Editor’s Note: The following is one of Eric’s classic “clip and save” guides to a particular astrological event — in this case, Mercury retrograde, one of which we’ve just begun. The current Mercury Rx is in Taurus; this piece originally published in the Jan. 24, 2014 members’ issue as a look ahead at that year’s three retrogrades of Mercury, and its wisdom is as valuable as ever. — Amanda P.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Three or four times a year, everyone who knows something about astrology goes through a ritual called Mercury retrograde. Everyone who doesn’t know about astrology gets to have the experience, not sure what it is though perhaps suspecting that something weird is going on.

The Path of My Soul. Illustration by Nina Gabriel.

We are now approaching the first of four Mercury retrogrades spanning between early February 2014 and early February 2015. The upcoming retrograde begins Feb. 6 with Mercury in Pisces and ends on Feb. 28 with Mercury in Aquarius. What I call the echo phase and what other astrologers call the shadow phase began Jan. 22. The after-retrograde echo phase begins when Mercury stations direct and runs through March 20.

Typically the retrograde itself lasts three weeks, but the whole process — wherein Mercury is dancing around approximately the same 15 degrees of the zodiac, lasts for two months. Hence, while Mercury is retrograde just 19% of the time, the retrograde effect can be felt about half the time. It’s the most concentrated around the days when Mercury changes direction. These are called the stationary points, or stations retrograde and direct.

Associated with lost keys, late or lost payments, disk drive failures and communication mishaps, Mercury retrograde does not have a very good reputation. Yet some people love it — if you’re the creative type, or if you have a slightly tweaky mind, if you like the feeling of swimming against the current, you might be one of the people who looks forward to Mercury retrograde happening. If you’re very sensitive to it for whatever reason, you might take a more cautious approach. Other people seem impervious to it, like it’s not even happening or has no effects. By now you probably know where you stand with this.

Every Mercury retrograde has its own unique pattern, and little clusters of three retrograde events tend to have similar themes as well. Each will influence your personal chart in a distinctive way. In 2014, all of the retrogrades start early in water signs, then track back into air signs. That describes scenarios of having some kind of emotional or aesthetic response (the water sign) that is then understood or analyzed (the air sign).

Mind, Body and Soul. Illustration by Nina Gabriel.

Thanks to the Internet, more people than ever know about Mercury retrograde. The idea is now lodged in popular consciousness as what’s likely the most familiar technical astrological concept. I just searched Google and got 405,000 results for Mercury retrograde (with the term in quotation marks).

Personally, I didn’t hear about it online. In my first journalism job, I worked for The Echoes-Sentinel, a gritty weekly newspaper in New Jersey. Flo Higgins, my first editor as a professional writer, happened to be an astrologer. She was about 65 years old, with long white hair and a fiery point of view, who had probably read the chart of everyone for 100 miles around.

The paper was part of a newspaper chain, the Recorder Publishing Co. Nobody believed in astrology, but we knew better when it came to Mercury retrograde.

Flo could, and regularly did, terrify the entire company with this one, sending the vibrations throughout the central New Jersey countryside, even getting the stunned attention of nerdy newspaper reporters trained not to believe anything. Nothing ever got into print, of course. The newspapers were too serious for astrology.

Mercury retrograde meant everything was about to go wrong. Flo was so convincing that even Jim, who ran the production facility and could take apart and reassemble a printing press blindfolded, had a paragraph taped to his office door, copied from Debbi Kempton-Smith’s infamous Secret’s From a Stargazer’s Notebook, warning everyone who visited:

Don’t Sign, Don’t Buy: Mercury is Retrograde.
This was my introduction to astrology. That was the first paragraph of an astrology book I ever read. Soon, newcomers to Echoland took it for granted that the Full Moon had something to do with how the mayor was acting, and when the production facility smelled like electrical smoke, it was clearly because Mercury was retrograde.

“Don’t sign, don’t buy” is the usual advice for the retrograde of Mercury. I’ll explain in a moment why that makes sense. It’s also associated with things getting lost, electronic devices going wonky, and being dissatisfied with what you purchase. Communication often comes under strain when Mercury is retrograde. For someone with a scientific or logical mind, the question is: what do all these things have in common?

