The Moon aligns with the Sun in 4° of Virgo on Saturday, August 27th at 3:17 a.m. CST. This new moon invites us to embrace simplicity and get back to the basics of our self-care routines. Small, consistent changes lead to powerful transformations.
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
Martin Luther King Jr
We are initiated into a practice of spiritual discernment. We connect with what is essential. Are we living in a way that affirms our values? Is our daily routine supporting our joy, health, and well-being? Are we giving to everyone else but neglecting to fill our cup? This is a critical time to discern the systems and structures we need to establish to nourish and support us in our day-to-day lives. We create new, practical routines that support us on a holistic level and we release what isn’t useful.
Virgo as an Archetype
The Virgo archetype represents the pursuit of purity and perfection through rational analysis and pragmatic integration. Their approach to service, thought, and action prioritizes effectiveness, efficiency, and accuracy. Virgo teaches us discernment so that we can heighten our perception.
Virgo as an archetype excels as a holistic systems technician. This means that they thrive when working in a system, holistically integrating knowledge and creating a sense of order. As an earth-based mutable sign, they bring consciousness into physical form and have the innate ability to assess how this consciousness is working in relation to its physical experience while lasering in on ways to improve and increase functionality. They are concerned with what is useful and necessary.
Virgo energy symbolizes sacred ritual, health, and body wisdom. They are reliable and selfless, captivated by the details of life’s process to refine, perfect, and bring into alignment. Virgo offers practical tools and strategies that foster healing. In its highest expression, Virgo is the vibration of channeling the sacred and offering it up as unconditional love through our mundane acts of service. Where we have Virgo in our chart offers an opportunity to learn about being of service and what it can mean to optimize our efforts to improve our daily routines and refine our craft.
Virgo and its planetary rulers Mercury and Chiron signify the study of practical knowledge to acquire and hone talents and healing capacities. Virgo is the sign that represents apprenticeship, training, and natural healing methods such as massage and herbalism. They thrive with earth-based rituals, tools, and medicines.
“The best way to find yourself is to loose yourself in the service of others.”
Mahatma Gandhi
This new moon cycle is, therefore, ample time to start new projects that require careful attention to detail, creating order, and finding pleasure in details and accomplishments. Virgo is an incredible healer but you can’t offer your medicine to the collective if you don’t have order in your world. This is a necessary time to bring a critical eye to where things are out of alignment and what strategies you need to have available to show up to perform the sacred devotional work that you are meant to offer in this life.
Working With The Critic Archetype
It is a cultural norm to think that criticism will motivate people to change their behavior. This is the lens of a shame-based society. This idea emerged from a culture that was unaware of their own shame and continued to transfer it by criticizing, projecting, and guilt-tripping others. Although there are many models like this in our current world, the truth is shame really isn’t a healthy or positive motivator. It may push us to take action initially, but when we are motivated by shame to make the change, we end up in a shame spiral, re-creating our unconscious patterns all over again. Doing this affirms the shame and fears that we were attempting to cover up—that we are not worthy, whole, and lovable as we are. Our inner critic develops from painful childhood experiences wherein we witnessed or experienced hurtful attitudes toward ourselves or others close to us.
To work with Virgo energy in a healthy way, we must understand and accept our inner critic. Virgo is meant to engage in a discernment process that can detach to assess the situation at hand and look at the structure and patterns clearly. It can laser in on what isn’t working and create the tools and strategies to improve and perfect. Through this internal reflection, we learn where to focus, mature, and develop. If this energy is not balanced, it can project criticism outwardly as an attempt to control or inwardly in self talk that is violent.
“Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.”
Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
This new moon we are asked to look at the part of ourselves that expresses criticism, frustration, or disapproval in order to get our needs met, maintain a sense of control, and operate from conditioning. Through awareness we can embrace what the critic is meant to do and allow it to support us in developing as spiritually mature adults, perfecting our skills and honoring our craft. To accept or embrace this part of ourselves, it is essential to understand that we are already whole and complete, and we don’t lose value through our preceived mistakes. In fact, there isn’t even such a thing as mistakes in the way most view it in our perfectionist-based culture. Our life is all part of our soul’s growth and path of development to create, assess, and refine. We are meant to express our creative essence and access and refine our skills. It is a lifelong practice of development and learning and requires us to risk getting creatively experimental and trying new things. We trust the process over perfection. Refinement becomes a pathway for more of the Divine to flow through you. Once we can embrace our own wholeness, we no longer need to strive for perfection, seek approval, or project our insecurities (or inner control freak) onto others. We just show up for our sacred work and continue to take steps.
