Author Archives: Eric Francis

The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, June 9, 2013

What do you feel when you see these cards? Tell me. What do you feel? Once you’ve identified your feelings, how about this: what was the thought on which your feelings were predicated? And how were you feeling before you had the thought? Was there a significant shift in how you were feeling before you saw the reading, and how you felt afterwards?

If so, then perhaps you have come away with a greater sense of the power that your thoughts about what you see have in affecting your perception of reality.

The Tower, Three of Swords, Eight of Swords -- RWS Tarot deck.

The Tower, Three of Swords, Eight of Swords from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck, created by A E Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. Click on the image for a larger version.

Thoughts create beliefs — a belief being a thought that has been repeated to the point where it isn’t as immediately open to enquiry. It can become entrenched like the grooves of a record, which is only capable of playing the same song, over and over again.

If that song is a song of fear, one that drowns out your connection to what lies at the very heart of you and separates you from your Self, then you have a choice. You can stick with the song you know — predictable, familiar, conjuring equally predictable and familiar feelings. Or you can see the song for what it is and the effect it has on you each time you get it out and play it. When you can do that, your options expand and you open yourself to freedom.

Take a look at the cards again. It may be that all is not what it at first seems.

On the left there is The Tower, in the centre the Three of Swords, and on the right the Eight of Swords: one major arcana card, which points to an archetypal experience, followed by two cards that describe the thoughts about that experience.

The Tower lies at the foundation of the reading — it has already happened in one form or another. When The Tower has been activated in our lives, we live through an upheaval over which we have little or no control. It occurs when a structure we have built — whether literal or metaphorical — has moved so far out of integrity with our essential selves that it can no longer exist in its current form.

The soul seeks freedom and creativity, and it cannot live fully in the confines of an inflexible and constricting ivory tower. In a misguided attempt to create a place of safety, where we crown ourselves kings over our lives, we find out sooner or later that the ivory becomes grey and lifeless, the skies surrounding it rendered black and without a source of light.

Thus we are overthrown by a higher authority that sees beyond the walls we’ve constructed around us: the divine breaks into consciousness with full impact. When the lightning strikes, it is the lightning of the transpersonal. What falls releases an element of the psyche that has been trapped or isolated by our actions, however well-intentioned, and the energy to the card will very often be felt collectively as well as personally.

In the second card, the foundation of The Tower is given its context — that of relationship. The Three of Swords is typically a love triangle of one form or another, whether personal, familial, professional, or the divided allegiances of communities, governments and cultures. Remember that Swords are thoughts, though — not emotions and not material reality. In the Three of Swords, we witness the belief that we can lay claim to love in the face of perceived competition. By asserting ownership over something that cannot be controlled, we strike to the heart of the love itself. We are not the victims as much as love is. Our limiting thoughts have wounded the very thing we wanted to have; the skies weep with us.

And so to the Eight of Swords. Looking at the swords around the bound and blindfolded figure, there are three swords at the left of the picture, a reflection of the Three of Swords. The figure is turned towards them, aware of their presence, but she cannot see the reality of her circumstances. This demonstrates an inability to see fully, or to recognise that, although the swords — her thoughts — feel familiar, what she is encountering is in fact different.

The Three of Swords is resonating. It has started to play its song, one that she has known before. Yet the song is in her mind; it is not an emotional or physical reality. If she were to exercise her right to freedom, she could remove her blindfold and see the threat for what it is: static blades, unmanned by others, points embedded in the ground. Weapons of her imagination.

Astrologically, we are entering the energy of the grand water trine now, which stretches over the next season and beyond. Water in tarot is the domain of the Cups suit, and it represents both the emotions and the unconscious.

When we move into the deeper waters of our psyche, our conscious mind can interpret this sense of fluidity as a threat, and it throws up all of the thought patterns that have become entrenched as a way of defending against it. Thus we meet the Cups energy with Swords. We try to think ourselves out of a sensation that asks for no-thought. We do this by running tried and tested thought patterns, because that is what our mind defaults to. We bring out our old records and we play them.

But our feeling natures work differently. They move with the beat of our hearts; they are attuned to a wisdom that transcends thought. The old patterns no longer apply. All the old patterns do is to keep us in the landscape of the Eight of Swords: blind to our power, trapped in the shallows while the sea is waiting a little further beyond to welcome us.

Freedom is right in front of you, if you are able to see your prison for what it is. It is the prison of your thoughts and your beliefs, and what you tell yourself based on them. What has happened in the past only continues to happen in the ideas you have about it. Look at the thoughts that hold you hostage, bring them out into the open and talk about them, and disarm them.

Be prepared to see another way, and another way is open to you.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: The Tower (Mars), Three of Swords (Saturn in Libra), Eight of Swords (Jupiter in Gemini)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.

Mars and Pallas Square Neptune: Big Brother is Listening

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Newspapers from the morning of June 7, 2013, revealing the massive government data mining program that includes all major Internet services, three major phone carriers, credit card transactions and more.

Dear Friend and Reader:

As part of Saturday’s New Moon festivities, Mars and asteroid Pallas Athene, conjunct in Gemini, are square Neptune in Pisces. This is an aspect that looked like it would have some political implications, though I was hesitant to predict what. It did not look friendly.

Mars square Neptune is a complicated aspect that can have deceptive and self-destructive tendencies. However people born with this aspect can also have a talent for seeing through hypocrisy — George Orwell, author of 1984, stands out among them. That was the book where we first read the phrase, “Big brother is watching you.”

Chart for the National Security Agency has a Mars-Chiron conjunction in Capricorn — just like Monsanto — and the Moon square Saturn and Neptune. The NSA is a top-secret agency more powerful than the CIA. It was initially founded to assist with Cold War spying and in 2001 was turned loose on the American people.

Pallas Athene adds a distinctly political dimension to the chart, as she’s a master strategist and the warrior-lawyer of the Greek pantheon; but Pallas is also square Neptune, raising a question over the legitimacy of motives and tactics used by the government. Put it all together and what do you get?

Thursday, The Guardian revealed that the National Security Agency was collecting phone records of millions of U.S. Verizon customers by the authority of a top-secret court order. The data, the government claims, is being used in an attempt to profile people to determine whether they are probable terrorists.

This isn’t merely a matter of spying on people for its own sake. In another story reported this week by NBC News, it was revealed that such profiling is enough to get someone killed by a drone attack, known as a “signature strike” based on someone’s alleged terrorist signature (covered below).

The NSA is a massive spy agency founded in 1952, originally given the mission of decrypting foreign communications. For example, during the Cold War, its boats would hover in international waters off the coast of Cuba, listening for communications between Havana and Moscow, translating the messages out of their encrypted code and giving the information to the CIA. The organization was so secret that its existence was not known till five years after its creation.

Since the Sept. 11 incident, it’s been turned loose on the American people, mostly under the authority of the PATRIOT Act. We’ve heard about this program a number of times before, but not under the authority of Pres. Obama, who famously said when he was a senator that the American people don’t want federal agents poking around their private lives.

The Guardian obtained a copy of the court order requiring Verizon to give the NSA phone call information on an “ongoing, daily basis,” reporting on calls within and directed outside the U.S. “The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of U.S. citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk — regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing,” The Guardian reported.

Then just hours later, the story got worse. The Guardian and the Washington Post published stories revealing that the NSA has been tapping directly into the three major telephone networks — AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, spying on nearly every American.

Nondescript-looking Room 641A was referred to in an internal AT&T document as the SG3 Secure Room, located on Folsom St. in San Francisco — where for years private Internet traffic was intercepted by the government. The program has been revived under Obama in a much broader format.

The same news reports, based on interviews with individuals close to the agency, said that the NSA can also extract data directly from the servers of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple, as well as a small service called PalTalk that is used mostly in the Middle East.

In addition, data from credit card transactions is also being mined, and a service called Dropbox would soon be tracked as well.

This effort turns ordinary services we all use all day into instruments to spy on people’s most imitate lives — that is, people who are not even suspected of a crime. The companies all denied involvement in the program, and government officials defended it as necessary to protecting the American people from terrorists. That, as we’ve seen over and over again, has become the excuse for anything and everything.

What is different about the program is that under the Cheney/Bush administration, it was done without the authority of a court. Under Obama, it’s been done in a way that’s colorable under the authority of law. That is to say, it can be justified because forms were filled out and certain procedures were followed — though the effect is the same, and the American people were not told.

According to media reports, the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the FISA court, created in 1978) grants orders to carry out the program every 90 days. The court, which consists of federal judges chosen by the chief justice, was created in the wake of domestic spying revelations under Richard Nixon, a program called COINTELPRO. The FISA court, however, approves every warrant that’s put in front of it to sign.

The whole scenario came out after The Guardian, a British newspaper, published an article about an April 25 FISA Court order giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data from Verizon for a specified three-month period ending on July 19. “The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI’s request for its customers’ records, or the court order itself,” The Guardian said.

Under COINTELPRO, the spying program that helped end 1960s activism, an FBI agent suggests that the pregnancy of actress Jean Seberg, allegedly by a member of the Black Panthers, be publicized in an effort to cheapen her image before the public. COINTELPRO was supposedly ended in 1971.

Ari Fleisher, the former White House press secretary under George Bush, said that Obama was carrying out Bush’s fourth term. Some would say he’s completing Nixon’s second term.

Most media reports claim that the content of communications is not being read — only the frequency, the identity of the correspondents as tracked by the phone number and even location information based on GPS readings from the calls. But this contradicts what has long been known about such programs.

For example, the NSA has been exposed in the past for monitoring the contents of phone calls of people not suspected of terrorism. James Bamford, the author of two books on the NSA, described details of the domestic spying program in 2005 on Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

While we’re considering the civil liberties implications of these programs, I suggest we consider the spiritual ones. It’s a form of psychological warfare to instill the feeling that a person has no privacy. These programs are reported to be so thorough that they can monitor the drafts of emails being written in services like Gmail, so they can actually see correspondence that is not sent, and observe a person’s thoughts in the process of writing something.

You might think that you have nothing to fear because you haven’t done anything wrong — though if that’s true, why not submit to a weekly police search of your dresser drawers? It is traumatizing to have your private life investigated, and as such I would rate this all as a form of domestic terrorism.

We need to remember that the kind of information being collected by the NSA and the FBI is often used against activists, from peace groups to environmental organizations. Just about everyone understands that what we hear about is only the very surface layer of what is going on; what’s revealed is often a kind of cover for the much deeper layers of a surveillance program.

It’s also worth remembering the words of James Madison: “If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”

Drone Attacks: Who Do We Kill?

On Wednesday, Richard Engel, NBC’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, exposed documents revealing that the U.S. military does not always know who it’s killing in drone strikes. Engel made his revelation on Wednesday’s edition of The Rachel Maddow Show and then on Thursday’s edition of NBC’s The Today Show [see video here].

