The Venus Diaries
The origin story
The Venus Diaries
It began as a personal investigation into the Goddess mythologies paralleling them to the cycles of Venus (the planet). A few months ago, I created a paper journal, designed a cover for it (which I share below) and set about to transcribe my research and my own digestations of what I was discovering.
Recently, I felt the urge to share what I was uncovering, but felt I needed a space separate from my website for my photography work, and thus, we are here today, on Substack to chronicle my analysis of the symbolisms I attempt to decode.
In recent years, I discovered much to my surprise, how illiterate I am when it comes to symbolism. I realise now, much of my “knowledge” of it, as a visual artist, has been learned through osmosis, by consuming imagery with repetitious iconography, without truly understanding the deeper veiled meanings and origins.
The symbolism that I speak of, perhaps stems from primordial times, when the early human beings were developing their expression and language. I imagine it probably first evolved through performative demonstration; gestures, body language, facial expressions and emotional outbursts, before culminating into pictorial art and symbols scratched into caves and stones. These eventually formed the foundations of our oral and written languages, some of which the distilled remnants can be found in present day.
The cover of my notebook that I collaged and designed on Canva.
As a child, I was infatuated with folklore, fairytales and mythologies. These tales, probably as old as time, still baffle me in many ways. For instance, how have these stories retained their relevance and our attention after all these centuries? Is it that they follow a specific formula that guarantees both their succession and success? Or is it a lot deeper than this?
Are these “stories” drawing from the Well of Remembrance and perhaps, they are not lessons, but rather tools in helping us to remember who we are and what we are.
We are ALL storytellers. Perhaps what differentiates human beings from other creatures is our capacity to imagine and to tell stories. Afterall, human civilisation is founded on “stories”. What is history, but a story agreed upon by the victors. Even in modern day society, we are surrounded by stories every day. You simply just have to turn on the television or your mobile phone and you will be bombarded with the news, advertisements, speeches, memes, movies, tarot cards, comics, plays, poems, art, sculptures, paintings etc. These are all forms of storytelling, it just so happens some more visual than spoken.
A good story has the power to unite us, move us to action, divide us, rationalise our existence, understand one’s self and shape our perception of reality.
Stories can also be encoded with ancient wisdom and secrets and it is this aspect that I am most interested in deciphering. Baked within the folklore and fairytales are specific motifs, which I see now as the breadcrumb trail left for us to map out, in order to remember where we came from, who and what we are.
Photo of Nauvoo, beauty by Lindi Bester and photography & styling by Katriena Emmanuel
Strip away the names and the places and you will realise that every one of these ancient stories follow the same “story arc”, which I like to condense into the simple phrase “the pearls of wisdom”. Essentially, every one of these stories can be likened to a clam shell. The clam was living out it’s life in ignorant bliss, until suddenly some “grit” (the conflict) enters, which changes the inner world of the clam forevermore. It is through this conjunction with the grit, that forces the clam to go through an alchemical process in an effort to expel the invader. It is a process of transmutation, unique to that clam’s chemistry, but ultimately over a period of time, it produces a luminous, beautiful pearl.
I believe contained within every ancient story is an alchemical recipe for our own transformation and enlightenment. However, stories are like a Matryoshka doll and requires one to perceive them through many different lenses, in order to reveal the secret treasures within. There lies in itself the first clue.
Join me in decoding these tales, the first one I will begin with in my next essay, is the story of Rapunzel.
Katriena Emmanuel
This is amazing! I am also diving deep into symbolism, mythos, artistic alchemy, etc. it’s such a beautiful rabbit hole to fall down. I can’t wait to read more of your thoughts on this!