Honoring the Sacred
Virgo energy is dedicated to service and caring for others. In order to be able to show up for others and our path of service we must take good care of ourselves. We have nothing to give if our own well is empty. This new moon in Virgo reminds us that we are the vessel to wish the Divine works through and that means our body and our well-being must be regarded as sacred. When we truly show up in a way that fully knows and honors our value we open ourselves as a channel for higher service capabilities. The divine meets us where we are, and if we recognize and care for ourselves as sacred vessels ready to fully serve, the divine meets us tenfold.
Virgo energy teaches us about the power of sacred ceremony and devotion. Virgo is the archetype that is associated with Karma Yoga. This is a practice of devotion and service in action. This involves moving off the mat and into the real world. It includes humbling your ego, serving your community, and becoming a part of something bigger than yourself. As the Divine is in everything and everyone there is true magic in the mundane when we meet it in the present. Virgo finds the sacred in simplicity. Through the process of stripping away what is not useful, we can focus whole heartedly on the substance that remains.
We Protect What We Wish to Nourish
What makes this lunation unique is that it has just one aspect and that is a strong square to Mars in Gemini. This signifies directing our focus on that which we wish to nourish and to protect as our new moon intentions blossom. We tend to our intentions as warriors would and fiercely protect the new budding growth while having the courage to initiate needed changes in our life. With this aspect, we balance frustration and curiosity. Squares wake us up to an unconscious part of ourselves.
This week Uranus entered its retrograde phase. Uranus brings divine insight, unexpected events, sudden changes. We may feel restless and frustrated with where we think changes are needed. We may feel sudden clarity arrive and see a more complete picture, or we may get a needed reality check of where we need to cultivate courage to advocate for ourselves.
Both the new moon in Virgo and Mars in Gemini are ruled by the planet Mercury. The way in which they connect and communicate Mercury energy is very different. Mars in Gemini initiates ideas, spreads information, and adapts easily to changes. Mars champions the action necessary for us to thrive. The moon in Virgo is reflective and discriminating. It is meant to go within and assess where we are at so that we can clarify where to focus our attention next to grow. This aspect of Mars and the moon in this new moon chart asks us to start to notice when our mind distracts us from our practice of discernment. We need to bring awareness to both parts of these very different expressions of Mercury. Mars in Gemini is curious and wants to follow the thread to the new learning but the new moon in Virgo asks us to practice discernment and really hone in our focus on what matters most. The moon in Virgo invites us to create balance where we overthink and overanalyze so we can show up for service with trust and devotion, connected to our humanness and in our wholeness.
“The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.”
Caroline Myss
This combination may bring a critical tone, impulsive reaction, and an intense energy to how we communicate. It also offers a gift to be flexible, see both points of view, embrace new learning, and pivot with needed change as the old society restructures and evolves. As Mars is in the sign of Gemini for an unusually long period of time due to its retrograde cycle, we will be working with the themes that arise now for the next seven months.
Mars is also in harmony with Mercury in this new moon chart. Mercury is setting up for its retrograde phase in Libra and will also begin to show us our retrograde themes that are activating and awakening for the next several weeks.
New moon cycles typically activate an 18-month period of growth from the seed that we plant to full manifestation. This new moon marks the beginning of a cycle that will continue all the way until the 24th of February 2024. This is an important time to advocate and protect what we wish to nourish for the next 18-months. We may see clearly where we genuinely need to refine and grow in order to offer our sacred work. This new moon asks us to look through the lens of spiritual discernment and cultivate the courage to rise up and answer the call from the Virgo area of our life. The energy we devote to our self care and next steps of development will be growing from now until the full moon in Virgo in February 2024. It is through the details and day-to-day action steps that we’ll grow to a new level of healing medicine and abilities.
The Invitation
This new moon is a call to bring order to our life and tend to our well-being. We are invited to commit to the small steps that reflect and affirm our true value for ourselves. We tend to our nervous system and honor our body as a sacred vessel that should be cherished and cared for as it supports our sacred work. We gather the tools and strategies to support our healing. We practice a lifestyle of embracing reverence and witnessing the sacred in our daily life. When we bring ceremonial reverence into the present moment, we have greater access to the inspiration around us. This new moon reminds us to bring presence and devotion to what we are doing and make it holy.