Hey all, I don't usually write astrology-specific posts, but I've been reflecting a lot on this topic so I thought I would give it a whirl. Read on and let me know what you think.
A Sigh of Relief and a Swish of her Skirts
or a straightening of her rainbow-patterned blazer ...
Venus, the planet of love, beauty, abundance, pleasure, queerness, and equity, moved from Virgo into Libra* yesterday, just a day after Mercury went direct in Leo (whew!). Venus has a hard time in Virgo, and I imagined I could hear her sigh with relief at 9 am my time yesterday morning as she moved from the sign of her fall, where she has to work so hard to attract the pleasure and relationship she's used to, to a sign where she's a ruler.
Is Kat Sandoval from CBS' Madam Secretary a representation of Venus in Libra? She's queer and nonbinary, dreamy and fun, and is a natural at working against the grain for equitable justice in the fantasy government of the show.* Could be!
ID: a 3/4 body shot of nonbinary actor Sara Ramirez (they/them) playing the role of policy advisor Kat Sandoval.
The Honey Goddess
In Libra, Venus does her usual job of attracting beauty in the form of love and relatedness, but she's also very principled and quite nuanced about building the equitable foundations for relationship. I have a friend who calls Venus one of the honey goddesses of the world. (Queen Medb from the Irish pantheon and Freya from Norse mythology could both be honey goddesses, as well as Oshun, the Yoruba orisha of love, fertility, and abundance.)
What do I mean by "honey goddess?" I mean an energy or vibe that attracts and builds with sweetness and generativity. Whereas planets in Virgo will wear themselves out in the name of service, Venus in her own sign of Libra could never. (This isn't a hit against Virgos: every sign and placement has their strengths and weaknesses.) Venus in Libra is always going to retain her self-sovereignty. She will always attract and benefit from a relational exchange as well as give generously to it. She doesn't demand that it be tit for tat or perfectly equal, but she does insist that it feel generative and satisfying in some way to all parties involved. (Note that I'm talking about Venus as she's moving into Libra right now, now how Venus and/or Libra might show up in your natal or birth chart. No matter what our natal placements are, all of us can enjoy the benefits of a wholesome transit like Venus in Libra. You can always schedule time to talk with me about your natal chart and current transits, too.)
Big Ideas: Can Equity and Justice Flow?
Because Libra is the sign of equity and justice, and Venus is a planet of attracting sweetness like honey (without killing yourself over it or working too hard) I started really thinking yesterday about how equity and justice could flow, naturally. I think for many of us, especially those involved in movement and justice spaces, these Libran qualities can feel like we must shed blood, sweat, and tears to achieve them. On one level, of course that is true. In the context of capitalism, we will never win our demands for liberation by asking nicely or playing by the rules. But in another way, in a trait that may be more central to human nature and can breathe more freely outside of capitalism, equity and justice can and do flow between and among people.
ID: The children of a small community of Kalahari San living in Namibia. A big sister holds her baby brother as other children gather around. Photo credit: Nicolas M. Perrault, used with Creative Commons License.
For anarchist and anthropologists* who learn from and are in solidarity with egalitarian peoples like the Kalahari San hunter-gatherers , they have found that most people share two traits that interact with each other. The first trait is that when they can take advantage of a situation to gain themselves a little more power or ease or resources, they often will, perhaps even at the risk of infringing upon another's autonomy or wellness. And the second trait is that people don't like to be taken advantage of or under someone's thumb. In societies where the material and societal conditions are able to support people's autonomy, such as hunter-gatherer societies, these two traits have a way of balancing each other out quickly.
For instance, it is common for a bully to be put in place by the group as a whole. Among the Mbedndjele BaYaka, who are egalitarian forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers in the Congo, a type of rough humor called moadjo is used is to prevent any one person getting a big head or putting themselves above others. That is, if a hunter made an especially large kill, the elder women would exercise their privilege to spend the rest of the day joking about how tiny and scrawny the animal was, just to keep things in equilibrium. As far as I have read, this is done with good humor and kindness, and it's done in a context where individual choice and autonomy are very respected within the interdependence of the community. Everyone in the village could expect the same treatment, because it helped avoid further conflict down the road.
