There is a stellium in the grace and diplomacy of Libra.  The Sun moves across its third decan, with Jupiter and Mercury together in earlier degrees of the Scales.  Mercury is now at a square to Mars, as the red planet conjoins Pluto in Capricorn.

Libra asks what beauty looks like, not only as an aesthetic but a principle — of grace, of harmony, of relationship with the Other at large.  Romance, yes, but the romance of seeing Self in its blend with all that seems external to it, all that seems outside ourselves.  Fence-sitting or judging wisely, a wind blows and autumn leaves rest where they may, every context beautiful from one vantage point or another.  A zodiac sign whose symbol represents the Sun setting, the great exhalation of the year begins — the counterpoint to Spring’s zeal in all of its beautiful fallenness.

Upon Capricorn, the commencement of Winter in the northern hemisphere, the year’s lungs are empty and the stillness of release visits us.  The sturdiness of the vessel is felt in its contracted emptiness.  The last orgasms of fall leave a satisfaction and insatiable curse, both rampant consumption and undying asceticism.

Capricorn surveys the land, the Queen of Pentacles’ face turned downward, the Queen of Disks face turned away taking stock of what is, what has been built, what masterful uses it has.  At best we see the erection of something which lasts — purposefully, steadily, unwaveringly — and perhaps many facets of this should never cease, will always be ‘tried and true.’

Yet Capricorn might resist the changes Pluto asks of it — the staleness of certain dogmas, the brittling bones of patriarchy that Libra might seek to equalize, that Jupiter the admiral general might seek to level.  Libra exalts the Sea Goat’s ruler Saturn, yet realizes some of his oldest iterations are reaching their last gasp.

Such themes drifts heavily through the air, as these two cardinal signs of more ‘objective’ elementals focus on society and world-forging.  Presidential scandals come frothing up as the Mercury-Pluto square tightens, and language itself flits across the stage guised not only as a morphing instrument for communicating the suchness of meaning — but as something which can become as sedentary as it is changeable.

I will share some reflections I wrote down last week that feel appropriate for the Moon in Pisces, especially in its recent passage through Aquarius and momentum towards the coming Full Moon in Aries.  Others have made good mention of such things, and I’ve surely put these thoughts a hundred different ways in my life as they’re some of my favorite to point out — and rather important in my eyes…

Words of Stone

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Nouns are dangerous.  Like language as a whole.  “You’re a liar!” comes off different than “that’s a lie” or “I feel like you’re misrepresenting that.”

“That makes her a misandrist, not a feminist” is an ironically aggressive, objectifying way of saying “that’s an example of misandry, not feminism.”

Stop noun-ing people!  Those woo-ish sayings can hold some weight: we’re human be-ings, human do-ings — not so much nouns to be reduced or confined to.  Ever hear the words “we are what we repeatedly do”?  That implies action, not some static label like “you’re a femi-nazi” or “you’re a nationalist.”  Dissect an action rather than placing someone into a box of an abstraction.

An important thing to remember in one of many revolutionary eras is that language must be wielded with utmost care — whether it’s a pronoun someone would like to be addressed by, or a label for oppressive types of behavior.

Getting wrapped up in the often dangerously literal and definitional aspects of language… can nurture some of the same objectivist, materialist tendencies that forged patriarchy as it is.  ‘This is this, that is that’…  As my friend Casey once put it, when did language go from description to definition?

It’s always for both and everything in between, because both and everything in between all exist.  But see which ways the mind might go when we use language too much for definition… winds blow yet stir little, inert and stale, not shaking up our viewpoints to the point of healthy openness, not relativizing our stances to the point of an embrace rather than a fist.

Yet form and matter, in all their impermanence, serve as a container for subjective perception.  Use language too much for description and we might become overly subjective… a different type of hyper-sensitive, or too “it’s all good, man.” It's not 'all good.' Get off your fucking couch.

The birth of patriarchy went hand in hand with the birth of agriculture, when people began to be viewed as property.  “That’s mine!”  This is this, that is that… what do those things even mean?  To you?

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Words are cool though.  Wield them wisely.

​[ Artwork by Augustine Dunn ]