You are me, and I am you. Isn’t it obvious that we “inter-are”? You cultivate the flower in yourself, so that I will be beautiful. I transform the garbage in myself, so that you will not have to suffer. I support you; you support me. I am in this world to offer you peace;
you are in this world to bring me joy.
~Thich Nhat Hanh
Relationships are the theme for The Libra New Moon October 16
Libra values harmony and beauty. Librans have a desire to create and do things that please others. The Libran approach to life boils down to this: if we each are sensitive and accommodating to the needs of others in our lives, and if we are willing to extend ourselves to caring for those in our life, then everyone’s needs will be met.
At some point in life, many Librans realize that others around them do not operate from this philosophy. Librans then grapple with how they have been responsive to other's needs over their own, but how others have not reciprocated in kind to meet the needs of the Libran. They perceive an unfairness, a profound imbalance in how equal measures of 'give and take' are absent in the creation of their relationships.
The New Moon shines a light on the way we can navigate the turbulence of the coming months.
It beckons us to embrace the Libran spirit and to plant an intention for how we can be kind, respectful and care for those around us. If we embrace the Libran ideal of everyone considering the well-beiing of each other, then we will see it better expressed in our lives and the world around us,
That said, we may find the New Moon invitation difficult to swallow. We are feeling more primed to perceive someone or something as the source of a problem. We are readying to take a stand, to set boundaries or voice an ultimatum. We may feel passionately, as if our life depends on it, that another needs to wake up, take to heart what we want to show them about themselves, and insist they either change their ways or disappear from our life.
Libra values justice and fairness. Her constellation is The Scales that balances two seemingly separate forces. With fair attention given to both, polarity is resolved through justly measuring and weighing all sides equally.
Libra exudes charm and beauty, but in the face of injustice, Libra’s warrior nature emerges. Libra's anger is self-righteous. When the scales are tipped to one side or the other, Libra feel justified in expressing ferocity. Ancient Egyptians saw Bast (the gracious, elegant housecat) and Sekhmet (the lion-headed goddess of war) as one and the same feline. So it is with Libra.
The Libra spirit will defend and feel justified in taking whatever measures are needed to exact fairness and restore order. The challenge with the New Moon is that each person has a subjective viewpoint on what is needed to correct a situation and restore harmony. Operating from unchecked attitudes and beliefs may propel us to act in ways that underscore the very patterns that brought about the tense situation in the first place, and succeed in only inflaming the polarization already happening. It is not that we need to back down or that we are not perceiving that some action is warranted, it is that we find a way to do it with respect for the other. We can approach a tense situation with the desire to reconcile, rather than a strategy of war where there will be a winner and a loser. This will not result in a balancing of the scales.
The New Moon is happening in the context of some heady astrological dynamics through November that have us feeling like we are in a pressure cooker. If there is any consolation to this, it is what we should be feeling. Humanity has arrived at a juncture. The events of 2020 have created a crucible of energy, and the heat is being turned up. We have been given the appropriate circumstances and conditions that can catalyze humanity into shifting its current collision course with potential extinction. But in the end, the shift will happen only if we choose it. Part of what we need to face is that our earthly home is suffering from the depletion of her resources and how they are being exploited and misused to sustain us. The other critical part of the puzzle is the shift needed in how humans care for and treat each other. My recent newsletter, Coronavirus Part 2 looks at the virus within the context of these larger movements of 2020. It provides a deeper contemplation of the astrological context for what the Libra New Moon is seeding.
The New Moon prominently inserts itself into the volatile dynamics unfolding. It is effectively staging a kind of intervention,that could very easily backfire depending on how its potency is wielded. The New Moon is injecting itself into the heated argument Mars is having with Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto by forming a confrontive and stressful relationship to each of these planets. The Libra New Moon has the potential to play the role of diplomat and negotiator to help resolve mounting polarizing and divisive circumstances. How we each choose to express this can be dicey, as our actions and words may inadvertently only serve to further misunderstanding. (Mercury retrograde through November 3). Our ability to discern the right course to take may be clouded or colored by strong personal feelings that make us less detached than we would like to be.
