Tarot Parallel: Venus Retrograding In Leo
Prophecy of The Empress Reverse & Strength through 7 of Wands and 6 of Wands
Dear Lovers ~ peace be upon your radiant hearts.
I have been contemplating a lot lately about the changing nature of my tarot reading practice. Recently, I ANNOUNCED “the voyage of unknown return” that I shall conclude my tarot offerings from accepting any new clients by the end of August. Thus, there’s only one month-ish left to collaborate with me in a 60 minutes or 90 minutes tarot session, with a 20% discount as a farewell gift: Love20.
BOOK HERE ~ for your heart, or as a special gift for another soul-friend.
If you ever felt called to be in a collaborative heart-soul-space with me through the TAROT, I WELCOME YOU SO MUCH, and I WOULD LOVE TO GUIDE YOU! If finances are an absolute restriction, yet you are reading this post/email and your heart is softly nudging you to “get Shahir as your tarot diviner…”, kindly proceed and redeem code GIFTOFLOVE through the booking link for a sliding scale option, pay-what-your-heart-can after your reading!
I have been attuning myself to be more unapologetically GENEROUS lately, as an internal energetic practice to be more intimate with my DREAMSELF - a concept I am exploring and designing deeper through Worldbuilding Summer Camp with
. I have always felt that whenever I vision myself as a divine vessel of abundance for others (loved ones and strangers) from a place of sovereignty and excitement, money and resources seem to knock on my door with less-to-zero resistance through multiple resources! BE, SO BE IT.From September onwards, only return clients are given *exclusive access* to book a tarot reading with me whenever there’s an energetic ALIGNMENT of intention from both parties: me & you. Tarot is forever my FIRST LOVE in divination, it saved my life from the harshness of reality countless times, and it made me become more ALIVE with the beauty of CO-CREATING REALITY WITH DIVINITY. LOVE has the power to change us, and it’s bizarre how much my immense love for my tarot practice has changed who I am in the past, all the way to who I am today, and the future.
I found tarot when I was struggling with finding my life purpose and trying to reconcile my identity as a queer muslim - because certain dominant religious dogma has a way of breaking our hearts apart… again and again, and again. Because in a less-heart-centered and fractured society… it is easier to swallow and hide the fractured pieces of our hearts than to accept the wholeness of who we are, and who we are becoming with our radiant hearts.
Our beloved Maulana Rumi once said, “you have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.” And perhaps Venus retrograding in Leo might relate to that for some of us.
As a person with a Leo 9th House of God with an exalted Aries Sun - I am somewhat obsessed with the concept of the HEART in any spiritual modalities or teachings. Partly because, there is a part of my heart that has been broken by the universe, by others, by myself - yet still I continue to stay courageously, OPEN. Just like the divine Sun, ruler of Leo, it takes so much heart to continue showing up every day from sunrise to sunset, illuminating different parts of the divine Earth & Moon.
Recently, I have also been perusing and contemplating a Venus Retrograde workbook created by our beloved and brilliant Pallas K. Augustine titled 'Where Is Your Heart? Venus Retrograde in Leo 2023'. For those who are VENUS-inclined, I would highly recommend you purchase it HERE.
For instance, because of Pallas workbook, I’ve been thinking about the 8-year Venus in Leo cycle ~ the last retrograding Venus in Leo was in August 2015. I was entering the final year of my undergraduate degree in the San Francisco Bay Area, and just left a memorable summer internship in New York City. One of my sisters visited me during that time, and guess what… I shall be traveling with the same sister this late August to celebrate her graduation/admission as a surgical fellow! On top of that, later in the trip, I’ll be meeting and traveling with Wendy, whom I went to college with. My natal Leo 9th House themes of travel and higher education is becoming ALIVE.
9th House is also associated with divination and direct communication with divinity, and it felt timely that I decided to pivot my tarot practice toward something more intimate and less public. In honor of my tarot practice and the astrological transit, I would love to share insights on the tarot correspondences between The Empress & Strength traversing through the solar realm of Decan 2 and Face 3 of Leo - which are associated with the minor arcanas 6 of Wands & 7 of Wands.
Mystical Overview of Venus in Leo: 5, 6, & 7 of Wands
In early June, I was on Sabrina Monarch’s podcast to share the mystical overview of Venus through all the tarot Decan or Faces of Leo… this is a wonderful time for a RE-listening of the episode!
In episode 240, Sabrina and Shahir discuss Venus in Leo and the upcoming retrograde [IT’S HERE!] through the perspective of decans of Leo and the associated tarot cards (5, 6, & 7 of Wands) and the station of Venus conjunct fixed star Regulus.
In the podcast episode, I mentioned and paraphrased Maya Angelou’s quote which is worth highlighting through this retrograding Venus in Leo transit:
“Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” ~ Maya Angelou
There are so much gems exchanged in the podcast episode, here are a few keywords and catchphrases ~ paraphrased:
there is a duality of the sun because solar light can bring heat and it shines, we love it, but it could also be “blinding” - we don’t enjoy looking at the sun directly.
with venus in leo, when we are being authentic with ourselves… we magnetize, we bring out and harmonize different types of authenticity in others.
we have to model how we CELEBRATE ourselves for others to do so. (6 of Wands)
a law of physic and a spiritual law: with every action, there is a reaction (7 of Wands) - the importance of discernment and strategy.
importance of validating and empathizing with each other’s reality, especially when it comes to people we are in deep and intimate relationships with. celebrating other people’s stories - enriches the connection!
the ecstasy of spotlighting other people’s essence: shining stars collaborate with each other!
