Growing Green with the Zodiac: Toward an Ecological Astrology

Virgo Season: Aug 22 to Sep 22

Readers of my Pecan Springs mysteries know that Ruby Wilcox owns the Crystal Cave, where she teaches astrology and tarot, sells crystals, divining tools, and books on mysticism, and stays in touch with the Universe. For years, she and China Bayles have badgered me about collaborating on a sister newsletter to All About Thyme, linking China’s interests in herbs and gardening, Ruby’s mysticism and her desire to live in more than one dimension, and my decades-long interest in plants. They account for eighty percent of the weight of all living things on our planet, but we often forget that they are responsible not only for our food but for the air we breathe, our medicines, our houses, even our fossil fuels.

So here is Growing Green with Virgo, the first in a series of 12 monthly posts about the relationships between plants, people, and the planets. Supporting subscribers, you’ll receive an additional section of this post (with tarot, journal work, project suggestions, and a recipe) in a separate email, as a workbook. I hope these posts encourage all of us to pay more attention to the green world upon which our lives depend.

Virgo, woodcut from a 16th century German book

Virgo Season: August 22-September 22, 2024

• Guardian planet: Mercury (currently retrograde, through Aug 28)

• Element: Earth. Modality: Mutable

• Virgo’s home in the Zodiac’s annual cycle: the 6th House, the domain of health, work, and—yes—daily routine. It deals with schedules, organization, plans, diet and fitness, and healthy living and working practices.

• Virgo season can help us find our centers. This mutable earth sign is all about making things better (neater, nicer, more organized), in our lives, our work, and—yes—in our gardens. You may find yourself dreaming up a plan, figuring out a schedule, and setting to work. A Full Moon in Pisces/Aries may illuminate your work (September 18).

• Virgo folk (those born with Sun, Moon, Rising Sign, or a cluster of planets in Virgo) are typically analytic, attentive, curious, reliable, pragmatic, meticulous, critical. Virgo season makes them . . . well, more so.

• Other planets are at work just now, intensifying Virgo’s earthy instinct to get things done—and sometimes turning things upside down. (There’s more here on the five retrograde planets.) Bottom line: Retrogrades may require us to re reshuffle our plans, reframe our personal stories, or reexamine some old ideas that we bought into before we fully understood them. Perhaps not the most comfortable season of your life, Virgo 2024 is a time for recalibrating, relearning, consciously reclaiming.

Virgo Season in the Garden

For everyone: In Greek mythology, the constellation Virgo is linked to Demeter, goddess of harvests, and to her daughter Persephone, queen of the Underworld. Virgo season is a good time to focus on the practical, earthy world of work: the projects you want to pursue; the ways you could tweak your schedule for greater efficiency; and the priorities that need shifting, especially when it comes to your physical and psychological health. You may find yourself looking with a new kind of attention to the plants that sustain your life. Virgo season is a perfect time to make a stronger commitment to what you’re growing, indoors or outdoors, and to what you eat and drink.

For Virgo folk: the garden is your place to shine. Virgos are associated with analytical thinking, attention to detail, and a desire for perfection. As an earth sign, Virgo highlights the practicality, organization, and reliability of the earth element. In the garden, you’re likely to maintain a tidy space, planning and organizing for optimal growth and aesthetic appeal. Since Virgo’s sixth house rules health, your focus is likely to be on the health of your plants and your garden’s contributions to your physical and mental health. To that end, Virgo likes to research best practices, soil types, and plant varieties; invest time in plant care; develop plans and keep good records of what works and what doesn’t. Virgo’s garden journals may be full of photographs, as well as detailed notes.

On the shadow side, Carl Jung cautioned that Virgo’s often obsessive neatness and striving for perfection can darken our joy in what we do. Virgo folk may need to add some plants with native energies or keep a garden corner on the wild side. Create a brush pile as cover for birds and small furry creatures. Create a small water feature. Welcome the wild weeds and watch to see what happens.

