In five short days, a collaborative project I’ve been working on for over a year now will launch on Kickstarter- The Universe Within Zodiac Oracle Deck, Guide, and Journal. Illustrated and designed by yours truly, with writings, affirmations, and journal questions by “Magic Kathi,” Katherina Hillenberg.
To read all about the project as a whole, see the preview, and get updates, check out the Kickstarter preview video (and mark your calendars for launch day next Monday!) here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lusicovicreative/1482102860?ref=2o3aew&token=e9030f1c
Because we are releasing this project on the full moon in Virgo next Monday, and because a journal is inherently aligned with “Virgo vibes,” and because we are currently in Virgo season, and because it happens to be my sun sign, I am going to do a blog series where I tell the behind the scenes stories of the creation of each of the signs in this Zodiac deck; and I am going to start with Virgo.
A quick side note to those in my audience who are not familiar with Astrology or the Tarot. #1- If you are interested in learning more about Astrology, then this blog series and this Deck and Journal are definitely for you! Read on! And be sure to support the Kickstarter next Monday when it launches! #2- Tarot and Astrology are similar in that they both deal in universal archetypes and both can be great tools (along with other ancient myths) for better understanding our own psychology. The Tarot and the Zodiacal archetypes are all tapping into the collective unconscious, as Joseph Campbell called it. They are ways to examine different energies and elements of life. Everyone has had a tower moment- where everything is crumbling in order to make way for the new. Everyone knows the feeling of being swept up in the passion of new love- represented by the lovers card. Everyone has a physical body and material goods, cutting mental clarity and moments of clouded mental confusion, flowing emotions, and the fiery ambition of career or other projects. These are the elements of life personified in the Zodiac and in the Tarot -represented by earth (material), air (mental), fire (creative), and water (emotional)- and as this book and deck explore, these energies and archetypes impact each of us at different times in life in different ways. These energies and their impacts are real, and often the Tarot and Oracle cards can be useful not in a prophetic way, but in a psychological one. More important than the card that is drawn is one’s own psychological reaction to the card drawn, especially in conjunction with the question posed in the first place. Very often, if we can just slow down and be curious enough, we actually know the answer to our own questions, we just have to actually notice how we think and feel in response. The tarot and other oracle decks like this one are a tool to help us pay attention to our own psychology. Now, on to our examination of the Virgo archetype!
“Virgo, the Virgin,” oh how I cringed each time my zodiac sign came up over the years. Virgo the perfectionist, Virgo the organized one, Virgo the planner.
True, Virgo is ruled by Mercury, a planet which is strangely exalted only in its own sign, and Mercury is all about messages and the mind- so it does make sense for Virgos to be, let’s face it, a bit neurotic.
But the characteristics and descriptions of Virgo never at all felt authentic to my personality. In fact, I think in hindsight what always bugged me was that while I may have indeed come across as a pure perfectionist goody two shoes, and while that does match the description of Virgo, it did not match how I actually felt, and what I resented was my own inauthentic projection to the world.
I did not want to be identified with Virgo because my outer projection was in fact quite similar to Virgo, but that was what I didn’t like- the fact that my projection did not match my inner experience. Not to mention I simply didn’t see how someone as creative and frankly chaotic as myself could ever be described as “organized” or “thoroughly well planned.” That doesn’t jive at all with my own experience of creative chaos, flying by the seat of my pants, and making it all up as I go.
Two pieces of context were missing. Well, maybe three.
Kay and I on the trip to Savannah, GA in which she pointed out that I definitely AM a Virgo.
Firstly, my best friend, another Virgo, pointed out to me when I brought up this discrepancy that sure, I was creative and chaotic, but I was also constantly striving to control the chaos. I was designing a journal specifically to organize my creativity and other life chaos, for Pete’s sake. (The Starlight Journal) Whereas someone truly chaotic wouldn’t bother ever trying to control, contain, or analyze any of it. So it turns out that despite my own annoyance with it, the stereotypical Virgo characteristics do in fact fit at least parts of my personality, and I have just had to come to terms with that.
Secondly, the broader context of my birth chart reveals the true key to my emotional experience being at odds with this Virgo description, but I’ll save that in depth analysis for the Scorpio blog post.
Thirdly, again in broader context, it turns out that the stereotypical Virgo characteristics have become somewhat distorted over time. The word “Virgin” in fact simply meant “young woman” in its ancient original context. Relatively innocent and pure, yes, but not in a way that forbid her from ever engaging in sacred acts of creation, including but not limited to actual sex. Somehow over time we have forgotten that the Virgin Mary is celebrated because she is a mother, because she trusted the divine plan and allowed creation to flow through her without needing to understand it all up front. These are all deeply tied to the sacred feminine. And yet somehow in the modern world we have divorced motherhood and all of sacred creation from the messiness required to get us there. The Virgin Mary is celebrated not so much for her actual motherhood -the creation of new divine life- but for being pure, virginal, and thus never sullying herself with the “dirty sinful messiness of sex.”
