The Myth of Virgo

Virgo (August 23 - September 23)


Modern language sometimes does some very funny things with words and concepts that come from the pre-Christian era. For example, take the Latin word virgo. It's usually interpreted as virgin, with all its sexual implications. So that the typical Virgo portrayed in popular astrology is virginal, i.e., prudish or inhibited or sexually cool. One need only look at some well-known film personalities born under Virgo, like Sophia Loren and Jacqueline Bisset and Sean Connery, to feel a little silly about equating Virgo with a lack of sexual interest or appeal.

But more of that later. Let's go back to what the word virgo once meant. It had, in fact, nothing to do with sexual virginity, but simply meant intact, self-contained. The great mythical figure that stands behind Virgo is the Great Goddess, the Magna Mater, and she was no virgin. In fact she is often portrayed in myth as the Great Harlot, the fecund one. There is a magnificent statue of the virgin goddess Artemis, one of many names for the Great Goddess, portrayed with fifty breasts to show that she represents the nurturer and giver of life to all of life. But she is virgo in the sense that she is self-possessed, her own person.

In early mythology, from which we inherit the figure of the Virgin Goddess, before the Hellene invasion from the north into the agricultural civilizations of the Aegean in around 2000 B.C., the goddess did not owe her powers on her status to a divine husband as we see her in later mythology.

She ruled alone, self-contained, husbandless, yet offering her femininity freely as she chose. She was the consort of all life. This is a clue to the deepest meaning of Virgo: the ultimate goal of this apparently humble sign is nothing less than the self-possessed psyche, the person who integrated within herself and can therefore give freely because she need not fear losing herself in another. She can choose life's experiences from her own place of completeness, rather than because her need for finding herself in another drives her into relationships or situations which destroy her or rule her.

Sometimes you see this pattern of becoming one's own person lived out in the lives of Virgos through the necessity to live alone for a period of time. In fact this seems to be almost a requirement for Virgo to develop himself or herself. Difficult as it is for any person to face loneliness, many Virgos impose it on themselves, not because they don't need others, but because something in them says that you must learn to be yourself and love you own company before you can allow another person to be himself.

The zodiacal circle of twelve signs is divided into halves. The first half - Aries through Virgo - is often taken to symbolize the stages of individual development. The second half - Libra through Pisces - is often taken to symbolize the individual's relationship to the larger society, other people, the world.

Virgo is the last of the first half of the zodiac, the cycle of individual development which we mentioned earlier. This means that Virgo in its deepest sense is about the real synthesis and integration of the individual, the refinement and ordering of all the experiences which have come from the first five signs. In an odd way you can see this in Virgo, just as you see it in Pisces, the last sign of the second half of the zodiac. In Pisces, you see the world, for the sign stands at the end of the great round. Pisceans contain the whole of human experience. It's why they can identify with anybody, sometimes much to their cost.

Virgo contains all the stages of individual development. She's been through the rash impulsive courage of Aries challenging life. She's been through the building and acquiring stability of Taurus. She's been through the curiosity and fascination with ideas of Gemini. She's been through the need for warmth and family and roots of Cancer. She's been through the need to be creative and individual in Leo.

You can see a sort of matter-of-fact 'Yes, I've done that' quality in many Virgos when they watch those other signs. It's as thought it's stored somewhere in their memory banks. And their job, their business, is about taking all those different stages and kinds of experience and not specializing in one but rather making a refined and well-functioning whole out of it. It's one of the reasons you find so many Virgos obsessed with health and diet, and equally many obsessed with psychology and self-help. They're trying hard to knit the whole thing together, to become the efficiently functioning person who can deal with any experience. But because Virgo is the final summation of the first cycle, any experience means any personal encounter, not an encounter with a group. Virgo isn't ready to go out into the bigger life of society. That's Libra's job. The compulsive self-perfecting that you find in so many Virgos, have a deep symbolic root. It's the need to prepare the vessel, to craft it, shape it, refine it, for some vaguely sensed next phase for which Virgo waits without really knowing what it is she's waiting and preparing for.

Virgo is also connected with the strange picture-language and concepts of medieval alchemy. Every Virgo, in some way, little or big, is an alchemist. Now, medieval alchemy doesn't really have anything to do with the practice of making gold, any more than Virgo has to do with virginity.

If you read old alchemical texts, you'll hear them constantly saying that alchemical gold isn't ordinary gold. It's transmuted substance, inner gold, spiritual gold, creative gold. It's about purification, of taking something clumsy and crude and base and transforming it so that the real potential shines out of it. Whether it's her house or her body or her psyche, this laborious process of transmutation goes on throughout Virgo's life. One way or another, whether it's herself or other people or the disorderly world, her business, her environment or the products of her skilful hands. Virgo is attempting the alchemical transformation. It isn't really the outside world she's trying to order and synthesize. It's life. And life, ultimately, is herself.






