Love has reasons which reason cannot understand. — Blaise Pascal

Venus and Mars today formed their second conjunction of this calendar year. The first was on Feb. 22, right by the Aries Point. There will be a third (in Virgo), after Venus has turned direct, on Nov. 2 (early Nov. 3 in some time zones).

Venus, Mars and the Moon in conjunction back in February. Photo by Amanda Painter.

It’s quite common in astrology for these connections to occur three times, direct then retrograde then direct. When it happens, the exact dates of contact often align with significant events; but equally, the whole story plays out during the entire period.

Venus and Mars getting together is basically a cosmic romance. At their simplest, Venus is love and Mars is desire. This time, they’ve come together in Leo, which means fun is on the agenda. No matter where in your life this love story is unfolding — whether it’s in significant relationships, friendships, creative endeavors or elsewhere — today is an opportunity for enjoyment. It’s also a chance to experience love as a spiritual force.

In May, Eric wrote about the Venus-Mars conjunctions that, “This is the story of a relationship. It describes a series of phases that an encounter with someone is going through, on the way to arriving in a place of mutual understanding.”

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If you have the occasion to ask “September already?” try to catch yourself and turn that question around. As would befit the initiative implied by the Moon in Aries today, make a declaration instead. To liberate yourself a bit from slavery to the civil calendar, and get in the flow of the astrology, declare: “All ready, September!”

This will be no month to allow bemusement at the arrival of its first day to dictate the tone for the rest of its days. Instead, endeavor in some way, no matter how small, to go beyond the usual and set the tone of your choice. 

For in the terms of astrology, September 2015 is and will be what one might call the single most unusual month in an unusual year. Hence, this should be a month when you can foment unusual manifestations.

To begin with, consider what happened overnight. As August segued into September, another important (and unusual) aspect transpired besides the Virgo Sun’s opposition to Neptune in Pisces, which Eric has already covered so adroitly to set the tone for Planet Waves this week.

Less than two hours after the Sun opposed Neptune (and while many of you were sleeping), retrograde Venus briefly shared the same degree of Leo with Mars, forming what astrologers call a conjunction aspect. The usual thing is for Venus and Mars to come together once every other year. For example, prior to 2015, Venus and Mars last conjoined once in April of 2013; and before that, once in May of 2011.

This year, however, is unusual. Venus and Mars will merge in the same degree of the same sign three times before 2015 is over. The first such event took place in Aries overnight between Feb. 21 and 22. The next instance will take place in Virgo as Nov. 2 rolls over in its sleep to become Nov. 3. Hence, the timing of the Venus-Mars conjunction at approximately 1:04 am EDT (05:03:47 UTC) this morning sets an astrological tone for the month that is emblematic of what is to follow.

Events later in September will include what you might call the ‘big three’ of astrology: a new season (when the Sun enters a cardinal sign), Mercury beginning its next retrograde, and a pair of eclipses — all in one month, which is not business as usual at all. Normally, the Sun entering cardinal Libra (as it will on Sept. 23) to precipitate an equinox, and autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, is the focus of the entire month. Not this year, however.

This year, the conjunction of the Sun and Moon in Virgo (on Sept. 13 for most of you), will be more than just a New Moon. It will also be a solar eclipse.

Only days after the Solar eclipse (on Sept. 17), Mercury will begin its third and final air-sign retrograde of the year in in the middle of Libra.

Finally, overnight between Sept. 27 and 28, the Full Moon in Aries will complete the trifecta by also being a total lunar eclipse. And those are just the highlights.

In sum, September will be no month to begin with a hapless declaration. Rather, if there were only one time in all of 2015 to declare yourself ready for anything and everything no matter how unusual, it would be now. If you can simply say that and mean it, the rest of September will be yours for the taking so long as you take it one day at a time, just as you did today.

Offered In Service   

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

By Amanda Moreno

This week several friends gave me suggestions as to what they thought I should write about. As diverse as the topics have been, they seem to fall under the umbrella of reality versus fiction, or a pervading sense of surreality and dreaminess, at the same time as the concerns of the physical realm have become emphasized.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

To try to combine them in a cohesive framework, I set out for the Planet Waves main page to see what my colleagues had to say about the astrology of the moment. The title of the weekly subscribers’ issue pretty much says it all: What is Real and What is Not. Of course! We’re in Pisces-Virgo Full Moon season.

