Venus is my favourite of the grahas.
Love is indispensable to a life — mine at least. I was imagining a prince on a white horse by the age of three or four. It was only later that I realised not everyone is like this: some people have a strong Venus, others have other grahas stronger, and their pursuit of love is cooler or more rational.
Where Venus sits in your chart tells you how you go after love. And the earlier you understand your own attitude to it, the more useful that is — I worried and grieved plenty when I was young and could not find it. Everyone goes through that, but astrology genuinely helps you meet it with some equanimity.
What does Venus (Shukra) signify in Vedic astrology?
Venus's Sanskrit name is Shukra. It is the second planet from the Sun and produces no light of its own.
If Venus's nature had to be reduced to one word, it would not be love but compassion — which is love at its highest.
Venus is a benefic and feminine. It signifies the princess and the goddess; for a man it signifies the wife, for a woman her love life. It also signifies young women, sisters and female friends.
Beyond love and marriage, it signifies your confidence within a relationship, and your capacity for devotion and sacrifice — along with art, creativity, jewellery, good food and comfortable surroundings. Everything beautiful, in short.
Venus rules Friday. The English word comes from Old English Frīgedæg, from the Germanic Frigga, whom the Romans identified with Venus. Japanese calls it 金曜日.
Like Mercury, Venus is always close to the Sun — so a Sun–Venus conjunction is also very common in birth charts. In a Hong Kong summer, look west around five or six in the evening: the star shining like a diamond is Venus.
Why is Venus strongest in Pisces and weakest in Virgo?
Pisces is the twelfth and final sign — abstract, dreamlike, always drifting. It has already passed through the essence of the eleven signs before it and arrived at an ocean of wisdom. Venus's compassionate nature — loving without conditions, without keeping accounts — does its finest work here.
Virgo, by contrast, is a sign that calculates. Venus in Virgo is forced into accounting: why do you give so little when I give so much? Venus dislikes this intensely.
So people with Venus in Virgo often carry a sense of inadequacy about love. Venus only wanted to give unconditionally, and now it must weigh, adjust and accommodate. What surfaces is the thought: perhaps I am not good enough. That persistent feeling of falling short is what happens when Venus is made to count.
But do not assume Venus in Pisces guarantees a fairy-tale romance. Quite the opposite — you may become deeply compassionate, even take vows, or become intensely religious. Ordinary marriage may not appeal, not because your material standards are high, but because what you want from the spiritual is very high indeed.
Venus owns Taurus and Libra, with Libra as its Mooltrikona. For ordinary human love and marriage, Venus in Libra or Taurus actually goes more smoothly than Venus in Pisces.
Venus's other face: craving
Venus is also connected to addiction.
You like someone to the point of obsession. They have already said they are not interested, and you keep pursuing, keep intruding. That is craving.
Other addictions work the same way: alcohol, chocolate, shopping, being unable to put the phone down. Why Venus? Because Venus signifies comfort and enjoyment, and every addiction offers some form of pleasure.
Moderate enjoyment is entirely proper. Excess, and certainly addiction, has a price — the drink is a pleasure in the moment; what follows is another matter.
Venus and the power to revive
Venus has a distinctive power: it can bring back the dead.
The Indian mythology tells it thus: Venus's father ordered him to kill his own mother, and he obeyed. The father, pleased by such obedience, offered to grant any wish. The wish was that his mother be restored to life.
Myth is myth, but it captures something about the force of love. Fairy tales say the same: Snow White has collapsed, and one true kiss wakes her.
You have felt this yourself. You wait for someone's call and it does not come, and your mind starts running: where is he, has something happened, does he not want me? Then the call arrives and you come back to life instantly. That is the power to revive.
Why is Venus said to balance our suffering?
This is worth sitting with: nearly every other graha asks us to suffer something.
The Sun grants a finite life and asks us to repay our debts. The Moon unsettles our emotions and clouds our sight with illusion. Mercury has us calculating without rest. Jupiter offers wisdom but demands practice and discipline. And Saturn hardly needs explaining — Saturn is there to collect.
Only Venus is merciful. It gives us beautiful art, beautiful restaurants, beautiful jewellery; it gives us pleasure, and it gives us love, so that life is not unbearably dry. Without Venus it truly would be. Because of Venus we can wear something we like, have our hair done, put on a pair of earrings — small pleasures that make a day bearable.
Though not to excess. Venus aside, the other grahas are all watching, and all keeping count.
Who is it that we love most?
The 1st house and the 7th house sit directly opposite each other. The 1st is you; the 7th is your other half. They face one another like a mirror.
So the person we love most must be ourselves. The partner is only the glass.
The more you like your partner, the more you like yourself. The more you dislike them, the more you dislike yourself. You look in the mirror and find the person lovable — because that person is you. You find them irritating — that is also you.
The same holds for the religious life. People say someone like Mother Teresa was married to Christ, and in a sense that is fair, since she gave her life to that spirit. But that spirit is not another person; at bottom it was still what she asked of herself — that she rise to that level. When she reached what she was reaching for, she was fulfilled. So what she loved most was still herself.
Understanding this can spare a great deal of conflict.
Parents say "this is for your own good," and "look how much I sacrificed for you." But when you genuinely love someone, most of the time you do not notice that you are giving anything up. Once it is said aloud and often, the other person carries a weight — you love me this much; what am I supposed to give back?
Whatever we do, we do it for the person we love most — which is ourselves.
Key facts about Venus
- Sanskrit name: Shukra
- Signifies: love, marriage, compassion, art, creativity, jewellery, enjoyment
- Nature: benefic, feminine
- Exalted: Pisces
- Debilitated: Virgo
- Own signs: Libra (Mooltrikona) and Taurus
- Directional strength: 4th house
- Orbit of the Sun: about 225 days
- Time in each sign: about 23 days
- Retrograde: roughly every 18 months
One more beautiful detail: trace the paths of the Sun, Venus and Earth over time and they draw a five-petalled flower. This is what is meant by sacred geometry — follow any orbit far enough and it resolves into a geometric form.
Finally
I hope your love life goes well. And if it does not, that is genuinely all right — there is more to this world than romance.
I spent my whole life pursuing love, and in the end I found that the greatest and most romantic love is sitting quietly with yourself. When you are happy in your own company, you will naturally treat a partner well. If you are miserable and restless alone, then even with a partner you will only take it out on them.
So loving yourself matters a great deal.