Mercury in Virgo O Degrees

A Body Eager to be Molded

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1165751n

Mercury enters Virgo at the Aries point of zero degrees later today. Legendary Neo Classical Ballerina Suzanne Farrel had this placement natally in her chart. Mercury’s exaltation in Virgo (in classical astrology), is clearly revealed not only through the flexibility of Suzanne’s body, but her humaness-her way of moving, thinking, understanding and communicating a message, in her case, Balanchine’s Message of  dance being the music.

Mercury’s power in so many ways is intimately connected to dance. The ability to travel smootly rom one place to another is essentially “Mercurian”.  Mercury, like the technique of dance, is all about transition. How can a dancer makes one step flow into the next, and the next, no matter where their legs are  coming from or where their arms may have to go? 

Mastering this is mastering the power of Mercury’s impulse: to move.  Whether it be a message, a newspaper, or taking one step in front of the other. Mercury must move. It thrives off of movement! That’s probably why Mercury retrograde is so infamous!

I think Suzanne’s ability to be completely moldable, pure, and of service to George Balanchine, is an excellent insight to how Mercury performs when at  its peak of 0 degrees, the greatest point of force of the sign’s energetic expression, ie. the Aires point.

Virgo is earth AND mutable.  This is a perfect marriage for what a dancer needs, to be a useful tool for a choreographer. I see the element of earth as the presence of the body in the very moment of its human existence, there is an immediacy to it…a ‘presence’ …a pure consciousness. 

For this reason Virgo has also been associated with the mundane ie. washing dishes, writing checks, brushing your teeth, etc. yet there is special way of being in the moment with the mundane… a meditative space that can be quite liberating and purifying.

Virgo’s understand the power of simplicity. Perhaps this is why so many of them are devout. Mother Teresa is an extreme example, but there are many variances. If we look for them, we can find them in our own lives. We can turn the mundane into the spiritual. Virgo’s placement in our chart can certainly give clues about our capability of being transformed through the mundane. 

Suzanne’s experience with Balanchine seemed very much this way…being in the studio is different from being on stage, yet the same. This is where the polarity point of Pisces comes in.  I think the entry point of Virgo at 0 degrees triggers that Pisces polarity point quite strongly. Pisces is the dream.

Pisces  is the essence of  Suzanne’s experience on stage, the world of magical possibilities.  Virgo, the in the ‘here and now’, ready to adapt completely with its environment, is on the other end. This selflessness, along with eagerness to be put to use and molded in any way necessary, became the very tool Balanchine used to redefine the art of ballet.