Materializing the Spiritual – Michelangelo’s Virgoan Masterpiece David, 1501

A sculptor removes the unneeded stone and a form emerges. The sculptor materializes the spiritual. This is Virgo. In the early morning of September 13, 1501 (Julian) and in secrecy, Michelangelo began carving a giant marble block. Over the course of more than two years, he released David from the stone. The sculpture in Florence depicts a beautiful male youth right before he faces Goliath. David is a karmic work that emerges from its prison of stone.

Michelangelo’s David is the Virgo Sun in the 12th house about to be freed from his marble prison.

Unlike other art, stone carving is not creative in the sense that it is a new creation. This type of sculpture is about negative space. David has existed for millennia encased in frozen stone since the marble last cooled. The stone carver is a gatekeeper for the statue; chipping away at the prison holding the statue. The gilding, the only creative element, has long worn away.

In this early morning horoscope, David, the finished statue represented by the Virgo Sun, is present in the 12th house. This house, associated with Pisces and Neptune, is also known for being a place of seclusion or concealment; the prison, the attic, the institution and also David’s prison-like marble block. The astrological karma places Michelangelo’s Pisces Sun in the 6th house of David’s horoscope. Just on time, Michelangelo arrives to carve him from his ancient prison of stone. For more than two years, David would exist somewhere inbetween the marble block and the final realization of the negative space. The 6th house is associated with Virgo and liminal space such as workshops, gateways, transitional and undefined and disorienting spaces, and waiting places. He stands poised and confident to take his heroic step from the prison. For centuries he then stood at the doorway of the Palazzo Vecchio, a 6th house place, always prepared to begin his initiation into the material world.

David is the archetype of the simple, classic beauty of Virgo. The young male who has left behind the boy but is not yet a man. A liminal age. Standing at the doorway. A liminal space. A stone statue carved preparing to take his heroic step forward. A stone carving in a pose that is the spiritual embodiment of the Virgo archetype. Virgo. Mutable earth. Materializing the spiritual.