Ep. 477 Transcript: Venus Retrograde Repetitions in the News

The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 477, titled:

Venus Retrograde Repetitions in the News

With Chris Brennan

Episode originally released on February 7, 2025

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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com

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Transcribed by Teresa “Peri” Lardo

Transcription released February 16th, 2025

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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey. My name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. In this episode, I’m gonna be talking about Venus retrograde repetitions that are happening in the news over the course of the past month.

So this is a follow up to an episode that I recorded last month with Nick Dagan Best on Venus retrogrades in Aries in history where we went back and we looked at the current Venus retrograde season which is just getting started right now in January where Venus is about to go retrograde in the sign of Aries. And since Venus goes retrograde in the same sign every eight years, we decided to go back in history in eight year increments and look at all the times that Venus had gone retrograde in that sign and just document some of the correlations that we found and some of the similarities and some of the repetitions between those different periods.

So we recorded that episode almost a month ago now on January 10th, and since that time, there’s been a ton of different repetitions of Venus retrograde events that have started coming back up in the news, including for subjects that we had talked about in the previous episode as being different Venus retrograde events from the past. So today I’m recording this on Thursday, February 6th, 2025, starting at – it looks like I just started at, like, 1:13 or so PM in Denver, Colorado.

So over the past month, there have been a ton of different Venus retrograde stories in the news. What I’m gonna do today is I’m gonna go through and just start to document some of these stories that are happening in the news already as Venus is slowing down and getting ready to station retrograde in Aries on March 1st. And part of the reason I wanna do this is because I wanna document some of this stuff as it’s happening in real time, but also because I want to give people a head’s up so that they know what to look for so that other listeners can keep their eyes open and let me know if they see other Venus retrograde repetitions happening in the news as well so that maybe at the end of this, I can do some follow up episodes to collect more stories. So some of the stories that I’m gonna collect today that I’ve noticed in the news are ones that I noticed happening in the news that I saw in like, the newspaper or online on social media or what have you. Others were sent in by listeners of the podcast over the course of the past few weeks. Especially I wanted to give a shout out to listener and patron Adam Rice, who submitted a bunch of stories through our private discussion forum for patrons through our page on Patreon.com. And he found a number of different stories, so I wanted to give him a special shout out. I also wanted to give a shout out to patron Natalee Fish who also did some interesting work on Venus retrograde repetitions and sent in some notable stories. So I’ll mention other people that sent in individual stories along the way as I go as well, but I wanted to specifically mention those two.

So originally, Nick Dagan Best and I were gonna record this as a follow up today, but he just had a catastrophic technical failure with his computer, so he wasn’t able to join me today. And I was really trying hard to catch this electional chart today on the Moon-Jupiter conjunction in Gemini, and due to deadlines and things like that with having to move onto other episodes, I have to go ahead and record it today. So I’m gonna try doing this as a solo show; I originally structured it as something that would be a dialogue between two people, so we’ll see how this goes, so just bear with me given that.

So first things first, let me give some context before I start about the dates for the Venus retrograde so you understand the time frames I’m talking about, especially since some people might notice that Venus hasn’t quite stationed retrograde yet because it’s not going to until March 1st. However, we’re already in what I call Venus retrograde season, because as soon as Venus moved into Pisces on January 2nd, which is one of the signs that it’s gonna retrograde back to towards the end of the retrograde, for me the Venus retrograde season officially began already at that time because part of what the Venus retrograde is is it’s an extended transit of Venus through in this instance two signs of the zodiac where it’s gonna station retrograde in Aries and then it’s gonna go back to Pisces between March and mid-April.

So when you define it like that, the Venus retrograde season really begins at the beginning of January this year, and it lasts all the way until June 5th, which is when Venus will finally depart from Aries for the last time. So that’s gonna be our definition of like, Venus retrograde season where we’ll be paying attention to events during the course of that. Now, the most intense phase of that will be during Venus’s actual retrograde period itself which starts on March 1st when Venus stations at 10 degrees of Aries, and it’s gonna last until April 12th when Venus stations direct in Pisces. That’s gonna be the most intense period, but there’s already a bunch of events and other things happening that are repetitions of previous events in eight year increments that started as soon as Venus went into Pisces. So here are the other dates – the retrograde, March 1st through April 12th. The shadow period, January 28th through May 16th. By sign, the entire period began January 2nd and ends June 5th. And then finally, the greatest elongation of Venus was January 10th through June 4th.

Here’s the synodic cycle of Venus for those watching the video version which we talked about in the previous episode, and finally here are the Venus retrograde in Aries years going back in eight year increments. This is every year over the past more than a century that Venus has gone retrograde in Aries. So 2025 is the current Venus retrograde season. Eight years ago, this happened during the same part of the year in essentially the first half of 2017. So that’s our two primary periods that we’re comparing is the first half of 2025 when Venus is retrograde to the first half of 2017. But it goes back eight years before that to early 2009 is the next eight year repetition. 2001. 1993. 1985. 1977. 1969. 1961. 1953. 1945. 1937. 1929. 1921. 1913. And 1905. So those are all the years that we covered in the previous episode, and we’re gonna see some of those years come up again today, because basically what’s happening is there’s things coming up in the news organically right now that refer back to a bunch of those previous years when Venus went retrograde in Aries in the same sign, and that’s the crux of what I wanna really convey to you and demonstrate today is that this is a phenomenon that’s happening naturally right now as a result of this retrograde.

All right, so let’s jump into it. So I’m gonna front load this episode with lighter stories from the entertainment world first, and then we’ll get into the more serious stories later on. So I wanna do that because initially when I was collecting these in January, there were a number of like, lighter repetitions that were coming up that were clear. But then obviously things have gotten really heavy in terms of world events and politics over the past few weeks as well, and there’s a bunch of repetitions that are tied in with that. So in order to not make this like, super depressing right from the get-go, I’m gonna start with a little bit more like, entertainment oriented and tech oriented type stories to begin with.

All right. So first story I wanted to jump into is that on January 18th, TikTok closed briefly and then reopened the next day on the 19th of January. So this was really striking because one of the things that I noticed at the time and was pointed out by different YouTube commenters is that a previous precursor to TikTok, which was the app called Vine, closed almost exactly eight years to the day before that on January 17th, 2017. So that’s tied in with the Venus retrograde cycle almost exactly eight years to the day when TikTok closed.

So that’s not the most interesting part. I mean, that is interesting in and of itself because Vine was like, a major social media network that a lot of younger people used and was very creative, and it had these very short videos. I think it was only like, a few second long videos, but people were able to do some creative stuff with that, and that was one of the first times where people were really starting to do stuff with video as a primary network for doing social media which then eventually Vine closed because they couldn’t monetize it. They didn’t figure out how to monetize it. But it really influenced eventually the development of TikTok, which has become so dominant over the course of the past eight years.

So I thought that was an incredible repetition that we had the closing of these two social media companies exactly eight years apart. So things are still ongoing with TikTok, and we’ll see how that plays out during the course of this retrograde, because there’s still gonna be some interesting like, twists and turns during the course of that story. But what I wanted to bring to your attention is that it wasn’t just that correlation where Vine closed exactly eight years ago, but I started going back in the history because this is what you can do sometimes to see if there were other repetitions eight years before that. And what I found is that eight years before Vine closed in January of 2017, there was another social media company that was in freefall, which was the website MySpace, which was like, a major social networking site. It was the main social networking site in the mid-2000s. And what happened is that everybody was very quickly moving from MySpace to Facebook at this time in like, late 2008 and early 2009. And the company MySpace was basically in freefall. And what happened is that both of their founders left the company during that Venus retrograde in early 2009 in Aries. So this included the famous MySpace Tom, who was everybody’s first friend on MySpace just by default, and he became very famous as a result of that. He left the company during that Venus retrograde in 2009. So we basically had a similar repetition of another social media company that was like, closing essentially around this time or that was on its way towards closing and to becoming not relevant anymore.

So if that wasn’t enough, I took it back further, and I found eight years before that during the Venus retrograde in Aries in early 2001 that the very first social media website ever closed down. And this is a website I hadn’t heard of before, but apparently it was called Six Degrees of Separation, and it actually introduced many of the sort of common themes that we associate with social media at this point in time in terms of like, private messaging and other things like that were started by this site as like, a major pioneer. And at its height, it had more than two million users or something like that. But they struggled to monetize it and it ended up closing. I think it was on like, December 30th of 2000, so just barely before Venus went into Pisces and before the Venus retrograde really kicked in basically all the people that were using this first social networking site lost it, and then had to go on and like, find something else. But apparently, this website inspired other social media websites that would later pick up the idea and run with it, like Friendster and eventually MySpace. So I thought that was incredible.

