Last week on Instagram, I wrote about how current events have triggered old traumas in me, how they keep rising up in front of me on waves of despair and rage, and so many of you shared that you’re experiencing the same. Also last week, my partner ran into another one of the many bureaucratic nightmares our society foists on trans people, and through his tears he told me that the pain and anger moving through him felt m o r e than him, felt generational. Not generational through blood, but generational through all his trans brothers and sisters before him, and those struggling with the same things today.
I told him that’s exactly what it is: generational. That’s exactly what so many of us are experiencing, in our different ways, in our different lineages of trauma. We each hold the knowledge and the traumas of our ancestors, whether blood ancestors or queer ancestors or cultural ancestors. We hold it in our bodies and our hearts. Things are rising to the surface in this moment, in this time, that have been buried for generations. And instead of turning away, instead of burying them again for a future generation, we’re dealing with those wounds. Or we’re trying to. We’re doing our goddamn best.
In a way, it feels like a dark joke that tonight is the new moon in Libra, the sign that rules the Justice card in tarot, when the American justice system has just proven once again that politics and privilege trump justice. But the Justice card has little to do with the legal “justice” system anyway, not when it functions like this. Instead, the Justice card is about clarity and discernment, equity and fairness, discovering and upholding the Truth-with-a-capitol-T. I’ve often said it’s about balance and equilibrium, but I think that can be easily misunderstood. Equilibrium is not the same as equality, and equality is not the same as equity. Likewise, balance for balance’s sake does not assume rightness or fairness. When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked how many women will be enough women on the Supreme Court, she said, “when there are nine.” That’s not balance by most definitions, but that’s how many men have presided on the highest court for hundreds of years. So that, and only that, would reflect a society that has truly embraced gender equality.
So, Justice is not really about balance. Justice is not really about the scales. Justice is about the FULCRUM. Justice is about the point on which the scales pivot, the hinge on which the arm tips up or down. In tarot, Justice sits at the center of the Major Arcana, card # 11, and from that position surveys the past, the present, and the likely future, perceiving the whole of the story with unclouded discernment. And then, once Justice has perceived the imbalance and the events & actions that transpired to lead to the current moment, Justice puts down the scales and takes up the sword.
Justice doesn’t merely perceive the Truth and proclaim what’s fair, they demand a reckoning. They do what is needed to readjust the scales into rightness and alignment. They take action.
Today, tonight, with this new moon, with this whole goddamn month, year, era, Justice calls on us to do the same in our own lives. Venus, the ruler of Libra, just went retrograde in Scorpio, so this new moon doesn’t have the usual harmonious truth-and-beauty Libra feels. But it does feel like a cleansing. It feels like a turning point. It feels like we’ve been pacing in front of the door to the underworld (Venus Rx in Scorpio, also Pluto square new moon) and now we’ve finally plunged straight in, teeth bared, nails out, but also hearts wide open. We’re ready to look into the darkness with bright eyes. We’re ready to reckon with those buried wounds. We are ready to see and accept and maybe even love all those parts of ourselves that we’ve been told are wrong or shameful or taboo. We’re ready to get really fucking real with ourselves about the lives we are leading: where we’re in denial, where we’re hiding from the Truth, where we’re complicit with oppression, where we’re compromising ourselves for the sake of peace. We’re ready for the raw truth, and we’re ready for a reckoning.
You are sitting at the fulcrum of your lives right now, friends. You are sitting where the scales of past and future meet. The present is the hinge where we can realign those scales, where we can create a reality that is just, where equity and love and inclusion are available for all, where the sicknesses of white supremacy and the cis-het patriarchy finally are healed, where recompense is made to oppressed peoples, where there are 9 women on the Supreme Court, where no trans person has to bear the wrong gender marker, where the bodies of women and femmes and all people are respected and sacred, where sovereignty over your own sacred body is your own.
What reality do you want to live in, friends? It’s time to create it. It’s time to tip the scales.
NEW MOON IN LIBRA TAROT SPREAD
For tipping the scales.
1- THE SCALE: The present issue.
2-3. THE WEIGHTS: Two aspects that are competing, out of balance, or out of alignment.
4, 5, 6. THE BASE: The foundation of the issue / What to learn through this / How to apply it to the future.
7. THE FULCRUM: The action that can be taken in the present moment to tip the scales into alignment, or begin to.
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