Venus and Her Lover

by Becca Tzigany

  Then I knew what the buzz in Dolphinville was about. It had felt to me like I had been blasted with a palpable salvo of love. My Venusian curiosity propelled me to continue to swim with them, to learn from them what they had obviously mastered: the vibration of love. While that first swim was my most physically forceful contact with the spinner dolphins, I continued to attend their lessons in gentle grace.

  The slap of a wave on the beach brought me out of my reverie. I opened my eyes and sat up. It was hot. I should go; much work awaited me at home. We were preparing for the first presentation of our Tantric art and poetry in Hawai’i, and James was busy stretching canvases for the show. As I gazed at the horizon, my eyes caught the brief gleam and tiny splash of a dorsal fin. Without hesitation, I grabbed my fins, snorkel, and mask, and stepped into the sea. Work could wait.

  Swimming out to where I had seen the fin, I looked around for them to come up for air again. Even though I did not always do it, I preferred to wait for dolphins to approach me; by floating in a meditation of gratitude, I felt, they would be attracted to me. After a while I heard the rushing sound of their exhale, and it seemed they might be heading my direction. Breathe in, relax, breathe out, they taught me. Submerging myself, I soon pinpointed the pod well below me, moving lazily in unison. It amazed me how effortlessly a group of them could move in harmony, apparently communicating psychically. Their slow gliding told me they were sleeping. It seems that they rotated leadership, the leader keeping watch and piloting while the others rested. Not wanting to disturb them, I quietly observed as they slid into the turquoise vastness. Hoping that no one else had seen them, I slowly paddled back to shore. Sometimes I had witnessed sleeping dolphins pursued, and though I and others tried to educate tourists and new swimmers, not everyone followed the same protocol, which meant that someday swimming with wild dolphins might be no more, either through the dolphins going elsewhere or government regulation. I was grateful for my time with them now.

  Floating in the refreshing water, I felt washed through and through with freedom and love... love of my family, love of other creatures, love for the Earth, love for all Life. If we were, in fact, treading through a portal – when the Divine Feminine amplified its power and balanced the Divine Masculine – when Venus and Mars could dance their joy unencumbered – then I was happy to be here now, bathing in this sublime moment.

  I felt Venus smiling.

  Phi Spirals from the Heart

  Institute of HeartMath Director of Research Rollin McCraty, in his paper, “The Energetic Heart: Bioelectromagnetic Communication Within and Between People,”87 reports, “The heart generates the largest electromagnetic field in the body. The electrical field as measured in an electrocardiogram (ECG) is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the brain waves recorded in an electroencephalogram (EEG).”88 HeartMath researchers have detected the heart’s torus-shaped energetic field (like a donut) with a diameter of five to eight feet (1½ - 2 ½ meters).89 This was in sync with what Nassim had said about the black hole at the center of the dual-torus field of the heart.

  As I investigated further, I discovered a fascinating train of thought. Light travels in a straight line, but under the influence of say, a black hole, it bends or curves. The only way a wave can re-enter itself nondestructively is as a Golden Spiral. When φ (phi) spirals spinning around a torus meet/interfere with one another in a harmonious way, they self-organize (into a form we could call matter). This is one view of how we as solid matter are actually coherent light.

  In Souls of Distortion Awakening,90 Jan Wicherink describes how the φ spirals turn into a vortex at the center. A black hole? “The implosion of the Golden sine waves into smaller and smaller wavelengths not only increases the frequency of the waves but also increases the speed of the waves to become super-luminal waves (traveling faster than light). According to Daniel Winter, this is what gravity really is, the cascade of Golden Mean electromagnetic sine waves that gain an ever-increasing velocity breaking the speed barrier of light.”

  This idea of φ (phi) coherence in the energetic field of the heart, I found, had not been scientifically proven. I liked the theories, however, because they put some of my favorite ideas to swim in the same pond...

  Light – Golden Proportion phi waves – Attraction (as gravity or as love) – Beauty – Harmony – Love – Venus – Ah ...ph (φ)...rodite!

