What causes retrograde motion? Venus never actually moves backward in space. Both Earth and Venus travel counterclockwise around the Sun in near-circular orbits. However, because Venus is closer to the Sun (mean orbital radius of 0.723 AU vs 1.000 AU for Earth), Kepler’s third law dictates that Venus moves significantly faster: ~35.0 km/s compared to Earth's ~29.8 km/s.

As Venus overtakes Earth on the inside track (like a faster runner on the inner lane of a racetrack), our line of sight projected against the distant background stars appears to slow down, halt at the First Stationary Point, reverse direction westward across the zodiac, and then resume direct eastward motion after passing Inferior Conjunction.

The Celestial Pentagram (Rose of Venus): Earth and Venus share an exquisite near-integer resonance: in exactly 8 Earth years (2,922 days), Venus completes nearly exactly 13 revolutions (2,921.1 days).

Because $13 - 8 = 5$, there are exactly five synodic conjunctions during this period. When you connect the Earth-Venus line of sight at regular intervals or map the five inferior conjunction points around the ecliptic, they land at $360^\circ \times 8/5 = 576^\circ$ ($216^\circ$ apart), forming a near-perfect geometric pentagram or five-petaled rose.