Libra

LIBRA

September 24-October 23 Birthdays

Birthstone: Opal

Best day: Friday

Element: Air

Type: Cardinal

It may seem strange to you that your sign, which is considered the sign of peaceful cooperation, adaptability and harmony, should be so much connected with war and the makers of war. President Dwight D. Eisenhower is among the many famous generals who has Sun in Libra; and three of the greatest war makers of all time —Napoleon, Adolf Hitler and Woodrow Wilson, who led the United States into World War I—have Libra rising in their horoscopes.

This should be a lesson to those who mistake Libra's politeness and adaptability for weakness. It is no such thing; being the Cardinal Sign in the Air group, Libra has the force of all Cardinal Signs and the strength of air which, as a tornado or a hurricane, can be the most destructive natural force known to man.

Libra never wants to make war; in fact, you born under this sign are very much disturbed by any land of untidiness, ugliness or disorder. It is for this very reason that you can be the most warlike of all the signs. Once you have decided, with your delicately balanced judg­ment, that the current order is ugly, disorderly, unfair or unjust, you can condone war as a way of breaking down the old civilization and building a new and better one. But even then war is only a last resort; you try to avoid it by compromise and conciliation if you can. You much prefer the compromise method, not only because of your natural kindliness but also because you dislike extremes of any sort—and war is certainly an extreme.

Of course, the average person rarely has such deci­sions to make; but the same principle holds true even in your everyday affairs. One of the few things that dis­turbs the Libran good nature is injustice—the injustice of an employer to an employee, of a parent to a child, even the injustice of having someone push ahead of you on a line. You value good manners, but you can forgive the rudeness of being pushed. What you really can't forgive is that "It's so unfair. I was here first!"

The symbol of your sign is the scales of justice, and you carefully weigh the justice or injustice of anything you see, hear, learn and experience. If the scale tips to one side you are ready to do anything—like going to war, manning a picket line or writing letters to congress­men—to restore harmony and balance. Harmony and balance are your aim, and you are willing to contribute even more than your share to achieving them.

You are extremely cooperative, adaptable and anxious to please, will go to great lengths to find out what will make another person happy and then do it Your natural way is to think of the other person first rather than your­self. Libra is popularly thought of as the sign most con­nected with marriage, but actually it rules marriage only in the sense erf a cooperative venture in the ordinary af­fairs of life. (The romantic aspects of marriage are ruled by the Fifth House.) What you are primarily is the sign of partnership, whether in marriage or in business.

Because of this, it is not surprising that Libra seeks a partner, whether it be a friend, a husband or wife, or a business associate. You find it difficult to do anything alone, and prefer someone with whom you can discuss all that interests you, especially in connection with the joint project. Some Libras find it embarrassing to walk into a restaurant or a movie alone, and would not dream of going on vacation alone. "I felt so left out; everyone seemed to be in couples but me," is a typical Libra com­plaint about a solitary outing.

You value this partnership relationship highly and will do anything in your power to keep it running smoothly. You often say, and honestly mean, that whatever the partner wants you want too. Yours, ordinarily, is a gentle, sweet, even-tempered and yielding nature, and you feel Ettle need to assert yourself forcefully. In fact, you can go too far in die other direction and find it hard to say a definite no to anything the partner asks of you. This is not always a commendable trait, since you can keep people dangling with half promises when in reality you have long since made up your mind that your answer will be no—you just haven't had the heart to say so out loud and possibly hurt someone's feelings.

Because you so value justice and fairness, you make about the best parent in the zodiac. You are reasonable, undemanding, always willing to listen to your child's side of the story. And you never commit the mistake that co many parents do of trying to force the child into a way of Me or an occupation for which he is unsuited. In your relationship with a child, as with any other human being, you will make a strong effort to see the other's point of view and to help Him get what he wants—not what you want for him.

You will also get along well with other members of your family, because of your gentleness, grackmsness and charm, though you usually have no strong or deep-rooted attachment to the home. Here again, you hate to take a definite stand or to cause a fuss; because of tfriy, you rarely make a break with your family and leave home before you are married. Sometimes your hesitancy in making a definite decision can even delay marriage, and in later years you can be a little resentful of this and feel you waited too long. Because Saturn, the planet that rules old age, is exalted in your sign, you are generally able to get along exceptionally well with older people— which of course includes your parents. We have all heard of the veneration of the Libra-ruled Chinese for their ancestors.

The opposite side of your admirable talent for being able to see the other person's point of view is that you can also see two or more sides to any question you have to decide for yourself, and often cannot choose between them. You can sometimes find yourself unable to act at all, or so hesitant that you wear out other people's pa­tience while they wait for you to make up your mind. Decisiveness and spontaneity are qualities you need to cultivate if you do not want to let all your wonderful tal­ents go to waste.

