Your work needs to be independent of others' work
You must not compare yourself to others
No one can help you but yourself
Criticism leads to misunderstandings
Work from necessity and your compulsion to it
Work on what you know and what you love
Don't observe yourself too closely, just let it happen
Don't let yourself be controlled
Live in love and the activity of your work
Be free of thoughts of sin and guilt
Be touched by the anxiety of life
Be patient with the unresolved in your heart
Try to be in love with the questions themselves
Be gentle to those who stay behind
Your inner self is worth your entire concentration
Allow your art to make extraordinary demands on you
Bear your sadness with greater trust than your joy
Do not persecute yourself
Its good to love, because love is difficult
You are not a prisoner of anything or anyone - Rilke

It's time to roll up your sleeves and get to work. The New Moon in Virgo is here! Virgo is known for her love of work and service to others. Just make sure it's YOUR work, YOUR passion, YOUR gift to humanity. So the question is, what is your work? When you find it, listen to Rilke's advise and be gentle with yourself.

Change is in the air. The end of August always feels like that to me. In Rhode Island, the weather starts to cool off, the beaches start to empty out, the ocean gets wilder as a result of hurricanes and the kids go back to school. Within three weeks, we'll be celebrating the Fall Equinox and you'll have noticed that darkness falls earlier and earlier every day. We are getting ready for our harvests. September is often the time of year when what we've been working toward all year finally gets birthed -it is the 9th month of the year! So get ready to get down for a big shift, taking your work to the next level, work being one of Virgo's passions.

The exuberance of fiery Leo has given way to the discipline, organization and dedication of Virgo. The two Leo eclipses were a shock to the system, dislodging old beliefs and giving us renewed confidence to believe in our visions, to believe in ourselves. Now we have to make the changes that we've been imagining for ourselves.

If you've been watching the Democratic National Convention, you can sense the passion and hopes of many Americans that we the people can create change this time around – a change of vision, of priorities, of values, of generations in our governing structures. Whether you intend to vote for Barack Obama or not, you can literally see the difference in generations that McCain and Obama represent.

Obama was born during the 60s, and so carries in his celestial blueprint the energy of the conjunction of Pluto (evolution) and Uranus (revolution) in Virgo, the energy that poured through those revolutionary times. During two of those years, Saturn and Chiron were opposite the exact conjunction in Pisces. (the loss of and yearning for spirit). As I've mentioned before, this conjunction has occurred in the past and has always been a marker for social, sexual, artistic and political change and evolution. But remember, a conjunction is like a new moon – it is just the beginning of a cycle. And so, the 60s were only the beginning of something new, something revolutionary, something that wants to evolve human consciousness. As a beginning, it was confusing, wild, instinctive, messy, spontaneous, glorious – a new birth.

But after birth comes growth, and in the next few years, we will be experiencing the next stage of that growth – a square (90 degrees) which provokes crisis and action. Pluto will be in Capricorn, Uranus in Aries and Saturn in Libra, asking each of us to fight for justice and renew the culture. This time, the Pluto-in-Leo generation (baby boomers) will help the Pluto-in-Virgo generation get things done.

But before that, we will be experiencing the beginning of that crisis on Election Day. On that day, one of the planets of the 60s conjunction, Uranus, will be in Pisces opposite (an opposition brings awareness or else a splitting) Saturn in Virgo at the same degrees of the original conjunction. The opposition between the old (Saturn) and the new (Uranus). Only this time, Saturn will be in Virgo and Uranus will be in Pisces. They've switched signs.

This time around, Saturn in Virgo will ask us to discipline ourselves by knowing ourselves so Uranus in Pisces can open us up to spiritual vision about what our purpose is in this most important time in our history. But that is the potential. It is up to human beings to act on that potential. Or, we can sit back and watch as the old guard fights to keep its power and once again put down the new vision, the new ideas, the true values of the people of the world. Whatever your political party, it is important to know that this election in America is really about choosing either the past or the future, either giving power to the powerful or power to the people.

The Virgo New Moon calls us to service. How can we be of service to our world? We have to take the heart lessons we learned in Leo and unite it with our heads. We have to think, analyze, discriminate, refine and integrate what our hearts have been telling us about our lives and the life of the world. We are heading into rough waters in these next few years, and the best way to swim in them is to remember we are here to serve our fellow human beings. That is the only real purpose of evolving our consciousness.

Virgo is the Virgin who advises us to learn to 'belong to ourselves' – to know who we are. Virgo is humble and has the ability to see that all the different parts of ourselves, our talents and our flaws, our unconsciousness and our compassion, make us unique. It's not about what we've done wrong or right; it's about what we've learned in this journey through life. And how that knowledge influences the choices we make for the future.

Mercury, whom we met in Gemini, is also the ruling planet of Virgo. Mercury is now in Libra, encouraging social conscience, cooperation, fairness, and diplomacy. As Virgo's ruling planet, he now brings his abilities to bear in the earthly realm. Instead of Gemini's guide of souls and godly messenger, he is the Alchemist, bestowing the ability to transform lead into gold, ideas into inventions, ideals into actions, unconsciousness into consciousness. As the Magician, he names things, and knows things.

There is a fairy tale that describes Virgo's ability to transform any situation through the power of NAMING. To know the name of something or someone means to know the essential nature of that person or thing. In Virgo, we are acknowledging that our essential nature is our Self, not our Ego.

The fairy tale is from the Grimm's Brothers collection and it is called Rumpelstiltskin (read it).

The story is about a miller's daughter who is forced by a insecure father and a greedy king to spin straw into gold. When an earth elemental offers to help her do just that, she is forced to agree to give him her first-born child. But when he comes for the child, she will not give the babe up. And so he says that if she can guess his name, she can keep the child. In the end, she finds out his name and the child is saved.

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