HISTORIC UNDERSTANDING As one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been known since prehistoric times and as such has gained an entrenched position in human culture. It is described in Babylonian cuneiformic texts such as the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa, which relates observations that possibly date from 1600 BC.[85] The Babylonians named the planet Ishtar (Sumerian Inanna), the personification of womanhood, and goddess of love.[86]
The Ancient Egyptians believed Venus to be two separate bodies and knew the morning star as Tioumoutiri and the evening star as Ouaiti.[87] Likewise, believing Venus to be two bodies, the Ancient Greeks called the morning star Φωσφόρος, Phosphoros (Latinized Phosphorus), the "Bringer of Light" or Ἐωσφόρος, Eosphoros (Latinized Eosphorus), the "Bringer of Dawn". The evening star they called Hesperos (Latinized Hesperus) (Ἓσπερος, the "star of the evening"). By Hellenistic times, the ancient Greeks realized the two were the same planet.[88] Hesperos would be translated into Latin as Vesper and Phosphoros as Lucifer ("Light Bearer"), a poetic term later used to refer to the fallen angel cast out of heaven.[b] The Romans would later name the planet in honor of their goddess of love, Venus,[89][dubious – discuss] whereas the Greeks used the name of her Greek counterpart, Aphrodite (Phoenician Astarte).[90] Pliny the Elder (Natural History, ii,37) identified the planet Venus with Isis.[91]
Venus was important to the Maya civilization, who developed a religious calendar based in part upon its motions, and held the motions of Venus to determine the propitious time for events such as war. They named it Noh Ek', the Great Star, and Xux Ek', the Wasp Star. The Maya were aware of the planet's synodic period, and could compute it to within a hundredth part of a day.[92] The Maasai people named the planet Kileken, and have an oral tradition about it called The Orphan Boy.[93]
Venus is important in many Australian aboriginal cultures, such as that of the Yolngu people in Northern Australia. The Yolngu gather after sunset to await the rising of Venus, which they call Barnumbirr. As she approaches, in the early hours before dawn, she draws behind her a rope of light attached to the Earth, and along this rope, with the aid of a richly decorated "Morning Star Pole", the people are able to communicate with their dead loved ones, showing that they still love and remember them. Barnumbirr is also an important creator-spirit in the Dreaming, and "sang" much of the country into life.[94]
In western astrology, derived from its historical connotation with goddesses of femininity and love, Venus is held to influence those aspects of human life. In Indian Vedic astrology, Venus is known as Shukra, meaning "clear, pure" or "brightness, clearness" in Sanskrit. One of the nine Navagraha, it is held to affect wealth, pleasure and reproduction; it was the son of Bhrgu and Ushana, preceptor of the Daityas, and guru of the Asuras. Modern Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese cultures refer to the planet literally as the gold star (Chinese: 金星), based on the Five elements. The ancient Chinese called the star Tai Bai (太白) if sighted in the evening, and Qi Ming (启明) in the morning, and it is both a representation of an important Taoist deity and a symbol of war. Lakotan spirituality refers to Venus as the daybreak star, and associates it with the last stage of life and wisdom.
