Dear Friend and Reader:

I was talking to a Leo reader recently who said she didn’t grasp her July horoscope. This, after years of it fitting perfectly for her, as she described her experience. Because the July horoscope was an interpretation of the total solar eclipse happening on Tuesday, I was curious and took yet another look at this eclipse, this time from the viewpoint of Leo, very close to where the eclipse occurs.

Photo by Eric Francis for Book of Blue.

I’ve said a few times, to friends and in writing, that this is one of the most challenging eclipses I’ve ever worked with, that is, the interpretation of it. I would estimate that I’ve covered about 70 eclipses in my career, and this one stands out. A few weeks ago, I was corresponding with my collaborator Tracy at Serennu.com and she handed me one of her one-line gems when I asked her take on what it was about. She said, “It looks like mother is not available and father hasn’t shown up yet.”

The eclipse takes place in the last degree of the sign Cancer. That implies that it’s ‘between Cancer and Leo’, in as much as there is any space between signs; it’s at the edge of one concept and at the beginning of another. When you interpret this around the signs, it represents a transition from one phase of life to another; the eclipse falls on the cusp of two solar houses for all of us.

Cancer and Leo are signs in a special category in that neither is ruled by a planet. Both are associated with luminaries — the Moon and the Sun, respectively. Ancient astrology gives them a variety of other distinctions, but they are in a sense the ‘master signs’, in that everyone is so affected by the bodies associated with them. And when an eclipse arrives, no matter where it is, these two signs are involved because the Moon and Sun are involved.

For their part (in mundane and psychological astrology) the Moon and the Sun represent mother and father, as well as the two dominant features of the person. The Moon corresponds to mother, the child-self, the personality, and one’s sense of needs and comfort. The Sun corresponds to father, adult self, the experience expressing the personality, and one’s sense of visible presence and glory. In a world chart like an eclipse, however, separated from the trappings of any one personality, the Sun and Moon can look a lot like mom and dad, and in this chart they do. We need to remember that in many biological and physical senses, we are made of mom and dad. So it follows that the luminaries will represent both facets of our parents and facets of ourselves. There is a very close correspondence in real life.

As we proceed with this analysis, remember that all the usual concepts that surround eclipses are applicable: discontinuty, concentration of experience, the feeling of fate and the establishment of patterns. Eclipses arrive with events that affect many people. And while they are apparently fixed points in time, they are more like standing patterns in space-time that can be felt for many months or even years. We are currently deep into the process of Tuesday’s eclipse, particularly given that it’s surrounded by lunar eclipses before and after. We are approaching the midpoint of three eclipses, the peak event and by far (using astrological precedent) the most potent event.

Holographic fetus from Daily Mirror series. Photo by Eric Francis for Book of Blue.

Let’s consider the structure of this solar eclipse and see if we can get a metaphor on the screen. A Moon-Sun conjunction in the last degree of Cancer, the event does not form solid aspects to any other major point. It’s like it’s lurking in a hidden dimension.

The Moon’s South Node is in the first degree of Leo — the very next degree, calling the focus in that direction; within hours of this event, both the Sun and the Moon will cross over the South Node in Leo (eclipses always happen near a lunar node; that is their job). It’s as if something is imminently about to be born, from the primal waters of Cancer into the daylight of Leo; moving from the cooler, formative sign to the hotter, brighter and more expressive sign. You could say we are witnessing a birth about to take place, but to me it seems more like conception, followed by birth. Perched on the South Node, there is something old going on; or something old about to be released.

The eclipse in that late degree of Cancer has a 12th house feeling to it. Conception is a veiled act. It generally happens in secret. It’s happening in another dimension of existence from the child who will be conceived; the child is in nonphysical form and the parents conceiving that child are in physical form, doing something that opens a bridge between the two worlds. Often, the parents who are about to conceive don’t consciously know that they are about to do so. This is because often, conception is an allegedly unconscious act, thought of as an ‘accident’, or something left to unexpected chance. People often act as if they don’t know that sex leads to pregnancy. There is often an element of denial involved — which translates to the denial of the creative process and denial that human beings are the creators of human life.

From the standpoint of the soul/child about to be conceived, assuming their intent plays a role in that fact, there is that moment of standing helpless, powerless and alone before the parents’ experience, which is the sexual experience that creates our physical form and sets off the new incarnation. In any incarnation, our first experience of sex is the sex that created us, over which we have no control; to which we are directly subject; and to which we relate to man and woman as equivalent energies, exterior to us, but of which we are neither.

I call this initial experience the ‘conception drama’ or the ‘primal scene’. The sense of powerlessness that attends the primal scene, and our refusal to look at it and make peace with it (most of us do not want to think about, much less witness, our parents having sex; and we don’t generally get to study other male-female couples having sex) is, I believe, at the root of our powerlessness around sex; and hence the root of our powerlessness around our own self-creative process.

Compersion Bed, for Jen Bolmann. Photo by Eric Francis for Book of Blue.

We can have millions of other ideas about sex; we can read articles about how to keep your Scorpio happy or 99 things you don’t know about touching your man; but what we tend to forget is that there was an actual sexual experience that created us, over which we had no power and which had rather profound consequences for us; namely, existence itself.

That feeling of powerlessness, such as being a hapless victim of circumstance, or a victim of sex, or of desire, or of reproductive power, is much of what describes our lives, till we gradually wake up to consciousness, volition and the power of choice. Imagine if we could, indeed, be conscious of the whole process of incarnation, this magnificent nexus of what we call at different times physical, sexual, metaphysical, spiritual and whatever else — all as the same basic experience that created us and by which we, in turn, take up life as creators. From there we can recognize every creative experience as containing all of those properties.

Now we have a chance to return to that primal scene. We have a cosmic metaphor for the conception drama, to which we are witness and participant. The event takes place ‘inside mother’ (the sign Cancer) and is born into the differentiated, manifest world (the sign Leo). Yet if we are using astrology, the whole thing can be out in the open; we can feel it as witness and experience the results even if the visual aspect is still concealed. Astrology can give us a glimpse behind the veil, and if we don’t look, we can feel the events on this side of the veil.

Remember that this is like a living metaphor being acted out by the celestial bodies, in their outer and inner expressions; as physical events and also as a shift in awareness. We have an enormous gift of psychic mobility with this event, and the potential to be cut off from our known moorings and experience something else, something new.

For those curious about experiences they can create that work with encounters of the primal scene, there are many possibilities, which can be done with or without a partner.

For those of us wanting to shift awareness around such vital things as our parents, our relationships, our sexual process and our creative process (all of which are related), we have one event that we can focus on as a point of transition. Awareness is about bringing things out of the ‘unconscious’ aspect of awareness and into the ‘conscious’ aspect of awareness; here, we have the opportunity to look, to be aware, and to change as an act of will. As with all change, we let go of one form and embrace another. From the look of this chart, poised on the brink between the two master signs, what we are letting go of is something we are ready to, and what we may embrace is something we are indeed ready for.

As Sinead said, there is life outside your mother’s garden.

Yours & truly,

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Carpe diem – seize the day. I proposed that a while back, a call to action that encourages us to put timidity aside, sends us forward in search of adventure and success and progress; a reminder not to waste the moment, when so much can be achieved. As goal setting goes, I’m currently in revisionist mode; everything’s speeded up to the point of absurdity and I’m only seizing about a tenth of what I used to. In this current period of overabundant information, stress and worry, I find the prospect of seizing anything exhausting; maybe it’s just me, but my lethargy is about all that’s keeping me grounded at this point. Sorting out the signals is a full-time job, and you don’t have to seize much to do it; what you need will come to you.

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die, St. Joseph’s Cemetery Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ. Photo by Brian Reilly.

It is helpful in seizing what we will of our day, or let’s call it embracing our experience, to push aside the bullshit — and I mean that literally: ‘bull’ as in imposingly solid and immovable, and ‘shit’ as in excremental leavings, processed and eliminated. For instance, at this writing if you turned on CNN you would find a ‘wise Latina woman’ with a stunning record of achievement being chided like an errant child by a group of partisan old coots that still can’t believe that a historically White, Male and Elitist America is ready to leap into a diverse new century. Sonia Sotomayor, being vetted as a Supreme Court candidate, is patiently holding her own against attacks that cannot be called anything but personal and more than vaguely racist; sexist as well, but covertly, as Republican lawmakers talk down to a woman whom they refuse to acknowledge as their peer and more. They are not attacking so obviously with their ‘legislating from the bench’ rhetoric this go-round; and it would be wise if they didn’t, since their choice of Roberts and Alito has fundamentally moved the court even farther to the Right and is an example of that very behavior they pretend to eschew.

There has always been bullshit in the American dialogue; some of our dearest mythologies are as dead and petrified as dinosaur dung. Impassioned flag wavers were not among those many of us who questioned the “land of the free and the home of the brave” meme during the first part of this century; who looked on in dismay as the Gunslinger Philosophy became not only justified but romanticized to the strains of the Star Spangled Banner. Our little guru, George Bush, succeeded where so many before him had failed; he broke us, inside and out, exposing decades of underlying rot and even now those who refuse to fault him want to return the nation to the downward spiral that brought us here. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty much disgusted that these unhappy people want me to be as miserable as they are because they’ve determined it “the American Way.”

