Venus

Venus is the lesser benefic, the planet of joining. In a birth chart she describes affection, beauty, pleasure, alliance, the arts of attraction, and the sense of what is worth keeping. She is the style in which a person reconciles, adorns, and says "this is enough." Traditional topics include marriage in many older books, women in a schema that modern readers should treat as historical, perfumes, fruits, and the agreements that make a peace. Use the topics as symbols. Let the whole chart decide how they show up in one life.

She rules two signs. In Taurus, fixed earth, Venus is in a domicile of keeping: worth you can touch, loyalty of the table, pleasure that has a body. In Libra, cardinal air, she is in a domicile of pairing: the contract, the fair beam, the social grace that considers the other person. Both are home. They are different rooms. A Venus in Taurus and a Venus in Libra do not want the same proof of love.

She is exalted in Pisces, classically near 27 degrees. Exaltation is a guest dignity, and this guest room is mutable water, where union can be kind, artistic, or willing to soften a boundary. She is in detriment in Aries and in Scorpio, the signs opposite her domiciles. Aries is too single and too hot for her usual manners. Scorpio is too binding and too suspicious of charm. She is in fall in Virgo, opposite the exaltation, where sorting and correction leave little room for a pleasure that remains imperfect. In detriment or fall she still loves. The love asks for more skill, because the weather does not do the work for her.

In the joys, Venus rejoices in the fifth house, the place of pleasure, children, and the creative risk. That joy agrees with Leo's natural topics and with Venus's own nature, even though Leo is the Sun's sign. The natural houses of her domiciles are the second, Taurus and the store of goods, and the seventh, Libra and the partner. A Venus in the seventh is in the place of the sworn other, which is a topical match, not an automatic story about marriage.

Sect: Venus belongs to the night sect, with the Moon and Mars. In a night chart her beneficence is more straightforward. In a day chart she is out of sect, still a benefic, and sometimes more complicated in the way she reconciles. Benefic does not mean "easy life." It means the planet tends to reconcile, increase, or sweeten, according to its condition. A poorly placed Venus can sweeten the wrong thing, or refuse to choose.

Venus retrogrades for a number of weeks on a cycle of about a year and a half. The apparent reversal is a review of worth, beauty, and alliance. A natal retrograde Venus often describes a private or revisionary way of valuing, not a lack of love. A transiting retrograde is a season for rereading an agreement, not a season in which affection is cancelled.

Read her sign, her sect, her house if you have the time, and her aspects. Venus conjunct Saturn is a love with a limit. Venus trine Jupiter is a love with room. The aspect writes the sentence the sign only weathers. For the earth home, read Taurus. For the air home, read Libra. For the honored guest room, read Pisces.