I am not going to write about the interior conjunction tonight. I am feeling like I need to review all the information that came to me before entering the fire of the Sun.
First off, Rhea showed up to start the journey. Rhea was the Titaness mother of the gods, and goddess of female fertility, motherhood, and generation. Her name means “flow” and “ease.” As the wife of Kronos (Cronus, Time), she represented the eternal flow of time and generations; as the great Mother (Meter Megale), the “flow” was menstrual blood, birth waters, and milk. Her children were swallowed up one by one by Cronus as he did not want to be overthrown as was prophesized by one of his offspring. Ceres, Pluto, Juno, Vesta and Neptune were all taken out of play until Rhea had Zeus and hid him away, replacing him with a stone. Zeus later got Cronus to expel the others. Yes, he was the hero here, but he would not have had that chance if Rhea had not finally stood up for her children and hid one away to give him a chance of survival. She was instrumental in finding away for the hidden energies to come back out into the outer world.
What this shows for me is that Rhea is about finding those aspects of my inner self that my masculine task master of right and wrong has pushed aside and not allowed to be seen. These are the parts that my past experiences and the experiences of my ancestors have hinted would harm who I was supposed to be, how I was supposed to be. This transfers into encouraging me to bring out and use parts of myself that I may have repressed while creating an atmosphere where I would receive the proper respect by doing so.
Zein Stein wrote “Rhea appears to have the influence of an interpreter/press agent/salesman for Saturn. It will give you things/ideas/structures from some person or other that you view as Saturn, but in a very un-Saturnian way so that you can more easily accept them. In other words, Rhea packages Saturnian information in an attractive wrapping, convincing you that it is something you can accept, or even more, something that you want very much. What it brings is definitely Saturnian, yet it brings it in a very unpressured way.”[1]
This appears to me to say that the rules and the “should and should nots” that I have identified with the energy of Cronus (Saturn) can still be honored but interpreted in a way that would be more affirming to my inner authenticity instead of the rules laid out by “others.”
Next I encountered Lilith as Venus turned retrograde and also when she officially slipped from view from here on earth. Lilith is the fierce Goddess who is all about finding and rescuing the hidden shadow aspects of divine femininity. She comes to help break down the barriers to the unconscious. According to Demetra George, “Lilith’s recorded story begins with Inanna, granddaughter of Ninlil, who was the “Queen of Heaven” in early Sumeria. The legend of Inanna and Enki told of the sacred sexual customs that were one of Inanna’s gifts to civilize the people of Erech. Here, the holy women of the temple were known as the nugig the pure and spotless virgin priestesses. They took as their lovers the members of the community who came to the temple to worship the Goddess and to receive a healing. At this time Lilith’s name is recorded as a young maiden, the “hand of Inanna,” who gathers the men from the street and brings them to the temple at Erech for the holy rites.
Between 3000 BCE and 2500 BCE the ancient Sumerian culture began to interface with the coming of the patriarchy. As the patriarchy moved to overtake the reign of the Goddess, they first needed to sever the people from the Goddess’s vast power, which was centered in her inner temple of sacred sexual love. In order to accomplish this task the patriarchy rejected and suppressed the sexual rites of the Goddess religion. Like the denied shadow when projected, women’s sexual power became demonized as a force of evil. Over the centuries the young maid Lilith, who first approached the men to take them to Inanna’s holy temple, became in patriarchal culture the embodiment of everything that was evil and dangerous in the sexual realm. She especially catalyzed men’s worst fears concerning the sexual power of the feminine.
The story of how Lilith was cast out of the Sumerian cosmology was told in the epic tale of Gilgamesh and the Netherworld (dating ca. 2000 BCE). Inanna saved a sacred huluppu tree on the banks of the Euphrates that had been uprooted by a great windstorm. She then planted this willow in her holy garden, planning to use its wood for her throne and bed. As the years passed the tree matured, but it bore no branches or leaves for three reasons: the snake who could not be charmed made its nest in the roots of the tree; the fierce Anzu bird set its young in the crown; and, in the middle, the dark maid Lilith built her home. And so Inanna, who loved to laugh, wept because the snake, bird, and Lilith would not leave her tree. She turned to Gilgamesh for help. He slayed the serpent, His men cut down the tree and presented it to Inanna for her throne and bed. The Anzu bird escaped with its young to the mountains, and Lilith smashed her home and flew to the wild and uninhabited places. Inanna rewarded Gilgamesh with a drum and drumstick from the base and crown of the tree, which enabled him to talk with the gods and to descend to the netherworld.
From a feminist perspective, this story raises several disturbing Questions. Why would Inanna weep at the presence of her handmaid Lilith in her tree? Why did she wish for the symbols of the ancient Bird and Snake Goddess to be gone from her life? And why did Inanna reward Gilgamesh for destroying the sacred serpent and banishing Lilith and the Anzu bird?
