The heart remembers.

The heart remembers the girl who kissed you in second grade. The heart remembers the boy who told you you weren’t pretty when you were twelve. The heart remembers every love and every crush, requited or not.

The heart carries these memories with it everywhere you go—of pain, love, ecstasy, grief, communion and abandonment. The heart knows things the mind has forgotten.

Sometimes this is a good thing: You remember moments of joy in times of sorrow and love in times of loneliness. Other times it is the opposite, and the heart becomes heavy with its burdens.

Your heart is full of ghosts.

On October 5th, 2018, Venus—planet of love, beauty, value, and worth—stations retrograde in the tropical sign of Scorpio.

She remains in the Scorpion’s subterranean waters until Halloween, when she returns to the sign of Libra, a much happier home for her.

Consider this a month-long Halloween for your heart.

Love is kind, love is warm, love is gentle. But love is often accompanied by pain, and that pain compounds and weakens when it is not dealt with appropriately. Venus’s retrograde through Scorpio will take us on a journey into the underworld of what we love and what we value, and remind us of what loves or once loved us. That can mean exes popping up out of the woodwork, or discovering a family photo album in the attic, or remembering why you stopped painting so vividly you have no choice but to pick up a canvas and brush once again.

When you deal with the darkness in your heart, when you acknowledge the pain and do what it takes to move through it to the other side, you find that it is full of light as well. And that by scraping out the encrusted justifications and coping narratives from around those wounds, you create a great deal of room for love and light and all that is beautiful and holy.

So don’t be afraid of the ghosts haunting your heart. We all have them. And when, instead of trying to banish them with holy water and banging of pots and pans, you offer them tea and conversation and help them find the solace to move on… You are likely to discover that the mysterious film on the mirrors has disappeared, and the furniture stops rearranging itself behind your back.

After All Hallows’ Eve things get much less spooky. Venus’s retrograde through Libra from October 31st until November 16th takes us out of the haunted mansion and into the temple of beauty where we may find ourselves better able to integrate the lessons of Venus’s time in Scorpio. We can find ourselves letting all the love and light in that there is, shocked by how much room we have for it in our hearts now that we’ve cleared out all the clutter.

November 16th, Venus stations direct in Libra, and the heart is moving forward from there, newly birthed and cleaned of all its gunk.

If you enjoy my writing and find it valuable, consider supporting me on Patreon. Between this posting and October 5th, I will be posting brief horoscopes for all twelves signs in a Patrons-only post, telling you what to expect from this time of Venus’s retrograde. I am also available for readings.