What's happening
Like Mercury, Venus does not truly reverse. She is being overtaken, geometrically, as Earth's orbit lines up with hers. From our vantage her ecliptic longitude decreases for about forty days before she stations direct and resumes forward motion.
Venus retrogrades are much rarer than Mercury's — roughly every eighteen months — and they usually fall in the same pair of signs for years at a stretch because of the five-pointed pattern Venus traces in the sky.
The tradition
The tradition treats Venus retrograde as a review of Venus's topics: love, attraction, taste, money, alliances, art, and the aesthetics of daily life. Where Mercury retrograde asks did you read it carefully, Venus retrograde asks do you actually want this, and on what terms.
Classical readings describe Venus as weaker in apparent motion when retrograde — not destroyed, but turned inward. The outward signals of charm, approval, and ease are less reliable; the inner questions of worth and attachment are amplified.
How to work with it
This is unusually good weather for reconsidering a relationship, a collaboration, or a financial arrangement whose terms have drifted without being renegotiated. Revisit the budget. Re-examine the aesthetic of a project that no longer feels like yours. Let an old connection return long enough to be properly finished or properly renewed.
It is less good weather for launching something that depends on mass appeal — branding, weddings, major aesthetic commitments — unless you are genuinely willing to revisit the choice once Venus is direct.
The simple rule
Ask what you value when nobody is applauding. Venus retrograde is the quiet interview with your own taste.