Author Archives: Eric Francis

The Great Attractor (and our 10th Anniversary)

Dear Friend and Reader:

Are you enjoying getting toasted, warped and pushed by all this edgy Sagittarius energy? The Sun is not only conjunct Mars in Sagg, which would be more than enough to give you a dark tan indoors on a cloudy day. Both are at this moment magnifying the most potent source of electromagnetic radiation in the known universe, the Great Attractor. There may have been a time when we were oblivious to this kind of energy, but not anymore. We have opened up to the point where you can’t drown this out no matter how much whipped cream you squirt on your karma macchiato.

The Milky Way at center, surrounded by galaxies, clusters and superclusters — and the Great Attractor, at lower right. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. Click image for larger version — really cool.

Philip Sedgwick, the first to delineate the astrology of the Great Attractor, noted that people with the point prominent have lives that impact the world in ways they often cannot see, far beyond their perception. He also noted a polarizing effect; people with it strongly placed (for example aspecting Chiron, the Sun or an ascendant) will evoke strong, opinionated responses from others, a typically Sagittarian trait, but amplified significantly. I have noticed that the people who don’t like them or what they stand for cannot do much about that fact; they can bark and growl but that’s about it. The Great Attractor puts reprisal out of reach and in a sense encourages cooperation. These are, however, subtle effects compared to when our planet and other planets align with the thing and its effects rain down on our consciousness, like they are doing now.

[This astrology is developing as the Big Three US automakers head to Washington DC to negotiate bailout loans, suggesting that this particular meeting has bigger implications than we may be noticing. The Sagittarian theme of the conjunction suggests that today’s hearing in Washington is a global event rather than merely a national one. Also in the news, security is at an all-time high in India as the government received warnings of another imminent terrorist attack there.]

Defined as a gravity anomaly in intergalactic space, The Great Attractor is as dense as thousands of Milky Ways. It is the biggest thing known to science. If you are wondering about the strange sense of time compression this time of year, the Great Attractor is our prime suspect. Consider this: how long ago was Thanksgiving? Hmmm, it was a week ago. How long does it feel like? To me, about two to three weeks, back in the good old days. How long ago was the US election? It was one month ago yesterday. To me it feels like it was about four months ago; or was it last year? Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.

The GA is located at 14 degrees of Sagittarius, one degree from the midpoint of that sign. If we could see it, from our viewpoint it would be on the level of the galactic spiral arms, though 200 million light years beyond them. The clouds and dust of our own galaxy make it difficult to study. We know that it broadcasts across every spectrum except the visible ones. Its gravity is so powerful that it’s drawing toward it a million galaxies, including our own, at the rate of about 24 million miles a day. Astronomers know this because the light of all these galaxies, clusters and superclusters shifts toward the red side of the spectrum, pulled in the direction of the Great Attractor. In other words, they are all moving away from us, toward it; and we are getting vacuumed along by this strange gravitational force.

One of the facts of physical existence is being in constant motion. First of all, we run around like idiots. Then, the Earth is turning; it is orbiting the Sun. The Sun is orbiting the Galactic Core once every 250 million or so years. Our galaxy is being pulled in the direction of this huge, dark, ominous hunk of whatever the heck the Attractor is, along with all these other galaxies. Think of this when you’re stuck in traffic and you’ll feel better.

Einstein demonstrated that gravity bends space-time. A black hole, an ordinary star, a planet, and I would presume even a teacup, warps the fabric of space and time (which are functionally one thing, the space-time continuum). As Mars, the Sun and Earth (with Mercury right nearby) align with the Great Attractor and all its incredible gravity, we are in a very real sense passing through a time warp.

The psychological result might be that when you go to bed you feel like you had five cups of coffee, but in reality the last one you had was at 8 o’clock that morning. You might feel fried; events breaking off from the whole and going their own way; or the sense of people and events polarizing (taking sides, or hunkering down in their position). We might sense that everything is about to go out of control. Who knows, it may be. There can be various shades of domination/submission in our relationships, pushed to cartoon-like proportions. Oh wait, this sounds like life as usual. Just turn up the volume to 11.

The Time Warp from a production of the Rocky Horror Show by the Castaway Players, Kingston, New York. Photo by Eric Francis.

Just 12 degrees away on the zodiac wheel, also in Sagittarius, is the Galactic Core, the center of the Milky Way (our home galaxy). We know about this point because Pluto has just finished conjoining it, which lasted from 2006 through 2008.

Compared to the Great Attractor, the Galactic Core (at a mere 26,000 light years distance) is so close as to be comparable to the neighborhood deli. This is true even as we know that our Sun is nowhere near the center of the galaxy; we are out on one of the remote arms of the Milky Way, though firmly held by its gravity. I think that our relative distance from the core is partly accountable for that close to the edge, God-forsaken feeling that so often exists on our planet. The core itself To me it feels like a homing signal, where we are drawn toward our deepest faith and sense of unspoken protection — if we bother to notice it’s there.

During Sagittarius time, the Sun (obviously, visible only during the day) aligns first with the Great Attractor (which is happening now) and then the Galactic Core (in about 12 days). The familiar cloudy smear of our galaxy is not visible in the night sky, as it is during the summer months. Rather, the current night sky looking out toward Gemini offers a view into the deeps of intergalactic space.

I always find it interesting and reassuring that long before these points were discovered in the 20th century, Sagittarius was considered the sign associated with all things distant, with spiritual matters and with events and ideas that exist on a vast scale.

Sagittarius calls for perspective. Even as all these fireworks are going off, Pluto has grounded itself in Capricorn, calling our attention to necessity. Precisely contrary to the infinite expansion mentality of Pluto in Sagittarius, the official recession was announced this week just after Pluto went into the sign usually associated with things being contained, such as growth; to wit, Capricorn. A recession means the economy shrinking rather than increasing. The news gives us the impression that every single person will be unemployed in a matter of days, but obviously the economy keeps functioning. It’s just that, as we are seeing, there is going to be a lot of restructuring going on. This will be a special recession in that everyone is needing to rethink how they do business and (in true Capricorn style) survive. I recognize that there are a lot of doom and gloom predictions out there and that the people predicting a total collapse are certain that they are correct. However, it works out that the future is unwritten, and no matter what the trends may say, we need to consciously seek a future that is different than the past.

Sparkled army man. By Andrea LaHue.

During those last days, indeed on the very last day of Pluto in Sagittarius, Bombay (Mumbai) was taken under siege by terrorists who were demanding, among other things, that the entire nation of India, consisting of more than a billion people, “become Muslim.” I could say a lot about this, but the thing I want to point out is the extent to which there is a misunderstanding of how belief works.

You don’t point a gun at someone (such as a nation) and say, “You must believe this,” and then actually have them convert their faith. While you might think that this is the reasoning process of insane terrorists with grenades, this kind of thinking is pretty much par for the course in the history of the Western world, and has been made a major revival over the course of Pluto in Sagittarius. In particular, this is true in the United States, which became a theocracy run by men bearing false witness to Jesus Christ. For the most part, we went along with the game, to wit, nearly everyone fell for Iraq.

We fall for a lot of belief bullshit. We pile a lot of beliefs onto this whole strange space odyssey we are on, out on the edge of a galaxy getting vacuumed down a vortex 200 million light years away with very little solid information about how we got here. The mystery is held in Sagittarius, and so too is the shadow baggage that becomes religion, indoctrination and phony worldviews that are enforced at the point of a machine gun.

Yet the vision factor of Sagittarius is what we need to preserve as Pluto makes its way across Capricorn. As the structures of the world are taken apart, we need to put them back together with a plan; or at least a plan for how we are going to relate to the scheme of things. As I have suggested many times, we are about to witness and participate in change on a scale we never imagined possible — but we need to start imagining.

The Sagittarius-Capricorn line is the place where we work that border between the vision and the reality of something.

