A Never tree tried hard to grow in the centre of the room,
but every morning they sawed the trunk through, level with
the floor.
Since Virgo delights in bringing order out of chaos, and Aquarius delights in bringing chaos out of order, these two Sun Signs should represent to one another the ultimate challenge.
Aquarians bounce around making prophecies and predictions as cheerfully as the weatherman (and with a far greater degree of accuracy). They insist on the right to be individualists and refuse to take themselves or anyone else seriously,treating life with a fine and careless detachment. Naturally, all this fascinates the method-minded, order-oriented Virgos, who wouldn't dare to prophesy or predict the future (they're too busy analyzing the past and nit-picking the present), who take themselves and everything else quite seriously - and treat nothing with careless detachment.
Virgos can recite the Gettysburg Address without missing a comma. They keep their checkbooks nicely balanced - and they also understand all about complicated airline schedules and the need to save your ticket stubs at the movies in case you have to go back outside to see if the time has run out on the parking meter. Naturally, all this fascinates the absentminded Aquarians, who can never get it straight whether it was Lincoln or Franklin D. Roosevelt who thought this nation of the people, by the people, and for the people should not perish from the Earth (both presidents were Aquarians, so it's easy to get them mixed up); whose checkbooks absolutely refuse to balance; and who are always handing airline stewardesses their movie stubs and handing startled theatre ushers their plane tickets - not to mention being unable to recall where they parked their bicycles or saucers, never mind the meter.
These two like to study one another, preferably at a distance. Neither wants to get too close until he or she has figured out some of the rules to the game the other one plays. They need a little push to get together initially, like an insistent introduction through a mutual friend or the nonoptional fate of being born into the same family circle. However, once they form a relationship, it's seldom a dull one.
Aquarians, ruled by the blitzkrieg planet Uranus, perversely refuse to think,speak, or act like anyone else, yet they want everyone to like them, and they can't seem to understand why they are enigmas to those not tuned in to their zigzag frequency. They are attracted to every concept or idea that blows in
front of their noses, until they extract all the truth from it, tire of the game, and move on to the next seductive possibility. What intrigued them yesterday will be erased from the blackboard of the mind tomorrow, wiping it clean for the next new and exciting equation.
An area of mystification between them will be the Virgo's awesome talent for details. Virgo almost never forgets a name, a face, a sum, a date, or an address.Aquarians can forget people, places, pens, pets, umbrellas, and uncles.(Both, however, are unlikely to misplace their billfolds.) The Aquarian penchant for forgetting can be traced to the reluctance of these men and women to clutter their minds with unnecessary data and details when there are so many multitudinous matters to investigate and solve. Gertrude Dial, an Aquarian friend of mine in Cripple Creek, Colorado, always manages to remember both her pocketbook and her burglar alarm (she owns an antique and Indian turquoise jewelry store), but she's been known to be a little fuzzy on some occasions when she's trying to skip down memory lane with a typically vague Uranus road map. I shall always be impressed by the image of the winter day we were chatting in her shop, and a snow-covered man burst through the door, grabbed Gertrude in a polar-bear hug, and cried out, "Gertrude, you sweet potato. How have you been?"
She bear-hugged him right back, answering, "I've been just fine. It sure is good to see you." Then she turned and said to me, "Linda, I want you to meet one of my oldest and very closest friends. This is . . . uh . . . this is . . . (and she stared at him, her eyes misting with a haze of Uranus confusion). I believe this is . . . uh . . . Jim. No, I mean Richard . . . I mean Tom . . . uh, that is, uh-. . . what is your name anyway?"
It pays to note that this sort of Aquarian mental fuzziness is the stuff of which genius is made. Refusing to bother with the memorization of nonessential data leaves these men and women free to give birth to startlingly original ideas,uncannily accurate hunches, and a lightning grasp of the really important facts of life. So we shouldn't sniff at or put down the absentmindedness Aquarians exhibit when their thoughts are wandering out there in the clouds. But Virgos will sniff.
