Category Archives: Full Planet Waves Edition

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Life Passages: The Return of Saturn

In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn drifted in the giant planet’s shadow for about 12 hours in 2006 and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. Here, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. This is the same Saturn that’s in your chart. Photo:Cassini Team.

I am older than I once was / And younger than I’ll be…
After changes upon changes / We are more or less the same
— Paul Simon, from the missing verse of “The Boxer”

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now
— Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Dear Friend and Reader:

As the world churns, the rest of the solar system keeps moving, silently and dependably. As it does, the current positions of the planets make what are called ‘transits’ to our natal chart — they touch and act on the positions of the planets when we were born. Many transits happen to everyone each year, but there are some events that stand out in the course of a lifetime.

In 1977, humans launched the Voyager 1 spacecraft (along with ts twin, Voyager 2) to take advantage of a favorable alignment of planets in the 1970s — the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction that was exact in 1981, with Uranus and Neptune right in the neighborhood. These aspects told quite a story in world history, from the election of Reagan to the fall of the Soviet empire.

One thing is for sure: these transits arrive, and when they do, the thing to do is meet them with clear intent and willingness to grow.

Most of the major transits (sometimes called key life transits) that astrologers work with involve the slow movers: Saturn, Uranus, Chiron, Neptune and Pluto. Howard Sasportas once described these as the gods of change, because when they come through our lives, our lives become different.

They are moments of transformation, and though not everyone has a ‘good time’ going through them, with astrological help they can be easier, more meaningful and more consciously useful. It’s rare, however, that people have astrological help or even the most basic information available to them.

Most people know of at least one key life transit — thanks to the Internet, ‘Saturn return’ is a household phrase. That’s the transit that happens when Saturn returns to its own natal position in your chart, completing a full 29-year cycle — one of the most meaningful steps on the way to adulthood. The second Saturn return is about restructuring one’s life on the way into later adulthood (what used to be called ‘retirement’).

There are many others, though, including the opposition of Uranus to its natal position, the square of Neptune to its natal position, and a diversity of Chiron transits. There are also some subtler Saturn transits, and a diversity of transits that are unique to an individual’s natal chart.

Planets Beyond Saturn

When we talk about key life transits, we’re mainly talking about Saturn and the planets beyond it. There are exceptions. For example, for part of its orbit, Chiron is considerably closer to the Sun than Saturn, though with profound effects. Sometimes a closer-in planet like Jupiter may be involved. But mostly we are talking about the experiences of the slow-movers, which gain strength and influence specifically for moving slowly.

For example, when Pluto makes a square to its natal position, that’s a turning point as well, happening these days at around age 36. For our grandparents, because Pluto was so much farther from the Sun during their lifetimes, that same transit happened at age 60, a very different time in one’s life. In the current era, the Pluto square is a necessary follow-up to the first Saturn return, a time to deepen one’s experience, to do cleanup work and to put the maturity one has earned to good use. The Pluto square takes matters to a deeper level, what you might call a depth of spiritual contact.

Uranus really is different. It orbits sideways and rotates backwards, to name two distinctions. It’s now considered the second-most distant ‘planet’ from the Sun, followed by Neptune. Illustration by Corey Ford, who has full-size prints available.

Uranus, which has an 84-year orbit, reaches the opposition point to its natal position these days when a person reaches age 42. That’s a big moment, and it happens just once in the course of a lifetime unless you live to age 126. Some call this the midlife crisis; I prefer to think of it as an opportunity for radical personal reinvention. This is true of other Uranus transits, sometimes to an equal extent, sometimes subtler.

Along the way, we experience a diversity of Chiron transits. These transits are a story all their own, happening on a different schedule for different age groups with each passing phase of time. Often Chiron transits exchange themes and events with other transits, and are sometimes timed synchronously. Yet because Chiron has an elongated orbit, every age group has its transits on a different schedule, with the exception of one, the Chiron return at approximately age 50.

Chiron is a massive comet (technically called a proto-comet) with an orbit in the shape of a stretched-out ellipse. It has an orbit just over 50 years, though it takes 15 years to go around half the solar system when it’s closer to the Sun, and 35 years to go around the other half when it’s far from the Sun. Because of this, some age groups can have the first square of Chiron to its natal position at age 7. Other age groups have it at age 15 and others at age 22, with much variability in between. Everyone has their own personal schedule of Chiron transits.

When you seek information from a professional astrologer, they’re likely to highlight the most recent, current and upcoming key life transits. They are relatively easy to work with, though the attitude of the astrologer makes a big difference in your perception of the transit you’re experiencing. If the astrologer says, “This is going to be difficult,” it’s more likely to be so. If your astrologer says, “This is going to be an adventure,” it’s much more likely to feel like one.

Many factors of your key life transits can be addressed without a personal reading; they have a lot in common.

When I work with a client during one of these transits, I take into account the qualities of the planet involved, the aspect it’s making to the natal position, as well as the qualities of the signs involved. I estimate that between a Saturn return in Libra and one in Scorpio, there may be about a 60% overlap in basic material. The sign placement offers additional clarity, and then there’s the house placement and the aspects to other planets, which further clarify things. Yet the most significant information comes from the client. As you read this article, consider the different times in your life and note what you’ve learned and what you’ve been through. The key life transits often weave together to tell one coherent story — notably, one that hasn’t yet ended.

The Timing of the Transits

In this article I will go over the basics of the Saturn return. (I will cover the other planets in later articles.) Saturn is in Scorpio, returning for all people with Saturn in that sign — those born between late 1982 through late 1985 are having their first return. There are a number of peak events within that time frame, and there will be a margin on either end for charts that are especially receptive to the transit (for example, if you’re born with Scorpio rising).

Most people use clocks and calendars to keep track of time, though that’s rather short-sighted. Astrologers use the motions of planets, which cover much longer spans of time. Saturn is one of the astrological factors that covers the topic of time, its use and its passage. Photo by Eric Francis.

Those born between late 1953 and late 1956 are currently experiencing their second Saturn return. Those born between mid-1969 and early 1972 are currently experiencing their Saturn opposition, as are those born between mid-1998 and mid-2001. (If you have Saturn in Leo or Aquarius, you’re currently experiencing a Saturn square.)

Uranus is now in Aries, and is currently making an opposition to the natal position of those born from around 1970 through around 1974, with subsequent years not far behind. This transit will affect people between about age 37 and age 43. Because planets often cluster up or form complex patterns, it’s possible to start experiencing the effects of a major transit earlier, and for it to extend well beyond the usually proscribed age range. The peak, however, is usually in the age ranges I’m describing.

Sometimes, however, the effects of a transit can seem to linger if we don’t ‘do the work’ of the transit, make the decisions or process the material that comes up during the transit. Often, there will be a subsequent transit following shortly to help with that. For example, not long after the Saturn return ends, there’s Pluto square Pluto. Soon after that passes by there is Uranus opposite Uranus.

Saturn: The Misunderstood Planet

Saturn may be the most misunderstood planet. Associated with structure, authority and stability, Saturn has been called many things by astrologers that have propagated considerable unnecessary negativity. I consider Saturn to be the internal governing principle. If you structure and run your own life, you won’t need someone to do it for you.

While you may hear Saturn associated with being stuck, there are few more dependable agents of change and progress than this planet. For those who fear loss, I would remind you of the words of Patric Walker, who suggested that Saturn always gives more than it takes away.

Stunning view of Saturn casting a shadow over its own rings. We had seen no such perspective on Saturn until the arrival of Cassini in the early 2000s. Photo: Cassini Team.

One of the most significant elements of Saturn is the structuring of time. Both the themes of ‘time’ and ‘structure’ are from old delineations, but the structuring of time is something I’ve adapted from the work of Dr. Eric Berne. In his book Games People Play, he describes the ability to structure time as a necessary prerequisite for sincere intimacy. We do not live forever, so if we want time enough for love, we have to make space for that experience. That’s a necessary element of maturity.

With Saturn it’s necessary that you do your part, and then it will do its part. This is to say, consider the themes I’ve mentioned. Be real to yourself and to what is indicated in your Saturn placement as you grow to understand it, and you’ll be at a considerable advantage over others without this understanding. There are often associations with parents where Saturn is involved, and in this respect the message is simple: resolve your relationship to them. Don’t let them run your life vicariously, and know when you’re aspiring (whether consciously or otherwise) to be them. You’re not them and they are not you; you are you.

Transits of Saturn have a few themes in common — development of maturity, the structure of our lives and the work that we do. Along with these themes, people undergoing Saturn transits will often experience changes or rearrangements in their relationships. This falls under the general heading of maturity and structure.

I know people who refuse to have intimate relationships with those who have not had their Saturn return; they are often too much like kids. When the Saturn return is done consciously, this is a transit that can help people settle into more grounded and mature attitudes and values. Your relationship to responsibility and the world around you is rearranged, usually in helpful ways.

Saturn Returns to Scorpio

That said, I suspect that the newest Saturn in Scorpio sub-generation is struggling a bit with these themes, owing mainly to the state of the world. I recently read that fully one-third of American adults are either unemployed or have given up looking for work. This placement lends itself to serious, clever and committed people who take using their resources wisely as a cornerstone of their lives, in a world that seems to be squandering everything it has.

People having their Saturn returns today have watched many peers become rich and famous for doing little or nothing. Kim Kardashian is just such a person. Along the way she was awarded $5 million in ‘damages’ for a far more boring sex tape than many other women her age make.

These natives are emerging into adulthood in a world where there is a radical imbalance in the distribution of resources — such as vast gaps between the pay of CEOs and ordinary employees. They watched the leaders of the banking system nearly cripple the economy and bankrupt the federal government, then the banksters walked away not only without prosecution but with millions of dollars in personal gain.

This is also one of the first crop of Saturn return people who grew up with the Internet. While unlike some of their younger siblings they were not born into the Internet, the IBM PC came out in August 1981 and the Macintosh came out in January 1984. That would be fine except for the ways in which computing rearranged the professional world, consumed many more jobs than it created and eventually fostered an environment where people could entertain themselves into oblivion.

Many of the people they see doing the entertaining have been catapulted to instant fame and fortune, and one thing that can hold back current Saturn return people is the expectation that this might happen to them. However, most (not all but most) very young people who find themselves living glamourous lives didn’t get there by mastering Saturn; they had something else going for them, and the adults around them provided the Saturn structure. This is one reason why so many famous young people cannot stay out of trouble.

Meanwhile, it’s difficult to imagine a sub-generation that’s seen more change in its short lifetime than this one. Between the day they were born and the day of their Saturn return, the world had gone through more revisions, renovations and recreations than all the open-source software combined. They are used to a world where something is new and exciting one day and irrelevant the next — and that won’t get you far with Saturn.

If there seems to be nothing to hang onto or no easy way in, that’s not an illusion. It’s a difficult fact of life that they must face. When they are ready to start taking on serious work assignments, there are fewer of those opportunities than ever.

It’s particularly cruel that those who sought an education are saddled with more college debt than any generation that came before them, with fewer work opportunities to help them pay that debt off.

Nearly all students graduate from their undergraduate education deep in debt, and many are struggling to find decent jobs to pay back the banks. The whole point of college loans is to create an educated workforce; now it seems merely about enriching the banks. Photo of Capen Hall at SUNY New Paltz by Eric Francis.

The real estate crisis has done little to lower rents, even as property values have plunged. Those at their Saturn return, who might ordinarily leave their parents’ home and the roomies behind, may be stuck living with others long past when it’s productive for them.

One of my readers described her dilemma eloquently. “All the possibilities available seem to overwhelm my ability to embrace even one of them fully. Which keeps me away from intimately relating to what is in front of me, whether it’s a partner, an idea, a possibility.”

She continued: “The fear of death seams to be pushing for a strong desire to accomplish something. An obsession with the future, and what to do to get there. The urge to share the body of artwork I have built up the last few years and to share the wisdom of the person I have become. At times, I even sense an imminent death, then an intense anxiety arises, of not having shared to the world my art, my love and my vision for the world and all people.

“I have a strong sense of who I am and what I am here to do. But it is the urge to do it and the fear that I won’t that is so prominent over the last weeks. The pressure feels as if it’s a one-time opportunity to grow up into what I will become.”

The Second Saturn Return

Those in their second Saturn return, in their late 50s, must really be looking at society in bewilderment right now. Those born in the mid-1950s were some of the original ‘save the world’ people — they were teenagers at the time of the first Earth Day, and those impressions never left them — but there’s a big mystery where the idealism went.

Their older siblings helped stop the Vietnam War, so they had the notion that social justice was possible. Now many more major wars later, none of those ideals have come to fruition. My sense is that many are ready to take up the good fight perhaps for the first time, now that their children are grown and many are watching their grandchildren grow up in an extremely uncertain, increasingly dangerous world. They too are struggling for a way into meaningful participation, but the shock must be even greater because they’ve lived through many phases of history when that participation really was possible.

Astronaut Dave Bowman catches a glimpse of himself as an old man in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film is filled with themes of Saturn, including many visual illustrations of the nature of space and time, and visits to other dimensions.

There is the pressure of leadership because at the second Saturn return one truly becomes an ‘elder’ in society — one entrusted with moral leadership. And unless they’ve had very successful careers, their plight for survival is often harder than those who are at their first Saturn return. In this world it’s not possible to be mature enough.

Yet I think that if they are able to use the restructuring power of Saturn and not succumb to the pessimism that really is possible with Saturn in Scorpio, they will be able to provide a solid foundation for the generations that came after them. They are not too old to think for the future, and future generations are counting on it.

Meanwhile, there are many deep personal issues that call for resolution when Saturn in Scorpio is aspected by itself or by another planet. By the second Saturn return, the confrontation with fertility and sexuality is not as potent as the confrontation with mortality, as those experiencing it see many of their elders depart the planet, sometimes in groups. One difference between the first and second Saturn returns is that at the second, the thought of mortality is less an abstraction and more a reality. Many of my readers have commented about what it’s like to see their elder relatives in decline.

Physical health is usually a greater concern at the second Saturn return. Yet despite this, many at this time seem to start their lives over, get divorced and begin new relationships, change careers and even go back to school to develop additional skills.

For those with Saturn in Scorpio at either Saturn return, there may be titanic questions about the role of sexuality and relationships in their lives, which are now coming to a boil. For people entering their second Saturn return, subject matter that was seemingly left behind during their 30s can come right back, seeking attention and healing. Perhaps people are not expecting to explore questions about sexuality or their sexual legacy in their late 50s, but we are after all talking about Scorpio here.

The second Saturn return can be a time of reclaiming one’s life and pursuing interests outside of work and family. Photo of Jim in his Woodstock studio by Eric Francis.

I’ve been doing some reading in the old astrology texts, and all authors who have commented on Saturn in Scorpio have noted its deep feelings and its tendency to secrecy — these individuals don’t give up their pearls easily, whether black or otherwise. Now those feelings and secrets are working their way to the surface, and this may leave those with this placement feeling especially vulnerable and asking the deepest questions of their lives.

And then there can be the dawning of that elusive thing, wisdom. As one of my readers wrote recently, her life “would be most dramatic if it weren’t so quiet here, in my body and person and whereabouts. I’ve spent the last decade building a house. Now it’s about done. I have a home, something I’ve wanted since childhood. Mostly, I have equanimity, a quality that always eluded me, that I’ve often prayed for, and this translates into more confidence, more of a feeling of myself and not a cloak or a ghost.

“I started reading poetry again. I used to be a woman who sought advice everywhere, and now I’m the rock in the stream, all the chaos flowing around and over me. I don’t have to attend so many seminars, read so many books, which makes for more time.”

Ah yes, were it so. Were it so.

Lovingly,

Truth or Dare in the Manifestation Zone

We’re about a week out from the last of three eclipses — a lunar eclipse in Sagittarius — but before we get there, there’s even bigger news: Monday, May 20, is an exact contact of the Uranus-Pluto square. Uranus-Pluto is the defining signature of this current era, ‘the 2012 aspect’, though we will not know its full effect and meaning until years later.

The third contact of the Uranus-Pluto square, the 2012-era aspect. There are many other squares in this chart, including Mercury and Venus square Chiron, and the Sun square Neptune. This chart is about the provocation to action, but it also questions human capacity for accepting and working with what is true.

But it’s easy to see in action: sudden upheaval, sparks of revolution, and the potential for evolution. We would be wise to question how exactly this aspect is working, however. In other words, whose revolution are we in the midst of? Are progressive or regressive forces getting more traction?

Monday’s Uranus-Pluto contact is exact at 7:02 pm EDT. The chart to the right is set for Washington, D.C. This will be the third out of seven exact contacts, which stretch from June 2012 through March 2015 (with a few years on either side when the effects are noticeable). Also on Monday, Venus becomes the first of the personal planets in Gemini to square Chiron. This is the beginning of the expression of ‘what is really true’, in response to questions Neptune has been raising.

Chiron will get your attention, especially if there have been lapses of integrity in your love relationships (Venus), letting you know in no uncertain terms how you can heal. Hint: it will take an active choice to come into alignment with the truth.

Meanwhile, Mercury, Venus and the Sun have been making a series of squares to Neptune, adding a chaotic, deceptive energy to the mix. If we’re going to have a revolution, it’s going to start with telling the truth. But that’s not what the sport or business of politics is based on. So we either need a total transformation in the political realm or to take the discussion outside of politics, or both.

Uranus square Pluto has the potential to open up our cultural fabric in a way that lets us weave something new; something that actually moves us forward as a society. But that will take holding a positive vision and being vigilant in recognizing those who would fill the opening with ‘advancements’ that actually set us back. The vision must be backed with action, and not ‘action by others’. This is about each of us, individually and collectively.

On the more internal, personal level, consider Uranus-Pluto a kind of booster rocket for whatever evolutionary leaps you’re making during this eclipse season. Whether you’re feeling these eclipses as subtle tugs to your subconscious or clarion calls too loud to miss, Uranus and Pluto will likely add some spark and muscle to the process — if you work the energy.

Chart of the Sagittarius lunar eclipse on May 25, 2013. Note the triple conjunction in Gemini — of Venus, Mercury and Jupiter. The Sun and Moon are both square Neptune, a powerful applying square. Saturn and Neptune are in a trine aspect, something that deserves a closer look, which we will do soon.

The Sun ingresses Gemini Monday, May 20, and will make a square to Neptune. That early Gemini Sun is then met by the May 25 lunar eclipse in Sagittarius, which has both the Moon and the Sun square Neptune. In the current week, Venus and Mercury are square Neptune.

So what’s with all these squares to Neptune? They represent questions of integrity. It’s about what is true, what you believe, how you describe your experience. In other words, the integrity piece is about speaking the truth and discerning what is not true. The May 25 eclipse looks like it bursts the bubble on illusions. That’s to say, you probably don’t want to be floating on one of those bubbles when the moment arises. The time to get gritty is now, though the sensation may be that ‘real’ is the least convenient option of them all.

Remember, where there are eclipses in the neighborhood, we’re in a manifestation zone, where patterns are noticed, erased and rewritten. If you’re someone who claims to live for truth, now is the time to question and notice everything that is not necessarily true. Subject everything to the same basic line of questioning. Scrutinize your intent. Listen to what you say and what others say to you.

Notice when you’re believing something that’s not true, or saying something that’s not true. This is a habit. So are the white lies that we tell and believe. You could say this is a game of truth or dare. Are you willing to speak your truth, and in particular, to speak the truth of your feelings? Would you dare yourself to take action on who or what really matters to you? That is a pattern I think many people would say they want — to let go of little deceptions, muster up some courage, and take an authentic emotional risk.

This Week in the Anti-Sixties

As we approach the third of seven Uranus-Pluto squares Monday — that’s what I’ve been calling the 2012-era aspect, which spans from 2012-2015 with a nice margin on either side — politicians in Washington appear to have gone even more mad than usual. You would think these people have nothing better to do and plenty of time on their hands because everything else in the world is going so well.

Michele Bachmann spoke at a Tea Party rally this week and called for the impeachment of Barack Obama. This week all records were broken for use of the words ‘impeach’ and ‘scandal’.

The frenzy is synchronous with the squares of Mercury and Venus to Neptune (not good for straightforward honesty and great for deceptive chaos) as well as the approach of an eclipse of the Moon in Sagittarius on Sunday, May 25, the third of three eclipses this spring. Here in the United States, four stories worth knowing about dominated the past five days of the news cycle.

One was the Republicans’ ongoing uproar over the attack on a CIA post in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, including repeated hyperbolic calls for impeachment of Pres. Obama, and none other than Minister of Truth Dick Cheney weighing in claiming that Obama is a liar. At least we’re starting to hear that the “diplomatic mission” was associated with the CIA rather than having it be called an embassy or a consulate, but that’s more like a true rumor than something that’s easy to track down.

In other words, what happened last Sept. 11 seems not to have been the result of normal politics or diplomacy; it was a covert operation gone bad. However, that’s not what the Republicans are saying; they’re selling it as some kind of nondescript scandal in a media campaign designed to inflict maximum damage on Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time and who will probably run for president in 2016. Everyone seems to understand this.

As POLITICO noted Friday, house Republicans have the power to call a select committee to investigate the issue (that is, to do something serious if they have real concerns), but that would cost millions of dollars (which would not look frugal) and sideline everyone not on the committee who is currently making a lot of political hay out of the issue.

Dick Cheney called Obama a liar this week. AP photo.

They would have to shut up and let the committee do its work. Therefore, it’s more effective to just let the chaos unfold, no matter how ridiculous it makes them look.

Next was the revelation that the Justice Department subpoenaed the telephone records of hundreds of AP reporters in several major bureaus last year, purportedly to track down who in the federal government had leaked information about a foiled al Qaeda bomb plot based in Yemen.

This included office phone records, cell phone records and much besides. Attorney General Eric Holder was being interviewed by the FBI and had to recuse himself from the case.

While what happened to the AP, a worldwide news agency based in New York City, seems to be collateral damage in Obama’s obsession with stopping leaks from his government, there is an obvious chilling effect that all journalists are feeling. That is to say, it’s scary to do real journalism when you think that your phone records or emails are going to end up in the hands of federal investigators, which would reveal all of your sources, contacts and private details of your life. There remains a lot of confusion over how this even happened.

Richard Nixon jumped into the political fray this week, holding a press conference where he now resides, in purgatory, calling for the resignation of Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, heads rolled at the IRS after the revelation that the agency was scrutinizing conservative groups who had applied for tax-exempt status. Two of the agency’s top officials were forced to resign over a policy of scrutinizing groups with names that included “Tea Party” and “patriot” who had applied for tax-exempt status.

This began in 2010 after the Citizens’ United decision of the Supreme Court declared that money is a form of speech and should flow freely like words from the mouth of a preacher.

And two more high-ranking military officers with oversight over sex crimes were accused of sex crimes, bringing the total to three [see related story below]. Meanwhile, Republicans in the House of Representatives tried to repeal Obamacare for the 37th time this week.

If it seems that Republicans are engaging in a coordinated assault on Obama’s ability to get anything done, that’s an accurate perception. If it seems that Obama continues to rack up an atrocious record on respect for basic civil liberties, that is also true.

The Military’s Sexual Assault Epidemic

News broke this week of yet more members of U.S. military sexual assault prevention task forces being investigated for committing — you guessed it — sexual assault.

Earlier this week, an Army coordinator of sexual assault prevention at Fort Hood, Texas, was accused of multiple charges; last week, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, head of the Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, was charged with groping a woman.

Senate subcommittee on Personnel Chair Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. addresses the third panel on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, during the hearing on sexual assault in the military. Finally, women leaders are cracking open the military’s bullshit handling of rape. Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP.

And just last night, The Associated Press reported that Lt. Col. Darin Haas, the manager of the prevention program at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, was arrested for stalking.

The disgusting irony is driven home by a report released last week by the Pentagon on rape and sexual assault in the U.S. military. An estimated average of 70 sexual assaults are committed daily within the U.S. military, or 26,000 per year. Only 3,374 of those sexual assaults were actually reported for the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2012.

Out of those, only 190 were sent to a court-martial proceeding.
Notably, just over half the cases in this latest report involved male victims.

“There’s a sense that, well, because you’re a woman, you’ll be sexually assaulted; because women are in the military, inevitably they’ll be sexually assaulted — which is completely false,” said Anu Bhagwati, executive director and co-founder of Service Women’s Action Network, on Democracy Now! on May 8. “And that rape mythology has to be addressed head-on, because still the vast majority of servicemembers are men.”

Clearly the military can’t handle this from within. These attitudes are too widespread and too deeply entrenched, but the Uranus-Pluto square is beginning to bust open the hermetically sealed structure of military legal proceedings for sexual assault cases. The lack of access to civilian legal proceedings is a huge obstacle to justice for victims of rape in the military.

It’s also clear that the issue of military rape is benefitting from what is historically the largest class of women in the U.S. Congress. Even the Senate Armed Services Committee now has a record seven female members. In a hearing of that committee last week, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., grilled two high-ranking Air Force officers.

It seems that the Sun’s conjunction to Pallas Athene in Taurus, which was exact for last week’s eclipse and is still close, took the form of women warriors shining a light on what we ought to value as a culture but do not yet: the sexual, emotional and legal well-being of those charged with protecting the country.

How Much Hood is Good? However Much You Have!

Have you ever been curious about just how widely varied women’s genitals are? It’s not quite such a taboo subject as it once was, but it’s still not exactly dinner conversation, either (well, not for most people). This week, in honor of May being National Masturbation Month, here’s a unique project to check out: a visual record of clitoral hood coverage.

These are just a few styles of clitoral hood coverage. View the full chart here.

The Clitoral Hood Coverage Chart is a sister project to a chart showing varying degrees of foreskin coverage. The foreskin chart for penises was created by someone named Paul Sherriff as a way for men to determine how much foreskin they may have, whether circumcised or not.

Enter the 23-year-old, anonymous author of the blog uncutting.tumbler.com. He is currently using a non-surgical method to restore his foreskin (done through tugging/tensioning the existing penile skin, a painless activity according to him).

‘Mr. Uncutting’ got curious whether the same spectrum of variation existed in women’s clitoral hoods, since that body part is basically the equivalent of foreskin. He put out a request for photos of clitoral hoods, and a number of women who follow his blog responded.

“Each clitoral hood you see here belongs to somebody who was willing to contribute to the project,” writes the blog’s author. “Pictures were taken in a non-aroused state, and contributors were asked to estimate their own level of coverage, to help me decide where on the chart to place them.”

Notably, one of the photos belongs to a woman who was subjected to genital mutilation as an infant. Luckily, her labia and the clitoris itself were left uncut, though the hood was removed.

If you are a woman who masturbates, chances are your clitoral hood plays a part in the pleasure. In fact, if your clitoris is extremely sensitive, touching your clit through the hood can mean the difference between pleasurable and painful stimulation.

Whatever kind of hood you have, this is the month to show it some appreciation. And if you want to add your beautiful vulva and clitoral hood to the chart, its creator is planning a second version. You can contact him here.

Monsanto As Patent Troll: The Law of the Land

Monsanto never really had a business plan when it got into genetic modification in the early 1980s. When it finally came up with one, the outwardly stated mission was to feed the world and cut back on the use of pesticides by creating plants that killed the bugs themselves (to which the bugs quickly became resistant).

When that didn’t work out, and when GMO crop yields came in lower than farmers were promised, and when drought resistant corn didn’t work, and when Frito-Lay and McDonald’s bailed on the NewLeaf Potato (the first crop that was also a registered pesticide), the business plan changed: Monsanto went on to create spray-resistant crops. That, at least, would sell more chemicals.

Vernon Hugh Bowman in February of this year, when he gave his testimony to the Supreme Court. AP/J. Scott Applewhite.

Now the business plan has morphed into patent trolling. That’s when an ‘inventor’ makes it easy for someone to violate their patent, and then sues them. This is Business Plan C for Monsanto, which always has another trick or two up its sleeve.

This week, the Supreme Court handed Monsanto a victory in the case Bowman v. Monsanto Co., in which it sought to block an Indiana farmer from planting patented newly grown soybean seeds not purchased directly from Monsanto. Notably, Bowman never purchased seeds from Monsanto — he bought them on the open market from a grain distributor.

He then took some of his crop yield and replanted it the next year, as seeds have been used since right around when humans stopped being hunter-gatherers approximately 15,000 years ago. Bowman argued that the right to use the seed that he purchased necessarily included the right to plant the seed and its progeny.

The court rejected that argument, ruling, “If the purchaser of [the sold] article could make and sell endless copies, the patent would effectively protect the invention for just a single sale.”

The case demonstrates first the absurdity of patenting seeds — and by extension, their natural processes — as well as the business model of patent trolling, for which Monsanto has built a reputation. They have gone so far as to sue farmers neighboring those that use GMO seed whose pollen has contaminated the neighbor’s crop.

In this case, because it’s now been endorsed by the Supreme Court, Monsanto can sue and collect from any farmer using patented seeds that were not purchased directly from Monsanto. But that’s just the beginning. The presumption is that Monsanto is always right, and that it’s not worth fighting because Monsanto will go to the very top and probably win.

I wonder what would happen if some Monsanto-made DNA got into animal feed and turned up in the flesh of the animal. Would it own that too? This is not a game of a monopoly — it’s a case of Ice 9.

Global War Coming Over Bees?

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin kept U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry waiting for more than three hours for a scheduled meeting this past week, to signal his “extreme outrage” over the United States’s continued protection of global seed and plant bio-genetic giants Syngenta and Monsanto, manufacturers of chemicals that are killing much of the worldwide bee population.

Um, Mr. Putin… Pretty sure the stinger goes on the other end. Photo from a 2012 protest by Dmitry Lovetsky/AP.

The Kremlin has called it a “bee apocalypse” that “will most certainly” lead to world war, said an article in the European Union Times, an Internet newspaper.

Bees are one of nature’s pollinators, fertilizing more than a third of the world’s food supply. According to a report from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation, released last Friday, there is “undisputed evidence” that a class of neuro-active insecticides chemically related to nicotine, known as neonicotinoids, are decimating the Earth’s bees. If left unchecked they could destroy our ability to grow enough food to feed the Earth’s population.

The European Commission has placed a two-year ban on neonicotinoids, beginning in December 2013. The timing suggests that this is what you get when a powerful eclipse about ‘values’, occurring just after Beltane and featuring lots of planets in the earthiest of earth signs (Taurus), presages an exact contact of the Uranus-Pluto square.

If the United States doesn’t follow suit with similar action that would be obvious to any rational nation — and if Putin can be taken at his word — the U.S. may feel the sting of something far bigger than a bee: Russia’s military wrath.

Video still of Commander Chris Hadfield as he sings Bowie’s “Space Oddity” while serving on the ISS. You might never hear a more haunting and heartfelt “Planet Earth is blue, and there’s nothing left to do…”

A True Space Oddity

On Sunday, the world got a chance to hear a cover of David Bowie’s hit “Space Oddity” that’s unlike any other. Commander Chris Hadfield recorded it on board the International Space Station, while serving as the first Canadian in charge of a spacecraft. He relinquished command of the space station on Sunday, leaving a three-man U.S.-Russian crew on board to welcome the next trio of astronauts. Hadfield, American Thomas Marshburn and Russian Roman Romanenko landed in their space capsule south-east of the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 8:31 am local time on Tuesday.

It is believed to be the first music video ever created in space, and it’s a beauty.

With reporting from The Guardian UK.

Current Astrology, my Interview with Enceno Macy
and Your Free Digital Issue of The Mountain Astrologer

Dear Friend and Reader:

Enceno Macy moments after being released from 17 years in prison. Photo by Eric Francis.

In this week’s edition of Planet Waves FM, I have for you my interview with Enceno Macy. He was released from prison last month after serving 17 years for a crime he didn’t commit. You’ll hear the story of how that happened, and discover that such a thing is actually possible.

He’s been a Planet Waves contributor going back about five years, writing a diversity of articles for us — including a new one that we’ve just published called Fresh Out. One of his articles, about the state of prisons in the U.S., also appeared in Listen, our 2013 annual edition.

Here’s a Google search of where his Planet Waves articles have appeared.

Last Call: Free Digital Edition of The Mountain Astrologer

The Mountain Astrologer is considered the best English-language astrology journal. There aren’t many left; TMA has persevered through the rising tide of the Internet, publishing six times a year. It now has a digital edition. I’ve been writing for TMA lately; last year I did an article introducing TMA’s readers to my work with Eris and the centaurs (free download). In an upcoming issue I’ll also have a major investigative feature, which I will leave under wraps for now.

In addition to a whole free issue of TMA, you can get a copy of this article that took me 15 years to research and six hours to write.

TMA is very good at what it does. It was one of the first astrology resources I discovered, and it helped me get my start in the business. It offers a carefully edited, selective, balanced presentation of astrology. It has some excellent standing features, including resources for following planetary movements that are not available on the ‘net.

