Venus

Origin and myth

The Mesopotamian goddess Inanna, later called Ishtar, was identified with the planet Venus from at least the third millennium BCE. She was both the goddess of love and the goddess of war, the morning star who rose before the Sun and the evening star who followed it down. Her descent into the underworld to confront her sister Ereshkigal, told in the cuneiform Descent of Inanna, is one of the oldest written narratives. The Greek Aphrodite, born from the foam of the sea after the castration of Uranus, kept the love aspect; the Romans named her Venus, and her temples in early Rome were closely tied to the political life of the city.

In Hellenistic astrology, Venus was given rulership of Taurus, where she expresses through the senses and the body, and Libra, where she expresses through relationship and aesthetic harmony. Her exaltation in Pisces points to her highest function: the dissolution of separate selves into compassionate love. Venus has a special relationship with the Sun: she never appears more than 48 degrees from it, alternating between being the morning star, the heliacal phase before sunrise, and the evening star, the phase after sunset. Mayan astrology was particularly attentive to Venus and tracked her synodic cycle of 584 days with great precision.

Meaning and function

In your natal chart, Venus describes how you love, what you find beautiful, and what you value. The sign of your Venus shows the texture of your attraction, and the house shows where love and beauty enter your life. Venus in Aries loves quickly and forwardly; Venus in Taurus loves through the senses and through enduring presence; Venus in Scorpio loves with intensity and demands depth; Venus in Aquarius loves with friendship and freedom. Venus also describes your relationship to money, the things you own, and your sense of self-worth.

The shadow of Venus, when over-emphasised, is vanity, indolence, and the use of charm to avoid honesty. When under-developed, the Venusian function shows up as a person who cannot receive pleasure, beauty, or love without suspicion. Venus in hard aspect to Saturn often describes a wound around love or worth, with the lesson of slow-built commitment. Venus in aspect to Neptune can romanticise love into illusion. The integration of the Venusian function is the practice of receiving as well as giving, and of refusing the false economy that confuses love with bargain.

In practice

Venus retrogrades approximately every 18 months for about 40 days. These periods are traditionally important for reviewing relationships, returning to old loves or old creative projects, and reconsidering values. Venus transits through each sign in about three to four weeks normally, and her movement through your chart's houses lights up the area of beauty and pleasure. The Venus return, when transiting Venus comes back to her natal place, occurs near your birthday and can mark the year's romantic and aesthetic themes. The eight-year Venus pentagram, the pattern her positions trace against the Sun, is one of the most beautiful figures in the sky.

In synastry, Venus contacts describe attraction and the texture of love between two people. Venus-Mars contacts produce immediate erotic spark; Venus-Sun contacts can be deeply romantic. To work with Venus, beautify a small daily practice, learn the names of the flowers in your neighbourhood, and notice what you genuinely find lovely as opposed to what you have been told to find lovely. Use the daily horoscope to follow Venus through the zodiac, or your natal chart to find her in your own sky.

Symbolic depth

In alchemy, Venus is copper, the green metal, associated with the resurrection of the spirit through love. The alchemical hieros gamos, the sacred marriage of the king and queen, is a Venusian operation: the conjunction that produces the philosopher's stone. In the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, Venus is assigned to the sephira Netzach, victory, the sphere of feeling, beauty, and natural force. In the tarot, Venus corresponds to The Empress, card three of the major arcana, who sits in a garden of grain with the symbol of Venus on her shield, an image of generative love and natural abundance.

Jung read Venus as a primary face of the anima, the inner feminine, and her descent into the underworld as a model for the soul's necessary work of meeting its dark sister. The myth of Inanna stripped of seven adornments at seven gates is also a model of psychic descent. Venus is not only romantic love but the larger principle of attraction by which what belongs together finds its way together: friendships, vocations, art, ideas. To work with Venus is to learn that beauty is not decoration but a form of truth, and that pleasure rightly received is a path to soul. Continue through the glossary.

Also known as

• Aphrodite (Greek)
• Inanna
• Ishtar
• Morning Star
• Venus (German)