According to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the following tarot cards represent Virgo:

• Hermit (IX)
• Knight of Disks (or Pentacles)
• Eight of Disks (Sun in Virgo)
• Nine of Disks (Venus in Virgo)
• Ten of Disks (Mercury in Virgo)

In this article, I’m going to give some traditional ideas about Virgo, then three ideas I personally associate with Virgo, and last I will give my interpretations of each tarot card.

Traditional Ideas about Virgo

In her book The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need, Joanna Martine Woolfolk describes Virgo as “reserved, modest, practical, discriminating and industrious, analytical and painstaking, seeking to know and understand.” (p. 33)

In his fifth lecture on Astrotheology, Manly P. Hall said that Virgo has been long been associated with the virtue of “service,” pointing out that the phrase “I serve” can be found on the crest of the Prince of Wales, and it was Kundry’s last words in Parsifal as she died at the foot of the Holy Grail. He said “service” is the great problem of humanity because we want to help, but we do not know how to help, our well-intentioned labor often ends up hurting more than helping. Hall said, “…to achieve service, one must understand the mystery of the world virgin, for service is actually bringing forth into life.” (1:28:15) In his book The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Hall associates the “world virgin” with the ancient Egyptian Goddess Isis, who is symbolic of Nature itself—the mother who births all things. Lon Milo DuQuette in his book Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot said that the Aeon of Isis represented the time before the agricultural revolution when “Woman was the human embodiment of the earth itself which appeared to spontaneously bring forth the vegetation and animals needed to sustain the race.” (p. 29) Later, during the agricultural revolution of the Age of Osiris, it became clear that just as male sperm is required for a female to grow a child, sunlight is required for the earth to grow crops, so humanity slowly shifted from worshipping the “Feminine Earth Goddess” to the “Masculine Sun God.” I personally believe this is when the concept of the “world virgin” transformed from the idea of the “autonomous self-procreating being” to the “physical being impregnated by a spiritual force”—also known as the “immaculate conception.” However, as Manly Hall pointed out in this Astrotheology lecture, both of these concepts of the “world virgin” center around the idea of bringing forth and releasing life, regardless of how that life was conceived.

In order to truly serve others, Hall said we must help that person tap into their own inner resolve and resources so that they may overcome their own difficulty. Just as the maiden cannot force the wheat to grow, we cannot force our service onto others, “otherwise our service goes immediately into dogma and despotism.” (1:31:25) I am reminded of Christian missionaries who go out to spread the gospel to indigenous people and save them from damnation, but only end up spreading their biological and psychological diseases and causing their damnation. True service requires great discretion, which explains its rulership of thoughtful and reasoning Mercury. As Rev. Ann Davies said in her lecture How to Contact the Hierarchy, “You have to have wisdom to know how to handle love properly, otherwise you can destroy—even with your love… [Like when you spoil people, keeping them from growing.] Wisdom is a part of love because you don’t love fully until you love Wisely.” (58:30) A parent who sees their child suffering may instinctually seek to rescue them from that situation, and while this may be necessary sometimes, any rescue also prevents the child from gaining the experience and confidence that comes from overcoming the challenge themself. Mercury reminds us that we must not only service with our heart but also with our head. Hall said, “For service is to prepare the way of life… Service for the young is preparing them for life, preparing them to bring forth.” With Virgo, our service must create the conditions for growth, create the conditions to Life come forth—and part of that requires us to give space and dignity to the other person so they grow true to their nature. We must allow the apple seed to grow into an apple tree. Trying to force it to become an orange tree will cause suffering for everyone involved.

Teaching from an esoteric astrology standpoint, William Meader said in his blog and lecture at the Theosophical Society that there are two foundational forces driving Virgo. The first is the drive to gestate the Christ principle within the womb of substate, and the second is the drive to purify the womb so it may accelerate and complement the gestation process. In other words, Virgo is all about gestation and purification. Viewed from a human perspective, Meader said the force of gestation is what helps us grow the divine child of our Soul (or spiritual self) within the motherly womb of our Personality—which is the composite of our mental, emotional, and physical selves. From this standpoint, our Personality is kind of like the soil-filled pot that grows the plant of our Soul. The pot and soil may look beautiful on its own, but it was created to grow the plant and will look even better with the plant in it. Meader said our “real self” is our Soul, and that our Soul incarnates “into three layers of intelligent substance: the physical dimension, the emotional dimension, and the mental dimension.” (39:19) In other words, those three dimensions are like outer layers surrounding the Soul core. I remember hearing Manly Hall once say that, if we could bring our physical, emotional, and mental natures to rest, we would find that something is still moving within us—and that something is our spiritual nature, or our Soul.

Meanwhile, the force of purification in its lower aspect can express itself as perfectionism and a meticulous and critical nature—especially when it is lead by its lower ruler Mercury, god of communication and thinking. When Virgo is lead by its higher ruler of the Moon (whom is said to be veiling Vulcan—the blacksmith of the Gods and higher ruler of Taurus), this purification impulse drives us to purify the vessel of ourselves so we may better grow the soul within us. The Moon is said to represent our unconscious habitual tendencies (our “auto-pilot” as I call it), which is why Meader said it represents our “liability” in our adult years. With Virgo and Vulcan, we must purify the conditioning of our vessel and replace what’s habitual with what’s natural. Ghandi said, “It’s very dangerous to mix up the words natural and habitual. We have been trained to be quite habitual at communicating in ways that are quite unnatural.” As Meader put it, “…the more that womb can be well-tended to, cared for, and purified, the more likely the Soul can birth itself through that form in service to humanity’s upliftment… so that a higher and wiser part of you can more effectively be expressed through that form.” (39:49)

Now that I’ve touched on some traditional ideas, let’s move on to the ideas I personally associate with Virgo.

