Scorpio Venus and Sagittarius Venus compatibility joins two signs that sit side by side on the zodiac wheel. Being neighbors does not make them close in the old books. Ptolemy said that signs one step apart are “averted from one another.” They turn their backs, so to speak, and share none of the bonds he names.
The two Venuses also differ in rank. In Scorpio, Venus is in exile, one of her two weak places. In Sagittarius, she is a traveler with no major rank at all. We tracked Venus and the Sun from 1600 to 2400 to put numbers on this pair. Read the page as a lens for talking about love, not as a forecast. Astrology is not a science, and no study has shown that Venus signs predict how a couple will do.
The pair at a glance
| Question | What we found. |
|---|---|
| How common is the pair? | About 1 random couple in 75, rank 61 of the 78 Venus pairs. |
| How far apart are the signs? | One sign, a step of 30 degrees. |
| Did Ptolemy link the two signs? | No, under every reading of his rules. |
| Where is each Venus strong? | In exile in Scorpio, with no major rank in Sagittarius. |
| Which Sun signs are most likely? | One Scorpio Sun and one Sagittarius Sun, in about 1 couple in 7. |
| Do the partners share a Sun sign? | In about 1 couple in 5. |
What a Venus sign is
Your Venus sign is the sign Venus was in when you were born. In astrology it shows what you find lovely and how you like to be loved. Venus never strays far from the Sun in our sky. So people with Venus in Scorpio are born between late August and mid January. People with Venus in Sagittarius are born between late September and mid February.
That is why your Sun sign alone does not tell you your Venus sign. You need the date, and near a sign line, the hour. A free birth chart gives it in seconds.
Averted: the bonds Ptolemy did not give
Ptolemy wrote the Tetrabiblos in Alexandria around 150 AD. In Book I he lists the ties that can join two signs. Chapter 13 gives four aspects, or angles: the opposition, the trine, the square and the sextile. Chapter 14 pairs signs that “command” and “obey.” Chapter 15 pairs signs that “behold” each other. Chapter 16 names the signs that have none of these ties. He calls them “disjunct” and “alien.”
Signs one step apart fall in that last group. In the Frank Robbins translation, such signs “are as it were averted from one another.” Two signs side by side, Ptolemy adds, “bound the angle of one.” They fill a single slice of the circle, so they form no angle between them. Later astrologers named this 30-degree step the semi-sextile and counted it as a minor aspect. Ptolemy did not count it.
The commanding and beholding pairs can be read two ways. One reading works by whole signs. The other works by exact degree, as mirror points around a fixed line. We checked both for this pair.
| Rule | Read by whole signs | Read by degree. |
|---|---|---|
| Commanding and obeying, chapter 14 | Scorpio pairs with Virgo, and Sagittarius with Leo | Scorpio mirrors Leo, and Sagittarius mirrors Cancer. |
| Beholding, chapter 15 | Scorpio pairs with Pisces, and Sagittarius with Aquarius | Scorpio mirrors Aquarius, and Sagittarius mirrors Capricorn. |
The whole-sign lists come from Robbins’s notes 80 and 83 to his translation. The degree reading is the one William Lilly used in 1647, where a mirror point is called an antiscion. Neither reading ties Scorpio to Sagittarius. We also measured the share of couples whose two Venus points sit on mirror degrees. It is zero.
So Ptolemy leaves this pair fully disjunct on both readings. In his scheme, the two signs simply do not see each other.
Venus in exile beside Venus abroad
Each sign has a ruling planet. Think of it as the landlord of the sign. Mars rules Scorpio, and Jupiter rules Sagittarius. Venus rules Taurus, the sign straight across from Scorpio. So in Scorpio she sits in the house opposite her own. The old books call this exile, or detriment.
In Sagittarius, Venus holds no major rank. She is not at home, not honored and not weak. Astrologers call this state peregrine, a Latin word for a traveler abroad. She does hold a few degrees there as her terms, a minor share of rule.
Chapter 18 adds a twist. Ptolemy splits the signs into four triangles and gives each one to rulers. The water triangle of Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces goes to Mars. Along with him, “the moon by night and Venus by day are co-rulers.” The fire triangle of Aries, Leo and Sagittarius goes to the Sun by day and Jupiter by night. Venus has no share in it.