Coming Up in Daily Astrology and Adventure

It seems like they just got it up there, and officials at NASA are already planning to send the International Space Station hurtling into the Pacific Ocean in just seven years.

The international space station, as seen from the space shuttle Discovery. The station is scheduled to be completed next year, then returned to Earth in 2016. Photo: NASA.

According to a Washington Post article, the lack of a long-term budget plan to keep the space station operational means that in early 2016 it will be “de-orbited,” which is apparently scientist speak for “made to fall from the sky and land in the ocean.”

At first glance the logic seems counter-intuitive. The space station has already cost the United States and the other participating nations around $100 billion and provided a unique platform for any number of scientific experiments. The recently added Japanese module, for example, has a “front porch” that allows for experiments in the vacuum of space.

Furthermore, the International Space Station has an unusually high-profile relationship with Earthbound fans of space exploration, in no small part because it can be seen with the naked eye as a bright spot passing through the night sky. Surely it’s got a value that extends past 2016?

The de-orbiting announcement was made by Michael T. Suffredini, NASA’s space station program manager, during a panel discussion at a public hearing last month. In addition to the budget issue, it’s been pointed out that the station was initially conceived as an orbital dock for the Space Shuttle, which will itself be discontinued next year. So what good will the darn thing be, then? Might as well bring ‘er down!

It seems not everybody is aboard with that plan, including at least one member of Congress.

“If we’ve spent a hundred billion dollars, I don’t think we want to shut it down in 2015,” Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, was quoted in the Post article.

Actually, Suffredini himself acknowledges that a near-Earth orbit facility like the International Space Station is the best place for mankind to learn about long-term residence in a space environment. And he said that “NASA is conducting a thorough review of the station to see what it would take to certify it as operational through the late 2020s.”
So if even the guy who suggested the space station needs to be de-orbited acknowledges it could be useful well beyond 2016, what’s up? Well, politics, that’s what. Because NASA, as a federal agency, is beholden to Congress for its budget — and it could be that the best way to save an incredibly expensive space station is to threaten to throw it away. Appeal to the sense of fiscal responsibility (such as it is) in Congress.

At least one scientist has spoken out in support of making major changes when it comes to the station. According to the Post, Robert L. Park, a University of Maryland physicist, says “the station fundamentally lacks a mission.” He also told the newspaper he thinks there’s a better solution than Congress continuing to fund it: “Give it to China. Let them support the damn thing.”

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, July 17, 2009, #775 – BY PRIYA KALE

For more daily Astrology, Horoscopes and information on Private Consultations please visit www.priyakale.com

Aries (March 20-April 19)
There may be waves of nostalgia filling your breath, mixed with a sense of anticipation, as you get ready to leave the nest. This is a new adventure in every sense but on the deepest level this is taking you ‘home.’ Rise above churning insecurities to see how far you have come in just the recent past. You are birthing your being in the most profound way; this means acknowledging your fears and then pushing through your own intuition to lift the veil of truth. In financial, emotional and creative decisions pay attention to the deeper purpose of what you are working towards, rather than getting caught up in irrelevant details. Dare to follow a dream knowing it is safe to be yourself.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
You have the potential now to spin words into gold bringing you more warmth, comfort and the security you need. You have the blessings of the Universe in this endeavor and any blockage you feel within a creative, personal or financial situation is only pushing you to find your own inner strength. Consider these labor pains as you birth a creation born of deep love. You are twice as smart, with twice the abilities and resources and twice as much to give than anyone else. Ask yourself what something means to you. You well know your level of dedication and that there is nothing you can’t do if you set your heart to it. Your wisdom is deeper and more golden than you give yourself credit for. Listen and be willing to speak.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
A professional opportunity is asking you to dream big and you may wonder if you have what it takes. But recent events have been leading you deeper to discover your deepest values and what is important to you. You may worry if you are attractive enough or loved enough; but remember if you argue for your limitations you will get them. A recent blazing discovery brought a revelation about your feelings, desires and who you are at your depths. Trust this as you get a second chance at a personal ambition, have faith in yourself and what you have to offer. Speak your truth boldly, honestly and courageously. If you reach for the stars now you might just land on the Moon.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
Consider this time an unveiling of your true being. As you begin to see yourself in a whole new light it may feel like a part of you is dying and perhaps it is. But be courageous and honest with yourself as you dive to discover who you are at the bottom of it all. You may worry how this will affect a deeply personal or financial relationship. But any fear of judgment is likely in your head and your cue to speak honestly in a spirit of building trust. You are awakening to a greater truth that can no longer be denied. Be guided by your imagination, an open mind and you are likely to be led straight to the heart of a gold mine of unexplored potential — you.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
“We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.” You’ve been wading through deep fears and doubts lately. But consider this week a soul-baptism re-birthing where you are bathed in divine glory. Only your self-criticism can hold you back from manifesting what has been a sweet hope of freedom. Find your own integrity and be honest about what something or someone means to you. There is a connection you share which has the ability to touch you at the depths of your soul, revealing a deep truth to you about yourself. If you can trust, this could potentially open up a deep well of resources and floodgates to intimacy. Allowing the freedom of being who you were born to be — yourself.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
Recent events have likely brought you a deep crystallized vision of what the future could be like if you dare to reach for it. Your integrity is your strength but you can be your own worst critic, so watch your tendency to judge your success. What you are birthing is a gift of hope, care and comfort for a thirsty world. But on a deeper level this is asking you to dare to dream bold and in vivid color as you paint your vision. Allow your intuition to be the torch that guides you through your most vicious doubts. Use your imagination now, as you listen to whispers of the muse. There is a light shining deep in your psyche unveiling the blazing truth of your mission.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
You stand on the threshold of manifesting your greater vision for the world to see, but keep your perspective regarding a personal, creative or financial aspiration. Your subconscious fear of judgment need not cloud the wisdom of exploring your options. The sky may be the limit, but that won’t help if you don’t venture outside your shell. An unexpected opportunity has likely given you new awareness of the potential if you dare reach for it. This has never been about your ego, but rather the depth of what you have to give. Your message is a shining beacon of warm hope, to a greater community.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
Open your heart and mind to a gentle Universe beckoning you to explore the unknown. Rather than any physical space this is about you feeling at home in this world regardless of where you are. If home is where the heart is, yours seems to be calling you beyond your comfort zone. Have faith in your own dedication to a mission as you turn a corner within a financial or intimate situation. You may fear falling into an abyss but your ability to face your fears is a tale of courage for a world starved for truth. Be bold and honest, as you dive into a divine mystery. You will find it only swirls you right back up to the top, unveiling to you your rightful place in the world.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
A recent unexpected proposition or confession may have presented you with an opportunity that sounds almost too good to be true. An important intimate or financial partnership has the potential to flood your world with more of the emotional and tangible security you need for your next great adventure. You may wonder if you can trust this, but recent developments have likely shown you the depth of your most important commitments and relationships. You judge your accomplishments more than anyone else you fear. Recognize your selfless dedication and integrity are rare gifts that need not stand in the way of your success. This is returning you to a phase where you feel safe and free to paint the sky fearlessly with the vivid colors of your imagination.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
A recent unexpected conversation may have opened up a depth of feelings you didn’t know existed; or it may be a piece of information that sparked your imagination. Now as you begin to discover a new depth of potential within a situation, it seems to be inviting you to leave your comfort zone to go deeper. This may feel like a huge risk, but there is nothing to fear now but fear itself. Even you know your deepest connections give you access to deep pockets and huge hearts that keep you warm, safe, loved, giving you the courage you need to enter the unknown. As long as you keep your sense of humor and perspective when dealing with the daily challenges of life you can come through with flying colors.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
A recent conversation has likely washed over you like waves of relief giving you an insight into the depth of care and concern that surrounds you. You may still worry though about what this means for the future or a creative or sexual partnership. A partner for their part has been going through a phase of resurrection and may finally be ready to relate to you as an equal. I suggest you overcome your own resistance to expressing your true feelings within a situation for fear of judgment. What you create together now has a shining message for your future.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
You are now rediscovering the depth of your being in a profound way. You’ve had to go deeper below your surface emotions within a sexual, creative or emotional situation but your journey has led you to pearls of truth that may have even surprised you. As a Pisces you are a sensitive creature and often need to keep a close watch on your heart to avoid people taking advantage of your niceness. But a close personal partnership or financial situation requires you to resolve any sense of limitation or judgment you feel coming from partners. Follow the feeling in your heart and soul and allow yourself to be led by passion. Your courage to live the dream daily, being true to yourself is the gift you give the world.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Eric Francis, Paris ’05.

Dear Friend and Reader:

We don’t have a monthly horoscope today. As I mentioned recently, the monthly schedules differ in part based on the magazine they originate in, and in part based on the number of Tuesdays in a month. There happen to be a lot of Tuesdays this month. And on the last of them, one week from today is a total solar eclipse in Cancer.

For the sake of doing clear astrology, I don’t usually release the first monthly horoscope for the next month until the Sun is in its new sign, and that happens on Weds., July 22. I’ll get back to you about how I plan to handle that scheduling.

