Category Current Astrology

Nov 12 2026

Return, But Different: The End of Venus Retrograde

Ripe pomegranates hanging from a tree, one split open to reveal deep red seeds
The pomegranate, ancient symbol of descent, desire, transformation, and return.

Hello you,

The ground was opened. The air’s been trembling. And if you’ve been feeling slowed, honeyed, provoked, pulled downward into yourself — well, let yourself fully embrace the rest of the experience. There’s purpose here.

The brightest and most beautiful planet in the night sky, the Goddess of Love — Venus — has been retrograde since October 3. Initially in Scorpio. Currently in Libra. And throughout the past five weeks, she’s been in a tense and complicated conversation with Pluto, the Lord of the Underworld who darkens the edges of our Solar System. Pluto is currently in Aquarius.

When Venus and Pluto meet in this way, they become insistent that you bring your values, your relationships, how you meet beauty, intimacy, and intensity, on a provocative shadow walk with them. The goal? To alchemize. To purify. To return to the light living from a more evolved understanding of yourself. Are you thinking about the past five weeks?

I’d really like you to think back to the end of this August. You might find something that was initiated then. Your values, how you experience beauty, your love life, the way you offer yourself intimately (or don’t), your finances, how you move through life’s most intense moments… even your vulnerability… maybe especially vulnerability. These are all places to feel your way through right now. And we’re currently moving toward the final phase of this energy… my opinion is that it’s important to look back over a cosmic tide of this magnitude once you’ve been swimming in it for a while. Then you’re able to understand what it means for you, and your lived experience. That’s where the value lies.

Even as Venus moved back from Scorpio into Libra during her retrograde journey, she’s maintained that arduous connection to Pluto throughout. This intimate, yet provocative combination wants you to do something cathartic… even, perhaps, regenerative.

Now, you’ve probably heard the version of Venus retrograde where your ex texts or you run into each other. Where in some way or another someone from the past shows up. Yes. Sometimes that happens.

But I’ve been sitting with a more fascinating question: what if what returns isn’t a person at all… but a hunger? What if being reminded of the ex is simply supposed to point you toward a pattern that wants changing? What if the return is a way you used to want. A creativity that went underground. A beauty that you won’t allow yourself to touch anymore. A part of your erotic life you folded away and told yourself was finished.

The question isn’t, Do I want it back? It’s, Who am I in the presence of what I desire now? Because you’re not the same person who wanted it the first time. And that’s the whole point of the retrograde — meeting what returns with who you’ve become.

I’ve been dreaming with Persephone through all of this. You may know Persephone… she’s the daughter who was abducted and carried into the Underworld by Hades (Pluto). But I haven’t so much been thinking of the girl who was taken — but of the queen who returned. She tasted something sweet in the underworld, despite every terrible thing, and that taste changed the shape of her. She didn’t come back as the one who originally descended against her will. She came back and reigned.

Return, but different.

And here’s the part of the story I keep going back to… after everything had been taken from her, after her world had become underworld, there was suddenly sweetness in her mouth. She’d been given pomegranate seeds. Here was something pleasurable. Delicious. By some miracle, after all she’d been through, something reached her. Something in her responded. That means she was still alive. To me, she encountered Eros — the burgeoning desire to still be reached by life and answer it.

Persephone was released from the Underworld, but because she’d eaten the sweet seeds of the pomegranate, she had to return. Cyclically.

But when she returns she doesn’t come back as the girl who left. She returns having become someone who belongs to both worlds. Wholeness doesn’t mean getting the old self back intact. It means becoming capable of integrating what was above and what was found below. Desire after descent has knowledge now. Depth. Choice. Appetite that has encountered consequence. Vulnerability that has encountered power.

The end of the Retrograde is very close… both Venus and Mercury start moving forward again within hours of each other on Friday November 13. That means you have until December 15 to understand what this intensely provocative season wants you to return to or from… but in a new fashion. You’ve been inhabiting the underworld, and now, as you reach back up toward the light, a resolution of these past many weeks will be in your grasp. Make sure you enter that stream of understanding for the full regeneration that’s possible.

I made you something you’ll find just below to accompany your walk out of the Venus Retrograde shadow…  something that will help you have your own encounter with something sweet in the darkness. The Taste of Return, a five-minute ritual. Something dark and sweet on your tongue, a cover over your head, a descent into whatever has gone quiet in you… and then you taste again on the way back up. I hope you also return  — but different…

This one’s for everyone — yes, men too. Eros belongs to all of us.

