Natal Venus retrograde means you have some difficulty in giving and receiving love and affection. You may experience sadness in love or have to endure hardship or delay. Lack of self-love, social anxiety, shyness and even financial hardship can be associated with Venus retrograde in your birth chart.
Most people have more than one planet retrograde in their natal chart, and it is rather difficult to find a person that has all his natal planets direct. Therefore, we should understand that the karmic connection to previous lives is a rule affecting most of the population, and should be regarded as a tool to understand ourselves.
In some occasions, money and belongings become the tool that a Venus retrograde person will use for drawing other people towards him. His insecurity may make him feel unwanted for what he is, so he instead considers attracting people for what he has to offer. In such circumstances, the native will frequently make gifts, pay for the other person and generally try to buy the other’s affection. Of course, this can be even risky for attracting people that hunt for money and benefits, tending to manipulate others for their own purposes.
Whatever the circumstance of the previous romance, you come into this life with those bad memories etched in your soul. You probably don’t recognize them as memories but as déjà vu or unexplained guilt. Especially when young, there can be a repeating theme of challenging events related to your past.
Often these challenges are a result of past life relationships issues. Due to the laws of karma, if you caused suffering or hardship to a lover in a previous life, then you shall experience something similar yourself during this life. Venus retrograde acts like Mars so perhaps you hurt someone you loved. Maybe you had an affair, walked out when they needed you most, or physically injured them.
A Venus retrograde person has karmic debts concerning love from previous lifetimes. They can have experienced traumatic events concerning affection, which lead them to be quite careful in their approach during this lifetime. The quest to reach healthy ways of experiencing the virtues of love will be their most important life lesson. They will have to break down their internal walls and open up to give and receive love, even if this means risking getting hurt again.
Self love can start with beautifying your physical appearance. The use of fashion, cosmetics and beauty treatments can greatly improve your self-love and therefore make you more lovable. However, natal Venus retrograde can also show as excessive use of makeup and jewelry or even disfigurement from cosmetic surgery.
Sadness and disappointment may come from unrequited love, forced marriage, sexual abuse, mental illness or physical disability. Learning to love yourself is critical in working through your Venus in retrograde issues. Other signs of natal Venus retrograde can be poor personal hygiene and not caring about how you look.
The aim of Venus retrograde in your natal chart is to perfect those areas of your love life which once let you down. As your relationship skills improve with experience, your karmic debt will be repaid and you start to enjoy more loving relationships.
A remedy for helping Venus function in a better way is getting involved with anything that promotes art and beauty. If you have this natal aspect and your Venus is underdeveloped, try starting an artistic hobby. It does not matter if you are talented or not, just let the planet bloom through your activities. Painting, dancing, and singing can be great tools, even for empowering your self-consciousness. In addition, it is very important to take more care about your body and appearance, as the results will directly manifest. Offer to your body everything it needs to feel more desired. After all, the biggest problem that retrograde Venus can bring, is that you do not like your own self as much as you should. When you empower Venus and start liking yourself, you will radiate this towards the world too. And the world will start treating you differently.
Of course, the Venus retrograde gives a lot of different traits depending on the house where it is located. Even though there is no general rule of when a retrograde planet starts to function properly, expect that by your thirties you will notice the planet to operate outwards too. Different astrological systems suggest various ways of calculating the change of a planet’s direction through progressions.