I’m also getting the message to ease back on my creative output, so I’m not planning an edition of Planet Waves Radio tonight.

The sky is popping, however, and I’ve updated Planet Waves Daily with a new post, this one about the Sun and Mercury square Eris. I’ve also delved into some Gemini stuff, including how Mars will be aspecting the natal Nessus and/or Hylonome of many people in our reading audience. Please check there, and I will see you Friday with the regular edition.

Yours & truly,

Dear Friend and Reader:

Lately I’ve been working through some rage at the guys on Harleys who roar past my studio without any tailpipes. Harleys, due to the way the engine cycles, have that distinctive slap and are loud enough with tailpipes; but I guess not loud enough for some. Between fantasies of taking matters into my own hands, I’ve been trying to figure out just why exactly someone would need to rumble down the street at 150 dB.

Harley-Davidson Deluxe Hog. Do loud pipes save lives, or announce one’s arrival? Photo John Cachero.

On one level, it’s what you might call pure testosterone. I was sitting with a client recently and she said she was turned on by the roaring bikes going by. She kept getting up to see what they looked like. I found this interesting; more interesting than wanting to take pot shots at them. It was a clue to what was going on. How we handle anger has a lot to do with our Mars placement, and how we integrate Mars.

That sound certainly gets you to look, whether you’re turned on or you want to see what jerk could possibly be that rude; that engine blasting is a form of publicity and it’s designed to be sexual. It’s the vehicular equivalent of squawking and parading around with one’s plumage out, doing the eternal dance. There is a lot of Biker Guy seeks Biker Girl in those loud engines; sooner or later some chick is gonna think it’s too hot to resist. So what if she has stainless steel teeth.

But this can’t be all. It’s more transgressive than a bird dancing around the backyard; there are lots of ways to get the attention of women. Everyone knows we don’t have earlids, at least not in this dimension, so with all that sound there’s an invasion involved. It’s aggressive. The message that “you are powerless to stop me from doing this” took a while to sink in intellectually; I experienced it as rage. But I knew the anger was telling me something; it usually is.

Henry McCarty a.k.a. Billy the Kid.

The guys know the cops are powerless, too. Having a loud engine is an equipment violation, not a moving violation. If you get a ticket you don’t even need to go to court. If you “fix” it within a day or so, the ticket is dismissed. Then you can unscrew tailpipes again and the game repeats. Under the current state traffic law as I understand it, there are no consequences for doing this to people. It’s little consolation that the driver slowly goes deaf; it’s mean to dogs and cats.

In this drama, I detect a bit of the Great American Outlaw, only like most things Great American, it’s a parody. We’re not talking Billy the Kid here. But then men in our culture, and in most civilized cultures, have a problem.

While biologically-based female roles dating back into the hunter-gatherer days (about three million years of human history, as compared to less than 10,000 years of civilization) are still available and in a sense inevitable for many women, many traditional male roles are not available. Nursing a child is still nursing a child. Slaying a mammoth is different than stopping at Whole Foods and picking up an organic steak. But think of it: is there anything more tantalizingly masculine than a guy standing next to a grill wearing an apron cooking up cheeseburgers for his hungry brood?

Yesterday I was studying the charts for my morning blog and I noticed that Mars is in the very last degrees of Taurus, about to change signs to Gemini. I took one glance at that chart and thought, This is about integrating Mars. By integrating Mars, I mean fully absorbing the energy of Mars into one’s psyche, and allowing it not just a place to be itself but accepting it into every aspect of existence. Mars is about volition, motivation and desire. An energy at the core of the personality, it is the quality that we use to consciously create our lives the way we want or need to. Mars is part of everything from the sex drive to the ability to create money, make decisions and stand up for our rights.

Both men and women have Mars and in our current society I believe have issues integrating that energy. We have so few examples of men who are in harmony with their masculinity that exceedingly few people have a concept of what it’s supposed to look like, or feel like, or do.

For a while recently, Mars took a dangerously toxic form: George Bush and Dick Cheney bombing helpless populations. These men set a desperately painful example of what it meant to be a man, or masculine, to a whole generation of young people. In effect, you can be as violent as you want with no consequences to yourself. This is not new in our era of history. Just this week, Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam War, died at age 93, one of the world’s most horrid examples of poisonous, misguided Mars energy.

To some people it looks like Grand Theft Auto, that video game where you get to pick up a hooker and kill her. To some it’s all about having a closet full of assault rifles, but that’s half-baked; shooting at trees and targets (or deer and bear) is not nearly as satisfying as risking your life in the heat of combat. None of this is in integrity; Mars is there, but it’s not integrated into the psyche. It’s this thing you do on Saturday.

The last two degrees of any sign are considered by some astrologers to be what’s called anaretic. Those degrees can indicate a crisis of integrating the energy involved; this can go to the point of a life or death struggle. When a planet is out there at the end of a sign, you have to deal with it. It’s going to be one of the things in the chart that gets your attention over and over, mainly because it’s acting like a missing piece, or a renegade piece. It’s insisting on being absorbed fully into existence. It’s an invitation to attain the closest thing to mastery over an energy that we can get in this life.

Taurus is a sign associated with Venus, so here we have Mars struggling for acceptance in a feminine angle of the psyche. We all have the whole zodiac working in our charts and we all have Venus and Mars. I’ve noticed that most of the gender drama that we see or feel is an expression of how those internalized energies feel to us, which are then projected outward as events, situations and people. Mars in Taurus is trying to be accepted by the feminine side of the psyche. Men are often trying to be accepted by women, or struggling with not being accepted; let’s imagine that the current setup is about the feminine side of the psyche struggling to accept the masculine side. Or, we have a situation where the masculine energy of Mars feels out of place in such a feminine sign as Taurus, and this alienation is an inner confrontation.

Some say men are from Mars and women are from Venus. The fact is, we are both from Planet Earth, and we have to live together. Photo by Eric Francis.

Most people have quite a bit of difficulty stepping out of their programmed gender roles. I think we give ourselves more credit than we deserve for succeeding at this. Women, how open are you to actually asserting your needs and desires, including your sexual needs and desires? How willing are you to subvert those needs and desires to keep the peace, to seem acceptable to men or to maintain your mother’s respect?

Men, how willing are you to be penetrated, psychically or otherwise? Are you receptive to your own feelings, or the feelings of others? In particular, are you receptive to the messages and desires of your intuitive or nurturing side? Are you willing to show your pain, grief or disappointment?

One thing I’ve noticed is that often, members of both genders want their counterparts to be different, then have no clue how to respond when they get what they ask for. Many women ask for more receptive, emotionally open men but get panicky when they find this; they don’t actually identify it as male. Men often claim to want a sexually or intellectually assertive woman, but nearly every woman I talk to says she gets into trouble with men when she asserts her desires or takes initiative. I hope this is a generational thing; I do see signs of progress in some of the young women I hear from.

Still, we live in times when “tradition” is pushed down our throat, meaning traditional roles that take gender to the level of a cartoon. Often, exaggerations and distortions are a defense against something. I think that a lot of macho drama is about rejecting the feminine as an internal attribute; as a fact of biology. A major aspect of the drama, the war between the sexes, and the hyper-exaggeration of gender, involves denial of the fact that we all contain attributes of both sexes in a multitude of formulas — in each of our charts. Despite certain biological facts, we have more in common as humans than we have differences as men and women, but for many purposes, the differences are exploited and emphasized. Astrology, if you use that as a map, does not differentiate between people based on sex. You cannot tell the sex of the person behind a chart from the chart. You need to get that information along with the birth data.

It’s a boy. It’s a girl. It’s androgyny. The singer Devendra Banhart. Photo by J.B. Mondino.

But you can tell a lot about gender orientation. Some women have charts that feel quite masculine, often in very specific ways. Some men have charts that feel truly feminine. Most charts have a diversity of these energies distributed along a wide, complicated continuum. There can be masculine expressions that fail to communicate with feminine expressions; and sometimes the dialog is clear.

In the relationship between Mars and Taurus, in these critical degrees at the end of a sign, we have a question: what would you want your inner masculine energy to do to or with your inner feminine energy? What about your inner masculine is repulsive to your inner feminine? Men: do you ever want to do to yourself what you want to do to women? Women: how do you feel when your libido feels like that of a man? Be descriptive.

One thing to remember is that our masculine and feminine attributes have different qualities from one another, different experiences and may have suffered different injuries in childhood. For certain purposes such as self-study or therapy, it’s helpful for a while to treat them as distinct entities and see what their experiences have been like.

So far, we’ve been talking about a transit with this Mars in Taurus energy. You can also use your natal chart for more specific information. Your house and sign positions of Venus and Mars will tell you a lot about yourself. The aspects to these planes will take you a level deeper. Make sure you draw from about five different sources for each placement or aspect, and make up an original interpretation from there.

On Saturday, Mars will join Venus in Gemini. They’ve already made a couple of conjunctions, so Venus, recently retrograde, is now separating from Mars; they are functioning like two different processes. But in the same sign they will have a lot in common. Gemini has several distinctive properties; one of them is that it’s mental, and it loves words and ideas. Another is that it feels young. Another is that it’s dualistic, and everything in Gemini is going to have two or four different expressions; two or more different opinions of itself.

