Virgo is depicted (in the heavens) with staff or rod in her right hand and an ear of wheat or corn (Spica) in her left hand.
Virga - a young shoot or twig, Virgatus - made of twigs, Verge - rod or staff carried by an officer as a sign of authority, it is also related to a measuring rod for the laying out of fields and boundaries. Virgate - an old English measure of land - around 30 acres.
Interestingly, it connotates a LACK OF sperm ; The Greek word for virgin is parthenos, and Virgo had the title Parthenos Dios, the Virgin Goddess; parthenic, 'of the nature of a virgin', Parthenon, the name of the temple of the virgin goddess Athena on the Acropolis at Athens. Parthenogenesis means reproduction without fertilization, from Modern Latin, literally 'birth from a virgin', the word is sometimes also used to describe reproduction modes in hermaphroditic species which can self-fertilize. Parthenogenesis is bought about by the ovum dividing by itself without the need for sperm.
But VIR is man and GYNE woman. Also Viridis - green, is interesting.
The sickle ? It seems to come from equating her to an English tradition ; " the Maiden of the Wheat-field that is still seen in the North English and South Scottish custom of the Kern-baby, or Kernababy, — the Corn, or Kernel, Baby, — thus described by Lang in his Custom and Myth :
The last gleanings of the last field are bound up in a rude imitation of the human shape, and dressed in some rag-tags of finery. The usage has fallen into the conservative hands of children, but of old "the Maiden" was a regular image of the harvest-goddess, which, with a sickle and sheaves in her arms, attended by a crowd of reapers, and accompanied with music, followed the last carts home to the farm. " ('Star Names' R.H. Allen 1889 )
Most of the associations to the constellation and the stars that make it up are not that hermit like ... except in the areas of study and learning.
