This is an Ode to all Librans
but especially those in their thirties now
who have Uranus and Pluto in Libra.

PROGRESS | KARMA | EQUALITY | | PARTNERSHIP

BEAUTY, BALANCE AND AESTHETICS | JUSTICE

The icon for Libra is the scales. Libra is the only sign that is not represented by a living creature. Let's really consider this for a moment. We have the ram, bull, the twins, crab, lion, the virgin (is she warm blooded?), the scorpion or eagle, the centaur or archer, the goat, the water bearer and the fish.

For Libra, we have a pair of scales. It takes an absolute neutrality to weigh things accurately. the "person" is not present but the seeing eye is present. The steady hand is present. And of course the scales must be accurately calibrated. There is a detachment that is critical to the sign. Learn to accept this and make it a plus as intended. After all, someone has to keep a cool head!

I ilke to think of triage when I think of Librans. How often they are accused of being "cold" and heartless, even more than the rogue Capricorn. Well in triage, we have a situation of holocaustic proportions, such as the tsunami or a battlefield or 911. Someone must decide. Someone must be present with enough presence of mind to put people in three piles, so to speak, and this amidst the smells and sounds of disaster: (1) you wlil die no matter what, (2) you will live no matter what (3) your life depends on immediate action and can be saved if you get it.

The water signs can't do this. They take everything personally and can be slaves to emotion. Even the Scorpion will freeze in life and death conditions if there is anything personal about it -- suppose the hand of someone who is surely dying reaches and grabs your leg?

The fire signs? They've never been known to volunteer for clean up duty. They like to cause big scenes, hopefully good ones not bad ones, but they do not like to administer them or hang around after the high points.

What about the other two air signs, Gemini and Aquarius? Gemini is too scattered. That leaves Aquarius, not a bad choice. It's just that Aquarians have a way of distancing themselves entirely from the realities of a situation and like to deal with it in absolute abstracts. They would be excellent at filtering data after the event and deciding in a detached and calculated manner whether or not the disposition of resources had been effective and what could be learned for the future (notice the emphasis on the future).

There is a cutoff point in each state where certain medical expenses will be covered by state and federal programs and certain will not. I figure there is some Aquarian sitting at a desk drawing that line. "Aha! We will pay for a kidney transplant if you are under the age of 37 plus 3-1/2 months, but not if you are older." Then s/he draws the line with the ruler and a steady hand and so it is.

To actually administer at the scene, my vote would go to a Libran because they get involved with people. The 7th house, Libran, is a social house, not a transcendental one.

Believe me, if you were ever in a life and death situation which depended on quick thinking, an air sign is your wo/man!

Here's another less dramatic but real example of Libran leadership. As many of you know, I once worked in a law firm and assisted the senior tax partner who administered the firm's pension fund. As a result, I was privy to the birth dates of the firm's 40 partners. I began my observations in astrology with this data at hand. I watched this group of individuals over a period of 12 years.

Lawyers are correctly noted for their big egos and the amusing thing is that all 40 of these guys had to vote once a year for a "managing" partner. In other words, they had to elevate one above the others. It probably was very hard for them to give someone besides themselves this kind of power but the entire time I was there, a cardinal sign was elected and it was almost always a Libran. The other sign chosen was Capricorn.

If these egomaniacs (and I use the word lovingly) had to give up something to someone in terms of leadership, it would be grudgingly, and only to a Libran or maybe a Capricorn. By the way, there was only one Leo lawyer the entire 12 years I worked there. I guess law isn't exactly a Leo "thing".

Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn are the cardinal signs. Their special gift is setting long range goals and filling the executive function. As my favorite entertaining astrologer, Richard Idemon (deceased) once described it: Let's suppose we're tromping through the jungle, clearing the way for a new road. The mutable signs are acting as guides and interpreters. The fixed signs are whacking underbrush, killing snakes, carrying food and supplies and checking the compass. All of a sudden someone climbs up a tree, looks around and yells, "Wrong jungle!" That's a cardinal sign.

