Johfra Bosschart, Virgo
I adore this image. It reminds me of a precious and delicate porcelain figurine that you hold delicately between your fingers, marveling at its fragile beauty. I like to spend a longer time looking at the Zodiac image before I start writing about it. I try to think of a literary work, preferably a poem, that I would associate with the image. For some reason Virgo directed my thoughts towards a Polish poet and a Nobel laureate, Czeslaw Milosz and his Song on Porcelain. In this beautiful poem, he voices his regret about beautiful porcelain being smashed by soldiers’ boots. Here is the first stanza:
Rose-colored cup and saucer,
Flowery demitasses:
They lie beside the river
Where an armored column passes.
Winds from across the meadow
Sprinkle the banks with down;
A torn apple tree’s shadow
Falls on the muddy path;
The ground everywhere is strewn
With bits of brittle froth –
Of all things broken and lost
The porcelain troubles me most.
To me this poem is a song of innocence and experience, and these two themes are very important for Virgo – the Virgin. The poem evokes the second world war. When I was a schoolgirl I Poland, September marked the anniversary of Hitler’s invasion on Poland (followed by Stalin’s some two weeks later). This happened when the Sun was in Virgo: our collective innocence was shattered and we paid dearly for the experience we gained.
In my last post of the series dedicated to Leo I pondered on the symbol of the Sphinx: half-lion, half-maiden. I have recently looked at Dane Rudhyar’s writings to see what he had to say about the sign Virgo. He also thinks that the Sphinx is a very important symbol to understand if we want to fathom the meaning of Virgo. He writes:
In Leo the creative thinker is born. With Virgo this new birth becomes substantiated. The fiery activity of the creative personality, dramatizing itself and releasing its energies from within outward, reaches a circumference and the cold winds of space. … the personalized emotional power of the human ego … transforms itself into the potentiality and expectancy of the virgin Woman, waiting for fecundity – within the sanctuary of the Pyramid. … The Virgin is alone – and expectant. She expects the performance of a Mystery which will destroy both her aloneness and her virginity.
…
The Sphinx is the symbolical expression of the crisis which must come at a certain stage of evolution if the creative, self-projecting, dramatic aloneness of the human ego (Leo) is to become the expectant, potentially fruitful aloneness of the human Soul (Virgo).
This fragment touches upon the many mysteries surrounding the sign Virgo and underlies a lot of the ostensive paradoxes of that sign. It alludes to ancient mysteries and female priestesses (often also sacred prostitutes as was the case in the cult of goddesses such as Atargatis and the Ephesian Artemis) who took part in them. Liz Greene quotes extensively from an essay by John Layard on the virgin archetype. I hope to read the original source one day but at this point I am quoting from it after Liz Greene:
… though we now think of the word ‘virgin’ as being synonymous with ‘chaste’, this was not the case either with the Greek word parthenos or with the Hebrew almah of which ‘virgin’ is the most usual biblical translation. For the Greek word was used of an unmarried girl whether she was chaste or not, and was in fact also applied to unmarried mothers. The Hebrew word means likewise ‘unmarried’ without reference to premarital chastity. … Thus in this sense the word ‘virgin’ does not mean chastity but the reverse, the pregnancy of nature, free and uncontrolled, corresponding on the human plane to unmarried love…”
A mind untrained to think symbolically takes everything literally. It is sad that for most of us in modern times virginity is limited to biology. This was not the case in ancient times.
Who is the female figure in the image? She is the Greek Astraea (or Dike), she is the Syrian Atargatis, and she is the Egyptian Isis. Let us look at them in turn. Dike represents the principle of justice and natural law. She used to live on the earth but got severely disappointed with human depravity and flew up to heaven to her father Zeus, becoming the constellation of Virgo. Like Demeter, Dike was usually depicted carrying a sheaf of barley. Liz Greene, herself a Virgo, writes the following about her:
She seems to be an image of the intrinsic orderliness of nature, and her disgust at humanity is a mythic image of the traditional Virgoan disgust at disorder, chaos and wastage of time and substance.
