Good Morning!

As you may have figured out by now, Tuesday horoscopes are on an as-available basis. Currently I write two monthly horoscopes, which run the first two Tuesdays that the Sun is in a new sign. The rest of the Tuesdays, I send a letter. Today, you get a letter: about a chart I will be using later today to write Friday’s horoscope — that is, Saturday’s Aquarius New Moon.

Simplified version of the Aquarius New Moon. for the full version side by side with this one, tap this link. Clue about charts: the houses and signs overlay one another in a seemingly random pattern. The house cusps are in black. They intersect the signs in the middle of a sign; the numbers around the outside of the wheel tell you where that happens.

If you are in a hurry and want some useful information, here is my summary of the chart: you may need to take an odd path to figuring out what you want. You may need to ‘back into your desire’, or find it by making what you perceive as a mistake; you may discover what you want by an experience of conflict that resolves itself quickly and then leaves you with real information. Therefore you need to be mindful of experiences that teach you what you don’t want, and therefore provide information about what you do want.

One other point. What you want and how you feel about that influences your environment — particularly your mental environment but also your direct ‘physical’ environment. Your conscious desire changes the world around you, and has an influence on elements of life that you thought were ‘too powerful’ to respond to you. Therefore, focus on what you want and observe how the local cosmos responds. Observe how you respond.

One last point. This is a good time to observe your conditioning patterns and see the ways in which you are influenced by groups and by the media. Until we do something about it, we are all brainwashed by the influences of others who are trying to tell us what is supposed to be good for us (a luxury car, an awesome new deodorant, chewing gum that makes you hallucinate). To move out of that level of consciousness primarily takes awareness.

Now, how did I get there? Are these kinds of declarative statements really possible? (Note to English majors: astrology writing is a literary format, in which I am expected to give you useful material that you can actually apply to your life. But this is a kind of mental trick; it’s useful because I interpret it in a way that slants it in that direction.)

Let’s look at the chart for Saturday’s New Moon. This chart is a simplified version, with most of the planets and points removed. If you want to see this contrasted with a more complex version, tap this link. I’ve left the ones that are directly in the current game. I will name them in order, from the top, anticlockwise: Mars retrograde, Saturn retrograde, Pluto, Mercury, Sun, Moon, Chiron, Neptune, Venus and Jupiter. The glyphs are all intuitive and you already recognize some of them.

Notice that there are planets with lower numbers next to them (from 3 to 6). They are talking to one another, and working as a set. Then there are planets with higher numbers next to them and they are talking to one another and working as a set (those in the 25 to 26 range). The sky is a little like a radio. Planets tune into frequencies based on their degree position, and relate to other planets in that range. Easy.

The definition of astrology. Photo by Eric Francis.

The planets in the 3 to 6 range are in aspect to Mars retrograde (the purple guy at the top). The ones in the 25 to 26 range are the Aquarius New Moon, conjunct Chiron and Neptune.

Reading astrology, the thing that is odd or unique can call the tune. Mars retrograde stands out in this regard. Mars has retrograded far enough back in Leo to be mixed up in the Saturn-Pluto square. You can see that because Saturn (green thing on the left) and Pluto (purple thing on the bottom) are within one degree apart, in a square aspect (see the line that connects them? It’s not necessary, you can see the aspect without it because planets in the same degree range are in aspect to one another.)

Toward the right, Venus and Jupiter in Pisces have moved into the aspect structure. When I am describing all the planets in the 3 to 5 range, that is called an aspect structure: the one that involves Mars retrograde and the Saturn-Pluto square. This is quite a mix of tension and gratification. Notice how Mercury is opposite Mars: that’s the conflict (Mercury opposite Mars can have the flavor of a blow-up or of psychic tension), which is largely mental in nature. It’s about an idea, and that could well be within you, trying to work itself out.

When I say, “you may need to take an odd path to figuring out what you want. You may need to ‘back into your desire’, or find it by making what you perceive as a mistake,” that is the influence of Mars retrograde talking to, and influencing, and being influenced by, Saturn and Pluto: an aspect that is changing civilization as we speak. Where Mars encounters that is where the individual will meets the big forces that shape the world. Example: if you lose your job (presumably as a result of Saturn-Pluto restructuring), you then get to figure out what you want to do next (Mars involvement: desire, but it’s retrograde, it’s an ‘odd’ way to figure something out, but it works).

New York City skyline. Photo by Eric Francis.

Then there is the New Moon group, at 25-26 Aquarius. (By the way, they are really at 26-27 because once you go over 25 even you are into 26th degree; but I’m stating it this way to match the chart illustration.) As I explained in a recent edition, when a slow moving setup such as the Chiron-Neptune conjunction is met by a close event from the Sun and the Moon, it brings out the nature of the slow moving setup.

And what would that be?

Chiron conjunct Neptune is about seeing our environment for what it is: the psychic environment, the digital environment, and any environment involving exclusive groups of any kind. By exclusive I mean anything for which you need membership, a password, a device, or to believe in an idea. The Neptune fog is being clarified and focused by the high-precision energy of Chiron. We are getting to see through the fog, which includes seeing the potential for creative movement and the toxic potential of the environment that is around us. If we get good information, it will give us some ideas for how to respond — not merely present a hopeless situation.

I have been learning a lot from the Abraham-Hicks material under this Mars retrograde in Leo, and today’s daily quote sums up this point nicely.

“Anytime you feel negative emotion, stop and say: Something is important here; otherwise, I would not be feeling this negative emotion. What is it that I want? And then simply turn your attention to what you do want…. In the moment you turn your attention to what you want, the negative attraction will stop; and in the moment the negative attraction stops, the positive attraction will begin. And — in that moment — your feeling will change from not feeling good to feeling good. That is the Process of Pivoting.”

Yours & truly,

Dear Planet Waves Subscriber:

We’re now well into Mars retrograde; our closest planetary neighbor stations direct in about a month, on March 10 in the first degree of Leo. It then spends the next three months working its way back across that sign. That’s how Mars works; due to its retrograde, it spends up to seven months in one sign, then covers the other 11 signs in about 17 months.

Artist’s conception of the Phoenix Lander arriving at Mars. Credit & copyright: MAAS Digital, SVV Project, NASA.

This prolonged experience ought to be giving us something to consider. I keep working through the themes of the current Mars retrograde, of which I have several for you today, but I would like to comment for a moment about repressed anger. Mars is a planet associated with anger, and the retrograde turns it inward.

As I write, a company called AIG is handing out $100 million in bonuses to its executives and employees. This company still owes the taxpayers $182 billion for various rescue packages, which we could classify as the result of some serious management incompetence. We were told in late 2008 that if AIG went under, it could take the global economy with it, and people actually believed this lie. That kind of conduct, hardly worthy of reward, they all get checks. Note, this is business as usual for capitalism. We just happen to be hearing about it now.

While we’re being told that the public and those in Congress are angry about this, where, exactly is the rage? Where is the action, the resistance, the moral indignation? Stuffed inside us, is where. Part of why we may be afraid to let it out is that once we start, we may not know when it’s going to end. There’s so much to be angry about. But one way or another we’re going to have to process that rage, or it will eventually have its way with us. Meanwhile, we are free to camp out in our anger.

Yet one problem with repressed anger is that it jams our circuits, keeping us in a stupor. Anger serves to block much else we might otherwise feel — all the other forms of passion, pathos and curiosity associated with Mars, and in this respect it can be useful to those intent on not living fully.

A Long Retrograde in Leo

Mars is retrograde second least of all the planets, about 10% of the time. But the months before and after the retrograde itself count as part of the process. In broad terms, I am counting the whole time Mars is in Leo as being associated with this event. Arrived in Leo on Oct. 16 and leaves Leo on June 7, right before one of the most significant astrological events in several generations: Jupiter conjunct Uranus on the Aries Point.

This is a time-lapse image of a recent Mars retrograde (in 2005), as seen from Earth. The effect is created by the Earth going past Mars, which has a slower orbit. Credit & copyright: Tunc Tezel.

Both events are connected by the common element of fire; and of Mars, which is the planet most often associated with Aries. Think of it this way: all winter long we are experiencing Mars tracking backwards (meaning, the Earth is going past it), which is like a windup of all that Martian-Aries energy.

