Category Archives: Weekly Updates

The Lighter Side of Taurus

Dear Friend and Reader:

The Sun is now in Taurus, the first earth sign of the astrological year, and the first fixed sign. After the fiery start of the cycle in Aries, Taurus stands as an anchor in the zodiac, making sure that the cosmic wheel doesn’t go flying off the axle. Taurus offers consistency, a sense of grounding in the sensual world, and its own special kind of fertile chaos.

Planet Waves
The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali, 1931. The landscape is as much part of the message as are the melting pocket watches. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

I’m sure many of you who attract those from among the herd of Taurus people have noticed some of this. With that stability covered, then comes the need for flexibility and change. That’s not always so easy in Taurus Land, though the configuration of the sky is telling a different story this year. Two main features describe this, though by the time I’m done writing this article I am sure I’ll come up with a few more.

Think of this sign as a place where the soul goes through a tempering process. Just like the Earth itself, Taureans are hot, hot, hot on the inside and cooler on the outside. Just like the Earth, they can be all temperatures and all climates on the outside, though that core is always burning. To an observer looking at the exterior of a person, they might see a slow-moving majestic quality, the kind of quiet dignity that you feel in a forest.

Yet this inner-outer temperature differential creates a pressure dynamic within the person. Looking at or even speaking casually to someone with this sign strongly placed in their chart, you might not figure that out. It’s revealed in the indescribable magnetism they have; a certain compelling quality that almost everyone notices. It’s a subtle kind of intensity, and it’s powerfully creative.

My personal favorite Taurus artists include Bono, David Byrne, Brian Eno and Salvador Dali; then there is Carrie Fisher (Moon in Taurus), Audrey Hepburn, Meryl Streep (Moon in Taurus), Dionne Warwick (Moon in Taurus) and Barbra Streisand — notice more than a few unforgettable voices among them. Taurus is the sign associated with the throat, speech and vocal quality.

Planet Waves
The Lady With the Lamp (Miss Nightingale at Scutari, 1854). From the painting by Henrietta Rae, Library of Congr. Prints & Photos Division.

Taurus energy can be obsessive, and driven to service in a way often ascribed to Virgo. Pioneering nurse Florence Nightingale had both the Sun and the Moon in Taurus, in a close conjunction.

She laid the foundation for the modern nursing profession with her devotion, foresight and attention to detail. So on the one hand we could say that while Taurus energy is resistant to change, that’s another way of saying it has the stability to be a pillar of society. Her contributions went on and on, and she lived to the age of 90. If you’re curious about this sign, I suggest you read about her truly fascinating and visionary life.

Time feels different when you’re a Taurus (depicted by Dali’s visions of melting clocks; they were autobiographical). It’s rather like how a geologist will look at a mountain range and see an animation: they see the glaciers in motion (even though that was 25,000 years ago), they see the gradual uplifting taking place, and they see the evidence of long spans of time.

Most of us look at a mountain and see something just standing there, and it is — but the motion is subtle and persistent. Like mountains, Taurus has an enduring quality (Queen Elizabeth II) — but it is far from stagnant.

As for what is different about our current Taurus experience. One salient quality of our moment is that Jupiter is in Taurus. It has been there for just under a year; all Taurus birthday (solar return) charts for 2012 will have Jupiter in Taurus as a distinctive feature.

Jupiter’s energy expands and magnifies. In a fixed sign, it will offer some extra flexibility. It can bring to visibility the best qualities of this sign, as well as have a softening quality. This lightens the energy of what can be a serious and reserved sign. If Taurus tends to see the world in sharp contrasts (it often seems this way), Jupiter is adding subtle shades and hues. That includes a more philosophical approach to life and a wider worldview and self-concept. For many with strong Taurus placements, this is a time of spiritual awakening. For everyone, Jupiter in Taurus is an opportunity to notice what is valuable, and treat it that way (that’s a useful description of spiritual).

Planet Waves
Venus in Gemini. Photo by Eric Francis / Book of Blue – New York. Link to higher resolution version.

The other standout feature this year is that Venus, the traditional ruling planet of Taurus, is in Gemini for an extended visit. This is another picture of mutable energy influencing Taurus, as Gemini is all about flexibility. We’re also about to experience Venus retrograde in Gemini, though this is a special event because it involves the Venus transit of the Sun in early June. All Taurus solar return charts include Venus in Gemini, which brings the quality of mental vibrance to all things Taurean this year. I think of Venus in Gemini as a picture of emotional (Venus) intelligence (Gemini). This will serve to make Venus more expressive in words and tangible ideas than it might ordinarily be.

Venus is our most vivid representation of goddess energy in traditional astrology, and we sure could use some of that now. The professional pool sharks we call politicians have resurrected every anti-woman concept, policy and plan they can cram onto the airwaves. The Venus transit of the Sun, which takes place June 5, is a moment when the world will see Venus not as a bright feature of the night world, as we’re accustomed, but rather as a celestial feature visible in the light of day.

Astrologer Adam Gainsburg has described this as the emergence of the solar feminine — the boldly creative expression of feminine energy. Think of the Sun being penetrated by Venus, then pouring the energy out in all directions as pure, vivid light. One gift this will offer is some balance, yet it’s more than that. Fully expressed, hot, clear, creative feminine energy is something that most people have not considered, much less experienced, and as you might imagine it’s making some people nervous.

It will be beautiful to see what influence this has on the world, and on you.

Lovingly,

Eric Francis

 

Taurus 2012 Birthdays: Behold the Solar Feminine

Dear Taurus Reader:

I’ve just finished your 2012 audio reading, a high-energy, loving, inspired look at your astrology over the next year. This is a special year for Taurus, due to the Venus transit of the Sun. Nothing like this again will happen until 2117 (not 2017, but a century later).

Planet Waves

Venus being the planet that represents you, this must mean something — and you can probably feel that something arriving in your life. It is indeed time for a change, though this is change on a cellular level, a re-creation of who you are. The Venus transit of the Sun describes someone who is bolder, more assertive and better able to tap your creative potential. This is the you who can shine out
in the world, and who is bold enough to welcome some glory and excitement into your life. There is a message in this transit about finding your voice, valuing who you are, and a beautiful, mysterious end to the way that two values systems have competed for your loyalty.

