Author Archives: Eric Francis

Forever Young

Dear Friend and Reader:

If I could write one thing to Bob Dylan, it would be a thank you note. Bob turns 70 on May 24, so this seems like a perfect moment. Of course, it’s hard to imagine him being 70 years old, but I’m sure he’s saying the same thing.

Photo by Ken Regan. This photo and others by Ken will be shown at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in SoHo. The show opens May 20.

If I could thank Dylan for one thing, it would be for setting an example that it’s okay to be relevant. A rock critic once wrote that he saved the world from “terminal, irrelevant schlock,” taking up real subject matter in every song. He did so (most of the time, anyway) without conveying the feeling of what some call statement songs. Many of his older songs definitely were, though the poetic strength of his writing made that either less obvious or more exciting. In writing, it’s always better to show rather than to tell, and Bob has shown us American life in its many shades, often dark ones.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to teach a university class called Rock Music as Journalism, and I think of Dylan as being the innovator of this genre. This has some resemblance to how he perceived himself, and how he actually created those songs.

“He said he was never a spokesman for a generation,” said Rob Fraboni, who produced Dylan’s 1974 Planet Waves album. “He was just writing about what he felt was pertinent at the time.” Dylan, he said, would spend time in the New York Public Library keeping up with world events. As a writer, he paid attention to injustice, on many different scales. The basic facts in one of his most moving early songs, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” come straight out of a news clipping, though with some poetic embellishment. Int ruth, the real events of that song were a lot worse than he described.

So here, we have an artist who is not afraid to get his hands dirty with ink from newspapers. He was never above politics, or detached from it. He got Robbie Robertson to do the same thing, and from that, we get songs like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” — which was written by a Canadian who did some research. “Whether he wants to be a spokesman for a generation or not,” Fraboni added, “he has definitely brought a lot of things into the forefront.”

Bob Dylan with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Greenwood, Mississippi, 1963. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

“The other thing to consider historically is that music was about dancing before Bob Dylan. The parents of the generation born in the 1940s were into the dance bands. Then along comes Bob Dylan and he changes the whole framework. Suddenly these songs mean something. There is a message, whether you want to call it that or not.”

To me, that message is a chronicle of the half-century he’s been writing music, at least as told through the eyes of an American. Many times he has seemed to be sounding a warning. In 1962 he described “guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,” ominously describing the Vietnam War that would engulf the United States two years later. In 1983, he lamented that all his clothes were made for slave wages in places like Singapore, in the same song warning, “I can see a day coming when even your home garden is gonna be against the law.”

As the trade deficit grows and most American companies pay pennies for labor in Asia, he called one of the biggest issues of the generation ahead. And as Europe and the United States ban herbs, and the US tries to ban farmers’ markets (regulating small, local farms being the approximate equivalent of outlawing gardening), we had better listen. (If you’re wondering about the potential farmers’ market situation, Google “Food Safety Modernization Act.”)

Dylan also redefined the genre of folk music. There were obviously folk songs before Dylan; it’s just that very few people dared to write new ones, and certainly not on a regular basis. Folk music was a somewhat stodgy tradition — and he opened it up to new contributors and new ideas.

“In truth there are no modern singer-songwriters writing in any sort of American roots or folk idiom who don’t owe a debt to Dylan,” Rosanne Cash said in an email correspondence last week. “We can all trace our work — how it’s structured, where we draw inspiration, and the self-reference (which hopefully doesn’t tip over into self-absorption) back to Dylan. In the same way that there is no modern country music without the Carter Family, there are no modern singer-songwriters without Bob Dylan.”

Dylan playing in Minneapolis, 1986, with Tom Petty to the right side of the photo. Photo by Robbi Cohn, Dead Images.

He even influenced the Beatles, but he did more than turn them on to pot. He encouraged them to do something meaningful with their platform, and they did. Of the four, John Lennon took that message closest to heart.

For many, Dylan’s message was a bit too much. As David Bowie said, he “brought a few more people on and put the fear in a whole lot more.”

There was the episode when Dylan walked off the set of The Ed Sullivan Show when network censors would not let him play “Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues,” which mocks the communist threat that was taken so seriously at the time, and is now known to be about the paranoia he was pointing out. A couple of years later, he and his band were attacked — even physically — by his fans at a concert in Forest Hills because he came out with an electric guitar.

Lest you think he was ever controversial for its own sake, that is, if his body of work is not convincing enough, let’s look at his astrology. His birth data is rated as AA — the highest rating, which means birth record in hand. We can be confident of his Sagittarius ascendant: he was born with a broad and far-reaching vision. The Galactic Center (literally, the black hole at the core of our galaxy, which is located in late Sagittarius) is rising when he is born; people with a prominent GC can have a cosmic quality, and an influence that seems to lurk behind everything.

Even many people with no interest in astrology know that Dylan is a Gemini. He embodies the concept perfectly: the messenger-trickster, who is witty and articulate in a way that is distinct to that sign.

Just for emphasis, he has Mercury — the ruling planet of Gemini — gleaming right on the western horizon, where everyone can see it. When something is on the western horizon, it can work like a mirror; the chart’s native can see himself there, and he himself can also function like a mirror, closely identifying with the public and vice versa. In part owing to that Mercury, my friend astrologer Gary Caton describes Dylan as “Hermes personified.”

The extraordinary Taurus-Gemini cluster in Dylan’s natal chart. Mercury in Gemini is the highest planet, the green thing on the top right side. Below that, in order, are Venus and the Sun in Gemini; then, in order downward, Jupiter, Uranus, the Moon and Saturn in Taurus. Not mentioned in the article are Black Moon Lilith and Nessus, also in Taurus. These kinds of concentrations can bestow a person with unusual creative power. How they use it is another question, and there are no guarantees.

Dylan’s Mercury has another special distinction — it’s connected to these odd points called lunar nodes, which bind a person to public karma. And he also has Venus in Gemini, granting him a status known even to his fans as a triple Gemini. Basically, that means there are six, 12 or 24 of him; multiple planets in Gemini tend to multiply.

But that’s not the part of his chart that I find the most interesting. To me the really interesting part has always been that he also has four planets in Taurus. Gemini can have an airy quality and, by itself, can want for substance. This is where Taurus comes in. He is working from a foundation of solid values, and this is what he expresses in his music. Let’s consider how this works in his chart.

Speaking in very broad terms, there are basically two kinds of planets: the kind that move fast, and the kind that move slow. Fast movers include Mercury, Venus and the Sun, which he has grouped in Gemini. These are usually about style and personality.

Then there are the ones that move slowly. These tell the story of a generation and of society itself. Three of the slow-movers have collected for a rare conjunction in Taurus. This grouping will be present, in one form or another, in the chart of everyone born between 1939 and 1941. How the energy of a planetary alignment expresses itself varies from day to day, and person to person — and is highly dependent on the time of the chart. In Dylan’s case, that Mercury is floating like that on the horizon for a matter of minutes before it sets, changing the astrology dramatically. This is one of those clear cases where had he been born 15 minutes later, he would not be the same person.

Hobby historians: does that 1939 to 1941 date range ring a bell? The world was on the brink of many changes — especially World War II — that were propelled by the same astrology under which Dylan was born. The concentration we’ve been living through this year is similar to that (though the slow movers are different), and we are at an equally wrenching, dangerous, and potentially potent time of history.

Taurus is often mistaken for a reserved, stable earth sign. It’s earthy like a volcano, or the place where two tectonic plates meet. There can be constant tension, even if it’s deep under the ground. People with strong Taurus in their charts have a lovely presentation, but they are on fire inside. Their need to constantly reinvent themselves is belied by that smooth exterior. But Dylan has the advantage of all that Gemini. He can reinvent himself externally, as an ongoing experiment.

Dylan playing in High Gate, Vermont, 1995. Photo by Robbi Cohn, Dead Images.

His strong Gemini gives him a stomach for something that’s abhorrent to most Taureans — inconsistency. On his 1976 album Desire, there is his famous tribute to Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, who was falsely accused of a 1966 triple murder in New Jersey. Had Dylan not put that song on the album, then done a benefit concert for him at Madison Square Garden, Carter might still be in jail. He was freed from prison in 1985 after his two convictions were thrown out.

On the same album, Dylan has a tribute to Joey Gallo, a New York mobster suspected of involvement in the 1971 murder of Joe Colombo, a major New York godfather. “Joey” manages to be a combination of a dirge, an obituary and a protest song. The tribute to Gallo is every bit as sympathetic as the one to Carter. Is Dylan telling us he can see both sides of the story? Or that everyone deserves fair treatment? Is he admitting that humanity is made of sinners and saints? If you think about it, it’s a curious mix of themes, though most people don’t notice because the songs are both so compelling.

From the “two sides of the coin” files, in one biography I read the story of both the Gallo gang and members of the NYPD organized crime unit being invited to watch the the final mix of the song “Joey.” Both cars pulled up outside the recording studio at the same time and seeing the other, both left. This was attributed to Dylan’s wry sense of humor.

You need a little of that if you want to be relevant. From one journalist to another, I would like to thank Bob Dylan for giving many people permission to say something that means something, and to take an unpopular side of the issue when that’s the right thing to do. Who would have thought, at the time Dylan emerged, that the world would become one giant advertisement, selling mostly packaging, usually paid for on a credit card.

Thanks to Bob, strewn along the foggy ruins of time, we will find not only relics of what happened before us, but seeds of how to look at the world and see it clearly.

Yours & truly,

Readers may discuss this article, and ask questions about it, at this link on the Planet Waves blog. Special thanks to Ken Regan and Robbi Cohn for their generous permission to use photos of Bob Dylan.

Moments in Time: A Few Transits in Dylan’s Chart

Bob Dylan left his home in Hibbing, Minnesota, in 1960 at age 19. We know the road: Highway 61. We know he headed for Chicago, where he failed an audition for a folk festival, and Madison, WI, where he first saw Pete Seeger perform. We even know the day: Dec. 21, 1960.

What was going on in his charts that day? Let’s use a chart cast at his time of birth on the day that he left home.

Astrology can plot events as well as birth charts. This is the chart for the day that Bob Dylan left home at age 19, set for his time of birth (called a diurnal chart). There are many striking things about this chart. The first is that Uranus is rising, suggesting a radical change, revelation or development of some kind. Then we see Chiron on the 7th house, which among other things represents the ability to speak to many people in a language they understand. And the Sun is at solstice, square the Aries Point, showing his connection to the public and attunement to world events.

Here is his natal chart, which will open in a separate window, for reference. The chart to the left is the chart for the day he went on the road, inspired (as he has told us) by Jack Kerouac’s novel by the same name.

To cast this chart, I’ve used a technique I haven’t mentioned here before, called a diurnal chart. That’s the chart for any given day, set for the place the native is, and set for the time of birth. It’s a way to look at the quality of any particular day, using the consistent reference point of the birth time.

The first thing you might notice is that he left on the very day of the winter solstice. The Sun entered Capricorn that afternoon. It may have been in the last moments of Sagittarius, which has that flavor of a long adventure of some kind. You can see the Sun represented as the yellow circle, on the lower right side of the chart; the double zeros tell you that the Sun is at solstice, in the first degree of the new sign.

We have an Aries Point chart — that is, a chart with something prominent in the first degree of one of the cardinal signs. As you may recall from many prior articles, that’s the point that reminds us of the connection between the personal and the political — a principle, invented in the Sixties, that Dylan would come to embody and indeed innovate. (I happened to post the Planet Waves website on the winter solstice in 1998, and we’ve embodied the personal is political as an astrological concept.)

The really fun thing about this chart is the ascendant. Even if you can’t read a chart, take a look — it’s the dark, horizontal line to the left side. The degree of the ascendant in a diurnal chart changes at the rate of one degree per day. When a planet passes the ascendant (which every planet does annually), the person can embody that energy, and on this day, the planet Uranus is rising. Fittingly, this day we see him embodying the Uranian principle: sudden change, reinvention, liberation, boldness, revolution. In terms of how a human personality might experience this, it would be a restless sense of urgency and the need to bust free.

Bob Dylan’s birth chart, rated as AA by Astrodatabank (birth record on file). Dylan is famously a Gemini (with three planets in Gemini, the Sun, Mercury and Venus). But this alone would not get him quite as far, if he didn’t have a fuel source coming from Taurus. Gemini grants expressive gifts, but then it needs something to express, often drawn from another area of the chart. The planets and points shown in Taurus, from top to bottom, are: Jupiter Uranus, Moon, Saturn, Black Moon Lilith, and Nessus. He is Sagittarius rising. On the day he left home, Mercury in Sagittarius had crossed his ascendant.

To the other side of the diurnal chart, we see the sky loaded with Aquarius. Counting Chiron and some of the minor planets I cast into every chart, there are seven points in Aquarius, a sign connected to ideas, groups, social movements, intellectual movements, inventions and equanimity. These points include the Moon — the Aquarius Moon, which is intellectually restless and may be the most socially conscious Moon placement.

Now, these events stand alone in the diurnal chart for the day he left. Let’s consider a few transits — that is, contact between real-time planets (in the diurnal) and the ones that are standing still in his natal chart.

Here is a fun one: In the prior article, we described how prominent Mercury is in Dylan’s chart — it shows up on his descendent, or western horizon. It was also prominent as a transit on the day he left: Mercury in Sagittarius was crossing his ascendant the day he left, as if it came to pick him up. This is another image in Dylan’s life of embodying or fully taking on the energy of Mercury-Hermes.

One last: with a character like Dylan, Chiron is going to be instructive. Chiron is in late Aquarius in the chart for his heading on the road. Chiron in Aquarius is the essence of the Beat Generation of writers, and the related youth movement. I think the Beat Generation kicks off when Allen Ginsberg organizes a series of readings in a garage-gallery in autumn 1955, in San Francisco, the very month that Chiron entered Aquarius for that cycle. This included reading part of his poem Howl, which would soon be considered one of the great works of American poetry.

Fast-forward five years and Bob Dylan is leaving home at the end of this transit — just as Chiron makes a series of squares to all those late Taurus planets in his natal chart. He was really, really feeling that quest for freedom. He was being provoked by his astrology, or you could say, the time was right. The last aspect Chiron makes, and the one he’s under at the time, is a square to his natal Jupiter in Taurus. Chiron square Jupiter is about a quest of some kind, a social crusade or fighting for the underdog. Indeed.

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Weekly Horoscope for Friday, May 20, 2011, #860 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — With Mars (the main Aries planet) making a long trip through Taurus, you may be feeling especially lusty, indeed, driven to passion. The question is, what are you going to do with it all? Do you have the opportunity to express even half of what you’ve got going on inside? I suggest you do two things. One is, do your best to create some opportunities to share that energy, with others or by indulging yourself. The second is, while you’re doing that, notice what gets in the way. Is it your circumstances? Are there people you feel you would offend or betray? Is it your own psychology? What is the relationship between the two? The question to ask yourself is, are you in a situation where you can really be yourself, and if not, what adjustments can you make?

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

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — As planets collect in your sign, previously hidden material is coming to light. That includes everything from fears to unacknowledged desires; from conflict to passion; from a sense of potential to a sense of loss. The effect is like awareness gradually rising, revealing a diversity of emotions that you may not feel, in total, amount to a good thing. I don’t think you’ll have that perception for long. With feelings, it’s necessary to embrace the full spectrum, in order to be able to draw the power from the battery and put it to creative use. There’s a message behind all the seemingly diverse information you’re getting; that involves what it means to be a whole person rather than living with the sensation that you’re made of many fragments. There are aspects of your psyche that will benefit from hearing one another’s point of view, and that is what you will access as the Sun enters Gemini this weekend.

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

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — It seems like every day that goes by, you know a little less. This is the result of being a consciously curious person who is aware of the functioning of your own mind. Curiosity is your friend right now; this is a sensation of being aware of not knowing, but enjoying the feeling as you sleuth out the elements of a situation. The situation in question is you, and it’s almost always healthy to turn your curiosity on yourself. I assure you the world would be a lot better place if we all invested more energy doing this, and fortunately you’re not shy about it. The key now is to go deeper than you usually do. What tends to repel you from that depth is that the deeper you go into yourself, the more you encounter density and stark tension rather than the fleet-footed mental process that you like so much. But just like the most valuable minerals are kept underground, so too are the most vital aspects of who you are.

