Did you learn to ride a bicycle with training wheels? Even if you didn’t, see if you can visualize or feel in your body how it might have been like: any time one of the little side wheels is touching the ground, you feel stable — but it’s not actually the same as being “balanced,” because the training wheels are positioned just a little higher than that rear bicycle wheel. So you kind of shift from being a little tilted to one side and then back to the other side.
You’re learning how to peddle…but are you actually developing the proprioception, core strength, and motor control to peddle without falling over?
Maybe you’ve been aware of that subtle middle position where you’re balanced; maybe your body has taken the feedback from those little wheels on the sides and you are trying to get the hang of not letting yourself tilt that far to either side. But maybe not. The opportunity is there to develop these things, but perhaps not a strong imperative to do so.
There’s a difference between the illusion or impression of stability and equilibrium and their actuality. Paradoxically, once those training wheels come off, you discover that “stability” and “equilibrium” are not constant.
Rather, they are constantly shifting — and that in fact stability and equilibrium only come when you learn how to create momentum under full agency: to take the opportunities offered by the moments of discomfort and being off-balance to try a new, more integrated and focused action.
Why I am I talking about training wheels on bicycles today?
Because when the Sun enters Libra tonight at 8:05 pm EDT, signaling the equinox and the fleeting balance of equal night and day as we begin a new season, it begins moving into contact with some outer planets in a way that bears some resemblance to the image and dynamics I’ve just described.
By the end of the week, on Sept. 26, the Aries Full Moon will make its exact opposition to the Libra Sun at 12:49 pm EDT. Moon and Sun will culminate their current cycle in direct contact with the outer planet configuration that has underscored the entire summer.
Libra is symbolized by a set of balanced scales. It is associated with a love of harmony and beauty (Libra is ruled by Venus) and with relating to others; and it is an air sign, bringing out a more intellectual refinement of Venus’s artsy side in contrast to the earthier, sensual expression of Taurus (Venus’s other home sign). Libra also has a people-pleasing side and the potential to vacillate without landing as a couple of its more challenging expressions.
Yet Libra begins a season. It’s a cardinal sign like Aries, Cancer, and Capricorn, suggesting tremendous potential to initiate action and create something that had not existed before. A former mentor of mine used to refer to the potential for people with strong Libra signatures in their chart to embody “the human blowtorch” as they manifest an intensely focused, prolific, and transformative way of using their gifts to create in the world.
The first degree of Libra sits directly across the zodiac from the highly sensitive “personal and political” Aries Point; Libra provides the air to fan the flames of Aries while drawing it into a relational dynamic that reaches beyond itself.
Aligned with very early Libra is the Virgo Cluster of galaxies — the nearest galactic cluster to Earth — whose center of mass is on the super-giant elliptical galaxy M87. That same former mentor of mine hypothesized that the power of the Aries Point (and the associated early degrees of all the cardinal signs) correlates to M87 and the rest of the galaxy cluster, a source of great power and mass beyond our “personal” solar system.
Regardless whether that theory holds, it is an interesting thing to consider if you’re trying to reconcile the harmony-loving, sometimes passive side of Libra people with their ability to move the cultural needle in dramatic ways through art or politics (or both at once). Libra’s scales echo the Scales of Justice in action as well as aesthetics, with social justice also entering through its relational vectors.
Yet, as mentioned, Libra is an air sign. And when the Sun or other planets in Libra connect to other planets in air signs, life can get especially “think-y” and start to lose some traction with “doing.”
Throughout this week, we have one of those situations — but it’s special, for more than one reason.
When the Sun enters Libra, it comes into a grand trine with two other major planets in air signs: Pluto in Aquarius and Uranus in Gemini. The Sun also moves into an opposition to Neptune in Aries.
Hopefully this is ringing some bells for you: Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto have been in close aspect to each other all year. In July, they were part of the precise “basket” configuration across air and fire signs that astrologers were super excited about (Saturn in Aries and Jupiter in Leo have since moved further into their signs).
So as we arrive at the equinox tonight and begin this new season with a fleeting moment of day and night balancing the world over, we’re also being offered an opportunity to connect with renewed intention and initiative with the shifts we’ve been experiencing personally and collectively, both consciously and subtly in the background, this past summer. Yet this opportunity might not be as clear and obvious as we might like.
As the Sun moves through early Libra this week and enters that grand air trine with Uranus in Gemini and Pluto in Aquarius, notice whether you start to feel like you’re thinking in circles. Especially if you feel like some of the “big” changes and events of the summer somehow aren’t connecting or integrating fully with a clear way forward.
Those three slow, outer planets I mentioned are all retrograde. That doesn’t mean you need to backtrack or can’t move forward. It does suggest they correlate to growth processes in your life that are happening in phases, and that you’re likely still in the middle phase.