Go find something delicious. Open to the return. 🌑🍎

Yours,
Michelle

Venus Retrograde ritual altar with candle, pomegranate, dark chocolate, red wine, journal, and autumn botanicals
A Taste of Return, a Venus Retrograde ritual for the journey inward,
and the discovery that sometimes what returns is you.

A Taste of Return
Venus Retrograde Ritual

For the End of this Venus Retrograde Journey

Venus is in the final day of her retrograde (October 3 – November 13, 2026) having moved back from Scorpio into Libra. On direct motion, she’ll move back into Scorpio again, tracing the same contours three full times over just a few weeks. We have until December 15 to fulfil the promise of this year’s internal journey. This is a season for introspection and return: for finding out what you still want — how you want it differently, and who you are in the presence of it.

In the old myth, Persephone is taken away from bright innocence into the underworld, and what awakens her there is a taste. Sweetness reaches her in the dark, and something in her answers… despite everything. That taste becomes both her aliveness and her tether — she will ascend, and she will also return, changed by what she has tasted.

Sometimes what returns is you.

This ritual takes five minutes. And the beauty of your attention…

You’ll need:

  • Something gorgeous and sweet that you genuinely want to taste, held in a small, beautiful bowl. Pomegranate seeds, a few blackberries, a couple squares of dark chocolate, a date, a cookie, or a glass of wine to sip — or both — whatever calls to you. Choose what you desire. Desire is your guide.
  • A piece of dark cloth large enough to cover your head and shoulders. A scarf, a shirt, a towel, some magnificent, embroidered thing you brought back from your travels. Any cloth you use in daily life or keep on your altar can become your Venus Retrograde threshold.
  • A candle and matches or a lighter
  • A journal, pad, or slip of paper and pen
  • and five unhurried minutes.

The ritual:

Stand or sit comfortably, with your items placed beautifully around you.

Choose. Hold the delight you want to taste. Let it be wanted.

Taste. Take half of what you’ve chosen and TASTE IT — slowly enough to notice the instant pleasure bursting in your mouth. Chew slowly. Sip fully. Let it fill your whole mouth. Savor. Let the sweetness open you.

Save a bit. Save a few sips, and set a few seeds, one square, a berry or two aside, in the bowl beside the unlit candle. It waits for you on the other side.

Light the candle. With that taste of sweetness laughing on your tongue, light the candle, and watch the flame for a moment.

As you gaze at the flame, ask:
What in me still tastes alive?
Hold the question deeply, gently.

As you gaze at the flame, ask:
What in me has been hidden and wants to feel the fire of life again?
Hold the question deeply, gently.

Cover. Place the cloth over your head. Let the visible world soften and fall away… Light shifts… Sound shifts… You are gently enclosed inside your own presence. You have crossed the threshold from light to dark, right where you are. Magic.

Descend. Go down into Self — into whatever has gone quiet, waiting, ripening in the dark… the buried, the unfinished, the long-unfelt, the long-untasted. Let whatever comes, come…  a sensation, a memory, an urge to move, a longing, tears, sweet stillness.

Hold this:

What in my life is asking to be tasted — again, or for the first time?

(Some descents bring a different question with them: What have I desired so deeply that letting it into my life changed the landscape? If that one rises in you, follow it — it knows the way.)

Encounter. Stay a breath longer in the dark, with whatever you have found. Meet it. See it — Feel it, in the quiet, at last.

Lift. When you’re ready, lift the covering slowly. Return gently to the visible world.

Taste again. Eat the bite you saved. Drink the wine. The same sweetness now stands on both sides of the threshold — and you may taste it as someone new. Returned — but different.

Write down your revelations. Take your journal, your pad, your slip of paper, and commit in writing what you’ve discovered. Uncovered. Perhaps recovered.

Return to life. Within the next day, give what came to you one small embodied expression in the living world. Buy the flowers. Begin the page. Put on the music. Take the walk. Say yes to the thing. Reach for the person you love.

We descend for more life. We return – but different.
And sometimes what returns is you.

— with love, Michelle

Sep 26 2026

Aries Full Moon: Sept. 26, 2026

A luminous full moon hangs above a calm, deep-blue ocean beneath a dusky lavender sky. Its golden reflection creates a shimmering path across the water. Ivory text reads: “This Full Moon Brings You Into Your Body. Aries Full Moon · September 26, 2026.”
The Aries Full Moon, September 26, 2026.
A return to instinct, feeling, and the wisdom of your emotional body.

