I have a confession to make. Although I have a Virgo Sun, and no planets at all in Libra, Libra season is my favorite time of year. Something about the quality of light, the crispness of the air, the sweet, fallen apple smell of the earth — my mind feels lighter and clearer in this time of year. Libra as an energy promises that we can reach agreements together, that all the frantic problem-solving of Virgo season can slow down and give way to a sense of calm, a companionable stretch of time just listening and learning. Libra holds down balance in the zodiac, which I don’t think we credit enough as being serious, hard work because Libra makes it look easy. Holding balance actually requires an awareness of what’s missing, what’s not being said, what voices aren’t in the room and why — and a willingness to gather those pieces up, to demand that they are permitted entry into the guarded enclaves of our hearts and minds. In this way Libra aims us toward justice, and promises meaningful steps toward increased intimacy when we bring this mess of our collective experience to the table and actually consider it together. Libra is the willingness to process, the trust that we can get along if we are invested in learning how, and the interest in discovering our shared values.

With Libra as the energy of mediation, we’re lucky to have a great mediation team this Libra season. With many planets moving through the Air signs (Mars in Gemini; Saturn in Aquarius; and Sun, Venus, and Mercury in Libra at various points) there is consistent support for coming together the talk things out, brainstorm, and better understand one another. Air energy is social, thoughtful, and has facility in looking at situations with a sense of detached clarity — unlike Water signs that sense all the unspoken vibes, Fire signs that are moved by their big feelings, and Earth signs that are looking for pracitical solutions. Air signs have a willingness to keep thinking, to keep listening, to keep trying out different models and experiments for the fun of it. Air energy keeps us all from getting too stagnant, reactive, or overwhelmed.

And we’re going to need this, because October also brings even more big energetic shocks (it is 2022, after all), including the final (almost) square between Saturn and Uranus on the 4th, Mars square to Neptune on the 12th, a solar eclipse in Scorpio on the 25th, and Mars moving retrograde on the 30th. This is a lot, but if you’ve been reading my column or following other astrologers over the last few years, none of this is particular new. Which is all to say, we continue to live through times of major transformation and upheaval, and each of us is experiencing this as both as a member of a global collective and as a specific human facing personal issues around security, health, safety, love, and growth. This month you may want to be especially conscious and careful around how you react (Mars) to perceived threats to your security or freedom (Saturn square Uranus), and offer yourself some gentleness around what you might uncover around relationship healing and trauma healing (Scorpio eclipse conjunct Venus). And remember that until the 29th you’ll always have at least one planet in Libra to help you come back to a place of calm and clarity.

In my youth, when I exclusively pursued high-passion, high-conflict relationships, I got excellent advice from a friend I turned to after one of those relationships dramatically ended. “What you need to look for,” they told me, “is a reasonable chiller.” This is still the best description of Libra energy I’ve ever heard, and I offer you this as a shorthand for my more longwinded meditations on Libra: In this time of ongoing upheaval and exhaustion in our world, find yourself a reasonable chiller to help bring you back to a place of calm and connection. Having a friend or lover who can do this with you is awesome. Finding your own inner reasonable chiller is even better — and no, you don’t have to have any planets in Libra to do this!

For personalized support, get in touch for a reading, or for more astro insights you can follow me on Instagram, join me on Patreon, and listen to my New Moon podcast The Hum. May you find the calm this month in the storm of these times.

Aries

Find Clarity: Get specific about what you need to feel safe, heard, and held in a longterm relationship of any kind. You’re good at getting out when you need to, but what do you actually need to stay if you want to stay? Learn to tolerate the discomfort of asking for something and waiting to see what you recieve, then assessing what to do next. Cultivtate a sense of safety in yourself: when you trust that you know how to keep you safe, it will feel easier to be patient in a relationship that’s going through changes.

Taurus

Find Clarity: Summon all your resilience and self-love (and a support team, if needed) and take a look at what’s going wrong between you and your body. Not what’s wrong with your body — you may have a long list of grievances and anxieties, but that’s what you’re used to focusing on. This month asks you to focus instead on how to find peace with your body, how to bring up your resentments and fears as feelings to process and transform, not as action plans to “fix” your body. This doesn’t mean you can’t pursue learning about and doing things that help you heal or keep you healthy — this is more of a wake-up call that your relationship with your body is what needs most healing right now.

Gemini

Find Clarity: What makes your heart open? What excites you? And on the other hand, what do you keep doing that is supposed to be fun but usually ends up more stressful than joyous? This month’s astrology is asking you to deeply consider your own desires, your boundaries, and where you want to direct your energy — not even in some larger purpose kind of way (though that’s great if it shows up for you), but mostly in a day-to-day way. Notice what has become an energy drain because it’s not bringing you actual pleasure. Notice what you want to do more of but don’t let yourself because it doesn’t feel “productive,” or because something else always seems more important. You have excellent cosmic support this month for bringing what feels pleasurable and exciting to you into the foreground, for deeming it important and treating it as such.