There may be other correlations with that going back into the past, but I haven’t gone too far. There was one or two submissions that suggested there might be earlier stuff before that, so that would be interesting to study maybe as a separate episode. So I just wanted to note those correlations. Yeah.

All right, so moving on. One of the other news stories that came up organically is in the last episode, one of the correlations I noticed in the Venus retrograde in Aries in 1985 is that Nintendo unveiled the Nintendo Entertainment System, so the NES, the original Nintendo video game system was unveiled in early 1985. And what I found was interesting is all of a sudden after we recorded that episode on January 10th, on January 16th, Nintendo unveiled its next generation console, which is the Switch Two. So I thought that was an incredibly striking basically like, parallel where the company did that once in 1985 and then they just did it again under the repetition of the same planetary period. So there’s more details about the console that are supposed to be revealed in April, so we’ll see what happens since that will be right in the thick of the Venus retrograde itself.

All right, moving on. One of the major things we talked about was the Oscars, because the Oscars always happen early in the year. And Nick noticed and had documented that every eight years, this specific Venus retrograde in Aries tended to be incredibly important for the Oscars. So one of the things is that there were a lot of firsts for the Oscars whenever this Venus retrograde happened, including in 1929 when Venus was retrograde in Aries, the very first Academy Awards ceremony took place. And then in 1945, the first Academy Awards that was broadcast on radio took place during that Venus retrograde in Aries. Then eight years later, the very first one that was broadcast on television took place. So now we’re back to Venus retrograde in Aries. We knew this was gonna be important; we talked about it a lot in our episode on February 10th because Venus is gonna station retrograde the day before the Oscars takes place on March 2nd. And what I just learned recently is that for the first time ever, the Oscars are gonna stream live on Hulu. So this is apparently, it’s gonna air live on ABC still on television at the same time, but it’s striking that they’re finally moving to live streaming through this live streaming service at the same time. So historically, this is gonna be remembered as a first in terms of livestreaming just like those other firsts in broadcasting for the Academy Awards. So that’s super striking.

Another really striking thing is I learned that Conan O’Brien, the comedian, is hosting the Oscars for the first time. And we actually discussed Conan in our previous episode because I had noticed that the 1993 Venus retrograde in Aries coincided with the period where he was suddenly and unexpectedly picked to be the host of The Late Night Show. And this is really, like, this huge career turning point at the very beginning of his career in terms of him becoming almost overnight like, a household name. And he’s had many other turning points since then, but it’s striking that all of a sudden, he’s coming up again and he’s about to have a major career turning point and sort of like, high point essentially because he’s gonna host the Oscars. So that was an incredible one because it’s a theme that we’ll see a lot, which is that sometimes there were people or topics or themes that we noticed and we identified in the last episode as being important during previous Venus retrograde in Aries periods, and sometimes they’re coming up and crossing over with other important events and themes that we noticed from other Venus retrograde periods and you’re seeing like, a combination or a confluence of those now that Venus retrograde is coming up again in Aries. So that was a really cool one, and I’m excited to see him host the Oscars.

Another major thing that I noticed for the Oscars that’s been developing lately is that the first openly transgender person has been nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars, which is Karla Sofia Gascon for her performance as the title character in the movie Emilia Perez. So for example, I found there was a New York Times headline on January 23rd that said, “Karla Sofia Gascon makes Oscar history as first openly trans actress to be nominated.” And these nominations were actually, the announcements were delayed a little bit due to the fires that happened in Los Angeles. So this, though, over the past week has blown up into this huge scandal and controversy, and she’s in the process essentially of getting canceled right now very publicly because of a bunch of terrible, like, sometimes racist tweets that emerged from not that long ago from the past several years. So this has become quite the scandal and is gonna be really weird at the Oscars, because now her production company and director and other costars are in the process of distancing themselves from her. There was already controversy surrounding this movie due to different people from Mexico saying that it wasn’t a good representation of the country or the language. There were also issues in terms of it received so many Oscar nominations, like a huge amount of Oscar nominations, that there were questions about whether the movie was actually as good as how much it was being nominated for. And it’s just turning into this whole debacle at this point.

So one of the things that’s interesting is that she has a Sun-Mercury conjunction at 10 degrees of Aries, which is right where Venus is gonna station retrograde on March 1st, the day before the Oscars. So there are some interesting things I noticed about her history, like that she first moved to Mexico from Spain in 2009 and really began most of her career as an actress at that time, which would have been under the same Venus retrograde roughly in 2009. There also may have been an important turning point in 2017, but yeah, we’ll have to see how this story plays out because it’s been extremely dramatic and extremely kind of like, scandalous, frankly, over the past week or so that it’s exploded and it’s been all over the place. So I’m sure that will be one of the kind of weird Venus retrograde scandals that continues to play out over the course of the next month or so during the course of this retrograde. So we’ll see what happens with that.

All right. Another story that I noticed is not a current story, but it’s actually something I found and realized later after something we talked about in a previous episode, which is that we had talked in the previous episode about one of my favorite Venus retrograde stories that I found was from 1985 when Coca Cola attempted to reformulate their formula and introduce New Coke, which they launched but then it was just like, universally hated. And eventually by the end of the Venus retrograde, they had to take it back, and they reverted back to what they now called “Coke Classic.” So what’s interesting is somebody on iInstagram like, joked about Coca Cola and cocaine, and that’s like, a common thing that’s known that Coca Cola was originally formulated with cocaine, which is why it’s named that. And then eventually, they took it out of the drink. But I actually looked back to see, you know, when did that happen, and was that tied in with Venus retrograde? And it turns out that it was. And I found that 1929 was the year that cocaine was finally fully taken out of the drink, and they completely reformulated it in order to remove part of the psychoactive effects of cocaine at that time. So this is in 1929, which was a Venus retrograde in Aries. So I wanted to mention that one not so much as a current news story, but as an addition to our previous one, because I thought that was incredible that it means that Coca-Cola has had not just one but two major reformulations under this specific Venus retrograde over the course of its history, and there might even be more there if somebody really wanted to dig into their history further.

All right, moving on. Another major news story. NASA astronaut Suni Williams became the woman with the most hours spent on space walks on January 31st, 2025, because she’s stuck in space and has been since like, last June to the failed Boeing starliner mission where they went up in this spaceship but it was like, glitching so bad that NASA decided not to bring them back on that spaceship and instead they would have to wait until sometime early next year, which is this year, to come back on a different spaceship. So as a result of that, they’ve been putting the two astronauts that were sent up on it to work, and one side effect of that is now Suni has become the woman with the most hours spent on space walks. So I thought this was striking, because it ties back to one of topics we talked about in the previous episode, which was this Venus retrograde in Aries kept coinciding with firsts as well as with issues related to women, but specifically this Venus retrograde back in 1961 coincided with when Yuri Gagarin was the first human ever to travel into space. So it brought that topic up again and merged it with like, a few other topics with now the woman who’s had the most hours on space walks. So I thought that was pretty interesting.

All right, after that, this story was submitted by listener Adam Rice who pointed out that David Lynch died on January 15th, 2025, and he was a famous director,. And what Adam pointed out is that David Lynch actually released his first full-length feature film titled Eraserhead in March of 1977 during that Venus retrograde. So Adam writes that it was controversial upon release but is now considered the film that established Lynch as one of the most important filmmakers of the 20th century. So he was in poor health due to a lifetime of smoking and then died probably as a result of air pollution from the LA wildfires in January. But it was striking here something we saw a few times over the course of the Venus retrograde episode before, which is in this instance somebody who did one of his most important works or got his start, basically, under this Venus retrograde, but then also at the end of his life that this Venus retrograde also coincided with his death as well as with the world sort of mourning his loss and reflecting on his life and the significance of it. So I thought that was a striking example.

All right, quick interjection as I’m editing this episode, but part of the reason that was an important example is because we had seen the same thing with Jimmy Carter in the previous episode where he was elected to office and was inaugurated under the Venus retrograde on 1977 in Aries, and then many years later in 2025 he passed away under the same Venus retrograde in Aries in 2025. Or similarly with Eisenhower, he was elected and inaugurated in 1953 under the Venus retrograde in Aries, but then later he passed away under another Venus retrograde in Aries later on. So sometimes people do some of their most important works under this retrograde but then later their life is sort of bookended by the retrograde at the same time.

