The pentagram of Venus – writing prompts

The Full Moon in Virgo was yesterday, lighting up the sky. Full Moons bring a time of completion, and can also signal a time of releasing what is not coming to fruition.
In today’s writing Studio session, we dove a little further into the planet Venus, this time also discovering her cycles. Venus has an orbit of approximately 19 months, during which time she makes two conjunctions with the Sun. One, called the inferior (or, as I prefer, interior) conjunction happens when Venus is directly between the Sun and the Earth. The other, the superior conjunction, comes during her retrograde phase as she is disappearing behind the Sun. The superior conjunction determines the beginning of a new Venus cycle, in which she begins as the morning star, rising just ahead of the Sun. After the interior conjunction she becomes the evening star, rising after sunset. In both incarnations, she becomes the brightest object in the night sky during her travels. The image to the right depicts Venus’ orbit from the view of Earth. In the course of eight years, the planet travels through five new cycles, making a five-pointed star, or pentagram, in the sky. Despite today’s association with evil intention, the pentagram began as a sacred symbol of the Goddess. Over time, Venus’ orbits go on to create the shape of a rose in the sky – the “Flower of Life”. Venus is associated with the numbers 5, 8 and 13. Coupled with the association with Frygga, the Norse goddess for whom Friday is named, Friday the 13th becomes a lucky day blessed by Venus, a far cry from mainstream meanings.

Twice in a 19 month period, Venus returns to the place in the sky where she was at our birth. But every 8 years, she returns at the same time as our birthday, when the Sun also returns to the same spot. This is called a Venus Return, and is associated with Venus-related themes being activated more strongly in our lives that year.

Our first prompts today were again a series of lists to get us started:
Think back to age 8, 16, 24, etc. for Venus-related events in your life or that of your characters;
List some significant relationships in your life or your characters;
List what makes you feel connected.

Our longer writing periods began with these prompts:
Write about a significant relationship in yours or your character’s life – past, present or future – and what makes it significant;
Describe a place or time in which social relationships took a turn, changed radically;
Write about a time you fell in love!