The Mirror of Venus: 5 Keys

The Mirror of Venus: The 5 Keys - 2023, DS.

"Moving now from the decad to its half - we meet one of the most brilliant personalities of the 'society of numbers;' the pentad and the characteristics of the number five. In arithmology or number mysticism the number five partially pertains to the essence and importance of the decad as being its half and its condensed image, but it is also the gamos, Aphrodite's number as goddess of the fruitful union, the generatrix of love, and the abstract archetype of reproduction."

- From the 1931 investigation of phi and the pentagram: The Golden Number: Pythagorean Rites and Rhythms in the Development of Western Civilization, written by Matila Ghyka, a book I've just read recently. The above quote is the first of five similar brief references to Aphrodite and the pentagram found throughout the book; three of which combine Aphrodite with the Egyptian goddess Hathor.*

But, while Ghyka acknowledges an ancient connection between Venus/Aphrodite and the pentagram, it seems to rest upon the idea of marriage, a "fruitful" union... conjugal bliss. He calls this incarnation of Aphrodite "Gamelia," that is, "of the wedding." But, Gamelia was a name given to many, if not all the Olympian gods; specifically Hera, wife of Zeus; it wasn't amongst Aphrodite's major titles, and, regarding the pentagram, is too literal a translation of the "love goddess" and is, ultimately, a red herring.

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Inset left, above: the contemplative Venus of Arles... (seemingly) holding an apple up to her broken-off, handheld mirror. Inset right,  is an actual bronze mirror (Greek, circa 460 BC) supported by the figure of Aphrodite who is holding a dove, while 2 winged erotes stretch their hands towards a point centered above her head. If you connect the point at the top of the goddess's head with the two doves perched above on the mirror, you'll have an inverted golden triangle. Below, inset left, is another similar bronze mirror from the same period, currently in the Met Museum. This one features dogs chasing hares; the hare is another Aphrodite symbol. Hint: we've seen the dogs and the hares before.**

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So, mythologically speaking, marriage was never known to be Aphrodite's strong point... although love, both carnal and celestial, was. The Venus of the pentagram, however, is significantly more complex, and we have to approach her from a higher ground, so to speak. From Theoi we have:

"According to the cosmogonic views of the nature of Aphrodite, she was the personification of the generative powers of nature, and the mother of all living beings. A trace of this notion seems to be contained in the tradition that in the contest of Typhon with the gods, Aphrodite metamorphosed herself into a fish, which animal was considered to possess the greatest generative powers." 

And, there is so much more. One might say, Ghyka was trivializing the Venus/Aphrodite connection. While he inserts the word gamos in his brief comment, he neglects the word heiros (sacred). Nor does he infer in any way that the "wedding" is, in essence, chymical. So, my strongest impression of the book is that the deliberate omissions Ghyka (amusingly) accused other writers of making - including Vitruvius - might've been tip-offs to those of his own. That being said, he probably connects more esoteric "dots" in the pentagram's long journey within the pages of this book than you'll find anywhere else. But, keep in mind, the author may be sticking to traditional "fraternal" codes of secrecy all the while... something also mentioned quite often in his book.

"The mirror also, in turn, symbolizes revelation and truth: the mirror often shows the face, and the eyes, as shown in the painting Venus At Her Mirror or Rokeby Venus or Venus-Aphrodite by Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez, in which the goddess gazes into the mirror with only her face revealed. The eyes, in turn, are the paths to truth: they are the “window to the soul”, or, ever-more interestingly, the “mirror of the soul.” Aphrodite, in gazing into the mirror, is therefore not merely enjoying the sight of her own beauty, but is acknowledging the truth of all that resides within her – for, as Aphrodite Ourania, she is that which keeps together the entire cosmos and continues the survival of all."

- A quote found here, introducing us to to the most important facet of Aphrodite: Aphrodite Ourania or Urania, the celestial Aphrodite, and the Venus/Aphrodite who will concern us most in upcoming posts. She shares some of the attributes of Urania, the Greek muse of astronomy and the stars, in some cases mistakenly,  but, in others, possibly an indication of the evolution of Pentagonal Venus and the golden meme.

