The Petals of Venus: The Goddess & Her Pentagram
“In the spring, and the night wind
is moist with the smell of turned loam
and the early flowers;
the moon pours out her beauty.”
May's moon is nicknamed the Flower Moon, Planting Moon, Milk Moon, Budding Moon, and Egg-Laying Moon. Dedicated to blossoming plants and the humans who care for them, May's moon is also known as the Mother Moon.
In the days between Beltane and Litha, spring is in full swing. Wildflowers soften our steps, and pollinators haunt the meadows. The earth has remembered her abundance.
Inspired by May's full moon (our fifth full moon of the year!), we're sowing seed spells, practicing floromancy, and remembering that mothering is a form of magick. Mothering is ancestral work. Mothering is tending to the earth and her creatures, nurturing flowers and thistles, and cultivating gardens—both above and below.
If we look to the Above in the early morning hours, our cosmic mother Venus, waves hello. A planet of generation and regeneration, Venus's journey through the stars (spending approximately 19 days in each sign) traces the paths and pit stops of our desires. Her voyage illuminates beauty, the needs of the heart, and that which we value.
From our perch here on Earth, Venus draws a five-pointed star in the sky every eight years. This star, a pentagram, is an ancient symbol, sometimes called the Rose of Venus.
Like her planet, the goddess Venus orbits around love, loss of love, creation, and wholeness. She is a primordial spirit who existed before time, although Roman mythology claims her as a child of the sea. In these stories, Venus's parents are Gaia and Uranus (the Earth and the Sky), and when Uranus's blood mixes with the ocean's rolling tides, Venus rises from the salty foam.
Venus marries the god Hephaestus, a spirit of the forge and fire. But she also loves Mars, a god with agricultural roots and a warrior's heart. And when her mortal lover Adonis is killed by a boar, the man's blood alchemizes with the goddess's tears to create a river of red roses. Venus is the mythical mother of these flowers. Like in her cosmic garden, Venus's footprints decorate our earthen meadows. If we struggle to see her sacred star in today's modern rose, remember that a wild rose has five petals bordering a golden center.
A guardian of the heart, Venus carries a cornucopia and naps in enchanted orchards. When her flowers wilt, Venus forages for apples. Apples are holy, chthonic, the Fruit of the Gods, and hiding within the apple's core are seeds of knowledge. These seeds are arranged in the shape of a pentagram, suggesting that divinity exists in the stars, seeds, soil, and the human form.
If we track the pentagram's roots beyond the Greco-Roman world, we'll end up admiring art from ancient Sumer. Historians believe that pentagrams from Sumerian pottery (3500 BCE) represented the goddess Inanna. Inanna and her Babylonian successor, Ishtar, were goddesses of love and war and personifications of the planet Venus.
To our distant ancestors, the pentagram promised life. People drew the star on top of their cooking pots to preserve food. They carried the pentagram for protection and used it in apotropaic charms. Later, when the Roman philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras (570-495 BC) began studying the pentagram, he claimed the star was a tool of health and harmony. Instead of Venus, he believed the goddess Hygeia was responsible for its magickal influence. Some theorize it was Pythagoras who first linked the five-pointed star with the elements, possibly in relation to Mercury, Venus. Mars, Saturn, & Jupiter - the five planets visible to the naked eye.
The ancients knew the five-pointed star was symbolic of magickal potential, and over the millennia, the pentagram collected many nicknames—the Witch's Cross, Wizard's Star, Goblin's Cross, and our favorite, the Witch's Foot. The mystic Manly P. Hall described symbols as oracular forms—mysterious patterns creating vortices in the invisible world.
If we treat the pentagram as an oracle, what sibylline stories will we find?
A few rituals to connect the dots of this sacred star…
Look to the sky: Curious about Venus's astrological influence? Head to Astro.com and enter your birth time and location to generate a natal chart. In which sign is Venus resting? Which of the 12 houses is she watching over? If your ascendant is Taurus or Libra, Venus is your chart ruler. Read more about your Venus placement here.
Lean into the elements: Modern witchcraft suggests that unity and balance radiate from the sacred star, with each of its five points corresponding to an element—Air, Fire, Water, Earth, and Spirit (or Ether). In addition to their physical makeup, there are endless correspondences for each element, including color, season, and plant associations. Together, the five elements represent the building blocks of nature, and therefore, the pentagram symbolizes the same. Adding elemental markers to your altar is a simple spell for balance. We can also tend to a devotional garden (Earth), light ritual incense (Fire), practice bibliomancy (Air), engage with Floromancy (Water), or craft offerings for ancestral guidance (Spirit).
Practice apotropaic magick: In her essay “Elemental Protection: The Pentagram in Witchcraft,” Mya Spalter explains that witches can employ the pentagram in a myriad of ways. Some will “draw the shape of an invoking, or point-upright pentagram (whether the form is made by a gesture of the hand, wand, chalice, cauldron, or blade) in the ground or air, or on an altar, to attract positive energy and protection. Some inscribe an upright pentagram to open a ritual circle and an inverted pentagram to close it, while others use an inverted, or banishing pentagram when performing a ritual cleansing, attempting to shed what isn't useful.”
Our founder, Caitlyn Barone, hangs a pentagram over her front door for protection. Here's how she makes her sacred stars.
Listen to your body: From the goddess Hygeia we get the the word 'hygiene,' a reminder that the body is holy and we are its gardeners. Hygeia (also known as Salus) was Venus's companion, and they were often invoked together. Hygeia was also associated with Asclepius, the mythical god of healing. She was either his daughter or attendant, and like Asclepius, serpents were her priestesses. In one of the most famous depictions of this goddess, a 17th-century painting by Peter Paul Rubens, Hygeia holds a snake and drips a mysterious potion into its mouth. In addition to the five-pointed star and serpents, Hygeia's healing spirit lives within our chalice. In the ancient world, people summoned Hygeia by drawing a pentagram on their body with medicinal oils.
Mothering: As our cosmic mother, Venus personifies wholeness but not in the traditional sense. Like the moon, that which we cultivate waxes and wanes. We move through periods of emptiness and increase. And even when we find ourselves in the fields of chaos, even when tears threaten to rain down, we remember—life is a garden, seasons are temporary, and harmony will always return.
From the book Venus & Aphrodite (a must-read for our fellow Venusians!), Venus is “the incarnation of fear as well as love, of pain as well as pleasure, of the agony and ecstasy of desire. Venus is the summation of the complicated business of human-heartedness – of our burning drive to engage with one another, both for good and for bad. She oversees the intensity of our passions and of our relationships within, and beyond, our species.”
In our upcoming Little Witch Tale, The Witch & the Raven, a girl follows her mother's 'what-if' to the land of birds. Click here to join the waitlist for this *free* digital offering!
