The Meaning of the Venus Transit in 2012

by Alison Chester-Lambert 

Is Venus Masculine or Feminine? A representative of fundamental, primordial Divine or a slut? Lucifer? The Virgin Mary?.......or a Barbie doll?

And what does it mean when she passes across the face of the Sun near the time of the Summer Solstice in 2012? Revolution actually.....

According to scientist Takeshi Imamura "Venus's atmosphere is in perpetual motion, as if a living thing,"(1)

The planet has high speed winds of sulphuric acid that whip around the planet 60 times faster than the planet itself moves, producing a dynamic, churning maelstrom.The Venusian surface is bone dry and hot enough to melt lead, with a thick atmosphere that is 96% carbon dioxide and a corrosive mist of sulphuric acid. (Sexy huh?) But somehow Venus produces lightening, when according to physics as we know it - that is impossible.

The Japanese scientist says "In so many ways, Venus is similar to Earth. It has about the same mass, is approximately the same distance from the sun, and is made of the same basic materials. Yet the two worlds ended up so different. We want to know why."(2) Did it suffer from a case of global warming run amok – or something else?

Modern pop astrology has tended to reduce Venus’ ancient meanings to those of a loved-up Barbie doll, but there is a surprising amount to contemplate when one investigates more deeply. Interestingly, Venus has phases, depending on which angle we view her from and how the Sun’s light is striking her. So, like the Moon, Venus can also look like a crescent or be `full` as in the full Moon.

And then there is the difference between her appearing in the dusky morning or the fading twilight of the evening. Because Venus is closer to the Sun than the Earth, she can therefore never be more than about 48 degrees away from the Sun as seen by us. So when she’s orbiting round the Sun’s right side, she looks like she’s in front of our star and rises before him in the morning. And when she’s coming back up his left side, she looks like she’s behind him and sets after the Sun in the evening.

Many ancient races attributed different meaning to Venus according to her being the Morning star or the Evening star. Fascinating ethnoastronomical research presented in 1983, analysed the meaning of Venus in 93 different ancient cultural religions/mythologies from predominantly the Middle East and the Americas, and listed the similar meanings.(3)

In the majority of those cultures and as the Morning star, Venus was understood to be masculine by gender with associations to light, fire, power, war, animals and their guardianship, lightening, spiritual guidance and mediation, civilised leadership and day.

As the Evening star she was linked with Femininity, fertility, old age, death and the Netherworld. Out of interest, the ancient Mesopotamians believed the right of the body was masculine and the left side was feminine.(4) Obviously humans are generally stronger on the right, but how come Venus appears stronger there? Um… give up!

It is interesting to consider that astrologically, when Venus is as far away from the Sun as she can get and therefore really distinct in the early or late darkness then she is in a different zodiac sign and therefore competing. The Sun is pouring forth one element and Venus is subscribing to another, describing a natural conflict. However, that doesn’t explain how all those cultures arrived at such similar views of morning and evening positions.

Venus as a Collective or Transiting Energy

We can get a sense of Venus’s rich and diverse history when we see that she has been associated with not just Isis, but also angel Lucifer the light bearer and the Virgin Mary.(5) It is difficult to compare the last character with Venus as representative of a vital reproductive force that stimulates virility and success in war, but there we go. The very ancient races did not have natal astrology with personal horoscopes, so for them, Venus represented a universal energy that could be called on to give protection, power and support.

In transiting astrology (without reference to natal charts) today, she still has these valuable gifts, along with affirmation, success, security, aspiration, achievement and support with earthly acquisition. Venus is an Earth planet and as such, she is a magnetic and attractive force, but this also puts her in a class with Saturn who can then be seen as her higher Earth partner. (Saturn’s Latin roots lie in abundance and prosperity, even though he tends to represent LACK of these things now.)

Venus, Juno and Self Esteem

If you are using Juno in your charts, you won’t need me to tell you what an incredibly accurate planet she is for `marriage` and similar relating issues. Juno seems to pick up the Libran energy and represents the balance of power and exchange of relating in a very literal way; she symbolises the extreme relating emotions and tensions of her mythological character, Hera.

Venus has a broader and wider responsibility as we have seen already, and brings issues of value, self worth and gratification into the game. Still the same need for affirmation and success but with a more desirable, pleasure and fulfilment orientation, for after all, Venus is an Earth planet and Juno is Airy. Venus understands the beauty of form, possessiveness, attraction and manifestation.

Essentially, Venus is much more involved with personal tastes, esteem, values and self-worth than Juno. Perhaps just check your chart for Juno activity on the day you married….. she will then speak for herself. All the planets symbolise keywords and energies that they provide or remove. So just as Venus represents a healthy sense of self-esteem in her positive guise, in her emanation as Apostrophia, she represents loss of self-esteem.