The Planet Waves 10th Anniversary

As it turns out, the natal Sun of Planet Waves (the Internet project, rather than the corporation) is situated right on this line where Sagittarius meets Capricorn, and Pluto has been working its transformational magic across our Sun as we reach our 10th anniversary. That would be on Sunday, Dec. 21, 2008. On that day, Planet Waves will have been on the air a full decade, or 3,650 days.

Little did I know at the time, but Planet Waves turned out to be very much about grounding a vision. We are preparing some retrospective materials for the next couple of weeks, which will give you a sense of how our mission was conceived and has developed. During this time, I will be passing the horoscope to Genevieve Salerno through the end of the year, so that I can lay low and finish the Next World Stories horoscopes. These are my extended-length annual astrology analyses that cover all the signs.

Given the prodigious astrology of 2009-2012, I am sure you can appreciate the depth at which I want to do these, and the quality I am putting into them. By now you may already know the main events: Pluto entering Capricorn; the Jupiter-Neptune-Chiron conjunction; Saturn entering Libra and squaring Pluto; and the continuing discovery of Eris in Aries.

We are adding new extra features every day, including a tarot spread generator, and a full-length monograph (short book) on Eris that I did for the 2007 annual, called Facets and Fragments of Self. This is included for all those who participate in Next World Stories.

Now I have to write the horoscope that appears below, and then gather myself for a short trip this weekend. I’ve been summoned to our nation’s capital to teach investigative reporting to gay and lesbian bloggers, an opportunity I would never miss.

Stay tuned.

Yours & truly,

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

ON THE DAY after Thanksgiving, what is called Black Friday to indicate a turning point in corporate profit, stores opened at dawn and before to welcome bargain hunters. This happens every year, yet this season it brought with it a dark side.

A swarm of bees. Photo by Robert Durell.

A young man in Long Island, a Wal-Mart greeter, was trampled by hundreds of anxious customers in an attempt to get to discounted goods double-quick. They pushed the front door off of its frame and mowed down anything in front of them. The 34-year-old part-time clerk died at the scene — few people are reported to have quit shopping, and cameras caught some of them laughing.

This feels like swarming behavior to me; in pursuit of stuff, we can become a singularly destructive force — like locusts descending on a fertile field, consuming everything in sight. While I don’t discount the psychology of this horror, I’m wondering how much our current financial insecurity factors into this. Maybe we have more of an edge, this year. Yesterday, the nation was finally informed that it was in a recession (as if we didn’t already know); statistics show we’ve been in one for almost a full year.

I don’t get a paper in the Pea Patch. Here in Southern CA, the paper arrives, slim enough, but is fleshed out with pounds of fliers and ads. They’re irresistible. I have to look, then I pine for a while. It’s no wonder we’re all made crazy by this season. The stuff — shiny, inviting, appealing, cheap — is everywhere. But ultimately, in dicey times, it’s not cheap enough.

Continued at this link...

Next World Stories, the 2009 annual from Planet Waves, is coming on Jan. 3, 2009. Click here to learn more.

At long last, Time Cycles Research, the main developer of astrology software for Mac, has added new points to its programs. This is the first revision to include new points since the software came out in the early 1990s. The revision includes Centaurs, Eris, the oscillating lunar apogee (sometimes called Lilith and not to be confused with the asteroid by the same name) and the nearly obsolete Transpluto. Time Cycles also now displays the Vertex, a point left over from the conversion of three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional chart and considered by many astrologers to be significant.

Birthchart 6. By Andrea LaHue.

Charts for Time Cycles popular Io Edition program have long included Chiron and the first four asteroids, Ceres, Pallas, Vesta and Juno. The software set now includes two additional centaurs, Pholus (discovered 1992) and Nessus (discovered 1993). Also included is the oscillating apogee, a standard feature in all European charts, which is a point based on the Moon’s presumed closest distance to the Earth. Two options are given, true and mean.

Transpluto is a hypothetical point that was somewhat popular in the 1970s, then used infrequently in the 1980s and 1990s, and finally fell out of common use in the United States and England as Chiron and actual planets beyond Pluto were discovered. We have never mentioned it in Planet Waves.

Lynn Koiner writes of Transpluto, “Used constructively, self-criticism and the perpetual alert for imperfections can motivate the individual to continually strive to do better, to achieve a standard of excellence and to make improvements where needed for the betterment of all. If a child has one experience of approval from a perfectionist parent, this will be carried over into adulthood as a pattern for finding contentment. The more experiences of approval from the perfectionist parent, the more contentment the individual will find in life.” Lynn’s full, well-documented delineation can be found at this link.

Two years after its naming and designation as a dwarf planet, Eris has been included. It’s always a good idea to invite her to the party. The only problem is that the glyph used is very similar to the European glyph for Uranus retrograde, a downward pointing Mars. Henry Seltzer, the owner of Time Passages software company, proposed this glyph at the 2008 United Astrology Conference and collected a number of signatures in favor of it. In a phone call Thursday, he said that his design was based mainly on practical considerations, and that it was a “provisional” glyph and that he would be open to a discussion among the minor planet specialists to solicit their opinion on this and other options. [He asked me to convene that discussion. If you would like to participate, please contact me at editorial@planetwaves.net.]

Time Cycles is still considerably behind Astrolabe, the producer of Solar Fire, which allows for more than 50 asteroids, trans-Neptunian objects, the hypothetical Uranian points, and several Centaurs. In case you need them, all of those points and manymore excellent features are available free at Serennu.com.

For Time Cycles, the inclusion of these points is great news for Mac users and the first major step forward for the software maker, which produces elegant charts, easy-to-use features and comes with an excellent database of famous charts. You can reach them at TimeCycles.com.

It is extremely rare for an asteroid to hit the Earth these days, though there is often much talk about it, but one entered the atmosphere just in the last days of Pluto in Sagittarius. Canadian scientists say they have located debris from a 10-ton asteroid that exploded in the skies over Canada’s Prairie provinces last month [see very cool video here].

Dr. Alan Hildebrand and graduate student Ellen Milley found several fragments late Thursday near the Alberta-Saskatchewan border.

They are searching for what they say could be thousands of fragments strewn over a 20-square-kilometer (seven-square-mile) area near the Battle River. Residents of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta were delighted by the huge fireball that lit up the night sky on Nov. 20, which was fortunately smaller than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs just as the Great Pyramid was being built.

Because it hit the ground before astronomers recorded its existence, it has not been named, it has no glyph, and it is not listed in the Serennu minor planet database. We have hastily convened a naming committee, which overnight decided it would be called “the asteroid that hit near the Alberta-Saskatchewan border” and its glyph will be Mars pointing toward the left.


Weekly Horoscope for Friday, December 5, 2008, #743 – By ERIC FRANCIS

Aries (March 20-April 19)
Let this weekend’s emotional turbulence serve to wake up your imagination. At first you may find that it’s waking up your shadowy, dreamy paranoia and emotional insecurities. If you don’t cower from your own shadow and follow those feelings past the veil, you are likely to discover something much more creative and vivid is going on back there. Our deepest pleasure is often hidden behind a veil of embarrassment. Our boldest ideas often arrive with a fanfare of psychological crisis. Keep your focus inward and write down some of the strange things you come up with. One or two of them will turn out out to be brilliant.

Taurus (April 19-May 20)
You may feel like something imminent is going to happen, or be walking around terrified that you’re about to die. You may be worried that you’re going to be swallowed by a partnership situation, or that the arrangement you have with another person is somehow larger than you are — too large to handle, too intense, too direct. All these feelings add up to a bold invitation to break out of your cage. You have recently discovered some old beliefs that you know are absolutely obsolete. What you have yet to discover is just where new beliefs come from.

