"Ikani, the Lord of Time and Mara, the Mother of Life, looked out over the harvest and saw that it was bountiful. Their hearts rejoiced, for in the silence of the Balance of the Light and the Dark, the seeds of the future were singing their names.
Fall Equinox: The Balance of Light and Dark
With the Fall Equinox, we move from the energy of self to the energy of community, the time for bringing in the harvest to make sure life survives the winter. It is the time of the seed, the potential we have to save for the new life to come in the spring, when that seed germinates. What have you harvested this year? What new seeds have been born in you that will take time to nurture and develop?
We move from the harvest season of
Virgo to the Libra energy of weighing something's worth. We
associate Libra with balance (the Fall Equinox is when light and dark are
balanced), and fairness (since we also associate the scales with Law, Order and
Justice) and partnership (symbolizing the sign of marriage and
partnership). But there is more.
The scales were originally used to weigh something's worth: in the Egyptian underworld, the scales of Maat were used to weigh the soul's worth, while on a more mundane level, scales were used to set up a standard measurement so that all people and countries could have a standard measure of exchange, whether it was to measure the weight of grain, gold or silver.
The archetype of the Scales is ancient. Believed to originate in Egypt, it represented the balance of the sun at the horizon between the upper and under world (at the Fall Equinox, the Sun rests on the equator and then begins its journey South). The ancient Babylonians thought the constellation represented an altar towering in the sky. The name Libra comes from the Roman word meaning ˜the balance'. Leave it to the Romans to standardize our mediums of exchange.
Libra is considered a masculine, outgoing energy; it is a cardinal air sign, meaning Libra wants to see its ideas take form and make a difference. Venus is Libra's ruler, and as the Greek Aphrodite, this seemingly feminine energy combines feminine and masculine in a wholeness that is greater than the sum of her parts. Aphrodite, goddess of Love and Sexuality and Beauty, is intrinsically Whole, for she is born from her father Uranus' phallus and her mother, the Ocean. It is the intrinsically feminine belief that we are all one, that we need to care for our communities, which activates Libra's insistence on fairness and justice. It is the wisdom of Love which lets us see the Truth. Love belongs to all of us, and is the one Truth that makes us whole.
So the archetypal energy of Libra
is balanced, and we are called upon to balance the masculine and feminine energies
within ourselves when we offer our intrinsic worth to the world. In partnerships, if we are not whole in
ourselves, we tend to look to the Other for completion. And that's where things begin to go
wrong. A partnership of equals means
that each person is whole. When we
haven't completed the Virgo mission of knowing ourselves, we project our
missing parts and needs onto our partners.
And as we all know, no one can save us except ourselves. Those of you born during the years Pluto was
in Libra (1971 to 1984) are here to learn this lesson about relationships. And with Saturn going through Libra in the
next few years, you'll get to see how well you've learned it.
That's where this full Moon can
help us. The Moon in Aries encourages us
to have the courage to be ourselves, to trust our own intuitions and be bold
enough to try something new, to figure out what we need in a situation. Aries' inherent self-interest or selfishness
is offset by the Sun in Libra, which teaches us how to balance Self and Other. The peace and harmony that Libra loves isn't
achieved by denying your real needs, but by negotiating a real balance of needs
between partners. Aries can show us new
ways of getting what we want, while Libra keeps us on track with diplomacy and
fairness.
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