Dear Friend and Reader:

Eric has just finished recording the Pisces video for The Sacred Space of Self, your 2018 Spring Reading. Soon, all 12 will be available for instant access. He burst out of the door before we had time to see what color shirt he was wearing, but he’ll be back tomorrow to tell you more about what’s in the readings.

In the meantime we have a new sample video for you, featuring the four cardinal signs: Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. We also now have individual sign purchases available — though it would be much more of a bargain to get the all-12 deal, which is still available to Planet Waves members for just $77.

The Sacred Space of Self contains invaluable information on the forthcoming Mars retrograde, which is less than a month away; along with Chiron in Aries, and Uranus in Taurus. The videos are relevant for your Sun, Moon and rising signs, and you may share them with loved ones.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

As you know, Mars will be retrograde for most of the summer, for two months beginning on June 26. Mars retrogrades happen every other year, and each is distinctive. It’s not just the sign where it happens that defines the unique property of the retrograde, but primarily what is happening with the outer planets that describe the invisible background layer of existence.

Wifi signals as they would look if we could see them, on the national mall. Most of us live with 24-hour wifi, plus many other bandwidths of radio signals — microwave, bluetooth, smart meters, ordinary radio and TV, etc., cascading over us all the time — part of why it’s so difficult to sleep.

Mars retrograde in Aquarius, as discussed last week, is about the social patterns of society. Given the connection of Aquarius to the internet, we will have a study, conscious or not, in what impact the internet has had on consciousness and social patterns.

We got an example of this with the Mars retrograde two years ago, when we all wondered how exactly the Donald Trump candidacy had any buoyancy at all, when during prior election cycles he would have sunk like a block of concrete. The answer is what the internet has done to consciousness and intellect.

Part of what is happening is that the structured nature of a literacy-based culture is degrading back to the tribal, oral and rumor/mythology based society that long predates it. Much of the insanity we are seeing in the world right now is associated with the inability to distinguish truth from hearsay or opinion, and further, the opinion that there is no truth. This is a form of nihilism.

Mars retrogrades are not evenly distributed through the signs. Far to the contrary. Of note, the forthcoming Mars retrograde in Aquarius will only be the second in living memory. Mars was retrograde briefly in Aquarius in 1924 and 1939; and it was retrograde entirely in Aquarius in 1971. Interestingly, during the only Mars retrograde that people might actually remember, Chiron had recently arrived in Aries.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Beginning in late June, Mars will be retrograde, mostly in Aquarius. Mars retrograde is a ritual we go through for about two months every two years, and it’s always significant; always an adventure. This is particularly true in our era when the role of men and maleness is being questioned, subjected to scrutiny and, in many ways, taking a clobbering.

Everyone has Mars in their chart, so it represents the masculine principle more specifically than it does men. Therefore, the issue is maleness, which is often unfairly attributed exclusively to male-bodied people. However, it would seem, looking at the world, that maleness, or a mode of existence known in Japanese as sanuki, is taking over reality.

These days, nearly everyone is a manager, a boss, a technician, a CEO, a COO, an organizer or some sort of agenda-driver. This is a kind of epidemic. We are now all expected to “make our lives happen,” to change the world, and even to be the master of the universe: after all, we “create our own reality.” Note: this is a lot of pressure to be under, and to put one another under.

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Editor’s note: this is the full PW members’ edition, featuring horoscopes by Eric, the Create feature, Planet Waves FM and more.

Dear Friend and Reader:

In just five days, Uranus will leave Aries and enter Taurus. Since Uranus is the planet of surprises and revolution, and Taurus is the sign of practicality and habit, this transition could feel a little jarring for some people. It’s already showing signs of manifestation in Mother Earth, in the form of volcanic activity and earthquakes.

Lava from fissure 7 slowly advancing to the northeast on Hookapu Street in the Leilani Estates subdivision on Kilauea Volcano’s lower East Rift Zone on May 5, 2018. Photo by HVO / USGS.

Perhaps the event in that category getting the most attention in the U.S. is the eruption of Mt. Kilauea, on the main island of Hawaii. Earthquakes and lava flow began at the beginning of the month, causing evacuations; by May 9, 27 houses had been destroyed and approximately 2,000 people had been evacuated.

On Wednesday, officials stated that the eruption could intensify, causing “ballistic projectiles” weighing as little as a few pounds or as much as several tons to be thrown in all directions, to a distance of just over half a mile — with pebble-sized rocks ejected several miles.

“At this time, we cannot say with certainty that explosive activity will occur, how large the explosions could be, or how long such explosive activity could continue,” the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said in an update on Wednesday, according to Time magazine. Whether it does depends partly on whether the lava within the summit of Kilauea falls to the level of the groundwater, which would produce steam-driven explosions.

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Editor’s note: this is the full PW members’ edition, featuring your weekly horoscopes, the Create feature, Planet Waves FM and more.

Dear Friend and Reader:

If you follow the news, you might have noticed some stories that fit the following theme: things that had once run rampant coming up against greater awareness, the need for deep healing, and a social justice imperative. Not all the week’s news stories fit this general shape, but many do. You might even sense some of those themes in your personal life, or find that certain news stories are resonating with you quite strongly.

