In Modesty Blaze—Sun in Virgo
Everyone shines, given the right lighting—Susan Cain
There’s a different quality to the light as the Sun moves through the sign of Virgo today. Now, as fields of gold are harvested and the last of the summer fruit hangs heavy on stooping branches, we may get a sense of Virgo’s connection with the slow, careful rhythm of the earth, the perfectly timed arrival of a cluster of black berries or the profusion of jasmine that bedecks the fence at the same time every year.
Where Virgo resides in our birth chart, this is where we hone our craft, where we polish and perfect. Virgo carries an imprint of self-containment and reticence, emphasised by the glyph for the sign of the Virgin which seems to curl modestly inwards. As the light softens in the North and grows brighter in the South, those shy souls who live quietly amongst cacophonous babble of self-aggrandisement and over-share that pervades our culture may feel the need to be introspective. For those of us who were shy and awkward as children, and have emerged as reclusive adults, we may prefer the undemanding company of a good book to cocktails at a trendy pop-up. We may feel more sensitive, more easily affronted by the blustering self-help guru who claims to be able to fix a floundering relationship in just eight minutes, or the “expert” who brandishes unexamined opinions on YouTube.
As a quiet procession of Virgo planets draws us inwards, we may feel the need to clear the clutter in our lives, quite literally “spring-clean” our homes, attend to our body by walking in nature, preparing lighter, easier to digest, meals. The Sun’s passage through Virgo highlights that part of zodiac where we must refine our skills without the compulsion to be seen or validated. We may take little steps. We may need time and gentleness to mop up the mess, attend to the details, mend what is broken or ailing in our lives. Another often overlooked aspect of the Virgo archetype is the Alchemist, the Healer, the Midwife, the Medicine Woman, the Sangoma.
Virgo is attuned to the silent cycles of the natural world. This is where we celebrate those quiet miracles, those very ordinary, often unacknowledged acts of service simply stitched into the fabric of our daily lives. We may meet this archetype in those who serve, those who take care of the details, those who mop up the mess. The driver of the bus who patiently explains to a breathless Spanish visitor the best route to take to the park. The volunteer at the animal shelter or food bank. The young man who drives an ambulance by night as a way of giving back.
It was Carl Jung who coined the term, “introvert” in the 1920s. His either-or-markers for our personality traits seem simplistic and one-dimensional in the context of astrology. The light and shadows of our birth chart depict the nuanced complexity and the challenges of our human experience. Jung’s radiantly “extroverted” Leo Sun in wide conjunction with Uranus in the 7th house would have glowed in the spotlight, but his Taurus Moon conjunct Pluto in the 4th house may have preferred soft lamplight or the dappled shade of the forest.
“Introverts are drawn to the inner world of thought and feeling,” Jung is purported to have said, “extroverts to the external life of people and activities.”
Self-proclaimed consummate introvert, Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, writes “Introversion—along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness— is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living in the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.” 
Susan Cain’s birth chart suggests that she has enough “extrovert” fire in her belly to become a successful author, public speaker, and Harvard Law school graduate, thanks to an assertive and competitive Mars in Aries and very possibly a Moon in Sagittarius. Her Pisces Sun conjuncts Chiron, Venus and Mercury are in Pisces, suggesting a deeply sensitive, intuitive way of self-expression and relating.
Venus demurely slipped into Virgo on August 21st, to be followed by The Sun (August 23rd) and Mercury (August 29th) and a Virgo New Moon (August 30th).
On August 24th, the relational planets, Venus and Mars, merge their essence, emphasising our human need for consistency in our close bonds with those we care for. They are conjunct on August 24th (at 4° Virgo, an echo of their last meeting at 19° Virgo in September, 2017) breathing soul, vital breath, into those bonds that fulfil our deep desire to belong, to be seen and to be deeply listened to. Author Elizabeth Gilbert who has a Moon in Virgo, describes the cadence of lasting love so beautifully, “to be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow— this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.” The older astrologers say that Venus is in her “fall” in Virgo. An outmoded and rather demeaning term that obscures the luminosity of this vibrant goddess as she appears in sensual, earthy Virgo. She’s anything but “fallen”. She rises strong, bringing the magic of the alchemist to her relationships, the sensitivity of the healer, the receptivity, the fresh uncalculatingly freshness of the Virgin to those who delight in her company. Venus in Virgo is the Earth Goddess who looks her best in dappled light, and as she joins Mars in Virgo this month, we hone our innate capacity for empathic connection, we cultivate and nurture enduring friendships, we mend bonds that may be frayed or broken, and gently place ourselves in just the right lighting.
“The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it’s a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamp-lit desk. Use your natural powers—of persistence, concentration, and insight—to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems. make art, think deeply.” Susan Cain.
