Venus Queen of Heaven
The Planet Venus
The Queen of Heaven
In this post I will be looking at the planet Venus and her meanings. I will look at the ancient goddess associations of the planet, as well as modern ideas about her, and take a look at the transits of Venus through the remaining months of 2021. While I will offer that analysis, this article is written to be timeless in its nature - a synopsis of my views on this planet and the goddess(es) that work through its energies.
Justified and Ancient
The oldest deity associations we know of for the planet that we call ‘Venus’ is the Sumerian goddess Inanna, who was a maiden goddess known as the ‘Queen of Heaven’ and a goddess of love, fertility, sex, the arts and prosperity, but also war - all passions seem to have fallen under her purview. She is an established deity with temples and cult centers from at least the fourth millennia b.c.e. in Sumer. I suspect her origins are much older. In time, she influences other cultures and is adopted into and/or influences ideas about goddesses of their pantheons becoming such deities as Ishtar, Astarte, Asherah, Atargatis, Aphrodite, Venus, and I suspect she lives on in Christin tradition as Mary Magdalene, as well as the stories of the Fairy Queen and in the Cult of Elizabeth Tudor - the Gloriana of the English Golden Age. She comes right on down to us in popular culture from Mae West, through the divas of Hollywood’s golden age, such as Veronica Lake and Marilyn Monroe to the great pop divas from Cher to Madonna and Lady Gaga, just to name a few the many I could cite. I suspect that her origins though are truly ancient, going back to our deepest antiquity as a species - at least to the Laurasian mythemes, if not the Gondwana or even Pan-Gaean mythemes (see Witzel, Michael for details on these ancient mythemes).
It is interesting to note that all the written records we have of this deity associated with the planet Venus come to us from no earlier than the descending bronze age of the Yuga cycle, millennia after the end of the ascending gold age. In fact, we are closer in time to the descending bronze age than people of the descending bronze age were to the ascending gold age. We look backwards and think ‘ancient times’ and that becomes a timeless blur, but to even consider the history of the last descending and ascending cycle, we are looking at a period of about 26,000 years. We are now in the ascending cycle, having just recently entered the ascending bronze age, and have only been in the ascending side of the cycle for about 1,300 years, having just completed the ascending iron age, which is the first age of the ascending side of the cycle. We are only now able to begin to implement ascending energies, as the iron energy, even ascending, is still the lowest energy and allows little advancement. While we can not yet fly, we now can walk. While we can not yet run, at least we are no longer crawling.
I suspect that in the ascending cycle the goddesses become paramount, as male deities became paramount during the descending cycle. I don’t believe that we become a matriarchy, or ever were a matriarchy. I just think that a specific energy is prominent through the ascending cycle, and that energy is constructive, life-giving, lifting upward and creative. These are the forces associated with goddesses from the earliest records we have, and while they have been gradually diminished through the last few millennia, and especially so as we entered the lowest parts of the descending Yuga cycle through the precessional ages of Aries and Pisces, this is actually what one would expect from the energy of Kali Yuga (the iron age). I feel that in the ancient gold age, and before it in the ascending side of the cycle leading up to the gold age, there was a greater balance than we see now.
Modern astrology, both Western and Vedic, is a product of Indo-European mythemes and thought - by its very nature, patrifocal. While many treat Vedic and Western forms of astrology as though they are very different, they really aren’t and the deeper you dive into both, the more similarity you find, with the underlying deities through which the planets are described being the same basic Indo-European deities with a focus on gods over goddesses. Recent scholarship has shown a strong connection between early Greek astrology and Vedic astrology and suggests early diffusion of concepts, but the real root, I suspect, goes back to the very roots of their common Indo-European origin, with both cultures receiving their initial astrological influences from the Babylonians. Later diffusion of Greek astrology to India was likely not the source of astrology in India, but a sharing of concept between cultures that were superficially different, but with a common origin in Yamnaya migrations in the descending silver age. Where you can find quite “different” astrology is when you dive on back further into Mesopotamian strains of astrology. When you compare Mesopotamian astrology to either Greek or Vedic forms, there are some distinct differences, and doing so makes it clearer that Western and Vedic lineages are closely related and deriving from a common root.
In modern strains of astrology, east and west, when we look at the traditional planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) we note that of the seven, only two are ruled by goddesses, while the other five are ruled by gods. They all have pretty much the same deities and deity associations in Western and Vedic sources. To me, this reflects the common Indo-European origin of both cultures, and the patrifocal bias of the Indo-Europeans in general. I would like to offer my own view of the planetary rulerships. I want to be clear that I am not asking you to “believe” me, to practice what I will write here or to change anything about how you think about or practice astrology. This is my view - my personal mythology - and I don’t need it validated or reflected back to me by any other humans. But I will say that I suspect this more balanced approach to the rulerships of the planets is reflective of the more balanced, egalitarian nature of cultures that I suspect existed in the last ascending cycle.