In this way, rejection, either by parents as a child, or rejection in love in later life, results in loss of self-esteem which Venus can easily represent. (Students are always horrified to discover that Venus activity can mean loss of relationship or loosing `possession` of love, just as easily as the acquisition of it!)

Astrological Meaning of a Transit of Venus Across the Face of the Sun

On the 6th June 2012 the planet Venus will pass across the face of the Sun and this is called a Venus transit. It is among that rarest of planetary alignments and only 7 of them have happened since the invention of the telescope. They happen in pairs with 8 years in between them. The dates of previous ones have been 1631 and 1639, then 1761 and 1769, followed by 1874 and 1882 and then finally 2004 which was the opener to a pair which will see the second event in 2012.

Obviously Venus and the Sun conjunct regularly, but ordinarily she passes our star high or low instead of moving across the Sun’s face, and I suspect that this event actually has more impact in terms of meaning. Firstly we have to understand that this event is like an eclipse in that the Sun and Venus have to be on the node where their two paths cross for this to happen and these nodes are important points in space time. Interplanetary space is filled with electromagnetic force lines and gravitational corridors and the intersections where paths cross is a distortion in force lines and plasma flux ropes.

Dr Percy Seymour gave us a new understanding of the magnetic lines of force that emanate from the Sun and I’ll try to explain just a little.(6) The sun’s equator rotates faster than the poles, producing stretched and distorted lines of force or magnetic canals which can be likened to the strings of a guitar. These are sensitive to the gravitational tug of the planets as they move around the Sun which is the centre of the mass of the Solar System.

Imagine a piece of string going from Earth to the Sun, a direct invisible connection, then imagine one going from Venus to the Sun too. The important thing about a Venus transit is the fact that from the Sun’s point of view, the Earth and Venus are coming from exactly the same place; the strings are in the same place and will cross each other as vibrations pass down the string.

The resonance from each planet is coming together on the Sun and that is jangling its guitar strings which then give off a chord rather than two single notes. The important impact is Earth and Venus’s impact on the Sun, as the centre of our Collective consciousness. This resonance is bounced back to us and changes something of the quality of Zeitgeist or Ether that we swim in and outcomes change. So what is the meaning of this in astrology? To find that out we have to go to the events around the last 3 pairs and look for similarities in world events.

From 1631 to 1639

A new world view was emerging, beginning with Galileo’s insistence that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe, the Sun was. Another influence was Rene Descartes who brought order to thought and something of a revolution in the intellectual life of Western man. The Catholic Church remained powerful, but was challenged.

A new generation of communicating European scientists were making nonsense of theories that had been rock solid for generations with microscopes and other inventions. They sought answers to motion and dynamics; things that had been unquestioned because they were holy and under God’s control. Authority and power was shifting.….and chocolate had arrived. (yyesss!!)

From 1761 to 1769

After a spectacular year of military successes in 1759, Britain signed peace treaties with France and Spain in 1763. Britain was now the dominant power in North America. However, the American Revolution started brewing at this time and the Anglican Church was ousted in 1761. Exploration for the achievement of scientific knowledge began with Captain Cook’s mission to Tahiti. (Vanilla to go with the chocolate?) He makes an unprecedented contribution to the knowledge of the Pacific. An industrial revolution occurred in Britain and the first of the mills, factories and canals were opened.

From 1874 to 1882

There were huge leaps in technology, electricity for public use and the telephone, light bulb and recording equipment were all invented. The Theosophical Society and the Christian Science movement were both founded in 1875.

So, what did these three periods have in common? Well they weren’t war-free periods, although it would be difficult to find any war-free periods in history. However, they are conspicuous in that the Transits of Venus did not occur during the periods of world war. Considering Venus’ ancient associations with war-like behaviour I had been expecting this.

A common feature is exploration and the seeking of scientific knowledge, which is interesting, since it is very apparent that we are in the middle of huge advancements in scientific exploration now. Captain Cook’s expeditions, with their painstaking recording of information on species marked a leap forward in the history of human inquisitiveness and acquisition of knowledge.

These common features may be explained by the fact that Venus transits always occur in Gemini and Sagittarius alternately - an axis that is all about exploration and the gathering of knowledge for books in an effort to gain gnosis and superior understanding. Religion and spiritual questioning is associated with the sign of Sagittarius and each of the eras has some notable milestones concerning issues of faith.

The last obvious common theme is revolution. In the 17th century it was about scientific revolution which the Catholic Church could no longer contain. In the 18th century it was about an industrial revolution in Britain (a dominant world super-power) and the preludes to a government revolution in America (to get rid of the afore-mentioned dominant world super-power.)