If you’d like to know more about your own birth chart, please connect with me by email: ingrid@trueheartwork.com
strologers associate Leo with rulers and kings. Like the mythical Fisher King, our leaders are wounded. All across their ailing kingdoms, Poverty presses its runny nose against the high walls of unexamined rhetoric that divides us by the colour of our skins, the money we don’t have, the names we can’t be bothered to pronounce. It’s those giant steps that make us wonder. It’s that sense of destiny that compels us to act with courage. Perhaps, in spite of what is going on around us, we may feel that heroic impulse, that surge of magnanimity, the expansion of generosity that comes from an open heart.
The chart for the Moon landing on July 21st, 1969 at 3.56am GMT depicts the spirit of the Great Heart. Mars blazes a trail into future possibilities in Sagittarius. Uranus and Jupiter are conjunct in Libra; the Sun and Mercury are conjunct in Cancer a sign that is ruled by the Moon. Pluto in Virgo conjoins the South Node. As we wonder about that one small step for a man, that giant leap for mankind, we embrace the essence of the Leo. And we feel the greatness stirring in our hearts.
As summer thrusts sunlight into the receptive hollows of the earth here in the north, and the benediction of winter silence presses into the cold soils of the south, the Sun moves into the sign of Cancer on June 21st and pauses at the threshold in the year. Margaret Atwood reminds us, “This is the Solstice, the still point of the Sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future. The place of caught breath.”
In contrast to the earthy Capricorn knot, all though this year a tidal surge of a very different kind of energy is swirling across the skies as Jupiter, that planet associated with big dreams, grandiosity and faith meets Neptune where we yearn to escape, be rescued from the burnt out ends of our human existence, where we long for romance, ecstatic spiritual experience; yet in real life we do the laundry, walk the dog and come home to relationships that, as John Welwood suggests in his book, 
Venus makes a T-square to the Jupiter/Neptune square June 23rd – 24th to offer us the gift of soul-union with a lover, artistic inspiration, the ability to be selfless, to see the beauty growing out of the cracks in the pavements, the black delta of mould in the subways. It also can signify the tsunami of grief and loss at the ending of a relationship or the realisation that we have been unrealistic or too naïve concerning our finances or what we hold dear to our heart.
Mercury turns Retrograde (4° Leo) on July 8th, stirring up the silt from the shadowy waters of the previous sign of Cancer. We may be prompted to be more introspective, to be mindful of just how we choose to wield our authority, how we bring forth our vision and creativity. As we stand at the Still-Point of the year, may our path be gentle. May we learn to pause and appreciate the simple pleasures, the exquisite beauty, the Love that is all around us.
The road is long, with many of winding turns
Gemini is a Mercurial sign, as changeable as the wind, as restless as our minds that dart and dance, waking us from our much-needed sleep, calling us from our meditation. As we read, watch television, or flick through Instagram, as we crave more and more stimulation, more learning, more data gathering, we feast on the words, the ideas, of Gemini. In our obsession with social media, we gorge on gossip, we witness, we observe, and we choose. Spiritual teacher, Caroline Myss’ Gemini Moon conveys the archetype of the Storyteller, the Data Gatherer. She writes, “the challenge is for us to decide whether to make choices that enhance our spirit or drain our power.” 
I post regularly on Facebook. I will gladly send you these posts featuring more regular astrological updates and the lunations if you prefer to direct your time and energy away from social media. 
There’s that defining moment. That softening in the belly. That strong, sure surge of love that expands our heart. That knowing, that welcomes us home to our natural rhythm, to where we belong. As the pulse-beat of nature’s rhythm of the seasons alters, and the Sun moves from the urgency of Aries into the slower, more deliberate cadence of Taurus, we may feel a renewed sense of Being as we join the circle of community at places of worship, as we visit friends and family and nourish ourselves with the sweet comfort of heartfelt connection.
On April 19th, a “blue moon” at the power-infused 29° point, illuminates those threads that still lie in disarray, those unresolved power struggles, those uncomfortable relationships we may have wrestled with at the Equinox on March 21st when the Full Moon was at 0° of Libra. This graceful Libran Moon may shine her light on a false belonging, a sterile psychic landscape, devoid of beauty and harmony, a place we have been lingering for far too long.
l, Marianne Williamson writes, “Our problem is not that we don’t have power, so much as that we tend not to use the power we have.”
It arrives suddenly, unannounced, concealed in a swirl of dry wind that scatters a shroud of ash over life as we knew it. It blinds us in the glare of a nuclear sky. Out of the blue, news that buckles our knees, shatters our world into shiny, sharp shards that embed themselves in our heart. At that moment, we know. Our life will never be the same again.
The Sun conjoins Chiron on Wednesday, a suggestion that the road ahead may not be easy. That stiff upper lips and stoicism was not what M Scott Peck had in mind when he said, “Life is difficult.” We may feel flawed; our flame of creativity and passion may be extinguished by worry or sorrow. We may not feel like Xena the Warrior. Chiron pierces through our illusions, our judgements, and in our pain, we may be emboldened by our courage, our inexhaustible vitality.
