A New Moon in Virgo — The Virgin and the Underworld

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today we're going to take a look at the new moon that's forming in the sign of Virgo. We're going to talk specifically about why this sign is associated with the underworld, and more specifically, the theme of initiation, descent into the underworld, and the transformation that comes through touching the earth. These are really important themes that often get glossed over in favor of stereotypical words like meticulous or careful or anxious or perfectionistic.

All of those words are actually related to those adjectives that we use to describe Virgo; they are related to some really deep themes that actually have more to do with the descent into the underworld that comes around this time of year in the metaphorical story of light and dark. So we're going to focus on that today, and hopefully this will help us think about what it might mean that we're going through a Virgo moon cycle. So before we get into it, as always, remember to like and subscribe. Share your comments and reflections.

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Click on the Community Quiet tab. It'll take you over there and tell you everything you need to know, and give you the Zoom link to join us. All right, so let's put Nchepso up on the screen. Of course, that's our affiliate software program. The discount code for this awesome software is in the description of the video as well. Okay, so we can see here Thursday, September 10. This evening, the new moon is forming in the sign of Virgo. You can see that right here.

So that new moon forming in Virgo doesn't have any major aspects being made very closely to the new moon, except for a little sextile to Mars, Mars in Cancer. So you could say that this new moon cycle will definitely still be picking up on the themes of Mars in Cancer. Maybe some of that deeper transformational work that's happening in your emotional bonds, your family, your neighborhood, any place that deals with lunar topics, women, children, family, home, and then on top of that, we also have the rulership of the moon coming from Mercury in the sign of Libra.

Mercury will be moving through a number of very powerful aspects, which we've outlined this week. If you go back in the content the past couple of days, you'll see an episode that I did on Mercury's major movements over the course of the next month, including a retrograde in October. And that Mercury is also the host of our new moon, so a new moon that features a Mercury that's trying to balance and coordinate a lot of different things simultaneously. So what I want to do now is give you a list of five things to watch for that really all come from an understanding of what Virgo is all about.

And I got to say, like there are certain signs of the zodiac that seem to really get unfair treatment, and by that I just mean over the years, what are the signs that feel most picked on? Scorpio's up there, you know. There's a lot of just kind of oh Scorpio, it's so dark and heavy and intense, and that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg. There's maybe some other signs that I get personally annoyed by, like Leo just loves the spotlight or something, because that's just so simple, you know. Or even like I don't know, even Geminis are two faced. You know, it's like phrases like this that can kind of drive you nuts.

And for me, with Virgo, especially having now in my life a Virgo rising daughter, I'm like, gosh, there's so much more to Virgo than I was aware of, even as an astrologer doing this for a long time, now like raising a child with strong Virgo energy. So, I think Virgo gets a bad reputation for being just nothing but a fussy perfectionist, and that's just such a limited, unfortunate perspective. You know, there's so much magic to this sign. In fact, sometimes I like to call, I've jokingly over the years called Virgo the Mary Poppins of the zodiac.

Now there is remember Mary Poppins is one of the descriptions that she's given is practically perfect. So there's it's very Virgo I guess you could say. Julie Andrews was also, by the way, born with Venus and Neptune co-present in Virgo, but practically perfect, she meticulously helps the kids organize their playhouse, their playroom, I guess. But with magic, she has, she's very proper and very organized. But it all comes, all of it, is contained in a very small tote bag, which is very magical.

She floats down from the clouds and touches the earth and helps the earth become organized. Helps raise the children. Helps deliver some moral insight and some spiritual insight to a family. She's the perfect Virgoan nanny with every mercurial feature of the sign that ought to be there. She also kind of loves Bert, but she's whole and complete unto herself. And to Bert, she's like, I love you, but you know, yeah. And maybe in the fan fiction of Mary Poppins, she marries. Maybe her and Bert have a family or something. But she does not marry. She comes from the clouds. She descends down to earth. She's very magical, but very practical.