The transit of Venus is a cosmic gift that will help you get clear about what’s important to you, what you want and what you want to be doing. There’s no need to worry about ‘getting this right’. Rather, what you’re being called to do is approach the future with an open mind, willing to let go of what is not working to make room for what is — when the time comes. I also describe the influence of Jupiter in your sign, as something that facilitates change — as well as Jupiter’s entry into Gemini as the onrush of new ideas and priorities.

In the second segment, I work with the transits to your relationship angles, taken from three perspectives. In this part, I go over the influence of Mars retrograde in Virgo (technically over, though still having profound effects). Perhaps the most significant relationship transit is Saturn entering your opposite sign in October, which yet again describes clearing away old values and situations and embracing something clear and mature. And I cover Chiron and Neptune in Pisces, your house of hopes, dreams and your visions for your life. These transits in particular will offer you new ways to have both social and erotic relationships.

Planet Waves
Your astrologer — Eric Francis. Photo by Darcy.

Part three is the tarot reading using the Voyager deck. Before I get into that, however, I talk about the rather beautiful way the Uranus-Pluto square is working to wake you up to who you are, and shed the conditioning that has, in the past, prevented you from making contact with yourself. I will let the tarot reading speak for itself — it’s a beautiful spread.

In this reading, I guide you through your astrology in easy to understand language — not technical jargon. This is an impassioned reading, offered in the spirit of motivation, liberation and your responsibility to yourself.

Your birthday reading includes the charts I used to create it, photos of the tarot cards and free access to last year’s Taurus reading so you can check on both how you handled the astrology and test how accurate I was. There are also special discounts on other products.

All of this is just $19.95. You have unlimited access to the page, as well as the ability to download the audio as an archive to listen to in iTunes (on any device).

Lovingly,

Eric Francis

 

Planet Waves

Monthly Horoscope for May 2012. | Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19)

Aries (March 20-April 19) — If you’ve been through a crisis recently, I suggest you look at where it enabled you to go, which is someplace you might not have gone without it. Mercury has been in your sign for a few weeks, stirring things up. Yet this has clearly been a project with a purpose. Recent events have conspired to bring you up to date with the times we’re living in. Even for an Aries, it’s too easy for the human brain to live in the past, and to get wound up in familiar patterns. Your mind is doing its best to burst free for you; it would be fantastic if you would consciously help with the process. If you feel that anything is blocking you, the chances are it’s a kind of mental block based on an attachment to something that is no longer valid in your life. Said another way, you may be turning an attachment (to someone or something) into an element of your identity, and confusing it with who you are. People do this all the time — but you have much better options. You have, over the past few weeks, seen some glimpses of the future. You may have wondered whether the best potentials were really possible — and I assure you that they are. You tend to become what you identify with, and if you want to become something new, I suggest you identify with that. You will distract yourself from the past, and crystallize what is real and valid in this moment.

Hello Aries — Eric has written a new description for your sign that you have access to from this link (no password needed).

Taurus (April 19- May 20)

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Now would be a good time to realize that you cannot proceed through life with two competing sets of values. What seems like superficial confusion often masks this very issue — that you’re trying to make decisions based on deeper principles that conflict with one another. As long as you’re wondering whether you want to do this or that, you’re still hanging out on the surface. When you find yourself asking why you want to explore one particular option, and why you want to explore some other particular option, and how you feel about those reasons, then you’re getting closer to the heart of the matter. Yet the real discovery comes when you find out that you have several programs running at the same time, which guide you in different directions. These conflicting programs will be problematic only if the conflict is ‘unconscious’ — that is, if you’re not aware of the roots of the debate, or even that the debate has roots. Those can reach into many places, but the one thing they have in common will be the past. You now have the opportunity to decide what values are truly your own, and you have a bold moment to allow your life to be guided by them and nothing else. Between where you stand today and the confidence that this will give you, there’s a process you’ll undergo — and it will take you into some forgotten places. You will benefit from learning, and from using what you learn to make conscious choices. This way, you will be one person, guided by what is actually meaningful to you.

Hello Taurus — Eric has written a new description for your sign that you have access to from this link (no password needed).

Gemini (May 20- June 21)

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — An eclipse of the Sun takes place in your sign on May 20, then two weeks later is the Venus transit of the Sun, also in your sign. This is a truly rare conjunction of the Sun and Venus, so precise that you can actually watch it happen (with eye protection, and if the Sun is visible where you are). Visible translates to visionary, and a personal turning of the eras. Let’s begin with a question. What would your life be like if you resolved much of the nagging tension that you carry around, year after year? What if your mind were a quieter place? How much more confident would you be? To understand the influence of this event, I suggest you look back to this time of year in 2004. What is the story of May and June of that year? This is one of the key ‘before and after’ points of your life. Venus transits come in pairs, separated by eight years, and 2004 was the first of the current pair. Think of ’04 as a time when you initiated changes that you didn’t necessarily recognize were part of a total self-reinvention. You embarked on ‘another way of looking at the world’. This comes to full fruition during the next six weeks. You may find yourself making long-delayed decisions, finding the courage to express yourself in ways you’ve always hesitated to, or being released into a total rebirth. Look around and remind yourself: the end of the past is near.

Hello Gemini — Eric has written a new description for your sign that you have access to from this link (no password needed).

Cancer (June 21- July 22)

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — In astrology, the 12th house is like a hidden dimension, a vast psychic closet where we keep everything we think we’ve forgotten, or that we were never quite aware of. Often things disappear into this realm, and sometimes they emerge — for example as unusually potent dream imagery, or as discoveries about ourselves we make in therapy or on a vision quest. Sometimes revelations can be precipitated by astrology itself, and that’s what it looks like is happening to you now. The highly unusual sequence of events of the next six weeks is concentrated in this area of your chart, as if you’re being granted access to the hidden dimension of yourself. Given that this is the place most people avoid (because it’s too strange, or they would ‘rather not know’), I suggest you open up your mind to self-discovery. Certain ideas you have about yourself may suddenly reverse; but mostly the theme I see is self-reconciliation. It’s as if a split you’ve lived with all your life, but were barely aware of, is finally going to make itself known, or resolve itself. In the process, you can make peace with many things that you’ve denied, including the split itself. This may include divisions between your male and female sides; rational versus intuitive approaches to existence; and other competing forces in your psyche. There is a point of resolution, and you’re approaching it quickly. One result will be freeing the energy that it takes to maintain the division — energy that you will have good creative use for.

