The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 553, titled:

Venus Retrograde in Scorpio Movies

With Chris Brennan, Skye Barclay, and Ames Doyle

Episode originally released on October 19, 2026

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2026/10/19/venus-retrograde-in-scorpio-movies/

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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 November , 2026

Copyright © 2026 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey. My name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. Joining me today are astrologers Skye Barclay and Ames Doyle, and we’re gonna be talking about Venus retrograde in Scorpio movies that have come out over the course of the past few decades anytime that Venus is retrograde in Scorpio, just as it is today, and what some of the themes are that arise through those films. So hey, thanks both of you for joining me today. 

AMES DOYLE: Thanks for having us. 

SKYE BARCLAY: Happy to be here. 

CB: Yeah, Skye, you are back again. We just did – this is a follow-up to the episode that we just did recently on Venus retrograde in Scorpio in birth charts. And then I also did a previous one on Venus retrograde in history. But I thought this would be a good follow-up because one of the things that we kept seeing is important films coming out that matched the theme of Venus retrograde in Scorpio in different eras and just how that would naturally explain a side of the transit. So we talked about doing a follow-up episode to talk about some of those films. 

SB: Yeah. It was kind of striking even as films were coming out today just how much they spoke to the moment. And then when we started looking back, it was like, whoa. 

CB: Yeah, totally. And then Ames, I was talking with you and you were pointing out to both of us some great films as we were coming up with the last episode. So I wanted to bring you in because of your background in watching movies and connecting some of those themes. So thanks for joining us. 

AD: Yeah, thank you for having me. Movies are one of my special interests, connecting with astrology, so truly could not have picked a better episode to come on to. 

CB: Awesome. Excellent. And one of the things is both of you are on the board of the Association for Young Astrologers, right? 

AD: Yep. 

SB: Yes, we are! 

CB: Awesome. 

SB: Just like you were in the past, right? 

CB: Yeah. We just learned that I was – back in 2010, I was the president of the Association for Young Astrologers when Venus was retrograde in Scorpio, so this is a funny kind of callback today. 

AD: That’s perfect. It’s like you’re in one of our board meetings. 

CB: Yeah, one of your Zoom meetings. Well, and we’re gonna see a lot of remakes and callbacks today with a ton of these movies ended up being remakes and sometimes successful remakes of earlier movies. So maybe you two will be the more successful remake of my attempts to do AYA in the past. 

SB: One can only hope. 

AD: Yeah, we’ll just keep trying. 

CB: Yeah. All right. Let’s get into it. Let’s talk just a little bit – one, just briefly again, to set the premise where there’s a certain extent to which as we were talking about in the last episode we see Venus retrograde can invert the significations of the planet or do things that are nonnormative relative to the significations of the planet. But there’s also a sense in which it just intensifies the significations of the sign that it’s in, or in which it just acts as a really extended powerful transit of the planet through that sign. And that’s something we see come up a lot in movies is just that it can be a really intense period where Venus in Scorpio themes become very prominent. And it can manifest in lots of different ways in culture, like in literature, in music. But one of the ways that’s a collective shared experience where I think we see it a lot is in movies, especially movies that are coming out right around when Venus is going retrograde in Scorpio, which it does every eight years. So you know, 2026, it’s retrograde right now towards the end of the year. So that means that we know it went retrograde in 2018, 2010, 2002, 1994, and so on and so forth. So I thought today that we’d sort of go backwards chronologically through those eight-year increments and just talk about some of the big movies that were out and that were popular during those times. And in that way, I think all of us were getting a sense where you can see different aspects or different themes of the archetype that are really, really obvious, right? 

AD: For sure. I mean, like anything in astrology, it’s very rarely subtle. It just kind of repeats over and over and over again, so it’s hard to miss. 

SB: Yeah. I think that it was pretty not only loud, but I think this is also a fun version for folks, because unlike having to dive into celebrity biographies, now they can just go back and watch the movies for themself and tap into the energy in a way that’s more interactive. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. And that everybody, especially with like, a big movie, has a shared experience, especially when it’s one that’s really popular like in this year with 2026, even though it came out earlier this year, it’s like, you know, Obsession was such a big movie that so many people watched. Or right now we’re seeing a bunch of movies come out that fit the theme pretty well, I think, recently, right? 

SB: Yeah. I think that we were all talking about just as the movies were coming out, like, Primetime where it’s literally uncovering these disgusting relationships and that process was like, oh wow – that is very literal of a Scorpio kind of diving deep into that Plutonian world, and Chris Hansen himself has Pluto conjunct his Venus, so. It also speaks to that time. 

AD: For sure. Yeah, I need to see that one. East of Eden really stuck out to me; I know that’s technically a miniseries, but the themes are – I mean, it’s just perfectly on brand with this character, Cathy, that rejects femininity and who’s arguably pretty evil, clawing her way from the bottom to the top. It was so, so perfect; I feel like I saw lots of people talking about how it fit Venus retrograde in Scorpio. 

CB: Nice. And then we talked on the last episode about how The Social Network has that movie or that sequel that’s coming out, The Social Reckoning, about the Facebook movie and it’s coming out almost exactly 16 years to the day as the first movie, which also came out when Venus was retrograde in Scorpio. And then you have – so in that way, it’s almost like, not a remake, but a sequel, but it’s a callback in some ways to something that happened under a previous Venus retrograde. And there’s those themes of, like, Venus is the social planet of social dynamics but also the dark undercurrents behind algorithms and I think we were seeing in the descriptions that rage bait and things like that were being emphasized in the algorithm more, or things that were deeply harmful to people socially. 

AD: Yeah, for sure. 

SB: Yeah. 

AD: I was thinking about this one, and I was wondering – I don’t know if either of you can recall what the kind of feeling was around Mark Zuckerberg as a person when the first one came out. Because for me, I feel like there was some, you know, this guy obviously, like, he screwed some people over and he’s a bit cutthroat. But I feel like now, the intensity is that much more eight years later, and so it’s kind of just digging that groove further into socially how we all know and feel about him. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. And even the recasting with the new actor, Jeremy Strong, you know, plays on that a little bit, because previously the previous – what was the name of the previous actor from, like, 2010? Jesse Eisenberg? 

AD: I think it was Jesse Eisenberg, yeah. 

SB: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. And he played a version of him that was, like, you know, had difficulty connecting with people socially or just didn’t get social cues and was also, as we’ll talk about actually when we get to that movie, some of the core themes was antisocial. But still there was something there that wasn’t as terrible, maybe, as it could have been in the way he was portrayed, whereas it seems like now with Jeremy Strong playing him, they’re playing much more of like, the cold, more calculated, much more media-trained version of Mark Zuckerberg. 

SB: Yeah. I think that speaks to just like, this turning point that people are feeling with tech. Before it was like, oh my gosh, tech has all these opportunities; they’re like, the cool kids on the block. Like, they’re making all these things! And now people look at tech with such more disdain because they’ve seen how it has hurt the culture and see how it has, like, take away jobs with AI and certain things. So I think that turning point and that reckoning from what you felt before with the characters is spoken in this moment and with this transit and with the movie. 

CB: Yeah, totally. And one of the interesting callbacks is the very first – as we’ll talk about later – the very first Facebook movie in 2010, it was a really brief role but it was the first appearance in a Hollywood movie of Dakota Johnson. And now she’s doing a whole, like, press tour and is getting a lot of press right now for promoting the movie Verity that came out a few weeks ago, even doing, like, she did SNL on October 3rd, which was the day of the Venus retrograde station, and they did a kind of funny sketch titled “Mean Scary Girlfriend.” And I thought that was, like, a funny symbolic thing on the day Venus was stationing retrograde in Scorpio, and ironically she has Venus in Scorpio; it’s not retrograde, but it’s interesting that she has that placement. 

SB: Yeah. I feel like it all ties together, because like, Rachel McAdams played Regina George, which is the mean girl. It’s October 3rd, so that way, like, people who don’t even realize the retrograde of it all kind of remember Mean Girls because that is the October 3rd day. And then the fact that another actress is playing her with Venus in Scorpio is just, like, so literal. 

CB: Yeah, that’s perfect. All right. So are there any other ones – there’s one other movie that came out or just came out called The Other Mommy, which is a horror movie, and I think that’s really interesting and fitting, because in a lot of the films I kept seeing difficult relationship stuff with the mother coming up in a variety of different ways as a core underlying theme to a surprising amount of our movies that came out with Venus retrograde in Scorpio. 

SB: Yeah. I think it kind of speaks back to our episode and then also when you start to see it, you can’t unsee it. Like with the TV show Phony that’s coming out where he feels like his mom got replaced and has this very interesting, unique relationship with his mom, and then another TV show that’s coming out is Carrie, which is a classic. And that, you know, she has a very, very intense, not great relationship with her mom in that film, and that also kind of speaks to this Venus retrograde in Scorpio moment. So it was a really good callout to kind of pull that out as one of our themes. 

CB: Nice. Okay. Yeah, and we’ll talk about that more. I think that’s good for, like, the current ones, right? I’m sure there’ll be more that come out this cycle that we’ll check in with later and just be like, oh my god, that fits so perfectly and we didn’t even know that was gonna come out at this time. But maybe we should jump back to 2018 and talk about some of the major movies that came out under that Venus retrograde cycle in the last three to four months of that year. 

SB: Let’s do it. 

CB: All right. Awesome. So which of these have we all seen, or which ones are the ones that really stood out to you the most in terms of this cycle? I know Skye, you really liked The Favorite, right? 

SB: I love The Favorite! 

AD: Yeah, that one’s a good one. 

CB: Yeah, that seemed like a really good film. What – could we briefly describe – I guess we have to say, like, spoilers for this episode, because we want to be able to talk about the themes, and I guess we can talk about the core premise a little bit, but it’s almost impossible to talk about some of these movies without spoilers. So maybe we can just put that out there right away. But what’s the plot of that movie generally? 

SB: So, for The Favorite, it has three key women and there is the queen and her “favorite.” And basically a new person, Emma Stone, comes in on the block and says, “Hey!” She starts at the bottom and she kind of crawls her way up, and you watch her kind of crawl her way up to be the queen’s favorite, knocking the other woman off her stage and kind of trying to win favor, which is a very Venus thing – like, build this relationship, but in the most martial, calculating way possible, which is quite, quite funny. Yeah. I think that’s just, like, the brief high version. 

CB: Yeah. So it was like, there’s a woman and she starts off at a really low point. She’s literally like, thrown in the mud at the beginning of the movie. But then she kind of like, finds her way into the court of the queen, and then finds that there’s already another woman there who’s manipulating and controlling the queen behind the scenes and partially is exerting power by having a sexual relationship with the queen. And then this, our main character, Emma Stone, sort of finds her way to manipulate herself in there and position herself as a the favorite of the queen.

AD: Yeah, she kind of – I mean, both of them really are using different types of manipulation and sneaky plots to try to kind of one-up the other and secure favor and then, yeah, both of them using sex to kind of control the queen who seems to be a little bit childlike, which I feel like a lot of the time you see depictions of royalty and that’s pretty common because they’re so disconnected from reality, so they’re a little bit easier to manipulate when you play on their vanity, which is another Venus thing is how we feel about ourselves and how sexually attractive we are and our power and all that kind of mingles together between these three women. 

CB: Yeah, totally. So there’s themes of, like, doing anything to survive. There’s themes of jealousy, there’s spies as well as people acting as double agents in the movie. And also I thought this Venusian theme was when power and manipulation and control is exerted subtly or with finesse, like we have that phrase in modern times of like, finessing somebody. And I felt like that really came through clearly in this movie. 

SB: Yeah. I think that one of the interesting dynamics is that Emma Stone kind of plays into this not damsel, but you start off kind of rooting for her because she’s the underdog. And she’s so sweet to Olivia Coleman’s character. And Rachel Weiss, who is the starting favorite, is kind of biting and tough with the queen and very harsh, and you think automatically, like, oh, this woman’s so nice, and oh, this other woman’s so mean. But when you go into the film, you can also see who has – how someone who is acting nice doesn’t really have your best interests at heart and then with Rachel Weiss’s character how when she says, like, “You can’t have cake” or “no” to this, she’s actually expressing her love for the queen and the country. And that kind of very Scorpio Venus theme of expressing love in a way that is saying “No, you can’t have this” and being a little harsh and being a little mean, which is very emblematic. 

CB: Yeah, I like that, of like, tough love. And the queen herself even at a certain point clearly enjoys being desired or competed over by the two women. And the notion, the theme of having multiple suitors who are trying to win your affection, or a woman’s status being elevated due to the relationship with the queen, but then also the queen experiencing like, a severe betrayal of trust at a certain point, and that idea of betrayal being a core wounding type thing. 

AD: Yeah. I mean, especially with Venus in Scorpio, I like to joke that that’s the placement that wants to wear a vial of blood around their neck of their partner. And so the betrayal goes so, so, so deep, but the bond also goes so, so, so deep. So that’s kind of, you know, when she’s done with somebody, she’s – they’re dead to her basically. Like, there’s no coming back from it. 

CB: Yeah, that makes sense. And just the sense of violation that comes with a betrayal of trust seems like a recurring theme because of the extreme intimacy of a relationship or of trust, but then when that sort of gets broken in some way that it feels like a sense of violation. 

SB: Exactly. I think that trust is, one, a very Venus-Scorpio word and exploring that, and who do you trust, and what is real versus what is more surface level I think is something that also kind of gets explored in these films. And one, to say, like, an interesting factoid with this film was that it came out with – after the Me Too movement, there was a call for more women-centric films, and this movie is very woman-centric. The men are almost played up for laughs. There’s that very subversive feeling where the men are in the makeup and looking very gaudy, and the women are the ones who are striving for power and taken more seriously. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. And this one came out, because it’s 2018, so this is when we’re getting into the Venus retrogrades that go back and forth between Scorpio and Libra. And this movie more than almost any of the others came off as a blend between Scorpio and Libra to me with Venus having just stationed direct in Libra one week before the movie came out. 

SB: Yeah. The court and the favor, and how you win the favor of the court is, like, you know, there’s trying to play the social game and then also there’s I don’t want to say killing, but like, there’s a point where she hits herself to make herself look like the victim and all these secret, manipulative tricks. It’s a very fun ride you go on. 

CB: Yeah, totally. All right, the only other things I wrote down were things like destroying one’s enemies through guile I thought was an interesting theme. Or possessive companionship was another theme that sort of came up in the movie. 

AD: Yeah. That’s that vial of blood thing. It’s like, you are completely mine and no one else’s, and in that way, I think the queen can be manipulated because she’s kind of merged all of herself and her power with another person. So yeah. 

SB: It’s a great example. 

CB: Definitely. All right, yeah. That was a good one. Everyone should check that one out. 

Let’s see, so we’re talking about 2018. One of the ones – I don’t know if we all three saw this, but Ames, you recommended Suspiria, and I watched that last night and that was a ride. That was an intense, pretty dark, like, Venus in Scorpio themed movie that was focused on – it was actually a remake, which is interesting, it was a remake of a 1977 film which we’ll find a bunch of our films on this list are remakes. But it was a horror movie centering on the idea that there was a coven of witches that were hidden within a Berlin dance academy. And it was pretty wild. 

AD: Yeah. I think I’ve blocked a lot of that movie out, because I saw it when I was younger, and it was really traumatizing. So I’m like, I know there’s a coven, I know that by the end, I was going, “What just happened?” And then I kind of put it away. So but it does seem like it’s pretty on theme. 

CB: Yes. I have to say I was traumatized. I was like, having a nice little movie and pizza night, and I was like, “Oh, Ames said this was a good movie; let’s check this out.” And then I’m just like, a little traumatized at the end. But it was a very good example. It came out on October 26th, 2018, just after Venus was retrograde and hit the cazimi in Scorpio, which I found was really fascinating. So there was a lot of very intense Venus in Scorpio themes. There were some themes about, like, movement as spells, which I thought was really interesting – like the dance component was a major component in the film. There was recurring mother issues in a really extreme sense the head witch was called – they were referring to her as “Mother,” and the main protagonist had a challenging relationship with her mother, and a lot of themes like that. I don’t know. Did you see that one, Skye? 

SB: I did not. You know, horror movies definitely freak me out, so when we had this long list, it wasn’t the first thing that I jumped toward. But we were commiserating by saying, like, by watching a bunch of Venus in Scorpio retrograde films, we are kind of low-key traumatizing ourselves — 

CB: Right. 

SB: — with these themes! 

