Chris Cuomo looks incredulously at Rudy Giuliani when the former NYC mayor and current Trump TV lawyer denies that he denied that Team Trump colluded with the Russians. Once again, the Nessus-Neptune conjunction was in the picture — right on the horizon.
Dear Friend and Reader:
I was having breakfast with a friend in Woodstock this morning, notebook out, pencil in hand, trying to think of an appropriate title to tonight’s article. “They Must Be Fucking Kidding” kept coming to mind.
Photo by Romaine Laurent via We Transfer.
Dear Friend and Reader:
Before we get into tonight’s topic — some astrology related to the government shutdown, which I’ve traced back to the beginning of the Trump candidacy — I’m here to check in personally.
I know that my role as a reporter is to write about how unusual things are and to document the astrology behind them, though we are really off the charts (so to speak) these days. I keep noticing an energetic quality of everything pulled taut and thin, like Saran Wrap placed too tightly over a bowl with pressure coming from inside. Some days it feels like the oxygen is running out of the environment.
Other days, it seems like every system in the world is stretched beyond the capacity for which it was designed. This is true of people, too. Humans are resilient, to a point; many are feeling the strain right now, and are fragile. This is psychological and emotional, where resources are running thin; and it’s also about time. People have never seemed busier and more overextended, often needing to plan basic social interaction weeks in advance.
Dear Friend and Reader:
Happy New Year! Even though most people try to set their New Year’s resolutions and intentions by Jan. 1, the astrology this year is clearly indicating a wider window for this process — and for beginning to take active steps in accordance. The major event with this theme is Saturday’s New Moon in Capricorn, which also happens to be a partial solar eclipse.
The March 20, 2015, partial solar eclipse visible over a statue on the rooftop of the Austrian Art History Museum in Vienna. Photo by Joe Klamar.
This being the second holiday week in a row, however (at least here in the U.S.), you might be feeling a little disoriented. So this New Moon and eclipse could also be useful for reorienting yourself, both inwardly and outwardly, amidst some of these recent events:
— NASA’s New Horizons mission has sent back its first images of 2014 MU69, nicknamed “Ultima Thule,” which it flew by on Jan. 1. This Kuiper Belt object, located some 6.5 billion kilometers from the Sun, is the most distant world ever explored by a spacecraft from Earth. Ultima Thule has turned out to be a “contact binary,” which is two connected sphere-like shapes held in contact by mutual gravity. It kind of looks like a snowman.
— China’s space agency has released a photo from the lunar surface, after its Chang’e 4 space probe became the first ever to land on the far side of the Moon. The mission could reveal important clues about the formation of both the Earth and its satellite.
The Martian landscape looks a lot like that of our home planet.
Dear Friend and Reader:
We end this remarkable year with Mars conjunct Chiron in Pisces. This is the last of five such aspects while Chiron has been in Pisces, since 2010. Chiron enters Aries to stay on Feb. 18, and remains through April 14, 2027 (spending more time in Aries than any other sign).
In many ways, Mars conjunct Chiron in Pisces is an aspect of our times. We have two masculine elements, Mars and Chiron, placed in the distinctly feminine, receptive, watery environment of Pisces.
Dear Friend and Reader:
We’re now at the southern solstice — the beginning of winter here in the Northern Hemisphere. Measured by the Sun’s ingress into Capricorn, this takes place Friday, Dec. 21 at 5:23 pm EST [for a detailed reading of the chart, please see Monday’s edition, or Amanda’s article below].
There are times when I can physically feel the movement of the planets. That is one of the things that awakened me to astrology.
I once experienced the solstice happening. I was on the ferry dock heading back to Vashon Island in Washington State when the Sun entered Capricorn. Just as this happened, the cosmos felt like a huge machine that slowed down, came to a halt, started back up, and began moving in the other direction. It was a little like being on an enormous carnival ride.
My first thought was: OK, this is about the angle of the Sun to the Earth, though it feels a lot bigger. It felt like more than the Sun-Earth relationship, though when you consider that, it’s pretty large from the standpoint of an individual body or consciousness on Earth. It might just feel like everything, and it did, kind of like the teacup ride feels like everything when you’re riding on it.
This is the view from where the first edition of Planet Waves was published in 1998, along the Saddle River, in Ho-Ho-Kus, Bergen County, New Jersey. Photo by Neal McDonough.
Dear Friend and Reader:
It’s snuck up on me, though later this month is the 20th anniversary of Planet Waves. On Dec. 21, 1998, we published the first version of PlanetWaves.net, with the intention of creating a reader-supported publication. [You can listen to a half-hour audio presentation here.]
