This evening marked the New Moon in Libra, not two days after the Fall Equinox arrived — the Sun’s passage into Libra deepening the natural year’s descent.  Luna caught up at 5:55pm EST, joining the Sun at 2° through the sign of the Scales, both lights configured in an opposition to Jupiter retrograde at 3° Aries — brighter and closer to Earth than it’s been in 70 years.

The Libra parts of us point to how beauty, truth, fairness, harmony, judgment, justice are all interwoven.  Our natural pursuit of these things, and the adjustments needed to get there, are stared down by the momentum of our willpower — ever at work, but partly halted at present.  We see through a fractured, crystalline looking glass at the relative potential along many different paths.

The Sun’s autumn announcement into zodiacal Libra, from the orbital vantage of Earth, means that by essential dignity the Sun has entered the sign of its fall.  Coincidence in the names?  Not one bit.  Halfway between maximum light on the summer solstice and maximum dark upon winter’s, here we find equal parts day and night anywhere in the world, with light decreasing — opposite the Sun’s exaltation in Aries, which follows the Spring Equinox, the midpoint of increasing light.

For all its supposed concern with veneer, balancing of power dynamics and copper-mirrored drama, remember that Libra, the sign succeeding Virgo but preceding Scorpio, marks the Sun’s descent into the underworld.  If it never clicked, the little symbol for Libra itself represents the Sun setting on the western horizon.

Part of the myth of this harvest-time descent of the Sun is the judgment of the soul, reaping what one has sown, and a kind of airy contemplation or reflection on one’s relative bounty.  Virgo and the Harvest Maiden very much synthesize and translate into this.  The sometimes wry touch, or ‘sardonic bedtime story’ in Virgo’s third decan lead to Libra’s commencement in the Balance amidst an ongoing decline of light.

In the Egyptian myth of Ma’at, the heart is weighed against a feather.  On a literal level, this makes little sense — hearts are definitely heavier, and ours figuratively crash against each other with heavy judgments and the decisions that reverberate from these… rather unlike the way a feather drifts from flighted vessels towards a cooling earth.

The mythopoetic dimensions here, and their enduring association with Libra, point us to a gentler way perhaps.  ‘Fence-sitting’ libran stereotypes aside, this revolving, contemplative place — of where one’s heart is at, of assessing power dynamics along the seesaw of Self and Other, varying intensities of immersion or apartness, of being ‘above or below’, of action itself… this fulcrum of thoughtfulness is best attuned to compassion before judgment.

The act of judging is not necessarily confining someone to a judgment or writing them off — judging is an ongoing function of the psyche and a major part of life.  We’re constantly weighing the relative merits of one decision versus another as we make moves on the board.  The more fiery among us might sometimes leap before this process, but hey, stunt doubles and erratic tyrants with their fingers on nuclear buttons are just built from different stuff.

I jest, but understanding the conflict and comedy between willful push and thoughtful pause — singular action and multiple paths — makes up a nice chunk of the natural mystery in how Fire signs and Air signs ‘oppose’ each other, yet like any Water-Earth astrological axis they share the same polarity.  Not that all Air signs are known for pause, but yeah.  Lots of polarity playgrounds y’all.

While ostensibly softened by Venus’ rule, Libra is a cardinal sign, marking the instigation of a season in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere.  Libra carries the generating yet somewhat undifferentiated nature of cardinality, yet its exaltation ruler is Saturn, whose more malefic dimensions include negation and the sense of fate’s inescapability.

Of the four cardinal signs, Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, the pair that are considered ‘yang’ by polarity — Aries and Libra — are those that mark a season whose name is a verb.  Spring and Fall might be perceived as bringing about the stasis of Summer and Winter.  Yet relative light and darkness are always dancing in eternal flux. 

Whether you flip the seasons or the zodiac for the Southern Hemisphere is less important — the waxing and waning of light that makes up the seasons, and the living, breathing archetypes of the planets, are constant and ever entangled in geometries both beautiful and spectral, endlessly broken down into flickering, fractal beauties.

With Libra and the year’s merging sunset, the surrounding climate of psyche is less a vehement, Ram-like push forward and more a weighing of the ideal against the real, a weighing of beauty and truth, taking a lovely (or displeasing) veneer and the content of one’s character into context together.  The shape of a situation on its surface, and what it is at its core as we peel back layers amidst descending nightfall.