Then within days of Mars leaving the sign where it was retrograde (ingressing from Leo to Virgo), there is, well, there’s a kind of explosion in Aries: one that’s going to make this a truly interesting spring; a season to remember; a kind of awakening. But we’re not there yet, not collectively. We’re still in the prep phase of Mars retrograde, gathering up all that Leo energy, pulling back the slingshot; and Mars is about to get mixed up with some slow- moving planets. One way to look at this is that Mars retrograde is jumping into the conversation that is currently underway between Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto. Let’s come back to that one last.

First Theory of Mars Rx In Leo: Contacting Desire

One of the ideas that kept coming through again and again during the writing of Cosmic Confidential is that Mars retrograde in Leo is about contacting authentic desire. Retrogrades have a few common properties: inwardly directed, oriented on a review, and revealing of the shadow properties of the energies involved. As regards desire, particularly sexual desire, we live in the land of shadows these days, wherein denial and hypocrisy are causing many psychic disturbances and contributing to a general state of frustration.

NASA image of Mars, showing the atmosphere.

Mars represents drive and the motivation for action; Leo represents the heart, passion and creative impulse. So we have a story here about finding one’s heart’s desire. This is a vital part of enlightenment, as far as I can tell. I recognize that the Buddhists have given desire a bad name, saying it’s the root of all suffering. However, most of us here in the West are not on a path of renunciation, and even if we were, that would not work unless it was our heart’s desire.

On its face, this would seem to be a philosophy of selfishness that defies any sense of collaboration or community. However, we have a much more serious problem in our society caused by people who have no idea what they want; or they have a vague idea when they need a clear idea, in order to make that happen. Being out of contact with one’s desires is a good way to be misled. This condition helps explain why so many people end up with so much that they don’t really want.

Here’s where it makes sense to look at the shadow side of desire, which is guilt. Guilt is basically a way of life in a repressive society, and there are few desires that we don’t associate with guilt. For many people, every bite of food, stopping somewhere on the way home from work or doing anything fun (such as admitting or acting on a sexual desire), are all associated with guilt.

We may cast ourselves as selfish people, and recognize the arrogance and self-centered quality of the Western world. It seems like nobody can have a big enough truck. Yet this to me is all about a reaction against being stalked by the shadow of guilt. We tend to be attacked by that guilt when we want something that is different than what we were told or conditioned to want.

Leo, like any fire sign, is about taking risks. To have that spark of individual, inner, actual personal desire, we must gamble something. There is a lot about sex in this transit: about understanding ourselves sexually. There are few opportunities more poignant to be ourselves than when sex is a factor; and part of that being oneself involves both knowing what you want, stating what you want, and standing in your desire and availability with self-affirmation and without guilt. This mainly requires one thing: self-knowledge, which is almost always based on courage and necessity.

We spend so much time and energy worrying about who we might offend with our desires that we rarely get so far as to figure out what they are.

Second Theory: Busting out of Conformity

Leo is opposite Aquarius. These two make an interesting pair, having lots to do with the intersection of the individual and the collective: that is, the many places in astrology where I becomes We. If that we is any form of social group, its rules can be harsh and in many cases not openly stated. Many of those rules set a low tolerance for individuality and the expression of curiosity, no matter how ‘progressive’ the social group in question may fancy itself being.

Operating on martian time, the Spirit rover sent back this color postcard image, recorded on Sol 5 of its stay on the martian surface, which looks eerily like an Earth desert. This was in 2004. Photo by Mars Rover Mission, JPL and NASA.

Leo describes a special kind of individuality: it’s expressive in a way that Aries only begins. Aries is the point of initiation and Leo is the point of more mature, creative, stable expression. True, Leo is associated with kids, though the Sun (which rules Leo) is associated with adults and expressing adult power. Those who devote themselves to creative process need to be in contact with both the adult and the child aspects of Leo at the same time: the child for curiosity and inspiration, and the adult for guidance and boundaries. This is not so easy for most people, who tend to be in parent/child mode: for example, needing to be told what to do, feeling powerless or over-controlling, or being unable to handle their whims.

Aquarius presents another aspect of the challenge. This sign represents the psychological tension between an individual and a group; or an idea supported by a group. Aquarius is the sign of individuality, and also the sign of rigid conformity, often to the notions of people who have unusual influence. It reminds me a little of the Army, which sells itself as elite and individualistic, but it’s really about doing exactly what you’re told. To break out of that takes self-awareness and a deep, soul-felt desire to individuate.

Nobody is advertising that product these days. Our current social language lacks the words and phrases for this process of becoming an individual; it used to be called self-actualization, individuation or waking up.

Today we think of it as having your iPhone set up perfectly. We think of it as knowing exactly what kind of Honest Tea you like best. Marketing culture has in many ways ruled the Western world since the 1960s, but it’s never been this bad; we have never had our minds colonized with so many contradictory messages to conform.

We do not recognize this as the psychological abuse that it is. In fact, most of us see it as a benefit, because as long as we play along, then in theory we don’t have to worry about what we might really want, or the consequences of not snapping into line. The current conjunction of the Sun and Nessus speaks of this collective abuse of individuals and individuality by various collective forces. Do these forces con us into being thought for, or do we willingly give up our power? Well, it’s a lot of both.

Mars retrograde is an impulse to reach inside for one’s own desires, needs and creative impulses regardless of what others might say, think or make a drama out of. It is an opportunity to be conscious of your tendencies to play along with the game the crowd is playing, and make another choice. Yes, there is a risk involved, but most of it is in your mind. Most of the risk that is not in your mind involves how to deal with hypocrisy; that begins by being aware of it when you see it.

Third Theory: Getting Involved in Something Larger

Now we can look at the exact aspects Mars is about to make to Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto. Mars is a personal planet. For the next several months, Mars will be making contact with Saturn and Pluto, which are transpersonal in nature; and for a brief while, Jupiter will be in the mix. Saturn and Pluto are dancing around the Aries Point, which is another transpersonal kind of thing, connecting individuals to much larger processes. Unlike Aquarius, which does basically the same thing only it’s full of psychic tension, the Aries Point comes bursting into your life one day.

A massive canyon on Mars, dwarfing the Grand Canyon on Earth, resembles a vulva, interesting for the planet we use to define maleness. Photo by NASA.

So what could this mean? I think it’s about getting over ourselves. There are so many factors that isolate us in our era, most of them psychological, many of them how we use technology, that the isolation itself has become invisible. We don’t question what it means to be slaves to our anxieties, our habits, our insistence on perfection.

In the Taurus chapter of Cosmic Confidential, I described something I called defensive individualism. Here’s how I phrased it:

Being who you are is in truth not about defending yourself over what you might not be; it’s about a positive, direct expression of your existence. Someone can define themselves as a vegetarian; but the question is, what do they eat? Someone can define themselves as ‘not religious’, but the question is, what values do they espouse?

So the question is for you: how do you want to participate in society, as an affirmative statement? I think you actually do know. In fact I think that knowingness is so intense as to be burning up your mind, and causing you to reconsider your whole life to allow it to happen. Yet it may be scaring the bejesus out of you.

Yep: there is plenty in this Mars retrograde about dancing with fear. It looks like the fear of existence, which is a strange thing because it’s really all we have.

And how about that?

Yours & truly,

Updates daily at Planet Waves and Cosmic Confidential Diary.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

You don’t have to wait for it anymore. Change is here. It’s happening in you, me, us. Even as our reptilian brain — that ancient portion of us that handles emergencies related to survival — responds to the difficult twists and turns of our current sociopolitical circumstances, there’s something quite unique bubbling in our Higher Minds. If someone asked you how to close out an Era, how to prepare yourself for a leap in consciousness and recreate your essential humanity while rattling around in the chaos of structural dissolution, you would probably just stare at them, wide-eyed and speechless. And so it is these days, when people ask us what we think. We aren’t sure, and that’s because we aren’t thinking; we’re feeling our way through this.

Harvester of Open Minds. Artwork by Ariel Brierly.

Some of us are denying those feelings of something unprecedented occurring, hoping that everything will go back to normal eventually. Others are exploring the emotions, allowing them to pass through the landscape of our minds, giving us the opportunity to separate what’s valuable while discarding the old paradigm baggage that has kept us in place so long. This thing that’s going on is organic, aligned with galactic forces, cosmic imperatives and planetary necessity. It’s both creative and destructive, summoning the energy of the Hindu goddess Kali, the Dark Mother of Time that slays the ego with reality. It’s inexplicable and exhausting. It’s simultaneously frightening and exhilarating, pushing us forward even as it seems to be pulling us backward. It’s the last step before the first step. It’s a dimensional doorway.

