On the eve of the conversation I describe below, Chronogram magazine, for which I’ve written the horoscope since 1995, held a party in Rhinebeck. Outside the party, I spoke for a moment with Jason Stern, my friend of many years and then-publisher of Chronogram. I said, seemingly out of nowhere, that one of the blights on my conscience was not being able to shut down the dioxin contaminated dorms at SUNY New Paltz. You can read about that incident on this website. The developments in this article happened the next day.

Kingston, NY

I just had the most interesting conversation of my journalism career since Dec. 29, 1991; in truth one of the most interesting conversations of my life. That was the day that the PCB transformers exploded at SUNY New Paltz — a small state college campus in upstate New York. This is a story that some of my longer term readers may be familiar with. In case you’re not, here is a summary that I wrote in 2007. The dorms I am describing, Bliss, Capen, Gage and Scudder halls, house about 1,300 students a year, nearly all of them freshmen and sophomores.

Hoarary chart for the conversation.

I have to protect my source, but I can tell you what I learned. He is someone who was involved on a high level in state government at the time, whose name I knew, and who based on his own conscience took action. I hadn’t heard about this whole scenario till tonight.

The botched PCB and dioxin “cleanup” of six buildings cost somewhere around $100 million. When that much money changes hands, he said, the mob is always involved, on many levels. This is why the coverup went across clear party lines. It’s why The New York Times (despite doing two short pieces on me personally) never actually dug into the story. It’s why Gov. Mario Cuomo stayed away.

He said that there was an employee in the state Office of General Services (OGS), the lead agency — which I have rarely mentioned in my coverage, but whose documents I tracked for years. Think of OGS as “the state itself” rather than one of its functionary parts. This person served as an “angel” who would sign off on anything, for kickbacks. At certain points the known cost of the cleanup was approaching a million dollars a month, and he would approve any bill. The Internet was crude at the time (mid-1990s) but there were many emails exchanged that documented every move they made. I asked why they were so brazen about it, particularly during my peak of work on the issue — I was on it around the clock for years, at that point.

“They just didn’t think they were going to get caught,” he said.

Continue reading →

Dear Fellow Traveler:

Have you ever caught yourself or someone you care about describing this scenario: when you’re in a relationship you have to put your authentic life agenda aside, and be the ‘relationship you’, until you can’t stand it any more and you get out of the relationship so you can go back to being the ‘real you’ for a while? This way you can ‘focus on yourself’ and be creative and do the things you love; which works until you want a relationship again, for sex or companionship or both, but to get there you have to lose yourself and sacrifice what you consider the most important.

An 1886 bas-relief figure of Astraea in the old Supreme Court chamber at the Vermont State House. Astraea is the goddess of justice and the personification of Libra, the sign of the scales of justice, relationships and sexuality. Photo: Wikipedia.

There are lots of versions of this scenario, which I call a split-self or hemisphere effect. The two sides of the brain act like different people with different needs and often it seems that both sides can’t get their needs met at once, much less maintain a steady conversation. Another example is having intimate friendships with people, but after a while wanting to be closer than those permit, so you find a ‘relationship’; then the other friendships, even if not directly sexual, must end once you’re in a relationship.

Inside the relationship, you start to feel confined and want your other contacts, but various insecurities or the rules of appropriateness (yours or those of your partner) seem to prohibit that. Then you feel the limitations, and needing to deal with them, believe you have to sacrifice the relationship in order to have your more ‘normal friendships’.

I am not suggesting that all relationships have this quality, though the world makes a compelling case that many of them do. Many have noted that monogamy (or what I will call unconscious monogamy) can be an isolating way of life, presuming not just sexual fidelity but often a kind of mental, emotional and social fidelity. Often this is born of paranoia as much as it is from a desire for togetherness. And, to be sure, it takes confidence and courage to go beyond this style of encounter.

How do relationships devolve into this state? Many of them start there. Early in this thing we call dating, we introduce prospective partners to our publicist, who looks a lot like us, but presents information strategically to ensure that we’re acceptable to this other person who doesn’t know us and is sure to think we’re a total freak if we let on the truth. Typically when we do this we forget two things: the truth will eventually come out, and the other person probably has some surprises waiting for us. Dating is an interesting thing: it’s like a mock friendship. You might act like friends, and spend time together like friends, and say you’re friends, but the actual trust and familiarity are not there. It’s like they are on credit.

Meanwhile, many people don’t have sex with their friends so they don’t ‘ruin the friendship’. Hence, this thing we call dating — the certified path to relationships — takes place with someone other than a friend, such as an acquaintance, a stranger, a sex partner or as it turns out too often, an enemy.

In the dating process, we’re supposed to do everything we can to present ourselves as acceptable to the other person, conceal all weaknesses and fears, present ourselves as impeccably monogamous, as successful and in perfect health; not mention opposite sex friends, bisexuality or our cross-dressing bondage fetish.

Photo by Eric Francis / Book of Blue.

We all know how judgmental many people are, and more to the point, we know how judgmental we are. I think it’s fair to lament how closed-minded so many people are, and how unconscious they can be about it. Question for you: how long is your list of turn-offs? How long is your list of requirements for a suitable suitor? That will give you an idea how difficult we make it for one another, and how far we’ve drifted from relationships as a source of pleasure and companionship, rather than getting a list of expectations met.

It’s no wonder why we’re so terrified to be ourselves. There’s one other reason, too, which comes wrapped in a paradox. Most ‘unpartnered’ people you meet are cruising for The One. We’re not seeking ‘casual’ relationships or casual sex; those are allegedly insincere and unfulfilling. We want the supposedly Real Thing, which precludes hanging loose and being real. So instead, we polish up the relationship résumé and put on our most authentic air. The contradiction is that if we’re really looking for The One and not the supposedly dreaded, evil, scandalous, disease-laden friendship with benefits, The One is presumably The One who will accept us for who we are: and in that case, no gloss would be necessary.

Characterizing the typically backwards, upside-down thinking of the world, you could say that our search for a relationship is often driven by the desire to avoid relationships. The whole process is so laden with unquestioned habits, values and presumptions, including the presumption that it’s acceptable to lie, it’s amazing that anyone ever gets to know anyone else. But try as we may to avoid it, we do get to know one another, as the old saying goes, for better or for worse.

Then we wonder why our relationships are such a struggle; why we can go so long without a partner; why it so often feels like we’ll never have sex again; why we have to make so many compromises once we’re involved in a relationship.

Photo by Eric Francis / Book of Blue.

It does not help that it’s nearly impossible to have a real discussion about these topics. For example, in my experience, every person has his or her own sexual and emotional orientation. We each have specific needs, desires and tendencies. Yet nearly all discussions of relationship are based on the marriage model of allegedly exclusive heterosexual monogamy, or some certified, sanctified form of queer. There are severe penalties for violating these rules. Often it seems the people who dole out the penalties break the rules the most often.

We need some sanity here. We need to take relationships seriously, and that is going to take commitments to both growth and authenticity that are not generally proffered in our society.

Saturn entered Libra Thursday, and that’s an occasion to consider the next phase of our lives. The planet of authority, structure, boundaries and commitments changes signs every 30 months or so, and as it does, we move dependably from theme to theme. Saturn in Libra is about focusing on relationships, and in particular, authenticity and balance in relationships.

For anyone even vaguely conscious, relationships are a focal point of growth. That requirement — awareness — rules out plenty of people. So does the notion of growth. For many others, relationships are where we hang out and avoid progress and indeed avoid ourselves. Which is, you know, fine as far as it goes: but if this is the case, we need to save some energy and stop wondering why things go so poorly so often. Why the divorces become so vicious. Why we seem to be on a constant search that goes on and on and on.

At some point in my astrological career, after years and years of hearing scores of relationship stories — most of them from women — it occurred to me: many people enter relationships as a pact to avoid growth. I considered this for a while, and considered my own life, and I realized why it was true, or why it seemed true. Our relationships are predicated on the idea that a stable, longterm situation is the objective or aim. Therefore, we will tend to suppress anything that threatens that concept of relationship. One of the things that threatens a relationship is when people change. Growth implies change, often in profound and unexpected directions. Within our culture’s one available officially-certified style of relationship, growth can easily be perceived as a threat. To stay in a relationship, often you have to do your best to be the same. You have to be the person that your partner expects you to be.

Photo by Eric Francis / Book of Blue.

The first thing that Saturn says is face reality. Usually by the time Saturn comes along and sets a limit, we’ve been aware of exceeding the limit for a while. Saturn in Libra is like peeling a veneer off of things. Libra works on several levels, and one of them is about presentation.

Everything that Libra touches is impeccably presented, and Saturn is coming along to strip off the finish and see what’s under the surface. This is a terrifying prospect to most people. Most of us have so little experience simply being ourselves that we are extremely uncomfortable doing so. It feels unstable, vulnerable and scary. There is a fear we carry that if I am myself, this relationship will end.