CB: Yeah. Like last night, the Moon was applying to Saturn, and I think you and I both made the mistake of picking traumatizing films to watch at the same time. But so yeah, I don’t recommend most people watch it, honestly, unless you’re super into intense horror, dark type films. But it certainly fits the picture and artistically it was really well-done. Like, it was a good movie from an artistic standpoint. And one of the things I found interesting is that it acted as a pivot point for Dakota Johnson into a more serious acting phase of her career as she was trying to move out of the post-50 Shades of Grey era. So that was interesting because it’s like, if, you know, 2010 is her first film where she shows up briefly in The Social Network, she’s the woman at the beginning of the film that’s with Justin Timberlake. And then she goes through this entire process of this period of doing all the 50 Shades of Grey movie, does this pivot here with this movie with a much more intense artistic type film, and then the sort of career that she’s had since then. And also this film featured Mia Goth who was also making a transition from more independent, art-type movies into doing more like, major horror movies that we’ve seen her get into over the course of the past eight years or so. 

AD: She feels like such a Venus in Scorpio person. I haven’t looked at her chart, but just everything that she does I feel like screams Venus in Scorpio. 

CB: Yeah. She has a whole stellium, because I was looking at it because of course since this is now the eight-year recurrence, she’s in the news again because just a few days ago she announced she divorced officially her husband who she had already separated with last year, Shia LaBeouf, and they actually had been together for more than a decade, and they had already announced a previous divorce – guess when – exactly eight years ago. During the last Venus retrograde in Scorpio, they tried to break up then, but then backslid and got back together. But now it’s like, they’re officially, officially over, and there’s some not good stuff coming out about him. So yeah, that’s an interesting repetition, but also interestingly may tie into her story and chronology because she has a stellium in Scorpio, so that’s part of what’s getting activated during these times. 

AD: Well, hopefully this Venus retrograde helps her to heal and move away from men like Shia LaBeouf who, yeah, there’s no good things coming out about him, and I don’t think has in a really long time. 

CB: Yeah. 

SB: Yeah. I think he just allowed FKA Twigs – like, he dropped the NDA that she had for a while to speak on their relationship. And because he dropped the NDA, she was able – she dropped the lawsuit, and I know that that was a big part of FKA Twigs’s story as dating Shia LaBeouf. So it’s very interesting that this is happening for both of them at the same time. Like, Mia Goth is free, and then FKA Twigs, who I love her music, is also somewhat free from this man. And so it kind of also speaks to that theme of kind of women being able to come out in this way from these abusive relationships. 

CB: Yeah. Toxic relationships is a huge theme of a lot of the movies that have come out during these time periods that we’ll see come up over and over again. And I know one of the things is like, with our current cycle it’s being made worse by the square to Pluto and the square to Mars. And that was something you and I, because we were trying to isolate Venus retrograde in Scorpio and the core essence of that last time, we kind of didn’t go into as much what planets were copresent in a sign-based conjunction or aspecting the Venus retrograde in Scorpio during the different cycles, but that really does make a difference sometimes in terms of how it’s experienced during different eras. 

SB: A huge difference. Like, where is Mars, and how are the outers playing into this story? And you know, we covered a lot of ground in five hours, but there’s always more to talk about!

CB: Yeah, totally. Okay, moving on. Have either of you seen A Star is Born? Like, I had not seen that until just recently, and that was like, intensely very on point. 

AD: Yeah, I’ve seen the Lady Gaga one but not any of the older ones. 

SB: It’s another remake film. I did see it when it first came out, and just speaking to that disruptive, toxic relationship is very, very loud in that film. But it had – it follows that kind of, you know, these two characters who are not really great for each other, but still get drawn to each other in this type of – I think we said in the last episode, like, struggle love, not the easiest feel-good type of relationship. 

AD: It feels to me a bit like weirdly a connection to the mother thing again, because it kind of starts off where he has a lot of power and he’s bringing her in and gives her this career. And then she essentially becomes a mother to him. I mean, there’s literally a point where he’s like, falling down and peeing everywhere in public. Like, it’s so – he kind of becomes this burden that she has to care for, even though he started off with all of the power. It’s like, the dynamic kind of switches, which I think is interesting. 

CB: Yeah, that’s a good point. There’s a huge like, caretaking and resentment theme in the later part of the movie. So the premise, though, for those that haven’t watched it is like, it came out on October 5th, 2018, which is right as Venus is stationing retrograde. Like, literally within 24 hours of Venus stationing retrograde in Scorpio. And it’s about a tragic romantic drama where he’s a singer or a country singer who’s established and successful, but he struggles with addiction issues. And he discovers a younger woman who’s really a good singer who’s played by Lady Gaga. And he sort of brings her in and helps her to become successful in her career, and her career takes off as his is sort of falling apart due to his internal struggles. And she eventually becomes really successful and surpasses him while he’s sort of on his way down. But they have a relationship, but the relationship falls apart because of his internal struggles. 

SB: Yeah. I think just like in The Favorite where power plays into these relationships and the shifts in powers in relationships and in these dynamics is another theme that keeps coming up very loudly. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. And I forgot to do – we should have done, like, a content warning at the beginning like we did with the first one because there’s obviously, like, a lot of really heavy themes. So yeah, there’s a lot of heavy themes for the rest of this episode, basically, because we can’t talk about intense movies that deal with dark or really dark subjects without, you know, sometimes mentioning that. But in this instance, there’s a theme that has to do with suicide that comes up in this movie as really prominent, and that is one of the reasons it actually stands out very strongly for being released as Venus is stationing retrograde in Scorpio of, yeah, the darkest sort of extreme of relationship issues. 

SB: 100 percent. Yeah. It gets very heavy, with a lot of these films. So definitely if anything comes up for folks, you know, you’re welcome to take a break. We’ll be here on the internet when you come back. 

CB: Yeah. So other themes. He was dealing with childhood trauma. But one of the themes was not being dragged down when you are on the rise and in a toxic relationship and that as a possible dynamic of trying to save a person who’s drowning, or the danger of getting dragged down by a person who’s drowning who can’t help themself and that as an almost relationship archetype was an interesting one that came up in this film. 

AD: Yeah. It feels very much like that kind of descent cazimi and then kind of coming out the other side cycle to me where there’s some kind of powerful moment or realization that happens, and then you’re kind of forever changed from what you were before that. 

CB: Definitely. Yeah. Other themes, like the internal struggles that can undermine an otherwise perfect or really good relationship, or an inability to overcome one’s inner demons as being, like, a core theme to the movie it seemed like. 

Yeah. So I think that’s good. And the only other thing is just, like, yeah, like you said, this was the third remake of this film because it’s already had different versions in 1937, 1954, and 1967. And interestingly, the 1954 one came out September 29th, 1954, which was one of our Venus retrograde in Scorpio eras. So that’s pretty stunning. 

SB: Yeah. And that one was the first musical version. The one before that was more of a Hollywood-esque, this one was more music-focused, and so it’s funny how much this one with Lady Gaga – you know, one of the biggest pop stars of our time – bringing that back as another recurrence repeat echo of that moment. 

AD: Yeah, that story must really stick with people that they keep bringing it back over and over again. And then I was thinking about it, and I don’t know if you remember this, but when they were doing press, there were all these questions about whether or not Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper were together in real life and they play like, on the piano, kind of gazing longingly at an awards show together. And so it feels like they really just kind of played into that “We’re so absorbed in our characters and in each other,” this very like, Venus in Scorpio kind of connection that they had even outside of filming that movie, which I found really interesting. 

CB: Nice. That’s really cool. That’s really funny. And she won the Oscar that year for Best Song, for the song that she performed in the movie. So there was some real life crossover there as well, because the song topped the Billboard charts just because it was such a good song. 

AD: Yeah, it was catchy. 

CB: Yeah. 

SB: Yeah. It spoke to the moment, and the moment rewarded. 

CB: Absolutely. And there’s actually a parallel there, but so the only other things I wrote down that were themes that were kind of interesting were like, feeling humiliation by your lover or having your lover humiliate you. Feelings of guilt or self-loathing. Or the inversion of, like, feeling like your lover would be better off without you can be a thing that people sometimes struggle with, and yeah. A lot of good, but very heavy themes. And what’s interesting is, like, that movie came out, but there was another one that came out in the same cycle which was not a successful movie called Vox Lux with Natalie Portman. Did either of you see that? 

AD: No, I haven’t even heard of that, to be honest with you. 

SB: I know it, because I had – you know, 2018 was a big movie year for me, so yeah. I saw that, and it kind of plays into your Natalie Portman theory, right, Chris? 

CB: Yeah. She just like, Venus retrograde in Scorpio for some reason – I mentioned this in the last episode – is very important for Natalie Portman, and I don’t fully know why. We don’t have a timed chart for her. I suspect that it’s because she must have Scorpio at an angular house, like the 10th or the 4th or something like that, because it’s like, her first film came out under Venus retrograde in Scorpio, which was Leon: The Professional in 1994. But the big one was 2010 was Black Swan, which we’ll talk about next, which I think she won the Academy Award for that year, and that was another Venus retrograde in Scorpio. And then 2018 is this weird middle one where she did Vox Lux, but it was not very successful and it was more of like, an arthouse type film. But there was an interesting parallel there where the one we were just talking about, the music was written by Lady Gaga, obviously, who also starred in it, and for Vox Lux, they got Sia to write the music for the film. And it also kind of like, culminates with this performance at the very end of it. But there’s a lot of themes in that movie about difficult relationships with the mother and the toxicity of fame and other things like that. 

SB: Yeah. She’s like, trying to find – like, come back to herself in a certain way, too, and I think that was another Venus in Scorpio retrograde film is like, coming back to oneself or self being revealed in a way. And so yeah, like, one character starting on top, like in A Star is Born, and then kind of falling down. And then same with The Favorite where one character may start on top and one may start on the bottom, but they kind of – things are revealed, and there’s a positionality change. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. The positionality change is really important. Okay, are there any other movies in the 2018 cycle that either of you want to make sure we mention? 

SB: Yes. 

AD: Go ahead. 

SB: Oh, I’m excited, because I have to talk about the movie that traumatized me, which is The Hate U Give. Very different type of trauma, because it’s a little too close to home. But this is a film about this girl, her name is Starr; she is living kind of like, a double life where she is living in this really rough neighborhood with drugs and folks, and then she – and there’s like, gun-shooting and a lot of tumultuousness in a predominantly Black neighborhood. And then she goes to this all white, basically, fancier school on the nicer side of town, and she kind of splits herself up. And then when she goes with one of her childhood best friends, it is the fact that she sees him get shot by the police; they kind of come in and they have a routine traffic stop. And she watches her best friend get shot. And it kind of makes her go from this place of, “I don’t want to say anything, I want to keep the peace,” to kind of being a loud voice from seeing this act and seeing how these powers that be misuse their power, and saying, like, “That’s not okay.” And it’s kind of talking about the hate you give is speaking to how hate just keeps going from relationship to relationship. You start here, and it just spreads and spreads. And so I thought that was a huge Venus retrograde story with her transformation of kind of having this traumatic loss and then kind of finding herself and being able to integrate both worlds and not having to act a certain way with her white friends and things like that. 

CB: Yeah. There was this underlying theme of, like, she was also keeping a terrible secret from earlier in her life, from the first shooting that she witnessed, but also this recurring theme of her being really scared to speak up and that being part of her process.

SB: Yeah. It was interesting to see that it was almost like, a recurrence in the movie where it came back to her. Like, it came back, and she had to make a change, because she had a loss earlier in her life. 

CB: Right. And that one actually came out also on October 5th, 2018, so like, right on the station, which is pretty crazy in terms of the timing, because that’s the same day A Star Was Born came out. And with this one, she’s dealing in the movie also with themes of trauma and grief and things like that. 

SB: Definitely. And just how that separation, I think separation is a huge thing that we can see in some of these films and how some separation in a relationship, and this is like, a loss of a life of her close friend, triggers that almost transformation in her and how she sees society. 

CB: Yeah. Definitely. And also the media and the manipulation of the media by perpetrators or enablers or the media itself putting a false spin on things was also a bit of a theme. 

SB: Yeah. I think it really spoke to, when I was watching it, understanding – I know Nick Dagan Best talks about the social consensus of what everyone kind of says is the norm with that Venusian theme of, like, “This is okay, this isn’t like, breaking the rule,” and then this film really highlighted the “No, what we consider normal and how this just keeps happening is not okay,” and that like, eruption and frustration. And I think we can even feel that in today’s time where people are talking about things that keep on happening that is frustrating and should not be happening. 

CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point, that yeah, Nick’s thing is like, challenging consensus as a core Venus retrograde theme, and this is a really good example of that where the entire movie is about, like, digging down within yourself and finding the power to speak up even when it’s difficult or even when it’s dealing with something that was traumatic. 

SB: Exactly. 

CB: Nice. When I was researching this, I found a really tragic thing, which is that the movie was an adaptation of a really popular book, but there was a screenwriter who adapted the book into a screenplay, and her name was Audrey Wells, and she actually passed away of cancer the day before the movie was released – so right on that Venus stationing retrograde in Scorpio. So that’s really sad and tragic and must have felt pretty heavy for everybody involved in the movie just knowing that as it was being released. 

SB: Yeah. It was a, like, interesting catch that even loss is part of the release of the film when it’s so deeply baked in the theme of the film. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. 

All right, I think that’s good. Are there any other 2018 ones that we definitely want to mention? The only other one I have written down is, like, they did a remake of Halloween on October 19th, 2018, which was the 40-year anniversary of the original Halloween film that came out in Venus retrograde in 1978, at the end of 1978. And they decided to, like, even though there had been a bunch of other Halloween sequels and stuff in the interim after 1978 because the first one was so wildly successful, they decided to make this – to just like, pretend that none of those other sequels existed and just make a direct new sequel set in modern times with Jamie Lee Curtis’s character who was the main woman in the original movie. But now they had her as an older woman and as a mother and a grandmother, and the theme was that – like, in the first movie, she had been deeply traumatized by a crazed serial killer who gets out of a mental institution and starts murdering people with a knife. And in the remake or in the sequel that they created in 2018, it’s like, she’s an older woman who was deeply traumatized, but she took that and became really protective of her family, and she has barricaded herself in her house, and she has a bunch of weapons and she taught her daughter how to shoot and defend herself and things like that. And there’s this real theme of, like, an older woman that’s experienced trauma and grief, and on the one hand, the tension that created with her family who thinks that she goes too far then in trying to give them paranoia or live in fear or other things like that. But then when Michael Myers, like, shows up again and breaks out of a mental institution and starts murdering people again, they realize that some of those skills that she taught them due to her own trauma ended up being useful as they – the three of them, like, together – fight back to get rid of him. 

AD: I feel like there’s a couple different, like, salient points in there. You know, I feel like any Scorpio placement native deals with that, being – I don’t want to say suspicious, but just kind of reading the room, being really intuitive, never forgetting a wrong that was done. And so I feel like that definitely speaks to her character. And then kind of the idea of the Venus retrograde – like, she’s been through it once before; she knows what it looks like, and being able to pass that on as a mother and a grandmother kind of ties back in that theme of relationships and trauma. Even though she is doing it from a place of trying to be protective, it still is maybe received as something that’s, like, jarring or not necessarily good even though it’s all done with their best interest in mind, so. 

SB: Yeah. It’s very Venus in Scorpio is like, “I am going to show you my love by teaching you how to fight and kill and protect yourself.” 

CB: Right. 

AD: All Mars. 

CB: Yeah, that’s really good. There was also a theme where they were kind of – it was 2018, so this was coming on the wave of a lot of the popularity of true crime podcasts like Serial and stuff like that that got big in 2012, 2013, and so on. And they kind of like, parodied or did a social commentary on some of the true crime podcasts saying that some of them get, like, too excited about the grisly details that they cover and things like that. And it was an interesting sort of like, social commentary on some of that. 

AD: I mean, there was literally a podcast called My Favorite Murder, and the catchphrase was “Stay sexy, don’t get murdered” – if that’s not Venus in Scorpio, I don’t know what is. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Although it’s like, irony, of course, because then it’s like, in a movie where it’s like, there’s a guy murdering people and that 40 years earlier sort of set the tone for the last girl trope of a woman who’s morally pure, and because of that, survives, whereas every other one gets murdered type of theme. 

AD: Yeah. Laid out in the rules of Scream. Gotta follow the rules. No fun! 

CB: Exactly. Which you and I have discovered, unfortunately, it’s like, we want to be associated with Venus retrograde in Scorpio, it’s not. Like, we could not find any connection there. So it’s something else, but I’m not sure what it is. 

AD: I will find it. Because I need an excuse to talk about Scream, my true passion. 

CB: Right. All right, I think that’s good for 2018, yeah? Okay. So let’s jump back eight years earlier to 2010, and 2010 – what is – I mean, we’ve already started to talk about it a little bit, but like, Black Swan was one of the biggest movies that came out – it came out December 3rd, 2010, and that was one of the biggest ones, because that was a Darren Aronofsky movie, and it was a psychological thriller about artistic obsession and about a – let me read the synopsis. “An artistic director decides to cast a single dancer to play both the innocent white swan and the sensual black swan character in a new production of Swan Lake.” And then she has this dark descent into hallucinations and paranoia and self-destruction. So you can kind of pick up some of the Venus in Scorpio themes a little tiny bit right there and as, like, a Darren Aronofsky film, that’s pretty standard. 

