10 October: Dark Moon in Libra
Dark Moon is the pause between lunar cycles, and it is marked by a rare moment of rest and quiet in the emotional body. When Moon conjuncts Sun she cannot be seen lighting up the night sky, so for a few nights she stops acting as our nocturnal Luminary and gets to take time off from the job of activating our emotions. This is the optimal moment for emotional cleansing, setting down burdens, and preparing for the next phase of activation.
Some people call the Dark Moon the New Moon, and this is really a subjective matter. In my practice we distinguish between the two. Dark Moon is the moment of conjunction, and New Moon comes a few nights later, when the first sliver of Moon can be seen above the tree line after darkness falls. For those of us who note this distinction, the New Moon marks the beginning of the next lunar cycle, when Moon begins to act as a luminary again. New Moon is the right time to begin lunar cycle manifestation, ideally after performing the ritual cleanse we associate with the Dark Moon’s emotional quiet.
The lunar cycle is colored by the sign the Dark Moon falls in, and this month the Moon’s focus is on the sign of Libra. Libra is the sign of the Balance Scales, and also the sign of Justice. Some people mistakenly believe that Libra rules objective justice, as in fairness. But it’s more true to say that Libra’s justice is about doing justice to oneself by treating oneself fairly.
Since Libra rules the seventh house of the Other, a lot of people think Libra is all about enforcing justice in the Collective, and they get caught up in obsession over other people. These people inevitably fall victim to codependency, getting entangled in a dysfunctional vortex of giving mutual aid they can’t really afford and then despairing over living in poverty, crying over not being able to martyr themselves for tragic causes that actually have no bearing on their personal lives, and trying in an ill-fated well-meaning way to exert control over other people so they don’t suffer from negative emotions ever again. Libra does not like to hear that these behaviors are not actually altruistic, but are instead deeply self-serving and problematic.
It’s actually not like Libra to be emotionally verklempt, because Libra is an air sign. A healthy Libra is characterized by emotional lightness, logic, and sound reason. A healthy Libra does not become emotionally dysregulated easily and does not fall victim to unwarranted grief over other people’s problems, because they are well able to detach themselves from watery and fiery feelings and zoom out to see the big picture of reality and the actual role they play in it. It is necessary for Libra’s growth to mature into the capacity for objectivity and intellectualization. Libra needs this detachment to see their true sense of purpose, and to understand that they need to understand the role of the Self in order to productively provide service to the tangible Other (distinct from the imaginary, projected Other).
As I always say, regardless of whether or not we have planets in Libra, we all have Libra on the natal chart. So that means nobody gets to escape the duty of maturing this part of our personalities. In order to mature the Libra parts of ourselves, it is necessary to understand that we cannot provide service to the Libran Other without developing a strong foundation in our Arian sense of Self.
100% of the Libra Suns I know loathe and despise the idea that they need to develop a mature, realized sense of Self to provide healthy service to Others. They would much rather live as slaves to the Collective. But of course it’s natural for immature people to desire to remain immature, because staying immature is easy and requires no investment of effort.
To this all I can say is that we all have to do things that challenge us if we want to grow up. These days a lot of people get away with remaining immature until death, and that is also a choice Libra is free to make if it really is too harrowing to think of the Self. Freedom of choice does give us the freedom to succumb to having a weak personality.
This Dark Moon falls within opposition distance of Saturn in Aries, and that is actually extraordinarily supportive to our process of developing a strong sense of self. Structural foundation is Saturn’s domain, and while traveling through Aries it is our sense of self that he is building.
Opposition can be a challenging transit, because it brings us into awareness of the polarized aspects of our personality. In this case the polarization that is highlighted is the contrast and interplay between the Self and the Other. We are forced to acknowledge that without one side or the other, we fall out of balance. Opposition brings our weaknesses into the light.
All that said, not everyone has dysregulation in the Libra part of the chart. Some people are overly Arian and deprioritize the Libran Other. For those people, this lunar cycle will bring the opposite challenge, calling for the opposite kind of maturation in the sign of Libra, the act of giving more weight and importance to others instead of overidentifying with the Self. For these people Saturn’s presence in Aries serves the purpose of creating healthy limitation.
Immature Arian people resent the idea of limitation, feeling rather strongly that they ought to have ultimate freedom to pursue their every desire to fulfillment. But the reality is that life cannot exist without limitation. Every decision we make sets limits. Even the decision to put off making decisions in an effort to limit our limitation sets a limit – living that way severely limits our movement towards maturity and personal growth.
So how can we all make the most of this lunar cycle that begins with the Dark Moon in Libra? Using the image of the balance scales, we need to place the Self on one side and the Other on the opposite side… and then invest our effort in developing the side that has less weight, in an effort to balance the scales.
A lot of people these days don’t understand what balance scales are for because most of us use electronic scales nowadays. The whole purpose of balance scales is to add weight to the lighter side until the scales reach a point of equilibrium. Scales that are out of balance are useless.
