Eating for Enlightenment and Cleanliness is Next to Godliness: Axioms from the Virgo-Pisces Axis3/5/2022
I actually wrote this article six months ago, in mid-September 2021, at the Virgo new moon. Now, with the Virgo full moon on March 18th, we will be reaching the culmination of the six month cycle that began back then.
And it's a perfect time to revisit this, especially with this past weekend's (3/4 - 3/6) Mars-Venus-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn - a rebirth - with Pluto involved it requires that we first do the stripping, the dying to the old consciousness, the stepping into the fire, before we get to the actual rebirth - the magical part where phoenix gets to rise again from its own ashes. So, what has come to pass over these past six months? The Virgo-Pisces axis of the zodiac (as I detail below) is the healing axis - the axis that deals with healing on the physical plane (Virgo) and how it connects to healing on the spiritual plane (Pisces). When this axis is activated (in the late winter/early spring during Pisces season and in the late summer/early fall during Virgo season), it's a perfect time to dive into the metaphysical causes of our physical ailments and dis-ease and clean things up on both ends. Here's my personal example.
Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Virgo and Pisces sit directly opposite each other in the sky, creating one of six axes of the zodiac.
Along with the twelve constellations that make up the wheel of the zodiac, astrology uses twelve houses, or temples of life, which denote twelve different areas of human life. The first house is the self and identity, the second house is resources and how the self is supported in the world, and so on. The sign that occupies the first house is always the rising sign or the sign that is on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth. The rising sign determines which sign of the zodiac, or energy, will occupy which temple of life for the individual, as the rising sign will change, but the placement and order of houses is always the same. Yet in astrology, we work with associations. Each sign of the zodiac has its specific energetic characteristics, as well as an associated element and modality. Each sign also has a planetary ruler it is associated with as well as rulership over a house or area of life.
Virgo's element is earth and its modality is mutable (each season has three astrological signs, and the signs that signify the end of spring, summer, fall and winter are mutable signs - they are known for being changeable in nature, just like the weather when one season gives way to the next). Virgo is ruled by Mercury and associated with the sixth house. The sixth house is one of the three money houses, which are second, sixth and tenth. While the second deals the resources and how we value ourselves and support ourselves, and the tenth is at the very top of our natal chart and is about career and reputation and public image, the sixth is about work as it applies to our every day lives. The sixth house is a house of routine and the workplace and our relationship to employees and employers. Traditionally this house represented the relationship between servants and slaves, and human trafficking. This house also traditionally represented disease, but with our advancements in medicine, today it functions more in the capacity of the routines and preventative measures we put in place to stay healthy, and routines and preventative measures are very much associated with Virgo.
Pisces is also a mutable sign - the last sign of winter. Pisces is of the water element and is ruled in traditional astrology by Jupiter and in modern astrology by Neptune. Pisces rules over the twelfth house. The twelfth house, just like Pisces and Neptune, is difficult to clearly define. It is almost something we can know from sensing it and intuiting it, but it is elusive when we begin to try to define in any concrete way. This is a house of spirit and the subconscious, of past lives and of collective consciousness. It has been called the "house of sorrows and losses", as it represents not only self undoing such as self-deception, denial and escapism, but also things that take us away from every day life, such as prisons, mental institutions, martyrdom and secrets. The twelfth house is also the house of sorrow and grief and exile. It rules over endings - including any death or loss of a loved one - even murder or suicide. From a traditional point of view, these houses historically have dealt with some very unpleasant parts of life - sorrows, losses, endings and confinement, and disease, slavery and servitude. Unfortunately, these are all things that still exist in our world today. At the same time, we have evolved over time to the point that while those things still exist, these houses have also taken on additional connotation. One way to look at this axis of the zodiac is as an axis of healing, from physical to spiritual. What used to be known as the areas of life having to do with disease and mental illness, can now be looked at as the areas of life having to do with how we prevent and heal these afflictions. While the terra firma of earth sign Virgo (sixth house) deals with healing in the physical realm and using preventative measures right down to cleanliness, Pisces (twelfth house) is concerned with the spiritual, mystical, and unseen.
Seen in this light, the Virgo-Pisces axis could encompass themes such as "eating for enlightenment," and "cleanliness is next to godliness."
The vessel through which we manifest our spirituality and creativity is our human. Our human does not pass "go" without sustenance, without food and water. For our human to thrive, we could infer that our human would require a more specific diet, rest, exercise and proper hygiene. When looking at an individual's natal chart or birth chart in astrology, we see the individual in the center of the circle of the zodiac. The part of the zodiac that is above the horizon line is the "day" part of the chart, or the part of the chart that is related to others and being out in the world, while the part of the zodiac that falls below the horizon line is the "night" part of the chart, or the part of the chart that is related to the self and the subconscious. The bottom of the chart is where we are coming from, and the top is where we are going. When we look at a chart this way, we look at the task of the individual in life to balance all of the energies around them. This means when we look at each of the six axes of the zodiac, our goal is to balance those polarities in our lives. The Virgo-Pisces axis simply put could be understood as mundane/spiritual, physical healing/spiritual healing, as well as the idea of service to others in the every day world and in spiritual realms. What happens in the physical realm will affect the spiritual, and vice versa. When we view our being as both physical and spiritual, taking into account our human's electromagnetic field, and our cognitive and emotional capacities, we begin to get a better idea of what is encompassed by this axis of the zodiac. Yoga addresses it with the idea of the five layers of being, or koshas - physical, energetic, mental/emotional, higher intelligence, and the bliss body. When we eat higher vibration food, we raise the vibration of our human. Addressing our physical body by addressing the food we eat can bring profound effects to us on mental, emotional and spiritual levels. When we put into place routines in the physical realm, like diets, exercise regimens, and daily practices such as house-keeping, brushing teeth and meditation, we are not only preventing disease on physical and mental levels, we are creating a container in the physical realm that supports growth in the spiritual realm. In days past, things that are mundane to us like salt and baking soda were considered magical substances. Today we understand the science behind their attributes, but in ancient societies, simple things like these were not only revered for their hygienic properties, but were believed to carry those same types of qualities into the spiritual realms. Salt was said to clear negative spirits as it was believed to trap and hold negative energies. The Virgo-Pisces axis can teach us about healing our being on multiple levels. It teaches us the importance of balancing our physical existence with our spiritual existence.
When we respect and honor our bodies, when we care for ourselves and treat ourselves with kindness, we honor life itself and the divinity both within and without.
Our bodies truly are temples.
When we honor the sacred that exists in the mundane, when our daily habits become rituals, when self-care becomes worship - when we truly love ourselves unconditionally and are acting in accordance, we naturally extend that same love out into the world. When we acknowledge the divinity in ourselves, we acknowledge the divinity in all existence. When we see the sacred in the mundane, we hold reverence for all life and all that we experience on this journey.
When we hold all of life and all that we encounter and experience as sacred and divine, then we are able to hold space for compassion and forgiveness. We are able to take more care with how we treat ourselves and others. When we see divinity at work everywhere and acknowledge the sacred in the mundane, we access the magic of life, of existence, of this world.
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Kasey Ford, Soul-Aligned Love & Life Mentor to Women
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