Ramblings, Reflections and Ruminations of Daniel Giamario | Aug 30, 2024 |
One of the primary purposes of the Turning of The Ages Mystery School is to be a harbinger of the great changes taking place during the times we find ourselves in. That includes how the essence of the 12 Mystery Schools of Life (the 12 Signs) are undergoing changes due to new transmissions from the constellations at a Turning of The Ages. It is, admittedly, not an easy topic, but worthy of gaining a thorough understanding of.
If this subject interests you, one of our upcoming September Equinox Seminars is titled How The Signs Change and Evolve Over Time. You can register here.
In addition, I have recently had the pleasure of collaborating with cosmology wizard Gemini Brett on our fully updated Certification Level Course 04: Cosmology and the Night Sky. This course is now available, and not only as part of the TOTAMS Level 2 Certification Package, but also as a stand-alone Cosmology course for anyone who desires to develop greater familiarity with the night sky as a living, earth-based experience. You can purchase the course here. A personalized guided study group for this course will commence early in 2025.
As always in this context, it is suggested to get to know the stars and planets experientially and proactively participate in receiving the incoming transmissions!
The New Moon in Virgo
With the New Moon on Monday, September 2, 8:56pm PDT, at 11Virgo04, let’s explore just what it means to say “in Virgo.”
11Virgo04 is almost exactly the star Zosma in the Lion Constellation, on the rump or lower back. Yet, tropical astrology measures this as 11Virgo. When the first young crescent moon is seen, which is how the ancients ceremonialized a New Moon, the tail star of the Lion, Denebola (21Virgo39), will be in alignment. So what is going on here? The answer is at the very foundation of the TOTAMS astrological paradigm (aka Shamanic Astrology Paradigm ™) and the revolutionary vision of our school: Signs and constellations are entirely different frames of reference, and yet intimately related, especially at a great Turning of The Ages. See my classic article Why We use Signs and Love The Constellations. Let’s explore more deeply.
Virgo, the Constellation
Constellations are star patterns onto which different cultures and different times in history can project meaning and receive insight from. Any individual familiar with the night sky can also do this. The star pattern itself can be seen as the “bones” or the scaffolding that serves as the visual framework of “as-above-so-below”. From a modern psychological perspective, as well as from a shamanic perspective, the inner psyche is the same as the outer experienced framework. Rudolf Steiner went so far as to think that if a person did not have knowledge and experience of this framework, the bodily constitution would be weak in the next incarnation! (Dornach, March 1, 1924)
Constellations, in whatever way we see them, or project onto them, are the framework for receiving energies and incoming guidance from the celestial and galactic realm. But this dimension is fundamentally different from what we today call signs.
Virgo, the constellation, is the largest constellation in the Zodiac, stretching as much as 47degrees.
It is quite remarkable how many cultures see the Virgo constellation as a feminine energy at its essence. In TOTAMS, we refer to this constellation as the “Virgin Priestess”. The word virgin in this usage refers not to pre-sex or no sex, but to autonomy and purity, or as the great Jungian Esther Harding put it: “a woman who is one unto herself.” In pre-patristic times, the “virgins” frequently were more sexually active than the non-virgins. The word “Virgo” actually means “virgin” in Latin. In the Christian era, she was often depicted with angel wings. I prefer an earlier priestess connotation.
From the Chandra x-ray Observatory Website:
“Most of the fertility and harvest goddesses of the Mediterranean and Middle East are in some way associated with Virgo but there is no one definitive myth that defines this pattern. The pattern is pictured as a female, often holding a spike of grain in one hand. Virgo is the second largest constellation in the sky after Hydra, and the Sun spends a long time within its boundaries. The Sun is still within Virgo at the autumnal equinox, another point significant to ancient harvest and fertility rituals. These associations can be seen in the names of some of Virgo’s main stars: Spica (spike of grain) and Vindemiatrix (wine gatherer).”
Johannes Hevelius’ Virgo from Uranographia (1690):
“Sometimes Virgo is holding a staff, a caduceus (the snake-entwined staff that symbolizes healing, rebirth, or oracle prophecy), or a scale in her other hand. These other symbols are associated with additional goddesses who symbolize justice or wisdom or prophecy. Many of the goddesses linked to Virgo are associated with stories in which a king or male god dies (symbolizing the coming of winter) and is reborn again in the spring, or in which the goddess enters the underworld to find him and cause his rebirth.
