New Moon of Tangible Adapting in Virgo with Fruiting Fungus Life Cycle

New Moon of Tangible Adapting in 6°47 Virgo

Fungus: The Fruiting Fungus Life Cycle

August 30, 2019 at 03:37 (PST)

This New Moon features not just one special fungus, but the full life cycle of a mushroom: The Fruiting Fungus Life Cycle. This New Moon is part of a stellium (concentration of 3 or more planets) in Virgo, and while each Zodiac sign bears its own representation of the archetypes of life and its cycles, the process from this Virgo Dark Moon to the Pisces Full Moon (September 13, 2019 at 21:33 PST) is ripe for setting intentions toward putting things in their place and initiating the harvest of resources that fruit from our spiritual unions with ourself and also with each other (as represented by Virgo's growth into Pisces). Virgo is the harvester, the herbalist, the discriminating mind taking time and baby steps to ensure a bountiful and nutritious harvest. Virgo makes sense out of the chaos and uses their talents to be of service toward themselves and others. The Fruiting Fungus Life Cycle flushes out the cycle of wholeness, through emptiness and the spaces in between. In Virgo we are clearing the closet. 

The Fruiting Fungus Life Cycle outlines the practical understandings of the cycles of germination, extension, connection, illumination, culmination, maturation, release, attuning, contraction, adjustment, and recomposition. It also delineates the earth-centered spiritual evolution: cycles of unity expressed through a cyclical perspective. When we are empty we remember our capacity, and when we are full we remember our weaknesses. The Fungus reflects a cycle of unity just as the Moon's cycle.

The fungus is a framework for reflecting to humans how we can more fully embody and heal our co-creation with the planet. Each mushroom invites us to feel, observe, smell, listen, taste (and maybe spit out), and live rich in our senses. The fungus also invites us to question what is hidden beneath the surface of our fruitings and to continually evolve through connection. Through a fungal frame, our community ecology becomes stronger, more resilient, and develops a larger capacity for digestion and creation.

Fungi are the sacred inhabitants the earthly realm and the realms below and above the thresholds. By tuning into the sacredness of the fungi as the sacredness of the cosmos or as the sacredness of the Sun, Moon, or Stars, we learn to harmonize our spirit with our bodies, our minds, and our hearts, and to resonate with the frequencies of the fungus.

MycoGlyph for Virgo New Moon of Tangible Adapting in 6°47 Virgo
with Fruiting Fungus Life Cycle on August 30, 2019 at 03:37 PST.

The Virgo/Pisces axis is one of service/surrender and accepting the realities of daily life/mystical and spiritual union. Groundedness in order to swim the subtle vibrations. Knowing the energetic and ecological boundaries as well as one's place and interplay in and with them -- one's truth and honest impression -- in order to be of service to something greater than yourself. As we move from Virgo New Moon to Pisces Full Moon we are given the opportunity to harvest our skills and to not only meditate on our emotional honesty and intuition, but to also work our practice into our daily lives to reach hidden depths and spiritual realization. Both signs are mutable or changeable, adapting to their environments and cued into how to move with the subtle energies in the areas where mental capacities meet spiritual. 

During this Virgo New Moon, Sun trine Uranus ignites self confidence to initiate the changes in your day-to-day. All the personal planets (Mercury, Moon, Sun, Mars, and Venus) will trine Uranus - and we will experience a harmonious flow of shifts free from any previous constraints. Our physicality, energy, movement, and the ways we communicate and take risks will experience some new changes or risk taking. The work that we put into harvesting our fruiting fungi is shifting. How we reap our rewards has the potential to become vastly more focused, disciplined, purposeful, and tangible. As we adapt to our circumstances our circumstances adapt to us.

The Sun (consciousness and essence) and Moon (emotions and unconscious) are conjunct Mercury (mental capacity), Mars (will and drive), and Venus (capacity to love and attract), creating a stellium of concentrated energy in Virgo. Being concise and disciplined with what you do and what you say will lead into expansion and illumination throughout the month. 

Throughout the first week of September, Venus (9/1), Sun (9/6), and Mars (9/9) will be trine Saturn, allowing structure, order, self-control, and concrete manifestation with who we are, what we attract, and what we seek.  

During the same week, Venus (9/2), Mercury (9/6), Sun (9/8), and Mars (9/12) are going to be in Virgo squaring Jupiter in Sagittarius. As these respective planets travel closer to these exact aspect days, tension will be growing with the ways we can expand and search for meaning with the archetypal symbolism related to these specific planets. How does our purposeful self-improvement increase our ability to utilize our skills to nourish ourselves and nourish what our communities around us need? How does the way we use language and communication, nourish our skills? How do you speak to yourself?

Neptune in Pisces is opposite the gathering of personal planets in Virgo. We are no longer getting lost in the fog or following in the path of somebody else's order or vision. The detriment of Neptune in Pisces symbolizes the loss of self in the collective. Neptune in Pisces surrenders control and merges self with other, dissolving the ego in forms of delusion, fantasy, escapism, addiction, and guilt. The Piscean detriment can suffer without knowing what to do with themselves. 

