Venus Transit Between Earth and the Sun in June, 2012

Seasonal

Venus Transit, June 2012

Perspectives of this Event: A Rare Astronomical Event, Ancient Mythology and Modern Response


This Venus Transit article by Sandra Cosentino is based on personal observation/knowledge and research from many sources, April 26, 2012.  (e.g., NASA, Wikipedia, Star and Telescope, Verde Valley Astronomy Club, others quoted in article)

I have assembled information about the upcoming June 5 or 6, 2012 passage of Venus across the face of the sun to highlight both the science and the mythology and some modern day views (new mythology).

I encourage you to enjoy this phenomenon which won’t occur again until 2117. But please use solar shades to view (inexpensive source given below).

Ancestral peoples were were skilled observers of the night sky.  And they had a living relationship to the sky much different than our more technological perspective today. For them science and religion were one.


The engraving from Johan Gabriel Doppelmayer’s 1742 Atlas Coelestis shown below is an artistic and scientific depiction predicting the 1761 Venus Transit. Retrograde loops for Venus and Mercury are depicted sideways on the left and right borders. Venus in her chariot is gloriously crossing in front of the sun. He even added clouds which might be present at that time of year for viewers from the earth–but even if cloudy, people could still imagine this event.

venustransit_doppelmayer1742md

Venus Transit by Johan Gabriel Doppelmayer, 1742

Venus, closest planet to Earth, is unique in its visibility during both morning and evening during its cycle giving it dual roles and/or symbolizing polarities. Venus worship gave rise to astronomy, science, math and probably civilization itself. 5 Venus cycles equals 8 years. This is the Golden Mean ratio in geometry.

In Maya myths Venus is known as the companion of the sun and it had a psychological affect on them. Mythologies that arose from this keen understanding of the sky phenomena are inspired by the same energies accessible to us today if we take time to wonder and look and sense.


Rare Astronomical Event

June 5 and 6, 2012 Venus, the closest planet to Earth, will pass for about 6 hours directly in front of the sun from our perspective on earth.  During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black disk moving across the face of the Sun.

venustransitHere in Arizona it will begin about 3 pm on June 5 and last until sunset.

These transits occur in pairs 8 years apart.   This is because the length of eight Earth years is almost the same as 13 years on Venus, so every eight years the planets are in roughly the same relative positions.

This transit of Venus happens only four times every 243 years with uneven spacing: it’s 121½ years, then 8 years, then 105½ years, then 8 years again. The last transit occurred in June 2004 — and after this June’s event there won’t be another until December 2117.

Venus, the second brightest  object in our sky, is growing progressively brighter until April 30.  I have watched this brilliance in awe in the Western sky these winter and spring evenings especially when earlier in April when Venus traveled through the Pleiades star cluster.  Right now the waxing crescent moon is next to Venus.

By the end of May, Venus will be in sun’s vicinity and harder to see.  Then Venus will disappear from our evening sky on June 5 or 6 (depending on your location) and it orbits behind the sun, loops around and reappears in the eastern sky as the morning star by mid-June.

venusmed

Venus, the second brightest  object in our sky, is growing progressively brighter until April 30 and then starts her descent into the sun. I have watched this brilliance in awe in the Western sky these winter and spring evenings especially when earlier in April Venus traveled through the Pleiades star cluster and then the waxing crescent moon pairing with Venus.

By the end of May Venus will be in sun’s vicinity and harder to see.
Then Venus will disappear from our evening sky on June 5 or 6 (depending on your location) and it orbits behind the sun, seems to turn around in its path from our Earth view and then reappear in the eastern sky as the morning star by mid-June.

The first transit was seen and documented by humans was in 1639. The 2012 transit will be only the 7th witnessed!


Safe Viewing

NEVER look at the sun directly with your naked eye or through cameras, binoculars or small telescopes without proper filters. Doing so can result in permanent eye damage or blindness. “People using a filter approved for safe solar viewing can expect to see a small black dot, about 1/30 the size of the solar disk, very slowly moving across the Sun,” said Fred Espenak, an eclipse expert at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Good source of bulk quantities of solar shades for under $1 each is through Astronomers Without Borders (AWB), which has been a strong supporter of 2012 Transit of Venus education outreach.


Mythology of Venus Transit

Venus will be directly in front of the sun; thus sun’s rays coming through and around Venus to us.
For Hawaiians this means we will be receiving sun through spirit of Aloha (love).

