Artful Astrology: Virgo Season & Poem-scopes
Our sun crossed the threshold into Virgoan territory and so welcome to a new archetype, element, and mode. The Virgin, Earth, and Mutable, respectively. Let us discuss the archetype of the Virgo, smash the stereotypes. As I write to you, there’s a foursome in the “virginal” sign of Virgo. You heard me correctly. The Sun, Venus, Mars, and Mercury hold hands, super-charged from their journey and offering us hits of grounded, discerning, specific energy. We’ll get to those specifics in a moment. Mercury is in her home sign, an earthy environment up to the task of turning abstract thoughts into golden communication.
Our collective chart has shifted from fire to earth, from fixed to mutable. Virgo is a changeable sign and calls Mercury her caretaker. Mercury-ruled priestesses and priests study the intricacies of translation, crowned with the operative skill of world-moving. That is, moving between worlds and words. Like this piece of art below:
Joan Miro, Drawing-Collage
We oft hear the Virgo archetype described as nit-picky, ultra-organized, hyper-vigilant, grim, and boring, even. Let’s review. Virgo is the only sign on the zodiacal block represented in imagery as a woman. She’s embodied and self-contained (think vestal virgins tending to the hearth, up-keeping the system in service to not men but the Earth herself). And in her self-contained-ness, her ability to care and fan the flames of creation and sustenance, she’s perceived as frigid, cold, virginal. Read: astrology is part of the culture at large, and so is not shielded from patriarchal weathers.
She’s virginal insofar as she doesn’t need someone to show her how to create and in fact, might prefer to do it on her own. The raw materials of creation are second nature to the Virgo and she uses her hands and mind to sort what’s necessary from what’s not. An editorial impulse that, in the hands of Queen (or King) V, are an ingenious act worthy of their own set of eyes and attentions. Anyone who’s ever edited anything (books, music, gardens, time) knows that one needs a sharp mind, a steady hand, and vision.
Egon Schiele, Standing Girl Wrapped in Blanket, 1911
In part, this season harkens creation after creation. It’s the moment of solitude, service, gathering up and dispersing, and work that happens before we begin to socialize (the following sign, Libra, being the moment of socialization, of other-ness). I’ll be releasing a podcast episode soon on my more detailed thoughts on this oft misunderstood energy. Let us not relegate dear badass Virgo to the realms of petty organization and nit-pick. No archetype is that simple. We’re talking about separating the wheat from the chaff, literal and celestial — and detecting use and beauty in both the runoff and thing itself.
Poem-scopes for Virgo Season
ARIES
In sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, etc. The material world changes and as she changes, so too we must heed the amorphous call. The quickest way out of your own quandaries is via service to others. You arrived head-strong and fire-ruled and so now teach others how to use their heads and hearts in such heavenly and unruly ways. Translation: Rock n’ roll.
TAURUS
Your impulse is to holding space and so the groundwork is done. Next? Creation itself in the form of whatever calls to your earthen soul, your most primal desires. With the sun in a fellow earth sign and many a planet in your creativity sphere, the heavens call you to design heaven on earth. You can make art out of anything. Even, or especially, dirt.
GEMINI
Revolution requires roots. You might get H O M E tattooed on your knuckles this month, as all celestial arrows point down to the seed of your Self. We are talking about the heavenly rhizome, the home in which you were raised, the home wherein you reside, and your body. We are talking, too, about wherever you were before you came here.
CANCER
Words were her plague and words were her redemption said poet H.D. How do you use your communicative powers, your watery intuition? Poems, writing, archiving, speaking, examining, acknowledging, record-keeping, translating. These are words for what your Virgo season alights — Mercury infuses your mind-space, desiring to transmute mental metal into hot gold.
LEO
How are you of use? Not to the societal machine, but to your highest-order-essence, your leonine gold. Gold, as in a super conductor of electricity. Look around at your environment for clues as to what you value: $$, objects, humans, energy? Remember that attention is a commodity. Beam your glow into what your soul prizes and slough off the rest.
VIRGO
Forces of spirit, divine light, and the empyrean masculine and feminine set up camp in your ecosystem and flower and flower, generating their own language. What energy rises to your surface and endeavors to be seen? It’s hard to have a self, a body, a soul. When the sun hangs in your identity center, you ASAP become a student of individuality and union.
LIBRA
The shallow drudgery of strict adherence to societal norms will dampen your Venusian aura. Heed the call from your mind’s center and unfasten yourself from the hardwire of blah. Read: stop scrolling. Let mysticism from holy books and direct transmission be the base note to your month and resist the urge to surrender your weirder thoughts. Craziness is like heaven… said Saint Jimi Hendrix.
SCORPIO
Use your psychic prowess to solve the world’s problems and call forth your crew. Two heads are better than one and seven heads are better than two. It’s better, after all, to be lonely together. Right? When Tilda Swinton said, If we don’t accept loneliness, then capitalism wins hands down, she was speaking, too, to your house of group-think, your wild Scorpionic take on the *current situation.*
SAGITTARIUS
Remember that entity, perhaps a dude sitting on a sidewalk or perhaps your BFF or a cat or maybe a peculiar stranger, who really saw you — saw you in a way you hadn’t thought possible? Claim the clean glint in their eyes and use it to propel you into what we can only call galactic sight and site. This is not about your number of social media followers, this is the rigors of polarized Purpose.
CAPRICORN
You’re intimately familiar with death process, as this is the rhythm to which you were born. The patron saint of stricture rules your heart and it’s time to take a Saturnian look at Jupiter. Translation: loosen the grip on your daily drudgeries and live for a time in the space of exhale, curiosity, bounty. You’re so…alive!
AQUARIUS
It proves useful to find your own electric point of entry into the underworld, as planets urge you toward what’s personal, deep, and ancestral. Death is only one part of the sequence. There’s also transformation and rebirth. Use the deftness of your clear heart to delve into the murk of what’s been long buried. Emerge as a new version of your most ancient-modern self, a little more healed for having descended the escalator.
PISCES
Trees speak their own language, communicate with roots across vast systems unseen to us. So too that connection is what you’ll swim towards as the sun beams in your polar opposite sign. You have a clear view of the glory of Spirit, which means, a line to connection of the highest order. A love supreme, tree-talk, float-tank, every synonym for godly love in earthen form. Your perspective is an asset.
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About the Author
Emmalea Russo (she/her) is an artist, writer, and astrologer. After her whole system got shocked by her first grand mal seizure at age 19, she started to wonder how the stars and planets influence our minds and bodies. Her interdisciplinary work focuses on edge spaces in human consciousness, art, and epilepsy. Her books, which combine visual art and writing, are G (2018) and Wave Archive (2019). She received her MFA from Pratt Institute and has been an artist in residence at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and 18th Street Arts Center.
She has taught classes and workshops on the creative process at RA MA Institute, Parsons School of Design, The Art Institute of Cincinnati, and elsewhere. She writes about astrology, art, and culture at The Avant-Galaxy Journal and hosts The Avant-Galaxy Podcast. She lives between the New Jersey shore and Los Angeles. Book a chart reading or astroplanning session with her here. A version of this piece first appeared on Emmalea’s journal, The Avant-Galaxy.