Couple. Photo by Eric Francis.

Venus is younger in Gemini; younger, I believe, than it is in Aries or Taurus. There is a freshness to this Venus, a light quality, an androgynous quality. She wants to talk and she wants to express her curiosity; part of what we can offer to Venus in Gemini is answering the questions of young people, and treating every encounter with them as an initiation. This, along with the recent Mercury conjunct Vesta, is an invitation to respect young women, and the sexuality of young women, instead of resenting these things. There is something here about honoring the inherent bisexuality of young women, and of women in general. There is a question for men: why do many of them feel that female bisexuality is fabulous but male bisexuality is strange?

Mars in Gemini can be overbearing; it can yell louder than it can listen. It’s opinionated and it may respond to the androgyny factor of Gemini by polarizing toward the macho end of the spectrum. Mars in this sign needs to learn something from Venus: take a light approach. Express your desires in words, politely, and see what happens. Ask questions and listen carefully to the answers. Keep the conversation going for at least an hour, and be patient with what you learn.

Mars crossing over into Gemini has to do with an alteration in the way that male energy likes to think of itself as protective. Most of what men think of as protective is really about being possessive. Venus and Mars in Gemini want some freedom, particularly the freedom to consider ideas. As I suggest in the Aquarius horoscope below, this is excellent astrology to consider the possibilities, to express curiosity, and to have some excellent beyond-hot conversations, confessions and inquiries about one’s personal truth. Gemini doesn’t want to judge anything — it just wants to consider it in a real way. Remember to listen. Use your ears, use your mind and use your heart.

Yours & truly,

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I once had a fascinating conversation with a family member who was retiring from the Navy, hanging up that spiffy white uniform with the scrambled eggs on the shoulders and entering private life. He had served as personal attaché for Governor Ronald Reagan in California and in the Pentagon when Ron was in the White House. Over dinner, we discussed his career and I tried plumbing his depths; he’s a Scorpio, so I knew I couldn’t count on his sharing secrets but maybe I could close in on a few with careful maneuvering. “Can you imagine,” I asked, sipping my wine and lowering my voice, “a scenario in which all of the nations of the world come together to fight a common threat?” His answer was quick, measured and not nearly as militarily obfuscated as I’d anticipated. “Yes,” he replied. “I can.”

It was an ‘ET phone home’ enquiry, and my military-minded, squared-away and no-nonsense loved one had crossed into the dimensional hinterland with nary a quiver. I came away from that encounter quoting Hamlet, regarding his father’s ghost: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” And clearly, I think it’s past time we began to dream them. Quantum physics offers us other ways to think of things; and coming off of years when science and religion were pitted against one another as natural enemies, instead of alienating them further perhaps it would be refreshing to allow them to wed, as they eventually must. The big picture is bigger than we know.

With all the talk of national safety, personal safety, financial safety, it appears to me that what we don’t know about the future is the larger of the fears driving us these days. We like to know exactly what we’re facing, it comforts us; but clearly, we have no idea what tomorrow will bring. We’ve lost control of these events, as uncomfortable as that seems. Even more impressive, there are ghosts walking among us, energy signals that are creating our 3D landscape as just a bit more hazy, reality winking in and out, and definitely not as solid as we suppose it to be.

Coming Up in Daily Astrology and Adventure

Astronomer Phil Plait over at Discovery magazine’s Bad Astronomy website isn’t afraid to light out after folks who push, well, bad astronomy. And with the 40th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 Moon landing nearly upon us, he is revisiting one of the most enduring conspiracy theories around: The Alleged Moon Landing Hoax.

One of the first images produced by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Photo: NASA.

Plait starts out by speculating whether the new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is taking high-quality images of the Moon’s surface — including the original Apollo Moon landing sites — will quell any of those doubters. His answer? Nope.

“That would be nice, but obviously it won’t,” says Plait. “If they don’t believe the thousands of pictures and video taken from the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts themselves, why would they believe further NASA evidence?”

For good measure, though, Plait linked to his 2001 review of a Fox TV program about the supposed Moon Hoax, “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land On The Moon?” In it, Plait goes through and provides point-by-point refutation of the conspiracy theorists’ claims, from why the photos taken on the Moon don’t show stars to the “deadly radiation of space.”

The Apollo 11 lunar module touched down in Mare Tranquillitatis (the Sea of Tranquility) on July 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon (it was not Neil Young, as previously reported in Planet Waves), uttered the familiar phrase, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” while his fellow moon walker, Buzz Aldrin, described the view as “magnificent desolation.” Armstrong’s quote was supposed to be, “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” but understandably enough, he was a little nervous at the time.

Part of the evidence validating the landing on the Moon is astrological. The same astrology that brought us the Woodstock festival just three weeks later brought us the success of the Apollo program: a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Libra, opposite Chiron in Aries; all aligned with the Aries Point. We will have more about this in next week’s edition.

The Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, Calif., has filed a lawsuit against a number of retailers claiming that some of the purses they sell contain potentially harmful amounts of lead. After decades of trying to get the lead out of gasoline, paint, plaster and many other products, this report is the latest in a trend of lead turning up in numerous products, many of them from China.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the nonprofit organization tested purses — mostly vinyl and faux leather — produced by some 26 manufacturers and found “their products contain lead at levels high enough to pose a health threat.” The Center for Environmental Health notified those manufacturers of the test results.

This action was brought under the auspices of a California law — Proposition 65, the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 — that requires shoppers be warned of lead dangers. According to the article, “Lead is found in vinyl and other fabric. The metal serves both as a stabilizer and as a chemical ingredient in some dies, paints and other coloring agents. It’s also found in zippers and zipper pulls on some of the products.”

It’s starting to sound like PCBs, which were a wonder-chemical that was put into everything from fabric dies to flame retardants to surgical implants — before being recognized as universally toxic.

So how serious a health threat could this be? Well, lead exposure has been proven to cause a raft of health problems, and it’s especially dangerous to children and pregnant women. Part of the problem is that lead, like many other heavy metals, is both an acute toxin, a neurotoxin, and is hormonally active. Lead is known to make people stupid, especially if they are exposed when young. For many years it was used as an additive in gasoline. The thing about lead is that what goes up must come down — right near where it went up. Lead emissions tend to stay local, rather than to drift. The generations born in the 50s, 60s and early 70s sustained the maximum exposure in North America; finally lead was banned as a gasoline additive, and started showing up in nearly everything else.

The health effects of lead have been known since Classical times, with the Wikipedia entry on lead poisoning noting, “Lead toxicity was first recognized as early as 200 B.C. Nicander of Colophon wrote of lead-induced anemia and colic in 250 B.C.” But that didn’t stop the Romans from using it in pipes and goblets.

A lawyer for the Center for Environmental Health told the Chronicle that the group hopes retailers can be convinced to use their buying power to influence manufacturers, by refusing to stock any products that contain lead.

A complete list of the manufacturers whose products were shown to have lead can be found here.

It’s no surprise that the head of the Roman Catholic Church recently released a document declaring, in a nutshell, that people should come before profits. After all, social justice is a calling card of many, if not most, world religions.

Benedict XVI meets Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Photo: Daniel Acker.

But the publication of Pope Benedict XVI’s third papal encyclical letter, Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”), goes well beyond that, calling for a sea change in world financial systems, so that more benefit and fewer profit, through the redistribution of the world’s wealth from richer nations to poorer.

According to a Washington Post article about the encyclical, the pope declared “access to food and water is a universal right, wealthy nations share with poorer ones and profit is not the ultimate goal of commerce. He advocates the creation of a ‘world political authority’ to manage the economy.” Benedict XVI further asserted that there needed to be greater care for the environment with “more research into alternative energy, worldwide redistribution of energy resources and pushing more advanced countries to lower their energy consumption, either through technology or through greater ‘ecological sensitivity’ among residents.”

Some might see irony in this latest papal pronouncement, given that the Roman Catholic Church is often cited as one of the richest organizations in the world, having some of the most impressive gold reserves, its own bank and its own stock market. The Vatican City is a repository of some of the most important artworks of Western civilization, and the Church owns property all over the world. However, putting a number on the total wealth of the Catholic Church isn’t easy; speculators claim amounts of up to $100 billion or more, but there is little documentation to support any definitive calculation.

Among the criticisms leveled at the Catholic Church in the past have been that its institutional wealth stands in stark contrast to the poverty Christ lived in, and that by liquidating some of its assets the Church could provide services to millions of people in under-developed nations.

The 144-page encyclical can be downloaded in PDF form here. The Church has not changed its position on female priests, birth control, or abortion. Mass can still be given in languages other than Latin.

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, July 10, 2009, #774 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Aries (March 20-April 19)
You may find it easier to express what you’ve been feeling, particularly if that involves an erotic/spiritual/emotional nexus that has had you tied in knots. Two things to remember, as the next days unfold: one is you’re not as tied up as you were a week ago, so you don’t need to tug as hard, or at all. Second, the new space into which you’re projecting your thoughts and ideas requires less energy than the old one; when you speak, try to use understatements. The main thing you need to do is hear yourself. You have complete control over this factor; the twist involves sorting out the truth when you seem to have two conflicting opinions on the same matter.