What are some of the other – both of you have seen Black Swan, right? 

AD: Yes. 

SB: Yeah. 

CB: All right. 

SB: For me, one of the things that came out was just another theme that was coming back was the hidden self coming to the surface again, and this reveal of that positionality of that descent that she goes through and this darker side coming out. I feel like in a few of the examples already you see a darker side of someone coming out, and that being part of the arc of a character. 

AD: And almost the idea that you have to confront that version. Like, there’s literally that shot in the movie where two Natalie Portmans are passing each other and kind of look back and having to look at the ugly underside of something that you’ve perhaps been neglecting and make peace with it or whatever that looks like. 

CB: Absolutely. And what was interesting is a lot of the dynamic between her light and dark side or good and bad side or whatever, however you describe it, the contrast was brought out by this intense toxic relationship with her mother, which I just like, rewatched, and I forgot what a huge piece of the film the toxic relationship with the mother is because the mother – there’s a lot of infantilization of the main character, of Natalie Portman’s character. There’s themes of vicarious ambition and resentment on the mother’s part. And the main character has this sort of like, almost like violent or desperate attempt to rebel against her mother as well as a main theme. 

SB: Yeah. The mother themes come out really, really strong, and also just thinking about the act of being a ballerina and how this movie takes something that’s supposed to be so dainty and beautiful and brings a much darker twist to it, which I think again speaks so loudly of the theme of Venus retrograde and what you said, Ames, about confronting yourself and really having to do that process – I think that’s a process we all kind of feel in a retrograde where we’re confronting sides of ourself and parts that may disgust us, or the things that we desire that have a certain level of – that we may not want to desire and what we’re willing to do for that. So I think in these films, you see it, and then it just speaks to what people experience in the transits. 

AD: I feel like also on that note with the desire versus disgust thing, I feel like that comes up a lot. And a theme that I noticed in a couple movies and we didn’t touch on it, but Portrait of a Lady on Fire is another one – that’s what I call, like, a cold lesbian film; it’s a period piece. But I felt like, even with The Favorite and with this one, there’s a lot of kind of queering of sexuality and gender roles that come up. But it’s been a while since I’ve seen this, but correct me if I’m wrong, but there is kind of this kind of fight for the desire that she has for the other character – who plays the other character? Mila Kunis? 

CB: Mila Kunis? 

AD: Yeah. And there’s kind of this like, wild night that they have together that has all of these elements of passion but maybe shame attached to it as well. I thought that was an interesting throughline as far as, like, desires that maybe don’t fit with the status quo of society. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely, because she – Natalie Portman’s character – views Mila Kunis’s character as being more liberated and in touch with her darker nature, which the main character is repressing. And so she also – that’s like, alluring to her in some ways as well. 

AD: Yeah, for sure. And I would say maybe not necessarily with this movie, but in general, I’ve found that in some of these movies if there is the strong mother figure, it’s almost like, replicating that relationship, but on the other end of the spectrum in some way. Like, kind of being attracted to these people who seem to hold more power than you do, and needing to ultimately reclaim your own power from other people. 

CB: Yeah, definitely. That’s a huge, huge theme that we’ll see come up, actually, a few times in different movies. And the role of power, which we already kind of explored a little bit in the one with the queen – what was the name of that? 

AD: The Favorite. 

SB: The Favorite. 

CB: The Favorite. But we’ll kind of see come up a little bit again in 1994’s Disclosure as well of some of those themes of power and control and who has the power and different things like that. 

AD: Yeah. Also, sidenote, before we move on from this, I just wanted to point out – I didn’t connect the dots until now, but the fact that this one is, you know, there’s Swan Lake involved and then the Swan Princess cartoon is based on Swan Lake and them both being made during a Venus retrograde or premiering during a Venus retrograde is another recurrence that I didn’t catch initially. 

CB: That’s great. So the animation one – that came out in 1994’s Venus retrograde in Scorpio, right? 

AD: Yeah, it did. 

CB: That’s perfect. Good catch! 

SB: Yeah, I thought that was why it was on the list! 

AD: No, I just saw that it was on there, and I was like, “Oh, that’s perfect! You know, transformation and having to fight for who you are against power dynamics,” but yeah. It’s perfect that there’s another thread that kind of connects them together. 

CB: Nice. Th at’s so good. And yeah, sometimes that’s the thing with – it’s like, there’s all these recurrences and sometimes they’re right in your face, but you don’t notice it until sometimes you sort of slow down or really think about it, and then you start making the connections. 

The last thing about this is this, like, this movie’s actually coming up in two different ways in the past couple of weeks since Venus stationed retrograde in Scorpio and reactivated again as a recurrence. One way is that there’s this whole story that I caught somehow on YouTube where there’s a famous writer that Natalie Portman as an actress really liked and featured in her book club or like, interviewed at some point, and the writer just, like, I think announced to her that in her next book she decided to make it quasi-autobiographical about Natalie Portman and that Natalie Portman’s super not stoked about that. And it mentions in passing, without mentioning her by name, certain things – like, she did a movie that had to do with ballet, which is obviously an allusion to Black Swan. Or it mentions another allusion to the 2018 movie she did, Vox Lux. So there’s some whole drama that’s happening right now about this Venus retrograde bringing up past movies and her history, again, for Natalie Portman, which is one of the reasons I said it was tied in with her. And then if that wasn’t enough, just a few days ago, Dakota Johnson is doing that press run right now, and they were asking for comparison of which movie do you like best, and they were doing an A or B. And they put up two movies and one of them was Black Swan, and she was like, “Well, not that one, because that’s a remake” or was inspired by or she sort of implied was a rip-off of the 1997 movie Perfect Blue. And I had never heard of that, but then it started a bunch of discussion, and then the Academy Awards’ social media account just tweeted out this gif comparison of scenes from the 1997 anime movie compared to, like, almost exact replicated scenes in Black Swan showing the comparison really closely. So it’s creating all this drama about the extent to which Aronofsky was influenced or drew scenes or themes or other things directly from this earlier film that he incorporated into what became one of the biggest films of the year in 2010 in Black Swan. So that’s an interesting recurrence and discussion that’s coming up right now as this planet is doing the same thing it was back then. 

AD: That’s really interesting that an institution like that would kind of shots fired put that out on social media. That’s wild. 

CB: Yeah, it’s really – I was really shocked. Like, when I first saw it, I was like, “Wait a minute, that’s the actual Academy Awards account.” Well, because she won – Natalie Portman won – Best Actress for Black Swan, so it was a real moment and it had, like, five nominations, but that was the only one they won. But yeah, it was surprising seeing the actual Academy seemingly endorsing the comparison or whoever’s running the social media account or what have you. 

AD: Yeah, that’s wild. 

SB: Yeah. Dakota Johnson really be shaking things up —

CB: Yeah. 

SB: — with her placements! 

CB: Yeah, I know! 

SB: People hate to see her coming! 

AD: Poor Ellen. I mean, not poor Ellen, but you know, she was on the other end of that. 

CB: Yeah. No, her – Dakota Johnson’s Venus in Scorpio, but not retrograde, but it’s making me realize it’s like, people that have Venus in Scorpio – that’s getting activated for them even if they don’t have it retrograde. And in that way is acting as a really powerful extended transit of a natal placement right now, which made me understand better why during the last cycle in early 2005 with the Venus retrograde in Aries why Lady Gaga was having such a moment. Because she has Venus in Aries where Venus was going retrograde, but it’s not retrograde natally, so I didn’t understand as much at the time why it was so important. But now I’m realizing it’s especially the people that have Venus retrograde in Scorpio that are getting that activated as a recurrence right now, but it’s also sometimes magnifying people that even just have Venus in Scorpio also. 

AD: That’s really interesting. And now we have found our in to eventually talk about Scream, because Neve Campbell does have Venus in Scorpio, so. Let’s put a pin in that for later. 

CB: Nice. Yeah, that was such a good find, both with Scream and also with The Craft, which are two just, mega major movies in the mid-’90s. 

AD: For sure. 

CB: All right, cool. So 2010. Are there other – you, Ames, you pointed out to me that the movie Let Me In came out around this retrograde cycle in 2010, and that was actually a remake of the original Swedish movie Let the Right One In. So that was a really great example of a remake, and that was like, a vampire movie, right? 

AD: Yeah. Admittedly, I have not seen the remake; I have only seen the original, and it’s been a really, really long time. But it is kind of, from what I remember, the story of this kid who’s a little bit of a social outcast who makes this unusual friend, but the friend has a dark secret, and obviously the secret is that she’s a vampire. So it feels pretty on theme. But then the devotion that they have to each other kind of goes beyond anything that you would expect for kids of their age, so again, that like, Scorpio Venus deep, deep bond only with each other kind of thing. 

CB: Yeah, totally. And there’s this theme – because like, the main character, Owen, develops feelings for Abby, and Abby’s like, interestingly, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, who interestingly – this is in the 2010 time period, and then eight years later, she’ll show up in Suspiria on the repetition, interestingly also in a vampire – well. It’s not a vampire movie; it’s a witch movie. But adjacent. But she’s stuck, the main character, the vampire, is stuck at the age of 12. So I thought that was really interesting, because then it’s like, a similar theme of a 1994 repetition where we have Interview with a Vampire and we have the main character, the younger girl who’s turned into a vampire as a young girl, and therefore is stuck permanently at that age and really, really hates that. 

AD: Yeah, and everything she does, she’s trying to get as close as she can to womanhood. Like, collecting bodies of women because she’s fantasizing about this thing that she can never be, because someone has taken it from her, which also feels a bit Venus retrograde to me. Like, the descent and kind of being pulled a bit. 

CB: That’s such a great inversion as a Venus retrograde keyword, because oftentimes with Venus, other times we’re seeing themes of women – like, we talked about in the last episode, Skye, The Substance and Demi Moore with her Venus retrograde in Scorpio and the themes of aging and getting aged out of an acting or modeling part, and then her getting played by the younger version of her, which we found out was, like, born on the 1994 repetition of Venus retrograde in Scorpio. But this is like, an inversion where it’s somebody permanently stuck at a certain age and hating being on the other side of that. 

AD: I mean, that’s womanhood for you, right? Like, no age is really the correct age, and even when you’re at the correct age, nothing will ever meet this, like, standard of beauty that you can’t quite meet. And so Venus in Scorpio, to me, is dealing with that kind of dark, patriarchal fact that can’t be escaped at all, no matter what kind of – you know, there’s that quote, like, “you could be the juiciest peach in the room and there’s somebody who won’t like peaches.” And I feel like that works really well as far as, like, women and aging and aesthetic as far as how it’s valued in the world. 

CB: Absolutely. Yeah, totally. Okay, any other themes? like bonding over being outcasts and being alone or isolated was a major theme. Bullying at school, and that kind of victimization breeding a desire for violent or ruthless retribution I’ve seen as a theme that’s sometimes coming up during the Venus retrogrades in Scorpio, as well as a little bit of, like, codependency and some of those related themes. 

AD: Yeah. I mean, that I feel like ties back really nicely to Carrie, if we wanted to talk about the like, codependency and violence. I mean, those are kind of the – and the bullying – all of those things tie in with Carrie really well, and so this feels like a – albeit a much more subtle version, but definitely a theme that comes up over and over again. 

CB: Yeah, definitely. Okay. Let’s move on. Are there other 2010 ones that we need to mention? 

SB: I had a couple. One to kind of talk about that women somehow always being villainized or chasing after, not doing it right, is Easy A, which I thought was a really fun story and remake of The Scarlet A [Letter] and it came out 21 days before the Venus retrograde in 2010 on September 17th. But it’s basically Emma Stone plays this character who is a virgin, and basically pretends to have sex and then her sexuality becomes the rumor and scandal of the school, and she kind of embraces it and wears an A and more provocative clothing. And I just think that movie of, you know, the scandalous woman and the lies and scandals that come out around women being scandal being a very Venus retrograde theme, just being very, very loud in that film. So I’d be remiss not to mention it. 

CB: Yeah, that’s a really good one, and those themes of, like, virginity versus promiscuity coming up frequently with Venus retrograde in Scorpio and the accusatory – like, people making judgments or false judgments or other things about that based on that as a recurring theme. 

SB: Yeah. It kind of goes back to that final girl trope being like, you have to be pure and such, and how she kind of plays into that for her own thing and just embraces it in her style in that film and it was a very fun watch. You know, you can go from the horror movie to a lighter watch with Easy A! 

AD: Palate cleanser! 

CB: Yeah. We need lots of good palate cleaners here in between the Venus retrograde in Scorpio movies. We’ve learned that you cannot binge a list of Venus retrograde in Scorpio movies without some palate cleansers. 

AD: Yeah, absolutely. 

CB: All right. 

SB: Enter with the trope with a lighter lens. 

CB: Yeah. This is good. Yeah, but Venus was already in Scorpio on this date even though it hadn’t stationed yet, so that’s a really good one. 

Okay, I think that’s good. 

SB: One that I did see and watch last night too was RED, which I think was really funny because the premise of this movie is that he is – RED stands for Retired and Extremely Dangerous. And so he kind of is a retired CIA agent, and he has to reassemble his whole team after a squad of hitmen try to take him out. So that like, somewhat that life and death theme and having to reconnect with all your old war buddies. But one of the things that surprised me in that film was the fact that there’s a love story in this film, and he is in love with this office woman that he ends up having to kidnap and take along for the ride. And they end up liking each other. But I think just the fact that she’s involved in this way and they’re just like, dragging this woman along – it feels very Scorpio-esque of even with this very masculine type of film – like, Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren are all key members; they’re still also – they find a way to put love in it, and also put this woman who’s kind of somewhat victimized or is victimized – she’s getting kidnapped so she doesn’t get kidnapped, you know? 

CB: That’s a really good one, because that also is probably at a really crucial point in Bruce Willis’s chronology with the Venus retrograde in Scorpio stuff, because then it was eight years later he did some of his final big films with Split in 2016 and then Glass in 2019, because then after that, he started doing all these video-on-demand movies. And it was in this really weird period I’ll never forget when all these tabloids and people were just like, ragging on him constantly for doing all these bad movies basically, and everyone was saying he fell off. And then, of course, in like, 2022 or 2023 his family announced that he was sick and he was losing his memory and stuff like that due to a significant disease and that he was having to retire from acting, so it turned out he’d been taking all these roles to, like, pay for – you know, set his family up, basically, for the future because he knew he wouldn’t be able to work again soon. 

AD: Yeah, a thing that was hidden from public view until it was time for everyone else to know. 

CB: Yeah. Well, it was a good reminder just that you never know what people are going through or especially what celebrities are going through in some instances and that people can kind of rush to judgment or rush to criticism – really severe criticism sometimes – not knowing the context of really what their actual personal life is like. 

AD: Yeah. 

CB: But okay, so that’s a good Scorpio-esque movie, and that reminds me of how I’d found in the 1962 repetition the first James Bond film came out. So we sort of see an echo of that here with this movie with Bruce Willis versus like, really the origins of spy movies and stuff like that under the Venus retrograde in Scorpio in 1962. 

SB: Yeah, that’s a good callout, because when I saw you put that on there I was like, “Oh yes! And here’s another spy movie coming back.” So a hundred percent, yeah. Things repeat. 

CB: That’s perfect. Yeah, and echoes and identifying sometimes when those echoes happens help you clarify what the underlying archetype is. 

All right, I think that’s it for 2010, yeah? 

AD: Yeah. 

CB: Okay, let’s move onto the next one going eight years back to the previous Venus retrograde in Scorpio in the last few months of 2002. All right, so one of the main ones that really struck me about 2002 – like, a huge massive one when I was pretty young – was on October 18th, 2002, the movie The Ring came out. And this was a massive, massive cultural phenomenon psychological horror movie that came out at that time that was huge when I was young. I was like, what, 18 in 2002 or something like that? So that was the obsession of my era, basically.d o you remember that, Ames? Was that the same for you? 

AD: Yeah, it definitely was a regular feature at slumber parties and is the origin of my crunchy girl trauma. Like, I have a hard time watching movies where, you know, like The Exorcist where there’s a lot of really fast, kind of unnatural crunchy movie. The Ring still haunts me to this day. So yes, it was influential, I would say. 

CB: Right, yeah. I’m glad you mention that, because that’s actually one of the things about Obsession that everyone, like, freaked out about was when she starts moving all weird. And there’s just something psychologically in us that feels like it – like, we get squeamish when something moves weirdly like that in unnatural way. 

AD: Yeah, it’s like the opposite of uncanny valley, right? It’s like, something’s wrong and I can see it very, very clearly. 

