This is a very obscure question, I said, and we shall need keen sight to see our way. Now, as we are not remarkably clever, I will make a suggestion as to how we should proceed. Imagine a rather short-sighted person told to read an inscription in small letters from some way off. He would think it a godsend if someone pointed out that the same inscription was written up elsewhere on a bigger scale, so that he could first read the larger characters and then make out whether the smaller ones were the same.
No doubt, said Adeimantus; but what analogy do you see in that to our inquiry?
I will tell you. We think of justice as a quality that may exist in a whole community as well as an individual, and the community is the bigger of the two. Possibly, then, we may find justice there in larger proportions, easier to make out. So I suggest that we should begin by inquiring what justice means in a state. Then we can go on to look for its counterpart on a smaller scale in the individual.
That seems a good plan, he agreed.
~Plato, Republic
The New Moon in Libra takes place on October 12, 2015 at 8:08 PM Eastern time, at 19 degrees Libra. Libra is the 7th sign of the zodiac, the sign of relationships.
This new Moon is particularly resonant because it arrives on the final thrust of a particularly relationship centered midyear. The summer months in the NorHem saw the Venus retrograde cycle, and Mercury is now direct and retracing its retrograde steps in the sign of relationships.
As soon as Venus entered Virgo, its ruler Mercury, where we can find out more information about what Venus is doing, went direct, and one of the hallmark aspects of the Venus retrograde was a square to Saturn (the other was a conjunction to Jupiter).
It has been a summer of relationship drama and it looks like it will be a fall of relationship restructuring. Looking ahead to the Nodal shift in Virgo, we are consolidating relationship lessons now and implementing them practically for at least as long as Mercury is in Libra, and beyond.
Let’s take a deeper look at a few relationship themes that have appeared through these cycles.
* Venus is the ruler of this new Moon, the retrograde cycle included a triple square to Saturn, and at the time of the new moon is within orb of a square to Saturn.
Solid relationships require effort. That means time, energy, and concentration must be devoted to oiling the wheels of the relationship. Success in relationship is not a static ideal state. Just as life circumstances ebb and flow in different ways, so do the qualities that define a relationship. Effort exerted by the people in the relationship over time is what builds trust and makes a relationship meaningful.
* An Open Heart is a Good Start
Sharing intimacy and love with another person is one of life’s sweet nectars. In an intimate relationship we want amazing things for our partner, and we do things to encourage and support them, and sharing positive intentions for each other makes life a brighter and more joyful experience. This spills over into other areas of life, softening the many situations we’re in and the many people we relate to.
At the same time, we all have the experience of being wounded, by love and by life. Who hasn’t experienced rejection or unrequited love, or the pains of damaged trust in life? Relating to anyone with an open heart means having the awareness to do our best not to inflict our own pain onto others.
* Communication is Key
Communication heals and strengthens relationships. It’s not enough to be nominally interested in communication, extolling its importance in theory but not in practice. The work of communicating with your partner is gritty and necessary. Examine if you are more willing to talk to your friends or trusted confidants about your relationship than you are willing to talk it out with your partner. While processing in a safe and neutral environment where you can really sort yourself out before you present what’s on your heart and mind to your partner has its benefits, the conversation must also happen between partners.
Ask yourself if you recognize when your partner is communicating something to you that is important to them. Does your partner recognize when you are telling them something that is important to you? Do you take it up as a serious topic of consideration?
It’s important that people in a relationship are able to hold space for each other to process.
Libra’s polarity in Aries highlights that your first relationship is your relationship to yourself. This means in part that the more self awareness you exercise as an active virtue, the better off your relationships are.
* The Importance of Shared Realities
What is the story you and your partner share about your relationship? What is the story your partner has about you? What is the story you have about your partner?
Does your partner understand you? If your partner is telling you about yourself, perhaps assigning labels to you like unreasonable, needy, low self esteem, do you examine the truth values of each of these labels before taking them on? Do you do this together? How willing are either of you to change your stories about each other as you learn more about each other? How willing are either of you to change your stories about each other as each of you changes over the course of your individual lives?
People in relationships spend a lot of time together. Especially if you live in the same area and see each other often, or if you live together. If you don’t live in the same area, you might spend a lot of time communicating electronically or by phone. No matter the distance you are definitely sharing psychic space together, which is very intimate space. This makes it even more important to be clear about the stories you tell yourself and the stories you share, because the effects are more subtle and more pervasive.