They'll sniff and ask, "How in the world can anyone forget the name of a close friend?" Such lack of mental discipline and breach of good manners horrifies the mentally meticulous, carefully courteous Virgo souls. They simply cannot comprehend such intellectual laziness and disorderliness. Shall we tell them that Aquarian Gertrude Dial can remember the exact cost of every one of her hundreds of pieces of turquoise jewelry, the year they were made, by which Indian, and precisely how many stones are set in each - with her eyes closed?Yes, let's tell them. Sometimes Virgos need to be tipped off to such non sequitur Uranus behavior, lest they underestimate the unpredictable shrewdness of the Aquarius intuitive intellect and get caught in their own flytraps. Aquarians don't have the time or patience to concern themselves unduly with etiquette book-type good manners. They have something more important - good hearts.
Virgos are good-hearted and intelligent too, but more timid, less wonderfully impetuous in demonstrating it than Aquarians. Whereas Aquarius arrives at a gesture of charity or a brilliant intellectual conclusion instinctively, through some sort of invisible telepathic process - Virgo arrives at the same place through painstaking inquiry and analysis - not instantly, like the Water Bearers, but right on time. Right on what time? Did someone ask the time?
VIRGO: It's exactly nineteen minutes before six o'clock P.M.
AQUARIUS: The time? What time is it? Uh, well... it's afternoon, isn't it?No, it must be closer to evening. I just noticed the Sun is setting. Bythe way, why is it that science refers to the Sun setting and rising,when it's the Earth that revolves around the Sun, and not the Sun around the Earth? I mean, why not call it Earthrise and Earthset instead of Sunrise and Sunset?
Indeed, why not? That will give Virgo something to chew on and analyze for the next fourteen minutes and three seconds at least! Just another carelessly dropped, brilliant observation from an ordinary, garden-variety Water Bearer,pouring out questions which are really answers, in typical Uranian fashion.
An Aquarian almost never apologizes for his or her shortcomings or eccentricities,whereas the typical Virgo graciously and appealingly says "I'm sorry"every time he or she commits the most minor offense against tradition or popular ideas of behavior. I once saw a Virgo say "I'm sorry" to his elbow after he carelessly bumped it. It's an endearing trait, to be sure. Male or female Virginians will worry-wrinkle their brains and hearts when they think others disapprove of something they've said or done, but Aquarians of either sex hardly even hear the person who repeats gossip to them, especially when the rumors are about themselves. It's in-one-ear-and-out-the-other to an Aquarian, who possesses the helpful wisdom of knowing it's impossible to please everybody - so the Water Bearer does his or her own thing and doesn't try to please anybody.They love to be liked, and are puzzled and hurt when friends criticize them, but the reaction doesn't last long. Maybe for two or three moments. Then Aquarius happily trots off, whistling a tune backward . . . and tosses some more wishes into penny wells. (No, I didn't mean pennies into wishing wells. I meant wishes into penny wells. You have to learn the knack of upside-down communication if you're ever going to be able to play tic-tac-toe with these people.)
Aquarians are the most curiosity-motivated Earthlings you'll ever meet.Virgos are too, but the latter are often torn between caution and curiosity. They fret and analyze and want to think things over carefully before they act, which deprives them of spontaneity, a quality they can learn from Aquarius, while Aquarius is learning the much-needed lesson of discrimination from Virgo. One thing they usually agree on (relatively) is how to spend money. Carefully. However,Virgo may be somewhat more careful than Aquarius, because Virgo believes that if one is to practice generosity, one must first practice thrift. Rams and Lions and Fish and Archers, who go around flinging cash to friends and strangers alike, upset the Virgins, who will caution the extravagant ones against such careless giving by warning that charity begins at home. If that doesn't work, they'll try again with the warning that, "As you grow more wasteful, you must grow less generous."