This is one of the reasons that we get Virgo wrong all the time. Though a very brief image search I did shows me this. You can see the different images of Virgo, but here you can see on the right hand side the Harvest Maiden with her wings, and sometimes in images she's depicted with a bird on her shoulder or with wings, and other times, and I think it was Liz Green that commented on this the first time I heard it, but other times apparently she'll be hovering above the ground, her feet just above the earth, and these magical features of the constellation image are worth meditating on.

Because what we're in a way what we're talking about is the archetype of something eternally youthful and innocent and sort of angelic and otherworldly that forever inhabits us, even though we come into this mortal world and our feet do touch the earth, we come into a body, we age, we experience mortality and impermanence, we go through transformational encounters with darkness and shadow, we have an experience of becoming stained or losing our innocence and having to retain, regain, or rediscover it, heal ourselves, become pure or whole again after losing something.

And yet Virgo retains the mystery of our wholeness, of our youthful purity, of our innocence, of the Virgin inside of us. But the Virgin is not just not touched by sensuality or sexuality. The deeper meaning, in fact, the virginal goddesses were unmarried and whole unto themselves. When I look at my young girls, I think of Virgo often. I think of Virgo often not because they're innocent and unmarried and unsullied. You know, it's like Game of Thrones or something. That word unsullied. Anyway, you have these, but more so that I will forever see, and I know dads like this. I know moms like, everyone knows what I'm talking about.

I will see them as little girls for the rest of their life, even as they are very mature, very capable young women to mothers to everything. Something in me will always be able to see that, and something in all of us, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or anything, always needs to retain that purity of youth, that wholesomeness, that innocence that is not just innocent as in naive, but innocent as in whole and pure and complete unto ourselves. So a lot of the magic of, let's go back to Mary Poppins for a second. A lot of the magic of Mary Poppins comes from the fact that she remains, even though she's an adult, she remains tapped into the magical essence of childhood, and she's whole and complete.

And I mean, I think we'd all say Mary Poppins is pretty sexy. Julie Andrews, you know, Julie Andrews. I've heard she was a difficult actress to work with. I don't know if that's true or not. And I don't mean to gossip. I just I've heard that she's very particular. Does not surprise me with Venus and Neptune in Virgo, but she embodies something that is very attractive, but also very pure and very sweet and very magical, and that's youth. That is youthfulness. It's whole. It's very attractive. Take away the sexual piece, right? It's just attractive and whole.

And there's something that we always need to retain something of that. No matter if we go through three marriages, or if we never marry, it doesn't matter. It's not about the literalness of marriage or sex, right? It's about something deeper than that, and a magic that comes from that. Now you look at other interesting intimations of Virgo archetypally, like the Vestal Virgins, an interesting Virgo archetype, the sort of sexual wholeness or fidelity that's connected to the magical power of an empire. That's a crazy story.

That's like if you've ever learned about the Vestal Virgins, it's really interesting. I mean, apart from the literal historical analysis as an archetypal phenomenon, the magical power of the Vestal Virgins keeping the hearth fire of Rome alive was like that. That even existed. It's pretty wild, you know. I mean, can you imagine if that was a thing right now? So, anyway, when we're thinking about Virgo, so much of what we're thinking about is about that wholeness, that purity, that magic of something almost like it's angelic. It's in, we all become human, but we all have something that is otherworldly and like we're all like little cherubim. Cherubim, yeah, okay, all right.

We've labored that long enough. So let's get into my list of five things to watch for, given this sort of magical theme of wholesome, childlike magic. Number one is initiation. So it is inevitable that the child, the virgin, will touch the earth. We are called down here for one reason or another. We have this experience of feeling called down. Mary Poppins comes because she's called. There's a nanny advertisement in the paper, and the paper somehow comes up to her. Remember that she's sitting on a cloud, and then she descends down with her umbrella, and she touches the earth.

In a sense, all of us when we come into a body are called off our clouds, and the story of these children is one of initiation in Mary Poppins. They are initiated into the shadows of their father's banking business, the shadows of the adult world that they feel discarded and set aside by. This is the adult world. Kids ought to be seen but not heard, right? So it's a very Virgoan story. But for initiation in a new moon cycle like this, what we're talking about is that inevitable way that we will come to face the shadows and the reality of life with feet on the ground, which is darkness and impurity and complexity and chaos, and immorality, and mistakes.