Atargatis is a fascinating goddess, one of my favourites that I feel a strong urge to learn more about. Atargatis’ epithets included ‘pure,’ ‘virgin’ and ‘Mother of the Gods.’ She was the great mother and a goddess of fertility, often portrayed as a mermaid with fish as her sacred emblems. Her cult had orgiastic elements. In the Latin novel The Golden Ass by Apuleius, the chief protagonist called Lucius is transformed into a donkey. The donkey’s evolution involves living out his brutish lustful nature. At one point Lucius as a donkey joins the orgiastic cult of Atargatis. This experience taught him something very crucial for the sign Virgo: the sacredness of the ritual and the sanctity of the body as the vessel of the divine. In the end, it is the goddess Isis who transforms him back into the human form. Ancient Egyptians associated Isis with the sign Virgo and portrayed her with huge, sheltering wings. She helped her consort Osiris to civilize Egypt by teaching women to grind corn, to spin and to weave. After the dark god Seth murdered Osiris and cut his body into 14 pieces (note that I am shortening the myth significantly here), she lovingly collected all the pieces save one – his penis, which had been swallowed by a fish. In the end in a sacred sex ritual she brought him back to life with her magic and they conceived a son – Horus. After this act of sacred sex Osiris became the King of the Underworld. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead the sign of Virgo is represented as the gateway to the kingdom of Osiris.
The word I associate with the Virgin archetype is integrity, being one-in-herself, intact, and adept at preserving boundaries. Her eyes are closed in the painting because she follows her own commands and bows only to the dictates of her own nature. She gives of herself guided by her own inner principles. Two quotes by Liz Greene capture this idea beautifully:
The issue of bestowing one’s gifts or one’s bounty as one wishes, according to inner laws, rather than satisfying expectations to gain rewards, seems fundamental to the mythic figure of the Virgin.
Virgos of both sexes are often caught in the dilemma of having to choose between the safe, well-paid and ultimately barren path of external compliance and the fertile but often lonely path of inner loyalty.
The traditional ruler of Virgo is Mercury (I will return to this) but her esoteric ruler is the Moon. The archetype of the Great Mother (“the universal primordial substance from which the material cosmos is condensed,” as Johfra puts it) is essentially Virgoan. Mother and matter share the same etymological root: the sign Virgo is an expression of matter divided into tiny atoms. The four Evangelists included in the four corners of the image allude to the four elements (the tetramorph, Greek tetra: four, morph: shape): the angel in the top left-hand corner is Matthew (the air element, presented in human form because his gospel stresses the humanity of Christ), the eagle is John (the water element as the eagle is a higher expression of Scorpio and symbolic of Logos – the word of God), the lion is Mark (fire; in his gospel the royal dignity of Christ is in the foreground), and the ox is Luke (earth; this gospel speaks of Christ’s sacrifice). The four of them are an expression of Christ consciousness.
Erich Neumann explored the Virgin archetype in astonishing detail in his wonderful book The Great Mother:
The childbearing virgin, the Great Mother as a unity of mother and virgin, appears in a very early period as the virgin with the ear of grain, the heavenly gold of the stars, which corresponds to the earthly gold of the wheat. This golden ear is a symbol of the luminous son who on the lower plane is borne as grain in the earth and in the crib, and on the higher plane appears in the heavens as the immortal luminous son of night. Thus the virgin with the spica, the ear of grain, and the torch-bearer, Phosphora, are identical to the virgin with the child.
In the painting she holds an ancient fertility symbol – the egg – which contains a flame. As the Sun is the child of the Night, so Virgin Mary gave birth to Christ or Isis to Horus. Liz Greene emphasizes also that the sign Virgo is about mothering in the deeper sense as “the nurturing of potentials and the bringing to birth of the inner pattern in outer life.” The fire she holds is feminine fire – fire of the earth, the libido that flames up in the act of sacred sex. The white wings not only stand for chastity but also for the upward movement starting on the earth, in the mundane, amidst nature, and rising towards the upper spiritual realms.
The traditional ruler of Virgo is Mercury presented on the left as Hermes and on the right as the Egyptian Thoth (the baboon). Rudhyar asserts that Virgo stands for “mental fecundity” and “critical faculty.” In search of meaning, Virgo questions, criticizes and passes value judgements, “breaking everything down as finely as possible” (Johfra). With a graceful gesture, Hermes is trying to encompass the universe with the mind. Thoth performs quality control of the souls of the dead, placing their hearts on one scale and the feather of Maat (measure, truth, balance, morality, justice) on the other. Maat was the Egyptian goddess who set the order of the universe out of chaos.
In conclusion, let me look at the remaining elements depicted in this image. There is the ibis in the lower right-hand corner, a bird sacred to Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom. It is guarding the scrolls of wisdom (we can see the Kabbalistic Tree of Life on the cover). A stride of the ibis was used as a measure in building temples. The jackal, an animal seen at burial grounds, alludes to an important function of Hermes – that of psychopompos, i.e. the conductor of souls through the underworld, the only god that was allowed to enter Hades. The mysterious figure on the steps emerging from the luminous mist is Osiris. He is awaiting the souls at the gate to the kingdom of the dead. But in alchemical terms, Osiris is also awaiting the initiates who took part in secret mysteries and who through them acquired universal consciousness and eternal life.
