Venus

Seen from Earth this planet stays close to the Sun. Ptolemy, in Ashmand's 1822 translation, says it is never more than two signs away, and Lilly 1659 explains that the same body is the evening star after sunset and the morning star before dawn. A chart's Venus therefore sits within a narrow range around its Sun, and it goes retrograde for about 42 days at a time on Lilly's count.

Ptolemy assigns it warmth and moisture, with moisture ahead, and calls it benefic, a label he derives from those qualities. Its houses are Taurus and Libra. Lilly seats the exaltation at 27 degrees of Pisces and the fall at 27 degrees of Virgo, with detriment in Aries and Scorpio, which are the signs across from its own.

Lilly's picture is sociable and sharply dated: a quiet person fond of baths, music and stage plays, easy to persuade and unwilling to take pains. Sepharial 1920 speaks of taste, gentleness and artistic gifts. Modern popular astrology makes Venus chiefly about love style and what a person values, an emphasis that rests on these older hints without being stated by them.