8:49  am  AHST  10/01/2024
   11:49  am    PDT  10/01/2024
   2:49  pm    EDT  10/01/2024
   7:49  pm    BST  10/01/2024

Libra is the perfect sign for what’s needed at this time in our history. It deals with relationships, yes, but also it’s the only sign that has an inanimate object as its descriptor, the scales. As an air sign, its “job” is to inform us of the need to balance, to maintain a relationship with an opposite polarity as a way of understanding the way Creation works. Nothing exists without its opposite. And the magic of Creation is in how those opposites attract, repel, argue, inspire, and otherwise create beauty, love, and perspective in our lives, since Libra is ruled by Venus.

We are now so deeply embroiled in polarities at this time in our history, life and death, truth and falsehoods, safety and disaster. More and more lying is being done on the public stage of our societies; the truth seems more and more diluted. What is it we need to pay attention to in order to find that blessed sense of balance? Living well, or at least sanely, in a time of a paradigm shift, as I’ve said here many times, is no easy thing to accomplish. We’re at the end of the era of the Industrial Growth Society, as Joanna Macy has said. What’s needed is a shift in consciousness, which then necessitates that we, each of us, must do the internal work to shift our ways, our thoughts and beliefs, toward a sustaining and life-affirming culture. This shift inevitably involves coming to grips with the darker, or “other” elements of our world, both inner and outer. This is the psychological and spiritual territory of an eclipse.

Here's how this particular Solar Eclipse chart brings these deeper issues to the fore. Sun, Moon, and Mercury are all squared (forming a challenging right angle) to Mars, the activator. In Cancer, however, Mars is deeply dependent upon feeling, emotions, and sensitivity, which of course is not what our culture has supported as its prevailing values. Mars, interestingly enough, is going to remain in Cancer far longer than its usual 2 months in a sign. It will be largely in Cancer through the month of April 2025. This is a long period of tending to our emotions, watching where we’re offended, learning to examine our feelings and when to take action on them and when not to. Also on a larger scale, its placing the focus upon the domestic needs of the People.

So its appearance in this chart, in a challenging aspect to the Solar Eclipse, is asking us to check out our emotional attachments, especially to political causes, and particularly in the US. I say this because Mars will make a brief appearance into 0˚ of Leo exactly on Election Day (sound the trumpets) but then turn retrograde on December 6^th and finally go back into Cancer again on that all-important day, January 6th, 2025. With Mars in Leo we may see some very fiery, post-Election Day action, which could lead to being very uncompromising, even cutthroat ways of showing wounded pride. However, exactly on January 6^th, that martial energy becomes once again focussed upon the sign that is the US’s natal placement, Cancer. And on a larger scale, the world is watching. Will democracy die? Will we honor the needs of our collective family?

Adding to the emotionality of this chart (which is lacking any major planets in fire signs) is a Grand Trine in water signs: Venus in Scorpio, Mars in Cancer, and Saturn in Pisces. Here is a powerful planetary placement that highlights an intensity and fervor which the energetics of the eclipse magnifies, and brings out the shadow of our emotionality to above the surface, into the public eye. It’s a very shadowy emotionality, as Venus in Scorpio is in its detriment, opposite the sign of Taurus which it rules, and Mars also is in its “fall” opposite the sign of its exaltation in Capricorn. These categories are not good or bad judgements, but are ways of illustrating that a planet’s usual strengths are not employed in these signs, but must be “worked’ to overcome possible awkward tendencies toward unconscious manifestations, given they are in a polarity sign that’s opposite to their easiest expression.

And in the background, Pluto, as we’ve said previously, has backed into Capricorn for a brief time, finishing up old business of breaking down old outworn systems of organization in our world, or making them so blatantly obvious that we become aware of the need for change. Pluto will go direct on the 11^th of October, and go into Aquarius on November 20^th for the next 20 years. No one alive now will ever see Pluto in Capricorn again. So this marks a shift into a new era, the beginning of a truly global cooperative society. Since outer planets move so slowly, the initial changes will be subtle. But a maxim for these generational passages is: the more subtle, the more powerful.

Jupiter will also go retrograde on the 9^th, and will not go direct until February of 2025. Retrograde planets turn their influence inward, into the inner realms of our awareness. Jupiter governs our urge for growth, expansion, but also our deeply held beliefs, our ethics, our laws, and our ideas of integrity. These are most certainly on the table for humanity now, facing as we are, the perils of global extinction, and the last desperate attempts of the petroleum and nuclear power industries to revive themselves, as they continue to ignore the environmental risks to the planet, and do active damage to individuals who champion environmental causes¹.

An eclipse in Libra asks us to look at where we shy away from Libra’s directive to balance the polarities in our lives. Where do our judgements of ourselves and others get in the way, and drain our life force energies? Where is our heart constricted in our thoughts and feelings? These are the places of our personal underworld that are actually treasures, places where our power can be unlocked and more freedom and delight can be experienced. Pluto rules this underworld, and transforms us as we shine the light of acceptance, awareness, joy, humor, and humility into the darkness.

¹ Steven Donziger won a 9.5 billion dollar judgement against Chevron, for polluting Ecuadorean native land, and Chevron’s powerful lawyers placed him in jail on charges of contempt of court and disbarred him from practicing law.