Again and again, over these last months, I’ve read channeling that pronounces this magnificent experiment within our own hands, within our own minds, as co-creators of an unknown future. Much like self-fulfilling prophecy, this will be what we decide it will be, both in the collective and in our own personal experience. The conundrum of facing so great a challenge as a Shift of Ages while we feel the most fragile and helpless contains the seeds of the consciousness we seek. This would not be on our plates if we didn’t have the ability to meet it squarely, so even if we don’t feel prepared we must assure ourselves that confidence is somewhere within us, waiting to be found. Yet many of us stand at this transitional crossroads, turning our attention to endings rather than beginnings, to strategies for the short-term rather than visions for the long-term. We must begin to trust not only the intuitive wisdom we’ve brought into this lifetime but also the clues that are continually being fed into the public consciousness, like little sparks of Light.

Continued at this link…

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, February 5, 2010, #803 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Avoid public dramas if you can, which may mean staying out of public places, or at least choosing from among places that qualify as friendly territory. Inside your home is going to be the best bet. You’ll need to keep a close eye on your own tendency to be temperamental when you’re under stress; if you can do that, you’ll have a significant advantage when you’re in tense environments, if you cannot avoid them. Meanwhile, a partner or significant other may be more emotionally sensitive than you’re aware of, or even than he or she is aware of. He or she may mirror back to you some of your own inner struggle. Significant similarities exist between what you’ve been through and your response to those experiences; and there are significant differences as well. Be mindful of both.

Regarding a professional matter, there seem to be two possible choices, but really there are two mental outlooks you can apply to the situation. One is about how most matters of ‘personal expression’ are not so personal. Often, they are about patterns that were set in motion long before we showed up on the planet. The second involves the feeling of extreme vulnerability that can manifest when you make a choice that actually does set you in the direction of what you want, and what serves you — or even when you step up to the commitment to do so. Be aware that you exist in a mental environment first, and an ‘economy’ or ‘society’ second. Your frame of mind is nearly enough to determine the outcome you want — if you know what that is.

You’re coming around to a new approach to a contract or agreement that’s been driving you mad in recent months. Your updated thought process could have a significant influence on a creative project or professional situation, particularly if an investment of some kind is involved. Yet once it gets dark out and the Moon comes up, don’t forget your other agenda — getting some of, more of, or all of the sex you want. Was that some kind of New Year’s resolution? If not, I suggest you add it to your list of the necessities of life, not the luxuries or ‘distractions’. I would add a reminder: sex happens in the context of relationships, which are based on agreements. A negotiation process is involved, which involves stating what you want and dealing directly with the response.

The answer is not to detach from your feelings, but rather to go deeply into them. You have an excellent grasp of how you feel on an intellectual level, yet there is an aspect of this situation that is showing no mercy. In the minds of most, that is not an invitation to be more vulnerable, but rather a cue to be more aloof. Remember, you don’t need to prove anything to anyone, and the last I heard, sensitivity was neither an Olympic sport nor a commodity traded on the Nasdaq. You can start with being aware of what you feel, and your ideas will give you a good idea where to begin. A creative outlet of some kind will guide you deeper into yourself, and that’s the place you’re going to find refuge, release and the sense of connection that you seek.

Your environment is hypersensitive and potentially over-reactive. Nobody feels like they can do anything right, though you’re the one who is able to sense that this is not as much a personal issue about any one person as it is about the state of the world. I suggest you keep a clear eye on the psychological patterns that do so much harm to so many, and be the one who guides the people around you out of them. You’re the one who is aware, so you have the first advantage here. This cannot be addressed on a superficial level; somebody has to ask the real questions, if anyone wants the real answers. You can go a long way if you start there. The planets suggest that at the moment people are susceptible to old personal material, so old they may have discarded it as irrelevant long ago.

Take off the mental stress; this is one of those phases when it could have a significant physical impact. If you can ratchet down a few levels, you’re likely to find yourself in a place of profound understanding that could influence the decisions you make. To be sure, you make different kinds of choices depending on your frame of mind at the time you’re making your decision. I suggest you take your time with something you’ve been working out since December. Put your emphasis on settling your restless nature a bit, and letting some of the emotional charge dissipate. You keep telling yourself you can keep your cool, but this is a question of layers. As each one of them comes off you will make a new discovery about yourself and what is important to you now, rather than in the past.

One of the great obvious mysteries is what sexual experience has to do with creative experience. The simple way to explain it is they wake one another up. Sex creates more than babies; it creates awareness. Art creates consciousness, not just works on paper. What they both have in common is that they require a willingness not only to have life be ‘nice’ but to delve into a world of light and dark, fear and passion. Both sex and art involve transmuting taboo emotions into something that is creative or pleasurable. If that is the working concept, then you can regard all feelings as healthy, normal or acceptable. Most pain comes from judging feelings; it’s one thing to feel shame and it’s another to say it’s bad. Or pleasure; or love; or the craving for emotional freedom that would open the way to any or all of them.

Mars has reached a point in its retrograde where it’s aspecting the Saturn-Pluto square. Jupiter is also involved; so we are adding some energy to the equation, and some inspiration. Oh! That stuff. There is only so inspired you can be on a backwards, uphill run. Yet certain developments suggest that you may suddenly remember why you’re on this journey, and why you committed to making the changes that you once feared were inevitable: only now they seem more welcome. The soul aspect of Pluto is coming out in this arrangement, rather than just the obsession/compulsion aspect. So too is the attribute of Saturn that says it’s easier to get what you want when you know what it is, and when you set goals, and when you set limits.

You’re getting to the heart of a thought process that’s been lingering like a fog for more than a year. Suddenly you seem to feel the promise of clarity, rather than just a question. But I would ask: is the issue clearer, or are you feeling better for other reasons and looking at it with greater clarity? Maybe this is a chicken and egg kind of question, though in that particular riddle, what is missing is the awareness of a point of origin, or of a much earlier timeframe. I suggest you take this opportunity to go back in time and get a look at the actual roots of your situation. Not incidentally, this is the aspect of any personal growth situation that most of us are trained to avoid looking at, and it’s usually the aspect that grants the greatest sense of strength.

This is a moment of significant contact, though it may feel like an inconvenient kind of good fortune. Here is the thing to remember: your friends can help you, and you can help them. You certainly seem to have professional matters on your mind, and you may be wondering whether you’re making progress toward building your house, or just making more sawdust. That matters less than making sure the community that helped create you, and that you helped create, gets some of your attention. Professional contacts and success are one thing; helping weave the world is another. You are part of a network of light, and if you turn your energy in that direction some of it will shine right back on you.

This may be a really strange few days to be an Aquarius. You tend to live with one foot in the dreamtime; abstraction is as real to you as scrambled eggs for breakfast. Yet you’ve been experiencing something unusual: in mundane terms, a sense of purpose, combined with a sense of potential, combined with a deep questioning of why either of these things matter. They may not; that is for you to decide, and the good news is that you have a sense of your own depth that would give you access to some real information. You may at this point in your life be discovering how personal meaning really is. You are the only one who gets to determine or decide on the relevance of your feelings, your experiences or your perceptions.

It’s as if your world has been strung with a ray of light, on which anything can pivot: fate, fortune, love, existence itself. You are standing in the place from which you can go anywhere. Now the question is, where do you want to go? Imagine for a moment that past commitments don’t matter; all that matters is what you want, in this moment. What, where, and who would that be? If this is the question you avoid, forget about why, and embrace it now. Likelihood is irrelevant; the cosmos has moved into one of those rare moments of long odds opening up. If something is standing in the way of your faith, go around it. If something is standing in the way of action, summon your will and allow your small volition to merge with something far greater.

Doorway, Saugeties, NY. Photo by Eric Francis.

Dear Subscriber:

I’m here with Jude’s article for you, called Starting Over.

This week I’m taking the rare opportunity to opt out of a horoscope and essay. For next week I have to write a weekly horoscope for the newspapers, so you’ll see one of those. I have an Inner Space for you Tuesday, though it’s based on the short annual (expertly excerpted by our copy editor, who has edited my horoscopes for five years); I’ll see if we can pull together excerpts of Cosmic Confidential instead.

Which is doing amazing by the way. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And — you are welcome.