Gemini (May 20-June 21)
You typically live with the sense that others have more power than you do, but for the past week or so you’ve been learning a lot about how to stand up to people and in a sense, how to speak their language. You accomplish everything else in your life with language; the discovery that direct communication can solve nearly every problem has occurred to you many times. It’s just that you now have the guts to do something about it, perhaps because you see no other option than to enter a dialog. This is not a situation you can get out of easily; perhaps see what happens when you get into it.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)
After being told for 2,000 years that passion and pleasure are sinful, it’s not easy to change that belief; but you have come a long way in a short time. You’ve also rightly observed that erotic pleasure is not all sweetness and starlight; there is growth to be done, there are cobwebs in the corners and there is the extraordinarily fragile space of discovering who you are in the presence of another person who may not understand. The question I suggest you ask as you go into the space once again is why human belief seems to stray so far from what our DNA tells us is necessary, desirable and healthy.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)
You may be concerned that someone is about to renege on a deal, but I suggest you keep your faith and hold up your end of the bargain. For you the the entire exercise is indeed about faith, but it’s also about looking honestly at your influence over how the situation works out. And that, too, is a question of faith in the sense of being faithful to your original purpose. You have more influence than you may think. True, you don’t like to get emotionally involved, but that is largely based on a hidden fear that, sooner or later, you will need to face.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
Adventure is calling you, and there is a fire burning in your soul that’s hot enough to feel in your head. It’s about time. You know that if you respond to this calling, there will be no turning back — and that is the thing that’s making you hesitate. You might want to add up how much of your life you’ve spent doing just that, and if your total adds up to years rather than decades you can count yourself doing well. You may feel that you’re not quite ready for this one, though if that is true, you may want to set some criteria for just what ‘ready’ actually means to you.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
You currently seem to have ideas and the willingness to dare trying them in about equal measure. The question is why you would hesitate. My theory is that for you, ‘in theory’ is enough. And it may well be enough, but I propose that you remember that there is a difference between an idea and an experience. Most people would say that it’s daring enough to play with the concept. But this is a little like studying maps without taking the trip; making the blue prints but not building the house.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
If you are on some kind of quest for money, remember just one thing: you’re here to learn how to make money in an ethical way. I recognize that this is often a handicap, but personally I think that it’s a pretty serious debility to sidestep your own values and pretend that everything is going to be fine, as so many of our comrades so often do. It comes down to the simple idea that the ends do not justify the means. The truth is that the means must justify the results. The world is making progress, and this is one form that it will take. Your common sense should be telling you this.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)
You are coming into your own, and it’s about time. Finally you are driven not by the obsession with being someone, but rather with the realization that you are indeed someone. This is never a discovery that you can take for granted on Earth, and I don’t suggest that you do so. It may be difficult for you to feel the scale of the impact that you are having, and that you can have in the future; but you may have a clue. What you can feel is what is important to you. If you focus on that, and allow that to grow, you will at least be able to direct the course of your impact, even if you don’t quite know what it will do.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
Finally, some of your potential is manifesting. But we may want to ask why this is, and I would say that the reason is because you have finally got some of your fear out of the way; and if not out of the way, you have put it on the surface of your psyche, where you can see it. When you are aware of fear, it can become a force for positive change, growth and consciousness. It is when fear lurks in the background that it is paralyzing and does the most long-term damage. You still have a long way to go, but from the look of your charts, you will get there in a relatively short time. Then the real quest can begin.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
Doors are opening for you, and there are people who wish you would walk through them a lot faster than you are. You may be one of those people, and you seem intent on making sure that you are included in the fast-moving plans of the world. You know that you have to go at your own thoughtful pace. And you also know that many times, opportunity does not repeat itself. It is true that you are in the final moments of a chance to take a step toward the unknown. And while this exact situation will not repeat again, there will be many like it for several years to come. You can afford to do, or not do, what you feel is right.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
There is a difference between a friend and an ally. Most of the people you count as friends are actually allies, and that is often a relationship of convenience. I suggest you sort out the people for whom it is not entirely convenient to be in your life, but who persist in being there anyway. These are the people to accompany you on the next phase of your journey. They are the ones who will not hold you to your past, but rather who will help you envision and create the future that is just starting to come into focus; that is just beginning to seem real.

Planet Waves Inner Space – December 2008

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Aries (March 20-April 19)
For some people, social acceptance is so important they will do anything to keep it once they have it. Don’t be one of them. The story of the recent years of your life has been the struggle — if I may use such a strong word — to maintain your individuality while also finding a place for yourself anywhere outside your front door. Whether it’s among your friends, or some group you want to mix yourself into, or a professional situation where you are seeking acceptance, don’t sell out. True enough, as Dylan said, if you try to be anyone but yourself, you will fail. But I’m talking about something else: significant success that will be the reward of focusing on your individuality and integrity.

Fire burns in the fireplace of Bruno’s former studio
during moving days in Nov. 2006, 59 rue de Rivoli, Paris. Photo by Danielle Voirin.

Taurus (April 19-May 20)
You have endured so many power struggles, they became a way of life. Even things that had no relation to your survival had a tendency to become, in your emotional perception, matters of seeming life and death. I suggest you track back over your recent and not so recent life and see how this relates to you, particularly in situations where you were confronted by others whose beliefs, whether more or less founded in truth, seemed to dominate the room, the company, the family or your household. The thing is, you do care what other people believe, yet you are finally discovering that what you believe is significantly more important.

Gemini (May 20-June 21)
When you think about your relationships, do you think in terms of structure, formal roles and appropriateness? Nobody would accuse a Gemini of this; you are perceived as conversant, easy-going and flexible in your customs. Yet as the model of your world changes even as you witness it, you’re getting a lesson in your relationship anatomy. As you pull off the wall panels, you are starting to see the beams, and they are not as flexible as you might have imagined — or at least not until now. The stress you are feeling when you experience the demand to make a change is precisely the stress that was underlying your existence all along.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)
You have yet to master the art of the deal. You want to, and you know that you can. You’ve made a lot of progress; it starts with remembering to count yourself in. This, you figured out more recently than you would care to admit. The other thing to remember is that everything is negotiable. People like to act as if their price is firm, but there is always a little wiggle room, and often a lot of the stuff. The other thing to remember is that you need to let others approach you. Let them speak first. This is tricky because we’re all so insecure, and you, as an emotionally alert person, maintain a certain lack of confidence as a yogi. But try it a few times: let others speak first.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)
Err on the side of play rather than work. If you approach life with a spirit of adventure and remember that old forms always, sooner or later, give way to new ones, you can create those new ones as a conscious gesture. At the same time, you can approach the puzzle of your life as precisely that. It’s just that the pieces will fit together in a whole new way other than you were expecting. Meanwhile, stay close to your original idea, the idea that didn’t care how or even if you got there; the one that was based entirely on vision, inspiration or a sense of destiny.

Waterfront, Antwerp, Belgium. Photo by Eric Francis.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
For the foreseeable future, the theme of your life is overthrowing your parent complex and setting that child in you free. You finally feel safe enough to do this, and that sense of belonging and emotional confidence was hard won. Remember what you’ve been through, and remember that you overcame your insecurities by finding your spiritual core — by all indications, again and again, till you were convinced it was real. You know in your heart that you can accomplish anything, but the true quest remains an interior one; in truth, a quest of the heart. You want to ‘do’ things but the truth is, what you want is to be more expressive, less afraid of the judgments of others, and not at all worried about doing it right. Try again.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
Beneath every true revolutionary is someone who respects tradition. Respect implies awareness; a conscious relationship; a process of working with tradition in a way that makes room for something new. There are traditions that are healthy; some that need to be put in airtight museum cases; some need to be destroyed and forgotten. You may feel, as did Reb Tevye, that without tradition your life would be as shaky as a fiddler on a roof. It has now come to the point where, without challenging the past, your life and emotional world will seem dangerously unstable. If you are feeling shaky, question a past value. Look for the shadow of authority. Not authority itself, but its shadow cast over your heart and soul. Then, stand in the light.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
How many of your thoughts are some form of fear or negativity cloaked in intellectual garb? One of the first exercises in spiritual training is noticing when you’re feeling something other than love. Guilt takes many, many forms. We learn it as children from parents, ministers, teachers, bullies and Boy Scout leaders. Then we forget we learned it, and think of it as something natural, rarely identifying these seemingly diverse feelings as unloving. When you recognize that every form of guilt is a veil thrown over a creative or loving impulse, your life gets easier. You have more energy, and because you spend your precious time approving of yourself, you have more freedom to choose what you want to do. Welcome to the future.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)
For the past decade, the world has been engaged in an endless war over values disguised as a battle over religious faith. The sides in this symbolic battle are not what we think, and the tumult and chaos mostly represent a massive failure to investigate our own true motives and desires. For just about everyone, that is, but you. You have been compelled to come to terms with yourself in such a way that has made it an irrevocable habit. You have seen the cost of not being honest with yourself. Yet there are practical matters you haven’t attended to with the devotion that’s necessary to truly qualify as ‘getting real’, and that time has arrived: the time to connect every dream to an action plan and action itself, or set it aside and move on.

