The Goddess of the Stars/Peaches for Everyone
Musings on the Virgo New Moon and the Venusian symbolism of turning 40
Happy new moon!
I hope today is hitting you with all kinds of beautiful insights. My day has been a little crazy in the best of ways- after taking my daughter to school, I came home and ate some Lion’s Mane “faux crab cakes” that my partner made out of some home-grown lions mane mushrooms. After that delicious treat, I did some qigong over zoom, reflecting on the transition of the yang/fire energy of summer to the yin/metal energy of fall. This combination of the medicinal mushroom and the movement of seasonal qi sent me off to a potently energized yet nebulonic place… a perfect cocktail for writing you this newsletter.
(The nebulonic part kinda took over last night, so you’re receiving this a day after the new moon- my apologies! Good news though- it’s all still relevant, and today Mercury is finally out of retrograde, so.. no more excuses!)
New Moon in Virgo opposite Neptune in Pisces
The moon is new: the sun, at 22 degrees Virgo has met up with the Moon at 22 degrees Virgo. Our messenger planet friend Mercury is also in the Virgo part of the sky. Lucky for us, he’s about to stop his retrograde tomorrow and move forward again, ending a long period of time where either Venus or Mercury retrograde (or both) were encouraging review, reconsideration, release, and slowing down in our lives, our values, and our communications.
This new moon in Virgo plus Mercury stationing direct in the same sign is a green light for initiating a new chapter, harvesting the rich depths that you discovered about yourself and your relationships and your world over the past several weeks. Hooray!
But don’t rev that engine and rush out the gate riiiight away. A new world awaits you this week, where all of the realizations and reflections from this summer’s Venus and Mercury retrogrades can be integrated and acted upon, but I recommend you pause for a moment before jumping right in. This is because this Virgo new moon is opposite Neptune in Pisces: the watery planet of dissolution, dreams, sensitivity, blurred boundaries, and transcendence in her home sign of the fishes.
This is a beautiful aspect to the new moon if we are aware of it, but it could make the detail-oriented Virgo energy feel a bit muddled or confusing if we’re not paying attention. I recommend leaning into a capstone reflection of your biggest dreams, your visions, your creativity, and your art this new moon, and then taking a more analytical approach of what came through for you in the week ahead.
I wrote a lot about this Pisces/Virgo axis on my last post about the full super-moon in 2 weeks ago, so feel free to go back and read that to learn more about the unifying similarities and differences between the Pisces and Virgo energies. (TL:DR: We contain multitudes, and sometimes it can be truly helpful to distinguish, label, and communicate about our multitudinous parts!)
This lunation, the polarity of Earth and Water is again feeling super potent for me right now, and it makes sense why…
I’m a Virgo.
The Sun and Mercury were both in the sign of the harvest goddess when I was born. Being told “You’re a Virgo” was probably the first introduction I ever had to the art of astrology, long ago. How much I’ve identified with that archetype has ebbed and flowed throughout my lifetime, but it’s been a known label, one to embrace or to grapple with. Being called “a Virgo” has been interchangeable, at various times in my mind with: neat, tidy, organized, nit-picky, a good planner, a literal virgin, prude, chaste, smart, attractive, independent, goddess-like, and beyond.
For most of my life, synonyms for Virgo have erred on the side of negative, at least from how I wanted to be perceived. It was sorta nice being called neat and tidy if I could live up to it, but with my notoriously messy room with piles of clothes and CDs and books lying around for most of my childhood, the tidy label didn’t always feel accurate.
As I’ve grown older, my understanding of this archetype is more nuanced. Today, for me, Virgo is aligned with the ability to be discerning for the sake of creating and spreading abundance. Virgo is not only analysis, but also synthesis. Virgo is high standards of quality. Virgo is deep, unwavering care for the systems that create and sustain life. Virgo is creating and improving on systems to feel relaxed enough for sensitive, sensual pleasure.
On the note of sensuality and abundance, I’ve also leaned into the fact that Virgo season is still SUMMER. Despite the fact that the school year begins in August (why, tho???) this season of the Virgin is decadently golden, warm to hot, juicy, and filled with the fruits that have been growing all season. Harvest is a season of plenty, of branches hanging heavy with apples and peaches and apricots.
