The Deeper Meaning of Mercury in Virgo

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology, and today we are going to take a deeper look at the meaning of Mercury in the sign of Virgo. Mercury is entering Virgo this coming weekend, and we'll be moving into the sign of not only its rulership but also its exultation.

A lot of people wonder about that, meaning what does it mean that Mercury is both in its rulership and its exaltation in the sign? We're going to take a look at the archetypal meaning of Mercury in Virgo. Today, I'm going to rewind and show you an episode from a series that I've done that is called Planets in Profile took Mercury, Venus, and Mars through all 12 signs, and I like to rewind when we have major planetary ingresses of those three planets as a way of exposing you to that series.

If you're new to my channel and don't know it exists, because there's a lot of great content in that series, that sort of evergreen, it's not tied to, you know, one date or time, it's a kind of, you can always look at that series as a way of understanding planetary placements in, say, your birth chart. But at any rate, let's take a look at the real-time clock. Before I push play on the rewind episode here, and you can see that this is Friday, July 28, and if we just advanced this by an hour here, it's about, you know, Friday evening, this is Central Time, July 28, that Mercury moves into the sign of its rulership and exultation in Virgo.

Now it stays in that sign for a couple of weeks. So you get, and then you get a retrograde. So it'll effectively be in Virgo for quite some time now. It doesn't cross into Libra until, you know, into early October. So we now have Venus and Mercury in Virgo for a long time, which is also why I think it's worth revisiting that talk on Mercury in the sign of Virgo.

So anyway, before we get into it, don't forget to like and subscribe; sharing your comments and reflections helps the channel to grow. As you guys know, I really appreciate it when you guys do that. You find a transcript of today's talk on the website nightlightastrology.com. If you have any questions when you're there or for readings or courses, email us at info@nightlightastrology.com. I hope you will enjoy this throwback episode. This is an Acyuta Bhava oldie, an oldie but a goodie from Acyuta Bhava. I hope you guys will enjoy it. Take it easy, everyone.

Today we're going to take a look at Mercury in the sign of Virgo. This is an ongoing part of my planets and profiles series, which I've been doing for a few years now. I've taken a look at Venus through the signs, Mars through the signs, the Sun through the signs, and also now Mercury through the signs and picking up with Mercury in Virgo, which is just about finishing up. So I'm a little behind. But better late than never and so let's dive in.

So what are the core characteristics of Mercury in Virgo? Well, let's start with the sign Virgo. This is the feminine earth sign. It's a double-bodied or mutable sign, and it is the temple of Mercury. So you've kind of put all of those things together because they all contribute to how we interpret a planet in a given sign. It's quadruplets city, its triplicity, or what we'd say its modality and its element. It's a double-bodied sign it comes on the cusp between summer and autumn. It is an earth sign; it is a feminine sign. So all of those qualities are really important for understanding how planets act and behave when they're in the sign. But most importantly, it is the Home Temple of Mercury.

There are two temples, of course, Gemini and Virgo. This is the feminine temple of Mercury, and it is the exultation of Mercury; now you might be wondering what an exultation is, and it will take too long to sort of totally unpack why it is that Mercury has a sign that has that where it is both in its domicile and exultation. But I'll just give you a clue. Exultations are more lunar in nature, and domicile relationships are more solar in nature; the one planet that has the ability to take on both masculine and so are feminine qualities or solar and lunar qualities that are very fluid that moves between them is Mercury, and so Mercury has one sign where Mercury has both a feminine or lunar exultation and a solar or more masculine form of rulership.

Now unpacking that is a really interesting topic that I cover in my year one course, so if you're like jonesing for more of that kind of information that really gets your gears turning, then check out my course on my website. So when a planet is in Virgo, it is reliant upon its host Mercury, but when Mercury is in Virgo, that means that Mercury is in his home sign or its home sign. Mercury is not a he or she really, and so there is; when a planet is in its home sign, it's like you or me in our own house; we're very comfortable there. We have all facility; we're sort of empowered to do what we want and with some greater degree of ease, or strength, or clarity. I mean, I don't know; for me, I consider myself to be a good guest in other people's homes, but there's nothing like being in your own house. You know what I mean?

So that's the general idea here that a planet is generally stronger and more comfortable and more able to express its own natural significations went in its own sign now; what would it express otherwise? Well, when a planet, let's say you take Mercury, and you put Mercury in Leo, which is the last sign that we explored, Mercury is compromising its own nature, its own significations with those of the Sun.