Sr. Airman Brandon Bryant (Ret.) describes what it’s like to kill people using a drone — he knows because he’s done it more than 1,000 times.

What is more frightening is that under current policy someone can be killed if they have the “signature” of a terrorist based on who they talk to, associate with and what places they frequent. This has nothing to do with their actual conduct.

Engel reviewed classified documents detailing 114 drone strikes in Pakistan in 2010 and 2011. The documents reveal both what is known and what is not known about the strikes. The terrorist affiliation is listed, such as “Al-Qai’da” or “Foreign fighters.”

Yet in all 114 strikes, the military admitted to killing just one civilian. A category for “other militants” contained many reports of killings, but it was not clear who they were. Up to 22 were killed in one strike.
U.S. policy allows drone pilots to kill people for having a “terrorist signature” — that is, based on who they visit, or what phone numbers they dial.

Engel also interviewed a former Air Force drone pilot named Brandon Bryant who describes what it was like to use drones to kill more than 1,000 people.

“I didn’t think I’d ever have to pull a trigger,” the former pilot said, describing when he was recruited into the Air Force. “I knew that people would be dying but I wouldn’t be — at least I believed that I wouldn’t be — the direct [cause] of someone’s death.”

“You know how people say that drone strikes are like mortar attacks [or] artillery. Well, artillery doesn’t see death. The artillery doesn’t see the result of their actions. It’s really more intimate for us. We see everything. We [see] before action and after. And so I watched this guy, I watched him bleed out. I watched the result of, I guess collectively it was our action, but ultimately I’m the responsible one who guided the missile in.”

He said he had “serious doubts now” that the man was actually a combatant, “but I didn’t doubt those voices in my head.”

Lovingly,

Use Your Intuition; Check Your Facts

The Gemini New Moon is upon us. This is, thankfully, the first solar-lunar event in quite a while that’s not an eclipse. Yet it’s no ordinary New Moon for reasons I’ll explain in a moment. The upshot is that decisions you make now can influence your life for many months. It’s necessary to use your intuition, though there are factors that might specifically interfere with doing so. So slow down, and cross-reference between what your intuition says and what the facts seem to be describing.

Take all the time you need. There will be key matters that you can delay for a month or two; others will require action sooner. Make sure you sort out the difference. Under the current influences, it’s essential that you verify your facts before making any decision you think is based on intuition or instinct.

Chart for the Gemini New Moon. The Mars-Pallas conjunction is at the very top of the chart, square Neptune, below the horizontal line on the right. View glyph legend here. The New Moon makes aspects to Chiron and Pholus, as described in the accompanying article.

The Gemini New Moon is exact Saturday, June 8 at 11:56 am EDT. At the same time, planets are gathering in the water signs, which is a growing emphasis on the emotional level — something that can be the most trustworthy or the very least dependable, depending on your relationship to yourself.

Mars, Pallas Athene (one of the first-discovered asteroids), Jupiter and the lunar apogee (a kind of radical feminine point) all join the Moon and Sun in Gemini for this event. All year a cluster of planets has been following the Sun, though it’s starting to fan out a little as Venus and Mercury have pulled ahead and are now in the sign Cancer. So this New Moon is a new alignment compared to what we’ve had all year — for one thing Jupiter in Gemini is involved, which can have an exaggerating effect. All this Gemini is also a reminder to consider many sides of an issue consciously.

And the Sun and Moon have entered a region of the zodiac where there are some centaur planets hanging out — the New Moon is opposite Pholus in Sagittarius and square Chiron in Pisces. Centaurs are not asteroids. They act with the full influence of planets, only the particular topics are not the ones usually covered by astrology.

Anyone who encounters the centaurs will usually use the word ‘intense’ to describe how they feel. But saying intense is like describing dinner as hot, when there are many subtler descriptions (vegan, organic, take-out, Indian, etc.).

So, getting into the particulars for a moment: Sun/Moon opposite Pholus might have the sensation of something about to go out of control. It’s therefore a moment to practice a higher degree of awareness than you might ordinarily. Walk around the world like you’re at Omega Institute, in a fully conscious engagement with life.

When Pholus is involved in a major aspect pattern like the New Moon, that’s the time to be conscious of anything related to alcohol. In our society that is often the ‘out of control’ factor, and it’s always a consideration when Pholus shows up. There are other cautions on this topic in the chart, which I will get to in a moment.

When planets are square Chiron, there may be the question ‘when are things going to get better?’ The answer (where there’s a square involved) is when you take action. We do a lot of waiting around on this planet, which is understandable given the resistance that can sometimes arise where decisions are concerned. While it’s often helpful to spot the right opportunity or not try to swim against the tide, sometimes it’s necessary to do what you must do when you must do it.

Mediterranean Sea at daybreak, Valencia, Spain. Photo by Eric.

The chart has a cautionary note, however. In astrology, precise aspect patterns speak more clearly than the fuzzy ones, and there happens to be an impressively tight aspect involving Pallas Athene, Mars and Neptune. Both Pallas and Mars are warrior-like planets; Pallas was born in full armor and Mars is the god of war. When these are square Neptune, there are questions about the use of aggression.

This aspect can be taken many ways, though I would boil it down to a few basic points. One is to be honest with yourself. Mars square Neptune can come with some self-deception, in a volatile environment. Make sure the choices you make are actually helpful; stop yourself if you have reason to believe they are not. There is also the alcohol theme showing up again; if you make any decisions under the influence of a substance, or based on any emotional drama you may have been through, I suggest you pause and reflect.

There’s no need to act in a lurch. Other factors indicate that it’s essential to know what you’re feeling before you make a decision — and a Mars-Neptune square could mess with your intuition. There’s a lot of action in the water signs right now, and they are encouraging deeper contact with the emotional realm.

In our world of schedules, constant interaction with computers, the influence of advertising and many, many substances that are designed to shut down the subtle senses, those senses are exactly what you need; they are what’s being emphasized by so many planets in water signs (Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Chiron and Neptune, to name the big ones).

That’s a lot of momentum. Both grand trines and the water signs carry momentum as powerfully as the tide. Navigating on water is different than what you do on land — you need more lead time; you cannot stop or turn instantly; the water itself will guide your movements and you need to be aware of that influence.

It’s therefore necessary for mariners to plot their course well in advance, which means referring to the weather, to the charts and to the compass. There’s little room for guessing.

Monsanto: An Eclipse and a Crack in the Teflon

On May 25, Monsanto Co. experienced a lunar eclipse on its 10th house cusp — the government angle, where its Sun is also placed. This coincided with the first-ever global anti-Monsanto protest the same day. Though the mainstream media tried to suppress the news, word got out through social media, alternative media and the Web.

This seemed like a charming symbolic expression of the astrology, especially given the international nature of the protest and that the eclipse, Monsanto’s midheaven and its Sun are in Sagittarius. That, however, was just the beginning.

Illustration by Lizanne Webb.

The next week, the world learned that an Oregon farmer had discovered wheat growing in his field that he hadn’t planted, and that didn’t respond to Monsanto’s Roundup brand herbicide. Multiple genetic tests determined that the wheat had been genetically modified to resist the chemical. The grain turned out to be a Roundup Ready variety developed and tested by Monsanto 12 years earlier, but which was never put on the market.

Stranger yet, the kind of GMO wheat that had been tested in Oregon was a spring-planted variety, but the rogue plants found were a winter-planted variety. So there’s this mystery not only about how the GMO seeds or pollen spread, but also why this isn’t the same type of wheat that was tested there. Where did this stuff come from, and what was it?

While Monsanto was busy telling everyone that the wheat posed no hazard, Japan was busy canceling a 25,000-ton order from a Portland grain shipper, and The Oregonian newspaper reported that South Korea and the European Union had called for new testing of American wheat.

A few days later, Monsanto announced that it was pulling its genetically modified-food lobbyists from the European Union, and won’t apply for any new permits to plant GMO seed, having met too much resistance in both the approval process and from the public.

“As long as there’s not enough demand from farmers for these products and the public at large doesn’t accept the technology, it makes no sense to fight against windmills,” said Monsanto’s German spokesperson, Ursula Luettmer-Ouazane.

Then this week, a Kansas farmer sued Monsanto in federal court for allowing its genetically modified strain into the non-GMO population. The “plaintiff has been harmed by any and all Monsanto GE wheat because it has impacted wheat exports and the price of wheat,” the petition states.

Monsanto is a company that has seen very little in the way of consequences for its many harmful actions. There have been a few examples over the years — this week we saw several.

Female Desire Gets a Fresh — and Truthful — Look

The Wild Woman is alive and well, and scientific proof — in case you needed any — is hitting bookstore shelves near you.

Ladybugs like to do it and so do ladies! Video still from the Swiss documentary “Microcosmos.”

What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire, by journalist Daniel Bergner, uses groundbreaking sex research to upend cultural stereotypes of gender sexuality. It reframes female desire, supported by evidence of female lust and sexual initiation all over the animal kingdom — including among humans.

“Bergner, and the leading sex researchers he interviews, argue that women’s sexuality is not the rational, civilized and balancing force it’s so often made out to be — that it is base, animalistic and ravenous, everything we’ve told ourselves about male sexuality,” according to an article in Salon.com.

Bergner writes: “Women’s desire — its inherent range and innate power — is an underestimated and constrained force, even in our times, when all can seem so sexually inundated, so far beyond restriction. Despite the notions our culture continues to imbue, this force is not, for the most part, sparked or sustained by emotional intimacy and safety. One of our most comforting assumptions, soothing perhaps above all to men but clung to by both sexes, that female eros is much better made for monogamy than the male libido, is scarcely more than a fairy tale.”

When asked by Salon.com what male readers might think of these findings, Bergner related one editor’s thoughts: “He said it had scared the bejesus out of him.” Would the braver male souls out there please raise their hands?

Trial of Bradley Manning Finally Under Way

On Monday, the court-martial of accused Army whistleblower Bradley Manning finally began. He faces more than 20 charges, including violating the Espionage Act and aiding the enemy. He pled guilty to 10 lesser charges of misusing classified material earlier this year.

Manning has been in custody for more than three years — time that has included torture related to his being in solitary confinement for significant stretches of time. He was arrested on May 26, 2010, for the release of approximately 750,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables and Army reports, plus two videos of military airstrikes to the website WikiLeaks.

Video still with identifying markings from the “Collateral Murder” video released by WikiLeaks, showing the two Reuters employees with a group of Iraqis in Baghdad. The video was given to Wikileaks by PFC Bradley Maning.

Of the two videos, the July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike is the most well-known, published by Wikileaks as “Collateral Murder.” The video contains images and audio of the shooting deaths of two Reuters employees, their cameras mistaken for AK-47s, with a group of Iraqis. Two children in a van were also wounded when their father tried to rescue survivors; the father was killed.

