Immerse yourself in the grounding energy of the Virgo Full Moon with a sacred ritual. Soften into Earth's embrace and rest within your deep inner knowing.
OVERVIEW:
What you need to know about Virgo
The Virgo Now Moon is a powerful Moon for accessing intuitional knowledge held within the body. As an earth sign, Virgo represents embodied presence, moral order, harvest, generosity and wisdom. In various myths, this archetype is tied to goddesses of the harvest and agriculture, highlighting the importance of nurturing growth, careful planning and deep listening required for a successful yield. This New Moon  invites you to slow down and decrease distractions, and pay close attention to what you are practicing in habits of thought, movement, gesture, and overall way of being.
Virgo New Moon Themes
Harvest your learnings
Soften into Earth's embrace
Receive the present moment
Create space to be nurtured by nature
Reassess routines & daily habits
Focus on creating beauty, not perfection
Virgo Chart
Symbol | Maiden | winged woman carrying a sheaf of wheat; justice, balance of the seasons, living in accordance with natural law; purity |
Modality | Mutable | represents the changing nature of life through shifting adaptable forces. |
Ruling planet | Mercury | Mind, communication, language, reason, intellect |
Element | Earth | practical, deep, sensual, grounded, stable, loyal, discipline |
House | 6th |  Health, wellness, daily routines, service, duty, responsibility, and quality of work |
Symbol | Maiden or Virgin | Justice, natural law, balance of the seasons and living in accordance with nature |
Physiology | Intestines, digestive system, liver, pancreas | Health conscious yet can have digestive and food absorption issues. All about food consumption, processing and nutrition. |
Flowers | Poppies Lily of the Valley Honeysuckle | Feminine in action, associated to the moon; Cleanses one's energy and improves mental clarity; Attract friends, bring in luck, and sustain love |
Metal | Mercury | Flexible, adaptable and bright |
Gems | Carnelian Jasper Yellow aragonite | Increase motivation towards action; Sustains and supports through times of stress, and brings tranquility and wholeness; Patience, responsibility, staves off habits of procrastination |
Herbs | Valerian Verbena Sassafras | Improve sleep quality, reduce anxiety, and reduce hyperactivity; Nerve cell protection, anxiety- and convulsion-reducing properties, and antimicrobial activity; Boosts immunity, heals wounds, increases energy |
Colors | Green Brown | Sense of grounding and focus on continuous growth. Brown represents stability while green represents growth in nature |
Ritual Preparations
1. RIGHT RELATIONSHIP:
Being in right relationship with your spiritual practice means approaching each aspect with humility, curiosity and reverence. This includes checking yourself on the nature of how you relate to "objects" as things and the process itself.
For example, if you feel called to stones as part of your ritual, consider WHY first. Then contemplate the impact of whatever action comes next. For example, instead of mindlessly purchasing cheap precious stones from somewhere like amazon (which have more than likely been harmfully mined/extracted and then shipped across the world as part of the consumer machine that's destroying our planet), perhaps part of your spiritual practice is to resist that impulse, and instead take the time to go for a mindful walk in your backyard, or a nearby stream and see if the right stone presents itself to you.
2. CLEANSE YOUR BODY-MIND-SPACE:
Cleansing is the practice of clearing out and releasing negative energy from your space, as well as energy that’s just old, stale, stagnant, or no longer serving you.
Here are a few different methods:
Physical cleaning:Â dusting, vacuuming, opening windows for fresh air
Salt:Â a common element used for purification and protection in many different cultures. To use, simply sprinkle salt along doorways and windowsills to protect them from negative energy entering or just keep a small bowl of salt on your altar or nearby surface.
Smoke Cleansing:Â light incense or burn a bundle of dried herbs such as rosemary, cedar, or mugwort. Choose plants that you have grown yourself or that grow abundantly wild nearby, plants that you have ancestral tied to or just those that have been grown and harvested ethically.
Bathe: Take a shower our bath; visualize any negative energy that has accumulated in your auric field to be washed away as the water goes down the drain.
Meditate: take some time to center, still your mind and ground into presence.
A NOTE ON SMOKE CLEANSING:
If you do not have meaningful/authentic relationships to Indigenous culture and customs, "smudging" with white sage cultural appropriation and is dishonoring to Indigenous nations across Turtle island. It is important to understand that smudging is not just about burning sage to purify the negative energy from your space but is a sacred ritual that is culturally specific to tribes such as the Lakota Sioux, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Navajo. If you have been gifted sage by an Indigenous friend, use to your discretion in how to engage with this medicine. This sacred plant is being abused, exploited and mass-harvested for commercial and consumer use which perpetuates the violence of white supremacy and settler colonialism. Take some time to locate yourself within a settler-colonial context interwoven with the land you currently occupy. Check out Native Land to learn the name and more about the territories you occupy.
Virgo Moon Ritual
Altar Tending
Your altar is a portal of spiritual communion; a doorway to your own sacred heart.Â
Altar tending is optional though it is a powerful practice, especially if you have a designated area in your home that you can tend over the course of the year to honor lunar and seasonal thresholds.
Altar tending grounds your spiritual practice and holds your prayers and intentions.
