Moon cycles and women’s cycles dance in cosmic synchronicity, but what about the rhythm of Venus, planet and Goddess of Love? Are we in tune with Her dance and how is She encoded in ancient symbolism?
The priestess gazes beyond her own reflection. Too brilliant to look at, she’s observing, in a mirror, Venus in transit, once diamond bright, now a dark circle merging with the molten fury that is the Sun. Her intermittent orbit, a song of love and loss and ecstatic return, light to dark, dark to light is a fleeting moment of intangible impermanence, showing us how we, on lonely Earth, are cut off from and connected to a rare song.
To understand Venus symbolism it is necessary to understand the way she moves.
According to Joe Pao, Venus-moon encounters occur roughly every 27 days, 7 hours and 43 minutes, approximately one sidereal month [1] [Positions vary according to orbits].
According to exploratorium.edu Venus appears as the Morning Star, visible in the pre-dawn sky for 263 days (late August to March); disappears for 50 days; reappears as the Evening Star, after sunset, for 263 days; then fades from view for eight days [2]. Note: depending on sources, time spans vary, some sources say three days and three nights [3].
Venus transits (when Venus moves in front of the Sun) occur in pairs, eight years apart within a 243 year cycle. Venus transits are rare.
Sparkling bright, she moves in retrograde. The Dance of Earth and Venus, orbiting the sun, forms a five petalled star. Eight Venus years are equal to five Earth years.
The number eight is important in Venus symbolism. The Star of Ishtar (Venus) is an eight-pointed star. Venus intrigued many ancient civilizations, inspiring cosmic mythologies interwoven with psychology. Celestial motion is embedded in the human soul and psyche. Babylonians knew Her as the “divine lady, illumination of heaven.” Ishtar, Inanna, Anahita and Aphrodite were identified with Venus. As the Morning Star, She was called Lucifer. Venus played an important role in ancient Mayan calendars. The Mayan sacred almanac, a 260 day divinatory calendar, is still used by some to track gestation (approximately 266 days). [4] The Aztecs saw Venus as a symbol of death and resurrection.
When it comes to cosmic symbolism, the dark spaces, the void, does the talking. In Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld, her descent, death and resurrection may relate to the disappearance and reappearance of Venus. Viewed as cosmic motion, the story of Inanna [Venus] descending to meet her sister Ereshkigal, the underworld sun Goddess, may have taken place when Venus went dark.[3]
Patterns can represent big ideas. Do patterns on one glyph and two Goddess figurines, separated by time and geography, reveal orbits of Venus consciousness swirling within the Matriverse? By decoding their ornament can Venus be written back into the wider consciousness?
I propose that a fascination with Venus, her movements intuitively observed, has been captured in the mark making and forms of the following three images. Overlaying a template of the Venus Earth Dance onto them, can I unlock their stories and show how the motion of Venus is encoded within them?
[A] This early Bronze Age, silver Anatolian Goddess figurine [circa 2500-2300 BCE, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston] has shimmering feet and breasts, with four golden dots decorating her crescent shaped head.
I propose her head is a Sun Course Symbol. The four dots, possibly eyes and earrings, may also represent the four phases of Venus. Her breast orbs may represent Venus as the Morning and Evening Star. Whilst her head is in the cosmos, her luminous feet walk in the underworld, bringing light there. Perhaps this icon is about Venus descending to meet the underworld sun Goddess [when Venus is in transit]. Note: in total there are eight gilded points depicted on this icon.
Curves within the Venus Earth Dance template appear to align with proportions within the icon, for example her shoulders follow an arc within it.
[B] In Chalking the Eyes in Search of She Who Spins, published Celebrating Inter-cosmic Kinship of the Goddess, Mago Books, I pondered the “possibility of meaning” of one Pictish glyph [600-800 CE, the National Museum of Scotland. See image]. In stone, the artist appears to have chiseled an anthropomorphic female figure emerging from within cosmic alignments and orbits. I’m revisiting this image to cross reference it with the two icons featured here.
I propose the crescent is a Sky / Sun Course Symbol, with a high arc for summer, a low arc for winter. Arrows point up, to the East, for sunrise, downwards, from the West, for sunset. The spirals (divine eyes) below the arrow tips tell the observer to look into the sky at dawn and sunset.
The “breasts” are Venus as the Morning and Evening Star, formed from and shown as both dots and gibbous crescents. Venus appears in whole or as a slither at various stages of orbit.
The “soft cell” curves, shapes found in Nautilus shells and the Golden Section [5], drawn within the crescent, may be a section of the five petalled Venus and Earth Dance.
Overlaying the “soft cells” with the Venus and Earth Dance template reveals the position of the sun where the belly button would be on the human body.
The crescent maybe a recumbent moon. *In Roman and Sumerian mythologies the Crescent Moon & Star symbol honors the cosmic power of the Goddesses Venus & Ishtar.
