Dear Friend and Reader:

It’s a pleasure to be able to write about a solar-lunar event that is not an eclipse, or something sitting on the Aries Point. That has been the story behind every New Moon or Full Moon so far this summer. With the Leo New Moon of Aug. 20, we close the book on those events and move on to new territory.

A lion in Namibia. Photo: Wikipedia.

This New Moon, placed at 27+ Leo, happens in the last few days before the Sun ingresses Virgo and (in the Northern Hemisphere) the summer season begins to disseminate into the autumn. This is one of the most palpable sign changes of the Sun that I’ve ever felt; sometimes it seems as if the Sun actually appears different between its time in Leo and its time in Virgo. The rays seem softer, almost like they are coming through a wicker screen some days.

We’re not quite there yet. First we have the Sun-Moon conjunction, or the Leo New Moon. This is a pretty interesting piece of astrological work: the conjunction is opposite to within one degree where the Jupiter-Chiron-Neptune conjunction happened this past spring. All those planets are now retrograde, and the conjunction has fanned out a few degrees earlier. Over the weekend the Sun opposed each of them, one at a time. The New Moon later in the week reminds us of their influence when we combine them into one focused ray of light.

Here, we come to the passage in the story about where the individual life meets the collective life. Leo is a truly holistic kind of individualism. It’s not the self-focused kind that we see in Aries and it’s not the unworldly kind that we see in Sagittarius. Leo’s ‘planet’ is the Sun, the ringmaster of the many-ringed circus of the solar system and of the psyche. The Aquarius triple conjunction is about taking our awareness to a new level of collective reality just like Leo takes a holistic view of individualism; that the individual contains the whole.

The key to the triple conjunction is Chiron, who in Aquarius represents the awareness that we all carry a tribal wound; the expectation of being outcast; the sense that we don’t fit in. Jupiter and Neptune are here to teach us that we can heal that. There are two levels, at least: Jupiter representing the need for individuals to get to know how big the world is, and how diverse, and learn how much everyone has in common, despite this.

Neptune for its part represents the need for us to wake up spiritually. I use that word carefully, but I know what I mean. I mean wake up, at all. I mean wake up to the fact that this dimension is not all there is, and to the truth of how deluded most people are; and how little we bother to apply what we know — and how much we need to. Chiron for its part is acting on both Jupiter and Neptune: in the first instance, to bring what is distant and wise and exotic to the immediate environment; and with Neptune to wake up from our delusion that we take any comfort at all in denial or greed.

Cats in window, Ile St Louis. Photo by Eric Francis.

Now we have a New Moon in Leo looking right at this whole story. We have the Sun and the Moon in a self-aware place, considering this much larger situation. This is the picture of an individual deciding it’s time to come into balance and see where we actually fit into this process. The New Moon emphasizes the need to align the masculine and the feminine attributes of consciousness and actually think with both halves of our brain.

Apropos of male and female inner archetypes, I will leave you with one image from the chart that might reveal something about this. Both Venus and Mars are relating to the planet Uranus, though in radically different ways. This week we get Mars in Gemini square Uranus in Pisces. This sounds like dualism colliding with itself and we realize that dualism is a tool or a quality that has a purpose and when that purpose is done we need to shift our perception to a unified level of consciousness — though as something resembling a conscious choice or action.

Venus in Cancer is also trine Uranus in Pisces. The suggestion here is that the feminine energy can simply flow, when it’s allowed to. It’s not about doing but merely allowing. This is something we rarely facilitate; in our society we put all kinds of regulations on the experience of feminine emotions, passions, feelings and sentiments — in both women and men. We have come a long way toward teaching everyone that women are merely display items, not the actual human experience.

Looked at one way the setup involving the Leo New Moon is about catching a glimpse of how out of whack we are emotionally, and admitting the need to hold that awareness long enough for healing to come — or even to begin. And to state it again, much of that healing involves thinking with both sides of our brains; feeling with both sides of our bodies; and to the best extent we can, standing in the viewpoint of the people we share intimacy or space with.

Yours & truly,

Max Yasgur (1919-1973), who allowed the Woodstock Festival to happen on a grazing pasture of his dairy farm in Bethel, New York. His neighbors did not appreciate this. Everyone else did.

Dear Friend and Reader:

This weekend is the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival, which was actually held in Bethel, New York — a town whose name translates to “house of God.” We’ve always paid tribute to Woodstock at Planet Waves, and commemorated the event in some small way almost every year. The original, one and only festival, held Aug. 15, 16, 17 and 18, 1969, was one of the great watersheds of the modern human experience, defying everything that our society is supposed to be, and exemplifying what we can create if we want. I don’t mean sex, drugs and rock and roll: I mean people getting along with one another, sharing what we have and celebrating existence.

Hexagram 13 of the I Ching: Fellowship Among Men.

It’s a little-known historical fact that on the eve of 500,000 people gathering for what in fact became three days of peace and music, Wavy Gravy threw the I Ching and got Hexagram 13, “Fellowship Among Men.” This is “the creative, heaven” above and “the flame” below. It’s a picture of creative fire, rising from the Earth. We’ve been talking a lot about Vesta lately, and this is a beautiful manifestation of her energy: the goddess of the creative fire within, and in the world. In fact the asteroid Vesta is prominent in this chart, which I’ll get to in a moment.

This event took place in what would have been an unforgettable summer in any event: the Moon landing, the gruesome antics of the Manson family, the recording of Abbey Road, the breakup of the Beatles and many other events, all of which culminate at the Woodstock Festival on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in sleepy old Sullivan County, a place there are usually more cows than people.

The judgment or predicted outcome when this hexagram appears is: “Fellowship among men in the open. Success. It furthers one to cross the great water. The perseverance of the superior man furthers.” Imagine how they must have felt seeing that message come out of the yarrow sticks.

Woodstock friends. The opening day of the festival, on a farm road somewhere between Bethel and the festival site. Photo: Ric Manning.

One commentary reads, “True fellowship among men must be based upon a concern that is universal. It is not the private interests of the individual that create lasting fellowship among men, but rather the goals of humanity. That is why it is said that fellowship with men in the open succeeds. If unity of this kind prevails, even difficult and dangerous tasks, such as crossing the great water, can be accomplished. But in order to bring about this sort of fellowship, a persevering and enlightened leader is needed, a man with clear, convincing and inspiring aims and the strength to carry them out.”

This was prophetic, if you ask me — it tells the story of an unprecedented community event, and of a vast, unconscionable missed opportunity in the decades that followed. Yes, some people tried in the 70s. Many people were searching or alternatives. There were numerous experiments in intentional community, some of which were short lived and some of which are still in existence today. The groundbreaking work of the Humanistic therapists was incredible, and we need to start reading those books again, and organizing consciousness-raising groups. But the Woodstock Generation quickly degraded into what was popularly known at the time as the Me Generation; then came the Neoconservative movement in the 1980s and its absolute obsession with private gain and profit. Today, we are still fighting over whether people are entitled to go to the doctor.

As for a persevering and enlightened leader: we’re getting there, though none too quickly.

The Festival’s Astrology

Let’s have a look at that Woodstock chart. There are a lot of astrologers in Woodstock. People have actually written books about this chart. It’s an astrology class in a sheet of paper. You might want to read the history of the event in Wikipedia so that you have a clear, objective narrative of what happened that weekend. (The list of acts that declined, and why, is something I find eternally amusing.) Many accounts have been written and exploring them would make a fine evening on the Internet. The chart is for the moment when Richie Havens took the stage on Friday night, 5:07 pm EDT.

Click on image to enlarge.

The chart for the Aquarian Exposition has Capricorn rising. This supports my theory that all truly revolutionary activity involves Capricorn. That’s because revolution is a tradition; and it requires structure and focus. However, let’s not forget that while the original festival was a total failure as a business, it was designed as a capitalist project, and as the decades have unfolded Woodstock Ventures, Inc. has certainly maintained this reputation impeccably. While I have bemoaned this attitude in past articles (there are some ugly stories that I will spare you here; but some are told in the third section of this article), it’s all I can do not to drop down onto one knee when I bump into Michael Lang, whose idea Woodstock was.

Using a chart with about 24 planets and points, the only ones that turn up in Aquarius are the Part of Fortune, Ceres and Pholus. If you had cast the chart at the time, you would have been unlikely to see any of them. The Part of Fortune was cast using a different, incorrect formula, only revised recently. Ceres was largely ignored at the time, and Pholus would not be discovered for another 23 years.

It would have been more accurate to describe this as a Virgo/Libra Expo. The main item in Virgo is Pluto, which had been there since the late 1950s and which set the tone of the Sixties; the Moon is applying to Pluto in a one-degree conjunction, emphasizing the point. It had been just three years since the Uranus-Pluto conjunction — that incredible spark plug, which fires next in 2012 with the beginning of seven consecutive Uranus-Pluto squares over a few years.

It’s always fascinated me that the Moon-Pluto conjunction is sitting on the South Node (called Ketu), which suggests that there is something coming up from the distant past; that this is the product of a very long history. This is located in the 9th house, the one about all things spiritual, exotic and invoking the Higher Self. As a filter, Virgo provides the energy of service, awareness and ideas.

Janis at Woodstock. Photo by Henry Ditz, Corbis.

By 1969, however, big planets were transitioning into Libra, which brings in the vibe of beauty, balance and harmony. Many of the best and most beloved rock stars, from John Lennon to Elton John to Thom Yorke, have strong Libra placements. There was a big conjunction in Libra that summer: Jupiter conjunct Uranus, which in a word is about fellowship and in another word about art. This took place in the early degrees of Libra, opposite the Aries Point, which as you’ve read here 100 times is about the intersection of the personal and the political; the zone of the zodiac where events take on vast meaning that resonates personally in a deep way with a broad population. Indeed, there has never been a single concert with greater cultural impact. Nothing that I can think of has even come close. I know from having been a writer for Woodstock Times that the word “Woodstock” is one of the world’s most recognizable brands.

As for the Aries Point, who do we find right there except Mr. Chiron, who would not be discovered for another eight years; and a few degrees away, Eris, who would not be recognized until 2006. So when you look at news footage of the festival, consider that the four most energetically weighted signs were Aries, Virgo, Libra and Capricorn.

There’s just one last thing: Venus conjunct Vesta in Cancer. This is the story of people passionately caring for and about one another. This is not an act. These are in my view the two most significant representations of the Goddess. It’s about sex offered freely as a gesture of love, service and healing — values we could learn a lot from today. Venus-Vesta-Cancer fires up the devotional ray of consciousness, and the sense of making home wherever you are; of loving the one you’re with.

Let’s go to an actuality — a fun quote from the history of the concert as told by the Wikipedia editors:

As the only reporter at Woodstock for the first 36 hours or so, Barnard Collier of The New York Times was almost continually pressed by his editors in New York to make the story about the immense traffic jams, the less-than-sanitary conditions, the rampant drug use, the lack of “proper policing”, and the presumed dangerousness of so many young people congregating.

Collier recalls: “Every major Times editor up to and including executive editor James Reston insisted that the tenor of the story must be a social catastrophe in the making. It was difficult to persuade them that the relative lack of serious mischief and the fascinating cooperation, caring and politeness among so many people was the significant point. I had to resort to refusing to write the story unless it reflected to a great extent my on-the-scene conviction that ‘peace’ and ‘love’ was the actual emphasis, not the preconceived opinions of Manhattan-bound editors.

After many acrimonious telephone exchanges, the editors agreed to publish the story as I saw it, and although the nuts-and-bolts matters of gridlock and minor lawbreaking were put close to the lead of the stories, the real flavor of the gathering was permitted to get across. After the first day’s Times story appeared on page 1, the event was widely recognized for the amazing and beautiful accident it was.”

So, cousins — all hail Woodstock and Fellowship Among Humanity.

As for this weekend’s noteworthy astrology…

From Planet Waves Daily

This dramatic view of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and its surroundings was obtained by Voyager 1 on February 25, 1979, when the spacecraft was 9.2 million km (5.7 million mi) from Jupiter. Photo: Wikipedia.

The Sun is now opposed to the triple conjunction of Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune. Though the first exact opposition (Sun to Jupiter) takes place today Friday. The Sun (currently standing at 22+ Leo) has been approaching the Aquarius stellium all week — (a cluster of planets or points not including the Sun or Moon), which is spread between 22+ Aquarius and 25+ Aquarius. All three points are currently retrograde; they feel like they’re charging their batteries for the inevitable excitement of this autumn. It will be interesting to see what happens as they station direct.

For those curious, Jupiter stations on Oct. 13, Chiron stations on Oct. 31 and Neptune stations on Nov. 5.

The Sun is currently advancing at 57 arc minutes per day, just shy of a degree — about as slowly as it goes, with the Earth and Sun currently near maximum distance (Earth reached aphelion July 4).

For those trying to work this out as astronomy, remember that it’s the Earth that’s moving, not the Sun; looking at the solar position, we are tracking the Sun’s apparent position from the viewpoint of Earth. What we have is our planet suspended between the Sun and these three planets. It’s a lot like a Full Moon, only it’s not the Sun and Moon that are involved but rather the Sun and Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune.

Chiron, a massive comet, is an entirely different kind of critter than Jupiter or Neptune. Jupiter is in the ‘gas giant’ category and Neptune is in the ‘ice giant’ category. It is a lot, a lot, of water. Jupiter is the largest known object in our solar system, at about 1,300 times the size of Earth and more than double (2.5 times) the mass of all the other planets in the solar system combined (this does not include the Sun). It has 63 known moons. Jupiter is so large that its orbit causes the Sun to oscillate. In other words, its gravity pulls the Sun in a measurable wobble. Neptune for its part is 17 times the mass of the Earth.

So the Earth is sitting between the Sun and a massive amount of gravity coming from Jupiter and Neptune; and Chiron, something microscopic by comparison, but which can focus awareness and precipitate events like nothing else I’ve ever seen. Chiron and many other ‘minor’ points inform those who are looking that size/mass doesn’t mean everything. However, it means something, and we have plenty of it working on us now.

The Great Dark Spot on Neptune, as seen from Voyager 2. Photo: Wikipedia.

The planets in their courses are offering us a reminder to be aware of a sense of exaggeration. Sun-Jupiter comes with the sense of large forces at work in our lives; this is a feeling or an idea, which might take many forms or pass relatively eventlessly. Yet feelings are events, and can precipitate events, so we need to be as careful and as conscious as possible as these days progress and we move through the exact alignment. Neptune tells us to check and re-check whether we are perceiving things honestly. There is a dreamy quality, and it can be difficult to pin down one’s personal truth with Neptune in an opposition. With Neptune you really have to give it time — but there can be a subtle sense of revelation that is pretty amazing to feel.

There is a touch of irony here in that the world is calling on us to possess emotional balance and a measure of control above all else, but the current pace of life gives us few opportunities to do anything of the kind. This is told in the astrology and it’s told many other ways.

Working in the background of the current, more obvious dynamic are many other alignments that are well within the historical range to be having an effect, and those are what we are more likely to be feeling but not giving a name to. For example, we still have several additional alignments of Saturn and Uranus to experience. The next is in about one month, on Sept. 15 (recall that the first of the series was on the day Barack Obama was elected president). Saturn is also about to leave Virgo and square Pluto, for the first of a sequence of Saturn-Pluto alignments.

This is a lot, I know. It seems like a never-ending sequence of events, which in fact astrology is; but the intensity of all of this combined verges on the ridiculous, and we are only warming up to the exact alignments that focus on June through December 2012 and then go on from there.

I originally began this diary by saying, I feel like I need to get my awareness to a level beyond the astrology, an idea which is good advice any day; we need to be taking our real instructions from core self, which is unlikely to be fazed by any of the turbulence, changes or developments indicated in the astrology. I would propose, however, that it’s always a good idea to be aware of one’s environment, and astrology definitely counts for that. To me this kind of psychic weather calls for leadership: many of you have been preparing for these events over many years. It’s time to step out and take your role, thus allowing those who have been holding your place to move onto other points of focus that they are ready for.