Planet Waves and TMA are doing a kind of sample swap — we’ve extended an offer for a five-week Planet Waves subscription to their readers, and TMA is offering a free digital edition to our readers — the 112-page current April/May edition. You’ll get it as a digital flipbook and also have access to each article as a downloadable PDF file. Digital-only subscriptions are available.

It’s fun doing this kind of exchange, to cross-pollinate our readerships, in the early ethos of the Internet. I think that Planet Waves and TMA are the perfect complement, and they’ve been very nice to us.

Here’s the link to get your free digital issue.

If you have any problem with accessing your free sample issue, please email TMA at digital@mountainastrologer.com.

Enjoy — and please let me know how you like it. — efc

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

Note that the longer monthly horoscope is being incorporated into the Friday issue after the Sun has entered a new sign; a new Inner Space is generally emailed on the following Tuesday.

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, May 17, 2013 #950 | By Liam Carey

Editor’s Note: This week we are happy to introduce Liam Carey. Liam has been working behind the scenes for the past couple of months helping research and write our news sections. He’s also a well-trained and aspiring professional astrologer. He will be standing in on the weekly horoscope for me occasionally, and will also be writing columns on the Tuesdays when there is not another horoscope scheduled. Please let me know what you think of his work. Thank you. — Eric Francis

Aries (March 20-April 19) — When I was 16 years old, a loner, stoned out and nearly a high-school dropout, my father gave me a book called No Man is an Island, by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. The well-intentioned gift was offered, I imagine, to cull me out of my rebellious ways. I was insulted. I mention this story as a lesson in how not to respond to gestures that coax one into the social arena, because you may be faced with such lessons this week. First of all, there is a powerful magnetism about you that will draw others toward you. Neither you nor those that come will know exactly what it is, but there’s definitely something there. Second, even though you don’t really feel like it, you’re either going to talk up a storm or at least have so much on your mind you’ll burst if you don’t get it out somehow. Go with the flow; the interaction is necessary to reality-check your ideas and keep your ego from running riot. — by Liam Carey

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) — There’s no doubt that your solar year is off to a fast and meaningful start. Since your birthday, life has offered you quite a bit of action and depending on how you’ve approached it, life has been exhilarating, frustrating or maybe just plain odd. It’s not over yet by any means (it never really ends, right?) as you still have plenty of adventure ahead, and plenty of ground to cover. I suspect that this week you will start thinking about how important it is to communicate what’s most important, what you value most — not just to ‘be aware’ of it but to speak about it. Change and growth are necessary even when they go against the grain of comfort and security. In that process things that used to be highly regarded may lose priority. While you know this to be true and integral, others may not understand and may challenge you on this new ground. Trust yourself. Know yourself, and be your own authority in this matter. It will pay off in spades for your self-worth. — by Liam Carey

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — It’s that time of year again, when everything seems to speed up, doesn’t it? It looks to me like things are moving at warp speed for you right now and you may need to remember the little things: do the dishes, walk the dog, go to the grocery store, tell the truth. Remember, the devil is in the details, though so are the angels. Seriously, there is so much energy and intensity that may engulf you, and good feelings too, that it could be destructive if not managed well. Here’s one of the details: be mindful of what you say and to whom you say what at work lest there occur any regretful interactions. Be cautious about any thought of revenge. If you talk over any doubts or hurt feelings you may have with a trusted friend, you will both be less inclined to take things personally. One last detail: be sure to put the plug in the jug in time if you’re out partying with friends or colleagues, lest a good time get out of hand. — by Liam Carey

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — The crab symbolizes the constellation Cancer and often the shell is utilized to articulate the tough exterior protecting an inner vulnerability. There is something brewing in your chart this week that may necessitate using that armor, something deeply significant about your sexuality and the conditioning patterns that govern it. We all have these impersonal rules and guidelines that govern our autonomous energies whether from church, society or family, and collectively they are coming under intense scrutiny; but this is personal for you right now. If you allow it to enter your psyche, you will feel either empowered to explore and experience the bliss of sexual union or fantasize about the several lovers you would have if unfettered. This will lead — again, if you give yourself permission — to a reevaluation of what you consider an ideal relationship. It’s ok if what you have doesn’t measure up to that ideal; it doesn’t mean you have to split. It just means you’ve peeled another layer off that James and the Giant Peach-sized onion. — by Liam Carey

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — It looks like you are surrounded by fun-filled, stimulating and fascinating people with innovative ideas. I imagine it is just what you’ve needed after spending much of the past few weeks mired in work and pressing responsibilities at home. This week is an opening to experience yourself and all your ruminations in the light and reflection of others. It’s a great time to exchange ideas and information with a variety of folks, and to learn about and formulate the manifestation of all sorts of things: social agendas, familial relationships, utopia — your ideal world and relationships. Plus it’s just nice to feel part of the crowd sometimes, and I suspect now is one of those times. It’s always good to step back and analyze your own agenda when possible and especially when engaged with others. Are you misjudging someone else’s or your own intentions? Are you being mindful of boundaries? Many questions have been raised about administration of resources and this can lead to emotional extremes. One way or another, you’re likely to encounter lessons about give and take, whose (fill in the blank) is whose, and compromise. — by Liam Carey

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — You know that the overall theme right now is change. Not just a little bit of change or anything, either, but some kind of epic, world-shifting alteration is underway and you are feeling empowered to try new things, think in new ways, and experience more of reality. Just remember, it’s not going to happen overnight. Step by step, day by day, and person by person, gentle persistence is your guiding principle, along with how to best use the energy that is available at any particular time. The energy right now is collection of information: data gathering, networking, communicating, and perhaps short-term travel. Through these lenses you will understand the options available to you in this process of re-creation. Searches like this have a way of stirring things to the surface that had been forgotten and you may encounter some memories that you must come to terms with. Trust your intuition if this happens and try not to over-think. Not only will you waste valuable time and cause a stir, but also you may miss the more vital message. — by Liam Carey

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — There is a lot of restless energy in your chart that has been building up for some time and is about to come to a peak. The energy infusion this week will highlight some of the broader ideas about life that you haven’t considered in a while, and a few brand-new ones. It just may enable you to see the rut that you’ve been in and start planning an escape. There is definitely the energy for some long-distance travel here. Perhaps it’s because the in-laws are coming? Pay your dues first; keep the peace and then the reward. There is also this concern: are you restless because of an underlying hurt that you don’t want to deal with? Maybe there is the subconscious urge to move so you don’t have to sit with yourself? It’s been said wisely that travel is a good way to get to know yourself. A shift in geographic point of view can give you a perspective on what you’ve been looking at but not seeing. Then you can decide how much you like it — which is to say, yourself. — by Liam Carey

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — It looks like you’ve built a defensive structure to protect some emotional vulnerability. That may be a good idea considering the sea of change that you’ve been navigating these past few months. Don’t forget to give yourself credit for staying the course; this type of devotion to change is not easy. Yet if you haven’t handled this so gracefully don’t hang onto any disappointment or stew over a loss of pride. It’s most likely part of the lesson. You’re a study in contradictions right now. As much as you want and need to focus inwardly to conceive, form images, and eventually crystallize what and who you want to be, you are at the same time drawn to engage with people in intense, deep, involved discussion. (I hope that sounds appealing.) As much as you feel the need to work, alone and unhampered, pulsating and electrifying your central nervous system, you also feel this deep desire to merge with a multitude of lovers/artists in some form of creativity. — by Liam Carey

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Things are looking and feeling much better at home than they have in a while. It seems as though the clouds have parted recently and there is harmony in your deep emotional reserves with what you project to your partners. This is the reward derived from the hard work you’ve put in over the past few months. Much has been happening to highlight who you are and what you have to offer in relationships, and it has been difficult to tangle with some of these questions. Accept the harmony of the moment and recognize it as fruits of purification. Nothing can grow without nurturing and you did that well. This is part of the long-term path of dissolving those aspects of your personality that just don’t work anymore, and in turn, discover what does. It’s entirely possible that you’ll feel like you’re living in a dream — and who’s to argue with you? You can imbibe all you like but I doubt you’ll match the high you’ll have by being present with your love, and speaking your truth. — by Liam Carey

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — First came the feeling, then came the ideas, and now the light bulb is glowing about a project that you think will be well received. Not only do you have all the necessary resources but you now also have the strength of purpose and drive to administer the people and resources properly. There may be a crisis in action regarding a love affair. Love unrequited? Sex talk gone awry in an established relationship? Those are only a couple of the possibilities, but I see some tension in this area of life and some potentially volatile emotions early in the week, as the Sun changes signs to Gemini. You can’t control everything, and forcing your will on others will very likely produce resentment. Discretion is the key, as is an honest, humble stating of feelings. It will be challenging to articulate your emotions into feelings, especially if you pressure yourself to, so step back and find a way to objectify them before you communicate. Make sure you channel some of this energy through physical exercise lest you burn out. — by Liam Carey

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — I once had a lover tell me to make love to her with my mind. I gotta tell you it drove me nuts. I just didn’t get it and, well, I just didn’t get it. I’m pretty sure you do though, and that you will have a driving urge to do so starting this week. Not only that but it looks like you will have willing partners in your quest for lovemaking through the mind. If this is not where the energy takes you then there will at least be a need to communicate your sense of aesthetics; your senses will be keen to this. There is a deeply creative spark that has been lit and I hope you have the opportunity to fan its flames. This is one of the most difficult and dynamic aspects of life because of the need most of us have to hang onto control in order to feel secure. To let go and play, make love and recite poetry requires a freedom of self that once granted, is a launching pad to other dimensions. — by Liam Carey

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — There is something extra meaningful coming through your emotions this week. It’s something that you will not only recognize and think about but also seek to clarify and articulate. This is not an easy task, but it’ll be worth it. Emotion is defined in a very circular way in the many dictionaries I checked that keep pointing to ‘feelings’, but one way to think of it is energy in motion. Feelings are definitely not emotions though; feelings are the interpretation of emotions (a Venus function that has merit here). Emotions are something that happen pre-thought and pre-verbal. There is not much control over them happening, although to make it off the playground safely it’s imperative to learn how to deal with them. Emotions are often unprocessed energy that doesn’t necessarily fit in the rational, social world and yet, they pulse through each and every one of us to one degree or another. This will be an important time to examine your emotions and consider how they affect your whole being. It’s possible that the opportunity will come through interactions with family, or simply an event or circumstance that sparks some memory. — by Liam Carey

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Bursting Free: Solar Eclipse in Taurus

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Yesterday we began our experience of a solar eclipse in Taurus. The nice thing about eclipses is that their effects last a while. Some astrologers say a few months, many say six months, though as I do lots of world horoscopes, I’ve noticed that the eclipses have effects that can last many years. So think of this as a beginning.

An opening into the East Woods on the Grandmother Land in High Falls, NY. Photo by Jenna Dern.

This eclipse looks like it has the potential to be an especially long-lasting one. On Tuesday as I was doing my Planet Waves FM webcast about yesterday’s eclipse (which also includes a reading about the young women who escaped captivity in Cleveland Monday) I started to wonder when was the last solar eclipse in Taurus. In theory, it should have been about nine years ago.

That’s because eclipses move in an approximately nine-year cycle, following these points called the lunar nodes. Solar eclipses should follow the nodes, but sometimes they skip signs. I’ve seen this twice before. By my reckoning (using this reliable tool programmed by my friend Tracy), when the lunar nodes (which travel as an axis) passed through Taurus and Scorpio in the early 2000s, there were no solar eclipses in Taurus.

Therefore, the most recent solar eclipse we experienced in Taurus was during the prior nodal cycle, on April 29, 1995. There also was a solar eclipse in Taurus in the same degree as the one that happens later Thursday on May 10, 1994.

Gee, that eclipse in 1995 was 18 years ago. Why is this delay significant? Eclipses represent an evolutionary process, helping us move from one place to another. They are the most dependable events for helping us to shift continuity, let go of past habits and attachments and enter new territory.

When a type of eclipse has skipped a sign, it suggests there’s been a kind of delay or pause in the evolutionary process in the area of our lives that sign represents. It might mean ‘stuck’ and it might mean ‘extra long gestation process’ on a particular theme. Further, this suggests we have some catching up to do, with which we’ll have some help from yesterday’s significantly potent Taurus New Moon eclipse (which was exact Thursday, May 9 at 8:28 pm EDT).

Rocks along the Atlantic Ocean near Portland, Maine. Photo by Eric.

This eclipse is conjunct two asteroids, to the degree: Pallas Athene and Lilith. Both Taurus and Pallas Athene are exemplary at maintaining appearances. They can create an exterior that’s impeccable, and often necessary for many kinds of social situations. Lilith, the ‘original woman’ from Medieval mythology, is what exists beneath that appearance. I read Lilith as ‘the woman within’, the one who won’t be subjugated by expectations or social circumstances.

Opposite the eclipse is Psyche in Scorpio — another image of what is under the surface: deep motives, and an element of pain, which emerges from a crisis of faith. Psyche asks the questions about how we could be loved, and whether we’re worthy of it. That’s not a statement but rather a question to resolve.

To one side of the eclipses there are squares coming from Diana and Icarus in Aquarius. There’s an element of protection (Diana, goddess of the hunt, who stands guard over young women) and an impulse to escape (Icarus, the guy caught in the maze who flew too close to the Sun).

To the other side of the eclipses is Dionysus in Leo, one of the most important mythological figures in all of ancient Greek lore. He’s described as the god of the grape harvest, of wine and of ritual madness and ecstasy. He represents another side of the impulse to escape — from the bonds of rationality.

I think the core aspect among these asteroids is Dionysus square Pallas: the inner impulse to liberate and shed the thick armor of personality, and Pallas, who in many ways embodies that armor (in which she was born). There is tension in this square, and it’s being emphasized by the eclipse (all of these aspects are within a one-degree orb of the eclipse).

Photo by Eric Francis.

The theme is that something in you wants to burst free. It’s not satisfied to live for appearances, for how proper you are, how predictable, how willing to subvert your own natural desires.

This has been going on for a while, as if it’s been gradually building. You may think it’s merely an impulse to escape. I would say it’s an impulse to evolve, to make contact with the inner person you contain and allow him or her to have a voice, to experience their feelings and to have a place in the world.

Yes, other people will have to deal with it, but in fact, they always do.

This sensation might come with the feeling of bursting free, though it’s not a matter of all or nothing, but of taking sincere steps, which include taking the risk of letting people know who you are and how you feel. Remind yourself that you have nobody to impress; you’re living your life and it’s not for anyone else to tell you whether that’s right or wrong, nor for you to judge yourself based on what someone else might think.

If events conspire to make that happen a little faster than you might have expected (which can happen where there’s been a long delay, or when you’ve never tried something you really want), I suggest you go with the flow of the cosmos. She has you held in her wisdom, and knows that you were born to love and live as you choose.

Other factors in this eclipse suggest that potent spiritual forces are at work to help us get where we want and need to be. Offer your cooperation and they will return the favor.

Lovingly,

More to Astrology than Eclipses

As the dust settles around Thursday’s solar eclipse — the first in Taurus since 1995 — there are other interesting aspects in the neighborhood. The Sun is now in the last decanate (10-degree span, or ‘face’) of the sign Taurus, which phase is ruled by Saturn. This is a message to tidy up your energy and focus your efforts on your highest priorities.

Planets are starting to fan out after the eclipse in Taurus. Here, you can see the Moon, Venus and Jupiter in Gemini. From the top reading the chart counter-clockwise, Eris, Mars, the South Node, Pallas, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Jupiter, the Black Moon Lilith or lunar apogee, Vesta and Ceres.

The Moon ingresses Gemini on Friday at 5:21 pm. Tonight the Moon is conjunct Venus, newly in Gemini, at 8:49 pm EDT.

One of the nicest features of the solar eclipse was that the ruler of the eclipse had slipped out of Taurus and into Gemini, making the event more mentally accessible.

The Moon will make a conjunction to Jupiter Sunday at 9:32 am. This could support a weekend with the potential for easygoing conversation and a break from the heaviness of the world.

In the mix, Mercury will be conjunct Pallas in Taurus Saturday at 10:33 am. There’s another interesting aspect between a traditional planet and an asteroid — Mars will square Juno Saturday at 12:29 pm EDT. Both of these aspects suggest that your best strategy will be stating what you need and what you want rather than expecting anyone to figure it out.

The Moon ingresses Cancer Monday at 5:57 am EDT. Venus moves into a square with Neptune Monday at 4:47 pm EDT, hinting that figuring out what you feel is a process.

Don’t take any potential ambivalence as a sign that something is wrong; both Gemini and Pisces are dualistic, mutable signs, and there are a lot of potentials for how you might feel and why you might feel that way. Take your time figuring it out.

Solar Eclipse News Roundup

It’s been an interesting few weeks leading into the first solar eclipse in Taurus since 1995. The eclipse, which happened Thursday, was conjunct the asteroid Pallas Athene, highlighting politics and also seeming to crack the facade off of what we see in the world around us.

Jodi Arias was convicted of the 2008 murder of her boyfriend and potentially faces the death penalty, which she says she wants.

Among the stories we’ll remember were the Boston Marathon bombing, which resulted in a major American city being put under martial law for one day. There was the explosion of a fertilizer plant in Texas and the collapse of a factory in Bangladesh killing more than 1,000 people. There was a miracle in the factory collapse story after a woman was found alive Thursday after 17 days under the rubble.

Barbara Heist, a woman who walked out of her own life one day 11 years ago in Pennsylvania, turned up in Florida, and three girls who had been kidnapped were freed from captivity this week, after being missing since the early 2000s — a profound example of human endurance. Ariel Castro was arrested for kidnapping and rape, and could facd the death penalty — which is unlikely to happen, as prosecutors will do what they can to avoid putting the victims through testifying at a trial.

Jodi Arias was convicted by a jury of first degree murder in the 2008 slaying of her boyfriend Travis Alexander. She stabbed him 29 times and then shot him. The jury is now deliberating whether she should get the death penalty, which she has said she wants, describing death as the ultimate freedom.

Republicans continued to be obsessed over the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi incident last September, though this seemed more like a pre-emptive effort to derail the probable presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time. It seems like both sides in this matter are deceiving the public, with Republicans exploiting certain facts and the Obama administration unable to admit what was really going on behind the scenes.

Mark Sanford, the former governor of South Carolina, defeated Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, the sister of Stephen Colbert, for a seat in that state’s 1st congressional district. Sanford is the guy who explained his disappearance while governor by claiming he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail when he was really having an affair in Argentina. Sanford resigned as governor and as chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association, only to be re-elected to his old seat in the House of Representatives.

Mark Sanford said this week that his winning the election was an experience of ‘grace’, after one of the more memorable falls from grace in recent years. AP photo.

The Palisades Nuclear Power Plant was shut down after water was found leaking for the second time into Lake Michigan. “There is no impact on the health and safety of plant employees or the public,” a spokesman for the plant’s owner said.

Eight men were charged in a $45 million international bank heist, one of the biggest bank robberies ever, which involved hacking into credit card data files to raise withdrawal limits, then stealing the cash from ATMs all over the world.

Yet among all of this news, what else happened? Most of what we experience as news is distorted by the echo chamber of the media itself. For all of our 24-hour news coverage, we hear about the same stories over and over again. They at least make an interesting gestalt to describe some manifestations of the eclipse. Yet it often seems that unlike in the 1960s, when we experienced similar astrology as we have now, we don’t see the breakthroughs, the points of progress, the reasons to celebrate, quite as much.

That may be an illusion caused by the fact that bad news gets the ratings, and the ratings sell Subarus.

U.S. and Russia Look to Syria as Uranus-Pluto Square Approaches

After two years of brutal civil war in Syria, the U.S. is talking about increasing aid and, with the help of Russia, trying to get the two sides of the conflict to negotiate. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, engaged in discussions in Moscow on Tuesday; Kerry telephoned European leaders from Rome the next day to begin setting the stage for a series of conferences between Syria’s government and the opposition — hopefully to begin within a month.

Secretary of State John Kerry will have to do more than pray at this stage of the game. Photo: AAP.

All parties are working to “effect a transition government by mutual consent of both sides, which clearly means that in our judgment President Assad will not be a component of that transitional government,” said Kerry as he met Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh this week.

In the meantime, the Pentagon has drawn up new contingency plans based on the possibility that Syria breaks apart. According to the Wall Street Journal, proposed plans include a buffer zone in Jordan for working with an overflow of refugees and for delivering weapons and aid to Syrian rebels. Until recently, the Pentagon saw the collapse of Syria as a remote possibility; at this point, volatile regional spillover is looking more likely.

The conflict in Syria began during the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, which signaled the warm-up of the Uranus-Pluto square. The next exact contact of Uranus and Pluto — era-defining forces of upheaval, revolution and evolution — is May 20.

“The Syria message was loud and strong,” said a senior diplomat briefed on Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s trip to the Middle East last month. “Everybody’s scared. And nobody knows what the hell we are going to do there.”

In recent weeks, leaders of Arab nations have traveled to Washington, D.C. to speak directly with President Obama, “asking the U.S. to play a ‘midwife’ role.” True to the season, something is being birthed in the region, but so far it has been a long, painful and violent process largely ignored by western leaders until relatively recently.

Recalling the governmental clampdowns on social networking during the Arab Spring protests in Egypt, Google reported this week that Syria was cut off from the global Internet. The last shutdown on a similar scale in Syria occurred last November.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that it is unknown whether Tuesday’s Internet shutdown was from an infrastructure cut, or a deliberate silencing of online communication. Digital media have been a critical tool connecting Syrians with the rest of the world.

Elizabeth Smart: You Will Always Have Value

Amidst the news of the three young women in Cleveland who have finally found freedom after about a decade of imprisonment and rape, another former victim of abduction and rape is getting attention for speaking out. Elizabeth Smart, who was held captive for nine months in 2002 in Salt Lake City, Utah, when she was 14, gave an address this week on the role abstinence-only ‘education’ played in keeping her from trying to escape her captors.

Sex or no sex, you have worth, and it’s always greater than chewed gum — even gum with the face of Jesus on it.

Speaking at a forum on human trafficking at Johns Hopkins University, Smart described the effect of hearing a school teacher compare those who engage in pre-marital sex as being like a piece of chewing gum:

“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed-up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value,” Smart said.

“Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

That may be the most insidious aspect of the ‘abstinence-only’ message, even beyond the lack of information about how adolescents’ bodies work and how to prevent pregnancy and STIs: behind it all is the message that having sex makes one worthless. Smart’s sense of no longer having any inherent value as a person proved to be an incredibly powerful mental shackle even when her captors took her out in public.

Smart, who is now in her mid-twenties, runs a foundation to educate children about sexual crimes. “You will always have value,” says Smart, “and nothing can change that.”

It’s a perfect message to broadcast and celebrate in a week with so many planets, plus a solar eclipse, in Taurus; a sign all about values, worth, the physical body, sex, passion and possession — especially your self-possession.

GMO Labeling Bill in Vermont Almost Law

The Vermont House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday approved a bill requiring labeling of food products containing genetically modified organisms.

If it passes the House, as expected, the Senate will likely take it up in January, since the legislative session ends this weekend.

Last year, Monsanto threatened to sue the state of Vermont if lawmakers passed a GMO labeling law. They claim that state GMO labeling is unconstitutional because federal law (in this case, FDA regulations) preempts state law.

However, federal law allows states to pass laws relating to food safety or food labels when the FDA has no prior regulations or prohibitions in place, as is the case with GMO labeling.

There are more than 200 state food labeling laws in effect right now in the U.S., including a GMO fish labeling law in Alaska, laws on labeling wild rice, maple syrup, dairy quality, kosher products, and laws on labeling dairy products as rBGH-free.

Rep. William Lippert, chairman of the Vermont Judiciary Committee, told his colleagues on Tuesday that the public interest in labeling is worth the risk of a lawsuit.

For once, we have a case of a politician listening to the will of the people, and not to Monsanto.

No End in Sight from Power-Plant Pollution

Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in southwestern Michigan was taken offline Sunday after operators discovered a leak from a water tank. Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials estimate 79 gallons of “slightly radioactive water” flowed into Lake Michigan over the weekend, according to Michigan Radio.

Palisades Nuclear Power Plant. Photo: U.S. NRC.

Despite this being the second time in less than a year that the tank has leaked — and despite not knowing how radioactive the water is — officials said there is no immediate risk to the public.

A Republican-appointed regulator was being investigated last year for trying to stop an NRC probe into safety concerns at Palisades, according to the Huffington Post. NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko toured the plant in May 2012, while “a significant leak of potentially radioactive water was pouring into the control room.”

After Jaczko ordered an investigation, Commissioner William Ostendorff allegedly “shouted at the top agency investigator, Cheryl McCrary, in front of several NRC employees,” and told McCrary the inquiry would be a waste of resources, said the article.

The hands-off attitude continued this week on the Democratic side, when the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed it has no plans to issue new limits on carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. In a letter to Senate Republicans this week, the Obama nominee to head the EPA, Gina McCarthy, said the agency “is not currently developing any existing source greenhouse gas regulations,” according to Democracy Now! The EPA delayed proposed emissions limits for new power plants just last month. All wealth may come from the Earth, but the EPA and many leaders don’t seem to get what that really means.

Only YOU Can Stand Up For What You Believe In

Lopi LaRoe’s radicalized Smokey the Bear.

Feel like showing how much clean water, healthy forests and free speech mean to you? Check out the designs of Lopi LaRoe, a Brooklyn, New York, screen-print artist and activist responsible for an altered Smokey the Bear meme that has the National Forest Service growling.

Depicting the iconic bear wearing a hat that says “NO FRACKING,” and with the slogan “Only you can prevent faucet fires” below him, LaRoe has radicalized a national symbol.

The t-shirts, bags and patches have “spread like wildfire,” according to LaRoe (haha) and sparked a cease-and-desist letter from the Metis Group, which acts as legal counsel for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service division. They claim Smokey is the property of the U.S. government (not public domain), and that messing with his image could “confuse the public.”

An article by Peter Rugh at Waging Nonviolence suggests they’re more concerned that she could bring attention to the fact that the Forest Service is considering approving fracking leases in the George Washington National Forest, which is near another national forest where highly toxic fracking fluid has been linked to the deaths of 150 trees in West Virginia. What would Smokey do?

Solar Eclipse in Taurus, Featuring Many Asteroids — and the Cleveland Captives Set Free by Heracles!

The new edition of Planet Waves FM covers the powerful solar eclipse we experienced on Thursday, with effects that will reverberate for many seasons, even for years. This is the first solar eclipse in Taurus since 1995.

I go over the chart of the eclipse, including taking a look at the minor planets that align with it. It’s a beautiful collection, including Pallas, Psyche, Hermes, Dionysus and the protector of young women, Diana.

I also read the chart of the 911 call made by Amanda Berry, the woman who was missing for more than 10 years. She was set free by Charles Ramsey, who turns up in the chart as Heracles. The chart describes a chilling crime scene, though a story with a happier ending than anyone (including a psychic) would have predicted.

Our program is sponsored this week by the Invocation of Spring report, which is a study in relationship dynamics. This report serves all 12 signs — with readings of about 35 minutes each, and can be used for your Sun, Moon or rising sign — or those of partners or love interests.

We also have the Taurus birthday reading available. You can listen to a tasty sample of both the astrology and the tarot segments at this link. This is an inspired, motivational reading that will guide you if you’re a Taurus Sun, Moon or rising.

Our musical guest is the folk group Girlyman, featuring their excellent musicianship and harmony vocals. Some members are working on a new record, which you can hear about at this link.

Here are the charts and more information about the eclipses.

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

The May monthly extended horoscopes were published Friday, April 26. Inner Space horoscopes for May were published Tuesday, April 30. We published the Moonshine horoscopes for the Scorpio Full Moon and eclipse on Tuesday, April 23. On Tuesday, May 7, we published the Moonshine horoscopes for the Taurus New Moon.
Note that the longer monthly horoscope is being incorporated into the Friday issue after the Sun has entered a new sign; a new Inner Space is generally emailed on the following Tuesday.

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, May 10, 2013 #949 | By Eric Francis

Aries (March 20-April 19) — How can you value yourself if you’re afraid to show the world who you are? The two concepts form a direct contradiction to one another. I suggest you monitor your thoughts carefully for any hint of ‘restrain yourself’ or ‘don’t say how you feel’ and notice whether these impulses are connected to the issue of worthiness. It’s true from one limited point of view that there’s an appropriate time for everything. The question is what side of the line of appropriateness do you choose to err on? You can practice conservatism as a veiled form of living in fear, or you can err on the side of expressing yourself in that moment when you might be pushing boundaries. You’re safe doing this as long as you’re actually coming from what you truly value. In the process, you’re just as likely to discover that what you thought was true for you no longer is. This implies conducting your life as an experiment, which in turn hints at not knowing the outcome in advance.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — This may be a time in your life unlike any other, and I do mean in some profound ways. I am also speaking in the longterm — you’ve just experienced the first solar eclipse in your birth sign since 1995, suggesting that you can move long-stuck energy, and bring desires to fruition that have potentially been brewing all that time. Yet to take advantage of the moment and its opportunities for growth and celebrating life, it’s necessary to go beneath the image you wish to portray to the world and offer the substance you’re made of. This can be challenging if past experiences of revealing yourself have ended badly — and who hasn’t had some of those? One thing to keep in mind is that people in your environment are making contact with some of their deepest insecurities. They may or may not be revealing that; they may be more or less aware of what’s happening. Pay special attention to sexual situations that seem to provoke the fear of intimacy, or some form of jealousy. There’s more potential for healing in those situations than you may imagine.

