Kathryn notes that the Venus cycle from 2001 to 2007 makes the shape of a pentagram with this interesting analysis:

It’s interesting to note that Venus is associated with love, harmony and proportion when the pentagram that its 5 retrograde cycles describes in the heavens contains a ratio that conforms to the Golden Mean. The Golden Mean is also known as phi- 1.618, or Divine Proportion. Since the ‘discovery’ of phi by the Greeks it became obvious that ‘God Geometrises’ and that the world is essentially founded upon the arrangement of number.

The pentagram has all sorts of occult connotations but it is actually one of the oldest symbols known to man next to the circle. We know this as it has been found etched into cave walls dating back to prehistoric times, showing that Man was obviously tracking the cycles in the skies above him. Next to the Sun and Moon, Venus is the third brightest object in the sky and it periodic disappearance from view at phases in its cycle would have been of tremendous symbolic importance to ancient tribes, whose world stretched only as far as the visible horizon.

The pentagram divides the ecliptic up into 5 equal sections of 72 degrees, which is the quintile aspect in astrology. The quintile refers to creativity, inspiration and the forging of links. Albert Einstein possessed quintiles which brought his Moon, Jupiter and Neptune together in the 5H chart. Here was a Man whose inspiration came in the form of his ‘geometrisation’ of physics.

The cycles of Venus were of particular relevance to ancient civilisations in particular the Mayans. They saw time, not as linear but as a series of interlocking cycles and it is mainly from their observations of the Sun, Moon and Venus phases that they have predicted the end of one vast cycle of Man for the date of 2012. It is now perhaps easier to cast out any ‘conspiracy theory’ that the classic era Mayans were part of a super advanced intergalactic race. This theory had been postulated based on the fact that the Mesoamericans (and the Egyptians) appeared to know about Phi long before it had been ‘discovered’ however it’s abundantly clear that the tracking of the heavenly cycles allowed these ancient races to discern the divine geometry inherent in nature and they used this knowledge as the basis of their architectural designs. Their pyramids, towers and other monuments were all observatories from which they tracked the heavenly movements and/or offered sacrifices up to the Celestial Gods and many were based on the Divine Proportion.

It was also the cycle of the planet Venus which the Mayans used to time the start of their wars*. Although Venus, and the quintile in modern astrology, is associated with harmony rather than discord, the opposite planet to Venus is Mars, the known planet of aggression. The Venus ruled signs of Libra and Taurus are both opposed by Mars i.e Taurus/Scorpio Libra/Aries. So it may be that due to their natural understanding of the law of polarity (in which the meaning of opposite signs is inextricable) the Mayans saw both Mars and Venus as significant of conflict and diplomacy and vice versa. Venus is never far away from the Sun, and was even thought to be its twin by the Mayans, but for certain periods in its cycle Venus disappears from view This gave rise to the mythology that it had a periodic sojourn in the Underworld, or was devoured before being resurrected. This may be one reason why the Mayans timed their wars to begin with the heliacal rising of Venus and why to this day it has correlations of aligning with the loss of reputation of old leaders and the rise of powerful new ones.