The Intercepted Child: A Personal and Collective Reflection.

During her retrograde journey, Venus moved back through the first decan of Scorpio and is now moving through the last decan of Libra.

I have been using my own chart to unfurl several layers of meaning coming to focus at this time. These insights refer directly to my own experiences and yet I feel they have resonance in the collective too.

Today Venus is a 27 ° Libra. On 13 November she will station direct at 22 ° Libra. On 24 October Venus was in the “Heart of the Sun”– the last Venus Star Point in Scorpio until 2177. This Venus “petal” on the pentagram will continue in Libra for roughly 110 years. The first ingress into Libra happened on 22 October 2022 at 29 ° Libra. From the next Star Point alignment in 2030, this “petal” will remain in Libra until 2113.

That’s a lot of technical information to say that a Venus Star Point has made a lifetime transition from the fixed watery depths of Scorpio to the relational sign of Libra.

What that means for you depends on a few factors:

Do you have any planets or points between 22 ° Libra and 8 ° Scorpio, and if so, what house do they fall in?

It could also be useful to reflect on what was happening for you around 22 October 2022.

Personally, at that time I was considering moving in with my partner. At the same time a friend was about to purchase a property in Scotland and wanted me to run it as an air B & B. Neither of these things happened; I put a stop to them. I’m not sure how consciously I registered it at the time but on reflection I see clearly that I did not want to be a tenant in other people’s lives; I wanted a home of my own.

In my own natal chart, in the band of the zodiac that Venus is currently moving through this retrograde period, asteroid Kaali is at 23 ° Libra 52’; Black Moon Lilith Interpolated is at 24 ° Libra 12’; Black Moon Lilith Oscillating is at 24 ° Libra 45’; Black Moon Lilith Mean is at 24 ° Libra 48’, asteroid Karma is at 26 ° Libra 46’, and asteroid Child is at 0 ° Scorpio 3’ (the exact degree of the Venus Star Point at 0 ° Scorpio 45’).

More peripherally, Uranus is at 18 ° Libra 13’; IC at 18 ° Libra 20’, and the Moon is at 19 ° Libra 43’.

During this Venus retrograde I am aware of how traumatic or painful experiences encountered in childhood and through our family of origin make scars in the psyche that continue to bleed in our adult relationships.

I have always been aware that this concentrated stellium across this bottom part of my chart in Libra, (3^rd and 4^th houses) is a major artery and psychic nerve that continues to be activated in my life.

Lilith is concentrated (tripled), focused and turbo charged by asteroid Kaali (kundalini energy). With the placement of asteroid Karma here, I am actively working with my ancestral line. That all of this sits close to my natal Moon and Uranus directly on the IC portal, points to a structural pillar of my life directly connected to my roots and ancestry.

The IC is the deepest darkest part of the chart; it is a psychic umbilical cord tracking back through the generations and containing all that has been hidden, repressed and unresolved, as well as the gifts and strengths of our ancestral lineage.

I have spent years working with this symbolism. There has been a lot to unpack but I didn’t realise until now why it felt that although I’ve been mining these depths (the basement of my psyche) for so long and still had a sense that there was more to unearth. This inner quest has taken a lot of life energy and libido; Mars represents our libido. In my natal chart, Mars sits across from the Libra stellium, closely conjunct Chiron (the wound).

I always had a sense that there were things I could not see and did not have access to and so I dived deeper. I became aware of the astral planes of existence… became a shaman of my own soul.

Along the way I have found that I could apply these excavation techniques to the charts of my clients– you can only meet a client as deeply and as far as you’ve gone yourself.

For years I have used the Placidus house system by default. Occasionally a client will request to work with another house system and I oblige. My own astrologer, who I have consulted over the years, uses Koch and it is by using this house system that I have revealed more information and had several “ah-ha” moments during Venus’ retrograde.

In my chart, when using Koch, the signs of Scorpio and Taurus are intercepted in the 4^th house; this means that asteroid Child is intercepted.

What an Intercepted Sign or PlanetMeans~

Intercepted signs do not necessarily mean that the sign and the associated house energy are blocked. It does mean that they are in some way contained, internalised or delayed. Because the sign does not touch a house cusp, it lacks a smooth outward flow, particularly in early life. Any planets or points within the sign are also intercepted.

Usual ways to access this internalised content are not effective; release comes through intuition, reflection, symbolism, dreams, creativity and other right brain activity. Also from working with the signs on either side of the intercepted sign.

Until the content becomes more available, there can be a tendency to project it onto others. Traits that are sidelined, hidden, or out of reach– but that are crucial to the person’s wholeness– may lead to a sense of fragmentation or even brokenness.

While other faculties work well and we may even excel at certain aspects of life, without the available life energy of the intercepted sign or planet we can feel that our fullest potential eludes us.

Shamanically speaking this is a lost, or fragmented soul aspect; soul retrieval could be beneficial.

When I consider this, it helps me to understand why I have struggled to contact my authentic child. With a concentrated stellium in Libra, I became the adapted child.