The next thing that Saturn says is face your fears. Saturn can point to what we fear the most, and in the case of Saturn in Libra that would be about intimacy of any shade — and if you ask me, sex and relationships are inseparable. Any two people who get to know one another for long enough will at least develop some sexual curiosity for one another. Alice A. Bailey notes in Esoteric Astrology that Libra is one of the most important signs for understanding sex (even surpassing Scorpio in this regard). Anyone who has read (let’s be modest) so many as three books on the history of sex understands that we are nearly all clueless.

We are also a society of sexophobes. Most people don’t even know it. Many people become viscerally, visually uncomfortable at the least mention or suggestion of sex, which of course requires perpetuating ignorance. In my office I have a genre of reader mail known as “I am not a prude” letters. These arrive in response to my website’s frank articles about sex and pleasure, or my nude photos. The letters always start, “I am not a prude, but this conversation/photo/article is inappropriate for an astrology website.” I guess we’re just supposed to talk about romance — nothing too real. I suggest that we make the discussion of sex normal, and that we get over our apprehension about it by diving into the subject matter.

Photo by Eric Francis / Book of Blue.

Many consider avoiding the discussion a form of maintaining their integrity in a way you would expect from a vegan. In one of the classic “I am not a prude” letters of all time, a reader in Europe recently expressed not only her opposition to my photos but, when I pressed her for information, her objection to making information about sex available. “Sex is much better and more fun and more creative and more respectful without any ‘education’,” she wrote. “This leaves space for discovery.” As if there is anything but space for discovery in sexuality. (I strongly advise Americans to stop thinking that Europeans are more enlightened about sex and relationships. They just have more nude beaches than we do and lower BMI because so many smoke.)

Our culture has so thoroughly suppressed honest discussion of sex that the mere mention of the topic seems destabilizing, dangerous or perverse. So it becomes, perpetuating fear and ignorance to an astonishing degree, glossed over by obsession with scandalous subject matter. We live with the illusion that we are an oversexed culture. But we emphasize the glamorous and the scandalous at the expense of what is simply true for us. I suggest we look at what our obsession with scandal is designed to cover over, and what it denies us.

We also suppress discussion of relationships, and the reason for this is the mandatory monogamy rule. Permissible discussions about relationships nearly all center around perpetuating the illusion of monogamy. Any real conversation about sex would be driven by curiosity, and we all know that curiosity does not honor the notion of monogamy.

I am not saying that there are not people who are happily monogamous. Clearly, there are some. But the preferences, values or experiences of some couples are not enough to make this way of living mandatory for everyone. Let’s also make a distinction between monogamy as an organic state of being between two people, which seems to work pretty well most of the time, and monogamy imposed or self-imposed as a moral imperative, which seems to fail miserably most of the time. We need to know our options, and that takes finding out what they are, and challenging the guilt that might keep us in line if we want to try something original or different. If you’re curious, give yourself space to learn and discover. Get used to people thinking you’re different, and the feeling that your parents will not approve. Gay, lesbian, bi and trans people come out to their parents all the time and nearly all of them feel better about it. I think that those with ‘alternative’ concepts of relationships can learn a lot from them.

Photo by Eric Francis / Book of Blue.

Saturn in Libra suggests putting some discipline into understanding both sex and relationships: and I mean actual understanding, not regurgitating Sex and the City or what you unwittingly ate at your parents’ or grandparents’ dinner table 30 years ago. There are some excellent books out. One is called The Myth of Monogamy, which is based on DNA testing of all kinds of critters. No — ducks are not monogamous; let’s have a good cry and get over it. A new one that’s appeared is called Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality. The publishers tracked down my address and sent me a copy. I haven’t finished it yet but it’s a lot of fun. One of the all-time classics is Eros Denied by Wayland Young, available for $5 from any online used bookseller (published by Grove Press in 1964). I promise you this will be one of the most enlightening books you’ll ever read. So too will A General Theory of Love, which talks about the neurology of emotional and sexual relationships, what we stand to gain by working with a good therapist, and how therapy works. [There is an ongoing thread about therapy on the Planet Waves daily blog.]

Finally, Saturn in Libra suggests that we have to make room for change. People who are alive grow and change, and the same is true for relationships that are alive. For those committed to living up to their grandparents’ 50-year marriage or someday being like that cute, old couple you see in your neighborhood, this may be a tough thing. For those who have no sense of who they are outside of a relationship, this might be scary, but in order to be in a relationship you have to know yourself, accept yourself and love yourself. Of course, this is society’s biggest taboo.

When you know yourself, you’re free. You don’t need to depend on others for your basic existence. You discover that it’s your privilege to love, that it’s your body and that this is your life. And when you’re real with yourself, you can be real with others — that is the starting point.

Yours & truly,

Related Article, with resources: The One and the Many.

In The News: Kid Ready to Resume Playdating.

The Big Smear

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

In 2003, before becoming either a senator or head of the short-lived Air America, Al Franken published a book called Lies And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. His courage was astounding, considering the year and the political climate. Franken earned the ire of the right, particularly O’Reilly and Hannity at FOX News and ideologues led by Rush Limbaugh. At the time, many people were unfamiliar with the dynamics of innuendo, slander and outright lies legitimized by those in power. Seven years later, Al Franken has proved to be as courageous a legislator as he was a political commentator. I still can’t watch FOX without thinking, “Lies and lying liars.” Unfortunately, FOX continues to justify Al’s early warnings.

This week, FOX News played a short clip of comments from a recent speech to an NAACP gathering by Shirley Sherrod, a Department of Agriculture employee. Ms. Sherrod spoke of her feelings in 1986 at being asked to help a white farmer while so many black farmers were being ignored. Sherrod’s father had been murdered by a white farmer when she was a child. Her speech traced her personal journey through the maze of racism to the realization that it was not race, but the moneyed elite that created inequities. In her moving address, she made a case for classism.

FOX cherry-picked fewer than three minutes of commentary from Sherrod’s forty-minute speech, taking remarks out of context and labeling them [overt racism] against white folk. The NAACP reacted with knee-jerk censure, prompting Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to demand Sherrod’s resignation. The White House quickly backed Vilsack, then retreated when the NAACP reversed its position following CNN’s prompt coverage of Sherrod’s entire speech. When the white farmer and his wife — the subjects of the 1986 incident — called the FOX story hogwash, it became apparent that we’d all been had yet again.

The right has made an art form of distortion. They’re past masters at selecting some factoid, twisting it into a pretzel of accusation and moral platitude, and pushing it down our throats whole and unexamined. They did so with weapons of mass destruction, with government spying on U.S. citizens, with torture. They practice the art of deception daily. Their leadership tackles the big, faux issues — ‘bankrupt’ Social Security, death panels for grandma, the return of the Black Panthers, etc. — while their footsoldiers muckrake. With nothing to lose, they proclaim everything a win. They will throw anything at the Democrats that might stick. They will push any button, frighten any citizen, or stain the name of anyone in order to spread doubt and disenchantment.

The Sherrod clip originally appeared on Andrew Breitbart’s radical-right website, Biggovernment.com, which was also the source of the 2009 ACORN ‘sting’ video. The ACORN bit of theatre featured an outlandishly dressed ‘pimp and prostitute’ supposedly receiving from ACORN helpful hints for tax avoidance, human smuggling and child prostitution. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was an umbrella NGO dedicated to neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other lower and middle-class issues. With over 400,000 members and 1,200 neighborhood chapters, ACORN received 10% of its 25 million-dollar budget from federal funding. Sting videos from both coasts were heavily edited with a bias toward employees of color and looped to run on FOX.

Cardinal T-Square Homecoming: Cancer Birthdays for 2010

Dear Fellow Traveler:

I’ve just finished the 2010 birthday report for Cancer and Cancer rising. I also recommend that people with the Cancer Moon listen to this report, as the Moon is the body that rules this sign.

For information about zodiac sign greeting cards, drop a note to sarah@planetwaves.net

The presentation includes an hour-plus astrology reading, and a 20-minute tarot reading. I cover, in detail, the cardinal T-square that is now taking shape in Aries, Libra and Capricorn. This is the aspect that is reshaping the world, and which is so profoundly affecting your sign. The interesting thing is that Cancer seems to be the ‘missing sign’ from this setup, though in this report I look at a mysterious point that is in early Cancer — a slow-moving hypothetical planet called Kronos.

The cardinal T-square is acting like a set of conditioning forces, setting high goals for your professional aspirations (Jupiter and Uranus in Aries), your relationships (Pluto and a lunar eclipse in Capricorn) and changes to your home and security base (Saturn in Libra). All of these elements are working together to provide an environment where progress is inevitable. Having not just fallen off the astrological turnip truck, I also know how stressful this is for some of you less-acclimated to nonstop change.
Cancer, after all, is a vibe that likes things safe and solid, though now the forces of progress are all over your life.