And you do have many talents. Taurus, the other Ven­us-ruled sign, is more concerned with the affectionate, materialistic, pleasure-seeking side of that planet You are almost solely concerned with the arts, which Venus also rules—the arts of painting, music, literature, interior decorating, sculpture, dancing. You usually excell in one of these fields, as a profession or as a hobby; and you have a special knack for beautifying anything you touch, whether it be last year's hat, an old piece of furniture or a discarded lampshade.

Your feeling for neatness, meticulous detail and order­liness is almost as strong as Virgo's. Sometimes, especial­ly when you are disturbed or undecided, you can fuss too much about details and are not satisfied until yourdelicately balanced judgment tells you everything is just exactly right. This can be a nuisance to anyone who has -to watt for you to get the house looking just the way you want it before you will consent to go out.

You yourself do not Hke to be kept waiting, though; you can get very intense about it, far more so than libra usually is. If someone keeps you waiting more than fif­teen minutes, especially standing up—in front of a thea­ter, for instance—they are likely to find you in a state of nervous collapse when they arrive. This unbalanced state, so peculiar in Libra's usually composed nature, » may also have some relation to Saturn, which rules time.

 

But aside from this minor ruffling of your temper, bal­ance and harmony are always part of your personality. This, plus your Venus rulership, are what make you so artistic. Beauty and art go hand in hand, and beauty is perfect balance, perfect harmony in the arrangement, composition or decoration of anything. You always like beauty around you—beauty of line and color, in fabric, furniture design and ornaments. Male or female, you are concerned about your own attractiveness too, and give much attention to your clothes, figure, hair style, jew­elry. Luckily you usually have excellent taste and do not overdo the ornamentation.

 

This devotion to beauty also applies to other people, and here you go a little off the track. You tend to admire people, at least until you get to know them, as much for their looks as for their personality, and you would find it difficult to become friendly with someone who was really ugly, or deformed, no matter how admirable they might be in other ways. This devotion to beauty is espe­cially true with regard to members of the opposite sex and can be extremely troublesome in marriage.

 

You can be carried away by a handsome (or pretty, as die case may be) face and not stop to find out if the person is a suitable marriage partner. Since you are enormously idealistic about love and marriage, and not willing to work hard to make a success of a bad match,yon can be extremely disillusioned by a partner chosen on the basis of looks alone.

 

You also have another problem with -regard to love and marriage, based on the delicate balance of your Libra nature. As an Air Sign, Libra is masculine; but ^enus, your ruling planet, is feminine. You can see both points of view, which usually makes you something of a specialist in matters of love. If you are a typical Libra you understand love in all its many manifestations, you enjoy it and you like to experiment with it Your attitude is mental and refined rather than physical and sensuous, but you can do things in the interest of experimentation that the more physical signs like Taurus and Scorpio would be ashamed to do in the interests of gratifying a purely lustful passion. If you have a marriage partner who understands you and is willing to go along with your experimentation into love, you can have an unusual­ly happy and fulfilling marriage. With the average part­ner, though, you have to beware of jealousy and misun­derstanding, hurt feelings and guilt complexes.

 

As mentioned, you are extremely refined, and on die whole you are honest and well meaning. But there is a laxness and laziness about Libra that sometimes makes you take the line of least resistance. You do not have the stiff conventional morality of a Virgo or a Capricorn, or the idealistic, spiritual morality of a Sagittarian; some­times you can be led astray by your pleasant, amiable way of adapting yourself to people and situations with the least possible fuss. This laxness can be fatal to a happy marriage, if it leads you into casual infidelity; it can also be troublesome in other areas, if it expresses it­self in other ways.

 

You may try to diet and find that you just can't resist having a piece of cake. You may intend to clean the whole house from top to bottom and discover that when you've finished one room you're tired. You do not have the spurts of energy that characterize the Fire Signs, or the grim stick-with-it-no-matter-how-you-feel determinatian of Taurus or Capricorn. On the other hand, your in­nate sense of balance and dislike of extremes usually keeps you from going too far afield. You may take one small piece of cake but you won't take the whole cake; you may have to stop and rest after cleaning each room but eventually you'll get finished. Your strong point is endurance rather than sudden exertion, and over the long pull you will outlast those who start faster and work harder for short periods of time.

 

But even if you rarely stray too far from your goal, it is helpful for your success in any field, personal or busi­ness, to cultivate persistence and will power. A grimly determined Libra would lose some of his or her airy charm, but a completely lazy Libra can become flabby both in body and in spirit. With your outstanding ability to find and maintain a balance between two extremes, you should be able to keep your delightful amiability while still accomplishing whatever it is you set out to do.

