Welcome to Libra Season. As a people, Libras are tough to generalize. Many other zodiac signs have easy jumping-off points: a Taurus or a Leo or a Pisces friend will share a meme about a personality quirk captioned with an “it me” and there it is! More proof for the playful stereotypes. When it comes to my late-September-to-mid-October-born acquaintances, though, most tell me, “I just don’t feel like I fit the Libra stereotype.” And small wonder! Even setting aside Libra’s contrarian distaste for simplistic, externally assigned identifiers, many astrology memes frame Libra ungenerously: as a social butterfly — a shallow, surface-obsessed dilettante so distressed by the threat of conflict they’ll go to any lengths to maintain a decorous peace.
Libra individuals tend to possess a magnetism that draws others into their orbits. But instead of being Mean Girls-style Plastics who strategically jockey to be at the top of the social hierarchy, they’re more often squirrelly weirdos who people just happen to like for some reason. Focusing on their butterfly moments ignores all the time they spend in their cocoons. And around this time of year, many butterflies are indeed scouting out places to hide so they can enter diapause — a sort of cryosleep that allows them to survive the winter intact.
These chill fall days, with their deep blue skies, always make me think about the inherent contradictions that Libras contain. In the early 2010s, an absolutely magnificent work of graffiti graced my hometown: a blocky all-caps proclamation “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE” written across the flat, horizontal apex of old downtown’s tallest building. Depicted in tragic black-and-white in Smithsonian Magazine, the paint used to convey the message matched the exact shade of the defunct mill’s doors: a brilliant, cheerful blue against a white edifice. On a bright autumn morning, the words beamed down beatifically as if ordained by the firmament itself. The juxtaposition of the grim words with their chipper color and style was arresting; it was impossible to suppress a big goofy grin upon viewing. Yes, we are all going to die, aren’t we? And isn’t that wonderful?
I imagine that sensation must feel a little bit like being inside a Libra’s brain: a huge delight in the tenuous balance of seemingly disparate sentiments. Libras are most readily characterized by that instinct to balance. When acknowledging something heavy, they won’t allow themselves to indulge in dour seriousness. When feeling lighthearted, they’ll justify their frivolity by assigning it deeper meaning. They devote a lot of time to tasks they later dismiss. They think so much that sometimes they forget they ever thought at all. They come in two basic personality types —gregarious hermit or extroverted misanthrope — often alternating within the same person.
Libras are a ridiculous and wonderful people, and the entire zodiac would do well to emulate their methods in navigating the extremes of their season. Read on for your Libra season horoscope, broken down by sign.
Click here to jump to a sign: Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo.
Appropriately, the aspects slated for your next four weeks imply a balance of optimism and caution. Mercury, which has run retrograde over your sign throughout the preceding season, briefly aligns with the Sun before moving backward out of your space to Virgo. Hold off on celebrating its exit immediately, however. Both the New Moon and the Sun in your sign oppose lucky Jupiter, setting better conditions for a period of contemplation than cathartic hedonism.
Your sign ruler Venus — representative of romance, attraction, aesthetic preferences, and pleasure— arrives to shine brightly in your sign in late September. Following the path of the Sun, Venus will echo its interactions with other celestial influences until they join forces in conjunction with each other at season’s end. Looks like you’ll be figuring some shit out over the next four weeks: while both bright balls of gas create auspicious formations with traditional Saturn and assertive Mars, they remain at chilly remove from the astrological representatives of luck and healing. Brace yourself for conflict with the rulers of your baser shadow instincts and your drive to transformative revolution.
Mercury further emphasizes this arc when it re-arrives in your sign moving directly in mid-October, jumping aboard the Sun and Venus’s shared route. The innermost planet will validate convention over unsought fortune and trauma recovery. An interesting motif in your sign’s celestial choreography this month is a repetition of disagreement with Pluto, dwarf planet of destruction and renewal. Both Venus and the Sun will be insistent on hewing to establishment while eschewing revolution. This will be a time to perch atop the pinnacle of your life and assess things as they are, rather than attempting to force major change. Wait for the turn of Scorpio season to seriously root around down in your subconscious. Both your sign ruler and the Sun currently insist on no thoughts! Just be an autumn airhead.
You have been in something of an astrological holding pattern, waiting for a sense of momentum to stir. Stay patient. The major action won’t fully kick off until your own season, but you need the long, quiet period of rumination so you can be properly prepared when stuff finally starts happening. You’ll spend some time drifting deep within your own internal void during the New Moon, continuing your mission to stay out of your own brain’s way while it sorts and weaves the events of your recent past away out of compartmentalization and toward coalescence. When the Moon enters your sign following its passage through Libra, the formations it creates will come to your aid, snubbing orthodox protocol to foment a release of longed-for spiritual rebellion.