So Mercury has to compromise. Let's say Mercury is interested in things like games, anything that goes back and forth, whether it's chess or basketball, you have a kind of contest and a matching of the wits or the minds or even a lot of back and forth like a hockey puck moving around back and forth, and there's a sense of fun and play, but also intelligence and skill. It's all Mercury.

Now, if Mercury wants to do those things, but it's in Leo, right, then it's going to have to start compromising with the nature of the Sun, and the Sun is going to, you know, have more to do with things like wisdom and mastery and fame and rulers and things like that, among other things. So you then have Mercury having to express itself through the lens of the Sun.

That's what signs are mainly doing in ancient astrology as they are modifying or blending one planet in relation to another, and they're also distributing topics by virtue of which signs land by whole sign in which houses. So if you have Mercury, you know, in Libra, and that happens to be in the second house, not only is Mercury then going to combine with Venus, the ruler of Libra, and Venus is position in the chart in relation to Mercury will be a part of how that's determined.

But also, you will have Mercury speaking to the second house topics of money, or finances, and so among other things that belong to the second house, just keeping it simple here. So that's what planets are always doing. So it's so great when a planet gets into its own sign because when a planet is in its own sign, what to speak of both its own sign and its exultation because either are favorable. It is as though the planet naturally has things at its disposal to do more of what is in its own nature to do, not having to compromise or work through the filter of another planet.

So the only thing is that makes it a little bit boring when you're coming to talk about the unique, like how do you interpret or how do you make sense of Mercury in Virgo? It's just like, well, it's Mercury, Mercury. It's just really mercurial, but there are some things that really distinguish Mercury in Virgo from other Mercury placements and from Mercury and Gemini even. One of them is this, and if you watch my video that I did on the meaning of the Sun in Virgo, you're gonna get a lot of really good background for understanding this video. So I recommend you do that. But here's the thing. Virgo is the puella or the puer, where you could say, of the Zodiac; one of them, Aries, is another which means that there is an eternally youthful quality.

Aries has very little sense of future consequence as a picture of youth and youthful idealism and impulsiveness and even recklessness. Virgo is a picture of youth that is about to be lost in a sense that will have to face darkness, initiation descent into the underworld, and consequence that comes as a result of the harvest. So one thing that you will see often in the lives of people with Mercury in Virgo, especially if there are other placements in Virgo as well, is that there are really strong contrasts between light and dark between oftentimes between childhood and childhood lost; and innocence and innocence lost.

Just that contrast between light and dark in general will play a really strong role in their life and often will then accompany some really strong mercurial abilities or gifts or talents or skills, or somehow Mercury is really vividly on display in their life, and of course, Mercury is multi-talented, multifaceted.

You have Mercury related to mercantile things like business and money and negotiating and the buzz of the stock market, highways, and transportation, information exchange, media communication, to a certain extent, technology, anything where there's a busy flow of info information or ideas, or data or intelligence or speech or communication and, of course, Mercury in Virgo in particular, can be such a craftsman or craftswoman can be such a skilled artisan, and things like that, too.

So, alright, so here are a few people that I think embody some of these energies well, and by the way, for everyone, for everyone who chewed me out for not having enough women in my Mercury in Leo video, I apologize. Usually, I have a really good mix. Last month, I was in the process of moving, and I was sort of in a rush, and there's a website that I use, and Astro databank, and some of these websites, you know, when you do a search, it'll just pull up like 100 listings, several 100 sometimes, and usually, I scroll down and pick a variety of interesting contrasting people, and that generally gets a pretty diverse range of people in the mix.

But last time, it was, it was sort of a sausage fest, so sorry, everyone. But now, this month, hopefully, that's balanced out a little bit more, and I always appreciate any additions that you all have to make to these videos. So please add in any Mercury and Virgos that, you know, have good stories that seem to match.

But watch how the contrast between light and dark innocence and innocence lost oftentimes with a specific quality of the child versus the adult that those qualities come out with, with Virgo people and often Mercury Virgo people who are very talented. Let me give you a few examples.

So let's go to let's start with Macaulay Culkin; that is a simple one. Here is the famous childhood actor, and there's a lot of like child under there's like a lot of childhood actors. But Macaulay Culkin, in a weird sense, is like someone who, when you look at you, you just keep thinking Kevin from Home Alone, and there's a weird way in which the key even jokes on social media about hey, look at I'm full, I'm not a little kid anymore. I'm 40, or whatever the case might be.