CB: Right. Yeah. 

SB: I think that speaks to Venus retrogrades, like, one – not moving in the way it’s expected, and just seeing something so clearly and that being the horrifying thing with a Venus retrograde in Scorpio is like, that clarity that happens when you do that review, and then it being in Scorpio, it being somewhat of a horrific experience. 

AD: Yeah. 

CB: Definitely. So for those that haven’t seen it, this movie was about a cursed video tape where anyone who watches the video tape will die exactly seven days later. And it was, like, very – I was rewatching it the other night, and it’s so well-shot. Like, just the way that it’s shot really holds up really well and it reminded me of just, like, horror movies having a good aesthetic and being able to appreciate some horror movies purely from an aesthetic or artistic standpoint. And this was one of them because it was shot really well, but it’s also a good scary movie. Unsurprisingly, mother issues are a very core, core theme in this movie, I think it’s safe to say, right? 

AD: I would say so, yeah. Kind of hard to miss that one. 

CB: It’s like, part of the theme was the mother suffered many miscarriages, so she realized she couldn’t have a biological child, so she adopts a young girl named Samara. But then it turns out that Samara was deeply disturbed and she never slept and she had the ability to psychically show people terrible visions and said that she would never stop hurting other people. Have you seen it, Skye? 

SB: No. I avoid the horror movie genre. 

CB: Okay. 

AD: Yeah, I think you made the right choice. 

SB: But I know of the tropes. I think it just became so iconic that you can see it happening or themes that originated in that movie in spoofs or spin-offs that even if you don’t know the film personally, like I don’t, but you can kind of see it echo in culture. 

CB: Yeah. I think it was parodied in like, the Scary Movie movies of that era and stuff like that just because it was so big. Yeah. So anyway, bad mother relationship issues as a core theme of horror and taking the idea of toxic relationships with one’s mother, which we kind of explored in the last episode in a real context with Tonya Harding, for example, but this in like, an extreme context of placing that in a horror movie context. 

SB: Yeah, the dramatization of it all. 

CB: Right. For sure. Okay, so that was October 18th, 2002, and that was Venus at 14 Scorpio just having stationed eight days earlier, so it’s a very stationary, very potent Venus there when The Ring comes out. And what were some other 2002 ones that we gotta highlight? 

SB: I think that one would be Chicago. I think that is another woman-centric film that I think you’ve mentioned in past Venus retrograde episodes too, Chris – like, how these women who are scorned by the criminal justice system and their stories and the bad woman kind of comes alive, especially with the “He Had It Coming” type of song that plays out really loudly there. 

CB: Yeah. It was so loud. Like, the recurrence of women in crime or women that have done crimes or are criminals just seems to be one of the core recurring Venus retrograde in Scorpio themes, both in art as well as sometimes literally as we’ve seen over the past few weeks really dramatically and in really sad cases. But in this, it was an artistic dramatization. What was the core story? It’s like, a woman commits a murder, and then her lawyer helps to defend her or to reframe her case positively and to manipulate the press? 

AD: Yeah. He uses the ol’ razzle-dazzle to get her out of trouble, and it’s very, like, I kind of like the angle of Chicago where it’s like, “Yes, these women are murderers,” but it’s a little bit like, “Good for her.” Like, “Yes, as you should!” Which is a nice kind of empowering take on female murderesses. 

SB: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. 

SB: That female rage that comes out that we kind of talked about before. I think it’s a very “support women’s rights and support women’s wrongs” — 

AD: Yes. 

SB: — that is kind of a joke that kind of comes along but gets highlighted in this film especially. 

AD: Yeah. I think also Roxie, like a big part of her story is the envy that she has for other performers, which to me feels like a tool of Mars a bit, which I know sounds weird to talk about envy as a tool. But how we talked about, like, disgust versus desire, I think envy can help you figure out the things that you want. And so even though it’s like, an arguably ugly emotion, it does go well with a Venus retrograde in Scorpio kind of looking at those ugly emotions in order to parse out who you are and what you want. 

SB: Yeah. Because envy especially is like, you know, “I envy this because I don’t have it and I want it.” And with Venus in Scorpio, it’s a highlighting of what you want and maybe don’t have. And especially in a retrograde, you’re realizing what you don’t have that you want, and that can come out as envy of a type of – just a strong – yeah, it can come out as a strong Venus retrograde theme of envy and how you can use envy as a tool, and that desire and allure and want from other people. 

AD: And then just like, being obsessed and fixated and not being able to let it go until you get it kind of thing. 

CB: Those are good themes. Yeah. So yeah, that was an interesting thing about, like, the retaliation against men that had it coming because they were cheating or abusive or deceitful, and framing their crimes as like a taking back of power in relationships where they felt wronged. And that’s really interesting, as well as how he’s defending the women sometimes by playing into societal expectations that they, you know, can’t be a certain way or that they’re fragile or naive or easily led astray and using that to get them off basically or to make them free basically in the legal system. 

AD: And then also, like, in the same turn having them sit a certain way or present in this way that’s subtly provocative so that they kind of manage to get it from both angles. You know, like, naive, innocent, and also they just happen to also be very attractive and provocative. 

CB: Right, right. Yeah. And they’re also, like, outsmarting the men around them by playing those roles, which is another really interesting theme. 

SB: Yeah. And especially with the – I think the outsmarting the men and kind of playing into that more, I think everyone can kind of hear how feminine focused these films are, but just the playing of a courtroom in itself is such a Libra act of being very, you know, winning people’s favor, putting people on your side, and kind of doing that malicious dance that kind of gets shown in this film of what do we consider okay, or how do you get people’s favor in these trails for murder? 

AD: And who decides what justice really is, you know? 

CB: Yeah, totally. And then, of course, it’s like a lot of this has become really – these are literally discussions that we’re – that’s what’s so crazy about this as a movie and that this was like, this won Best Picture that year, and it came out with Venus retrograde in Scorpio, but then it’s like, a lot of these discussions are literally happening right now in the past couple of weeks. It’s like, you have the woman – the failed execution that just took place, and then in the context of that it’s brought up a lot of discussion about Aileen Wuornos back in 2002 and what she was doing and the validity or the extent to which she was a victim early in life and how that frames, you know, her case and everything like that. It’s really eerie that this movie came out and was such a hit back in 2002, and now on this recurrence, it’s like, we can see some of the same themes coming up in the news and headlines today. 

AD: Yeah. And not to bring it back to East of Eden too much, but that’s a huge discussion that’s been coming up, I feel like, on social media is, you know, is Cathy – are her actions justified because she was a victim of sexual assault? And she is trying to kind of get around all of these, like, men who are trying to own her and control her. Does that make her actions justified, or is she still a villain? So it’s interesting that that comes up both in pop culture and in real life, seemingly, whenever we have a Venus retrograde in Scorpio. 

CB: Yeah. 

SB: Yeah. 

CB: That’s incredible. 

SB: Yeah. And I think that kind of also speaking to that theme that we saw in the last episode, too, which was how you can start to sympathize and where does your empathy lies with the monster or the villain, and who do we paint as the villain in these stories? And even that also goes back to the story of Medusa, you know, where she got hurt first and was victimized first, but is seen as this scary character, but no one talks about that initial hurt. So we see that kind of spoken to in these films and in our current culture, and it’s just become pretty loud that this is the type of story or theme that comes up with this transit. 

CB: That’s such a great point and encapsulation of that point about Medusa that we talked about in the last episode, because it’s like, on the surface it’s like, who is Medusa? It’s a monster who freezes people into stone if they look at her, and she has snakes for hair. But then it’s like, but the backstory is she was a woman who was in a temple and had beautiful hair, but then she was assaulted by Poseiden, and then Hera – or was it Athena – falsely blamed the victim in that instance and then turned her into that. So it’s like, that’s so interesting that that’s like – that’s a good encapsulation of that. 

SB: Exactly. And does your thought of Medusa change when you know her backstory? 

CB: Right, and becoming more of a sympathetic character in a way. 

AD: Also with the idea of Athena being the one to falsely kind of put Medusa in the wrong, I feel like we can also see that in the way that we kind of go after, like, famous women seemingly for almost no reason at all. Like, you know, I’m sure that the women that we’ve talked about have dealt with it. I know Dakota Johnson has. But I’m thinking very loudly of like, Blake Lively and Amber Heard and people like that who it’s so easy and sometimes women will be the loudest ones to kind of point a finger, because there’s this idea of being rewarded by the patriarchy for othering another woman. So I think that’s also a theme that we can kind of see come up over and over again. 

SB: And then — 

CB: Yeah. 

SB: — with the retrograde part of being like, wait, why are we only talking about the woman when there is also a man who has done wrong in Medusa’s story, or in the stories that we see where does the sympathy lie? I think even in The Hate U Give, that was one of the frustrating parts where they started sympathizing the officer who shot the boy and then starting to paint him as a victim – starting to paint the cop as a victim while letting the victim who actually all he did was grab a hairbrush become villainized, putting the worst traits of him upfront to somewhat justify the cop’s behavior. So kind of really thinking about who are we sympathizing with and why, and what type of narratives in media I think goes back to what’s the norm of where we put our sympathies. 

AD: And with like — 

CB: Absolutely. 

AD: — the Scorpio element, like, who has the power inherently? And that’s something that we should consider when we talk about who the real victim is. 

CB: Yeah. And the tendency sometimes to sympathize or frame the perpetrator and to villainize the victim, basically. Yeah. Okay, so yeah, so that was like, Best Picture that year, so that’s a stunning example with Chicago coming out in December of 2002 and winning Best Picture. What were some other major 2002 ones that we should highlight? 

AD: I don’t know if it was major for everybody, but I do feel like White Oleander is a really, really good one that kind of hits on a bunch of things we’ve already talked about, just with the mother element and the kind of – the descent and figuring out who you are and making peace with it. I feel like it’s a good one for that. 

CB: Yeah. So what’s the synopsis of that movie again? 

AD: So Michelle Pfeiffer is the mother in this movie, and her daughter – I think it’s Alison Lohman that plays the daughter – basically, Michelle Pfeiffer is an artist, and she becomes very obsessed with her boyfriend. He dumps her, and she just, like, can’t get over it because she’s used to having all the power in a relationship. And so she murders her boyfriend and goes to prison. And then her daughter is kind of shuffled between these different types of foster homes that feel like this very, like, clean journey as far as descent goes, because it starts off where she’s in a foster home with Robin Wright, and it’s very, like, super Christian, it seems very squeaky clean on the surface, but in actuality, it’s really dysfunctional and there’s abuse. And even though she’s trying to be this, like, good girl and converts to Christniaty, she’s still not able to find the safety that she craves and that she never really got with her mother, either. And then it just kind of proceeds from there. Like, every time she goes to a new foster home, there’s this new struggle where she has to face herself and kind of develop this inherent sense of self, but also a way to self-soothe. It’s almost like she’s trying to somehow find that mother figure everywhere she goes, but she can’t find it. And even her real mother is just deeply manipulative and using her for her own gain. 

CB: And her mother is serving a life sentence for murder? 

AD: Yeah, she is. And kind of the – you know, spoiler alert, but – one of the big things right at the end is that Michelle Pfeiffer wants her daughter to lie on the stand and basically say that they were nowhere near there. And the way in which they forgive and release each other is that Michelle Pfeiffer tells her not to get up on the stand. In that moment, there’s some healing that happens because she’s no longer trying to use her daughter like a pawn and kind of just takes on the responsibility of the action that she has taken. 

CB: That’s such a great additional – like, we keep talking about mother issues, but there’s all sorts of different ways in which people can have tensions with their mother, and different ways that that can manifest. Because it’s like, we know some of the father issue signatures with Saturn or other things like that that astrologers talk about, but this is such an interesting access point for understanding what happens when the relationship with the mother goes awry or is not normal or if there’s something abnormal or something toxic about that. 

AD: I wonder if it’s just the idea that Scorpio is where the Moon is in fall, and so there’s that connection to dysfunction with the mother. 

CB: Yeah. That would make sense. I saw – I mean, there’s also a retrograde component with Venus as well, though, with like in the last cycle – or maybe it was two cycles ago – Gypsy-Rose Blanchard and the whole thing with her getting out of jail after having her mother murdered or her boyfriend murdering her or whatever happened with that was kind of a theme under that one that was striking. 

AD: Yeah, and she’s back again, right? In the news currently. 

CB: Yeah. Her, what, ex-husband just died, I guess, and that’s a whole thing. 

All right, and you pointed out that Robin Wright’s in this film, so this is a recurrence for her, right?

AD: Yes. 

CB: And that’s because — 

AD: She’s the kind of “shiny on the top” but actually deeply unhinged right beneath the surface figure. 

CB: Nice. And she was filming The Princess Bride during the Venus retrograde on ‘86? 

AD: Yes, which I feel like this is just the polar opposite of that role in every way. 

CB: Right. Yeah, definitely. 

AD: But also interesting that, like, The Princess Bride, she’s supposed to be this kind of young, innocent woman, and then in White Oleander she is a former exotic dancer, and she was an addict, and so she’s really kind of been through the darker parts of life and is trying to reinvent herself and be good. But she just can’t quite get to where she needs to be. 

CB: Yeah, the whole, like, later era of Robin Wright’s career has just been amazing with playing darker, more complicated characters, especially like, House of Cards and the role that she played on that. You know, despite all the gross stuff that happened with Kevin Spacey later on and all that bullshit with him eventually getting kicked off the show when that came out and then her carrying it the rest of the way. But she was just an amazing character, and that’s a good reminder of just, like, that’s the thing about villain characters. I learned – somebody was telling me on Patreon, I’m spacing out their name, but – that to play a villain character, you have to understand them better, and it’s more complex to understand where a villain is coming from. And I think that’s one of the things that comes through with some of these is what it means to play a complex villain or challenging character who’s toxic in different ways and to actually make that feel real and understandable in some way rather than just, like, one-dimensional. 

AD: Yeah. I think part of it is because there’s a part of us that recognize, even if it’s like, miniscule, a bit of that in ourselves, whether it’s a tendency towards envy or anger or whatever it is. And so having to humanize a villain can feel uncomfortable, but that’s Venus retrograde for you. 

CB: Yeah. And I think there’s an element of that that we’re seeing, you and I, Skye, in the last episode with people that had – actors that had – Venus retrograde in Scorpio that were really good at playing villain characters and identifying some of those shades of grey or being able to understand the humanizing parts of a villain character to play that more effectively. 

SB: Yeah, the ability or comfort they can get in somewhat of the scarier, darker roles. Like, they don’t shy away from it. I think those folks with Venus Scorpio retrograde can find an affinity with those which helps them embody those characters really well. And I think that even with what we’re saying of kind of like, that sympathy element that we’re getting with these stories of, “Oh, I’m sympathizing with this villain,” and the positionality of kind of looking good on the surface but actually kind of falling into this darkness or starting somewhere dark and then actually being redeemed is something that we can watch in those folks who have Venus retrograde in Scorpio where we saw some people kind of coming from scandal and getting out, or coming into scandal. So I think that it’s really cool to see that also in movies. 

CB: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s a great point. Okay, moving on. One of the ones I found – it was not a release, but it was a filming – but I found out that Kill Bill was being filmed in late 2002, and specifically Quentin Tarantino was filming the legendary showdown at the House of Blue Leaves against O-Ren Ishii and the Crazy 88, and this was amazing because it’s like, if you think about that scene, it’s a single woman with a samurai sword who’s taking out an entire gang of people singlehandedly. But one of the things that was fascinating about it is that it was so gory that – and they used so much fake blood on that scene – that they famously switched to black and white early in the sequence in order to avoid the censorship of getting an NC-17 rating, which would have killed the commercial prospects for the movie. So it switches to black and white. But it’s still – even in a black and white scene, it’s like, there’s a lot of – it’s a pretty, pretty gory scene I think. 

SB: Totally. Talk about feminine rage. It’s like, intense. And to see a woman in that, I think, is like, the Venus of it all being, like, whoa. 

CB: Yeah, totally. Like, a woman – because Uma Thurman’s character is literally an assassin, and she’s out for revenge against people that tried to kill her on her wedding day. And that’s actually her name is The Bride. So that’s pretty funny that they were filming that, and apparently it was supposed to take two weeks, but it ended up being filmed in, like, August, September, October, so that’s like, ground zero for that Venus retrograde in Scorpio. 

SB: Yeah. It’s like it happened, and they – I can imagine Uma Thurman being in that moment and, like, the transits and the time and just really embodying that moment when she was playing it and just, you know, we didn’t know it at the time, but she capturing that moment of what that would look like – what this Venus retrograde story would look like – with that scene. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Of a woman bent on revenge that will do nothing to, you know, get to that destination. 

Okay, so that was good. Another huge movie that came out on November 8th, 2002, was Eight Mile. And I remember that being a huge release at the time, right? 

