I wrote about this as a short inspired Instagram post on last Autumn Equinox, when a realisation that sprung from that natural cycle was so strong that I felt an urge to write in more detail about it. Somehow though it stayed in an incubation stage up until now, and I’m trusting it was needed. So although we are somewhat in-between equinoxes, the messages here could apply to whatever stage we find ourselves on the night and day balance pendulum trajectory.

Autumn Equinox, in the season of Libra, which correlates to the card of Justice in Tarot, reminds us of balance - the perfectly aligned day and night, darkness and light, equal amounts of each, sitting together in perfect equilibrium. There’s a certain satisfaction in experiencing that perfection, and I admit that’s something I strive and crave a lot of the time - the sense of perfection through balance. Most likely I’m not alone, and in the spiritual world we are encouraged to seek balance in all. It can become a sort of Holy Grail, something that we must attain, yet more often than not, we, in our earthly bodies and lives, experience how elusive and tentative this experience of perfect equilibrium can be.

On the day when we celebrate nature’s alignment in equal day and night and the marking of changing seasons that it provides, I was feeling into the energies of that occurrence and reflected on how the day and the night are of the equal length only for two brief moments a year (Autumn and Spring Equinoxes), twice in the whole year long circle around the Sun - it’s not even a day long event or an hour, it’s just a brief point in time, like a second of pause between exhale and inhale. The rest of the year, however, is spent getting there, slowly moving away from this coming together in equilibrium towards more pronounced light or more profound darkness, and when it reaches some saturation on either side of the pendulum swing, like with the gathered momentum of the bob, it swings back to the opposite direction.

If we were to take the cyclical nature of nature itself as an example of our own inner nature (after all we are part of it - we are it!), perhaps this equilibrium that we are seeking is not something that can be attained, or at least not as a constant, fixed and stable end goal. Arriving to it and staying in it might be not just impossible, but also not desirable. Perhaps it’s the journey there that matters more, maybe it’s the transitional state that is to be celebrated, aspired towards, and all the stages of expansion and contraction that precede and follow the perfect equilibrium, all extreme points of that pendulum swings are equally important in getting to this balance - in fact, perhaps all of these stages together create what we call balance, rather than a fleeting moment of tipping points. After all, the moment of equilibrium can only be experienced as a result of swinging, calibrating, balancing.

Anyone who’s familiar with a movement practice, or has ever brought some awareness to even everyday movement (e.g. cycling, rollerskating, dancing, balancing on one leg etc) might have noticed that it is much easier to keep balance when we keep in movement, at least slightly shifting the points of gravity in our body - left to right, left to right, as if looking for the centre this way, or reinforcing the stable core through peripheral fluctuation, at the same time creating some sort of little outside movement stressors that make centre tighten up, strengthen and hold it all together. So it’s through this fluctuation that we experience the sense of balance, and not through total stillness and perfect equanimity. If we were to stay in this place of equilibrium, we would simply stagnate. When there is no movement, the core relaxes, it’s as if we lose the sense of centre. And at times, it is a necessary state, just like that pause between exhale and inhale of rest and replenishment. But it is not a place to stay in, to attain and keep, it is just there to move through as a reminder of cyclical nature, like brief reference points - a look-out tower on our path to check out where we’ve been and where we’re heading. If we were to stay in constant balanced harmony we would restrain the flow of energy. Where would we draw the aspiration to seek more, to move towards the light? And how would we get an impulse after that to slow down to regenerate, regain energy, for the next steps forward? How would we learn new things, grow and discover new paths, if we don’t make mistakes, fall and get lost in the darkness?

This nature’s dance of light and dark offers us a few further lessons. Firstly, it is constant and rhythmical - there’s a pattern to it, there’s no unexpected dropping out of it, or random accelerations of process, there’s just steady ebbing and flowing, going and returning, speeding up and slowing down, with no pause and no rushing, something that we in our daily lives and even in our spiritual growth often struggle with - often rushing too fast, burning out, numbing, disconnecting, we take it to the extremes, pushing against nature, looking for shortcuts. Whereas nature is consistent yet every changing - the days get longer in spring very gradually, though slow steady change. Even in the darkest, longest night of Solstice or brightest longest days of Midsummer, nature never takes it to extremes, we still have light and darkness respectively to balance those out, no matter how short - it is always proportionate. There is no phase in the year were it all is just night, or just day, where unexpectedly the earth decides to pause spinning for a bit, and then accelerates later.

The similar principle seems to appear in relation to what’s conscious and unconscious in us, where the same interplay of dark and light balancing each other out occurs. What’s suppressed in the conscious would balance itself out through unconscious, and the other way around, like a see-saw of darkness (the shadow) and light, constantly asking us to navigate closer to the fulcrum of it, allowing both to be, in equilibrium, yet always in motion, with one foot on each side of it to keep balance. We can’t put all our weight on the light side, expecting the opposite to disappear - like a heavy pendulum, it will swing right back to the other extreme to balance things out. This duality in constant interplay is the balance, and it’s through accepting both sides and their connection that we get a sense of harmony, the paradox of duality.