Concept #1: Letting the Child Go

The female body is truly a most amazing and magical thing. When talking about the Aeon of Isis I mentioned above, Lon Milo DuQuette in Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot said the following:

More than any other observable phenomena woman was most godlike. Each month, coinciding with the rhythmic cycles of the moon, she issued blood. Yet miraculously she did not die. When the cycle of bleeding stopped, her body changed; her breasts and belly swelled for nine moons until she burst with water and new life.

Lon Milo DuQuette, Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot, PDF p. 30

When we reflect upon the “womb” and the process of childbirth, we find a powerful and universally-human symbol. A womb can be thought of as “an enclosed environment that gestates new life” or “something that grows something else within it.” Thinking from this lens, we can see the universe as composed of an infinitely expansive set of concentric and/or parallel wombs. A home is a womb that grows a family. A school is a womb that grows its students. Any regular practice, whether it is band practice or volleyball practice or meditation practice, is a womb growing the practitioner. Duncan Trussell mentioned on the recent Joe Rogan podcast that “ideas” are kind of like babies in that there’s a gestation period where they are still developing in the womb of your mind. From my understanding of Thelema, Aleister Crowley’s concept of Nuit is that she represents the womb of the cosmos that surrounds and grows us.

However, there’s one universal requirement of all wombs—they must always eventually give birth to their child. If a mother never gives birth to her child but instead keeps it trapped and imprisoned within the womb, then she becomes the Terrible Mother. In our day-to-day life, we see this as “helicopter parents” which this parentingforbrain.com article defines as “overprotective parents who tirelessly oversee every aspect of their children’s lives and sometimes even act on their behalf.” It’s possible that these parents are doing this not just for the well-being of the child, but because it is selfishly satiating their innate human needs for a sense of control and purpose in their life. We must remember that the goal of the womb is to feed the child, not feed off of the child. I remember hearing Jordan Peterson say that one of the important roles Mother Mary played in the story of Jesus Christ was that she offered her child up to the world and allowed him to be sacrificed, as represented by Michelangelo’s Madonna della Pietà. I am not a parent yet (although my wife is due with our first on December 12th!) so I cannot speak to how much “easier said than done” this is for parents. However, I believe the principle is there that the role of the parent is not to keep the child safe forever, but to help them become their most authentic self. Mother Mary plays this role when, during the wedding at Cana, she tells Jesus, “They have no more wine.” She then tells the servants, “Do whatever He tells you.” It’s as if she is telling her child, “Go do your thing. Go be your True Self.” Unfortunately, it was him being his True Self that eventually got him killed.

Virgo can represent the harsh truth that the womb must go through the sacrifice and hardship to grow the child’s life, but ultimately it must let the child go to live its own life—even if that life leads the child to its own demise. As Carl Jung said in The Red Book, “One should not turn people into sheep, but sheep into people… A sad demise in dignity is better than an undignified healing.” (p. 126) The most nourishing thing you could provide for your child is dignity and independence. Virgo represents not only the labor of helping the caterpillar grow into a beautiful butterfly, but also the heart-wrenching labor of letting the butterfly fly away. Whenever Virgo comes up in a tarot reading, it is a good time to ask, “What wombs am I involved in? What am I gestating, or what is gestating me? Is it time to give birth? If not, when will I know that it’s time to give birth?”

Concept #2: Heeding the Mind-Body Connection

William Meader wrote that Virgo is traditionally associated with grounded living, practical endeavor, attention to detail, clear and rational thinking, and favoring a “work before play” attitude. Since pregnancy is a big theme in my life right now with my wife’s pregnancy, I can’t help but see the idea of a “pregnant woman” encompassing all of these traits. Aluna Michaels pointed out in her video here how when a woman become pregnant, she typically begin eating, drinking, and behaving differently in order to help grow her child. Pregnancy is not a time for partying or drinking or smoking or skydiving, but nesting. Virgo’s lower ruler of Mercury, associated with rational and “frontal lobe” thinking, kicks into high-gear to assist with her “purification” process as she must decide what behavior will be best for the gestation process. (I have seen this firsthand with my wife, who must have purchased 15 books on childbirth and parenting in the last 4 months since we learned of her pregnancy.)

The transformation of the newly pregnant mother can symbolically apply to more than just literally pregnant women. What if we expanded it into the idea that you, reader, just discovered you are pregnant with a divine Soul? How would you act differently in order to assist in the gestation process of your Soul? Manly Hall, Dion Fortune, and James Hillman all talk about the Soul being an incomplete being who must be grown into the world, rather than a fully-formed part of ourselves. Hillman describes it as an “invisible acorn” that we are all born with and, instead of “growing up,” must “grow down” into physical reality. Fortune says that, unlike Athena who burst fully-formed from Zeus’s head, the Soul enters the world like Jesus in the manger, born amongst the animals of our lower nature. The moment you become the mother who accepts her pregnancy and takes responsibility in gestating your Soul, I believe you enter your “second adulthood” as James Hollis calls it, where you are less concerned about outer accomplishments and more concerned with connecting to and expressing that inner life.

So how can we become responsible mothers to our soul? I believe Virgo’s “Earth” association makes it the perfect Zodiac sign to encapsulate what Mark Tyrrell calls the need to heed the Mind-Body connection. The crux of the idea is that the condition of our physical body influences our mind, and the condition of our mind influences our physical body. In his article above, Tyrrell recounts an experience with one of his patients who hallucinated an encounter with the Devil on the subway. While this sounds like it could be a schizophrenic episode, the cause was actually that he was sleep deprived, working two jobs, “maybe catching 10 minutes of shut-eye here and there,” and drinking “up to 30 cups of strong coffee a day.” If you abuse your body, your mind will not function correctly. A similar story Tyrrell recounted in another video (I can’t remember which video) was of a patient who suffered from insomnia, so her previous doctor prescribed her sleeping medication without ever asking her how much coffee she was drinking throughout the day. As soon as she eliminated her excessive coffee intake, her insomnia went away and she had no need for the prescription. Thus, while I personally associate Cancer with making sure your emotional needs are satiated, I associate Virgo with making sure our physical needs are associated. Virgo’s association with service and labor not only applies to helping others, but helping your body by getting enough sleep, eating a healthy nutritious diet, and getting regular exercise. As Paul Foster Case wrote in The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order, “‘Sound mind in sound body’ applies with special force to esoteric training. A practical occultist must have a strong and pure physical vehicle… to the end that it may be prepared for initiation” (pp. 71-72).