If Aries is the iron fist, Libra is the iron fist in the velvet glove. (I can't remember who first made this analogy but it certainly wasn't me!) Librans like Charlemagne, Admiral Lord Nelson (Britain's greatest hero), Richard Cromwell (a great general), Gandhi, and Dwight Eisenhower are stellar examples of this commodity. Charlemagne's Rising sign is not known. Lord Nelson and Gandhi had Scorpio rising. Cromwell had Virgo rising. Eisenhower had Gemini Rising. Norman Rockwell described Eisenhower's face as the most fascinating of any he painted, awash with light.

Dwight D. Eisenhower (Libra with Gemini rising)
and Mayor La Guardia

Here are some other famous people with Sun in Libra. Pethaps you will relate strongly to one of these.

• Farah Diba Pahlavi
• Charleton Heston
• Jerry Orbach
• Swami Beyondananda (Taurus Rising)
• Rita Hayworth (Taurus Asc.)
• Jenny Lind (Taurus Asc.)
• Christopher Reeve (Leo Ascendant)
• Luciano Pavarotti (Leo Ascendant)
• Angela Lansbury (Leo Asc.)
• Ted Kennedy (Virgo Asc.)
• Friedrich Nietzsche (Scorpio Ascendant)
• Eleanor Roosevelt (Sagittarius Asc.)
• Brigitte Bardot (Sagittarius Rising)
• Weird Al Yankovich (Capricorn Rising)
• Jesse Jackson (Capricorn Rising)
• F. Scott Fitzgerald (Aquarius Asc.)
• Deepok Chopra (Pisces Asc)
• Carol Lombard (Pisces Asc.)

... and so many more.

Libra is often a sign associated with physical beauty, being Venus ruled. Librans often have perfectly symmetrical features and a classic beauty (Greek/Roman classic).

I have often marvelled at the physical beauty of Admiral Lord Nelson, his blind left eye notwithstanding. See my article on Lord Nelson's astrology, Saturn in Aquarius especially, in an article entitled ENGLAND EXPECTS THAT EVERY MAN WILL DO HIS DUTY.

Admiral Lord Nelson, Libra with Scorpio Rising

Rita Hayworth, Libra with Taurus Rising

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PROGRESS

Libra is all about equaling things out, making them balance, finding the harmony, weighing one alternative against the other, course correcting (veer left, correct, veer right, correct, etc.).

Progress for a Libra is like flying a plane or sailing a boat. A plane can't go in a straight line like the presumed crow flies. It proceeds in vectors ... go left, go a little too far left, correct right, go a little too far right, correct left, go a little less far left, correct right ....

Until they get this just right, Librans can lead the most extreme lives of all. Hot monkey sex, correct celibate, correct hot .... or spend money like a drunken sailor, correct stingy, correct throw money.... Or as two real life Librans I know (not related) did: be Pentecostal, "sin", figure you're going to hell anyway so sin some more, repent, etc. One of these ladies thought the whole matter was hysterically funny. The other woman was tortured as I met her when she was just entering the repentance stage.

Libra is one of the dual signs. The others are Gemini and Pisces. Librans like Geminis must see both sides of an issue in order to understand it. Both struggle with good and evil but the Gemini may actually play both roles where the Libran will contain both within. Pisces live in two worlds, here on earth and also in the ethers. Librans are often bi-sexual where Geminis and Pisces are often asexual but for different reasons.

Small Ode to Piscean Love

The Ultimate Love is Secret Love  
"The other day I was talking to a group of people, and I told them that the ultimate love I believe to be secret love. Once shared, love shrinks in stature. To pine away for love all one's years, to die of love without uttering the beloved's name, this is the true meaning of love.

 

"A poem tells us:  I shall die for my love Know the truth only in the smoke that remains-- My lover's name kept secret to the end.  

 

"The kind of love this poem describes is the most elegant kind of love. Once, when I made this remark, apparently four or five people present, impressed by the poem, took up the line: 'Know the truth only in the smoke that remains..." and coined the phrase 'lovers in smoke.'"  

The Hagakure -- Jocho Yamamoto

This progressing by vectors is why the temple floor in metaphysics is black and white, not gray. Notice the black and white squares of a typical metaphysical glyph (symbol) and also the black and white pillars. Black and white represent all polarities such as hot and cold, male and female. Black and white are extremes on the continuum “color”, hot and cold are extremes on the continuum “temperature” and male/female are extremes on the continuum “human”.

the B.O.T.A. temple

Sometimes you will want to be alone and sometimes with others.