To start, I would reiterate that as I have pointed out before, I think the goddess(es) were the paramount deities of the ascending cycle and the last gold Yuga age. I suspected she remained paramount well into the early parts of the descending cycle, probably through all of the descending gold age and at least into the descending silver age, though clearly, within the descending silver age she is already loosing ground. I do not think there were matriarchal cultures in our past, but I do think that cultures were less patriarchal (as we understand that today) and more egalitarian. Do I think there were natural divisions of labor amongst the sexes, realms where one gender held more sway or influences? Yes, because as someone well-versed in natural sciences, biology and evolution, that is how mammalian evolution tends to work. However, a natural division of labor does not imply male domination and adulation, nor a stratified pyramid scheme style of culture. It simply implies that there would have been a tendency for one gender or the other to play certain roles. I mean, none of the males would have ever given birth, for example, so childbirth would have been a female specialty, even if some males would have at times helped in the birthing process as spiritual personages or medicine people. Biologically in mammals, males tend to be physically larger and stronger, though that is not true in every case. Males likely would have taken on the larger role in hunting and guarding/protecting the tribe (which in time mutated into the warrior ethos in the descending cycle), but there would almost certainly have been instances of females who hunted, and females certainly would have assisted in the work of processing the animals hunted.
Another example of biological separation of the sexes is that we have no evidence that one biological female was ever able to impregnate another biological female. These are just biological realities, even though our acculturation may expand on or modify them, and our sciences may greatly expand upon them in the future. Within the confines of basic biological realities, I suspect the majority of our ancestral history was less stratified and more egalitarian, neither a true “patriarchy” or “matriarchy”, but something with complex roles and divisions of labor that fell along the lines of biological realities, along with acculturated meaning and symbolism that might have become codified through tradition and taken on a habitual role. The reason that I think goddesses were likely paramount throughout much of the last ascending cycle (at least) is because of the many female icons found from our paleolithic past, the presence of female deities as a (if not the) major focus of worship through the early Neolithic right down into the beginning of the descending Yuga bronze age, the particular stories of the earliest goddesses that survive down to us, and the fact that only females can give birth to another human being. With our modern understanding of biological sciences, we may have much less superstitious awe concerning this than our ancient ancestors had. I suspect this was the preeminent role of the goddess, the divine, and because the continuation of the human race through time was literally derivative of the female body, and all things came into the world through the female form of its kind (for the most part) the act of creation itself was associated with a female divine being or spirit.
I feel that ancient beliefs followed observable reality, and so the ideas of the divine took on the form of what we observed. Biologically in mammals, births tend to be about 50% male and 50% female, being based in the random assortment of the X and Y chromosomes of males. Further, intersexed individuals do occur within nature, including the human race, and sexual orientation is a variable spectrum within all animal species. All of these things would have been observed and early belief would have formed around these observations, so I feel that there would have been a greater balance in the deity rulership of the five observable “moving stars” (planets) and the two lights (Sun and Moon).
For me, here is how I break up the seven observable planets. Sun, Moon and Venus are feminine and associated with goddesses. Mars, Saturn and Jupiter are male and associated with gods (goddess consorts), while Mercury (the messenger) is mutable and neutral - both genders and neither; male, female, genderless, gender transgressive and/or intersexed as the situation requires - associated with the ‘go-between’ archetype of all those who were biologically and/or culturally outside the dualism of “male” and “female”.
I think the preeminent goddess of the paleolithic was a Sun goddess. We see remnants of her descending through such Indo-European goddesses as the Greek Eos (deriving from the Indo-European root goddess Hausos), and surviving into modern times with the Japanese Shinto goddess Amaterasu, for example. I suspect the ancient solar goddess was THE goddess - the life-giving light of the Sun, the ultimate source of life on earth and a symbol of the light of creation from which the Universe sprang. Venus and Moon still retain goddess associations, but I think the combination of Sun, Moon, Venus creates the triple goddess, which would appear to be an ancient mytheme, complimented by a trinity of male deities - consorts to the three goddesses of the triple goddess.
