Astrology Highlights (printable)

What's in the Sky this Cycle?

This New Moon brings a Solar Eclipse (when the moon passes between the sun and earth). If you want to see it and are in the Northern Hemisphere, I suggest astral travel. Set your coordinates for northeast Asia, Japan, the western Pacific Ocean, the Hawaiian Islands, and the western part of Alaska. Whether or not you can see the eclipse, you will feel it. Perhaps you’ve already been feeling it. Eclipses start their vibration sometimes three to four weeks in advance. Eclipses bring a dramatic acceleration or sudden turn of events. If events in your own life have turned, I hope you’ve also noticed there’s an illuminated doorway just ahead of you. It is open and beckoning. From the other side comes an encouraging voice: "Change, when approached in the right spirit, is always good." Eclipses force much needed changes to the surface. Their shakedown makes it easier to release worn-out behaviors, attitudes and relationships. Their turbulence impels us to grow.

Libra New Moon 'Scope
by Dana Gerhardt

Embracing Libra is like riding a teeter totter with a good friend on a crisp autumn day. Sink into the movement of up and down, releasing into your partner’s rhythm as your partner surrenders into yours. We are meant to lose the fixity of self in Libra, so that we might approach our "others" with a more spacious give and take. There are no fixed opinions, no enemies in Libra’s world, only shifting points of view. Woe to the undecided voters and the pollsters who must track them this cycle! In Libra, thoughts can shift as quickly as the autumn wind. It may not be until the Sun enters Scorpio on October 22 that the undecideds will discover their convictions.

There are two eclipses this month--one solar and one lunar--which means you might feel like you’re caught inside a kitchen blender. Situations leap out, life gets splattered with demands, the world grows noisy with unexpected turns. Stand firm and your toes will get caught in the blades. My advice at this particular New Moon, with Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury and Jupiter in Libra, is to surrender to your spinning life. Allow your dreams and your anger, your frustrations and your desires to get chopped up and blended in a new and hopefully tastier way. See if you can ride this wild momentum, gracefully, to a new state of peace.

The majority of emails I’ve received this past week tell the same story: many of my friends and clients have been knocked off their feet. Not all of their tales are catastrophic. Some are just too busy. Others have enjoyed a surprising miracle. But whether you’re up or down, the work is the same. The intent of Libra’s cycle is to come to balance. Equanimity is the primary practice this month. This is the time to make peace—with your enemies, your loved ones, your own heart and mind. Neither repress your emotions nor chase after them with your thoughts. Rather, observe their momentum without attachment. Such steady attention can, like the center beam in Libra’s scales, gradually bring you to calm.

The Sabian Symbol for this New Moon might at first seem a little incongruous: "A child giving birds a drink at a fountain." The fountain suggests renewal. A child serving birds suggests we can renew ourselves through our concern for others. Ultimately, we are both the child and the birds, thirsting and offering, as we reach for a new lightness of being. In the midst of our churning world, we have a special opportunity: to discover the true source of Libra’s harmony.

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