Venus Celestial Inspirations in Culture and Mythology, Oracle Divination Highlights, and 2022 Morning Star Moon Dances.

 

As with many cultural myths and stories of the hero/heroine’s journey, we are gifted allegories as inspiration to reflect upon our own life’s journey. Through them, we no doubt learn to trust our ourselves, unveil patterns, connect in community, and navigate life’s ups and downs with a little more grace.

 

Ideally, we hope to come out the other side navigating our own resurrection/rebirth/ascent newly formed from these sacred and common life experiences of loss, love, breakups, new jobs, career changes, moments of awe, and all of life’s many beginnings, middles, and endings. Each one changing us. Forever leaving us a little more intimate with our own path and way of being in our small corners of the world and life.

 

Innana, the first daughter of the Moon, is the Sumerian goddess of love, sensuality, fertility, and war. She later became known by the Assyrians and Akkadians as the goddess Ishtar, and then, Phoenician Astarte, Roman Venus, and Greek Aphrodite, to name a few. Sumer in southern Mesopotamia became Babylonia, in our modern day these are the lands, indigenous peoples, and cultures of Southern Iraq from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf.

 

Her myth of descent and return from the Underworld is connected to the Venus cycle, and one I follow and experience as deeply evolving inspiration in my own life. We can see this allegory in many of our world’s richly layered cultural stories, poems, art, mystics, and mythology.

 

Many of the worlds ancient sites and temples were built in alignment with the Solstices and Equinoxes as an honoring and connection to the Celestial realms, our life giving Sun/Son/Sol, and the passing of the Ages. The Venus cycle is one such cycle that’s captivated the hearts and minds through time, and every eight years would align with certain sites such as Newgrange in Ireland, built by the Neolithic people of Ireland.

 

It’s also believed the builders of Solomon’s Temple in, Mount Moriah, Jerusalem, tracked the Venus cycle and built the Temple to honor the planet at the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes.

 

The 19 month Venus cycle begins with her birth as Morning Star after her Inferior Conjunction/Union with the Sun (Venus passes between Earth and Sun), during her retrograde phase. As Morning Star, Innana, Queen of Heaven, makes a decision to go to her sister, Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld/Night.

 

In some myths, she visits her sister to attend the funeral of her brother in law who has died. In others, she’s exploring her reach to extend into the underworld with her newly gained powers known as the meh/me/vestments, that were given to her one drunken night by Enki, the God of wisdom and waters.

 

Where have we perhaps wanted to take over and extend our own rule in life, to be the one in power or the head of something, or to take energy from others for our own gain?

 

Regardless why she goes, Innana, must travel to the underworld because her sister represents the other half, perhaps justice and balance. Just as day needs the night, and light needs the dark, we must all embrace our shadows to become whole. We must embrace the energy of the Tower to dismantle what doesn’t serve us and community.

 

Neither is bad or better than the other, regardless of what society has tried to instill within our cultures, both are one hundred percent whole in their own right and need to unite to fully integrate the fullness of birth, life, death, and rebirth.

 

The, me/meh, which Innana carried with her to the underworld, represent the divine orders of humanity representing culture such as writing, art, song, and others such as truth, victory, and sexuality. She dressed herself in her royal regalia and set off on the heroine’s journey, which is ultimately our journey.

 

After her heliacal rise as Morning Star, she has monthly conjunctions (Venus Moon Dances/Gates) with the old waning crescent crone moon. These are visible each month in the early morning hours before sunrise.

 

Here in the Morning Star phase, in Innana’s mythology, she/ we learn about our descent by releasing false illusions at each of the gates. In what ways do we abuse our own power, misuse our power, mistrust ourselves, betray ourselves and/or other? How do we not serve our life and community? Where are our false illusions of ourself?

 

Then, she’ll have her heliacal set from the morning sky, go though the 60-90 day underworld journey with her sister Ereshkigal (her Superior Conjunction with the Sun as she passes around the far side of the Sun).

 

As with most myths, one typically does not return from the underworld without great sacrifice and change. It is here she’s killed by her sister and her corpse hung on a hook to rot. How many times have you felt like you were hanging on a meat hook in your own life? Left alone to rot? How many times have you felt you may never come through the experience of a hard time in your life? Where do you need to put old ways to death? We see ourselves in her journey, and she in ours.

 

Before Innana’s journey to the underworld, she instructed, Ninshubur, her faithful sukkal (vizier-high official), to help her if she does not return from the journey. Ninshubur, kept her word when Innana failed to return after three days and nights. She found help at the temple of Enki, who fashioned two androgynous creatures from the dirt and instructed them to secretly journey through the seven gates to the underworld with the food of life, and the water of life, and to witness the pain and grief of Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld. 

 

In her gratitude for their ability to be with her in her darkest time, Ereshkigal offered them gifts. But, they only wanted one thing, the body hanging on the hook, Innana. She granted them their wish. Kurgarra sprinkled the food of life on the corpse. Galatur sprinkled the water of life on the corpse, and Innana was resurrected.

 

Just as we are all learning to hold ourselves and other in life’s many experiences of grief, sadness, pain, and hard times, when witnessed from the heart, we may heal and god/goddess willing, we may be gifted rebirth to rise again forever changed and molded into a more integrated, wiser, and more compassionate version of ourselves.

 

Before ascending from the underworld, Annuna, the judges, told Innana she must send a replacement because no one leaves the underworld unmarked or unchanged. As she left, the galla, the demons of the underworld, accompanied her the entire way to be sure she kept her word.

