The First Gate of Ascent
February 18, 2026: Venus meets with the moon in Pisces
Venus is low in the evening sky, shining brightly as Evening Star. She meets with the moon at the Earth Chakra gate.
The Gatekeeper Speaks
Come, my love. Take my hand. Walk where I walk. As you emerge from this Underworld place, your legs are weak, it is not yet time to run. Find your feet. Let your feet kiss the ground. Let the ground rise up to meet you, support you. Will you trust it?
You’re waiting to fall. Waiting to have the ground yanked out from beneath you. Yes, that’s helped give you your fire of independence, helped you burn brightly and be yourself. And, it leads you to letting your fire go out. Fire and Earth. Grounding your fire. Magnetizing your flame. These are the gifts you bring back to your life on this journey of ascent.
Tenderly my love. Find the places you brace, that you hold yourself ready to fall. These places are the very places that make you lose your footing. Tenderly, gently, will you release into vibration? Will you allow the rhythm and hum of the Divine to flow through, shaping you, structuring you, supporting you from the inside out? Are you willing?
Let yourself silently be drawn by the strange pull of what you love.
It will not lead you astray.
-Rumi
Silver Essence
The Quality of Deep Trust
You belong within a great embrace that urges you to have the courage to honor the immensity that sleeps in your heart. When you learn to listen to and trust the wisdom of your soul's longing, you will awaken to the invitation of graced belonging that inhabits the generous depths of your destiny. You will become aware of the miracle of presence within and around you.
-John O'Donohue, Eternal Echoes
Inquiry Questions
Take some time to drop in, deepen into the quiet of your unfolding soul, and explore what is here now in your awareness, rising as Evening Star.
Sacred Warrior, what keeps you from recognizing the deep support that is already there?
Bold and beauteous One, what is your understanding of goodness?
Sacred Warrior, where have you felt betrayed by trust in the past? How do you relate to the Divine from this wounding?
Bold and beauteous One, what is your experience as you embody the crystalline structure underlying all reality?
What is your own unique lens through which to explore this Essence of Silver, the quality of deep trust, for Venus’s ascent as Evening Star? With whom do you journey this cycle?
Ritual Space
Take some time to drop into ritual space as you receive the initiation of this gate. We step into liminal space, time out of time, in ritual space. We connect with the lineage of those who have watched the stars for millennia, receiving the gift of Venus's journey, aligning ourselves with the cycles that are already unfolding. We remember our nature as beings who cycle, change, transform. We remember how to receive knowing directly, rather than needing others to tell us what is so.
You may wish to create an altar, light a candle, and anoint yourself with oils. Sit with this gate, the quality of Essence that is being called forward. As you deepen in surrendering to receiving initiation, ask who would come to guide you in your journey with this quality of Essence? What of yourself do you offer in return? What is calling to be set down at this gate? What pattern, belief, way of being in this world, is challenged by this quality of Essence? What are you ready to release in order to deepen more fully in this journey?
What gift is revealed in the releasing of this pattern, belief, or way of being? What has more freedom to be itself in this release? You may see this directly, or may need to live with this initiation throughout the whole cycle and come back and answer this question before entering into the next gate. You may wish to draw cards to receive guidance in this way.
As you complete your experience in ritual space, take time to offer thanks and adoration to the archetype, to Venus, to your personal guide that arose for this journey, to your ancestors and lineage. Offer thanks to the land that holds and nourishes and grounds you. In the giving and receiving we remember our deep connectedness to all beings everywhere, throughout time and space.
Remember and Record
Last cycle we opened to receive guidance, choosing to show up, choosing to honor experience and knowing and receiving, experiencing the deepening of trust in the capacity to receive guidance. It is already there. Everywhere. We must choose to notice and receive it. We experience that first lesson of manifestation: what you focus on grows.
In this cycle we are exploring where our feet meet the ground, this foundation of support. Here we begin exploring how we secretly sabotage our efforts to build. We have unconscious structures already in place, protecting us, because we have lived experiences of having the ground knocked out from under us. We have experienced betrayed trust. Where we thought support ought to be, instead we’ve found disappointment, loss, pain, danger, helplessness.
And so we brace against this betrayal of trust. We hold the bracing in our bodies, protecting against feeling like that again. An unconscious holding, where we relate to ourselves and our intentions and the Divine, in the same way we related to those early betrayals of trust. These old structures that were useful at the time to protect, are now secretly sabotaging our conscious building.
Now, we have access to conscious choosing. Now we have access to opening to the Divine, softening into the holding that is already there. Now we know what it is like to gently meet tension with touch, breathing, vibrating, allowing vibration to hold and soften and recohere. Now we know how to breathe, vibrating down into the feet, feeling the earth kissing back, the space between the feet and the earth alive with vibration. We have experienced the softening into becoming quicksilver, a liquid silver aliveness that can take the shape necessary in the moment. A fluid structuring from the inside out that is minutely responsive to what is needed now. This is the holding, the deep trust, that becomes our foundation in the present.
So we dance the edge of honoring what was, and living into what is, bringing the unconscious patterns stuck in the past into the present to be released into conscious choosing.
Spend time with feet on the earth this cycle. Spend time softening into vibration. Spend time allowing the liquid quicksilver to permeate and hold you from the inside out.
Spend time finding the secret ways you sabotage yourself. The daily writing prompt is this: “My intention is…(make it as clear, concrete and specific as you can). “But…(stream of consciousness writing).” You can work with one intention over and over again if that feels useful. Notice how your body responds, the bracing you feel. Notice how you protect against feeling dropped, disappointed, feeling a loss of innocence and joy. Follow the feelings. Honor them. Then feel your feet on the ground. Vibrate. Become Silver. Choose to be here now. See what happens.