I am more inclined to think the crescent, drawn as a pair of curves, represents a pair of Venus transits, separated by eight years, as the planet moves in an arc across the Sun. I’ve checked with Nasa’s Eclipse website and there were Venus transits in 667, 789, 797 CE which fits with the time frame for this glyph (789/797 CE if it’s a pair of Venus transits shown). [“Transit Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC.”] At this time the Picts were on the cusp between Paganism and Christianity. Causantín became king of the Picts in 789 CE. As a side note: Female histories were probably redacted by Christian scribes.
The Last-in-a-lifetime Venus transit was visible in north-east Scotland in 2012.
The intersection where the arrows meet, the bottom of the V, corresponding to the vulva V on a female body, is the observation point, the still point on Earth around which all else spins. The lower circle, in the tip of the V, has a smaller circle in its centre, so I do think this glyph is about Venus in transit, visible as a dark circle silhouetted against the sun, observable in a mirror. In OUPblog, Paolo Molaro mentions how mirrors are used to observe this transit [6]. This is interesting because Pictish symbolism features mirrors, possibly for divination and viewing transits and eclipses.
A “soft cell” is a geometric building block with rounded corners, a Golden Section curve [3]. Division and mirroring are one way nature builds itself.
[C] This Neolithic Goddess figurine from the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, Romania, 4050–3900 BCE, is decorated with patterning which at first glance appears decorative. However placing the Earth Venus Dance template over the front facing “soft cell” curves, drawn in her hip / vulva area, a similar alignment reveals itself. There is a sun disc at the bottom of her vulva V. Above it, a dot within a circle, may show a Venus transit.
Two dots and a disc near her throat, perhaps Venus as the Morning and Evening Star drawn above the Sun, with “soft cell” curves at her shoulders, may also relate to Venus.
There’s more: The pattering on the figurine, both back and front, seems to correspond to arcs within the Earth Venus Dance.
[Click to view another Figurine which I think shows a pair of Venus transits. ]
Are these patterns co-incidence or by design? Perhaps the artist intuitively observed Divine Proportion and patterns, scrolling like ferns and shells, the harmonic mathematics of the Golden Section and Fibonacci Sequence, underpinning the structure of nature and the universe, patterns within us all. If so, celestial motion has been etched upon the Goddess, and in particular her womb space, because, as Goddess Nut shows us, our ancestors believed the cosmos was female.
It’s worth considering linguists believe the cyclical patterns adorning the Venus of Pazardzik (Bulgaria 4500 BCE) are part of the “Danube script.”
I hope I’ve done enough, by exploring the possibilities of meaning in this symbolism, to portray these life affirming hyperbolic spirals, crescents, dots and circles as celestial observations, embodying our ecstatic connection to the cosmos. As Anaïs Nin says, “We can throw our dreams into space.”
The Birth of Venus, continues to capture the imagination of artists in the near and ancient past. I believe this planet, just like the moon and sun, vibrates within our souls and psyches.
References
[1] Pao, Joe. See Venus rendezvous with the crescent moon in the night sky tonight (Oct. 5). 4th October 2024. space.com https://www.space.com/venus-moon-conjunction-october-52024?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_content=space.com&utm_source=facebook.com&fbclid=IwY2xjawFvUT1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHc4X1SKhemkaG6vhoHfVXe_tZVXfj7pqidewFZS5zEkBhonqmrv9RwiVew_aem_rAt6WeWn-9_k8N-LGEwDjQ
[2] Chichen Itza. The Motions of Venus. Annex Exploratorium. edu. https://annex.exploratorium.edu/ancientobs/chichen/HTML/caracol3.html
[3] Genesis 1:14-19 DAY 4 The Morning Star, Institute for Biblical & Scientific Studies
[4] Flores, Alfinio, Dr.. Venus Synodic Period and Ancient Mayan Calendars. 07.2106. Journal of mathematics and culture, WordPress. https://journalofmathematicsandculture.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/venus-synodic-period-jmc-final-10-1.pdf
[5] Paul, Andrew. Mathematicians define a new shape – and you’ve probably seen it. September. 20. 2024. Popular Science. popsci.com. https://www.popsci.com/science/new-soft-cell-shape/?fbclid=IwY2xjawFbc-BleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHUJZOA0Pl5YdeJ3IVTdgyziRLZbnyDOYUG776sjgbJepG2gtyih0fMcx1g_aem_S1E36bIFkM2657mce9Rgog
[6] Molaro, Paolo. The science of rare planetary alignments.
October. 8. 2015. OUPblog. Oxford University Press’s Academic Insights for the Thinking World. https://blog.oup.com/2015/10/rare-planetary-alignments/#:~:text=The%20alignment%20of%20both%20the,every%20105.5%20or%20121.5%20years.