Today is Friday, Sept. 30, 2011. The Moon is in Scorpio all day today. It leaves for Sagittarius at 12:42 am EDT Saturday morning, where it will spend the weekend – perhaps finding god after its sexy Friday night?
That said, relationships continue to be the theme, with or without sex involved. We often try to find ourselves in our relationships, putting to them the questions of “who am I” and “what do I want?” and getting quite stuck – and building up toxic resentments – when we cannot find our answers there. In fact, Jan Seward addressed this very phenomenon in her column yesterday evening, noting that we often look for partners who embody the parts of ourselves we’ve repressed and cast off. Unfortunately, the longer we’re faced with this mirror of all we are not — but wish we were — the more likely we are to take out our pain on our partner.
Clearly relationships don’t have to be that way. The solution is to focus on self-awareness. The question many of us face is figuring out how to keep that focus and still stay in an intimate partnership, without one or the other taking over. How can we feel free enough to explore ourselves fully as part of a pair? How can we maintain a functional partnership if we need to be free?
Right now the conjunction of Venus with Saturn in Libra gives a palpable sense of the confinement inherent in bonding. This is not to say that bonding is inherently bad or unwanted or unproductive, and it may not necessarily feel confining. But to clearly sort through any feelings of confinement requires maturity. Looked at another way, this aspect could also imply a very strong bond or productive relationship, which is the reward of maturity.
In that case, it becomes clear that jealousy is not the answer to how to form a productive bond – it’s the problem that gets in the way, and it could rear its head this weekend. Look at it clearly if it does, and get to know your issues. There is a minor planet conjunction coming up closer to the Full Moon in a couple weeks that may bring up some real shadow material. So this is a better time to get the ball rolling if anything in your relationships requires some negotiation. Conversations about loaded issues tend to go better when they are not initiated under pressure, and also when you know what you would consider to be a resolution. In terms of the astrology, Mercury quincunx Jupiter right now is calling for communication and the ‘stronger party’ may want to slow the process down. If you can let off a little pressure now, you may avoid backing yourself into a corner down the line.
In any case, the Libra Sun is also encouraging expression. It engages the Mars-Vesta opposition, making a sextile to Mars in Leo and a trine to Vesta in Aquarius. Say what you need to say and create what you need to create. If the ‘male desire versus female chastity’ facet of that opposition has been feeling tense for you, the Sun may provide a third-party outlet for that energy: creativity. That opposition is also holding the ideas of ‘do your thing versus get involved’, ‘bravado versus service’, and ‘pride versus humility’. But the expression and creation offered by the Sun seems to say that you can make getting involved ‘your thing’; you can throw your bravado into the service of something larger (protesters on Wall Street, perhaps, with visits from Michael Moore and Roseanne Barr?); you can take personal pride in what you’ve created while still having the humility not to need your name in lights on a marquee.
Part of it comes down to finding the balance (there’s that word again – go figure!) between long-term planning and short-term steps toward your goals. You want a balanced relationship? Have one open conversation this weekend with your partner about something you want, but never talk about. You want to be an actress? Dig out a favorite monologue or poem and recite it to the trees. You want to be part of the revolution that changes the world? Take the inner lessons you learn from astrology each day and take one clear action in the wider world based on it this week. Begin to display a little devotion, and it could become your drive.
Looking for insights on how this week’s astrology affects your personal Sun and rising signs? Try out Planet Waves Light, our streamlined horoscope service. For deeper cultural context and astrological investigation, the premium Planet Waves subscription includes the same horoscopes, plus extensively-researched articles on Fridays.
Darkmary, thank you for the inner view, there’s something about your passage that is shedding phosphorescence. Amanda – that fungi has a lot of information built it. Many, many thanks to you both.
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My offering for today:
“According to Hesiod, and this I have corroborated through my own experience, most dreaming breaks down into two basic types. For visionary or “true” dreams, you go through a gate made of Ramshorn, the algorithm of their curling is what establishes the ‘truth factor’ of the dreamwork there. Another, more heavily trafficked realm is approached through an ivory gate, a tangled mess of tusks –all shapes and sizes from elephant to boar tusks – it looks more chaotic and militant.” Continued here…t
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darkmary: Thank you for the passage from Rilke. The selection demonstrates your good sense for the moment and helps the rest of us catch up with you.
Amanda:
Separate kudos for the photo. A pleasing composition and something to ponder, all in one.
Thank you once again for a description of useful protocol that synchronizes with the astrology. Starting to communicate before a crisis lays a foundation for broader and deeper understanding. Also, once again, the concluding paragraph is fine like sterling silver. Thanks for helping us to navigate with awareness and responsibility.
Thanks for these questions and reflections, PW, and Amanda for your photo. I don’t know what your eye sees, but nature unfailingly reflects for me my internal landscape. “You are whole,” she says, “and holy.” I almost always cry. On my kitchen table, a collection of seed pods, feathers, moss, and bones accumulates, the first of autumn’s gifts bestowed on long walks. The days shorten and I sink further into the earth.
Just one year out of a fourteen year marriage and the landscape of relationship is, by necessity, much more internal than external. And yet all of the questions that get played out in relationships are more relevant than ever. “Who am I? What do I want?” But instead of so frequently acting these questions out, I hold them now, inside. This is not to say that I never look to others to find the parts of myself I have repressed or cast off. The world is our mirror and until we have brought all that is held in the dark to conscious awareness, we will seek out our reflection. Sometimes my desire to know myself is so intense that I seek my reflection like the proverbial bull in a china shop. Not so delicate. Sometimes I feel like I should extend apologies, just as a general matter of principle. Bulls in china shops do not get many dates on Friday nights, so, miraculously, or perhaps, quite obviously, the world conspires to throw us back on ourselves again and again. And so I draw my awareness inward, deeper.
Thank you, especially, for these past couple week’s reflections (PW writers and readers who write, alike) about the equinox, new moon, and Libra stellium. (God, it has been tense and intense.) It has helped this Libra rising discover old and realize new ways to find balance and expression, hopefully without stepping on toes and breaking the china.
This morning, the first thing I read was a passage from Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. With gratitude I share it:
To go forth now
from all the entanglement
that is ours and yet not ours,
that, like the water in an old well,
reflects us in fragments, distorts what we are.
From all that clings like burrs and brambles—
to go forth
and see for once, close up, afresh,
what we had ceased to see—
so familiar it had become.
To glimpse how vast and how impersonal
is the suffering that filled your childhood.
Yes, to go forth, hand pulling away from hand.
Go forth to what? To uncertainty,
to a country with no connections to us
and indifferent to the dramas of our life.
What drives you to go forth? Impatience, instinct,
a dark need, the incapacity to understand.
To bow to all this.
To let go—
even if you have to die alone.
Is this the start of a new life?