John Locke

John Locke is the father of liberalism, an English philosopher and physician whose ideas about natural rights, consent and limited government run straight through the American Declaration of Independence and the whole architecture of the modern liberal state. His empiricism gave us the famous image of the mind at birth as a tabula rasa, a blank slate written only by experience, and there could hardly be a more Virgoan idea. The Virgo Sun shines through the intellect, through patient analysis and a scientific, left-brained love of getting the details exactly right. Locke was the physician who coordinated the surgery that saved Lord Ashley's life, the meticulous scholar who mastered medicine, epistemology and politics alike, the jack of all arts who became a master of all. Virgo shines by being useful, and Locke was nothing if not of service to reason.

His Cancer Moon, the luminary at home in its own sign, gave that clinical mind a tender, protective undercurrent. This doubly maternal Moon cares for the vulnerable and guards the nest, and it is felt in a thinker so concerned with safeguarding life, liberty and property, with what a just society owes its people. A precise Virgo head; a nurturing Cancer heart.