Respect your process: a creative toolkit for Virgo season
Including: a tarot spread, creative prompts, an exclusive creative ritual, and Virgoan playlist
Hi little coven, happy Virgo season.
Typically associated with order and consistency, Virgos have a reputation for perfectionist tendencies.
While it’s true that one important element of this sign is respect for order, logic, and processes, let’s not reduce Virgos to the up-tight, rule-following reputation that proceeds them. The lives and work of some of the most successful Virgoan creatives — Beyonce, Mary Shelley, Ai WeiWei — prove that the creative power of this sign has less to do with perfectionism and more to do with mastering the rules as a foundation for breaking them.
What if it’s not about the perfect outcome, but the perfect journey... the perfect process?
And what if a perfect process is simply defined by taking steps that support your vision?
Virgoan energy offers us the opportunity to reflect on how priotitising our own unique process can be an act of creativity, rebellion, and bravery.
And you don’t need to be born under a Virgo sun to embrace this sign’s energy — you simply need to be willing to draw on this sign’s dedication to process, and give yourself permission to redefine what it means to respect and follow your uniquely perfect process.
We can look to two Virgoan archetypes to help us understand, accommodate, and make the most of Virgo energy in our creative lives this season: the star-maiden and the Hermit tarot card.
For a sign associated with getting things right and doing things by the book, pinning down the origins of the Virgo archetype is a muddy process at best: we know the constellation takes the shape of a maiden in the stars, but there’s very little consensus around her mythic associations. Is she a celestial monument to Demeter, goddess of the harvest, or her daughter Persephone, goddess of the Underworld? Is she Astraea, who was, according to Greek myth, the last immortal to abandon Earth, and the first who will return, bringing a new paradigm of peace, justice, and hope to the world?
At the risk of infuriating some Virgos who define themselves by an adherence to black-and-white clarity, I’ll say this: there are no wrong answers. (sorry!)
An association with Demeter invokes the sign’s natural industriousness, its vested interest in cause-and-effect, and its elemental earthiness.
Persephone, too, summons that tether to earth, and the darkness we may experience when we become ungrounded/unconnected to the things that support us. In some ways, her story highlights the oppressiveness of rules: her entire existence is governed by a cosmic rule about where she is allowed to be and when, and for how long.
Persephone also speaks to the duality of the creative process — we are not productive all the time. We are not the same all the time. Sometimes we’re up, sometimes we’re down. Sometimes bright, sometimes dark. Sometimes grounded, sometimes untethered. We aren’t robots. We move through different seasons — of the year and the earth — but of life and creativity, too.
Making space for Persephone’s dual nature means creating space for flexibility within ourselves. We simply cannot expect ourselves to follow the same rules all the time, day in and day out and generate creative, unique results. Sometimes, we have to forge new rules that fit who we are and how we feel on the day. Sometimes, we need to enforce quiet and stillness; other times, we need to focus on the act of bringing ideas to life. It doesn’t all have to happen at once.
As for Astraea, her presence in myth is not as robust as the mother-daughter duo of Demeter and Persephone, but what we do know about her is significant: Astraea is the last immortal to abandon the Earth… she did her best to enforce fairness and justice in human matters, but the work wore her out. Ultimately, she left the world behind, and Zeus installed her in the sky as a constellation, where she could still watch over us. There’s a prophecy that one day she’ll return, and restore order to the earth. Her name translates to “star maiden” or “starry one” - enriching her association with the symbol of Virgo season — and she serves as a beacon of hope to follow toward a better world. Taking this story as a Virgoan parable, you can see how it acknowledges the importance of order, but also the truth that order can’t be enforced all the time, at the same rate, for everyone.
Ultimately, Astraea had to do what was right for her, even when she couldn’t impose her idea of order everywhere. And hopefully, one day, us mere mortals will see her wisdom for what it truly is.
Given the mythic associations of Virgo’s star-maiden, it’s at first little surprising that this season’s Tarot card isn’t one of the strong feminine figures of the tarot who represent proxies for the goddesses we’ve covered (The High Priestess is often linked to Persephone, The Empress to Demeter, then there’s the Justice card, and the Star card, which speak literally to Astraea, as goddess of justice and star-maiden/beacon of hope, respectively).
Honestly, the Hermit’s role as this zodiac season’s champion was initially perplexing to me. But upon deeper reflection (ironically the most obvious advice associated with the Hermit archetype), I could see elements of all these goddess’s stories within the card’s energy:
Demeter’s maturity and wisdom is manifest in the Hermit figure’s age, and the card’s earth-element associations.
The dark sky and sparse ground conjure Persephone’s stints in the underworld.
And the Hermit’s lantern has captured Astraea’s hopeful starlight.
Combined, the card paints a picture of a figure wise enough to follow the light of their own hope through periods of darkness. Here there is faith in the process, and in our own approach to that process.
In my upcoming book, Tarot for Creativity, I write about the Hermit as a call to follow the light of your own vision.
I’ll leave you with a few words from that chapter, which I think perfectly sum up how the Hermit asks us, this Virgo season, to write and follow our own rules… to recognise your personal processes as the most important systems in your life, and respect that going your own way, rather than trying to get things right by anyone’s standards but your own, is the true wisdom to integrate into your creative life over the next month:
When the Hermit comes up in a reading, you’re invited to ditch maps and directions, and go on your own journey instead. Eschew what you’re being told is the “right” way and trust your gut. Keep your creative process sacred, personal, sometimes even secret. Give yourself the gift of a creative adventure on your own terms, rather than remaining trapped in someone else’s version of what your creative work, process, or life should look like.
That’s not to say that you should never take feedback. After all, the tarot itself is a form of feedback. It means you shouldn’t yield to feedback that extinguishes the light of your vision.
The Hermit wants you to respect what keeps your creativity burning, and follow that light instead of chasing after the approval or attention of anyone else. It’s not a card about forcing yourself to be alone, but it is a card about owning your creative vision and doing what feels right for you, even if that means going it alone.
Creative Prompts for Virgo Season
Use the following prompts as jumping-off points for your own creative exploration of Cencer season. These aren’t homework — try what feels good or interesting to you, and know you have my permission to ignore the rest.
Journal about the star-maiden and the Hermit card
How do these archetypes make you feel?
What memories, desires, and questions, do they bring up for you?
What similarities and differences do you notice between them?
Write a story inspired by Persephone, Demeter, and/or Astraea
You can use your tarot deck to help you draft the plot: pull a card to represent where the story starts, what happens in the middle, and how it comes to a close. Then, using the goddesses as inspiration for your characters and/or setting, write your story.
Draw a map that charts the path you feel drawn to take in your creative life this month
Use color, collage, or design software - whatever feels right (and creatively compelling) for you
More creative resources for Virgo season (including a tarot spread, a guided meditation for Virgo season, a Virgoan playlist & more) are available below for paid subscribers.
If you’d like to dig deeper into what creative gifts Virgo season has to offer you, and get access to future creative tools for every Zodiac season, you can become a paid subscriber to The Shuffle for just £1/$1.25 a week (annual subscription rate). Subscriber support means that I can keep regular resources like these coming, and continue to focus on developing quality writing & resources at the intersection of spirituality & creativity.