A client was expressing frustration over her untidy house and her struggle to manage the minutiae of her daily life more efficiently. Hearing Virgo and the sixth house in her statement, I summoned my Gemini moon for a lightning fast conference and calculated a response: “Maybe you’ve just formed some bad habits out of fear you won’t be able to make things perfect and keep them that way,” I suggested to her. “Why not focus on forming new habits that help you get this day to day stuff in hand?”
It that was a pithy recommendation, and we were both pretty pleased with it at the time. But remembering it now, I think I did my client and her Virgo planets a disservice by pretending her problem was one merely of housekeeping and habit. It’s not that what I told her was wrong, exactly; but it didn’t go quite deep enough. “Why,” I might reasonably have asked her, “have you turned the maintenance of your life into a drudgery to be avoided?”
Habit vs. Ritual
The New Moon on August 28, 2011 is at 5.27 degrees of Virgo, the sign associated with those routines that comprise most of our days— working, running errands, preparing meals—as well as the habits we form through repetition of those routines. For the most part, we regard these habits and routines as entirely separate from our spiritual lives, a perspective this extends to our astrological lore, which relegates poor Virgo to the role of hapless drone while conferring spiritual honors upon its opposite sign, Pisces. In fact, the practices we identify as “spiritual” tend to be those traditionally associated with Pisces—meditation, bodywork, yoga, all of which have acquired increasing cachet while the homely tasks associated with Virgo are denigrated, and when possible, delegated.
But something is being lost, I think, in our determination to avoid these humble occupations; it’s often these small, ordinary tasks that offer the most accessible route from unconscious habit to mindful ritual, as well as the most frequent opportunities for attempting the journey.
Nag your child to finish her homework; do it every single weeknight (whether or not she actually has homework assigned), and soon you’ve got yourself a habit. Set aside half an hour each evening to sit with your child and talk about school, her assignments, and her experiences there, and you’ve entered the realm of ritual. You can immediately sense the difference between the two approaches; yet, both habit and ritual involve doing particular things at regular intervals in a particular way. What distinguishes them from one another?
Intention, and consciousness. You can sweep the kitchen floor each evening and hardly notice doing it, beyond a vague desire to have it over with as quickly as possible. But imagine you instead give your full attention to sweeping the floor carefully and thoroughly, visualizing the debris and disorder of your mind being swept away with the bread crumbs. Feel the difference?
Why make such a big deal out of sweeping a floor? Because we don’t live forever. Do you really have five minutes every day—more than thirty hours each year!—to waste on meaningless, unconscious activity? And yet the floor needs to be swept– a consequence of inhabiting a body that walks on things, eats things and spills crumbs. If you don’t occasionally sweep up the debris, pretty soon it offends the senses. So why not enjoy sweeping the floor, clearing it of life’s thriving, lively messiness? Why not use those five minutes as a sort of practical prayer, to celebrate being alive?
Honoring the Invisible
Virgo is the sign of habit, but equally the sign of ritual. Ritual is not magic; it is ordinary, everyday action performed with magical intention. It is the union of practical and spiritual, Virgo’s practicality and Pisces’ sensitivity. It is honoring spirit through the offering of our humble earthly abilities—modestly, with love and devotion.
Ritual is present in a house of bereavement, where friends and neighbors show their concern for the grieving with practical gifts of lovingly prepared food. It is present when I use my grandmother’s 75-year-old masher to prepare the Thanksgiving potatoes. It was present when my husband’s cousins spent the first days after their father’s death building an exquisite casket from wood their father had saved for this purpose.
Ritual is ordinary action carefully performed with extraordinary intention. It is how we honor the invisible with visible gestures.
From Habit to Ritual
During the first two weeks of the cycle that begins at the Virgo New Moon, ferret out those circumstances that bore you, irritate you, or overwhelm you. Where in your life do you encounter drudgery, the feeling you’re “just going through the motions”? Where are you most likely to be annoyed or short tempered with others? What ordinary situations make you feel so overwhelmed, you no longer know how to untangle them? These are situations that suggest unconsciousness. They are situations which, if approached with intention rather than a sense of distasteful obligation, present the greatest avenue for your spiritual growth right now.
The client I mentioned at the beginning of this article, for instance, was overwhelmed by the idea of literally getting her house in order. She disliked housework, yet craved the order and serenity of tidy surroundings. What were here options? Here are a few that spring to mind:
- Forgo cleaning the house, and grow increasingly dispirited by the disarray.
- Hire someone to clean the house (not always an option).
- Jump right in and start cleaning the house, gritting her teeth and cursing with every stroke of her scrub brush as her mind wanders to all the things she’d rather be doing.
