Scratch Some Virgo, Find Some Pisces

by Eric Francis Coppolino, January 31, 2012

The late, great horoscope writer Patric Walker once wrote, “Scratch a Pisces and you’ll find a Virgo under their skin.” Though this was a cute one-liner that I read in the New York Post, Patric was alluding to a real astrological principle: the “opposite” signs contain each other. In a sense, they’re not even really opposite; they are aspects of the same thing, and in this way a polarity of two signs—any two signs—works as one entity.
When signs on both sides of the polarity have planets or notable events in them, this is especially noticeable—and that’s what’s happening these days with Virgo and Pisces.

Mars is currently in Virgo, making an extremely rare eight-month visit that includes an approximately 11-week retrograde. (The retrograde extends between January 23 and April 13.) That’s placing an unusual emphasis on Virgo, since Mars does not usually move that slowly, and because (particularly when retrograde) it’s not considered the best fit for Virgo.

On the other side of the sky, Chiron is currently in Pisces, where it will be into 2019. Then Neptune is due to arrive on February 3, and it will remain there until 2025. These are slow movers that will change the shape of the world, our perception of the world, and our experience of existence.

Such events, taken together, qualify as the full activation of the Virgo-Pisces axis—what I will call the axis of practical imagination. Virgo expresses the technical side of nearly anything, based on its tendency toward integrated or applied knowledge. Pisces expresses the imaginative side of the psyche, which can often inspire the more practical modes of expression.

The two have to work together in order for much of anything worthwhile to happen. Think of the circuit board and all the ingenuity required to create it as an expression of Virgo. Think of the concept “Macintosh” as an expression of Pisces. To do anything innovative, it’s necessary to have both ends of the polarity working, which is the challenge that both artists and technicians face every day. Usually someone is oriented toward one side or the other—they like the creative end but not the practical end—or vice versa.