Birds of Paradise. Illustration by Nina Gabriel.

Yet there are more humanistic approaches to the topic. “While delays and misunderstandings do seem to happen, I’ve noticed a magical trend — that people and ideas return, for integration, resolution and more,” writes Molly Hall on About.com.

People returning to our lives out of the mists of time is one potential effect of any inner planet retrograde, one of their more mysterious qualities.

But what is this event really about? And how might it work?

Let’s start with Mercury, the planet. This fleeting little world, the one closest to the Sun, is associated with the mind, with ideas and with communication. Mercury is the messenger of the gods, and also the trickster. It’s associated with, as in it’s the traditional ruler of, Gemini and Virgo, two mutable signs (mentally oriented, flexible, a bit nervous). Both of those signs have signs opposite them that are ruled by Jupiter (Sagittarius and Pisces).

In modern astrology, Mercury picks up many of its ancient associations — for example, the messenger function translates to mail and telegraph. It’s associated with communication of all kinds, communication devices, computing devices, commerce and the flow of money (rather than acquiring wealth — that seems to be more about Mars). Surrounded as we are by all of these devices, and nonstop messaging, and by financial instruments (such as debit cards) that are morphed with communication devices (such as the World Wide Web), we have given Mercury a lot of power in our lives.

Hence, Mercury retrograde is probably more powerful in our lives than it ever was. We swim in an ocean of things ruled by Mercury. Our consciousness is fully immersed in them; in many ways so is our identity. With the advent of handheld devices that go on the Internet, this seems to transcend economic barriers now more than ever.

In English the word mercurial means “sprightly, volatile, quick,” associated with the speed with which the planet Mercury moves, and how fast and how frequently it seems to change directions (that is the retrograde). It can have a sharp wit and seem smarter than you — Bob Dylan has been described as mercurial and he’s also a Gemini, one sign that Mercury rules.

Fire & Water. Illustration by Nina Gabriel.

Mercury is the Roman incarnation of the Greek god Hermes, and these figures show up throughout Western mythology.

In Norse mythology, he gets the role as presiding officer of the gods rather than as messenger — though of course that supposed role as messenger is a disguise for a much more significant function.

In Egyptian mythology he is the mighty Thoth, who was nobody’s messenger, or fool; he was responsible for the development of writing and science, maintaining the state of the universe and assisting with the judgment of the dead. Picking up on the ambivalence theme, Thoth was a mediator between good and evil, making sure that neither had a decisive victory in an ongoing struggle that continues to this day.

There’s also an association to the element mercury, or quicksilver, the only metal that is a liquid at room temperature. Mercury’s androgynous and liquid quality hints at a certain ambivalence. The old astrology books describe the planet’s nature as neither male nor female. Between metrosexuality and the LGBTQ movement, we have some clues that gender roles and relationships are coming under the increasing influence of Mercury.

It’s interesting that mercury the metal is a persistent environmental contaminant, and one that is known to interact with and disrupt the normal action of sex hormones. The element mercury is known to artificially induce androgyny.

Iron, Not Quicksilver: From Astronomy to Psychology

Mercury retrograde happens when the planet Mercury passes between the Earth and the Sun. Because Mercury’s orbit is about 84 days, this happens three times a year. While the retrogrades typically last about 22 days, there is a margin on either side of two to three weeks where the influences can be felt.

Mercury is not made of mercury. It has a huge core with a very high density, leading astronomers to believe that it’s made mostly of iron. In fact Mercury is believed to have the highest iron content of any planet in the Solar System.

Over the Rainbow. Illustration by Nina Gabriel.

This is all another way of saying Mercury retrograde means a huge magnet passes between the Earth and the Sun, making its closest pass to our planet at the same time. This may explain why devices act weird, but I think that it also helps explain why the mind gets wonky, such as the tendency to lose things, or to perceive problems as being worse than they are — the nervous system runs on electricity. The mind is a device that is, at least on the physical plane, rooted in electricity and magnetism.

