Robert Graves wrote of the mother goddess that  she is "deeply fixed in the racial memory of the European countryman and impossible to exorcize."

Among the ancient cultures, it is the Greeks who have  preserved some of the most compelling portraits of  the goddess.  Mere mention of the names Aphrodite, Medea, Scylla, Hecate, Ariadne, and Athena is enough to evoke images of archetypal significance.  Each of these figures represents, as it were, a face from the ancient gallery of the mother goddess, offering respectively a crystallized view of the goddess  as Queen of Heaven, sorceress, harpy, witch, captive maiden, and warrior.
 
 

It is the goddess' identification with the planet Venus—attested in numerous cultures from the ancient Near East, but also among aboriginal peoples of the New World—which offers the elusive common denominator necessary to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the goddess' mythical attributes.  In  this series of essays, we intend to show that the  majority of symbolic images and mythological themes  associated with the mother goddess—including the various forms of the goddess personified by the Greek figures enumerated above—have their origin in ancient conceptions associated with the planet Venus.

If indeed the cult of the mother goddess traces to the  ancients' experience of the planet Venus—its appearance, behavior, and participation in a series of spectacular cataclysms—the possibility presents itself that the various faces of the goddess reflect significant phases or episodes in that planet's history.  It is demonstrable, for example, that Venus experienced a  series of metamorphoses in appearance during the period of its association with the polar configuration,  including several changes in color and shape as well as significant mutations in its orbit, the shape of its atmosphere, and rate of spin.  Inasmuch as the  respective phases in the evolutionary history of Venus can be delineated and reconstructed, they can be shown to be responsible for the origin and development of specific archetypal images of the goddess.
 
 

                              Aphrodite Urania

Even today, the name Aphrodite evokes images of alluring beauty, sensuality, and passion.  The goddess  is best known, perhaps, as a divine matchmaker and agent provocateur of sensual desire and infatuation, whose magical charms were enough to entice even the gods into acts of lust and illicit love.  In the Iliad, for example, Aphrodite's zone is said to arouse immediate
desire in the eyes of its beholder.

 As Burkert points out, verbs formed from the goddess' name denote the  act of love, a tendency found already in Homer.

Aphrodite is famous for her liaisons with various  heroes and gods.   Aphrodite's adulterous dalliance with Ares was the source of much amusement to the gods of Olympus, and was most likely a subject of ancient cult as as well.

Her torrid love affair with Adonis ended tragically.  According to one version of  the myth, the goddess is said to have leapt off the  Leucadian rock in grief for the beautiful youth.
Her romance with Anchises, finally, is one of the most ancient traditions surrounding the goddess.
 

No doubt it is difficult to discern the action of a planet behind such accounts. 

There is a noticeable tendency in Greek myth for originally multifaceted goddesses to become compartmentalized through time.  Such a specialization in function appears to have occurred in the case of Aphrodite:
 
 

 More profound words regarding the historical origins  of Greek religion it would be difficult to find.

While the goddess is already securely attested in the earliest epic literature, her name is absent from the Mycenaean religion as
 known from the Linear B tablets.  Most probably the cult of the goddess came to Greece in the period  between 1200 BCE and 800.14  Burkert, upon  surveying the evidence, confesses: "Aphrodite's origin  remains as obscure as her name."

                 Whence, then, did Aphrodite arrive on Greek
                 shores?  For Homer, Hesiod, and other early writers,
                 the goddess was intimately linked to Cyprus.  The
                 Odyssey lists Paphos as the goddess' homeland, while
                 the Iliad makes Kypris her most common epithet.
                 Hesiod calls her both Kyprogene and Kythereia. (Cythera)

Our search for Aphrodite's origins does not stop in Cyprus, a well-known melting pot of Oriental religious  conceptions. 
The cult of Aphrodite  originally came to Greece from the ancient Near East:

 This view receives strong support from the Greeks themselves.  Pausanias, for example, offered the following opinion: "The Assyrians were the first of the human race to worship the heavenly one [Aphrodite Urania]; then the people of Paphos in
Cyprus, and of Phoenician Askalon in Palestine, and  the people of Kythera, who learnt her worship from  the Phoenicians."
 

