The real test of change comes when all we’ve garnered from the descent gets applied into our relationships: challenging expectations and unspoken agreements.

When Inanna failed to return from the underworld, her trusted advisor Ninshubur went to Enlil and then to Nanna to ask for help. Both refused. They said that Inanna had craved the great heaven and the great below as well, and in her craving the powers of the underworld she must remain there.

This craving is Inanna’s entitlement that we looked at in part 4; she believed the underworld was hers to enter and claim as her own. Only Enki answered with compassion and made her return possible.

On 25 October, the day after her inferior conjunction, Venus retrograde moves from Scorpio back into Libra. By the end of October she starts to appear again, low in the east before sunrise, as the morning star. Mercury also turned retrograde on 24 October, and it will stay retrograde in Scorpio until 13 November, so now our minds are going back over old ground, just as our hearts are also.

The return part of Venus retrograde is her journey back to the upper world. It is a passage beginning from conjunction and taking place over several weeks until she turns direct in mid-November, the day after Mercury.

At the first crossing in of Inanna’s descent on 3 October, as Venus turned retrograde, the task was to stop pushing forward and turn inwards, being receptive to what our lives are showing us, the subtle or not so subtle feedback we are receiving. Moving with grace rather than exerting our own effort, we discover our personal self’s limitations.

The second crossing, when Inanna begins to return, rising from the hook, runs until the end of her retrograde period. The return focuses on our sovereignty, because it is now up to us to choose how we live with what we were given from our descent. So the return an embodied time of integration.

So how now will we use that new knowledge and understanding of our true power when it is fully returned to us?

The rules of the underworld apply. As Inanna is about to leave, the judges seize her, because nobody has ever left the underworld unscathed, without paying a price. If she is to go, she must send someone down to take her place. Demons go with her, surrounding her on every side like a reed fence. So while she has her life, she is not yet free.

The first person Inanna meets on her way up is Ninshubur. Ninshubur has been sitting in the dust and has dressed herself in a filthy garment, mourning her. The demons offer to take her, and Inanna refuses. She says that Ninshubur did not forget her instructions, that she lamented for her and went from god to god on her behalf.

The same happens twice more. Shara, her singer and companion, is found sitting in the dust in mourning clothes, and Inanna will not give him up. Lulal, who follows at her side, is found the same way, and she spares him too. Those who truly grieved her are protected. They did not carry on as normal and they were changed through their loss.

The teaching here is that when we come back from a descent, the relationships that survive are with those that could truly see what we went through and let it move them. Being seen is important because it helps us not get lost while inside a powerful experience.

In the same way that ancient Babylonian sky-watchers recorded Venus’ disappearance and return, others witnessing us helps us recognise the changes in us, changes we would not see had others not noticed them.

Still, despite Inanna’s resurrection, we are left with an uncomfortable reality. While she has suffered much humiliation and even death, she has received help and been restored to life. This does not guarantee that she will exercise her authority differently when she returns to her upper world throne.

It is possible to come through a devastating experience and learn a great deal about ourselves, only to then find that our former habits reappear when we are back in our familiar role.

Consider if we have spent our life being indispensable to others. We organise what everyone needs or what needs to happen for things to run smoothly. We anticipate problems, plan, strategise, stepping in, taking responsibility whenever needed. Our sense of self has developed around being capable, giving of ourselves, being reliable and responsible. At one time, this was a role we needed to grow into, and now something new is required of us.

Then for whatever reason, life brings circumstances or experiences that mean we cannot continue in the same way. We begin to see how unappreciated we actually are. How we never actually get what we need. And we decide we have to relinquish that role we’ve played so diligently.

When we give up a role, we begin to question a lot of the foundations of our lives. We can question what our true worth is. Who really loves us for who we are rather than what we give them. Those around us can feel uncomfortable with us changing, as it makes them question their lives too. But it gives others the opportunity to take more responsibility themselves.

That might bring us much relief, or other more complex feelings. It can be particularly difficult to acknowledge if our understanding of ourselves has always been associated with generosity. Once the dust settles and life feels back to normal again, the pull to slip back into the old role can be strong, and this is when our vigilance must be online. Changing patterns is about understanding precisely what we have been doing and working through any threats we feel about the prospect of living differently. Awareness certainly helps, but it’s one leg of the chair.