Hello Cancer — Eric has written a new description for your sign that you have access to from this link (no password needed).

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — You are only as successful as you feel. I’m sure you’ve noticed that many are driven by hunger and accomplish many things, only to feel like they’re failures. This is in a sense the story of Western civilization; it’s all about an empty kind of desire, and when the desired thing is attained, it goes into the abyss. I suggest you monitor this issue carefully this month. You are at what could rightly be one of the most fulfilling times in your life, in whatever you consider your core mission to be. Yet it seems as if there’s a shadow you keep encountering. Sometimes it feels like a question. Other times it feels like your most cherished goal keeps slipping out of reach. The most meaningful thing you can do is not be distracted by what amount to mental illusions, distractions or what you might think of as self-defeating programs. Stick to your goals; stick to what you want and let any doubts you have serve to make your plan and work method stronger. One theme that comes up is what it’s like to have the reputation that you do. Any public presence, even a moment in the spotlight, can cause weird feedback inside the ego. Wondering how you’re perceived by others can be a strange experience. You don’t need to worry what people think; trust that they respect you, and know that you’ve earned that respect by your dedication to service and your ability to walk in the strength of your true principles.

Hello Leo — Eric has written a new description for your sign that you have access to from this link (no password needed).

 


If you have more questions than answers, consider this.

We will soon figure out that it’s actually 2012. The recent retrogrades of Mars and Mercury seemed to create a delay, but really this winter and early spring has been a phase of gestation. Over the next four weeks, the energy starts to pick up pace dramatically, and we will discover where we are and that something unusual, and beautiful, is happening.

Even as we approach the truly beautiful potential of the astrology that’s developing, many people are struggling with their day-to-day lives. There are more questions than answers; the economic and political situations seem hopeless; the pace of existence is going so fast that there seems to be nowhere to get in a little meaning, or seek some peace of mind.

Planet Waves

Here is where astrology can help. Astrology looks at the longer cycles, and the deeper themes — and can help you see your life in context of the present moment, no matter how chaotic it may be. Context means a sense of where you fit in that will help you see your potential and make better choices.

For years, I’ve been helping my clients prepare for making the most of the astrology of the 2012 era. Based on this experience, and many years of study, I’ve prepared a set of readings for all 12 signs (and rising signs, and Moon signs) that guides you through this astrology, step by step. I cover the most challenging and energized developments of this spring, which includes eclipses, Venus retrograde, the Venus transit of the Sun, and then a few days after the Sun ingresses Cancer, the Uranus-Pluto square.

I suggest you get this report in its current form, where you have access to all 12 signs. This way, you will be able to listen to your Sun, Moon and ascendant, and gain added depth. You can listen to your opposite sign and learn something about how this astrology will influence your relationships. Each sign gets a half-hour discussion. These came through loud and clear, with strength and meaning. I spent a week designing and recording them, and I am grateful to be able to offer them to you as a tool to help you guide your decisions, as you seek deeper meaning along your journey.

Spring 2012 is a kind of checkpoint along the way to wherever you are going. But really it’s a calling into the adventure of existence, a bold invitation to go beyond your past limits and explore something truly new about yourself.

All 12 signs are now available for $19.95. Next week they will go on sale for $9.95 each with no discount for multiple signs. The report is getting rave reviews from people who are currently working with it, including these words from a customer named Donna: “OMG — thank you thank you thank you — just spent this morning listening to my [Spring Report] info, and am so blown away by the accuracy (and relief!) in this experience. Thanks so very much for your part in supporting this work and for showing up in the way that you do!”. Here is the link to order.

Individual signs will be available soon — please drop us a note if you want to be notified of when, or if you have any other questions.

Lovingly,

Eric Francis


 

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — You’re blessed to exist within two worlds, as far as your professional goals come. You have two distinctly different sets of talents, missions in life and leadership skills. Often these worlds seem far apart, and each seems to exclude the other. You might feel that your work or creative life would be perfect if you could only get these two different aspects of yourself working together for one goal. I would propose that they have more in common than you may think. At some point in the past, they may have existed as one body of thought or even a single goal. But the way the world divides and categorizes things, they became two seemingly separate realities. Yet they have one important thing in common: you. Over the next few weeks, you will have an opportunity to travel back into the origins of your most meaningful goals. If you follow this adventure, you may arrive at the spot before they differentiated. You’re about to discover the many things they have in common, and how they support one another, mainly by allowing you the more full use of your brain. This is likely to reach the level of full synthesis, where you have the experience of being more than the sum of your parts. You have many talents, intellectual skills and perceptive abilities, and they all support one another. Yet when you encounter this as a direct experience, whether in subtle or obvious ways, your life can truly shift.

Hello Virgo — Eric has written a new description for your sign that you have access to from this link (no password needed).

Libra (Sep. 22 - Oct. 23)

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Beliefs interfere with perceiving existence as it is. This is one reason why so much that’s not even vaguely true is accepted on a mass scale; the test of whether something is valid is belief, which favors those who are more convincing. Your astrology this month vividly describes your process of testing every belief that you come across. The question is, how do you know something is a belief? First you have to be curious about the nature of your own thoughts. In a sense, you have to fact-check yourself. When you ‘know’ something and have no basis for that knowledge, or you discover that someone told you but offered you no proof, then you’re dealing with a belief. Another hint will be when you step into a world of multiple viewpoints on the same, something that you’re a bit famous for. Looked at one way, this indicates that you’re working in the realm of beliefs rather than of concrete knowledge. Yet if you are able to look at something enough ways, you will eventually begin to understand its deeper nature — including yourself. It’s time to penetrate through these things into something tangible. You may feel this involves making a commitment to something that you’re uncertain of. Really, the commitment is to finding out; to admitting that uncertainty and finding out what’s on the other side. This won’t undermine your faith in yourself, or in life, or in the cosmos; a commitment to seeking actual knowledge will only strengthen your faith.

