Sun in Virgo / Eclipse Effects Begin

A mirage sunrise over Lake Superior

(photo credit: Tom Ruen, July 2002)

Believe it or not, everything that we have been going through and seeing around us in the world is something of a prelude (or prequel, if you prefer).

To what?

To understanding what it’s all about, which at some level and at some point isn’t about ‘them’ or ‘that’ or whatever. It’s about us. It’s about how willing we are to grapple with what’s wrong - not with life, but with how we’re responding to life. How we’re treating ourselves through whatever we choose to do with our days, our life, to this world and (so we think) to others. All the fighting, all the despair and disregard, all the name calling and ill will, all the shameful neglect for our own standards with regards to anything or anyone who would dare disagree with us...

Metaphysically, none of that is about anyone but us.

Yes, it’s you and me and everybody else, individually going about stirring up our own karma. There is an argument to be made here that things have gotten so bad that there is some underlying knowledge that we need to do some purging of the malicious sort of toxin which has been eating away at our world.

It’s just that very (very) few of us are yet at the point where we realize that the ‘bad’ out there is what we apparently need.

Need? Who needs grief?

Evidently we do.

Why?

Simple: because we’re human, and humans generally don’t learn all that much through the good times. We would like to think that we do, but then there are all those expressions like ‘the burned hand teaches best’ (and a thousand others) which admit what we know deep down in our gut: we learn best through pain. That which carries too high a price, we tend not to repeat - just as that which we keep doing over and over again must have some benefit.

Think about that for a while and then think through what’s going on in our world. Humans don’t seem to be in the habit of ‘committing’ peace.’

But why would that be?

Astrologically - which is to say metaphysically - the reason we would be looking for here is described by Scorpio, the sign which wherever it manifests is always about the feelings we are confronted with through our experience of others or emotionality connected with some process, choice or situation.

When it comes to anything Scorpio, we like to feel not that we can win but that we’re going to win - a quality which tends to manifest in Scorpio’s intensity of drive and personal focus. But let’s be real here... as convinced as we might want to be, the reality is that if there’s a question of winning, there’s also a possibility of losing.

There are three water signs: Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. With Cancer there’s always a candy coating of innocence. So Cancerian mistakes, as flinch-worthy as they may be are generally of the ‘fool me once, shame on you’ type.

But with Scorpio there’s a knowing - at least an emotional knowing. Plus Scorpio is a sign which belongs to the public and interactive quadrant - as opposed to Cancer, which is personal and mostly hidden from the greater world at large. This marks the Scorpio mistake as the one which isn’t just annoying, but possibly embarrassing...even humiliating.

And when people are threatened with humiliation, most don’t take it very well...hence Scorpio’s reputation for manipulation, vengeance and badgering, browbeating and other forms of waiting out a ‘foe’ - which is the point here: in representing where we intersect with others, as part of its polarity to Taurus (sign of personal security) Scorpio also represents how we defend our internal Self...or whether we need to.

This becomes important now as the Sun reaches 0 Virgo on August 23rd (at 4:45 in the morning UT/+0 time) simply because 0 Virgo is in perfect sextile to 0 Scorpio, and 0 Scorpio is the degree of this October’s solar eclipse, a solar eclipse which will occur on October 23rd (UT/+0).

In other words, with the Sun moving into Virgo (which obviously begins with 0 Virgo), this is also the moment when a celestial timer goes off as we enter the two-month ‘breaking down’ period which precedes any given solar eclipse. This ‘breaking down’ process has to do with us - the breaking down of our resistance to things, whether that amounts to something we need to know (and/or accept) about our Self, or something we need to understand about life, our world, or something going on in that world.

As Mercury moved into Virgo last week on the 15th we started thinking about things. Now, as the Sun moves into Virgo, the ‘thinking’ as something apart from real time efforts fades or even vanishes - a quality often seen when Sun and Mercury are in the same sign. Mercury alone is the thought...Mercury plus Sun becomes the theme.

With Mars in the 3rd sign to Virgo (Scorpio) throughout most of the Sun’s transit of Virgo we can expect to see efforts, denials and threats over the next few weeks, all of which are diversions of sort considering there are things coming to the surface in everyone’s life which are too real to ignore even if dealing with them is difficult at best. Eliminating things (and people) is sometimes necessary and yet often simply the easy way out - one which we are likely to find cuts us short in the process.

This year’s annual Sun in Virgo is likely to have  financial implications. Such matters do not have to be negative, but they should be taken into account. That this Sun/Eclipse positioning forms both a one/eleven...

...as well as a one/three...