The astronomical symbol for Venus is the same as that used in biology for the female sex: a circle with a small cross beneath.[95] The Venus symbol also represents femininity, and in Western alchemy stood for the metal copper.[95] Polished copper has been used for mirrors from antiquity, and the symbol for Venus has sometimes been understood to stand for the mirror of the goddess.[95]
Perhaps the strangest appearance of Venus in literature is as the harbinger of destruction in Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision (1950). In this intensely controversial book, Velikovsky argued that many seemingly unbelievable stories in the Old Testament are actually true recollections of times when Venus nearly collided with the Earth - when it was still a comet and had not yet become the docile planet that we know today. He contended that Venus caused most of strange events of the Exodus. He cites legends in many other cultures (such as Greek, Mexican, Chinese and Indian) indicating that the effects of the near-collision were global. The scientific community rejected his wildly unorthodox book, however it became a bestseller.[96]
The Ancient Egyptians believed Venus to be two separate bodies and knew the morning star as Tioumoutiri and the evening star as Ouaiti.[87] Likewise, believing Venus to be two bodies, the Ancient Greeks called the morning star Φωσφόρος, Phosphoros (Latinized Phosphorus), the "Bringer of Light" or Ἐωσφόρος, Eosphoros (Latinized Eosphorus), the "Bringer of Dawn". The evening star they called Hesperos (Latinized Hesperus) (Ἓσπερος, the "star of the evening"). By Hellenistic times, the ancient Greeks realized the two were the same planet.[88] Hesperos would be translated into Latin as Vesper and Phosphoros as Lucifer ("Light Bearer"), a poetic term later used to refer to the fallen angel cast out of heaven.[b] The Romans would later name the planet in honor of their goddess of love, Venus,[89][dubious – discuss] whereas the Greeks used the name of her Greek counterpart, Aphrodite (Phoenician Astarte).[90] Pliny the Elder (Natural History, ii,37) identified the planet Venus with Isis.[91]
Venus was important to the Maya civilization, who developed a religious calendar based in part upon its motions, and held the motions of Venus to determine the propitious time for events such as war. They named it Noh Ek', the Great Star, and Xux Ek', the Wasp Star. The Maya were aware of the planet's synodic period, and could compute it to within a hundredth part of a day.[92] The Maasai people named the planet Kileken, and have an oral tradition about it called The Orphan Boy.[93]
Venus is important in many Australian aboriginal cultures, such as that of the Yolngu people in Northern Australia. The Yolngu gather after sunset to await the rising of Venus, which they call Barnumbirr. As she approaches, in the early hours before dawn, she draws behind her a rope of light attached to the Earth, and along this rope, with the aid of a richly decorated "Morning Star Pole", the people are able to communicate with their dead loved ones, showing that they still love and remember them. Barnumbirr is also an important creator-spirit in the Dreaming, and "sang" much of the country into life.[94]
In western astrology, derived from its historical connotation with goddesses of femininity and love, Venus is held to influence those aspects of human life. In Indian Vedic astrology, Venus is known as Shukra, meaning "clear, pure" or "brightness, clearness" in Sanskrit. One of the nine Navagraha, it is held to affect wealth, pleasure and reproduction; it was the son of Bhrgu and Ushana, preceptor of the Daityas, and guru of the Asuras. Modern Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese cultures refer to the planet literally as the gold star (Chinese: 金星), based on the Five elements. The ancient Chinese called the star Tai Bai (太白) if sighted in the evening, and Qi Ming (启明) in the morning, and it is both a representation of an important Taoist deity and a symbol of war. Lakotan spirituality refers to Venus as the daybreak star, and associates it with the last stage of life and wisdom.
The astronomical symbol for Venus is the same as that used in biology for the female sex: a circle with a small cross beneath.[95] The Venus symbol also represents femininity, and in Western alchemy stood for the metal copper.[95] Polished copper has been used for mirrors from antiquity, and the symbol for Venus has sometimes been understood to stand for the mirror of the goddess.[95]
Perhaps the strangest appearance of Venus in literature is as the harbinger of destruction in Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision (1950). In this intensely controversial book, Velikovsky argued that many seemingly unbelievable stories in the Old Testament are actually true recollections of times when Venus nearly collided with the Earth - when it was still a comet and had not yet become the docile planet that we know today. He contended that Venus caused most of strange events of the Exodus. He cites legends in many other cultures (such as Greek, Mexican, Chinese and Indian) indicating that the effects of the near-collision were global. The scientific community rejected his wildly unorthodox book, however it became a bestseller.[96]
VENUS SYMBOL
This is the symbol of VenusAstronomical and astrological symbol of planet Venus, alchemical symbol of copper, and gender symbol for female
In science fiction
Main article: Venus in fiction
Venus's 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 very similar in size to Earth, it possessed a substantial atmosphere. Closer to the sun than Earth, the planet was frequently depicted as warmer, but still habitable by humans.[97] 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.