He, of course, had this incredible, youthful, boyish charm that captivated audiences and made a cult classic movie. But, you know, there was a movie that he did not, if you guys remember this, but it was called The Good Son, and it was this contrasting view of him as a really jealous little boy who was like actually a murderer, and he was like slowly trying to kill his family members or something like that it was really creepy. Of course, later in life, he dealt with a lot of addiction as well, and he's talked very openly about the fact that being this childhood, lovable, innocent, bright light, really sort of messed him up, and you will find that story repeated again and again, not only with Virgo in general but with Mercury and Virgo people who have these really these gifted mercurial skills or traits. So there are others.

One that I found really interesting is another one that fits a similar bill is Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. So he has this kind of childhood or youthful run of success, and he's, of course, he's a skilled voice actor later in his career, and he does a lot of other work. But there is a way in which there you can never really recapture being the innocent young Luke Skywalker, and again, I'm picking on some just some basic themes to start with that you'll often see repeated where there's this feeling of eternal youth that either you can't get back to or that somehow is stained or tarnished.

I mean, is it really? You know, that's maybe that's part of the journey of Virgo, right? Is it can it really be tarnished, but it may seem like it is or feel like it is, and there's something lost that you can't regain? River Phoenix is another really great example of someone who has this really eclectic background, his family was in a cult when he was a child, and he at one point was like panhandling, I believe, or playing music for money or something like that out in the streets with his sister.

So he has this really sort of, he described it, I think, as a desperate situation when he was younger, and really had no education and so on and so forth, and then later in life, he goes on to become this really amazingly talented actor, but how is he known? He's known as one of the kinds of tragedies of Hollywood of this promising young person who, you know, in some ways, he dies too young and can't fulfill the promise, and drugs are part of that.

Again, so similar to Amy Winehouse. Amy Winehouse is another great example of another person who, you know, she's kind of brought up with an interest in music, and she's this young, talented. If you ever see the movie, Amy, it's a it was a really good movie. I went to the theater with my wife and saw it back in the day. Almost ten years ago, I think it came out. I don't remember. I think she might have passed in, like, 2010 or 11, and maybe it came out and, like, a few years later, so maybe it wasn't that long ago.

But anyway, there's another tragic story of this young talented girl who, I mean, that's a whole mess of a story. I'm not, like, so well-read on Amy Winehouse. But what do people say about Amy Winehouse she was too young. She had this talent, and she was a total craftsman. She had this amazing craftsmanship and skill, and people will say you know that she was technically very good as a musician. So then it's lost; there's like this contrasting loss of innocence that she has through addiction and codependency and relationships, and she had problems with their parents, and it's like she's suspended animation in this childhood promise.

So Whitney Houston is another very similar one where Whitney Houston is brought up basically in a family of very talented people gospel singers. I think she was cousins or second cousins or first cousins or something like Dionne Warwick, am I getting that right? Someone correct me if I'm wrong. But she had a really talented family and a lot of pressure as a young girl to become a pop star, which she did. But then she's again; it's like there's this delayed thing.

I know that this story is not unique to Virgos; it happens to a lot of people in Hollywood in general. But you will be shocked to find out how many Mercury in Virgo people have these highly again, like, especially if there's a couple of other placements in Virgo, these really amazing talents and abilities that are mercurial in nature, but that they come from some really intense contrast between light and darkness, childhood and loss of innocence and things like that. Um, so Whitney Houston, another one who ends up having a lot of health problems, or she has problems with her husband at one point. Not just one point, but for a while, and then there's an interesting contrast between light and dark that come in other forms.

One that I find really interesting is Madonna. Madonna has Mercury in Virgo, and she's basically someone who plays on the entire theme of purity versus corruption, chastity and virginity versus, you know, sexual empowerment, and what is the real power of the feminine, and of course, she's an amazingly gifted musician, singer, songwriter, et cetera. So Madonna and her childhood background is really interesting to note, that I can't go into it right now.

Freddie Mercury is literally part of the Queen emblem, and the way that it was made was with the fact that he has so much Virgo energy, and he had that literally in mind, along with the Zodiacal symbolism of the other band members. By the way, that's all part of the Queen emblem. But Freddie Mercury literally is that's not his real name.