It is a place fraught with peril, and contact with that peril, meaningful engagement with it, and emergence from our contact with that darkness, still retaining that sense of wholesomeness, because it turns out that wholeness cannot be touched by the ground. It cannot be stained. There's nothing that can change it. And a lot of what initiation boils down to is the contact with the earth that potentially obscures or temporarily obscures our sense of who we are and what is real and what we are in our wholeness, and retention of that through the temporary forgetting or the temporary encounter with the world, with the earth, with darkness, is what initiation is all about.

Most initiation rituals involve going into the darkness. Where does that come from in Virgo? It comes from the fact that we are on the precipice of the dark half of the year, the fall equinox. Now that is not literal, right? This is a mythic storyline that's being oriented to the northern hemisphere's view of the year, but it's not that the zodiac is causing something to happen. This relative orientation is just a mirror of patterns. In the same way that you can use the I Ching or the orientations of the I Ching and the acupuncture meridian lines, which are partially informed by seasonal patterns from one place in the Earth, but you can use it wherever you want on Earth, in the same way that Tarot has seasonal elements. But you don't need to be in the place that Tarot came from to use it. So that's important because people always ask questions about that.

Initiation is a huge part of a Virgo moon cycle. So watch for that transformative process to be touching your life and to deal with some encounters that require you to retain everything that is whole and good and pure about who you are that really can't ever be changed or touched. But you have to go through experiences that are transformative and that make you feel like maybe you are losing it, only to find that you're not. The second theme I have is touching the earth. To touch the earth for Virgos is often about touching the fear we have that the earth is bad, or too complicated, or imperfect.

And so part of why we end up saying perfectionism, fussiness, meticulousness, is not because those, you know, Virgo has psychologically speaking the care or concern for the details and so forth are really helpful. You know, it's good to have Virgos on my staff at Nightlight, and God, is it useful? You know what I mean. Really love having some Virgos on my side in life. But what we mean by touching the earth is more to do with recognizing that complications, messiness, things missing the mark, which is one of the actual definitions missing the mark of the word sin, sinfulness, missing the mark, all of these encounters with this world are going to make us feel at times like something true, pure, innocent, whole has been lost.

Or the encounters, in other words, with the mess of life can leave us feeling like something is broken. Something needs fixing. Something is impure. Something probably needs forgiveness. Something has become dirty, and those encounters with the earth are very important because part of what Virgo can grant us is a very deep sense of forgiveness and grace, forgiveness and grace because life is messy and will involve complications that are inevitable. You can't avoid touching the earth when you become an embodied living being. Touching the earth might mean going into debt. Touching the earth might mean getting a B minus rather than an A that you're used to getting.

Touching the earth might mean having to recognize that you have real vices that you can't control. Touching the earth might be about recognizing your limits, comparing yourself to others, and seeing that you're just not as good at something as somebody else is. Touching the earth can mean that you have to accept things about yourself, about life, that are unpleasant, that you cannot change, that cannot be altered, that you have to simply accept, or it can involve the constant obsessive ways in which we try to fix and manage so that we don't have to have that experience, but inevitably Virgos usually do. And anyone with Virgo energy, right? Any planets or placements in Virgo will typically put us in touch with the fact that life just is messy, and that's part of the earth.

Now, there's also a ritual. There's a kind of ritual experience of purification, which means we touch the earth, we touch the complexities, we touch the darkness, and we recognize that sometimes that means repair is needed. Purification can mean, for example, that if you have a test to take to get a credential, a license to practice something, and you fail, and you fail because you recognize you're not putting in the time or effort that people who pass the test are putting in, that can be very purifying. That feedback can be very important. It can be the feedback that requires you to get better at something.

A lot of the times, we're almost like allergic to saying get better at something. No, you're fine just the way you are, and that sort of is the final healing balm of Virgo. You know, you're fine just the way you are. Mister Rogers, I believe it was Mister Rogers had some really good Pisces energy, and that Pisces energy is like the balm to Virgo. Like you're beautiful, you're fine. Let it go, let it go, surrender. You know, But also, legitimately, Virgos are on a journey of getting better. But how do you get better at something without thinking that getting better can make you better or worse on the level of the soul? They're different things.

