Virgo, The High Zen Art of Ordinary Life 

COSMIC WEATHER REPORT: 9:05 AM EASTERN, Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008: The Cosmic Key to the Zodiac -- Virgo: The High Zen Art of Ordinary Life.

Putney, Vermont

Last fall, the giant planet Saturn  entered the earth sign Virgo, where it will stay for the next couple of years, till the summer of 2010. Earth is the most basic element, the remedial element of structure and form, of getting our hands on the living clay of ordinary life, refashioning it into something that really works instead of just pretending to. Basic existence is now the final frontier for radical transformation that can change the world.

Virgo is the secret cosmic force of the zodiac, but its magic is little known and hard to find, because it's too earthy and obvious. The Virgin presides over the mundane magic of ordinary life, which, in recent centuries, has become anything but. Common sense has been subsumed by a Junk Culture's mad dash to oblivion. Each day the high magic of the Virgin gets seduced by the Trance of Normalcy which has taken over our culture and twisted our values. How much longer are we willing to put up with this farce before overthrowing the old and ringing in the new?

Saturn is the Get-Real planet of astrology, and Virgo, the Get-Real Sign. Every two-and-a-half years Saturn marches through a new sign, stripping that sign's pretense and clutter, paring it down to the bare bones of what the sign's really about. Virgo is all about mastering the basic rudiments of daily life. Ordinary, obvious, overt, easy-to-overlook, high magic resides in the place we least expect it -- in the way we walk, talk, sit, think, eat and breathe. In these mundane areas now, it's time to awaken from the mass trance state that each day passes as normalcy, and find what life's really all about.

Ancient Rome, following the earlier lead of Greece, recognized this mundane realm as a distinct high art, which they placed in the hands of the Vestal Virgins -- priestesses of the Home and Hearth, trained in conducting daily life as a way to reflect the greater will of the gods. During the next two years, each of us, in our own way, is summoned to awaken from the Trance of Normalcy, and transform the basic field of daily existence into a high art. We must become virginal to the wonder of ordinary existence, counter the satiated jadedness of skeptical mind with the innocent longing of our heart. If we do, we'll fulfill the revolutionary vision of the last great Virgo period -- the 1960s. How? By following gut-instinct instead of listening to those who say it can't be done. By evicting the the self-cancelling mindset. By daring yourself to believe in that dream that's been dancing just beyond your grasp for so long now. By renouncing the meaninglessness of a life that poisons the soul, and turning instead toward vision that fills the soul with longing, and urges you  to exceed your self-assumed limits.

Virgo was the key operative sign of the 1960s, because the transcendent planet of revolution, Uranus, met Pluto (the collective unconscious) in Virgo in the autumn of 1965, setting the whole tone for revolution that was to come. Three years later, Jupiter (king of the gods) met Pluto in Virgo, in the autumn of 1968, overthrowing the confines of Normalcy, and pointing the way to a new world, which began to crown through the crust of the old, even if it never emerged fully back then.

Virgo was the key to the Sixties because it's the one sign with the power to bring the cosmic blueprint down to earth where it can do some good. When these three planets did their dance in Virgo forty years ago, the blinders were torn off the third eye of our species. Within the slim confines of a few brief illuminated years, our collective consciousness rose above the obsolete delusion of the War Machine to stare clear into the realms of higher purpose. Across the world in a searing flash brought to us by Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto, it became instantaneously evident that the old way of doing things was bogus and bankrupt and killing the soul of the world. We saw with unmistakable commonsense Virgonian insight, that our leaders had sold us down the river, and a whole new way of conceiving our purpose was vitally necessary.

Now, as Saturn marches through this same territory, we're each being asked to pick up the threads of that earlier weaving, and reweave normalcy into the High Zen Art of Ordinary Life. There's a way to sit, think, talk, eat, walk and breathe that reflects higher purpose rather than counters it; that brings our deeper awareness into its fuller expression; that aligns Self with Cosmos. There's a way to move through the world as a great dance of spirit-in-motion.

Virgo is a tuning fork, a pitch pipe, a modulating note that rings out, for each individual to get with the Galactic Orchestra. Virgo is much more of a How Sign than a What Sign. It's the howiest of all. There's a rhythm, a way, a manner, a mode, a craft to the very raw fabric of existence. By the way we walk our talk we can reclaim ordinary life into a magical dance that bridges cosmic vision with here-and-now. The sidewalks of life are teeming with vast potential that can remake the world. If you put your ear to the ground you'll hear the rumbling of a new species rising from the dust of the old. Cosmos is now very close. The obvious, isn't. We can no longer afford to take life for granted. We must dare ourselves to dream new dreams.

Here, on Easter Sunday, and for the next couple of years, we can tap a resurrective power to turn around the nightmare of normalcy. Across the world, our average, everyday, ordinary, working, waking, existence is up for grabs. The soul of the world, sick and tired of lies, is hungry for Truth. We're being revitalized by rhythms that speak to the soul and can uproot the toxic barrier of stuck thinking. Dormant seeds planted in Virgonian soil in the late 1960s are springing a whole new crop in the place we least expect it -- the Monday morningness of life.  Astonish yourself.  Be willing to be.

Who are you really working for? The drones of a dead and dying culture or the Soul of the World? Can you sleep well each night because the life you're living is the one you were born for? Are your muscles and bones aimed at something that serves? Who are you really? What are you here to do? How much longer are you going to wait?