The New Moon is in Virgo today, and the autumnal exhalation of the zodiacal year is days away, surrounding challenges in the celestial weather notwithstanding.  The Mars Retrograde / Saturn square from Aries to Capricorn remains an enduring frictional theme as it will this Fall.

​About nine years ago, a particular relationship inspired me to call various squares from Aries to Capricorn ‘like a fairy caught between the gas and the brakes.’  I still do to this day.  She had a way of talking herself out of momentum with excess mental considerations that came off more charming than worrisome, but a rising Mars in Aquarius definitely seemed to contribute to her anxiety.  It was kind of adorable, if not super counter-productive for making decisions on time.  She remains one of my great friends from states away, and I still playfully give her shit when she’s voicing too many what-ifs and not being the grease in her own wheels.

​Well, these Mars-Saturn squares from Aries to Capricorn are more like a symphony’s dramatic overture about a traffic jam turned ambush.  Shower that shrapnel onto your electric Virgo New Moon, and this week may have already seen some serious friction-turned-action and putting on the brakes alike.  Key themes might be self-valuation, decisive action, speed and brick wall, acceptance of boundaries, and realizing standards you have for yourself and others — the mutual service and commitments between you.

Virgo is a sign that pop culture often misunderstands from the jump based on the name alone.  Consider the Latin etymology ‘maiden’, and Greek translation of ‘virgin’ as ‘one unto herself.’  To be complete unto oneself is a realization possible regardless of where one falls in Virgo’s resonant ‘virgin-whore’ dichotomy.  Purity is relative to one’s measure of devotion — to a job, to a lover, to a sense of purpose in the world.  To oneself.

In the breath of the year, from Spring’s inhalation to Winter’s empty lungs, Virgo’s end marks the boundary between Summer and Fall, between the held breath and exhalation, between Self and Other.  While the seasonal distinction applies more to temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, regardless the ‘zodiacal body’s descent of breath’ from head to foot clarifies Virgo’s traditional rulership of stomach and digestion.

In Virgo, what has been consumed and internalized is separated from what is expelled.  The body gains nourishment and waste is discarded.  This is not only Virgo’s association with health, body consciousness and discretion, but also her ostensive sexual selectivity and separation of idealogical wheat from chaff.  She seeks the finest suitor, whether a lover or a concept.

​Virgo mediates between Leo’s self-radiating romantic vision, “God’s gift to man”, and Libra’s balancing judgment of the external, its knowledge of beauty in (dis?)harmonic relationship.  Virgo is the gift held in the hesitance to devote oneself — or to dive into service and sacrifice with no abandon.  To give oneself to the ideal perceived as highest, or to consider every ideal, turning them over mercurially in the light?  To be monogamous with one, or with the whole world?  There can be prudence in either.  The divine harlot is also an equalizer, bringing healing on the fulcrum of Self and Other.

The Virgo part of us' straddling the line between inner and outer, between vision and embodiment — Virgo’s mental struggle with purpose and form behind the curtain or out ‘in the world’, is a tension of utmost beauty.

​May Venus in Leo bring light upon you during these hours.  Cheers~ xx