It’s therefore incumbent upon you to use them to your best advantage, rather than experience them as destructive forces — and you do have this option. Here is where Kronos comes in. Think of this point as a super-Saturn, describing an inner growth process through which you recognize your authentic role in the world. One of the keywords for Kronos is “VIP.” It is about authoritative positions and expert status, in the words of Martha Lang-Wescott, suggesting that the time has come for you to put your knowledge to work, and to focus the self-respect you deserve for having gained that knowledge. Kronos entered Cancer in 2000-2001 and will be here for many years to come. It’s a helpful influence I suggest you become familiar with.

Last week’s eclipse in your birth sign is a reminder that you are at a true turning point in your life. And Chiron plus Neptune entering your sympathetic water sign Pisces represent wide expansion of your horizons.

I cover all of this in the 2010 Cancer birthday report. I suggest that Cancer rising also listen to this because these transits will affect you directly in the same ways they affect the Cancer Sun. And this sign being ruled by the Moon, those with their lunar placement here will benefit as well.

For those who are wondering how I can go into this kind of detail without having your natal chart, I explain it in this link on the Cosmic Confidential website. While I have a gift for creating these kinds of reports, I am tapping into a property of astrology that allows me to create a more accurate report than the ‘custom reports’ that assemble many bits out of a database. This is an actual, complete reading of the astrology affecting the sign Cancer.

Our audio reports have received rave reviews from our clients, and are among the most successful products we’ve ever offered in Planet Waves history. For instant access to your 2010 Cancer report, check this link. The cost is just $14.95, a fraction of what a computer-generated ‘custom report’ goes for. You will receive an audio link that you can play as many times as you like, and there is the option to download the whole thing so you can put it into iTunes or your iPod.

Please let me know how the report works for you. Wishing you the very best of love, luck and adventure rising to the challenges and opportunities of these transits,

Yours & truly,

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, July 23, 2010, #825 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Aries Confidential	You may take a gentler approach to a relationship than your emotions are dictating. Current aspects suggest strongly that you may be feeling frustrated, hemmed in or overcommitted. You’ve tasted freedom and you want more. There is often the question of balancing that with what relationships seem to call for — except for one thing: we don’t have a ready-made model of coupling that encourages change, growth and exploration. Most of us need some grounding in our relationships, and anyone who is waking up and discovering who they are needs the flexibility to be an individual. I suggest you bring this issue to the forefront of your relationship rather than leaving it lurking in the background. You’re not going to lose your imagination, your passion or your curiosity anytime soon, nor are you going to lose your desire to share love. In my view, anyway, you don’t need to sacrifice one for the other.
Taurus Confidential	I have suggested many times that you won’t be happy with anything but a visionary career, something that has the essence of authentic altruism. You are starting to get a new look not only at this possibility, but at the actual potential. Making advances in your professional life is not merely about something that happens and it’s not merely about making it happen. However, the first essential item on the list of basics is wanting what you want. If you find yourself doing mental gymnastics about this, stop yourself, and be clear about what you desire. That’s another way of saying feel good about yourself, and proceed from there. I suggest you not concern yourself with how you’re going to make it happen, or how it’s going to happen, at this stage: merely with setting your objective. Then, notice where you are today and track how far you’ve already come. This may give you the hint that you don’t have far to go.
Gemini Confidential	Most of what we do with our lives is suffocated in the paradox of needing our parents’ approval. By most, I mean for some people, up to 99% of their energy gets funneled into covertly seeking the approval of the very people who neglected them. This gets a lot of different names and descriptions such as creative blocks, struggles in relationships, physical disease, depression, discontentment and self-loathing. We may have the impulse and even the desire to live our own lives, but to do that we invariably come up against the sense of betraying someone if we do. It could be an actual parent, or someone who has settled into our reality as a surrogate. This, in turn, creates a split. Half of us need to be free. The other half is trying to protect the person from the supposed betrayal. The result is a person in conflict, and this can cause actual splits in the mind. The next couple of months will present you with an unusual tour of your family history. I suggest you proceed with the detachment of an anthropologist rather than the emotional immersion of a child.
Cancer Confidential	Today group sex is considered kinky and unusual, though there was a time when all sex was group sex. Paper-thin walls, tents, dwellings with no divisions and the ancient practice of the family bed meant that everyone was aware of sexuality as a tribal matter. Then there were the rituals that are all but lost to time. This weekend’s Full Moon in Aquarius is an invitation to open up that dimension in your own life. You may or may not be up to some kind of group experience (and how to create one is another story), but you can tune into the collective nature of sexuality that surrounds us all. Drop some of your filters and polite propriety, and let yourself feel outside the bonds of certified relationship mode. That is to say, let yourself be turned on by who or whatever turns you on. Notice what people say, what they put on open display and what they notice. Reveal something about yourself to those to whom you might never dare expressing your erotic truth. And whether you’re solo or with someone else, some very yummy phantasy will be vibrating in the air.
Leo Confidential	With the Sun entering your birth sign this week, you’re likely to be feeling confident, though I would suggest you not let that verge into overconfident. The first will point the way forward; the second will lead you right back to doubt. Several situations in your life are developing rapidly and require your full focus. You cannot assume that something is going to ‘just happen’ or that ‘things will work out’. What you can count on is that if you take one step at a time, and check your work at the appropriate moment, you will be able to guide events sufficiently to get a constructive result — and maybe a lot better. Be mindful anywhere there is a system involved: a human system such as an organization; a technological system; or a thought system that influences the way you make decisions. Look for what you’re doing right; hunt for flaws and fissures and repair them immediately. You may not get a second chance.
Virgo Confidential	Be careful about directing anger or resentment at yourself, which could show up as guilt. Or, it might appear as the belief that you must make a sacrifice. I am not saying that we don’t give up certain things in order to have certain others, but this can be done with more or less conflict, and more or less passion. Lately it seems that one external obstacle has given way, only to reveal the existence of a more complex inner challenge. I suggest you be grateful for this. The situations you’re working through often mask for one another. When you make a discovery about an underlying issue, that’s a reason to give yourself a high-five. It’s clear from your charts that you’re trying to work something out. One desire seems to conflict with another, or your state of mind is not quite harmonizing with something that’s important to you. Here’s what I suggest: patiently cycle through a diversity of approaches until you find the one that actually works — and such exists.
Libra Confidential	Love is about play. Yes, it’s about paying the mortgage and knowing where someone is at 10 pm and all of that, but if love is not a source of pleasure, companionship and contact, then what’s the point? For many, love is an isolating experience. For you it’s nothing of the kind: your impulse is to love everyone, and as it works out, that’s one of the best things you have to offer the world. You have an unusual opening this weekend to get the vibe going. Teach people how to be more playful and more willing to be vulnerable. Remind everyone that love is normal, not special. Explore the fuzzy line between love and friendship. Remind everyone that every relationship is part of a larger community. You often try to do these things. You among everyone you know has the deepest commitment to openness. Suddenly you may discover you’re not alone.
Scorpio Confidential	Certain new developments are pulling you deeper into yourself, and you may be resisting. That would be logical, if you thought that being closer to yourself meant you were going to be more distant than others. In the short run that may be true, though you can be sure that those from whom you might be more distant are not serving your growth or your sanity. I suggest you dive into yourself and see what you discover. If you feel guilty for doing this or if someone around you resists, remember the feeling. If you do need to be around people, I suggest that you keep it down to a small group in your own home, and that the people you invite be those to whom you have no special obligation — just a bond of authentic friendship. More than anything, you need to feel and to have others — not one other person, but others — acknowledge your feelings. But here is the point. You must acknowledge them first.
Sagittarius Confidential	This weekend’s Full Moon in the very Sagittarian sign Aquarius is a moment of transcendence for you. The prison gates of your mind — that is, all those concepts that you drag around — open up and you can step out into clear air and light. The point of doing this is so that you have space to observe the world rather than see it through your preconceived ideas, expectations or ideology. What may surprise you is your observation of how much your notions of the world were coloring or obscuring your actual view. You need to keep your perception clear and your mind open in these days and weeks, and keep them open. Life is holding out many unusual options and possibilities, and to explore them fully will require confidence that can only come with being honest. Borrowing from T.S. Eliot, you will know that’s happened when you come back to the place you started and see it for the first time.
Capricorn Confidential	You will be able to solve a significant money issue in the next few days, and the way you’re going to do that is with an idea. What you discover was sitting right in front of you all along; you’re likely to notice that the only thing that changed was your perspective. To that end, look at any problem in your life from a diversity of viewpoints. Walk around the issue; step back and look at it from a distance. You may discover that the first thing you can do is adjust your mental outlook. The second thing you can do is adjust a goal, making it more realistic and practical. Eliminate any notion of appearance or pretense. Forget what anyone would think or might think. You don’t need everyone to agree with you, and you might want to move that expectation out of the way. You do, however, need the right person to share your perspective, and work the issue out as a team.
Aquarius Confidential	This weekend is the annual Full Moon in your birth sign, and it’s a hot one. The Moon makes aspects to Jupiter, Uranus, Pluto, Saturn and a bevy of small worlds. This is going to light up your social instincts like little ever has. Think of it as the kind of astrology under which The Beatles met, or where a great revolution (intellectual, artistic, visionary) was planned. This planetary setup suggests that anyone can lead you to anyone else; if under the usual aspects we are all at most separated from one another by six degrees, think of this moment as one degree of separation. As for the emotional vibe: I can say something to you that few others might appreciate, which is this. Many people are pushing through resistance that they don’t understand. They convert emotional energy into mental gymnastics, thereby torturing themselves. You’ve moved past this, or you have enough times that you know in your heart that it can be done. Hold that space and you will allow others to treat their inner contradictions that much more gently.
Pisces Confidential	I have three suggestions for you this weekend, which is the most gorgeous astrological image of introspection that I’ve seen in several lifetimes. Suggestion one, clean a closet. You may want to clean in general (a solid hour would do), and you can make a party of it, but digging out and transforming one closet is the key. Think of it as a treasure hunt for some missing information about yourself — some gem from which you will profit wildly (and a little extra space for your shoe collection). Second, whatever may be your current relational/sexual partnership status, cast away the world and dive into your inner fantasy sanctuary and melt every bit of resistance in your mind to delicate steam and the essential oil of you. Last, after you do both of these things, seek out a weird, interesting or otherwise strange group of people and get in a group situation. Bring into that situation the energy of utter and absolute self-acceptance, open up your heart and see what happens.