While the above paragraph emphasized how the physical body can impact the functioning of our mind, the mind can also impact the functioning of our body. The obvious example of this is the negative impact that “emotional stress” has on our body. However another example of this is depression. In this article, Human Givens describes depression as caused by the combination of stress induced by excessive rumination or worrying (which Mark Tyrrell points out is simply a misuse of one’s creativity and imagination), along with a total lack of action or attempts at resolving the worries. The article says, “Every little thing we worry about and do not resolve in the day is translated into a bad dream the next night… This upsets the balance between refreshing slow-wave, recuperative sleep and energy-burning dream sleep (known as REM sleep). When that happens, we soon start to wake up feeling tired and unmotivated. This makes us worry even more that ‘something is wrong with me’, and the cycle continues.” Thus, our mental state decreases our physical well-being, which further decreases our mental well-being, which decreases our physical well-being, leading to a positive feedback loop. (Due to the combination of thinking, internal conflict, imagination, and lack of action, I associate this entire concept with the 9 of Swords.)

In her video here, Aluna Michaels said that the child of our Soul requires a “serene environment” in order to fully develop. I believe this is because, when the emotional self is full of stress and fear, its internal voice will dramatically overpower the quiet whispering of the Soul. I once heard Manly Hall say in a lecture that we must calm our physical, emotional, and mental selves so that only our spiritual self is left moving us. In order to cater to this serene environment, Michaels said that we must practice “discernment” instead of “judgmental criticism.” She said that we must separate the wheat from the chaff, but we must not think, “Ugh! I hate chaff so much! It’s evil and it’s ruining my life!” Instead we must just throw it away and move on. Marshall Rosenberg emphasizes this “observation without evaluation” in his Nonviolent Communication, often quoting Krishnamurti who said, “The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.” In order to purify our mind, Paul Foster Case in The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order encourages initiates to participate in the “chastity of thought, word, and act” (p. 72), working in alignment with Virgo’s traditionally “virginal” nature. I believe this chastity of the mind can expressed in ways like discernment without judgment, meditation, focus, prayer, relaxation, connection to the Observing Self, and clear discernment between our inner imagination and our outer physical reality. Tyrrell points out how Stephen King uses his imagination to write terrifying horror novels, he is not immobilized in fear by his imaginings. “He can clearly separate himself from what he’s imagining.” If someone doesn’t respond to your text, is it because they hate you, or because they have something else going on in their life? The lack of a response is the physical fact, but the meaning you attribute to the fact happens in your imagination.

Concept #3: Reclaiming “Virginity”

Traditional astrology calls Virgo the virgin. Nowadays, a virgin is defined as “a person who has not had sexual intercourse.” However, it wasn’t always used like that. According to etymonline.com, the first recorded use of the word “virgin” to mean “young woman in a state of inviolate chastity” was in the 1300s A.D. In Latin, the word virginem simply meant a “maiden, unwedded girl or woman.” While the “unwedded” part does make the definition dependent upon the woman’s relationship with a man, “sex” is not the defining feature in this definition. Convinced by Kristine Shields’ article here and Renee Boje’s article here, I believe that if we define the word “virgin” more in alignment with its ancient connotations, we can unlock an idea that not only helps us better understand the “virgin goddesses,” but can also inspire strength, autonomy, and independence—especially for women.

According to this Encyclopedia.com article on the “virgin goddesses” (which I am going to quote from a LOT in the following paragraphs), the idea of a “virgin goddess” seems to have begun with the Classical Greek period. In their patriarchal society where men ruled the household and controlled their wives, the “unwedded woman” represented a threat since she was “a female who is independent from and even capable of exercising power over men.” In other words, the virgin represented the woman who “never became fully subordinated” and who carried “the connotation of being wild or untamed.” This is perhaps why Artemis, “goddess of wild places, flocks, and the hunt,” is seen as a virgin Goddess; she is, essentially, uncontrollable by the patriarchy. This is the same for Athena, goddess of wisdom, whose “virginity meant that she could consort with men as an equal.” According to Wikipedia, Athena’s temple—originally just referred to as “the temple”—grew to be known as the Parthenon. The Greek word parthénos means maiden or girl, as well as virgin or unmarried woman, so the name Parthenon essentially translates to “the virgin’s building.”

Keeping in mind all of this above, the Encyclopedia.com article states that “virginity can mean maidenhood in the sense of prematurity, it can mean temporary or constant willful abstinence from sexual activity, and it can denote a struggle for independence from male domination.” However, instead of solely defining a “maiden” through her relationship to men, the article goes on to paraphrase the work of Marija Gimbutas in her books The Language of the Goddess and The Civilization of the Goddess who wrote about the symbolism of “the maiden” in contrast to the symbolism of “the mother.” According to the article, Gimbutas wrote that the Mother represented “the giver and taker of all… the sustaining power, represented especially by the enduring earth, the bedrock that underpins all life… the eternal” power of nature. Meanwhile, the Maiden represented “the forces of renewal and regeneration… represented especially by new life, plant and animal, that emerges in spring… the ephemeral power of nature.” In other words, while the Mother is about the sustenance (or lack there of) of life, the Maiden is about the renewal and regeneration of life. If we rephrase this dichotomy of the “Mother and Maiden” to the “Mother and Daughter,” these ideas help shed light onto the symbolism of the myth of Demeter and Persephone—the key characters of the Eleusinian Mysteries which operated in secrecy over a span of 2000 years (!) and promised immortality to its initiates. Another name for Persephone was Kore. According to Etymonline.com, the word “kore” is Latin for “maiden,” and is from an earlier Proto-Indo-European root *ker- meaning “to grow.” In Ancient Greek, a “kouros” was a growing boy while a “kore” was a growing girl—reinforcing the idea of the maiden or daughter representing the trans-form-ation of new growth, as opposed to sustenance of an existing form.