- Initiate this daunting project by tackling a single, well-defined task—say, cleaning one closet. Putting a favorite CD on the stereo, pouring something nice to drink, and taking the first, satisfying step toward restoring order and sanity to her home.
Which of her options sounds most spiritually energizing? Which carries the seed of spiritual expression? Which honors the invisible with a mundane but visible action?
The price we pay for too much unconscious, habitual activity is boredom, drudgery, fatigue, and irritability. So I invite you to experiment, during the next 28 days, with offering up whatever practical, Virgoan skills you possess in the daily service of spirit and intention. With all the love and attention you can muster, bring order and attention to your abundance by balancing your checkbook. Honor your mobility and independence—wash your car! Bring serenity to your home by cleaning your house, one room, even a single drawer. Do these things not as a kind of hairshirt to prove your spiritual worthiness, but to celebrate and honor the spirituality that inhabits the everyday, the simple, the here and now.
© April Elliott Kent All rights reserved
Nice! Having all my Virgo planets this is not the first time I have heard this. But, since our reading it is the first time I have tried to be engaged in cleaning the toilet. I love to find magic in the mundane.
I just read this quote by Thich Nhat Hanh:
“Washing dishes is like washing a baby Buddha.”
I love this…..wondering if he is a Virgo.
Happy New Moon!
Beautiful! I totally agree. I wrote something about this on my blog some weeks back.
Very Thich Nhat Hanh! I love that guy. Great article, Kent!
Well, on this eclipse I started as a freelance copywriter at a technology company — and on the first day they announced a radical new approach to marketing and pricing that will require MAJOR writing efforts over the next two weeks.
This ain’t yer Lovin’ Leo Lion writin’. This here’s your Virgo writin’ if there ever was.
April, loved this Virgo post!!
I believe you mean “cachet”, not “cache” , early on. Trying to help,
Kcd
Indeed I did, Kcd, and thank you. Too much computer work put “cache” in my brain. Changed!
Spot on, April! I’m inspired to review my Virgo appointments with this New Moon.
An official Virgo who can happily work on words 24/7, with a sense of spirit and offering that I’m grateful for, I have resisted regular housework and house maintenance my whole life – but not without signature guilt and angst, of course.
I often think (dream!) that a maid and yard service would serve my Virgo shortcomings well – but, so far, I also have a dose of guilt and angst about ‘servants’ and/or deserving such an easy fix.
pdw, in all honesty every Sun Sign Virgo I know well – every one – struggles with housework/maintenance. A dear Virgo friend put it well when he said housework fills him with despair, because you get the house looking just about perfect and then it all gets messed up again! It’s the never-ending nature of Virgo tasks that can wear us down.
I like housework well enough, but our house is old and lots of stuff is kind of crumbly. No matter how much cleaning I do it never looks really pristine. So I don’t have the onus of perfection upon me in the way I probably would if I lived in a shiny new house. My housekeeping is hit or miss, but clutter is pretty well in hand, the toilets are clean, and the dishes are washed twice a day. That’s good enough for this Mars in Virgo! (Just ignore those towering stacks of paper in my office….)
April, thanks for this diverse perspective. I am one who can get an area organized and looking wonderful, and before I know it, it is almost as if gremlins or poltergeists have come in during the night and made it look as bad as before, or even worse! I shall try this approach and see if it might help me keep things in their new arrangement, as opposed to sliding back into their same disarray.
Love that magic can be included in everything!
Good luck, kat. I’m trying this approach to see if it can make me a little less grumpy as I perform my evening chores – I mean rituals.
So far my success has been limited, but I suppose that’s why they call is a spiritual practice – gotta keep at it!
Hi April,
I love your perspective on the New Moon in Virgo. Looking forward to working with this energy over the coming weeks, as I am moving house, to our new home, Yipee! The sun moon conjunction will be on my natal Uranus in Virgo in 4th(also widely conjunct Pluto)! so you can guess where all my energy will be focused.
Great Article, love your work.
Ruth.
Thank you, Ruth, and best of luck with your move. Sometimes astrology is just that literal, isn’t it – Sun/Moon=Uranus in the 4th house!
A lovely reminder. A Virgo myself, I suddenly recall how “habitual” I was as a child. Everyday I’d come home and practice all the music we’d been given in band on my saxophone. I wouldn’t have done it if anyone had been home to hear me. I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else, or because I was “supposed to.” It was completely my idea to start playing the sax, and I was the only person who monitored it. (Too many students for even the band director to notice much.)
But it was satisfying. And it taught me that an amazing amount of progress can be made through such a simple ritual. As well as – confidence in feeling prepared later, when the annual concert came up, etc.