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Taurus (April 19- May 20)
Financial matters rarely take care of themselves; we need to roll up our sleeves and do something about them. Emotional matters are usually the same way; they don’t get better unless they get attention. Anyway, so far as I can see, you need the satisfaction of resolving something on your own terms: yet frequently those terms involve taking a passive approach. Gradually your motivation has been perking up, but it’s been easy enough to ignore. Over the next few weeks, you’re likely to be feeling highly motivated to get your life in gear; which is a beautiful thing as long as you connect the engine to the wheels. If you get the sense that the free flow of energy is blocked, it’s not actually about money or about love; it’s about your trust in your own creativity; trusting your ability to make a positive impact on a situation. I would ask you, what exactly would it take to get you there?

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Gemini (May 20- June 21)
This weekend Mars joins Venus in your birth sign. This is an invitation to act on your desires; meaning to take action. You can bet these include sexual desires, to which I will say: we are conditioned to ignore or deny ourselves what we want. Then when we make a move toward getting what we want, the programmed response is guilt. The problem with guilt is that it’s self-reaffirming; in other words, the guilt reaction itself is usually enough to convince us that something is wrong, which has a touch of Alice in Wonderland to it: declaring the sentence before the trial. Of course, actions have consequences; but that does not make them inherently right or wrong. Remove guilt from the equation, if you can, and you’ll get to manage all of this consciously.

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Cancer (June 21- July 22)
Look carefully and you will see that you’re in entirely new relationship territory than you were in just one season ago. Something old has been removed or is losing its power; something new is gradually taking its place. This is not an easy transition, and it involves developing the ability to make agreements, and for everyone involved to honor those agreements. Our civilization has yet to figure out that most of its woes are encrypted directly into the most personal modes of relationship, and the most intimate. As a culture we have yet to figure out that what made our parents miserable will probably make us miserable, but as an individual you are finally coming around to this revelation. Just remember, their fears are not your fears. More to the point, they did generally not see their fears for what they were; you cannot afford that particular delusion.

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Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
The problem with the concept ‘spiritual’ is that it tends to be applied only to things that are outside the regular affairs of life; not, for example, to sex, relationships, work and politics, to name a few. These are the areas of existence that typically get the exemptions, and that doesn’t leave much; such as yoga class. As much as we say that spirituality is different than religion, it’s the same thing as long as we have the Saturday night / Sunday morning false division of reality. You are one of the pioneers of the notion that everything is spiritual and that spiritual ideas are useless if we don’t apply them to whatever we need to. You’ve always known this, but lately it seems like a focusing lens has been dropped in front of this issue and you can see just how vital it really is — to your happiness and that of the rest of us.

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Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
You’ve had so many ideas and so much to do that frankly I’m surprised you have time to read your horoscope. Now if you want to accomplish some of what you’ve set out to do, you need to change your methods. At the moment, that involves taking leadership. You have done a lot; you’ve accomplished plenty. You continue to do a lot, indeed, too much: the next step involves taking leadership over some form of coordinated activity, and taking over the language involving the object, goal or orientation of the project. There has never been a time when your ideas and what affects many people beyond your scope of perception were more closely related. You just need to climb a little higher to see the connection; it would help to set a goal for yourself that you feel is outside your current abilities.

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Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
What we need to get used to, in my opinion, is the nexus between sexual experimentation and healing the relationship between our soul and our body. I mean this about all forms of sex; and here is the issue. What has the power to heal has the power to harm. If we don’t consider our erotic exploration a means of healing, it will manifest as something that divides us between ourselves, and that is what usually happens. That is why so many of us are in so much sexual pain. We expect sex to come with various shades of deceit; we expect it to get in the way of friendships; we don’t consider the deeper implications of engaging in this activity that has the power to create humanity and consciousness. Your life is an example of the most creative expression of these ideas. Please don’t keep them to yourself.

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Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
What has a back has a front — in this dimension. If you expand your awareness to include a wider array of possibilities, everything can change. True, it’s simpler to think in binary terms; in linear concepts; but you would be missing most of the story if you do. You are about to enter a world of possibilities, and that world may seem like a hall of mirrors, where it’s unclear whose feelings belong to whom and what results will come from certain actions. It would help to remember that many more possibilities exist than you can currently observe, both personal and professional. You may not be able to see them right away, but you will be able to feel them: in the form of tension with people you encounter. If you notice any form of polarity, or a pull toward someone, or even a negative sentiment like resentment or jealousy, explore it; look right at it, and speak to it clearly.

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Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
You want people to be less wimpy, to stand up for their beliefs and not cower down from the least argument, and you’re about to get it. The challenge for you may be figuring out what side of a particular issue someone is taking; that may be the same puzzle they are facing. So if you want a good conversation, your role initially may be to help others figure out what their opinion is. This is kind of like being an editor, which in fact would be a fine role at this point in your life, given how much activity is happening in your 3rd solar house. The problem is that editing and even writing are becoming things of the past, requiring too much patience and discipline than is well supported in the current version of the world. Who has six hours or six months to think about something? That’s the real issue; you need more time to think, and you can give it to yourself.

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Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
Watch your workload over the next few days. Things are going well now, but you could find yourself snowed under when you least expect it; and much of what you think must get done doesn’t have to be done. Besides, you’re not the only one who can do it, though you may be feeling that way. Part of what will help is to cut through the chatter, the paperwork and the distractions and make one key decision from which everything else will follow. Part of how you know you’re making the right decision is that you’ll feel like you have to make some immediate adjustment to your idea-framework, timing and use of language — and that will help you see how little you have to do, in order to get quite a lot done. With Mars in Gemini, work from idea to action and not the other way around.

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Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
Now it’s time to test your theories. You don’t test a theory in theory, you test it in action. An experiment is involved. Mars (now joining Venus) moving through one of the most adventurous, dynamic angles of your solar chart for the next few weeks will give you plenty of ideas and plenty of words for them. The action point is the contact point. To have actual pleasure, growth-oriented experiences or the excellent thrill of creating something new, it’s necessary to take a chance. With Venus and Mars both in Gemini, the possibilities may seem endless, as do your options for how to apply them. If I were experiencing this astrology I would go for the person or experience that I find the most appealing; and now that I contemplate the Gemini aspect, that could indeed begin with hot, hot, hot talk.

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Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
The intangible may be so real you can hold it in your hands; give it a chance to become so. Seek with the faith that you will find, and feel with the faith that you will experience fulfillment as a result. Remember that the richest territory for you is interior, regardless of how expressive or interesting your life is now. What you are firming up is your ability to be a container, and therefore to feel full. You cannot hold energy if you don’t have the ability for some kind of psychic containment; you cannot share if you don’t have enough for yourself. These are old problems that you’re finally able to remedy. That planets at times may seem to be playing a game of paradox with you, and at at times you may be feeling deeply mixed emotions. Stick with your feelings and discover the win-win: the more you have, the more you can give; the more you have, the more people give to you. Try to get this one down; it’s a keeper.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Following a New Moon conjunct Vesta in the sensitive first degrees of Cancer, opposite Pluto, it was quite a week for The Personal is Political. Let’s not forget the Venus-Mars conjunction. It’s fair to say that anything that happened in the news this week was about all of us, whether we think of it that way or not. We got the Aries Point in the style of the sign Cancer: the world has come crashing into our living rooms. In case we are looking for evidence of how the Aries Point (that is, the early degrees of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn) magnifies the news and makes it our own, we have a prime example.

Three beloved American celebrities, indeed, household words even on Guam, left the planet within 24 hours: Michael Jackson, Ed McMahon, and Farrah Fawcett. Two of the three are extremely interesting sex symbols, and though this article may not be the place to get into it, the astrology gives a vivid picture of this.

Then the election crisis in Iran got a face: that of Neda Agha Soltan, the unlikely martyr: a young woman who was shot in the chest by Iranian police. The political movement in Iran has transformed to a specifically women’s movement; by some reports, two-thirds of the protesters in the streets of Tehran have been women. Or we might credit a lot of Muslim men for marching alongside their sisters. It transformed again from the perception or reality of voter fraud to a debate in the streets over whether the Islamic Republic has any credibility at all in the eyes of the Iranian people, and for that matter, the world. Remember that this country is ruled by a form of governance that draws all, as in all, of its power from the alleged dictates of a male god, his male prophet and his cadre of holy men.

Speaking of patriarchy, a young middle-school 4.0 honors student who was strip searched as zealous school officials were trying to find her alleged stash of Advil won a partial victory before the U.S. Supreme Court. That’s correct — they looked inside her undies for Advil. I’m surprised they didn’t find a tampon.

The court ruled that the search was excessive, in part because the immediately prior search of her bags and pockets revealed nothing suspicious (this is why you should never have rolling paper in your car, as that becomes probable cause); but the court immunized school administrators from personal lawsuits. This is not a good signal to send. When I was editor of New York Education Law Report, I learned all about what screwed up things go on in schools with the full knowledge and support of the administration. South Park is right.

Assoc. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion. He thinks it’s okay to do this kind of thing. “Preservation of order, discipline and safety in public schools is simply not the domain of the Constitution,” he said. “And, common sense is not a judicial monopoly or a constitutional imperative.”

