angstoic.com Astrologer, Ang Stoic
In the final days of September 2020, the Virgo Sun will reach the Equinox (Tuesday 22nd), inaugurating into Libra. This crossing marks a significant shift in the Solar cycle, heralding a change in the direction of the Sun’s rays falling on Earth. Here, at this sacred turning point, we are called to open our eyes and ears to the world of others, realising that what they have to offer is equally significant.
Passing this critical point, the all-powerful Sun now begins to glare his illuminating beams more on the southern half of the planet and less on the northern half. In the mundane sense, this augurs the official end of summer in the Northern Hemisphere while in the South, winter is over and spring begins. Astrologically, it marks the shift of consciousness from personal to social matters.
The Shift into Libra
Humans immediately experience the energetic shift of the Equinox. We become instantly aware that matters of meaning must now concentrate less on the realms of personal concerns and more on those that involve others. Our most important life decisions over the coming six months (Libra-Pisces) will tend to include the will and desires of others. If we want to reach a more harmonious equilibrium in our relationships, we must first refine our skills of negotiation and learn to compromise our intentions so they are workable in context with today’s social world.
Naturally, our social skills must be refined every year at this time, since the Sun and Moon has helped us all to evolve over the past 12 months.
The cardinal/air Libra Sun awakens us to the public spirit. We are inspired to make a conscious effort to be more respectful and friendly. Policies, law enforcement and politics will play a bigger role. Our inclination to adapt to others will shine through. Our little affectations and vanities become instantly revealed and our need to be unique and important to others becomes evident. Whether authentic or contrived, our efforts to be charming and pleasant will ring through. In any sense, we show greater interest for peace and good relations; for aesthetic beauty and art; for fashion and deportment; for ease and comfort; cordiality and graceful manners. We are called to loosen the selfish grip on our own interests and though we may waver and vacillate between our interests to satisfy ourselves and our attempts to please others, we are thrust to make an effort to “get along”.
“Getting Along” vs “Going Along”
However, let us not kid ourselves. Let us place this Libra Sun into the 2020 context. As our eyes stand witness, seldom before has the Libran inspiration to restore balance and order into our social and political affairs been so challenged. Even with ruler, Venus, in mutual reception, the authority and power of the Sun to administer fair decisions will be extremely challenged over the coming month.
Essentially in the sign of his fall, the Sun’s power is at his most indecisive/ineffective in Libra. The Sun tends to operate best when under more decisive signs (Leo, Aries). To make matters even direr, he will have to stand against the long-escalating tensions occurring in the cardinal duel between planets in Aries and Capricorn, which for the next two months refuse to give way easily. Their positions have become deeply entrenched around the late degrees of their cardinal placements (22°-26°). Here, the war between the self-centred freedoms of Aries versus the obedient conformity to Capricorn’s insistence for social order is building into a state of massive civil discord and oppression.
As we may be observing, our society has degenerated into (chiefly) two camps of extreme willfulness and unyielding judgements. Whether we are personally affected or just a concerned onlooker, one may wonder as to whether people wish well or choose condemnation upon one another. Planets in cardinal signs want to go their own way, accomplish their own agenda, often at the expense of the way of others.
Libra, also cardinal (initiating) but in the cool, idealistic element of air (intellect), lends us important tools that we can hone in our lives to work out who means well for us and who just wants to mess us around. In the balancing act, we must immediately work out who in our lives wishes us well, desires the very best for us – not only because they care, but because it benefits them too. We are encouraged to at least come to the table, listen to other peoples’ side of things. Even if those we’re dealing with seem critical of us – and the opinionated Libra is famous for prompting or providing unsolicited advice, we must determine whether the critique and assessment of others is well-meaning; ie. in the best interests of our finding peace and harmony in our lives.
We are still fresh out of the Virgo New Moon, where we learned much about the usefulness and practicalities of the discernment process. In the past month, we have learned to better discriminate between those who are useful and those not facilitating our better intentions for health and expediency of process. We have learned to cease activities and cut ties with fruitless distractions, annoying people and our often unconscious tendencies toward self-sabotage.
The Libra Sun now highlights the elements in this world that are not good for us, people who do not wish to see us well, who wish to throw our lives into disorder, for whatever selfish reason. However, we may not necessarily be so bold or decisive enough to call these out in real-time situations, sensing that we may lack the skills to handle any incursions upon our relative well-being.
The danger here is that we may choose to sit on our hands, crippled with inaction, uncertain as to how to respond – often looking to our ‘leaders’ or other authorities to guide us; to demonstrate or teach us of the guile and tact necessary to restore a more ideal outcome for ourselves. Sadly, our public figures seem either paralysed or silenced in their capacity to say what they think, or they are deliberately holding their tongues because their own position or secretly-held self-interests seem threatened or compromised.