Dear Planet Waves Subscriber:

On April 20th Chiron enters Pisces for the first time since it left in 1969. In a recent edition of Planet Waves, I described our current era as the anti-Sixties, but Chiron in Pisces is very much a true-to-Sixties factor. Think of it as being a little like the Beatles. The Sixties were a tumultuous, often frightening time in history, featuring social upheaval, protests, lots of people taking weird drugs, assassinations of beloved leaders, nonstop war in Southeast Asia, and students at protests getting shot. But in the background, there were the Beatles, putting out a constant stream of peace and love. The Sixties would have sucked without the Beatles, and they would have sucked without Chiron in Pisces.

The famous first live performance of “All You Need is Love” at Abbey Road Studio, on June 25, 1967 — also the first-ever worldwide television performance, called “Our World.” Every country participating got to contribute something; this was England’s contribution. Chiron was in the last degree of Pisces that night, beginning its process of ingressing Aries.

In case you’re not familiar with this odd little planet that goes round our Sun every 51 years, I will cover the basics in a moment — but first let’s review the basics of Sixties astrology. What we usually think of the Sixties was the product of a conjunction: Uranus conjunct Pluto. This meeting of two ‘modern planets’ — planets discovered by science, rather than planets of antiquity — is a cycle of revolution and innovation. Uranus bestows a surge forward. Pluto grants depth, intensity and soul. Put them together and you get an era like the one that brought the French Revolution.

In the Sixties, Uranus and Pluto were conjunct in Virgo, with explosive results. Yes there were many positive developments, but always that constant sense of change and tension and the fear of where it was all going.

Across the sky in Pisces — unknown to astronomers or astrologers at the time — was a small planet called Chiron. Though it would not be discovered until 1977, planets are active long before we’re aware of them, and Chiron’s influence in this era was a protective spiritual backdrop that provided a kind of refuge, a source of inspiration and focal point within all the madness that could make a song like “All You Need is Love” meaningful. If you were born in the Sixties, Chiron in Pisces is likely to be a prominent factor in your astrology, and you’ve been working with it all your life.

Think of Chiron as a condensing device, gathering the viewpoint, imagery, sensations, feelings and the soulful quality of Pisces and concentrating these things into something tangible: call it a sense of contact with the world beyond this one, no matter how mad this world becomes.

In an earlier article on this subect, I write, “In Pisces, Chiron calls us toward the numinous, the mystical, the unknown. Barbara Hand Clow described it beautifully as a Siren’s voice calling from the ocean, beckoning us nearer to God or cosmic consciousness, but as a direct experience rather than as a theory. Chiron serves mainly to focus awareness, but it always does so through experience…The lessons of Chiron in Pisces, if we may call them that, are distinctly spiritual in nature, involving the life beyond the body, the vast mysteries and the surrender of concrete definitions.”

Chiron Basics

Let’s go over the very basics of Chiron, with which (thanks to Laurie Burnett) I’ve been working since my first days as an astrologer. Though Chiron was actually discovered in 1977, there are photographic plates on file going back to 1895 where Chiron can be seen. These are called pre-discovery photos, and the year 1895 is interesting because that’s when D.D. Palmer discovered or invented chiropractic — named for the centaur from Greek mythology. Chiron was a physician, surgeon and herbalist. The French word for surgery is still chirurgie, and the actual meaning of Chiron from old Greek seems to be “one who has hands.” However, by the time of the discovery in the late ’70s, the mythology of Chiron and the other centaurs was a meek footnote to classical literature.

The Education of Achilles by the Centaur Chiron, by Jean-Baptiste Regnault (French, 1754-1829). Chiron mentored a generation of the greatest Greek heroes, including Jason and Heracles. Part of his delineation includes the idea of mentorship.

Then came our awareness of [the minor planet] Chiron and, true to form, information started coming to the surface. Charles Kowal made his discovery the morning of Nov. 1, 1977 using what is called a blink microscope, a tool astronomers use to analyze photos of the sky for movement. The new body was the size of an asteroid, it had the orbit and composition of a comet, and it was described in a popular journalism article as a planet with an orbit between Saturn and Uranus. This made sure it got unusual attention. It was given minor planet catalog number 2,060 (in order of discovery) and, somewhat miraculously, astrology took notice.

Kowal — an astronomer, not an astrologer — gave Chiron its first keyword when he said, “This thing is a maverick.” Among other discoveries, Chiron stood out as highly unusual and as it works out, people with Chiron prominent in their charts also tend to stand out. They do things their own way. They thrive on being different.

He named it after a centaur presumably due to its hybrid nature; a centaur is a morph of a horse and a man. Naming it after the famous physician of Greek myth, the one who taught medicine to Asclepius, the god of medicine, brought in the dimension of healing. Chiron, an immortal, was injured in a battle, and this brought in the paradox of the wound or injury factor that is so often involved with Chiron, and so often misunderstood. On one level, we have an image of what we face as ‘spiritual beings’ inhabiting the mortal coil, rarely having that sense of being all the way here.

Remembering that mythology is based in symbolism, the ‘wound’ in most situations is the sense of imperfection and spiritual disconnection that we often drag around here on the physical plane. Where Chiron stands in our charts describes how and where this sense of imperfection might manifest, with lots of intensity, drama, effort and focus. Because Chiron is a centaur, we have an image of the paradox of whether a human is an animal or, you know, something else. Notably it was Chiron’s animal half that got hurt, suggesting that the injury we carry involves our deeper, older, primal and instinctual nature.

Charles Kowal, the discoverer of Chiron.

Yet this has another dimension. Under Chiron’s influence, often the things that seem to hurt us or challenge us make us not only strong, but also able to excel in some outstanding way. Chiron can represent the sense of debility, of not fitting in, or of constant struggle that brings out our greatest talents and develops our strongest character traits. In essence, Chiron is where we’re doing the most significant work on our human potential — or where we get hung up over and over again. Each time we have a Chiron event in our astrology is an opportunity to refocus the cycle.

In careful readings of Chiron in thousands of my clients’ charts, I’ve noticed a few other properties. One involves the holistic nature of Chiron; it wants us to take a whole system approach to any issue, such as our own lives. This also makes it an environmental harbinger: what we think of as ecology is about taking a holistic approach to life on our planet. Another is about raising awareness, which (not coincidentally) is often related to seeing the whole as opposed to a collection of parts. Chiron wants us to see the connections. Chiron transits are often described as ‘intense’ but that which is so intense is the attention factor. There is always a call to action, but it might take us quite a while to get there.

Where we have Chiron in our chart is a place where we tend to put enormous energy, often thinking we’re getting nowhere. Then we find out just how much progress we have made; how much we have learned, developed and given to the world.

A profoundly influential 20th century astrologer named Al Morrison noticed that often, significant benefit came from Chiron events, but that it often arrived with a challenge: so he called it the inconvenient benefic.

