Venus (♀) describes what attracts you, what you find beautiful, and what you consider worth having. In Aquarius (♒︎) she sits in air under Uranus’s rulership, which brings her close to her own sign of Libra and makes her lighter and more volatile.
Seduce the mind first
This Venus points toward the mental. Her quickness of mind is considerable, her affection and her feelings pass through a certain rationality, and her intellect needs to be won over before anything else.
These people are generally very open. They enjoy change and will fear anything ossifying in a relationship. They are originals, outsiders, rebels, provocateurs; they will always look to stand out, to surprise, to shock, to feel different and unique. They will catch you from the opposite direction to the one you expected, and a good part of their charm is exactly that.
So this Venus flourishes in unconventional and nonconformist relationships. She will always want to remain free and independent, and her affection only expresses itself in full autonomy. She will not attach herself through the slightly clinging notion of mutual belonging that other Venus placements genuinely need.
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The absolutism about freedom
That pushes these people to be, at times, uncompromising and self-interested inside a relationship. They are absolute and whole about it: freedom must suffer no limitation, they have their own rules on the subject, and they find imposed restrictions very hard to accept.
They like seducing through their ideas, they enjoy persuading, and they like admiring a partner for their vision of society and of the future.
They genuinely need to perceive a partner as a friend. For them, affection is conceived at bottom as a friendship — light, shared, enjoyable. For them the finest proof of love is being given space, being trusted, and having nobody try to limit them, all of which they will grant you spontaneously in return.
They fundamentally need dreams, prospects, and permanent effervescence, with their interest and curiosity kept alive. Conversely, if you want to drive them away: be jealous and possessive, ask them to renounce their freedom, bore them, and stop talking to them. Results guaranteed.
How to court this Venus
Be unconventional and surprise her. Be sociable, open, and optimistic. Let her glimpse how much you have to show her. Above all, try first to be a good reliable friend to her, and leave her in charge of her own freedom.
And if that means letting her go, let her go. Do not chase her. If she is going to come back, she will, and you will get nothing from her by pleading.
What this Venus finds beautiful
Artistically she is strongly drawn to modern and contemporary art, even the abstract, along with interior design, fashion, electronic music, and the live performing arts including cinema.
Materially this Venus is entirely disinterested. She likes novelty, gadgets, and various pieces of new technology, but money is above all a means to her and never an end. These people are highly reasonable and fair in managing a budget, and they think rather than act on impulse.
And if your Venus is retrograde?
Retrogradation tends to make these people even less conventional, and more extreme in their exuberance. Introversion and repression around their own difference can become more dominant. They can find it harder to open up emotionally, and can come across as more self-interested and individualistic.
A retrograde Venus in a natal chart often matters a great deal among the birth dominants, being a personal planet and rarer than a retrograde Mercury.
When other planets get involved
- Uranus on your Venus — doubled at the source. Unpredictability becomes the organising principle of the love life.
- Mars on your Venus — the ideas gain heat, and the detachment stops being available when it is most needed.
- Saturn on your Venus — freedom meets structure. Either the commitment that makes it real, or a long argument about being fenced in.
- Jupiter on your Venus — the social and intellectual range expands, and so does the utopia.
- Neptune on your Venus — the ideal takes over from the person actually standing there.
- Pluto on your Venus — detachment gives way to depth, which this placement finds uncomfortable and genuinely useful.
Venus in Aquarius through the houses
The sign says how you love; the house says where. In the 11th, this Venus is doubly at home among friends and shared causes. In the 7th, the partnership has to keep something of a friendship in it. In the 5th, romance stays unconventional and refuses to follow the script.
In short
Venus in Aquarius loves as a friend loves, freely and without ownership. Her gift is affection that never turns into a claim on anyone; her work is discovering whether she can be close to one person without reading it as a cage.
A page like this describes one placement in isolation. To place it in your whole sky, start with how to read a natal chart.
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