AD: Yeah, for sure. I feel like Eminem was already huge and then he just skyrocketed after that movie. 

CB: Yeah. So that was – Venus was retrograde at three degrees of Scorpio, and it was about 12 days away from stationing direct. And he famously has Mercury in Scorpio, which is exemplified by a lot of his lyrics, especially earlier on. But this was definitely sort of like, the height of his popularity in some sense, both commercially with his early albums that were very huge in the early 2000s, but also attempting to make this shift to acting and making a semi-autobiographical drama about navigating and coming up out of poverty in the underground rap scene. 

AD: I mean, talk about humanizing somebody who has, like, such a different reputation from his music, you know? Like, there was a lot of backlash because of the violence in his lyrics. And he said some, like, pretty offensive shit. But then he put this movie out, and it was like, okay, well, he has this trauma, he’s worked so hard, and there was this humanizing element for him where everybody kind of got behind him a little bit more, I feel like. 

CB: Yeah. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Song a few months after this. So this is similar to, what, A Star is Born, basically, where it’s like you have the movie that comes out late in the year during the Venus retrograde in Scorpio, and then it wins Best Song basically. 

AD: Yeah. Wild. I would have never predicted Eminem winning that award pre-that movie, but he’s a talented guy. 

SB: And also speaking to one of our themes that we mentioned in the last episode, but also that exile character, of being the outsider in a way. And I think this movie really exemplifies that experience and really see his transformation in that. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. Because he has a working class background, he lives in a trailer park, and you know, surprise, there’s like, huge mother issues and family trauma issues. His mother is played by Kim Bassinger, which is really funny. And they have a volatile relationship, and she’s dating somebody, like, he went to high school with, and he’s fueled to be successful partially as a desire to protect his younger sister from the sort of chaotic, neglectful environment that he grew up in. So there’s a lot of like, subtext there, which of course the movie was very thinly veiled autobiographical stuff, so it mirrors famously his own issues with his mother. And then there’s also, like, weird relationship things, because he has a relationship in the movie with Brittany Murphy, but there’s sort of like, an allusion to him being broken up with his girlfriend who was having an affair or something like that, which is alluding to his volatile relationship with his actual ex in the movie. So there’s a lot of weird subtext to everything. 

AD: Yeah, those themes of betrayal, I feel like, are pretty loud in that one as well. And Brittany Murphy, I think, if I’m not mistaken, has Venus in Scorpio natally – not retrograde. 

CB: Oh really? 

AD: Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Yep! Yeah, she has Venus in Scorpio. So that’s another interesting little connection for a person who has it, but not retrograde, having kind of this big moment culturally. 

CB: Yeah, that’s incredible. Yeah, because she was very – that’s probably the biggest role, one of the biggest roles, that she was really later in her career before she passed away tragically, bizarrely super young, aside from like, Clueless was her breakout role, but this was probably her biggest acclaimed critical role, I feel like. 

AD: Yeah. I mean, maybe Girl, Interrupted was another big one. 

CB: Oh, okay. 

AD: But yeah, I would say it was up there, for sure. 

CB: Got it. Okay. Anything else about this one? But yeah, that’s a really great point, Skye, about the feelings of alienation and not belonging being a central theme. And then, of course, we saw that play out much more literally in, like, Drake’s chart in a more literal sense sort of reversed. 

SB: Yeah. I think the only thing that I’m realizing in this moment is that, like, a Venus retrograde in Scorpio – if you are villainized, it may be a great time to do a rebrand. Just generally. 

CB: Right! Yeah. I mean, if you – because that was a lot of the things about his early albums were very misogynistic, but then that was my reflection at the time is like, I was always surprised that I knew people – I knew women at the time who were my age in our late teens or 20s that were super into this movie and really thought, like, were really into Eminem despite all of that. So that is an interesting point in terms of, like, rebrands. And it would kind of kick off a series of those, because a lot of – like, didn’t 50 Cent did an autobiographical one? There’s like, a few people that did autobiographical type quasi movies about themselves, right? 

SB: I’m sure. People making movies about themselves wouldn’t surprise me, but yeah. People have – when you understand someone’s, like, difficult backstory, it really puts their questionable behavior into context. And I think contextualizing is just another Venus retrograde and then in the Scorpio element, contextualizing some of the darker themes is something that happens in these times. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so that was good; that was a major release then. And then are there other 2002 ones that we should mention? 

I guess Bowling for Columbine was a major one that was released on October 11th, 2002, and that one was striking to me because the major focus of that movie was gun control and making an argument about gun culture in America and the lack of restrictions on guns or other things like that, and I thought that was interesting, because I had seen previously in the history episode how in 1994 under that Venus retrograde, there was a major piece of gun control legislation that was passed. So it was interesting then seeing eight years later this movie come out and that being the major focus, especially in the wake of the Columbine shootings a few years earlier in 1999. 

SB: Yeah. I think that with this film, it just shows where the social issues really come up, and especially the ones that are, you know, more violent and questioning our relationship with violence could be a very good Scorpio Venus retrograde – like, reviewing it and being like, why is this the case? Is this okay? Should this be the norm? 

Especially with Scorpio, too, I think that there, in our worlds and in our culture, there are unseen violence. Like, people are getting hurt by systemic issues. And then those systemic issues also causing them to do harmful acts. And so not necessarily with just Columbine, but when we think about Venus retrograde of, like, understanding where the hidden, systematic powers that be and then people doing these acts and then reviewing what’s okay and what’s our relationship with violence and who perpetuates violence – I think that becomes just one of the common themes. And Bowling for Columbine is just a perfect example of reviewing our relationship with guns in a film. 

CB: Absolutely. Yeah. And there was also this theme of paranoia, of how he was drawing a line between domestic gun violence in the US and talking about how the media was constantly feeding this sense of paranoia and of people needing to be scared and protecting themselves, and that both the media and politicians were actively cultivating a state of paranoia in order to feed into that. 

AD: Yeah, which does feel a bit Scorpio in and of itself. Like, that kind of paranoia and always looking over your shoulder and not trusting your neighbor kind of thing. That feels apt. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, I think that’s good for that one. 

Another major one that came out that I almost overlooked and I realized at the last minute before we recorded today was that Frida came out in October of 2002, which was the biographical movie explored the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, and that was pretty amazing and pretty big movie at the time. 

AD: Yeah, I actually went and looked to see if she had Venus in Scorpio because I was like, ooh, that would be so perfect because you think of her as being this, like, deeply empowered kind of nobody-can-tell-her-what-to-do kind of aura about her, and her art was so raw and powerful. She does not have Venus in Scorpio. But it works still that the film about her came out, because I feel like that kind of energy really encapsulates her.

CB: Yeah. Well, it’s like, so much of the movie was about her relationship with Diego. Like, one of her primary lover throughout the course of her life. But then them having a toxic relationship, and then her having relationships with women and other things like that were a major focus of the film. 

AD: Yeah, that queering of the heteronormative experience coming up again. 

CB: Yeah, exactly. But also there were the themes, you know, because of her life about her injury and the deep pain that she had that was lingering and the health issues that she had as a result of that, and a lot of the darker themes that she expressed through her art. And then eventually the movie culminates with her doing that showing of her artwork as she’s basically towards the end of her life, and she’s stuck in bed, but then having this celebration of her life and her artwork. 

AD: Yeah, that’s very striking. 

CB: Yeah. So that was October 25th, 2002. And so that was Venus retrograde at 11 Scorpio, having stationed 15 days earlier. Nice. Okay. 

Were there any other 2002 ones that we need to mention before we move on? 

AD: I don’t think so. 

SB: Not for me. 

CB: I meant to mention at the end of the Eight Mile one that he wins the rap battle at the movie by being overly truthful about sharing details about his life and his shortcomings and then also sharing the truth about the background of his opponent, basically, and that he comes from a more privileged background than he led on. And I thought that was really interesting, because that was like, weirdly in real life, that was one of the themes we were talking about with Drake is him becoming popular with his Venus retrograde in Scorpio by being overly sharing about his psychological struggles or relationship issues, other things like that, early on. 

SB: Yeah, like weaponizing vulnerability. 

CB: Exactly. Right. Yeah. So interesting just, like, parallel themes there I thought were interesting. 

Okay, let’s move on to eight years earlier to the Venus retrograde in 1994, which was commonly talked about as being this huge year for movies in a bunch of different ways, but especially the ones that came out around the Venus retrograde in the last few months of 1994 were pretty legendary. And I’ve talked about some of them already a little bit, like the fact that Pulp Fiction came out, or we mentioned Interview with a Vampire was the quintessential vampire movie, I think, especially in the 1990s, was a huge one, right? 

AD: Oh, yes. I was fully obsessed with that movie, along with every other middle schooler that I knew. 

CB: Yeah, because that’s, like, what, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, who were at the height of their popularity in many ways, as well as a really young – yeah, a young but amazing performance by Kristen Dunst who’s acting way above her age at this point. Because that was the one we were talking about earlier of her being stuck in the body of a 12-year-old, which is weirdly similar to the other vampire movie that we mentioned that came out in 2010 two cycles later. And the themes of like, the burden of immortality and rather than that being a glamorous gift, instead it’s framed as this curse of profound isolation. 

There’s a theme sometimes of putting younger female actresses in weird positions. Because this also came up under that cycle, like under the same Venus retrograde, is like, Leon: The Professional comes out with Natalie Portman’s first role. And then that’s famously kind of problematic in different ways that she’s portrayed. 

AD: Yeah, just the idea that these young girls can be kind of thought of by the men that are around them as being, like, older than their age in some way, and justifying things that way that are maybe inappropriate is interesting. 

CB: Yeah, for sure. There’s also, like, toxic family themes, because three of them turn into this weird family unit with Tom Cruise’s character and Brad Pitt’s character, and then the child actress Claudia character. There’s also themes of the morality versus predator nature, because they have to – one of them, like, Brad Pitt’s character is tortured by the need to take human life, and that’s a thing that he struggles with as a vampire in the movie. 

AD: Right, where Tom Cruise’s character just kind of – it doesn’t affect him at all. He’s not fazed. It’s just a thing that he’s already made peace with, where Brad Pitt it’s more of an agonizing process. 

CB: Right. Yeah. So that was a huge movie at the time, coming out in November 11th, 1994, which it looks like that is Venus retrograde at five Scorpio with a whole stellium of Mercury, North Node, Sun, Jupiter, Pluto in Scorpio about 11 days before Venus stations direct. So that’s pretty striking. 

Other movies that came out in 1994 – a major one that happened that Elly Higgins just pointed out to me, actually, was that Dreamworks was founded October 12th of 1994, which was the creation of a major studio by Steven Spielberg and two other important industry leaders at the time. And that was the first time a new studio had been founded in over 70 years, and it was right on this, like, Venus-Jupiter conjunction which was itself a recurrence of Steven Spielberg’s natal Venus-Jupiter conjunction, which I think we kind of alluded to or talked about a little bit, didn’t we, Skye, of him being one of the natal people? 

SB: Yeah. Yeah, we did, and how that recurrence was interesting. And we didn’t dive too deep into him, but yeah. No, a hundred percent. I was – when you said Dreamworks and brought up that find, I just was like, quickly researching Dreamworks films, because when I was looking into this, I was talking with a friend, and my friend was like, when we were talking about beauty and the disgusting nature of that, she was like, “Is Shrek in that?” And I was like, “No, Shrek doesn’t fall into that,” but then one of Dreamworks’ biggest films is Shrek where it is kind of this ogre who, when she has – this princess who was – you know, spoiler alert for Shrek, I guess – who’s a princess by day and an ogre by night, and she decides to choose the ogre life and changing her value system of not just choosing the pretty, dainty, but choosing something real with Shrek and that feels closer to her true self. I’m like, oh, no, that didn’t fall in a Venus retrograde, but then knowing that Dreamworks came out and their most iconic series is Shrek – I was just like, there it is! There it is. 

CB: Yeah. Like, that was probably – that was one of the biggest things that the creation of this studio did, because it’s like, it was put together by these three guys, but one of them was Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was just running Disney during the whole Disney renaissance, but then he leaves and he founds this studio after getting pushed out of Disney, I think. And one of the things they do is they create more somewhat like, adult-oriented animated films like Shrek, as well as start doing 3D animated films. So that eventually culminates in Shrek, which eventually in 2001, 2002 wins the first ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. 

SB: Wow. Just like, wow. You know, that’s the funny thing, and that’s why I have hope for you, Chris, and you, Ames, for finding your little hidden thread with Scream, because there’s probably something there that you just — 

CB: Yeah. 

SB: — don’t see. 

AD: I will find it. I’m a Scorpio rising. I will find it. 

CB: Yeah. So let me show you the charts for this, just because it’s really stunning when you understand this as a recurrence for Spielberg where this is Steven Spielberg’s natal chart where we have a timed chart for him where he has – he’s December 18th, 1946, Cancer rising, with the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter in Scorpio in the 5th house, the place of creativity. And Venus and Jupiter are really close. Venus is at 19 Scorpio and Jupiter is at 17. And that Venus has just stationed direct 10 days earlier. So this is like, a supercharged Venus in Scorpio, but it’s conjunct Jupiter in the 5th house of creativity. And from a very early age, like in the 5th house episode, Leisa and I talked about how he made scary movies with his siblings. But then look at the date of when Dreamworks is founded; it’s October 12th, 1994. Look at that Venus. It’s stationary. It’s stationing direct at 18 degrees of Scorpio conjunct Jupiter at 17 Scorpio within a degree. And so it’s like, a perfect recurrence transit for Steven Spielberg, and he starts this major Hollywood studio which is also kind of unheard of because there hadn’t been a studio founded for, like, 70 years at that point. And then immediately it just starts churning out major award-winning movies where they produced three consecutive Best Picture Oscar winners in a row, which was like, American Beauty in 1999, Gladiator in 2000, and then A Beautiful Mind in 2001, which apparently was, like, very, very rare for a studio to pull something like that off. 

AD: Well, it’s kind of incredible that that’s a recurrence transit for him, but in his natal chart it’s pretty tightly trining his MC, right? 

CB: Yeah. His — 

AD: So — 

CB: — MC’s at 20. 

AD: So it makes sense that things would kind of go his way for that being a recurrence transit for him specifically. 

CB: Yeah, exactly. And it’s also a night chart, so Venus is of the sect in favor; it’s the most positive planet in his chart. The ruler of the 5th house is that exalted Mars in Capricorn in the 7th. They’re both trining the Midheaven really well. I mean, it’s all pretty good for, you know, for movies and for movie-making and in terms of thinking of him doing Jaws as the first big movie that really took off. But it was like, the first really big Hollywood summer blockbuster, and it sort of created the entire category of a summer blockbuster. But it was also, you know, a scary thriller quasi-horror type movie, and that being his first big thing. 

AD: It’s interesting that he somehow made it fun, though. Like, the 5th house of it all. Like, it’s scary — 

CB: Right. 

AD: — but we all still kind of love it and think of it, yeah, like as a summer blockbuster. 

CB: Yeah, totally. 

SB: And the thing that’s really striking for me is not only that Venus, but also that Jupiter. And like, Venus-Jupiter is some of the most auspicious things that can happen. And so the fact that this was happening for him and having that Venus-Jupiter in Scorpio again for this release of and Dreamworks in general and then having all that success and that being somewhat even more amplified with the North Node in 1994 being there, and kind of just like, putting it on blast of louder and bigger and just more success on that piece just really speaks to how that moment became a moment, you know? 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so that was a great recurrence one. And I had found that his first and second movie both came out on Venus-Jupiter conjunctions. So he just has this, like, history of doing really important stuff on Venus-Jupiter conjunctions. Most recently even with Disclosure Day, which he just released on the Venus-Jupiter conjunction I think in June, although that didn’t do quite as well. Yeah. 

So another major movie to move on that I found really late in this process was that Shawshank Redemption came out in September 1994 as we were heading into the Venus retrograde. And that actually didn’t do super well initially, but became this sort of huge classic movie, I think, pretty quickly once it came out on video. 

AD: Yeah. I mean, it’s so perfect – the end of that movie is like, just a visual manifestation of Venus retrograde just crawling through it all, you know? 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. So he’s like, what is the plot? It’s like, he’s set up – a guy is framed for murder and sent to prison, and then just gets stuck deeper and deeper in there, especially with a sketchy warden who does things to make sure that he can never get out or that the truth of his case will never become known. But then it sort of culminates with that scene of him digging through the wall and eventually having to crawl through this terrible pipe of excrement and stuff like that in order to eventually emerge on the other side into freedom. And it’s always remembered for that. And that’s such a good image, because one of the things I realized that we’ll see in the next cycle is Elly Higgins pointed out that the Nickelodeon show Double Dare first aired under the Venus retrograde in Scorpio. And I realized one of the keywords for Venus in Scorpio – retrograde in Scorpio – is things that are gross. There’s a real element of things that are gross or things that we find repulsive for different reasons, which can be things like slime in that instance on Nickelodeon of having to do challenges or an obstacle course that’s filled with slime and stuff like that, but it can also be in this instance, it’s like, he’s literally crawling through excrement or in other movies we’re talking about blood or things like that. But that element of that which we find gross or repulsive is sometimes a really core Venus in Scorpio or Venus retrograde in Scorpio theme. 