Autumn evening, St Gilles, Belgium. Photo by Eric Francis.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
Was there a day in the past week or so when you woke up one morning feeling strangely like yourself? Like you actually exist? Like you belong on this planet? Actually existing has its challenges, and not everyone faces them; but you are being given a down payment on the rewards of noticing that you belong here. Be mindful that your ability to make an impression on the world is increasing rapidly; you need to say less, do less, and feel your presence in the room before you say or do anything. For a while, quietly assume that just arriving someplace shifts the environment, and notice how that change looks and feels. It may be subtle, it may not be, but either way it amounts to power that is best accounted for consciously.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
We live in extraordinary times: ones that will be remembered for the presence of Chiron in Aquarius, and much else besides. That is another way of saying mass scale awakening (pleasant or not, but awakening nonetheless). For you, it’s a way of saying focus, pay attention and experience many situations where you have no choice but to stand out from those around you. I know, you always thought you did this; there is no Aquarius who does not fancy herself especially unique. Yet you lost sight of the compromises you were making. Certain definitions became foggy when they needed to become clear; and many of those involved the direction you thought your life should be taking versus the direction everyone else thought it should be taking.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
Saturn and Uranus have made the first of several contacts involving your birth sign; and you can now feel the effects of this. It may have seemed for years like you were making an excellent movie, carefully written, well directed and acted beautifully, but you were projecting it out into space. Turning the metaphor toward Earth, you may have felt like a brilliant dancer without the benefit of gravity to hold you to the ground. You need a structure to focus yourself against, to press against, to project your light onto — and now you have one. I suggest you take every opportunity to feel the benefits of this, and remember, remember, remember what it was like not to have these things working to your advantage.

In Search Of Our Family Thanksgiving

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Editor’s Note: Wednesday night as Pluto was in its final hours in Sagittarius (a transit that has long been associated with religious extremism), Mumbai, India came under siege from terrorists. As of this morning, two of the remaining three standoffs appear to have been resolved. Terrorists have been cleared from the Oberol Trident Hotel and the Nariman House Jewish Center. There is still gunfire reported, as at least one gunman is occupying the Taj Mahal Hotel, according to CNN-IBN. At least 146 have been killed in the three-day incident, and hundreds injured.Many are wondering whether this is a sign of things to come, or a kind of last gasp of the terrorist era. The astrology of the incident would support the idea that this is an artifact of the past and not the future. Pluto was changing signs and the Moon was in the last degrees before a New Moon, meaning it was at the end of a lunar cycle. There are indicators in India’s chart that this is an issue that will be contained primarily to that country. However, this was a different kind of attack (not a suicide attack in the conventional sense, but rather a carefully coordinated, very well financed siege targeting Westerners and Israelis). It calls for careful analysis, which we’re preparing for you.

Please check our main page for more frequent updates. I suggest you use the Internet and seek news from diverse sources. The South Asian Journalist Association (SAJA) is the most comprehensive source for news from Mumbai; they’ve organized a live call-in for Indian journalists and are doing a collective report every 12 hours. The streams are at 10-11:30 am and 10-11:30 pm New York time; that’s 8:30-10 am and 8:30-10 pm India time, and you can listen to them here.

By Judith Gayle | Political WavesI’D PLANNED on writing about gratitude today, with Thanksgiving upon us; considering the plenty that turns up on our tables this week, it seems ungrateful not to. But then my attention turned toward the Pilgrims. When you have little kids around, as I’m thankful to have this season, construction paper Pilgrim hats come home along with turkeys made of stuffed paper bags, and your mind just goes there.

Mayflower in Plymouth harbor, 1882. Painting by
William Halsall.

In my particular case, my earliest ancestors on this continent arrived on the Mayflower. Seven of them embarked but when that first harsh winter was over there were only two, who married, no doubt out of necessity. My grandfather 13 generations removed was John Howland, a young indentured servant and a few years older than Elizabeth Tilley, the family matriarch. John received his freedom, and material reward for his loyalty, when HIS minister and employer, John Carver, died in the first years at Plymouth. The Howland’s lived to a ripe old age and produced 88 grandchildren.

I think that’s likely to mean I’m related to just about everybody in this hemisphere, at least by marriage. According to the records, I have distant cousins that include Churchill and FDR, as well as — disturbingly, I might add — Nixon and the Bushes. They say that the six degrees of separation theory has reduced itself to three degrees in the last few years; think about playing the Kevin Bacon game, only now it’s a shorter version. Maybe soon we’ll discover that there IS no separation, not a lick of it; that will be a true day of Thanksgiving.

Barack Obama is related to Dick Cheney, on his mother’s side; I wonder which is the most embarrassed by that revelation. Perhaps it would be a more pertinent question to ask who we aren’t related to, as opposed to who we are. I think we’d all be very surprised. A few years ago, when DNA investigation became more available, an African-American professor of black studies, and civil rights activist, submitted his blood for analysis; the results turned his self-perception upside down. He found that his DNA revealed him to be mostly Northern European with a smidgeon of Asian. His self-definition — indeed, the premise of his mission in life — disappeared in a flash. What he had identified as exclusively his was, instead, all of ours; Americans are all a bit of this, a bit of that. It would be enlightening if we all had such a test and broadened our self-awareness.

The Pilgrims — I think of them as the original boat people — were a motley crew; partly religious exiles, partly entrepreneurs and opportunists. When I try to put myself in their place, I am left admiring their courage and their trust in the future. They might as well have planned a trip to Mars; they had no idea what tomorrow would bring them. In some ways, we’re in similar energy today, all of us. We’re reconfiguring the future out of the lessons of the past and the circumstances of the present; we’re pushing off into an unknown future. We’re a courageous lot, like it or not; pat yourself on the back. Our boat is bigger, but our figurative destination is as intriguingly unknown; the waters we cross, similarly uncharted.

Grandpa John was written into history as the guy who fell off the ship in a huge storm; he grabbed a rope and hung on until he was finally hauled back onto deck. I expect he had a moment of gratitude, right there. That’s one perspective worth thanksgiving; solid footing. Grandma probably had another; being on that ship, tossed around like a beanbag on a seemingly endless sea would be different perspective. Finally landing on a shore both beautiful and hostile was a perspective that awaited them, surely a relief but with another set of problems. Life is like that; one shift after another; circumstantial adjustments that redefine the moment of reality.

Coastline at Big Sur, California. Photo by Doug Dolde.

This morning I had coffee outside, looking up into the California sky; traveling the 1500 or so miles from the Midwest each year is how I refresh my perspective and renew my heart, surrounded by loved ones. In one of those rare Southern California events, rain came yesterday and threatens today. The morning sky was almost white with fast-moving clouds, ragged patches of azure blue peeking through in interesting patterns. If you stare at something long enough, your eyes play tricks; as I watched the heavens, the blue shapes seemed like continents dotting a white sea, shifting and changing. It was like looking at a photographic negative and seeing the picture in a new way; it ran like a time-lapse, moving along quickly, pushing the sky-colored continents together and separating them again.

