Venus on Point

Venus is coming to a standstill.  Here are some snippets from the Astrodienst Ephemeris.   

Venus travels only 7 minutes in the zodiac today.

The planet of love and kindness can be easily followed throughout its cycle with Earth and Sun.  

Tracking Venus when it is slowing down is a great meditation. We can consider how it is falling from view in its approach to passage between Earth and Sun.

It helps steady the mind and focus on the solar system, as we approach new spiritual experiences.  Do you feel your ability to extend kindness pulling back or coming into a still focus?  Does seeing Venus slowing down give you any insight into the changes you feel coming in your approach to others? 

The Astrodienst Swiss Ephemeris is free, and accessible to the public.

At conjunction on far side of Sun Venus covered 1 degree 15 minutes in a day.  The last one was in Oct at the beginning of Scorpio.

5 months after superior conjunction in Oct Venus is still flying.

We saw Venus highest in the evening sky in June.  Greatest elongation, when it was seen farthest from Sun, was June 6.

And to keep things interesting, Mercury is now flying at top speed as it rounds the far side of the Sun!  Our minds are very active, commerce and communication are whizzing away.  Then there’s the growing Moon….  But this meditation centers on Venus; the friend slowing down as it passes from the celebratory sign of Leo to the studious sign of Virgo, and then back to the Leo party.   This July our brilliant evening star dipped down below the ecliptic, like a Radio City Music Hall Rockette ducking out near the end of the line as the curtains closed in from the west. 
 

Both Venus and Jupiter set earlier every night as we see the setting Sun’s light every day closer to both of them.  We are losing visibility of our two charming benifics, and have to know without being able to point to them that they are still there. 

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We don’t have to comb through the ephemeris looking for the moment Venus was as far ahead of the Sun as it gets for a cycle, Astrodienst provides another (free!) set of pdf’s that show several highlights of a planet’s cycle.  These are snippets from the pdf for Venus from 1600-2100.  Yes, they cover centuries of cycles!

In this cropped section of Venus cycles I outlined the date for greatest (or maximum) elongation with a blue square.