First Decan of Libra (0°–10°)

The Moon's face at the autumn equinox

The first decan of Libra covers 0°–10° of the sign and begins at the autumn equinox, the moment of equal day and night. In the Chaldean order this face belongs to the Moon. In the triplicity order it belongs to Libra itself, and so to Venus. Both rulers are feminine and nocturnal in traditional terms, and both are social: the Moon responds and nurtures, Venus attracts and harmonises.

Astrologers read this face as judgement guided by feeling. It weighs a situation by how it lands on people, and it tends to side with whoever is hurt or outmatched. That makes it tactful and kind, and also vulnerable to mood, since the Moon changes and the scales move with it. The Sun enters its fall in Libra, so solar will is weaker here, and the face favours consensus over command. The question this decan keeps meeting is how to keep the peace without losing sight of the truth or of oneself.

The piper, the reader and the lance

Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533) gives this face an angry man holding a pipe and another man reading a book. He reads it as justice in the most practical sense: helping the wretched and the weak against the powerful and the wicked. The Picatrix, the Arabic manual of astral magic that reached Latin Europe in the thirteenth century, gives a man holding a lance in his right hand and a bird hanging by its feet in his left, and reads the face as justice, truth, sound judgement and alms for the poor.

The figures combine anger with music and study, force with mercy. Here justice is a cause that stirs feeling, and the reader with the book shows the need to learn the case before acting. The Golden Dawn named the matching card the Lord of Peace Restored. All three sources share one aim, balance brought back after a wrong, with feeling as the spur and judgement as the method.

Equal nights and the procession on the ceiling

This face began as one of the thirty-six star groups of the Egyptian night clock, whose dawn risings each marked about ten days and whose passage marked the hours of the night. The surviving lists vary from monument to monument, so no Egyptian star can be tied to 0°–10° of the tropical zodiac with confidence.

The season gives the link. Libra opens at the equinox, when the night is as long as the day, and the hour stars divided darkness that was itself changing in length through the year. On late temple ceilings, Dendera's among them, the decans march across the sky goddess's body in registers beside the planets and, by Roman times, the twelve signs, a crew steering the hours in turn. Hellenistic astrologers fixed them to the zodiac three to a sign, giving Libra its three faces. More on the decans as divine powers is on the Egyptian decan gods page.

The Two of Swords: the Moon in Libra

In the Golden Dawn system this decan is the Two of Swords, the Moon in Libra, which Book T calls the Lord of Peace Restored. Pamela Colman Smith's Rider-Waite image shows a blindfolded woman in white, seated with two long swords crossed over her chest. Behind her is a sea dotted with rocks, and a crescent Moon hangs above. She holds still, and the balance holds with her.

The card reads the decan with some irony. The Moon gives the crescent and the water, the tide of feeling she has turned her back on; Libra gives the balance and the blindfold of impartial justice. Peace is restored, but by refusing to look as much as by deciding. The two trumps behind the pip are The High Priestess for the Moon and Justice for Libra, inner knowing beside outer law. Readers in the tradition take the card as a truce that holds while someone weighs a choice, and as a prompt to take the blindfold off when it is time to choose.

A Sun or planets in the first decan of Libra

With the Sun here, born from roughly 23 September to 2 October depending on the year, you have the Sun at the start of its fall and in the Moon's face. You may be quick to sense what others feel and to soften a hard moment. You likely care about fairness and are drawn to defend the person at a disadvantage. Your judgement is often good when you trust your feelings and slower when you try to please everyone. The growth point is choosing. Some choices will disappoint people you like, and that is part of being fair.

Several planets in these degrees give a chart sociability, sympathy and a strong pull toward relationship. The Moon itself here rules its own face, which steadies it in an airy sign. Venus at home in Libra and in her triplicity-order face is graceful and fair-minded. Whatever planets gather here, they tend to act through other people and to suffer when there is discord around them.

Working with the first decan of Libra

Before agreeing to something to keep the peace, wait a day and notice how you feel about it in the morning; the Moon's face judges best after the mood settles. Write both sides of a hard decision on one page, then choose. Use your sympathy with the underdog deliberately, through advocacy, mediation or backing a colleague who is outnumbered. If you read tarot, set the Two of Swords between The High Priestess and Justice and ask what you already know but have not yet admitted. Music and reading, the occupations of Agrippa's figures, are good ways to restore your own balance before restoring anyone else's.