Libra-Scorpio Threshold
Libra-Scorpio Threshold
measuring cups with claws
The Sun moved across the threshold from Libra to Scorpio on Tuesday. I’ve been wanting to get back to writing this threshold series, and have been particularly excited to write this one for reasons I’ll share below.
This is the 5th installment in the series. If you’re new here (hi!) or haven’t read one of these before, some background: I like to spend time considering signs that are side-by-side and what it is like for planets to travel across them.
In traditional astrology, when two planets are in signs that are next to each other, like Libra and Scorpio, the planets are “in aversion.” Planets in aversion can’t see each other and can’t communicate directly. It’s like they are in separate rooms with a thick adjoining wall, perhaps hearing the other shuffling around but unable to see each other or exchange words. I’m fascinated by their ghostly intimacy, this invisible sensing. It is a relationship that relies on affect, memory, and anticipation when illumination fails.
I like to think about what side-by-side signs have in common because technically, they should be so unlike. They never share modality or element. It’s a complete switch up from Pisces to Aries, from Aries to Taurus. Still, they are neighbors so while I revel in the differences, it enriches my understanding of each sign to look for surprising connections and common ground.
If you work with fixed star conjunctions as I do, fixed stars invite this sort of thinking. I can imagine how a person could find it baffling or frustrating that the fixed stars projected onto the ecliptic do not land where it seems they “should,” with Libra constellation stars landing in the tropical Scorpio zodiac, the stars of Scorpius landing in Sagittarius. I find it tantalizing. There are also a ton of fixed stars that are part of non-zodiacal constellations that we project onto zodiac signs that seem to fly in the face of what we know about them, complicating these landscapes further.
I like neat and tidy geometry of astrology. So clean. But I also love when that tidyness goes squiggly and boundaries overlap and rules start to show their exceptions. There’s a magic there too, and it reminds me to stay loose and allow layers to form. That’s a lot of what these threshold pieces are about.
But first —
My Books Are Open!
Before I share this post’s main content: my books are open for November readings! I actually have a few spots for next week as well. I’m moving in November so I’d love to get my calendar settled soon as I continue to juggle running my one-person (but many-spirit) business with the cross-state moving logistics. Next week I’ll be writing to you surrounded by a lot of cardboard boxes (I’m nearly done with a plant-focused post!).
Meanwhile, these new 11th House readings have been so exciting! I know I’m supposed to say that but really, I’m loving these readings. I thought they would take longer to gain the juice than the 5th House readings have, but they just build right on that work. It’s been an honor to talk to people about the shape of their wishes, their experience in group dynamics, and how they might navigate some of their chart-specific fears around sharing their creative work with others. These are all subjects I struggle with myself and I have found that the planets have really loving, hilarious, and clever ideas about how to move through it.
I have also added a 1-session version of Plant & Planet Devotion. I wanted to make this offering a little more accessible. The main difference, besides time and the depth it offers, is when we meet for one session my plant recommendations will be more on the fly rather than something I’ve sat with for days between our meetings, divined on, and so on. But the intention to facilitate a stronger relationship between you and one of the planets in your chart, with the help of plants, is the same and totally possible in one session. If you’d like it to sink in a bit more, the 2-session option is still available.
This Libra-Scorpio threshold piece (I swear we’re getting to it) takes a lot from my experiences giving my Rays of Light: Sun + Fixed Star reading (reminder: I will stop offering Rays of Light in 2025 to make way for new readings so if you’ve been wanting that reading, now’s the time!). A lot of Sun in Libra people showed up for that reading and continue to do so. I expected that! What’s a little surprising is I also saw loads of Sun in Scorpio and Scorpio Risings folks too (though I have theories about why that is). Because I saw so many people with prominent Libra and Scorpio placements this last year, I feel like I know these two zodiac signs better than I ever have. I have been eager to write this post up.
Here it is. I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think in the comments if you feel moved to do so! I really like it when this isn’t a one-way communication.
Libra-Scorpio Threshold
To be in the last part of Libra is to be with a wheeling contraption with many limbs, whirring and reeling, threatening to sputter out but it doesn’t. It is an automaton of shining beauty. A machine you can love. You will not be able to turn away from it, so alluring, so intricate. It is at the very edge of its capacity but still within it and that is part of its beauty.
It is a clockwork toy castle on wheels with a real moat and porcelain swans and tinkling music, dancers in the ballroom like synchronized music box figurines, a fountain with crystal waters, endlessly moving. How dainty and specific and sorted out it all is. Each choice deliberate, exquisite. Each choice for your pleasure. And that is the pleasure of the moving-thing. Everything is on interlocking tracks, a choreography built into the structure. It responds to its environment, a breeze, your touch. How alive these objects seem. How alive they are. A painted wooden dancer curtsies, you bow. Are you part of it? Are you real? So well-crafted, so in-motion, so juggled by many operations.
What does it take for planets to live in this place? What does it take for a human to live a life that reflects planets here?
The Scales are an air sign, yet scales have no lungs, no voice. A scale has no heart, yet Libra is Venus’s home. Yet scales invite, don’t they? They are open hands to put things in. Here and there. What is that? And what is that? How are they alike? How are we alike? What fulcrum holds the difference? Do you trust the measurement? Do you approve of the evaluation?
The Scales invite and they assess. Venus at the auction. Venus in a gallery, at the opera. Venus as matchmaker and mediator. Venus as maker of the great toy castle machine, delighting you, enchanting you, asking: “who is object and who is subject? why think in these terms?” and “if objects have personhood, what is objectification?”