On the road towards redefining Virgo

I’m very interested in exploring and writing about my understanding of the Virgo archetype. I believe a huge distortion has been made since…well…the onset of the patriarchal times (which falls into the category of “the world as we know it”..unfortunately). And I don’t mean “men” when I say patriarchy, just to be clear. I mean a certain paradigm we live in and which has shown it’s limitations that affect both males and females. Patriarchy is a concentration of characteristics which we indeed associate with the male side, but unfortunately these are not serving men either, as I believe we need to integrate both male and female, yin and yang parts in ourselves to be whole.

So back to the Virgo archetype. Recently I got to a point when I started being afraid to attempt clicking on the play button of any Virgo-related Youtube video. Or to read any materials online about the “Virgo personality”. I felt something is very off here. And I had felt this for a long time, related to my Sun sign. So I started researching a bit more, and I managed to find various resources of information about the Virgo archetype which seem to add a bit more depth to the subject and are not focusing only on the shadow side of the sign, which most of the astrologers still do, unfortunately. I intend to write more about the subject in the future, but for now let’s start with this.

It’s worth it looking into what “Virgin” originally meant, and it starts making sense. The Virgin was the knowledgeable, independent woman, who didn’t need to be tied to a man. The Virgin was not owned by anyone, but she was the go-to person for advice, for healing. Her knowledge was based on experience, hence the Earth element, and she might have been in a relationship, with a man, but she still kept her independence intact. She is also the mother, but not in a Cancerian nurturing way, but more like the “teach a man to fish” way. She was not at all “pure and untouchable” from the sexual point of view, on the contrary, she represented someone who had a wide knowledge about the connection of sexuality and the sacred.

How I see Virgo, the original image surrounding this archetype, it is the blend of the feminine and the masculine, and from this point of view it’s easy to see why this image of the Virgin might have been viewed as an impediment by those representatives of early patriarchy who tried to introduce this paradigm where the feminine part inside all of us started to be viewed as “less than”, “not smart enough” or even “evil” and became denigrated, vilified, pushed away.

But, to end on a more cheerful tone, it’s 2016, the middle ages are over (even the contemporary middle ages – one certainly hopes) and the Virgin is back, more powerful than ever. To take back what had been taken away – not only from her but from the whole of humanity, from all of us.