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TWELVE PHASE OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE: LIBRA
Our symbolical journey along the path of the Zodiac has led us past the awesome countenance of the Sphinx and through the disciplines to be learned during the Virgo period which it opens. Now we face the mysterious structure known to all under the name of the Great Pyramid. Into this structure is stamped the significance of the cosmic reality of the zodiacal Sign, Libra; the significance of the fall equinox and of the ascendancy of the Night-force, victorious over the Day-force. In Libra, Leo's self-assertion and Virgo's self-criticism are reconciled and overcome through self-consecration to Humanity. In this consecration the self remains, but no longer as a master, not even any longer as a critic or a servant. The self remains as a focused lens in and through which the light of the Whole operates, urging all men to become participants in the total organism of Humanity. A participant: a man of action, who works consciously for the triumph of the universal Will over the narrow power of particular egos.
Libra is the birth of the individual unit into the Greater Whole in which he is thenceforth to operate as a cell. The fall equinox marks the decisive triumph of united action and social-cooperation over individualistic self-expression and emotional self-centeredness. It is not yet a final victory; just as the spring equinox does not mean the ultimate phase of personality-building. But, after Libra, the goal ahead should become clear. Vision and understanding are there to be had by every true seeker. New energies are being aroused, energies that are the products of group-cooperation and social interchange. New vistas are revealed, new goals more or less clearly outlined. The walls of the fortress of self are — at least theoretically — broken. The life within should be able to combine freely with the life of the companions who eat of the same bread of consecration to the welfare of the Whole; yet who also are ready to fit into a hierarchical pattern of group organization.
The three phases of the process which leads from the fall equinox to the winter solstice parallel rather closely the sequence of development symbolized in the zodiacal Signs, Aries, Taurus and Gemini; but now it is no longer a process of building up of personality, but one devoted to the growth of society. Socializing forces are surging with ever-increasing momentum. The still scattered individuals are swept by their tide. The entire purpose is that of making more valid, more actual, more tangible the reality of human interchange, the reality of the community, the reality of living together within an organic, stable, permanent structure of communal behavior (Libra). Out of such living together, the energy born of communal feelings and realizations (Scorpio) and the vision born of communal thinking (Sagittarius) will progressively emerge — and finally the completed social organism, the perfected State (Capricorn).
Libra is a cardinal Sign and, thus, in it values of activity or behavior are stressed. The momentum of the social process dynamizes the consciousness of the Libra type. There is great social eagerness, a vital sense of dependence upon social values. This is not the Leo type's dependence upon fame or applause, which was born of unacknowledged social insecurity turning into bravado. The Libra type has developed, for the first time in the zodiacal sequence, a real sense of social value; but just because social values have become so real, so important to that type and because, at the same time, his feelings and emotions are still strongly conditioned by the individualism of the Day-force, the Libra native has a tendency to exaggerate the importance of social factors.
Just as the Aries type becomes aggressive and arrogant in his eagerness to establish himself as an integrated personality, so the Libra type will go out of his way to prove more than is necessary his social sense. He will sacrifice himself — at least he will act as if he did — rather than feel he might be negligent in his social or group obligations. The socializing urge haunts him just as the personalizing urge haunts the Aries type. And yet he is not really sure of himself in social or group activities. He always feels that somehow he could easily revert to individualistic desires; that he has to cover up the possibility of that reversal, to make up for it, to invent stories and stage attitudes to assure his companions — and himself! — that he belongs to the group and the group acts through him.
It has been said that the Libra type is opportunistic, changeful and unreliable. But these are only surface characteristics. The real — because the psychological — reason for these Libra traits is that the Libra person is willing to do anything to fit in with what a group or collectivity expects of him, with what he thinks the group might expect of him. This makes him changeable and unreliable in surface decisions. It gives him at times the appearance of a chameleon — the symbol of all opportunists — changing his color to fit the situation and, better still, to merge into situations. This "merging into situations" is really the essence of the Libra behavior. But underneath it there is a very great individual pride and susceptibility, a sometimes borrowing? sense of his inability to perform adequately the task he has set for himself — whether in his family or his social life.
Libra and Aries are signs of unstable equilibrium. In them the Day and Night forces are nearly balanced. Thus the tendency to restlessness, nervousness and often neurotic behavior is often present. In Libra, the person wants consciously to be social, impersonal, spiritual, rich in his dealings with his coworkers; yet subconsciously he seems, at least to himself, to fall always short of the mark he has set as his ideal goal, and the goal seems ever elusive. Thus he easily experiences fits of despondency, followed by over-zealousness in social work and group-participation. He is ever on the lookout for the ideal group, the ideal form of cooperation. All human relationships seem to him solemn and extremely serious. But he pours himself so intently in them that he may miss the reality by straining himself after the ideal. He may crush the trees in his passionate love for the integrity of the forest.
Yet, at his best, the Libra type is an excellent manager of group activities, a wonderful harmonizer and integrator — the more so perhaps, the more he feels unsure of his own integration. Group-harmony, happiness and idealism in human relationships are matters of life and death for him. Controversies and intercinal strife upset his nervous balance to the point of complete psychic exhaustion. He has not reached the point where he can thrive on diplomatic intrigues and political schemes, as the Capricorn type does. In Capricorn the social sense is as set and steady as the sense of personality is set in Cancer. But in Libra and Aries respectively nothing is yet set. Society and Personality are in the making. Things are just taking shape; so there can hardly be as yet complete ease — just because inadequacy and reversal to past attitudes must appear as appalling tragedies.