Moving on, the Grammys just took place on February 2nd. And one of the things I thought was interesting is that Beyonce won the Album of the Year at the Grammys for her album Cowboy Carter. And I thought this was incredible because when we were studying Venus retrogrades, I was looking to see what was happening in the culture under different ones, and one of the ones that I picked up on was that in 2001, Beyonce and her group at the time, Destiny’s Child, had a hit single with the song “Survivor.” And I thought that was really striking because it was kind of evocative of Venus retrograde in Aries to begin with. So I didn’t realize – I wasn’t really paying attention until the Grammys happened, and then was struck that she actually won the Album of the Year under this same Venus retrograde many years later after 2001.

So also as I dug into this, I noticed that some people said that she actually should have won – she’s widely believed where a lot of people felt like she was kind of snubbed or robbed eight years ago in 2017 and should have won the Grammy for Album of the Year for her album Lemonade, which many argue is her best album. But she lost that year to Adele. And apparently, even Adele in her acceptance speech said that she wanted to like, share the award with Beyonce or something like that. So she must have been conscious of that to a certain extent as well. And Adele called her “the artist of my life” during that speech. So I thought this was incredibly striking, because Lemonade was also a very Venus retrograde album, but it’s striking that she lost and didn’t get that award eight years ago under this Venus retrograde in Aries. But then eight years later, there’s this repetition and Venus is back to the same place, and now suddenly she wins it for this album. So sometimes there can be these reversals that happen in these eight year increments that are tied in with the Venus retrograde cycle.

All right, so similarly, Lady Gaga also featured prominently in our previous episode because right at the beginning of that episode, I noticed that the 2009 Venus retrograde was really when Lady Gaga blew up. And her single “Poker Face” was just like, all over the place at the time, and I remembered that very vividly. And one of the things that happened is that I anticipated that she was gonna be coming back into the news again and would be prominent, and I basically said that to pay attention to her and that she would be somebody to keep an eye out on during this Venus retrograde because it was gonna be a repetition of that time, and also because this Venus retrograde hits really important things in her chart in Aries and Pisces.

So what happened is that at the Grammys, she actually won an award where Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars won the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance award for their duet, “Die with a Smile.” And she got up and she gave a speech. She mentioned trans people in her speech. She said, “Trans people are not invisible. Trans people deserve love. The queer community deserves to be lifted up. Music is love.” So she brought up trans people, and this is gonna be a recurring theme because this seems to be a major theme for this specific Venus retrograde is what’s going on with trans rights and both attempts to promote it and push that forward as well as attempts to push that back and to suppress it, essentially. So we’ll return to that a lot.

So the other thing that happened is that she premiered a music video for her new song, “Abracadabra” at the Grammys during one of the commercial breaks. And immediately she released the song the next day, and immediately like, everybody was hailing it as being like, this return to her old style from 2009. And people were comparing it favorably to songs like her original song “Poker Face” that was such a smash hit.

So on Wikipedia, for example, I found this quote where it says, “The song’s dance pop energy and theatrical visuals have drawn comparisons to her earlier works.” Elsewhere on The Hollywood Reporter, I found a quote that says, “The spellbinding video for ‘Abracadabra’ feels reminiscent of Gaga’s early releases like ‘Bad Romance’ or ‘Poker Face,’ an intentional move on the singer’s part.” So it continues; it says her new album, which is called Mayhem, will “mark Gaga’s return to her pop roots,” according to a release. And she has this whole statement where she says, “The album started as me facing my fear of returning to the pop music that my earliest fans loved.” And then it continues, and it says, “She reinvents her early sound with a kaleidoscopic approach that draws from her expansive musical library while embracing a fresh and fearless artistic perspective” I guess is part of the press release.

So I thought this was interesting that she’s, you know, consciously harkening back to an earlier phase in her life to some extent, which is part of what Venus retrogrades can sometimes be about. They can be about like, a throwback. They can also be about like, a revival or a comeback is one of the major themes that we really talked about a lot in the episode during the course of it and identified a few different like, comebacks that were taking place during this Venus retrograde as well as previous ones. So I thought that was really striking.

And one last thing – YouTube commenter Carla Joseph noted in a YouTube comment, she said, “As a Patriots fan,” you know, in the episode we had talked about the Super Bowl in 2017 and how that was the one that was so crazy because one of the teams was super far behind but all of a sudden it made this crazy comeback in overtime and won the game. And that was one of the things that I picked up on where I realized that Venus retrogrades were partially about comebacks. But Carla mentioned that she said, “You missed that Lady Gaga was actually the performer at that Super Bowl in 2017,” and I completely spaced that out and forgot that, and that’s really huge. So it means that Lady Gaga in 2017 had hit another major career highwater mark around that time in 2017 during this same Venus retrograde. So this retrograde’s super important for her for just a number of reasons. Yeah.

So her album’s coming out on I think it’s March 7th, which is shortly after Venus actually stations retrograde on March 1st. So we’ll have to keep an eye out about that. I would expect it to be successful, which you know, isn’t necessarily a given, because there was definitely like, a point in Lady Gaga’s career where it was just like, she was knocking things out of the part constantly, so it’s sort of like, a given that any new album would be a success. But I noticed last fall that she was in the Joker sequel and released an album with it, and the movie was just not very well received and did not seem to be successful. So one of the things that’s interesting about her having this period of success right now if indeed she does, especially during this Venus retrograde with this new album, is that it’s not a given that she necessarily would be super successful if you didn’t know that the astrology was hitting like it is with this Venus retrograde right now. So I’m looking forward to seeing how that goes and what level of success or revival or throwback she’s able to achieve.

All right. Moving on. Another major news story that happened to get a little bit more serious was the airplane crash over the Potomac River in Washington, DC, which took place on January 29th, 2025. So I wanted to give a shout out to patron Natalee Fish who did a lot of early work on this specific one and some of the historical things that was tied into, although there was a number of different people that sent me comments about this. But Natalie was the one that sent some of the earliest and some of the most extensive ones, so shout out to her. There’s some major repetitions with this event. And so what happened is on January 29th, a Black Hawk helicopter collided with a commercial airliner, and 67 people died with 64 on the airliner and three on the helicopter.

So one of the things that I found that was really striking is I just happened to find this news story that said that the airliner that crashed had previously been in a crash eight years earlier almost exactly, on February 15th, 2017, where during takeoff, the airplane struck a deer with its right wing and sustained substantial damage although it continued with its climb and then afterwards the crew declared an emergency, basically, and landed it. So I thought that was really striking, because that’s like, some Final Destination type stuff where exactly eight years ago it was in a almost catastrophic crash and then eight years later under the exact same retrograde, it actually crashes tragically and a number of people are killed. So there’s something about that that’s really striking and really important.

Additionally, as soon as the news about this airline crash took place, two other dates came up that kept being mentioned in the news, which were 2009 and 1961, which were both Venus retrograde in Aries periods. So one of them is that all of the news stories were mentioning how the last major commercial plane crash in the United States was on February 12th, 2009. And this was Venus retrograde in Aries. So this was Colgan Air Flight 3407 where 50 people were killed, and so 2025 was the first US airline aviation accident with casualties since 2009. So exactly two eight-year Venus retrograde cycles later, these two events were connected.

So if that wasn’t weird enough, there were some people on the flight in 2025 that were involved in the US ice skating teams. So what was weird about this is then a lot of the media coverage of it started being about referring back to that there had been an incident in the past where the entire US ice skating team was on an airplane on February 15th in 1961 that crashed, and it wiped out the entire US ice skating team, plus coaches, plus officials, and plus family members. It was this huge, tragic event that happened as they were traveling to the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague.

So one of the young women or girls that was on board at the time who was champion Laurence Owen had just appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated two days earlier on February 13th before the crash happened and before she died. So it was this very public and very striking crash that occurred while the plane was on approach to Brussels Airport.

So the crash set back the US figure skating team for a time, and the sport had to rebuild. But there was a memorial fund that was established to support young skaters at the time, and it’s played a crucial role in the development of some subsequent champions. So you know, some figure skaters from back then in the 1960s were interviewed in 2025 to share their thoughts, and they were, of course, having some of those old memories like, brought back into the forefront at this time. Yeah. And that crash just looked terrible. And then if that wasn’t striking enough, one of the things that Natalee Fish and a number of other commenters noted to me is that the United States Figure Skating Association was founded on April 4th, 1921, during Venus retrograde in Aries where Venus had just stationed retrograde, because at that point, it stationed retrograde in Taurus and then it would retrograde back to Aries, but it was part of this same eight year repetition. But basically, this made it so that it officially recognized figure skating in the United States. So this whole connection with like, flights, and with like, the US figure skating teams was incredibly striking and seems very tied in with this specific cycle of Venus retrograde in Aries over the past century.