It’s a transitional, mutable season, evoking that beautiful tingling sensation where the embodied heat of basking in a sunny hammock is met with the first cool breeze of autumn. Virgo, when tuned into herself, is the radiant, confident expression of “I have all I need. My cup is overflowing, and I have no other option but to gift the excesses of this bounty to my tribe, my community, and back to the earth.”
Millions of Peaches, Peaches for Me (and…Everybody!)
I celebrated my 40th birthday last Friday in deep reverence for these themes of Virgo season’s abundance. My honey and I went to Ojo Caliente, a local hot spring, to soak in the gushing waters. I had a standing Zoom meeting that day, my amazing weekly Qigong Practitioners Circle, and so I walked over to a field at the springs in my robe to take the call. It was too hot in the sunshine, and I needed a place to balance my phone, so I found a nice apple tree to practice under. As I moved through the forms, I kept hearing thuds and plunks around me. Ripe apples fell from the branches, creating a rhythmic pattern. I looked around and noticed the heavy, dripping bounty of the apple tree, the crazy amount of apples scattered on the grass around my feet, feeling excess of juicy goodness that I was surrounded by. After the call, I picked up a freshly fallen apple and took a bite, and it felt like the best birthday gift I could imagine.
Later that evening, my family came over for a birthday dinner, and my mom brought an abundance of peaches from my parents’ backyard tree. She had been out of town for the past week, and to her surprise had returned to an entire dining room table full of peaches that my dad had gathered. Everyone at the dinner party got their own bag of peaches as a party gift.
The next day, I went to an all-night dance party that happens annually here in the desert, and a similar abundance of the season surrounded me: the most extensive field of glowing golden sunflowers atop a mesa in the afternoon sun, a generosity of smiles on the dance floor, a consistently maintained pot of chai nourishing us at all hours of the night, and bountiful gifts of fresh pastries and watermelon and rose wine and tea brought out from the vans and tents of party-goers as soon as the sun started to rise.
As I write, I’m looking at another giant platter of fresh peaches that my brother and his wife delivered this morning, saving her mother’s tree’s branches from breaking under all the juicy weight.
This is a season of plenty. And it’s a plenty that can be distributed, disseminated, and shared- in fact, it’s a plenty that has to be shared. If I don’t pass some of these peaches around to other friends or cut them up and put them in a pie or freeze them for a fresh wintertime smoothie for my daughter, they will rot. The discernment that Virgo season requires is truly a deep dive into how to make the most of an abundant season. Analyzing and synthesizing how to make the bounty go furthest, not just for ourselves, but for our communities, and the earth herself.
Virgo is not a matter of black or white, yes or no. The discernment of Virgo season is not binary. It is sensitive, sensual selection of what is best served where. The already- rotting peaches that were left on the ground by the tree did not go to waste- they returned nutrients and moisture to the soil. The peaches that were taken and eaten and given away scattered the seeds so that more peaches may grow, and more smiles may blossom from decadent juice dripping down chins.
Who is this harvest goddess?
I wrote about this a bit in my last post, but I’ll reiterate here that “Virgo” comes from the Latin word for "self-contained" - which I believe is better interpreted as "self-sufficient". The nature of Virgo is a nurturing woman, coming from a place of being able to nourish and provide for others because they can already provide for themselves.
The Virgo myth throughout cultures and time has been linked to the “Great Goddess”, mother to the earth, the Cosmic Egg. She has been a fertility goddess and a harvest goddess, represented by Ishtar (Babylonian), Isis (Egyptian), Ceres (Roman), and Demeter (Greek). The first known incarnation of Virgo was Nidoba, Babylonian grain goddess. Over time, worship of this goddess changed to worship of Nabu, the god of wisdom and justice, so Virgo is associated with both the seasonal harvest and the pursuits of justice. This is seen in the representation of Virgo by the Goddesses Dike and Astraea.