I'm a Ram, so I don't agree with that philosophy for an instant, but I only report astrological characteristics, I don't endorse them. Anyway, neither Virgo nor Aquarius is likely to squander money, or spend it with a great deal of looseness on himself or herself. However, influenced by a powerful humanitarian urge, Aquarians do worry more than a little about the future of mankind andwomankind, about their brothers and sisters who may go hungry and starve, as the Earth faces possible famine. Virgos will worry right along with them. Worrying is Virgo's speciality, they pride themselves in it, and have refined it to an art. Their sympathies, you see, are similar, but their manner of expressing them is somewhat different. Both are sincerely concerned, but Virgo is decidedly more specific about it.
AQUARIUS: Just think how much less food the children of other countries are fed, compared to our American youngsters. It's sad, and it's shocking.
VIRGO: Yes, it is. I wonder if people realize that exactly thirty Biafran children,for example, must survive on the same amount of food eaten by only one healthy American child. It's really appalling.
AQUARIUS: Do you know that all the fertilizer we use each year for ornamental purposes in this country alone - such as on golf courses, lawns, and flower gardens, all of which could easily do without it for a short while - would mean the difference between life and death to some nations?
VIRGO: That's entirely correct. We know it, but if only there could be a way to make other people in the United States know that by doing without their fertilizer for ornamental purposes for just twelve months there would be enough fertilizer to more than double the harvest grains of India, where so many millions of people are literally starving to death.
AQUARIUS: I was thinking, it's so costly to convert grain to meat, and if Americans would
VIRGO: Exactly! It takes twenty pounds of grain to create just one pound of beef. Excuse me, please, for interrupting.
AQUARIUS: Sure, that's okay. Like I was saying, if Americans would eat less meat, this would
VIRGO: If Americans ate only 10 percent less meat for only fifty-two weeks,or one year, it would free more than twelve million tons of grain for people all over the planet whose bellies are bloated from hunger.How can people realize that, and still enjoy their hamburgers and steak? Please forgive me. I didn't mean to interrupt again. I'm sorry.
AQUARIUS: Don't mention it. Listen, I was wondering . . . what would happen if we didn't eat any meat at all?
VIRGO: I'm glad you asked. What would happen is that not only would the world be a happier place to live in, but we'd all be healthier and live longer. Eating the flesh of our brutally murdered, slaughtered animal brothers is what causes nearly all disease. We'll never heal the pain of starvation on this Earth, or heal our own bodies, if we don't stop eating meat. Oh! do you eat meat? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude.
AQUARIUS: Well, I did eat it, but now I . . . . s a y , are you a vegetarian?
VIRGO: Yes, I am. Would you like a glass of carrot and celery juice? If you've never tasted it, it's really delicious.
Not all Virgins eschew meat, of course (although many do), but before long,this particular, courteous, and informed Virgo will convert the curious Aquarian to a meatless diet, through the wise and inborn sense of human health all Virgos possess. Soon, the Water Bearer will be spreading abroad the exciting new discovery,with typical humanitarian enthusiasm - that you can stay well, look young, extend your life span, and simultaneously help those who are starving simply by treating your body to fresh fruits and veggies, instead of aging and slowly killing it with hamburgers, hot dogs, roast beef, and steak. Then the Water Bearer will investigate further (like a good Aquarian detective) and joyfully pour out the newly discovered knowledge to Virgo that one can become more spiritually enlightened and psychic, as well as prevent and cure one's illnesses,by periodically observing a three-day grape-juice fast, such as every month or two, for which wisdom Virgo will be cheerfully grateful.
Yes, together these two may rescue old Mother Earth and her misguided Earthlings after all. It's the Aquarian Age of brotherhood and sisterhood, so why shouldn't Virgo join the Uranus club too? Virgo cleverness and clear thinking, combined with Aquarian inventiveness and genius, could be just themagical alchemy we need - plus the innate kindness and concern for others which is characteristic of both Sun Signs. Kindness heals all ills.