I did a cursory glance at other Venus retrograde in Aries years, and it did seem to imply that this retrograde is often important for US figure skating in these eight year increments in other ways. But in some instances, it was positive; it’s not always negative. And there may have been something with the Mars repetition that made it negative in 2025 and 2061 – or 1961 – because that was the thing is it wasn’t just a Venus retrograde repetition, but also Mars was retrograde in Cancer at the same time, which happens much more rarely about every 32 years. So the only two previous times that’s happened is, you know, 2025, 1993, and then 1961. And the previous one before that was 1929, which we’ll get to later for different events. But keep that in mind, because that’s one of the things that we’re gonna get into and that I’m exploring more is when there’s these dual or these joint repetitions of two planets retrograding at the same time, which happen at certain fixed intervals but is much more unique sometimes when that happens.

And the last thing I’ll say about that with airplanes is, you know, in the episode itself, I remember researching the episode a month ago before we recorded it, and I kept seeing all these disasters. But there kept being important things with both airplanes and a lot of firsts with airplanes, but there was also sometimes some major disasters with airplanes as well at the same time. And I know I noted some of those in the previous episode recorded on January 10th, but there was a number that I cut out as well, because I felt like it was getting a little excessive to keep recording all of them, and sometimes I was a little unsure if that was like, a Venus retrograde thing or if obviously there was other things going on at the same time. But I do think there’s something to that, that there’s something with this specific retrograde in Aries that’s tied in with aviation, but also sometimes accidents.

So as an example of that, a listener named Regina Baldwin sent in an example of a repetition where she pointed out the Miracle on the Hudson crash which happened January 15th, 2009, right as Venus entered her retrograde shadow when famously – if you were around during that time, it was really memorable event – Captain Chelsey Sullenberger averted a plane crash in the incident, and it was basically like, this plane took off in New York shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia, New York, but it was struck by a flock of birds. And as a result of that, it lost all engine power, and he basically glided the plane and landed it in the Hudson River so that there was no fatalities, although there were a hundred people injured, and there were five of them injured very seriously. But it was this striking event that happened again in the buildup to this Venus retrograde in Aries back in 2009 just two eight year cycles ago.

So yeah, there’s a lot of other crashes. Regina also pointed out the Hindenburg disaster occurred off the coast of New Jersey on May 6th, 1937, during that Venus retrograde in Aries. And there’s other things as well. Nick provided a list of other major ones, and so did Regina. But I think I’ll skip that for now and just say that if somebody wanted to research that more, you’ll find other instances. And I think that’s part of the reason why we’ve seen such a rash of different airplane like, catastrophes and incidences taking place over the course of the past week, although it was compounded by Uranus stationing in Taurus at the same time, which is also leading to some unexpected disruptions and other things like that. But it’s been kind of crazy. But I think I’ll leave it there, because that’s probably sufficient in terms of that. But it’s worth studying further.

All right, moving on. Another thing that came up in the news is that on January 10th, the Department of Justice in the United States released a report on the Tulsa Race Massacre. And I thought this was really striking. This one was submitted by Adam Rice again through our Patreon forum. And in the original episode on January 10th, one of the incidences, like, major incidents that we identified and talked about that happened under the Venus retrograde in 1921 was the Tulsa Race Massacre where this group of like, white people just massacred this very successful like, area in Oklahoma that was sometimes referred to as “Black Wall Street” because it was like, so successful and there was so much stuff going on there. So what happened is here’s the Washington Post headline from January 10th – it says, “Justice Department Corrects Legal Record on Systematic Tulsa Race Massacre: A new report formally concludes that the 1921 attack in the Greenwood District was the result of racially motivated violence targeting Black residents, refuting an initial federal account from the time.” So the report found that “the attack was so systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence.” Authorities said, “A recent four-month reexamination of evidence in the case found that what an investigator described a month after the attack as a supposedly spontaneous violence was in fact a coordinated effort by white perpetrators to decimate a thriving community known as Black Wall Street.” The report “sought to correct the federal government’s legal record after more than a century.”

So I thought that was incredible just because, you know, we talked about that because it was such a notable event that we noticed and we knew about that happened and coincided with the 1921 Venus retrograde in Aries. And we talked about it on January 10th, but I had no idea that there was this report that came out literally like, the same day from the Justice Department that was going back and correcting the record about it. So I thought that was really striking.

All right, moving on. On January 15th, Joseph Biden gave his farewell address. President Biden gave his farewell address. And one of the things that was striking to me in this when it came out was that he mentioned Eisenhower’s famous farewell address in 1961 where Eisenhower warned of the “military industrial complex” in his farewell address. And that was something that we talked about in that episode on January 10th that I thought was striking is we talked about Eisenhower and him mentioning the military industrial complex was a really famous statement that’s been referred to and like, cited for a long time over the past 20 years, especially in like, the mid-2000s. It was very much mentioned a lot during the course of like, when George Bush initiated the second Iraq War, for example, and the extent to which that was possibly motivated by the military industrial complex I remember was talked about a lot at the time. So it was incredibly striking that Biden mentioned this as a throwback where Eisenhower gave that speech on January 17th, 1961, when Venus was in Pisces slowing down to retrograde in Aries, and then Biden gave his speech on January 15th, 2025, as Venus was in Pisces slowing down to retrograde in Aries.

Additionally, Mars was retrograde in Cancer for both of those, because remember 1961 shares that even closer repetition because it was not just Venus retrograde, but also Mars retrograde in the same sign. So Biden used his farewell address, he invoked Eisenhower, and he used his address to warn of a “tech industrial complex,” and he said that, “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy.” So I thought that was incredibly striking in terms of just, you know, that sometimes things that happen in the past get invoked and come up and become relevant again in the future. And in that instance, mentioned directly.

All right, so moving on. On January 20th, President Trump’s inauguration took place, and it was moved indoors due to the cold weather. And at the time when this happened, I found a headline from the Washington Post on January 17th that said, “Coldest Inauguration Forecast Since Reagan’s in 1985 Forces Trump Indoors.” So of course, the last time the inauguration was moved indoors was 1985, and that was Venus retrograde in Aries year. So that was incredible and incredibly striking just as a repetition then of events sometimes.

Let’s see, moving on. Trump keeps mentioning William McKinley, who was the 25th president of the United States. And he was president from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. And McKinley has been in the news a lot lately because Trump keeps mentioning and keeps bringing him up and seems to admire him. And part of the reason he seems to admire him is partially due to McKinley’s use of tariffs, and McKinley was also into protectionism and also made the Republicans dominant for a period of time politically for a couple of decades after his term. So Trump mentioned him in his inaugural address, saying, “President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.” And what’s incredibly striking about this is McKinley was inaugurated on March 4th, 1897, as Venus was slowing down to station retrograde in Taurus, and what’s striking about this is this is actually part of the same series of Venus retrogrades that keep happening every eight years. But this was early enough tath it was when Venus was still stationing retrograde in Taurus and then retrograding before it had started stationing in Aries, because the Venus retrogrades move about two degrees every eight years in terms of where they station. They move backwards. So basically, McKinley, who Trump is mentioning and who as a result of that is getting in the news a lot now, was born under this same Venus retrograde that we’re talking about now that stretches back all the way from 2025 to when he was inaugurated on March 4th, 1897, as Venus was slowing down to station retrograde. So it’s another perfect repetition.

So Trump, of course, immediately implemented tariffs. McKinley similarly ran on tariffs and protectionism, and began implementing them shortly after entering office. One of Trump’s first executive orders, besides attempting to rename the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America,” is that Trump also has officially renamed the mountain in Alaska, the tallest mountain in Alaska and in North America, which is named Denali – he’s now renamed it to Mount McKinley in honor of this president that he’s very like, enamored with. So this is a mountain in Alaska that’s the highest mountain peak in North America, and according to Wikipedia, it says, “the Koyukon people who inhabit the area around the mountain have referred to the peak as ‘Denali’ for centuries.” But in 1897, there was a gold prospector who renamed it “McKinley” as political support for then presidential candidate William McKinley. So from 1917 to 2015, the US government officially referred to it as McKinley, but Obama restored the original Native name on August 28th, 2015, during the Venus retrograde in Leo as Venus was about to station direct in Leo during the course of that.

