seer: libra (and october) season love letter
love is grief is love is grief is love
peace be upon your hearts - lovers,
welcome to libra season and october month, we love, we are loved, and we are - love, much peace cultivated through the act of loving.
to be honest, libra season is *somewhat* of a struggle for me because the month brings significant memories of loss and grief. both of my most intimate and immediate ancestors - my maternal grandparents, whom i have had a substantial relationship with, passed away during libra season.
i lost my maternal grandfather (ayoh) when i was 11 years old. i was in a 12th house scorpio year, ruled by mars in cancer in the 8th. this was the first death in the family where i felt personally impacted, though i lost my paternal grandmother at a younger age, i don’t remember processing much grief about her earlier death.
fast forward, i lost my maternal grandmother 3 years ago - i still remember that rainy evening vividly, after work i went to my friend siti’s place to study for GRE together, and i received a call from my libra sun gemini moon sister of my dear che’s passing. astrologically, i was in a 3rd house year with domiciled saturn in aquarius. below, i made a post about my last physical encounter with my dear che to remember her impact.
grief is very much alive in my body to this day, even as i’m writing this, i am tearing up. even as i’m performing ancestral rituals on saturdays or sundays, i am tearing up. even as i am listening to surah yaseen on youtube, i am tearing up.
love is grief is love.
at the time of this writing, my bestie @ sipa recently lost her beloved aunt, i am tearing up. a dear malaysian astrologer-friend lost his father, i am tearing up.
collectively as a society, i do not think or feel that we have fully grieved the pandemic and all its impact since 2020, all of us have lost something sacred to us, something that would never be found again. there is no such thing as a “return to normal” because normalcy does not exist anymore for most of us because we have lost them. i hope saturn in pisces transit, starting in late march 2023, allows us to grieve more intimately and more deeply.
something about death freezes us. something about the news of death would freeze me to this day. i think we freeze or are frozen - not because we do not know what to do next without the person we have lost, but because our nervous systems are being asked to “stop” along with the removal of the life of our loved ones, as if our life-forces are bound to each other. death immobilizes the living, both the ones who just died and the people surrounding them. for me, when someone you love dies, there is something apparent about how slow and sticky time is (or time becomes) immediately after the death, and the days following it: we feel deeply “imbalance.”
i am not a grief specialist, although i do hold space for grief in a lot of client sessions. there is also something about grief-tears that have a lot to do with the lifetime flowing of “the freeze” within us from those moments. i do not feel that grief is exclusively sadness or hurt or pain from a loss. for me, i think for most of us, grief is the big waves of emotions crashing, all of them at once - a multi-directional flow - comparable to an ecstatic feeling of Love, but deeper, darker, and wilder. sometimes those grief waves are small too, but never they are unnoticeable. we feel them in our hearts, we feel them through the vibrations of our bones. the rippling waves sometimes flow as grief-tears, the frozen becomes the flowing.
when death occurs in our lives, there seems to be a disruption between our linear time and our internal time. time is inherently saturnian, death too, as well as grief.
the time “disruption” reminds me of the moments from the movie everything everywhere all at once. watching this movie is definitely a grieving space.
libra is the place where venus is at home (domicile), saturn is celebrated as a visitor (exalted), the sun is an unwelcomed guest (fall), and mars is a stranger danger (exile).
perhaps, therefore love is grief, and grief is love. when we go through the venus process with another being in any partnerships (libra), we chain parts of our life forces (sun) with them, and we sacrifice or let go of parts of our self-interested-baggages to create a better more equitable structure where both people are in balance. the saturnian exaltation reminded me how we appreciate and romanticize love that sustains the test of time - it is beautiful indeed. naturally, we wish all our relationships with those whom we love would be able to withstand the test of time.
esther perel claims that “the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.” death-saturn reminds us that quality time with our loved ones has limits because we are mortal beings, and saturn appreciates both quality and time. however, once quality time with our loved ones is removed, there is no more quality time to be had together, our solar weight tips the balance because we are left with our own cosmos - without another sun to balance the vastness of our fullest being. grieving days following a death often create this internal imbalance - something was tipped - sometimes the question of “fairness” comes out when we process death - it feels deeply unfair because of this imbalance. in libra, mars is estranged here too, because the concept of self-survival and having to “fight” this world… alone? i do not think such a pursuit is possible because human beings are social animals - needing interdependence as a radical act of survival.
- - - switch
as a venus year creative practice, i embarked on a venus embodiment youtube project with different astrologers. this is an astrology project to witness the laughter-loving venus through the different signs and life experiences of astrologers living with her in their birth charts. in hopes that through our lively exchanges of the experiential venusian embodiments, the conversation helps others with similar venus signatures: zodiac signs, house placements, aspects, or planetary rulership to feel seen and celebrated for their inner-outer venus too.
i had an insightful discussion with djenneba drammeh recently, yall should also subscribe to their writings here.
this has been such an exciting pursuit as a community-oriented astrologer, and i would love to witness the growth of my youtube presence + collaboration! listen and subscribe for future updates, for now, we have only produced venus in gemini, cancer, leo and virgo episodes, stay tuned for more!
that’s all lovers, wishing us all a healing libra and october season. please let me know and comment if any of these messages resonated as we move through the month together.
share this newsletter with your loved ones, promote my offerings below, and any financial tips are hella appreciated too.
we love you, keep loving.
- - -
This was beautiful and so timely. Lately I’ve been delving into the sensation of freeze/cold and letting it transform into grief! Thank you 🙏🏻🌹🌊
this made me tear up 🥲