Hello Libra — Eric has written a new description for your sign that you have access to from this link (no password needed).

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Someone you love is serving as a powerful mirror. By powerful I mean emotional, intellectual and spiritual: they’re offering a full-spectrum image. You may not understand what you see, but somehow you recognize it as your reflection. It’s revealing many aspects of yourself that until now have existed outside of your ability to see them, or notice their significance. In relationships, we often seek our ‘other half’, and desire self-completion in sexual experiences. The experience you’re having is showing you the way that you’re already complete, or at least pointing you to the compelling idea that you can seek all aspects of yourself from within. The thing about being whole is that this necessarily includes the darker shades of your emotions, including your fears, and those moments when you notice you’re disgusted with yourself. There’s no point blaming others for those feelings — and the more you claim them as your own, the more you integrate the cast-off parts of yourself, and heal the insults and injuries that create the situation in the first place. Far from making your relationships less fulfilling, this will put you in a position to relate to others as a whole person (which is a lot more fun than thinking you’re a fraction of a person). There is confidence that emerges from self-acceptance and self-understanding that you cannot fake and that nothing can substitute for. When you are solid with yourself, you will draw solid and aware people to you — which I am sure you’ll appreciate.

Hello Scorpio — Eric has written a new description for your sign that you have access to from this link (no password needed).

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 - Dec. 22)

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — I feel like the Sagittarius horoscope has been the Career Advisor as far back as I can remember; I’ll keep that short: whatever has happened the past three months has helped you work out the bugs in a plan that will work a lot better debugged. One of the reasons people respect you is because you can admit an error and are aware that there’s strength in admitting imperfection. Moving on to the more interesting relationship angle of your solar chart, I see the cosmos offering you an opportunity and a challenge, and in order to embrace them you will need to do your best to stay in the present moment. There are forces that will try to trick you into finding some retreat in nostalgia, or past relationships, or fantasies about what is possible; stick to grounded, tangible reality. Notice when others are lost in the past, which is a way of defending against intimacy that’s available right now. You may be surprised to notice how many people fit this description, and how few are willing to see eye-to-eye in the present moment. Yet they exist and if your perception is clear, you will see them. You will see a lot else. Without trying too hard to nudge you into hobbies that might not be your true devotion, what do you think about photography? I don’t mean snapshots, which are more about passive observation. I mean creating pictures that express a personal vision of the world that is obviously burning like fire inside of you.

Hello Sagittarius — Eric has written a new description for your sign that you have access to from this link (no password needed).

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Disease process is about fragmentation, and healing process is about making whole. You can also say that disease process often involves lack of awareness, and that healing process begins with raising awareness. For you in particular (though this works for many), healing starts with the mind: with soothing your mental state. Chaos is not good for you. When your mind competes within itself, or is divided somehow, or when the dialog gets out of hand, the stress can lead to your feeling physically ill. You have one of the most sensitive charts this way and, incidentally, you have to take good care of your lungs. Events of the next two months will teach you not only how you can take better care of yourself, but also demonstrate the direct benefits of doing so. Meanwhile, I suggest you take the time to go over your health history, as well as studying your track record of health-improvement campaigns. Now for the truly useful part: track this against your work history. During which jobs have you felt healthier, and which have come with phases where you were less healthy? Did the relationship involve stress, or some other environmental factor? Do you feel better when you have more or less responsibility? Knowing these things will help you adjust your plans and design your life in a way that is fully supportive of your natural state of being. That natural state is integrity — and you seem determined to cultivate that in yourself with a deep determination right now. If so, you’re on the right track.

Hello Capricorn — Eric has written a new description for your sign that you have access to from this link (no password needed).

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — When you arrive at a crossroads, how do you decide which way to go? Though you’re a devoted student of psychology, when it comes to your own self-guidance, intuition is the first and last word. Your mental process can help at times, and get in the way at others. To figure out which is in effect, I suggest you evaluate how you make your decisions. This experience will come in handy when you encounter a significant opportunity or option that is on the way. Understanding a little more about your decision-making process will help you decide what to do, especially if you discover you don’t like how you tend to make decisions. Past disappointment gets too many votes; it deserves just one — knowing what you don’t want. That information is worth a lot more when you have a constructive, positive option in mind. Making a decision in the moment usually involves letting go of something in the past. Here’s the point where you tend to overthink, without realizing that your thought pattern is covering up an emotional attachment. What you want is to think enough — just enough. Once you wake up and pay attention, events this month will proceed quickly, and come on with the slight sensation of disorientation. This is evidence that you’re letting go of your usual moorings — that means keep going. You know what you want, and you know what is possible; now for the matter of trusting yourself, which is not as grandiose as it might seem some days.

Hello Aquarius — Eric has written a new description for your sign that you have access to from this link (no password needed).

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Some days it seems you need a thicker skin than you have, given the state of the world. Remember that your sensitivity is your most dependable asset. If people don’t respect that, it may be inconvenient for you but in truth, it’s their problem. Part of that problem is using aggression (active, ‘passive’ or otherwise) as opposed to intelligence. That’s not going to work with you. Your most appropriate response, if transgressed in any way, is to allow others to feel the effects of their own energy. You’re sensitive to this as well; sometimes when you refuse to take on something that’s being dished out in your direction, you feel like you’re doing something to someone — and this is a key piece of the game you need to master and, in a sense, subvert. You can go a long way to avoid needless confrontation (which includes nearly all of it) but if you smell it in the air, acknowledge that at the first moment. Stay alert to the fact, and lightly step out of the way. There are, however, many more creative expressions of the same astrology — in particular, Mars opposite Chiron in your sign. In its most positive form, you’ll experience this aspect as a point of creative and intellectual contact. You’ll be able to tell what’s going on from the sensation of either authentic passion or devotion to healing. Still, expect to use your power of refinement and the benefits of age and experience to work with a situation that may seem a bit crude at first, but which may develop beautifully over time.