Who are we to other people when we can no longer play the role they expect? What is left of our worth when the capacities we built it on are gone, for a while or for good? The answers can be hard to find, especially when the identity we have lost was also the one that helped us survive.

We shouldn’t assume anything. The old self isn’t eradicated, and it doesn’t vanish from the psyche. It steps back from running our lives, relieved of its day job, while the Divine self begins to lead and open up new directions and opportunities. This is the real change. Being able to discern real change is key. And repairing our lives and getting back on an even keel is not real change. The deeper question is what new form our life must now take because of what we know. This is what sovereignty is.

On 25 October, Venus still moving retrograde moves out of Scorpio, as previously discussed in part 3 the sign of her detriment, and back into Libra, one of the two signs she rules. So the return home has a literal meaning because Venus is returning to one of her own signs.

Libra is about fairness, reciprocity and relational agreements between people. Following Inanna’s attempted coup of Ereshkigal’s throne, it is ironic that Venus is now moving to a sign concerned with how two people can essentially get along.

It is also true that many of our relational agreements are established without being discussed openly. We just fall into them. This is especially the case if there’s intensity between two people. It’s easier to often not speak what is there. We take on our roles. One person is better at keeping the contact alive and regular, and the other assumes contact will come. One adapts more because the other adapts less. There are many versions.

Scorpio territory exposes buried material. Libra asks how does this change the terms? What is fair now? What do I value now? What do we need to change about our agreements—spoken and unspoken? If anger, resentment or bitterness is pushed aside, what do we need to do with that? If we are somewhat dependent on one another, is it a healthy or burdensome dependence? If one person held the awareness for what the other could not see or acknowledge, what changes once both can see it?

Perhaps the central issue that we all experience is the struggle around whose experience or reality is more important. If one person’s reality is continually dismissed or seen as not important, then it emerges in an increasingly forceful way to get everyone’s attention. Individuals and families often become entrenched in their version to the point when neither can recognise the other side’s perspective.

Both sides can be recognised as separate and important, each with their own experience and reality. There are times when listening and acknowledging the other’s experience allows the conversation to move forward. We can substantially disagree with each other, but goodwill emerges when people can hear each other. We don’t need to agree. We can both exist, each keeping to our own truth. We do not need to extinguish another person’s reality. This is very important in these times of great difference and discord. And truly, there is no other option for us all now than to actively apply this approach.

This is sovereignty in motion. That is, the third way, as sovereignty demands something beyond either side.

Even and especially within ourselves, opposing impulses similarly become entrenched. We may identify with the part that wants to act while feeling another side of us that wants to wait and see. Understanding, awareness and acceptance of the parts and sides within us is an act of inclusion towards ourselves. Even the urge to overrule one side of ourselves can tell us a great deal, showing us which part we usually favour as our familiar approach or pattern, and what we fear might happen if we listened to the other.

Venus will continue travelling through Libra until her direct station at 22°52′ on 14 November. During this period, we may find ourselves reconsidering our bonds and agreements. Examining our habits, obligations and the unspoken distribution of power. With Mercury retrograde over the same weeks, much of this may happen through outward and inward conversation, as we revisit, rethink, and find new ways of making sense of our lives.

It’s quite possible that most of us will feel quite lost and disoriented at this time. The feeling is of going backwards in our lives, of returning to the past, things we wanted to perhaps never entertain again. Perhaps we thought we’d moved on. And so it can feel quite disconcerting to feel like you just simply cannot shake the past away.

We are very much inside our own experience right now, and two days after the conjunction, on 26 October, there is a Full Moon in Taurus, the sign Venus rules. With the Sun and Venus still only about three degrees apart, we might feel strongly activated. We might also feel quite alone in that place, as though no one understands what we are going through.

Signs of change might also not arrive till much later and we must be patient for that. And that’s ok, if inner recognitions take longer to catch up in outward change. The work is perhaps just one of commitment to the change that needs to be acted upon.

It can help to let someone see what you have been through, or to write the experience down for yourself in a journal, so you can read it back later from a different place. It also helps to look for the first sign of dawning light, the small new seedlings of a beginning or change, just as the first sighting of the morning star was recorded by the Babylonians.

We are not quite at the point where Inanna needs to find her substitute for the underworld. In the next part 6, as Venus turns direct, she will find that someone, and he will be sitting on her own throne, as she tried to sit on her sister’s throne. By then, we may have come to some conclusions of our own.

Back to part 4