When I leaf through my old notebooks, and look at my bookshelves, I see the origins of the concept for Planet Waves: Journalism in the most intimate sense of the idea.
The first edition of Planet Waves, published on Dec. 21, 1998.
As a young spiritual seeker, I didn’t look for refuge in an ashram. I plunged myself into the world of news reporting, politics and business, and sought to find God and my deepest personal truth right in the midst of the chaos.
This is the situation most people find themselves in: the need to learn and grow mixed up in the complexities of life, the pain, the struggle, and the seeming lack of meaning. The spiritual path is useless if the only place it feels real is when you’re sitting on top of a mountain.
At the time, I recognized the problem of advertising, which I considered a toxin and a needless distraction. From the beginning, I designed Planet Waves as an ad-free business model, and for the first three years, I paid for the project myself, before going to a subscription-based model in the early 2000s.
This was the more challenging path, requiring us to build a direct relationship to you. To this day, you can still call me on the phone.
This business model has allowed us to be quirky and creative and to find our own way, one day at a time. We are, as a result, able to offer you something that you can’t find anywhere else: something handmade, imperfect and gritty, or said another way, sincere. Our well-earned freedom from corporate sponsors is, rather directly, the freedom to write about taboo subjects, and to ask real questions. For example, we have, since day one, hosted a sincere, sensitive discussion of sex and relationships.
Dear Friend and Reader:
As of this writing, we are in the midst of Mercury stationing direct, Mars conjunct Neptune and the Sagittarius New Moon (square Mars and Neptune). These happen in such proximity as to be counted as one event. That is some thick astrology in the midst of a rare moment, within personal contexts and global ones.
Fractal image, unknown artist.
I covered the personal influences of these aspects in Monday’s edition. It’s been an exhausting year of inner-planet retrogrades, which can feel like walking backwards up a hill, carrying a pack. There have been many destabilizing events, particularly associated with the retrogrades of Venus and Mars.
My theory is that events associated with the retrogrades were designed to loosen up certain elements of personal and social reality in preparation for the sign changes of Chiron (into Aries) and Uranus (into Taurus). It will be easier going forward without whatever attachments Venus and Mars helped break free.
As of Thursday afternoon, Mercury is also direct, completing its third retrograde of the year. That will offer some immediate relief. It’s remarkable that the station-direct happened with Mercury exactly trine Chiron, as Chiron is in its last weeks in Pisces (the Aries final ingress takes place Feb. 18). Through the weekend, this is an opportunity for a dialog about all those Scorpio-styled things that people so often resist talking about. There is now an easy opening, for those who dare: easy to access, and easy to miss.
Editor’s note: this is the full PW members’ edition, featuring a special opportunity to re-read your weekly horoscope, Create; and an interview with Robert Schmidt.
Dear Friend and Reader:
How is this Mercury retrograde going for you? We only have about a week of it left (not counting a few days for things to shake back into place after it stations direct on Dec. 6); so hang in there. Personally, I feel like some of the other current astrology is contributing more to a sense of restlessness; but really it’s all part of the same environment, so it’s hard to say for sure.
Photo by Amanda Painter.
For one thing, we have several objects in the last degree of their respective signs, or about to be. In zodiac order, these include: retrograde Uranus in Aries, Venus in Libra, Mercury about to retrograde into late Scorpio, Pholus in Sagittarius, and Vesta in Capricorn.
Planets in the last (or ‘anaretic’) degree of a sign are often said to feel a little edgy; kind of like how we human beings can get a little edgy in anticipation of a big transition in our lives. Add in that some of those planets are making oppositions or squares to each other — aspects of tension — and the restlessness factor increases.
Plus, we have the Sun in the last sign of a season (Sagittarius), the civil-calendar year is almost over, and Mercury is retrograde in a sign that’s partly about forward intention (in a long series of inner-planet retrogrades this year). The sky seems to be reflecting a general sense of just wanting to get on with it — whatever ‘it’ might be.
So we end up with some questions. What absolutely ought to wait till Mercury’s direct, so that you don’t make more work for yourself than is warranted? What must you address or take steps toward so you can channel this energy creatively, rather than repressing it in unproductive ways?
What can you get started on — such as research, preparation, getting organized, making repairs, reviewing your progress — that might put you in a much better position to take bigger steps in the near future? What’s the different between being wisely cautious and giving in to crippling self-doubt or paranoia?