You can become a better musician. You can be better at a craft or skill. You can be better at your relationships. You can perform better at life morally, ethically. But none of that can make or break the eternal pure drop of God consciousness that you are. You know nothing can make you divine or take away your divinity. It is your birthright, you know, and it actually has no beginning or end, and you're connected to it forever. And that innocence is what we feel and notice in a child.

And oftentimes we also start to notice it again when our elders are getting closer to leaving their bodies. Elders can contain so much wisdom and almost start to retain some reflection of childlike qualities. And I'm not just talking about, you know, I don't know, softening, like my grandmother had a little bit of dementia toward the end of her life, and was just very soft and kind of open and childlike in that way. And that's, you know, that might be part of aging and some of the certain kinds of conditions that accompany aging that are somewhat difficult and could be really scary for her at times too. So I'm not trying to glorify something like that.

But what I am saying is that there's a softness that comes back in as we age. And I've worked with people of all different ages and stages of life, and I'm thinking of some of my elders at different points in my life who have been really sharp mentally still, but very soft and almost childlike. Again, it's as though the entry and exits are very Virgoan. They're very pure. They're very whole. In the middle portion of life, purification for most of us is make or break. You're either bad or you're good. You know, if you make a mistake, then you have to make it right because it's about your fundamental goodness or badness as a spirit soul. That's a pretty treacherous trip.

You know what I mean? Like ah, so let's be so gentle with ourselves as we may have some purifying. We may have some legitimate ways that we have to get better. That doesn't mean we're bad, you know. And underlying, there's something deeper to all of us that, especially when we're going through times where we have to get better at something, it's really important to stay in touch with. I have to get better at this, but I'm coming at this from a space of already being whole, and that's my next point: is whole. What does it mean to look at another human being and see them as whole?

Because the other thing that can happen is this tendency toward evaluation and criticism. The approaching judgment of the harvest is coming. Sacred preparation for that moment is inherent to the sign of Virgo. Transformation, descent, initiation, all parts of the sign of Virgo, beautiful, magical, mysterious parts of the sign. But we can then look at the world as if it is not whole and not complete, as if it is missing something, and that can cause us to see lack in anything and everyone that we see. It can give us an eye for the wholes and imperfections.

And a big part of a Virgo moon cycle is about learning to retain that view of the world as whole. I am whole. You are whole. There is wholesomeness all around me, and that doesn't mean that my superpowers of critique or improvement or purification aren't still necessary. But I am whole. You are whole. We are whole. Mary Oliver was also someone with very strong Virgo energy. I'm going to read you a poem by her today before we end about wholesomeness. Last but not least is sacred anxiety. No one wants to live with anxiety all the time. No one really wants to live with anxiety anytime, you know.

But with Virgo, there is a kind of sacred anxiety, and I refer back to Mary Poppins throughout the movie. You know, she'll be like, "Snip, snap, you know, like, let's go. It's time to go, and she has this sharp, keen eye for what could go wrong, or she's like, Don't slouch, you know. Or she'll be talking to the kids, and when they're laughing on the ceiling, you know. Do you remember that when they float up to the ceiling and they're all laughing, and I think it's the laughter that compels them or that propels them upward. And then she's like, okay, enough.

She has a really keen sense of when enough is enough. Why? What is it about, you know, the Mary Poppins, the Virgo archetype that senses that it's good to have fun, it's good to have magic, but only so much of it. Remember how hesitant she is to demonstrate the magic by Bert's like, come on, Mary Poppins, do your magic, and she's like, I do not like this, do not like that attitude, young man. You know, she's got it. She's because she doesn't want magic. Is not a toy, right? Even though it's very childlike, magic serves a purpose.

