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Hello Stargazer,

After taking more than year off from publishing a monthly forecast so that I could focus on producing exclusive content for my Patreon...​

...I'm super excited to announce the return of my astrology forecast!

And I'm double excited to bring it back just in time for Libra season.

It gives us another opportunity to reflect on the work of Libra superstar Oscar Wilde (born with natal sun in Libra), and particularly his posthumously published prison letter De Profundis.

​We explored De Profundis at length for the last month my Patreon community + on our private Discord server as part of an ongoing working for Venus in Libra.

But now that Venus entered Scorpio shortly after the Sun entered Libra, the vibe shift demands that we go even deeper into Wilde's De Profundis so that we can navigate a turbulent season ahead with grace, poise and charm.

​Click here to join my Patreon so that you can get access to members-only weekly forecast when it drops later today.

The Sorrowful Mysteries ~ Libra Season 2024

The equinox heralds the arrival of Libra season, the beginning of autumn in the Northern hemisphere when the Sun begins to fall. At this time of year, the gaunt foreshadow of death is balanced by a great surge of appreciation for life and all its beauty.

When the Sun moves into Libra, the hermetically sealed self-sufficiency of Virgo evolves into the desire for friendship, collaboration and reciprocity. Ruled by Venus, the season of Libra invites you to come into harmony with others and deepen the bonds of love that you share. This is the season when good conversation becomes the most valuable quality you can possess.Following the equinox, the Sun’s light begins to yield to the darkness. And the light of self yields to the mysteries of another. This is why the Sun in Libra is an ember that burns for others: finding its light in everyone’s eyes.

Those born under the sign of Libra often sparkle with social grace and charm simply because they are so quick to find the light in others. And this is why they can usually manage to relate to anybody.

Their external charm can sometimes be interpreted as capricious or insincere. But the interior world of Libra is a mythic realm of sorrow and beauty, for this is the sign of the zodiac that begins the preparation for death.

The zodiac is a seasonal calendar, as told through the great myth of the Sun. And Libra represents the part of the journey where the Sun enters the threshold to the underworld in preparation for its imminent death in Scorpio.

The Weighing of the Heart

Libra’s scales of justice symbolize the equinox, the moment where day and night hang in perfect balance. But as the darkness slowly overtakes the light, the Sun falls into the underworld.

Thus, the Scales also evoke the goddess, Ma’at, from the ancient underworld myth in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Maʽat resided in the Hall of Truth, where she held the scales that represented truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice. Before crossing over into the afterlife, the souls of the dead had to be judged by Ma’at, who weighed their hearts upon her scales and balanced them against the lightness of a feather.

Those with hearts as light as a feather were welcomed into eternity. But those with heavy hearts were torn to shreds by the hounds of hell.

The judgment of Ma’at makes it very clear that there is no justification for entering into the afterlife with a heart that’s heavy with bitterness and regret. The lightness or heaviness of your heart is the choice between your soul’s eternity or its extinguishment.

The only way to live and die with lightness in your heart is to choose love.

Love is the wisdom of your heart’s true devotion to life: a path of bliss and pain; sacrifice and struggle. Although it’s nice to imagine that love is only born from beauty and pleasure, the deepest kind of love is often born from great sorrow.

Thus, the secret wisdom of Libra is to allow love to bloom, even in times of great sorrow.

Demeter’s Sorrow

Another ancient myth that correlates to the fall equinox comes from the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, which centered upon the earth goddess Demeter and her beloved daughter, Persephone. These goddesses represented the light and life of nature, eternal spring and summer.

It describes the final days of Virgo, how the light and beauty of summer is torn away.

One fine day, the virgin goddess Persephone was wandering alone in a meadow, only to be abducted by Hades and dragged into the depths of the underworld. The radiance of Persephone’s beauty vanished. And her mother Demeter fell into a deep sorrow, letting everything on earth wither and decay.

To bring balance back to nature, the myth concludes with a compromise between the gods. During spring and summer, Persephone was allowed to ascend and live with her mother in warmth and bliss. But during the fall and winter, Persephone descended back into the underworld to rule with Hades.

The rites of Eleusis leading up to the equinox reenacted Demeter’s agonizing search for her daughter. Feeling the depth of her sorrow was an essential aspect of their initiation into wisdom.

Sorrow opens the door to the soul’s liberation.

Or as Oscar Wilde observed:

As the light begins to fall and the darkness begins to rise, you may feel Demeter’s sorrow, her mourning for the Virgin’s golden warmth. But do not despair. Light and life are in an eternal flux of rise and fall.

The cycle of Persephone’s descent and ascent illustrates the eternal return of death and rebirth. And to the initiates of Eleusis, this cycle implied the immortality of the soul.

The Greater Mysteries of the September equinox still serve to remind us that the death of summer opens the gateway to eternity.

Crossing the Threshold

Libra season begins on September 22 in a deeply introspective mood.

You might feel unexpectedly tired as the light falls, the Moon wanes between eclipses, and Venus plays the role of Persephone when she squares Pluto just before entering Scorpio on September 23.

The internal pull toward introspection gets a sudden uplift when the Mercury makes his superior conjunction to the Sun on September 30, balancing each other out for what lies ahead.

