Virgo symbol (♍)

♍ is the glyph of Virgo, the Virgin, the sixth sign of the Western zodiac. Astrologers give its dates as 23 August to 22 September, and in their tradition it is an earth sign ruled by Mercury.

Zodiac signs. Also called ♍, maiden symbol, virgo glyph, virgo sign symbol, virgo symbol.

Meaning

♍ is Unicode character U+264D VIRGO: a letter like m with its last stroke looped back across itself. Where it comes from is uncertain, and Richard Hinckley Allen (1899) gives three readings: the initials MV, for the Virgin Mary; a monogram of Παρ, the first syllable of the Greek Παρθένος (Parthénos), virgin, which is the International Dictionary’s view; or a rough drawing of the wing of Ishtar, the goddess the Semites gave these stars. Virgo is Latin for virgin. Unicode gives the same shape a second use, as an alternate glyph for the minim.

Origin and history

Where the twelve sign glyphs came from is not known. Encyclopaedia Britannica says their history is unknown and that they first appear in Greek manuscripts of the late Middle Ages. Allen cites Clerke, who found them in manuscripts of about the 10th century but in carvings only from the 15th or 16th, and Brown, who quotes the antiquary C. W. King: King found the glyphs on no antique work and suspected “Arab sages” had devised them, a view Brown did not share. None of the three readings of ♍ is documented.

Allen describes the figure as usually drawn with a palm branch in her right hand and an ear of wheat, the spica, in her left. Eratosthenes and Avienus identified her with Isis, and the ancient image of Isis holding the young Horus came back in the Middle Ages as the Virgin Mary with the child Jesus. Albertus Magnus, in the 13th century, said the Saviour’s horoscope lay in this sign.

Astraea and the Scales

Sometimes the Virgin was drawn holding the Scales, and so, Allen says, she was taken for Δίκη (Dike), Justice, and for Astraea, the starry daughter of Themis and the last of the gods to leave the earth. The Scales became the next sign, Libra.

Virgo as a farmer with a scythe

In Islamic art the sign looks different. The Metropolitan Museum of Art explains, on a brass inkwell from Iran of the late 12th or early 13th century decorated with all twelve signs, that the constellation was called al-ʿadhra, the virgin, and drawn in astronomical treatises as a woman, but the sign was called sunbula, ear of corn, after its brightest star. On objects the virgin was therefore replaced by a man, evidently the planet Mercury, cutting ears of corn with a crescent-shaped scythe. Mercury rules both Gemini and Virgo in Ptolemy’s scheme.

Often confused with Scorpio

♍ and ♏ share the same m-like letter. Virgo’s last stroke loops back across itself; Scorpio’s ends in an arrowhead. Allen thought the likeness might show some close connection, now forgotten, between Scorpio and Virgo, which were once neighbours in the zodiac.

What astrologers say Virgo means

In Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, Virgo is one of the four bicorporeal (two-bodied) signs, which share the weather of two seasons. It is feminine, one of the two houses of Mercury, and Mercury’s exaltation, “in which the dry autumn is signified”; it is Venus’s depression. It belongs to the second triangle, Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn, governed by Venus by day and the Moon by night. Astrology today, as Britannica describes it, makes Virgo an earth sign and a mutable one, and lists “analytical, hardworking, critical” as the traits traditionally attached to it. Britannica adds that astrology is not supported by science: no correlation has been found between birth dates and personality.

Sources

Miscellaneous Symbols, Range: 2600–26FF (code chart), The Unicode Standard, Unicode Consortium, U+264D
Star-Names and Their Meanings: Virgo, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1899 (reprinted by Dover as Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning), LacusCurtius (Bill Thayer, University of Chicago), Virgo
Star-Names and Their Meanings: Scorpio, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1899 (reprinted by Dover as Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning), LacusCurtius (Bill Thayer, University of Chicago), Scorpio
Star-Names and Their Meanings: Aquarius, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1899 (reprinted by Dover as Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning), LacusCurtius (Bill Thayer, University of Chicago), Aquarius (on the zodiac signs’ symbols)
Inkwell with Twelve Zodiac Medallions, Brass, inlaid with silver and copper; attributed to Iran, late 12th–early 13th century; object number 44.131, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Wayback Machine copy, 7 March 2026), Catalogue note
Tetrabiblos, Book I, Claudius Ptolemy, 2nd century AD; translated by F. E. Robbins (Loeb Classical Library, 1940), LacusCurtius (Bill Thayer, University of Chicago), I.11, I.17, I.18, I.19
Zodiac, The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica; last revised by Rick Livingston, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Wayback Machine copy, 11 September 2026), Signs and dates; Astrology

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Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research

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