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♎︎ Libra

​The Libra constellation represents the clarity of good judgement. Libras are highly selective, diplomatic, and fair, but their usual temperance can also give way to prejudice and drama.

Element:     Fire

Motive:      Power

Virtue:     Courage

Zodiac:        Ram

Colors: 

Red, Yellow, Black

Deities:

Agmar, Maratha, Lazaros, Valarian

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October 1 - October 21

The 21 Days of Libra range through most of October.

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Air Sign | Dawn & Dusk

Libra, the 2nd Air sign in the Zodiac, embodies the radiant beauty of the sky, symbolizing the transformative light that heralds the arrival of a new day and the enchanting hues that grace the horizon during dusk. Just as the the daily cycle brings clarity, order, and chances of renewal, Libras bring balance, harmony, and aesthetic refinement to the world. They are seekers of justice and fairness, infusing their surroundings with a gentle elegance that may inspire and liberate others.

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Like the ever-changing hues of the sky throughout the day, Libras remind us of the beauty that can be found in diversity, and the importance of embracing different perspectives. They have an eye for symmetry, proportion, and grace, and they are drawn to create spaces and experiences that evoke a sense of equilibrium. Their presence brings a serene and calming energy, like the gentle rays of the morning sun that illuminate the world, or the warm, contemplative hues that herald the end of the day.

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Libra shines as a mediator and peacemaker. They can see different perspectives and find common ground among seemingly conflicting viewpoints. Their diplomatic nature helps them navigate complex relationships and foster connections based on mutual understanding and respect. 

Just as Dawn and Dusk signal the transitions between Day and Night, Libra symbolizes the progression of life through each passing moment, inspiring us to seek balance within ourselves and find a sense of inner peace. Like the daily cycle of the sky, Libra illuminates the path towards unity, reminding us of the interconnectedness of all things. Libra's influence brings clarity, order, and an appreciation for the inherent balance that exists within ourselves and the world around us, from the first light of day to the very last. 

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Power Sign | Selection

There are many great phrases about karma, such as talk shit, get hit, or fuck around and find out. But the classic physical law works well here: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.This law of Balance drives Libra’s innate sense of justice and righteousness, striving to be a strong advocate for themselves in negotiations. Though this can take a wrong turn if the standards for this fairness are too ideological in nature rather than a genuine reflection of their needs, this diplomatic ability can be a great starting point for mutualistic relationships. A tit for tat attitude is not always ideal for dealing with life’s ups and downs and forging alliances for the long haul, but in business dealings or acquaintance level connections this ability to remain impartial and not invest too heavily is perfect. 

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When it comes down to it, life’s not fair.  Making it your personal mission to try to make it that way might seem like a frivolous quest doomed to failure, but just because life isn’t fair doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to make it just a little bit more so and level the playing field for those who are truly getting the short end of the stick. There are those out there expending plenty of energy taking advantage, enacting cruelty, or trying to tip the scales in their favor, so in accordance with the law of Returns there are Libras out there to balance things back out again. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it is cycled and redistributed, so that is why we must be careful with what we put out there. Even if we feel it is righteous or for good, there is always another side to the story. We mustn’t appoint ourselves judge, jury, and executioner.

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They say that power corrupts, and we can guard against this by distributing it so that no one person holds too much. This keeps us accountable to one another. Libra needs to remain wary against any one size fits all solutions, and cultivate appreciation for the variety of viewpoints we have in this world in order to keep from becoming dogmatic and paranoid. While desire for order may be coming from pure intentions, and wanting to preserve the ‘good’, there must always be separation between the selector and enforcer of that selection, which is why the Power motive is distributed among four different elements. Air is far removed from the practical ramifications of earth, and while it is important to explore theory it must always be balanced with the need for embodiment. 

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Personal Life / Personality

Those born under the Libra constellation or with a Libra influence in their Star Chart tend to have an aura of fairness about them, both in the sense of beauty and of the equity, justice, and balance that they see to. 