Hello Taurus Sun, Moon and rising sign folks! Your Taurus 2013 birthday reading is ready. I cover Saturn in your opposite sign Scorpio, as well as the current eclipses, and what it means to have so many planets in your sign, rising sign or Moon sign at this time of year. I speak to you for an hour about your relationships, your quest for independence and what looks like some special motivation to grow and become. It’s a beautiful reading, recorded with a warm, intimate feeling. You may listen as many times as you like, or download it into iTunes or another MP3 player. The tarot reading reading includes photos of the spread, the chart and access to last year’s reading if you want to check my accuracy. You can order your birthday reading here for just $24.95.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — The current astrology has you on a tour of the unknown, uncharted, unacknowledged regions of your psyche. This is likely to come with some form of the message that there’s a lot you don’t know about yourself. Few people are comfortable with that feeling, but when you’re there, you’re there. Yet sincere not knowing is the state that usually precedes sincerely finding out. If you work with this equation over the next few weeks, you’re almost certain to make some discoveries that will help you guide your life in the direction that you’ve been called for a long time. You’re unlikely to have certainty in advance that the choices you make are right. Indeed, you seem to be going through an encounter with your own doubts. You need to go beyond your opinions or your feelings to do this. Rather, document your observations, particularly those of a spiritual or self-realization nature. At times you may find yourself in a dreamlike state, and you may forget things that you see and experience. When the time comes to know and remember, you will be happy you’ve left yourself some notes.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — It’s a frightful thought for most people to have their innermost self or innermost thoughts known to others. Think of all the effort that goes into putting up various veils, decoys and disguises. Consider all the thought that goes into being polite, stating things in oblique ways and even learning how to tell creative white lies. Now imagine how much energy all of this image-building creates — and tune into the feeling of how all you really want to do is be real. You may be bursting to express what is true and what is most valuable to you. I suggest you take this as a moment when you can initiate that, or step up your efforts and be more bold than usual. You may find this idea helpful. Your solar chart suggests that it’s obvious to others who you are, so you don’t need to worry about anyone finding out something new. The question is your relationship to who you actually are. Avoidance or denial will consume your energy; sincerity and willingness to be clear and vulnerable will concentrate and focus your energy.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — It’s worth considering the differences between the perception of success and actual achievement. It’s also worth considering the relationship between them — there is one. People seem more inclined to bet on who they think looks like a winner, vote for who looks like president or invest in a company with a strong image. The pattern in yesterday’s solar eclipse describes you integrating the two ideas — what you’ve accomplished and presenting what you’ve accomplished in a way that focuses attention. The chart also includes the description of a longterm project coming to fruition financially; one of the things described involves the financial rewards of your work. This is something that can grow and develop over time, on every level: economic, creative and also social. The social piece is integral to everything, since both outreach and fostering cooperation are essential to almost any venture or project that is focused on people, and these factors are especially strong. I suggest you work them consciously, because what you focus on will have a tendency to increase.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — You’re being invited into a new universe of possibilities, and to get there, it’ll help significantly if you leave a number of old beliefs and mental habits behind. Many of these look like some of the stereotypical self-critical Virgo issues, though as anyone born under your sign knows, that’s neither a myth nor a legend. Be aware of all beliefs that would qualify as hostile to yourself. These have had a way of turning into a religion, and you need a better one of those — one that’s worldly and practical and that has your happiness and success as its primary goal. Speaking of religion, I’ve often noticed the extent to which people underestimate the impact of religion. This can include what came by osmosis (from various sources, ranging from grandparents to movies to the Boy Scouts). I suggest you pay attention and inquire whether any vaguely negative or self-hostile thought doesn’t have its roots in a religious notion, whether you consciously chose it or not. It’s time for a mental purge of all such influences, which will help you discover what they’ve been hiding from your view.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — This is a time of resolving your old commitments and entanglements, and moving on to a life that may take you far from anywhere you’ve ever been before. I suggest you summon your sense of adventure and your faith in yourself and get ready to make a series of moves. Don’t waste your time delaying on resolving what you know you’re through with. Make a list of the remaining points to address or work through and set a short schedule for doing so. You are being called beyond those prior attachments, commitments and ideas of who you need to be to others. This may include being drawn to other parts of the country or the world, and beginning what looks like it could be the adventure of a lifetime. This may feel like expressing another aspect of yourself entirely, a hidden side or some parallel reality that you might not have expressed under more typical circumstances. Yet if ever there was a rare moment in your life, this is it.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Give partners or loved ones a chance to meet you on their own terms — and see if that’s acceptable to you. There’s a good chance that when someone you care about or have an interest in finds their own way in life, it will have some significant overlap with your ideas or your plans. Yet a key element in this scenario is that whoever we’re talking about comes to whatever conclusion or decision they are going to make on their own, rather than under your influence. Part of what they’re experiencing is feeling too influenced by others, and wanting with every cell in their body not to feel that pressure. As for your own involvement, it would be healthy of you to diversify a bit, and to explore a concept of relationship that does not insist on a high level of attachment or even involvement. Our marriage-obsessed culture tends to do things backwards, like set a goal of a ‘permanent’ partner rather than exploring a process of seeing who you trust, who you like and what you have in common.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — It’s important to know how much is enough, which includes enough work, enough attention to your health, enough time or effort spent on something and enough emphasis on the idea of relationships rather than the reality. No sign description of Sagittarius that you’ll ever read would say, “These people are good at living a balanced life,” though it’s clear that one of the inevitable longterm projects you’re involved with is one of balance. The way the scale is tipping right now, some balance in the direction of what actually makes you happy would serve you well. This would include being alert for what aggravates, irritates and eats your energy. I suggest you also be alert for what you have not completed, and set about the task of wrapping things up with that person or aspect of your life. At the moment, everything in your chart is guiding you in the direction of closure. You’re about to have access to a lot of energy — I do mean a lot — and you don’t want to waste it dragging behind you anything you don’t really want or need.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — I’ve described this week’s solar eclipse as moving heaven and Earth — and that is certainly true for you. Eclipses have long-lasting effects; this one isn’t over. It actually just began, and what’s interesting is that there hasn’t been a solar eclipse in Taurus since 1995 — an unusually long time. So this signifies setting free an awesome amount of energy in the creative zone of your chart — your solar 5th house of play, art, pleasure and sex for fun. Since it’s also about children, you might want to monitor changes in their lives if you have any, though let’s stick to you. You could say that this eclipse is about letting go in all of the places where you’ve tended to hold back. As you let go, you may notice that some deeper themes or issues come up. Creativity, love, passion and pleasure all tend to bring up everything unlike themselves. So as you explore your more expressive side, leave some room for what comes up for healing — and the energy to address that.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — You may think that you have to get your life in order, or feel perfectly secure, before you dare to express yourself creatively. However, that’s a setup for not expressing yourself much at all, since it’s rare that our lives are in perfect order (and besides, creativity thrives with at least a dash of chaos or challenge). It’s worth questioning these kinds of if/then statements: if I’m healed, or perfect, I can do this or that. Often the healing or the ‘perfecting’ comes in the process of creation, or of somehow taking action. Said another way, creative and sexual experiences are part of the normal flow of life, not the outcome of some special effort, or state of deserving. The confidence you seek you will find through taking chances, not by waiting until you’re confident to take a chance. There may be some obvious signs that this is true, for example an alluring opportunity that you might try if you felt up to it, but which you can still try, even if you’re not sure.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — We’ve all heard the term “Think globally, act locally.” The idea is reputed to come from a Scottish town planner and urban theorist named Patrick Geddes (1854-1932). Geddes also gave us the idea of a ‘region’ and coined the term ‘conurbation’, which describes a metropolitan area where towns and cities seem to overlap. These are all themes that relate to how Thursday’s solar eclipse aspected your chart. In a sense, it’s about claiming the space you occupy, though it’s more of the regional space: your community and local slice of the orange on which you live. It’s also describing your relationship to your neighbors and the people in your community, encouraging you to invest your energy locally to the greatest extent possible. There’s likely to be a beautiful result if you do. One other thing — this is the year when you take concrete steps to improve your quality of life, specifically in the spaces that you occupy. This happens every now and then, though the conditions are perfect for creating more space, better space and better use of space. That, in turn, is about creating harmony between your life and your world.

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Beltane: All Wealth Comes from the Earth

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Dear Friend and Reader:

A few times I got to hang out with one of my now-departed neighbors in the Hudson Valley, legendary music agent Alfred Schweitzman. His client list reads like the roster of our most beloved crop of Ulster County rock stars (including The Band and Todd Rundgren) among many others. He used to give the best New Year’s Eve parties and we once smoked the peace pipe in his cherry-paneled office.

Fae on the Grandmother Land. Photo by Eric Francis.

“All wealth comes from the Earth,” he would say. He was very wealthy and he liked to say it often, as if making the point made the idea stronger in his consciousness. When I first met him I was pretty new at astrology, though I knew enough to know how much sense this idea makes. It’s something I’ve considered many times and that’s the theme of this time of year — the season of Beltane.

The structure of the old religion, the calendar, made sense — without a lot of religiosity packed around what people did at different times of year. There was a time for every purpose, a concept we’ve nearly forgotten exists. For example, Samhain (pronounced sah-wen) establishes a relationship with death and the ancestors, and this tends to run through many cultures as a conscious focus around the time of Halloween, the final harvest.

Nature and its cycles are the basis of what we think of as organic, and in the spring, the world is coming back to life after the long winter. The festival to celebrate that is Beltane, traditionally celebrated May 1.

There is some debate about whether this is really the peak of spring or the start of summer (in the social rather than technical sense). The first week of May is the halfway point between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice (in the Northern Hemisphere).

The word Beltane originates from an old language called Lowland Scottish (the culture from which the holiday seems to originate), and earlier, from Gaelic, with a probable literal meaning of “blazing fire” or “to shine, flash, burn.” And that is exactly what the planets are doing right now.

For most purposes, I count Beltane as May 5, the day the Sun passes over the midpoint between equinox and solstice, though I give it a wide berth. The Sun reaches the Taurus midpoint this year at 4:18 am EDT on Sunday, May 5. Taurus is a passionate sign, and at the moment it’s on fire, and it’s gleaming. Present in Taurus are Mercury, Venus, Mars, the Sun, the South Node, and asteroid Pallas Athene. That’s quite a collection of energies. The Moon will be in Pisces at that time, in harmony with Venus-ruled Taurus.

Photo by Eric Francis.

To emphasize the point, Beltane is followed up by an eclipse of the Sun on May 9, and surrounded by two lunar eclipses — this is a moment of change and potentially beautiful progress. Eclipses are points of no return. Aim your mind and your intentions and you can be transported closer to your desires.

That all said, here’s my metaphysical summary of Beltane. All wealth comes from the Earth, and the Earth is our Goddess. Beltane is the time to honor the Earth and to love the Goddess, and one happy way to do this is through sexual exchange that’s consciously a celebration of life. I know that all sex is in theory a celebration of life, but for many people it doesn’t feel that way, and this idea might be something new. Indeed, the corruption of sex is inextricable from our corruption of the planet and our obsession with money.

Beltane is the time to make love in a conscious way, experiencing the pleasure of existence and honoring the planet we live on, and honoring women. This in turn is a way of expressing gratitude for the abundance that comes from the Earth (all the resources we need for physical life are generously provided by Gaia) and women (who are the vehicle through which physical life is gestated). If possible, make love outside, close to the Earth or on the Earth, for that extra experience of direct contact.

However you choose to celebrate this moment, whether by yourself or with others, allow yourself to be the vehicle through which the Goddess expresses herself. This can work no matter what your gender or sexual orientation.

Whatever you do, this is a great time of year to offer a big THANK YOU to the planet and the cycles of nature that gestate, birth and support our lives.

Lovingly,

For PW Members: Free Digital Issue of The Mountain Astrologer

The Mountain Astrologer is considered the best English-language astrology journal. There aren’t many left; TMA has persevered through the rising tide of the Internet, publishing six times a year. It now has a digital edition. I’ve been writing for TMA lately; last year I did an article introducing TMA’s readers to my work with Eris and the centaurs (free download). In an upcoming issue I’ll also have a major investigative feature, which I will leave under wraps for now.

In addition to a whole free issue of TMA, you can get a copy of this article that took me 15 years to research and six hours to write.

As one of its writers I’ve been impressed at the thoughtfulness, care and quality of editing that goes into the publication — really, the kind of attention usually saved for poetry. The publisher, Tem Tarriktar, is one of those ‘I’m not really a designer’ people who creates a beautiful, easy to read layout.

Planet Waves and TMA are doing a kind of sample swap — we’ve extended an offer for a five-week Planet Waves subscription to their readers, and TMA is offering a free digital edition to our readers — the 112-page current April/May edition.
You’ll get it as a digital flipbook and also have access to each article as a downloadable PDF file. Digital-only subscriptions are available.

Here’s the link to get your free digital issue.

If you have any problem with accessing your free sample issue, please email TMA at digital@mountainastrologer.com.

Enjoy — and please let me know how you like it. — efc

B is for Beltane — and an Eclipse

By my reckoning Beltane is Sunday at 4:18 am EDT, meaning that’s when the Sun reaches the midpoint of Taurus. That in turn is the midpoint between the equinox and the solstice (known as the cross-quarter). It’s a tipping point of the year and for us in the Northern Hemisphere, a moment when we know spring has actually arrived.

Kermit and his pet B.

That is, unless you live in that swath of Iowa, Kansas or Minnesota — hardy people out there, who are currently buried under enough snow to require front-end loaders to move it out of the way.

Beltane is a time for the ritual of Hieros Gamos — playing out the sexual communion between God and Goddess, symbolic of the harmonization of opposites. We spend a lot of time frustrated with our opposite, and this is a time to release that and reach a natural state of harmony.

For this event, the Moon is in Pisces, and Mercury, Venus, Mars and Pallas Athene are all in Taurus. It’s quite a chart. Mercury is making an opposition to Saturn in Scorpio. Since we’re on the topic of sex (apropos of Beltane) this aspect is worth a moment of reflection along the theme of sexual communication.

There is potentially an imbalance to be aware of here. You’re not hallucinating if you notice that many people put a lot of energy into stuffing or otherwise denying their desire. There are many reasons for this: fear, the notion of losing control, the need to feel like a moral person, not having a model for how to express the energy, some form of old pain or grief, guilt, shame, etc. — and it’s very difficult to negotiate with these emotions.

But Mercury wants to; it wants retrograde Saturn to open up and let out some of its feelings. Mercury is asking Saturn not to be so invested in the past. Mercury in Taurus makes perfect sense, but this is not about sense. I would suggest that instead of trying to convince anyone to change, or waiting for it to happen, that you find people on your wavelength and share with them. Otherwise what you’re doing is making someone else’s hangup into your own, which becomes a kind of excuse not to be free to choose for yourself.

Created by Good Vibrations; endorsed by Pres. Obama, the Tea Party, the FDA and Planet Waves.

“Trying to get someone to open up” sounds like trying to work out parental material with a partner; that rarely works.

This is a special Beltane season, since there’s an eclipse coming on May 9 at 8:28 pm EDT. We’ve covered this eclipse in a recent SKY column. The eclipse also contains a cautionary note about parental material — it’s conjunct Pallas Athene. That’s a caution about doing things designed to get your dad to approve of you.

One nice element in the eclipse chart is that Venus will have moved into Gemini by then, where it’s open to additional viewpoints, and more concerned with having a good time than it is with monogamy or commitment. Mars in Taurus is closer to the South Node, so it’s an integral element of the eclipse. There’s a message there about being aware of attachment, and what that means as opposed to loving someone. You don’t need to let go of desire or pleasure or even love when you let go of attachment; what would help is if you have enough self-esteem to recognize that love is real.

Which brings me to masturbation month. Sometime in the 1990s, the Good Vibrations sex toy stores in San Francisco and Berkeley designated May as Masturbation Month. This is interesting given that Beltane is the season of coupling, but I associate Taurus, where the Sun is through most of May, with masturbation. Think of this is Hieros Gamos with yourself.

Plenty of what goes on within a person involves conflict between and among various inner male and inner female archetypes, and explored consciously, it’s possible to have a lot of fun and bring yourself into tune.

Evidence that Politics Can be Deadly

Wilhelm Reich said that politics is the most neurotic form of human interrelation. Sen. Pat Toomey, the Republican co-sponsor of the failed background check bill, demonstrates just how true that is. He admitted that many Republicans didn’t support the law, which would prevent felons, terrorists and domestic abusers from buying high-powered weapons, or any weapons for that matter — because they didn’t want Pres. Obama to have a political victory.

Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania says Republicans didn’t want to be seen helping Obama, even if that meant keeping assault rifles out of the hands of terrorists.

“In the end, it didn’t pass because we’re so politicized. There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it,” Toomey said.

“The toughest thing to do in politics is to do the right thing when your supporters think the right thing is something else,” he added. I guess this is what you would call ‘a man of character’.

His comments came in an interview Tuesday with a roundtable of Digital First Media editors in the offices of the Times Herald newspaper in Norristown, Pennsylvania.

According to the editors at the meeting, Toomey then tried to walk back his comment, saying he meant to say Republicans in general, not just his GOP colleagues in the Senate.

Toomey was one of four Republicans who voted in favor of a measure to expand the background check system so that it covers private sales at gun shows and online. Five Democrats voted against the proposal (including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who voted no so he could bring the bill back up later).

— With reporting from CNN

Living Your Truth: First NBA Player Comes Out

For the first time in the United States, there is an openly gay male athlete playing a professional team sport. Amid speculation over the last few months that this would happen in one of the four major team sports, NBA center Jason Collins came out in a Sports Illustrated editorial. His announcement in the web version of the magazine coincided with this week’s opposition of Mars in Taurus and Saturn in Scorpio: a perfect image of his sense of self-worth and personal determination to stand up to the authoritarian secrecy of pro sports.

Newly ‘out’ NBA player Jason Collins; you can call him Mars. Photo by Kwaku Alston for Sports Illustrated.

“I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport,” writes Collins in the forthcoming May 6 issue. “But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, ‘I’m different.’ If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.”

Collins, a 12-year veteran and, according to NBA Commissioner Davis Stern, “a widely respected player and teammate throughout his career,” cited the Boston Marathon bombings as motivation to come out because the event, “reinforced the notion that I shouldn’t wait for the circumstances of my coming out to be perfect. Things can change in an instant, so why not live truthfully?”

For years, Collins made a quiet, coded statement about his sexuality, wearing the number 98 on his jersey to commemorate the year gay college student Matthew Shepard was beaten to death in Wyoming, and the founding of a suicide prevention program.

Collins also cited former Stanford University roommate and current Massachusetts congressman Joe Kennedy as inspiration when he learned that Kennedy had attended the 2012 Boston Gay Pride parade. Collins writes, “I’m seldom jealous of others, but hearing what Joe had done filled me with envy. I was proud of him for participating but angry that as a closeted gay man I couldn’t even cheer my straight friend on as a spectator.”

The reaction to Collins’s announcement was overwhelmingly positive as he received support from several current and former players as well as politicians and celebrities. Prominent among his supporters was gay rights pioneer and former professional tennis player Martina Navratilova, who came out 32 years ago to a much chillier media reaction. Navratilova, winner of 59 total major tennis titles, believes that Collins’s action will save lives: “…there is no doubt in my mind. There is some kid out there who is not going to commit suicide because Jason is out.”

Give Life, Refuse to Take Life… and Face Jail Time

On one level, declaring conscientious objector (CO) status while in the military is an affirmation of the sanctity of life. To some, opposing a war is punishable with prison time — even if you’re the mother of four with another child on the way, as is Kimberly Rivera. She’s currently facing 10 months in a military prison, during which she will give birth.

Kimberly Rivera and her family. Photo: We Move to Canada.

In 2006, Private First Class Rivera deployed to Iraq as a gate guard in Baghdad — a critical role. She realized that if called to, she could not pull the trigger and take a life; and that not doing so would likely mean the lives of her fellow soldiers. Seeking the counsel of her chaplain, she was essentially told to suck it up and complete her mission, rather than being told about regulation AR 600-43, which would have given her the right to request status as a CO.

Knowing no other recourse, she decided to refuse a second tour of duty in Iraq, and crossed the border into Canada while on leave in January 2007. She was an active member of her community in Toronto and made attempts to legally emigrate — endorsed by Canada’s War Resisters Support Campaign and Desmond Tutu — until last year when Canadian officials ordered her to leave the country. She turned herself in at the border.

Charged by a court-martial with desertion, Rivera could have faced up to five years of prison. In comparison, 10 months may not seem like much; try telling that to her four children, ages two, five, eight and eleven. That she will have to give birth in prison is especially harsh, given that many soldiers charged with desertion serve no time.

“The judge doesn’t really give the rationale for why he made the decision he did,” said Rivera’s lawyer, James Branum, on Democracy Now! this week. “As long as 24 months has been given. But many other resisters receive little jail time or no jail time. And people that desert, generally, over 90 percent do no jail time at all. And so, we feel that Kim was singled out.”

Branum continued, “The prosecutor at trial said that he asked the judge to give a harsh sentence to send a message to the war resisters in Canada.”

You can send a message about the arbitrariness of this decision and support this mother’s decision not to take a life through a campaign to ask for clemency for Rivera.

Attention Birds and Bees: Restrictions on Plan B Partially Lifted

As if on cue to help us celebrate Beltane, on Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved a proposal to make Plan B (the emergency contraceptive or ‘morning after pill’) more accessible to women. Plan B would be available over the counter, thereby allowing women to access it even when a store’s pharmacy window is closed. The new proposal would also allow teens at least 15 years old to purchase Plan B without a prescription, if they show proof of age (currently girls must be 17).

Kathleen Sebelius and her arch-nemesis, Plan B emergency contraception. Beltane, basketball, Plan B, honeybees, birds and bees… This week’s Planet Waves has been brought to you by
the letter B. Photo: AP/Evan Vucci/Salon.

Under the former regulations, the ability to take Plan B within 24 hours, which increases its efficacy, can be delayed by limited pharmacy hours — and, sometimes, by pharmacists influenced by their political or religious views. (Consider law student Hilary McKinney in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who went to Target with her boyfriend, and sent him to the counter to pick up the prescription: the pharmacist refused. When McKinney confronted her, she was told, “I can’t sell it to men. Who knows what they could be doing with it?”)

Some groups, such as Planned Parenthood, are applauding the FDA’s decision as a “step in the right direction.” Others, including the Center for Reproductive Rights, called it “still disappointing because by retaining an age restriction that the FDA had previously determined was unnecessary, women of all ages must surmount barriers to getting the morning-after pill.” The Family Research Council is concerned that over-the-counter availability will mean that teens most at risk for STIs will circumvent medical screenings.

The FDA’s decision came in response to — but stopped just short of — U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman’s mandate on April 5 that all restrictions be lifted on the sale of Plan B, making it available over the counter to women of all ages. Korman had called the Obama administration’s failure to make the medication more fully available despite the recommendations of its own scientific staff “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable,” according to an NPR story.

On Wednesday the Justice Department announced they would appeal Korman’s decision to abolish all age restrictions on Plan B. The New York Times has suggested that the Justice Department’s decision was likely based “not only on the substance of the judge’s ruling, but also the precedent the ruling would set in countermanding an order by a White House cabinet member, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services.”

Yet Sebelius herself made an unprecedented move when, in 2011, she overruled the FDA after it had moved to lift all age restrictions based on scientific research, and blocked the sale of Plan B to teens without a prescription.

Monsanto Investigates Its Own Failure

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has given Monsanto 60 days to investigate the engineering and safety of the water treatment system at its new phosphate mine in southeast Idaho after an earthen holding pond sprung a leak, creating a sediment plume of 100 feet and sending an estimated 3 million gallons of water into an adjacent wetland.

Monsanto reported the failure to state and government regulators on March 29. The company then began an internal review of the network of ponds designed to manage and collect storm water and snowmelt at the Blackfoot Bridge Mine near Soda Springs.

Blackfoot Bridge, in southeast Idaho’s phosphate patch, will begin operations later this year. The mine has a 17-year life expectancy and will supply Monsanto with a key ingredient in its Roundup weed killer.

The biggest environmental threat from phosphate mining comes from selenium, a byproduct created when water interacts with mine waste rock. The construction plan for Blackfoot Bridge Mine, in a region with a history of pollution by the mining industry, includes state-of-the-art engineering to avoid this scenario.

But environmentalists are not convinced even this will avoid future catastrophes.

“It only goes to show that no matter how well-designed, how good the intentions are, things like this inevitably happen,” said Marv Hoyt, with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, a group that worked during the permitting process for tougher safeguards. “This was a relatively minor incident. But our concern is that this never happen again.”

A Victory for European Bees — and Sex, Plant-Style

On Monday, the European Union announced plans to restrict the use of three pesticides that may be responsible for a worldwide bee ‘die-off’ in recent years. Coming during Beltane season, this move affirms not just the environment, but the process that catalyzes plants to bear fruit — an image of sexual reproduction and interconnectedness from which humans often divorce themselves.

A beekeeper seeking to ban pesticides stands next to Bernie the Avaaz Bee in front of the European Council and Commission in Brussels on Monday. Photo: Yves Logghe/AP.

Fifteen EU nations voted for the restrictions, eight were against and four abstained.

EU Consumer Commissioner Tonio Borg said his agency will override the deadlock and move “in the coming weeks” to restrict three neonicotinoid pesticides on plants and cereals that attract bees, according to The Washington Post. Neonicotinoids are one of the world’s most widely used insecticides.

The ban takes effect Dec. 1 for two years unless decisive new information becomes available. Major chemical companies, who are against the ban, argue that scientific data supporting it is lacking.

Beekeepers worldwide have reported an unusual decline in bees over the past decade, particularly in Western Europe, according to the European Food Safety Authority. Bees are critically important, because they pollinate one in every three crops produced — including most of the food crops in Europe, it said.

Borg said bees contribute more than 22 billion euros ($29 billion) a year to European agriculture.

“Today’s pesticide ban throws Europe’s bees a vital lifeline,” said Iain Keith of the Avaaz environmental group. “Europe is taking science seriously and must now put the full ban in place to give bees the breathing space they need.”

In the U.S., several national environmental advocacy organizations and commercial beekeepers filed suit in March against the Environmental Protection Agency for its conditional registration of some neonicotinoids. It said the agency did not properly ensure environmental health protections, particularly for pollinators.

The EPA is now reviewing its registration of neonicotinoids and has speeded up the review schedule due “to uncertainties about these pesticides and their potential effects on bees.”

Hopefully the EPA will align with the EU’s position and honor Gaia — though that may require increased public pressure more than hope.

…Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

Even Earth’s planetary neighbors are celebrating Beltane with her this year: last week NASA’s two Mars Exploration Rovers made the news for drawing what appears to be the outline of a penis on the surface of the red planet — though it’s unclear exactly when the tracks were, um, laid or which rover did it. NASA says the twin exploration vehicles, named Spirit and Opportunity (indeed!) are programmed to spin in tight circles to test the terrain and find new routes. Either that, or the ‘artificial intelligence’ guiding the rovers thought that the giant Mars vulva could use some company. (Photo: NASA)

Beltane and Tristan Taormino

In this week’s edition of Planet Waves FM I am honored to have as my guest Tristan Taormino. I first introduced my readers and the astrology community to Tristan a year ago in my article Beyond Astrology, wherein I proposed that she be the keynote speaker at a major astrology conference.

The elegant, articulate Tristan Taormino.

Why? Because in my opinion astrologers need to be sexually literate, the better to assist the clients who come to them with questions about their sexuality. Life is not about squares and trines. It’s about what people live through, and helping them get what they want.

Tristan is a sex educator, filmmaker and self-described feminist pornographer. She’s written a number of books and tours the country giving presentations on what she does. You can reach her website here. In the introduction I mention that I did her chart as part of a presentation on sex astrology in Portland, Oregon.

In the first part of the program, I follow up on the legal representation situation for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. I read a letter from a reader who was concerned that I suggested that a public defender would not be helpful to Dzhokar; she explains the federal public defense system and how it’s different from that on the state and local level.

Dzhokar will be represented by Judy Clarke, who describes her job as getting her clients to plead guilty in order to avoid the death penalty.

My musical guest is the band Girlyman. “Really good, really unexpected, and really different” is how Village Voice describes Girlyman’s lyric driven folk-pop. But that can also describe the year that inspired their fifth studio album Supernova, available June 19th (distribution through Burnside). No doubt their new CD will be fantastic.

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

The May monthly extended horoscopes were published Friday, April 26. Inner Space horoscopes for May were published Tuesday, April 30. We published the Moonshine horoscopes for the Scorpio Full Moon and eclipse on Tuesday, April 23. Moonshine horoscopes for the Taurus New Moon will be published Tuesday, May 7. Note that the longer monthly horoscope is being incorporated into the Friday issue after the Sun has entered a new sign; a new Inner Space is generally emailed on the following Tuesday.

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, May 3, 2013 #948 | By Eric Francis

Aries (March 20-April 19) — The theme of next week’s eclipse is self-understanding, though I mean this in the most practical way. You need a system for governing your life that takes into account what is actually meaningful to you. That means listening to the things you’ve promised yourself you were going to do over and over again. One thing that would be helpful is to evaluate that list and see what is still valid for you. Eliminate everything that’s no longer part of your actual agenda, so that you can free up energy, bandwidth and priority space for everything that is. I would suggest going forward that you be vigilant about putting your priorities into action. For this, you will need a plan that has emphasis on three phases: initiation, follow-through and completion. Stretch your perspective beyond the ‘get started’ phase and into the ones that take more dedication. This can be the time in your life when you get past the inertia that has bogged you down in the past. That’s another way of saying: this can be a time when you learn to express your true potential.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You’re standing within one of those momentous transition points in your life, though you may not be feeling the full beauty of that now. Sometimes they’re difficult to see when you’re right in the midst of things. That said, momentous is not what it’s cracked up to be; this is also a time when the seemingly smaller or subtler decisions you make, and the things you learn about yourself, will be tools that you can use for the rest of your life. I suggest you investigate the ways in which you seek to protect yourself. What are you protecting yourself from, and who exactly was it that informed you of some potential danger? A defensive streak in your solar chart may be masking an aggressive aspect of yourself that gets veiled by your compelling exterior. Since you probably don’t want to take any aggression out on others, you may take it out on yourself. If you can see this cycle in motion, and pause it even for one moment, you can make a discovery that enhances your life profoundly. For clues, study your relationship with your father.

News About the Taurus Birthday Reading

As of press time today, I am nearly done with your Taurus 2013 birthday reading. This is also excellent for Taurus rising and Taurus Moon. As for the astrology: I cover Saturn in your opposite sign Scorpio, as well as the current eclipses, and what it means to have so many planets in your sign or rising sign at this time of year. What I really do is speak to you for an hour about your relationships, your quest for independence and what looks like some special motivation to grow and become. It’s a beautiful reading, recorded with a warm, intimate feeling. You may listen as many times as you like, or download it into iTunes or another MP3 player. The last segment I need to record is the tarot reading, done with the Voyager deck by James Wanless. The reading includes photos of the spread, the chart and access to last year’s reading if you want to check my accuracy. You can pre-order your birthday reading here for just $19.95 and we’ll email your access info to you once it is ready Friday afternoon. Once the report is out, the price will go up to $24.95, so pre-ordering is how to get the best price.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Slow down and think deep. For you they are the same thing. Gemini can be brilliant (rather than just bright and witty) when it thinks slowly. In your case that might mean considering something once a day over the course of a week or two, instead of making a snap decision. As you do this, you may decide that there are things you ‘already know’ without having any special way to know them. If that turns out to be true, then use the think-about-it-every-day method to consider whether that something is in fact true and if it is, what specifically that would mean for you. Anyway, I suggest you take a gradual and meticulous approach to deciding what is really true for you. As you make that evaluation repeatedly, you will notice that you’re making adaptations and changes as the days go on, and those would be interesting to keep track of. What new facts are leading you to come to a different observation? What changing feelings? Keep this up for a week and you will make a rather significant discovery about yourself.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — What do you want to be known for? Now would be a great time to make that known to others. I suggest you do that in the form of being who you are more boldly, and doing what you do with more confidence. Despite the sometimes conservative descriptions of what makes a Cancerian tick, and how you prefer to stay home and all that, you’re in a time when that happens not to be true — if it ever was. You are not merely safe being seen as someone a little eccentric, who is willing to take the risk of being thought of as a little weird; your success depends on taking advantage of this. It’s the fear of seeming different that prevents many people from doing something different; and I assure you that anything really worth doing in the long run will draw its value from being original. So you have a pass on that particular social concern, and now you can ask yourself for real: what do you want to be known for? The chances are you’re already pretty good at it.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — There’s the image of stewardship in your chart — as in ‘steward of the land’. Not its owner, possibly its occupant, definitely one who facilitates, who keeps a watchful eye, and who will act in a protective capacity when necessary. What’s the land of which I’m speaking? It probably involves some professional activity where your leadership is now being called upon and also recognized as essential. You’re an old hand at what I will call the spiritual piece: putting your faith (in the deepest sense of that word) to work in a way that few people can. This is what comes across to others, and what you can depend on. You can speak in the most practical terms about the most mundane kinds of affairs, and you will seem to be offering life-giving truths. Meanwhile, count on the fact that you’re a social and professional magnet — for talent, collaborators, and potentially for investors in whatever you’re doing that you invest your faith in. State your goals and build cooperation — the most precious thing on Earth.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Be patient and you won’t have to be patient for long. It may seem like you’ve been waiting forever for something tangible to materialize relating to a long-desired goal; and the tangibility factor is exactly what’s in the process of developing right now. What’s going to help you the most is focusing on that thing that seems to be the most intangible to many — faith in yourself. This may be a point of conflict for you right now; you may think you have a mixed record of accomplishing what you set out to accomplish, though I suggest you not dwell on that. What matters the most is that you learn from what you consider your successes and your supposed failures, because the information that you synthesize from both sides of that equation is what will help you the most. One of the reasons this thing called failure is so important is that it’s evidence of taking risks. Those experiments can produce plenty of information, and no matter what the supposed topic, it’s applicable to anything else you may do.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — It’s time to make a list of all the decisions you’re holding off on committing to fully. Evaluate that list and you will get an accurate picture of where your life is at. One image that’s coming through your chart is that of withholding approval from yourself. You simply have to be your own most devoted cheerleader, though that’s not possible if you’re in conflict with yourself. It’s an even bigger problem if you project that inner conflict onto relationships with others. Your life will be altogether easier and happier if you embrace that fact that your feelings come from you. If others have a role in your life that you don’t like, it’s also up to you to make decisions in response to that fact. Looked at one way, your life is a study in power relationships, as events of the past few days seem to have dramatized. You want to live out your own values, and yet at the same time it’s so easy for you to get caught in the values of others. In light of this, the skill to develop and emphasize is not peacemaking but rather the nuts and bolts of negotiation.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — People around you seem to have a plan. You need to know what it is, because from the look of your charts, you’re somehow involved. I suggest you take hold of the situation and declare yourself in or out where certain situations are concerned. There are a number of reasons you don’t want others to do this for you, most of them involving your own integrity. But it’s more than that; if you step up and make a firm commitment one way or the other, that will have the effect of precipitating results, whatever you happen to choose. The fact that you know you actually did commit yourself, not knowing the outcome, will give you a greater sense of investment in whatever develops, and that seems to be precisely the thing you need to help you guide your life. I would ask you to ask yourself one other question. What are you holding on to, and by that, I mean what from the past are you reluctant to let go of? Since we’re talking about the past, it’s more likely to be a feeling than a physical situation.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — If something irritates you, remove it from your environment. The problem with environments is that they tend to be invisible; the contrast that we need to notice things fades into the background. So you may need to use unusual methods to determine what’s irritating you, one of which will be your dreams. Remember that in dreams there are no stock interpretations, and every element of the dream represents you. Tell yourself any dream you have from the viewpoint of one of the objects or people in the scenario and it will make more sense. Meanwhile, I suggest you hang out with people who can offer you a reflection of yourself, or challenge your perspective in a way that helps you, rather than those who expect you to be a certain way. Clarity is what will help you feel better, in a deep way rather than a fleeting one. In this world, clarity is something that we must work for patiently, though anyone who’s arrived there will tell you it’s worth the effort.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Sex is not a secret and your sexuality is not a secret. I recognize that most people think this is the very thing that must be kept the most under wraps — which is one reason I think that people whose sexual initiation involves a coming-out process make so many so nervous. The question to ask yourself is what exactly would you not want known about you, and why wouldn’t you want it known? There are a number of possible responses to that question, though sooner or later, any person who comes to terms with their sexuality addresses the issue of shame. One misunderstanding about shame, like many other environmental pollutants, is that it’s been there all along. That’s not true. At a certain point it is injected into society and at some point in the life of nearly every person, it’s inflicted on them. Shame is like a binding or glue that attaches us to many other problems. Once shame is acknowledged and addressed, many other things can begin to resolve themselves.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — It seems like every season or every year, you are encountering some new call to leadership. Said another way, life is calling on you to take more responsibility and to associate yourself with a purpose that comes from deep within you. Yet at the moment, you seem to be facing a diversity of challenges that are interfering with that. I say ‘seem to be’ because the emotional and personal situations in your life are calling on you to shore up your foundations. You are being pushed to question every assumption you have about what it means to be ‘safe’ and ‘secure’, and many assumptions from the past are coming up for question as well. Looked at one way, you are being called to build your life on a focused sense of purpose. But there is something that may go deeper, which is a grounded sense of your own existence. It may be that part of how you cultivate that is to take on challenges bigger than you thought you could handle; then logic would say that your ability to meet those challenges was based on something real.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Your intuition will guide you perfectly right now, and to feel that working you may need to tune into a different level than your sentient mind. That may be a challenge because there’s so much keeping you alert, thinking and driven to be productive. You can keep doing all of that, though I suggest that you give yourself space to be reflective. One reason to stay close to home for the next few days is that it’s probably the most interesting and indeed exciting place to be. Do what you can to keep parts of your days open so that your receptive mind is available to pick up the abundant information that’s coming your way. If you’re feeling restless, one way to express that is to write. All the planets currently gathered in Taurus are in your 3rd solar house of writing and communications. I know that for many this is a delightfully busy time of year. If you give yourself time alone, it will also be a beautifully productive time, including benefits in growth, guiding your life and deepening your understanding of yourself.

