Journey to the Heart of Venus (I)

COSMOS

Harmonic Resonance, Consciousness and Purpose

Originally, the word cosmos meant "benign order" or "ornament" and implied an aesthetic, ethical and intentional arrangement of the whole. This "whole" referred to the Earth, the Heavens and all that is found in them. So, in this understanding the word cosmos conjoined the beautiful, the good and the true in a single constellation of values that were perceived as inherent in the universal order. (Part of this primordial meaning still lives on in the word "cosmetic" = method or technique that results in an aesthetic improvement or beautification)

During the 6th century BCE, the semi-mythical figure of Pythagoras (pytha goras = buddha guru = enlightened teacher) spreads through his teachings this tripartite conceptualization of the cosmos. This is an echo of the unified vision of reality originating in the remote past, inherited and passed on through the mystery schools of Egypt. Thus, the word cosmos gets to stand for a vision of reality in which the universe is endowed with harmonic resonance, consciousness and purpose. This is the Pythagorean vision of the Music of the Spheres, the universe as symphony, or Harmonices Mundi (the Harmonies of the World) as it was called by Kepler in its revolutionary astronomical treatise. It is with this specific cluster of meanings, that the word cosmos is going to be used throughout the whole of this three-part article.

Cosmocean. © Xavier de la Huerga 2012

The Diabolical Metamorphosis of Venus

In this same plane of cosmic resonances, we find the feminine astro-mythological archetype of Venus-Aphrodite, with attributes such as beauty and love ruling over the sustainment of harmony in the world. Her sphere of influence encompasses music, dance, poetry, passion and sexuality. Her mythological birth from the sea foam is a metaphoric reverberation of the primordial truth of our origins - the origins of all life on Earth - in the uterus of the oceanic matrix. As well as the emergence in the cosmos of the human soul; the emanation of the archetype of harmonic perfection. Beauty, love and truth as morphogenetic field, shaping living matter around itself.

When Cronos (Time) emasculates his father Uranus (Space/The Sky), his genitals (generative power) fall into the ocean/uterus and, out of the rising foam, Aphrodite is born. Pneuma (the breath of spirit) imparts consciousness, while Nature covers with her mantle (matter) the child of time and space, whose manifestation takes place through the agency of light, symbolised in the conch shell.

In its astronomical aspect, the epithets lucifer and vesper correspond to the two visibility phases of the planet Venus in its synodic cycle, during which it alternates between morning star (lucifer) and evening star (vesper). Lucifer is the latin translation from the Greek word phosphoros - bringer of light - , while vesper is hesperos - dweller in the West. Lucifer was also the epithet of other goddesses associated with light; Diana lucifera, goddess of the full Moon, Aurora lucifera, goddess of dawn...

A Roman denarius depicting Diana Lucifera, Moon goddess, sister of the Sun god Apollo, carrying a torch as her title "bearer of light" implies.

The transference of the epithet lucifer to the judaic-christian archetype of Satan takes place with the translation of the Vulgate Bible by Jerome of Stridon at the end of the fourth century CE, specifically, with the translation of Isaiah 14:12. How did this extravagantly erroneous interpretation of the word lucifer came to be? This is a long and tortuous story that gos back to the group of texts known as the Septuagint Bible and its posterior interpretation by Origen of Alexandria. Curiously, part of the answer seems to be found in the heated relationship between Jerome and a polemic bishop in Cagliari (Sardinia) who went by the name of Lucifer Calaritanus and is still nowadays celebrated locally as Saint Lucifero. It is likely that he was excommunicated for his unorthodox interpretation of the Bible. In fact, Jerome wrote a pamphlet attacking him and his followers (Altercatio Luciferani et Orthodoxi - The Dispute between the Luciferian and the Orthodox).

It doesn't belong in this pithy article to continue unravelling the details of this obscure saga. Be that as it may, the demonisation of the epithet lucifer ends up being an early chapter in the history of the devaluation of the feminine principle kickstarted by the rise of patriarchal monotheistic religions.

Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Ocultum Lapidem - © Xavier de la Huerga 2012

The Pentagram. A Satanic Symbol?

