Virgo New Moon
by Guru Rattana, Ph.D. - Issue #47, September 3, 2002
To Be Human is to Be Devine
Virgo is one of the three Zodiac signs with a human symbol. (the Gemini Twins and Aquarius Water Bearer are the other two.) Virgo is the archetype of the priest or priestess, which represents human mastery through human-spirit integration. Virgo teaches how to find our spiritual identity through our human form. While the Sun is in Virgo (between August 23 and September 21) is an opportune time to explore our human wholeness. The New Moon in Virgo, September 6 PST, (check for your part of the world), is the moment when we initiate a new year, dedicated to some aspect of the Virgo archetype as it relates to our personal life. The New Moon is a good time to align with and set your intention to integrate these energies into your being. Below I explore some of the gifts Virgo has to offer us, that may help you tap these powers within yourself.
There is less outward and more inward energy the days before the New Moon. There is more energy to be alone, meditate and plan, than to be active in the world or to initiate new things. Do not force yourself to do things that you think you should do. This is a good time to clear out, clean up and prepare for a new cycle.
The Six Personal Signs and Houses
The signs of the Zodiac, and the twelve houses, representing the arenas of life, set out the natural evolution of our human experience. The first six signs and their corresponding houses, which are below the horizon on the wheel, are known as the personal signs and houses. They represent lessons that we must learn to prepare to be in relationship and in the world. The second six houses are above the horizon and represent areas of relationship and our interface with the world.
- Aries and the first house give us the energy and the space to find our own identity.
- Taurus and the second house challenge us to define our needs and do what it takes to provide for ourselves.
- Gemini and the third house launch us into the exploration of the world beyond ourselves. We are supposed to use our mind to observe, learn, listen and communicate.
- Cancer and the fourth house introduce us the arena of family, the Earth as our home and our inner space. We are challenged to become more human by getting in touch with our emotional body and establishing a safe foundation within our own psyche.
- Leo and the fifth house make it known that we can have a lot of fun being human if we open up to our own creativity and self-expression.
Virgo - Final Preparation for Being in the World
Virgo and the sixth house represent our last major learning experience, before launching ourselves into committed friendship and partner relationships in the seventh house. Virgo and the sixth house are generally associated with work, service and health. It is through "on the job training" that we learn how to "make it in the world". This is the house of apprenticeship and discipline. Through mentoring by a craftsperson in our trade, wise adults, and spiritual teachers, we learn how to become a mature adult in a very practical way. This is the outer dimension of Virgo and the sixth house. What about the inner dimension?
Virgo is the doorway between our personal and our interpersonal worlds. My personal interpretation is, that the domain of Virgo prepares us to experience mature love in relationship. What a great idea. How do we do that? Virgo teaches us to realize our wholeness, to become a complete human being, to be an integrated man or woman. Without the training of Virgo we remain insensitive to our humanness, ourselves and each other. We forget, deny or try to ignore that fact that we all have emotions and feelings. We stay stuck in our limited desire-driven egos, and stay controlled by childish programs - i.e. we never grow up. The world is filled with adult children acting out dysfunctional programming. Conflictual, codependent and unsatisfying relationships are the result of unions between people who do not honor the feminine emotional side of being, and never attained emotional adulthood.
Oneness of Body and Spirit
There is another twist to this story too. There are many spiritually advanced souls in similar dysfunctional relationships. This is important for us to look at, because many of us have been monks, sadus, sages, saints, priests, priestesses and yogis in many past lifetimes. We mastered the spiritual lessons and connection with the Divine. We are here to master the human level this lifetime, and to integrate spirituality with humanness. In the past, spiritual paths taught that flesh was bad, sexuality was a sin, passion was lust and material well-being equaled greed. Everything related to being human was evil. Spirit and flesh were separate and in conflict with each other. Many have carried this belief system into this lifetime.
Virgo and the sixth house are belief-buster territory. Virgo teaches us that spirit and body (matter) are not separate. Virgo teaches us that the world and our bodies are a special manifestation of spirit. Matter is a dense form of spirit. To know and honor our physical being is to know and honor the Divine. We have to get this lesson to have fulfilling relationships, a full human life and to be liberated! There is no passing GO (liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth in a human body) until we successfully complete graduate school on planet Earth. We can go to mountaintops, ashrams and spiritual settings to connect to our souls and to be renewed, but escapism from the world is not an option forever, if we wish to complete our evolutionary cycle and merge in the Light.
Integrating our humanness and our spirituality is a tricky business. Many things that we consider human are a product of a limited, asleep ego. We have to connect to our soul, and stay connected to our divine identity, to figure out what is real, and what experiences support our soul evolution. We have to listen to our inner guidance to be able to distinguish between what is real and unreal, to break out of our comfort zones, and to be willing to live at the edge of evolutionary change.
Virgo teaches us to integrate our soul essence into our human expression. Virgo lessons are about grounding our soul consciousness in our human form. The experience of the ecstasy of our spiritual being is what we bring to our relationships. Time alone is required to achieve this level of self-mastery. We are most fortunate to be able to draw upon our previous lifetimes as monks and celibates, etc. to attain soul consciousness, but escapism is not the name of the game. At some point in our life, we will be tested, to see if we can hold our divine connection in intimate relationships and in our daily worldly lives. In reality, most of us we are being tested to see if we can attain and maintain soul consciousness while supporting ourselves, being in relationship, and leading creative and productive lives.
