Venus

Meaning

Venus, the second planet from the Sun, is the brightest light in the sky after the Sun and the Moon. It never strays more than about 47° from the Sun, so it is always seen as the morning star before dawn or the evening star after dusk, and every eight years its meetings with the Sun trace a five-pointed figure around the zodiac.

It stands for attraction, affection, pleasure and harmony: what someone loves and finds beautiful, how they give and receive love, what they value, money included, and how they make peace.

Tradition calls it the lesser benefic, the planet that eases and reconciles, and places it in the night sect. It rules Taurus and Libra and is exalted in Pisces; its detriment is Scorpio and Aries, its fall Virgo. Its old significations include love and marriage, music, ornament and the arts.

Its gifts are warmth, charm, taste and the wish to bring people together. Its difficulties are complacency, the avoidance of conflicts that need facing, and pleasure pursued past the point of joy.

In practice

• Its sign describes taste and the style of affection: Venus in Taurus delights in the senses, in Aquarius in friendship and freedom.
• Its house shows where pleasure and ease are found: in the 7th, partnership; in the 2nd, earning through pleasant or artistic work.
• In synastry, one person’s Venus on another’s Mars, Sun or Ascendant is classically read as attraction.
• Retrograde about every 19 months, for some six weeks; about 7% of people are born with it, often read as tastes and values formed apart from fashion.
• Every eight years Venus comes back to nearly the same degree on nearly the same date, so people born eight years apart around the same day often share their Venus.

Across traditions

• Chinese astronomy calls it 金星 Jīnxīng, the Metal star, and also Tàibái, the Great White.
• Indian astrology names it Shukra, teacher of the asuras in myth, and exalts it in Pisces, as Western astrology does.
• Human Design makes Venus values: its gate shows what feels right or wrong, the sense of fairness someone brings to others.

Origin and history

In Babylon Venus was Ishtar. The Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa, copied for centuries, records the planet’s first and last appearances over twenty-one years of a king’s reign in the second millennium BC, with the omens read from them, one of the oldest planetary records known. The Greeks first named the morning star Phosphoros and the evening star Hesperos before recognising a single planet, which they gave to Aphrodite. Ptolemy describes Venus as temperate and benefic, and Rome’s Venus left her name on the day dies Veneris, the French vendredi; her metal, copper, takes its Latin name from Cyprus, Aphrodite’s island.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune takes Venus from the Swiss Ephemeris (DE441): its apparent position seen from the centre of the Earth, in the tropical zodiac. It is marked retrograde when its daily motion runs backwards, stationary within about three days of a station, and swift or slow against its mean motion of about 1°12′ a day. It is in sect in a night chart.

Near its inferior conjunction Venus can stray well north or south of the ecliptic; when its declination passes the Sun’s greatest on that date, Ulune marks it out of bounds. The Venus–Mars midpoint is one of the five midpoints Ulune lists.

Correspondences