The Eight Gate of Ascent
September 14, 2025: Venus meets with the moon in Scorpio
Venus is high in the evening sky, shining brightly as Evening Star. She meets with the moon at the Crown Chakra gate.
Venus begins Her retrograde period October 4, 2025.
Venus Speaks
I return as Queen of Heaven. I savor and delight in the journey and savor and delight in the return. In my ending is my beginning and in my beginning is my ending. I take my place as Queen of Heaven, drinking in the fullness and completeness of this past journey of grounding my fire and magnetizing my flame. I know my potency differently now than when I started. I have weight, density, impact. I shift the gravitational pull around me. I hold the ancientness of time and space within my fire. I return as Queen of Heaven, more fully, more potently, myself.
In all of the journeying, I remember to pause and savor the work. This is the moment of celebration, the return, the allowing all of changes to settle into my skin. I look good. This potency suits me. I will savor and delight in this new embodiment of self. I will taste the deliciousness of the harvest of this journey. I will sigh and release and relax into this new fullness and completeness. I return as Queen of Heaven and it is good.
The world exists as you perceive it.
It is not what you see, but how you see it.
It is not what you hear, but how you hear it.
It is not what you feel, but how you feel it.
-Rumi
Black Essence
The Quality of Pure Potentiality
We cannot recognize the truth of our experience if we don’t know where we are in the moment. We won’t recognize where we are if we resist being where we are. Not allowing ourselves to be where we are prevents us from understanding our experience for what it is, and we won’t see the truth of the situation.
And that truth turns out to be essential power—it is the power of truth and peace and stillness. This is the immense and silent power to be—to be undisturbed and unruffled by the ignorance and reactivity of the familiar self. It is simply the power to be who you are, without domination or control, the power of True Nature that brings a love and a freedom in simply being yourself.
-A.H. Almaas, Unfolding Now
Inquiry Questions
Take some time to drop in, deepen into the quiet of your unfolding soul, and explore what is here now in your awareness, rising as Evening Star.
Sacred Warrior, what is your experience of aloneness? What makes you want to resist it? What are you afraid of if you are alone?
Bold and beauteous One, what is your legacy? For what will you be remembered?
Sacred Warrior, what do you protect? Who do you build for? Who do you honor from your ancient lineage through your legacy?
Bold and beauteous one, what is created when your vitality impacts your capacity to build what is lasting?
What is your own unique lens through which to explore this Essence of Black, the quality of pure potentiality, for Venus’s ascent as Evening Star? With whom do you journey this cycle?
Ritual Space
Take some time to drop into ritual space as you receive the initiation of this gate. We step into liminal space, time out of time, in ritual space. We connect with the lineage of those who have watched the stars for millennia, receiving the gift of Venus's journey, aligning ourselves with the cycles that are already unfolding. We remember our nature as beings who cycle, change, transform. We remember how to receive knowing directly, rather than needing others to tell us what is so.
You may wish to create an altar, light a candle, and anoint yourself with oils. Sit with this gate, the quality of Essence that is being called forward. As you deepen in surrendering to receiving initiation, ask who would come to guide you in your journey with this quality of Essence? What of yourself do you offer in return? What is calling to be set down at this gate? What pattern, belief, way of being in this world, is challenged by this quality of Essence? What are you ready to release in order to deepen more fully in this journey?
What gift is revealed in the releasing of this pattern, belief, or way of being? What has more freedom to be itself in this release? You may see this directly, or may need to live with this initiation throughout the whole cycle and come back and answer this question before entering into the next gate. You may wish to draw cards to receive guidance in this way.
As you complete your experience in ritual space, take time to offer thanks and adoration to the archetype, to Venus, to your personal guide that arose for this journey, to your ancestors and lineage. Offer thanks to the land that holds and nourishes and grounds you. In the giving and receiving we remember our deep connectedness to all beings everywhere, throughout time and space.
Remember and Record
As we complete this 20 month journey with Venus as the Sacred Warrioress and the Ancient Grandmother, it is time to harvest. Review the journey. Review your intentions and images for the year.
Who are you now?
How do you embody the archetypes of Sacred Warrioress and Ancient Grandmother? How do you embody your passionate purpose?
What is your Why, What, and How?
Who do you build for? Who in your ancient lineage do you honor?
What one thing do you take from this past journey that has changed how you orient in this world?
What is completed? What needs to be released? What will be seeded into the next cycle?
We’ve practiced building with each cycle, following the moon’s cycles within the bigger cycle of ascent. What do you need to fully use this support to keep building? How do you build?
This is the time of harvest, the exhale before beginning the next journey. The fuller the exhale, the fuller the next inhale will be. Journal it, move it, create it. What is needed for you to reap all of the rewards from this journey and then let it be complete?
In our endings are our beginnings and in our beginnings are our endings.