  During our time in Europe, where I encountered Greco-Roman statues of Golden Proportions, I had fallen under the spell of Golden Aphrodite as the embodiment of beauty... and the embodiment of φ (phi). What if she was the embodiment of love for the same reason? Did she cause attraction between lovers – as irresistible as gravity – because loving feelings generated φ waves in the heart, the strongest energetic field of the body? Is that why no mortal can refuse Venus and her call to love?

  Mars never refused her, according to myth. And according to physics? What if Light were the Divine Masculine? Photons – like “seeds” of light – propelled by desire, make a beeline (a vector) at light speed for the womb of the Divine Feminine91. Hmmmm...

  Love = Gravity = Divine Feminine

  Light = Photons = Divine Masculine

  The Masculine’s active directionality and the Feminine’s enticing receptivity.

  The dance of Shiva and Shakti portrays the “urge to merge” that is the Universe’s dazzling impulse to create. As Creation manifests into duality, its myriad forms are then seduced to gravitate toward one another, to merge again into Oneness. Thereupon the perpetual passion of the Eternal Dance of Life.

  My whole life I had been under the allure of the Goddess, and given the utter bliss I experienced when my heart was open, I had every reason to continue to serve the power of Love. In fact, James and I had enlisted in Venus’ campaign to widen the sphere (or torus?) of love in our world. So here I was on the Hawaiian Islands, swimming with dolphins who bombarded me with... well, everyone in Dolphinville used the same word: with love. Were dolphins particularly talented at emitting φ (phi) spirals from their hearts? Is that why we were all so spellbound by them, as they worked to entrain the humans into harmony and beauty?

  Is that how they got their name? The ancient Greeks named this marine mammal δελφίς (delphís).

  Del... φ... ís

  Ah... φ... rodite

  Here we go again. Another embodiment of splendorous grace sporting φ in the middle of its name.

  Scholars explain the presence of dolphins with Venus in ancient sculpture, mosaics, and paintings, as a reminder that she was Goddess of the Sea, that she had been born of sea foam. But now I rather thought it was because dolphins were Venus’ allies in her archetypal expedition of spreading the joy of love on Earth.

  THE DANCE OF THE ETERNAL COUPLE

  Dudaka was a dancer and a friend. His intense drive to experience life had led him from his native France to the Americas, where he followed the beat of several indigenous cultures, to then come to Hawai’i with his Trance Liberation community dance rituals. Ecstatic dance lived up to its name, for the tribal-trance music transported me into luminous soundscapes... and sometimes distressing darkness. The more I danced, the more the jammed connections in my body came unhinged, and the more I felt an internal wisdom pulsing through me, driving me.

  Dance is one of the Tantric arts. In Tantric India, the devadasi (temple dancers and courtesans) performed rituals melding the erotic with the divine. Shiva, as archetypal Lord of the Dance, brings rhythm and consciousness into play with energy. He dances the Kosmos into existence... and into annihilation.

  When Dudaka and I would meet on the dance floor, we surrendered our bodies to be carried away by the rhythms. In those wordless moments, we achieved an emotional intimacy communicated through a roll of the hips, the waft of a hand, or the vulnerability in our eyes.

  Soon we talked about Venus and Her Lover. Over long lunches, Dudaka, James, and I stoked common visions of
artistic creativity, healthy sexuality, and the global village. James, eyeing the connection he saw between Dudaka and me, got an inspiration, discussed it with me, and one day announced:

  “How would you like to play a part in our project? We think you’re right for Osiris,” he said.

  Dudaka, without hesitation, replied, “Yes, I’d say I am!” Oh, how accurate that would prove to be! Osiris, the Dying and Resurrecting God.

  During the ensuing discussion, we all expressed our willingness to try out a mutually loving liaison. We broached the ethics of polyamory, committing to honest communication, attention to the feelings of others, and safe sex. My recent years of low libido and other menopausal challenges having given my sexual identity a rough ride, I welcomed the opportunity to explore feelings which Dudaka was kindling within me, and to invite a new lover into my relationship with James.

  Everlasting God

  Osiris is a seminal character in world mythology, the original Benevolent Ruler and Savior who brought agriculture, as well as other arts of civilization (architecture, music, poetry) and moral principles to ancient Egypt. People believed it was his life force, his mana, that caused the annual flooding of the Nile, upon which the entire society depended. It was believed that under the rule of Osiris and his sister/wife/queen Isis, Egypt led the way for humanity to develop.

  The evolution from a gathering and hunting society (personified by the red god Set) to one of agriculture (personified by green Osiris) is marred by a backlash. The story goes that Set plots against his brother and succeeds in killing him – twice! Queen Isis, through her magic, resurrects her brother/husband the first time, but cannot save him in the end, despite her valiant efforts to reassemble his body parts, which Set had spread throughout Egypt. Thus Osiris descends into the Underworld, which soon enough he sets in order, including fashioning a set of scales to judge the souls of the dead. He becomes not only judge but also welcoming Father, and thereafter a symbol of eternal life for those who follow his ways.

  The green god Osiris, like the seed, is dismembered (the threshing of grain), goes underground, is re-membered (through ritual), and then is reborn (green shoots sprouting in the spring). This agricultural metaphor dances through many Mediterranean and Near Eastern traditions, including those of Inanna, Dumuzi, Adonis, Dionysus, Persephone, and Jesus Christ.

  To invoke the Dying and Resurrecting God, then, was to bring alive a powerful archetype. In addition to their mythologies, Osiris, Isis, Dionysus, Demeter, and Jesus had millennia of their mystery traditions, in which devotees studied and meditated on the secrets of life and death. Often using grain and wine as sacraments, initiates overcame the fear of death and came to know themselves as eternal beings – in other words, divine themselves.

  Photo Shoot: Divine Couple

  The Isis/Osiris segment, in many ways a climax of our work, had been gestating for years, awaiting the right moment. Several times we had thought we were ready for that photo shoot, but Nassim, despite his identification with Osiris and his research of Egyptian technology he believed to derive from the sky gods, never could settle into the role for our project. Perhaps he feared sexuality would taint his scientific work in the public mind.

  Only now, in July 2004, did it actually manifest, here, with Dudaka. Not so easily, however: our first date with him two weeks prior had to be postponed at the last minute. So it turned out that the afternoon we came together was in the middle of the Egyptian Days Out of Time, 5 days set aside in the ancient calendar to honor the five principal deities: Osiris, Isis, Horus, Set, and Nepthys. The Egyptian twelve months of 30 days each made a balanced 360-day year; the five days left over were believed to be the birthdays of the important gods and goddesses. According to the myth, Nut, Goddess of the Sky, was forbidden by her husband Geb, God of the Earth, to bear her children on “any day of the year.” Thoth (Tahuti), the wise and wily divine messenger (a.k.a. Hermes/Mercury), took pity on Nut, burdened as she was with five children in her belly. So he engaged Geb in a game of chance, gambling for a portion of his light. Through trickery he won the wager, and out of the light he fashioned five special days (not one a “day of the year”!). Her labor began, and on each day, she gave birth to a child. I came across this myth in a book the day of our photo shoot. Unconsciously we had already begun the worship.

  We cleared furniture from the living room, as the connection between Isis and Osiris would certainly play out as a dance. In fact, the book I had consulted specifically mentioned dance offerings to Isis and Osiris. For Dudaka and me, nothing could be more natural.

  Kona sunsets are reddish-orange due to the vog – the telltale haze created from Pele’s liquid earth sizzling into the sea. As the bright sun sank toward the horizon, the vog squeezed the fire out of it, as if Pele accepted no challenge to her own fiery display. The sun ruddied, leaking color into the vaporous sky and spilling it, like an overturned glass of red wine, onto the sea. We watched this from our lanai. Next to our porch the fronds of the royal palm quivered in the slight breeze. It was time for the evening rite.

  Dudaka, James, and I sat in a circle to speak our intentions and feelings, and to clear the air. We did the Tantric Commitment Ceremony. Then, with focused intention, I bellowed out an Egyptian prayer to Isis. The Egyptian language, incised with so many consonants, enlivened my mouth, which had been lulled by my practice with the vowel-dense Hawaiian language. Invoking Isis:

  Nehes, nehes, nehesAwake, awake, awake,

  Nehes em hotepAwake in peace,

  Nehes em neferuLady of Peace,

  Nebet hotepetRise thou in peace,

  Weben em hotepRise thou in beauty,

  Nutjert en Ankh,Goddess of Life

  Nefer em pet!Beautiful in heaven.

  Pet em hotepHeaven is in peace

  Ta em hotepEarth is in peace

  Nutjert sat NutO Goddess, Daughter of Nut,

  Sat Geb, Merit Ausar,Daughter of Geb, Beloved of Osiris,

  Nutjert asha renu!Goddess rich in names!

  Anekh hrakAll praise to you!

  Anekh hrakAll praise to you!

  Tu a atuI adore you

  Tu a atuI adore you

  Nebet Aset!Lady Isis!92

  I felt as if my words were ripping the fabric of time, forging a connection between the banks of the Nile and the shores of this volcano. In the burgeoning silence after the Isis invocation, I felt the presence of the Egyptian goddess floating into view, like a picture taking form in a bath of photographic developing solution.

  Then Dudaka intoned a prayer to Osiris, reading Rameses IV’s inscription to Osiris at Abydos:

  Your nature, Osiris, is more secret than other gods,

  You are the moon in heaven.

  You rejuvenate yourself at your own desire,

  You become young according to your own wish.

  You appear in order to dispel darkness,

  Anointed and clothed,

  For the gods and magic came into existence to illuminate your

  majesty and bring your enemies to shambles.

  Truly, you are the Nile,

  Great upon the banks at the time of the beginning of the

  season;

  Men and gods all live by the moisture which comes from you.93

  After our opening ceremony, I put on music and began a dance honoring Mars and Osiris – flirtatious and free – in which I removed my clothing piece-by-piece. It touched me to see James and Dudaka sitting spellbound on the sofa, clasping each other’s hands, as if to brace themselves for the waves of seduction I was casting at them. At one point, I stood on the sofa, undulating my body over each of them in turn.

  Then the two men honored me with a full-body massage. How I loved relaxing under their touch! Four hands! There was a moment when Dudaka was sweeping over my legs with his long hair, electrifying my skin. Soon my body was tingling fr
om head to toe.

  James, ever mindful of the requirements of the photo shoot, noted that we should move along, for we were already a couple hours into it, without him having yet picked up the camera. Even though I was in such a relaxed state, I recognized James’ position as art director, and so turned my attention to more willful movement with Dudaka.

  When such moments occur in photo shoots, it is like steering a course through a raging river. The torrents of energy flowing through us must be channeled while at the same time we surrender to them. How to accomplish this when we may be especially open and vulnerable? For me it is an exercise in focus and resolve. For Dudaka, however, this seemed to be an abrupt shift, and I felt the difficulty he now found himself up against.

  He stood up to go outside. James’ look stopped him. “I left my pipe and some silk scarves in my truck. We could use them. I’ll be right back,” Dudaka explained.

  “OK,” I said.

  “No, not OK,” James countered. “We’ve got our circle established here. Let’s not break it. And besides, you can use my pipe, and we have scarves.”

  “I’ll just be a minute,” Dudaka said. I did not see any problem and said so.

  James glared at me. As Dudaka walked out, James hissed, “I thought I was the art director here! Or do you think it should be you? Or him?”

  “James, calm down,” I said in a low voice. “What’s the big deal?”

  “Look how long it has taken us to get to this point! You know about building energy, Becca. Can’t you see what this is doing?”

  At the moment, I could not. Little did I realize how big a deal it was, which certainly supported the fact that James was indeed the one most capable to be artistic director. By Dudaka and me negating his position, James saw us straying off in our own direction, unmindful of him and the needs of the project. While James could have accepted this from a newcomer, he felt that coming from me, it was a betrayal, as I would find out later.