Weekly Ingredients: 9/20 - 9/24. LIBRA season. - Smart Crone Talking

Blessed Mabon.

Libra - cardinal sign - masculine - ruled by Venus. Light side: fair judgment, balance, seeing both sides, seeing all sides, social, ambitious, works well in partnership, hard wired for partnership, easy charm, killer smile, argumentative, (disagree anyway) wonderful, explorative lovers(!), great friends, and quite often brilliant artists. To be the recipient of a Libra’s tender affections is to be wrapped in one of the best reasons to be alive.
 
Shadow side: Pathological self-involvement. A player; both the men and the women and the they. Mental conclusions supersede instinct and intuition. Peace at any price, even when that peace is a whip to the soul. The fact that someone may not understand Libra’s point of view drives them crazy. How could they not understand? Libra knows they see all sides of the story, and is remarkably effective at presenting their case, so how can someone not understand? Obsessive thinking, toxic-hamster-in-the wheel-thinking is the result and can go on for years.
 
Tarot card for Libra is Justice. Sweet merciful justice. The sword of truth belongs to evolved Libras. Balance belongs to evolved Libras. (as does imbalance) Libra follows detailed Virgo. Libra makes sense of the details and finds the balance. Libra’s do not like the fact that balance isn’t a solid thing; it shifts, it changes. Soul task for Libra is shadow work. What’s been split off? What needs to be reclaimed? What’s the wound and what’s growing out of it? Shadow work is not an intellectual exercise, it’s experiential; explored through feeling, not logic. Logic will get you to the gate, but it won’t take you through.
 
As ever I do not believe that astrology controls the actions of human beings. I do hold true that there are energetic currents worth paying attention to, that can be worked to your benefit, if that’s your choice.
 
Mabon is the autumnal equinox. Equal hours of light and equal hours of dark. What could be more Libra, whose symbol is the perfectly balanced scales? Equinoxes for this witch represents the balance of the opposites; the light and shadow. One without the other is useless; everything has right use. As god-awful as it seems, or actually is, there is always right use. The bleeding key is acceptance and surrender. In acceptance and surrender is the ending, the death. Re-birth follows death, all death contains re-birth, but you can’t skip the death part. You have to own how that makes you feel. Dive deep; breathe it, taste it. That’s the feeling you were taught was bad, that’s the feeling you’re judging and why you’re coming up lacking in your own eyes. Stop. If you’re coming up lacking in your own eyes, your judgment is rooted in poison soil. It’s a plot to keep you on your knees and groveling. What’s truly happening is you are coming to understand your humanity. You are on the planet to become humane, to own your humanity. All of it.
 
The fires in California, the anniversary of 9/11, and then Ruth died. I just lost it. I’m still grieving, and yes there are things I know I can do, actions I know I can take in her honor, but those actions are thematically the same political actions I’ve been taking for the last 30 years and now everything I fought for, laws that were passed to protect the planet and humanity are being destroyed. I am either enraged or curled in on myself like a leech sprinkled with salt. Right use of trauma triggers the search for meaning, for reason. Right use of trauma breaks the perceptual frames through which we see and judge. 2020 has deeply traumatized the individual and the conscious and unconscious collective. Everyday, it seems to get worse. The most effective, healing, and beneficial way I know to work with trauma, from both my own experience and the experience of friends and beloved clients, is through acceptance and surrender. Acceptance and surrender opens the path of right action. Not quite sure why people tend to think that acceptance and surrender are signs of weakness. Nothing could be more powerful because it’s the beginning of walking away. It’s the end of doing the same thing over and over and expecting difference results.
 
As it’s Libra season, theoretically it’s a great time to find balance. But my darlings the scales are see-sawing in the extreme (like Libra does when trying to make a decision) and balance is not in the cards. You cannot impose order on chaos, the harder you work at shutting down chaos, the stronger it gets. Life force is thick with some pretty ugly insanity right now and your task is to recognize it when you see it and not engage. Look out for same arguments, different day. Take a conscious step back, very Libra, and survey the dog fight. Look East. Call the air, call the angels of the air, call the ancient shining ones of East and air. Call the sylphs. Give over to the all powerful energy of Air. None of us could live without air; none of us could live without what has been freely given. You’re looking for something else, and no you don’t know what it is yet but you’ll know it when you quite literally run into it.
 
If there was ever a week to practice restraint of pen and tongue, this is it. This week, tend to what’s in front of you, do the best job possible, and nod. A lot. The entire collective (and the individual) is feeling pretty fucking powerless and in the mood for a fight. Hooks will be baited and cast – avoid, avoid, avoid. Rant to those who love you, who intuitively understand that your rant is a tsunami of your most painful feelings and not a conclusion.
 
You are resilient, you are quite capable of bearing what some say cannot be borne, and if you walk the path of consciousness you know the time for compromise is flat-out over. Maat, the ancient Egyptian Goddess of truth, justice, and cosmic order, is woke. I have been shown that the new world, (individual and collective) will be built on the seven principles of Maat: justice, harmony, balance, order, reciprocity and propriety. We (you) don’t know what that’s going to look like…yet. And getting there won’t be pretty but the love that is taking us there, the ever growing love we feel for one another and the planet, has never been more radiant, more powerful, more connected. We (you) have this one and we’re (you’re) not letting go.
 
Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools, Kat
 
 
art: still from shahzia sikander video