Chiron is an intense influence: it accelerates processes, it pushes us to be independent, to look at ourselves, and to deal with our growth. Chiron will try to get our attention gradually; if we ignore the messages, eventually we will experience a collapse of some kind. Then if an astrologer checks the chart he or she might blame Chiron. This is why it’s necessary to look at the whole Chiron cycle when working with this body, which will reveal a hidden pattern of experience and bring together events that we previously thought were unrelated. I cover this in an earlier article called, “When Astrology Listens.”

Chiron in Pisces: Focusing a Vision

Chiron has an egg-shaped orbit that lasts about 51 years. Because of how stretched out the ellipse is, when Chiron is close to the Sun it will cover a sign in about 18 months. When it’s far from the Sun, it will take between seven and nine years. Chiron was close to the Sun in the mid-1990s as it passed through Virgo and Libra, so we all had a rapid succession of Chiron transits then.

This diagram shows the orbit of Chiron, in blue. Note how Chiron crosses the orbit of Saturn for part of its trip around the Sun, then extends out nearly to the orbit of Uranus. Nearly all centaurs cross the orbit of other planets, providing a symbol or image for many of their qualities. The first orbit-crossing body ever discovered was Pluto, in 1930. Graphic courtesy of Serennu.com.

Now Chiron is approaching its most distant point to the Sun, so it will take about eight years for Chiron to cover Pisces. Chiron enters Pisces for a 90-day visit on April 20, retrogrades back into Aquarius on July 20, then returns to Pisces to stay on Feb. 8, 2011. So this spring and summer we get a 90-day introduction to what this energy feels like.

If you like synchronicity, here is something interesting. Through all of 2009 and part of 2010, Chiron was in a conjunction with both the ancient and modern rulers of Pisces — Jupiter and Neptune in late Aquarius. So Chiron enters Pisces all charged up on Pisces energy, and we have been getting wave pulses of this combination for many months. The combination of Chiron with any Pisces factor is focusing that which was previously invisible.

So what do we think of when we think of Pisces? What is our experience of this energy? It’s a fairly wide spectrum, ranging from the highest reaches of the imagination to our direct experience of God or soul to the most liberating and soulful erotic pleasure; to the depths of denial, deception, drink and drugs. (Neptune has a lot of keywords starting with the letter D.) In all, Chiron in Pisces is about helping us see what we have been missing or not paying attention to.

If we focus the strengths of Pisces, that would feel like clarifying our vision for our lives. Most of us have a really hard time with this; many people have no interest at all. Pisces is full of ideas, ideals, and the desire to transcend physicality. Which of these work and which do not? Chiron is calling for a sober assessment of these, to test for what are authentic values and which are things we see through our rosy, New Age glasses.

To put it bluntly, we might discover that we’re not as spiritual as we thought, in the sense that we need to apply our beliefs and ideals to the world in a real way. Chiron calls for a practical approach to whatever it touches. If you believe you’re spiritual, what is the working end of that equation? Where does that quality make contact with society — not just your altar or your yoga mat? You could look at Chiron in Pisces as the focusing of dharma: acting as if to hold the world together. Chiron takes us out of the theoretical realm and directly into what comes with evidence and documentation.

Many people find that the whole spiritual thing is really elusive. Chiron in Pisces draws this ‘elusive’ quality into focus. It’s about making conscious contact with the deepest level of who we are, be it soul, or our true creative impulse, our deepest emotions or our erotic core.

The Missing Piece

Does it ever seem like something is missing from the world? Does there seem to be a lack of compassion, or empathy, or contact with the deeper nature of existence? We see all kinds of evidence of this, in contradictions like: someone opposes abortion allegedly for spiritual reasons, then they support war and the death penalty. That ‘missing thing’ is often the ability to see the whole picture.

Pisces is one of the most erotically focused signs. Aquarius gets you there on an intellectual level, in theory first. Pisces gets you there in the senses, in fantasy and with imagination. Chiron in Aquarius has given us the theory to back up being horny. Chiron in Pisces is saying sex is of the soul, so let’s go there. Illustration from Imago.

We live in an impressive — though certainly not unprecedented — time when many religions are bashing it out for political supremacy; waging war; are involved in child sex scandals; and spending as much time taking advantage of the poor as they are taking care of them. And five years of Chiron in Aquarius has certainly brought us deeper into the digital dimension.

You could say that the missing piece is the actual experience of God or the human spiritual attribute. Of course, mood-stabilizing drugs are being sold by the kiloton to mask over the spiritual or psychological progress that we need to make, which is an attribute of toxic Pisces. So, too, is the raw, unabashed negativity we get on networks like Fox, to which tens of millions of people are addicted, watching for hours and hours a day, thinking they are being informed. (Toxic Chiron in Aquarius.)

And in a time when we need to be working together and focusing on our common interests, our culture continues to push us toward false individuality and separatism every day. The more we indulge these things, the more we really can believe that we don’t have anything in common; that we gain no real benefit from cooperation. Chiron in Pisces is here to open our hearts and our eyes to these factors and to provide options so that we can see we have a choice in the matter of how we perceive and live our lives on the planet together.

Characteristic of Chiron, as the denial becomes transparent, this may come with a crisis. The crisis seems like it will be about noticing what is missing — perhaps what has been missing for a long time, and then wanting to do something about it. But if we’re talking about spiritual, then it’s right within reach: compassion, cooperation, and helping out a little when you see something needs to be done. Love is always available. We have the option to dismiss the notion of ‘separate’ interests. We have the option to act on our creative ideas and desires and not just hang out thinking about doing so. And you who have done a thousand yoga classes, gone to retreats and intensives and trained in different healing modalities who isn’t quite doing anything with all those gifts: I’m here as Chiron’s personal spokesperson to let you know it’s time to get busy.

Yours & truly,

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Examples abound of politics being personal in these challenging times. They are also local. Here in Southern Missouri, I belong to a Political Action Committee that holds a yearly contest for high school kids. In each of several counties, participating students are asked to write an essay on “Why We Should Vote.” We had a sizeable turnout last year, given the presidential election; this year there were not so many. Still, reading through forty essays that all sound alike is a brain-numbing experience. The talking points obviously reflected their teachers’ instruction, and a thread of militarism disguised as patriotic duty ran through every submission. The repeated, effusive honoring of those who “died for our freedom” exposes the deep taproot of American nationalism.

In the end, choosing a winner came down to selecting an entry with a bit of originality and a unique presentation. There weren’t many contenders. We haven’t raised taxes for schools in decades, and it shows.

Yes, politics are local. We read the news to get the larger national picture, but in this age of information deluge, we get a big dose of local politics with every link we open. West Virginia comes to mind. The recent disaster at Massey Energy Company’s Upper Big Branch mine snuffed out the lives of 29 miners, filling our screens with photos and film coverage of anxious, grieving families awaiting news of their loved ones. Sadly, those not killed by the explosion perished from toxic levels of methane gas. The inherent dangers of coal mining became national news, exposing the political machinery that begets such tragedy and the systemic lack of worker protections that threatens us all.

The Sago Mine disaster in 2006 killed 12 and sparked calls for more safety regulation and industrial safeguards. Bush gave lip service to reform without enforcing mine safety laws — or any other laws distasteful to his corporate cronies. Aided by the Chamber of Commerce, coal companies have used loopholes to file appeals on 18,000 pending citations, leaving $210 million in contested penalties yet unpaid. While an appeal is pending, business goes on as usual and the resulting profits more than cover any eventual fines. As recently as March, Massey was twice cited for a build-up of lethal coal dust and a failure to conduct inspections. Massey appealed at least 37 of the 50 citations issued against the company for serious safety violations last year. Massey Energy Company is the current poster child for classist, corporate greed resulting in deadly mismanagement.