Mythology and History
The Maiden.
Named for the Greek goddess Demeter, the Earth-goddess, and is associated with the arrival of spring and bringer of the growing season. Hades, the God of the Underground, fell in love with Demeter's daughter, Persephone. He promised himself that he would marry Persephone, making her his queen. Demeter would not stand for this. One day Hades, in a black chariot drawn by four great black horses in golden harness and reins, rode up to Persephone and carried the girl off with him back to the Underworld.
Zeus solved the problem by saying that Persephone would spend half of her time in the Underworld with Hades and the other half on Olympus with her mother. In this way, winter comes when Persephone goes down to the Underworld to be with Hades. When Persephone returns to Olympus, the winter cloak of death melts and there is a rebirth of life over the land and the crops begin to grow.

Virgo usually is shown carrying two sheaves of wheat, one of which is marked by the bright star Spica, whose name comes form the Latin and means ear of wheat, or corn.

Known as Ishtar or Lilith by the Babylonians. And also was known to the Sumerians.
The Egyptians knew Virgo as Isis, the Goddess of Fertility.
The Hindus looked at Virgo as Kauni, or "the Maiden."
The Persians called her Khosha, or "the Ear of Wheat."
The Hebrews called her Bethulah, meaning "Abundance in Harvest."

Virgo, the Virgin

Virgin august! come in thy regal state
With soft majestic grace and brow serene;
Though the fierce Lion's reign is overpast
The summer's heat is all thine own as yet,
And all untouched thy robe of living green
By the rude fingers of the northern blast.
— R. J. Philbrick's Virgo.

she is the oldest purely allegorical representation of innocence and virtue. This legend seems to be first found with Hesiod, and was given in full by Aratos, his longest constellational history in the Phainomena, Other authors mentioned her as Eirene, Irene, the sister of Astraea, and the Pax of the Romans, with the olive branch; as Concordia; as Parthenos Dios, the Virgin Goddess; as Sibulla, the Singing Sibyl, carrying a branch into Hades; and as Tukhe, the Roman Fortuna, because she is a headless constellation, the stars marking the head being very faint.

Classical Latin writers occasionally called her Ano, Atargatis, and Derceto, the Syrorum Dea transferred here from Pisces; Cybele drawn by lions, for our Leo immediately precedes her; Diana; Minerva; Panda and Pantica; and even Medusa. Posidippus, 289 B.C., gave Thesbia or Thespia, daughter of Thespius, or of the Theban Asopus; and some said that one of the Muses, even Urania herself, was placed here in the sky by Apollo.

Ishtar, the Queen of the Stars, was the Ashtoreth of the 1st Book of the Kings, xi, 5, 33, the original of the Aphrodite of Greece and the Venus of Rome; perhaps equivalent to Athyr, Athor, or Hathor of the Nile, and the Astarte of Syria, the last philologically akin to our Esther and Star, the Greek Aster. Astarte, too, was identified by the Venerable Bede with the Saxon goddess of spring, Eostre, at whose festival, our Easter, the stars of Virgo shine so brightly in the eastern evening sky; and the Sumerians of southern Babylonia assigned this constellation to their sixth month as the Errand, or Message, of Istar.

But all these figurings, ancient as some of them may be, are modern when compared with the still enduring Sphinx generally claimed as prehistoric, perhaps of the times of the Hor-she-shu, long anterior to the first historical Egyptian ruler, Menes; and constructed, according to Greek tradition, with Virgo's head on Leo's body, from the fact that the sun passed through these two constellations during the inundation of the Nile.

The astrological influences of the constellation

Ptolemy makes the following observations; "the stars on the head of Virgo and that at the top of the southern wing, operate like Mercury and somewhat like Mars; the other bright stars in the same wing and those about the girdle resemble Mercury in their influence and also Venus moderately . . .; those at the points of the feet and at the bottom of the garments are like Mercury and also Mars moderately". By the Kabalists it is associated with the Hebrew letter Gimel and the 3rd Tarot Trump "The Empress". (Robson).
"spicifera est Virgo Cereris" — "The Virgin with her sheaf belongs to Ceres".

Rising sign in Virgo: The temperaments of those whose span of life she pronounces at their birth Erigone will direct to study, and she will train their minds in the learned arts. She will give not so much abundance of wealth as the impulse to investigate the causes and effects of things. On them she will confer a tongue which charms, the mastery of words, and that mental vision which can discern all things, however concealed they be by the mysterious workings of nature. But with ' the good there comes a flaw : bashfulness handicaps the early years of such persons, for the Maid, by holding back their great natural gifts, puts a bridle on their lips and restrains them by the curb of authority.