Eris in the 8th solar house. Spiral Door aspect, Quaoar and Ixion in the 4th solar house. Pluto working toward the solar 5th house. Saturn in the 12th solar house heading for the 1st. Chiron-Nessus conjunct in the 6th solar house. Mars retrograde in the 11th solar house. Venus retrograde in the 12th and 1st solar houses.   Virgo is the relationship house for Pisces, the career house for Sagittarius, and the home and security house for Gemini. This interpretation works for Virgo rising as well.

SAFETY is the issue on Planet Earth, and what a game we make of it. Perhaps this is born of some need to flirt with death as a way of affirming life, or to have a little of the power over others that we think they hold over us, but we make things a lot more complicated than they are. And, indeed, we live in a time when we are under constant psychic attack; when our rights and liberties are under attack; when any person who can read knows their food is not food anymore. And, as a Virgo, you know it's your role to make the world a better place, a safer place, to offer if not solace, then solutions. The question is your point of beginning; the feeling from which you proceed.
 
For you, safety has been the theme of many years of your life, though you may have given it a variety of different names, and gone through a diversity of phases along the way to where you are today. Indeed, you may look back and wonder what, at certain times, you were thinking. As uncomfortable as it may be to question your logic, I suggest you do so. The reward will be the clarity of conscience that can only come from an honest reckoning with yourself, and the time is at hand. I suggest you celebrate this.
 
Pluto has been burning its way through your 4th solar house since the mid-1990s, representing a distinct phase of your life. The 4th solar house is about emotional grounding, security, family and the childhood environment that becomes the adult's emotional environment. For you, the sign involved is Sagittarius. The planet involved has been Pluto, the lord of transformation and the soul's journey. Yet an unprecedented series of discoveries in Sagittarius during the past decade has expanded the plot and the theme, gradually giving you new ways to consider your situation, in particular, the family life from which you originate, the family life you exist in now, and your relationship to the family of humanity.
 
Sagittarius in the 4th house is not about having a warm, cuddly feeling inside -- that you must work for, and grow into. Sagittarius, rather, is a bit distant, it perceives on a wide scale, and it reaches deep into awareness. If taken superficially, Sagittarius is perhaps the very worst archetype of the lot, creating a devil-be-damned attitude that, if run through one's emotional system, can create cruelty. If taken on the deeper level, or higher level (as you prefer), the result is an individual who is able to perceive his or her place in the world and not see himself or herself as separate from, or above, the condition of the planet.
 
Pluto transiting this house has certainly given you a lot to think about, and has compelled you into direct experiences with life where you transgress the boundary between what is personal and what is political. You live something of an inside-out, upside-down experience; the more selfish you may try to be, the more you are guided back toward your destiny of participation. The more you try to participate in the world, the more the cosmic forces seem to align and say: this is about you.
 
Living this paradox has kept you on the edge, very much apropos of your sign and its modern ruling planet, Chiron -- a planet also associated with the sign we are focusing on, Sagittarius. Chiron is the archetype of the shaman, who must live on the edge of society, who defines and negotiates his needs differently; and who has a different purpose. You will find that you belong on this planet as long as you honor that purpose. Alienation is one thing, but if that takes you beyond the sense of an existence that has meaning, you need to make adjustments, mainly to your philosophy of life: not somebody else's philosophy, but as you have by now discovered, your own.
 
A 4th house Pluto transit, if lived unconsciously, can create a constant search for security that takes you many places, through many ideas, and many concepts of self and God. The thing is, as someone once wrote, seek and you shall find.
 
It would not be an exaggeration to say that isolation has at times been a difficult but productive teacher, pointing the way into yourself and helping you reach the core of your being. You have not quite arrived yet; the Spiral Door is located at the gateway between the 4th and 5th houses, where the sense of safety and grounding becomes the gift of expression, be it through some creative experience, the ability to live spontaneously, raising a family, or creating a business that helps support you and your community. If you have gained knowledge in these years, to borrow another expression, this time from the yoga path, "Action is the fruit of knowledge."
 
