Venus Opposition Venus Synastry: When Two Tastes Face Each Other

Every birth chart has a Venus. It is what you enjoy, like and value: your taste in food, music and company, the small pleasures that make an ordinary day better, and the way you are kind to other people and to yourself. Venus opposition Venus in synastry means your Venus and their Venus are about 180° apart, half the zodiac, directly across from each other. Because each of you has a Venus, the contact is the same from either side: your Venus and their Venus, and their Venus and your Venus.

An opposition usually joins opposite signs, which lie on one axis through the zodiac. (Usually, not always: an opposition that starts near the edge of a sign can shift the pattern.) That is the geometry. An opposition is the widest of the angles: half the circle, a straight line through the zodiac, where a square is a corner. The reading rests on that angle alone: two Venuses placed across from each other, as two people sit across a table.

This contact can turn up between friends, siblings, colleagues, flatmates, classmates, or a parent and their child as readily as between partners. It is one contact among many in any two charts, and one pair of planets does not describe a whole relationship.

Opposite signs lie on one axis, so the two Venuses are tied to a single pair of signs. On this reading, that suggests the two of you may be concerned with the same matter, such as how a meal is shared, how a room is dressed or what a good evening is, while giving different answers to it. The same question, answered from either side of the axis.

The angle says nothing about which answer is warmer, plainer, bolder or quieter, and nothing about who is more generous with their time or money. Each of you has a Venus, so each answer is your own, and the contact is the same from either side.

The plainest effect is that choosing together can take give and take. From inside, each of you may find your own pick the natural one, and the other's the one that calls for a reason. Asked what to eat, what to watch or how to spend an evening, you may each have an answer in mind, and the answers may differ. When that happens the question may be asked, answered twice and settled by a coin, a turn or a third idea.

On a bad day, you may each reach for a comfort of your own and say so. In a disagreement about something else, a difference over what to eat afterwards may come along with it. At a party, one of you may want the music up and the other the conversation easy to hear, and a joint purchase such as a sofa or a trip can bring up two figures that each feel right. With others at the table, the two answers may become three.

When one of you offers the other a treat of their own, such as a favourite biscuit or a favourite song, it can be taken up and tried.

Planning a week away can show the contact over a longer stretch. You may each have a few days in mind, and the days may differ in pace, in food and in what counts as a sight worth seeing. A day may go to one plan and the next to the other, or the two may be laid side by side in a calendar and a third arrangement drawn from them.

On the trip itself, the same questions come up in small forms: where to stop for lunch, which road, how long to stay in a shop. Each is a place where the two tastes may show, and each time the answer may differ.

A present between you can take a little thought, and so can a purchase for the house. Taste in colour, in weight, in how much is on a table, in how loud a place is: each is a small matter where the two of you may start from different places. Choosing for someone whose taste is across the axis from yours may mean choosing from outside your own liking, asking what they would enjoy and not what you would.

Shared things raise the same question in a practical form: a set of bowls for the kitchen, a playlist for a long drive, a name for a shared photo album. Each is a choice with room for both of your tastes.

What passes between you in this contact is mutual. Each of you can give the other something they would not have picked, and have it tried. Each of you can also give the other a reason to say what they enjoy in a thing.

What each of you may want in return is to have your liking understood as well as tolerated. It can matter to be asked what you enjoy in a thing, and to have the answer listened to, even if it is not adopted. You may also want your turn to count, an evening or a pick that is wholly yours. And you may want a little notice when you try the other's choice, since it can be a bigger step than it looks.

These are sketches, not reports: illustrations of how the contact might show up across different kinds of pairs.

• Siblings. Two siblings are told to choose a joint present for a parent in a shop of teas. One picks a smoky black blend and the other a pale green one. They hold the tins up together.
• Colleagues. At a conference hotel, two colleagues are asked where they want to sit for the breakfast buffet. One heads for the window and the other for the corner by the door. They stand in the middle with their trays.
• Parent and child. A parent and their child take turns choosing the evening's music in the kitchen. The parent puts on something slow and the child skips to something fast, then the parent skips it back.
• Friends. Two friends stand in front of a rack of fridge magnets in an art gallery shop. One likes the plain ones with a single painting, the other the busy ones with lots of colour. Each is holding one up and saying "this one".
• Flatmates. Two flatmates are buying a lamp for the hallway. One wants a bright white bulb and the other a warm dim one. They stand in the shop, each reading the other's box.
• Classmates. At a school disco, two classmates are each asked where the shared table is to go. One points to the quiet corner by the radiator, the other to the spot by the speakers.

In each sketch a choice is put forward from each side, and the choosing is still ahead.

The older sources used here say nothing about a Venus and a Venus half the circle apart. The nearest passage is James Wilson's (*A Complete Dictionary of Astrology*, 1819, p. 381, under "Sympathy"), which is about planets in the same places in two charts. That is a conjunction, not an opposition, so nothing from it is used here. Wilson does give a separate rule on that page for an opposition, but it concerns the Sun or Mars with Mercury or the Moon, not Venus, and it is not used. Nothing in the sources used here tells an opposition from a square.

The distinction this page draws, that an opposition reads as two tastes facing each other, rests on the 180° angle and on the opposite signs it usually joins. It is an editorial reading, not something the older books say about Venus and Venus. The same goes for everything else on this page: what the contact is like, what each of you gives and may want, and the sketches, which are illustrations.

• You may each have a clear idea of what you want to eat or watch, and the two ideas differ.
• You may have stood in a shop each holding a different choice for the same shelf.
• You may have taken turns choosing, and kept a record of whose turn it was.
• You may have tried the other's pick and found something in it.