Grit and Virtue
On Pisces, Christianity, and a game of spot the difference between me and Tenn Kujo
“Everyone is talking about how we’re human beings not human doings. It’s a lot of pressure when I like being a human doing” I don’t remember what my therapist said, to be honest. But that’s my awareness of my nodal axis at play long before I knew what a nodal axis was.
It’s a common occurrence that I would just drop “TRIGGERED” in a text to Virgo-chan, “and I don’t mean an i7 gangbang” (I wish) “I can’t believe people in the online space are out there doing things so fucking sloppily my sloppy looks like perfectionism” when my nervous system is dysregulated by something I witnessed.
And I promise you, I have perfectionist perfectionism. I really mean my low effort, nonchalant, just go with the flow, I set a timer and when it goes off we’re done and you let it go stuff. I am honour-bound by a soul contract to be excellent as the baseline, and then my excellence is just…more excellent, I guess?
I’m a basic 4* hotel. Then I’ll give you a luxury experience when I make an effort (and contrary to popular belief, I put a lot of effort in my partner. Some would say too much effort, but this isn’t a Codependents Anonymous meeting).
Virgo traverses my entire X House, since the cusp is 29° Leo, but it’d be limited to think I’m only naturally that archetype in my career. The X House rules legacy and status. And that’s a much broader scope about who we are. Which brings me back to the other side of the axis.
I took part in the recent Barney + Flow 2024 Astrological forecast masterclass, and it clashed with a class in a course I signed up later in time, and my Scorpicorn Girlboss brain had an argument for going to the copywriting class, but something deeper held on to going to the Astrology one.
And I won her North Node Field Guide in a giveaway I didn’t know was going on, because of course I did. Look, I believe we have free will, but it’s becoming clear to me that I can’t just leave my North Node as a “why I imprinted on Reiji Kotobuki” joke.
Something that has been on my mind for a while has been the name of this Christian ministry I used to love back in the day, Grit & Virtue. I just looked it up. The website and what they offer has shifted from its inceptions. Which, it turns out, was when I became a part of that world.
“The conviction was to help women become who they were created to be so that they can do what they’ve been called to do. The vision was grand, something beyond myself. After tons of prayer, discernment, and advice, I launched Grit & Virtue in 2015.”
So much for having changed, which is one of the many accusations thrown at me alongside outright deception and other lovely things you’d want to hear from your husband /s
What attracted me to the brand was how it was a women’s ministry that is not fluffy. It recognises the immense strength women have.
Virtue may, perhaps, seem a bit forced from Ms Edgy Death Girl here, since it’s “behaviour showing high moral standards", but to me that’s because we tend to have a black and white idea of what morality is.
But, for me, grit is virtue*.* And the words on G&V’s website still call to me on a deeper soul level. “Our tribe emerged with a desire for more.” “(…) empower, educate, and equip you on the journey of becoming.”
It isn’t until the Manifesto (which came out of the era I was involved with this ministry), that the theological foundations of Christianity show the divide. But even then: “The world screams at us that we’re not enough. The voices in our heads say that we’re not worthy. As a result, we live our lives based on a foundation of fear, instead of one that is built on freedom.”
It shouldn’t surprise me that it resonates. I helped shape it. But somewhere after meeting my soon to be legally ex-husband I forgot how G&V “aims to help women align to their true identity, so they can focus on being, before doing”, and retreated into the comfort of my South Node.
I got caught up in the doing. I can relate to mothers saying they lost their identity after having children, because I lost mine mothering the man-child. For the first half of our relationship I still held to the illusion that self-sacrifice was getting me closer to big-g god, and eternal salvation, then I guess I realised devotion required an energetic space I couldn’t hold in the doing.
I was “dedicated by a vow” but the vows were emptied of any “profound religious emotion, awe, reverence”. Devotion was staunted, and so was I.
The past 3 years have been a time of transition and not knowing who I am, culminating in my XII House profection year (this one). I love profections as a timing technique because they mean every 12 years we cycle through a time of uplevelling, integration, and transformation. Far from the birth chart being static, we are always shifting and deepening our becoming.
Pisces rules the XII house, being the sign of the coccoon, the liminal, the space in between where we gestate before the birth of our Ascendant. We’re coming to the end of the Age of Pisces, and are beginning to see the first blooms of the Age of Aquarius sprouting.
I find it fascinating how the ages work backwards compared to how we experience our own journey. I love the way I once heard Ayesha of Oath Oracle describe Aquarius: the water bearer receiving from Source pouring into the earth.
A lot of my having a hard time with the themes of Pisces is due to having to come to terms with the aftermath of leaving an abusive relationship, and I don’t mean my marriage. Although that’s a part of it, too.
It’s not easy to believe you are unconditionally supported when you used to trust in a higher divine being and got yourself entangled in a marriage that was wrong on so many levels when you went into it all from a place of asking big g-god for a sign he was “the one”.
I guess I should’ve been more specific because, arguably, he was the one who triggered the deeper healing of everything that was wrong and rewinded and shifted timelines. Even if I wouldn’t have realised the shifts that were needed if not for my “basic anime boyfriend” (Virgo-chan’s words, not mine).
But even when you don’t move from an energy of victimhood, but accept that life happens for you and not to you, and even the most unfair instances you face (which you did not manifest, I can’t stress this enough) call you to take responsibility for what you make it mean about you…even then, it’s hard to just be “yes, I believe there is a divine source out there and it’s got my highest good in mind because I’m a fragment of it, and I can tap into that guidance.”
Ironically, in Human Design I have Hope motivation and an anti-theist trajectory: a journey away from the need to prove anything towards trust…in myself. But not in my doing, because like my Pisces North Node (in gate 37) reminds me, I have mastered the doing more than, often, I give myself credit for. Trust in my being.
I don’t believe Magic requires something external to us that meets the standards of what we historically considered the supernatural, and I believe hyper-rationalism is as much a shadow of Pisces as being delusional. However, Magic requires an unconditional surrender to power.
And it’s obvious to me how I hold myself back, and stay in the clean and detailed and intellectually-minded Mercurial Virgo energy, looking with wariness and longing at the kind of flow that used to come so naturally for a short time in the past, when I believed that I could let go of control because I’d be rescued like a princess in a fairytale.
How do you surrender where you have to trust in your wings to fly off the Fool’s cliff? I wish I had an answer for you, but here’s your monthly invitation to look at where in your life lays the sea in which the Pisces swim. We still have Saturn, and Neptune in domicile, transiting the sign, to explore what spirituality has to offer you in the house it occupies.
And whatever house that is, you can always tap into your Pisces when you keep living in wonder
P.S. I have two guest episode queued up on Starry Sky, with the wonderful Lainne Love talking about being leaders who want to positively contribute to the evolution of humanity by leaving a legacy of love, and with the major girlcrush Shelby Avann the Intimacy Mistress talking about getting intimate with our intuition. Find the show wherever you get your podcasts.