AD: Yeah, just the humanity of it all, you know? Like, not skipping over the fact that, like, we do bleed, and we do excrete – is that the nice way to put it? And you can’t get around it. Like, everybody does it. So Scorpio is gonna make you look at it, and Venus would probably prefer not to, but with a Venus retrograde in Scorpio, we have no choice. 

SB: And I think that just in those, it is the disgusting and the things that you don’t want to look at. And even with some of the themes with this Venus retrograde and in Shawshank Redemption, it’s like, a lot of that movie – or all the movie – takes place in a prison. And that’s some of the places that people just don’t want to look at. And so to be able to find friendship in this dark place in Shawshank Redemption and, of course, his glorious dig-out out of that hole is very emblematic. I did just realize and catch one really funny thing, which is that Morgan Freeman is in this movie and his character’s name is Red. And then in Venus retrograde a few times back that I just talked about with that CIA film RED, Morgan Freeman is in it again. And I just thought that was just a little bit — 

CB: Nice. 

SB: — funny and on the nose! 

CB: Yeah, that’s really good. 

SB: Yeah. 

CB: That’s funny, two cycles later, yeah. And that’s a good point that this also – the movie has to do with crime and also people that are falsely accused, basically, because he’s in jail for completely trumped up reasons. 

SB: Exactly. Kind of again that if you knew the backstory, the truth, like, this person that people are villainized and is in jail who maybe shouldn’t be there or is falsely victimized or villainized. 

CB: Yeah. I just looked up the description again, and it’s actually even more relevant. It says he’s sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison for the murders of his wife and her lover, and is sentenced to a tough prison. However, only he knows that he didn’t commit the crimes. 

AD: Yeah. I forgot about that, that that’s what he was in for. 

CB: Yeah, I forgot that’s the entire premise was, like, the supposedly murdering his wife and her lover. 

All right, so that’s a classic. And then, of course, I mean, the top one – the hugest movie – that came out was Pulp Fiction on October 14th, 1994. 

SB: Another Quentin Tarantino bloody film. 

CB: So that is Venus retrograde on October 14th; Venus has just stationed, so this is one of the ones that comes out 1.7 days earlier, Venus stations, and it’s at 17 Scorpio conjunct Jupiter at 17 Scorpio. And it’s a movie that’s told out of order. It has a nonlinear storytelling structure, which is very Venus retrograde. And then yeah, it’s about crime and the underworld in Los Angeles, and especially about hitmen and fixers and things like that where it’s exploring the hidden and violent underworld just beneath the surface of society. 

AD: Yeah. I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but there’s also, like, a kink element to it, too, right? That’s part of it, or somebody who’s like, in a full latex outfit. Did I make that up? 

CB: Yeah, there’s a whole scene of, like, there’s an extreme sadism and sexual violence element at one point that punctuates the movie later on, that especially for a mainstream Hollywood film was extremely jarring and out of the ordinary at the time. 

AD: Yeah. I feel like that image of Uma Thurman getting the shot of adrenaline straight to her heart is so iconic for that movie, and yeah, it’s like, this beautiful woman who not that long ago was just, like, up and dancing with this iconic bob, and she has this mystery and this incredible sex appeal, and then the next thing you know, she’s got a giant needle sticking out of her and a nosebleed, and it just, it’s perfect. 

CB: Yeah, such a Venus – Inanna-type story of literally she dies and then is brought back to life in the middle of the movie. 

AD: Yeah. 

SB: And with Pulp Fiction – and thank you for reminding me about that whole leather kink type of scene – it reminds me of kind of what we talked about with Versace and how after his S&M runway show, it’s like, everyone was wearing harnesses and these, again, kind of putting these pain as pleasure themes into the zeitgeist with this film, which is just funny. And even when you see the cover of the Pulp Fiction film where Mia Wallace is just, you know, smoking a cigarette, looking so alluring and just on the bed with a pistol beside her, just very, you know, Venus in Scorpio-esque in even that image. 

AD: I do feel like there’s this throughline of, like, cool for Venus retrograde in Scorpio. Like, you have it with that movie, and then later we can talk about The Color of Money, but there’s something here about this just like, very bad boy, leather jacket, from the wrong side of the tracks, just kind of sexy vibe to Venus retrograde in Scorpio if we can say a nice thing that’s not, like, pure trauma and horror. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great point of, like, the edginess of crime being cool or like, alluring or the titillation of danger or other things like that as major themes, and it stands out in this movie for sure, like, almost more than any other. But it’s not an uncommon theme. 

SB: Exactly. It’s just another recurrence that we keep seeing in all these examples. 

CB: Definitely. Okay. Or even, like, what’s his name’s character – with the whole date between Mia Wallace, it’s like, the whole premise of that entire segment of that third of the story is that he’s supposed to take out the criminal kingpin’s wife for a date and the inherent danger of that, and then they sort of start developing a connection, but then he’s like, “No, I need to get out of here,” because he knows he could be killed for any sort of misstep with this woman who’s the wife of a dangerous criminal kingpin. 

AD: And what’s more alluring — 

SB: Yeah. 

AD: — than living on the edge of danger with a beautiful woman? 

CB: Yeah. 

SB: A dangerous connection. Like, that’s a really good kind of Venus Scorpio retrograde – a dangerous connection and kind of realizing maybe you’re in over your head — 

AD: Yeah. 

SB: — with that. 

AD: The appetizer to a potentially toxic relationship down the line. 

CB: Yeah. And even the movie, like, opens with that, because it opens with the two that are about to do a stick-up, and they express their love for each other, and then they jump up and they start holding up the restaurant and robbing everybody. So that’s another one of those themes that sort of recurs. And then we see versions of that at the beginning of the film and then again at the end we return back to it, so there’s this out-of-orderness which is great with Venus moving backwards rather than forwards. 

AD: Yeah. 

SB: Yeah. 

AD: Absolutely. 

SB: Like, you only understand the beginning after kind of going through that whole story, even though it seems disparate in the beginning, and that’s kind of the retrograde feeling. Like, something happens in the beginning and you don’t really fully understand it until you go through this retrograde and you’re back at that point, and it kind of all clicks together. 

CB: Exactly. And then that will kind of – that’s playing out for a lot of us right now, because a lot of people are having experiences as Venus was slowing down to station, and it’s something you think is one and done, but then Venus goes retrograde and retreads her steps, and then it turns out that this is part of a larger sequence of events that you didn’t realize you’d have to revisit something. And then eventually Venus goes forward and hits the same degrees again, and then finally will wrap things up, but we’re still in the early stages of all of that. 

AD: Yeah, just watching things emerge from beneath the surface. 

CB: Yeah. Okay, so to just jump through a few other 1994 ones really quickly, I mentioned Leon: The Professional was Natalie Portman’s first role, and that’s about a hitman basically that befriends a young girl and then they have a weird relationship when her family is murdered and he becomes a healthier – in the final cut of the movie, like – quasi-father figure to her when her original family was very toxic. But there’s also this element of being stripped of one’s childhood and then seeking out violence or revenge was a major theme of that movie. 

SB: Yeah. Talk about dangerous connection with Venus in Scorpio and then how somehow the hitman is the nicer father figure; that is definitely taking a different look at certain professions and people. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. And that one was more well-reviewed earlier, I guess, when it came out, but it’s like, in retrospect, Luc Besson, the director, was kind of a creep. So it sort of had a much different, like, re-analysis in retrospect now given some of his personal things and relationships at the time. And yeah, even Natalie Portman’s feelings on it seem ambivalent. But it’s interesting just from a recurrence standpoint to think about Venus retrograde in Scorpio, and that’s her first film. She’s a really good actress. And then the repetition in 2010 of her winning, you know, Best Actress when Venus retrograde in Scorpio repeated and then she played Black Swan. So there’s just something even just from that standpoint of looking at her career that’s fascinating about it. 

AD: Yeah. I feel like we also get a little bit of that recurrence of, you know, you said she has kind of ambiguous feelings about it now, and it’s kind of that “I’ve been through the descent and I understand now more what was going on, but I was too young then to really know.” Kind of like how with Robin Wright she did The Princess Bride and then later she went onto these more mature, wise, no bullshit kind of roles. 

CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. All right. Other 1994 ones. The movie Disclosure came out in December 9th of 1994, which was like, a major movie that came out with Demi Moore, who, as we talked about in the last episode, has Venus retrograde in Scorpio. So this was a major recurrence for her. And it features her and Michael Douglas where, famously, there’s a power dynamic inversion where she’s his superior, and she tries to come onto him sexually. But when he rejects her advances, she accuses him of harassing her, and then the whole movie plays out as a corporate drama of intrigue and things like that. 

AD: Reversal of the traditional power structures and gender roles. 

CB: Yeah, which is interesting, because I read that part of the point of that was to show that the dynamic of harassment was about power and to frame it more as a dynamic about power, regardless of the genders involved. So that was one of the reasons why it was kind of risque for the era especially. 

AD: Yeah, for sure. Not something that you would have seen a lot in film back then. 

CB: Right. Okay. There’s other stuff about that. The only other 1994 one that I had was I noticed that the Nickelodeon show – I don’t know if either of you watched it – this was like, important for me, but the show The Secret World of Alex Mack aired October 8th, 1994, where after getting splashed with – this was on Nickelodeon, but – after getting splashed with an experimental chemical, there’s a junior high school student named Alex Mack who then gets superpowers. Like, the ability to shoot electricity from her fingertips or turn into a blob of goo, which is funny because there’s like, a gross element to that. But then the core that I found relevant was that she has to keep her superpowers secret, especially from her parents, and the whole element of the burden of secrecy becomes a major recurring theme in that entire first season of the show.

AD: Yeah. The thing I remember most strongly about that show, because it came out when I was pretty young, was just that she could turn into Capri-Sun. That was, like, the thing. I feel like everybody just — 

CB: Right. 

AD: — said it’s Capri-Sun for some reason. 

CB: Yeah. Totally, because that’s like, what the – in the commercials at the time the exact, like – this was early days of CGI and sort of like The Terminator and Terminator II, the T-1000 turning into liquid metal. 

AD: Yeah. So the secrecy element, yes, but I just remember thinking it was the coolest superpower, and I was really jealous of everything that she would get to do with being able to turn into Capri-Sun. 

CB: Same. For repetitions, there were revival rumors in 2018, but it didn’t materialize. But then funny enough, I looked it up today, and this month – October 16th through 18th – the lead actress and several of the original cast members are reuniting for the first time ever at a convention panel at ‘90s Con in Hartford, Connecticut. So I thought that was really funny that they’re doing, like, a reunion on this Venus retrograde in Scorpio of when it came out. 

AD: That’s perfect. There’s a ‘90s Con? I want to go to that. 

CB: I know. I’m kind of tempted as well. That would be kind of cool. 

Okay, any other ones? Did we mention The Swan Princess one? 

AD: We did a little bit, just in that it ties in with Black Swan and how they’re both kind of loosely connected to Swan Lake. But basically, with The Swan Princess, the idea is that there’s Odette, who is this beautiful princess – this is an animated movie, and if you haven’t seen it, you probably should because it’s a classic – and she and this prince are kind of raised together with the idea that they are going to be matched up, but they really don’t like each other at all. And then as she blossoms and matures, he starts whistling a different tune. But all he really has is, you know, an affinity for her beauty; he doesn’t really care about her as a person. And meanwhile, there’s an evil, powerful sorcerer who wants to take over the throne and be superpowerful. And so he turns Odette into a swan, because she obviously will not agree to marry him. And every night, if she’s on this particular lake when the moonlight hits, she turns back into herself. And so there’s this, you know, element of her being transformed, but also the prince having to save her; he can’t just declare his love. It has to come from a place of he sees her for more than just her beauty. And so the swan element disguising that and him having to actually see her for who she is. 

CB: Nice. I like that. Yeah, seeing underneath the physical appearance or the mask in some sense. 

AD: Yeah, there’s just this great quote, which I think I sent you like a screenshot of it earlier where he’s like, “You’re everything I want! You’re beautiful.” And she’s like, “What else?” And he’s like, “What else is there?” And that’s kind of the journey for that clueless guy. 

CB: Nice. 

SB: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. 

SB: That really speaks to the Shrek story. And I’m like, oh, that sounds a lot like Shrek!

AD: I was thinking that when you were talking about it. I was like, hmm. Animated films, holding hands. 

CB: Funny the repetition with Black Swan in 2010 as well, as you said. 

AD: When was Swan Lake written or choreographed? Should probably look that up; I bet it’s under a Venus retrograde in Scorpio. 

CB: Yeah. I don’t know; that would be a whole interesting history, though, to look back on, because if that archetype – usually I found when you establish an archetype repeats twice, then you realize that it’s actually gonna continue that repetition. And if you go further back, you’ll start seeing it more and more. So usually when you do pick up on a genuine one, there is something there. 

AD: Yeah. For sure. 

CB: Yeah. All right, I think that’s good for 1994, yeah? All right. Let’s transition into the next cycle, which is 1986 when Venus was retrograde in Scorpio in the last few months of that year. One of the main ones that stood out to me – there were two that stood out to me, but one of them was Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which came out on November 26th, 1986, which you wouldn’t normally think should be relevant. But what I found really fascinating about this one is it was very – the whole plot was focused on an environmentalism theme where the plot – let me read it. It’s like, from a summary. It said, “In the 23rd century, a massive alien probe threatens to destroy earth while attempting to communicate with humpback whales, which have been extinct for centuries. To save the planet, Captain Kirk and his crew use a stolen ship to time travel back to 1986 San Francisco to locate two humpback whales and transport them into the future to answer the probe’s call.” 

The reason why I bring this up as interesting is because I think this is kind of like, a repetition of an environmentalism theme that I first saw come up in the history episode in the Venus retrograde in 1962 when this book, Silent Spring, came out. And the book showed how the use of chemical pesticides to eliminate insects was cascading up the food chain and was wiping out songbirds and ultimately poisoning humanity. And this book was one of the rare books in American history in, like, there’s only a small list of like, three or four books like that that really was read by everybody at the time and just changed society, and this was one of those books that came out in that Venus retrograde in Scorpio. And then it kickstarted the whole environmentalism movement, which culminated one cycle later in 1970 with the Environmental Protection Agency being created under the next Venus retrograde in Scorpio. 

So I mention all of that because the whole premise of the movie is that humanity long ago wiped out humpback whales, and then an alien community sends a probe that’s looking to communicate with those whales and is gonna destroy earth if they aren’t there anymore. So they have to go back in time to find them. And it sort of ends on that conservationist sort of notion of, like, we don’t know how we’re harming ourselves by destroying the environment or destroying different animals on earth, basically, if that makes sense. 

SB: That makes complete sense. I think that one of the things that’s interesting about that is that Mars was in Aquarius and just that humanitarian theme and thinking of the collective in that way really stands out. So I feel like that’s pretty loud in that theme of how the Mars element could skew where we are looking in that retrograde cycle. 

AD: That’s a good point. 

CB: Totally. Yeah. And it looks like – so on the date, November 26, 1986, was Venus stationary at four degrees of Scorpio conjunct Pluto. So stationing direct. So it’s like, it’s in the direct side of the station, so you get a massively successful movie. Because often the direct stations, like more so than the retrograde stations, it seems like the movies are a bit more successful when they come out on them. But having it conjunct Pluto and this theme of existential issues of potentially being wiped out if we destroy the environment. 

AD: Yeah, and then the idea of pushing things forward – like, progress – with that Aquarius, like you were saying, Skye, that’s so striking. 

SB: And the fact that that Pluto element is like, you’re killing the planet, you guys! And how to kind of bring it back to life was going in that retrograde fashion and going back. 

CB: Yeah. Yeah, exactly, and that they literally have to travel back in time in order to fix it. 

SB: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah, so that was a big one. Another one that I found that was more connected but it was like, in 1986, the book that the movie Hellraiser was based on was published in November. And then they were also shooting the movie of Hellraiser during that time during that Venus retrograde in Scorpio. And I’m not, like, a big Hellraiser fan, but I do know that the premise was that there’s this group of extradimensional beings called cenobites that are focused on pleasure, and they don’t differentiate between pain and pleasure because they see them as two sides of the same coin or something like that so that they’re extremely into the concept of pain as pleasure, I think is part of the central premise or something, right? Am I getting that right? 