In other words, the reward of being clear with yourself, and emotionally grounded, is the ability to participate in the world in a constructive way. And it would seem that every cell in your astrology and very likely your body wants you to take on some element of world karma and take on your role fully as a world server. There are an infinite number of possibilities, and the planet at our particular moment has karma to burn. In fact, that's about all we have to burn right now.
 
Let's come back to the idea of safety, because this remains a big part of the story of your life. For most people, safety is about believing they are safe. Beliefs, however, are often little more than the mind tricking itself. They are a form of self-manipulation. For example, you may believe that your front door is locked, but that does not make it locked. If you believe it, you feel safe. However, when you later discover that your door was not locked, or that the back window was wide open, you may for a moment have the vague idea that either you were not safe, or that something else (perhaps just luck) was keeping you safe. But that moment of discovery, where a belief evaporates like a drop of water, is rich.
 
Conversely, you may have locked your door, but you're afraid it's not locked. Your belief tells you you're not safe. You go back, and the door is in fact locked. You may adjust your belief based on the arrival of that fact, and declare yourself safe (which is another belief); you may go back and check again. We could say from this that there are at least two kinds of beliefs: those that are based on known facts, and those that have no basis. A third kind of belief is the kind based on faith. One by one, as your facts have proven to be without basis, or have not added up to the truth, you have been guided more and more clearly to trust something else, which is faith.
 
But faith in what? This has been an adventure, and continues to be one. Because no matter what external "thing" we may have faith in, be it the security of our job, a concept of God, a medical test, a place, the government, or some verified truth, all faith is solid to the extent that one trusts oneself. The game can be projected outward to an infinite degree. You can collect facts all you want and they still won't add up to the truth. Something, some other factor, is guiding the process, and that something is inside you.
 
There have been some interesting turning points here. One phase of your life to become intimately familiar with is late 1993 through late 1995. This was the era right before Pluto changed signs to Sagittarius, when Chiron came blazing through your sign. Working with Chiron, I suggest that people do what I call "time frame" exercises, going back and looking at certain periods of time and establishing the basic facts of what occurred, and the nature of the turning point. These always make interesting investigations, and the Chiron perihelion, when it was closest to the Earth, moving the fastest through the signs, and making many aspects to everyone's chart, is an interesting one. For you, it was a personal transit because of the involvement of your Sun and one of your ruling planets.
 
This time frame is likely to have brought out something of your true nature, or precipitated a course of events that had the effect of putting you in contact with yourself, over time. If you are Virgo rising, then Chiron crosses your ascendant at this time, and the effect was potentially stronger than if it transited your Sun, though there are meaningful differences. For example, the Sun is about your role in the world, your sense of glory, and it has a lot to do with how you relate to your father and what he felt your destiny was. The ascendant is more closely related to your sense of existence, and is more subtle. Chiron in the ascendant can create an existential crisis that gets us to finally focus on who we really are as opposed to who everyone else said we are. (If you're not Virgo rising, you may want to find out what your ascendant is and see when Chiron was there, or will be there.)
 
Now, I bring this all up because whatever happened, developed, between 1993 and 1995 was definitely a turning point. Something seems to have wiped clean your sense of who you were; you became transparent to yourself, saw your own games, or had a crisis that changed your life, and that is when the real search began. Bearing in mind that on the most superficial level, this was a search for safety, what proceeded was likely some form of a grand experiment in what makes you feel safe, how long it lasted, whether it was sincere, whether it was at the expense of others, and whether it cast you in the role of victim or leader. To put it mildly, if Virgo is the sign of nurses, then it's not of any ordinary ones; assuming you got yourself into a position where you could be consistently useful, you would be a Clara Barton (Capricorn Sun and Moon) or Florence Nightingale (Taurus Sun and Moon).
   
