Venus of New York – December 2016 – 9th Anniversary

Venus of New York by Agni Jnana Yannanda, The One Who Speaks With The Stars
Participatory Durational Performance
December 2016 – 9th Anniversary
Light Design: Niko van Egten

This December, I return to the ritual threshold first opened by Venus of New York.
Nine years ago, this work marked a turning point in my Artist-as-Medium series, when trance, hypnosis, and divination expanded to include astrological transmission through the avatar Agni Jnana Yannanda, The One Who Speaks With The Stars.

I read my first astrology book at six years old. As a teenager, I studied with the Polish astrologer Leszek Madzik, who in turn had studied with Dane Rudhyar, bringing me into a lineage that blended psychological astrology, symbolism, and spiritual evolution. I even tried to write my MA thesis in Anthropology based on the symbolic system of astrology, but couldn’t convince the professors at the University of Nikolas Copernicus(!). When I discovered astro.com while studying philosophy in France in the mid-2000s, astrology became a portal into inner worlds and into language itself. I learned English, French, and Spanish by following the site’s daily insights, to the point that I could quote passages from Liz Greene, Robert Hand, and Stephen Arroyo by heart. Over the years I continued studying with many teachers, including evolutionary astrologer Jamie K. Miller of Pandora Astrology, and Vedic astrologers Ronnie Dreyer and Komilla Sutton. For decades the stars were my private teachers, guiding me quietly through friendships, love, and the intricacies of life.

In December 2016, for the first time, I stepped into a public ritual space and shared that knowledge through performance. This was the birth of Agni Jnana, an embodied oracle inviting participants to sit with me one by one as I entered trance to read their cosmic patterns—beginning with the position of their natal Venus. She is the one who shapes the quality of our relationships, love, and art, and as she is the ruler of my chart, I set that first performance to carry her signature, becoming the doorway into each person’s celestial story.

That inaugural reading also unfolded at a potent moment in my own sky: my progressed Mars was aligning with my natal Venus, echoing the energy of my first artistic collaboration with Niko van Egten, whose Venus aligns perfectly with mine.

✨ This Saturday, I will be offering astrology readings once again: honoring the lineage of this work and celebrating love.

December 20, 2025
4–6:30 PM
Accent Sisters
89 5th Avenue, #702
New York, NY

Event link: https://www.instagram.com/p/DSVhSxRkrnf/

Wishing you an abundant and luminous New Lunar Cycle in Sagittarius in both Vedic and Western systems!
December 19th, 2025, 8:42 pm EST

New Moon Conjunct the Galactic Center

This New Moon in Sagittarius arrives as a spark of renewal, lifting the collective gaze toward possibility, direction, and meaning, and this year it is especially potent because the Moon and Sun come together conjunct the Galactic Center, the gravitational heart of our Milky Way. In Western astrology, the lunation opens a doorway into visioning the year ahead: what truths guide you now, which philosophies anchor you, and what horizons are calling your name? Sagittarius burns away stagnation. It encourages a return to freedom, purpose, and the wild inner compass that refuses to be domesticated. This is a moment for intentions that stretch you, intentions rooted not in obligation but in adventure, authenticity, and the wisdom your life has already earned.

In Vedic astrology, the New Moon falls at 4 degrees of Sidereal Sagittarius, in Mula Nakshatra, the root star. Mula cuts down to essence. It excavates, purifies, and dismantles anything that is not aligned with your deeper dharma. With the Galactic Center nearby, this Mula New Moon becomes a profound reset point: a return to origins, both personal and cosmic. It encourages you to release what has run its course and to plant intentions at the very root of your being, where destiny and choice touch.

Together, these systems converge on a single theme: this New Moon marks a clarifying point of truth. It invites you to shed outdated narratives, reclaim your inner direction, and align your next steps with the larger arc of your soul’s unfolding. Trust the pull toward renewal — it rises from the root of Mula and from the center of the galaxy itself.

Jana Astanov is an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, installation, photography, and sound. Her practice draws from trance, movement, and site-specific ceremony to transform the audience into participants within a living cosmological field. The body becomes a ritual instrument in her work, linking land, stars, and collective presence through participatory actions. Mythic knowledge converges with contemporary technology, shaping a form of ritual futurism in which human, earthly, and cosmic intelligence are intertwined. https://www.janaastanov.com/

Agni Jnana Yannanda, Venus of New York, December 19th 2016.