Venus stationary-retrograde sextile Ixion!
I hope you are enjoying today's stationary-retrograde Venus. Our values and relationships have reached a plateau and we're heading into a period of reassessment of those areas of our lives, in which we'll use more personal reference points, rather than the socially accepted ones we normally use.
As she turns, Venus in Scorpio is closely bi-quintile Neptune in Aries, and sextile Ixion, our new seeker consciousness, at 7 degrees of Capricorn… so, as we enter this period of reassessment of our values and relationships, we will be prompted to integrate this at a very deep level with our spiritual consciousness, and also to be authentic and to follow our bliss in our review process.
More about this in a moment, but first, as this is my first blog-post since before the United Astrology Conference, I can report that we had a huge success at the conference, selling lots of books, doing lots of dwarf-planet readings - which people loved - and generally getting love and support from the astrological community. Many well-known astrologers stopped by our booth and thanked me for my work, saying that they were using my interpretations, which made me realise the value and reach of this newsletter. This feedback has encouraged me to double down on this work of interpreting the dwarf planet transits in these next years.
I went on from UAC to talk at the British Astrological Conference in Nottingham, where my work was also very well received. However I caught Covid at UAC and I have been nursing myself since then to get through my commitments, which is why I haven't put out a blog-post for almost a month. Thankfully I'm now back from the void and largely recovered.
Deep Authentic Reassessment
So back to the Venus bi-quintile Neptune and sextile Ixion we are currently all experiencing. This is a genuinely rich and layered sky for the inner work that the Venus retrograde is inviting us to do, and it is bringing us into a deep and authentic reassessment of what we truely value. Let's look at what Ixion in particular is adding.
Ixion is the wild child in each of us — the part that just wants to satisfy our personal passions and is constantly asking whether the rules we are playing by are actually the right ones. He orbits in resonance with Neptune, and at the more enlightened level of his expression this means that his passionate energy can be focused into a personal spiritual mission: where Neptune's spirituality is nebulous and vast, Ixion takes that same frequency and concentrates it into something specific, embodied, and deeply personal. With Venus now sextiling him from Scorpio as she turns retrograde, we have a flowing and fruitful connection between our deepest values, our most intimate relationships, and Ixion's passionate call to be authentically, wholeheartedly ourselves.
The biquintile to Neptune adds another dimension. The biquintile is an aspect of creative urgency — part of the fifth harmonic family that speaks of mastery and the need to release something that has been developing into fuller expression. Venus biquintile Neptune as she stations retrograde is a call to let our spiritual and transcendent sensibility genuinely inform the reassessment we are entering — not to apply social or conventional criteria to our values and relationships, but to use the deep, visionary, dissolving wisdom of Neptune in Aries to see them freshly, as they truly are and as they could most beautifully become.
Together, these two aspects are creating an unusual and precious invitation: to look honestly at what we value and who we love, through both Ixion's passionate authenticity and Neptune's spiritual clarity, and to let what we find guide us forward in a way that is genuinely more our own.
If we are not yet consciously working with Ixion's energy, this Venus sextile may stir a restlessness in our values and relationships that feels somewhat compulsive — a desire to throw off the constraints of how things have been and reach for what we want right now, without quite checking whether that impulse is wisdom or simply the arousal of base passions at a vulnerable moment. Venus retrograde in Scorpio already tends to surface buried desires and unresolved relational intensity. Ixion at the unconscious level can amplify this into the kind of passionate urgency that leads to broken promises or decisions made in the heat of a moment that we later regret. The second chances that Ixion's myth always offers are genuinely available — but at this level, they tend to be wasted. If you find yourself feeling this kind of pressure during the retrograde, the practical signal is to pause before acting. The reassessment Venus is asking for is a slower, more honest process than Ixion's raw energy naturally wants to allow.
For those of us on the spiritual path, however, this aspect pattern is one of the most useful gifts a Venus retrograde can receive. Ixion in sextile offers us, as we turn inward with Venus, exactly the quality of honest self-encounter that makes a retrograde truly productive. He invites us to own what we genuinely want in our relationships and values without filtering it through what is socially acceptable or what others expect of us. The retrograde is already asking us to use more personal reference points — Ixion is the planet who supplies the authenticity and the courage to actually do that.
The secret that Ixion's teaching consistently returns to is the sensitivity to unspoken agreements. Every relationship we are in has these — implicit understandings about how far we can go, what is genuinely welcome, and where the real grey area lies between our inhibitions and the actual freedom available in each connection. The Venus retrograde in Scorpio is the perfect time to become more conscious of these agreements, to feel into what they actually are rather than what we have assumed them to be. In which of our relationships are we holding back something authentic out of conditioning rather than genuine respect for the other? And conversely, where have we been overstepping, claiming territory in a relationship that hasn't genuinely been offered? These are Ixion's questions, and asked honestly during a Venus retrograde, they can reorganise our relational landscape in ways that bring us considerably more genuine freedom and considerably more genuine intimacy.
The biquintile to Neptune in Aries adds creative urgency to this inner work. Aries Neptune is already asking us to find a new, bolder, more individually pioneering spirituality — one that does not simply inherit the forms of the past but charts something genuinely personal and alive. Venus biquintile this energy as she turns retrograde is asking that our values and our relationships be touched by this same bold spiritual freshness. What would your most important relationship look like if it were organised around your most authentic spiritual understanding of what love actually is, rather than convention? What would your relationship with your own values look like if you stopped measuring them against the socially agreed standard and allowed them to be as individual and as spiritually alive as Ixion and Neptune together are calling for?
You may find that during this retrograde, something clarifies about a relationship or a value that has been genuinely calling for this kind of honest reassessment for some time. The sextile to Ixion is a flowing aspect — it supports rather than forces. The work will still need doing. But the passion and the authentic self-knowing to do it are genuinely available right now in a way they may not always be.
At the most spiritually evolved expression of this pattern, Ixion's blessing reveals itself fully. His passionate personal mission, focused through Neptune's spiritual vision and channelled through Venus's loving reassessment, can produce something genuinely rare: a set of values and a relational life that are both deeply personal and genuinely spiritually alive, that serve as an evolutionary impulse not just for us but for those around us who can sense what it looks like when someone is truly living from their own authentic centre. The old structures around love and value are crumbling. Ixion, at his finest, is the energy that helps us chart a genuinely new course — not lawlessly, but with the passionate integrity that knows both its own fire and the implicit agreements that make that fire sustainable in relationship. Let this retrograde be genuinely yours.
Ixion - Retrograde Venus Special
If this Venus retrograde pattern has illuminated something about how Ixion's seeker energy is operating in your values and relationships — and how much more freely and authentically you might be living if you worked with him consciously — our Ixion 101 course is the perfect place to begin that exploration in depth. The course kicks off in January, so participating will give you a great start to the new year, and I have a Retrograde Venus Special to encourage you. This is the best deal you will get on this course and this is the only time it will be offered, so be quick to grab your opportunity!
On this course, over six weeks, you will explore Ixion's placement in your personal chart through live Zoom sessions, instructional webinars, and deeply personal consciousness exercises designed to help you onboard Ixion's seeker consciousness into your actual lived experience. You will work with your own chart in community with fellow students, exploring Ixion's house position, his aspects, and his transits — understanding exactly how this passionate, authentic, spiritually focused energy is shaping your life. You have a choice of two Zoom times, plus access to our dedicated tutor support program for those who want extra help with the exercises.
May this retrograde return you to yourself, and may what you find there be worth following. I hope you can join us on Ixion 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
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