The feedback has been incredible and the extra work — starting much earlier and finishing about three weeks later — seems to have paid off. But I think the best is yet to come: everyone who has signed up so far, and who signs up for the next week or so, will have access to the Key Life Transits section. I am designing a way to offer this separately, but for now it’s included. These are a series of articles on the big transits we have: Saturn return, Uranian opposition, Pluto square, and a series of Chiron transits. I will likely go in order of the solar system: Saturn, Chiron, Uranus, Pluto.

The articles in Cosmic Confidential cover your astrology by Sun sign. These will cover your astrology by age. I am looking forward to settling down from the wild ride of CC 1.0 and jumping into CC 2.0. We also have some very cool projects slated for the spring. I will of course keep you updated. Meantime, if you’re going to upgrade to all 12 signs, extend your Planet Waves subscription and you get CC for the price of lunch.

Reminder, the Full Moon is overnight tonight. I am aware that I said some places it was overnight Thursday to Friday, jumping the gun a little. Please note that correction.

One last: the Planet Waves daily blog has been hot lately. Our article selection has been pretty amazing and traffic is up substantially; our first big jump in quite a while. Here are some of the highlights: a Zelda Rubenstein tribute about to go up; a tribute to J.D. Salinger; an astrological tribute to Howard Zinn; a 69th birthday tribute to my dad; new articles by Len Wallick; and a mock interview of me by Larry King — all on Daily Astrology and Adventure (that’s the official name of our blog).

By the way — I’ve been warned off of using my prior (preferred) salutation, “Dear Friend and Reader,” because spam catchers catch the word ‘friend’. We have this little issue of content filters snagging naughty old Planet Waves, so please beware of that. Check your spam if you don’t see us by 10 am ET, and remember, we post to the subscriber area, but for that you need your password.

Remember, we’re heading into a Full Moon conjunct Mars retrograde on a Friday night. That means: be cool. Don’t just play it cool, actually be cool. Pay attention, watch for crazymakers, and find a constructive, pleasurable and creative way to vent your energy. I’m sure you can think of one.

Yours & truly,

Dear Friend and Reader:

Last week’s solar eclipse in Capricorn conjunct Venus is showing some ramifications in the corporate/government realm covered by that sign. Thursday the Supreme Court issued a decision in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The 150-page decision, we’re being told, grants the rights of individuals to corporations, originating in the matter of whether companies can pour money, unfettered, into propaganda designed to sway an election. Previously, this was subject to campaign laws that kept such electioneering a few feet back from the election itself.

Personally, I cannot think of a more significant issue for the Supreme Court to rule on, in our era of unmitigated corporate power. Here, we have one of the first landmarks in the Pluto in Capricorn era, a time when we know that the structure of society will change in many ways.

The court held yesterday that corporations have the free speech rights of people. Yet if anything, corporations are superhumans, subject to no responsibilities of citizenship that would balance freedom on the scale that they typically exercise it.

They do not have a natural lifespan, and can in effect live forever. They cannot be incarcerated, and holding them civilly liable for crimes or abuses of their rights verges on impossible (case in point, Bhopal). Any punishment is meaningless, as most in the position to commit atrocities have so much money that even a heavy a fine comes out of the petty cash fund. They can be as big as the state of Israel (or bigger), have an army and exist on five continents at a time. They have no lawful interest except for profit. They can employ a thousand attorneys. Their shareholders can come from many different countries. Their own power and structure shields the individuals involved from most forms of prosecution; it is rare that corporate officers are held accountable for the crimes committed by their companies.

This is an easy distinction, to see the difference between human rights and corporate rights. While many think there is a precedent for this, the original decision supposedly giving corporations the rights of people was so flawed that the issue is right in Wikipedia where school kids can read about it on their iPhones. That famous case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, never took up the constitutional issue. Many in the legal community are fully aware of this issue, to the extent that there is a law center devoted to dealing with it.

Most people do not understand that ‘corporatism’ is the true definition of fascism; that is, the merging corporate interests and entities with the state itself. This is the thing to beware of. What we have just witnessed is an example of the state granting greater rights to the corporations who are its creatures than to the natural sovereign citizens of the land — in this case, the power to influence elections to high office. In effect, the government has privatized elections and has sold out its own power: a typical move, consistent with the central bank existing as a private entity as well.

I would say that Thursday’s decision in Citizens United is an example of unequal protection under the law. Paraphrasing Carl Sagan, those who enjoy extraordinary rights must be held to extraordinary responsibilities. The problem in our moment of civilization is precisely that this alien race of entities thinks it has no responsibilities at all, in any meaningful sense of the concept.

I’ll be back with a more detailed analysis of the chart and the issues in a coming edition.

Yours & truly,

Updates daily at Planet Waves and Cosmic Confidential Diary.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Jupiter went into Pisces this week, and if you’ve felt the news hit your heart like unwelcome aftershocks I wouldn’t be surprised. We were caught between hope and despair as we watched Haitians rescued, a week trapped beneath rubble, while others that might have been saved by sanitation or antibiotics perish. We’ve stood by helplessly as the Democratic Senate super-majority collapsed. We’ve been bitterly disappointed as the Right-leaning U.S. Supreme Court backtracked on new sentencing for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Californians are being evacuated as the sky drops buckets of unaccustomed rain, and in beleaguered Virginia, a man with a rifle killed eight and forced down a police helicopter before being captured. Not all of us appear entirely sane. Total eclipse of the heart? Or grist for the mill of the Gods?

Scott Brown won Cosmo’s “America’s Sexiest Man” contest and appeared in the June 1982 issue.

Politics is personal. It’s also local. What we saw in Massachusetts — Ted Kennedy’s iconic Senate seat, dedicated to progressive concerns for almost 47 years, going to a Cosmo centerfold and Tea Bagger — is local politics gone viral and hard-headed. My own brain is about to explode from the buzz-saw clamor of Republicans chirping the good news that the nation is headed back into their cold embrace, as gleeful as locusts rubbing their legs together, ready to descend. Nonsense. The echo chamber of political thought in these last days is about as relevant as re-runs of SpongeBob SquarePants.

Regressive politics won’t work this time, if it ever did; I doubt regressiveness has ever achieved anything other than to delay the inevitable. We can’t go backwards and hope to address what’s ahead of us. Bill Moyers, politico for LBJ before he moved to journalism, has told us that Republicans consider government a “perversion;” the entirety of their policy is obstruction to governance, and that’s not what we need now. As old timer Sam Rayburn, a Democrat from Texas and longtime speaker of the House of Representatives, said, “A jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a carpenter to build one.”

Continued at this link…

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, January 22, 2010, #802 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Imagine a guardian angel has come into your life, whose only role is to reassure you that the fear you were feeling so recently is simply not necessary. We know that, of course; but tell it to the fear. Jupiter in Pisces is serving you as a kind of psychic cushion; another voice that is available to answer distress, anxiety or any form of psychic disturbance. Jupiter is pointing to something that was always there, in a slightly less tangible form, and this can help you tune into this moment as an emotional tipping point: toward pleasure, toward a richer sense of imagination, and with some greater possibilities. The experiences you desire are not merely in your dreams. Yet all of them depend on some form of cooperation, which will be easier to connect with as you let anxiety melt out of your psyche.

You’ve been exploring your long-term goals quite nearly forever, and one particular dream is closer than you think. Look for it in the form of a tangible opportunity or direct recognition of some kind. I’m not sure what keeps people from thinking that they can do something meaningful to them and to the world; so few people try that there is plenty of room. And whatever you have to offer looks like something real and necessary. I suggest you address what looks like a mix of identity crisis and a tendency toward panic attacks, because these things are only wasting your energy and reinforcing a false idea. What would be the opposite of this? Get out of your head: let the vision come to you rather than you going to it. Feel the quickening of energy. When you take action, memorize what it’s like to ignore fear.

Mercury has stationed direct at the same time as a solar eclipse; that was a week ago, and if you look at the events of these past seven days, you will get an assessment of your commitments, and the commitments of others toward you. Or is it expectations? You need to figure it out. It seems that many of your business and sexual interactions have the fingerprints of guilt and obligation on them, and it’s long overdue for you to have had enough of this. I was going to say ‘sick of this’ and you may well be: if anything is ailing you, investigate whether it’s your sense of feeling trapped in promises that you have no idea why you made them. Remember that about 90% of this is strictly a phenomenon of your mind; literally a hang-up that you don’t need and will only be stuck with if you want it.