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

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — As the Sun enters the sign Gemini, I want to share an observation that I’ve cultivated over many moons as an astrologer: your sign embodies the notion of the twins just as much as the actual sign of the twins, or any of the other supposedly dualistic signs. Yet for you this happens in a way that is hidden, and that also tells us something about most of the human race. We see division in the world without necessarily understanding that it has a counterpart within us. In the weeks ahead, you can go a long way toward healing the inner splits that often cause you so much struggle. Finding inner accord is not so much about ‘middle ground’ as it is about common ground. Your different pursuits in life are not as different as you think. As time goes on, you’re likely to see that they all support one another. You can make relationship choices that are designed to facilitate your inner harmony.

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) — This is an important time to articulate your goals to yourself. You have them; you merely need to put them into some tangible form, such as on a white board or a computer file (both of which have writing in common). This is also a time to purge old goals from your repertoire, the ones you know you no longer wish to pursue, the ones you have decided are not rewarding. When you do that, you’ll notice a bunch of things that you were doing in support of those old objectives that you can now call off, and collect your energy around what you actually want. I suggest you do this sooner rather than later, since the opportunity to make some excellent progress is on its way. You will be able to make more of it if you’re better prepared, which translates to knowing what you want and having some energy available.

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) — Your solar chart is set up for a dual career kind of life (so is everyone who has Virgo rising or Gemini on the 10th house cusp). That is to say, there are two distinct sides to your true career, or you have two distinct careers, each of which needs love and attention. What is interesting about the present moment is the way you seem to be integrating them. If you’re not actively doing this, then you have an invitation that will be opening up over the next few weeks. The solution set may be embarking on a project of some kind that utilizes all of your skills, talents and desires in a new way. When you consider them now, these different aspects of who you are may seem totally unrelated. But they have you in common — and there is something you can do or create that draws on all of who you are at once. It may be thrust on you suddenly; know what you want, and be ready to leap.

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) — An eclipse is approaching in the angle of your chart that describes your relationship to what some call the ‘higher self’. That same angle of your chart also brings in the themes of ethics, your sense of justice and — oddly enough — your mother’s hidden psychological legacy. Was she of two minds about something important? Did she try to split her character, being decent folk in one part of her life, and less than friendly in another? Or did she live two lives in some other way? The split has carried itself into your life, though it may not be obvious how. If you find yourself in some kind of ethical or spiritual crisis during the next few weeks, you might want to look to her life as a map, or as a source of information. If you happen to have an aunt, she would be the place to go for some useful information.

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) — Planets are lining up in your opposite sign Taurus, including ever-important Venus and Mars. This leads me to some curiosity about the nature of a relationship in your life. To what extent is it really happening, and to what extent is it the product of your imagination? The answer is probably a mix of both, though this is a good time for a reality check. I suggest you make a timeline of the history of the relationship. With that, I suggest you make a map of all the people you’re attracted to, and those who you suspect are attracted to you. Not a list, a map. Who are they? How do they relate to one another? Look for patterns — and see if you notice what they say about you. For example, what aspects of yourself do each of these people represent? This should be pretty interesting.

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) — I know I’ve told the story of our old web designer Jordan, who created the astrological sign Sagittaurus. True, it was a typo (plastered all over the 2003 annual edition and later removed) but it was a good one — and over the next couple of weeks, it comes true. Your ruling planet Jupiter arrives in Taurus for more than a year, uninterrupted. This is about your wellbeing, in particular, it’s an invitation to take better care of yourself and invest more of your resources into pleasure. There’s a clue that your ideas are worth more than your labor. I will admit, this is a challenging notion for most people, who are accustomed to punching a clock. So if you’ve ever had a scheme or concept whereby you make a living from your creative work product rather than your time or your effort, now is the time to get it going. Many other factors are stacked in your favor, but you have to make the moves.

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 need some diversity. If you have some other way you express yourself, that’s the thing to do now. The other side of your brain needs attention. If you usually use words, switch to pictures. If you use pictures, maybe switch to music or movement. If you speak another language, find someone else who does. In fact, if you have some particular specialized jargon you love (fashion, photography, tropical fish, the Grateful Dead), look up your best friend who also speaks that language. You will find these things entertaining as well as liberating. Part of what you’ll get is balance, and part of what you’ll experience is the sensation of not being alone, which will come as a relief. It’s not that you are alone, but if your astrology lately has you feeling like the only pea in a pod, there will at least be two.

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) — Get ready to start making improvements to your living space, or finding a new, better, brighter one. Clear out old stuff; clean your windows; drill into corners and closets and bring the physical remnants of the past to light, so you can move through it. This is about Jupiter moving into Taurus, your solar 4th house — your physical environment, which translates to your emotional environment. While that doesn’t happen till the first week of June, I suggest you start early, while Jupiter is in a fire sign, and your house of ideas. Speaking of which: if you have been a little late in the game of initiating your ideas, go for it. Even making a small move now could lead to something significant materializing. The first step is the most meaningful one and in truth you are never too late.

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) — I suggest you take a low-key approach to improving your financial situation, mainly by using trusted methods of making income rather than new ones. Think of this as a time when you can collect on old or established investments or ventures rather than having to invent some. That will happen soon enough, as you convey your older methods into newer ones, which you may be considering in their formative stages. You have an excellent chart setup for turning concepts into income, but that takes three things: clear ideas, the ability to stick to them, and trust. Of the three, trust is the most important element, which is why I am suggesting you get the ball rolling on what you already have faith in, rather than what will likely challenge your sense of your own credibility. Once you taste success, you will recognize the feeling that it’s associated with.

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

Hare’s Moon: Make Love, Not Drama

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By Gary P. Caton and Eric Francis

Note to Readers: I’ve teamed up this week with Gary to write the Full Moon article. You can reach Gary at his website, Dream Astrologer.

Traditionally, the Full Moon of May is sometimes called the Hare’s Moon. This is because May and Beltane mark the season of rebirth of life upon the Earth. With the hare’s reputation for being prolific, no creature seems more suited as this month’s symbol. Some other names for this Full Moon include the Milk Moon, Flower Moon, Corn Moon or Corn Planting Moon. There are many traditions, and they each give things their own name.

A full year of repeated efforts were required to finally capture the rising Full Moon behind the Parthenon (447-438 BC) in central Athens, Greece. Anthony Ayiomamitis/Perseus.gr.

The names for this Moon all evoke rich, juicy, sensual energy that is very grounded and personal. It would be nice to tell you that May’s Full Moon, which takes place today in late Scorpio, offers some respite from the drama fever that has been 2011 thus far and that we can all finally just chill a bit, and simply enjoy the sultry pleasures of mid-spring. The truth is that it looks like it might take some effort and awareness to make that your reality, but you can do it. These are the times we’re in: fortune favors the conscious.

The Full Moon is conjunct a bright star shining just below it. This is Antares, the heart of the Scorpion. Considered a ‘royal star’, that is, a star of great dignity, Antares is very powerful and associated with success, but often the kind that comes through intensity and some form of life-death struggle. Antares’ energy can be polarizing, and the danger here is in seeking drama just for the sake of drama, such as for the sheer thrill of it.

You’ll have to avoid these temptations in order to access the more earthy energy of this Full Moon. It is also advisable to err well on the side of caution when addressing any potentially intense people or dangerous situations. By definition, the Sun and Moon are in opposition at Full Moon, with the Earth between. This is what allows the lunar surface to be fully illumined. Psychologically, it’s something like staring into a celestial mirror, whereby big chunks of our psyche can also be lit up. This provides opportunities for moments of clarity and holistic self-understanding to those who are aware that life is really just a waking dream, and we are constantly gazing into ourselves, even as our eyes are open.

Deepening the subject-object tension this month is the fact that the Moon is in Scorpio, a sign where she’s not always so comfortable; the Scorpio Moon can be a bit tense in her skin, and requires special care. As Eric mentioned last week, the Moon is exalted in Taurus; so it’s in detriment in Scorpio. Mars, currently in Taurus, is also in a sign where he’s out of his element.

Chart for the Scorpio Full Moon. Note the Sun right above the eastern horizon (to the left, in an astrology chart) and the Moon right below the western horizon. A cluster of planets visible in the pre-dawn sky is right above the Sun. Chiron and Neptune are high in the chart, loosely square the axis of the Sun and the Moon. They are both in Pisces, which is indicative of the massive flooding throughout parts of the Mississippi River valley.

In this Full Moon chart, these bodies are like travelers who are far from their homes and without access to their natural resources. They must be very sensitive, aware and creative in getting their needs met or else risk behaving in a way that will get them into trouble. So on a personal level, it looks like the best way to engage with this Full Moon energy is a kind of slow burn, which allows energy to be released but doesn’t invite or go looking for conflict. Due to the Moon’s placement in Scorpio, your intuition may be off; make sure you back it up with facts. Due to Mars’ presence in Taurus, you may be exaggerating the degree of external conflict, because you feel something burning inside.

On a collective level, the Full Moon’s opposition is making a square to Chiron (which has been ingressing Pisces for a year) and Neptune (which has just entered Pisces). It’s a fairly wide square, but because it’s Neptune (which has the widest orb of any planet), it still counts. This is what astrologers call a t-square: an opposition (the Full Moon) with the third planet square the axis. That planet (or in this case a conjunction of two planets) becomes a focal point for the opposition. This has the effect of taking all the juicy tension of opposites brewing inside us and projecting it out onto Neptune in Pisces. Both Neptune and Pisces are big, transpersonal, watery archetypes and we are now seeing the biggest flood of the Mississippi River since the Great Flood of 1927.

The Red Cross has announced that its disaster fund is depleted and despite a short-term boost, long-term FEMA funding shortfalls loom on the horizon. With the economy still struggling, these disasters pose major long-term financial challenges for our country. All this comes at a time when our politicians are in the midst of one of the biggest budget fights in a long time. Republican lawmakers are refusing to raise the debt ceiling, and our country currently runs on debt.

In astrology, economic resources are mainly symbolized by the earth signs and the four fixed signs, which mark the midpoints of the seasons. The fixed signs are about material manifestation and making solid and concrete what was begun in the cardinal signs. So we can see here that Taurus is the most material sign of all, being both earthy and fixed. Currently we have four out of five personal planets in Taurus: the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars. With Taurus being largely about values, this is a call to get our priorities in order.

Cows on a farm near the Grandmother Land in High Falls, NY. Photo by Eric Francis.

The other development in the fixed signs is the conjunction of Vesta and Pallas Athene right at the cross-quarter point of 15 Aquarius. This conjunction has been forming since early April. The cross-quarter points, which are in the fixed signs located halfway between the solstices and equinoxes, are sensitive points in the year, and this Full Moon is still close to them.

While this is happening, there is lots of financial news brewing just off-camera: questions about printing money (QE2), the debt ceiling, cutting the federal budget, pension fund issues, and a gaping hole in the books of the Federal Reserve Bank. I would also note that the head of the International Monetary Fund is currently sitting in jail in New York City, accused of raping a hotel maid over the weekend, offering a rare glimpse into the private life of one of the men who runs (or is it sells?) the world.

Now, these factors — things that happen in the news — are usually considered abstract, even if they are supposedly really important. Except that when there is troubling economic news, people tend to worry. And worrying is not going to get us anywhere. The real question is, what is the source of abundance, and how can we stay closer to it? The fact that these pseudo-communities (such as the ‘federal government’) are doing so poorly points to a need for real communities.

This Full Moon is telling us to make love, not drama. Beltane (still in season, with this Full Moon) is about making love for abundance. It’s about joining yin and yang to complete the cycle of nature.

There’s one other clue in this chart, spoken in the language of the asteroids. It involves that conjunction in Aquarius mentioned earlier — Vesta conjunct Pallas. These three elements have one thing in common: a bit of detachment. Pallas can separate herself from her emotions and keep everything on the level of the mind; Vesta can separate herself from emotional attachments; Aquarius can be cool and clear in its thinking. Put the three together and we get a message: save your passion for sharing love and pleasure, and if you have a problem you need to address, use your mind.

If you are dealing with an issue you don’t fully grasp, then consult an expert or two that you trust, and make sure you actually understand their advice. And as the Full Moon separates and the Moon ingresses Sagittarius, you may notice that what seemed like an insurmountable deadlock today can melt away into something easier to handle, if you’re willing to let the conflict go.

I would remind you that the source of abundance is creativity, not the economy. The source of love is the human heart, not any material thing. If you remember that, it will actually make a difference. And in truth, the Full Moon is about nature, not astrology. This particular one is reminding us that, here in the Northern Hemisphere anyway, it’s springtime — a time to surge back to life.

Of Cows, Bulls and Mars in Taurus

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Have you ever seen that Far Side cartoon where one cow is standing up on two feet in the middle of the herd, trying to get all the other cows to stampede? The thing is, they’re not interested. They just want to stand around and graze.

The Forge of Vulcan by Luca Giordano, c. 1660, located in the The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia. Vulcan is the Roman name for Hephaistos.

Taurus is about values, that is to say, it represents what is important to us. There are those days when this Far Side cartoon is what it feels like to care. Do you know what I’m taking about? You have something really meaningful on your mind, but everyone else wants to eat grass. Taurus is interesting that way. It can be loaded with passion, and it can want not to get up off the couch. There are days when nobody wants to budge about something that really makes a difference, and days when everyone wants to stampede to the new flavor shake at Dairy Queen, willing to commit acts of violence to get a better spot in line.

It’s often a mystery what makes the difference, besides a good publicist.

One symbol of Taurus is a bovine critter — either a bull or a cow, depending on how you think of it, and depending on what day you inquire. The bull and/or cow are among the many symbols associated with Taurus, which also include the pentacle (or five-pointed star), Venus (which traces the pentacle in the sky) and various manifestations of the Goddess, the Moon (shown in the crescent over the circle) and others, most of which are drawn together in the mythology of Crete. That was one of the last goddess-based cultures in the Western world, if not the very last, and was probably destroyed by the eruption of a volcano on the Greek island of Santorini (properly, Thera) around 1640 BCE. There was also a big earthquake, which probably happened about 10 years earlier (archeologists know that because piles of rubble were found encrusted in volcanic ash).

The association of Taurus with an earthquake and volcanic eruption is essential to understanding this sign. Elegant and composed on the outside, Taurus is more like a blacksmith’s shop on the interior. There is heat, smoke, loud noise, and the clashing and shaping of the soul.

We are in a Taurus moment right now. The Sun will be in this sign for another week, and Mars just entered this week (where it will remain till June 21). Many other planets (still in Aries) are on the way — those would be Mercury, Venus and Jupiter. For the moment let’s focus on Mars.

Cow munching alfalfa — non-GMO, for now. Acting on one’s values can include putting one’s money where one’s mouth is.

Mars is a visitor from either the sign opposite Taurus (Scorpio) or the prior sign (Aries). In this arrangement lies a subtle point — Mars is the daytime ruler of Aries and the nighttime ruler of Scorpio. That is, it’s the warrior during the day and operates by stealth at night. Either way you look at it, Mars has an opposition energy to Venus-ruled Taurus.

Note that in astrology there are two kinds of opposing signs; one is the sign directly across the dial, and the other is typically one of the adjoining signs. The adjoining-sign kind of opposition is rarely mentioned by astrologers, but it’s significant because the sign next to any other sign will be of the opposite gender energy.

For example, while Scorpio is ruled by Mars, it’s still a feminine sign (as a water sign). Aries is ruled by Mars, but it’s a masculine sign. Taurus is a feminine sign ruled by Venus. So we have Mars in a sign ruled by Venus, and this will bring out the underlying fiery energy of Taurus. Most astrologers would say that Mars is compromised (it’s called being ‘in detriment’ because the natures of Taurus and Mars are supposedly so different), but I think that Mars is really bringing out or activating a fiery property of Taurus. You might say it’s choosing the bull version of Taurus rather than the cow.

