Sacred Secretion Dates for Virgo: Your Monthly Chrism Fast Window

Moon at 120° — enters Leo · 150° — enters Virgo · 180° — enters Libra

The Virgo window spans 120° to 180°. Phase one, the modern addition, is the Moon through Leo (120°–150°); the midpoint is the Moon entering Virgo at 150°; phase two carries the Moon across Virgo to 180° — the autumn equinox degree, where Libra begins. Across the twelve windows below the length averages 4d 5h; the spread, 4d 0h to 4d 10h, is the Moon's varying speed.

Virgo's cusp days are around August 22–23 and September 22–23. The Sun's entry into each sign moves by up to a day from year to year, so a birthday within two days of either date cannot be settled by the calendar alone. The calculator computes the Sun's true longitude from your birth time and birthplace timezone. Confirm your sign there before relying on these dates.

Virgo is Earth under Mercury, and the body-map gives it the abdomen — the intestines and, by most readings, the solar plexus. That is a striking assignment, because the solar plexus is exactly where Carey says the monthly seed is born: the manger. Virgo, the virgin, and the manger. He did not think the correspondence was accidental and neither, once you have sat with it, will you. Of the twelve, this sign has the window's central image built into its own anatomy.

Astrologers read Virgo as meeting any discipline with a mixture of relief and suspicion. Relief, because the sign is already inclined toward discernment about what goes in. Suspicion, because a Mercury-ruled mind wants to optimise it — the right timing, the perfect protocol. The modern first half, Moon in Leo, brings heat and theatre in this reading; the counsel for those two and a quarter days is not to manage it. The water fast later practice adds here is not Carey's, who wrote against fasting (God-Man, p. 103). Let the plan be imperfect.

When the Moon crosses into Virgo, Carey says the seed is born in the manger and, if saved, begins to rise. His Virgo salt was potassium sulphate, the salt that “manufactures oil” (The Zodiac and the Salts of Salvation, p. 33) — the same oil this whole teaching turns on. Image, not remedy. Carey's own rule for these days, as for all others, is no gluttony. For a Virgo, the deeper retention is of criticism. These days of not fixing anything — not the diet, not yourself, not the people around you. Watch what the mind does when it cannot correct.

Sources: George W. Carey & Inez Eudora Perry, God-Man: The Word Made Flesh (Los Angeles, 1920); George W. Carey & Inez Eudora Perry, The Zodiac and the Salts of Salvation (1932). Their physiology is their own description, not established medicine. God-Man is quoted from the archive.org scan.

Tonight, in the dark, lie down and place both hands over the soft place just below the ribs, where the solar plexus sits. The tradition calls this the manger; your sign owns the region. Breathe into your hands for ten slow breaths and simply feel the temperature there. Then ask one question silently: what would I be doing right now if nothing needed fixing? Do not answer it. Let the belly answer, over the following days, in its own way. Ten breaths, alone, nothing to buy.

Every Sun sign has its own window. Yours opens when the Moon enters Leo and closes when it enters Libra. The pages for all twelve signs are below.