Editor’s Note: This post is the full Planet Waves members’ issue, complete with Eric’s horoscope and the Create section.

Dear Friend and Reader:

As you head into the weekend (for many U.S. readers, a long holiday), you’ll want to know that the astrology has some things to say about power struggles and confrontations. Mercury and Mars, both in Cancer, are opposing Pluto in Capricorn. At their best, this pair of oppositions can be leveraged to get beneath the surface of things.

Photo by Amanda Painter.

Mercury opposite Pluto, exact at 8:36 pm EDT tonight (00:36 UTC Friday), is especially good for deep research into a topic or uncovering a secret. With the sign Cancer involved, this could easily mean getting to the underlying emotions that are driving an interpersonal situation or reaction.

In its most productive expression, Mars opposite Pluto (exact July 2 at 8:02 am EDT / 12:02 UTC) can be used to make positive, creative changes in your life.

Again, with Cancer involved, that might mean giving yourself an ‘attitude adjustment’ if your emotional reactivity has been swinging to extremes. What’s really bothering you?
Or it could relate to overdue updates to your actual home environment, just as one example. The main idea is to use the energy constructively and consciously in some way, so that it does not end up using you.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

A few weeks ago, I was invited to participate in a training program for women as a male model and actor. The essence of the class was teaching women to be in their power, and how to treat men as people.

Kasia Urbaniak, headmistress of The Academy.

The exercise I took part in was late in the weekend, Sunday evening for a class that had started Friday night. The instructions were simple. One of the five men who was serving as a “model male” would sit in a chair. One of the students would approach him, with the instruction of making three observable statements of fact, for example, “You are wearing a gray suit.”

The effect was profound. For many of the women, it seemed like one of the most challenging things they had ever done. Some could barely speak. One was moved to tears, and the class had to pause so she could be consoled.

Leading the class was Kasia Urbaniak, former dominatrix with 17 years’ full-time experience, who had during those years also spent enough time in Daoist monasteries to come within four days of being ordained a nun.

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Sample from the audio file from this week’s edition of Planet Waves FM. The lines are the silent spaces between the words that my listener was complaining about.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Within the past year or two, I received a comment from a listener to Planet Waves FM, who complained that I pause too much when I’m speaking. He said that he would be running my program through a “truncate silence” filter, in order to condense my language. He wanted to speed up the pacing of my thought process. Apparently I think too slowly for him; if he only knew.

This is the perfect example of how electric media affects people: we come to expect being overwhelmed. By electric media, I mean the whole story arc of an electrically powered environment, from telegraph to electric light to digital. They all have one thing in common, which is electricity. (Technically, the word electronic refers to the presence of transistors, which are little electric switches.)

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James Comey, former director of the FBI, testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday morning. He explained how he was pressured by Trump to drop the investigation into the Russians meddling in the 2016 election. Photo by Doug Mills / The New York Times.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Before I touch on Friday’s Sagittarius Full Moon or today’s testimony by James Comey, I want to review one issue.

Donald Trump is currently president of the United States, and he didn’t win the election. He got 2,864,974 fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. Many presidents have won by a far smaller margin of victory, most notably John F. Kennedy, who beat Richard Nixon by just 112,827 votes — a margin of just 0.17%.

Donald Trump meeting with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian foreign minister, while James Comey was being fired. This photo was taken by TASS, the Russian (formerly Soviet) news agency. No members of the White House press pool (i.e. American reporters) were allowed into the room.

This is the simple truth. Trump lost the election, and won this weird thing called the “electoral vote.” I am aware that the Electoral College is in the federal constitution. So too is the idea that a black person is three-fifths of a person.

The actual issue of Trump losing the election but still taking office is not about the law; it’s not about politics; it’s a moral issue. The last time someone lost the “popular vote,” which means the vote, we got George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and a series of disastrous wars that have yet to end.

We got the Sept. 11 incident, which the administration knew was about to happen. We got the PATRIOT Act. We got torture and “extraordinary rendition.” We got uncontrolled surveillance of our telephones and internet accounts.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

The other day, looking at some astrology charts, and comparing them to the front pages of major news websites, I had an odd feeling. It was the sensation that the planets are going around and around, and the news is going around and around, which came with a question: does this story ever culminate?