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, April 16, 2010, #812 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Aries Confidential	Face your challenges over the next few weeks as inner mental puzzles rather than opportunities for contention. You could take this astrology either way, depending on your theory of growth or personality. What is coming into conflict are two different aspects or levels of your mind, one of which would be better described as emotional and the other more appropriately called intellectual. Yet there is another dimension that is opening up for you that goes beyond both. You have had tastes of this over the past year, but you’ve been so busy trying to stay oriented that you may have missed some of the subtler aspects of the hidden world trying to get your attention. Beyond mind, personality and emotion is imagination. Humans are mainly limited by what we can envision, and some of those limits are about to disappear.
Taurus Confidential	I just checked the classifieds and there are no jobs available for moss growing on a rock. You will have to strike that off your list of potential careers. However, you have a few other possibilities: author of love letters or erotic novels; antique dealer; folk historian; marriage counselor or sex therapist; social coordinator. You would see many more, if you chose to be less critical of your creative talents and instead let them guide you to a productive place. For the next few weeks I suggest you conduct a review and inventory of your talents and skills, as well as the desires you’ve previously hidden from yourself but now, for whatever reason, you have the confidence or at least the need to embrace.
Gemini Confidential	You need to keep a line of communication open within a relationship or partnership, which will provide an opportunity to talk about matters that are usually too sensitive or embarrassing to bring up. You or someone close to you may be keeping secrets; the aspect structure calls for an even exchange of hidden material. I suggest beginning the conversation with an understanding of amnesty; even if you cannot make that request, you can, in your heart, agree to let go of whatever you learn. The changes are excellent, if everyone is honest, that you will come out of the conversation closer rather than more distant. Yet the seeming paradox is that you will be more distinctly individual: in other words, a space of both closer and more liberated. That’s not a paradox at all: it’s a formula.
Cancer Confidential	Any career move you make in the coming weeks needs to meet one qualification: that it be authentically you. By this I mean based on your actual talent; your true values; and what you want to be doing with your time. It’s likely that you’ve been aware of what that is for a long time; you’ve said the words and you understand the values involved. What you’re about to experience is the opportunity to make visceral contact with those values and move forward with the sense that you are embodying what matters to you rather than ‘trying to be’ something. It’s not even necessary that you believe in yourself; rather, all you really need to do is be honest with yourself. And I suggest you trust that those who have the power to help you will also have the inclination, though you will need to initiate the discussion.
Leo Confidential	You tend to be the keeper of faith; this has been true lately, and now you’re going to be the keeper of putting faith into action. As you do this, your role involves being conscious of the past while helping orient on the future. Being aware of the past will have the obvious benefit of avoiding the errors strewn there, but also learning from what you’ve done right. Yet this analytical exercise will have another benefit, which is to focus your mind on the question in a new way. One way to look at this involves agreements. Yet what you are really looking for is a way to frame the issue in a way that lends itself to the best solution. In other words, remember that the answer to any puzzle, problem or situation depends mostly on how you phrase the question.
Virgo Confidential	Making long-term plans needs to be an exercise in creating the future rather than determining in advance what you think is possible. If you’re thinking reductively, that is, crossing things off the list to see what you’re left with, I suggest you go the other way and see if you can make the list as interesting as possible. You will come up against some stuck thinking as you do this; you may feel like you’re violating someone’s rules for how you should be; mostly you will encounter your need to stretch your creative muscles. For too long you have existed within a limited set of beliefs of what is possible, and haven’t yet acknowledged that these are a collection of past relics belonging to people you’ve never met, who left the planet long ago.
Libra Confidential	You seem to be trying with all your energy to get beyond an issue that has been lingering for years. There is an optical illusion quality to this: some ways you look at the situation, it seems entirely to your benefit. Other ways you look at it, you see a lingering problem that defies rationality, communication or normal means of effort. When one feels true, the other doesn’t exist; and it makes no sense that something could be helpful and detrimental at the same time. As you move back and forth between perspectives, ask yourself where the process is taking you. Are you learning anything from considering the different possibilities? Are there circumstances you’ve noticed that present a tendency toward one viewpoint or the other? What if you were to get out of your own way?
Scorpio Confidential	Nobody can challenge your authority — if you remember that all you have is authority over yourself. From the look of your charts, people will try. Certain individuals may want to go back on agreements, and they may imply a creative interpretation from the past that didn’t really exist. All you need to do is hold steady: you don’t need to defend yourself, nor do you need to engage in much discussion. The more energy you feed into the situation, the more someone will think they may be right. In fact you have the option to ignore any communication that you’re pretty sure doesn’t actually impact your life. Be conscious of your own obligations: ask yourself, quietly: do I owe anything to this situation? Have I lived up to what I promised? Even if you determine that you have not, you have time to take care of business. Don’t let anyone rush you.
Sagittarius Confidential	I’m sure I’ve told the story at least once of how my first web developer, then-16-year-old Jordan Laughlin, created a new sign — Sagittaurus. Part of why this is funny is due to the wildly differing nature of these two signs: freewheeling Sagg and cautious Taurus. This week his vision comes true. Jupiter and Venus are in an unusual dialog right now, feeding one another’s potential. The key is to let the energy or impulse you feel move quickly into manifestation. You won’t finish everything you start, but you’ll get a feel for how different ideas translate from concept to expression. Where you sense unpleasant tension, try something else; where you sense an easy energy flow, see where it leads. You’re looking for the sweet spot that translates approximately to emotionally satisfying work.
Capricorn Confidential	How do you respond to people who seem less stable than yourself? People who seem erratic, unpredictable or a bit flaky? There seems to be someone of this nature in your environment, and you seem to be getting your buttons pushed. The difficult part is, you don’t have direct power in this situation. Your emotional responses and mental judgments don’t translate well to situations where your authority means anything. And it’s difficult for you to see precisely where your responsibility exists. How about this: it involves how you learned to deal with someone in the distant past. You seem to have had at least one parent who specialized in being extremely self-critical and therefore judgmental, which was papered over by charm and a nice outfit. You are now peeking behind the veil to let go of any similar tendencies you may discover in yourself.
Aquarius Confidential	You seem to be longing for some old version of yourself, but you’re swiftly being carried away from even the memory of who that was. Yet one situation remains, where the prior and future “editions” of you stand in a face-to-face standoff. Take your time with this. Notice who, in your life, supports what you consider to be the direction of your desired growth, progress and creativity. There is never a compromise between good and evil, but fortunately this situation is not so black and white. You are in a process of synthesizing elements of past and future; inner and outer; structure and energy. The result — who you become — will be significantly different than any of the constituents.
Pisces Confidential	You struggle with being different, though you persist in doing precisely that. What you have yet to discover is how different you really are, and how productive that can be, including in the financial sense. What happens over the next week is designed to focus your energy on the most creative and innovative attributes of who you are, and I suggest you never duck from that distinction. Rather, keep firmly in mind how far you’ve veered from a conventional life, and more significantly, why you have done so. The person you are on the inside is often different than who you present yourself to be on the outside, though as Chiron makes its way into your birth sign, the two are being united in a way that has never quite happened before, and that has never succeeded this well before. Allow every event over the next few days to teach you how to become the person you know you’re destined to be.

Dear Planet Waves Subscriber:

The other day, an email came floating into my inbox from a website called Care2, a green-styled corporate site purportedly dedicated to saving the world, claiming 12.5 million subscribers. The subject header of the email read, “Monogamy vs. Polyamory: Do Open Relationships Work?”

View from train bridge, Rosendale, NY. Photo by Eric Francis.

Naturally, I thought: this ought to be pretty interesting.

The writer gave her analysis a title like a boxing match or a legal case. Mono versus Poly is now in session! All Rise! The article commenced as such (literally, its first words): “Non-monogamy is about one thing — sex. And sex is good.”

(You can tell she learned her writing style from The Bible.)

It went downhill from there, fast. Faster than I ever thought possible without jet propulsion and a lot of lube. “And sex with different people — either concurrently or over the course of a lifetime — is good too. Sex is so good that some people are addicted to it. Sex makes people do crazy things and it makes people feel amazing things. I love it just as much as anyone else, but there is more to life than sex.”

When you see the word ‘but’ you can usually tell how things are going to go. Her premise is that since polyamory is about sex, and since sex isn’t everything, polyamory is nothing special to concern oneself with. The author, whose name is Polly, continues: “I am pretty sure that the words on your deathbed won’t be, ‘I wish I had had more sex with more people’. Maybe if you’re a pervert, or if you didn’t get much action in your life, you would say that, but most people wouldn’t.”

I will spare you any more. This article, while one of the less eloquent and less favorable recent mainstream reviews of polyamory, shares one thing in common with every other article on the topic that I’ve ever seen: it sets polyamory and monogamy against one another as irreconcilable opposites.

While the author is less tactful about her prejudices, she does us the favor of expressing them overtly: for example, there is in many discussions the lurking suspicion that people who don’t claim orthodox monogamy are perverts, but the word is rarely used. Or they don’t really like relationships, and can’t handle intimacy; they just want to get laid. Facing these prejudices repeatedly is enough to push nearly anyone who tries to be openly polyamorous back into the closet.

Social prejudices about polyamory emphasize the sexual aspects of the experience — which seems to represent the fantasy or desire most project onto the idea.

Yet I wonder what the real issue is. Studies done over the years on the incidence of cheating reveal that 45% to 65% of women and 55% to 80% of men stray outside monogamous commitments.

The variance is because some studies ask whether people have ever cheated while in a monogamous agreement; some ask whether they have cheated in their current relationship. Other studies show that women tend to understate their sexual conquests, and men tend to exaggerate. The two stats may be much closer than the studies show. Neither sex has a claim on fidelity.

In any event, we’re talking about a large portion of the population whose definition of monogamy has at one time included, and possibly includes today, sex with more than one person. For a fast check, ask yourself: do you know anyone who hasn’t been through this at least once? How about three times? How abut five?

Notably, the accepted definition of monogamy has changed in recent decades from one partner for life (now considered archaic), to one partner at a time, as often as you feel like moving on. That’s a big difference. The revised term is ‘serial monogamy’, but I prefer to think of it as serial polyamory: we tend to have multiple partners, one at a time (that is, while we’re not having multiple partners, two or more at a time).