Amy, I can relate to that so much. For me, it was the guitar and singing. I sing and play very seldom these days, but recently I’ve been trying to get back into practice for a rare gig later this month. It’s really a challenge without all the years and years of daily habit/rehearsal to fall back on. But I’m gratified to find that after only a week or so I’m already developing some callouses on my fingertips and it doesn’t hurt so much to play. As you say, an amazing amount of progress can be made through simple but regular habits. (Do you still play the sax?)
What a lovely blog today. How ironic…I just moved in with my Virgo partner and amd so appreciating his sense of beauty and order. (Leo here) I naturally love beauty and order but he carries through with it in such a easy, gentle, softer way than I do. He’s such a good example.
As I cleaned the wood floor this morning, including sweeping the kitchen floor, I felt such a wondeful feeling as I performed this “ritual” and not this chore. I was happy to do it for us and happy to feel a pleasant feeling “sweep” through me.
Yes, it’s making a prayer out of every little thing needed to be done.
Lovely!!
Congratulations on your big move, Collen! I really love Virgo people and treasure my husband’s Venus/Mars conjunction in this sign. As you say, there’s a gentleness and orderliness about the way Virgo approaches the world that’s very soothing.
Generally I enjoy keeping house, but I confess, cleaning floors is my particular housecleaning hairshirt. Tomorrow I think I’ll take a page from your book and tackle the tile floor in our kitchen. If I can make that into a prayerful exercise, anything is possible!
April, I love this. I have just finished a mini rant on my site about how nothing is getting done & there is so much to get done & blah blah flipping blah. Interestingly, when it it does get done it is with the help of a very loud ipod, a paint roller & a lot of dancing around the house, so goodness knows why I am putting it off- possibly because of the cleanup required after the paint job!
I adored that post on your site, Jo. With Mars and Pluto in Virgo I am never restful at home. I’m always scanning whatever room I’m in and nervously cataloging the undone tasks, or those done imperfectly. I think that’s why I love staying in hotels, and sleep much more soundly in them – the messes and imperfections are someone else’s problem!
With my moon & ascendent in Virgo (as well as it being in my 2nd house, Jupiter AND Saturn) I am so looking forward to this new moon. I’ll be setting some powerful intentions for the rest of the year this evening. And cleaning my cupboards!
Oh Lindsay, you have Jupiter/Saturn in the 2nd house too? I have that combination in Capricorn and it’s the bane of my existence. I feel like that Push Me-Pull You creature out of Dr. Doolittle!
This is a brilliant article and I’ll be following your suggestions for proceeding with this Virgo cycle. I love your advise on habit and ritual. It really helps me to understand how the Pisces full moon plays into it.
Thanks, Anita. I’ve never liked the habit of bestowing all spirituality upon a single sign (Pisces) and house (the 12th), when of course all signs and houses have a spiritual dimension. But it’s only when I contrast Pisces/12th house/Neptune with Virgo/6th house/Mercury that I can see both their messages a little more clearly, and how each complements the other.
OK, now I’m inspired! What a fresh way of thinking about all the tasks that fill my day. Thank you for this gift!
That’s fantastic, Michele. Just what every writer loves to hear – many thanks!
Even tho I know this!!! Thank you for helpling me to “remember”. lol. Wow, don’t we get caught up in things and forget to breathe. Love it Girl!! Thanks again. Duh! Silly me.
Silly me, too, Lana! Seeing the potential for ritual in daily routines is one thing, but putting the principle to work in my life is challenging.
The avoiding drudgery question is a REALLY good one. Actually, the whole article is worth chewing over (and oh, how my Virgo Moon loves a good chew)
lostshoe, my Virgo Moon mother was never a great fan of housework. She slammed through it as expediently as possible so that she could get on with the stuff she found really interesting. So I can’t say she passed on a love of domestic arts to her daughters, but I’m thankful she taught us so many practical, useful household skills – as well as a very Virgo love of books and thoughtful conversation!
“Ritual is ordinary action carefully performed with extraordinary intention. It is how we honor the invisible with visible gestures.” – Beautiful, April.
Perhaps not meditative as such but certainly with awareness of the energy within the task at hand.
I do have a tendency to go on automatic pilot when I tidy up. I recently re-decorated my hallway (in 48 hours flat!). On the first day I felt angry and spent the whole day resenting the mess and the time it was taking. I angrily cleaned, angrily stripped doors, angrily went to buy the paint…The following day I became fully aware of my thoughts and realised I was in danger of putting all those angry vibes into my lovely new green walls so I popped in my earphones and listened to every album of my favourite artist whilst I painted. Voila, happy green walls
Hi April,
Boy do I relate to this… don’t know if it’s because I’m a Virgo or a Virgo with a Gemini Moon, but either way I have this issue too and love your perspective on it. I have a daunting task ahead with my house (too much fun and not enough work around the house this summer), so I’m going to be mindful of my thoughts and make it more ritualistic than habit and ask my guys for help too.