Hello Pisces — Eric has written a new description for your sign that you have access to from this link (no password needed).

Schedule Update and the Pisces New Moon

Dear Friend and Reader:

This note is being sent to the main subscriber list and our product customer list, together. Reminder to horoscope subscribers that this is a ‘Wednesday night’ week; there’s just one horoscope mailing, on Wednesday evening EST. This week I’m recording some overdue birthday reports and the forthcoming Spring Report.

Planet Waves
Boats stored for the winter on Fort Pond, town of Montauk, NY. In the background on the left is Montauk Tower, part of the failed plan to make Montauk the ‘Miami of the North’. Photo by Eric.

Yesterday was the Pisces New Moon, and I wanted to make sure you had access to blog posts on that topic — An Age of Pisces and Pisces New Moon, Starring Chiron and Neptune.

As you may know, the New Moon that takes place at 5:34 pm EST on Tuesday is pretty special — the Sun and Moon are right at the midpoint of Chiron and Neptune, both newly arrived in Pisces for a long, long visit. It’s also conjunct an asteroid, Pallas Athene. I explain this in the posts above, which were written with input from our blogging team.

I correspond with many other writers, and I asked Zane Stein, author of the first book on Chiron, for his perspective. He’s one of the original Chiron pioneers (as far as I know, the first astrologer to ever see an ephemeris for Chiron). While I have your attention, here is what he said to me this morning, writing in from Australia:

New Moons mean new beginnings. They can be little beginnings or huge ones, but each month when the transiting Moon reaches the transiting Sun, a new cycle begins. The lunation influences everyone, to one degree or another, but its influence is felt the most by individuals who experience a contact from the New Moon to a personal part of the chart. For those individuals, the new beginning is something quite personal.

Planet Waves
Pisces New Moon — no houses, just signs. Look at all those planets gathered to one side of the sky, mostly in Pisces. The Sun and Moon are toward the top, in yellow and gray.

The energy of the New Moon is shaped, first of all, by the sign it is in. Today’s lunation falls in Pisces which is, positively, the energy of spiritual growth, imagination, and seeking to become one with the universe, and all of these things may be emphasized in the next few weeks following. The other side, though, is that the New Moon may force people to deal in new ways with some of the negative Piscean energy, such as illusions and delusions, as well as escapism.

When a lunation occurs very close to another body, that closeness emphasizes the effect, makes it stronger, more noticeable. And this lunation, falling at 2 Pisces 42, is conjunct Neptune (0 Pisces 41) on the one side, and Chiron (4 Pisces 59) on the other, and in fact is almost exactly on the midpoint of those two bodies. And in between the lunation and Chiron we also find one of the larger asteroids, Pallas, at 3 Pisces 14. Clearly there is much more to this than just another Pisces lunation.

Neptune has only recently entered Pisces, but it is feeling quite at home as it rules that sign. If a normal New Moon in this sign emphasizes the extremes of the two fish swimming in opposite directions (spiritual growth, for example, versus escapism), consider the conjunction with Neptune as upping the ante. The potential for spiritual growth is so much, much moreso now than any of us have ever experienced in this lifetime, but likewise the potential for self-destruction is equaly greater.

Many of you who read this may remember the last time Chiron was in Pisces (although as the old joke goes, “If you can remember the Sixties you weren’t there”). It passed through Pisces to teach us many things, but its method was to help us heal our wounds by first polarizing society so we could see just how far from whole we really were. Even if you don’t remember the Sixties you probably have read of all the ways we were pulled into two different directions. So add this to the mix, and you can easily see the polarization, which has already begun, intensifying as a result of the lunation.

Then there is Pallas. She doesn’t start fights, but if she feels a battle has begun she fights to defend her people. She also is quite adept at mapping out plans, perceiving patterns. Her part in this lunation, I fear, is to stir people to clearly draw out the battle lines.

The potential energy of this lunation is unbelievable. Pallas/Chiron can enable us to fight against anything that is blocking us from trying to heal our wounds, and linked with Neptune enable us to see a much, much larger picture than we even dreamt possible. But there will be so many, many temptations to follow other pathways…false paths that lead nowhere, false gurus that are full of lies, drugs that promise enlightenment.

One key to making this the beginning of a positive new cycle is for each person to truly believe (Pisces’ keywords include ‘I believe’) in the basic goodness of the universe, and that we are all its children, made out of the same ‘goodness’. Then ask yourself, “What inner dichotomy, what inner battle, do I need to face, and heal, to make me more whole and more at one with Spirit?”

Thank you for that perspective, Zane. Remember, whatever commentary you read from any astrologer is just that: a perspective on something with no truly objective interpretation. But interpretations can be more or less grounded, more or less trustworthy.

See you Wednesday night with the March horoscope. Note, in the introduction to the horoscope, I may be quoting some of the material you’ve read in this post. It seemed sensible to get it to you sooner rather than later.

Happy New Moon. It’s a regular Pisces Party.

Lovingly,

Eric Francis

Eric Returns Friday; New Homepage Design

Good Morning,

This is a reminder that Eric will return this Friday, March 19.

It’s also a reminder that in case you’re having mail delivery issues, please send me a second email address. We have mailed on schedule, without interruption or delay, for many months. Of course, it’s difficult to notify people of something by email when they’re not getting your email. So please mention this to subscribers you know who have Comcast or Road Runner broadband. Delivering to these ISPs has been especially challenging.

Finally, we have done some reorganization of our homepage so that you can find the subscription archives more easily. Go to PlanetWaves.net and look for the icon like the one you see next to this paragraph, and follow that to the Planet Waves Astrology News archive. Or, click the link at the top of any mailing — the one right above this letter that says “Access Archive,” and you will be taken to the entry to Planet Waves Astrology News.

Our new homepage design makes it easier to orient yourself and find our different content areas. Please have a look. We had coverage yesterday of the Pisces New Moon on the Planet Waves Blog.

Thanks for tuning in — and see you Friday with full coverage of the equinox.

