooked and flew up and around her. As the retrograde Capricorn Pluto, she was carrying dead (Pluto) bird (28° Capricorn) energy and I think this is why the birds weren’t so happy to see her.
I was the 18° Libra Ceres on the Sabian symbol “two men placed under arrest”. This symbol is about consequences and I parked illegally resulting in my first ever ticket, broke pottery in our hotel room, and had to make an insurance claim on the rental car. Nothing I did wrong went unnoticed but true to Ceres most everything just cost me some resources (Ceres).
Death in Ireland
Writing this article titled “Bring out your dead” was meant to touch on the comical element of the Sister Trip. Although, the rental car was returned in one piece just with a few scratches on one fender the idea that Monty Python had been present or some other comedic troupe persisted throughout our circuit of the island.
My sister at one point said she hoped we weren’t going to any more graveyards. Only Saint Patrick’s grave was on the itinerary but many of the round towers, churchs, abbeys and historic sites had a surrounding graveyard or tomb. At one point, several yelling Irishmen ran into the road followed closely behind by a herd of cows heading full tilt through someone’s front yard. We stopped in time for them to run right in front of us until they could get them back up to a nearby farm gate while another herd of cows ran down the hill at us but fortunately stopped at the fence in between us and them. Earlier a yelling Irishwoman had run into the road in her nightgown and robe stopping us and turning us around to avoid an accident scene with a motorbike ahead. All that was missing was the Rabbit of Caerbannog to fly out of some nearby cave.
Although neither of us were interested in examining any Irish famine sites, I ended up reading a book on it in Dublin. I had no idea the Irish had persisted in planting potatoes for five of six years of the famine. I had no idea the famine had even been six years long. I assumed it was a short yet nasty episode of maybe 2 or 3 years. Believing the story that the British had been responsible, I was shocked to see that the things the Irish blamed the famine on (land ownership system, keeping the ports open) had persisted unchanged for at least twenty years after the famine while the famine itself ended only when the Irish planted beans and barley instead of potatoes. Pluto is brutal to people who don’t release the dead. Potatoes, grown underground, are a Plutonic food. The nightshade family. Potato plants are very poisonous and only non-green potatos are safe to eat.
The universe had once again demanded I pay attention to the point. Let go. Don’t be the Irish trying to plant blighted potatoes for five straight years thinking this is a story for everyone else and you don’t have to let go. It’s time, bring out your dead.
Death of My Aunt
This brings me to the saddest part of the retrograde Venus conclusion. My aunt’s family didn’t have a lot of time to prepare. She had taken a turn for the worse recently. In May, I was telling her about our plans for the trip. In July, she had to go to the hospital and recovered enough that we thought she was out of the woods but that didn’t last and she declined rapidly. It was only a few days ago that I learned she was home but was in hospice.
Although, I made peace with my father’s death many years ago, I have for several years been able to text and speak to my aunt about questions I still had. She and my father were always very close and they loved each other very much. In May, she is the one who told me that dad had sung Irish songs when he was undergoing treatment in the hospital. He was very proud of what limited Irish heritage we have. My aunt made sure to tell me what she knew before we went on the trip. I had supposed that maybe my sister had chosen Ireland because in some subconscious way she was looking for dad. I always went to my aunt to look for dad. Before going to Ireland, I understood that the Venus retrograde would let my sister and I explore our past relationship. My natal 25° Aries Moon was conjunct the north node of trip chart so talking about the past was something I was expecting.
The delay of the trip moved the trip Ascendant to conjunct my Taurus Chiron and placed the I.C. near my Cancer Sun. The trip definitely skewed toward me right at the last minute but it is my aunt’s death that has tilted toward my sister’s natal chart. Writing and knowing what a particular astrological signature means doesn’t make it any easier to deal with its consequences. Like all Plutonic transformations, the most painful part is letting go. Yet it is necessary. When Pluto calls and tells you it is time to bring out your dead, all you can do is remember that letting go allows for the rebirth of life.