On Wednesday, May 16, 2018 at 8:11:34 AM UTC+1, Gerald Kelleher wrote:

The phases of Venus dictate its position to the Sun as seen from a slower moving Earth so in effect we see that faster moving planet runs its smaller orbital circuit around our parent star in much the same way we see Jupiter's satellites run around the parent planet -

To see why this is wrong, look up how long Io takes to orbit Jupiter, and how long it takes to go from left of Jupiter to right and back to left.

Then look up how long Venus takes to orbit the Sun, and how long Venus takes to go from Eastward elongation to Westward and back.

This exercise involves looking at numbers, so Gerald is excused.