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Once Upon a Time in Boston

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New York Times from April 20, 2013, shows SWAT team about to enter the home of Watertown residents without a warrant or probable cause. None dare call it martial law. Photo by Eric Francis.

Dear Friend and Reader:

I walked into Dominick’s Cafe to buy some newspapers on Saturday, April 20, and Dominick asked me: “What the heck just happened in Boston?”

That’s the question, isn’t it. And it’s a good one.

The fairytale version goes like this: Terrifying, mysterious bombers attacked the crowd at a great athletic event. The nation spared no expense, used its best technology and figured out who might have done the terrible deed, then sent its bravest fighters in to catch them. Everyone helped with this effort. One suspect was killed; the other took flight, was hunted down and was caught.

Bag at the exact scene of one of the explosions was not a backpack, as police claim the bombs were contained in. Was this really the bomb? What about the backpacks?

Then all the people of the kingdom came out in the streets and cheered the brave warriors who had saved the day, joyful that they were now safe again.

Alternate versions go like this: we witnessed a vast over-reaction by public officials; or we saw a planned event designed to insure the budgets of federal agencies against sequestration.

Or, people who federal anti-terrorism authorities knew about and were supposed to be watching went overlooked.

Or like many other events, this was a Shock Doctrine event designed to destabilize society in some way, and force yet another take-away of individual rights, complete with a martial law drill/mass psychology experiment conducted in the virgin target of Boston. Depending on what country is eventually blamed, we may be looking at an excuse to go to war. One problem we have now is that what I call the “false flag meme” is extremely popular — that creates a lot of noise when trying to sort out the truth behind the official story.

I heard about the bombing of the Boston Marathon shortly after it happened Monday afternoon April 15 on a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Chicago. Fortunately, it was a flight with WiFi. However, the first thing I did before reading any of the news reports was to cast the chart. In doing forensic astrology (if possible), I prefer to see the chart before I know the facts, then make some observations and perhaps come up with a theory. Then I study the facts to either dismiss or support my hunches.

What I noticed first about the chart was that Neptune is looming on the western horizon. Also called the 7th house or descendant (opposite the ascendant, which is to the east), that angle of a chart gives a picture of the environment and describes one’s relationship to one’s environment. Neptune’s themes cover illusions, delusions, denial and deception. Neptune also includes inspiration, a talent for fantasy, music and photography and in a natal chart, it can point to one’s taste for drink and drugs.

Many photos of the scene were accused of being fakes. This turned out to be a real photo of Jeff Bauman, who in fact lost both of his legs in the bombing. Photo by Charles Krupa, AP.

Neptune in the 7th is a warning to be especially discerning about what you see, hear and think. My sense was that everything we were about to be told would be distorted, incorrect or made up.

Moments after seeing the chart, I posted to Planet Waves: “Nothing says ‘don’t trust the story’ like Neptune on the 7th. It’s like looking into a fog, and you need special vision to see through it.”

So began a week of misreported facts, misidentified suspects, conflicting versions of the story, government officials offering facts, then taking them back, photos circulating around the Internet featuring scenes that could have come out of movie studios, plus all the usual stories of selfless heroism, love of country and determination to go on. The bombing happened not just at the Boston Marathon but also on a day venerated in Boston — Patriot’s Day, commemorating the start of the American Revolution in 1775.

It was a perfectly strange week in every other way. Just 48 hours after the 200 people were hurt in a domestic bombing incident, the Senate voted down a series of measures designed to keep assault rifles out of the hands of known felons and terrorists. This is newsworthy on a galactic scale. Now the next time we have a mass shooting incident, we’ll know it was officially endorsed by the United States Senate, in the name of keeping us all safer.

Letters laced with the poison ricin were allegedly sent to the president and a senator, and a suspect was arrested and charged with the crime. He was later released because there was no evidence against him. There was a massive explosion in a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, close to the anniversary of another fertilizer explosion in 1947 that killed nearly 600 people. There were many, many other horrid anniversaries in American history the week of the bombing.

Then early in the evening of Thursday, April 18, the FBI released photos of its proposed suspects in the Boston incident, beginning one of the strangest days in modern American history — the 7-Eleven robbery that may or may not have been part of the scenario, the MIT campus officer shot for no special reason, the carjacking and the midnight firefight that allegedly killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, a suspect in the bombings. These developments are what we’re told turned Watertown, Massachusetts, into a war zone.

Did these men really do the bombings? Did they have help? Were there additional suspects? Many times people are accused falsely in high-profile cases, and other times they have assistance.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, after casually going to school the day after the bombing, allegedly went on the run. Boston metro area was put under martial law; Harvard, Brandeis, Boston University, MIT and other campuses were shut down.

We witnessed the most impressive show of force aimed at a civilian population on domestic soil ever, as the new Homeland Security militarized police apparatus was rolled out before our eyes, with its robots and X-ray vision. A terrifying door-to-door search ensued. I have a friend in Watertown who was horrified as eight “heavily armed men” searched her condo without a warrant or any actual reason, as she and her kids watched. I have heard next to no commentary or questioning whether this was a violation of the 4th Amendment right against unreasonable search of one’s home.

The suspect was then discovered unarmed, outside the police perimeter thanks to a neighbor who noticed blood on the white tarp covering his boat, looked inside and thought he saw a dead body. The reason that didn’t happen sooner? Everyone had been ordered indoors.

That person, we’re told, was Dzhokhar, who was bleeding so badly he was barely alive. He had, by some miracle, allegedly engaged hundreds of military police in a prolonged firefight without a gun. I was watching at around 7 pm last week just before he was captured, and heard the ongoing gunfire. Exactly what was happening? Who was shooting whom? Was this pure theatrics?

As for his injury: one version of the story goes that he tried to shoot himself in the neck, but missed. One of the purported SWAT team members at the scene said in an interview his neck injury looked like it was inflicted with a knife.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was allegedly so weak he could barely move. How did he wage a firefight with dozens of SWAT team members only to be found without a gun? Image: CBS News.

Through the week, many rumors surfaced — the InfoWars and Natural News disinfo distribution stations were running around the clock like overheated mimeograph machines, calling foul. Working with collaborators around the ‘net on my Conspiracy Response Task Force, we debunked various theories and attempted to assemble valid facts. It felt like swimming up a waterfall of lies. For example, the FEMA event in town that day, supposed proof that the big bosses were all in town for the show, turned out to be a previously scheduled class at Harvard.

The athletic coach running in the marathon who heard an announcement that “this is a drill” was the only person who described that; a second witness would have made his account more plausible. But there does seem to have been some use of the “drill” rumor that day. Then there was the one about the Boston Globe tweet allegedly predicting the incident. That tweet came out an hour after the fact, not in advance, and referred to something else. We do our best to trace these kinds of rumors and ideas back to the source, to cut down on the noise.

Yet as we went through the reported details, no part of the story came out intact. It was like adding a list of numbers from the bottom and the top, getting different results every time. All of these major crime scenes have an element of chaos, and there are always unresolved issues, but it’s not usually like this, with the “facts” changing every hour. There was a lot of sloppy news reporting, but that seemed to magnify a problem that already existed.

Then as the week progressed, we learned that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother, was the subject of an international terrorism inquiry in 2011. The Russian government had asked the FBI to look into him; the FBI investigated and interviewed him, and said it had no reason to suspect him of anything. This is at best bad police work and at worst a cover story. Later in the week we learned that he was also known to the Department of Homeland Security and the CIA. Who was this guy? Was he really a threat who the government ignored, or was he an asset?

Sunil Tripathi, falsely accused of the bombings, had gone missing in March and was found dead this week in waters off India Point Park, Rhode Island. Family photo.

What is true and what is not? Neptune indeed. The sense of chaos, confusion, slippery facts and squirming versions of the truth are all attributes of Neptune.

But Chiron is also in the 7th house, close to Neptune, and that suggests that clarity is available, and that it will come if one focuses on documented information first and honors intuition second. (This order of operations is not only true — it’s my reading of this particular chart. In almost any chart, however, Chiron will emphasize the idea of tracking what we know and how we know it — one of its themes is documentation.)

The chart for the Boston Marathon bombing has several plot lines that unfold simultaneously. Charts often have that attribute, and it’s necessary to sort out the significators as carefully as possible — that is, to have a clear sense what planet represents whom, or what. This can take a little time to sort out, but with patience, it happens. The chart has proven to time the events well and describe them accurately. Let’s take a closer look and see what it says.

Orcus is Rising

Minor planet sort from Serennu.com showing Orcus rising in the chart for the Boston bombings. This represents the lurking fear that was used to terrorize the whole metro area and indeed the country. Ophelia is an asteroid delineated by Martha Lang Wescott: “A point of over-reaction and counterproductive reactions (linked to mistrust of one’s value to others and concern about deception).”

This chart has Virgo rising, and right in the exact degree rising was a newly discovered planet called Orcus. Essentially the twin of Pluto, located in the same region of space (the inner Kuiper Belt), Orcus was named for an early European prototype from the Hades/Pluto cycle of myths.

Chart for the Boston Marathon bombing. Though it’s not shown in this chart, the ascendant is occupied by Orcus at 3+ Virgo. It’s a planet similar to Pluto, named for an older god of death and the underworld.

He’s an underworld god, and he has a famous namesake in modern literature — J.R.R. Tolkien named his monstrous, smelly orcs after Orcus. Orcus in the ascendant is an image of the troll under the bridge; the lurking factor of which we must be very afraid.

Virgo rising suggests something meticulously planned by intelligent people. The bombs went off less than 15 seconds apart, and they performed as designed. Indeed, one thing Virgo rising tells us about this plot is that it was meticulously planned. Even though the end decayed into chaos, that, too, appears to have been planned, since it seems so ‘destined’ by the chart, and Virgo leaves little to chance.

Here’s where we see that. When Virgo is rising, the next place to look is the planet that rules Virgo — Mercury, and that turned out to be an influential planet as the event unfolded. Mercury in a world chart like this can represent a person, and it can represent an idea or a message — whatever message comes out of the incident, whatever is taken by the public.

Mercury was newly in Aries, after months in Pisces. In the bombing chart it is on the Aries Point, indicating the intersection of something deeply personal with something widely collective. (By the way — I underestimated the power of the Mercury sign change to Aries, after it had spent more than two months in Pisces. I knew enough to read this one, but I missed it: it was as if Mercury was gathering energy in Pisces and then released it all moments after it got into Aries, making contact with the Aries Point.)

Plus, at the time of the bombings, Mercury was about to make a conjunction to Uranus in Aries — and pass through the Uranus-Pluto square that defines what I call the 2012 era — approximately 2011-2016, with a few years on either side as a warmup and cool-down. Mercury made that pass the weekend of April 21-22. What we witnessed was a generational event. It was an event that sent us a message about the nature of the times in which we’re living.

Planets as People

Early in my inquiry, I saw Mercury as representing a young person. My take is that Mercury represents Dzhokhar, the younger brother, in the capacity of one who seems to have been haplessly drawn into this plot. As Mercury made its exact conjunction to Uranus, the scenario seemed too crazy, Dzhokhar was on the run and Boston was under martial law.

Focus of the action in the bombing chart. Notice Neptune, the blue trident, on the 7th house cusp. Nessus is right below it, indicating a culprit that is out of sight. Mercury, in green, is about to make a conjunction to Uranus, in blue.

In a terrorism plot, there’s also the matter of a secret enemy — the behind-the-scenes perpetrator. We find information on that in the sign and planet that rule the 12th house. Leo is on the 12th house cusp — and that says to look at the Sun (the ruler of Leo). This character in the story is dramatic and important-seeming. The Aries Sun is about to make a conjunction to Mars, which has the image of dying violently.

I believe this represents Tamerlan, the older brother. Tamerlan is also the international connection — Sun/Mars is on the 9th house cusp. There is some involvement with a foreign government or other large influence, or the scenario will be portrayed that way.

We don’t know his actual involvement in this, and the chart portrays him more as a victim, that is, as a scapegoat, than as a perpetrator. Now he’s dead in the style of Lee Harvey Oswald, and we won’t ever hear from him.

There’s one last plot line to cover. The 7th house, where Neptune is looming, is also the house of open enemies (as contrasted with secret ones). We know that Neptune is sitting there in Pisces, warning us that nothing in the official version of events may be true. Pisces also has a traditional ruler — Jupiter. Jupiter will tell the story of who the open enemy really is, once we look past the movie-like illusion of Neptune.

Where is it, and what story does it tell? Jupiter is in Gemini, and also the 10th house of government. It’s in a strange condition — called intercepted, which means that Gemini has no house cusp running through it (this doesn’t happen in every chart, and it can happen anywhere when it does).
Intercepted Gemini is like a house hidden within the 10th house, which you can think of as the inner sanctum of government, the intelligence establishment or black operations of some kind.

There are a number of scenarios that fit, but the most basic reading is how various ‘intelligence’ agencies of the U.S. government knew that he existed. What their actual relationship to him was has yet to be exposed. We just don’t know, and we may never know — though the influence of Chiron and other factors in this chart suggests that the truth may yet come out. At this point, I think that there is no basis for ruling out anything. We know that the federal government has been involved in bomb plots before.

This chart has many alignments with the chart for the 9/11 incident. That Jupiter is conjunct the 9/11 Saturn to the degree, and Saturn is one of the most influential planets in the 9/11 chart. The Moon is within two degrees of the 9/11 Moon. There are many other alignments — the charts fit together like puzzle pieces.

Gemini, above left, doesn’t have a house cusp running through it. That’s called an interception. Jupiter and other planets are tucked away in a ‘house within a house’ and represent a subplot to the story. The government is represented by the 10th house in most charts.

In closing I will say this. If you’re thinking that two bombs justified the house arrest of more than a million people, please think more slowly. These ideas would best be phrased as questions rather than as statements. Was that governmental response justified? What was the emotional cost, and the price we paid in our freedom?

What is the agenda that will ultimately be served? Seeing who benefits is the best way to understand something; in that sense, the truth of whodunnit matters less than the truth of who exploits something.

Many people who lived through having their homes searched are emotionally traumatized. They may never think of the concept of ‘home’ the same way again. Yet as gun advocates push their strict reading of the 2nd Amendment, they miss the point of the 4th Amendment.

Our social contract in the U.S. is clear. “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…” Was the response we witnessed reasonable, in the moral and legal sense of the word? We need to have a long conversation with our neighbors about this.

We also need a national conversation. What we witnessed in Boston, from the improvised explosive devices to the firefights in urban areas to the door-to-door searches, sound a lot like what the American government has been involved with in Afghanistan and Iraq for more than 10 years. The war literally came home to Boston and its suburbs and raged in the streets and door to door. Every aspect of life was disrupted.

We don’t like bombs going off in our public places and I hope we on’t like armored vehicles in our neighborhoods, SWAT teams in our homes and high-powered rifles being fired in the streets.

The new concept of ‘police’ is different from the beat cop casually swinging his baton. It’s paramilitary force that was put on display in Boston last week. Photo: The Boston Globe.

It’s also time to ask when we’re going to stop doing this to other countries, and using everything as an excuse to ramp up militarization, constantly preparing for threats.

James Madison, one of the most beloved fathers of the American Revolution, cautioned us at the 1787 Constitutional Convention: “Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”

It’s also time for ‘non-political’ people to raise questions about the conduct of our leaders, both at home and abroad. It’s time to learn not to feel like an asshole for actually caring — and for being willing to speak up, including when it’s considered socially inappropriate. Which is usually.

And this is the heart of where the political intersects with the personal. To what extent are your views shaped by what is acceptable to society, including to your friends? When you begin to consider other ideas, and they start to threaten the worldview you’ve had since childhood, how do you feel and what do you do?

This is where the Boston Marathon bombing becomes a deeply personal question; indeed, a spiritual question.

Lovingly,

Thanks to my Rumor Debunking and Crisis Reporting Team: Fe Bongolan, Liam Carey, Amanda Painter, Susan Scheck, Carol van Strum, Lizanne Webb and many, many Planet Waves friends on Facebook who helped us track this story the past two weeks.

The Perfect Chart: Citizen Hearing on ET Disclosure

Beginning Monday, the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure is set to take place at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The format is a congressional hearing, though featuring six former federal lawmakers who will question a wide diversity of witnesses and take 30 hours of testimony.

View of the ‘cantina’ scene from Star Wars, featuring critters from hither and yonder, directed by George Lucas.

The hearing takes place just a week after the release of the film Sirius, which purportedly exposes the use
of alien technology and its influence on the economy, as well as the government coverup of UFOs.

I’ve been waiting for something like this for years. Though it’s being mocked as a “mock hearing,” what exactly do people want, if a “real” hearing is not going to happen anytime soon? It’s not a mock hearing if there are real witnesses, and the witness list includes many retired military and government officials, including former Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell and many other retired officers with the rank of captain or colonel.

Stephen Bassett, executive director of Paradigm Research Group, which has created next week’s Citizen Hearing, said in a recent interview that “credible evidence for the extraterrestrial presence is overwhelming.” He believes that Congress and the media intentionally suppress the story, which is obvious since we have all either seen a UFO or know people who have had an encounter of some kind. Two U.S. presidents have reported encounters as well — Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Featuring many of the world’s top UFOlogists and ET specialists, the hearing is designed to raise public awareness of the issue and get the media to cover it, though so far that hasn’t worked well.

Lynn Woolsey, who represented California to the House of Representatives from 1993-2003, will chair the hearings.

Retired U.S. Rep. Lynn Woolsey of Petaluma, California, who represented Marin and Sonoma counties for more than 20 years, will preside over a panel of six former federal lawmakers. The entire event will be webcast live in English and Spanish, and then archived in several additional languages, including Hindi and Mandarin. The event reportedly has a budget of $600,000, which was provided by an anonymous donor.

And it has a very impressive chart. Casting for the official start of proceedings at 9 am Monday in Washington, the first thing that jumps out at me is that the chart’s relationship angle — the western horizon or 7th house cusp — is pointed right at the Galactic Core, that is, the heart of our Milky Way galaxy. That is the perfect image of reaching out for ‘the other’ and potentially making contact.

The chart has ever-populist Pisces on the 10th house cusp — the government angle. The highest planet is Neptune. Much like we’ve been seeing with Neptune on the 7th house cusp of the Boston Marathon chart, this indicates some kind of denial trip, distortion or coverup on the part of the government. It also describes the idealism of the organizers of the conference.

Chiron is also high up, also in the 10th house, suggesting that there’s the potential for clarity and a breakthrough. It’s a potential moment of healing on this issue. But Neptune is powerful, and it’ll be necessary to cut through the confusion and paranoia first.

Two other things. Do you see all those planets packed into the house on the top left of the chart? That’s the 11th house of the citizenry — the people. There’s so much there, it looks like the cantina scene from Star Wars. Everyone is there. It represents the vast, diverse public willing to listen and get some perspective on this issue. Uranus standing right outside the 11th suggests that there’s a kind of revolution possible, though Eris right inside the 11th is warning against the intellectual chaos that usually surrounds this issue.

Chart for the start of the Citizen Hearing on ET Disclosure.

Yes, some people will think the whole thing is too weird, but as Ellie Arroway said in the film Contact, Hollywood has been making money off of aliens for years. Everyone knows the phenomenon is real. But the stone dead silence of the government and corporate community is enough to drive anyone mad.

One other detail. The chart has the Moon newly arrived in Capricorn. It arrives in the new sign just an hour before the proceedings begin, and spends the first half of the conference in that sign. The Moon in Capricorn means that it’s square the Aries Point (in this case, to less than one degree), and that is about public contact. It also describes a vibration that aligns with the retired government sources who are speaking at the event.

The Moon in early Capricorn, about to make a conjunction to Pluto, tells us that the Moon passes through the Uranus-Pluto square during the early part of the conference. That’s the 2012 aspect — the standing wave pattern that’s behind so much of the current changes we’re experiencing. The Moon is another descriptor of ‘the public’, which to me looks like some kind of a breakthrough is actually possible. A lot of people have been waiting for something like this, and in its own way, this event is a statement of the times in which we’re living.

I, for one, plan to be listening to the testimony eagerly. — efc

May 2013: Moving Heaven and Earth

The story of May 2013 continues a story begun in late April — that of eclipses along the passionate Taurus/Scorpio axis. This comes simultaneously with a large grouping of planets in Taurus, which will include Mercury, Venus, the Sun and Mars all contributing heat and action, plus the asteroid Pallas Athene contributing a cool, reflective and intellectual quality that will come in handy.

The partial lunar eclipse in Scorpio was Thursday, April 25, the first eclipse in a series of three. The Sun was conjunct Mars and the Moon was conjunct Saturn. Mars and Saturn are still in an opposition aspect. The energy of the eclipse is still cooking. Glyph legend here.

This is also the season of Beltane — the time noted by the Old Religion when the connection between sex, fertility and prosperity comes to the forefront. That is exact May 5, though for several reasons this year has an extended and unusually powerful Beltane season. That is related to the eclipses that have found their way into our current region of the zodiac.

May is also the month of the third of seven Uranus-Pluto squares, which span from June 2012 through March 2015. I call this the “2012 Era Aspect,” and it’s the thing that — whether we see it or not — is shaping our world into the next world we will inhabit. I’ll come back to that — let’s start with the eclipses.

Eclipses are about making progress — they take us from one region of our lives to another. They are like rifts in the landscape of time, dividing one kind of territory and experience from another. They help us shift and create patterns, that is, let go of old ways of living and evolve into new ones. Spring is a perfect time of year for a series of eclipses, as the energy is already rising up out of the ground.

In the time of eclipses, it’s necessary to project your life in the direction you want, and in a sense, to look where you want to be. It can be easy to be caught up in the drama of the moment, though there is enormous creative power in these events.

Most of the time eclipses come in pairs; the current run is a group of three. The first of these was Thursday, April 25, and was a partial lunar eclipse in Scorpio. Think of that as a very precisely aligned Full Moon, but not quite aligned enough to have a dramatic visual effect.

Taurus New Moon annular solar eclipse. Look at all those planets stuffed into Taurus! It’s a regular herd of bovine critters, including Mercury, Mars, Pallas and the South Node, along with the Moon and the Sun. The eclipse is exactly conjunct Pallas, suggesting a thoughtful approach to unbridled passion. Glyph legend here.

Such eclipses can, however, have a significant spiritual influence, and this one is about draining old, clogged-up or sticky emotions. It’s about letting go of attachment to the past, since the eclipse is conjunct Saturn in Scorpio. It’s the first necessary step in the process. Saturn in Scorpio (which lasts into 2015 if you include its retrograde) is about clearing out our antiquated, ancestral, past-life values about the mysteries of existence, principal among them sex and death. There’s a need to unravel the taboos on these topics, and to dissolve the emotional plaque that is clogging the conversation.

Next up is a solar eclipse in Taurus. This is an annular eclipse (what would be a total eclipse, but the Moon is too far from the Earth to block the Sun fully) in Taurus. This is also the Taurus New Moon. It happens as part of a cluster of planets in Taurus that includes (in order of degree) Mars, Mercury, the Sun, the Moon and Pallas Athene. The whole arrangement is loosely opposite Saturn, but implying that we can indeed be free of any emotional blockages, or we have them out of the way for now.

What’s unusual about this eclipse is that it’s conjunct one of the first-discovered asteroids — Pallas Athene. She has a diversity of themes, including strategy, law, government, guardianship and one’s relationship to one’s father. In a sense this calls attention to our relationship with Big Daddy — the government — which is increasingly becoming a spiritual theme.

There’s also something here about living with a conscious strategy. It’s true that various forms of psychology and spirituality are suspicious of having a strategy; it’s often equated with one’s heart being closed. However here on the physical plane, it’s necessary to direct one’s life with intention, and I think this is what Pallas is saying in the most personal sense.

Penumbral lunar eclipse in Sagittarius. This is an exciting chart. The Sun and Moon are both square Neptune, which is dreamy and idealistic, even a bit visionary — and Mercury and Venus are in a conjunction. That’s about using the full spectrum of your intelligence — physical, mental and emotional. The ‘spiritual’ angle enters through Neptune, though that’s the one that’s more challenging to grasp, being elusive to many but accessible to some. Glyph legend here.

Finally, there is a third eclipse — a penumbral eclipse of the Moon — that takes place May 25. This is four days after the Sun has ingressed Gemini, so you might think of it as being on another slice of the orange. It’s the last eclipse on the Gemini / Sagittarius axis for several years.

By this time, much of the sky will have shifted into Gemini — including the Sun, plus Venus and Mercury (in a lovely conjunction), all of which are joining Jupiter. The eclipse has an idealism and optimism to it — it’s exactly square Neptune, the planet of dreams. The Mercury-Venus conjunction is saying: use the whole spectrum of your intelligence. That means mental, emotional and intuitive.

Remember your independence. Remember that you’re free to adopt another point of view than the ones the people around you might be taking. Don’t be surprised if you see the world a particular way and others don’t quite get it — that’s temporary.

There’s one last feature for May, and that is the Uranus-Pluto square, part three of seven. As I’ve written before, this is the first major Uranus-Pluto aspect since the 1960s. Indeed, what we think of the 1960s was all about such an aspect — the conjunction, in Virgo. Nearly half a century later this has evolved into the square, which reaches across the cardinal signs from Aries to Capricorn.

Uranus is about revolution and Pluto is about evolution. Uranus in Aries is encouraging radical self-awareness and expression, and Pluto in Capricorn is provoking deep questioning of ‘the system’, the family system, society and our role in it. Who knows what sense of progress will be in the air, as Uranus and Pluto meet up for the third time in the midst of these glorious, intriguing eclipses.

The spiritual path tells us that all progress starts within. This aspect is the perfect blend of self-consciousness plus a deep need to work the interior, the shadow side, the structures that we’ve internalized unconsciously — and set ourselves free, always mindful of the necessary balance of liberty and responsibility.

Alleged Sarin in Syria: Another Day, Another Rumor of War

The White House said Thursday that it believes the Syrian government has used chemical weapons in its civil war, an assessment that could test President Obama ’s repeated warnings that such an attack could precipitate American intervention in Syria.

Not good for critters — test rabbit is used to check for leaks of the toxin in a Colorado sarin facility, 1970. Photo from Wikipedia.

It is not encouraging that this development coincided with a lunar eclipse, as the issue emerging this day may indicate that it will become a persistent issue. It also raises the potential that some people in the defense establishment are pushing for yet another war in the Middle East. The story is likely to develop rapidly as Mars makes its exact opposition to Saturn on Wednesday. That is likely to bring a key turning point in the issue.

The White House, in a letter sent Thursday to congressional leaders, said the nation’s intelligence agencies assessed “with varying degrees of confidence” that the government of President Bashar al-Assad had used the chemical agent sarin on a small scale. The “varying” part seems to be about conflicts in reports from different agencies.

Sarin is a powerful neurotoxin and is one of the most potent acute poisons known to science. It kills people by paralyzing the nerves that regulate breathing, essentially suffocating them. It was manufactured widely during the Cold War and stockpiled by both the USSR and the United States, and is banned by a major chemical weapons treaty that Syria has not signed onto.

The administration said more conclusive evidence was needed before Mr. Obama would take action, referring obliquely to both the Bush administration’s use of faulty intelligence in the march to war in Iraq and the ramifications of any decision to enter another conflict in the Middle East.

“Given the stakes involved, and what we have learned from our own recent experience, intelligence assessments alone are not sufficient,” the White House said in the letter, which was signed by its legislative director, Miguel E. Rodriguez. “Only credible and corroborated facts that provide us with some degree of certainty will guide our decision-making.”

That meticulously legal language did not disguise a thorny political and foreign policy problem for Mr. Obama: he has long resisted the calls to arm the Syrian rebels and has expressed deep doubts about the wisdom of intervening in an Arab nation so riven with sectarian strife, although he has also issued pointed warnings to Syria.

— with New York Times reporting

A Sex Ed Activist in the Making

Let’s say you’re a high school senior somewhere in the Bible Belt who can think for yourself. You understand that what passes for sex ed these days (abstinence-only ‘indoctrination’) is basically abusive — and you do not want to participate. What are your options? Apparently you need to be strong enough to take legal action, as West Virginia teen Katelyn Campbell discovered.

Campbell’s school, George Washington High School, had invited abstinence-only ‘educator’ Pam Stenzel to give her scare-tactic talk in a school assembly. Among other things, Stenzel is known for telling kids, “I can look in your eyes and tell if you’re going to be promiscuous,” and “if you take birth control, your mother probably hates you.”

Campbell, who is student-body president, wasn’t interested. Not only did she refuse to attend, she filed a complaint with the ACLU over the “slut-shaming” Stenzel uses to make students uncomfortable.

Furious, her principal called her into his office, calling her a “backstabber” and threatening to tell the college where she’ll be attending this fall about her “bad character.” Apparently he’s not familiar with Wellesley College in Massachusetts, which was founded with the intention to prepare women for “…great conflicts, for vast reforms in social life.” Ha.

Campbell has not backed down. She filed an injunction, blocking the principal from contacting the college and protecting her First Amendment right to advocate for comprehensive sex education.

“West Virginia has the ninth highest pregnancy rate in the U.S.,” says Campbell. “I should be able to be informed in my school what birth control is and how I can get it. With the policy at GW, under George Aulenbacher, information about birth control and sex education has been suppressed. Our nurse wasn’t allowed to talk about where you can get birth control for free in the city of Charleston.”

Obviously high schools in such repressive social climates are not going to start holding Beltane assemblies for students anytime soon, passing out free condoms and lube to students as they leave the building to frolic in the fields, celebrating fertility and sexual pleasure. But, ’tis the season — and Katelyn Campbell is well on her way to championing “vast reforms in social life.” Look out, world: this month, she’ll have some eclipse power propelling her as she leaves high school behind.

Finally — Labeling of GE Food Moves Forward in U.S.

“The Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act” was introduced Wednesday by U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and U.S. Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR).

This is how it’s done in Europe. Does that look so hard?

The bipartisan legislation introduced Wednesday would require clear labels for genetically engineered whole foods and processed foods, including fish and seafood. The measure would direct the FDA to write new labeling standards that are consistent with U.S. labeling standards and international standards.

Groups advocating for food manufacturers to inform consumers when packaged food contains genetically engineered ingredients welcomed the labeling bill.

“Americans want to know more, not less, about their food,” said Katey Parker of Just Label It, which has more than 650 partner organizations. “More than 90 percent of Americans want the same rights as consumers in 64 countries around the world.”

