Of the Planet Venus, and her Several Significations and Nature

[p. 45] Name.—After the Sun succeedeth Venus.

Colour in the Element.—She is of a bright, shining colour, and is well known by the name of the evening star, or Hesperus; and that is when she appears after the Sun is set; she is commonly called the morning star, but by the learned Lucifer, when she is seen long before the rising of the Sun. Her mean motion is 59 minutes and 8 seconds; her diurnal motion is sometimes 62 minutes a-day, and 82 minutes she never exceeds. Her greatest latitude is 9° 2'. She is retrograde 42 days, and stationary 2. Her year is 224 days and 7 hours.

Element.—She is a feminine planet, temperately cold and moist; nocturnal, the lesser fortune, author of mirth and cheerfulness.

Manners and Quality when well dignified.—She signifies a quiet man, not given to law, quarrel, or wrangling; not vicious; pleasant, neat and spruce, loving mirth in his words and actions, cleanly in apparel, rather drinking much than gluttonous; prone to venery, often entangled in love matters, zealous in their affections, musical, delighting in baths and all honest merry meetings, or amusements and theatricals; easy of belief, and not given to labour, or take any pains; a company keeper, cheerful, nothing mistrustful, a right virtuous man or woman, often jealous, yet without cause.

When ill dignified.—Then he is riotous, expensive, wholly given to dissipation and lewd companies of women, nothing regarding his reputation, coveting unlawful beds, incestuous, an adulterer, fantastical, a mere skip-jack, of no faith, no repute, no credit, spending his means in ale-houses, taverns, and among scandalous loose people; a mere lazy companion, nothing careful of the things of this life, or any thing religious.

[p. 46] Corporature.—A man of fair but not tall stature, his complexion being white, tending to a little darkness^* which makes him more lovely, very fair, lovely eyes, and sometimes black; a round face and not large, fair hair, smooth and plenty of it, and it is usually of a light brown colour; a lovely mouth and cherry lips, the face pretty fleshy, a rolling wandering eye, a body very delightful, lovely, and exceedingly well shaped; one desirous of trimming and making himself neat and complete both in clothes and body, a love dimple in his cheeks,^† a stedfast eye, and full of amorous enticements.

Oriental.—When oriental, the body inclines to tallness or a kind of upright straightness in person; not corpulent or very tall, but neatly composed; a right Venus person is a pretty, complete, handsome man or woman.

Occidental.—When she is occidental, the man is more short in stature, yet very decent and comely in shape and form, well liked of all.

Quality of Persons, and Employments.—Musicians, gamesters, silkmen, mercers, linen-drapers, painters, jewellers, players, lapidaries, embroiderers, woman-tailors, wives, mothers, virgins, choristers, fiddlers, pipers: when joined with the ☽, ballad-singers, perfumers, seamstresses, picture-drawers, engravers, upholsterers, limners, glovers, and such as sell those commodities which adorn women, either in body (as clothes) or in face (as complexion waters).

[p. 47] Sicknesses.—Diseases by her signified are principally in the matrix and members of generation; in the reins, belly, back, navel, and those parts; the gonorrhoea or running of the reins, lues venerea or any disease arising from inordinate lust, priapism, impotency in generation, hernias, &c., the diabetes, or an involuntary discharge of urine.

Orb.—Her orb is 7 degrees.

Years.—Her greatest years are 151; her greater 82, her mean 45, her least 8. In man she governs youth from 14 to 28.

Countries.—Arabia, Austria, Campania, Vienna, Polonia the Greater, Turin, Parthia, Media, Cyprus.^*