Libra: The Divine Lessons of balance

How do we describe Libra?

The divine lessons of Libra invite us to collaborate and cooperate. The trick is to avoid conjoining, losing the tension that creates the limitations required for creative success. In any good collaboration, there is true divinity in asserting individuality as much as making room for commonality. Harmony is not made beautiful simply by similarity, but through the divine tension between alignment and variance. The best collaborations allow both voices to be heard, both messages to be sent and received, both creators to be challenged, inspired, and admired in connection to a whole that is greater than the sum of either of its parts.

Libra is a love scholar that teaches us through the spectrum of individuation and cooperation. She is the most magickal when she can embody mutuality and independence in one breath.

Libra teaches us lessons of balance.

Very often we learn through the inverse; we may be taught to be gentle through experiences with roughness, we may be taught generosity through selfishness, and we may learn to value connection through lessons of isolation. Libra lessons often come from moving too far in one direction only to have the pendulum return so quickly it’s momentum carries it again, too far in the other direction.

I often witness and experience the lessons of codependency and interdependence in this same swing of the pendulum or struggle to balance scales, to add a new metaphor. For those who were challenged with parentification, who became care takers far too young, the urge to take care is now likely just as strong and the urge to reject care for ourselves. Then, as awareness and healing repair the wound, both the urgency around caring for other and the readiness to be cared for become easier, more available, and less likely to generate activation and reactivity. As things become even more balanced in the healing process, the willingness to allow others to suffer the consequences of their actions begins to expand, and new cycles in the spiral that is healing and balancing are discovered.

What does Libra look like?

She is a gallery, refined, thoughtful, full of tasteful art and reflections of aesthetic symmetry and creativity of the highest value. She is the mark of civilization, of things made legible, clarified, defined and named beautiful for their purity.

What does Libra feel like?

She is most empowered with clear and healthy boundaries. She is most exalted with structure, discipline, limitations, and a clear ethical code. She is dignified in devotion to diplomacy, cooperation, and collaboration. She if soft to the touch but cool and balanced by her careful restraint. Libra feels like the satisfaction of justice.

What does Libra taste like?

She is mild, likeable, even, and appealing. She is a well-balanced wine, refined with time. She is a perfectly ripe fruit at the balance of the equinox.

What does Libra smell like?

If Libra were a perfume she would be gentle, soothing but heady. She would be a scent that is hard to forget but never challenging. She would be clean, pure, and decisively ripe without ever becoming overpowering or unfairly assertive.

The Mythology Connected to the Libra Constellation

The constellation of Libra is considered to be the Titan Goddess Themis who was sister to Nemesis and second wife to Zeus. She is the goddess of justice, legislation, divine law, and harmony with nature. She carries a sword to cut the truth from the lies, and her scales are the symbol of the justice she upholds. Themis is the Goddess of peacemaking, balance, seeing other’s point of view, along with divine awareness, and social graces. If disregarded, it is her sister, Nemesis, who punishes. Nemesis is the consequence of failure to regard Themis and her Libra qualities.

This narrative again conjures the awareness of collaboration and balance. The Libra Titan herself does not operate alone, but she is still quite individual. She is interdependent, offering her magick in divine cooperation with her sister.

The same could be said of her relationship to Zeus. Through this collaboration she birthed the three Horai and the three Morai. While the Horai governed the measure of time, the orderliness of divine law, the Morai determined the path of fate, the purpose and the process of divine law. Even her offspring cooperate to create a sense of order, of fairness, and of divine balance.

The Autumnal Equinox And Libra

The Autumn Equinox began with the mythological moment that Persephone was abducted from a fruitful field by Hades and taken to the Underworld. With the abduction of her daughter, Demeter, the goddess of fertility and agriculture, was brokenhearted and plunged into depression. The grieving Goddess brought an end to the fruitful season and it was not till her daughter, Persephone, returned from the underworld that the soil became fertile again and the warmth of Spring returned. By eating the fruit of the Underworld, Persephone had condemned herself to return to Hades every year. In the Northern Hemisphere, we experience this descent into the darkness of winter and less fertile fields at the Autumnal Equinox. 

This equinox marks the beginning of Libra season, offering yet another reason it is the perfect time to negotiate balance.

The balance between restful and wakeful activities, the balance between your needs and others’, and the balancing out of injustices. (Elections are just around the corner!) The scales of Libra also conjure the image of carefully balancing the abundance of growth and fruit gathered from the seasons before and how to measure them, consider their value, and carefully apportion them in an even and sustainable way. A way that is intended to create harmony, fairness, and beauty in its evenness and symmetry.     

Libra is a Cardinal Air sign; it is an initiator of communication and cooperation. This sign is the only one in the Zodiac that is symbolized by an inanimate object, the scales. Libra’s lessons are marked by measurement; to engage in cooperation requires great intention and attention to the ‘give-and-take’ of relationships, the equal exchange of energy.

The art of communication is illuminated by a balance of listening and speaking or orienting to the other’s needs and perspective.

A beautiful reminder of the power of balance and counterbalance appears in the art of photography. Through this medium, we can easily observe the significance of light and dark values and of the power of contrast. The most beautiful black and white photographs are considered to be those that contain the full spectrum of white to black tones. It is deeply pleasing to our eyes to experience the richest black tones, the ethereal white, and every shade of grey in between. At an even deeper level, we simply cannot see one tone without the other. We require dark to perceive light, and like so many other polarities, it is as if the two distinct entities rely on one another, hold one another in orbit, balance one another.