Virgo and Soap

,`I was surprised in the shower the other day by a large fresh cake of Ivory Soap, which happenstance, coinciding with the beginning Virgo, led me to abloggin’.

The German historian Heinrich von Treitschke, a Virgo (b. 15 September 1834 - 1896) is mostly known merely for three words: CIVILIZATION IS SOAP. (What he actually said was quite a different thing: that the English believe that civilization is soap.)

Still, the well-known connection of astrological Virgo to soap, cleanliness and purity pretty much holds water. William Lever of Lever Brothers, for instance, the inventor of the soap manufacturing process . . a Virgo, and indeed responsible for the proliferation of washing-up in the British Isles, which drew forth Treitschke’s memorable observation. 

Surely, cosmetics falling under the succeeding sign of Libra, depilatory processes (including the famous Brazillian) come under the previous and adjacent sign of the Virgin. Tho Mr. Clean is not a real person and Bruckner shaved his head daily.hasn’t got a sign, Michael Chiklis of The Shield, classical composer Anton Bruckner, and vegan musician Moby: 3 Virgos!

Arn. Schoenberg, b. THIRTEEN September 1874
I mention Moby's veganism as Virgo is inevitably preoccupied with orthorexic notions of health and nutrition. Boringly precise, endearingly fussy, or pathologically obsessive-compulsive, thus Anton Bruckner's numeromania, also the similar numeromania (triskaidecaphobia) at the root of composer Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone system. Virgos may be highly sensible or highly strung, there's always a pitch of refinement.

99 - 44/100% PURE! (reg.) The depth and brilliance of this advertising slogan is the recognition that perfection is unattainable, that the profound fate of measurement and knowledge is to strive and fail and strive again. The very concept of purity "invokes" desecration and frantic defenses. Hence Virgo's urgency and  stubborness.

"I live like a monk: with one toothbrush, one cake of soap, and a pot of cream."The three great screen beauties born under Virgo, Greta Garbo, Sophia Loren and Raquel Welch, are all known for their obsessive beauty ahd health rituals. Vera Stravinsky,  recording her impressions of Greta Garbo,  wrote that Garbo was  uninterested in the conversation around her until someone mentioned discovering a new soap. "Is it good for stockings?" was Garbo's only memorable remark of the evening.

"Cameron Diaz (b. 30 August 1972) is arguably Hollywood's most compulsive celeb. Not only does she open doors with her elbows to avoid touching germ-infested knobs - doorknobs, that is - she also admits to scrubbing her Hollywood home scrupulously and washing her hands 'many times' each day."

Jeremy Irons, b. Sept. 19, 1948

The British-born star, biding time in Ireland's Shannon Airport, got so bent out of shape over a filthy airport bar that he gave the beer-soaked tables and overflowing ashtrays some desperately needed elbow grease...

" . . .He said: 'I'm just hanging around here. I'm bored and it has to be done. This place is disgusting. . . . I had an hour to kill in the lounge. I had done enough reading, and I looked around me and the place was a dump, so I decided to clean up, I find being delayed at airports quite depressing, and I felt much better after cleaning up. . .'"

Virgo Michael Jackson was, of course, a famous germaphobe.

Virgo Charlie Sheean is an admitted "neat freak" who extols the benefits of "a linear environement".

Comments

[NR]

What a wonderful post!

And I'm in awe of the way you write. Prose that reads like poetry!

::bows deeply::

[Beth Turnage]

Brilliant!