Thus the need for a powerful idealism whenever the Libra type is evolved enough to be really conscious of the social process. Just as the Aries type seeks a Superman or Master upon whom he could lay the at times insuperable burden of his as yet unsteady personality, so the Libra type pursues his quest for an ideal group or pattern of society to give security to his social endeavors. Thus the attraction which the Theosophical concept of the "White Lodge" — the perfect group — has had for a number of eager Libra personalities; such as Annie Besant, B. P. Wadia and a few others. Thus also the high social idealism of a Gandhi, with his Sun in Libra.
On the other hand, the less evolved type of Libran operates at levels where human relationships are most easily formed — at the level of physical attraction. Still others find their field of activity in the arts. Libra is ruled by the planet Venus and produces beautiful features and great charm. It is a symbol of culture and esthetic refinement. It is seen at work wherever the factor of form operates as a means to bring scattered elements into cohesive patterns of order and beauty.
This factor of "form' is often little understood. Any kind of social organization, including industrial management, is based on the principle of form. Any relatively permanent relationship between two or more units means that a form or pattern has been constituted. The Night-force, in its operation throughout the Zodiac, depends upon form. There can be no "gathering together" without form. Every work of art is a formal gathering together and organization of separate units, whether these be pigments, lines, tones or physical materials. and so is a social group. Libra is the artist who dreams of ideal forms. Capricorn will make these ideal forms concrete and tangible among living men. The dream of the artist often inspires the politics of the statesman; witness Wagner's influence upon Hitler, who himself has a Libra Ascendant and is more an artist than a statesman — but has the power to inspire able statesmen.
Besides "form," another factor figures predominantly in the activities and reactions of the Libra type; and that is that of evaluation. This leads us to consider the symbol of the Scales associated with Libra. One should not take the symbol literally and conclude that Librans are "balanced" persons. They may be so occasionally; but just as often they will be found to be extremists in most important matters, even if ready seemingly to give in for the sake of social harmony.
The symbol of the Balance has actually a different meaning. Scales are used to weigh things. Weighing a thing is to compare its mass to that of a socially accepted standard weight. It is therefore to measure and to evaluate the fundamental character of a thing — its mass or weight — in terms of social value. Mass is fundamental, because it evaluates an object in terms of its relation to the planet as a whole, in terms of the factor of gravitation; and, moreover, because all values are estimated by reference to a certain wealth of gold. Scales, therefore, symbolize the evaluation of the most fundamental characteristics of any object. The point they emphasize is certainly not the factor of "balance"! — a means to an end — but that of evaluation, measurement, and (on the basis thereof) of judgment.
The Libra type is essentially a person who evaluates things, people, events by referring them to fixed social standards, either traditional or ideal. He evaluates, and while he may not feel sure enough of his social standing to pass judgments "in the name of society" — as the Sagittarian will do remorselessly — nevertheless he will have weighed the evidence and fitted things very neatly where, in his view, they belong. Social usefulness and the capacity to operate harmoniously in group are the main standards Libra uses to make his evaluations. They are social, and they are also esthetic standards. And the Libran type often operates in the field of art, because it is easier to organize notes on a score, or lights and shades in a drawing, than to bring human personalities into stable patterns of organization.
Again we must repeat that Libra is not yet a master of the social process. He has emerged out of the critical stage of self-examination and self-discipline stressed in Virgo. He has seen perhaps the Vision of the "ideal Society," of the "New Jerusalem" — the perfect City or State. But it will take more stages of evolution before the power actually to build that State with men and women is developed. Thus Libra dreams, evaluates, reaches toward and radiates the love which should eventually build the new group and the new society; but he does so as an artist rather than a politician — even though he may be a splendid manager. He is seer and harmonizer more than builder.
In another sense, Libra symbolizes the seed. It does so logically, because, in the seed, all the vital energies of the dying plant are gathered within a rigid form of organization. The seed is the symbol of the mystic brotherhood. It is also that of self-sacrifice. Thus the first degree of Libra carries the symbol of the "butterfly impaled by a dart of wisdom." The chrysalis stage was that of Virgo. Virgo prepares in every way the ground for Libra. In Libra, the "new life" begins; life as a participant in the life of society, of any Greater Whole — be it Church or "White Lodge." Libra is the Initiate as he rises from the mystic sarcophagus in the King's chamber of the Pyramid. He has seen the Vision. He has recognized his place and function in his closest group as well as in the entire universe.
Now stretches before him the path of service to the group; but that service would be of little value indeed if the total reality of that greater whole was not experienced thoroughly by every part of himself. Thus, in Scorpio, that reality has to impregnate and revivify his feelings and emotions, the very substance of his personality; and in Sagittarius, it has to transfigure his mind. Libra's vision must be insubstantiated in Scorpio; formulated mentally in Sagittarius. And as the winter solstice occurs, the Christ-child is born: God, or Humanity, become a man.