A mystical union with what we seek has immense gravity to illuminate during the Full Moon. This mystical union is one that retains the strength and wholeness of the self, that is not disillusioned by the imperatives of others. When we stay pure and practical of our motives and desires, check in with ourselves consistently, and see the truth of the order within the chaos, by the time we reach the Full Moon in Pisces we won't feel the need to scatter into its abyss. Instead, we will see how the pieces fit together and how Virgo and Pisces lend helping hands to each other. They live on an axis of liberation. An axis of what is at the root spiritual service towards the self and towards the vast, changing collective. 

What are your adaptations motivated by? 

There's also a T-Square during this New Moon between Mars (in Virgo), Neptune (Pisces), and Jupiter (in Sagittarius). Jupiter is positioned as the apex planet, providing motivation and drive. To assert from the depths of our true dreams and intuition, we will incorporate that which is seen as external, and by giving attention to joy and honor in every day.

The Fruiting Fungus Life Cycle

1) Spore Germination Phase = New Moon
Any New Moon is the Spore Germination phase of a mushroom's growth. New spores are inoculated and we start from a fresh slate, we set intention for upcoming culmination and (spore) release. 

2) Hyphae Phase = Waxing Crescent
As we grow from New Moon to Waxing Crescent (First Quarter), we are introduced to the Hyphae Stage. Hyphae are the strands or fibrous branches of our vegetative growth. Hypha are 1 cell wall thick, 1/110th of a millimeter, and move through the fungus' substrate, which is simultaneously the fungus' habitat and source of nourishment. Hyphae, after connecting to one another and forming a network, are what eventually pierce through a plant's root (or form a dense mat around the root), participating in nutrient exchange and providing support, efficiency, resiliency, stability for the plant and ecosystem.

3) Mycelial Phase = Waxing Gibbous
From Waxing Crescent we dance to Waxing Gibbous (Second Quarter), also known as the Mycelial Phase. During the Mycelial Phase we accept the responsibility for the intentions we've set, and we move and groove with our individual hyphae into a network of mycelium -- planning, strategizing, and molding our vision. Mycelium is the network or collective mass of hyphae branches. Mycelium can take the shape of what it grows around, and humans have recently been engaging with this potential. Ecovative is an organization that experiments with using mycelium as products like compostable packaging molds, makeup sponges, mushroom "leather" grown in only 9 days, effective insulation, and footwear support foams. Mycelium is extremely fast moving and is responsible for MycoRemediation - absorbing and degrading contaminants like lead, petroleum, synthetic dyes, PCB's, PCP's, and PAH's from soil and water. 

Another part of the Mycelial Stage is forming a hyphal knot. When conditions are right, a hyphal knot forms, strands of mycelium find each other, knot, and pierce the surface of the ground. From a hyphal knot, the fruiting body matures into a primordium, or a baby mushroom body! A mushroom is made up of mycelium matted together in a new way, shape, and form. 

4) Fruiting Body Phase = Full Moon
From spore germination, hyphal growth, mycelial expansion, hyphal knot, and primordium maturation, we arrive at the voluptuous, textured, smelly, tasty mushroom! Even if the mushroom is not edible they will have some sort of unique and extravagant taste, smell, appearance, and way about them. 

During the Fruiting Body phase, our visions mature and often change form. During this Full Moon phase we experience a sense of culmination, release, and perhaps mastery or completion. We can acknowledge what was done and grown since the New Moon and are illuminated by our fullness. Through our elucidation and expansion from New to Full Moon, we recognize the connections that all life forms share.

5) Spore Dispersal Phase = Waning Gibbous

Spores of our intentions begin to disperse during the Full Moon through to the Germination Phase or next New Moon Phase. Spores' dedicated purpose is to travel and evolve, through sexual and asexual reproduction. Since they are limited in mobility, spores at at the mercy of the forces around it. Spores must land in supportive environments to germinate. Usually spores land less than 3 feet away from the parent mushroom. Spores may be lifted into the atmosphere and air currents and contribute to rain cloud creation. Viable spores can remain dormant in soil for long periods and have been obtained from 4,500 year old glacial cores. 

During the Spore Dispersal Phase specifically, we acknowledge the results that culminated from the Full Moon. We look at what we might do differently. Assess what needs to be changed, tweaked, or thrown out. We learn from how much distance or exertion our spores travel.

6) Mushroom Recomposition Phase = Waxing Gibbous 

After releasing its spores, the fruiting body itself might dry up and shrivel back into the earth.
Unless the mushroom was found, chosen, and picked from its environment to be ingested or used as medicine, the mushroom slowly withers and rots. Mushroom bodies may also be parasitized by another fungus before rotting, like with the Lobster Mushroom. The recomposition cycle allows what was once in existence to decompose and recompose into something new. This Recomposition Phase is the period of adjustment as we head back into the darkness. We can look inward, reflect, restructure, and create new intentions for the next moon cycle. 

One of the most potent teachings of Mushrooms is to realize that the mushroom is only the fruiting body -- a visual wonder that calls forth both the vast underworld relations that communicate for its existence, and the cadence of its whole life cycle -- what it took for this mushroom to get there, and what it will turn into and give back into the soil. During this Virgo New Moon we are empowered to have self awareness breakthroughs and find greater understanding of our creative, regenerative individual processes and how they play in the larger play of our ecosystems.