The Five-Pointed Star Exists But It's Not Visible
Not to the eye, anyway. Those points are not visible to real time eyesight.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa374be72-855f-421c-b1f2-b4f2b4ca4d4a_1812x406.png)
The stars of the Universe, as everybody knows, are balls of nuclear fusion. None of them are configured as having five points or, for that matter, any points at all. They, of course, are spheres. So how did this outlandish design ever become a proxy for stars?
The story is stranger than you might think.
The four brightest objects in the sky are the Sun, the Moon, the planet Venus and the star, Sirius. Having such prominence has made them so compellingly fascinating to humans that they were long ago given the status of deities by the ancients.
Venus was especially noteworthy because it lights up the twilight sky just after sunset and then follows the sun down below the horizon, night after night until it no longer does that and totally disappears. Then, a short time afterward, it returns and does the same thing in the pre-dawn sky, only this time rising above the horizon and shining brightly ahead of the sun. Thus it is both evening star and morning star alternatively.
This cycle of the planet repeats itself every eight years, making Venus the “timekeeper” of the heavens and a powerful influence on early peoples.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3f0b9a60-5da2-4e78-84ba-516de89abc84_895x377.png)
Early civilizations were aware of the dual nature of this planet but had no way to explain how that came to be. They had no idea of the physics involved but simply recorded points of light as Venus moved from brilliance in the east to brilliance in the west. The stars don’t move but the planets do and so the planets, including Venus, must know what they’re doing and surely they are telling us something. I think it’s likely the Aztecs saw this duality of Venus as two opposing forces which they identified as the gods, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, roughly “light” and “dark” respectively.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4a8d160a-f508-4a6d-8fec-c5f15fe6f46a_897x390.png)
So how does Venus become a five-pointed “star”?
Well, first you have to conceptualize that the zodiacal constellations we see in the sky are contained in a 17-degree wide “band” termed the “Zodiac” or “band of life” (from the Latin, zodiacus = ‘circle of animals’). The sun, moon and main planets all move 360 degrees around us inside this narrow band. The band itself is divided into 12 equal parts of 30 degrees each and each given the name of a particular constellation which astrologers termed a “house” of the Zodiac.
If you note that the planet is a morning “star” in one of these “houses” and then note the next “house” in which it’s once again a morning “star” and then repeat that three more times, you will have witnessed Venus moving from “house” to “house” as a morning star over a period of eight years. Each “leg” of that 8-year journey lasts 1.6 years or 19.2 months. The distance between each of the “points” is 72 degrees.
And there you have it!
Here is the image that Venus draws of itself —- a fiery pentagram staked out in 8 years along the Zodiac! It is the original, 5-pointed star.
Moreover, this entire “pentagram” itself rotates 2.4 degrees at each successive cycle as illustrated below:
According to the Mayan calculation, this full circle takes 1,248 years in a total of 150 complete cycles. Of course, this identical pattern also occurs when Venus is an evening star, which is why the ancients gave it two identities.
It’s really difficult to comprehend how people living thousands of years ago were able to conceptualize this image by simple, long-term observation. But they did. By the time of the Greek philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras, (530 B.C.) this figure was already well known to astrologers. He included it in his school and swore his pupils to secrecy regarding it.
Before going further please indulge my opinion that astrology today is fundamentally a crock of mysticism and buncombe, requiring ignorance as its chief asset. In ancient times, when planets were gods, astrology was the best way to understand their behavior and I think astrologers were probably the geniuses of their day. That they could figure this stuff out simply by observation seems incredible. But they did.
As for the planet itself, you have only to go outside and look to the east or west when Venus is playing its role as morning or evening “star” to realize what a powerful sight it really is. No wonder that the ancients were awed by it.
There’s more to Venus than meets the eye and there’s more to this post, including a recipe for some delicious pancakes. It’s all yours by hitting the button to become a paid subscriber. And heartfelt thanks if you do!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Eat Your History to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.