The Ceremony of the Everyday

Full moon at 5° of Virgo

Art by @peathefairy, who teaches creatives how to relax into their work.

In the first hours of Saturday, February 24th—4:30am PT to be exact—the full moon peaks at 5° of Virgo. Virgo needs us to be exact, if we can be. Virgo is the high priestess of details and precisely organized systems. She reconciles accounts, cleans up messes, heals ruins, and makes things whole. Guided by Mercury, she calms and clears and orders our minds first, then keenly perceives the world through that mind, constructively criticizing it, sensing precisely where there is imbalance or disorder and what might be needed to set things right. Then she rolls up her sleeves. While all of this might seem mundane—and it is—it’s also the destination of all spiritual paths. Enlightenment means nothing if we can’t apply it. Chop wood, carry water, sing while you do the dishes. Know the gift of being alive while you are alive, and give back gratefully. Meet the chaotic, destructive energy of the world with compassion and firm boundaries; warmly warn it to fucking stop. Meet the chaotic, destructive energy inside of you with compassion and firm boundaries; warmly warn it to fucking stop. Sternly invite this energy to heal.

Wherever Virgo influences your chart, it’s trying to get you to “accept the mission” of your life, to agree to take on your Great Work, joyfully, so you can experience the paradoxical liberation of conscious bondage. Sometimes this mission is something we receive, like a knowledge handed down to us. Sometime this is something we have to create, whole cloth. Sometimes this mission evolves, or our understanding of it evolves. But staying connected to it is how we stop getting drained and weighed down by the details; it buoys us. This is one of Virgo’s secret teachings. When we are plugged into a mission or meaning, we remember that we are already on our path, and everything is on that path; it’s not actually possible to leave the path. Taking out the trash is on the path! This job I need to pay my bills is on the path! If we are still searching for that purpose—or are in the process of making it—that’s ok. We can still practice this Virgo integration magic by simply remembering and cherishing our peak experiences and epiphanies, and intentionally weaving some of that perspective and hope and love into our everyday.

This full moon is arriving, as all full moons do, in the midst of the season of its opposite sign; in this case, Pisces. Everything I just wrote about, Pisces is not only not that, it’s actively undoing all of that. Pisces is the most chaotic, go-with-the-flow of all the Zodiac archetypes. (What’s a path??) It’s job is to melt what’s stuck and frozen, to finish dissolving old identities and forms and structures, to open us up and destabilize us and prepare the way for the big changes of spring. It often does this by flooding us with feelings. We entered Pisces season on Sunday the 18th, so if this week has been surprisingly different for you, emotional in strange ways and not great, hang tight. A Virgo full moon would normally bring a welcome moment of groundedness to Pisces season, and I would like to tell us that’s what’s coming. But this year, Virgo’s ruler Mercury will enter Pisces the day before the full moon. It’s making these two signs are extra entangled right now, each trying to do things that don’t come as naturally, things the other is good at. If you normally love Virgo’s steadying presence in your life, you might be missing it for a minute. If you normally love Pisces easy, liberating, radicalizing presence in your life, you might be missing that too.

I am trusting all of this is leading to some illumination—the full moon’s job—of something that’s been hard to see. Some way these two sides of us can better integrate. Something that might help us navigate our next season/(re)incarnation. The Sabian symbol for 5° of Virgo is something like “a man dreaming of fairies” or “a person becoming aware of nature spirits and opening to more subtle layers of reality,” which just further affirms this tangling of Virgo and Pisces right now. If Pisces is pure imagination, pure dream stuff, the spiritual realm behind all reality, Virgo is the mind perceiving that dream, giving it tangible form and structure by telling its story. This symbol says to me that some information will be arriving, the kind that arrives in dreams, on walks through the forest, while showering—while our analytical mind is at rest. On this full moon, on Saturn’s day, if at all possible, create some good conditions for that to happen. Practice your spiritual practices, whatever they are. Follow any Virgo impulses to organize and clean and restore, but be flowy and relaxed and Piscean about it; put on some pretty ambient music. Consider making time for whatever kind of meditation works for you. Do a little ritualing. Stay open through out the day and the days that follow for a notion arriving, one of how to hold your life and your work more joyfully, more lightly, allowing for the possibility that all is unfolding exactly as it should.

Still from an animation of many joyfully dancing/moving parts by Kelli Anderson.

Ritual & Writing Prompts

(Disclaimer: Prompts are suggestions, not instructions. Play with what inspires you, ignore what’s doesn’t. Adapt in any way you see fit.)