This quote makes no sense to me, even as the former editor of a law report. He must have copied it down wrong when Scalia was yakking at him. The Constitution does not mandate common sense, and the schools would be exempt even if they did. Right? But the conclusion is obvious. In the mind of The Hon. Assoc. Justice Pubic-Hair-in-the-Coke, clearly it must mean: off with her jeans!

Hypocrisy is a Drug

Then there’s the South Carolina governor: The Hon. Mark Sanford, who was exposed for having a relationship with a woman in Argentina, who claimed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail (look ma, I’m an Eagle Scout!) but left his easily-recognized official vehicle parked in the parking lot of a small airport — and then happened to bump into a reporter. Who recognized him as someone besides J. D. Salinger.

Stunts like carrying two pigs into the Statehouse lobby endeared Sanford to S.C. voters, but not to state lawmakers. Photo: S.C. Statehouse Report.

While this may seem like the sordid scandal of the week, it has a few special properties that make it archetypal in nature. It’s also the news event that most closely matches the astrology through the July 4 weekend, and which vibrates with some deep emotional undercurrents, and advises extra caution in affairs of the heart. That astrology also counsels extra caution where sexual or emotional hypocrisy or maybe is a factor.

Sanford is a person with a lot to lose: he was considered for the 2008 vice presidential nomination, he was a potential contender for the 2012 Republican nomination and he was chairman of the Republican Governors Association till he resigned in the wake of this news. Everyone knows that Republicans don’t have affairs. They hold the torch for the standard that how moral you look involves your personal life, set irrevocably during the Clinton impeachment.

Sanford’s conduct reveals how far we will go to get our emotional needs met, but it also speaks of the human potential for hypocrisy. And then of course there is the relationship between the two. Sanford, a congressman in the late 1990s, was a particularly harsh critic of Bill Clinton, and voted for three out of the four articles of impeachment when Clinton had an affair with his fellow Leo, Miss Lewinsky. “I think what he did in this matter was reprehensible…I feel very comfortable with my vote,” Sanford said at the time.

“The issue of lying is probably the biggest harm, if you will, to the system of Democratic government, representatives government, because it undermines trust,” Sanford told CNN in another interview. “And if you undermine trust in our system, you undermine everything.”

He has also weighed in on whether same-sex couples should have the right to marry, which means have the right to have legal sexual relationships. “As Jenny and I are the parents of four little boys, we’ve always taught our kids that marriage was something between a man and a woman,” he told The Post and Courier in 2004, according to Think Progress. As if that would prevent them from being gay.

In an email to his mistress, Sanford described her beautiful South American skin tone and tan line, the exquisite curves of her hips, and he used the term “hopelessly impossible” to describe their love affair, which evolved from an eight-year friendship. This is an example of the kinds of situations that can arise when we are in a structured relationship, have a few unmet needs, and have access to the entire world right from our desk. This describes a lot of people. I have never seen statistics on Internet-based relationships by those with supposedly monogamous primary partners, but they must be incredible.

Check out this Solstice Aspect Structure, Again

So how does this all happen at once? Well, the answer is astrology. Unrelated things are related because you can’t jump out of the universe.

Unrelated Things. Paint by Tony Brown.

Everything about the solstice/New Moon combination points back to the Aries Point, which points to events that we can all relate to, and which reflect our lives directly. It also points to sex: Venus, Mars and Pluto, for example, and a New Moon conjunct the sex goddess herself, Vesta. I know I also refer to her as the celibacy goddess — she is both.

As part of the solstice and Cancer New Moon conjunct Vesta that we experienced Monday, Venus and Mars made an exact conjunction, in a close aspect to the solstice point (00 Cancer). The solstice and subsequent Cancer New Moon happened in very early Cancer; and Venus and Mars at that moment were conjunct at 15 degrees of Taurus (the Beltane point) — creating an exact semi-square, or 45-degree angle. This, in turn, was in aspect to Pluto, specifically a 135-degree aspect called a sesquiquadrate (or sesquisquare): that is, a 90-degree aspect plus a 45-degree aspect from Venus/Mars to Pluto. The 45- and 135-degree aspects often work as triggers or tipping points.

When you see me or any other astrologer use the term degrees, we are saying: these things are related. Don’t think of it as a complicated aspect structure; think of it as a huge conjunction. They are so related as to be in one place. It’s one energy system, though drawing from different signs; but you can pile the whole thing up (which is what often happens, in terms of the results).

We have the following planets related: the Sun and Moon, the solstice point (i.e., the Aries Point), Vesta, Venus, Mars and Pluto. Remember that this is the setup for the whole season, and this season comes with a lot of eclipses, three of them, including the cliffhanger of a solar eclipse that is the subject of my extended midyear horoscope report. This astrology tells a story that will go on for months.

And Here Comes Aqueerius

During the next week or so, the celestial drama unfolds, if you can imagine such a thing. In astrology, imagination counts for a lot. The whole thing is a kind of legal fiction. It’s like a cartoon based on reality that creates reality as it goes; the more you notice, the more fun you have.

Celestial drama, artist’s rendition of SN 1993J. The bigger star sends seven suns’ worth of mass to its little partner, then explodes in a fiery death. Credit: ESA

Venus and Mars are in Taurus. Both are gradually sailing into a square aspect (90-degrees, fixed sign to fixed sign) with the triple conjunction of Chiron, Jupiter and Neptune in Aquarius. Can you visualize that? First Venus (the faster moving of the Venus/Mars pair) will square the triple conjunction, starting on July 1 when Venus squares Chiron (followed soon after by Jupiter and Neptune) then four days later, Mars squares Chiron. Of course, Venus and Mars will each square Chiron, Jupiter and Neptune; so this is a very complex dynamic, and it involves every sex, gender and gender role. Even a cross-dressing bisexual can’t worm out of this one.

A square also has a way of triggering events, but it has another way of being deeply introspective. It’s as if something that’s inside ripples out, as an event. Or as may be the case, a lot of events. My intention for explaining this astrology to you is so that you can use the aspects consciously and not get dragged into something negative — but rather, apply it to deepening your relationships, to raising consciousness and for some interesting sexual experiences.

To sum up in advance: the key to taking this astrology on a positive, constructive and interesting level rather than a negative and entangled one (abundant possibility here) is tossing hypocrisy out the door of your life. This astrology is a beacon for honest transactions.

Let’s look at a few of the dynamics involved. I will save Jupiter for an afterthought — the more challenging energies are Venus and Mars square Chiron, then Neptune. This is a potentially explosive, potentially extremely fun, potentially extremely weird, potentially demented sequence of events.

Nile River Goddess. Art by Latifah Shabazz.

Venus square Chiron can result in an uncontrolled expression of erotic energy. This is the girl in your high school who everyone thinks is beyond hot and who has a reputation for actually having sex and who you really, really want to have sex with, but you’re afraid it won’t be ‘special’ for her and you’re probably right, but it would be really good, but you’re still scared for some reason — she is not, she just wants more. And she’s gonna get it, and you need to have guts to walk up to her and speak your mind (or whatever organ you want). Basically, it’s a girl like Farrah, who is kinky in part because she’s a little messed up. But she’s determined to have fun. She’s determined to let it out, and work it out that way.

One manifestation of Venus square Neptune could be: everything is like a dream, you cannot tell what’s real and what’s not; what’s coming from your hormones and what’s coming from your brain and what’s coming from, um, someplace else. You’re not supposed to care where it’s coming from; you don’t care what pill it is. It’s all too good to be true and maybe too much to be fun — to appreciate this aspect you need a taste for excess (particularly with Jupiter right there). You need to violate public moral standards (Aquarius) for it to be really fun. Jupiter can make it seem like whatever you’re doing can have huge consequences, which may or may not be true; but it’s worth the risk.

Chiron square Mars turns this whole thing inside out. I will give a male example. He is the guy who is so stunning that all the girls/women are dripping for him, but he’s a proper kind of fellow, despite being the hottest drummer for miles around. The propriety is part of his appeal, but it’s a trap.

He has this thing about sex being sacred, and he won’t get naked with anyone unless they are destined to be really, really special. The standard is impossible to meet; it’s religious in nature. You are human, not a deity; he wants a deity. He is the anti-Vesta: sex symbol and closet prude. He probably thinks pussies smell bad, but they’re ‘sacred’, so he won’t say anything. Anyway, he’s unlikely to find out, but he’s waiting for just the right girl; the one from another planet that he read about once in a science fiction novel. The one more powerful than him. You may be that girl, but you have to prove it. It’s just that you’ll hardly ever get the chance.

Add a square to Neptune and this whole thing can go Kamikaze. He will do heroin and get with a hooker to blow off steam. But it won’t be as much fun as he was hoping. Add Jupiter and it’s several hookers plus some alcohol, too much coffee and a bipolar episode.

The Awake Way to Do This

Aspects can and always do have many manifestations — and they are what we make them; they exist on the level we experience or express them. What we make of them is related to who we are becoming, consciously or not. The cautionary side of this story is to remember human nature, and to remember your nature.

Venus and Mars by Sidney Harold Meteyard. Oil on canvas, 41-1/2 x 43-1/2 inches. Venus and Mars in astrology are about remembering and honoring human nature, including the dualistic nature of ourselves and others that we often overlook rather than accept as a given.