The fact is, if you become a bully or exploiter in a hunter-gatherer society, you have a much greater likelihood of being killed by your neighbors. These are all folks who are handy with weapons, who have a variety of good survival skills, and who are used to having their own autonomy and communicating with each other (including with the land) as equals for their mutual nourishment. In that case, it's pretty easy to organize a group to take down a bully or a false chief.
Tending the Native Plants
These are the kinds of examples I meditate on now that Venus has entered Libra. It's a helpful practice to consider that a measure of equity and justice could flow around me, to me, from me, within me, with the ease of Venus in Libra. It's helpful to imagine that equity and justice feel as beautiful as a garden of native plants, as luxurious as a warm bath, as nourishing as a good meal. It's helpful to consider that I don't have to punish myself or to load up on white guilt for equity and justice to be present and available in my relationships and my work. This doesn't mean I would take these practices for granted. Quite the opposite, just as I would seed a plant bed or prepare the ingredients for a good meal, equity and justice can take a pleasurable and grounded kind of effort.
This is really a new frame of mind for me in many ways, as I brought a lot of unfinished business into liberation work and was acting out of a lot of trauma and shame. I'm not saying that this possibility of ease is all that equity and justice are about, or that it's all sewn up now, but I like introducing this additional facet into the work I spend my days doing. It is possible to have pleasure, reciprocity, and the honey goddess principle in movement work. It is possible to see beauty by noticing the colors and patterns present, by listening to good music, and by stopping to explore an interesting local shop or community garden as I make my rounds. It feels good, generative, creative. This is what Venus and Libra can be about.
But Everything Has Been So Bad ...
But wait, you say, how can we talk about the ease and flow of equity and justice when things are so bad?
ID: art by @mamamuralista on a white textured background, three stylized images of mothers holding children and carrying a basket or container on their heads with the pattern of a flag on each basket. Each have text above them. The text reads "Free Palestine, Free Congo, Free Sudan," and the flag on the basket correlates to the country named.
You're right. Children - babies - in Palestine, Sudan, the Congo, and several other parts of the world are dying in horrible ways in record numbers. Whole generations of children are being traumatized in ways that we can feel with our whole body, our hearts, and our psyches, while the so-called leaders in the so-called U.S. on occupied Turtle Island send more weapons and steal more resources from those lands. This happens while many of us who pay for those weapons with our taxes struggle to survive, working 2 or 3 jobs - or countless extra hours on our phones and devices at our salaried job - and still not being able to afford decent healthcare, food, shelter, and education.
But as @jonathanldent (Jonathan Dent) pointed out on Instagram, Libra is one of the two signs that has been hosting the eclipses since October of 2023 (the other is Aries). This means that the Moon's South Node - the point where it meets the path of the Sun exactly from the Southern Hemisphere of Earth's point of view - has been living in Libra since then.
While the North Node is hungry, like the head of a dragon, and moves toward the traits of its sign (Aries is a sign associated with aggression and war, as well as the more positive traits of passion and direction), the South Node is the opposite. It is the tail of the dragon, disrupting and destabilizing as it arcs away from the traits of that sign; in this case, Libra, of equity and justice. It is draining. As Dent says, "Because Libra represents justice, these South Node Libra eclipses have been playing a major role in revealing the lack of justice and cooperation that we've been seeing and feeling on a collective level. He goes on, "It seems as though this current Venus in Libra transit is making space for us to hold the lessons that we've been experiencing" through these draining eclipses. We will have the last eclipse in Libra on October 2, 2024, and then the South Node will move on to Virgo in January of 2025.
You can go to Dent's post to find out where Libra sits in your chart, and what part of your life might feel a resonance to this holding and healing that Venus coming into Libra evokes. I'm not suggesting that any of us will heal entirely from trauma that is still ongoing, but perhaps we can look at where our trauma is hurting ourselves and others and reach for some different patterns, pathways, and practices. (This is exactly what I coach, so you can book a free discovery session with me to talk it over.)
