Dear Friend and Reader:

Saturday, Nov. 22, is the Sagittarius New Moon exact 7:32 am EST (12:32 UT) — and it got me thinking. Years ago, a Sagittarian ex of mine said to me, “You’re the only person who’s never judged me for being who I am.”

He was a creative, sensitive poet-type and was having trouble reconciling his authentically non-monogamous side with the part of him that truly desired to settle down and start a “traditional” family. Not everyone he dated was comfortable with the tension that dichotomy generated, or appreciated how hard he was trying to be true to himself.

We tend to think of Geminis, the sign opposite Sagittarius, as being the ones who can’t decide between their options. Sagittarius is attributed a more singular focus, represented by its symbol: a centaur (half horse, half human) shooting an arrow into the sky.

But what if it’s not so much indecision, as a case of “getting it all” on one level — getting that everything’s connected, that we’re all one, that it’s all love — and then just wanting it to work on the ground the way they know intuitively that it should? There’s something very compelling about this kind of Sagittarius when you meet them. Unfortunately, much of the world just is not operating on that level. And that can be very painful for them — and those who care about them.

Then there are the fun-loving, freedom-claiming jokesters of the Sagittarius clan — the optimistic gamblers. According to many astrologers, this is often a phase in younger Sagittarians that can give way to the more spiritual, inwardly-seeking type later in life.

The center of our galaxy lies in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. As we approach the Capricorn solstice, the Sun aligns with the Galactic Core, blocked from view by thick dust clouds. Photo of the Milky Way from Mount Parnona, Greece, by Anthony Ayiomamitis.

Of course, someone born under this sign might be a synthesis of both types. I’m thinking specifically of a dancer/choreographer friend of mine. He plumbed the depths in his art; he got that love is what matters most of all; he could DJ a wicked dance party. He also could not give me a straight answer when I asked, “So, are you married?” during one early conversation in which he was clearly hitting on me. Nothing that evening was going to pin him down to anything black or white; the part of him that was half horse was not about to be corralled.

Part of what gives Sagittarius its more “out there” feel is that it contains two mysterious, powerful deep-space points. The most compelling may be the very core of our galaxy, considered a “cosmic homing signal” in astrology related to the deeply spiritual leanings of more “evolved” Sagittarians.

The other is the Great Attractor, a massive gravity anomaly tens of thousands of times larger than our galaxy, drawing everything in our region of space toward it. In astrology, the Great Attractor is often associated with people and events that have a polarizing effect on those around them, that is, a strong attraction or repulsion.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that the more devoted you become to your own authenticity and the path of your soul’s growth (a Sagittarian theme), the less equivocal people’s reactions to you are. Either people love who you are becoming and support you 100% (even when that means you may leave their immediate personal orbit as you grow), or they may accuse you of betrayal and selfishness, judging you with the pain of their own unprocessed shadow and fear of change. As Kermit sang, it’s not easy being green.

If you like to track the specifics, the Sun ingresses Sagittarius at 4:38 am EST (9:38 UT) on Saturday, followed by the Moon at 7:19 am EST (12:19 UT). Not even 15 minutes later, at 7:32 am EST (12:32 UT), they conjoin for the Sagittarius New Moon, not far from Venus.

Having Venus nearby adds some extra love to the proceedings as the Sun moves through the sign and encounters a plethora of challenging minor planets, along with the Great Attractor and Galactic Core. Soak it up now, and make like ET, another “misfit” who “got it”: keep your heart light on.

Yours & truly,

Amanda Painter

Planet Waves (ISSN 1933-9135) is published each Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon in Kingston, New York by Planet Waves, Inc. Annual basic subscription rate: $99/year. Core community membership: $199/year. Editor and Publisher: Eric Francis Coppolino. Business Manager: Chelsea Bottinelli. Web Developer: Anatoly Ryzhenko. Astrology Editor: Amanda Painter. Copy Editor: Jessica Keet. Research, Writing and Editing: Planet Waves is produced by a team consisting of Fe Bongolan, Brendan Merritt, Amy Elliott, Judith Gayle, Kelly Janes, Amanda Moreno, Casey Smith, Carol van Strum, Len Wallick, Lizanne Webb and Chad Woodward.

