Sometimes it’s the first query on a date: what is your sign? Or impetus for song, like the authoritative march of The Fifth Dimension’s The Age Of Aquarius or the sultry sermon of Beyoncé’s “Virgo’s Groove.” And yet, for some, the obsession with astrological signs is annoying or trivial. They cannot understand why the sky is relevant to anyone’s self-definition. But I come from people who awoke with the sun, who used the stars as a compass, the moon as a reference for how their wombs behave. I can’t convince anyone to believe in the meaning of the stars, all I can do is love them for what they have given me, which is a scrutiny over my destiny, a responsibility to live out a purpose.

Described by Chani Nicholas as “the study of how the sky mirrors what happens on earth,” astrology is an extension of centuries worth of fascination with what happens above us; a rejection of mere coincidence and an affirmation that our coexistence with these planets (and one another) has significance. The more we know about our astrological charts, the more we can unleash our own individual potential, and, from there, the more we can use such potential to participate in and affect the collective world around us. In that spirit, Issue 008: Libra Methodology probes the planets for possibility and exalts astrology as an interpretive tool and pedagogical resource to be taken seriously.  

Being a Libra is one of my proudest traits, after being a Black woman and a daughter. Ruled by the planet of Venus, Libra is the sign of harmony, relationships, marriage, and partnership. Venus rewards rituals; the one who sits at her vanity everyday oiling her hair, the quilt that is constantly being restitched, the lovers who commit to rediscovering each other. Thus, Libras cannot thrive on I, we require connection and collaboration. Symbolized by the scale, Libra is also the only sign in the zodiac that is represented by an inanimate object. An enduring point of fascination for me is that those scales aren’t measured for us. How we reach equilibrium (both within our own selves and with others), what we use to reach it, is our work. Be it pennies, stones, or precious gold, the material that makes up our scale is our choice to imagine. In this way, embodying Libra’s wisdom demands our ingenuity, our effort.

In addition to balance and interdependence, Libra also represents beauty and justice. As we have learned to rely on definitions of both that are decided for us—vocabularies that are most profitable, that are narrow and oppressive—Venusian sensibilities offer a remedy to the corruption of beauty and justice as they’ve been maligned by capitalism and subjugation. Issue 008: Libra Methodology identifies such remedies by exploring the transgressive approaches to beauty and justice cast by creative practitioners born under a Libra sun, inviting readers to see the ethos of Venusians as not just characteristics of the sign, but a method that can enhance the way that we live everyday. This issue wonders, in a moment where we crave immediate answers and automatic responses, what it might mean to live the Venusian way: to make a ritual out of scrutinizing our lives everyday and decanting meaning from them, to understand beauty as a subject worthy of constant scrutiny and maintenance, and to practice justice as not a collection of quick answers, but meaningful ruminations.

Astrology and art criticism have at least two things in common: they both serve as vehicles of interpretation that bolster our capacity to inhabit our lives with deeper rigor / they are also both fundamentally misunderstood. Where astrology is dismissed as frivolous and excessively esoteric, art criticism is often perceived and perpetuated as niche fodder for the privileged. Issue 008: Libra Methodology challenges these associations by asserting that, when earnestly engaged, astrology arms us with insight to act in accordance with our own destinies and art criticism fortifies our understanding of contemporary cultural context. Together then, while inducing an eye roll from the nonbelievers, they both offer lucid mirrors and practical methodologies for how we might orient ourselves within and navigate the dynamics of the broader world. Here, Kara Jackson, Jupiter’s Inaugural Guest Editor, explores the Libran themes of justice, beauty, balance, and interdependence as expressed by the practices of artists, musicians, critics, and designers—all of whom were born under a Libra sun—to wonder about what modes of thought, being, relation, and imagination might be possible if these frameworks explicitly hold hands.

Harmony Holiday lowers her ear into the writhing sonic landscape of John Coltrane’s “Crescent” (performed live in Tokyo), Jessica Lynne, Amarie Cemone Gipson, and Stevona Elem-Rogers reverently point their pens toward bell hooks’s Art on My Mind, and Ella Ray attunes their analysis to the lessons in black survival embedded in Beverly Buchanan’s practice. Lawrence Burney remembers the late critic Greg Tate through a review of Arthur Jafa’s elegiac film LOML, Kara Jackson offers a poem after Ntozake Shange, Robin Givhan unfurls a comparative analysis of Kerry James Marshall and Yohji Yamamoto’s use of black in their respective practices, Denise Ferreira da Silva reads the birth charts of Coltrane, Faith Ringgold, and Amiri Baraka, and jellystone robinson inflects these written contributions with The Spirit of Libra: a short film about Winnie, a young woman who petitions the cosmos to change her astrological sign.