Ultimately the alternation between the polarities becomes so fast and so deft that it appears to be a straight line or no motion at all. This is captured in Crowley's Tarot Card depicting Libran energy, called Balance. It is because this goddess balances energy that the planets stay in their orbits and the stars do not fall from the sky. (We speak poetically and metaphorically of great truths.)

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KARMA

One of the reasons Libra is considered to be the most difficult sign/lifetime is that, in essence, if born a Libra, the whole lifetime is karmic. It's a balance to another lifetime and preparation for a new lifetime, new karma, in the future.

I feel it is necessary for Librans to understand the principle of karma, not the weird version some of our New Age friends probably pass around or the kind that scientists say very scornfully that they don't believe in but the real thing which is actually a version of math.

Karma is mathematical. It doesn’t have any of the guilt introduced by Christianity It is simple algebra. What we do to one side of the equation must be done to the other. What begins, ends. Colloquially, “What goes around, comes around”. These are things you must contemplate carefully and understand thoroughly to make sense of what is to come in your life if you are a Libran

A very eloquent and friendly discussion of the concept of karma from a philosophical western (non-religious) point of view is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essay on Compensation. To every Libran, I say, simply, “Don’t leave home without it.”

I don’t believe you are going to be able to understand the dynamics of your lifetime if you don’t get a handle on the meaning of karma as it applies to every situation in life. It is the right yardstick for you to measure with. The Essay can be read for free on my website. I input it myself -- that’s how important I think it is that you read and understand! (It's part of the public domain now.)

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EQUALITY

You can more or less take it on faith that only a Libran can truly understand the complexity of equality. I think most of the rest of us sort of toss it off as an impossible ideal and leave it at that. Perhaps I am especially sensitive to this being an identical twin and being raised by a double Libran. The question of equality got a lot of what I thought was unnecessary attention in our house!

Uranus was in Libra during the late 60's and early 70's and people born during that time are beginning to make their impact in the workforce as they are reaching their mid thirties. They will revolutionize our beliefs about "equal opportunity", for example, and justice. Those born during this time period also have Pluto in Libra -- signaling evolution, as well, in our ideals about partnership, equality and justice. Pluto remained in Libra through to the mid 1980's.

This idea of equality for Librans … how well I remember my double Libran mother serving dinner at night, in exactly equal portions to my two sisters, myself and my brother, the way she did everything. Our dad traveled a lot in business,so it was often the five of us. When she died, after my father, ... how could it be otherwise ... we each received ¼, ¼, ¼ and ¼ of her estate. But at the dinner table I wondered, does she notice that this is Richard’s favorite dish and Annie’s least favorite? Does she realize that Susan has snacked all afternoon and I am on a diet and waited for this meal all day? I wondered, would it be more fair, in a way, to give Richard and me “more”, Annie and Susan “less” and then to make up for this tomorrow with Annie’s favorite meal and a warning to me not to count on more than my fair share at dinner? Had she alternated fairly between favorite dishes lately? Etc. These are issues that concern Librans.

The dilemma within society can be played out thus: what about specialness? How are my special talents compared with the special needs of another. The Uranus/Pluto in Libra generation is particularly concerned with these issues as you will be reworking our current ideas in society of “equal opportunity”.

Who does it serve if Jessica's talents lie fallow while time and resources go to buffer up Mariah and Carly who lack rudimentary skills? Does everyone win because the herd slows down to include the halt and lame or does everyone win when the creatively and intellectually gifted pick up the pace, improvise, invent and serve?

The answers to these questions are not simple but life posed them to you from the cradle. You may spend a lifetime answering them. Probably the idea is to alternate. Remember those vectors of yours? Spread out over time they approximate the thesis, antithesis and synthesis Hegel and Marx understood. That has been the progress of history so far but it takes a lifetime to learn this.

It is not so much that you pose these questions as an intellectual exercise, either. You have lived them and are going to live them. They are critical to your understanding of yourself, others and society. They are also critical to how you address your own considerable talents if you are richly blessed and your own needs if you are without. How can I love my neighbor as myself if we are so unequal? Perhaps the balance comes across lifetimes. That is the gist of Emerson’s Essay.

