later this month, we enter the astrological sign of Virgo on The Alchemical Journey, and our Virgo Workshop this year takes place over the weekend of 21st / 22nd August, just as the Sun enters that sign. It is always one of the most profound phases of the journey for me. Colette and I have just been to Babcary on the Virgo figure in The Glastonbury Zodiac, where we will be walking this month, and have recorded the following short film to whet your appetite!
Virgo
Virgo must surely be the most misunderstood and undervalued sign in the zodiacal wheel. For beyond the popular image of an innocent virgin, secretary or nit-picker, lies an experienced mistress of purification, discernment, and sexual control. Virgo is the only woman in the Zodiac and one of only three remaining in the whole heavenly sphere. Two of them were chained in the Greek cosmos – Cassiopeia & Andromeda – but Virgo remained free, as the sole representation of the Goddess in the constellations of the night sky.
Virgo by Josephine Wall
To the Greeks, she was Demeter, with her wheat sheaf, or ear of corn, overseeing the grain harvest and holder of the key to the secret of agriculture. To the Egyptians she was Isis with her child Horus and in the Christian cosmos, Mary with the Christ child. She is a virgin in its older meaning, certainly, as one who owns her own body and chooses when and with whom to unite! Virgo marked the Summer Solstice around 5000BC, and her departure from there is said to have coincided with the end of the Golden Age. She left in disgust, some say, at how humanity had fallen from grace. So, like the mystery school initiates who invoke her return, we are re-imagining her on The Alchemical Journey this month as the Great Goddess that she once was, as we invite her qualities into our lives.
The Harvest
The Virgo phase represents a critical moment in the alchemical year, when the crop must be cut down in its prime, harvested and its essence extracted. In the human life cycle, Virgo represents the rite of passage, where we find out what we’re really made of. This is marked in traditional societies by being cut away from familial roots, through circumcision or ablation, or other initiation rite. We experience Virgo whenever we are examined, judged, cut down to size, as wheat is sorted from chaff. Just as our Leonine experiences have helped us realise and express our confidence and creative potential in life, so our Virgoan ones have set us to task. The harvest goddess shapes and moulds our spontaneous impulses into practical, useful, sustainable projects that serve the greater good. She strips away our indulgences, hones our creative instincts and transforms our promises into everyday miracles, like golden wheat being turned into the food that nourishes a community.
Virgo is ruled by Mercury the wily magician, whose skill and cunning knits together the fabric of life into a seamless dance, his magic embedded in the details of life. Our task in Virgo, then is to sweep, to clean, to tidy, to order, to polish, to wax, to sharpen, to distill, and to become still ourselves as we perfect the ordinary tasks of life. Through bringing mindfulness to our repetitive actions, honouring time, work and our body’s rhythms, we actually open up the possibility of transcending those ritual structures, and entering a liminal space between worlds where transformation can occur.
Wax On, Wax Off...
On our Virgo weekend, I always like to show a clip from the classic 1970s rite of passage film, The Karate Kid, in which a young American wannabe is trained by a Japanese zen master, so that he can stand up for himself against a local bully. In one classic sequence, as part of the boy’s karate training, he is set a series of menial tasks, waxing his teacher’s cars, painting his garden fence, sanding the floor. This goes on for days with no apparent connection to karate, until the boy eventually snaps and accuses the old man of exploiting his trust just to get his household chores done. His frustration then turns to revelation in an extraordinary scene, when he suddenly realizes that in the embodiment of these repetitive actions he has actually learned a series of powerful karate moves which are now second nature to him. As with the alchemists, as they attempt to imitate and perfect Nature’s own creative process in their laboratories, these repetitive trials offer the ritual service necessary to precipitate our inner gold.
Virgo in The Glastonbury Zodiac
In the Glastonbury Zodiac, Virgo is “Old Mother Cary”, her figure drawn by the River Cary, a name suggestive of the Celtic harvest goddess, Ceridwen, mother of Taliesin. The river which rises at the springs of “our lady” paints her flowing robe at Wheathill, her swollen belly at Babcary and her breast at the bronze age barrow, Wimble Toot. She holds her sheaf of wheat at Keinton Main-de-Ville, where her hand rests. These associations continue to enchant our journeys into this landscape temple, which meets us with new synchronicities on every walk.