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Just some dynamics to look out for:

*action given pause, momentum weighed against myriad different paths and potential outcomes

*struggling for balance

*authenticity versus deceit

*fairness and balance as a structure, or an artwork to be shaped in relationship, rather than randomly encountered or not actively maintained

*a different kind of division, based on differing visions

*Saturn is the exaltation ruler of Libra, which adds a judging, evaluating quality… best ‘stay flow’ with it than tie weights to the feet of our words as we plunge in together

*the seeming contradiction of fighting for peace, the realization that both are interwoven and will remain so, because they are parts of the Story that already exist to live and be lived by

*some kind of detail, project, joint venture, conversation, relationship or healing process using up an inordinate amount of mental energy

*a sense that a lot of mental work is being done, with the bulk of the action yet to come even if current efforts are pronounced

*an issue of resolution, forgiveness, clarity of motives, alignment of pursuits between one party and another

*the need to have ‘that’ conversation, whatever it is, not only because it’s forthright, virtuous or what have you, but because it’s really practical for energy conservation (present Libra placements ruled by a fallen Venus in Virgo, with Mercury retrograde in Virgo conjunct her)

*if you have a need that’s going unfulfilled, state it; if the person, people, or entities in question aren’t receptive to that, the conversational nature of the universe will respond with something because karma (action) involves boomerangs and reactions

*’they only want you when you’re winning’, ‘nobody likes you until someone likes you’

*not letting resentments eat up your power

*it might help to ‘stop’ evaluating a friendship, bond, unspoken soul contract of some kind going awry — because the act of pursuing perfect fairness, adjustment, or composition of a power dynamic can itself become an unhealthy obsession

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Part of the paradox in Libra’s theater — that holding up of mirrors between Self and Other — is that evaluating a situation with the hopes of promoting objective fairness or balance still involves subjective value judgments, and the revelation of personal bias or preference in regards to truth, beauty, and striving for any kind of transcendent Logos.

(Think of Hollywood’s preeminent court jester Sacha Baron Cohen, born with the Sun and Uranus conjunct in Libra — electric, highly erratic and prodding in how he holds the mirror to people in their embarrassing feats of self-revelation.  Like Saturn, who exalts in Libra, he creates the surrounding container, and the ‘will’ of others does the rest of the work.  And yet, his own politics are basically implied, despite a ‘no one is safe’ game.  Another kind of gonzo Libra inspired by Baron Cohen, Andrew Callaghan of Channel 5 and formerly All Gas No Brakes, is similar in such implications despite his open, sort of humanitarian and theoretically neutral approach.)

We’re working with endings, beginnings, aesthetic critiques, striving ideals and the ‘dirt under one’s nails’ required to seek, build or continue building anything worthwhile… and we’re faced with adjusting our course, whether partly or entirely, to reach a place of better communication, consensus, and a more even (or simply preferred) power dynamic.

As Mercury retrograde in Virgo conjuncts our fallen Venus in Virgo — ruler of the present Sun and Moon — remember one of the essential facets of ‘virgoan prudence’…

Following Leo’s focus on the exchange of light and dignity between parties, Virgo energy, at its best, has less to do with criticizing what is different, open, expansive or may be perceived as less discretionary — and more about drawing attention to the sanctity of focus itself. 

Mercury exalts in this sign because of its ability to narrow down priority, and help us execute moment to moment in a way that values the economy of personal energy, such that Spirit can move through the contours of everyday life in ways that lead to balance as above, so below.

Mercury as Hermes, messenger god, mythical mediator between Sun and Earth… likes this home, because here the Divine Heckler is tempered by that humility and discretion — purifying the ‘little paths’ of the everyday, such that we can move out and make room for the welcoming of the Ideal into our earthly temples.  Mercury and Venus, as the two planets between Sun and Earth, have thousands of years of historical association with ‘merchants’ (Mercury), items of beauty and the coining of money, as well as the corporeal paradox of having matters of commerce near to places of divinity.  ‘Earth and Sun’, ‘human and the heavens’ type crises they flit amidst.

I had to drink a cold brew to finish this instead of my usual matcha because it’s Sunday and places close early, so I have also failed at commerce and my, uh, temple is crashing amidst night’s descent.

Swim well stargazers ~

—A.B.

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