Chelsea Bottinelli

 

Searching for Freedom on Dec. 24th

Dear Friend and Reader:

THERE ARE A few Christmases I wish I could take back. None of the reasons having to do with how much I loved and needed or was totally annoyed with my family at the time, nor with the number of presents I did or did not receive.

Planet Waves
Mama Irene (right) and her sister Rosario. Ilocos Sur, Philippines, 1934.

My parents come from the Philippines, a culture where Christmas was something other than the nog, the flashing lights, the tree and the mistletoe. It was an entire, weeks-long friggin’ Christian ritual of making ornaments from bamboo, days of feasting, and celebration of Christ as a baby — complete with commemorative baby Jesus ornaments. It was meriendas at 10:00 pm and mass at midnight with the statues of the family in the manger and the incense going 24/7. It was you trying your best to stay up until the clock struck midnight as your uncles tortured you into entertaining them, about singing your little voice off followed by applause, appreciation and about an ignominious headlong dive for the dollars they threw on the ground for you to pick up as reward. I was part of a family that belonged to a rich cultural tradition going back five hundred years.

Being a child of new immigrants in America, it didn’t dawn on me until after our families were nuclearized and split apart that the family-hanging-by-the-rafters Christmases that were fun for us as kids would be so completely replaced by the aluminum tree and the revolving lamp with gold, blue, green and red film. What we bought for Christmas was the cartoon of American culture, which is too often its reality.

Our family worked hard to be every bit as American as we could. Our own culture, rich with tradition, customs, language and music, was replaced by English-only spoken in the house and weekly trips to A&W Burgers on Freedom Boulevard in Freedom, California. At Christmas, instead of meriendas, it was the quiet, heavy dinner by candlelight. A blown-up Polaroid portrait of my parents in Sunday best clothes and my sister and I in two-piece JC Penney cotton-knit suits at the ages of six and nine, looking like Filipino facsimiles of Lyndon Johnson, Lady Bird and the two Johnson daughters. No more church, and no uncles sitting in a half-circle with cigars and bucks. And no other kids my age. We were losing every year, cell by cell, pieces of our cultural soul.

What do you do when you lose both a culture and tradition? Who are you? Where do you belong? These are questions I’ve asked myself every time I’ve looked in the mirror. Commensurate to losing our culture to a homogenous society was losing my mother’s language, and with that, the means to communicate coherently with my own parents. By the time I was an adolescent, my parents, born in the Philippines and I, born in America and raised in the Sixties, were speaking languages from different planets.

I feel as though time, the zeitgeist of the era I grew up in, and my own creative choices to be who I was authentically propelled me towards approaching every Christmas as a stranger in a strange land. Yet I still longed for a home which was not just a place but a culture and a tradition. That longing happened even though I knew that on Dec. 26 I would set sail again for places the family of my earliest Christmases couldn’t even dream.

Planet Waves
Family party in Watsonville, CA, 1959.

Today marks my second Christmas without my sister’s family. They’re headed to Fiji for some well-deserved time away after a full year of college pressure on the kids and a career-heavy year for my sister. Blame it on my south node in Cancer, but last year when my sister first took her family travelling instead of staying home for Christmas, I felt adrift and grieved. Where would I find my Christmas? Did I want to? I realized that as hard as it was at first to accept, it was, after all my years of pursuing my own life in spite of traditions lost, my choice as well as theirs.

My sister and her husband are now walking the road that comes to parents. Make a home and a life for your kids. Watch them leave to pursue their own way, their own dream, their sense of authenticity, their personal freedom. It’s all their journey now.

It’s a strange world celebrating the holidays here, in this life, in this place. My holiday memories come from places and times with traditions that are as deep as bedrock. To someone like me, who straddles two worlds, at home in neither, the holidays come with this sense of duality: the loss of your cultural identity, and the constant striving to create a new one as each year passes.

The binding of our family to a Christmas tradition has evolved from the gathering at home trying to hold on to our sense of identity in a new world to opening up to the bigger world. Not an easy thing to do. The transition can be rough, especially if you’ve been culturally rendered like we have; when traditions become stripped of their feeling. Yet at the same time, I’m finding it is an amazing, dark and mysteriously lovely world, even when and if we are celebrating Christmas. The holidays are a fulcrum from which we mark our changes, find our families — blood or true, and our relationship to them and to time.

Every holiday, I find I’m still always searching for me. Maybe that’s the lesson from this life of coming from two worlds: It’s the search for who I am that’s ultimately my native and adopted country, my culture and my year-long holiday tradition. It’s that search itself where even though I get distracted from time to time, wondering whether or not I will be alone or with others over the holidays, I still find that I am finally, and most assuredly, at home.

For Planet Waves, this is

Fe Bongolan
San Francisco

 

Copyright © 2008 by Planet Waves, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

2008: A Moment to Remember

 

Planet Waves

Dear Friend and Reader:

In today’s edition, let’s take a look back at the past four seasons, which seem to have whipped by like time-lapse photography. This was a year that Pluto changed signs: we will not forget it. We will remember for any number of reasons, personal and cultural. It was the year of the banking collapse, and of Barack Obama getting elected; it was the last year of the Bush administration. Yet when you take an interior view of life, you get a different perspective: the relationships that changed, or which began or ended; how our kids were doing, and those close by; what we’ve been learning and how we’ve been growing.

 

Planet Waves

Pluto changing signs represents a turning point for all of us: looked at one way, a contraction; looked at another way, the grounding of a vision that we have for ourselves. By grounding, I mean the process of making real; of taking idealistic visions and turning them into organized realities. I don’t suggest you let the supposed bad economic news get under your skin. And if you find yourself in a position where you need to “survive” (which is condition normal on the planet, though some days are definitely better than others), figure out how to do it in a more meaningful way.

 

Planet Waves

Between now and 2012, three outer planets change signs (Neptune, Uranus and Chiron, close on the heels of Pluto). Saturn and Uranus make four more oppositions to one another, the next being Feb 5. at 5:55 am EST. In the midst of this, Saturn moves into Libra, squaring Pluto (next autumn). Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune make a very compelling conjunction in Aquarius, a process that works out over two years (with a big peak in May). Many of these developments have an influence on the Aries Point, meaning the news will be big, and it will be personal. But as interesting and strange as this will be, the real excitement does not start till June 2012, when Uranus squares Pluto and the revolution begins. I’m up to my cerebral cortex in all of this astrology as I prepare your extended length horoscope in Next World Stories.