This Full Moon Brings You Into Your Body

At the Autumn Equinox, just four days ago, the Libra Sun reached across the sky to Neptune, inviting you to open to your own invisible world and notice what you can see when you close your eyes and feel your way into yourself.

Today’s Full Moon in Aries embraces Neptune on the other side of that Equinox moment, with the Sun in Libra still aching toward them.

The conversation between the Sun, Neptune, and now the Moon, has become deeply emotional, and you know what they say… As above, so below.

What you met, or intuited, or dreamed at the Equinox now moves into your emotional body. Into instinct, feeling, memory… into the things you sense before you know what words to wrap around them.

The Libra Sun illuminates your relationships with your people and your sense of beauty and everything you love. Across the way, the Aries Moon and Neptune are pulling you like the tide into a more intimate knowing, a more tender feeling for your own inner life.

What if this is one of the gifts of the changing light? You discovering that you don’t have to see something clearly to know that it’s there.

I’ve been exploring this in my new Equinox reflection, What You Can See When You Close Your Eyes, and in Forest of Breath, a free guided meditation for sleep that takes you deep into an Autumn forest and beneath an ancient tree and into the quiet between waking and dreaming.

Both are waiting for you at michellegregg.com. 🌿

xx Michelle

Forest of Breath: An Autumn Guided Imagery Meditation for Sleep

Read the Autumn Equinox reflection: What You Can See When You Close Your Eyes →

Jun 9 2026

Look for Venus and Jupiter tonight. ✨Venus Jupiter Conjunction on June 9 means love and abundance.

A twilight landscape of rolling green hills under an atmospheric, purple sky featuring the June 2026 Venus-Jupiter conjunction. The two bright planets align closely in the western sky above the horizon's sunset glow, illustrating the powerful astrological transit of abundance and planetary alignment.
Step outside into the twilight—the sky is offering you something golden tonight.

Look for Venus and Jupiter tonight. ✨

Have you spotted Venus near Jupiter yet?

Are you feeling loving abundance? Attraction? The possiblity of expansion? A desire for gorgeous relationships? A desire to fulfil your dreams?

These two planets have been moving closer and closer together for several days, so we’ve had some time to land in this beauty… keep it up! Keep aligning with those energies!

The conjunction is exact on June 9, 2026 – today. It’s so worth stepping outside for a few minutes just to watch them brighten the sky with their wonder. LOOK IN THE WESTERN SKY JUST AFTER SUNSET. Look West, then slightly North just above the horizon, and you’ll see them beaming their goodness on you. There’s something deeply reassuring about remembering that we’re living inside a real solar system — one that moves, turns, glows, and keeps its own elegant timing whether we’re paying attention or not.

And these planets won’t run from each other after tonight… you’ll be able to see them moving away from each other over the next few days. So if you have cloud cover, try again!

Venus and Jupiter coming together is one of those lovely pairings that speaks of pleasure, generosity, beauty, expansion, sweetness, and the feeling that life might still have something golden to offer.

Here’s the bit of astrology you’ll want to tuck into your knowing. These two planets together allow us to better resonate to:

• Opportunities, both ones we’ve wanted and worked toward, and unexpected ones.
• A positive shift in our financial well-being.
• The sense that loving connections and meaning for the future are opening up.
• Your heart starts to feel more alive – your resistance is dimming and your ideas are opening!

This energy moves towards those who consciously align with it. Expect to be joyous. Expect to be alive. Tell yourself that your life is good and beautiful and filled with love and all that you want and need. This is the most beautiful way to use the energy. Actively. With purpose. With full consciousness. Pull it toward you!

Go look west after sunset.
I bet you need that kind of beauty right now. 🧡

Mar 11 2026

The Tide Is Rising: Jupiter Goes Direct in Cancer

The tide is rising. Jupiter went direct in Cancer, March 10, 2026 – catch the wind.

Hi you…

Thanks for being here. And since you are, I’m just wondering. Do you feel something stirring? Are you feeling like you might be getting a little excited again about something that’s been at anchor a little too long? Or that you can feel a release from something that’s felt a little too still or heavy? I hope you do, because something shifted last night, and I want to share it with you.