  • Taste, temperate, 

  • Obsessive, compulsive, eccentric, 

Interpersonal Life / Relationships

  • Selective, attractive, well-groomed, dedicated, communicative, affectionate, loving, fair, friendly, charming, congenial, decent, free, liberating, protective, benevolent, enthusiastic, 

  • Critical, avoidant, dismissive, gaslighting, mean, controlling, manipulative, unemotional, dramatic, narcissistic, inauthentic, rude, judgmental, bratty, superficial, shallow, gossipy, unforgiving, neglectful, 

Social Life / Society

  • Capability, analytical, stylish, graceful, tolerant, sociable, dignified, respectable, popular, gracious, reasonable, rational, principled, composed, influential, intelligent, conscientious, 

  • Fake, vindictive, militant, adversarial, oppressive, repressive, intolerant, bossy, performative, deceptive, administrative, complacent, sensational, authoritative, dictatorial, dogmatic, reactionary, provocative, righteous, 

 

Archetypal Story of Libra

Sarah is a normal teenage girl. She likes dress up, stagecraft, long walks in the rain. But when her hobby time gets interrupted by real world responsibilities, she turns to dark magic invocations to rid herself of inconveniences. One night while babysitting this takes an ominous turn as her incantation actually works, summoning the King of the Goblins to take her annoying baby brother away. Realizing her ‘evil’ stepmother would probably not approve, she attempts to negotiate with Jareth for the return of the child. He offers him back if she can solve his Labyrinth and make it to the castle in the center, and using his time powers winds the clock to count down her challenge. She is peppy and enthusiastic upon reaching the front gate, but gets immediately frustrated upon entering and jogging down a corridor with no seeming end. The first in a series of colorful creatures steps in to offer an alternate point of view, urging her not to take anything for granted. She endures many sets of binary choices, each forcing her to ask better questions and take into consideration what her desired outcome actually is. Over the course of her chthonic journey in the Underground, she gains Vantage or perspective which was sorely missing in her world view. 

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As she transcends the limitations of her scope, the difficulty of the puzzle scales alongside her abilities. Much as she wishes to just solve it and have things be easy, it becomes painfully obvious that she must continue to rise to the occasion, and she cannot do so alone. She acquires allies during her quest with a myriad of special abilities and she makes use of these in navigating hazards. Teamwork makes the dream work, up until the Goblin King himself, worried about their potential success in overcoming him, takes matters into his own hands and directly sabotages the bonds of friendship by blackmailing companion Hoggle who has been with her from the start. Jareth gives him a poisonous fruit to give her in exchange for sparing him from being thrown into the Bog of Eternal stench, and preys upon his insecurity about being worthy of her friendship.

 

He succumbs to this weakness, and upon biting into the peach Sarah begins hallucinating about an extravagant masquerade ball. Jareth uses this dreamy sequence to distract her from her mission and inflict her with amnesia, but she is able to break through the illusion and rejoin her friends. The power struggle between them finally comes to a head at the castle in the center of the Labyrinth, where she resists every temptation he offers and defeats him. All of the goblins in his kingdom were presumably once children won in a similar battle of wills. Victorious, she returns with her brother to the real world, and her fantasy friends make an appearance to assure her that they will visit should she ever need them.

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What Jareth seems to want from Sarah is companionship from someone more equal to him, someone who challenges him instead of being a subordinate. Despite his constant dominance displays over everything within his realm, there is something in him that calls out to the free will of the human spirit which he admires in her. In the end, she does not grant him Unity or Solidarity, they remain apart and she does not seem to be interested in any contact with him, though she quickly befriended the motley crue of other characters in spite of their eccentricities and flaws. Jareth is a Capricorn, and the structure of the journey of self discovery to the Underground he sets up for her is a gift he bestows without any acknowledged gratitude.

