Category Archives: Horoscopes

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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Taurus New Moon Edition

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Dear Friend and Reader:

This Thursday, May 9, at 8:28 pm EDT the Taurus New Moon will form an annular (not annual) solar eclipse. Although it may not be visible from where you are, astrologically this is still a powerful moment — and we’ve entered the on-ramp into that vortex already.

Photo by Anthony Ayiomamitis.

In today’s Moonshine horoscopes, Genevieve Hathaway has interpreted this Taurus New Moon solar eclipse for each of the 12 Moon signs. Your Moon sign is where the Moon was when you were born, which you can find out by entering your birth data into Serennu.com. It helps to have your birth time but often that is not necessary. You can also try reading these horoscopes for your Sun and rising signs for additional layers of insight.

Because this week’s eclipse is a South Node eclipse — meaning that the Sun and Moon are conjunct the lunar South Node in Taurus (a calculated point) — the emphasis is on releasing what is no longer serving you (beliefs, things, relationships and especially values) to make room for what fits your life now. It’s also a time to remember and recognize the gifts and talents you have that are so second nature, you tend to take them for granted. Appreciate them by putting them to work for you.

There’s an impressive collection of planets aligned with this eclipse. Many are in Taurus, including Mars (if you allow about 5 degrees of wiggle room), Mercury, and the asteroid Pallas Athene. If you broaden your lens to look at a larger array of minor planets, it turns out there are quite a number in the four fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius) hanging out near the eclipse degree.

You can see a listing of those planets here on Eric’s Facebook page, where a discussion about them is forming. Eric will also be covering some of the themes they represent in his broadcast of Planet Waves FM later tonight (Tuesday), and Genevieve will offer her take on the eclipse in a blog post Thursday morning.

One last thought, just to emphasize the point of the current astrology: we are in a period of being able to engage in willful, progressive decision-making from now through Thursday’s eclipse. In other words, this is a time when you can recognize and let go of what does not work — and just as importantly, you can integrate what does work. There are two steps to the process, but both steps require being willing to see what you’re being shown — which, in truth, are things you already know.

New Moons and eclipses may create darkness in the sky above us, but metaphorically that means you get a clearer view of what’s within, minus all the shiny, bright distractions around you. The idea is to make decisions on what truly matters; you know exactly where those things live.

Yours and truly,

Amanda Painter

These Moonshine Horoscopes are written by Genevieve Hathaway. Genevieve is an astrologer and Planet Waves contributor. She is available for astrology readings. You can contact her at genevieve@venusinblue.com.