Think back to November – or even sometime between November and December – just a few months ago. If there was something you were breathing life into, something that held a lot of meaning for you, a lot of promise, you might have noticed that around the Winter holidays the energy wasn’t gaining momentum anymore…

That was Jupiter. Our cosmic friend of big ideas and big hopes and exuberant, life affirming motivation. He started moving backwards on November 11 in the sign Cancer, and because he has everything to do with forward motion and gaining momentum and putting your faith and your sweat into something you really believe in, that backtracking can feel like what was once bright and shiny – right there on the horizon – lost its luster. The sunrise might have dimmed, or you might have felt some resistance, or started to doubt your own reasons for being lit up about it in the first place.

But here’s the thing… a really lovely thing. Last night, March 10, at 11:30 PM EDT, Jupiter started moving forward again, after four months of going against the tide. And when that happens, the energy begins to shift, and you catch a little wind in your sail, and you might feel the possibilities stirring again.

Maybe close your eyes for a couple seconds… see if you can align with that excitement again about the thing… whatever that thing was and STILL may be, and then see if you can find a smile around it. Can you? Do you feel the corners of your mouth turning up just a little when you focus on it? That’s what it feels like when hope returns…

That’s what it feels like when the tide turns, and you feel your own purpose start to swell again.

So, the whole reason for any planet to go Retrograde, is to give you time to rethink your plans, to realign with why you’re doing what you’re doing – maybe in a different way. During those four months of Jupiter traveling backwards, you were meant to gain some new perspective about what you believe in and what you’re trying to accomplish. Maybe during those four months you learned something? Or maybe you realized that you needed to change your plan or shift something slightly – or a lot – to make it better.

And if you’ve come up with a more honed and worthy goal, or shifted direction a little… and even if you didn’t!… what are you feeling right now?

This is the time the wind is picking up again.

So think about how you can gather your momentum again. Look for signs that things are shifting… hell, create your own shifts, be the wind in your own sail, because when you do, you’re actually moving with the current current. You’re saying to Jupiter, I get it! I’m moving with you… and he really likes that. 😊

And here’s the beautiful part: this is just the beginning. On March 20—the Spring Equinox—Mercury goes direct in Pisces, the Sun moves into Aries (pure initiation energy), and every single planet in the sky will be moving forward. Not one retrograde. Just momentum, clarity, and the open water.

We’ll talk more about that next week. But for now, know this: March 11-20 is the tide rising. Jupiter just cleared the mist. The Equinox is when you catch the wind.

How does that feel? What does that look like? What’s your new perspective? What’s happening that’s letting you know that things are starting to move forward?

If you want to explore what Jupiter moving forward means in your life right now—via your astrology chart—where your momentum is building, what’s ready to grow—I have a few openings this month. You can reach me here: astrology@michellegregg.com.



Sunlight pours through blooming honeysuckle and wild roses, capturing the golden warmth and lush abundance of Summer Solstice.
Jun 20 2025

The Longest Light: Summer Solstice and the Spirit of Cancer Season

Woman lying in sunlit summer grass, eyes closed in warmth and reverie.
The Sun lingers. Let yourself linger too.

Today, the Sun lingers.

He pauses in his journey, as if the heavens themselves are holding their breath. This is the longest light—the fullness of gold before the great turning inward begins again.

And here you are: open, alive, brimming with possibility.

Today the Sun moves into Cancer, and the warmth of the familiar wants to spread your arms wide to include something or someone new. With this fresh and gorgeous Cancer lens, there’s sweet longing to expand the heart’s circle. You might feel the nudge to gather your people close. To express your love in bigger, bolder ways. To feel them brighter, yet still long to keep them safe.

Within your circle, you might also feel a burning to shift the shape of your family dynamics, your relationships, your very definition of belonging – because you feel yourself growing and expanding toward something you might not yet know the shape of. But the urge to explore it is real.

Red-haired woman running through a sunlit summer field, barefoot and free, hair flying like wildfire—alive with purpose and joy
Answer the Sun’s invitation to bloom in full, erotic aliveness.

This is a moment to feel. To let your sensitivity guide you. Let light seep into every corner of your desire to be alive and whole and lush. Summer ignites an understanding of the eros of life—that creativity is erotic.

The Sun and Jupiter in tandem proclaim:
More is possible.
More love.
More truth.
More safety in your own skin.