So what’s happened now is that Trump has reversed this or reverted it back to calling it McKinley again, and I thought this was just incredibly striking because the article where the prospector from 1897, when he first renamed it, was published on January 24th, 1897, and this was when Venus was at 20 degrees of Pisces and it was getting ready to slow down and station retrograde. So this Venus retrograde truly is bringing back things from over a century ago that were still happening under this same Venus retrograde that’s happening now. And sometimes it’s not just like, presidents, but sometimes it’s like, things that happened around the time or when those presidents were actually in office. So I thought that was crazy.

all right, moving on. The 16th amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, I found, on February 3rd, 1913, and this amendment gave Congress the power to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states based on population. So basically, this amendment is in the news right now because Trump has over the past few weeks just put tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China on February 1st. And one of the things that I learned is that in the 1800s, apparently the US government, a lot of its primary income came as a result of tariffs so they were much more widely used in the 19th century. But this was the turning point – February 3rd, 1913 – when the 16th amendment was ratified when the government started moving, basically, from just making money through tariffs or primarily making money through tariffs to basically introducing an income tax. And what I learned is that while income taxes were used briefly during the Civil War, they were not a permanent fixture until the 16th amendment was ratified in 1913. And so 1913, of course, was Venus retrograde in Aries. So this whole thing about going back to what was happening before that, to tariffs and the whole issue of tariffs, is partially tied in with this Venus retrograde that occurred in 1913 when they started funding the government through other things.

All right, other things. There’s been some trade stuff between the US, Canada, and Mexico as I just mentioned. All that’s still in the process, and some of it’s been deferred but is still ongoing. One of the things that I noticed is that Nick pointed out that NAFTA was signed in mid-December of 1992, which was just before the 1993 Venus retrograde. So in some ways, some of this Venus retrograde may be tying things back to that period, and 1993 and 1992 is also important because Mars was retrograde in Cancer at that time. So while some of this is kind of Venus retrograde-y, what’s going on in terms of some of the trade wars and the tariff stuff, there’s also this major Mars retrograde in Cancer component as well at the same time. There’s other stuff I could go into there, but I’m gonna skip it for now. I did find – there was a listener – shout out to Jessie Flores for this one who pointed out to me that starting in 1929, there was a period that’s referred to sometimes as the period of Mexican Repatriation that began in 1929. And this was a period of mass deportations of Mexican Americans and Mexicans from the United States that took place between 1929 and roughly 1939. But it began in 1929, and then accelerated over the next few years. So this was happening under President Herbert Hoover, and what’s so striking about this is that this was Venus retrograde in Aries – because 1929, the first half of it was a Venus retrograde in Aries period, the same cycle we’re in now – but it was also Mars retrograde in Cancer at that time because this was the 32 year recurrence before the 1961 recurrence that occurred. So yeah, we’re seeing a repetition of that in terms of both Venus retrograde and Mars retrograde, and this period in 1929 coming up, which is apparently one of the first major periods in which the US was like, deporting a lot of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, and that’s a major theme that’s happening right now with migrants and with immigrants that’s happening in the country over the past couple of weeks. And I’ll get into that more a little bit later.

Other things that happened – there was a notable first. Adam Rice noted that after the inauguration, Kamala Harris flew home with an all-female crew for the first time. So according to a Vanity Fair article on January 21st, it said, “How Kamala Harris Made History as She Left DC: After the inauguration of Donald Trump, his 2024 Democratic opponent and the first woman VP headed back to California on a Boeing C32 flown by an all-female crew, marking a military first.” And it was, “it was the first time an all-female crew operated a C32 for the US Air Force.” So I thought that was interesting, because it ties in several themes from past retrogrades, including like, women, firsts, aviation, and other things like that.

All right, moving on. Another story that was in the news in January was Leonard Peltier was his prison sentence was commuted by President Biden on January 20th, 2025. So this gets into this idea that I noticed coming up in a couple of instances with this Venus retrograde, and it might be a general theme, which is the idea of clemency might be a major Venus retrograde theme. So Adam Rice noted – listener Adam Rice, again, this is another shout out to Adam who found a lot of amazing stories – he pointed out that Leonard Peltier was imprisoned with two life sentences on June 1st, 1977, and that was a Venus retrograde period in Aries just like it is now when he was granted clemency here in 2025 under this Venus retrograde. Another listener named Amelia Merrick who also pointed out this story said that Leonard Peltier had his prison sentence commuted to house arrest as what she called “the longest held political prisoner in US history.” He was sentenced, yeah, April 1977. “Since his release is conditional to house arrest, he won’t actually leave prison until February 18th when Venus will be at eight degrees of Aries.” And Amelia points out that he was found guilty on April 18th, 1977, when Venus was at 10 degrees of Aries, so it’s very close like, Venus return stuff that’s happening here.

So I didn’t know very much about this case until it was sent in, and I started researching it over the past week. And some of the things that I found is that apparently Bill Clinton – like, Leonard Peltier, so the story was like, he was a Native American man that was involved in a group of Native Amercians that were trying to like, protect themselves in the 1970s or something like that. And there was FBI agents that were somehow messing with this group, and then two FBI agents were involved in a shootout on a reservation in 1975, and two FBI agents were killed. But supposedly, there was all sorts of issues surrounding the case, and many people believed for decades that Leonard Peltier was falsely imprisoned and that the case for convicting him wasn’t very good. So that’s roughly like, the story; I’m sorry if that’s like, not very well put, but just to summarize my understanding of it briefly. But so many people had pushed for his release for many years after he was imprisoned in 1977 for like, two life sentences, and apparently in 2001 when Bill Clinton was leaving office, he almost granted clemency to Peltier and almost released him before he left office in early 2001. But then what happened is 500 FBI agents and their families showed up and protested in front of the White House during that Venus retrograde in 2001 in Aries, and this was the first time that this had happened. So that was an interesting thing, because he was almost released and then wasn’t; it was blocked, evidentially because many of the people in the FBI still believed that he was involved in the murders or something like that.

So then what was interesting is eight years later in January of 2009, President George W. Bush denied Peliter’s clemency petition before leaving office. So again, eight years later, it was denied. So what’s crazy about this in this instance is that apparently this is one of the last things that Biden did in the last 15 or 20 minutes of his presidency, which made it very dramatic that he – as one of his last final acts – decided to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier. And apparently, his sentence was commuted; he wasn’t given a full pardon, but this will allow him to basically end his life like, not imprisoned. So that’s kind of a complicated story, but there’s some major like, Venus retrograde things going on there that would be worth looking into more, and I’m sure people that are more familiar with the story can probably fill in the details better than I can.

Okay, but that wasn’t the only instance of clemency that happened. So that happened on the 20th, but then all of a sudden on January 21st, once Trump got into office, he granted a pardon to Ross Ulbricht who was the former guy that ran the – what was it? It was not the Pirate Bay, but he ran the Silk Road, which was like, a underground internet site where like, drugs were sold using Bitcoin, and lots of other sort of somewhat nefarious stuff at the time was done. But it was one of the early ways that like, Bitcoin was used and eventually became a legitimate like, currency as it’s being used today.

So Ross Ulbricht was arrested by the FBI and sent to prison, and part of it was that – I’ve seen some of the texts surrounding it, it was a little bit dicey because one of their arguments was that he not only engaged in some of the stuff with that but also had ordered supposedly like, hits to be done to attempt to like, kill some rivals or some people that were causing him problems or something like that. That’s disputed, and he claims that he didn’t actually order those hits. I don’t really know what the actual situation is or what the reality of the situation is, but basically, he’d been imprisoned, and one of the things I noticed in researching his story is that his first appeal was denied eight years ago on May 31st, 2017, when Venus was in Aries just coming off of retrograde. So it’s an interesting parallel with like, the previous story about Robert Peltier, because again, this is somebody who was denied clemency eight years ago on the same retrograde essentially or at least lost his first appeal. But then eight years later under the same retrograde when that repeats, suddenly he’s granted a pardon and is suddenly a free man. So I thought those two stories in parallel were very interesting, because they were both clearly tied in with the Venus retrograde.

And of course, Ross Ulbricht’s story also goes back to two Venus retrogrades ago, because as I talked about in the previous episode, early 2009 is when Bitcoin was created. So that also becomes very much tied in with his story as well, and it was really Ross Ulbricht’s connection with Bitcoin is part of the reason that Trump pardoned him now because Trump ran as a heavily like, pro-Bitcoin and cryptocurrency candidate last year. And that’s one of the things that he promised is that he would release this guy if the other like, crypto people would vote for Trump. So he was like, basically making good on that promise when he got into office.

