The Visual Journey of Venus: As Heroine and Goddess of Death/Re-birth

By Gary P. Caton

The Visual Journey of Venus: As Heroine and Goddess of Death/Re-birth is Volume 2 in a series of astrological essays from some of astrology's leading lights.
In this essay, Gary Caton explores the mythology, astrology and astronomy of the Venus cycle (the heroine's journey) as she journeys through the sky.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Flare
• Release date: Oct 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781903353585

Gary P. Caton

Gary P. Caton is the author of Hermetica Triptycha and the host of the popular Hermetic Astrology Podcast. He organises the annual Sky Astrology Conference and his website is www.dreamastrologer.com

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The Visual Journey of Venus

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THE VISUAL JOURNEY OF VENUS

As Heroine and Goddess of Death/Re-birth

Gary P. Caton

Counting stars by candlelight, some are dim but one is bright

The spiral light of Venus, rising first and shining best

Oh, from the north-west corner, of a brand new crescent Moon

from ‘Terrapin Station’ by Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia

As the lyrics to this popular song allude, Venus is by far the brightest of the five visible planets and easily outshines all the stars in the sky except the Sun and Moon. In her brightest phases, Venus can cast shadows and can even be seen in broad daylight. Many have seen the star and crescent formation mentioned in this song – a frequent celestial occurrence known as a conjunction of Venus to the Moon. A star and crescent in some combination form the basis of symbols widely found across the ancient world, and remain potent symbols to this day. They are featured on the flag used by many Muslim-majority states, for instance.

It should come as no surprise, then, that records of fairly complex observations of Venus date back to the very origins of civilization. The observations recorded in what is known as the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa date somewhere around the 17th century BCE. Long before the Common Era, Mesopotamian astrologers were well aware of, and even able to predict, the intricate movements of Venus in the sky. In particular the first visual appearances of any planet (or star) were considered extremely important. This event, known as the heliacal rise, was religiously and meticulously followed by Egyptian and Mesopotamian astrologers. In fact regular observations of heliacal risings form the most important records for the later development of mathematical planetary theory. The diaries of the Mesopotamian astronomer/astrologers, which were compiled over several centuries of observations before the Common Era, have been described by scholars as being ‘among the most extraordinary achievements in the entire history of Science’.¹

Some time after the Hellenistic era, with the advent of horoscopic (chart-based) astrology and the Ptolemaic world-view, astrology began to lose touch with some of its early observational traditions. As an abstraction the horoscope or chart hides a great deal of nuance regarding the planets as observable phenomena. Only in the hands of an experienced stargazer and astrological scholar are these nuances revealed. The result is