Sun Enters Virgo: Grow What Feeds You. Eat What Nourishes You.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Virgo is the sign of food and dairy production. You might say that it’s the sign of the agricultural revolution, symbolized by the Virgin Goddess.

This sign is ruled by Mercury, which from ancient times represents merchants. No doubt the first thing on Earth that was sold or traded was food. Yet this likely predates agriculture, as hunting and gathering came long before anyone intentionally cultivated food.

The planet is in a food crisis right now. Vast populations survive on carbohydrates. If you study people’s grocery choices at the checkout line, you can see how much of their diet is comprised of starch and sugar in various forms. And anyone with a food sensitivity knows that wheat and soy are ubiquitous in the food environment, especially when you consider how much is fried or bulked out in soy products.

It does not take long to figure out that much of what is claimed to be food is not. That includes all the fruit and grain that is converted into 117 billion gallons of wine, beer and liquor every single year. Beverage alcohol products provide a significant proportion of total intake of carbs, and also the greasy emotional floor on which society is walking.

Grow What Feeds You: Astrology Studio for Virgo

Of Emotions and Food

Food is connected to feelings. Memories of childhood foods are among the most poignant, and so too is their sensory recall. Everyone loves the comfort foods given to them when they were young.

Every food you eat leads you to feel a certain way. I once ate a home-cooked Thai meal that left me as high as if I had smoked some weed; there was none in the food. It was all the combination of spices, the other ingredients, and the company present.

Not all food makes you feel good. Much of what passes for food in our society is physically and emotionally toxic. People consume vast amounts of sugar infused starches, fried or otherwise processed in seed and bean oils. When you read the history of these products, you learn that most of them were used in industrial facilities, replaced by petroleum products and then converted into “health foods.” This true of everything from canola oil to flax oil to soy oil and the rest of them.

While much of society is extolling the alleged virtues of a “plant-based” diet (the new electric car), many are becoming sick and bloated from the constant consumption of these products. Diabetes, heart disease and many mental disorders have their roots in the foods that supermarket and convenience store shelves are brimming with.

Anything that makes your body sick is unlikely to make you feel good when you eat it. Yet digital consciousness barely recognizes feelings, much less the relationship between feelings and food. I use the word addiction cautiously, though I suspect that much of what drives consumption of food is either a physical or emotional dependence on the emotional level: everything from stress eating to living from sugar high to the next.

What Our Minds Consume

“You are what you eat” extends to the mind. Lately I’ve been on a campaign of unsubscribing to all of the Substacks that have morphed into endless paranoid diatribes. [I cover this in a recent interview with Mark Bailey, my friend and technical advisor.]

My inbox is much quieter without all the predictions of economic collapse, global fascism, the “flat” Earth, rigged elections, and every other kind of imaginable conspiracy. Along the way I deleted subscriptions to about a dozen “health freedom” newsletters that had devolved into utter noise.

Many internet readers seem to be in love with the frantic musings of people who think they are writers, who have never once met an editor. They feel like they are getting the news.

The digital environment has turned what was inconsistent, unreliable and agenda-driven (the legacy media), into utter tumultuous chaos. Suddenly everyone has the ability to terrify anyone who will read them. I am all for free speech, but the condition of the internet, particularly Substack, has been like issuing everyone a high-powered weapon. In the 1970s, Marshall McLuhan compared exposure to computers as being drugged on LSD. So not only is everyone armed and potentially dangerous, most are high as a kite.

Much of what you may think of as information is really just the toxic debris of undisciplined, uninformed minds. Not only is it not in any way reviewed or verified; the people putting it out have no concept of what that might mean.

Here in the United States, we are entering the final stretch of an election process where the big lie is that who wins actually matters. After observing elections since I was a child, and covering many as a reporter, it’s my assessment that it does not matter who “wins” a U.S. presidential election. And if it matters, the decision is made in advance.

Fortunately, many other things make a difference. And they all involve what you can see and feel; people you can actually talk to; and issues that relate directly to your community and its wellbeing.

The Shock of Electrical Disembodiment

I have learned to take McLuhan at his word when he said that people act like they are on LSD when exposed to computers. He never took the stuff, but he likely met many students who were high. Tripping was also common among the intelligentsia, and you can be sure he had many discussions at cocktail parties with people who had dosed.

When I say that the electrical environment and digital in particular causes disembodiment, I mean that it’s like living on the astral plane. People seem to be thinking without their heart or their brain. There is no empathy possible on the internet because that requires the sensitivity of the emotions and of the body. Yet speech and actions still have impact.

Marshall’s son Eric, who lived well into the digital age, wrote, “The body is everywhere assaulted by all of our new media, a state which has resulted in deep disorientation of intellect and destabilization of culture throughout the world. In the age of disembodied communication, the meaning and significance and experience of the body is utterly transformed and distorted.”

If you read this as a poem, it’s easier to follow. Take each line as its own statement — a statement of what is happening to you, your world, and the world.

The body is everywhere assaulted
by all of our new media,
a state which has resulted
in deep disorientation of intellect
and destabilization of culture
throughout the world.

In the age of disembodied communication,
the meaning and significance
and experience of the body
is utterly transformed and distorted.

Utterly transformed and distorted. Why is the world the way it is now? You have a clue. The question is what, if anything, we can do about it.

The Sign of Mental Integration

Virgo is the sign of mental integration. This offers an answer to the fragmenting, even shattering influence of “new media,” which for us means exposure to the digital environment. It’s essential to be situationally aware in this environment.

If you or anyone else is acting strangely, irrationally, heartlessly, or with any disregard for your brothers and sisters, stop and ask yourself what is happening. If you are feeling unstable, self-judgmental, or like you’re losing control, get off the internet and reach out to someone in your physical environment.

There are other influences that are working to neutralize our feelings and separate us from one another. Most of them are environmental, ranging from the rising tide of chemicals, to the panic (conscious or unconscious) that many are feeling about the planet heating up.

While the whole world has been swallowed by the digital environment, you still have some control over your inputs. You have the freedom to select those with whom you communicate. You might choose based on how they make you feel.

And you have a great deal of freedom over what you eat, though sticking to your choices can take some discipline. But it’s worth it: this one area of personal choice has more influence over how you feel than you may imagine.

With love,

SIDEBAR:
Venus in Virgo Square Mars in Gemini

One distinctive feature of today’s chart is Venus square Mars. I cover that in some detail in an article called Venus Square Mars: A Case in Point from a couple of years ago. But I’ll add a short summary here.

This is about the power dynamics of sexual desire. In Western society, especially the United States, we expect sex to be a kind of political event. That’s how it’s portrayed in the news — marches in the streets, Supreme Court rulings, and so on — and as Redstockings Feminist Collective used to say, “The personal is political.”

But do you really believe that? Is how you relate to your partner some kind of political act? Is what you write in your diary subject to public evaluation? Is your imagination subject to police action? Should your desires be regulated?

There are people who think so.

However, when power dynamics enter relationships, such as using sexual desire as a means of manipulation, or as a commodity, the loving and pleasure aspects of sex are burned away. Love is not about power over. Sex is about free people granting one another mutual fulfillment.

When sex is used for gain in any form, including the full range from monetary to authority and control, it ceases to be a natural expression of humanity and is more like a capitalist institution; a commodity.

Therefore, if you like someone, then tell them. Maybe they’ll be interested. As soon as you start doing anything coy, you’re in it for the power. And who knows — maybe you don’t want that. Maybe you want the beauty and sharing that sex has to offer.