The Epic of Gilgamesh, as inscribed upon the clay tablets dating from 2000 BCE, was the later Babylonian version of an earlier Sumerian tale that had occurred over the preceding one thousand years. It is known only in fragments today. From the patriarchal perspective Inanna must sacrifice her virginity, that is, her new moon maiden nature as a goddess who is free and autonomous. She must also submit to the new solar gods and allow Gilgamesh to destroy the symbols of her power: the bird, the snake, and the tree.
It now becomes clear why Inanna wept at the continued presence of Lilith, the serpent, and the Anzu bird, who all resided in her sacred tree. The ancient Bird and Snake Goddess who made her home at the crown and base of the tree of life united heaven and earth. This image contained the power and knowledge inherent in the eagle-winged, lion-faced bird and the wisdom of sexual renewal embodied by the serpent. Inanna had to give up these symbols of her power if the new patriarchy was to grant her throne and bed, her new symbols signifying co-rulership in the new reign. If she could not let go of them voluntarily, they would be taken away from her in any case by the coming patriarchal onslaught. The home of her handmaiden Lilith was destroyed, and Lilith had to flee to the desolate wilderness.”[2]
“Lilith and Adam – Originally he and she, Adam and Lilith, were created equal and together and set in the Garden of Eden to give things their names and thereby bring the world into manifestation. They had a very difficult time because Lilith insisted upon full equality, which Adam refused, and they could not agree upon anything. Adam would have sex with Lilith only if he was on the top and she was on the bottom because he was superior, having been created from the pure dust, and she was inferior, having come from filth and sediment. After some time Lilith realized that Adam was never going to accept as valid and worthwhile anything she had to offer, so she uttered the secret name of God, few off, and vanished into the air.
Adam complained to God that the wife he had been given had deserted him. God then sent three angels, Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, to capture Lilith. They found her beside the Red Sea, a place of ill repute abounding in lascivious demons, with whom Lilith engaged in unbridled promiscuity and bore scores of demonic children. Lilith did not return to her husband. She chose a lifetime of exile in a desert cave on the shores of the Red Sea rather than one of subjugation and domination to Adams will. Lilith went through a great period of grief. Not only had she voluntarily removed herself as the feminine aspect of wisdom from the process of a new creation of the world, but daily one hundred of her children were dying for her defiance. After her mourning was done she made love with the water elementals, and many beings arose from this union–namely the sea of the unconscious, from which the feminine aspect of our wisdom arises from the depths of our psyche.
Lilith was punished for her defiance by being exiled from legitimate society and cast out into the wilderness. What remained of Lilith’s story was then distorted, and the image of her that abounded in the Hebraic literature and folklore of the next several millennia was one of feminine evil. She was known as the harlot, the wicked, the false, and the black. The first woman on earth who was equal to man and a free spirit was condemned to survive for eternity as a she-devil, mating with demons and devils and bearing monsters instead of human children.” This image was to serve as a threat and warning to any woman who might consider leaving her husband or defying male authority.[3]
Demetra George goes on to say in her chapter entitled “Lilith as the Shadow of Feminine Sexuality and Freedom,“
“Lilith, in the matriarchal world, was once an image of all that was the finest of a woman’s sexual nature, especially in her fiery, dark aspect, which relates to the menstrual mysteries. After the patriarchy repressed women’s sexuality and the old Goddess religion disappeared, Lilith came to embody mankind’s projection of the feminine shadow, which Barbara Koltuv sees as representing the assertive and rebellious woman. As a demonic dark goddess she was then feared and hated rather than revered.
To enter into the figure of Lilith is to remember a time in the ancient past when women were honored and praised for initiating and fully expressing their personal freedom and sexual passion. If we then recall a time in the more recent past when women tried to reenact that ecstasy, only to be abused, suppressed, and rejected, we will understand how Lilith has been transformed by patriarchal culture. In the following discussion we will ask, “What does it mean to reclaim the qualities she once bestowed upon the feminine as her birthright?”[4]
So there is a lot of information here about Lilith, but I truly feel it is important to see how influential she will be during this next journey of Venus in her Leo cycle. Lilith, if honored and recognized, will be the powerhouse needed to find our hidden shadow gifts and bring them out to be used.
In summary, this journey appears to be about finding parts of myself that have been buried deep in my subconscious. I will need to find the strength, the cunning, to go within, uncover these hidden attributes and bringing them out into the light of day. Rhea has shown me that I need to do this and Lilith will be my guide on this undertaking. Am I ready to immerse myself into the realm of the Sun at the conjunction? Will I find the personal strength to do the work that will need to be done?
[1] https://www.zanestein.com/CybeleRhea.htm
[2] Mysteries of the Dark Moon by Demetra George
[3] Ibid
[4] Ibid