One of the friends I consulted suggested via text that I write about love in the digital age. Having recently re-entered the dating pool, he has been trying out various online ‘dating’ platforms. His words to me were, “Like…what is intentionality in this realm?”

He then sent me a bunch of emoticons that pretty aptly expressed his experience: excitement at all the options, the ease of hitting up his phone and the apps on it, the sense of fishing for something…and then…silence…no contact…just emptiness. A shadow.

I myself have a kinda-mildly-like-it-as-a-necessary-evil / totally-hate-it relationship with online dating. I’ve actually met some remarkable people and had some really fulfilling relationships come out of those meetings. I’ve also become increasingly jaded and tend to deactivate my accounts regularly.

For me, it’s very much about the “what is real, what is not?” question. Often I’ll receive a message that makes it clear within a few lines that the person has projected all kinds of forevers and hopes and dreams onto the pictures they saw of me and the profile I’ve written. I find myself annoyed, thinking but you haven’t even met me! You don’t even know me!

I’d rather meet people to date in the wild, but that seems so rare. There’s also the fact that online dating is yet another vortex to get sucked into when avoiding the fact that shit seems to be going down in the world at a far more rapid pace than we ever dreamed imaginable.

Which brings me to another conversation I had today. A friend was commenting on her observation that many people seem to be hanging on for dear life these days. More specifically, she pointed out that even those who thought they were prepared or preparing for the magnitude of the transformation we’re facing seem to be finding themselves a bit caught off guard and shocked that all of it is actually happening in real time.

We’re here! Ecological tipping points are being reached, small towns in California are finding themselves without water, racial tensions are rising, genocide continues, the ecosystem is collapsing, Donald Trump is gaining in the polls…things seem to be accelerating at a rate that can make it very difficult to get our bearings in time and space, especially on top of personal emotional upheaval. There it is again — surreality.

I loved seeing that Len wrote about the current astrology in terms of a rite of passage. Using that kind of terminology is helpful in that it gives us a concept to work with that provides a framework we can navigate within. A rite of passage is an event or process that marks the transition between one stage of life and another. On the collective level, it is marking the transition from one paradigm to another.

During a rite of passage or vision quest there is often a core fear that is faced. This movement creates tension as we move from one identity to another. The tension generates creative energy that allows a new facet of our identity to emerge, bringing something new into the world.

Eric describes Jupiter in Virgo as a nice description of the initiation of that creative process, which is something we can use as a catalyst for change. When taken in the context of rite-of-passage astrology, what comes to mind for me is the potential for bringing the Piscean fantasy down into the material world, hopefully by the initiation of a Virgoan creative process.

What does that mean? A creative process that is embodied, practical and rooted in intention. Hopefully an intention to serve — be that serving the greater good or just a specific purpose in our personal lives. In other words, what fantasies or dreams can serve us moving forward?

In my own life, I have been noticing the surreality in many ways. I have been watching documentaries such as The Human Experiment or Frontline’s episodes about government spying and “nightmare” bacteria. At the same time, the skies over Seattle have been this eerie, apocalyptic yellow due to the fires burning all over the state. Sewage spills in the lake have closed beaches. The Olympic Mountains, home to our state’s rainforest, are at 3% of their normal rainfall. I could go on.

As everything seems to be speeding up and getting more surreal, however, I’ve been coming home into my body and truly anchoring into my life. Through continued dietary change and lots of learning about the connection between the gut and the brain, I’ve been making a commitment to being here. I feel grounded and centered, even though deeply emotional content continues to arise. I am aware that whatever new identity is coming to the surface, it is more committed, more secure and more aware that we have to change our cultural conditioning towards acceptable ways of living immediately, and that I have to exist in a way that embodies that knowing. It’s an intense awareness, but the calm I feel is surreal.