So what’s the deal with the perfection then, what is it that we are trying to achieve when we seek this balance? When we look for perfect balance out there, as a fixed concept, outside of what we are already living and what is already naturally trying to move through us -the intrinsic ebbs and flows of energy, the balancing rhythms and cycles - we are chasing something unattainable, something to pin us down in the illusion of perfection. As Johnson puts it in his writing about owning your shadow in reference to this balanced middle-way place: ‘one cannot stay very long in this middle place, for it is a knife-edge, outside time and space. A moment of it is enough to give meaning to long stretches of ordinary life.” So perhaps perfection is in this constant imperfection and in seeming imbalance. It’s imbedded in constant movement, fluctuation, in opening and closing, expanding and contracting, and being always present to every moment of it - perfection is in the centre, in the strong core that is found through, and as if chiselled away by, endless motions through life, and not in the absence of duality. So we could say we are already perfect, we just need to open our eyes and hearts to the motions of it, and feel our centre, the strength of which is created by allowing ourselves to fully live the polarities.

The Moon (18th card of the Tarot Major Arcana) relates to Pisces energy, and is very close to me and my path personally. Having rather heavy Pisces placements in my chart (Sun, Moon, Mercury just to start with :)), this energy is very dominant in my life, and something that I found rather difficult to deal with in the past. However now that I can actually understand this energy better and can name it, and that I know myself better, I find it to be both a blessing and a curse (or rather a challenge :)), and also an incredible tool, which if channeled well can be extremely creatively rich.

“The Moon represents both, the duality itself, the darkness of the scary journey and the light that guides you through it.”

I noticed that often when The Moon card comes out in readings, many readers (including me) get a rather conflicted reaction.. oooh!.. what is it? is it good? is it bad? is it yes? is it no? it's one of those energies that doesn't scream in your face with clarity, transparency and forwardness.. (like perhaps The Sun would), and that's exactly what this energy is - it's illusive, it's murky, it's not good, not bad, it's just not clear, it's not revealed yet, and it might not be.. In fact the secret of this card is so deep, and the veils are so many and so confusing, that we start even doubting whether there is anything on the other side, whether that which we feel like is hiding behind the darkness of the night, is even there..

It's like walking in the moonlight in the forest at night, with one of your senses (that of sight) being taken away, you replace it with intuition, or is it intuition? Maybe what feels like intuition is just our vivid imagination based on fear - was that sound just a crack of the branch under my foot as I walk, or is it something scary and big that I can't see? And the longer we stay in that forest, the more it starts resembling a dream (or a nightmare).

And that's how my life, my gifts, my personality often feel to me :) Whenever The Moon energy enters my life, my intuition starts opening up and connecting me to the realms that my Capricorn rising side has kept me away from very well for long time :), yet the more my intuition opens up, the more I start doubting the reality of it, is it the illusion that I created and now live in as reality, and the more I stay in this energy, the more my anxiety and fears start growing. And that is one of the piscean neptunian realities of existing in this real world. And the more we are scared of our own intuition, our own imagination and the confusion of what is real and what is not, the more we, the pisces, are drawn to withdraw and escape.. or rather to stay lost in this energy, by paradoxically not engaging with it at all..

That has been the reality for many years, for as long as I can remember myself. Until I realised not long ago, that in the middle of the card there is a path, and although the path starts in the deep water, of this energy of the emotional and spiritual depths of the water signs (we can even see the cancer and scorpio represented in those waters too), where pisces feel at home; it leads you through a variety of landscapes, into the mountains and beyond.. it's a challenge for pisces to navigate all those landscapes and to stay grounded, to stick to the path, especially with the distractions of its own fears, illusions, doubts, and tendencies to escape. But the key in The Moon energy is to keep moving, to keep moving on that path. 'Just keep swimming.. just keep swimming' as one of the most famous fish we know (Dory from 'Finding Dory') keeps advising us.

And interestingly, this movement is between duality, duality of its own piscean nature, duality of things that pisces energy struggles to balance. Duality of immense gift and connection to the spiritual realms, to the dream and subconscious world, that is not easily accessible to all, to the creative potential that not many can tap into; and the other side of this duality - the one where if not balanced, if not grounded, if not taken care of, the dreams become nightmares, the intuition becomes illusions, the other realms becomes madness, and the creative potential drowns in the escapism and overwhelm, and in fear of our own power.

And here is the blessing and the challenge that I've been living most of my live, and am reminded of every time I draw this card - The Moon calls you on this quest of using this deep murky hidden potential of shadows, to tap into them without fear, while keeping one foot firmly on the ground, knowing and trusting that there is a path, and you just need to keep moving, and you will come out on the other side of it, with the depth of creative gifts beyond your imagination.

Just have a look at that moon image in the card, the moon seems to be nested in the image of the sun. When you enter the dark forest in the moonlight, it’s this moonlight itself that in our psyche so strongly represents the darkness, the fear of the unknown, the scary journey that awaits you through the shadow world. Yet at the same time The Moon is also the one that illuminates the night, that it’s the only light that shows the path, that helps you navigate this seemingly dangerous and scary terrain. Hence The Moon represents both, the duality itself, the darkness of the scary journey and the light that guides you through it. The Yin energy of water, reflecting and holding within the yang energy of the journey, the movement forward through it.