Army prosecutor Captain Joe Morrow accused Bradley Manning of aiding the enemy, claiming that Osama bin Laden accessed some of the cables after their release by WikiLeaks. The prosecution is working to establish close ties between Manning and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Manning’s defense lawyer, David Coombs, said that Manning “believed [the leaked] information showed how we value human life.” Coombs added, “He was troubled by that. He believed that if the American public saw it, they too would be troubled.”

As Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com pointed out in 2010, “Shining light on what our government and military do is so critical precisely because it forces people to see what is really being done, and prevents myth and propaganda from distorting those realities. That’s why the administration fights so hard to keep torture photos suppressed, why the military fought so hard here to keep this video concealed (and why they did the same with regard to the Afghan massacre), and why whistleblowers, real journalists and sites like WikiLeaks are the declared enemy of the government.”

The thing is (as Greenwald also notes), these gruesome incidents are not unusual. This is what war is — and that is why the government is working so hard to break Bradley Manning. It’s why we need to understand that this trial is not about a traitor; it’s about what we allow government to do in our name.

Supreme Court OKs Expanded Use of DNA Swabbing

A divided Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that police can collect DNA samples from people they arrest for a “serious crime.” However, privacy advocates are alarmed because the unprecedented ruling does not define what a “serious crime” is, and that police might use it to justify sampling people who have not committed a crime at all.

It looks so simple — but what does it mean to have this much personal info in the hands of authorities? Photo: PA.

The case centered on a Maryland law used to take a DNA test of a man arrested for a felony assault. The test matched DNA in a rape case six years earlier that had previously gone unsolved. So far, 25 states have passed laws that are similar to Maryland’s.

Advocates of the law cite DNA as “the fingerprinting of the 21st century” and say it could solve numerous cold cases and prevent other crimes from happening, because the police would have a database of potential suspects. However, Justice Elena Kagan — one of the dissenting justices — equated that with searching one’s house without probable cause, which is illegal. ‘Probable cause’ means that law enforcement agencies have a solid reason to believe that a crime has been committed.

“This is a general rummaging through our genetic blueprint to look for evidence of unknown, completely unrelated crimes, with no reason to think that the person who’s been arrested for maybe a minor offense has committed any other crime,” said Michael Risher of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“It’s an incredible broadening of the government’s authority to stick its fingers into our bodies, seize our bodily tissue, seize the DNA profile, and put it in an enormous criminal database, with no suspicion to think that that’s going to uncover any crime,” said Risher.

Who Says Fairies Aren’t Real?

Photographer Yume Cyan has captured a series of stunning, magical photos of fireflies in the wooded area near Nagoya City, Japan, over the last month or so. Keeping the shutter open on a low aperture allows Cyan to capture the insects painting with light — and then they spark imaginations. You can see more of Cyan’s photos in larger sizes at 500px.com.

A Bad Week for Monsanto, the Grand Water Trine,

The Gemini New Moon and Bradley Manning

In this week’s edition I cover the strange developments in the Monsanto story — the global protest the day of an eclipse, followed by the revelation of GMO wheat growing in Oregon, Japan canceling its order for all U.S.-grown wheat as a result, and then Monsanto pulling out of Europe. In this edition I also cover the grand water trine, the Gemini New Moon and the conscience of Bradley Manning.

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

The June monthly extended horoscopes were published Friday, May 24. Inner Space horoscopes for June were published Friday, May 31. I recommend reviewing the previous month’s horoscope at the end of the month; you can see May’s monthly horoscope here. The Moonshine horoscopes for the Gemini New Moon were published Tuesday, June 4.

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, June 7, 2013, #953 | By Eric Francis

Aries (March 20-April 19) — You must be impeccable in speech and language: in what you say or write or communicate in any way. This is not a time to ignore your doubts about whether you really mean what you’re saying, or whether you’re capable of fulfilling a promise. When in doubt, say nothing. Statements made with the intent of expediency — that is, white lies intended to help you get ahead — could be the most damaging, and may have significant repercussions in the near future. Though you may not have the intention to deceive anyone, this astrology can also cover situations where you’re not working with full information, or have inaccurate data. Therefore, it’s necessary to check what you hear from others as well as it’s necessary to understand someone’s motives for putting you up to something. Be vigilant, be clear, and ask questions till you absolutely understand any situation you’re in.

Order your 2013 reading from Eric Francis now, in LISTEN, the 2013 annual edition of Planet Waves. As a subscriber you can still get all 12 signs for the price of three. This is a detailed written and audio reading that you will love. You can also purchase signs one at a time (including audio and written, prior to our splitting those two products).

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You’ve come through many situations where you could have given in to others’ insistence that you not trust yourself, but stood your ground. You may be in a similar situation now, where friends or associates are trying to convince you of something; it could be anything. The thing to be alert for is pressure of any kind that has the effect of negatively influencing your self-confidence. You might want to be cautious about taking praise too seriously as well. You don’t need the opinions of others, and you don’t need to judge your own performance, either. What matters is that you bring sincerity and integrity into what you’re doing, and that you be accountable for any errors you make. That means consciously engaging your learning and self-correcting process. The opinions of others matter far less than we’re led to believe, and life is not a popularity contest. Impeccability matters a lot more than popularity.

Gemini Sun and Rising — a Reading for You

Dear Gemini Reader:

Your birthday reading for 2013-2014 has become the bestselling birthday reading of the year. I bring to life the truly beautiful astrology that you’ll be experiencing over the next four seasons.

Eric and his astrology assistant Jonah, who has Virgo Sun and Moon.

I begin with a discussion of what every Gemini should know about his or her sign, and then I cover a diversity of transits that you’ve read about elsewhere but may not have put into the context of your life.

Jupiter is in your sign now, joined by Mercury and Venus. Soon planets will move into Cancer, the sign associated with resources, money and self-esteem — that is good news on all of those topics. I describe what it means to have your ruling planet Mercury retrograde three times in water signs — covering seven months of the year.

I talk about Pluto going through your 8th house, which is raising all kinds of questions about the role that structure plays in your relationships — and your desire to burst free and express yourself. I cover Saturday’s eclipse of the Moon in Sagittarius, your relationship sign.

I have created my 2013 Gemini reading specifically to help you tap into the very unique energy coming your way — energy with the potential to transform how you feel, think and relate. This is a truly helpful moment in your life, one that can make up for some of the challenges of recent years.

The reading will be accurate, informative and fun for Gemini rising and Moon as well. You can listen to a short audio preview here.

Your reading is ready for instant access. The price for this hour of astrology plus tarot reading (and bonus materials) is $29.95. You may order your Gemini birthday reading here.

I know you’ll love this reading. Please do check it out.

Lovingly,

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — This weekend’s stunning New Moon in your birth sign is a reminder that anything is possible and that everything is negotiable. Make sure you know what you want, because as the next few days unfold, you may find yourself in a position where you can create those very things. Yet to make this happen you’ll need to focus your intentions as clearly as possible. You may be inclined to compromise, which is something that might at some point need to happen in the physical world. I suggest that you not even vaguely consider compromising on your desires, your intentions or your idea of what is right for you. Rather, that’s the very place to stick to your true desires. If you’re feeling guilt, notice it and set it aside. If anyone tells you that you’re dreaming, tell them they’re right.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You may get a series of opportunities to resolve situations or psychological issues that have long troubled you. The sensation of doing so may be like pushing on an invisible wall. It starts to give way, and as you push you start to wonder when it’s going to finally stop — but it doesn’t. You might apply some positive thinking to a scenario that has resisted that very thing in the past, and discover that it’s working. None of this is an accident. You’re ready not only to confront the conflicts in your own psychology, you’re ready to let them go. You know there’s something about your nature that makes you the embodiment of opposites. I don’t mean being a walking contradiction, even if you feel like that some days. What I mean is that a theme of your life is integrating elements of yourself and the world around you that only seem to oppose one another but are in truth part of the same thing.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — Be cautious with financial transactions, from basic ones to the most complicated. Much hinges on whether you understand the details, and whether you put the information to good use. To put it mildly, plenty is at stake, and there is the opportunity for significant gain or loss. Therefore, slow down and take each step consciously. Know what decisions you can (or need) to put off until you have more information. In truth you’re in an exceptionally strong position and you have all the right ingredients to succeed at whatever you’re doing. Your part is to maintain the impeccability factor. That includes being fair to the people around you, maintaining the appearance of propriety. At this moment it’s every bit as important that you be standing in your integrity as it is that you present yourself as doing so. Be conscious of any double standards you may have, and remember that what you say even casually will echo outward. The Universe has ears.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Check whether your tendency to commit to multiple projects or professional endeavors is really working for you or the people you serve. This is the time to get your priorities in order. You may have a tendency to make decisions based on political expediency, that is to say, less on the basis of truth and more on the basis of what will grease the wheels, close the deal or please people in power. The other side of that kind of transaction is that someone else can lose in the process, which is usually considered a form of collateral damage. This is exactly what you want to avoid, because what happens now will have implications in the future, for good or for ill. This can be a time of tremendous achievement for you, if you do what is right. That does include what’s right for you — just make sure you keep your promises, and pause on making any new ones you’re not sure you can fulfill.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Your long-range plans may seem to be conflicting with certain immediate desires. The question you might want to ask is, in this world how practical is it to plan your life years in advance? This might be a time to experiment with the idea that your immediate goals fit into a larger plan, and you don’t need to have that scheme fully mapped out for everything to hang together. You have some excellent opportunities in front of you right now, and others will notice your commitment and aura of success if you allow those qualities to gently come forward. You don’t need to push anyone or anything. There’s a strong wind at your back right now. What I do suggest is that you be realistic about whether you really want any opportunity that’s offered to you in the coming days. The question is not ‘what am I doing with the rest of my life’ but rather, ‘where might this work with my life plan?’ or even better, ‘how does this feel?’