There is some evidence supporting the idea that the “virgin Goddess” of Virgo is actually Persephone. The first is that ancient statues and images of Persephone often depict her holding a sheaf of grain. Similarly, according to this article by Camille Molas, the brightest star in the constellation of Virgo is called “Spica,” which is a Latin word meaning “ear of grain” or “ear of corn.” Thus both Virgo and Persephone are depicted holding a sheaf of grain. Another fact that supports the connection is that, according to the myth, Persephone spends half of the year in the Underworld with her husband Hades and the other half in Olympus with her mother Demeter. When Persephone is in the Underworld, her earth-goddess mother Demeter becomes sad and causes Fall and Winter; when Persephone reunites with her mother in Olympus, Demeter becomes happy and causes Spring and Summer. Similarly, this article by the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield Massachusetts states that in the northern hemisphere—due to the earth’s yearly cyclical tilting of 23.5° —the constellation Virgo is visible above the earth’s horizon from around May to October, and is invisible below the earth’s horizon from around October to May. In other words, the constellation Virgo spends half of the year under the horizon of the world, or “in the Underworld.”

Although I am no scholar, it seems to me that the “virginal” status of Persephone seems to be of a more “mystical” nature around death and resurrection, rather than her status in relation to men. The encyclopedia.com article says “Kore was closely related to death,” which makes sense considering she was the Queen of Hades and often referred to as “the dreaded Persephone.” According to etymonline.com, even the name Persephone has an element of death to it. It is guessed to have come from the Sanskrit word parsa– meaning “sheaf of corn” and the Proto-Indo-European root *gwhen– meaning “to hit, strike,” which combines together into “a female thresher of corn.” However, while she rules the land of the dead half of the year, she also ascends to Olympus during the other half of the year. Thus she seems to represent both death and resurrection, and while the “death” part makes us uncomfortable, there cannot be a true resurrection without a true death.

Lastly, I believe that the one of the most powerful mystical ideas of “virginity” rests in the idea of parthenogenesis or “the immaculate conception.” To me, this represents the metaphorical act of a physical being impregnated—not by another physical being—but by a spiritual force or idea. When a woman (or “maiden”) becomes pregnant, she experiences a radical physical, emotional, and mental transformation. Her body inevitably changes, and if they are anything like my wife, her values and behavior will also change. Whereas my wife and I used to be on the lookout for bars and concerts, we’re now on the lookout for strollers and Montessori schools. While my wife is currently experiencing the transformation of a literal pregnancy, I believe the metaphor of pregnancy process can inspire and guide a spiritually-induced transformation. When the Personality becomes a womb that births the Soul, then it is as if an immaculate conception took place—like the newborn scarab climbing out of the ball of dung, seemingly created from nothing.  

The same encyclopedia.com article I’ve quoted from a million times at this point says, “According to Gnostic mythology, the origination of the lower worlds of psychic and material quality (as opposed to the upper world of spiritual substance) results from the fall of a female soul—later replaced by the Jewish Sophia—and her involvement in passion and sexual activity. In the end, the soul is restored by union with a male salvational figure in a ‘virginal’ bridal chamber.” This same idea of our lower feminine Malkuth nature redeemed by our higher masculine Tiphareth nature is foundational to the philosophies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, inspired by the Book of Abramelin. To them, our lower self is seen as a feminine vessel who must unite with our masculine bridegroom known as the Holy Guardian Angel. The misogyny and patriarchy within this philosophy is obvious. I mean, of course a patriarchal society would say that “the masculine” is the savior and “the feminine” is the helpless damsel-in-distress that must be rescued. I agree that this philosophy is entirely demeaning from this angle.

However, if we think of the “masculine” and “feminine” as metaphorical symbols representing the process of childbirth, then the masculine Father represents the power of the initiatory act that conceives the child, while the feminine Mother represents the symbolic reception of initiation, the gestation of the child, the labor of childbirth, and the subsequent nourishing and maintenance of the child with breastmilk. From this lens, I believe the “masculine bridegroom” metaphor above is less misogynistic if we view our lower self like this maiden, full of the potential to create new life, but inert until we experience the “immaculate conception” from the higher spiritual source. To me, the virgin represents the incredibly energetic potential of a form, which is currently hidden in darkness and needs to be uncovered. The virgin is like an airplane before you put fuel into it, sitting still on the ground. The virgin is like the “sleeping beauty” of a dormant Rube Goldberg machine which, once the spiritual source knocks over that first domino over, will unleash a cascading tidal wave of kinetic energy. From this lens, our “female soul” represents our potential while the “masculine” spirit represents the experience or connection which triggers a radical, beautiful, and powerful transformation of our self that ultimately releases the Christ within. I think the idea of the “virgin” should reclaimed from “someone who hasn’t had sex” to these concepts of autonomous independent people (especially women) as well as the human being who is capable of manifesting the Cosmic Christ into physical reality.

Tarot Card Interpretations

Keeping in mind these traditional and new ideas, here’s some of my personal interpretations of each of the Virgo tarot cards.