Did you catch it above when I mentioned Neptune sitting opposite the Libra Sun this week? Neptune is also retrograde currently, which describes its powers of dissolution having an inward or backward orientation.
As the Sun shines out its light to guide you forward, is its beam getting dispersed and reflected back by Neptune like a car’s high beams in dense fog, making it hard to see the way ahead? Or is that sunlight warming the fire of Aries to help generate some idealistic, Neptunian steam that can power you forward?
Encouragingly, the Sun’s grand air trine with Uranus in Gemini and Pluto in Aquarius combines with its opposition to Neptune in Aries to form what is called a “kite” chart pattern: the Sun-Neptune opposition forms a line bisecting the triangle of the grand air trine, while Uranus and Pluto make a pair of sextiles to Neptune (air to fire).
The Sun-Neptune opposition offers some tension and focus so we can better access and use the gifts of the planets in the grand trine. The sextiles of Uranus and Pluto to Neptune offer accessible ways to resolve the conflict of the opposition. But oppositions describe a need to work actively with each side of the equation to find a meeting point or compromise. And the opportunities of sextiles only benefit us when we actively act on them.
Uranus brings disruption, interruption, and inspiration to wake us up from the illusions and confusion of Neptune — if we are willing. Pluto offers the truth so we can make corrections and adjustments at the root rather than settling for the superficial — if we are willing. Neptune, for its part, offers grace as we stumble through these opportunities, tilting back and forth from one to the other, and also suggests an ideal that can keep drawing us forward rather than giving up.
Ask yourself this equinox: what have I learned during the season now closing? What has changed, been disrupted, evolved, felt confusing, or insisted that I see it more clearly?
If you were to imagine yourself right now on the bicycle of this astrology, with Uranus and Pluto acting as training wheels, is there anywhere in your life where you have you been mistaking a lot of busy pedaling (perhaps while leaning on certain supports) for truly riding the bicycle of your life? Is there any way that you are getting caught in thought loops or endless review, questioning, and revision?
How can you incorporate all (or even just some) of the insights, inputs, feedback, and processing of your experience to step into a new phase of agency in your own propulsion forward?
What could this kind of equilibrium and momentum feel like as you put yourself into motion toward the target of your own continuing self-actualization?
To be sure, I am not suggesting that this is a “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” moment. Interdependence is healthy; building community and nurturing connections with others is essential to our collective survival and thriving. Nobody “does it all alone” when it comes to life.
Functional social support systems, built one Libran 1:1 relationship at a time, are always an integral part of even our most internal, solitary processes of healing, growth, and creativity. Current world trends suggest this relational imperative is only gaining in importance, no matter how much the onrush of digital technology might try to delude and distract people into thinking otherwise.
Rather, I am suggesting that this equinox — and this whole week, through the energetic peak of the Full Moon — is describing opportunities that we could easily sleep on if we get too focused on our confusion or a fear of imbalance, and forget how much power we possess to continually keep finding our inner equilibrium as a basic, innate factor of moving forward with awareness.
Yet you might be wondering:
Are you aiming for an ideal or an illusion?
With the Full Moon conjunct Neptune on Saturday it could become harder to see the difference between those two possibilities through the glare of heightened emotions, especially if you find yourself in any kind of confrontation.
At the same time, all that sunlight the Moon is reflecting could also illuminate the point of contact between you an another (or between you and your goal) where sensitivity can elevate into visionary creativity, compassion, and responsiveness — albeit with a little careful listening, negotiation, and compromise.
Neptune working as it does, you might not know for sure which experience you’re truly having for a few more days or even weeks, after the Sun moves out of opposition to it.
If you’re anything like me, perhaps the question is more about noticing with greater attention the peripheral feedback you’ve been getting all summer and especially this week: the unexpected synchronicities and insights, the compelling need to explore hidden depths.
Change is the only constant, which means “balance” in life is always transitory. My sense is that Libra’s lesson of inner equilibrium has never been about never getting thrown off-kilter.
Rather, I think it’s more about repeatedly and actively noticing, integrating and adjusting, and pedaling forward; choosing agency when you are able and allowing the grace of surrender when necessary. Perhaps Libra’s equilibrium is even about seeing beauty in each of those shifts as they bring us in and out of connection with each other — if not in the moment, then sometime in that distant, obscured future we keep pedaling toward.
With love,
Amanda
If I can support you through however your life is changing during these wild times with an astrological consultation or some soul work sessions, please get in touch. And if you enjoyed this, please consider leaving me a tip here. I offer this writing as a gift, but it does take time and energy. Thank you!
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