One of the most notorious Librans of recent fame is Brigitte Bardot.  She serves as a reminder that the ruling planet of Libra is Venus, goddess of love and beauty in ancient mythology.  You'd think Libra would be the most obvious, easiest sign to understand.  All they need is love, right?  Wrong. 

Remember that Libra is an airy sign.  And air is concerned with ideas and principles above all else.  Love, yes, of course.  Every Libra thinks a lot about love, just as he thinks a lot about anything that pertains to relationship.  But the operative word here is think.  Libra's idea of love isn't necessarily your idea of a warm, cozy, delightful tête-à-tête.  More likely, it'll be one of his many theories on the nature of love and marriage, his ideals of the perfect relationship, his concepts about how people ought to behave toward each other, his urgent vision of a world where everything is absolutely balanced, polished, perfect, symmetrical, harmonious.  It can drive you mad.  This sign, whose symbol is the scales of balance, has less to do with ordinary sweaty human coupling than any other.  What?  Libra soil his hands?  Never.  Love, for Libra, must always be in the appropriate style:  a ritual of courtly love, complete with the right gestures, the right words, the right perfume, the right satin sheets, the right scented candles, the right flowers.  Be careful.  Libra is the great perfectionist of the zodiac.  Not Virgo, as you may have heard.  Love, ah yes.  Love, for Libra, makes the world go round.  But his love is a theoretical one.  He knows less about love than any other sign, although he thinks about it more.  That's why he's always searching for it in the most idealized possible forms.  Like Aquarius and Gemini, Libra's emotional nature is often childlike and naïve. 

The planet Venus symbolizes, in astrology, the urge for relationship.  Let's look closely at that word.  Relating one thing to another doesn't necessarily involve emotion.  It's the art of comparison, differentiation, of making balanced and symmetrical patterns.  Relationship is an integral part of dance, of geometry, of mathematics, or warfare.  Relationship can mean a delicate and masterly sense of which colour blends with which.  Or whether the lines of a Porsche 928 are superior in style to those of a Ferrari.  This is really what Libra is concerned with.  Marriage, yes.  Most Librans think a lot about marriage, too.  It's rare to find a Libra who remains unmarried for long.  There's something about the ritual, the ceremony, the sense of togetherness, the rings, that appeal to the delicate quality of stylization in Libra's nature.  It's the marriage of opposites, the balancing of things which are incompatible and