Virgo Emoji

The astrological symbol for Virgo, the Maiden. ♍ covers birthdays from August 23 through September 22 and is the sixth sign of the zodiac. The glyph is a stylized letter M with a curling loop on the right side, and is sometimes interpreted as the maiden tucking in her robes. Virgo's letter-M glyph is visually close to Scorpio's (also an M, but with an arrow-tail), which is why the two signs get mixed up at small text sizes.

The character was encoded in Unicode 1.1 in 1993 as U+264DU+264D VIRGO and promoted to full color emoji in Emoji 1.0 (2015). In astrology, Virgo is a mutable earth sign ruled by Mercury), the planet of communication and analysis. That rulership is why Virgos get the analyst / editor / spreadsheet-maker reputation: Mercury handles words and details, and earth adds the 'makes it real and functional' layer.

Online, ♍ carries the perfectionist brand. It's the emoji people deploy when they've reorganized a pantry at 2 a.m., caught a typo in a group text, or built a color-coded spreadsheet for a weekend trip. Virgo season (late August through late September) is when the emoji peaks, but its meme presence is year-round thanks to the sign's extreme meme-ability.

♍ is the astrology emoji for the organized-and-critical corner of the zodiac. It lives in bios, birthday posts during Virgo season (Aug 23 – Sep 22), and an enormous meme economy around perfectionism. Parade's Virgo meme roundup and So Syncd's Virgo meme piece catalog hundreds of the 'things only Virgos do' format: color-coded planners, unsolicited grammar corrections, midnight reorganization sprees. Compatibility content pairs Virgo with Pisces ♓ (opposite sign, the classic attract pairing) or with fellow earth signs Taurus ♉ and Capricorn ♑. On dating apps, Virgo in a bio often works as a flex about organization and reliability, occasionally as a warning about over-correction.

The maiden who became Virgo was the goddess of justice, or the harvest, or virginity, or divine innocence, depending on which Greek you asked.

The most common association is with Astraea), daughter of Zeus and Themis and the goddess of justice. According to the Greek poet Hesiod, Astraea lived among humans during the Golden Age, when people were peaceful and virtuous. As humanity declined through the Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, the gods gradually abandoned Earth in disgust. Astraea was the last to leave, holding out through the worst of the Bronze Age before finally ascending to the heavens, where Zeus placed her among the stars as Virgo. The scales of justice she carried became the neighboring constellation Libra ♎. Virgo and Libra are side-by-side in the sky for exactly this reason: they're halves of the same myth.

Other versions link Virgo to Demeter, the harvest goddess, holding an ear of wheat. Virgo's brightest star, Spica, is literally Latin for 'ear of grain' and represents the wheat stalk Demeter cradles. Virgo season overlaps with the northern hemisphere grain harvest (late August through September), which is why the harvest framing is so persistent. Earth sign, late-summer star, wheat-stalk imagery, the agricultural layer is baked in.

A third version links Virgo to Persephone, Demeter's daughter, who returned to earth each spring and disappeared to the underworld each fall. This one is astronomically poetic: Virgo disappears below the horizon every autumn, exactly when Persephone is supposed to be heading back down to Hades.

When the zodiac standardized in Hellenistic times, Virgo held onto all three layers: justice (Astraea), harvest (Demeter and Spica), and cyclical descent (Persephone). The glyph ♍ is usually interpreted as a stylized maiden figure or as the initials of the Greek word for virgin. And 'Virgo' itself is Latin for 'unwed woman', originally meaning independent rather than sexually inexperienced, though the translation has drifted over 2,000 years.

Encoded in Unicode 1.1 (1993) as U+264DU+264D VIRGO. Part of the Miscellaneous Symbols block, sits between ♌ Leo and ♎ Libra. Upgraded to full color emoji in Emoji 1.0 (2015). The Unicode technical name matches the Latin constellation name.

1. -3000Babylonian astronomers named this stretch of sky 'The Furrow,' linked to grain.
2. -700Hesiod's Works and Days introduced Astraea as the last immortal to leave Earth, cementing the Virgo / justice myth.
3. 1993Encoded in Unicode 1.1 as `U+264D` VIRGO.
4. 2015Promoted to full color emoji in Emoji 1.0 alongside all twelve zodiac signs.

• •Spica, Virgo's brightest star, is a binary star system about 250 light-years away, made of two stars in such a tight orbit they can't be seen separately without a telescope. The name means 'ear of grain' in Latin.
• •Virgo is the only zodiac sign represented by a woman. Every other sign is either an animal (ram, bull, crab, etc.) or a non-gendered figure (twins, scales, water-bearer, centaur).
• •Virgo and Gemini are the two signs ruled by Mercury in traditional astrology. Both signs are stereotyped as 'thinkers,' but Mercury-Gemini is the chatty / adaptable variant and Mercury-Virgo is the analytical / perfectionist variant.
• •The word 'Virgo' comes from Latin for 'unwed woman.' Originally meaning 'independent' or 'unclaimed,' the translation drifted toward 'virginity' in post-classical Christian readings. The sign's original meaning had nothing to do with sexual status.
• •Virgo has more galaxies than any other zodiac constellation. The Virgo Cluster is the nearest galaxy cluster to our Local Group, containing about 1,300 galaxies.
• •The Amazon Prime show I'm a Virgo, written and directed by Boots Riley, is the only major streaming series to use a zodiac sign as its title. It's about being 13 feet tall, not about astrology.
• •According to YouGov, Virgo is one of the least-hated zodiac signs in the US, it rarely tops the 'least favorite' lists that Gemini and Scorpio dominate.
• •Michael Jackson rehearsed the moonwalk approximately three weeks solid before Motown 25 to perfect the performance. Virgo-level preparation applied to pop history.

• •Beyoncé, born September 4, 1981, the perfectionist-producer archetype. Astrology content cites her meticulous album rollouts as the clearest Virgo case study in pop.
• •Zendaya, born September 1, 1996, the precise, control-the-narrative Gen Z Virgo. Almost every 'famous Virgos' list opens with her.
• •Keanu Reeves, born September 2, 1964, the quiet-Virgo variant: low-key, service-minded, perfectionist about craft without being loud about it.
• •Tim Burton, born August 25, 1958, the detail-obsessed-auteur Virgo. Every frame in his movies is hand-controlled.
• •Cameron Diaz, born August 30, 1972, the 'charming but knows what she wants' Virgo, common to celebrity Virgo lists per Hola's roundup.
• •Blake Lively, born August 25, 1987, the lifestyle-brand-built-on-aesthetics Virgo.
• •Michael Jackson, born August 29, 1958, the perfectionist-performer Virgo, rehearsing single moves for weeks.
• •Stephen King, born September 21, 1947, the 'writes 2,000 words every day without fail' Virgo author archetype.
• •I'm a Virgo, Amazon Prime series from Boots Riley (2023) about a 13-foot-tall Black teenager coming of age in Oakland. Title made ♍ a brief streaming-TV emoji.

• •♍ is U+264DU+264D VIRGO in the Miscellaneous Symbols block. Zodiac signs span U+2648 – U+2653.
• •No variation selector required on modern platforms. Older monochrome fonts may render ♍ as a plain M-like glyph without color.
• •In horoscope logic, use sun's ecliptic longitude (150°–180° = Virgo) rather than calendar dates. Exact sign boundary shifts ~24 hours per year.

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