Our far past was like that, literally. With six, or perhaps only three, degrees of separation, our relationship to one another is like that as well; we’re moving quickly, coming together and separating. Touching and moving along. If we have the larger perspective, everything’s in its right place. If we’re seeing the big picture, there is purpose in our meeting, moving, melting together and pulling apart.

We’ve found new ways to connect. We’ve identified the common thread that binds us all together, pulling us forward into the next discovery. Our very humanness is a blessing — our ability to take a moment into our hearts and feel it so thoroughly it rattles our bones, imprints our brains and opens our souls. So are these extraordinary times that shift us forward into new perspective and new adventures. If we see anew what has always been here, while adjusting our perception of what can be, we can only look out at what’s ahead with gratitude.

As I write, the children are squabbling in the other room. Brother and sister, seven and 10; beloved combatants. Some things don’t change. I expect Grandma Elizabeth yelled at her share of quarrelsome children. It’s perfect, just as it is; it’s a major blessing to my senses, my heart, my imagination. When I’m missing the sound of them in March, I’ll remember their squeals of indignation in November and smile. I’m very blessed that I can carry that resonance in my heart; never lose it. I’m very blessed to live in a time of growing awareness, so I don’t have to lose anything.

We are all blessed; we survived the last eight years, a little the worse for wear but, hopefully, wiser. Many of us are facing challenges that seem dire, yet aren’t; for those of us that are truly challenged, we must remember that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. We’re all much stronger than we think we are; that’s a good thing to remember in tough economic times. Maybe we learn to simplify our lives now; we’ll appreciate simplicity when our perspective on clutter changes. The burden of too much is as heavy as that of too little; we might be shocked to discover that less is a blessing and not some great sorrow.

It would be wise and welcome to come to a deeper appreciation of family and friends now, as our ability to juggle all the balls becomes more difficult; perhaps there are some we can consider dropping without all falling to ruin. This is a time to reach out to one another, to help others carry their burden and taking delight in finding that somehow that makes our own lighter. Maybe we’ll remember that our DNA would define us all as family, while being friends is a choice, worth making. Perhaps we’ll discover that this grand social experiment belongs to all of us, equally.

I found this quote in the cartoon section of the paper today; it’s by Thornton Wilder: We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

The Aurora Australis. A Full Moon and 25 second exposure allowed sufficient light into this photo taken at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station during the long Antarctic night. Photo by Chris Danals, NSF.

Treasure is that thing you value above all else. I wonder what Grandma Elizabeth treasured most; certainly, fresh from the kind of life-altering adventure she’d lived, she had some consciousness of what she’d experienced. This is a good time to remind ourselves that we’re adventurers, as well, and look at our lives through Grandma’s eyes. She would be amazed at our bounty; she would be stunned by our progress. She would be staggered at our numbers and mystified, I think, by our fears.

All this talk of a financial depression signifies nothing much; if you are lucky enough to have an elder to consult, ask them what the Great Depression was actually like. The social structure in place through that financial emergency was much different than our own. I have no doubt we will be challenged by the times ahead, perhaps severely, but I can’t help but think we’re so much better equipped to deal with them than were our forbearers. We have safeguards. We have, thankfully, new leadership that puts our well-being much higher on the list than did the last. We’ve recently found a new spirit of compassion and cooperation, all good to have handy as we come together in difficult times.

And we have gratitude; without which there is no metaphysical give-take; no opening of ourselves to receive more, to share more, to give more. Unless we realize that we are being blessed — day in, day out — we will miss the abundance of our experience and live in internal, if not external, poverty. Remember what they said, back in those bad old days? Money can’t buy happiness. Ahhh — but gratitude can.

So, with Thanksgiving behind me this year, I have 364 additional days ahead for gratitude. Today I’m thankful for you, my Planet Waves family. You’ve all blessed me this year; and in appreciation, I send you this YouTube from Gratefulness.org. Any pondering of our blessings should come with pictures and music; what is cool and dry in mind, is warm and fecund in heart. We need all our senses to appreciate what blessing really means; you can’t watch this little clip without a heart-twitch or two.

We are all part of this lovely human family, lifting upward, moving forward; coming together. We are abundantly provided for, as long as we have the consciousness to accept and appreciate the myriad blessings that surround us. That makes this day … and every day … a day of thanksgiving. Grandma would be proud.


