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Men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Most modern
readers are familiar with this adage, but very few, I suspect, are aware that such
ideas were already commonplace by the time of Homer. Thus it is that a famous passage in the
Odyssey tells of the illicit affair between Ares and Aphrodite.
In the song in question, the two lovers are entrapped while making love in an invisible
net devised by the lame smith Hephaestus, much to the amusement of the other gods
who are witness to the entire scene. For well over 3,000 years now, scholars
and laymen alike have been scratching their heads, trying to figure out whence
Homer derived this body tale, one which the ancients themselves found
more than a little blasphemous. Was the love affair between Aphrodite
and Ares a product of the blind bard's vivid imagination?
On the contrary, there is much reason to believe that this particular vignette,
like so many other famous scenes in the Iliad and the Odyssey,
represents a vestigial remnant of an age- old oral tradition and as such was deeply
rooted in ancient religious ritual, especially marriage ritual. Our earliest
and likely most reliable witness of ancient Greek wedding practices is the melancholy poet
Sappho, who wrote about 700 BC from her island homeland Lesbos. For Sappho, Aphrodite
represented the archetypal bride. The raging war-god Ares in turn, she describes as
the divine prototype of the bridegroom. Thus a recently discovered fragment
reads as follows: quote, ”A bridegroom will come equal to Ares ,
bigger by far than a big man.” According to Sappho, the Greek marriage ritual held
that the bridegroom was somehow infused with the divine charisma of the celestial goddess.
Gregory Nagy summarized the available evidence as follows:
”In the wedding songs of Sappho, the god Ares is a model for the generic bridegroom who is
explicitly described as ‘equal to Ares’ in Sappho Song 111. Correspondingly, there
are many instances of implicit equations of the generic bride with the goddess Aphrodite.
In Sappho Song 112, for example, the bridegroom is said to be infused with the divine
charisma of Aphrodite evidently by way of his direct contact with the bride.” End of quote.
A number of questions present themselves at this point. The most obvious perhaps is the following.
To what extent, if any, were such traditions inspired by the actual appearance or witness
behavior of the planets Mars and Venus? To even pose such a query, is to risk
ridicule in classical circles, not to mention in astronomical
departments around the globe. As it turns out, Sappho’s peculiar report that Aphrodite imbued her
Ares-like bridegroom with charisma, offers a decisive clue. For as we have documented elsewhere,
analogous traditions surround the planet Venus and other cultures.
The testimony from ancient Persia is especially instructive here.
According to The Zend-Avesta, the planet Venus was identified with the goddess Anahita.
Anahita, who was intimately associated with ancient conceptions of sovereignty
and kingship, was believed to invest the king with charisma. Quote, “She legitimated the enthronement
of the king, providing him with charisma.” Strangely enough, such ideas were surprisingly
widespread throughout the ancient world. Analogous conceptions are
commonplace throughout the various cultures of Inner Asia,
where the charisma imparted by the planet goddess was a favorite theme
among the Huns and the Turks, for example. Quote, “To become a real ruler, the Hunnic
supreme ruler had to possess sacral grace. Through it, he ensured the welfare of his
people, as well as fertility, successful military campaigns, etc. Among the
Iranians, the notion of sacred charisma is expressed with the concept of hvarna,
farn, and among the Turks with the concept of qut... Thus, the Iranians and Turks both
believed that the most important quality a ruler need to have to be able to govern
was the result of the blessing and support of the Great Goddess.”
End of quote. To reiterate, in order to assume the throne and ensure
general welfare and fertility, the king must first receive the charisma of the Queen of Heaven,
the planet Venus. This is getting curiouser and curiouser, as they say.
In what sense is it possible to understand the planet Venus is infusing
the ruler or bridegroom with charisma? What exactly is charisma?
The Greek word ‘charisma” comes from ’charis’, a word often translated simply as ‘grace’ or
’splendor’ but attested in a wide range of different, albeit related meanings.