---

---

Hermit (IX)

In the Hermetic Qabalah, the Hermit card sits on the path between the fourth sephira Chesed and the sixth sephira Tiphareth. According to Dion Fortune in The Mystical Qabalah, Chesed represents the principle of construction and support, while Tiphareth represents our Soul and Higher Self, standing at a pivotal meditation position upon the tree. Below Tiphareth are the “forms” of the universe and above it are the “forces” of the universe. With its emphasis on social isolation and hermitude, I believe one simple association of this card can be living as a constructive agent of Life, regardless of what other people around you do. I associate Chesed with one’s internal “value system” and “morality” and “ethics.” The Hermit is about discovering the values of your own Soul, then sticking to them regardless of your environment. I’ve grown to believe that most humans are born with an instinctual set of “values,” and that ancient human systems such as the Judiac Ten Commandments or the Egyptian 42 Negative Confessions are not only social rules for controlling a society, but also an attempt at documenting those internal rules of the Soul. The more we listen to and act upon these values of the soul, the brighter our divine spark grows until it becomes a roaring fire. While the day-to-day decisions are the difficult part, the overall goal of the value system seems pretty clear: we must follow in the footsteps of Osiris, Zeus, Quetzalcoatl, and the benevolent Demiurge or Great Architect of the Universe, and become divine kings with the duty of helping humanity. Osiris and Quetzacoatl bringing humanity science, art, and agriculture can be interpreted as the highest aspect of our benevolent loving soul delivering gifts to the greater group of humanity. With the Hermit card, we gain the strength to act as a benevolent divine king, regardless of others’ actions, which in our malevolent world can lead to some loneliness and possibly even social ostracization.

The Hermit’s solitude can also represent the human need for “privacy.” According to Human Givens theory, all humans are born into the world with an instinctual need for “time and space enough to reflect on and consolidate our experiences.” The Hermit is the perfect symbol of this need. While the Hermit is major arcana number 9, the following number 10 is the Wheel of Fortune. Amongst other things, the Wheel represents the constant changing of the physical word—sometimes you’re on top of the world, and sometimes the world is on top of you. As long as you stay to the outer rim of the wheel, you will continue to experience the radical ups-and-downs of life. However, the power of the Hermit is that their solitude grants us the ability to move inward from the outer rim to the center axel. This center axel is called the “Axis Mundi” or “the still point of the turning world.” As long as we are moving and striving, we will not be able to find this center point. As Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). Before we can bring Heaven to Earth (which the Great Work of alchemy), we must first leave Earth and find Heaven (the Lesser Work of alchemy). The Hermit represents the aspirant to has begun their journey inward.

According to Aleister Crowley in The Book of Thoth, the Hermit card is attributed to the Hebrew letter Yod. Yod is the simplest glyph of the Hebrew alphabet, and thus all other letters are said to be complexifications of this small letter. Crowley writes, “The letter Yod is the first letter of the name Tetragrammaton, and this symbolizes the Father, who is Wisdom; he is the highest form of Mercury, and the Logos, the Creator of all worlds. Accordingly, his representative in physical life is the spermatozoon…” In other words, Yod represents a transmission from the highest, most divine entity of the universe. Meanwhile, the Hermit is also attributed to Virgo, which represents the ultimate receptacle of that transmission. Thus, from Earthly Virgo and the Spiritual Yod we have the “immaculate conception” I spoke about above at the end of Concept #3. By accepting the call to adventure of the Hermit, we take on the responsibility to seek the Inner God—as the hesychasts or anchorites or sufis or mystics of all sects have done. However, before we can be a perfect receptacles of this Inner God, we must first use the discernment and purification of Virgo to cleanse ourselves physically, emotionally, and mentally. Once we do that, we have the opportunity to become impregnated by that Inner God. This impregnation will radically transform us, allowing us to birth new Life into this physical world. Just as a mother is a “creator” who has made a child, once the immaculate conception takes place within our soul, we turn from merely a “creation” of the universe into a demiurgical “co-creator” of the universe, releasing new Life from within ourselves and others.

I will end with some ideas on the Hermit from Paul Foster Case in his book The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order. In these passages, you’ll see that Case associates the Hermit with two mystical concepts: connection with the Divine Will (of Yod), and identification with the One Self. About the Divine Will, he writes, “He who is advancing in the Grade of Exempt Adept must identify with the One Will represented in Key 9 by The Hermit. He then sees that the only Willpower is the Divine Willpower. Thereafter logic forces him to say, as did Jesus, ‘I seek not mine own will but the will of the One sending me.’ Note that the Authorized Version interpolates the word Father in this verse. The literal translation of the original Greek is “the will of the One sending me” (p. 260). About identification with the One Self, Case writes, “…he [the aspirant or occultist] enjoys conscious awareness that his innermost I AM is identical with the Ancient of Days. Like Jesus, he can say, ‘Before Abraham was, I am’; and his power over the forms of nature is the direct consequence of his inner identification with That which determines these forms. This is represented by the second letter of BINH, corresponding in Tarot to The Hermit” (p. 278). Note that the second letter of the word BINH is “I.” “I” or “Y” are English transliterations of the Hebrew letter Yod, attributed to the Hermit.

Knight of Disks

The Knight of Disks represents “fiery earth” which can be interpreted as “motivated manifestation” among many other things. Joe Monteleone, the amazing teacher over at the Tarot Mysticism Academy whose Level 2 class inspired me to start this blog in the first place, associates the Knight cards with “active doing” whereas the Page cards are more about “receptive learning.” To me, this card can be summed up as “an agent who transforms the environment around them.” While the imbalanced viceful energy of Virgo can make the Knight of Disks controlling and perfectionistic of their environment, the balanced virtuous energy of Virgo helps the Knight see its environment as a seeds to be grown which require some labor but also must be left alone. The beginner cook is constantly poking at and moving around the food they’re cooking; the experienced cook knows when to back away and just let it cook. When we combine the “active doing” of the Knight with the Earthly pentacles, we end up with a card that emphasizes pragmatic action above lofty idealism. It is the epitome of physical work. This card represents the farmer tending to their land growing the wheat that Virgo holds in her hand, instead of the philosopher contemplating the mysteries of the universe. The Knight of Disks does not live in the past or the future, but sees the world as it is today, doing what must be done today. Instead of saying, “One day I will do xxx,” the Knight of Disks says, “Today I will do xxx.”

