On August 11th, Mercury will leave the lion’s den to enter the purifying atelier of Virgo. If Mercury in Leo wrote his magnum opus, it’s the bespecktacled Mercury in Virgo who comes in to revise and refine, stripping the masterpiece of any hubristic elements and giving it a palatable shape.
Virgo, questing towards perfection
The sign of Virgo rules the intestines whose job is to take the salad we had for lunch and discriminate between what to keep and what to let go. Virgo is the yoga pose adjustment offered by a skilled instructor. It’s the hours that went into the flawless delivery of a triple Axel jump by a nubile figure skater. It’s the discriminating finger testing the sauce on the stove to evaluate spice levels. Virgo is the sign that strives towards perfection, always on the quest to improve one’s life, one’s performance, one’s skills, one’s relationships, one’s you-name-it! No wonder those with a heavy emphasis in Virgo tend to go far in life: they are always setting the bar a little out of reach and then striving for it, somehow never quite satisfied with what they’ve attained as their focus aims on the part that still isn’t perfect.
The Sun will enter Virgo on August 22nd. But for now, Venus, Mars and Mercury lead the way, saturating the Virgo parts of our charts. This means the fixed signs—Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius—will get a little bit of a break from the action packed skies of July.
Mercury in Virgo
When we take the Virgo qualities above and apply them to Mercury we get “purifying processes”, like digestion. Or “enhanced iteration” and “critical inquiry”. Mercury refers to our speech, the way we process and disseminate information and the manner we conduct our business. Mercury in Virgo lends a practical and earthy approach. Learning/teaching style focuses less on theory and more on how to make the lesson applicable. Many examples are provided so students have a scaffold to hang theory on. Mercury in Virgo says, “Just the facts, Ma’am”… leave the dramatic embellishments to Leo!
In its strive towards perfection, Mercury in Virgo natives are often plagued by an inner bully with catch phrases like: “OMG, you did NOT just say that?!” or “You can’t possibly think you’re ready to ___fill in the blank___: you need to take one more class, read 6 more books, do an apprenticeship, get your degree, THEN you’ll be ready!” When this inner critique rears its head, it would be wise to remember Winston Churchill’s admonition, “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” Even though he did not have Mercury in Virgo, his wife Clementine Churchill did!
As Mercury optimizes and revises his way through Virgo, this will be a good time to get our thinking caps on, pull out the spreadsheets (or Trello or Todoist!) and get cracking. Mercury does some of his best work in Virgo. We have until the 30th to take advantage of this optimizing energy.