In other variants, the goddess herself, representing the bountiful Earth, divides her time between the upper world and the underworld, returning above ground in the spring. Among the goddesses associated with Virgo are the Babylonian Ishtar, the Egyptian Isis, Sumerian Ishtar, Greek Demeter, Demeter’s daughter Persephone, Roman Ceres, Dionysius’s daughter Erigone, Greek Dike, Athena, or Artemis – and many others. Virgo is also important in an ancient Chinese belief which is based on the passage of the moon, not the Sun.”
Virgo, and her main star Spica, have Babylonian precedents. The MUL.APIN associated Absin “The Furrow” with the Sumerian goddess Shala, and on boundary stones of the Kassite era, Shala is conventionally depicted as holding a length of grain. The female essence, whether virgin, maiden or priestess is rather obvious!
Many of the stars of this constellation have remarkable stories, dating back before the Christian era. The Sun during this lunation will align both with stars in the Lion and the Virgin-Priestess constellations.
- September 2: Zosma (11Virgo21) – rump of the Lion
- September 13: Denebola 21Virgo39) – tail of the Lion
- September 18: Zavijava (27Virgo12) – left arm or wing of the Priestess
- September 22: September Equinox (00Libra) – near the heart of the Priestess
- September 26: Zaniah (4Libra34) – left arm or wing of the Priestess, associated with spiritual vision
- October 2-3: Vindemiatrix (9Libra59) – on the right arm or wing of the Priestess, associated with intoxication through sacred ceremony; and Porrima (10Libra11) – near the center of the body of the Priestess, known as the goddess of prophecy.
The Libra New Moon on October 2 is aligned with these stars, as well as there being a Solar Eclipse at 10Libra04.
Virgo, the Sign
Signs are an earth-based system that are determined by (fixed to) the Equinoxes and Solstices. Inspired by the latter Babylonians, the Hellenistic Greeks, in a brilliant stroke of genius, created an entirely different frame of reference. Doing this became necessary because the constellations, with their attendant meanings were observed to not be showing up in their respective season anymore. Also during that time frame, horoscopes for individual persons started emerging. Thus two entirely separate systems of measurement were inaugurated, which to this day causes huge confusion! It is the contention of TOTAMS that they are intended to work together. How do they?
When someone says they are, for example, an Aries (referring to the tropical system), it simply means that they were born 0-30degrees past the March equinox. A Cancer is anyone born 0-30degrees past the June Solstice, and hasn’t got anything to do with the constellation of the same name. Still, there is some relationship.
Not so well known is that in Ptolemy’s school (circa 150AD), both zodiacs were known, and a question asked in that school was: “What is the proportion that the constellation informs the sign?” TOTAMS is exploring this essential question now! So much changes at a great Turning of The Ages!
There is an essence to the sign of Virgo (defined as 150-180degrees from the Aries Equinox). The Hellenistic system defined it as an Earth Sign ruled by Mercury (along with Gemini). This view, in our assessment, is a mistake and no longer applies, as well as having caused gross judgment towards the sign Virgo. In fact, TOTAMS has eliminated the entire doctrine of ruler-ships, which we perceive as being locked into a previous era. Virgo, the sign, is too often depicted as critical, picky, cold and judgmental, resulting in many people in the current world – particularly those with lots of Virgo on their chart – being victimized by this lack of understanding. In contrast, TOTAMS sees this sign as discriminating and wholly dedicated to recognizing the PATTERN of the Universe, and being committed to upholding it. I think goddesses and archetypes related to Vesta and Ceres are more resonant with the sign of Virgo. The Shamanic Astrology Handbook goes into all this in great depth.