So for a person born by day, the exiled Venus in Scorpio keeps a part in ruling her sign. The traveler in Sagittarius has none. A day birth means the Sun was above the horizon. Your birth time decides it.
| Question | Scorpio Venus | Sagittarius Venus. |
|---|---|---|
| Who rules the sign? | Mars | Jupiter. |
| What is the rank of Venus there? | Exile, a weak rank | No major rank, a traveler. |
| Does Venus share the triangle? | Yes, by day | No. |
| What element? | Water | Fire. |
| What mode? | Fixed, the middle of autumn | Mutable, the end of autumn. |
| How much time does Venus spend there? | 8.11 percent, 11th of twelve | 8.23 percent, 9th of twelve. |
In the old scheme, water is cold and moist, and fire is hot and dry. The two share no quality. Scorpio counts as a feminine, or receptive, sign. Sagittarius counts as a masculine, or active, one. Fixed signs hold the middle of a season, and mutable signs close it. Out of 78 Venus pairs, this is the only next-door pair of water and fire with a fixed and a mutable sign.
Our page on Venus in Scorpio tells the story of the exile in full. The guide to Venus in Sagittarius covers the traveler’s side.
How common is this pair?
Venus does not spend the same time in each sign. About every 19 months it seems to move backward for some six weeks. Astrologers call this retrograde motion. Venus repeats its path on an eight-year cycle, so a short span of years can skew the count. We used eight full centuries.
| Venus sign | Share of time, 1600 to 2400 | Rank of twelve. |
|---|---|---|
| Sagittarius | 8.23 percent | Ninth. |
| Scorpio | 8.11 percent | Eleventh. |
| Equal share | 8.33 percent | One sign in twelve. |
Now take two people at random. The chance that one has Venus in Scorpio and the other in Sagittarius is twice the product of the two shares. That comes to 1.33 percent, or about 1 couple in 75. The pair ranks 61st of the 78 Venus pairs. Among the twelve next-door pairs, it ranks tenth. The gaps are small, so read the rank as a detail, not a verdict.
How close are the two Venus points?
A sign is 30 degrees wide. So a Scorpio Venus and a Sagittarius Venus can sit anywhere from almost 0 to almost 60 degrees apart. Astrologers allow an orb, the miss they accept around an exact angle. Here is the share of couples whose two Venus points fall within each orb of an exact 30 degrees.
| Allowed miss | Share of couples. |
|---|---|
| Within 3 degrees | 19.0 percent. |
| Within 6 degrees | 36.0 percent. |
| Within 8 degrees | 46.3 percent. |
| Within 10 degrees | 55.6 percent. |
These shares are close to the same for every pair of signs, so they are not special here. The edges tell a more useful story. A Venus late in Scorpio and one early in Sagittarius can sit only a few degrees apart. That is a conjunction across the sign line. A Venus early in Scorpio and one late in Sagittarius can sit close to 60 degrees apart, a sextile.
Within 8 degrees, one of those two major angles turns up in 7.05 percent of couples. That is about 1 couple in 14. Ptolemy’s aversion is a rule about signs. The degrees can still cross the line.
A birth date is enough to find the Venus degree within a degree or so. Venus never moves more than about a degree and a quarter in a day.
The Sun signs behind each Venus
Venus orbits inside the Earth’s path. From here, it never gets more than 47.28 degrees from the Sun. So your Venus sign is your Sun sign or one of the four signs closest to it. We turned that around. Among people with Venus in a given sign, which Sun signs do they have?
| Sun sign | People with Venus in Scorpio | People with Venus in Sagittarius. |
|---|---|---|
| Virgo | 9.3 percent | None. |
| Libra | 29.7 percent | 9.5 percent. |
| Scorpio | 23.5 percent | 29.2 percent. |
| Sagittarius | 28.4 percent | 23.5 percent. |
| Capricorn | 9.1 percent | 28.6 percent. |
| Aquarius | None | 9.3 percent. |
Now pair the two partners. We multiplied each partner’s Sun shares and grouped the results. Order does not matter, so a Scorpio Sun with a Sagittarius Sun counts once.
| Most likely Sun pairs | Share of these couples. |
|---|---|
| One Scorpio Sun and one Sagittarius Sun | 13.8 percent. |
| One Libra Sun and one Scorpio Sun | 10.9 percent. |
| One Sagittarius Sun and one Capricorn Sun | 10.3 percent. |
| One Libra Sun and one Sagittarius Sun | 9.7 percent. |
| One Scorpio Sun and one Capricorn Sun | 9.4 percent. |
The top mix covers only about 1 couple in 7, so it is a lean, not a rule. It also hides a twist. Most of that 13.8 percent is a swap. In 8.28 percent of these couples, the Scorpio Venus has a Sagittarius Sun and the Sagittarius Venus has a Scorpio Sun. Only 5.52 percent have each Venus in its own Sun sign.
