"The Venus personality temperament remains a mystery"
concluded Michel Gauquelin1. He was not able to link it to success in any profession, or show any character-traits linked to it. The key here may be quite simple: Venus as Morning Star (Lucifer) versus the Evening Star (Hesperus). The 'sweet' and attractive Venus-traits were more traditionally linked to the Evening star. They can usually be separated by subtracting the zodiac longitudes of Sun and Venus: if {Sun - Venus} is negative, it's the Evening Star. That doesn't work however if 0° Aries is in-between them. The two spheres are always less than forty degrees apart. Suppose the Sun is in Pisces and Venus is in Aries, then subtracting the two will give around three hundred degrees, as a positive value, while clearly Venus is the Evening Star, so it's the other way round.
In the previous section, the complete data-set included these five likely-sounding traits:
Charming, loved (aimé), elegant, graceful, seductive
These applied to 566 biographies, within the four different professional groups as explained in the previous section. These gave no result2. However, upon separating out that half of the subjects who were born under the Evening Star, a 32% excess appeared in the four cadent-house sectors.
Traits here plotted around the Evening-Star Venus-day, with citation-counts are: charming (108), passionate (95), enthusiastic (73), elegant (48), noble (35), dreamer (34), gracious (33) fantasy (33) and silent (24), totalling 488. Venus as the Evening Star expresses traditional qualities, as shown for these nine traits (n=488) - here depicted with both 12- and 36-fold divisions of the circle.
This is the first time Venus-traits have shown up in the diurnal circle. The net excess here in the four houses is 60%.
One can generate solar and Venus longitudes for each set of birthdata using Solar Fire: it will input the data as a text file, and export it again as a text file with the longitudes added on. One then subtracts these on a spreadsheet.
Not surprisingly, these traits were most common in the actors, appearing in over one-third of their bios, whereas they were uncommon for sportsmen, featuring in less than 10% of their bios.
Initially the trait 'doux' (gentle) was included in the second group (score: 145), however this was found to reduce the effect in the four sectors: suggesting that 'gentle' is not in fact a Venus-trait. But 'doux' is included in the data-set, if you want to check it up.
The traits 'passionate' and 'ardent', we may ask, do they apply to Mars? In her Psychology of the Planets (1982) Francoise gave only the latter as being Martial. Plotting the data in the usual manner, the 'ardent' birthdata came out as strongly Martial, showing a more than 70% excess in the cadent sectors, while 'passionate' was weaker, more like 25%. So 'ardent' can be added to the five tested in section 9, as being a Mars-trait.
We've here presented 31 character-traits, in such a way that anyone can select them and test them for any planet:
active, amitié, amiable, amoureux, ardent, authority, charming, combative, cold, courageous, deep, director, dreamer, dynamic, elegant, energetic, fantasy, gentle, graceful, imaginative, jovial, loved (aimé), organizer, passionate, pride, pure, seductive, severe, silent, solitary, tranquil.
Only one of these applies to two heavenly bodies, in fact to the two nearest to the Earth: ardent. That character-trait appears as both Martial and Venusian.
1. The Truth about Astrology MG 1983 p.63
2. But see Ch. 7, 'Venus and Personality' in MG, Spheres of Destiny 1980