Evening Star

Definition

An evening star is an inferior planet — Mercury or Venus, the two planets that orbit closer to the Sun than Earth does — seen above the western horizon after sunset. It is the stretch of the planet's cycle that runs from superior conjunction, behind the Sun, through greatest eastern elongation, the point of widest separation, toward its next retrograde station. The effect is simply a matter of seeing: the planet shows at dusk because it sets after the Sun, and it has pulled far enough away, and is bright enough, to stand out against the darkening twilight.

In Tradition

In both traditional and modern Western astrology, the evening-star phase is read with a different interpretive flavor from the morning-star phase. Astrologers agree it carries qualities of culmination, deliberation, reflection, and mature expression — the planet trails the Sun down at the end of the day. Traditional doctrine ties the evening-star phase to the occidental, evening position, which the inferior planets are said to prefer for their full strength, leaving the morning-star phase with a complementary but distinct character.

In Practice

An astrologer recognizes the evening-star phase from an ephemeris — a table of daily positions — by confirming that the inferior planet sets after the Sun (its place along the zodiac is greater than the Sun's by more than the visibility threshold) and that it has come out of superior conjunction. The phase is read as supporting deliberate, mature, reflective expression. In horary and electional work, a significator — the planet standing in for a person or matter — in evening-star condition is read as occidental and culminating; in a birth chart, Mercury or Venus as an evening star is read as favoring deliberation. Mercury's evening-star phase is sometimes called "Epimethean," Venus's "Hesperos" or "Vesper."

Historical Origin

Ancient astronomers at first took evening-star Venus, Hesperos, to be a separate body from morning-star Venus, Phosphoros; the Pythagoreans recognized that they were one and the same, and the identity was set down in Ptolemy's Almagest and Phaseis. Al-Biruni's Tafhim §§284-289 describes the conditions of the cycle of visibility. The modern Western synthesis appears in Hand's Horoscope Symbols and Sullivan's Retrograde Planets.

Etymology

Origin: English/Greek. Meaning: Descriptive: a star (planet) of the evening. Greek: Hesperos (evening, western).

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Etymology

Further Reading