– originally a male domain. Our word poetry comes from the Greek poiein, which means to make, to produce or create. The ability to create – especially out of nothing – is a divine attribute, and God as a causative force is always male. (Woman does not create out of nothing; she transforms what there is.) Thus the poet is essentially male, even if physically a member of the fairer sex. Look at Sappho, for instance – we know what she was like.
Virgo, then, although embodied in the form of a woman, actually represents all that is male.
This is also expressed in her name, associated with virginity, purity and innocence. These may appear to be female characteristics, but in the sphere of ideas virginity is a male attribute. Womanhood, in fact, is never a state of virginity: Woman is always initiated. The Male, on the other hand, cut off from blood – menstruation, defloration, giving birth – not only is in a state of virginity but cannot be otherwise. Maleness is by its very nature always inexperienced, always uninitiated.
That virginity and maleness are indissolubly linked is a truth so glaringly obvious that it hardly needs stating. It even finds expression in some Romance languages, especially in French: the French virginité and virginal come from the Latin vir, which means man, or male. What further proof could one want?
Virgo and Aquarius, then, the royal pair united by love, only appear to be a young woman and an older man. In fact they are a young man and a mature woman. It is he who gazes into the distance, innocent and inexperienced, daydreaming and composing poetry; while she, experienced and knowing, well aware of what is important, beckons to him enticingly with the splashing sound of water. ‘Come, here is the source,’ she seems to be saying, ‘come to me and I will let you drink; I will quench your thirst.’
Let us now leave these celestial heights and descend from the firmament to the earth.
Since the day I discovered this myth and learnt the deeper significance hidden in the signs of the Zodiac, I have been testing it, checking how much of it is confirmed in practice, and whether Virgos really are in some way connected with Aquariuses. Naturally, I began with myself. To whom am I drawn? Who, I asked myself, dazzles me? Who has the power to captivate me, to charm and beguile me like the Erl King? Is there such a person? Yes – Mozart, the greatest genius who ever lived. His music enthrals me, enraptures me; I could listen to it forever. He is the love of my life, the altar at which I worship.
And what is his sign? On which day of what month did he come into the world?
The date of his birth is engraved in my memory like holy writ; my music teacher drilled it into me from my very first lessons:
the twenty-seventh of January
The sun on that day was in the first decade of Aquarius.
And I am not alone. My case is a common, even classic, one.
Take, for example, the greatest of the Virgos – Goethe. (Goethe, let us recall, was born on the twenty-eighth of August.) As we all know, Goethe had a rich life. He knew hundreds, even thousands of people, and to many of them he was bound by some special circumstance or connection. But three people stand out particularly on this list: Mozart, Mendelssohn and Franz Schubert.
Goethe saw Mozart just once in his life, at a concert in Frankfurt-am-Main. He was fourteen and Mozart was seven. The child prodigy played the most difficult compositions on the piano and the violin and then, without looking, gave a musical definition of the pealing of bells and the chiming of clocks. He made such an impression that Goethe couldn’t get him out of his mind; he is said to have mentioned him even on his deathbed. ‘I see him, I see him clearly,’ he is supposed to have whispered through withered lips. ‘Little man with the sword . . . don’t go! . . . More light!’ And when he was younger he listened constantly to Mozart’s music, with wonder and adoration. When he became director of Weimar’s famous theatre, Mozart’s operas were the main ones staged there. He was so taken with the beauty of The Magic Flute that he spent many years trying to write a sequel. He also couldn’t get over his disappointment that Mozart hadn’t set Faust to music. ‘Only he could have done it,’ he is supposed to have remarked in his old age. ‘He could have done it, and he should have done it! The music to my Faust should be like the music to Don Giovanni!’
Then there is the story of Goethe and Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn appeared fairly late in Goethe’s life, when the latter was seventy-two and the former eleven – barely older than Mozart. And the result of this first meeting? Within an hour the cocky little imp had the mighty Jove at his feet, ecstatic with admiration, devouring him with his eyes and ears, utterly captivated.
But what role was the child playing? What was it, exactly, that little Felix was doing when he performed before the Master? Why, yes, of course – he was teaching him! Opening his eyes and ears, playing Beethoven and Bach, whose music Goethe had never heard, initiating him into the mysteries of harmony and technique. Educating, instructing, enlightening. In short, the child was teaching the old man. Extraordinary! Unbelievable!
Unbelievable? It might have been if the child hadn’t been an Aquarius. But Felix, too, like the divine Mozart, was born under that sign (on the third of February). He was thus a female element, older by definition.
And so we come, finally, to the story of Goethe and Schubert: not quite like the others, but equally significant.
This time it is Goethe who is the object of fascination. Schubert falls in love with his poetry. He reads it, he recites it, he is overwhelmed with admiration. And one passage in Faust affects him so strongly that he is moved to tears. Which passage is it? Of course: it is Margaret’s monologue, spoken as she sits at her loom. Those unforgettable first four lines:
My peace is gone
And my heart is sore;
My soul is heavy,
There’s no calm any more.
They resound in Schubert’s head, they obsess him. He cannot sleep. Finally he understands that he will get no rest until he sets them to music. And thus is born the most famous of his songs, Gretchen at the Spinning-Wheel. It is the beginning of a new chapter – a new era! – in musical history. Gretchen is followed by one masterpiece after another; all in all, Schubert sets about sixty of Goethe’s poems to music.
Need one add when Schubert was born? Could this passionate lover of the inspired verses of a Virgo have been anything other than an Aquarius? The thirty-first of January was the date he came into the world.
This last example is perhaps the most significant of the three. It is a kind of archetype.
When Goethe, greatest of the Virgos, wrote that extraordinary poem, the song of a virgin in love, he was giving expression to his deepest self, to what he was because of the stars. I am Margaret, he might well have said (anticipating Flaubert, who many years later was to say the same of his Madame Bovary). For indeed, is this a woman’s experience of love? Does a woman in love lose her mind, give way to madness, long for death? Of course not. A woman who loves is calm and controlled, for love is her realm and her natural state. A woman in love knows perfectly well what she wants, and she strides boldly towards her goal. She wants to conceive and give birth; she wants life, not death.
But the male element, when pierced by Love’s arrows, behaves just like Goethe’s Margaret. Let us listen to his lament:
My thoughts spin round,
My poor head aches;
My poor mind reels
Till I think it will break.
His face alone
From my window I seek;
It’s him alone
I run to greet.
O to embrace him,
To clasp him at last!