Venus in Aries

Aries faces Libra, one of Venus's two houses, and so Lilly 1659 names it her detriment. The word has one specific meaning, the sign opposite a planet's house. Here the old writers set Venus, temperate and moist, in the hot dry sign that belongs to Mars.

Raphael's Guide of 1877 gives this Venus a quick, restless and changeable disposition, an easy attraction to romance and a tendency to indiscretion. Lilly lists a term from the seventh to the fourteenth degree and degrees 21 to 30 as a face, so her entries here are partial and tied to the degree.

Ptolemy (Ashmand's 1822 translation) keeps Venus within two signs of the Sun, so a Venus in Aries belongs to someone born when the Sun was anywhere from Aquarius to Gemini. Modern astrology usually describes a direct and impatient way of courting, a portrait owing more to the sign's reputation than to any of these texts.