I’ve just checked over the asteroids and noticed that in the midst of all of this is one called Terpsichore, the muse of dance. I would take this one symbolically and literally. So let the music play…

Yours & truly,

PS: We have covered the astrology of Woodstock before, most recently in 2007, at the 38th anniversary. Here is that article. It’s one of my favorite studies in the Aries Point, with a sidebar comparing Max’s chart to that of the festival. There is some cool stuff in here about the Great Attractor and the Galactic Core as well, i.e., a bit of Sagittarius, which was Max by the way. And for those who missed the link above, this early Planet Waves article called Flashpoints covers the disastrous 30th anniversary concert in the summer of 1999.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Our August has shaped up to be quite a ride, hasn’t it? Every morning I wake up, look out the window and think, Nothing is the same. It looks similar, but it’s not as it was — and that’s because we aren’t what we were. If we turn on the television news, we see clips of people yelling and screaming at town hall meetings, fighting to keep things as they used to be without the basic understanding that it’s too late; we can’t go back. Once we have an authentic realization, information floods in that changes our outlook forever. Once we get on to our self, our resonance and vibration adjusts to another level and the past is no longer our baggage but simply the practice pages of our life that brought us to this new moment. In the chaos of change, we’re free in ways we simply don’t appreciate.

If you’re taking a break from crazy this August and refuse to watch cable news, you may have missed some town hall kerfuffles lead by the least-informed, yet loudest, sector of the Republican party. Image: Jon Stewart vs. Town Hall Crazies (VIDEO).

Most of us are somewhere between those poles: trying desperately to keep things the same or willing, even eager, to start anew. The first is irrational, the next is necessary but our conditioning makes that process a frightening prospect akin to a first day at a new school, or new job, a step into the unknown. We’re fearful of what we don’t know because our expectation is that we have to perform at some pre-set level in order to succeed; we have to be ‘good,’ and ‘cooperative.’ We have to know the rules and follow them. We have to respond in the right way in order to achieve approval; to behave as expected in order to get along. Under no circumstances should we simply be ourselves — we need to be the edited version of ourselves, existing within the definitions of societal norms. Yet when the norms change, as they occasionally do, the systems are the last ones to get the memo.

If we look at our systems now, so many of them struggling to survive, we see how woefully inadequate they are; we’ve spoken about how the Capricorn Pluto will dissolve and reconfigure them, hopefully in time to salvage a bit of their original intent, but perhaps not. Me, I’ve spoken candidly for a decade that we should not attempt to patch them with band-aids, or plaster over the gaping holes in them; I believe they need to be reconfigured entirely. And that’s not because I’m an anarchist and want to see everything fall to bits; it’s because the original intent of so much we hold dear in this nation was interpreted by flawed men to create them along the lines of their own personal belief systems, and too often those beliefs were religious, racist, sexist and elitist. In other words, if cause always precedes effect, the original cause at the basis of our American systems has been irretrievably corrupted by human ignorance and avarice. This isn’t a nation conceived in life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for only some — it’s for all or we are not living out the blueprint that some say was given to humankind as a revelation to push us forward into a new era.

Coming Up in Daily Astrology and Adventure

There was a time when the phrase “ancient Chinese secret” was a pop culture phenomenon. Calgon soap even used it in a television commercial back in the 1970s.

An elderly man and a child perform tai chi together. Tai chi is promoted as a method for the elderly or infirm to reclaim the natural vigor of youth. Photo by Peter Harrison (Wikipedia).

As you can see, the phrase was more of a punch line than anything else. But let’s be frank: The Chinese culture is ancient, and over the centuries it has uncovered many methods and practices that, while not exactly secret, remain mysterious to Western cultures.

Today, modern science is confirming the benefits of many types of Eastern medicine and practices. The latest news is this: Performing tai chi chuan exercises can benefit people with type 2 diabetes according to a study published in the June edition of The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

Researchers Rhayun Song, Sukhee Ahn, Beverly L. Roberts, Eun Ok Lee, and You Hern Ahn spent six months studying a group of 99 Korean diabetics who were practicing tai chi. According to the summary of their report, “the adherent group had greater decline in fasting glucose… than the non-adherers.” The practitioners also performed more self-care activities and had better quality of life, social functioning, mental health and vitality, they reported.

While only the summary is available at the Journal’s web page, a full copy of the report can be purchased here.

Frank Herbert’s science fiction masterpiece Dune and its sequels hold a special place in the canon of that literary genre — and now they’ll hold a special place in the Solar System.

Sand dunes on Earth, and dunes on Titan. Photo: NASA.

As noted by SFScope.com, a science-fiction news site, the plains on Titan — the largest moon of Saturn and the only yet found with a dense atmosphere — will be named for planets in the Dune series of books.

Each plain will be identified with the name of a planet from the series, followed by the Latin word for plain, planitia. The first such to be named is Chusuk Planitia.

So, who made this decision? Two groups: The United States Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Science Center and the International Astronomical Union. Links to the list of Titan planitia names and the Titan images showing named features in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature can be found here.

Dune, published in 1965, portrays the personal and political struggle of the Atreides family on the desert planet Arrakis. It is the best-selling hardcover science fiction novel of all time. Frank Herbert, who died in 1986, wrote five sequels in the Dune saga. The series subsequently continued through the work of his son, Brian Herbert, and science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson.

A thoughtful opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum does a good job at pointing out the struggle between religious believers and adherents of science isn’t only being waged by conservative Christian organizations. Some nonbelievers are also lobbing rounds at those who seek to hold to the middle ground and say that religion and science are, at many levels, compatible.

“A Venerable Orang-outang”, a caricature of Charles Darwin as an ape published in The Hornet, a satirical magazine, 22 March 1871.

Mooney and Kirshenbaum, authors of the book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, highlight some of the prominent atheist writers and scientists who are lambasting scientific organizations that espouse a third way: The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Center for Science Education, in particular.

The arguments of the nonbelievers — sometimes styled as the “New Atheists” — boil down to essentially the same claim as that of their religious opposites: Science and faith are incompatible. Yet the authors of the editorial find a very clear downside to either group achieving dominance in this long-running argument.

“It all might sound like a petty internecine squabble, but the stakes are very high,” write Mooney and Kirshenbaum. “The United States does not boast a very healthy relationship between its scientific community and its citizenry. The statistics on public scientific illiteracy are notorious — and they’re at their worst on contentious, politicized issues such as climate change and the teaching of evolution. About 46% of Americans in polls agree with this stunning statement: ‘God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.'”

Because the New Atheists and the scientific organizations have the same goal — increasing scientific literacy in America — it seems ironic that they find themselves at odds with one another. And the editorial’s authors find a great way to highlight this irony: Calling upon Charles Darwin’s own words.

“It turns out that late in life, when an atheist author asked permission to dedicate a book to Darwin, the great scientist wrote back his apologies and declined. For as Darwin put it, ‘Though I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds, which follows from the advance of science.'”

That gradual method, as it happens, is the one being advocated by the scientific organizations.

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Weekly Horoscope for Friday, August 14, 2009, #779 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Aries (March 20-April 19)
Finally a line of energy has opened up in a frustrating or divisive situation, though you’ll need to apply yourself to work it consciously. The go-ahead is that for a moment, anyway, you no longer feel so divided against yourself. You’re also in touch with your feelings in an unusual way; you are able to make certain admissions to yourself that are otherwise much more difficult. An issue that was previously invisible is now vivid enough to see for what it is. But it doesn’t resolve itself unless you assert yourself. We could make a list a mile or two long about why you’re not supposed to do that. Here is a clue: guilt does not mean you’re wrong; it means you’re suffering from having been made wrong in the past. If you feel guilty for feeling, for having emotions or for seeking self-understanding, you can be sure that was the case. These things can only be addressed now, which fortunately is precisely what time it is.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
If a romantic, erotic or creative situation seems to stall out, the issue is communication. Not just any communication; deeper communication, wherein you reveal something about yourself. It would help if you reveal this thing to yourself: there is something here about your fear, which seems like the very last thing you want to talk about. It is, however, the one thing standing between you and intimacy; between you and contact with your core. You would be wise to ask yourself why you are so frightened of your own creative and sexual power. Part of the reason is that you are a perfectionist about these things, which does not actually serve you. Part of the reason involves the influence of a parent, with whom you are trying to secretly bargain. There is a third factor; I leave that one to you.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
You keep trying to think your way through a situation; you keep getting off to a good start, but then there is only so far you can go. At a certain point you will need to address the emotional material involved. And at a certain point you will need to address how you feel about it in the present, rather than how you used to feel about it. You’ll know you’re there once you drop the self-critical routine; once you stop comparing yourself to others; and once you grasp that you are using the standards of your family to assess yourself. The purpose of this time in your life is to make the break from them. The first step in this process is looking at how many thought processes loop back through their reality; their ideas; their supposed opinions about you; while we’re at it, their house, money, schedule, dog and/or cat. Stepping away from this is not as dangerous as you keep telling yourself.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
Focus on the experience of a partner. What are they going through, in relationship to you? You will likely need to ask. What are they going through, in their own internal relationship? Aah, here is a point to consider: the primary relationship is the internal relationship, but we are all taught to notice, experience and process this relationship differently. Mostly we are taught to deny its existence or its importance, substituting instead a bunch of opinions about ourselves and about the world. You are taking a significant step in this inner relationship with yourself: for one of the few times in your life, an environmental factor is compelling you to set a boundary, to define your inner reality in a distinct way, and to make a series of admissions to yourself about what is so. Everything you say to anyone counts.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
One of the most sincere things that any person can do is admit that we stand in constant relationship to the unknown. One way to look at the overload of so-called information in our society is to fill a vast, terrifying gulf of what we don’t know: for example, how long we will live, how we got here, what the rest of our lives will be like, whether we can really trust certain people, and how serious the planetary crisis is right now. As the next few days pass you will be looking straight into not just the unknown but the sense of potential that accompanies any honest encounter with the abyss. If you haven’t already unplugged the thing and put it in the closet, these would be the perfect few days to boycott television and other forms of infotainment.

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
You have been provoked in some way; now comes a moment of seeking understanding, and maybe even discovering that a new depth of understanding is possible. Remember that understanding is only partially mental in nature; it is primarily emotional. Yet there is a place where the two dimensions cross, and this is the place to hold your awareness: the point of integration. True understanding is not conceptual; it’s about changing, even if slightly. It feels less like ‘aha’ and more like swallowing a mouthful of food. You take that food into your body, and it digests into your blood. That is why we need to be conscious and indeed careful what ideas we take in, because we actually become and integrate those ideas, unwittingly or not. Mercury in your sign is leading you in a certain direction; trace the trajectory, so you can change it now if you choose.

Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
You are beginning to see a certain alliance or relationship for what it is: not just a source of potential, but an ongoing process of realizing your potential. The beauty of the situation is that while those involved may feel slightly out of place, the combination of human energies is helping everyone adapt and also utilize any disadvantages as a source of strength. It’s worth reminding yourself that nobody accomplishes anything meaningful alone. The more we accomplish, the more help we have. Therefore, you will thrive in an environment of perpetuating mutual assistance. It’s worth 10 times its apparent value. Help when you can. Ask for help the moment it occurs to you. One will support the other.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
Earlier this week, Mars formed a square to Saturn and over the next few days it’s about to form a square with Uranus. Both of these aspects are helping you find a place in the world, a place where you actually belong. They may feel like jolts, but if you pay attention, you’ll notice that the first jolt snapped you into a stable position and the second jolt represents an idea that will set you ahead. The idea may feel like an accident or improbable discovery, and it’s clearly not going to fit any pre-established notion of how your life is supposed to be. Yet as the next few months unfold, I think you’ll see how the changes of the current weeks work together to guide you to a place that feels natural, necessary and most of all, real. You will know you’re there because it feels right and there are so few others who have ever arrived at a similar place before.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
During the course of this year, an energetic condition or state emerged in your life that seemed to pick you up and carry you. The truth is, it took you by storm, making it difficult to track the decisions you were making as you made them; and made it more difficult to assess your motives. The more recent news is that what was once an onslaught of progress is more understandable in its constituent parts. Everything is composed of elements. The ones that are influencing you are in the process of distinguishing themselves from one another, but only so that they can re-form again in new ways. In fact there are so many possible combinations that it will be very helpful to work from the goal backwards to the process of getting there. This will save time and energy and maximize the results that you want.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
We all struggle with faith. But there is something right now that is really testing yours. You keep trying to run it past your rational mind, seeking an explanation for why something feels wrong. It would be easier to admit that it’s not working, which would allow you to start developing ideas for what would be more likely to work. You are about to get one of those, but will you know it when you see it? This really is the question. Therefore, you need to look. I suggest that you not be dismissive of anything that seems too strange, or seems to contradict your constitution. Just about all important discoveries morph in perception from being outrageous to necessary to the next great thing. Therefore, I suggest you believe in what seems to be weird, if only for a day.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
There comes a point when relationships must follow your growth agenda. Until that point they seem to follow every other plan. It helps, of course, if we have a growth agenda — but you’ve reached a point where you can now take this as one of the most necessary ingredients of your life. One nice thing about maturing is that we get to know ourselves; we can get a sense of our needs, our desires and what the two have in common. We can also distinguish one problem from another, which I’m sure you’re noticing is a truly useful skill to have. All of this looks like its time has come; but you’re about to make a new discovery about yourself that will stun you into letting go of some old and useless values. However, I would say it’s as difficult to see an old value as useless as it is to accurately perceive a new one as useful.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
Freedom implies responsibility. With Saturn (boundaries) and Uranus (experiments) so closely involved with your birth sign in these seasons of your life, your existence is a process of exploring both sides of the equation. The actual field of possibilities in the world is so huge that one must eventually set a limit and make a choice in order to have any semblance of freedom. But this hardly matters, if we don’t have opportunities to explore what is possible. Recent events have been jolting you out of your reality box, in your profession as well as in your relationships. Upcoming aspects point to a revolutionary new idea. This will in a sense take you back to the beginning of a process, to an idea-creation stage. To make this work for you, you will need to refine the best of these ideas quickly and efficiently, and get back to work. Remember to explore every phase of the process fully and consciously. Remember to be aware what you are rebelling against.

BY ERIC FRANCIS

Today on Planet Waves Daily: The emotional body touches the fertile point of chaos.

Aries (March 20-April 19)
You may not know what you want. There can be significant pleasure in considering your options, and you’re more likely to make a good decision if you do it from there rather than a place of angst or hot inner debate. Before you decide, anything is possible. The good part is that after you decide, most things are still possible.

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Taurus (April 19- May 20)
Some things you cannot have a strategy for, and passion is one of them. Something in your charts suggests that this is what you’re trying to do; I suggest you ask yourself why. Yes, you seem to be of two minds about something important, but your feelings are certainly telling you something that doesn’t need to be analyzed.

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Gemini (May 20- June 21)
Mars making a prolonged visit in your sign cautions against feeling too confident or too certain in any decision you’re making. You are as likely to feel as strongly about one side of any issue as you are about another — and then to change your mind. This could be perfectly insufferable for friends or loved ones; so you need to make sure you listen for a long time before you speak, and make sure people know you might change your mind.

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Cancer (June 21- July 22)
Venus and Mercury working together says you can balance your feelings and your ideas. For example, approaching the quest for deeper relationships from a place of contentment rather than need will open their potential. Believe it or not, this is a decision we make. So, too, is the choice how to react if you get spooked.

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Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
You actually might be able to take a week off for your birthday this year. Cash flow should be improving, or at least you know you have a plan. Mainly you’re in a rare moment when people are more likely to keep their problems to themselves, and not depend on you as the usual solution. Make a plan, and get away while you can.

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Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
This has not been the easiest year of your life. If I were your brain, I would need a cup of ginkgo tea. Conduct a 20-minute review and you’ll notice that you’ve worked your way into a relatively sane and stable place. I don’t want to bias the study results, but if you do this one right, you’ll be blessed with a feeling of confidence.

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Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
A real conversation about your feelings is finally possible. You’ve had so much practice talking about everyone else’s feelings the past few months that you’re likely to be an expert by now. Relationship matters will be easier if you resolve sooner rather than later to forgive someone who has hurt your feelings.

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Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
You are friendlier and more generous than some people think, and you cannot control their perception of you. However, you’re unlikely to be particularly consistent this month. You need plenty of room to change your mind, and I suggest that you decide in advance that you don’t care if this pisses certain people off.

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Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
By now you’ve noticed that this is a very unusual time in your life. Generally there is a kind of glass barrier between what we think is possible and what actually happens. Now it’s more like a clear curtain. If you don’t walk up to it and touch it, you might not be able to tell the difference.

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Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
Your worst fear may be that if you take a small chance, you’ll take another small chance and then you’ll take a big chance and eventually risk it all. Therefore, it would be better to quit while you are neither ahead nor behind, and be happy with what you’ve got. While you could call that life, you definitely can’t call it living.

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Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
Now is the time to put into action all the things you’ve been thinking, brewing and conspiring –- and you will get results sooner rather than later. Your mind never rests, so while you’re busy with your latest round of working your plan, you seem to be gearing up for another round of planning your work. Don’t forget to plan some fun.