With Uranus and Moon on the IC, repressed memories would come in the form of flashbacks, or sudden rage and anger. When younger this eruption from the unconscious could also find release in impulsivity or intoxication.

Trapped energy from the basement of my psyche came through dream images throughout many years.

Triple Black Moon Lilith had a part to play too; in her shadow aspect, Lilith was the outcast, the black sheep, the scapegoat and the sexually shamed woman. The child trapped in the 4^th house– alongside Scorpionic power– had lost access to her natural instincts and boundaries.

What was banished on the cusp of the 4^th house in Libra, the exiled aspects of Lilith, and the kundalini power of Kaali were also banished to the 4^th house dungeon. It was almost as if the conditioned Libra niceness that had been installed in me since my earliest days could only take so much before popping (Lilith will tolerate only so much). Kundalini energy that is not properly channelled can trigger a nervous system overload; repressed traumas and unconscious material can open up the psyche before the mind can process them leading to emotional instability and even psychosis.

I also suspect that asteroid Kaali is a point in the chart where we have access to the astral planes. In an unconscious state we can be astral prey. This gets dark and touches upon shadowy psyop territory.

In ancient star patterns, Libra and Scorpio were considered the same constellation and only became separated by the Romans in the 1st century BCE. In early Mesopotamian and Babylonian astronomy, the claws of the giant Scorpion stretched across the section of the sky we now call Libra. Scorpio was a potent symbol of the underworld and astral power.

The Scorpion was primarily associated with Išḫara, the goddess of oaths and love. On Mesopotamian boundary stones Išḫara was symbolised as a scorpion. To the ancient mind, she represented cosmic justice– anyone who broke an oath would be stung by her tail.

The goddess Ishtar (the Sumerian Inanna) was also connected to the scorpion; both Išḫara and Ishtar were identified with the cosmic movements of the planet Venus.

From Ishtar to Venus~

Venus is the Roman goddess of sex, fertility, beauty, prosperity, and victory. As one of the most widely referenced deities in the Greco-Roman pantheon, her myths and attributes were adopted by the Romans from the Greek Aphrodite. The cult of Aphrodite was largely derived from the Phoenician goddess Astarte, who is cognate with the East Semitic goddess Ishtar; Ishtar’s cult was based on the Sumerian cult of Inanna. These goddesses form a lineage involved with love sex, fertility, divine justice, and war.

In a poem written by the Akkadian poet Enheduanna, Ishtar is referred to as “The Goddess of Fearsome Divine Powers”. The poet begins by praising Inanna as the planet Venus before telling us how she is raped by the inept Gardener, Shukaletuda. When the goddess wakes from her slumber and realises that she has been violated, she is furious and unleashes great plagues and storms upon the Earth… she turns the rivers to blood.

This is the darker aspect of Venus that has been severed by the separation of Libra and Scorpio. As modern women we have been conditioned from birth to be loving, giving, feminine, polite, not too much, never angry, not too aggressive in our sexual appetite but sexually available and receptive to men’s sexual desires and the palatable to the male gaze.

These darker aspects of the feminine have been exiled with Lilith.

In the severance and banishment of a more autonomous, sexual, boundaried, fierce and justice focused feminine who will sting any adversary who crosses her, we have become compliant and our feminine power undermined and exploited.

In my personal story I feel this happened early in childhood.

The unadapted child, the free- spirited child allowed to follow her own soul’s path and develop her unique essence, has strong instincts; she knows when something feels right and when something is wrong and will let it be known. The adapted and silenced child whose life critically depends upon being loved and cared for will override herself to be safe and to belong.

This is a common story for many children in our world; these adaptations run deep, become ingrained and habituated as the coping mechanisms we carry into adulthood and our relationships.

As Venus retrogrades through Scorpio and Libra closing off a hundred-year cycle, I am imagining the reweaving and merging of Scorpio and Libra. It’s as if Venus is garnering her own lost aspects, the darker Ishtar traits, and resetting the boundaries and oaths of Ishara.

As Russell Brand stands trial for several accounts of violation against the feminine, a sacred law, long forgotten, is returning.

I don’t know what is going on for you during this Venus retrograde but maybe somewhere within the layers of your psyche, an ancient voice is speaking.

Where in your life have boundaries been transgressed?

What parts of yourself may be locked in the underworld?

Like Inanna on the hook, cast the eye of death by her shadow sister self-Ereshkigal, and then sprinkled by the waters of life, what is being revived in you?

In the depths of Scorpio, in the underworld we descended with Venus to reclaim the severed parts of ourselves. Now as Venus journeys through Libra, we have an opportunity to allow those newly resurrected parts to be brought into the relational sphere of Libra.

How does the loving, accommodating, endlessly giving goddess of pleasure also set her sacred boundaries?

In the disempowerment of the feminine over millennia, women have been tamed, subdued, sexualised, abused, and cut off from the root of their power and their instincts.

We are now undergoing a massive collective feminine soul retrieval to reclaim this power.

Personally, I am releasing the intercepted child, letting go of the adapted child and giving birth to the divine child. This is an unexplored, esoteric power of “The Scorpion”– the ability to reproduce itself through the process of parthenogenesis.