A part of you may feel wide open to the “more.” You may answer the call because you feel an urge to sort your space, to clear the table and name what you’re ready to do next. You may feel called to bring order to your outer world, because of some clarity that wasn’t there last week. Or maybe your focus sharpens around how you show up for others, what you give, and how to make it count. You suddenly recognize how you want to show up to serve in the world – and you’re feeling the need to assess what that means and how it’s possible. The challenges that arise are the ignition and the motivation. Let them light you up. Let them call you.

Within that light, that calling, is a beautiful ache—a knowing that change doesn’t always require chaos. Sometimes it only takes a turn of the dial, a conscious clearing of what has overstayed, and the future rushes in like light through an opened door.

The dreams you’ve whispered to stars?
They want your hands.
They want your structure.
And even if your heart trembles a little at their bigness,
you are more than ready to hold them.

Let today be your still point.
Your sunlit center.
The place you pause, just long enough, to feel the light of what’s arriving.

A beam of joy.
A living solstice.
The day that doesn’t end.

A handwritten letter floats in the air above a sunlit path lined with wildflowers, as petals and leaves swirl gently in the breeze.
May 23 2025

The Magic of a Mind Made New: Gemini Season 2025

Two golden twin figures standing back to back, surrounded by cosmic light and symbols of duality, glowing with ethereal illumination.

Gemini Season has arrived like a breeze through an open window, carrying late Spring perfumes, poems, and possibilities. The Sun now shines in the sign of cleverness, curiosity, contradiction—and connection. And under this sky, the story you’re telling yourself is not the final draft. And the winds of change are blowing through the air like spells. We’re restless. We’re suddenly full of ideas we can’t quite wrangle.

While Gemini is often thought of as just a light flirtation with ideas, the sign actually goes much deeper. This particular Gemini Season is a sacred invitation to rethink the beliefs that bind you, rewrite the inner scripts that might have been keeping you small, and to rise into a new rhythm of self-expression. And this year, it’s personal.

Something essential is stirring—something in you, something in the wind, in the rhythm, in the light of longer days. And Gemini knows how to catch that breeze and translate it into words, ideas, and connections that take flight.

Gemini is mutable air. It shifts. It thinks. It flirts. It dances. And this season invites us to do the same—with our thinking, with our language, with our self-concept.

Gemini Season says:

  • Let’s choose a story that grows with us.
  • Let’s speak in fresh, living languages.
  • Let’s breathe into beliefs that sparkle with vitality.

This is the season for curious re-evaluation, for unlearning with love, for letting our thoughts take wing.

What must also be known is that the Sun entered Gemini in a precise trine to Pluto in Aquarius. This is rare. This is electric. This is transformation through thought—alchemy through language. While Gemini brings agility, adaptability, and dazzling multiplicity, Pluto adds depth, power, and an unflinching gaze into the soul of our mental patterns. We’re not just having new ideas—we’re entering soul-level editing.

This is the time to remember that your words hold power—and that they can empower. You can choose to speak in ways that shape your relationships toward evolution.

Your words, both thought and spoken, tune your frequency. You get to choose what that frequency feels like, and the direction you take.

In a Gemini-ruled world with Pluto present, language is a spell.

  • So be curious about the spells you’re casting.
  • Be attentive to the metaphors you live by.
  • Be playful with how you speak to yourself.

The twins of Gemini, Castor and Pollux, remind us that duality lives in all of us—the immortal and the mortal, the visible and the hidden, the speaker and the one who listens. Pluto’s trine to the Gemini Sun shines light into the places we’ve kept mentally compartmentalized, forcing open the doors between parts of the psyche we thought we had to keep separate.

The twins teach us that there’s never just one truth. There’s never just one version of reality. There’s always another perspective. Another voice. Another curiosity waiting to be followed.

A softly lit, enchanted workspace featuring an open journal, glowing candle, fresh flowers, and ethereal details like magical sparkles and gentle morning light. This image evokes the feeling of personal spellcraft, quiet reflection, and the sacred power of language. It captures the heart of Gemini season’s invitation to rethink, rewrite, and rise—starting right at your own kitchen table.

And when Mercury is active (as it always is during Gemini Season), our minds are extra tuned into all that’s moving.

This is a good time to:

  • Journal your questions instead of your answers
  • Read something you normally wouldn’t
  • Rewrite the About Me page of your life
  • Reconnect with the part of yourself that loves to think, to speak, to connect, to learn

Add to this the grounding presence of Mercury in Taurus, still holding the reins of the season’s ruler with slow, sensual thoughtfulness. Mercury in Taurus reminds us to think with the body, to speak with the breath, to choose words that build rather than break. He is trining the South Node in Virgo and sextiling the North Node in Pisces—a cosmic invitation to release perfectionism and control in favor of compassion, fluidity, and trust.

