Full moon in Libra: openhearted wonder

My birth sign is Libra, that airy frivolous balancing act. I’ve never been sure what to make of that sign. I seem to be more Leo or even watery wavering Pisces. But in some ways, yes,  I am very flightly conceptualising fairness-at-all-costs Libra and this month, autumnal here in Africa, the great harvest moon is in Libra.

 

In opposition to the Libra full moon is selfish expansive Aries as a sun sign. It still puzzles me that so recently I fell in love with a man who was my opposite in so many ways. Mars to my Venus, Aries to my Libra. But of course I have plenty of that aggressive wilfulness in my nature as well. He needed some Venus. And then our shadow selves emerged and we tore apart. As Whitman said ‘I contain multitudes‘. Rivalrous factions at times.

 

As this full moon swells and drops like a luminous belly, my Venus goes retrograde in Aries, the symbol for a childish, self-interested idealisation of romantic love. Well, that too. The old dream of happy-ever-after on unrealistic terms. And Saturn, damn his eyes,  goes retrograde in Virgo, raising the threshhold of fear and caution, loss of optimism. A troubled combination of energies.

Fortunately Libra is all about balance and justice, listening and helping to create a thinking environment around us. Listening  out for  the wordless and less obvious note of hope. The hopes of a lifetime suppressed and now rising to the surface. Hope in others, hope for balance to be achieved, the delicate and precarious creative tension that holds artistry in mid-air. The ballet-dancer, the walker between towers, the dreamer who takes action.

 

And there is my salamander again, the wizard glimpsed in Fire and Air together, unstable but electrifying. A dangerous time, a time to hold still and imagine the heron perching on one leg in the rippling currents of change.

Here in the cottage, I move around on tiptoe because the rains have begun and great coal-black spiders, twitching beauties, are easily startled. When rain spiders get a fright they leap forward (not sideways or backwards) and the unwary interloper has to deal with a scrabbling  spider the size of a small dinner plate on one’s arm or shoulder or clutching one’s hair. What some of us call ‘Just Another Day in Africa.’  The trick is not to lose balance, to remove the frightened Arachne gently, put her down near an open window, bless her; and only then scream like a banshee and run like the wind.