The Eighth Gate of Descent
November 19, 2025: Venus meets with the moon in Scorpio
Venus crosses the horizon line, entering into the Underworld on November 24, 2025 in Scorpio.
Venus Speaks
I feel delicate, tender, open. I sense my wide eyed innocence and wonder. I am here. This journey of descent, of following the fire, meeting the water again and again, collecting the clues and pieces of something Else. The brash boldness that initiated the journey has softened into a steady willingness.
The initial impulse to find passionate purpose has led me here. Right to the threshold of the Underworld. Right into the maw of the unknown. Right into the heart of darkness. Am I willing to lean in, to release into the darkness and let it take me. Oh yes. Yes, yes, and three times yes.
What jewels lie waiting to be discovered? What glitters in the heart of the earth? I don't know. And that delights me. I feel an unfurling of calm, of potent power, that place of steady being, in the knowing I am exactly where I need to be. I cross the threshold and release into the dark.
So the power of our Being is an annihilating force, which annihilates ego attitudes and positions by revealing that they don’t truly exist.
-A.H. Almaas, Spacecruiser Inquiry
Black Essence
The Quality of Power
What we realize is that the power of our erotic nature is not a destructive one. It always comes with love. The motivation for creation is love. Surrendering to this energy is not a passive thing. It is a melting into our true nature, which imbues us with creative capacity in a real way. We can then be courageous and be vulnerable at the same time, because that is what it means to be who we are.
-A.H. Almaas, Divine Eros
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, as you embody Venus as Morning Star.
How do you resist emptiness? How do you experience emptiness?
How do you give up your power? How do you experience your power?
What is something you feel helpless about? How do you experience that helplessness? What happens if you stay with that sensation?
What is your own unique lens through which to explore this Essence of Black, the quality of power, of Venus in Aries? 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
We officially cross the threshold into a new phase of our journey. The descent has happened. The revelation of possibilities, the activation of stuck places, the descent is all about loosening what was fixed, static, unmoving. In alchemy this is bringing forward the prima materia, the nigredo, that which is ready to be transmuted.
In this Underworld phase, we let it simmer and deepen and cook. Sometimes it feels more like a crockpot than anything else. We've added our ingredients and by allowing a slow simmer, all of the separate ingredients transform into something new, something coherent, a sumptuous meal.
In this path of the Feminine, there is an honoring of the dark, the rest, the allowance to be vibrated, cooked, transmuted, that isn't forced or deliberately manipulated. I'm so good at making things happen, of building and creating, that sometimes it is difficult to trust the rest. And yet, She is here drawing me deeper, with innocent delight into letting things rest on their own. Honoring the dark with all of you this cycle.
