makes you feel alive, is effort. You were born hungry to accomplish
things. You’re hungry now. You’ll die hungry too. That sounds like a
baleful prophecy, but it’s not as dark as it seems. Another way of
describing your innate restlessness is that you’re eager to evolve, to
learn, to grow, and are never content to rest on your laurels.
Your soul took a risk working with this energy. You sense what you could
be, how you’d look if you were wiser, purer, clearer. Just as vividly, you
see what you really are, with all your flaws and shortcomings. Ideally,
that contrast should inspire you. But if it gets twisted, then you plummet
into self-criticism, guilt, and crippling, self-imposed limitations. And
that pathology gets expressed outwardly as a critical, nit-picking person-
ality. On the deepest level, you’re learning about self-acceptance. But
you’re doing it in the toughest of all psychological environments: an
honest mind. (From “The Sky Within,” by Steven Forrest. Courtesy of
Matrix Software [http://thenewage.com] and Steven Forrest http://
[http://www.stevenforrest.com].))
Among its several natal programs, Matrix Software created a unique report
based on the published works of the early twentieth-century astrologer Grant Lewi
(1901–1952). Lewi’s highly original delineations were recognized as creative and
insightful by his contemporaries. One measure of the appeal of his work is that his
books Astrology for the Millionsand Heaven Knows Whatare still in print. The follow-
ing is excerpted from the report program “Heaven Knows What”:
“Three things are to be looked to in a building: that it stand on the
right spot, that it be securely founded, that it be successfully executed.”
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born in Virgo, August 18, 1749.)
“The happiness of man consists in life. And life is in labor.... The
vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.” (Count
Tolstoy, born in Virgo, August 28, 1828.)
To discover the motivating drive in the life of any Virgoan, it is neces-
sary to look at the work he is doing; for so deep is Virgo’s utilitarian
sense that he identifies himself with his work and is quite willing to
lose himself in it. His personality and character development depend,
to a peculiar extent, on the nature of the work he has set himself, for he
will be as big or as small as his job or mission. He is capable of becom-
ing single-tracked, absorbed and narrow over whatever he happens to
fall into. He is capable of making work his god, and thus going high
and far in a chosen direction. He is capable of expanding his spirit by
selecting a career somehow related to service. He is capable of the
extremes of self-denial if he thinks his work calls him to that. And he is
also capable of feeling that his work requires self-immolation, self-limi-
tation and self-sacrifice to an inordinate degree.
However you figure it, the puzzle of his nature will be solved if you
find his attitude toward the hub of his universe, his work. So true is
this that when you run across an unemployed Virgoan you have theTHEASTROLOGYBOOK [731]
Virgo