In my view, the effects of the retrograde are evenly distributed between a perceptual event and one in the world outside the mind. The combined interaction is powerful, the more so for not being easily discernible as a reality or as an effect of the mind. A purely mental phenomenon seems to be associated with a Mercury retrograde effect, so notice how your mind is handling problems or puzzles when they arrive. I have observed that the approach to a problem really does suggest whether and how that problem will be solved.

With the space remaining I will pass along, in summary form, some of what I have learned about Mercury retrograde. I don’t mean what I have learned from books — I mean what I have observed tracking, experimenting with and doing consulting about every Mercury retrograde since 1994, and some going back to 1987.

I agree with “don’t sign, don’t buy.” That is, when you can avoid doing so. I have experimented with making purchases during or near Mercury retrogrades. Most of the time it turns out I don’t need or don’t use what I purchased. Sometimes it does not work, works strangely or does not do what I intended it to do. So I divide my life into times when I buy things and times when I
don’t.

I will usually (as in 99% of the time) make major purchases only with Mercury direct and out of echo phase. There are rare exceptions, but not so many. If you buy something during a retrograde, try not to be too attached to it, or expect a break-in period, while you work out the bugs. Sometimes things work out just fine. Really, most things can wait a week or two or three. If they cannot wait, be extra conscious of all the factors involved in the sale, don’t rush the process, keep your paperwork and make sure there is a good return policy. Choose carefully and get a good one, whatever it is.

The Way of Mother Nature. Illustration by Nina Gabriel.

As for contracts, it’s not always possible to determine when you sign your lease or make the deposit, but I have been known to make landlords wait for weeks before even leaving a deposit. (Hi Stefan!)

Plan ahead and use what flexibility you have. It’s worth finagling this to your advantage when you can. The operative events are the first payment and the signature on the contract.

The problem if you sign with Mercury retrograde, or about to retrograde, is that something is likely to reverse itself — an elementary illustration of what it could mean that Mercury changes directions. Or, you will learn something you wish you had known sooner. Which leads to my second point.

There are legitimate questions of what to do when you have a house closing scheduled for during Mercury retrograde, if you have to start a new job, or you get the bug to have that new car. I plan to write more about this; there are some basic approaches that can be applied, one of which is to understand exactly what is in the contract or commitment and not make any promise that you cannot keep.

If the situation involves significant amounts of money, a real commitment or the potential for a real inconvenience, it might be a good idea to talk to an astrologer who truly knows what they are doing with Mercury retrograde. [I can usually handle this kind of consultation in-and-out much of the year.]

The truth comes out when Mercury stations, either retrograde or direct. Mercury has a way of shaking out information, especially right as it stations. You can count on this. If you’re working on a mystery, or a riddle, or an investigation, or research, or trying to solve any mental puzzle, keep it going till the next Mercury station retrograde. Just to be sure, wait for the second batch of information just as Mercury stations direct. This is one reason you want to wait before signing or buying.

If an item of communication is missed, don’t assume you’re being ignored. Many people shoot off one email and expect a reply. With spam filters, busy people processing hundreds of emails a day and odd errors like emails not arriving, it’s better to give people the benefit of the doubt. Give people a day or two to respond, and if they don’t, send over a friendly one-liner to the effect of, “Hey I emailed you, just want to make sure you saw it.”

The Music of My Soul. Illustration by Nina Gabriel.

If communication gets dicey, pick up the phone. We are getting better at communicating online, but still, it can be difficult to relay feelings or basic concepts, especially with Mercury retrograde. The moment things get weird, such as if there is a misunderstanding, pick up the phone and clarify — before things get out of control or real misunderstandings happen. It’s better not to conduct arguments by email. It has all the sensitivity of sniper fire. Err on the side of being human.

Resolve the past, plan the future. I have found that the best use for Mercury retrograde is to tidy up what you’ve left unresolved in the past. Clean your desk, organize your stuff, contact old friends, go through your email and see if you missed anything important. While you’re at it, collect your ideas and figure out what you’re going to do next. Plot and scheme. Use the various qualities of the retrograde to refine your plan over time, then plan a launch sometime after the station direct.