The Virgo-Pisces axis is so fascinating to me because it speaks to the need for intentional commitment to some kind of practical service at the same time as it reminds us that we have to let go and that nothing is permanent. I find myself in a space where I am focusing on health and achieving goals at the same time as I have invited the universe to guide me, knowing that at any time my ideas of where I’m heading might need to shift. I am trying to accomplish at the same time as I am surrendering.

I’m reminded of a class I took in grad school about the life of Carl Jung and the spiritual crisis of our times. For part of the final assignment we had to create four mandalas, each of which was representative of some part of our spirituality. The fourth mandala was to represent our ideal spiritual vision for our lives.

I am a horrible visual artist, but really got into the project. For this fourth image I wanted to paint the circle of the mandala nestled within a tree. I was so looking forward to painting each individual leaf, as I was working with the Virgo-Pisces axis a lot at that point in my life, and individual leaf painting felt like a pretty epic Virgo activity.

About a third of the way through I realized I hated what I was creating. I had drawn the trunk and stems of the tree and then began the leaves and it looked ridiculous. The colors were all wrong, and it was quite clear that I was not going to be able to make the image in my head translate to the canvas. I felt anxious and then angry. I dabbed my paintbrush into a glob of paint, self-critical scripts all pumping in my brain, and then began to mindlessly blot out all of the leaves, knowing the painting was ruined.

About three minutes into my furious blotting and dabbing a funny thing happened. I realized I was filling the tree in with leaves — but leaves that looked completely different from what I had intended. The shape and textures and color variations created the image of the tree without need for each individual leaf being painted. I started laughing and realized I had just followed the flow right back into Pisces, giving up and surrendering my vision and ending up with what I had wanted anyway. I’d simply gotten there a different way.

The Virgo energy is integral to our ability to discern what is real and what is not, and to bring the fantasy into reality. We have faced so many of these catalysts for change in recent years, and from my point of view now we are being called to step out and consciously co-create a new world. Even at the most subtle levels or with small steps, and using discernment as to what steps make sense, we can allow space for the divine to come through, inviting it to guide the way. Using the blend of Virgo and Pisces, we can tap into creative intent, becoming a catalyst for change at whatever level responds.

By Sarah Taylor

The Prince of Disks, The Magus, and the Ace of Wands. From planning and preparation, to ignition, to fire. This is the journey depicted in the cards in front of us this week — though a more accurate description would be “the potential journey”: an Ace, while powerful, refers to what is available, but which doesn’t necessarily have to be acknowledged or used.

Prince of Disks, The Magus, Ace of Wands from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

There are single figures on the first two cards, and no figures on the third. It’s you, in collaboration with a force that, as The Magus, you are fully equipped to draw from, but which you may opt not to harness at all, whether deliberately or by default. In other words, the power of these three cards in combination is in your hands. No-one else’s. Or no other human’s, anyway. But we’ll get to that a little later.

The Prince of Disks is the Röhrig equivalent of the Knight of Pentacles in the Rider-Waite Smith tarot deck. He is the venturing, questing energy of Disks, or earth — anything that we experience in material form. Lying at the further end of the spectrum to Wands (fire, Eros, creativity; significantly less tangible), the Prince of Disks’ realm is one that is denser, slower to action and yet with the potential to stick around for a while.

Looking at the image on the Prince’s crown, he is an architect. He holds the blueprints, and it’s his job to go out and look for the best materials for the job. He is a visionary, and also an idealist, being younger than both the Queen and the Knight (the King). He is persistent — perhaps even stubborn. This stubbornness can serve him very well at times, though, because without this dogged pursuit of the plans in his mind, and the tenacity to see them through, nothing would get made — or nothing of much (personal) value anyway.

There is an interesting parallel between the Prince of Disks and The Magus; and a fundamental difference too.

The parallel is the light source in each picture, both associated with the figures’ crowns. With the Prince, the light is more contained, sitting at the heart of the plans of what looks like an amphitheatre. Performance; a place where one’s mettle is tested; a place where one has the chance to shine.

With The Magus, that light has turned supernova. Or, to put it another way: when taken in sequence with last week’s reading, the zero point field of The Fool has exploded into matter with the arrival of The Magus. Card 0 (The Fool) in the major arcana is now followed by Card 1 (The Magus). Binary. We exist in a universe defined by duality.