Aphrodite has numerous  characteristics in common with Ishtar.  Both are depicted as goddesses of love and associated with
rites of prostitution, for example.
Aphrodite, like  Ishtar, was represented as armed and invoked to guarantee victory.  Aphrodite's beard recalls that elsewhere ascribed to Ishtar.
 

   In the Greek sources themselves, Plato is our earliest authority for this identification.

Urania—"the celestial one"—was a Greek translation of the Semitic title malkat ha-ssamayim, "the queen of the heavens,"
long understood as having reference to Venus.

                      A Sumerian hymn invokes Inanna as follows:

 That Inanna was identified with the planet Venus in early Sumerian times is well-known.

                 The Akkadian Ishtar sings:
 
 

How is it possible to understand these early hymns to Inanna and Ishtar apart from reference to a celestial body?  In complete agreement with the religious  literature, Babylonian astronomical tablets include the Sumerian phrase dnin.dar.an.na, "the bright, or vari-coloured, queen of heavens" among the various names for the planet Venus.

                 The Canaanite goddess Anat, whose fundamental
                 affinity with Inanna and Ishtar is well-known, was
                 likewise deemed the "Queen of Heaven" in Egyptian
                 sources.  And she too has been identified with the
                 planet Venus.

The celestial goddess figures prominently among the pagan gods mentioned in the Old Testament, and no doubt there was much truth in the Israelite's admission  that the people had long burnt incense to the Queen of Heaven.

Although Jeremiah does not name the goddess in question, Astarte seems the most likely candidate.
Astarte's identification with the planet Venus is commonly acknowledged, as is her affinity with Aphrodite.  Indeed, a late inscription, c. 160 BC, identifies Astarte and Aphrodite Urania.
 

                             Star of Lamentation

If the cult of Aphrodite reflects ancient conceptions associated with the planet Venus, it must be expected that knowledge of that planet's mythology will help explain specific details in the goddess' cult.
Aphrodite's important role as a lamenting  goddess, most obvious in the traditions surrounding Adonis, a god whose rituals featured ceremonial wailing and the singing of dirges.

Aphrodite is said to have leapt from the rocks of  Leukas in anguish over the death of Adonis.

"By diving from the White Rock, she [Sappho] does what Aphrodite does in the form of Evening Star, diving after the
sunken Sun in order to retrieve him the next morning  in the form of Morning Star."

That Aphrodite's lamentations have some reference to Venus receives support from Babylon, where Ishtar/Venus was known as the "star of  lamentation."

A survey of ancient Venus-goddesses will show that most were represented as great mourners.  Inanna's
lamentations in the wake of Dumuzi's death, as we will see, are said to have shaken the foundations of
heaven.  In Canaanite tradition, Anat's lamentations on behalf of Baal were proverbial and much celebrated in
 ancient cult and literature.
 
 

 In Egyptian tradition, Isis is said to have wandered the world disconsolate looking for the remains of Osiris:

"She sought him without wearying; full of mourning she traversed the land, and took no rest until she found  him."

Similar traditions surround the Norse goddess Freya, commonly identified with Venus.
Freya's lamentations conform to a universal archetype:
 
 

The same idea is apparent in the New World, where  the goddess Itzpapalotl (otherwise known as Obsidian
Knife Butterfly) is said to have "wandered off—combing her hair, painting her face, and  lamenting the loss of Arrow Fish."

According to Diodorus, the goddess wandered the world with disheveled hair while lamenting the death of Attis.
Significantly, Cybele was identified with Aphrodite.

 There is good reason to think that Diodorus' account preserves archetypal motifs of great significance, as
 the mourning goddess' habit of wandering around with flowing hair forms a recurring feature in ancient myth.