If it may not be broke — don’t fix it so fast. One phenomenon I’ve noticed during Mercury retrograde is that things seem broken or like they are malfunctioning but are not really. Or, the problem is one thing but you think it’s another. Or, the problem is not as bad as you think. Therefore, before tearing everything apart, or spending a lot of money, or sending anything back to the factory, troubleshoot carefully and try simple solutions. Break out pure logic and apply that as a tool. Look for temporary workarounds and see if the issue resolves on its own. I’m suggesting you avoid solving a problem that doesn’t exist, or worse, making a bigger problem than you thought you had.

Always remember that Mercury is the trickster.

That means he, she or it can be tricky, and you need to use your mind — not have your mind be tricked. Mercury is a kind of a game. Be a good sportsman and keep your sense of humor.

Lovingly,

About the Artist: Nina Gabriel is an artist, poet and writer working from her home-based studio in Los Angeles, CA. She says: “To produce art is the most satisfying experience for me and the results of my work I would like to share with as many people as possible thus spreading my spirit far and wide. It is my sincere wish that my art and poetry bring peace, happiness and joy to anyone that appreciates it. I also hope that it will bring forth many positive feelings such as love, faith, confidence and truly all the good that life has to offer.” Visit her blog here.

Click here to read the complete edition this piece came from.

Eric’s first Nuclear Axis article, titled The Nuclear Axis, appeared on Star IQ on June 30, 2000. Nuclear Axis Reprise: The Chernobyl Connection follows up with a more in-depth comparison of the Nuclear Axis and Chernobyl disaster charts, and was first published April 26, 2011. The April 27, 2007, piece Chernobyl: Witnesses, Far and Near elaborated on more details of the Chernobyl Disaster on its anniversary that year, and has been reprinted today for the 30th anniversary.

Notes from Downwind, published Nov. 15, 2013, examines the chart for the Fukushima earthquake and nuclear disaster in relation to the Nuclear Axis chart.

Additional essays include Out to the Edge, which investigated North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un’s natal chart in the context of the Nuclear Axis chart on April 12, 2013; and Back from the Edge, which commemorated the 65th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing on Aug. 6, 2010.

In April 2012, Eric posted parts one and two of his special Planet Waves FM interview with Karl Grossman, one of the few journalists who has devoted his career to exposing the dangers, and the deceptions, of nuclear power and atomic weapons. Those broadcasts are titled The Nuclear Deception, part one and Nuclear Lies, part 2.

Essential viewing on the insanity of nuclear weapons includes the classic Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) — available from Netflix on DVD or BluRay, or online (for pay) on YouTube; and The Atomic Café, available on Vimeo.

Anatoly also found for us these two videos set to music: Chernobyl and the Pripyat Ghost Town, made by photographer Elena Filatova, whose work is featured in Chernobyl: Witnesses, Far and Near; and Remember Chernobyl… 26. April 1986, which features news footage from Chernobyl.

This is an article introducing the Nuclear Axis chart — the chart for the beginning of the nuclear age. The chart is for the first time scientists created a self-sustaining nuclear reaction, the kind that would be necessary for the creation of atomic bombs or their incestuous first cousin, nuclear power. The article we posted earlier, Chernobyl: Witnesses Near and Far, includes the chart of the explosion at the reactor. It is what you might call a classical Nuclear Axis chart, with planets piled up across the critical degrees of Gemini and Sagittarius. There was also a lunar eclipse about two days before, during which key (bad) decisions were made. I am republishing the Nuclear Axis article for astrology students who would benefit from knowing this chart exists, and what its implications are. –efc

While we’re on the nuclear topic, this is a good time to get the conversation going about the Nuclear Axis. For more detailed background and some chart examples, check this old article I wrote for Star IQ. The Nuclear Axis chart is the chart for the first self-sustaining atomic pile, created in a secret lab under an athletic field at the University of Chicago toward the beginning of the United States’ involvement in World War II. This was part of the Manhattan project.

What we have is a chart for the Nuclear Age. It is exceedingly rare to have exact data for such a profound event in the history of humanity, particularly given that this one happened under the cloak of absolute secrecy.