With its emphasis on practical action, as well as Virgo’s ruler Mercury and its virtuous ability of discernment without judgment, I believe we can associate this card with the idea of “doing what’s important before what’s urgent.” This is a concept I first learned at least a decade ago in Tim Ferriss‘s The Four-Hour Work Week, when he said, “Am I being productive, or just active? Am I inventing things to do, to avoid the important?” Dr. Benjamin Hardy wrote an entire chapter about this concept in his book Be Your Future Self Now. The chapter is titled, “URGENT BATTLES AND SMALL GOALS KEEP YOU STUCK.” He quotes Dwight D. Eisenhower who said, “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” The whole idea here is, as Hardy writes in the chapter, “When we put the urgent before the important, we never get to the important.” From my personal experience, the urgent are things like: doing the dishes, mowing the lawn, doing laundry, going grocery shopping, cleaning, and so on. These are the busy work that will always be urgent, and will always be there. Meanwhile, the things that are important are the personal projects that are nearest to your Soul. They are activities that provide you with a sense of meaning and fulfillment. If you always do the urgent instead of the important, then one day you will wake up sometime during your second Saturn return and say to yourself, “What did I do with my life? I know I was busy, but why do I feel like I accomplished nothing?” Running through a park and running on the treadmill both use the same amount of energy—but one takes you somewhere new while the other keeps you where you are. Busywork is stops you from falling behind, but it never moves you forward.

At the end of last year, I undertook a radical transformation. I went totally sober, I started waking up at 4:30am everyday and going to bed at 8:30pm every night (weekends included), I started working out more regularly, I started wearing a dress shirt and tie everyday (weekends included)…… I even started parting my hair in a different direction. (Lol!) The “purification” of my body through sobriety freed up so much energy and time in my life. However, the thing that has done wonders for my mental health is that—following Benjamin Hardy’s morning and evening routine advice (I can’t vouch for this enough, it really changed my life)—everyday, I put the important before the urgent first thing in the morning. I want to become an professional author that combines occult philosophy with self-help psychology. This is what I’ve decided is important to me. So, every morning between 5am to 7am, I work on this project before starting my “real job” at 8am. I used to do this kind of stuff after my real job… but after work, I’m so tired! This way, my best energy of the day goes toward my personal project. I redesigned my life so that, by 7am every morning, I did something enjoyable and meaningful toward my future. Then, between 7am and 8am, and after work, I work on all of the urgent things.

With the Knight of Disks, we get a chance to ask ourselves, “Am I doing what’s important or what’s urgent? If I’m only doing what’s urgent, then how can I carve out space for what’s important?” Working everyday on something that you personally feel is important to your incarnation on the planet is incredibly nourishing to the Soul. Whereas everyday and every night I used to have this nagging voice in my head that said I was wasting my life away, and that I was meant for so much more… now by 7am every morning that voice goes away. Everyday that you do something important to your Soul, you add a little bit of kindling to your Soul. If you do this over enough time, what was a tiny spark will turn into a massive fire that illumines the world for both yourself and others. However, the Soul requires the physical labor of the Knight of Disks in order to grow. You cannot gestate the Soul by “thinking” alone—you must take action. Action, labor, and service toward the upliftment of humanity simultaneously gestates the Soul and allows it expression into the physical world.

Eight of Disks

The Eight of Disks is composed of 4 building blocks:

• Eight as Hod (Mercury), representing the logical and analytical mind.
• Disks as Earth, representing manifestation and the physical world.
• The Sun, representing awareness and the Higher Self.
• Virgo, representing service and gestation.

In this card, Mercury and Virgo point us toward service of the Earth (or physical labor). All three of these components look outwards instead of inwards. However, the redeeming Sun in this card helps keep us connected to our Soul. Without the Sun, we may get wrapped up in our labor so much that we begin to identify with our jobs. We think, “I am what I do.” However, the Sun reminds us that we are seeds of God planted into this world with the sole task to grow. Without the Sun, we ask, “How will I do this task?” With the Sun, we ask, “What task will grow the acorn of my Soul?” To this end, everything I spoke about in the Knight of Disks section about “doing what’s important over what’s urgent.”

The Sun is associated with the Christ principle, while Virgo is associated with the maiden. Thus, in this card we have the symbol of the maiden Mary pregnant with the Christ. With this card, we must ask ourselves, “What am I gestating, and how can I help itself growth?” Perhaps this card can signify that turning point when a woman discovers she’s pregnant and decides, “Okay—time to radically change how I live my life.” In this card, our lower self no longer lives to support itself—instead, it lives to support our higher self. This card helps us realize that, while we thought we were the hero this entire time, it turns out we are just the womb growing the hero inside of us. We are not person, but a seed growing something inside us that is far more spectacular than our ego. Prior to this, we identified as the seed. After this, we must identify with the plant that wants to grow out of the seed. We must be the acorn that identifies with the oak tree it is growing into.

In her video on the divine feminine, Daat Darling mentioned that the process of childbirth is essentially carrying darkness behind the veil of the womb (because the child is a total mystery that you cannot see, a person of pure potential and no actual), suffering through a lot of pain and labor for this child, and finally becoming the Creator who births the new Life into this world. With the rationalizing logical intelligence of Mercury in the 8 of Disks, you may not be deduce exactly what you are growing, but we can take educated guesses as to what it might be and devise a plan of action that ought to help it grow and release itself. The first step is to get a clue as to what the solar seed of your Soul is trying to grow into. Manly Hall said that once you bring your physical, mental, and emotional selves to rest, you’ll find that there is still something moving in you. That something would be your spiritual self or your Soul. As the awesome Howard Thurman quote goes, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” The Soul represents this aliveness in us. I believe this is the same concept Joseph Campbell was after when he said, “Follow your bliss.” After you experience the aliveness, then the motherly discernment of rational Mercury enters the picture and can help “gestate” this inside you. If it was a certain hobby that made you feel alive, Mercury can help you read books, watch videos, and join workshops that help fan the flame. At this point, since the unconscious is REALLY unconscious, and all rational understanding of the soul just a guess, it becomes like a game of “hot and cold”—if the activity makes you feel more alive, then you’re close to your soul, and if it makes you feel dead, then you’re far away from your soul. In other words, we must learn to use our rational mind to analyze which things in our life fan the flames of our soul, instead of using it just to form opinions, evaluations, judgments, and criticisms of the world.

