Venus Retrograde is not playing with ya’ll

You Can't Be Naive About This One: A Libra Season Tarot Reading

Venus and Mercury are both retrograde in Scorpio starting in October. And this tarot message is snatching your rose-colored glasses.

Happy birthday to all my Libra babies! 🎂 But don’t let the cake fool you; this is going to be a rough season.

The card of the month is the Page of Cups, clarified by the Five of Cups and the Seven of Swords. And the message is clear: this is not the month to be naive, especially about what your intuition has already been trying to tell you.

Why This Month Hits Different

The biggest astrological weather we’re dealing with right now is Venus retrograde in Scorpio (Oct 3rd), paired with Mercury retrograde (Oct 24th), also in Scorpio. That’s a lot of Scorpio energy pointed at how we love and communicate.

The Page of Cups is telling us we can’t afford to be naive right now, and I don’t say that to fearmonger. I say it because being naive to what’s literally right in front of you can genuinely put your safety, mental health, and well-being at risk.

It’s easy to get comfortable with what you’ve been dealing with. Complacent, even. But comfort doesn’t always equate to healthy.

You Can’t Approach Love Like a Child

If you’re in a relationship that could work, there’s still a baseline requirement: you can’t show up being childish, like falling in love with a pretty face and a nice smile. Or falling in love with someone’s potential.

Here’s an example I give a lot: people want a connection where they can be vulnerable and safe, but they also have to reciprocate that. People want someone caring and honest, but if you don’t actually know how to receive that kind of care, you can end up self-sabotaging (seven of swords) your way right back to square one. Back to the same unhealthy pattern, still chasing the healthy connection you say you want.

Sometimes the comfort of chaos is just more familiar than the quiet of something good.

Your Body Remembers

The Page of Cups is a water card, and your body is about 75% water, which feels relevant because water holds memory. So, your body holds memory too. It carries the residue of past situations, sometimes going all the way back to childhood, and it brings that residue into your new situations. Good or bad.

This is why therapy matters so much. People underestimate how deep trauma runs. When you’re in a connection that isn’t aligned with you, your cortisol spikes (stress hormone), and that’s part of why you’ll see people (women especially) gain weight, retain water, and look inflamed or puffy during a bad relationship stretch. That’s not “just stress.” That’s your body telling you something is wrong. It’s not just “we argue sometimes” or “we don’t see eye to eye”. Your body keeps score even when your mind is making excuses. And protecting your peace is a top priority.

Scorpio Doesn’t Do Surface-Level

Bringing it back: we are not in a space where we can be naive about our relationships. Venus retrograde in Scorpio, paired with Mercury retrograde in Scorpio, puts you in a position where you can’t run from the obvious anymore.

Scorpio doesn’t do surface level. Think of a scorpion. It penetrates. It gets to the thing underneath the thing. Which means this is also a month to be accountable for your own actions.

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I’ve seen this with clients over and over: someone is upset that they’re being disrespected, or that they’re in an unhealthy connection. I’ll be empathetic the first couple of times, but after that, it becomes, “Well, you’re still there. Let’s focus on that for a second.” I will never blame the victim. But if something isn’t serving you, it becomes your responsibility to leave it before it does more damage.

Libra Wants to Sit on the Fence. Scorpio Won’t Let You.

It’s fitting that these retrogrades are landing during Libra season, because Libra tends to be indecisive. Happy to sit on the fence. But the Scorpio energy circling right now will not allow that. You’re going to have to make a decision, or one will be made for you. And trust me, speaking from experience, that second option is never the fun one. This is, again, why I recommend therapy.

People-Pleasing Is a Form of Self-Abandonment

Libra is also prone to people-pleasing. Staying in a connection just to be in a connection, for whatever the reason. And here’s the uncomfortable truth: people-pleasing can actually be a form of manipulation, because you’re altering yourself to accommodate what the other person wants and needs. You’re also altering yourself just to be liked. Which means you’re not even showing up as your authentic self.

And the flip side: you can people-please so hard to stay in a connection that you end up just... tolerating the person. So the question becomes: what do you actually want? A warm body and love are not going to cut it.

This isn’t only about romantic relationships, either. It can show up with friendships, how you spend your money, your self-worth. Venus rules all of that. And Venus retrograde will keep pointing at where you need to value yourself more. Because here’s the thing. If you show people what you’ll tolerate, they will give you the bare minimum. Advocate for yourself. You deserve better than the bare minimum. But also take accountability and do a self-audit. Can you reciprocate what you’re asking for from someone else? Especially if that person genuinely has your best interests at heart and is willing to talk it out? For example, honesty and vulnerability are very uncomfortable. You ask for it as a foundational relationship thing, but might not be ready to receive it. Sometimes a good thing doesn’t feel safe to our nervous system. Our internal antenna repels or attracts what you desire (consciously or subconsciously).

The Love Island Case Study

All this Scorpio energy has me thinking about Love Island Season 8 (terrible season btw), honestly.

Melanie (a Scorpio sun) gives incredible advice to the other girls, and still lets her man do whatever he wants. She’ll cuss him out and still let him back in the house. We watched her lose her light on that show. She cried the entire summer. Drained. And somehow she is still holding out hope that he will become the man she wants. Also, falling in love with his potential. Makes you wonder what she experienced in childhood that made this feel normal to her. (And yes, Sincere is the opposite of his name, with his bun of deception.) But she’s also a great example of someone who fully knows what she shouldn’t tolerate. Yet, she stays anyway. That gap between knowing and doing? That’s the whole reading in one relationship.

“Your heart is sacred... Why are you going to give him a second chance, when there are so many others waiting for their first?"

Kayda is another one. Zack is a Scorpio, and on the show he reads as pretty manipulative, doing whatever it takes to get what he wants (getting further than Charlie and humping Bryce). Libra energy tends to view relationships through rose-colored glasses, and Kayda and Melanie actually have something in common: they both are with men that don’t truly value them. They also don’t add value either. I want both these girls to sit with themselves and ask, “Why am I still here when I know I deserve better?” And gett to the root of that question.

I’m genuinely curious how both of those couples hold up long-term, because at a certain point it starts to feel less like love and more like proving a point. Proving the time invested wasn’t wasted. And that’s the trap: people treat time spent with someone as a badge of honor. It’s not. Speaking from personal experience. If it’s not serving you, it’s not healthy, and someone shows you who they are early. I’ll give someone three chances, max. If they can’t prove, through simple, consistent actions, that they consider your feelings and treat you like they love you, it’s a chop. I say that all the time, and I mean every word. It’s not worth it. I promise.

The Takeaway

What makes Melanie and Kayda’s situations so visible to us as viewers is that we have a fully developed prefrontal cortex watching from the outside (well, most of us). We can see these connections aren’t healthy. Or we have been through similar situations and know how this will play out. Melanie herself knows this man is untrustworthy. And she’s still there. That’s the moment that calls for accountability and self-awareness: why am I so committed to someone who doesn’t respect me, doesn’t earn my trust, and doesn’t treat me like they love me? Because love is a verb.

These are the kinds of themes that will surface while Venus and Mercury are both retrograde in Scorpio, and it’s not really avoidable. If you don’t acknowledge what’s coming up, it will quietly sabotage the things you’ve been trying to build. Venus rules money, so this could hit your finances. Mercury rules your nervous system, and a dysregulated nervous system can unravel everything to the point where you stop trusting yourself and stop feeling grounded in your own decisions.

So consider this your heads-up. Prepare accordingly. So, good luck out there. 🦂