Sunshine and Shadows
Venus enters Leo this week (Aug. 25, 2025, 9:27 am PDT), through Sep. 19. Venus transits let us examine what we value. What in the physical world brings us pleasure? Who are the people we treasure, and what makes a relationship successful in our eyes? When Venus is in Leo, the litmus test is whether something – or someone – makes us feel valuable, attractive, and respected. We will adorn ourselves in clothing that makes us feel this way, go out with romantic partners we’re proud to be seen with, party ’til dawn, and demand royal treatment.
While Venus is in Leo, we’re called to share our heart, hospitality, and generosity, usually through big gestures. Venus in Leo wants to pick up her closest friends in a limo and treat them to dinner at a fancy restaurant, complete with champagne.
It’s a sunny, life-affirming position for Venus – but it will make a lot of important aspects this week to heavy planets, which brings a lot of shadows to Venus in Leo’s sunshine.
Sweet and Serious
Venus trines Saturn this week (Aug. 25, 2025, 5:56 pm PDT at 00º25’ Leo and Aries). The trine between Venus and Saturn is sweet itself, but not in the way Venus trine Jupiter or even Neptune might be; those connections have a softer quality. When Venus, the planet of relationship and affection, fun, and appreciation of life’s beauty comes together with Saturn, things tend to be more serious. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Maybe you’re in a relationship that’s has been progressing nicely, and now takes a serious turn. Maybe you’re willing to make a commitment to somebody. It may be romantic, but it also might be a friendship with someone whom you’re more willing to trust, to rely upon, to confide in.
Venus is a financial planet too, and at the time it connects with Saturn, especially by trine, it may be time for a financial commitment. You may be ready to take on a mortgage, or just sit down and take an honest look at your financial future. Saturn can be your very best financial advisor.
A New Spice for the Dish
A musician has been working on a new composition for weeks. It sounds good. It reflects her signature style. It says more or less what she set out to say. But it lacks…something. It’s competent, but flat, like a dish that needs some spice that you can’t put your finger on. She could play this piece to a club full of fans and it would be warmly received; only she would know that something was missing.
One afternoon, a friend calls and invites her to lunch. This friend always makes her laugh, and has a way of enticing her to try new things. They meet for brunch at a new place he suggested. The cuisine is new to her, but her friend recommends the perfect dish – fresh, lively, exotic. He entertains her with stories, and her delight over the food is punctuated with belly laughs.
She returns home refreshed, energized, and heads straight for her studio. She tweaks her composition with one small, new element that winds up being just what has been missing. And all it took was a few hours with something new and some laughter with an old friend, like a perfect spice to enliven the dish.
As Venus in talented Leo connects in a lively sextile with Uranus (Aug. 26, 2025, 1:58 pm PDT), take advantage of something new that’s offered. Changing one small element in your day can make all the difference in how happy and creative you feel, and how you share it.
A Familiar Formula
On the same day, Venus makes a trine to Neptune (Aug. 26, 2025, 3:18 pm PDT, 1º29’ Leo-Aries), a lovely aspect that makes everything shimmer in a lovely haze for a couple of days; and an opposition to Pluto (Aug. 26, 2025, 10:54 pm PDT, at 1º51’ Leo-Aquarius), a wake-up call to cold, hard reality.
If you’ve ever fallen madly in love with someone who was no good for you – who was, in fact, a destructive influence in your life – this formula will be familiar. Someone, or something, can seem like the answer to all your prayers, can make everything in life seem beautiful. And then… he drinks too much, she steals from you, he cheats with your best friend, she winds up living in your car. And yet, it’s hard to walk away… because, “I’m in love.”
Venus trine Neptune reminds us that seeing things as beautiful is a gift. But Venus opposed Pluto points out that seeing things as they really are is another kind of gift, even if it doesn’t always feel as good.
Staying in Touch
We worry about technology a bit these days, but a change of technology can be inspiring. When I get stuck writing at my computer, I can get unstuck by pulling out a pen and paper. For awhile, I had an old portable typewriter that unhinged a different compartment of my writer’s brain. Even texting emphasizes my smart-alecky side.
From one form of technology to another, the part of me that’s a creator remains fundamentally unchanged. I imagine Neptune as my muse, the planet that amasses ideas and feelings, nostalgia and dreams, then relies on me to put them out into the world in some kind of order. In the same way I once fantasized that a different guitar would make my songs better, some days I hope that switching to a different technology will open up new possibilities in my writing. And Uranus is, I suppose, how inspiration is channeled.
Uranus sextiles Neptune this week (Aug. 28, 2025, 5:14 pm PDT, 1º26’ Gemini and Aries), the first of five such aspects between now and June 2027, and their first major aspect since their 1993 conjunction. That’s when the World Wide Web became accessible outside its military and academic uses and changed the way we communicate and connect in no time at all.
And today, in the same way skipping from pen and paper to a typewriter, to a word processor, and a website changed creative expression and interpersonal connection at that epic conjunction, artificial intelligence is offering new possibilities at the sextile.
AI is controversial. Some are absolutely opposed to it in any form. Others appreciate its lightening of the load, making everything from composing a piece of ad copy or drafting a tactful note to a troublesome neighbor a lot easier.
But while Uranus trine Pluto in air signs make this technology feel inevitable, the aspects they make to Neptune are sextiles, which feel a little more optional. Sure, we can abandon our own creativity to the robots if we choose. But if what we want to do is to share our souls, rather than just shorten our workday, there are no shortcuts.
Over the next two years, Uranus sextile Neptune will bring new ways for us to share information and creativity, and to connect with others. That doesn’t have to be terrible. But it’s up to us humans to stay in touch with who we are and what we have to say, and to tend the soulful side of things.
New Ground, and More of It
I first flew in an airplane when I was in high school. I’d taken innumerable road trips with my family over the years, and I was used to that slow pace of travel. This was my first experience with covering territory in two hours that would once have taken several days of driving.
Unquestionably, there’s something nice about a road trip. You gain an intimacy with the terrain, which was fascinating in the 1960s and 70s, before every city and town in America looked quite similar. You savored every inch of the journey. And I missed that, in flying. But by taking an airplane, your vistas increased dramatically.
Sometimes, making a bigger life for ourselves requires that we let go of some of the treasured minutia of each mile so that we can cover new ground, and more of it. This First Quarter Moon (Aug. 30, 2025, 11:25 pm PDT, 8º07′ Sagittarius) pits the Sun in down-to-earth, eye-on-details Virgo against the Moon in Sagittarius and its wider lens. Taking a leap of faith can be scary. But if you’ve paid attention to detail and planned carefully, now is the time to trust that you’re ready to jump in a plane and fly into your future.
Writing and images © 2012-2025 by April Elliott Kent
