Breaking the Spell of Normality-Libra

Art by Mindy Sommers

Consensus Sexuality, Sovereignty, The Deeper Truth,

Libra and a Million Retrogrades

Normality steals real life away from us and repackages it as something sort of limp, grey, and almost mechanical. It’s used as a cunning device that keeps us from discovering our true nature.

I want to talk about some Libran themes, and show you how the nine planets in retrograde are assisting in a major evolutionary upgrade for those who want it.

First, let me add some context for your consideration. Consensus Sexuality, and how it historically kept people from their true nature by instilling the cage of normality around their expression. 

Homosexuality was defined as a mental disease in the Psychiatric Handbook until 1973 when a group of practitioners got together and decided it was no longer an illness. In other words a panel of people got together to decide what was normal. (this happens with a multitude of subjects, all across the globe, all the time. I assert it’s an external control function to keep us from meeting our eternal mystical nature)

In 1987, in Manchester, England there was an undercover police operation called “Spanner”, in which police obtained a video of what was labeled “homosexual debauchery”. It appeared to depict acts of violence and sex. The police legitimately thought there were victims of violence that perhaps had even led to death. But when the police moved in to make an arrest, they came upon a group of healthy men who said, “we are a somewhat kinky bunch, we like to engage in this form of love making, and everything we did was 100% consensual. We did this with full informed consent. No one was injured or killed”. 

Crow Tarot Deck

After a whole bunch of hysterical press, 16 men were charged and brought to court. The court ruled that consent was not a defense. Even though they were in the privacy of their own home, and making choices that affected only their bodies. The men posed the question, “isn’t what we do with our bodies, our time, and in the privacy of our homes up to us?” 

The judge came back and said “no, it isn’t”. This resulted in the men being sentenced to prison. When they were released, knowing this verdict was wrong, they took the case to the higher courts, and they lost again. 

Lord Templeman, who was one of the condemning judges famously said, “pleasure derived from the infliction of pain is evil”. Cases similar to the Spanner case were brought forward that involved permanent harm and mutilation, but those cases were decided differently. Much analysis of the similarities between cases has made it clear that the problem the defendants had in the Spanner case was the modality of sex. In Spanner, the modality was homosexual, in other words, “abnormal”, whereas the others were heterosexual in nature, or rather “normal”. 

In a final attempt to overturn the ruling they took the case to the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg, France. There was a lot of hope that because Europe had become somewhat more enlightened, the case would finally be overturned. Instead, that final case in 1997 resulted again in a ruling that stated, “while a person has a general right of free will the State may as a matter of public policy, restrict that in certain cases, for example, the general public good and the protection of morals.” 

What a worrying statement. Who has the final authority on morals? Who is to say what pain or pleasure is for anyone? Who is to say what we can and cannot do as willing, fully conscious, human beings? Where do we go to find justice when Empire, the Gatekeepers of “normality”, says we fall outside the bounds and must be punished? When they say we are limited to a limp, grey, mechanic, existence, or suffer societal repercussions?

The same goes for psychotropic plants. Who has the right to tell you what you can and cannot do with your body, or your consciousness? Who has the right to interfere with your sovereign, karmic, path in life? Where do we go when we cannot find a wise, fair, arbiter of Justice within the machine of Empire? Where do we go for guidance concerning what is truly right?

What I’m pointing to is a philosophical process of inquiry that we each must undertake as spiritual initiates. If we are serious about the process of unfoldment, reaching higher levels of attainment, this is necessary work. We must learn to cultivate our own values of rightness, and justness, in order to experience true spiritual sovereignty. 

We can turn to the mystery school lessons of Libra to help us answer these questions. Libra is concerned with Justice, Judgement, and our Karmic path. Esoterically, The Libran Scales can represent the Goddess Ma’at who weighed the heart and the feather to administer judgement before people left this plane and travelled to the afterlife. "Ma'at" is an ancient Egyptian word best translated as "the rightness of things". It is through right relationship that we can keep our hearts lighter than a feather. Although that has become increasingly difficult in a world that is consistently slathering our consciousness with consensus morality rather than the morality of the High Heart. Truth that flows from the High Heart is our own Divine Love in Action. How do we bring in clarity around what is right and true for us individually, divorced from societal trendiness that is cloaked in the tyranny of do-goodery? 