...harmonic note speaks to communications and responses, acceptance and whatever earnings our successes are due against that tendency we have to segregate, separate, differentiate or unify, whether actively or passively, whether financially, mentally, systemically, societally or through any other means we might think to associate with ‘identity,’ ‘identification,’ ‘individuation’ or ‘ideation.’

...All of which is not only its own little pot of things to stew about (stewing can be nourishing), but also a means by which we will begin to process and either a.) attract, or b.) manifest those situations which represent our individual Scorpio test of personal security.

(Oh joy, oh rapture...)

With the Sun entering Virgo, the eclipse sits in the derivative third sign (1. Virgo, 2. Libra, 3 Scorpio), eliciting everything and anything which has to do with the generic third house...or the individual third house of your natal chart, which we obviously can’t talk about in detail. But we can consider what it means to have an eclipse ‘blacking out’ that which we have thought of as our ‘norm’ or ‘modus operandi’ for however long, tra-la-la.

The third house/sign points to mentality, choice, consideration, information, organization, intelligence, record-keeping, accounting/accounting for, siblings, communication, cars-trains-planes-telephones-computers and whatever else ‘communicates’ us or our ideas to anyone or anywhere else. To have a solar eclipse in this aspect to Virgo speaks to a desire (or) need to let something to... which may mean a real (tangible) something - or it may be our attitude which makes us think getting rid of someone or something will some a problem which in reality is about our personal perspective.

In other words, as the Sun reaches Virgo and as all comes to be as it is at that time and moving forward, something about our (Virgoan) efforts is either eliminated... or comes to be causal in some sort of event or experience wherein life is asking us to not just deny but actually let go of (in reality) something we have long used as methodology, justification, moral position - something.

One slightly unusual quality about this Virgo ingress chart is the fact that as the Sun enters Virgo it  doesn’t actually aspect any other standard planet using standard (Ptolemaic) aspects and standard orbs - a quality which in astrological terms accelerates or multiples the general effect of any placement.  Yes, the Sun is certainly in aspect to fixed (royal) star Regulus at 0 Virgo as it conjuncts it, but this rule only applies to the 'standard planet' list (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto).

As for Regulus, this is the point which gives us royal notice about how in all the things we may think of doing, revenge had best not be not a part of any of it.

No, don't even think about it.

You’re free to do what you want to do about this, of course, but Regulus at any degree promises success only where we are not embodying or utilizing the concept or qualities of revenge (otherwise known as vengeance). At 0 Virgo this speaks to a combining of two rather different influences, one being a burning confidence and the other being the humble servant, suggesting all sorts of ways we may move forward through requiring of ourselves that we lead through earning the respect of all those we would like to have as supporters and/or followers. It not being in the general Virgo play book to do much but drop a hint as to what may be coming at us, this unaspected Virgo Sun may well represent matters or issues in life which we don’t pay much attention to.

It may also represent our not wanting to pay attention to something which doesn’t tickle our fancy.

There is no pre-determined ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ chiseled in stone here. Furthermore, there is just that odd but karmic chance that something highly focal at the moment may be just the thing which the universe has made (in true Scorpio and Scorpio/Virgo style) irresistible so that it will elicit the behavior or choice or realization or victory or complete and utter loss which for some of us will be the 0 Scorpio black rabbit hole we drop rather in slow motion between now and October 23rd, the to-be-hallowed (in short order, no doubt) date of the incoming eclipse.

The March 2006 Solar Eclipse at 8 Aries

(photo credit: Aliparsa, March 2006)

As a side-comment here, if you’re thinking that you should start dreading now and avoid the October solar eclipse rush, there really is no hurry.

Why so?

Well, it’s not like we’re not already on slippery Scorpio ground with ourselves. We can tell that - just look around: wars are raging and death is stalking among us overly openly. Reason has become subject and subjugated to ensnarled passions we haven’t come to grip with yet.

We think we have, of course. But we haven’t. That’s what the next two months are about, with the first part of that process to be lived out under Sun in Virgo.

Oh yes...before I close, the other part of this Scorpio-Virgo relationship - the Virgo-to-Scorpio (one/three) derivation. We can expect a lot of demanding, a lot of manipulation, a deal of denial, much begging (real and otherwise) and a whole host of human beings attempting to manipulate, corner and browbeat others (often through sheer volume or repetition) over the next few weeks.

Be aware: those who fall to such tactics are showing you their vulnerabilities. Treat those issues with kind respect and both sides will win. Take advantage of such chinks in armor and the karma will be yours.

So...do you really want to try that fate on (of your own free will) as we go into the prelude to the last and most primal of all Scorpio solar eclipses?

That would be the question.
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