How far apart are the two Suns? The most common gap is one sign, in 36.7 percent of couples. Two signs follow at 24.4 percent. The Suns share a sign in 18.9 percent, about 1 couple in 5. The Suns are never opposite.
In 41.46 percent of these couples, at least one partner has Venus in their own Sun sign. That ranks 55th of the 78 pairs.
How the tradition reads this pair
Nothing below has been tested. It is how the old symbols describe the two styles.
Where the pair meets
Both signs belong to autumn. Scorpio holds its middle, and Sagittarius closes it. In the old reading, both Venuses want something real. Scorpio wants depth and loyalty. Sagittarius wants truth and room to grow. Neither likes small talk about love.
Both can be blunt. The Scorpio Venus says little but means all of it. The Sagittarius Venus says a lot and means that too. Modern writers such as Liz Greene and Stephen Arroyo read a Venus through its element. Water loves by merging feelings. Fire loves by sharing a spark.
Where it snags
The friction is about closeness and space. The Scorpio Venus wants to know where it stands and asks for proof. The Sagittarius Venus hears questions as a fence. What feels like care to one partner can feel like a leash to the other.
Aversion adds a note. In Ptolemy’s image, the two signs face away from each other. Read that as a symbol, not a sentence. Each partner starts from a different set of assumptions. So each one has to say plainly what it needs, instead of hoping the other will guess.
The same signs through other planets and pairs
The Sun shows the core self, a different layer from Venus. Our page on Scorpio and Sagittarius read through the Sun covers that layer. The Moon shows emotional needs, and Scorpio and Sagittarius Moon signs reads the pair that way.
A Scorpio Venus meets a far easier sign in Scorpio Venus and Pisces Venus compatibility, a water trine. One step further on, a Scorpio Venus meets Scorpio Venus and Capricorn Venus compatibility, a sextile. A Sagittarius Venus meets its other neighbor in Sagittarius Venus and Capricorn Venus compatibility.
Every pair of Venus signs is listed in our guide to Venus sign compatibility, sign by sign.
What the evidence says
No study has tested Venus pairs. The largest test of love signs used the Sun. In 2007 the sociologist David Voas looked at the 2001 census of England and Wales, with 10.3 million married couples. He found no link between Sun signs and who marries whom. A small excess of same-sign couples came from errors on the forms.
So an averted pair is not a warning, and a shared Sun is not a promise. The odds on this page are odds about the sky, not about love.
How we measured
All figures cover 1 January 1600 to 1 January 2400, in the tropical zodiac, seen from the center of the Earth. Every moment of birth counts the same. We used two methods that share no code. The first used the Astronomy Engine library. It found each time Venus and the Sun entered a sign, to a tenth of a second, and added up the time. The second used the Swiss Ephemeris. It checked the sign of Venus every hour, on a grid set half an hour off the first. That is more than seven million points. Neither method drew random numbers. On the Venus figures, the two agree within 0.01 points.
Pair odds assume two people born at unrelated moments. The Sun pair figures multiply each partner’s Sun sign shares. The degree and mirror figures use the real spread of Venus inside each sign, in steps of a tenth of a degree. Ptolemy is quoted from the Loeb edition by Frank Robbins, Book I, chapters 13 to 18.
Frequently asked questions
Are Venus in Scorpio and Venus in Sagittarius compatible?
They are next-door signs that Ptolemy called averted, with no bond he would name. Within 8 degrees, 7.05 percent of couples still have a conjunction or a sextile across the sign line. No study shows that Venus signs predict how a couple does.
How common is a Scorpio Venus and Sagittarius Venus couple?
About 1 couple in 75, or 1.33 percent, over 1600 to 2400. It ranks 61st of the 78 Venus pairs.
What Sun signs are likeliest for this couple?
One Scorpio Sun and one Sagittarius Sun, in 13.8 percent of these couples. In most of those, each Sun sits in the other partner’s Venus sign.
Is Venus weak in Scorpio?
Scorpio is her exile, the sign opposite her home in Taurus. Yet Ptolemy makes Venus a co-ruler of the water signs by day, so a day-born Scorpio Venus keeps a share of rule.
Do Scorpio and Sagittarius behold each other?
No. By whole signs, Scorpio beholds Pisces and Sagittarius beholds Aquarius. By degree, Scorpio mirrors Aquarius and Sagittarius mirrors Capricorn. No couple has the two Venuses on mirror points.
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