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — You may be negotiating some important transactions now, and if so, I suggest you be careful and take each step consciously. One tool you can work with is timing; in particular, knowing how long you can delay in order to get the information you need, or to work out the agreement as you want it to be. If things don’t seem to be working out as you want now, you can afford to wait at least one month to put them in order. If the opportunity disappears between now and then, it was probably not going to be helpful. One potential reading of the current astrology is that there are facts you may not be aware of, or may be overlooking, in service of your strategy or agenda. You need to bring the practical, discerning side of your nature into action right now, rather than your idealistic side. The moment calls for a microscope, not a kaleidoscope.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — I reckon there is plenty going on in your life right now, and that you’re not sure about some of it. By not sure, I mean that your intuition may be nagging you about something or someone. There may be a situation that seems to be all promise and little payout. Or you may have concerns about where your own emotional desires and needs fit into the scenario. I suggest you honor your doubts and give the situation a little more time. You’re about to enter a whole new emotional landscape when Jupiter, the Sagittarius planet, enters Cancer in a few weeks. You may need to exercise what feels like extreme patience till then, though it will be worth it. You’ll be on more solid emotional ground, and you’ll discover what it is you were concerned about.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — I suggest you observe how relationship situations develop over the next few weeks before you put all your emotional eggs into one basket. There may be situations that look promising. Have fun with those people. Remember though that while the first days or weeks of an encounter are meaningful — beginnings always are — you’ve learned from much past experience to watch how things develop, and to allow them to do so. The question is: who can handle who you really are? You’ve also learned not to try to tamp down your energy or put a cloak over your passion. That requires allowing people to have their responses to you. What matters most is that they do feel you and you feel them, no matter what the longer-term prospects are. As you get better at this, you’ll begin to attract people who can handle you at full strength.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — If you’re feeling like you’re bursting with creative and sexual energy, you’re right on time. In many ways your happiness depends on your ability to express yourself, so if you’re delaying for any reason, I suggest you feel some ideas moving, pull the cork and let some of the energy out. The thing about any creative endeavor is that it requires taking a risk. Often that risk is what you might do with potential ‘failure’. That’s exactly the psychology you want to fly into like a headwind. There’s also the small matter of having so many options. This is the time to experiment. One beautiful thing about our modern world is that one need not merely be a painter or a violinist. Very nearly everything is mixed media. As you explore, you’ll discover that there are several specific things you want to get good at — and you will.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — A rare alignment between Mars, Neptune and Pallas is suggesting that reality is like soft clay in your hands right now. So now is the time to sculpt your life in the way that you want. You will continue to have opportunities to do so, but this is the true formative moment. Therefore, take your time and redesign your life the way you want it. This will invariably involve how you use space, how you project yourself into the world. The astrology is suggesting that you work from the inside out: feel the heat within you, then let that shape the layers of your personality, your decisions and what you do with your time. A helpful metaphor might be to consider the hot molten core at the center of the planet that shapes the continents, and which sometimes erupts and lava flows over the Earth, forming new landmasses and changing the shape of mountains. Yet this natural force will be responsive to your plans and ideas. Said another way, anything is possible.

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Out Of Sight — Gemini New Moon

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The Gemini New Moon just before Noon EDT Saturday, like all New Moons, will be out of sight. It will not be the only such event in the astrology this weekend. If there is anything to the proverb “As above, so below,” the next several days will not be about appearances. Rather, you will be entering an auspicious time to observe and cultivate nascent developments to your inner life.

An inner life is a valuable resource. Like all resources, you need to be aware of it, and take care of it. That’s especially so now, on an implied threshold of cycles, shifts and crossings taking place out of sight above and below.

Above you, some new cycles are about to set in. Foremost among them is the start of a lunation — the period of time from one New Moon to the next.

Every lunation begins with the Moon moving between Earth and the Sun, out of sight in the solar glare. That phenomenon explains how New Moons are an appropriate time to begin new cycles of your own by simply being aware of the resources your inner life offers. Among them are contemplation, meditation and imagination. Simple awareness can in turn lead to appreciation. That’s a major inner shift, and it corresponds to a shift about to take place above you.

Out of sight above you, an important hypothetical point is on the threshold of a rare and major shift from one sign to another. The mean lunar apogee (otherwise known as mean Black Moon Lilith) enters Cancer about 6 am EDT Sunday.

In simple terms, mean Black Moon Lilith (abbreviated as mean BML) is the part of the lunar orbit farthest removed from Earth, whether or not the Moon is actually there. The “mean” part is not a nasty disposition, but an indication that the point is an averaged mathematical value. While an empty, abstract, averaged point may seem little more than imaginary, astrologers have learned to appreciate it as a resource.

Witness the “Swiss Ephemeris,” one of the most respected astrological resources in the world. With only 14 columns to work with, one of those columns (the one headed by a black lunar crescent on a cross) is devoted to listing the daily position of mean BML. That position changes slowly. So slowly, the last time mean BML changed signs (into Gemini) was on the historically meaningful date of September 11, 2012.

Mean BML last ingressed Cancer on August 3, 2004. For the mean lunar apogee now to cross over into Cancer, the sign ruled by the Moon, for the first time in nearly a decade is thus worthy of meaningful contemplation. What’s more, the timing is something to meditate upon as two positions on the zodiac closely associated with the Moon (mean BML and Cancer) come together less than 24 hours after the actual Sun and Moon have come together to initiate a lunation.

You would be justified in imagining two very different lunar cycles beginning at once, both enhanced and distinguished by their close concurrence. All the more so when you consider that the imagined event will be nearly concurrent with another point being crossed that is deeply appreciated as a milestone of astrology, even though it is also out of sight.

Just before 9 pm EDT Sunday, Mercury will cross the degree of Cancer to which it will return when its retrograde period (from June 26 to July 20) finally ends with a resumption of direct motion. In other words, Mercury will be entering its ‘echo’ (or ‘shadow’) phase just after mean BML enters Cancer and just before the Moon returns from being out of sight in the glare of a conjunction with the Sun. The close association in time implies a close symbolic correlation between all three events.

The echo/shadow phase is a period of about two weeks. During that period, as Mercury’s apparent motion decelerates before reversal, your own experience often corresponds to an ‘echo’ from the future. It is a time which frequently foreshadows what the approximately three weeks of retrograde motion will bring.

To have the foreshadowing that accompanies Mercury’s final fortnight of direct motion commence as two lunar cycles begin, and to have all of those beginnings take place out of sight, implies where your attention would be best directed over the next several days. Instead of the usual protocol of prioritizing what you see, you may want to initiate a new cycle of your own.

This weekend, you may want to initiate a new cycle of awareness. You may want to begin that cycle by shifting your focus from what you see on the outside to what you feel, and what you think, on the inside. You may want to cross over from prioritizing external resources and start appreciating internal resources. You may want to cultivate those internal resources, and develop them into what could ultimately be how you anticipate, and create, an outer life that is out of sight for you now.

If, as is the case with many people, your outer life leaves something to be desired, what have you got to lose? Instead of taking the weekend to simply indulge the usual distractions that take you out of your mind, try taking a cue from the astrology and explore what may have been, until now, out of sight.

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

Moonshine Horoscopes — Gemini New Moon Edition

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Now that we are about a week and a half past the last of those three eclipses, we’re approaching the Gemini New Moon. This New Moon is the complementary phase to the Sagittarius Full Moon eclipse, a ‘first marker’ for whatever that energy set in motion, though the eclipses will keep unfolding for months. This New Moon is not an eclipse, but it is a ‘live one’, with several planets joining the Sun and Moon conjunction in Gemini. It will be exact at 11:56 am EDT on Saturday. (You can view that full chart here.)

Photo by Anthony Ayiomamitis.

In today’s Moonshine horoscopes below, Genevieve Hathaway has interpreted this Gemini New Moon for each of the 12 Moon signs. We’ll also be running her blog post on the New Moon in Thursday’s Daily Astrology column.

Your Moon sign is where the Moon was when you were born, which you can find out by entering your birth data into Serennu.com. It helps to have your birth time but often that is not necessary. You can also try reading these horoscopes for your Sun and rising signs for additional layers of insight.

In order of degree, the planets in Gemini for the New Moon are: Pallas Athene, Mars, the Sun, the Moon, Jupiter and Black Moon Lilith (actually a calculated point). That’s lot of activity on the mental plane. It could feel like having many options and ideas that are true for you all at once — and they may be.

This chart has stronger things to say, however. For one thing, the conjunction of the Sun and Moon is exactly trine Juno in Aquarius. Trines open up a flow of energy, and this one looks like it is opening up channels to give voice to our emotions, thoughts and desires about our relationship needs. This is an opportunity to start a new conversation about these things in the face of crystallized social conventions and expectations.

Juno also carries the theme of social justice, which is hugely important right now. For one, because the world so desperately needs us to stand up for social justice together as individuals while Uranus and Pluto continue to up-end governments and cultural institutions around the world. (Witness the latest protests and government crackdowns in Turkey this past week).

Also, the New Moon chart is asking us whether we’re being ‘two-faced’ or not. Mars and Pallas Athene are conjunct in Gemini and square Neptune in Pisces. If you really want to be sincere and live a ‘higher vibration’ life, you’ll want to examine the ways you may be perpetuating the lies of politics.

Most of us do so in one area of life or another, with varying levels of awareness that we’re doing it. But if you can dig in and reach some honesty with yourself on this score, the sky is offering assistance in making it count. The Gemini New Moon is also square Chiron: any crisis of consciousness can lead to healing if you’re willing to stick with it and act on it. And Pholus in Sagittarius, opposite the Sun and Moon, is playing Devil’s advocate, ready to take the ball and run with it if you give up the power of your thoughts to dogma.

What will you set in motion this weekend?

Yours & truly,

Amanda Painter
These Moonshine Horoscopes are written by Genevieve Hathaway. Genevieve is an astrologer and Planet Waves contributor. She is available for astrology readings. You can contact her at genevieve@venusinblue.com.

Gemini New Moon Moonshine Horoscopes | By Genevieve Hathaway

Aries (March 20-April 19) — The Gemini New Moon is highlighting how you think and the patterns in which your mind moves. Your mind is one of your most powerful tools. I suggest experimenting with a few new ideas and approaches to how you use it. When your mind and emotional body act in tandem toward the same goal, they shape your outer world. Have you noticed how well that works? Like a laser, you can focus your mind on exactly what you desire, shaping and creating your vision. It’s like a muscle; the more you work it, the easier it will be for you to employ with exact precision. Each new situation is an opportunity to apply your full mental capacity and emotional commitment. At first this might feel limiting — yet notice how much you actually do accomplish and initiate when you are working with your full focus and emotional resources channeled in the same direction. — By Genevieve Hathaway

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Your sense of feeling good about who you are is shifting in a new direction. A new viewpoint is helping you peel back a layer on an aspect of your self-esteem that at times may have felt too slippery to grasp. Like shedding skins, you are working through the layers to reach the core of what it means for you to have an expansive sense of self-worth. Hint: it’s independent from external situations, including how much money is in your bank account or stashed under your mattress. This process may come with the feeling of being exposed. While potentially uncomfortable, this has pushed you to re-assess something you’ve been told in the past. Ask yourself whether you should believe it anymore. Remember, your truth has a distinctly different theme from what anyone around you holds true for you. As you settle into this viewpoint, you are building a strong foundation of self-confidence. — By Genevieve Hathaway

Gemini Sun and Rising — a Reading for You

Dear Gemini Reader:

Your birthday reading for 2013-2014 has become the bestselling birthday reading of the year. I bring to life the truly beautiful astrology that you’ll be experiencing over the next four seasons.

Eric and his astrology assistant Jonah, who has Virgo Sun and Moon.

The reading will be accurate, informative and fun for Gemini rising and Moon as well. You can listen to a short audio preview here.

