Monthly Archives: July 2011

Faith, Credit and Flexibility

Dear Friend and Reader:

Back during the Cheney-Bush administration, I used to have this notion that there was an astrologer working in the White House who was taking it upon himself to sabotage everything they tried to do. For example, they invaded Iraq with the Sun in the last degree of Pisces, when they could have waited one day and had it in the first degree of Aries, honoring the god of war and drawing on fire instead of water. But with their late Pisces military action, they got a toxic, unnecessarily deadly and expensive bog that seems to work for no one except military contractors.

The sprawling Caloris Basin on Mercury is one of the solar system’s largest impact basins. Created during the early history of the solar system by the impact of a large asteroid-sized body, it spans about 1,500 kilometers and is seen in yellowish hues in this enhanced color mosaic. The image is from the recent flyby of the MESSENGER spacecraft. Till that mission, we didn’t have such amazing photos of Mercury. Photo: NASA & Johns Hopkins Univ.

More recently, the Obama administration has been saying that the last day that the United States will have money to pay its bills is Tuesday, Aug. 2. Therefore, the debt ceiling must be raised so that the government can cover basic services and make interest payments on prior debts. That happens to be the day that Mercury stations retrograde.

You don’t need to know that much astrology to see the potential problem with this. The last few days leading up to any Mercury retrograde can be chaotic. Murphy’s Law often seems to be in full effect.  These days, sometimes called the Mercury storm, don’t lend themselves well to complicated projects, and even if you make progress leading up to them, all of a sudden Mercury switches directions and you can be back to step one. While most astrologers would avoid making arrangements with Mercury retrograde, just about every astrologer will at least tell you to wait out the storm and do things while Mercury is moving solidly one direction or the other.

Plans seem to be unraveling over and over as divided Republicans in the House of Representatives cannot get clear over what to do. There are divisions between the Tea Party Republicans and the older more traditional Republicans; and there are big divides within the Tea Party itself. They all seem to agree that (in theory, anyway) taxes won’t go up, and tax loopholes won’t be closed. Yes, the Christians refuse to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. What they can’t agree on is how much damage to do to Social Security. This is on one level a conversation about taking from the poor and giving to the rich. And Obama seems to be playing along with it.

But there is a deeper game going on. Republicans want Obama and the Democrats to give them cover for their votes earlier this year to kill Medicare. In other words, they want to get Democrats to vote for Medicare cuts (even small ones) so that they can say, “But the Democrats voted for Medicare cuts too!” in the 2012 campaign. If instead it becomes a point of contrast between the parties in the upcoming election and Democrats choose to campaign on it, we’re looking at another big wave election that gives Democrats huge majorities in both houses and an Obama landslide. The polls are extremely clear on this point, but this is going to take guts and commitment that we have not seen coming from the Democratic party or its leaders any time recently.

Meanwhile, the fundamentalist fringe movement is pushing the country toward both default and a drop in the United States (as of today) AAA bond rating. Either or both events would drive interest rates up for all Americans and American businesses, which would likely trigger an even bigger global recession. This is being done in the name of lower taxes and saving the economy. It reminds me of hanging themselves so they can’t eat so much — therefore they will lose weight. There are a large number of congressional representatives (nearly all of them Tea Party-types) who say they will refuse to raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances. In other words, they are intentionally pushing the government into default. Many want to see the federal government hobbled; others seem not to understand that there’s a problem; the majority are using this as an opportunity to damage or destroy what they think of as ‘socialist’ programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. This attempt to dismantle traditional government structure is an interesting image of Pluto in Capricorn in a wholly destructive manifestation.

Chart for Mercury stationing retrograde Tuesday night in the US, early Wednesday in the UK and Europe. As Mercury stations retrograde, Mars makes its way into Cancer, joining the cardinal cross and setting off the 2012 aspect of Uranus square Pluto.

And all of this is happening in the few days leading up to Mercury stationing retrograde on Aug. 2, suggesting that little (or nothing) will get done, or that it won’t go according to plan and will need to be done over. Mercury stationing retrograde, especially in a mental sign like Virgo, can also represent people changing their minds. For reasons I will describe in a moment, that would indeed be a miracle. Here we have people claiming to have sworn to uphold the constitution and who have made a big show about it (remember the Republican stunt of reading the Constitution out loud at the beginning of the congressional session earlier this year?), threatening to default on the full faith and credit of the United States.

There’s one other astrological current event that qualifies as A+ interesting. In an article from earlier in the year called Here at the Edge of the World, I described many charts that have an important element at 28+ Gemini. Those include the main chart of the Sept. 11, 2001 incident (the Moon); the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004 (the Moon); WikiLeaks (the ascendant); the Fukushima quake, tsunami and meltdowns of March 11, 2011 (the South Node); and Japan (the Moon). Mars is currently approaching that degree of the zodiac.

It will arrive Sunday morning, setting off all of those charts at once, giving this moment something distinctive in common with many of the weird things that have happened the past 10 years. As the Republican/Tea Party/conservative coalition in the House of Representatives starts to flake apart, we have yet another image of an unraveling power structure. We get another opportunity to see things how they really are. This seems to be just one more way the veneer is being torn off of so-called conservatism, the most recent (and ongoing) example being the still-unraveling Murdoch media empire. Though it’s out of the headlines in the United States for the moment, there was a development yesterday: the mother of another murdered child had her phone hacked by News of the World, sparking a new wave of outrage in the UK this week.

Mercury Retrograde — Aspects to Neptune and Transpluto

Mercury will be retrograde for most of August, between the 2nd and the 26th. The effect ripples out for about two weeks before and after the exact retrograde (called the shadow or echo phase). Mercury begins its retrograde in Virgo. It arrived there Thursday, creeping along in direct motion. It will station back into Leo on Aug. 9, and spend most of its time retrograde there. After stationing direct the 26th, Mercury will remain in Leo till Sept. 10, when it re-enters Virgo in direct motion.

Closeup of Mercury stationing retrograde on Tuesday. Mercury is the green critter with horns in the center of the alignment. Right next to it is the hypothetical point Transpluto (circle with a slash), which can represent self-judgment and narrow-minded thinking. Mercury making a series of conjunctions to Transpluto is reminding us to be aware of when we back ourselves into a corner with self-judgments and fixed ideas.

Said simply, during this retrograde cycle, Mercury changes signs between Leo and Virgo several times. This is one of the lines adjoining our ideas of work and play; between a serious attitude and a more passionate one; between the creative force and the intellectual one. One way or another, we will all be working out some of the calculus regarding this important boundary.

Now, it happens that there is a big planet right in the first degree of Pisces — that would be Neptune. And there is an odd little point right in the last degree of Leo, called Transpluto. After being in Leo since 1937, this hypothetical point (a theoretical planet, used only by astrologers) is now transitioning into Virgo. Seventy-four years is a long time for any point to stay in one sign, so this is a transition worth paying attention to. And while it’s making this transition, it’s exactly opposite Neptune, and getting a series of conjunctions from Mercury.

The themes of Transpluto include raising awareness of rigid concepts, self-judgments and harsh or strict emotional treatment of oneself or others. As an influence in Leo for many generations, I believe it describes some of our problems with self-esteem. It’s like a narrow, judgmental thought form that we act out first on ourselves, then on others. And I would say that this concept tends to operate ‘unconsciously’ or is considered part of a normal personality. It can be associated with normal emotions such as vindictive jealousy, competition between mothers and daughters, and a variety of other feelings that manifest subtly or not so subtly.

When Mercury makes aspects to something, that’s about awareness. So we get an opportunity to see how rigid we can be, and maybe do something about it. I’m confident that under this astrology, we will have direct experiences of being exactly as intransigent as we are. What is normally unconscious will become more available to awareness. You can think of it as consciousness, or an idea, passing through a narrow space; this aspect reminds us that we may be witnessing the birth of a new paradigm.

Mercury is also making a series of oppositions to Neptune. The opposition between these two planets is saying pay attention, be realistic and consider what is true and what isn’t. It’s a classical setup for a lack of integrity unless you work diligently to have some. There is something here calling out for intellectual honesty; there is the reminder that every deception takes two parties, the one who deceives and the one who allows themselves to be deceived.

These themes of psychological narrowness, deception and rigid ideas can be applied easily to the ongoing political situation. For example, we’re being told over and over again that tax cuts for the rich create jobs (were that true, there would be lots and lots of jobs available right now) and that cutting government spending during a recession is a good thing (no serious economist believes that). Tax cuts for the wealthy (for whom the Doublespeak jargon is now ‘job creators’) tend to go into investments or to pay back debts, and the money stops circulating. Paychecks, unemployment checks and welfare benefits immediately circulate into the real economy, helping many people and businesses along the way.

The Cancer Miasm and the Tea Party

Wednesday night I had dinner with a friend who’s an experienced homeopath and teacher, helping me fill in some gaps in my studies. He was describing what homeopaths call the cancer miasm: that is, the whole thought form and energy pattern associated with the disease cancer. We Americans live in what may be the most carcinogenic society on Earth, and homeopathy proposes that this is as much about our mentality as it is about toxins in the food and water. Even mainstream medical practitioners note that one thing many cancer patients have in common is the habit of suppressing their emotions, but homeopathy is describing something other than an individual state. And it is describing how individual states of mind are an aspect of the larger culture.

They might look like trees on Mars, but they’re not. Groups of dark brown streaks have been photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on melting pinkish sand dunes covered with light frost. The above image was taken in April 2008 near the North Pole of Mars. At that time, dark sand on the interior of Martian sand dunes became more and more visible as the spring Sun melted the lighter carbon dioxide ice. When occurring near the top of a dune, dark sand may cascade down the dune leaving dark surface streaks — streaks that might appear at first to be trees standing in front of the lighter regions, but cast no shadows. Photo: NASA.

My friend described the cancer miasm as being about a psyche gripped by intractable ideas; that is to say, a mind that will not budge. This is the essence of fundamentalism, a mode of thinking that currently has the United States Congress and thus the world economy by the throat. Everyone on the majority side in the House of Representatives pretty much agrees that any raising of additional revenue is out of the question, and that they’re going to cut benefits from people living on government pensions they paid into for decades. Note that I am talking about a psychic state described by homeopathy and not conventional medicine; there is some relationship, and it’s not necessarily direct (though it can be). It influences everything from our politics and social behavior to our food production methods. We all struggle with the miasms of our whole society and our family, not just the individual ones we have. We live in a carcinogenic society that produces cancer in nearly half of all people. This is territory not embarked on by conventional medicine, which deals only in dose-response relationships and only rarely addresses mental or emotional states — or their effects. Within the fundamentalist movement, there are fixed ideas about sex (don’t talk about it), abortion (murder in all instances), birth control (now also considered murder) and homosexuality (no way, Jose). All unions are bad, government is bad, taxes are bad, regulations are bad, and on and on, ad nauseam. Note carefully (it is not that hard to see) that nothing is being created except chaos. There is no plan to make, to build, to improve, to develop; the only goal is to control people (mainly through sex and private relationships) and eliminate the government’s role in the process of creating civilization. This philosophy of government is a disease process: cancer of the mind. There is something — you might call it a spiritual presence — lacking at the center of people and organizations who think this way which leads the way to aggressive religiosity. The Grand Canyon is really 6,000 years old and there were dinosaurs around when Jesus was alive. Who cares about science? There’s no such thing as evolution. (Go figure!) Like the often aggressive medical condition known as cancer, this mentality also facilitates aggression in general: multiple wars, a five-fold increase in prison population, numerous, ongoing accounts of police brutality (including the frequent abuse of Tasers) and so forth — and note that it seems to be ‘untreatable’ and out of control.

In the midst of all of this, there’s a rule that says absolutely no compromise. Do not bend. Never give in. Never flex. Have you wondered about this? Pres. Obama politely pointed it out in his speech Monday night — the part about compromise being a dirty word. We saw a lot of this operating in the days when Karl Rove was in the news. One of Rove’s most basic plays is never back down. The people currently holding Congress hostage are so convinced they’re right that they’re willing to let the whole economy crumble before they consider some other possibility.

I don’t think a majority of people think this way, but this style of thinking is certainly all the rage in politics right now. “If they budge on their position, they fear they will collapse,” my friend said of those gripped by the cancer miasm. “They reject all rational arguments in order to maintain their insanity.”

What would it be like to climb a hill and look out over Mars? That opportunity was afforded the Spirit rover earlier this month as it rolled to a high perch in the Columbia Hills. Peering out, the rolling robot spied the interior plains and distant rim of Gusev Crater, beyond an outcrop of rocks called Longhorn. Spirit continues to find evidence that many rock shapes have been altered by ancient water. But we have no idea what happened. When we look at Mars, I suggest we consider one potential fate of the Earth. Photo: NASA.

This condition has three main psychological roots. One is the compulsive need for control over themselves and their immediate environment. This extends into the environment as the desire to control others, but the real struggle is for self-control. That can be projected out into fantasies of total control over everyone and everything.

Second is the wobble factor: there is no stability to this type of psyche, and the prior characteristic is an attempt to compensate for this. With this comes the fear of being attacked, which would precipitate both lack of stability and loss of control. Intellectual process is replaced by superstition and belief in ‘out there’ notions.

Third is a lack of centeredness. There is no sense of the core of their being, of an inner reality. Everything gets pushed out to a rigid surface of the psyche — what Wilhelm Reich called personality armor. This leads to loss of sensitivity, loss of contact with the world, and a sense of isolation from people and from reality. It’s like having a thick shell that allows for no compassion or human sensitivity.

This condition describes many of the people we see in modern politics, as well as the people who support them. The crazy thing about the Tea Party movement is that it’s not really possible to discuss the issues. Everything comes from a predetermined place. The framework of the discussion is fixed far in advance and can never change, except to become more rigid. What people with this picture need is to develop some psychic mobility and a sense of flow — but that feels really dangerous.

But what about the rest of us? What about the people who don’t start this way, but who eventually fall for it? My friend described another energetic picture, described by one of the homeopathic remedies: that of being divided against oneself. It’s the way of thinking wherein, ‘this may be true, but that may also be true. Maybe there isn’t really a truth. Who knows?’ It’s not really possible to come to a conclusion; the truth does not really exist. Then the left and right sides go into battle, or as is often the case, the upper and the lower (mind versus body, for example).

Cancer cells appear during the oncological process. There are equivalents on other levels of reality. In homeopathy, what is called the ‘cancer miasm’ is associated with a state of mind in addition to a biological disease process. The state of mind influences society on all levels with its rigid thought systems and suppressed emotions, as well as its physical environment that encourages carcinogenic behavior, such as routinely eating toxins.

This condition is described by another homeopathic concept — a remedy called Anacardium. It is made from a tropical plant; note that in homeopathy remedies have complex pictures that emerge over many years of use. The word means ‘without heart’. Anacardium tends to describe the majority of people who don’t want to commit to a position, who consider themselves middle of the road. It’s a lot like the situation of an abused child whose parent will not let them make any decisions, such as what clothes to wear. If they digress, they will be punished cruelly. So they behave well, but underneath that facade is the sense of being disgusted with themselves. That describes the weakened condition of the American public rather succinctly.

In a column Wednesday, Paul Krugman of The New York Times explained that the mentality killing the United States is not right-wing extremism. Rather, he proposes, “the cult that I see as reflecting a true moral failure is the cult of balance, of centrism.”

He notes correctly that news reports portray a situation “in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.”

“What all this means is that there is no penalty for extremism; no way for most voters, who get their information on the fly rather than doing a careful study of the issues, to understand what’s really going on,” he said. “The ‘both sides are at fault’ people have to know better; if they refuse to say it, it’s out of some combination of fear and ego, of being unwilling to sacrifice their treasured pose of being above the fray.” He ends somewhat ominously: “It’s a terrible thing to watch, and our nation will pay the price.” What he is saying is that the pre-existing heartless middle of the road position makes us susceptible to fundamentalist abuse.

Let’s review the two concepts. The cancer miasm that infects fundamentalist politicians is about being overcommitted to one side and totally intransigent. In this state, flexibility is death — leading to death. The Anacardium position suffered by most voters (who cannot seem to discern good from evil, or who vote for the politicians who openly want to take away their privileges) is about refusing to commit to anything at all, lacking any confidence. It is the product of abuse, and subject to abuse and opportunistic disease (such as cancer). The two are a dangerous combination because those who are overcommitted will find it easy to push around the people who are not committed at all.

Mercury Stationing in Virgo, Mars Entering Cancer

Mercury stationing retrograde in Virgo on Tuesday is the perfect image of changing one’s mind. Virgo is a mutable sign, and it has a mental quality; Mercury rules Virgo, and it’s intelligent, mentally agile and adaptable. And this agility is not always merely an option. Mercury stationing can create situations to which we have to adapt whether we like it or not. Think of it as a decision you make in your healing process because you want to be well. So in the midst of all this intractability, we have a teaching moment that’s likely to reveal it really does help to be able to think things over and do what’s right. Mercury stationing retrograde in Virgo is about discernment.

Crescent Mercury photographed by MESSENGER spacecraft. Photo: NASA.

But something else interesting happens the next day. On Wednesday, Mars enters the sign Cancer. Concurrently with the retrograde of Mercury, Mars makes aspects to nearly every slow-moving planet. This includes the T-square on the cardinal cross (Uranus in Aries, Saturn in Libra and Pluto in Capricorn) — so we’re going to get an approximately four-week spell when the 2012 alignment (the cardinal T-square) is fully activated and becomes a grand cross. On Aug. 17, Mars will cross over the degree of the July 1 solar eclipse, reminding us what that was about. (It was a big eclipse, as we are now discovering.)

As it moves through the sign Cancer, Mars makes what are called hard aspects to Saturn, Uranus and Pluto — indicating the potential for some hotheaded, reactionary and yes, rigid emotions (the sign Cancer principally expresses itself emotionally). This is a good time to get beneath the shell (associated with the crab) and defensiveness of this sign, and open up to the deeper empathy we’re all capable of. And we will have help.

As Mars moves through Cancer, it does something else: it makes trines to Neptune in Pisces, then Chiron in Pisces. A trine, considered a soft aspect, is an aspect of flow, and this is a trine involving two of the water signs. Mars is alternately making hard and soft aspects, suggesting that water will have the opportunity to take the path of least resistance — the experience of flow and flexibility. Water signs are involved: this is creative flow, with a feeling of empathy, and creative results.

While the Mercury station in Virgo gives the opportunity to be mentally flexible, make decisions and use our intelligence, the Mars aspects give us the choice to express rather than suppress our emotions. The two are related; both describe becoming unstuck, but in both instances, it’s a conscious act — the healing process (as humans experience it) is a conscious choice. These aspects suggest we will have lots of options, if we choose to explore them.

Lovingly,

Additional research by David Kramer. Photo research by Sarah Bissonnette-Adler.

Coming Soon: Planet Waves Mercury Retrograde Report

Dear Friend and Reader:

I just finished the Cancer birthday report, which is getting good reviews. Here’s a link to the description, for those who have Cancer Sun, Moon or rising. The sign reports are designed to work for all three placements. The first four signs (Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer) are available for 2011. To find them all, you can visit this link.

Analemma & the Tholos, Delphi, Greece. Photo: Anthony Ayiomamitis.

This week I began recording a Mercury retrograde report for all 12 signs. As of Friday morning I am just about finished with this project. Even though there are three mercury retrogrades per year, I get to this report once a year, gradually expanding the available database of knowledge about this rather mythologized but routine event. The report is coming out great so far; I’ve done the introduction and the first nine signs and I expect to have it ready Friday afternoon.

One thing about this particular Mercury retrograde is that it crosses the line between Leo and Virgo. We get the first such crossing in direct motion on Thursday, then retrograde on Aug. 8, then in direct motion again on Sept. 9. Some astrologers describe the Leo/Virgo line as the sphinx point — where cat (Leo) meets human (Virgo).

