Venus Retrograde in Scorpio: Eight-Year Repeats in the News

Venus retrograde in Scorpio is a window that astrologer Chris Brennan says tends to pull buried material back into view, and in the second installment of his news series on The Astrology Podcast (episode 557) he tests that claim against the headlines of the past several weeks. The episode works as a running ledger rather than a single argument: a rock musician reflecting on the end of a marriage, a political ad that dragged a candidate's childhood trauma back into public view, a 1990s cast reunion, a family memoir, a viral wedding interruption, and an AI chatbot story about human-AI relationships. The thread through all of it is the eight-year repetition, the idea that when Venus revisits the same sign and degrees it occupied years earlier, the same themes return wearing new faces. Read carefully, these stories are less gossip than a lesson in how a backward-moving planet changes what people look at, and what they feel compelled to say out loud.

Why does Venus retrograde make us look backward?

Brennan starts with the mechanics that give the whole series its logic. When Venus goes retrograde, it begins moving backward through the order of the signs, and he insists that retrogrades always carry a backward-looking component. People start reaching into the past for different reasons. Sometimes that means reflecting on former relationships, and sometimes exes return to the present. (Chris Brennan, 1:33 in the episode.)

What makes this episode distinctive is the method. Brennan is not only pointing to a planet and naming a mood. He is tracking a particular kind of recurrence: the same planetary pattern, in the same sign, showing up roughly eight years apart, and then checking whether the news of the moment rhymes with what happened the last time. He pairs that framework with the retrograde cazimi with the Sun, the stage at which retrograde Venus sits in close conjunction with the Sun. And he ties the Scorpio side of the story to hidden secrets, which explains why so many of the items in his notes involve things kept out of sight finally surfacing.

The first installment of the series had already gone up in late October, and Brennan says that after recording it he had enough new notes to fill another hour. That detail matters. He is not building a case from a single dramatic headline. He is building a log, and the value of a log is that patterns become visible only when you keep writing things down over time.

What does a rock star's marriage reflection reveal about old chapters?

The story that sets the frame for the episode comes from the musician Gavin Rossdale of the band Bush. A clip from an October 12 episode of the A Life of Greatness podcast began circulating on Twitter around October 20. In it, Rossdale made rare comments about the end of his marriage to Gwen Stefani, which broke up in August 2015 over issues related to infidelity. That breakup landed squarely in the middle of a Venus retrograde in Leo. Eleven years later, with Venus retrograde in Scorpio, Rossdale was looking back.

Brennan's reading of the cultural weight is useful. The two were among the biggest rock acts of the 1990s, their bands toured together, and the marriage became a notable one for millennials. Rossdale's own words are what give the reflection its texture:

"Yeah, it was beautiful. She was an amazing girlfriend, so I learned a lot. Mainly a lot of kindness. She was a breath of kindness and sort of gratitude about things. We were married for 14 years. It was basically our youth. So I have fond memories of that."
— Gavin Rossdale, on the A Life of Greatness podcast, as quoted by Chris Brennan (3:23 in the episode)

The line that Brennan lingers on is the one about chapters. Rossdale said that life changes and that you find yourself in different chapters, and then offered a reflection that Brennan read aloud from his notes: "Life is so much easier when you just accept and embrace the chapters as opposed to trying to bring old chapters into new chapters." Rossdale also described a wide chasm between the two of them and called it a shame, given how incredible the kids are, because it makes it hard to share that good thing. Brennan finds the passage moving, and it is worth sitting with on its own terms, because it is a fairly precise description of what a backward-looking planet asks of us: not to erase the past, but to stop forcing it into a present it no longer belongs to.

Brennan is careful about causation. He does not present Venus as the reason a marriage ended in 2015 or the reason a clip went viral in 2026. His claim is narrower and, to my ear, more interesting: a Venus retrograde is a period when people are given a reason to reach back, and the reflections that come out of that reaching tend to be about how to hold memory without letting it run the house.

How can a 1978 retrograde show up in a 2026 political ad?

The episode's heaviest recurrence is also its most careful. Brennan describes a political ad from the period of October 19 to 21 in which a candidate, Amy Acton, was targeted with an interview featuring her mother, who said she was a liar. Brennan calls the ad scummy, and it is easy to see why: the content drew on a family's worst chapter to make a campaign point.

