Have you ever wondered… what is the Rose Lineage?
The Rose Lineage is very hot in spirituality, but if you have ever been a little bit hazy on what exactly folks mean when they say the Rose Lineage… or on what the spiritual link between the planet Venus and the Goddess is… I got you.
Today I am answering that question!
Let’s dive right in.
Firstly… let’s check in with the planet Venus.
Our quest for the Rose Lineage starts with the planet Venus.
Venus appears to us as a bright star in our sky in the early morning or at dusk. She’s known as the morning star or the evening star, and she is of course named after the Roman goddess of love, good fortune and fabulousness, Venus.
Astrologically she represents all those wonderful Venusian qualities too – love, abundance, good fortune, sensuality and the sacred feminine.
What does she get up to?
Well, the planet Venus spends 263 days as a Morning Star, appearing in the eastern sky a few hours before sun rise. In her morning star phase she slowly descends to the horizon until she disappears for 50 days, completely absent from the skies.
Then she reappears as the Evening Star in the western sky, visible just after sunset. She ascends in the sky, getting visible after dusk for a shorter and shorter amount of time until after 263 days as the Evening Star she disappears.. and 8 days later returns as the morning star.
This morning-to-evening star cycle takes 19 months to complete. Her full cycle, which means the time it takes for her to arrive back to the exact same place in the sky, takes 8 years.
Over her full 8 year cycle she traces a beautiful pattern in the sky: like this:
And in one 19 month morning-to-evening star cycle, she covers this much of the pattern:
There are five 19 month cycles in her big 8 year one, and you can see in her pattern that she creates the points of a five pointed star or a five petalled rose at the centre of her mandala dance. This is important as you will read below!
You can download a stargazing app so you can find where Venus is in the skies – once you know which star she is, you will always recognise her! I like the Skyview Lite app, it’s so fun to look at the night sky and see where all the planets and constellations are..
How is Venus related to the Rose Lineage Goddesses?
Many old myths are actually star stories, telling the tales of the planets and the heavens as they dance through their ages-long cycles.
It is thought that the ancient Sumerian myth of Inanna is a star story about the journey of the planet Venus through the skies.
Inanna is one of the earliest recorded goddesses we know about, worshipped from at least 4000 BCE to about 600 BCE in the ancient middle east, in the river delta on the borders of what is now known as Iran and Iraq. In Sumeria she was called Inanna, in Akkad she was called Ishtar.
She was the goddess of love, war, culture, justice, fertility, power… she was an all-of-the-things goddess, the mother of civilisation and one of the most exalted deities.
In her most famous star myth Inanna goes to visit her sister Ereshkigal in the underworld. As she descends to the underworld she passes through seven gates, and at each gate she relinquishes a symbolic layer of clothing that represents her worldly purpose and identity…
… until she arrives in the underworld naked. When she meets Ereshkigal, Inanna is killed and hung on a meat hook to rot. After three days her friends back at her kingdom come to look for her and Inanna is eventually released from the underworld, either by the grace of Ereshkigal or by the trickery of her loyal friends. As she rises from the underworld she reclaims the removed clothing and symbols of power, even as she is transformed and changed from her underworld journey… but she is told that an underworld journey takes changes a person and always demands a sacrifice – a part of you must stay behind.
Inanna decides that the part of her that will stay behind in the underworld is her husband Dumuzi, because he was not appropriately overcome with grief when she was dead and thus Inanna doesn’t want him any more, so she sends him to stay in the underworld.
This story is a mirror of the descent of the Morning Star of Venus in the skies, who rises lower and lower until she disappears entirely. When she returns as the Evening Star, each day she appears higher and higher in the sky.
The story is about the dark night of the soul, and how we sometimes have to go to the places within that we don’t want to to retrieve the wisdom we need.
Inanna was very identified with the planet Venus. Her symbol was the eight pointed star, a bright light in the night sky, which has appeared in ancient carvings alongside the solar disk of Utu the Sun god and the crescent shape of Nanna the Moon god, and she was known as the Mistress of the Heavens in the devotional prayers of the ancients.
(I love the lineage of Venus, so our symbol at Rockstar Priestess is also Inanna’s eight pointed star!)