One Libran, who characterized herself as a natural leader and I agree after looking at her chart (I think she is a Fieldmarshall (ENTJ) personality type), wrote in her feedback form, “This year I have deliberately stepped back and not jumped to take charge in a lot of projects (sticking only with a few) to test myself to see how I can work following rather than leading…”. Only a Libra would do something like this!! My question is, “Was the group served?” Possibly not in the short run but evidently in the long run as she was in essence honing her leadership skills.

The whole point of Emerson’s Essay is to spread these things out over longer periods of time. Learn to look from the God’s eye view. This era compensates for the one before. The pendulum swings. Thus, we advance collectively in vectors as well (how Libran of us!). Left, correct, right, correct, left …. Knowing history is going to unleash a lot of power in you.

Your generation is more or less “doomed”/destined to work out personal issues in a broad public arena because the way your mind works, that is actually much easier. You are well suited to leadership and must begin to learn more by doing. Many of you may take the MBTI personality inventory (TAKE IT HERE FOR FREE) and discover that you are Masterminds (INTJ), Architects INTP), Inventors(ENTP) or Fieldmarshalls (ENTJ), though Inventors and Fieldmarshalls are less likely to seek intuitive information from others.

Explore the ideals of balance and justice in the outer world, in the macro, and the micro will follow. The inner balance will follow. You are built to explore these issues in the framework of society and the world. Your toys are not those in your own living room but rather economies, political systems, human lives and the like. Please read that last sentence the way it was written, without emotion. I wrote it with my Libra Moon. People exist in your lives as they fulfill parts in your strategy. This is not exactly saying that you use people.

To be caught between a rock and a hard place is the favorite vice of the Libran. It is their second favorite complaint, next to "No one understands me!" Librans are vulnerable on both scores. Librans may be involved in very painful love or power triangles more often than any other sign. The metaphysical reason is not libidinal as with Taurus or Scorpio, the others most likely to be found in flagrante, but rather because each alternate partner may represent a different lifestyle, or choice. For a Libran to make a choice is to know themselves. I think I know of more married Librans in very long standing love affairs than any other sign by far. Learn more about LOVE AFFAIRS here. This also occurs because there are two aspects to Venus, the ruler of Libra. Many Librans get waaaaay up there in their ivory tower and become very vulnerable to a down-and-dirty earth Venus episode such as prostitution or someone they consier from a much lower class. Libra is one of the signs that is class conscious. SEE BORN ON A ROTTEN DAY.

The desire to be alone (sporadically) is also very Libran. Don't apologize for it. Being alone gives you the space you need to know how you feel about something. You can't know how you feel under pressure and you can't know how you feel without detaching enough to get objective. Just understand that this is very, very hard for partners and children to comprehend!

Speaking of partners ...

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PARTNERSHIP

On the other hand, you also don't know how you feel until you know how the other person feels. Then you may often disagree. This is the typical dialogue:

Libran's partner: What would you like for dinner tonight?

Libran: Oh, I don't know. What would you like?

Partner: Fish sounds good to me. Let's get some fish!

Libran: I don't feel like fish, let's have hamburgers.

Partner: AAaaaargh!

Libra is the turning point of the archetypal wheel. It is the 7th house, 180 degrees from the beginning. It is the point where we can know ourselves no more without reflection from an other.

When they say life is a mirror, they are thinking of Libra reflecting Aries! To know who you are, just look at your partner. I remember when I was working at the law firm (my training ground in my early thirties) we could hardly wait to meet the significant others on the holiday occasions ... we, the staff, didn't feel like we really knew someone we were working with til we met their "other half".

Life is a mirror.

In the dual nature of the signs, Gemini plays both halves but at different times or in different places. Pisces tends to spit body and soul. Libran walks around with their other half and go home to it and sign binding documents with it. Sometimes they divorce it, too, and when they do, they try to be very civil about it. Librans are the "nice" people of the Zodiac.

There is a price to pay for so much niceness and that is the famous Libran proclivity for sandbagging. It goes something like this ... Liz from Chicago's Cell Block Tango could have been a Libran. One day she just snapped.

