Venus-Mars Matrix

The form sends the birth date, the time if you give one, and the coordinates and time zone of the city you pick to our API, the same one that draws the full birth chart. The API converts the local time to Universal Time with the IANA time zone database and asks its ephemeris for each planet's apparent longitude as seen from the Earth, in the tropical zodiac. The sign is the 30° slice that longitude falls in, counted from 0° Aries, and the results show the degree within the sign too.

Without a birth time the matrix calculates for 12:00 noon at the birthplace. Houses come from the API's default system, Whole Sign, in which the rising sign is the 1st house and each following sign the next house; the wheel draws them only when you enter a time.

The aspect is read from the API's aspect list, which uses the orbs on the methodology page. For two personal planets those come to 8° for a conjunction or opposition, 7° for a square or trine and 5° for a sextile. The API also finds quincunxes and the minor aspects, but the matrix has readings only for the five major aspects and shows any other angle as no major aspect.

Dignity follows the traditional table, which gives Mars Scorpio as well as Aries and uses no outer planet as a ruler:

Steve Jobs was born at 7:15 PM Pacific Standard Time on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco; the time is from his birth certificate. In UTC that is 3:15 AM on February 25, 1955. For the request the matrix sends, the API returns:

1. Element pair. Earth Venus with Fire Mars. The matrix files this pair under “The Magma”, one of its 16 element-pair readings.
2. Dignity. Mars is in Aries, so its card carries a Domicile badge. Venus in Capricorn holds none of the four, so its card shows no badge.
3. Aspect. The two planets are 97.92° apart. The nearest aspect is the square at 90°, but 7.92° from exact is outside the 7° orb, and the API lists no aspect of any kind for the pair, so the matrix shows its no-major-aspect panel.
4. Houses. With the birth time, the Ascendant is 22°17′ Virgo, so the wheel places Venus in the 5th house and Mars in the 8th.
5. Birth time. Through February 24 in San Francisco, Venus moved from 20°15′ Capricorn to 21°23′ Capricorn and Mars from 28°31′ Aries to 29°13′ Aries, and the gap between them changed only from 98.27° to 97.83°. Any birth time that day gives the same signs and no aspect; the noon chart the matrix uses without a time has Venus at 20°49′ Capricorn and Mars at 28°52′ Aries. Mars was in the last degree of Aries, though: it had entered on January 14 and moved into Taurus on February 26, two days later. Venus was in Capricorn from February 5 until March 4.

Like every example on the site, this one shows the arithmetic and makes no claims about his life.

For the signs, usually nothing. Venus and Mars move slowly enough that a single day rarely spans a sign change. Over the 36,525 days from 1930 to 2029, Venus changed sign on 1,270 of them (3.5%) and Mars on 687 (1.9%). On 1,930 days (5.3%, about one date in 19) one of the two changed sign, and on those dates the sign depends on the hour and on the time zone, because the matrix converts your local time to Universal Time first.

For the aspect, a little. In that span the gap between Venus and Mars never changed by more than 1.66° in a day, so the noon stand-in is never more than about 0.83° from the true gap. That matters only when the gap sits near the edge of an orb.

For the houses, everything. The houses turn with the Earth through all twelve signs each day, so the matrix draws them only when you enter a time.

Venus never strays far from the Sun: from 1930 to 2029 it was at most 47.2° away in longitude. It moves faster than the Sun for most of its cycle and turns retrograde about every 19 months (584 days on average), 62 times in the span, for 40.9 to 43.1 days each time. Mars isn't tied to the Sun. It turns retrograde when the Earth overtakes it, about every 26 months (779 days on average), 47 times in the span, for 60.0 to 81.1 days.

So Venus usually spends about three and a half weeks in a sign rather than a month, and Mars a little over six weeks. The long stays come with retrogrades: a planet that turns back inside a sign can stay there for months, while a retrograde that crosses back over a sign boundary can leave it in the previous sign for only a few days (3.5 days at the shortest for Venus, 2.2 for Mars).

Over a century the twelve shares are not equal, and for different reasons. Mars's orbit is eccentric enough that it moves slowest near aphelion, which lies at 5°41′ Virgo as seen from the Sun, so it lingered in Leo and Virgo (10.25% and 10.39% of the span) and passed more quickly through Aquarius and Pisces (6.79% and 6.65%). Venus's shares follow where its retrogrades fell. They recur in nearly the same places every eight years, and in this span none began in Libra or Pisces, two of the signs where Venus spent the least time. Equal shares would be 8.33% each.

Added up by dignity, Venus spent 14.58% of the span in its domicile signs, 7.17% exalted, 19.26% in detriment and 8.87% in fall. For Mars the figures are 15.87%, 7.10%, 17.23% and 9.37%.

The 144 sign pairs are far from equally likely. From 1930 to 2029:

• Venus and Mars were in the same sign 14.35% of the time, against 8.33% if they moved independently, and in neighboring signs 23.62%.
• They were in opposite signs only 3.01% of the time.
• The most common pair was Venus and Mars both in Gemini (1.42%), followed by Venus and Mars both in Virgo and Venus and Mars both in Leo (1.39% each).
• The rarest, at 0.14% each, were Venus in Leo with Mars in Aquarius, Venus in Libra with Mars in Taurus, Venus in Virgo with Mars in Aquarius and Venus in Leo with Mars in Pisces: about one-tenth as common as the most common pair.

The Sun explains most of this. Venus stays within about 47° of it, and Mars moves fastest through the zodiac when it is near the Sun as well, so the two often travel together for weeks. For Mars to sit opposite Venus it has to be far from the Sun, around its own opposition, when it is retrograde and passes Venus quickly.

The headline reading uses elements: fire (Aries, Leo and Sagittarius), earth (Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn), air (Gemini, Libra and Aquarius) and water (Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces). Equal shares would give each pair 6.25%. Same-element pairs run highest because same-sign pairs are common: Fire Venus with Fire Mars led at 7.42%, while Fire Venus with Earth Mars was the least common at 5.61%. Each cell gives the title the matrix uses for that pair.

Measured every two hours from 1930 to 2029, with the matrix's orbs:

The conjunction is the most common of the five and the opposition by far the rarest, for the same reason that same-sign pairs are common and opposite-sign pairs rare. About two births in three get the matrix's no-major-aspect panel, and in 8.7% of the span the API found a quincunx or a minor aspect that the matrix doesn't read.