Our Virgo Workshop this year takes place on Sat 21st & Sun 22nd August. Click here to find out more and to book a place
Walking the Glastonbury Zodiac with John Wadsworth. Part 6: Virgo
Lynne Speight With Corn Dollies
I’m just returned from this year’s annual pilgrimage into the Virgo figure in The Glastonbury Zodiac, as part of this month’s Alchemical Journey workshop. By way of preparation on Saturday each member of our group explored their relationship to the Virgo archetype and engaged in a number of activities designed to help us drop into the mystery of this often misunderstood sign.
Our Virgo Group
Our day on Saturday culminated with a beautiful exercise led by Lynne Speight, where we each made a corn dolly in honour of Virgo. It was a perfect preparation for our walk into the landscape effigy today.
Virgo is one of the most gentle, nurturing and evidently pastoral landscapes that we encounter on our zodiacal adventure, ripe with the potency of initiation into the mystery of the feminine perspective. With much of her form being marked out by the winding path of the River Cary, we could see her as Old Mother Carey, the caileach, whose sunken jaw and wrinkled face at Cary Fitzpaine puts us in mind of a witch or wise woman.
Virgo by Yuri Leitch
This most striking landscape effigy clearly resembles a woman with a long flowing dress, easily conjuring the image of a harvest goddess, overseeing the harvest time of the year that Virgo represents. Our walk takes place around the parish of Babcary, on her swollen belly, its name suggestive of the baby she carries, and there is even a local legend here of a royal child once being hidden in the village.
To get to Virgo from Glastonbury, we seem to leave the Zodiac, crossing the Fosseway, the natural boundary of the ecliptic circle on the ground. For she sits apart from the other signs, somewhat detached, ‘beyond the pale’ (pale being an old word for fence); a woman whose unashamed sexuality is anathema to the patriarchal religious structures that she inevitably subverts. She is the fallen woman of Christianity, and we find the only church in the Zodiac dedicated to Mary Magdalene on Virgo’s wheatsheaf at Keinton Mandeville. We may envisage her also as Magdalene’s Arthurian counterpart Guinevere, furthest from Avalon yet nearest to Camelot, fiercely guarding the integrity of the feminine principle in our round table landscape.
Our Group on Wimble Toot
This morning, our group formed a circle on Wimble Toot, the ancient round barrow on the nipple of the Goddess’s breast, and we offered up our prayers and deepest longings to her. The Toot is difficult to access and we entered via a well-hidden path, the main track being blocked off from the road by a landowner clearly respectful of her modesty!
As we walked slowly around her pregnant belly and upper body, I was aware of the slowness and deliberacy of the cyclical transition, but also of the urgency and rightness of this time. The seasonal turning of the year became a symbol for the paradigm shift of consciousness that must once again draw upon the power of the Goddess if it is to have any hope of uniting the jagged shards of our fragmented world.
Virgo carries the energy of ritual precision, respect and careful discrimination. She connects us to the magic that exists in the fine detail of life, and through the honouring the harvest ritual, we are offered a key to the timeless eternity of the present moment, so uniting with her opposite sign Pisces, as we transcend the boundaries of ego and lose ourselves in service to a greater oneness. She reminds us that we must attune ourselves to the land, and pay our token of respect to that which feeds and nurtures us. And she reminds us to embrace that which lies beyond the pale in ourselves and to welcome it.
As ever I am indebted to Anthony Thorley for his insight and dedication to the Zodiac. You can join us both on our next Alchemical journey weekend, which is Libra: The Alchemy of Relationship. It takes place in Glastonbury & Barton St David on 9th / 10th October. All are welcome. See our website: www.thealchemicaljourney.co.uk for details. You can also contact me for astrological consultations on 01458 446486.