Venus Cosmology
Image cropped from a
 painting by
 Adolphe-William Bouguereau,
 titled "The Birth of Venus"
 

“What are all those bright lights up there?”
 “Those are fireflies...that all got stuck in that black net thing.”
 “Really?  I always thought they were giant balls of gas, burning billions of miles   away.”
       --The Lion King

    Ancient peoples staring at the twinkling lights of the night sky had only their naked eyes and their minds with which to answer their questions concerning the nature of the universe.  Without tools of modern science, the sky is comparable to an inkblot in that one sees what they want to see.  Back when the cosmos weren’t so scientifically broken down into definitive facts, people created their own theories, myths; to explain, but not to prove or disprove.  These stories are just as complex as scientific theories discussed today.  They are not about rational fact so much as they are an expression of appreciation for a mysterious object of beauty.  With less numbers and data yields more humanity and the literary device of the apostrophe, wherein forces of nature are assigned human characteristics.
    Venus represented the soul of a goddess; she was a living and feeling presence to which people could relate.  Technology has depleted much of the beauty and mysticism surrounding the cosmos, as today, we learn about the planets as emotionless chunks of rock governed by laws of this machine we call the universe.
    Venus is like a projection of where our planet is heading, a crystal ball five billion years into the future.  Although from Earth she appears vibrant and alive, no life exists in this firepit. And those, as they say, are the technicalities.
    Ancient cosmologies were based upon interpretation and storytelling.  Reasoning behind observations made in the sky was, for the most part, speculative, since modern observing tools such as the telescope had yet to be invented to give weight to any scientific theory.  There was little separation of science and religion; the belief in higher beings controlling the cosmos was established as an explanation of the universe (McLeish, 1983).
    This bright light visible from Earth has long symbolized a being, a personality, a presence; there are stories behind this ‘star’.  In ancient Sumerian society the "Evening Star", “Inanna of the Dawn”,  was symbolized by crops and was thought to bring prosperity, fertility, and life.  Babylonians believed in Ishtar, a vengeful seductress who brought bad fortune to many of her lovers.  These beings are all different cultures’ interpretations of the forces behind Venus (Friedrich, 152).
Aphrodite was the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and sexual desire, symbolized by Venus’ breathtaking brightness.  In Homer’s version of the tale she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione; however, in the more dramatic version of Hesiod, she came to be when Mother Earth’s son castrated his Father Heaven, and from the subsequent foam rose Aphrodite  (Venus, when translated into the nearly identical Roman myths.)
    As in all Greek mythology, gods and goddesses are more human in their actions than godlike; the drama in their lives rivals any soap opera.  Venus gets her way; in fact, two gods were transformed into lions for showing ingratitude towards her.  There is a flower called the Wind Flower that grows in memory of her beloved, Adonis, who, legend has it, died after he ignored her warning about fighting beasts stronger than him.  Venus is powerful, there is a festival celebrating her of Greek proportions – sacrifices, smoking sacred herbs, incense, dancing.  As she is the goddess of love, she makes mystical things happen; she brought Pygmalion’s ivory statue of a woman to life for him.  Fittingly enough, she is the mother of Cupid, whose arrows fill those he hits with love (Bulfinch’s mythology).
    “Laughter-loving” (Friedrich, 60) Aphrodite is a matchmaker, as she is always dealing with issues of love and, more commonly, lust.  She is known for her deceit, case in point, she attempted to disguise herself as an old woman to encourage Helen of Troy to get back together with Paris, her love.  She is a powerful presence and is constantly “entering into someone and so arousing passion within them” (Friedrich, 83).  She is beautiful yet deadly; she seduced a mortal, Anchises, who feared he would pay in the form of death, blinding, or impotence, as many others did.  Venus the planet is a hot, fiery place; perhaps the Greeks knew this on some level and in turn translated this knowledge into a personality which possessed these qualities.  Ironic is the fact that the art and literary representations of Venus capitalize the theme of water, a symbol of life and fertility, when the planet is, in actuality, dry, hot and devoid of life. Yet she rests in the sky, like an omen, overseeing, watching, calculating.  After all, she’s been dealing with this drama for thousands of years.