But he takes up the name Freddie Mercury as a way of also honoring the strong mercurial symbolism in his chart, and if you want to talk about, yeah, another young, talented person, and well, of course, he becomes emblematic of a lot of the AIDS epidemic, and growing awareness about the epidemic, and so forth and so, and also as one of the first like, truly great, mega-successful gay rock stars and not not the first but one of the first who really and of course, Queen there's like there's pride in being gay and being who I am. Freddie Mercury has this way also of trying to hold there a youthfulness that he holds on to all the way through and, also if you saw them, I don't know if any of you saw the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. But that was a really interesting look at his childhood and his family background as well. So Freddie Mercury is another great example.

Another example is oftentimes; you'll find that people who write about or talk about or have some really deep focus on children and the transition between childhood and adulthood like that initiation will embody this too; for example, River Phoenix, one of his most famous films that he starred in was stand by me, which was one of my favorite movies of all time. By the way, I don't know if you guys ever seen a really good one. In that movie, he plays a young boy who is part of a group of young boys who go looking for the dead body of a classmate of theirs, who was apparently hit by a train, they think, and so they go to find that Bodhi and it's a story about the loss of innocence and the loss of childhood and moving into young adulthood. It is just, I mean, just perfectly Virgo in that sense.

Now, JK Rowling is another example of someone in terms of the subject matter of her magnum opus, Harry Potter, which is all about young children who are being initiated into the mysteries of light and dark innocence and innocence lost those and those stories are our you could say that they are, they were initiated, they initiated a whole generation of readers, you could say, very young readers, in the same way, that previous books like The Lord of the Rings, or the Narnia Chronicles, may have done so for others. That's really interesting.

Coco Chanel is an interesting one because she basically in the kind of cross-dressing Mercury, the way where Mercury can go feminine or masculine; Coco Chanel allowed women to have a more chic, sporty casual, and some would say slightly more masculine look, and make that like make that something that is available to women as well. So they could get out of like, you know, tight restrictive, let's say, overly feminized, and trapping, apparel and fashion, and she's famous for that.

Her childhood story is interesting as well; I won't go into it. But just notice the way that there's also there can also be a contrast between the masculine and the feminine that are there. There's that double-bodied nature of Mercury.

Sting is another good example of someone where there's a real kind of fluidity; there's like a real sexual fluidity that most people know that he's sort of famous for, in terms of his he's kind of a tantric guy, and also super craftsman and Okay, so I've got more to run through stingers, I think is a pretty good example. When it comes to talking about the sort of sexual fluidity, there are others like that too.

Tori Amos comes to mind. Tori Amos was brought up. Ha, Methodist preacher's kid, that's me, too. So we're, we're bound to get in trouble if you're a PK. But yeah, she was a preacher's kid who grew up a virtuoso from a very young age, like three years old with the piano, and eventually was let go on of the scholarship that she had when she was a little bit older like 10 or 11 or something like that I read because she was had an interest in rock music and then.

Interestingly enough, her father took a position in Silver Spring, Maryland, which is where our yoga studio was, and she ended up playing open mics and things like that at gay bars and other places that her father would sort of chaperone, and I think it's just really interesting, though, that she had this aversion to elements of the religion that she was raised with. She had a rebelliousness and a desire to explore themes of darkness and was also a childhood wonder. Right? And then she became this voice of; I want to say like avant-garde and resistance, I mean, part of that, like that 90s scene that was so alternative, and of course, a strong voice for feminine and what I would call the goddess in music.

So, Ray Charles is similar in the sense of being a child wizard, like he had like all of these really incredible technical abilities. He was interested in taking things apart and back together, like apparently when he was really young. Of course, he has glaucoma; I think it's glaucoma, he loses his eyesight and then, but he ends up becoming this virtuoso on the piano.

So again, the main theme that I want to communicate with Virgo is Mercury in Virgo is not just super talented Mercury stuff because it's such a strong Mercury. It's also that contrast between light and dark childhood and innocence lost. HP Lovecraft is another really good example. HP Lovecraft, when he was young, was in a well-to-do family, you know, he's a very strange and interesting author if you guys know his work or just sort of sci-fi, horror, suspense, thriller, all like macabre.

So Lovecraft was born into a family that's very wealthy, but people started dying, and the wealth started being lost; not surprisingly, he was he came to this really talented writer but also informed by the idea that we live in a rather meaningless universe that doesn't really care so much about human beings. So there's this really strong theme of innocence lost, and naivete, and even like anthropocentrism, and then he sort of started to swipe people off that anthropocentric, you know, platform in his writing, and I had to read them in grad school at that, you know, he was interesting, not my taste so much, but that background of his childhood is super, super important.