More than 1.5 million Americans have petitioned FDA to require labeling on packaged food containing GE ingredients, according to a press release from Sen. Boxer.

The legislation is particularly crucial now with the Monsanto Protection Act on the books, since that legislation prevents courts from stopping farmers from planting GE crops, even before it rules on their safety. Purchasing food other than that with a certified organic or Non-GMO Project label is now truly a case of ‘buyer beware’.

Here is the Senate version of the bill; here is the House version.

Climate Activist Speaks Out, as CO2 Level Nudges 400 ppm

As if to punctuate Earth Day with a huge exclamation mark, on Monday Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory measured CO2 levels in the air of 398.36 parts per million (ppm). Scientists believe that soon carbon dioxide, the main gas driving climate change, will reach 400 ppm for the first time in human existence.

A 2009 article in Science reported that when CO2 concentrations were sustained at this level 15 million years ago, it was 5° to 10°F warmer and seas were 75 to 120 feet higher, said a recent ThinkProgress article.

Model of allosaurus in Baltow, Poland. CO2 levels have never been this high, and some are concerned humans could end up like the dinosaurs as a result. Photo by Jakub Halun/Wikimedia Commons.

Climatologist Chris Field told the AP: “It’s an important threshold. It is an indication that we’re in a different world.”

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography has set up a website and even a Twitter feed, @Keeling_curve, that will tweet out the CO2 level every day. The Keeling Curve is the graphical representation of the rising CO2 level; it can be seen on the website.

Though it may seem futile with news like this to try to reverse CO2 levels, climate change activists such as Tim DeChristopher still fight the good fight. The founder of the climate justice group Peaceful Uprising spoke to Democracy Now! in his first interview after being released from 21 months in federal custody.

He was convicted of interfering with a 2008 public auction that disrupted the Bush administration’s attempt to sell off oil and gas exploitation rights in Utah. Posing as a bidder, he won drilling lease rights to 22,000 acres of land, trying to save the property from oil and gas extraction.

DeChristopher’s defense attorneys were prevented from telling the jury that the auction itself was later overturned and declared illegal.

When asked what climate change activists need to do now to succeed, DeChristopher said, “I don’t think anybody knows what needs to be done now. And I think that’s something that we shouldn’t necessarily shy away from telling people, from telling other activists, and especially from telling young people, that, there’s a lot of things that we’ve tried, most of which hasn’t worked, especially on climate change, and especially on trying to get our government to do something about climate change. So, mostly we need people taking action, and nobody can really tell you what that action should be.”

His case is the subject of the documentary, Bidder 70, which screened nationwide Monday to mark Earth Day. Itopens for a week’s run in New York on May 17. Maybe now that the Sun, Venus, Pallas Athene and Mars are all in Taurus, we can dig in our heels and push a little harder for the sake of the climate — and all life on Earth.

Syrian Electronic Army: 1; Associated Press: 0

The Associated Press’s twitter account was taken over by hackers this week, and a false tweet caused a stir at the White House, on Wall Street and beyond. Minutes after the hack the AP’s account, with over two million followers, was suspended.

The attack happened on Tuesday, April 23 with a tweet that stated: “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.”

Screen grab of the fake AP tweet.

Minutes after the report, White House press secretary Jay Carney informed reporters that President Obama was “fine, I was just with him.” Shortly after that an Associated Press White House Correspondent, Julie Pace, stated that their account had been hacked. The AP media relations director wrote in a blog post that other AP accounts were suspended, “out of a sense of caution.”

In those sparse minutes between the attack and the announcement by the White House and Associated Press, potentially $136 .5 billion worth of value was lost from the S&P 500, which dropped 14 points; the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 143.5 points. Both bounced back and by the end of the day reported overall gains; however, one trader described the reaction of Wall Street as “pure chaos.”

The group the Syrian Electronic Army claimed responsibility for the attack through another tweet of their own that stated: “Ops! @AP get owned by Syrian Electronic Army!”

The same group claimed responsibility for recent twitter hacks of NPR, CBS and the BBC. The Associated Press reported that this group often attacks publications based on their displeasure with coverage of the situation in Syria — which has been engulfed in a brutal civil conflict since March 2011, claiming upwards of 70,000 Syrian lives to date (and possibly involving the use of chemical weapons, as reported yesterday).

The initial 2011 uprising was part of the domino-like Arab Spring revolts in the Middle East that heralded the Uranus-Pluto square. Uranus and Pluto meet for their third of seven exact contacts May 20.

Video still from Jimmy Be Free’s video for “Lost in the Rocks.”

Meet Jimmy Be Free

If you’ve listened to the last couple broadcasts of Planet Waves FM, you’ve heard the fun, soothing, invigorating sounds of violinist Jimmy Be Free. Using an electric violin and a looping pedal (and often other instruments), he’s able to create layered compositions in real time. You can watch his video and learn more about Jimmy here; among other things, he’s a sound healer and lifestyle coach committed to aiding “the transformation of ourselves and Gaia to enable us all to live here on Earth a life that more closely resembles life as it is in Heaven.”

Boston continued, and this week’s lunar eclipse in Scorpio

Here’s your new edition of Planet Waves FM, in which I question how it’s possible that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is going to be represented by the public defender. He needs a real attorney, and if he cannot get one in Boston, that may be suggesting he cannot get a fair trial — since a fair trial depends in part on competent legal counsel.

My musical guest is once again Jimmy Be Free, who I met in the Portland Airport last week. He’s a brilliant violinist, composer and singer. I play two different pieces this week, one called “The River” and the other called “Fragile.”

Please read the amazing client comments on the Invocation of Spring reading, which we sent to our members yesterday. Note — the price of the Invocation of Spring report will be increased Monday, to $39.95.

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

The May monthly extended horoscopes are published below in this issue. Inner Space horoscopes for May will be published Tuesday, April 30. I recommend reviewing the previous month’s horoscope at the end of the month; you can see April’s monthly horoscope here. We published the Moonshine horoscopes for the Scorpio Full Moon and eclipse on Tuesday, April 23. Note that the longer monthly horoscope is being incorporated into the Friday issue after the Sun has entered a new sign; a new Inner Space is generally emailed on the following Tuesday.

Planet Waves Monthly Horoscopes for May 2013 #947 | By Eric Francis

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Just the concept that something is or even that it may be valuable is enough to make it so. It works the same way in how we feel about ourselves. Consider the effects of the value you put on yourself. I don’t mean your monetary value, though that will come up eventually; I mean whether you think you matter to others, or whether what you do and offer to the world makes a difference. You’ve had a way of thinking about this theme for a long time. You’ve tried to work out the equation a number of times before, with only limited success. It’s as if you know your own value intuitively but cannot quite articulate it to yourself. Yet there’s a vital piece to the puzzle: values are only valuable to the extent that we act on them. Once acted upon, there’s greater tangibility to what is, in essence, an idea. The dividing line I see in your chart seems to involve making an actual decision about what you say is the most important to you, and then sizing up the effects based upon what happens. We do a lot of jabbering to ourselves about what is so important, though rarely put ourselves through this simple test. Well, it may not be so simple, and you may need to persevere through what seems like an inordinately long time to get your results, though it’s only long in your perception. Assuming you keep at it, you may not have your answer until six months from now.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You are surrounded on all sides by potential, and by people who believe in you. Yet you may have an ominous feeling, as if something is brewing that you don’t understand and cannot discern clearly. Yet consider all that you’ve learned about yourself the past few weeks — how many things you would not necessarily have considered, and were probably not expecting. These have worked out well, and many situations are still developing. The ominous feeling is an eclipse of the Sun in your sign on May 9. This is profoundly meaningful astrology that will deliver a clear message to you. You may not be certain if it’s a sign from the distant past or something entirely new; in a way, both are true. What this eclipse signals is a kind of growth checkpoint. There are two questions that I see. One is: what do you ‘take on’ when you engage with someone in an intimate relationship? There’s something suggesting that you become like that person, at least a little, and I suggest that you decide consciously the extent you want to do this. Another image in the chart involves your father, and your tendency to want to live up to what you perceived as his expectations of you, or his image of you. It’s more likely that your highest vision of yourself would take you in another direction entirely. It will help if you notice this negotiation process with full awareness rather than having it run in the background.

Hello Taurus! Your 2013 Birthday Reading will be ready soon. We’re now between two eclipses on the Taurus-Scorpio axis: this week’s partial lunar eclipse, and then a Taurus New Moon solar eclipse in two weeks (the third eclipse this season runs through different signs). This is making for a potent birthday season for you, packed with potential. Also, Saturn in your opposite sign may feel challenging, but can ultimately be a useful tool if you learn how to work with it. I’ll be covering these major influences and more in a two-part astrology reading about an hour in length, plus a special tarot reading using the Voyager Tarot by James Wanless. You can pre-order your birthday reading here for just $19.95 and we’ll email your access info to you once it is ready.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Have you ever heard someone say they don’t want to go to an astrologer or a therapist because they might find out something about themselves they don’t want to know? Please don’t let that be you. No matter how much you may have to discover about yourself, you have nothing to fear in those discoveries. If you resist potential self-awareness, though, that’s likely to have the effect of echoing around your mind and seeming ‘worse’ than it is. I suggest you go right for clear information as soon as you have a question, and then make sure you persist and work through three or four layers of inquiry before you pause. The idea here is not to go through the motions, but rather to bravely seek self-understanding. If you do that with sincerity and an open mind, you will learn something about yourself and about existence that you’re unlikely to ever forget. This is likely to be something that you already knew but went to some length to deny, for reasons that you might not want to know. In other words, part of the story is why you might have denied this thing that you’re discovering or rediscovering. By why, I mean your actual motives for doing so, since this doesn’t seem to be mere happenstance. There is intent at work on every level, and that’s the thing to track: what is driving the story in any particular direction that it might go, and what is driving you to go any direction you might go.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You’re about to seem like a ‘different person’ or a ‘changed person’ to many people. This is due to an eclipse in Taurus, your 11th house. From the size and shape of the chart, it looks like you have many options for ‘different’, and I suggest you figure out what they are and see if they are viable options. One reason many people refuse to change or resist change is because they don’t want to be perceived as having done so by their friends. Sadly, most people feel a need to live up to who people think they are. You now have a moment of cover where you can make a significant adjustment not just to how you project yourself but to who you actually are, in substance. People will either not notice or not care, or they will forget that anything was different; or who you’ve developed into will seem natural in the context of so much else that’s changing. The way this looks is something like, you manifest in a revised form as one determined to succeed at what you feel the most called upon to do. You can be much more assertive than you usually are, and you can count on being supported in that, if you remember your charm and charisma and your natural magnetism. Establish your goals, align with your collaborators, then align yourself with the resources that you need to get the job done — and you will.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — You remain in a position of leadership, and it looks like you’re collecting some valuable skills as you mature into your calling. There’s a skill I’ve noticed that’s largely missing from the population around us — that of politics. The dysfunction and cruelty we see career politicians dramatizing is not really political — it’s more like anarchy. What I’m describing is the ability to help facilitate mutually beneficial outcomes; to make sure that collective resources are used in a way that benefits everyone; and to stand guard over what is right and true. You’re refining these skills and you may be feeling a calling to put them to use. Yet there is an essential idea contained in your chart: what you’re doing is not about power; it’s about benefitting people as a kind of public servant, in a way that is also supportive of you. By one reading of this astrology (using only traditional planets), you might be super ambitious to the point of not caring whose head you step on. When we add the influence of the asteroid Pallas Athene exactly conjunct the May 9 solar eclipse, you show up as someone deeply concerned about fairness, and proceeding in a way that is honest and grounded in your real values. The world needs more examples of this, and you are setting such an example in your local world. A Course in Miracles reminds us that “everyone teaches, and teaches all the time,” and you are being called to be a teacher of integrity by example.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Your charts are calling for you to develop a longterm strategy — and to let go of a set of plans that are no longer valid based on your new goals. You may have a specific goal that keeps slipping out of your mind, something you know you want to dedicate yourself to, then you go back to an old scenario. You probably know exactly what this is; the challenge is that it would lead you to make many other changes, which you don’t necessarily know how to make, or have the energy to initiate. In order to slip out of the gravity of the past, begin with your mind. Begin with the idea. Then take some step to bring the idea into form. Then, size up your life and your environment and begin to sketch out your plan. Overall, you need a slow, steady and extremely persistent approach. Yet the key factor is remembering what you want to do, and then doing it, and remembering what you no longer want to do and not doing that. Getting out of old patterns and into new ones takes some persistence, and fortunately you have that going for you. The sooner you start — no matter how modestly or slowly — the more time you will have to establish the new pattern. Then when the coming eclipses do their work, events will help you not just focus and develop that pattern, but also cultivate the essential ingredient of faith in yourself. That’s the thing; that’s the skill you want.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — You’ve likely been through an unsettling or perhaps tumultuous month or two. Events have challenged you to be flexible, tolerant and to make some peace with the fact that many people are different from you. This also means that you are different from they are. However you look at it, you’re in a position where you have to find common ground with others. You cannot set the agenda exclusively, and obviously you cannot have others set the agenda for you. Without some form of negotiating your way into territory you can share with others, you’ll find yourself at an impasse. This happens when people have intractable values. I suggest you look at your values and decide which are flexible and which you cannot compromise on. Then see if you can encourage partners to do the same thing. You are in a situation where something has to give, and where your flexibility will be called on as a bottom line. That’s why I suggest you decide what you’re willing to give, though while you’re at it, you may want to assess your concepts of ‘mutual’, ‘reciprocity’, ‘exchange’ and ‘understanding.’ In the end you will need to reach a consensus. And any honest consensus always starts on the level of values, which are the fundamental elements of who a person really is. So, said another way, this is about you revealing who you truly are — which implies admitting to yourself who you truly are. And yes, that might be a little intimidating.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — To what extent are you invested in a close partner, and have you considered whether you might be over-invested? This isn’t necessarily an easy question, though you may be getting some new information on this topic in the near future. This is, however, not a new story. Indeed, it’s the latest step in the process of your rewriting what may be a very old story, and that relates to certain fixed patterns of how you tend to think of yourself, your relationship partners and your mutual role in one another’s lives. This question is valid whether or not you currently are with a partner. The underlying material remains the same. The question gets more relevance if you tend to repeat patterns in your relationships. It gets even more relevance if you tend to come up against certain emotional issues and then skip them over, expecting a different result from last time. The current astrology is, to use a strong word, demanding that you be real with yourself. You know it’s also time for you to be relating to others on real terms, and call nothing less than that intimacy. I know there is a temptation to have the pleasure, security and emotional contact of relationships without taking the risk of vulnerability. Yet it’s never long before this runs out. If you’re someone who does value depth and intimacy and who takes emotional risks, the next few weeks promise to be a daring, meaningful and beautiful time in your life.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Isn’t it time to get over the feeling that if you get close to someone, or allow yourself to connect to them deeply, that your life is going to run out of control? Imagine that the ‘out of control’ factor is really an unknown. That’s not what it literally is, it’s just your equivalent of X. You could, under that scenario, revise the story: “if I connect to someone deeply, something of which I’m not sure may happen.” That is another way of saying that if you make contact, something will change — and it will. Both people will change. That is what happens when humans interact: they learn from one another, influence one another, and often become a little (or a lot) like one another. I suggest you list the reasons you have to trust and not trust the situation; to trust and not trust yourself. From the look of the astrology, you’re the person who is the most likely to have a profound or life-changing influence on someone you respect or admire, though you may not be up to believing how that’s possible. Well, it is possible; making friends with a kitten is enough to have a life-changing influence on many people. This isn’t something you have to try to do, plan on or expect. The most helpful thing you can do is trust, which means not throwing your fear in front of your path as a stumbling block. Said another way, you can use your power for or against your own best interests.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Sometimes I get the feeling that some people are finally figuring out that sex is a form of play, and sometimes I get the feeling that there’s so much fear that most people are totally in the dark. So I’ll put the question to you: how do you relate to sex as a form of play? Don’t answer too fast — I suggest you ponder it. If you don’t come up with sex as a form of play, then what is it? What kind of activity is it, or what does it represent? If you answer yes to the play question, how does it contrast with other forms of play (music, golf, paintball, finger painting, ultimate Frisbee)? The ‘serious cast’ that sexuality gets is almost always based on a moral trip of some kind. It’s also based on possessiveness and attachment. The play aspect is often drowned out by the fear of what might happen if the attachment is in some way threatened. The current aspects are calling on you to do a few things. One is to relax the sensation that you possess someone. Another is to allow your curiosity to come to the front of your awareness. Yet another is to allow yourself to change. Yes, it’s time to change. If you resist what you know are necessary, timely and even overdue changes, that’s likely to manifest as the sensation of pressure, anxiety and tension. You could just as well invest your passion into something or someone creative.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — You seem to be trying to balance concerns about your home against professional matters that you know are just as significant. You’re more likely to work them out together than separately, as the two are directly related. Yet there seems to be another factor, which is a relationship on which you suspect much will hinge. Well, it could be a relationship or it could be your idea about a relationship — I suggest you sort that out, on your own and if possible with anyone who might be involved. If you leave the matter hanging below the surface of your awareness, it may have a way of running your life from the back seat. If you raise the question consciously, you will take away the negative manifestations of its power and begin to engage the more constructive ones. There’s one theme that comes right back to you: how in contact with your needs and desires are you? How well are you able to articulate them to yourself? By articulate, I mean the kind of thing you can put into sentences that another person could understand. That’s how clear you want to be, starting within your own mind and then extending out to a real discussion with others. One word comes to mind: marriage. What does that word mean to you? What is it about? What did you believe when you were younger and what has life taught you? What would it truly mean to be a partner, and to have one? How flexible is this idea for you?

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — A storm of change and progress passed through your life recently, which rearranged your orientation on existence and seemed to redirect the course of your life. All the fast-moving planets have come and gone; you’re now left with the slow-movers, the deeper influences, remaining in your sign. The changes you make from here on out are less about circumstances and more about the deeper alchemy of your consciousness: that is to say, what you do with your mind. You will get what you tune into. You will make more of what you are aware of, so I suggest you make conscious choices where to focus that awareness; remember that it’s a magnifier. Though Pisces is often described as being dreamy and ethereal, you have a mind that is capable of handling practical, tangible material — and of persisting with an idea or thought process for a long time. You’re about to see some unusual results, which combine many different factors into a focused moment of evolution. It’s as if your whole perspective suddenly changes, and in hindsight, you see all the factors that led up to this. One thing that would help you immensely now is to practice making decisions. It doesn’t matter the scale, though attention to the smallest choices means a lot right now, because you’re in a situation where many seemingly innocuous factors will add up to something unexpectedly significant. I don’t suggest you practice rosy-eyed optimism as much as remain faithful of your ability to guide your life competently.

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The War Comes Home, to Boston

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Dear Friend and Reader:

As of our distribution time, two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing had been identified. After a robbery last night at a Cambridge 7-Eleven and a shootout near the campus of MIT, one of the two suspects identified Thursday is dead and one remains at large, as the entire Boston metro area is under siege by the equivalent of an army — tanks, helicopters, SWAT teams and busloads of police. Meanwhile the world is watching the situation develop on live television.

Photo from page one of New York Times website today.

One suspect — Tamerlan Tsarnaev, age 26, shown Thursday in surveillance video wearing the dark hat — was killed.

Some reports say he was shot; others say he was run over by his own brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, age 19, who may now be in a standoff with police. Who exactly is in the house that the police have surrounded is unknown. CNN was reporting that police had asked for a Russian interpreter.

Tamerlan was found to have an improvised explosive device (IED) strapped to his body. Other people have reportedly been taken into custody.
[Birth dates for the brothers are available; here are their provisional charts, set for noon and relocated to Boston.]

After a night of bizarre developments, including the robbery of a convenience store, a carjacking, and a police pursuit and shootout, the scenario at this point is still extremely puzzling and does not resemble any other known terrorism scenario.

The astrology of the bombing indicated a rapidly developing situation that would get
weirder as the week developed, and is not quite done. The chart actually comes to a peak on Saturday. This is described in the current Planet Waves FM.

The press is reporting that the house where the bombs were made may have been located, and there are reports of a bomb squad van in the area.

Boston Marathon Chart Looked Like Suicide

Monday, I described the chart as resembling that of a suicide. Though it was not a suicide bombing, the suspects apparently didn’t have a clear escape plan. It’s possible that neither suspect will survive this manhunt, though much is not known: the extent of the conspiracy, how they were trained and the extent to which their existence was known to authorities prior to this incident.

But the chart — with Neptune looming on the western horizon, representing the environment — also warns that very little information coming out is trustworthy. This is a chart that says slippery when wet.

Chart for Boston Marathon bombing shows Neptune on the western horizon (blue trident on the horizontal line, far right), cautioning against drawing conclusions without plenty of confirmation. The unfolding scenario is described in the 8th house — to the right side, halfway up the chart. That’s the Mercury-Uranus conjunction, which describes a situation that’s developing rapidly.

In an unprecedented development, the towns of Belmont, Newton, Watertown, Allston, Brighton and Cambridge are currently under lockdown, with more than 380,000 residents being asked to stay in their homes. A door-to-door search for the surviving suspect is underway.

That search is apparently expanding. Later in the morning, the governor issued a “shelter in place” order for all of Boston, perhaps the first time that’s ever happened in a major American city.

All public transit services in the Boston area are shut down by order of the Massachusetts governor. Campuses of Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Brandeis, Emerson, Boston College, Suffolk and Northeastern are all shut down for the day, along with Boston public schools. Businesses are being asked not to open. Logan Airport is currently open but under heavy guard.

This latest development emerged Thursday night after the robbery of a 7-Eleven, a brief hostage situation and the shooting of an MIT security officer. After their photos were broadcast around the world yesterday, the two brothers wanted for the marathon bombing made a run for it, beginning with the attempted robbery of the 7-Eleven, then engaged police in an extended firefight, throwing IEDs out of the windows of their car.

This brings to a peak a week that began with the bombing of the marathon, and continued with the attempted ricin poisoning of Pres. Obama and the arrest of a suspect, Paul Kevin Curtis. Wednesday the U.S. Senate voted down every gun regulation that was proposed in the aftermath of the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting in December.

Later on Wednesday there was an explosion at a fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas, which leveled part of the town and resulted in numerous fatalities.

Thursday afternoon, the FBI released photos of the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects, and by 10 pm the pair had made their existence known, attempting to rob the 7-Eleven, shooting the MIT security officer and engaging police in a firefight.

The astrology suggests that the story still has some strange developments in store. An aspect prominent in the chart of the Boston Marathon — Mercury conjunct Uranus — is not exact until Saturday, followed by Mercury square Pluto.

As for that Slightly Subtler Week

In last week’s edition, I suggested that this would be a slightly subtler week. However, I made a mistake reading the astrology: I didn’t account for what might develop when Mercury, which spent more than two months in Pisces as part of its retrograde process, ingressed Aries, crossing the Aries Point. The result was a large release of energy, with these developments emerging from behind the scenes.

That also means that Mercury is moving through the Uranus-Pluto square — it will be conjunct Uranus on Saturday and square Pluto on Sunday. The Uranus-Pluto square is the longstanding aspect in the background of our lives now. It’s the “2012 aspect” that actually spans from 2012-2015.

Mercury is that planet that ruled the Virgo ascendant of the Boston Marathon bombing chart. So it’s very much the star of the show at the moment, and is very much about a developing story that fits a much larger pattern of events. Mercury — illustrating a young individual — is about to lead authorities back to a larger group (Uranus) but we don’t know what happens next. That’s because Uranus always indicates something unpredictable happening.

Please watch the Planet Waves blog and our Facebook pages for additional details and analysis as they become available.

Lovingly,

Planets Moving Fast; More Developments Coming

The Sun is still traveling in a conjunction to Mars, a close and potent one, moving quickly across the sky. So before things cool off, they stay hot for a little while. We’re also about to experience the Mercury-Uranus conjunction (exact on Saturday, seeming to describe an explosion of ideas, revelations, rebellion, inventions, the unexpected). That develops into the Mercury-Pluto square (exact on Sunday, describing depth, introspection, inner probing, seeking understanding, recognition of transience).

The chart for the Scorpio lunar eclipse suggests the action might not be over. Mercury is about to make a conjunction to Eris, indicating that there are more surprises in store. First, Mercury makes a conjunction to Uranus on Saturday and a square to Pluto on Sunday.

Planets have now begun to shift into Taurus. Leading the way was Venus, which ingressed Taurus earlier in the week. The Sun follows later tonight, and there’s more to come. Taurus is supposed to cool off the sky a little, but it doesn’t always work that way.

That said, the sky is building toward the Scorpio Full Moon on Thursday, April 25 — that’s the opposition of the Sun in Taurus and the Moon in Scorpio. This is also a partial lunar eclipse — the first in a cluster of three eclipses this spring. Eclipses tend to be pattern-setting events, and the span of time between them can have an unusual quality of things moving forward and developing quicker than usual.

We’ll have more about this event early next week. In brief, it looks like Mars — which will still be conjunct the Sun in Taurus — is bringing extra heat and desire to this Full Moon. You’ll likely feel the urge to express that physically. On the other side of the sky, the Scorpio Moon can feel like a deep well of emotion, often with a sexual tone to it. Saturn will be conjunct the Moon for this eclipse, offering a container for all this energy as we explore it.

This is a passionate lunar eclipse we’re building to over the next several days. With an atmosphere of fear, anger and grief running high for many people, try to keep tabs on when your emotions run ahead of your thoughts. This is a time for empathy and self-awareness, and a good time to slow down and take a breath before speaking or acting. Respond, don’t react.

Immigration Reform — Over Before It’s Begun?

A bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday filed legislation for immigration reform, which hinges on almost complete border security. The legislation calls for “high-risk border sectors” — those with at least 30,000 illegal crossings a year — to be sealed off before most undocumented immigrants could begin the process to legal residency.

Advocates of true reform say this requirement — and indeed the whole path to citizenship — is nearly impossible. U.S. immigration officials would have to guarantee complete monitoring of the southern U.S. border and a 90 percent success rate in blocking unlawful entry in certain areas.

Only then could the nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants apply for permanent residency, a process expected to take at least 10 years. The path to citizenship is even longer: 13 years for undocumented immigrants to become eligible, according to Democracy Now!

Further, the legislation would block anyone who arrived in the United States after Dec. 31, 2011, from applying for legal status and ultimately citizenship. Applicants would also have to prove they have no criminal record and pay up to $2000 in fines, requirements that would bar “vast swaths” of immigrants from becoming citizens, said Democracy Now!

As if to further impede the “impossible” legislation, some are concerned that this week’s Boston Marathon attack will have adverse consequences.

League of United Latin American Citizens head Brent Wilkes said in an interview with Politico.com there is always a “threat of something happening when the details of the bombing attack become public.”

“If for example… somehow the person who did this was an immigrant, that would be something that would certainly make it harder for us to usher legalization through both the Senate and House,” he said, referring to the change overnight from support to opposition for an immigration overhaul after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Poison Letters Intercepted

A Mississippi man, Paul Kevin Curtis of Tupelo, was arrested by federal agents on Wednesday. He is suspected of sending letters believed contaminated by the poison ricin on Monday to President Obama, Mississippi Republican senator Roger Wicker, and others throughout the week. Tupelo is Wicker’s hometown.

Curtis, 45, believed he uncovered a conspiracy to sell human body parts on the black market and claimed “various parties within the government” were trying to ruin his reputation, according to CBS News. Both letters said: “To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance.” Both were signed, “I am KC and I approve this message.”

Ricin is a highly toxic, naturally occurring protein derived from the castor oil plant. A dose the size of a few grains of table salt can kill an adult human if exposure is from injection or inhalation. It does not have an antidote. The letters field-tested positive for ricin; authorities are awaiting the results of lab tests, since field tests for ricin often display false positives.

Courts Block Document Transparency, Medical Clemency

Two ongoing cases of delayed justice, secrecy and inhumane treatment have met additional setbacks this week. In the first, court documents related to the ongoing case of Army whistleblower Bradley Manning, who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed classified material to the website WikiLeaks, will not be accessible by journalists.

Bradley Manning, military release photo.

A lawsuit challenging government secrecy in the trial of Manning, brought on behalf of a group of journalists, had sought to allow access to transcripts, judicial arguments, and other court documents.

The Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces rejected the lawsuit, “citing a lack of jurisdiction until the trial is complete,” according to Democracy Now!

“Today’s decision flies in the face of decades of First Amendment rulings in the federal courts that hold … that the accuracy of court proceedings depends on their being open,” said the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Bradley Manning’s trial will now take place under conditions where journalists and the public will be unable to follow what is going on in the courtroom.”

This development is disconcerting, given that Manning’s supporters both in the U.S. and internationally have been concerned about his treatment while detained, and its effect on his mental health.

Detention without trial has also been a controversial hallmark of Guantanamo prison, where most of the 166 prisoners have been waging a hunger strike since February.

One of those prisoners, Yemeni national Musa’ab al-Madhwani, may be dying after being placed in solitary confinement without daily monitoring, after collapsing last week. U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan has denied an emergency relief motion from al-Madhwani, claiming he does not have jurisdiction. Hogan also described his condition as “self-manufactured.” al-Madhwani’s doctor accused Guantanamo of “deliberate indifference.”

Al-Madhwani has never been charged with a crime in the ten-plus years he has been imprisoned.

In related news, a landmark report was released this week confirming that the highest officials in the George W. Bush administration were responsible for the torture of people after the 9/11 incident. It also calls out the Obama administration for its lack of transparency around rendition and torture.

Couple Arrested in Revenge Killing of Texas DAs

Arrests have finally been made in the well-publicized cases of Texas District Attorney Mike McLelland, his wife Cynthia and Mark Hasse, an assistant DA, who were murdered earlier this year. Despite much speculation that a Mexican drug cartel or the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (a white supremacist prison gang) must be responsible, the culprits have turned out to be much less exotic — yet perhaps more chilling.

On Wednesday, prosecutors filed charges against former Texas justice of the peace Eric Williams and his wife Kim Williams. According to an affidavit, Kim Williams confessed to taking part in the killings, primarily as the driver, but claimed that her husband actually pulled the trigger on all three victims. She joined her husband at the jail at about 3 a.m. on Wednesday; he was already in custody over allegedly sending an anonymous e-mail threatening another attack.

The pair committed the murders in retaliation for Evan Williams’ conviction for stealing three computer monitors from the county. That verdict — and its resulting loss of his law license and peace officer license — allegedly put the couple into dire financial straits, prompting them to plot revenge, which they patiently enacted. Williams and his lawyer both claimed that Hasse and McLellan tampered with evidence in his trial over the stolen computer monitors to settle a political grudge.

Investigators struggled for weeks to find evidence to tie Williams to the murders. Finally on Saturday, prompted by evidence not yet disclosed, they discovered a storage unit at a self-storage business housing a car matching the description of the one witnesses claimed to see speeding away after the January shooting of Hasse in front of the Kaufman County courthouse. The unit also included several guns.

“I find it hard to believe that someone could have written a novel with all these twists and turns in a small rural county in Texas,” said Bruce Wood, the county’s top elected official. “People are relieved but still stunned.”

Communication Breakdown

Adding to the chaos and confusion of the Boston Marathon explosions was both spotty cell phone service and conflicting reports regarding cell phone service being cut off. News outlets reported that service was unavailable in parts of the city but the reasons were unclear.

Both The Associated Press and the New York Post reported that government officials shut service off in Boston to prevent remote detonation of further devices. The Associated Press report cited a law-enforcement official as their source, and around the same time the New York Post ran a headline stating the same. Wireless Internet was also reported to be slow or unavailable through various news reports and twitter accounts.

Despite these reports, other accounts state that there was no official decision made, or steps taken, to shut down cell phone service in Boston for any reason. Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T denied any interruption of service to the area. A Sprint spokeswoman noted that they did experience some “mild call blocking” immediately following the blasts due to above normal traffic, and suggested people try texting rather than calling in these situations. The AP retracted their story.

That does not mean that cell phone service cannot be cut off. Precedents have been set world wide in Egypt, Myamar, Iran, and domestically here in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. The phrase shutting down the Internet or cell phone availability is misleading however, since there is no “kill switch” for these or any one way to shut them off.

What does exist is a classified document within the Department of Homeland Security outlining protocols and procedures to shut down communications in the event of an emergency: Standard Operating Procedure 303 (SOP 303). Since SOP 303 is classified, little is known about what conditions would constitute a situation in which it would operate. What is known is that state and Homeland Security officials share a network with government and private institutions that can coordinate a shutdown in localized areas.