Dual Roles – Ancestral Fascination with Venus

Venus is unique in its visibility during both morning and evening during its cycle giving it dual roles or symbolizing polarities. Venus as “evening star” is seen as the goddess of love; whereas as “morning star” it becomes a symbol of conflict and destruction.

“Venus must always have seemed a unique, animated entity. For our ancestors the details of the complex movements of Venus served as important harbingers of war and peace, feast and famine, pestilence and health. They learned to watch every nuance for the clues they could wrest of what nature had in store. They watched carefully, obsessively, through skies not yet dimmed by industrial haze and city lights, and they learned to predict accurately, for years and decades to come, the rising, setting, dimming, brightening, and looping of Venus.”
(David Grinspoon, NASA astronomer and author of history of Venus observation comments on ancients’ preoccupation with Venus)

At the dawn of recorded history, Sumerian priests composed hymns in honor of the planet which they venerated as the goddess Inanna:

“To her who appears in the sky, to her who appears in the sky, I want to address my greeting, to the hierodule who appears in the sky, I want to address my greeting, to the great queen of heaven, Inanna, I want to address my greeting, to her who fills the sky with her pure blaze, to the luminous one, to Inanna, as bright as the sun, to the great queen of heaven.”

As early as ancient Babylon, astronomer – astrologers recorded the movements of Venus and the “discovery” of its “transits” or inner conjunctions, when Venus is visible in daytime as a black spot crossing the Sun, was made thousands of years ago. (source: Chet Snow)

In early Western civilization – in Mesopotamia – Venus worship gave rise to astronomy, science, math and probably civilization itself. 5 Venus cycles equals 8 years. This is the Golden Mean ratio in geometry. Because of this 8:5 ratio, Venus traces a five-pointed star around the ecliptic every 8 years. The occult symbol of the pentagram probably has its roots in the discovery of this fact in ancient Mesopotamia.

Venus was the centerpiece of Mayan cosmology and mythology, known as the companion of the sun and it had a psychological affect on them. This kinship is believed to be caused by the close proximity of the two objects as well as their similar shared orbits with both rising and setting in similar patterns.

The ancient Maya tracked the morning star risings of Venus, which occur every 584 days. Maya kings had skilled astronomers who could calculate the Venus cycle with great accuracy based on careful observation over the centuries.  This Venus transit is the last one before the ending of current 5,126 year cycle of the Mayan calendar.

They created a framework of cycles for predicting the future morning star risings of Venus – for centuries to come. With this system, they could also predict solstice and eclipse dates.  Mythologies developed around Venus and the day-signs associated with its risings. Most scholars agree that Venus was associated with war and that the Maya used it to divine good times for their coronations and wars. Because its heliacal rising immediately before dawn was seen as an evil sign, Maya rulers planned for wars to begin when Venus rose. The Mayans also scheduled human sacrifices based on the days when Venus was the dimmest.

venus_botticelli

Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex, fertility, prosperity and military victory. She played a key role in many Roman religious festivals. Venus became a popular subject of painting and sculpture during the Renaissance period in Europe as in famous Botticelli image shown here.


Venus Transit Today: New Age Perspectives

Golden Mean, Crop Circles, Astrology, Mayan Calendar and Call for Global Oneness

This section offers some New Age perceptions of Venus Transit and discussions of the Golden Mean.
Humans today are still creating mythologies based on a relationship with our evolving cosmos.
There are also links to an excellent video and a vedic chant at the bottom of article
.

Some interpret this modern day crop circle (left below) as a depiction of the upcoming Venus transit of the sun calling it Lamat, the Mayan name for the evening star–Mayan glyph on right.


Golden Mean

Golden Mean of Venus Cycles by Elaine Kalantarian, Blue Moon Astrology:

“Thirteen is a number strongly associated with Venus through the golden mean, that divinely perfect, mathematical ratio of 1.618. Aristotle, Plato and Pythagoras all considered it sacred, the divine proportion.The cycles of Venus herself, the planet we most associate with beauty, proportion, and harmony, reflect the golden mean, the pentagram and the number 13.

Venus polishes off five complete cycles (584 day intervals) in a total of eight years and five days. Eight plus five equals 13, Eight divided by five happens to equal 1.6, our golden mean, and of course 8 plus 5 equals 13. Moreover, 5, 8 and 13 are in the “magical” Fibonacci sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 and so on. The sequence is derived by a simple formula: each number is the sum of the previous two. The ratio between each Fibonacci number is this same golden mean. This divine ratio is found all over nature from the patterns of growth spirals we see in pinecones, sunflower seed heads and spiraling mollusk shells to galaxies spinning in space. Medieval and Renaissance design and construction of sacred buildings commonly applied the golden ratio. Here is an interesting article by a builder who noted the golden ratios, including the pentagram, evident in the design of his nearby parish church.

