The fall equinox is here on the tail of the Pisces full moon, and I am definitely feeling it. To recap, this full moon is in my first house, touching on a lot of relationship points in my chart. Further, this time of year is when personal planets transit my 7-10th houses, and I’m starting to wake up from the slumber I went into at the Virgo new Moon in March.

The first day of Libra is the first day of fall, the 2nd day of the year when night and day are the same length, and the day before the night progressively increases as day decreases. It’s time to celebrate the fortune of spring and summer and prepare for the winding down, or as it truly goes, the different work, beginning with the reinforcing of social bounds, bonds, and expectations (Libra).

And now it’s the solstice, and the sun is within minutes of entering Libra. It’s 60 degrees and raining — cold enough to wear pants, cold enough that the cicadas are silent, cold enough that I can close the windows for the first time since April or May and hear the pitter-patter of both the rain and my own typing breaking a silence I have not experienced in quite some time. Court will start soon, and thus will my workday, but until then, it’s dark, quiet, and cool, a perfect balm for my full moon hangover.

I can do an ingress chart for the first day of Libra – that’s a mundane and/or predictive chart for the coming month – but I didn’t. Sorry.

I can tell you that the moon is in Aries, Mars is conjunct the Sun, Venus in Scorpio is opposing Uranus. That Sun/Mars is making a grand trine to the north node in Gemini and Saturn in Aquarius. Some of you may find the ingress of the Sun into Libra a welcome relief, and the air trine lightens the mood and the cardinal energy of the Sun/Mars relieves some of the tension of being the white rabbit late for a very important date which is the bane of Virgo’s existence because Libra doesn’t care if they’re late because they’re here now, right?

Venus opposing Uranus on the Scorpio/Taurus axis

Venus opposition to Uranus happens about once a year, and as you guessed, it creates a tension between our social and personal values and our need for freedom or to focus on the future. For example, this can be a time in which one may have to choose between an intimate but stagnant relationship (Scorpio) and a future without that person but with the freedom to focus on what one values in themselves (Taurus). This can also be a shit-or-get-off-the-pot moment between doing what makes others happy while still waiting to get what you think you deserve (Venus in Scorpio) and taking the risk of investing in your own talents and skills (Uranus in Taurus).

If you have planets or angles in the fixed signs, you may feel this change more acutely than others, but if you don’t, whatever axis you have Taurus and Scorpio can be affected. Even if you do have planets or angles in the fixed signs and/or actually transited by Venus and Uranus right now, you may not necessarily see this manifest in an ultimatum given to you by someone else or a specific event because that’s not necessarily the nature of Taurus/Scorpio. In fact, these energies may very well come from you, or manifest as your decision and your behavior, mostly because you decide to stay on a course. Taurus, while reward-driven, isn’t necessarily motivated by external factors, and Scorpio isn’t swayed by the crowd. While Taurus doesn’t really care what others think of them so long as others don’t get in their way, Scorpio is more likely to maintain a protective facade to peer out from behind in order to maintain their privacy on the other side. However, neither energy is geared toward approval. Taurus is the artist, the farmer, the chef, and the joy is in the having of the finished product, not in what you think of the finished product – that’s what Gemini is concerned with. Scorpio is the psychologist, the detective, the miner, and the joy is uncovering what is true and pure because it is true and pure, not in comparing what is true and pure to what others think is true and pure – that’s what Sagittarius is concerned with. Yes, Taurus/Scorpio are stubborn, as are the other two fixed signs, but fixity of purpose for Taurus is the will applied to the material and for Scorpio, will applied to the emotions – Scorpio’s traditional ruler is Mars, and it could be said that wherever Scorpio is in an individual’s chart is where their internal fire burns. Taurus’s ruler is Venus, and wherever Taurus is in the natal chart is where the individual applies their energy to being alive and staying alive – it’s what keeps you going, both your sustenance and your rewards. If Aries is Friday night, then Taurus is the weekend itself. If Aries is the spark of motivation, then Taurus is the finished product. If Aries is the hunt, Taurus is the feast. Likewise, if Libra is the union, then Scorpio is the intimacy: love marriages in any memorable history are a very recent phenomena, and despite whatever previous generations think of the way younger ones go about sex and love, all intimacy begins with an initial union, a mutual agreement, even if it’s just the two of you swiping right, even if it’s just a casual conversation with your matches on the dating app that you keep looking at wondering who is going to make the first move.