Do you understand yourself? What are the stories you have about yourself? These can be stories about your role in relationship, how you expect partners to treat you, how lovable you are. Are you holding on to any stories that were assigned to you by parents, former partners, friends, authority figures, that aren’t yours but that you act out as if they are? It’s worth examining the stories about yourself that are influencing the way you show up in relationship.
* Venus is a Powerful Goddess
The metal for Venus is copper, a metal that conducts electricity. Relationships consume a lot of energy. Listen to any album from any era, read any play or story from any time period, pour over mythologies from ages past — love and relationship feature prominently.
Venus is a powerful planet and it’s important that we start recognizing her consuming ferocity rather than only valuing her pleasant relational qualities. This is Venus with the face of Aries or Scorpio. There are other planetary bodies and archetypes we can point to that take us into a deeper relational journey.
As Americans, we ought to examine whether we are spending too much time emotionally invested in sorting out relationships when in our era there is a lot of other important work to be done. A simple solution (so simple it’s deeply complex) to worrying about how to relate to the opposite sex is to understand that we’re all people first. Simple as that. Who’s that standing in front of you and how should you relate to them? A person first. People want love, dignity, and respect. Very simple.
Relationships done well have powerful conductive force and can produce a lot of energy. We all would benefit from learning healthier ways of relating. Something Venus in Virgo as eternally vigilant and ever deepening her knowledge of the craft is more than willing to do. Let’s get better at this! Put it in the calendar, it’s a date.
* The Sun and Moon in Libra are opposite Uranus in Aries.
People are individuals with their own goals, journeys, and desires in life. We do well to understand that our partners have interests and desires that might not always include us. And we also do well to understand that one person cannot possibly fulfill all of our needs, especially if we are complex individuals. Some of us are exceptionally unique snowflakes, and some of us are very simple snowflakes— just a fact. Expecting a single person to fulfill all of your needs puts an unfair strain on the person and the relationship.
Sometimes people unite beautifully and through the strength of their relationship produce something magnificent for all of us. This is echoing the union of Shiva and Shakti, the laser beam focus and the universal creative energy. The inner masculine and the inner feminine found externally and modeled lovingly. This can encompass a romantic relationship or a working creative collaboration. In coming together with open hearts, high awareness, and good intentions, we elevate how humanity functions in harmony with itself and with nature. Understanding that what we need can be found outside of a romantic partnership enhances a solid sense of community that is just waiting to be made manifest through us. We do well to devote ourselves to community building in our immediate environments.
The Uranus principle in this chart brings a transpersonal element into the mix. This evokes a “bigger than this immediate situation” relevance to the topic of relationships. Individual human transactions are subsumed by this broader principle influencing our awareness. Plato invoked this principle before Uranus was ever glimpsed through a telescope. He took a micro transactional situation or a micro quality and enlarged it so that it had implications for an entire State or body of people. In the same way, Socrates would observe effects on a really large scale and deduce implications for the individual. We can do that here too.
Perhaps over this past relationship centered retrograde season you’ve been noticing that when you give a lot of focus and emotional attention (emotions are powerful energetic sources) to working out a relationship, maybe even fruitlessly going in circles for whatever reason, that that process has redirected your focus and emotional attention from other areas of your life that are just as important to you as an individual. That focus and emotional attention can go somewhere that can do something real on a broader scale for a longer time. Are we as Americans over-engaging in this gyre of emotional energy drain?
This is not to devalue the importance of individual relationships — when thriving, authentic, and nourishing, these are some of the sweetest nectars life has to offer. This is simply to add a bit of reflection in this corpus of experience that seems to be a major source of gravity of focus for a country of people that has so much global influence and cultural export power.
The opposition aspect between both lights in Libra and Uranus in Aries evokes the image of striking a balance. Of recognizing the importance of individual relationships and the importance of individuals. Of recognizing the value of relationships between couples, and relationships between broader groups of people who share a purpose. Of liberating ourselves from methods of relating that do not serve. These are made apparent by the fruits the relationships bear. We are asked to invoke a fair assessment of how relationships inform the highest paths in our lives, and to be fearless pioneers in working together to advance a relational recalibration.
Warmly,
Ichrak
P.S. I am working on a write up for the nodal shift into Virgo-Pisces, but doing some research into mean node and true node now. There’s an approximate difference of a degree and a half between the two calculations so one set has shifted on October 10th and the other won’t shift until later this month. In any case, post coming soon.
