Everyone’s heard the one about persnickety Virgo, the hyper-organized Excel doc savant, the fine artist of 1-star Yelp reviews, the living, breathing efficiency hack who would probably come with a broom and dustpan already attached if they were an action figure. None of these do Virgo any actual justice. The thing about brooms, though, is that witches used to use them to essentially get high through their genitals off of plant medicine. The other thing about brooms is that the Vestal Virgins of Rome were self-possessed priestesses who devoted themselves to maintaining the flame and sweeping the floors of the temple. Both of these things feel correct to mention in an article about Virgo.

As the sign of mutable earth, Virgo is uniquely attuned to nature as a technology — the building blocks of matter are less solid, more malleable, than they seem to the naked eye. The raw materials of the harvest require a diligent set of hands to perform the work of purification, refinement, and distillation — of separating the wheat from the chaff. We’re not always meant to merely take what we’re given if what we’re given can be improved, or rendered more effective. Virgo corresponds to the digestive system because our body must literally convert food into energy it can use. Even devotion to the divine requires a certain amount of devotion to the maintenance of our bodies, to the tangible facts of our lives, and to the technical foundations that make it all possible.

Virgo’s no-nonsense, “get it done right” mentality is what saves our asses when sloppy thinking (and sloppy work) begin to threaten our state of affairs. Virgo has read the whole manual and knows exactly where you fucked up the seam you were trying to stitch. Virgo has researched that thing you’re trying to do and can probably give you most of the salient, helpful advice you really need. If life is a group project, Virgo usually pulls more than their own weight.

This is largely owing to the fact that Virgo is basically a Mercury Super Juice Elixir because it’s not only a sign of domicile for Mercury, but also of its exaltation. This doubling-up of essential dignity is unusual, but it makes sense that it would apply only to Mercury, who famously shapeshifts and exists in multiple places at once. Planets in their domicile are in charge, and planets in their exaltation get to be powerful and show off without as much of the responsibility. In this sense, Virgo is where Mercury whistles and works — where it directs the show and revels in the applause.

That Virgo is a clean freak is not always necessarily true. That Virgo offers the world an immaculate contribution is probably more apt. When Mercury is this powerful, you get both the good and the bad of quickness and neuroticism. Mercury sees the trees and misses the forest, but it also comes equipped with a nimble set of tools to produce breathtaking detail work. Mercury computes, runs the analysis reports, and finds the most efficient route to a perfect process. Virgo usually has a strong opinion about a process and is more than happy to tell you about it, but it’s not coming from a prideful place. It’s just that Virgo can see when you’re making life harder for yourself, and they’d rather save you the trouble.

Virgo is also where Jupiter experiences a condition of exile (or detriment). This accounts for why Virgo placements aren’t content to merely marvel at the cinematic projection that is the Wizard of Oz, but must instead dismantle the engine and reveal the man behind the curtain. Virgo approaches things with skepticism because it’s the literal antithesis to Pisces, where we swim in the ocean of God and give ourselves over to the experience. In Virgo, God must be broken down into its individual components in order to better understand how all the pieces fit together. Even if the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, even if this is a vandalism of the gestalt, Virgo questions the things no one else will.

There are a couple other things that Virgo is both unfairly and understandably characterized for, and that’s rampant perfectionism and hypercriticism. Perhaps the greatest disservice to Virgos is that they’re most famous for being uptight and for what they can offer to other people. Virgo is a sign of fall for Venus, which is another way of saying that there’s nothing simple about simply enjoying anything (or enjoying yourself). Pleasure and beauty are things you can apparently overthink, which takes you out of the moment but paradoxically makes you really good at them. In other words, Virgo isn’t just a nerd. Virgo is the sort of lover you want to keep around, but it’s probably a mistake to assume they’re doing it all for you. Being reminded you’re top-tier is its own sort of kink.