My health insurance website has a picture of an apple with a measuring tape around it. Apples, I reflected, clearly represent good health. Of course, there is the saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

This website lists ten health benefits of apples which include preventing cancer and Alzheimer’s. This site also mentions that apples contain boron, which, in a classic Freudian fashion, I misread as “bacon.”

What sign could rule apples, such a perfectly healthy fruit?

Virgo Perfection

The astrologers in the room knew where I was going with this right away. They could probably sniff it out like a rotten apple in the back of the refrigerator behind the leftover pizza.

Health is ruled by the sign of Virgo which also monitors and governs the sixth house of the horoscope. The sixth house traditionally rules health, work, servitude and pets.

If in your sixth house you have sun in Virgo, then you probably eat a lot of apples and other healthy stuff (and have a clean colon).

If in your sixth house you have, say, moon in Sagittarius, then maybe your eating is something like one day just apples, the next day a five-course steak dinner and the following day just a six pack – to be repeated weekly.

If apples are so gosh-darn wonderful, why don’t we bring apples (which can be cold stored) to each others’ houses on the high holidays?

Why instead of apples do we bring eggnog and cookies and turkeys and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pies and deviled eggs?

Why not apples?

Simple Perfection

Perfection, in the apple and maybe in the rest of life, is simple. The world discourages simplicity. If Virgo, the mutable earth sign, represents simplicity, then the other mutable signs might represent other aspects of life in “square” (90 degree angle representing discord) to this simplicity:

Gemini promotes stimulation and constant activity.
Sagittarius promotes seeking, wandering and wondering.
Pisces promotes merging and becoming the energy of others.

Each sign, of course, has its place in life. When we are three years old, we need Gemini activity, not simplicity.

While we seem to want perfection, we appear to seek the opposite – the busy and the complicated.

Simplicity, as represented by the apple, is often perceived as boring while non-simplicity, as represented by eggnog, is perceived as more tasty, more interesting, more exciting.

I agree!

On the other hand, during a meditation retreat while eating a granola bar and tea, I suddenly had the heightened sensation that this was the best breakfast I’d ever eaten in my entire life.

Granola bars have since lost their appeal.

But I wonder if through quiet and simplicity we can experience an eggnog-and-pumpkin-pie rush while eating more simply and more healthy.

Maybe we’re not fully experiencing the apple?

Maybe if we eat quickly while preoccupied, we need increased taste sensations?

Pluto and Uranus in Virgo Generation

The Pluto and Uranus in Virgo generation, those born in the very late 1950s to late 1960s, are the generation that is bringing us the current interest in living green, healthy and simply.

They are also bringing hand sanitizers and anxious fear of germs, but all energies have multiple manifestations.

Another manifestation is the Virgo busy mind counting calories and calculating vitamin and mineral intake with every bite.

That’s where Virgo’s opposite, Pisces, helps out. Virgo might choose simplicity, but Pisces experiences it. It’s a polarity and balance is the key.

This Pluto and Uranus in Virgo generation is just beginning to feel the Neptune in Pisces transit, which opposes the Virgo energy. The next step in being “green” is to enjoy it, not analyze it. Thinking too much about simplicity might make it complicated, as with the business of orchard apple picking.

The Big Apple Mystery

The big mystery remains — if apples represent simplicity, why is the busy, bustling New York City called the Big Apple?

According to this Wikipedia article, European settlement began on September 3, 1609, which is in the sign of Virgo. And those coming in 1609 did come for Virgo religious purity and simplicity, didn’t they?