This is the beauty of cosmic choreography.

You may feel the pull to rewrite an old story. You may feel the itch of an outdated label that no longer fits. You may suddenly find yourself speaking words that feel more like spells than sentences.

Let them rise.

Let the mind make new myths.

Gemini Season isn’t here to help you master a message. It’s here to remind you that you are the message. That you are allowed to grow, adapt, shapeshift—and speak from the spark, not the script.

  1. Write your contradictions. Make a list of all the seemingly incompatible truths about you. Then ask: what if none of them are wrong?
  2. Speak out loud to the mirror. Choose one thought you believe about yourself. Say it out loud. How does it land in the body? Shift it if needed. Say it again.
  3. Walk and talk. Go for a walk and speak to yourself as if you’re speaking to your future self. Let the movement stir the words. Let the wind carry what no longer serves.

Remember: this is Mercury’s realm. Language is sacred. Thought is magic. And curiosity might just be the key that unlocks your next becoming.

Gemini says: Ask it. Try it. Say the wild thing.

You are not here to be consistent. You are here to be true.

And if you need permission to change the story? Gemini offers it freely.

Think of it as spring cleaning—but for the self.

Rethink. Rewrite. Rise.

Let this season be a flirtation with possibility. Let your words open doors. Let your thoughts lead you somewhere new.

Happy Gemini Season, my loves.

🖋 Michelle Gregg
Counseling Astrologer | michellegregg.com

A woman with long dark hair rests peacefully in a green garden surrounded by soft wildflowers.
Apr 24 2025

How Ya Feelin’?

So… how are you?
What’s in your head?
What’s in your heart?
What’s your body saying?
And maybe most importantly, how’s your Spirit?

I’m genuinely interested in your answers.

We’ve been navigating vivid, complex, often intense energies—each asking us to grow in ways we couldn’t have foreseen. And it makes sense if you’re feeling untethered, uncertain, or even hopeful in strange new ways.

Let’s take a breath and name the landscape:

  • Pluto’s move into Aquarius after 15 years in Capricorn—a generational upheaval.
  • Neptune’s shift from Pisces into Aries—a wave of the mystical meeting the spark of self.
  • And still to come: Saturn into Aries, Jupiter into Cancer, Uranus into Gemini, and Chiron into Taurus—all within a 10-month window. This is extraordinary. And it’s just beginning.

Eclipses, retrogrades, and the evolutionary churn of outer planet ingresses are rewriting the energetic atmosphere of our lives. What used to feel fixed or solid may no longer be so. And in the absence of certainty, there’s a strange kind of invitation:

🌿 To wake up.
🌿 To participate.
🌿 To become conscious creators in this great cosmic rewrite.

This time can feel like a lot. But it’s also fertile.

We can root ourselves in awareness, in love, in practice. We can respond to change with curiosity rather than fear. We can listen deeply to what’s being asked of us—and grow something new.

So tell me, dear one:
How ya feelin’?
What’s waking up inside you?
What do you long to embody now?

You’re not alone in this.
You’re part of something vast.
And you’ve got allies in every element, every planet, every breath.

The world is changing—and so are you.
Let’s make it beautiful.

(Please feel free to tell me how you’re feeling in the comments!)

🌿 Feeling the shifts and craving grounded, soulful support?

If this post stirred something in you… I invite you to have a session with me. Click this link to find out more. And thank you!

A woman holding a mirror gazes into a glowing full moon reflected in a still forest pond beneath a starry sky.
Apr 12 2025

The Beauty You Heal – A Full Moon in Libra Reflection

As this luminous Libra Full Moon rises and Venus shifts forward in the sky, you may find yourself caught between the ache of old wounds and the longing for grace. On April 12 at 8:22 PM EDT, the Libra Full Moon 2025 rises as Venus stations direct in Pisces, ushering in beauty, balance, and hope. Opposing the Sun conjunct Chiron in Aries, this lunation reveals relational wounds and inner truths. A powerful time for contemplation, healing, and choosing peace over perfection.

The Moon opens to the perfection of her Sun’s reflection just forty minutes before Venus begins her forward motion. This is no ordinary moment of lunar fullness. It is a cosmic sigh. A letting go. A hopeful love letter to beauty and balance, delivered right as Venus herself turns her gaze forward again.

