Within a day or so of the Aquarius eclipse overnight Sunday to Monday, a woman gave birth to octuplets, one of the few births of eight live children on record. Nearly 100,000 jobs were reported lost by American industry. A recently unemployed man shot his family of five, then killed himself.

The wonders of the Internet. When I was new to reading about astrology, I found a book that covered the Western signs in the context of the Chinese zodiac. It’s called The New Astrology by Suzanne White — a book where you can look up some ideas to go with being a Leo Rooster or a Pisces Dragon, and it was intelligent (the Pisces Dragon, my own sign, should seek employment as a philosopher or photographer, Ms. White suggests, but according to her research, she can think of no reason why one would want to be the boss of anything).

So — what happens when you inaugurate the president with the Moon void of course during Mercury retrograde? Naturally, you have to do it over again. After all that astonishing fanfare, the real kind with trumpets and flags, along with $125 million spent on the swearing-in ceremony attended by some three million spectators, Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed the presidential oath of office.

Barack Obama’s inauguration next week is the chart of a world in transition, or one about to unravel. These may amount to the same thing, necessary aspects of the same process: though if you ask me, this is a dangerous chart. We live in dangerous times and most of us have no clue the extent or depth of this fact, nor its profound virtue.

Our annual edition is a tradition at Planet Waves, but also in my work as an astrologer. The project is an extended phase when I review the astrology for the coming 18 months and make friends with it. This process of acclamation with the celestial movements involves looking at the charts for dozens of events, using as many planets as is practical.

AND WHAT, pray tell, is going on? We have a full edition for you this week as we approach one of the biggest and most emotional Full Moons of the year (in Cancer, conjunct Varuna and square Eris); and as Mercury slows to a halt on Sunday. It’s all the madness you would expect with these two events happening a day apart, in the last weeks of the Bush/Cheney era I thought would never end; it hasn’t yet.