All right, so moving onto other stories that were in the news. One of them, a major one, was the Gaza ceasefire. And this one was noted by a listener named Sarah Ngwib on YouTube who noted that a ceasefire in Gaza was announced on January 15th, 2025, and went into effect on January 19th. And what Sarah pointed out is that almost exactly 16 years ago to the day, another ceasefire began on January 18th, 2009, which brought an end to a 22-day war in Gaza at that time, exactly two Venus retrograde cycles ago. So there’s a lot of other stuff going on in terms of that and a lot of stuff that’s still unfolding, but that at least correlation I thought was really worth mentioning, and I give a shout out to Sarah for noting that one.

All right, moving on. Another one that I noticed that was sent in, actually, by Adam Rice is he noted that Cecile Richards, who was a former president of Planned Parenthood, died on January 20th. And this was notable because as Adam noted in the previous episode, Nick and I had discussed how the first birth control clinic in the United Kingdom was opened in 1921. And what Adam pointed out was that he found another correlation, which is that in February of 1961, the FDA in the United States approved the first birth control pill that would be marketed to doctors by the manufacturer specifically as a contraceptive. So there’s a striking tie-in there in terms of that as an important turning point. And I went back and noticed that apparently in 1921, another Venus retrograde in Aries years, Margaret Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, and this is what eventually became Planned Parenthood later on. So this one, though, is a little dicey, because it wasn’t until a bit later in 1921, but it’s still striking that the early origins of Planned Parenthood essentially has its, is tied in in some way with this Venus retrograde in Aries.

And then in related news, ABC News on February 1st reported that multiple health agency websites on HIV and contraception have been taken down to comply with orders from the Trump administration. So this brings up, like, a whole other can of worms and things that are not good that are taking place right now, which is that it seems like this specific Venus retrograde that’s happening right now in Aries is partially representing or going to represent, is in the process of representing a huge setback for things involving like, race, sexual orientation, women’s rights, and trans rights. And I think this is important because it’s a reminder that things don’t always go forward on Venus retrograde, but sometimes they go backwards. So for example, we saw a really striking and terrible example of that was the 1921 Venus retrograde, which coincided with the Tulsa Race Massacre, for example. But then we saw other times where there was major progress that was made in civil rights. And there’s this weird back and forth that happens during these Venus retrograde periods of pushing things forward versus pulling things backwards, and this tension between progressiveness versus regressiveness. And I think some of this is represented by the fact that Venus literally walks backwards in the sky and in the zodiac during these times in each instance astronomically. So one of the things I will say, though, just to give people some hope, is that it will set a foundation for future progress when the things that are broken at this time are fixed and then eventually surpassed at some point in the future. That’s one of the things that did come up for me consistently in studying the Venus retrogrades in this cycle over the past century that I think you can see clearly in the last episode. And indeed, you know, in other parts of the world, there’s still some progress being made in this specific Venus retrograde. So for example, Thailand legalized same-sex marriage just recently, to give an example.

But one of the major themes, as I mentioned earlier, that seems to be coming up with this specific Venus retrograde, is trans rights where on the one hand, there’s like, some positive things happening where for example, Sarah McBride of Delaware just became the first openly trans member of Congress, for example. But then on the other hand, you have all of these not good stories that are obviously going on as well, where for example on February 5th, ABC News there was a headline that says, “Trump Signs Executive Order Banning Transgender Athletes from Women’s Sports and Directing the Department of Justice to Enforce.” The order is titled, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” And then elsewhere on the first day of his presidency, Trump signed an order declaring that only two genders exist.

Elsewhere on February 1st, Washington Post reports that CDC removes gender and equity references in public health material and says that large sets of data are being scrubbed of references to transgender and LGBTQ+ people among others, which could compromise their use in research.

Elsewhere, Donald Trump signs an executive order to move incarcerated transgender women into men’s facilities and stop gender transition medical treatments. So there’s a ton of stuff, and I can’t really summarize it all because there’s so much happening right now. But I did notice that there were some correlations from previous retrogrades where for example, eight years ago in early 2017 under this same retrograde, Trump announced at the beginning of his first term a ban on transgender people serving in the military. So this policy faced numerous legal challenges and underwent revisions before being implemented, and then additionally, there was a reversal of protections back then as well where the Trump administration withdrew guidelines for transgender students in public schools regarding the use of bathrooms and facilities corresponding to their gender identity.

Elsewhere, in 2017,the first openly transgender US State Representative was elected, which was Danica Roem, won a seat in the Virginia General Assembly becoming the first openly transgender person to be elected and serve in any US state legislature. If you go back one Venus retrograde cycle ago to 2009, Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act was passed, and this included gender identity, and this expanded the federal hate crime protections to include transgender people. If you go back further to 1993, you get the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, which while not directly related to transgender rights, the policy which banned openly gay and lesbian individuals from serving in the military also impacted transgender individuals due to its focus on gender and sexuality. So some of this stuff like, ties back going back quite a ways, and I wanted to mention this because obviously it’s a major topic now, but it was one that actually came up where I talked about one of the Venus retrogrades in the middle of the 20th century – I think it was like, in the 1950s – when there was one of the first really notable trans celebrities at the time under this Venus retrograde in Aries became really prominent. And in fact, as I talked about in the last episode, trans issues is actually a recurring theme that’s come up for thousands of years in connection with the Venus retrogrades because as I talked about in the episode with Demetra George, episode 412 which was titled “Inanna, Venus Retrograde, and Barbie,” which was released August 12th, 2023, one of the things we talked about is that the cult of Inanna, which is the goddess that was associated with Venus and in which we had this Venus retrograde cycle encoded into some of its legends, that there was this association with transgressing gender norms in connection with the goddess Inanna.

So there was this one passage I mentioned in particular in one of the hymns to Inanna about men becoming women and women becoming men, and in one of the articles I read in that episode, it said, “the carnivalesque festivals of the goddess where associations when reversals of age species, status, and sex all came into play, when social rules were in abeyance, and were possible times of institutionalized license.”

Elsewhere, there was this other quote that I pulled out by a Mesopotamian scholar named Joan Goodnick Westenholz in a short chapter she wrote on Inanna in a book titled The Mesopotamian World. And this was her concluding paragraph that I found really striking where it says,

“We have traced the development of the conception of the Sumerian Inanna and her Akkadian counterpart, Ishtar, from their first appearance in cuneiform records and we’ve examined the diverse elements of the personality of the goddess. We have seen that her most archaic and basic aspects of astral dimorphism is the source of the ambiguities and the contradictions in her character, including her apparent androgyny. In like manner, she held dominion over all polarity of behaviors, from capricious to caring, and represented both order and disorder, structure and anti structure. Her bipolarity was founded on a natural phenomenon. The planet Venus appears twice in its course – once in the east, and once in the west as morning and evening star. Her very mutability may have intrigued the ancient Mesopotamians and led to the conception of Inanna/Ishtar as the one and only divine entity able to embody such opposing aspects.”

So I think that’s part of what’s going on here and why this is tied in with – it’s not like, a recent phenomenon, but the idea of gender transition somehow has this much longer history than people sometimes realize, and it’s been tied in with Venus retrogrades as we demonstrated in the last episode for much longer than people think. So obviously, because this one of the major like, social issues of our time, it’s become even more prominent as being fought over so much more strongly and there’s attempts to suppress it so much more now. But like with some past issues related to civil rights, to sexual orientation and things like that that we saw progress with during the course of the different subsequent Venus retrogrades in the 20th century, I think we will see some progress with that under this retrograde in the future. But obviously, this is one of those times in which there’s a lot of problems and a lot of pushback and a lot of attempts at suppression. So we’ll see how it goes, and we’ll see what kind of foundation this Venus retrograde sets for future progress hopefully at some point in the future.

Okay, moving on. Another story that was submitted by Adam Rice is he noted that Trump fired the first female officer to lead a branch of the American armed forces once he got into office. And he quotes The New York Times that said, “The Trump administration fired the commandant of the US Coast Guard, Admiral Linda L. Fagan, within 24 hours of Trump’s inauguration. The admiral, who was sworn in as the service chief on June 1st, 2022, was the first female officer to lead a branch of the American armed forces.” So I thought that was striking as another Venus retrograde thing.

