Vesta's Sacred Flame

With the wildfires burning in her San Diego county, April Elliott Kent of Big Sky Astrology pondered life's stripped down essentials. "This Full Moon in Taurus reminds us, in the face of Scorpio's purifying destruction, how simple our true needs really are...Just those we love, and maybe a toothbrush." Her essay on the Full Moon in Taurus, entitled Enough, poses the frightening question that many of her neighbors had to face. "What would you take if you had to leave your burning house?"

There's nothing more fearsome than a raging fire with its power to turn everything to ash. One California man described his family's home of nearly three decades as, "So us." Losing everything to fire has the resonance of a Scorpionic descent, a death of the old self, the old way of living. It's a dramatic example of losing the foundation of who we think we are, and the slow journey to a brand new life.

So much has been said about whether the fires are truly a "natural disaster," or as Jamie Lee Curtis recently said, "man made." Wise observers have long been making links between our consumer-driven lifestyles and the environment. The United Nations just released a final wake-up call warning of rapid degredation of the world's resources, nearly past the point of no return. I'm slightly hopeful that Saturn in Virgo can drive home the connection between our daily lives, and the health of our bodies, and in turn, the planet. It's hard to know whether personal choices, like using green nappies, will counterbalance what seems like such a global problem, with stubborn, vested interests. "Mother Nature is angry," pointed out another SoCal resident, Halle Berry, but will we act on her outbursts?

In an email conversation, April Elliott Kent wondered if wildfires aren't one of nature's ways of trying to heal itself from being drastically altered by development. "I always associate Virgo with Vesta and her sacred flames, and perhaps we're all undergoing a bit of 'controlled burning' under her influence." It doesn't lessen the heartbreak of what people are going through, but may eventually guide us toward Virgo's healing and wisdom about living in harmony with nature.