Weekly Horoscope for Friday, November 28, 2008, #742 – By ERIC FRANCIS

Aries (March 20-April 19)
As you enter a phase of your life where achievement becomes the thing you reach for and finally attain, remember that you don’t matter quite as much without the people around you. Indeed, you may not matter at all. What you accomplish is meaningful in the context of community: be it your company, the locale you inhabit, or the culture wherein you are making your mark. Nothing is about you alone, though you may think it’s supposed to be that way. Remember your context. Remember whom meaningful developments must serve, if indeed they deserve that name. To do any of this, you need to have faith in something larger than yourself.Taurus (April 19-May 20)
The part of you that’s a skeptic, traditionalist or purist is the part that’s going to come under the most intense scrutiny now. This is the aspect of yourself that someone gave the job of blocking your progress. Why they may have done that is a story of its own, and it involves the rigid, fear-based psychology of one of your parents — most likely your mother. The past makes a great refuge for people who don’t want to face themselves, or embrace change. You are alive in a time when we are confronting nothing but change, and the values of the past cannot dictate our way of life in the present. I’m not proposing you throw tradition to the wind; only that you be aware of a deep desire to bring it, and yourself, up to date.Gemini (May 20-June 21)
You may wonder how it is that people get so much power in your life. By now you’ve figured out that, in part, a key aspect of yourself is accustomed to thinking of relationships in terms of authority. I can tell you where this most likely comes from: a cosmic model wherein marriage is the central defining factor. It doesn’t matter if you’re married or not, or whether you believe in marriage; you have inherited a set of instructions, and you need to be conscious of them so that you can either dance to the music, or become the conductor of your own orchestra. The instructions you’ve received have you programmed to believe that a certain kind of commitment is the only thing deserving of the name, and that a certain kind of relationship is the only type that can be called authentic. And in this equation, you tend to lose. That is why I am suggesting you get hip to what is going on.Cancer (June 21-July 22)
Think of a way to remember this time in your life. I used to get my ear pierced on very important occasions, and to mark key transitions in my life. Other times I pick a spot and make a fire big enough that I’ll never forget it. Some people get tattoos and some take a trip to their favorite place. The autumn of 2008 will go down in the story of your life as a time when you finally figured out how to open up to others; how to embrace your relationships; when you actually got it that soul is the thing you want from your experiences of love — and nothing more or less than that. Therefore, meet soul with soul. Allow others to touch you deeply. Give up that part of you that clings, and clings to yourself. Allow love to be what it is meant to be: something alive, with its own volition, owing nothing to the past.Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)
Most of the people I serve as an astrology consultant are struggling for professional direction. The culture seems to be gradually shifting in this direction: from the search for the “special relationship,” to the search for the special thing that we are supposed to do. Lately you may be feeling overwhelmed by a calling for that elusive something. I don’t think it’s going to be a struggle; that is, I think your calling is going to find you. Most people (as with love) will tell you that’s usually what happens; there is something to do, and we do it. I would remind you to subtract the glamour from the equation. Keep your focus on what is practical; on what you can actually do; skip the appearances entirely. Then the clues will be obvious.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
You have learned many times that anticipation is more difficult than action. How many times? Only you know that. I think you’re through hesitating, though. I think you are craving experience that is devoted to pleasure and creation, not merely to growth and knowledge. You can take your first steps into this endeavor slowly and gently, one at a time. The vortex will take you in the right moment. In this first moment of tasting freedom, tune into your senses. Look around at the world and imagine what you would change if you could. Remember that the past is becoming the present and being drawn toward the future with every passing moment; remember that everything, no matter how old and permanent it may seem, is transient. The difference between your life yesterday and your life today is that you are taking part in that transience consciously.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
You have deep roots, and you know it. But you don’t always reveal this fact about yourself, cautious as you are in a world that so often shuns that with strong vitality. However, you seem to be craving a means of expressing your sense of positive potential, and I suggest that you do so at your pleasure. I know that you’re a modest person; you prefer understated beauty to anything flashy or pretentious. Yet what you’re feeling is anything but understated right now: clearly stated describes the feeling better, yet passionate and driven make the point more vividly. I don’t suggest you hold back. Yes, approach the world with your usual grace. And say what you mean, when you mean it. The way your charts look, this would work better in writing than verbally, and get accustomed to the fact that others will read it sooner rather than later. That would appear to be its purpose.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
Existence is continuous; you are your dreams, your desires, your fears, your experiences and your ideas. Most of what we call mundane or ordinary consciousness is about seeing as divided that which is blended into a gentle and unique holism. The journey of your life is, at the moment, about recognizing and embracing the continuity of who you are. Aspects of your experience only seem dark and dense if you deny them, or withhold energy from them. In these very days, you are working to push energy into aspects of yourself that will drink it up like water. You are even succeeding; just work into the territory gently; allow a new state of consciousness to take over gradually. You will see the world differently; you will perceive people in unusual ways; you will finally recognize the extent to which the past dominated your thoughts, precisely because you are growing free of that affliction.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)
Nothing can stop you now, and you may be wondering how you ever thought it could. All through your life, you have been the person with vision, with a sense of potential and with a connection to your inner truth that was not merely confounding to the world; it seemed like nobody even noticed. Here is the problem: you grew up and never got over that belief or observation. Now when people do notice, you may be the one who doesn’t quite get it; you may be the skeptic or the one whose perception can’t quite contain the truth that you are making contact. One of the odd ways you work around this point is by having certain people in your life who reflect the strange idea that you are somehow less than you are. These people don’t need that job; and you need a wider field of consciousness to express your true self. Let it happen — or rather, check it out: you’re actually happening.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
Pluto’s ingress to your sign is a distinctly psychological event for you; you have been under pressure you don’t understand, for longer than you understand. At times it felt like the urgent need to change, to grow or to become, without any corresponding sense that this is possible; even to change your own way of thinking. The shift in the energy not only makes it possible that you can do so, but suddenly makes it necessary. A hope becomes a requirement, and you may feel that this is somehow unfair because you don’t actually get to appreciate that moment of doing something because you can. Well, the truth is, that doesn’t make a difference. You are going to become the person you want to become because you desire doing so, but the truth is, you know you really need to.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
The question or quest of your life right now is the balance between inner and outer. Most people struggle with this profoundly. For example, in intimate partnerships, many have the sense that if they are with a partner, they must neglect an aspect of themselves, specifically, their individuality. If they are free of a relationship, they must reject intimacy as threatening to their identity. This may be one expression of your situation; another involves the distinctly social and antisocial attributes of your personality. You live with a lot of tension here, between being so oriented on what only you understand, and wanting contact with people you can relate to as a community. It may take you a while to work this out — but resolve to use the time well. There is strength and energy in there.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
Patric Walker, whose daily horoscope demonstrated to me that astrology is real, wrote his last column the weekend that Pluto entered Sagittarius, on Nov. 12, 1995. He had died a month before, with a month of columns written ahead. His parting comment to Pisces: “You will shine in your chosen field.” I’ve always appreciated his emphasis on choosing your walk of life; and the insinuation that success and decisions arrive together. I would ask, in these years that Pluto has been working its way across your 10th solar house, what have you created a reputation for? Have you brought your vision into focus in any way? Have you appreciated the extraordinary freedom granted by this transit? And if you had an unusual chance to direct your energy and your intentions, where would you apply your impact? The planets are ripe for a revolution, and you seem to be brewing an idea or two.

Planet Waves Monthly – December 2008

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Dear Friend and Reader:

PLUTO IS in its final moments in Sagittarius until Dec. 18, 2241, when it returns to the sign of the centaur. Apropos of a major Pluto transit, the ingress to Capricorn is being attended by much drama and many truly unusual developments. And apropos of a change in historical eras, we are in a moment between two presidencies; two vastly different times of life. Many people have pondered the meaning of the 2012 era without necessarily believing that the whole thing — whatever it is — is real. You are about to find out, but your perception is a filter. Everything you witness, you interpret. I suggest you observe that process in motion.

Interbeing. By Alex Grey.

December’s pivotal moment, and indeed that of 2008, arrives at the end of December, between Christmas and New Year, when Mars makes a conjunction to Pluto, newly arrived in Capricorn. Pluto’s journey across the Galactic Core and ingress into Capricorn have been in progress for well over two years. We’ve had a chance to get our spiritual bearings; to make some decisions about right and wrong, and how we want to fit into the world we see around us. Sagittarius is a brilliant teacher of ethics, even if certain people under its influence act is if they have never heard of the concept.

The Capricorn journey, which lasts through 2024, will come with a return to practical matters. We will be compelled to validate our choices by a measure of what is true rather than what we want to be true. We will have a chance to reform our horribly outmoded “traditions” and institutions, recycling the pieces into something useful; something that feeds us and not just the pharmaceutical giants.

This is likely to be true in both the long-run and our immediate moment. Pluto transits are often attended by a dramatic event; and Mars entering Capricorn points the way. That conjunction coincides by about a day with the Capricorn New Moon on Dec. 27, conjunct Mars, Pluto and square this odd thing called the Aries Point. All of this adds up to developments certainly both in public life (i.e., the news) and invariably for us as individuals — and an encounter where the two intersect.

These will not necessarily be the most relaxing holidays, but we live in highly unusual times, and we have to get into a new groove of awareness. The world is on the brink of the most significant changes we have seen in our lifetimes. Though time always seems to be accelerating, we have lived for a long, long time with the sense that we are on the road to nowhere. Now we are approaching the first of several key destinations, where the scent in the air is indescribable, and where the light falls upon the Earth differently than we’ve ever seen. Tune into your senses; they will reveal most of what you need to know. Tune into your heart: it will reveal what you already know.

Yours & truly,

Correction. In Friday’s edition, we misidentified a piece of artwork that is really by Alex Grey. Alex is a painter who depicts both the physical and nonphysical dimensions of the world. He illustrates everything from the skeletal-muscular system to the energy lines in one’s aura and how they intersect with the people near us. He is a practitioner of Tantra in the Tibetan tradition, which like all forms of Buddhism explores and celebrates the cycles of birth, life, death and rebirth. Alex’s 55th birthday is coming up Nov. 29. He has a Sagittarius Sun and a Virgo Moon, with a good bit of Scorpio (Venus and Mercury). He once personally gave me his birth time; I cannot find it. These images are available in magnificent books. You can visit his homepage here.

Aries (March 20-April 19)
Leadership, when attained, often arrives with what seems like a test. It may be designed by the cosmos as such; it may be that there is an ‘equal and opposite reaction’ taking place somewhere, and this is the result. What seems like a crisis (from a dense level of perception) is also accessible as a reorganization and opportunity (from a more expanded perspective). Change brings change. This comes in many forms, and it now appears to be arriving in particularly large measures. To me, the astrology suggests that whatever may be developing, you not lose sight of your objectives, your intentions and what are commonly called goals: the big ones; the dearly held ones. Look at any situation and ask how you can use it as an opening. It is true that you are encountering forces beyond your control and are suddenly playing in another league. It’s true that the practical matters you are encountering have little to do with the visions you were holding out for yourself so recently, and for so long. This is a crucial point as anything comes to fruition; once you get to the place where practical concerns dominate, keep sight of your vision, your meaning, your truth — no matter what anyone else says or does.

Net of Being. Painting by Alex Grey.