Elsewhere, a major topic that just came up in the past week in the news was Guantanamo Bay, and Adam Rice contributed to this one and I also did some research where on January 29th, there was a Washington Post headline that said, “Trump plans to build a mass detention camp for deportees at Guantanamo Bay,” and that he “ordered construction of a deportee detention camp with room for 30,000 migrants.” So I thought this was striking for a number of reasons in addition to being terrible morally, because over the past two decades, there’s been these fights that have been going on about the legality and morality of Guantanamo Bay and attempts to close it down. And it keeps coming up, especially under this Venus retrograde. So for example, Obama had previously issued orders to close Guantanamo Bay in January of 2009 at the beginning of his term, which was during Venus retrograde in Aries. But then Congress prevented its closure, basically. And then so what he ended up doing is that during the course of the Obama administration, the number of inmates was reduced from 250 to 41 by the end of his administration, and he even transferred out some inmates at the last minute in January of 2017 before Trump came into office. He also wrote a letter to the Speaker of the House on January 19th, 2017, that was titled, “Letter from the President: Report with Respect to Guantanomo,” in which he basically encouraged them to close it. There were only 15 detainees that remained in Guantanamo Bay as of January 2025 by the end of Biden’s term. But now that we have a repetition that’s going on of Venus retrograde, it’s now evidently being expanded to potentially have over 30,000 people.

So I was trying to see what the earlier connection was, and I was having trouble seeing this. Adam noted that we had talked about how the September 11th attacks were being finalized in early 2001 under that Venus retrograde, so it’s possible that’s partially connected to that because that’s eventually what led to Guantanamo Bay being opened up by Bush or at least being used to send a bunch of people from especially Afghanistan there. It may also tie in with the Bay of Pigs that happened in 1961 in Cuba, and there were some history things surrounding that. But I think this is gonna be a major important focal point and turning point for this Venus retrograde, especially because of the issues that have always been surrounding this, which is that it’s outside of the United States and therefore doesn’t have a lot of the same like, legal protections and other things as things that are in the country itself. So there’s a potential for abuses and other things like that as a result of that. So you know, we’ll have to see how that story plays out during the course of this Venus retrograde as well as whatever comes after that.

All right, a weird story that’s in the news that’s coming out right now relates to this story that was written back in 1889 that was titled The Travels and Adventures of Little Baron Trump and His Wonderful Dog Bulger. So this was like, a children’s story that was published back in 1889, which was a year of this Venus retrograde under this same cycle, and what happened is that these books were rediscovered eight years ago in early 2017 at the beginning of Trump’s first term by like, internet people. And people started noticing the like, weird similarities between these stories with Donald Trump. And what’s happening is that this book is again like, doing the rounds over the past week or so, and for example, it was mentioned by Joe Rogan brought it up in his podcast, Joe Rogan Experience episode 2263 with Gad Saad, which was released January 28th, 2025. So some of the parallels is that there’s like, this young boy that’s named Baron Trump, and that’s of course the name of Trump’s son, of Donald Trump’s son, but also Trump in the 1980s reportedly or allegedly supposedly some people believe he called into like, television shows like CNN, and he would use the fake name John Trump is what was alleged supposedly.

So anyway, in the book, some of the parallels that people have noted that I wrote down is that it says in the book, Trump makes personalized insults for each person he meets. He lives in Castle Trump, which sounds a lot like the modern day Trump Tower. In the book, his father’s name is Don, which is weird because that’s – it’s like, you have Baron Trump and you have Donald Trump. The character is restless and always getting into trouble, and Baron in the books – the child character – is really boastful in both books, and he’s kind of like, a braggart and very full of himself and does things like talking about having the best brain. He also evidently sues a lot of people, and some of the other bullet points that people have pointed out are things that like, women throw themselves at him supposedly and that he travels to Russia. So that’s very bizarre and very weird.

And then this author several years later published a book titled 1900; Or, The Last President. And the book opens in New York City with protests following the shocking victory in the 1896 presidential election of a populist candidate who brings on the downfall of the American republic. So it says, it tells the story of the United states on the brink of collapse with widespread protests and social unrest following a controversial presidential election. Anarchists and socialists have laid siege to a hotel on 5th Avenue, screaming, “Death to the rich man!” In a few months, the president appoints a man named Pence to the Cabinet. The mob is marching to protest against people in a hotel on 5th Avenue, and 5th Avenue is where modern day Trump Tower is now located. So it’s the story of a populist candidate who unexpectedly becomes president, and then the destruction of the republic by the end.

So this is kind of like, conspiracy theory-ish, and kind of like, people noting parallels which are very interesting but also like, straining to find parallels in these books. But what’s actually interesting about it from an astrological standpoint that I wanted to focus on here is that the book was written by an author named Ingersoll Lockwood, and I found his birthday, and he was born August 2nd, 1841. And he was born basically later in the same year as the Venus retrograde in this same cycle. And if that wasn’t enough, he wrote that book – the first book in the Trump series – later in 1889, and that was also a Venus retrograde year in this exact same cycle. So he was born under this Venus retrograde, and then he wrote this weird book that seems to have weird parallels with Trump under the same Venus retrograde later in his life.

So what’s weird about this is, you know, people like, have these different conspiracy theories about whether it’s like, you know, he was a time traveler or something like that. But I think like, at the most simple level what’s actually interesting about this story and the fact that it’s coming up now is just that the author was born under this Venus retrograde, he wrote the book under this Venus retrograde, and so of course under the same cycle many years later in 2017, his books which otherwise fell into obscurity are suddenly rediscovered and gain popularity and prominence again and have people talking about them many years later when the same Venus retrograde recurs. And then of course, eight years after that, the same Venus retrograde recurs and now all of a sudden they’ve become even more notable. So sometimes it’s like, part of the take home lesson is just there’s weird stuff that happens in the past under a Venus retrograde and then it will come up for different reasons in the future when that Venus retrograde recurs again. So that doesn’t really say anything about like, the validity or anything of the conspiracy theories, but I just think it’s an interesting point about sometimes things recurring from the past when the same planetary conditions are present in the future.

So one of the things of course, though, that’s bizarre about this is the presidential election that Ingersoll Lockhood was writing about in that book about the end of the republic is he was actually talking about the election of William McKinley, basically. When McKinley got into office for the first time was 1896, and he was inaugurated in 1897 under this same Venus retrograde that’s happening now. So that’s bizarre. And then Nick had a whole write-up in this section I’m gonna not go through now since he’s not here to speak about it, but it was weird because McKinley ended up – he was inaugurated in 1897, but he ended up being assassinated shortly after starting his second term. So I thought that was bizarre in connection with the Venus retrograde. And then there were some other notable ones because Lincoln – well, actually no – yeah, I mean, there’s a few other correlations like that, including like, Lincoln under the same retrograde was shot April 14th, 1865, just a day or two before Venus stationed retrograde in the same cycle. So there’s this weird Venus retrograde thing that runs through some of the presidencies that’s kind of bizarre and is worth it if somebody wanted to research it further.

Some of the last few stories that I had – somebody in the YouTube comments wrote a comment saying that part of the pushback to Hillary Clinton’s healthcare reform in 1993, which we talked about in the previous episode, was that she was appointed and not elected to office, you know, because Bill Clinton gave her like, the job basically to like, head up the healthcare reform, which she did and then there was huge pushback in 1993 under that Venus retrograde at that time which was also a Mars retrograde in Cancer. So I thought that was interesting just because if that’s at all true, it’s interesting that that topic came up again now with some of the people that are getting involved with things right now in the government.

I did find a quote saying that when Hillary was appointed for this that it was “the most powerful official post ever assigned to a First Lady” according to the Sarasota Herald Tribune. So I thought that was a really striking Venus retrograde thing, just tying that back in there.

One random one that was sent in by a listener named Betsy Vereckey is she pointed out that the new Bridget Jones movie is coming out on February 14th and that the original Bridget Jones movie – because apparently this is like, the 4th one – came out on April 13th, 2001, when Venus was retrograde in Aries. And Betsy wrote, “I feel like Bridget Jones always stirs up conversations about women. In the last movie, she gets with a much younger man,” apparently that’s part of the plot for the movie that’s about to come out.

And one of the last news stories that I noticed that’s developing right now is right now there’s this bizarre news story that’s going around social media, especially on like, TikTok and Instagram, of this woman who went to Pakistan for a marriage proposal but then got stranded there when the guy ghosted her. And now she’s refusing to leave, and it’s become this kind of like, hilarious internet sensation thing because she’s very like, she’s got some stuff going on. And there’s a part of it that is kind of tricky, because she might be disturbed to a certain extent, but this seems to be a thing that’s unfolding that’s very Venus retrograde-y right now. So I wanted to note that one as just something that’s kind of like, evolving at the moment.