Not me.

Virgo and Libra, for a bit:

And, unlike with Virgo, who can keep their mouth shut and push their emotions aside in service to a bigger agenda, Libra cannot abide by inequality. Virgo knows that everyone has a job to do, and sometimes it’s not the job you want to do, but it’s the one that needs to get done in order to clear the crap to create the possibilities in which Libra thrives. Virgo canvasses in the cold of winter and takes police batons to the back and pepper spray to the face so that Libra can have voting rights for all to make sure that all those Virgos never have to do it again (but they will, because that’s what they do). If Virgo does the work, then Libra is where we enjoy the efforts of that work. After all, this is a Venusian sign. Virgo is the harvest and Libra the celebration, again, but also the work of reinforcing social bonds after the work is done, because if we don’t, that’s when chaos happens. Splitting according to one’s fair share, making agreements, and sharing, are glues that bind the society in which we thrive and maintain our social bonds, so that later on, we can have Scorpionic things, like capitalism and then Sagittarius things, like advertising campaigns and then Capricornian things, like corporations, and then Aquarian things, like franchises, and then Piscean things, like forgetting what it’s like to have to go to the soil rather than the fridge for one’s food so we have time to pray and worry and curate our Spotify playlists.

Libra is not necessarily no work, though it can be slothful and lazy, but rather the time of working to make staying together enticing, and if you don’t think compromise is work, you’ve never compromised before. I’m in the Pluto in Libra generation, and lemme tell you, radical and transformative compromise is the reason no one is accusing Generation X of doing anything wrong since 2001 is a fringe benefit, because I’m sure that when our children all reach their definite adulthoods and realize that we allowed a world to go digital at the expense of everyone’s mental health and ability to get along with people in real life and therefore, online, too, we’re going to get it for ruining society as a whole while hiding in our condos with our 401ks and piles of 80s toys we bought on Ebay because never getting to be a child meant we never got a chance to grow up, so now no one gets to be a child ever again.

So anyway, we’ve got that to look forward to in the future.

The Air Grand Trine:

I’ve believe that I’ve written before that I’m not super moony over grand trines. They’re really nice for flowing energy, but not necessarily motivating, and they don’t tend to create the changes or challenges we need in order to get the stuff we want or need. They’re just…pleasant, and for people who are born with those in their charts, they just work for them, and you probably know people who have grand trine energy in their charts. Unless they also have a t-square or a lot of challenging aspects otherwise, they don’t tend to be the most ambitious, do they? I used to think it was because things came easy for them, but now I’m starting to think that the reason grand trines can cause a person to lean toward a lack of ambition is because with trines, there’s an awareness of the blessings and not wanting to rock the boat, lest the gifts be lost. Whereas with a T-square in which the energy initially is deprivation or having nothing to lose anyway, grand trines are enough. I’m not convinced that they’re talents or gifts that one is born with that makes them the best or really awesome at something, but rather enough to do well, and to challenge that is to possibly have to confront the fact that maybe one is not so great.

So I think of a grand trine like being a big fish in a small pond. Having grown up in a small, insular, often inbred place, I knew of and currently know a lot of these types. I even know some who have done this as a deliberate life choice and have suggested it to me, but when the ruler of your 4th house is retrograde and conjunct Uranus in the 8th house and trine your ascendant, the universe can’t scream louder for you to leave your place of birth because where you’ll be accepted is elsewhere in the Big Beyond. But the grand trine is like a big fish in a small pond, because it only works where it is, and it only works because it’s not challenged. I mean, if you look back at your hometown homecoming queen and homecoming king, chances are, they’re not the most beautiful people in the world, but they may have been the prettiest in high school at the time, or at least the best at convincing people they were, but they didn’t go on to grace magazine covers in their adulthood. Your favorite local artist who paints ducks and sunsets on the lake may get a lot of fanfare in town, but their work would be received as uninspired and derivative by people who work in the fine arts. Your favorite local musician that everyone secretly wonders why they’re not famous yet may in fact be pretty good, but it’s pretty rare for someone to get discovered at a seedy bar in a small city in the Rust Belt.

