Spica
BehenianAlpha Virginis · Virgo
Position (2026)
♎ 24°13' Libra
Magnitude
0.98
Planetary Nature
Venus / Mars (robson)
Robson assigns Venus/Mars. Some modern astrologers use Venus/Mercury, following a different Ptolemaic interpretation.
Alvidas: Venus / Jupiter / Mercury
Spectral Type
B1V
Appearance
A brilliant blue-white eclipsing binary in the ear of wheat held by the Maiden, the brightest star in Virgo
Behenian Correspondences
Gemstone
Emerald
Plant
Sage
Read: The 15 Behenian Stars → background on Agrippa's list, the magical tradition, and how each star was historically used.
Name Origin
Language
Latin
Original Form
Spīca
Meaning
The Ear of Wheat (or Grain)
From the Latin Spica Virginis, the ear of wheat held in the Virgin's hand. The name has been universal: Aratos wrote 'in her hands'; Cicero called it Spicum; the French have l'Épi. The Arabic was Al Simāk al A'zal (the Unarmed Simāk, contrasting with Arcturus, the Armed Simāk). The star marked the discovery of precession by Hipparchos around 130 BCE, comparing his observations with those of Timochares 150 years earlier.
Known As
Spica in Astrology
Spica, the brightest star in Virgo and the sheaf of wheat in the Virgin's hand, is considered the most benefic fixed star in traditional astrology. It bestows gifts, talent, and fortunate outcomes across all areas of life. Its Venus-Mars nature combines aesthetic grace with productive energy, creating individuals who harvest abundant results from their efforts. Spica grants artistic talent, scientific ability, and a quality of blessed productivity, things grow and thrive under this star's influence. The gifts of Spica are freely given, asking only that they be used with gratitude and shared generously.
When Spica Is Angular
Spica carries additional weight when it falls on one of the chart angles, independent of any planet conjunction.
If Rising
Spica rising on the Ascendant is traditionally considered one of the luckiest placements in all of stellar astrology, bestowing good fortune, material abundance, and opportunities for advancement that exceed the native's own expectations. There is a quality of grace and ease to Spica's influence on the Ascendant: doors open, obstacles dissolve, and recognition comes with surprising naturalness. The native may receive honors or positions of spiritual or institutional authority that seem almost destined.
If Culminating
Spica culminating at the Midheaven promises professional success of an exceptional caliber, with wealth, public esteem, and creative or spiritual distinction. The native's career benefits from a seemingly effortless ability to produce results that others admire and seek to emulate. Religious, artistic, or academic pursuits are especially favored, and the potential for lasting legacy through one's professional contributions is considerable.
Mythology & History
Spica represents the ear of wheat held in the hand of Virgo, the celestial Maiden. The Greeks identified her with Demeter, goddess of the harvest, or with her daughter Persephone, whose annual descent to the underworld brought winter to the world. The star's name comes from the Latin for "ear of grain," and across civilizations it has symbolized the gifts of cultivation, the abundance that follows patient labor, and the promise of return after loss.
Spica, the brightest star in Virgo, takes its name from the Latin spica virginis, the ear of wheat held by the Virgin. The Greeks identified this constellation with Demeter, goddess of the harvest, or her daughter Persephone, and the star itself represents the bounty of the earth's fertility. In Babylonian astronomy, Spica was the star of the furrow, associated with the goddess Shala who held a sheaf of grain. The Egyptian identification connected it with the goddess Isis, and the star's heliacal rising in autumn coincided with harvest time across the Mediterranean world.
As a Behenian star, Spica was associated with emerald and sage, and its talismans were among the most benevolent in medieval stellar magic, crafted to attract love, protect crops, and ensure abundance. Ptolemy assigned it the nature of Venus and Mars, a combination that bestows creative power, artistic brilliance, and success through talent rather than force. Spica has been considered one of the most fortunate stars in the entire sky across virtually every astrological tradition. Hipparchus used Spica's position to discover the precession of the equinoxes around 130 BCE, making it pivotal to the history of astronomy itself.
Virgo Context
Spica gleams in the left hand of Virgo, the only zodiacal constellation represented by a female figure. The Greeks saw in Virgo the goddess Astraea, the last immortal to leave the earth during the decline of the ages, or Demeter searching for her daughter Persephone. The constellation carries themes of purity, harvest, discernment, and the sacred relationship between humanity and the fruitfulness of the earth. Spica, as the sheaf of wheat, represents the culmination of that fertility: the harvest gathered, the promise fulfilled.
Learn more about Virgo and its stars.
Natal Conjunctions
Find your conjunctions →Spica Conjunct Sun
Spica conjunct the Sun makes you someone whose very identity is the harvest, you are the person in the room who brings things to fruition, whose presence signals that scattered potential is about to become something real. Your purpose is not merely to possess gifts but to embody the moment when long cultivation yields its reward. You carry the Virgoan sheaf of wheat at the center of your being, and others instinctively bring their unfinished work to you because completion is who you are.
