The Season of the Fire Goddess: Why Jacoby Could Benefit from Sacred Sex

With the recent ingress of the Sun into Virgo, I thought I'd write about the relationship between Virgo and Vesta, the minor planet thought by some to be a ruler of Virgo. As someone with both my South Node and chart ruler, Pluto, in Virgo, I love the notion of Vesta as ruler of this sign. The symbol for Vesta is that of a flame, and she represents the goddess that tends the fire with great devotion, making sure to keep it going. Vesta is associated with fire, earth, devotion, passion, service, courage, sensuality, and sexuality. According to Eric Francis, astrologer and specialist in the minor planets: “One interesting thing about Vesta is that she does not have a specific identity; there are not classical representations of her. She is the spirit of the eternal, core fire of humanity itself…” (www.planetwaves.net; 8/22/08). The core fire of humanity itself! Now that’s a powerful energy.

Introducing Vesta as ruler of Virgo unearths a facet of Virgo that too often goes overlooked. Virgo is well-known for its tendencies toward discrimination, analysis, detail-orientation, and service to others. The shadow side of these traits can manifest as self-criticism, unconstructive self-analysis, being judgmental, and being self-sacrificing in a way that rolls into martyrdom or victimization. I think about Vesta, in contrast, as empowerment and wholeness from within. It’s akin to the Virgin archetype Marion Woodman refers to: The energy of being who I am because that is who I am. That is, being whole in oneself. Interestingly, Vesta is often associated with being a virgin, but not in the sense of a person who has never been sexual. Rather, Vesta is virginal in her being complete within herself, which in my estimation is the kind of goddess that then exudes sexuality. There is a pure presence to Vesta and from this place she can be absolutely devoted… to humanity itself.

This description of Vesta is strikingly different from the tendencies of Virgo toward self-criticism or judgment of others or sacrificing oneself. From the perspective of Vesta as ruler of Virgo (Mercury is its traditional ruler), the task for Virgo, perhaps, is to work toward recognizing that one is whole in oneself (which requires acknowledging and accepting all of oneself) and to then practice devotion from this grounded place. It is about the truth of who one is and living from that truth and sacred space.

Here's a strange example: Jacoby Ellsbury, right-fielder for the Red Sox and Sun-sign Virgo. As I have watched Ellsbury enter into a batting slump this season, my fantasy has been that some passionate, mature, sensual, healing Vesta-style sacred sex would help him get back into his flow. Now anyone who follows baseball knows that women go crazy for Jacoby (outside of Fenway people make lots of money selling pink t-shirts that say things like “Jacoby can steal my bases anytime”) and so what follows may just be a result of my own projecions... but I think I may be in touch with something else. It’s almost as though I can see Ellsbury’s self-criticism (Virgo) paralyzing him as he gets up at bat. I imagine it’s mostly subconscious-- that he is barely aware of this. Still, one cannot be in the present moment, and therefore in the flow needed to realize one’s potential—- particularly athletic potential, unless those voices are turned off or better yet confronted and found to be false. I imagine Vesta-style sex would accomplish this, at least for a while. The idea is that it would teach him that he is worthy and that all of him is acceptable, which is an effect that some sex can have, and has the parallel effect of shutting down those critical voices. More importantly, perhaps, what Jacoby needs is anything that will allow him to feel fully grounded in himself, in the here-and-now, thereby shutting down that self-criticism and from this place to become devoted to baseball—not as a pressured stage of performance, but rather as sacred sport. This would mean playing baseball for the sake of baseball, rather than for the sake of performing or winning. Now, the Sox might not hire me as their sports psychologist with this philosophy, at least not until they saw the results. And I guarantee they would see results with the encouragement of true devotion to the sport as sacred activity. The thing is, we reach our potential from this place of being grounded, present, and devoted; and not from the place of putting pressure on ourselves. Devoted discipline is very different from discipline driven by self-criticism, harshness, or self-abuse.

Jacoby-as-example is meant to illustrate the small yet significant step of moving from the shadow side of Virgo (self-sacrificing, self-criticism, and rigidity) to that of Virgo shining as truth-and-wholeness-in-oneself and the sacred devotion that comes from this place. Moving from discipline fueled by self-criticism to the discipline of sacred devotion.

We all have both Virgo and Vesta somewhere in our natal charts. In order to get in touch with this energy, and to use the current energy of many of the personal planets in Virgo, we may wish to consider just what we hold sacred in our lives, or what we wish to. What are we devoted to, and does our energy reflect this? And where do we experience ourselves as gods or goddesses, whole within ourselves and devoted to our own self-service and nurturing? The answers to these questions will put us on our own paths of healing.