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NEW MAGICKS FOR A NEW AGE

Volume III: Beyond Ritual

Historical, Philosophical, and Scientific Considerations

Book 1: Astrology
Part 9: Astrology and Health

Chapter 1 Virgo/Pisces and Health

Traditionally, Virgo and Mercury rule sickness and health, while Pisces and Neptune rule epidemic
diseases. It may be possible to refine that still further. First, Virgo, Mercury, and Persephone, the
hypothetical first trans-Plutonian Planet Who shares the rulership of Virgo with Mercury, may have
dominion over viruses of all kinds, whether associated with illness or not, and DNA and RNA, the
molecules in which the genetic code of all Earthly life is carried. Second, Pisces and Neptune may rule
all bacterial and other unicellular forms of life, whether or not they are associated with disease.
The first assignment turns partly on a pun that may also, however, be a memo from the Collective
Unconscious: the fact that the words virus and Virgo share their first syllable, vir-, etymologically linked
to the Latin word virtus, meaning “strength” or “vital essence.” DNA and RNA are in fact the vital
essence of all Earthly life, the heart of every living cell, whether an organism in its own right or part of a
multicellular one. They are Life’s “handwriting,” as it were, its signature – and it is Mercury who rules
writing and communication, and therefore all the information sciences. Today the biological sciences are
evolving into information sciences themselves, since the principles of their disciplines are becoming
more and more based on molecular biochemistry and the behavior of the genes. So Mercury rules
genetics as a branch of the information sciences as well as its implications for biomedical science.
Persephone, as an Outer Planet also ruling Virgo, therefore rules all these as expressed at the level of
whole populations or even Gaia, our living world, as a whole.
In addition, viruses, which are little more than naked RNA themselves, chunks of genetic
information passed around the biosphere from desk to desk like Ghidarillions of office memos sent from
desk to desk or department to department in a gigantic, world-spanning mega-corporation, love-letters
mailed by Life to itself as if every second were Valentine’s Second, almost invariably hate water, which
tends to kill them rather quickly. Virgo is a dry Sign, and therefore more suitable for rulership of viruses
than Pisces, Sign of the Ocean Sea, would be. And while cellular life had to have begun in water,
because of its internal chemistry, RNA and/or DNA may have first come into existence in clay, a slightly
dampened mineral formation with a crystalline infrastructure that many now thing would be perfect for
service as a template on which long, complex molecules, even self-replicating organic ones such as RNA
or DNA, could be assembled relatively quickly and easily.
Pisces and Neptune, on the other hand, are much more suitable as rulers of cells of all kinds, since
cells essentially comprise outer envelopes made of fatty acids, which enclose intracellular media that are
mostly water, together with some fatty acids and carbohydrate molecules, including the genetic templates
of DNA and RNA within.. Pisces rules liquids of all kinds, and therefore is much more suitable as ruler
of the mostly-liquid cell than is the dry, clay-ey Sign of Virgo. It and its ruler Pisces are therefore also
much more suitable as rulers of bacteria, whole one-celled organisms, not just DNA or RNA scantily
clad in protein panties as viruses are. This applies not only to bacteria associated with disease, such as
tuberculosis or syphilis, but to all others as well, including benign ones such as Lactobacillus bulgaricus.
As far as illness of any kind goes, though, Mercury is much more suitable as ruler of its expression
on the level of the individual, while Neptune, ruler of the Collective Unconscious, is much more suitable
as Lord of epidemics of any kind, bacterial or viral, as well as of public-health organizations and
institutions which deal with them, while Persephone, Lord of Natural Selection, another Planet of the
Collective, would be most likely ruler of all wisdom associated with health and sickness and the
processes and institutions by which these are passed on from generation to generation. She would
therefore be the likely Lord of the nutritional sciences, herbal remedies, and orthomolecular psychiatry,
which use such wisdom to treat and prevent disease in individuals and at a population level.
Finally, we come to poor little Chiron. Chiron seems to specifically rule “cool” viruses which prefer
the mammalian central nervous system for their vital medium, allergies, irritations, and other problems
connected with which sometimes drive people infected with them into endlessly repeated episodes of
self-destructive, apparently obsessive/compulsive, sometimes downright criminal and evil behavior that
seems totally senseless until it is realized that it is by this behavior that the poor, benighted, ill-used host
of the virus, usually all unawares, vectors the damned thing on to new hosts. Chiron also rules the
paradigm shifts necessary for diagnostician and sufferer to realize that that is the problem and do what is
necessary to get rid of the virus, generally long, unbroken courses of anti-viral herbs and tinctures,
ascorbate therapy, and anything else suitable. If Virgo is an electron microscope and Mercury is the One
using it to study microbiological life, Persephone is the head of the entire research project that ties all the
results of the study together and hands them on to the public. Chiron, for his part, is the lensing or other
focusing mechanism in the microscope that does the actual work of enlargement and makes clear the real
nature of the thing under study.
Nota bene: It is appropriate that the Outer Planes Uranus and Neptune, which, like Saturn and Pluto,
rule whole groups and populations of organisms, are associated with microbial organisms – which are
not, after all, truly microbial. Every bacterium with a given genotype is part of the same organism that
all other bacteria with that genotype are; the fact that that organism is spread out diffusely over a
population of a different type of organism, living within or on the bodies of the members of the latter
population, makes it no less a single organism than any eukaryotic multicellular organism which has its
own cells compacted together in one body. As one microbiologist recently put it, a bacterium is as
multicellular as we are; only the fact that we have been studying bacteria one cell at a time for so long
has kept most of us from realizing that fact.
The same is also true of viruses. Every viral mote with a given genotype is part of the same viral
organism that all other such motes with that genotype are. Though they are potentially far longer-lived
than we are, they are not immortal; they cease to exist when no more suitable hosts for them are
available. Even so, this may take a long, long time, depending on how adaptable the “microbes” in
question are. If one host population becomes extinct, if another is available to which the “microbes” can
adapt to and live with then the “microbe” will live on as long as it has suitable hosts. So Uranus and
Neptune define the length of “days” of “microbes” in the same way that Saturn defines ours, albeit on a
larger scale, marking the beginning and ending of their lives just as Saturn and the progressed Moon does
ours.