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Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
If your life seems to be taking you deeper into a mystery, pretend you’re writing a novel. Some authors like to know the ending of the story before they start the book, and some like to be surprised by the outcome. Which would you prefer? You can afford to let things take their course; anyway the real mystery is how you truly feel.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Friday morning, today that is, I will be in Toronto presenting a seminar at the American Psychological Association (APA) conference called “The Inner Goddess and the Inner Gaze.” My presentation, as currently planned, will explore the phenomenon of the inner feminine, or anima, and its relationship to both men and women in our journey of growth and healing through the use of mirrors and photography.

Ange from the Book of Blue sessions in Paris. Photo by Eric Francis.

Since I am not a psychologist, my presentation is co-sponsored by one: Dr. Christine Farber, a longtime Planet Waves reader; as well as my astrology student from the Omega Institute and a one-time client. She caught onto my work with Book of Blue and proposed that the themes I am covering in that project were ready to be introduced to mainstream psychology. She crafted a presentation using language from my articles, which was accepted by the APA women’s psychology section as a seminar.http://members.planetwaves.net/wp-admin/post.php?post=9272&action=edit&message=1

Book of Blue is an indirect outgrowth of my work as an astrologer, though expressed in photographs and intimate essays. As an astrologer, I have written and worked primarily with and for women, and in the process have explored my perceptions of women, studied the paths of their lives and done my best to understand their choices and values. I have always been conscious that part of why I am doing this work is to heal my relationship with my mother and with all women; and part of it is to be of service to women in response to a lifelong calling.

You might say that I am a woman-identified man. Given the choice of who is more ‘my kind’ of person, as in who I feel more like, I certainly feel like I have far more in common with most women than with most men. Yet in much the same way that relationships among women are fragmented by mistrust and competition, I noticed something similar in my own relationships that I set about working to resolve. The healing process largely facilitated by my work on Book of Blue has involved repairing a sense of alienation and isolation that has gradually given way to an atmosphere of communication and contact.

The [usually] fun part is I also get to be a man, and experience and witness the intensity and subtlety of female beauty, that is, intellectual, emotional and physical beauty, from the viewpoint of being male. Along the way, my inner feminine gets to make friends with other women and learn how to be female; and my inner man gets to polarize into his masculinity and explore our contrasts and how they feel. Along the way, I am working out a relationship with myself.

Conscious of holding this space as mental preparation, I am able to create a space for my photographic subjects to see and feel themselves; to be a witness to their own self-aware femininity and humanity. Women spend a lot of time in mirrors, but I wonder how much of it is really about witnessing themselves. In my studio, that is precisely what they are invited to do: as a means of seeing their own beauty, integrating their sense of identity, processing guilt and body issues, and making peace with their judgments about themselves.

In Search of Venus

In astrology we work with inner archetypes all the time; they are the lead characters in the astrological drama. For example, everyone has Mars and Venus working in their chart; we all possess the same inner masculine and feminine aspects. Where these things are placed, and how we relate to them, are important factors that help shape our personality and affect how we adapt to life in our skins and in society. We know there is plenty of gender tension around us, and we feel it in our relationships; there are also gender relationships within us, which shape our consciousness, perceptions and experiences.

Anya from the Book of Blue sessions in Toronto. Photo by Eric Francis.

Usually we project that tension outward, rejecting the opposite gender internally and seeing her as a phenomenon in the outer world; without remembering anything about her origins in consciousness.

In terms of the inner feminine, I am talking primarily about Venus, though she takes a number of other forms: for example the Moon (who often represents a child or the child self as well); certain of the more potent asteroids (Psyche, Juno or Vesta, for example); and an important new discovery, Eris (the castaway woman). Yet even when we do astrology, to what extent do we experience and explore these things as having actual life rather than symbolic existence?

Were I to write an astrology book, it might be called something like Astrology in Real Life, revealing how we can use the chart as a map to a quest rather than as a purely mental construction. My inner woman is described in my chart as Venus in Taurus in the 11th house, conjunct the asteroid Photographica. She is trine a planet curiously like Venus, which is Uranus/Prometheus (few other astrologers would say this, however). I’ll go through these one at a time. Venus is a complex archetype, and like many planets, her energy is colored by her sign placement, expressed through her house placement and elaborated in her aspects.

Venus in Taurus is an interesting mix of flirtatious and deeply committed. She is profoundly feminine; sensuous and biophilic. She is womanly in what you might call the true sense. She has a belly and hips and breasts. She feels her fertility and her creative richness; she is conscious of her sexual aches, cravings and desire for contact. She loves and is bonded to herself. Venus in Taurus is an exquisite image of female selflove and self-pleasuring. At her best, she is truly self-possessed and thus can afford to share herself. True to Taurus, she has respect for tradition but is also a rebel. Most of all, she is guided by one thing: her authentic values, which are the basis of every decision she makes.

She loves both sex and sensuality. She is bisexual and her attraction to women is related to her connection to herself and to the common bond that all women share as those who provide comfort and give life. Is she monogamous? She’s bisexual; in theory and in practice, no. But devotion and loyalty are supreme to her.

In the 11th house, she is publicly visible and known; she offers herself as available to the community; she is someone respected for her integrity. The 11th is the most idealistic house and she believes in her hopes and dreams: they are there to be made real, and to be shared with others. Taurus in the 11th is a practical dreamer. Venus in this house not only believes in true love, she feels it as real within herself. She is possessive (a Taurus trait) but recognizes that when you are solid with yourself you can be there for others. Her desire to participate is an invitation to share (an 11th house trait).

Chenoa from the London sessions of Book of Blue. Photo by Eric Francis.

Taurus is about deep bonding and the 11th is about friendship. There are paradoxes and there are points of harmony between these two layers, and this is one image of the new relationship (and erotic relating) model I am working out with women. I write about this extensively in the diary section of the Book of Blue.

Then we have an asteroid in conjunction, adding a special theme: photography. Martha Lang Wescott says of this asteroid, “While useful for showing the importance of photography and visual images, Photographica also relates to the brain’s ability to retain and interpret visual imagery.” I would add that it likely involves the ability to use visual imagery as a communication medium.

In using my camera, I explore, create and relate, and using my studio I create the space for others to do the same thing. The photographs then become a point of meditation for the subject, who can use them to explore her mental and emotional states, and make peace with her way of seeing herself. Finally they become public art that can extend the healing process beyond the studio, and the individuals involved, and into the world.

Book of Blue is about the use of visual imagery to heal the self-image of women, in the eyes of both men and women. We all agree that we are overwhelmed with idealized, reconstructed images of young women, and these cause disturbances in our ability to perceive women for who they are. More often than not, the personhood of women is robbed by false images and ideas about womanhood.

Venus trine Uranus is about creating an innovation that gets around this trap. It is about harmonizing beauty with technology (Uranus in Virgo), which is specifically a technology for healing; and an idea base (3rd house Uranus) that also comes in written form.

The Mirror of Denial, and the Mirror

In an article I wrote last year called “Pornography as the Mirror of Denial,” I explored the idea that in using pornography, heterosexual men are holding a mirror to themselves into which they see a woman reflected. This woman, in my view, is designed to be an image of their inner feminine or anima. She becomes an image of his inner woman, who for whatever reasons allows him to make contact with himself through a feminine filter; which in turn facilitates letting go emotionally.

Natasha from the Brussels sessions of Book of Blue. Photo by Eric Francis.

The problem — the point of denial — is that the women depicted in these images are not present; they do not respond; they are not available to talk to, share with, cry with, and to actually experience sex with. Therefore, each time someone lets go meditating on that image, this feeling of denial and unavailability is reinforced.

I would like to explore this theory a bit, however I want to define pornography first. To my knowledge there is no agreed-upon artistic, legal or moral definition of pornography. Nearly any image can be accused of it, which is dangerous. Therefore I define pornography as the use of an image rather than something inherent in the image itself; this includes the image-maker’s supposed intent. The picture might be intended to sell lingerie or a DVD, it might be from a Coke ad, it might be a street photo, it might be a classical image or it might be a page from Playboy. If the image is used by someone for erotic gratification in some way, that’s what gives it the distinction of pornography. “I know it when I see it” is in the eye of the beholder.

This being said, I think that the relationship between the image and the viewer is far more complex than nearly anyone gives it credit for being. When we look at pornography and find it mentally stimulating, one possible reason is because we identify with the subject of the image.

We could consider this a form of projection, that is, putting an internal idea or self-concept onto something in the outside world; but I think it’s just as much about introjection: taking in something we see outside ourselves and allowing it to become part of us, or wishing it were; or seeking to identify some part of ourselves through the image.

In my article, I suggested that men experiment with setting pornography aside, and use a mirror instead. This way they would look for that inner woman in their own reflection, and make friends with her within themselves.

We can go over the many reasons why this would be considered taboo: for example, many would think that it’s gay. After all it’s a man relating erotically to a man. If he’s looking for someone feminine in that image to connect with, it’s even more gay; he’s seeing himself as a woman, and potentially loving himself as one. Or it could be considered narcissistic; even the fear of being known for that would be enough to stop many people. In the end, exploring with a mirror is psychologically daring, but it can subvert the ego as well. Witnessing yourself in such an out-there state is brave and a potentially uncomfortable confrontation.

Autogynephilia and Gender Dysphoria

The idea of a man loving himself as a woman has been described as a form of pathology in the psychological literature, part of a trend of categorizing an increasing number of erotic feelings as forms of mental illnesses, commonly known as gender dysphorias. After a long struggle to have homosexuality removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), there is now a movement to bring in many other similar feelings and experiences.

Krissy from the Portland, Maine, sessions of Book of Blue. Photo by Eric Francis.

The clinical term for a man loving himself as a woman is autogynephilia. It was coined in 1989 by Ray Blanchard to refer to “a man’s paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman.” It has been used as a means of explaining the feelings underlying being a transvestite, among other things. The term paraphilic basically means a kind of fetish that you need in order to get off. However, I don’t think it’s a paraphilia. Blanchard himself has said that “an autogynephile does not necessarily become sexually aroused every time he pictures himself as female or engages in feminine behavior, any more than a heterosexual man automatically gets an erection whenever he sees an attractive woman. Thus, the concept of autogynephilia…refers to a potential for sexual excitation” [emphasis in original].

Everyone has this potential, obviously. So like much of psychology he is describing something that everyone feels at some time in pathological terms. Astrology is much more compassionate here; any astrologer will tell you that we all have Venus and Mars and identify with both to varying degrees. It would help if more psychologists studied astrology.

In a 1992 paper, Blanchard and his colleagues wrote that, “autogynephilia may be conceived as a kind of misdirected heterosexuality…autogynephilia competes with normal heterosexual attraction.” Thus, according to this theory, if you use pornography depicting a female for sexual purposes, you are healthy; if you use a mirror and seek the vision of your inner feminine there, you could be diagnosed. The implication is that it’s not ‘normal’ for a man to be too woman-identified.

Hayley from the Portland, Maine sessions of Book of Blue. Photo by Eric Francis.

Yet I would propose that this happens to some degree every time a man is sexually aroused by a woman. He may not be consciously saying, “I am her,” or “I want to be her,” but I would propose that the feeling is pervasive. Many, many heterosexual men are fascinated by women to the point of envy. We assume this about gay men; but when you look at it closely there is nothing more gay than heterosexuality. (I will save my theory of why heterosexuals need to come out of the closet for another day.)

This can be a source of incredible pleasure; yet I think that if left unexpressed, or if this clashes with other values and it results in shame, the results can be painful. Hence, it’s usually easier to project the whole phenomenon of the feminine outside oneself, onto women. It is easier, socially and psychologically, for men to disown their inner feminine aspect. And sadly, we see the results of this casting-off all the time. Many men view women as a kind of alien species. I am sure that most of them are not actually comfortable with women’s experiences, feelings, or bodies, despite being obsessed with them.

As a result, many women view themselves as aliens, despite being obsessed with themselves. In creating my portrait series, I chose to explore female self-awareness in part as a way of claiming it within myself. I was curious what it felt like to inhabit female beauty; to see oneself as female; and to be female and also see oneself as human.

Gaze of the Inner Goddess

What about women, seeking their reflection in the world? They don’t need to seek out pornography; women are told constantly how they are supposed to look and feel about themselves; they are constantly made to feel they must compare themselves to others. The entire world is holding up a mirror to women, and it is usually pretty harsh. It is impossible to live up to what we see, and this is a source of almost constant agony for many women caught in this ego-based hall of mirrors.

Christine from the Toronto sessions of Book of Blue. Photo by Eric Francis.

As a result, many women pay closer attention to other women than do men: down to the details, and viciously judgmental in ways that most men would never imagine. This is often in the spirit of competition, though I would not call it healthy competition. I have also learned through both photography and astrology that most women are profoundly judgmental of themselves, which they project onto other women, and express by being servile to men. In the words of my friend and collaborator Neisha Hirsch, “She wants what she wants, and she feels bad about it because we are all so programmed to please others instead of ourselves.”

The idea of a Book of Blue portrait session is that the model focuses on herself, while I hold space and document the experience. The model may be dressed or nude; nudity tends to enhance the feeling of vulnerability, yet in reality is simply more basically human. Excellent images have come from sessions with the model dressed but I have not analyzed what feels different about them. I’ve also learned that nude modeling is something that many women contemplate and consider; in reality, a great many explore the territory. Sometimes it’s about money and sometimes it’s about fun and liberation. Sometimes it’s for the pleasure of being seen.

I am aware that my presence influences the images, but it also makes them possible. My maleness is a specific factor; much of what women must contend with is the feeling of being looked at by other men, and now I’m there looking at them up close. We are exploring the space and the feeling of being seen.

Sue Story from the Kingston, NY sessions. Photo for Book of Blue by Eric Francis.

This is a fine line to walk. I will work at different emotional temperatures and proximity depending on my relationship to the subject of the photo. In all, I believe that my presence “takes over” the aspect of the woman who is concerned about being seen, and allows me to do that part. The inner spectator is going to be in her mind anyway. Hakomi Therapy discovered that these inner roles could be occupied by someone external, thus liberating the person from having to do it themselves. I see my part as replacing the critical witness with a loving witness. This presents the opportunity to be seen by someone who is open, accepting and moreover not afraid of their self-judgments, which as I have learned, from much experience, can be quite painful.

I am willing to go as far with my photo subjects as they want, and have journeyed in this process through a diversity of states from grief to erotic self-exploration to dissociative experiences and many levels of what might be called ‘ordinary consciousness’. More than a decade of experience as an astrologer, holding space for emotional and spiritual process, helps support this space and the process that unfolds here. (The aspect in my chart is the Moon conjunct Vesta in the 8th house.)

One potential result is that a woman will encounter her inner goddess, that is, her essential inner woman, through the experience of making the images, and seeing them afterwards. Some of the images are published, with the consent of the photo subject, and there have been some interesting dialogs between viewers and the subjects of the photos.

Is it Art, or is it Therapy?

Semen and Mirror. Photo by Eric Francis / Book of Blue.

We are standing here at the threshold where art functions as a healing modality. When art is working this is often the case, though this particular process makes it more personal than usual. I never set out to create a therapeutic model — only to make images and learn something about myself and the people involved. What I quickly learned was that the model was working out something in her relationship to herself; I was working out something in relationship to her; and I was meeting my inner feminine in many different forms. As she would feel her vulnerability, I would learn to empathize with her. As she would feel her sexual power, I would feel it as well. As she would witness her beauty as being something untouchable, I would feel this too.

I discovered that I was working right in the space where her self-image is created. So in a sense the resulting photographs are documents of a new self-image in the process of being developed, discovered or witnessed. It is fascinating to see, in models I have worked with over a long period of time, the ways in which facial features, the expression in her eyes and her presence with herself evolve over time. They are also documents of me exploring my own self-image as a woman; and a long process of aligning with the experience of women being in harmony with themselves. In my view this is correcting the experience of generations of women before me being conditioned to be in conflict with themselves; to disapprove of themselves; to be someone other than who they are.

My sense is that whatever else is happening, I am getting photographs of the real woman, not a projected vision of her. This would be the process of someone discovering her inner goddess. To do that, of course, I have had to know and love my own inner goddess; she in truth is the one who stands guard over the photo sessions and the resulting images, holding space for the process to unfold, and gradually teaching me to see women for who they are and not who I would have them be. I trust that my photo subjects are learning to do the same thing for themselves.