It’s also the line where play meets work; where self-expression meets service; where passion meets the details of creative process. For each of the 12 signs I will be exploring that relationship. You will find out what this means in your chart — whether you know your birth time (and hence your rising sign) or not. This report will be brimming with personal guidance, strategy points and hints that will help you benefit from this retrograde, based on my experience covering (as in writing about) the past approximately 51 Mercury retrogrades.

If you’re vaguely interested in studying astrology, all 12 signs will be worth listening to because I will go over all of the house cusps in one place. The house cusps are each a special zone of their own, each having unique qualities (like an extra 12 houses).

This will be a one-purchase-gets-all-12-signs product. Look for the official announcement soon!

Lovingly,

PS, Chelsea just called and said she has set up the routine for the Mercury retrograde report. You may pre-order by going to this product page. We will send you an email when the whole thing is finished, assembled and ready to go. — efc

Planet Waves FM: Crime in Progress

In this week’s edition of Planet Waves FM, I look at the issues surrounding the debt ceiling battle that really amounts to an economic and political power grab: a kind of false flag collapse of the economy. It’s happened before — the banking crash of 2008 was both avoidable and intentional, and many people profited to a degree that the public has no concept of.

There are several theories about what’s happening at the moment, one of the most cohesive coming from one of our commenters who is fairly close to the action — you can read his assessment here. By any analysis, the conduct of legislators in Washington ranges from irresponsible and deceitful to blatantly insane; and while Obama is doing his best to maintain his public image, he is offering up Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to the flesh-eating monster of the conservative movement.

I briefly discuss the Oslo attacks but I don’t discuss the chart — that you can see on a post from this weekend. I have a few comments about Amy Winehouse and what an extraordinary chart she had — unfortunately time did not permit.

I cover this in a streamlined, one-hour program featuring musical guests the Grateful Dead. Monday would be the 69th birthday of Jerry Garcia, so we have two hot folk-blues numbers for you, lovingly selected from a pretty good collection.

To listen to today’s edition of Planet Waves FM in the old player, or to view the archives going back more than a year, check this link. If you listen to Planet Waves FM in iTunes, please check this letter to iTunes listeners.

Thank you!

 

 

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, July 29, 2011, #869 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Revised and Updated! Click for Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — If you have the impulse to help someone, make sure your resulting gesture is actually going to be helpful — in advance. Perhaps go one step deeper and question your motives, and your perception that anyone in particular needs your assistance. If those checks tell you to proceed, I suggest you then call the person up and ask if there is some way you can help, rather than just taking it upon yourself to do so. Meanwhile the focus of your life really needs to be you right now. You’re entering a phase ideal for inner questioning, and seem to be seeking the resolution and completion of certain stories that have gone on seemingly forever. Your first impulse to cut yourself off from the past may be followed by the recognition that you have yet to do precisely that, but remember what you’re seeking is not ‘cutting off’ but rather emotional closure.

Aries, your birth sign or rising sign, is getting some of the most potent transits of them all right now. I’ve recorded an hour of astrology and a tarot card reading for you. Learn more by visiting this page.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Pay attention to the conditions at the beginning of any story or circumstance to get a sense of how it’s likely to work out. Pay attention to the presence of unresolved material from the last cycle, because it’s likely to be carried over into the next one. Aspects of yourself that you think of as inherent or unable to change are the ones that are caught on this treadmill. It can, at first, take an enormous amount of will power (conscious intention, followed up by action, with the results reinvested in intention) to get out of a cycle wherein history repeats itself. But there is something else at work. It’s about belief. Usually, belief is an unconscious process; the decision to accept something as true or not is rarely preceded by actual thought and contemplation. I suggest you watch this process in action — particularly when it comes to what you believe about yourself. It’s not all true.

I’ve recorded an hour of astrology and done a tarot reading especially for you. It’s information that will help with your relationships, your professional life and your personal growth. Visit this page to find out more.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — You seem to be focused on the distant past. I suggest you sort out the difference between your opinion of things, and how you feel about them. Your mind seems to be overrunning your emotions, and your emotions are trying to come to the surface. One way to work with this is to set aside your opinions and stick to the basic facts of any situation. Given that certain key parts of this scenario are related to the history of your life, and the history of your family, that may take some research, though that will serve a few purposes. One will be to correct any misconceptions you may have; incorrect facts have a way of leading to frustrating or useless opinions. Second, you’ll get a chance to be a bit more detached about your situation, which will allow your perceptions some space to take in the nature of reality. Remember, the ‘nature of reality’ is best explored as an experiment in perception. You don’t need to come to any conclusions; anyway I don’t think they will help you, because what you’ll benefit from most is an open mind.

Gemini is one of the most misunderstood signs — and as someone born under this sign, part of your role is to hold a mirror to the world. I’ve recorded an hour of audio for you, plus a 20 minute tarot reading. You can get access to these by visiting this page.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — There are two really good ways to work with money. One is to treat it as a science. The flow of wealth has certain properties that are rather unrelated to what you may have been brainwashed with as a kid. Careful study of people, of how they conduct transactions, and where you fit into the equation will tell you a lot. The second way is to treat money as energy, which can flow or get stuck. You can have a lot of energy, and it can get hung up; you can have relatively little and it can flow nicely and you feel successful. Yet the thing that will prevail over both is how you feel about yourself. This is the one essential thing that will have a way of dictating all the terms of your existence. No matter what else you may feel, believe or be up to, how you feel about yourself is both cause and effect; origin, journey and destination. Question your judgments. Embrace and share your gifts.

Hello Cancerians! Your birthday report is ready. It’s more than an hour of astrology plus a 20 minute tarot reading. Please visit this page for more details.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — This weekend’s New Moon in your birth sign is the harbinger of great beginnings. I suggest you take the long view, however, and not let any questions or doubts get in your way. Keep them on your shelf, where you can see them, but you don’t have to take them down and play with them every 20 minutes. It’s true that to ‘succeed’ means being on the brink of failure; to ‘have’ is right on the edge of not having. It is this line that so many people fear getting close to, opting instead for the supposedly safe ground of mediocrity. That is not your fate, though the coming few weeks represent a time of re-evaluation of your goals, your plans and more than anything your deeper sense of purpose. You were given the talents that you have; what do you plan to do with them, and more significantly, for what purpose? You are in a time in your life when great things are possible, and perhaps when you’re experiencing more truly positive developing than you give yourself credit for.

Hello Leo! I’m now working on the birthday report for your sign. Watch this space for additional information.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — It is sad but true that most people who pass through our planet don’t go much deeper than the surface of who they are. One tradition I respect describes this as “the fear to look within,” which emerges from one thing — the fear of what we think we will discover. Borrowing from Christian terms, we fear that we will find sin. Translating that from Latin, we fear lack of some kind. In modern psychological terms, there are a great many people who are terrified that they are empty inside, and therefore spend their lives existing on the shell of their psyche. There is really only one way to find out the truth, and that is to dive inside. Yes, there can and often are challenges associated with entering unknown inner territory. But much like diving into water, the fear is all in the anticipation. You have recently embarked on some kind of unusual inner journey. Yes, this is real; and so far as I can see, once you pass through the narrow gap of self-judgment, you have nothing to fear.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Virgo, please go to this link.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — It is amazing how different your perception of yourself can be from how you’re perceived by those around you. I would say that on the whole, most people have a much higher opinion of you than you do of yourself. You might doubt them, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. It also doesn’t mean that you can live by allowing your friends to shore up your self-esteem. You can, however, make careful note of what you observe outside you contrasted with what you observe inside you. You can notice the filter through which you’re seeing yourself, and through which you are perceiving what others say about you. On a good day, you will simply trust. The notion of whether you’re a ‘good person’ or a ‘bad person’ is made irrelevant by something, for example, like trusting the love that you feel. That said, if you have anything for which you want to make amends, now would be a great time. Acknowledging where you feel you have fallen short commands something more important than the respect of others: and that is self-respect.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Libra, please go to this link.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — I strongly suggest you go out of your way to play fair the next few days, and while we’re at it, keep that as a goal for the next month. One hint that you may need an ethics check is if you’re perceiving differences between yourself and others that are translating into rationales for how you, in turn, might act toward them. The operative device here is rationalization. Listen for moments when you are stating reasons to yourself, which you then build into strategies. Others don’t have to be wrong for you to be right, and further, they are entitled to be wrong and you don’t have to do anything about it, or even have much to say about it. Part of why this mode is so problematic is because in getting into the ‘me vs. them’ state of mind, what you’re really doing is cutting yourself in half. If you approach the world from a whole state of being, you will see a lot less conflict, and the conflict you do see will mean a lot less. And for you to succeed, nobody has to fail.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Scorpio, please go to this link.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — The professional move you’re contemplating is going to come in three phases, the first of which you seem to have embarked upon this week. Consider this the test phase of a new project or journey. Note carefully your environment, including what influence you seem to have, and what influence you lack. Check carefully the extent to which certain details need attention, and what practical matters fall into place. Then, get ready for a total reassessment of your plan. At this point it does not matter whether you seem to succeed or fail. Stick to your vision, indeed, nourish it and let it nourish you. The relationship between your vision and any particular outcome is like the relationship between the Earth and a tree. The tree is rooted in the earth; it grows from the Earth, but the planet that that supports it, where those roots sink in, is something far greater. Then, let that guide you through the next few phases of your movements.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Sagittarius, please go to this link.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — You may be feeling a kind of anticipation anxiety, as if something big is about to happen. The way the world is, I would not call you paranoid; the current structure of consciousness is all about something big happening, to which we all respond like criminals when the lights are turned on, then we go back to sleep. In this environment, anticipation anxiety can be a real problem, a kind of lurking psychic sensation that something is about to pop up. I suggest you channel that feeling directly into a creative outlet of some kind. That could be anything from making music to listening to it; express some wholesome indulgence in pleasure; get around some people you love and trust and make food. The kind of fear you may be processing is a lot more poignant if you think you live in a vacuum, and if your creative energy gets bottled up. And it’s likely to vanish entirely among trusted friends and when you take part in any form of play or loving communication.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Capricorn, please go to this link.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — You need to figure out a way to vent some pressure. Obviously, make it constructive, though I can tell you from your charts that this is the deep underground kind of pressure, unlikely the kind you can work out with a stroll in the park. I suggest you work your way down to that level gradually, but steadily. This is one of those psychic equations where there is always a little deeper you can go, so I suggest you just move inward toward the direction of any tension you might feel. There comes a moment when the energy you’re holding starts to release. Then you can relax into a new layer of yourself and keep going. As you explore and experience, notice how your relationship to existence changes. Notice what happens to your tension level, your anxiety level, and your perception of your problems. Notice how you think others feel about you. Notice, more than anything, changes to your sense of what you think is possible.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Aquarius, please go to this link.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Mars is about to enter your sympathetic water sign Cancer. That’s another way of saying how much fun you have will be matched by how much fun you think you deserve. While Pisces has a reputation for being hedonistic, I have found that more often the opposite is true: those born under your sign who are obsessed by ethics plunge themselves into service. This may be a defensive reaction of some kind. It may also be a common-sense response to existence in a world that, frankly, needs a lot of help. Anyway, I would propose experimenting with a new kind of common sense, the one about you experiencing some of the pleasure and nourishment you want. The key word here is want rather than need; needs are great, but that concept seems to be a hedge against the guilt typically associated with desire. I’m suggesting you jump over the hedge and go right into the garden.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Pisces, please go to this link.

The Light in August: Your Monthly Horoscope

Dear Friend and Reader:

August 2011 is one of those months when it will pay to know a little astrology — or even a little bit about the current astrology. The planetary movements of the next four weeks present a number of challenges, just as many opportunities and an occasion to peer into the future. There also seems to be an extended window in which to address certain matters of the past, and to work with the question of emotional balance.

Photo by Eric Francis.

We think we’re a mentally driven society, but I suspect that’s only on the surface. Deeper in, we are moved and in a sense stalked by our own emotions. That’s why we’re so easily manipulated. Since Mercury is retrograde for nearly the whole month of August, let’s consider some of what that suggests — then go into the deeper emotional material.

Mercury starts its retrograde Aug. 2 in Virgo. Because it’s in the early degrees of Virgo (at the beginning of the sign), it will promptly retrograde back into Leo, where it has spent much of July. The image is one of moving inward through layers. We start by questioning some idea of who we are (Mercury stationing retrograde in Virgo, the sign of ideas) and we gradually backtrack toward what seems like an answer, but what is in truth really a deeper inner reality, represented by Leo.

Leo is a unique sign in that it’s ruled by the Sun rather than a planet. Only one other sign is not ruled by a planet — Cancer, which is associated with the Moon. The Sun has a special role; it’s the center of the solar system, around which all the other planets orbit. Every bit of light that we see from planets, the Moon or on our own planet comes from the Sun. Its dual role is a gravitational center, as well as an energy source. When a tree grows, that energy comes from the Sun. When you burn coal, that energy came from the Sun. When you express yourself, you’re using solar energy to do so, and that’s the basic meaning of the Sun in astrology.

Photo by Eric Francis.

Most of us don’t identify ourselves as creative people. That’s another way of saying that we tend not to identify with the Sun in our charts, or rather, we can get distracted by the personality represented by our lunar placement. It’s intriguing that most people don’t know what sign their Moon is in — if you like astrology, I suggest you find out. The ‘aha’ will validate astrology for you, and give you a whole new element to work with.

Mercury retrograde into the sign of the Sun is a way of saying that we’re exploring for, searching out and feeling for the expression of our solar nature. Remember — this isn’t an idea; it’s not a story. It’s an atomic reaction that’s burning so hot, one can be blinded looking into it for a few moments even at our distance. As you feel for this energy, you will feel for how you want to express yourself. Don’t just think about it — reach in and pull out the expressive energy and give it away, just like the Sun does.

As you’re doing this, be aware that something else is happening. For most of August, Mars will be in the sign Cancer. It arrives Aug. 3, just a day after Mercury stations retrograde. That suggests some confusion between the mental level (our ideas about things) and our emotions (energy moving on a sub-verbal level). So remember that. Then Mars does something pretty fancy: it moves along what’s called the cardinal cross — aspecting all those planets in the early cardinal signs (Uranus in Aries, Pluto in Capricorn and Saturn in Libra, among others).

Mars is highly energetic, impetuous, hot, passionate and at times raging and confrontational. Be careful not to pick fights over what turn out to be misunderstandings or incorrect interpretations. Indeed, get your facts right; wait a while and see if you can get to a new level of understanding. Try to see where the people around you are coming from. And be careful when you’re driving. We all know not to drive drunk, but I would add to that under the influence of any alcohol at all, or when you’re overtired or upset. Stack the deck in your favor. And please don’t even ride as a passenger with someone who is out of sorts.

Photo by Eric Francis.

The generous perk of this astrology is opportunities for maturity. Moments when we go out of balance in any way are great times to learn why it happened, what was going on below the boards, and what we can do about it. There are other perks: if you slow down and don’t try to do too much (almost always good astrological advice with Mercury retrograde), there is a lot of passion and creative mojo in these Mars aspects. If you remember that the opposite of depression is expression, you may find yourself in a creative zone like no other.

As for peering into the future: Mars in particular is tracing the regions of the zodiac that are the most involved with the 2012 phenomenon. When that happens, we get a taste of the energy of the future months or years in advance. This works on the personal level and the global level. If you pay careful attention, you will be able to see and experience what is developing. We will, of course, be covering these developments on every channel as they happen.

If you’re curious how this astrology influences you personally, I invite you to check out my midyear report. And of course, you can tune in every day at PlanetWaves.net, and don’t miss my podcasts each Wednesday at Planet Waves FM.

Yours lovingly,

Now Playing: Planet Waves Mercury Retrograde Report

Dear Friend and Reader:

The Planet Waves Mercury retrograde report is done. I’ve recorded an introduction and about 25 to 35 minutes of audio for each of the 12 Sun signs and rising signs. The audio introduction to the Merc Rx phenomenon in general is available to all readers, in which I give a primer on Mercury retrograde and describe key details of this one. The product itself is the sign-by-sign interpretation, which I offer in clear, easy to follow language. As you may know, I am always reaching for the point of sanity in the astrology, the solution set to what seems like an overly complex puzzle. I trust these readings will bring you some comfort, clarity and a few good ideas to work with in these wild and unusual days.

Analemma & the Tholos, Delphi, Greece. Photo: Anthony Ayiomamitis.

Mercury retrograde is a challenging event for many people. I do my best to counter those challenges with creativity and the intelligence made available by a careful reading of the charts. Whether you’re looking for work, sorting out your relationships or trying to turn a corner in your life, I trust you will find these readings helpful.

I’ve had an amazing time creating this report all week in the midst of much other activity — it seemed to create itself as the days went on, and I was a little wistful letting it go as I finished the 12th sign, Pisces. Now it’s on your hands — and I’m happy to offer it to you. If you’d like to hear the general introduction, you may listen to the audio above. (Please note one correction — when I say that the retrograde is 88 days, I mean the full orbit of Mercury around the Sun; the retrograde is usually 24 days.)

One thing about this particular Mercury retrograde is that it crosses the line between Leo and Virgo. We got the first such crossing in direct motion on Thursday. Then we get another in retrograde motion on Aug. 8, and a third in direct motion again on Sept. 9. Some astrologers describe the Leo/Virgo line as the sphinx point — where cat (Leo) meets human (Virgo). The crossing of house/sign cusps blends themes and helps us navigate unfamiliar territory. There are planets hanging out here — Transpluto on the Leo/Virgo line, and Neptune on the Pisces/Aquarius line. This adds some intrigue and depth to the circumstances surrounding this retrograde.

Leo/Virgo is the line where play meets work; where self-expression meets service; where passion meets the details of creative process. For each of the 12 signs I explore that relationship. You will find out what this means in your chart — whether you know your birth time (and hence your rising sign) or not. This report is brimming with personal guidance, strategy points and hints that will help you benefit from this retrograde, based on my experience covering (as in writing about) the past approximately 51 Mercury retrogrades.

If you’re vaguely interested in studying astrology, all 12 signs will be worth listening to because I go over all of the house cusps in one place. The house cusps are each a special zone of their own, each having unique qualities (like an extra 12 houses).

This is a one-purchase-gets-all-12-signs product, so you can read your Sun, Moon and rising sign — and those of your friends and loved ones. You may download or listen as many times as you like. There are some special offers included on the project’s homepage, in case you want to expand your self-inquiry. We’ve also included last year’s audio and the prior year’s written report (The Electric Tide), for the super-curious.

Here is how to get instant access.

Lovingly,

 

 

Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope – August 2011

Revised and Updated! Click for Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Additional research on horoscopes for Capricorn and Aquarius provided by Arlene Kramer.

Aries (March 20-April 19) — We have yet to account for how individual emotional turmoil ripples into the world around us, affecting everyone and everything. One step in the evolution of humanity is each of us learning to handle our emotions. I have an old friend who believes that everyone — everyone — needs anger management training. The movement of Mars this month, through one of the most sensitive angles of your solar chart, suggests that you want to be a master of your emotions rather than a slave to them. In all sincerity, both are possible; the more probable of the two will depend on what you want. This is all about what you want, and by that I don’t mean a new surfboard — I mean your definition of happiness. Let’s start with your domestic life; what is your idea of a home that sustains you? What energy do you put out, and what do you take back in? What is it that makes you feel safe? Notice whether events that unfold this month are like or unlike what you want. Notice how you conduct yourself with others; notice what is motivating you as carefully as you can. While you’re observing, I will say this: there is little use for anger, except when expressed as a matter of fact, with the intention of awareness and healing. We all get angry. We have a lot to be angry about, and rage is driving most of the world’s biggest problems. Make sure you use the stuff constructively.