In terms of a psychological effect, it could translate to active desire rather than hoping something comes along; that is, outward passion rather than feeling desirable, or quietly yearning. It can be about the direct expression of one’s values rather than simply ‘having’ a value. You could think of a Mars influence on Taurus as the active use of resources rather than saving them up for a rainy day.

By the traditional rules of astrology, Mars is definitely out of its element in Taurus; a bit on the defensive, with less ability to take advantage of its usual gifts. In a modern context, it is going to change the quality of Taurus and make contact with this underlying element — and like an earthquake, it can all emerge at once. So with Mars in Taurus you will want to be aware of this, and make sure you keep a handle on your temper. You need to find a way to let off the steam, especially if you have a lot of Taurus in your chart. Figure out ways to use that energy creatively.

By the way — with fiery Taurus, we’re talking about the archetype of Hephaistos, the consort of Aphrodite (Venus in Roman terms). Alice Bailey associated Taurus with the Roman god Vulcan, equivalent to Hephaistos — which is an asteroid by the way, and which happens to be in Taurus at the moment.

As I mentioned, Mars will be in Taurus till June 21 — right on the eve of solstice. (Speaking of June, Keith Olbermann returns to cable on Current TV at 8 pm on Monday, June 20).

Other planets will be moving in, meanwhile:

Mercury enters Taurus May 15. Mercury is the ruler of Gemini and Virgo. Because of the Virgo connection, it has a natural affinity for earth signs; yet in Taurus it tends to be more pensive and emotional rather than mercurial and quick-witted. Its intelligence is the more thoughtful and enduring kind. For reference, when Mercury is in Capricorn, the third of the earth signs, there’s a stronger emphasis on the past (a quality, to some extent, of all earth signs).

Venus also enters Taurus May 15. This is one of the signs of which Venus is the traditional ruler. The mix of Venus, Mercury and Mars brings quite a nice dose of erotic energy to Taurus. The three are moving into a trine with Pluto, which will give that energy some means of expression and depth, taking advantage of the psychic space that Pluto in Capricorn has been clearing out for us (whether we like that clearing out process or not).

Artifact of the Inuit creation goddess Sedna, who rules over the seas; photo from the collection of M.E Brown.

Jupiter enters Taurus June 4. It stations retrograde at 10+ Taurus on Aug. 30, and retrogrades back to the first degree of Taurus — it does not re-enter Aries for this cycle. It stays in Taurus until June 11, 2012, when it enters Gemini amidst many other world-changing events.

Sedna is also in Taurus. This is the planet with the longest known orbit — 11,400 years. It’s currently eight billion miles away from the Sun (and that is close; it’s at the near side of its orbit). It is, for us, a seemingly permanent fixture in Taurus. It’s currently at 22+ degrees of that sign. It begins its transit into Gemini in 2024. The Sun is currently conjunct Sedna, and over the next few weeks Mercury, Venus and Mars will also make conjunctions as well. The themes of Sedna take us into some of the darkest territory of the psyche, including alienation and rejection. Melanie Reinhart once described its themes as being about ‘keeping your heart open in hell’. That might mean while you’re looking at Coke Zero and Exxon-Mobil ads everywhere.

Tuesday, by the way, is the Scorpio Full Moon (Sun Taurus/Moon Scorpio). This will happen with the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars in Taurus — so we are in a moment of full activation of Taurus, with just four days of the Sun’s passage to go after that Full Moon — but thanks to the presence of many inner planets, more than a year of Jupiter and Sedna for another decade, Taurus is an energy we will be exploring for quite a while.

Because Taurus is about an investigation of what is meaningful and valuable to us, and because it relates so closely to how we feel about ourselves, I would say that’s a good thing.

Yours & truly,

The Runaway International Best Selling E-Book! As Seen on Oprah and The Onion! The One That all The Pundits Simply Cannot Stop Talking About Night And Day! A Must Read if There Ever Was One!

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, May 13, 2011, #859 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — The late, great Lois Rodden (the astrologer who created the system by which birth data is rated) once wrote that astrologers think Mercury is the money planet — but they have it all wrong. The money planet, she said, is Mars, the reason being that in order to make money you need drive. Mars provides motivation and energy, and it has recently entered the money sector of your chart. If you’ve ever felt complacent about your finances, you now have a phase of time where you can experiment with being more assertive, and also more persistent or maybe it’s consistent, or both. The contact point is drive, connected to action, sustained for the next five or six weeks. I assure you, you can make progress, but I would add some caution. Anything you do that is not directly connected to what you actually value is liable to backfire.

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

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Inaction, or what is sometimes called paralysis, is usually the result of fear. The human psyche runs in a fairly typical cycle: for many, only fear is a motivating force. When fear subsides, then we can find ourselves going back into lazy mode. Mars has entered your sign, which means two things. One is that you are being relieved of significant mental pressure that has been at the root of a good bit of frantic emotion, paranoia or psychic irritation the past couple of months. Another is that you now motivate yourself directly, without having to process or dance with paranoia. There is freedom with this, but that implies movement, change and a dynamic — not predictable — relationship with existence. To make the most of this, you’ll be shaking your bones, even the lazy ones. Get in the groove now. More planets are on their way into your sign — a lot of them.

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

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — You seem to have had your mind rearranged recently, or at least your thinking. The subject is how you see yourself in the world, or how you think others see you. Need I say that the differential can be more impressive than that big canyon on Mars? How you think people perceive you has nothing to do with how they actually do. This is important to keep in mind, all the time. The potentially troubling news is that, try as you may, you have only a limited ability to influence how people think of you, or experience you; most of that influence comes from where you present yourself, and to whom — rather than how. The good news is that you have far more freedom to be who you are than you think. People tend to be distracted; they tend to be forgetful; when necessary, most can be seduced with self-interest, no matter what they may have thought yesterday.

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

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — With planets starting to exit your career house (Aries), you may find it easier to focus on some specific goals related to advancing your work or profession. Fewer planets means less pressure, and more acting from choice and a bit less acting from compulsion. Yet while it may seem like the chaos of the past two months hasn’t helped much, or helped anything, you’ve made more progress than you think. If you don’t know what you’ve learned, I suggest that you have some data-mining to do. All these experiences you’ve been through may be things you hope you have to avoid going through twice, but every one of them has taught you something, whether you deem it a success or a failure. Let the dust settle on these recent events; you’ll see you are still in possession of an excellent idea that you have every intention of developing — and you now know enough to do it.

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 can now take authority; it would be great if you did. Here’s the thing to remember: It’s easier to bring people into consensus if you start with getting them to agree on values and principles involved. Leave the exact subject matter out; stick to the underlying things that everyone can agree to. Then, once a subject is added, you have a basis for the conversation and with that it will be easier to reach an understanding. Your outer role, therefore, is not really being the boss or the authority but rather the one who establishes a framework of ethics. Let everyone around you take credit for the accomplishments that result from the progress that you guide them into making. Of course, you do have the option to declare yourself chief in some obvious way, but that is far less likely to be effective. And effective is precisely what you want.

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) — As planets move into your fellow earth-sign Taurus, you will have support plucking up your moral resolve and your sense of adventure. For weeks life has had the approximate overtone of a sudden-death event of some kind, where your ego was on the line every day. This may have been fun at first but it is likely to have grown tiresome. People to whom crisis is interesting make excellent paramedics and ER docs, but the rest of us thrive on some balance between crisis and placid times. One advantage to planets leaving Aries is that you and others are less likely to take so many things so personally. This will make it obvious that neither you nor others have to get defensive, and you’ll tend to see defensive responses for what they are. One thing they are not is useful. What we call ‘ego’ is a frustrating perspective from which to see the world, and yourself — fortunately, other options are on the horizon.

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) — Saturn in your sign has provided you with a base of stability through some unusually torrid weeks and months. Well, it’s not just Saturn; it’s how well you embody the Saturn principle of flexible structure, and of stability through times of change. The theme of your life is now about negotiation, rather than confrontation or of being confronted. Yet it will help considerably if you are the one who opens the discussion. This will mean being conscious of what you want sooner rather than later; and dispensing with your usual strategy of leading from behind or ‘topping from the bottom’. You gain a significant advantage both by admitting your actual desire and taking initiative on that desire on the framework of your relationship. This is not about being aggressive; it’s about being aware and assertive.

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) — Mars in your opposite sign presents you with a mirror. The first question is, what do you see in that mirror? What do you feel? You can tell that by the shift in perception, experience and what some call ‘energy’ both in the world around you and in your most intimate relationships. For practical purposes, assessing a transit in your opposite sign, they are basically the same thing: your environment. Notice in particular the shift of the 48 hours surrounding this moment. See if you can observe what within you has changed that is coloring your perception. Observe how what you are noting is changing how you feel about yourself. The idea is to come as close to ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ being one experience as you can. This is not intended to blur a boundary — it’s intended to reveal your influence over your own experience of life.

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) — One house in your chart has been lit up for months now — your 5th house, which is Aries, which is daring art, adventure, passion and sex. There has been so much going on in this house, peaking the past two weeks, that I would not be surprised if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed by all of this so-called creative energy. It has been difficult to focus, difficult to gather your ideas, challenging to follow through on so many fleeting matters initiated by an impressive collection of planets. Now that most of these critters are moving into Taurus, two things happen. One is that you can tap into some persistent focus and work-related drive. The second is that your 5th house clears out except for two of the most inspirational energies, slow-moving Uranus and Eris, which will be around for years. In other words, you lose nothing in the way of inspiration, and gain plenty in the way of drive and dedication.

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 could relax and loosen up a little. Your concept of existence has been so driven by a mix of responsibility and the need to grow that quite a few times you’ve forgotten to have fun. But you have not forgotten how to have fun; that’s the meaningful thing. The kind of fun you’re likely to want to have involves risk, and that risk involves daring to act in a way you might consider childish or irresponsible. I can see where you might think this, though it’s unlikely to be true. In fact, one of the greatest risks you run is to allow the pressure to have fun and indulge yourself to build up, which could lead to actually acting irresponsibly (for example, such as when you drink). A little conscious indulgence will go a long way toward helping you fulfill more ‘serious’ responsibilities, but more to the point, it is springtime and that is a natural time to frolic and play.

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) — As more planets — beginning with Mars — cross your sensitive 4th house cusp, you may feel restless, even unsettled and like it’s time to pick up and make changes. At the same time you may have the feeling that it’s not a good idea to act from a point of frustration. Yes, maybe that would be true at a New Age workshop or Buddhist monastery. In reality, though, the things that spur us to action are valuable, be they ‘negative’ or ‘positive’. And given the challenges that so many of us face making changes at all, I suggest you take any inspiration to improve your situation as helpful and creative. You have the option to see the humor in any situation; to not get too emotionally wound up; to merely experience any feeling as the motivation to act. Indeed, the fact that you may feel anger or frustration is likely the result of waiting.

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) — Sometimes you’re slow on the uptake, but once you get something, you really get it. The thing about your intellect is that it’s tactile, and it’s becoming more so. You like the actual document and substantial proof over somebody’s say-so. You like to see the thing in question, or at least see a picture of it, rather than merely having a description. Mars joining the Sun in the brains/cognition/idea angle of your solar chart is inviting you to be assertive, inquisitive, curious and bold about learning what you want to learn. You’re invited to be passionate about what inspires you to creative action, and by passionate I mean feeling anywhere along the whole spectrum. Love your ideas for how they feel as much as what they say. Your mind is a kinesthetic thing; that is to say, your preference most days would be for having clay in your hands over a math problem, for going into the woods over going into the gym, and for sex over the idea of sex. In the words of old Uncle Fritz, lose your mind and come to your senses.

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

Neptune Joins Chiron in Pisces

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Chiron Files by Eric Francis

Neptune entered Pisces last month, joining Chiron in that sign. This is the full activation of Pisces, and combined, these transits are shifting the background of our lives. There may be other effects, which will be more or less subtle depending on your relationship to your intuition, your emotional body and your creativity.

This is the first time Neptune has entered Pisces since 1847, that is, long before the Civil War. So this development is news. Neptune, discovered in 1846, is considered to be the modern ruling planet of Pisces (the traditional ruling planet is Jupiter, which still counts). So for our time, this is significant. No living person has been through this transit. We are actually the first to experience something.

And what would that something be? Many have noticed that we’ve been growing more clairvoyant over the past few decades. Does anyone remember back when it was taboo to mention clairvoyance, as if it were the equivalent of admitting to Devil worship? Now it’s considered normal, if only because so many people experience it directly, or know someone who does. At least once in their lives just about everyone has had a dream that gave a glimpse of the future.

Chiron made a brief ingress to Pisces last year, before entering to stay earlier this year. From the first moment, Chiron in Pisces emphasized the need for healing the oceans. BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill began within hours of its initial visit before stationing retrograde. Neptune’s current arrival for a longer stay has been synchronous with the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which is having profound effects on water as well. Yet both of these seem to be metaphors for the prevailing emotional state of humanity.

Chiron is calling for awareness, and Neptune is calling for cleansing. We need both. Many people flee to ‘spiritual’ solutions without recognizing that what they’re processing is much closer to the human realm. With healing on the level of water, it’s necessary to do the flush gradually. There are no fast solutions, though adding awareness is a very good first step, and adding water is an excellent second step.

My take is that this involves drinking more water, and at the same time cutting back on toxic substances in our diets and medicine cabinets. Every time you take a pharmaceutical product, I suggest you read the label and run the product through Google, looking for un-advertised effects. You might be surprised what you find.

You may be noticing an increase or distinctive change in your dreaming patterns. For example, someone who never remembers his or her dreams might notice they’re remembering them vividly.

Pisces has subtler frequencies, and these are often connected to imagery. We are bombarded with toxic images through news, advertising and cinema. Often this is violent and manipulative — and it takes a toll both on wellbeing and creativity. I think we would all be a lot more emotionally stable without advertising, and we would have a lot better sense of who we are. Indeed, if advertising promotes instability, the root is likely to be in getting us to doubt and even hate ourselves.

With these Pisces factors being so strong, and lasting for so long (Chiron for eight years and Neptune for more than 12 years) we need to pay attention to these influences, and choose healthy inflows in this watery realm. This choice of what we take in is one of the most basic elements of emotional healing. Often the more basic issue is being able to choose to let go of a toxic influence. How many times have you heard, or experienced, that one? The person who is in the damaging relationship or job but who cannot leave, for some reason they don’t understand?

Then there is the Piscean theme of creativity. One sad fact of childhood is that the naturally spontaneous, precocious quality of children is gradually supplanted with adult versions of rationality. We may not think we miss our creativity; we may think it’s okay to let others do this for us; but I think that secretly or not, everyone craves being an expressive person.

All of this Pisces is an invitation to express yourself, and this isn’t just a recreational indulgence. As my old therapist Joe is fond of saying, expression is the opposite of depression.

Light Bridge: The 25-Year Span by Eric Francis is the story of irrevocable change told through the lens of astrology, history and self-awareness. This is a carefully selected set of articles and essays by Eric written since 1987, which take you through the transition of the millennium into 2012. The essays are a continuing meditation on the experience of confronting global changes from long before anyone was certain they would really happen. It begins in a spiritual community in 1987 and comes to the present day, including a look at the astrology of the 2012-2015 era. Included are Eric’s best essays on sweeping world changes, relationships and maintaining some sense of one’s inner life in the midst of it all. The book, available as a printable PDF, is 174 pages and is illustrated by Carol McCloud. It’s just $14.95. It’s the perfect companion to Light Bridge, the 2011 annual edition of Planet Waves. Purchase your copy here.