The last things I would say about this card is that it is very practical, grounded, and focused. This card is about using your intellect (8) to shape your immediate world (Disks) in a way that allows your future self (6) to act in the world (Virgo) with more power and effectiveness. This is not a card for dreaming and contemplation, but rather for looking into the distance to see what direction you’re going, then looking down at the ground and determining what your next step will be. The gestation of the Soul is not all fireworks and revelations; instead, it mostly happens in the monotonous and the mundane of daily life, which is why it is important to have daily practices and routines that nourish the Soul. The Earthly disks of this card waits like Play-Doh, ready to be sculpted and resculpted by you. I also associate the number 8 with the Human Givens innate need for “achievement and competence,” which is directly related to the need for “knowledge”—because with knowledge comes power, and will power comes self-esteem and competence. Since the number 8 is also the realm of all magic and communication, this card can be using written words (“spells”) and symbols in the physical world that inspire your higher self to act in service to the world. Perhaps this card is about writing out a mantra of your soul or making a vision board, and using it to inspire and guide your daily behavior. I wrote a paragraph in my Gemini in Tarot article about how Mark Fisher, author of The Instant Millionaire, recommends using autosuggestion.

Nine of Disks

The Nine of Disks is composed of four building blocks:

• Nine as Yesod (The Moon), representing our imagination and autopilot.
• Disks as Earth, representing manifestation and the physical world.
• Venus, representing emotional needs and unconscious instinct.
• Virgo, representing service and gestation.

This card is all about the labor and service of connecting the imaginary universe and the physical universe. All buildings and works of art exist in the imagination before they manifest into the physical. Sometimes, as with the Venus of this card, that existence in the imaginary realm is more of a “vibe” or a “feeling” than a rigid defined structure. This card can represent “the compromise” that ultimately takes place between the formless and perfect vibes in the imagination and the ragged and rough forms of physical reality. As a musician, I know how disappointing it is when the song in your head sounds nothing like the song coming out of your speakers. The Virgo in this card reminds us that we are entitled to our labor, not the fruits of our labor. The labor itself should also being rewarding, because as Krishna said to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, “We have a right to our labor, but not to the fruits of our labor.” This is because we can never truly know what fruit the seed in our imagination will grow once planted into the physical reality. If you have an idea that you’ve wanted to manifest, the 9 of Disks is saying to do it. Allow the idea in your mind to fertilize the matter in your environment, then gestate it until it is ready to become a Life of its own.

Personally, I associate the imaginary/astral realm of Yesod with “the Underworld” of ancient Greek mythology, while Malkuth represents our normal visible world that everyone lives in together. Combined with the love of Venus and the labor of Virgo, I believe this card can represent the story of Orpheus traveling to the Underworld to bring back to life his love Eurydice. One (crude) interpretation of this myth can be that it represents humans traveling deep into the recesses of their imagination in order to find beauty and bring it back into the physical world—the process that every creative person in the world participates in. The artist must get into a flow state and allow the work to pour out of them, because if they turn back too soon, the love will be pulled back deep into the underworld. The 9 of Disks represents this tumultuous journey of the creative person who wants to convert something imaginary into something physical.

Venus is always associated with love and beauty, while her offspring Eros is associated with sexual love and desire. All of these things “attract” other people to them, as gravity pulls the Moon toward the Earth. Thus, her “superpower” (if you will) is the ability to “draw out” power from its environment. Whereas Mars uses his own energy to change the world around him, Venus instead pulls the energy out of the environment in order to change the world around her. Viewed from the power of Mars, the old sexist story of the Prince rescuing the Princess shows that the Prince has all the power while the Princess is totally powerless. However, viewed from the power of Venus, the Princess has the goal of escaping her entrapment and thus is drawing the Prince toward her to save her. She is pulling the power out of the Prince in order to save him. Perhaps this is why it is said in ancient Greek mythology that Venus was the only god in Olympus who liked Mars and could stand him—because he is like the electricity and she is like the conductive copper wire that can tell it where to zap. The fact that Mars and Venus are each associated with one specific gender of humans is where the sexism creeps in, so we must remember that every single human being possesses both the power of Venus and the power of Mars. While the gods themselves are gendered, their powers are not. With the union of Earth, Virgo, and Venus in the 9 of Disks, we can ask ourselves, “Instead of trying to do this myself, how can I draw the energy out of my environment to help me with this goal?” In order to learn a little more about this, you can check out my last paragraph about the 7 of Wands in this article.

One last thought about this card is that, if you are creating something, you must reflect on how it serves other people. Dan Sullivan talks about how all products must be thought about in terms of, “How does this help other people become the best version of themselves?” The products that go to market that are super successful, are products that help other people become their best selves. In the book Story Mythos, Shane Meeker makes the case that you must approach a customer as if they are the hero on their own journey, and you are the herald or messenger in their story delivering their call to adventure. When creating something, you must remember that it’s not about you. What you create should see others as seeds of potential who are capable of new growth, not stones who are fixed as they are. You must see the astral character beyond the physical body.

Ten of Disks

The Ten of Disks is composed of four building blocks:

• Ten as Malkuth (Earth), representing matter and the physical world.
• Disks as Earth, representing manifestation and the physical world.
• Mercury, representing the logical and analytical mind.
• Virgo, representing service and gestation.

