Almagest

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Venus opposite Venus

the transiting Venus standing in opposition to its own natal place, or one person's Venus opposite another's in synastry

What the tradition reads

A natal chart cannot show Venus opposite itself, since a single body cannot stand at an angle from its own degree; the tradition reads this key through transit instead, the practice of returns and their intervening angles applied to Venus as it is to the Sun or Jupiter. Cafe Astrology's reading for transiting Venus opposite its own natal place names differences in values or in how affection is expressed, a feeling of being underappreciated, and a stretch of inner unrest that tends to pass once the transit does. Between two charts, when this is the aspect between the two people's own Venus placements, the pairing is read, together with the square, as one where "tastes and values differ between the two of you, and this can become more and more obvious as time passes": the source notes that "you don't always share the same pleasures, and you don't know how to instinctively please one another, so it takes time," and that decision making as a couple can turn lengthy and complicated as a result.

The story

An opposition sets two bodies at the diametrical distance from each other, six signs or one hundred eighty degrees apart; Ptolemy's chapter on the mutual configuration of the signs names it, together with the square, discordant, since it joins signs of a differing nature and gender. 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. An opposition between Venus and itself, whether met in transit or found between two people in synastry, sets that same doubled nature at the farthest possible remove from itself, desire and its more presentable face now facing each other rather than meeting.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Venus:Venus:opposition.