Moonshine Horoscopes by Genevieve Hathaway

Aries (March 20-April 19) — What do you value? Pull out a pen and paper and make a list of that which is most important to you. Making a list will provide a concrete way to gather your thoughts and sort through new information regarding what you think of as important. Are you at the top of that list? At the moment, you are connecting with a certain doubt that has been floating around your psyche for a long time. So long it may have seemed like the normal state of your existence. I’m not referring to any kind of self-esteem crisis, rather a deep and pervasive sensation that you could not quite measure up to the vision you held for yourself and your place in the world. There has been some block that you thought you could not get around. As the Taurus New Moon takes place this week, you come into contact with the fact that this is only perception, not truth. This realization will bring you a long way in resolving any doubt you’ve held about yourself, bringing a greater sense of confidence in your ability to be an active and successful participant in guiding the direction of your life. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You are moving through a period of time where your life may seem to accelerate, almost too quickly for you to comprehend. It’s like you are moving through a series of doors, quickly going from point A to point D, at a speed so quick you may not even register doors B or C. For you, who likes to take your time before making any changes or decisions, this could be disconcerting or frustrating. I propose a question: what additional benefit does examining the intermediate steps along the way bring? Doors B and C are just means to reach your final destination. I suggest going with the flow of the quickly-moving events. Let go of expectations of where you will end up, instead flowing with where the changes take you. What is on offer is a rapid re-alignment of your core values, bringing you into contact with a deeper and richer sense of who you are and what you desire. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — A pattern or habit, which may not have been apparent to you before, is now becoming obvious, like it’s moving out of a blind spot and into full view. A door opens that allows you to step in and examine this material, allowing you to decide how to re-arrange the system by which you operate. For a while, there has been a gap in information that has affected your life story even if you didn’t know it. You are gaining insight into the ways you unconsciously tried to please other people at your own expense, ignoring one of your own boundaries in the process. Gaining this awareness allows you to now address this habitual response to others. Focus on how you can make different choices and decisions in the future. You have a lot of help at the moment to do things differently. I suggest taking one decision at a time, making one change at a time. Before long you’ll be able to look back and see how far you’ve come, through a series of small changes. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Who is in your larger network and why? That last part is of particular significance. Part of standing in our own personal authority is taking ownership over the process of selecting who is around us. I suggest you take this one step further — rather than only selecting who enters your personal sphere, take steps to seek out the kinds of people you wish to fill your network. You can think of this as building a community of mentors, friends, colleagues and even acquaintances who add something of benefit to your life. The first step is identifying who you want around you and then reaching out to build relationships with those types of people. You are in a particularly influential moment and it won’t take much of a reach to connect with some people with whom you’ve wished to surround yourself. Focus on who you want around you, rather than whether or not the person will reciprocate your efforts to build a relationship. I suggest not getting distracted by any sense of doubt as to whether or not every person will respond to your efforts to connect; ultimately, enough will. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — An important work or career opportunity is presenting itself. This opening may seem to have arrived suddenly, though in truth you’ve been preparing and working toward it for a while. You are wrestling with a lingering sense of uncertainty about whether you have the skills and personal resources to capitalize on the rapid changes and progress in your work. I propose quickly dropping this notion and not questioning whether you can accomplish the new task ahead. Any sense of not being able to seize this opportunity is based on attitudes and perceptions from childhood. What you are running up against is a wounding that goes back many generations in your family. Identify it for what it is and realize that it does not inform who you actually are and where you are going. Instead, stay grounded in the experiences and skills you do have. You have more than enough knowledge and skill to make the leap. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — You’re at your happiest when the little things in life are ironed out. When details are straight and your environment is orderly and those around you are appreciating how hard you work, you feel good. Yet, this can at times lead you to over-plan, or to place too much emotional attachment into details of situations. The specifics are important in life, but can’t provide an entire picture of the landscape of any series of events. Space is opening for you to access a greater perspective that allows you to appreciate the larger picture rather than focusing too much on the details. You can also think of this as giving yourself and others grace to move within nuances of developments rather than following a set script. Take note of how you feel when you test out this new perspective on the events in your life. What you are connecting with is a new philosophy based on a greater degree of acceptance for the imperfections in the world — it isn’t just a new viewpoint but also a resource enabling you to apply greater flexibility to situations. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — You are working through a kind of sexual negotiation based on what you value rather than present rules of society. Part of approaching any sexual relationship from an authentic place is treating yourself and the other party as distinct individuals who are growing, changing and learning. Negotiations are a form of relating that helps both parties understand where the other is coming from. It involves giving something while also having your needs met. It’s a type of conversation and dialogue where both parties ultimately benefit. This type of communication takes practice and patience in holding space for you and your partner to share such intimate desires. At the moment, you have the necessary language to move this sexual negotiation along quite far. As you work through these negotiations, remember — the truth is erotic. Working from that premise will help facilitate an open dialogue that can lead to some truly erotic, intimate and soul-fulfilling sexual experiences. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — You are someone who values depth and unhindered honesty. You respect the truth. You are being called to bring this level of depth and straight-forward honesty to your relationships. A current situation with a partner may be challenging you in ways you had not expected. It’s pushing you to share a part of yourself that you have been scared to share in the past. Your internal world has many secret layers or hidden rooms that you rarely let others enter because of the deeply personal and vulnerable material contained there. Available at the moment is an opportunity to rewrite some very old patterns of only sharing filtered parts of yourself with partners. This is a form of intimacy, one that comes from showing up as vulnerable and honest in your relationships. Sharing yourself in this way with a partner may feel like a risk, but it’s one that is worth taking. Trust that a partner will show up and answer you with his or her own vulnerabilities and insecurities. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — This week as the Moon and Sun meet in Taurus, your astrology is indicating a burst of energy in your emotional and physical bodies. This may come with the sensation of your body and emotions working as one unit. You can also think of this in terms of balance, with both aspects of you working together in a healthy harmony. Part of working from this balanced place is listening to the signals that both parts of you are sending. Consciously know what nurtures each and build that into your daily life. At the moment, what you are accessing is a well of energy, a type of renewable power source, that you can draw on to achieve your goals. Shift and alter routines and habits to facilitate these two parts of yourself working increasingly as a cohesive unit. Once you set these new structures and patterns, it won’t take much to keep this internal energy source charged and accessible. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — You are tapping into a willingness to experiment and take new approaches to situations. It’s as though a certain rigid structure you have lived with is dissolving, leaving you with the flexibility to try a few new ideas. I suggest applying this new sense of open possibilities to an important project you’ve been working on. For a Moon sign that is used to fixed structures, having many options could feel somewhat disconcerting. I suggest following that feeling and pushing ahead out of your comfort zone. Experimentation is a process that involves testing the waters and seeing what happens, then making adjustments as a result of what you learn. Through this process of trial and error you will be able to continue to refine your project’s evolution. Keeping your options open will enable you to shift and move with the new information you learn. As you continue to work the fine edge of the options at your disposal, you will hit on the one that leads your project to the progress you want. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — You are in a moment of realization about a question you’ve been wrestling with for a while. This has to do with the nature of your internal world. At times it may have felt like you were having endless heated discussions with yourself about your place in the outer world. You’ve fought a doubt you’ve had about your ability to attain your highest goals or vision for your life. What you desired may have seemed impractical or too out of reach. I pose a question: who defines what is possible? You have a lot more creative power than you think. Think of what you envision for your life like a piggy bank. Each time you invest time and love into where you wish to go, a penny gets added to the bank. The piggy bank won’t be full of pennies right away but, as you continue to add pennies and hold your vision, eventually you’ll have a full bank. In terms of the real world, this represents your arrival at your final destination; you are much closer than you think, so remain focused on what you want no matter now impossible it may seem. — by Genevieve Hathaway