Cancer

Find Clarity: How do you feel safe when the world feels unsafe? Over the last few years you’ve consciously or unconsciously built patterns of response to all the upheaval (both personal and global). Is it time to revisit any of these patterns? Are you stuck in habits that are supposed to help you relax but instead just help you dissociate, or stress your system more? Remember that Cancer is a sign that has innate emotional wisdom it can tap into — what steps do you need to take to be with your feelings, to let them move through you, to access your calm, inner sense of strength? Get clear, get creative, and above all don’t get caught up in patterns of self-criticism as you approach change.

Leo

Find Clarity: This month the universe invites you to get more specific in your requests and in what you’re trying to share. Instead of vaguely complaining that you want “love,” tell your friends and your dating apps that you are interested in feeling deeply chosen by (and choosing of) someone who delights in your idiosyncracies and who demonstrates trustworthiness by showing up when they say they will, over and over again. Or that you’re looking for a community to belong to, and are interested in how to risk more vulnerability so that all the parts of yourself that you usually hide from others have a chance to be welcomed, too. This is a time that rewards you naming, in exquisite detail, what you want, what you’re offering, what you’re trying to learn, and what you’re done entertaining.

Virgo

Find Clarity: A question that is often difficult for Virgo energy to answer: When are you done? When is it enough? The more prominent Virgo is in your birth chart, the harder it may be to even ask those questions, because at the end of any productive day there is still a to-do list that’s waiting for you tomorrow. And there’s a kind of satisfaction in the doing, it’s not all a slog, but Libra season offers Virgo energy an opportunity to stabilize, to slow, and to draw in nourishment as a tree does — deeply and with little effort. I invite you to take a look at your works-in-progress, your one-day-maybe lists, your relationships in flux, and say: Okay, this is good enough for now. I can relax. Anything you struggle to say that about is something you are allowed to just take a break from engaging with. Now is not the time to give it your energy.

Libra

Find Clarity: Many Libra people discover who they are through relationship. Being reflected by those who love (or hate) you is not the only way but is often the quickest way to locate yourself, to understand your edges and how you are different from those around you. This Libra season, you’re getting an extra helping of reflection from the cosmos and it’s an opportunity to do some deep integration about who you are now, how you are changing, and how you may be more different from your loved ones than you previously let yourself imagine. Let this difference be a good thing, something exciting to learn — not something you feel you need to protect people from. Those who love you in the way you need will only be delighted to learn more about you as you learn more about yourself.

Scorpio

Find Clarity: You know that there are times you need to retreat into an inner world. You probably have a clear sense of when and how, even if you aren’t always able to do it in the moment — although I dream a world in which we can all call out of work to tend to our emotional sensitivities and brooding needs. The clarity this month calls for is a little harder to access: How does the magic happen? What inner processes help shift you from overwhelmed to restored, and why? Getting curious about this will help you take more seriously what you’re doing when you honor your need for retreat — and less likely to sacrifice this need when it’s in your power not to, say, when a friend or lover wants you to stay present with them but you just fully cannot. See if you can put words to what you do alone, internally, so that you can explain why it’s so necessary to you — and even find better ways of doing it, if you notice you’re not feeling restored despite your best efforts.

Sagittarius

Find Clarity: It’s easy to feel a sense of doom about the future right now, and Sagittarius energy is particularly wounded by this. Care and feeding of planets in Sagittarius includes healthy doses of speculative futurism — imagining what better things may be beyond the next horizon, what lives you may get to lead in your next phase of development, what good things are still out there that you haven’t yet experienced. And a particularly Sagittarian form of despair is feeling that you can’t access those things — that the world you wanted to live in never was, or is no longer, and that you’re trapped. This month takes you by the shoulders with a clear, calm pressure and pivots you toward a different perspective on the future: There is still beauty to be discovered, unexpected joy, profound realizations, and all kinds of possibility. But you will find these things in a transformed landscape, and you will also need to experience grief, disorientation, and ongoing commitment to working with the world as it is, as you find it. Both can be true. Believe in your capacity to be with both.

Capricorn

Find Clarity: Don’t be afraid to ask yourself the big, hard questions right now about the path you’re on and if it’s where you want to be. Ask these questions from a place of strength, though — which is to say, from the belief that you can and will get where you want to be if you’re not there now. Asking from a place of anxiety won’t get you the information you need. Also, if you determine you are on the right path, this month encourages you to double down on loving what you do and doing it well, whether that’s energy channeled into your career, your activism, your parenting, your artwork, or whatever else feels central to your strengths and goals. It’s time to recognize what you offer.

Aquarius

Find Clarity: You can get a little lost sometimes in the vast potential and interlaced branching pathways of it all (it all being pretty much whatever you’re thinking about in the moment), but this month supports a sense of focus and purpose. There’s something you care deeply about that it’s time to get serious about learning more rigorously — or it might be your turn to teach something you know very well. Have faith in what feels important to you without too much second-guessing, especially if you have people reflecting back to you that it’s important to them, too.

Pisces

Find Clarity: Start talking about what’s been rattling around in your mind that you haven’t wanted to think about. Every time you get that gut sense that something’s off, every time you notice your mood dropping, every time you’re anxious and don’t know why — this month offers strategic support for surfacing and healing all those vague ickinesses, but it has to start with your willingness to name them. Start small if you need to, by saying (if only to yourself): “That didn’t feel good” and “I’d like to change something about this.” Where you go from there is up to your own sense of safety, support, and pacing.

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