In a previous post, I wrote about a friend I’d been grieving the loss of for years who reached out just as Venus reached its shadow degrees in Libra at the end of August. Since she was my friend and she is my partner’s ex, I suspected our Venus Retrograde in Scorpio would be about this situation, even more so since Mercury was going retrograde during the same time period.
Why did I think this? I’ll explain. Venus reached its shadow degrees of 22º of Libra on August 30th, two days after an eclipse and the day my old friend happened to reach out. Venus Retrograde technically started on October 3rd, but all of September was spent tracing the path Venus would go over twice more, once while retrograde and again after going direct on November 13th. Mercury Retrograde began on October 24th, the day before the Venus Cazimi, and it will go direct along with Venus on November 13. This means there has been a lot of focus on the Scorpio and Libra houses in our charts.
The person who reached out is a friend, yes, but also someone I have a complicated history with: whether you want to call it love, limerence, or unhealthy attachment… This is why I thought the 5th house being activated made sense for me, but also this situation impacts the one I love, so that angle makes sense as well. However, in addition to the 5th house being love, romance, sex, and sexuality, it is joy and creativity. It turns out my Venus Retrograde in Scorpio has been all about channeling these deep feelings into creative output, and doing so with my partner.
For my partner, Scorpio is his 7th house of partnership. I thought this made sense, because this person is his ex and this situation is affecting me, his current partner as well. This is an important thing to note about transits, your chart isn’t just you so not every transit will impact you personally. Sometimes it is describing something that will happen to someone in your life, with the 7th house being your partner, for example. However in the case of my partner, he has his Moon in the 7th house in the path of these Retrogrades, so they are affecting him personally as well.
I spent much of September cautiously texting with my old friend, trying to figure out what was going on, and not really getting a clear answer. It felt great to reconnect with her, but I was concerned about her wellbeing and what could have happened to make her want to connect with me again after all this time. There were times when things got pretty tense, because I accidentally shared things she found upsetting. For example, the Gweeny song my partner created. To be fair, I asked her first if she wanted to hear it and she said yes, but still it was a moment where I was like, “What are we doing here?”
At the end of September, my partner shared he’d been working on a song, not with the intention of releasing it, just with the intention of working through his emotions. However, once I heard it, I was like you should release this. It could be healing for you. Then I wondered if maybe I could work through all my confusion the same way. Since he used Claude to help him organize his thoughts to write the lyrics, I decided to give it a shot as well. I wrote a prompt and gave it to him… It was hilariously bad. It was nothing like how I felt, so he tried to give it more direction. That only made things worse. It was “word soup” as he calls it. I was not impressed. It’s funny, because every time I see glimpses of how AI can help in some situations, how it actually performs is a total let down. Womp womp.
But I had the structure of a song at this point, and some ideas of where to go. So, I just wrote it myself. There were points where I didn’t know what to say, so for that, we sent the lyrics off to Myla for editing. She edited the phrasing of a few lines and added a few lines. Then my partner created the instrumental for her to sing on, and she did. She sang it. If you're interested, you can check out a snippet of Ghost of What We Were, or pre-save Venus Retrograde in Scorpio to hear Ghost of What We Were in its entirety when it's available! I'm so excited for this work to be out in the world!
As for his song, he created music for 3 versions and recorded all of them: the original song he wrote in English, a Spanish translation, and a Spanglish version. I got to watch him record, and help him overcome his nerves and stay on task. It was awesome! I loved it so much! If you're interested, I highly recommend checking out a story he created about this whole process: The Loom in the House of the Scorpion! It's more fun to read than my straight forward posts, and you'll get a sense for how meaningful and healing creating this EP was for him.
Then he had to do all his mixing and mastering within a few days so that he could upload the EP for distribution with extra time to spare! Technically he didn’t have to upload it until the 29th, but he got it done the week before, just before Mercury went retrograde. Still, the retrograde got him a little. There is no AI in the finished recordings, but his distribution platform asks it AI was used at all in the making of the songs, and he disclosed that it was “partial AI” meaning that the songs will not be available in official libraries on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. He wasn’t too concerned as with his previous distributer that was an extra fee anyway, but Myla and I both felt it was unfair. It seems like it’s meant to catch AI slop that has been flooding streaming platforms, not for real music like what we created.
There isn’t anything that can be done about this EP, but it will still be available and monetized on streaming platforms, so at least there’s that. And to correct this injustice, we are already working on the next project, which will be AI-free!
So, I hope y’all will check out Venus Retrograde in Scorpio, the EP when it is released on November 12, the day before Venus and Mercury go direct! Get messy with us, go deep and talk about all the things Scorpio wants to bring up to the surface. I hope y’all love it!