Venus: Liking and Valuing

Venus is about what you like, what you value and how you show affection. Would you rather spend money on a good meal, a good-looking piece of clothing, or a trip? Do you show you like someone with gifts, with time spent together, or by saying it out loud?

When you look at your own Venus, ask two things: where does this force go, and how smoothly does it run? Check straight away against what you have liked and cared about lately.

What the old texts say: in Book I ch. 4 of the Tetrabiblos, Ptolemy says Venus has the same mild powers as Jupiter but acts the opposite way — slightly warming because she is near the Sun, and mainly moistening. Ch. 5 counts Venus with Jupiter and the Moon as beneficent because of that mild nature; in the text the label means mild rather than extreme. Book IV ch. 4, on what kind of work a person does, says to look at Mars, Venus and Mercury.

In love, Venus is about who you are drawn to, how you show affection and what feels worth it on a date; the Moon is about what you need in a relationship to feel settled; the Sun is about who you are trying to become. Read the three together to see the whole of you in love.

Think back to a time someone caught your heart. What drew you in? That is the Venus part. What let you feel safe and at ease? That is the Moon part. The two answers often differ — write both down.

What the old texts say: Book IV ch. 5 of the Tetrabiblos, on marriage, opens by saying that for men you look at the position of the Moon, and for wives the Sun. Venus appears in descriptions of what happens when it joins them, in a supporting part.

Venus’s orbit also lies inside Earth’s, so from here it too always appears near the Sun — though it can sit further out than Mercury. Venus goes round the Sun in about 224.701 days (NASA figure).

In degrees: NASA gives the semi-major axes as Venus 108.210 and Earth 149.598 million km. Treating both orbits as circles, Venus gets at most about 46 degrees from the Sun; the same arithmetic gives Mercury about 23. Venus’s orbital eccentricity is only 0.0068, almost a circle, so the real value barely changes; Mercury’s is 0.206, so its value swings much more. So your Venus sign is your Sun sign or one of those within two of it.

Two people with the same Sun sign can like very different things, and the difference often lies in where Venus fell. Among Libras, Venus in Scorpio is single-minded about what matters; Venus also in Libra likes balance and atmosphere.

What the old texts say: Book I ch. 4 of the Tetrabiblos notes that Venus is near the Sun and uses that to explain her slight warmth. Book I ch. 17, on which signs go to which planet, says Venus “at most is never more than two signs removed from the sun in either direction,” which is among the reasons Libra and Taurus went to her.