The Venus Chronicles
The Turn of Venus; Emilia Clarke as our Venusian muse, her Libra sun, Venus and Mercury in Scorpio marking her a native of these frequencies
As centuries of feminine rage is unleashed, Venus’ retreat and retrograde is the good dark medicine we all need in these modern burning times.
Venus arrived glowering and exhausted to her underworld lair and not soon enough. Here may the feminine - in all of us - tend centuries of wounding, deliberate mistreatment and malevolent misunderstanding. But first for the Lady, one hell of a reckoning. In Scorpio deliverance comes with a sky high chance of retribution, everyone feeling the sting of this ongoing torrent as tectonic plates worth of rage unleash. The howls for justice that isn't as rough as the crimes against our humanity will be met during Scorpio’s season of retrograde. Prepare to be spooked in a whole new way this year. Then Venus unfurls back into Libra and likely overdue restitution that is actually restorative justice. Still this rebalancing will look very different in the hands of the feminine gone dark, or rogue. And we have now, which means it’s way too late for all that to arrive the other way around. Not this year, not this revolution and most definitely not this retrograde.
For the next three months Venus makes her retrograde underworld journey back along the Via Combusta and its incendiary imperatives will drastically alter how the feminine moves. Forevermore. As with all Venusian retrograding, each portion of this forty days and forty nights journey - sound familiar? - is a distinct wilderness that will conjure particular reflections in each of us. This isn’t a formula, but it is a way. Each echoing retrograde star point tracing a formidable floral motif through our lives, its signature scent made of ash and nostalgia and reckoning.
Can you let the brew percolate into an elixir? Because no one can rush alchemy nor bend Venusian time to their will. She does not orbit around us. Can you stay in your underworld once the gates are flung open, and slam shut around you? Or will you be drawn by the lures and shades a Venus in retrograde also conjures from her lair. Do not waste these vital considerations on mere romance when the revolution of humanity is at stake. This retrograde is a revision test of your values, a reckoning of your relationship patterns and a total reconfiguration. Its clarion call to right the wrongs of the past in service of the future is all rolled into a hydra headed shadow that only you can meet.
The Venus Chronicles
The Chronicles of Venus is a curated shadow salon that follows the star points as its guide. Walking you through the process of Venus’ retrograde outlining motif and sequence, the astrology and astronomy, delivering the symmetry we are seeking as we sink into this lattice of shadow work.
This time around the descent will also take us through Mercury's concurrent retrograde and four distinct lunations, into Scorpio season proper and Venus’ turn direct in mid November in Libra. And then beyond as Venus returns to our night skies and radiates her greatest brilliance all year. That's not just a metaphor, darklings. This is ancient magic that is coded into the frequencies and currents of life on earth. Its mysteries gave rise to a Rose Lineage mirroring the pattern that the Earth and Venus trace in our skies with their entwined orbits. And this time around you can make your shadow journey in tandem, consciously curated and carefully crafted to marry ritual and sequence to each of our own very personal considerations and understanding.
Since 2019 when the Coven was formed, we have completed this deep process multiple times and its results are unparalleled. The last with Venus was in 2023 through Leo, also with a concurrent Merc retrograde in case you’ve been feeling like you won’t survive it. We have before and you will again. The one that was arguably worse and took out New Year was the Venus retrograde of late 2021, in Capricorn where Lilith hunts now. And before that, in 2018? Muse on this we must because it was a Venusian retrograde that covered almost exactly the same ground as this, treading the fabled path of the Fiery Way back from Scorpio into Libra.
The Venus Chronicles is the shadow salon that offers one way to actually do the shadow and light work of this retrograde, this cosmic lineage, this life on earth during the rebirthing of all our humanity. The Way that draws its many names in distinct mythologies and traditions from Venus’ orbital pattern in our skies and her cycles of life and death that live in our bodies. Venus knows, as do all the great goddesses from Inanna to Persephone, that darkness is fertile. The constant spectre of death forces you to face all the extinction thresholds knowing every phoenix stunt exacts its hefty toll as the price of rebirth. That parts of you which need to die and take their old ways with them can do so tended at the threshold and gentled by your care. That your return will be just as dazzling as Venus when you emerge lighter, all the disparate parts of you reclaimed and regenerated into your next form this life.
This is not just women’s work.
Historically it always was, and it shows. Its mythologies and true lore are women’s equivalent - some would say precedent - of the Hero’s Journey made famous in modern times by Joseph Campbell. Joe was following a story arc that arrived when matriarchy was despatched and its communal care traded for conquest. But in that version of the story the hero is singular, his hapless NPCs disposable and he always returns with his spoils to greater power and even greater conquest. An operating system that has left the rest of us bar the billionaires dangling at the edge of existence and staring down an increasingly desolate dehumanised future.
Fortunately the worm is also turning, in league with the rise of the force of the feminine in our skies and finally forming chorus here on earth too. Before you get lost in the binary, or rush to claim not all balls of belonging, consider that the work of the feminine within tends the part of all of us that has been most cruelly mistreated, abused and dismissed by patriarchy as a system of control. The feelings you don’t know how to hold. The buried damage and its shame offensive. The values that actually shaped your behaviour at the start and still make the rules above ground in the end zone. Everywhere you play pretend or swallow your tongue or your heart or your backbone whole. All the places you give yourself away to love or be loved, or now where your avatar does it to like or be liked. The shadows being cast that must be confronted - and integrated - are cultural and communal as much as they are interpersonal.
