When learning about the mythology of astrology most people have heard something along the lines of, "This Planet is just the same as [insert deity here] from Greek mythology!"
Tell me you haven't heard someone say that before, common, I know you have. And while they may be right to an extent, there are some major differences between Roman mythology (what the planets are based on) and Greek mythology (which has much more commonly known lore).
Let's talk about it, shall we!
The one that I see most commonly compared is Aphrodite and Venus. Everyone wants to just group these two goddesses together because they both represent love and femininity, BUT LEMME TELL YOU. Y'alls got it all wrong.
So there was this guy you have heard of, Julius Caesar, he has a salad named after him, I can't quite understand why, and he was also the dictator of Rome. Although, when googling exactly what Caesar's job title was some douche head-on Quora, John Griffiths, said that, "Caesar was something better than an Emperor. He was the grandfather of emperors," as if that isn't the most pretentious thing you've ever heard.
Not only was he an important dude in Rome and in salads, apparently he was related to Aphrodite (sounds like a crock of shit, but this was Rome in 48 BC, so no one questioned it). This was a HUGE deal because according to Roman legend, the Romans were descendants of the Trojans and the Trojans were led by Aeneas. That sentence just meant nothing to you so lemme translate:
There was a huge war in Troy called The Trojan War (go figure) between the Trojans and the Greeks. The Greeks won and basically destroyed all of Troy and killed a lot of their people (it's war, that's usually how it goes). Some people managed to get out alive and those people went to Italy and founded the city of Rome. Apparently, they were only successful, however, due to the help of Aeneas and his mom Aphrodite. So when Julius Caesar is all like, "Yo. I'm related to Aphrodite, man," everyone was losing their brains because, she is viewed as one of their saviors (That was not an exact quote, but you get me). Caesar then decided he was going to create a monument dedicated to Aphrodite for all she did for Rome and in order to stroke his own ego.
Now, what in the world does that have to do with anything?
Well I don't know if you recall, but the Trojan war was against the Greeks, so the Romans HATED the Greeks. When Caesar said he was going to build a monument dedicated to the GREEK goddess Aphrodite, everyone in Rome was like, "Woah, Woah, Woah, hold on a minute." And that's when the controversy arose.
Something to also note here is that the Romans were very conservative compared to the Greeks and Aphrodite is anything but conservative. Before Venus and Aphrodite got mixed together, Aphrodite was much more of a hoe than she is portrayed now. She had sex with pretty much all the gods, goddesses, and boned all the sexy humans too. She was a warrior and fought better than a lot of the men, and pretty much just killed everyone one that got in her way. Conservative Rome was not a fan of this, using it as fuel to call the Greeks 'perverted' and 'gross' (I don't know what the actual insults were then, sorry). This was a huge argument against the Aphrodite monument because the Romans thought it would give the wrong idea to women (I love how society hasn't evolved since 48 BC, amazing).
Eventually, the Roman people won the argument and Caesar couldn't build his sexy Aphrodite statue, but he still wanted to build some sort of monument in memory of his "family". That's where Venus comes in.
Up to this point, Venus was just a goddess of Gardens and Vegetation, she was pretty irrelevant and people kinda forgot she existed. So when some dude in Rome was like, "Look, Caesar, you can build your statue, but the new Goddess of love is gonna be Venus because she is modest and motherly," Caesar was down cause he really didn't care as long as he could claim he was related to a Goddess and since she was irrelevant anyway, it kinda worked out.
That's when the phrase, Venus is just the Roman Aphrodite, started. Eventually, the lore between the two goddesses would begin to combine making Venus a little more sexy and Aphrodite a little more modest, and now they are pretty much equaled out.
As far as astrology goes though, I've never really used the deities in my practice. It's just not really a part of my work. That being said I discovered a lot of this information when flipping through the book, Encyclopedia of Spirits: The Ultimate Guide to the Magic of Fairies, Genies, Demons, Ghosts, Gods & Goddesses by Judika Illes, at the library and found it super fascinating, so I wanted to learn a little more about it through surfing Wikipedia and then sharing that knowledge with all of you.
The memorial was built and it's called the Venus Genetrix if any of y'all were wondering.
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