Photo by Amanda Painter.

Consider these examples: Bill Cosby’s retrial resulted in a guilty verdict on three counts of sexually assaulting Andrea Constand; a magistrate in Australia has ordered Cardinal George Pell, one of the Vatican’s most senior officials, to stand trial on decades-old sexual abuse charges; women executives at Nike have parlayed an internal, informal survey about long-term sexual harassment and gender discrimination (much of which had been reported to human resources and ignored) into an apparent reorganization of the company.

Additionally, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un promised on Monday to immediately suspend nuclear and missile tests and dismantle one of its nuclear test sites, after a diplomatic meeting with South Korean leader Moon Jae-in. He even pledged to abandon his nuclear weapons if the United States agrees to formally end the Korean War and promises not to invade his country. (We’ll see, but it is a fascinating statement.)

Between these stories of the pursuit of sexual justice and a potential cessation of certain nuclear and war-oriented activities, there’s a common thread. Something that had been running amok in an institutionally sanctioned or corporate/governmental environment, with far-reaching consequences (Pholus in Capricorn), is meeting up with greater awareness in personal and collective realms (Chiron on the Aries Point — the first degrees of Aries). Chiron and Pholus are in a square aspect that is exact on Saturday.

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Editor’s note: this is the full PW members’ edition, featuring your May monthly horoscopes, the Create feature, Planet Waves FM and more.

Dear Friend and Reader:

This week’s astrology is building to a Full Moon in Scorpio on Sunday evening. We’re approaching that event while riding on the energetic coattails of an aspect that has to do with the constructive and destructive uses of power. So if you feel like your week has been marked by things like interpersonal conflict, or situations where you’re having to work hard to figure out the best ways to express yourself and take decisive action, this could be why.

Photo by Amanda Painter.

Today’s aspect, which has been coloring the week thus far, is the conjunction in Capricorn between Mars and Pluto. You can read a little more about that in this week’s Monday Astrology Diary.

One hallmark of this aspect is the need to be aware that you’re thinking primarily about your own best interests — in terms of changes that you want to make — while figuring out how your interests and those of others are interdependent. Then you can do some heavy lifting to accomplish a lot.

Similarly, the chart for the Scorpio Full Moon on Sunday shows a need to take action. At 8:58 pm EDT (00:58 UTC Monday), the Moon in early Scorpio makes its exact opposition to the Sun in Taurus (the Full Moon). The Sun and Moon are also square the lunar nodes.

Put most simply, the lunar nodes are two hypothetical points related to the Moon’s orbit.
Having the Scorpio Moon and the Taurus Sun making right angles to the North Node in Leo and the South Node in Aquarius this Sunday means that we’re approximately halfway between eclipse seasons. You might take some time to think about what decisions you made and what actions you took between late January and mid-February, when the last pair of eclipses occurred.

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Image by Christine Yates.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Chiron is now in Aries. Its eight-year trek through Pisces is ending, and a new era in astrological history is beginning. By any metric, the theme is individuality.

I don’t mean individuality in the sense of being a member of a tribe, or a movement, or an organization, or a TIKI-torch brigade. I don’t mean drinking Pepsi, which makes you different from someone who drinks Coke. This is not about something you tattoo onto your skin, but rather the cultivation of your soul.

Stains On Glass by Christine Yates.

Chiron in Aries can be summed up in two words: self-actualization.

This is usually defined as a noun, which is a thing: “the realization or fulfillment of one’s talents and potentialities, especially considered as a drive or need present in everyone.”

I think of it more as a verb, a process, and both a journey within oneself, and the experience of growing, and bringing what you contain outward to the world. This process and the natural impulse that drives it are often buried beneath thick blankets of denial and hazy self-awareness, lost in habit, and worn down by resistance.

Perhaps most of all, the desire to self-actualize is often sacrificed to what seems like a more primal need to conform to what others expect of you, or what you think they expect. This style of conformity is propagated in early childhood, by what Wilhelm Reich called the miniature authoritarian state, the family. Usually, curiosity is its first casualty; independent-minded people are always curious.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

From the look of this weekend’s astonishing astrology, we’re about to go through a stargate. By that I mean time is moving in quantum leaps rather than what we think of as linear. It’s true that since late 2012, we have been off the map.

Picture by Makamuki0.

That’s one of a few ways to “explain” why this is happening: in the Mayan model of time, time is over. This jives with the internet model of time, where everything happens simultaneously and everywhere.

In “internet time,” we have all projected ourselves onto the astral plane in the most extravagant out-of-body experience since before we incarnated. The problem with going out-of-body is that it’s a little like being dead.

Being alive is being in your body. Being dead is being out of your body. If you want a possible explanation about why reality is so twisted, morphed and unreal, consider the notion that we’re wandering around the planet like ghosts roaming an old mansion, who don’t know that we’ve passed on.

That’s when it’s handy to have a spirit medium send them to the light. I’m an astrologer here to call you back into your body.

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