The superior conjunction is only days before the south node solar eclipse in Libra on October 2. This closes not only the present eclipse portal, but also the one that began last year when the lunar nodes entered the Libra-Aries axis. What has changed since the fall of last year? And what is something you can release so that your heart can be light as a feather?

On October 8, Mercury trines Jupiter on the same day as Venus trines Mars. Mercury in Libra stabilizes Jupiter in Gemini. Galvanized by his recent superior conjunct, Mercury has the power to bring Jupiter's fantastical scope into the focus of scalability reality. If you've had a vision this year that's suffered from scatterbrained excess, this is a day you can find the focus to trim it back to its bare essentials.

Meanwhile, Venus in Scorpio and Mars in Cancer open a safe space to explore the roles of dominance and submission in your relationships and rivalries.

Venus in Scorpio has the medicine Mars in Cancer needs to heal his mother wound battle scars, but only if he surrenders to the sting. But her medicine is narcotic with high risk of abuse, coodependency, and dope sick love. Be mindful to set boundaries at this transit—with yourself as much as you do with others. Know your limits and honor them.

On October 17, the Full Moon in Aries is conjunct Chiron in Aries and in a waning T-square to Mars in Cancer. Your boundaries will be tested. Where there is volatility there is also vulnerability and where there is sickness there is also the cure. The eruptions of pain and sorrow you may experience at this full moon are the poison that is the cure.

​Click here to join my Patreon so that you can get access to members-only weekly forecast when it drops later today.

The Sorrowful Mysteries of Oscar Wilde

In search of an historical Libra who embodies the social grace, charm and deeper mysteries of the sign, there’s none more captivating than Oscar Wilde.

Born on October 16th, 1854 with his Sun and Venus in Libra, Oscar Wilde’s heart was a fertile garden of tremendous beauty and pleasure, but hidden within was a chasm of great sorrow that he didn’t discover until tragedy struck him near the end of his life.

Oscar Wilde first rose to fame as an award winning scholar with an encyclopedic memory. But it was wit and humor that became his offering of lightness to balance the heaviness of Victorian life. As he said:

There are many parallels between Victorian England and 21st Century America. Both are defined by materialism, puffed up by the myth of progress and shadowed by a neurotic repression of the human spirit.

Oscar Wilde’s wit was sharpened on the social inequities and values of the Industrial Revolution, which is why he remains so thought provoking for modern readers. The decadence in Victorian England is very familiar to the commodified culture of 2024. As he describes:

For many years, he lived a high life of aristocratic frivolity, freely exploring art and soul; beauty and sexuality as he pleased. But all that came to an end in 1895 when he was convicted of homosexuality and was imprisoned for a two-year sentence of hard labor with poor food and harsh conditions.

Wilde’s sentencing was a total humiliation, leading to the loss of his family, his fortune, and his reputation. All this injustice and suffering gave him many good reasons to have a heavy heart.

And yet, as a consummate Libra, something beautiful and wise blossomed within him during this time. And it offers great inspiration to help anyone endure their own times of suffering because it made him a better man.

As Goethe said:

Life is not always fair or pleasant. But as the ancient mysteries taught, sorrow has a way of awakening the soul.

The environment of prison was like the threshold of the underworld, the grim hall of truth where Wilde’s voice took on a calm eloquence, transforming the pain of his captivity into a lucid form of wisdom and beauty.

It was during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol that Wilde composed a letter to his lover Bosie (Lord Alfred Douglas). Wilde entrusted the manuscript to his former lover and loyal friend, the journalist Robert Ross, who often competed with Bosie for Wilde's affections. Ross published the letter fiver years after Wilde's death in 1905 under the title De Profundis, Latin for "from the depths"—a reference to the Psalm 130: "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord."

Wilde’s voice is dramatically different in De Profundis, no longer filled with cavalier humor and acerbic observations.

Instead, it opens with the chilling lines…

As he reflects upon his life, he admits that he has no regrets about the life of pleasure he had enjoyed. But he also reflects upon the fact that he had unknowingly starved his soul by only tasting the sweet side of life. He had been a decadent “child of his age”. But now, the experience of sorrow in prison had transformed his spirit with humility.

Inspired by his long suffering, his outlook on life eventually transformed into a mystical revelation:

As though he were addressing Ma’at herself, Wilde describes how he intends to live with lightness in his heart after his release from prison.

He describes how after many months of bitterness, rage and suicidal depression, he has finally lightened his heart by forgiving the society who betrayed him and the people who mocked him. Finally he declares that he would rather be homeless and hungry for the rest of his life than live as an aristocrat burdened by hatred in his heart.

He chooses the lightness of the feather. And as an artist, he discovers that…

Upon his release, Wilde was bankrupt and ill. After moving to Paris, he became swallowed up in alcohol and morphine. His last publications described the cruelties of prison, inspiring social outrage and sweeping reforms. He died at only forty-six, but left a tremendous legacy that uplifts the heaviness of life through humor, beauty and the wisdom that can only be born from great sorrow.

Like the great equinox myths of the ancient world, Oscar Wilde’s story can inspire you to align with the mysteries of Libra season. In the spirit of Oscar Wilde then, enjoy as much pleasure as life will allow. But remember the other side of the scales, where sorrow is given as a gift, breaking your heart open to summon the light of your soul.

​Click here to join my Patreon so that you can get access to members-only weekly forecast when it drops later today.

Much Love,
Rachel

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