The Virgo Moon is often difficult for the person with this placement anywhere in their birth horoscope. The reason is the Moon is the earliest childhood experience and Virgo is concerned with creating heaven on earth. The mother believes that the child must be perfected. Virgo has the highest intentions in creating perfection but it doesn’t leave much room for being an earthly being. A child does not understand this intention and tends to take in the general subconscious feeling that they aren’t good enough and something is lacking. This is such an early formative period that it is not something that is easy to escape and it forms the foundation of their life.
Mary Tudor was born on February 18, 1516 (Julian) at 4:13 am in Greenwich, England. Her mother is represented by a Virgo Moon in the 8th house. Mary’s Virgo Moon is one part of a mystic rectangle. This rectangle looks like the red saltire which denotes St. Andrew’s cross. This was later used by Spain as a flag and coat of arms of the royal family but is also the design element behind the Confederate States of America battle flag. Mystic rectangles denote a native involved in a cause.
Mary had an outstanding education that not many children would have received. She entertained diplomats on the virginals at four. She learned Latin and possibly Greek, dead languages even then, that were the preserve of universities and the clergy. Her mother was blazing a trail with education for girls and creating a princess who could be a king. This was possible because she wasn’t hamstrung by traditional views on women’s roles. Katherine’s own mother Isabella of Castile was a warrior queen subduing the Moors and clearing her kingdom of heretics, debt, crime and all other manner of things getting in the way of uniting a new empire that would be Spain. Upon this first successful birth after four previous miscarriages, stillbirths and short lived children, Katherine of Aragon decided she needed to perfect this child. She was preparing her for an illustrious reign as a female King of England.
The archetype of Persephone is also a very common theme with Virgo placements of any type. Mary is no exception, her parents are shown together in the 7th house of marriage. There her father is Jupiter and her mother Ceres. Proserpina (Persephone) was a pawn that her father gave to his brother, Pluto. Her value and the reason she is so essential to the zodiac in a way that other goddesses are not relates to the value her mother gave her. Only very little of the myth of the child creation relationship between Jupiter and Ceres comes down to us: Demeter resisted Zeus. That is it. It is quite possible that the marriage between Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon was a replay of what that resistance meant.
Katherine had the better pedigree. Henry was the second son of a king with a trace of royal blood who claimed his crown from right of conquest. And it was no grand conquest. King Henry VIII’s Sagittarius kingship rested on a weak Aries aided by a kingmaker essentially a stronger Libra. Katherine rested on two Leos, King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile, one of whom was also a very strong Aries mother. Katherine was a direct descendant of John of Gaunt through his marriage to Blanche of Lancaster and also Constance of Castile while Henry had to make do with John’s late marriage to Katherine Swynford and the four twenty-plus year-old adults he legitimized after he married their mother. Hence this is the reason Henry VIII’s father Henry VII claimed the throne by right of conquest; right of heredity was not going to be an option. Mary, at the time of her birth, saw her father in the Jupiter role – King Henry was a mutable fire: incredibly dangerous but essentially an overgrown playboy prince, vulnerable to whims but with not much staying power. Her mother was Taurus fixed earth. Queen Katherine just did not react to the King’s fire and she wasn’t afraid of it. Mary’s early childhood home was rooted in stubborn and stable Taurus and this underlain her view of life. Katherine wasn’t vulnerable to Jupiter’s fire. Ceres resisted Jupiter.
At the time of Mary’s birth, Queen Katherine’s role was primarily as King Henry’s queen consort. She was in a very powerful position in the court and she was focused on perfecting the princess she had borne the king. The problem that was developing was King Henry saw Mary primarily as a diplomatic token, secondarily she was “his daughter” – a possession that was his to do with as he liked, and he enjoyed seeing Mary and having her presence in his court. His chart does not indicate he ever saw Mary as a potential heir to his throne.
Queen Katherine’s direct role in her daughter’s chart ended at 11 am on the 23rd of May 1533 (Julian). Katherine’s marriage to Henry was annulled by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, ending her role as queen consort and she was banished from her daughter’s life, also ending her role as the Virgo Moon.
This begins the second part of the Virgo journey. Virgo is about the best intentions of creating heaven on earth but the second stage of Virgo is being dragged underground and raped by Pluto and overcoming this and ruling Hades (hell). This crises plays out again wherever Virgo is found. Virgo is mutable earth, Pluto can rip it apart and pull the innocent, perfect maiden down and restore the earth seamlessly.
As Bloody Mary, this princess would take up a cause to restore the Catholic faith. She would burn Protestants who became martyrs in their faith. The Archbishop of Canterbury who had once declared her parents marriage “against the law of god” watched Protestants burn and recanted and then recanted from his recantation when he realized he was to be burned anyway. While her reign as the first woman sovereign of England was not long and was highly unpopular she did settle affairs with the Pope. The Pope recognized the monastic lands were to remain in the hands of the new owners. While she did not rule long, many of her accomplishments were to promote a more stable reign for her sister. The mystic rectangle in her chart ends with her Pisces Sun in the 2nd. Pisces is a purifier and the 2nd house is the storehouse, fields, and the estate. In Mary’s case, once she is Queen, England is her 2nd house. As the Virgo Moon, whose parents’ marriage had formed her personality and given her into the hands of Pluto, she became the Pisces Sun and took up a cause to purify her kingdom and she ruled there as Bloody Mary, Queen of the Damned.