Shadow work is a deeply personal undertaking that always brings you back home. Having a map to follow really helps when you are on hands and knees in the dark and feel more alone than you ever have before. Knowing how to navigate your underworld is the secret source that powers any shadow journey, and this salon is designed to provide all that support, information and understanding as you make your way.
Venus’ retrograde lasts forty days and forty nights, a pilgrimage whose familiar refrain has been weaved into myriad stories of prophets and saviours. This salon is now open for you to Choose Your Own Adventure through Venus’ retrograde spookshow and all these dancing shadows. Each of the star points timed to her actual movement through the skies. A sequence that generates different considerations and distinct reorientation. Each with journalling, experiences and exercises, rituals and revelations and a live workshop tailored to lighthouse the way.
We’ve only just begun.
Venus Star Point I // Retrograde Alchemy
From October 3
Understanding the retrograde process, feeling into the frame and shape of your own Venusian shadows, committing to the process through ritual. Making the descent and avoiding the prescribed pitfalls. Self care for the longer haul and how to stare into your own blind spots.
Venusian Circle: Live workshop on October 8th following the Dark Mooner
Venus Star Point II // Influence & Boundary
From October 11
The continuing conversations braided into the retrograde by Mercury, Mars and Pluto, how to read the shape and frame of your own retrograde journey, maintaining boundaries and protecting vulnerability, exploring the wild full spectrum of your shadow with the compassion of the goddess and the rage of the dark feminine. The place where the shadow work gets really real.
Venus Star Point III // Blinded By The Dark
From October 19
The deepest part of the journey with Venus combust then cazimi, Mercury turns retrograde, houses shift and glitch. This turning point is the darkest portion of excavation and the salon offers journal and ritual processes to really stay with the shadow, wrangle dual retrogrades and move with the revelations. How to let yourself be changed by it all. Managing the hard part of true shadow work; its PTSD and triggers, navigating fear and terror in your underworld, developing a fresh relationship to initiation and its alchemy through the feminine lens.
Venusian Circle: Live workshop on October 23rd following the Full Mooner
Venus Star Point IV // Rebirth
From October 29
Venus in phoenix mode, reborn but still vulnerable in her Underworld. In the Salon we are tending grief and loss, honouring ancestral threads and loosening their binds as the Scorp portion gives way, suturing our oldest wounds and cleaning up the mess they have generated over the cycles. Your shadow sight and senses shift, your understanding deepens, the alchemy can be seen in motion and felt within.
Venus Star Point V // Shapeshifting
From November 5
Retrograde is a re-imagining and this is the stage where we truly understand from the inside how the caterpillar becomes butterfly within the cocoon. Together we reorient from past to present and future without abandoning the shadow again, shapeshifting into something else entirely. The results that make the sacrifice worth every hard yard and dark corner. The contact high of great shadow work and how it shifts your nexus of power unalterably. Remember, remember.
Venusian Circle: Live workshop on November 6th following the Dark Mooner
Venus Star Point VI // Emergence
From November 14
Venus and Mercury direct in tandem as we too make the return from our Underworld carefully and consciously. How to stay with hard won change in the shadows when exposed to the light of real life consequences. The shadow of retrograde, reorientation and return as well as all the tricks of the light. The magic of integration and the method that makes the work stick.
Venusian Circle: Live workshop on November 21st following the Full Mooner
Venus Star Point VII // Radiance
From November 25
Venus blazes at her greatest brilliance as our evening star, and you will too by the time this journey is done and we are all embracing a more Sagg state of mind. A final rounding up of your experience and a deeply felt ceremony to enshrine in the shift with ritual. This is a well earned celebration of your shadow work and a vow made to your darkness as much as your light. Fully Venusian.
Closing Venusian Circle: Date TBC to suit the cohort.
The dates listed are when each of the modules arrives with all the information and you can join anytime here for USD33, which will add you to the pool. Participants can purchase the workshops individually as we move through the Chronicles to attend the Mooner and its Venusian Circle. Because we do not record the mysteries for the machine nor perform for the Underworld or Outerworld as we move faithfully through our shadows there is no recording. The salon is offered to those who want to show up for their shadow work in this moment and this process. Like all oracular journeys, you have to make the crossing into the Underworld to meet Venus in her orbit and timing, not any other way around.
There are also a number of places to do this shadow work with me directly. We meet online for shadow sessions in addition to your attendance and process as part of the cohort. Highly recommended if this retrograde feels personal already. If you are local to Sydney, I offer imaginal shadow journeying in-clinic, wonderful if things hit a peak - or a low - during your process. As you can see darklings, over the decades of shadow work I have honed a modular process that also meets you in your orbit. This time again, like all the others before it, we craft your Venus Chronicles as a mix of sessions to suit.
This offering is one I hold open to anyone who hears the call of their shadow or the dark goddess, as one of her daughters and Venusian natives. Tis written in my stars. I hope you will join us in the salon as we dance with Venus and her shadows.
Until then, my love to the Lady.
Words c. Kerrie Basha 2026 // Bohomofo is an AI Free Zone