Astraea, the greek Star Maiden, represented all that was good in the world. She was the daughter of the god of dusk and the goddess of dawn, and embodied justice, innocence, purity, and precision. She lived on the earth with humans during the Golden Age, but eventually was sent to the sky by Zeus as the constellation Virgo when she became too overcome with the lawlessness and misery of mankind. Astraea was the last of the Greek immortals to leave Earth, sticking by their side far longer than any of the other immortals. Many believed that her return to earth will usher in a new Golden Age of Man.
Virgo, like Venus, and many other archetypes, has shape-shifted a lot throughout history. Rather than trying to decipher whether Virgo is more accurately “harvest” or “justice” or “virgin”, I love to tap into the richness of the amalgamation of these ancient goddess myths in our collective consciousness to remember an underlying theme: sensitivity is powerful.
Indulge the Virgo: Reflections on turning 40
A few friends asked me how it felt to be turning the big 4-0. I can answer with honesty that it feels… profound. While turning 30 felt like a checkbox of whether I had achieved enough in my life up to that point, turning 40 has felt like being born again.
This is an inexplicable felt sensation, but also an intellectual one. Like the evolution of Virgo, I feel reborn in the sense of truly understanding the truths that sensitivity is powerful, sensuality is powerful, nuance is powerful. After many years of fighting it, I’ve finally learned to listen to the softer parts of myself and to receive more subtle messages from the world around me, rather than only listening to my well-trained brain or the loudest voices in the room.
In this spirit of this wider receptivity, on the day of my solar return I was open to some downloads about the number 40 that felt aligned, magical, and deep, and I wanted to share them with you here.
Let’s start from the beginning of life…
40 weeks is the duration of a human pregnancy, the time from conception to the time of birth, the 3 trimesters in the womb. The photo of me below was taken at exactly 40 weeks since conception of my daughter, and she came into this world the next day.
40 days is the approximate amount of time after giving birth that it takes for the wall of the womb to heal in the place where the placenta had been attached. (When I was pregnant, I became obsessed with the placenta, this new organ that grows to the size of a dinner plate out of nothing in order to sustain the life of the infant in the womb). Many cultures around the world recommend that women who just gave birth to a child should rest and be cared for for these 40 days, although it is more often correlated with tradition than this healing process. In various places, this is called “confinement” or “lying-in”; “La Cuarenta” in Mexico and Zuo Yue Zi (“doing the month”) in China.
40 months is 3.33 years, which has always been a magical number for me. At 40 months, children are in the babbling stage, with a great leap into blossoming imagination, communication, and vocabulary, exploding with possibilities and desire to connect their rich inner worlds with the world around them.
In astrology and astronomy, 40 days is the amount of time that Venus spends in an apparent retrograde motion during each of her 2-year cycles around the sun. Venus transforms from a morning star to an evening star during this time, with the morning star Venus represented by a sexually empowered warrior Queen of Heaven, and the evening star Venus represented by a goddess of love and beauty.
In ancient myth, this 40 day period of Venus retrograde is widely known to be associated with the Sumerian story of Inanna’s descent to the underworld- a story about meeting the dark, shadow side of oneself in order to return more whole.
Astrologer Melanie Reinhart writes:
“Inanna’s descent represents the supreme wisdom of the feminine journey – she goes down to the place of grief, accepting the mourning that inevitably goes with the loss of our illusions about someone, or indeed about ourselves.”
(For more on this, I highly recommend the recent Astrology Podcast episode Inanna, Venus Retrograde, and Barbie!)
The number 40 is highlighted again and again in myth throughout culture and history. In Indian mythology, Buddha fasted and meditated for 40 days and 40 nights before reaching Samadhi. The Christian myth of Jesus’ temptation by Satan into the wilderness for 40 days. (Fun fact: Another name for Venus is Lucifer) The myth of Noah’s flood, caused by 40 days and 40 nights of rain. Moses and the ancient Hebrews wandering in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights. Jesus staying on earth for 40 days and 40 nights after he was crucified.
We just completed the 40 day period of this summer’s Venus retrograde in Leo on September 3rd. Venus retrograde, as we can see from examples of 40 days and 40 nights across the spectrum of human history, has been a codified time of inward reflection on our personal values and our selves. I like to think of that reflection time as an integration process of the two modes of Venus: the warrior and the lover.