My answer is; it’s the higher dimensional aspect of our being that is really the only acceptable  judge. We can create anything we desire here, if we stay tied to some form of embodied wisdom that can tell us if we are doing something that is for our evolution or against it. We will not find those answers out on the screen of culture. 

Our connection to our own sovereignty and rightness can, and will, inform us of our guilt or absolution on any given matter.  And one way we can do that is through a sort of divine balance of inner polarity. Equilibrium points us towards inner rightness. And it is equilibrium that helps bring us into communion with our eternal mystical nature. It helps us uncover our karmic path. What are we all doing here? What is our divine purpose? 

The Evolutionary mission of the Planetary Spirit is to strike the Keynote of Truth. That’s it. Day in, and day out, our divine contract is to preserve truth, and align our soul with it. To find equilibrium, one moves as the truth moves. It really is that simple. As we are all individual shards of divinity, it will look different for each of us. But a life in service to our deepest truth is our purpose. It is how we evolve as individuals and as a collective. And finding equilibrium in relationship to this truth, is part of Libra’s Mystery School Teachings. 

The external control mechanisms will not be able to inform us of our mystical nature. And there is a drive right now to convince us that we do not even have one. The polarity extremes keep trying to pull us further and further away from equilibrium, out of bodies, and away from truth. Libra is here to help us keep our equanimity.

All of this beautifully sums up what our current sky symphony is in service too. We have a total of nine planetary bodies in retrograde. Eris, Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Chiron, Saturn, Jupiter, Pallas Athena, and Mercury. Meaning each archetype is asking us to do an internal inventory of how their force is expressed through us. Retrogrades also hold the magic of helping us to break the spell of normality. They help us see the mystical side of life, the side that often goes against the grain. It is when our sensory perception gets lopsided, or turned upside down that we are able to question “the matrix”, or consensus reality.

The Before Tarot-Magician

Most recently it was Mercury who Stationed Retrograde in Libra. (Sept. 26-27) Mercury rules the mental; our intellect and subsequently our communication, and our hands, so what we “do” and create in our lives. He is connected to Thoth/ Hermes, and therefore, the Library of Mankind’s Knowledge and Wisdom. In the Hermetic Tradition he represents the Magician in the Tarot. Reminding us of our inner magic, and all of the power that contact with that magic brings to our lives when we harness it. Mercury’s Cycle from Cazimi to Cazimi, which includes his retrograde journey, contains all of the alchemical elements of transmutation. 

For some, the “Fall” into Libra season feels eerie. A sense of dis-ease and foreboding sets in. For others, the smell of the air and the shift in the atmosphere brings a mystical quality forward. It becomes more tangible, more accessible to our senses. In the Hermetic tradition, Libra is associated with the Tarot card, Justice. Paul Foster Case describes the Justice Card as “the inward urge or drive for self-direction, work or action,” which he says is the “basic meaning for the sanskrit term Karma”. He goes on to say that “Our subconscious deductions from experience are the seeds of Karma, and are the basis of all of our instruction and knowledge.” This is where Mercury in Libra is synthesized. The Justice card always contains a sword. In mystical traditions, the sword is always associated with Truth. It cuts away illusion. Mercury Retrograde often has that quality as well. 

With Mercury going Retrograde in Libra, an air sign, we once again turn our attention towards all of the “re” verbs; revision, revise, reinspect, remember, reunite, rework, etc. This serves to give a major boost with our Libran inquiries. He will no doubt jolt us out of the bounds of normality at some point. Libra begins the yearly cycle of involution, inviting us to balance inner polarities, and Mercury Retrograde asks us to bring our mind inward and reflect on our mystical nature. We are supported in looking again at what we value, where we’ve moved towards or away from realness, truth, and justness, and if what we are doing is in service to our evolution or against it. This is a karmic inventory. To read about Libra’s connection to Karma, I wrote a short piece at this link.

More about Libra and the Narrow Door https://www.redmoonrevival.org/insights/narrow-is-the-door