In the 19th century a technological or electrical revolution began. There is a lovely quote on NASA’s website which is taken from the log of William Harkness at the U.S. Naval Observatory during the Venus transit of 1882:

: “There will be no other till the twenty first century of our Era has dawned upon the Earth and the June flowers are blooming in 2004. What will be the state of science. God only knows.”(7)

I suppose we could ponder on the potential state of our planet during the next set starting in 2117!!

The revolution theme is most welcome when we think about it. For right now what we need most of all is a revolution! Or perhaps a better way of describing it would be that we need to revolutionise many areas of the way we conduct ourselves on this planet. Our world faces enormous problems.

We are heavily over-populated with resulting challenges for food production and fresh water. Western lifestyles and social care were funded by credit which threatens to bankrupt the western world and over-consumerism has nearly depleted natural resources and raw materials.

We’ve been acting as if we have a spare planet tucked away somewhere and we are in for trouble when stuff starts to run out. These Venus transits have previously coincided with periods of exploration and the gathering of knowledge and we could really do with another one of those to get us out of this mess.

The particle science being explored by the teams at the Large Hadron Collider could take us into the realms of harnessing power out of thin air and this could solve oh-so-many problems. We need to find a way of producing limitless, free, non-polluting energy and a discovery revolution could only help in this.

Is it a Coincidence that 2,012 Beacons of Fire will be Lit Across the British Empire on June 4th?

It is something of a mystery that 2012 is also the year that London hosts the Olympics and it happens to be the Queen's Diamond Jubilee - she has reigned for 60 years. In celebration of this, there is a co-ordinated project to light 2,012 beacons of fire on the 4th June 2012. Just 2 days before the passage of Venus across the face of the Sun. The ancient races understood Venus' power and the importance of this event. They too, would have celebrated it in this way. It is simply astonishing that these events should coincide in this way. We live in an amazing Cosmos!

A Dazzling Paradox of Complexity

It is not just our scientists who are aware of the complexity of planet Venus, in ancient Mesopotamia, where the sparkling star was known as Inanna and Ishtar, her meaning was a dazzling paradox of duality and complexity. She was known as both god and goddess of love and war, who could be wild and savage with violent or erotic behaviour, or grieving and regretful, as she was when the human race was reduced to clay by the world flood.(8)

When rejected she is described as lusty, aggressive, vindictive and vengeful.(9) Her sexuality is occasionally innocent and often exotic, but it is her involvement with everyday issues that tells of her fundamental importance. We are told she calms, pacifies or prepares, but on the other hand she confuses or destroys. She is there in winning, loosing and money accounting and also when one is lying or being truthful.

Inanna was a warrior and prostitute with an ability to turn men into women and women into men by combining masculine aggression with an instinctive understanding of what makes humankind tick. There is a simple reality or realistic manifestation to Inanna’s energy which existed in practical, day to day living. She bridged the separateness between human or animal and divine. And although capricious or frightening, she offered understandable dialogue and practical support in realistic pursuits.

Inanna could make what shouldn’t have been made, or destroy what shouldn’t have been destroyed, thereby demonstrating her importance in life as she torments and throws outcomes into disarray. The extremes within the concept of Inanna can be compared to those that the actual planet experiences in terms of violence and hostility.

This image is also useful when considering her ambiguous and indefinable gender, where Inanna is both male and female, straddling both potentials or occurring as an energy in both and thereby defying or exceeding the usual rules; as wild and strong willed or beguiling as nature or the divine itself.

Science now seeks to understand the churning maelstrom of the Venusian atmosphere with its searingly hot temperatures, (hot temper-atures get it? Ha!) violent lightening and un-explainable high speed winds. However, when pondering the ancient Mesopotamian thoughts on Venus, although the planets tempestuous atmosphere was only discovered in the last century, it seems the Mesopotamians were already briefed!

copyright Alison Chester-Lambert 2011

Parts of this article were copied from Alison's book which contains a section of prediction for 2012 - `The Future in the Stars`.  The whole article first appeared in the Astrological Journal.

Endnotes

(1) Dauna Coulter, (2010) Japanese Spacecraft Approaches Venus, NASA Science. [hereafter, Coulter] http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/16aug_vco/

(2) Coulter

(3) Stanislaw Iwaniszewski, “Venus in the East and West”, in Songs From the Sky, ed. Von Del Chamberlain, John B. Carlson and M. Jane Young. [Hereafter, Iwaniszewski] (U.K. Ocarina Books, 2005) 151-162

(4) Rivkah Harris, (1991) Inanna-Ishtar as Paradox and a Coincidence of Opposites. History of Religions, Vol. 30 No 3 Feb 1991 [hereafter Harris] p270.

(5) Iwaniszewski

(6) http://cura.free.fr/decem/09seym.html

(7) http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/watchtheskies/venus_transit.html

(8) James Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1955), p 94

(9) Harris, p. 264