The ‘axis’ part of the chart is the opposition from Gemini to Sagittarius. This is fairly easy to see: you know the glyphs for Gem and Sagg, and the planets are connected by a series of purple lines that form the axis. In Gemini we have Uranus and Saturn; in Saggitarius we have Sun, Mercury, Juno and Venus. Not shown in mid-Sagittarius is the Great Attractor, an inter-galactic point. The ominous thing about the Sagittarius alignment is that it has themes of international and death; as well as obsession, and lots of money.

Indeed, after WWII in many respects the entire economy would be based on the vast expenditures of the nuclear industry — all those bombs and airplanes and personnel and missiles that needed to be developed and countless spies and so on and on — and all the apparatus of defense that had to be erected around the nuclear arsenal: indeed the whole military industrial complex.

Continue reading →

Editor’s note: this piece was written in Brussels for the April 27, 2007 subscriber edition. We are running it today as part of our commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. This article includes a chart for the event.

I can relate to Chernobyl because I have seen so much environmental damage in the United States. Chernobyl was and is a lot worse, but it never seemed like someplace else, or something we were exempt from elsewhere.

Among these disasters I am most familiar with is the Love Canal area of Niagara Falls, a neighborhood where 700 homes were contaminated with dioxin. There, on the site of the 99th Street School, is a grass-covered clay cap that buries the schoolyard, and the toxic waste dump directly beneath it, three-quarters of the way to the tops of utility poles. They poke up a few feet and follow the line of a long-forgotten street.

Seeing that for the first time one afternoon, I witnessed the tragedy of civilization. It was like finding the Statue of Liberty’s torch sticking up out of the ground. No place is exempt. This is both frightening and reassuring; we’re all in this environmental game together.

Chernobyl happened in the Ukraine. When I was a kid, my best friend Eric Olynik’s family was Ukrainian, so the place was always real to me; I had heard of it, and knew stories from there, and had a feeling for the people: proud, down-to-earth and bold. At the time the Ukraine was part of the USSR, but Ukrainians always made the point that it was its own country. Today, production on Planet Waves occurs in the Ukraine because that is the home of our webmaster, Anatoly Ryzhenko.

Before Chernobyl, I knew about nuclear power because my father worked in the industry as a public relations and communications consultant. He came in shortly after Three Mile Island and was part of the team that helped clean up the PR disaster that the partial meltdown in Harrisburg, PA, created.

Continue reading →

By Amanda Painter

That old politics adage just gets proven truer with each passing week. Today’s twist: GOP presidential hopefuls Ted Cruz and John Kasich have just agreed to coordinate efforts in certain remaining primary contests in an effort to prevent Donald Trump from gaining the necessary delegates to win the Republican nomination outright.

The New York Times reported earlier today that Mr. Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said in a statement Sunday night that the campaign would “focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Governor Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico.”

Shortly after that, Kasich’s chief strategist, John Weaver, said they would shift resources to states in the West and “give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana.”

The campaigns’ allies and affiliated Super PACs are expected to follow suit.

A month ago Weaver had made the suggestion to Cruz’s team, who rejected it in favor of keeping the spotlight in high-profile contests; since then, Cruz’s situation — and that of the GOP elite — has become more desperate, with the goal shifting from winning the nomination with a clear majority during the primaries to preventing Trump from doing so.

Although polls show Cruz trailing Trump in Indiana, Kasich threatens to win delegates in the Indianapolis area. If those votes go to Cruz as a result of this new strategy, he could close the gap on Trump. Indiana awards delegates based on congressional district results and the overall winner. According to the Times, “five of the state’s nine districts include or immediately border the county that is home to Indianapolis,” making that region’s voting integral to the final delegate count for the state.

Also pushing the Cruz-Kasich alliance is the fact that Oregon opens its early voting period this week — although at this time, the Cruz camp has given no specific instructions to Oregon voters to vote for Kasich instead, as Rubio did in Ohio.

Why would the Cruz campaign offer to punt in Oregon and New Mexico? Because if you combine the delegates for those two states (52), it comes close to the total for Indiana (57). Oregon and New Mexico are also “proportional states,” meaning that the winner will not take all. And since Cruz can no longer clinch the nomination in the primaries, it’s no real loss to sacrifice a few delegates to Kasich in an effort to keep them out of Trump’s tally.