Recently, Sabrina also shared a Youtube video/podcast episode on Being (Un)Seen & Fantastical Inner Worlds with the transit Venus Rx!
Connecting The Empress Reverse & Strength
In the Tarot, The Empress is often a major arcana representing fertility and fecundity, and the symbol of Venus is apparent in the imagery. Whatever she/they touches - it blooms into a flower, into a field of paddy, into the ecstasy of being fed after a period of starvation. One of my favorite symbols in the Smith-Rider-Waite tarot is the pomegranate fruit, and they appear *only* in both consecutive major arcanas The Empress (3) and The High Priestess (2) out of 78 tarot cards. In the previous card, the pomegranate symbolism was on the veil in the background behind the Priestess figure, yet in The Empress - the feminine-presenting figure is clothed in a robe with pomegranates symbols - as if the deep magic of creation has been embodied in the transition between the two cards. The pomegranate is also a sacred symbol in Goddess worship, femininity, and creation. Yet, it is also the symbol of death and rebirth because of the survival story of the abduction and rape of Goddess Persephone, a spring goddess. Persephone allegedly ate, ranging from 3 to 7, pomegranate seeds, a fruit that sealed her fate in the underworld with Hades, without her knowing the rules prior to consumption.
Thus, for me, the fruit represents the cosmic forces that create new realities and the choices that bind us to our realities. It was about making bodily choices, despite the unfair consequences of said choices in a system that is inherently rigged against us.
Most tarot readers love the appearance of The Empress tarot card because on most occasions it signals something “positive” - something is growing - something is becoming more abundant - something is rooted in beauty. WE LOVE THAT, RIGHT?
What happens if we interpret transit planetary retrograde as tarot reversals?Personally, I only work with tarot reversals if and only if my guides nudged me to do so. And I don’t particularly have a “recipe” for reading reversals since I don’t agree with the idea of reversals as having the complete opposite meaning. It could be the opposite, but it could also be complementary, it could overlap, it could be a double-dosage of The Empress vibe… the list goes on.
This time, The Empress reversed reminds me of the tender processes of returning to our generative bodies. In Tarot for Change,
wrote about The Empress in relationship to intuitive and body-knowing. She shared that “when we aren’t in our body, we’re not able to experience the consequences of behavior that disrupts our energy and lives. We push through hangovers; ignore hunger and fullness cues; hang out too much with people whom we don’t feel good around; spend years, decades, and sometimes lifetimes doing work that elicits agony or, perhaps worse, nothing at all.”The paragraph above hit me so hard when I was reading it sometime in November 2021 while enjoying an ice cream in Harlem, that I annotated “Ooof!” on the page margins. I still remember the HIT, the heart-enlightened feeling, as I re-read and write the quotes above. The Empress reversed is asking and inviting us to RE-turn to our intuitive body-knowing, especially with regards to the things/patterns/stories we have created in the past…. do we want to create more of them? do we want to create less of them? do we want to change direction? do we want to stop their creation altogether? do we want to keep eating and planting the seeds that burn and exhaust our life forces? or do we want to choose different seeds?
Because our bodies are holy sites of fertility and fecundity, because by choosing the seeds/things/patterns/stories which are more aligned with our bodies - we honor our body-knowing, present, and generative future.
How then, lovers, do we return to our wildly intuitive and natural body-knowing with this Venus in retrograde?
Perhaps, the guidance lies in the terrain of Strength, which corresponds to the zodiac sign Leo. Strength card is always the act of balancing between the rawness of our desires with the softness of our ideals. I don’t believe that our “wildness” could or should be tamed necessarily - for it is against the natural principle of being wild. However, I do believe in the intimate collaboration with the wildness from within, and to do so requires SO MUCH HEART, SO MUCH INNER-COURAGE, SO MUCH COMPASSION.
Returning to our intuitive heart also requires the exploration of all chambers within us because everything has to flow freely, for the fire to continue burning bright within us. If there are parts of us that are stuck or stagnant - it disrupts the fiery blood from flowing smoothly. This is partly why I believe the symbol of lemniscate or infinity is present above the figure’s laurel crown, a beautiful reminder of the infinite flow of the cosmos within you, and with you.
Sometimes, whenever I am afraid of trusting my heart-body-knowing, or leaning on my inner-fire, my passion. It is often because I fear that my fire is not enough, or that my fire is unimportant, or that my fire is too powerful for my body to handle - and that I might burn or hurt those who are associated with me or around me, or I might face judgment because of it all. Yet, our inner fire is a holy gift from divinity ~ and for us to keep flowing with such a gift - we cannot and should not limit it ourselves. To limit our hearts is to constrict the heart’s chambers, and to slowly strip us from being alive.
[Again] How then, lovers, do we return to our wildly intuitive and natural body-knowing with this Venus in retrograde?
This Venus Retrograding in Leo - I hope you re-set your heart on fire!
I hope you explore the playful intimacy between living and being alive!
I hope you remember the love, within your fire, and you find those who love to celebrate and fan your fires too!
I hope one or more of your major life purposes are illuminated, because illumination becomes part of the fertile process of creation… thus, I hope you shine and you dance to the rhythm of your intuitive and everlasting sun.
Forever Your Love Devotee,
Shahir
lysm 🤍