The Last Descent In Our Lifetime
Happy Dark Moon!! Depending on when you're reading this, the moon has gone completely dark or is just about to, and tomorrow morning, Saturday the 10th, she goes new at 9:50 here in Utah, twenty nine and a half days since the last New Moon in Virgo, Earth Element. One full circle of her.
You might have noticed I went quiet. I usually offer a First Quarter, a Full Moon and a Last Quarter in your inbox. This month, there wasn't, I didn't have it in me, the drive just wasn't there. I was in my own stuff, deep inside myself, living the work instead of writing about it, and that's okay. More than okay actually, because when I finally looked up at the sky I found out I wasn't the only one who went under.p at the sky I found out I wasn't the only one who went under.
Venus Went Down Into the Water
On October 3rd, the exact day of the Last Quarter I never sent, Venus stood completely still at 8 degrees Scorpio, the deepest form of the element of water, and turned retrograde. At the last New Moon, she was taking her last breath of Libra, Air, straight into that ocean.
The Sumerians knew Venus as Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, and the oldest story we have of her is her descent. I speak to this myth alot, including in my book, because its such a powerful story. She went down into the underworld to her sister Ereshkigal, keeper of the dead, and at each of the seven gates she had to give something up, her crown, her jewels, her robe, until she stood in front of her sister completely naked, nothing left of her but herself. Her sister struck her dead and hung her body on a hook for three days and three nights. Her faithful Ninshubur, who Inanna had told to come looking if she didn't return, went to the gods for help, and Inanna was brought back up.
The ancients tracked this in the actual sky. When Venus goes retrograde, the evening star sinks lower into the sunset each night, disappears completely for a handful of days as she passes between us and the Sun, and then rises on the other side as the morning star. The descent into the self…she meets herself (the sun) head on. This time she will meet her own projections of light around October 24th.
Her retrograde lasts about forty days, forty two this time, October 3rd to November 14th. Jesus went into the desert for forty days, alone, hungry, tempted, and most of us know that story. I think Inanna's is the female version of it, and it's about two thousand years older. She went down instead of out, bearing it all, baring her naked raw self to truly see herself and the parts of her that needed to die. And she let them.
On October 7th Mercury, the divine messenger, caught up to her at 8 degrees Scorpio, exact, bringing clear communication down into the depths, under the water with her. Maybe Ninshubur is the part of you that loves you enough to come looking for you.
Thirteen Times Into the Same Water
That moment she disappears comes around about every 584 days, and five of them fit almost perfectly into eight Earth years. If you follow her path from Earth across those eight years, the loops she makes trace five petals around us, a rose, and if you connect the five places she disappears in the order she makes them, they draw a five pointed star. The Rose of Venus. Every eight years she comes back to almost the same point of her rose, slipping back about two and a half degrees each time.
One point of her rose has been in Scorpio, water, since November 1930, and she's gone down into that same water every eight years since, 1938, 1946, 1954, 1962, 1970, 1978, 1986, 1994, 2002, 2010, 2018, and now October 24th, 2026, at less than one degree Scorpio. Thirteen descents. Thirteen, the number of the goddess, of the moons in her year, the circle complete. And this one is her last.
None of Us Will Be Here When She Comes Back
On October 25th she backs out of Scorpio into Libra, air, the scales, and by 2034 this point of her rose has slipped over the line into Libra too. The bottom of her descent won't touch Scorpio again until around 2181. Not us, not our kids, probably not even our grandkids. For almost everyone alive right now, every time Venus has gone down at this point she's gone down into Scorpio, the grief, the rage, the want, the jealousy, everything we were taught to keep repressed. This is the last time in our lifetime we get to go all the way down with her into those depths of ourselves.
We Were Born Down There With Her
Pluto, the ruler of Scorpio, lord of the underworld, was discovered in February of 1930, the same year this whole Scorpio era of Venus began. On October 16th, a week before she disappears, Pluto turns direct at 3 degrees Aquarius, air, squaring the exact spot where she goes under.
Then there's the generation born with Pluto itself in Scorpio, roughly 1983 to 1995, my generation. Both times Venus went down into Scorpio while we were being born, 1986 and 1994, Pluto was down there in the water with her. Astrologers in the evolutionary tradition name the core wounds of that generation as betrayal, abandonment and loss, and the growth edge as self-reliance, learning to trust what's actually yours.