It’s time to get back into art. It’s time to travel. The two may be related. I know money may be tight, but that never stopped anyone from traveling or making art, if they really wanted to. A change of scenery would make it easier for you to see the many sources of support, psychic and material, that you have available. Part of how you gain access to them is through the only thing there actually is on the planet, relationships. Everything in your charts at the moment suggests that you push the limits on cooperation, on community, and on connecting to the incredible bounty of energy that is humanity. You must provide one thing: the crystal of intention. The seed idea. The organizing principle. Clarity of purpose. Whatever you want to call it.

Mars retrograde in your sign is the last holdout of this winter’s incredibly complex astrology. Now that so much crazymaking is out of the way, including Mercury retrograde and two eclipses, you have some perspective on what sources of distress are internal and what is coming from your environment. This in turn can inform you how much your own sense of self, and your sense of direction, shapes everything you experience. It’s easy to deny this when the planet is going mad and even the tectonic plates of the Earth are feeling the astrology. Mars retrograde is designed to pull you deeper into yourself than you have ever been, and while you’re there, I suggest you stay on the lookout for something about yourself that you never knew. The people who love you are aware of this quality in you; and you are aware of it in them. Next stop: authentic self-awareness. Clue: it’s easy.

So you’ve seen the pitfalls of trying to emphasize maturity over enjoying your life. There is only so far that theory can go, and coincidentally, it’s the one they kind of bashed into you as a child. You can now connect with that child and (with the wisdom of an adult) give him or her some of what she needs and wants. Most of this is where you allow your mind to go, and in a word, that direction is curiosity. I believe that curiosity has the highest value of any human thought, because it leads the way to so much: to love, to creative flow, to passion and to taking chances that we often think the better of. The simple desire to know and to understand is the thing your kid in there wants the most out of life, and you have an open enough mind to encourage this hunger and thirst for awareness.

With the Sun and Venus crossing the most dynamic angle of your chart — that would be Aquarius and the 5th solar house — you are on a quest for adventure. That’s good timing, though you need to be cautious about potential conflict over the next couple of weeks. I don’t suggest you walk on eggshells; rather that you pay attention for anyone who might not actually be a friend. You don’t need to be suspicious; a friend is what a friend does. Someone who is persistently insensitive is not a friend; someone who is not supportive of your desires is not a friend. That’s really all you need to know. Enjoyment of life does not depend on cooperation of others but it can definitely he hindered by the lack of cooperation. The most helpful thing you can do is to stay on friendly terms with yourself.

How many people are out there working to protect the world from the one inevitability of existence — the future? Most of the political battles and nearly all of the personal struggles of our lives involve the one simple fact that time moves on and existence changes. To create any illusion to the contrary requires a lot of effort, and that shows up as most of the madness that we witness. At the moment, you are negotiating with the future regarding the work that you do. You seem to have a notion that the answer can be found in the past, in the form of something that you left behind, or neglected to account for when you made the choices that have brought you to where you are today. Perhaps, though I suggest you look in the past for the sources of resistance, not for inspiration. The inspiration is here and now.

Make sure that you connect every idea you have with some tangible way to improve your life. Let this be the deciding factor about whether a concept has any value at all. Does this sound totally selfish or like perfect common sense? I suggest you stay out of the realm of abstraction and stay directly in the realm of self-care. Self-care includes creating a healthier environment (and by that I mean healthy on every level, from the music to the food to the kitty litter); and that touches everyone who happens to wander into your life, or who you currently live with. This is the one missing improvement after many (very many) concepts you’ve had to make your life a better place. Simply: making your life a better place (for you).

After an earthquake there are aftershocks, and we’ve had a series of quakes associated with an eclipse in your birth sign. The ground will be settling for a while, and it may take some time to see where you stand with yourself; however, unlike a physical quake, in the world, psychic shakeups are usually helpful, and they don’t do any serious damage. Keep your perspective: you’ve been prodded to take a step in your life, which means waking up and noticing that the things that mattered to you so much yesterday may not matter to you so much today. New things certainly do: you have some fresh priorities, and I suggest you keep them at the top of your to-do list rather than anywhere else. The word is value. Remember what you value, all the time.

Venus has arrived in your sign: the world needs this, and you are her first beneficiary. Venus in Aquarius does something helpful, which is put a little organization around the feminine principle. Far from being ruled by ‘male’ aggression, I believe the world is currently mostly ruled by toxic feminine energy that manifests as emotional manipulation (such as television advertising), fear, psychic chaos, obsession with glamour and superstition. Were the world really ruled by male energy we would all be out there fighting the good fight, and if by toxic male energy, openly crusading for evil; but we keep it quiet. Venus in Aquarius bestows some logic and a conceptual framework around so much unbridled emotion. For you, it offers the touch of receptive sensitivity in the midst of your restless drive for reason, and for reasons.

Jupiter in Pisces: that is good news. And when was the last time you heard me say that? I hope it was more recently than 12 years ago, the last time Jupiter was in our sign. Let the psychic pressure begin to ease off and feel your ears equalize with a little pop. Take note of all the dry spots in your world, whatever they might be. Make a list, long or short, of everything in your world that needs water, be it metaphorical or actual H2O. Notice what you need more of, and what needs improvement in your life, and be real about this assessment. Then set your intentions on having those things happen. Don’t worry about how; your job is to align your energy with your intention, desire or need, and the job of the universe is to answer.

Dear Subscriber:

First, a historical note. Did you know that when Christopher Columbus “discovered America,” the thing he discovered was Haiti? So the island that was shaken and the country that was shaken to rubble this week has a hallowed place in the dark history of the New World, as the place where European feet first touched the ground. There, they met the native Tainos, one of the Arawak people; and made a settlement, called La Navidad, on the north coast of present-day Haiti.

Detail of Columbus Before the Queen, by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, 1843. No authentic portraits of Columbus exist. This is from imagination. Original is kept in the Brooklyn Museum.

Thus began a holocaust. In 2007, US News and World Report said that from an estimated initial population of 250,000 in 1492, the Arawaks had dropped to 14,000 by 1517. How did that happen? There’s the famous entry from Columbus’ log, reporting his first encounter with them; that pretty much explains it.

“They brought us barrels of cotton thread and parrots and other little things which it would be tedious to list, and exchanged everything for whatever we offered them…I kept my eyes open and tried to find out if there was any gold, and I saw that some of them had a little piece hanging from a hole in their nose. I gathered from their signs that if one goes south, or around the south side of the island, there is a king with great jars full of it, enormous amounts. I tried to persuade them to go there, but I saw that the idea was not to their liking…They would make fine servants…With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

So much for Pat Robertson’s theory that this week’s quake happened because the Haitians had made a pact with the devil at Bois-Caiman near Cap-Haitien on Aug. 14, 1791. Yes, those in the slave revolt used Santeria at the commencement of the rebellion; that is historically documented. But even in the unlikely event that has some kind of karmic influence, it doesn’t explain what had happened on Hispaniola for the prior 300 years: brutal slavery at the hands of the Spaniards and the sugar-addicted French. Bad things have been happening in Haiti since Columbus laid eyes on the place.

When we look at the astrology of Tuesday’s earthquake and notice that it was triggered by the Aries Point — that potent first degree of the horoscope that puts collective and personal events into the context of one another — we can safely propose that this is about something much bigger. Are we getting a message that this is so big, it’s a comment on the story of the entire New World?

Yes, earthquakes happen, and they can happen anywhere. For example, there is an active geological fault line running down the Hudson River. The Indian Point nuclear power plant sits atop a newly identified intersection of two active seismic zones. We in New York who don’t even experience tremors could wake up to the Earth shaking one day next week or in 5,000 years.

The Aries Point and the Earthquake

The Haiti earthquake occurred in the days before a solar eclipse overnight Thursday to Friday, right near an 11-planet alignment in Capricorn and Aquarius. Yet in the midst of that alignment was a specific astrological marker, involving something called the Aries Point. That’s the location of the Sun on the first day of Northern Hemisphere spring. Or, the location of the Sun the day the Sun’s rays square the equator as the Sun enters Aries; same thing. The Aries Point, literally the first degree of the sign Aries, is extended by astrologers to include all four cardinal signs: the early degrees of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, all of which are sensitive to Aries Point effects.

Relief supplies on their way in to Haiti on a U.S. Air Force cargo jet. This is what it looks like to transform implements of war into the service of human progress. Photo: CNN.

