Aug 22 – Sep 22, 2016 (Fall Equinox)
Click here to learn about the Sun. Click here to learn about Virgo.
Disclaimer: the Sun sign is a much-celebrated yet oversimplified astrological element, usually given more significance than it deserves. Remember – you are a whole soup of planets!
Prepare to be tossed in the turbine. Change is afoot! It’s time to move, get a job, go to school, break up, dig deeper in emotional healing, whatever it is you need. This next cycle will be insanely busy, especially the first two weeks.
I want to reframe Virgo – she’s a badass with agency over her body and life story. Virgo is ruled by Mercury, the fleet-footed Messenger God. The Virgo life is a fast one, full of incredible change. In the body, Virgo rules the sympathetic nervous system and lower digestive tract. She lives deep inside: maintaining, monitoring, assimilating. Virgo is dependable and devoted, constantly working on herself, craving continual improvement. She may be reserved at first, but you will soon find that there is a vast, undiscovered world within her.
Let’s return to a regular workout schedule, a better diet or, at the very least, elevated seriousness. If health is already a priority, this transit is about perfecting through practice, lots and lots and lots of practice. Our greatest responsibility is to simply let change happen around us without tensing or attempting to control these dynamic shifts. As autumn eventually fades and polar winds blow across the fields, Virgo will watch her crops wither with impressive calm. She will return and start from the beginning in the following year, as will you, as will I.
Virgo, Goddess of Harvest, would be so happy to see us working, picking fruit or dancing through rows of wheat. We need to be outside to really understand this constellation. She lives in verdure, in the rasp of sun and wind, in dry rustling of grasses and the crunching of dawn footsteps to the creek. Make your home beneath tree and star, wash your face and shirt in the singing river. Catch the berries as they fall, unhook the mushroom from its earthen post. Remember that you are a human being on a giant organic spaceship and that Gaia has provided us with everything we need. Skip the supermarket and the apartment, head back to the woods. We put ourselves in grave danger by forgetting our inner animal. Gnaw the root, weave the straw, paint your body with the colors of autumn-cometh.
Leave as much space and flexibility around work plans as possible. Virgo likes to lock herself in: immersed, productive, barely breathing or resting. But I also know that Virgo likes change. Commit only through the Virgo cycle, for Libra will bring a new host of opportunities and challenges. Virgo is a friend who comes for a specific purpose and doesn’t stay long, like her fruits and vegetable, ripe but once a year. Allow room for migration, for fluctuation; just as the clouds ignore our plans, so do the stars.
One thing is sure: there is no respite, no repose, no languor here. You’l feel it growing, a seed at the base of your spine, spreading to the stomach, an excitement in your finger bones, so mercurial it nearly hurts. Whether it’s work or school, I wish you the very best. Be proud of yourself, celebrate your successes!
This is also when we come back to the body with love and acceptance. What does that mean? For some it comes naturally, an abiding sense of home and security embedded in the flesh. For others it is the work of a lifetime. At its most basic and yet most profound, coming back to the body means revolution. You create your reality. You are made of light. To be out of the body is to ignore its beauty, its potential, its power, its impact as it burns through space.
Move your blood with Virgo Yoga.
Mantra: focus