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The diagram above, a sort of gateway into the Venus subset of the golden meme, is already somewhat obsolete regarding the pentagonal journey I unintentionally began taking around Thursday, April 4, 2019, after my vision of the rose pentacle. I wrote at the time that I anticipated something "larger." But, really, I had no idea of the many roads left to travel. Needless to say, Venus/Aphrodite had her foot in the door from Day 1.

I have since learned that the Venus pentagram, in its entirety, is not merely one arrangement of five symbols but, possibly, an arrangement of 10. Moreover, each of first five symbols composing the "mirror" represent metaphorical hallways with numerous doors. In other words, the Venus pentagram remains true to the pentagram's nature - it's a fractal - very possibly as colorfully layered as (what appears to be) a phi-based Julia set, inset right. Additionally, Venus/Aphrodite is not merely 2 goddesses in one... she's worn many hats over the course of her very long career and has several hybrid forms as well, so, it's a very tangled web, indeed. 

In spite of all of the above, the first five symbols I'd originally chosen for the diagram still stand, but, while I had hoped to address each of them briefly here, I've come to realize it isn't presently feasible. There is no "brief" in this discussion. 

As for now, I will include in this post some bits which have already been written regarding several symbols in the diagram.

(Note: I was originally going to conclude this post with one more bit of information via Prince Ghyka which might interest us, and it concerns Albrecht Dürer. This "bit of information" was eventually accompanied by other bits of information to necessitate adding a dedicated Part III to Albrecht Dürer and the Divine Ratio Parts 1 & II. As I said, there is no "brief" in this discussion. Stay tuned.)

(Continued after the jump...)

Qualifying Feminism: Empowerment and the Arts (Part II)

A poster in a London bus station featuring an image by the artist Egon Schiele.
The banner, however - strategically plastered over the figure's pubic area -

was not of the artist's device. See here or here.
(All images in this post can be clicked-on to enlarge.)

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The C-Word: Censorship

“Art cannot be modern. Art is primordially eternal.”

- Egon Schiele, Austrian painter (June 12, 1890 - October 31, 1918).

"The purging wave seems to know no bounds. The poster of an Egon Schiele nude is censored; calls are made for the removal of a Balthus painting from a museum on grounds that it’s an apology for pedophilia; unable to distinguish between the man and his work, Cinémathèque Française is told not to hold a Roman Polanski retrospective and another for Jean-Claude Brisseau is blocked. A university judges the film Blow-Up, by Michelangelo Antonioni, to be "misogynist" and "unacceptable." In light of this revisionism, even John Ford (The Searchers) and Nicolas Poussin (The Abduction of the Sabine Women) are at risk."

- Via an English translation of one of the more coherent passages from the notorious "#MeToo" backlash letter published in Le Monde earlier this year, written and signed by 100 French women-of-note, up to and including Catherine Deneuve. The original document (in French) can be found here and, in English, here. Inset left is the  painting under scrutiny at that time, Thérèse Dreaming.

"As with previous awareness raising campaigns, it is not unlikely that the backlash will snowball and that the deeply entrenched patriarchal mechanisms that have maintained sexism for centuries will reassert themselves. That is after all how the system has survived to date. It is also all too likely that we will all — men and women — soon grow weary of allegations of sexual harassment as we have done in the past, making #MeToo a distant memory, a bud that did not blossom into long-lasting structural change. As Jessa Crispin writes in her manifesto about why she is not a feminist, popular social movements must, by their very nature, be “banal… non-threatening, and ineffective.” This underscores the problem with movements propelled by hashtags and celebrities."

- Excerpted from the Public Seminar article The Many Faces of the #MeToo Backlash, written by Maryam Omidi.

"In an angry riposte, French feminists described the letter’s signatories as “apologists for rape” and “defenders of paedophiles”, a reference to Deneuve’s vigorous support of the French-Polish film director Roman Polanski, convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl.

'There’s nothing really new in the arguments they use; they’re like the embarrassing colleague or tired uncle who doesn’t understand what’s happening,' a group of feminists wrote in an open letter of their own to French radio."