Ironically — as both Trump and several comments on the New York Times website pointed out — this move looks a lot like the “collusion” in a “rigged system” Trump has been calling out during his campaign.

Commenter Peter K of New Jersey wrote, “Excellent! Trump falls just short of 1,237 and the convention becomes an expensive, damaging war for all involved, especially the GOP itself. Trump eventually gets the nomination anyway, and immediately after the election, Merrick Garland withdraws from consideration so that President Clinton can nominate a young, reliable liberal to SCOTUS, who is then quickly confirmed by the Democratic majority in the senate, of course a result of the down-ticket damage caused by Trump. Perfect.”

Bud, from McKinney, Texas, underscores the idea of “down-ticket damage” that could result: “I’m an independent voter and a conservative. If the Repubs do not nominate Trump, I will vote out every sitting Repub from Senator to local city council. We’re told from elementary school we live in a democracy and our votes count. Then we’re exposed to all this nonsense about super delegates with the Dems, silly rules with the Repubs, etc. Cruz and Kasich are behaving like kindergarten children.”

Jack, from New York, New York, adds, “Cruz tried to play as an outsider but now that his campaign is in trouble, he is resorting to the ultimate insider’s game of collusion to protect the status quo. [Do] Kasich and Cruz not realize that we the people are not stupid? Trump’s attractiveness is not himself or his persona — au contraire — but that he offers to expose and eliminate political corruption, the driving force that keeps professional politicians in business. The electorate understands this even if Cruz and Kasich do not. Even Bernie Sanders and his supporters on the other side understand this.”

At the very least, what everyone seems to understand is what a bizarre primary season this is. And, as Fe Bongolan points out in her column today, the insanity is bringing to light much that we can change, if we have the will and integrity to stick to our ethics and demand that our public servants do the same.

I am going to be up front right now: I am voting for Hillary Clinton for president. She wasn’t my first choice. Neither was Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley.

My first choice for President was Elizabeth Warren.

Warren got my notice because she was wonky enough to be smart and savvy about regulating the big banks, and put away the investment schemers who profited by betting on people’s failure to pay ballooning mortgage debt from subprime loans. She created an agency of the federal government — the Consumer Fraud Protection Bureau, which is an FDR-and-Teddy-Roosevelt-type of government watchdog invented to protect us from further financial malfeasance by banks and predatory loaners.

In the highest compliment I can give her, Elizabeth Warren is a brilliant public servant. A policy wonk. Competent. Cool-headed. Compassionate. Thoughtful. These are my prerequisites for presidents, Congresspeople, community leaders, bosses and colleagues in my professional life — we who work in the underbelly of The Beast, aka government. She is an effective leader with vision and goals who knows how to accomplish them; and if she doesn’t know, she will learn all she can to attain her goals.

If she ever decides to run, now or in the future, I would be an early adopter for Warren. When Warren indicated she would not run last year, and Bernie Sanders took up her political mantle, I gave a listen. After a few months I decided that neither Clinton nor Sanders would get me to commit time, money, energy and even more hours sitting on my butt blogging on political websites. I am in enough exercise hell right now working to burn off the blog butt developed over a year-and-a-half of blogging for Kerry, and another two years blogging for Obama. In 2016 I decided it was time to let the candidates come to me.

I remember the “inevitable” Hillary at the second Daily Kos 2007 convention in Chicago. She didn’t interest me. By then, Barack Obama was the thing — savvy, personable and smart as a whip. From that day forward, I was the model of the early adopter. And the thought of electing the first African American president in my lifetime was a political holy grail.

Eight years later, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge. I am not disillusioned with Obama the way so many liberals and progressives are. I came to my senses after the Tea Party takeover of Congress in 2010, realizing the Office of the President is only a third of what it takes to move the government Beast. When Obama took office, there were environmental, economic and social Superfund sites created by eight years of predatory business practices, corrupted office holders in state and local offices, and a White House damaged from the abuse of power by the Bush-Cheney years. Massive problems had to be corrected. Obama could not sail our ship fast enough towards the change he promised. That ship was run deeply aground.

