Venus Retrograde in Scorpio in Birth Charts

Chris Brennan (0:00)

Hey, my name is Chris Brennan, and you're listening to The Astrology Podcast. Joining me today is astrologer Skye Barclay, and we're going to be talking about Venus Retrograde and Scorpio in natal charts. Hey, Skye, thanks for joining me.

Skye Barclay (0:12)

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Chris Brennan (0:15)

Yeah, this is great. We've been researching this episode over the past few weeks, and we haven't found a lot of great examples of Venus Retrograde and Scorpio to mark the occasion, which is that Venus just stationed Retrograde and Scorpio only a few days ago on October 3rd. We're recording this on October 6th, and you actually are the author of a new book titled 2026 Venus Retrograde, A Dance of Daggers & Delights. I thought you would be a great person to talk to about this topic, so thanks for joining me.

Skye Barclay (0:45)

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's quite a transit, so it called to me.

Chris Brennan (0:53)

Yeah, we all knew this is going to be a big retrograde, and it obviously has started, and it brings up a lot of stuff during the course of it. I did a whole episode last month on Venus Retrograde and Scorpio in history, and I could see some of the repetitions that we were in for, but it's much different to look at it from a natal standpoint and understand what it means for people when it's built into their birth chart. That's something you focused on a little bit, but what I liked about your book is you helped personalize it for people, especially by looking at it relative to different rising signs, right?

Skye Barclay (1:31)

Yeah, I write horoscopes and journal prompts for every sign and really try to break it down so people could see how these themes could show up in their individual lives.

Chris Brennan (1:44)

Nice. I love that. Well, it's a really great book. It's amazingly illustrated. I was really impressed by the production design and everything else, not just the book and the content itself, but even the aesthetics. You did a whole photo shoot for it in order to help illustrate it, right?

Skye Barclay (2:00)

Yeah, I did two photo shoots. I did one photo shoot that was a studio shoot showcasing Venus in Libra versus Venus in Scorpio so people could see it come to life.

Then I did a photo shoot with me getting my braids redone because I had a photographer follow me for eight hours because I think of that journey as going into the underworld for a Venusian experience, so giving a new take on Inanna's descent.

Chris Brennan (2:28)

I love that. That's brilliant.

All right, so what's our plan for today? Our plan for today is actually we're going to center this around. You and I have found a core group of at least 20-something example charts of mainly notable figures or celebrities that have Venus retrograde in Scorpio, where Venus goes retrograde in Scorpio every eight years, basically. So it gives you some definite time periods to look for, and it goes retrograde for about 40 days and 40 nights every eight years. So we have about 20 examples that we're going to go through, and we're going to let some of the themes that we found come through and arise by talking about the biographies of some of these people. And in the process of doing that, I think it gave both of us a really deeper understanding of what this transit means and both, not just the transit itself, but also what Venus means, what Venus and Scorpio means, what retrogrades mean, what detriment means, and all sorts of other things, I think, right?

Skye Barclay (3:31)

Yeah, I think that when you kind of learn about these archetypes, especially if you don't have the placement, you kind of learn these keywords. But when you start seeing people who have these placements, they really embody it throughout their lives. And so you're able to see, one, that people aren't doomed just because they have one detriment placement, but also all the multiple unique ways you could only imagine they could show up in the good, the bad, and the ugly. And there's ugly with Venus and Scorpio.

Chris Brennan (4:08)

Yeah. So there's definitely, I mean, you have to do a content warning at the beginning, because there's definitely some difficult themes that arise when we're talking about Venus Retrograde and Scorpio. And it's like anybody paying attention to the news over the past week or two already knows that there's been some really tough stuff coming up in the news, and really tough discussions, and other things like that. So it should be no surprise then that when we're looking at this as a natal signature, that there's some difficult or sometimes dark themes that can come up as well. So we definitely want to give people a heads up that we're going to be talking about some serious themes today, like in some instances, like extreme instances, like serial killers, themes of violence, stalking, and abuse, and other things like that.