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Sources:
Johfra Bosschart, Astrology
Juan Eduardo Cirlot, The Dictionary of Symbols
Liz Greene, The Astrology of Fate
Erich Neumann, The Great Mother
Dane Rudhyar, The Zodiac as The Universal Matrix
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symbolreader 
Thanks for this Monika. You are inspiring me to do a little reading on astrology. I downloaded natal charts for myself and my husband last night. Your links here, and other posts of yours will be most helpful.
So far it feels like learning a new language…:)
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May your search be fruitful.
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Reblogged this on Little Brownette Bird and commented:
My Moon is in Virgo (as are Pluto and Uranus, making me, I recognize…rather odd). I believe it has in many ways colored my life and my personality more than my Sun sign (Aries) has. My astrologer friend calls me the least-Aries Aries she’s ever seen. Part of that is a Cancer Ascendant and Mars in Taurus stirring the soup (or should that be settling it?) as well.
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I love that image of indigo blue Hermes framing the universe with his hands. And you know I’m all about Ephesian Artemis. 🙂
You nailed Virgo, Monika. I’m also leaving you a song. One of my best friends occasionally serenades me to it, changing the name from Christina to Kelsey. It’s in the Dike vein… and written and sung by a Virgo who I understand is well regarded in your native country.
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Oh yeah, that indigo is splendid. Love the song, can see you in it. I think it was you who pointed me to the Ephesian Artemis. Or maybe we both served her at one point 😉
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Monika, thank you for this beautifully written, insightful post. I am fascinated by Johfra’s imagery… in particular the line drawing near the scales held by the baboon (forgive me if he has a name); This diagram is the North Indian Vedic Astrology chart, which I use in my astrology practice. I never noticed it depicted in his artwork before! The chart here appears to suggest planets only in the 1st, 4th, 7th, and 10th houses, which are called Kendras or houses of Karma. They are the foundation houses in a birth chart. When these houses are occupied by planets, there’s a solid foundation upon which the rest of the individual’s personality and soul expression can manifest through. Of course depending on what other houses these planets rule, their conditions, and if they are aspected by difficult planets, etc… will present the ‘flavor’ of the manifestations. But the realization of ‘solid’ and ‘stable’ as a foundation in life ties in nicely with Virgo.
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Amazing, you are so right about the vedic chart. I knew it reminded me of something. Thank you very much for pointing this out! I have a lot of respect for vedic astrology and like you I did not know Johfra did too. The baboon is Thoth, so it is very significant that he would be holding a Vedic chart.
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Ah! I’m familiar with the ibis-headed form of Thoth. Thank you for informing me.
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So much of information and presented really well! It was a good post and can’t wait for your take on Libra!
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Thank you! Libra is an extremely cool image.
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Ooo…I always insist that Libra’s are cool peeps 😉 But then again I could be very much biased…lol.
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I just had a thought…a question actually….do you read these cards intuitively and choose the interpretation based on that? Or is it part of a book?
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I use various sources including what Johfra wrote himself but to be honest he was a much better painter than interpreter or writer. I try to use my intuition as much as I can.
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Oooo..that’s so cool. Your post is so well thought out with references and such, much like a scholarly article and it’s based on you intuitively interpreting the card. For some reason that makes it uber cool in my book..hehe.
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I am in such awe of your ability to synthesize multiple and occasionally disparate elements and sources into exquisitely insightful cohesive articles. I have been discussing the sacred prostitute with a few folks recently and rescued my copy of Nancy Corbett’s book The Sacred Prositute out of the chaos I call my book closet! Virgo is so much more than the geek with the pocket protector or the nice girl who follows the rules!
I read this post today that I think you will enjoy : http://virgomagic.com/2013/09/04/virgo-new-moon-2/ She is one of “us” and writes for The Mountain Astrologer!
thank you for all you do!
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That really is so nice to hear. Cohesion is always my primary goal. I have the book you mentioned, actually. The topic of sacred prostitution is extremely fascinating to me.
There are Virgos like you describe around us, but Johfra’s images show the highest, most luminous expression impossible to achieve fully in real life.
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Beautiful image, and post Monika. I have a lot of the virgin in my life. Looking forward to Scorpio.
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Thank you, dear Sindy.
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A fascinating read — thank you. I appreciated the Polish historical perspective especially. 🙂
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Thank you. I realized while writing this why it is archetypally fitting that the war started when the Sun was in Virgo.
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In your opinion, is there any cause and effect relationship between those events?
