The Kiss of the Scorpion: Why you Should Follow Venus Retrograde 2026
Photo Credit: Lindsay MacLean Studios
Scorpion Kiss Squared
I was bitten by a scorpion once. I was about 45 minutes into a 24-hour plant medicine ceremony in Nicaragua. It was just me, the facilitator, and the man who would become my husband—but at that point, we’d never even kissed. Now, I want to be very clear: my husband is the best thing that has ever happened to me. He is patient, kind, self-reflective, sensitive, emotionally intelligent, excited to explore every corner of the hidden parts of consciousness with me, and completely hilarious. But the man has four planets in Scorpio. FOUR. Including his Sun and his Venus. Like any good astrology buff, I had, of course, looked up his chart the moment I started to catch a whiff of feelings, so I was going in with what should have been full informed consent that the guy was intense.
To say that the scorpion sting ushered in a bad trip would be putting it mildly. What do you do when you're lying in the pitch black, surrounded by sinister-sounding animals and there's nothing to distract from the throbbing in your hand and the shooting numbness moving up your arm? Obviously the next logical thing to do is to draw a connection between the sinister reputation of the animal that has just attacked you and the Sun sign of the person next to you. Scorpion…Scorpion…Scorpio. Wait! He's a Scorpio. That was all it took to make the incredibly illogical next leap that Scorpio=Murderer. That night, in a cursed fever dream, I watched dozens of different permutations of my own death at the hands of my groom-to-be. I knew the Scorpio archetype was about death and rebirth, but seriously? Come on.
I've never experienced that kind of terror. I was pretty experienced in the exploration of consciousness but this was the first and only time that I ever lost track of the thread of reality. It took a few more hours, even after the ceremony ended, for my poor friend who was about to become so much more, to convince me that he had no intention of taking my life. It wasn't 24 hours later that we had our first kiss—a happy ending. We'd made it! Or so I thought…
It all seemed random and chaotic at the time. I had flashbacks to that night for over a year, and I felt angry and bitter about it. I didn’t guess until years later that this was the symbolic crossing of the threshold into my Venus in Scorpio journey. In fact, it was only as I was reflecting on the upcoming retrograde—thinking back to my most Scorpionic experiences—that it dawned on me that my first instinctive interpretation was more correct than I could have imagined. No, I'm not writing to you from beyond the grave (though "The Undead Astrological Counsellor" has a nice ring to it), but the number of metaphorical deaths and subsequent alchemical transformations that ensued was frankly rude.
I thought the scorpion was just an a**hole, but it turns out it was there to deliver a message: “Girl, are you sure you wanna do this? This is what Venus in Scorpio love really looks like.” It took 3 more years for me to really unpack what that meant, to the point where i felt ready to teach about it‚in my new course —just in time for the 2026 Venus Retrograde.
Photo Credit: Lindsay MacLean Studios
The Shape of Venus in Scorpio
Unsurprisingly, loving someone with a Scorpio stellium* is deeply transformative. It grows you up fast. In three years, I’ve become someone I barely recognize—someone more resilient and fearless, and able to face challenges that would have had me in a puddle on the floor before all of this. That doesn’t mean that I loved every minute of the process. Quite the opposite. If you had asked me one year in, I would have told you to steer far clear of strong Scorpio placements all together. The fights, the stubbornness, the struggle for power and control (on BOTH sides—I have a Scorpio Moon, so I am equally as guilty of these tendencies).
Venus in Scorpio love creates this transcendent phenomenon where two people will periodically fuse into one entity just for funsies. It can feel incredible and it can be dangerous. You can lose yourself. And the way you arrive at those intoxicating moments of union is to boldly march into the darkest corner of every emotional cave until you can find your way through them blind. We're both therapists by training, so if there was an emotional processing Olympics, we would be the first in line to try out but we would both still tell you that this undertaking is not for the faint of heart.
Normally when we think about love, we think about the sign that Venus has just exited and will dip back into briefly during the retrograde: Libra. Love feels fantastic in Libra. It is as harmonious and balanced as a relationship will ever feel. Partners are giving and understanding and everyone just wants to get along. Venus feels at home in this sign. But like every one of the signs, without exception, there is a dark shadow to Libra, which is that we can start to erase ourselves when we spend too much time focused on what keeps love feeling constantly good.
The 2026 Venus Retrograde* will have us spending time in both of these signs—22 days in Scorpio, and 19 in Libra. It is imperative that we visit the darker waters of Scorpio in order to determine what love really needs to move forward and transform towards greater wholeness—not just what feels comfortable right now. But we equally need to make sure that we're not bringing an excess of Scorpio intensity to the detriment of considering fairness and seeing a multiplicity of perspectives. We will need to draw on each of these archetypes equally in order to find the appropriate mix of honesty and tact, so if you have a tendency towards either too much or not enough directness, this will be an opportunity to rebalance the scales (no Libra pun intended 😬).
There are a few key signatures of the Venus in Scorpio energy to be kept in mind if you
Have a Scorpio Venus or your partner does
Have any prominent Scorpio placements in your chart (Sun, Moon, Rising sign, Mercury) or your partner does
Are in a time period—like now, if you're reading this article when it first comes out—where Venus is moving through the sign of Scorpio in the sky
Venus in Scorpio Pulls No Punches—This sign does not mince words. On the surface it can appear kind of callous and insensitive. It's not. It is a radical commitment to honesty. Not every Venus sign will view it this way or understand their perspective, but Venus in Scorpio believes that the only way out of relational tension is through, and with direct, truthful feedback. All your blind spots and the places you'd prefer to hide will be exposed under Venus in Scorpio's surgically precise microscope and you will probably hate it, until you begrudgingly admit that it's making you into a stronger and better person.