Rituals of Abundance for Lean and Dangerous Times*
But how to make some space for this holding and healing?
When you have a moment, you may want to offer a moment of beauty or desire up to Venus or your particular deity or idea of love, equity, justice, and relatedness. They often like flowers, pretty things, bits of art that you've made or found, anything honoring women or queer folks. If you have a little altar or just a clear space on your desk or table or windowsill, you can set your offering next to a lit candle or incense, or on top of a pink or green scarf or cloth.
Perhaps you want to write down a desire or an intention that's in her Venusian wheelhouse of love, beauty, partnership, equity, justice, and attracting abundance and goodness. One thing I like to do is write a cute intention full of emojis in my Notes app. It amuses me. Here's a partial example, and this intention focuses on my Libra placement in the 3rd house of my natal chart, which is a house of daily routines.
To Venus in Libra ♎ and Queen Medb 👑 , the Honey Goddesses 🍯💃🏼. Let me allow equity ⚖️ and justice ✊🏼 to flow naturally to me, around me, within me, and from me. 🌪️🙏🏼 Pant 🌱 in me and fill me with 💦 an acceptance 🕊️😌 and a vision 👁️ for beauty 🌹 and ease 🤸🏼 and reciprocity .
In my daily life 🕰️🗓️ , in my neighborhoods 🏘️ , in my rituals 🕯️ and routines 🚶♀️, with my neighbors 🎎👭, allow me to see beauty 🍄🌌, , loveliness 💒💖✨❇️, honey 🍯🐝🐻 and attraction 🧲, to see a side of equity 🧮🌈 and justice 💰💸 that honors each person's self sovereignty 👑 and connection 🔗 to land 🌍🏞️🌄and abundance 🥙💛.
Your intention doesn't have to be fancy, and you can simply carry it around for a few days or few weeks to see how it opens up space for you to reflect and participate in collective healing and loving. Whatever you do, it should definitely feel good to you as well as to your honey goddess.
She wouldn't have it any other way.
What will you do to make some space for healing and holding the difficult realities of the past year or more? How can you practice allowing equity and justice to rise up organically and noticing them in the collective? Send me a note and let me know!
*Notes
A. The etymology of the word "Libra" is kind of fun.
It comes from Latin and means two things. The first is "a balance, a pair of scales," as this is the appearance of the constellation Libra in the sky.
The second meaning for Libra is a unit of weight, a pound.
This is why the abbreviation for 10 pounds of weight is 10 lbs.
It's also why the symbol of the British pound is £. The pound's value was original based on the price of a pound of silver.
Venus is the goddess of wealth, and much of equity is seen in terms of who has resources (who's got pounds) and who doesn't, so those connections become clearer when we dive into the etymology.
"Libra" may share roots with the words "caliber" (qua libra or "what weight?" evolved to "what capacity?") and "deliberate" (to "weigh well and entirely").
The significance of "Libra" has evolved as dual meanings of liberare, its Latin root, have evolved to mean "to set free, unrestricted." We might see a clue of this in the word "liberally," or to "generously, munificently, freely" give praise or gifts from as far back as the 14th century.
One last fun fact: the Greeks did not originally recognize Libra as its own constellation - it was actually the "claws" of Skorpio. Make of that what you will.
B. In the "all your faves are problematic" vein, yes, I, an anarchist, watch Madam Secretary with my partner and we groan at all the imperial awful stuff and wrestle with the nuance the show is trying to bring to it and there's a lot we love about it and it's a mess. I understand some folks dislike Sara Ramirez' engagement as Che Diaz in And Just Like That and their defense of the character. I don't know much about it as I've never watched the Sex and The City franchise. I do know Ramirez has spoken out about Palestine.
C. You can read and listen to more from the anthropologists and anarchists at the links below:
Chris Knight, Did Communism Make Us Human?
The Book on Fire Podcast: Bullies, Mothers, and Others - Anthropology Beyond The Dawn of Everything.
D. I shamelessly revamped the last heading from dancer and choreographer Peter Carpenter (who also happens to be my little brother). He created a cycle of dances called Rituals of Abundance for Lean Times starting in 2011.