figure 3.13 (left) of Sacred Goddess in Ancient Goddess Cultures
version 3 (c) 2024 Richard Heath
In the heliocentricThe modern view of the solar system in which all planets orbit the Sun and the Moon orbits the Earth as third planet out. world view all planets orbit the sun, yet we view them from the Earth and so, until the 16th century astronomy had a different world view where the planets either orbited the sun (in the inner solar system) which like the outer planets orbited the earth, this view called geocentricThe ancient view of the planetary world in which the inner planets orbit the sun and the sun and planets orbit Earth (the geo part). The Chaldean order was Earth - Moon - (Mercury - Venus -Sun) - Mars - Jupiter - Saturn.. The discovery of gravity confirmed the heliocentric view but the geocentric view is still that seen from the Earth.
The geocentric was then assumed to be wholly superseded, but there are many aspects of it that appear to have given our ancestors their various religious views and, I believe, the megalithic monuments express most clearly a form of astronomy based upon numbers rather than on laws, numbers embedded in the structure of Time seen from the Earth, and hence showing the geocentric view had more to it than the medieval view discarded by modern science.
Venus was once considered one part of the triple goddessThe goddess took three forms as the beautiful young Venus/ Aphrodite, the fecund Earth goddess and the wizened Moon goddess. and the picture above shows her complete circuit both in the heavens and in front of and behind the sun. The shape of this forms two horns, firstly in the West at evening after sunset. Then she rushes in front of the sun to reemerge in the East to form a symmetrical other horn after which she travels behind the sun to eventually re-emerge in the West in a circuit lasting 1.6 years of 365 days, more precisely in 583.92 days – her synodicThe recurring time cycle of a given celestial phenomenon seen from the Earth. period.
In my latest book, Sacred Geometry in Ancient Goddess Cultures, the young goddess of our Venus/Aphrodite is most clear in the matriarchal civilization of the Minoans, centered on the Greek island of Crete between 2000 and 1300 BCE. The famous “horns of consecration” resemble the horns of Venus in the sky, then used to bracket the rising sun and moon, on the horizon, from sanctuaries on mountain peaks or east facing “palaces”.
figure 5.5 of Sacred Geometry in Ancient Goddess Cultures (left rhyton of Kato Zagros, (center, detail of tripartite shrine and courtyard featuring three altars (c) Olaf Tausch, (right) the likely appearance of the whole sanctuary on a gold ring.
The extremes of the sun at Solstices and its mean, directly east at EquinoxThe two times of the year, in Spring and Autumn, when the sun rises directly east and sets directly west - at every latitude on Earth. are three locations and the minimum and maximum moon, to north and south add up to seven locations seen in adjacent horns within sun or moon will rise at those key moments over a solar yearFrom Earth: the time in which the sun moves once around the Zodiac, now known to be caused by the orbital period of the Earth around the Sun. and over the moon’s nodal periodUsually referring to the backwards motion of the lunar orbit's nodes over 6800 days (18.618 years), leading to eclipse cycles like the Saros. of 18.618 solar years. In the book the inter-palace distance between Knossos and Malia is found to be, in miles, the 18.618 years taken for the lunar nodes to traverse the EclipticThe path of the Sun through the sky along which eclipses of sun and moon can occur, traditionally divided into the 365ΒΌ parts of the solar year, each part then a DAY in angle rather than time.