I couldn’t help but notice two kinds of stories online during this recent Leo season—different ones playing out in different corners of my feed—that ultimately fell into two different categories: a person being in the thrall of a projection onto a Hero, and the reverse, when multiple people withdraw their projections onto a Hero figure in a short period of time.
When there is a lot of drama like this in the air, it’s helpful to pause and ask yourself, “when did I do something that was even a little bit similar to this?” I immediately thought of a time many years ago when I was in a writer’s group. I had recently joined a church that sometimes uses the phrase “spiritual father” when describing a priest. When I mentioned that in a positive way during the writer’s group a fellow writer in the group cringed. I quickly moved the conversation on, but the sting remained, and was remembered years later when I ended up withdrawing the projection on that Hero figure.
Something else was in the air this Leo season: the term “shadow work” can be weaponized. Not everyone who comments has actually withdrawn their projection—some never had one to begin with. More than once I saw someone lob “you should do shadow work!” at a person like an accusation. Jungian analyst Ken James has a teaching I return to often: nobody truly signs up for shadow work. It does you, not the other way around. And here’s the trap in that: the moment you think someone isn’t doing shadow work, shadow work is already doing you.
Enter Virgo season and its quieter corrective: the sign of the card The Hermit, and associated with the one-in-herself virgin. The virgin archetype isn’t about chastity, but about being true to her nature.
“The virgin forest,” Marion Woodman said, “is untrammeled…full of all kinds of seeds so that there is immense potential.” She has the courage to sort out what is her and what is not her—and that, Woodman says, is the root of the crone (Woodman, Crown of Age, audiobook, ~15:00).
The reason one-in-herself isn’t self-sufficient or armored is that Virgo isn’t avoiding the shadow—she’s just not performing it for an audience or outsourcing it to an authority. She’s letting it do her, privately, without needing a father or hero to supervise the process.
Where have you outsourced your own authority? What would it look like to take a step back and instead water some of the seeds of your immense potential?
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Anita Ashland
AnitaAshland.com