- Regarding a backlash against the former backlash via this article. Inset left is a still from Repulsion, a Roman Polanski film starring Catherine Deneuve (pictured) as a woman who kills two men, one of whom sexually assaulted her. As one might expect, Deneuve's character is portrayed as psychologically deranged (i.e., violence of men is expected and often applauded in a patriarchal society, violence in women - even when justified - is pathological.)

As for Roman Polanski, in 2018: "in light of the #MeToo and Time's Up movements, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to expel Polanski from its membership." As for Polanski's relationship with his "victim," Samantha Geimer, apparently they have become friendly... see Samantha Geimer on Roman Polanski: 'We email a little bit'.

"The problem of comprehending Lolita begins with this moral discrepancy and her literary position as a rape victim. It causes us to unravel with Humbert. We question the book, ourselves, our culture, and in the space between our disgust and Humbert’s desire, we obsess over and recreate the story. Spawning two films, several musical adaptions, ballets, plays, a Russian opera spin-off, fashion subcultures, and endless memorabilia, Lolita is a transcendent literary icon. Her ghost lingers in Lana Del Rey, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus and many a pop icon seen cradling a teddy bear in skimpy lingerie. The hyper-sexualization of young women is Lolita’s legacy, a cast thrown sixty years into the future: a transition from rape victim to sex icon."

- From Emily Roese's 2016 (Huffington Post) article: The Problematic Idolization of Lolita. Inset right is a detail from a poster for Stanely Kubrick's 1962 film adaption Lolita.

"Violence against women is often against our voices and our stories. It is a refusal of our voices, and what a voice means: the right to self-determination, to participation, to consent or dissent, to live and participate, to interpret and narrate. A husband hits his wife to silence her; a date rapist or acquaintance rapist refuses to let the 'No' of his victim mean what it should, that she alone has jurisdiction over her body; rape culture asserts that a woman's testimony is worthless, untrustworthy... Having a voice is crucial. It's not all there is to human rights, but its central to them, and so you can consider the history of women's rights and lack of rights as a history of silence and breaking silence."

- From Rebecca Solnit's A Short History of Silence, an essay from her (highly recommended) collection: The Mother of All Questions, 2017, Haymarket Books.  Regarding the photo (inset left) - "STILL NOT ASKING FOR IT" - more info can be found here and here.

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Apparently, the poster which introduces this section is one of several which appeared in London bus stations this year announcing an exhibit of artwork by Egon Schiele, a Viennese artist and painter, known for his oddly contorted human figures, both nude and otherwise (inset right and sourced here). I don't know that any feminists were involved in the censorship of his work - and, possibly, the exhibition of his nudes in a bus station wasn't the most brilliant of plans to begin with - but, in terms of censorship "100 years old and still too daring" makes a significant point. In terms of culture, are we as a species moving forwards, backwards, or remaining stationary? More importantly, will the censorship of art and/or the artist - either contemporary or from the distant past - solve anything? Lastly, is the sensual and/or sexual content of art - regardless of the variety explored or intimated - a feminist issue? And, if so, should art fall under the jurisdiction of any and/or all other political and societal movements as well?

While I can both sympathize with and applaud the #MeToo
(and subsequent Times Up) movements - which marked the historical moment when women finally broke their silence and dragged a few "rape culture" enthusiasts out from under their proverbial rocks (where they'd been congregating for a very long time) - the infamous backlash letter signed by 100 French female luminaries was correct in one respect: suppressing a work of art due to its sexual content or the sexual behavior of its makers - even when said content or behavior is presently considered taboo - is antithetical to the nature of art, human creativity and human expression. But, most importantly, for a feminist, fanning the flames of censorship can also backfire.

Then again, history tells us that in almost every case of censorship or prohibition - across the board - the eradication of the offending behavior was not achieved... neither in the short term and, most certainly, not in the long term. Case in point: Lolita, the 1955 novel written by Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977). Basically, it's a feminist's nightmare - and a hebephile's wet dream - following the obsessional musings of a middle-aged man directed towards his manipulative, sexually precocious 12-year-old stepdaughter whom he eventually rapes. Banned in Great Britain and France for a period of two years, it was then banned in Australia from 1958 to 1965. Meanwhile, when it arrived in America, 100,000 copies were sold in its first three weeks. After all, nothing says "Must Read" like the word: "Banned"...