I was asked, actually repeatedly, for some insight into the Virgo/Pisces axis, especially as it applies to the ASC.

First, I see Virgo as service, but mainly service on the earth plane. Virgo is blessed with a good heart and willingness to do what is needed, however humble, but it prefers to deal with realities as perceived from the physical dimension. So, I see Virgo as working more in the realm of physical health and Pisces more in the realm of psychospiritual health. This is very true when the polarities operate elsewhere in the chart, but when they occur on the ASCs, it is a little more subtle.

Take the images of Virgo and Pisces, and you see Virgo as recognizing the suffering that occurs while incarnate: the diseases and deprivation. However, Pisces sees the separation from the divine and wants to restore the feeling of wholeness, abolish the sense that we were ever abandoned or exiled or that we somehow got lost. In this respect, Pisces is never quite as fully incarnate as Virgo; and, for the same reason, it always feels a little more intangible, remote, distant. Virgo does not speculate on what
it doesn't know, but it definitely sees the present issues as pressing. It is incarnate and is thus somewhat less ethereal, but much more realistic.

The second part of the question is whether Virgo/Pisces is an "opposition" of two parts of the same essential energy, i.e., polarities of one spectrum of experience in which balance is found somewhere between them or whether they are really different as understood by earth and water.

This is a far more difficult question because, on some level, we are all one, including the fire and air; but on another, earth and water are not really separate, merely different frequencies of the same matter, earth being less humid and, of course, less flexible.

We might take up the question from another angle. Virgo/Pisces are spectrums of the Divine Feminine, the feminine as not contaminated by the masculine, ergo the sense of virginity and purity. If we use the Jean Shinoda Bolen terminology, we'd say that these are the archetypes of the feminine before her experience of the masculine, the so-called virgin goddesses as opposed to the vulnerable ones who have interacted with the
masculine and thus been transformed, in a largely unpredictable fashion. For instance, for me it is impossible to imagine a virginal Scorpio. I am not saying that individuals with Scorpio energies cannot at one time have been "technical" virgins, but their psyches are never virginal because life experience has left indelible marks on them, even when Scorpio is on the ASC.

The imagery I use is that if all the water signs, especially when on the ASC, have some degree of desire to protect and rescue people who are suffering, then Pisces will stand on the shore waiting for people to get out of the water, Scorpio will dive into the water regardless of how dark and dangerous it is, and Cancer will try to create a safe place on the water rather that in it. This is how I see the energies when they express through
the ASC.

For instance, I remember a little of what I channeled for Linda during the most recent class. Her soul energies manifested to my inner eye as a flower floating on water, the stalk went down into the water and "through" it to the earth below, but it could feel the sunshine and light as well as the complexity and trauma below. It had what we might call "perspective." The idea of safety being right on the borderline between water and air was powerful in the image I saw. However, in another way, we might say that the energy was "clean," i.e., she was literally on top of everything, like a mother who can be a refuge for children who are dealing with heavy life experiences.

Scorpio is indifferent to whether or not it gets its hands dirty in the process of rescuing. There is a tremendous feeling of strength to recover from anything and everything and also a sense that it is not necessary to escape from any experience merely to be strong enough to endure the experience. It is not indifferent to the experience; it is having the
experience knowing that having experiences is all right.

Pisces is not all right in this world. I think it's sensitivity to Cosmic Pathos makes it fragile, and it wants to save people rather than protect them. It saves people by suggesting that it is time to get out of the water and there is a huge struggle getting onto shore, but shore is a place of eternal purity and perhaps what she is seeking to know, probably a place that is more earthy and less watery. However, there is also the idea that one must somehow oneself escape the water and the process entailed in this
escape is purifying so that Pisces does not really have a lot of work to do once the victims emerge from the water. Pisces doesn't actually go swimming, not in the psychic sense. It watches others who are swimming, convinced that nothing is served by one more person risking drowning. You might say, Pisces likes to dry people off.

There is much more to this imagery. Scorpio will go into the fray. You might say that Scorpio would find working in the streets of Calcutta "normal." It can note all the poverty, disease, and despair and feel assured that being there is the right place to be. Cancer will try to create a safe haven in Calcutta, one clean place where bandaging can occur
without incurring more injury. Pisces will show the way out of Calcutta, whether to Benares or the Himalayas or wherever.

All nurture but in vastly different ways. What is "spiritual" about Pisces is the sense that people must themselves seek a clearer place before the gifts of Pisces can actually be received. I think it would be nonsense to maintain that Pisces is more spiritual. We are all spiritual, but Pisces needs for people to recognize this fact before it feels that its specific insights and understanding can be appreciated.

I have an appointment, but I will be glad to continue this thread later if there is a response from anyone.

There is considerable discusion and usage of chakras in your work, particularly astroendocrinology. I have only seen mention of chakras in eastern thought--are the chakras or rather the ideas of them brought from India, etc.; or were they simultaneously developed in the West or Middle East? My interest is academic on this topic.

Your web site is great!

John in Richmond

Dear John:

To the best of my knowledge, there was constant exchange of information and ideas between the East and West until the Dark Ages. Why Marco Polo and others had to "discover" the East after the Crusaders had already heard so much about it is a curious issue, certainly due more to political pressure on historians than reality.

I suspect, however, that the chakra system is actually Indian in origin. This said, there are drawings in very old Rosicrucian texts showing the solar system superimposed upon the human body, suggesting thereby that a comparable, albeit not identical, system of thought existed hundreds of years ago in the West.

Dear Ingrid,

I'm one of your students and have used the astrological fertility cycle for conceiving my 2 children, (now aged 21 and 18) and for my clients. I have only missed once, and that is because the client became pregnant before I got her charts out to her!

By the way, I also planned the sex of my pregnancies. I would encourage
all the other students to utilize this method; it's wonderful and produces results!

I was told when still a teenager that I would have problems conceiving....what rubbish!

I am not aware of a computer program that would calculate the cycles for us. It's very time-consuming to do this by hand, but it was the only way I knew. Please advise how to do this on computer!

Thanks,

Trink

Dear Trink:

In the old days, we did this by hand, and you are right, it took quite a bit of time to thumb through the ephemeris page by page. Then, Neil Michelsen made this an option that one could have when mail ordering computerized horoscopes (before personal computers were around).

I am fairly certain that you can perform these calculations using Solar Fire, WinStar, and Janus; but I'm going to check and report back. If others use these programs, let me know. I'm using Janus these days because it has a superb rectification tool.

Janus does the job perfectly and swiftly (everything on Janus is incredibly fast, but it is not as feature oriented as Solar Fire and has a slim Atlas). Anyway, the way you do this with an astrological software program is you do a return chart. Under options, you choose Sun/Moon phase. I did this on Janus and instantly got an accurate list with the angle of the Sun and Moon precise. As usual, with WinStar, there were problems. It actually performed the right operations, but backwards (which won't work with fertility charts). The angles were correct, but the phases were wrong. Let's see if I am speaking a language everyone understands. If one looked for a 90 degree angle, you'd get the quarter Moons, but you only want either the first or third quarter, not all of them. In fact, WinStar did not give me the correct quarter on seven tries, par for the course for WinStar. The option is there, but like many WinStar options, it seems to be temperamental. I'm sure Solar Fire is slick. I was just eccentric last time I bought new software and wanted to see what Janus is all about.