Shooting the Mirror

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What are we gonna do now? / Taking off his turban, they said, is this man a Jew?
‘Cos working for the clampdown / They put up a poster saying we earn more than you!
When we’re working for the clampdown / We will teach our twisted speech
To the young believers / We will train our blue-eyed men / To be young believers
— The Clash – Clampdown

Dear Friend and Reader:

This has become a Beltane infused with death. I learned recently that some cultures (such as in the Eastern Orthodox faiths) practice Days of the Dead-type rituals right after Easter. I had no idea till someone told me a few days ago. But that is a small palliative to seeing mobs of young people dancing in the streets, celebrating a murder. In a glance, I understood why we don’t see those same young people at peace rallies.

Young people sing in the streets celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden, the night of May 1, 2011. Photo by Eric Francis.

Friday morning we witnessed something a little more in the spirit of the season — the royal wedding. It is interesting that the future king of England was married within mere days of the purported slaying of our worst enemy. Are we being told that the royal house is in order, and that empire is on the rise again? Though some may see this as evidence that the military power of the West is now in capable hands, it is disturbing that Osama bin Laden was, in essence, executed without a trial. Being a democratic nation, that’s the thing that’s supposed to set us apart from all the other kinds of nations — that someone is innocent till proven guilty. I know a lot of people might think that’s just ridiculous. But I would ask why, when fair, transparent criminal procedure was part of why the American Revolution was fought?

For the sake of this article, I will set aside any possible questions about whether it was actually him; I can tell you that I don’t personally know, and the U.S. government generally does not win awards for its impeccability with truth. Either way, this is an important moment. Bin Laden’s purported death turns a chapter in the history of the Sept. 11 incident and the history of the seemingly endless War on Terror. That phrase has always irritated me. It’s possible to address terrorism with a war (though not particularly effective), but one cannot wage war on an emotion. Presumably we are supposed to be less afraid now that this has happened, though many people feel we’ve kicked a hornet’s nest.

Since we’re on the topic of Sept. 11, 2001, let’s consider some recent astrology related to that incident.

Back in October, the Libra New Moon occurred exactly in the ascendant of the main Sept. 11 chart — what I call the North Tower chart — and that, to me, said something was brewing with the issue. The chart of the world’s most famous terrorist attack was stirring back to life. At the time, I covered this in an article called History, Turning on a Phrase, in which I laid out some of the serious problems with the prevailing theory of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The ascendant of the North Tower chart contains the planet Mercury — it is rising precisely, to the degree, like the moment of the Sun coming up over the ocean, the moment that Flight 11 was crashed into the World Trade Center. Last October’s Libra New Moon was conjunct both Mercury and the ascendant of the North Tower chart. By conjunct, I mean to the exact degree, something that will not happen again for decades. Mercury in that chart describes the ‘secret enemy’, that is, a suspect for whoever was behind the attacks and the conspiracy. The ascendant or rising degree is the face of the chart — and the face became that of Osama bin Laden.

Mercury rising in the chart for the North Tower strike. Mercury is precisely in the degree of the ascendant, which happens for about four minutes out of every 24 hours. The little planet below it in Scorpio is Pholus, shorthand for, “An unstoppable flow of cash is about to come loose.” And given that the placement is in Scorpio, that would count for death as well. Full chart here. You can read about the chart in this article.

Bin Laden was sold to the global public in cinematic terms as the personification of evil, the prince of darkness, and the cryptic embodiment of every radical Islamist who ‘hates our way of life’. He was described as the sinister, insidious mastermind, living out of a cave, plotting against all we love so dearly. He was alternately portrayed as an economist, a billionaire and the iconic ‘sand nigger’, an appalling phrase that surfaced during the first Bush War in 1990-91 to describe anyone in a turban. Bin Laden’s face started showing up on bumper stickers, buttons and novelty wanted posters with crosshairs — this, despite the fact that there was never enough evidence to list the Sept. 11 attacks as among the reasons he was wanted by the FBI. Take a look: on his real wanted poster, he’s not wanted for 9/11.

There had been no investigation, no arrests and no trial — but the word was out on the streets of New York City even as office paper from the towers was still drifting in the breeze that Osama bin Laden was the guy. Hardly anyone in the public knew who he was. His name had popped up in the news from time to time, just like lots of other Arab terrorists, but his was not exactly a household word — that is, until the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Then, in an hour, he became an archetype.

The peace dividend that many had hoped would come at the end of the Cold War went up in the smoke of the World Trade Center, and so did what was left of the federal budget (or more accurately, credit card). And, we were told — and readily believed — it was all because of one bad guy, Osama bin Laden.

The peace dividend wasn’t the only thing that went up in the smoke. Raising Osama bin Laden to the level of a religious icon, the citizens of the United States bowed down to fear, allowed their privacy to be taken from them, and tacitly consented to global war, presumably without end. In her broadcast Monday night, Rachel Maddow summed up the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks beautifully:

Ten years ago, before 9/11, the U.S. defense budget was half the size that it is now. Ten years ago, before 9/11, there was no Department of Homeland Security. Had someone suggested that there ought to be one, you probably would have teased them for using a weird word like homeland.

Ten years ago before 9/11, you walked through a metal detector to get on an airplane, sure, but this was the kind of thing you’d only do maybe on a third date [visual of full body X-ray at airport security]. Sometimes on your flight, even the pilots would keep the cockpit door open and you could see them work and you could see the world fly by through their windshield if you peered down the aisle.

Rachel during Monday’s broadcast. Image courtesy of MSNBC.

Before 9/11, the U.S. had troops based in Saudi Arabia. Before 9/11, the U.S. legal history of torture was of our government prosecuting people for that. Wartime was no excuse. Before 9/11, the National Security Agency having access to everybody’s emails and phone calls and texts and bank records and everything would have been a scandal.

Before 9/11, we did not have a new militarized intelligence bureaucracy that The Washington Post described as an additional 1,271 government organizations, 1,931 private companies and an estimated 854,000 people holding top-secret security clearances.

Before 9/11, no one in politics and private life talked about Article III Courts called for under the Constitution because those were just what courts were. We didn’t have anything but Article III courts. Why would we?

Before 9/11, we didn’t drop bombs using flying robots.

Before 9/11, we had not lost 3,000 people in Lower Manhattan and at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Before 9/11, we did not have 2.2 million Americans who are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and we did not have the national promise to do right by them as a country in respecting their service. Before 9/11, we had not lost more than 6,000 of those veterans in our post-9/11 wars before U.S. forces finally found and killed Osama bin Laden.

If you were a kid when 9/11 happened, it may be hard to imagine our country without all of these things in place. If you were an adult when 9/11 happened, you probably never could have believed this is how we would have chosen to spend the decade after.

These are some serious consequences of the events that spanned a few hours in the history of a nation. The verified body count in Afghanistan and Iraq today stands at 110,000 civilian deaths; because not every death is accounted for, it is really much higher, and that does not include the many injured. Every one of those civilian deaths comes with a family that has lost a loved one. Thousands of people have been orphaned and millions have been reduced to refugees, displaced and fleeing across borders.

Site of impact where the Pentagon was allegedly struck by an airplane, an agonizing 59 minutes after the World Trade Center was hit. How is that even possible? Meanwhile, most people point out the obvious lack of an airplane or damage in the shape of one. But how did the debris go in the direction that the plane was supposedly coming from? The wall stood upright for about half an hour before it fell outward. Photo by Dept. of Defense.

Yet even Rachel Maddow, who I consider the best mainstream broadcaster in the business, possibly in the history of commercial television, never questions the orthodoxy of Osama bin Laden being the guy behind Sept. 11. She never mentions there is a problem, or even a potential problem, with the facts. I wait for her to do so in faithful anticipation. Indeed, the most left-leaning journalists in the mainstream media, and many in the alternative media (in addition to everyone else), swallow whole the notion that bin Laden did it; that the conspiracy was his alone.

There is a silent presumption; it is accepted, unquestioned, as religious orthodoxy. In what seems to be a perpetual, unshakable consensus of the working media, nobody is allowed to so much as inquire what is wrong with the official story.

That is the one thing that Jon Stewart has in common with Glenn Beck; that Barack Obama has in common with Dick Cheney; that Rachel Maddow has in common with Rush Limbaugh.

Whether you’re writing in The Washington Post or The Washington Times, or The New York Post or The New York Times, you swallow this ‘truth’ of the official 9/11 story like a Catholic swallows the host: without chewing, and without question. Even Amy Goodman refuses to give airtime to what has become known as the 9/11 Truth Movement: the people demanding to know what really happened that day. And that, I think, is amazing, given the significant questions that exist (including many raised by architects and engineers), and given how many Americans don’t trust the official story.

Among other surveys, a Scripps-Howard poll found that, “Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is ‘very likely’ or ‘somewhat likely’ that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them ‘because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East’.”

I understand the lack of trust that the public feels. We all know that a lot of people have made princely sums of money on the War on Terror, and that alone is reason to be suspect. We know that since Watergate (a far-reaching crime that has been reduced to a word), people have struggled, with good reason, to trust the government. George W. Bush ignoring the warning in the CIA’s presidential daily briefing from Aug. 6, 2001 looks a lot like complicity.

World Trade Center 7, or the Salomon Brothers building, shortly before it collapsed in its footprint at 5:21 pm on Sept. 11, 2001. Most people don’t know that a third tower of the Trade Center complex even existed, much less that it fell down that day. Photographer unknown.

I also understand the issue that journalists face. Nobody in a prominent position wants to be accused of being a conspiracy theorist, or of sympathizing with them. They don’t want to seem flaky, especially if they go out on limbs other ways (and many brave journalists do). Nobody with a decent job wants to cash in all of their credibility raising the issue, nor do they want to discover one day that their brakes failed at 70 mph.

Plus, there are no definitive answers; the story has no payoff. When you question why, for example, Tower 7 of the World Trade Center fell down on its footprint on the afternoon of Sept. 11, having been hit by no airplane, there is only a question. And that question has some very serious implications. It’s better not to open that can of worms — or not to be the one who tries. I give Michael Moore a lot of credit for raising some of the right questions in Fahrenheit 911.

Yet there is something else going on, something deeper than politics. On the most superficial level, everyone seems to be buying into the old story of good and evil. There is a game of victim consciousness — and I don’t mean the actual victims of whatever happened on Sept. 11; I mean how victimization became a cultural event. Victimization requires a perpetrator. If you have an emotional need to accept that your country is the symbol of all that is good, and you secretly know that it’s not, then you have to see that evil someplace else. Jungian analysts don’t think this is a conscious process — but we’ve all seen it and felt it, and we often know when we’re doing it. It’s just when the whole society gets into the act, it’s sometimes really hard to tell.

Mercury and Saturn, Trading Places

It’s easy to see the issues that became the 9/11 Truth Movement in the chart for the North Tower. By that, I mean in this chart we see the obvious potential for the incident being an inside job or a collaboration between the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’. It would not be the first time in history that this has happened. Treason is against the law because it exists.

There is a rule in astrology called mutual reception. Planets that occupy one another’s signs can also be viewed as swapping places. Mercury (the secret enemy) is in Libra (a sign co-ruled by Saturn), and it trades places with Saturn, the planet of government, which is in Gemini (a sign Mercury rules).

Not a bad guy inherently, but in the Sept. 11 chart, Saturn represents the shadow government (basically, the Cheney/Rove administration as opposed to the Bush administration). Photo from Cassini Mission/APOD.

Said directly, Saturn in Gemini is in reception to Mercury in Libra. The two function as one entity, cycling energy between them as one system. They are also in a perfect trine aspect — an aspect of cooperation that Martha Lang-Wescott once said (long before 9/11) translated to “you lie and I’ll swear to it.”

What does that look like in real life? We could mention that bin Laden starts his career as a CIA operative, fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Pakistan was the intermediary between him and the United States. It is no surprise that he was found living in the midst of Pakistan’s military elite, half a mile from a military academy.

Or we could remember that George H. W. Bush was sitting at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel with Osama bin Laden’s brother Shafiq the morning of Sept. 11, watching the smoke rise from the Pentagon. This is not a novel; it is reality. They were part of a meeting of the Carlyle Group, the Bush family business, which is essentially an investment firm and holding company that (among other things) develops military contracting firms. Shafiq was an investor in the Carlyle Group, which profited from the wars that followed. If that’s a coincidence, it’s a really weird one.

Or we could remember that his son, George W. Bush, had a long relationship with the Taliban going back at least to when he was governor of Texas — the very government that Osama bin Laden personally financed. That relationship included an energy deal with Enron requiring the Taliban’s cooperation that was no longer forthcoming in 2001. When you research this, the connections between Enron, the Taliban and Bush are so well documented as to be horrifying.

We could also consider that when we had Osama bin Laden all but captured in December 2001, the United States let him go. To me it seemed obvious: we could not have a war without an enemy. Were he to be killed or captured, he would be useless. When alive, he gave the War on Terror brand an identity. Eliminating him would have been like McDonald’s capturing Ronald McDonald.

When you add this to all of the unaccounted-for issues of Sept. 11, starting with the blatantly ignored early warning on Aug. 6, or the fact that the U.S. government was flying NORAD exercises on that day and many federal officials did not know whether the four hijackings were part of the game, or that nobody is admitting that WTC 7 was demolished (nor did the 9/11 Commission even inquire as to how it fell down) it is clear that one guy did not mastermind 9/11.

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden.

Meanwhile, we have rarely heard much of what Osama bin Laden had to say for himself. Mostly, we know his face, which is an unusual face for a terrorist because his gaze always seems balanced, present and soulful. In his lengthy obituary Monday, The New York Times did him the service of quoting a 1997 interview he gave to CNN.

The United States, he said, wants to “occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose agents on us to rule us and then wants us to agree to all this. If we refuse to do so, it says we are terrorists. When Palestinian children throw stones against the Israeli occupation, the U.S. says they are terrorists. Whereas when Israel bombed the United Nations building in Lebanon while it was full of children and women, the U.S. stopped any plan to condemn Israel. At the same time that they condemn any Muslim who calls for his rights, they receive the top official of the Irish Republican Army at the White House as a political leader. Wherever we look, we find the U.S. as the leader of terrorism and crime in the world.”

I agree with his analysis. It is actually much worse than he’s saying. I understood that analysis (mainly from reading Noam Chomsky and long talks with my friend Steve) well before I ever heard the name Osama bin Laden. When you start listing the holocausts that the United States has sponsored, whether in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Central America, East Timor, Cambodia, or Vietnam — not to mention the universe of agony and humiliation we have loosed upon the Arab world — you understand better what he’s saying. It starts to look pretty suspicious that we personify evil in this one person, without admitting what our own nation does.

This process is psychological, it has a name, and the name is projection.

Unlike bin Laden, I don’t think the appropriate response is to fight back against these injustices with guns and bombs — that happens to violate my religious and ethical views, and I don’t think it will work. Admittedly I’m not the one getting shot at. I also oppose the death penalty under all circumstances, as do many families of murder victims. But in a world where we pay for children to play video games that involve shooting and blowing up others, and murdering prostitutes (to wit, Grand Theft Auto), and where most of our tax dollars go to bombs, you can hardly blame bin Laden for taking this approach. I am not saying it is ethical or lawful. I am saying it is logical.

What we are doing is, in essence, blaming him for our own actions. And I do mean that literally. Plenty happened on Sept. 11, 2001 that Osama bin Laden could not have done himself — at least not without a lot of help from people with keys to the World Trade Center.

The Projection of Shadow

Psychology has a way to help us past our madness, both individual and cultural. The thing is, this requires the desire to mature, awareness, the willingness to admit one’s mistakes, and some sustained effort.

Carl Gustav Jung, in 1922.

A psychologist and scholar named Carl Jung explained projection to us. Here is how he described it; his language is a bit formal. “Projection means the expulsion of a subjective content into an object; it is the opposite of introjection. Accordingly, it is a process of dissimilation, by which a subjective content becomes alienated from the subject and is, so to speak, embodied in the object. The subject gets rid of painful, incompatible contents by projecting them.”

I’ll state this again, with my elaborations on his ideas [in brackets].