 

Planet Waves

Astrology’s job is to look forward. For a moment, let’s look back. Rachel picked out her favorite pieces from 2008, which are below. Without making more work for Anatoly (who does our web design) here are a few of my personal favorites from 2008. One thing I did was devote a lot of energy to Eris, the planet that was classified and named in 2006. One article is below; here is another: Calling Home the Castaway Woman. This covers several of the more controversial feminine archetypes that are swept to the side of our society, including Lilith.

 

Planet Waves

Speaking of ladies on the edge, I did yet another astrological tribute to my sex mentor, the High Priestess, Dr. Betty Dodson. It’s a really cool demonstration of how to take apart an astrology chart as well. There is a lot of good stuff here about the asteroids and Chiron.

 

On the subject of Chiron and Centaur astrology, here’s a piece called Crossing the Borders and Boundaries of Time. And apropos of astrology as process work, here is one called In Canada, They Call it Therapy. Following up this theme, I paid a visit back to the channeled classic The Starseed Transmissions, with a piece called A Psychological Process.

 

Planet Waves

Last but definitely not least among my favorites for 2008, there was the Emotoscope — my  parody on a Sun-sign horoscope, based on emoticons. The rest, as you will read below, is history.

Yours & truly,
Eric Francis

PS, if you’re not a subscriber and you think this is a really cool way to cover astrology, you may sign up for Planet Waves Astrology News by visiting this link. We don’t depend on advertising — we depend on you, using another kind of business model than you’re used to. If you are a subscriber, thank you. Please feel free to send this edition to whomever you like. You can send this link.

 

Taurus: What is the Question?

Planet Waves
Planet Waves reader Deb Silverman of San Francisco dreamed for years of being an acupuncturist, and with much work achieved her goal.

I went through a phase early in my astrology career when I got into conversations with young tarot card readers. Maybe there were just two or three such conversations, but they seem to stand out as a distinct phase of gaining an understanding of life. Anyway, one of them would say to me, “I don’t feel right about charging for my work. It’s not right to charge people to help them.”

One day I parsed the logic and replied: “Well, do you think it’s better to charge to hurt them?”

This pretty much obviated the issue. In truth, however, it usually works out that it’s easier, more efficient and more profitable to hurt people rather than to help them. A quick scan of the history of industrialization — including PCBs, asbestos, cigarettes and the Ford Pinto — establish this pretty quickly.

 

Eris Notebook: Dancing with Discord

Planet Waves
Eris. Illustration: www.ravendusk.com.

How do you decipher the effect of a newly discovered planet? One way is you look at when a planet in question made a conjunction to another planet, and study the events of that era. This has an odd way of making things transparent.

I like to use Chiron for this kind of experiment because it tends to bring things into awareness. Chiron is not exactly neutral or inert, but it can faithfully raise awareness of whatever it is making contact with; it can reveal the essential strength or crisis of the other planet in question. This is one reason why I recommend that astrologers check several past Chiron transits before they attempt to read an astrological chart.

Between 1971 and 1972, Chiron in Aries made a series of conjunctions to Eris, so we have a phase of time we can use to test the theory of Eris’s effects. The conjunctions were exact May 30, 1971, Sept. 8, 1971 and March 19, 1972.

Many things occurred during that era, but for sure it was the watershed of modern feminism. Feminism is not just about women’s rights. It is about deconstructing the known order of the world, which tends to largely be based on gender roles. When you suspend or even question gender roles, you basically get a form of chaos. It’s impossible to see the extent to which people cling to those roles until you take them away for a moment or two.

 

The Country of Our Dreams

Planet Waves
American flag in a field of milo, Kansas, autumn 1998. Photo by Eric Francis.

In honor of an issue on July 4, I thought I would take a look at the chart for the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Independence Day is considered by most people to be the birthday of our country — the moment when the 13 colonies joined together against the King of England and declared themselves free and independent states.

Have you ever read the thing? It’s short, it’s very sweet and it sets an example for the world. The Declaration is the document from our history that sets the goal of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for our nation. It states in part, “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.”

Gee whiz. We need this thing today. Has it expired? It continues, “Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”

 

Bucky Fuller: This Is The Future

Planet Waves
Buckminster Fuller developed and refined the geodesic dome during the summers of 1948 and 1949, when he worked at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Image from BMC.

Earlier this week I was writing Daily Astrology & Adventure, describing the helpless feeling that I think most of us have when we’re considering how serious the world situation is. Some names came to mind of people who were not scared or paralyzed, but rather who viewed the future as an opportunity to do things better.

One man who saw what was coming and was unfazed by the looming crisis of too-rapid growth, dwindling resources and overcrowding was Buckminster Fuller. I linked to his Wiki page, and for the next couple of days, I mentioned his name around my neighborhood. I could only find one or two people who had even heard of him — and neither knew who he was or what he contributed.

Imagine if a scientist from late in the 21st century dropped in on our lives today, and could see our current ecological and economic problems clearly, with the wisdom and sense of perspective of the future. Imagine that he knew the solutions as if they had already been worked out, and had withstood the test of time. That was Bucky Fuller.

 

The Ultimate Opportunity to Get Unstuck

Planet Waves
Illustration by Danielle Voirin.

Lately I have been hearing a lot of the word stuck. This feels positively strange to say, but there seems to be a trend of admitting you’re not going anywhere in life, or like you feel like you’re not going anywhere. Every other email I get from a reader is about how stuck they feel. I guess all these years of voting Republican and having lattes for lunch are finally starting to catch up with us.

This is not the ever-popular “Bugger off, I’m proud to be stuck” energy; it is not the eminently distinguished “Who, me? Stuck?” posture, either. This is, “Wow, I’m like really stuck. I want to be an artist, but the only thing I’ve used a pencil for in the past six years is to scratch inside my ear. I’ve had these paints in my closet since 1998, and the lids are stuck. Even the gas cap on my Ford Explorer is stuck. I hate my job and my bed feels like fly paper.”