And, because none of these people have to face and surmount challenges, they don’t necessarily have to get better at what they do, become competitive, face rejection or humiliation and keep going. There’s not only no motivation, but there’s a latent fear: if I venture out of this grand trine, I will be lost, unseen, unheard, unnoticed.

Contrast this with the T-square, where you have two opposing planets dying to get away from each other, both irritated by the square it makes to the apex planet. The opposition can’t win, the squares can’t be easy, so what’s the difference between being rejected by the high school art teacher or the admissions officers at the Rhode Island School of Design? What’s the difference between being called ugly in high school and being called ugly by people on social media? What’s the difference between being booed off stage in a crowd of 50 in a small town vs. a crowd of 200 in a bigger town?

The difference is that the broader you cast that T-square, the more likely you are to find people who get it, who get you, and that makes it worth the risk even if the rejection hurts more. Consider the grand square, with two oppositions square to each other, and you have the spokes of the wheel of a the zodiac that get the entire thing moving — grand square people cannot rest because there is always something pushing them, and like T-square people, they can’t expect to bloom where they are planted.

But you know, a grand trine feels nice. It’s secure, and when it’s in transit, it gives us all a bit of a lull and a respite from the constant hum of the zeitgeist machine no one can unplug. Here, we have the North Node in Gemini, Saturn in Aquarius, and Sun/Mars in Libra, so I’m using the term “rest” rather loosely. The need to become one’s own expert and share with others with the North Node in Gemini, the karmic deprivation of a progressive future and the factioning we’re seeing with Saturn in Aquarius, and the brat running around the store while his mother shops and talks on her phone with Mars and the Sun in Libra is working right now. A grand trine doesn’t necessarily have to manifest in a positive manner – it can actually create the perfect storm – because flowing doesn’t have to mean “good for you.” I mean, someone could land a perfect punch square on your nose and break it and while it sucks for you, it was a perfect blow. And a perfect storm can be devastating to some and beneficial for others, usually insurance companies, but you know what I mean.

If you want to attempt to “use” a grand trine’s energy, have fun with that. If you want some advice however, my advice is to not rest on your laurels. Transiting grand trines aren’t cosmic vacations. They can be advantageous to you, and my suggestion is to figure out what you need to learn (North Node) by objectively comparing what you learn from many sources (Gemini) from those who are experts or experienced in what they do (Saturn) regardless of what popular opinion is (Aquarius) knowing that you can find the energy (Mars) if your intentions are good (Libra) and that those who celebrate you for who you are (Sun) will support you (Libra). See what houses these are transiting in your own chart for an idea of where this change will have to come from. For me, this is in my 3rd, 7th, and 11th houses. this isn’t a time for you to become one of those dO yOuR oWn ReSeArCh ninnies, because you can’t do “research” from your phone, especially if you don’t know what you’re looking for or what rigor to apply to the work. It is a good time to indulge in your curiosity (Gemini) but to know the difference between research and edification and some random guy on Youtube who tells you something that makes you feel as if you’re in on a special secret and the people who are saying “what you’re looking for is right here. Right fucking here. We took out giant school loans to become the people who make sure things are right. fucking. here. for. you.”

But maybe that applies to me, too.

But just so you know, I would never in a million years tell you to do your own research on GMOs, vaccines, statin efficacy, or the like, because I’m not a scientist and most of your aren’t either, and the entire point of having this amazing, sophisticated society we live in with millions of people agreeing broadly on things is so we can have the benefit of the division of labor so that people can do what they’re good at. Scientists are good at science, and that’s what we pay them to do, so we don’t have to do our own research, so we can all do what we’re good at doing, whatever that is, and we agree to share what we do in order to maintain our bond. For even after the harvest, when we have all gotten our fair share, we still need to stick together because winter always comes, as do storms, wars, diseases, and the other things that don’t care about our particular rank and file. It’s no mystery then why freedom in the archetype of Sagittarius comes only after the agreements of Libra and the investments of Scorpio and not before them, because even the ancients who invented democracy and republics knew that without the first two, the third is only an illusion because how free when you can be when you’re starving death and alienated? Because if death itself doesn’t get you first, then one day, you will be tilling the land for someone else’s grain to grow, no one to bargain for your life, no one to fight for your freedom.

Happy Equinox, everyone. I hope the weather is kind and the cicadas are gone until next year.