By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
THE EXTREME nature of our many personal and political challenges was reflected in the New Moon eclipse on Sep. 11 complete with a Grand Cross in mutable signs -- a triple whammy; this was the companion to our Full Moon lunar eclipse on Aug. 28, popping us into a petri dish of dramatic possibilities.
Add to this week's bombshell the emotional anniversary of the Towers falling and the long-anticipated Petraeus Report that, as expected, "stays the course" and hopes to pour enough soothing rhetoric on our tattered sensibilities to put us back to sleep for another six months. Toss in news of a declining dollar that hasn't been this devalued in 15 years and a flattened housing bubble that's put even the McMansions in jeopardy, mix it with talk of a coming recession and you've got quite a potent little angst-producing cocktail -- a Stinger comes to mind. Oh, and let's not forget our covert provocations with Iran, and the overt establishment of a base four miles from the Iraq/Iran border and moving in British troops.
Hey, barkeep -- make that a double!
With explosive Uranus opposing the Virgo eclipse, and squared by aggressive Mars, war and conflict is much on our plate -- the fourth leg of our cross is an expansive Jupiter, inflating the issues like a Jolly Jump at a kid's birthday party. Uranus is the pin that can reduce all that hot air to a crumpled puddle of vinyl, of course -- just as General Dave prepared to give his report on the Hill, for instance, news came that two of the seven daring soldiers who wrote a recent and
controversial New York Times editorial questioning "the mission" had been killed; a third had received a head wound as the article was being written. And as Petraeus spoke (not sworn in, by the way) to the Senate about Bush's "largely successful" surge, insurgents rocked US headquarters in Baghdad with mortar fire, killing one and wounding 11. Reality check, eh? If you're just learning about this as you read this article, you can thank the Holy Trinity of the Bush administration -- unitary Executive, secretive Pentagon and complacent media.
We've come to our turning point, now. We've all had enough; we can't see a future ahead that offers us easy passage and we're looking to end this forward thrust into continued mayhem. The Virgo Saturn certainly offers us a way backward into a working relationship with reality, although Virgo tends to nitpick, to seize a project in its teeth and shake it until it's dead; with the overwhelming amount of broken promises, systems and social contracts that we see around us, how...what...to pick for this intensity of attention is problematic. Throwing things into reverse will make us look in the rearview mirror, and that comes with this warning:
Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. For a nation that's spent years refusing to look at how bad things were getting, turning its gaze to all that's crumbling around it is daunting, to say the least. And hitting on all pistons, the cosmic engine driving this energy is working not only globally and nationally, but personally, giving us hard realities about our own lives and habits.
Continued at this link...
Eric is taking a short break this week and next, so horoscope will return two weeks from today. Today's archive selection is an Eric Francis classic on Chiron and Virgo from the summer of 2004.
|
VIRGO IS WHAT'S called a human sign, being one of the few regions of the zodiac represented by a person, specifically a young woman. According to Fred Gettings in his
Arkana Dictionary of Astrology, the symbol for this sign has, among its sources, "been derived from the merged letters of M and V (Maria Virgo) as part of the important Marian symbolism associated with this sign." Maria, or Mary, is the living vestige of goddess-worship within the Catholic church and indeed all of Western civilization, after Catholicism took over the more gender-balanced, nature-oriented Celtic religion.
The Sun enters this sign each year in late summer as the harvest approaches. Like the other earthy signs Taurus and Capricorn, Virgo is associated with stability, sustenance and nourishment. In the northern hemisphere, the shift from Leo to Virgo is one of the most visceral sign changes we experience; the quality of light changes distinctly, there is a different feeling to the air, and late summer is very much a season of its own. The sweet touch of melancholy associated with summer's end is an important part of the emotional signature of the Virgo soul.
William Lilly, the great horary astrologer who wrote the first astrological text in English,
Christian Astrology (published in 1647), says that amongst physical locations in the world, Virgo signifies a "study where books are, a closet, a dairy-house, cornfields, granaries, malt-houses, hayricks, or of barley, wheat or peas, or a place where cheese and butter are preserved and stored up." This sign, in its worldly expression, is about food and its preservation, and food for the mind.
