“Five pointed Stars and Octagons”

Here are a few more clues. I came across this poster in a cafe in Glastonbury. It shows geometric patterns created by the planet Venus.

Here’s a close up of a couple of the smaller diagrams

“The Dance of Venus” poster is available from Wooden Books, 8A Market Place, Glastonbury BA6 8LT, UK info@woodenbooks.com

The diagram on the left (showing the conjunctions of Venus with the Sun over an 8 year cycle) has some interesting parallels with feng shui

• 5 points = Yang Stems ?
• 5 inverted points = Yin stems ?
• 1 paired with 6 (Early Heaven Water Yang & Yin)
• 7 paired with 2 (Early Heaven Fire Yang & Yin)
• 3 paired with 8 (Early Heaven Wood Yang & Yin)
• 9 paired with 4 (Early Heaven Metal Yang & Yin)
• 5 paired with 10 (Earth Yang & Yin)

Although not identical, the diagram is also not a million miles removed from the diagrams which show the interactions between the five elements

The diagram to the right has parallels with the BaGua and Pakua, and you will find abstractions of it in the architecture of churches and cathedrals, particularly in the floor plans and the larger windows.

It isn’t quite that straightforward though, as Venus doesn’t quite return to the same point at the start of each 8 year cycle. The cycles “walk” round the circle, almost re-synchronising after 30 cycles, but needing another 3 repeats of those 30 cycles to get back to where they started - so approximately 720 years. That equals 4 of the 180 year cycles which we use in feng shui, and a third of that gives us the 60 year cycle. There are also 60 “earth dragons” in Yin feng shui, which may be connected.

This is a screen print of “The (Almost) Earth-Venus Pentagram” animation of the Venus conjunctions at https://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/AstronNotes/Earth-Venus.htm

Conjunctions and oppositions of Jupiter and Saturn. Please see http://davidpratt.info/pattern2.htm for further details

While we’re on the subject of planetary movements, there is a conjunction of Saturn & Jupiter every 20 years, taking 3 cycles to complete the circle. The San Yuan Fei Xing (Three Periods Flying Star) uses 20 year long fate periods, which it groups into three’s (the Upper, Middle and Lower Fate Periods). Though interestingly the changes of Fate Period occur about 3 years after the dates on the right.

Again these don’t repeat exactly, but move round the circle approximately 8 degrees each time taking 2640 years (44 cycles) to get back to where they started.

There’s a whole bunch of feng shui interactions built around triangles and hexagons.

For example

• 6 Points = Yang Branches ?
• 6 Inverted Points = Yin Branches ?

The diagram on the right maps these points to the 12 signs of the Western Zodiac (please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac for further details), which have very close parallels with some aspects of feng shui relating to the 12 Branches. Rat branch for instance occurs when the Earth is physically passing the Northern Winter Solstice point in its orbit around the Sun (for about 15 days before and 15 days after the Solstice point).

So from the orbital patterns of Venus, Saturn and Jupiter it looks like parts of feng shui may work by tapping into resonance patterns set up by the relative movements of the celestial bodies in our Solar system.