Yours & truly,

Additional research: Pia Ruisi-Besares. Dedicated with love and gratitude to Betty Dodson.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a lot of egomania going on out there; surely in the headlines, across our television screens, in our community and workplace, some in our own home. We all have an ego, of course. In the purest sense, here in incarnation, we need one to survive — that sense of self that psychologists speak of — and in that definition, I’ve always thought it better to have too much of one than not enough; life will chip away at the excess, so it’s best to have some to spare. We all know people who seem too timid and withdrawn to be more than a doormat for other people’s whims; some who are damaged and burdened by the past that seem unable to get out of their own entanglements of self-pity and victimization. The wounded ego is even more difficult a path than the pompous one; and yet both come from a misunderstanding of true Self and can rightfully be called egomania. We are each the center of our own universe; and we decide its trajectory.

Coming to some sort of balanced ego involves what I think of as ‘process,’ the necessary adjustments of a lifetime that pare us down to a list of self-reflections, hopefully lengthy, and a short list of what we Absolutely Know; a line or two or three. That would be the chapter in our memoirs that indicates we’ve finally seen through the mind-fuck that tells us we ARE our ego; until we can do that, we haven’t the necessary balance to push back the false face we wear to find the shining soul within. Ego is the loudest voice within our head; the one that takes offense, plans punishment and revenge, manipulates to get its needs met, justifies its every whim, protects itself at all costs and feels a burst of power when it ‘wins.’ There are a lot of ways to look at our ego-self; I prefer the one offered by A Course in Miracles. Ego is the tyrannical, insistent voice of our false self, identified with the body and its fears, competitions, attacks and defenses; it is, in essence, enemy to the actual Self, in justified terror that if it does not overwhelm its host and assure it’s the only voice heard, it will disappear. In Course, there are two parts to this trap of density and illusion; ego and guilt — we will look at the first, today, because it is the enormous lower-thought nut we need to crack and discard.

Essentially, I think of the ego as the default spokesman for the outer world of appearances; the one that is a projection of our thoughts and desires made manifest, the one that has a set of pecking orders that, as we shift this era, we are suddenly unable to agree upon. It would be lovely if I didn’t have to pick on the Republican minority so much, but their very purpose, as declared by the expired leader of their pack, William F. Buckley, is “to stand athwart history,” delaying progress and protecting the status quo; this represents the very split in consciousness we’re facing. The conservative movement is Poster Child for the old ways, and the old ways no longer reflect who we are; the new must shimmer with new resonance and expanded understanding if we are to love ourselves and our planet back into sanity.

Coming Up in Daily Astrology and Adventure

At the same time NASA is planning the return of astronauts to the Moon and looking into how best to send men to Mars, it has not entirely lost sight of the Earth.

Sustainability Base is a NASA Ames project to create a supportive and nurturing workspace for employees. Credit: NASA.

On Aug. 25, the space agency will break ground on what it claims will be the most environmentally friendly building in the federal government, according to Steve Zornetzer, Associate Center Director at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., who spoke with Space.com.

Sustainability Base — the name pays homage to Apollo 11’s landing site on the Moon, Tranquility Base — should be ready for the scientists and engineers to set up housekeeping sometime in 2011.

Touting the nearly $21 million center’s LEED platinum credentials, Zornetzer told Space.com, “I decided that if we’re going to build an energy efficient building, why don’t we build the most energy efficient building we can possibly build, in the spirit of what we need to do for this country.”

Key to the building’s stingy energy appetite will be a computer system, drawn from NASA’s experience with monitoring conditions aboard spacecraft, which makes adjustments on the fly to keep Sustainability Base at maximum efficiency. It will even go so far as to check weather forecasts and accommodate changes in temperature and precipitation, and send out regular reports to building occupants so they are aware how much energy they, personally, are using.

Which is all very well and good, but what about you? Well, maybe you won’t have a cutting-edge, high-powered computer brain adjusting your thermostat in response to the latest forecast, but Space.com does provide a list of 10 things you can do to make your home greener.

Rock fans, rejoice! Space rock, that is, the kind which come plummeting out of the sky and evaporate in a blaze of glory. The annual Perseid Meteor Shower should hit its peak next Wednesday, August 12, between the hours of 1 and 2 a.m. on the Pacific Coast.

The Perseid meteor shower is slowly intensifying as Earth plunges deeper in Comet Swift-Tuttle’s debris stream. On August 4th, amateur astronomer Thomas Ashcraft caught an early arrival using an all-sky camera at his observatory near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

That prediction comes from Jeremie Vaubaillon and Mikhail Maslov, as reported by SpaceWeather.com. The veteran forecasters anticipate one of the finest displays in years, with a peak rate of some 180 meteors per hour, or up to 3 per minute.

What’s causing this? Earth is passing through “a filament of comet dust,” according to NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, which got left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle in — hang onto your hats, friends — the year 1610. That filament will serve to augment the “main Perseid debris stream,” said NASA’s Bill Cooke, which itself “may be denser than normal due to gravitational enhancements by Saturn.”

Mankind has watched the Perseids in wonder for more than 2,000 years, and at one point they were known in Europe as the “Tears of St. Lawrence,” a 3rd century saint who is patron of (among other things) Rome, Canada, prostitutes and librarians.

Okay, just to be clear, the use of the term “warm” in this application is extremely relative.

Spitzer’s First Warm Image. Credit: NASA.

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, an infrared observatory launched in 2003, recently ran out of the liquid helium it used to keep certain instruments cool. As a result, the telescope has “warmed up” to a mere -406 degrees Fahrenheit (or 30 Kelvin, for those who are counting), and now its cameras are operating in a different spectrum of the infrared.

And that’s resulting in images like this and this, taken July 21.

Phil Plait, over at Discovery.com’s Bad Astronomy, explains the change in Spitzer’s operating temperature this way: “Unless cooled, the mirror and the rest of the telescope will glow brightly in the infrared, making it impossible to do any science. It would be like shining a flashlight down the ‘scope! So Spitzer uses liquid helium to cool some of its instruments down almost to absolute zero.”

Make that “used” helium as a coolant, Plait adds. It’s all boiled away over the last five-and-a-half years, but a sunshade still provides some protection and allows the cameras to take the current images without being washed out by ambient heat.

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, August 7, 2009, #778 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Aries (March 20-April 19)
You are free to think what you want, do what you want and associate with whom you please. But if that statement still evokes doubts in your mind or your feelings, it’s time to figure out why. Nobody likes to admit how much power others hold over them, yet the only way to liberate yourself from that power is to be aware of it. Recent events have exposed some psychologically controlling tendencies in the people around you, and your tendency to go along with it. This kind of pressure would have no appeal, though, were you not uncertain of your own opinion in a critical matter. The point is that when you are united with yourself, there is no way that another person can have an undue influence on you. This is the real lesson. In other words, it’s not about them, it’s about you.

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Taurus (April 19- May 20)
You know what you are feeling but it’s difficult to put into words. Or rather, are you in conflict about what you’re feeling? You seem to have one idea; you may perceive someone else as being in conflict, as having two opinions on the same matter. You might want to check in and see whether the idea of someone else feeling a certain way may simply be a screen onto which you are projecting your own feelings. This is almost always worth doing; it helps to know whether something is a reflection, an image or something emotionally and physically substantial. I can tell you this. At the moment, something besides conflict is luring you out of your shell: something much more interesting and pleasant. Yet to go there you need to be willing to do two things: go beyond conflict; and to treat it honestly and directly when you feel it.

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Gemini (May 20- June 21)
Your fears have been getting more of your attention than they deserve. What’s actually happening is that the flow of energy is opening up inside you, and you’re experiencing this as instability, which can evoke a kind of nervous quality. Yes, you’re famous for this, but enough is enough. The thing is that Mars is going to be in your sign for a few more weeks, and is about to make a trine to the Aquarius conjunction. To put it mildly, a lot of information is coming in, to the point of overload. One thing to do is make friends with the chaos. To do this, you only need to let go a little, and feel it as energy rather than as matter. Another thing that might help is to focus on who you are rather than what you are thinking. Your sense of being will feel like flying above the clouds rather than being caught in the wind and rain.

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Cancer (June 21- July 22)
Different factors in your chart are bringing up your worst fears and your deepest sense of potential. You might think it would be nice to have the potential without the anxiety, but you are obviously trying to work something out. Remember that between love and fear, no compromise is possible. Or rather, when we attempt to forge a compromise, we end up with this odd thing we call guilt, where what is right feels so wrong; where love feels like a burden; where no option feels right. The thing to do when you feel guilt is to love and forgive. And you do have that option right now, in a very strong way. We rarely call guilt by its name; we jump to the conclusion that we are wrong without any conscious critique. Guilt is more about evidence that you are attempting to choose what is right for you, more than anything else.

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Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
You are bigger than anything you encounter; you can embrace any circumstance. Like all people, you tend at times, or often, to feel smaller than your situations and looked at one way, your life is an exercise in recognizing your true place in the scale of the cosmos. Now you have some bonus opportunities to practice. While it’s true that you don’t have control over most things, you have vast influence over how you perceive yourself and others. This is the key to finding a place of harmony with them. Yet the thing about people is that they feel so many different things, and these feelings can be destabilizing to themselves and to others. They often exist in a state of contradiction. You have a talent for embracing contradictions; for recognizing that they exist within you, too, and thus taking away their power in your relationships.

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Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
Mercury in your sign seems to be arriving with the necessity to make a decision, but I would suggest that it’s not the time to rush matters. You don’t need to commit to anything or anyone before it’s actually time to do so. I would suggest that you take a different approach, anyway: look at what you’re already committed to; where your devotions are currently invested, whether you’ve said or done anything about it or not. You may indeed be facing a blockage, but that is not, I repeat, not a sign that you lack a sincere dedication or investment. You have made more progress than you think, even if that progress has not had any visible results lately. Before you make the decision in question, you’ve needed to make a discovery; that discovery is at hand. Then you need to process the information and your feelings about it. Time is on your side.

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Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
Venus is working her way across the angle of your chart that most astrologers associate with success. In the solar chart system used by newspaper astrologers, the sign involved is Cancer, suggesting that your success is intimately linked with other people being taken care of; and that happens to be where Venus is at the moment. You are the visible factor in this equation; a beacon and a reference point. There’s also a hidden factor involved, one of supreme significance to achieving any of your goals. You may not be able to identify this offhand, so I suggest you keep a keen eye out for what this factor may be. Potentially, a person; potentially an idea; potentially both — and collaboration is strongly implied in the setup. Take maximum advantage of this.

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Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
A close partner, friend or loved one is leading the way from conflict to faith: the way of all healing. I do recognize the struggle of faith on our planet. It seems like a cynical concept, when so many people make it their business to take advantage of others rather than offering them support and opportunities. This is evidence that faith manifests in relationships first. Here is where to pay attention. There is a pride issue involved: in a sense it feels good to be right, or to fight for what is right. And it feels like we are giving something up by giving up that struggle; by admitting that it was unnecessary, we can face the illusion we’re admitting to being wrong, after struggling to assert a point of view. Someone close to you has a better idea; accept its potential humbly.

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Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
There has been something standing between you and your success, and even your ability to express yourself clearly. Recently you caught a glimpse of what that something might be. It probably looked like some ugly psychological tendency that you’re dragging around; in reality, it’s a thought form that has hijacked your identity by forcing you to follow its every whim, subtle or not. You could call it a hidden negative expectation. The powerful part was not the negative aspect but rather the hidden one. It directly involves what would, presumably, happen to you if you open up and reveal a vulnerability. By exposing this you make yourself stronger, not weaker.

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Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
Finally the issue of self-worth is coming up on the radar. It’s like this thing that we’ve dragged around, concealed in our psyches, since we had our first thoughts. I’ve noticed that no matter how much work we do on this issue, it seems to respond in quantum leaps. Basically, we work and work and search for that sense of why we need to feel better, or identify the issues; and then one day it all catches up and suddenly we’re on a different level. It would seem that something like this is happening to you lately. There is one difference, though: you can document the change. You have a tangible reason to accept and understand that something you blamed yourself for is not your fault.

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Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
Every person comes equipped with shadow material. This is a fact of psychology as we understand it today. Where did these fears, injuries, judgments and dark spots come from? We can identify many sources, but they are all in the past. That is the one thing they have in common and the one thing we need to remember: something in the past is affecting us now; something in the past is acting like, or tricking us into thinking that it’s in the present time. You are now in a moment of sorting out. The question you can ask yourself is, how much do you want to be influenced by things that happened one or five or thirty or more years ago? The more you ask that question, the more influence you will have.

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Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
You can count on the people you care about the most being ready to have a real conversation about what truly makes a difference. You are changing; you’ve taken a step and have become more comfortable with a fact of your own life that was difficult to accept at first, but which you’re now embracing as a teacher. If you can keep doing this, trust that the best is yet to come. The lessons of your life are not haphazard, nor are the rewards for your efforts. If the universe is governed by chaos, it’s the intelligent kind; and like any living thing, the more intelligently you speak to the people in your life the more intelligently they will reply to you. Don’t deny others’ consciousness. Assume awareness. Be aware.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

This week I’ve invested my energy into an extended horoscope that looks closely at the eclipse of the Moon next week, as well as the sign change of Venus from Gemini to Cancer. This happens to be weekly horoscope number 777. Today I will leave you with a few thoughts on next week’s Aquarius Full Moon and penumbral lunar eclipse.

Dina, photographed for Book of Blue by Eric Francis.

As we have reported previously, this is the third in a sequence of three eclipses [view chart]. This one takes place in Aquarius, conjunct a centaur named Nessus. This is the third centaur; the first planet ever named by astronomers at the suggestion of astrologers; and an energy that we all must work with on a day-to-day basis in our relationships and our attempts at relationship. As I go through the process of writing, corresponding and teaching on the topic of this eclipse, I am gradually working out a new interpretation of Nessus. One thing I can say, at least, is that this point addresses some of our deepest vulnerabilities.

We don’t need to look too far to see that we live in a world where it is possible and indeed likely that we will be collecting injuries, violations of trust and various traumas as we proceed through life. And if we look carefully we will also see that we live in a world where healing is indeed possible; and if we agree to that possibility, it verges on inevitable. The pace of experience is quickening and these opportunities may be coming in at an unusually rapid pace, and/or old traumas may be coming up to be addressed faster than we are accustomed to. Given that a fair number of people don’t actually deal with the material, how much is coming up may be presenting some significant challenges.

Therefore, we need to consciously, humbly bring healing process into our relationships. We need to learn to communicate about things that are relevant to us, to our partners and the situation, not just at the end of a relationship, but at the beginning and in the middle. We need to listen and take what we hear under advisement, setting aside the control agenda.

To put it politely, this is potentially inconvenient, it takes time and not so many people think it’s any kind of fun. In order to have any sense of safety in the current psychic environment, we need at least to be able to trust that we can communicate honestly about what counts; and be heard.

We have been going through the process of these eclipses for well over a month; in fact I would say that the June 22 New Moon conjunct Vesta, on the solstice (therefore, involving the Aries Point), was something of the opening bell. I think there is a pandemic of emotional exhaustion going around; we deserve to claim that. Meanwhile, the presence of Vesta in that potent New Moon suggests that we are being called upon to come out of our own limited, personally-driven reality boxes and offer ourselves in service to others as we move through our own healing.

Many factors point to a collective healing process underway, involving profoundly deep issues of trust, individuality and sacrifice. We find it nearly impossible to trust one another. We struggle to express our individuality, at the expense of being cast out of our tribe or relationship. And we are obsessed with the idea of sacrifice, which creates a state of paralysis around some of the most basic experiences of giving and receiving.

There will come a day when we are each available to admit our vulnerabilities and our needs without the fear of terrifying others. That day will come sooner as we begin to embrace that we all are working through similar injuries, though in slightly different patterns. We currently live under a system of tyranny by fantasy: the notion of getting real is still a vast taboo, one that is upheld by our culture of expectation and distraction.

New York City. Photo by Eric Francis.

In the midst of this, the process of awakening is compounded by the many admissions we must make to ourselves; and by the incredible pressure we are under to stay asleep. In actual fact we typically delay some of our most important growth until the last hour of life, which is another way of saying that we are conditioned to live like we’re going to live forever; but without actually embracing that which makes life worth the experience.

This eclipse is informing us that if we want to be close, the only way to do that is by being vulnerable. That, in turn, requires both experimenting with and building trust, which I would propose is the basis of all functional relationships. This in turn requires being willing to be hurt as a result; not desiring to be so, but recognizing that it’s one of the risks of vulnerability.