You know how people
have these little habits
That get you down. Like Bernie.
Bernie liked to chew gum.
No, not chew. POP.
Well, I came home this one day
And I am really irritated, and
looking for a little sympathy
and there's Bernie layin'
on the couch, drinkin' a beer
and chewin'. No, not chewin'.
Poppin'. So, I said to him,
I said, "Bernie, you pop that
gum one more time..."
and he did.
So I took the shotgun off the wall
and I fired two warning shots...
...into his head.

Chances are Bernie never saw this coming or he might have said to his Libran Liz, "Why didn't you tell me? I had no idea I was irritating you!"

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BEAUTY, BALANCE AND AESTHETICS

Some of the great beauties in the world have Libra Rising, the sign that is ruled by Venus. How could I make an ode to Librans wtihout including these ... some of the great lovers of all time and also the greatest military strategist (!) ?

Famous people with Libra Rising:

• Jennifer Lopez
• Britney Spears
• John Kennedy
• Bill Clinton
• Monica Lewinsky
• Kate Winslet
• Denzel Washington
• Omar Sharif
• Rudolph Valentino
• Richard Idemon
• Amy Grant
• Prince Aly Khan
• Karl von Clausewitz (famous Prussian military theorist, often considered the greatest of all time) is book, On War, free online
• Sir Walter Scott - really started the romantic era in literature

Sir Isaac Newton wasn't noted for his cupidity but I personally have always found him absolutely beautiful to look at.

Sir Isaac Newton, Libra Rising

Here's one of the great beauties of her age, Jean Harlow, the first "blonde bombshell" who set the pattern for Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and others.

Jean Harlow, Libra Rising

Although I know of no study, it may well be that architects have a predominance of Libran energy not only because of their aesthetic but because they are noted for a near perfect brain hemisphere balance. In addition, space is as important to them as filling space.

Architects are evenly divided brainwise between left hemisphere (logic) and right hemisphere (artistic or intuitive). In my own experience, I have found Libra to be very dominant in their charts with planets in the 11th house as well, giving them the ability to design in time and space.

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JUSTICE

Perhaps the most profound issue addressed by Librans is the principle of justice. The shift from vengeance (personal justice) to social justice, including the principle of equity to replace an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, is embodied in the sign Libra. Perhaps this is where the quality of mercy is borne, for only with objectivity can one forgive one's enemies in order to forgive oneself. Only when one really understands that life is a mirror will this principle be realized.

Life is a mirror.

A powerful presentation of this theme appears in William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, delightfully presented of late in a film by Michael Radford starring Al Pacino as Shylock, Jeremy Irons as the merchant Antonio, Joseph Fiennes and Lynn Collins. Not to oversimplify this play, perhaps Shakespeare's most popular, but it does lend itself to a good Libran interpretation. Where I will start and where I will end is that the merchant Antonio and the Jew Shylock are mirrors for each other.

If you see this movie, the play or read it, follow the argument in court at the end where the Duke, the magistrate of Venice, tries to convince Shylock, the Jew, who is legally entitled to a pound of the merchant's flesh cut closest to the heart, that Christian mercy is appropriate. He says,

Shylock the world thinks, and I think so too,
That thou but leadest this fashion of thy malice
To the last hour of act, and then 'tis thought
Thou'll show thy mercy...

Shylock replies that his hatred and loathing are real and will not change and that is his only reason and the only reason he needs for seeking forfeiture of his bond.

Earlier in the play it is established that the merchant
Antonio (Jeremy Irons) has spat upon Shylock and called him a dog, a cur, and other names, though turns to him when he needs money to help his friend woo a wealthy and beautiful wife. Nowhere in the pleadings does the merchant defend himself other than in asking for mercy. One feels Antonio knows why he is hated and that it is deserved ... but to die for this by having his heart cut out? Is that justice?

THE QUALITY OF MERCY IS NOT STRAINED

Portia, playing a young lawyer in the judgment scene, pleads with Shylock in a very famous speech:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,-
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest,-
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
''Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,-
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,-
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.

The emphasis is mine. The gist of this speech might be summed up as, "Judge not lest ye be judged". Shylock, being a Jewish man of the 16th century, worships the wrathful god of the Old Testament and does not expect mercy. Further, he does not believe that he has done anything wrong and asserts this many times. He compares forfeiture of the bond with the way some Venetians own slaves.

