Full Moon in Virgo: Wholly Perfect

The full moon in Virgo illuminates

just how vital EVERY single part of you is.

How everything that makes you you is necessary.

Let’s use this lunation to figure out the material supports

that will help you to identify and honor

your full self.

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Mentioned:

Kristin Neff’s self-compassion work.

Labyrinthos, the online tarot reading and education app.

Make Magic:

You’ll find the questions for every 2022 full (and new) moon in the book

New and Full Moon Rituals for Entrepreneurs and Changemakers,

co-authored with my friend and fellow witch Leslie Tagorda,

host of The Savvy Luminary podcast.

Transcript: Full Moon in Virgo: Wholly Perfect

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello, my love. Welcome. I’m so happy to talk to you today about the Full Moon in Virgo for 2022. Full disclosure: this Moon is happening right along one of the important axes in my own natal chart. My rising sign is Pisces, and that is where the Sun is. The Sun in this Full Moon chart actually is almost exactly on the degree of my rising, and so the Moon is directly opposite or almost exactly on the degree of my descendent. 

So, the message for this particular lunation, this particular Full Moon, it is very much my message. It is something that you have heard me say versions of again and again in this podcast. This Full Moon is about cultivating a whole self-honoring life. And I’ll talk about how I see that in the chart for the Full Moon and, also, about what that means, and some reflections, as always, for you to consider as you think about what the Moon means for you particularly.

All right. So, I’d love to begin by speaking a little bit about the energies, the vibes of Pisces and Virgo. So, you might remember that in every Full Moon, we become interested in a balancing of two opposite energies, yeah? The Moon is directly across from the Sun, zodiacally speaking. That’s why it’s fully illuminated. And with this full illumination, we are meant to see a big picture. We are meant to reconcile two opposing and, yet, complementary energies.

So, the axis of this Full Moon happens across Pisces and Virgo. When I think about Pisces, I think about cursive handwriting—do you know?—where one letter flows into the next into the next into the next, that looping, loping gait. And the letters are distinct and, at the same time, they are connected. 

Pisces—you might remember—is mutable water. And that, for me, really is key for Pisces energy: connected, connective, and yet of individuals. The element for Pisces is water, and you can think about water in terms of droplets. A drop of water has its own cohesiveness, its own tension. And, yet, when you drop a droplet on top of another, they will merge. There’s a merging function with water.

So, thinking about Pisces is like thinking about the ocean made of droplets; thinking about our bodies composed of cells composed mostly of water; thinking about our planet composed of elements composed mostly of water. 

Virgo, all the way across the Zodiac, is an earth sign. And if Pisces is about the looping, loping gait of cursive writing, Virgo is about dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. Virgo is very carefully printing, and actually most people with a lot of Virgo that I know have very neat handwriting [laugh], come to think of it. 

You can fact-check that for me. Let me know if the Virgos in your life have neat handwriting. I will tell you that the Virgo, Venus-Virgo Moon editing this podcast certainly does have very neat handwriting. OK. I digress. I am Pisces after all. I will make my way back to the point, but I will loop and lope as I make my way there. 

So, while Pisces is oceanic, Virgo is associated with the harvest. So, Virgo is about planting seeds, carefully tending seeds, eventually harvesting fruits. Virgo is mutable earth, and so Virgo says, “We can rearrange our material reality to make it better. We can tend it to make it healthier.” 

So, while Pisces is about merging; Virgo is about refining. Pisces, we might say, zooms in and out. It ebbs and it flows. And Virgo does the same but with an intention to refine and to cultivate. 

So, Pisces will say, “We are all made of stardust, and isn’t that extraordinary?” And Virgo will say, “Yes. Also, speaking of dust, there’s dust everywhere, so can we please get the right tools and the right techniques for sweeping it up? And can we put that on a schedule that is optimized for evenly distributed collaboration?” [laugh]

I love Virgo energy, and I find it a necessary balance. I have a lot of Pisces in my own being. I am a Pisces-rising Pisces Moon, and so that Virgo energy that is arranging and tending is very balancing for my extremely go-with-the-flow nature.

OK. So, this Full Moon in Virgo is asking us to honor ourselves as we are. So, what I was just saying that I have a go-with-the-flow tendency. I have a lot of water, a lot of sensitivity, a lot of creativity, a lot of sloshiness in my own way of being. This Full Moon says, “Let’s honor that, and tend that, and let’s use this lunation to figure out the material supports that will help you to honor your whole self.”