Vesta’s presence in the solstice New Moon is reminding us that we must all hold emotional space for us all. We need to practice patience with one another, and we need to check in with how the other is feeling, doing and experiencing existence. I offer a special reminder to men: as women develop their power of will, you will need to respond to that seemingly unusual thing with equanimity. I would remind women that as men develop their emotional capacity, you need to open up, listen and bring empathy to the situation.

This is no time for anyone to be proud, haughty or to withhold the most basic compassion.
Indeed, compassion is what we all need, and it will grow exponentially as we offer it to one another.

Lately I have been corresponding with someone in Wales named Sari. She has provided me with a series of interpretations of this eclipse, one of which I would like to share with you here. Before I leave you with her wise, compassionate words, I want to remind you that we are indeed building to a Full Moon that is exact at 8:54:52 pm EDT on Weds., Aug. 5 / 1:54 am British Summer Time on Thursday morning, Aug. 6. Readers in other zones, please calculate off of London time.

This eclipse building is likely to come with exceptional tension, and if it’s not handled carefully the results can indeed damage our relationships. Therefore, we need to both be careful and especially forgiving, and ride gently through this energetic shift.

Yours & truly,

And now I leave you in the capable hands of Sari. If you want to reach her, please email me at dreams (at) planetwaves.net and I will forward the mail to her. The reference to V is from the film V For Vendetta, with which I am not personally familiar. We have provided a link into Wikipedia and Netflix. She makes references to Shelob, the ancient spider from The Lord of the Rings as well.

dear eric,

it seems a good time for going beyond ourselves. this eclipse feels like a purging, a letting go, even of abandonment.

Onyx from Book of Blue. Photo by Eric Francis.

by playing the torturer, the tough male, V was risking being hated by evie, forcing her to face up to the truth of herself. this is an archetype for all of us waking up. at first the truth seems like a punch in the stomach. we despise the messenger, and struggle against facing up to our own inadequacy. but once we’ve had a cup of coffee and a bit of breakfast, mostly we’re very grateful that someone was brave enough to point out a weak spot. then self-awareness becomes fun, and there’s no antagonism.

at the moment the female in the psyche is still unaware of how much she is controlled by her eggs, her nesting instinct and her mother’s fears. shelob in a sense is the driving force behind mordor, more houses, more cars, more breast implants. she uses the eunuch gollum to lure the naive psyche — frodo — into her lair, filled with the sticky and impenetrable webs of her deception and manipulations.

hell was a word devised in the 16th century to describe females who could not embrace the patriarchal laws, e.g. turn the other cheek, love thy neighbour, trust in god but first tie up your camel (that one isn’t but should be) etc.

the patriarchal laws are a common sense way of being humane to one another, to reject the velociraptor urge to be top dog, we no longer needed to survive, and now we could behave as angelic humans. 2000 years later and we’re still working on it (with a little help from the Galactic Centre)

jesus said in the gnostic gospels that ‘the female must become more male to enter the kingdom of heaven.’ and i reckon he meant more thoughtful, and more aware of how their biology affects their emotional life. in the gnostic gospels the misogyny issue is irrelevant as a number of the disciples are female and are treated with respect for their wisdom.

Photo by Eric Francis for Book of Blue.

and when women aren’t in touch with their higher selves they are poisoners, bitches and control freaks, and create men that are psychically castrated and so do their bidding.
one of nixon’s death bed lines was ‘I did it all for you, mommy’.

the patriarchy has been misconstrued as bullying, cold and colonial, when the essence of the patriarchal laws was philosophy and reason. bluebeard represents the undeveloped male, the mummy’s boy, the death complex that refuses to allow any new growth. and men out of balance are brutish, but at the moment we are blaming the men for the western world, and seeing the women as victims. the extreme of course is the taliban treating women as second-class citizens.

but most of the men i know are dying to worship the female, they’re just sick of being slapped in the face and have resorted to celibacy and comfortable numbness.

so nessus conjunct the moon could represent the tough male king, imploring the female to step down off the pedestal and become equals, to dive into their soul skins and allow the men to dive into theirs.

lots of love, eric.

sari

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

A loved one and I were speaking recently about a person she’d put on the prayer list; a dear friend who has MS, unemployed for almost two years and at the mercy of state aid. She is able to get some medication for her debilitating condition but only that which assists her with the most basic and outlying symptoms: Xanax and Vicodin. The actual medication that might change her circumstances and improve her body function is not included on the list of meds available to her; or affordable. When we think about healthcare reform, we must remember that this woman’s dilemma is replicated by as many as 50 million citizens in our nation, going without the basic care they need for their wellbeing. Additionally, we can consider this the prototype for medicine in America — treating symptoms while rarely eliminating cause; a self-sustaining, and quite deliberate, money pit.

Former President Theodore Roosevelt campaigns on the Progressive Party ticket promising national health insurance, along with women’s suffrage, safe conditions for industrial workers and other social issues. Photo: AP.

As the healthcare “debate” grinds on — in quotes because it’s not really much of one; we are shouting at one another over a stone wall of immense proportions, built of money and greed and old paradigm perception — the opposition seems to be wallowing in, and promoting, the most dangerous psychic symptom humans display: fear. We all know that fear is epidemic in this century, turning reason to mush. Those that point to 9/11 as the turning point in which the American psyche collectively began to tremble probably have it right; but it is not to our credit. Britain, for instance, was blitzed into rubble during WWII, sustaining a death toll of over 51,000 souls before the Nazis were beaten back by international forces, and they came out the other side of that dark tunnel stronger and more determined; first among its reconstruction necessities was a national healthcare system for its battered citizens.

Those who point to cause of fear as national insecurity, economic instability, immigration issues or matters of dysfunctional society are misdiagnosing; this viral symptom is ancient, systemic, built into our cellular memory and as lethal as cancer to our common good. It has been used to control us since the dawn of recorded history; in fact, the entirety of the Judeo/Christian concept is based on fear, guilt and punishment. When I speak of patriarchy, this is where my mind settles; it is male energy, but not specific to males. It is authoritarianism, and we have a global delusion that we need its heavy hand in order to sustain civilization. This is our oldest error of perception, born in the Book of Genesis, delivered by a used car salesman of a snake with a proffered apple and an invitation to history to blame and misinterpret the Divine Feminine — her soft diplomacy, her sophistication of thought and her nurture as preservation of the species — for all the world’s ills. Another reminder, I’d add, that the old paradigm rule is to conquer and silence the threat of what we don’t choose to value or understand. To quote Mencken, “The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear — fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.”

Coming Up in Daily Astrology and Adventure

Months into the contentious and politically charged debate over healthcare reform, proponents of alternative medicine finally got a hearing in Congress and an amendment that would require insurers to cover alternative therapies.

Senator Tom Harkin and Dr. Mehmet C. Oz, Director, Cardiovascular Institute and Complementary Medicine Program, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY and Founder and Chairman of Health Corps speak before a HELP Committee hearing on the role of Integrative Care. Copyright: Tom Harkin, Iowa’s Senator.

According to a July 24 report in The Boston Globe, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa is leading the push to get acupuncture, herbal healing, naturopathy and other traditional methods recognized as legitimate options for Americans seeking healing. The Democrat has been a champion of traditional medicine in Congress for some time, and last week he discussed an amendment he is co-sponsoring that would require health insurers to extend their coverage beyond Western medical practices.

“It’s time to end the discrimination against alternative healthcare practices,” Harkin told a congressional hearing, according to the Globe.

According to the article, the number of Americans who are turning to traditional and natural therapies is increasing. However, there are widely varied regulations across the states for the many forms of traditional medicine. For example, the article notes, 44 states license acupuncturists while only 15 license naturopathic physicians. While Harkin’s amendment would not require all states to license all traditional therapies, it would prohibit insurers from discriminating against alternative healthcare providers who hold a state license. The Globe reported that the amendment was adopted by a Senate committee writing health legislation, but details are still being negotiated.

There was opposition to Harkin’s support for alternative medicines. The article noted that the American Medical Association “says there is little evidence to confirm the safety or efficacy of most alternative practices.”

It is worth noting that while some forms of alternative medicine are new, others have long histories, especially Eastern medical practices. Acupuncture, for instance, can be definitively traced back to the second century B.C., and there is evidence it may have been practiced in the Stone Age.

Government — especially its military arm — likes its secrets. Journalists and documentarists like exposing them. This periodically leads to some humdinger revelations, and one such was offered up by the PBS science program NOVA this week.

Secret Astronauts. An early photo of the first MOL crew, the “Magnificent Seven.” Copyright: Nova.

In the program “Astrospies,” NOVA explores how, in the wake of the Francis Gary Powers spy plane incident of 1960, both the United States and the Soviet Union started elaborate secret programs to create orbiting, manned stations to be used as platforms from which to spy upon each other. And, in the case of the Soviets, to install the first armaments in space.

Called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (or MOL), the American effort included a covert Air Force program to train astronauts who would operate a highly advanced, high-resolution camera to photograph Soviet military installations from 100 miles up in space. While the public cover for this program — one even President Lyndon Johnson used in press conferences — was the need for testing the effect on humans of long-term weightlessness, the Soviet Union saw through the ruse pretty quickly and started their own program. Called Almaz, which is Russian for “diamond in the rough,” the plan was similar to America’s: Launch an orbiting station from which photos would be taken of U.S. military sites (as well as those of Soviet allies). The Soviet station, though, was also armed with a cannon designed to shoot down other satellites that were deemed a threat.

While the American program was cancelled before the MOL was ever launched, the Soviets did put three Almaz stations in orbit over the years, making them the first armed vessels in space. However, though the gun was remotely tested once, it was never used otherwise. Both programs were succeeded by unmanned spy satellites that still orbit the Earth today.

It’s a fascinating program, and a transcript and clips are available at the NOVA website, providing chilling insights into the willingness of the world’s two superpowers to push the Cold War into space and turn the night sky into a potential battleground — the same night sky where you can look up and see passing overhead the International Space Station, a cooperative effort of many countries, including the U.S. and Russia.

The Devil’s Tower National Monument and the Milky Way make quite the team in this photo by Wally Pacholka, posted at Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Devil’s Tower National Monument. Photo by Colin Faulkingham / Wikipedia.

Well, okay — maybe just a few words….

Mr. Pacholka’s photograph is a stellar (pardon the pun) example of the confluence of the astral and the Earth-bound, and remarkably appropriate for this desert sentinel. After all, while the Devil’s Tower stood for centuries as a landmark for native peoples in what would become Wyoming, it was with the 1977 Steven Spielberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind that it became a national sensation, inextricably linked with alien visitation (and mashed potatoes).

Of course, “alien” is a matter of perspective; if and when mankind travels to another planet, inside our Solar System or outside of it, it is we who will be the alien visitors then. And our Sun is just another entry in the Milky Way’s catalog of stars and will help make up the shining band in the sky of some far-off planet, should we ever traverse the light years separating us from other worlds circling other stars. Will that planet have something as desolate and beautiful as the Devil’s Tower? We can only hope.

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, July 31, 2009, #777 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Note: Planet Waves weekly horoscope sequence numbers began about four years ago, when I was briefly living in San Pedro, Spain, and hired Jessica Keet (of South Africa and then Los Angeles) to be the Planet Waves horoscope coordinator. We began with number 531 as something of an arbitrary beginning place, so we could keep track of our projects. Today we reach horoscope 777, one of those truly beautiful esoteric numbers. Today’s horoscope is an extended edition, interpreting the sign change of Venus from Gemini to Cancer, and the eclipse of the Moon that happens next week conjunct the centaur Nessus.

Aries (March 20-April 19)
There are indeed two ways to look at the world. Of course there are usually many more, but two is a good start; it’s better than being stuck in one, particularly if that one relates mostly from the place of fear, guilt or contention within yourself. The questions you face now go something like this: what is influencing you to be biased one way or the other? What motivation do you have to take over your power of choice? And finally: what preconceived ideas about yourself, going back as far as you can trace the history of your life being influenced at all, are directing your decisions today? I understand that you may feel way behind a partner in this process of raising your awareness to the level of what really matters. Yet there are social forces that are currently vying not only for your attention but your devotion. These, I suggest you scrutinize carefully.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
When you go through a process of spiritual growth, it can take the ‘ego mind’ some time to catch up with the progress of your soul. The seeming coexistence in a double paradigm can be difficult. There’s also no guarantee that any one person will succeed in experiencing unified consciousness; not in this world, where we always have another seemingly good reason to retreat to the past. Yet you are moving forward, in the face of so many factors that are seemingly so much larger than yourself. In a little while, the dilemmas that seem so important today will vanish into the depths of your true calling. I would go so far as to describe this as an evolutionary movement for your whole being; not your existence as it seems to be in fragments, or dissociated parts. You are not one who thrives on confrontation. But ultimately we must each confront the fact of our own existence and what it means. As Venus changes signs to Cancer and forms an opposition to Pluto, you may experience something rather like this.

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Gemini (May 20- June 21)
You may not be getting a clear signal about what is available, who is available, what is expected from you or what environment you are in. The movement of Mercury over the next few days suggests that you’re likely willing to do anything to have that sense of acknowledgement. I would propose, however, that you would be wise to look in your own direction for this information. I suggest you reduce your plans to reaching for the one truly specific thing that you need. This will obviously conflict with your tendency to always want to keep your options open; to not be tied down. This tendency has power, I suggest you ask where it comes from. Obviously you want to participate in a direct way. That participation requires commitment. Yet true commitment is never to an external factor; it is based on movement from within, and generally, once we make a commitment we know because our body, our feelings and our choices begin to move in that direction without our actually having to make a choice. You can trust this.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
You have come a long way in facing your fears during the past few weeks. There is a feeling of freedom in that, yet you have not seen the best of the results yet. These results will come even as you continue to struggle with some unknown factor that has seemed to be the source of so much in the way of disturbance in your life recently. I suggest you give up the struggle and reach only for awareness. Fear has a way of lurking on what are sometimes called ‘unconscious’ levels of the mind. It hides, and influences us by stealth. There is only one remedy: to love openly, freely, generously, and in the face of whatever may appear to threaten love. Remember that love is not threatened; rather, every other value quakes in the presence of this most beautiful human force for healing and embrace. For a while, you may find yourself with no choice but to love in the face of fear. And your love will become all the deeper and stronger for rising to the occasion.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
You may be viewing the future with a sense of apprehension. Recent events may have you feeling like it’s difficult to plant both of your feet on solid ground. Yet the only solid ground in the universe is your own integrity. That is the filter that influences the rest of your reality, and the more aware of this fact you are, the more true-to-course your life will feel. This, even in the face of others who are uncertain, who are slipping backwards, and who choose to let their sense of identity be dictated by factors outside their control. You are in the process of figuring out that you are indeed different than the world you perceive. That can be quite an uncomfortable state of existence, but then it is the ultimate expression of individuality to be who you are despite what the world is. Then, as I am sure you have learned at certain points in the past, there comes a reconciliation process. Here is a clue. You will know you are making a contribution when you are able to give and feel that you are losing nothing.

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Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
The Hermit is the tarot card associated with your sign, and you may indeed be able to relate these days. The Hermit is a trump among trumps; one of the most exalted states of humanity: a stage of evolution where we have risen above dualism and from that space of unity within ourselves, we are able to hold up the light for others to follow. That inner sense of unity is the key, and yes, you may at times still struggle to hold the space. Yet that is part of the process, and part of what is witnessed. You don’t need to be perfect, but rather embracing your role and the journey you are on. The truth is you are not as alone as you may think; certainly not to the extent that you may feel. Yes, you exist in a different reality than many people you know. You have more information, and certain doubts run much deeper. It is difficult at times for you to make contact with others. Yet as you radiate and express who you are, you may discover they are more eager to make contact with you.

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Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
I suggest that you remember this stretch of your personal history carefully. Once this distinct phase passes, you may have a tendency to forget some of the territory you crossed, and how meaningful it truly is. You can remember as a kind of yoga; leave yourself notes; collect artifacts and stay in contact with the people who you discovered were influencing you, because they have more to share. Most of all, remember the transitions you experience and the commitments that you make. The story of this time in your life is that of your passion awakening. You are gaining trust in yourself and your gifts. I would emphasize your potential to embrace one gentle truth: your talents are collective property. They have limited value outside the scope of their influence on others. In other words, your greatest satisfaction and contact with your potential will come from witnessing the influence you have on the world around you, rather than from merely ‘doing your thing’.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
I am sure you wish the negotiation process would finally end; it would be easier indeed if more of the people around you were more negotiable, and for that matter more committed to their own cause. This, I think you will discover is true as the next few days unfold. Here is the challenge: seeing things as they are, not as you are. You may struggle to emphasize the positive, or perhaps more accurately, to see what appears to be negative in its true context. Someone close to you is leading you gently toward a place of faith. You have the ability to stay where you’ve felt stuck; or to shift your consciousness to a new kind of awareness. Take note: they are leading you emotionally, toward a feeling-tone where you will be able to stabilize your consciousness on what I can only describe as love: the real thing, connected to something much larger than yourself. This is directly an expression of your potential. As you taste this, you will still be aware of some sharp contrasts within you and around you. But you will have a new basis for judging what is possible.