In western culture, it happens to be the coming of Christ which symbolized this particular quality, mercy, in our evolution. Please read this descriptively and symbolically, not critically. I am neither Christian nor Jew and I assume you, dear reader, are not either but this is our evolution as human beings which is depicted for us on the stage. We can be reasonably sure we have played all sides of this drama ourselves in our past lives.

In essence, the magistrate wants Shylock to realize that no one is perfect and he, Shylock, may one day need forgiveness as well, if not from God, then man. As we stand on this stage, we are still very early in our development regarding the due process of law. It is through incidents like this one that these precious entitlements we take for granted were carved out slowly over time. This is precedent law in action. (Suggested reading: The History of the English Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill.)

As it happens in Shakespeare, that day of reversal, that day of comeuppance, arrives quickly. By the end of the act (and the play), the magistrate has read cleverly through the law and Shylock must suffer by the letter of the law as he tried to profit from it earlier. But it is also the law of karma we are watching here and the law of life, not just a civilization in the making back in the 16th century and the undoing of one man.

This play is very Libran. It embodies the clever litle piece of karma, "Live by the sword, die by the sword." Nothing can happen to you that does belong to you, that has not grown an accepting place inside of you that draws this experience towards you. The outer mirrors the inner with perfect scales of justice, j u s t i f i c a t i o n justification such as the lines in this paragraph are justified and the paragraph above and below it are not.

In short, if you wish mercy -- if you think you might need mercy some day, if you think you are capable of human failings and who is not? -- you must give mercy yourself first, before you need it.

It is contrived if you give mercy so that you will get mercy if needed but even so that is more conscious than living without it, in a state of judgment and harsh criticism of your fellow humans, holding them righteously to the letter of the law. If life itself does this, that is one thing, but wo/man to wo/man, be merciful.

GIVE ME JUSTICE OR GIVE ME MERCY?

When I worked in the ghetto near the Mexican border, I read Tarot cards for many mothers whose sons were gang members. When these boys got caught, their mothers and sometimes girlfriends wanted to burn "justice candles", an adjunct to their Catholic religion, as though they were burning a candle to a saint. They liked the candles that were prepared in the Mexican "botanicas" near the border. I suggested they might want to burn "mercy candles" instead :-)

This principle of "live by the sword, die by the sword" is embodied in Emerson's Essay. When you are harshly judged by another, you need not fear but that their time of judgment will come, in another life if not in this one. 'Tis the secret law of nature, things working out secretly in the dark. And in the meantime, their own harsh judgments of others doom them to a dark inner landscape of self loathing.

Shylock, a Jew, doesn't believe in heaven and does not follow the Christians' argument but the plot reverses and suddenly he himself must beg for mercy from the magistrate and the merchant, both.

If you have lived long enough, you understand that allegiances in life are constantly shifting. ("Politics makes strange bedfellows" was first spoken by a Libran or a Capricorn, that's for sure.) One day the man beneath your feet may have your life in his hands. This situation obtains throughout history and is the stuff of which many novels are written and movies are made. This is the way of the world.

It is a convincing reason to propose the "Golden Rule" as a rule to live by simply because it is practical and proves to be operatively efficient. More than merely or even profoundly religious, it is good common sense for the way human society has always worked and it profits he who follows it powerfully.

As a matter of fact, Shylock wound up reviled not only by the Venetians but by the other Jews, his best friend (confidant) Jubal and his own daughter. By the end of the play, we have all had a catharsis through the Jew.

I doubt there is anyone in the audience who has not considered revenge at some time in their lives. These scenes are played out daily in the news. As we watch this play, we can't help but grow in self understanding even as we, the people, the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and pagan people have grown in self understanding over the past 400 years. We will always be evolving morally or degenerating morally. We have a choice for we cannot stand still.

For the Libran, these matters become a preoccupation. The idea of getting "even" appeals to the intellectual side of the Libran but it is morally wrong. Who really wants to sit in judgment of another? I don't know but someone has to. Perhaps a Libran.

The urge to even the scales is difficult to justify in other terms. Thus our concept of equity. If your faulty product causes the death of my farm animals, you cannot replace them per se but you can reimburse me in equity, in an amount determined to be equal to the damage I have suffered, determined by a third party.

