Venus's is the longest of the nine periods, and it is the one people hope for. Venus brings charm, comfort, taste and attachment, and her twenty years are spent on what pleases: love and marriage, home and vehicles, music and art, money and what it buys. A well-placed Venus gives two decades of ease; even a troubled one gives pleasure, though it charges for it. People in a Venus mahadasha are more attractive to others and more interested in being so.
For those born with the Moon in Bharani, Purva Phalguni or Purva Ashadha the Venus period is the first twenty years of life — a childhood and youth spent on comfort, beauty and the mother's world — and the Sun's brief, bright period follows at around twenty. For everyone else it arrives after Ketu's austere seven years, often as a marked softening of life: the person marries, buys a house, earns well, or simply enjoys things again.
The cost of Venus is indulgence: money spent on comfort, relationships chosen for pleasure, a slackening of effort. Where Venus stands from the lagna directs the twenty years — in the 7th they are partnership, in the 2nd wealth and family, in the 10th a career in the arts, diplomacy or luxury, in the 6th or 12th expense and complication in love. Venus's dignity (exalted in Pisces, debilitated in Virgo) says how much ease is actually given.
What Venus brings
Traditionally, Venus brings charm, comfort, taste, attachment. A mahadasha is that graha's turn to colour the years: the house it holds from the lagna, the houses it rules and the planets it sits with all say what its 20 years are spent on. The antardasha inside it — each of the nine grahas in turn — sets the shorter weather.
Venus mahadasha by house
The tradition reads the period first from the house the lord holds in the birth chart, counted from the lagna in whole signs:
- 1st house. A Venus period from the 1st brings charm, comfort and attention to the body and its pleasures.
- 2nd house. A Venus period from the 2nd brings wealth, fine things and family pleasure.
- 3rd house. A Venus period from the 3rd brings art, pleasant siblings and soft effort.
- 4th house. A Venus period from the 4th brings home comforts, vehicles and property.
- 5th house. A Venus period from the 5th brings romance, creativity and children.
- 6th house. A Venus period from the 6th brings expense on comfort and disputes with lovers.
- 7th house. A Venus period from the 7th brings marriage and partnership to the centre.
- 8th house. A Venus period from the 8th brings hidden pleasures and the partner's money.
- 9th house. A Venus period from the 9th brings fortune through women, the arts and gentle faith.
- 10th house. A Venus period from the 10th brings a career in beauty, the arts, diplomacy or luxury.
- 11th house. A Venus period from the 11th brings gains through art, friends and pleasant company.
- 12th house. A Venus period from the 12th spends on comfort, beds and distant places; money flows out through pleasure and foreign ties.
The antardashas of Venus
Each mahadasha is divided among the nine lords in the Vimshottari order, beginning with its own; the length of each is the mahadasha's years times the antardasha lord's, divided by 120:
| Antardasha | Length |
|---|---|
| Venus–Venus | 3 years 4 months |
| Venus–Sun | 1 year |
| Venus–Moon | 1 year 8 months |
| Venus–Mars | 1 year 2 months |
| Venus–Rahu | 3 years |
| Venus–Jupiter | 2 years 8 months |
| Venus–Saturn | 3 years 2 months |
| Venus–Mercury | 2 years 10 months |
| Venus–Ketu | 1 year 2 months |
Who begins life in the Venus mahadasha
Venus rules three nakshatras. A natal Moon in any of them starts the cycle in the Venus mahadasha, with the balance set by how far into the nakshatra the Moon stood:
- Bharani — 13°20′–26°40′ Aries
- Purva Phalguni — 13°20′–26°40′ Leo
- Purva Ashadha — 13°20′–26°40′ Sagittarius