Your reading is ready for instant access. The price for this hour of astrology plus tarot reading (and bonus materials) is $29.95. You may order your Gemini birthday reading here.

I know you’ll love this reading. Please do check it out.

Lovingly,

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — This week’s New Moon takes place in your Moon sign, now a busy place with many planets and asteroids moving through. A number of personal planets, including Mercury, Venus and Mars, have either just been in residence in your sign or are moving through. Gemini is a multi-faceted sign, and with all these different additional energies present, it may feel like you are living with many versions of yourself. If you start to question which is the real you, try considering them all as parts of your complex nature. You are in a moment of seeing how these various aspects of yourself are more similar than different — merging them into what feels like a cohesive version of yourself. This is more about the feeling of being whole rather than any disconnect between the different sides of you. You are connecting with yourself in a way you may not have thought was possible in the past. — By Genevieve Hathaway

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — During the New Moon in Gemini, your 12th house is an active place — the Sun, Moon and a number of other personal planets are packed into this area of your chart. This may feel like something new is blossoming under the surface of your psyche, or like you have access to a well of energy you weren’t aware of before. There is plenty of energy here for you to tap into and apply to all areas of your life. At times it could feel like working the controls of your own sophisticated rocket. All you need to do is envision where you wish to go and it will take you there. I suggest riding this energy wave growing from within you and following where it leads. You can think of this as letting your powerful inspiration be your guide as to where you apply your time, energy and creativity. You will get some truly unique and innovative results. — By Genevieve Hathaway

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — Lately, you have been working through a doubt or question regarding your role in a particular group, and whether it is the right one for you. One of your emotional needs is for your voice and opinion to be heard and respected. I don’t mean that you must always be considered ‘right’, rather that people actively listen to and consider your ideas. You have an opportunity now to set a new pattern — of your opinion being valued by others. Those around us follow our lead in how we want to be treated. As you place a greater sense of worth on your thoughts, feelings and opinions, those around you will do the same. Part of respecting yourself is setting boundaries that others will also respect, and holding people to it. What you are gaining through this process is a greater connection and sense of belonging in the communities you are a part of. — By Genevieve Hathaway

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — You are reworking an idea you’ve held for a while regarding the roles of work and passion in your life. You are coming up against something you were taught as a child that is causing you to question your approach to your career. What you are making contact with are a few outdated concepts that no longer serve who you have grown to be. Think of this New Moon as a chance to update your inner software, regarding beliefs your parents held and how they do not align with your own. Start there and work forward to what you believe today. The goal is an integrated concept: you give to your work by tapping directly into your passions. When the work you do to make money is based on your inner creativity, you fill a deep well of energy from which you can draw. As new options present themselves, you will continue to restructure this career/passion symbiosis. — By Genevieve Hathaway

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — At the moment, you are in a unique position to be able to see how the beliefs you’ve held have affected the choices you’ve made. Beliefs are ideas or perceptions that we judge to be true — it’s a feeling, not necessarily a fact. These internal sensations inform the degree to which we believe or disbelieve something. What we believe has a large impact on how we experience our lives. You are undergoing a process of re-orienting your relationship to belief and how you use it to aid your vision for your life. Over this New Moon, you will be able to move between emotion and detached observation effortlessly. View ideas from multiple angles. Enough distance will let you see if it’s grounded in truth rather than emotional attachment. By testing each belief this way, you will be able to choose consciously those ideas that have a strong foundation in accurate facts. — By Genevieve Hathaway

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Information is coming through regarding the motivations of a few important partners in your life. You intuitively know where others are coming from before they do, giving you a very clear picture of why a few key individuals are doing what they are doing. You can think of this as working with insider information, as though you get to see what is going on behind the scenes in their own personal world. The more you know about what drives a person’s actions, the easier it is for you to predict the reactions they will have and choices they will make. I suggest considering the view that this information is more useful for arranging mutually beneficial agreements than for manipulating the other party for your own personal gain. An arrangement where everyone involved benefits will move your personal goals much further along than an agreement where only one party benefits. — By Genevieve Hathaway

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — During the next week try working with the concept that your approach to relationships is just that — your own, not dictated by others. Think of this as structuring your relationships to fit who you are as an individual. From there it follows that you hold space for partners to do the same. At the moment, you may feel like you need multiple types of relationships, or multiple relationships, to satisfy the different facets of your personality. I propose reimagining how you assess information regarding whether a relationship is a good fit. Start from the place of how you approach sex, looking for a fluid, growth-centered partnership rather than a strict set of rules and expectations. This is about bringing a willingness to experiment and hold space for personal exploration. Recognize everyone’s experiences and needs, including your own, as valid, withholding judgment. From these open and honest experiences strong relationships can be built with a foundation rooted in love and acceptance. — By Genevieve Hathaway

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — As a Capricorn Moon, your Moon sign ruler is Saturn, a planet about time and honoring what we do with our time. New ideas and options equal new ways to think about how you use your time. Information is coming to light this week that helps you make some long-desired changes in how you structure your days, specifically in terms of what your personal energy goes into. This restructuring process is helping you plan things out so you have more time for that which you value the most. I suggest seeing time as a way to assign value to the things that are most important to you. I don’t mean that you shirk any obligations because they have less personal value, rather that you utilize the template of time to get done what needs to be done. This frees up time for the things and people that bring you the deepest feeling of meaning and connection with your life. — By Genevieve Hathaway

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — A project you’ve been working on for a while is about to take a big leap forward. This may seem to come suddenly when in fact it’s been building for some time. You are synthesizing a number of ideas, resulting in a quick advancement. Continue to work the edge of this project, stretching out further and further into what is possible. I suggest considering a final product that is better than what other people have produced as not really better, but different. To be different there must be a piece of the unknown involved — experimenting with what hasn’t been tried before. Crafting a project that pushes the boundaries of certainty involves boldness and calculated risk-taking, two of your biggest assets. If you encounter any doubts from others, continue proceeding with what you know is right. Out on the edge is where innovation happens and discoveries are made. For many it’s an uncomfortable place to be; you in fact thrive there. — By Genevieve Hathaway

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — You are currently working with some deeply personal ideas about who you are. This process is drawing you into an investigation of how certain adults’ opinions impacted you during childhood. They influenced what you view as possible in terms of sharing who you are with the larger world. Know that questioning these ideas is a healthy process. You are making contact with how these adopted concepts influenced what you reveal in public situations. As a Pisces Moon, there is a piece of you that will always have one foot in the psychic realm — the part of existence we can’t touch but can connect with emotionally and intuitively. For you it is a very real, tangible place. Over the New Moon, you are dissolving internal blocks that were in the way of fully believing you can share this more ethereal side of yourself. As you move through this opening and show yourself, take note of how many people arrive to connect with you. Quite a few will. — By Genevieve Hathaway

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Gemini New Moon Moonshine Horoscopes — and This Week on Planet Waves

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Dear Friend and Reader:

We have Genevieve Hathaway’s Moonshine horoscopes here for you today. In these she has interpreted Saturday’s Gemini New Moon for each of the 12 signs.

Photo by Amanda Painter.

Eric will get even deeper into this weekend’s New Moon in his broadcast of Planet Waves FM later this evening. That usually posts at about 8 pm EDT (often sooner). He will also cover the planets entering Cancer and the grand water trine — along with matters of conscience and war on the topic of Bradley Manning.

As the current lunar cycle winds down, a succession of planets has begun to leave Gemini and enter Cancer. This is energizing a conversation involving planets in all three water signs — called a ‘grand trine’. Eric introduced the main theme of this configuration in Monday’s Daily Astrology post. He writes there:

“These placements indicate that we will all be taken into deeper water. If that’s uncomfortable I suggest looking within for what might be the root of that sensation. Somehow, though, I have a notion that many people have been experimenting with going deeper or exploring in there. Having planets in water signs on this kind of scale is like a deepening capacity for empathy, reflected in the cosmic signs.”

Today’s Daily Astrology considers how we can use the background of this deepening empathy and emotional sensitivity to navigate a potential sticking point: the need to verify whether we’re being honest with ourselves. If you’re caught arguing with yourself, are you sure your inner conflict is about what you think it is?

Lastly, are you a Gemini? Do you love one? Customers who have already listened to Eric’s 2013 Gemini Birthday Reading say they are “amazed at the accuracy” and that it’s “a focused and objective portrait” of what they are living through. The reading comprises two sections of astrology plus a tarot reading, and comes with bonus materials — all of it suitable for those with Gemini Sun, Moon or rising sign.

Yours & truly,

Amanda Painter

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The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, June 2, 2013

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By Sarah Taylor

“Once you free your mind about the concept of … being ‘correct’, you can do whatever you want. So, nobody told me what to do, and there was no preconception of what to do.”

— Giovanni Giorgio, songwriter and producer

The reading today is unambiguous: the events from the eclipse period and their effects are still at work in the psyche. You are being encouraged not to turn away from what was revealed to you, and to follow the call of what is yet to emerge into full consciousness, even as the land of The Moon seems alien to your thinking, logical mind. Your thoughts — and here, specifically, thoughts that are enmeshed with fear — are not the focus. The Moon, by its presence at centre, is asking you to acknowledge your fears, and to shift your attention to meet with what feels right in the depths of you. It is painting its desire on the canvas of your heart.

Ten of Swords, The Moon, Nine of Swords -- RWS Tarot deck.

Ten of Swords, The Moon, Nine of Swords from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck, created by A E Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. Click on the image for a larger version.

How to bring what The Moon is asking to be manifested to light? The card itself points this out in the form of a pathway, which runs between the two towers in the background, which I see as being associated with the Ten of Swords — where you have just come from — and the Nine of Swords — what might potentially re-emerge as a result of that experience.

The Ten of Swords suggests a time of hitting rock-bottom. It is the card of inevitable surrender to a circumstance, whereupon you discover in your prone position that the sky in the distance is clearing. What has happened is done, and the sacrifice you endured was what you needed to go through in order to emerge on the other side with a new perspective.

Now, as you move into uncharted territory, there might be some fear about the re-emergence of something in the Ten of Swords that you know only too well. The Nine of Swords is the card of thought as a mode of self-injury. It represents a deeply engrained belief that has the power to hold you to ransom and thus to isolate you.

Know this, however. The power of the Nine of Swords lies in the power you give to it. When you understand this, you are able to see that your beliefs are a matter of choice. And in that understanding we can all make the courageous choice of taking another path — the pathway that strikes out in a new direction.

The Sun radiates. It is action-orientated. It represents the conscious, which is more readily accessible to the intellect. The Moon works in a different way. Its light is reflected and therefore it is passive. It asks for receptivity rather than activity. It asks that you still the chatter. It asks that you embrace your creature-self, which is more adept at walking through the shadows (think how much better a dog or a jackal can see in the darkness).