Spica Conjunct Moon
Spica conjunct the Moon gives you an instinctive knowledge of timing that borders on the agricultural. You sense when emotions are ripe, when a relationship is ready to deepen, when a creative impulse needs more nurturing before it can be gathered in. Your emotional life follows seasons rather than moods, and you possess a maternal genius for cultivating the best in others, knowing exactly when to tend, when to wait, and when the moment has come to reap what has been carefully grown.
Spica Conjunct Mercury
Spica conjunct Mercury bestows an elegant, productive intellect that excels in both analysis and creative synthesis. The mind produces insights with unusual fertility, and communication carries a polished, engaging quality. Scientific and artistic thinking are equally strong, and you often bridge these domains with grace.
Spica Conjunct Venus
Spica conjunct Venus doubles the Virgoan star's own Venus nature, and the result is love experienced as creative communion, a merging where beauty is not observed but grown between you and another. You do not merely appreciate art or attract affection; you inhabit a world where love, beauty, and fertile creation are indistinguishable from one another. Relationships become gardens, and your deepest intimacy is the act of bringing something exquisite into existence together.
Spica Conjunct Mars
Spica conjunct Mars makes you a competitor in the fields of creation, someone who attacks creative and productive challenges with physical intensity and refuses to accept a mediocre harvest. You cultivate with the ferocity of someone who takes the quality of their output personally, driving yourself to produce the finest results through sheer force of will and tireless effort. Where others treat talent as a gift to coast on, you treat it as a standard to fight for.
Spica Conjunct Jupiter
Spica conjunct Jupiter makes you the great cultivator of other people's gifts. Your abundance overflows into generosity that is not merely charitable but transformative, you see the latent harvest in everyone you meet and possess the philosophical wisdom to know that true wealth is what you help others bring to fruition. Teaching, mentorship, and the patronage of talent are your highest callings, and your expansive optimism is grounded in the practical knowledge that good things grow when properly tended.
Spica Conjunct Saturn
Spica conjunct Saturn grounds abundant gifts in disciplined, structured effort. You learn that even blessed talent requires patient cultivation, and the combination of natural facility with sustained effort produces mastery of the highest order. Professional achievements are both excellent and enduring.
Spica Conjunct Uranus
Spica conjunct Uranus revolutionizes what harvest means. You bring innovation to fields of cultivation and creation, radically reimagining how abundance is produced, distributed, or understood. Your brilliance is not effortless but disruptive, overturning established methods of making and growing in favor of approaches so original they redefine the craft itself. You are the inventor in the garden, the one who changes the technology of fruition.
Spica Conjunct Neptune
Spica conjunct Neptune infuses natural gifts with mystical sensitivity and artistic vision. You channel inspiration from transcendent sources and produce work of extraordinary beauty and spiritual depth. The combination of Spica's productivity with Neptune's vision creates art that nourishes the soul.
Spica Conjunct Pluto
Spica conjunct Pluto adds transformative depth to Spica's abundant gifts. You produce work that not only excels but fundamentally changes the field in which it operates. Creative power serves evolutionary purposes, and your gifts carry a quality of profound, regenerative impact.
Spica Conjunct North Node
Spica conjunct the North Node charts a karmic arc from scarcity consciousness toward becoming a vessel of earned abundance. You are growing away from hoarding, from the fear that gifts will run out, from measuring your worth by what you keep rather than what you produce. Your soul's direction demands that you trust the harvest, cultivating your talents with patience and distributing the yield with open hands, learning through each life season that generosity and fruition feed each other.
Spica Conjunct Ascendant
Spica on the Ascendant bestows a graceful, attractive presence that others experience as naturally beneficent. You radiate a quality of fertile, productive energy that enhances every environment you enter. Life unfolds with notable fortune, and you often appear blessed by circumstances.
Spica Conjunct Midheaven
Spica on the Midheaven marks a career of exceptional achievement and fortunate outcomes. Professional success comes with a quality of grace. Things work out, opportunities arrive, and your efforts produce abundant, excellent results. Recognition comes through the consistent quality and productivity of the work.
Spica Conjunct Part of Fortuna
The Part of Fortuna conjunct Spica is one of the most favorable placements for material prosperity in the entire fixed star catalog. Wealth arrives with the same abundant, seemingly effortless quality that characterizes everything Spica touches, and financial life carries a sense of being genuinely blessed by forces larger than individual effort. Resources accumulate through a combination of natural talent, fortunate timing, and the willingness to cultivate abundance patiently rather than grasping at it. The one caution is that Spica's generous prosperity can encourage indulgence in luxury and sensual pleasure, and the native must guard against allowing material ease to erode the disciplined cultivation that produced the harvest in the first place.
Paran Interpretations
Parans describe what happens when Spica and a planet simultaneously occupy the four angles (rising, culminating, setting, nadir) at a given location.
Spica in Paran with Sun
Rising
Spica rising with the Sun marks a life initiated with abundant natural talent and early fortunate circumstances.
Culminating
Spica culminating with the Sun places blessed productivity at the apex of public achievement and recognition.
