Paul McCartney’s ”The Kiss of Venus”

Cosmophonia

For proof that the ideas of the Quadrivium continue to resonate in modern culture, we need not look further than Sir Paul McCartney. By pure coincidence, we happened to fall in love with the song "The Kiss of Venus" from his 2020 self-titled album, and decide to do an episode based partly on the book "A Little Book of Coincidence" around the same time, not realizing that said song was inspired by said book! After making the connection we decided we had to do the song on the show. It turns out that the song has several subtle but exciting connections with the "Kiss of Venus" phenomenon as described in the book, both in the lyrics and in the harmonies and musical form.

References

Paul McCartney, "The Kiss of Venus" from McCartney III

The Paul McCartney Project website (very helpful compilation of McCartney's interviews and comments)

John Martineau, A Little Book of Coincidence

More on the venus pentagram

More on planetary conjunctions and retrograde motion

Animation of Messenger probe trajectory

Dominic Fike version of "The Kiss of Venus"