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — As someone with a Pisces Moon, you are heavily influenced by your environment. You’re a kind of psychic and emotional sponge, soaking up the energy around you. Lately, you’ve been learning quite a bit about the connection between your environment and how you feel. By environment I mean everything from who you are around to the kind of neighborhood you live in. You pick up on the energy given off by people and places. An opening is available to make some lasting changes in terms of what is in your environment and how it provides you with grounding for a balanced and nurturing emotional state. First, start from a point of living each day in mindfulness. You can think of this as consciously observing who and what influences your energy. Then take steps to choose what surrounds you; limit your exposure to situations, surroundings and people that deplete your energy. Ultimately, you are learning to be the steward of your emotional energy as well as your environment. — by Genevieve Hathaway

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Taurus New Moon Eclipse — and Your Moonshine Horoscopes

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Dear Friend and Reader:

I hope you enjoyed Beltane weekend, whether you celebrated outdoors or in, solo or with others. We’re coming up on the Taurus New Moon (Thursday) and Genevieve Hathaway has written a set of Moonshine horoscopes, which you can read here, especially for the occasion.

Annular Eclipse at Sunrise. Photo by Anthony Ayiomamitis.

This New Moon is also an annular (not annual) solar eclipse in Taurus, flanked by several planets in the sign of the bull (a regular herd). This is the second of two eclipses along the Taurus-Scorpio axis, and in two weeks, we’ll have a third eclipse on the Gemini-Sagittarius axis. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves — this week is rather special.

In Monday’s Daily Astrology post on the Planet Waves blog, Eric discussed Thursday’s eclipse in the context of Beltane season. He’ll be taking his last look at this New Moon eclipse in tonight’s broadcast of Planet Waves FM, which usually posts by 8 pm EDT (often earlier). Eric will also investigate the astrology of the three abducted women finally rescued from the house where they had been kept by three brothers in Cleveland for about 10 years.

Today’s Daily Astrology post asks you to consider Mercury’s message as it conjoins Mars in Taurus and aspects two other planets. We’re entering a rare opening for conscious and progressive decision-making, a hot-spot of energy on the way to the eclipse vortex. At around noon EDT today Len Wallick offers his take on Venus entering Gemini Thursday morning, another landmark on our way to the eclipse.

Finally, if you are a Taurus (by Sun, Moon or rising sign) or know a Taurus, there has never been a better year to treat yourself or a loved one to the Taurus Birthday Reading Eric has recorded. This is your moment, bulls.

Yours and truly,

Amanda Painter

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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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Inner Space Horoscopes for May 2013

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Planet Waves

Planet Waves Inner Space Horoscopes for May 2013 | By Eric Francis

May is characterized by eclipses, the last two in a series of three that began with a lunar eclipse in Scorpio on April 25. Arriving twice a year, eclipse phases are times of rapid change and development. They can be evolutionary moments, and there can be a touch of unpredictability, chaos and the sense of fate operating. Check in with yourself regularly about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and what you really want to be doing. Notice what is being said and what you’re experiencing in your relationships. Consider whether desire levels are truly compatible between you and the person you’re with — and factor this same question into anyone you want to be with. For attraction to work, it must be mutual. If you’re feeling jealousy, that’s a good time to sort out the difference between love and attachment. It’s all the difference in the world.