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Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
Make sure you notice when people treat you compassionately. Decide consciously whether you want to pull away, or welcome their offerings. Given your nature, you may feel that to acknowledge their kindness and commitment will imply commitment on your part. I believe this is true, and I believe it’s a reason why so many people insist on being so remote and aloof from the people around them, yet all the time begging for attention of the kind that they don’t really need. To put it mildly, you have tendencies that isolate you from the deeper levels of human contact that you seek; and now you have opportunities to experience both that closeness and also to step beyond your fears. Attachment is not an option in this world; how we choose to express that attachment is. Sharing is not an option; what we choose to give and receive is. Over the next few days and well beyond, you will experience a series of opportunities to breathe in the exchange of love, of passion and of nourishment. These things take nothing from you. Each time you recognize this will take you one step closer to authentic fulfillment.

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Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
A moment ago I stepped out for a break halfway through writing this column, and visited the deli next to my apartment. I had been away for several weeks. The owner, Mrs. B., a Capricorn, pulled me aside the moment she saw me to describe a complex dream that she had awakened from that morning, in tears. It took place on the dangerous Afghani/Pakistani border. Of the many scenes she described, three stand out: in one, she rose above her fears and flew away from a threatening situation. In another, a man died and she revived him using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, literally breathing life into him. In the last scene, someone informed her that the Muslim prayer, “Laila, illallah Muhammad rasul Allah!” would be rewritten to include her name: “…illallah Najibah rasul Allah!” In other words, in her dream, she was being named as the messenger of Allah. But what could this mean? A woman? We all know this is one definition of blasphemy, Islamic-styled. I gave her my interpretation: it’s about the awakening of the Divine Feminine, within her and in the world. In our era, we have very few precedents for this, and the prospect is indeed frightening to many. I suggest you embrace Her dearly.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
This is a profound phase of reassessment for you. You are making sweeping discoveries about yourself, and specific ones, that are changing the way you perceive both yourself and the world around you. Perhaps I don’t need to say this, but I will say it anyway, which is that this is a process and you are a work in progress. Many things that will happen have yet to occur; there is plenty that you have to reveal to yourself, and to others. We tend to want things cut and dried; made for TV, and indeed, most of our ideas about life are false concepts that are induced by scriptwriters. Yet life is not scripted, and there is no actual reason we would want it to be — except of course for the convenience of not having to be authentic in the moment. Therefore, you can afford to leave your scripts behind. You can afford to admit your fears. You can afford to look at the reasons why you possess the deep vulnerabilities that you do. Most of all, I suggest that you enlist the people in your life to be your partners in healing your fears and pains. You can take solace in the fact that we all share the same basic insecurities and we all face a common destiny. The ground of life is more level than it may seem.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
Yes, so much remains unknown and unresolved. While this is often the case on our planet, there have been few times in your life when so much seemed possible, and when so much seemed at stake. The two must necessarily come together. You have been spending quite a bit of time confronting the mysteries of existence, and embracing situations in which you are not powerless but wherein your power must emerge from a different place than you are normally accustomed to seeking it. I would suggest that your strength now exists in embracing situations that seem contradictory. Some of these are accented by the fact of so much seemingly missing information. Remember that most of what we know we know through interpretation. I would suggest that you take this up consciously, and remember that you are indeed interpreting; it would help immensely to be aware what you know, what you suspect and what you don’t know, as you go through that process. It’s vital to know the difference; it is vital to identify missing information so that when it shows up you know what you’ve got. Some of this will be about others. Most of it will be about you.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Dear Friend and Reader:

In one of my fantasy-fiction experiments, I’m taken back to the summer of 1969 by a character called Fade, a kind of nature sprit who can incarnate as human. She inhabits the East Woods on the Grandmother Land, and she’s been there for quite a long time. The 60s were a particularly fun time for her because there were many tripping, sexually lit-up hippies roaming the woods, and they could catch glimpses of her when she shifted her locus to a low astral plane.

A camera in the Lunar Module provided live television coverage as Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder to the surface of the Moon.

There, I met a young astrologer who, several weeks after the Woodstock festival, was using astrology to figure out how both Woodstock and the Moon landing (and so much else) happened the same summer. Plenty of things in the world make a lot more sense when you connect them to the astrology; nearly simultaneous things happening in different places, connected only by how incredible they are and that they’re all happening on Earth.

I asked her if I could see her chart, which was of course hand-drawn in magnificent calligraphy, and calculated in pencil; back then all astrologers had to learn interpolation, logarithms and other mathematical skills that computers now do in half a wink of the eye. (It takes a bit longer to program those computers, though.)

“I’m sure you’ve noticed the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction had something to do with this,” I said. That conjunction happened in early Libra, less than one degree from opposing the Aries Point.

“Yes, the themes of those planets are beautiful, especially in Libra — like a rush of love. But this conjunction happens every 14 years. It can’t be the whole story. There has to be more.”

“Good call. In 1977, a new planet is going to be discovered. It’s already been photographed about 10 times, going back to 1895. But nobody has noticed it yet. Nobody has seen that it’s in all these pictures. I can tell you where it is right now. I know this chart.”

She handed me a pencil; I would have felt like I was marring someone’s artwork had it been a pen. I sketched in a little key shaped glyph in early Aries, opposite the Moon. “It’s called Chiron and it was discovered by Charles Kowal. This is a planet that will change astrology. It’s a whole new entity in astrology.”

Then I reached into my bag and pulled out a ruffled, home printed monthly ephemeris for Chiron. I considered for a moment how I might be ‘changing the future’ by giving her this and I decided that the worst thing that could happen is that she would become a talented astrologer.

Click on image to enlarge.

I have grown to thinking of the Apollo 11 landing chart as the chart that proves astrology. While it’s true that there are things about the chart that I can’t understand, that is, I don’t get the symbolism of, that’s often the case, and it’s part of the fun of astrology. Charts for important world events have a way of unfolding over years; they are esoteric devices and don’t give up their secrets all at once.

However, there is so much that is so much fun. Here are some defining features. You will need to find them in the chart yourself. Click on this legend, and translate my words into the chart; it’s easy.

Jupiter conjunct Uranus, in Libra, gleaming in full glory, looking right at the Aries Point. This one conjunction has several layers; the first is that it represents a 14-year cycle between two of the most expressive and dynamic planets; big ones, too. Jupiter is about wisdom, expansion, far journeys and foreign lands. Uranus is the forward-thinking, Promethian influence of sudden leaps ahead, inventions, innovative concepts and technology. Straight away we have a chart that says, “Humankind leaves Earth and goes to another planet for the first time.”

Libra is the piece that invokes relationships; looking back at ourselves from the ground somewhere else; getting there in the first place with our child-like technology, basically proving the notion that someone else can visit us; the feeling, in true Aries Point style, that we are all in this together.

Chiron in Aries. At the time of the Moon landing, Chiron (though undiscovered at the time) was making a long opposition to Uranus. Most of us born in the 1950s into the early 1970s have this aspect; and it appears prominently in the Moon landing chart, due to its Aries Point presence, as well as Jupiter’s involvement. Chiron in Aries is ultimate search for self (associated with what was at the time called the Me Generation); retrograde, a self (or a search) so deep we can barely fathom it. It could be a truly ancient injury to our identity; something akin to the ‘separation’ concept in A Course in Miracles; the idea that we have forgotten who we are and forgotten our source, but we still have access to it if we delve deeply enough. Obviously through this momentous effort we are trying to heal something within ourselves, and in truth we may have. I think there are world events that push us to take up a new concept of who we are; where our idea of who we are must expand in the face of what we have witnessed. The Moon in Libra is opposite Chiron in the chart for the first steps on the Moon. This is really too beautiful for words.

The Aries Point. I can think of no better chart that describes the Aries Point as a multiplier of experience, and of being involved with something enormous that touches each person so individually. Neil Armstrong said it beautifully, “One small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.” The contact point, in astrology, is the Aries Point, and here we had it Libra-styled; relational; and done with elegance and beauty.

Neil Armstrong photographed by Buzz Aldrin after the completion of the Lunar EVA on the Apollo 11.

Many planets in the 11th house, in particular all those Libra ones; and some Virgo; in the house of ‘all of us here’. This is the house of the collective, and of collective benefits, mutually, between people and society. We have all profited from the space program in ways that we are reading on right now.

The Sun and Mercury in Cancer, 9th house. This looks like a collective spiritual awakening; and a long trip to somewhere such as Mecca. Though in theory this mission had nothing to do with religion (a 9th house theme), it did something to humanity as a whole in terms of opening a conscious door to higher consciousness (another 9th house theme) and it was certainly as far as we’ve traveled in quite a long time (9th house again). I know that plenty of bad things happened in the years after the Moon landing; world peace did not ensue. But a lot of growth and progress did.

Scorpio rising, Neptune in the 1st house. This has some penetrating power; it is deep and trippy in that Ram Dass kind of way; it’s another symbol of transformation, related to the 9th house in that there is an esoteric connection between the sign Cancer and the planet Neptune. To have Neptune rising speaks of the invisible, internalized and difficult to discern nature of the real effects of this event. It’s also cannon fodder for conspiracy lovers, because Neptune rising could imply or impart the feeling that the whole thing is fake. Intuitively, I never thought it was; yet I’ve yet to see one bit of documentation that would lead my thinking that way. I also enjoyed a recent episode of Mythbusters that took on several of the factual issues of the ‘NASA faked it’ contingent; none of them held up.

While we’re on the topic of the 1st house, note that Mars is in Sagittarius in the 1st house, imparting the feeling of unmitigated determination that it took to get this job done.

Venus conjunct Nessus. I don’t understand this one; a straight reading would say this suggests the event described was not so good for women; it would suggest a potential violation of the feminine principle; the whole thing could be the result of a woman’s actions, somewhere deep in its hidden history. Gemini implies that there are several aspects to the story. Neptune is about consequences and how they got to be that way. With Venus ruling all that Libra as well as the 7th cusp, there is something implied in a relationship. And while we do indeed rightly extol the glory to humanity for making this thing happen, and our blessing of being alive at or near the time it happened, there are hidden results that we will need to process for a long time, and would be wise to consider before we go to another planet, or back to the Moon.

Yours & truly,

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

“I can’t go back to yesterday — because I was a different person then.”
–Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

For the last thirty years, I have said that I exist with ‘a foot in both worlds.’ Early on, I found that the majority of folks I discussed this with had no understanding of what that meant; the explanation itself was the recruiting pitch that separated the potential Lightworkers from those who had chosen more mundane paths. You might say that some of us discovered mutual interest in metaphysical principle and alternative spiritual practice; to my way of thinking, we’d found one another again. We were Family; we gathered.

Finding balance. Photo by Dissolvedgirl.

This ability to live in both the density and expectation of 3D and still exist in the ethereal possibilities, taking cues as they’re given and keeping the awareness of the larger landscape always forefront in your mind, is a bit of a wire-walk. You learn to keep a sharp ear out for the absurd, which often informs you; you notice what others don’t. You have possession of the understanding that everyone is part of you and you them, but participating in group mind becomes impossible. And because your concept of the world is larger than many around you, you do not value many of those things that drive humankind so ruthlessly — they’re pleasant, some of them, even recommended but hardly required. This creates you far from the center of the herd; but not at the edge as a straggler. You’re a different drummer, walking a parallel path and witnessing everything around you; providing service wherever you can.

If you’ve been doing your homework, you should have a foot in both worlds now, yourself; it’s necessary if we are to gracefully shift the paradigm. I suspect you are able to intuit your new skill even if you have no actual idea what that other world offers you; this current reality is dissolving at a rapid pace in favor of another, the rock-solid concepts we’ve counted on are pared down to a scattering of pebbles and the project of reconstruction that absorbs so many of us is loaded with vague new possibilities and discoveries just outside of our vision. If you don’t feel that deep in your bones, see it flicker by in your peripheral vision, hear the ripe, hollow thunk of it in every news article and conversation, let me point out a few examples to help you get your sea legs.

By Eric Francis | Dogtown Writer

This week’s 40th anniversary of the Moon landing, mankind’s “one giant leap” and the signal technological achievement to that point, offers up a reminder: Sometimes what you’re doing is rocket science.

Dr. Lou Povinelli. Photo courtesy of NASA Glenn Research Center.

During the 1960s, that’s exactly what Dr. Lou Povinelli was doing. He was a rocket propulsion system engineer, and one of the tens of thousands of NASA employees (supported by hundreds of thousands of contractors) who worked to make the Project Apollo program a success. Today he is a senior technologist and member of the executive corps at NASA, working at the John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

“When I came to NASA and I look back at what I had done before I came here, it seemed like a perfect fit,” said Dr. Povinelli. “There is an outstanding group of engineers that work for NASA and I think they all take pride in their work — exceptionally good people, well suited and well talented to carry out these missions.”

Being a rocket scientist, it hardly needs saying, takes a bit of schooling — 11 years of college, in Dr. Povinelli’s case.

He started with two years at Canisius College in Buffalo for a pre-engineering degree, followed by a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering after three years at the University of Detroit. Then he was off to the University of Kentucky for two years, where he secured a master’s in mechanical engineering. His Ph.D. in mechanical and astronautical engineering took three years at Northwestern University, after which he was awarded a prestigious Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship at the Polytechnic Institute of Turin, Italy, which ended in 1960.

“About that time, I figured I needed to make some money,” he said, then added with a chuckle, “So did my wife!”

Coming Up in Daily Astrology and Adventure

How often does something the size of Earth show up unexpectedly in the Solar System?

A large impact mark on Jupiter’s south polar region captured on Monday by NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Photo: NASA/JPL, AP.

Not very, for sure. But this past Monday, July 20 — on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, no less — a backyard astrologer in Australia apparently was the first person on Earth to notice something new about Jupiter.

There was a hole in its atmosphere. A really big one. Emphasis on “really.”

As reported in this New York Times article, Anthony Wesley was having a look around the night sky above his home north of Canberra, Australia, with his telescope — a serious model as tall as a man with a 14.5-inch reflecting mirror — when he noticed something odd about Jupiter.

There was a big hole near its south pole. Big enough to hold this very planet we’re standing on.

After verifying through observation that it wasn’t a storm or the shadow from one of Jupiter’s Moons, Wesley contacted some folks who he felt could get an even better view of it: NASA. Boy, did they.

NASA’s experts were quick to verify Wesley’s sighting and give him credit where it was due. There’s been a fair amount of speculation as to what could have caused the phenomenon — perhaps a comet struck Jupiter, as happened with comet Shoemaker-Levy in 1994 — but it is possible no concrete answer will be found.

Still, noted Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Leigh Fletcher, it was the kind of discovery stargazers often wish they could make.

“Given the rarity of these events, it’s extremely exciting to be involved in these observations,” Fletcher said in a NASA release. “These are the most exciting observations I’ve seen in my five years of observing the outer planets!”

For his part, Wesley told the Sydney Morning Herald, he came away with an appreciation of the role gas giant planets play in Earth’s cosmic safety.

“If anything like that had hit the Earth it would have been curtains for us,” he said, “so we can feel very happy that Jupiter is doing its vacuum-cleaner job and hoovering up all these large pieces before they come for us.”

It’s been a good week for spectacular nighttime displays in Europe and Asia, and the nice people who contribute to Space Weather were all over it.

The longest solar eclipse of the 21st century took place on July 22, 2009, Northern Cook Islands, South Pacific. Photo by Alan Dyer.

Naturally, there was the July 22 total solar eclipse over India and China — the longest one of this century. Donald Gardner, a Space Weather correspondent in the Chinese city of Huangshan, reported: “The temperature dropped from 96.6F to 88.5F at totality. The roosters were crowing and the streetlights came on!” He also took the spectacular photo at the link above.

Back east in Europe, where the eclipse wasn’t on full display, Tomasz Adam of Staszów, Poland, reported that there was plenty to see, anyway, as he demonstrated with his photo of noctilucent (“night shining”) clouds. “While India and China were enjoying a total solar eclipse, here in Europe we were treated to a sky show of our own,” he wrote. “It was easily the best display I’ve ever seen.”