To create an altar, draw upon the Virgo Ritual Elements above and consider what you might want to bring to your. Start simple. There is absolutely no need to "buy" altar items. This is something that we encourage you to unlearn. Everything we need is within us and can be found around us. A simple bowl of water will do since you're working with the water element.
Let your altar reflect the place you live and weave in any ancestral cultural traditions.
Explore different practices to engage in as a way to develop your spiritual practice. Explore verbal and non-vernal communication. Let every gesture facing your altar be a prayer.Â
NOTE ON CULTURAL APPROPRIATION:
There is no right or wrong way to go about creating, tending or being with your altar, however we do not condone cultural appropriation or theft of any kind.
Clarify Your Intentions
An intention is a way to bring heart and mind into alignment. There is power in naming that which you are calling in.
When we speak to God/Spirit/Source/Allah, gods & goddesses, deities, ancestors, and forces of love, we acknowledge that we are not alone and that support and guidance is available to us as multidimensional beings who are interdependently woven into the fabric of existence. When we give voice to our intentions, we are speaking to the larger Self that encompasses the intelligence of the universe.
The intentions we give voice to now will stay with us and ripple through the unfolding of the seasons.
Moon Blessing or Prayer
A blessing, invocation or prayer can be done in silence, but there is power in speaking words that come from your hearts deepest longing. A prayer is spoken to the animating, loving force of the universe - that which gives us life and is the source of love. How you call this permeating, loving presence is unique to each of us, but here are some words that you may have resonance with: Ancestors, place-based spirits and dieties, god(s), goddesses, Allah, Source, Buddha, Creator, Spirit, Tao etc. It's important to remember that Spirit is not outside of you, but also within you... so when you pray, you're also praying to the deepest, divine aspect of your nature.
I humbly offer my breath to the Holy Mystery,
whose invisible hands weave our dreams.Â
I humbly bow to the lands who hold me,
whose 10,000 faces reflect our nature.
Bless this journey down the river of life,Â
May we learn how to walk together in a good way.
Eco-Somatic Practice: Softening into Earth's Embrace
CONTEXT:
To amplify your connection to earth energy, perform this part of the ritual outside or next to a window. If being outside is not accessible to you, no worries! Remember, YOU are earth and that is enough.
ACCESSIBILITY:
All of our practices can be adapted to suit your needs. One option is to treat this as an imaginal practice, in which case you don't even have to leave your home. Read through the steps and then close your eyes and have an interior experience... let your dreamscape guide you. Alternatively, you may feel called to art-making as a way to engage the content. Earth is within us. Here is a beautiful earth-inspired video which you may enjoy.
GUIDED PRACTICE:
Begin by finding a comfortable seated posture while making contact with the earth in some way. This can look like sitting directly on the grass cross legged or sitting in a chair with your feet flat on the ground as you imagine making contact with the ground beneath you. You might even place your hands on your thighs as you imagine large tree trunks.
Sense the stability of the ground as you take a few minutes to come into stillness. Notice the quality of your breath as you inhale and exhale. Allow your face muscles to soften as you close your eyes.
Bring your awareness to the base of your sit bones or feet. Sense the quality of contact you are making with the ground. Solidity. Stillness. Stability. Sense your body begin to soften as you gently exhale. Allow earth's gravity to receive you. Breathe softly into different areas of your body that seems to be holding tension. Hold your awareness there for a few slow and gentle breaths . Say the words: "I soften. I relax. I let go." Take as much time as you need to work through areas of the body that feel constricted.
After that, I welcome you to either:
place your hands on the grass outside or the ground where you are
prostrate yourself with your forehead on the ground
simply place your hands on your belly
Close your eyes and take a few moments to visualize the vastness beneath you.
The unseen world of soil, roots, stones, water, sediment, worms, microbes, mycelia, bacteria, flows of information that feed the underground networks of life.
Allow images to flow into your mind as you consider the memories that this land/place carries. How everything returns to Earth, and how her yearning can be felt through gravity itself.
Consider the time of the year it is. As the Sun wanes life begins to fade from the tips of trees while leaves and fruits begin to fall from branches. Exhale as you soften into Earth's embrace.
This next part involves offering loving touch to your own earth body.
If you can reach, start with your feet then work up to your calves, hamstrings and quads. Slowly make your way up your entire body as you acknowledge and greet each part.
Gently and slowly squeeze, massage, caress, tickle, scratch (really whatever feels most pleasurable and nourishing depending on what area of the body you're landing on). There is no right or wrong way to do this. For example, you might want to massage your feet, squeeze parts of your lower body, rub your hands, caress your belly, scratch or massage your scalp, softly rub or tickle your face, etc.
Notice how you feel.
When you're ready, move into rest, stillness and time for integration. You are welcome to lie down on the ground for a few minutes while following the rise and fall of your breath. Follow your intuition.
Virgo New Moon Journal Prompts:
What came up for you during the eco-somatic practice? Take some time to reflect on anything you'd like to hold onto.
You may also wish to reflect on any or all of the following questions:
What in your environment is working for you? What makes you feel alive? At peace, clear?
What is not? What is taking you outside of your center?
What in your routines and atmospheres are working for? What is not?
What are you trying not to feel? What are you trying to control with business so that you don’t have to feel? What wants to speak instead
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