It’s almost ten at night. You’ve worked through everything on today’s list, and now you’re finally on the sofa. And what do your eyes do? They wander over to that pile on the sideboard, the one that’s been sitting there since June. The one you couldn’t have cared less about all summer. Suddenly you’re itching to get up and clear it away. Welcome to Virgo season. From August 22 to September 22 the sun moves through Virgo, and if clutter is bugging you more than usual right now, you’re really not imagining it. That’s the quality of this time, and it works on all of us, no matter which sign sits in your birth chart.
The woman in the field
Picture Virgo as the woman out in the field, right in the middle of the harvest. While Leo is still celebrating that anything grew at all, she’s already standing between the stalks, sorting and analyzing. This one stays, that one goes. This becomes tea, that becomes tincture. Should we have watered a little more here? And what about the soil, actually? Could we send the soil to a lab?
Virgo is an earth sign, and earth is absolutely unromantic. Earth wants to know what things are actually good for. That’s why these four weeks revolve around what really happens in your day. Your mornings, your workflows, your body, your routines, your calendar. After Leo’s stage lighting, Virgo switches on a light too, but a completely different one: no spotlight, more like a work lamp, the kind that shows you everything that’s been left lying around. I’m telling you: ULTRA-ANNOYING!
And she loves two things that seem to have nothing to do with each other: order and healing. Look twice and they have a whole lot to do with each other. Both mean looking closely and then doing two things: sorting out what harms you, and tending what does you good. Virgo is the herbalist among the archetypes, the one with the home apothecary and the perfectly organized pantry.
Your brain at half past two
Virgo is ruled by Mercury, the planet of thinking. Virgo sees every detail, she sees through every process, she turns thirty loose ideas into a list that actually works. Her biggest construction site is that same head, because it keeps working at half past two in the morning.
So what does that mean for you if you’re not a Virgo at all? You don’t have to be one for this to get you. I’m not either, I’m a Leo, and still I voluntarily cleaned out my kitchen cabinets this week, all of them. At ten in the evening I suddenly want to take care of things that didn’t bother me all summer, right when I’m supposed to be done for the day, of course. Maybe even your belly is speaking up, because Virgo rules digestion, and when the head chews on things all night, the gut likes to chew along.
As a witch, I’ll tell you what helps, and Mercury conveniently delivers it too: your hands. When your head has locked up, give your hands something to do. Pick herbs, clear out a drawer, slice apples, get the garden in shape. Your head barely calms down because you talk nicely to it. What actually calms it down is your hands doing something useful. And useful is Virgo’s favorite word.
The voice that says it’s not enough yet
And now the show-stopper, because this is the real theme of the season. The Virgo gaze always sees first what’s missing and what’s a mess. In your home, in your work, in you, and of course in the people you love. And most of us have been hearing a voice for years that keeps saying the same lines: That’s not enough yet. Why can’t you just be tidy? Try harder. You’ll never amount to anything.
Really listen to that voice over the next few weeks, and then ask yourself: Who does it actually sound like? Pretty certainly it sounds like someone from your past, like a mother, a teacher, a boss, or some other authority figure. You inherited those sentences at some point and you’ve believed ever since that they’re your own. Fuck you, no, they are not. And here’s what you do with that super annoying voice: You write its sentences down word for word, you take a good look at where they actually come from, and then you throw them out, no warning given. That alone tidies up your head more than any new organizing system ever will.
And just so we understand each other: With that precise gaze of hers, Virgo actually wants to heal you. By the way, there’s the kind of tidying that makes your life run lighter, and there’s the kind of tidying you do to earn your evening off. The first one is magic. The second one is just dumb.
The Kehraus: your spell for Virgo season
The oldest spell in the world lives in a mop bucket, because when you mop, you remove what no longer belongs, and that’s banishing magic in its simplest form. My Kehraus goes like this. Kehraus is an old German word for the final sweep-out after a festival, when everything that has piled up gets thrown out.
You need: 1 liter of hot water (about 4 cups), the peel of one organic lemon, 2 sprigs of rosemary, 1 sprig of sage, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 2 tablespoons of plain household vinegar.
Pour the hot water over the lemon peel, rosemary, sage, and salt, and let it all steep for ten minutes. Then strain it and add the vinegar. Rosemary and sage belong to Mercury, so this is exactly the right stuff for this month. On natural stone and oiled wood, skip the vinegar, the herbs are enough there. And no worries about the smell, the lemon catches it, and once the floor is dry, all you smell is the herbs.
What turns this into a spell is the direction. Start in the room farthest from your front door and mop your way toward it, because that way you push everything old in one single direction, namely out. And while you mop, you speak your incantation:
Salt and sage and rosemary,
sweep the old away from me.
Lemon bright and vinegar clear,
out with all of yesteryear.
Pour the leftover water down the toilet and flush firmly, so the old really leaves the house. The garden is off limits, salt and vinegar have no place in soil, nothing grows there afterwards. And so is the street drain, because that one often runs unfiltered into the nearest creek.
Three oils for your Virgo season
- Lemongrass strengthens Virgo energy and brings clarity to your head when everything seems important at once. On skin it’s a sharp fellow, so you measure precisely: one drop in a full tablespoon of almond oil, a little of that on your wrists, and leave your temples alone, that’s too close to your eyes. If that’s too fiddly for you, just smell the bottle. Skip it entirely during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
- Clary sage balances her out and calms things down when your thoughts run laps at half past two. For a room spray, first dissolve 20 drops in two tablespoons of high-proof alcohol, then top up with water to 50 ml (about 1.7 oz). Essential oil won’t dissolve in plain water at all, it floats on top and ends up on your skin as a concentrated drop. Shake before every spray and spray into the room, away from your face. This one also stays in the cupboard during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
- Rosemary is THE Mercury herb and my personal permanent resident on my desk. It wakes you up and gathers your focus when it has wandered off. Simply smelling the bottle is often enough.
Three stones for your Virgo season
- Moss agate is the stone of gardeners and herbalists. It grounds you and reminds you that things are allowed to grow instead of having to be finished. Put it where you work.
- Amazonite calms the inner judge and softens the tone in your head. Carry it in your pocket and hold it when the voice starts up.
- Smoky quartz is mine. If I could only pick one stone for these weeks, it would be this one, because there’s one sitting on my desk anyway and letting go fits the theme pretty well right now. Everything you sort out during these weeks, you get to hand over to it symbolically.
Before you fill your shopping cart: One is enough, and ideally it’s the one you already have at home.
Your Virgo tarot spread
I’ve got three cards here for you. Take the deck you work with anyway and lay them out from left to right.
- Card 1: What in my life has long been fine, and I don’t see it? Virgo always looks first at where something is missing. This card changes your angle.
- Card 2: What can go, so there’s room? That can be a habit, a thing, or a person. This card usually just tells you what you already know.
- Card 3: What do I put in its place? Your seed for autumn. One small seed is completely enough.
Look at the image first, before you check your book. Your first thought is usually the right one. The second one is the one you use to argue the first one away.
Mark two more dates. On September 11 the new moon lands in Virgo, that’s the big sowing of the month, and there’s a separate article coming here in the magazine. And September 23 brings the autumn equinox, Mabon, the second harvest of the year. From then on the darkness wins, and Virgo hands over to Libra.
And if you take just one single thing from this article, make it this: Sometimes good is simply good enough. It damn well doesn’t always have to get even better.
