So here we are, the first day of Virgo season, and Hexagram 59: Dispersion/Dissolution recommends that we become less rigid by having a religious type of awe:
Through hardness and selfishness the heart grows rigid, and this rigidity leads to separation from all others. …Therefore the hearts of men must be seized by a devout emotion. They must be shaken by a religious awe in face of eternity – stirred with an intuition of the One Creator of all living beings, and united through the strong feeling of fellowship experienced in the ritual of divine worship.”
The I Ching, Richard Wilhelm translation
This reminds me of what Jung told Bill W., the founder of A.A. (Alcoholics Anonymous). Jung told Bill W. about his experience with an alcoholic patient who became sober after meeting with Jung for a year and a half. The patient later relapsed.
Jung’s conclusion was that the patient’s situation was hopeless “so far as any further medical or psychiatrict treatment might be concerned.”
He also said, when asked if there was any hope: “there might be, provided he could become the subject of a spiritual or religious experience – in short, a genuine conversion.”
This led to the famous Step One of A.A: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our live had become unmanageable.” And also Step Two: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
So what does any of that have to do with Virgo? Virgo’s planetary host is Mercury, and one would normally associate spiritual experience and converesion more with Jupiter, Mercury’s opposite.
When you look beyond the stereotypes, Virgo is about the fluidity between spirit and matter. Virgos are working to be of this world while not being of this world.
Virgo is adaptable and not rigid, because it is one of the four mutable signs. It is mutable because it will be handing off to Libra, where the amount of darkness during the day will become greater than the amount of light.
We just left Leo season, which, among other things, is associated with the heart. Leo is a fixed sign, not an adaptable and mutable one. So if you are leaving Leo with any traces of rigidity of heart, Mercury, Virgo’s host, might just be a good antitodte. Mercury is like a spirit guide and helps bring change.
I’ll leave you with three questions from Hilary Barrett’s commentary on this hexagram:
Where and how can you be less rigid?
Where are the walls in a current situation you are facing, and what can you see as they dissolve away?
As energy and vitality is liberated from old boundaries, where will it go?
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*The 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, an ancient Chinese text, are arranged along the ecliptic (the celestial equator) in Human Design. In astrology there are 12 zodiac signs along the ecliptic, so there are 5.3 hexagrams per zodiac sign. I’m contemplating these hexagrams as a way to engage with astrology, the I Ching, and Jungian psychology.
References:
I Ching: Walking Your Path, Creating Your Future by Hilary Barrett
The War of the Gods in Addiction by David Schoen
I Ching or Book of Changes translated by Richard Wilhelm