 

The power dynamic between them prevents them from coming to any real understanding, and they adhere to the rigidity of the arrangement as you would expect two clashing Power motivated signs to do.  The chthonic ark is reminiscent of the descent of Isis into the Underworld, where she undergoes trials to achieve her true magical power. Whereas the lord of the underworld, as we see in Hades and Persephone, is depicted as bitter and lonely as the dungeon he lives in. In the end, his reward is getting to play a game with real stakes. Hoggle might also be thought of as a fledgling Capricorn, as he is greedy, capricious, and petty. His relationship with Sarah is deeply transactional at the start, and he is shocked when she offers him friendship as he has never had a friend before. Though he makes a mistake in betraying her trust, he atones and makes it right by fighting for her when the chips are down, and overcomes his rugged individualism to find comfort in Unity.

 

Lake at Dusk

♎︎ Libra

Automation/AI, Conflict Resolution, Urban Planning

These days, justice has become synonymous with images of suits, courthouses, and political trappings. It is my sincere wish that as soon as possible this dated ‘modern’ aesthetic goes the way of powdered wigs, and we can get rid of this ‘professional’ facade and fallacy. My favorite depiction of democracy is of course ancient Greece, where each in the senate had a white stone and a black one by which to cast votes. Simple, clean, elegant, accountable.  Which is very much the vibe of Libra, Buckminster Fuller says "When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."   Elegance is a natural byproduct of fit, in a way that’s how we really check our work and I think that applies to less physically obvious structures as well. 

 

There is a lot of fear mongering surrounding automation and AI, the narrative is very nihilistic as has every wave of job replacing technology before it. In late stage capitalism, we have become so utterly dependent upon our job as our identity and reason for being, despite increasing instability in the global market and decreasing security of what once were thought of as solid jobs.The whole point of developing technology is to replace tasks which are demeaning to the human spirit, or that are better to be automated, and our ancestors toiled for thousands of years so that we could reach the pinnacle of that today. It is an immense disrespect to their sacrifices that we are not using it for its intended purpose and now trying to lay blame at its feet. So in a way, there is a profoundly physical reality to AI, but also a spiritual one. We have so many movies about golems, androids, robots turning on their masters as though we expect and deserve it, it begs the question why we even go on if we are so fearful about atoning for what we’ve done. Modern translations of ancient mythology echo this sentiment that the gods were somehow afraid of their human creations, and sought to lord over them tyrannically and try to control their potential to overthrow them, but that seems like an awfully convenient narrative for a monotheistic colonist to impose on a pagan culture they were looking to subdue no? What might scifi look like if instead we choose not to carry that narrative forward?

 

There is so much concern over what on earth we would do with our time, if we didn’t have to work a grind job all day just to keep a roof over our heads, and yet the recent social experiment of quarantine revealed a lot of people have taken the opportunity to pursue hobbies and crafts they wouldn’t otherwise have time for, spend time with their families, reflect with themselves, organize their living spaces, start businesses…the proof is in the pudding. Time will tell what adaptations might have been born out of the temporary reprieve, which allowed for a reevaluation of priorities. Two key takeaways from our global pandemic experience fall directly under the Libra mission: commuting to office jobs is not a thing we should do anymore and the fact that we devoted so much of our city structure to that end in particular now needs to be dealt with, and eliminating a lot of the extraneous administrative paper pushing jobs and repetitive tasks altogether, replacing them with AI or automation is essential to our ability to move on to figuring out what is actually generative and worthwhile for human beings to do. 

 

It might be weird to call the phenomenon of urban sprawl reclamation as ‘justice’, but I think it’s highly appropriate. The land was stolen to begin with. Equality hinges upon finding a way to distribute space to those who can actually do something productive with it, including but not limited to the first nation people who were its original caretakers. Doing away with private company ownerships of common utilities like water and power is a dream not too far off on the horizon; how that really works and what it looks like on a large scale hasn’t necessarily been seen yet. We have so many irrational fears about people overusing when something isn’t capped off and kept under lock and key… yet we allow corporations to exploit natural resources as fast as they are able. If there was no profit motive at play, and no critical supply failure to create a threat of scarcity, there would be absolutely no reason for the individual to take more than they need. Early experiments on universal basic income have been deeply upsetting to the status quo, and each step in that direction does its part to erode the rock solid yet, shockingly YOUNG institutions. The vast majority of publicly traded companies don’t live past 50 years old, though the life expectancy of a single human is much longer than that!

 

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