Almagest

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Venus conjunct Venus

the transiting Venus's yearly return to conjunct its own natal place, a Venus return, or one person's Venus conjunct another's in synastry

What the tradition reads

A natal chart cannot show Venus conjunct itself, since a single body cannot stand at an angle from its own degree; the tradition reads this key through transit instead, the same practice of returns that marks the Sun's yearly cycle and Jupiter's twelve year one applying equally to Venus, whose own orbit brings it back to conjunct its own birth place about once a year, a Venus return. Cafe Astrology's reading for that day counsels surrounding oneself "with positive thoughts, people, and affirmations," since the return can act as a stamp for the year ahead in both relationships and personal finances. Between two charts, when this is the aspect between the two people's own Venus placements, the pairing is read, together with the sextile and trine, as one that "helps boost your overall compatibility," since the two share a similar style of expressing love and affection, appreciating how the other dresses, decorates, handles money, and socializes, and feeling, in the source's words, generally "at ease in one another's company."

The story

A conjunction sets two bodies at, or close to, the same degree, with no real angular distance between them; Ptolemy's own chapter on the mutual configuration of the signs measures the opposition, trine, square and sextile by the number of degrees separating two positions, yet Wikipedia's summary counts the conjunction among the five traditional major aspects sometimes called Ptolemaic, and reports that conjunctions are said to be the most powerful aspects. Venus's own myth already holds two aspects within one figure: Wikipedia's page for her describes Venus Verticordia, "Venus the Changer of Hearts," honored at the Veneralia for her ability to transform untethered desire into pudicitia, desire expressed within bounds society permitted, and notes that in one context she was a goddess of prostitutes while in another she turned hearts from sexual vice to virtue. A conjunction between Venus and itself, whether met yearly in transit or found between two people in synastry, is that same doubled nature caught at its closest point, desire and its own more presentable face fused rather than held apart.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Venus:Venus:conjunction.