✨ 10-02-24: New Moon In Libra + Solar Eclipse

The Lovers ✧ Eight of Pentacles ✧ Nine of Swords

As I stated on Cohost, it ended up being a day late, but it should still be relevant!

A moon in Libra is always a good opportunity to contemplate how we can bring a sense of balance back to our lives. As we go through different seasons, fluctuation is only natural; leaving the scales askew. Straightening them out will mean analyzing where you've fallen off, where you've overindulged. For some this will involve getting back into a steady rhythm of taking care of yourself after neglecting your needs due to depression, stress, a particularly busy period, or all three. It may mean returning to work or a project after a period of focusing on just those basics. For many, this will mean re-aligning your actions with your values, double-checking that your values themselves even align with how you feel in the present, or whether you've borrowed them from somebody else.

The appearance of The Lovers hammers the message in further, as it speaks to harmony alike what you will find in equilibrium, in alignment; it speaks to choices we may be asked to make, especially in prioritization; It speaks to our values. Are you truly married to what you believe in? How can you commit, or better commit, to those beliefs?

Dualities are of special significance: Light and dark, life and death, love and hate. Dualities that feed into each other, can't exist without one another, may exist with only a fine line of division. A shadow cannot be cast without a source of light. The death and decay of something once living will inevitably serve the growth of brand new, burgeoning life. What dualities exist within you? In which way is the scale leaning? Do you expect yourself or your life to be nothing but "good" all the time, or see either as nothing but "bad"? How can you see the shades of grey between the black and white? We can see duality even in the second and third cards pulled in this reading.

The Eight of Pentacles is upright, and it is earthly, grounded, in the realm of the material. It is a card all about planting seeds, and slowly and steadily nurturing growth, committing to labor you know you will one day harvest the fruits of. On the flipside, the Nine of Swords is reversed, and as a part of the swords suit it is of the mind. Its associated element is air, and it deals more-so with your thoughts, with your attitude. This card itself, especially reversed, is about deep inner turmoil, negativity, and often anxiety—and being part of the suit of swords, the source of this pain is housed within our own darker thoughts or distorted mindsets, in the painful secrets or fears we bury in the depths. It is home to all the skeletons we're afraid to dig up, all the things in the dark we're afraid of the light illuminating.

It's worth it to ask yourself how you can shift your mindset for the better, and use your experiences to learn and to grow. You may have hurt someone deeply, but at any moment you could seize the realization of that as a chance to change. Someone may have hurt you deeply, but in reflecting on your experiences, you may be able to glimpse a familiar pattern you've let play out in all your relationships. You may be able to find compassion, seeing their pain crystal clear, or you may find it mirrors your own, giving you insight into your emotions, fears, and overall psyche, as we may often know ourselves by knowing another.

Sometimes the problem is less how we've let ourselves perceive something, and more the fact we don't let ourselves perceive it at all. It's easier to let the pain lie in the dirt, buried and unseen, than to dig it up and examine it. Grief may need to be felt, a hard truth may need to be acknowledged. Something you've been holding onto may need to be allowed to end. Be mindful of how a fear of death, a fear of change, or a fear of being alone may be controlling you and feeding in to your worst thoughts and impulses. Let your tears water what you hope to grow, and let the harmony of The Lovers marry your light and your dark.

Libra and The Lovers both have heavy association with relationships. There is something to note about your existing relations, whether they be with others or your own relationship with yourself. Painful lessons or experiences now or in the past can color your perceptions harshly, making it hard for you to see the love or good that does exist in the world, or the light that exists within yourself.

You may feel as if you are uniquely bad compared to others or that you and you alone are failing—that everyone else is whole while you lay broken, everyone moves forward while you fall behind, everyone shines brilliantly while you burn to ash and blow away with the wind; but to be human is to be afflicted. The pain you own is not a burden you're carrying all on your lonesome. Suffering is often a private affair, so it's easy to feel alone in your pain, but you must know that every ounce of it you feel is shared with someone out there in some manner. Often it is shared with people you would look up to, or even be inclined to believe have it all figured out. You are not an island, and you are not broken beyond repair.

There are three main ways you may face & deal with any intense feelings that might bubble up during this lunar cycle:

1. Through connection. This can be direct or indirect. Being around people that love you for you, that make you feel good for being yourself is obviously going to have a positive effect over time, but so can hearing strangers talk about their own struggles, and letting it soak in how truly connected we all are. So can learning to see yourself as human, and learning what makes you tick.
2. Through your values. When your values aren't in alignment with your thoughts and actions, it's only natural for that to impact your self-esteem, or lead you to places you don't want to be. Likewise, you may ask if how you treat or talk about yourself aligns on its own. If you believe in ideas like core human worth, or that being successful in the capitalistic sense has no bearing on human value, why would that not be true for yourself? If you stand behind your loved ones and encourage them to stand up for themselves when being mistreated, why do you think you're only any good if you're a doormat?
3. Through analyzing your feelings and trying to identify the source. We are taught to hate ourselves or not believe in ourselves at some point. Strong, deeply set beliefs and feelings like that don't just start existing out of the blue. While there may be noise in your mind, your intellect remains clear if you reach out for it. Use it to figure out where this all began, what feeds into it, and how you can take practical steps to move on.

Part of the balancing at this time is going to involve letting go, or have something to do with something you've let go, or will let go eventually. That may mean a relationship left behind. Long-term fears or pain finally let slip from your grasp. Problems or projects left on the back-burner or simply forgotten in prioritization. Replacing harmful habits with healthier ones.

The moon will help to illuminate, providing the clarity you need in order to know what to release. Just remember through the process that it takes time to grow, and for now just planting the seed and/or tending to what you've already planted may be more than enough.

Related Songs: Burial Plot (Acoustic) by Dayseeker, There's Fear In Letting Go by I Prevail, Jesus Christ by Brand New, Querents by Eidola, Burial Season by Our Hollow, Our Home, Know Where I Belong by Varia, Grave Warden by Our Hollow, Our Home

Credits: Sun & Moon divider by Saradika over on tumblr, deck is the Sacred Rose Tarot by Johanna Gargiulo-Sherman

If this reading resonated with you, please share my work with others if you feel called to do so. :] I don't have my kofi set up yet for tips, but I do have a deck wishlist for new Tarot/Oracle decks + tools, as well as a Quality of Life wishlist for making my current living situation a little easier to cope with!