MIRROR, MIRROR... REFLECTIONS ON VENUS

As a kid in school, my imagination was sparked by reading of Captain James Cook's voyage to Tahiti in 1769. Cook's mission was to observe the Transit of Venus for the Royal Society, furthering scientific and navigational knowledge, before going in search of the legendary Southern Continent.

On 5th - 6th June 2012, we will again be able to see Venus as a small black dot against the  backdrop of the Sun*. This transit or obscuration occurs in pairs eight years apart, separated by 121.5 years and 105.5 years. The 2012 Transit is the second of our current pair - the first occurring in 2004 - and the next transit of Venus will not be until 2117.

Such rare and spectacular events suggest great astrological significance, though equally they are hard to put into context. There are correspondences looking back through history, whether or not we can credit Venus transits for these in isolation:

• 1518/26 First circumnavigation of the globe, Christian Reformation, Cortez conquering the Aztecs, Conquistadors bringing back Xocolatl - chocolate - to Europe.
• 1631/39. Rise of rationalism/ scepticism, Galileo, Descartes, First regular mail service in Europe. 
• 1761/69. International co-operation on observation of Transit, 'discovery' of Australia,  birth of American revolution.
• 1874/82. Height of Victorian era, founding of World Postal Union, laying of transatlantic telegraph, invention of the telephone.
  
  

Venus transits occur only in the signs of Gemini and Sagittarius, while Venus is retrograde, and common themes revolve around breakthroughs in thought and exploration. We are probably too close to have any historical perspective, sandwiched between our two present Venus transits, but the world financial meltdown, the digital age and the rise of social networking will probably be the standout features of our time, in retrospect.

Print is disappearing and in the UK particularly, the Geminian nature of this occultation is reflected in the national debate over press ethics. A succession of politicians and journalists have been paraded in front of the Leveson Inquiry, with some prominent media figures facing jail time, who only recently had an almost untouchable aura. 


Venus is the only major planet to be named for a female deity. She spins in a different direction to all the other planets, symbolically representing our need to adapt to others in relationship. Venus's day is also longer than her year (ie, it takes longer for her to revolve once on her axis than to orbit the Sun). We have all heard of Lazy Librans, while Taurus teaches us to savour our earthy pleasures slowly. The mythic Venus-Aphrodite was famously beautiful and jealous, and the planet's glyph has been called the 'hand-mirror of the Goddess'. 

In terms of specific Venusian qualities, we are clearly having a realignment of material values, or as somebody put it, a world financial colonic irrigation (Old Mother Earth could do with a face-lift too). The West has higher standards of living than ever, except with greater divisions of wealth, with nobody ultimately being much happier. We are a global community of smiley-happy, linked-in friends now, and what better time to inaugurate a more peaceful Venusian world. It is easy to get carried away with starry-eyed visions at such times, but esoterically, we might see Venus coming in front of the Sun as a vital infusion of feminine energy into a masculine Solar-dominated world. The return of the Goddess, and a universal shift from the Mars Chakra to the Venus Centre in the Heart. 


It is also not too much of a leap to see symbolic meaning in a transit in 2012, of all years. The ancient Maya had a particular reverence for Venus, which they identified with their god Quetzacoatl, the so-called Plumed Serpent. They had a sophisticated knowledge of Venus's orbit and synodic cycle, her disappearance into the underworld at her inferior and superior Solar conjunctions, and then her rebirth as the Morning and the Evening Star. They treated Morning Star Venus with special fear and awe, as a time for war. The extent to which the Aztecs saw Hernan Cortez as the personification of Quetzacoatl is disputed, but some accounts claim that the 1518 Transit of Venus lay at the heart of Montezuma's fatalistic attitude to the Conquistadors.


Venus's synodic cycle with the Earth is a something of a chestnut for Western astrologers, with its precise five-pointed star, or five petaled rose, describing an idealized planetary mandala. Would that all planets' cycles described so graphically their inherent astrological nature (which at some level, admittedly, they must do). Venus corresponds so elegantly to the Earth's orbit, and their mutual dance of five conjunctions, or 'kisses', over an eight-year period has a strangely seductive quality for anyone studying the subject. I have read accounts of astro-dramas, where the symbolic 5:8 cycles have been choreographed and re-enacted among participants, to great effect. However you decide to tap into it, it is a particularly lovely, harmonious energy to work with. 


                                  

                                         'There's a little black spot on the sun today...'

* Sky-watchers in the UK will only get an hour of the Venus Transit at sunrise on 6th June, and only then with a clear sky and unobstructed horizon. Take care, and of course never look at the sun directly.