Bernie Sanders had my heart for getting the issues plaguing us diagnosed — the vast income and wealth disparity that is dissolving the middle class at the edges — but how would he implement that change? With an obstreperous Congress and Senate refusing to govern, let alone change how we govern? What steps would he take under those circumstances?

As much as I am casting an ambivalent vote for Clinton — and am very wary of support by the 1% of her candidacy — on social issues, education, health and welfare she and Sanders are closely the same. She can handle the crossbows the Republicans will aim at her. She’s taken those arrows for years already.

The optics of Bernie’s campaign prior to the New York primary last week were heart-breaking and sobering: a very bad interview with the New York Daily News the week before April 19; his dismissal of Southern states and their African American majorities that went for Hillary; his still predominately white demographic among his supporters as evidenced from the results of the New York primary; and campaign manager Jeff Weaver’s plan to dissuade superdelegates from going for Clinton at the convention, even though Clinton has exceeded Sanders in the popular vote. These are all quite disconcerting. You need people of color — the backbone of the Democratic Party — to turn out and vote for you if you plan to run for President.

I would vote for either Sanders or Clinton before I vote for a Trump or a Cruz. But the likelihood of Sanders reaching the nomination look far slimmer after New York, and Clinton is polling well in the next primary states coming up. What are progressives who support Sanders’ message going to do? Should they stay home in November?

Earlier this week, Markos Moulitsas at Daily Kos wrote that he wished Bernie and Hillary could mash up together as one candidate. One with vision to set the course to lead our ship, and one with the experience to move with determination through our Byzantine political system, to get needed legislation through that changes all our lives for the better.

Many progressives want the change we need to come faster. Which is what a revolution does. But there’s a catch: how do you dismantle a system so enormous and plugged into the many interests that sustain government yet are corrosive to democracy? Is it a cold-turkey withdrawal? Is it a strategic take-down of intrinsic elements? And then, what happens to the most vulnerable in the meantime?

Along with the lobbyists for corporate interests such as oil, coal, hedge funds and the military industrial complex, there are lobbyists for the environment, education, organic farming, sustainable energy, women’s reproductive freedom, fair minimum wage and equal pay. Who will stay? Who will go?

Watching how our government works right now is like looking at time-lapse photography documenting the transformation of a normal person to a meth addict. Not a pretty progression. With this current do-nothing Congress it gets uglier by the minute. A government that does not function is useless. Social Security checks need to be cut and sent. National parks need to be maintained. Roads needs to be repaired. Public safety employees, such as in FEMA, need to be paid.

That means elected representatives need to make and pass laws and approve budgets, not put up yet another vote to make abortion illegal or repeal Obamacare. They need to confirm the replacement for the vacancy on the Supreme Court. They need to re-evaluate our gun laws so more innocent lives are spared. If there’s anything that needs to change first, it’s that government needs to function well again for the people who need it most.

That leads me to the mashup word of (R)evolution. This goes beyond the presidential election of this year, and leads us through to the coming time when Pluto begins its slide out of Capricorn and into Aquarius. Then the real fun begins. This current government took close to 250 years to create, and it’s still re-creating itself. As we can all agree, it’s also still in a pickle.

But it’s going to take consistent participation in voting our interests not only now and two years from now, but another two years after that and then some to make the changes we need. That’s exactly what the Republicans did starting with the day Nixon resigned in 1974. Elections should not stop at the office of POTUS. One President cannot change everything. We need a hero/ine in the office of president, but more so we need to be heroes and she-roes ourselves. Locally, statewide and nationally.

Bernie may lose the nomination, but his message needs to be foremost for the Democratic Party’s platform and all the way down the line. Keeping Sanders’ vision alive in the Democratic Party platform is my priority. Even though I will be voting for Clinton in the general election, we need to get her ship to move more left. And we most definitely need to focus on down-ticket races to create a Congress that will move progressive ideas through, that will pressure the Oval Office to do more, and that will get their fellows across the aisle to DO THEIR FREAKING JOBS. We’ve got to fill that vacancy in the Supreme Court.

These seem like small, incremental changes, but like Citizens United, one ruling can change all our lives, for better or worse, and for years to come. We need the ‘little’ changes that add up to the big change and we need to keep our eye on the ultimate revolution — the Big Change — of a nation governed by us and for us: a truly representative democracy.