What kind of purpose? Initiatory purpose, a healing purpose, and it's a tool of great joy and great insight that she has, and she's always keenly aware of where the boundaries exist and where something might go beyond its appropriate measure. You know it, and she's like, okay they come in from rain, you got to take your medicine, you know, and then she sings a song to help them go to bed at night. She's the perfect example of what it means to have fun and enjoy and taste the magic, but to be aware of the fact that anything in this world can go too far really quickly.

And so there's actually very much like Virgo, like Libra, and Virgo shares a kind of Anticia relationship with Libra, well, a contra Anticia. The two signs actually share seasonal qualities of light and dark, but in a flipped manner. That's the topic for another day. But that awareness that something can be really good, really beautiful, but it can be just a little too much. My wife has Saturn in Virgo in her third house, and she is so keenly aware of that, like when we go. I mean, thank God, by the way, because she's never had problems with drinking. Not like someone who's had an addiction problem in his life.

She's never. She's always been able to remain moderate, but she also has. There's alcoholism in her family. We've gone to Al-Anon together, so forth. So, but thank God for having her around because whether it's eating dessert, you know, or the occasional times over many years where I've had drinks with her, you know, she's always like, and she realizes things are reaching a crescendo about three or four beats before I do, you know, and I always attribute that to her Saturn in Virgo, just nicely trining her Sun and Moon, and I think when I was in my early 20s and I was struggling with addiction, I wouldn't have liked my wife at that time because I would have found her to be a killjoy and like prude, you know.

That's specifically because I had no built-in sense of sacred anxiety. Sacred anxiety is like if you want something to stay good, be a little bit scared of the moment where it could turn bad. If you want something to stay magical, be a little bit aware of the potential abuse that turns it bad. If you want something to stay in a nice place, be a little bit scared that your lack of attention could make you lose something, so that people sometimes describe Virgo as anxious. Now, I've, for example, worked with probably more than any other sign, I've worked with young, I should say, a lot of women who, when they were young, with Virgo signatures, struggled with eating disorders.

A number of dancers I've seen that have been very perfection-oriented in their craft, but really ruthless to their bodies. You know, it's a very common thing that happens in different professions, but dance is one of them I've seen time and again. And I'm not trying to be a jerk to dancers or anything. I love dance, and I know many dancers don't struggle with that. But so the point is that there's a sense of that anxiety when turned inward, and the volume gets turned way up, is like it won't be perfect unless I attend to this with obsessive level of control, fear, and anxiety and worry.

That's the thing we, that's the shadow we want to be careful of. But there's no one I would rather have. For example, if you guys have ever met Saffron, who works for us at Nightlight, she has a lot of really good Virgo energy. And you know, and if you ever met Delia, who worked here in the past and is still a good friend of Nightlight, she makes our calendar every year for the Kickstarter. Still, she was at our retreat helping coordinate this past summer. These are people. These are some ladies with really strong Virgo energy that, to me, feel like the Mary Poppins in the managerial roles at Nightlight. And like, thank God, you know what I mean.

It's good to have Virgos in your life, and it's good during a Virgoan cycle to emulate the best of what Virgos give us, right? How to touch the earth, retain that sense of magical, wholesome, pure care, attention. Sacred anxiety is an important part of life. We're walking on sacred land, you know. I think of all the native people who knew that and know that so much more than, you know, like us heavy footed, like Westerners or what have you. Not trying to be mean to ourselves or myself as a Westerner, but if it weren't for my contact with indigenous people and traditions from Peru, South Central America, some of the beautiful opportunities I had to attend some ceremonies with indigenous people and elders from Native American traditions here in North America, I never would have understood that mindfulness.

Even like Tikhnot Han and getting exposed to mindfulness and meditation, that you should be thoughtful and careful, and just ever so slightly aware of the potential to offend, right? Not like obsessed about getting it right, but aware that your actions are taking place in a sacred ecosystem, and so that kind of Mary Poppins awareness with joy and fun may it come into all of our lives in this moon cycle. I hope you enjoyed this talk on Virgo. That's what I've got for you today. Stick around because I'm going to tell you about the Year One program next. Come study with us. It is an absolutely fantastic program with good people, really good structure, really good support, and it's a journey that will transform you from the inside out, and for many people, set you up to practice for others. We'll see you again next time. Bye.