I’m late in publishing this Zodiac cycle’s intelligence blog post. It’s not because it’s hard to determine the intelligence that dominates in Libra. Most people know that Libra is the sign of achieving balance between polarities. After all, the sign itself contains the clue: scales.
According to Reverend Bill Darlison, in The Gospel and the Zodiac:
“In ancient Egypt, Libra was associated with Ma’at, the goddess of cosmic harmony and justice, whose special task was to weigh the hearts of the dead on the scales of justice balanced against an ostrich feather. Those who failed her test were heavy-hearted. Those who passed were lighthearted.”
What has been challenging for me this month is explaining why balance is important to attain for a spiritual journey from a deep perspective versus a superficial, simplistic view. After all, that’s what this series on Zodiacal intelligences is all about — attaining deeper insight than we’re used to.
Maybe one of the reasons for my struggle is that, with Libra, the whole zodiacal cycle changes from the previous six cycles. While the cycles from Aries to Leo were all about light — in Libra we begin our annual “fall” into the gathering darkness. We’re on the precipice of half year of first gradually darkening days, before we return to slowly lightening days again.
As Darlison states:
“The entry of the sun into Libra marks the autumnal equinox in the northern hemisphere, when day and night are equal once again. This is the midpoint of the year, the moment of equilibrium, when the forces symbolized by the day and the night are in perfect counterpoise. This has happened before, of course, when the sun entered Aries in the springtime, but there is a difference between these opposite, but complementary, points: At the spring equinox, the point of poise occurs before the daylight begins to dominate. In the autumn this is reversed and the balance-point presages the forthcoming massing of the darkness.”
“The first six signs, then, come under the dominion of the daylight and can be said to represent the light of individual consciousness struggling to establish its identity. This process is associated with the sun, the giver of light. It begins in Aries, the sign of the sun’s exaltation, and reaches its climax in sun-ruled Leo. The signs that follow the autumnal equinox are characterized by the gathering darkness. This represents that our individuality has to be incorporated, if not submerged.”
Balancing Acts
Maybe it’s easier to write about the light. After all, everyone wants the light, right? Few seem to want the dark side of our life to intrude on their version of reality. In fact, a large majority of spiritual seekers reject darkness outright. They prefer to pretend that darkness doesn’t exist. That it’s not a significant part of their spiritual awakening. What they are missing is that recognizing the darkness and embracing it is the only way to ever attain the light.
It’s about balance. Good and evil. Happy and sad. Yin and yang. Or as Alan Watts would say: The crests and the valleys of the waves.
What we have to learn in Libra about balancing is that to achieve higher levels of balance needed for true spiritual ascension requires multiple balancing acts — not just one. One of these is moving from a predominantly externally focused existence to a state of equilibrium with our internal being.
One of the teachings of the Jesus figure is to “give up everything and follow him.” Why? Because too much external worldly stuff keeps are attention focused outward and makes it difficult, if not impossible, to focus inward in meaningful ways.
On this point, the Jesus figure stated: “When you make the two into one, you will be called sons of men.” Is there a better description of achieving balance?
According to Davison, “The image of balance can be applied to any sphere of life in which we find the interaction of complementary forces … (such as) the relationship between male and female in marriage.”
However, like quintessential human relationships, when it comes to relationships in Libra, it’s complicated. As “the sign of the sun’s fall, it represents the subordination of one ego to another in a perpetual struggle to maintain a fragile harmony. As Aries represents the consciousness of self, Libra symbolizes ‘the other,’ the one with whom our ego has to make the biggest compromise, the one with whom we have to learn the hard lessons of mutual concern and love.”
Further, “Libra symbolizes ‘the primitive urge for unity and relatedness with others … and the need to conform to an ideal pattern of community life.’ In fact, one of the spiritual lessons of the Libra phase involves our willingness to move from isolation into participation, a movement symbolized by marriage, but not restricted to it. Such primary unions are microcosms of the greater unity and harmony of the ideal society in which the Libran principle of justice operates to guarantee equity, fairness, and balance in all areas of communal life.”
The Sacred Marriage — A Metaphor for Balance
Davison also explains the rather complicated topic of “the sacred marriage” — a metaphor characterizing the ideal state of spirit-material balance.
“The sacred marriage symbolizes a return to a supposed prelapsarian (the mythical innocent and unspoiled time before ‘the Fall’ of humans) condition of the human race when, ‘in the beginning, God created them male and female.’ When the twin principles of matter (male) and spirit (female) were joined in harmonious unity and balance — the image of God — before being sundered by the Fall.
“A secular version of this myth of primordial unity is found in Plato’s Symposium in which a certain Aristophanes refers to a time when humans were androgynous, male and female, physically joined together in one circular whole, until their powers became so great they had to be cut in two by Zeus. Human love, says Aristophanes, is the attraction between the separated halves.
“But joining the separate parts of the self is, in the Mysteries, a spiritual, not a physical quest, in which each individual strives to balance the various polarities within himself or herself, to become a completely human being in whose nature spirit and matter are both completely developed and perfectly balanced. The divine man who unites in his own person ‘husband and wife,’ the male and female elements in nature, as God and man are one in Christ.
“This ‘sacred marriage’ was the goal of the Gnostic aspirants. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus teaches his disciples: When you make the two one, and when you make the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and female one and the same, so that the male be not male nor the female female, than will you enter the Kingdom.
“This is the teaching that would have been imparted to those ‘inside the house,’ i.e., to initiates. But it has been lost in the legalism of Christian orthodoxy’s literal approach to the text.”
Mind, Body, and Spirit Balance
Balance is not the exclusive reign of the Zodiac. All mystical teachings clarify its value. As Davidson writes:
“The importance of personal balance is stressed in Taoism, the most Libran of the world religions, in which the unity of opposites, the yang and the yin, within the psyche is a condition of personal growth and social harmony.
“In the teaching of Hua Hu Ching, we learn that in ancient times, people lived holistic lives. They did not over emphasize the intellect. Instead, they integrated mind, body, and spirit in all things. They understood that true growth comes from meeting and solving the problems of life in ways that are harmonizing to yourself and to others. If you can follow these simple ways, you will be continually renewed.”
Here is the critical lesson in all of this: “Unless the mind, body, and spirit are equally developed and fully integrated, no (spiritual wisdom) … can be sustained.”
“When the body is emphasized to the exclusion of the mind and spirit, humans become like trapped snakes: frantic, explosive, poisonous. All such imbalances inevitably lead to exhaustion and expiration of the spiritual life force.”
If your soul “is so involved in worldly affairs and so absorbed with its possessions, honor, or business affairs,” the possession of these things will prevent souls who want to ascend from being able to do so. When Jesus told a rich young man to give his wealth to the poor, it was not to boost the poor person’s material advantage. It was to boost the rich man’s spiritual advantage.
The spiritual message of Libra, then, is not just that we should strive for harmony in our social relations. The harder, and the higher, call of this siren bids us leave everything — husband, wife, mother, father, land, business — in order that we may enter into a newer, nobler relationship with all things and all people.
In such a relationship, we participate in the world’s redemption by suffering with and on behalf of others and so bringing into our daily waking life ‘that sense of unity with others which (we) experience in the higher realms of being.’ In such a relationship the paradox of the Gospel is realized and the spiritual reward far outweighs the material sacrifice.
It’s easy to see why obtaining the Libran intelligence of balance is one of the most challenging for spiritual aspirants living in our heavily materialistic, outwardly focused modern times.
