Śukra (Venus) is the second great natural benefic of the Jyotiṣa scheme and the kāraka of beauty, desire (kāma), sexual pleasure, marriage (particularly as the primary indicator in a male chart), the fine arts, luxury, vehicles, material abundance, and the power of the senses to draw consciousness toward the pleasures of embodied existence. Parāśara describes Śukra as having a graceful body, beautiful eyes, dark and curly hair, a kapha constitution with some vāta, and a fundamentally rajasic nature — the quality of activity, desire, and the movement toward objects of pleasure and beauty. As the teacher of the asuras (daitya-guru), Śukra commands the arts of life — both in their highest aesthetic expression and in their most consuming, potentially binding, materialistic forms.
The kārakatva of Śukra includes: wife (in a male chart), sexual pleasure, beauty, music, poetry, dance, gemstones, vehicles (vāhana), perfume, white flowers, white things, sugar, semen (śukra literally means “bright” or “semen”), semen-related reproductive health, kidneys, the face, eyes, and the southeast direction. Venus’s association with both the arts and with reproductive fluid in the Sanskrit tradition speaks to a deep classical insight: creative energy and sexual energy are the same fundamental life force expressed in different registers — sublimation of one enhances the other.
Śukra reaches its exaltation at 27° Mīna — the sign of Jupiter’s boundless compassion and the dissolution of boundaries. Venus in Mīna expresses love and beauty in their most selfless, transcendent form: artistic devotion that seeks to dissolve the boundary between the lover and the beloved, between the artist and the art. The highest expression of this placement is the bhakti poet or devotional artist who channels desire into an offering of extraordinary beauty. Debilitation in Kanyā at 27° creates the characteristic tension between Venus’s desire for pleasure, merger, and aesthetic experience, and Kanyā’s analytical, critical, service-oriented field that evaluates rather than surrenders.
In the context of female charts, the Moon and Jupiter are the primary significators of marriage, with Venus indicating the quality of the relationship’s pleasures. In male charts, Venus is the primary kāraka of the wife. Classical texts emphasize that Venus’s strength, dignity, and house placement reveal not only the quality of romantic and marital life but also the native’s relationship with beauty, luxury, and the pleasures of the senses in general. A well-placed Venus produces a natural aesthetic sensibility, comfort with abundance, and a capacity to enjoy relationships with grace; an afflicted Venus can produce either excessive sensual indulgence or a deep frustration of the desires for beauty and pleasure.
Mythologically, Śukra is identified as Śukrācārya, the preceptor of the demons, who possesses the Mṛtasañjīvanī vidyā — the secret of reviving the dead. This arcane knowledge, withheld from the gods, represents a dimension of Śukra’s significations that is less often discussed: the esoteric, transformative, and potentially dark arts associated with Venus. The tantric tradition has its own relationship with Śukra as the master of the reproductive and creative forces — the one who knows how life is renewed and how desire is the engine of cosmic creation. This aligns with Venus’s rulership of the second (accumulated resources) and seventh (relationships and the other) houses in the natural zodiac.
In Praśna Jyotiṣa, the condition of Śukra is decisive for questions about marriage, romantic relationships, artistic endeavors, vehicles, luxury items, and sexual or reproductive matters. A strong Venus augurs well for these matters; a debilitated or afflicted Venus suggests obstacles involving beauty, pleasure, and the conduct of significant relationships. Friday (Śukravāra) is Venus’s day, and dawn and evening are its special times. The Venus Mahādaśā spans 20 years — the longest in the Viṃśottarī scheme — and typically produces the most sustained period of material enjoyment, relational development, and artistic expression in the native’s life.