As The Magus, your plans can now be implemented because you are a master-implementer. As magician, you can draw your vision into existence. The slower methodology reflected in the more contained light of the Prince of Disks, has become fibreoptic — zipping along a creative continuum at a rate of knots that demands the kind of mental dexterity and access to invisible states of creativity that The Magus, as Mercury, is made for.

As an aspect of your personality — the one that endeavours and endures — The Prince of Disks has laid the groundwork for the current spell that lies on the crafting table in front of you. Now, as a Soul-based archetype, an aspect of you that is not limited to your personality-based, human form — The Magus — is asking to be given the space to do what it does best.

The catch? You may not be entirely in the know as to the when, how, and why of this process.

The reason for this is that an archetype acts behind the scenes and under the surface. It is not wholly accessible to our immediate state of consciousness, if at all. We may sense its presence; we may feel its energy moving through us; we may sometimes know what it is that is pulling us to some aspect of Soul work. (Sometimes we may choose to call one in or to partner with it in an act of alchemy with equally unpredictable results.)

When an archetype does become known to us, we can either 1) ignore it, 2) try to guide or steer it, or 3) let go and ride with it. I’d suggest that the third option is the one that we are least inclined to trust or to follow.

We do so like to feel in control.

An invitation: why not sit down for a minute or two and look into the eyes of The Magus looking at you? What do you see? What does he see in you? What is his expression telling you about what needs to start, given that you’ve been planning for long enough? Where is it that letting go (of doubts, preconceptions, ingrained habits) and seeing what happens may serve you?

Because the final card, the Ace, is yet another “1” card. Baby, if you had ignition before, now you have twice the fire. But only if you reach up and take it. This can be a tricky thing to do; there is something deeply entrenched in our psyches about taking fire and the consequences associated with that (Prometheus, anyone?).

Except here, if there is balance, then the story is different. You are fully equipped to play with those matches. First, you have a meticulously planned grounding and sense of responsibility. Second, you have the activation of an archetype whose primary role is to wield a wand (and a cup, a sword and a disk, for that matter). Third, the presence of the Ace means that it is a gift that is being extended to you — or soon will be.

Bear that word in mind: “gift.” A gift in its literal sense has no conditions attached to it. It is given, pure and simple. All you need to do is to take it. The time is coming, and if you’re not sure you’ll know when that is, then maybe it’s time to stop thinking you need to know. Maybe a part of you — the one looking at you from the centre of the reading, the most tangible he may ever be — knows just fine.

Maybe that’s why it’s called magic.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Prince of Disks (the airy aspect of earth), The Magus (Mercury), Ace of Wands (the pure, limitless potential of fire)

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.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

The week had its ups and downs. With the Dow taking fits, Starbucks issued a memo to its baristas to be particularly gentle with their twitching customers. Farther down the consumer food chain, McDonalds’ customers barely noticed. The panic has largely subsided, although China seems to have lost its hard edge as the nation most likely to swallow us whole.

A third-grader in Georgia brought a gun to school and accidentally killed a classmate, a shooting at Savannah State resulted in one death, and murder was televised in Moneta, Virginia when a reporter and cameraman were killed by a disgruntled ex-employee during a live broadcast. The latter incident prompted Obama to call on the public to rally for gun law changes, saying the shooting “broke his heart.”

That was the statement that prompted teen-killer George Zimmerman to call President Obama an ignorant baboon. Frankly, I find it fascinating that a person so obviously non-white feels competent to use skinhead rhetoric, or that people who should know better indulge in name calling. Cases in point: John Boehner called Ted Cruz a jackass, and The Donald renewed his feud with FOX by calling Megyn Kelly a bimbo.

Joe Biden may be running in 2016, or maybe not, although it would be damned strange if he didn’t. He’s been running one way or another since the 1980s. His late son, Beau, urged him to run, but that very wound, still so fresh, may be the stopper card in the deck. Meanwhile, Joe is going through the motions, meeting with Elizabeth Warren and potential donors.