As the saying goes, “creativity is messy, and I am very creative.” And yes, painting is often messy. Pottery is literally dirty work. Sex is messy, emotions are messy, frankly pregnancy and childbirth and nursing and child raising are allllllll very very messy, dirty, and downright gross. They’re inherently unpredictable. That’s the price we pay for literal creation.
The fertility and abundance celebrated at the harvest, the season in which Virgo reigns in the sky, are the very prerequisites for the creation of new life, which requires in fact the same messy, inspired, passionate energy with which we also create paintings and dance and novels and pottery. It’s all messy, and it’s all sacred. It’s all transcendent, and precious, and (when done with the proper intentions of love rather than hedonism) that messy transcendental preciousness is why it is sacred. The messiness and the transcendentalism is also why it is feminine- because in order to experience it fully and in a pure and sacred way, we must surrender to the experience and to the divine.
This is equally true in inspired painting or writing, in sex, in childbirth, and in mothering. The truth is, try as we might to analyze and organize and control, we cannot. And that is the beauty and sacredness of it.
(Although speaking of messes, have you noticed how usually in order to organize anything you have to make a bigger mess of it all first. That might be god chuckling at us Virgos.)
In the Tarot, Virgo is associated with the card The Hermit. This archetype I find actually bridges the gap between the ancient and modern stereotypes about Virgos. While the modern idea retains only the masculine aspects associated with Mercury and the mind, and the ancient traditions associate Virgo with the feminine elements of the harvest, the abundant and fertile earth, and the goddess Deméter, and thus ancient Virgo embodies creation in general (Virgo is an Earth sign, after all), the Hermit manages somehow to incorporate both.
The Hermit card, you see, is about knowledge and learning, yes, the mental pursuits of the mind. But more deeply it is about wisdom- specifically the wisdom found within. It is about the journey and discovery that occurs when you retreat from the busy-ness and noise of the world, and venture within to hear the whispered wisdom of your soul. It is the archetype and illustration of gnosis if ever there was one. It is usually (if not always) depicted holding a lantern- at once the flame of light which illuminates, enlightens, teaches, and the sacred flame of inspiration or messages from the divine. (See, Mercury does belong here, just not how we typically think.)
For is it not usually when we are quiet, introspective, and curious enough to hear our own soul that divinity whispers to us inspired words of wisdom or creation? It is not a coincidence that the Muses of Greece and the Holy Spirit of Christianity are both said to speak to us at various times, inspiring great passions and innovations, and illuminating great wisdom both.
The Hermit, and also the true Virgo archetype, is the archetype of the keeper of the sacred flame of embodied creation (motherhood and fertility) and of inspiration- of the messages and wisdom (Mercury) found within our own souls. It is this sacred feminine archetype (the trusting receiver and care taker of divine and thus sacred creation and inspiration) that I have depicted in the Universe Within’s Virgo card.
The Virgo Illustration from The Universe Within Zodiac Oracle
Surrounded by an abundance of flowers and vines of the Earth, and holding an apple, this Virgo is modeled after a neoclassical painting of Eve, the first mother who walked with God in the abundant garden, and was cast out for daring to follow her curiosity, seek knowledge and wisdom on her own, or even become aware of her own body. For indeed, speaking in terms of evolutionary biology, it was apples and snakes which caused our brains to evolve to be able to spot them, and it was this cranial development which caused the painful childbirth which God predicted would befall Eve. But this consequence, as it seems to me- not a punishment but a natural consequence- is simply the price we pay for creation.
The messiness is always the price we pay for creation. And the pain and mess of it all should never take away from the sacred transcendental awe due to Eve and every mother for their act of creating new life. Truly, women are goddesses of creation. Ask anyone who has ever witnessed it, no matter how messy.
Reference images for the Virgo Illustration. From L to R: The Taste, by Hans Zatzka, Kay holding her house keys on move in day, and Kay smiling holding her first published book.
To represent the Hermit and the true sacred feminine (holder of the flame of divine creation) nature of this archetype, my Virgo maiden is holding not a lantern, but a star.
Stars are the best metaphor for divinity- the sacred, the inspiring, the deities, and the literal flames- that we humans have throughout history. We have mythologized the deities as stars and denizens of the sky in stories both ancient and new, just as we have wished on stars, a prayer to divinity in another form. Thus this depiction of the Virgo archetype has caught a falling star- she is literally a goddess, holding both divinity and embodied knowledge in her hands.
Finally, on a personal note, the face of the Universe Within’s Virgo card is modeled after the face of my best friend Kay, my personal favorite Virgo, and one of the best channels for the flow of divine inspiration and creativity that I know.
Kay adjusting her crown at our Summer Solstice picnic a few years back, looking like the abundant, creative, badass goddess that she is.
So here’s to Virgo season and all it’s many abundances.
May you have an abundance of health, of cheer, of good food and drink, and may you have an abundance of wisdom and divine inspiration as well.
If you need a helpful tool for that last one, be sure to check out this deck and journal when it launches next week! 💫