Aries, your birth sign or rising sign, is getting some of the most potent transits of them all right now. I’ve recorded an hour of astrology and a tarot card reading for you. Learn more by visiting this page.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — I know that lots of political movements the past few decades have tried to claim pride as a good thing, as something healthy. In a sense it is, if you think of it as an alternative to shame. But I’m not sure that it is. Pride seems to be more of a form of insulation against the complexity of emotion. This would count for both the emotion of ‘proudness’ and one’s pride being hurt. They’re really not that different. One of the strongest qualities of your astrology this month involves an investigation of emotions that seem loud and bold on the surface, but are in truth sublime and intricate on a deeper level. Yet to discover this, you will need to ask yourself certain questions, and be content, for a while, that you don’t have the answers. Part of having a strong mind is being able to live with mystery for a while. This thing we call the ‘ego’ loves to rush in with an answer, before questioning much of anything, and your charts are rather packed with that right now. Yet just below the answer is a question. To get to there, you will need to follow your curiosity: for example, about why you feel a certain way, or why your reactions to certain people, events and emotions are so strong. The questions may lead to more questions for a while. That’s a good sign. Be as patient as you can be under the extremely restless astrology of August. There is a beautiful moment when understanding will come.

I’ve recorded an hour of astrology and done a tarot reading especially for you. It’s information that will help with your relationships, your professional life and your personal growth. Visit this page to find out more.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — When seeking money, remember your ethics. When working for advancement in your career, remember your ethics. I say these things knowing we live in a world where the concept of ethics seems outmoded and even useless. I assure you, it’s not. Whatever the current trend in thought, no matter how popular, useful and effective it may be to forego questions of authenticity, or matters of right and wrong, there is such a thing as karma. We are all subject to it. I don’t think you’re an unethical person; rather, I see a spell of astrology where the ends might seem to justify the means. They do not. How you go about something, from the specific methods you use, to the motivation that drives you, is every bit as meaningful as what you accomplish. Indeed, the two are so closely related as to be the same thing: if you notice you’re being driven by some form of ambition, you might want to check your goal and make sure that it’s really something you want. For an extended phase of your life, you are being granted a mantle of power. You have an aura of authority, and that connotes responsibility. I suggest you live like your telephone is tapped and like you’re being followed around by a television crew. Live as if you are actually accountable for your actions. You are. You are also accountable for the constructive, creative and sincere deeds to your credit, but on that particular theme, I suggest you let others do the talking.

Gemini is one of the most misunderstood signs — and as someone born under this sign, part of your role is to hold a mirror to the world. I’ve recorded an hour of audio for you, plus a 20 minute tarot reading. You can get access to these by visiting this page.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You will need to watch your tendency toward what some call passive aggression during the next few weeks. There’s nothing passive about aggression in any form, but it can wear many disguises, and have many motives. One motive would be insecurity. The planets this month are a setup for attempting to convert an extra-fiery temperament mixed with lack of confidence into conflict, which would be a purely self-destructive combination. The way to recast this into a creative equation is to be in contact with your desires, also with your sense of entitlement. They are two different things, though typically experienced as one. The first thing to do is sort them out. It’s absolutely vital that you be in touch with your desires; that you discover what you want. And it’s equally vital that you experience desire itself as a source of pleasure, without resorting to a sense of entitlement. Of its own, wanting is healthy — especially if you can find in your desire the authentic need to share and nourish others. Yet when you retreat into obsession with having, with achieving or with conquering, or with a drive for getting attention at any cost, that can turn negative fairly quickly. Therefore I would say, give what you want to receive. Get in contact with your deepest desires, and express them in a way that is generous and loving. Be especially kind to women; that means listening, in the first instance, and offering your support in gentle ways, with no strings attached.

Hello Cancerians! Your birthday report is ready. It’s more than an hour of astrology plus a 20 minute tarot reading. Please visit this page for more details.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — We all have those moments when an idea seems to manifest instantly into reality, and for many people they seem to be coming closer together. This is likely to be true for you during the next few weeks. We may not know how this process works, but it may be enough to say that thought is creative on many different levels. The first thing to do is create a space within your mind and your emotions where you feel safe. You can give yourself reasons, or you can stretch into an inner spot that requires no particular rationales. Once you know you’re safe, then fear is a moot point. And from there, it’s possible to apply an abundance of newly liberated energy into creative ideas. I don’t just mean art; I mean ideas for creating the world around you that works for you and your family or loved ones. Every situation you encounter has a positive solution, and is an opportunity for expanding your consciousness. Notice how every one of those encounters is a passing phase, but the thing that remains consistent is you exploring the flow of existence. The world is full of threats; we all know this. And I don’t think there is a person walking the face of the planet who has not noticed how powerful love is, and I mean by the results they got at least once. Yet the mental balance between love and fear can be a delicate balance; we decide which way to go from thought to thought, and moment to moment.

Hello Leo! I’m now working on the birthday report for your sign. Watch this space for additional information.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — The human psyche seems to be arranged in layers. Those who have endeavored to address any significant personal issue have observed something like this. When you go into one layer and explore in a sincere way, you eventually come to another layer, and another. All healing processes work like this: the different attributes of a situation can be experienced as some form of physical, then emotional, then spiritual, which are arranged like the skins of an onion. The deeper we go, the more we can experience this elusive thing we call self-awareness. Mercury beginning its retrograde in your sign on Aug. 2 will take you deeper into yourself than you’ve gone in a while. You will have the opportunity to go past the surface layer of your ideas about yourself, closer into the core material. You have an invitation to challenge every stereotype about Virgo, whether it’s true or not. When you journey toward your own core, past the busy, questioning layer of your mind, you experience something akin to pure heat. When you get to this layer, you might recognize that everything you were told about yourself as a kid was true but only so far. It would seem that your primary impulse is creative rather than service, expressive rather than passive, passionate rather than intellectual. As Mercury retrogrades into Leo through most of August, you will have access to that original core of your psyche — the vibrant, fearless child. While you’re there, light the fire of your adult mind. Don’t just remember what you learn; become that person you once were and in truth always have been.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Virgo, please go to this link.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — The planets say that this is truly an extraordinary month for you on two accounts, which are closely related. One is an opportunity to be the vibrant socialite we know you are. Libra is one of the most laid-back signs, but you’re turning into an honorary redhead with a shock of vibrant hair and an aura to match. The second is that you get to make some wishes with the actual prospect of them coming true. Perhaps ‘wishes’ is a little too passive of a word, but ‘goals’ is a little too business-like. What I mean is discovering in your heart what you want, feeling the pleasure of that and knowing that you’re creating it in that moment. Make contact with your most cherished desires. Most of those involve the pleasure of developing your talent and expressing your brilliance. You have the opportunity to let go of many negative messages from your past; indeed, to transcend nearly all of the typical childhood conditioning about being ‘less than’, or needing to tone it down so you would not threaten your early caregivers. By now you’re familiar with what some of those messages were and how they have influenced you. You’re also familiar with the potency in you that burns karma, turning it into creative fire. I often describe Libra as the human blow torch. If there was ever a moment when that was true, that would be now. Though I rarely give dates in my horoscopes, I’m looking at an amazing chart that says pay attention on Aug. 16 and the few days surrounding it.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Libra, please go to this link.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — You’re embarking on an odyssey this month. This may involve actual travel to an exotic place that feels like your spiritual home, or the astrology may be referring to an emotional and spiritual journey into some extraordinary inner territory. A third possibility is that you’re taking a ride in a time machine that is giving you a hint what the next three to five years will be about. Whether one or more of these is true, or something else entirely, there are profound encounters in your chart that promise to stretch your capabilities, including your ability to relate to people. There is an element of mastery that will be required from you, however. You are in the zone where your desires directly influence and indeed have an impact on the spheres of others. Some people will be engaging and welcoming. Others will be less thrilled that you’re so confident in yourself. One vital lesson from what you experience is not taking the responses of others so personally. That said, if you notice (as objectively as you can) what those responses are, you will be able to determine your best, most creative points of contact. Another lesson is being bold enough to really, truly understand in your heart and soul that you are loved. This is not something to take advantage of in the negative sense but rather to remember, and feel, and work with in the most creative ways you can. People can see you for who you are, at the same time you’re able to bring forth the best of who you are.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Scorpio, please go to this link.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Someone needs to point out how much energy is consumed when we have to deal with the insecurity of others. Even if you only count the direct results of those who make every move based on their lack of confidence in themselves, that’s a lot of energy. Then there are people who build empires based on their lack of faith in themselves, who become petty tyrants, who spend their lives judging others, and far worse. You may need a strategy for such people this month, and the first element in that plan would be recognizing the phenomenon when you see it. The first sign is when you notice difficulty: in any communication process, in negotiations, in the flow of events. This may not be mere circumstance, and though you may not be experiencing intentional acts of disruption, check this factor of insecurity in those you’re addressing. Once you’ve figured out that someone is coming from a weak place and therefore overcompensating by being disruptive or exerting unnecessary authority, the key is not to get caught up in it. At the worst, the phase will pass, as long as you don’t complicate the issue in any way. For the most part you can feel confident going about your business on the policy that you don’t need permission from others to live your life. You may think you’re pretty good at that one and usually you are, but not always. So this month you will get to master a new level of the game of independence and freedom.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Sagittarius, please go to this link.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — I read recently that Ray Bradbury wrote the original draft of Fahrenheit 451 on public typewriters that cost a dime for every half-hour. He didn’t have a lot of money and had to work swiftly, even a bit furiously. He invested a little over $9 in dimes to write the original 25,000-word manuscript. The result became one of the most enduring works of 20th century science fiction. Your astrology has this feeling to it this month. You seem to be in line for some kind of creative or professional project that you do under adverse conditions but which benefits from the challenges and the pressure. These situations are not always comfortable at the time; there are some deadline junkies who love those conditions, and I don’t think there’s anyone who hasn’t noticed that constraints around time, space or resources can have a positive effect on the outcome. Therefore, I suggest you not complain about the demands of whatever you have to do, how much time you have, or be especially fretful if things don’t work out as planned. Rather, apply yourself to the goal and more importantly to the process, and get to work. Count on extending your talent right out to the edge of whatever boundary you’re in. Stay close to your purpose and remember, a committee of one gets things done. One other point — Mercury is retrograde (or close to it) just about clear through August. That suggests that you will need to think differently, think your way, and count on the odd chance.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Capricorn, please go to this link.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — It’s time to make peace with the truth, as you’ve established it over a long time, about whether your family is a help or a hindrance. Working as an astrologer for as long as I have, I’ve heard many stories of people and their relationships to their families. There seem to be three basic configurations. One involves those who are unconscious of their situation, and who are often under the thrall of the expectations of their parents, no matter how old they are. Another involves people who have made what’s sometimes known as ‘the break’ and have declared their independence in a way that is both physical and energetic. Another common pattern is people who are outcast by their families, which can be devastating or is considered well and good enough because they have nothing in common with them. I suggest you evaluate your situation, and acknowledge what you want. I don’t mean what you want that would please someone else. I don’t mean what would require you to compromise any important personal value. I mean what you know would work for you. It’s true that you may need to transcend guilt and a sense of obligation. It’s possible that you will find yourself in the position of starting over. It’s a beautiful thing that in the current version of Western society, we distinguish the concepts family of origin and family of choice. The truth is, you choose in either case. Choose on the basis of what is truly right for you.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Aquarius, please go to this link.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — You have a lot of pent-up energy: your charts suggest you’re like a battery of sexual energy in particular. That also means creative energy, which is the basic life force that fuels all of existence. Consider for a moment what a stretch it is for many people to relate that which is creative and that which is erotic. Perhaps the confusion arises from the many ways in which our culture denatures the creative process in total, buries it in deception and tends to choke off the curiosity that leads directly to expression in every form. Curiosity, too, is a vital factor that often has to be explained. If you would allow yourself to be absolutely curious, about anything you liked, well, where exactly would you go with it? Anyway, at the moment you have a lot of energy, and it’s sitting in a kind of a container. You could view that as repressed, or you could view that as saved up for just the right moment. Indeed, a diversity of such moments are on their way. The question I suggest you work with involves how you release your energy. One big explosion is obviously not a healthy option. I suggest you look for situations that feel appropriate, constructive and healthy. You obviously have patience and the ability to stay self-contained, so use that to your advantage. You also want the right connection. That’s likely to feel like the intersection of curiosity and a place where you feel yourself open up with no effort. You arrive, you start to unfold, you crave the unknown.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Pisces, please go to this link.

Space Shuttle Lands on Another World

Dear Friend and Reader:

When the Space Shuttle Atlantis glided majestically through the early morning darkness and touched down at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, July 21, it landed on a different planet from the one Columbia first took off from in April 1981.

Shuttle Atlantis lands at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, July 21, 2011. This was the last Space Shuttle mission, ending a 30-year era of space history. Photo: NASA/Kim Shiflett.

Atlantis landed on a hotter, more crowded planet, one engulfed in economic, environmental and ideological crisis. Even if we could afford it, it’s doubtful the religion-obsessed, anti-science, anti-progress politicians who dominate our current moment could muster the vision to develop something so technologically ambitious as a sustained manned space program — which may be a good thing.

We hail the Shuttle mission as a technological achievement, yet Atlantis is an appropriate name for a spacecraft returning to a world that cannot handle the power or responsibility of its own technology. We are very good at making things, and not so good at dealing with the consequences. We are great at making profits from industrial processes, but we don’t look ahead to what those processes might create in the way of consequences or costs to the future. Indeed, we act as if there are no consequences even as they pile up.

The last Shuttle returned to Earth through a more radioactive atmosphere, with its air and oceans more contaminated by a vast (and increasing) diversity of persistent toxins. It’s true that by 1981 the environmental situation was at a critical level, yet in three decades that crisis has grown exponentially. The number of chemicals being produced, and the amounts involved, are unconscionable. So too are the tons of plastic going into the oceans every day, and the dumping of solvents into the oceans to break down the millions of gallons of crude oil that are spilled into seawater every year.

Monster storms, extremes of temperature, rapidly melting ice caps, hurricanes, tornado supercells, earthquakes and droughts are more frequent, to the point where they now seem commonplace. In 1981, most people did not know what the word tsunami meant. They didn’t learn it by studying for the spelling bee. “Earth changes” were something you knew about if you studied Edgar Cayce. Now they are in The New York Times.

Many municipal water supplies are contaminated by the mood-altering drugs being used to quell what is in truth a mass-epidemic psychological crisis.

Timeline of total number of inmates in U.S. prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities from 1920 to 2006. The big jump takes off like the Space Shuttle in 1980.

In 1981, there were 500,000 people in prison in the U.S. Today there are 2.5 million. The world population has increased by 50% during the same time, from 4.5 billion in 1981 to 6.75 billion today.

There is less fresh water left, as water tables are pumped dry for irrigation and animal production. Hydrofracking now contaminates otherwise good water supplies in communities eager to profit from our energy-hungry world. Today’s cars still run on the same basic principle as the Model A — an explosion of carbon fuel inside a cylinder.

In 1981, the national debt of the United States was about a trillion dollars; today it’s $14 trillion. Much of that money has gone for military purposes. Since 1981 (just a few years after we pulled out of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), the United States has fought in or been responsible for wars in El Salvador, Nicaragua, East Timor, Iraq, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq (again) and Libya. The world is still rigged with nuclear bombs. Since the fall of the Soviet empire, many have gone missing. There are hundreds of thousands of tons of nuclear waste piling up with nowhere to go. This waste will be toxic for many millennia, and we have no dependable way to warn future people about it. Try reading script written in 1700. Try reading French if you’re German. Even if future civilizations understand our pictograms warning of danger, who’s to say curiosity won’t get the better of them?

The end of the 30-year Shuttle mission marks a phase in the history of human space exploration, but it also marks a distinct phase in history overall. In the early 1980s the Republican movement began its merger with the Christian movement, turning churches into political clubhouses and morphing the fundamentalist agenda with our supposed national priorities. That blend of agendas has resulted in the adoption of 80 state laws designed to restrict abortion rights in 2011 alone, all of which are based on religious ideology that amounts to a war on women.

In the spring of 1981, when Columbia took off, the U.S. schools — under the direction of the Reagan administration, with help from the Heritage Foundation — began a program of abstinence-only sex indoctrination. This created generations of young people whose most dependable source of sex education is now pornography. In the spring of 1981, the first articles about AIDS appeared in The New York Times. Since then, the number of people living with HIV has increased every year until 2009, the most recent year for which we have statistics.

Shuttle Columbia, on the pad at the Kennedy Space Center on April 12, 1981, about to launch as STS-1. The stunning, glamorous image is the symbol of the promise and power of technology. Photo: NASA.

We are in a moment when we need the most enlightened leaders, with the broadest vision and sense of the future, yet we seem to have precisely the opposite: those driven by narrowness, fear and ideological obsession. As I write, the United States is being backed against its debt limit by politicians who either don’t understand the concept of default, or who are too caught in their own apocalyptic visions to spare a rational thought for the safety of the world economy. Well, we can add to that a third concurrent fact: they lack the maturity to negotiate. Every turning point is used as an opportunity to leverage total power.

While I am describing the world’s problems, which are really our problems, let’s add one more. During July, we in the United States finally caught wind of what has been happening to the news media throughout the English-speaking world (and much of Europe and Asia). The mental sphere was being contaminated by a company called News Corp, which subverted the primary mission of the press — to inform people — with a vast criminal enterprise funded and driven by a propaganda machine. To sum up, it seems like News Corp was designed to serve as the platform for every lie that anyone in power wanted to propagate. The problem has been metastasizing, and it appears that Rupert Murdoch & Co. used the information they had to run a kind of blackmail operation that led many people to stay quiet about how much political influence they really had.

Yet there are many layers of the issue that most people have yet to hear about, such as Murdoch’s role in building up the climate change denial movement. That Murdoch has fallen on hard times is some of the best news in these 30 years since Columbia first took off, a rare moment of transparency and an actual negative result of evil deeds befalling the one who was responsible. Yet the power vacuum that may be created by Murdoch’s fall is not automatically an improvement in our condition; two other things have to happen.

The first is that many people have to take on an increased role in accumulating and distributing valid, relevant information. The second is that many more people have to be interested in hearing about it. World crisis puts people into crisis, which has a way of eating their time and energy and making us less available to participate in change. In the 1960s the youths that participated in the antiwar and environmental movements were not working three jobs. Today the affluent ones who might be available often find themselves being entertained to death.

The door at 10 Downing St. — the headquarters of the British government — is usually used by heads of state, monarchs and dignitaries, but Rupert Murdoch came and went through the back. Official photo from the Prime Minister’s office, taken in 2010.

T.S. Eliot observed in 1936 that “human kind cannot bear very much reality,” though now we have more to bear than ever. Throughout history, most people have balked at exerting their influence on the greater scheme, and it doesn’t help that we’re consistently brainwashed to believe that having an influence is impossible.

It would be far easier for people to have an influence were that actually our agenda. Even when we’re working three jobs, we find the time to do at least some of the things that are important to us. If we opened up to the necessities at hand, we might be motivated to do something about them. But the choice to be informed and aware is strictly optional. That is the nature of free will. So while humanity has not been capable of dealing with very much reality — and T.S. Eliot was describing a very long span of time in that poem — it does not help when we are driven into psychological, emotional and spiritual crisis that paralyzes us further. We would be wise to see that strategy at work.

We are right to wonder how the people of the world are ever going to deal with the problems we face. We are right to wonder how we personally are ever going to muster the strength and focus. Obviously we cannot leave it to our ‘leaders’, who in the United States are obsessed with collective death and wrapping the female body in barbed wire, and who in the U.K. are getting drunk with corrupt newspaper reporters, the police and convicted private investigators. It might help if we didn’t rely on FOX News to tell us what to think, and to remind us constantly how powerless we are. It would help if we understood the concept of “giving up our power.”

