Synastry contact

Sun Square Venus Synastry: When Who One of You Is Meets a Different Kind of Enjoyment

Short answer: Sun square Venus synastry (comparing two birth charts) means that who one of you is and what the other enjoys come from signs in elements that do not mix easily: one person's core self, will and direction meet the other's tastes, pleasures and affection from a different place. A square usually joins fire or air with earth or water, so the contact reads as friction between two kinds of nature, and your tastes can differ even when you like each other. The friction is a kind of energy in the contact and says nothing against either of you. It is one contact among many, and what gets built on it is up to the two of you.

Who one of you is, meeting a different kind of enjoyment

Every birth chart has a Sun and a Venus, and they do different jobs. The Sun is who you are: your core self, what you want, the direction you steer by. Venus is what you enjoy and value: your taste, your pleasures, how you show affection, and what makes time with someone feel good. In this contact, one person's Sun is about 90° from the other person's Venus, a quarter of the way round the zodiac.

A square usually joins signs in elements that do not mix easily: fire or air with earth or water. (Usually, not always: near the edge of a sign, the pattern can shift.)

The reading built on the elements is friction between two different kinds of nature. What one of you is like and what the other enjoys can come from places that do not blend, so your tastes can differ even when you like each other. That friction is energy: it is how the contact makes itself felt, and it says nothing against either of you.

You may find it between friends, siblings, colleagues, flatmates, a parent and their child, or partners, and it is one contact among many in any two charts.

Which of you is which

In this contact one of you brings the Sun and the other brings Venus, and the two come from elements that do not mix easily. Call them the Sun person and the Venus person.

If you are the Sun person, you are going about your own business, being who you are. The Venus person may like you well and still not share what you pick. You may notice a small pause when something is proposed, and wonder what it means. It may only mean their taste points somewhere else.

If you are the Venus person, you are enjoying what you enjoy. The Sun person's way may not be quite what you would have picked, though you may be fond of them. You may find you like the person more than the plan, and that you have a different idea of what would be nice.

If the link also runs the other way, from the Venus person's Sun to the Sun person's Venus, each of you is both.

What each gives, and what each may want

The Sun person can give a self whose ways the Venus person would not have picked, and so a glimpse of something outside their usual run. The Venus person can give a different answer to what is worth enjoying, which may show the Sun person that their ways are theirs and not simply how things are.

At one moment the proposal comes from you, at another from the other, and the taste that answers it differs.

What each may want is plain. The Sun person may want their way taken as theirs, not as a mistake. The Venus person may want their taste counted as a real preference, not as a mood. In a square these wants may go unspoken, since liking each other can make a difference of taste seem too small to mention.

How it might look

These are sketches, not reports. Each shows two people who like each other, and whose tastes point in different directions.

Flatmates. Two flatmates tape colour samples to the hall wall. One wants a bold shade and the other a pale one. They look at the samples for a week, and the discussion is about which light makes each look better; the tape is still on the wall.
Siblings. Two siblings order a cake for a shared birthday. One wants lemon, the other chocolate. They order lemon, and the second says nothing and eats a smaller slice.
Parent and child. A child wants an elaborate costume for the school play, with a cape, a hat and a sword. Their parent likes plain things and suggests two of the three. The child chooses the hat and the cape, and the parent looks at the sword a while longer.
Colleagues. Choosing the venue for a team dinner, one colleague names a lively place with a long menu. Another prefers somewhere quiet where the group can hear each other. The venue chosen is a third place, and the colleagues stay for different lengths of time.
Friends. Two friends choose a seat at a noisy restaurant. One likes the table by the kitchen, with the bustle; the other likes the one by the window. They sit by the kitchen, and the second keeps glancing at the window.
Partners. One partner wants a night out, the other wants a night in. They stay in, and one of them looks through the listings anyway.

In each sketch the two like each other and want different things, and the difference gets looked at.

Fire or air, meeting earth or water

A square usually joins a fire or air sign with an earth or water sign, so there are four pairings. In plain terms: fire is enthusiasm and action, earth is practical steadiness, air is talk and ideas, water is feeling. Each pairing can run either way, with the Sun in the first element and Venus in the second, or the reverse.

Fire and earth. Enthusiasm against steadiness. The Sun person's quick start may meet a Venus person who enjoys what is slow and settled, or the Sun person's steady pace may meet a Venus person who enjoys the new and loud. It might look like two cousins choosing a gift for a grandparent: one wants a trampoline voucher, the other a good cushion.

Fire and water. Bold against tender. A bold Sun person may meet a Venus person who enjoys gentleness, or a sensitive Sun person may meet a Venus person who enjoys big, bright things. It might look like two siblings choosing a film for a family evening at home: one wants the loud adventure, the other a quiet story.

Air and earth. Talk against practice. A Sun person who lives in ideas may meet a Venus person who enjoys doing things with their hands, or the reverse. It might look like two flatmates with an empty stretch of the weekend: one wants to talk through a plan for the flat, the other has already found a shelf to fix.

Air and water. Reasons against feeling. A Sun person who explains may meet a Venus person who enjoys sitting with a mood, or the reverse. It might look like two friends on a station platform, one reading out the delay times and the other just wanting to watch the light change.

What the friction gives

Friction is energy, and between a Sun and a Venus it shows up in a few ways.

It may widen what each of you enjoys. Living near a taste that is not yours, you might come to like some of it: the other's kind of film, their sense of what is worth keeping.

It can bring a taste you took for granted into view. When the other does not share it, it becomes something you can name.

It can mean either of you puts what you enjoy into words, since it will not simply be assumed.

Each difference of taste is also a small piece of information about the other person.

From the sources

What the older sources say (about the same place, not this aspect)

Alan Leo (*How to Judge a Nativity*, c. 1903; pages from the 1928 printing, p. 222) is the only older source this page uses. He writes about friendship. He says that in all friendships Venus is the planet most affected, "by its own position" and by the planet that in another horoscope is in the same place, and gives his reason: Venus is "the planet of union and of communion". He then goes through what the Sun, Mercury and the Moon do when they are on "the place of Venus" in the other chart. The Sun, he says, will produce "a happy and pleasurable friendship". He says only "in one horoscope" and "in another", so he does not say which person is which.

What Leo describes is the same place, which this page reads as a conjunction; that reading is an editorial inference, because he names no aspect. He says nothing about a Sun and a Venus a quarter of the circle apart, so nothing he writes can be taken to describe a square, and his passage gives nothing to tell a square from an opposition or from other contacts. It is given here as the only older passage this page uses on a Sun and a Venus. Leo states his reading flatly: the Sun "will produce" this friendship. Reading that as a tendency, not a promise of how a friendship turns out, is an editorial reading, not something Leo says.

The distinction this page draws, that a square reads as friction between two kinds of nature because it usually joins signs from elements that do not mix (fire or air with earth or water), and the reading of that friction as energy, are based on the kinds of sign a square usually joins; the angle and the elements are the geometry of the zodiac. This is an editorial reading, not something the older books say about the Sun and Venus. The same goes for everything else this page says about what each person is like, gives or may want.

Is this you two?

Liking each other is clear; what to do with a spare hour is less so.
One of you says "all right" in a way that the other has learned to read.
A gift, a plan or a place has suited one of you far better than the other expected.
One of you has come to enjoy something you would not have chosen.
Your disagreements may be about taste, not about whether you value each other.
One of you can say plainly what you like, and the other may take it as news.
A spare hour can start with two different suggestions.