He will probably call you. She will probably text, “Hey” with two or three letter “Y”s. They will probably creep on your IG stories. Probably in the third week of October, with something along the lines of sounding apologetic of sorts but in reality…they are not apologizing.
Every astrology site on the internet is going to tell you the same generic thing: Venus is retrograde, clinch your sphincter, don’t answer her/he/them, all based on the danger beginning when the planet stops.
The Maya watched Venus for a thousand years and reached a conclusion with a bit more nuance. Don’t let the station scare you when in reality the danger might be like Twin Peaks season 3: it’s all in the Return. What goes into the dark comes back changed and it comes back screaming just like Laura Palmer.
So the question is not whether to answer your ex. The question is when. And the sky gives us the best clues the gods could send us.
Venus Retrograde 2026: The Dates
Venus stations retrograde on October 3 at 8°29’ Scorpio. In the Yucatec count that day is 7 Hix / 7 Ix, 7 Yax and Piltzintecuhtli is the Lord of Night.
Big exotic words yes, but essentially I am saying, Venus sinks fast. By early October the Evening Star that blazed at her brightest in late September is gone from the western sky entirely.
On October 24 at 03:40 Universal Time she passes between us and the Sun. In Yucatán and Guatemala that is the evening of Friday, October 23: 1 Hix / 1 Ix, 7 Sak’, the night held by Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Dead.
Eight days later Venus rises again in the east before dawn.
Mercury turns retrograde on October 24 and joins her in Scorpio. Both stand still and turn forward on November 13. That day is 9 Men / 9 Tz’ikin, 8 Keh and it falls on a Friday, the weekday that belongs to Venus herself.
Zinaan, the Scorpion in the Maya Sky
The Paris Codex carries a band of thirteen constellations. Many of them differ from what the Greeks came up with. But the scorpion, Zinaan, sits on the stars of Scorpius. Susan Milbrath calls this a surprising and rare congruency of where two peoples who never met looked at that arrangement of stars and both of them saw a scorpion.
Let’s get precise about what this does though. Precession has pulled tropical Scorpio roughly twenty-four degrees away from the stars of Scorpius. Venus at 8° Scorpio is not standing among the scorpion’s stars. What the two systems share is the figure and the meaning attached to it, not an address.
And the meaning is the point here. There is a Nahua account, recorded by Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón in 1629, of how the first scorpion was made. A man named Yappan took a vow of chastity and kept it against every temptation sent to break him. Then Xochiquetzal came down from her garden, asked him to help her climb and he came down off his rock. He was killed where he stood and transformed into a scorpion and he crawled under a stone to hide.
The scorpion is born from tlazolli, the filth of sexual transgression and that domain belongs to Tlazolteotl/Ixcuina. She is the seventh Lord of the Night and in this retrograde window she holds the night five times: October 7, October 16, October 25, November 3 and November 12.
A man hides under a rock because of what he could not resist…the guiding storyline of this retrograde.
Alba Congel, the Third Precious Stone of Grace
The Maya had a deep relationship with all of the major planets of the solar system and this is shown off greatly in the Books of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, where the world is born through seven infinite precious stones of grace, one for each measured night. Venus is the third. Her Creature is named Alba Congel 16th Cen. Mexico but evidence of this model dates back to the Classic Period.
The Descent: October 3 to October 23
For one Winal (a Mayan unit of 20 days) Alba Congel walks down into the earth. She begins on a Jaguar day (Hix/Ix) and she dies on a Jaguar day.
Everything that surfaces in this window belongs to what is being buried. The ex who writes on October 12 is not being returned to you. They are being swept out and he brushed against you on their way to the door.
Four days in the descent carry the signs that govern this ground and they carry them at full weight: October 17 is 8 Lamat / 8 Q’anil, seed. October 18 is 9 Muluk / 9 Toj, payment and debt. October 19 is 10 Ok / 10 Tz’i’, fidelity and judgment. October 20 is 11 Chuwen / 11 B’atz’, the thread.
This is a time to settle what is owed and discard what will not come clean.
Eight Days in the Dark
The Dresden Codex gives Venus eight days of disappearance between her death as Evening Star and her rebirth as Morning Star. Count eight days from October 23 and you land on October 31: 9 Ik’ / 9 Iq’, a Wind day. Coincidentally it is the eve of the Day of the Dead.
Wind is our breath and our speech. What returns on a Wind day returns as talk and talk is cheap.
What Comes Back Around
Then the same four signs return, one winal after the first set, with the numbers newborn instead of heavy. November 6 is 2 Lamat / 2 Q’anil. November 7 is 3 Muluk / 3 Toj and the Moon passes in front of Venus that day. November 8 is 4 Ok / 4 Tz’i’. November 9 is 5 Chuwen / 5 B’atz’, the thread and it falls on the New Moon.
Seed, payment, fidelity, bonding.
So here is your answer: Not October. Pay what is owed on the seventh, test what they say on the eighth and if it survives both, November 9 is the day the sky supports a bonding. Nothing before the star rises bonds anything.
When a Partner Goes Cold
Venus does not sulk. She descends because the Evening Star has to die for the Morning Star to exist.
If the gulf between y’all began after August 31, when the shadow opened, it is tracking the sky and it has an end date: November 13, when the Deer month takes both wanderers back. If it began before that, the transit is not your problem and waiting will not fix it.
A Relationship Born in the Shadow
Say you met in September and the astrology is suggesting it will not last.
It actually may not be doomed by rather waiting to bloom. The star that governs this relationship has not risen yet and its real birth date is not the night you met. You will have to assess things if your relationship is still standing come November 1.
The Worth You Think You Lost
In late September Venus will have been the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and Moon. Two weeks later you cannot find her at all. By the end of November she is at full brilliance again in the morning.
She is the same planet of the same size with nothing changing but where she stands relative to the light.
Brightness is a position, not a virtue.
And worth in this system is not a feeling you manufacture with Mel Robbins quotes. Worth is accountability. What you owe, what is owed to you and what gets paid. That is the Maya concept of Toj or Ch’ab and it comes around twice on this calendar with a date attached.
You cannot positive affirmation your way out of a debt. You must find the wisdom to settle it.
Dear reader, be on the lookout for the Venus Retrograde Ritual Survival Guide coming out later this week featuring legitimate Mayan Magic that I guarantee you have not seen before, but most certainly will not want to miss. This Ritual guide will be avaliable for paid subscribers only.
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Mayan Life Path Astrology Birth Chart Reading: an in-depth soul blueprint analysis that reveals your cosmic destiny through ancient Maya Telluric Astrology, analyzing your daysign, trecena, Venus cycle, Lord of Night, birth year energy and peak manifestation days based on your exact birth moment.
References
Susan Milbrath, “Astronomical Deities in Ancient Mesoamerica,” in Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, ed. Clive Ruggles (Heidelberg: Springer, 2014), 683–94; Milbrath, Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), 259–63.
Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions That Today Live among the Indians Native to This New Spain, 1629, trans. J. Richard Andrews and Ross Hassig (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984).
Ralph L. Roys, trans., The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1933), 107–8.
Day-sign attributions follow contemporary K’iche’ daykeeping. Barbara Tedlock, Time and the Highland Maya, rev. ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992).
EarthSky, “Venus Brightest in the Evening Sky,” September 2026.