Because the global crisis depends on individual crisis as a power source, and as a way of blocking solutions, then it’s clear that working to heal ourselves is a crucial step in any wide-scale solution. If we as individuals don’t feel better, and less overwhelmed, then there’s no way we can take on the challenges of the world. If we’re so busy fighting ourselves, and obsessing over petty sins, and demanding that certain people not get to go to the doctor when they need to, we’re obviously not joining together to do something about the problems we perceive. Therefore, working on individual healing is a necessary prerequisite to planetary healing.

That, however, can be a trap of its own. I have met many, many well-meaning people who do all kinds of things to make themselves ‘better’ people who still cannot muster the will power to take on something larger than their own life. I know many people obsessed with spirituality, yoga, attending self-improvement workshops (and so on) but who rarely participate in anything more than that. This has always mystified me, but maybe I’m a little naïve.

Self-indulgence presents a trap, and it’s often wrapped in the cloak of self-improvement. Inner work can be a sophisticated form of checking out. Participation takes time, energy, effort and often requires personal resources. You don’t usually get an expense account working as an activist. You have to figure out how to get to the demonstration, or how to fund your project, and taking on that responsibility is a dependable means of growth. On one significant level this is a question of one’s agenda. If you want to do something, usually you will figure out a way. If you have a goal that takes more than one person, it’s usually pretty easy to find others with the same goal — if you want to. Then of course you have to master the art of getting along with them. That desire might get you to go to therapy. This is different from “inner work.” There are no abstractions involved, but rather confronting practical realities that in turn improve your state of mind. You heal because you get a benefit from it, the benefit being you’re better able to participate in something creative, cooperating with others.

Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression, made on clay wedges or tablets. Emerging in Sumer (a land in southern Mesopotamia, in modern Iraq) around the 30th century BC, one of its main purposes was to record agricultural instructions for future generations. After 50 centuries, pages aren’t even yellow. Photo: Uncyclopedia.

And this brings us back to the purpose of civilization itself. The first cuneiform writing was not created to publish romances or News of the World. It was developed so that one generation could pass the instructions for growing crops down to the next. We created writing not for personal expression but to ensure collective survival. Next time you see a cookbook, remember that’s from the oldest genre of literature.

What we seem to lack in our moment of history is the notion that there’s an intersection between individual needs and collective needs. We have a lot in common, but the obsession of business and government with privatization veils that fact. George Orwell once wrote that it was not possible for the wealthy to light the city streets for themselves but keep them dark for everyone else.

Today, you can count on people to figure out how to do just that. It’s silly because in most matters, collective benefit is efficient, and we invoke the concept of synergy. If we put some of our individual energy into a collective pool, we’ll be able to accomplish more and take care of many more people, at no loss to ourselves. Personally, I don’t find it appetizing when I’m eating to think that other people are starving. I prefer that everyone have food. Here, we can divine something from the current political agenda of no taxes / no social safety net / no care for the future. This agenda defies the notion of civilization itself: that if we need to stand up to the elements, if we need to make buildings to stay warm and dry, we simply must recognize that collective necessities have everything in common with individual necessities.

If we can get clear about that, we would understand that the reason we improve ourselves, and individuate, is specifically to expand into a collective experience. Most people don’t sit hour after hour and learn guitar chords merely for themselves or for the sake of doing it; eventually you want to play music for and with others. So when you take yoga and journey into the underworld and do five-day workshop intensives or read books about growing whole, ask yourself why you’re doing it, and remember — there actually is a reason. Action is the fruit of knowledge.

If we study the moment of history when the Shuttle Atlantis landed on Earth for the last time, we can learn a lot about ourselves. The thing we need to understand the most carefully is a central idea: the one that will tell us about our common interests. In terms of all the basics and many of the flourishes of life, we’re all in this together. There are some who suggest that the space program is a way off of the planet. One of them is the launch director for the last mission, Mike Leinbach. “The Shuttle program to me was an evolutionary step off the planet and into the heavens,” he said before the July 8 liftoff. “We have learned to live and work in low-Earth orbit. I think we as a species need to be thinking about living off this planet, long-term. That ought to be the mission.”

The problem with this approach is obvious, right?

Lovingly,

 

And Just What Was the Space Shuttle?

Before NASA put some guys on the Libra Moon (true fact: the Moon was in Libra when Neil Armstrong stepped out onto its surface 42 years ago yesterday), the space agency was thinking about reusable space vehicles. It had some pretty good development programs, including one for a vehicle that took off like an airplane, gradually went into orbit and then became a space ship. It used a lot less fuel than the spacecraft we see used today. They also didn’t punch a hole the size of a small city in the ozone layer, like the Shuttle did again and again.

Perhaps the strangest thing in this chart, for the liftoff first Shuttle mission, is Ceres conjunct Nessus to the degree, what you might call the fruit of the poison tree. This same aspect appears in the chart for Sept. 11, 2001. The giveaway of the Shuttle’s military intent can be seen in the chart for the first launch — the concentration of planets in the 6th house in Aries is all about a military operation. Both Aries and the 6th point to military action. The Moon is not void of course in this chart — it’s closely trine Uranus in Scorpio, which represents a dark financial agenda. In many ways the program was a four-decade feeding trough for the world’s largest military contractors. Notably, Columbia was the second orbiter lost in a Shuttle accident, disintegrating on re-entry in February 2003. Venus (the ascendant ruler) is precisely, to the degree, opposite Pluto rising in the 12th house has an ominous feeling of impending doom, and not just for this one ship. It was only secrecy, public image cultivation and our love for the early astronauts that let NASA get away with this extended black operations program.

Ideas for low-energy, horizontal take-off ships were abandoned at the start of the Mercury and Apollo programs in favor of a one-time-use, vertical launch rocket eventually leading up to the familiar Saturn V that took humans to the Moon and back.

The Space Shuttle program was formally initiated by Richard Nixon in 1972, shortly before the Watergate scandal broke open and a year before the Apollo 17, the last flight in that program.

While NASA’s mission was always said to be civilian, it openly merged with the military for the Shuttle program. The thing is, the whole civilian image of NASA was just that — an image. The American space program was driven by Nazi technology imported at the end of World War II through something called Project Paperclip. The goal of the German space program involved putting nuclear weapons into space. While the Mercury, Apollo and SkyLab programs were soft peddled as being about pure science, and funded as such, underneath they were driven by military values and a blatant military agenda.

When it came time to do the Shuttle, NASA knew that its continued funding depended on the deeper pockets of the military rather than the relatively poorly financed world of academic science.

“The Shuttle was 50/50 all along. It wasn’t totally military, or totally civilian. That was the problem,” said Karl Grossman, author of Weapons in Space and The Wrong Stuff, a book about the nuclear implications of the American space program. [Read Dr. Grossman’s newest article on Planet Waves.]

“The military compromised the whole program. They wanted the huge cargo bay to be able to service military assets in space, which would include weapons in space. That’s why they did it the way they did it, with the large cargo bay. I would say half the missions were military missions. Some involved reconnaissance up in space, mapping, and God knows what else. Those were the missions where you had seven colonels flying into orbit.” Think about that for a second — colonel is one rank below general.

I would say that the pure-science aspect was merely PR gloss for the military aspect. This overwhelmingly military theme is confirmed in the chart for the first launch in a way so glaring it would be funny if it didn’t involve a plan to wipe out mass populations with space-based weapons. In the chart for the first Shuttle launch, notice all those planets on the right side, just below the horizon. Those planets are all in Aries, a sign associated with Mars, the god of war, and of aggression in general. And they are in the 6th house — the house of military service. Aries in the 6th is about as military as you can get. They include Mars and Eris (in a conjunction), siblings who in various myths were responsible for quite a bit of warfare.

Space Shuttle Atlantis stands on Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it is set to liftoff on STS-135, the final shuttle mission. Photo by NASA/Terry Zaperach.

Those planets are opposed by Pluto, which emphasizes the point. Pluto is in Libra, lurking in the 12th house of the chart, a kind of veiled zone. There is a hidden agenda, and it seems to involve something nuclear, such as plutonium (a lot of which has been put into space). It is precisely opposite Venus (the ascendant ruler). By precisely I mean to 1/6th of a degree, which blends Pluto and Venus into one concept.

We can only guess what all those colonels and other well-decorated officers were doing up there all those long days and nights in orbit, and just what was sent up in the cargo bay of that big bird. Yes, we get a lot of pretty pictures from the Hubble telescope, but the price to humanity has been pretty high.

Some comments from the military can give us a clue that the original intent of going into space at all — nuclear weapons in space — was in fact the agenda. Why nuclear weapons? They power the space-based lasers that Ronald Reagen was all excited about. And to my thinking, if the HAARP program exists (which it does) then its orbital components were installed during Shuttle missions. Here you have it in the military’s own words.

Gen. Joseph Ashy, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Space Command, said in 1996: “It’s politically sensitive, but it’s going to happen. Some people don’t want to hear this, and it sure isn’t in vogue, but — absolutely — we’re going to fight in space. We’re going to fight from space and we’re going to fight into space. That’s why the U.S. has development programs in directed energy and hit-to-kill mechanisms. We will engage terrestrial targets someday — ships, airplanes, land targets — from space.”

And in a 1999 publication called New World Vistas, the Air Force said, “In the next two decades, new technologies will allow the fielding of space-based weapons of devastating effectiveness to be used to deliver energy and mass as force projection in tactical and strategic conflict. These advances will enable lasers with reasonable mass and cost to effect very many kills.”

It is tempting to be caught in the romance of space travel, and to respect the bold spirits of those who risked their lives to sit on top of 535,000 gallons of liquid rocket fuel as they light the thing up for launch. It’s tempting to get caught in the Buck Rogers image of men in space, and to confuse it with the peaceful mission of the starship Enterprise. Unfortunately, the Space Shuttle was not science fiction. It was science fact, and after 133 successful missions (two ended badly, but that’s still a lot of trips into orbit; think about it), we can only speculate what kinds of weapons systems are now orbiting our planet, or what anyone plans to do with them. It is little comfort that these systems are not exactly in the hands of the wise and the enlightened, but those whose careers are driven by subterfuge and the quest for power.

Photo by Anthony Ayiomamitis.

To discover how the developments of the next six months influence you personally, check out the Planet Waves 2011 Midyear Report by Eric Francis.

 

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, July 22, 2011, #868 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Revised and Updated! Click for Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — You are at a leverage point where you can make progress on connecting your financial goals to your creative flow. While you’re doing this, you might ponder why, or perhaps how, it is that so many people find this so mysterious. Is there really any way to create or attract wealth other than creativity? One of the unfortunate elements of Western thought to get over is that there is some other way. Since you don’t look like you’re becoming a bank robber any time soon, I suggest you consider the idea that — for you, anyway — there’s just one practical way to fund your life, which is with the thoughts that emerge from your mind, the products of your hands, and your vital participation in the world. I wonder, does that match your view of yourself? What would you need to do or adjust in your life in order to get over any lingering anxiety or outright fear about money, creativity or both? Now is a great time.

Click here to order your 2011 Aries Audio Birthday Report.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — I suggest you spend some time trying on the feeling of being more fortunate than you think you are. This may feel like an exaggeration — go for it. Don’t imagine the cup is half full; imagine the cup is overflowing, and that you’re strolling down your favorite street of your favorite city in any style you like. Allow yourself to think and indeed to feel like your life exists on a larger scale than it does. I suggest, specifically, that you allow yourself to feel safe being more, and having more, as both an experiment and a kind of exercise. If you can get over the feeling that it’s somehow silly to do this, you may discover that the way into success is to allow your mind to expand and make room for it, so that you have space to grow into. Small feelings and thoughts lead to a cramped life; more expanded, generous thoughts lead to a more spacious, abundant life.

Click here to order your 2011 Taurus Audio Birthday Report.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — You seem to be in the process of making a decision about whether you feel right where you are, and by that I mean domestically (in your home), geographically (in your city or region) or both. Just make sure that you distinguish the logical piece (what you’re thinking, or what your mind is telling you) from the sensory and intuitive piece (what you’re feeling, and what your instincts are telling you). You have some time to sort this out; I suggest you not try to convince yourself of anything, and set a boundary on how long you’re going to ponder this issue. On the surface, it seems like the primary issue is your sense of safety. Really, I think you’re grappling with a sense of belonging: do you belong where you are? Do you feel grounded? Your mind and your body may have two different opinions about this, and the next six weeks or so will help you work out any differences you find. PS, one other clue: what if the past was not such a potent factor?

Click here to order your 2011 Gemini Audio Birthday Report.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You may be feeling out of step as the Sun leaves your sign, as if you are somehow adrift in a world of possibilities you cannot seem to grasp. I suggest you set a boundary around yourself, and explore within a smaller sphere of reality than you might ordinarily. In a sense, I’m suggesting you experiment with a limit, which could be your backyard, it could be a phase of time that you define, it could be a group of friends, or it could be a purpose that you’ve embraced. When you’re consciously existing within that enclosed (or clearly defined) space, how do you feel? The world is indeed large and wild, and there are a lot of possibilities. I suggest you experiment with seeing the potential that already exists within you. I also suggest you experiment with being content and comfortable within that self-imposed limit or idea, at least for a little while. There’s more available for you in there than you may imagine.

Hello Cancerians! I am doing your birthday report today. (Oops! It’s a week later and I’m going to have another go at it.) We will send a special mailing when it’s ready — and post it to the main PW blog.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — The Sun enters your birth sign this weekend, and I’m guessing that always comes as a relief. This is the season of your birth, and for as strange as life on the only known inhabited planet is right now, you can welcome a sense of familiarity and a drop in psychic pressure. For the past couple of months there has been a lot going on behind the scenes of your life, and you might discover that many of the situations and issues you were working with have resolved themselves. I suggest you focus your energy on coming to terms with one particular fear that has been more persistent. Now is the time to develop an understanding of the source of the feeling, as well as build some confidence that it’s something that cannot actually hurt you. One advantage to the current moment is that you can actually get the sensation into your direct vision and see it for what it is. This information will come in handy in the near future.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Leo, please go to this link.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Many of your best attributes are hidden from plain view. You may even walk around with the sense that if people could only see you for who you really are, they would be amazed. But you’re the one who deserves to be amazed: by what you possess within yourself, by what you’re capable of, and by what you want to share with the world. I’m wondering what could be standing between you and your full expression. One hint that the charts are offering is that you’re uneasy about power. Offering your strength or creativity is indeed a kind of power. There is a risk involved, and though I’m uncertain where it comes from, you seem to carry some anxiety around the whole theme of aggression. It’s as if you feel that when you start to let go and assert your potential, you are somehow being pushy or even violent. You are currently in a moment when you can experiment with having absolutely no fear of that; where you can assert yourself a little more strongly and be confident that you’re safe doing so.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Virgo, please go to this link.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Isn’t it weird how attached people get to their religious beliefs, even to the point of enforcing them with laws, judges and police? And when you think about most religious beliefs, they are based on very little, or absolutely nothing — which may be why so many people feel like they have to be so pushy about them. This works with many other kinds of beliefs, such as in sex roles, social roles, with money, or with a worldview. The current moment is all about belief melting away and the presence of something real making itself known. The presence may not be obvious; in fact it may be subtle, such as something that was there all along but which you’re just noticing now. You will notice more elegantly if you let go of belief, arguing about belief, or trying to convince yourself (or anyone) of anything. The truth that will emerge from the background of your perception is more likely to express itself in an atmosphere of relative calm, with your mind in observer mode.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Libra, please go to this link.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — You’re about to get the answer to a mystery — you might say, the mystery of where your power goes. I mean, you must have figured out that it goes somewhere, because you can go from being influential and creative in the flow of your life, to suddenly being subsumed in another person or a situation larger than you. This can and often does happen so dependably that you don’t even notice it at the time. Yet you’re embarking on a turn of events that are poised to give you a big clue what happens when you suddenly discover you have no influence. I think you’ll catch yourself before things go too far — that’s the whole point. This arrives not a moment too soon, because with the Sun about to enter Leo, you have everything going for you right now. You are visible, you’re perceived as competent and qualified as you are, and this is a moment to shine, especially in the work that you do.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Scorpio, please go to this link.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — When the Sun enters Leo this weekend, it picks up on a load of fiery energy that’s concentrated in both Aries and your own sign. This seems custom-designed to give you momentum, and it will — but I suggest you be aware of one thing. What you might currently think of as a highly focused goal may be changing. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing. The result will be an opportunity to expand your horizons in a way that you’ve been lacking for a while. Expanding may come in the form of new space, new ideas, or new locations, perhaps at a distance. Whatever may emerge, it’s time to stretch out of your familiar territory and reach into different possibilities than the ones that have surrounded you for many months. You may have an idea to return to someplace you’ve been before. This would not be a step back, or backwards — rather, you would arrive there and see it as an entirely new place.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Sagittarius, please go to this link.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — There is an opening in your life that did not exist a month ago, and you can go through that opening and explore an unfamiliar world. This is likely to be in the form of a relationship. It could be a new person, or an experience of someone currently in your life that is ready to open up in a new way. I suggest you let the experience attract you, and draw you toward it — rather than plunging in, not knowing what you’re getting yourself into. Easy does it; this is gentle territory. Stay close to the feeling of what you don’t know; stay close to the subtle curiosity that may be leading you. If you find yourself losing confidence, stay close to your curiosity and treat it like it’s emotional oxygen. Feel the sensation of not knowing, and loving the anticipation of discovery.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Capricorn, please go to this link.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Here is some news: This week, a spacecraft originating on Earth traveled 117 million miles, reached an asteroid for the first time, entered an orbit around the thing, and sent home photos. The ship is called Dawn and the asteroid is Vesta, who I think of as the guardian of ‘the sacred space of self’. This took place in your birth sign, which at the very least is an astrological honor. But I think it’s more than that. Vesta is a representation of interior consciousness, a dimension that eludes many people most of their lives. This stark metaphor of a long journey to a remote location, and images traveling back to us over that vast distance, suggests that you’re making a discovery. It may be as simple as coming fully to terms with the existence of your inner universe. You don’t have to concern yourself with what that means; you can look within your consciousness with wonder and appreciation.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Aquarius, please go to this link.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — In our world, we must come to terms with the conflation of sexual desire and violence. We don’t like to think of it this way, but there is a relationship between the two, it has many expressions, and we all experience them in one way or another. There’s an element to your astrology this week that reminds me of a drain of violent impulses from your emotional body. The chart feels as if pressure is being released from your psyche, and one way that can express itself is the healing of dualism. Part of what pushes sexual feelings into a violent dimension, and indeed all of human emotion, is the perception of difference, which extends one more layer into duality — an us versus them feeling, or me versus the world. The challenge of your current astrology is about relaxing and experiencing some element of the common ground we all share, from moment to moment. This will offer you a whole new way of exploring pleasure and desire.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Pisces, please go to this link.

Into the Water — but Not off the Deep End

Water has been the dominant element in the charts this month, as the Sun moves through Cancer and particularly as we recently experienced a solar eclipse in there that is still sending out its waves. Venus is also in the sensitive sign Cancer, making aspects to many planets. This reminds us of what I think of as the most significant personal theme of our times, which is emotional healing.

This is illustrated most vividly by Chiron in Pisces, a relatively new influence, which means we’re still getting accustomed to it. Pisces and the other water signs are the realm of feelings, emotions and the imagination. If we look honestly at how these things are contaminated, it starts to get disturbing. The truth is there are many influences competing for control of our feelings, and that control is not positive. It’s easier to make people feel bad, and when someone succeeds at doing that, they tend to get control.

I was reading one of those commercial health websites the other day and found a kind of slideshow about all the things you shouldn’t eat if you don’t want to ‘bust your diet’. The program included descriptions of numerous items containing a pile of both salt and sugar, such as big, fluffy cups of ‘coffee’.

I wrote to a friend about this, who explained something called sensory-specific satiety. By adding both sugar and salt, people’s taste buds are basically tricked into never reaching a satiation point — they want to keep eating and eating. That’s why you’ll find loads of sugar in many salty products and a loads of salt in many sweet products. It keeps people confused and munching — and this is hooked right into the emotions, directly and symbolically. Sugar and salt both influence the emotions, as does the experience of desire, attempting to fulfill that desire and then going back for more when you feel like you don’t have enough.

