Mercury and Venus: what the aspect between them says about you

What an aspect is in the birth chart

An aspect is the distance between two pieces of the chart, measured in degrees — and that is what says whether they work together, ignore each other or fight. The previous series describe each piece on its own: the planet in the sign, the planet in the house. This one describes what happens between two of them.

There are five distances that tradition calls the major aspects: the conjunction (0°), the sextile (60°), the square (90°), the trine (120°) and the opposition (180°). Each has its own way of putting two pieces in contact, and none of them is good or bad — what exists is what each one charges and what each one delivers.

And there is the number almost no text gives: the orb. Two pieces at exactly 90° form a square; at 97°, they form nothing. This blog uses 6 degrees for the major aspects, and outside that they are two pieces in the same chart, which is another thing. That is why an aspect is not found out from the date: it needs the calculated chart.

And there is a reading order that changes everything, and that almost no site respects: the aspect comes last. It describes the relationship between two pieces, and there is no reading the relationship without knowing both. Whoever arrives here without having read each piece in the sign and in the house is reading the conversation without knowing who is speaking.

What Mercury and Venus mean together

The aspect between Mercury and Venus says how much your speech was built to please. Mercury is how a person thinks and speaks. Venus is what she finds beautiful and how she approaches. In contact, the two produce someone whose words carry charm — and who, for that reason, has to learn to say an unpleasant thing without losing herself.

It is the lightest pair in the series, and the most underrated. The ability to say a hard thing in a way the other person can hear is an expensive skill, and it lives here.

And here is what hardly any text writes down: an aspect is a RELATIONSHIP, and not one more piece. It does not add a trait to your chart — it says how two traits already there get along with each other. And there is an astronomical detail that changes everything in this pair, and that almost no text mentions: Mercury and Venus never get very far from each other, so this aspect is either close up or nowhere.

It is worth giving the number before any reading, because without it there is no aspect: this blog uses a 6-degree orb for the major aspects. Outside that they are two pieces in the same chart, which is another thing. And the orb requires the calculated chart — and here the birth hour matters less than in the other pairs, because the two move slowly compared with the Moon — but the house they fall in depends on the minute, and it changes the reading.

The conjunction of Mercury and Venus

The conjunction joins thought to pleasing: this person speaks beautifully, and knows it. She picks the word for its sound as well as its meaning, defuses a quarrel with one sentence and is good at writing a note, a speech and an apology. She has usually heard all her life that she has a way with words.

The cost is trouble with the ugly subject. She puts off the hard conversation, wraps the criticism in so much cotton wool that the message gets lost, and is then annoyed because the other person did not understand — when she went out of her way to keep it from being understood.

The sextile of Mercury and Venus

The sextile gives ease with words without the vanity of it: the person pleases without depending on it. She negotiates well, writes clearly and gets called on to deliver the difficult message precisely because she does not spoil the message. Her kindness does not cost the truth.

The cost is small in this pair, and it is this: whoever was always well received never practised what to do when she is not. A hostile meeting or a difficult audience catches this person with no repertoire, and she takes it worse than she should.

The trine, no: it requires 120 degrees, and this pair never gets anywhere near that. The section just below explains it with the number.

The tense aspects: square and opposition of Mercury and Venus do not exist

And this is not opinion nor school: it is the orbit. A square and an opposition require 90 and 180 degrees of separation, and the orbits of Mercury and Venus do not allow it: the maximum separation between the two, measured across two centuries, is 73.6 degrees. For the same reason the trine, which asks for 120, does not exist either — of the five major aspects, this pair forms two. A page called “Mercury square Venus” is a page about nothing — and there are thousands of them on the internet, written by people who never did the arithmetic.

It is worth understanding why the mistake is so common, because it says something about how those texts are made. Whoever writes a series on aspects usually builds a table of every pair times the five aspects and fills in the little squares — and the table knows no astronomy. The result is a text describing in detail a configuration no human being ever had in a chart.

What to read instead: the distance between the two, which is what actually varies in this pair and what actually changes the reading. It is in the conjunction section, above, and is measured in degrees in the calculated chart.

How the aspect between Mercury and Venus shows up day to day

It shows up in the care this person puts into how she says a simple thing. They are concrete signs, the kind one recognizes in one's own week — and they hold for any of this pair's aspects, because the subject is the same and what changes is the friction:

• picks the word for its sound as well as its meaning
• defuses a quarrel with one sentence
• puts off the unpleasant conversation
• wraps criticism until the criticism disappears
• writes a good note, message and apology
• is bothered by a rude manner more than by the content

Notice what this list does not say. It does not say the person is fake or evasive — two labels this pair carries that describe the extreme, not the aspect. It says her speech was built to bring people closer, and what is missing is practice at displeasing.

The easy aspect has a cost, and the tense one has a gift

This is the inversion most texts do not make, and it holds for every pair: what runs with no friction was never tested, and what bothers is what produces. The trine between Mercury and Venus delivers the result with no effort — and for that reason the person usually does not build the muscle, and finds that out on the day the ease is not enough. Here the inversion shows up in another way, because there is no tense aspect: the cost of the easy one has no counterweight within the pair itself, and the practice at saying hard things has to come from outside — from Mars, from Saturn, or from life.

It is one of the few pairs in the series where the lesson is not inside the aspect, and it is worth saying so rather than inventing a tension the orbit does not allow. The Shelly Method reads every archetype through four faces — the light, the shadow, the excess and the deficiency —, and in an aspect they get distributed between the two pieces: almost always one of them is in excess and the other in deficiency, and the fix goes through the weak side.

How Mercury and Venus evolve over time

It matures when the person learns to say no with the same elegance she says yes. It usually happens after a situation where the delicacy proved expensive: an arrangement left vague because nobody wanted to be direct, and which charged for it later.

Maturity here is not getting harder. It is the person discovering that clarity is a form of kindness — and almost always the more generous of the two.

No honest text gives an exact age for this: the arc depends on the whole chart.

What the aspect between Mercury and Venus does not say about you

It says how those two pieces get along, and not who you are. This pair is the closest of them all in the sky, and for that reason the most common: many people have the conjunction, and on its own it says little. What makes it individual is the sign, the house and the rest of the chart.

Which signs and which houses the two fell in changes everything: a Mercury and a Venus together in Gemini are someone who enchants by talking; the same two in Capricorn are someone who pleases through precision, and not through charm. See Mercury in the 12 signs and Venus in the 12 signs, which describe each piece on its own — and that is the reading that comes before this one.

A limit said out loud, because it is part of reading seriously: none of this is prediction. Astrology describes a tendency and gives vocabulary for what the person already lives — it does not replace your work or your decisions.

Frequently asked questions about Mercury and Venus in the chart