AD: Yeah. I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but yeah, I remember the box that they use, and it stabs you when – I don’t know if it’s a Rubik’s cube that’s not actually a Rubik’s cube, but it’s like, a thing that when you figure it out, it stabs you. Like, that’s the reward. So yeah, that intersection of pain and pleasure. 

CB: Yeah, I think I’ve successfully suppressed most of the childhood traumatic memories of being exposed to this movie, so I can’t speak to it too extensively. But I know that that’s like, the central theme. 

SB: Yeah. I think that also just brings in, again, that kind of putting pleasure as, like, pain from pleasure into the mainstream, and that concept like we saw in Pulp Fiction and we saw with Versace again of being like – and when I read the description, it says like, “the sexual deviant Frank inadvertently opens a portal to hell when he tinkers with a box he bought while abroad.” And just like, even that word of just like, this is the centering on sexual deviance, and with Venus in Scorpio, we are deviating from the norm; we’re deviating from what pleasure and what a typical “normal” – I put that in air quotes – sex kind of looks like and deviating from that path just like how Venus in Scorpio deviates with using martial tools like pain and also deviates in the retrograde-esque of it, of going a different direction than everyone else. 

CB: Yeah, totally. Because it’s like, Venus in Scorpio and just finding something pleasurable or appealing about that which is dark, and what dark is sometimes being culturally relative, being relative societally in different ways, and there being extreme versions of that versus ones that are relative to, like, your religion or your community or your social class or other things like that. We’re seeing all sorts of different manifestations of that here. 

All right. So that was one movie. Another one, Blue Velvet came out in September of 1986 – famous David Lynch film. And I’m just gonna mention that in passing. Platoon came out in December of ‘86 about the Vietnam War and some pretty dark things. I know one that you watched, Ames, was The Color of Money, right? 

AD: Yeah. I was really excited to watch that, because the only thing I had seen from it before this really famous scene where Tom Cruise is kind of hustling a pool table to “Werewolves of London.” And so I watched it, and it’s also a recurrence for Tom Cruise, who, you know, did Interview with a Vampire later down the line. He kind of weirdly plays this similar character, this just, like, very arrogant – in this case, very very young – person who kind of has to be brought to heel and check his ego by Paul Newman, who’s like the teacher for lack of a better word of how to hustle people at pool. And they kind of both go through this similar journey where they have to release these ideas that they have about themselves, and then get very vulnerable in a way where they kind of get their confidence shaken. But then they come out on the other side, and they’re much more sure of who they are and what they want. And then there is also that cool guy element. I mean, it’s Paul Newman; he’s wearing aviators; he has a moustache. They’re in pool halls — 

CB: Right. 

AD: It’s just deeply, deeply cool, even Tom Cruise, who is a little obnoxious. 

CB: Nice. Yeah. And it looks like Paul Newman won Academy Award for Best Actor for this film. Or was it the previous one? Wikipedia says it “stars Paul Newman and reprises his role as Fast Eddie, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.” So that’s interesting. And it’s funny that you mention the recurrence, of course, because we’re having a recurrence right now, of course, and Tom Cruise is trying to promote another big movie right now that just came out – that movie Digger. But it sounds like the reception is pretty mixed so far. 

AD: Yeah. The only thing I’ve really heard about it is more about his red carpet appearances with is it Emma D’Arcy from House of the Dragon who’s like, a genderqueer, nonbinary person. He had been, like, really buddying up to them on the red carpet, and then that’s all I’ve heard is this interesting friendship they have, which I think also ties in with that bucking expectations and queering gender and queering sexuality, and then the two of them kind of aligning is just a really unexpected but also makes sense kind of event that’s happening. 

CB: Got it. Nice. Yeah. Well, it’s interesting, edgier, darker roles almost that he’s taking on during this time where this one, it’s like, pool hustling, and then eight years later it’s Interview with a Vampire and being a dark vampire character, and now it’s the whatever the current one is about, which I guess we’ll all find out if we see the movie at some point, because it’s kind of – the previews don’t give away a lot, I’m sure deliberately, but yeah. So that’s an interesting repetition. 

Let me see if there’s any other – I don’t think there’s any other ‘86 ones to mention. 

SB: This is not an ‘86 one, but I just looked it up because we keep talking about how S&M and themes and pain as pleasure keeps coming into the zeitgeist. So this is not a movie, but I did look up the song “S&M” by Rihanna — 

AD: I was wondering about that! 

SB: Yes! And that album came out November 12th, 2010. So Venus was technically — 

CB: Wow. 

SB: — in Libra, but it’s still part of that Venus Scorpio and Libra cycle. And that song – I remember as a kid, because some of the lyrics are, you know, “Feels so good to be bad, there’s no way I’m turning back, now pain is for pleasure, because nothing can measure, love is great, love is fine, out of the box, out of line, the affliction of the feeling leaves me wanting more.” Just like, “Sex in the air; I don’t care; I love the smell of it.” Like, this was the song that everyone was singing, and I just remember being around – it’s like, 2010ish; this song came out in 2009, but the album that it’s part of came out during the retrograde – being just so weird because you guys are too young to be singing about this! This feels kind of wrong. Just in the sense that I’m, like, I don’t know, 13 at the time, and I’m around 10-year-olds, and I’m like, y’all aren’t even teenagers! You shouldn’t be talking about singing this — 

CB: Right. 

SB: — song! So I feel like it’s just another thing of being, like, pain as pleasure becoming broadened to the zeitgeist and everyone’s talking about it and almost feeling wrong with that Scorpio Venus type of vibe. 

AD: Is that the one that – it has to be – the like, “whips and chains excite me” or whatever? 

SB: Exactly. 

AD: Yeah, yeah. I remember, I was like, “Oh my god!” Aghast! You know? 

CB: Yeah. If this is relevant and at all adjacent, but Dakota Johnson, who has Venus in Scorpio, the big movie was 50 Shades of Grey where that’s like, one of the main themes as well. 

AD: Yeah. 

SB: Yeah. 

AD: Talk about a cultural conversation. My god, you could not escape those books or those movies. I worked in a hair salon when those books came out, and it was just rows of middle-aged women reading 50 Shades of Grey. Like, took the world by storm. 

SB: And the fact that, like, Dakota Johnson, a Venus in Scorpio person, is the one who ushers that topic of pain and pleasure and s&m into the zeitgeist with the film was just another way that the Venus in Scorpio person ushers in certain themes, these themes, into the zeitgeist as that avatar. 

CB: Yeah. Or is like, open to taking a role like that that deals with darker themes. Yeah. And that point that you make, because that’s so fundamental to just, like, Venus is supposed to signify pleasure, but Mars ruling Scorpio and Aries is usually supposed to signify that which is painful or violence or other things like that. And when you put those two together, like, having an outcome like that is really fascinating, just as a fundamental archetype. 

SB: Yeah. 

CB: All right. Awesome. Well, I think that’s good for the 1986 cycle. Let’s jump back to 1978. And obviously, all of us are, like, the further back we go, the less and less each of us has to say about different films, or the less familiar we are. The main one is – I like, rewatched Halloween, which came out October 25th, 1978. I already talked about that and mentioned it, but just that was a hugely successful slasher film that came out at that time. And one of the things that was interesting as I kind of quickly rewatched it the other night, and it’s just, like, the primary element of it is it’s a young woman who’s in high school, I think, who’s being obsessively stalked by this crazy killer. But it’s like, so much of the focus and the eerieness of it is just that, like, this guy’s following her around town and sort of creepily watching or leering on her and watching her from afar. And that’s where so much of the horror element comes from. So just I thought that was interesting, that psychological element to it. 

AD: Yeah, for sure. I also think of the element of a good horror film, and this one is not an exception to the rule, is not seeing the monster – like, not seeing behind the mask. That Scorpio shrouded in mystery kind of hidden aspect and that showing up repeatedly with horror movies that are really impactful during Venus retrograde in Scorpio. 

CB: Right. Yeah, that’s a really good point. 

SB: One thing that I wanted to just say is just that crazy stalker theme and how we saw that with You and how Venus in Scorpio retrograde and that idea of the lover being dangerous or – not the lover. Stalker isn’t a lover. But someone who thinks they’re in love with you being that dangerous and how that kind of connection and the connection they think they have with you can become dangerous. So it’s like, “Oh, I love you,” and then – or “Oh, I’m obsessed with you,” and that kind of becoming a dangerous thing with this stalker element. 

CB: Exactly, yeah. And just that that can go either way, because it’s like, you have the version of the Venus in Scorpio that’s like, “I’m gonna stick with you no matter what, through thick and thin, no matter how bad things get.” Or to an utter extreme, like “I would die for you,” let’s say, like a version of that in a romantic sense. But then the other sense of that fixed sign staying power is just like, somebody that’s obsessed with you, that won’t take no for an answer, or that keeps following you despite rebuffing them or something like that, and how scary of an archetype that can be. 

SB: Exactly. It’s not always The Notebook. 

CB: Right. Yeah. We saw it the most famously in You those dynamics come out. But it’s just an interesting manifestation, because at the beginning we had talked about that artist, Marina Abramovic, sitting for huge, long periods of time and putting up – what is it? Endurance. Like, doing art through endurance of like, sitting there for hours and hours on end and that being part of the artistic expression. But then a relational version of that being this. 

SB: Exactly. 

CB: All right. The other one for 1978 that was huge was December 22nd, 1978, the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers came out, and this was about a classic sci-fi movie where people are being taken over and replaced by aliens. And what was interesting is this was actually a remake of a classic 1956 movie, which itself was based on a book that was originally serialized in a magazine that came out November through December of 1954 when Venus was retrograde in Scorpio. So it’s like, the book that Invasion of the Body Snatchers was made on, the recurrence was 1978, and then a famous remake of the movie, and it’s one of the rare movies where the remake is usually looked at as being better than the original, which I thought was really fascinating because typically it’s not that case. Like, with Let the Right One, the American remake is usually looked at as being worse than the original movie. 

Yeah, but it’s a bunch of focus on paranoia and people appearing to be one thing, but not being what they seem and sort of wearing a mask and different things like that were major themes. 

SB: I just wonder how many remakes that we’re going to see of films coming out now. Like, how many are gonna have that staying power where they are gonna end up being remade in the future. 

CB: Right. I mean, that’s a good question. Like, probably realistically some of our – if it’s a really popular film, we’ve already seen the tendency to remake really popular ones recently. So that would be an interesting question – like, which films will – like, Obsession will probably get remade at some point in the future. 

SB: I would think so. I definitely could see them exploring the one wish willow in different ways. 

CB: Totally. All right. The only other thing about this was that it had a really bleak ending. Like, no happy ending was an interesting Venus retrograde in Scorpio thing that has come up a few other times, but this was the first time where it has this legendary scene where all hope is just, like, lost, and that could be a theme as well. 

Okay. So moving on. There’s one in 1970 which is a movie called Love Story where it was December 16th, 1970, and it was this cultural phenomenon type movie that was centered on an intense romance that’s cut short by a terminal illness. So we don’t have to focus on that too much, but I just thought it was interesting because it sort of gets repeated in later movies like A Star is Born, for example, which is not illness, it’s something else, but still ideas of loss and grief of a loved one, basically. 

AD: Has Love Story been remade, or am I thinking of another movie? Maybe I’m thinking of Marriage Story. 

CB: Not sure. We’ll have to look that up 

So that’s 1970. I didn’t write down a bunch of other movies for that. 1962, I’ve already mentioned the very first James Bond movie comes out October 5th, 1962. And all of the, like, standard James Bond tropes that are so ubiquitous these days are really in that movie; I was really surprised. I had never really watched the first James Bond movie before, but it’s like, he’s a handsome, suave secret agent, and he’s got special weapons and there’s all sorts of intrigue. There’s also a global crime syndicate named SPECTRE that’s operating behind the scenes, behind governments and things like that, so there’s that element of like, of paranoia, of secret societies and things like that that’s kind of interesting. 

AD: And there’s always a Bond girl, of course. 

CB: Yeah, that whole element of the different versions of that, as well as, like, he has a secretary and they have a weird relationship, and a lot of those dynamics of 1960s sort of interactions. 

AD: Yeah. The secretary versus like, the femme fatale kind of dynamic. 

CB: Right. Totally. All right, so that’s 1962. Let’s see. 1954 I didn’t have one, except there was this movie called Magnificent Obsession that came out in August, and I mainly just mention that because this was important because Rock Hudson was in it, and this established him as a major leading Hollywood man. So I think what happened is after this movie came out and Venus went retrograde in Scorpio, I think he got a lot of parts and stuff and a lot of focus. And this is important because I’ve talked about him previously because he had a Scorpio stellium, and he was a really notable Hollywood actor that was closeted. And then it came out later in the ‘80s that he was gay, and it was a big surprise to a lot of people. So I just thought it was interesting that he was really becoming this household name shortly before that Venus retrograde in Scorpio began. 

AD: That is really interesting. That’s one of the, you know, obviously he’s an older Hollywood star, so I haven’t seen a ton of stuff that he’s in, but that’s the thing that sticks out most about him is the fact that he was closeted for so long. 

CB: Yeah, because he died of AIDS, famously, in the mid-1980s, and that was a shock, and it was one of the things that started to make people take AIDS more seriously, and that was one of the things I discussed with Gary Lorentzen in our episode about the astrology of AIDS as a pandemic, but also how it was the different phases of how it was hitting the gay community at that time. So just wanted to mention that because of that, because there’s probably something there in terms of his chronology. 

SB: And I just, like, if anyone looks up the cover, because I just was curious when I looked up Magnificent Obsession, and you just see him with his eyes closed and this woman holding him, and his head rested in her bosoms with this painful expression, which is like, again, very Venus Scorpio, just like, all that emotion and that woman in that position of power in that dynamic and him kind of like, kneeling for her. And when you think of the… And even with just the basic overview, like a reckless playboy is in a boat accident and his condition requires a resuscitator to save his life, and just this idea of death and rebirth and coming back to life with these things and how, you know, the trials and tribulations of a Venus retrograde in Scorpio story aren’t light fodder. There’s usually death, rebirth, very intense themes. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s funny, because you would think stories would become more sanitized the further back you go, but sometimes there’s really intense stories still even in mid- to early 20th century Hollywood. Like, this one was, like you said, he causes the death of a doctor and causes his wife to be blind. And so he seeks redemption by dedicating his life to medicine in order to restore her sight. So it’s a pretty heavy theme. 

SB: Oh, and the other thing is 1954, there was another Star is Born in — 

CB: Right. 

SB: — that we kind of talked about earlier, but just saying again this was the first one that was, like, music-focused that recurred again with the Lady Gaga version. So I just thought that was a little fun tidbit to add. 

CB: Right, which is funny because that in 1954 was already a remake of an earlier film. So it’s just like, Venus retrogrades in Scorpios as remakes and remakes and remakes all the way down. 

SB: Yeah. I think if you were to think of, like, elections and what to use a Venus retrograde for, it’s like, “I want this story to be retold again and again!” Like, “I want it to keep coming back,” and that idea of story and Venus and keep coming back to the zeitgeist and the stories that are able to be retold maybe have a Venus retrograde vibe to them. 

CB: Yeah, definitely. That there’s something core there that’s worth reexploring further sometimes, whereas other times, it’s just like, something that was good and rehashing it. Like during the last cycle with Lady Gaga having a Venus retrograde recurrence from 2010, I think, and the phrase “reheating your nachos” became trending at that time. 

SB: That’s so good!

CB: Yeah. All right, so 1946. In the original Venus retrograde in Scorpio in history episode, I talked about It’s a Wonderful Life coming out at that time and how even though it’s become this Christmas classic, it wasn’t received super well at first because it was super heavy for a holiday movie because the main character is depressed, and he’s thinking about killing himself. And then he sees this flashback and goes through this process before eventually coming to a position of embracing his life at the end. But it’s actually a pretty heavy film. 

AD: Yeah, it’s kind of shocking for the time period that it came out in that it’s so heavy. Think of that era, and it’s like, Bing Crosby! You know? And then you’ve got this movie about a guy who’s contemplating suicide. 

CB: Yeah. Well, and it didn’t go over super well at the time as a result of that. And I think one of the people got into financial trouble after. It’s only later when they accidentally let the film rights lapse that television studios started playing it because they could play it for free, and then it becomes a holiday classic in the US, which eventually under the 1994 recurrence, ABC or somebody buys the rights and then starts playing it only during December twice in December every year for the past 30 or 40 years, and it becomes a more controlled holiday film. 

AD: I feel like that speaks to that underneath the sheen element of Venus retrograde in Scorpio where Christmas is this, like, cheery time, and everybody is supposed to be happy and it’s gift-giving or whatever. But with anything like that, there’s always going to be some kind of undertone that’s not purely joy and happiness, and then Venus retrograde bringing that out about Christmas feels perfect. 

