I don’t know when I learned that I’m a Virgo rising. Filtered through conversations with friends about astrology, and long before the days of social media, astrology was something that was oddly constant in my life. Checking my horoscope on astro.com and cafeastrology.com when I started my day has been a ritual since my teens. I still check them out of habit and curiosity and the same self-examination I’ve always had. What has changed is everything else in my life. I’m a practicing astrologer seeking clients. I am for the moment, otherwise unemployed. I have been single since January 2020. This, and other overly personal things, are what I’m going to write about through the lens of astrology in this newsletter. This will never be a cut and dry explanation of astrological techniques. Or even a faithful chronology of my life. This is about me and how I’ve used astrology to see myself differently. Because while astrology was always humming in the background of my life, when things really started to fall apart, I found myself looking for a way to know myself again and astrology became that and so much more for me.
A Servant’s Heart
I grew up in coastal South Carolina, the youngest of three girls in an evangelical Christian family. My life revolved around church and my parents discouraged us from consuming secular media. I was lucky my family and our church were not that extreme compared to others. My parents believe in science, pushed us all to achieve academically and in our hobbies, and were welcoming of our friends from different backgrounds. However, the culture was conservative and often stifling for my vivid imagination. I will never forget the first time my father told me that I should strive to serve others because I had a servant’s heart. He said, I was meant to help other people and through them, God, achieve greatness rather than strive for my own.
I remember being mad that my father saw some sort of arrogance or ambition in me that needed to be stamped out. As I was thinking about this newsletter, the phrase “a servant’s heart” kept returning to me. Pop astrology says Virgos are prudish, fussy, overly critical, “the mom friend”, anxious, controlling, helpful, and for some reason, obsessed with hygiene and cleaning. (This is not true, I’m a proud Virgo slob!)
Worse than that, my Sun and Mercury, my chart ruler, are conjoined in Aquarius, which for Virgo risings, is the 6th house, also called the house of bad fortune, which signifies slavery, misfortune, illness, and pets. In modern significations, we say the 6th house rules subordinate employees, rather than servitude and slavery, and also labor unions and social justice movements that uplift disadvantaged people. In a way, my dad was right, I technically at least have a servant’s chart, if not a servant’s heart.
But of course, I’m going to go deeper than that. What is missing from most pop astrology is that the ruling planet itself is more fundamental than the sign. You cannot understand the signs of Virgo or Gemini without understanding the astrological significations of the planet Mercury.
Mercury is the messenger of the gods, also known as Hermes in Greek mythology. Mercury is an observer, and a magician. They are often said to embody the transitional times of sunrise and sunset, and in traditional astrology, they are not confined to the day sect or night sect like the other visible planets. Mercury is a witness. What Mercury chooses to do with all that they see has a lot to do with where they are in your chart, and what they rule.
Mercury as embodied by the sign of Gemini is easier for most people to understand. Geminis are fickle, trendsetters, funny, and always ready for the next thing. Being an air sign, they can float from one person to the next without giving much offense by having a light touch. In contrast, Virgo is an earth sign. How can earth communicate? Or be anything but practical? If Gemini is an illusionist, then Virgo is an alchemist.
Mutable signs, both Gemini and Virgo are mutable, are about change and adaptability. How can solid, unmovable earth always be changing? I like to think of Virgo as loess, or the mineral rich dust that blows from the deserts or from mountain streams that were once ancient glaciers to river plains to create the world’s richest and longest lasting soil. Loess, pronounced “luss”, comes from the German word for loose. It is light enough to travel thousands of miles on the wind and ends up creating soil that can be cultivated for thousands of years.
This is the systematic foresight of Virgo, to see how the smallest bit of dust can sustain civilization. If a Virgo wants to excitedly explain something to you, it’s because we see the magic and the serendipity in the mundane. Our interests are vast and endless. We are restless, and we have to channel that restlessness. What exactly interests us and how we go about communicating depends on the house and the sign that Mercury falls in.
For me, a 6th house Aquarius Mercury, my professional work has taken up most of my life. I kind of fell into doing fundraising, after working in the development office as a student in college, some of the staff thought I would do well in the office. I did love the work, and being part of a team, but I always have had trouble with seeing where to go next or to understand my own achievements.
There’s this paradox of being a Virgo rising and an Aquarius sun and Mercury, even though the signs share many similarities. My own chart ruler cannot see the ascendant from the 6th house. My sun is in detriment in Aquarius, and ruling the 12th house. Yet, for all these difficulties in my chart, the signs of Virgo and Aquarius share a sort of frustrating backwardness in terms of how their modality interacts with their element. Just as it’s confusing to understand how an Earth sign can be mutable, it’s just as confusing to understand how an Air sign can be fixed, like Aquarius. In my own life, this has created quite the panic spiral at different times. While writing this, I realized that wind currents by their nature are fixed air. They move, but in a predictable, reliable way. In a way that can transport millions of pieces of soil to a valley, sustaining and supporting life.
I know I’m not the wind, or soil, but a person who marvels at being a part of something bigger than myself. To put both hands in the dirt, as the lyric from the song “4th of July” by Hand Habits that’s been stuck in my head while writing this goes.
I hope you will shake off your expectations of Virgos, and me, and revel in the dirty, affirming process of astrology. As astrologers have said for millennia, as above, so below!
Anna
PS: Feel free to judge me and my chart if you want, to follow along, if you will. My birthdate is 02/09/1988 at 7:00 p.m. Charleston, SC.