Using aspects like this consciously, there would be a matter of choice involved, rater than only compulsion. The key is to be aware of both potentials. The choice would ideally based on one’s true values (Venus and/or Mars in Taurus) and remembering where and how these intersect with those of the larger society (the square to slow-moving planets together in Aquarius). The thing to bear in mind is that we find our values planets together in Aquarius). The thing to bear in mind is that we find our values through a process of experimentation, including testing out norms.

One Chiron connection is to be mindful where one’s sense of lack, injury or craving could cause us express ourselves in ways that are out of balance; remembering that we also have a need to do specifically that. Looked at one way, human existence is about exploring the territory between balance and imbalance.

There is something here about being mindful that we are trying to get deeper emotional needs met while we do things that may be ‘just for fun’ or ‘just because we have to’ — and to be aware what might happen as a result of different kinds of choices. the Taurus connection is about remembering that we make different choices based on our level of self-esteem. Often that process comes into relationship with this thing coming out of aquarius called peer pressure, which often includes the brainwashing to have a low opinion of oneself.

Neptune’s presence in the square is a reminder to be aware of ‘unconscious’ impulses, the influence of loneliness and the tendency to rationalize, and instead to be honest about our needs and desires as early as possible and to explore experience from there. Mars square Chiron warns against going on a purity trip or moral trip while directly indulging in that which one supposedly is against.

The presence of Venus and Mars suggest that we look at how we (for example as men and women) take the same kinds of experiences in different ways: but that we are indeed having common experiences.

Taken together, Venus, Mars and Pluto are about sex and the dance of the genders, and the common forces that influence all gender identifications; internal and external. Chiron in any form is about raising awareness, and some injury, usually in the past, is typically involved. Neptune is about the imagination and, taken in an active, healthy way, it’s about making fantasy experiences real. Vesta is about devotion to a process, a person, an experience or a necessity.

I called up Dale O’Brien today to get his spin on this whole arrangement — of which he sees Vesta as a centerpiece.

“Vesta is more about the Vestal than the goddess; devoting oneself to someone or something,” he said. “She is very big in decision making. Women were chattel in Rome, perhaps worse than in Greece. The Vestal Virgins were taken at a young age [some say as young as seven]. When they came to midlife, they had a decision to make: to rededicate their life to being devoted to the temple, or they could leave the temple and and be free women. They could go from total obscurity to being very powerful. Vesta’s role in the solstice chart is an enormously powerful placement, but its power is missed because its power is understated.

“Now with this solstice conjunct Vesta, there is enormous issue about what people are going to dedicate themselves to, particularly in the face of Plutonic changes.

“I don’t think [Gov. Mark Sanford] is just another sex scandal. It has a larger archetypal quality. It’s like, if there was going to be a nuclear attack in 24 hours what would you do? Most people would make love, no questions asked.

“You know, it could be all over. What are you going to do with your life? Are you living in a strong connection to the life force? This includes conscious sexuality.”

Yours & truly,

“My actions at the Washington Plaza Hotel, beginning an hour and a half from now, depending on traffic oin Massachusetts Ave., will be reprehensible and indefensible. Of course I will wish I had never made the mistake I am about to spend several hours making, but sadly I am too blinded by greed and lust to care about or consider the consequences of my actions.” Click for video.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Modernism is not a word I use much because it’s too generic to be useful; and overused, as well. The innovation of the moment is always tagged modern, but having tucked a number of seasons under my belt, I remember when color television was the ultimate in modern — or the microwave, which had my mother so concerned she would be nuked in her very own kitchen, she used it as a breadbox for two years before attempting to reheat a cup of coffee. New technology is always modern — cutting-edge, we like to say — and those of us who don’t keep up with the latest stuff are constantly on the cusp of being obsolete; I’m there. I don’t have a cell phone, let alone an iPhone or a Blackberry, so I’m obviously an old fogey. John McCain lost votes when it was revealed he couldn’t e-mail — now he’s discovered the power of Twitter. Day late, dollar short, for John; and every comment he tweets is patently obsolete to the direction modernity is taking.

Modernism is a defining concept, however, in the big picture. Here in America, we consider ourselves the forerunners of modernity. That’s pretty arrogant, considering how backwards we are on many important fronts. Still, we won the space race, put the web on the map and gave the world little blue pills to keep its resolutions firm so we’re there; entrepreneurs of the first water, full of interesting ideas that change the outlook of the day and, ultimately, drive the marketplace. Notice that we’ve just connected the dots back to money. In this nation, profit and modernity are kissing-cousins; hand in hand, they offer us a chance to worship at the throne of the AmeriCo god and buy more techno-toys. Our American deity, it should be noted, does not seem to have an ethical or moral center; just a self-indulgent one.

For years now, the conversation about Middle Eastern culture as compared to Western has centered around modernity; they show little evidence of democracy as fundamentalist Islam forbids much of what we think of as modern thought. In places like Afghanistan, where war lords rule and tribalism runs deep, the Taliban, even though it is repressive and brutal, is welcomed by many because it offers structure in a chaotic collection of territories threatened by the West. It seems logical that squatting in the sand century after century, fighting the elements and one another, has proven to the locals that their survival requires some umbrella under which to gather and collectively fight against intruders. That the umbrella is radical Islam at its most stringent probably doesn’t bother them; live in the empty desert for a few millennia — every day the same, scratching out a survivor’s life — and then you tell me what’s radical and what isn’t.

Coming Up in Daily Astrology and Adventure

When you run down the list of uses for the International Space Station, “volcanology” is not likely to be very high on the list.

Sarychev Peak Volcano in Stereo. Credit: Expedition 20 Crew – International Space Station, NASA.

Perhaps a little shuffling is in order.

Just reported this week on SpaceWeather.com is news that a crew member snapped a photograph looking nearly straight down on the eruption of a volcano on June 12. It was the first time in 20 years that Sarychev Peak, located in the Kuril Islands, had blown its top, and the resulting image was spectacular.

The folks at Space Weather took especial note of three particular features of the eruption. Firstly, its shockwave literally “punched a hole through the atmosphere.” Secondly, the brown and white of the plume was created by a mixture of ash and steam. And thirdly, the plume was capped by what appears to be “a mass of water condensing from air shoved upward by the rising ash column. If so, it is akin to the iridescent pileus clouds sometimes featured on spaceweather.com.”

That not fantastic enough for you? Grab your 3-D glasses and take a look at this tricked-out version of the image by graphic artist Patrick Vantuyne of Belgium.

It shouldn’t be surprising that dogs — who can be trained to find missing persons and hidden explosives, among other things — are now being used as early warning systems for medical conditions.

Dogs are being trained in Britain as potential life-savers to warn diabetic owners when their blood sugar levels fall to dangerously low levels. Photo by Phil Walter.

According to Examiner.com, dogs in England are being trained to sniff out low blood sugar in diabetics and warn them about it before their human companions begin suffering the deleterious, and potentially deadly, side effects of hypoglycemia.

The article cites a Reuters report in The Windsor Star newspaper, which says the Queen’s University Belfast concluded a study last December that found “65 percent of 212 people with insulin-dependent diabetes reported that when they had a hypoglycemic episode their pets had reacted by whining, barking, licking or some other display.” Now the Cancer and Bio-Detection Dogs research center, based in Aylesbury, England, is following up on that study by training dogs to detect signs of low blood sugar.

The article quoted Chief Executive Claire Guest, from an interview with Reuters TV, as noting, “Dogs have been trained to detect certain odors down to parts per trillion, so we are talking tiny, tiny amounts. Their world is really very different to ours.”

But before you get your hopes up at the idea of a pooch being part of your next doctor’s visit, it’s worth noting that Guest doesn’t actually think this will lead to dogs in hospitals. Instead, she hopes electronic sniffers can be made that will match the abilities of dogs’ noses. However, such technology is still about 15 years away, she predicted.

An interesting debate encompassing fascism, religion and public service has taken shape in recent days outside Springfield, Missouri.

Members of the National Socialist Movement picking up litter last weekend along Route 160 near Springfield, Mo. The Springfield unit of the neo-Nazi group volunteered with the state last year to adopt a half-mile stretch of the highway. Photo by Mark Schiefelbein.

That’s where the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi organization, applied to adopt a half-mile of Route 160 as part of the state’s adopt-a-highway program, where groups volunteer to keep public rights-of-way clear of trash. A June 20 article in The New York Times outlined the reaction of state lawmakers, who were displeased by the group’s application but could not legally deny it — in fact, Missouri had lost a court case years earlier after turning down a Ku Klux Klan application to adopt a roadway.

This time, it seems, officials thought they’d respond by renaming that road for someone they felt the National Socialist Movement would disapprove of: Jewish theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who escaped Nazi Germany and eventually became a leading figure in the Civil Rights movement here.

However, on Monday The Times reported that Heschel’s own daughter, Susannah Heschel, who teaches Jewish studies at Dartmouth, has raised an objection to the tactic. According to the article, “she appreciated their intentions, but attaching her father’s name to a road cleaned by neo-Nazis would be ‘vulgar’ and would ‘dishonor’ him.”

