As the Trees Go Bare: Venus Descends and Dreams Deepen

The art of conscious descent.

Noticed any basements in your dreams lately? Caves? Subterranean corridors? Catacombs?

The leaves are falling, the seasons are turning, and the underworld is calling us to journey deeper into the depths of ourselves. There is a lot of energy in the cosmos supporting us to lean into deep transformation. In addition to the seasonal shift, Venus has just entered the underworld.

Venus follows a 19-month cycle that ancient sky-watchers tracked with devotion. For about nine months, she appears as the Morning Star, rising before the Sun in the eastern sky, meeting the waning crescent Moon each month. Then she disappears for two to three months, passing behind the Sun in what’s called superior conjunction. Venus reemerges as the Evening Star then, in the western sky after sunset, for another nine months, this time rendezvous-ing with the waxing crescent Moon.

This rhythm—visible, invisible, reborn—mirrors the archetypal pattern of death and renewal that humans have recognized for millennia as an integral part of life in physical form.

I’ll be honest: astrology has always felt a bit like trying to read a map written in a language I don’t quite speak. The complexity, the charts, the aspects—it’s all so elaborate that I struggle to integrate it into my practical life. What I want is something I can actually see in the sky, feel in my body, and bring in to potentiate my dreams. This is why I love tracking Venus’s meet-ups with the Moon and her journey into the underworld. Not as an abstract astrological concept, but as a living, moving presence I can mirror in my own life.

Last weekend, on October 19th, came the final meeting of Venus and the Moon.Venus has been our Morning Star for seven months. Now, if you look for Venus in the pre-dawn darkness, you won’t find her. She has sunk below the horizon, drawn closer and closer to the Sun until she disappeared entirely. For the next ~three months, Venus will be invisible as she journeys through the underworld to meet her shadow.

Ancient cultures tracked this pattern with devotion. They didn’t just observe it—they recognized it as a sacred story playing out in light and motion above them. They knew that Venus, unlike any other “wandering star,” died and was reborn with reliable mystery. Myths were told to match the sky.

The Sumerian Venus myth is simple in outline and profound in resonance: Inanna (Venus herself, the Goddess), radiant Queen of Heaven, hears a call from the Great Below. Her sister Ereshkigal reigns there—the dark twin.

Inanna chooses to descend, she chooses to answer the call, but passage requires a price. At each of seven gates, she surrenders a piece of her power, her identity, her protective layers.

At the first gate, she removes her crown. At the second, her lapis lazuli earrings. The third gate takes her necklace. The fourth, her breastplate. The fifth demands her ring. At the sixth gate, she removes her jingling girdled belt. Finally, at the seventh gate, she surrenders her royal robe.

Naked and humbled (from the word humus, meaning earth), Inanna enters the underworld and faces death. She hangs on a hook for three days. Then, through intervention and transformation, she returns, not as she was, but remade. She has found the secret of parthenogenesis, giving birth to herself.

Inanna reclaims her clothes and jewelry as she ascends, but she is no longer the same queen. She has been to the depths. She knows the secrets to wisdom and beauty that only one who journeys through death can know.

Inanna's Quest

This isn’t a cautionary tale, it’s a map for renewal encoded in celestial mechanics. We cannot heal what we will not face. We cannot grow beyond what we refuse to release. The sky has been teaching this for millennia.

She goes down

As we go down

We follow her underground

Hail to Inanna

Who died

To become born

Starhawk and the Reclaiming Collective

We can follow along with this myth, with the sky, through our bodies. Each meeting of Venus and the Moon corresponds to an energy center in our body, representing a layer of identity being examined and released.

Each gate that Inanna goes through represents the purification and rebalancing of an energy center.

Here’s where we’ve been:

Gate 1 - April 24, 2025 | Crown Chakra: The Crown - Relinquishing authority, how you think you should be. Meeting humility and dignity as the illusion of control dissolves.

Gate 2 - May 24, 2025 | Third Eye Chakra: Lapis Lazuli Earrings - Releasing old perceptions and the stories you’ve told yourself. Seeing with your true inner vision, beyond conditioning.

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Gate 3 - June 22, 2025 | Throat Chakra: The Necklace - Surrendering the voice you’ve performed for others. Finding your authentic expression beneath the practiced words.

Gate 4 - July 21, 2025 | Heart Chakra: The Breastplate - Removing the armor around your heart. Meeting vulnerability as strength, compassion without protection.

Gate 5 - August 19, 2025 | Solar Plexus Chakra: The Ring - Releasing false power and where you’ve given yourself away. Standing naked in your willingness to meet the world beyond ego.