Taurus (April 19-May 20)
There seems to come a point in everyone’s spiritual development when they get a handle on a deeper truth, and then have to make it known to the world. A new dimension of reality is making itself accessible to you, and it may be overwhelming. It’s shaking up all your reality boxes, and drawing you into new possibilities like falling into a vortex. I have a lot of Taurus friends — most of them agree, they need the action, they need the shift in energy and the reshuffling of reality. Things have been too much the same for way too long, despite many opportunities to make progress. The pull you are now experiencing transcends anything familiar; it’s more powerful than anything close to what you’ve known in the past. I suggest, however, that to the extent you consider this a spiritual event, you be modest about it. A new version of the truth is making itself known to you. Yet it’s not concepts that count now, but rather, it is the results of your actions, and how your beliefs transpose directly into choices. You may feel like you’re deluding yourself in terms of what you feel like you can accomplish, even with help. Remember, miracles speak louder than words.

Gemini (May 20-June 21)
Your primary responsibility to yourself is to avoid power struggles. That may not sound very creative. Yet given both recent and imminent developments in your solar chart, it’s a key skill you need to master. You have come through a long phase wherein you learned, by one method, to meet people you perceived as powerful face-on; you learned that your ideas are as good as their ideas. That one belief has saved you incalculable grief and it is basically still true. However, you are in a new country with new laws and new metaphysics. You need to think strategically; you need to pre-empt any situation wherein you may be compromised or challenged, long in advance. What is different now is that certain people in your life are themselves coming from a different level; they wield the power of structure and establishment, more or less justly. In any transaction where you feel like the weaker party, look at the contract; look at the by-laws; consciously examine any agreements that you have. Everyone has to play by the rules; therefore, know the guidelines, and enter any situation having already complied with the basics. There will be times when it’s appropriate to go directly to the human level, to seek assistance or acknowledgement; just know when you’re doing it.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)
You have long sought more direct contact in your encounters with others. You have wanted relationships that did something other than dance around the point. Soon, you may be wondering how direct is too direct. Meanwhile, it’s crucial that you get accustomed to a new way of life; that you adapt to a new metaphysics of the human dance. Any encounter that matters will require you to make some change to the structure of your beliefs about relationships and about yourself. Most people don’t recognize how rigid these ideas are, those contained within themselves and within society. You are about to discover how rigid you thought your ideas were, and how flexible they can be. The rules as they exist are generally designed to make sure that nothing (meaning, nobody) new or out of the ordinary gets in. This, in turn, is designed to sustain a model of ‘self’ that counts a living, breathing, pulsing human life as a fixed or static entity, rather than ever-changing and in continuous motion. If you are in an established partnership, you’ll need to become truly honest with yourself about the extent to which this whole setup is true for you. The time has arrived for new concepts that account for change and still preserve some sense of loyalty and commitment; remembering that honesty trumps everything — when we don’t let fear do it first.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)
You are not somebody with commitment issues; rather, you intuitively understand that your presence means something. Nobody has to tell you that. Yet too often you try to demonstrate this simple fact. I suggest you make up your mind that you have nothing to prove. Once you do that, you will feel your thrust come on, born mainly of trusting yourself. You will feel the profound influence that you wield, particularly in those areas of life where people feel the most helpless: work, their health and dealing with bureaucracy. You understand something about simple wellbeing, mainly because you’ve had to work so hard to feel that the world is here to support you. For the next year or so — and for sure, during the next few months — expect some kind of grand reorganization to dominate your awareness. Recognize that change is happening, and is happening around you. There are corresponding changes within your psyche; there are old ideas that you’re dragging around that are simply no longer helpful and are begging to be revised, reconsidered or removed entirely. It is not easy being born under a fixed sign (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or Aquarius) these days. It is like a giant cosmic wedge is being driven into the world, threatening every known structure or establishment, even down to its very existence. You are one of the people on the design team for the new reality. You must be dauntless and flexible, in equal measure.

Namaste. By Alex Grey.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
It’s time to get the ship out of relationship. Typically, we drag around an iron hull full of garbage when we relate to others: expectations, supposed needs, unstated desires, issues with language, stereotypes and countless things that need to be melted into something useful. For you, these issues do nothing but suppress your ability to be spontaneous; to be creative; simply put, to have fun. If you feel like you have sexual hang-ups of any variety, you need to look no further than this theme to find out what they are about. It is true, as you have so often divined, that this story is old; it goes back a long way; and those with a strong Virgo signature in their charts were often the kids who were forced to be adults before they had a chance to be young. At the time, this was held as a virtue; the adults appeared to respect you because you were so ‘grown up’, but you were unwittingly deprived of many opportunities to be young when you really were young. As an adult, one common manifestation is taking an excessively serious, at times even formal, approach to relating to others. Folks are folks, no matter how much money they make, no matter how hot their ass is, no matter how famous they are, and no matter how much they remind you of someone from your past. At a certain point you must crawl from the wreckage of history and into the adventure of the day.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
Where do you live, and why do you live there? Do you feel safe and nourished? Can you, in particular, stretch into any moments of feeling perfect safety based on where you are on the planet? I suggest you monitor this theme carefully for the next month or two. Play a mindfulness game with yourself. Start with your emotions; notice when you feel safe in the psychic sense. Who inspires this feeling, rather than something else? Next, do you feel safe within the passage of time? Do you feel safer thinking about the past, the present or the future? Do you cling to tradition, ignore it, or consciously work to evolve it? Next: your environment. Do you feel safe walking down your own street? Do you feel safe in your home? In your room? Last query: What did your family teach you about trust? I suggest you go over all the angles here: are men dangerous or supportive? Are women honest and fair, or are they some shade of manipulative? Are people trying to steal from you, or help you? Do they keep their commitments or break them? These queries are going to provide you with a lot of data. Coupled with the transits you are exploring this month, your environment will too. You may decide you need to make some adjustments. If so, then soon is the time.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
Many teach basically the same thing: we walk around the world trapped in a maze of our own thoughts and ideas, all of them from the past. The yoga path calls them samskara, or “latent past impressions.” A Course in Miracles has the lesson, “I see only the past,” which reveals basically the same thing. Anyone who has experimented with altered states of mind has probably, at least once, encountered that feeling of our fingertips and our thoughts sticking to everything we perceive. Even the sanitized Christian notion of forgiveness implies that we are hung up on what has happened before, and it’s from this that we must release to be free. If you are wondering what is going on right now, the theme is about liberating yourself from the maze of old ideas and realities. You experimented with this earlier in the year, with some success. Now this mission is back, with a vengeance: but don’t take revenge on what you have done and what has happened to you; gently disentangle yourself. Let go of beliefs that were fully supported by yesterday’s data and facts, and which (if you look carefully) are not supported at all today. Don’t worry about what’s coming; that space will fill up like a new iPod. So quickly in fact that you must exercise discernment about what new programs, files and recordings you want on your system — consciously, one at a time.