The ratios in a pentagram, the five pointed star, include the golden mean. An ancient symbol of wholeness and protection, the pentagram is associated with Venus, present in her 584-day cycle. Inscribed on the zodiac wheel by marking the degrees of critical stages in Venus’s movements in concert with the Sun, every time Venus completes five of her cycles, a new pentagram is drawn in the heavens.”


Venus Golden Mean by Richard Merrick from article:The Birth of World Religion from the Divine Proportion:

“Whether discovered separately or shared through ancient trans-Atlantic voyages, the pentagonal orbit of Venus and the golden mean hidden within it was the founding principle in all of the world religions. Reflected in the geometries of flowers, seed patterns in fruit and the human anatomy, the pentacle was proof of a divine order in Nature. No advanced mathematics is needed – just careful observation and a little simple arithmetic was enough to reveal God to our ancestors. While few today are in the least bit aware of it, the celestial harmony between the Sun, Venus and Earth-Moon system is the first and true religion – everything else is a mythical veneer.”


Kiara Windrider is sending out a message to use the Venus Transit as a call for global oneness; she says:

The planet Venus is rich in archetypal symbology. It is often known as the Morning Star, the Bringer of Light. It is related to love, human unity, beauty, and oneness. On June 8, 2004, the path of Venus directly crosses over the disc of the Sun, an eclipse lasting for the space of seven hours. The energies of Sun and Venus blend together, and as these blended radiations make their way into the Earth’s electromagnetic fields, it weaves the energies of love and unity into the mass consciousness of the planet, and potentially into the hearts of every man, woman, and child alive on Earth!

Interestingly, Venus transits always come in pairs. The second passage of Venus across the Sun’s disc takes place on June 6, 2012. The eight-year period in between represents a “doorway” through which Unity consciousness will come to dominate the mass consciousness of the Earth.

We are calling people all over the world to observe the days leading up to this Venus Transit, June 6-8, as a time for opening to the bright impulse of cosmic energy that is streaming into the mass consciousness of Humanity. What are our highest dreams and hopes? What is our greatest potential as divinely inspired humans? What can we create together as we step into the “doorway” to the Golden Age?

Let us come together during this time in gatherings throughout the world to celebrate love and beauty, light and unity. Let us work with these expansive cosmic energies to anchor them deep into the heart  of Earth Mother, deep into the human collective consciousness. Let us translate these energies into art, economics, culture, politics, education and ecology. Let us bring transformation into every field of human endeavor.  Let us pray, each in our own way, for the emergence of the Golden Age, for enlightenment for all, for peace, healing, and beauty on the planet!  Let us pray for the unity of humankind.

This current “doorway of Venus” is especially significant because it remains open until 2012 AD, the completion of our current cycle of human evolution. Some refer to this date as the end of linear time, or as the end of a period of human consciousness conditioned by separation and duality. The Mayans refer to this time as the Return of Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent, and look to this eight-year doorway as the timeframe within which the mass enlightenment of humanity will take place.


Mayan Calendar Relationship

“It’s not surprising that the second Venus transit of this decade falls in June, 2012, just six months from the end of the Mayan calendar in December 2012. In the finest of the early Mayan books, the Dresden Codex, the beginning of the Great Cycle in August, 3114 BC is referred to as the “Birth of Venus”. As well, several of the surviving Mayan manuscripts also refer to Venus as a Sister Planet of Earth. And Maya Prophecy states that the renewed world of new consciousness will be born on the occasion of the Venus Passage across the Sun of 6th June 2012.” (Richard Giles, astrologer)

Chet Snow video The Venus Transit of 2012 as looked at through the eyes of the Mayan and other ancient civilizations here.


Vedic Astrology

Venus Lakshmi Shukra Mantra Invocation‬ to awaken the energies represented by the planet Venus–or Shukra, in the Vedic Astrological system is found here.

The Goddess Lakshmi, embodies love, soul-mates, wealth, happy family, harmony, song, dance, poetry and beauty. Her images, including her Yantras (the geometrical meditation form of the deity) are also shown. Included as well are Western images of the Lakshmi-Essence: i.e. Venus and Aphrodite, to demonstrate the universality of Venus energy. (Shivanand Thomas Amelio)