Today is the new moon in Libra. It is also Rosh Hashanah Eve – the eve of the Jewish New Year. 

What a year it has been for Jewish people. On so many levels. In so many ways. What a year this has been for all people in the region where the Jewish people come from. What a year this has been for Palestinians. What a year this has been for humanity. What a year.

The pain. The fear. The othering. The hatred. Death. Destruction. 

Libra wants balance. The Libra archetype is the person who wants everything to be fair and even. 

So what is balance or evenness in war? How do you measure? And how is that ever a good idea? Where does it end? And how? 

Retaliation. Reaction. Defense. Attack. Response. Back. And forth.

Libra loves beauty and harmony and they don’t want conflict. War is not their domain. The Libra archetype avoids confrontation. They seek symmetry. They reach for romance. They are always in search of equilibrium. 

But balance is not sustainable. Balance can be touched for a moment. It isn’t a state we can hold. Balance is a tipping point.

In the Northern Hemisphere, Libra is the zodiac sign that welcomes Autumn. In the Southern Hemisphere, Libra welcomes Spring. It’s the sign of the Equinox – the equal moment between day and night. The tipping point toward more darkness or toward more light. 

Libra seeks justice. What is justice? Who gets to decide? You look at the justice system and see it is created by certain people and therefore tends to lean toward one side and not another. 

You look at social justice movements, and lately it seems like justice is taking on a whole other meaning. Justice for who? And for who not? 

We hear a lot of justifications these days. Justification for atrocities. For killing. For suffering. For rape. For murder. For oppression. From this side. From that side. We justify all kinds of things. 

I think of Libra as the wavering, the small movements within the attempt to create stability, the bend in the knee of the warrior, or the dancer, which allows them to take a stance. 

We usually think of taking a stance as an unwavering commitment. But what if the steadfastness of the stance that we take is in the flex, in the bend, in the twist, in the turn. 

Libras aren’t known for their decisiveness. And that’s because they want to see things from every possible angle, and to weigh all the options.

Life often requires that we make a decision and move on already. We gotta stay on the move. Make a choice. Pick sides. 

It seems as though humans always want to pick a side. One side must be in the wrong and the other in the right. One is better, the other is worse. One is good, the other is bad. 

Libra leans a little this way and a little that way. Moving back and forth as it seeks the middle. It can be annoying. Especially when you see clearly that you are on the “right side” and that you are on the side of “justice.” You want the Libra character to pick your side. Pick already! 

But maybe this archetype holds some of the medicine that humanity needs right now… Maybe we can learn something important from this scaling, weighing, back and forth movement, unsure which is the right choice archetype. Maybe this is precisely what humanity needs right now – a little less clarity. A little less certainty. A little less righteousness. 

Libra has a gentle presence that dances with uncertainty. There is never actual homeostasis in nature, in our bodies, and in the world around us. 

And justice? How can we ever be sure that we are right about something? 

Why aren’t we questioning ourselves a little more? Don’t we know that our perspective is limited? 

The symbol of Libra is the scale. 

Maat was an Ancient Egyptian goddess of truth, balance, justice, cosmic order, harmony, and law. And she’s famous for holding a scale

Maat brings order out of chaos. She is the energy that brings cohesion within the disarray. If we put her in Indian terms, Maat is Dharma; order, law, steadfastness. You know what’s cool? The verb root dhr in Sanskrit, found in the word Dharma, means both to stabilize and to flex. Because for anything to be stable it needs to also be able to move. 

She is a nature goddess and also a culture deity. She is the order within the chaos of nature, which organizes itself into cycles and seasons and phases. There’s some predictability in nature, but nature leans toward more randomness. Maat is the order that we find as we learn about nature’s organization. 

Maat is the human capacity to learn, and through knowledge to organize and create systems. She is a culture goddess and a nature one. 

Maat is most famous for weighing the heart of the deceased against a feather on her scale. If the heart is as light or lighter than the feather, the soul of the person goes on and travels to the afterlife. If the heart is heavier than the feather, it is devoured by Ammit; a demonic deity with the head of the crocodile, the body of a lion, and the hind of a hippo. 

The weight of the heart, who Ancient Egyptians believed held the soul, holds the person’s deeds. Were they good or evil?

Who gets to decide? 

If we look at the world from a certain religious perspective, justice means one thing. If we look at a person through a different perspective, justice means something completely different. 

We weigh the heart on completely different scales, depending on our belief system, values, and point of view, our background, our social circle, and sometimes even trends. 

Being gay in some cultures, would mean your heart gets eaten by a crocodile at the end. And punishing your wife, because she was sexy and other men flirted with her, would mean passing on to the afterlife. 

Ideas of justice can get really twisted.

For me, and probably for you too, justice has to do with human rights, with oppression, with dignity and liberty, with equity and equality. 

And even all of that has more nuance and greater complexity of facts and realities. We can’t see the whole picture from where we stand. Our perspective is limited.

Perhaps Libra, with its indecision, is here to remind us to be less sure, to lean into our not knowing, to leave room for doubt, and to waver rather than go head first into certainty. 

That’s not to take away from the importance of our values, form our deep desire for all beings to have what they need to not only survive, but thrive. 

Libra is a tipping point. A moment of balance that leads into another long period of searching. 

It’s not a comfortable place, but perhaps the searching, the questioning, the wondering, and the wandering is where most of life is, and so perhaps, it is the point itself. 

As we begin a new lunar cycle, with this archetype of justice and equality, we can plant the seeds of different and opposing views in search for a middle ground. 

As the Jews within us begin a new year, we can break the pomegranate of righteousness, and invite other tribes and cultures to break with us. As we eat and digest the bitter, sweet fruit made of seeds, may we plant some of them, and create the possibility of a future. 

Peace can only come from the willingness to take a chance, to take risks, to break open, to not be so busy with being right, but to be willing to waver.

Wavering isn’t a sign of weakness. Wavering is the bent leg that creates the possibility of stability. 

Check out this FREE video that explores the New Moon In Libra.

And if you want to grow deeper roots of stability, spread wings of confidence and broad vision, and drink the nectar of wisdom and pleasure pouring from within your own creative well, join us for Bond With Your Life – a deep journey of mythology, teachings, from nature, embodied practices, and yoga education. 

All the details for this in depth six week course are here. 

With love,

Hagar