Eclipses, which are coming soon, tend to move stuck energy, stuck people and stuck things. That is to say, they move it (that is, us) whether we like it or not, and it’s actually possible to have a lot of fun during this time of acceleration and adventure.

 

The Atlantis Factor

Planet Waves
Professor Peter Higgs. Photograph © Peter Tuffy, The University of Edinburgh.

The other night exploring the astrology of the Large Hadron Collider — a particle smasher that scientists will use to study the formation of the universe — I joked that the lead scientist, Prof. Peter Higgs, namesake of the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle, was a holdover from Atlantis. It went well with the story of a multibillion dollar machine supposedly designed to have some kind of spiritual outcome and a chart that looked a little like a runaway train.

I am careful what I joke about; there’s this odd spell that follows me around, under which my jokes come true. Then looking at his face for a while, as he peered out from beneath his dashing green hardhat, I started to recognize him. You know that odd feeling of having met someone before, but it wasn’t any time in the past few thousand years?

 

The Chart that Sold the World

Planet Waves
President Bush addresses the nation, calling for widespread panic. Details in The Onion.

I just want to make sure we’ve all tuned into the underlying reality of what people like Bush are saying when they glibly inform us that “this sucker could go down,” meaning the economy. Which he actually said a couple of weeks ago, in a cabinet meeting. He means you may not be able to buy groceries or pay rent despite working 40 or 60 or however many hours a week.

Here is what he didn’t say but clearly meant, as quoted in The Onion’s recent article, Bush Calls for Panic: “My fellow Americans, the time for running aimlessly through the streets while shrieking and waving our arms above our heads is now. I understand that many of you are worried about your economic future and our situation overseas, and you have every right to be. Yet there is only one thing we as a nation can do in times like these: give up all hope and devolve into a lawless, post-apocalyptic, every-man-for-himself society.”

 

Barack Obama and the Sword of Damocles

Planet Waves
In Richard Westall’s Sword of Damocles, 1812, the boys of Cicero’s anecdote have been changed to maidens for a neoclassical patron, Thomas Hope. Still, the infamous sword hangs over him as the king watches. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

A couple of weeks ago, someone introduced me to Gerald Celente, the internationally renowned trends analyst. Celente has an office around the corner from my studio in uptown Kingston, NY. “His job [is] to see the future and understand how the issues and events of today will determine the trends of tomorrow,” according to his bio on Coast to Coast AM, the former Art Bell Show.

I’ve known of his work for years, but somehow managed not to meet him till that day. I seized the moment and asked him if he would do a quick interview, and he told me to come by in 15 minutes. I bought a quart of currant juice from Ray the Bee Guy to bring as a gift, packed my camera and digital recorder and walked to Celente’s office. He works out of a magnificent old market building with bay windows, hardwood floors and dozens of thriving plants.

We started with a discussion of the horrid state of the American government and economy. He expressed his extreme distaste with both major presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, saying he wouldn’t trust either of them to “lead him across the street, much less lead the country.” But, he said, Obama supporters are the biggest hypocrites of all.

Why would that be? Obama has stated his position in favor of escalating the war in Afghanistan and bombing Pakistan if the government doesn’t cooperate with the war on terrorism. Obama supports “clean coal technology” and the use of nuclear power. I also know he claims to be in favor of the death penalty. Celente asked me which of these issues I agree with, and I said none of them. And he asked me why I would possibly support Barack Obama for president. Backed into a corner, I struggled for an answer.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he said. Celente’s job is to make predictions; he happened to be right this time. “You’re thinking, he’s saying this stuff to get elected.”

“Right,” I said.

“So you’re saying you’re hoping he’s lying.”

 

Abandon Hope. Start the Revolution.

Planet Waves
Cormorant Island Penguins, Antarctica, 1988. Things have not got better for these guys in 20 years. Photo by George Mobley.

I forgot to mention that the local Republicans moved in downstairs from my erotic art studio. All summer long it was supposed to become a sports bar, but thankfully that didn’t quite work out. About a week later, the space was rented to a bunch of people running for county office on the Republican ticket, so it became the de facto McCain/Palin headquarters for my region.

In honor of this fact, I moved my favorite nude art piece out to the display space in the front of my lobby. Now, a Belgian model named Iris greets me and my neighbors every day as we come and go from work. We all get to share in the the glory of the Goddess, beauty of nature and the majesty of the First Amendment.

That is the good news. When people ask me what I think is going to happen on Tuesday, I tell them to prepare for a fight. I get a long face from everyone. I know, we just want this to be over; politics is exhausting, it’s not really fun (even though it’s currently more gripping than the World Series), and many of us doubt whether it’s even meaningful. Most people I know are crossing their fingers and hoping it’s all going to be okay.

Personally, I think hope is a thinly veiled form of fear. Any rational assessment of our national and global situation confirms that we do indeed have a few worrisome items on the agenda (the ice caps melting, the Supreme Court slipping toward a solid conservative majority, and so on). And, as the energy heats up and certain elements of the past begin to crumble away, we have a lot of potential to create the next world.

 

The History of the World, And of You

Planet Waves
Seattle Protests: The police were guarding the freeway – earlier, a group of anarchists had closed down a busy highway.

We owe ourselves a retrospective of the Pluto in Sagittarius era on a cultural level, and this is planned for Next World Stories. It has all gone by so much, so fast, and seemingly without lasting meaning. Everything that has occurred in the outer life of the culture seemed profoundly important in its moment, but so much seemed to come to nothing.

Yet underneath all that movement was a process that, much in the style of Pluto, has often remained unconscious. Remember that Pluto the god wears a helmet that renders him invisible to mortals. To me this process represented a spiritualizing process; an actual experience of mass-scale individual ensoulment, working deep beneath all the “isms” that have driven us nuts the past 12 to 14 years. Seeing and understanding the Pluto process is particularly meaningful for you, who are trying to understand the mysterious growth process unfolding underneath what you think of as your life.

 

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Copyright © 2008 by Planet Waves, Inc. All Rights Reserved.