Similar noctilucent clouds made their presence known in Merry Olde England earlier this month. On June 16, Space Weather published a fabulous photo by Grant Privett of glowing clouds over Stonehenge, one of man’s most important astrological calendars.

Special Edition for Friday, July 24, 2009, #776 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Aries (March 20-April 19)
The Sun and other planets are crossing one of the most fired-up angles of your solar chart — Leo, your solar 5th house. The 5th has a reckless feeling to it; once is never enough, nothing is ever dangerous and your tendency to take pride in your boldness can shine out. There’s just one issue: you seem reluctant to express yourself because you’re worried about how someone, it looks like your father, will perceive you. If it’s not your father, it’s a relationship in which you feel you have to prove something. To say this is a delusion would be to oversimplify the case, but not to understate it. Check if you’re trying to have it two ways: to live authentically, and to demonstrate that deep down you’re worthy of approval because you’re so pure.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
It’s like old home week: a visit to the ancient past, and to the root of the influences that have guided you to become who you are. Guided is one thing; lashed to a board is another. Your visit to the past has arrived as a reminder: you can indeed identify and let go of what influences you don’t want. Currently the problem is you may be too close to it to see it for what it really is; to see the influences of your early childhood for what they are, sufficient to envision that something different is possible. And what that different experience would be remains to be seen: but I think it would start with exploring forms of diversity that simply did not exist anywhere in your past — anywhere but you, that is.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
Your charming side is coming out lately, though I keep wondering — is that a switchblade in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? It’s probably best if you keep it there. You know you have it if you need it. Yet in truth you don’t need this or any other sharp tool — only to tune into the side of yourself who is in tune with who you are. To the extent you recognize conflict as an inner phenomenon that then gets dramatized in the world, your life will be simpler and easier. Your tendency may be to do precisely the opposite, which would be to think you’re taking on the tension in your environment. Just check carefully what is what before you make any accusations, or try to defend yourself.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
Your power comes from your sense of self-worth, just like energy flows out of a battery. And like a battery, you need to be charged up. It’s difficult for you to feel or measure this energy when you’re using your emotions to evaluate. You’re going to need the involvement of your mind. The question is whether that alone can serve to build your confidence, and I would say: perhaps a little, but only to the point where you make some moves that gain you the sense of presence in the world that you seek. You may be inclined to feel that you tried recently, and failed. That is part of the process. At the moment you have the pluck to try again, and again, and probably a third time or more. That sounds like a plan.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
You’ve lived a lifetime this week; you’ll live another through this birthday season, particularly building up to the lunar eclipse of early August. It may seem like you’re shedding so many aspects of yourself, with corresponding changes in your relationships. After the past six months of curves and loops, this is obviously an understatement. Yet there is something you know you need to give up — something that you don’t need and in truth don’t want. The question is why you think you would want it; that’s most likely a matter of emotional attachment, and it does seem to be an impressively old bit of clinging. Making a choice is only a matter of applying your perception. This promises to be a lot easier now than it’s been lately.

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Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
You’ve slipped into another dimension; this, rather suddenly. The world is simpler, your feelings are clearer, and best of all, you understand yourself. You may be asking why you can’t feel this way all the time. One possibility is that you’re too dependent on logic, or at least a certain kind of logic that you use to compare yourself to others. You gain freedom when you cease the comparisons; when you determine that you stand on your own, and that your intelligence and creativity can be judged on their own merits rather than in contrast to people and things to which you’re actually incomparable. What you’re feeling right now is freedom, spurred by reverence for the unknown; that is, for what you don’t know about yourself yet.

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Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
If someone asked whether you need to be the center of attention, you would probably say no, and most of your friends would agree. But when we observe your life, you handle the spotlight well; in fact, you’re at your most creative when you know that others are looking at you and the works that come from your heart and hands. This is about where we find you today. You have opportunities to send your message; express your talent; develop yourself in ways that are both authentic and creative. These opportunities may not have been available or seemed as valuable just a few days ago. They qualify as both of these things today.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
Life is easier when you’re not carting around the emotional baggage of other people; it’s easier when you set your own goals rather than eliminating the things you aspire to because you’re certain that someone will disapprove. We don’t see how subtle this is: and if you can see, you can step outside of it. If you can take at least one bold step, you might be able to break from the tractor beam of someone else’s doubt — and that is precisely what it is. Straight away, you’re in a position to discover that there is another side to the story. Yet you may still be struggling with feeling confident and secure with this cord cut; keep working on the attachment issues involved. The forthcoming Aquarius lunar eclipse will help you clear up any residual dust and grime.

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Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
For the first time in months, planets are gathered in a fire sign. Yet it seems like your mind is teetering between being driven by passion and being guided by logic and ingenuity. While the two don’t contradict, it has been the passion piece that has been missing; you have not been lacking ideas or for reasons to try them. So take a ride on the tiger. One of the best qualities you have access to is an expanded sense of faith in your abilities. This same faith is opening your perspective on what is possible. You are, at the moment, less dependent on others for your sense of what you can achieve. Your perspective is the one that counts the most, and you know it: a bigger step than you might imagine.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
Will the world ever change? Think of how challenging it is for an individual to change, multiply it by six billion and you have one possible answer. However, that being said, you are performing some impressive feats of progress. Among other things, you are redesigning your relationship to the past. It has less power, for one thing, and it seems more like a resource than a museum where you can’t touch anything. Perhaps the biggest problem with the world is that everyone seems to have their eyes on the back of their head. Humans tend to look in the direction of what was, and away from who and what is standing right in front of them. Try looking straight ahead: I think you’ll like what you see.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
I don’t blame you for being uneasy. You rightly sense that a lot is about to change, and that you’re about to change, but it’s difficult to say when, or how, or even why. Yet why is the easiest of these questions to answer: it’s time. That implies ‘when’, which would be right around now. The only thing standing between you and some of the most incredible progress of your life is fear of the thing you say you love the most: people. I would never suggest that your fear is frivolous. People can be treacherous, and they often aspire to making this an art form. However you have yet to fully identify the ways in which your own fear magnetizes certain kinds of people to you; and you tend to forget how transparent people’s agendas are. When you meet someone and you’re busy sizing up how cute they are or aren’t, listen for their agenda. Use what you find out.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
I’ve been noticing how sensitive I am to the background music in the cafes where I write this column. I always get the feeling that I’m conveying the music into the words that I write; for this reason, I’ve had to stop writing one particular place because I don’t want to vibe Frank Sinatra in your direction. This may be a Pisces thing, particularly with an eclipse in your sensitive 12th solar house approaching fast. All in all, your sensitivity to the background is going up. I suggest you take control of your environment, particularly the parts of it that you can’t see but that you can smell, hear and feel. I suggest you do a round of cleaning, remove any irritating factors you can get rid of, ritually fill a garbage bag, and get some help from someone who knows Feng Shui. If moving your bed six inches can make you happier, definitely move the bed.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Tonight’s total eclipse (Wednesday in many zones outside the United States) of the Sun in the last degree of Cancer represents a point of demarcation in our lives. It’s one of those rare points in time where we will be able to say, “Before this, things were one way, and after this, they are the new way.” I think this will work even if we’re not ‘consciously’ aware of the process; we’re standing in a doorway, a portal, and the past is on one side and the present is on the other.

Photo by Eric Francis.

I recognize that people are trying to do this all the time, usually on New Year’s Eve or their birthday. However, we persist in doing something that mocks living in the past. It’s not possible to actually live in the past but it is possible to be preoccupied with the concept. The feeling of existing in the present is so different than being caught in mental constructs of history as to be a little stunning; perhaps destabilizing. But it is different; with the main distinction being that the world of potential seems so much more open.

Today is a day where it would make sense to look at your life and decide what you want to move on from. Based on the possibilities you see in the world, some of which may have just presented themselves to you recently, it is a day when you can take a step toward what you want to move on to: what circumstances, ideas, people, places and modes of self-expression you want to embrace.

The biggest secret in the universe is not that it’s your life; it’s where to find the tools to make it so. Really there is only one: the power of decision. Every small move means a lot.

Yours & truly,

Aries (March 20-April 19)
What is a man? It depends on who you ask. I would ask you: is a man who you make him, or is he who he is? The answer, so far as I can tell, is somewhere in between: a man who is who he is, but who he becomes depends considerably on who you allow him to be. Today’s total solar eclipse falls on the brink of your 5th house, which is the line where we take risks, including sexual risks. Here, we see the drama to integrate (or reject) feminine energy in the form of the Sun and the Moon in Cancer. Are you willing to allow the men in your life to embrace an introspective, emotionally grounded orientation? Would you recognize someone who did so as a man? Or would he be a eunuch? Remember, we live in a society where if a man wears a coordinated outfit, many would presume he’s gay. This is a difficult place to start.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
Remember that you’re being driven at the moment by an apparent split in your values system. Values are how we guide our lives. Relationships, as well, are based on shared values and a mutual exchange, but it’s difficult to define a shared value and therefore to commence an exchange if you’re struggling to prioritize what’s important to you. But you can do something: you can commit to finding out. You can commit to relationships that are devoted to learning. As a starting point, it would help if you make peace with the notion that learning is a process of change; communicating is a process of change; understanding yourself consciously is a process of change. You will not fall off the edge; to the contrary, once you take a chance and step out of your emotional mire, you will discover that you’re standing on solid ground and in clear light.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
There are so many possibilities; so many of them feel wrong. A few of them feel right. When you engage your desire, one of two things seems to happen: you get caught in a guilt trip, or what you want changes. I would propose that what you feel guilty about is what you really want. What you think you cannot have is what you really want. What you are more likely to reject as inappropriate is what you really want. You might ask how you would ever get out of this conflict, the question takes on different meaning when you remember that the conflict serves a purpose. For one thing, it’s a substitute for depth. For another, it stands in the way of getting anywhere on this issue of desire. And think of it: using this method, you don’t actually have to deal with an experience of fulfillment. Ask yourself if there’s a better way.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
Imagine that you finally have all the power. You have total control. You can do anything to anyone that you want; make their decisions, including their decisions about how they feel, so that for as long as you’re subject to what someone feels, you can decide what that will be. Are you having fun yet? I didn’t think so. Part of the adventure of life is experiencing and adapting to what other people want. Control is toxic in large doses, and it’s toxic in small ones, too. Self-control works, up to a point, but that too quickly turns to a fear-contaminated drama. This thing we want, we can only have when we create it together. You seem to be reaching, at times dearly, for something that you already are inside, but which makes you extremely nervous when you encounter it on the outside, as another person, with their own perceptions, desires, needs and volition. You can come a long way right now by embracing what you perceive as your opposite.

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Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
In the process of any transformation, there is that moment where we lose control and surrender to the process. This can be done as a voluntary gesture, or our will can be wrested from us; the difference you may feel says a lot about your method of going through changes. It would make some sense right now to notice who wants you to stand in their shadow rather than to be illuminated by their light. It would help to observe who affirms your self-awareness and who tries to deny it. Yet something much greater is going on; many details you’re observing now will end up as notes that you don’t come back to, given the vastness of the deeper experiences that you’re going through and which will soon begin to show their results. To put it simply, it’s a different world when you know yourself well. It’s a different world when you trust your own strength.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
You probably think it would help if you could define precisely what you’re feeling; obviously that is not happening. It’s also become difficult to determine what you’re going through by the responses of others. Those have ceased to be meaningful, if only because they’re so wrought with contradiction. Last and definitely not least, your goals have become so diverse that you can’t define your state of mind based on your relationship to any of them. So what exactly do you do? Actually, you can afford to wait. What happens over the next few days will likely parallel what happens over the next six months; but you won’t have to wait the full six months for a clue what you’re up to, but it would be wise to live the next 24 hours with impeccable awareness, patience and a keen ear for your cue to make a move: from the look of your charts, a move into the vast unknown.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
What is a woman? She is part biological entity (ovaries, chromosomes, the capacity to give birth) and part social construction (learned attitude, values, fashion statements). You have a relationship to both, and so does everyone else. I suggest you make an agenda of being at peace with both the conditioned attribute and the biological one. The more you develop conscious relationships to both, the less either of them will be able to have undue influence; I’m suggesting that most of that influence would come from the choice to be unaware, unconscious or working in automatic mode. There are many influences working on you now, which seem like external forces trying to determine who you are and how you should feel about being alive. They all relate back to your parents and how they perceived your gender role; that, and who they warned you about.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
Imagine that the hang-ups you are processing are not your own. They feel like your own, but I’m proposing a psychic or psychological maneuver to give you a little distance and to assess things in a way that is fairer to yourself. Here is the issue as I see it. You are still drowning in your mother’s insecurities. She overcompensated for those insecurities by trying to control the entire universe, including you. I would not be surprised if this made her sick, mentally or physically. The vector of control was a mixture of emotional manipulation and applied ignorance. The remedy is to ask for what you want, state your goals honestly and make sure you take responsibility for knowing what you’re supposed to know, and for putting that information to work. You keep telling yourself you have actual goals, one of which has recently come back into focus. These three simple techniques will get you a lot closer to them.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
I recently got into a conversation with the owner of a spiritual store (statues, books, tarot cards) about whether shit is spiritual. This is another version of the conversation about whether sex is spiritual; or lust; or food; or blood. It’s another version of a very old conversation about whether what human beings feel, or who we are, is acceptable, in any form. I will skip, for the sake of a 150-word horoscope, the conversation about who benefits when the natural world and natural feelings are divided from what is considered pure enough for God, or relevant at all. I suggest you fill in the blanks, however, and ask yourself what phenomenon of your life gets assigned to good, bad, useful, pure or obscene; what you call sacred or what you call profane.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
We all live with enormous tension between relationship and commitment. We live with even more tension between sexual attraction and acting on that attraction. In the cartoon version of the world, men are accused of desire and women are accused of resisting desire. This is a simple formula for making everyone wrong. In reality each of us is a complex mixture of wiliness and reticence; of need and craving for independence; of active and passive approaches to existence. Relationships are based on an exchange of energy, ideas and specific forms of nourishment that in turn can be warped into power struggles. You can afford to relax. You have plenty; you have influence; people notice you. You have no need to purchase your bonding in a secret deal. You don’t need handcuffs; holding hands is enough.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
Relationships imply service. There is no way around this one, but there are many techniques for trying to fake it, or deny it, or to make sure that things are so imbalanced that nobody notices just how imbalanced they are. Relationships also involve cooperation, which would be a novel concept for many. Some of the most important relationships happen at work, which usually goes against the rules in the company handbook or sexual harassment guidelines. One thing we can say for sure is that your charts are strongly suggesting that you work with the concept of power sharing in a conscious way. To have an honest distribution of power, everyone needs to have their agenda on the table, and that includes revealing your deepest insecurities, and being open to hearing about those of the people close to you.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
Tuesday’s eclipse stands at the nexus between your house of creativity and sexuality (your solar 5th house, Cancer) and healing and service (your solar 6th house, Leo). For your purposes, you can view these two houses as being one concept for a while, with many combinations of the themes involved. This might involve a sufficiently strange reorientation that you, and others, have some difficulty figuring out how it could possibly be true; viewing sexuality as a creative expression of healing and service remains for most something in the purview of science fiction. Experiencing service as a kind of pleasure is something we typically project onto ‘saints’. Yet your life has taken on some unusual dimensions lately, and events of the next few weeks promise to open doors to possibilities that you may have dreamed of, but have not quite experienced yet.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Dear Friend and Reader:

I was talking to a Leo reader recently who said she didn’t grasp her July horoscope. This, after years of it fitting perfectly for her, as she described her experience. Because the July horoscope was an interpretation of the total solar eclipse happening on Tuesday, I was curious and took yet another look at this eclipse, this time from the viewpoint of Leo, very close to where the eclipse occurs.

Photo by Eric Francis for Book of Blue.

I’ve said a few times, to friends and in writing, that this is one of the most challenging eclipses I’ve ever worked with, that is, the interpretation of it. I would estimate that I’ve covered about 70 eclipses in my career, and this one stands out. A few weeks ago, I was corresponding with my collaborator Tracy at Serennu.com and she handed me one of her one-line gems when I asked her take on what it was about. She said, “It looks like mother is not available and father hasn’t shown up yet.”

The eclipse takes place in the last degree of the sign Cancer. That implies that it’s ‘between Cancer and Leo’, in as much as there is any space between signs; it’s at the edge of one concept and at the beginning of another. When you interpret this around the signs, it represents a transition from one phase of life to another; the eclipse falls on the cusp of two solar houses for all of us.

