This was written for September 2010 by Mark Borax, author of 2012: Crossing the Bridge to the Future. It is posted here with permission of the author.
September 22 is Autumn Equinox, the moment the Sun enters Libra. Libra loves a mystery. Its passion is to decipher the chemistry of what makes life and love flourish. The depths of Libra, like the wilds of New England autumn, contain secret corridors, subterranean windings similar to the route that tree nutrients travel between their hidden roots and fully exposed branches.
Libra's difficulties are compounded out of the discord that results when life and love languish in trapped, withheld stages, rather than blossoming into their full colors. When couples settle for diminished rather than passionate versions of partnership, when daily existence fritters away to boring routine, Libra shrinks to a fraction of its full power.
How do you stay in touch with that inner core of inspiration that transforms existence to something magical and profound?
Since giant Saturn entered Libra this summer, this question hangs in the air even before Equinox, and will become instrumental during the next two and a half years as this outer planet passes through this enigmatic sign.
Like fall foliage, there's more to Libra than meets the eye. Under casual scrutiny it appears as if New England leaves change color in the fall, but this is not the real story, because the colors were there all along, hidden beneath a shiny layer of green painted on by chlorophyll. During the crisp September chill nights and mornings in Vermont, the chlorophyll wears off revealing the brilliant hues that were waiting in the wings during the earlier acts of spring and summer.
To produce the world-famous explosions of golds, oranges, tans, pinks, reds and especially the rich saturated rust color that marks the special peak years when the forest bouquet is at its fullest, requires only a slight scratching away of the green by the lowering temperatures of autumn. New England Autumn is not just a visual spectacle though, but a multi-sensory excursion. The air becomes pungent with a certain scent that leaves only seem to acquire in New England. The crispness of the leaves seems to extend into the spirit of the people, awakening creativity even as the strong northwestern gusts and storms send the first batches of maple, oak, dogwood, hickory, beech, ash, aspen, and birch twirling through the sky.
And at the end of August, the first tiny outbreaks of color only erupt from the most stressed-out trees, who lose their chlorophyll before the others.
So too with human beings. The inner composition of a single human being or a love partnership is at hard to fathom at first. And those who burn brightly tend to get stressed out before the others, and so, perhaps reveal more of what we're made of.
The Libra in me (I was born October 2) is crazy about decoding the underlying themes and patterns of a single human being, a relationship, or a period such as the current moment of cosmic weather here on earth.
With Saturn in Libra, as we approach Equinox, we're all being invited to find out what we're made of. What dream of life and love burns brightest within you?
Bits and pieces, and cues and random inklings are being flushed out from under the green now. Libra asks us to learn the give-and-take of life. Who you run with, where your soul-sisters hang out, what greater awareness is possible when you band up with your own brand of spiritual outlaws and push the limits of the commonplace-in such ways you can learn where you're able to bend and compromise versus what's non-negotiable, what you have to stand strong within and claim as your own.
Libra's weak point is playing to the crowd, giving others what they seem to want at the expense of your own truth. It takes many back-and-forths of the balance scale to identify the true ground you stand on and learn when the path of inflexibility is truer than compromise, which is why Libra's been called the iron hand in the velvet glove.
This balancing act during the next two years will accompany one of the greatest turning points in world history. Civilization has run its course. Two thousand years of Pisces is ending. The Age that began with Christ is finalizing. We stand poised on a new era of human consciousness and are being asked to become more flexible in some areas while uncompromising in others.
