Venus in the 12th House: Why It’s Time to Find Pleasure in Solitude
If you follow astrologers on social media, you've probably noticed that we tend to make a big deal of it when a planet changes signs.
There are two reasons for this:
1. We are all scrambling to create content, and we are all using the same three astrology planners to help us do it. Planetary ingresses (which is the technical term for when a planet changes signs) are highlighted, so they catch our attention and are relatively easy to write about.
2. The Romans used to say that the way a thing begins often says a lot about the nature of the thing. By observing the first day of a planet's passage through a sign, you can often determine the nature of the business the planet has with you during its passage through that sign.
Usually, planetary ingress days don’t feel very important to me. Suitably for someone born under the sign of the bull, I have a thick skull when it comes to planetary energies. It takes a lot of drama to get through to me.
The day Venus moved into the 12th house was one of those high-drama days. I felt like I was made of glass. Every social interaction felt like it left a chip or a crack. Issues with my social circle that I had been coping with adequately for months boiled over all at once.
Venus is supposed to be a benefic planet, so it was surprising to experience a Venus transit that way.
One of the qualities of the benefics, however, is that they try to improve whatever they touch.
Venus in the House of Troubles
The 12th house is about withdrawing from the world to attend to yourself spiritually. Monastics and mystics tend to have strong 12th houses, but so do addicts and people who struggle with chronic health problems.
Even if you read the 12th house as positively as you can, it's a difficult area of life to work with. Doing it right requires the self-discipline to spend a lot of time alone and a willingness to look in the mirror without flinching.
I have a difficult relationship with the 12th house. I just finished my 12th house profection year, which is supposed to be a time when you let go of the old self and prepare to become something new. I resisted it with every fiber of my being from the first day to the last. It just didn't feel like the right time to step away from the world for a year.
In retrospect, I can see, while I consciously worked very hard to resist withdrawing from the world, life conspired to bring about endings. I withdrew from online communities that I had been very invested in. The worldwide pandemic kept me from IRL gatherings that would have usually taken a lot of my time.
Despite these realizations, I know I haven't even begun to make peace with the 12th house. I still fundamentally see it as something to be fought.
Venus Full of Grace
Just before I wrote this, I did something I almost never do: I shut my office door.
Then I lit a stick of my favorite incense and went back to work.
It's just me and my roommate home right now. We're on separate floors, and he's great about respecting my work, but the meaning of a shut door feels important to me right now. I need to create a safe and beautiful haven of solitude.
Pleasure in solitude: That's a Venus sentence if I've ever heard one.
It's almost like Venus is taking me by the hand and saying, "This year has been hard. You've been forced into a lot of solitude you don't want, but your happiness depends on not associating every moment of solitude with this unpleasantness."
Venus is spending most of this month in Cancer, and we're all being invited in various ways to heal our hearts from the imposed solitude of the last year.
What healing pleasures are you embracing right now?