Gardening by the Sun in Virgo

Virgo season in the northern-hemisphere garden calls us to honor both our Demeter and Persephone selves. These seasonal tasks will get the job done.

• Harvest late-summer crops (tomatoes, peppers, squash) and fruits (apples, pears, grapes).

• Plant cool-season crops (spinach, kale, lettuce, radishes) for a late fall harvest, also garlic, for next summer.

• Divide and transplant perennials (day lilies, hostas, irises) to prevent overcrowding and promote new growth.

• Plant those spring-blooming bulbs (tulips, daffodils, crocuses) so they can get a start on their roots.

• Deadhead bloomers, but leave plenty of seeds for the birds. (Virgo’s tidiness sometimes gets in the way of other priorities.)

• Compost leaves, garden debris, kitchen scraps (a Persephone activity if there ever was one).

• If yours is an indoor garden, consider a new arrangement of pots and planters, tidy up the area, maybe add a new plant or two. But do your research first, to figure out which plants will feel most at home with you.

When it rains, indulge these Virgo pleasures:

• Satisfy Virgo’s yen for outstanding science reporting. Read The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, by Zoë Schlanger. You’ll be amazed. I was.

• And here’s an X-tremely earthy read: The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms, by Amy Stewart, author of Wicked Plants. “Gives worms their due and exposes their hidden and extraordinary universe.” (Who knew?)

• Still raining? Introduce (or reintroduce) yourself to the ancient science of astrology. You can obtain a birth chart free, at this site or this one. You’ll need the date, time, and place of your birth.

• Virgo season is a good time to dig into details, so once you have your chart, learn how to use it. This post is an easy introduction to the three most important elements. Substacker-astrologer Maria Luz goes into more detail.

Gardening by the Moon in Virgo

20th-century science dismissed the age-old agricultural practice of gardening by the Moon’s phases and signs. But recent research on the ways plants respond to stimuli (reviewed in The Light Eaters) suggests that the universe of plant behavior extends beyond our human awareness.

As a gardener, I think about it this way. Coordinating my garden activities with lunar phases can help me plan a regular schedule, stay engaged with what’s going on in my garden, and connect me to age-old, cross-cultural agricultural traditions and the holistic, energetic idea of the cosmos they honor. I’m keeping an open mind while I wait to see what researchers turn up.

Gardening by the Moon’s Phases

It’s said that the waxing Moon’s increasing light encourages leaf growth while its increasing gravitational strength raises soil and plant moisture, boosting plant energy. The decreasing light and strength of a waning moon encourages root growth. Garden practices are coordinated with these lunar rhythms, with each of the phases lasting about a week.

Here’s the calendar of best days for this and that for this 2024 Virgo season:

• Waning Gibbous Moon (Aug 13) to Last Quarter (Aug 26): Plant cool-season root crops, also perennials, biennials, and bulbs.

• Waning Crescent (Aug 25) to New Moon (Sep 3, Virgo): Harvest and store crops, fertilize, weed, mow lawns. During the dark of the New Moon, put work aside and meditate.

• Waxing Crescent (Sep 4) to First Quarter(Sep 11): Plant above ground annuals (especially leaf plants), grains, herbs. To increase growth, mow grass, graft and prune.

• Waxing Crescent (Sep 12) to Full Moon (Sep 18): Plant above ground annuals (especially fruit plants), grains, flowers. To increase growth, mow grass, graft and prune.

• Full Moon (Sep 18): In the brightness of the Full Moon (Pisces/Aries), harvest medicinal and ritual herbs and plants. Celebrate, be grateful.

• Waning Gibbous (Sep 19 to Last Quarter (Sep 24) : Plant below ground/root plants, perennials, trees, shrubs. Harvest crops, fertilize, transplant.

