Dear Friend and Reader:

I was just informed by my editor Brian, at Chronogram, that due to the Memorial Day holiday our publishing schedule has been moved up by about four days; we have to ship the magazine at 1 pm Thursday. Therefore between now and tomorrow night I’ll be doing the most efficiently written monthly horoscope and lead article in astrology history (which you’ll receive Thursday evening).

Mercury Retrograde by Eric Francis.

Now, it occurs to me that this is the perfect Mercury retrograde blip. Anyway, the only impact on Planet Waves readers is that I’ll be moving Planet Waves FM and my tribute to B.B. King to Thursday. That will be followed by the Mercury retrograde conference call (a live edition of Planet Waves FM), which will take place at 8 pm EDT later that evening.

I am planning this as an open discussion about Mercury retrograde, and your ideas about it, and your experiences. This should be an interesting call. People who purchased the Mercury retrograde reading are invited, as are all Core Community members.

If you’re a Basic subscriber and want to attend the call, please send an email to mercury@planetwaves.net and we’ll reply with instructions for how to participate.

Meanwhile, I’ve had a few other thoughts about the current Mercury retrograde since publishing Thursday’s edition.

As mentioned, this retrograde comes to a head in about a week, with the alignment of Mercury, Mars and Neptune starting May 25 or so and peaking on May 27. There’s rather significant potential for self-desctructive behaviors to resurface. The coolest heads must prevail in all sensitive matters of communication, and even in the most ordinary.

But what I really see are privacy concerns. A superficial reading of these charts in 1990 or so would have come with a caution against gossip and deception. An astrologer might have warned about being careful what you say when drunk. All of that still stands as reasonable.

Now it’s 2015 and we are soaked in digital technology. There is a camera pointing at you everywhere, and we know everything that makes it onto the Internet is being saved in a database for possible future use. We also live within a maze of passwords, for everything from banking to investment portfolios to email to Facebook.

Don’t miss my tribute to B.B. King in Thursday’s edition of Planet Waves FM, available at about 5 pm that day.

Keep an eye on these things. Make sure your passwords are secure enough. Too many people still use passwords like “password,” which is an issue. So please shore up those boundaries.

All that action around Neptune is a caution we can only get from astrology. Neptune is even difficult to discern when you’re looking right at it in a chart. So I’m going to keep that focus through the end of the month.

Sunday I wrote a piece about the confluence of the Taurus New Moon and Mercury retrograde. That link is open without need for a password. I also published an older piece about my early days of reading Tarot cards, which I’m glad I dusted off — it’s from an unfinished book project whose time is approaching.

Meanwhile, remember — there’s an open meeting about Mercury retrograde Thursday at 8. I’ll record it for future reference.

Catch you Thursday afternoon with Planet Waves FM, Thursday evening with the monthly horoscope for June, and then live on the phone or the Net right after that.

Lovingly,