Venus conjunct Sun & sextile Varda!

Tomorrow Venus will conjunct the Sun - traditionally called Venus Cazimi - just as Mercury turns retrograde. This is the mid-point of the retrograde Venus cycle. How have you been going with this reassessment of your values and relationships? Hopefully you've found the space to make some adjustments in both those areas. Perhaps you have been updating your look by going through your wardrobe and shedding the clothes that are no longer you. Or sorting through that storeroom of stuff and clearing out and rearranging your home. I've been doing my tax return and putting together the course materials for our new Mani course - which I'm loving - and which starts as the retrograde Venus and Mercury turn direct.

Now, with this weekend's conjunction, the Sun will be burning up all the remaining clutter and baggage in our values and relationships, enabling the space for a renewal in those areas which you will refine and settle in place during the remaining three weeks of the Venus retrograde. This combustion is created through your wilful actions, so you have to do it, but your actions are likely to be very personally motivated with the retrograde Venus in Scorpio, so bear this in mind.

And Mercury turning retrograde just as this Venus Kazimi occurs, means that you will also be reassessing your ideas and communications, as you work to settle in place these new values and relationships over the next three weeks - so this is likely to be a very internal time. While this mental reassessment may introduce some confusion to start with, it will likely encourage you to double down on making some changes in your life as both planets turn stationary-direct in mid November. 

Finding Inspiration & Hope in the Venus Cazimi

We are blessed to be getting some enlightening help during this Venus Kazimi through the Sun-Venus conjunction being closely sextile Varda, our new planet of inspiration consciousness, at 29 degrees of Sagittarius. Varda is the goddess who kindled the stars in the mythology of the Elves in The Lord of the Rings, so she creates light in dark places and shows us the light, if we need guidance or inspiration. She enables us to hold a clear, luminous orientation when the world around us becomes confusing or difficult. She also enables us to shine our light in the world and thereby to inspire others. So the sextile should turn the Venus Kazimi into a light-filled relationship reassessment experience, where we might both understand ourselves at a very deep level, and also see the way forward to the changes we want to make in our lives.

In Tolkien's mythology, when the Dark Lord took over Middle Earth, it was Varda who inspired her people and led them through the long night toward a new and safer home. She brings order out of chaos by placing the stars in the sky — by naming what is true and real, and by showing others the pattern of light that can guide them forward. In a sextile to the Venus Cazimi, her energy is available to us as an active gift rather than a passive one. This is an aspect of opportunity — it does not work automatically, but when we reach toward it consciously, it opens something. And what Varda is offering through this sextile is the capacity to see clearly into our own values and relationships right now, and to find there not just what needs to be cleared away, but what is genuinely worth carrying forward into the new.

If Varda is not yet a conscious presence in your inner life, you may find this aspect expressing itself somewhat differently. At the unconscious level, Varda's energy can pull us into a rich inner fantasy world that has less and less to do with the reality in front of us. Rather than seeing clearly, we find ourselves constructing narratives — sometimes gloriously detailed ones — that feel more satisfying than the actual choices available to us. The Venus retrograde and Mercury retrograde together already have a dreamy, inward quality, and without Varda's higher orientation, that inwardness can tip into visions that have gone stale, and we might start playing strategic games rather than engaging in genuine reassessment. If you find yourself during these next few days cycling through old relationship stories, winning imaginary arguments, or dressing up avoidance as deep reflection, that is Varda's shadow at work. The invitation is simply to ask, with fresh eyes: what is actually real here? What is genuinely mine to carry forward, and what am I just maintaining out of habit or fear?

For those already walking a conscious inner path, the Varda sextile to this Venus Cazimi is a genuinely beautiful and potentially clarifying gift. She is the Kindler of the Stars — which means she is available to illuminate, to help us see the pattern of what we are becoming rather than just the confusion of what we are moving through. With the Sun burning through the accumulated residue of our values and relationships right now, and Varda in sextile to that fire, you may find that what emerges from the combustion is not just empty space but a constellation of something real — a clearer sense of what you actually love, what you genuinely stand for, and what kind of connection you are ready to build in the weeks ahead.

Pay attention to what arrives as inspiration rather than analysis during these days. Varda does not work primarily through reasoning — she works through the sudden interior clarity of seeing the stars in their right places, of recognising the pattern. If you find yourself during the Venus Cazimi with an unexpected sense of knowing — about a relationship, a value, a direction you want to move in — that is her quality of light. Trust it. It has been forming through the whole retrograde process, and the Cazimi is the moment the Sun burns away the last obscuring cloud.

Varda also brings the capacity to walk away cleanly from what no longer serves us. One of her deeper gifts is precisely this: the ability to acknowledge past betrayals or stagnant associations, to release them without rancour, and to step forward into genuinely new territory. With the Venus retrograde already asking us to reassess who and what we value, and with Mercury about to begin its own retrograde reassessment of our communications and ideas, Varda's light can help you distinguish between the connections and values worth renewing and those that have truly run their course. That discernment — clear, non-dramatic, genuinely luminous — is her great contribution to this moment.

The deeper teaching Varda carries is that the interactive struggle with whatever is dark or difficult in our lives is won not through force or strategy, but through inspiration and hope — through the simple act of kindling light in the places that most need it. She asks us to become more objective, less distracted by the turbulence at the edges, more steadily aware of the whole situation we are navigating. In the context of this Venus Cazimi, that means holding the retrograde process lightly enough to see it for what it is: not a disruption, but an invitation to place the stars of our inner life in their right order, so that we — and perhaps those around us — can navigate by them more truly in the months ahead.

Varda - Venus Cazimi Special

If this sextile has given you a sense of how Varda's inspiration consciousness might be working in your own life, then our Varda 101 course is the place to explore this in depth. Kick off the new year by developing your ability to hope and be inspired — these are powerful shaping forces in our lives, because they open us to our full potential — To encourage you, I have a Venus Cazimi Special which gives you the course for less than one third of the full price! This is the best deal you will get on this course, so be quick to reserve your place!

Over six weeks, you will discover how Varda's light-kindling, hope-bearing, constellation-placing energy is specifically positioned in your chart — through your natal house position, her aspects to your personal planets, and her transits through your chart. Through live Zoom sessions, instructional webinars, and chart-based consciousness exercises, you will develop a real, lived relationship with the planet that teaches us to create light in dark places and to inspire others to find their own way forward.

May the stars kindle in you, and light your way forward. I hope you can join us on Varda and thanks for your work embracing these new aspects of consciousness. 

Love and laughter

Alan

I highly recommend the Dwarf Planets Course for the insights and the amount of new information and perspective gathered. Alan’s teaching inspires one and brings new light and spiritual understanding to charts (certainly to mine). His humor and friendly approach made the seminars very enjoyable, yet profound.  Elisabetta Quintiliani - Italy