“Projection means the expulsion of a subjective content [what is in one’s own mind, such as a motive] into an object [into something or someone outside oneself]; it is the opposite of introjection [absorbing the properties of something or someone external]. Accordingly, it is a process of dissimilation [making oneself different from], by which a subjective content [a thought or feeling in your mind] becomes alienated from the subject [oneself] and is, so to speak, embodied in the object [something or someone else]. The subject gets rid of painful, incompatible contents by projecting them.”

Our view of the U S of A as being this great nation that does only good deeds and always spreads democracy is not compatible with the nation that bombs villages with napalm — jellied gasoline dropped burning from airplanes that sticks to human skin, which was used widely in Vietnam. That is not acceptable behavior for our freedom-loving country, so we have to project it onto an evil-doer.

This is largely about relief, but it’s also about protecting our self-image and our pride. The dark or cruel side of our existence — all the people we have killed, starting with the American natives our young nation exterminated, the tens of millions of African slaves we imported — exists as shadow material that we put onto others.

It works on a deeply personal level with individual leaders. Jung explains, “The projection of the personal shadow generally falls on persons of the same sex. On a collective level, it gives rise to war, scapegoating and confrontations between political parties.”

Or, as an author named Paul Levy put it, “Shadow projection is itself the unmediated expression, revelation and playing out of the shadow. Shadow projection, the process in which we ‘demonize’ our enemies, entrancing ourselves into believing that ‘they’ are inhumane monsters who need to be destroyed, is the underlying psychological process which, when collectively mobilized, is the high-octane fuel which feeds the human activity of war.”

Photo by Eric Francis – Book of Blue, New York.

Levy continues, “Trying to kill our shadow as it appears in the outer world is itself the embodied reflection of our original inner act of splitting off from, projecting out and trying to destroy the dark part of ourselves, which is the impulse at the very root of shadow projection in the first place. In other words, our present-moment ‘inner’ activity of projecting the shadow ‘outside’ of ourselves is being dreamed up and played out in the seemingly ‘external’ world. The outer world is the canvas upon which our inner process embodies, or incarnates itself. We are literally acting out on the world stage our very inner process of disassociating from, projecting out, and trying to destroy our own darkness (emphasis added).”

We do this at our own peril. We not only create pain, which makes more guilt and thus more shadow to project; we are consuming our national resources in an existence of nonstop war. We burn creative energy on conflict, which subtracts it from loving and creating and building and cooperating.

Putting a bullet through Osama bin Laden’s head is just more projection. Everyone is acting as if this, too, will have no consequences.

I have a good friend who’s a truly perceptive psychologist. Her name is Christine Farber. Watching young people dancing in the streets Sunday night, I was so disturbed that I wrote to her to ask her what she thought was going on. I noticed something sexual in the vibes of these people gloating in the death of Osama bin Laden. It seemed like they finally had been given permission to show a little passion; not be so damned cool.

Christine replied:

My 20-year-old nephew is now planning to have Sunday’s date tattooed somewhere on his body; he informed me that he clapped and screamed and danced when he heard the news Sunday night. What are these responses about, at their core? You mention sex; I’m sure you’re on to something, and I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts about this on Friday.

I think about Eros and power and vulnerability and compassion and healing. I mean Eros in the sense of how we rise to meet the world, and what inspires us to do so. We rise differently if we have experienced traveling into our vulnerability — really being there — rather than fleeing from it. Your own writings, especially Book of Blue, describe this experience and the healing and compassion and empowerment that come with it.

Fleeing from vulnerability can still allow for certain expressions of power, that of power over something, which is where I think most of our world is on this issue. Many people felt vicariously powerful hearing the news of BL’s death. I received the following text from someone the next day: “Great for America. Shows the world that no matter what it takes, we’ll get ya!” I heard this same sentiment expressed over and over, and it I saw it in the faces of those chanting “USA” at ballgames, in streets, etc. It’s as though folks were waiting, perhaps desperately, for something to inspire them to rise up to meet the world with passion. Waiting for that something that could allow them to feel powerful. And waiting for something that would help them to feel connected to something larger than themselves (in this case, their country).

If, as a country, we did a little more hanging out with vulnerability — traveling downward, deeply into ourselves; being with those hidden hurts and desires and vulnerabilities — then I think the response to this event would have looked different, very different. Both individual and collective Eros would have other outlets, inspirations, and manifestations. We’d be more able to see through the illusions of violence. We could forgive.

What I find most striking is that people are craving power (which could be fulfilled through empowerment rather than power-over) and connection and inspiration. I like to believe that the jubilation comes from experiencing this — i.e., fulfillment of the more archetypal cravings underlying the experience, even if this fulfillment is short-lived, backward, skewed, and otherwise disturbing. Am I being too optimistic?

Personally, I don’t think so.

Yours & truly,

Additional Research: Mandy Hall, Eileen Mahood-Jose, Amanda Painter.

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, May 6, 2011, #858 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — You now have access to parts of your psyche that are so different from who you usually consider yourself to be, that you may feel compelled to reconsider your identity from top to bottom. If your mind is alert and alive, these things happen from time to time; the current theme is how you relate to your feminine side. Until now you may not have fully taken ownership of this aspect of yourself — but then, you may have never associated it with the kind of creativity and passion that you can tap into right now. If there’s a part of you that’s feeling overwhelmed or intimidated, this might be the spot to focus on; to tap into and access some unusual ideas or strength. Even if you do nothing but observe yourself, you will notice something truly different over the next few days, and that something different points to a new source of wisdom. Here is the thing: you are an Aries and this astrology is happening in your sign. You make your awareness real by acting on it.

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

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — What seems to be a hidden matter or cause is not so hidden at all. In fact, it’s everywhere you look. You’re not sleeping, so what transpires in your life follows the logic of the waking world and not a dream. For the conscious, denial is not an option, and besides, nothing happening in your charts suggests you have something to deny — except for one thing. You seem to be struggling to come to terms with fear. Fear comes in response to what you think of as ‘the unknown’. There seems to be so much, but I assure you, it’s not so unknown. You merely need to look at your life and collect evidence of what is so. I suggest you consider strongly what you think of as your potential, including your unexpressed talents. What is your reasoning process as regards these sources of energy, pleasure and abundance? What do you tell yourself, when it comes to your ideas about your own development and growth? Check your logic.

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

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Think of all the times you felt excluded: too special to fit in, too ordinary to fit in, too smart to fit in. Then in some odd way you emerged as a leader. Remember all the times you felt insecure, only to discover that you were really the dependable one, in possession of some actual confidence. There is something to be said for this approach to life; it’s a way to cultivate modesty, and you’ve used it as a way to focus your objectivity. It’s also a form of camouflage. But let’s consider something else. Imagine you enter the situations you encounter without making any of those assumptions. Neither do you assume you’re better in any way; but let’s start by removing any possibility of a handicap. Let’s start assuming you have a leadership role; that you know your mind is the most creative one around; and that your intellect has a mobile quality that allows you to see above, beneath and around every situation. Use what you’ve got, kid. And don’t hide it.

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

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — There is something about your professional aspirations, or your potential, that is truly unusual — and now is the time to put that where the whole world can see it. Stay visible; make sure people know your accomplishments. Be absolutely real, and forget all the ways you think you’ve failed, or haven’t lived up, or have taken too long to get where you’re going. Tell yourself the other side of the story. You dare. You persist, even when you have your doubts. You may need proof to believe you’re an innovator, but let me speak for your astrology. You are one, and that quality is emerging from you at its strongest (probably ever) in these very days and weeks of your life. One factor of success of any kind is thinking of yourself as that successful person. If you can identify with the notion of achievement, or of yourself as a person who is talented and accomplished, you can be that person. Give it a try.

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) — It’s time to set one new goal. You may have more; but pick the most important one, and pick a timeframe wherein you want to make it happen. I suggest giving yourself a little more time than you think; perhaps double what you think would be a best-case scenario, so you have space to get your work done. Then break down the steps to making it happen, and go for it — one meticulous step at a time. Remember that step one is the vision. It’s knowing what you intend or desire to create, and then putting the full focus of your mind behind it. This is partly an exercise in how it’s possible to accomplish anything at all, so remember the steps you took on the way to this particular project, because you’ll need them for the next. Now is the time to create and refine your method, because you will get to use it over and over again during the next few months.

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) — Now is the time to consider your investments — and any debts you may have — in a new way. Debts, even small ones, can be a significant mental burden for many people, equivalent to the financial burden. It’s the idea of owing money that becomes as difficult as any other part, and that has a way of taking over one’s identity. I suggest devising a way of thinking of any money you owe as something other than who you are. On the other side of the ledger are your investments. What have you put your energy into the past few years? What commitments have you made, and what agreements are you in? Looked at rationally, are you getting a sufficient return on your investments? In what form does that return arrive? There seems to be a question, because your charts speak of both a drive to do something innovative, and a longing for freedom. As you shift your identity from what you owe to what you give, you will get a more authentic idea of who you are.

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) — For all you’ve been confronted with lately — and there is a lot — you know where your true loyalties are. Remember them. Your charts speak of many options open, many possibilities, new horizons and a few disruptions. While you’re in the midst of navigating all of this, you’re figuring out what means the most to you, and why. It’s excellent to have a solid feeling about at least one thing. Lest you think you should have it about everything, imagine what it would be like to have no solid ground at all, nobody you can trust, no assurance that there is someone who truly values you. There are plenty of people who have no idea what any of this feels like, or it’s been so long they’ve forgotten. Remind yourself what helps you keep your sanity and your grounding. And remember that being this person to others counts, even if it’s in subtle ways.

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) — Please stop obsessing over your health. I know the environment and most of the food we eat are toxic. We’re all getting older. But your mental pattern is not helping — and you’re well positioned to change your mind. I suggest you start with an idea of what it means to be healthy. Create a concept of wellbeing. Make it original. I suggest you include your idea of relationships that support your presence in the world, your sense of belonging and most of all, your productivity. It’s essential that you not compromise who you are in order to be acceptable in a relationship. This should go without saying, but the world has some rather different notions of what it means to ‘be together’ so we do need to keep the topic upfront in your mind. Remember — your concept of relating to others needs to be flexible, as do the people you relate to. You’ll figure out whether that is true soon enough.

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 are still in the idea phase; you’ve yet to really get down to work, though now is the time for that. Yes, it’s definitely still the time to focus on the concept of what you’re doing, and the chance you want to take on something — however, the moment is ripe to start doing the real work. That should feel like construction of some kind; a transition from paper to wood, from a sketch to clay; from entirely flexible ideas to an experiment with the materials you will use. You need to get your body into the project, and get your hands dirty. As you do this, you’ll feel the change in your thinking; there is a dimension shift involved, and once you move into 3D, that will have the effect of sculpting your thoughts and ideas. And you need to be shaped by them as much as they need to be shaped by you — though it’s only going to happen in physical reality, in real time. Perhaps even with a welding torch.

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) — For the past few weeks it’s like you’ve been running the triathlon. One emotional challenge after the next has surfaced; one fear after the next, compelling you to take charge of your life in what seems like a different way every day. Now that whole sequence of challenges has passed. It’s gone on so long you may still be braced for the next one. You still have body memory of every day facing a challenge different from the prior one. I suggest you take a moment and appreciate the relative calm. But do so only long enough for you to take action on what you kept wanting to do before, but which kept getting interrupted. You have much more support right now, and you’re feeling stronger. One by one, planets are about to enter your fellow earthy sign Taurus, which is going to feed you energy. Use it well, while you have the opportunity — and it is truly an opportunity.

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) — Yes, what you’re thinking is original, yes, it’s a little weird, and yes, it’s a good idea. There are a lot of good ideas — so many in fact, it’s a little tragic. I say that because most of those ideas don’t ever get applied to the problems they were intended to solve, or manifest in the form of something useful; that’s the part that takes work. Yet it takes discernment to recognize that what you’re thinking has a value. I assure you that it does, and that it has a value beyond what you can imagine now. Now, this whole concept of value is going to be the big question over the next few years, and I strongly suggest you put your mind to this question — the value of ideas, and of your ideas. Value must be recognized and acted on; if you hesitate between the two, ask yourself why you’re doing so. Time does not last forever. Meditation is a virtue; hesitation is not.

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’re well on the way to figuring out you exist. I’m not kidding when I say that most people don’t know they exist. If they did, they would live differently than they do. And as you make the latest in your ongoing series of self-discoveries, you will choose to live differently, in ways both subtle and bold. You’re in the process of making a discovery that has not quite come into focus yet, though as it does, you will see that the way to certain decisions is open, where before it seemed blocked. One important dimension of this discovery is about your relationship between self-esteem and money. Said another way, it’s about self-respect and power. Once you respect who you are, your power ceases to be compromised. You are less vulnerable to manipulation. And success will seem less like an alien thing and more like something you do naturally every day.

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

Anything But Stuck: A Taurus Adventure

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Dear Friend and Reader:

The mystery of ‘self’ is one of the most persistent questions of modern times. In fact, it seems to be a good bit older; who is this critter lurking behind the mind and the senses? In our own age, many of us have grown up immersed in psychology. Of course, what we think of as psychology started as the study of the soul, and that has long been the domain of mysticism.

Photo by Eric Francis.

However you prefer to slice the orange, May is an exceptionally interesting month for the process of self-awareness. Now, what do I mean by that? I mean the journey of growth and healing that many of us are on, or aspire to be on. I mean collecting on all those workshops you’ve taken, and all those books you’ve read, and all that therapy you’ve done — all designed to help you wake up to being a whole person, with access to your talents and resources.

Still, the question can persist: when we have the sensation that there is something about ourselves we want to change, how do we go about doing that? Or maybe it feels like this: “I have so many options, which is right for me?” Or even, “I seem to have no options at all. How can I make some?”

Think of this as the puzzle of claiming who you are, summoning your resources and deciding that your life is yours to live, and therefore, to change. That sequence of events takes a mix of awareness, understanding and action. If you’re paying attention for the next few weeks, all of those things will be bubbling and percolating in a rather bold way. In the background is Uranus in Aries, which puts the world on notice that self-awakening is the theme of our decade. Then there is Chiron in Pisces, which is deeper, reminding us that soul awakening is the theme of our decade. Gradually, the two levels will merge.

In our immediate moment, this unusually exciting month has just begun with the Taurus New Moon earlier today, May 3. The New Moon happens at a time of year called Beltane, the ancient celebration of The May, famous for the May Pole, the May Queen, and the “bustle in your hedgerow” of Led Zeppelin fame. It’s the time of year for bonfires and frolicking in the fields to make them rich and fertile for the crop that’s about to be planted. This New Moon is packed with both Taurus and Aries energy. The Sun and Moon will be in Taurus, yet we also have Uranus, Venus, Mercury, Eris, Jupiter and Mars in Aries, along with an interesting lunar point called the Black Moon Lilith. All of that is pointing to the unusual array of ‘selves’ we have available to try on.

Taurus wants something solid and unambiguous. Yet lurking right behind it is a paintbox full of colors (mostly yellow, red and orange hues) that we can use to illustrate this elusive notion of self.

Photo by Eric Francis.

Mercury was recently retrograde in Aries, and has been making many conjunctions, emphasizing the point. Still slow and powerful in the sky, Mercury is in contact with many of these Aries planets — in particular, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Eris, in a close sequence. That is showing us option after option for who we can be and how we can feel. There’s a particularly spectacular triple conjunction on May 9 between Mercury, Venus and Eris, the basic message of which is: there are many ways to love, and many ways to express love.

This energy is anything but stuck. Taurus can have a challenge getting going (like the cow in the Far Side cartoon who proposes a stampede, but none of the other cows are interested). Yet mixed with Aries, we get the true nature of Taurus — earthy on the outside, fiery on the inside. There is raw passion inside all of that sensuality, and there’s curiosity too. You can think of the solid nature of Taurus as something to ground into or use as a foundation while we’re busy exploring the more explosive energies that reside below the surface.