In all, an interesting situation that raises some surprisingly deep questions, which writer Brad Hirschfield delves into this week at the On Faith section of WashingtonPost.com.

COLOMBO (AFP) — Sri Lankan police say they have arrested an astrologer after he predicted serious political and economic problems for the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse.

Chandrasiri Bandara, who writes an astrology column for a pro-opposition weekly, was taken in on Thursday, police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekara said.

“The CID (Criminal Investigations Department) is questioning the astrologer,” Gunasekara said Friday, adding that they wanted to find out the “basis” for the prediction.

The astrologer had predicted that a planetary change on October 8 will be inauspicious for parliament and the government may not be able to arrest rising living costs — a prediction already made by private economists.

The opposition United National Party condemned Bandara’s arrest and accused the government of heading towards a dictatorship.

“The crime which Chandrasiri Bandara committed was publishing an astrological column which was adverse to the government,” UNP general secretary, Tissa Attanayake, said.

Sri Lankan politicians take astrology seriously and most have their own personal seers who decide the auspicious times to launch any new programme or work.

The government’s popularity is at an all time high after the military crushed the Tamil Tiger rebels who fought for nearly four decades to carve out a separate state for minority Tamils from the majority Sinhalese community.

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, June 26, 2009, #772 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Aries (March 20-April 19)
Set aside the seeming issues of fault and blame. I know that once those circuits in our brains are turned on, they are difficult to turn off. However, if you care about the truth, you need to move to a different conceptual framework. There is indeed a cause to your present situation; and it’s more complex than you may be imagining. Someone close to you is also involved in sorting out a very similar matter, and the relationships are similar, but the effects appear different. For example, what has mainly served to shut you down has served to open up someone close to you, or someone you want to be close with. You have something to learn from this person, and how they respond to their environment and inner movements of energy. Let them decide if they have something to learn from you.

Coming Soon: the Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition. Here is product and signup information for the midyear edition horoscope by Eric Francis. And if you haven’t read your Next World Stories annual edition, it’s still waiting for you! Sign up here.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
You’re entering mysterious territory that may at once feel dreamy, lonely, fulfilling and empty. You may be wondering how one cluster of experience can have so many different properties. Let go of any doubt that there’s something off within your own perception — this is indeed a strange dimension you’re at the edges of, and you’re not going to come out the same person. What will mainly be challenged is your notion of stability, which on most days tends to be wound up a little too tight to do you much good. You’ll feel better, learn more and be more productive if you allow yourself to be a different person every day and perhaps from hour to hour: with a changeable concept of what you want and need, of what hurts you, and what will heal your soul. Or simply, a mutable concept of who you really are inside.

Coming Soon: the Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition. Here is product and signup information for the midyear edition horoscope by Eric Francis. And if you haven’t read your Next World Stories annual edition, it’s still waiting for you! Sign up here.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
You have a rare opening to dialog with yourself and others about events that have hurt you the most. Few people like to have this conversation; they think it’s an admission of weakness. You are intelligent enough to know that keeping things shut away doesn’t help you or anyone close to you. I suggest you remember that you’re not a bad person because you were treated a certain way. To the contrary, what you can now address is the fact of having been made to feel bad about yourself. Start with the simple acknowledgement that something was done to you, over which you had no control. That admission will open up a world of positive ideas in response: in other words, mental and emotional movement; creativity; confidence: simply, the opposite of paralysis.

Coming Soon: the Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition. Here is product and signup information for the midyear edition horoscope by Eric Francis. And if you haven’t read your Next World Stories annual edition, it’s still waiting for you! Sign up here.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
Who is being narrow minded? Any time you are inclined to point the finger at someone else, take a step toward opening your own mind. Don’t blame yourself — just open up. Look at the world a different way. There is a lot to look at. It is true that we live on a planet where most of our brothers and sisters insist on being psychologically myopic with the same care they put in their contact lenses each morning. It’s true that when you’re open, it takes someone else who is open to even notice, and that can be discouraging. But psychological narrowness is the next best thing to rigor mortis. It is consciousness contracting in the opposite direction of the life force. Oil your hinges. Stretch your body’s muscles. Think new ways, and new experiences will come to you.

Coming Soon: the Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition. Here is product and signup information for the midyear edition horoscope by Eric Francis. And if you haven’t read your Next World Stories annual edition, it’s still waiting for you! Sign up here.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
You are now in the usually hidden dimension of how you really feel about your relationships. What’s the most helpful is that you can see them for what they are; you can see people for who they are; and this way, when you love them, you know you’re loving the real person and not your own image of them. This is perhaps the greatest step we can take on the way to being someone devoted to truth. It is the essential thing that divides romance from relationship. As part of this process, there is the necessary recognition that in addition to love, we are joined with people by those things that are sometimes called the ties that bind. The way of the lover is to see those for what they are, and to keep loving.

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Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
You need to depend on your popularity as much as your message. You spend your life taking care of people, or so it seems. Many of the people you have nourished and helped to grow have become strong in their own right, and you can depend on them to help you. If you are struggling to take leadership of a situation, take a step back. You need to work specifically with a feeling of ease. You need to spin psychologically difficult, or difficult to grasp, subject matter in an easy way. If you do this, you will be able to help people open up in a way that frees their energy and by extension wastes less of yours. The truth is that most of us don’t know how much we have, which is why we’re so reluctant to share. Get clear about this one yourself.

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Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
You seem to be working to reconcile your two different concepts of sex: one as something recreational, playful and creative; and the other as something deep, dangerous and transformational. Your psychic chemistry is just about right for this experience of reconciliation. Is one of these aspects a lure into the other? Are they really the same thing, but divided by a world that loves to put everything into categories? The thing that gives all of your experiences meaning is specifically you. You are the one thing that they all have in common. So this process of reconciling two ‘concepts’ is really about allowing aspects of yourself to make friends with one another, and also about recognizing how diverse you truly are.

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Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
Move carefully through the relationship territory of the next week or two. A partner may seem more willing to experiment, to dare or to be thrown wide open than you are. This may be unsettling, particularly if you are in the mood to be cautious, to weigh every emotion and to doubt your right to feel passion. If you’re not fully conscious (which is an abundant possibility), the differences between you and others could result in an actual fracture or split. You can help by maintaining your flexibility, and knowing when you’re reacting instead of responding (that is easy — reactions are fast and responses are more gradual). Take the opportunity to follow instead of lead.

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Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
Think of all the things that were done to cram you into your gender role. Yes, there are nice things about being a girl, and nice things about being a boy. But I don’t think they should be compulsory, the conditioning should not start when we’re fetuses, and it would be nice of someone to mention the damage that being treated this way causes us. Most of your healing process at the moment involves working out various aspects of your gender identity. As a Sagittarius you are a natural at bridging the gaps between very different things, and it’s entirely natural for you to draw wisdom, energy and ideas from many sources. Open up just a little and you will have a rare opportunity to give your male and female sides equal rights within your own life.

Coming Soon: the Next World Stories Midyear Horoscope Edition. Look for signup information Monday for the midyear edition horoscope by Eric Francis. And if you haven’t read your Next World Stories annual edition, it’s still waiting for you! Sign up here.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
There would seem to be some titanic inner struggle between your desires and your sense of security. This is often the case, when real desires enter the picture. I suggest you take the opportunity to ask yourself why exactly you might be having this response. Is there actually something threatening about what you want or need, or are you hyper-sensitive? Is it possible that you’re feeling guilty? And if so, why would that be? Remember how much of your psychology is determined by the stories that you tell yourself. Remember how much of your inner nature was inflicted on a child who was told things about himself or herself that simply were not true. To the extent you are in conflict, you are believing very old lies. This is the perfect chance to cast them off.

Coming Soon: the Next World Stories Midyear Horoscope Edition. Look for signup information Monday for the midyear edition horoscope by Eric Francis. And if you haven’t read your Next World Stories annual edition, it’s still waiting for you! Sign up here.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
Good art is usually born of conflict; that is, the process of resolving conflict. You have just enough of the right kind of emotional turmoil to give you something worthwhile to say, or to show, the rest of us — and there is a very wide door open to being able to express yourself in precise terms. I would not worry if you don’t feel like you’re actually coming across, should you attempt to describe, write about or illustrate your experience; the essence of what you are feeling will come across clearly. It may take you a little time to catch up with your own message, too. If the process is unsettling, embarrassing or seems dubious, you’re in the right place at the right time. It just may take a few weeks or months for you to catch up with yourself.

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Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
This continues to be a time in your life when you can visualize your way into reality. There is a message coming through about your relationships. Usually when creating a relationship, we envision the kind of partner we want. I suggest you take a long moment and envision the kind of partner you want to be. Reach for something beyond what you may be capable of today, but which you aspire to. Consider your best traits and how they can be nourishing to others. Use role models if necessary. And remember, since this is an experience of imagining, the rules and limitations of the past do not apply. Along those lines, this is not about who you’re supposed to be, but who you want to be; in truth, who you really are.

Coming Soon: the Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition. Here is product and signup information for the midyear edition horoscope by Eric Francis. And if you haven’t read your Next World Stories annual edition, it’s still waiting for you! Sign up here.