Planet Waves

During World War II, the conjunction of Uranus with Saturn in Gemini seems to have precipitated the formation of the WAACs — the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. Nick Dagan Best suggests that, “The pairing of these particular planets conjures their mythological association with castration, evoking the insecurities of patriarchal culture. Perhaps the WAAC’s recruitment slogan wasn’t helping assuage masculine insecurity: ‘Your job: To replace men. Be ready to take over’.” Full-page image from URANU.S.A.

URANU.S.A.

If the events of this week have brought anything home, it’s that aspects and transits involving Uranus can come with big, surprise ideas and actions (including the creative and revolutionary) — as well as upsets, literal explosions and fires: events that change the course of things in a dramatic way.

Astrologer and friend of Planet Waves Nick Dagan Best has written a non-fiction book in graphic novel format, called URANU.S.A., which traces the story of Uranus through Gemini in U.S. history. Uranus has transited Gemini during three distinct recent eras: the revolutionary period that birthed the United States of America; the American Civil War; and U.S. involvement in World War II.

In that time, Uranus in Gemini’s wartime expression has spurred some truly notable advancements; for example, Uranus and Venus joined in Gemini turns out to be “a repeating planetary signature in the gradual advancement of racial equality in United States law.”

If you have some solid, basic astrological knowledge (you know a square from a sextile; you have a feel for how planets express themselves in the 12 zodiac sigs, and in aspect to each other) and a sweet tooth for history, it’s a fascinating and vividly illustrated read.
The e-book version of URANU.S.A. is available now; or you can pre-order a print copy and it will ship as soon as it’s ready.

The Boston Marathon and our Culture of War

Here’s your new edition of Planet Waves FM. In this edition, I provide a careful analysis of the chart for the bombing of the Boston Marathon on Monday. I do this without jargon — explaining the astrology in human terms, and looking at things that are out of view of investigators and mainstream journalists.

My musical guest is Jimmy Be Free, who I met in the Portland airport Monday. He’s a brilliant violinist, composer and singer. You can pick randomly from his music — it’s all beautiful.

If you would like to see the charts I’ve been reviewing associated with the Boston Marathon, here is a Zip file of the charts. They are worth a look.

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

The April monthly extended horoscopes were published Friday, March 22. Inner Space for March was published Tuesday, Feb. 26; there will be no Inner Space for April due to scheduling issues. We published the Moonshine horoscopes for the Aries New Moon on Tuesday, April 9. We will publish a Moonshine horoscope for the Scorpio Full Moon Tuesday, April 23. The monthly horoscope for May will be published Friday, April 26. Note that the longer monthly horoscope is being incorporated into the Friday issue after the Sun has entered a new sign; a new Inner Space is generally emailed on the following Tuesday.

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, April 19, 2013 #946 | By Eric Francis

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Remember what you figure out this weekend, because it may be one of the most relevant personal discoveries you’ve made in a long time. The question, though, is why you might forget, and one reason for that is because if you put the information to use, you will need to make some deep decisions not just about what you do, but about who you are. I know you may not think that who you are is a decision, though I assure you that it is. Even if you only go as far as deciding to be who you know you are, rather than who you are not, that’s still an important choice, though it goes deeper than that. Your state of being is in a continual state of change, and at each of those junctures, you are presented with a choice. What decision you make will be influenced by what you know and whether you use what you know — and you’re about to learn something that is both meaningful and useful.

Attention all Aries: Your 2013 Birthday Reading is ready! Your sign is loaded with planets right now, making this New Moon the ultimate in cosmic reset buttons for you to get your solar year started Aries-style. If you have already ordered, you may now access using the login and password you received when you placed your order. If you have not yet ordered, what are you waiting for? You’re an Aries — the zodiac’s initiator! This birthday reading includes two 40-minute segments of astrology, plus a tarot spread using the Voyager Tarot by James Wanless. You may purchase instant access to this affordably priced reading here.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — As planets and the Sun move from Aries to Taurus, you may repeatedly have the sensation of seeing what you were missing. Venus made its move first, which will be followed by the Sun and Mars. It’s likely that there’s a theme of making discoveries about your sexuality and your sexual identity. The big surprise may be that there are variables you hadn’t considered, or overlooked. Looking deeper, there’s an inquiry about your relationship to your father and how that shaped your identity. Look for the ways that the relationship was set up for you to please him and you may notice what you left behind in the process of doing so. Those are things you can reclaim, and when you take a bold step toward doing that, you will want to take another and another. You’re poised to discover something I cannot describe, but I can see one clear effect: the sensation of being set free. Notice what got you there.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — This would be the weekend to get to every interesting social event you hear about. There’s something in your chart about making connections, which have an element of surprise and a stroke of genius to them. One reading of your solar chart describes an encounter with a group — that is, the potential to walk in on a new circle of friends that seemed like it was waiting for you to come along. But make sure you focus on the one-on-one encounters that seem to draw you in the deepest. Indeed, notice who and what draws you into yourself the deepest. You may feel some inclination to judge yourself at a certain point, to compare yourself to others or to wonder whether you fit in. Think of that as a veil that you’re passing through — or like one of those moments in a metaphysical journey where you’re confronted with your own fear. Remember, the fear is not coming from outside of you; what you’re seeing and being offered a chance to resolve is something inside yourself.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You have an opportunity to reinvent your career, which really means reinventing your creative process. This may start as the flash of an idea, a meeting, or a new way to see something that you’ve been mulling over for a long time. What matters most is that you follow your impulse and put your plan into motion. Take one step, then take another. You may have the feeling of pushing into the unknown, which turns out to be familiar territory where you discover that you know just what to do as you do it. The thing to remember is that while your idea may seem a little out of the ordinary, that’s precisely the point. What else deserves to be called an ‘idea’? Anyway, this is likely to be a real one. If you’re like most people in Western civilization, you have more to do than you can handle, so I suggest you make some conscious decisions about how to route your time, energy and resources. Remember: people around you support you. Get real about that.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — Think of yourself as the guardian of something of global importance. Imagine that you are a protector of all that is fair, honest and loving. That’s humble service, but it’s also essential that you make the mental shift from littleness to magnitude. You have a significant function in the world, and to fulfill that function you will benefit from keeping your mind as open and encompassing as you can. Center yourself on values that are designed to protect the core of life and love. You know what they are, and it’s natural for you to contribute to the world in such a way that supports what matters the most to you. You now have that opportunity, in what may be a continually increasing way. Remember the leadership skills you’ve developed. Remember your knack for getting others to cooperate with you, and to cooperate with one another. Remember how resourceful you are, which means you can pull together whatever it takes to get the job done.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — This may be the weekend to renegotiate your relationship agreements. The topic may come up on its own, or you may need to bring it up, in the context of recent events. The first thing to remember is that everything is negotiable. The second thing to remember is that there is a solution that can work out well for everyone, and you can find it — if everyone agrees. Short of that, you must do what you need to do in order to be free to live your life. You’re not a subsidiary of anyone, you’re not indentured and you’re not a slave to money or any other form of resources that might come from someone else. You are, however, free to use shared resources in a way that’s mutually beneficial and creative. I suggest you set no less of a standard for how you can conduct your life. Yet you have far broader horizons than you’ve admitted to yourself recently, and I think that will be your true source of motivation.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — There’s no way you can keep living with the relationship models that have served you in the past, but which cannot handle the way you and your world are today. There’s too much energy moving for you to hold yourself and others to strict rules or expectations. You also need to know how to work with the fact that people are attracted to you, rather than working against it, or having it work against you. Think of what you’re doing as directing the flow of energy. At the moment you have a lot to manage, and you may have given up keeping track of things. Now would be a good moment to spark yourself to full consciousness and make decisions. Listen to what people say. They will tell you all you need to know about who they are — and in the process, reveal plenty about who you are. Yet of all the information coming through your charts most important is the bit about not resenting when others fancy you. If you do, I suggest you consider it a measure of your self-esteem, and address it on that level. Remember, you don’t have to give up your power when you accept attention, affection and admiration.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — By all indications, this is going to be an exciting season of your life. Meaningful encounters with people are showing up on the event horizon. There may be so much energy coming your way that you do not know what to do with it. Two ideas come to mind: One is that what you encounter, who you meet, what you do and how you feel about it have the power to rearrange your life. You might be inclined to hold back, to prevent the changes, but that will only lead to an enhanced state of chaos. The other idea is that you’re starting to focus on your healing process with new commitment. You may have an idea that part of that journey involves a new approach to your relationships, though it goes a lot deeper than that. You would not be able to relate to others without a self with which to do the relating. The primary message of your solar chart is that how you relate to others is an extension of who you are — not the other way around.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — When I was at Burning Man 2001, someone said to me that many people there were not going to go past their boundaries, but they would find out what they are. You’re currently having your own miniature Burning Man or Burning Woman celebration. Your mental and emotional environment is thriving with creativity and passion. I would ask: how are you responding to this? Are you being pushed up against your boundaries, or feeling uncomfortable at the idea of certain potential experiences? How are you feeling about taking chances you might not take, particularly of a sexual or creative nature? How much fun can you stand? Right now you have the chance to feel the edge of your limits, or to expand them — a little or a lot. Either way, I suggest you notice what those limits are about. If you feel, listen and think, you’ll get information, and you can use it to make choices around the options that you’re being presented.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — You will feel love, and be loved, when you feel safe. Think of safety, love and trust as being part of the same thing. I suggest you assess any situation in your life, whether it involves your relationships, your children, or the work you do as a question of safety — or more accurately, of perceived safety. There’s a potential problem, though, in focusing too much from that angle. Many people who feel confident are that way because they take chances and succeed, and when they don’t, they count what they’ve learned, dust off and try again. Looked at the other way, people who refuse to take even ordinary risks will repeatedly convince themselves that they’re not safe doing so, and many influences in your solar chart suggest that the more daring you are, the more secure you’ll feel. What you’re looking for is not the assurance that nothing can go wrong but rather the self-assurance that life rewards you for actually living.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — You seem to be in a moment of revelation. Some idea or development is finally promising to move the story of your life along, rather than overwhelm you with problems and potential. The full idea may not have come to you yet — though you’re working your way toward it. The thing to remember is that there are two dimensions here — the outer and the inner. The outer level involves the conscious thoughts you’re thinking, the facts of which you’re aware and what you might do about them. The inner layer is a much deeper reality check about how you feel about these things. I suggest you include considerations such as what you would need to give up and what you would gain; an assessment of how certain choices have worked or not worked for you in the past; and any influence on your social reality. Practical matters are not everything; emotional matters count for a lot right now, and as the Grateful Dead lyrics go, “Without love in the dream, it will never come true.” Perhaps take that a step further — this is all about love, and awakening to it.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Your personal revelation of our rather stunning moment might go something like this: You can now see how many of your prior self-assessments of being unworthy, not good enough, not talented enough, not determined enough or any form thereof were not just incorrect but ridiculously off the mark. You have all the talent and resources you need; the next step is to engage with life more assertively, even competitively. Set clear goals for yourself, draw up a list of steps that will get you to each goal, and proceed with a clear strategy. Since you’re a Pisces you will always yield to intuition, so you don’t need to have any concerns that having a plan will hem you in. Your strategy is like a notebook that will help you guide your decisions, keep track of your priorities and help you ensure that you don’t miss any steps. Your intuition is working just fine. Add logic, reason and some consciously adapted skill at politics and you will be unstoppable.

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Out To The Edge

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Thanks to this past Wednesday’s Aries New Moon conjunct Eris, I knew this would be an interesting week. That’s usually as far as I go with predictions; I don’t want to spoil the fun.

North Korean Premier Kim Jong-Un. At 29 years old, he is the world’s youngest head of state — six years younger than is lawful for a U.S. president.

What we experienced was no ordinary New Moon. It was conjunct a relatively recent major discovery (Eris showed up in 2005 and was named in 2006, resulting in the ‘demotion’ of Pluto and compelling astronomers to define the word ‘planet’ for the first time).

Both Venus and Mars were conjunct Eris, adding a personal flavor and, thanks to Mars, a bit of extra zest.

And the whole performance took place in Aries — a sign associated with initiative, self-assertion and militancy.

When a new planet appears in an event so prominently, I call that a proving moment, and I wait to see what happens, so I can learn what the new planet is about. In world news, this week turned out to be pretty special.

For one thing, Maggie Thatcher, the ‘Iron Lady’ former prime minister of the U.K., kicked the bucket, with neither the people nor the media hiding its antipathy toward her. Thatcher waged war on Northern Ireland and the poor, established a new-style British economy that was based on finance rather than on production, and helped provoke the United States into Iraq War I. Her domestic policies included the controversial ‘head tax’, where everyone was taxed the same amount regardless of their income level. In short, Maggie Thatcher is viewed by most Brits as a disaster.

There were long-planned parties and champagne in the streets. Manchester United and Manchester City, two of the U.K.’s most powerful soccer teams, both refused to hold a moment of silence for Thatcher, not merely as a snub but rather fearing that riots would break out in the stadiums if they did. This was a good week to avoid a riot in a soccer stadium.

In Iran, there was a deadly earthquake near a nuclear facility. There was a knife attack in Texas, a weird, minor hostage situation and an incident in which a man tried to cut off his arms with hand saws at a California Home Depot. He did not succeed. But these incidents contribute to the idea that many people are approaching a snapping point.

Daily Mirror cover announcing the death of Margaret Thatcher (served from 1979-1990) questions whether she should be given a state funeral.

In the United States, the Senate has taken up the deep philosophical question of whether terrorists, felons and those judged mentally incompetent by a court should be armed with toys like M4 Carbine assault rifles (that’s another term for the Bushmaster, which delivers bullets that make baseball-sized holes in the body of whomever is hit, and which dismembered young students in the Sandy Hook incident).

This is the question of the ‘background check’, which is already required by federal law, but which is subverted at gun shows, where the check is not required and therefore where those otherwise banned routinely purchase weapons.

Thursday, the Senate voted 68 to 31 to allow the background check question onto the floor for an up or down vote. That’s to say, supporters of the bill mustered up more than the 60 votes necessary to get past the filibuster promised by some of our more brazen senators.

Such is evidence that even our Reptilian overlords are vaguely responsive to public pressure. The NRA, which seems to be increasingly psychotic as the weeks go on, had threatened to mark the report card of any senator who dared even to allow the measure onto the Senate floor.

The vote took place as parents and other relatives of those killed in the Newtown massacre watched from the Senate gallery, after being brought to Washington by Pres. Obama aboard Air Force One.

The airwaves and cable channels were awash with the usual anti-gun control arguments, including the old story about the ‘slippery slope’: when you ban one kind of weapon, where does it end? First they come for the Bushmasters, and the next thing you know they’re confiscating your Glock, then your grandpa’s trusty old shotgun, then your .22 target rifle, then your Sears BB gun — and then they take away your pocket knife.

Other people are wondering: how big should the biggest allowable weapon be? If we refuse to draw the line at the Bushmaster, maybe we should allow civilians to have anti-aircraft or anti-tank weapons. Maybe civilians should have F-15 fighter jets, and we can do the Home Air Force reality show. Maybe we should allow people to have Cruise Missiles.

The M4 or Bushmaster is legal in most states, and can even be purchased many places without an FBI background check.

Or hey, maybe we should allow everyone to have nuclear weapons. Speaking of, this may be remembered as the week that North Korea threatened the world with thermonuclear war.

We’ve all been hearing a little about this, though I’ve noticed that cable news in the U.S. is playing it down somewhat.

This week, the North Korean government issued a statement: “The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching close to a thermonuclear war due to the evermore undisguised hostile actions of the United States and the South Korean puppet warmongers.” (This was issued by the “Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee,” a hilariously named North Korean state agency.) It also said that North Korea “does not want to see foreigners in South Korea fall victim to the war.”

How considerate of them. Of course, it’s evidence they think this is going to be like the Hatfields vs. the McCoys, a contained little atomic war local to the Korean peninsula. This shows you they need to get out of the house more.

Meanwhile, for the past week or so, under the leadership of the world’s youngest head of state, 29-year-old Kim Jong-Un, North Korea had already been threatening to shoot its missiles at Guam, Japan and its neighbors to the south. [The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has said it believed that North Korea could make a nuclear bomb small enough to put on a missile, but Secretary of State John Kerry rejected that idea. The DIA had previously said that Iraq was close to a nuclear bomb as well.]

For many, this episode was the first time they’d heard of Kim Jong-Un, unless of course you caught the story in February of retired NBA star Dennis Rodman visiting North Korea and allegedly being the first American that Kim ever met. Kim is known to be a basketball fan and idolizes its players.

Artist’s conception of Kim Jong-Un living out his natal chart, riding a big one in a parade. Illustration by Lizanne Webb.

Everyone is used to the gasbags up there issuing threats, but this particular threat was accompanied by the North Koreans deploying portable missiles believed to have a range of up to 2,500 miles. They didn’t fire them — they just set them up and pointed them at various places. Presumably, these were armed only with conventional warheads.

Various governments, including China, issued warnings to back off. China in particular said that no country had the right to destabilize the region or the world.

Kim Jong-Un took office in December 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong-Il. Korea is mysterious and North Korea is even more mysterious; astrologers have had some trouble finding out Kim’s birthdate. (This is not uncommon for people from countries that use different calendars than we use in the West, particularly if they were adopted, and it presents an ongoing challenge to astrologers.)

But this week, Oregon-based astrologer Mark Lerner, who for many years published Welcome to Planet Earth, was a guest on Coast to Coast AM, and said he had Kim’s data — which turned out to come from a British astrologer named Paul Saunders.

Kim’s date of birth was known to be Jan. 8, but his year of birth was not known for sure; it’s either 1983 or 1984. Saunders noticed that Kim’s mother was quoted in the BBC as calling him the “Morning Star King,” and after doing some research rectified Kim’s chart to 1984 and even came up with a time. You can read how he did the rectification here.
I think it’s good work.

The upshot is that on Jan. 8, 1984, Venus was shining brilliantly in the pre-dawn sky. (Venus is a planet and not a star, but the term ‘morning star’ refers to a planet rising in the east before the Sun rises, usually Venus.) The prior year, there was not a morning star on Jan. 8. So that kind of narrows it down to 1984.

The Nuclear Axis chart version I (set for CWT; version 2 is set for CST). This is the chart for the first self-sustaining, controlled nuclear reaction, which was part of the Manhattan Project. The axis can be seen from the lower left to the upper right — notice the planets in Gemini and Sagittarius. When planets make conjunctions or squares to planets on the axis, there are often nuclear events.

When I saw the chart, I let out a little gasp: many of Kim’s planets fit snugly into a chart called the Nuclear Axis. That’s the chart for the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction, created as part of the Manhattan Project, which designed the first atomic bombs during World War II.

When planets or events like eclipses come into alignment with the Nuclear Axis chart (the axis referring to a band of space through Gemini and Sagittarius), there is often some kind of major nuclear incident. You can teach yourself astrology by taking the Nuclear Axis chart and comparing it to events like Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island.

The gist is that Kim Jong-Un is a walking, talking nuclear incident. He has many important planets in his chart aligned with the Nuclear Axis, and seems to have been born to provoke the issue into public consciousness.

I don’t know if he will start a nuclear war, but he’s destined to get us to think about that possibility, which would be healthy. He is young; he’s likely to be around for a while. And for many other reasons, this issue is not going to go away. It’s likely to surface in a big way in the late winter and early spring of 2014.

First, though, a brief note on the Nuclear Axis chart. This is the chart for the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear reaction. The event took place back in 1942 in a lab under the grandstand of a football stadium at the University of Chicago. (You never know what’s going on under those athletic facilities at a big research university.)

I spent an hour on the phone with Mark Lerner Wednesday. He’s the astrologer who did most of the early research on the Nuclear Axis, and who first demonstrated the effect. He informed me that there’s a one-hour discrepancy in the time of the first controlled reaction, based on conflicting reports of whether the stated time — 3:25 pm — was in Central Standard Time (CST) or Central War Time (CWT, which was like Daylight Savings Time, but year-round). Fortunately, both charts have Taurus rising, so they cover common territory.

Natal chart for Kim Jong-Un. Notice the planets in Sagittarius (left side, above horizon) and Gemini (right side, below horizon), which are on the Nuclear Axis. He also has Ceres and the Moon in Pisces, which are square planets along the Nuclear Axis. You can see Kim’s chart next to the Nuclear Axis at this link.

After interviewing him for an hour on the topic, I was still not satisfied that the CWT chart was actually wrong, potentially because I could not connect all the facts without the documents in front of me.

I mention this to let you know that I’m aware of the issue. Till I sort it out in an article devoted to the topic, I’m going to stick to the chart I’ve been using over the years, since this chart works (the one set for CWT, with early Taurus rising). Note that the one-hour time difference does not change the location of the Nuclear Axis itself — that involves planets in the first half of Gemini and Sagittarius.

See if you can find that axis in the charts. Gemini is the green II and Sagittarius is the reddish arrow pointing upward and to the right. They are opposite one another. The axis runs straight from Gemini to Sagittarius and is indicated by the purple lines going across the middle of the chart. See it? Great!

Okay, now take a look at Kim Jong-Un’s chart (here it is in larger size, side by side with the Nuclear Axis). The thing about anyone 29 years old is that they’re still in the midst of their Saturn return — one of the most significant thresholds into adulthood. The U.S. founding fathers had a good point when they set the minimum age for the presidency at 35 — long after the first Saturn return. Kim is a head of state who is in many ways still a sheltered child.

Atomic Boy Wonder has many of his planets in Gemini and Sagittarius. Look at that whole collection to the left side of the chart. That’s the 12th house — the house where everything has a veil thrown over it, and you cannot really know for sure what’s going on. It’s a perfect description of North Korea — a whole clump of activity tucked into the elusive 12th, behind a scrim or veil.

And it’s loading up the Nuclear Axis. Kim also has his Moon in Pisces, which is sensitive, emotive, easily influenced — and exactly square the axis. He has an emotional investment; it’s easy for him to get dragged in, and that Pisces Moon under such stress does not look like any form of stable. (In fact, the Moon is at the point of a T-square and is extremely unstable.) Note, when something is square the Nuclear Axis, such as this Pisces Moon, that counts full score.

Dennis Rodman’s trip to North Korea. This is a news event — not Rodman’s birth chart. The sky is piled up in Gemini, Virgo and Pisces — all aspecting the Nuclear Axis. Rodman’s natal chart does as well. You can see Rodman’s chart next to the Nuclear Axis at this link.

There are other interesting things about his chart. He has Mars in Libra right on top in the 10th house, the house of the president, of the king, of the CEO. That is not what you would call diplomatic — it’s rather aggressive and insensitive. Mars is not comfortable in Venus-ruled Libra. Between that and his Pisces Moon, I think little Kim thinks that he’s perceived as a girly-man.

Pluto is right there; so really he has a Mars-Pluto conjunction in his 10th. He can be a little autocratic, which I guess fits since he’s actually a dictator. This accentuates the sensation that he has something to prove, and that warfare might be his chosen means.

I think we have an actual problem on our hands with Kim Jong-Un, especially if North Korea persists in its nuclear development program. When this incident blows over, we may have a new, major episode or series of incidents in the spring of 2014 when Mars is retrograde in Libra. A lot of astrologers are watching this one, and I will say now that it’s likely to be the subject of frantic prediction. This is because Mars will be passing through the Uranus-Pluto square three times, and Jupiter will be in the picture, making a grand cross.

One last chart — that of Dennis Rodman’s trip to North Korea earlier this year. He went allegedly on the occasion of a basketball event. Kim loves basketball, so you can imagine it was a big deal to have Rodman sitting there with him. Rodman’s natal chart has important planets on the Nuclear Axis, which drop into the puzzle perfectly.

Yet the chart for his trip to North Korea is the really impressive one. I think it would be hard to stuff more planets into Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces — all on or square the Nuclear Axis, some with stunning precision. We might wonder what exactly Rodman was doing there and what exactly he said to Kim. We will probably never know that for sure, but what we do know is that this whole nuclear escalation incident took place shortly after Rodman’s visit. Clearly, he didn’t have a calming effect on Kim. He had some other effect.

I don’t know what to make of this connection, but I think it’s pretty strange, particularly in the context of a volatile and easily influenced young dictator who is vying to have his country be a nuclear contender.

What we’ve seen this week is how volatile the world is, and how on edge some people in it are. The North Korea nuclear issue is just one example of what we usually have to tune out to make it through the day. There are many others — issues both collective and individual; griefs that we must be witness to or bear personally; the sense that there is only limited opportunity to get out from under the strain or off of the treadmill. Looked at one way, many of us have good lives, complete with food and shelter. Looked at another, the psychic strain of existence increases constantly, and grows more complex.

Dennis Rodman visits Kim Jong-Un in North Korea earlier this year.

We are all under a lot of pressure, much of it unacknowledged. The astrological events of the past week or so may have focused that in your life, and hopefully you’re someone who can deal with pressure and who has healthy ways of blowing it out or expressing it creatively. But not everyone has the opportunity or knows how.

Many people are trying to cope by using medication — which sometimes works pretty well and sometimes makes matters worse (it’s necessary to figure that out for yourself). Many medications intended for physical ailments (ranging from those designed to help people quit smoking to diabetes drugs) have significant psychiatric side effects.

As part of the gun debate, we are seeing some awareness of the need for better psychiatric treatment so that we can stop in advance some of the people who do these mass shootings. As part of this, it’s necessary to acknowledge the extent that mental illness is on the rise, and start to understand how and why that is happening. And if ‘better’ treatment means more drugs, we really better consider the known effects of those drugs. Many have a ‘side’ effect of inducing suicide in some patients, which means they likely have a spectrum of other non-helpful effects in some people.

The most important thing we can do is learn to take care of ourselves, and take our own healing process to heart. We can also be aware of who is in distress around us, and extend an offer of help, or at least to talk. It may be your boss or someone who works for you. It may be a neighbor, friend, relative, your partner or spouse.

The events we’re seeing dramatized in the world are merely an expression of what’s going on within the hearts and minds of many individuals, including ourselves. I would say that we’re at a point where healing is no longer a luxury.

We may be figuring out that we’re not going to solve anything with bombs, guns, control dramas or aggression — though what to do about these things is another question.

Lovingly,

Invocation of Spring: Your 2013 spring sex and love astrology reading is now available for your listening pleasure. The eclipses approaching this season are on the sensual, passionate Taurus-Scorpio axis. Beltane (the Pagan holiday celebrating fertility and sexual union in early May, at the peak of spring) is right around the corner.

Your 12-sign reading includes an introduction plus a 35-minute audio reading for each sign. Listen to your Sun, Moon and rising sign for added depth as you start tuning up your sex and love vibrations. Consider these audio readings a kind of a road map for your relationships — and some inspiration. Order instant access for $24.95 here.

Slightly Subtler Week Ahead

We are still coming off of Wednesday’s Aries New Moon; with clear skies we may see the new crescent Friday evening, so we’re not done with this less-than-subtle event. The New Moon conjunct Venus, Mars and Eris came with some wild world news (see my lead article above).

And in personal news, well, you tell me. How was your week in relationships? The astrology has been so self-centered as to verge on narcissism. Yet it also provided enough individuality for those who tend to get lost in others to snap out of it for a minute, and to remember that they exist. One person’s narcissism is another person’s self-actualization.

Portland OR’s south waterfront, with a little yacht and freeway bridge under construction. Photo by Eric Francis.

(You really know it’s narcissism when someone demonstrates not just lack of care for those they claim to love, but the refusal to acknowledge their existence.)

We remain in an evolutionary/revolutionary moment, when the image in the astrology is divesting our idea of who we are from structures and institutions, including our concepts of relationship, and “self-concept” as it was dictated to us.

In any case, the astrology of the next week or so is somewhat subtler than it’s been the past few weeks. There are not what you would think of as ‘major events’. The dominant aspect in the astrology is a quincunx — a 150-degree connection between Saturn retrograde in Scorpio, and Uranus in Aries.

In the context of what we’ve been living through, this is actually useful and timely. Uranus in Aries is a long burst of self-awareness, though it can get distracted by glitz and glam. You can derail your spiritual path by getting caught up in what a bright, shiny object you are, or what a deep and spiritual object you are.

The quincunx to Saturn in Scorpio is like leverage that is pushing the boundaries of agreements. Saturn in Scorpio may be desperately trying to cling to the frozen emotional patterns that many people stomp around in proudly, like ice queens and kings. Those in Saturn mode need the heat of those in Uranus mode; and if they don’t respond, those in Uranus mode — that is, the self-aware revolution — need to see how people are responding to them.

I’ll give you two examples. If you’re in self-aware revolution mode, you may notice that someone close to you is trying to cool you down, or get you into their stiff emotional choreography. You have a choice — to stick around and risk hypothermia, or to explore elsewhere and see what you learn.

Two days after Mercury enters Aries to join Uranus, Eris, the Sun and Mars, Venus enters Taurus, joining Pallas Athene and the lunar South Node. View glyph legend here.

Those in self-aware revolution mode might also be drawing toward them people who are on a similar wavelength. That could be a lot of fun — though there will be some tension between individuality and conformism in the equation, as there always is on Earth, and I suggest that this be handled consciously. If humans need to learn one thing, it’s how to negotiate. Negotiating is the opposite of being a victim.

One regular Planet Waves reader (who goes by “awordedgewise” on the blog) described the Saturn-Uranus quincunx as more of a creative tag-team effort:

“Sort of like; it’s really cold out and I’m working on an ice-sculpture, but in order to manipulate the ice-water, I need a little flexibility. Uranus gives me that flexibility, then Saturn firms it up again — over and over. … It is not a one-shot deal wherein Uranus needs to loosen up Saturn. This is a long-haul shift made up by many, many moments of ‘change, then observe’. Just like a sculptor’s process — shift/observe, shift/observe, shift/observe — until the new creation is complete. Saturn is not the evil cousin from the past. Uranus and Saturn both represent useful and necessary components of the process.”

While those processes are working in the background, Mercury and Venus change signs as we shift into a new week. On Saturday at 10:37 pm EDT, Mercury joins the Aries stellium. Mercury is comfortable in Aries, making for a quick, witty, inventive mind. With so many other planets in Aries, you’ll want to stay conscious of superficial impulses and your ego/temper — especially since Mercury moves into a conjunction with Uranus next week.

Venus entering Taurus Monday at 3:25 am EDT should help temper and ground personal relations. Venus rules Taurus (and Libra), and here the planet of love expresses itself best through the senses. Good food; beautiful art; sex that takes its time building to some serious heat with generosity and receptivity; literally putting your body in contact with earth; these are all things that say ‘Venus in Taurus’.

And if you’re one of those U.S. readers who waits until the last possible moment to file their income taxes (due April 15), Venus in Taurus may bode well for that, too. Not that you should consider this an endorsement for procrastinating.

The Queer Frontier

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Dear Friend and Reader:

I had a great time listening to the arguments surrounding both same-sex marriage and the Defense of Marriage Act (or DOMA) last week before the U.S. Supreme Court. It was like the “personal is political” World Series, hearing some of the most intimate human topics being debated in what is arguably the most powerful court in the world.

Photo by Eric Francis – Blue Studio / New York.

I loved hearing some of the justices make truly illuminating points and hearing others squirm around having to discuss something they wished they didn’t have to deal with. You might say that was sex, or the idea of gay sex — or you might say that was progress.

They’re all closely related. The essence of the discussion was: is sex actually a moral issue? We’re told it is so often, and we’re so thoroughly conditioned to treat it like it is, that I think many people would rather discover their kid playing with explosives than walk in on them playing doctor.

Treating sex as a moral issue has a long history, though looked at another way, it is the story of history. This has its origins in religion, which predates our modern concept of law or government. Yet the two are closely related. The purpose of both is less about an orderly society, a trustworthy economy or meeting the needs of the people, and more about social control.

There was that stunning moment during the DOMA arguments when Justice Elena Kagan quoted the House of Representatives report on why it passed the law. In that report, we discover that Congress, under the stewardship of serial polygamist Newt Gingrich, felt that marriage needed to be defended in order to “honor a collective moral judgment” reflecting “moral disapproval of homosexuality.”

Rep. Henry Hyde, then chairman of the House Judiciary Committee where DOMA was brewed and fermented, said at the time that “most people do not approve of homosexual conduct … and they express their disapprobation through the law.” And now that law, or rather the whole tendency to place moral judgment on normal social behavior, is up for question.

Photo by Eric Francis – Blue Studio / New York.

We don’t know what the Supreme Court is going to do with these cases, though we know that there is a discussion happening on the highest level of government. For many reasons, that’s truly encouraging. What was once deeply hidden, denied and treated with disgust and rage is now household conversation, in a sense, sanctified by the blessing of the court.

Yet that could only happen were there some movement on the deepest level of the psyche. Which brings me to the astrology involved.

We’re in the midst of a generational event — the Uranus-Pluto square. This is the latest step in a cycle that turned over in the mid-1960s; that was the Uranus-Pluto conjunction. To some extent we all utter the words “The Sixties” with some reverence — it was a profound, tragic, sometimes beautiful, often wrenching time in history. A force for change had been let loose, and that was described by the Uranus-Pluto conjunction.