Love, Death and the Messenger Are Talking in the Dark
Venus is the personal planet of love, worth, money, what we let ourselves receive. Pluto is the generational planet of death and rebirth, and in Aquarius, air, the sign of humanity, he's leading the death and rebirth of the whole collective. While she's down at the bottom of the ocean he turns around and looks right at her, and what the two of them are talking about is everything we've been in an unhealthy relationship with…money, abundance, the relationships where we abandon ourselves to keep someone else comfortable, the ways we learned to earn love by giving ourselves away. Pluto lets those die. Venus leaves them at the gates.
Mercury stays down there with them the whole time. He went into Scorpio on September 30th and doesn't come out until December 6th, and on October 24th, the same day she disappears, he turns retrograde at 21 degrees Scorpio and goes under too, turning direct on November 13th, the day before she does. The messenger stays in the water this whole time, so whatever Venus and Pluto are working out down there, the language for it comes up from inside you, in your own words.
Maybe that's why so many of us with Pluto in Scorpio carry what feels like memory of ancient Egypt, the temples, the mysteries, the place our spirituality lived…and the place we left it, where we were reprogrammed to sacrifice ourselves on someone else's altar instead of knowing we are the altar. Our mothers and grandmothers went down into this same water every eight years carrying that same program.
So the generation carrying Scorpio in its bones gets to go down with Inanna one last time, at the last point she touches these depths in our lifetime, with the lord of the underworld facing her from the sign of humanity. I think that's an opportunity for a complete DNA shift, complete ancestral healing, complete generational healing, the kind that doesn't get handed down again. Whatever you leave at those gates, you leave for everyone in your line who went down before you and couldn't set it down.
Eight years ago, October 2018, she disappeared at 3 degrees Scorpio. Where were you in October 2018? What about 2010, or 2002? Where did you leave yourself, and who were you leaving yourself for? If you want, sit with that one for a minute.
She Comes Back Up Onto the Scales
On November 14th she turns direct at 22 degrees Libra, air, her own sign. She comes up out of the underworld and the first place she stands is on the scales.
In ancient Egypt, after death, the heart was laid on one side of the scales and the feather of Ma'at on the other, Ma'at the goddess, truth itself, the living order that holds everything together. Anubis guided the soul to the scales and Thoth wrote down what they showed. A heart in balance with the feather got to continue on. A heart gets heavy from living against what it already knows.
The Maiden Is Still Holding the Scales
Tomorrow's New Moon lands on those scales too, 17 degrees Libra, air. In the actual sky though, the soul layer, the Sun and Moon are meeting in front of the constellation Virgo, earth, the maiden. At the last New Moon I told you about Astraea, the last immortal to leave the earth, who took her scales up into the sky beside her when she went. Tomorrow the self is standing on the scales and the soul is still standing with her, the one who holds them. And the asteroid Astraea is sitting right on the North Node in Aquarius, air, the direction the whole collective is being pulled, less than a degree apart.
At the last New Moon Uranus turned retrograde in Gemini, air, and I said whatever insight came would feel less like a bolt out of nowhere and more like something you already knew. That's what this whole cycle was for me, nothing new, just remembering.
What Are You Leaving at the Gate?
So, twenty nine and a half days. What's occurred for you since the last New Moon? We're still down here with her, she doesn't come back up until November 14th. What's being stripped off you right now, at a gate you didn't even know you were walking through? What are you setting down, and what do you keep picking back up? If you want, put your hand on your heart tonight in the dark and feel how heavy it is, against the feather.
Tomorrow the dark goes new, one more gate, and she's still going down. Whatever you plant gets planted down here in the underworld, and on November 14th she comes up beside it in Libra, air.
Let the heaviness die down here. Every heavy thing you let go of feeds what you plant. Happy Dark Moon!!
With you,
Kat
☥ For the good of all, Harm of none
enter the Holy Raw
Walk the silence with purpose. Let the liminal reveal what is ready to rise.
✧ Transparency Note
This piece was created with the support of AI as a structural and research tool.
All language, edits, and final resonance were shaped and approved by Kat.
No content here is AI-generated without human voice, everything you read has been truth-filtered, mythic, with final word and resonance by Kat
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