To the other side of Aries is Pisces. Much of the developing news this year has involved Chiron and Neptune arriving in the most watery sign of the zodiac, connected with the depths of inner awareness, emotions, creativity and out-of-body communication. We have the constant reminder to be inwardly aware. Chiron and Neptune, both decidedly spiritual influences, are in a long conjunction, lasting many years — and now the conjunction has moved into Pisces. This is an invitation. Yes, the material world and the expression of the personality are interesting. Yet Pisces grants a sense of depth and meaning, the potential to create a vision, and the reminder that only you can know who you truly are.

The horoscopes below interpret these aspects. There is much, much more for you in Light Bridge, my annual readings (in audio and written word) for 2011. Catch you Friday — or see you over at Planet Waves with the Wednesday podcast.

Lovingly, your astrologer

Eric Francis Birthday Audio and Tarot

Birthday audio for 2011 will be available soon. These are extended readings for your sign which explore your solar return for 2011. These in-depth readings cover new subject matter you haven’t read about before, and take a new look at topics I’ve covered elsewhere. Aries will be done shortly, with Taurus soon to follow. I’ll then backtrack and cover the signs that had birthdays earlier in the year. Check for Aries this week and please watch this space for other signs. The readings are about an hour in length and also include a tarot reading for your sign. They were a big hit last year and we look forward to making them available soon.

Planet Waves Monthly Horoscopes for May 2011

Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Be careful about being right. I don’t doubt — at least on one level — that you are correct in what you’re thinking, but I suggest you be cautious about any presumed entitlement or privilege flowing from that notion. Right is too close to self-righteous, and that won’t work in your favor. The equation, ‘I have this, therefore, I deserve more’, is especially toxic, though it takes subtle forms that you may not notice. Any such feeling is being driven by forces lurking beneath your awareness, which may include the fear of isolation, conflict within your values, or a phobia about not knowing who you are. You may find yourself obsessed with trying to figure yourself out, and to evaluate whether you’re acting in an ethical way. I suggest you measure your happiness using factors such as your sense of abundance, your generosity and your level of fear. This is the time to mix having with giving, rather than to mix having with withholding or demanding. Now, I recognize you may think these are good ideas, but perhaps you’re wondering where you’re going to find the flexibility to keep an open mind. That is an internal matter, something you really cannot negotiate with others. You are not at the mercy of your personality or your conditioning. You are only at the mercy of your awareness. With so much activity in your world, pausing to reflect deeply may not be something that occurs to you naturally; this is your reminder.

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

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — To understand the nature of your inner struggle, consider your parents’ relationship to one another. It may serve as a useful map to your psyche. On what points did they get along? On what points did they conflict? Did they consider one another faithful, and what became of any incident wherein there was some breach of faith? What was their shared experience of sex? How were decisions about money made? Who ruled the roost, and how? Map out their experiences and you will have a tangible way of mapping out your inner reality. You may notice that in your day-to-day choices, you dramatize the harmony or conflict that they lived with, possibly for decades. And what if you don’t know about some of these dynamics between them? You may have an indication of missing knowledge of your inner territory. How would it feel to ask your parents about their most private matters? What subjects could you broach, and which would you avoid? What does that say about your willingness to explore your own motives? Any psychic or emotional exercise involving one’s parents may point to a missing parent, or a relationship that wasn’t really a relationship. This can provide as much information as direct facts; it always helps to be aware of what is missing. One thing is clear: one of your parents may have been deeply mistrustful and envious of the other. How does that dynamic play out in your inner life? How can you foster trust in yourself? This would be the key to your happiness.

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

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — The time has arrived to be bold about your vision, and about putting it into words and especially action. You need all three now; each is an essential ingredient of manifestation. You are past the phase of doing things in a seeming vacuum, or in the confines of your own mind. You are at the phase where cooperation is essential, and where the results of what you create will involve a community experience of some kind. At least that seems to be your intent. Yet if you’re new to this level of accomplishment, you may feel some distinct unease at ‘putting yourself out there’. For example, you have no way to control an idea once it’s out of your hands. You have no control over how people perceive you, no matter how careful you are about guarding your reputation. I suggest, therefore, that you give up on control and stick to the core of what you are offering. Why is it original? What are the benefits of what you’re doing? One thing that I’ve seen a lot of people struggle with is the notion that others will benefit from something that they do, without a direct return to themselves. I can think of few things that would more effectively stand in the way of abundance than being concerned that someone else might benefit from you. Take pleasure in that possibility. It seems that at the basis of your vision is some significant benefit to the world; get that going from day one.

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

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — What you do and what you accomplish is not merely directly, intimately connected to who you are; right now there is no distinction at all. Therefore, project yourself fully into what you’re doing. Bring in every resource that you have, every talent, every idea. I suggest, in particular, that you focus on what you consider your most radical ideas or plans. Radical means reaching into the roots, so what I am suggesting is about depth rather than about how shocking something is. Some may consider it shocking, and one measure of depth is the feeling of being drawn out of your safe zone. Ideally what you begin at this juncture will have a feeling of risk, and of being a little edgy. Ideally you’ll feel like you have to risk your reputation in order to do something more authentic than you’ve ever done. Think of what would be your most idealistic future plan, and then remember that it’s possible to put into action now. At this moment you are opening a door to a new phase of your creative life, which is what you used to think of as your professional life. Therefore, this is the time to claim your deepest mission. Send yourself the message that what you’re doing is real and you will signal this to the world. Let everything you say and do have the same basic message. If you get distracted or caught in externals, go back to the roots of what you’re doing and express yourself from there.

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) — Various religious manifestos claim that mankind is guilty of usurping the power of God. This has always struck me as odd. It seems that religion is what has stolen many precious things from humanity. It tries to tell us who we are and are not; it defines ‘bad’ and ‘good’ in ways that brutally limit us and coopt the study of ethics; and it has swiped cosmology wholesale, taking control over our ideas of birth and death. There is just one artist mentioned in the Bible — Bezalel, whose job is to build a temple (go figure). Last and surely not least, I cannot think of one of the world’s major religions that is friendly to sex. So what of the human experience hasn’t religion usurped? Automotive repair? To a surprising degree, religion has not succeeded in doing much at all to you personally. While it’s better to overestimate the damage caused by turning God into an institution and law book, you seem to have made it into adulthood as someone who has direct access to your cosmic source. You have your own fully conscious ways of discerning right and wrong. And your notion of who you are is defined not by what anyone has told you but rather by your own impressively restless, staunchly independent quest for truth. Man, I hope even half of that is true! It’s certainly what is possible for you right now. Just remember when you run up to Mount Olympus and get some of that fire, you’re not stealing — you’re stealing back.

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 seem to be involved in many different levels of business arrangements and personal commitments. It almost seems that your quest for self-discovery is being distributed among many situations. This can be confusing, though for the past few weeks it looks like you’ve been experimenting with the possibilities and getting a feel for who your potential collaborators are. This process isn’t over yet, though something interesting seems ready to emerge — which is your vision for yourself. It’s as if the more options you see that involve others, the more you see that you’re different, and that nobody’s model or concept fits your life, your plans or your talent. Yet you can, if you want, draw on the resources and talents of many people in support of your dreams, and that seems to be the most productive use of your options. The beauty of the moment is that no one personal contact is defining or limiting who you are. You now know that you make the final decisions about who you are and what you want, and this is the month to stake your turf. Put down a solid foundation now, in terms of a clear declaration to yourself, as well as some concrete action or investment, and you are likely to see an excellent return on that commitment during the next few months. The bolder and the more tangible your plan, the better. One last clue — anything you’re envious of, you can do better. So don’t waste your time on anything except creating your world.

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) — For the 17 years I’ve been writing this horoscope, I’ve been sensitive to the idea that many people have multiple relationships, and that others want to, while only rarely referencing the concept directly. Checking my archive of 12,000 horoscope entries, I’ve used the word ‘polyamory’ just three times since 1999. You just heard the fourth. There’s an old expression in art that form follows function. Your life would seem to be populated by a diversity of truly interesting people at the moment, and full of the surprises, innovative ideas and potential disruptions that they have to offer. From the look of things, you’re interested in several of them, though with different experiences developing independently of one another. One of these influences seems to be radically transforming your vision of yourself, your aesthetic sensibilities and your idea of freedom. Other people have different roles, though the common thread is that you have a point of contact with each of them. There is an equally strong pull to bond with someone in a way that may have been more appropriate for our parents’ generation. Yet you are at a kind of a crossroads where you can look honestly at your predecessors and their relationship style, how that shaped their lives. Remember that nobody is forcing you to make a decision, and you don’t need to follow the old values of the past in thinking that you have to. You have options, and now is the time to keep them open.

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 probably getting tired of working so much — and it seems like a new horizon in a relationship is opening up. I would just offer you a word of caution about one thing. At the moment you’re becoming aware what a multifaceted person you are. This has always been true, though you’re likely to be feeling its true potential now, as you open up to being a full-spectrum human. The relationship situation that might seem so appealing has the potential to limit this nascent awareness that you’re developing. So if you choose to get involved with someone, or take a situation to a deeper level, make sure that you bring your diversity with you. You’re under no obligation to be less of a person so that someone else doesn’t feel threatened. This simply doesn’t work; I’m not saying that from theory, I’m speaking from experience, and not just my own. Therefore, don’t make any promises you aren’t sure you can keep, even if they get you something you want. Be cautious if you think you’re compromising your values system for a good cause. It won’t be long before you figure out that you’re boxed in. At the moment, you’re only at the beginning of your journey of self-expression. I suggest you guard your freedom carefully. Remember that there are concepts of relationship other than the ones that insist you have to give up a piece of who you are as the price of admission. Where you want to be is the place where your whole existence is welcome.

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 you look around and you see a world that metes out amoral and unethical treatment of others, I imagine you wonder what you can do about it. You don’t need to look far to see this, and at the moment you’re particularly vulnerable to noticing injustice. The appropriate response is connected to what you think the cause of these problems is. You may have noticed that it goes a lot deeper than most people realize. Humans are confronted not only with an environment wherein there is exceedingly little trust in many relationships, but with constant effort to use that as a manipulation device. You could, therefore, respond by striving for trust within your personal relationships, and do what you can to correct the small injustices that you notice. In a world where it’s considered ethical to take, you could invest your energy in giving. I suggest you strive to nourish the world not as a special activity, but rather as part of all that you do. While you’re doing that, notice what is nourishing about everyone you meet. There is always something. You don’t even need to like someone to find something about them that enriches your perception. And you don’t need to like someone to be friendly and supportive. One simple but bold approach to avoiding exploitation is to set up the various exchanges of your life on terms that are mutually supportive. And if you give a little more than you receive, you will figure out how much you have.

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 need a new way to express yourself. There is so much steam and fire in your chart, I strongly suggest you not only vent it but put it to creative use. You may be feeling overwhelmed and looking for a way to calm down; you may feel like you’re being crowded out of your own home or your own emotional body. These are real feelings with actual causes behind them; but it’s not the kind of thing you can fix or sort out in a short time. The sensual world is the place to take refuge. It’s worth reminding you that Capricorn is an earthy sign, so your mode of expression needs a kinesthetic quality to it: something you can wrap your hands around. Music would work well; a hand drum would let you express some of the fire that’s burning in your soul. If you’re going to do art of some kind, I suggest clay rather than drawing, and if you’re going to experiment with a craft, I suggest something more like welding and less like paper mache. Meanwhile, what are all these factors from the past that have shown up, right in the moment when you want to spring yourself into the future? From the looks of your solar chart, the moment you decided you were done with the past, a whole lot more history showed up for you to look at. Have no fear: the force of progress is a lot greater than anything that could hold you down. Just remember to keep your energy moving, and moving fast.

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) — While the astrology of the next month doesn’t give your mind, or your workload, much time off, there are big changes in the home and family angle of your chart. For as restless as you are, the emphasis is now on grounding yourself in a meaningful way. You need a solid base of operations. While you may have many ideas for where or what that could be, you seem well poised to make some significant improvements in your situation. If nothing else, you can get clear about your newest idea of what a home really is, and conduct some experiments to see what fits. There is the sensation of making something new from basic elements rather than walking into a pre-fabricated situation. This is more like building a new house than it is like buying an old one, but the implication is emotional rather than physical. Your knowledge of what makes you feel secure is evolving. Your sense of your income potential is evolving as well. But mostly you seem to be getting clear about your necessity for stability and comfort, and this is illustrated by the Taurus New Moon, which happens in the angle of your solar chart associated with putting down roots. If there is a note of caution, this involves the relationship between jealousy and security. Most people you ask would say the two are related, and that jealousy is a sign of true love. I would say you’ll feel a lot more secure if you understand what jealousy is and why you want a better option.

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) — Everything you see in the world has a point of origin, which was invariably a human idea, decision or action — usually all three. You are at a point in your life when the things you think, decide or go for have a deeply original quality. You not only have the power to make something new, you are very likely doing precisely that. You may not recognize it at the moment; I strongly suggest you bring your full awareness to what you’re doing, and what you can be doing if you give yourself the flexibility and space to express yourself. How you manage space is vital to this, and that primarily involves your mental space. If there’s something you know is important to you, that your soul is calling out to create, make a space for it. By definition the space would be empty at first, existing for the sake of eventually being filled. It will be, soon enough. Have the flexibility to recognize if something a little different comes in; creative process is enhanced by exploring variables in a playful way. But remember your purpose, your initial intent, your true desire. And keep holding open that space, as a conscious strategy. It may be a space of time devoted to a single purpose. It may be a physical space that you work in, or alter. It may be some kind of a notebook or online work area. Remember that these are physical metaphors for honoring and working with the inner space of an idea. Begin in earnest now, apply yourself every day, and evaluate in three months.

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

Eric Francis Birthday Audio and Tarot

May is Self-Awareness Month

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Dear Friend and Reader:

In late 2010, one of the Planet Waves editors posted to our blog an article she found about the odd relationship options offered by Facebook (for example, the category ‘it’s complicated’ being a stand-in for everything other than something supposedly normal, without saying what). Following that article back to its source, a blog called Onely.org, I discovered the existence of a singles movement.

Photo by Eric Francis – Blue Studio, New York.

A singles movement? This is about people for whom conventional relationship models do not work, or more simply put, a movement of people who want to go solo. Methods of doing this vary, but I can generalize a little. They don’t want to date in any conventional way, they don’t live with the expectation of marriage, they don’t cohabitate, and they don’t do the boyfriend-girlfriend thing. They don’t want to be half of a couple, in the immortal words of Erica Jong; they want to be a whole person, and the easiest way for them to facilitate that is to be single, our society’s ultimate form of queer.

There are a lot of possibilities here, but the main idea overall is stepping outside the box of relationship expectations in which we so often get caught, like it or not. Those who are living a solo way of life might count their friends and erotic partners as being on an equal par, on the basis that all relationships have value. One is not on a higher rung than another. From what I have read, there’s substantial questioning of how society compels many people to embrace relationship options that might not (or absolutely do not) work for them.

There is as much questioning of heteronormative conditioning as there is in any queer community. In case you haven’t heard that word, it’s a keeper: heteronormative — a concept to contain all the rules and regulations you’re supposed to follow in a world oriented primarily on heterosexual relationships, which are considered the norm — indeed, there’s still a compulsory quality. I am always intrigued every time I see a wedding band flashed in a TV commercial, particularly on a man’s hand, which is often. No matter what product they’re selling, the other product is marriage.

The idea of a singles movement immediately sounded revolutionary because much of the relationship discussion is about what form of long-term committed relationship one chooses (mono or poly, married or living together, gay or straight), rather than questioning the orthodoxy of relationship. Many people have the feeling that if they’re not ‘in a relationship’ they’re not normal. Many places having a partner or spouse is the equivalent of fully-vested citizenship. Once you have someone on your arm, you’re allowed into society. Meanwhile, if you’re not ‘in a relationship’, what about all your other relationships. Why don’t they count? Well, as for what counts, we’re almost always talking Relationship with a big R.