I think that while the female goddesses were seen as representing the giving of life, the males gods were seen as protectors. This would have manifested as the hunter and the guardian, because we evolved hunting for our nourishment and in a world filled with massive, aggressive, capable predators, and no humans could have survived without hunting and protection. The skills that made the hunter also made the protector. Physically stronger bodies due to testosterone would have made this a predominantly biological male pursuit, though certainly, there would have been cultures where females took an active role in this as well, or at least some individual biological females would have in some instances. The three planets that symbolized this were Mars (who I suspect was the hunter and later became the warrior as the descending age fell over the minds of humans), Jupiter (who I feel was the active expanding force of new lands and bountiful hunts, becoming the head of the religious pyramid scheme in the descending cycle) and Saturn (who I feel was the contractive source of protection through caves, boundaries, group cooperation and the skills to make weapons - skills requiring practice and patience and was the preeminent of these three, becoming the outcast old god of restriction during the descending cycle and the supremacy of Jupiter).
Mercury then, as the go-between and intermediary, would have symbolized all those who were neither strictly “male” or “female”, those who in any way moved between the two poles of the spectrum. This would be a catch-all for all in-between states and, as is appropriate for Mercury, as a deity of the liminal, can’t be described as just one thing. Further, as go-between and messenger, this energy can team up with any of the other planets to produce particular manifestations. For instance, team up Mercury and Mars and you might have a woman who is as strong as any man and just as capable a hunter. She might be attracted to either or both of the other sexes, or to the intermediate. She might identify as male, female or intermediate (by whatever name). As another example, When Venus and Mercury teamed up, you might see biological males who practiced culturally female arts, serving in typically female roles, as reflected in the child of Hermes and Aphrodite, Hermaphroditos. Again, such males might have been anywhere on the spectrum in terms of sexual attraction and might take on any of the potential gender identifications with the cultural milieu. The point is that Mercury serves as a place where paradox can reside, because it is observable that, while most of existence really does manifest through the binary of duality, not all of it does, and so for all the black and white, there is plenty of gray connecting them. Very ancient humans were mixing pigments. Do you think once they had a black and a white pigment they didn’t at times mix them and end up with gray? Their beliefs reflected what they could observe.
So in the same way that we have “day sect” and “night sect” planets with Mercury as the neutral balancer, the division of gender for the planets that I tend to think in, and suspect would be closer to how the deep ancients thought, is a system of three “male” or “Yang” and three “female” or “Yin” with the intermediate balancer who can interact and interrelate with each set creating a deeply balanced and evenly weighted arrangement. I realize this is different than what you have learned in either Western or Vedic astrological traditions, and I am not asking you to adopt it, saying it is “the truth” or asking you to change your thinking in any way, form or fashion. I am simply sharing my personal mythology. Use it if you find it useful.
I suspect that throughout the descending Yuga cycle, there has been a decreasing of the emphasis on the goddess archetype in favor of a focus on the male god archetype, with those male gods going from hunter/guardian to warrior/ruler. I want to be clear that I am not seeking to undervalue the male. I think it is essential and has its place and is magnificent, but I think the undervaluing of the female and over-valuing of the male, along with the focus on violence, domination/conquest and expansion exemplified by the warrior/ruler paradigm, creates an imbalance that is not life-affirming and in the longterm builds destructive momentum. I do not want to see the male lost or subjugated, replaced or eliminated. What I want to see is balance regained, not to reduce men, but to lift up both the feminine and the in-between (as represented by Mercury) to stand with the male in a blanked way. I think that this is the only doorway to the survival of our species, and I think this is the force of evolution that the ascending energies have been taking and will increasingly continue to take. This is the rise of the Goddess, not the enslavement and destruction of the God.
Even in the written historical records, we see a diminishing of the Goddess. We will focus on Inanna-Venus, but this would apply to all the goddesses of antiquity. With just the example of Inanna, we see this female maiden deity go from being the Queen of Heaven and patron goddess of Uruk to, eventually, the Roman Venus. What a contrast! With each retailing of the Inanna story by a later culture, she is reduced in stature and power, changed to match the culture, with fewer attributes. Even for the Greeks, she, as Aphrodite, was one of the Titans. Last born of Uranus, brought forth when Kronos castrated his father Uranus to take the throne. Sister of Kronos/Saturn, she was a Titan, but by the time of the Romans, she is relegated to a mere daughter of Jupiter, and no longer a Titan. In the Vedic traditions the goddess Lakshmi is associated with the planet Venus. Lakshmi is one of the trinity of goddesses forming the Tridevi, where she still carries many more attributes, muck like the goddesses Aphrodite or Ishtar/Inanna, though Lakshmi is still comparable to the goddess Venus - just with more attributions and associations.