Often, we are tempted to avoid The Moon because it isn’t fully understandable. What can happen when we enter the wilds is that we can try to explain it by falling back on prior experience — the Hindu notion of sanskara. There’s your Nine and Ten of Swords. The Moon is bringing you face to face with thought patterns and asking for some deep work around the releasing of those that no longer work for you or serve your highest purpose.

Choose differently. Ask for the help you need to see what you cannot see, and to look at what is so close to you that you hadn’t considered it wasn’t a part of you. Choose the unknown, choose your intuition, your feeling body, a path that is hazy and indistinct, but which calls to you wildishly. Be patient. Above all, be gentle and loving with yourself. This wildish connection is feminine, of the earth, feeling- and body-based, tuned to the world of Spirit; it moves in its own rhythms. It exhorts you in a strange tongue. Learn this language and you learn a new way of relating to your thoughts, to yourself, to others, and to your life.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Ten of Swords (Sun in Gemini), The Moon (Pisces), Nine of Swords (Mars in Gemini)

Planets Diving into the Water (and Mars in Gemini)

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Dear Friend and Reader:

How did you come out of the three-fer series of eclipses that ended last Friday night? The sudden release of energy left many people feeling frayed, others like a sack of potatoes, and others like they emerged from an initiation ordeal.

Photo by Eric Francis.

To recap, we just lived through a partial eclipse of the Moon in Scorpio (a Full Moon) on April 25, an annular eclipse of the Sun on May 9 (a New Moon), and a penumbral eclipse of the Moon (a Full Moon) in Sagittarius on May 25.

Usually eclipses come in pairs; three is a substantial increase in the energy. There was also a reference to the past, with one extra eclipse along the Gemini/Sagittarius axis, which was so 2012. (Eclipses come in weird, interesting patterns, and are a topic of their own.)

We have all been through the paces. In the collective world, the proverbial poo hit the turbine with the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15 and the energy has barely relented since. The closest we’ve come to a break was last weekend’s Full Moon in Sagittarius passing by. That may have felt like climbing a high mountain, taking a look around and then falling asleep next to your backpack for six hours.

If you’re feeling stirred up, unsettled, or restless, I would not be surprised. This kind of astrology can provoke anxiety and depression. A Gemini friend said to me this week that it feels like the decline of civilization is making itself known these days. Whether he’s right or not, many people feel this way. A good few have given up, and others wish they could.

This is not an easy time in history to be alive. It’s lovely that most of us in the Western world live in dry spaces that keep out the rain, and might even have enough food to eat. Yet the spiritual and psychological strain at this time in history is unlike any other, and in truth it’s more than most people can bear.

Photo by Eric Francis.

If the strain gets to be too much, the typical approach is denial. There’s never been a more opportune moment to practice blissful ignorance as a way of life — that is, until something deeper calls you.

That may be happening soon, if it’s not happening now. This week, the cluster of planets that’s been following the Sun all year begins to enter Cancer. There’s a lot of energy in that first degree of Cancer (where the Sun is when summer begins, which happens in a few weeks). Any time planets cross the spot where a season changes we get what I call an Aries Point effect — individual and collective realms converge into one. We feel world problems more poignantly. This will persist till those problems get our attention. It seems like one purpose of the hyper-extended nervous system of the electronic media is to make sure we have access to the full picture of what is going wrong with the world, the better to get capable people to respond.

Friday, May 31, Mercury enters Cancer, where it will be into early August. That’s in part due to a spell of Mercury retrograde that begins at the end of June, though we’re a bit ahead of ourselves on that topic.

In the next few weeks, Venus, the Sun and Jupiter enter Cancer. There’s a lot going on in the water signs this year, and what happens this month is central to that.

Saturn is in Scorpio through early 2015 and Chiron and Neptune are in Pisces for the long haul. All these planets about to ingress Cancer will complete a grand trine in the water signs. This is rare and beautiful astrology. It’ll be excellent for anyone with a strong water sign signature in their chart (Sun, Moon, rising or any strong planet in water signs). And as previously mentioned here and there, Mercury is about to make its second of three retrogrades in a water sign this year.

This ongoing arrangement may be challenging for those who are overwhelmed by the rising tide of their emotions, or who are not good at sitting with their own emotions. For those with strong water sign charts, you might feel like you really do belong on the planet, at least a bit more than usual.

Near Sag Harbor, NY. Photo by Eric Francis.

In any event this is a time when it’ll be necessary to adjust to an extended moment when feelings really count and are more palpable than usual.

Remember that water signs imply that things may make less sense on the rational wavelength and more sense on the intuitive wavelength.

Once that grand water trine really takes hold in late June, with Jupiter’s arrival (and we’ll get our first taste of it this weekend), emotional patterns will tend to increase in momentum as if in a vortex. Therefore, make corrections as soon as you see something that needs to be addressed. Keep clarity with people. Put crazymakers as far away from the action as possible, which means don’t invite them into your house.

As Mars in early Gemini works its way into a square with Neptune, this is especially true. This aspect is potentially deeply creative, poetic and experimental — and also potentially self-destructive. See if you can stay on the creative side by giving yourself healthy outlets for your emotional energy.

Mars square Neptune is one of those aspects where I extend a substance use/abuse caution. Know when you’re doing things for fun and when you’re self-medicating (both have their moment). Know when enough is enough. There’s a calling here to embrace a spiritual level of experience rather than an escapist one. This aspect is an accelerant, but it can be directed inwardly as a kind of catalyst.

Planets in Cancer are a reminder to stay emotionally connected. Now is the time to get into the mode of slowing down a little and taking better care of yourself. Eat real food. Get actual rest. Get near some water. Don’t forget to drink some of it, too.

Lovingly,

Editor’s Note: News briefs below are researched and written by a team consisting of me, Liam Carey, Amanda Painter, Susan Scheck and Carol van Strum. Jessica Keet and Chelsea Bottinnelli provide editing support. Our fact checking list includes Alex Miller and Len Wallick. Note, even if other writers are working, I make the last call on all astrology interpretations in the Friday edition. To get on the Thursday night fact checking team please write directly to me at dreams@planetwaves.net — efc

Near Earth Asteroid Buzzing By; Sun Square Chiron

In other astrology news, Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) 285263 (1998 QE2) will pass 5.86 million km from the Earth on Friday, May 31 at 4:59 pm EDT. This is the closest approach of 1998 QE2 for this century, and it poses no impact threat since it’s currently at more than 15 times the Earth-Moon distance.

Radar images of 1998 QE2 showing its binary point — a little Moon that orbits with the asteroid — one of many binary minor planets orbiting our Sun.

Yet this is the latest in a series of near-miss asteroid passes, which you might think of as a defining metaphor of our time in history.

The Moon is in Pisces, and will make a conjunction to Chiron later today (Friday). That happens just after last quarter phase, also today. The Moon will ingress Aries Sunday, June 2 at 2:33 am EDT.

Mercury and Mars have both changed signs; Mercury is now in Cancer and Mars is in Gemini. Venus will ingress Cancer on Sunday, June 2 at 10:12 pm EDT. Immediately after that, the Aries Moon passes through the Uranus-Pluto square, making a conjunction to Uranus and a square to Pluto.

The Sun is reaching the sensitive midpoint of Gemini — sensitive due to the presence of the Great Attractor in mid-Sagittarius (a massive energy source and gravitational point), and also due to the most commonly used U.S.A. chart having mid-Sagittarius rising.

The Sun will also be square Chiron through the weekend and into early next week. The combination of Sun in Gemini and Chiron in Pisces is suggesting that you go past the idea of your creative potential or what you want to do, and past the words you use to describe it, and actually begin a new experiment. You might not want to talk about it at all, since it’s too easy to talk away a good idea.

There’s also a caution to be aware of what you were told you could not do, or what example was set by early male caregivers, and what you learned from their own (potentially ‘failed’) quest to express themselves. Their burdens are not yours; their lack of confidence is not yours — that is, not unless you allow it to be so.

Bachmann Exits Stage Right; Comey in the Wings to Head FBI Snake Pit

Michele Bachmann, former presidential candidate and congressional representative from an alternate universe, announced her exit from politics this week, at least as something besides a lobbyist. Known for her hilarious made-up facts about history, co-owning a We’ll Cure Your Gayness ‘therapy’ center and being investigated by five different law enforcement agencies for campaign finance issues, Bachman has been the Republican rodeo clown who distracts the attention from what is really going on around her.

We’ll miss you, Michele. Photo: Daily Kos.

Speaking of, Obama seemed ready to nominate James Comey, the former number-two official in the Justice Department under George W. Bush, as head of the FBI. He would replace Robert S. Mueller III when he retires in September.

Unlike other federal agencies, the FBI director has a term limit (that’s because J. Edgar headed the agency for half a century under six presidents). Mueller has exceeded the 10-year term limit by two years.

Though a Republican (the ninth that Obama has left in place or appointed to a top-level position), Comey will probably face opposition in the Senate — get this, for new and novel — for his ties to Wall Street.

Comey has a reputation for standing up to Bush administration shenanigans (illegal wiretapping, in particular), which might be a useful character trait given that he would be stepping into an FBI that seems to be unraveling by the day. Already facing criticism for losing track of Tamerlan Tsarnaev before the Boston Marathon bombing, the question now is why one of Tsarnaev’s friends was killed in Florida last week during questioning by FBI agents.

The friend, Inbragim Todashev, was being interviewed by agents and state police about his possible involvement in a 2011 Boston-area triple murder when suddenly he ended up with a lot of bullets in him. There are conflicting reports whether he was armed with a pipe, a knife, a broomstick, reached for a sword or had no weapon at all. (Seriously? A broomstick? A sword? Is this Harry Potter or Dungeons and Dragons?)

FBI agents are not allowed to frisk questioning subjects when interviewing them inside their homes. While it’s possible that he could have had a knife, that doesn’t explain how he ended up with seven bullets in his body, including one in the crown of the head, according to his family.

Chart for the FBI’s creation in 1908 reveals a grouping of Cancer planets to the right, showing the extent to which the agency is ruled by its emotions. To the left is a group of planets in Leo, including a Mars-Jupiter conjunction — this gives a flair for drama, pride and being driven by a kind of religious ideology.

Autopsy photos were sent to the Todashevs in Russia this week after the body was released, and Ibragim’s father held a news conference in Moscow Thursday showing the images and demanding an explanation.

An article in Thursday’s New York Times included this explanation of what happened: “The agent fired several shots at Mr. Todashev, striking him and knocking him backward. But Mr. Todashev again charged at the agent. The agent fired several more shots at Mr. Todashev, killing him. The detective in the room did not fire his weapon, the official said.”

I know what everyone is thinking. Those Russian kids are so badass you can shoot them six times with a Glock and they just keep coming at you.