By any realistic description, some versions of monogamy sound a lot like polyamory. Those who are proponents of monogamy at all costs, who advance the cause of abstinence-only until heterosexual marriage for life, sound like they are in reaction to the observable data, which basically proves that most people are simply not that way; that, and living in reaction to their own feelings. So do a lot of romantics, cruising for The One. True, there are some who choose a mate for life. For some this actually works beautifully and for some it creates misery. In any event, we only know their story up until today. We don’t know about tomorrow.

No matter how we experience relationships, I would propose that there are more similarities between what we call monogamy and what we call polyamory. For one thing, they both involve modes of relationship. No matter what the outward style, relationships boil down to a one-to-one meeting between two individuals. Those meetings are set within a larger context with many complex interrelations: a community.

That community either supports the relationship or it weakens the relationship. The relationship either offers something back to society, or it does not. Who has sex with whom seems to be incidental — except for one thing, jealousy. I won’t say much about jealousy in this article, except I would state upfront that in my view, if one issue is choking off the potential of the human race, choking our relationships and doing incalculable damage to sex, that’s the one.

From Self to Self: The Inner Origin of Relationships

But let’s go back to the egg. One must be a self to have a relationship with someone else. Being a self implies an inner awareness of existence, which is a relationship to existence that is in truth a relationship to self. The quality of this core relationship determines nearly everything that follows. No matter what kind of external relationships you engage in, your primary relationship is to you.

Naomi from the Book of Blue. Photo by Eric Francis.

How do you feel about your existence? Do you love yourself, judge yourself, hate yourself, struggle to ‘be yourself’? What threatens you and what makes you happy? To what extent do you take ownership of your life? What threatens or enhances your sense of existence? How do you relate to death?

And, a kind of operative question that results from all of these: why do you want to be in relationship with others? What is your motive? Most of us want relationships, but we have different drives. Is the reason to share pleasure, learning, and food? Is it to share work and a mission? Is it to exchange misery? Is the purpose to seek completion in another, or to explore your wholeness with another? Is the purpose to protect you from something or to celebrate and explore a sense of safety? Do you seek love or attachment?

Each of these themes appear to be mediated by one’s relationship to oneself. Each individual brings an agenda into the pairing, and that agenda is internally mediated. It’s usually based on a level of maturity and experience in life, and one’s level of awareness. In other words, you decide and express your agenda in a relationship based on your relationship to yourself. Notably, this is the relationship that we typically seem to lose sight of when we’re ‘in a relationship’, which might feel like losing one’s independence or sense of identity.

Many people feel like they’re a ‘different person’ when they’re with a partner, and ‘go back to being themselves’ when a relationship splits up. This is a sign of inner fragmentation.

Our inner relationship is the real thing that most of us struggle with, most of the time we’re struggling. Even if we think we’re struggling in a relationship, what we’re actually struggling with is a relationship with ourselves. If we could figure that out, we would have fewer problems and more solutions. We would know where to look for those solutions.

From One Self to Another Self: Dyad as the Basic Bond

One subject that rarely arises at polyamory conferences (the places polyamorous people come to talk about relationships, make friends and exchange information) is monogamy. I mean, it’s mentioned, but the topic of the depth of one-on-one bonds is secondary to the issue of how things are doing with the other partners, the rules of engagement with other partners, and so on. Rare is it to hear open conversation about the need to relate one-on-one or the need to be in an exclusive relationship for a while. You meet couples at polyamory conferences that are monogamous before they branch out, but I’ve never met a couple at a conference that was choosing to keep their relationship exclusive.

Crystal and Benji. Photo by Eric Francis.

I think that most people who identify as polyamorous know this and honor when others do this, but individual relationships seems to play second fiddle in poly culture when in fact, so far as I can tell, they are the second most basic foundation of poly culture. The very most basic is where one stands with oneself; and the second is the quality of our one-on-one bonds.

Now ‘monogamy’ and ‘polyamory’ have a second key element in common: they both use dyadic (that is, pair) bonding as a structural basis. Strong dyads share the same basic properties, no matter what the style of relationship: they are based on agreements; they are based on honesty; they are based on a desire to share; hopefully they are based on love.

Relationships have a purpose, and they express that purpose within a tribe or community. Remember that marriage, our society’s most basic and seemingly most coveted bond, is often performed in a public ceremony, officiated by a public official (traditionally by a minister, a judge, the mayor or a sea captain). The community is generally invited as witnesses.

The relationship is presumed to have public implications and the marriage license is a public document, filed with the city clerk. This suggests that the pair bond is part of something larger: society or a community and often, a family.

Relationships involve a contract or agreement of some kind, even if that is just to be together. Whether they’re happy affairs or not usually involves whether the individuals involved feel that the agreement is honored; whether the individuals get their needs met; and whether the arrangement works for both people. These facts apply whether the relationship is heterosexual or homosexual, whether the individuals are members of the same race or economic class, or whether they are of similar or very different ages.

Most of us would agree with “whatever makes them happy.” Whatever makes us happy, if we can arrange it. Whether the individuals involved choose to have sex with other people would be covered by all of these concepts.

The Many: We All Have Multiple Relationships

One thing does not change, whatever kind of relationship is involved: those individuals relate to other people. Unless they are really, really lonely, they love other people and other people love them. Partners in healthy monogamous relationships have loving relationships with others. One bit of revisionist history is that the ‘nuclear family’ is the basic unit of society: parents and kids. Until recently, these relationships were set within a complex social structure called the extended family. The dyad was part of a much larger structure that included many kinds of loving relationships.

Humorous postcard explaining how complicated relationships are, which (if you don’t read the words) also gives a picture of the human networks surrounding any couple. Author or “curator” seems to be Adam Sicinski. Link to original.

Referring back to the beginning of Polly’s article (polyamory is all about sex), the truth is our relationships are always about so much more. It verges on hilarious that someone would accuse polyamorous people in particular of focusing on sex; poly folk spend so much of their time obsessively involved with the details of their relationships it’s amazing they have any time for cooking, much less for sex. But even the ‘let’s meet at the motel for a quickie’ kind of affairs have a way of becoming deeper emotional involvements.

Yet even if we presume sexual monogamy — someone who only has physical sex with one other person, for a long time — we all have bonds and commitments with others. Some of those, while ‘nonsexual’ in the physical sense, can be profound, intimate and long-lasting connections. Imagine a man is married, in a healthy relationship with his wife. He also has a secretary who has worked for him for 20 years, and they love and trust one another deeply. They haven’t shared sex, but their bond of love is as powerful as that of any marriage. Most people would not call that polyamory; I would.

And most of us have extremely active fantasy lives. Fantasy knows no bounds; yes, some people feel guilty about it, but that usually makes it so much hotter. And fantasy takes us outside the bounds of monogamy.

One thing I’ve always found interesting is that monogamy has many rules that don’t involve sex. Some monogamous couples do not ‘allow’ one another to have close friends of the opposite sex. Some monogamous people feel threatened when their partner has any friends at all. Some don’t ‘allow’ their partner to go to community college. Some feel threatened when their partner checks out a cute guy or girl, and some encourage one another to be open about their attractions and even their erotic fantasies, unfettered. Others would be profoundly threatened by this. Still others invite their friends to have sex with them.

Since nearly everyone has sexual desires and fantasies about others, the core issue running the show — that is, the thing that determines our choice to have more than one partner, and whether to be honest about it — would seem to be jealousy. Everyone gets jealous at times; some make a religion out of it. Some make it their dharma to work through it and be free. Those who dwell on jealousy relate to others with a different set of presumptions and expectations than those who process it in a healthy way. As it turns out, in an attempt to avoid the jealousy issue, a great many have sex with others without telling their partner about it. In other words, from what I hear, many people would openly want or admit to being with more than one partner or lover if jealousy were not in the way. One common equation is, “I want to be sexual with someone else, but I’m not going to because you might, and if you do, I will be jealous.”

When we talk about polyamory, what we’re really describing is an agreement to take up all the boundaries of a relationship consciously, rather than applying a term that seems to presume the nature of those boundaries, but more often denies their existence. In other words, polyamory is what we talk about, more than what we do. Most people choose to remain silent about their sexual reality.

Why ever would we do that? Well, since your first relationship is to yourself: ask yourself.

Yours & truly,

Compersion Letters from Planet Waves Readers

“Suppression of the natural sexuality in the child, particularly of its genital sexuality, makes the child apprehensive, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, good and adjusted in the authoritarian sense; it paralyzes the rebellious forces because any rebellion is laden with anxiety; it produces, by inhibiting sexual curiosity and sexual thinking in the child, a general inhibition of thinking and of critical faculties. In brief, the goal of sexual suppression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all misery and degradation. At first the child has to submit to the structure of the authoritarian miniature state, the family; this makes it capable of later subordination to the general authoritarian system. The formation of the authoritarian structure takes place through the anchoring of sexual inhibition and anxiety.”

