For
awhile last year, we were visited twice each month by a marvelous
woman who cleaned our house. The place felt terrific after
Angela had been here - not just clean, but calm. Centered.
It was as though the place had been Rolfed, instead of merely
mopped and dusted.
Angela
came to us through our 95-year-old neighbor, Mildred. One
day, after she had been coming to our house for about a month,
I thanked Mildred again for the referral and remarked how
wonderful and peaceful our place felt when Angela was finished
with her work. Mildred nodded, sagely. "Oh, she's a very
spiritual person," she said.
Yes,
I thought, that's exactly right. Angela was devoutly religious,
but she never spoke of it. Rather, her spirituality was
something that came through in the way she approached her
work with a spirit of care and gentleness, and something else
I can only call magic. Hers was the practical, everyday
magic of smoothing the wrinkles from the linens, making the
woodwork gleam, and leaving the floors shiny - but with an
extra dash of cheerful calm that transformed this simple work
into something more.
This
ability to settle and soothe the discord of daily life is
the practical magic of Virgo. Ordinarily when I think
of magic, it's the heady style of Scorpio that springs to
mind, a fragrant and thrilling pastiche of pentacles, black
velvet, and patchouli. As for spirituality, that adjective
has always belonged, in my mind, to my Pisces friends,
warm and sweet-natured, unfailingly compassionate, and full
of concern and good works for a wide range of social causes.
But most
of us are not full-time priestesses or everyday saints. We're
just people with jobs, carpools, and colicky pets. We may
wish for more time - and tranquility - to spend in meditation,
but as my friend Dana once pointed out, it's Virgo and
the sixth house that represent the everyday world where we
spend most of our time. Do we feel well? Do we have work
to do? Is there bread for tomorrow's breakfast? Traffic snarls,
paying the bills, balancing the checkbook, washing the dishes:
this is the Virgo stuff our days tend to be made of.
Going
to worship services and participating in other formalized
rituals can be beautiful, meaningful. These are moments when
we get to step outside of our routines and examine our spiritual
progress with an objective eye, unencumbered by the distractions
of regular life. But for most of us, formal ritual has to
be carved out of days that are already bulging at the seams.
When we leave our formalized ritual spaces, we need a method
of pursuing our lofty spiritual goals in the real world,
ideally one that capitalizes on the fifteen waking hours each
day that most of us spend just taking care of business. Enter
Virgo, who asks, what if each part of your day, tasks great
and small, could be a catalyst for your spiritual growth?
Virgo
is a modest sign, and doesn't often call attention to itself.
But this Full Moon, with the Moon beautifully illuminated
in her sign, is the moment to give Virgo her due - particularly
so, since this Full Moon brings also the dramatic emphasis
of a lunar eclipse, with the Sun and Moon square transformative,
magical Pluto. It's been seven long years since eclipses last
fell in Virgo's sign; since then, if you're like me, you've
managed to collect closets full of moth-eaten sweaters, a
mind full of outgrown attitudes, and a life full of routines
that have become disconnected from your sense of spiritual
purpose. This Pisces/Virgo eclipse season reminds us of
the importance of being wise and discriminating about what
we bring into our lives, and warns against trying to fill
the empty spaces in our hearts with distractions - things,
people, and situations that can never replace the ones we've
lost.
At
this Virgo lunar eclipse, pledge yourself to a renewed spirit
of practical magic - of reorganizing your daily routine
so that it is supports your spiritual objectives, and resetting
your mental routine so that it instinctively seeks spiritual
opportunity in chores and details. Clean out your drawers,
your filing cabinet, your heart; sew buttons, darn socks,
mend relationships; donate, volunteer, and pledge yourself
to causes that are important to you. Candles, herbs, incense,
and gemstones are fine tools for accessing our higher selves,
but so are brooms, mops, and dustpans.
I'll
share a funny story that, although it happened at the Leo
Full Moon, describes the spirit of the Virgo Full Moon much
better. Determined to rid our home of stagnancy and tension,
I threw myself into performing a ritual from the wonderful
book The
Magical Household, by Scott Cunningham and David Harrington.
"Peel nine lemons," it read, "then soak the
peels in a bowl of water." Then my eyes skipped ahead
to a passage about using the water to clean the floors, the
windows, and the doorknobs of the house.
Determined,
I set to work. I picked nine juicy lemons off the tree in
our back yard, carefully peeled them, and made my lemon water.
Three hours later, I had cleaned the house pillar to post,
even rubbing the wood floors with a rag misted with the lemon
water. Exhausted, I slumped into an easy chair to admire my
work. I picked up The Magical Household, still laid
open to the page with the ritual, and read it again. Halfway
through I stopped, did a double-take, and laughed out loud.
It seems I had overlooked one crucial passage: "Next,
still visualizing, scrub the floors, doorknobs,
and windows with the lemon water."
Oh, well.
The house needed a good cleaning anyway. And after my labors,
it gleamed, bright and clean - the cleanest it had been, in
fact, since Angela's last visit. I sat for awhile and enjoyed
the peaceful, mind-emptying contentment that follows happy
physical labor, watching as the light slowly changed and a
peaceful dusk settled on shiny floors and glinted through
sparkling windows. Thanks to a little practical magic and
a lot of elbow grease, the house felt peaceful and relaxed
for the first time in a long time. And for a moment, at least,
I felt like a very spiritual person.
The
Magical Household, by Scott Cunningham and David Harrington.
Llewellyn Publications, 1990.