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No, of course not. They just correspond, it is synchronicity. Symbols are at another level, not causal.
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So, those emblems had no effect on the decision makers, even those leaders involved in the German pseudo-occult movements like Thule?
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This I do not know – if the occult interest of the Nazi leaders caused them to do anything. But I find it interesting and worth exploring – how they misused symbols for their sick purposes. The swastika, the SS emblem, the eagle…
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The SS leader Himmler was deeply involved with Thule and several other German occult societies. It would be remarkable if there wasn’t some connection with the selection of the invasion date and the Nazi occultism. Just a thought.
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I was at an astrological workshop once where we analyzed the chart of Hitler’s attack and you may be right because they had astrologers who advised them.
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Yes, I think Albert Speer said in his book that Goebbels told him the beginning of September had been determined by Hitler’s astrologer as an auspicious time for the invasion.
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But astrology is neutral, it is people who are evil.
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Yes. From my perspective, God IS, and Creation IS only. Everything else is what we take and make of it. 🙂
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An incredibly insightful post Monika. Enjoyed every part of it. Just a note on this: “A mind untrained to think symbolically takes everything literally. It is sad that for most of us in modern times virginity is limited to biology. This was not the case in ancient times.”
I find it interesting that in the Isaiah text in the Old Testament the word parthenos is used in a particular verse seen to be a prophecy of the coming of the Christ. In the synoptic Gospels the word is translated as virgin and the entire doctrine of the virgin birth is based on a literal and biological understanding of the word virgin.
Again thanks for an outstanding post. To add. I was born under the sign of Virgo. I’ve never quite known how that has shaped me. Your post has given me a lot to think about. Thank you.
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I swear I thought you were a Virgo. I sometimes have these hunches. I am really happy you found my post meaningful.
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Wow! Was it that obvious? You got me worried -lol
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Yes, Don, maybe you should reconsider commenting here (cue diabolical laughter) 🙂 🙂
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Just to say that the word Parthenos is found in the Septuagint – the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
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That is interesting.
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Great post. I read Apuleius in college and was fascinated by the book, especially the depictions of the rites of Isis at the end. Cheers!
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Agreed, the book is really great.
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I’ve been waiting on this one, and it was worth it! Thanks so much for a really interesting read, and such an in-depth look. It explains so much about my husband that I couldn’t put into words. Wonderful.
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Thank you, this makes me really happy.
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I didn’t get a chance to leave a comment when I liked this earlier and wanted to add that I thought this post was wonderful. I thought the painting, the poetry and the analysis were all splendid and complimented each other nicely. The image felt very serene and I found myself especially intrigued with the details. Do you think that Virgo symbolizing the gateway to the Kingdom of Osiris in the Book of the Dead refers to the sun beginning to decline in the sky while it is positioned in the constellation Virgo on the ecliptic? I am a Virgo and would love to learn about the impact of astrology on life. Any thoughts on sites or books that interpret the significance of your astrological profile based on date and time of birth would be graciously received.
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I think your intuition about Virgo Sun and the kingdom of Osiris is very convincing – I do not know for certain, though. I take it you have never had your natal chart interpreted by an astrologer? You can get a drawing of your chart from http://www.astro.com, where there are also some basic articles on astrology. I can also advise you on further reading if you wish. Discovering astrology 12 years ago was a revelation to me. So much fell into place.
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You are correct about me never having an interpretation. Thank you and I would be thrilled about any info that you provide.
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Sure, first get a drawing of your chart. I can do this for you as well.
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I got this from a site offering natal charts after entering day, time and city of birth. How do I proceed?
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I see you were born in the same year as me. What I always recommend to beginners are books by Stephen Arroyo:
I would start with his Astrology, Psychology…, then move on to Chart Interpretation Handbook. That is how I started: first reading the books for some time, then I went on a few astrology courses. Astrology requires a long time and patience to gain knowledge and confidence. I have been doing it for twelve years but only last year did I start to do readings for people because I did not feel confident enough before. Keep me posted how you are doing with this.
You can get a much better drawing from you chart from this website: http://www.astro.com/horoscope
The drawing you got looks terrible – very sloppy. I think your Virgoan side must dislike that.
You can also look here at some basic information about astrology, but Arroyo also does a great job in that respect. He is not facile, however, which I think is a great thing.
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Thank you very much Monika. I really do appreciate your assistance with beginning this journey and will definitely keep you updated as I continue. You are right about my thoughts regarding the chart, it did seem overly cluttered. Since I had no idea about the significance of anything however, I was unsure whether that was a good thing or not.
I will get a new one from the site you recommended and do look forward to reading Arroyo’s book. Thanks again for your advice.
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