At the heart of this lunation is a provocative opposition between the Moon in Libra and the Sun conjunct Chiron in Aries. Here, Libra’s deep longing for harmony is mirrored and challenged by Aries’ raw need to assert individuality—especially where wounds have been left untended. A balance between cooperation and self-motivation is the a-ha! that Libra quietly craves, and Aries boldly insists upon.

Chiron invites awareness of where you’ve been hurt in relationship. Libra asks: “What if you could move from that wound with more grace than you thought possible?” Venus’ return to forward motion in Pisces lends a subtle spiritual influence—she forms a semi-sextile to the Sun and Chiron, hoping you’ll opt to create a compassionate bridge from self-healing to reconnection. But the Moon’s quincunx to Venus suggests it might not be entirely comfortable. Some readjustment is required. It’s an invitation to realign your values, not just in romance, but in all the ways you relate.

This Full Moon asks:

  • What wounds are still shaping how you show up with others?
  • What inner beauty do you still withhold because of those wounds?
  • And are you finally ready to release the mask of harmony to live in true peace?

Identify your Muse, and allow yourself to breathe gently into their arms. Not to start something new—but to return to what you’ve always known. That beauty begins in relationship with your own soul. That balance is not stillness, but movement in rhythm. That healing is an art form.

Tonight, under Libra’s golden gaze and Venus’ forward glance, allow yourself to become the art. Let go of the pretense. Keep the beauty. Forgive the wound. And choose peace—not because you have to, but because you finally can.

Just below is a link to a guided imagery meditation I created for this incredible Full Moon in Libra. I hope you enjoy it, and please, follow me in Instagram!

Mar 21 2025

Aries Season! The Art of Renewal: Spiritual Growth and Purifying Shadow Work at the Spring Equinox


Happy Spring! Each Spring Equinox offers its own unique energy to mark the beginning of the return of warmth, life, and light. And while the hours of daylight and darkness may be equal, sometimes the energy of the moment may not feel quite as balanced as the hours. The astrological chart of the moment the Sun moved into Aries at 5:03 AM Eastern on March 20, 2025, ushered us into themes both light and dark for the duration of Spring. This Aries Season offers influences of spiritual growth, beauty, self-reflection, and also the opportunity for intense transformation. With intense transformation, balance is often hard won, but is absolutely the goal.

This year our initiation into re-burgeoning life is unhurried and the threshold between Winter and Spring may not feel entirely clear. This new season also arrives with an infusion of the potential for spiritual awareness and the desire to reach for the Divine. The Sun (our conscious awareness), newly in Aries, conjoins Neptune (divine inspiration, compassion, beauty) blurring the edges between Self and Other. Besides the spiritual, other ways of living through this Neptunian lens include exploring our artistic gifts, opening our imaginations, or offering something that inspires others. Still another way is to feel like hibernating in our internal fantasy for just a little while longer…

There are some fiery energies to tap into, with the Aries Sun, Venus and Mercury being in an easy conversation with the Moon in Sagittarius, which lends itself to an expansive and excitable emotional environment. But even this fire is more like firelight than a blaze of glory, since Mercury and Venus are both Retrograde in Aries. They are encouraging us to retreat to our internal world to analyze and evaluate our patterns of communicating with our loved ones. And they’re encouraging us to suss out whether our relationships support and uphold our values. If they don’t, these Retrograde planets beg the question: what are we going to do about it?

There’s also a very intense undercurrent to all of this via Pluto, who is at large in this year’s Spring Equinox energy. His transformative presence is felt through our relationships, the way we think and communicate (how’s your self-talk?) pulling at our deepest emotional yearnings. There are potentially obsessive leanings with this dark presence, further holding the normally straightforward fire of Aries in check. But the purpose with Pluto is to get to the truth and to purify those areas of our lives he’s touching. So as we evaluate ourselves, our thought patterns, the ways in which we communicate (including with ourselves), and our relational values, we must be honest about what we find. And then we must take the path of the Spring caterpillar. Without dissolving in her chrysalis, she’ll never become the glorious butterfly. So, this year, in order to meet Spring in right alignment, we must go into our depths before we fly joyously into the sunlight on the fragrant breeze of Spring. But when we do, we’ll have done a little purifying shadow work, and will feel even lighter and happier for having done it.