The astrological link came from the astrologer Stephanie Iris Weiss, who pointed out on Threads a repetition that Brennan then built into his notes. Acton was in court with her abusive stepfather in September 1978, and he fled in October 1978 before a trial could take place. Venus had just stationed retrograde on October 18, 1978, at 22 degrees of Scorpio. Brennan's point is that a family wound from the late 1970s, one in which the mother sided with the abuser, came back to the surface during a Venus retrograde in Scorpio, while Acton was running for office. He is also clear that she had built a successful life despite what she endured. (Chris Brennan, 8:41 in the episode.)

This is the kind of example that separates serious astrological observation from a horoscope. A Venus retrograde in Scorpio in 1978 and a Venus retrograde in Scorpio in 2026 are the same kind of event, arriving forty-eight years apart. Whatever you make of planetary cycles, the parallel is specific enough to test: the sign, the degree, the timing relative to a court case, and the public nature of the second moment.

Can family secrets and old reunions follow the same pattern?

Not every recurrence in the episode is dark. Brennan notes that most of the cast of 10 Things I Hate About You reunited on Dancing with the Stars around October 20, with the lead actress dancing and the group paying a heartfelt tribute to Heath Ledger, who played a major role in the film. The same week, an actress from the cast appeared at a reunion for The Secret World of Alex Mack at a 1990s convention. Brennan had noted that the show premiered in 1994, around the time of a Venus retrograde in Scorpio, so seeing the cast reconnect under the same planet closed a loop he had been tracking.

The darker family and secrets stories in the episode run along the same logic. Brennan moves through a controversy around the H3 Podcast and Ethan Klein, in which infidelity and shock play a part in the discussion, and then turns to Meghan Markle's father in connection with a 2018 Scorpio retrograde. He also takes up a memoir by Collin Gosselin alongside Jon & Kate Plus 8, and a cold case in which Ted Bundy was confirmed in 1974. The through-line is not that every story is about the same thing. It is that Scorpio's themes, secrets, betrayals, and the things families do not say, keep returning in news that is driven by people's private lives.

What is a retrograde cazimi, and why does it matter here?

Near the end of the episode, Brennan returns to the idea of a retrograde Venus in close conjunction with the Sun, the cazimi condition he has been tracking alongside eight-year repeats. (Chris Brennan, 1:07:59 in the episode.) He treats it as a point of heightened signal rather than a formula that guarantees an event. He also asks listeners to send him other stories they notice that line up with the retrograde, which makes the series a conversation as much as a broadcast.

That openness is a useful habit for anyone who wants to read the news astrologically. A cazimi, or any close aspect, is a timing marker. It helps you decide where to look. It does not tell you what you will find.

How should you read Venus retrograde repetitions in the news?

The episode offers a working method for anyone who wants to try this without drifting into superstition. Start with the dates. Brennan's cases are anchored to specific days, from the October 3 start of the current Venus retrograde to the October 18, 1978 station in Scorpio, and the strength of a repetition depends on checking those dates against the sources. Next, separate the story from the interpretation. The Rossdale clip, the Acton ad, and the 10 Things reunion are each documented events, and the astrology is a lens layered on top of them. Finally, keep a log over time. Brennan says studying repetitions as they unfold in real time gives a deeper perspective on the astrology underlying current events, and the value of that perspective comes from patience, not from any single hit.

The most personal takeaway may be the one Rossdale gave without knowing he was giving it. Old chapters are real, and they can hold love, youth, and gratitude. But when a backward-looking planet invites you to revisit them, the work is to decide which pages belong in the present and which can stay closed.

Where to go from here

If the stories in this piece caught your attention, the best next step is the full conversation. Listen to episode 557 of The Astrology Podcast, which carries the chapter timestamps for each story, including the Gavin Rossdale reflection at 3:23, the 1978 recurrence at 8:41, and the cazimi discussion near the end. Then go back to the first installment on Venus retrograde repetitions in the news, which Brennan released in late October and which lays out the framework that this episode builds on. If you want to test the method yourself, keep a simple log through the next Venus retrograde: note the dates, the sign, the degree, and any news that echoes your own past. You may find, as Brennan has, that the backward glance tells you more about what you are ready to look at than about what the planet is doing.