Coming into Virgo Season right at the end of Venus retrograde made me think a lot about the nature of the Venus archetype in relationship to the Virgo archetype. As I enter the decade of my 40s, I am feeling messages from both: warrior, lover, virgin, self-sufficient woman, service-provider, mother, helper, creator of life, one with high standards, one who wants to be cared for, one who cares deeply. And I want all of it. And luckily, Neptune in Pisces is here today to remind me: You. Contain. Multitudes.
After looking at all of this powerful numerology and symbolism, I’ve decided that I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t explicitly worship Virgo and Venus going forward in my life. The power of these sensitive and self reflective goddesses over me has been there for a long time, but I didn’t always have a name for it.
For example:
My Secret Venusian Tattoo
Looking back half my life ago, when I was 20 years old, I had an impulse to get a tattoo of a circle, to remind me of the cycles and of our place within the universe as I was moving to the mega-city of Sao Paulo for a year. On a road trip with my college bestie, we took a tour of the Great Kiva at the ruins of the pueblo at current day Aztec, New Mexico, and bonded with our tour guide Jerome, a Jicarilla Apache man whose ancestry could be traced back in the region and who had a deep spiritual connection to the ruins.
I returned to Santa Fe and expanded upon my circle tattoo idea to a representation of this kiva, on the center of my back. I moved to Brazil and everyone asked me “Que significa tatuagem?” - “What does your tattoo mean?”, to which I would say “It’s an ancient building that helps us know our place in the universe” to the best of my ability in my novice Portuguese. That was all I knew how to say, or how to explain it, and something about having that ink on my back made me feel at home in such a foreign place.
Over the years, I didn’t think too much about the ink or the significance, beyond the general knowing that ancient buildings worldwide- from Stonehenge in my ancestral lands to kivas in the lands I grew up on- had a deeper connection to the cosmos than our modern cities do. At times I have felt appropriative and have considered getting it removed, but it has persisted.
This year I randomly reconnected with a high school friend and learned that his father happens to be an archaeologist that has studied these ruins at Aztec. After showing him my tattoo, he let me know that it has recently been determined that the building on my back is nothing other than a Venus Calendar.
Here’s an excerpt from the book “The Venus Calendar Observatory at Aztec New Mexico”, which was published in 2010 - 7 years after I got my tattoo:
Between the 10th and 14th century's AD a grand civilization developed in what are now the 4 corners of the USA, encompassing approximately 10,000 square miles. Many scholars have studied this "Chaco Phenomena" and have ascertained that there was great influence from cultures of the South in what is now Mexico and Guatemala. Parrots, Macaws, cacao certain iconography and burial effects found in the Chaco Domain are consistent with materials mentioned in the Mayan Popol Vuh describing specific attributes of Ahauship (kingship) in Meso-America. These items have been found within the Chaco Domain. Implicit in the above is the use of Meso-American calendrics, which eluded scholars until recently….
The Hubbard tri-wall kiva at Aztec, N.M. through archaeological documentation and new research proves itself to be a Venus calendar. Venus is very important in Indigenous cosmology as it represents Quetzalcoatl / Sacred Plumed Serpent, harbinger of the sun. The knowledge of Venus cycles shows advanced astronomical knowledge at Aztec suggesting that a specialized group of Shaman/Priests did live there, "the day keeper's and diviners" of the later Chaco Domain. The Hubbard Venus Calendar and Chacoan Tzolkin gives us a glimpse of what cosmology future scholars will find embodied in the two unexcavated tri-walls at Aztec on the Animas and else where in the Chaco Domain and Pan America.
Soo… I guess I’m a ‘cosmology future scholar’ of some kind! … hehe. Yes. When Venus calls.
A rose, by any other name…
Venus magic surrounds me. Here’s one more example of how Venus has always had a hold on me, without me really knowing it:
In March 2018, I took a fateful pregnancy test and discovered I was a month into hosting a baby in my body. I took the test on a Friday morning, and my then-husband was out of town with some friends until Sunday evening. I sat with the news, a private conversation between me and this emergent being in my womb, until he returned. During this time, I stayed in silence- I took my dogs on several hikes, sat by the waterfront of the San Francisco Bay, and felt the protective energy of the pups watching out for me and this newfound reality.