CB: Yeah. You have to imagine that some of the Venus retrograde in Scorpio Christmases are a bit more heavier than others, especially if they’re like, activating anybody’s Scorpio placements and you’re having, like, toxic family reunions and stuff like that. Or yeah. 

SB: Yeah. Like, I’m sure everyone in 2026 is gonna enjoy this Christmas season, but yeah. I think that even thinking about, Christmas and the holidays are some of the times where depression spikes because everyone realizes maybe they don’t have a family to come back to, or they have these things where they don’t feel what they “should” feel, and I think this story, and even the story of the film, it’s very funny because the main character has to reevaluate and put a different perspective on not “this went wrong, this went wrong, my life isn’t worth living,” but kind of seeing all the things that went right and what he has, and that Venus retrograde experience of really putting a different value on the experiences you have and that perspective shift. And so, yeah, I thought that was really funny that it just like, an accident that made this film a success by someone letting the rights go for sale and just thinking about all the movies that are getting bad reviews maybe now, but watch out – like, someone’s gonna find it and be obsessed with it and just really come back into the zeitgeist a big way in eight or 16 years. 

CB: Yeah. That kind of happened with Shawshank. Like, Shawshank Redemption wasn’t initially successful, but then later it sort of became more so. But I mean, there is something beautiful about that – about finding meaning in life when pushed to the extreme of almost losing or throwing away everything. And so that was an interesting message, but it would have been edgy – it was edgy – at the time. 

One thing I will say I noticed is I don’t know if this is happening everywhere else, but I noticed on my street, speaking of seasons, but everybody on my block is decorating for Halloween with way much more gusto than I’ve seen in any other year with huge outdoor lawn exhibitions and stuff like that. Like, way more extravagant than most Halloweens. Is this just a me thing, or is this happening everywhere? I’m very curious. 

AD: No, right down the street from me, somebody has a giant replica of the Jaws shark coming out of the ocean. Like — 

CB: Nice. 

AD: — it’s huge. It’s massive. It feels a bit like “the horrors persist, but so do I” kind of vibes. 

CB: Right. Yeah. That’s such a good image, though, of decorating for Halloween as a Venus in Scorpio thing. 

SB: Yeah, just the dark and scary kind of being more the cultural norm. It’s like, yes, we’re all coming together and we’re all experiencing this vibe and we’re going to the underworld together, especially this year, it coming out with an extra vengeance and an extra strength and oomph. 

CB: Yeah. Well, and that there’s something that can be fun and light about that, even though people are decorating with, like, you know, skulls and bats and vampires and other stuff, it still has this fun component to it. Or they’re dressing up for Halloween, and they’re sometimes dressing up as scary figures or villains or other things like that, but there’s still something fun and light about it. I think that’s part of the highest manifestation we can think of of the most positive spin in some ways of a certain version of Venus in Scorpio. 

AD: Yeah, for sure. Those 12-foot skeletons alone – just talk about taking it to an extreme. I know some people that leave them out year-round and decorate them for every holiday, so those people are in heaven right now. 

CB: Nice. 

SB: Yeah, just decorating with bones and skulls and death memorabilia and gravestones just feel very Venus in Scorpio to, you know, “Let’s decorate with the cobwebs.” 

CB: Right. Yeah, the cobwebs are everything this year; that’s one of the things I’m seeing. 

All right, the last one was just – one of you noted that Beauty and the Beast film came out in 1946? 

SB: Yeah. And this one is much more gothic and I think more Scorpio-esque; it doesn’t have that Disney flair, but it had more of a deeper sensibility. And one of the things I just wanted to highlight was just the idea of Beauty and the Beast and finding beauty in this beast-like figure and kind of being drawn and allured to that, even though it’s not the cultural norm and this type of thing where she leaves him, and then if she doesn’t come back in this film he’ll day. And just adding that death and life type of sensibility and just that idea of creating – yeah, just one of the classic descriptions of Venus in Scorpio is just like, finding beauty in what others find repellant. And what is more says that with Beauty and the Beast? 

CB: That’s perfect. I love that so much. Yeah, so that’s Venus retrograde in Scorpio. And with a huge Scorpio stellium at the time, wow. Perfect. Okay. 

SB: Getting loud. 

CB: That’s very loud. All right, excellent. Well, that was the last film on our list, I believe, right? 

SB: Yep. 

AD: That covers it. 

CB: All right. So let’s do some summary stuff. We’re gonna summarize some themes, talk about some recurring things that we saw come up and just sort of like, reflect here at the end of this now that we’ve gone through this entire journey through the filmography. Obviously, it’s much more weighted towards recent films and films we’ve seen, so I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff that we missed, especially about the earlier eras. But nonetheless, I think that’s given people some nice insight into some of the different things that come up during these times. And we’ve occasionally noted parallels in real life, but obviously each of these films is coming out and then there’s a bunch of other things happening in real life. But it’s just interesting to see that some of those themes in art are so loud during these times. 

Yeah, so what are some of the themes at this point to touch on or reflect on? 

AD: Yeah, I think mommy issues are right up there at the top. That showed up, like, constantly. 

CB: Right? Like, it’s not just me; that is a recurring theme at this point. I didn’t think of going into it; it’s so obvious now in retrospect. But it’s very, very loud. 

AD: Yeah. 

SB: I think the remake nature of these stories are kind of being retold or stories you can revisit – I think that’s another major theme that we saw through all of this. 

CB: Yeah, so many remakes. Like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Ring was a remake of a Japanese film. I’m putting Black Swan in there just because it seems like there was some inspiration or something of that from an earlier 1997 anime film. Easy A was a remake – is that the case? 

AD: It’s based on The Scarlet Letter. 

SB: Yeah. 

CB: Okay. Right. A Star is Born. Halloween 2018 was a sequel, quasi-reboot. And Suspiria 2018 was also a remake of a 1977 film. So a lot of remakes, a lot of revisiting the past, which is a common Venus retrograde thing is like, you know, something from the past comes back into the present. And astrologers often talk about that in a cliche, like, relationship context of an ex relationship coming back from the past. But in this instance, it can be artistic themes and stories and inspiration from the past that comes back into the present and gets updated or repackaged with a contemporary aesthetic. 

SB: Yeah. It’s there, and you know, it’s funny. Like you said, it can be an ex, but it can also just be a story. And they’re both Venus things. 

CB: Right. Totally. Okay, what are some other themes that you two are seeing? 

AD: The excrement side of things, like things being gross and human and just being in the muck of life and feelings and emotions, both metaphorical and pretty literal. 

CB: Yeah, things that are gross is one of my main takeaways that I really like. Things that are gross. Because like, and then we get the blood; we get the excrement; we get the fluids. Like, even sex is kind of gross in a certain context; if you think about it, there’s a lot of fluids and stuff. And so people could – it’s like, there’s different things that are gross, depending on different contexts or depending on what perspective you’re looking at things at. And that’s where that’s relevant on a deeper level, because what is gross is relative and something that one person finds gross another person might find appealing, and that’s where things get interesting with Venus in Scorpio. 

AD: Yeah, for sure. 

SB: Yeah. I’ll lump that in with the s&m type of themes that we saw. Like, pain as pleasure and what people find pleasure in that may repulse you, and how that just comes up to the zeitgeist and then all of a sudden, all of us are talking about chains and whips in, you know, ways that we may not typically do. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. Like themes of power and control and manipulation as well as the way in which power can sometimes be displayed overtly, but in Scorpio we oftentimes find it displayed in a way that’s hidden or covert or indirect in some way where through things like manipulation or control or other things like that. 

AD: Right. And then also just the people who traditionally don’t have power taking it back, sometimes by any means necessary. Violence, things like that. 

CB: Definitely. Yeah, that makes sense. 

SB: I was just going to continue on that Medusa theme that we saw kind of come up again of who gets sympathy and who gets empathy and empathizing with the villains and empathizing with the – and kind of reevaluating in this Venus retrograde moment where our sympathies lie and maybe sometimes the people we originally saw as villains are actually victims, and the ones who may come across as victims are actually the perpetrators or villains. Like in The Favorite where you think the one is very nice and she’s actually much harsher and does not have good intentions, versus the one who’s like, overtly harsh is actually have better intentions for the country and the queen. 

CB: Yeah, totally. Or in other instances where you’re like, rooting for the victim. Like, in Halloween, you have a young girl that’s being stalked, but then when she turns it on her victim and stabs Michael Myers, everyone’s rooting for her to fight back and to flip the table in terms of the power dynamic. 

SB: Exactly. Yeah. Our relationship with violence and who gets to do violence and when women do violence and wrongs – I don’t think that in Halloween it’s a wrong, but when women do the wrongs, like “supporting women’s rights and supporting women’s wrongs” I feel like is now a theme that will stick in my head for Venus retrograde in Scorpio.

CB: Yeah, definitely. Okay. Are there other – I know we’ve talked – one of you wrote down focus on queer relationships, and I know that was something that came up a lot during Venus retrograde in Aries. But we saw that come up a lot here, and I kept thinking of the keyword that came up when I talked with Elly Higgins about that during our Venus retrograde in Aries in queer history episode was just that which is normative versus non-normative, and Venus retrograde, because it’s going against the grain and it’s moving against the direction that all the rest of the planets are headed, being things that are more non-normative, whatever that means relative to the current cultural times. 

AD: Yeah, and then having it be in Scorpio, there’s kind of this, like, secretive element to it. Like, you think of The Favorite; it was secret, it was used as blackmail, and then Portrait of a Lady on Fire it’s secret; it’s just the two of them and they can’t ever speak of it again. So that’s another theme that keeps coming up. Like the flavor of the Venus retrograde and the ways in which we see queerness presented. 

CB: Yeah. And also that Venus in Scorpio is in its exile, which adds an additional layer of being outside of the norm or being outside of your own element or being away from home in some sense so that you get a doubling up of both of those meanings. 

AD: Yeah. I mean, literally in the case of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, they’re on an island by themselves away from everything they know. 

CB: Oh wow. Okay. 

Okay, are there any other major themes that we saw come up that we wanted to mention here in our summary? 

SB: I think we covered a big part – oh, I think one that I would want to say is just the hidden self comes to the surface. You know, a new understanding of self and in these crisis and usually with Scorpio, it’s very deep and cathartic and maybe painful experience kind of bringing that self up. 

AD: Yeah, that shedding of the skin. Like, it has to happen, but it’s terrifying and hard and painful. But on the other side, you feel renewed. 

CB: Yeah. And that entire process that Venus always goes through when it goes retrograde of that descent of Inanna as a goddess into the underworld and getting trapped there and then eventually having to emerge on the other side renewed. But it has an even more special significance in this context in Scorpio because one of the things we’re missing about Mars is when the Greeks inherited astrology and adapted it from the Mesopotamians, they had a choice of what god to assign to the planet Mars as they were adapting it. And they picked the god Ares, which is the god of war, which fits one piece of it, but the other piece of it that we lost out on was that the Mesopotamian god was Nergal that was a god of war, but it was also the god of the underworld. And that’s an element that I feel like comes up with Scorpio where you do get this underworldly element that I think is becoming more clear as we’re talking about Venus retrograde there so that when Venus goes retrograde in Scorpio, it’s not just Inanna doing the solar phase cycle descent where she hides beneath the beams of the Sun, but it’s also going into Scorpio where there is this underworldly element that can bring up those themes like that, including extreme themes of death or mortality and things like that in really heavy and serious ways. And sometimes that can lead to that exposure to the darkness or to death or extremes like that can lead to a renewal of a sense of life like we saw with the film It’s a Wonderful Life in 1946. But other times, it can be other versions of that that we’ve seen as well. 

SB: Yeah. I think even just understanding that the underworld process and that death is always a part of retrogrades, but in Scorpio it’s so much more pronounced. And I think I understand it when you compare it to the Barbie movie when Venus is in Leo, and you see there’s that iconic line, it’s like, “Does anyone ever think about dying?” 

CB: Right. 

SB: There’s still that underworld and death experience, but it’s Barbie; it’s pink; it’s so much different than a Scorpio Venus retrograde story. So you can see how it aligns, but the sign that it happens in really colors it, too. 

AD: Yeah, Venus in Scorpio feels like a hat on a hat. It’s like, it’s a descent, and also you’re in the underworld. 

CB: Right. And you’re like, decked out in goth attire at that same time and looking fabulous in that outfit. 

Yeah, I love that, and the Barbie movie coming out the day Venus stationed retrograde, and then I always think of the actress, Margot Robbie, having Cancer rising and having the Moon in Scorpio, so that being drawn to that film or even to I, Tonya as well in terms of exploring some of those themes. 

SB: Yeah, that’s a good point. Like, she has a comfort with that Scorpionic, deeper, darker, harder subject matter, even if you don’t see it right away as her chart ruler too. 

CB: Exactly. And it’s like, we saw that with a lot of the actors and actresses that had either Venus retrograde in Scorpio or Venus in Scorpio especially, that they have an openness to exploring some of those darker themes. And that doesn’t mean that they themselves are bad people, or even that the audience that’s interested in listening to some of these stories are bad people, but just exploring and acknowledging a side of human life that’s there even if it’s not always pretty or roses or other things like that. 

SB: Yeah. I think of, like, our boy Penn Badgley and he was like, “Do you identify with Scorpio?” And he says, like, “Do I identify with being observant or deep or” I don’t know exactly what he says. 

CB: He says “penetrating.” 

SB: Penetrating! Exactly. And he’s like, “We all are penetrating,” and I’m like, “Yes, Penn, but we all have Scorpio in our chart somewhere! Even if it’s not activated, we all have it! So you’re right!” Like — 

CB: Well — 

SB: — it’s just like, yeah! 

CB: And we don’t all play, like, obsessive serial killers on a hit TV show that comes out when Venus goes retrograde in Scorpio. So it’s like, no, my friend; you are an exceptional Scorpio, even if you are playing that out through your art in some sense and even if you don’t internalize that in the way that you might. But nonetheless, that’s pretty compelling. 

SB: Exactly. 

CB: Yeah. All right. I think we could keep talking; we could be out here all night, but I think that that’s pretty comprehensive, and this is pretty amazing. Thank you both for joining me today for this exploration. We’ve sort of been through this together a little bit quickly; like, we could have gone more into it, but then it would have been, like, 10 hours long. So I think this was perfect. And people can let us know in the comments, especially on YouTube, if there’s other films that should be added to the list that cover things that we didn’t even think of or didn’t cover. But this was amazing. 

Thank you both for joining me. So first, Skye, you have a book on Venus retrograde in Scorpio right now – a whole workbook – that people can get and should get. They can order it from your website in order to personalize this and understand how this transit’s working out in their birth chart. 

SB: Yeah. I’m like, showing the screen for the audio listeners of my book. But yeah, I dived deep on this transit and this specific transit, but you can learn more about how it’s hitting your personal chart and how it fits into your larger story and you can learn a lot by zooming in. But what’s fun here is we just zoomed out a lot, so you can get the opposite experience with the book. And if you need help with understanding your Venus retrograde story, I am doing personal Venus retrograde readings where we can dive into your personal story together, and you can have a friend in the underworld to go with. 

CB: I love that. And that’s really helpful to have that and to be able to personalize it and have somebody to help you guide you through that journey can be really crucial during these times. 

All right — 

SB: Yeah. Especially at the hard times. 

CB: Yeah, especially the more challenging and darker times and to give you a timeline and help in terms of what you’re looking at. 

Cool. So your website is SkyeAstrology.com, and I’ll put a link to that in the description below this episode. 

Ames, tell me about yourself. Do you do consultations? What are your offerings? I know you’re really active making videos; I’ve been loving your video content and short-form content lately. 

AD: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I’m on TikTok, and I do reels. A lot of it is just kind of off-the-cuff talking about current transits, but I also do like talking about pop culture and film and things like that. And then I do consultations as well, natal chart readings, but I also really love to get into the muck of timing and current transits. So I am very down for some retrograde chats. 

CB: Nice. Awesome. Yeah, people should definitely sign up to that, and I’ll put links to your – what’s your website URL? 

AD: It’s AstroWithAmes.com. 

CB: Okay, perfect. Well, I’ll put links to both of your websites and social media profiles in the description below this video on YouTube or on the podcast website so people can check it out there, and I’d recommend checking it out. 

Thanks so much for joining me today, both of you. I really appreciate it. This was fun. 

AD: Thank you so much for having us. 

SB: So much fun. I feel like half of these episodes, I’m just like, suggesting movies to you, Chris. And I’m just like, “Hey, you want to watch this? I think you’ll like it.” And then you come back, and you’re like, “That was so good!” 

CB: Yeah. Both of you have had amazing recommendations, and you’ve found some really deep stuff that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise, so I really appreciate you helping to guide me through this retrograde and find my way and learn more about it. It’s been much appreciated. 

AD: Yeah, absolutely. 

CB: Cool. All right. Well, thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and we’ll see you again next time. 

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