The question is, if nobody speaks up to the obvious inequities and injustices now, then when? If we are not prepared to express our honest reaction to how things are upsetting our quest for balance and peace in our life, then in which life are we expecting to make things right? We need to watch this reticence to express ourselves, given so many planets are in retrograde. Everything not done now will come to haunt us, sooner or later.
Sure, you may say that you are reasonably comfortable – as comfortable as one could be during these ‘apocalyptic’ times. You may be content to watch it all burn down around you as you sit there, high up in your tree, happily ‘going along’ with everything that is being expected of you, staying relatively ‘safe’ from all the destruction going on down there. The problem with this is that you are soon left with less and less and the effect on your free spirit as a ‘citizen’ becomes gradually demeaning, diminishing your sense of personal power, your social leverage and capacity to speak up for what eventually threatens to devour you too.
In the melee happening in Capricorn/Aries, we see how much the contention between personal rights and freedoms versus the state-sanctioned rules and laws has been dredging up a lot of anger. Conflicts that not only affect the ‘common strugglers’ of this world but weighing in upon the squabbles between great national powers and mighty corporations – entities which claim to determine the happiness and well-being of all its constituents and patrons.
Mercury leads the crusade here, and this week we see our little scout well-ahead of the Sun, now at the critical degrees of this cardinal challenge. By Tuesday/Wednesday, we see Mercury’s squares to the Saturn/Pluto stir up plenty of mental shrewdness and ingenuity. We will see a groundswell of minds, at least ready to tackle some of the most prohibitive problems in our quest to speak our mind. If the aim here is to restore some liberty, peace and justice in our lives, the exchange of ideas must at least question the intimidating force of the Sa/Pl status quo. In the conflict, we need to to look seriously into all things, investigate matters that are holding us down intellectually, ask questions that will satisfy our thinking enough to reason with an impossibly irate Mars.
Mars in Aries, especially in retrograde, exhibits a rather combative egoism which, when aroused by the well-meaning ‘queries’ and ‘suggestions’ of a sprightly Mercury does not easily exercise restraint during discussions. Mars’ usual spirit of autonomy feels already thwarted and constrained during these times and we may see some hasty, self-serving even irate reactions fly.
Hence, we may not appreciate others telling us what to do – however well-meaning. Nor will others take it from us. There is a fire within each of us which, whilst temporarily smothered or stifled somewhat, is ready to rage outwardly as angry words for not having acted appropriately when it should have. Under any provocation, the slightest upset or ‘judgy-sorts-of words’ may easily unleash our temper in communications or negotiations.
See Your Full Mars Retrograde Horoscopes Here
It, therefore, stands as a dire warning for this week: Try not to lose your patience when things are apparently not as you might wish to see them. You may be demoralised, awfully regretful for having done rash things (or not having acted) as you ‘should’ have; you may even feel cowardly.
The opposite is also true here. If you refuse to stand with the mob, to ram against the status quo, refuse to march with the posse, you may feel better about yourself for preserving a sense of dignity and self-respect, as indicated by the Venus in Leo.
There is no question, as Saturn/Pluto maintains its iron-fisted conjunction through the next few months, that totalitarian systems are being installed in 2020. These are means of control which, throughout history, seek to grind insecure individuals to the ground, make them agree to lies, accept any corruption and abuse of power. Exercising unyielding force on the population is a very effective means for leaders to make them compliant and agree to anything, however crazy and uncouth.
This week we might start to see the impact of how, through a series of micro-aggressions and gradual impositions on our individual liberties, we have (since March) blindly complied to create a political atmosphere filled with little signs of how our subjugation to ‘the state’ has gradually diminished our capacity to be all that we could be. Anger turns to hate when we discover that others are not meaning us well after all, and I will discuss how this is likely to play out in the coming weeks on this week’s cosmic bus (join me Thu/Fri, usual time).
For the time being, be mindful that there is incredible pressure on us all to comply and be constrained by increasingly draconian and secretive powers through the ministries of governance, law and morality. We must be mindful of the pressures upon your prerogative and be utterly discerning about who means well for you and who wishes you harm. We must also try not to act rashly, saying things or acting in ways which only mirror their hatred and unkindness. If we wish to avoid being pressured into a position where we end up hating those who force their unwanted toxicity and unreasonable demands upon our personal freedoms and liberties, we need to pick up our own skills of judgement, tact, and guileful political manner.
We are learning not only to see the truth but to speak it artfully. Here, we must come to fight any infractions upon our personal autonomy without fear of consequence or punishment, before it is too late. We have only this life, this precious moment to align our intergrity with our inner compass, realistically speaking. Let us not blow this.
Blessings, and may you have an amazing week xx
A prompt reminder to all of you to review and study your New Moon reading and intention while the Sun is still in the last degree of Virgo.
Thank you Ang ?