Mars and Venus: contrasting temperaments
Mars and Venus are often contrasted: Mars is energy, courage and action, while Venus is harmony, attraction and comfort. The classical texts describe them as opposite in temperament.
What it is
Mars rules Mesha and Vrishchika and is considered fierce. Venus rules Vrishabha and Tula and is considered gentle. Both are significators of relationships in different ways.
How it is worked out or read
The contrast is a traditional way of reading a chart and should not be taken as a fixed description of any person.
Where it appears on this site
See the Mangal and Shukra articles.
The two grahas side by side
Mars and Venus are often taught as a pair because their themes sit at opposite ends of the same range. Mars, called Mangal or Kuja, is read as the graha of drive, courage, competition and physical energy. It rules Mesha and Vrishchika, is exalted in Makara and debilitated in Karka. Venus, called Shukra, is read as the graha of attraction, comfort, art, harmony and relationship. It rules Vrishabha and Tula, is exalted in Meena and debilitated in Kanya.
Notice that the signs of the two grahas face each other across the zodiac: Mesha is opposite Tula, and Vrishabha is opposite Vrishchika. Classical teachers use this opposition as a memory aid. What Mars pushes towards, Venus balances, and what Venus draws together, Mars sets in motion.
Their natural relationship
In the Parashari table of natural friendships, Mars counts the Sun, Moon and Jupiter as friends, Venus and Saturn as neutral, and Mercury as an enemy. Venus counts Mercury and Saturn as friends, Mars and Jupiter as neutral, and the Sun and Moon as enemies. So Mars and Venus are neutral towards each other, neither friends nor enemies. A reader should keep this in mind when the two meet in a chart: the tradition does not treat their combination as automatically harmonious or automatically difficult.
In the Vimshottari dasha, Mars rules a period of seven years and Venus one of twenty. The Venus mahadasha is the longest of the nine, and the Mars mahadasha among the shortest, so their themes can colour very different lengths of a life.
When Mars and Venus combine
A conjunction of Mars and Venus, or a mutual aspect, is traditionally read as joining energy with attraction. Texts and modern readers describe it as giving warmth, enthusiasm in relationships, and drive towards creative or aesthetic work. The same combination is sometimes read as restlessness in matters of desire. Which way the reading leans depends on the sign, the house, the dignity of each graha and the aspects of benefics such as Jupiter.
Mars also aspects the fourth, seventh and eighth houses from itself, while Venus has only the standard seventh aspect. So Mars can reach Venus by its special aspects even when Venus cannot reach Mars, and the reader should count both directions separately.
Reading them with care
It is easy to turn these two grahas into simple stereotypes: Mars as anger and Venus as romance. The classical texts are broader. Mars also signifies land, siblings, technical skill and protective courage; Venus also signifies vehicles, comforts, the spouse, and refinement in art and speech. A careful reading lists these wider themes, checks the houses each graha rules for the given Lagna, and treats temperament as a tendency described by tradition rather than a fixed verdict about a person.