Lucifer Archives - Astrology readings and writings by Lynn Hayes

Venus retrograde – the significance of 40 days and 40 nights

Venus turns retrograde only every two years or so which makes it one of the more rare astrological events (the outer planets retrograde every year and Mercury retrogrades four times a year). When a planet is retrograde, meaning it APPEARS to be moving backwards from our perspective on earth, its influence tends to be more hidden and we generally are urged to look backwards and rectify matters from the past.

Astrologer Marina Macario makes an interesting point – that the 40 days and 40 nights of the Venus retro period corresponds to the 40 days and 40 nights that Jesus traveled in the wilderness.

Forty is mentioned in the bible often, but most famously when Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness for forty days. Could this be referring to the astrological phenomena of Venus retrograde? After all, Venus has two sides to her. She is the goddess of love and war according to the Babylonians. The word Lucifer (which is often confused with Satan) means light-bringer and refers to Venus in her morning star phase. The ancients said the first few days of her Lucifer phase was a particularly dangerous time. People born with Venus as a morning star are said to rush headlong into love affairs and are very passionate. Venus as an evening star is has more of the receptive, traditional meaning.

You might also be interested in this earlier article I wrote about the two sides of Venus, and in this article about Lucifer as Venus, the Light Bringer.

I became curious about the significance of 40 days and 40 nights, because before Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for this length of time […]

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By Lynn Hayes|2020-05-15T15:45:39-04:00October 5th, 2014|Planetary cycles, Religion|8 Comments

Into the underworld, and Venus ascending

Halloween truly is a pagan practice, and most people now recognize that this so-called holiday is actually rooted in the old Celtic festival of Samhain. Although Halloween is commonly celebrated on October 31, the festival of Samhain is a cross-quarter holiday that occurs at the midpoint between the Fall Equinox and the Winter Solstice on November 7.

Astrologically, Samhain (along with the other cross-quarter days of Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasad) is celebrated at the midpoint of the fixed signs of Taurus, Scorpio, Aquarius and Leo. Fixed signs are the signs of power – like the square, their stability and fixed nature leads to a buildup of energy that opens up a doorway to an explosion of raw power. In Scorpio, that power is directed within, fearlessly exploring the invisible dimensions of life and reaching across dimensions to discover what awaits there.

Samhain was celebrated as the New Year in pre-Christian Celtic lands, and it was thought that during this time the veil between the worlds was at its thinnest. Communication with the dead was widely practiced during Samhain rituals, not surprising because of the association with Scorpio and the underworld of darkness that it rules.

When Christianity attempted to subsume the pagan Celtic festivals into Christian holidays, All Saints or All Hallows Day was established on November 2 with the night before being the Eve of All Hallows which has come down to us as Halloween. Participants still celebrate the souls of the dead during Hallows Eve, but now the creatures from the other side were reviled as evil. Wise women became the evil witches; offerings of food and drink were left out for the dead souls to placate their evil spirits.

Sig Lonegren from Glastonbury writes about Samhain and […]

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By Lynn Hayes|2010-10-30T12:27:53-04:00October 30th, 2010|Holidays, Planetary cycles|1 Comment

Venus of the Evening

Many many years ago, back in the mists of antiquity, ancient astronomers thought that Venus was actually two separate bodies, one called Phosphoros, “The bringer of light” also known as Lucifer or the Morning Star; the other they called Hesperos, the Evening Star.

From our perspective on earth, the orbit of Venus is always fairly close to the Sun. When Venus is at her brightest she becomes visible just after the Sun goes down, and is then called the Evening Star.

Astrologer Dana Gerhardt writes:

This week Venus reappears as the Evening Star, in the sign of her exaltation (Pisces) and conjunct magnificent Jupiter. I would expect nothing less, as she’s been kicking ass during her recent underworld journey (which began just as Tiger Wood’s furious wife took a golf club to the cheater’s SUV). In my Oregon town (often called “land of a thousand goddesses” for its many bright and talented single women), a sudden string of sexual attacks brought out angry marches, attended by both women and men. Here in Ashland, Venus was not trembling in fear. From many of the Super Bowl ads it seems that men may be the ones trembling today, hoping to reclaim their grunting authority from the powerful Venuses in their lives (or maybe that was just the retrograde Mars). At the Grammys, Venus divas dominated: Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Pink and Taylor Swift, all reminding us how much fun it is to be a girl. We’re halfway through this current Venus cycle and it’s worth recalling how it began: when Venus emerged as the Morning Star, so did the breakout popularity of Susan Boyle, who showed us that even a middle-aged Venus in a frumpy dress can be a diva. Boyle’s song was “I […]

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By Lynn Hayes|2023-06-12T16:51:51-04:00February 11th, 2010|Astrology, Astronomy|Comments Off

Lucifer: Satan, or Venus?

I was taking in my daily dose of hilarity on Matthew’s blog this morning where he has a post about asteroids that begins with a comment about Lincoln’s Sun being conjunct Lucifer which has caused some astrologers to say that Lincoln is the Antichrist”

The whole thing about Lucifer being Satan is bizarre to me. Lucifer is the “Light Bringer,” the “Morning Star.” So how did he get from bringing the light to representing the devil? This article from the Theosophical University Press has some interesting information on the subject.

Lucifer means lightbringer, from the Latin lux “light” and ferre “to bear or bring.” The word Lucifer is found in only one place in the Bible — Isaiah 14:12 — but only in the King James and related versions: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! . . .” In other translations we find: “O shining star of the dawn!” (Moffatt) or “O morning-star, son of the dawn!” (Hebrew Bible). The King James Version is based on the Vulgate, the Latin translation of Jerome. Jerome translated the Hebrew helel (bright or brilliant one) as “lucifer,” which was a reasonable Latin equivalent. And yet it is this lucifer, the bright one or lightbearer, that came to be understood by so many as the name for Satan, Lord of Darkness.

Lucifer is mentioned only in the Old Testament, and Satan doesn’t come into the picture until the new Testament. Jesus is also known as the “Morning Star” in the New Testament, which confuses the issue even more.

But before either the Old or New Testament, Venus was known as the “Morning Star.” Plato, who is thought to have been born in 428 b.c.e. and therefore predates the New Testament and some of the rewrites of the Old Testament, wrote in his work called Timaeus:

Time, […]

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By Lynn Hayes|2020-05-15T15:48:05-04:00July 10th, 2009|Astronomy, Religion|Comments Off