I often characterize the Aries Point as “the personal is political,” in that the news that occurs around the time of an Aries Point event always affects a lot of people and also has a property of merging the personal and the collective realms. The world crashes into our living rooms. Everything happens at once. On the same day, relief efforts are underway from one of the deadliest earthquakes in recent history, and possibly in a very long time; congressional hearings on the banking crisis that nearly toppled the economy are proceeding. Citigroup was leveraged 68:1, debt to assets. There are no new regulations in place to prevent it from happening again. Remember I said that. I’m not the only one.

Suddenly there’s a new terrorist alert coming out of Yemen. Most people hadn’t heard of Yemen till a month ago. One near-miss incident on one flight is causing some to respond as if Sept. 11 had happened again.

A trial is underway in San Francisco to determine the constitutionality of banning same-sex marriage; talk about the personal being political. This trial is uniting one of the nation’s top conservative attorneys, Ted Olson — the U.S. government’s lawyer under George Bush — with one of the stalwart ‘liberal’ movements. Finally, a defection.

Then, in the approximate flavor of Mercury retrograde in Capricorn (on the Aries Point, with Pluto two degrees away), Google is considering pulling out of China. The company, which is part of our daily lives if anything is, cited what the Washington Post reported as “a concerted political and corporate espionage effort that exploited security flaws in e-mail attachments to sneak into the networks of major financial, defense and technology companies and research institutions.” China has imposed strict censorship requirements on Google which even fans of the company are disgusted that the search engine follows.

Oh, and our nation’s health departments are blitzing us with that ad for flu vaccinations, which you can see practically on any channel at any time: they suddenly have an overstock. I haven’t got around to doing an article on this, but hand sanitizers are pure BS. They don’t work; they make matters worse, creating a sticky, sugar-based film on the hand into which bacteria embeds and where it flourishes, allowing it to be spread further.

That Was Just the Warmup

This is a snapshot of the culmination of Mercury retrograde, two eclipses and a massive alignment within about 60 degrees of sky: a lot of pressure, a lot of Aries Point. Mars (the ruler of Aries) is retrograde, too: that lasts all winter, and you could look at it as Mars being a bit reserved and feeling cramped in his style: or Mars calling us all to look inward and search out our true sense of self. That the retrograde takes place in Leo puts Mars opposite Aquarius, the sign of conformity to groups. We are just coming out of one of the most impressive phases of mass-hypnosis that a talented, astrologically literate fantasy writer could ever make up. That would be based on a decade of Neptune in Aquarius, the drug of the masses being denial, Facebook and Fox News.

Attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies, usually on opposite sides of the issues, have teamed up to get same-sex marriage ready for the Supreme Court. Image from Rachel Maddow Show / MSNBC.

Chiron is now conjunct Neptune, a rare event that is about clearing up all that fog and seeing through the denial, delusion, deception and false idealism of Neptune in Aquarius.

But here’s what I’m here to tell you: we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. I can say this with some confidence after studying Aries Point effects for about 10 years, and knowing a little about the astrology of 2010. All the fuss about 2012 is the Aries Point, but we are fully into the aspect pattern right now, as planets begin to gather in the early degrees of the cardinal signs.

Of course the Flying Saucer People (who may be right) don’t know that; the Mayan astrologers seem to have had a clue: their long count comes to its transition on Dec. 21, 2012 with the Sun in the first degree of Capricorn, that is, aspecting the Aries Point precisely. The issue is not the Sun, itself; what the Mayans were looking at was where the Sun would be located: precisely on one of the cardinal points, and where they would be aligned at this time in the precessional cycle.

Before that happens, we have the spring of 2010. And here’s a bit of what we get. The big event involves a conjunction in the first degree of Aries: the conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus, two very influential planets. Jupiter leaves Aquarius and moves into Pisces on Sunday, but it does something unusual: it cuts clear across Pisces and stops in the first degree of Aries, where it stations retrograde.

Uranus, meanwhile, has been in Pisces for nearly seven years. If you’re a Pisces you’ve been on a wild ride, no doubt; but we’ve all been feeling this one as the morph of the technical world with the dream world, as a sense of bizarre instability and emotional restlessness. Uranus moves into Aries in June, right when Jupiter does: and we have the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction on the Aries Point. The last time these two planets teamed up with Aries Point involvement, it was in Libra the summer of 1969. That was the summer we had the Manson murders, the Moon landing and Woodstock, among many, many other news events that get eclipsed by these big three. (For example, the Beatles broke up that year.)

This image was enhanced by the U.S. Geological Survey to bring out detail. It is based on a 1979 image from the Voyager 1 spacecraft.

What is this conjunction about? From a political angle, we see many signs of a mass movement or uprising of some kind. It could be aggressive, or even militant; it could just be highly energized. I recognize that there are occasionally protests in our time of history, but we still don’t identify with this as being a time of rebellion or uprising against the many injustices that are being perpetrated. Given all the years and years of abuses taken by the American public, and by extension, the public of many other countries that have been affected by everything from the Iraq war to the banking crisis. Most people will still tell you they don’t know what to do about these things. Jupiter-Uranus to me looks like an invention; and in part, an invention of identity.

What we don’t want is too many people becoming too over-identified with a brilliant cause that they ‘take matters into their own hands’, and I don’t mean that in the style of Betty Dodson. The influence of Aries could have certain individuals becoming extremely gung-ho about their ‘ideals’ and Uranus could have them convinced they represent a ‘group’. Jupiter can lead people to think they know more than they do. The theme of the hour is precisely the opposite: figuring out how little we know; and getting some perspective on all this group identification that has been dominating the political landscape of our era.

When Jupiter and Uranus meet on the Aries Point, they will be in alignment with Saturn and Pluto, which have already been stirring up plenty of change. Pluto in Capricorn all by itself is the astrological semaphore for the banking collapse; the near-total dysfunction of Congress; and many other aspects of corporate and government decay. Astrologers have seen this coming for years; in articles years ago I was describing a banking crisis when I had no clue what that really meant. Notably, when Chiron crossed Capricorn beginning in late 2001, we had the aftermath of the Sept. 11 event, the Enron scandal, and Worldcom going down, and Arthur Andersen; and a variety of government scandals involving the FBI and US intelligence ignoring the warning signs about the imminent attacks.

What I said at the time was that Chiron in Capricorn was a kind of readiness exercise for Pluto’s arrival; if we learned the lessons then, we would not have to go through them again. Now, it seems the entire economy has turned into one giant Enron.

An Awakening of Consciousness

Jupiter and Uranus in Aries add a LOT of energy to this equation. But they add something else, something we really need: self-awakening. The thing about Aries is that it is deeply connected to themes like self-awareness. Aries is the original sign of I Am; it turns the key to existence, to action and to desire. Uranus is a revolutionary force, forward thinking and provocative. It could have been named Prometheus just as well. The ‘fire of the gods’ is the core of self-awareness, which of course all religions seem to have an issue with. Better to leave it all to God, than to be entrusted with the responsibility of making decisions.

Uranus, the first planet discovered by science, is associated with revolutions, innovations, ideas and stirring the pot. Photo by Voyager 2 spacecraft.

Then comes Jupiter. Jupiter magnifies things and is an excellent compliment to Uranus because it brings in a wisdom aspect, a cultural attribute and something worldly. And this sounds like it has the potential to be a sudden, spontaneous awakening of awareness, in particular, of self-awareness. Aries is about desire, and after Mars has spent six months lingering in Leo, most of it retrograde, desire is going to be running high this spring.

Opposite Jupiter/Uranus is Saturn in Libra, which is about taking relationships seriously. The Sixties were great and all, but one of the missing pieces was a reverence for relationship. That was a problem. What happened in the Sixties was not really a sexual revolution; it was the unleashing of long pent-up desire. There is plenty of sex going around these days, but most of it is not what you would call conscious or honest.

At the same time, in the same era, many of the people who aspire to do the work on themselves are afraid of sex or sexual contact; a good few — you must know some of these folks — are chipper and spiritual and associate sex with the ‘baser instincts’. Many people are trapped in relationship paradigms that force them to suppress who they, or is it who we, are; and it looks like that issue may finally catch fire. We sure could use the heat.

Yours & truly,

Updates daily at Planet Waves and Cosmic Confidential Diary.

