Virgo (23 August - 22 September)
original art by Bex McKay
Mary Oliver - Babe in the Woods
Virgos are known as being very detail-oriented, so it’s fitting that we look at Mary Oliver (10 September 1935), a poet whose work explores the places where nature intersects with humanity. Virgos are ruled by Mercury, and as with other Mercury-dominated signs, they are adept at speaking and writing.
Our tarot card, the 8 of pentacles, speaks to dedication, skill development, and hard work, evident here in the fact that Oliver began her lifelong career of writing poetry at the age of 14 and continued until her death at the age of 83. It’s a testament to both her commitment and her organizational skills that when she was just 17, she befriended and became the secretary to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sister Norma, helping her organize the late poet’s papers.
Reversed, the 8 of pentacles speaks of having to work hard to prevent a negative outcome, and it is perhaps an effort to avoid this that led Mary Oliver to keep her personal life private. Although she was the victim of childhood sexual abuse, her early work tended to explore themes of the natural world, rather than exploring her personal experiences. Perhaps it was her Virgo tendency to be diplomatic and thoughtful that led Oliver to keep aspects of her life private, including her 40+ year relationship with Molly Malone Cook, a photographer and eventually Oliver’s literary agent. Later in Oliver’s life, she inserted herself into her work, taking her poems from explorations of nature to explorations of her own relationship with nature.
It’s interesting that Virgos are known for examining their own thoughts and feelings, and the strength of Oliver’s poetry is its emotional exploration of the natural world, independent of the person doing the exploring. Oliver spent a great deal of time in the natural world, following in the Romantic tradition of Whitman and Thoreau. She took daily walks, often writing while still outside in order to capture the immediacy of her observations. She even hid pencils in the trees so that she would never be caught without a writing tool while outside.
The natural overlap between Virgo attention and 8 of pentacle industriousness is a lifetime of recognition, including a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.
