The star sign Libra: borrowed stars and a stern guest

Eleven signs of the zodiac show a living creature, animals or people. One shows an instrument. And that is not the only oddity about Libra: it was given its stars by a neighbour. The Sun moves through this sign from the September equinox onwards, for a good month.

Stars that once belonged to Scorpio

In older catalogues of the night sky, this place carries no picture of its own at all. The stars concerned count as part of Scorpio and are known as its claws. Only little by little did an independent constellation come loose from them, and the old affiliation stayed on in the names: the two brightest stars of Libra still carry the Arabic words for the southern and the northern claw.

Anyone who knows this reads the usual lists differently. The twelve signs were not designed in one go. They grew, with shifts, reassignments and a latecomer.

Why Libra stands here of all places

There is a plain reason for the reassignment, and it has to do with the calendar. The beginning of this sign falls on the day when light and darkness in autumn last about as long as each other; after that the dark side grows heavier. An instrument that shows exactly this condition fits this point in the year better than any animal.

The technical classification follows almost by itself. Because the sign opens a season, it counts as cardinal; it is assigned to air, that is, to the realm of language, agreement and argument. How this division works as a whole is set out under four elements.

Venus rules, Saturn is exalted

Rulership over this sign belongs to Venus, and most accounts stop at that one piece of information. Classical doctrine, however, knows a second assignment: Saturn has its exaltation in Libra. Exalted means that a planet stands in a sign that does not belong to it, but in which it comes into its own particularly well — like a guest whose word in another household counts for more than that of some who live there.

This combination explains the sign better than any list of traits. Venus stands for agreement: for two sides settling because both prefer that to a quarrel. Saturn stands for what makes an agreement binding: deadline, form, consequences. A contract is both at once. That is why tradition places the subjects of law, contract and justice in this sign — subjects with a serious streak that descriptions like to leave out. What the individual celestial bodies mean is set out under planets.

What this means in daily life

In dealings with others, the first thing to stand out about this sign is its language. Libra people look for the wording that both sides can agree to, and they notice quickly when an arrangement is out of true — when one party puts in more than they get back, even when they do not complain. In working relationships, in clubs and everywhere something is negotiated, that is a rare ability.

The weakness that goes with it does not lie where the clichés look for it, but in false even-handedness. Anyone used to weighing two sides against each other ends up treating them alike even when only one of them has anything to show. But courtesy towards a weak argument is not fairness, it is an error of arithmetic. The remedy is uncomfortable and simple: doing the sums instead of mediating, and letting a clear result stand even when it hurts one side.

The second thing to stand out is a need for someone to talk to: in this sign a great deal only becomes clear while it is being told to somebody. That is not dependence, it is a way of working — it just stalls without a listener.

Two Libras are not the same Libra

All of this describes a sign and not a person. The Sun is one factor among many: how someone quarrels depends more on Mars, how they calm down more on the Moon, and the impression they leave before they have said a word depends on the ascendant and not on the month of birth. You will find the other pictures of the zodiac under zodiac signs.