The Greek Electra, for example, is said to have  loosed her hair and streamed across heaven as a comet while lamenting the destruction of Troy. Electra's plight is recounted as follows:

A  goddess with flowing hair  is a perfectly natural interpretation of a comet:

"When we see a picture of a comet some of us are  immediately reminded of a woman with long, straight hair being blown back behind her, the reason, as we  have said, for the very name comet, derived from the Greek word for hair."
 
 

In the account of Bion, a Greek poet of c. 100 BC,Aphrodite herself is said to have unbound her hair and embarked upon a period of wandering in the wake of Adonis' death:

The goddess' comet-like form left a trace in ancient ritual as well.  Thus, various early Christian authors  described a Phoenician ritual at Aphaca associated  with Astarte in which the goddess was represented as a falling star.  Astour summarized this ritual as follows:
              
 

As the "star of lamentation" was judged to be of  female form, we find that mourning rites were typically  the special province of females: "Those rites and 'lamentations' are thoughout the primitive society  performed by women."

Nor is it without interest to note that mourning rites around the globe feature women whose hair is purposefully loosened in order to appear disheveled and flow with the wind.  Arab mourners, for example, are described as follows:

"Then our women bewail (the dead) with voices, hoarse with weeping…with dishevelled  hair."

In the Mahabharata, women wearing their  hair loose is a sign of mourning.

 Ancient Egyptian  monuments likewise show women mourners with disheveled hair.

Given this practice and the general belief that disheveled hair was a token of mourning, it  is doubtless no accident that various words for "mourning" in the Egyptian hieroglyphic language have  the hair-sign as a determinative.
 
 

 The same visual effect, of course, could be produced  by tearing at the hair or by leaving it uncombed or  otherwise uncared for.  Women upon the islands of  Leti, Moa and Lakor are expressly forbidden from combing their hair during the period of mourning, in order to appear all that more dishevelled.
 

 "In Greece, as elsewhere, the dirge was sung and  accompanied with an ecstatic dance in which women  beat their breasts and tore their hair."
 
 

                               Lion of Heaven

In the same hymn in which she is described as a "star  of lamentation," Ishtar is compared to a raging lion:

                 "Irninitum [an epithet of Ishtar], raging lion, may your
                 heart be calmed."

That the planet Venus was the object of this imagery is confirmed by various lines of evidence, not the least of which is that Inanna (as Venus) is explicitly described as a lion in heaven.
 

"Inanna, great brightness, celestial lion…"  Here the signs translated as "greatn  brightness" are elsewhere used to signify
 "hurricane, or raging storm" a startling extension of meaning.

Would anyone viewing the planet Venus  in its current manifestations ever be moved to describe  it in such terms?  It is noteworthy that storm-like  imagery attaches to the mourning goddess' hair.

If we recall that Venus was elsewhere described as a  "long-haired" star, or as the star with "disheveled  hair,"
the possibility arises that it was the planet's abundant "hair" which provided the necessary link  between Ishtar's role as star of lamentation and lion of  heaven.

It was called Iubar  "because it is iubata 'maned'."
The light of Venus is also to be compared to a lion's mane:

"The morning-star is called iubar, because it has at the top  a diffused light, just as a lion has on his head a iuba 'mane.'"
 

           Various Greek and Latin authors used the word iubar to describe a comet.

                 In the sacred iconography surrounding Ishtar, lions are
                 conspicuous.  A popular motif finds lions being
                 marked with a "hair-star" on their bodies, various
                 authorities noting of the star that "the motive was a
                 token of possession marking…animals [with it] as the
                 property of Ishtar."

The "hair-star," of course, is a common term for "comet"  throughout the ancient world.  That the "hair-star"  would appear among the religious iconography associated with Ishtar/Venus makes perfect sense if that planet-goddess once presented the appearance of a comet-like body.
 