We could add all the influences of media that are designed by focus groups, script writers, editors and directors to get us to feel a certain way and thus respond by taking action. So all day long we are infiltrated by primarily emotional sensations designed to get us to act. Even before the Internet, people in the Western world were exposed to some 4,500 advertisements a day.

Then there are the drugs we’re prescribed or self-prescribe for everything from migraines to depression to pain to ‘social anxiety’ — which are far more abused than street drugs. All of these influence how we feel. Then there are the entertainment products we ingest willingly, which pack our emotional bodies and our senses full of images and sensations.

All of this is in the realm of Pisces, which directly connects to both our senses and our emotional responses to them. This is a challenging realm to begin with, before all of these extra inputs arrive. Pisces itself is now the home of Chiron, suggesting a special focus of attention is necessary.

Chiron in Pisces is telling us that it’s time to beware of all of these influences and how they affect us. We tend to avoid the conversation because once you start, there is no end in sight. There are so many sources of emotional infiltration (including family, social ties, relationships or the quest for relationships, and work-related necessities) that it might seem like you could never deal with them all. However, Chiron in Pisces presents us with both the occasion and the responsibility to be aware. That awareness would embrace everything that influences how you feel, and everything that you choose specifically to influence how you feel. Chiron is a holistic influence. One of the most effective ways to work with it is to see the connections between the seemingly different elements of your life.

You might consider the new basis for everything you eat, drink or allow into your mind as being: How does this make me feel? This kind of questioning counts as raising awareness, and it counts for a lot. You don’t need to plunge in and change everything under the influence of Chiron; you need only touch the edge, admit the subject matter and respond to what you find out. Or you can start by seeing the relationship between two seemingly different things: such as a meal you ate, and how you felt the next three hours.

Then you have the opportunity to make a correction. You might say that Chiron is about making adult decisions about what we know affects us. Yet one way Chiron works is that the longer we ignore it, the more the stakes go up.

One thing we face when confronting emotional situations is lack of confidence (which is itself often an emotional condition). In terms of confidence, an eclipse in Cancer (which as we’ve been reporting, happened on July 1 — but eclipses have an influence for at least the next six months) is a two-edged experience. On the one hand it’s pushing us into new territory. Eclipses are measured in cycles that go for many centuries, and this recent one was the first event in a brand-new cycle — one that’s never happened before. So that can be intimidating, and it can invite us to enter unknown territory willingly, perhaps with some curiosity. That might include: what do I think of as risky, and is that realistic? What do I do for the sake of safety, and does that help me or hurt me?

There are many influences affecting us now that are about stepping out of the feelings that have held us captive since childhood. You would be amazed who is still dealing with the same things that stripped them of their confidence, or is still trying to please their parents, well into their 50s and 60s. To begin to escape these traps we first need to notice we’re in them; then, at least, it’s possible to consider another possibility. You have options and you have the power of choice. We might question how it is that we heal from any of this, and the answer is we become aware, and then gradually make a series of decisions. Chiron and what it represents will help with the awareness piece; the decision part is all yours.

The World in a Grain of Pholus

So leave me now the Moon is up
But remember all the tales I tell
The memories that you have dredged up
Are on letters forwarded from hell
— Joe Strummer / “Something About England

Dear Friend and Reader:

Every now and then, a significant global event affirms the theme of one of the recently discovered planets. By recently, I mean since the late ’70s starting with the discovery of Chiron — and I mean bodies within our solar system. Many people wonder how astrologers come up with the meanings of these things, these ice cubes and hunks of iron orbiting our Sun in odd patterns. We have many ways. Wide-scale public events where a particular planet appears prominently in the charts help confirm what we know, expand our understanding and create new dimensions of knowledge. I call these things ‘provings’, after a homeopathic term that basically means to test and experiment.

Cover of The Guardian, one of Britain’s left-leaning actual newspapers, from earlier in the month, breaking the story of how News of the World writers hacked the phone of slain teenager Milly Dowler. After publishing her parents’ anguished voicemails in the newspaper, they deleted the messages, leading her parents and police to believe she was still alive. This outraged England and sent the news across the Atlantic, forced the closure of the newspaper and has resulted in nine arrests.

One such event is developing right now, involving the second centaur planet Pholus: the unraveling of the Rupert Murdoch media empire, particularly the criminal conspiracy within his News International division that owns many newspapers in the U.K. This is the phone hacking scandal you may have read about elsewhere. It’s a complex story and it’s a bit exotic for our U.S. readers, so I will offer a summary before I get into the charts.

Just this week there have been nine arrests of current and former News Corp staff, including someone who had just served as the communications director to the current prime minister (the equivalent of our president). Hearing about the conduct of News Corp reporters, this week members of Congress from both parties called for a criminal investigation in the U.S., and as of Thursday the FBI was involved. News Corp, Murdoch’s company, is a Delaware corporation. Rupert Murdoch and his son, James, both hold U.S. passports.

The scandal takes place within England’s tabloid newspaper world, an environment so competitive and so vicious that it defies comprehension. An interesting element here is that newspapers still exist, for the moment: this issue will make many of them less profitable and speed their demise — though notably, it was a British newspaper, the The Guardian, that cracked the whole affair open. There is no equivalent market or environment in the U.S. In London you can walk up to a newsagent and have your choice of a dozen different papers with headlines screaming about the private business of nearly anyone, adorned with photos of naked or bikini-clad women, inciting controversy and harvesting human agony on an industrial scale.

Rupert Murdoch with his third wife, Wendi, in 2011. Murdoch has a prominent Vesta in his chart, which suggests that he is surrounded by young women. Photo credit: David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons.

To visualize the product, imagine what would happen if The New York Post dropped acid with TMZ and The National Enquirer, aided by hackers, lawyers and corrupt private investigators, with unlimited resources, spurred and enabled by pure greed and the luxury of having no ethics at all. Then you might come close. We do have related problems here in the states, particularly Murdoch’s FOX News. More on that in a bit.

I have long maintained that the media, in particular what we call the news media, is one of the biggest spiritual problems of our times. By that I mean an existential problem on all levels, from consciousness to politics, influencing every thought we think and why we believe we’re alive. If we want to understand why society’s problems seem so intractable, imagine if there were more newspapers that told the truth about them, rather than covering up the issues. If we want to understand why so many people are so poorly informed, have bizarre opinions, absurd worldviews and believe in the politicians and policies that hurt them the most, we have the media to thank, all of it, including movies, TV and most books. We’ve all seen this over and over: a problem surfaces in mainstream news coverage, and then it disappears. We all know about issues that get no press at all. And we figure there must be a reason — such as the newspapers are protecting their friends in public office, or are somehow involved in what they’re making disappear.

If we want to understand why people are so caught in shame, blame, guilt and fear, we can attribute a lot of that to what we inject into our minds. True, people make the choice to watch, but it’s also true that television is pervasive and addictive, and that it feeds off of well-known human weaknesses, including the need for escape. The same is true of gossip journalism; if you’re emotionally injured, you might find a temporary palliative in watching others get shamed. Most of what we think of as news is so toxic and so contrary to any agenda that would help living things, it’s a small wonder that anyone gives it any credence — but we do. And typically we do because we’re trying to fill a gaping spiritual hole.

British tabloids exist in an environment like no other, where anything is ‘fair’ play. Photo: Creative Commons, via IB Times.

There has always been yellow journalism, but the digital age has expanded the possibilities for spreading carcinogenic ideas to something as dependably repugnant as a hazardous waste incinerator built next to a school. Most ‘news’ propagates an obsession with negativity, which comes in the form of fear, paranoia and divisive ideas that pit communities, regions and the generations against one another. At the dark soul of this industry is Rupert Murdoch, whose media holdings (the second largest globally, with reported revenue of $33 billion in 2010) have made him one of the most influential men in the world.

As he controlled the media market, working relentlessly toward a monopoly, Murdoch in many ways has seemed to have a stranglehold on ideology, doing his best to exploit the pre-existing pain in the human psyche and choke off any hope of progress. He has not entirely succeeded, but he’s done damage on a global scale, and direct damage to the political systems of the U.S. and the U.K. the extent of which we have yet to determine. Part of his game involves having a little something (as in a dirt file) on anyone who is anyone. If you challenged him, you could find yourself in the newspaper the next day. Right below the surface of what we’re seeing reported in the news is a vast criminal enterprise, a kind of blackmail and extortion racket, designed to amass power not just over a market but power over people and institutions.

Now it’s starting to unravel, with another series of stunning revelations every day.

The Prince’s Knee Injury Makes ‘News’

Since 2005, the British public has been learning, mainly through press reports in The Guardian, that a Murdoch Sunday scandal sheet, News of the World, was hacking into cell phones of royals, sports figures and entertainers, and spreading gossip found in their voicemail boxes. The first incident that came to light involves a story published in December ’05, when news of Prince William’s knee injury made it onto the pages of the tabloid. Prince William is heir to the throne of the United Kingdom, and his injury had only been known to his family and staff. Buckingham Palace suspected hacking of William’s voicemail and those of his staff, and called in Scotland Yard, which began an investigation. Not surprisingly, the investigation turned into a cover-up.

The Guardian from earlier in the year, stating that the hacking investigation was being reopened. On the cover is Murdoch and his henchwoman, Rebekah Brooks. She was the editor of News of the World through many of he newspaper’s worst ethical violations. Murdoch tried to protect her, but she resigned Friday facing a summons to testify before Parliament and a call for her resignation from a Saudi shareholder of News International.

About eight months later, in mid-2006, the author of the story and a (previously convicted) private investigator who worked for News of the World were arrested. Police seized computer files, recordings and other documents. In 2007, a special commission determined that there was no further evidence of wrongdoing.

At the time, a guy named Andy Coulson was editor of News of the World. Coulson resigned from his post when the case came to light and not long after, he became the communications director for Conservative (Tory) leader David Cameron, a member of Parliament. Two years later, the then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown learned that Murdoch and News International were dropping their support for him and the Labour Party, whom they had backed via Murdoch’s The Sun tabloid since 1997, in favour of Cameron and the Conservatives. Brown was ousted and Cameron became prime minister — giving a hint about Murdoch’s political influence.

The Sun is the bestselling daily newspaper in the U.K., and Cameron has had their support right through his candidacy, to his becoming prime minister and beyond. So this goes right to the top of the British government.

The story lay quiet for two years, and was re-opened in July 2009 when The Guardian revealed that Murdoch’s organization had paid £1 million to settle a variety of lawsuits that would have named other phone hacking journalists it employed. A News Corp statement responding to The Guardian’s story said, “all of these irresponsible and unsubstantiated allegations against News of the World and other News International titles and its journalists are false.” A top police official said, “This case has been the subject of the most careful investigation by the most experienced detectives… No additional evidence has come to light. I therefore consider no further investigation is required.”

But the story would not go away. It turned out that more than 4,800 people had their phones, voicemail and email hacked. Police had been regularly bribed for phone numbers of public figures, and even the schedule of Queen Elizabeth. Imagine envelopes of cash changing hands between so-called journalists and police on the queue at drive-through fast food restaurants. There were ongoing denials of wrongdoing from News Corp and various government officials. Yet in early 2010, the truth began to surface again, with a parliamentary investigation concluding that there must be a wider scandal than was originally indicated.

Current British Prime Minister David Cameron, who hired the former editor of News of the World, Andy Coulson, as his communications director. Coulson resigned in January and Cameron’s administration, with its ties to Murdoch, is now threatened. Official photo.

Along the way, it was revealed that among the many thousands of people who had their phones hacked were the victims and survivors of terrorism, including the 7/7 attacks that had devastated England in the summer of 2005. The Guardian’s investigation revealed that, “phone hacking and other illegal reporting techniques were rife at the tabloid.” Through 2010 and 2011 there have been many developments behind the scenes, including former News of the World editor Andy Coulson’s resignation as communications director for the prime minister this past January.

Then suddenly the story made it across the Atlantic on July 4 when The Guardian reported that News of the World had hacked into voicemails left for murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, who disappeared and was killed in 2002. During the six months she was missing, reporters working on the story had listened to, published and then deleted voicemails in Dowler’s cell phone. The deletions led her family and the police to believe she was still alive, and made more room for anguished pleas from her parents that were published in the newspaper.

Notably, the editor at the time this happened was Rebekah Brooks, who on Friday resigned as the head of News International, Murdoch’s U.K. newspaper division. The high-publicity trial of Milly Dowler’s killer had evoked tremendous sympathy from the British public, and this revelation broke the dam of outrage at Murdoch and his newspapers.

In the same burst of news, swirling around the solar eclipse two weeks ago, we also learned that News of the World had hacked into the medical records and bank accounts of then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, sensationalizing the illness of his infant son in the pages of the newspaper. It was clear that any boundary between public and private, between what is truly intimate and what is made into political fodder, was nonexistent.

Then on Friday, July 8, Coulson — just six months after he resigned as communications director for the current prime minister David Cameron — was arrested for his involvement in the phone hacking scandal. His former boss, the very head of the British government, denied that he had any knowledge of what Coulson had been up to as editor of News of the World, though he was warned about it many times. This damages Cameron’s administration and he is viewed by many as a pawn of Murdoch.

Rupert Murdoch at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Davos. 2007. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

On Sunday, Murdoch closed News of the World after 168 years in print, hoping that would work as a kind of sacrificial offering. The man who would never back down gave up significant ground; News of the World was one of his few profitable newspapers. Then on Wednesday, Murdoch gave up his $12 billion bid to purchase the remaining shares of a satellite broadcasting system called British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) that he did not already own. Labour, Liberals and Conservatives in Parliament joined together and demanded that he back off of that deal. Later that day, the chief lawyer for News International resigned after 26 years with the company, the first senior executive to quit in the scandal. The lawyer, Tom Crone, is believed to have signed off on many of the more controversial articles that appeared in News of the World.

Then on Friday, July 15, Rebekah Brooks resigned as chief of News International, the British newspaper division, for her conduct while editor of News of the World. Murdoch had succeeded at protecting her through the scandal, but demands from the public, the Dowler family and one of News International’s biggest investors pushed her out. It’s unclear whether she will testify before Parliament next week, where she has been subpoenaed.

One last. A New York City police officer recently said he was approached by reporters for News of the World who were trying to get the contact information for Sept. 11 victims and their families. Immediately, several congressional representatives, including Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) have called for investigations into whether the privacy of Sept. 11 families was violated.

“The limited information already reported in this case raises serious questions about the legality of the conduct of News Corporation and its subsidiaries under the [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act],” Lautenberg wrote. “Further investigation may reveal that current reports only scratch the surface of the problem at News Corporation.” Lautenberg, as senator from New Jersey, represents many of the families of Sept. 11 victims.

So there you have it: a vast criminal enterprise, scavenging on the suffering of parents missing their child, survivors of the most notorious acts of terrorism in the past decades, and a private company with deep tentacles into government and the police; both are already implicated in the cover-up.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose phone and medical records were hacked to exploit a medical condition of his infant child. Murdoch then turned against him and the Labour Party. Photo: Screen shot from BBC.

All of this was done for profit and power, with the end result being the parading of pain and suffering before the public and multiplying it by many orders of magnitude. When anyone would try to stop it, they could be thrown to the sharks; most said nothing out of fear that they would be assassinated in the newspapers.

Remember that the product of all this activity was supposed news. The public has gazed into this oracle for some orientation on what is important in life, such as: should we bomb and invade Iraq? Is a public option for health insurance a good idea? Should we kill Social Security? Are we safe from environmental toxins and radioactive fallout? In the United States alone, 100 million households have access to FOX News, nearly total saturation. Many people — including educated people who should know better — take its paranoid, delusional pronouncements as gospel. And we are now getting a glimpse of what has been going on behind the scenes.

The one thing that all commentators say about this story is, there’s no telling when, where or with whom it will end. The once seemingly invincible Murdoch organization is cutting off appendages to stem the damage. The allegations have spread to other titles in his News International group, including The Sun tabloid and far to the other end of the journalistic spectrum, the prestigious Sunday Times. Everyone involved in the British press knows that crimes were committed at many newspapers beyond Murdoch’s group, but he is the Godfather.

Pholus: The Process that Cannot be Stopped

You may be familiar with Chiron, a small planet discovered in 1977 orbiting in a path that weaves it between Saturn and Uranus. In 1992, a similar planet was discovered, and the centaur group was designated by astronomers. The new planet was called Pholus, one of the other wise centaurs (and possibly a direct branch off of the Chiron cycle of myths).

Pholus in the natal chart of Rupert Murdoch. It is the small florescent green planet close to the horizontal line, with the large number 5 next to it. Murdoch has Pholus rising in Capricorn — the sign of business and government. The nearby planet is Vesta, suggesting devotion to the cause of profiting on human suffering (and an obsession with young women). View chart.

The energy of Pholus feels like something leaking out of a pressurized vessel. It could be anything; in the myth, it’s a cask of wine, the scent of which draws a mob of rogue centaurs, who get involved in a war with Heracles. Many disasters ensue; it’s one of the most horrendous scenes in Greek mythology. The most important thing about the wine is that it’s collective property. That stuff that comes out — it belongs to everyone. And once the process is started, the genie doesn’t go back into the bottle. The wine, of course, is a symbol; it could be anything that causes a reaction.

Pholus represents processes of rapid transformation that can be provoked by seemingly minor things. Robert von Heeren, one of the first astrologers to delineate Pholus, gave it the key phrase, “small cause, big effect.” Its energy is highly reactive, unpredictable and can be grossly irresponsible. There is a connection to alcohol, including conduct inspired by being drunk.

In the chart of Rupert Murdoch, Pholus is rising; that is, it’s in the ascendant, right on the eastern horizon, arguably the most powerful spot in a chart. That makes it a primary factor in his personality. It’s placed in the sign Capricorn, which covers corporations and government. What better way to describe the sense of unleashed scandalous information, springing from a source that cannot be stopped, spreading war, havoc and a weird kind of intoxication? Think of FOX News going around the clock, spouting its seemingly endless stream of lies, laced with a toxic agenda. That’s how Murdoch manifests his Pholus in Capricorn. He also has Vesta nearby, illustrating his total devotion to the cause. That’s a property of Vesta — devotion. But it has several other noteworthy factors. One is a connection to sexuality, particularly the shame/guilt aspect (this is especially true in Capricorn).

Pholus in the chart of News of the World’s first edition, in October 1843, long before Lincoln was president. Pholus in this chart aligns directly with that in the chart of Rupert Murdoch, above. See full chart here.

In 1969, Murdoch purchased News of the World. It had been in print continuously since Oct. 1, 1843. Wikipedia’s editors sum up the newspaper’s mission: “It quickly established itself as a purveyor of titillation, shock and criminal news. Much of the source material came from coverage of vice prosecutions, including transcripts of police descriptions of alleged brothels, streetwalkers and ‘immoral’ women.” By 1950 it had become the biggest-selling newspaper in the world, with circulation of about nine million. This is astonishing given that the population of England was just over 40 million at that time. That is saturation on the level of FOX News in the U.S. — nearly every household.

On the day that News of the World first published, Pholus was in Capricorn; in fact it was sitting in the very same degree of Capricorn as Rupert Murdoch’s Pholus, though he would not be born for another 92 years. That happens to be one Pholus cycle, pretty much to the day. You could say there is an element of destiny at work here, or at least an alignment of purpose.

Pluto in the chart for the last edition of News of the World, on Sunday, July 10. Notice that Pluto (red guy) is in the same degree Pholus occupies in both the charts of Murdoch and News of the World. Full chart here.