 

Perhaps we can see and sense this as our own ability to befriend and walk with these messy aspects of self we have felt ashamed of and wanted to disregard and shy away from. We are also left marked and changed by our own personal underworld journeys. In order to be whole and come out on the other side of hard times, we must walk with them to integrate, heal, and learn with the fullness of our own expressions.

 

She now ascends from the underworld as Queen of Heaven and Earth, rising as the Evening Star. Perhaps reflecting our growth, healing, softness, love, sensuality, and renewed and restored power. Here each of her monthly conjunctions with the Moon are with the Witches New Moon, a waxing crescent moon, and they can be seen after sunset in the western sky.

 

Upon her return, she must send someone in her place. Modern astrologers and writers refer to this part of the story as Venus’s retrograde phase because during a planet’s retrograde, there’s time for contemplation and reflection. To be more present to our decisions. And so Innana contemplates her decision to choose her replacement.

 

She finds everyone had mourned her except her husband, Dumuzi. And so as the story unfolds, Dumuzi spends half the year in the underworld in her place, and his sister the other half to take his place.

 

Perhaps we can see this as the ever present journey of descent and ascent in our own cyclical lives. Nothing is or will ever be perfect after all, because we are forever changed by these experiences. We will no doubt face messy and chaotic circumstances, shadows and hard times, and will hopefully build resilience, community, and trust to come out once again on the other side.

 

In her retrograde phase, after disappearing from the evening sky and traveling in the light of the Sun fully integrated from her travels to and back from the underworld, she unites in a sacred marriage with the Sun at the Inferior conjunction. At this conjunction and holy marriage, she is birthed once again as Morning Star and begins the new 19 month cycle all over again.

 

As we stand at this new 19 month synodic cycle, as she has risen earlier this month as Morning Star and will leave retrograde and have her first waning moon conjunction with the old balsamic crone moon on 1/29/2022, we join her to cast our magic in our own cycles of descent, only to ascend once again, and again. Our constant refinement and becoming.

 

Venus is associated with love and abundance. She is the ruling planet of Taurus and Libra ,and is therefore carrying a very grounded sensual and earthly energy, but also connected to Ma’at in bringing balance, justice, and change where it is needed in community and relations with self/other.

 

Venus’s planetary atmosphere would literally crush us, so do not for one moment think she is all about love and light. She is Innana, she is Ereshkigal, she is the rose thorn, she is the bloom, she and we, are both.

 

I share guided journeys through this work in the form of meditations, sound musings, oracle divination, reflections, and more about her connection in Hermetic magic, the cycles laid out in the book, The Light of Venus, the Tarot, and the Tree of Life as we journey along together in our Venusian Rhythms Meditation Journeys. Learn more and join the next starting on 2/2/22  HERE.

 

 

Venus Morning Star Oracle Divination Highlights

 

As some of the divination story came through my own writing above, this MS phase divination was very specific in the ways of dismantling the old creation stories of power over and shame. I’m scribing the full divination now and will share it in our Venusian Rhythms Meditation journeys together.

 

As a highlight for you here, wherever and however, known or unknown, you’re upholding false or outdated stories of Lilith (and self) being demonized, less than, and Eve being shamed and blamed for the fall of humankind, or the serpent and apple for being evil, please please surrender them, and heal these stories that have been meant to keep us hiding under the false power of others.

 

Adam and Litlith, Adam and Eve, and every other allegory and myth that has made us believe we are born of sin, needs to be released and healed!

 

At each gate, the Oracle gave specific details which we will work through in our Venusian Rhythms Meditation Journeys. Whether you choose to join us or not, you still have the original rite of Salt and Lavender baths or scrubs at each Venus Moon conjunction.

 

If you feel called, please utilize this rite as a physical way to connect to Source energy and cleanse old outdated ways of being. You may wish to light a candle and also annoint with cedar oil or burn cedar incense as an offering to this story of Innana and Ereskhigal, which is our story.

 

 

Venus Morning Star Moon Dance Calendar

 (Conjunctions with the Waning Crescent Moon every month, in relation to Innana/Ishtar’s story, signifies a conscious choice to release illusions of power at each gate) Exact dates for your time zone can easily be googled and found online. I gathered these dates from and personally love

www.in-the-sky.org 

 

 

 

• 1/29 ~ Gate One, the gate of Authority ~  in Sagittarius (Removes crown) stripping false illusions of authority/connections to divinity.

• 2/27 ~ Gate Two, the gate of Perception ~ in Sagittarius (Gives up Lapis bead earrings or royal staff, stripping her of false illusory powers we give to magic and manifestation without real action. Cue, The Secret movie. LOL.

• 3/28 ~ Gate Three, the gate of Communication ~ in Capricorn (Removes the double stranded necklace, in another story is is the double stranded beads from her breasts) surrendering false illusions in how we communicate authenticity.

• 4/26 ~ Gate Four, the gate of Compassion ~ in Aquarius (Removes her breastplate called, “Come, man, come!”) surrendering ways of not fully love self and other.

• 5/26 ~ Gate Five, the gate of Will/Personal Power ~ in Pisces (Removes gold ring of power around her wrist, in another story the golden hip girdle around her waist) representing the surrender of any false illusions of not trusting oneself and misused power.

• 6/26 ~ Gate Six, the gate of Creativity ~ in Taurus (Surrenders the lapis measuring rod and line, on another story gives up her ankle bracelets) symbolizing the false illusions that she/we are not worthy of creating in the world.

• 7/26 ~ Gate Seven, the gate of Manifestation ~ in Gemini (Removes royal robe as a symbol of any false illusions of life force energy and what may not serve our energy any longer)

• 8/25 ~ Death by choice and surrender to old ways of being.