Margaret Starbird writes:
Because the present orbit of the planet Venus makes a perfect pentagram around the sun every eight years, the 5-pointed star has long been associated with Venus.
Henry Lincoln’s book The Holy Place shows some amazing diagrams of 5- and 6-pointed star configurations using the alignment of cornerstones of medieval churches in an area of Provence around Rennes-le-chateau that he says were designed as a temple honoring Mary Magdalene (as the Christian incarnation of Venus).
A fascination with Venus and her movements is well documented from pre-historic times by Immanuel Velikovsky in a book called Worlds in Collision. According to Velikovsky, ancient peoples looked to the skies for their “godsâ€â€”and associated them with the planets, because the planets’ orbits were not yet “fixed.†He theorized that Venus had an erratic orbit that brought her too close to earth on a “near collision†course on a regular circuit (about 50 years)—causing world-wide havoc: floods, volcanoes, tidal waves, even shifts of the world’s axis. Finally, after a final “close encounter†with the earth, she “bounced†away and was forced into her present orbit which was benign. This theory is borne out to some degree by the mythology of Inanna (associated with Venus). In her earliest myths, Inanna was the goddess of war and destruction, but she later became the goddess of love. Ancient Sumerians who had feared her in the past, suddenly began extolling her beauty and benevolence in their liturgies.
Perhaps it was the association with Venus (“divine feminineâ€) that prompted Eliphas Levi (the former Catholic priest) to identify the pentagram with evil/Satan? The Catholic Church has a history of negative attitudes toward women. St. Thomas Aquinas (13th c) taught that if a woman conceived a female child it was due to a “defect in the mother or the effect of a humid south wind.†Here’s a quote from St. Jerome (d. 420), who first translated the Bible from Greek into Latin: “Woman is the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness . . . a perilous object.†They are reflecting sentiments from the New Testament epistles of Paul and the author of 2 Timothy marginalizing women in the earliest church: “I do not allow a woman to speak or to have authority over men.†And then, a quote from Tertullian, one of the early Church “fathers†taking us back to Genesis and the “Fall”: “Do you know that each of you women is an Eve? You are the gate of Hell, the temptress of the forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of Divine Law.†Gender bias is as ancient as the Scriptures….
Peace and light,
Margaret
“The Woman with the Alabaster Jarâ€
www.margaretstarbird.net
Margaret posted the above to our GoddessChristians forum and a few people responded:
Deborah L Shutek-Jackson, author of the Magdalene Legacy Tarot, writes:
Yes, Margaret, as you have pointed out, gender bias is as old as the scriptures, which is why I believe that Moses took the story of Adam and Eve and twisted it against Eve to satisfy the “God” upon which he conversed with (who was quite a gender biased god, himself) The inference that woman was created as a sidekick for man is biologically incorrect.
We are initially all women at the start of conception. The Y chromosome is not there to directly create the male organs, but rather to affect the creation of specific messengers within the pregnant female. As long as these “messengers” are not blocked from being created  in the mother, they will enter the fetus’ bloodstream and recreate the initial beginnings of male genitalia. Once this important task of the mother is complete, the testicles of the now “male” child will continue to produce chemicals via the newly forming genitals which will take over from there. If anything, Man was created for Woman.
It is the Adam and Eve story itself that has cast a great deal of error and misogyny on earth. So my question has always been WHY was the erroneous story written in the first place? Who originated  the twisted version and for what purpose?
I do find it very interesting that a very twisted version of the goddess exists in the ancient Egyptian stories of Bast, Sekhemet, and even Het Hert (Hathor), which begin to appear far earlier than the apple in the garden story. Almost a corrupted version of the feminine principle, itself (IMHO)
Deborah L Shutek-Jackson
http://www.themagdalenelegacytarot.com/Home.html