Bound to the Sun like Mercury, but on a longer leash.
Venus stays within 48° of the Sun, so it too is constrained — never more than two signs away. Its retrograde cycle traces a five-pointed figure against the zodiac over eight years, one of the more striking regularities in the sky.
Like Mercury it rules two signs: Taurus as appetite and possession, Libra as proportion and comparison. Where Mercury's pair splits gathering from sorting, Venus's splits having from weighing.
It is the slowest of the inner planets to retrograde and the least often, which makes a retrograde Venus a genuinely uncommon placement — unlike a retrograde Mercury.
What it is
The second planet, and the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and Moon.