This Full Moon is illuminating how vital every single part of you is, how everything that makes you you is necessary, even the parts that annoy you a little bit. [laugh] Oh, my gosh. I just got a huge infusion of Virgo energy into the way that I care for clients, and I’m so excited about it. And my amazing assistant and the incredible Vicky Smith, together they built this system that will smooth the process for all of my clients. And, of course, my sloshy self [laugh] immediately was requesting ways to make that system a little more fluid, a little more flexible. 

And I laugh because this fluidity can be so frustrating, and it is the very thing I want to contain and, at the same time, this fluidity makes me me. And, so, happily, my team knows and loves this about me. I have material support that honors this aspect of me, and so they were happy to help me find a little more freedom in the system that they built.

So, this leads us to the first question for this Full Moon. What aspects of yourself are you ready to embrace more fully? [laugh] Like, what is the way that you are that makes you shake your head sometimes, and go, ugh, why? And, yet, it is who you are. What aspects of yourself are you ready to embrace more fully?

This is, for sure, for sure, a cornerstone of my own coaching, this idea that we can actually arrange our lives to suit who we are, rather than changing ourselves to fit into this life. And this ability to create a life that really honors ourselves, here in the 21st century, we have a real shot at that for the first time in hundreds of years, because as our world industrialized and globalized, we really did get locked into a very time-bound, conformative way of being. And that has opened up so much for so many of us in the last few decades, and especially in the last for few years.

Now, let me be clear. As much freedom as there is, there are also so many and such strong messages asking us to conform, telling us the way to be, that really fully, truly embracing our whole selves is not easy, especially if our own cultural identities, our own bodies are not the ones that are prized and privileged in the dominant culture. So, in order to embrace all parts of ourselves, it will help a lot to have a few practices that help us to do so. 

So, one of those is self-compassion. Remember, Virgo is very interested in the room for improvement. It wants healthier crops—literal and metaphorical. It wants a better harvest. So, Virgo is always looking for the places that things could be better. It helps enormously to do this in a self-compassionate way.

So, perhaps you’re familiar already with Kristin Neff’s work. Kristin Neff is one of the leading theorists on self-compassion, and she says that self-compassion has three main components. There is self-kindness, meaning that we are nice to ourselves. When we see room for improvement, we are kind about it; encouraging about it.

Number two is the idea of common humanity, the idea of connectedness, that we’re never alone in our struggles. We can always reach out to resonate. We can always reach out for support. We can always find other people who understand. 

And then three is mindfulness. Kristin Neff sees that being present, being mindful of our emotions, of our environments, of the present moment is also crucial in practicing self-compassion so that we don’t get wrapped up in the past, what we didn’t do, what didn’t work. But, rather, that we stay right here, right now, being receptive rather than judgmental, and responsive rather than reactive. 

So, the next question for this lunation is, how can you bolster your practice of self-compassion around self-kindness, around connecting rather than isolating, around mindfulness—or perhaps around all three? I know that I need to practice all three, personally. 

Kristin Neff’s research shows that people who are self-compassionate are much more successful in living their values than people who are self-critical. And this, for me, is such the opportunity for this particular Full Moon in Virgo; that we might perfect our perfectionistic tendencies. So, stay with me. This is a theory that I have.

I think that there are some of us who have very high standards. We have high standards for ourselves. We have high standards for our work. We have high standards for our communities and our world. Yeah? We see the room for improvement, and we aren’t afraid to move into it. And in our late-capitalist, white-dominant, patriarchal world, it can be very easy to allow those high standards to force us into unhappy and unhealthy lives.

So, a lot of people will say, “Oh, just let go of your high standards. Let go of the perfectionism. Turn away from that.” But, remember, I’m here, Virgo is here, Pisces is here, to say, “Oh, no, this is a vital part of us, these high standards, this desire for improvement. This is a beautiful, honorable part of us. And we can channel it toward something better than how our body looks in denim. [laugh] We can channel it towards something more important than how clean the house is.”

One of the most powerful places, one of the most healing places I’ve directed my own perfectionist tendencies is toward self-compassion. Natalie, would you like to perfect something? Perfect self-kindness. Become relentlessly, excellently self-kind. [laugh] That is a beautiful challenge, and it doesn’t ask me to let go of those high standards. 

And thank goodness, because that is part of who I am. You can’t have as many planets in Libra as I do, can’t have a Jupiter-Venus square [laugh], and not have high standards. So, if I have these high standards, if this is a part of me, let me employ and deploy them in the direction of my values. Yeah?