The trick with the New Moon is to not to get caught and swept into believing we need to 'fix' a dynamic in a forceful way. Taking charge, feeling the rightness of our position, will have a beneficial outcome if we remember that we are all in this together, that at the heart of it we all have the same needs and desire for a harmonious outcome - even if we disagree with how to get there. There will undoubtedly be ways to put the New Moon's wisdom into practice in our daily life and relationships. For the US, the Nov 3 election will be a testing ground for how well we can enact this as a collective.
The 'Mirror' is an archetypal symbol associated with Libra. When we look at another we are really only seeing ourselves. If we react to another, we are reacting to something unresolved within ourselves. When we look at a given situation, what are we seeing? By shifting our perspective, the picture of what we are seeing outside of us will shift, and by default so will the image we have of ourselves.
Everything is interconnected
And nothing exists
Except in relation to everything else
Bill Harris
To embrace the deep truth that we are all interconnected, we can first recognize that everyone around us in the same pressure cooker that we are. Anxiety and uncertainty punctuate our lives and communities. Knowing this, we may more readily extend kindness and respect as we take a stand justice, fairness and harmony.
We may feel separate or different from others, may even feel that some other is threatening the beauty we want to create and see in the world. And yet, we can stop and remind ourselves that the other is not so different than me. We are more related, more interconnected than the data our five senses relay to us. We are all in this together and how we treat each other will determine the direction humanity will take in the coming months and years.
We may, indeed, need to get angry, hold a picket sign, draw a line in the sand. And, we can do this while also respecting the person or group we have identified as opposing or standing in the way of the values we are devoted to upholding. At the heart of it all, we are battling ourselves and so we need a maturity, an awareness of ourself and of others while waging the good fight for justice to prevail and for harmony to be found between humans and the living world we inhabit.
Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water. And everyone you love is made of stardust,
and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply,
and the night sky is no home, and you have cried
yourself to sleep enough times that you are down
to your last two percent, but nothing
is infinite, not even loss. You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day you are going to find yourself again.” Finn Butler
The New Moon is aligned with Spica – The Harvest
The constellation of Virgo is the Virgin, the goddess who is whole unto herself. In this starry constellation, the Virgin’s hands are extended. One hand holds a snake, a symbol of death and transformation. Her other hand holds a chaff of wheat, the harvest and sustenance that has emerged from the year’s labor.
The fixed star Spica is the Ear of Wheat that the Goddess Extends with her Left Hand.
We are being presented, at the New Moon, with the harvest of what we have sown in relationships.
Spica bestows gifts. The gift for humanity this month can feel like a bitter pill to swallow. We are being shown what we have sown in our relationship with others. The degree that we have not sown mutual respect and a shared agreement to care for those in need shows how far we, as a collective, have gone astray.
When we look in the mirror, what do we see? We may see how we have removed ourselves from relationships believing the difficulties within them are insurmountable, or we may see that we have given ourself away to others and are depleted for it, or we may see that by controlling those around us we have not let others in, or we may not know how to acknowledge and respect others because we have yet to figure out how to do this for ourselves.
LIkewise, if we are aligned with the spirit of the Libran New Moon and we have put a sincere effort to move beyond ourselves to work on, resolve and nurture our relationships, we may experience blessings for our efforts. The golden rule of most religions worldwide is to love others as we would have them love us. If we don't know how to love ourselves, then how can we love others? is a question that bears contemplation. However, the invitation this month is not so much to work on loving ourselves more, but to love others. Through giving to others what we wish to receive, we will also receive the benefit of that gift. For when we love others, in essence, we are actually loving ourselves, and our self-love increases.
Many of us cognitively understand that we are all connected. Some have had a mystical experience of the Oneness of everything, and some are still caught in projecting their pain on some outer circumstance that they firmly believe is causing the upset they feel within. If you are like me, you may see yourself in all three of these scenarios.
The Libra New Moon, in the midst of the pressure cooker of the fall dynamics, is calling us to more fully experience and move from the wisdom that all creation is interconnected, with each part and person part of each other. If we operate without this wisdom, circumstances may get more intense. The harvest is found in the recognition of the deep truth of our interconnectedness. And abundance is found in the lived experience of it. May we all seed the blessings of love and abundance into our lives and the world from how we greet the moments and opportunities of each day.
**October Special**
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