Very Big PS: I am going to do my best to disappear for the next week in the service of wrapping up the Cosmic Confidential horoscopes. That may mean no regular horoscopes next week, or whatever other simplifications my inner editor can dream up. It will be very nice to wrap up four months of work on this edition: I am ready. Those who have not yet signed up for Cosmic Confidential can currently do so at the original per-sign price. See the Cosmic Confidential Diary for more details and it’s been a pleasure being your astrologer once again through eclipses and other planetary wilderness. — efc

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

No, I’m not writing today about liberated vaginas and the purity of a zipless fuck: it’s already been done by Erica Jong, taking an early stab at breaking through the social coding, ultimately the wall of guilt, that keeps us in our assigned roles. In sex, as in everything else, we’re only as authentic as we’ve allowed ourselves to be. Today we’ll examine the wall itself because, seems to me, we could not be tossed and twisted like pliant pizza dough whenever something scary comes along if the ingredients weren’t already within us. On the face of it, the gluten that makes us so easily stretched and molded seems to be a kind of sociopolitical herd consciousness, turned at the snap of a twig or the whim of a leader. Those of us disinclined to take such a leap get carried along by the majority, and that sums up my experience of the early years of our new century.

Who Let the Dogs Out?

As always, it’s news of the day and the politics that shape it that bring all this to mind, absurd illustrations of our current psychic state. It’s taken so tragic a thing as the heartbreaking earthquake in Haiti to get the politicos off a toxic replay of national security issues, all this on the heels of the Christmas bombing event that put Janet Napolitano’s job as Homeland Security Secretary in jeopardy. Hysteria is sooooo unattractive. I confess to having very little patience with this kind of mob-mentality and group-think, and took a certain perverse delight in this quote from an article by David Rothkopf: “The Republican Party has the collective cool on these matters of Prissy helping to birth Melanie’s baby in Gone With the Wind.” While I’m coming clean, I should also mention my resolution to immediately turn the channel on any program featuring Liz Cheney. She will be added to my Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck Rule: “Do not lie down with dogs lest ye get fleas.” Or Neo-con kennel cough, whatever.

As regards the herd consciousness of the opposition party, and in some instances our own, facts don’t seem to get us very far in the national argument, intelligence doesn’t count for much, and emotion is the name of the game. As illustrated in the book What’s The Matter With Kansas?, when we’re fed on a consistent diet of make-believe, we don’t connect with our own best interests even when they’re staring us in the face. Even more, as regards this whole issue of random terror, we’re easily spooked. Sometimes I think our American “can do-ism” and confidence in our ability to manage our own lives play against us when Chicken Little starts to squawk. 300 million of us rushing out with shotguns pointed at the sky at the first sign of danger is not only counterproductive, it’s stupid. And stupidity seems the word I choose most often when I think of the dialog concerning the state of our union.

Continued at this link…

 Weekly Horoscope for Friday, January 15, 2010, #801 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Did I ever mention that one of the reasons I like writing horoscopes is how subversive they are? Being aware of astrology puts people at a distinct advantage. I get to propose ideas that subvert the dominant paradigm — which is exactly what your charts say you’re up to; or what you have available. These days you’re dancing to the beat of a creative drummer that nobody else knows exists. This exploration is giving you ideas about yourself, as well as approaches to political or professional situations that lately have shown no sign of abating in their weirdness. You, however, are poised to take advantage of a turn of events that others are bound to find distressing or impossible to deal with; and as a result, exceed something you were certain was a limit on your success.

The thing about your old beliefs is that you couldn’t find yourself in them. The thing about your new beliefs is that you’re right at the center of them. Let this be your guide to wider mental and geographic horizons, and to your notion of success. Despite many odds against you, the ways of the past that long predate your birth are yielding to your willpower and influence. Here’s the thing to remember: while old beliefs can exist, and while they can guide our actions in ways that are not relevant to the present moment, the past itself does not exist. Or rather, it doesn’t exist, if we notice that fact. Lately you are noticing; it’s like you’ve climbed up onto an island of the future. Take a look around: this is where the journey begins.

The thing about agreements is that when they are made consciously, they can be unmade. If they are made unconsciously, they have to be sorted out carefully before they are unmade, because nobody really understands what they implied. However, you know what you want from a particular situation and you can go a long way from stating that plain-Jane simple and clear such that a plant could understand it. The thing is, it’s likely to be something you haven’t said yet; you may not have said it in the context of this conversation, and you may not have ever articulated it clearly at all. This is a great opportunity; and don’t stop here. You are finally figuring out what is important to you, and it’s about time. Now, put that knowledge to work for you.

Friday’s solar eclipse in your opposite sign definitely represents a shift in a relationship, and I hope you’re clearly perceiving the potential. It’s possible that some change in the structure of things means that it’s time to move on, but it’s more likely that those involved will move onto a new level of awareness and a new kind of involvement. There seems to be some kind of incentive involved here; I suggest you figure out what it is, and keep it at the front of your mind when you’re making decisions. There are no more throwaway relationships in your life. I’m not saying there ever were, but now each person you become involved with needs to have a space that is their own, and be considered a lifetime endeavor.

You cannot only reorganize your work patterns now; you can go to the meta-level and consolidate your methods and systems. Indeed, that’s the theme of the hour, and there will be many benefits for doing so. It would, in fact, be wise and ethical to gear your motivations toward efficiency and profit, as functions of one another. They need to increase together, which will have an added benefit of ease. Is it really possible to make things easier, cheaper and smoother? Actually, yes. Part of how you’ll be doing this is by paying close attention to your environment: in particular, your technological environs, and to one person who is a highly effective teacher, but who you may have only caught on to the wisdom of recently.

How do you really feel about sex? Do you secretly wish you could take off your socks? Do you wish you could take a shower right afterwards, but it’s too rude? Or would you rather stay covered in your scent the whole day? Do you find the talking part as hot as the physical part? Do you like the risk of making someone guess what you want? Do you secretly swim in the direction of that which is forbidden, just because that makes it better? Yes, yes, I thought so. Your charts are super-sexy (as they would say in Germany) right now. I hope this means you are feeling equally sexed; and in terms of getting what you want, it’s far likelier if you go for exactly what you want; what, and with whom.

The ground is moving under your life right now, and and that means that energy is rising up from the Earth. Feel the power, even as you wonder what will happen, or how you will deal with the changes. Feel your stability deepening, even as your structures are challenged. Notice how the brittle spots in your emotions are cracking and settling into place; and how the strong, flexible ones are standing strong and true. Don’t be annoyed by that one lingering anxiety; don’t let it hold you back; it’s just a thought. The truth is, you are letting go of a past that you for a very long time took for granted. You took its power over you for granted as well; and that, finally is changing fast.

Your concept of a partner or loved one has to change. In polite spiritual company one would say evolve, but I mean shift entirely. You’re holding onto a lot of old ideas about this person, or trying to; they are pretty much useless as anything except souvenirs now. The past few weeks have taught you how deep into yourself you can go, without ‘losing yourself’ in there. You have seen how close to a seemingly dangerous possibility you can come without losing your nerve. All of this is helping you make a new map to your own mental process and psychic interior. Now, back to this other person: update your files; see them in their current context; and most of all, envision them on their chosen path to the future. Don’t worry: this is much likelier to bring you closer than it is to draw you apart.

Jupiter is about to change signs; it does this once a year, which is what makes you such a fashionable person. This year’s fashion is the hot tub, the Jacuzzi, the hot springs bath or when all else fails, the bathtub. If you don’t have a bathtub, make friends with someone who does, and trade them occasional peeks at your collection of Air Mail stamps. Maybe get a fish tank; check Craig’s List and you’ll find some gear at a reasonable price. Try to spend some time by the ocean. Drink water. I will remind you many times during the coming four seasons: water, water, water. One other thing: keep your frugal attitude. Don’t do less, just do it for cheaper. Save your money for some kind of significant, imminent long-term investment in yourself.

What an interesting eclipse today. I wonder what’s going on with you. You may file your iStrology report via email; juicy is welcome. As for my aStrology report: you seem to be claiming back some significant aspect of yourself or your autonomy that was previously invested in a relationship. What you’re verging on is experiencing yourself as a whole person: independently of any other person, or in the context of a relationship. This ability will provide you with many opportunities to go over ground you’ve covered, and in a sense taken, during the past three or four months, smooth out problems and accomplish your goals with much greater efficiency. The truth is, you have a job to do. Get your intentions behind that every day.