 

                               Aphrodite Areia

In ancient Greece, especially in Sparta, Aphrodite was worshipped as a warrior, as attested by the epithet Areia.
 

                 The Spartan cult finds a parallel on the island of
                 Cythera, where Aphrodite Urania was represented
                 as armed.  And this cult, it will be remembered, was
                 esteemed the oldest cult of the goddess.

"We may believe that the cult of the armed Aphrodite belongs to the first period of her worship in Greece."
 
 

The lamenting goddess is closely related to the warrior-goddess. Inanna is described as a great warrior whose "raging" threatens to destroy heaven and earth,and she is also described  as a mourner whose  lamentations shake the foundations of the world:

Inanna's celestial war-mongering, in fact, is directly  related to her "troubled heart" and otherworldly dirge:

 "In the process of humanization,  gods of rain and thunderstorms tended…to be  envisaged as warriors riding their chariots into battle."

"Since in early nomadic society the young women egged on  the young warriors in battle with praise and taunts, she could also be seen as the personification of the rage of battle."
 
 

 Incongruous or not, goddesses everywhere are  represented as warriors.  In addition to Inanna and Aphrodite, Hathor, Anat, Astarte, and Freya are all represented as warriors.  The traditions surrounding Ishtar are exemplary here.  The destruction wrought by the raging lioness knew no bounds, extending to the sacred domain of the gods as well:

                      "O splendid lioness of the Igigi-gods, who renders
                      furious gods submissive…great is your valor, O
                      valiant Ishtar, Shining torch of heaven and earth,
                      brilliance of all inhabited lands.  Furious in irresistible
                      onslaught, hero to the fight, Fiery glow that blazes
                      against the enemy, who wreaks destruction on the
                      fierce, Dancing one, Ishtar…Irninitum, raging lion,
                      may your heart be calmed."

                 Other hymns confirm that it was the goddess' cries which shook the world:

                      "I rain battle down like flames in the fighting, I make
                      heaven and earth shake with my cries, …I, Ishtar, am
                      queen of heaven and earth.  I am the queen…I
                      constantly traverse heaven, then (?) I trample the
                      earth, I destroy what remains of the inhabited
                      world."

Ancient India presents several  examples of the warrior-goddess, the most interesting of which is Durga-Kali, who shares numerous  characteristics with Ishtar.

Although Kali is occasionally described as beautiful, it  is more common to find her presented in repulsive  terms:

                      "Hindu texts referring to the goddess are nearly
                      unanimous in describing her as terrible in appearance
                      and as offensive and destructive in her habits.  Her
                      hair is disheveled, her eyes red and fierce, she has
                      fangs and a long lolling tongue, her lips are often
                      smeared with blood, her breasts are long and
                      pendulous, her stomach is sunken, and her figure is
                      generally gaunt.  She is naked but for several
                      characteristic ornaments: a necklace of skulls or
                      freshly cut heads, a girdle of severed arms, and infant
                      corpses as earrings."

As battle was described as the "dance" of Ishtar, so too does Kali dance during battle:

                      "Ever art you dancing in battle, Mother.  Never was
                      beauty like thine, as with thy hair flowing about thee,
                      thou dost ever dance, a naked warrior on the breast
                      of Shiva."

Kali's dancing, moreover, like that of Ishtar, threatens the foundations of the world:

                      "The dread mother dances naked in the battlefield,
                      Her lolling tongue burns like a red flame of fire, Her
                      dark tresses, fly in the sky, sweeping away sun and
                      stars, Red streams of blood run from her cloud-black
                      limbs, And the world trembles and cracks under her
                      tread."

As this last passage indicates, Kali's disheveled hair  was explicitly linked to a period of great catastrophe threatening the world.  According to Hiltebeitel, the goddess' "disheveled hair is thus itself an image of Kalaratri, the Night of Time, the night of thedissolution (pralaya) of the universe."