Now we are at the first quarter phase of that cycle — the square. The force of evolution and that of revolution are meeting at a 90-degree angle, which technically spans from 2012-2015, but which in retrospect will have a story arc that goes from around 2008 through around 2020. We’re now in the peak of the astrology.

But with the exceptions of some uprisings in 2011 — prior to the exact square, and which either did not persist, or which ended badly — we’re not seeing demonstrations in the streets, or a social uprising. But what we are seeing are these developments in our concept of relationship; and that is a development in our concept of what a person is. Plenty of that concept is related to sex.

Many, many centuries of “disapprobation” directed at homosexuality in particular have left a compounded injury in our collective and individual psyches. One way that manifests is as homophobia, by which I mean anything from subtle annoyance to deep, abiding disgust. When you combine that with the natural primate tendency toward same-sex relating, the result can be a lot of chaos and pain, or a society that often seems to be unraveling.

Looked at one way the Uranus-Pluto square is about some kind of upheaval, change or progress in society. Looked at another way, it’s an introspective process that each person is experiencing individually. That, I believe, is where the real progress is happening.

I would offer a perspective on the spiritual significance of embracing the whole notion of ‘homosexual’. Primal sex is sex with oneself. Very nearly everyone masturbates, which I’ve observed is a kind of core level of sexuality. It’s not about reproduction. It’s about the pleasure of existence or perhaps the mere fact of it, it involves feelings related to the self, from the self, in a reflexive way — and it’s true blue homo.

Photo by Eric Francis – Blue Studio / New York.

The sex we have with ourselves is a form of gay sex; it is a same-sex experience. That, I believe, is one reason for the fuss over masturbation that has persisted more than 400 years (it can actually be historically traced to the early 1700s). There are other reasons; one is that sex alone with oneself has a way of opening up the full potential of fantasy, which does not always follow the fantasy that starts with a bridal shower.

I used to think that a sexual revolution would happen after AIDS was cured. It’s not really cured but it’s not what it used to be. Yet as time and my writing portfolio have collected, I’ve reconsidered. In my view, we don’t need a sexual revolution. We need conscious sexual evolution, which means many people individuating and living lives of authenticity, transparency and awareness (the opposite of hypocrisy). Sexual evolution is about being real.

The core of sexual evolution is that you are an independent person and so is everyone else. Then you do what you want to do in an ethical way. Part of that ethical way involves honoring independence and sexual choices, and understanding that nearly all of us exist on a continuum with each of our lovers, as they do with us — there are (for nearly everyone) those who ‘came before’ and those who will ‘come after’.

That leaves plenty of room for deep exchange, safe containers for family, and longterm or even lifelong commitment.

Now that monogamous lesbians and male homosexuals and the things they do are on the way to acceptance in society, it’s time to open the discussion that sexuality exists on a three-dimensional continuum (not the Kinsey scale), and that every person has a different sexual orientation with every different person we encounter. I guess that makes us a different kind of queer with everyone and anyone.

My sense is that Uranus-Pluto has nudged us out to the Queer Frontier. Yes, many pioneers have been here for a while; I am talking about the preponderance of momentum in our society, social movement that has the ability to carry many with it.

Photo by Eric Francis – Blue Studio / New York.

Here are some ideas about who deserves full inclusion in our ongoing conversation of what is possible rather than what is moral.

People who are open and positive about sex. There are many; those who are willing to speak up are a rare breed. They’re the people who admit the whole thing, stating who they are, who they like and what they do. They are the people who can carry on a conversation and create the spaces where nothing is taboo.

Self-sexuals, which includes everyone part of the time, and many people much of the time. Many people otherwise engaged sexually have their best sex with themselves. This includes people who choose to be sexual exclusively with themselves; if we were to hear from them we would find out there are a lot more than we thought.

My sense is that this is where the real change — claiming pleasure and releasing guilt and shame — will start or may have already started. I understand conscious self-sexuality to be an easily accessible, pleasurable, socially interesting path to sexual healing.

I have noticed that many people are reluctant to speak up and claim this. I am doing my best to set a different trend. (I may hold the World Internet Record for mentions of masturbation in my articles, as of today, I get 6,060 Google returns on the topic). I know there are a LOT more people who have something to say — who I have yet to hear from (happily anticipating your emails).

People who choose themselves as a sex partner, whether ‘one on one’ or in the context of other sexual relationships, have the right to not feel shame about this, and we need to educate one another how to do this.

I took a little surf of my 6,060 Google hits a few minutes ago and found this quote, apropos of self-sexuality that I wrote a few years back:

“I would propose that masturbation is about a lot more than masturbation — and that’s the reason it’s still considered so taboo by many people, and in many places. First, I would say that masturbation holds the key to all sexuality. It’s a kind of proto-sexuality, the core of the matter of what it means to be sexual. I mean this in an existential sense. Masturbation is the most elemental form of sexuality, requiring only awareness and a body. Whatever we experience when we go there is what we bring into our sexual encounters with others — whether we recognize it or not. Many factors contribute to obscuring this simple fact.”

Photo by Eric Francis – Blue Studio / New York.

Polyamory and nontraditional forms of relationships, which includes most people some of the time and nearly all people at some point. The awareness that some people actually admit to this is starting to increase, though at the moment polyamory seems to be wanting for idea-based leadership and coordination, in the midst of its biggest PR boon ever. The press has never been better and we’re not really taking the opportunity to build on it. I would remind polyamorous leaders that it was two sci-fi writers who got your movement going; you might want to give out book lists at your mixers, and have writing workshops at your conferences.

Single people. Not poly. Not mono. Not cheating. Not ‘asexual’. Single — those whose primary partner is ‘perself’ to use a Marge Piercy word (from Woman on the Edge of Time) for ‘him or herself’. Many people are single because that’s what’s available, and a good few are because they want to be that way.

Single people are discriminated against structurally by everything from the tax code to the dentist office application to you name it. The tax break for married couples is stunningly discriminatory, literally paying some people to have one specific kind of relationship. Single people are often considered a threat to the sanctity of coupled people. I could go on and on. Check out a blog called Onely.org for more info. Note, I would recommend to the Single’s Rights Movement that it could help matters by being more open and honest about masturbation.

Bisexuals and gender fluid people whose identity is not fixed and committed like registering with a political party. The official queer movements still have a hard time with this, no matter how many letters they add to their collection. I am speaking about people in harmony with their diversity of potentials, desires, choices and options for how they can feel and express themselves. When we look carefully at this and at ourselves we will find out that many, many more people fit this description than the previously existing political parties ‘allow’. Gender and sexual orientation are indeed fluid. The sex organs secrete liquid, which is designed to mix with others, in case we need a biological metaphor.

Asexual and non-practicing (apparently there is such a thing as asexual, with 1% of the population reporting this). Having no sexual feelings or not wanting to act on them is as queer as anything else in a world where sex is considered normal. From what I have read in my inbox, they feel left out when the conversation turns to sex and relating. They would do well to find one another and talk about who they are and what they do. There are many reasons for this choice, and we need to consider it as valid as any other.

That is the whole point. We all have a right to choose who we are and what we want. The ability to do this, I believe, needs to be about ability and volition rather than about privilege. The core idea is consent: the freedom to say yes or no, to yourself and to others; the freedom to decide who you are today.

Lovingly,

Invocation of Spring: Your 2013 spring sex and love astrology reading is now available for purchase. The eclipses approaching this season are on the sensual, passionate Taurus-Scorpio axis. Beltane (the Pagan holiday celebrating fertility and sexual union in early May, at the peak of spring) is right around the corner.

Your 12-sign reading includes an introduction plus a 40-minute audio reading for each sign. Listen to your Sun, Moon and rising sign for added depth as you start tuning up your sex and love vibrations. Consider these audio readings a kind of a road map for your relationships — and some inspiration. Order instant access for $24.95 here.

Quite the Aries New Moon

The sky is currently building toward the Aries New Moon. Astrologers don’t usually describe the New Moon as a building process — usually it’s more like closure, resolution and completion. Yet this is an unusual New Moon, with the sensation of something building to a point of release, much more like a Full Moon.

Chart section showing planets in Aries at the New Moon April 10, plus Mercury at the top in Pisces, safely out of its echo phase. Uranus is in early Aries; the Sun and Moon are conjunct at 20+ Aries, with Eris, Mars and Venus nearby within about three degrees. Glyph legend.

It’s exact at 5:35 am EDT on Wednesday, April 10. Several smaller but meaningful events lead up to this, though it’s worth noting that we have this landmark on the immediate horizon. It’s actually a grand conjunction involving five planets, which are the Moon and Sun (as with any New Moon), the new planet Eris, and then Venus and Mars.

Additionally, Uranus is a longterm visitor in Aries, and while it’s slightly off to the side of this New Moon, it’s close enough to add energy, a creative factor and a hint that there’s a lack of predictability involved in the events that develop.

Yet that is also described by the presence of Eris in the middle of the five-planet alignment. Eris, a Pluto-like planet with a much longer orbit than Pluto, is serving as a kind of threshold — between the familiar and the unfamiliar. That can include your familiar concept of yourself and the one you don’t know so well; it can include your familiar concept of relationships and the one that perhaps you are being drawn into as if by gravity.

Between what I’m calling the ‘familiar state’ and the ‘unfamiliar state’ is a kind of threshold. You might say that threshold is a direct encounter with the unknown, and the fact that there even is an unknown. (One of the first things denial denies is the fact that there’s anything else.)

While you take the ride of this New Moon, remember that on the deepest level it’s about an encounter with your evolving self, and your relationship to that self — which sets the tone of every other relationship. Eris can add the element of chaos. I would note that there are two kinds: toxic and fertile. I suggest a bit of meditating on the difference between them. Toxic chaos is self-serving. Fertile chaos inspires creativity, and can be a release from the entanglements of the past.

Between now and Wednesday, several other things happen. One is that on Saturday, the Mercury shadow phase ends; the Mercury retrograde we experienced in February and March is fully resolved at this point. Mercury enters new territory for the first time in many weeks, and is getting ready to enter Aries on April 13.

The next day (this Sunday) is the exact Venus-Mars conjunction in Aries. This is an interesting conjunction because we have Venus and Mars in a sign that is ruled by Mars. That seems like a competitive situation of some kind — those are usually pointless. Who is competing for what? That’s the question to ask, if things ever get testy. The more competitive person is most likely to lose the game that THEY are playing, so if you want to win the game you’re playing, I suggest you avoid competitive people and find the cooperative ones.

They are most likely to be the ones who know what to do with a mystery, with the unknown, and who are comfortable making changes.

Gun Control Progress: State by State

Congress may have failed to move forward Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapons ban a couple of weeks ago, but lawmakers in individual states are proving better able to make progress in the face of the NRA’s big-money lobbying. Connecticut — where the horrific Newtown school massacre occurred this winter — is the latest state with one of the strictest gun-control laws in the U.S.

The measure, which Gov. Dannel Malloy was expected to sign into law Thursday, requires universal background checks for all gun sales, increases gun registration, expands the state’s ban on assault weapons, and bans any new sales of magazines with more than 10 bullets.

A little further south, Maryland is likely to follow suit. That state’s House of Delegates approved a bill on Wednesday that includes the fingerprinting of gun buyers and banning assault weapons and magazines with more than 10 bullets. The measure now returns to the state Senate, which passed a similar version of the bill last month.

In related news, the Center for American Progress has released a new report showing that states with the nation’s most lax gun laws also suffer the nation’s worst rates of gun violence. Eight of the states with the most gun violence were among the 25 with the weakest gun laws. Indicators included gun homicides and suicides, gun deaths of children, and fatal shootings of law enforcement officers.

Colorado, another state that has recently passed stricter gun regulations in the aftermath of gun violence, hosted President Obama this week.

“I believe there doesn’t have to be a conflict in reconciling these realities,” said Obama on Wednesday, as part of his efforts to get a gun control law passed in Washington. “There doesn’t have to be a conflict between protecting our citizens and protecting our Second Amendment rights. Aurora is very much a purple city. It’s got a majority Republican city council; a majority of its state legislators are Democrat. But they came together understanding that out of this tragedy there had to be something that made sense.”

It sounds great — but Obama still needs to confront members of his own party standing in the way. That leaves it up to individual states, although Connecticut has a lot to lose if it pisses off the gun industry.

At least three major gun manufacturers call Connecticut home, and they’re threatening to leave. The small New England state can’t afford to lose the thousands of jobs represented by those companies. Yet it seems leaders there have chosen that possibility over losing more children to gun violence.

Arkansas State Attorney General to Investigate ExxonMobil Oil Spill

In the aftermath of last week’s spill of up to 5,000 barrels of crude oil in Mayflower, Arkansas, state attorney general Dustin McDaniel announced he will look into the causes and impacts of the spill from the ExxonMobil Pegasus pipeline.

The pipeline spewed oil onto lawns, roadways and wildlife, and almost into nearby Lake Conway. No one was hurt, but the spill led authorities to evacuate more than 20 homes.

A river of tar sands crude flows through a Mayflower, Arkansas, subdivision. Photo by evacuated Mayflower resident Warren Andrews via the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

“There are many questions and concerns remaining as to the long-term impacts, environmental or otherwise, from this spill,” McDaniel wrote to ExxonMobil executives Tuesday. He asked ExxonMobil to preserve records pending his investigation.

Also on Tuesday, federal pipeline safety officials issued a corrective action order to ExxonMobil. The cause of the rupture is still unknown, but the corrective order states ExxonMobil reversed the system flow of the pipeline in 2006, and that a change in direction of flow can affect the hydraulic and stress demands on the pipeline.

The company cannot restart the failed segment of the pipeline until officials are satisfied that it is safe.
A longstanding cause for concern has been that the Pegasus pipeline is located in an area that drains into the main source of drinking water for hundreds of thousands of customers. A Central Arkansas Water official said the water system plans to formally request that ExxonMobil move it out of that region.

The spill in Arkansas comes as the Obama administration prepares to issue a decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. That controversial project would expand the transport of Canadian tar sands oil on a massive scale; the Pegasus pipeline was carrying western Canadian Wabasca Heavy crude at the time of the leak.

“It’s almost as if nature was trying to send a message that it might be best to just leave this stuff underground in Canada, where it’s been safely for the last few million years, instead of trucking it, piping it, training it hither and yon across the countryside,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder and director of 350.org, on Democracy Now! this week.

Who’s Responsible for the Monsanto Protection Act Anyway?

Food activists are looking askance at the White House, after Obama last week signed the “Monsanto Protection Act” into law, as it rode on the back of the larger spending bill that is keeping the federal government in business. The rider says the government must allow the planting of genetically modified crops even if courts rule they pose health risks.

Because it was passed as a rider and not as its own legislation, it expires in six months, and the food justice movement is already gearing up for a fight if it comes up again.

One mystery is who introduced the bill in the first place. Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, Monsanto’s home state, was one of its biggest supporters. Blunt reportedly crafted the bill’s language with Monsanto’s help, according to Democracy Now!

Democrat Jon Tester of Montana, the Senate’s only active farmer (and an organic farmer, at that), would sure like to find out. He opposed the rider, saying the provision would undermine judicial oversight and hurt family farmers. Tester said last month in Senate hearings that the source of the bill is unknown.

“I don’t know who authored this provision,” he said. “Maybe someone in Washington knows, but no one is willing to put their name to it. And that’s a shame.”

He’s not the only one who wants to hold someone accountable. One activist group, Peaceteam, is “demanding a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee to determine who is responsible for putting it in there, and to demand their immediate resignation, regardless of party affiliation, so that this kind of anonymous graft can never happen again,” it said in an email.

You can add your voice by visiting the Monsanto Reckless Release Action page here.

Nuclear Saber Rattling on the Korean Peninsula

North Korea and the United States have once again traded escalating rhetoric and tactics in the past few weeks in the wake of a vote on tighter UN sanctions on North Korea and joint war games by the U.S and South Korea. While most of the language and tactics are similar to years past, there is always the possibility that the smoke here could turn to fire.

The latest round of bravado seems rooted in a UN Security Council vote for stricter sanctions on South Korea after a third nuclear detonation in February. This was the first such test conducted under new leader Kim Jong-un and in direct defiance of China, South Korea’s biggest backer. China responded in March by joining the other 14 Security Council voting nations in these tighter economic sanctions.

North Korea then threatened to end the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War and has since threatened nuclear attack on South Korea, Japan and United States territories and mainland. The expression of threats has so far escalated up to late Wednesday night with North Korea stating that they were cleared to engage in an attack on the U.S. using “lighter and diversified nuclear” weapons.

This all happens amidst the backdrop of joint military exercises by the United States and South Korea. The U.S. has flown stealth bombers plus B-2 and B-52 bombers over the Korean Peninsula, and has deployed war ships to the region.

While many experts and analysts agree that a nuclear attack from the north is unlikely, there are tactical moves on the part of both nations that could easily escalate the crisis. So far though, South Korea and the U.S. have been following a typical, although volatile, script.

Ready or not, someone may be coming out

Are National Football League players and their fans ready for an openly gay player? Quite a few vocal supporters think so and appear to be preparing for just that. The bigger question may be, will this be harder for the players or fans?

A CBS News report followed by an announcement from the players union indicates that a player is preparing to come out in the next few months with the intention of continuing his football career. This would be a landmark event in the world of professional sports. It’s one of the remaining popular national institutions that has remained on the sidelines of sexual orientation / gender identification equality issues.

NFL Players Association president Domonique Foxworth explained that the union, in conjunction with outside organizations, has had meetings to educate players for the “inevitability” and “unavoidable” circumstances of a player coming out. He believes that the time is ripe for a player to take this step and that there are more gay players in the league, so if one comes out, others may follow.

Meanwhile, CBS News sports correspondent Mike Freeman indicated that despite negative, homophobic comments made by two current NFL players (Chris Culliver and Chris Clemons, both in response to questions about having a gay teammate in the locker room), the player in question is more concerned with the reactions of fans than of his teammates.

Minnesota Viking punter Chris Kluwe, ambassador for the group Athlete Ally that works to end homophobia in sports, agrees with that assertion. Kluwe suggests that the fundamental principles of “don’t be a distraction” and “team first,” drilled into NFL players’ psyches, may become a source of strength for the openly gay player and the team. The enormous amount of media scrutiny and fan attention is what could keep the issue contentious.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: Truthers Are Nuts, Too

In Wednesday night’s edition of Hardball on MSNBC, Chris Matthews gave a rundown of paranoid political theories circulating among the American population, including how many people think that Barack Obama is the antichrist, how many people think that the country is run by reptilians (evil ETs disguised as humans), how many are sure that Obama wasn’t born in the United States and so on. Most of these are right-wing conspiracies.

Then he said that there are some loonies on the left as well — such as the people who believe that George W. Bush took down the World Trade Center “with a plunger” (meaning a detonation device). He described these people as fringe elements, despite the fact that a 2006 Zogby poll revealed that “less than half of the American public trusts the official 9/11 story or believes the attacks were adequately investigated.”

Larry Silverstein, owner of WTC 7, said in a PBS interview that he told the Fire Department that, ‘”The smartest thing to do is pull it.” Screen shot from PBS.

That means more than half of American adults do not trust the official story — now that the fog of war in Afghanistan and Iraq is starting to clear. Matthews asked incredulously what motive Bush and Co. might have had to knock the buildings down and make it look like the work of terrorists, answering his own question — hypothetically, to start those wars — but pretending that was a ridiculous theory.

Besides being prejudiced, the problem with Matthews’s objections is that they are ignorant of many basic facts.

After 11 years of dissecting how exactly two massive towers could crumble from airplane strikes without the help of explosives, attention has focused on the building that crumbled without being hit by an airplane — WTC 7 or the Salomon Brothers Building. I covered this in the Planet Waves article History, Turning on a Phrase. This article covers the astrology, the science and the psychology of the event.

Oddly not investigated in the official 9/11 report, WTC 7 collapsed onto its footprint at near free-fall speed at 5:20 pm on Sept. 11, 2001. There were numerous reports of a police radio countdown, witness testimony reveals the area was evacuated prior to the collapse, and the building had sustained only minor damage.

Office fires are cited as the usual reason that WTC 7 collapsed, despite the landlord, Larry Silverstein, admitting on PBS that he told the Fire Department that “the smartest thing to do is pull it.” That phrase is a term from the demolition industry, which “pulls” buildings (formerly with a crane, now with explosives).

Yet the real issue with Matthews’s characterization of the 9/11 issue is science. How can a skyscraper collapse at anything near free-fall speed with all that mass between the top of the building and the ground? Maybe he doesn’t know that 1,500 professional engineers and architects have agreed that from a scientific standpoint, the official explanation is impossible. There is evidence of explosives. That’s not their opinion; it’s based on the calculations of the engineers who design this kind of skyscraper, and whose job it is to make sure it stands up. You can visit the website and explore a diversity of videos there.

Of course, paraphrasing Einstein, proving that WTC 7’s spontaneous collapse violated the laws of physics would require the calculations of only one engineer, though just in case, we have a few more.

“The piglet squid would seem to suggest that evolution’s medications are working. Possibly a little too well.” And if you think this critter is weird, you should see what evolution comes up with when it’s having a really bad day. (There are lots of things science doesn’t fully understand about squid, including why their eyes are so complex.) Photo: Sierraclub.org via WTF, evolution?

Um, Are You Sure About That One, Evolution?

If you think you have a hard time staying motivated, upbeat and creatively juiced on the job, imagine trying to do so for 3.8 billion years! Chances are, you’d have as many ‘misses’ as ‘hits’ on your project resume. Maybe you’d occasionally confuse a really weird idea for pure genius. Perhaps spite and self-pity might get the better of you, after eons of being made fun of for some of your more experimental work. Sometimes the solutions you come up with to ‘fix’ your ‘mistakes’ might strike others as, um, less than obvious or logical. And let’s face it: almost everyone has done something stupid while drunk at least once in their lives.

This seems to be the basic idea behind the hilarious nature blog, WTF, evolution? Created by Mara Grunbaum, an editor for Scholastic Science World and a science writer for other publications, the blog imagines evolution as a sentient being who just seems to be winging it sometimes. The conversations with evolution are the best — revealing a rather sensitive soul whose feelings are easily hurt when people laugh at its favorite creations.

It’s okay, evolution — we know how you feel. Surely somebody out there appreciates you.

Aries New Moon, North Korea, Elisa Novick on Tour

Thank you to my listeners for participating in our spring membership drive. As promised, I’ll leave the $49 for one year membership offer available through the end of the week for those who have not yet signed up.

In this week’s edition, I cover the current astrology: last quarter Moon, Jupiter square Chiron, Mercury conjunct Borasisi (here is the article I reference, With Love from Borasisi). I also speak for a few moments about Elisa Novick’s European tour — here is that itinerary, which takes her through London, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam over the next few weeks.

In the second half of the program, I check out the situation in North Korea, and take a new look at a chart called The Nuclear Axis. North Korea shows up as a wannabe nuclear country, though it may have a significant role in how we resolve the nuclear dilemma. Here is the best chart we have for this elusive country.

I reference my earlier interview with Karl Grossman, who gives a detailed history of nuclear power and nuclear bombs. Here is the link to that interview, which is in two parts, and is worth listening to (and worth playing for students of any age, who will benefit from knowing this history).

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

The April monthly extended horoscopes were published Friday, March 22. Inner Space for March was published Tuesday, Feb. 26; there will be no Inner Space for April due to scheduling issues. We published the Moonshine horoscopes for the Libra Full Moon on Tuesday, March 26. Moonshine for the Aries New Moon will publish on Tuesday, April 9. Note that the longer monthly horoscope is being incorporated into the Friday issue after the Sun has entered a new sign; a new Inner Space is generally emailed on the following Tuesday.

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, April 5, 2013 #944 | By Genevieve Hathaway

This week, Genevieve is standing in for the weekly horoscope. I will be back next Friday with your weekly horoscopes. — Eric Francis.)

Aries (March 20-April 19) — You’ve spent the past month doing a lot of work behind the scenes and below the layers of your psyche, shifting and moving material out of the way that no longer serves you. This process of de-cluttering the corners of your mental and emotional space has clarified who you are. Sharing this side of yourself may feel deeply personal — that’s a good indicator that you are showing the authentic you. As you share with others the ‘you’ no one knows, remember that how people react is independent of your inherent value. Presenting yourself unfiltered will challenge those around you to do the same. Some people may find this difficult to match, but enough people will follow your lead and answer with their own authenticity. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Attention all Aries: Your 2013 Birthday Reading is ready — just in time for the Aries New Moon on April 10. Your sign is loaded with planets right now, making this New Moon the ultimate in cosmic reset buttons for you to get your solar year started Aries-style. If you have already ordered, you may now access using the login and password you received when you placed your order. If you have not yet ordered, what are you waiting for? You’re an Aries — the zodiac’s initiator! This birthday reading includes two 40-minute segments of astrology, plus a tarot spread using the Voyager Tarot by James Wanless. You may purchase instant access to this affordably priced reading here.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You are working through a question regarding desire. More specifically, what do you want and what desires bring a sense of deeper meaning for you? This may come with the feeling of an expansiveness that makes the answer hard to pinpoint, like trying to determine where a voice came from as the sound echoes through a large cavern. The discernment you are looking for is available to make some decisions regarding what you want. It involves a slight stretch in belief: that you can create in your life what it is that you want. I suggest trusting your intuition as you follow a feeling that is pointing you toward some important answers. You will make contact both with a greater sense of focus regarding what you want, and the large amount of resources at your disposal to bring what you want into your life. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — You are reworking an idea around ‘relationship’ and what it means to you. At the moment, you have a strong drive to be fully authentic and present in all you do. This energy can come with the feeling of pushing a round peg into a square hole. I suggest you first get clear on what a relationship that supports you as an individual would look like, then carefully and thoughtfully convey this idea to a close partner. For relationship structures to fit you, they need to give you room to be you — with all your idiosyncrasies, beliefs, dreams and curiosity — as you give the same to close partners. As you express your desire to make changes to a relationship, hold space open for a close partner to do the same. In reworking relationship dynamics, I propose you consider applying two things you know well: your curiosity and an open sense of experimentation. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Your astrology highlights a busy career angle, with a number of seemingly rapid changes lately. A door you thought would open has seemed a bit stuck. I suggest you view change less as a derailment of where you want to go, and more as an opportunity to pause and examine what you want and what that would look like manifested in your life. Desire is the starting place of any path — it informs how you move, the intention you apply, and the actions taken. How that desire manifests can often come down to your vision. You have quite a few options available at the moment, and as you work through whether you want to try the previous path or create a new one, I suggest working with the attitude that it’s always a good thing to have options. At your disposal are the resources to re-open an old door or begin a new path; the key is to proceed with a vision that is aligned with your authentic self. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — A recent financial investment is challenging an old concept around resources, particularly financial resources. What you are discovering is that money is not just useful in making more money or sitting in a bank account. How you use your resources has a distinctly service-oriented component. It’s not just about writing a check, but rather knowing what your investment is creating — as well as who is impacted by it. Think of this approach as a socially aware allocation of your resources. I’m not referring to giving away all your financial wealth. Instead, notice the power your financial investments and donations have in making a difference in your community. You’re in a position to make a big impact in many lives; it will take less of an investment than you may think — though it will take targeting the right groups and people for the greatest results. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — A current agreement requires something you know well — attention to the details. I suggest taking extra care to shape, craft and fine-tune an agreement before acting on the contract or arrangement. The energy at the moment is pushing for action; in this climate you could move too quickly and miss an important piece of information. Slowing down the process enough to notice the intricacies will give you a chance to fully understand the entire landscape you are working in. Take it slowly enough to collect all the details, then double check those details and facts. You possess enough creativity and ingenuity to come up with an arrangement that is beneficial to all involved. Trust that you are able to make a good decision involving a particularly tricky part of the negotiation. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — You are negotiating your way through a somewhat complex relationship situation. This may feel like navigating a maze blindfolded. I suggest using your intuition to feel your way through the situation. As you would use your hands to feel along the walls of the maze and build a mental image of what’s around you, tap into your intuitive body to collect information that can move you through partnership dynamics. What you are making contact with has more to do with material you’re working through internally than an actual relationship problem or difficulty. As you work through this material I suggest you not project your internal state and struggles on a partnership; instead, involve the person in an open dialogue about what you are working through. Holding the space open for yourself to heal and another person to walk this journey with you will also strengthen an existing partnership. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Your work life is in a moment of rapid change that may come with the sensation of someone hitting the fast-forward button on the scene changeover in a theatrical production. One structure has rapidly replaced another. Events are occurring quickly, which may make you feel off kilter. I suggest you not get distracted by any seeming disorientation around your work routine and its evolving structure. You tend to like to maintain control in all aspects of your life, but at the moment you are being called to move with the changes rather than trying to steer them. A creative opportunity is presenting itself, allowing you to work with these changes in a way that lets you expand farther into your workspace. It’s about creating a work structure that facilitates your creativity flourishing. Start with an openness to try new structures and then allow inspiration to guide you.
— by Genevieve Hathaway

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — For you, a healthy component of emotional and spiritual balance is enjoying sexual fantasies. They allow you to explore many of your sexual needs that may be logistically challenging to experience directly in day-to-day life. Currently your fantasies are quite vibrant, being stoked by some hot and passionate astrology. Your core essence of self and your energetic sexual self are merging and mixing, stirring up a particularly rich fantasy life that is spilling over into your physical sexual experiences. Take the time to mentally and emotionally explore these fantasies. As you do this you will make contact with an important aspect of yourself, learning more about what makes you unique — and also tapping your well of creativity. The more sexually honest you are, the deeper you will be able to push into yourself, bringing you a stronger sense of feeling good about who you are as a whole being. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — A home is not only about the house, yard, trees, grass, shrubs and neighborhood where you live; it’s also about a sense of grounded security coming from it being ‘yours’. You can think of this as the place where you can be fully yourself, expanding into a space that is all your own. At the moment, you are working with a calling to redecorate or make changes to your home, which in essence help you further claim this space as yours. An opportunity will arise to make a few important changes to your surroundings, going a long way in helping to make the living space and surrounding environment resonate within you on a deeper level. As you consider the adjustments you make to your home, I propose you approach your living space as an extension of your inner world by focusing on increasing the nurturing nature of the space. This may be as simple as rearranging the furniture or sweeping — or as involved as taking out a wall.
— by Genevieve Hathaway

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — We tend to think of our thought processes as part of our conscious self; something we have control over. Yet, how often does a thought enter your mind and then you mentally correct yourself or have an internal debate with yourself over that thought? How often does this internal dialogue seem to go on for far too long, reaching surprising levels of complexity? Lately many of your mental processes are coming up for review — these are the thoughts you seem to have before you have a chance to think them. These mental patterns contain many of the themes you inherited from your parents, which have been passed down for many generations. You have the tool of perspective at your disposal to see the patterns for what they are and make changes. You can see your thought patterns laid out, not only their structure, but also where in your family they came from. As you work to restructure how you think, I suggest requiring that all mental patterns must support your sense of feeling good about your existence. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — You’ve recently been through some potent and meaningful astrology in your sign, bringing you into contact with both the complexity of who you are and any blockages to your ability to exist fully as your whole self. You’ve been learning what you can and cannot do, and who you can and cannot be. During Mercury’s recent retrograde in Pisces, important information came out that is now up for examination. Think of this process as being like washing clothes on an old-fashioned washing board. You lather, scrub, rinse and repeat. Through each scrub against the washing board a new layer of denial is peeled away. As you hang up each freshly scrubbed concept about who you are, you’ll be able to inspect it thoroughly without layers of issues getting in the way. In this process of examination, notice the connection between these concepts of ‘you’ and your sense of self-worth. The first step to reconciling these ideas is drawing a line between the two. — by Genevieve Hathaway

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A Fire in Aries; Be Cool, Don’t Just Act Cool

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Dear Friend and Reader:

With the recent equinox, the sky continues tipping from water sign Pisces into fire sign Aries. The spring season began in the Northern Hemisphere Wednesday, with the Sun joining Mars and Uranus in Aries. This is the beginning of the astrological year — the metaphorical clock resets to midnight.

Nautilus stairway at the old 59 Rivoli artists’ squat, in downtown Paris. Photo by Eric Francis.

This is being followed close on its heels by an unusual Full Moon on Wednesday, March 27 at 5:27 am EDT. The Full Moon is a Moon-Sun opposition stretched across Aries and Libra. The Moon is on its own in Libra, though it’s meeting the Sun, which is conjunct Venus, Mars and Uranus.

This setup is a reminder not to let yourself get knocked off balance by your environment, or by people you perceive as overpowering you in some way. Your environment (which means people and circumstances) is offering you options, and to a real extent it’s showing you a reflection of yourself (illustrated by the Full Moon reflecting all those planets).