Traditionally, its ruler is the planet Mercury, the closest to the Sun and the messenger of the gods, which shuttles back and forth across the sky during its many retrogrades all year long. This is symbolic of the mutable nature of Virgos: they can change and adapt.
Apropos of Mercury, Gettings, in his excellent dictionary, describes Virgo as a sign "deeply committed to the intellectual process." Those of us who know and love Virgos are familiar with intelligent, clever, somewhat nervous people who can never seem to do enough. But this is not mental activity for its own buzz; there appears to be something inherently spiritual, transcendent of ego and dedicated to world service that is apparent in who many Virgos are and what they represent.
Virgos had best put these qualities to good use. They have a lot of energy to burn and have an inherent need to be of genuine assistance to the world. When they are fulfilling this role, they are generally quite happy and involved; when not, they can become annoying, particularly to themselves. Many astrologers feel that the keywords of Virgo are
I Serve, and many born under this sign know exactly what they're talking about.
Alice A. Bailey, in her 1951 book
Esoteric Astrology, addresses some of what may be going on beneath this impulse.
"The sign Virgo is one of the most significant in the zodiac," she writes in her introduction to this sign, "for its symbology concerns the whole goal of the evolutionary process, which is to shield, nurture and finally reveal the hidden spiritual reality. This every form veils, but the human form is equipped and fitted to manifest it in a manner different to any other expression of divinity and so make tangible and objective that for which the whole creative process was intended."
I think the first sentence of that statement is pretty easy to grasp, but I had to read the second one a few times. Remember, she is writing from an esoteric or occult viewpoint, which takes the view that the physical world is like drapery hung over the inner life. One could just as easily reason that all of nature, including human nature is the living expression of divinity at every moment. She is saying, essentially, that every form in nature veils the inner life of spirit; that the soul is hidden within what we see every day. But there is something in the human form (represented by Virgo) that is in a position to make divinity tangible in a way unique in all the world, and which is the intent of the entire evolutionary process. This notion rates the human experience as the most important on the planet (debatable, yes?), but maybe if we took that seriously, we would be kinder to other living things and the planet herself.
Next, she adds a bit of interesting, ancient data. "The word Virgo itself is a descendant of and corruption of the ancient Atlantean root name which was applied to the mother principle in those far off times. This Virgin was the founder of the matriarchy which then dominated civilization and to which various myths and legends bear evidence and which have come down to us concerning Lilith, the last Virgin Goddess of Atlantean times."
In other words, the sign Virgo represents the feminine principle of divinity in its entirety. We might think of that as the spirit that animates mater-mother-matter, our entire earthly life, our bodies, and all we do and create within the material plane.
Bailey also associates Virgo with Mary, "who carries the [evolutionary] process down to the plane or place of incarnation, the physical plane, and there gives birth to the Christ child." She adds that "Virgo is, therefore, the opposite pole of spirit and stands for the relation of these two after they have been brought together."
I would offer the idea that the urge or impulse to serve that each of us encounters where Virgo is in our charts is the impulse to give birth to something intended to heal the world.
Under the traditional system of rulerships that was codified (but not invented) by Claudius Ptolemaeus in the 2nd century C.E., Mercury rules two signs, Gemini and Virgo. Ancient astrology describes Mercury as being neither male nor female but some of both, so we have an unusual planet to be associated with the sign of the Goddess and the matriarchy. Bailey, in her system of rulerships, associates the Moon and Jupiter with this sign. The ancient Celts felt that Venus was the spirit of Nature herself. Venus is, in my experience, by far the most intelligent planet, which feels rather like what we're talking about here.
In terms of traditional astrology, one of Mercury's two signs, Gemini, has the quality of relating to abstract thought, whereas Virgo seeks out much more tangible, solid reality that you can ponder out loud, put into print and footnote, or squish between your toes. Mercury seems to represent one distinct aspect of Virgo, the mental one. As we have seen, there is far more to the reality of Virgo than this.
