Venus in culture
Venus, as one of the brightest objects in the sky, has been known since prehistoric times and has been a major fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed.
Modern Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures refer to the planet literally as the "gold star" (金星), based on the Five elements.
Nonetheless, a cylinder seal from the Jemdet Nasr period indicates that the ancient Sumerians already knew that the morning and evening stars were the same celestial object.
[17][18][19][20][21][22][23] In ancient Canaanite religion, the morning star is personified as the god Attar, a masculine variant of the name of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar.
[27][28] Hermann Gunkel's reconstruction of the myth told of a mighty warrior called Hêlal, whose ambition was to ascend higher than all the other stellar divinities, but who had to descend to the depths.
It thus portrayed as a battle the process by which the bright morning star fails to reach the highest point in the sky before being faded out by the rising sun.
[41][42] At first described as either a phoenix or heron (or Bennu),[41] calling it "the crosser" or "star with crosses",[41] and associated with Osiris, later during the Late Period under probably Mesopotamian influence Venus was depicted as a two-headed morning god (with human and falcon heads), as in the Dendera zodiac, and associated with Horus,[42] son of Isis (which during the even later Hellenistic period was together with Hathor identified with Aphrodite).
The Greek myth of Phaethon, whose name means "Shining One", has also been seen as similar to those of other gods who cyclically descend from the heavens, like Inanna and Attar.
The second century Roman mythographer Pseudo-Hyginus said of the planet:[48] Ovid, in his first century epic Metamorphoses, describes Lucifer as ordering the heavens:[49] In the classical Roman period, Lucifer was not typically regarded as a deity and had few, if any, myths,[47] though the planet was associated with various deities and often poetically personified.
[61] Aquila of Sinope derives the word hêlêl, the Hebrew name for the morning star, from the verb yalal (to lament).
In a modern translation from the original Hebrew, the passage in which the name Helel ben Shahar occurs begins with the statement: "On the day the Lord gives you relief from your suffering and turmoil and from the harsh labour forced on you, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has come to an end!
"[63] After describing the death of the king, the taunt continues: This passage was the origin of the later belief that the Devil was a fallen angel, who could also be referred to as "Lucifer".
This allegorical understanding of Isaiah seems to be the most accepted interpretation in the New Testament, as well as among early Christians such as Origen, Eusebius, Tertullian, and Gregory the Great.
The fallen angel motif may therefore be considered a Christian "remythologization" of Isaiah 14, returning its allegorical imagery of the hubris of a historical ruler to the original roots of the Canaanite myth of a lesser god trying and failing to claim the throne of the heavens, who is then cast down to the underworld.
[65] In Christian tradition the morning star is a symbol for the approaching Son of God and his light-filled appearance in the night of the world (Epiphany).
One of the nine Navagraha, it is held to affect wealth, pleasure and reproduction; it was the son of Bhrgu, preceptor of the Daityas, and guru of the Asuras.
In some parts of Pahlavi literature the deities Aredvi Sura and Anahita are regarded as separate entities, the first one as a personification of the mythical river and the latter as a goddess of fertility, which is associated with the planet Venus.
As the goddess Aredvi Sura Anahita—and simply called Anahita as well—both deities are unified in other descriptions, e. g. in the Greater Bundahishn, and are represented by the planet.
[74] In the 11th century Turkic Kutadgu Bilig, under cross-cultural influences of Greek and Sumerian mythology, Venus became associated with love, beauty, and fertility.
[75] According to myth, of which an echo is found in a play by the 17th-century English poet William Percy, two angels, Harut and Marut, descended to earth and were seduced by Zohra's beauty to commit shirk, murder, adultery and drinking wine.
The positions of Venus and other planets were thought to influence life on Earth, so the Maya and other ancient Mesoamerican cultures timed wars and other important events based on their observations.
[80] In traditional Lakota star knowledge, the planet Venus is named Aŋpo Wiŋ or the Light of Dawn (sometimes also translated as Morningstar).
In western astrology, derived from its historical connotation with goddesses of femininity and love, Venus is held to influence desire and sexual fertility.
[88] The discovery in the modern era that Venus was a distant world covered in impenetrable cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface; all the more so when early observations showed that not only was it similar in size to Earth, it possessed a substantial atmosphere.
[89] The genre reached its peak between the 1930s and 1950s, at a time when science had revealed some aspects of Venus, but not yet the harsh reality of its surface conditions.
