Venus will be at its brightest for the year this week, which brings Alfred Tennyson to mind for the Storyteller’s Night Sky: Her constant beauty doth inform stillness with love, and day with light.
This reference to Sleeping Beauty isn’t arbitrary when it comes to Venus, for, like the maiden in the tale, Venus “sleeps” for about 100 years before it appears to transit directly in front of the Sun and awake in the heat of a kiss. And that’s just the beginning of the story!
Like all the planets, Venus makes rhythmic retrograde loops. Over every eight years, Venus will make five of these loops, then it will come back to where it started. Every 100 years or so, these retrogrades will include a pair of Transits, and that’s when beauty wakes up.
Venus’ last Transit was eight years ago, so why does it matter now? Well, this June, Venus will complete its first cycle of five loops since then. These five loops seem to create a five-pointed star, or pentagram around the Earth, a sacred symbol since ancient times, meant to represent the healthy flow of life forces into the human physical body. This is why Venus was always considered the “sister” planet to the Earth, not because there might be life there, but because its motion was found to have a sustaining and healing influence on the life forces in the human body.
So in 2020, Venus completes its first pentagram since it awakened with a kiss from the Sun at its Transit in 2012, and this week, Venus will get as bright as it can for the entire year, especially Tuesday night, looking high in the West, even before the Sun sets.
So what happens when Venus completes its pentagram? Then beauty wakes in the human form, or as Tennyson described it: And on her lover’s arm she leant, and round her waist she felt it fold; And far across the hills they went, into that new world which is the old…
The full text of Alfred Tennyon's Sleeping Beauty can be found at this link.