The Sign of Virgo has certainly received quite a bit of information and inspiration from the constellation with the same name. Even when the Sun enters Libra at the September Equinox, it is being informed by the Virgin-Priestess constellation. This will not always be so. As we have seen, at this current New Moon of 11Virgo, the constellation of the Lion is informing Sun and Moon. The entire sign of Virgo is informed by the Virgin-Priestess AND the Lion constellations. Over the course of a 26,000-year precessional cycle, every constellation will have an opportunity to align with every sign. That is the essence of the Turning of The Ages. The first essay in the Shamanic Astrology Handbook explores this situation, including how the meaning of the September Equinox itself can change over time. Every sign is undergoing alterations to its essence when looked at from a 26,000-year perspective.
Key Points
- Both Zodiacs are valid, and they are intended to work together, not in conflict with each other.
- Each tropical sign has an essence, but the essence can change, just as archetypes themselves can change.
- Each constellation has an essence that is part of Great Mystery and of a higher order than what any given culture projects onto it. But the stories and recent projections also matter, for as long as we are not bound to them.
- The old patriarchal Hellenistic meanings as well as the surface level meanings of the constellations (not signs) in Vedic/Sidereal astrology need updating.
- It is necessary to name the constellations different than the signs. TOTAMS uses the protocol of naming the constellations as we have more recently seen them; for example, the Aries constellation is the Ram, the Leo constellation is the Lion, Libra is the Scales, Virgo is the Virgin-Priestess etc. This was inspired by the astrology known as Astrosophy, from the Steiner wellspring.
An Author From The 1920s Presaging This Understanding
To demonstrate that there are others who have known that astrology would need a revision, I share here an excerpt from a remarkable book by Elizabeth Vreede: “Anthroposophy and Astrology”. In it are essays from 1928-29. Vreede was part of Steiner’s esoteric circle, as head of the Science and Astronomy department. She is the true founder of Astrosophy, a system of astrology that has influenced this writer.
Vreede writes (page 106-107, July 1928):
“We ought indeed to have two expressions, one for the twelvefold division of the year’s cycle, the signs, and one for the configurations of stars visible in the sky, the real constellations of the zodiac. The traditional names, Ram, Bull, and so on, have actually something of both in them. It is, therefore, so extraordinarily difficult to make a correct distinction between sign and constellation. On some night when the stars are clear, to recognize the Ram quite plainly outlined in the sky, its head turned to the rear, in order to see again the old imaginative pictures from which the constellations receive their names. The same is true for Leo the Lion, Sagittarius the Archer, and so on. On the other hand, the equinox always remains the “Scales” even at this point, as already stated, now lies in Virgo. We must really be clear that the names arise entirely from the old dream-like clairvoyance, and all of them are basically out of date for our time. Modern humanity must experience the starry heavens differently—whether it is sign or constellation … But in a certain sense the names of these pictures, the new names of the starry heaven are lacking. Perhaps if such names did exist, the older names could be preserved for the “signs.” But they would have to be totally severed from the visible constellations and be only the divisions of the ecliptic-equator.
These things are spoken of here only in order to point, perhaps, to a distant future perspective. To give new names would have meaning only if they were universally accepted by civilized humankind. Otherwise one would merely pursue a cosmological sectarianism … and particularly of art and inner spiritual experience of the starry heavens – will allow the conditions to ripen that can some day lead to appropriate naming, be it of the constellations, the signs, or both.”
The Turning of the Ages Mystery School is certainly taking her up on this future necessity!
A Venus Addendum
Spica is the brightest star in the Virgin-Priestess Constellation, currently at 23Libra53. Indeed, Spica, may be the most sacred star related to Women’s Mysteries and the Sacred Feminine. I have written about her many times. She was seen as a stellar stand-in for /counterpart to Venus. Her yearly journey was analogous to the journey of Venus in and out of the underworld, as well as in the Northern Hemisphere the season of harvest and then the onset of winter. 5000 years ago, the Full Moon at Imbolc was the celestial radiance of the Goddess, and Spica’s conjunction with the Sun was symbolic of her death and resurrection. The Catholic Church has fixed the date of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary as August 15. 5000 years ago, that was when the Sun was conjunct Spica in the underworld. Precession has changed this. The date of the Sun-Spica conjunction is now October 16. Spica now disappears into the underworld around October 2, the New Moon, and rises around Samhain (secular Halloween).
Venus herself aligns with Spica in the Virgin-Priestess on September 16-17. I find this to be of supreme interest and highly relevant to our topic and the commencing lunation.