Over the years I’ve been an astrologer, I’ve worked with, and heard from, many people for whom the relationship game as it’s currently set up simply does not work. Who they are does not fit any known model of relationship, and they cannot seem to find partners who match their values. Many of these people are the aware and questioning types, who strive to live consciously. Many of them even want to be in a relationship that suits them, but don’t seem to find suitable situations.

So I was happy to find some information and validation that seemed to be skewed in their direction. Exploring other websites in this genre, the discussion I read was often politically astute and a bit indignant. There was a lot of discussion of why married people get such significant tax breaks. And why should the dentist be asking about your marital status? Is that vaguely relevant to getting your teeth cleaned? If they need to notify your next of kin that you have a cavity, they can call your sister.

Photo by Eric Francis – Blue Studio, New York.

Out of curiosity, I started typing the word ‘masturbation’ into search engines on various singles movement sites and getting nothing back (with the exception of one derogatory reference to ‘mental masturbation’). I thought this lack of discussion was interesting and more than a bit strange. Here was a movement advocating living freely and being detached from relationship expectations as a vocal choice.

We all know that many people stay in relationships to assure a supply of sex, even if those relationships don’t always serve their other growth needs. To be free of these dysfunctional relationships, it would help (in my fantasy world) to have an idea of sexual independence we could aspire to. And one logical starting point for that would be really, truly understanding one’s inner sexuality, and doing well with being one’s own lover. But the movement advocating how you can be free of these relationships, at least that I could find that evening, had nothing to say about sex with oneself.

The movement advocating being single was the very last place I would have guessed there was a taboo on discussing solo sex. Clearly, if you’re single and want to be, that implies that sex with oneself is not a substitute for anything, and also that (assuming you have a sex drive) it’s an entirely necessary state of affairs. If being single implied having a low sex drive, Thomas Edison would have never invented the singles bar.

I wrote to the editor of one of these websites, and after a round of emails that went on for a few weeks, she basically told me that they just didn’t feel comfortable talking about self-sex. I admit to being a bit naïve, but truly, I was stunned. Okay, just a little stunned. The lack of authentic sexual conversation is normal fare in our culture. In exploring the many reasons why masturbation is still taboo, we must include that as one of them. But I think it goes deeper. It’s fair to say that considerable embarrassment surrounds the topic of masturbation. It’s private, and most people would rather keep it that way (unless you count their fantasies of getting caught).

Photo by Eric Francis – Blue Studio, Brussels.

It’s about to be May, which was officially designated Masturbation Month back in 1995 by the Good Vibrations toy stores in Berkeley and San Francisco. We now have 31 days of cultural sanction for the conversation. Speaking as an astrologer, I’ve always thought it was appropriate that the time of year when the Sun is in Taurus (the sign of self-value, associated with physical sensuality) was a great time to start the festivities. And by the end of May we have Gemini lighting up the sky, a delightfully kinky sign associated with the ‘dual self’ phenomenon — a kind of inner mirror where you can see yourself as any gender you like.

What exactly is Masturbation Month? It’s a little like Chrysanthemum Appreciation Week, only it involves masturbation and it lasts a month — and it’s a lot more radical. I don’t think Obama signed a proclamation, but we can pretend.

What would the conversation be about? I would propose that masturbation is about a lot more than masturbation — and that’s the reason it’s still considered so taboo by many people, and in many places. First, I would say that masturbation holds the key to all sexuality. It’s a kind of proto-sexuality, the core of the matter of what it means to be sexual. I mean this in an existential sense. Masturbation is the most elemental form of sexuality, requiring only awareness and a body. Whatever we experience when we go there is what we bring into our sexual encounters with others — whether we recognize it or not. Many factors (such as projection and denial) contribute to obscuring this simple fact.

However, people who are comfortable with their sexuality in general are likely to be comfortable with masturbation. It also works the other way. If you want to know how someone feels about sex, ask them how they feel about masturbation and you’ll get your real answer. Self-sex is a path to self-knowledge, which is essential to mature, healthy relationships. The less mature relationships can be mazes of ignorance and codependency, and often, sexual dependency is a major ingredient in the glue that bonds these encounters together.

This, in my opinion, is why masturbation, and by that I mean conscious self-sex, is so revolutionary. It’s a bold way to be who you are, as you are, regardless of any expectations of relationship.

In contemplating the masturbation taboo, I figured out something that turns out to be a factor in the oldest literature that insists masturbation must be forbidden: it has a tendency to open up one’s fantasy life. And we all know this knows no bounds. That, in turn, can point to desire for sexual and relational options other than what one has at the moment, outside the rules. Far from being a mechanical experience of sexual maintenance that it’s often portrayed as being, self-sex helps us open up an inner world of possibilities.

Photo by Eric Francis – Blue Studio, New York.

Within that world are two basic elements: what we want, and what we keep in the shadows. Where pair-bonded relationships are the norm, desire for anything other than what we have in the current relationship is often regarded as forbidden territory. If you have sex with yourself, who are you thinking about? That can grant a tremendous sense of inner freedom, something we dearly need. If revealed to anyone else, it can also open up a can of worms. If you have a partner or spouse, I ask you — can you reveal the contents of your fantasy life to him or her? Some brave couples may be able to do this with powerful results. As one of my favorite authors once wrote, only the truth is erotic. Pretend for a moment that the contents of your imagination are not private.

Consider the possibility that the people closest to you, or even those who pick up on your energy, might catch on to what’s going on in your inner world of desire. The more perceptive people in your world can see through you, and those with whom you’re sexually intimate, or attracted to, might be able to tap right in. Yet what we call the ego puts up all kinds of blocks to this awareness, and by that I mean fear expressed as shame or embarrassment.

For many people, knowing that their partner is thinking about a past or potential lover (or a current secret lover) would lead to some deep insecurities coming to the surface. So when we stash away masturbation, we’re stashing away all the secret desires held in our erotic and amorous fantasies, as well as papering over those insecurities. They will then tend to surface in our relationships in other ways, primarily as jealousy.

The term shadow material from Jungian psychoanalysis fits well here. Shadow is all this stuff we contain within ourselves, including guilt, shame, the fear of abandonment, rage, hatred and all their cousins. These are emotions we tend to project into relationships. For example, we might see them as qualities in others but not ourselves. They might become ‘issues’ in the relationship. It’s easy to understand how this works. An insecure person is much likelier to be jealous of a partner than someone who is confident in themselves and in the relationship (usually in that order). In that case, jealousy would be a projection of insecurity (and/or envy and/or the fear of abandonment).

Photo by Eric Francis – Blue Studio, New York.

Conscious masturbation, and by that I mean your inner erotic reality experienced as part of your ongoing relationship with yourself, is one way to access and process these dark feelings rather than project them outward. If you experience any embarrassment, shame or misgiving around masturbation (and most people do, at least occasionally), consider the possibility that these things obscure something deeper, that being your point of contact with yourself. You can call that self-love or self-esteem; you can call it being centered in your reality. I am talking about an authentic inner journey, the kind that usually gets categorized in the bin with the label ‘spiritual’, but which has a distinctly sexual sensation.

Given that religion as we know it (particularly as Christians, Jews or Muslims) has not only made sexuality allegedly bad, but has also built its fortune on doing so, it can take quite a bit of determination to go here. We are all influenced by religion’s misgivings and control dramas around sex. The fact that so many people experience forms of false modesty, embarrassment, shame and guilt, in many facets of life, and also where masturbation is a factor, suggests that there is a connection. And I would add that because the control games of religion are most often aimed at women, self-eroticism in any form is particularly revolutionary for them. For many women it is the first place they can step out of their chains and confront the shame of existence that is so often projected onto female sexuality. Let’s remember that there are many, many women for whom masturbation provides their only orgasms.

I’m also speaking to anyone who feels like they depend on others for their sexual pleasure and sense of self-contact a bit more than they want to, and who may live with the secret knowledge that they want to be more independent.

I will leave you with an idea that I’m developing in other venues this month, which is self-centered sexuality. I know, this is the thing we’re supposed to avoid in that we’re ‘not supposed to be selfish’. I’m not talking about selfish, I’m talking about self. Self-centered sexuality means being centered within yourself. This is different from narcissism, which translates loosely to, ‘nobody besides me exists, or matters’.

Taking this to a fully conscious level, say, as conscious as yoga practice, is something that would benefit everyone, and is a space for unpartnered people to explore their authentic sexuality. I would also propose as part of this that couples explore getting closer to one another by masturbating in one another’s presence. This is perfectly intuitive for some people and just as counter-intuitive for others. In the experience, I suggest including the full content of your mind and not just your body. In case you experience embarrassment, I would offer you the idea that the very hottest sexual experiences are just on the other side of that veil.

Photo by Eric Francis – Blue Studio, New York.

For those who consider themselves ‘not in a relationship’, this opens up many possibilities, including a great option for ‘friends with benefits’. That would be sharing masturbation, something that can be surprisingly natural and fulfilling, but absent most of the usual worries about sex (pregnancy, STIs, over-attachment). It’s a way to share sex without the baggage of thinking you have to get married or even send flowers.

You’ll also have an opportunity to encounter material that has come up in your past relationships, and (for example) explore healing your self-esteem, body issues or sexual shadow material. Imagine if you could enter your encounters with others from a confident and self-aware place, understanding who you are and what you want. That would give you a new basis for choosing a partner, or allow you to consider the idea that you might not want to be in a conventional relationship. Imagine if you could fully embrace the sexuality of everyone you meet, with open-minded curiosity rather than a sense of threat. This is what I mean by self-centered sexuality.

So, the sex toy stores may be calling this Masturbation Month. I would revise that to Self-Awareness Month.

Lovingly,

Photo selections by Sarah Bissonnette-Adler.

Was Royal Wedding Chart Planned by Astrologers?

Yesterday, I asked what royal astrologers — assuming they exist — were thinking when they planned the chart for today’s wedding of William and Kate (which began at 11 am London time, 6 am EDT). The chart has one unusual property — the Pisces Moon is void of course, meaning that it’s not making any aspects to other planets prior to entering the next sign. That’s not the kind of thing that you would expect a professional astrologer to include in a chart this important — the marriage of the future king and queen consort. To me this suggests the chart was not planned by astrologers but rather was based on a guess that worked out pretty well. One thing that seems to have been intentional enough was putting the wedding on the day of Catherine of Siena. Catherine, of course, is the long form of Kate, who is now Princess Catherine.

Chart for today’s royal wedding places the concentration of planets at the top of the chart. Venus, the blue girl, is the most elevated planet. The void of course Moon is high up slightly toward the right. At the bottom of the chart is Saturn in Libra, occupying one of the chart’s most potent angles, the IC. This tells us that no matter how modern the new couple may be, there is a deep anchor into tradition.

Let’s look at the very basic elements of traditional astrology first. The whole endeavor looks royal enough; the ascendant grants the appearance of things, and the chart has Leo rising — a sign of royalty. So there is something kingly about it; it is the marriage of the future king.

At the top of the chart (skewed a little to the right), the Aries cluster is in the 10th house — the house of the king or the president, so that is royal enough. There is a lot going on in this house; the affairs of state are definitely a key part of the subject matter of this chart. With Aries on the 10th, it’s not too cynical to say that the business of state is war. But with Venus as the most elevated planet, we see at least a pretty face being put on that agenda, and at best, the possibility for something else. On the personal level, Venus in Aries as the most elevated planet suggests that this is the chart for the coronation of not merely a princess but rather of a queen.

Yet the narrative of a chart is usually told most articulately by the Moon. And the Moon is the odd thing about this chart — it’s void of course. That is to say, the Moon is late in a sign (in this case Pisces, late in the zodiac), and it’s not going to make aspects to any other planet before it enters the new sign. It’s a little like saying there is no story. The Moon is in Pisces, but it’s void in that sign, which can subtract the energy in question rather than add it. Pisces is about empathy, going through struggles together, service and public contact (the latter point emphasized by the Moon as well).

Looked at one way, we have a story that is ‘no story’. Or at least it is not directly indicated by the chart what transpires. Yet there is a partial exception to the Moon being void, suggested by William Lilly, one of the great astrologers in English history. That exception says that if the Moon is in one of the signs that it rules (Cancer or Taurus, where it is exalted), or one of the signs ruled by Jupiter (Sagittarius or Pisces), it will do some of its work carrying the story forward, because nothing is in the way that might stop it. And yes, there are many charts where it would be great if you could get the Moon out of the way. It seems to bollix things up at least half the time.

The Moon is first associated with the sign Cancer, so to see where the Moon is ‘coming from’, we can look at this sign. In the marriage chart, Cancer is in the 12th house — and the whole sign is intercepted there. Cancer does not touch the cusp of the 1st or the 12th. It’s like Cancer is swallowed by, or locked into, a house that’s usually associated with secrets, prisons and things too weird to comprehend. This can include dead people. And from this house, the Moon emerges and shows up void in Pisces. That’s the next best thing to it not being there at all.

So this leads one to wonder — what is this really about? William is designated to be the guy who leads the kingdom and moreover protects the fortunes of the Windsors (the royal house) well into the 21st century. Few of us who are adults today will live long into that reign. Elizabeth seems to have figured out the secret to eternal life, and we may even get to endure Charles being king for a while. So William is being groomed for a phase of history that is unforeseeable now.

These are some of the minor planets gathered around the degrees of the Moon, checking just the mutable signs. Typhon, a point in the region of Pluto, is located middle of those late mutable degrees. That evokes the tornados that have whipped across the U.S. the past few days. Also, the mysterious 28+ Gemini degree, which links together so many key world events ranging from Sept. 11 to the Fukushima quake, is occupied. The point is Apophis, a near-Earth asteroid discovered in 1976, and which was briefly a source of worry about a possible collision. It’s closer to the Sun than is Earth, and its orbit potentially crosses ours. The name is of Egyptian origin.

Part of the goal of a royal marriage is to produce an heir. For information about that, we look to the 5th house — and there, we find Scorpio. Note that there are no planets in Scorpio (which I’ll come back to in a moment). What we do in any event is follow Scorpio to wherever we find Mars, and that is in Aries, in the 10th house, conjunct Jupiter. That tells us that the child produced by this marriage will very likely be king. Aries, the 10th and Jupiter are all regal enough. But Scorpio lacking any planets reminds us that we have no description of who this person will be.

The fact that Mars-Jupiter is also conjunct Eris does give some reason for concern. So, all in all, we have a pretty mysterious chart, one that suggests what we’re seeing is more like a movie than a real event.

Let’s check in with the minor planets. Using the set selected over the years by Tracy and me at Serennu.com [see minor planet ephemeris here], the asteroid closest to the ascendant is Requiem, which is associated more with songs about death than about love. This may be a reminder of Diana, Princess of Wales, whose presence still looms large in the royal house and modern history of England.

Let’s take a look at what the minor planets say about that void of course Moon. In the rules of traditional astrology, aspects to astroids or newly discovered bodies would not change that Moon from being void, but astrology is in a transitional phase, so let’s take a look and see, at least, what is described. The Moon’s closest aspect is an exact opposition to Makemake. This is a dwarf planet (like Pluto or Eris) and it’s considered an important discovery. It was named for the creator god of the indigenous folks of Easter Island; it’s also a fertility god. So we have, at least, a clue that the purpose of the marriage — creating an heir to the throne — will be fulfilled.

The Moon is also square the Galactic Core. That brings in the large, sweeping themes associated with the core, and the ‘great presence lurking behind the scenes’ effect for which the Galactic Core is famous. The Moon is summoning the energy of the core, trying to bring that quality into the more conventional ‘spirituality’ of the Earthly realm.

Looking at the little table that lists the minor planets, notice that there’s a sequence of planets in Pisces to which the Moon will indeed make conjunctions. Actually, there are four of them clustered in the last degree of Pisces (all with the number 29 next to them) — Circe, Urania, the Osculating Apogee (Black Moon Lilith) and (last but surely not least) Karma.

This Moon seems to be describing something specific, or rather, someone. That someone emerges from the spirit world of the 12th house and manifests high in the sky in the spirit world of Pisces. She has no assigned role; she is ‘out of the way’, but she’s very much a presence. Her name is being evoked every few minutes — that would be Diana, named for the goddess of the Moon.

