Welcoming autumn and Libra season, dark sides and all ⚖️🍂

your witchy writer friend check-in: Libra season edition

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your witchy writer friend check-ins are are specially curated editions of the newsletter that hit your inbox and/or Substack app with the passing of each astrological season. They include thoughts and recommendations on any number of relevant current events, links, literature, and ideas on what to create ritual with. I also share deeper discussions of astrology as a framework for what may be coming up, both on personal & collective levels, and how to use it as a vehicle for personal growth and healing.

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Photo by Ihor Malytskyi on Unsplash

We have passed across the threshold—moving from the lightness and lushness of summer into the darkening parts of the year. Well, in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway! I could not shake a dogged sense of fatigue yesterday; my ascension and integration symptoms have been strong lately, involving exhaustion, disinterest in old habits, certain relationships being removed from my path, and consistently clear messages and downloads from Spirit.

Anyone else with me?

As yesterday’s autumnal equinox ushered in ever so slightly cooler temperatures in California, I found myself considering the pendulous duality this time always brings. It’s what equinoxes represent—the point of balance between light and dark, this one an electric hovering as the Wheel of the Year turns and the Northern Hemisphere begins its slow descent into winter.¹ This is physically represented by the lessening of daylight hours, of a bright and effervescent summer fading into moody and colorful fall, and then, ultimately, into wintry dark and cold.

My favorite lesson from this part of the spiritual path I’ve chosen to walk—one of constant awakening toward new levels of self discovery—is the joy of honoring each and every season of growth. I’d consider that one of the foremost joys of living a more expansive life, actually: learning to accept that “nothing in nature blooms all year round,” or so goes the saying (and the reality). Nothing in nature, including us.

Part of the joy of unfolding into a more expansive life is honoring each and every season of your growth.

And so, part of this shift means allowing ourselves the space to get and be tired, to follow more closely the natural rhythms of our own energy cycles. For me it’s involved reclaiming a series of rituals, practices, habits, and structures I once actively deferred or repudiated. Cutting back on caffeine is one of those things—learning how not to depend on it or other forms of uppers to “rescue me from myself.” A big one indeed. And as the path unfolds, I wonder again and again, Why am I so afraid of being tired?

I’ve discovered, among other things, that I can be both a morning person and a night person, just like I can love dogs and cats. (What’s up with the binaries enforced on these things, anyway?) My theory on this is that people of both camps enjoy similar things about them. The cracking open of the early morning, and the deepening into late night hours. It’s the sensation of owning those hours: the power of solitude inherent, of being completely alone and unbothered by the rest of the world. Indeed, the world is yours to do with as you will in the deepening crush of 4am.

This is all too appropriate for Libra season; if anyone knows the feeling of striving for equilibrium, sometimes in the most unexpected of places, it’s Libra.

Admittedly, I’ve been feeling a certain distance from Libra energy lately. As an Aries myself, we are sister signs—two sides of the same coin, parallel but polar opposites. And nowhere is this more evident than in the way we choose to operate in our social circles. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve moved away from keeping a larger circle, from bouncing from friend group to friend group. It’s been a few years now that I’ve firmly entrenched myself in thinking along these lines: if you’re friends with everyone, you’re close friends with no one.

It strikes me that Libra simply doesn’t think this way.

What I have always loved about Libra is their ability to draw people toward them with such grace and ease; they are magnetic, but not in the same way as Scorpio— they remain open-faced as flowers. But, because many don’t want to see the world as anything less than gorgeous, harmonious, and zinging with radiant energy, there are times when they don’t see the people they attract for who they really are, but instead as projections and emblems of the world order they long to create.

This is the dark side of Libra—the other side of the scale, the balance, they are represented by.

I know what you’re thinking: “Well, okay Kimia, but don’t we all do that to some extent?” Yes, of course we do. It’s just that Libra is the sovereign, the majordomo of this style of delusional thinking; it’s why they’re such great manifestors, always attracting. When Libra’s attention is on you, they are pure sunshine in human form. The only problem is that they treat most of the beautiful people in their lives with the same attention while they are with them, so you may not know where you actually stand with them.

Being around Libra energy has always made me wonder: what would it be like to be different, to focus the entirety of my being on others, and being present for others, even at the risk of losing myself?

Instead, I exhibit the opposite problem (there’s the other side of the coin again); I turn inward, toward my hyper-independence. Yes, it’s a trauma response; yes, I still do it. I have never particularly related to the problem of “people pleasing” that many seem to, as is evidenced by soaring mental health trends and the therapy talk side of social media today. It’s not that I don’t want to please the people I care about. Far from it. Nor is it that I’m above people pleasing, or that I don’t seek external validation sometimes, as we all do.

It’s that the thought of losing myself to others is frightening enough that I must avoid it at all costs. In romantic situations, the fear of being hurt again was colossal enough for a time, that I built towering walls around my heart, that I cut men off ruthlessly and with no regrets. I’m still working on that.

That said, one thing I’ve always loved about myself—even in the depths of the depression and high-functioning but immense anxiety I faced before my spiritual awakening(s)—is that I’ve always held on to a strong sense of Self.

And this is part of it, as I remind myself now; boundaries over barriers. Bridges, not walls, though I have been known to burn a bridge or two in the past.

Building intimacy with others does not have to constitute losing who you are. Being seen, with purpose and authenticity, in community does not have to be something to fear. Nor does the desire to be seen—and even validated—need to turn into something codependent, hungry, and uncontrollable; it does not need to become a crutch.

We’re all human, after all. To be human means to be in relations with others, constantly co-creating with the world around us.