New Moon in Virgo: A fish out of water
Over the past couple of weeks, I have found myself in deep contemplation about the concept of being a fish out of water. Which, to be transparent, is largely how I have felt over the past year. I have unexpectedly been in the Chicago area for the past fifteen months, when I had planned on four. Most of my life remains in storage in Sedona.
I am in a lovely area, in a home I inherited, surrounded by both nature and convenience. Yet, it often has felt like I can not find my footing. Though I grew up in the Midwest, culturally, it is a vastly different world from the place I have called home for half of my life.
I have been a fish out of water.
Water is home to a fish. It’s where it moves freely and can breathe deeply. To thrive, water is where it belongs.
Whenever we are going through great change, a move, a new career, the end of a marriage, the death of a loved one, or even the birth of a child, we are, in essence, like that fish out of water learning how to find a new way to move through the world. This can involve something as outwardly dramatic as a physical move, or the equally internally dramatic shift into a new identity. It takes us a while to come to ground.
We are at the end of Leo season and quickly moving towards the threshold of Virgo season (the official entrance is on Friday at 4:33 pm EDT/1:33 PM PDT), and a little more than nine hours after we shift, a New Moon takes place right at the beginning of the sign. Virgo season has two New Moons this year, giving it extra emphasis. The second, on September 21, is also a solar eclipse at the very last degree of Virgo, bookending the season.
Virgo is a sign that is driven to bring order out of chaos; in other words, it is always trying to figure out where things and people belong. To do this, it needs to take the time to digest and process so it can integrate what has passed. Something that, in the Western mindset, with technology moving ever more quickly and our expectations mirroring that, we often struggle with. As Carrie Fisher said in Postcards From the Edge, “instant gratification isn’t fast enough” for many of us, at least mentally. We can feel the change, yet can’t see what’s on the other side of that bend in the road, and we find that uncomfortable, almost intolerable.
This is where we have to trust the process (Virgo) of the new life we are gestating by staying grounded in the knowledge that there is a time and season for everything. We must trust the past of the cycle that we are in at this moment.
In many African cultures, according to John Mbiti, author of African Religions and Philosophy, time flows backward rather than forward. It is two-dimensional. There is Sosa, which is comprised of the now, the recent past, and the immediate future, which can be experienced, and Zamina, the vast, endless past, where all events go to live forever. The future as an abstract, infinite horizon barely exists in the African psyche. Time is intimately connected to events such as the rhythmic cycle of seasons, ceremonies, or something as simple as a conversation. In these particular cultures, these moments actually produce time. In other words, time must be experienced to be real. According to Mbiti, this is why many African languages don’t even have a way to describe the distant future. There is a profound attunement to the cycles of life. For example, the length of a year is based upon when a wet or dry season ends, versus a calendar. So it might be 365 days…or it might last 390. For them, time itself is a process of creation, versus the Western view of time as a commodity that can be saved, wasted, or even lost.
This is the energy of Virgo: being in the moment, as part of a larger cycle we are within. Right here, right now is where we create. To trust the moment is to receive the moment, and this gives us the power to create with it because trust engenders connection. Trust is receptive, open.
The power of Virgo lies in its ability to pay attention to the details. It’s not looking at the forest; its attention is focused on becoming intimate with the tree through noticing the minutiae it discovers its essence. It understands that life is a continuous process of change and transformation. It’s when Virgo loses its attention to cycles, worrying about the future or the past, that it gets thrown off course.
Virgo season takes place during the time of the harvest, when we separate the chaff from the grain, keeping what nourishes us and discarding what doesn’t. During this New Moon ( August 23 at 2:06 am EDT/August 22 at 11:06 PM PDT), if there is a place you have been struggling or can’t seem to find your footing, ask yourself, “ Where does this belong in my life?” Or perhaps, “What cycle am I currently in?” Are you grieving, or gestating something new? (Winter) Are you actually in the birth process? (Spring). Are you tending to the growth of something? (Summer) Are you near harvest? (Fall)
This double New Moon’d Virgo season offers a profound opportunity, a month of process work, to bring ourselves back to ground, to allow ourselves to be nourished by the soil of our being and and prepare to more fully reorient at the next New Moon eclipse that takes place on the cusp of the solstice.