One of the "staples" of sacred geometry is the five-pointed star, pentagram, pentacle, or pentalpha. A symbol that, as we will see later on, has a deep relationship with Venus, both in its astronomical reality and in connection with the archetypal attributes of its goddess form. Consequently, the characteristics associated with the pentagram bring us back to the thematic continuum of Cosmos; ethics, aesthetics and truth.

The pentagram was revered by the Pythagorean school as the epitome of geometric perfection and the visible manifestation of the immanent beauty in the cosmos, because of the harmony in its proportions, symmetry and prodigious mathematical properties. Pythagorean initiates use it as an insiders' sign to recognize themselves and they call it Hygieia (Greek) Salus (Latin), being those the names of the feminine deification that stood for health and hygiene, the healing arts and pharmacopeia.

Ring from a member of the Pythagorean academy at Croton Pythagorean academy (Fourth Century BC). It bears the inscriptions: 'SALUS' - 'YGEIA' surrounded by the serpent of Ygeia. Drawing by V. Cartari from Le Imagini degli Dei degli Antichi (1647)


Hygeia-Salus nurturing the serpent

In the Greek pantheon, Hygeia is the daughter, sister or sometimes consort of Asclepius. Basically, his feminine counterpart that originally predates him as the deity of healing, but was in a warrior-dominated society, diminished to a secondary role. She is portrayed carrying a serpent and a small dish from where the serpent drinks or eats, symbolizing her capacity to nurture and regenerate the vital force. This serpent and bowl, have become the symbols for the pharmaceutical profession in the Western world.

In the same manner as the lucifer epithet, the pentagram has ended up suffering an inversion of its original and true meaning. This happened during the mid nineteenth century when the imaginative and influential French occultist Alphonse Louise Constant (who wrote under the pen name of Eliphas Levi) publishes his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, where he declares arbitrarily and without any historical factual support, that the downward-pointing pentagram stands for the principle of evil. Likewise, the pentagram that Eliphas Levi places upon the forehead of his famous illustration of Baphomet - the supposed deity worshipped by Templar Knights -, is fifty years later included in the "Devil" card of the popular Rider-Waite Tarot, thus reinforcing the modern association of the pentagram (specially, the downward-pointing pentagram) with the archetypal representation of Satan. This relationship has been exacerbated in the collective imagination through the means of Hollywood, the mass disinformation media and by the use of this symbol by figures with egomaniac, narcissistic traits; like Anton Lavey, founder of the Church of Satan in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Baphomet, Eliphas Levi s. XIX El Diablo, Tarot Rider-Waite s. XX Le Diable, Tarot de Marseille s. XV

Certainly, before the nineteenth century the pentagram (whose first examples appear in Babylonian cuneiform tablets dating 5,500 years ago) not only wasn't associated with the principle of evil, but it actually was considered a talisman capable of bestowing protection against any of its forms or incarnations. An example of this belief in its protective power appears in Goethe's masterpiece Faust. During the third scene of part one, the devil (Mephistopheles) is blocked by the presence of a pentagram in a room to the point that, only when a mouse gnaws on it, is the devil capable of moving on.

It is obvious that, throughout history, European practitioners of the healing arts utilized the pentagram in one way or another. Hence, the names of witchfoot and drutenfuss (druid´s foot) by which it was known in the British Isles and Germany. Even so, the pentagram was never condemned by the Christian orthodoxy, as its abundant presence in uncountable churches and cathedrals throughout Christendom indicates, as well as its extensive use by early gnostic christians. This, together with the lack of any evidence for its identification by the Inquisition as an element of "devil worship", confirms the modernity of the fallacy of the pentagram as an emblem of the satanic.

(Left) Clay tablet with proto-cuneiform writing and pentagram. (Centre) Magnified detail (Jemdet Nasr, 3.000 a.C.). (Right) Gnostic Amulet, third century CE.

But the true "magic" that the initiates of the past revered in the five-pointed star went further beyond its mere talismanic usage. This had to do with the understanding of this figure as a symbol of the elemental structure of the cosmos - the four elements plus ether, or spiritual quintessence - and because its whole geometry was an expression of the mathematical constant known as the Golden Ratio, which will be explored in Part II of Journey to the Heart of Venus.

ASTROGEOMANCIA - Con las raíces en el cielo

Wednesday 31 May 2023