The cycle of Venus begins during its retrograde period, signifying a phase of renewal and reorientation of feelings, emotions and values. It is a time when the future attempts to free itself from the past, clearing the way for the development of a new set of values and a new emotional sense. But attempts to fight or rebel against the past and its values and morality can bind us to the very things from which we seek to free ourselves.
      During its 584-day cycle, Venus spends only about forty-one days retrograde, which is proportionately less than any other planet, and only about one in 30 people are born while Venus is both Morning Star and retrograde. If you are one of them, your feeling nature and sense of values may go "against the grain," and you may deeply question traditional values and morality. This means you may find it difficult to get emotionally insynch with others, or others may have difficulty connecting with you or understanding your value-system. Yet your emotional natural is very strong and you are guided by a very definite set of values and ideals.

Venus Lucifer retrograde people often find themselves involved in the arts, especially as exemplars dedicating their life and work to new ideals. Such truly avant-garde individuals may be so far ahead of their time that their true stature is recognized only after the close of an often tragic life. In other instances, a struggle against the past and its biological and social imperatives, combined with a search for higher values and ideals, may lead to ascetic practices or to a life of devotion and renunciation. But ironically, such practices and their associated forms of devotion and renunciation, and the values and ideals driving them, are likely to be rooted in a past tradition.
      Examples of the denunciatory type include Meher Baba, the once famous "silent mystic", and the female Christian mystic Teresa de Avila. The birth chart of Meher Baba features Venus in the first house Aquarius, with no planets between it and the Sun. Uranus is on the Midheaven, with Scorpio Moon and Saturn retrograde nearby. In the instance of Teresa de Avila, Venus is on the Ascendant and Mercury rises between it and the Sun. Pluto retrograde is on the Midheaven.

In a man’s chart, Venus Morning Star retrograde suggest a high degree of self-discipline and dedication to one’s ideals and goals, to one’s art and self-image. Dedication of this sort should not be confused with pure ambition or a drive to "get ahead" or to dominate – drives connected with Mars and Jupiter – and which may factor in according to how these two planets tie in with natal Venus. The tragic artist Amadeo Modigliani (who was born with Venus straddling a very close conjunction the Sun and Mercury) is an example of this type, and so is, in his own way, actor Jack Nicholson.

Women leading pioneering, often difficult, lives figure largely as examples of Venus Lucifer retrograde. Chrissie Hynde, the first woman to become the creative and musical principal of a successful rock band, is an outstanding example. Chrissie went where no woman had gone before. She was never merely a "chick" in a rock band, and she never played traditional female roles. Chrissie is the heart, soul and guts of The Pretenders, and she made it as "one of the guys," on her own merit. And when she wanted a child fathered by a musical genius, she chose and won her long-time influence, Ray Davies of the Kinks.
      Another example is provided by the birth-chart of Mimi Farina, sister of Joan Baez and widow of writer Richard Farina. Until a tragic motorcycle accident took her husband’s life 30 April 1966, Richard and Mimi Farina were among the most successful and influential folk musicians of the mid-1960s, and probably the first to create the folk-rock-blues fusion that saw fuller development and success in the work of Bob Dylan, Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, Country Joe and the Fish and many others. In the 1970s Mimi founded the Bread and Roses Foundation, which brings live music concerts to prison inmates.
      Courtney Love exemplifies the full range of Venus Lucifer retrograde womanhood. Born when Venus was conjunction Mars in the eight house, and at the very end of the Venus retrograde period, just a day before its station, Courtney had to rise out of a background of early abandonment and abuse to find her own place in a world which never seems able to understand her, a world in which she often felt emotionally displaced. In 1994 her husband, the legendary Kurt Cobain, took his own life, leaving her with a young child. Fan’s of Kurt’s band, Nirvana, and the press tried to blame her for her husband’s suicide, and she was even vilified by her publicity-seeking journalist father. Yet Courtney continually goes on, and the world continues to misunderstand her.

When considering a birth-chart with Venus Lucifer, it is important to determine whether or not Venus is also the Planet of Oriental Appearance – that is, if it is the planet rising immediately before the Sun, with no other planet between Venus and the Sun. Additionally, planets situation between Venus and the Sun should figured into the interpretation the Venus types, as the functions and drives they symbolize inevitably play into the picture. In the instance of the remarkable birth-chart of figure skater Tonya Harding, Jupiter (expansion, compensation and the need to succeed) is situated between Venus Lucifier retrograde and the Sun, and the three are involved in a triple conjunction, which opposes a tight conjunction of Moon and Saturn retrograde.