Venus in the 7th house is the placement with the loudest classical warning attached to it and the friendliest observed record. Karako bhavo nashti says the karaka in its own house spoils it. Plenty of working astrologers disagree.

Venus in the 8th house puts pleasure, marriage and money into the house of what stays hidden. The results are secrecy, in-law wealth and a real pull toward the occult, and Shukra's own mythology explains why.

Shukracharya was a guru, teacher to the asuras and holder of a knowledge the devas did not have. Venus in the 9th house puts that figure in the house of the guru, and the result is belief arrived at by a route nobody approved of.

Venus in the 10th house sells taste for a living, and it does it from an angle rather than from directional strength, which is a distinction most readings of this placement get wrong.

The eleventh is one of the three kama houses and Venus is the karaka of kama. That doubling is what makes Venus in the 11th house excellent at acquiring things and unusually poor at feeling finished.

Pisces is the twelfth sign and Pisces is where Venus exalts. No other graha has its exaltation sign sitting in the natural twelfth, which is why the classical rating of Venus in the 12th house is so much better than the house's reputation would suggest.

Ketu in the 1st house puts a headless graha in the house of the head. The body works, the personality functions, and the identity underneath never quite sets. It is one of the most spiritually capable placements in the chart and one of the least comfortable.

The third house is an upachaya, and Ketu is one of the grahas that genuinely improves there. It gives real skill with almost no appetite for recognition, which is a strange combination to live with and an effective one to have.

Ketu in the 2nd house does two things at once that look unrelated: it makes money arrive and leave without ever feeling owned, and it gives speech an odd force. The second is the part almost nobody tells you about.

The fifth house is purva punya, the merit carried forward, and Ketu is the graha of what has already been completed. Put them together and you get a chart with credit in it and a complicated relationship to the thing the house is most asked about.

Among the twelve, the sixth is where Ketu is at its most effective. It is an upachaya house, Ketu behaves like Mars, and the graha's habit of removing things becomes an advantage in the house of enemies, debt and disease.

Ketu in the 4th house takes the sense of belonging out of the place you live. The house may be perfectly good. Something in it never registers as home, and the same mechanism produces an unusual aptitude for stillness.