It’s worth recapping that Mercury stationed direct last Sunday afternoon (March 17), ending a three-week retrograde phase. That retrograde is still working itself out, and it will be for about two more weeks as Mercury re-traces the degrees where it was just retrograde (this is sometimes called the second shadow phase, or second echo phase).

Some people are more sensitive to these Mercury retrogrades than others, whether psychologically, emotionally or through experiencing those odd events like computer crashes, lost keys and missing envelopes. There were a lot of planets in Pisces during this retrograde; that gives some people the feeling of emotional resonance and others the feeling that they’re drowning. Mercury will remain in Pisces until April 13, when it joins the rapidly developing Aries grouping.

Speaking of: Venus was the most recent planet to move from Pisces to Aries. Venus is happy in Pisces (the two have a natural affinity) and it needs more love than it’s often willing to offer in Aries (the sign of Mars, so there can be some tension). It’s a prickly spot for Venus, but with the promise of a conjunction with Mars in early April, there may be some fiery action in the sex department at that time. Do your best to find the balance between going after what (or rather who) you want, receiving what is offered by a partner (or someone who is not one yet, but whom you’re interested in), and remembering to be extra-conscious of the other person’s experience (known as empathy) — and what you can offer them in return.

We are entering a phase with a lot of Aries happening, and empathy really is the name of the game.

Now, as for why the planets in Aries are big news. As you may know, there is currently a generational aspect happening — Uranus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn. These are two slow-moving points that are meeting in a major aspect for the first time since 1965-66. What we think of as the Sixties was mainly the combination of three major factors: a conjunction of Uranus and Pluto; Chiron in Pisces; and Neptune in Scorpio.

Brooklyn’s beloved Cyclone roller coaster, the oldest, meanest, fastest (and safest) wood and steel contraption in the business. It occupies one city block in Coney Island. Photo by Eric Francis.

We now have the first Uranus-Pluto (major) aspect happening since the Sixties. Chiron is back in Pisces. And Neptune is in a water sign. Let’s stick to Uranus and Pluto. They are early in cardinal signs — Aries and Capricorn. Their square aspect is a five-year (or more) project, of which we’re now in the middle. These longterm aspects heat up when other planets get involved, and now a lot of other planets are about to jump into the mix.

Friday, Mars makes a conjunction to Uranus. Soon after on March 26, it’ll make a square to Pluto. That’s going to add a lot of energy to what is already a high-potency alignment, which is lurking just below the surface, waiting for something to come along and do just that. This tells a story in natal charts. In my old series Born in the Sixties, I describe how aspect patterns of certain birth charts emphasize the astrology of that era, and certain ones play it down. Anyone born under the current astrology is going to have Uranus-Pluto emphasized for their whole lives because there are so many planets involved, just as certain people born in the 1960s do.

At the same time, the Sun will move through Aries, form a conjunction to Uranus on March 28 and a square to Pluto on March 31. Venus will do the same thing (on the same days as the Sun — the Sun and Venus are moving in tandem right now), and then Mercury will do the same next month (April 20 and 21). So, over and over again, inner planets — the ones we feel and see — will be making conjunctions to Uranus and squares to Pluto.

This is a series of events that can change the world, and can also wake us up to how much the world has changed before our eyes in just a few years. The thing is, we may see what seems like a ew years’ worth of changes in a matter of weeks. It’s impossible to predict what this will bring, though there is likely to be some ‘personal is political’ effect in the world. When astrology like this heats up, many people get the urge to participate.

Fire spinning in Krakow, Poland. Photo by Eric Francis.

For some, it’s like you spent four years studying in the library, then the spring of your senior year, protests break out on campus and you want to participate — and you may feel like it’s too late. If you experience something like this, remember that social movements are not a thing, they are about people. So go outside, and meet the people who are involved. Do your part to make what you’re witnessing into something that is personal and immediate. In many ways this is the story of our our whole era in history. We have the opportunity to take chances on what is happening now — or to let the era slip by.

And while the Uranus-Pluto square, the defining aspect of our time in history, seems to last for a while, it will go by faster than you think. Now is your moment to dare; now is your moment to make a difference, in your own life and that of the larger culture.

As for the personal being personal: do your best to stay cool and keep your head through this astrology. This is the time to be cool, not just act cool or ‘play it cool’. Cool means reflective, aware and clear. It means being aware of time and timing, and knowing when you’re ready to make your move. There will be moments when passion is called for — you will know them when you’re in them. Even then, make sure you’re aware of your emotional temperature at all times.

Mars and Uranus, which are conjunct today, describe a clash between personal and community interests — therefore, orient yourself on cooperation and don’t try too hard to stand out. Be real, be yourself, and notice (and feel) what’s going on around you. Do your best to be part of what you say you belong to. Offer yourself a little more generously than you think you need to, or are being asked to.

Everyone will feel better.

Lovingly,

This is a 12-sign audio report about relationships and sex. Each of the signs gets half an hour of attention — half the length of a long podcast. You can listen to your Sun, Moon or rising sign, and those of people you care about. Visit this link to pre-order.

Lunations of April Rock the World

New and Full Moons this April are potent astrological events that will continue the fiery theme that has been brewing through late March. One by one, planets have been transitioning from Pisces to Aries, tipping the feeling and experience of the astrology from water to fire. The New and Full Moons of April also bring us into the first of two eclipse seasons in 2013.

Let’s start with the Aries New Moon. That takes place April 10. For this event, there are six planets in Aries, five of them concentrated into a narrow band of sky with the new planet Eris at the center. You could call this the Eris New Moon. We’ll have a ‘proving moment’ for Eris (discovered in 2005, named in 2006), when we get another example of how this planet works. Sometimes a New Moon close to a newly discovered planet will bring a revelation about what that planet is here to show us.

Aries New Moon conjunct Eris

Let’s run through what’s in Aries as of the New Moon on the 10th. Uranus is in there, about to make its third of seven squares to Pluto (that happens on May 20).

See glyph legend here.

Then, we have that grouping of five planets right around Eris — the Sun and Moon to one side, and Venus and Mars to the other side.

Eris is the sensation of ‘all chaos, all the time’. It’s the times we live in. I trace this back to the Sixties, though it’s been ramping up exponentially year by year since then. Eris describes a state of global chaos as well as a personal sense of being overwhelmed. It’s also about the persistent question ‘who am I?’ Yet one is fortunate to be in a position to ask that; typically, it’s experienced as confusion. And there is plenty of that going around lately.

Young people in particular have little in the way of structure they can hold onto, and if they do, they are also witnesses to a world that seems to be falling apart day by day.

The twin conjunctions on either side of Eris seem to represent two possible states of relating. To one side is the Sun and the Moon — an image of mother and father, or a traditional concept of relationship. To the other side is a conjunction of Venus and Mars, which is at least a meeting between two peers. However, in this equation Venus is in Mars’s sign — it’s out of character. And while Mars rules Aries, it’s not always feeling so confident there.

This describes many modern relationships where men and women are out of character, or where people of the same sex are sorting out gender roles. So it’s a little of the old and the new, side by side — with a kind of chaos membrane between them. In reality, human relationships have more in common than social activists would like us to think. We are all people, alive at the same time, participating in the same society, doing our best to meet our emotional needs and offer what we can to others.

Scorpio Full Moon – Partial Eclipse

The Aries New Moon is followed by the Scorpio Full Moon of April 25. The Sun ingresses Taurus on April 19, and soon after is followed by the Full Moon. Planets will be ingressing Taurus through the month, and by the time of the Full Moon, Mars, the Sun, Pallas Athene, Venus and the South Node will be collected there.

See glyph legend here.

The Scorpio Full Moon has two different feeling tones. One is indicated by the concentration of personal planets in Taurus — including Venus and Mars. That has a passionate feeling to it; a desire for physicality and connection.

The Sun is conjunct Mars, which lends passion and drive, as well as a need to express energy physically. I think this will be meaningful to honor, despite the possible distractions. That is the whole point of focusing passion — to be able to keep your focus sufficiently to power through the noise, static and obstructions of the world.

Taurus also has a mental quality that evades the very physicality that it represents. It can be lost in fantasy or lost in an idea of how things should be, or should have been. The mental quality of this event is hinted at by Venus conjunct asteroid Pallas Athene. Pallas was the goddess born directly from her daddy’s head, in a full suit of armor, ready for action. That seems to color her whole delineation — the notion of nonsexual birth, from dad, seemingly as the product of his mind. Just imagine her bursting out with her helmet and spear.

Pallas therefore has a distinctly mental quality. We have an image of getting lost in one’s head, doing too much to plot strategy or striving to impress others with one’s intelligence. Pallas has a theme of daddy-pleasing, something we do more of than we think. In many ways the world is a story of daddy worship, from fussing over the pope to thinking the president runs the country to adherence by nearly everyone to patriarchal ways of organizing society — even though we know there are alternatives.

For this event, Mars is opposite the Moon. And the Moon is conjunct Saturn. These two aspects lend a reflective, heavy and at times frustrating quality. Fortunately this chart is an eclipse, and that’s suggesting a theme of letting go of that which is frustrating. It may be necessary to take things from the mental level to the emotional level in order to work this out. It’s not always obvious when your mind is tied up that your real situation is emotional in nature, which could imply physical — emotions tend to be closer to the body than is the mind.

This eclipse is the first of three. It’s followed two weeks later by an annular eclipse of the Sun in Taurus. That happens May 9, in the season of Beltane. And then May 24-25, there is another lunar eclipse on the Sagittraius-Gemini axis. I’ll have more about those charts a little closer to the events.

House of Representatives Needs Better Drugs

The House of Representatives Thursday approved a group of measures that would keep the government running through September, but which preserved the ‘sequestration’ of federal money designed to starve all the programs that Republicans don’t like. That is not a partisan statement — this was the third version of the Paul Ryan budget, the same Paul Ryan who lost the election last November.

I beg you, please. Michele Bachmann pleads for the repeal ofObamacare. Screen shot from C-Span.

The bill “underfunds key elements of the president’s health care law, as the administration builds up health insurance purchasing exchanges. And it makes permanent four formerly temporary gun-rights provisions just as Senate Democrats prepare a final push on gun control legislation,” the New York Times reported Thursday.

[Meanwhile, the Senate this week failed to pass a ban on assault weapons; Democratic leadership withdrew the measure, saying it didn’t have the votes to carry.]

The Republican budget law passed by the House Thursday is supposedly designed to balance the budget, but Ryan himself two weeks ago admitted that his budget was more of a philosophical statement. Still, that didn’t stop the House from approving it. It has not gone to the Senate, and it would never pass there, so the House vote is a kind of token gesture.

“We want to balance the budget. They don’t,” Ryan said Thursday. “We want to restrain spending. They want to spend more. We offer modernization, reform, growth and opportunity,” he continued. “They want to cling to the status quo, more taxing, more spending, more borrowing.”

What you have here is a longterm issue — the national debt — being treated like an immediate problem. It would be like waking up one day realizing that you’re $150,000 in debt and need to pay it off all at once, rather than just paying your mortgage on time.

Ryan’s proposal depends on repealing the Affordable Care Act to balance the budget,
which this week the Republicans tried to do for the 34th time. Michele Bachmann, the wannabe presidential candidate, introduced yet another law to repeal the ACA, saying, “That’s why we’re here because we’re saying let’s repeal this failure before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens. Let’s not do that. Let’s love people, let’s care about people. Let’s repeal it now while we can.”

Don’t miss the video of Bachmann’s diatribe on the House floor Thursday. It’s really worth 33 seconds of your time.

Assault Weapons: Losses and Wins

Unsurprisingly, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein’s proposed ban on assault weapons was too tough a sell for NRA-cowed Democrats in the U.S. Congress. Had it already been part of the gun-control package moving forward (which is undefined at this time, but could include universal background checks), it would have taken 60 votes to remove it.

At least, that was Feinstein’s argument; that voting it out of a package would be harder to do than passing the entire package in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut massacre late last year. Senate majority leader Harry Reid saw things differently, explaining to reporters that the necessary votes just weren’t there.

“I’ve worked 40 years on these issues — guns. I’ve seen so much violence,” a shaken and frustrated Feinstein told reporters Tuesday. In 1978, while working as the San Francisco County supervisor, Feinstein found the body of Harvey Milk after he and Mayor George Moscone were shot by Dan White. In 1994, following a mass shooting at a San Francisco high-rise, she successfully pushed for the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. That ban expired in 2004.

Meanwhile in Colorado, home of last summer’s movie theater shooting rampage in Aurora, there is more gun-related success and sadness. Earlier this week, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed legislation enacting gun control laws with some actual teeth. Ammunition magazines will be limited to 15 rounds (not exactly paltry); background checks will be expanded; domestic abusers must surrender their guns; and online concealed-carry permits will be banned.

Almost as if to prove some kind of point, on the eve of the gun law signing ceremony an unknown assailant shot and killed Tom Clements, the head of Colorado’s prison system. Clements had answered the doorbell; police there do not believe the shooting was random. No shit.

UPDATE: Monsanto Protection Act Moves to Obama’s Desk

Food Democracy Now! announced late Thursday that Congress passed the Continuing Resolution spending bill, HR 933, that contains the dangerous Monsanto Protection Act (Section 735) we reported on last Friday. Section 735 strips the important concept of “judicial review” from our courts and allows GMO crops to be planted while appeals to stop them are still being heard.

The bill now moves to President Obama for his signature. If you want to stop the bill from becoming law, here’s a petition to the president.

Grocers Say No to GMO Frankensalmon

Retail grocers representing some 2,000 individual stores and food chains, today said they would not carry AquaBounty Technologies’ GMO salmon, regardless of the FDA’s future decision on its approval. This is the first organized grocer boycott of the genetically engineered [GE or GMO] salmon.

What kind of salmon is this, real or Frankensalmon? We can’t tell from the outside but it makes a big difference. Photo: Wikipedia.

Retail chains including Trader Joe’s, Aldi, Whole Foods and regional chains Marsh Supermarkets (with stores in Indiana and Ohio) and PCC Natural Markets in Washington state, plus co-ops in Minnesota, New York, California, and Kansas have joined the “Campaign for Genetically Engineered (GE)- Free Seafood.”

“GE fish only advances if there is a market to buy it. Today’s announcement of a huge number of seafood retailers stating their refusal to buy the fish shows that FDA approval won’t be the last word on this important debate about what consumers want their future fish to be,” said George Leonard, a scientist with Ocean Conservancy who testified before Congress on the GMO salmon.

Concerns include whether the salmon is safe to eat and potential escapes from the farms where they are raised. The offspring of wild salmon that crossbreed with them could be exposed to unknown genetic consequences, harming the species and contaminating them as a food supply.

The Campaign for Genetically Engineered-Free Seafood is being led by consumer and environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth, Center for Food Safety, Food and Water Watch, and Consumers Union.

No other genetically engineered fish is on the market, but according to the Center for Food Safety “at least 35 other species of GE fish are currently being developed around the world, including trout, catfish, tilapia, striped bass, flounder, and many species of salmon.”

War on Iran Delayed Til 2014

In a rather ambiguous announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that it will probably take Iran about a year to manufacture a nuclear weapon, if they decide to do so. President Obama — making his first trip to Israel as president of the United States — seemed to concur that this was enough time to wait before taking military action against Iran, saying:

“We prefer to resolve this diplomatically. And there’s still time to do so. Iran’s leaders must understand, however, that they have to meet their international obligations. And meanwhile, the international community will continue to increase the pressure on the Iranian government. The United States will continue to consult closely with Israel on next steps. And I will repeat: All options are on the table.”

It’s a nice little mitzvah for Israel right before Passover, what with Obama citing an “unbreakable bond” with the country and vowing to extend billions of dollars in annual U.S. aid. The two men displayed a friendly, avuncular joking relationship during the press conference, and Chuck Todd of MSNBC got in four questions when he’s only allowed one. Clearly these world leaders were feeling pleased with themselves.

But if you read between the lines, it sounds rather like Netanyahu and Obama have agreed to delay war on Iran until at least 2014. And, glaringly, Obama has made no mention of the illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

Obama is now touring the West Bank for talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. We’ll see if he notices the new tent camp aimed at stopping the expansion of West Bank settlement that a group of activists erected ahead of his visit. Said Palestinian lawmaker Mustafa Barghouthi, “It is [Obama’s] duty to see the Israeli apartheid system and the system of segregation that his ancestors suffered from.”

It remains to be seen whether Israeli forces will raid the camp now, or after Obama leaves.

Small Cause, Big Effect?

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said Wednesday it believed a rat was the cause of an extended blackout that disabled the plant’s cooling system this week — a disturbing reminder of how very little it can take to bring on catastrophe.

Tokyo Electric Power Company’s engineers found the charred body of a rat inside a faulty switchboard. They believed it had short-circuited the switchboard, perhaps by chewing on the wires.

The power failure began Monday, cutting off the flow of cooling water to four pools used to store more than 8,800 nuclear fuel rods. All of the affected pools were expected to be cooled by Wednesday, according to a New York Times article.

Last week Fukushima and the people of Japan (indeed, people around the world) marked the two-year anniversary of a triple meltdown at the plant in March 2011 after a huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems.

“The spent fuel pools have been a particular source of concern because they contain far more radioactive material than the three reactor cores that melted down two years ago, forcing the evacuation of 160,000 people,” the article said.

Part of “Modern Movement,” the latest installment in museum security guard Todd Balthazor’s comic strip, “It Is What It Is.” Todd is a security guard at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

When Life Imitates Art Imitating Life…

A recent New York Times feature on the secret lives of museum security guards introduced one Todd Balthazor to the world beyond Minneapolis: art school grad, cartoonist, on-the-job yoga practitioner and cultural satirist.

“I’m stretching all the time,” said Balthazor. “You have to do that, or else you are going to stiffen up. We have some elderly workers, and they just walk like trees.”

He also keeps his sense of humor and his drawing skills limber by drawing the cartoon It Is What It Is, based on his encounters working at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Walker features the strip on its blog about twice per month. Hopefully that’s more often than Balthazor has to resort to memorizing museum visitors’ outfits and holding his breath to stay mentally sharp, surrounded by people ‘photo bombing’ major artworks for their hipster Facebook profiles.

Equinox, Iraq War and the Founder of Monsanto

In this week’s edition, I cover the chart for the Aries equinox and the forthcoming aspect Mars conjunct Uranus in Aries. Then I look at two anniversary charts — the beginning of the Iraq war 10 years ago today, and the death of John F. Queeny, the founder of Monsanto, 80 years ago Tuesday.

In the Iraq war discussion, I mention how this scam grew out of a bigger fraud, which was the Sept. 11, 2001 incident; here’s a recent article from the member archives studying that event.

I also mention an International Astrology Day celebration hosted by Kepler College, the only college in the U.S. devoted to astrology.

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

The March monthly extended horoscopes were published Friday, Feb. 22. Inner Space for March was published Tuesday, Feb. 26. We published the Moonshine Horoscope for the Pisces New Moon on Tuesday, March 5th. Note that the longer monthly horoscope is being incorporated into the Friday issue after the Sun has entered a new sign; a new Inner Space is still emailed on the following Tuesday. The Moonshine horoscopes for the Libra Full Moon will be published Tuesday, March 26. Your April Monthly Horoscope is below in this issue.

Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for April 2013 by Eric Francis
(standing in for weekly horoscope #943)

Early Aries Birthdays (and Early Aries Rising)

You have more change in your chart than a bootblack has coins in his pocket, but what will it take to make lasting progress? Remember that change comes from you, not from anyone else and not as a magical factor of any relationship. The planets hold incredible promise at the same time they make it difficult to know what you want. Current aspects suggest it would be good for you to pause and decide what is right for you, before you make any spontaneous decisions. True, that’s not very Aries, whose motto is often leap before you look, think or know you’re leaping. Sometimes that works for you — but you have so much energy and leverage right now, it would be wise to use your considerable human intelligence. Set an agenda for yourself, which you take one step at a time. No matter what, the planets are promising you an exciting year ahead, with many surprises. You don’t need to invent excitement — it’s coming your way. Note to Aries readers: your birthday reading will be ready next week. Please check your email for an announcement when it’s available.

Aries (March 20-April 19) — I suggest that you not get ahead of yourself. You may feel that there’s nothing you cannot accomplish, but certain recent events may also demonstrate that there’s no guarantee that impulsive decisions actually work out to your benefit. When life is moving unusually fast, and when there are so many unpredictable factors that it seems impossible to use logic and scheduling to solve your problems, you may be tempted to throw all organization to the wind. This is the time to pause and ask yourself what it really is that you’re doing, and why. Have you thought this through? Well, it’s not too late, though you may have to slow down and take the pulse on a relationship or partnership that seems to have taken on a life of its own. The astrology is suggesting that the most challenging thing is listening. That includes you listening to others, and them listening to you. Yes, it seems elementary that such a basic level of exchange could be missing in a situation so significant in your life, though I suggest you check this carefully and make sure that you and those close to you are truly willing to hear one another out. Doing so will not threaten anyone’s existence, importance or role. What a sincere (and extra-length) exchange of feelings or ideas will do is to re-incorporate the human element into this endeavor, before you encounter challenges that depend entirely on that one very thing. In a word, that would be trust.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You may want to put on a logical face and take a reasonable approach, though it seems to be passion that’s driving you and direct physical experience that you’re seeking. It’s as if there is a storm blowing inside of you, and the wind, thunder and rain want to escape from you any way they can. You don’t have to let this out all at once; it would be helpful if you could actually tune into what you’re feeling, and consider what some of its possible sources are. Astrologically, here is how it looks: It’s as if you’ve been living a fictional version of your identity, and the real thing is starting to rise up in rebellion against the facade. This involves the roles you’ve been given, or assigned to yourself, such as with your family and in your relationships. By one reading of the chart, there’s a lot to say about the ways in which you’ve tried to impress your father with what a good person you are. The real you has no such political motives. Your relationships don’t need to be based on any kind of a purity standard, but rather on what is mutually good for those involved. If you find yourself seeking someone’s approval, that’s the time to go to a new level of maturity. You would be wise to consider the influence and impact of your relationships on the community that surrounds you. If you’re inclined to say, “what relationships?” or “what community?” then please look more closely.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Focus on getting along with people — especially if you want things to go smoothly at work, and especially if you want to accomplish the great things that you feel destined to do. I would interject with a question: do you consider yourself to be in a position of leadership? Is it possible that you are, but are in denial about that fact? Leadership has formal manifestations, such as they call you the ‘team leader’ or the CEO. And it has informal manifestations (such as being the one who does the dishes in the break room, facilitates communication among those who might not ordinarily get along, or sets a good example in other ways). Now, your leadership role may lean toward the informal, which would actually be easier. You are in a position to blend your concept of rebellious with everyone else’s concept of what works. Said another way, you’re the one who may have the kind of weird idea that turns out to be the perfect solution to the riddle everyone has been staring cross-eyed at for six months. You are in the perfect position to reconcile both sides of the equation (such as practicality and innovation; doing what is legal and understanding what the law does not cover; getting the right result for the money that’s available). From the look of your chart, I would describe you as the master of resolving the unsolvable paradox. Just remember — many people love to be stuck. Know who they are and don’t waste any time banging your head against them.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Get clear on what you want to accomplish. Your goals may have changed recently, and they’ve certainly changed since you last made big changes in your life. By big I mean really big — the kind you thought you could never make. At this stage in your life, you’re likely to have a whole new vision, though you may be living under the results of the prior vision. The difference now is that you have something to lose, and some of that is worthwhile and serves you well. Keep your mind on the continuity factor, at the same time ensuring that you’re not a slave to the past. Be sensitive to what works and what does not work in your life. Be aware of what you want and what you do not want. One thing is clear: this is a time in your life when you’re ready to have more responsibility than you’ve ever had, and when you’re ready for it. Part of the benefit of living with a sense of duty is that it’s compelling you to assert yourself. That, in turn, is compelling you to know yourself well enough to take authority and get the results that need to be gotten. Remember, we live in a world where few people want to take responsibility for anything outside what immediately impacts them. That’s why the planet is in the state it’s in. You have a different path in life. It may be more challenging, but it’s a lot more meaningful.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — The age-old traditions of superficial, self-centered and boring won’t work for you this month. They never did, but they are currently at an all-time low ebb. Therefore, you can plan on events that take you deeper, that involve you with others, and that are genuinely interesting. As you do, you may encounter the temptation to distract yourself with appearances, glamor and the desire to ‘be known’ for something. I suggest you succumb to nothing of the kind. Do what you do for its inherent value, rather than some secondary result. This leaves you plenty of room to focus on excellence, and to remember that a meaningful attribute of your karma is to focus groups of people into conscious coordination. As you do this, one thing to be aware of is anyone who does not want things to work. Some people on the planet have a not-so-funny way of reacting negatively when energy starts to focus in their proximity. They can be jealous when people succeed, seemingly not needing them. The first thing to do with anyone exhibiting this kind of attitude is to notice, and notice soon. There are a few ways to handle this kind of value; one is to include the person and keep him or her busy. Help them feel needed. Or, you can find a constructive use for their competitive spirit. Ask everyone involved what they need and what their expectations are. When you get your answer, set goals and make adjustments.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — You have learned a lot about how other people perceive you, and you’ve learned just as much about how you perceive them. Have you got the message that it’s all just perception? One thing that’s clear is that being able to perceive from multiple viewpoints is better than perceiving from just one. A moving point of view is at least a reminder how tenuous the senses and one’s opinions can be. Yet you’re always better at least paying attention, and being sensitive to the perspectives of people close to you. You’re likely to have many occasions this month to use what you’ve learned all through this year. You’re also likely to forget what you learned, so I suggest you pause and think carefully if a relationship situation, financial deal or some matter involving any form of shared resources heats up. You’re likely to perceive those involved as being impetuous and self-centered, and you may be right. But to get past that, you will need the information that you’ve learned and the strength that it gives you. True, it’s a subtle form of strength, but knowledge is indeed power. If someone is asserting their will on you, or playing a kind of hardball competitive game, you’ve really got two choices. One is to go blow for blow. The other is to use your mind, study and understand the situation in a whole way, and begin negotiating. You have the ability to turn the whole scenario not just in your favor but also into a situation where everyone comes out ahead.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — What can you do to place yourself onto some solid emotional ground? You have to live with the situation you’re in, at least for a while; this is not one you can easily evade, run from, or redesign to suit your fancy. And why would you want to? There are so many ways you’re benefiting, and you both understand and want the power of commitment. It would be healthy to account for the ways that you contribute to any emotional situation in your life. Indeed, I suggest you list yourself as a direct co-creator in any and all of your relationships. I know that there’s a way they seem to be thrust at you. I know you don’t understand how or why some things happen. However, taking a passive approach is only going to accentuate that feeling. The more you step up, the more you will feel like you’re able to influence your various life situations. I am not suggesting that you try to take control. I am not suggesting (as you may be tempted to do) that tit-for-tat or “an eye for an eye” is an appropriate response, even when you’re treated unfairly. I am saying claim your space, stand in your responsibility and be true to yourself and to those with whom you’re journeying. That might include asking for what you need, expressing gratitude to those who have helped you or having a dialog about how to improve circumstances for everyone.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Recent events may have left you feeling heavy or uncertain about existence. I often wonder how anyone manages to be optimistic or positive, given the prevailing state of the world. Still, your chart is urging you to make sure that others know you care about them. Having faith in your ability to help will strengthen your faith in humanity. The other thing I suggest you do is remember that your creative spirit is alive and flourishing. By this I mean you are feeling passionate about your desire to engage fully with life, and whatever has been happening has had the effect of guiding you to do so with greater strength. I suggest that you make your choices for how to invest your mind, your senses and your hands based on what you want now — not what you wanted in the past. Be aware of a tendency to live in your memories, or to gravitate toward the feeling of nostalgia. A little of that may serve you, but not much more. There is so much that the present moment is offering you that it never has offered before. If you can look beyond your ‘latent past impressions’ of everything around you, you’ll see that this is a perfectly unique moment of existence for which you are ready and, I suspect, willing. Many people on this planet struggle with one thing only, which is letting go of the past. With a little courage, there’s no need to fight.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — As a Sagittarius, you have a reputation for being one of the most daring signs of the zodiac. I would say from my experience as an astrologer, that’s more packaging than product — except for now. By now, I mean in recent years, and I especially mean now as in this month. Every possible factor is encouraging you to be bold and do what you would not normally dare to do. Start with what you want to do the most, and which is available to you. Could this be as simple as calling up someone you like and letting them know that? Could it be taking up someone’s offer for an adventure, romantic or otherwise? Going down the list of possible reasons you might hesitate, one of them shows up as ‘something in your past’ that you’re afraid might come out. This feeling might be so subtle you haven’t given it a name, though if you’re feeling like you cannot bring yourself to do something and you don’t know why, you will benefit from investigating invisible influences. For example, do you feel like you have a commitment to someone (from the past) which is preventing you from being fully in the present? Is there some lingering unresolved matter, potentially involving a sexual relationship, that is weighing on your conscience? You may think that this is some kind of permanent installation in your psyche; I assure you that if you want to be free in the moment, you actually can resolve it and move on.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — You may not know where to focus your energy, or where the main issue is. Your perception of what you’re working on may keep changing, evading your understanding. Yet you know there has to be an energy source when you’re feeling so much, and to such extremes. First off, I suggest you investigate your environment for any factor that aggravates or even annoys you. This may be a challenge if you feel like someone has coated every surface in your house with hot pepper oil, or like there’s a high-voltage quantum wave machine down in your basement. There will however be certain factors that you can identify and address. I also suggest you experiment with removing two or three foods that are not serving you (or anyone). To give one example, high fructose corn syrup is an irritant, a toxin and it burns too hot for your current constitution (which at the moment is dominated by fire sign Aries). Your chart suggests that food or some ingredient in what you eat may be related to anything that currently troubles you. Deeper in, however, I would propose that there’s some kind of emotional matter that’s influencing your self-image. Are you feeling like you’re getting old? Do you feel like others don’t take life as seriously as you do? Is the memory of some authority figure weighing on your spirit? Self-image is a complicated issue to work on. In the end, how you see yourself comes down to a choice.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — You seem to be struggling with some persistent doubt about yourself, which may work out to be a positive thing. I say that because if you’re grappling with an issue, you’re less likely to be in denial about it — and denial was very likely how you addressed it in the past. Now you have another challenge: framing any issue in a way that actually has the potential for progress. If you’ve described something the same way for a while and you’re not getting results, I suggest you take a different approach. For example, if you’re asking ‘how do I solve this problem’ and that’s not working, maybe ask, ‘why do I need this problem?’ Then once you address the need, the situation will change. Speaking of needs, this would be a great time to learn how to express yours. That may involve finding language; it may involve deciding it’s OK to speak up; it may involve facing the fear of rejection from someone close to you if you dare to write yourself into the story. Actually this has a lot to do with relationships, and what you were told your role was supposed to be. That relates to what you expect (and were told to expect) others would do for you, and be for you. Reality is always different from theory, especially where the BS that we’re fed about relationships is concerned.
Commitment does not mean commitment to another person, but rather a shared devotion to a higher principle than oneself.

Hello Pisces! So many planets in Pisces means this is a brilliant moment for you, and your 2013 birthday reading looks at this astrology carefully. Chiron, the planet of healing, Neptune, planet of inspiration, and Mercury retrograde are all included. You now have the ability to develop a gift for business and financial success, if you focus your creative talents and work cooperatively with others — and I explain how to do that effectively. This reading is two 40-minute sessions of astrology, a tarot reading and an extended written description of your astrological sign. I’ve also included access to last year’s reading so you can review the past 12 months and check my accuracy. Here is a link to that affordably priced reading — which is like an extended, personal meditation on your life. You will love it — promise.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — It’s not all about money, though you don’t need someone to tell you that. What you do need is someone to remind you that money is a legitimate pursuit, if connected to what you consider to be a worthwhile goal. I suggest you work with that equation, and make sure that your values about money and how it is attained are clear. You have what you need to break new ground in this area of your life; you no longer need any form of the idea that money is somehow unspiritual, uncreative or evil. It is a form of highly versatile energy that can be converted into anything. Yet confidence around money has many precursors, one of which is your sense of your own presence in the world. That is likely to be running strong right now, though you may also feel unstable if you focus too much on that sensation. This is a kind of paradox that many people face on the way to tapping their strength — there’s a lot of vulnerability involved; there is a risk involved; there is the possibility of failure. You might get to a point where you’re absolutely confident of what is important to you, and then that’s scrambled by one thing you learn, or one experience.
Yet you may notice that one thing is consistent beneath the surface, which I would describe as initiative. You have a pioneering spirit, and there are few times in your life, if any, when it’s been stronger than it is today. Lead on.

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