It’s thought that her appearance as Evening Star mirrors her qualities as the goddess of war, and the Morning Star her qualities as the goddess of love.
Inanna is the first goddess of what is called the Rose Lineage, the line of goddesses who originate with Inanna in ancient Sumeria and who change shape and form across the middle east and the mediterranean.
Many goddesses who follow Inanna in linear time are thought to be descended from her, shapeshifting to fit the needs and stories of different tribes and cultures throughout the lands. Goddesses in this lineage include Ishtar, Astarte, Asherah, Hathor, Aphrodite, Venus and Mary Magdalene.
So what is the Rose Lineage?
The Rose Lineage refers to the teachings that come from the astrological mysteries of the planet Venus in the skies and her associated goddesses – the descendants of Innana Ishtar.
It is called the ROSE lineage because as the planet Venus dances with earth in the skies from our viewpoint she makes the mandala of a great rose in the sky with the five pointed pentagram as her heart.
Venus is the planet of love, ecstasy and the divine embodied here on earth – and so the goddesses and teachings associated with her are usually fleshy, sensual, life-affirming and have the mystery teaching of our bodies and our selves being holy, divine and sacred.
You will find a lot of womb related stuff within the Rose Lineage as it’s a reclaimation of our bodies as sacred and a reclaiming of the long dismissed feminine as holy, but not all rose lineage stuff is womb specific.
The rose is not only the pattern Venus makes in the sky – it is also the archetypal flower associated cross-culturally with all forms of love and the divine, and is sacred to many if not all of the goddesses in the Rose Lineage.
The rose flower is said to have the highest frequency scent of all flowers, the closest earthly frequency to divine love that exists, and a huuuggge emphasis of the teachings of Venus and the Rose Lineage is love. .
Today the goddess often most associated with the Rose Lineage is Mary Magdalene, as she is the most modern form of the Rose Lineage goddesses weaving back through time.
She is also the most accessible goddess for many folks growing up in western christian culture – it’s a lot easier and much less scary working with a holy woman who has a place within your childhood upbringing than going hell for leather with a forgotten pagan goddess.
Another myth within the Rose Lineage cycles and goddesses is the story of the sacrificed husband or lover – for Inanna she sacrifices Dumuzi (although she’s not all cut up about it), Isis has to resurrect her husband Osiris, Aphrodite pined for her murdered lover Adonis until he too was resurrected, Mary Magdalene lost her beloved Jesus and witnessed his resurrection and final departure from this world. .
How did the ancient people honour the movements of Venus in the skies?
We don’t 100% know. We know that the Inanna myth documents the movement of Venus, and that the Sumerian and Akkadian Priestesses of Inanna performed rituals in her honour and most likely enacted out her myths. It’s thought that the ritual calender of the temples may have been synced with the movements of Venus in the skies,
We know ancient astronomers were meticulously recording the movements of the planet Venus for a long time – this is the Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa, created in around 1700BCE, and it records Venus’ planetary movements and links them to political and world events – old timey predictive astrology!
How can we work with the magic of Venus and the Star Goddess?
There are two ways:
- We can learn the life-affirming arts and live by the values of the Rose Lineage and the planetary Venus – my class The Venus Working is one (very fun) way to do that, and there are many other ways, teachers and classes who will help you to integrate the sensual, body-sacred, love-centred teachings of the Rose into your life. Pick a mystery school – the Rose Lineage is very hot right now.
- We can observe the planet Venus in the night sky and direct our spiritual work in harmony with her ascent and descent. This can add a deeper layer to our spiritual work and a spiritual oomph from syncing with the cycles of the planets to make our work more potent.
A key point about working in the Rose Lineage is that it is embodied gnosis and spirituality – it emphasises the here-and-now being the sacred spiritual initiation that you need, that your body is a holy temple to the Goddess, and to celebrate this beautiful life and earth.
I hope this has helped explain the mystery of the Rose Lineage for you, so when people talk about it you know what’s going on!
If you have any more questions about the Rose Lineage, let me know in the comments, and I can write a new article for you to help you out.\
Ready to deepen your learning of the Rose Lineage?
I have a free masterclass that will teach you the living arts of Venus: the Venus magic you need to live a beautiful life filled with fun, delightful surprises, and effortless orientation towards the life of your dreams.
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