Ruler: Venus
Nature: cardinal
Quality: masculine
Element: air, mental
Symbol: the scales
Keywords: harmonious, sympathetic, balanced
Principle: co-operation
Destiny: through devotion, Libra attains balance. Clear vision

Sign Tarot: Justice
Planet Tarot: The Empress

Expectation: intimacy
Imperative: to partner,merge
Gift: joy of co-mingling
Challenge: surrender
Difficulty: melancholy
Need: embrace

Body parts: loins, kidneys, ovaries
Foods: cereals, berry fruits, beans, spices
Colours: shades of blue, pink, pale green
Flowers: hydrangea, roses, blue flowers
Herbs: mint, cayenne
Metal: copper
Gem: sapphire, jade
Animals: galah, lizards, small reptiles
Countries: Austria, Japan, Burma, Tibet
Cities: Copenhagen, Vienna, Johannesburg

Cyclic Parallels >>
Human Life: young adulthood
Moon: wanning gibbous
Day: evening
Plant Life: leaf-fall

Source: http://www.groundedheavens.com
( Astrological Diary Australia )

Goddess of love - sexual, social and ideal. Known to the Greeks as Aphrodite. Daughter of Jupiter, the consorts of Venus included Mars and Adonis. Goddess of gardens.

Venus, under the Roman militarist culture, became associated primarily with erotic love. As Aphrodite, she had far wider sway, being a deity of affection and social interaction. Her origins spring from the titanic struggle between Kronos and Ouranos. Kronos used a sickle to cut off Ouranos' phallus, which he then threw into the sea and which floated in white foam. Inside this divine flesh the goddess was nurtured. The name Aphrodite means "she who came from the foam".

The cockle shell became revered among the peoples of Asia Minor because some stories have it that Aphrodite was birthed from a cockle shell. This legend is immortalised in Birth of Venus by Botticelli.

Aphrodite was a lover of Ares (Mars) and was the mother of Eros. The coupling of Mars and Venus to produce Eros is a powerful evocation of the dualistic contradictions in sexuality.

She fell in love with Adonis, an impossibly handsome Syrian god of fertility, and thus became a bitter rival of Persephone, queen of the dead. To settle the dispute, Zeus ruled that Adonis spend one third of the year alone, one third with Persephone and one third with Aphrodite. Adonis' yearly death and rebirth echoes the cycle of crop growth, flowering and dormancy, as well as being one of the early resurrection myths. Similarities are obvious with the Celtic myth of the Fisher King.

Remnants of the influence of Venus in the Age of Taurus, some four or five thousand years ago, can be seen in the Mithraic traditions of bull-worship.

Concerned with love and personal relationships, Venus represents the feminine side. Gentle and tactful, adept at social graces, Venus can also be indecisive and careless, as well as too romantic.