Setting
Spica setting with the Sun indicates gifts that ripen and mature beautifully, with the finest harvest arriving in later years.
At the Nadir
Spica at the nadir with the Sun conceals an abundant wellspring of natural talent at the deepest foundations of the personality.
Spica in Paran with Moon
Rising
Spica rising with the Moon awakens intuitive gifts and emotional fertility from the earliest years.
Culminating
Spica culminating with the Moon brings emotional grace and intuitive productivity to their highest public expression.
Setting
Spica setting with the Moon indicates deepening emotional wisdom and nurturing gifts in the mature years.
At the Nadir
Spica at the nadir with the Moon harbors a rich, fertile emotional life that nourishes all outward expression.
Spica in Paran with Mercury
Rising
Spica rising with Mercury bestows early intellectual elegance and fertile communicative ability.
Culminating
Spica culminating with Mercury elevates productive, polished intellect to career-defining prominence.
Setting
Spica setting with Mercury deepens intellectual gifts over time, with the most refined insights arriving in maturity.
At the Nadir
Spica at the nadir with Mercury conceals a mind of extraordinary fertility operating beneath conscious awareness.
Spica in Paran with Venus
Rising
Spica rising with Venus initiates a life blessed with artistic talent and natural attractiveness.
Culminating
Spica culminating with Venus achieves peak recognition through beautiful, accomplished artistic creation.
Setting
Spica setting with Venus brings deepening aesthetic refinement and enduring relational grace in later years.
At the Nadir
Spica at the nadir with Venus conceals deep reserves of aesthetic sensitivity and loving generosity.
Spica in Paran with Mars
Rising
Spica rising with Mars produces an individual of productive energy and efficient action from youth.
Culminating
Spica culminating with Mars places fruitful, decisive action at the apex of career achievement.
Setting
Spica setting with Mars channels productive energy into sustained harvest over a full lifetime.
At the Nadir
Spica at the nadir with Mars conceals exceptional productive drive that powers all visible accomplishment.
Spica in Paran with Jupiter
Rising
Spica rising with Jupiter expands natural fortune and abundant talent from the beginning of life.
Culminating
Spica culminating with Jupiter achieves the widest recognition through generously productive achievement.
Setting
Spica setting with Jupiter brings expanding fortune, wisdom, and generosity in the mature years.
At the Nadir
Spica at the nadir with Jupiter builds on hidden foundations of vast natural abundance and inner wealth.
Spica in Paran with Saturn
Rising
Spica rising with Saturn demands early discipline to develop natural gifts into mastered craft.
Culminating
Spica culminating with Saturn achieves the most enduring recognition through disciplined excellence over decades.
Setting
Spica setting with Saturn builds a lasting legacy of productive mastery recognized across generations.
At the Nadir
Spica at the nadir with Saturn establishes rigorous foundations that support the most abundant creative output.
Spica in Paran with Ascendant
Rising
Spica rising with the Ascendant stamps the personality with visible grace, talent, and beneficent energy.
Culminating
Spica culminating with the Ascendant projects natural gifts and fortunate presence onto the broadest stage.
Setting
Spica setting with the Ascendant draws others who recognize and are enriched by your blessed quality.
At the Nadir
Spica at the nadir with the Ascendant grounds identity in deep reserves of natural talent and productive energy.
Spica in Paran with Midheaven
Rising
Spica rising with the Midheaven launches a career blessed with early recognition and abundant professional gifts.
Culminating
Spica culminating with the Midheaven represents the summit of fortunate career achievement and productive excellence.
Setting
Spica setting with the Midheaven indicates a professional legacy of abundant, excellent work that endures across time.
At the Nadir
Spica at the nadir with the Midheaven builds career success on hidden foundations of extraordinary natural talent.
Notable Charts
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Jupiter conjunct Spica
History's archetypal prodigy, composing at age five with a musical gift so extraordinary it was widely described as heaven-sent, embodying Spica's theme of divinely bestowed brilliance
Prince
Jupiter conjunct Spica
A self-taught multi-instrumentalist who played 27 instruments and fused genres with seemingly effortless brilliance, embodying Spica's signature blend of refined artistry and magnetic success
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Spica conjunct the Ascendant mean?
Spica conjunct the Ascendant is considered one of the most fortunate placements in all of stellar astrology. The Venus-Mars nature of the brightest star in Virgo grants personal brilliance, artistic talent, popularity, and a harmonious blend of grace and initiative. You radiate capability and charm.
Is Spica a benefic fixed star?
Spica is unanimously considered the most benefic fixed star in the traditional catalog. Ptolemy assigned it Venus-Mars nature, and virtually every astrological tradition regards it as a bestower of gifts, talent, and good fortune without the moral conditions attached to the Royal Stars.
What does the name Spica mean?
The name Spica comes from Latin: Spīca, meaning "The Ear of Wheat (or Grain)." From the Latin Spica Virginis, the ear of wheat held in the Virgin's hand. The star is known by 10 different cultural names across world traditions.
Lunar Mansions
Spica serves as the determinant star for these 3 lunar mansions across different traditions.
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