— By Eric with additional research by Tracy Delaney

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, April 29, 2011, #857 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — The thing that you feel is in the way is actually your balancing point. It may be annoying for being in the way, though it’s vital as a counter-balance to the energy pouring through your life. For the moment, you have to live with this situation and, I trust, learn to turn it into an opportunity. While you may not think you have any real freedom, you have many viable options available, though they aren’t opportunities in the sense of five job offers. It’s more like you have five talents that you know it’s time to get working in harmony with one another rather than competing with one another. If you seem to be facing a limit, think of it as a container. For example, let’s say we’re talking about a job situation that you want to change. How much can you bring your talents into your current situation, despite its drawbacks? The more you can, the more you will open the way to a future where all of you is welcome.

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

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Remember that meaning is only meaningful in context, and currently most of that involves your experience of your own mind and emotions. Typically we cannot see this because we see everything through the filter of our own mind. Yet for the moment, you have a window into a kind of blind spot in your psyche. That’s the place where so much is influencing you, but which is so difficult for you to get a grasp on. It’s the source of the pressure you’re feeling, and the volatility. You may not be able to resolve those feelings now, but you can ground yourself in productive or creative activity that will at least give you the opportunity to put your energy to use. What you’re doing may not live up to your imagination, but actually it looks like a great opportunity to bring your creativity into a project or task that will benefit from some love — and which will benefit you as well.

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

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Mercury is still shell-shocked after its retrograde phase in Aries. The feeling reminds me a little of the Earth vibrating after a quake. Aries is a bold sign, though what it represents — our sense of identity — is a fragile thing. For you, Aries represents how you are perceived, where you fit into your social scene, and how you define yourself as a ‘public’ individual. Yet there is a deeper theme to this house, which is what you want out of life. This, you seem to be grappling with. There are days when everything seems like a fantastic possibility. Other days it seems like you have no options at all. Yet in both of those scenarios you are watching life like a movie. At this stage of your growth it’s essential that you take up the charge of visioning your own way in life. You will know the difference because a movie screen reflects some other light, and a vision gives off a light of its own.

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

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You’ve been spun around recently, and may be struggling for some direction in your professional life. There are many things you want to do, while you’re confronted continually by one thing that you have to do. Looked at one way, this is a crisis; looked at another way, it’s a sign that your creativity exceeds your current structure or framework, particularly your mental structure. In order to work this out, I suggest you take a long-range view; think in terms of two to five years. Yes, this seems like a long time, but the years go by quickly, and most of why we seem to fall short of the progress we want involves the lack of long-term self-guidance. If I am not mistaken, there is one thing you’ve wanted to do, or accomplish, for a very, very long time. Somehow you keep missing that goal, or forgetting it. I suggest you make a series of decisions, starting now, to guide your life in that direction. Keep your focus, and don’t worry about the results.

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’ve been running an obstacle course lately. Many plans, revised plans and possibilities are flying around your head like so many airplanes at O’Hare. I trust that over the past week some of them, at least, have come in for a landing and others have flown off to different horizons. You’re now free to take some tangible action and accomplish something you’ve put off for a while. I would point out that amidst all of these different concepts for what is possible, there is something that is particularly alluring; it has a mix of daunting and inevitable. It may be the least predictable among your many objectives — or the one that causes the most disruption when you try to get it going. That is a sign that your idea contains energy, which is, in turn, a sign of its actual potential. As for the lack of predictability — you might call that the ‘god factor’ — the unknown element that leads to a truly creative outcome.

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) — Remember that you’re still in the early phase of a long process of establishing your relationships, and your relationship to existence, on new ground. At times it may not feel like ground, any more than the floor of a canoe does as you’re coasting down a river. Yet this floating, moving surface area is providing you with a stable enough platform to stand on. At the same time, you seem to be surrounded by a diversity of people who are making various offers and demands. I strongly suggest you look for the one or two that are in close harmony with your values. By close, I mean truly, authentically connected to who you are and what is important to you. Learn to identify this point of contact when you encounter someone, and moreover, to identify when it’s not present. The key is to not be guided by prejudice; you might find this bond with those significantly different than yourself, and be absent in those you consider more similar to you.

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) — You may be under more stress than you think. The fact that you’re able to handle a lot of push, pull and delicate balancing doesn’t change the fact that it affects you. You may not be able to tell how you actually feel until you get away from people and tune into your inner being. I suggest you do this as much as possible. At the moment you live between two worlds; one is more obvious, louder and full of commitments; the other is subtle, it’s quiet and it’s easy to distract yourself from. But both are real and vital parts of your life. It is the inner calling that is drawing your attention now; it is the source of your energy and the way to orient on your wellbeing. If you’re looking for a way in, start with silence and solitude. From there, any meditative act will take you deeper, such as drawing or music. Deep within the many swirling activities of your world is a deeper place that you are craving.

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 seem to be in the place of renewing a relationship, or are feeling a new experience on the horizon. This could be truly beneficial, as you may be feeling. I suggest, however, that you make peace with two possibilities: one is how you might feel if you’re actually desired. Usually, you’re the one who does the desiring. Often, being wanted can stir up a lot of controversy, among other things, because one has the feeling of being seen and noticed. When someone, indeed, anyone wants you, you cannot feel invisible, no matter how much you want to. Second, there is the possibility that you will have to engage with a kind of conflict that you have often vowed to leave behind. You can leave it behind, if you remember (ongoing) that the shadow material that comes up in relationships relates directly to the shadow material you are carrying. Address it within yourself first, and the relationship is more likely to follow your example.

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 should now be able to get a little more traction on your creative plans. Even if you’ve been beset by various delays and mix-ups, and even if this has hurt your confidence, I suggest you take a few solid steps and see where you end up. You’re not lacking for bold ideas, that’s for sure. As for confidence, you seem to live in two realities — one in which you’ve got what it takes, and another in which that can evaporate in doubt. The only way to resolve this is through action, which is to say, by daring and seeing what you’re capable of. Once you get the hang of that, and see how much you’re capable of, you may still experience doubt — but at that point it’s merely a thought that doesn’t have to take over your life in any way. In my opinion, the one and only key to freedom is experience.

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) — This must be an emotionally complex time for you. If so, I suggest it’s time to apply what you learned recently about your attachment to the past, and to who you thought you were in the past. I would also suggest that you ask yourself whether you’re becoming more like your parents, or less like them. This is the question. You have the power to take that process in any direction you like. You can integrate their positive attributes, and outgrow their anxieties; you can take on the worst of who they are (or were). In our time, in your generation, the choice is yours. Yet this is a bigger choice than you may imagine. Collectively, we are at a moment when we need to make a break with the past. That is not about flying cars or solar panels. It’s about how we experience fear, and what it means. It’s about how we think of ourselves; it’s about who we think we are, and what choices we make as a result.

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 may get a clear idea where you want to put down some new roots, be they emotional, physical or both. You may not be able to act on it right away, but you can create a strategy based on a calling or devotion that you feel. These three concepts are grouped as one idea: roots, calling and strategy. The feeling, when you tune into it, is one that comes with an unusual sense of depth. It’s something you know and feel in your body. In a sense, you’re not making a decision, it is making you. Meanwhile, your mind may have a diversity of opinions, doubts and thoughts of its own, and you can watch those go by like a movie; you don’t have to react or even respond to them. Yet the thing you’re most likely to get is confirmation of some kind that what you’re feeling is authentic and solid. What to do next will follow logically.

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) — I’m always impressed how messed up so many people are when it comes to money — how mystified, closed-minded and afraid. Money is tied for first place with sex on the list of things people get weird about. The weirdness seems to run in the same basic direction — a crisis over sharing, by which I mean giving and receiving, which can then culminate in withholding and being taken from. It’s as if when we shut down the voluntary process of exchange, and refuse to do what we actually want, some other system takes over. This is the time to own your money, to own your desire, and in fact to own any other resources that you consider your own. The reason to do this consciously is so that you can give and receive as you choose, with what is rightfully yours, undaunted by anyone who refuses to actively, consciously possess what is their own. Your power is your power. You can go anywhere from there.

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

Planet Waves Inner Space Horoscope for May 2011

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Dear Friend and Reader,

A friendly French cow. Photo by Eric Francis.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, May is the season of Beltane, also known as Midspring holiday. The theme is love and abundance, explored consciously as part of our relationship to the planet. No matter how weird things may get on Earth, we are still in a relationship to the planet, and Beltane is the time to take that in a positive and creative direction. The timing is when the Sun reaches the midpoint of Taurus, usually on May 5.

It’s a tipping point in the year, a moment of concentrated energy to set intentions and manifest what you want for the coming seasons and through the inevitable winter. This year, we have the Taurus New Moon two days ahead of Beltane, so if I were the astrologer to the High Priestess, I would be suggesting Beltane celebrations begin the evening of May 2 and continue through the week. Some traditions take the whole month, and the festival is known as The May. There is a lot of fire in the Beltane chart — the Sun is in Taurus and many other planets are in Aries.

Lovingly,

Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — You may still be feeling hesitant from the recent retrograde of Mercury in your sign, but the winds of fortune are strong against your back. You can afford to act on your confidence, as long as you’re proceeding with sincerity. You have so much drive and passion, those are the last things you need to concern yourself with. The idea is to make sure you’re pursuing your heart’s desire. The time has arrived to be absolutely real — no faking, no delaying your true priorities, only moving from an authentic space. You may be thinking, How do I know what I really want? I would say: you do know. If you set aside all your excuses, all your rationalizations and you don’t let your mother make your decisions for you (overtly, or covertly) you will be on solid ground with yourself.

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

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Many factors seem to be influencing you — if only you knew what they were. But what if you knew? What if you could see through all your doubts and seeming confusion? Stop and listen to yourself. If your inner monologue has been louder than usual, listen to what that voice is saying. Literally, what do the words mean, and what do the images you’re seeing show you? It may seem overly simple, but ‘knowing thyself’ actually does involve witnessing the contents of your awareness. The key is slowing down long enough to size up what is helpful, what is destructive, and giving yourself a moment to make a choice what to respond to. By choice, I mean a mentally oriented decision rather than being pushed or pulled by your emotions.

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

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — You go through phases of searching for your own identity among the people around you, and after what you’ve been through the past month, I am guessing you’ve figured out that it doesn’t quite work. Besides which, it’s likely that the people you care about are looking to you for some idea of how to maintain their stability in our uncertain times. You actually have a better sense about yourself than most of them have about themselves. How could this be? You’re more accustomed than others to dealing with the many possibilities of who you are. You know that a human mind is complex, and you embrace that complexity. You also know that there are no guaranteed outcomes, and your comfort level with uncertainty feeds your self-awareness.

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

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — This continues to be a vital time for emphasizing your professional goals. By goals I mean what you discover at the intersection of ‘I am’ and ‘I do’. You can add to that ‘I want’. It takes a few different factors to make a goal worth pursuing: a sense of identifying with the goal; a love of the activity; and the desire to make it happen, or to invest yourself. Most folks run into problems because what they think of as their goals don’t meet any of the criteria here; it’s possible to fudge and make excuses, but they don’t actually get the job done. Even meeting one would be helpful, though with the planets being what they are, I suggest you go for total authenticity. As you’ve figured out, a learning curve is involved, and this is a very good sign.

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) — What is possible? Ask yourself that question, and listen to your answer. That will reveal your state of mind. If you want to know who can support you in your goals, ask them what they think is possible and, rather than trying to convince them of anything, listen to what they say. Some people live for yes, and some live for no. Some live for maybe, and others for maybe not. It’s true that if you study the pages of The New York Times or watch CNN for an hour, you may not feel like you have any reasons for optimism. Despite the prevailing doom and gloom of our era, we’re in a moment of rich potential. Part of what is feeding that potential is the chaos. True enough, it takes a special kind of person to see the possibilities when many merely see loss and devastation. Just keep your faith that a new world will arise from what is left of the old one — and part of how that will happen is the vision that you’re offering.

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) — What is an asset and what is a liability? This is the main question you have to ask yourself. I can give you a clue that you’ve probably mixed up a few of these — certain things you thought were helpful are not so helpful and other things you thought were harmful are turning out to be pretty good assets. This is not so much a matter of perception as it is about correcting misperception. Yet there’s also another little issue, which is that most of the time we actually don’t evaluate our lives on the basis of what helps and what hurts. When we apply that question consciously, real information is forthcoming. The deeper question would then be, why are so many people attached to what hurts them, and how are you doing letting go of those things?

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) — No matter how much energy is coming toward you, flexibility is the key to keeping your balance. It’s true that you’re under a lot of pressure — more than you thought you could handle. But it’s not merely pressure; you’re being offered energy, opportunity, love and friendship. You’ve got an opportunity to participate in the world like you’ve hardly ever had before. The thing about participation is that it tends to draw in your full involvement. While many would think they are ‘giving up their life’, I would say that the one sure way to have a life is to be involved. Here, we come back to the question of balance, which for you means flexibility. Having options is a prelude to making choices. And one decision leads to the next.

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) — Rest is important, but there are activities more restful than sleep. That’s a good thing, because your life has nothing if not activity at the moment. Notice that some things you do nourish you and some deplete you. Have you started to see a pattern, which is which? If you were to apply one criterion to evaluating everything in your life, this is the one. But let’s define ‘nourish’. I would include things that expand your capacity for achievement; desires that stoke your ambition to do good work; experiences that challenge your idea of who you are; activities that fill up your time in a productive way, and nudge out the things you don’t like to do, or that don’t serve you. What nourishes you may make you a bit uncomfortable — but only a little, and only at first.

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 theme of this phase of your life is stretching your creative capacity. I think that to some extent, everyone wants to be creative, but you may be experiencing this as a kind of extreme restlessness that you cannot quite ground. A little focus will go a long way. Don’t worry about meeting your ‘full potential’. Rather, if you have to take out the trash, do it in an interesting way. If you have any kind of assignment at all, figure out a way to take pleasure in the work and do it as artfully as you can. Meantime, pay attention to the ideas that are percolating out of you, and when you feel a juicy one, explore and experiment with it. Take a chance. Allow yourself the space to do something unusual, and keep going till 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) — You may need to toss all your ideas of safety or sanity, but what do you do with all of the stress? If it’s coming out of your psyche in ways that are painful or disruptive and offer you nothing in return, I suggest you make some decisions about how you direct your energy. It may be time for a change, and by that I mean a significant change. One thing your chart is saying is that the past is not what it used to be, and it barely exists at all. What exists for sure is the way you can direct yourself into the future, and this looks like one crucial goal that you may be resisting. Any idea what that might be? Is there something you dearly want to achieve, but you’re having a little denial attack about? Focus on that goal and you’ll likely feel a heck of a lot safer on the planet.

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) — Stay grounded, whatever that means to you. That mind of yours has a lot of activity and adventure running around in it — a bit much to leave you with a feeling of settling into any consistent ideas. In fact the nice thing about your ideas is that they are pushing you out of your comfort zone. Your grounding can come from tuning into a commitment that is truly meaningful to you, and orienting on that. It’s an idea that feels like home, or feels like a solid and meaningful place to gather your emotions. It could be a person, or a relationship. It could be your physical space, or your desire to create a solid home for yourself. Remember that this would best be a container for your abundant energy, rather than a place to barricade external influences away from 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) — This is an excellent time to get your financial life in order, and by in order, I mean beginning with a clear concept of the abundance and prosperity that you want. In case you haven’t figured it out, it’s a lot easier to create wealth when you’re not busy talking it down. Having enough is entirely unrelated to greed. Enjoying a glass of wine does not make someone an alcoholic. Be clear with yourself about your ideas here. Recognize when a prejudice is entering the picture, such as the notion that money corrupts someone. The only thing that can corrupt anyone is their own values, so if you proceed from understanding what is important to you and appreciating why that is so, you will have a guiding principle that will be truly useful as you realize just how resourceful you are.

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