Okay, so those are all the major news stories that I wanted to talk about and flag so far. And like I said, we haven’t even gotten into the most intense part of the Venus retrograde yet, so the purpose of this is I just wanted to draw people’s attention to what’s going on, that way people can help me to keep an eye out for other important stories as this retrograde continues to emerge.

So one area that I’m looking at that is becoming increasingly important for me is these joint repetitions. And I’m still working out like, a name for them, but when for example there’s both not just one repetition of a planet or a recurrence of a planet, but also a second planet doing something important at the same time. So the most notable ones that we’ve seen are the years in which Venus goes retrograde in Aries and Mars goes retrograde in Cancer at the same time. So for example, those occurred the most notably in 2025, 1993, and 1961, but there was also one in 1929 which we’ve added and seen some important things happening under. For example, that was the year in which the so-called Mexican Repatriation, I don’t know, event started happening in 1929 that seems very relevant to now. Weirdly, the previous Mars retrograde before that that was tied in with the same 32-year cycle was 1897. And that was the year in which William McKinley was elected. So that one, that Mars retrograde though was entirely in Gemini because it had shifted out of Cancer, but it was still tied in with the same 32-year cycle so it may still be relevant.

So I don’t know what to call these yet; I’m still working on a name. My working name for this is like, “joint repetitions” or “dual repetitions.” Maybe a “dual return” or a “double return” – something like that. But this principle – I think it’s very simple, but it’s very powerful, which is that the repetition of one planetary period like the eight year period of Venus can indicate a recurrence of an event. But the repetition of two planetary periods heightens the likelihood of a more specific recurrence of a specific type of event. So for example, the repetition of this Venus retrograde in 2025 in Aries coincided with a plane crash just like it did in 2009 during a Venus retrograde in Aries. But the occurrence of a Venus retrograde and a Mars retrograde in 2025 coincided with a much more specific recurrence of a plane crash involving the US figure skating community like it did in 1961. So there was something more specific and more focused about the fact that it was a double recurrence of two planets at the same time, or a joint recurrence. So that’s something I’m paying attention to.

There’s also other types of recurrences that we can look into. So one of the ones that I’m working on is recurrences with the eclipses. So this is one that came up a lot last year, which was everybody was noting all of the recurrences between 2024 and 1968. And part of what was happening is that it was a recurrence of the Venus cycle, the eight year Venus cycle with the nodal and the eclipse cycle. So if that recurrence holds true, then our current closest connection, for example, between 2025 is gonna be 1969. And that was like, for example, like, the beginning of Nixon’s presidency for example. The previous one before that would have been 1913 as a recurrence of both Venus as well as the nodes and the eclipses. So specifically, for example, 1969 versus 2025 is Venus retrograde in Aries overlapping with eclipses taking place in Aries and Libra but shifting over into Pisces and Virgo. That’s the repetition right now. And I think that’s a large part of the reason that there were so many bizarre recurrences last year between 2024 and 1968, and that’s gonna be something to really pay attention to this year in terms of what are the recurrences now between 1969 and 2025. So that’s something to research.

There may be other recurrences that I talked about with Nick that are worth investigating. Like, Venus retrograde in Aries that coincided in years where Saturn was also conjunct Neptune, as it’s gonna be this summer. So that’s something that requires some work. And then additionally, the Mars retrogrades in Cancer are starting to become more clear, and that might deserve a whole investigation on its own because I’m seeing some very interesting things about Mars repetitions in Cancer that are very much tied in with what’s happening right now in the United States. Seems to be paralleled in the past. Like, for example, one of the things that’s happening right now is that Trump signed an executive order where he’s trying to get rid of birthright citizenship, which is in the 14th amendment. And the 14th amendment itself was ratified by most of the states when Mars was retrograde in Cancer. So that’s a pretty striking repetition of Mars and what was happening at that time with something that’s happening now, and I’m thinking about maybe doing a whole separate investigation and episode on Mars retrograde in Cancer. So if people would like to see that, let me know in the comments and I’ll see if I have enough material to do that.

All right, I think that’s it for this episode. So in terms of conclusions, I think what we’re seeing here at this point that’s pretty clear is that history is always rhyming and sometimes repeating constantly. And when you see a repetition in history, it usually means that there’s some planetary periods behind it that are connecting those events in time.

So the more overlapping repetitions there are, the more specific the event is, as I was saying with the joint repetitions section. So I need help researching this, because this has already been massive, and I found a ton of different stuff. But some of the things I found in this episode were as a result of listeners helping me out, because this is bigger than any one astrologer can do all on their own. So what I want you to do if you’ve listened to this entire thing is keep an eye out for repetitions in the news during the course of this Venus retrograde all the way up until early June when Venus finally leaves Aries for the final time. So keep an eye out, and let me know if you notice any major repetitions that tie current events happening in the news with any of those previous Venus retrograde periods that I mentioned in the Venus retrograde years.

So here’s a slide one more time, just to show you those years one more time, which are 2025, 2017, 2009, 2001, 1993, 1985, 1977, 1969, 1961, 1953, 1945, 1937, 1929, 1921, 1913, and 1905. So you can see how – you know, all the stories that I’ve been mentioning and talking about in this episode all tie back to one of those years in these incredibly striking ways. And one commenter at one point on YouTube asked like, sort of with some trepidation a genuine question where they were like, could this be accused of just being like, confirmation bias? But I don’t think this is confirmation bias, and I did as careful of a job as I could in the last episode to avoid that just by trying to set up the basic rules and parameters of what we’re looking for and then to stick with it pretty strictly. And one of the ways that I think we can demonstrate that this is not confirmation bias is the fact that these news stories connected to things that I talked about already in the January 10th episode have just started like, magically or mysteriously appearing in the news again after I recorded that episode. And that’s one of the things that I think we’re gonna be able to document during the course of this retrograde is there’s gonna be a continuation of that, and there’s gonna be a bunch of other really striking news stories that come up that are gonna connect back to some of these previous Venus retrograde in Aries periods over the course of the next few months.

So I need your help in researching this. If you notice a correlation, then please let me know. Send it in by the best way to let me know if you found a good correlation is to post a comment below this video on YouTube. That’s the primary place where I’m gonna take submissions and comments, because that’s gonna be the easiest way to track everything is to post a separate comment below this video on YouTube. And that way at some point, I can do another update to talk about more correlations that have emerged or have been found over the course of the next few months. So alternatively, you could email me at TheAstrologyPodcast@gmail.com, but I strongly prefer that you just post a comment on YouTube, because that’s gonna help me keep things together and sometimes when people email me, they don’t realize that they’re sending in something that I’ve already noticed that others have already submitted, whereas if you go to YouTube and look at the comments, then you’re gonna be able to see ones that other people have submitted and voted on already by upvoting the ones that are really good.

So leave a comment on this video if you see an interesting repetition. Of course, give me a like on this video and be sure to subscribe as well; that really helps out the chanell and is a good way of getting me back for all this research and like, work. I’m gonna release the show notes for this episode where most of my written notes for this I’m gonna release as a PDF to patrons of The Astrology Podcast through my page on Patreon.com since I’m able to do this research as extensively as I have been because those patrons are helping to support and fund my work and make it so that I can, you know, focus full time on doing and then recording things like this and putting it out for free. So if you’d like to support that work, then consider becoming a patron. In return, you’ll get access to the show notes. Patrons are also gonna get early access to this episode days, possibly more, sometimes even weeks before the episode is actually released, so that’s a nice bonus. And we may do some other live chart reading sessions to talk about people’s personal experience of Venus retrogrades, and in order to interview them about Venus eight year repetitions that are happening in their own personal lives, which is always really interesting and really fun as another extension of this that takes it outside of just a news context and instead personalizes it. Because one of the things that you’ll realize is that these eight-year Venus repetitions don’t just happen in the news; they also happen in our personal lives, and they sometimes connect events from our past with what’s coming up and what’s going on in the present as well as the future. So I’m extremely fascinated by this. I think… I did a lot of work on Venus retrograde during the last retrograde in Leo in 2023, but now we’re taking it so much further and we’re getting an even better idea of what Venus retrograde is all about and how intricate and complex, but also at the same time like, straightforward and powerful it is, as a timing technique. And there’s something incredibly exciting about that.

So all right, I think that’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for watching. Let me know what you think in the comments. If you enjoyed this, then please leave a comment to let me know. Otherwise, good luck with your research. I’ll be back again in the future to talk about other Venus retrograde news. But otherwise, I think that’s it for this episode. So thanks for watching, and I’ll see you again next time.

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