The Times added: “Under the F.B.I.’s guidelines, agents can fire a gun at someone if they feel the person is a threat to them or someone else. The episode is being reviewed by a team of F.B.I. investigators who specialize in shootings and by the district attorney in Orlando, the official said.”

I just took a look at the FBI’s chart. You would think it would be ruled by logic and wisdom. In fact, the chart is dominated by the rapid-cycling, emotional sign Cancer. The agency has Venus, Mercury, Neptune and the Moon, as well as the lunar North Node and the hypothetical planet Transpluto in that sign. The chart reads more like the script to a soap opera than an episode of CSI.

But with a Mercury-Neptune-Moon conjunction, it’s no wonder that paranormal-investigating agents Fox Mulder and Dale Cooper are among its time-honored fictional heroes. Think of Cooper using information from visionary dreams to solve crimes in Twin Peaks (Moon-Neptune), or Mulder’s nonstop emotional “it must be true” histrionics in X-Files. All of these Cancer planets are currently taking oppositions from Pluto and squares from Uranus, which will keep life interesting for years to come.

Another Political Prisoner for the U.S. Collection

The Obama administration is continuing its crackdown on political activists and whistleblowers. This week Jeremy Hammond, activist and computer security wunderkind, pleaded guilty to hacking into the private intelligence firm Stratfor, the FBI and other institutions, and to being affiliated with the hacktivist group Anonymous.

Booking file photo of Jeremy Hammond; Cook County Sheriff’s Department, Illinois.

“I did this because I believe people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors,” said Hammond, 28, in a statement. “I did what I believe is right.”

About five million Stratfor emails ended up on the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, founded by Julian Assange, as a result of Hammond’s actions. Facing the possibility of overzealous prosecution (the likes of which contributed to the suicide death of activist Aaron Swartz earlier this year), Hammond took the guilty plea to avoid a potential maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

Hammond now faces up to 10 years of incarceration. He has already served 15 months, including weeks in solitary confinement.

“Obama has, in relation to the Espionage Act, applied it to more people, more journalistic sources and journalists, than any — than all previous administrations combined, going back to the origin of that act in 1917,” said Jullian Assange in an interview on Democracy Now! Wednesday. “And that’s part of a new centralization of power in the United States.”

Assange continued, “The Pentagon, allied institutions like Stratfor, can’t keep up a perception of authority if bright young men, determined, courageous and moral, like Jeremy Hammond, are seen to have struck a blow against them and exposed their corrupt activities.”

Hammond, who was programming video games by age 8, has also been a peace activist from a young age and started his own computer security training website when he was 18. In his freshman year at the University of Illinois, he approached administrators of the Computer Sciences Dept., alerting them to a security flaw in their website and offering to fix it. They thanked him by banning him from returning the next year.

Speaking truth to power is never appreciated by the powerful — and the stakes are getting higher and higher as the U.S. government continues to consolidate power and money under the ‘national security’ umbrella.

Fire Ignites to Burn Monsanto — and its GMO Seeds

Under the energies of a super-charged Full Moon and the third powerful eclipse in a month, Saturday’s worldwide March Against Monsanto reached farther and wider than its founder ever dreamed — yet major news outlets in the mass media brazenly ignored it. [We covered the astrology of the event in this blog post.]

Protesters in San Diego, California, on Saturday. Photo: March Against Monsanto.

Founder Tami Monroe Canal created a Facebook page on Feb. 28 calling for a rally against the company’s practices, and watched as sign-ups spread rapidly across the Internet.

“If I had gotten 3,000 people to join me, I would have considered that a success,” she said Saturday. Instead, she said an “incredible” number of people responded to her message: more than two million, in 52 countries and 436 cities.

The group plans to build on the momentum of the march to get GMOs out of the food supply.

“We will continue until Monsanto complies with consumer demand. They are poisoning our children, poisoning our planet,” she said. “If we don’t act, who’s going to?”

This is a movement started, organized and reported on only by social and alternative media. The mass media coverage blackout backfired, as alternative-media reporters such as Anthony Gucciardi of Natural Society and protesters worldwide documented the march via cell phones, Facebook and Twitter.

“We have so much support from so many different groups coming out and standing up against Monsanto that it just goes to show there is a ‘sleeping giant’ of awake individuals who thoroughly understand the challenges we face as a nation,” Gucciardi said from Philadelphia. “One only needs to tap into that powerful energy of resistance to ignite a movement, like a match to a gasoline-drenched fire pit.”

Forewarned is Forearmed — But Will Anyone Listen?

Residents of towns in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota affected by fracking (hydraulic fracturing) and related practices sent warning letters — an unprecedented move — to Illinois lawmakers this week, detailing a tragic impending “public health disaster” if that state allows the controversial practice.

An anti-fracking rally after a House Committee hearing at the Illinois State Capitol on May 21. Photo: AP/Seth Perlman.

They advised a moratorium “to take the time to visit areas with fracking, bring scientists and medical experts into the process, and undertake an environmental and public health study. If you allow fracking to go forward as planned, you will bring to your state the same horrific experiences we have suffered in Pennsylvania.”

Some of the text of the letter is below; you can read the entire letter here.

“The oil and gas industry promises that fracking is safe and that it will create jobs and bring your state riches, but Pennsylvania’s experience in the past five years tells a very different story. In short, water contamination has been widespread; our air has been polluted; countless individuals and families have been sickened; farms have been devastated, cattle have died, and our pristine streams and rivers have turned up dead fish; only a fraction of the promised jobs and revenue for the state have come to fruition; and our communities have been transformed into toxic industrial zones with 24/7 noise, flares, thousands of trucks, and increased crime. What’s more, the jobs have made many workers so sick that they can no longer work in the industry.”

Pennsylvania residents also released links to a “List of the Harmed“, with names of affected citizens and their ailments.

The Illinois General Assembly was set to vote this week on the state’s fracking bill, after a House Executive Committee hearing on it revealed that none of the committee members had ever visited a fracking site.

Meanwhile, General Electric Co. has invested $15 billion in fracking in the last few years, and is set to invest more. Think of that next time you need a new appliance, or choose investments for your portfolio.

Syria: Another Proxy War, and a Volatile Chart

What exactly is happening in Syria? The storyline in the mainstream media is that the government has been pummeling its citizens ever since the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011.

Child with her toy truck and adult wristwatch stands on a pile of rubble in Syria.

Those uprisings were among the first hints that the Uranus-Pluto square (the 2012-era aspect) was about to happen, though as is often true with aspects between these two planets, the gains are short-lived and easily spoiled. As we’ll see in a moment, Syria’s chart describes how the country is a tinderbox waiting to burst into flames.

Among the developments this week: U.S. Sen. John McCain (R, AZ) made a surprise visit to Syria, visiting the rebels. His daughter tweeted that she wished she hadn’t found out about it on Twitter.

McCain has been pushing for more direct involvement by the U.S. in Syria, but the question is, why? Is it humanitarian concern for the rebels? Or is he part of a team angling for a side-door into a war with Iran? What about making sure Lockheed Martin, et al., stay robust with new customers and new projects? War is always good for arms traders.

The Obama administration is backing a European Union decision to provide weapons to Syrian rebels. The statement came after the European Union was unable to reach a consensus on a previous arms ban, which Britain and France were pushing to ease.

“We disagree with and we condemn the continued supply of Russian weapons to the regime, and this includes all class of weapons. And we’ve been clear throughout and very direct with the Russian government about that. We’ve seen how the regime uses those arms,” a State Department spokesman said this week.

Russia, meanwhile, is providing arms to the al-Assad regime, which the E.U. denounced this week, including selling anti-aircraft missiles to the government. Both Russia and the U.S. claim to support global talks on ending the conflict, but their actions send another message.

“For a long time after Vietnam our government was paralysed with doubt; we are seeing that process again in the wake of the catastrophic war in Iraq,” U.S. ambassador to Syria Fred Hof said this week. He’s correct in one part of that analysis: Syria seems to be a proxy war, just like Vietnam was. (A recent meme among hawks is, “We cannot make the mistake of hesitating like we did during Vietnam stop us from getting into some new exciting, expensive, endless, pointless war.”)

Syria’s Astrology is On Fire

Thanks to an astrologer and historian named Nick Campion, we have accurate chart data for most countries of the world (if you’re studying astrology, The Book of World Horoscopes will be essential in your collection). The French gave actual power over the Syrian government to local rulers on Jan. 1, 1944, probably at midnight. Ceremonial independence was a few years earlier; the actual transfer of power is what this chart is for. Here is the pertinent section of that chart with a link to the full chart here.

One of Syria’s independence charts includes a conjunction of Mars, Vesta and Uranus, visible toward the upper right.

One of the most characteristic features of this chart is a triple conjunction of Vesta, Mars and Uranus in early Gemini. This is a rare triple conjunction to the degree, with all three points being about fire: Vesta’s central theme is fire, Uranus is like lightning or an electrical fire, and Mars is aggression or martial power, particularly when in aspect to Uranus.

All three planets are retrograde, suggesting that the energy has been directed inward as pent-up rage or aggression and could come unraveled at any time.

Mars has just ingressed Gemini and is about to walk right over that Mars-Vesta-Uranus conjunction. Gemini is a potentially volatile energy (an airy, mutable sign), and oxygen fuels fire. This is taking place in the 8th house, of transformation but also of crisis, death and tons of cash changing hands. Events could proceed rapidly over the next few days.

One other appearance by Uranus, hardly a cameo: it’s about to go over the 7th house cusp of Syria’s natal chart. That can be disruptive, and the shakeup can come from the outside. Where Uranus is transiting the 7th house cusp, it’s easy to have aggravating factors in the environment. Note, there are creative ways to take this transit, which would depend on things like cooperation, unusual diplomatic arrangements and welcoming outside points of view — but that’s unlikely while everyone is funneling bombs into the country.

There’s one other complication — Neptune, currently in early Pisces, is making a square to that conjunction. If this situation seems confusing and painfully volatile, it is. Neptune can be fuel for the fire, it can be sarin gas, it can feed religious mania or mania of any kind, particularly when square Uranus.

Neptune in a square to this triple conjunction of Mars, Vesta and Uranus is given to dishonesty, self-deception and self-destructive behavior. Let’s hope this doesn’t get blown out of proportion, especially because some arms traders want to make a few bucks.

Musical instruments made from guns, displayed with a series of collage paintings called Machine Music, in the Imagine and Disarm exhibits by Pedro Reyes at London’s Lisson Gallery. The paintings “present a utopian vision of a world in which heavy artillery has been converted into instruments of ‘sonic warfare’, with soldiers fighting in the field with musical instruments as their weapons.”

An Unlikely Orchestra

Mexican artist Pedro Reyes found a higher use for some of the illegal firearms ravaging his native country — many of which come from the United States. He’s turned them into musical instruments.