Alex Grey painting. Photo by Mazev courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)
Your astrology gives you an interesting relationship between the old and the new. Your outer image is clearly that of one who pushes forward. Your inner truth is about someone who is deeply invested in the ways things have always been done. Maintaining this tension feels like serving two masters. For a long time you have tried to push into the future — that of your ideas, words and community — without being able to do very much about the values that have kept you trapped in a bubble of the past. We can’t change the past, but we can change our interpretation of it. Part of how we do that is by looking deeper. Part of how we do this is by looking at what matters most to us in the present, and making our investment here and now. You are likely to make a discovery this month, one you’ve been working up to for a while, which has you pouring your energy and resources into something that has great meaning now. You will recognize it because it has lasting value from antiquity, and it’s subject to the kinds of re-visioning that you do so well and with such feeling. In other words, the activity or idea most vital to you now also makes room for a future that you cannot see. Like many of us, you will have to move some debris out of the way to make room for what is coming, but as you are no doubt feeling, that effort is well worth your energy and time.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
There are those times when one’s life changes (and I mean really changes) in the course of a month, and this may well be one of them. Sometimes that change involves outer events and others when progress is precipitated by an inner shift that comes ‘out of nowhere’. I don’t mean an epiphany but rather a complete reorientation of your perspective, which makes it impossible to see or experience the world like you did in the past. We may wonder why these moments don’t come sooner, or how we can induce them when we feel we need them. Some say the changes happen when it’s time; astrology suggests that we live in two worlds at once, and when certain transits occur (another way of saying ‘it’s time’) a bridge is built between these worlds — and this is what is happening now. There are facts about yourself that it’s been easier to deny. Now it’s easier to make friends with them, and to admit their reality and their impact. Once you do that, you realize you are someone different than you thought you were. You don’t become different; rather, you recognize that you changed a long time ago, and your awareness is finally catching up with that progress. That is the shape and size of things now; but I am understating the case by about tenfold so as not to frighten the faint of heart; not you, of course.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
You are the last person who would want to exist in a state of isolation from the world — and in some respects this seems to be happening to you. Yet in truth you are at the beginning of a process of inner confrontation that will free you from specifically what has kept you trapped in your own world, away from contact with the very people you crave. In a fairly simple statement, if you divide yourself, you cannot make contact with others; or if you do, it will happen in a fragmented way. Your journey now is about dismantling inner psychic structures and partitions that have literally divided you from yourself. Many factors have influenced this pattern, over a very long period of time: most surely before your parents were born. You may wonder how it’s possible to be influenced by events so far in the past. Here is an analogy that will make it clear how strange this situation is. Obviously, your parents were taught by their parents and they were taught by their parents, and so on. Most people would deny that the transfer of information is so direct; after all, most of us can’t even name all of our great-grandparents (try it and see). Yet their words, feelings, ideas and experiences are conveyed by communication and by our DNA. These are the influences you need to identify. These are the very influences you are confronting right now: invisible, but not invincible.

By Alex Grey.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
Some years before she died the morning of Oct. 31, 2008, Rockie Gardiner (beloved author of the Rockie Horoscope) penned one of the most touching things I’ve ever read by an astrology writer. Forget about eavesdropping or skimming my email; it felt like she was reading from my Akashic records. I must paraphrase, but it went something like this. The distances you are crossing lately have been so vast, there is really no way to see or feel how much progress you’ve been making. It all just seems like one endless stretch across the abyss. In the long and fleeting years since that appeared in print, you have continued to move across space and time, guided by some kind of homing sense. Now, a series of developments this month and in early January indicate a kind of arrival. Surely you feel this: the sense of the ship of your soul drawing a little closer to dry land; the excitement of a plane making its initial descent into a country you’ve read about and wanted to visit all your life. You are still a traveler — you always will be, on the level of your soul. As a Pisces, you are indeed visiting a strange land. But you are here to grow, and you are certainly accomplishing that. You have lived the wisdom that life is not about the destination but rather about the journey, which makes getting there all the more poignant; all the more meaningful.

[For online editions, here is something I dedicate to Rockie, by Laurie Anderson.]

Alternative Monthly Horoscope for November 2008

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Scorpio really has three symbols — the scorpion, the eagle and the fish. Which one do you want to represent you? This is a mystical way of saying that you have a choice of who you are, and that choice counts for more than you may imagine.

Scorpius from the Uranographia of Johann Bode. Part of the scorpion’s body is overlapped by the foot of Ophiuchus, the supposed 13th sign of the zodiac.

Aries (March 20-April 19)
You may not understand the energy source behind so much change in your life, though you need to stay fully awake in order to count it as progress. You run the risk of becoming overly invested in a relationship situation that could distract you from far more meaningful endeavors. If that relationship involves business, it’s vital that you take the advice of others under consideration without letting it dictate your choices. This is easier said than done.

Taurus (April 19-May 20)
You seem to be involved in a confrontation or an unusually passionate direct encounter of some kind, and the chances are it’s going to change how you see and feel about yourself. Well, you may take credit for the change yourself; after all, you made the decisions involved. Yet you need to look at what is happening around you and what is happening to you and be sure you at least draw the associations between these seemingly unrelated circumstances.

Gemini (May 20-June 21)
Make a clear decision about whether you want someone as your lover, or stand aside. It would help if you were realistic about whether this person wants you. He or she seems to be self-absorbed, which is not usually a green light. The deeper question is whether sex is a necessary prerequisite to the relationship that you want. Generally, people get sexually involved way too soon, long before they have processed their prior relationship. You don’t have to do this.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)
You have some powerful support right now, and some deep ideas about which you’re passionate. The thing to remember is that there is more to life than projects, no matter how driven you feel. Put some of your energy into people, or into someone in particular, and you will have plenty of inspiration and drive for the creative work that you want to do. If you keep your life in balance, it will be some of the best you’ve ever created. And you will not be doing it alone.

Scorpio is intense. No two ways about it. They radiate charisma and magnetism even when they’re not trying. Famous Scorpio Condoleezza Rice (Nov. 14, 1954) recently said that she’s looking forward to “getting back to shopping”.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)
Is there some work that you’re leaving unfinished or neglected? You seem to be pouring your love and devotion into your home life, and this is giving you a deep sense of security and pleasure. Yet you also have a calling, a mission or a role to play in the larger world. You may underestimate its importance or balk on the grounds that it’s not feeding you the way it should be. Yet are you really feeding it? You will surely get the results that you invest.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
You may not like the seemingly inevitable shakeup or disruption of your slow, steady process, but it’s time to get some fire under your feet. You love to do things in a thoughtful and methodical way. Others seem bent on demonstrating that there is another way to do things: with gusto and little sense of the consequences. You have taken every conceivable precaution. Now all you need to do is let go.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
You may want to examine your ambition and determine whether it’s being driven forward by loneliness. If that is the case, I suggest you put your energy into human contact rather than gunning for cash or a sense of achievement. Alternately, you have an option that may prove even more fruitful: dive deep into yourself and learn something that in truth you can only learn right now. The beauty of this moment is its introspective quality.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
Planets are lining up in your birth sign, and each one is bringing you new opportunities to express yourself. It would be great if life bent to your will this easily all the time, but of course you would not notice the brilliant moments like the one you have right now. And the truth of the matter is, it’s not a good idea to take any of this for granted. Keep a conservative edge and make sure you apply common sense at every opportunity you have to deny it. There will be many.

Antares (a Scorpii / Alpha Scorpii) is a red supergiant and the brightest star in Scorpio. It is one of the four brightest stars near the ecliptic.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)
Pay attention to your motives. You seem obsessed by someone or something, and usually that is justification to do whatever you want to whomever you want. This is a situation calling for ethics, because for one thing the karmic stakes are high. You are also more vulnerable to emotional longing and unmitigated lust than usual, and these are usually not the best states of mind for making decisions. When in doubt, wait a week. If still in doubt, wait another. Even if you’re certain, you owe yourself a good session of self-questioning.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
You have a wide opening for an unusual success, but it’s not going to last that long. This is not the time to say that you’ll get to it next year. You have tortured yourself over whether this decision is right or wrong, and a few times you’ve come close to taking the leap. Remember what you’ve learned from these previous attempts. Admit you’ll never be 100% certain of success in advance, nor are there any guarantees. Once you make peace with that, what to do will be obvious.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
You have so many different influences working on you, I suggest you reduce your inputs down to the most trusted sources of information and that you take your time before making any major decisions. For most of November you will be under the influence of aspects that can backfire as easily as they can spur you forward. The most vital thing you can do is be committed to honesty with yourself. Of all the skills available to the human race, this one seems to be the least accessible. You need to put it first.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
The planets are pushing you to be more focused on your long-term goals — and to give you the feeling that failure is impossible. It may be, but there are things you can do that put it closer within reach and an even longer list of things that can set you back. You can’t count any gain as solid until it’s been tested two or three times. The thing to remember as you go through the unusual events of this month is that you have the upper hand. You’ve taken more time to prepare, you have come further and your ideas are consistently good — if you remember to use them.