Thus ‘charis’ denotes not only the beauty of Aphrodite, or any other young woman,
it can also describe the glory or undying fame awarded to a winning
athlete after some great contest. It is possible to be more specific here;
’charis’ describes an effulgent aura or corona-like crown, encircling another object.
Indeed, according to insightful analysis of Richard Onians, Homer conceptualized ‘charis’ as “a
wreath or crown about things.” Additional insight into the luminous
charisma associated with the planet Venus can be obtained from the religious
traditions of the ancient Near East. For the earliest cultures of Mesopotamia,
the union of Inanna and Dumuzi represented the paradigmatic model of
marriage, much as the union of Aphrodite and Ares did for the Greeks.
In dozens of ancient hymns, Inanna-Venus is represented as the exemplary bride
and Dumuzi as the prototypical bridegroom. Famously, an archaic Sumerian ritual
found the king impersonating Dumuzi and engaging in a sacred marriage with the planet Venus
as Inanna. In order to legitimate his hold on the throne and secure
fertility throughout the land, according to various early literary accounts of the right in question,
a key episode found the planet goddess imbuing her royal bridegroom with radiant power.
This idea is evident in an old Babylonian hymn. Quote, “Oh Inanna, a husband worthy of
your splendor has been granted to you... You, oh mistress, you have handed over to him your power
as is due to a king, and Dumuzi causes a radiant brilliance to burst forth for you.”
Francoise Bruschweiler in her masterful analysis of the symbolism associated with Inanna,
offered the following commentary on this particular hymn. Quote, “This passage is interesting due to
the way in which, in the context of a sacred marriage, the luminous essence of the goddess is
passed over to Dumuzi.” End of quote. It will be noted that sacred marriage culminates in the
luminous essence of the goddess being given to Dumuzi. Equally instructive is a testimony
provided by an early Sumerian epic poem entitled ‘Enmarkar and the Lord of Aratta’, described as
quote, ”...probably the finest piece of storytelling ever produced by the Old Babylonian authors.”
In the epic in question Enmarkar is repeatedly brought into close
association with the planet Venus. Most telling for our purposes here is
the following passage where an Enmarkar kingship is explicitly credited to the planet, quote,
”The ever-sparkling lady gives me my kingship.” End of quote. The word translated as ever-
sparkling here is mul-mul-e=”to shine, or radiate,” a verb form from the Sumerian word for ’star’
mul, and hence referring to the luminous splendor of the planet Venus itself. The clear
import of this passage accordingly, is that kingship itself is a gift of the planet Venus.
Far from being figurative in nature, the language of Enmarkar and the lord of Aratta,
is best understood in literal fashion. It is the planet Venus who makes the
king by enveloping him with a radiant crown of glory or charisma. With regards to the specific
astronomical details of the planetary conjunction, commemorated in ancient traditions of
Aphrodite imbuing Ares with charisma, it is important to understand that our model requires that
the red planet be positioned squarely in front of the larger Venus within the
so-called polar configuration of planets. It was this decidedly extraordinary
conjunction of planetary powers that was conceptualized as Aphrodite enveloping
Mars with charisma during their sacred marriage. Or alternatively, as Inanna’s imbuing of
Dumuzi or Enmarkar with the luminous crown of kingship. As a result of these awe-inspiring natural
events, the red planet was viewed as having gained sovereignty as king of the gods.
Indeed it is precisely because the marriage of Venus and Mars is
functionally analogous to the crowning of Mars, that we would understand the
fundamental connection between the sacred marriage right and kingship.
Thus it is that, from the standpoint of historical origins, to be king meant nothing less than to be
married to, or conjoined with the planet Venus. It goes without saying that the unique
conjunction of planets described here is quite impossible in the current solar
system due to the fact that Mars being a superior planet,
can never appear in front of Venus, an inferior planet. Hence the bold challenge to conventional
ideas of astronomy presented by a radical historical reconstruction based
largely on the written testimony of the ancient sky watchers themselves.
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