Lance Armstrong was a childhood phenom in terms of his athletic ability; he was a very gifted athlete from an early age. But then, of course, he, you know, he, he, the innocence is lost, he takes steroids, he starts cheating, and one of the things he said in a documentary was an interview that I was watching with him not long ago, because I did I do a whole spiel on him in my year to class, we break his chart down.

One of the things that I heard him say was that he said, If I could just go back to when I was a teenager, and, you know, kind of tell myself that there's not as much at stake. But then another thing that he does, so in other words, you don't need to cheat. But another thing that he said, which is really interesting, is he said, you know, back then, in the 90s, the culture was just like, everyone was doing this, and it wasn't such a big deal, and he has this way of almost like reminiscing or wanting to go back to a different time, a time when he was pure and a time when before the innocence was lost, or almost like he feels that some something culturally changed that was unfair to him, and he the fact that he hammers on that so much, as well as saying, Yeah, and I wish I wouldn't have, like, thought I lost my innocence somehow.

That's really important, of course; he's a very talented athlete, and don't sleep on how important Mercury exalted mercury can be in an athlete's chart. Tom Brady is another great example, who was, you know, one of the probably the GOAT in terms of football, you know, quarterbacks in football.

Howard Hughes, you can also see this tilt into darkness. Howard Hughes is a good example, someone who kind of loses his mind. He's a great engineer and kind of an inventor and, you know, aviator and things like that, but he also sort of loses it. So the tilt into madness or losing your mind or something like that can be a part of it, as well as can be. Sometimes it's a physical illness or sickness or what have you.

Liz Greene, the astrologer. She's a really great example of someone who was known in the astrological world for really being able to investigate the depth and the darkness of the archetypes in astrology and the unconscious dimensions of the psyche, and she is someone who will help get you out of the glitzy glittery pop astrology very quickly, because she is very willing to strip away the naivety and just be like, No, we need to go into the underworld.

Check out her book, The Astrology of Fate. Anything you read by her, though, is she's very willing to kind of go carefully, methodically. She's a total master craftsman, and she goes right into, you know, the belly of the beast, she just goes, she goes right into the unconscious, and gives you a sense of what's really there behind the signs, the planets, aspects, and so forth.

It's one of the reasons why I love her so much is because when you first start learning astrology, you're like, Yeah, this is nice, but I get the feeling that this is 1000s of years old and that there's a lot more than meets the eye here that there's a lot more underneath the surface. What is it?

Well, sometimes you think about Virgo is very wholesome and meticulous and organized and pure and all of that. But don't forget this tilt into darkness that is such an important part of the trajectory of Virgo.

Mother Teresa is my last example. Here is someone who, as a very young girl, felt the call to monastic life. There's that issue of purity. However, the call within the call, as she put it, was to serve and live among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, which she did. I know that there are criticisms that people make of her and the way that some of the things were done and fair enough.

But as someone who grew up with a mother who deeply admired and respected her because my mom went to Catholic school too, you know, I went and saw her convent. Yeah, I went and saw her ministry in Calcutta and read some of her journal and diary entries that are kept there, and I was blown away by how much her heart was really in the desire to be with and serve among the poorest of the poor, and how she went from this young girl with a very wholesome kind of pure desire to love and serve God and cloistered life, you know, totally giving herself to God, to this need to go out and see and be in and touch the darkness and frailty of human suffering and I really appreciate that about her.

I appreciate that she also struggled with her own internal darkness and doubts, even when she was very old in her spiritual life; I think that is, I think that is very real and something that contrasts the kind of pure Mother Teresa that everyone you know, like, and I'm always shocked when people, I know, people in my own family, extended family and stuff like that, who are Catholics who are like, well, you know, she had her doubts at the end. It's like, well, I hope so.

You know what I mean? Like, we're our faith, life. Doubt is part of the texture of what makes our faith really rich and deep, and in the bhakti tradition anyway, doubt shows an emotional engagement and investment with divinity, not some absence of it. Doubt shows a wrestling with divinity that is said to be a particular mood of devotional life that comes and goes just like different seasons and weather patterns come and go. It's to be embraced.

What I love about Virgo is that Virgo is not just about nice, organized, helpful people. It's also about the need for the pure, innocent, naive image to wrestle with and invite in darkness, doubt, worry, and anxiety, and these things become sanctified and sacred if we let them.

So I hope that you've enjoyed this little tour of Mercury and Virgo. As Mercury enters Libra, there's going to be some good things to talk about there. All right, take it easy, everyone. Bye.