Wilhelm Reich, from The Mass Psychology of Fascism

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

What a strange and exasperating period we’re living in. What has become habitual no longer serves us. Our existing patterns of behavior reveal themselves as increasingly unworkable, and our nation, along with most others across the planet, finds citizen pitted against citizen, political party against party. We are seemingly at a standstill here in the USA, where even our Vice President admits that, “Washington right now is broken,” adding, “I’ve never seen it this dysfunctional.” The President finds it necessary to toot his own horn, emphasizing that the year-old stimulus has been a success, keeping folks in jobs, creating new ones, and providing tax relief to ease the pain. The minority party argues that such assessments are all just speculation, that those jobs might have been funded anyhow — yes, when piggies fly, but that’s another story. What is ruthless and self-serving is deeply entrenched, while all that is hopey-changey, to quote the caustic Ms. Palin, must defend its very existence.

This week Evan Bayh, a Blue Dog Democrat who once served as Governor of Illinois, announced he wouldn’t be running to retain his Senate seat. Calling himself disillusioned, Bayh finds the Congress too partisan, and urges electoral “shock” to fix the broken system. Vote incumbents out, he proposes, and vote in those who want to reform the process for the good of the people rather than for special-interest groups. Those of us who watch these things carefully wonder at a statement like that, since Bayh was one of those who set out to kill the Public Option; also his wife is a member of the board at WellPoint, the nation’s largest health insurer, earning millions in the last couple of years. Gosh, doesn’t that seem like a deeply personal ‘special interest’ to you? Those who hoot and holler because Democrats couldn’t get anywhere with their supermajority should carefully scrutinize this man and his fellow Blue Dogs, because the Dems’ ability to utilize their power successfully this year was obstructed by him and those like him who serve the corporate middle.

Evan Bayh has been pointed to as an example of a centrist. He campaigned faithfully for Hillary Clinton, who aligns with her husband as a domestic centrist and military hawk. There is another word for this: establishment. While embracing Obama after his win, even briefly being considered as a vice presidential nominee, Bayh immediately organized a Blue Dog block and threw the e-brake on progressive legislation. Over the last thirty years and longer, the political stance of this nation has been diligently moved so far to the right that I think of it as a little left of Moses. In compromise with this supposed center, nothing has changed over the years but the lineup of players urging that liberals everywhere take them seriously since they represent the majority.

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, February 19, 2010, #805 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Planet Waves en Italiano

Aries Confidential	You’re not the goodie-goodie you like people to think you are; this, despite how you flaunt your wild side. Though you would probably never own up to that contradiction, it’s time to worry less about your image and more about how being authentic draws authentic people toward you. I suggest you admit to your chaos, your passion, your craving for freedom. I suggest you admit to the true fact that your attractions follow no special logic, no rules, and in the end, know no bounds. You could spend a lot of time worrying about why you have tried to pretend otherwise; you could wonder why you’re caught in the structure that you’re in. Or you can simply be free.
Taurus Confidential	You have an active imagination; it’s so active, you rarely give yourself a chance to step out. Yes, Taurus is the sign most often associated with physicality and grounding and all of that, but lately you seem more in your head than usual. You seem to be searching and dreaming and exploring in there. That’s fine, as long as you take some of what’s in your head, and put some of that pancake batter onto the griddle. True enough, you don’t have to. You can keep stirring it in your mixing bowl. You can keep adding sugar. But as long as you do that, you’re always going to have batter and you’re never going to have hotcakes.
Gemini Confidential	Don’t expect your social experiences to follow a plan, or even your vaguest notions of what you thought you wanted. I would propose that you will figure out what you want in a series of experiments, at the end of which you will have given up on a few old friends and made some brilliant contacts with some new friends. This is the time to desire new people, places and experiences. In fact, it’s time for them to desire you right back. I would say if you don’t want attention, don’t leave the house, but not even that will work. Remember this attention parlays into your workplace or professional activities. You will be rewarded for good work, so keep your focus.
Cancer Confidential	You cannot control the outcome of events, and you don’t want to. What you can do is pay attention to the flow and skate along with the game. And it looks like a fast game, for sure, where the rules change. Mars finally stationing direct is likely to improve your attitude about money, as long as you remember to invest it in what has lasting value, or in what fits a long-term plan. You feel like you have a lot of mojo, which remains true as long as you apply every molecule and photon of it consciously. There is a direct relationship between awareness and power, and at this opportune moment I suggest you add some ambition. Not a lot, just enough.
Leo Confidential	You’re about to get a surge of energy — though I suggest you go for the slow burn. Keep your flame blue and clean and just the right temperature. In other words: plan for the long run. Mars is about to station direct in the first degree of your sign; then over the next 10 weeks it will work its way clear across Leo, touching the natal Sun of everyone born under your sign. Through the long Mars retrograde, you’ve done a fine job reinventing yourself. I suggest you stretch gently into this new concept of who you are, rather than inflating like an airbag. You’ll be tempted; yet the long-term outlook says that if you pace yourself, the very best is yet to come.
Virgo Confidential	You now know the truth about a health situation that has long troubled you, taxing your peace of mind in a way that you’ve let on to only a few people in your life. Though you prefer to be truthful, you were correct in not spreading your anxiety, mainly because you knew it would come back to you. Now that your worst fears have been proven unfounded, you can spread something else, which is your unmitigated vitality. And that will come back to you, just like anything else you broadcast. In the next six months, this echo effect is only going to intensify, and you’ll need to be clear what is yours and what is not.
Libra Confidential	This is not the time to seek stability in your relationships — it’s time for something better. This theme repeats over and over this spring, any way you shuffle, slice or dice the planets. You need to trust the stability within yourself. Most people seek structure on the outside, and give their relationships a too-difficult job. The difference, in the end, is about maturity; when your life moves as fast as it’s going to move, and becomes as unpredictable as it’s going to become, you need to know where your center is, and you need to know how to get there fast. Then you will be able to play fast and loose, something that is unusual for you, but which you’ve craved for a long time.
Scorpio Confidential	It may be driving you half-mad that a partner can’t home in on their sense of identity. But then, you’ve been wavering on a commitment for many weeks, and this commitment has a lot to do with who you are; or rather, with acknowledging who you are. There is more to this commitment than meets the eye, because of the depth of the understanding involved. In a sense, you’re making an agreement with yourself about the role that you deserve in the world; which in turn is a reflection of how powerful you are willing to believe you are. True, over the past few months you’ve given yourself many reasons to doubt, but in truth you’ve discovered just as many to have confidence.
Sagittarius Confidential	Few astrologers would advise someone born under your sign to take a little extra risk, fearing what you might do. However, I’m aware the extent to which you have put the restraints on yourself in recent months, and have retreated far from your usual swashbuckling self. Here is the key: respond to your feelings and not your mind. Start from where you feel safe. That is a feeling you can actually trust. From that space of safety, take a step; then when that works out, take another step. You may, along the way, feel the impulse to leap in feet first, and I wouldn’t want to stop you; just make sure you’re absolutely willing, with no hint of hesitancy.
Capricorn Confidential	It’s time to make some fast, bold professional moves; primarily this is the time to make sure you’re as visible as possible. If you stay where people can see you, you’ll increase the chances of success significantly: success as you define it. I have an idea what that is: the privilege of expressing the person you actually are in your professional life. Capricorn is often accused of being ambitious: I see the matter differently, as a quest for authenticity that brings you through many incarnations of your career and your role in the world. In actual fact, you must try again and again till you find the place not where you fit, but where you are free to exist.
Aquarius Confidential	In astrology there are, occasionally, before and after moments. That is the easiest way to understand, or to even see, the meaning of how the planets move. You have now arrived at an ‘after’ moment: after a very long spell of the need for clarity, coexisting with yourself in a kind of misunderstanding. You have resolved something, or perhaps you’ve just observed something, but it goes so deep into who you are that it seems to reach across all your lifetimes. In any event, however you choose to think of it, you have turned one page of your life and embarked on a whole new volume of existence. The territory changes fast from here: take careful, conscious steps and always notice where you are, and whom you’re with.
Pisces Confidential	Know good times when you’re in them — and you are. These are not the kind of good times that melt into the background of history, forgotten because of their comfort. Rather, this is a moment that stands out rather than stands back, and which you may consciously, willingly and lovingly use to enter a new phase of your life. I trust that you feel a certain energetic relief, the ability to relax and the growing sense not that you have enough, but that you are enough. Keep that feeling, and remember the idea, if you lose contact with the inner orientation. It is fair to say that everything is about to change — in ways you would have wished for, if you could have ever predicted what is possible.