Cancer and Leo are signs in a special category in that neither is ruled by a planet. Both are associated with luminaries — the Moon and the Sun, respectively. Ancient astrology gives them a variety of other distinctions, but they are in a sense the ‘master signs’, in that everyone is so affected by the bodies associated with them. And when an eclipse arrives, no matter where it is, these two signs are involved because the Moon and Sun are involved.

For their part (in mundane and psychological astrology) the Moon and the Sun represent mother and father, as well as the two dominant features of the person. The Moon corresponds to mother, the child-self, the personality, and one’s sense of needs and comfort. The Sun corresponds to father, adult self, the experience expressing the personality, and one’s sense of visible presence and glory. In a world chart like an eclipse, however, separated from the trappings of any one personality, the Sun and Moon can look a lot like mom and dad, and in this chart they do. We need to remember that in many biological and physical senses, we are made of mom and dad. So it follows that the luminaries will represent both facets of our parents and facets of ourselves. There is a very close correspondence in real life.

As we proceed with this analysis, remember that all the usual concepts that surround eclipses are applicable: discontinuty, concentration of experience, the feeling of fate and the establishment of patterns. Eclipses arrive with events that affect many people. And while they are apparently fixed points in time, they are more like standing patterns in space-time that can be felt for many months or even years. We are currently deep into the process of Tuesday’s eclipse, particularly given that it’s surrounded by lunar eclipses before and after. We are approaching the midpoint of three eclipses, the peak event and by far (using astrological precedent) the most potent event.

Holographic fetus from Daily Mirror series. Photo by Eric Francis for Book of Blue.

Let’s consider the structure of this solar eclipse and see if we can get a metaphor on the screen. A Moon-Sun conjunction in the last degree of Cancer, the event does not form solid aspects to any other major point. It’s like it’s lurking in a hidden dimension.

The Moon’s South Node is in the first degree of Leo — the very next degree, calling the focus in that direction; within hours of this event, both the Sun and the Moon will cross over the South Node in Leo (eclipses always happen near a lunar node; that is their job). It’s as if something is imminently about to be born, from the primal waters of Cancer into the daylight of Leo; moving from the cooler, formative sign to the hotter, brighter and more expressive sign. You could say we are witnessing a birth about to take place, but to me it seems more like conception, followed by birth. Perched on the South Node, there is something old going on; or something old about to be released.

The eclipse in that late degree of Cancer has a 12th house feeling to it. Conception is a veiled act. It generally happens in secret. It’s happening in another dimension of existence from the child who will be conceived; the child is in nonphysical form and the parents conceiving that child are in physical form, doing something that opens a bridge between the two worlds. Often, the parents who are about to conceive don’t consciously know that they are about to do so. This is because often, conception is an allegedly unconscious act, thought of as an ‘accident’, or something left to unexpected chance. People often act as if they don’t know that sex leads to pregnancy. There is often an element of denial involved — which translates to the denial of the creative process and denial that human beings are the creators of human life.

From the standpoint of the soul/child about to be conceived, assuming their intent plays a role in that fact, there is that moment of standing helpless, powerless and alone before the parents’ experience, which is the sexual experience that creates our physical form and sets off the new incarnation. In any incarnation, our first experience of sex is the sex that created us, over which we have no control; to which we are directly subject; and to which we relate to man and woman as equivalent energies, exterior to us, but of which we are neither.

I call this initial experience the ‘conception drama’ or the ‘primal scene’. The sense of powerlessness that attends the primal scene, and our refusal to look at it and make peace with it (most of us do not want to think about, much less witness, our parents having sex; and we don’t generally get to study other male-female couples having sex) is, I believe, at the root of our powerlessness around sex; and hence the root of our powerlessness around our own self-creative process.

Compersion Bed, for Jen Bolmann. Photo by Eric Francis for Book of Blue.

We can have millions of other ideas about sex; we can read articles about how to keep your Scorpio happy or 99 things you don’t know about touching your man; but what we tend to forget is that there was an actual sexual experience that created us, over which we had no power and which had rather profound consequences for us; namely, existence itself.

That feeling of powerlessness, such as being a hapless victim of circumstance, or a victim of sex, or of desire, or of reproductive power, is much of what describes our lives, till we gradually wake up to consciousness, volition and the power of choice. Imagine if we could, indeed, be conscious of the whole process of incarnation, this magnificent nexus of what we call at different times physical, sexual, metaphysical, spiritual and whatever else — all as the same basic experience that created us and by which we, in turn, take up life as creators. From there we can recognize every creative experience as containing all of those properties.

Now we have a chance to return to that primal scene. We have a cosmic metaphor for the conception drama, to which we are witness and participant. The event takes place ‘inside mother’ (the sign Cancer) and is born into the differentiated, manifest world (the sign Leo). Yet if we are using astrology, the whole thing can be out in the open; we can feel it as witness and experience the results even if the visual aspect is still concealed. Astrology can give us a glimpse behind the veil, and if we don’t look, we can feel the events on this side of the veil.

Remember that this is like a living metaphor being acted out by the celestial bodies, in their outer and inner expressions; as physical events and also as a shift in awareness. We have an enormous gift of psychic mobility with this event, and the potential to be cut off from our known moorings and experience something else, something new.

For those curious about experiences they can create that work with encounters of the primal scene, there are many possibilities, which can be done with or without a partner.

For those of us wanting to shift awareness around such vital things as our parents, our relationships, our sexual process and our creative process (all of which are related), we have one event that we can focus on as a point of transition. Awareness is about bringing things out of the ‘unconscious’ aspect of awareness and into the ‘conscious’ aspect of awareness; here, we have the opportunity to look, to be aware, and to change as an act of will. As with all change, we let go of one form and embrace another. From the look of this chart, poised on the brink between the two master signs, what we are letting go of is something we are ready to, and what we may embrace is something we are indeed ready for.

As Sinead said, there is life outside your mother’s garden.

Yours & truly,

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Carpe diem – seize the day. I proposed that a while back, a call to action that encourages us to put timidity aside, sends us forward in search of adventure and success and progress; a reminder not to waste the moment, when so much can be achieved. As goal setting goes, I’m currently in revisionist mode; everything’s speeded up to the point of absurdity and I’m only seizing about a tenth of what I used to. In this current period of overabundant information, stress and worry, I find the prospect of seizing anything exhausting; maybe it’s just me, but my lethargy is about all that’s keeping me grounded at this point. Sorting out the signals is a full-time job, and you don’t have to seize much to do it; what you need will come to you.

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die, St. Joseph’s Cemetery Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ. Photo by Brian Reilly.

It is helpful in seizing what we will of our day, or let’s call it embracing our experience, to push aside the bullshit — and I mean that literally: ‘bull’ as in imposingly solid and immovable, and ‘shit’ as in excremental leavings, processed and eliminated. For instance, at this writing if you turned on CNN you would find a ‘wise Latina woman’ with a stunning record of achievement being chided like an errant child by a group of partisan old coots that still can’t believe that a historically White, Male and Elitist America is ready to leap into a diverse new century. Sonia Sotomayor, being vetted as a Supreme Court candidate, is patiently holding her own against attacks that cannot be called anything but personal and more than vaguely racist; sexist as well, but covertly, as Republican lawmakers talk down to a woman whom they refuse to acknowledge as their peer and more. They are not attacking so obviously with their ‘legislating from the bench’ rhetoric this go-round; and it would be wise if they didn’t, since their choice of Roberts and Alito has fundamentally moved the court even farther to the Right and is an example of that very behavior they pretend to eschew.

There has always been bullshit in the American dialogue; some of our dearest mythologies are as dead and petrified as dinosaur dung. Impassioned flag wavers were not among those many of us who questioned the “land of the free and the home of the brave” meme during the first part of this century; who looked on in dismay as the Gunslinger Philosophy became not only justified but romanticized to the strains of the Star Spangled Banner. Our little guru, George Bush, succeeded where so many before him had failed; he broke us, inside and out, exposing decades of underlying rot and even now those who refuse to fault him want to return the nation to the downward spiral that brought us here. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty much disgusted that these unhappy people want me to be as miserable as they are because they’ve determined it “the American Way.”

Coming Up in Daily Astrology and Adventure

It seems like they just got it up there, and officials at NASA are already planning to send the International Space Station hurtling into the Pacific Ocean in just seven years.

The international space station, as seen from the space shuttle Discovery. The station is scheduled to be completed next year, then returned to Earth in 2016. Photo: NASA.

According to a Washington Post article, the lack of a long-term budget plan to keep the space station operational means that in early 2016 it will be “de-orbited,” which is apparently scientist speak for “made to fall from the sky and land in the ocean.”

At first glance the logic seems counter-intuitive. The space station has already cost the United States and the other participating nations around $100 billion and provided a unique platform for any number of scientific experiments. The recently added Japanese module, for example, has a “front porch” that allows for experiments in the vacuum of space.

Furthermore, the International Space Station has an unusually high-profile relationship with Earthbound fans of space exploration, in no small part because it can be seen with the naked eye as a bright spot passing through the night sky. Surely it’s got a value that extends past 2016?

The de-orbiting announcement was made by Michael T. Suffredini, NASA’s space station program manager, during a panel discussion at a public hearing last month. In addition to the budget issue, it’s been pointed out that the station was initially conceived as an orbital dock for the Space Shuttle, which will itself be discontinued next year. So what good will the darn thing be, then? Might as well bring ‘er down!

It seems not everybody is aboard with that plan, including at least one member of Congress.

“If we’ve spent a hundred billion dollars, I don’t think we want to shut it down in 2015,” Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, was quoted in the Post article.

Actually, Suffredini himself acknowledges that a near-Earth orbit facility like the International Space Station is the best place for mankind to learn about long-term residence in a space environment. And he said that “NASA is conducting a thorough review of the station to see what it would take to certify it as operational through the late 2020s.”
So if even the guy who suggested the space station needs to be de-orbited acknowledges it could be useful well beyond 2016, what’s up? Well, politics, that’s what. Because NASA, as a federal agency, is beholden to Congress for its budget — and it could be that the best way to save an incredibly expensive space station is to threaten to throw it away. Appeal to the sense of fiscal responsibility (such as it is) in Congress.

At least one scientist has spoken out in support of making major changes when it comes to the station. According to the Post, Robert L. Park, a University of Maryland physicist, says “the station fundamentally lacks a mission.” He also told the newspaper he thinks there’s a better solution than Congress continuing to fund it: “Give it to China. Let them support the damn thing.”

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, July 17, 2009, #775 – BY PRIYA KALE

For more daily Astrology, Horoscopes and information on Private Consultations please visit www.priyakale.com

Aries (March 20-April 19)
There may be waves of nostalgia filling your breath, mixed with a sense of anticipation, as you get ready to leave the nest. This is a new adventure in every sense but on the deepest level this is taking you ‘home.’ Rise above churning insecurities to see how far you have come in just the recent past. You are birthing your being in the most profound way; this means acknowledging your fears and then pushing through your own intuition to lift the veil of truth. In financial, emotional and creative decisions pay attention to the deeper purpose of what you are working towards, rather than getting caught up in irrelevant details. Dare to follow a dream knowing it is safe to be yourself.

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Taurus (April 19- May 20)
You have the potential now to spin words into gold bringing you more warmth, comfort and the security you need. You have the blessings of the Universe in this endeavor and any blockage you feel within a creative, personal or financial situation is only pushing you to find your own inner strength. Consider these labor pains as you birth a creation born of deep love. You are twice as smart, with twice the abilities and resources and twice as much to give than anyone else. Ask yourself what something means to you. You well know your level of dedication and that there is nothing you can’t do if you set your heart to it. Your wisdom is deeper and more golden than you give yourself credit for. Listen and be willing to speak.

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Gemini (May 20- June 21)
A professional opportunity is asking you to dream big and you may wonder if you have what it takes. But recent events have been leading you deeper to discover your deepest values and what is important to you. You may worry if you are attractive enough or loved enough; but remember if you argue for your limitations you will get them. A recent blazing discovery brought a revelation about your feelings, desires and who you are at your depths. Trust this as you get a second chance at a personal ambition, have faith in yourself and what you have to offer. Speak your truth boldly, honestly and courageously. If you reach for the stars now you might just land on the Moon.

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Cancer (June 21- July 22)
Consider this time an unveiling of your true being. As you begin to see yourself in a whole new light it may feel like a part of you is dying and perhaps it is. But be courageous and honest with yourself as you dive to discover who you are at the bottom of it all. You may worry how this will affect a deeply personal or financial relationship. But any fear of judgment is likely in your head and your cue to speak honestly in a spirit of building trust. You are awakening to a greater truth that can no longer be denied. Be guided by your imagination, an open mind and you are likely to be led straight to the heart of a gold mine of unexplored potential — you.

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Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
“We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.” You’ve been wading through deep fears and doubts lately. But consider this week a soul-baptism re-birthing where you are bathed in divine glory. Only your self-criticism can hold you back from manifesting what has been a sweet hope of freedom. Find your own integrity and be honest about what something or someone means to you. There is a connection you share which has the ability to touch you at the depths of your soul, revealing a deep truth to you about yourself. If you can trust, this could potentially open up a deep well of resources and floodgates to intimacy. Allowing the freedom of being who you were born to be — yourself.

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Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
Recent events have likely brought you a deep crystallized vision of what the future could be like if you dare to reach for it. Your integrity is your strength but you can be your own worst critic, so watch your tendency to judge your success. What you are birthing is a gift of hope, care and comfort for a thirsty world. But on a deeper level this is asking you to dare to dream bold and in vivid color as you paint your vision. Allow your intuition to be the torch that guides you through your most vicious doubts. Use your imagination now, as you listen to whispers of the muse. There is a light shining deep in your psyche unveiling the blazing truth of your mission.

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Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
You stand on the threshold of manifesting your greater vision for the world to see, but keep your perspective regarding a personal, creative or financial aspiration. Your subconscious fear of judgment need not cloud the wisdom of exploring your options. The sky may be the limit, but that won’t help if you don’t venture outside your shell. An unexpected opportunity has likely given you new awareness of the potential if you dare reach for it. This has never been about your ego, but rather the depth of what you have to give. Your message is a shining beacon of warm hope, to a greater community.

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Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
Open your heart and mind to a gentle Universe beckoning you to explore the unknown. Rather than any physical space this is about you feeling at home in this world regardless of where you are. If home is where the heart is, yours seems to be calling you beyond your comfort zone. Have faith in your own dedication to a mission as you turn a corner within a financial or intimate situation. You may fear falling into an abyss but your ability to face your fears is a tale of courage for a world starved for truth. Be bold and honest, as you dive into a divine mystery. You will find it only swirls you right back up to the top, unveiling to you your rightful place in the world.

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Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
A recent unexpected proposition or confession may have presented you with an opportunity that sounds almost too good to be true. An important intimate or financial partnership has the potential to flood your world with more of the emotional and tangible security you need for your next great adventure. You may wonder if you can trust this, but recent developments have likely shown you the depth of your most important commitments and relationships. You judge your accomplishments more than anyone else you fear. Recognize your selfless dedication and integrity are rare gifts that need not stand in the way of your success. This is returning you to a phase where you feel safe and free to paint the sky fearlessly with the vivid colors of your imagination.

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Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
A recent unexpected conversation may have opened up a depth of feelings you didn’t know existed; or it may be a piece of information that sparked your imagination. Now as you begin to discover a new depth of potential within a situation, it seems to be inviting you to leave your comfort zone to go deeper. This may feel like a huge risk, but there is nothing to fear now but fear itself. Even you know your deepest connections give you access to deep pockets and huge hearts that keep you warm, safe, loved, giving you the courage you need to enter the unknown. As long as you keep your sense of humor and perspective when dealing with the daily challenges of life you can come through with flying colors.

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Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
A recent conversation has likely washed over you like waves of relief giving you an insight into the depth of care and concern that surrounds you. You may still worry though about what this means for the future or a creative or sexual partnership. A partner for their part has been going through a phase of resurrection and may finally be ready to relate to you as an equal. I suggest you overcome your own resistance to expressing your true feelings within a situation for fear of judgment. What you create together now has a shining message for your future.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
You are now rediscovering the depth of your being in a profound way. You’ve had to go deeper below your surface emotions within a sexual, creative or emotional situation but your journey has led you to pearls of truth that may have even surprised you. As a Pisces you are a sensitive creature and often need to keep a close watch on your heart to avoid people taking advantage of your niceness. But a close personal partnership or financial situation requires you to resolve any sense of limitation or judgment you feel coming from partners. Follow the feeling in your heart and soul and allow yourself to be led by passion. Your courage to live the dream daily, being true to yourself is the gift you give the world.

The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.