Astrological Understanding
We say, in astrology, that Venus represents love, beauty, goods, abundance, relationships, values, luxury, arts and our aesthetic, but is that all she represents? I would say no. I would say that this is a truncated view of her, handed down to us through the iron age.
Who Is She?
So who do I think she is, how does she manifest in my personal mythos? To begin with, she is one of a triumvirate - Sun, Moon, Venus - with Venus playing the role of the maiden. Her chief association is passions. All of them - good and bad. Remember that the brain regions of the amygdala and the hypothalamus are intimately involved in emotions and such activities as sex and violence. So she is love and peace as much as war and hate. It is important to remember that she is Ereshkigal as much as Inanna, Persephone as much as Aphrodite, Proserpina and much as Venus. She is the very creative fountain in its fertile, spring form. She is the light of the Sun brought into new, creative and passionate form in the material. While the light of the Sun is so powerful that she can burn, the cool light of the Morning and Evening star enflames the passions. Sex, goods (the bounty of artisanship and husbandry), arts, love, relationships and relating - whatever form that takes. While Venus is the maiden, the Moon is the mother and the Sun is, well, not the crone exactly, as much as the realized, life-giving source, the primal light of life, which the maiden derives from and the crone returns to at death. She is the end of seeking and the source of all life. Venus is her fresh-faced arrival back into the realm of matter, ready to passionately create and continue the cycle. She makes the rain fall and the plants grown, the new animals be born and the endless creative innovations of culture. She is the thing all creation is grasping to hold, to be, to experience, and the Vedic sources associate her, through Lakshmi, with Maya (the physical illusion). It might all be illusion, but Venus reminds us that it doesn’t have to be ugly or miserable. Since we can shape Maya through our intentions, we can make it a sweet dream or a nightmare. The energies of the descending cycle seem to have preferred the nightmare. I don’t think the ascending cycle will be happy with that same nightmare. I’m just sayin’…
What Does She Want?
This is the real question. What does she want? Beauty, pleasure, bounty, intelligence, cheerful interaction, passion, color, artifice, music, good conversation, in short… all the feels! I feel her most natural allies amongst the other planetary gods are Saturn and Mercury. Granted, Mars is a big turn-on, but doesn’t make congenial longterm company. When the heat has worn off with Mars, Venus is back to Mercury and Saturn, but why? Knowledge and communication. To create Venus’ vision, Saturn is absolutely essential - has the knowledge and ability to bring it about, and Mercury has to translate her directives to the rest of the gods, and to humankind, from the upper world to the middle world to the underworld, and only Mercury can enter all worlds as the go-between.
Kronos/Saturn, as brother to Aphrodite/Venus and fellow Titan, or as the wise Enki to Inanna’s coy maiden, is on par with her. They are of a generation, even if he is the oldest and she the youngest of that generation. They are primal forces, stronger and more fundamental to existence than the other gods of the physical. Venus and Saturn create the vision and bring it into physical reality. This parity between these two primal forces is the origin of form. The only fundamental beyond them is the original light (represented by the Sun). which is shattered into the bits they use to make the physical reality. Beyond that, all the other deities and planetary energies are playing within the realm of Venus and Saturn. The Moon creates its cycles. Mars seeks to tear it apart and penetrate it. Jupiter expands it. Mercury can move between any parts of it and so is the messenger moving between levels and realms freely.
Saturn and Venus really only seem to want one thing, above all things, from humans. They do not want your obedience. They want your creativity and the transcendental power of your experience. They value all experience, but those experiences where the individual gives themselves over to the creative force and becomes a conduit for the direct intervention of Venus and Saturn in the world are especially valued and empowered. Venus is the force and energy of creation - passion - and Saturn is the power of manifestation - physical form. They want you to embrace ‘YOU’, even if that makes you an outsider, which both have a special relationship and affinity to, to begin with. Further, I am given to remind you that while we are not yet in the precessional age of Aquarius, we are in a smaller Saturn cycle that began in December 2020 with the new Saturn/Jupiter cycle beginning (both for twenty years and the next two hundred years of their air cycle), at the beginning of Tropical Aquarius and Sidereal Capricorn - both ruled by Saturn. This means that while we are in this cycle, especially for the next twenty year, but also for the entire two-hundred years, and then on into the precessional age of Aquarius, we are under the rulers of Saturn, and thus Venus is elevated too. Saturn is the ruler of almost the entire spending bronze age, through the precessional ages of Aquarius and Capricorn. So you can bet your sweet ass that Venus will be headlining!
