English translation of a French version
performed by Tabitha du Plessis,
student at ITIRI
(University of Strasbourg)



(Transcription of the content of the video)

Botticelli’s Venus. It is a painting that almost everybody can recognise. We always say “The Birth of Venus”, but in reality it depicts the arrival of Venus (the Greek Aphrodite) on the shore of the Island of Cyprus. The beauty of the model leads one to describe her curves in detail, but by paying closer attention, particularly from a spiritual point of view, one notices a number of peripheral objects and characters.
Firstly, there is the shell, the shape of which evokes a very intimate part of the female body. Do we not call it the mons veneris? It is probably for this reason that the shell symbolises subterranean worlds, the primordial waters, the moon and fertility; it must be.
These connections are almost universal. If you are not yet convinced, do an Internet search of images of Cyprae-like seashells, which are very common on the shores of the Island of Cyprus,…the island of Aphrodite. Amongst these characters, at the top left, one notes the presence of Zephyrus, the deity of the West Wind, the wind that brings fertility. Two nymphs appear next to Venus. Once again, these images bring to mind the female sex, of which the roses are a delicate symbol. The roses, in turn, bring to mind the Virgin Mary, and with an Internet search you will find an image of the Virgin Mary underneath a scallop shell.
Even today, in Christian baptisms, the priest uses a recipient in the shape of a scallop shell from which he pours the water from the baptismal depths onto the forehead of the child.
Let us depart from Florence to Compostela, where according to a legend, a wind pushed a boat that contained the remains of the tortured Saint James from Jerusalem to Galicia.
Even today, the pilgrims that go to Santiago de Compostela collect scallop shells in abundance at Cabo Fisterra, an area in the vicinity of Santiago de Compostela that is geographically similar to Finistère (from the Latin finis terræ, meaning of the end of days).
It is clear that the Christian cult of Saint James has replaced an older cult surrounding the scallop shell, which is the ultimate symbol of femininity. But who cares nowadays about the sex of Venus-Aphrodite, and the peripeteia of Saint James, rewritten by the Catholic Church?
It seems to me that teaching in anthropology should not ignore the symbolic systems that European societies have forged, because they help one to situate man at the heart of the universe, in the broadest sense; including the sky, its galaxies, its drifting planets, as the Gnawa initiates would say.

And speaking of wandering planets, you are certainly able to guess the name of the star that guided the monk Pelagus when he found Saint James’ remains ?