Astrology: Sun in Libra I

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 https://andrewbwatt.com/2020/09/21/astro-sun-in-libra-i/  <-- Read the Rest of this blog entry here.

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September 22 at 9:31 am sees the start of the first Decan of Libra, called the Blindfold and Sword, according to Austin Coppock‘s book 36 Faces. The Hellenistic era assigned this decan (or face) to the avenging Erinyes, or Furies (sometimes called “the Kindly Ones” to avoid offending these spirits of justice and vengeance). Punishing crimes of youth against age, children against parents, guest against host, and householder against city councils, the Erinyes promise vengeance in the next life as well as this one on all oath breakers.

Chart for Sept. 22, 2020 at 9:31 am. 

As I write this, the United States is in mourning for the death of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the author and architect of a number of important recognitions of civil rights in this country; the fear is that the President and Senate will appoint and confirm a heavily-conservative replacement to her seat.

Yet it’s impossible to talk about justice — in this country, or any other — without discussing the very idea of Law as rooted in vengeance, and its very conservative origins. The Erinyes and their fearsome reputations are attested in Linear B, the oldest texts in pre-ancient Greek. There, we see their responsibility to punish the crimes of insolent youth, disobedient children, violent guests, and obstinate householders within the city, for what these things are — a divine enforcement of the status quo, a rigid defense of the establishment against the challenges and vagaries of change. In other words, the blindfold is partly off, and the sword is only pointed at one kind of offense, and one kind of offender. The protestors in the streets ought to be more careful than usual in the next ten days, and I say this as a warning rather than a threat — the next ten days offer more cover to authority’s excesses than to the release of captives.

Of late, I’ve been playing around with two further subdivisions of the Zodiac beyond the decan, and it seems time to introduce them in this column. The first are the Terms, which are five unequal divisions of each Zodiac sign. Somewhat out of step with my astrological colleagues, I use the Chaldean Terms, which break each Zodiac sign up into parts based on elements (Fire, Air, Water, Earth), and in chunks of regular descending size — 8°, 7°, 6°, 5°, 4°, all together equalling 30°.

Each Term is ruled by a different planet (in the Chaldean Terms), and the first eight degrees of Libra are ruled by Saturn (by day), and Mercury (by night). Thus, this first decan of Libra is mostly ruled by the slowest planet in daylight — Saturn, the harsh and elderly and essentially conservative force of the heavens; while the night belongs to mercurial youth, diverse and ever-shifting, sexually precocious, of shifting mores and morals, philosophically unbound, and committed to no firm position. Yet by the end of the next ten days, these positions are reversed: Saturn’s commitment to order and firm boundaries that cannot be crossed shall rule the night; and the herald-planet Mercury with all their trickster ways will rule the day. 

Both of these changes occur under the rulership of Venus, the queen of heaven, who has overall command over everything that occurs in Libra — and she is perpetually seeking concord and cohesion, unity and peace above all else. It is in this context that she deploys her two magistrates Mercury and Saturn to do her bidding: the one to use language and symbolic actions to pacify and soothe the concerns of the present moment; the other uses all sorts of traditional techniques — the hospital, the cathedral cloister, the courtroom, the prison, and the grave — to bind and control the upstarts who have caused their elders such distress. And the Erinyes will say, yes, justice has been done here, and hold their peace. 

The second technique I’ve been experimenting with, are the divisions called the duodecima, or twelfth parts. Each Zodiac sign (30°) is divided into twelfths, one for each sign of the Zodiac; these units are 2° 30′ wide, and thus each Decan contains four duodecimas. The first Decan of Libra is thus quartered into the duodecimas of Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, and Capricorn, ruled by Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. While these duodecimas are not a major part of any astrological system today (except perhaps this one, mine), they suggest four adjectives that may represent the next ten days in a kind of rough sequence: balancing, fierce, authoritarian, and unforgiving. Another might explain them thus: evaluative, intense, fundamentalist, and cruel. Any way we choose to explore these themes — with the Erinyes, the balancing of Mercury and Saturn in the terms, or by duodecimas, we’re about to see a shift in how the status quo responds to its discontents.