Chart body
Venus
How you love and what you find beautiful.
In a birth chart, Venus describes your affections — how you love, what you find beautiful, what you value.
What it actually is
Nearly Earth's twin in size, wrapped in a runaway greenhouse atmosphere hot enough to melt lead. It rotates backwards, and its day is longer than its year.
In a chart: About four weeks in a sign, never more than 48° from the Sun.
How Venus is read
At its best
Taste, ease and genuine warmth. The ability to make a room, a relationship or a meal feel like somewhere people want to be.
The difficult end
Being liked as a substitute for being known. Avoiding the necessary conversation because it would be ugly.
What to do with it
Let it be a bit ugly. Venus is at her best when she can hold a real disagreement without the beauty collapsing.
What Venus rules
Traditionally Venus rules Taurus and Libra. If one of those is your rising sign, Venus is your chart ruler — the planet a traditional reading treats as standing for you.
The metal of Venus
Copper Cu
Copper conducts better than almost anything and was mined on Venus's own island of Cyprus. Read as connection — warmth that passes easily between people.
The other chart bodies
Where is Venus in your chart?
Its sign says how it acts; its house says where in your life it acts. Both come from real positions at your birth moment.