Your biggest astrological event of the month doesn’t even take place in your sign. Over in Capricorn, your ponderous ruler Pluto will turn direct following the leisurely retrograde it began in late April. In the second week of October, you’re likely to feel a surge of energy and motivation as your distant dwarf planet boss buddy steps forward toward Aquarius.
Fire signs tend to do well during air seasons. Conflagrations need oxygen to grow! While your sibling sign Gemini is most often your partner in goofiness, you can also get up to some serious shenanigans with Libra, fueling each other’s tendencies to flout somber consideration in favor of jokes.
You’ve got a good Moon headed your way at the end of September, featuring approval not only from Venus and the Sun, biggest players of the season, but also your sign ruler Jupiter, which is mostly at odds with Libra throughout the month. This bubble crashes into something more complicated as the month turns to October and the Moon favors stuffy Saturn while clashing with representatives of forward momentum. That’s usual to you, though; you’re well-practiced at dusting yourself off and regaining your feet in the wake of a sudden collision. Sometimes it’s even funny!
The Moon is at detriment in the sign of the Sea Goat, meaning its effects are somewhat diminished while it’s with you in early October. Still, it has some interesting stuff to say to you! To use some of the most refined and elegant astrological terminology I know, this season’s Moon in Cap says “fuck everything that’s happening with the Sun and Venus in Libra, and fuck lucky Jupiter too, let’s go cliff-diving into some oddball niche interests!” Mercury will have just turned direct by that point and will only reiterate the Moon’s message: the path forward requires embracing your most deeply held sense of zaniness.
You’ve got a quietly enormous event slated for the second week of October: Pluto, which has been in your sign since Sagittarius season 2008, turns from its most recent retrograde to stroll inexorably toward Aquarius and eventually out of your life entirely. Cast your mind back through the hazy mists of history to November 2008. Do you even remember who you were then, what you felt like? Pluto is Scorpio’s ruler. It moves slowly and it means business. It’s about transformation—not surface makeover but all the way down to the mitochondrial level change. It’s a bridge-burner and a path-blazer, and it’s totally impassive about collateral destruction along the way. You can’t be reborn if you don’t die first, ya know?
Combined with your own innate pragmatism, your time with Pluto has made you formidable. Nearing its final months with you, its direct motion will find you pressing forward ever more eagerly rather than cringing back, attempting to cling to the past. You’ll mourn when Pluto’s gone, probably, but its influence in these final months together will have you frantically working toward the version of yourself you’ll become once it has left.
Libra season is sort of like upside-down Aquarius time. Everybody is assigning existential meaning to eyeshadow shade selection and rolling their eyes at their own devastating personal trauma. To be fair, that’s a lot like your attitude during your own season, but at this point everybody else is doing it while you’re ready to undergo serious preparations for winter. Fortunately, dissidence is your comfort zone.
You’re still uncomfortably rubbing elbows with authoritative Saturn, retrograde in your space until Scorpio season. Enjoy the relative sense of retrograde remove: when Saturn turns direct it’ll be more apt to actively interfere with your life, and it won’t move on to Pisces until next March. The Sun, Mercury, and Venus are all friendly with the ringed planet this month.
When the Moon visits you this season it forms positive relationships with nearly every other major astrological influence except for your own sign ruler Uranus. These continual nudges to reign in the bizarre and hew to a more conventional standard feel irritating, but it’s not like any influence, be it astrological or mundane, can truly render you less strange than you already are. Experiment with Saturn’s urge to shape you into a compliant citizen and see what that looks like. You’ll likely find that it ultimately expands your scope of eccentricity.
You’re still with your sign ruler Neptune, still retrograde until early December. With the outer planets, retrograde periods translate as more of a muffling of their effects rather than a flat-out reversal. As a result, your sense of intuition is heightened even as you feel that it’s more distant and cryptic than you’d prefer.
The Moon in your sign should provide a boost to your mystical powers of discernment, creating friendly angles with the representatives of innovation, inspiration, and regeneration. However, it squares stubbornly with Mars and opposes Mercury during the same period. This is definitely not the time to start a fight or plow ahead into a new project over your own suppressed feelings of insecurity. Continue to trust your gut even if your hunches feel different than usual.
You’re playing host to benevolent Jupiter for one last season before the big planet moves backward into Pisces during Scorpio season. Though retrograde, Jupiter’s presence is nearly always beneficial: it’s about growth, and offering plentiful resources to support expansion. This energy feels natural to Aries, who are always questing, besting, and testing confining boundaries, so make sure you take the time to appreciate the power boost while you’ve got it. Luck loves to be noticed. The Moon briefly joins in conjunction with Jupiter in your sign on its way to full phase: cool things could happen on October 8.