In the 1930s, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the "sword-and-planet" style "Venus series", set on a fictionalized version of Venus known as Amtor. The Venus of Robert Heinlein's Future History series was inspired by the chemist Svante Arrhenius's prediction of a steamy carboniferous swamp upon which the rain dripped incessantly. It probably inspired[citation needed] Henry Kuttner to the subsequent depiction given in his novel Fury. Ray Bradbury's short stories The Long Rain and All Summer in a Day also depicted Venus as a habitable planet with incessant rain. Other works, such as C. S. Lewis's 1943 Perelandra or Isaac Asimov's 1954 Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus, drew from a vision of a Cambrian-like Venus covered by a near planet-wide ocean filled with exotic aquatic life.[97] In Germany, the Perry Rhodan novels also used the classical vision of a Cambrian Venus. The desert planet model of Venus, covered in clouds of polymeric formaldehyde dust, was never as popular, but featured in several notable stories, like Poul Anderson's The Big Rain (1954), and Frederick Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth's novel The Space Merchants (1953). Findings from the first missions to Venus showed the reality to be very different, and brought this particular genre to an end,[98] a passing which Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison marked with their 1968 anthology Farewell Fantastic Venus.
As scientific knowledge of Venus advanced, so science fiction authors endeavored to keep pace, particularly by conjecturing human attempts to terraform Venus.[99] Arthur C. Clarke's 1997 novel 3001: The Final Odyssey, for example, postulates humans lowering Venus's temperature by steering cometary fragments to impact its surface. A terraformed Venus is the setting for a number of diverse works of fiction that have included Star Trek, Exosquad, the German language Mark Brandis series and the manga Venus Wars. In L. Neil Smith's Gallatin Universe novel The Venus Belt, Venus was broken apart by a massive man-made projectile to form a second asteroid belt suitable for commercial exploitation.
Main article: Venus in fiction
Venus's 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 very similar in size to Earth, it possessed a substantial atmosphere. Closer to the sun than Earth, the planet was frequently depicted as warmer, but still habitable by humans.[97] 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.
In the 1930s, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the "sword-and-planet" style "Venus series", set on a fictionalized version of Venus known as Amtor. The Venus of Robert Heinlein's Future History series was inspired by the chemist Svante Arrhenius's prediction of a steamy carboniferous swamp upon which the rain dripped incessantly. It probably inspired[citation needed] Henry Kuttner to the subsequent depiction given in his novel Fury. Ray Bradbury's short stories The Long Rain and All Summer in a Day also depicted Venus as a habitable planet with incessant rain. Other works, such as C. S. Lewis's 1943 Perelandra or Isaac Asimov's 1954 Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus, drew from a vision of a Cambrian-like Venus covered by a near planet-wide ocean filled with exotic aquatic life.[97] In Germany, the Perry Rhodan novels also used the classical vision of a Cambrian Venus. The desert planet model of Venus, covered in clouds of polymeric formaldehyde dust, was never as popular, but featured in several notable stories, like Poul Anderson's The Big Rain (1954), and Frederick Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth's novel The Space Merchants (1953). Findings from the first missions to Venus showed the reality to be very different, and brought this particular genre to an end,[98] a passing which Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison marked with their 1968 anthology Farewell Fantastic Venus.
As scientific knowledge of Venus advanced, so science fiction authors endeavored to keep pace, particularly by conjecturing human attempts to terraform Venus.[99] Arthur C. Clarke's 1997 novel 3001: The Final Odyssey, for example, postulates humans lowering Venus's temperature by steering cometary fragments to impact its surface. A terraformed Venus is the setting for a number of diverse works of fiction that have included Star Trek, Exosquad, the German language Mark Brandis series and the manga Venus Wars. In L. Neil Smith's Gallatin Universe novel The Venus Belt, Venus was broken apart by a massive man-made projectile to form a second asteroid belt suitable for commercial exploitation.
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