Venus sign meaning: how you love

Your Venus sign is the zodiac sign Venus stood in at the moment you were born. It describes how you love: what attracts you, how you show affection, what you find beautiful and what you value. You find it from your date of birth, and it is always your Sun sign or a sign within two signs of it.

What your Venus sign describes

In a birth chart, each planet stands for one part of you. Venus is the part that says yes: to a person, to a thing, to a way of living. Astrologers read four things from it.

• How you love. What closeness means to you and what kind of relationship feels right.
• How you show affection. Words, touch, time, practical help, gifts: Venus suggests which of these comes naturally to you.
• What you find beautiful. Your taste in people, clothes, rooms and music.
• What you value. What you gladly spend time and money on, and what you would not trade away.

The sign Venus stands in colors all four. Your Venus sign is often not your Sun sign, the sign people mean when they ask what your sign is. That is one reason why descriptions of "how a Leo loves" miss so many Leos. A Leo with Venus in Virgo tends to show love less through grand gestures and more by noticing what you need and quietly taking care of it.

Why Venus is always close to your Sun sign

Venus circles the Sun inside the orbit of the Earth and takes about 225 days for one round. Seen from Earth, it is therefore never more than about 47 degrees away from the Sun. That is why you see Venus in the evening sky after sunset or in the morning sky before sunrise, and never opposite the Sun.

Each sign covers 30 degrees of the zodiac circle. So Venus can stand in your Sun sign, or in one of the two signs before it or after it.

If your Sun is in Leo, your Venus is in Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo or Libra. A Leo with Venus in Scorpio or Aquarius does not exist.

To find your Venus sign you need your date of birth. Venus stays in one sign for weeks at a time, so the birth time matters only on the day Venus changes signs.

The twelve Venus signs at a glance

Read these as tendencies, not as rules. How your Venus plays out depends on the rest of your chart.

How Venus works with your Moon and Mars

Venus describes what you are drawn to. The Moon and Mars fill in the rest.

The Moon: what you need

The Moon stands for your feelings and for what you need to feel safe. Venus shows what you like in another person. The Moon shows what you need from them once daily life begins.

The two can differ. Someone with Venus in Sagittarius and the Moon in Cancer is drawn to independent people and open horizons, and at the same time needs closeness and a home that stays put. What your Moon sign means

Mars: what you go after

Mars stands for desire and pursuit: how you go after what you want. Venus is the attraction, Mars is the move. With Venus in Libra and Mars in Aries, a person wants courtesy and harmony in a relationship and still tends to pursue directly and impatiently.

Unlike Venus, Mars is not tied to the Sun. It can stand in any of the twelve signs, whatever your Sun sign is.

Venus shows what you say yes to. The Moon shows what you need after you have said it.

What the house of Venus adds

The sign shows how you love. The house shows where in life this plays out most clearly. Houses are the twelve sections of a chart, each linked to an area of life. They begin at the Rising point, the degree of your Rising sign (also called the Ascendant), so they depend on your birth time and place.

A few examples of how astrologers read Venus by house:

• Fifth house (creativity, play, romance): affection shows through fun, flirting and making things.
• Seventh house (partnership): committed one-to-one relationships are a central theme.
• Eleventh house (friends, groups, hopes): love tends to grow out of friendship and shared circles.

What the twelve houses mean

Without a birth time, your Venus sign is still exact. Only the house is missing.

What to do with your Venus sign

1. Find your Venus sign and read its line in the table. Ask where you have seen this in your own relationships.
2. Add your Moon and your Mars. Notice where they agree with Venus and where they pull another way.
3. If you are thinking about one specific person, look at how two birth charts are compared before you trust a list of matching signs.

If you would rather have it read for you, a Love Reading is written for your chart and describes how you love, calculated from your exact birth data.