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Most of how we experience life is dependent on one thing: how we feel about ourselves. This is often considered an emotional experience, and in the end it may be. But you’re now down to one option, which is to use logic. This will get you past any impulses and snap judgments that you may be experiencing, and into a frame of mind where you can ask yourself what’s true and what’s not. Make sure you ask yourself how you know what you think you know, which will help you avoid certain biases that all people have about themselves. There seems to be something about yourself that you’re trying to let go of, and something else that you want to embrace. Remember that humans are creatures of habit, and what you emphasize (by any means, whether negative or positive reinforcement) is likely to increase.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — This month’s unusual solar eclipse in your birth sign marks a special point of progress in your relationship to yourself. Taurus is famous for its black-and-white vision — that is, a struggle in seeing the gray areas in focus, and also some challenges in holding two different possibilities open at the same time. That would include two potential versions of yourself, two sets of priorities and two different sets of responses to your life. This is not about having a split personality — it’s about having a dynamic personality, which can juggle your options and engage in a productive dialog with yourself. As part of that dialog, I suggest you think in terms of methods. When you think of a goal or something you want, sketch — in pencil, and in just a few steps — a potential plan to get there.

Hello Taurus! Your 2013 Birthday Reading will be ready soon. We’re now between two eclipses on the Taurus-Scorpio axis: last week’s partial lunar eclipse, and then a Taurus New Moon solar eclipse next week (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) — Many factors are influencing the sudden sensation that you’re a ‘new person’, factors that indicate this goes deeper than a feeling or a transient phase. All your inner workings, processes and challenges actually do add up to something, and when they do, you’re free to leave them behind. Perhaps core among these is your relationship with aggression, which might be something you’ve directed at yourself from time to time, a tendency to be competitive or an opinionated quality that exceeds the bounds of what’s useful in your relationships. This seems to be the thing that you can drop the most easily, in place of a way of experiencing life that’s based on empathy and understanding. You don’t need to agree with someone to appreciate their point of view. You have something to learn from everyone.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You’re being called upon to take up a leadership role. You’ve probably had this idea a few times lately, but now the opportunities to put it into practice are presenting themselves. There’s a creative piece to this — whomever you may gather or influence, the purpose is not really social even if it takes place in a social environment. What you’re doing is helping focus human energy. That includes your own energy: one test of who to spend time with can include whether you find someone inspiring and supportive of your own creative aspirations and projects. This is a time in your life when focusing your talent is one of your highest priorities. In such a time, idle socialization can be a serious diversion. Therefore, as you meet people, check that your contact with them enhances your ability to do what you love.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — You’re in the position of visionary, and many people are counting on you. This has a few main elements. The most significant is about values; you’re the one setting the example for what is right and true. The second is strategy. You know that there must be a method, and that means taking conscious steps to doing things in a way that solves future problems rather than creates them. The third step is presentation. You’re in the perfect spot to have the ‘pulse on public opinion’, however you may define ‘the public’. You can intuitively offer a way to show-and-tell the thing that needs to be explained, in a truly appealing way. All of this is a formula for success, though I think it’s going to be a different formula and a different kind of success from what you’ve experienced before.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Though you’re a mutable (easily changeable) sign, you may be figuring out the extent to which you have some fixed beliefs that are not helping you. It’s one thing to have values to guide your life. It’s another to live in rigid belief systems that make it difficult to adapt to the realities of existence on the planet. If you find yourself struggling with anything (such as sexual guilt, confusion about someone you desire, or acting in ways that are designed specifically to please others), I suggest you consider what fixed beliefs are influencing those experiences. Some old idea of what is supposed to be right and what is supposed to be wrong is simply not working. Note, those ideas come from somewhere; you didn’t make them up. But whether you continue to carry (or drag) them around is another matter — a matter of choice.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — What you’re going through is not as big of a deal as it seems. It would help considerably if you were less judgmental of yourself, which would help you be less judgmental of others. The whole judgment thing is indeed a vicious circle, and forgiveness has to enter the picture somewhere. Your chart suggests you’re playing the role of harsh parent to yourself more than the role of trusted friend. As the month develops you will have leverage points where you can make decisions concerning how you feel about yourself. These might seem to be emotional, though there is a logical access point. Asking yourself whether something makes sense is a good place to start. I don’t mean makes sense in terms of internal logic — I mean makes sense in terms of being happier or getting what you want from life.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — There’s plenty you can learn from the people you care about, and even from the people who annoy you the most. You’re being confronted with a diversity of situations that are challenging you to update your ideas about relating to others. You’re seeing the results of your old ideas, and you may be seeing past versions of yourself dramatized in the actions of others. Mainly, I think that your charts are pointing directly to the value of being flexible and able to negotiate, without being a pushover. Negotiation is something that should produce a workable result for both people involved in the conversation. That starts with you knowing what works for you, and listening to what others say works for them, then exploring the common ground.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — One way or another, healing — or the need for healing — surfaces in every relationship. Maybe that’s because love brings up everything unlike itself. Maybe it’s because we carry around so many prejudices from our past relationships, and those obscure our view of who we’re actually with. I suggest you honor the healing aspect of your relationships though without putting that on a ‘higher’ plane than celebrating life. One of our biggest collective problems is pleasure anxiety (that is, tension, guilt or other issues around simply feeling good). In that regard, sincere, wholesome pleasure counts as a form of release from pain and anxiety. Yet along the way, there will be questions, some pain might arise, and in your chart, there’s the question of what to do along that borderline where passion meets anger. Devote yourself to listening and you will have all the information — and the love — you need.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — You don’t need to feel awkward about your sexuality. I mean, you can if you want, but you’re attractive and you’re making an impression on people. That means they’re noticing you, though you may not feel okay about that. If there was ever a time in your life not to be a slave to your hangups, this is the time. If there was a moment to commit to your growth as a sexual being, you’re standing in it right now. Get used to the fact that to some extent, this is a deeply private experience that by definition others will be finding out about. You’re at the point where your prior personality structure cannot contain the growth or the energy that’s brimming out of you now. Get used to that fact and you’ll have a whole new way to feel good about who you are.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — I trust that by now you’ve figured out that there’s no point resisting progress. You’re growing, you’re maturing, and you’re being called to bigger and better things than you may have ever dreamed possible. Yet this is not a fairytale; you’re living an actual journey of maturity, which has many elements. One of them is fully embracing adult responsibility. Another is hearing the call to leadership. Yet another is recognizing that time is finite, which is another way of saying that you must use time as your ally rather than treating it as an enemy. Time is a resource, and it’s one that you have the ability to use wisely. One way to avoid wasting time is to invest your energy in who and what is present in your life now, rather than obsessing over the past. The past leads nowhere; the present will lead you into the future.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — This is a passionate season and it may be especially so for you. I suggest you put your heat and light into everything you’re doing, and be fully present in your own life and in the world. You’re radiating from the inside out, and you’ve surpassed the whole ‘invisible Pisces’ thing. You don’t have to concern yourself with what results you’re going to get. Do what feels right; associate with the people who feel right; and make the changes you need to make along the way. I suggest you put lots of energy into communicating what you feel, including in conversations, in writing and in creative modes like music, photography and art. This is all leading to something, though I won’t predict what. I can tell you that there will be some exciting developments later in the month that will spring from the love that you pour into your life and the world right now.

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May Eclipses and Inner Space Horoscopes

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Please see PS from Eric below.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Your Inner Space horoscope is back and available at this link, after a one-month break. In this edition Eric looks at the eclipses of May — a solar eclipse in Taurus and a lunar eclipse in Sagittarius. These are the second two eclipses in a three-eclipse series.

Photo by Eric Francis.

In addition to discussing the eclipses and Beltane (the Pagan celebration of fertility and sexual pleasure) on Planet Waves FM tonight, Eric will be speaking with a very special guest: sex educator and filmmaker Tristan Taormino.

Eric has nominated Tristan to be a keynote speaker at the next United Astrology Conference (UAC). Planet Waves FM posts by about 8 pm EDT, often earlier.

We’re between the first two eclipses in the series now, and the astrology is moving us along. In Monday’s Daily Astrology post on the Planet Waves blog, Eric looked into the Capricorn Moon as part of the Uranus-Pluto square, and the subtly cumulative effects of the eclipse-like events the Moon and Pluto have been engaging in for over a year.

Today’s Daily Astrology features Mars in Taurus opposite Saturn in Scorpio: two opposite planetary energies that could generate the sense that things are ‘coming to a head’. Also, be sure to check back later today for Len Wallick’s post on Mercury entering Taurus, which will bring the total of major astrological bodies in Taurus up to five as we approach Beltane.

Yours and truly,

Amanda Painter

PS from Eric: I am looking for stories from the second Saturn return at age 58-59. What did you go through and what are the ‘before and after’ versions of events? Also if you’re around age 29 and going through your first Saturn return I am curious about what you’re experiencing these days (re: relationships, sense of purpose, employment). This is all for a possible article; lease provide a first name and your age to identify you in print.

Please send to dreams@planetwaves.net. Thank you! — efc

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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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