Preparation for Relationships and More
Virgo territory challenges us to integrate the feminine qualities of peace, compassion and surrender, with masculine integrity, choice and action. We have to connect our drive and motivation with our inner space and knowing. We have to be able to dance with the masculine and feminine powers inside ourselves, in order to qualify and attract balanced, satisfying relationships. Basically we have to establish a new way of being.
The western model of relationships is based on the belief that men and women are basically different, and that male and female energies are separate. Through experience and counseling we learn about each other, and figure each other out, so we can accommodate the other and make compromises to make co-existence possible.
The tantric model of relationships is based on the belief (reality) that male and female energies are polarities that dance in oneness. Tantric relationships explore how men and women can interact out of oneness. The dance, not crisis management, is the name of the game.
Virgo prepares us for relationships by making us whole. When we are whole, we cannot be possessed. When we cannot be possessed, we do not use relationships and sexuality to attain power, possessions or security. We do not need a partner to give us a sense of identity. We find our identity within ourselves, as a reflection of the goddess or the Divine. We establish relationships for mutual upliftment, not to become financially and emotionally dependent.(1) We honor sexuality to serve the higher purpose of embellishing our divine connection. We use sacred sexuality to experience and share bliss and ecstasy. Through sexual union we share the highest form of healing love.
Note on Karma and Liberation
Life and liberation are complex, and we are not privy to all the subtleties of the process. However, we do know that we have to pay off our past karma before we can be liberated. Much of our frustration around not producing results comes from that fact, that while we are paying off our debts, a lot of the theories of manifestation don't seem to work. When we are in deficit, we have to pay our bills first. We have to complete our agreements, before our energies can be used to produce the resources and attract the relationships we desire. We have to carry out our soul assignments before we are at choice to use our energies to manifest our dreams. We have to achieve balance before we can enter the fun zone. Successfully learning our lessons in the first six arenas of life, and passing the Virgo exam, greatly lighten the rest of our journey.
Embodying Archetypal Energies
Achieving wholeness and balancing masculine and feminine energy within ourselves can evoke some interesting inner experiences. We consolidate our energy and pull in the pieces of our soul, by getting in touch with the energies of different archetypes. These archetypal energies often come to us as past life experiences.
One friend is activating his power to take charge of a life-changing project, by getting in touch with previous lives as a sumo wrestler, samurai warrior and a king. He does not sit there dreaming of past lives. He is being called upon to take action that activates his innate skills and talents. In action he evokes powers that help him take charge of an extremely challenging and potentially very rewarding situation. His life path demands that he command from a position of power, and do so with finesse, confidence, competence and mastery.
Another friend is getting in touch with a previous life as a healer. This energy is making it possible for him to heal situations and relationships in his life that previously drained his energy. Accessing the healer archetype does not necessarily mean that one is destined to become a healer in the literal sense. It does open the possibility to claim this energy as part of yourself. Often we use our healing abilities to heal others, while our self-healing alludes us. The healing archetype allows us to access the power to heal ourselves, and to make the decision to do so.
The point about archetypes is that they help us reclaim parts of our souls, integrate and embody empowering energies, and achieve another level of mastery and wholeness. As a result, new paths open to us that were not available before. When working with archetypes, it is important to avoid getting lost in images and mental perceptions. Tune into, evoke and identify with the energies. Identify where you are confused and anxious and not breathing fully, and integrate the new energies in those dark, stuck or resistant areas. The process makes us more sensitive to the richness of our humanness.
Taking our power is seldom a comfortable process. Usually the discomfort of our current situation has to exceed the discomfort of change before we choose to move forward. How we deal with the situations that challenge us determines if we move to the next level of self-empowerment. A quantum shift in consciousness is often required. I remember Yogi Bhajan telling us that the Universe is set up for us to win. It is comforting to remember this when we are in the middle of the morass of soul evolution.
Mentoring
We can be mentored by these archetypes. Ideally we would have wise human mentors to guide us in our lives, but alas the institution of mentoring is not always available. Steven Forrest writes "nobody can be fully human, fully activated, fully potentiated, without proper mentoring. We simply need it. If we are not well mentored, if we are not suitably initiated, then something is missing in us, and we feel a terrible grief. Furthermore, because no one taught us how to be human, we tend to make a lot more mistakes, and the mistakes deepen our grief and breed shame in us".(2)
The sign on the cusp of the sixth house, and the planets and their signs in our sixth house, indicate the character of the mentoring that we need, can attract, and the nature of the lessons that we need to learn from mentors. We have to humble ourselves to receive mentoring, because it is a relationship between two people who are not on equal footing. In humility and trust the relationship between master craftsperson and apprentice, elder and initiate, and spiritual master and disciple, can be healthy and mutually satisfying.(3) Mentoring can hone a skill, but more importantly, it passes on a quality of consciousness and teaches us how to be human. If we can surrender to the wisdom of our mentors who share their deep experiences of life, we can one day become mentors ourselves.
Virgo delivers us to the realization and practical experience of wholeness. We step into the world as a complete human being. We experience ourselves as a dynamic combination of spirit essence, physical body, emotional richness and mental facilities. In our wholeness we feel passionately alive, and are consciously aware of, and able to take advantage of, the vibrant potentialities of existence.
References and Footnotes
"The Case of the Disappearing 6th House", Steven Forrest, The Mountain Astrologer, Issue 103, June/July 2002, pp. 9-16.
"Virgo, Sexuality and the Sacred Prostitute", Catherine Auman, The Mountain Astrologer, Issue 103, June/July 2002, pp.17-21.
1. Auman, pp. 19-20
2. Forrest, p, 13
3. Forrest, p, 12.
For news of all the latest astrological events, check out Guru Rattana Blog