We watch the sky and remember. We remember those who have watched the sky throughout time. We remember those who learned from the cycles and seasons. We remember watching the sky and feeling our smallness, our connection, our reverence, our belonging. For thousands and thousands of years people have watched the sky and learned. They have watched the sky and aligned their actions, their rituals, their way of being with the cycles spinning through the sky. We watch the sky and learn and we remember.

Venus has danced her dance for eons. She shows us how to change. She shows us how to enter into the unknown, to let go, to die, and be reborn. She begins as Morning Star, shining brightly in the East's predawn light, high in the night sky. Month after month, for nine months She descends, Her brightness flaring closer and closer to the horizon line. And then, and then She vanishes. She dips below the horizon and is not seen for a few months. Just when we wonder if She is gone forever, She begins to be seen in the West, in the light of the setting sun. She is reborn as Evening Star. Month after month She climbs higher in the sky, shining more and more brightly until She reaches the peak of Her ascent. She pauses in Her journey, rests within the heavens for a few weeks, and then begins the next cycle of descent, disappearance, and ascent.

She is the primordial Heroine's Journey. She is the one from whom the myths arise. Inanna, the ancient Sumerian Queen of Heaven who descends into the Underworld because She heard a cry of pain, meeting with her sister Erishikgal, Queen of the Underworld. Persephone, the Greek goddess of growing things, taken into the Underworld, who then emerges as Queen of Death. The light descending into the unknown and merging with the dark, arising in completion. 

We watch the sky and remember. We remember how to descend into the depths of darkness, to reclaim that which is lost, surrendering to the death within the unknown, and rising again, reborn, re-cohered into wholeness. We remember.