Both were pioneers, inventors and bold leaders, whose contributions we still benefit from today. While we're on the subject, there are stories from both of their lives that are apropos of your moment. They both fall within the general category of grounding, and in particular, grounding one's search for meaning -- which is one way to sum up Pluto in Sagittarius in a sentence. Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, had enough Capricorn in her chart to walk through a brick wall without needing to dust herself off. (She gets added to my formidable Capricorn Moon chart collection.) Barton was a self-described Universalist, and today, Unitarian Universalists are among the few Christian groups that have the guts to refuse military service on religious grounds. Barton's basic beliefs included, according to the Wiki:

1. The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
2. Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
3. Acceptance of one another and encouragement of spiritual growth in our congregations;
4. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
5. The right of conscience and the use of democratic process within our congregations and society at large;
6. The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all;
7. Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
 
Note the lack of dogma and the emphasis on action. Note the corresponding emphasis on dogma and the utter lack of action connected with most religious ideologies.

Florence Nightingale, a nurse who took on the project of tending the Civil War wounded, is another name and story to get familiar with. Thus sayeth the Wiki:
 
"Inspired by what she took as a divine calling, experienced first in 1837 at Embley Park and later throughout her life, Nightingale committed herself to nursing. This demonstrated a passion on her part, and also a rebellion against the expected role for a woman of her status, which was to become an obedient wife. In those days, nursing was a career with a poor reputation, filled mostly by poorer women, "hangers-on" who followed the armies. In fact, nurses were equally likely to function as cooks. Nightingale announced her decision to enter nursing in 1845, evoking intense anger and distress from her family, particularly her mother."
 
Aah yes. For everyone who writes to me and says I'm "too tough on parents," because I constantly suggest we need to basically divorce our parents and deal with the head trips they laid on us, note the number of actual achievers and contributors, from Ammachi to George Lucas, whose parents wanted them to do something else, and who stood up to them, broke free and did what they had to do. Indeed, this is quite the theme of Pluto through one's 4th house, liberating oneself of one's parents' influences and the influences of the generations.
 
The necessity is for what Alejandro Jodorowsky calls "cleaning your tree," that is, addressing the influences of your generational lineage, the past deeds of your ancestors, their refusal to deal with their psychological baggage -- and what they dumped on you. This should be the subject of a book, not a horoscope, and fortunately plenty have been written. I suggest you start with A General Theory of Love. I don't recommend books lightly, and I don't recommend this one casually, either.
   
So, safety. There is more to say on this subject than I have room for here, but I will conclude with this. For you, real safety in the world has a lot to do with how you relate to others, particularly in the form of groups that are committed to service. The part of safety that has nothing to do with beliefs involves community. Part of why we feel so unsafe, threatened and voided out is because our sense of community is quickly being fried. Your sense of community, however, is being turned up, and I would start this brief discussion with the suggestion that you check in with the reality in your life of how you relate to groups of people. It's a focus point, because Chiron, one of your main planets, is taking a long trip in Aquarius.
 
Aquarius is your 6th house -- the Virgo house for Virgo. In other words, the way you express your Virgoness to the world is not by being alone, but by experiencing, teaching and learning cooperation. That cooperation needs to be focused and directed; dedicated to some idealistic goal with practical application. Optimally, it would be something that has never quite been done before, or is being done in an original way.
 
But note, as many have noted before: the dynamics of how you relate to a group involve rather directly the dynamics of your family of origin. Group involvement is also a place to outgrow the dynamics of your family of origin. The point, however, is not therapy. Therapy should be had in the therapy room, and to some extent, all of us in the Western world need it. The people you are meeting are people on a mission, and you are being invited to share in that mission, and even to create it as you go along. True, there is more to life than this -- but here, we have a very good start.


VIRGO
For more information about your relationships, please see Pisces. This will give you an idea what is happening for those closest to you, and how they may experience you. For more information about your career, please see Gemini. You can consider this an alternative take on your professional life, as it's an assessment of your 10th house. For more information about the home and security angle of your chart, please see Sagittarius. This will give you greater detail on themes just covered in this horoscope that relate to home and security. For an explanation of the houses, please see this article.