The Virgo New Moon of August, 2022 invokes the element of earth and the quality of mutability or changeability. There’s a glimmer of autumn coming. For many of us grown-up kids, this time of year is forever associated with “going back to school.” We’ve had our play time in Leo’s summer season. Now it’s Virgo time to go back to scheduling, packed lunches, and attention to details.
At this lunation, on August 27 at 1:17 a.m. on the West Coast, the Moon will have just barely separated from a square with Mars in mutable air sign Gemini. A tense square between the Moon and Mars might have meant a couple of days of heightened irritability and emotionally harsh conversation or a distinct need to analyze.
Mars has just entered an unusually long sojourn through the sign of Gemini (August 20, 2022 until March 25, 2023). This transit will be long because Mars will be in one of its periods of retrograde motion in Gemini from October 30, 2022 to January 12, 2023. Planetary retrogradation is nothing to get alarmed about. It’s just a time to slow down and carefully review and attend to matters connected to the planet that appears to be moving retrograde.
The transit of Mars in Gemini will affect everyone differently. I’ll probably have a lot to say as the transit progresses. In general Mars, the planet of action, drive and desire, moving through Gemini’s realm, will ignite one’s curiosity and ambition to learn new things. I’m looking forward to it as a period to focus on my compelling desire to write and study
The ruling planet or dispositor of the August 27 Virgo New Moon is Mercury, which has just entered Libra. Mercury, the winged Messenger, in the air sign of the balances, has to do with beauty and harmony—or lack thereof—in our communications. Mercury in Libra doesn’t mean everyone’s talking all sugar and spice. It can heighten the degree to which we’re missing the mark. But there can also be an inclination toward thinking and speaking about peace and justice.
Mercury’s transit through Libra reminds me of the song “Both Sides Now.” Perceiving a multitude of perspectives can bring humility about what is true and what can be true. On the other hand, vacillating from one viewpoint to the next might also leave your head spinning.
The August 27 Virgo New Moon has me thinking about the common rap sheet of Virgo qualities. Virgoan people are notoriously characterized as neat-niks and nitpickers. But on the higher road, Virgo is symbolized by a Harvest Maiden. She employs discriminating wisdom, separating wheat from chaff. Thus, the connections made between Virgo and wholesome health habits, ethics and skillful service. Virgo represents basic goodness which. Just knowing right from wrong is something we cannot take for granted.
These days, I can’t think about Virgo without pulling from my book shelves a 2021 book called The Kore Goddess: A Mythology and Psychology by Safron Rossi, Ph.D. She’s one of the teachers in Astrology University four-year certification program. She’s a Jungian-based scholar of literature and mythology. This book is about a set of mythical Greek goddesses who are neither mothers nor wives. They are a Virgin or Maiden. They are self-sufficient, and they are personified psychologically by the Goddess Kore, from the root word for vital force, that which makes life grow.
From Dr. Ross, I adopt the key term contained integrity. It’s a key quality of the Maiden and it is Virgoan. The archetype of the Virgin holds a youthful essence which Rossi also calls grounded individuality. In pre-patriarchal times (and may it be so in a post-patriarchal future) virginity did not mean no sexual experience. To be virgin meant to be independent and self-sustaining in a feminine sense. “At the heart of the Virgin aspect of women’s psyches,” Rossi writes, “is the capacity to stand in the world rooted in the earth of one’s nature.”
Our bodies, hearts and minds are composed of all of the physical and metaphysical elements: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. Each is a refreshment in its own inter-dependent way. Virgo season is a time of year to know one’s earth self, as a firm and reliable container, both solitary and capable of holding all things as friend.
Blessings for the Virgo New Moon!
~Sara
Sara R. Diamond, an astrologer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a life-long student and practitioner in several esoteric paths. Her style of astrology combines modern-psychological astrology with insights from traditional astrology. Sara is also an estate planning attorney. In addition, she has published four books on right-wing movements in the United States and earned her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. You are invited to contact Sara via her website at www.SaraDiamondAstrology.com.
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