                 There is a recurring emphasis in the Hindu texts on the
                 disheveled hair of the warring goddess.  Indeed, an
                 epithet of the goddess—Muktakesi—commemorates
                 her loosened and disheveled hair.

When it is reported that Kali's "streaming tresses hang in vast disorder," or that her disheveled hair blackens the skies, "sweeping away sun and stars," is it not apparent that the imagery of the comet is once more upon us?

                 As repulsive as Kali appears to the Western reader,
                 her cult continues to exert a strange fascination over
                 the people of India.  She is described as:
                 "Tthe most cherished and widespread of the
                 personalizations of Indian cult."

Kali's monstrous form, bizarre as it is, can be shown to have striking parallels throughout the ancient world.  Consider the example provided by the Aztec mourning goddess Itzpapalotl, who was commonly  represented as a warrior:

What, then, is a Tzitzimitl?
The demonic creature in question "is an eerie goddess  in the night sky…[whose] hair is madly disheveled."
The resemblance to Kali is apparent.

                 In Aztec myth, Itzpapalotl was said to have been
                 thrown from heaven for sinning against the gods.  This
                 tradition finds a close parallel in ancient Babylon,
                 where Lamashtu—an avatar of Inanna/Ishtar was
                 said to have been thrown from heaven, whereupon
                 she displayed wildly disheveled hair.  An Assyrian
                 incantation alludes to this theme:

  

The image of Ishtar-Lamashtu being hurled from  heaven with disheveled hair once again recalls cometary imagery, comets having long been compared to women with streaming or disheveled hair.

Lamashtu's disheveled hair and tattered clothes, likewise, recalls the appearance and attire  traditionally accorded mourners.

A witch-like goddess renowned for her chimeric form  and ogre-like appetites, Lamashtu was said to have the head of a lion:

Significantly, one hymn compares the goddess to a lion with disheveled hair:

"Among all the devils and fiends of which the Mesopotamians lived in terror, the one that seems to have been the most dreaded was [Lamashtu], a she-devil, and the daughter of the great god Anu…The goddess Lamashtu was a violent, raging devil of terrifying aspect…With her hair tossed about wildly, and her breasts uncovered she burst out of  the cane brakes like a whirlwind…"

The fact that the image of the warrior-goddess with disheveled hair can be found in both the Old World and New strongly suggests that the imagery originated  as a direct result of common experience, presumably  being inspired by a particularly memorable comet-like  apparition.  Yet as the example provided by  Ishtar-Lamashtu attests, there is also an indissoluble
connection with the planet Venus.   Here, too, New

World traditions provide a remarkable correspondence.  Thus, an Inca name for Venus was  chasca coyllur, signifying the "star (coyllur) with  tangled or disheveled hair."

The moderndescendents of the Inca, moreover, continue to observe "the day of disheveled hair," presumably because of its cosmological import: "In the Andes, the modern lexicographer Lara has noted a Quechua neologism, ch'askachau—literally 'the day ofdisheveled hair'—meaning viernes, the Spanish word for Venus's day."

It was the planetVenus itself, explicitly identified with the mother goddess, which once displayed disheveled hair while  participating in a spectacular cataclysm shaking the\ very foundations of heaven and earth, recalled as  Inanna's lamentations, Ishtar's battle dance, or Kali's  terrible "night of the dissolution of the universe."

                          Aphrodite Melaina

Prominent in the accounts of Kali and Lamashtu is an emphasis upon the goddess' disheveled appearance  and black color.  Kali's name, in fact, signifies the "black one."  Here, too, it can be shown that the  goddess' dark form belongs to the most archaic stratum of myth.  In the New World, for example, the Aztecs celebrated a mother goddess known as Coatlicue, "Serpent Skirt," who was described as  "black, dirty, disheveled, and of shocking  ugliness."
 
 

Aphrodite's epithet Melaina is of interest here.  Signifying "the black one," this name hardly seems  appropriate for an Indo-European goddess of love and beauty.  The epithet Skotia, "dark one," is of similar import.

                 NO doubt it will be objected here that this is hardly a
                 fitting epithet for the brilliant planet Venus.  And this is
                 quite true, at least with respect to the present Venus.
                 Once again, however, there is compelling testimony
                 that Venus once assumed a dark color.  Witness the
                 following tradition of the Zinacantecans, heirs to the
                 Maya, in which the planet Venus is compared to an
                 ugly black form when sweeping a path for the sun:
 

                      "The great star is a Chamula girl…The awful ugly
                      black Chamula, And isn't that star beautiful, It has
                      rays of light."
 
 

Aphrodite's black form and warrior-aspect are best understood as vestiges of her one-time role as a terrrible goddess, long since suppressed in her  popular cult.  Both features would appear to reflect the goddess' original identification with the planet
Venus.

                            Aphrodite Comaetho

One of the most famous myths associated with Durga-Kali finds her slaying Mahisa, a would-be lover of bovine form.  There the goddess can be found  threatening her victim as follows:

"I will take away your life's breath."

It is possible, perhaps, to recognize here a widespread theme whereby the mother goddess steals the life-breath, soul, or heart ofa great king.

The classic example of this mythological genre is that of Scylla, who secures the death of her father Nisus by stealing the purple lock of hair upon which his life and kingdom depended.

The myth of Scylla represents a variation upon the widespread theme of the external soul.

 A similar deed is elsewhere attributed to one Camaetho, who is said to have brought about the demise of Pterelaus by stealing the golden lock of hair wherein resided his soul.   Yet the name Comaetho, signifying "fiery-haired, is otherwise attested as an epithet of Aphrodite.

Here it is important to remember the widespread tradition which recognizes comets as the "souls" of  great kings or heroes.

Comets were also expressly compared to "locks" of hair and said to portend the  fall of kingdoms.  The following report from an Italian writer of the first century reflects what appears to be a  universal belief:
 

 Ovid's account of Scylla, upon further scrutiny, seems  to preserve more than a trace of that harpie's cometary nature.  Thus it is that, after stealing Nisus'  lock, Scylla is said to have become "enraged,"  whereupon she appeared with "streaming hair.
Scylla's end is worth quoting at length:

Ovid's comparison of Scylla to a "hated spirit," quite  possibly, preserves archetypal elements of the  goddess' cult.  In Greek tradition, the departing soul of a human being was compared to an angry Erinys.  Yet the Erinys was elsewhere personified
 as a goddess of wrath and rage, having a black form  and bloodthirsty appetite.  Indeed, the name itself is  thought to commemorate the goddess' wrath.Aphrodite herself, moreover, was likened to an Erinys.  Thus, Farnell refers to a puzzling passage in Hesychius in which an Erinys "is explained as aninfernal power or as an eidolon of Aphrodite; eidolonin this context must either mean 'phantom' or 'image'.

 In the compelling image of Comaetho escaping with  the life-soul of Pterelaus it is possible to recognize the archetypal witch.  From time immemorial, in both the Old World and New, witches have been blamed for the theft of hearts or souls (in ancient symbology, hearts are typically synonymous with "souls"). Hultkrantz offered the following summary of Pueblo conceptions of the heart-soul:

A seldom noticed fact is how often the great mother goddesses are described in terms otherwise befitting a witch.  Ishtar-Lamashtu, as we have seen, was presented as a witch-like demon, swooping down from the sky and making off with children.  The Norse Freya, similarly, was described as a witch as well as a warrior and mourner.

While witch-like characteristics can be found within the cults of most great goddesses, they are particularly prominent in the cults of the Norse Holda and Greek Hecate.  Grimm described Holda's transformation into a witch as follows:

 Holle-riding, "to ride with Holle," was equivalent to the nocturnal ride of witches, the latter being accompanied by departed souls.

