Tuesday, August 23, 2005 GOOD MORNING WORLD, and welcome to Virgo. The Sun entered the sixth sign of the tropical zodiac about two hours past midnight this morning, Greenwich time. I've often noticed how at this time of year, at least some of the places I've lived, that the light changes as the Sun crosses the Leo to Virgo cusp. Something is obviously different; it looks and feels like late summer Sun. Virgo is a mutable sign. Mutable means changeable. It can take different forms, sometimes assertive, sometimes passive, and often differing. All the seasons end with one of these mutables, when one season dissolves into the next; speaking for the Northern Hemisphere, Gemini ends the springtime, Virgo ends the summer, Sagittarius ends autumn and Pisces ends winter. Run that backwards for Down Under. The astrological signs represent the oldest and most mysterious dimension of astrology -- and also one of the more obvious. They are the basic archetypes of human experience, as we experience it, you might say the trump cards of the astrological system. They tell a cultural story we are born into, repeat to ourselves often, go looking for, and rewrite as we go. The myths of the signs, more than any other set of symbols, connect to religion, art, folklore and much of literature. This works whether we believe in astrology or not; the myths are alive inside us, and we have relationships to them no matter what we think we think. Virgo "the virgin" is the cult of the yummy, tummy, fertile young woman. Alice A Bailey relates her to Mary, and the Egyptian goddess Isis. Here's a bit on Isis from Encarta. We'll gradually update the photos on the site this week to keep in tune with the times. And much more on Virgo in Friday's Planet Waves Weekly. "In Egyptian mythology, goddess of fertility and motherhood. According to the Egyptian belief, she was the daughter of the god Keb (“Earth”) and the goddess Nut (“Sky”), the sister-wife of Osiris, judge of the dead, and mother of Horus, god of day. After the end of the Late Period in the 4th century bc, the center of Isis worship, which was then reaching its greatest peak, was on Philae, an island in the Nile, where a great temple was built to her during the 30th Dynasty. Ancient stories described Isis as having great magical skill, and she was represented as human in form though she was frequently described as wearing the horns of a cow. Her personality was believed to resemble that of Athor, or Hathor, the goddess of love and gaiety."