In Christian mythology, Virgo represents Mary, the cosmic woman who gestates and gives birth to the Christ. The Christ is the unifying principle or value system (not specifically Jesus or his many mythological prototypes) that guides us to sanity. Christ means anointed one, or king. The “second coming” would be people taking up authority for themselves, in essence making the choice to rule their own lives.
We do indeed live in the time without a king, which typically represents a time of spiritual and intellectual chaos. Yet we also live in times when an internal guiding principle is difficult to identify as a phenomenon we can share. It will be the role of Saturn in Virgo to help bring that out, though Saturn often represents a power struggle as one form of authority (dogmatic, external, governmental) is let go of, and another form (inner authority) is embraced.
Saturn often represents a struggle because typically, we refuse to take sufficient authority in our own lives to master this energy. As I write, I keep resisting describing some of my recent experiences outside Gage Residence Hall here in New Paltz—one of the dioxin-contaminated dorms. But this time I will yield. Whenever I’m out there, most recently taking photos and then earlier this week doing an interview for public television, I take time to talk to students who live there. Most of them are women, so I focus the discussion on reproductive issues, such as toxins passed on to their future children, and more immediate concerns like endometriosis.
Most people simply do not care. So what, exactly, is there to reach to within someone in order to have a real conversation about what matters—such as health, the environment, relationships, or sex? It is not really possible to convince someone to care about themselves; that would be the starting point, rather than the endpoint. What you would be conversing with at minimum is someone’s ability to take charge of their life in some small but significant way. We who don’t live in Gage Hall face similar situations with many personal and global issues at this time, and Saturn in Virgo represents the squeeze.
How much pressure will it take to manifest our actual intelligence and make actual decisions? What will it take to get us to look at the data and assess it meaningfully?
Saturn is generally considered the lord of time; things involving Saturn typically take time, and we are warned to be patient. But Saturn making a move also brings immediate changes, and can represent a change of mind or of outer circumstances. When we add a solar eclipse to this (about a week after the ingress), we have the image of things moving quickly before they slow down. We have the image of a confrontation with truth, both inner and outer.
Saturn transits: conjunctions to outer planets
Between 1956 and 1972, Pluto was in Virgo. Between late 1961 and 1969, Uranus was in Virgo. Between 1960 and early 1969, Chiron was in Pisces. (These dates do NOT factor for retrogrades into the prior or succeeding sign, so if you are born at one of the far ends of the transit, please check an ephemeris.)
On October 9, 1965; April 4, 1966; and June 20, 1966, Uranus and Pluto were exactly conjunct in Pluto, representing the peak of both planets’ transit in Virgo. This was the astrology of revolution, evolution, and liberation that we experienced in the 1960s, which is typical of any era when Uranus and Pluto get together.
Over the next 30 months or so, Saturn in Virgo will make aspects to Uranus, Pluto, and the conjunction points in many millions of natal charts, as well as making oppositions to everyone who has natal Chiron in Pisces. In other words, all the hottest 1960s astrology is about to be set off by Saturn in Virgo—including Saturn itself, which opposed Pluto during this era (for a prototype chart showing the whole configuration, look at April 23, 1965, at 2:56pm EDT—the chart is linked from the online edition of this article).
To me, the Uranus-Pluto configuration represents a massive well of untapped energy, innovation, creativity, and intelligence. Many keep wondering what it will take to wake up this generation, most of which thinks it’s trapped in a cubicle and mortgage. The “service” aspect of Virgo and Pisces is so strong that it often entirely overshadows the innovative aspect.
It may be that the generation of Pluto in Virgo might wind up being the “good Nazis” of our era: people who are loyal to a fault, but don’t ask what, exactly, they are loyal to. It is often enough to be “a good person inside a bad system” or the supposed reformer from within. But I don’t think that is enough. We were taught by our predecessors that living under the conditions of the Great Depression was intolerable; we were taught by the next generation that we must take care of ourselves at all costs; we have learned, as a result, that the “best” way to live is to take up our places as cogs in the machine, but only nominally asking just what that machine is for.