There are no compromises to integrity. You will make errors; there may be learning experiences; there are certainly unexpected or unfamiliar circumstances. But there are no compromises. Either something is true or it is not. Either someone is honest or they are not. Either you listen to your fear, or you listen to your creativity, maintaining awareness of your shadow. I am rarely one to advocate seeing the world in such black-and-white terms, but this is a temporary tool or utility that will help you get where you are going: and you seem to be feeling your potential more palpably than ever. This includes your financial possibilities; your emotional depth; your ability to focus your thoughts like a laser and cut through nearly anything. That is power, which demands responsibility. And this, in turn, is precisely that impeccability is the theme of the hour.

What a relief that Jupiter is coming home to Pisces on Sunday. It’s been a dozen years since the ruler of our sign was there. Say what you will about Zeus, the deity; Jupiter the planet bestows protection, opens potential and offers a feeling of abundance — particularly when in Pisces. Especially if you have a bit of Pisces in your chart, and you have more than a bit. On this and several other accounts, you’re both gaining a sense of clarity and easing through a spell of isolation and a weird kind of psychic pressure that has stalked you for years. You have more decompression coming, but like coming up from deep underwater, you don’t want to do it all at once. I do suggest that this weekend, you figure out a way to let your body and soul relax, take a deep breath and let your imagination do its thing.

Good Morning:

I have noticed the squeeze of this approaching simultaneous Mercury stationing direct and annular (not annual, rather annular) solar eclipse. I bet you have, too. Using a fairly basic set of planets, there are 11 of them concentrated in Capricorn and Aquarius, including Mercury and the eclipse; plus Jupiter, Chiron, Neptune and Pluto. This whole setup is stretched across the two Saturn-ruled signs, Capricorn and Aquarius. One addresses psychical structures and the other, psychic structures. To illustrate the point of how this feels, in case we need to look at a chart for information, Saturn is square Pluto, which feels a little like a train making a 90-degree turn.

The Thema Mundi, or chart of the world. This is probably a fictional horoscope, used as a teaching tool and reference, handed down to us from the classical era of Greece. Unlike the current chart, it’s light and airy and all the planets are exactly in their proper places: that is, each planet is in the sign of its rulership. Notice that the chart has Cancer (ruled by the Moon) rising, whereas we usually associate Aries with the 1st house.

As part of this, Venus, the Sun and the Moon are all precisely aligned for Friday’s eclipse, to within one degree. So this is an eclipse conjunct Venus in Capricorn; which is a whole book chapter because Sun-Venus alignments are pretty special and got a lot of love from Mayan astrologers. There is big one coming up in June 2012, and this is a signpost on the way.

In case that’s all not enough for you, there’s also a “near Earth asteroid” called 2010 AL30 going by, which the space-type blogs are saying might be a piece of debris. This morning one of the world’s leading astrophysicists said in an email that his best guess (the word ‘guess’ was written in all caps, which I will spare you, because we’re all feeling a little jumpy) is that AL30 is a hunk of spacecraft debris, of which there are many orbiting the Earth, and in near-Earth orbits around the Sun. “Give it a few days and I bet it’ll be pretty clear,” he said.

I would agree. Assuming the world doesn’t crack open on Friday (I read a report recently that earthquakes are indeed associated with planetary alignments, and the alignment we now have is the perfect specimen) we will all feel better Saturday. Mercury stationing direct at the time of an eclipse has the feeling of significant, specific information coming out: it could be personal, and this week is one of those distinct personal watersheds where it’s possible to make some actual, deep decisions about ourselves and our lives that stick.

In Capricorn with stuff dancing around the Aries Point, it could be another one of those huge revelations about what is happening in the banking world that nobody seems to notice because the information gets snowed under by the kid with the underpants bomb. Or, you could turn on your TV and be treated to a debate about whether Buddhism or Christianity is the better path to redemption for Tiger Woods. (Note that the notion of redeeming one’s soul does not exist in Buddhism, to my knowledge. For that, you definitely have to go straight to the Christians.) With the eclipse conjunct Venus in Capricorn, we learn something about values and what we hold dear; we learn something about how deeply our values are ‘informed’ (putting it politely) by corporate culture. Learning is, of course, subject to one’s interest level; but other factors suggest that there will be reason to pay attention.

Closeup of Friday’s eclipse of the Sun, which takes place at 2:11 am EST. Nearly a dozen points and planets are in Capricorn and Aquarius, including Pluto, the Sun, Moon, North Node, Jupiter, Neptune and Chiron — and Mercury about to station direct. Jupiter is in the last degree of Aquarius, about to ingress Pisces on Sunday.

That’s as much prediction as you’ll be getting out of me today.

Now for a little analysis. As you can see from the diagram to the left, there are lot of planets concentrated in one part of the sky. Notably, the Earth is opposite all those planets; they are in Cap and Aquarius and the Earth is in Cancer. So all that energy — big planets a thousand times the size of the Earth, and small potent ones — are pulling on us; pulling us in one direction. What direction would that be?

From time to time, there has been discussion or speculation about a chart for the world. It turns out that such a thing exists; from the Hellenistic (classical Greek) era of astrology. The chart is called the Thema Mundi, and I’m a big fan. Since discovering this chart a few years ago, it’s informed my study of the houses in particular, which are the basis of astrological interpretation. This chart has Cancer rising; 15 degrees, to be exact. Yes, the chart of the world has the maternal, feminine sign Cancer on the ascendant, rather than aggressive, headstrong Aries.

This is interesting because it puts all those planets that are going by into the two relationship-oriented houses of the Thema Mundi — the 7th (Capricorn) and the 8th (Aquarius). By relationship I mean partnership, conjugal, marriage, contractual type of relationship: direct and straight on. Note, in the chart of the world, the two houses associated with relationship are both ruled by Saturn. This confirms the joke about lesbians bringing a moving truck to the second date. We already know about everyone who gets married by Elvis in Las Vegas and the only ads I see on TV these days are for dating websites and Girls Gone Wild; I always want to marry those girls, straight away.

That joke is on me. The 8th house (marital contracts) of the Thema Mundi is Aquarius — the sign of groups.

Note that in a high federal court in San Francisco right now, a trial is underway (as of yesterday) that will in part determine the constitutionality of banning same-sex people from marriage. We will know these laws are really fair when a bisexual person can marry a man and a woman; or when five people can get married.

So this whole traveling space revival is shaking up the marriage and relationship angle of the world horoscope. Isn’t that funny? Well, I guess not if you had to call the cops on your boyfriend last night, but the rest of us can afford to have a sense of humor about it. There is a lot, and I do mean quite a lot, of stress on our concepts of relationship, and on our actual relationships, to get in step with the post-postmodern world of constant change.

Full chart of Friday’s eclipse of the Sun in Capricorn, conjunct Venus. This is a few hours before Mercury stations direct on Friday.

It does often seem that everything about our lives changes except for our ideas about what a relationship is. We have many sources to thank for that reinforcement, but what we really have are our own ideas, our own fear of abandonment, our own obsession with control (which we call jealousy), denial of our sexual reality and that of our partners, and a lot — a lot — of religious conditioning. Which shows up as supposedly secular social conditioning, generally as marketing, all of which is under pretty severe stress to drop the whole charade and get real; which is, in turn, calling on us to take new approaches to relating that most people, for whatever reason, dare not consider: for example, relationships not based on the notion that we own one another.

The Chiron-Neptune conjunction, approaching full focus, is suggesting that we clear the fog and look at the world through some lens besides the ideals that have proven themselves to be untrue. Mars retrograde in Leo (opposite all that Aquarius) is saying we need to do the one really, truly brave thing that we are here to do in the world, which is to be an individual. When you do all the relationship calculus, no matter what one is or thinks they are in terms of lovestyle or lifestyle or preference or sexual orientation, there remains the first and final project of being a self-aware individual no matter how zonked out anyone else is on trying to make their lives as perfect as an advertisement.

And there remains the fact that the antiquated expectations that we were given by our grandparents and our parents need to be carefully assessed. We need to question every single one of the assumptions that were handed to us from the past. The group pressures coming from the direction of Aquarius, which is the sign of conformity, among other things, need to be seen for what they are — and I trust that Chiron-Neptune will offer anyone who wants to break free the clarity and resolve to do so.

Mars retrograde in Leo has been reminding me of the Abraham-Hicks material, which tells us to focus on what we want, because that is usually what we get: the key being to apply that powerful manifesting force called desire on that which is actually in our own best interest.

Yours & truly,