Now for the current moment. Remember that the story developing so rapidly now first surfaced in 2005, nearly six years ago — but it didn’t go out of control until the past two weeks. On the day that News of the World published its last issue, Pluto in Capricorn was (and still is) exactly conjunct Pholus in the natal charts of Murdoch and the fated newspaper. You could say that Pluto is activating natal Pholus in both of these charts — and we are getting the full Pholus effect, rippling through the world of Capricorn: business and politics. There are many planets making aspects to Pluto — we keep describing this as the cardinal cross, plus Chiron in Pisces and Jupiter in Taurus. All those planets are fueling the fire ignited by Pholus in the charts for Murdoch and News of the World, and they will be for a while.

Notice how something new seems to be escaping from a structure in a way that can never be reversed: the truth of what went on behind the scenes. With Pluto in Capricorn we have the energy of the unstoppable force, combining with Pholus in Capricorn (in the natal charts of Murdoch and News of the World) to wreak havoc on one of the world’s biggest companies and oldest, most established governments. This is not a scandal in any conventional sense of the word; it’s the revelation of a massive criminal and political conspiracy, which has largely been fostered by something called the corporate veil. That’s an aspect of a corporation that protects individuals from liability created by the people who run the company. With the prosecution of 11 individuals so far (two in 2006 and nine in the past week), the corporate veil has finally been breached.

When other journalists commenting on this story say they have no idea where it’s going to end up, or who will become involved, they are describing the astrology perfectly.

An Age of Change: Uranus, Pluto and WikiLeaks

Pluto in Capricorn has certainly ushered in an age of change to the institutions of our society. The financial crisis that started in 2008, with the worst recession by far since the Great Depression of the 1930s, is illustrated by Pluto in Capricorn. We all have this sense that there are bigger changes in the works than the ones we’ve already seen.

Julian Assange, creator of WikiLeaks, is involved in releasing information that is damaging to corporations and government. He exists in what seems like a parallel universe to News Corp and Rupert Murdoch. Coincidentally, both are from Australia. Photo: Assange’s personal ad.

Through this era, we’ve witnessed the emergence of WikiLeaks, which has cracked the vessel of government and begun to get out the truth, in particular about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. There are striking parallels between the WikiLeaks and News Corp situations. Both involve corporations, governments and the unsuppressed release of information that is damaging to them. Both are stunning commentaries on the gross abuse of political and corporate power. Yet one of the releases is being done to those institutions (WikiLeaks) and one is coming from inside the system. Both are revealing crimes against the people at large and doing severe damage to the reputations of those in power.

What is interesting is that, at least in the short run, an external assault on the system (WikiLeaks) seems less effective than when the system starts to self-destruct from within (News Corp imploding, though spurred by The Guardian newspaper). Yet both methods will have effects that are going on in a kind of living laboratory, and the results will take years to understand.

You can think of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, as a kind of anti-Murdoch. Both are in the business of revealing hidden information, but Murdoch reveals what damages individual people, and Assange reveals what is damaging to big institutions, calling them to task for damaging people. (Notably, the chart for WikiLeaks has a powerful Pholus, exactly squared by the Moon.)

As Pluto makes its way through Capricorn, we will be seeing more of these damaging revelations, from many sources. Once Pluto gets going, it’s nearly impossible to reverse the process. Pluto in Capricorn is not just going to be about economic collapses. There is a restructuring of society taking place, we’re all watching it happen and many will be called to participate. If you have a copy of your natal chart, look at what’s in the early to mid cardinal signs for a clue as to how you will be taking part. (Murdoch has Pholus there; he’s unwittingly become part of the solution to the problems he helped create.)

There is a major crux point in that process, which is in June 2012, when Uranus in Aries makes its first exact square to Pluto for this cycle. This is the first axial alignment of Uranus and Pluto since the 1965-1966 conjunction that shook the world for more than a decade (what we think of as the Sixties). It’s a moment when personal consciousness (Uranus in Aries) meets up with the restructuring of society (Pluto in Capricorn.)

Protests in Wisconsin this year were the perfect image of the Uranus-Pluto square. Photo: UAFF.

The Uranus-Pluto square is close right now: as of today it’s less than two degrees apart, meaning that we are seeing some of the more interesting effects of the aspect start to manifest. We’ve been witnessing them all year, from Arab Spring to the protests in Wisconsin. One implication of this is that not only is Pluto conjunct the natal Pholus of News of the World and Murdoch himself, Uranus is making a square to that position. Uranus influences the speed of events and also the sense of a surprise. So when that first square makes exact contact next spring — pay attention because events will progress at a blinding rate.

Anything or anyone with important points (planets, the ascendant, etc.) aligned with the Uranus-Pluto square is set up for big transformations over the next few years. As we watch what happens to Murdoch, News Corp and its various actors, we will get a clue how big. Just a few months ago it would have seemed impossible that things could come this far, that so much would be revealed. Of course, we weren’t expecting the wave of revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa either, massive, rolling protests being another manifestation of Uranus-Pluto.

Yet what anyone looking to improve the world is looking for is structural change, and while we have yet to see much of that, it is inevitable. Awareness is the first step in the process, and right now that means being aware just how much influence Rupert Murdoch has amassed in the governments of the United States and England. His truth incinerator known as FOX News has helped create many wars, relentlessly exploited terrorism for profit, and built up the hate-inspired Teabag movement in the United States, a fundamentalist religious movement which is currently holding the government hostage over the debt ceiling issue. And women are being taken hostage. This year alone, 81 laws have been passed that in some way restrict access to abortion thanks to Teabag movement politicians getting into office.

FOX News involves itself directly in the U.S. political process. It is a breeding ground for potential presidential candidates, all of whom display a bitter resentment for humanity. Not surprisingly, the same sentiment emerges from what is revealed in the WikiLeaks files. Conservatism is not about conserving anything; it’s about fear.

The Change We Need: An End to Garmonbozia

When we think of the structural change associated with the current astrology, it might help to think on multiple levels of reality. Astrology itself is multidimensional. Do we really think that an undiscovered hunk of iron (Pholus in Capricorn, in charts many decades old) is physically influencing our reality? Or is there some kind of energetic influence?

“Bob, I want my Garmonbozia.” Michael J. Anderson as ‘The Man from Another Place’, a resident of the Black Lodge in David Lynch’s film “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.” Garmonbozia is human pain and sorrow, collected and consumed by demonic beings who manipulate events to cause, and thus feed on, even more pain. Such is the nature of News Corp and much of the mainstream media.

The concept of multiple levels of reality also hints at a relationship with the unseen world, what some call the spirit world. An illustration of this comes from one of the most reviled films in 20th century cinema — Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. The film, considered by most to be as incomprehensible as reality itself, explores the relationship between the Black Lodge (a kind of nonphysical organization) and events in the town of Twin Peaks, which surround a series of murders. People in the town became possessed by the spirits of the Black Lodge, which harvested their pain and sorrow and created it into a kind of food they consume, which they call garmonbozia.

We think of enterprises like News Corp as spreading pain, warfare, shame and hatred, and then collecting money, which is true on the physical level. But rarely do we consider the spiritual damage these things perpetuate. There are factors at work on the energetic level, and one of them is the harvesting of that sorrow, converting it into the ability to cause more of it, and harvesting that. I cannot tell you exactly what entities are behind News Corp and Mr. Murdoch on the invisible planes of reality, but I know they’re there, thriving on what he seems to create, and I know who they work for.

Television, newspapers and plenty of Internet sites spew out human pain and then profit from it, but the results collect on another level as well. In this image, a woman who lost her son in a car accident is covering her mouth, suggesting that she is both grieving and ashamed. The story verges on pointless, but millions of people will relive her agony through video. Image: NBC TV.

As individuals, we feed the process as we focus our attention on the pain of others in a way that is unrelated to their healing or our own. We might think we’re being entertained or informed, when in truth we’re multiplying the negativity like an infected body multiplies a pathogen. Then we get drawn in and addicted to (which means controlled by) the multiplication and transfer of energy. There is a reason people watch FOX News or listen to Rush Limbaugh hour after hour. It creates the very psychic void it pretends to fill, much like the combination of excess sugar and salt in fast food makes it impossible to satisfy one’s hunger.

There really is no systemic way to address this deeply personal aspect of the problem. Each person has to make a choice to divest his or her energy and invest it in something else. This does not mean turning away from the whole situation; it’s precisely the lack of awareness, what you could call ‘unconsciousness’, or what some call ‘ignorance’ (the conscious choice to ignore something) that enables and invites the problem to begin with. Most of us from time to time notice how much we look away from something simply because we don’t want to deal with it — even though we know that looking away perpetuates the problem.

The very thing that we believe is designed to spread awareness and tell the truth — the news — has been taken over to spread disinformation and then benefit from the resulting chaos. It’s true, as the House of Murdoch is flushed of its demons, we are getting a dark look inside the media, and also a dark look inside our collective psyche.

Our job now is to raise awareness and make a decision. We are seeing the cost of letting other people do our thinking for us, and stated as simply as can be stated, it’s high time we think for ourselves.

Lovingly,

Additional Research: Fe Bongolan, Tracey Delaney, Hazel Ferguson and Carol van Strum. Photo research by Sarah Bissonette-Adler. Additional editing: Jessica Keet, Amanda Painter.

Discuss this article here.

 

Something About England

By Joe Strummer & Mick Jones — The Clash

They say immigrants steal the hubcaps
Of the respected gentlemen
They say it would be wine an’ roses
If England were for Englishmen again

Well I saw a dirty overcoat
At the foot of the pillar of the road
Propped inside was an old man
Whom time would not erode
When the night was snapped by sirens
Those blue lights circled fast
The dancehall called for an ambulance
The bars all closed up fast

My silence gazing at the ceiling
While roaming the single room
I thought the old man could help me
If he could explain the gloom
You really think it’s all new
You really think about it too
The old man scoffed as he spoke to me
I’ll tell you a thing or two

I missed the fourteen-eighteen war
But not the sorrow afterwards
With my father dead and my mother ran off
My brothers took the pay of hoods
The twenties turned the north was dead
The hunger strike came marching south
At the garden party not a word was said
The ladies lifted cake to their mouths

The next war began and my ship sailed
With battle orders writ in bed
In five long years of bullets and shells
We left ten million dead
The few returned to old Piccadily
We limped around Leicester Square
The world was busy rebuilding itself
The architects could not care

But how could we know when I was young
All the changes that were to come?
All the photos in the wallets on the battlefield
And now the terror of the scientific sun
There was masters an’ servants an’ servants an’ dogs
They taught you how to touch your cap
But through strikes an’ famine an’ war an’ peace
England never closed this gap

So leave me now the moon is up
But remember all the tales I tell
The memories that you have dredged up
Are on letters forwarded from hell

The streets were by now deserted
The gangs had trudged off home
The lights clicked off in the bedsits
An’ old England was all alone

 

To discover how the developments of the next six months influence you personally, check out the Planet Waves 2011 Midyear Report by Eric Francis.

Planet Waves FM: Capricorn Full Moon, Rupert Murdoch, News Corp, U.S. Government Psychosis — and PHOLUS.

Today’s edition of Planet Waves FM looks up close and personal at the Capricorn Full Moon, which takes place Friday. (Don’t forget — you can receive our special edition on that event free by sending an email to thunder@planetwaves.net.)

Eric Francis, at the podcasting mill.

This has been a very, very interesting Full Moon. Just look around and notice for yourself.

The Sun and Moon align exactly with a slow-moving aspect we’ve been talking about — Varuna square Eris. The thing about your Varuna square Eris kind of aspect is 1) you can’t look it up in a book and 2) no matter how significant these newly-discovered outer planets are, the aspect is going to seem like it’s in the background right up until it’s lit up in the blazing light of the Full Moon — and that’s what’s happening right now. (Note, our readers recently took a throw at delineating this aspect in a special edition that you can read here.)

In today’s podcast, I look at the Rupert Murdoch / News Corp scandal, and the utter insanity going on in Washington DC in the form of the Tea Baggers (far right wing Republicans) pushing the United States government to the brink of financial default, which if it happens could set off a lot of problems. In the second half of the program, I look at how Murdoch’s chart lines up with that of News of the World, the weekly that he shut down Sunday.

Our musical guest this week is the acclaimed Emma’s Revolution, described by our friends at Z Magazine as, “Beyond progressive commentary, Emma’s Revolution examines issues of our time the way the media should.” Pete Seeger once said, “This record is part of the worldwide revolution which will save this planet… these songs you’ll find yourself singing for the rest of your life.” Gee whiz! Anyway you can hear them on Planet Waves FM.

For the old player and the full archive of my programs, visit the Planet Waves FM homepage. Our theme music, in case you were ever wondering, is called “Earth Calling,” composed and performed by Tino Izzo, represented by Chacra Music.

 

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, July 15, 2011, #867 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Revised and Updated! Click for Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Certain events may seem to be pivoting around you, or your influence — and you may be wondering how things have gone so far. I suggest you ask another question, which is: how far can you go making use of this circumstance? You are likely to be learning something about the kind of impact you can have, saying or doing very little. I would persist in a policy of saying less rather than more, but choosing what you say well. Consult with others and work from a strategy. You may think you’re in a situation where you have to choose sides. How do you do that? Well, know your own agenda, and subject it to some scrutiny. Then see where your intentions align with those of the people in your professional environment. You may think you’re ahead of yourself; you may think that you’re into something too advanced for what you’re capable of. Remember your ethics at all times and you will do beautifully.

Click here to order your 2011 Aries Audio Birthday Report.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — The world around you seems to be moving at full thrust, and you’re in one of your more sensitive moods at the moment. You’re in an amazing position to observe and express empathy for what’s going on around you. Yet the Full Moon in your fellow earth sign Capricorn is an invitation to take a step up in the world. It’s also an occasion to step out of the psychological box that you’ve inherited from your mother, who understood the world more in terms of the past than as something you can experience in the present or the future. You seem to be accustomed to going through this psychological material with a spoon, or with a garden spade on a good day. Now you can feel the experience for what it is, and that feeling can propel you to make decisions about what you want and how to be that will surprise you with how simple they feel, and in fact, how simple they are.

Click here to order your 2011 Taurus Audio Birthday Report.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Remember that there is such a thing as right and wrong. I know that certain members of fundamentalist faiths blast the notion of moral relativism, or what you might think of as situational ethics. In truth, most of what we think of as right and wrong are indeed relative (such as it’s wrong to harm a dog, but you can eat lamb if you want). By right and wrong, I mean aligned or not aligned with your personal constitution. The problem you have is the same problem that everyone else has: it’s difficult to distinguish guilt from an ethical impulse. Maybe this will help you: Guilt judges you wrong before the trial. An ethical impulse asks a question, and then you get to answer the question based on your values. Listen to yourself; listen to the values you’re referencing when you make your assessment. This is a step-by-step process. It should take longer than a Gemini minute; more like a Taurus hour.

Click here to order your 2011 Gemini Audio Birthday Report.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — We’re in the midst of a Full Moon in your opposite sign Capricorn. The Sun in your birth sign suggests that this is time to experiment with role reversal. If you tend to be the passive type, it’s time to take action. If you tend to be more like a child, it’s time to be an adult. If you tend to be the kind of person who seeks security, it’s time to take a chance. The kind of astrology you’re experiencing is the kind that rewards action, conscious decisions and knowing continuously what crossroads you’re standing at. You are indeed standing at a significant intersection of possibilities, of potentials, and of influences. You may seem so overwhelmed that the only logical thing to do is stand back and watch. Yes, I do suggest you watch — but not while you’re standing back. Life is calling you to participate right now; don’t worry that you feel like you’re in over your head. That’s how it usually is, whenever something actually relevant is happening.

Hello Cancerians! I am doing your birthday report today. We will send a special mailing when it’s ready — and post it to the main PW blog.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — Sometimes it’s meaningful to think of success as a mountain that you climb, though there are times that what once seemed high up descends to a place where you can reach it. People you may have thought were inaccessible or superior to you are now more obviously your peers. What seemed like it might be a great achievement is now seen as a practical matter. What you thought of as success you can now think of as doing things well. All of these changes are an attribute of what you might call a maturing process, though really what you’re discovering is that you have a place in the world. A bit of grace and poise are called for in stepping into that place; faced by so much to be angry about, you are the one capable of looking at the world with some peace of mind. When you communicate anything, remember that you’re relating from all of these points of progress, and are often speaking to those who struggle to have any faith in themselves.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Leo, please go to this link.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — You’re not the type of person for whom the ends justify the means. Your whole life is a story of process; you could certainly use being a little more goal-oriented, and this is a time when you can experiment with that boldly. Goals require action to be meaningful. It’s true, they can reside in your mind as an abstract concept for many years, though I suggest you think of a true goal as something you’re experimenting with and want to go further with. More than being an idea, it’s something that’s already in progress. You may have to be what feels like ruthless in moving obstacles out of the way, so that you have the space and energy to do what you want. It’s more your style to involve yourself in what is the most meaningful to you and gradually allow it to take over your life. And remember this: it’s unlikely that you have two goals. You really have one agenda that expresses itself many ways. Keep coming back to that and you will stay in alignment with your purpose.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Virgo, please go to this link.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — There is a limit to how far purity will get you. Striving for impeccability is another thing. There is a limit to the value of being sentimental; there is no limit to the value of caring deeply, and that certainly describes you well. Now for the tricky part: accomplishing most goals requires a little detachment. Sure, it’s possible to froth at the mouth like a stock trader, or to lust after power and glory — those things work, but they don’t usually work when the actual objective, when the purpose involved, is an authentic or nourishing one. So focus on your authenticity, and on the process of cultivating nourishment. You have something that others benefit from, and it would be helpful if you made peace with that. In a sense, you’re being used for a purpose larger than yourself, and as long as you love that purpose, it’s one of the most exalted states that a person can attain. I suggest your mantra for these days be, ‘the greatest good for all concerned’.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Libra, please go to this link.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Remember that every work relationship is indeed a relationship. Each is a unique experience, and in truth one human contact is not ‘bigger’ or ‘more important’ than another — or at least that is the wise assumption now. Remember that none of these situations is an ornament for show; be especially mindful here if you have a partner whose position somehow reflects on your status or credibility. Maintain your integrity and stand on your own merits. The sky is volatile right now, but it’s rich with potential. You are obviously feeling some pressure with the Full Moon, and you may have a sense that if you make a mistake, you won’t be able to undo it. This is not really true. While you want to make your decisions consciously and carefully, August presents a kind of review phase wherein you can reassess certain elements of your situation and make useful corrections. The key is to stay in contact with your motives, and be honest with yourself about what they are.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Scorpio, please go to this link.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — You may be feeling provoked; you may even be feeling outraged about something. This may be enough to spur you into some kind of unusual action, and that could be a truly positive thing. I suggest that while you’re experiencing the sensation of feeling pushed or compelled to notice something, think back and ask yourself how many times you’ve noticed the same thing; how many times you’ve had the same sentiment, but less passionately. Who or what is spurring you to action now? The planets in your solar chart are in a dependable alignment that is designed to get results, with the one caveat being that you must stay in close alignment with your motives, your ideals and what you actually want to create. I strongly suggest you think in pictures, rather than just in words. Visualize what you intend; notice what is in the picture and what you want to add to the picture. Then notice when it takes on a life of its own.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Sagittarius, please go to this link.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — How much happier would the world be if we lived among sexually satisfied people? Think about it. Think of all the subverted energy that would be going to where it really matters; think of all the toxic aggression that would fizzle out and be replaced by fresh passion. Consider all the pain that would be replaced by the direct experience of healing. Imagine all of that hungry ghost yearning that is really sexual starvation, replaced by the desire to generously nourish oneself and others. Then imagine this multiplied by all of the people experiencing it, you among them. What would society feel like? What would your world feel like? What would it feel like to exist? You have many opportunities to open up, which means to relax and flourish. Whatever dark emotions, fears or inhibitions that may have bound you in the past are too weak to hold you back now. Your desire and passion are stronger than they are.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Capricorn, please go to this link.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Among my pet names for the zodiac signs, I have two for yours: one is Acurious, and the other is Aqueerius. They are related. These days, it’s weird to be curious. Part of why it’s weird is because the things that others think about doing, you tend to dive in and experiment with. I reckon that often, you do so knowing there are no guarantees — that’s very helpful. Experimenting, exploring, endeavoring to give your curiosity an actual place in the world are best left open ended, free from expectation. Who knows, the results might be a mixed bag; they might be a huge breakthrough; you might decide it wasn’t worth it, and move onto the next thing. The beauty is that you actually dared to find out. You stopped living in your head and took up a process of understanding the world through first-hand experience. Your charts are especially encouraging of this at the moment; can you feel it?