Even so, Shylock is an intelligent man. He has justification for his feelings. He has shown remarkable restraint up until the time of forfeiture of the bond, perhaps awaiting his moment or perhaps as he says in the play, suffering the lot of his tribe. Shylock is deeply religious. He tries to live a good Jewish life, keep a clean home, raise his daughter well. He is not an overly emotional person. Thus his story ends in Libran territory.

Were he to leave the court and swear revenge or bind his son (had he one) to revenge, then the crawl like a snake through the underbelly of Scorpio would begin.

Justice for a Libran is a civil matter -- civil because it Involves the agreements and laws of society and civil because it requires behavior from the neck up, you might say. Librans have not yet gone through the experience of Scorpio (archetypally) where all the rules go out the window. Thus their sometimes wondrous pleading for justice -- and their other favorite warcry, which is so hard for the rest of us to understand, "But it's not fair!!" The rest of us know nothing in life is fair. We were born knowing it. We have no issue with this. We didn't expect it to be any other way. But I will bet you if there is a Libran in your life, sooner or later you will hear this cry or you will say it yourself.

It is good to get some of these things straight before entering Scorpio territory. You might compare the nice, Libran rules of the Geneva Convention to the beheading of hostages. Suddenly someone has left Libra and moved into Scorpio, where unforgiveable things occur beyond the rules of civilized society. Beheading hostages is not Clausewitz' "continuation of politics by other means". It is regression to tooth and claw. War, horrible as it is, is meant to be civilized. It is formally declared. It is defined. It is fought (in the western world) between people identified as military by their uniforms.

A whole new order of things evolves or more correctly is descended to at the point of beheading a civilian and not only that but a civilian woman on video. As much as Librans struggle with their ideals of justice, they are ideals. There is a certain innocence because the real hell of Scorpio is as yet unknown, the psychological territory where someone can kill the one they love.

THE URANUS AND PLUTO IN LIBRA GENERATION MATURES

As a futher point of interest, the attempt on the part of President Bush to move class action product liability suits to the federal courts is a step into Uranus and Pluto in Libra jurisdiction. People who were born in the late 70's and early 80's who are now maturing are the Uranus and Pluto in Libra generation. They are now beginning ti turn 30 and their "majority" begins. We will begin to feel their ideas and ideals moving into the mainstream.

In this one particular way, Bush may perhaps be going with forthcoming trends of the generation which will revolutionize our concepts of justice.

If you are a member of this group, born in the late 70's or during the 80's, let me know what you think. If you arent sure you have Uranus or Pluto in Libra and would like to know, please email me and put "Uranus Pluto Libra?" in the subject line and I will reply.

Is life fair? I wish I had a penny for every time I have heard a Libran say that with their whole heart. How can we tell you that there is no such thing? Maybe your generation is here to tell us we're wrong and there really is such a thing as fairness, equality and justice.

So this is my Ode to Librans. My mother, Virginia Rose, was a double Libran, having her Sun and Moon in Libra, Rising sign in Cancer. She was a real beauty. She died when Pluto was in Libra, contacting both her Sun and Moon. She suffered a series of insurmountable losses in the four years before her death, causing a stress relatd cancer. My own Moon is in Libra in the 11th house. It is very hard to become objective about one's Moon but in Libra, perhaps not so hard after all! Anyway, it has been my pleasure. If you liked this article, you'll also like these articles by Nancy.

John Keegan
Troy the Movie
Old Men are Bastards
Harvesting the Seeds of the New World Order (SEC, Wall Street and economic changes)
England Expects that Every Man will do His Duty (Admiral Lord Nelson and others with Saturn in Aquarius)

Virginia Rose

Nancy R. Fenn

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WHAT NANCY'S READERS HAVE SAID:

2.21.2005 How amazingly wonderful-what perfect sense you make. I know the struggle-my Leo Mom doesn't get my fairness thing either-neither does my Pisces husband. He also has a real struggle with the justice thing-I go back and forth on mercy and giving the command to take off their heads;0)... I love being a LIBRA sun especially with my SAG ascendent-it makes me want to tour the cathedrals of Europe and what I think led me to Hawaii.... Stay dry and thanks yet again for an inspiring article to start my day off on a positive note-reminding me that being me is not such a bad thing....

OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!

11.10.2006

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