It takes great courage to submit to the call to visit those secret vulnerable places in our heart, to weep away the pretenses, to risk tenderness.
And now you’ll be telling stories
Most of us doggedly resist change, pay lip-service to diversity, avoid new beginnings. We’re hard-wired to take the path well-travelled. And yet, on some level, most of us know that the external props in our lives are as flimsy as straws when the wild wind blows. Nothing and everything has changed.
Uranus remains in Taurus until 2026, shaking and jolting us from the steady rhythm of our cossetted lives, widening the fault lines in our relationships, swallowing the earth from under our feet. As we ricochet from our rut, Uranus may escort epiphanies that separate us from what we love and value, pushing us over the edge. Uranus destabilises, brings anarchy, chaos, revolution and rebellion. Uranus is the Sky god who brings innovation on winds of change.
When we’re shook up and shattered, on our knees, we may receive a flash of insight that directs us to a new bend in the road.
For those of us who like our lives anchored by certainty, the world may seem a precarious place right now. As our plans are sucked into the undertow, we may be cast adrift from the raft of our faith.
Chiron, in our birth chart, represents that place where we are maimed, irrevocably scarred, by the unfairness of life, where we discover that bad things do happen to extremely good people and that what goes around doesn’t always come around in any satisfactory or just kind of way.
In Pisces, Mercury drapes our dreams in silken images that sparkle and inspire. He withdraws from worldly concerns, submerged in fantasy, delighting in music, art or poetry. He aids emotive expression of our thoughts, our feelings, our heartfelt concerns. Yet, we can also be prey to delusion, confusion and misunderstandings in those deep and often murky waters where the two fish swim.
Love is an act of the imagination. We daub our lover with our oldest longing. We paint his lips with our most noble and generous magnificence. Love photo-shops her imperfections. Love ennobles his good qualities, assigns them with mythical powers. In our love’s vow we talk, we touch, we seal our dreams with a kiss. We know that we are beautiful. We feel young again. Alive, in a way that we haven’t felt in years.
We dis-own our passion and vitality, clutch at things we feel we can control. We blinker our eyes and stop being curious. Our entire birth chart, and more specifically, the archetypes of Venus and Mars, describe the myriad ways we love embrace, or avoid, Love and Erotic Desire. In myth, Venus was not faithful. She delighted in variety, she evoked jealousy. She defied the patriarchal Greek and Roman morality. In our birth chart, she leads us down to the Underworld to experience orgies of love and humiliating loss, then urges us to emerge again, re-newed, stronger, wiser, eyes wide open.
Love is a creative act of the Imagination. Its realm is rarefied, intangible, briefly captured like an exquisite butterfly where it flutters to the sound of music, poetry, the wind whispering through the trees.
Anais Nin wrote so poignantly, “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we do not know how to replenish its source.” So how do we replenish Love’s source? David Schnarch writes, love and desire are “not a matter of peeling away the layers but of developing them—growing ourselves up to be mature and resourceful adults who can solve our current problems.”
A contagion of loneliness is sweeping across our planet, unbearable isolation that begets the neuroses of modern times—anxiety, depression, even dementia.
George Monbiot, in his new book, “Out of the Wreckage”, points out that humans are unique, spectacularly unusual, when it comes our sensitivity to the needs of others. We have an innate altruism, an inborn sense of community. Neuroscience, evolutionary biology and psychology conclude that we have evolved to care, to cooperate with one another. “By the age of fourteen months, children begin to help each other, attempting to hand over objects another child cannot reach. By the time they are two, they start sharing some of the things they value. By the age of three, they start to protest against other people’s violation of moral norms… we are also, among mammals, with the possible exception of the naked mole rat, the supreme co-operators,” Monbiot writes. Even today, in a globalised, unimaginative world that offers a bland diet of uniformity, there are societies that conceive of the universe as a whole, that we are in relationship with all of life, and that everything, everyone is interconnected. Writes Lynne McTaggart in The Bond, Connecting Through the Space Between Us: “they have bought into another narrative, another world view of who we are, and why we’re here, than that espoused by our culture, and most particularly by our current science.”
Aquarius is represented by the water bearer, pouring life-giving water to moisten new ideals. For the next month, the Sun and Uranus are in mixed reception, which means that the archetypal energies of these two planets are working together in collaboration. The Sun symbolises our creative essence, our hero’s or heroine’s quest, and when this energy teams up with the energy of the planet Uranus, we feel the urge to change, to free ourselves from those things that no longer serve the evolution of the group and the individual.
ssociated with creative self-expression, with wholehearted passion and with autonomy. And the Moon is Queen in Leo, confidently wearing her crown as she opposes the Sun in Aquarius. Depending on where the eclipse falls in your own birth chart, this will be a culmination point in a developing situation, an illumination, or a time to get down on our knees and surrender your pride.
For regular astrological updates, or more information about your own birth chart, please visit my Facebook page, or email me: