Dear Friend and Reader:

A wave of energy currently moving through Scorpio is likely to bring your most private thoughts to the surface of your awareness. You will discover them yourself first, then the next step is likely to be the need or the inspiration to tell others. I would regard this as a healthy impulse, but it needs to be handled carefully. In the current days there is the profound, immediate potential for healing deeply hidden pain and injury, though you need to make the time and space for the conversations to happen in a meaningful way. The risk of healing is vulnerability.

Musicians brave a severe dust storm at Burning Man ritual, Sept. 2009. Photo by Eric Francis.

Here’s how the astrology looks. A setup involving the Sun, Mercury, Jupiter and a small, meaningful centaur planet called Nessus has been developing all week, and peaks over the weekend. Planets in Scorpio (Sun, Mercury) are encountering planets in Aquarius (Nessus, Jupiter), and this is stirring the psychic/emotional pot. There’s a level of conflict involved, as Scorpio thrives on a private kind of vibe and Aquarius thrives on an open one.

There is also the need for harmony: we all have all the signs working in all of our charts, and one effective way to work with astrology is to foster cooperation between all the energies and seemingly conflicting influences. This kind of emotional struggle may be inconvenient, yet they have a way of building character.

The aspects involved are squares, including the currently forming Saturn square Pluto. We’re all getting the same basic message, which is to be honest with ourselves as a first step in being honest with others. Sexual secrets and their underlying emotional reality (such as those involved in Scorpio) are among of the biggest problems we face as individuals, as participants in relationships, and as a society. Just like a relatively small injury can result in a systemic infection, a small secret can fester, spread its poison and eventually take over one’s life, or as the case may be, a culture. That is the Aquarius factor.

This week, Maine became the 31st state where the voters denied same-sex couples the right to marry. Maine’s legislature had passed a law allowing same-sex marriage, and then it was put on the ballot as Question 1. By a spread of about six percentage points (53% to 47%), voters repealed the same-sex marriage provision.

I have probably used the phrase “the personal is political” more than any other in Planet Waves, which is the key phrase I attribute to an astrological phenomenon known as the Aries Point. This is focused on the point in the zodiac where Pisces (the most collective sign) meets Aries (the most individual sign).

Dancer at Burning Man ritual. Photo by Eric Francis.

The Aries Point is the cosmic repeating station where the most private material becomes the most public, and where people’s most private emotional baggage creates public policy. The Aries Point touches the first degrees of all the cardinal signs (including Cancer, Libra and Capricorn) and has four additional hot spots in the zodiac, activated when something significant happens at the midpoint of the fixed signs — and that’s going on right now, in the conversation between Scorpio and Aquarius.

If I had to call one basic theme for 2012, this would be it. The Aries Point is all over these charts, which began when Pluto entered Capricorn earlier this year. Whatever you may hear about 2012, from the most paranoid sources or the most enlightened, is rooted in this theme.

The phrase “the personal is political” is often credited to the radical feminist group Redstockings, though it really comes from a 1969 paper written by Carol Hanisch — an influential thinker in that group. Commenting on feminist meetings of the era, Hanisch wrote, “One of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action for a collective solution.”

I believe that this viewpoint has a dangerous blind spot, and if you ask me it was one of the deepest flaws in the feminist thinking of the era. All collectives are made up of individuals. Individuals contribute ideas; they take leadership; they have lives and karma they are working out; they both influence and respond to the events that surround them. The personal level of reality cannot only not be omitted; it’s influential on every other aspect of existence.

Each individual must take care of his or her own personal material. This is because there is nobody else to do it for us. Our individual material will ripple out into a larger environment, influencing the people around us. Even if there is apparent progress in the collective world, it will disappear like smoke unless individuals take the process of change on board and mind our own growth and healing process.

Dancers at Burning Man ritual. Photo by Eric Francis.

You might call this politics from the inside out, which is a form of individual progress that adds up to collective progress — or as the case may be, its opposite. This is the crucial intersection of individual growth and collective progress. It’s the golden chord.

The same-sex marriage issue makes a good example of how this works, or doesn’t work. It’s a deeply personal matter, and we might even ask why it’s being subjected to public debate. Many would say that because all individuals in the United States have the right to equal protection under the law, we all have the same basic rights. We could not deny someone a driver’s license on the basis of their sexual orientation; how can we deny a marriage license? Well, the reason is because the marriage issue is so personal; and by that, it involves regulating what people do in their living rooms and their bedrooms.

The pro and con sides of this issue are not even vaguely equivalents; they each have different concepts operating at their core.

Someone in favor of the state allowing same-sex people to marry is affirming that people can make their private choices, which they would make anyway. This is the Scorpio angle. There is an affirmation that the collective (such as the state) needs to get out of the way of individual choices that don’t actually harm others. This is the Aquarius angle. It can go both ways — Aquarius is the sign we associate with freedom, but it also contains the psychological pattern of tyranny.

A mature person recognizes that same-sex couples are still going to have live-in relationships and live as married couples no matter what any referendum says. Self-awareness is implied in the pro-same-sex marriage position. One understands, “I believe that people are inherently free,” or at least that it’s not their right to interfere with the private activities of others.

Compassion is also implied: we all know that this is about deeply personal stuff, like visiting one’s partner in the hospital, inheritance rights, and the right to be viewed by society as equally as human as your neighbors.

Burning Man Center Camp. Photo by Eric Francis.

Someone against same-sex marriage is attempting to use the government to dictate what other people can do, neither having a direct part in the matter, nor facing the results. There’s the presumption that one’s subjective morality should be applied to someone else, because their private conduct somehow offends someone’s private morality. We don’t admit out loud how detached from reality this viewpoint really is, probably because it’s so commonplace.

Spokespeople for the anti-same-sex marriage position love to get on TV and tell us about how they are not against gay people, per se. They just don’t want them riding in the front of the bus, where relationships are considered legitimate. If we remember that this movement is funded and energized by many of the same people who teach “abstinence only until heterosexual marriage,” the truth is more obvious; in religious terms, marriage is a “sex license.” While this will not prevent them from having sex, demented religious minds might think that at least it will keep them out of heaven.

The closest the anti-same-sex marriage position comes to being self-aware involves admitting the fear that someone might have to explain it to his or her children. Now, do we gloss this one over, or do we talk it out?

Self-awareness never seems to reach the level of someone opposed to same-sex marriage being able to say, “I’m embarrassed by this, and it’s coming from deep inside. I wonder what that’s about,” or, “I’m ardently in favor only of traditional marriage, but that seems homophobic. Maybe this says something about me.”

On an issue this personal, we could do with some personal reflection, especially from those attempting to block the freedom of others to live their private lives; when they themselves do what they want. This is an example of how one’s private pain, denial and lack of awareness (the personal) can affect many people (the political).

Now, this conversation is a bit abstract, in the sense that we rarely actually feel the ways in which our personal views add up to some massive collective movement; and that is the first thing to meditate on. The way we feel, what we say to our neighbors, what we teach our children and our students, all of it ripples out into the culture, through time and space. All of it affirms what we want to be true about the world, and reinforces our own perception of reality.

Burning Man, aisle between Center Camp and the Man. Photo by Eric Francis.

Yet I think most of us are guarding a blind spot: we don’t see how influenced we are by seemingly collective ideas that are really the views of a very few people, amplified by the media. It’s easy for you to see how I am influencing your thoughts with these ideas; you voluntarily choose to read my writing, and you can actually write to me if you want to and you’ll likely be treated to a dialog if you do. But when you turn on the television and you’re subjected to a barrage of ideas of people you have no reason to trust, who you can never challenge or engage with, that can and does cause a lot of problems. And if you don’t know their agenda, now we’re really talking dangerous.

In our era of history, sex has become the primary political battleground. This is in two main areas. The first is in the attempt at enforcement of gender identity norms. There is inherent hypocrisy here: who is to say what’s normal? I don’t think there is anyone who does not feel feel that their deepest erotic desires are a little weird, but we either accept ourselves, or spread the conflict outward.

The second is the tendency of making more and more forms of sexual communication into crimes. For example, laws that were designed to protect children from sexual exploitation are now being used to prosecute them (such as when teenagers send naked pictures of themselves on their iPhone cameras).

And though it may be difficult to see, you become the battleground: your feelings, your body, your relationships. One of the ways all this public debate over supposed right and wrong in personal, relational matters affects us is to make us afraid to reveal our personal truths: to say how we feel, what we want or what we’ve been through.

Opening up these ways is the theme of the astrology over the next few days. The pattern of the planets, as I see it, suggests: be aware if you have fear of revealing your personal truth. If you’re talking to a partner or prospective partner, you can say, “I’m afraid if I say this you will leave me.”

This is probably the root of most of our fears. It’s an old story, and I do mean that it goes back to the beginning of our lives. We don’t have to drag it around forever. Remember, those truths that seem the most difficult to reveal are often rewarded by the deepest liberation.

Yours & truly,

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Time flies. A year ago, the majority in this nation voted for a change in leadership. Not counting the two months in which Obama influenced but did not lead this country, we are about ten months into his tenure, and as promised, everything has, indeed, changed. George W. Bush breathed a sigh of relief as he handed over the presidency, eager to get away from the crushing responsibility that he botched so badly and the ticking international and financial time bombs he left behind. He speaks now, occasionally but repeatedly, about the joys of picking up dog poop. My mind reels with dark bits of snark whenever I hear this, but the inclination is overwhelmed by sheer gratitude that he’s engaged in something so harmless. George was the perfect foil for the corporate coup that has brought the nation to her knees and, according to new polls, somewhat less than 20% of the nation misses him terribly. I’m amazed it’s that many.

Michelle Bachmann’s Census Theories Too Much For Glenn Beck. Photo: FOX NEWS VIDEO.

We had a handful of prominent elections this week and their result reflects the anger and anxiety across the land. The Huffington Post declared it a Republican sweep. Since this was Rightwing territory at stake, I’m hardly surprised, and both the nature of the political dialogue and the lethargy of the Left mark this turning. Those who won the day were mindful of the paranoid Tea Bagger theories proposed by operatives like Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachman, which is a distressing indicator that our political discourse has gone haywire in a big way and that for some of us, reality is not in play. A moderate Republican candidate was so offended by the radical rhetoric aimed her way that she dropped out and endorsed her Democratic opponent. As to turnout from the Left, improvement to their lives has been slow coming and their hopes dampened by myriad delays and political snafus. They stayed home in droves, which is the equivalent of voting against their own best interests. Sadly, I can guarantee them that things will not get better under Republican leadership; the GOP knows how to campaign, but history proves that they have very little talent at — and only the barest interest in — governing.

Still, change is sweeping us along and those who interpret it for us are the least likely to appreciate its ramifications. The media keeps us informed of all the juicy insider tidbits and feuds which grab ratings for them but are the equivalent of lolling the day away watching soap operas. We’ve got big fish to fry, yet we’re easily distracted and led to focus on the minnows, to find the one we fancy most and root for it as if politics was a minnow roil, a reminder of why these little fish are called ‘bait.’ We’re still focused on win/lose for the few instead of win/win for the whole of us, which means that we’re in for a continuing period of lose/lose. There are days I want Wolf Blitzer’s head on a stick and would gladly put my foot though the screen when I inadvertently click over into FOX News to catch a glimpse of the ever-doltish Beck or a smug O’Reilly. Yet playing small is the wrong focus entirely, Beloved. We’re like the squirrels here in the Pea Patch, so busy trying to push a nut up the tree that we don’t see the turkey vultures circling overhead.

Coming Up in Daily Astrology and Adventure 

Words are tricky things. They have power (“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”), but they are also mutable. There’s a brilliant example of this currently in the cereal aisle of your local grocery store, where several products of the Kellogg’s company boldly proclaim on the front of the packaging that each “helps support your child’s IMMUNITY.”

Yet these cereals aren’t ones built on whole grains, or bran, or shredded wheat. Nope, they’re built on krispies – as in Rice Krispies, Cocoa Krispies, and Frosted Krispies. This is the latest trend of marketing ordinary packaged items as health foods.

Vintage Rice Krispies box. Photo: Wikipedia.

The claim is based on the fact that Kellogg’s has increased the amount of synthetic vitamins they spray onto the cereals, bringing the dosage up to 25% of the recommended daily allowance. But, as The Early Show on CBS reported this week, these are still sugar-packed kids’ cereals, chock full o’ high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils. In our view, these two ingredients are the junk food dividing line.

The claim of enhanced immunity raised red flags all over the place, among not only parents and nutritionists but the government of San Francisco (where everyone is eligible for government health insurance), which has asked for evidence backing up that claim.

The Early Show sought such proof, too, and got this statement from Kellogg’s: “These nutrients have been identified by the Institute of Medicine and other studies as playing an important role in the body’s immune system. Therefore, we believe the claim … is supported by reliable and competent scientific evidence.”

There again you see the power of words, this time as exercised by a public relations professional. The company essentially admitted they’ve done no empirical testing on the immunity claim, though not in so many words.

While experts interviewed by The Early Show expressed serious misgivings and general disapproval of the claim, over at NaturalNews.com the tone trended towards outright scorn.

“Cocoa Krispies isn’t even real food, if you ask me. It’s a nutrient-deficient, highly processed, sugar-laden source of empty calories. To claim it ‘supports IMMUNITY’ is so far-fetched that you’d have to be living in some alternate universe to even think about believing it,” wrote Mike Adams.

Cereal manufacturers (not to mention fast food restaurants) have long proclaimed their fare to be “part of a balanced diet.” However, there you get into that language trap again. “Diet” is, perhaps, the most misused word in Western popular culture. That’s because it has primarily come to mean “weight-loss program.” Someone generally only says “I’m on a diet” if they’re following a specific regimen, simple or complex, to lose weight.

But we’re all on diets, even if it’s Kit-Kats and cucumbers. What you eat is your diet. And more and more often, what you eat is processed and packaged food (which, the BBC reports, could increase the risk of depression).

And that is about the worst thing for one’s immune system since DDT.

It’s an election week for many places in the country, and that means a return to those belabored favorite terms of the punditocracy: Red States and Blue States.

Photo of Microscopic rock forms indicating past signs of water, taken by Opportunity.

Well, this week the planet Mars offers a chance to see the Red/Blue divide on a planetary scale, accomplished with the complete absence of politicians.

Our friends at SpaceWeather.com have an interesting item about Mars, which is lining up for a close fly-by of Earth in January, known to astrology fans as Mars retrograde in Leo. This is giving backyard astronomers with adequate telescopes a chance to see what appears to be the Red Planet blushing blue, as illustrated by a photo taken by Joel Warren of Amarillo, Texas.

What you see in the photo is the northern polar ice cap on Mars, visible as a blue swatch atop the ruddy planet. There’s water ice in there, although it’s often under a layer of carbon dioxide frost (i.e., dry ice).

You know, it occurs that there may be an astronomical solution to the generally intolerable lack of civility in politics. After all, we have a Red Planet and a Blue Planet. Could it be as simple as Red Staters getting a vacation on Mars and leaving the Blue Staters on Earth? Or maybe vice versa, to allow each to experience a home world of the opposite chromatic character?

Or maybe the politicians need a trip to Mars, before they finish trashing the Earth.

The debate on how and why the Earth’s global climate is being altered by mankind’s actions is still stewing along, despite years of study that has built a body of work giving great support to the thesis. However, stiff opposition remains in many corners – including among many religious people.

However, that’s been changing in recent years. The Creation Care movement among some evangelical and mainstream protestant religions, for example, which seeks to address issues such as species extinction and deforestation.

Representatives of nine of the world’s major religions met at Windsor Castle in Great Britain to pledge actions aimed at stemming global warming. Photo by Stanislav Saling/UNDP.

Well, the effort to recruit religions for the fight against climate change was recently stepped up with the “Many Heavens, One Earth” meeting held this week at Windsor Castle in England. Sponsored by the United Nations, it brought together religious leaders from around the world to discuss how they can help reduce the human impact on the environment.

And they’re not just talking about an Earth Day sermon, either, reports the Dot Earth blog of The New York Times.

For example, according to Olav Kjorven, a U.N. assistant secretary general, religions operate more than half the schools on the planet. That means small additions to the curricula in those schools could have a huge impact in raising awareness about planetary stewardship.

Many religions also have vast repositories of wealth, Kjorven said, giving them the ability to leverage their capital investments to advance “environmental and social benefits.”

Some religious activities also have a direct impact on environmental issues. Take, for instance, Islam’s annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj – millions of people travel from around the globe to Saudi Arabia, where their impact is measurable in the strain on natural resources (food and water) and environmental services (waste disposal, energy use). Efforts are underway to determine how to reduce the environmental impact of the hajj, and Muslim environmentalists have also begun organizing in groups such as ecoSikh, which hopes to educate the faithful on how the Quran calls for them to care for creation.

“The environmental agenda has always had an anchor in science, facts and data, Kjorven told The New York Times. “For decades, several faiths were looking the other way [regarding the environment] even though in their traditions, when you go further back in Scriptures, have a lot to say in terms of caring for creation. There are segments of the evangelical movement that certainly are still not interested, but by and large religions are becoming a major voice, and you can hear them in a powerful way in Windsor.”

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Weekly Horoscope for Friday, November 6, 2009, #791 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Aries (March 20-April 19)
Pain is contagious. So is pleasure; so is awareness; so is love, though pain seems to be the more durable commodity. That is the problem. Your role now is to be the steward of pleasure and communication. The truth about erotic reality nowadays is that someone has to hold that role in nearly any situation. Someone must also consciously hold the space of it being okay to talk about sexual health. Be aware of the role that the past may be playing in any conversation, and guide things gently into the present (where we can actually make decisions). Move the energy from the emotional level to the verbal. This will guide the flow of the conversation from the experience of an overwhelmed child to that of adults who are alert and responsible enough to exchange love and pleasure. It’s more fun that way.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
Someone you care about has something on his or her mind. It likely mirrors unresolved subject matter that you possess; many people in relationships have similar histories, though they don’t always know it. I suggest you listen carefully and do your best to find the common ground you share. I can describe the issue: it involves lacking the sense of approval by community or family for one’s ‘too much’ (that is, high energy) kind of nature. You could say it’s the fear of being scary, of being perceived as ‘too intense’ or ‘too deep’. Yet deep in those subtle or resounding fears is something you’re both trying to work out. It involves psychological social conditioning to be less than, or the message that we are inherently wrong; this in turn creates a disturbance, and that is up for working out now.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
You’re being called to bring your awareness to a deeper level than you’re usually comfortable doing. You know your limits; you know what makes you want to run. (I initially typed ‘fun’ and there’s a connection: what you think is the most fun is often what makes you want to run.) Have you paused to notice why it is that you panic? I have a clue. There’s an empty spot you feel inside, and going deep reminds you that it’s there. What exactly is this about, and why do you struggle with it? You’ll need to go further into your own depths to figure that out. Energetically, you like to breathe air. It’s not in your nature to breathe water, and that’s what this may seem like. Be mindful of that moment right before you fear you’re about to drown in your own emotions.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
We’ve reached the point, at least in American society, where sex must become synonymous with sexual healing. Food must become synonymous with emotional healing and the work we do needs to be considered integral to creative healing. All three are related; they all emerge from the ways in which we have been pushed into giving up our passions and in truth, giving up on ourselves. The sense of injury that you may be encountering relates to a collective wound. You feel it as personal; in truth, it describes everyone around you. The other open secret is that we constantly fall prey to the same collective pain that we think of as personal, and as a result we’re scared to talk about what’s bothering us, much less actually address it. Let’s deal with that shame.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
Many times, you have reflected to yourself on the swamp of madness that you’ve crawled out of, to take up life on the dry land of sanity. Your past and that of your family hold many secrets. Not all of them are pretty, and if you ask me, those are the most significant ones. They’re the facts that have been padded and cloaked in denial, in mythology and in contradiction, while secretly running our lives. They are the hurts of the past that those close to us have refused to acknowledge. You don’t need to make that mistake, and therefore have the power to put history to work for you rather than have it work against you. History is an interpretation. The facade of that interpretation is cracking, and borrowing from Moses, the truth will indeed be what sets you free.

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
Your rationality is like a small boat on an ocean where the waves are threatening to turn you to fish food. But what exactly are you being tossed around in? Your most useful psychological asset is so deeply intuitive, your reasoning process is like a decoration next to it. The problem is that too often, you don’t trust yourself. You typically need to pile on the rationales before you’ll let yourself have faith in an idea or a perception. Is that really necessary? Remember, nobody is looking over your shoulder. It’s true, some daunting authority figures have tried to have an unfair influence over you in the past, but you’ve been saying over and over that you’re through doing what they told you to do. At the moment, reason and intuition point to two different outcomes. Which will you accept as valid?

Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
You may feel like your life is aimlessly drifting toward somewhere you don’t recognize. Look another way and you’re heading directly toward a specific goal or perhaps an inevitability. Yet this particular direction you’re approaching is the kind of inevitability known as a choice. Said another way, a choice is an option, and the one you’re about to encounter offers you a mighty specific possibility. It’s also a potential so subtle you could miss it. More than anything, this is a choice you’re being offered to make about yourself. Deeply personal in nature, it’s likely to percolate to your awareness in a moment when you feel you have lost all sense of who you are; a sly instant when you may recognize that all your past perceptions about yourself no longer influence who you are.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
Saturn entering Libra represents an enormous sea change for you. Certain elements of your nature make you one of the most inherently introspective signs of the 12. Yet Saturn, now in your 12th solar house, is drawing you toward a dimension of inner seclusion that is different than anything you’ve experienced lately. And that is putting pressure on you to change your mind about certain long-held beliefs; to alter your environment; and to come to terms with everything about you that nobody else knows. However, you may recognize that your inner secret world cannot stay that way for long. The overriding theme of your current transits is that in order to regain your sanity, you need to be more transparent. In the end, you will discover that it was not what you were concealing that was causing your struggle, but the mere fact that you concealed it.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
Earlier in the year, the theme was how wide open your horizons were. Now, the theme seems to be narrowing down the possibilities, perhaps so restrictive that you seem to have lost all sense of your potential. This will not last long. In a short time, you will figure out that your emotional wellbeing is the factor that most significantly influences your wider sense of perspective. There’s something here, as well, about your state of mind. You have been struggling for a long time with the assumption that you had an injury inflicted on you as a child. What I suggest is that you focus on what this injury has taught you, and what opportunities you’ve been given that would have been impossible without that struggle. Now, as an adult, you have the ability to choose to draw on strength that is yours alone.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
You perceive yourself as being easy to see through. In fact, you are difficult to read. Even your most ordinary behaviors can have an aura of mystery about them. Whether you care about how this influences people, at least it’s information you might want to work with. But then, you’re often a mystery to yourself, and I don’t need to tell you how frustrating this can be. It’s fair to say that your process of understanding yourself is just beginning. Pluto in your sign is here to open up your psyche in a way that will reveal yourself to you. The challenge of this kind of experience is reconciling the aspects of yourself that seem to contradict one another. I would propose that this is the actual work of growth: of building authentic integrity.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
Neptune and Chiron have resumed direct motion in your sign. A few weeks ago, Jupiter resumed direct motion. If you recall, there was a triple conjunction of these planets earlier in the year. Now it’s about to repeat — only as three separate events. Let’s focus on the next one up: Jupiter conjunct Chiron. This relatively rare conjunction will enable you to focus your power of perception like you never have before. It’s truly a gem of astrology, which will grant you the gift of seeing what you have in common with the world; and to witness the validity of your own idealism. Yet there is something your psyche is trying to master, as a prerequisite, which is the ability to allow, without judgment. This allowing we could call truly objective knowledge. Once you get there, there’s another step to take. And what you know now is radically different than anything you’ve known in the past. What you are called upon to do will likewise be different.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
It’s as if you’re living two lives. They have little in common with one another. One exists in the world of your imagination. One exists in a more tangible form. Yet for a Pisces, the imagination is tangible and the external world can have all the properties of a dream. Indeed, in your consciousness, dreams often have more credulity than what most call ‘reality’. Now, this distinction is not as simple as a parallel between dreams and reality; it’s two parallel dimensions, side by side. Occasionally you get an opportunity to bring facets of one into the other. That’s what is happening now, and what will be happening over the next few weeks. Focus on and develop what seems to be in your private world, to the point where it takes on vivid reality. Then, begin to transpose it in words, or pictures, or any form that may be revealed to more than one other person.

Dear Friend and Reader:

As Saturn cleared the last degree of Virgo and made its ingress to Libra yesterday, I’ve been watching the world with extra curiosity; and I’ve been observing myself in the process of watching. It was a strange week, though I think that many of us have actually taken a step. Others are struggling. The pressure is on. Saturn is applying in a square to Pluto, which might feel like a crunch, like a system breakdown/rebuild, and/or a series of long overdue personal turning points showing up.

Photo by Bliss for Book of Blue.

Square and opposition are among the aspects that say bend in the road. Pluto in Capricorn, for its part, is doing its best to revamp antiquated systems and will be doing so for a long time. It may not be pleasant as some of them are torn down. Note: we have never consciously lived through Pluto in Capricorn. The last time it was here (18th century) was before the discovery (1930).

Saturn, pushing on Pluto, is now ramping up this theme. In the spring, other mighty planets join the alignment in what I’ll be referring to here as the cardinal T-square. This is not your ordinary turn left at the light. We’re talking about various forms of personal and system overload, and the need to develop a new approach to dealing with it. The current popular approach is to shut down, often because no other options seem viable.

The Aries Point is involved, which suggests a series of personal intersections with large cultural subject matter. Saturn is now opposing the Aries Point and Pluto is square it. The problem with this notion of a contact point between the widest themes of society and the most private ones is that most of us don’t experience ourselves as part of anything bigger than ourselves. More often, we feel alienated from most of what is around us. We wonder often enough if we belong in our personal relationships, perhaps the most modest definition of ‘something larger than ourselves’.

It’s time to download the Let’s Get Deep app for your iPhone. We’re goin’ in.

Apropos of the phantom known as 2012, many have this lurking suspicion that something is up with society on the largest, deepest levels; stuff like banks closing and other big systems collapsing on themselves. As my readers know, I don’t subscribe to the stock up on tuna fish school of spirituality. There are plenty of theorists with websites working around the clock to scare you. I am here with a more grounded, psychologically meaningful approach to where growth and the news intersect.

Yesterday, I ended up on C-Span, watching a discussion in the US Senate about healthcare, and this makes a charming example. Follow along with me as I explore the metaphors. This is the ultimate Aries Point kind of thing: many people know there’s a problem because they are dealing with it personally, or know someone who is. For example, we’ve all met that person with supposedly good health coverage, whose carrier refuses to pay their medical bills.

What I learned from watching TV

I learned from watching C-Span that the 30% in so-called administrative costs of insurance companies is largely about them hiring people to fight off coverage claims. Medicare has only 3% administrative costs; that’s a big difference.

Photo by Bliss for Book of Blue.

A former housemate and friend in Washington State was covered by a disability carrier that hired a private investigator in an attempt to prove that she didn’t deserve her payments. They secretly followed her around with a video camera for months, literally spying on her. The leading spy actually came to our door one afternoon a few years ago, and, incredulous that he didn’t have a business card or shield, I had to march him to the property line. They cut her off.

When I researched the issue, I discovered that particular carrier was involved in a massive fraud scam, documented by the courts. Don’t ask me how I do it, but it took a five minute Google search and a phone call to a paralegal somewhere. We were able to purchase a large box of depositions and supporting documents for the cost of copying, which detailed the outrageous conduct of the company from many prior lawsuits. My friend sued the company and won, at the usual incredible expense and effort; and the insurance company passed along its legal (i.e., administrative) costs to the other policyholders. You can be sure that many of their formerly insured who also got dumped rolled over and let it happen, and that the company profited wildly on this practice.

With this kind of scenario, individuals are experiencing the real and direct effects of what is called the free market. Under this system of economics, the role of consumers is largely to be exploited. Our job is to pay our bills and buy the next cool thing, whether it works or not, preferably purchasing online. The problem is that when these monster-sized free market enterprises fail, usually due to lack of regulation, greed and blatantly illegal conduct, they go right to the government for bailouts. They act like a big daddy in the fat times, but they just have his credit card; then we pay the bill. So it’s only free market up to the point that it’s advantageous for the free marketeer. It’s like the rich man’s son becoming president.

Speaking of. During the healthcare discussion, the war in Afghanistan came to the forefront of the national conversation, where it currently remains. This is supposedly not a personal issue, unless you have a loved one serving, or unless you have a deep concern about global affairs. In the current social climate, the first possibility is the more likely, and this war has gone on largely unnoticed for seven years at incredible expense. There are currently calls to increase troop levels, the violence has been escalating in recent weeks, and there has been lots of talk about what it will take to “win the war.” As I listen to John McCain give his mealy-mouthed victory pep talks, I’m having flashbacks to my Vietnam War history class at university.

Burning Man mailbox. Photo by Eric Francis.

Now for the reality check. Does everyone remember how eagerly we sought revenge after the Sept. 11 incident? Do you remember how that surge of individual/collective fear was used to manipulate us into believing anything that anyone with an agenda wanted? [Here is the first Planet Waves article written after Sept. 11, called Hold On World.] That opened the way to all of this war. Both wars have turned out to be endless quagmires without an actual military agenda, and incidentally, we are the latest of many empires to attempt to invade Afghanistan. (The one before us was the mighty USSR. Before that was the former British Empire.) Osama bin Laden, our supposed enemy in Afghanistan who started as a CIA employee during the USSR War, was never caught, and is not even wanted in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. Take a moment and look at his FBI most wanted terrorist page. We knew enough to invade a country because of him, but he’s not even listed as connected to that event? Be careful not to fall off your chair.

Note that Sept. 11 was an Aries Point event that came at the time of the Saturn-Pluto opposition of 2001 — and is directly connected to developments now, at the time of the square.

Gradually, through 2002, the Bush administration convinced just about everyone we needed to invade Iraq as well. As I wrote in 2001, “Beware: the enemy is likely to switch at some point.” (This and a lot else is in the Sept. 11 chart.)

They told us about mushroom clouds and chemical weapons and women’s rights (in Iraq), and the United States invaded with great fanfare and barbecues and support our troops bumper stickers; and yes, a bit of protest. Bush declared mission accomplished on May 1, 2003. However, the United States is currently spending in range of $10 billion to $12 billion per month on these two fraudulent wars.

The current total cost is nearly $926 billion and counting fast (the link takes you to a rather disturbing cost counter). Most of the money is borrowed. It will have to be paid back with interest. That will double the cost. We’re talking about close to $1 trillion in principle alone. New Yorkers alone have spent more than $83 billion in federal debt and taxes on these wars. Remember, somebody got this money — companies like Blackwater, Boeing and Halliburton, and every bank that processes the funds and all the bondholders, all of whom profit. Hey, it’s a “free market” so they have the right. Then there’s the body count. Borrowing from the Yes Men, these are all golden skeletons in the closet — the cost not of freedom but of profits.

Things were already unraveling for Charles Ponzi when he posed confidently for photographers in his office in August 1920. Photo: Wikipedia/Boston Public Library.

Of course we “can’t afford” healthcare. There are many who believe that these wars were designed to make sure that the agenda of increasing military spending and cutting social services was permanently encrypted as a national priority, no matter who was in power. The Republican Party could pack its bags and move to Tahiti and we would still be pouring money into these wars, with bodies coming home, for untold years.

Then came the bank bailout, which was really a payout to enormous businesses that had previously gambled away our savings and pensions — the great Ponzi scheme in the sky. By some estimates, this too actually cost close to $1 trillion (not the usual trademark figure of $700 million).

What is the solution? Swine flu. Lots and lots of anxiety, millions and millions of ‘vaccinations’, billions and billions of dollars into the pockets of big business.

This is all coming home to roost, right on time, as Saturn squares Pluto. But as we all know, this aspect is affecting many people personally; it is saying time is up on many deferred matters of growth, change and adjustment.

Really, Really Personal: The Fear Factor

Overwhelmed? Of course you are. You have SO much else on your mind; so many other cares, you cannot deal with this. We are so overwhelmed that many, many people are in a state of nearly constant anxiety, which leads to paralysis. And that is precisely how this all happens. We are so consumed and even overwhelmed by our own lives that it’s very nearly impossible to care about anything more. That is the plan. It’s worked before: one of the little remembered psychological tactics of the Nazis was, you have so much to worry about. That’s okay, the experts will take care of the bigger stuff.

Photo by Eric Francis for Book of Blue.

Just like we don’t usually connect the lack of funding for real social priorities with massive military expenditures, we don’t connect our personal lives with what is happening in the wide world. Yet think about how many people are medicated for panic, anxiety, social phobia and depression. That presumes a state of overwhelm; and medicated overwhelm is not generally the place from which anyone is going to care much about the world; it would only make matters worse. We feel fortunate to get through the day, these days.

Even those who are not officially in the anxiety disorder league have lots to worry about: thoughts of money are only a source of fear for most people. What’s going to happen with your kids, or your parents?

Sex is typically associated with diseases, rape, heartbreak and loss of power. Going in the woods is associated with ticks. Half of the teenagers on the road are texting while driving; many older people are doing so as well. Heck, I can’t even text when I’m not driving. Six thousand people were killed last year by this practice, and tens of thousands were injured. Numerous drivers are otherwise drunk or impaired. Someone lost in their own world might ram into yours.

If you get sick or injured, your health insurance might not cover you, if you even have any — and stress is associated with plenty of illnesses.

For those with the luxury of having goals, there can be significant fear about how, exactly, we’re going to get anywhere with any of them. Many are filled with the feeling that they missed the boat on life. We’re reminded every time we see all these young upstarts on television, particularly the ones hauling in millions on limited talent.

Then there are the long-term issues. Have we really addressed the matters of growth that are constantly lurking beneath our lives? Have we done the therapy we need, or addressed those longstanding family issues? Some people are more devoted to this than are others; many people are really freaking out. Saturn to Pluto is a get-serious, grow-up moment. Many will hear the calling, and claim responsibility for their lives, perhaps for the first time. In such situations, the inner pressure may be pretty intense or disconcerting.

Others will give up, again. It’s an easy time to bury one’s head in the sand, waiting for the fear to pass and for everything to get back to normal.

Photo by Eric Francis for Book of Blue.

I would ask: what exactly aren’t you scared of right now? What is the one place you feel confident in yourself? What can you really laugh at? That’s a possible clue for what you’re not afraid of.

The place or space where you feel no fear, or where you are willing to confront your fear, is the place to start your process of getting out of this mess — which I believe is on many levels a mental and emotional trap. That space where you’re not afraid may be where you connect with something about yourself that you can offer to others; simple generosity.

Or you may want to take it from the other direction: what are you the most frightened of? What’s the most paralyzing thing that you experience? That may be what you need to give a voice to, and confront; the gesture that will prove to you that you can set yourself free, one step at a time. The thing with fear is, it’s one thing to experience it, and it’s another thing to cocoon oneself in it as a place of ‘safety’ or refuge from life — where in one is protected from having to take risks; from having to face challenges; from having to really feel. Yet all this insistence on being a certain way because one is basically scared of everything is to do precisely that. Simply put, fear is often a lame excuse and little more.

Human awareness has two functions: to open awareness, or shut it down. Moment to moment, we are confronted by this one simple choice. I know that often it may not feel so simple. Yet the times we are living through demand that we be strong, present for our own lives, and available to the people around us, many of whom are in difficult shape. We need flexibility and willingness to change. We need the actual willingness to grow, which means parting with the ways of the past on a deeper level than ever.

Last, we need to be honest with ourselves, which is another way of saying opening awareness and witnessing what comes through.

Yours & truly,

PS, following up from last week. This week I’ve been hosting the post-movie discussion for the Yes Men at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck, NY. One story I’ve been telling is that of the psychological study that determined what laughter is about. Why do people laugh? What does funny mean? I don’t have a cite reference, but here’s what I remember: the researchers determined that where laughter is present, people are no longer afraid. That’s one of my latest Yes Men theories: that they go into the belly of the beast, and laugh, and remind everyone not to be so scared when confronting serious issues.

This week the Yes Men were sued for the first time, by the United States Chamber of Commerce. Here’s why that was a stupid move: check out the lead in this CBS News story about the lawsuit: “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is suing the Yes Men, activist group that fooled several media outlets into reporting that the chamber had changed its position on climate change legislation. Meanwhile, pressure continues to mount against the business lobbying group for its opposition to the legislation.”

How about that — they got it right. It’s not about the Yes Men, it’s about climate change, and every time this story runs it’s putting more pressure on the Chamber to take a realistic position on climate change.

The Sun is square Mars, from Scorpio to Leo. Saturn has just entered Libra; after a retrograde back into Virgo in the spring, it will re-enter Libra on July 21, staying for the full 30 months. So while this is not the ‘permanent’ ingress, it’s one of just two times Saturn will walk past the Libra cardinal point in direct motion. The combination of a hot Sun-Mars aspect at the same time Saturn is on the brink feels like getting pushed over a cliff and hoping you can fly. There is something here about being your hottest, most raging self at the same time as you are trusting that you are grounded in your relationships. This is all about trust, in a daring, high-energy moment. It is not necessary to live your life as a religion based on your fears.

The orbiting Cassini Spacecraft snapped this sweet shot of Saturn along with its largest moons (Titan, lower left, Rhea, upper right). Photo & Credit: NASA.

The Sun is conjunct Ceres, the minor planet that stands in for Mother Earth: she addresses nutrition, mothering, what mothers go through and what painful psychological material they convey to their daughters in particular; but also to their sons. Sun-Ceres also tells us about mother’s relationship to father, and in Scorpio, the sexual relationship of mother to father.

Ceres is a planet worth watching in an age where food is such a focus (from the whole supersize thing to mad cow to food lacking nutrients to why so many are so fat to why so many are anorexic to why food is used by many as a substitute for sex or to suppress grief). Ceres is vital in understanding the complex nexus of material that connects mothers and daughters — perhaps the relationship in society most urgently in need of investigation. Any woman wondering why she is not free would do well to look to her relationship with her mother, and her Ceres placement, for more information.

Let’s stick to Saturn today and trace the story over the past 14 years, since this is now the halfway point of Saturn’s trip through the signs. See if you can follow the progressions of your life. In case you’re thinking, “I don’t know enough astrology,” this is exactly how you learn the stuff. At lunch, print this list and take a survey of a couple of coworkers and ask them if the dates mean anything. Then you’re really being an astrology detective.

Saturn entered Aries on April 7, 1996 (one ingress. It returns to Aries in May of 2025). Saturn on the Aries Point is the beginning of a long cycle of history. Note, many cycles run concurrently.

Saturn entered Taurus on June 9, 1998 and on Feb. 28, 1999. Saturn was in Taurus for the grand cross/total solar eclipse of Aug. 1999 and the Clinton impeachment. This was the Neocon revolution going into overdrive. Saturn in Taurus is about values. We ran into serious issues with values at this time and have not really recovered.

Saturn entered Gemini on Aug. 9, 2000. and again on April 21, 2001. Saturn was in Gemini for the events of Sept. 11, 2001 and was indeed opposite Pluto for that event. That was the Saturn-Pluto opposition of 2001-2002. When you think of Saturn in Gemini, think Saturn = structure, Gemini = twins, opposite Pluto = something happens propagated by fundamentalism (including fundamentalist conservatism) = Sept. 11, 2001.

Saturn entered Cancer on June 2, 2003. This was a one-time ingress. It was in Cancer for the re-election of George Bush and Dick Cheney, conjunct many planets in Bush’s chart and square many of his planets in Libra. (Personally, Saturn crossed my ascendant and I moved to Europe for nearly four years.)

Saturn entered Leo on July 16, 2005. This was a one-time ingress. Saturn in Leo is exactly opposite Chiron in Aquarius at the time of the ingress. Neptune is also in Aquarius, and the Saturn-Neptune opposition that summer is the astrology we think of when Hurricane Katrina comes to mind. For some very strange reason, Saturn in Leo is associated with dams bursting. Michele, my assistant in Paris at the time, researched this like a lunatic, finally she came up for air and announced: When Saturn is in Leo, burst. We got half a lick of credit for predicting Katrina and the levees in New Orleans, from that.

Saturn entered Virgo on Sept. 7, 2007. This was a one-time ingress. While in Virgo, Saturn makes a series of oppositions to Uranus in Pisces; this is the banking crisis.

Saturn enters Libra on Oct. 29 and July 11. In the process it makes a square to Pluto — the first of three squares to Pluto is exact Nov. 15 [corrected – I originally said the 17th]. If you notice from this list, something happens every time that Saturn aspects an outer planet, but the odd thing is, it seems to be manipulated. Most of those turning points are what you might call manmade. But except for man himself, what is not?

Saturn leaves Libra and enters Scorpio on Oct. 5, 2012, where it will be for the infamous by presumed reputation winter solstice of 2012. This is a one-time ingress.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Nothing says Fall like the sweet, shivering anticipation of Halloween when swarms of youngsters collide with one another in search of treats across American neighborhoods. For the young ones, there’s the thrill of hiding behind a carefully prepared costume, walking the dark, shadowed streets with a flashlight and pillowcase, ready to reap a killing in yummy stuff and get a peek into other people’s houses. It’s a celebration of chaos and excess, approved greed and semi-danger that seizes the imagination of children everywhere and, at least for one evening, welcomes the safely-gelded terrors of mock murder and mayhem, monsters and supernatural possibilities that go thump in the night. It’s Sun in Scorpio with a big chocolate-coated grin.

Trick or treat? Digital collage by Noise Collusion.

Halloween has changed a good bit since I was a kid. In those Long Gone Days, we were let off our leash entirely since most parents knew their neighborhoods and their neighbors and sternly advised us whom to avoid. Now, conscientious parents walk with their kids or go in groups, avoiding those houses that they’re not sure of and scooting them past the dark hulks of homes sadly foreclosed. The fear of treats tainted by LSD or razor blades is mostly behind us, but prudent parents advise their young not to eat anything until they get home, where the candy can be dumped out and properly assessed. Items not entirely sealed and the occasional homemade goodie are carefully scrutinized and probably tossed. What was once a kind of primal, spontaneous celebration of season, as well as a delicious echo of the Old Religion, has become a holiday industry reaping millions if not billions that has its own rules of engagement and is frowned upon by churches that see all things that celebrate Earth as an assault on faith. The all-knowing Evangelicals apparently have the inside scoop: Jesus would never, ever trick-or-treat.

In the Old Days, we got to wear our costumes to school and parade around so everyone could admire them; now you can’t, for reasons of security and, in some areas, acceptable attire. Moms would send in homemade treats for rollicking class parties; now they can’t, unless they’re store-bought and blister wrapped, duly authenticated as safe. I’m sure that as all this micro-management of our children’s safety became customary, there were parents who mourned the limitations being imposed on this free-wheeling childhood tradition, and yet, should they think about it for any protracted period, they might be a little more concerned for the season itself and the very Earth essence it represents. The danger to their children has little to do with psychotic cupcake-poisoners and more to do with climate change. As a bonus, all the plastic wrappers and disposable paraphernalia of this holiday really DO go thump in the night. Increasingly toxic seas and landfills burgeoning with our debris are more of a tragic trick than a treat.

Coming Up in Daily Astrology and Adventure

The Augustine Panel, tasked by President Obama to thoroughly review NASA’s programs and mission, issued its final report last week and, as Space News reported, no punches were pulled. Yet the discussion pushed the open door to private space travel a lot wider, since that will be the only option in the United States. Who knows if the free marketeers weren’t behind this one.

Norman Augustine, left, chairman of a presidential review of manned space options, and panel member Edward Crawley, right, brief reporters Thursday. Photo & Credit: NASA.

In a nutshell: The Constellation manned space flight program, designed to be the successor to the Space Shuttle program that shuts down next year, isn’t sustainable under the current budget and plan.

What does that mean, exactly? That the panel, composed of independent experts on space flight and technology, doesn’t think NASA will have Constellation ready for manned flights until 2017 — which might be after the International Space Station is decommissioned, unless its budget is extended. And even if that happens, the Constellation program would subsequently be delayed two more years because it would lose funding in favor of the ISS.

So, is that it? Is manned space flight over for another generation, or longer? Not necessarily.

The option is to throw the gauntlet down to private enterprise — a “private option,” in contrast with Washington’s current debate over a “public option” — and allow non-governmental entities to service the ISS (along with the ongoing Russian Soyuz program) while NASA works toward a long-term goal of putting people back on the Moon and going to Mars. It’s part of a so-called “flexible path,” one of the options the panel presented to NASA.

There’s a price tag even if part of NASA’s mission is surrendered to private contractors, of course. The panel recommended plumping NASA’s budget by $3 billion per year to help meet even the scaled-back goals its members saw as realistic. In their vision, the space agency would also pick alternate targets that might make for easier landings, such as the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos, or large asteroids like Ceres.

However blunt and rational their assessments, it’s clear that the Augustine panel — named for chairman Norman Augustine, a former Under Secretary of the Army and an aerospace businessman — is optimistic that America’s future does include some kind of manned space program, as evinced by the title of their final report: “Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation.”

The full text of the report can be downloaded here.

When you were just a kid, Oct. 31 was pretty simple: It was the night you put on a costume and collected candy from the neighbors.

Typical Halloween scene in Dublin, Ireland. Photo: Wikipedia.

Of course, like every other major holiday on our calendar, Halloween means much more than that. Built on the ancient Celtic tradition of Samhain co-opted by the Romans first and later by Christianity, it’s now accorded one of the highest honors of modern society.

Its own retail season.

Even with a third of consumers expecting to cut back on purchasing for the holiday this year, the Chicago Tribune reports that some $4.75 billion should be spent on what has become, by some reckoning, this nation’s second-most-popular (and profitable) holiday after Christmas — which also shares similar pagan roots, but that’s another post.

So what has this buying frenzy, and the associated parties and trick-or-treating, to do with the old Samhain rituals surrounding the end of their year? Well, quite a bit, from the tradition of Druids wearing animal skins during ceremonies (costumes); to the Romans tagging on a festival for the goddess of fruits and trees (bobbing for apples).

True, a lot of that is speculative. But what’s clear is that Halloween has touched something deep in the American psyche. Perhaps the fact it offers a ritualistic and publicly accepted opportunity to shed for one night the lingering Puritan roots of our society and turn loose the inner self, to embrace abandon and celebrate the fact that we like to celebrate. Change who you are for a single evening. Mingle with the dead and the famous and the fictional. Give out loot like you were a pirate king (and to the most appreciative of all recipients, children). Deny reality with little or no consequence, depending on how much alcohol you imbibe at your All Hallows Party.

In short, embrace the unknown. That’s what Samhain was about, the night the Celts held that spirits of the dead could pass over the barrier between worlds and bring with them the mysteries of what lies beyond the grave. Modern Halloween shares that love of mystery and lets us indulge in it, if only for a night.

A picture. You know what’s it;s worth. Once upon a time, newspapers and magazines (remember LIFE?) were the main conduit of powerful images to our homes. However, even with newspapers folding and magazine circulation stagnating, it has never been easier to get astonishing photographs in front of people, thanks to the Internet. Throw the heavens into the mix, as both subject and platform for photographers, and you get some amazing stuff, like we noticed this week.

More than 9,000 years ago, a catastrophic volcanic eruption created a huge caldera on the southern end of Onekotan Island, one of the Kuril Islands, located off the southern tip of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Today, the ancient Tao-Rusyr Caldera is filled by the deep blue waters of Kal’tsevoe Lake. Photo: NASA.

Space Weather is one of our favorite haunts. It has a large and dedicated following, every single one of whom, it sometimes seems, has a camera attached to a very good telescope. That results in stunning images like this sunspot by Paul Haese of Blackwood, South Australia. “By unleashing six C-class solar flares in the past 48 hours,” the website reported Tuesday, “sunspot 1029 has become the most active sunspot of the year so far.” You can also watch its progression across the Sun’s surface on this movie clip.

This past Monday night, the Moon and Jupiter were in close alignment, and Alan Friedman of Buffalo, New York, was one of many contributors to share his photo of the conjunction.

Pointing a camera toward space has been a favorite pursuit of photographers since the invention of the art. But in recent decades we’ve been able to put the camera in space and point it back toward Earth, and NASA’s Earth Observatory website showcases the magnificent perspective that is offered from orbit.

The results can be awe-inspiring, such as a volcanic plume rising from the island of Montserrat. They can provide clear evidence of man’s presence on the planet, as from this fire at a fuel facility in Puerto Rico, or cargo ships clustered in Great Bitter Lake along the Suez Canal in Egypt. And, of course, they can be the source of valuable scientific information, such as identifying the areas impacted by tsunamis or weather patterns that can significantly impact the climate.

Or they can simply find a beautiful spot we would likely never get to experience in person.

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Weekly Horoscope for Friday, October 30, 2009, #790 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Aries (March 20-April 19)
If you can’t find ’em, grind ’em. That’s what they used to say back in the days of the standard shift car. Most drivers today would not know what to do with an actual gearshift and I think that driving suffers as a result; people are out of touch with how their car actually works. Driving is almost all visual now, rather than based on the feeling of how the wheels, the gears and the engine interrelate. This is one of those weeks where you’re learning to shift in manual mode. This applies particularly to your relationships. When you’re learning to do this, you may stall out. You have to actually think about how steep of a hill you’re driving up. And there are advantages. You can do fancy things, like downshift when you need extra power. That is exactly what I suggest you do right about now.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
Be conscious of the conditions placed on any relationship, by you or anyone else. They come in two general categories: conscious and unconscious; that is to say, the conditions that are spoken and the ones that are not. The unspoken ones are the most insidious. Your goal for the foreseeable future is to keep all of your agreements on the table, and to discern carefully which are reasonable and which are not. You are under potent influences leading you to grow, to mature and most meaningfully, to widen your horizons. Anything leading you to maintain a narrow mental perspective is one likely issue: some form of guilt, imposed on you long ago by someone in authority. If you find yourself in a moment when it’s unusually difficult to proceed, ask yourself if someone from the past is running your life.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
Most people think that art, or doing anything new for that matter, is about creativity. Actually, it’s mostly about discipline. On proportion, I would say that you need about one part creativity for every nine parts focus and determination. This is in part because anything you actually make, and make with your authentic being, requires focus and effort. This is particularly true for you given both your multitasking type of nature, and how complex your life has been lately. The problem with over-emphasis on discipline is that it can squash creativity. Therefore, a third skill is involved: applying resources from both hemispheres of your brain, as needed. This is a very special kind of balance; the kind that calls on you to continually decide whether you need to draw on the creative attribute or the focusing attribute, and to make the adjustments promptly.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
You’ve been getting the message to clean house for a while. I mean this in the physical sense. It’s time to open space, to clear closets, and to make sure that there is a relationship between functionality and aesthetics. There is something in your psychic space that wants to be opened up as well, and this involves your concept of where relationship meets security. You place a lot of emphasis on relationship as a form of security, and it has not always been dependable. You may be too easygoing here. You tend to be emotionally flexible, but this does something strange: once you feel you’ve been taken advantage of, you can become way too self-centered for anyone’s benefit. These tendencies don’t originate with you, but you do have the power to change them. Be gentle on yourself and those you love as you clear them out and update your files.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
Mars has been making some sparks in your birth sign lately, which is provoking ripples of insecurity. But Saturn’s move into Libra yesterday suggests that the air-conditioned side of your head must prevail. By now, you’ve figured out how you look at your life determines how you feel about yourself. Your perspective determines how much complexity you see and experience. Now is the time to work for one solution that simplifies the equation; a method to address the madness or maybe just the complexity. It’s not that you need to get organized; it’s that you are seeking, and very likely to find, a whole new organizing principle. This is about going to a new level of self-perception, which in part is about getting over your resistance to new ways of doing things. I understand you seek comfort in stability; but at the moment, that is not the goal. Strive for focus.

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
The changes of the past two years have been nonstop; you would probably agree with this. Or, if I said, the changes of the past seven years have been nonstop, you would probably agree with that as well. Yet these two timeframes represent entirely distinct growth phases for you. We might ask, though, what constitutes meaningful change. And we would be wise to ask how much you struggle to make lasting changes, and what you have to sacrifice in order to do that. Part of your turbulence has involved a perception of yourself as being unstable. You get defensive about this, and you have gone to some extreme measures to ground yourself; to stop the shaking; to try to learn how to relax your mind and its many concerns. Here is a clue. You can now let this stability come from the inside, rather than trying to impose it with rules and laws from the outside.

Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
You may be experiencing a relief in pressure, or a system breakdown. Often the two will arrive together. If you are being compelled by life to make changes, remember — you can make them incrementally. It’s vital for your health and sanity that you not attempt them all at once, and in particular, that you not think you must do so. Start with the most important changes; you will actually need to pause and prioritize. At this point, don’t think too far into the future; deal with what you know about now. Over the next few weeks you’re likely to experience yourself going through a kind of funnel, or taking an unexpected turn. It may feel larger or more significant than it really is. Most of the pressure is in your mind. This is why I am suggesting you think things through, think in stages, and make your changes gradually.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
In so many ways, you are the unstoppable force. Yet it’s not usually easy for you to direct your energy confidently, often because you are at the mercy of your emotions, your fears and a peculiar reluctance that does not have a name. Lots of your energy goes into working out emotional details of relationships, though this is directly a reaction to the fears you haven’t quite identified. Now more than ever you may wonder if you’re a slave to these fears, but I would propose that this is a time to liberate yourself from them. There will be rewards for doing so, because you know you cannot aspire to your highest goals, or even your more modest goals, unless you face a vast unknown within yourself. You may notice that this feels less daunting and more like an open invitation.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
You are someone who puts enormous emphasis on your social popularity. It’s time to start asking whether this works to your profit or your detriment. When we actually examine how many actual friends we have, usually they can be counted on one hand. The rest of the people we associate with have little influence on our lives, though they serve a variety of purposes: supposedly ensuring an adequate supply of sex or relationship prospects; giving us a feeling of belonging; or ways to pass the time. A moment of maturity has arrived. There’s something urgent about it; you have some solid reasons to focus your social horizons, as well as your expectations from life. The people you associate with need to be the ones who share your values. The goals you profess and work for need to directly reflect those values, for reasons that will soon be obvious.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
You may have recognized the crucial difference between being and doing. Most of the time we forget there’s a difference. We are typically ‘civilized’ to place an emphasis on what we do rather than who we are. Yet think of it this way. If you were to subtract all of your activities, who then would you be? If you were to be relieved of all your roles in life, what would your existence feel like? That’s the space you need to work from as Saturn makes its most significant move in many years. Saturn will indeed summon you to action, though the instruction set you work from needs to be based on your inner reality, not your image, appearance or what you did yesterday. It’s vital that new commitments you make reflect the recent profound discoveries you’ve made about yourself. At this stage of your life, it’s the only formula for true success.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
There may be more agnostics born under the sign Aquarius than any other. It’s easy for you to have an “it could be this, or it could be that” relationship with the realms of existence that defy perception. This approach leaves you lots of room to be creative. Yet in his delineation of the five senses, Aristotle omitted the sense of knowledge. That is to say, even if you’re in a dark, silent room floating in an isolation tank, you’re still aware. We’re taught to think that awareness can only be fed from the outside, by some material input. Is that really true? Do we have enough awareness of these inner realms to even know, or have a clue? I would propose that there is an additional source of input to consciousness that does not include the senses, and doesn’t even involve the mind; it is the awareness behind both.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
You may still feel like you’re swimming against the tide. However, Saturn’s move into Libra will give you some traction. It will do so if you focus on agreements and commitments. It may feel boring, and you may feel like this kind of approach to life lacks imagination or limits your potential. My sense is that this emphasis will have the opposite effect — to give you a basis for progress; an organizing principle. This involves people, and the kind of people you will harmonize with are those who are not only unafraid of commitment, but rather those who thrive on the stuff. Though the notion of commitment is vague to some, think of it as mutual contact and awareness relating to specific objectives. This will become the conduit for so much more that is on its way.

Dear Friend and Client:

In my second year at SUNY Buffalo, I took a course called American Norms and Deviations, taught by Robert Knox Dentan. He began the class by informing students, “Ninety percent of what you know is wrong.” It was a shocking concept at the time, since we were after all attending a reputable university, studying with experienced professors. We fancied ourselves pretty smart.

Authorities chase down Richard Heene’s helium balloon/flying saucer fantasy, which took a 50 mile trip over treetops in Colorado last week. Heene knew all along that his child Falcon was safe at home. Photo courtesy of CBS News.

“Raise your hand if you’re white,” he said. A bunch of us raised our hands.

“Not true. This sheet of paper is white. Raise your hand if you’re black.” A bunch of students did, and using a black object he proved to us that they were not, in fact, colored black. We’re all various shades of pink, tan or brown; not black and white: that’s a lie. That particular lie is then colonized into our minds, and used as the basis of numerous other supposed crises in civilization, making possible political tactics such as fostering racial discrimination.

All semester, we had our preconceptions taken apart and handed back to us. In 1982, Dentan was already talking about the Kaposi’s sarcoma epidemic that would eventually come to be known as AIDS. I don’t know how far we expanded the 10% of truth that we started with, but I think Dentan taught us to be more discerning about what we take into our minds, and to question what we presume to be valid information — skills we can all use right now.

The past couple of weeks have brought one incident after the next reminding us that there’s a hole in so-called reality, a kind of hypnotic opening through which that 90% of nonsense floats in.

In this confluence of events, we had Balloon Boy in Colorado, whose high-altitude adventure turned out to be a hoax by his parents to advance the cause of their proposed “reality” TV show. Richard Strandlof was arrested on the rare federal charge of “stolen valor,” after claiming he survived the supposed airplane crash at the Pentagon and a roadside bomb in Iraq as a Marine. And the Yes Men struck again, this time taking up the guise of the US Chamber of Commerce and informing the media that the powerful organization had reversed its opposition to dealing with climate change.

These were the little stories, pointing to much more important ones. In the background, standing tall and confusing, was the “health care debate,” which is so wrought with delusion I don’t even know where to begin. Yet I trust that these seemingly minor stories will give us a clue what we may be missing.

The Aquarius Factor

That we exist in a time of mass deception is easier to see when something that is not true is accepted as truth, then revealed as such — but we tend to forget these incidents quickly. What each of these events shares is the property of revealing how we process our perceptions, with a lot of help from our mental patterns — an Aquarian thing. We have help from television and the Internet, other Aquarian things. There are three parts to every hoax: the people who create it (and why), the people who spread the word (and why), and those who believe it (and why). The third factor is the most crucial one. We believe lies because we want to.

The astrology points back to the triple conjunction in Aquarius, the one involving Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune. Aquarius is a sign that represents the people in an elite sense of that word; for example, all the special folks who watch the news, or who have access to the ‘net. It’s “everyone” to the extent that you can use some concept or idea to group them together.

The timing factor was Jupiter stationing direct in Aquarius on Oct. 13. Jupiter (often associated with fashion and trends) is the original planet of illusions, acting like a giant projection screen for our ideals. In Aquarius, we have an image of the electronic media being a vector of those ideals, often presented in the form of images that imitate us and which we in turn seek to be like. Jupiter is still close to Neptune (just six degrees away and now approaching its last exact conjunction, on Dec. 21, before venturing into Pisces). Chiron is in Aquarius, a long-term factor serving as the annoying (to some) thing that keeps trying to get our attention. If Aquarius is a group, Chiron is the part that belongs there but doesn’t quite fit in; Chiron’s job is to call bullshit.

Considering these three stories, we could give Balloon Boy to Jupiter (a puffy, grandiose lie told in order to pump up someone’s ego and enrich him personally), False Valor Man goes to Neptune (a delusional guy who craved being a hero in a time when this is the thing that society supposedly wants the most) and the Yes Men to Chiron (guys with a specific collective healing agenda who are willing to challenge perceptions and take personal risks).

The Quadruple Conjunction

For those who follow the Centaur planets, Nessus is close by as well, in mid-Aquarius. To not call this a quadruple conjunction is a lie, justified by the convenience of not having to explain a planet that only a few people have heard about. Making the story simpler, so that fools like us can understand it, is one of the media’s favorite excuses to lie. We can assign the media itself to Nessus. He can incarnate as a badboy not concerned with truth, only what he wants. Nessus is here to remind us that the news has an agenda, and it often gets used to perpetuate others with the same agenda — generally, profit.

Click on image to enlarge.

We have a clue that a Centaur called Pholus is involved as well; it is currently in Sagittarius. To keep some focus, let’s use just one chart — the missing person 911 call for Balloon Boy, which is provided at the right. We see the quadruple conjunction in the 3rd house of communication media, right where it belongs. The top of the chart is loaded, and with the most elevated planet being Pallas Athene — the asteroid of strategy. There is a plan in action. Venus, also high up and ruling the Libra midheaven (goals, aspirations) is square Pluto, with both precisely aspecting the Aries Point. It’s going to be big, but it’s not going to go well.

Once this story got out, it seemed like it would never end. One thing led to another until, for a few days, it seemed like the only thing on television. That would look a lot like Sagittarius rising — with Pholus in the ascendant. The ascendant at 12+ Sagittarius is exactly, within arc minutes, the ascendant of the most widely used chart for the United States, the Sibley Chart. Is this some kind of cosmic clue that the entire United States of America is an oversized, runaway homemade helium balloon whose creator fancies is a flying saucer? Some would say so.

One image of Pholus is dropping two Mentos into a bottle of Pepsi: there is an uncontrolled release. What gets out travels fast, goes far and does not go back in. Then it obscures the discussion about everything else. Another concept for Pholus is “small cause, big effect.” This is telling us: Balloon Boy may seem like a trivial story, but it reveals something much larger. The synchronicity between the ascendant of this chart and that of the USA chart is one of those jokes that only an astrology nut could appreciate.

We are all suckers for a story about how a kid, previously thought to be in grave danger, is really safe. It slipped into our living rooms under that particular pretense — a Lassie story: kid falls down well, whole town worries, dog/god intervenes, kid is rescued. We crave that kind of story, being confronted as we are by so many people in so much pain, and struggling with so many personal cares. We believe stories like this because it makes us feel better. Plus, it’s exciting, but safe — something bad happening to someone else.

Falcon Heene, second from right, starred as Balloon Boy in his father’s flying saucer hoax. He admitted live on CNN that they did it for the show.

We all understand a hoax, as well. How we handle them is another issue. The tipping point in the story came on CNN. Anchor Wolf Blitzer was standing in for Larry King and he had the whole family on live for an extended interview. It’s extraordinary that a network news anchor would be in a position to directly question children about a breaking story on live television, with or without permission of the parents. It may be unprecedented, but that’s what happened.

Asked by Blitzer why he stayed up in the attic while his parents were frantically calling him, without hesitation Balloon Boy said, “You had said we did it for a show.”

Wolf seemed to have a hard time wrapping his head around this, and followed the original Lassie-like premise of the story. He still presumed that Balloon Boy was hiding out; and thank God he was safe. He gave the family the benefit of the doubt, but he’s flustered. According to the CNN transcript of the interview, Blitzer says, “I heard what he said, but I’m sure that’s — I’m not — it wasn’t real — really clear. What was his — his reasoning why he heard — he heard you screaming, ‘Falcon, Falcon’. And I’m sure he heard his mom screaming, ‘Falcon, Falcon’. But why didn’t he come out of the garage at that point?”

The kid spilled the beans; but nobody breaks irony. The thing being avoided here is the notion of an intentional deception. Most of the biggest news stories, from Sept. 11 to climate change to the health care “debate,” involve important elements of intentional deception; but there is a taboo on noticing them, or saying anything if you do.

Finally, after an agonizing delay, Blitzer calls the father out on what the child said, and the father said that to insinuate that this was a hoax was “appalling.”

Then the family proposal for a “reality show” appeared on Gawker.com. It says, in part: “This will be the most significant UFO-related news event to take place since the Roswell Crash of 1947, and the result will be a dramatic increase in local and national awareness about The Heene Family, our Reality Series, as well as the UFO Phenomenon in general.” [Note, this seems to check out; here is the best fact-checking I could track down. Anyway, it must be true — everyone is quoting it.]

Norman Lear, co-creator of All In The Family, analyzed Balloon Boy this way on his blog at Huffington Post:

“So the Heene family put one over on us, you and me, just plain folks and families all across the country. But CNN and MSNBC and Fox??! And those giant, senior broadcast institutions of newsworthiness, NBC, ABC and CBS, who certify legitimacy by just covering such stories with a straight face? Did any of them find a minute to wonder if their scraping of the hogwash/bullshit/celebrity-baked crap from the bottom of the news barrel and serving it up 24/7 doesn’t have something to do with creating a climate that mistakes entertainment for news to an extent that it all but seduces a Richard and Mayumi Heene into believing they are — even if what they dream up to qualify is a hoax — entitled to their 15 minutes?”

That, and there is a hole in reality big enough to fit the World Trade Center.

Neptune, False Valor and a False War

Lear is correct: you have to expand your context to see this stuff for what it is. Then you see how big it is. Let’s briefly consider Richard Strandlof, nee Rick Duncan: False Valor guy. He is facing a year in jail, $100,000 in fines and can’t make $1,000 bail. Here’s how The New York Times, sometimes but not always a reputable source, told the story:

A former Marine Corps captain who suffered brain trauma, or a charming drifter who tells a good story? Richard Strandlof is in jail for the rare charge of “false valor.”

“A former Marine Corps captain who suffered brain trauma from a roadside bomb in Iraq and was at the Pentagon during the Sept. 11 attacks. An advocate for veterans rights who opposed the war. An Annapolis graduate who was proudly gay. With his gold-plated credentials, he commanded the respect and attention of not just politicians, but also police chiefs, reporters and veterans advocates for the better part of two years.

“Yet, except for his first name, virtually none of his story was true. In reality, he was Richard G. Strandlof, a charismatic drifter with a history of mental illness and petty crimes who had moved from Montana to Nevada to Colorado, assuming different names and identities along the way.” His story was used in political ads for a congressional candidate. He started a veterans group. He was a hero.

Now, how exactly did this happen? According to one person who knew him, he would tell his story over and over again and as he did, the persona of Iraqi war hero gathered energy and seeming reality. This, despite little issues: for example he claimed to have lost a finger, but he had all 10 of his digits, according to the Times.

This is an example of what can happen with Neptune in Aquarius. (Apparently this kind of impersonating a war hero is pretty common lately, just not as high profile.) He is playing into some of our cultures biggest deceptions and highest ideals, which function as a drug. He used two of the most powerful tools in our society — image and narrative — to create his illusion. But mostly, he had credibility because we want his kind of story to be true. In fact, given how we neglected protesting the phony Iraq war, we desperately need it to be true, or we’ll hate ourselves as a society. We should bail out “Rick Duncan” and give him an authentic replica of the Purple Heart; this way, we will feel even better about ourselves.

But how did it really happen? Is it possible to miss the irony that he claimed false valor during a war fought on entirely false pretenses, started by a president who was not properly elected? Remember, by some odd coincidence, Bush got fewer votes, and there were no WMDs found in Iraq. Saddam Hussein had no connection to al Quaeda and no responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks. The Rick Duncan story was based on a much bigger lie: that this war makes any sense at all. Part of the reason that we need heroes from this in the first place is because it is so atrociously false.

If we arrest Richard Strandlof on charges of false valor, we may as well arrest George Bush for the same thing. And we would surely arrest Dick Cheney. But that would go against our collective hallucination that war is good for anything, much less necessary at all.

The Yes Men Strike Again

Neptune in Aquarius is now being subjected to a conjunction from Chiron, which is giving us some opportunities to see the deceptions we usually consider normal for what they are.

Nobody knows how to use the climate of mass delusion for a productive purpose better than the Yes Men. We’ve met them a couple of times in recent editions of Planet Waves. Their modus operandi is to impersonate powerful corporate interests, such as officials of the World Trade Organization, Exxon or Dow Chemical, then use that platform to deliver an environmental or anti-globalization message both within an industry and to the public.

Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men poses as a representative of the United States Chamber of Commerce, as he’s confronted by Eric Wohlschlegel of the real United States Chamber of Commerce. We don’t have ID on the woman posing as Andy’s assistant. “This guy is a fraud, he’s lying,” Mr. Wohlschlegel told those assembled. “This is a stunt I’ve never seen before.”

Earlier this week, they posted a spoof on the US Chamber of Commerce webpage with an announcement that the Chamber had “reversed its position on climate change policy, and promised to immediately cease lobbying against the Kerry-Boxer bill.” The legislation, proposed by Barbara Boxer and John Kerry, is described as comprehensive climate change legislation. On behalf of the Chamber, they promised to support clean energy, among other things, and admitted that “clean coal” is no such thing.

The Yes Men then rented a room at the National Press Club and called a news conference. The real Chamber got word and one of its officials came bursting in and announced that it was a fraud. You can watch how that looked in this video. It is worth watching several times, to track the psychological interactions, and because it’s first-class funny.

Meanwhile, the “story” was picked up by Reuters, and once that happens, it’s part of the mainstream news flow. What they proved is that Reuters, the wire service that’s so old, it started with carrier pigeons, didn’t bother to call the real Chamber of Commerce before running such a dramatic piece. Big Business, Inc. would stop lobbying against environmental legislation? Is anyone paying attention?

The Yes Men movie is available by DVD! They’re selling it as a fundraiser, so it’s not as cheap as Netflx. If you live in upstate New York (unlikely, I know), it’s at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck. Here is the ordering page if you want to invest in the Yes Men and the DVD.

Reuters simply reprinted the press release and sent it out as news. When I was a boy, you had to pick up the phone and verify a press release.

This shouldn’t be so surprising, said Igor Vamos, who plays “Mike Bonanno” of the Yes Men. “The media picks up all the fictional news sent out by corporations. Having a massive lobbying agency such as the US Chamber of Commerce tell lies that are going to destroy public health and the environment shouldn’t even be legal,” he said. “Those greedy dudes at the top are just making our jobs easier as Yes Men. Unfortunately they are making it easier for anyone else who is trying to tell lies in the media.”

They understand that you cannot just “speak truth to power,” so they embody power and then tell the truth. They take a small lie and use it to expose an enormous lie, and in so doing, set the record straight. The liar is forced to admit their real position.

The Yes Men are an excellent example of how Chiron works: a bit inconvenient, but straight to the point. The Yes Men are the homeopaths of the media. They take a small lie and use it to expose an enormous lie. Chiron has another property: it’s is the thing that reveals the problem with the system. It may seem small, but you can be sure it’s meaningful. If you fix the problem, it becomes a strong, powerful entity; if you don’t fix it, the system collapses.

Vamos said Thursday night that the US Chamber of Commerce was retaliating, and had moved to shut down its Internet service provider, MayFirst/PeopleLink, a socially conscious ISP. The Chamber also threatened MayFirst’s upstream provider, Hurricane Electric Internet Services, which would result in a loss of service to MayFirst, cutting off hundreds of websites of progressive businesses. Vamos said that Yes Men websites might be out of service for a few days as a result.

It’s unusual for anyone to fight back against the Yes Men, because they understand that if they fight, the Yes Men get more press. “They’ll have to push it pretty far” to shut down their ISPs, Vamos said, “but it will be fun for us all along the way.”

Yours & truly,

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

It has suddenly turned color here in the Pea Patch, and I note with distress that the little lemony yellow and rusty orange and near-garish magenta leaves are turning crisp too quickly and falling too fast to suit me. The leisurely turning of season at this time of the year usually delights me, watching the squirrels scramble for falling acorns that hit the roof like grenades, the critters coming close in to forage, seemingly aware that hunting permits have yet to be issued. This year, factoring in the storms and floods and general mayhem that the unpredictable weather patterns have brought us in these last weeks, I find there’s no denying we’re quickly coming up on Winter. Yes, I know — I just made a mental leap that left out the remaining months of Fall. But Winter is what it feels like here, and ‘feels like’ is the name of the game as we make our way through this period. On every level it feels like we’re being crowded, and this is just one more bit of evidence that the gentle turnings I so appreciate have been replaced with sharp jolts of change.

A neighbor here in the Patch puts out corn in the yard for the critters. Photo by Mae Abel.

We have another jolt ahead. The mighty Lord of Karma, Saturn, is due to enter Libra next week, giving us a shift in how we view duty and responsibility. The upside is that it will provide a bit of relief from the critical eye, and perhaps tongue, that we’ve developed under Virgo’s lead. A new way to perceive things is always good, in this case, we will begin to take our attention off the gazillion details and nose-to-the-grindstone energy signal that Saturn in Virgo produced. I think of Virgo as a craftsman’s hands: weaving, repairing, putting up preserves, turning wrenches, collating or stamping or delivering with nary a complaint. Virgo diligently takes care of the cogs and belts and rivets, adds up the numbers, corrects grammar, checks labels and micro-manages the petty stuff that we’re advised not to sweat. So looking up from this laser focus should give us opportunity to lift our heads to see a bigger picture, one that will become more balanced, resting on Libra’s scales.

Libra is the sign of harmony, and the question, of course, is whether we can create harmony out of this tit/tat polarization in which we find ourselves. Seems to me that many of us are more than ready for such an experiment, while others would just as soon drink hemlock. It doesn’t matter if we’re ready, though: we’re being pushed out of separation and into cooperation. Perhaps we’ll finally get a bit of that bipartisanship we need in order for more of us to feel the security of inclusion, of working together to meet mutual need, or perhaps not, given the GOP short-term goal of driving Obama out of office in any way possible. Republicans present a well-disciplined and unified face — at least in the last couple of decades, marching in lockstep much as that which gave us heart-fluttering dismay during the Bush years — and now they’re all in line as the Party of No, save for Olympia Snow who warned recently that her vote to kick the healthcare project along was probably a one-time thing.

Coming Up in Daily Astrology and Adventure

 

The amount of available real estate in the galaxy increased dramatically this week, with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) reporting the discovery of 32 new planets outside of the Solar System.

On 19 October 2009, the team who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, better known as HARPS, the spectrograph for ESO’s 3.6-metre telescope, reported on the incredible discovery of some 32 new exoplanets, cementing HARPS’s position as the world’s foremost exoplanet hunter. The system Gliese 667 (Artist’s impression).

Yes, that’s right, 32 planets. They range in size from gas giants much bigger than Jupiter, all the way down to super-Earths a few times the size of our current home world.

The announcement pushes the total number of discovered exoplanets beyond 400, a large portion of which were discovered by the folks at ESO using a handy tool they call HARPS — the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, a high-resolution spectrograph attached to the organization’s 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla, Chile. This device has aided in the discovery of more than 75 exoplanets across 30 star systems since its installation in 2003.

The astronomers look for planets on stars that are similar to our Sun, as well as low-mass dwarf stars and stars with a lower metal content. Most of the planets found are gas giants, but it is the super-Earths that generate most of the excitement for the potential — however tiny — that they could harbor life. They are also commonly found in multi-planet systems, like our own Solar System.

It is worlds and the similar but still larger Neptune-sized planets that scientists place the greatest chance of life-sustaining conditions being found someday. However, so far the chemical cocktail necessary to support life has only been documented on two exoplanets, neither of them with a rocky composition believed essential to the equation. Both of these are instead “hot gas planets,” and one was also just announced this week, as Space.com and NASA each report in articles from Wednesday.

A video of the ESO announcement can be found here, complete with pretty pictures of those faraway planets — all of which are artists’ renderings, not actual images of the planets.

 

They look like spiraling trails left behind by drops of ink as they fall into a glass of water. Or perhaps some kind of shamanistic markings, drawn in woad on bare flesh. They call to mind the “magnificent desolation” astronaut Buzz Aldrin spoke of after his trip to the moon.

Popular Landform in Cydonia Mensae, also known as the “face” on Mars at 0.2m/pixel, captured by the HiRISE telescope camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

They are actually trails, left behind by dust devils as they dance across the surface of our neighbor Mars. And they serve as a reminder that, even in environments hostile to life as we know it, tremendous beauty and grace can be found.

The image comes from NASA’s HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It shows where the dust devils have been dancing on the Martian surface; the lightweight red dust is picked up by these whirlwinds (which can be almost five miles tall) and leaves the darker, heavier sand beneath it exposed.

The dust devils aren’t all that different from those in deserts on Earth — hot air rises from the surface, spinning as it goes and picking up whatever is light enough to be carried away. They last only minutes, scientists believe, and may actually have done NASA some good by occasionally clearing sand off of the solar collectors on the two Mars rovers.

But for the rest of us, who perhaps in our daily lives have little concern over extraterrestrial weather phenomena or the trials and tribulations of roving robots, the image offers a moment of beauty, and may provoke our thoughts to turn away from the worries and obligations of the everyday and contemplate for a moment the fact that there is beauty to be found everywhere, even beyond the bound of our own planet.

 

It may be turning colder in parts of the country, but it’s still hurricane season, and the latest Pacific storm brought a strong reminder of that to Baja California over the weekend.

Hurricane Rick. NASA Sattelite image.

While in the open ocean, Hurricane Rick had whipped itself into a Category 5, the most powerful classification of storm (here’s a NASA image from Oct. 18). Its 180 mph winds were the fastest recorded in a Pacific storm for a decade, The New York Times reported, and it sent powerful waves up and down the Mexican coasts that killed two people. However, it lost force as it closed in and by the time it made landfall around Mazatlan, it was a weaker Category 1 storm and lost even more punch as it headed inland, dumping as much as six inches of rain along its path.

Further out in the Pacific, past Hawaii, was Hurricane Neki with 105 mph winds, but it was not expected to come into contact with inhabited islands as of the middle of the week.

And an expatriate American woman living in northern Honduras reported heavy flooding after 11 inches of rain fell in 24 hours early this week. On her blog, La Gringa’s Blogicito, she reported crop damage, landslides and fallen trees, and she included a clip from the local newscast covering the damage.

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Weekly Horoscope for Friday, October 23, 2009, #789 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Priya Kale also wrote a Planet Waves horoscope this week as well, so we actually have two for you. Here’s the link to Priya’s take on the Sun entering Scorpio today and Saturn entering Libra next week.

Aries (March 20-April 19)
It’s not change that most people fear, but rather the anticipation of change. It’s the mere idea that something might be different tomorrow, or that an influence we don’t understand will enter the scene. Most of the time, that kind of anxiety belongs to someone else. Here’s the question: is another person’s fear or prior history of loss interfering with your ability to be close to someone? The static or distortion can take any number of forms, and you might not recognize it for what it is. The most likely form it will take this week is anger; and remember that anger directed at yourself shows up as guilt. Who would that ‘someone else’ be? Ask yourself who, as a child, taught you the most about relationships, both by her example and the words she said to you.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
If we held our relationships to the standard of whether they nourish us, and whether we enjoy nourishing them, Match.com would suddenly be more popular than Facebook. However, we might ask what gets in the way of that exchange of nutrients, and a likely answer would be resentment. Who do you know who really, truly enjoys taking care of someone without a trace of that old stuff? Are you able to sincerely receive the gifts you’re offered without either guilt, or taking them for granted? Such is possible, and by this point in your life you may be getting in contact with something that verges on actual, conscious need for contact. As long as you don’t perceive that need as a weakness, you will discover a dependable friend.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
There’s no way to avoid an emotional issue now; whether you stuff yourself or starve yourself won’t change the situation. However, you’ll have a dependable measure of your emotional state based on looking at what you eat and why. This would include the foods you crave, and how much care you put into feeding yourself as a healing method rather than as an indulgence. Gradually, you are beginning to recover from a long phase when you thought you had lost faith not only in yourself but also in people who you hoped would be dependable. You can venture into territory now that seemed impossible just a couple of weeks ago. You can, in fact, take care of yourself, and you will feel better merely as a result of the intelligence of that gesture.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
Like your fellow water signs Scorpio and Pisces, you morph in and out of whether you feel like you belong on the planet based on whether others resonate with you emotionally. You’ve been doing well in this regard, given how few planets are in water signs lately. This may be because you’re so committed to rethinking your concept of what a relationship is, what a partner is for, and whether there’s someone unusual enough to actually make contact with you. I would suggest this, however: you can reach out. You can reach out to more than one person if you want, or (in another take on the same aspect) develop something with a person you consider truly unusual. Have confidence in your inner guidance, which is quieter than your emotions. Be aware that you’ve come a long way toward recognizing what is truly important to you, and allow trust in love to be an expression of that awareness.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
First I would like to speak to all the Leo moms who may be reading, and acknowledge that motherhood is something that comes with many mixed emotions. Not only is there not a standard of perfection, your own responses to the at times overwhelming responsibilities of a child or children can be inconsistent. Give yourself some space for the full spectrum of possibilities, and no, you’re not losing your mind if you feel many things within a single hour or a single day. For all cats: this is a reminder that emotional mastery begins with awareness. You may not know it, but others perceive you at the moment as what is sometimes called an intense person. I don’t suggest you hold back, but I do suggest you measure your words.

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
The narrow ledge you seem to be walking along involves a concept of who you are; and this concept is not big enough to contain who you actually are. Most people try to live up to something outside them. You often brutally try to enforce an inner standard, which involves successfully meeting a checklist of qualifications for personhood. Attempting to follow this list may feed the obsessive side of your nature, but it does nothing to make you a better person, or a happier one; and generally leaves you in the position of being your harshest critic. One thing you can do now is to notice this tendency. Give it a name; any name but your own. When you see it operating, step back, take a breath, and consider that something else is possible.

Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
Hopefully, you’ll remember you read this. In less than one week, Saturn moves into your birth sign. This is a truly rare transit that comes with the feeling that the Earth itself is moving. Changes that you thought were inconceivable will suddenly seem not only possible, but probable or even inevitable. Here is the thing to remember, and not forget. At this point nothing, including any developments that may surface as this transit happens, is permanent. This is more of a test run, a boundary check and an energy check; it is an experiment in what is possible; and a chance to see how flexible you really are. It is not, however, a time for ‘permanent’ decisions, and this of course will be good news to any Libra. That time will arrive; now is a moment to actually explore the alternatives.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
You have the moxie, the charm, the style, energy and most of all, the personal integrity required to succeed in the way that you want to. In fact, you can forget about everything on that list except for the last item. I also know you have your doubts, and let me be the first to tell you that Scorpio self-doubt is just about always misplaced. Success does not usually happen fast, and we have good reason to question the kind that does. What I am telling you is that you have solid reasons to have faith in yourself. So what if various elements of your romantic life make about as much sense as two jigsaw puzzles mixed together. Who cares if there are those nights you feel like you’re holed up in a raft floating on the ocean of your own existence. You actually know who you are. You actually believe in yourself.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
You don’t usually present yourself to the world as a peculiar, unfathomable person steeped in the vast unknown of the cosmos. Sometimes you even fool yourself into believing you’re the happy-go-lucky person you read about on your own Twitter feed. But if that’s true, then what exactly is the source of this unshakeable faith you have in yourself? What’s the source of your incredible passion that comes from deep in your core and never seems to run out? I know there are the deep kind of faith and the shallow kind, and they both work pretty good. This is the time of year that you’re reminded just how deep your commitment to yourself is; but I assure you that you have not seen anything yet. Remember the goals that were so meaningful to you in the spring. They will soon be back, with ten times the mojo.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
For such a serious, focused person, you have an odd ambivalence about your goals. At times you’ve adopted the position of letting your most important decisions be made for you. Other times you respond to necessity, which not that different, but at least it’s practical. Neither of those options is viable now, and at this stage of your life, neither is honest. You know that your choices must be based on who you actually are, and that the process of making decisions is one of the ways you make that (ongoing) discovery. Therefore, if you find yourself in a position of being compelled to decide what you must do, shorten the loop and strive to understand who you are. Even if that is a work in progress, focus on your reality in this moment: not who you were, or who you plan to be.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
Information is on its way; it may be coming right now, but you may not be listening. I say this because your charts hint strongly that you’re walking around telling yourself, “It’s not time; I’m not ready.” I would suggest that it is indeed time, you are indeed ready, and that the information you’re getting is designed to provide an essential element of preparation. You’ve figured that the universe doesn’t run on a train schedule. But the planets do move in a logical way, and one thing that logic says is that you’ve prepared long enough for a new assignment that will take you far and wide, and prove your competence in the tasks you’ve chosen to undertake. It would help a lot if you didn’t try to convince yourself otherwise.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
As regards other people, such as relationship partners, they appear to be figuring out something that you’ve known is true for a long time. Yet is that what’s happening, or are you getting into alignment with your own truth, and therefore making room for the people around you to be in alignment with theirs? Either interpretation is true enough. Let’s assume the second possibility, because it keeps the cause of what you perceive within yourself. At this point, the more responsibility you take for everything and everyone in your life the better — most particularly yourself. Your commitments carry more energetic influence now than at any moment in recent memory, especially the ones you make to yourself. Your inner guidance is impeccable. Practice trust, day and night.

Dear Friend and Client:

Libra has been one of those seasons with five Tuesdays. I don’t issue the first monthly horoscope until the first Tuesday that Sun has ingressed the new sign, so I’m here with a brief letter telling you what I think you need to know about this week’s astrology.

The Sun is in the last degrees of Libra, still close to its position at the New Moon on Sunday morning. We have a fairly long phase of the Sun void of course this week; in my reading it will not be making new aspects to anything in the way of major planets or asteroids until it ingresses Scorpio at 2:44 am ET Friday; that is to say, overnight between Thursday and Friday, or Friday morning, in most time zones in the United States, the UK and Europe.

The Sun void of course till then suggests that a cosmic door is open on the worldly level of our affairs; that we can encounter unusual changes or developments. In my experience it’s a door to the unlikely, which we need to watch (like any door) and invite in who and what we feel is healthy for our growth, environment or community. There is a risk involved. There is also an element of timing, as in, do what you can, while you can. Interesting opportunities are available, and there’s also a sense of drift that makes it wise to coast a bit rather than push.

This is occurring while Saturn is on the threshold of Libra; it makes its first ingress to that sign on Oct. 29. I suggest you hold back on making important changes or initiating new developments until this ingress occurs; and see if you can feel the difference when it does. There will be plenty of leverage in that moment — Saturn will be in its new sign, applying in its square aspect to Pluto.

Lately I’ve taken up a new interest in doing my best to make sure that people who are either new to astrology and curious, or who have been studying for a while and can’t get it out of their heads, have a way into the work. The easiest thing to follow is the Sun/Moon cycle. This takes you through the lunar phases; the sign changes of the Moon; the sign changes of the Sun; and the seasons of the year. Everything else in astrology mimics these cycles. The only exception is that planets go retrograde but the Sun and Moon do not; but the Sun and Moon do other things that you can tune into and these will give you a sense of what retrograde energy feels like.

For instance, the Moon is waxing right now; the energy is building. It’s also slow right now, and slowing down even more (this is the equivalent of the Moon being retrograde). That means it’s far from the Earth and proceeding through the degrees and signs more slowly, and that the energy is building gradually. Even if you grasp astrology on an intellectual level, you won’t be able to read a chart until you can feel the energy to some real extent. This, we do with some of the same sensors that allow us to feel the seasons changing.

Speaking of, the Sun’s ingress into Scorpio is the peak of autumnal energy here in the Northern Hemisphere. From there it’s just two weeks till the high sabbat of Samhain (pronounced sah-wen), which is what became Halloween in our culture. We can feel this because the weather many places is indicating that this is the season; but there is something else on what you might call the psychic level that gives another clue: the thinning of the veil between the worlds. Here’s how you can play with that — see if you can dial in your favorite relatives who are no supposedly longer among the living. Talk to them, or better yet, listen into the ethers; look at some old photos; basically, say hello and feel for the reply.

The Sun’s Scorpio ingress chart is pretty interesting. Take a look at the Sun and the Moon; their glyphs are obvious. Both have values near zero, which means they’re at the very beginning of their trip through a sign. The Sun is at 00 Scorpio 00 and the Moon is at 00 Capricorn 02, about to make a conjunction to Pluto (that little red thing; the Moon is moving toward the right). This also means the Sun and Moon are making an aspect — they are exactly 60 degrees apart, and that’s called a sextile. There are many other aspects in this chart, but the Sun and Moon changing signs within minutes is pretty cool.

Now, now do we interpret this? It all depends on the context — all interpretation is context-specific. Currently, since there is no question on the table, your context is my brain! Sun Scorpio brings in passionate, transformative and sexual energy. Moon conjunct Pluto can feel deep, isolated, lonely or generically intense. It is also truly introspective and draws its strength from the inside out.

To me, the core question is something about guilt, how it rules our lives an what we do with it. Why do I say this? Any time you have a lot of Capricorn in a chart, and a lot of sexual energy, it’s a good idea to check out the role of guilt. It runs our lives and from a young age is injected into our veins like embalming fluid. I think that what we describe as being spiritual as opposed to religious involves replacing guilt with love. Most people forget that they are innately biological and most of what they’ve been conditioned to feel guilty about is their own biology.

On this note, I would point you to two daily entries this week — one on The Secret Life of Mother and another on Ecstatic Childbirth. Both have sparked some interesting conversation, as is often the case out on the front page.

I’ll see you back here Friday. If you post any questions about what you’ve read here, this letter will have a discussion area posted to the main homepage and you can post them there; or drop me a note at dreams@planetwaves.net.

Yours & truly,

Dear Friend and Reader:

Venus is now in Libra, just past a square to Pluto in Capricorn. The Virgo-Libra cusp is a busy place these days; Mercury recently ingressed Libra (ending its retrograde two weeks ago, and its echo phase Wednesday). Pallas Athene, an asteroid connected with law and justice, is currently quite happy in Libra, the sign of equanimity. Then at the end of the month, Saturn enters Libra for the first time since August 1983. Each time a planet moves into Libra, it opposes the Aries Point, the first degree of the zodiac (said properly, the first degree of the tropical zodiac).

Elliptical Galaxy M87 (NGC 4486), type E1, in Virgo. Photo by David Malin.

We’re also right upon the Libra New Moon, which I’ll cover in a section at the end of this article. [View chart here.]

Libra is one of the home signs of Venus; it’s said to rule that sign (and also Taurus). So you can truly say this is a ‘good thing’, but as good as it is, it’s also made interesting by the aspect to Pluto and its presence opposite the Aries Point.

As I have said here many times, the Aries Point in any astrological equation tells us that the big world (out there) and the little world (one’s private life) are intersecting. Yesterday’s conversation about where individual relationships meet society’s rules and expectations is a good for-instance, though the effect can get much larger. Yet the conscious attempt to reconcile where we actually fit into our culture is an excellent example of putting the Aries Point to work. What I’m suggesting here is that astrology is not something that happens to us; it’s something we pick up like a dependable tool, and use for a purpose.

Venus square Pluto

Venus square Pluto is a picture of one’s internal experience of a relationship; of one’s own relationship tendencies; and the role of erotic impulses in the quest for growth and personal evolution. The relational aspect comes from Venus in Libra; the societal attribute from Pluto in Capricorn. Pluto also brings in the concepts of growth and evolution. Venus and Pluto both bring in different aspects of sexuality, and add up to a lusty mix. Yet it manages to be something well beyond lust for its own sake; this is a drive to connect, and exploration of the motive to connect.

The global view of the surface of Venus. Photo: Solar System Visualization project and the Magellan science team / Wikipedia.

This is an aspect that feels meaningful, applicable and moreover, urgently calling for self-reflection. That square wants to start the conversation from the inside-out. It’s pointing to that significant piece of a relationship that exists within our individual psyche. We tend to think of a relationship as this thing that two people have; but really it’s two things that two people are having, with one thing assigned to each person.

Part of being a healthy relationship partner is being able to focus on both your experience and that of someone else. This would necessarily start with your own experience, and then embrace that of your partner. When we only focus on someone else and habitually forget our own needs, or act to our own detriment, that would be codependency. This aspect is saying start inside. Recognize how much of love, sexual attraction and obsession, acceptance, need, satisfaction, acceptance, guilt and fear are personal matters that we alone experience. Or said another way, the square is calling on us to call back our projections and take ownership of our experiences.

Messier 87: The Galaxy on the Aries Point

One last bit of astronomy. Venus is currently conjunct a fixed point; a galaxy called M87, which is parked in the first degree of Libra. The Aries Point is the place where the tropical zodiac begins, based on the position of the Sun, the day of the vernal equinox. There is no “thing” involved — except if we consider M87, an enormous galaxy that takes up the first degree of Libra and is part of an important cluster of galaxies known as the Virgo Group. Something in the first degree of Libra has a direct relationship to the Aries Point — an opposition, and I think that this galaxy may be a meaningful part of the ever-so-dependable effect that we see.

M87 is a particularly incredible galaxy due to a massive gas ejection.

Libra is intense and nobody really wonders why; few people notice. We think of it as the nice, laid-back sign of balance and things that work well aesthetically, but I describe Libras as the human blow torch. That flame, set to low, seems harmless and barely noticeable, but then when you turn the knob it jets out hot enough to burn through steel or compose the best rock music you’ve ever heard (Thom Yorke, for one wholesome example). Libra is conjunct M87 today and Pluto, occupying the first degree of Capricorn for the last time, is currently square M87.

This sounds like a conversation of people with something to say.

Mars enters Shadow Phase

As of Saturday, Mars, now in Leo, enters the shadow phase of its upcoming retrograde. [Leo is on the Fixed Cross of the heavens, but event is obviously still newsworthy. And astrology students note, the midpoint of the Fixed Cross, that is to say, any fixed sign at 15 degrees, activates the Aries Point.]

Mars’s thin atmosphere, visible on the horizon in this low-orbit photo. Photo: Wikipedia.

The shadow phase is when a planet enters the degrees where it will soon be retrograde. The upcoming Mars retrograde takes place entirely in Leo, and goes from Dec. 20 (one day before the Capricorn solstice) to March 10. Mars leaves the degrees where it was retrograde on May 17. In all, Mars spends nearly eight months in Leo, bringing the first major burst of fiery energy to the sky since Pluto left Sagittarius.

There is more fiery energy to come. This spring arrives with some of the most spectacular astrology in many years — in particular, the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction is on the Aries Point — which will be the main theme of Cosmic Confidential, the 2010 annual edition of Planet Waves.

Libra New Moon

The New Moon in Libra is exact Sunday at 1:33 am ET; that is to say, overnight Saturday to Sunday in most time zones covered by our readership; Sunday morning at around dawn in the UK and Europe. This New Moon has some distinct properties, one of which is that it will be exactly square the lunar nodes (precise to less than one degree). This gives the New Moon an eclipse-like property, because it touches the nodes at a direct angle.

Whenever an important event occurs square the lunar nodes, we have a turning point in the story of our lives. It can be a change of direction; a reversal; a sense of a factor intervening with the ‘normal’ flow of events. This clearly represents an opportunity to create such changes in your life, all the better if you have determined that their purpose is to further your growth and evolutionary progress.

These changes may take up a focus in relationships, with so much significant activity currently in Libra. There may be a ‘clear the decks for something better’ kind of feeling.

This New Moon aligns precisely with several minor planets. For one thing, it’s precisely conjunct the asteroid Urania — that is, precise to one-tenth of a degree — which is urging us to see the big picture and not get caught in the petty details. Urania’s presence reminds us to focus on having a consistent method; a fair, rational approach; and to not sacrifice intuition in the process. Apropos of Libra necessary to look for the common ground between seemingly different or opposing things.

A Mysterious Opposition to the New Moon

This weekend’s Libra New Moon is exactly (to less than one degree) opposite a minor planet conjunction: 1992 QB1 and Achilles. I’m glad I checked this this: these are two minor planets with which I’m very familiar, having worked with them for a full decade. Both are subtle and a bit off the normal wavelength of awareness. Their conjunction is also square the lunar nodes and is thus showing up high on the list of priorities. Let’s go in alphabetical order, numbered planet first.

Srimati Radharani is the Supreme Goddess. She is most always seen with Lord Krishna.

1992 QB1 is a planet slightly past Pluto that confirmed the existence of the Kuiper Belt: an enormous band of planetoids and icy debris in the region of Pluto. It was the first planet discovered beyond Pluto, and it was spotted first on the Aries Point, to the degree, in 1992. It has not been named, though a whole class of planets has been named after her: the Cubewanos (Q-B-1-o’s), which usually have orbits in range of 300 years (Pluto is about 250 years, so as mentioned, they’re a little further out). I have contacted the co-discoverer, Jane X. Luu, and proposed the name Radharani, the consort of Lord Krishna.

I believe that this is a feminine archetype associated with people, predominantly women, who assist people at threshold moments: midwives who help us birth; hospice workers who help us die; orgasm coaches, who teach us how to let go more deeply; Tantrikas who introduce us to the sexual mysteries; and all teachers and guides who assist others in the process of crossing boundaries within themselves. Said another way, she represents anyone who takes a personal risk and gives from their souls to assist those who must cross a spiritual border. I have a word for them, which is thresholders, and I believe they come under the guidance of, and are significated by, this small planet.

1992 QB1 is similar in energy to Vesta, but less detached; more directly involved in the process. She does not have to address the paradox of the ‘sacred prostitute who is also chaste’ and is therefore not under a vow of celibacy in any form. To the contrary, her personal experience in all of these matters is what would make her a master (or at least adept) of the 8th house of death and transformation.

If we step outside the specific life contexts of what this planet is about, we can get some basic psychological descriptors. She takes on the experience of humanity personally; she resonates with what is inevitable for everyone; she possesses eclectic knowledge, like a Centaur planet; she offers herself totally in special circumstances when this is necessary, and in general as a life path.

The Libra New Moon is shown in the lower left side of the chart, the glyphs for the Sun and Moon being obviously illustrated and occupying the same degree and minute. The New Moon is precisely opposite two minor planets that are not shown in this commercial astrology software, 1992 QB1 and Achilles. The New Moon is also fairly closely opposite Eris (red glyph, top right).

Next is Achilles, a special asteroid which to me represents false lack of confidence in women. Achilles can also represent cases or circumstances of false confidence. I have covered false confidence in this blog post. It also shows up prominently in the chart of Cho Seung-Hui. Let’s stick to the more prevalent and I think more significant issue, false lack of confidence. This theme is one of the great issues of our day, and it deserves its own article. It’s closely connected to the lack of self-esteem that is both endemic in our times and which is basically considered normal.

This false lack of confidence may be associated with an injury to curiosity (rampant, and usually created by ‘education’); with the sense of not knowing enough; with being told one was inferior and/or held down; with a sense of inferiority incultrated in people specifically because they are female or gay; or many other factors. This is the Ph.D. who cannot get a job, perhaps in part because they thought the degree would give them something they didn’t already have. It’s the person with great musical talent who won’t play a gig; anyone with a natural skill who won’t use it because they don’t feel up to it; and represents a diversity of other conditions where we feel that we’re less than what we are, and hesitate, but where this is not supported by the facts. It is psychological in nature.

When you put the two archetypes together, we see a failure to assist one another in our transitions. We see situations where someone refuses to help, or fails to help, someone close to them make a transition that they need to make. This may be about jealousy, or a sense of being abandoned, or the refusal to step up to the challenges of growth themselves. The New Moon in Libra opposite this conjunction, precisely square the lunar nodes, is saying we need to step up to this challenge as the highest level of evolutionary imperative: we need to help one another cross those vital thresholds, grow, change and transform.

Yours & truly,

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

There’s a new game afoot that I suspect you’ve noticed and may even have developed some skill at playing. It’s a kind of Cosmic Where’s Waldo?, where we scan our headlines, our television screens, our neighbors’ responses and our co-workers’ attitudes for some hint of reality, some sense of spiritual aptitude. We’ve traveled a long summer’s madness, trickled tears at the twists and turns that are pummeling our nation, battled our fears over the projections and losses and defaults; wondering if we’re the only ones hunting a solution other than chaos. The shifting landscape of our game board has taken us into distressing, often surprising territory, but we trudge on, looking for that sparkle of awareness in the eyes that will tell us we’ve found like-mind. Our family members sometimes turn into one of those dim Not Waldo faces as we search feverishly for the lost ones; we mourn a bit, heart-shocked and disturbed, then move on in our quest. We’re in search of our tribe.

Righty propaganda picture courtesy of Roger Ebert’s blog piece on the Anger of the Festering Fringe.

Back in May, some big players in our game turned retrograde within a day of one another; Jupiter, Neptune and Chiron. They’d been traveling in a pack under the altruistic canopy of the Water Bearer, Aquarius; had been and will be again, into the new year. Jupiter has slowed and begun forward movement now; perhaps some of the zealotry, bloviating and excess will dissipate or, at minimum, we can begin to put it into perspective. As with any retro, we got a review period; and a particularly potent one. We’ve had a good, long look at the unenlightened and the unintelligent, who bellow louder than the many who gained insight into the Jupitarian concerns of ethical and moral social expression during this period. If Chiron requires us to re-wound, we’ve managed it; if it is also the path toward our healing, then I suggest we get on with it. Our nation is dis-eased in many ways, her fractured schisms symptomatic of her decline; and as with every such malady, it’s our choice of remedy that makes all the difference.

You have no doubt heard that our president has received one of the most honored awards the world bestows: the Nobel Peace Prize. The Committee Chairman was very specific about the reason Obama unanimously beat out 200 other nominees, saying, “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. We are not awarding the prize for what may happen in the future, but for what he has done in the previous year. We would hope this will enhance what he is trying to do.” The firestorm of opinion that greeted this remarkable accomplishment was stunning. When a respected Washington Post columnist writes that the award is “ridiculous, embarrassing,” she is displaying a deep lack of vision into these changing times; when Glenn Beck says the prize should, instead, have gone to his Tea Baggers — and later declares that the White House finally going after the Republican propaganda machine, FOX News, is comparable to Hitler’s assault on the Jews — then I suddenly feel the true impact of the words ‘ridiculous’ and ’embarrassing.’ Neither of these people are Waldo. Dude, where’s my tribe?

Coming Up in Daily Astrology and Adventure

 

Stonehenge — the Neolithic landmark on the English countryside that served as a sacred site, an observatory, an astrological calendar, a burial ground, and more — continues to reveal secrets some 5,000 years after its construction.

Archaeologists have released an artist’s impression of what a second stone circle found a mile from Stonehenge might have looked like. Painting by Peter Dunn.

ScienceDaily.com reports that British archaeologists with the Stonehenge Riverside Project have found evidence that another stone circle stood less than two miles away on the banks of the Avon River.

Today, all that is left of that second circle are nine depressions in the ground, but those plus other archaeological evidence (Stone Age tools, evidence of fires) lead scientists to believe that 25 standing stones once formed a circle more than 30 feet across on the site, surrounded by a henge, or a circular ditch with an external bank. They’re calling it “Blue Stonehenge” because they believe the standing stones were bluestones mined from the Preseli Mountains in Wales, more than 150 miles away.

They also suspect that around 2500 BCE, Blue Stonehenge was dismantled and its stones incorporated into Stonehenge proper when it was rebuilt. Still, according to the article, Blue Stonehenge should be considered part of the overall Stonehenge complex and not a separate construct, since it stood at the end of the Avenue, a ceremonial way that led from Stonehenge to the Avon.

It all fits in with what the Stonehenge Project’s members believe was a Neolithic community along the Avon, which included a village they discovered in 2005 and call Durrington Walls. That village, the scientists speculate, represented a “domain of the living” that was linked with a “domain of the dead” through the newly discovered circle and Stonehenge.

“It could be that Blue Stonehenge was where the dead began their final journey to Stonehenge,” Sheffield University Professor Mike Parker Pearson, a co-director of the Project, was quoted in the article. “Not many people know that Stonehenge was Britain’s largest burial ground at that time. Maybe the bluestone circle is where people were cremated before their ashes were buried at Stonehenge itself.”

Stonehenge is part of a network of prehistoric monuments in the area. Also nearby is Avebury Henge, a double stone circle so large that it includes a small town. This is located about 32km south of Stonehenge. Silbury Hill, an ancient manmade mountain, is also in the area, and is part of the same network of monuments, all of which were likely to have related purposes. There are many theories as to their use, one of them astrological. Stonehenge may have been a war council chamber devoted to Mars, and Avebury Henge another kind of temple devoted to the Sun and the Moon. Even in modern times, Avebury’s two circles are referred to as the Sun Circle and the Moon Circle. Silbury Hill, for its part, remains a mystery, and few artifacts have been found there.

The Stonehenge Project’s other co-director, Professor Julian Thomas of the University of Manchester, seconded the significance of the find: “The implications of this discovery are immense. It is compelling evidence that this stretch of the River Avon was central to the religious lives of the people who built Stonehenge.”

 

Hats off to the Hubble Space Telescope again for capturing yet another phenomenal image from our universe: The collision of two galaxies.

A recent NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures what appears to be one very bright and bizarre galaxy, but is actually the result of a pair of spiral galaxies that resemble our own Milky Way smashing together at breakneck speeds.

What you see in that image, released by NASA on Oct. 13, is the end result of the collision of two galaxies the size of our own Milky Way, which has created a new astrological body called, in the romantic lingo of science, NGC 2623.

Or Arp 243. For short, we guess.

Despite the fact these two galaxies impacted one another at what a NASA/European Space Agency article calls “breakneck speeds,” because of the interstellar distances involved this still was a very, very, very slow motion event to us. For one thing, it happened a long time ago, since it is 250 million light years away in the constellation Cancer.

So, what exactly is Hubble showing us? Some pretty mind-blowing stuff. The two galactic centers have now merged into one nucleus, according to NASA/ESA, bringing unimaginable energies to bear upon one another. Those energies created tidal forces that formed the two tails you can see streaming away from that nucleus — tails composed of huge clouds of gas, nebula, and clusters of young stars created by the violence of the collision. In the lower arm alone, more than 100 star clusters have been identified.

Furthermore, deep within the nucleus the supermassive black holes that inhabit galactic centers are now sucking in matter and forming what scientists call an accretion disc. That releases torrents of energy, which in turn heats up the disc and makes it radiate lots of electromagnetic energy, which can be measured by astronomers.

It is, if you really stop to think about it, a phenomenally humbling concept. During this collision stars older and bigger than our Sun have doubtless been destroyed, entire planetary systems torn apart, new stars and worlds created — all so far away that humanity will likely never reach it no matter how long we last, but visible to us if we look at the night sky with a powerful enough lens.

 

How cold was it in Colorado this past week? Too cold for baseball. The third playoff game between the Colorado Rockies and the Philadelphia Phillies was canceled last Saturday after a cold front moved through and snow and ice dusted the Rockies’ stadium. The low of 17 degrees broke the 1905 record for that date, a report from The Associated Press said. That same day, black ice was blamed for a wreck on Interstate 25 in Colorado Springs that involved up to 50 cars.

Seats sit empty on the main concourse as snow covers the playing surface of Coors Field in Denver on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009, after Major League Baseball officials postponed Game 3 of the National League division series between the Philadelphia Phillies and Colorado Rockies on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009, in Denver. Temperatures below freezing combined with a light coating of snow to force officials to delay the game. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Meanwhile, several days of steady (and occasionally heavy) rain have soaked parts of the southern US. Rising waters have caused flooding in low-lying areas, created major headaches for farmers, and the steady downpour all but shut down the rides and midway at the annual Arkansas State Fair on Tuesday, a day in which some parts of that state received 5 inches of rainfall before 2 pm. Another front system was due to arrive Wednesday night and soak the state again Thursday.

However, the rainfall in the south had nothing on the big storm (left over from last week’s typhoon near Japan) that swept into the San Francisco area on Tuesday night. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as a “storm unlike any other in the Bay Area in nearly half a century,” it dumped up to 10 inches of rain in parts of the region, knocked out power to tens of thousands of people, and was blamed for hundreds of car accidents.

Meanwhile, two storms are working over the northeastern US in sequence. Wet snow will creep into the western and northern suburbs of Philadelphia and New York. Temperatures will be 10 to 30 degrees below average, ranging from the 20s in the north to the 40s in coastal Jersey and the Delmarva at night and mainly in the 30s and 40s during the day (a few 50s in Southern Virginia).

While such storms can be predicted, other major natural disasters can happen without warning. However, the October issue of New Scientist reports on a Japanese study that holds out hope of early warnings for at least one such event: volcanic eruptions. By monitoring cosmic radiation for muons, they hope to be able to detect the mass of material inside volcanoes and predict when there’s a buildup of magma.

 

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Weekly Horoscope for Friday, October 16, 2009, #788 – BY PRIYA KALE

For more astrology, horoscopes and information on private consultations please visit www.priyakale.com/blog. Please email priya@priyakale.com with comments and feedback on the horoscopes.

Aries (March 20-April 19)
You’ve started a new cycle within your relationships, marking a crucial turning point toward your personal and professional destiny. A conversation you have this week with a friend or partner can be hugely informative, as well as fuel your expansive vision of the possibilities for the future. Recognize now there is a deeper fire growing within you to explore your creative as well as sexual potential. You are an Aries and with the planets aligned the way they are the sky is the limit when it comes to a heart’s desire. If you can be bold and honest, you are more than likely to gather all the support you need from friends and benefactors alike who want to see you succeed. Let your actions be from the heart; be playful yet fair, so everybody wins.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
You’ve scaled a mountain recently. Now you enter a phase of reaping the rewards for your efforts, to what can only be considered a labor of love. It may finally feel like you can see beyond the horizon with one close relationship, offering you a chance to deepen your intimacy. This may even bring fresh hope regarding a financial situation surrounding your home or family that has been unsettling you recently. This is freeing you to focus your energy where it matters. You’ve learnt a thing or two along your journey in your search for inner peace. Let these invaluable teachings guide you as you light the way for many that find hope in your message of truth.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
You could find yourself flying high on wings of love this week. Or it could be a hugely creative idea whose time has come. You’ve already confronted your deepest fears regarding your own creative and sexual potential. Speak honestly and from the heart within a dialogue with an important partner. Also listen closely to what someone is saying to you; this can only open and expand your awareness to the possibilities beyond the horizon. Be innovative and creative. You are entering a phase of learning the art of heartfelt expression of your creativity as well as passion. It’s time to leave the nest and follow that great hope in your being, that longs for connections that open up your world rather than tie you down.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
Something is lighting a fire deep inside you, fueling your desire to live your life on your terms. If you can gather your courage, confidence and faith, you can have important conversations with the people closest to you so they know where you stand. Your passion is nothing to be ashamed of, neither are your needs for greater freedom of expression and I suggest you begin with self-acceptance. Those that love you will understand and support you, but for that you have to open up and speak your heart. This will go far in bringing you a greater understanding of the ground you stand on, so you can be free to venture beyond your limits daily, consciously and creatively.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
You make contact with your heart this week, asking you to be bold as you speak your truth. You are at the end of a long phase of examining your own self-worth, which may have in the past prevented you from expressing your true desires. Now you move into the next phase of learning the art of expressing your creative and sexual passion and individuality in these matters. There is at least one partnership that can open up to a new level of understanding as a process of this dialogue. Recognize your emotions are not something to be afraid of, so don’t be shy. There are many who hang on to your message of hope — it gives them wings and the precious gift of freedom and truth.

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
You are heading into brand-new territory starting now, marking the end and beginning of am important phase of your personal journey. You’ve learnt difficult lessons over the past two years that may have had you questioning your own integrity. In overcoming your self-doubts, you are learning important truths about what and which relationships give you the security you need to express yourself freely. This has little to do with your ego, yet has to do with your deepest values. You know well, it is in giving that you receive. Help others see this crucial interdependence we share. You have a greater message of self-acceptance, healing and wisdom you bring to all the lives you touch daily simply by your “being.”

Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
It may feel like you are standing in a new world, only a babe in the woods. You are indeed moving into a new journey of rediscovery of your own being that will teach you through experience that you can only be true to yourself. If you can start with taking responsibility for yourself and your own feelings, it will be easier to speak this truth with others. This week brings an important conversation with a creative or romantic situation close to your heart that requires you to be bold, honest as well as keep your sense of humor. Be honest and willing to reach for your wildest desires, as you create the life you were born to experience, brick by brick, one imaginative step at a time.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
You’ve had to overcome deep doubts about a financial or intimate relationship. Clear any lingering doubts you have this week regarding a domestic situation by being willing to speak them honestly with all parties concerned. No matter what you fear, this can go far in soothing your worried mind. Professionally you are coming into your own and are likely to have more opportunities coming your way to shine. But you well know what you are trying to manifest as your mission is so much bigger and greater than you. Be honest, humble yet bold as you move forward. The ghosts of the past need not continue to haunt you as they have. Listen to the soulful truth and growing hope in your world that wants to liberate you from the shackles you’ve gotten used to.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
After walking the razor’s edge with a precarious financial or professional situation, this week should bring you your first taste of freedom. You are likely to be having important conversations with partners this week, marking the sign of times to come over the next couple of years. Over the coming months work on exploring your aspirations and creating consciously the kind of life you have always dreamed and hoped for. There is no need to fear judgment for your unique ideas; they hold a great big, beautiful message of hope. Your gift to this world is your ability to dare to dream, so be bold and honest as you share your vision. You can have the support you need, if you can find the courage to believe in yourself first.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
An professional opportunity could come your way that can tangibly improve your position. You can stand to reap the tangible and financial rewards of this association. But be sure to know where your deepest values lie. What you are trying to build now requires nothing less than your deepest integrity and commitment to the collective lives you touch through your endeavor. Reach for honesty and openness within all your negotiations and there will be a way for everyone to come out on top. Don’t be fooled by something shiny but ultimately shallow, and be bold enough to reach for a greater truth. The only thing that could limit your success now is your own fear of it and the changes you are making.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
Expect to feel the passion rise within your closest relationships. You move toward a phase of greater understanding where everyone is free to speak their mind without the fear of judgment. Be fair and wise in all your conversations this week. An important opportunity can come your way turning your luck around within a situation you’ve been tempted to consider hopeless. You’ve been on an inward journey recently of finding your own truth. Have faith in your growing sense of expansiveness and idealism, and act with this awareness. Your enlightened perspective will be your greatest teacher and confidante over the coming phase of your journey. Remember the lessons of humility, but leave the past behind for higher truth coming to light.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
An important conversation you have this week with a partner is likely to open your relationship to a new level of understanding. If you listen carefully and speak honestly, this has a greater message for your psyche that can help you heal all your relationships — the ones you have and the ones you haven’t even formed yet. You are learning the power of truth to liberate. What someone is saying is awakening a deeper soul awareness within you about your role in shaping the collective psyche. This is a dialogue that can expand your consciousness and release your creative passion to heights untold. Now and in the coming phase of your life, no matter which way the winds blow — anchor yourself to truth and let the rest blow over into the dust where it came from.

Dear Friend and Client:

Good morning in the States, afternoon in the UK and Europe.

Harvest at the Kingston Farmers’ Market. Photo by Eric Francis/Planet Waves.

There’s not another monthly horoscope for the Libra phase, and I’m currently working on the new monthly horoscopes for November — so I won’t be writing anything extra today.

I’ve published three monthlies for Libra time already: Planet Waves Monthly (the original ‘Planet Waves’ horoscope), Inner Space and the Alt Monthly. These three horoscopes focus on the sign change of Saturn from Virgo to Libra on Oct. 29. I suggest you find out your ascendant if you don’t know it, and work with that as well. Astrology is “all about the houses,” as a great newspaper astrologer once said, and Saturn changing signs definitely qualifies.

In yesterday’s daily edition, I talked about the station-direct of Jupiter (which was overnight) and Mercury exiting its shadow/echo phase (which it does Wednesday) and entering new territory. For our afternoon post yesterday, one of our writers attended President Obama’s speech at the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC and has provided some excellent, unique coverage.

We’re in that time of year when I’m preparing for the new annual edition, which I will announce shortly. As my friend and first spiritual study partner Scott Kalechstein used to say, it’s important to get the word in before you get the word out. I am now in the ‘getting the word in’ phase, as I study the charts and movements of the planets through mid-2011 as the warmup for writing the annual.

During this time of year, I take every opportunity I can to do less rather than more. As I see it, my primary job is to stay balanced, healthy and focused to do the best possible work on the annual edition. The astrology of 2010 is certainly calling for that kind of care and attention.

We will see you Friday.

Yours & truly,

Dear Friend and Reader:

We met the Yes Men a few weeks ago, after I spent Monday morning, Sept. 21 trooping around Manhattan as they gave out their climate change edition of the New York Post. This paracosmic spoof on the conservative tabloid was distributed to 100,000 New Yorkers as a global warming conference consisting of presidents, prime ministers and environment bigshots was pouring into the city. Distribution points outside the United Nations made sure that a bunch of copies made it into the proceedings, and the prank became national news.

Outside the Film Forum in New York’s Greenwich Village, where “The Yes Men Fix The World” premiered this week. Photo by Eric Francis / Planet Waves.

This week, a film featuring the boys premiered in a number of cities: The Yes Men Fix the World, a retrospective of their anti-corporate pranks over the past few years. This seemed like a fine occasion to look at their astrological charts and consider what their existence says about the nature of reality. [View movie trailer here. Several videos are linked from this article and they are all a lot of fun.]

The Yes Men — created and led by Andy Bichlbaum, a Libra, and Mike Bonanno, an Aries — specialize in impostering corporate executives, then delivering an environmental message to petroleum conferences, World Trade Organization meetings and even live on BBC World.

By yesterday afternoon, I still hadn’t tracked down Bonanno’s birth time. When I finally got him on the phone, I was fortunate that his mother was standing right there with him, and that she remembered when he was born. Then Mike invited me down to the city for some after-the-screening fun: what he described as a procession and some drumming but which really turned out to be the takeover of an enormous Whole Foods market in lower Manhattan. They are always stealth about their plans.

After cruising 100 miles down the New York Thruway and then through the streets of Manhattan, I arrived at the Film Forum in Greenwich Village just as the screening ended. Bonanno was on his way; he is a professor and had just finished teaching a class. I waited outside, where I ran into one of the guys whose job it is to follow them around with a video camera; this seems to be a whole genre of art. He said that the Yes Men worked relentlessly, as if he had been tracking them around the clock for days on end and needed a shower and a night’s rest.

Soon after, Andy Bichlbaum came strolling up to the theater, and a few moments later, Bonanno arrived; just about every screening gets its own Q & A session. I followed them in. Standing in front of the movie screen, they took questions from the packed audience: How do you pay for all these antics? How is it that you don’t get arrested or sued? Aren’t people starting to recognize you?

Then they explained the plan to take over the local Whole Foods store. Why? John Mackey, the CEO of the national health food chain, had recently published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal wherein he said that it’s not the government’s job to provide health care and we should all fend for ourselves. Yes, the CEO of the groovy, crunchy organic food chain thinks that we’re all on our own.

Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum take questions from the audience Thursday night in New York City. They then turned a moviegoing experience into an activist event, and the Uranus-Pluto square had begun. Photo by Eric Francis / Planet Waves.

“Health care is a service that we all need,” he wrote, “but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That’s because there isn’t any. This ‘right’ has never existed in America.”

So he’s an erudite historian, and a patriot to boot. Interesting — a careful reading of the Constitution (or of the case law) does not reveal any intrinsic right of his corporation to exist perpetually, either.

Tonight, the Yes Men would be getting revenge. They passed around the lyrics to “Hey Mackey!”, sung to the tune of “Hey Mickey!” We would all meet in the frozen foods aisle and, after an announcement (via megaphone) of “a big spill in the health care aisle,” the protest would begin, operatically.

Hey, Mackey, you don’t seem to care
We’re not as rich as you but we still need health care.
Oh, Mackey, you’re so greedy can’t you understand?
It’s guys like you, Mackey!

They needed a singer to lead the chant; a hand went up, a guy came to the front, and he was handed the black, feather-adorned megaphone for an on-the spot-rehearsal. Then they said they needed a choreographer. Was there a choreographer in the house? A hand shot up near the back and they had someone to design a few cute little steps, the organic version of the Hokey-Pokey. Oh, and there would be SurvivaBalls involved — these huge inflated things that are supposed to enable corporate executives to survive floods, famines, pestilences, earthquakes and assault (in the event of climate change disasters). Using SurvivaBalls, the Yes Men had recently attempted to take the United Nations by sea, floating down the East River; only to be stopped by the NYPD five minutes later.

Audience participation: moviegoers transform into activists, take to the streets, and head east on Houston Street towards the Whole Foods Market. Photo by Eric Francis / Planet Waves.

Then the audience of about 150 got up, filed out of the theater, and headed east on Houston Street, toward the Bowery. I knew the Uranus-Pluto square of 2012 had begun. It was time to fight the power, in an organic foods store. We stopped for one last strategy session about two blocks away. The SurvivaBalls would need to discreetly take their positions various places, and would need time to suit up and inflate. (They are inflated with fans, and if the battery pack is charged, this can take as little as one minute. But it takes longer to suit up.) Everyone else would need to nonchalantly walk around the store, pretending to shop. Then we would hear the announcement and gather in the back and start the protest.

I was tracking Mike, who had taken off his ridiculous black helmet and was still wearing his lab coat. He put the black, feather-adorned megaphone into a shopping cart, picked up a few squash, set them down in the basket, and marched past the dairy aisle. Others walked into the store and feigned shopping. Hardly any of these people looked like they had ever been to a protest before; now they were stealthily congregating next to the non-GMO tortilla chips, waiting for the moment of action, wondering if they should pick up a few groceries for the weekend.

At one point, a security guard, catching onto the fact that something, um, unusual was going on, questioned me about my cameras, and instructed me not to take pictures in the store. “Oh, I would never take pictures here, I’m just a regular working guy on the way home from a busy day, doin’ a little shopping.”

“Who do you work for?”

“The New York Times.” I flipped out my Ulster County Sheriff press card, which he didn’t bother to read. Crisis avoided.

Andy Bichlbaum convenes a last minute strategy session in the dairy aisle of Whole Foods market on Houston Street. Photo by Eric Francis.

Several people asked me what was going to happen and what they should do; I said that this was the Yes Men moment. Their actions begin with an impeccable, carefully developed plan. Then things seem to fall apart. Then at the last second, it comes off flawlessly.

Suddenly we heard the announcement, coming from over near the salad bar. Loud and crackly and a bit obnoxious. ATTENTION SHOPPERS, THERE’S A SPILL IN THE HEALTH CARE AISLE.

Then the song and dance began, with drums, a bagpipe, clapping, and three adorable, enormous white critters waddling around. And the cameras and video cameras everywhere, more high-end Canons and Nikons than at a fashion show. And iPhones, cell phones and BlackBerries. I left a cell connection open to my friend Amanda in Maine, with the phone clipped to my camera strap, so she could hear the antics live. This was clearly the best documented supermarket takeover in history.

Hey, Mackey, you’re a swine, you’re a swine, you blow my mind
Hey, Mackey, what a pity you don’t seem to care…
Oh what you do Mackey, do Mackey.
Don’t break my heart, Mackey.

The mob moved toward the bakery aisle, and made a left at the kambucha. Security was now, finally, onto the plan. Guards and managers with walkie-talkies weren’t sure how to handle this. Technically, it was potentially a terrorist situation, and there were all these…cameras everywhere. People brazenly disobeying the “no photos” rule. This more than anything seemed to push them to the brink of panic. They looked extremely nervous. Some of the employees thought it was first-class funny. One of the guards tried to convince Bichlbaum to, well, convince him of something, but nobody stopped singing. It just seemed to go on and on.

The lyric sheet said to “repeat ad nauseam until real health care reform is passed,” and it actually seemed like it might last that long. But finally, we filed out into the street, everyone giddy. It had gone off impeccably. The SurvivaBall people unsuited. New York City police were buzzing around, wondering what to do; obviously they had been called by the store management. What exactly did they say? “It’s the Big Fig, only…he’s white…and there’s a bagpipe…”

The thrill of victory: SurvivaBall wearer outside Whole Foods. This product is allegedly made by Halliburton. Photo by Eric Francis.

Basically, the Yes Men had succeeded in getting everyone into their movie. Yet again. This is their specialty; and in truth, a Whole Foods was easy pickin’. They have taken on some big gorillas.

In what I often describe as the greatest prank in media history, Bichlbaum once impersonated a spokesman for Dow Chemical and, speaking to a live global audience on BBC World on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster in India, said the company was taking full responsibility for the toxic release and cleanup. Bhopal is considered one of the worst industrial catastrophes in history and has still not been remediated.

Dow Chemical had recently purchased Union Carbide, the perpetrator, for $12 billion, and for an incredible, uninterrupted five-and-a-half minutes Bichlbaum (using his alias Jude Finisterra) described how Union Carbide would be liquidated and the proceeds given to the toxic exposure victims. He added that Dow would open all of its product safety files to journalists and researchers and enter a phase of total transparency. Dow stock plunged 3% that day, costing shareholders billions.

But the Yes Men were not done. They went back to Andy’s apartment in Paris and, using Dow Chemical letterhead, issued a press release that said: what you just saw on BBC World was a hoax; none of it is true. We will not be cleaning up the site, we won’t be giving more money to Bhopal victims, we won’t be opening up our files — denying everything, point by point, upstaging Dow’s own PR department.

“We target people we see as criminals, and we steal their identity to try to make them honest,” explained Bonanno. Their Bhopal stunt on BBC World resulted in 600 articles appearing in the mainstream press; apparently, this is what it takes to get the media to cover something as important as the 20th anniversary of an industrial disaster that killed tens of thousands of people.

Andy Bichlbaum poses as Dow Chemical spokesman on BBC World, taking full responsibility for the Bhopal disaster, which killed 25,000 people in 1984.

“You can’t help but fall in love with them,” said Paul Rapp, a Massachusetts attorney who has represented them and who helps from time to time. “They don’t do any harm, they’re provocative and they’re as ballsy as they come.”

The Yes Men got their start after acquiring the Internet domain GATT.org (a reference to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) where they posted a parody of a World Trade Organization website. “People looked at the site and didn’t look at the content,” Rapp explained. He said Michael Moore was one of the contributors, among other gifted satire writers.

Soon after, the Yes Men were contacted to make a presentation at a textiles conference in Helsinki, Finland, where they appeared as representatives of the WTO. In other words, in their first major coup, they were invited to the conference; they didn’t have to fake anything. “It landed in their laps and they said let’s go,” Rapp said.

“They went to Helsinki and advocated slavery. Nobody protested. They all took notes and then had lunch.”

It wasn’t until the Vivoleum hoax in 2007 that they actually were stopped. They got on the agenda at the Calgary Gas and Oil Exposition representing ExxonMobil, introducing a new product. “As humans begin to die as a result of calamities caused by climate change, their remains could be harvested for an alternative fuel source called ‘Vivoleum’ that would eventually replace oil,” Bichlbaum told the audience of oil execs from around the world.

They passed around lit candles purportedly made from the remains of a fictional Exxon maintenance employee named Reggie Watts, who died after responding to a toxic spill. They played a video tribute to Reggie, but by that time, security was escorting them out of the room. The owners of the conference called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who thought it was so funny they refused to arrest them. But the managers of the conference were infuriated and insisted that charges be pressed. According to Rapp, the Mounties recommended Canadian attorneys to defend them.

Now that we know who they are, let’s take a look at their charts. I obtained the birth information directly from each of them in the past few days; I am publishing the charts but not the birth data so that nobody steals their identities. The rest of this article includes a technical discussion; not everyone will be up to it but nobody is allowed to complain. If you’re a beginning student or even curious about astrology, try to follow along. I’m giving the details rather than just interpretations; and a discussion will be initiated Friday morning on the Planet Waves blog.

Right away, we see they have three important things in common. First, they’re born in the 1960s. Bonanno is born in 1968 and Bichlbaum is born in 1963. Here, we have a rare example of people living out the radical astrology of that era, which has its roots in the Uranus-Pluto conjunction in Virgo. Both men have that rare aspect in full force, and interestingly both have it in the 11th house — the house of community and the public. They feel that influence working in the public sphere, and are gathering energy and goodwill as a result of using that energy wisely and for the public good.

Rick Tarnas in his book Cosmos and Psyche said that in his astrological study of history, people born with one of the major Uranus-Pluto aspects find their place in history when the next one arrives — which it’s doing at the moment: the Uranus-Pluto square that’s coming into focus and which begins to reach full strength in the spring. (I’ll show this aspect influences all the signs in the 2010 annual edition of Planet Waves, Cosmic Confidential.)

Andy Bichlbaum leads the anti-corporate choir in Whole Foods. Photo by Eric Francis.

The second thing they have in common is nearly the same ascendant; not just Scorpio rising, but within one degree: Bonanno has 2+ Scorpio rising and Bichlbaum has 3+ Scorpio rising; they are exact to within one degree of precision. When people have the same ascendant, it’s easy for them to share a worldview. Regardless of what year they were born, they experience the passage of planets through the houses at the same time. Mars rules the ascendant of both charts; but if you look at their Mars placements, they are nearly in exact opposition, to within one degree.

Third, Bonanno has seven planets and points in Aries (innovative, bold, self-aware) and Bichlbaum has five planets and points in Libra (a drive for justice and talent for making things beautiful). Both men are artists and designers. They have bold alignments in the cardinal signs that mirror one another, and when you see them in action, that’s how it feels. Like many talented actors who work closely together, they can anticipate one another’s moves, communicate without needing too many words, and function as a unit without sacrificing their individuality. (In an interesting parallel to their opposite Sun placements, Andy is born on the West Coast, in LA, and Mike is born on the East Coast, in NY.)

I gave the charts to Tracy Delaney at Serennu.com to find the coolest minor planet placements. In her view, this involved Ixion, a small planet just beyond Pluto’s orbit; and Ceres, the former asteroid. Both Mike and Andy have these two points placed prominently. Ceres deals with food, nourishment, grief and processes that create or restore balance. Ixion is all about morality and morality plays.

“Mike has Ixion exactly rising, and Andy has Ixion conjunct Moon. Both have Ceres in the 12th house, conjunct the ascendant,” she wrote.

“Ceres/Ixion is a good description for environmental atrocities. Ixion is also ‘capable of anything’ as you often say. They seem to be bringing out the delineation for us: ‘going way too far’, ‘shocking behaviour’, etc. Nice to see Ixion can be expressed so positively.”

SurvivaBall wearing protester waddles out of the store. Photo by Eric Francis.

As I described in the Mighty Equinox edition, over the next few years, potent planetary energy moves into the cardinal signs. This began with Pluto moving into Capricorn in 2008-2009, and will continue with Saturn moving into Libra later in the month. By next spring, Jupiter and Uranus make visits to Aries (including an exact conjunction on the Aries Point), and the trend will continue with Mars entering Libra over the summer. This energy only builds from here, and the Yes Men are all but assured a continued rise to prominence.

The obvious question, though, is what gives them the ability to do what they do? That is to say, imposter nearly anyone and walk through walls? And get away with it over and over?

Bichlbaum’s chart gives the first and perhaps the best clues. He has a loaded 12th house, which makes him not just a natural born actor, but also a talented shapeshifter.

Take a look at his 1st house — four points in Scorpio, in particular a Mars-Neptune conjunction. Anyone with this conjunction is going to have an intense life. They have a visionary quality, which could manifest as anything from a gift for filmmaking, poetry, photography, and a tendency to take very big risks. They’re not afraid to risk it all if they have to; it’s been described as Kamikaze. And that’s exactly what the Yes Men do: they dive in headlong, and see what happens.

But Bichlbaum works with a plan; he is a master of the game. He has the asteroid Pallas Athene precisely conjunct the Sun, which gives him an innate understanding of politics, law, strategy and plenty of protection. I think he’s actually going to end up at the negotiating table on behalf of the public when the climate change endgame arrives.

No arrests; no teargas; no nonlethal weapons, Tasers or paramilitary cops. Photo by Eric Francis.

Bonanno has a chart of a different color: it’s difficult to pack more Aries into one horoscope than he has. This gives him initiative and inventiveness — and in the 6th house a strong drive to service. This is Aries at its best: self-awareness, self-confidence and devotion to getting the job done. Bonanno is capable of nearly infinite amounts of work, which he mingles with a quest for pioneering adventure. Check out his Chiron directly on the Aries Point, to the degree. It will be interesting to see how his career develops when that Jupiter-Uranus conjunction happens there on June 8.

Bonanno is born between a lunar eclipse and a solar eclipse (you can tell, in part, because his Sun is on one of the lunar nodes). Being born during or even near eclipses gives the feeling of living with the hand of fate on one’s shoulder, it can make one’s life seem larger than life, and can grant access to a wide public.

He has a chart that pulls the Sixties astrology into full focus: check out the sextile between Neptune and Uranus (with a 25 next to each of them), and the Sun showing up at the point of a yod (at 26 degrees of Aries).

Remember as you study these charts, these are talented men who are responding to the times in which they live. They have determined to put their natural gifts to work for a purpose. Notably, neither has “given up a career” to do this work; both currently work as university professors.

We all have gifts. The Yes Men are rising to the occasion of history, and they are in tune with the times: the only people who can tell the truth have a sense of humor. Their message actually seems to be getting through, and now they’re movie stars. As Paul Rapp, their sometimes lawyer said yesterday, “It’s easier to get people to see your way of thinking when you get them to laugh rather than throw bricks at them. That’s just human nature.”

Yours & truly,

PS, readers in the New York area are invited to meet me Saturday for the 6:15 showing of The Yes Men Fix the World. This will be at the Film Forum in Manhattan, on West Houston reet west of 6th Ave. Note, it would be smart to purchase tickets online in advance! For directions and other information you can call the theater at (212) 727-8110. I’ll get there by about 5:30 pm and I plan to go out for dinner somewhere afterwards. If you plan to be there, please drop me a note at dreams@planetwaves.net. I’m planning to bring my dad, who is a nuclear industry public relations specialist.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I’ve been thinking about endurance; it’s not a happy word in this current sociopolitical climate. It conjures up visions of trudging onward, making do, standing against the storm. It often assumes that those who endure have some magical capacity to withstand any perceived loss or happenstance, no matter how grim, and emerge unscathed; that they are muscled and boned a bit differently than much of frail humanity, that they have an extra bit of oomph that the rest of us don’t possess. Stuff and nonsense, of course; we’re all configured with everything we need to endure and even overcome any slings or arrows aimed our way. We’re not just bodies, not just a tumbled collection of wounded emotions and thwarted desires; we are all — as Dannion Brinkley, who survived three Near Death Experiences and has written convincingly of the wisdom he received during those events, puts it — powerful spiritual entities.

The Strongest Souls. Photo by Accretion Point.

To assume that endurance requires glass-half-empty experiences that limit and diminish us pits us against the wisdom of our own life path; who can say what is random occurrence and what we’ve put in our own way to stumble upon, to overcome, to grow through? Kahlil Gibran tells us that, “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” Only a person who has endured and understood the journey can say, as did he, “The deeper sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain.” In my own life, the most difficult periods plowed the ground for harvest; the greatest sorrows led me not to answers that would lull me back to sleep but to questions that pushed me forward into exploration and expanded awareness. Those who endure gather strength in increments, like mighty redwoods that add another thin ring year after year, decade after decade; or the grains of sand that slowly but surely become magnificent pearls.

Twenty-five years ago I sustained a personal trauma, a turning point in my life that set me back hard. A rather dim friend, studying to be a psychologist, told me that she ‘saw the Phoenix arising’ in me; that I’d be fine. Soon after, my Phoenix found itself in intensive care with viral pneumonia in both lungs; I lapsed into a coma, saw the Light, received a gentle chiding about my use of personal will and was sent back to get on with it. NDE? Assuredly. Smooth sailing on the other side of such an experience? Of course not. Brinkley, who was twice struck by lightning and suffers pain to this day, begged to be released from his body and allowed to remain on the Other Side on the occasion of all three NDEs. Our human ego, our tangled emotions, our limited self-perception are all 3D attributes that both define us and thwart our progress; endurance requires real internal work, a daily flexing of spiritual muscle that is grist for the mill of the Gods, grinding slowly and growing our beauty.

Coming Up in Daily Astrology and Adventure

 

 

We’ve come a long way since the Apollo program, when we would loft a rocket into space, land gently on the Moon, plant a flag, collect a few rocks and take some pictures for use on MTV. Today, NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) was scheduled to slam into the Cabeus crater, located close to the Moon’s south pole, at 7:31 am ET.

The best places to explore on the Moon may be the toughest to land on. So we’d really like to know exactly what’s there before we try. Punching the Moon in the nose is one way to find out! Credit: Tom Lucas & Dave Brody.

The event was broadcast live on NASA TV, which will doubtless replay the video more often than a Billy Mays commercial in heavy rotation. If that’s not enough, you can watch it over and over on your iPhone.

So what’s up with this intentional crash landing? Well, the “punch in the nose,” as the wags at SpaceNews.com put it, will enable NASA to determine what’s in the soil of the lunar surface at that point. The way you do that is you make a big plume of dust and then you analyze it using spectrometry, among other things. All this talk about water up there — well, we just had to dive in.

Knowing what resources are there will help NASA determine where to establish landing sites in the long run, should they return men to the Moon. And who knows, maybe there’s gold; and we’re going to need a place for a really big prison colony; and a staging area for deep space travel; and so on.

According to NASA’s website for LCROSS, the exercise is a two-stage operation. First, a rocket that the mythically clueless wonders have called Centaur, will slam into the Moon, sending up a debris plume that may reach 10 kilometers in height. Up above, the LCROSS mothership will first photograph the whole thing and stream video directly back to NASA, then pass through the plume and analyze the debris. What’s NASA looking for, specifically? Signs of water and “water fragments” (OH molecules), as well as salts, clays, minerals and organic bits and bobs.

Then the mothership herself will strike the surface, creating a second debris plume. That will be examined by the Hubble Space Telescope — as well as, NASA hopes, hundreds or thousands of backyard astronomers with 10-inch or larger telescopes, which should be capable of spotting the action from planetside. Once is never enough.

 

One of the most alluring things about space is that because of its very vastness, it’s possible for truly enormous things to effectively be hidden in plain sight for centuries, even millennia. Then, one day, some clever stargazers think of a new way to look at part of the sky that’s been stared at countless times before, and suddenly something truly magnificent appears.

An enormous ring discovered in infrared light by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. The yellow line shows the orbit of the moon Phoebe, which circles through the newfound ring, represented in tan. Both Phoebe and the outer ring orbit at an angle of 27 degrees from the main ring plane (they also orbit in the opposite direction of the other rings and most of the moons). Credit: NASA.

This week, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working with the Spitzer Space Telescope, identified a new ring around Saturn — a ring so vast that its size is hard to comprehend.

The inside edge of this ring is some 3.7 million miles away from Saturn, and the ring itself is 7.4 million miles wide. It’s not very dense; at 20 particles per cubic centimeter, you couldn’t walk around on it. That’s reason it wasn’t spotted sooner. Within it orbits Saturn’s moon Phoebe, which is one of the planet’s most distant satellites; both Phoebe and the ring, in fact, orbit in the opposite direction of the rest of the moons and rings.

The ring was found by University of Virginia-Charlottesville astronomer Anne Verbiscer and her colleagues, who used the Spitzer Telescope’s infrared imaging system to identify the giant ring. According to the JPL website’s article on the discovery, infrared was the key to finding the ring.

“The ring would be difficult to see with visible-light telescopes,” the article reads. “Its particles are diffuse and may even extend beyond the bulk of the ring material all the way in to Saturn and all the way out to interplanetary space. The relatively small numbers of particles in the ring wouldn’t reflect much visible light, especially out at Saturn where sunlight is weak.”

Added Verbiscer: “The particles are so far apart that if you were to stand in the ring, you wouldn’t even know it.” Of course, he means “float around in the ring.”

Another Saturnian mystery may have been solved by the discovery of the new ring, as well. Back in 1671, the astronomer discovered a Saturn moon he named Iapetus, and several years later he noted the moon has a giant dark spot on it. Now it’s suspected that the spot was created by impacts of materials from the ring on Iapetus, “slamming the icy moon like bugs on a windshield,” according to JPL.

The first thing most astrology readers are going to ask is: what is the implication for astrology? My reply: the solar system, which makes up most of our symbolic set of references for the astrology we do, is a work in progress. We hardly know anything about it.

It’s remarkable that this discovery is announced just as Mercury was making a conjunction to Saturn, in aspect to the Galactic Core (see Wednesday’s daily astrology post). This is a message from Saturn. And it’s about the galactic nature of Saturn (for eons, thought to be the outermost planet): this ring has the distinct image of a galaxy, a far-flung plane of dust.

The ring also does something a little like Pluto or a Centaur planet: it intersects the plane of Saturn’s traditionally referenced rings at an angle. Pluto’s angle of intersection the Sun’s equator is about 11 degrees. This ring intersects at about 27 degrees. So there’s a mystery. If some force is holding the other rings in place where they are, some other previously unknown force is holding this one in place. That raises more questions than it provides answers, though one implication is that this is how Saturn works in astrology as well. It has another influence than the one we think it has.

 

The Indonesian island of Sumatra, devastated by a powerful earthquake Sept. 30, was dealt further blows in the following days as huge mudslides ripped through some areas. According to The New York Times, as many as 600 people were buried by landslides after the earthquake, taking the estimated death toll well past the 1,100 previously reported.

On Thursday, Typhoon Melor continued its creep northward through Japan’s minor islands, heading for the main land masses and threatening heavy rains and high winds. The Tokai region was expected to receive more than 15 inches of rain Thursday, prompting Toyota to shut down its manufacturing plants in the area around the city of Nagoya, Japan’s third-largest city.

Meanwhile, in India a week of flooding has left more than 250 people dead in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, located in the country’s southern region. More than 2 million people fled their homes during the inundation, MSNBC reports.

And Southern California was on the good side of a cold snap this week, as temperatures dipped 10 to 15 degrees below normal  and winds died down — all boons to firefighters who were working to contain the 7,100-acre Sheep Fire that had been raging through the mountains, timber, and chaparral — not to mention communities — in the San Bernardino National Forest.

 

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Weekly Horoscope for Friday, October 9, 2009, #787 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Aries (March 20-April 19)
Most people strive for stability in their relationships, which is good until it gets boring. Elements of your work life may be influencing you to seek a little jolt of excitement elsewhere, but be gentle on the people you love. You have an opportunity to see how far your insecurities will allow you to go. You’ve been sensitive lately; the past seems very close by, and your fears seem easily provoked. Confidence is most meaningful to dial in when you’re feeling less than confident, which is one of those emotional paradoxes that works brilliantly when you get a handle on it. Remember, if you’re feeling fear, give the fear a voice. Pay attention if you notice yourself shaking things up for their own sake. True intimacy happens on the uncertain edge, and you’re close to it now.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
You seem to be doing a lot of negotiating with yourself about whether to take a risk on something; though what you’ve left out of the conversation is a real assessment of what that risk actually is. It’s too easy and entirely popular to think, This is too risky, but rarely do we ask what we have to lose. This question would help whether we have plenty to lose or, as is more likely the case for you now, very little to lose by allowing yourself to experiment. Well, the one thing you stand to lose is a false belief that someone else is in charge of your life. Nobody wants to think this; usually it comes up in the form of excuses that all cook down to some version of, “If I try this, my mother won’t approve of me.” And then?

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
Mercury is about to become free of its retrograde in Virgo, a transit that has made progress seem like a thing of the past. The process has certainly given you plenty to meditate on, and you may be wondering if you’re any better for having gone through so much mental and emotional introspection. I suggest that you not try to make up your mind about this right now; try to avoid judging anything at all. Simply move forward and see where you end up in a few weeks. For a while you’ll still be covering what seems like old territory, doing some things over and rethinking history yet again. You’ll notice the difference vividly when you arrive in new territory, and that’s the time to keep your focus on what is new and what you’re creating.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
The question “What is a self?” is an old one, yet few people have answered it for themselves. If we ask what is a man or what is a woman, the answer is part biological fact and part social concept; a construction with no truth anywhere but in our minds — and thus open to interpretation. You’re at a point where it’s become necessary to let go of a model or concept of who you think you are. Yet it would be wise of you not to confuse this with who you actually are. The past can be a tyrant, all the more so because we tend to be out of contact with it, or discount its influence. There’s a way to deal with the past effectively: with total awareness. If you do that, you can trust that the choices you make now will indeed have the power to help you change your life.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
Who hasn’t looked at a cat and wondered what’s going on in that mind? In the secret life of Leo, you’re harder on yourself than nearly anyone recognizes. I reckon that in the past week you’ve had a revelation or two about why that doesn’t work, and as the next couple of weeks progress, you’ll be gifted with some ideas about a better policy by which you can run your life. I’m not suggesting that you suspend your ethics, which serve you well; I am proposing that most self-improvement is less about ‘working on yourself’ and more about making up your mind about what you want and what is right for you. Contrary to some astrological rumors you are not a selfish person by nature, though you need to be just selfish enough to take care of yourself well.

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
You often torment yourself with the details, but not like this. However, you do seem to be working your way toward the conclusion of a process that has lingered since midsummer. I would remind you that you’re not working on anything but yourself. Here’s a little exercise that I learned from uber-Virgo Brad Blanton, author of Radical Honesty. Every time you say the word “it,” get rid of the T. That would mean that “it’s difficult” translates to “I am difficult.” “It’s expensive” would translate to “I am expensive” and “It’s nice out” would become “I feel good today.” As you play this game, you’ll start to notice how much projecting you, me and the rest of us do. Once you do that, you can start to claim your reality as something you create or at least witness on your own terms.

Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
We tend to view having a strategy as a good thing, and sometimes it is. Yet sometimes having a plan isolates us from being spontaneous, which is one of those things that allow for authenticity and intimacy. The fact that you’re being so conscious of your plans seems to be born out of a missing sense of your own existence. True, you’ve been dragged through quite a lot the past week, but that hasn’t given you an actual sense of who you are; though hopefully it’s offered a clue as to what’s missing. Each time you find yourself making a strategy, pause and ask yourself what you really want. If you find yourself being mentally defensive and trying to ward off dangers that don’t exist yet, stop and ask again. Let the answers guide you.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
You seem to be enmeshed in an old belief that you’re trying to get rid of and thus improve your life. Some make it sound like it’s the easiest thing in the world: change your beliefs and change your life! Most of us know it’s not that easy. Usually, we have no clue what we believe, much less why. If you look honestly, you may discover that you’re hooked in emotionally rather than intellectually; and that the root comes from a hidden pattern that you picked up from your family, which is in turn rooted in religion. I would propose that most religious beliefs are emotional rather than spiritual in nature. Whether they are true doesn’t matter. That we feel better for a moment is the goal, and it’s one that’s no longer serving you.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
Jupiter, the planet associated with your sign, is sitting close to a halt in Aquarius. This tells me that an idea is getting ready to either start moving, or come to fruition. Anyone involved in the actual manifestation of ideas, which is probably something you attempt on a regular basis and even succeed at, knows that they seem to take on a life of their own. To the extent that life has included a lot of sleeping in, walking backwards and irritating your friends, it now seems ready to include progress, utility and a bit of fun. There’s not a rush here — some of the best stuff on its way, especially in the concept/project department, develops over the next six months. All of it grows from what you’ve been up to lately, and what you are doing now. Therefore, take one step at a time, and the occasional opportunity for a leap.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
If you perceive yourself in danger, remember that you’re protected. This protection won’t get you too far into a string of felonies, but it will support and embrace you when you know you’re doing the right thing for yourself and for the people you love. Herein lies a slippery matter, though: what if there’s a conflict between the two? What if doing the right thing for yourself hurts others? The truth is, most of the time it does not. Something else is going on: not only are you being given an opportunity to see your fears for what they are, you have an opportunity to see your strengths for what they can do for you. Remember, as so many do not, that there’s a difference between a fear and a crisis.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
Someone just pointed out to me that one manifestation of the Age of Aquarius (a very long age lasting 2,000 years, and a relatively short one of lots of planetary energy coming through your birth sign in our current era of history) is that everyone has to endorse everyone else or nobody believes anything is valid. We know this is more ridiculous evidence of how much trouble many people have thinking for themselves, a trait so rare few people even have a clue. I would pose two questions this week: one is how can you take a ride on this property of existence in a constructive way? Second, can you bring awareness to your own struggle in thinking for yourself? Or put another way, have you signed up anyone to run your life?

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
This has not been an easy stretch of your life in certain close relationships, but you’re no worse for wear. In fact, the clarity you’ve gained has been worth all the effort. You may be lacking the angst and the drama of recent months, but that’s not a substitute for happiness. You can handle a crisis, but I assure you that you would not prefer them if you had an alternative, and you’re now being invited to give yourself precisely that. You are about to enter new territory in your personal and sexual relationships. The way to maximize this astrology is to look for points of agreement you share with people, and work from there. If you have similar ideas about food, eat together. If you have values in common about money, do business. If you share common ground about sex, create some sex.

BY ERIC FRANCIS

Today’s bonus horoscope is our third monthly for the Libra cycle of the Sun. Imagine reading it in one of those big thick fashion magazines, only down in Australia. We’ll be back with another Tuesday bonus edition next week, but it won’t be a horoscope. See you with a regular edition Friday! –efc

Aries (March 20-April 19)
Keep two ideas side by side: Leadership and Relationship. You’re in an unusual position of authority, but your strength is in your ability to negotiate and create agreements that benefit everyone. If you’re looking for a way to get attention, remember that passion is what actually inspires people. Express your vitality in an original way and very nearly everyone will respond.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
You’re discovering that your old beliefs don’t stand up to the test of the current version of your life, or of the world. This may be the best news you’ve ever had. Once you make friends with this, you will see it as potential and nothing less. Make sure your new beliefs leave plenty of room for achievements that you would have decided were impossible just a few seasons ago.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
You’re now free to take on your more desirable creative passions. During the past couple of months you’ve thought them over, and I trust made some decisions about what’s important to you. You’re holding two keys in your hands: one of them says use what you know; the other one says that true creativity involves taking a risk, a leap or a guess.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
You will have a rare glimpse into the innermost feelings of someone close to you during the next few weeks; and more meaningfully, they will know you can really sense what’s going on with them. Stay open and give honest feedback, but know that your ability to resonate with their feelings is the thing that will gain and keep their precious trust.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
You’re seeing the end of so many financial woes, and I hope by now you’re figuring out that their source involved too much focus on details and not enough on ideas. Be clear with yourself just how much wealth or independence you think it will take for you to feel safe and secure. Then get yourself to that level and notice how you feel. From there, you will have options.

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
Saturn is about to make its exit from your birth time, and when you look back on this extended phase of your life, you will notice one thing, really: you finally came to terms with who you are. Now that you have that significant benefit, it’s time to put it to work. It’s your privilege to achieve what can only be done by a confident person.

Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
You have had enough being alone, or feeling alone. With any luck you’ve used this time in your life to get to know yourself, and to embrace the mysterious nature of your own existence. I also trust that you’ve faced a few fears that persisted far too long. What happens next will demonstrate one thing, at least: it was worth the wait, and the effort.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
You are an introspective person by nature, and sometimes you wish you were not. I suggest you prepare for an extended phase of life when your primary goal, more than ever before, becomes getting to know yourself. The specific task you will master involves how to maintain your balance in your deepest relationships, a skill that we all could use.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
You know it’s time to get serious about money. It’s been that time for a while. The problem seems to be that your best ideas don’t seem to have a direct connection to cash flow. That, I assure you, is a matter of applying the same creativity that created the ideas in the first place. It’s also a matter of believing in yourself. Try it and see.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
You’re about to have your first real test of where your new definition of yourself meets up with your highest vision of achievement. Years from now, remember one thing: I did not say ‘second highest’. In the weeks and months to come, aspire to the one thing that you know is at the very top of your priority list, and which has been for a while.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
To most people, I can say: only you know who you really are. To an Aquarian I would say: who you are is so complex and so deeply concealed that you often have a challenging time figuring it out yourself. You’re about to glace into an excellent mirror, taking the form of one particular decision you make that will reveal your true identity.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
You have a gift that many people strive for: the ability to experience your sexuality and your spiritual nature as one thing. If you imagine that most of your friends don’t quite have this skill, the strange things they do and the odd struggles that grow out of their choices will at least seem easier to grasp. Remember: you can do things differently.