The New Moon in Libra is exact at 8:47pm PST Monday October 8th. The moon is square Pluto, suggesting we are working with the unconscious, to surface shadow energies within that have been repressed, to release and transform. The New Moon is ruled by Venus, which just stationed retrograde in Scorpio on Friday, and is still virtually at a standstill in the sky, grinding down on a single point (10 degrees of Scorpio), as she slowly turns around and begins to backtrack, working to undo the damage that has been done. Venus is also square to Mars, revealing friction between the masculine and the feminine.
My sense is that this represents the rise of feminine power. And that along with that, comes the empowerment of the people. The people are waking up. The people of the world are awaking after thousands of years of oppression. When enslaved (in reality or in mindset), we cope by escaping, by numbing out, by leaving the body, by going into a sort of trance, because the truth is too terrible to bear.
As we awake, we are still surrounded by terror, if not in our own lives, then to the truth of terror in the world, and the truth of the trauma in our ancestral lines, that lives on in our bodies and minds. We must wake up to the fact that our history is one of brutal terror and trauma. We must confront just how bad it is and how bad it has been. Because that is truth, and waking up means seeing truth.
This trauma is the result of the dominance of masculine energy over the feminine. And as people awake, they are reclaiming their feminine power. What does it mean to reclaim your power? After thousands of years of being under power, there is an understandable distrust of power. We’ve seen power abused. We’ve seen power twisted and contorted. We’ve come to understand power as power over others. But true power is power within one’s self, to claim one’s sovereignty and dignity. To claim one’s right to humanity and grace.
There is great fear of the instability that comes when people fight for their power. There is fear of anger and chaos. There is fear of change. In the wake of thousands of years of terror, we seek comfort and safety in the status quo, in the illusion of peace, in the patriarchal structures that claim to keep us safe.We must muster great courage to face this fight. It will be messy. It will be chaotic. But it need not be violent. That is our choice. If we truly want a better world, we have to undo the structures of old and together, build a new society based on love and mutual support.
We are afraid of violence, but the true violence is in the structures of our society: in law, in education, in state authority, in police brutality, in corporate control, in colonial power, in the colonial mindset. That violence hides under the mask of protection and security. And so, when the people rise up, those authorities claim their false security is being threatened, and we are led to believe the uprising is the source of violence, when in truth it is loving anger rising to fight the real threat.
We have been told that anger is violence. We have been taught that anger is unbecoming. We have been led to believe that anger is not spiritual. When in reality the guise of false peace that passes for our societies is brutal. “Peace” is the true brutality. Anger at injustice and oppression is love. Rage is the right response to the realization of our collective history. If you are not angry you are complicit in the oppression and the continuation of the violent structures of old.
It’s important to distinguish between the inner and outer work of reclaiming our feminine power. On the outer level, the women of the world are rising up in anger to the brutal violence perpetrated by men. On the outer level, we must acknowledge that although there are men who are victims of violence, and that on occasion false accusations are leveled, the vast vast majority of violence, sexual and otherwise, in the world, is and has been for thousands of years, perpetrated by men largely against women. This IS an issue between men and women.
On an inner level, we all have masculine and feminine energies. On an inner level, we all have work to do. We all have to reclaim the feminine with us. If we want a better world, we all have to reclaim our power. We all have to be brutally honest and courageous enough to see the the patriarchal forces within, to see the violence within. To see the way the masculine, as contorted by the colonial virus, seeks to subjugate and oppress the feminine within, seeks to contort the feminine to be something she is not.
Feminine energy does not look the way we want it to. Feminine energy is powerful, and most of us are afraid of it. What do you think of when you think of Goddess? What do you see in your mind’s eye? Do you imagine Venus, or Aphrodite? Do you imagine a perfect, poised, calm, and quiet woman? This is the patriarchal image of how Goddess should be. And this is one more mechanism of control.
Yes, Goddess can be calm, and can be quiet. Yes, Goddess can be gentle, and can be poised. And yes, she does represent harmony. At one time, when people respected Goddess, there was harmony, and protection, and her energy was for the most part gentle and nurturing. But after millenia of disrespect, enslavement, rape, and violence, she is rightly furious. And if we wish to connect to Goddess, to our femininity, we must allow the anger to surface and be expressed.
We are in such a state of disharmony (with each other, with the earth, with our bodies) that the harmonious influence of Goddess, must work through turbulence, and what will look like disharmony, in order to move from the ugly state we are in, toward harmony and balance.
Libra represents the scales of justice, and the balance has been on the side of the Patriarchy for millenia. Well, the scales are shifting as the women rise and reclaim their power, as the people rise, and reclaim their feminine, as we learn, once again, to honour and respect Goddess, as she is, not as we wish her to be.
There is great work to do. But we will do it together. And together, we will create a better world.