OK. So, this leads us to the next question. What becomes possible when you self-appreciate instead of self-criticize? When you embrace more fully these aspects of yourself, when you are kinder to yourself, what becomes possible? Spend a moment with that question, my dear. 

OK. Now, let’s get practical because, again, Virgo is earth energy. It is interested in day-to-day material life. When the Full Moon is in Virgo, we have Moon, meaning body, meaning emotions, meaning materia, material life, in the sign of earth. And we have the Sun in Pisces in the sign of flow and water.

So, the next question honors that. The next question says, where in your life can you edit your everyday routines to invite more freedom and flow? Where can you edit your everyday routines to invite more freedom and flow? 

So, you might think of this like by time of day. What do your mornings look like? What does your breakfast, lunch, dinnertime look like? Do you have those? [laugh] Do you have breakfast and lunch and dinner? What does your bedtime look like?

For me, I’m so sloshy that I get more freedom and flow with a little bit of structure around things like meals. So, when I dedicate myself, for example, to definitely having dinner with my family at the table, that actually creates space for conversation and connection and nourishment, which ultimately does promote freedom and flow for me. 

So, it’s not just kind of shaking up or breaking open your everyday routines. It might also be establishing them. If there is a place in your life that feels a bit rough or chaotic, if there’s something that’s not flowing smoothly, how could you edit your everyday routines to promote smoothness and flow and health? 

OK. Finally, there is a spiritual aspect to Pisces energy, where the Sun is shining from. Pisces does want you to remember that you are magic; that you are sentient stardust. And Pisces does encourage you to explore intuition and spirituality and imagination and dream life. Pisces is very into the woo tools. Pisces loves these Full Moon podcasts.

So, with the Full Moon in Virgo, we can ask, how can you integrate your woo tools? How can you integrate your spirituality, your astrology, your tarot? How can you integrate gut checks and visualizations more fully into daily practice? 

This could be as simple as pulling a tarot card or an oracle code in the morning. So, as you know, in these Full Moon episodes, I’m sharing with you different resources. I’m incorporating different resources for inspiration, and also just to honor that a Full Moon is asking us to see more of what’s available. 

So, there’s this great app. It’s called Labyrinthos. I’ll put it in the Show Notes for sure. And it lives on my phone, on the first page of my phone. I can go in, and I’m doing this right now, and I can ask for a daily reading. And, so, I’m pulling a single card here. Let’s see what it gives us.

OK. I pushed the button on my phone, and I got the Four of Pentacles Reversed, and here’s the message that the app gives us. “While being conservative can be incredibly beneficial, beware that it does not turn into stinginess. Your fear of loss could lead to hoarding, and a fixation upon material things in life. What is the basis of trying to keep such tight control?” 

I love that that is our card for the Full Moon in Virgo. [laugh] It’s so good because the Four of Pentacles Upright is a guy who’s holding on tight to a coin, to a pentacle, and that represents Earth. It’s like I’m going to keep and hold the material. 

And reversed—at least the way that I want to see it—it’s saying, “Let me open up. I don’t need to hold on so tight. In fact, when I open up, when I’m grasping a little less hard, and I’m allowing my life to breathe, I’m allowing money to flow out and to flow in. I’m allowing growth to happen.”

That is actually when I’m truly secure and truly rich because that is when I am going with the looping, loping flow of life. I’m not holding on tight, resisting it. Rather, I am moving and growing through life, and life is moving and growing through me. 

Ooh, and that really, my friend, that is the message for this Full Moon in Virgo. Every little bit of you is essential. It’s vital to who you are. So, embrace and love your tendencies, and create a life that allows you to be who and how you are—and, at the same time, remember how big you are. Remember that you contain multitudes. You are a miracle and a mystery. 

You are sentient stardust—and so am I. So, can we, together, create a life and world and a community that even begins to do this miracle justice? Whew, all right, my love. You can find this really fun app in the Show Notes. 

You can find a little write-up, and all of the self-reflection questions for the Full Moon in the book that my friend Leslie Tagorda and I coauthored. It is called New & Full Moon Rituals For Entrepreneurs & Changemakers. Super fun. In this book on page 35, I have a bunch of ways for you to create an actual ritual for the Full Moon—really fun. And it might be actually one of the ways that you could integrate some of your woo into your monthly routines. 

OK. A happy and prosperous Full Moon to you. May this Moon illuminate for you the places where you can shift your everyday life in a way that allows you to love and tend and be your whole perfect self. Thanks so much for listening. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time. 

End of recording