 

CAREER POSSIBILITIES

 

An Air—or intellectual—Sign, your fine, delicately bal­anced mind makes you an ideal lawyer, judge, or art, literary or music critic. Your ability to deal harmo­niously with other people can make you an excellent per­sonnel director, counselor or mediator. Being able to see aH points of view makes you tolerant and unprejudiced; you could be, literally, a diplomat, or you could function effectively in any field where diplomacy and tact in dealing with people are helpful.

 

You usually prefer the professions to the commercial field or dealing directly with money, but your precision can make you a fine mathematician. It can also make you excel in any branch of science or philosophy that re­quires minuteness of judgment. With your Venus ruler-ship you also fit into the fields dealing with personal adornment, such as cosmetician, beauty shop operator,dressmaker or dress designer. You are the partnership sign, and you would be excellent running a small busi­ness—you being the one who meets the public or does the creative work while the other partner does the rou­tine chores Bice handling the money and ordering the supplies.

 

The whole field of art is open to you, and you usually have talent in some artistic field. Painter, writer, illustra­tor, musician or actor could be your specialty. Interior decorator is a natural for you, since you like beauty around you and automatically try to create it; besides, your sign rules things made of wood, which applies to most furniture.

 

Paradoxically, while Libra rules peace, it also rules war, through its opposite (or partnership) sign Aries. Libra men are often army officers; Libra-born Dwighl D. Eisenhower has already been mentioned, and there are many other Librans who have found their careers in the armed forces.

 

HEALTH

 

The typical Libra is lithe and graceful, slim and del­icate when young, and does not give the appearance of being very robust. This is true up to a point; you are somewhat delicate, and you do not have the fierce en­ergy of Scorpio people, for instance, or the stolid endur­ance of Taurus. But in health as in everything else you are perfectly balanced; as long as you avoid undue strain, walk instead of running get the proper rest and do not overindulge in food or drink, you will be able to keep on going cheerfully when people who are much stronger to begin with collapse.

 

The trouble is that with your self-indulgent Venus tendencies most Libras do not stay slim, lithe and per­fectly balanced. It is typical for Librans to become heavy when they are middle aged, and the inherent lazi­ness of your sign makes it especially hard for you to buckle down to staying on a dirt. You are too well bal­anced to gorge yourself at any one meal; the accumula­tion of weight is a gradual thing, since you do not have the nervous energy of a Gemini or a Virgo to burn it up. libra governs the kidneys and the spine, and it is in these areas that you may have health problems.

 

Aside from that you have no special liability to disease, and as long as you keep your Me reasonably well balanced you can go on in good health for many years. Moderation is your keynote; excess in any direction is always danger­ous for you (and this includes crash diets, which can af­fect the general health of a Libran far more than it does with people of other signs).

 

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

 

With all your tact, amiability and willingness to please, you are not really capable of love in the deep emotional sense of a Cancer, for instance, or the matter-of-fact earthiness of a Capricorn. To you love is an idealistic intellectual adventure, something to be en­joyed as much for its trimmings of soft lights and roman­tic music as for itself. You do not want and in fact will not tolerate bitter quarrels, heartrending emotional scenes, jealousy or vindictiveness.

 

But as long as all goes smoothly, you make the best husband or wife in the world—always willing to do what tibe other person wants, kind, gentle, considerate, cour­teous, loving to cook and keep the house looking well, if you are a woman, and willing and able to guard the family budget so there will always be enough money.

 

One thing you must guard against is a tendency to choose your mate by superficial appearances, or to let your amiability lead you astray so that you can't say no to a very persistent suitor or someone your family or friends recommend. Your own balanced judgment is the best guide to the right mate for you, and you must trust your own judgment when making a choice.An individual horoscope is necessary to determine the proper marriage partner for any particular person, bat generally speaking you would find your most suitable mates in the other Air Signs, Aquarius and Gemini, who will share your desire for freedom from emotional com­plications, or the Fire Signs, Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, who will be grateful for your tolerance of their more fiery natures and will in turn add enthusiasm and spon­taneity to your balance.

 

The Water Signs will annoy you with their emotional clinging, to which you may at first acquiesce but which you will eventually find cloying and restrictive. With the Earth Signs, you may find a slight community of interest in Virgo's precision and orderliness that in some ways matches yours and Taurus' love of beauty; but these resemblances are superficial and not as great as the differences between you. At all costs avoid selfish, ambi­tious Capricorn, who will take advantage of your amia­bility to get what he or she wants even while laughing at you for giving in so easily.