New Moon in Libra

Scales With Nothing to Stand On

The New Moon arrives on Saturday October 10th at 15.49 BST, Sun exact Conjunct Moon in Libra. On paper this is the moon for peace. New intentions for balance, for harmony, for a fairer way of meeting each other. And yet there isn’t a single planet in earth anywhere in this sky. Scales need a table, and this pair has nothing to stand on.

That makes two lunations in a row. The Harvest Moon had no earth and neither does this one. Fire and air carry almost everything, with Mercury and Venus down in the water of Scorpio and only Lilith glowering from the first degrees of Capricorn. Plenty of heat. Plenty of talk. Very little ground. Meaning any peace made this week will have to be anchored by hand, in bodies, kitchens, gardens and kept promises, because the sky isn’t going to do it for us.

And there’s a second difficulty. Libra is ruled by Venus, and Venus isn’t at home. She turned retrograde a week ago and is walking backwards through Scorpio, and a few hours after this New Moon she squares Mars to the minute. The moon of harmony is taking its instructions from a planet in the underworld, mid-argument. This is still a new beginning. It’s just one that starts with the harsh truth rather than the comfortable truce.

The ruler has gone underground

Venus stationed retrograde on October 3rd, the same day Mars opposed Pluto, not a great mood to set off in. What we love, what we value, what we find beautiful and what we’ve been putting up with all return for review.

She slips back into Libra on October 25th, turns direct in mid-November, and doesn’t finish with Scorpio until early January. This is a long descent, and the New Moon falls right at the top of the stairs.

Venus retrograde returns to almost the same ground every eight years. Think back to October and November 2018. Who were you loving then, and how? What were you

tolerating? What did you swear you’d never do again? Some of that story is back on the table, and you’ve had eight years to mature a different answer.

In Scorpio she has no interest in pleasantries. She wants to know what is underneath the arrangement: the debt, the resentment, the desire nobody has mentioned, the fear of being left. Old lovers may get in touch. Old grief certainly will. Hold off on the new commitment, the dramatic haircut and the expensive purchase until she turns. Use these weeks to find out what your existing bonds are actually made of.

Venus and Mars, to the minute

Venus is square Mars as the New Moon lands. Venus in Scorpio, Mars in Leo, fixed water against fixed fire. Neither gives way easily. Scorpio remembers everything. Leo will not be made to look small.

At the lightest end this is pure friction. Are we flirting or are we rowing? Sometimes it’s hard to tell, and sometimes it’s both before lunch. Take the pause to cool off when you need to.

There’s a heavier reading too. Mars has just come off his opposition to Pluto in Aquarius, and Venus is backing towards her own square with Pluto. The three of them are locked into a fixed T-square with Venus at the sharp end. Power, desire and control, all pressing on the planet of love while she’s on her knees in the dark. Venus in Scorpio keeps the record of everything that corrodes intimacy: coercion, contempt, betrayal, the small daily violences that, women in particular, have been told to absorb and keep smiling through.

With Mars square her, that record gets read aloud. Expect grief. Expect rage, your own and other people’s, in the headlines and round the dinner table.

Rage is information. It tells you where a boundary was crossed and never repaired. The work of this New Moon is to give it a direction, so that it becomes a demand for proper consequences rather than one more fire with nowhere to go. In a chart with no earth, anger left unattended, spreads.

Mercury is in Scorpio too, still within range of Venus and separating from his own square to Mars. Words carry a sting this week. He slows from here and turns retrograde on October 24th, the very days Venus vanishes into the Sun, so by the end of the month both planets of relating are underground together. They’re pushing you to say the thing you’ve been swallowing. If you can’t yet say it to the person concerned, say it out loud to yourself in the car.

Two men before the tribunal

The Sabian symbol for this Moon: Two men under arrest account for their acts before the tribunal of society.

For a New Moon in the sign of the scales, it’s certainly apt. There are two of them. Libra never does anything alone. Notice too that they have already been caught. The hiding part is over. What’s left is the accounting: standing up, saying what you did and why, and letting it be weighed by something larger than your own version of events.

We’re watching this at scale, powerful men and whole institutions being asked to explain themselves. Venus in Scorpio isn’t impressed by a good lawyer. But the symbol is personal too. Where are you the one in the dock, and where have you appointed yourself judge and jury? Which relationship has started to feel like a sentence you’re serving? And which old verdict, imposed years ago by somebody without the facts, are you still obeying?

The Sun and Moon are pulling away from an opposition to Saturn, currently retrograde in Aries. Saturn is the judge in any chart. The fact that the opposition is already separating suggests the hardest part has been and gone. What follows is the sentence, or the release. Some things have to be forgiven. Some have to be answered for first. Wisdom lies in knowing which is which.

Where the pressure can go

For all the difficulty, this chart has exits, and most of them run through Mars. He trines Saturn and Neptune in Aries, and sextiles Uranus in Gemini. Fire to fire, fire to air. The same Mars squaring up to Venus has steady, disciplined work available if he’ll take it. The trine tightens over the coming week and it’s the best friend this New Moon has: anger put to use, the big project started, the difficult letter written and posted.

Neptune lends Mars something worth fighting for. Uranus gives him a fresh idea about how.

Jupiter, also in Leo, is making a sextile to the Sun and Moon. This is the reminder that generosity helps. So does humour, and so does the courage to go first, to be the one who says sorry, or thank you, or enough. Jupiter in Leo is big-hearted, and a big heart is the nearest thing to solid ground this week.

Behind all of it the long game still being played. Uranus trine Pluto, closing in again. Neptune sextile Pluto, half a degree from exact. The old order of power continues to be dismantled and rewired while the rest of us argue in the foreground. Chiron lingers on the last degree of Aries, the wound around standing up for ourselves getting its final airing.

Where this leaves you

By all means set your intentions for balance. That is what a Libra New Moon is for. Just make them honest. Peace that depends on somebody keeping quiet is a ceasefire, and Venus in Scorpio will have rooted it out before Christmas.

Start with the accounting. What’s out of balance? What’s your part in it, the giving too much as well as the taking? What would fair actually look like, and what are you prepared to do about it this month, with Mars and Saturn at your back? When the heat rises, move before you speak. A walk round the block, ten minutes in the garden, a sink full of washing-up. Give Mars a job.

And since the sky has no earth to offer, bring your own again. Do one earthy, ordinary thing every day this fortnight. Eat properly. Sleep. Finish one thing before you start the next. Stand on real ground while you have the conversation. Scales can only settle on something solid, and for the next few weeks that something is you.

BRING IT all HOME

If this Moon has you wondering where the ground has gone, your home is the place to find it.

My new seven-week course with The Shift Network, Shamanic Feng Shui, begins on October 27th, weaving feng shui, geomancy and four decades of shamanic practice into a way of living with your space as an ally.

Join my free introductory class, Discover Shamanic Feng Shui this Saturday October 10 th 8pm BST.

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