Virgo Season
The Sun entered into the earth sign of Virgo at 2:01am PDT on August 23, kicking off VIRGO SEASON through September 22!
In its most empowered expression, Virgo is deeply oriented to ever-learning, living and guiding with humility. Virgo is a service-oriented sign and is motivated by the joy of being able to show up with practical, tangible wisdom and a skill set to help a situation improve.
Virgo, naturally attuned to details and patterns, understands the minutiae of manifestation, the ways we must organize and strategize to create the changes we wish to see in our lives and in the world.
Step-by-step and with intention toward a vision is quintessential Virgoan wisdom. It’s all about what we practice in our daily lives. The choices we make and how we relate in our day-to-day will create our future.
I have an altar on my desk right now (pictured above) to honor some of the predominant astrological energies being stimulated both personally, in my own birth chart/life, and in the collective. Virgo energy is strong here, represented by the embroidery hoop by Shanalee Hampton revealing a key to some powerful Virgo manifestation magic: “MAKE tiny CHANGES.”
“A slight change in your daily habits can guide your life to a different destination.” –James Clear, author of Atomic Habits
Virgo Season invites us to get grounded and look through a detailed lens upon our current situation (individual, relationship, community and society). What are the ways in which conditions need to improve? Virgo demands specificity. Devote patient time here. Critically examine.
And, when you’re ready, or perhaps simultaneously, with equal specificity, envision what improvement would look and feel like. What would be ideal? What would be glorious and life-giving? Let your imagination be vast and free. Spend spacious time here. Join with other hearts and minds to dream.
Then, embark upon a process of breaking down into bite-sized, tiny pieces how to get from point A to point B. Outline it. Map it. Whatever your method, make the path and practices as detailed and accessible as possible, knowing you can continuously refine and evolve the plan. Adaptability is a Virgo superpower due to this earth sign being of the mutable modality.
In the spirit of Virgo Season, I want to honor Andrea Ritchie, who “is a Black lesbian immigrant survivor who has been documenting, organizing, advocating, litigating, and agitating around policing and criminalization of Black women, girls, trans, and gender nonconforming people for the past three decades.“
She has a new book coming out in October (which you can pre-order now) titled, Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies. This is the next book in the Emergent Strategy Series started by adrienne maree brown in collaboration with AK Press back in 2017 with amb’s groundbreaking book Emergent Strategy.
My partner, Dan, and I went to hear Andrea Ritchie speak on a panel at San Francisco State University, along with Angela Davis and Ny Nourn, several months ago. The event was in celebration of 25 years of the national grassroots organization, Critical Resistance, working to abolish the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). It was my first exposure to Andrea Ritchie, and immediately upon returning home that night, I cued up a couple of podcast interviews with her to listen to in the coming days. Here’s one from the Emergent Strategy pod hosted by adrienne maree brown.
Andrea Ritchie has over 20 years of experience as a researcher, policy analyst and advocate on criminal justice issues. The depth and precision of her knowledge coupled with her capacity to articulate the reality of the current moment and ways we can move into new possibilities was profoundly grounding and igniting. I can’t wait for her new book to arrive. Here’s the synopsis:
“Practicing New Worlds explores how principles of emergence, adaptation, iteration, resilience, transformation, interdependence, decentralization and fractalization can shape organizing toward a world without the violence of surveillance, police, prisons, jails, or cages of any kind, in which we collectively have everything we need to survive and thrive.
Rooted in analysis of current abolitionist practices and interviews with on-the-ground organizers resisting state violence, and nurturing organizations and convergences that can grow transformative cities and movements, Practicing New Worlds takes readers on a journey of learning, unlearning, experimentation, and imagination to dream the worlds we long for into being.”
You can pre-order here!
To read more, please visit my 2023 Virgo Season Newsletter.