In the Ten of Disks, we have the most Earthly sign of the entire tarot deck, possibly second only to the Princess of Disks. Its only non-Earthly aspect is Mercury; however, he is the ruler of Virgo, and as the representative of the rationalizing conscious thinking mind itself, the thinking mind is incredibly comfortable in the external world. Manly Hall once said that the rational mind is especially good at comparing the ripeness of two fruits. This kind of “comparing and discernment of physical forms” is where Mercury shines. Thus, this card says to get out of your head and into the world. This is the card of biomimicry. If you are trying to solve a problem, this card says, “Look to Nature for your answer.” In Qabalah, Malkuth represents the multiplicity and diversity instead of the unity, the multiform instead of the uniform, the peripheral instead of the central, divisible and visible instead of the indivisible and invisible. As James Hillman wrote in The Soul’s Code:

“If today our civilization is turning toward the environment to stave off ecological disaster, the first step of this rapprochement with nature is to cross the threshold of the parental house into the home of the world. We are parented by everything around us—if “parenting” means watching, instructing, encouraging, and admonishing. Do you really believe that humans invented the wheel out of their big brains alone, or fire, or baskets, or tools? Stones rolled downhill; bolts of fire shot from the sky and out of the earth; birds wove and probed and pounded, as did apes and elephants. The sciences that master nature were taught by nature how it could be mastered.”

James Hillman, The Soul’s Code, PDF p. 80

On top of learning from Nature, this card is about coming to terms with your smallness in the face of Mother Nature. Carl Jung wrote that the Heavenly gods are forever magnifying while the Earthly gods are forever diminishing. I think this is because, when you look outward at things like a mountain, a canyon, or space and the stars, you will inevitably feel small. (However, when you find God inside you, you will inevitably feel large.) However, your smallness does not mean you are not powerful. The antidote to this smallness comes from another Jung quote: “A well-tended small garden is better than an ill-tended large garden. Both gardens are equally small when faced with the immeasurable, but unequally cared for” (The Red Book, Chapter XVIII). You are small, but still capable of caring for the environment about you. Find your garden and tend to it. At the end of the day, we are all inspired mud inspiring mud. Our body is the Orphic Egg from which Phanes bursts forth. With Mercury, we have the ability to give our own matter and the matter surrounding us a purpose. Since the force of change of Chokmah is the ultimate nature behind it all, all matter is like a clay meant to be sculpted and resculpted forever. As Seth Godin wrote, the mantra of the creative person should be, “Here, I made this.” With Virgo, we grow something of value, but we also cannot hold onto it forever. We must eventually stop the gestation, give birth to it, and give it to the world. We must embrace the change of the world, not run away from it.

From a physical perspective, this card can be about tending to the environment around you. On the Cosmic Eye podcast, they talked about the idea of “returning to zero.” When you do the dishes after cooking a meal, you return back to a state of “zero.” This makes it so that the next time you want a meal, your environment is not cluttered and busy, but empty and ready for you. Anytime we clean out and set up our environment in a way that reduces the friction between ourselves and our future goal, we can see that as a “return to zero.” When we return our physical environment to zero, we clean our workspace. When we return our physical bodies to zero, we purify ourselves with things like detox cleanse and sobriety. When we return our minds to zero, we use meditation and mindfulness to practice stillness and focus of the mind. I believe the orderly discerning nature of Virgo and Mercury on the Earth makes the 10 of Disks a good representative of this idea. (This is also similar to the idea of “environmental design beats willpower” which I associated with the 4 of Wands, and the idea of “leaving room for the meaning vacuum” which I associated with the 10 of Swords.)

Finally, as with all Tens of the tarot, this card can also represent the idea of the end of the chapter. It says, “It is time to write the last lines of this chapter so you can start the next one.” This particular card is the “lowest of the low” in the entire tarot deck (second perhaps only to the Princess of Disks). Earth is the densest and heaviest of the 4 elements. While all the other elements have a kind of active nature to it, with Fire as motivating force, Water as a reflective force, and Air as a dispersing force, Earth is seen more as a receptacle than anything—totally inert and susceptible to inertia. However, the secret truth of Earth is that it is actually just the combination of those other 3 elements into one unified body. As Lon Milo DuQuette wrote, “This mess may be the lowest of the low, but it has something that no other section of creation has except the highest high—that is, a little bit of absolutely everything!” Because of that, this card has the potential to reach the highest high—higher than any other element can reach. A mantra of this card can be, “If you’ve hit rock bottom, then there’s no way to go but up.” Instead of thinking of yourself as falling into a hall, think of yourself as falling onto the rubber band of a slingshot. The further you descend, the higher it’s going to shoot you as soon as it gives way. There are two things that lead to Great Transformation—Great Love and Great Suffering. If you are currently experiencing the Great Suffering, then the universe is setting the stage for your Great Transformation. All you have to do is let go of the rubber band go.

Conclusion

To summarize, Virgo is about the labor of the pregnant mother gestating new Life. It is about tending to other beings in the physical world in a way that helps them become more alive and more authentic, rather than getting them to do what we want them to do. It is about nursing our lower Personality—which consists of our physical, mental, and emotional selves—in order that it may properly grow the thing we were born to grow—our Soul. Like a newly pregnant mother reading every book she can about childbirth and parenting, Virgo’s ruler Mercury helps us discern the best ways to purify ourself and the environment around us in order to heed the mind-body connection and accelerate this Soul growth. Seeing ourselves as maidens of the cosmos, we must move away from a less sexual understanding of the word “virgin” and reclaim its original intention of feminine autonomy and independence. Once we consent to the “immaculate conception” from the supreme source of the universe, our lower Personality undergoes a radical transformation of attitudes, values, and actions—like a newly pregnant mom more interested in strollers than nightclubs. Once we enter the transition phase between maidenhood and motherhood, we must recognize the two duties of the mother: to help your child grow, and to let your child go. When we tap into the energy of Virgo within us, and we acknowledge Virgo as simply another name for the goddess Persephone, then we can embrace our destiny as midwives of the cosmos whose duty is to tend to the transition and prepare the way for Life.