For those of you interested in diving into the astrology chart for the Spring Equinox 2025, here you go! If you have any questions about what you see, feel free to be in touch! astrology@michellegregg

Spring Equinox Chart drawn for March 20, 2025 at 5:03 AM Eastern Daylight Time from Decatur, GA, USA

Venus Retrograde ritual setting with pomegranate, dark chocolate, red wine, candle, journal, and autumn botanicals
Apr 11 2008

A Taste of Return: An End of Venus Retrograde Ritual

Venus Retrograde ritual altar with candle, pomegranate, dark chocolate, red wine, journal, and autumn botanicals
A Taste of Return, a Venus Retrograde ritual for the journey inward,
and the discovery that sometimes what returns is you.

A Taste of Return
An End of Venus Retrograde Ritual

Open to the meaning of your Venus Retrograde Journey

Venus is in the final day of her retrograde (October 3 – November 13, 2026) having moved back from Scorpio into Libra. On direct motion, she’ll move back into Scorpio again, tracing for the final time the same contours she’s crossed twice over the past several weeks. We have until December 15 to fulfil the promise of this year’s internal journey. This is a season for introspection and return: for finding out what you still want — how you want it differently, and who you are in the presence of it.

In the old myth, Persephone is taken away from bright innocence into the underworld, and what awakens her there is a taste. Sweetness reaches her in the dark, and something in her answers… despite everything. That taste becomes both her aliveness and her tether — she will ascend, and she will also return, changed by what she has tasted.

Sometimes what returns is you.

This ritual takes five minutes. And the beauty of your attention…

You’ll need:

  • Something gorgeous and sweet that you genuinely want to taste, held in a small, beautiful bowl. Pomegranate seeds, a few blackberries, a couple squares of dark chocolate, a date, a cookie, or a glass of wine to sip — or both — whatever calls to you. Choose what you desire. Desire is your guide.
  • A piece of dark cloth large enough to cover your head and shoulders. A scarf, a shirt, a towel, some magnificent, embroidered thing you brought back from your travels. Any cloth you use in daily life or keep on your altar can become your Venus Retrograde threshold.
  • A candle and matches or a lighter
  • A journal, pad, or slip of paper and pen
  • and five unhurried minutes.

The ritual:

Stand or sit comfortably, with your items placed beautifully around you.

Choose. Hold the delight you want to taste. Let it be wanted.

Taste. Take half of what you’ve chosen and TASTE IT — slowly enough to notice the instant pleasure bursting in your mouth. Chew slowly. Sip fully. Let it fill your whole mouth. Savor. Let the sweetness open you.

Save a bit. Save a few sips, and set a few seeds, one square, a berry or two aside, in the bowl beside the unlit candle. It waits for you on the other side.

Light the candle. With that taste of sweetness laughing on your tongue, light the candle, and watch the flame for a moment.

As you gaze at the flame, ask:
What in me still tastes alive?
Hold the question deeply, gently.

As you gaze at the flame, ask:
What in me has been hidden and wants to feel the fire of life again?
Hold the question deeply, gently.

Cover. Place the cloth over your head. Let the visible world soften and fall away… Light shifts… Sound shifts… You are gently enclosed inside your own presence. You have crossed the threshold from light to dark, right where you are. Magic.

Descend. Go down into Self — into whatever has gone quiet, waiting, ripening in the dark… the buried, the unfinished, the long-unfelt, the long-untasted. Let whatever comes, come…  a sensation, a memory, an urge to move, a longing, tears, sweet stillness.

Hold this:

What in my life is asking to be tasted — again, or for the first time?

(Some descents bring a different question with them: What have I desired so deeply that letting it into my life changed the landscape? If that one rises in you, follow it — it knows the way.)

Encounter. Stay a breath longer in the dark, with whatever you have found. Meet it. See it — Feel it, in the quiet, at last.

Lift. When you’re ready, lift the covering slowly. Return gently to the visible world.

Taste again. Eat the bite you saved. Drink the wine. The same sweetness now stands on both sides of the threshold — and you may taste it as someone new. Returned — but different.

Write down your revelations. Take your journal, your pad, your slip of paper, and commit in writing what you’ve discovered. Uncovered. Perhaps recovered.

Return to life. Within the next day, give what came to you one small embodied expression in the living world. Buy the flowers. Begin the page. Put on the music. Take the walk. Say yes to the thing. Reach for the person you love.

We descend for more life. We return – but different.
And sometimes what returns is you.

— with love, Michelle