The Sun enters tropical Virgo at 12:46 am EDT (4:46 UT) Saturday. Included with the Sun’s ingress into Virgo this year is astrology’s implicit support for thinking about any way you might be boxed in, and getting out. Putting you in a box may be well intended, or self-serving. Yet, nobody can box you in unless you cooperate.
Virgo is ruled by Mercury and has a demonstrable affinity for the centaur Chiron, as Eric has often mentioned. The Sun, among other things, correlates with consciousness.
Solar Virgo thus expresses consciousness through Mercury’s intellectual energy field while also offering what Eric called “the intensity and drive” Chiron confers. That’s how it’s an appropriate time to start school again.
That’s also how the Sun’s annual traversal of the sign distinguished by mutable earth is an opportune time to focus on what boxes you are living in, while supporting imaginative solutions and grounded action to get you out. Especially so during this decade, when Chiron is reflecting back at Virgo from its mirror (or “opposing”) sign – Pisces.
In particular, this year’s solar ingress into Virgo adds even further emphasis on thinking and working your way out of a box because of aspects the Sun will make just before and after crossing over from Leo.
The Sun will make its last aspect from Leo with an opposition to the centaur object Nessus, currently retrograde in the last degree of Aquarius. The proper interpretation of Nessus is (like all centaur objects) complex and nuanced. Nevertheless, the subject of abuse and its shadow is a pervasive part of the Nessus theme. Among the various forms of abuse, one of the most insidious is prior restraint and deprivation of potential.