For Reyes the process of transforming weapons into objects of positive utility “… was more than physical. It’s important to consider that many lives were taken with these weapons; as if a sort of exorcism was taking place, the music expelled the demons they held, as well as being a requiem for the lives lost.”

The collection includes instruments created from firearms, including revolvers, shotguns and machine guns, which were crushed by tanks and steamrollers to render them useless. Played in concert, their cacophonous tones are reminders of the destruction they bred in their former incarnation.

Planet Waves FM Was on Break — Call for Blue Studio Sessions

Eric is looking for guests on his Blue Studio podcast. These began last year as readers came forward to describe their life journey of sex and sexuality. Rather than having ‘experts’ do the talking, this is a sex program created from the ground up. If you’re curious email him at dreams@planetwaves.net with the subject header Blue Studio Sessions.

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

The June monthly extended horoscopes were published Friday, May 24. Inner Space horoscopes for June are published below in this issue. I recommend reviewing the previous month’s horoscope at the end of the month; you can see May’s monthly horoscope here.

Inner Space Horoscope for June 2013, #952 | By Eric Francis

We’ve had a lot of intense months lately; June promises to be an interesting one. Eclipses are out of the way for a while, which will help everyone sleep a little better. Planets are gathering in the sign Cancer, which is a reminder that we need to take care of one another on the planet, as much for everyone else as for ourselves. You want the people around you to feel safe and strong, and the small gestures you make honoring that fact will come right back to you. Jupiter enters the sign Cancer for a year right after the solstice. Then on June 26, Mercury stations retrograde for three weeks. This may come with the feeling of re-evaluation, and the need to tune up your emotional body so that you may focus on what you want rather than what you define as a need.

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Get ready to make a stretch — of your living space, of your emotional capacity, of your ability to take care of yourself and others. You don’t need to be afflicted by the same ‘there’s never enough’ bug that so many others seem unable or unwilling to shake off. You can afford to feel safe, and you will only benefit from encouraging the people you love to understand that they too are safe. Humans are critters that belong in broods, tribes and caravans. Our society falsely promises benefit and gain by striking off on one’s own or ignoring the needs of others. Everyone needs some time to themselves, but that’s a different thing. Anyone who feels the pleasure of cooperation and the benefits of solving collective problems collectively is unlikely to go back to the old way.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) –You may think you know what you’re saying, but do others understand what’s on your mind? I ask not for their sake but your own. You need to feel understood. You also need to feel like you understand yourself, though over the next couple of months that’s likely to come in layers rather than to burst out of the ground like a gusher. I suggest you be patient with yourself, and express your uncertainty gently. If you do, what you may notice is the presence of a rare kind of confidence that has roots going deeper than any questions your mind could come up with. Therefore, if you ask a question, assume that it has an answer. If you see a problem, assume there is a solution. It may not manifest overnight, though it will help move things along if you keep adjusting your point of view. You will see different things from different perspectives.

Gemini Sun and Rising — a Reading for You

Dear Gemini Reader:

Last week I recorded your birthday reading for 2013-2014. It’s become the bestselling birthday reading of the year. I bring to life the truly beautiful astrology that you’ll be experiencing over the next four seasons.

Eric and his astrology assistant Jonah, who has Virgo Sun and Moon.

The reading will be accurate, informative and fun for Gemini rising and Moon as well. You can listen to a short audio preview here.

Your reading is now ready. If you’ve already purchased or are an all-access member, you should receive an email shortly. The price for this hour of astrology plus tarot reading (and bonus materials) is $29.95. You may order your Gemini birthday reading here.

I know you’ll love this reading. Please do check it out.

Lovingly,

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — How you feel about yourself determines what you think is possible. That in turn is the most dependable metric on what is possible, for you. Events this month seem determined to teach you what you have to offer, and the many ways your gifts and your efforts can be of service to the world. One thing is for certain: if you think you have nothing to offer, you must think again. It may take you a little time to figure out what your gifts are and what you can do with them, but that’s different than doubt or despondency. If you’re just not seeing the possibility, it’s likely that something is blocking your view. That something may be an outdated attitude or value about the meaning of work, or a negative emotional attachment that you can now, at long last, dissolve.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Stay as close to the edge as possible, for as long as you can. Keep your options open. You may be inclined to take the ‘safe’ route because the thing you want seems impossible, too challenging or too remote to be viable. You may feel like your deepest desire has gone missing. Please be patient, and appreciate the experience of uncertainty as much as you can, and remember that your main job right now is to keep the door open for the best potentials when they begin to show up, which could stretch out a few weeks from now. You will feel when they arrive; you’ll recognize them. My sense is that you will feel the tide is turning and know that you can move with it. What arrives is not a one-off but evidence that you have entered a new time in your life, one that will offer you many gifts that you merely need to open up and receive consciously.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — There seems to be so much you can’t do anything about, though what you have going for you is the ability to access what I will call spiritual help. Any mystery, any problem, any challenge, is inviting you to ‘offer it up’ to natural healing forces and ease your mind. One thing is certain: those forces are real, and they are willing to help you. Since you’ve got the responsibility to take care of so many people, count it as a good thing you have support. Yet you have more help than you may know. While it’s clear that you will need to help guide certain events in a positive direction, your leadership style would benefit from a major revision from anything your parents or early authority figures inflicted on you. There’s a new way to do things — and you’re bringing it into existence.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — As the month develops, you may feel like you’re swimming against the tide of social opinion, or perhaps more subtly, that you just start to feel different than the people around you. What I suggest is that you not try to prove yourself or allow any discussion to degrade into a power struggle. You have a right to be independent, particularly in your emotional response. Who is right or wrong doesn’t matter; what matters is that you’re at peace with yourself. If you recognize that there is only a limited extent to which anyone is entitled to an opinion about your life, this will be a lot easier. There’s also missing information, though you’re the one most likely to be ahead of the curve figuring out that the knowledge that’s coming will validate your hunch or point of view about what is right for you.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Events that develop this month will be enough to focus your priorities on what you know matters — what you’ve said so many times is your top priority. You may start to feel like you have some catching up to do, yet I would caution against acting like you have to make up for lost time. Rather, work with the idea that what you’re doing and the choices you’re making now are right on time. Take the steps you need to prepare for the steps you’re about to take. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is how much you’ve learned the past year. Make sure that you consider what some call ‘both’ sides of every issue and what I would say amounts to taking a circumspect, open-minded approach, never being too invested in your own opinions.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — When you have faith in yourself, the universe will provide for you. Or rather, it will provide for you anyway but you may not notice that’s what’s happening. It’s your faith that will inform you and that, thankfully, is something you’re learning to make friends with. Here are some clues that this arrangement is working well: One is that you have enough of what you need. Another is that you have a vision for the future that you trust. Rather than being a vague hope or wish, your vision is something that you can see in a focused way, even if it doesn’t exist yet, and that you trust despite any questions you may have — questions I suggest you ask gently, and wait earnestly for the answers. You know more than you think, though to access the information you must listen and trust.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Relationships are about an exchange of something substantial, be it feelings, resources, ideas or effort. What happens this month will be enough to illustrate the point. You’re ending a phase of your life and beginning another where ‘too much of nothing’ is no longer enough. Once you’re clear about that, it’ll be obvious who is offering you something, without needing to understand the motive. This may be the exercise in trust that you’ve been planning to embark on for so long. Remember that it takes some trust to trust, and at first you may seem to have no special reason to do so. Not at least based on certain elements of your past — though there are others you may not have considered. And they are reminding you they exist. They’re reminding you there is something about yourself that it’s time to reclaim.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Suddenly you have more options than you know what to do with, or you will soon. As you consider these options, you may also be inclined to hesitate. But rather than do that, you have an opportunity to experiment, and to explore who makes you feel how. Relationships are not theoretical. They are not about pondering who or what might work, or how a situation might feel. They are about experience, and an experiment, and you don’t need to commit to more than that when you want to explore someone. You are not married after the third date, you don’t have to have sex, and the person is not your boyfriend or girlfriend. You can explore sex and you’re still not married. Rather than the social conventions, the thing to pay attention to is your own need for contact. Remember, this is more important than your need to bond. Start with contact and see where things go.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — What your life hinges on is your ability to state your needs and your desires. It would help if you could tell them apart, and have clear ideas what constitutes one or the other (clue, you will have very few needs, and a good few more desires). Knowing about this is not enough; being clear with yourself is not enough. You need to put this information to use. You may have been taught to ‘expect’ your needs and desires to be met, or to hope that doing so for others would result in someone showing up and doing that for you. Many things preclude that, including the aura of independence you put out, however what I suggest you do is tell people — the ones that matter — what your life is about and what role you want them to have. How they respond is up to them, though you’ll learn a lot either way.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — The more fun you have, the better you will feel. While on one level this is a serious time in your life with so much at stake, what matters more is your motivation to succeed. What some call luck will play a role in this; you’re about to have a rare collection arriving in your solar 5th house, including Venus and Jupiter. This is an invitation to take action rather than to wait for good things to happen. For a Pisces there is no better incentive to live well than play, creative exploration and sex. It’s not every day that you get an opportunity like the one you have now, and if career questions or business are on your mind, you will get better results from fun than from labor. Along a similar line of thought, working in a creative mode is more important than working hard.

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The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, May 26, 2013

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By Sarah Taylor

Whoa there, tiger! Before you go rushing off, sword drawn, ready to make your conquest, why not let these questions compassionately penetrate the membrane of your consciousness:

“Am I headed in the right direction? And what am I running from?”

Knight of Swords, Five of Cups, The Moon -- RWS Tarot deck.

Knight of Swords, Five of Cups, The Moon from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck, created by A E Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. Click on the image for a larger version.

There is no coincidence that this is the second appearance of The Moon in the triple eclipse period that has taken place over the last four weeks.

The first eclipse was a lunar eclipse on April 25/26; the second a solar eclipse on May 9/10; the third a lunar eclipse that took place May 24/25 — in other words this weekend.

The first time The Moon card appeared during this period, on May 5, I wrote:

If we can let go of our fear … and accept a period where not everything is clear, where it is best to travel light and remain flexible, where details are obscured, and where there is an ‘edge’ to our experience that is jagged and chaotic, then what these three creatures [jackal, dog and crustacean] bring to us is contact with something that has a particular kind of wisdom.

Yes, it isn’t rational, and it is impervious to our need to analyse, categorise and understand. It is nevertheless an integral part of us and one that we often disown or ignore because it plays by different rules. …

Thus the Moon becomes a gift — the potential for something to become manifest.

The time is ripe for you to stop racing ahead — to stop your thoughts racing too — and move within to discover and embody fully this gift while the power of the three eclipses is only just beginning to take shape. The suggestion here is not to be side-tracked by a need to embark on a crusade that would have you rushing from pillar to post, in attack mode. “If I just get in here fast enough, then everything will fall into place.” “If I get out into the world, show them who I am, then I’ll get places.”

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