It’s a founding concept of the union. In reality, it’s a theory that’s nearly 250 years old. Time to update it to meet the 21st century’s technological standards, and our world’s massively larger population and needs.

Whether you like your transition with an “R” for Revolution or an “E” for Evolution, the results will be the same, and as the old spiritual says: “When the lord gets ready — you gotta move!” We need to inculcate in our culture from kindergarten on up that voting is a privilege. One to be enjoyed as a healthy habit, like eating more carrots or hopping on the spin bike for 35 minutes.

We’re all going to need us to vote now, two years from now in down-ticket races, and more — for school boards, governors, state legislators and local councils and boards. We need to do this for a future we can create together, for the health of our nation and our democracy. Beyond Sanders and Clinton, we need to put a face on our collective future. That face is ours.

See you in the comments below.

Editor’s note: This Sunday (April 24, 2016) Venus conjoins Eris in Aries. That’s some pretty serious goddess power in the sign of self-identity. For an idea of how Eris can show up in her full positive expression, we’re running this archive selection by Eric, originally published April 9, 2010, in our weekly subscribers’ issue. — Amanda

Dear Planet Waves Subscriber:

This weekend, the Sun is conjunct the newly discovered planet Eris. I know that I mention a lot of newly discovered planets, but Eris (discovered and named between 2003 and 2006) so magnificently qualified as the official ’10th planet’ that its discovery compelled astronomers to shake up their organizational model of the solar system, create a new category, ‘demote’ Pluto and define the word planet for the first time. Technically Eris and Pluto (and Ceres, along with a few others) are now known as drwarf planets.

Amidst the literally hundreds of thousands of bits, bobs and blobs orbiting our Sun, Eris stands tall as a key discovery: a genuine scientific breakthrough. She’s bigger and brighter than Pluto, and is currently (because her orbit is so egg-shaped) the most distant object orbiting our Sun known to science. Given that we’ve only known about Eris, by name and reputation, since late 2006, we have not had much time to make up our minds about what it’s about, though I have some ideas.

How do astrologers develop the meaning of newly discovered bodies? On the simplest level, the name (chosen by the discovery team) evokes a myth. Eris was the goddess of discord and has a positively terrible reputation in Greek mythology as the one who started the Trojan War. Going directly from the mythology to the delineation doesn’t usually work in astrology; looked at one way, the myth has to be understood in a fairly complex way and the elements of the story applied to ‘real life’. Sometimes, though, the mythology carries through pretty well. With Eris my hunch is that it would be wise to take a more circumspect approach.

My take is that Eris, the astrological concept, uses the ‘chaos’, war and discord factor as a personality metaphor. Eris is in Aries for nearly every person on the planet, except for a few folks still around who were born in the early 20th century. Aries is the sign of identity; the sign of “I Am.” One thing you can say about our time in history is that there’s a lot of confusion going around on the ‘who we are’ theme. This is a long-term transit, which will have lasted about 110 years when it finally ends.

The goddess of discord certainly seems to have arrived at a time of rampant chaos on the planet, but I think that most of that chaos is in the psyche; it is internal, on the level of identity, self-awareness and a kind of mental chaos that we live with as if it were normal. One of the discoverers, Chad Trujillo, said that the discovery team agreed that it was the perfect name to give a major discovery at this time in history because the world is in such madness; but he didn’t specify what kind.

Delineating the qualities of this point on the personal level, Eris seems to walk the edge between the personality/identity anarchy we live with now (an Aries factor), and the authentic clarity of one’s existence and mission that’s also accessible when we get done with the game of ‘confusion’ or of not knowing (also an Aries factor).

Astrologers involved in the process use many techniques to get at the delineation of a new discovery, though of course, we must verify our theories with experience. The myth can turn out to be a small, or significant, piece of the story: it depends from body to body. We must also look to the physical properties of a planet itself (such as the length of the orbit); fancy things like the perihelion and planetary nodes; the discovery chart; the time in history of the discovery; specific historical events where the new point shows up in the chart; and perhaps most productively, the lives of people with the new item prominent in their natal charts.

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