Bernie Sanders got the endorsement of respected black activist Dr. Cornel West as well as faux-candidate Deez Nuts, who was revealed to be a 15-year-old Iowa high school student named Brady Olson. Brady decided he’d run after hearing that a cat from Kentucky, Limberbutt McCubbins, was making a presidential bid. Although unsure how the feline is faring, Deez Nuts is polling at 9% nationally.

This was the week that Donald Trump put a fork in the miniscule possibility that he might capture the White House by tossing Univision’s Jorge Ramos out of his presser. He needs 45% of the Hispanic vote in order to succeed, but remains seemingly oblivious to their disenchantment with his xenophobia. He says he’s (under)paid tens of thousands of them in his day and they all love him dearly. Uh-huh.

Ramos, who left Mexico because he felt stifled as a journalist, prides himself on tough questions, none of which Trump can, or will, entertain. Watching the two go at one another should remind us that riches do not assure integrity, nor can they put a dent in the dignity of honest men. Seems to me the vain man made a strategic error in insulting the proud man, highly respected by the Latino, Cuban and Hispanic communities.

Donald’s illogical ‘plan’ to deport some 11 to 12 million souls has earned him a new endorsement, that of the white supremacist publication The Daily Stormer, which is urging its Neo-Nazi readership to support Trump as the only viable candidate. Which brings me to an early Trump supporter, Rush Limbaugh.

As a broken clock is right twice a day, Rush occasionally makes sense, although you have to dig for it. In the first days of Trump’s ascension to Pub favorite, Limbaugh loudly bemoaned the media’s disapproval of Donald’s candid speech as “uncivil discourse.” In part, he was also taking a hit at Establishment Republicans — this was, of course, before the truly cynical candidates hastened to shift right to try to capture their share of Bagger outrage.

This was all about the dreaded political correctness that is infecting the nation, Rush insisted, the sheeple-pleasing determination about what is acceptable for public discussion. The combination of liberal media [sic] and establishment politics kills off the GOP’s brightest and best. Said Rush, “This is how they get rid of Republicans. Should I throw a name out there? Sharon Angle. Todd Aiken … Sarah Palin. Any number of them. I mean the list is long.”

While the blusterfuck shock jock from Missouri surely seems delusional about which folks are representative of the nation’s brightest, he’s buried an important point. The media and establishment can push worthy candidates to the edge of the herd by simply insisting that they are unelectable, but this time it isn’t working as usual.

The Pubs are desperate to get Trump off center stage, while the last person corporate America wants to deal with is still-surging Bernie Sanders. Both are exceeding expectation, and neither is ready to fold, nor should they. It’s long past time we had this painful, revealing and informative national conversation.

Despite proclamations from the talking heads, these outlier candidates do not speak to the fringe. They speak to those who have watched the federal system fail. Each side wants a different result. The left wants to fix the system while the right wants to kill it off, and both Trump and Sanders are well positioned to take the nation down his respective path.

Today, Bernie challenged the Dems to give up on establishment politics and establishment economics. He challenged them to create a no-nonsense movement or prepare to fail as a party. The old and the young seem to agree. It’s a positive sign that many more Republicans have become Bernie admirers than vice-versa, and no wonder. Bernie’s politics are no more radical than were Eisenhower’s, nor are many of the policies he champions, and those values he represents define the most stable period of the twentieth century.

My comments are just tip of the iceberg, of course, but it’s taken two days to tippy-tap this far on my tablet. With something like 400 days before this election — and powerful transits to influence them — we’re just beginning to talk it through. If Biden jumps in, the whole mix changes.

The choice of a productive future remains ours to make. As Bernie says, “If we stand together, there is nothing we can’t accomplish,” and that’s the goal: to put aside petty differences, come together over common cause, and transform our nation into a government worthy of 21st century challenges.

(By the way, I want to thank Geoff for his kind contribution to my Fix The Computer project, which would put me back on the road to being technologically functional. If any of you would like to throw something in the hat, please visit PayPal and contribute to judeshere@yahoo.com or send a note to that addy for a snail-mail option, with my gratitude.)