When I wasn’t being blown away by the fact of being pregnant or staring out into nature, I was deep in thought about a name. For some reason it seemed very important to me to find the right one, right away. Not too long into my research about goddesses in my ancestry and my husband’s ancestry, I found Tala.
Taala means “to blossom” in Finnish, where my father’s father’s father comes from.
In Swedish, where I can trace some of my ancestry, Tala means “to speak”.
In Iroquois, Tala means “stalking wolf” or “alpha she-wolf”. In Navajo it means “wolf princess”. This girl was to be born in the year of the dog, already surrounded by 2 protective dog siblings.
In Samoan, Tala means “one who tells a tale”. In Arabic, “little palm tree”. In Persian, “gold”.
In Tagalog, Tala means “bright star”.
And in ancient Filipino mythology, Tala is “The Goddess of the Morning and the Evening Star, the daughter of the Supreme Being.” Aka… Venus.
I was only just barely getting into astrology when I discovered this name, so I didn’t actually think about Tala meaning “Venus” until quite recently. The Goddess of the Morning and the Evening Star sounded familiar and romantic, especially in conjunction with all the other personal and ancestral meanings. But I didn’t actually think “Your name means Venus” until last year, when she pointed up at the bright planet while we were sitting in our hot tub one night and said “That’s my star!”
Wow.
Venus, Virgo, the Goddesses of the Stars. History, Her-story, Motherhood, Fertility, Sovereignty, Service. This life certainly requires a good balance of warriorship and romance.
Over my next 40 years, I look forward to having no doubt about that, with more and more practices to support the subtle, nuanced process of embodying these powerful goddess archetypes.
A short practice for attuning with your inner Venus & Virgo
So, by now my Virgoan powers of analysis and synthesis have probably become pretty clear to you, reader. haha, a blessing and a curse! Thanks for sticking with me. If you feel inspired by this process and want to tune in with Virgo or Venus yourself, read on for a short exercise.
Venus has been out of retrograde for a couple weeks, and now that Mercury, the planet of communication, is also direct, it seems like a very good time to think and write about our Venus retrograde reflections. This Virgo new moon is a perfect time to pause and listen to what lessons came up for you, with the intention of being sensitive to your best path forward considering this new information.
Take a moment to close your eyes and think about the past 2 months. Ask yourself:
How have your values shifted or changed?
What outdated values have run past their expiration date?
How can you be gentle with yourself as you discern and sort which values to renew and which to shed, in order to create more creative freedom in your life?
To look a little deeper into your personal relationship with Venus, it may be helpful to look at where Venus lies in your birth chart. It could also be helpful to check which house Leo is in in your chart, since that is the area where Venus was just retrograde.
For me, Venus is in Leo, so this was my “Venus return”, the time when Venus returned to where she was when I was born. And Leo is in my first house of self. With this information, I know to meditate on how this period has shifted how I value and show love for myself.
If you don’t know where Venus or Leo is for you, pull your birth chart here and look at what sign and house the planet was in when you were born. Themes related to the house and the sign where Venus was placed can give you insights on what aspect of your life naturally contain Venusian themes of love, sensuality, ferocity, and what you value. Next, take a look at which house Leo is in in your chart to see what areas of life may have undergone shifts in values over this Venus Rx summer. Check the chart below for clarity on the areas of life represented by houses:
Cheers to using the powers of these ancient goddesses for inward reflection and outward service. May your cup run over in the gorgeous week ahead!
Until next time, on the vibrant full moon in Aries <3
Alison
Oh wait, one last thing!
Come to my Studio Tour next weekend (Sept 23 & 24)!
If you’re in Santa Fe, I would love to invite you to come to my home for the Eldorado Studio Tour, a long-running tour of art studios in my neighborhood. This is my first year doing the tour, and I’ll be showing paintings and mixed media pieces alongside the stunning photography my partner Jackson. I’ll have originals and prints for sale, but I’m mostly just excited to wrap up this last decade with a visual retrospective of my brain on paper, and clear the air for fresh new inspirations.
You can find directions and more info about the tour on their website, or feel free to DM me for my address. <3 <3 <3