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Aquarius, please go to this link.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — This is the weekend to be as visible and social as you can be. Your relationship to the world is changing, as is the world itself. All of this is happening at a pace so fast, we feel it about as palpably as we feel the Earth moving beneath our feet — that is, not so much. One way to experiment with change is to get out into a social environment. The big Capricorn Full Moon is shining bright in your 11th house right now, which represents your circle of friends. Yet it’s also one of the houses that represents your vision for your life, and this house is the scene of many unusual changes these days. Looked at one way, the soil is being turned over for new planting. Looked at another way, there is an archeological dig going on, where you’re able to retrieve long-lost desires, ambitions, and a quest for freedom that has over many years been buried by the shifting sands of time. You have strong intuitive guidance right now, and many other factors working in your favor. Pay attention to who you meet, and notice how the world has evolved around you even from the place you remember it being just a few months or years ago. Be aware; get in sync. These are unusual days.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Pisces, please go to this link.

The Thunder Moon & the Hero’s Journey

Full Moon rising above Cape Sounion, Greece. Photo by Anthony Ayiomamitis.

 

Editor’s Note: Gary Caton is a specialist in observational astrology — an earlier kind of navigation by the stars and planets that depends on what you can see. He will be doing our Full Moon article each month teaching this method, telling you about what is visible in the night sky. Anthony Ayiomamitis is our friend in Greece, and he is a photographer-astronomer who takes many photos near the ancient temples that dot the land of his country. I consider him an honorary astrologer. — efc

By Gary P. Caton

The Capricorn Full Moon is exact Friday, July 15 at 2:40 am EDT. One beautiful thing about the Full Moon is that more than most of the events astrologers write about, it’s almost always visible. Even if it’s not, Full Moon energy is so obvious that everyone who is vaguely sensitive, or who deals with the public, can feel its energy.

Traditionally, the Full Moon of July is sometimes called the Buck Moon or Hay Moon. This is because after the flowering of the Earth in May, and the subsequent growth spurt in June, it is now time for farmers to make the first cut of hay. When this is done, animals such as deer have much less hiding space and can be seen more readily in the open fields. A glimpse of a male or buck deer at this time of year shows a dramatic transformation as he has sprouted horns on his head much like fields have sprouted hay and grain — and their furry texture matches the color of wheat.

Another name for this month’s Full Moon is the Thunder Moon, because thunderstorms are most likely during the warm summer months. Visually, the most noticeable thing about this Full Moon is that it is at its lowest appearance in the sky all year.

Summer Triangle. From Wikipedia.

From the perspective of the Earth, the Sun and Moon are about the same size. They alternately illuminate day and night, and they form a dichotomous pair in other significant ways too. As the Sun reaches his highest appearance in the sky during summer, the Moon is making her lowest appearance and is closest to the horizon when full. Conversely, in wintertime when the Sun is low in the sky at noon, the Full Moon passes almost directly overhead.

So, while you will see the Sun rise more toward the northeast at this time of year, the Moon rises toward the southeast. At midnight she will be in the south, but only about halfway up in the sky between the horizon and zenith, which is the point directly overhead — that is to say, a little lower than you might expect. What you will see near midnight if you continue looking up, until you are gazing directly overhead towards the zenith, is a huge asterism called the Summer Triangle. An asterism is a combination of stars that form a pattern, but which is not designated a constellation; the Summer Triangle is composed of the three brightest stars of three different constellations. Because of its position in the night sky (during Northern Hemisphere summer) it’s one of the easier things to identify.

Just about directly above the Moon you will see Altair, the brightest star of Aquila the Eagle. Altair is the 12th brightest star in the sky, brighter than any of the ‘royal stars’ which used to mark the seasonal points in the sky. Further above and to the left or east is Deneb Adige of the constellation Cygnus the Swan. Deneb is the 20th brightest star in the sky and is actually one of the most remote stars visible to the naked eye from Earth. Above Altair and to the right or west (as you are facing south) is Vega of the Lyre. Vega is the 5th brightest star visible from Earth, and the 3rd brightest from mid-northern latitudes. With any distance at all from a major metropolitan center, you should be able to see and recognize the beautiful stars of the Summer Triangle shining above the Thunder Moon.

Altair, the bright star closest to the Moon, and its constellation Aquila are mythically associated with the eagle favored by Zeus, the God of Thunder. So we have another association with the thunder present here for this Full Moon. Altair is a star of boldness and action, not just for oneself but also for others. This brings up the larger theme of the Hero’s journey — a mythological telling of the path of self-development. Historically, the three bright stars of the Summer Triangle are mythically associated with the Stymphalian birds of the 6th labor of Heracles, who was one of the heroes of Hellenistic Greece. The labors of Heracles are a metaphor for all of the hard work we have to do in order to grow and evolve. It always seems like another massive growth project is on the way, and these are represented by the labors.

Harder than it looks: the Stymphalian birds were man-eating birds with beaks of bronze and sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims. Heracles was sent to take them out. From Wikipedia.

During summertime, the Summer Triangle appears in the east at nightfall, high overhead around midnight and in the west at dawn. Because the stars of the Summer Triangle are visible all night long on a summer night, some see the Summer Triangle as symbolic of a giant V (for Vacation!), with Altair marking the point of the V.

Certainly vacations are great and everybody should take one whenever they can, but there is another way to see a summer getaway, and the season of summer generally, which is framed more toward the processes of growth and self-actualization. Symbolically, Light translates to awareness. So in the summer, when the Sun is at its highest in the sky, the awareness of our urge to shine, lead, create and individuate (yang) is heightened. Conversely, the Moon is at her lowest at this time. So the need to receive, to be safe, to nurture and be nurtured and to change moods (yin), is relatively low. We can afford a little adventure because the Earth is so fertile now, nurturance is not an issue. You can sleep outside if you want or need to; even having shelter is not strictly necessary.

The Moon is your capacity to find safety and to nurture growth. The Moon refers to your past, your heritage, your habit patterns, and your comfort zones. So the sign and house of the Moon is an area of life where you are comfortable and return to for solace, healing and restoration (night-time/yin). The Moon appearing low in the sky is telling you that you can afford to relax your awareness of these issues at this time. Simultaneously she is pointing to a group of stars high above her which are about undertaking the Hero/ine’s journey.

Being willing to take this journey is the willingness to undergo the development of self-awareness and self-actualization. Self-awareness in astrology is most succinctly symbolized by the Sun, our closest star. So the Moon is basically delivering to us the same message as last month, though in a little different way. That message is to remember that you are a star and it is the time of year to live like a star. How do you do this? There are many ways to undertake the Hero/ine’s journey and live like a star, but perhaps the simplest and most practical is to BE-come your Sun sign. Followers of astrology are often given an idea that they are supposed to be like their Sun sign, but often it works the other way around: the Sun sign presents us with a kind of objective, and we can gradually develop into that as we live and grow.

The Sun symbolizes your capacity to self-actualize your potential through the Hero/ine’s journey. The Sun is present- and future-oriented, because you are engaged in the process of becoming. So your Sun sign and the house of your Sun (these are two different things; for the house of your Sun, you would need to cast your chart, with your correct birth time) represent an area of life you are actively exploring (daytime/yang) and in the process of developing and refining. Summertime and the Thunder Moon are calling you to let loose the reins and freely express your Sun sign in the journey to actualize all your best attributes.

Why Does the Moon?

Dear Friend and Reader:

At first look, the Casey Anthony verdict earlier this week was shocking: to many it was obvious that she killed her daughter Caylee. On closer look, it’s clear that the prosecution did not prove its case, and that they went too far in seeking the death penalty in a situation without a verified cause of death, time or location of death or clear motive. True, much of the circumstantial evidence pointed back to Casey. Not calling the police when your child is missing for a month is weird, but it’s not capital murder.

Casey Anthony’s mugshot, from 2008.

What many are questioning and indeed are disgusted by is the public’s fascination with the case as it unfolded over the past three years. “Because the case received such thorough media attention in Orlando, jurors were brought in from the Tampa Bay area and sequestered for the entire trial,” Wikipedia’s editors wrote. “The case became a macabre tourist attraction as people camped outside for seats in the courtroom, where scuffles also broke out among those wanting seats inside. The New York Post described the trial as going ‘from being a newsworthy case to one of the biggest ratings draws in recent memory’, and Time dubbed it ‘the social media trial of the century’.”

Why, when there is so much going on in the world, in a time when there are so many injustices and so much that needs our moral and ethical attention, is this what so many people were fixating on? One analysis is that it was fed to the public as a distraction from the global banking crisis, the struggle over the national debt and the debt ceiling, the move to cut Social Security and Medicare so that oil companies can be subsidized by taxpayers, school being cut back to four days a week because some states can no longer afford all five days, the endless lies about how cutting taxes for the wealthiest people in society creates jobs, the multiple wars in the Middle East, nuclear meltdowns (and nuclear plants submerging under water and forest fires near nuclear labs). We could view this as just another morbid circus designed to take our collective mind off of what really matters. I would propose that it’s all part of the same thing: that the same mentality is driving every issue right now, and we are ‘surviving’ by cultivating the same insensitivity to everything.

Yet why people are fascinated by this case in particular is the part I understand. Everyone knows that techno-murder committed by the nuclear power industry or Monsanto is wrong, but who can relate to that? Try explaining the inner psychology of a chemical executive who poisons thousands of people by falsifying a safety study, or a school administrator who puts students in a toxic dormitory. It’s so banal as to be sleep-inducing.

What we can identify with is the dark side of a relationship between a parent and a child. We’ve all been there, from one end of the relationship or both. I would say that how parents treat children is more important than any nuclear meltdown or banking scandal, because within those parent-child relationships is contained the future of humanity. And who is not moved — be it chilled, disgusted, outraged, saddened or intrigued — by the curious, inviting eyes of Casey Anthony?

Add to this the extent to which many women are obsessed by the concept of motherhood and you have a formula for excellent ratings. On of my readers, a Florida attorney, posted a comment to our Facebook page Friday morning: “What has amazed me the most is the depth of the emotions so many women had in response to the verdict. When I look at the women who expressed the strongest emotions, they are women who wear the ‘badge of motherhood’ as their very essence, their identifying factor in this world. And if someone wears a badge as strongly as some of these women do, it usually means they are struggling with that very issue in some form or fashion.”

This is the chart for Tuesday’s not guilty verdict in the Casey Anthony trial. You can see Nessus as the light blue glyph with the letter N on top on the lower right, in Aquarius, which describes childhood as inherently abusive — a point Alice Miller tried to make with her entire writing career. The Moon in this chart is perhaps the most telling planet: exactly square Mars, in the 8th house, suggesting that rage (Mars in Gemini) was the cause of death (by a mother, Moon in Virgo). Mercury, the highest planet, is square Jupiter (precise to one arc minute), suggesting that the truth was exaggerated by prosecutors. And Juno, representing a spouse, is exactly square the lunar nodes, suggesting that a marriage partner, or the marriage itself, was directly involved and that the whole situation turned on that one aspect of things.

I didn’t pay any attention to the saga as it unfolded. I saw a total of five minutes of testimony from the bug expert two weeks ago, by accident. My only thought was: that’s the expert testimony? They’re going to have a hard time proving this case. I became interested the moment I learned the verdict was not guilty. Then I got a little shock when I remembered that just a week ago was a solar eclipse in Cancer, the sign of motherhood. That seemed eerie.

So I cast the chart for the verdict. It tells many stories, some of which I will share with you here. I researched the case and cast a number of other charts. Earlier in the week looking at the charts for Casey, Caylee and the crime scene, I became physically nauseous, which persisted for more than an hour after I closed the files. I don’t remember that ever happening looking at a chart, and I’ve done quite a few creepy astrology cases. There was no special reason I could discern; the charts themselves are interesting but did not seem disturbing on their own. For example, Casey has her natal Moon in Cancer, and Friday’s eclipse happened very close to that Moon. Seeing that I think most astrologers would have predicted her conviction.

Let’s take a look at the verdict chart and see what we can observe. The chart has Libra rising, which is an appropriate image for a legal proceeding (the scales of justice are illustrated by that sign). We find the ruler of Libra, Venus, placed in Cancer — the sign of motherhood, and that keeps showing up prominently.

Venus is located in the second degree of Cancer, which means it’s aspecting the Aries Point: talk about something that is deeply personal blowing up into a vast show of political theater that everyone can in some way relate to. This is the kind of situation that washes away any boundary between what we think of as personal and what we think of as political. The real-world places and situations associated with where these astrological contact points occur are extremely alluring and are indeed often irresistible. In other words, when there is an event in the world that shows up in the charts as connected to the Aries Point, many feel compelled to stare.

Venus in this chart is about to make a series of aspects, to Uranus, Jupiter, Chiron, Pluto and Saturn. Casey’s ordeal has only just started. She’s 25 years old and, assuming she survives the next few years (which presents a significant question), she will have to live with this for a long time. She did not get away with anything. Perhaps she did in the legal sense, with its supposed requirement for judicially acceptable proof (despite this, the innocent are often convicted of things they did not do). This is the kind of thing that it can take lifetimes to unravel, and I would note we are not privy to the long history that led up to what we have witnessed.

Venus in Cancer, aspecting the Aries Point, suggests this event is about mothers everywhere. In the verdict chart, she shows up in the 9th house, a house closely associated with the courts. It’s as if motherhood itself was the thing on trial. For reasons I will get into in a moment, it most certainly is. [If you are studying this chart as an astrology student, notice how Mercury rules the South Node as well as 9th house. This implies a very long trajectory to this issue, and by that I mean many lifetimes. And such a prominent 9th house suggests that Casey’s mother’s psychology is a crucial factor in these events.]

Family photo of Caylee Anthony.

There are some chilling planetary placements. Nessus, for example, is right on the 5th house cusp. Nessus, a centaur planet related to Chiron, is about the cycles of karma, and it has a close association with both revealing and healing psychological and sexual abuse. The 5th is the house of childhood and of children. Nessus indicates a cycle of abuse here, and Aquarius suggests that involves the structure of society. Meditating on the case all week, I thought: what happened to Caylee is a more extreme version of what happens to many children. Alice Miller‘s entire body of work is devoted to the theme of how childhood is inherently humiliating and kills something within most kids.

Caylee, the prosecutors said, was gagged with duct tape and poisoned with chloroform (a toxic sedative, much like ether). What child is not told to shut up? How many kids are drugged out of existence, be it by television or Ritalin? Well, there are a few; there are more conscious parents today than I remember as a kid, when every child was hit and there was no such thing as a time out. Yet hardly a day goes by when I don’t see a child humiliated in public by his or her parents. And if I have learned one thing as an astrologer, it’s how difficult it is to be a kid in our society. Very nearly everyone is still dealing with what they experienced during childhood, and once they discover it, many people are convinced that the damage they suffered is intractable.

“It wasn’t until I wrote my books that I found out just how hostile society was toward children,” Miller once said. “I have come to realize that hostility toward children is to be found in countless forms, not only in death camps but throughout all levels of society and in every intellectual discipline — even in most schools of therapy.”

Being a parent is extremely challenging as well. “In mothering, we meet our whole self, not just the light but the dark as well, the creative and the destructive and everything in between,” said Jerilyn Brownstein, a therapist who specializes in working with mothers and expecting mothers. “But we aren’t prepared to meet the whole self. Who teaches us? How do we learn to meet the destructive parts of ourselves?”

New York-area motherhood therapist, Jerilyn Brownstein.

Things that harm can have beneficial effects, but, Brownstein said, “Only if we learn how to work with them. But when we push them underground, or when other people avoid them, they become destructive.” Brownstein’s practice is designed to help women keep these issues visible, where they can deal with them.

When I interviewed Brownstein for an earlier Planet Waves article called Born in the Sixties, she said, “Motherhood initiates women into their creator energy, and their destroyer energy. And unless they learn to work with their destroyer energy consciously, it can destroy a marriage, a partnership, a child’s life, a child’s self-esteem. It doesn’t have to look like murder.”

When the Casey Anthony verdict came out this week, I called Brownstein to get her feedback, since the case was centered on precisely the kind of themes she successfully addresses in therapy and group process with her clients. It had been eight years since our last conversation, and she was continuing to develop her group process work with young and expecting mothers. “We can go to movies and be really obsessed with murder and violence, but what’s at the heart of it?” she asked. “What are we trying to work out? What are we trying to learn about? We’re trying to see these parts of ourselves in the outer world. But then there’s this lingering question: how do I find the gem, the jewel? The gifts are in the darkness. But you have to build muscles to excavate and go in.”

Most of what society does is designed to avoid that darkness and cultivating the strength to find out what might be in there.

Brownstein pointed out that a situation like this does not emerge out of a vacuum. “Events like this always bring up the question: in the circle around this woman, what were people not wanting to see? Whether she’s guilty or not guilty, her child is dead, and there’s information there. Who saw or didn’t see things around this child? What don’t we want to see and why don’t we want to see it? It has to be really big to get our attention. The little voice inside that’s saying look at me, work on me, look at this habit, this way of being that’s not serving you. But watching someone go through a trial for murdering her two-and-a-half-year-old, that’s got our attention.”

The Pill Kills is a propaganda campaign being waged by fundamentalist Christians in some states against birth control by the American Life League. They propose that the birth control pill is a form of abortion, thus, of murder.

I keep wondering about the events that surrounded Casey’s pregnancy with Caylee. I keep wondering about the truth of her relationship with her husband — the chart suggests in bold terms that he had a vast, concealed role in what went down.

The scale of related events goes way beyond one case. The eclipses we’ve just been through have happened during a particularly disturbing few weeks on the theme of motherhood and the reproductive rights of women. In June, Rachel Maddow reported that fundamentalist Christian activists are “not just trying to roll back abortion rights. They are trying to ban birth control as well. The American Life League’s annual Protest the Pill event was held this past weekend in Texas. Their message: the pill kills. Using birth control makes you a murderer.”

Maddow — one of the few journalists who covers women’s reproductive rights consistently — added, “The Pill Kills folks seem like a fringy group, at least maybe on the extreme edge of things, but their politics on birth control — I don’t know, does it still count as fringe if it’s being proposed by Republican lawmakers in eight states? Alabama state house tomorrow could give final approval to a bill that would change the definition of person in Alabama to mean, quote, ‘all humans from the moment of fertilization and implantation into the womb’. The bill would ban abortion, outright, sure. But because of the way it’s written, because of the whole fertilization and implantation language, because of the way birth control works — with this bill, Alabama might just be poised to ban the most popular forms of birth control as well.”

Two weeks ago, The Guardian (a left-leaning UK newspaper) reported that a Mississippi woman who became pregnant as a girl was facing murder charges — and life in prison — for experiencing a miscarriage.

“[Rennie] Gibbs became pregnant aged 15,” The Guardian wrote, “but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit — though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby’s death — they charged her with the ‘depraved-heart murder’ of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.”

Many young women face a confusing psychic maze when considering their own reproductive and sexual power — factors that are related but are not the same thing. Their eggs speak loudly, and so do the moral voices that have tried to take control over their lives. Propagating ignorance in the form of abstinence indoctrination is not the answer. Closing off access to the scientific progress of the 20th century is not the answer. There is no answer but respecting individual choice, and giving each young woman the freedom to follow her own conscience. Photo of Heather Fae by Eric Francis from the Book of Blue New York sessions.

