This has been a strange 2012 with many more sky anomalies than an average year. Moons, eclipses, strange lights, alignments... could the Maya have been onto something? And who told them of the heavens from the viewpoint of incoming craft rather than primates looking up from the tops of pyramids?
There are strange bird people (suparnas, garudas), avian-human hybrids, and there are feathered serpents (nagas), reptilian-human hybrids. With plant-helpers, they told the indigenous Amazon Jivaro and neo-shaman anthropologist Michael Harner that they were the "true gods" of this world. What did they mean?
There is more to this world, beings seen and unseen, than meets our two ordinary eyes. An extraordinary "third eye" -- or what the Buddha called the dibba cakkhu and other supernormal powers -- is needed sometimes.
A meditator near Boston, at Barre's Insight Meditation Society, told Wisdom Quarterly of developing the absorptions then turning attention toward designated areas and seeing the "unseen beings" there. There were devas above the trees, suffering beings beneath the ground, ghosts cowering, and humanoid beings in space. This was our first hint that what the Buddha taught about cosmology and cosmography is personally verifiable. It may not be very important or pertinent to serenity-and-insight. But if it verifiable, it is not something taken on faith.
There are natural born "seers" who, knowing nothing of Buddhism, describe the same sort of beings. This plane is full of them. Could it be the planets have titular entities associated with them: Surya (Sun), Chandra (Moon), Bhumi (Earth, Gaia), and Shukra (Venus). The world is much stranger and wonderful than most of us ever imagine.
According to the world's only functioning "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (a.k.a. Wikipedia), Venus is Shukra and the titular entity for the first planet from the Sun is Budha. Astrology and horoscopes used to be powerful tools before the information was suppressed and turned into an inane pastime and ludicrous endeavor.
(13Orcun) Conductor Gustav Holst may be most famous for his "The Planets." But he arguably created a much greater and profound work he called the "Hymns from the Rig Veda." That is, he understood the links between the Sanskrit Vedas ("Books of Knowledge") and proto-European languages and mythologies/astrology. Sir David Willcocks, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Shukra represents the planet Venus. It is a Sanskrit word for "clear, pure" or "brightness, clearness." It is the name the son of Bhrigu and Ushana, and preceptor of the Daityas, and the guru of the Asuras, identified with the planet Venus (with honorific, शुक्राचार्य Shukracharya). He presides over "Shukra-var" or Friday. He is rajas in nature and represents wealth, pleasure, and reproduction.
In Astrology, there is a dasha or planetary period known as Shukra Dasha which remains active in a person's horoscope for 20 years. This dasha is believed to give more wealth, fortune, and luxury to one's living if a person has Shukra positioned well in his or her horoscope as well as Shukra being an important beneficent planet in her or his horoscope.