Gate 6 - September 19, 2025 | Sacral Chakra: Jingling Girdled Belt - Letting go of creative blocks and sexuality as performance. Allowing flow to move you into an undulating dance with life.

Gate 7 - October 19, 2025 | Root Chakra: The Royal Robe - Surrendering the last covering, the deepest identity. Standing naked in pure being-ness, rooted in our essential true self. This is what happened last weekend.

Inanna entering the nigredo

We are in the invisible time now. Venus has completed her descent and now gestates in darkness. On February 17, 2026, she’ll be reborn in the western sky after sunset as the Evening Star. On March 18, 2026, Venus will meet the moon once more, and thus begin her long journey back from the underworld.

This is not empty waiting, this is the fertile void where transformation happens. The old self has been dismantled. The new self is composing itself in the depths.

This can be a difficult time. We stand naked, having let go of what we thought had protected us—the habits, relationships, patterns, jobs, homes, and identities that we had grown accustomed to. Perhaps they did protect us in the past and perhaps they had been genuinely positive influences. Maybe we actively chose to release them or maybe they left on their own accord. Either way, there has been a death and we’re now in an in-between time of reckoning.

This is a time to grieve. To be still. To rest. To listen to the body. To feel the feelings without rushing past them. This is not a time to numb or check out—though if brief respites are needed, that’s okay too. Honor what the nervous system needs. This change, this stripping away, can be a lot of work energetically for the body.

Psychologist Francis Weller calls this phase the nigredo—the blackening, the time of decomposition before regeneration. It’s a purification time, though not the kind that feels clean and light (that will come in the spring). It’s the purification of compost, of breakdown, of matter returning to its essential elements.

Here’s what happens after the big thing leaves: all the little things start reshuffling. It’s like a river system when a large boulder has been removed. The water that once flowed around that obstacle now has to find a new path. Sediment is released. Upstream and downstream, everything adjusts. Eddies form in different places. The current redistributes. It takes time for the whole system to come back into equilibrium.

This is the time we’re in now—that period of rearrangement after the de-rangement of the chaotic frenzy we just passed through. The ancient Greeks actually ritualized this process: Dionysus presided over sacred de-rangement, the frenzied dancing that catalyzed rebirth and revitalization. The chaos wasn’t the enemy—it was the threshold.

Consider what the trees teach us. After the fall leaves drop, the tree reabsorbs up to 90% of their nutrients back into its roots and trunk. The letting go is not loss—it’s retrieval. The tree takes back the energy it invested, reclaiming what it needs for the dormant season and the spring to come.

This is the invitation for us right now: to receive the energy back from what no longer serves. You released it. You were brave enough to let it fall. Now let yourself soak in the energy you gain from that act of courage, from participating in the cycle of exchange, from trusting nature’s reciprocity.

When Venus returns, she’ll reclaim her vestments as she ascends through seven more Moon conjunctions. Maybe she puts her clothe back on differently now; she’s been to the underworld, she knows herself.

You inner goddess giving birth to herself

Here’s where we’re going:

Gate 1 - March 18, 2026 | Root Chakra: The Royal Robe - Reclaiming your foundation, but knowing now what is truly essential.

Gate 2 - April 17, 2026 | Sacral Chakra: Jingling Girdled Belt - Restoring creative flow and sensual power, now informed by your shadow half, no longer obscured.

Gate 3 - May 16, 2026 | Solar Plexus Chakra: The Ring - Taking back your power, but wielding it with underworld wisdom.

Gate 4 - June 14, 2026 | Heart Chakra: The Breastplate - Protecting your heart again, but with new capacity for true intimacy.

Gate 5 - July 13, 2026 | Throat Chakra: The Necklace - Speaking again, but with the truth and authority of one who has been silent.

Gate 6 - August 11, 2026 | Third Eye Chakra: Lapis Lazuli Earrings - Seeing clearly again, but with vision deepened by darkness.

Gate 7 - September 9, 2026 | Crown Chakra: The Crown - Reclaiming your true sovereign self. Standing in full, empowered integrity.

This is the way of our internal goddess, the eternal pattern of transformation. It always begins with chaos—the necessary destruction, the dismemberment, the letting go of everything that once defined you. You cannot skip this step. The descent demands we surrender what we thought was essential, only to discover what is truly essential beneath.

Before sleep tonight, consider setting an intention to dream. Ask to dream yourself into your next incarnation—the version of you that is waiting to emerge. What will you know that you don’t yet know? What will you integrate from this underworld journey? How will you move through the world when the spring comes again?

This is an invitation to let yourself be unmade.

This is also an invitation to allow yourself to be reborn.