The article continued, “Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the U.S. more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.”

The newspaper reported many other cases of American women who have been charged with murder as a result of incidents during pregnancy. This is a trend that has totally infiltrated U.S. politics to the point where we really do deserve to call our government the American Taliban. Indeed, in the 2010 election, 71 candidates for Congress or state governorships were in favor of criminalizing abortion, which is one shade away from turning every pregnancy into a potential crime scene.

And the anti-abortion movement has taken some ground the past few weeks as well. Kansas, for example, passed a law mandating the state’s three remaining abortion clinics to make changes that amounted to redesigning their facilities on about 72 hours notice, or face closure. That is the state where George Tiller, an abortion doctor, was assassinated while at church — and where the few surviving abortion doctors regularly have their lives threatened and their home addresses published.

In May, Texas passed a law that “requires doctors performing abortions to conduct a sonogram of the fetus and describe it in detail to the mother. Women seeking abortions must then wait 24 hours before having the abortion performed, unless they live more than 100 miles away from the nearest clinic, in which case the waiting period is only two hours.” You can read the full article on the local CBS News website. I have heard of many other examples of take-backs of women’s reproductive rights the past few weeks, including the notion of ‘personhood’ being extended to fetuses (technically, a fertilized egg is not a fetus, it’s a zygote) as a way to charge people who get abortions (or so much as take birth control pills) with murder or manslaughter.

To top things off, England this week moved closer to adopting abstinence-only indoctrination as the country’s method of sex education — a method used in the United States for the past 30 years, initiated by Pres. Ronald Reagan and the Heritage Foundation in 1981. So after denying young women access to real information about reproductive health, the proposed solution to this crisis is to deny them access to reproductive health care, abortion and even birth control, then bring murder charges when something goes wrong.

I suggest we ask ourselves what’s going on — a lot more than the obvious.

Lovingly,

Additional Research & Contrbutions: Sarah Bissonnette-Adler, Fe Bongolan, Gary Caton, Amanda Painter, Dena Seki and Carol van Strum.

 

To discover how the developments of the next six months influence you personally, check out the Planet Waves 2011 Midyear Report by Eric Francis.

 

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, July 8, 2011, #866 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Revised and Updated! Click for Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — You’ve learned a little about human relations this week, and how to gently guide outcomes to your benefit. Now is the time to remember what you’ve learned. Maintain your best political posture. Small gestures, decisions or interactions can lead to results with much more significant consequences than you imagined. Without walking on eggshells, be conscious who you’re relating to, what they believe, and what influence they might have. On the other hand, don’t underestimate what you learn from very nearly anyone, what ideas float your way, or who in your environment might know someone who can influence a situation positively. The key thing is not to assume; know what you need to know, and know what you don’t know, particularly as regards to your environment and people in your environment.

Click here to order your 2011 Aries Audio Birthday Report.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You can open the flow of your psychic or emotional energy to anything you want. Whatever happens, or whatever you choose, there is an intensity factor involved, and you appear to be in a situation that is influencing you to change profoundly. But despite how things may appear, the direction of that change is optional. You are making decisions ongoing, and anything that seems inevitable is worth questioning. This is not about ‘having an out’ as much as being conscious about what you want, where that might come from, and how you must adapt if you’re going to be in a position to receive it. Your own emotional density level will profoundly influence the situation and how you experience it. By density level, I mean are you in a tight and contracted state, or are you expanded, aware and open to progress?

Click here to order your 2011 Taurus Audio Birthday Report.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — You have time to correct an exaggeration or over-reaction that occurred earlier in the week, though without seeming like you’re acting in a lurch. Check back over the past few days and see if you’re not still under the influence of some event, questionable information or social interaction that pushed things out of proportion. Adjust your perspective; set some limits on your own responses and make sure you check the validity of every fact involved. With some conscious boundary setting you will be able to guide the situation back into both a realistic scale as well as take advantage of some mutual benefit you may not have seen at first. By mutual I mean something that everyone benefits from. Be vigilant against exaggerations, gossip or repeating anything at all that you have not personally verified. Don’t count on others to demonstrate maturity and restraint — that’s clearly your role.

Click here to order your 2011 Gemini Audio Birthday Report.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Last week’s eclipse of the Sun in your birth sign is not only still reverberating with change and emotion; it has barely begun to reveal its secrets. The qualities of eclipses include pattern setting, changing continuity, and a sense that what feel like karmic developments are afoot. I suggest you keep using all of these to your advantage now. The Sun is still illuminating your sign, the Moon is waxing toward full phase and there is strong energy coming from the other water signs: all of these things bode well for your ability to gently direct the flow of your life. As I have suggested before, refer back to your long-term vision, and make sure that the small choices you make are in alignment with your actual goals, desires and needs. You’re standing in a moment when it’s possible to influence your life for many years to come. Make sure it’s the influence that you want.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Cancer, please go to this link.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — You’re in a position to represent the views of someone close to you, or those of a group of people you care about. In essence, you’re the spokesperson. That’s a funny word because it evokes the image of bicycle spokes that come together in a hub, with that hub connecting everything to everything else. Make sure you stay in contact with people who seem to be on the periphery of the situation, as well as those close to the center. One little catch is, you may not actually feel like you know enough or are confident enough to be in this position. However, your ability to doubt yourself, such as even to ask that question, validates that you have the sense of responsibility that is necessary to support others in a way that is clear and effective. What you’re representing is the worth of something, and part of how you’re doing that is because you have a sense of your own worth. Yet you also have something that is a special gift of Leo: you understand we’re all in this together.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Leo, please go to this link.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — There’s a hidden factor involved in your life, and you’re going to have to deduce its presence using clues. One of the clues will be that you encounter a limit or an authority figure, but when you test the boundary, you find out that it’s something designed or intended to help you rather than block you. This should suggest that you mind your perceptions of what is helpful and what is not; of who is cooperative and who is not. Your first impression may not be correct, and experience will have to be your guide. That said, we all have our prejudices, and I suggest you beware of any you carry that are based on some missing information (most are). Therefore, the best thing you can do is inform yourself. You’re currently in a position where you can make unusual advances on a professional agenda, but only if you’re fully aware of what that agenda is. Therefore, know yourself.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Virgo, please go to this link.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Now is a moment to take leadership, though not the bossy kind. I’m talking about the kind wherein you become the facilitator of cooperation, based on what you know the goals to be. Don’t be squeamish about this — you are fully in tune with the people around you on an intuitive or emotional level; you may understand the overall direction of things better than the people supposedly in leadership. Therefore, trust what you perceive, and use your skill to guide the flow of events in a positive direction. You have much more influence than you may recognize right now; by that I mean, you may be working as an admin assistant or secretary, seemingly lacking ‘real’ authority, but there is something about your position within the social structure that allows you to guide things in a subtle but authentic way. If you happen to be in a certified leadership role, remember that people respond to their emotions before they respond with their minds.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Libra, please go to this link.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — People influence one another in ways you would never expect. That theme of influence is starting to show up in most of the signs this week, and for you it shows up most strongly among those you’re attracted to, and those who are attracted to you. This quality of mutual attraction has the potential to be rather potent, and the sense of mutual reactivity might be stronger than you’re expecting. If you feel a lot of energy, you might want to slow down the movie a little, and take your time making decisions that you cannot reverse. I’m not saying don’t make those decisions, I’m suggesting that this is a time to consult with both your impulses and your rational mind. Regarding any questions of investments, spread out your risks and make sure you understand you know what you’re getting into. Remember, there are at least two sides to every story, and to every person.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Scorpio, please go to this link.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — This is no ordinary time in your life. I feel like I need to keep reminding you of that, because the world is so strange right now, and there’s hardly ever been a moment when you felt your experience on the planet was typical of anything. That said, even by your standards, your potential is hyper-charged at the moment. The way to take advantage of this is to keep grounding your vision into some form of tangible reality. If you have an idea, make a sketch. If you meet a person, follow up and establish the contact. If you get an offer, think it over and respond promptly, and decisively. Don’t be afraid to move on from what does not work — your ability (and willingness) to do so will influence the way that events, resources and people flow in your direction. One last point: the oldest and most modern concept associated with Sagittarius is global. Think large; reach further. Your life is a quest.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Sagittarius, please go to this link.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — You’ve become so accustomed to living under constant pressure that you may not remember any other way of life. The pressure to change can get on your nerves, and it can affect your nervous system. I suggest you notice the extent to which the stresses that have been on your life, potentially going back a decade, have eased up. You have matured, and you’ve proven to yourself that you’re able to handle any situation that comes your way. At a certain point you must make a conscious choice to trust that capacity rather than investing any fear at all in the notion that you’re not up to the challenges of life. Not only have certain tension-causing pressures begun to wane long ago, there are supportive influences in your life that you may not have noticed, and if you have, that you may not trust. That is your choice, of course, but you can only take advantage of what you have faith in, and you will tend to love who and what you nurture.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Capricorn, please go to this link.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — You’re used to applying yourself to most problems mentally; the concept of intuition defies rationality. But I don’t suggest you make any special effort to foster your intuition, even though your solar chart strongly favors this. Subtle flows of information generally come toward you rather than you going toward them. Seek and ye shall find works with some things; with others, it’s more like be open and ye shall receive. Therefore, focus on your openness. Listen with the part of your mind that is not so prone to questioning, even while you’re busy asking and inquiring. The thing about intuition is that despite what the other methods of evaluation say, it’s the one that usually turns out to be correct. By usually I mean nearly all the time, enough to ask yourself what good reason does at all. Think of it this way — intuition is inherent knowledge. Reason helps you put that knowledge to use.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Aquarius, please go to this link.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — The door you always thought was closed is now open, and you can use it if you remember to. That’s the key — remembering, and among the things on your memory list would be the benefit of a sense of ease in whatever you do. Connecting with ease is a conscious choice. It’s not about luck; it’s not about privilege. Most of the time, you make a decision. Now, this implies that you have choices open to you, which is my basic concept of freedom. If you feel perplexed or uncertain, ask yourself what your choices are. If you have at least two options, consider yourself fortunate, and make a decision based on what will work out best for you (or for everyone, depending on your values). If you go through this process, you’re likely to find your life is a lot simpler than if you do not. Though it may be difficult to grasp, the most important decision to make consciously is the one about who you are.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Pisces, please go to this link.

After the Eclipses: Unfolding the Cardinal Square

Dear Friend and Reader:

July began with the third of three eclipses in just one month, and it was an impressive one. You may be aware that the influential planets Saturn, Uranus and Pluto are arranged in what is called a T-square (three planets at right angles). This has been going on for a while — well over a year, in fact — and from time to time, it’s ‘activated’ by other influences. That’s precisely what happened with the July 1 eclipse of the Sun in Cancer.

Coastal waters in Portland, Maine on July 1, 2011. Photo by Amanda Painter.

We are now on the other side of that event, in a new era of astrological territory. It’s like we’ve entered a new country of time, one offering us different challenges and opportunities. This is a place where you can cultivate an updated version of yourself; let go of old anxieties and outmoded habits; express different qualities of yourself even if you could not express them so effectively before. It can be challenging to leave behind old struggles, familiar emotional spaces that did not serve you, and even physical patterns and commitments that you were already aware in the past no longer worked. Yet this is an opportunity. The next major aspect structure on the horizon is Uranus square Pluto, which is exact for the first time in a little under a year, but which has been gradually warming up. You can think of Saturn-Uranus-Pluto as an experience of compression, and Uranus-Pluto on their own as an experience of unfolding or expression.

This is a ‘power to the people’ aspect — and you’re a people. It’s a time of a new horizon of awareness, and you’ve said many times you’re seeking such a view. Gradually let go of the feeling of what you want to let go; gradually embrace the feeling of what you want to create. This horoscope, a monthly for July 2011, offers some ideas about how to do that. I’ve also presented them in a greatly expand form — about 30 minutes per sign — in my midyear report.

We’ll see you with a regular edition on Friday. Of note, Gary Caton has joined our lineup of writers. You’ve read two of his articles here; he will be covering the Full Moon for us each month. He’s also collaborating with me and Amanda Painter on Daily Astrology & Adventure, which posts each night at midnight Eastern Time. See you there.

Lovingly,

 

Planet Waves Inner Space Horoscope – July 2011

Revised and Updated! Click for Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — It’s one thing to be spontaneous; it’s another to be reactive or impulsive. There is a fine line between the two right now. What side of that line you land on seems to involve where you place your priorities. This is the time to ask yourself: what really matters? If you are in reaction to something, run that question past the conscious part of your mind. If something is meaningless or trivial, treat it that way. If something has actual consequences, meaning or potential, treat it with respect and give it time and space to develop. Certain events may seem beyond your control in the early part of the month, but they are certainly not beyond your influence. One of the most meaningful things you can do is set limits and boundaries, particularly on your own emotions. Be cool, and evaluate the influence of the past on anything you might be experiencing now.

Click here to order your 2011 Aries Audio Birthday Report.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — The many benefits of experience, of learning and even this elusive thing called ‘good fortune’ do not come automatically; we have to make them real, take advantage of what we have available to us, and make the most of our lives as a matter of will. This sums up your situation right now. Yes, we live in times when it’s necessary to breathe consciously, make decisions every time we eat, and even to choose the way we feel as a matter of moment-to-moment awareness. This process will work on the largest scale you can imagine — or the deepest. Jupiter is in your sign now, and it’s aligned with some of the most potent forces known to astrology. Learn to handle your own mind skillfully; learn to see the opportunity in everything. The potential to make the most of your life is right with you, and in you — but it’s up to you to perceive it accurately, and to use the decision points you encounter as ways of bringing your potential to fruition.

Click here to order your 2011 Taurus Audio Birthday Report.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Powerful influences of the past may still be lingering around your awareness, or be present in your life. These influences, strange as they may be, present the opportunity to encounter them consciously, and to resolve anything from the past you’ve left hanging. They may range from powerful emotions of love and attraction to feelings of anger or resentment. Indeed, you may be mystified at how things that seem to exist in the distant past have such potency in your life in the present. The short explanation is, this is how perception works, until we take over and update our minds. We do have the capability to ignore what from our back files is calling for our attention, and we have the capability to resolve it and free up our energy. Many people live their lives dragged down by the past. I know you don’t want to, and I’m here to tell you it’s not necessary.

Click here to order your 2011 Gemini Audio Birthday Report.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — A partial solar eclipse in your sign on July 1 may have you reassessing very nearly everything and everyone in your life. The key to doing this productively is to see yourself as something other than boxed into your circumstances. Most of the factors that seem so influential lost their power many months ago; you’re just realizing it now. More to the point, you’re being invited to see your immediate opportunities for what they are, and to use the creative force of your mind to see them as authentic. You’re past the point where it’s even vaguely productive to doubt yourself. You may be confronted by how many people you care about invest their creative energy doubting themselves, and I suggest you look to them as an example of what you don’t want to be. Then, quickly look for examples and inspiration of what you do want to be, and by that I mostly mean look within.

I’ll have the Cancer 2011 birthday report for you soon!

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — Over the next week or two you’re likely to notice that your fears were exaggerated, based mostly on information you were missing. It is ignorant to think that ignorance is bliss. Knowledge may not, in itself, be blissful, but it can help us focus our reasoning abilities and see what we’re actually confronting and what our real potential is. Most of what you’ve been concerned about is emotionally driven. When you get your mind into the act, you tend to see things a lot more realistically. But at the moment, you need to assess information carefully; some factors are much smaller than they seem, and others are much more useful than they seem. Therefore, think, but think carefully, adjusting your mental process as you go.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Leo, please go to this link.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — One sure way to find out whether your sexuality is your own is to try to do something you want with it. It’s one thing to think we’re totally in control of our desires and our pleasure as long as we follow the rules that everyone else has set for us, and to which we have tacitly agreed. But once we step outside of those rules and experiment with our ability to make choices, we get a reality check. Part of how we get by in the world is telling ourselves we’re free. How we actually get free is by experimenting with what we want, and consciously engaging whatever comes up as a result. If you don’t feel ready to experiment in the real world, try doing so in your imagination. Let yourself think, want, need or indulge anything or anyone you want, and then observe your responses. One last item, under the general heading of ‘reality check’: what do you feel confident telling others? Why or why not?

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Virgo, please go to this link.

To discover how these changes influence you personally, check out the Planet Waves 2011 Midyear Report by Eric Francis.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — In this world, we tend to work for our achievements. But when they arrive, often it seems like some circumstance we had no clue about or could not have predicted influences what we accomplished — or rather, like we would have seen it had we been paying attention. Your role now is to notice those ‘unforeseen’ factors, use them to your best advantage. You may get caught by surprise, but even then you’ll still benefit from a little advanced preparation — and mostly from being open to some unusual form of success. However, I suggest you not think of success as something you work for as much as prepare yourself for. This is a moment to reap the rewards of what you’ve built on, and part of your preparation means being open to recognition, visibility and willingness to take some chances — kind of like you’ve been doing lately, but from a deeper place.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Libra, please go to this link.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Belief systems are dangerous things, mostly because we don’t see them for what they are. We tend to think that ‘we believe what is true because it’s true’ rather than we think something is true because it’s part of a pattern that we adopted. There is an easy way to test this theory. Identify one of your assumptions. This might take some thought, but find something you believe is true, then check it out. Determine how right or wrong your belief was. Once you do that a few times, you may decide you had better test every assumption that you make, particularly if it involves what you think of as a ‘belief’. Every time you hear yourself say that word, pause and ask yourself what you really mean.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Scorpio, please go to this link.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Jupiter, your home planet (the gorgeous, enormous orange and yellow one with 63 moons) has taken up residence in Taurus for the next year. This will help you solidify and stabilize your plans, your finances and get clear about your desires. You may feel less ambitious, less hot to burst into the next phase of your life, and cooler in general. But from the aspects Jupiter is now making, I trust that you can see that you have the potential to make some excellent decisions in the next few months. The thing is, these will be deep decisions, and therefore ones that affect your life. Remember to look for the place where the outcome you want the most fits the thing that works best in the world around you. It is a fact that your personal constellation aligns with the greater movements of the cosmos. Feel gently for that opening.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Sagittarius, please go to this link.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — An eclipse in your opposite sign, Cancer, may be giving you the feeling that you are at the mercy of the fates. You may have a knot in your stomach that you cannot control what anyone else feels, what they want, or how they respond to you. You will feel better when you embrace this lack of control; by better, I mean you will feel emotionally free, and free to move around in the world without the constant sense of an emotional burden. The people around you are giving you the opportunity to put that emotional burden down. You may on some level equate this with abandonment; it is nothing of the sort. Indeed, this moment is about you learning to embrace rather than abandon yourself. When you make this one simple choice, you will feel much more secure in your relationships.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Capricorn, please go to this link.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Do you ever have the feeling that people are holding out on you, as in not telling you what they know and what you should find out? It’s not usually intentional. Social conventions prevent us from saying too much to others; the emphasis on ‘mind your own beeswax’ gets in the way of ‘please don’t hesitate to tell me what I need to know’. So, while you may feel like you get some news too late, actually, it’s right on time to be useful, as long as you don’t fret over not knowing it sooner. Then, you can adjust your own standards for what you want to be told in advance, as well as what you diplomatically mention to others. Remember, these are situations where the messenger isn’t always appreciated, but you at least can afford to honor reality for what it is. Thank people for keeping it real.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Aquarius, please go to this link.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — You have a lot of, and I do mean mucho, creative energy available. The more you use it, the more you will have. This is contrary to the usual laws of the Earth where the more you use, or give, something, the less of it you have. Everyone benefits from what you are offering, and the more you go full-spectrum, the more benefit you will create. This works personally for you as well. The best way for you to get into abundance consciousness is to be generous with yourself, put energy into what you have passion for, make sure people know what you’re up to and keep one eye focused on peace and justice at all times. You have every reason to have faith, and every reason to let go of the lack of faith that has been so irritating for so much of your life.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Pisces, please go to this link.