Is there ever even a turning point where it’s possible to say that there’s some improvement in the human condition? I reckon that many sensitive, aware people are past the point where they think all we need to do is hope and pray.

Is astrology — and life — a trip on the Mad Teacup Ride?

I started to get inside the feelings of someone who is aware of current events and, following the astrology, is waiting for a day when there’s going to be some breakthrough, some sense of relief. Considered emotionally, the state of the world is, in a word, overwhelming. That counts whether you want to do something about it, or you’re in a position where you know you can’t do anything.

Notice something vital: what we think of as news coverage gives no hint how to process the material spiritually, or how to respond any other way. I’ve long found this to be curious. What, exactly, is the purpose of “the news,” except to influence and harvest public opinion? What are we supposed to do with everything we learn? How is it possible to process all the pain and struggle we’re exposed to?

The other day, The New York Times editorial board published a commentary called The Groundhog Day War in Afghanistan, pointing out that this military action has gone on nonstop for 16 years, at a cost of $800 billion and 2,000 American lives, “Where there is still no peace, and where everything seems to be going backward.”

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Photo of the chart for the Aug. 21, 2017, total solar eclipse (set for Washington, D.C.) and The Sun tarot card from the Voyager Tarot deck by James Wanless. Photo by Eric Francis.

Dear Friend and Reader:

On Monday, Aug. 21, 2017, the Moon will pass in front of the Sun, blocking the Sun and casting a shadow over the Pacific Ocean. As the Moon moves and the Earth turns, the shadow will pass just south of Portland, Oregon, traveling southeast, reaching maximum intensity near Memphis, Tennessee, passing through South Carolina and then out into the Atlantic.

This is the first eclipse to touch both coasts of the United States since 1918, though that one had maximum intensity over the Pacific Ocean south of Alaska, not on land. The Aug. 21 event will be the first eclipse to make landfall exclusively in the United States dating back to 1776. In that sense, it’s an unprecedented event, arriving at an unprecedented time in U.S. history.

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An early-morning tweet from Donald Trump today. The single greatest witch hunt? This is coming from someone who spent eight years accusing Pres. Obama of being born in Kenya.

Dear Friend and Reader:

News out of the Trump administration has moved this week at the speed of Uranus multiplied by Eris in Aries — the light-speed of the internet. The current cascade of events, peaking yesterday with the naming of a special prosecutor to investigate the various Russia affairs, will likely lead to the end of Trump’s presidency.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Tuesday evening, Donald Trump unleashed yet another shit storm when he fired James Comey, the director of the FBI. The facts and particulars are extremely complicated, and are changing by the hour. But the bottom line is, this is what you get when you have a paranoid, narcissistic, borderline-personality person in a position of extreme power.

Donald Trump meeting with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian foreign minister, while James Comey was being fired. This photo was taken by TASS, the Russian (formerly Soviet) news agency. No members of the White House press pool were allowed into the room.

Comey’s seemingly ambiguous role in the U.S. political structure, and his loyalties, were difficult to pin down. But one thing is clear: Comey, as head of the nation’s top law-enforcement agency, was leading the investigation of the Trump campaign’s many ties to Russia. Just last week, he sought to expand that inquiry, and requested additional funding and resources.

It’s also obvious, given the astrology of the weekend (featuring Mercury conjunct Uranus, another peak of the recent Mercury retrograde), and the Full Moon on Wednesday afternoon, that he had a panic attack. Or as the Daily News put it succinctly on Thursday, he threw a “Trumper tantrum.” Comey was scheduled to testify about Russia before Congress on Thursday, and the reports about Russia seem to be coming out in a steady, nonstop trickle that indicates the existence of a well.

Lacking any real political will from Congress, Comey was the one person who was an actual threat to Trump’s power. Trump, acting as if he was on his reality TV show, gave him the big “You’re Fired!” However, he can still be called to testify about exactly what he knew.

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