The patron-goddess of witches and sorceresses,  Hecate was described as having serpentine hair and  brandishing torches whilst riding through the air on  flying serpents.
Like Holda, Hecate was intimately associated with a train of souls and ghost-like beings, the latter said to accompany thegoddess on her nocturnal jaunts: "Queen of the spirits of the dead, she was active at night, accompanied by a retinue of dogs and ghosts of suicides or those who had died a violent death.

This tradition recalls the Medieval belief that the souls of children and barking dogs accompanied the nocturnal haunts of witches.

The fundamental affinity of Hecate with Aphrodite is baffling at first sight, for what could the goddess of love have to do with a witch goddess?  Yet Aphrodite's affinity to Hecate makes perfect sense in  light of her intimate relationship to Erinys and
Comaetho, both of whom share witch-like attributes.

It is precisely these terrible or "negative" images of the goddess which have proven difficult to understand or discover in the natural world.  Not surprisingly, investigators have had little recourse but to attempt an  explanation in terms of subjective psychological  factors.

Neuman says:

 
The archetypal images of the terrible goddess—Kali,  Lamashtu, raging lioness, Scylla, witch—have an objective basis in historical fact, being directly  traceable to the ancient appearance of the planet Venus while displaying a comet-like phase.
In order to understand the terrible aspect of the various Venus-goddesses, all that is required is to allow for  the possibility that Venus hasn't always presented such  a beautiful face.
 
 
 

As indicated by her title Urania, Aphrodite is to be  identified with the planet Venus, known throughout the  ancient Near East as the "Queen of Heaven."  In this celestial identification the Greek goddess conforms to what amounts to a universal rule.  Thus, a systematic analysis of the various mother goddesses will reveal an  indissoluble connection with the planet Venus.
Virtually every aspect of the mother goddess' cult,  rightly understood, will trace to the Cytherean planet.
As the mourning goddess is described as wandering  the world with disheveled hair, so too is Venus  described in no uncertain terms as the "star of lamentation" and as "the star with disheveled hair."  Asnthe mother goddess is commonly regarded as a greatwarrior, whose dance threatened the very foundations of the world, so too have various cultures around the world described Venus as an agent of war especially  linked to apocalyptic disaster.  As the warrior goddess is compared to a raging lioness, so too is the  planet Venus described as the "lion of heaven."  As the raging goddess is described as having assumed a
black form, so too is the planet Venus.  As mother  goddesses everywhere are described with witch-like  attributes, so too is Venus likened to a "witch-star." And so it is with countless other mythical motifs  surrounding the mother goddess.

Considered in isolation and with reference to the current skies, there is no conceivable reason to link  the planet Venus to rites of lamentation, disheveled "comet-like" hair, leonine imagery, war, the color black, or witches.  Such associations would be
puzzling enough were they confined to one region of  the world alone, yet they are to be found in the New World as well as the Old.  Only the Saturn thesis, and  the Saturn thesis alone, I dare say, can explain these peculiar traditions surrounding Venus.
The key to understanding these  traditions is that Venus formed the celestial prototype for the heart-soul of the ancient sun-god (Saturn), the escape or theft of which constituted a great cataclysm associated with the kingdom of that planet-god.
 

During a spectacular series of events, Venus took on  the appearance of a comet-like apparition, its long disheveled "hair" spanning the heavens and obscuring the sun while throwing the cosmos into darkness and chaos.  During this disturbance of the polar configuration, Venus circled about the polar axis for an indeterminant period of time, ostensibly looking for  her lost consort and lamenting his loss.  Only with the realignment of the polar configuration was the terrible goddess pacified and order restored.

This thesis allows for the ready understanding of the various universal traditions surrounding comets, none of which makes any sense otherwise: 

I.     The comparison of comets to the souls of great kings; 
II.    The association of the appearance of comets with the death of kings and the fall of great kingdoms; 
III.   The association of comets with great eclipses or with the end of an age.  It is because of Venus' specific role  within the evolving polar configuration that that planet  and comets came to share numerous attributes and  terminology in common.