Venus and the Virgin

The Virgin at La Salette, France

"MAY is Mary’s month, and I
Muse at that and wonder why:
Her feasts follow reason,
Dated due to season—
Candlemas, Lady Day;	5
But the Lady Month, May,
Why fasten that upon her,
With a feasting in her honour?	..."

 From the May Magnificat by AE Housman

If you were a visitor from another planet and your pod landed in Europe, you might be able to guess that the stone building with the tower that you found in every village and town was a place of worship.

Montserrat, Catalunya

The altar, the quiet, the attitude of the people within – all these would give you clues to the nature of the building's use.

But if you were to hazard a guess at the nature of the religion these Europeans were following, I think you would be likely to send this mistaken report home to Planet Zorb.

"The earthlings in this place seem to worship a mother goddess. She is depicted as young and beautiful and usually holding a baby earthling. Sometimes she has a crown of stars, and sometimes she stands on stars… Sometimes she is very, very sad."

The love of the Virgin Mary goes deep here – and I believe the adoration of the holy mother is much older than the Catholic Church would like us to think.

Here's an example of the connections between the ancient goddesses and the mother of god.

Fatima

May is Venus' month. She rules the sign of Taurus through which the Sun now glides, and she is also Taurus' tutelary deity. (to see previous posts on tutelary deities click here) The planet Venus was always associated with the feminine. In Babylon, where astrology was born, this was the goddess Innana's planet.

Stella Maris under
the pentacle.

The Babylonians were well aware of the five-pointed star that that Venus traced in the sky, and so the pentacle was associated with the mother goddess. Over a period of eight years, if you plot each station (retrograde or forward) of Venus on the circle of the zodiac, you will create a perfect pentacle.

The Virgin Mary is sometimes called Star of the Sea (Stella Maris) and when she is depicted with a star, it is traditionally five-pointed.

If our visitor from planet Zorb, noted the the Virgin's pentacles and took note of the European Union symbol which is visible all over the continent, not least on every license plate, he might find further evidence of the continent's penchant for the goddess.

No wonder certain Protestant
groups thought the stars were a sly
takeover of the European
project by Catholics!

Here's the rest of the poem.

"...Is it only its being brighter
Than the most are must delight her?
Is it opportunest
And flowers finds soonest?
Ask of her, the mighty mother:
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?—
Growth in every thing—
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested
Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell
In sod or sheath or shell.
All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathising
With that world of good,
Nature’s motherhood.
Their magnifying of each its kind
With delight calls to mind
How she did in her stored
Magnify the Lord.
Well but there was more than this:
Spring’s universal bliss
Much, had much to say
To offering Mary May.
When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple
Bloom lights the orchard-apple
And thicket and thorp are merry
With silver-surfèd cherry
And azuring-over greybell makes
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes
And magic cuckoocall
Caps, clears, and clinches all—
This ecstasy all through mothering earth
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth
To remember and exultation
In God who was her salvation.'