New Moon in Libra

Hasui Kawase "Autumn at Funatsu, Near Lake Kawaguchi"

On the 4^th of October, we have a new moon at 11 degrees Libra. New moons represent new beginnings, and this one looks like it’s about making a commitement to confront difficult, covert relational issues and energy imbalances—even if it hurts. It’s a kind of verbal and intellectual surgery that is required here. Clear-sightedness and honest, direct communication that cuts through the bullshit and rot.

Let’s break it down. Libra is an airy, intellectual sign ruled by Venus, planet of relation and values. Libra energy is all about finding the balance-point between different people and their differing needs and values. Bridging the gaps between people and creating harmony.

As a high-powered cardinal sign, and one so concerned with beauty and pleasure (Venus), Libra can be controlling and shallow. Libra energy can lazily whitewash out difference instead of doing the difficult work of enacting a fair balance. It can insist on a superficial show of outward harmony even when everything’s rotten underneath the pretty façade.

Thankfully, this kind of strategy is just not an option under these skies. Or say: it’s an option, it’s always an option. But it won’t work, so whitewash at your peril!

Why won’t it work? For one thing, Libra’s ruler, Venus, is in Scorpio, a no-bullshit sign that sees straight to the core and strips away the layers of rot surrounding it, cutting in order to heal. Venus in Scorpio is just not ok with superficial relation. It requires something volcanic, molten, metamorphic; something from the depths.

For another, Mercury, planet of thought and communication is in Scorpio too…and conjunct Saturn and the north node in Scorpio. This is the conjunction Venus passed over last month, the day before the full moon in Pisces. The karmic direction of the current story is in Scorpio, and Scorpio doesn’t whitewash. Scorpio transforms.

But with Scorpio, this transformation involves stripping away what’s dead or amputating it. Flaying the dead from the living tissue so that regeneration is possible. Scorpio is about surgery: careful, precise, unsentimental… and necessarily painful. But at best it is a form of compassion, bloody and wounding though it may be.

Venus’ conjunction with Saturn and the north node last month highlighted the need for sorting out our values, especially regarding love and money. With Mercury involved this month (and until December, as Mercury retrogrades through Scorpio), necessary relational transformations are effected via careful, precise, unsentimental thought and communication.

And in case there were any doubt as to what it this story is about, the sun and moon in Libra form a cardinal t-square with the ongoing Pluto-Uranus square, the traumatic and transformative aspect which defines these years.

It’s very simple really. Transform or die. No illusions, no excuses. Break free of what you already know is draining and depleting you, cut your losses, get out of unbalanced energetic exchanges. If words are called for, be simple and honest and direct; lay the situation bare, but try to stay balanced and kind. With Mercury conjunct Saturn in Scorpio, less is more in terms of verbal communication.

It’s beautiful when the sky is this unambiguous. Not to say it is easy. There is really not much ease or let-up to be had here—it’s all pretty hardcore. And just wait till we hit November and the fourth exact Uranus-Pluto square, and a new moon in Scorpio that pounds home these same themes, in case you haven’t been listening!

But awareness of just how much is required of us these days is a great fortifier. Knowledge is power: that’s a perfect phrase for Mercury in Scorpio. And there will never be a better, more powerful time to transform how you relate to the world than right NOW. 

There is really not much choice. “The fates lead him who will; him who won’t they drag”, as Seneca wrote.

--As an aside, Seneca was a Roman poet and dramatist of the 1^st century AD. Stoic philosophy combined with a life full of political intrigue and scandal, culminating in a forced suicide after an alleged plot against the emperor Nero. The skies make me think of him, speaking as they do (as he did) of stoicism, perseverance and integrity. Here are some more quotes, very relevant to the current astro-weather:

What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend.’ That is progress indeed. Such a person will never be alone and you may be sure he is a friend to all.  

Throughout the whole of life one must continue to learn to live and what will amaze you even more, throughout life you must learn to die.

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

Choose as a guide one whom you will admire more when you see him act than when you hear him speak.

 You want to live-but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying-and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?

Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives.

What view is one likely to take of the state of a person's mind when his speech is wild and incoherent and knows no constraint?

Rehearse death. To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate, beyond the reach of, all political powers.

What is required is not a lot of words, but effectual ones.

Retire into yourself as much as possible. Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one. People learn as they teach.

A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness.

You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good.

So called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments.

I am telling you to be a slow-speaking person.

Be harsh with yourself at times.

 

Ok, enough heaviness! (But no question, it's all very heavy. No way around it.)

Happy heavy October!