The Full Moon in your sign this season looks to be particularly intense. As usual, the Full Moon tends to affect the entire zodiac with the spirit of its sign. This month, that’s the initiative, assertive spirit of Aries — but it swaggers straight into opposition with Venus and the Sun in Libra. This alignment bodes of contention. What’s more is that the waning gibbous Moon’s alliance with Saturn and Mars doesn’t suggest an immediate resolution, either. Be careful out there! The Moon’s square aspect with Pluto before moving on to Taurus could signal a jarring life-shift, and everybody knows October is the riskiest time of year to accidentally get turned into a werewolf.
Your Libra season continues the trend of your entire astrological year to date: the weirdness intensifies. You’ve still got Uranus and the North Node in your house, both retrograde, both urging irregular navigation toward your ultimate life destiny. In late September, Uranus forms a cooperative sextile angle to Lilith, ruler of your shadow self. Everyone else should avoid picking a fight with you when this happens lest you devastate them in combat with a Bayonetta-style dance battle.
The Moon lands in your sign on the comedown from fullness and just sits there resting for two days before socializing again. When it does re-enter the game, the Moon affirms the overall trend of your season, fighting with rule-abiding Saturn but collaborating with innovative Uranus, intuitive Neptune, and revolutionary Pluto. Your sign ruler, Venus, is making a lot of moves in Libra this season; the waves rippling over to your patch of the wheel may provide the exact kind of challenge you need to maneuver your life into the direction you want.
You host Mars all month, feeling both its sense of enthusiasm and aggression. This is a month to get shit done: Mars will poke at you if you try to sit still. The red planet only forms two aspects with other astrological influences this season. In late September, Mars makes a trine with Saturn. The proverbial law will be on your side in whatever you’re pursuing at that time. Then, in mid-November, just before the Moon moves into your sign, Mars forms a contentious square angle to Neptune. This could manifest as a well-intentioned blunder. If you escalate someone else’s conflict by jumping in with uninvited defense, apologize and walk away.
The Moon in your sign this season is delighted with nearly every planet other than Neptune. You may misinterpret and react strangely to social cues, but it should balance out because almost every other major astrological influence is in your favor. Maybe ask a Virgo friend to proofread/advise before sending a risky text, and you’ll be golden.
The Moon is vindictive to you this season. Having lavished goodwill upon Gemini, it immediately forms cranky square aspects with major planets once it enters your sign. Though friendly with Uranus and Neptune during its three-day visit, it stubs up uncooperatively against luck, communication, romance, regeneration, and the whole waking world represented by the Sun. Odds are you will not feel overwhelmingly positive at the turn of the third week in October, but what the hell! At least it’s a cinematic-feelin’ season to indulge in some moodiness.
You need to be particularly careful around the Full Moon in Aries. Other signs are gonna be out there haplessly transforming into werewolves subsequent to making out with strangers at pre-Halloween parties, but not you! With Lilith in your sign fueling your most monstrous impulses, anyone who gets too close is likely to end up with their face eaten off Jennifer Check-style. If they survive the mauling, they might even become a were-Cancer.
You know how people who live by the beach like to vacation in the mountains? Something about that phenomenon is analogous to Leos in Libra season. This time of year is always energizing for your sign. You can feel the breeze again! The Sun, your ruler, is close with Libra’s ruler Venus this season. Looks like it’s going to be a passionate time! Both Venus and the Sun are currently interested in the here and right-now. Aspects with other planets indicate that this is a time to be taken at face value; momentous change isn’t favored and might not even be possible at the moment.
So enjoy! Wear cute scarves or whatever, make slow blinks at a cat. When the Moon hits your sign near the end of the season, it’ll be friendly with the Sun, all of the inner planets, and Jupiter, setting the stage for an excellent astrological party. Discouragement from Uranus and Saturn might cast a chilly wind, but it’ll be environmentally appropriate for your autumn aesthetic.
You make a trade with Libra at the start of this season: Mercury for Venus. Your sign ruler Mercury comes home to you first, still moving retrograde but happy to be back in its own territory. Before Venus departs for Libra, Mercury moves into conjunction with the planet of love, and together they both form fortunate trine aspects with Pluto. Venus’ movements in your sign throughout your own season suggested a radical overhaul in the realm of desire, be it romantic, platonic, professional, or a fresh fascination with a new hobby... I’m so curious as to how that’s going for you! I hope it’s even better than you could’ve imagined.
Mercury turns direct at the beginning of October and reiterates the theme of momentum in renewal by forming another trine with Pluto, this time direct. You enjoy a full October week in the company of your ruling planet moving directly in your space before Mercury returns to Libra.
At the end of Libra season, the waning crescent Moon makes friendly formations with the representatives of discovery and reinvention while defying the rulers of spirituality and conflict. Sometimes the best course of action is the opposite of what you’re “supposed” to do in a given scenario. This could be one of those times.
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