Venus in the Later Part of 2021
It has been interesting to observe Venus since the Great conjunction of December 2020. She was close to Saturn, in a supportive sextile, during the Great Conjunction and has moved through the zodiac to make a conjunction with Mars and opposition to Saturn in July 2021. She is now in the superior position to Saturn and will remain so throughout 2021, as will Mars. What is significant though is that once Venus made the conjunction with Mars, she quickly moved past Mars. This is very important, and doubly so now because of the empowerment of Venus through Saturn, yet I have seen little mention of this fact. She is now the lead planet and is in her evening star phase. This gives her a powerful and outsized influence for the rest of the year, and gives us her softer energy. For much of the first half of 2021, all the planets were in-between the South Node and the North Node. Mars was the first planet to cross out of that containment. And while Sun and Mercury, as well as Venus, have moved out of the containment over the last few weeks, Venus is the first to cross over Mars (getting a little friction and energy in the process). This now puts her in the lead position and ‘cancels’ Mars as lead planet for the rest of 2021, until the conjunct again in Tropical Capricorn in February of 2022, when Mars will again cross over Venus and move in front of her for a few days. This is as they are both approaching Saturn.
However, by the time they conjunct Saturn in March of 2022, Venus, picking up speed after her recent retrograde, conjunctions with Pluto and cazimi with the Sun, will have again crossed over Mars to take the lead, taking on her Morning Star phase in January 2022, and will conjunct Saturn first before Mars can reach Saturn. She will remain in this state, out in front of Mars, throughout 2022 and much of 2023. It is very helpful that Venus will blunt the energies of Mars throughout the rest of 2021, as Mars will make a difficult superior square to Saturn and opposition to Uranus in November of 2021. We should remember that another aspect of Venus is fairness and justice. At the Mars/Saturn square of November, Venus will be semi-sextile Saturn and sextile Mars, serving as a buffer between the two and almost certainly seeing women stepping up to the plate to deliver needed balance and direction at what might be a very difficult time. With her switch to Morning Star, she will take on her more active, aggressive Warrior goddess face.
Another important aspect of Venus this fall will be her next retrograde cycle, which will start with Venus in conjunction with Pluto, and both within one degree of the US natal Pluto at 27 degrees of Tropical Capricorn, as Pluto is moving to make its first pass of the US Pluto Return. Once Venus goes direct, Pluto will have made the first conjunct return to the natal US Pluto and both Venus and Mars will join Pluto at that degree at that time, all in rulership by Saturn (in both Tropical and Sidereal systems). Venus will also resume her morning star phase within five degrees of conjunction to Pluto at her next cazimi. It would appear to me that Venus is serving as Saturn’s publicist and public representative here at the beginning of this new Saturnian cycle. I expect important shifts to occur at every level of society through the next year and over the next decade, especially here in the US and within the US political system. I will have more to say on these themes in later posts, and especially as the US Pluto return draws nearer.
On the personal level, the later part of 2021 and early 2022 gives each of us an opportunity to embrace our creativity more deeply, to own both Venus and Saturn more fully, and manifest their desires in the world. Fighting that will not be productive, and I feel for those who seek to swim against the stream at this time of change and renewal. Just remember, Venus is goddess of all passions, including war, and if you turn the laughing maiden against you, she will take up Ereshkigal’s face, Athena’s sword and Artemis’ bow, and will call up the legions of Ishtar/Inanna. She may have been crippled and diminished throughout the depths of the iron age, but her power is returning, and she knows it. She might look like Elle Woods from the movie Legally Blonde, but she will cut a bitch…
The rest of 2021 supports your creativity and your self-actualization. What brings you passion? Find that and get to it! In popular culture, Venus manifests strongly through powerful female archetypes - Madonna and Lady Gaga with their troupes of dancing gala priest(ess)es are one very good example - fierce and beautiful, unapologetic and self-motivated. Not necessarily soft and retiring, but bold and claiming their place, whether you like it or not. You might look at the work of Lil Nas X, Trixie Mattel or Orville Peck to see what her priest(ess)hood is currently up to. See Ariana Grande’s video for her song ‘God Is A Woman’ to get some insight on Venus’ intentions. Venus doesn’t want to get rid of men. She just wants them to clean up a little, get out of their death cult of the warrior/ruler dynamic, quit being destructive and recognize her place as Queen of Heaven. May the gods have mercy on those who don’t, and for those who think that Venus is just a trivial, weak, self-obsessed little girl, you need to take into account that you have only seen the manifestation of Venus that the iron age would allow. We are no longer in the iron age, and you can expect a new manifestation of Venus, Saturn-approved and Saturn-empowered. Good luck!