Gardening by the Moon’s Signs

As the Moon changes phases, it also moves from one zodiac sign to another, each sign lasting about two-and-a-half days, each suited to a different set of tasks. If you’d like to learn about gardening by the Moon’s signs, you’ll find a calendar and chart here. Before you tackle the calendar, scroll down to have a look at the chart, where the phases are displayed in the wide center column and the signs are shown to the left. The terms are explained in detail at the bottom.

I’ve set the Astro-seek link for the beginning of Virgo in August; you can reset it (at the top of the page) for September. Even if you don’t intend to adopt this gardening practice, the chart is a key to understanding the how and why of this ancient system.

Virgo’s Medicinal Herbs

In ancient medicine, the planets were thought to rule certain parts of the human body. Here is a representation of these relationships, as they were generally understood from around 4,000 BCE to the advent of modern medicine.

From Christian Astrology (1647) by William Lilly.

Virgo governed the digestive system, the intestines, and the spleen. Correspondingly, the medicinal plants associated with Virgo were plants used to relieve digestive problems.

Mercury’s Medicines. Virgo is ruled by the planet Mercury (represented by the Twins), which governs communication, intelligence, and healing. Mercury’s plants often have feathery or finely leaves and may be aromatic when crushed. The structure and growth habit of these plants reflect the duality, airiness, quick movement, and volatile energy that the ancients assigned to Mercury. The plant’s essential being—its compounds, appearance, growth habit, medicinal properties, even its ecological niche—are unified by and with Mercury’s personality or essence.

Every culture/community had its botanical pharmacy, varying from one bioregion to another. Here are four medicinal plants that were frequently associated with Mercury.

Photo by Anna Evans on Unsplash

Dill (Anethum graveolens). The quick-growing nature and fine, feathery leaves of dill reflect Mercury’s swift and airy qualities. In herbal lore, dill was believed to enhance mental clarity and focus, attributes linked to Mercury. Its use in calming digestive issues also aligns with Mercury’s domain over the nervous and digestive systems. Additionally, dill's historical use in spells and charms for protection and clarity ties it to Mercury’s influence in warding off negative energies and promoting clear thought. Dill foliage and seeds contain Vitamins A, C, and D, as well as riboflavin, manganese, folate, iron, copper, potassium, magnesium, and zinc.

Coriander/Cilantro (Coriandrum sativum). The seeds are sweet and aromatic. Used to treat intestinal gas and cramps, coriander stimulates the secretion of digestive juices and relieves diarrhea. Fresh, the leaves are known as cilantro or Chinese parsley and are used to flavor rice and bean dishes, soups, and salads. You’ll find some interesting recipes here. If coriander tastes soapy to you (it certainly does to me!), it’s because of a genetic variation that affects how we perceive certain aldehydes in the coriander leaves, which are similar to aldehydes in soap.

Anise (Pimpinella anisum). The herbalist John Gerard (1545-1612) didn’t mince words in his description of this plant. He wrote that anise seed “wasteth and consumeth winde [gas], and is good against belchings, and upbraidings of the stomacke.” Its volatile oils ease intestinal cramps and bloating. Traditionally, the seeds were placed on the table after a meal. There are many good recipes for anise breads, cookies, cakes, candies, and liqueurs. Try these from Taste of Home.

Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) is unusual in that all parts of the plant are edible and used in cooking. The bulb is often roasted or eaten raw in salads, the foliage is used as an herb, and the seeds are used as a spice and—medicinally—as a digestive aid. Fennel plants produce a strong scent that acts as a natural insect repellent. Planting fennel in gardens is reported to help keep pests like mosquitoes and aphids away. The essential oil is also used in some natural insect repellents.

More Virgo botanical allies:

• The frequent appearance of parsley (Petroselinum crispum) as a garnish is due to its reputation (dating back to the Greeks) as a digestive herb.

• Oregano (Origanum vulgare) has been used to treat indigestion and diarrhea; its oils have recognized fungicidal and worm-expellant properties.

• Mint (Mentha) helps in relieving gas and bloating, soothing the smooth muscles of the stomach and intestines, and stimulating the production of digestive enzymes.