Venus in Scorpio will often feel like a Power Struggle—Part of the shadow of Venus in Scorpio is that issues of greed, domination, and control can lurk in its murky waters. The speed at which it can plunge you into a fierce locking of horns can catch you off guard and leave you wondering how you suddenly got yourself dug in so far. People with this placement natally (in their birth chart) are born lawyers who can build an iron prison of words around you without lifting a finger—even when they're wrong. As much as these power struggles can make you want to claw your eyes out, they are also fabulously informative. They reveal the areas where you cling to control and become a training ground for discerning what to let go of vs. what is worth fighting for.
Venus in Scorpio Uses Sex as an Alchemical Transformation—Scorpios have a reputation for being sexually magnetic and having an unusually high interest in sex. Venus in Scorpio is no exception; sex is their love language. But to lean on these stereotypes misses the most important nuance, which is the type of sex that is at the heart of the Scorpio Venus archetype. A Scorpio doesn't want to have a shallow fling with you—they want to penetrate your soul. Or have their soul penetrated. Whatever they're into. This archetype is often selective and difficult to pin down romantically, but once it locks in, it doesn't let go and leaves you forever changed.
Venus in Scorpio Loves to Blend Two People into an Amorphous Ball of Romance—When Venus is in Scorpio, you can have an exceedingly hard time identifying where you end and the other person begins. Modern psychology tends to call this codependency and tell us "It's bad. Don't do that." The reality is a little more nuanced. Venus in Scorpio is meant to flirt with the boundaries of melting two people into one another and it can take incredible discernment to learn how to do this in a healthy way rather than becoming couple soup. Sometimes, you need to go too far losing yourself in another person in order to find where your edges truly are.
This Venus Retrograde
Venus Retrograde has been my favourite astrological time period since the 2023 Venus Retrograde in Leo, which I followed for the first time as part of an astrology course I was taking. We were taught how to use the time Venus was moving backwards for intentional review, reflection, self-exploration and romantic shadow work. I could hardly believe the difference in how I felt afterwards—the Leo themes of confidence, creativity and self-expression took root in me deeply and the very way that the world responded to me seemed to have dramatically transformed. That, by the way, was not even 2 months before my back-to-back Scorpion kisses.
When I found out this year’s Venus Retrograde was in Scorpio, I knew right away that I wanted to do something special to mark this time period. If you're into shadow work (or examination of the darker aspects of our human nature in order to find greater integration and wholeness), this retrograde is the opportunity of the century. For some people, everything that has been getting away with hiding in the shadows is going to bubble violently to the surface. It's going to suck. It's going to be glorious. This retrograde touches the Planet Pluto, the LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD, that drags the maiden Persephone through a crack in the earth so she can emerge as the literal Queen of Hell. It touches the asteroid Chiron, the wounded healer that pokes our deepest relational triggers so that we can overcome them.
This 6-week journey (more like four months if you're tracking the pre- and post-shadow periods, and if you don't you're missing out) is going to be epic. It's going to reveal parts of ourselves that we don't like, and we are going to learn to love them. It could feel exhausting, nauseating, overwhelming, maddening. Some of us are going to lose ourselves. Many or most of us are going to find a better version of ourselves.
It actually didn’t dawn on me until I had already created my new program that the underworld journey Venus is about to take the collective on is one I have already traveled myself. That’s not to say that I'm not already experiencing my own shadow work process as well, but the murky caves of Venus in Scorpio no longer frighten me because I know the reward that is available on the other side. Because Venus in Scorpio knows us better than we know ourselves.
My last fight with my Scorpio Venus husband ended with him writing a song in less than an hour that explained how I was hurting better than I could have articulated or understood it myself (seriously, who does that?) but what that taught me was not that we all need a guy with a guitar to help us figure out our feelings. It's that that energy is completely available to all of us right now. There is a rare opportunity to dissect our own inner experience, order it logically and own the sh*t out that narrative.
Photo Credit: Lindsay MacLean Studios
Finally….
If there is one thing I would change about the way my Venus in Scorpio journey unfolded, it would have been to have a little more light shed on the process. I don't regret any of the venom-soaked steps that forged my marriage in fire, but GOD would I have loved a map. When you're not prepared for the force this energy hits you with, it will absolutely beat you to a pulp—not because the other person is bad or wrong in any way, but because love that reflects your best and your worst parts without restraint is always going to feel a little bit like having your skin slowly peeled off.
I created Dreaming A New Love Story: A Guided Astrological Journey to Reimagine the Way You Love to bring some shape and order to how this adventure unfolds. Knowing and normalizing what is happening can make all the difference between this Venus Retrograde feeling like a tsunami and feeling like a big wave that you're equipped to surf through with some bumps along the way. If you're curious to find out more, the full program description and registration page can be found here.
Key Terms:
Stellium: 3 or more planets in one sign in someone's birth chart.
Retrograde: When a planet appears to move backwards in the sky. In astrology, this is a time period characterized by review and reflection.
Post-Retrograde Shadow: After the retrograde period, this is the period of time where the planet turns around and moves forward across the same patch of sky that it has just traveled backwards.
Comments