And then came Chiron. Discovered in November 1977, Chiron is physically a massive comet. At 160 to 180 kilometers across, it is thousands of times the size of even the largest comets we can typically see -- but too far away to resolve even for most telescopes. Chiron orbits our Sun in a 51-year egg-shaped path that crosses Saturn's orbit and goes out nearly as far as Uranus. The discovery of Chiron, and considerable early enthusiasm about it, raised much speculation about what sign this new planet might rule. This notion was based on an assumption that new planets rule anything at all. But by 1977, the modern planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) were said to rule Aquarius, Pisces and Scorpio respectively. So when Chiron came along, astrologers were ensconced in the dubious habit of thinking that something new had to rule a sign.
While this issue is debatable, Chiron certainly has a lot to say about Virgo. Chiron's dedication to healing, service and perfecting the human experience are related to Virgo rather impeccably. Chiron always seems to be struggling to bring something from a 'higher level' into the physical plane. Chiron will do whatever it needs to do, again and again, until he gets it right. It is not easy integrating the energy of one level of experience into the other -- anyone who has tried to bring loving vibes into their place of work might know what I'm talking about -- but with persistence, it can be done. And Chiron is persistent if nothing else.
Chiron of Greek mythology was a surgeon and the primary teacher of Asclepius, the god of medicine. There is not a lot of room for error in these distinctly human fields of work. The roles of both teaching and nursing have long been associated with Virgo.
The mental obsession that Chiron can bring helps us see through Virgo in a way that's helpful. As Barbara Hand Clow has pointed out, this obsessive quality is one of the most important links between Chiron and Virgo, something that tricksterish, often annoyingly neutral Mercury could not really explain fully. Chiron is no messenger, and he's not neutral; he is someone with a mission, who speaks through action.
That mission has been likened to the Christ from the earliest days of astrologers interpreting Chiron, so we might speculate that Virgo has given birth to the Christ energy in the form of this new planet. Many of the early astrologers who considered the mythology of Chiron, which involves an immortal who experiences death and resurrection, have made this connection, particularly Zane Stein. But what exactly does this mean, in a world where the mythology of Jesus is twisted in ways that are used to preach intolerance, hatred and mass murder?
It means that a) we had better start thinking of Jesus a bit more compassionately, and b) that Chiron is going to push us to become whole, authentic people, whatever it takes.
By 'push' I am referring to the events, experiences, transitions and life circumstances that surround Chiron transits. Chiron transits often come with a good bit of suffering, but that struggle always serves to clear away the old personality shell so that the essence within us can emerge. Study your Chiron transits and you'll see what I mean. (For example, look at Chiron's squares and oppositions to itself; look at when Chiron crossed your ascendant; and when it made conjunctions to your Sun and Moon).
Even astrologers who don't use Chiron will tell you that there's something really, really intense happening when Chiron shows up, though for many astrologers it's difficult to put their finger on. Many astrologers have difficulty discerning the qualities of Chiron from those of other planets which are making major transits at the same time. This difficulty is understandable enough. Chiron is entering the field of experience from an entirely different level than we're typically used to. It will, in turn, make use of anything and everything available in your current reality to raise awareness. Its mission is to help us see and feel beyond the edge of what we thought of as reality, and what we thought of as ourselves, and experience ourselves as something entirely new.
Imagine Chiron's orbit piercing the ego-boundary of Saturn. It plunges into our reality like the comet that it is, often guiding, prodding or stunning us to awareness -- always gently first, then in escalating degrees. Like Virgo and the 6th house, Chiron brings the message
be here now. Stand in your true nature. Be who you are. Remember that you are part of nature and cannot escape from it. For those accustomed to living a life of escape and diversion, this is not always a pleasant message, but ultimately it both sets us free, and leaves us free to do what we came to the Earth to do.
CREDITS: Associate Editor: Priya Kale. Webmaster: Anatoly Ryzhenko. Proofreader and Fact Checker: Sara Churchville. Horoscope Editor: Jessica Keet. Business Manager: Chelsea Bottinelli.