Sun Enters Sagittarius, Sagittarius New Moon

By Eric Francis

We’re in an unusual moment when the solar and lunar cycles are synchronized. The Sun’s slightly faster apparent daily motion through a sign this time of year is much closer to the lunar cycle than in summer, when the Sun’s daily motion is slower.

Representation of Hecate, in the British Museum.

Currently, the New Moon happens the day that the Sun enters the new sign. This occurred with the solar eclipse in the first degree of Scorpio; it will be true of the Capricorn New Moon on the solstice, and it’s true of Saturday’s New Moon in Sagittarius.

The Sun ingresses Sagittarius at 4:38 am EST on Nov. 22 (09:38 UTC). The Moon enters Sagittarius at 7:19 am EST (12:19 UTC) and the New Moon occurs 13 minutes later, at 7:32 am (12:32 UTC).

The Sun and Moon join many planets already in Sagittarius: Venus, Ceres, Pholus, Vesta and an exotic collection of minor planets (including Sphinx and others).

And this Sagittarius infusion picks up on the fire sign energy of Jupiter in Leo and Uranus in Aries. We are about to have a fiery month. Fortunately, we recently covered the territory when Mars made its trek through Sagittarius between Sept. 13 and Oct. 26. Remember what you learned then — it will come in handy over the next few weeks. You don’t need to solve the same problems twice.

The theme of this chart as I see it is discerning the difference between intuition and fear. It’s also discerning the difference between intuition and wishful thinking. This can all take some practice, by which I mean testing your hunches against what actually happens in reality. Intuition is trainable in the sense that you can teach yourself what to listen for.

These charts are urging discernment rather boldly. Discernment means paying attention to your senses, to your observations of the environment, and to your basic wits. I know that Sagittarius (and Neptune, which is square the New Moon) are considered spiritual, but the more spiritual you are, the more closely you need to pay attention to what is so.

The Sun and Moon square Neptune are describing a tendency toward naive thinking, skipping the details and going on hunches. There’s never been a time when this is more perilous. The world has quite literally turned into one massive marketplace, with a seemingly infinite number of entities promising everything under the Sun if you’ll only give up your credit card number. Therefore, one theme of the next month is verify. Belief is risky; belief is almost always based on prejudice, which means judging in advance of actually knowing.

Venus is also square Neptune, which is urging caution around the value of what you purchase (especially with the signs involved being optimistic Sagittarius and idealistic Pisces). The saving grace of this aspect pattern is a point called Hecate.

My working chart for Saturday’s New Moon in Sagittarius (cast in Io Sprite), with some asteroids, centaurs and other points penciled in (cast in Serennu). View full size chart here. See glyph legend here.

Named for a beautifully complex goddess, in astrology it translates to what Martha Lang-Wescott calls “the inner sense — women’s ways of knowing — and whether one can trust that.” She also describes a connection to night, dreams, intuitive wisdom, and various aspects of childbirth and mothering. One question she asks is whether mother served as a protector.

In this chart, we can think of Hecate as the protective goddess of intuition, stepping in right when we need her the most. With intuition you always need to pay attention, and feel for the tug on your sleeve of the voice whispering in your mind.

For some this takes practice, mainly to clear past clutter and interference, and to hear your actual inner voice speaking. For some it’s natural. I would propose that anyone can tap into this guidance system, which is a lot smarter than GPS. One way to practice is to take little pot shots on things that don’t matter much. For example, step outside of your house and choose a direction to walk, based on that inner voice — and see what happens. There are lots of ways to play.

Sooner or later, you will need the skill of inner guidance. There will be times when a lot is at stake and you will need to trust your inner sense. Most of the time I suggest working with as much data as you can get. Speaking for a moment as a journalist who has spent many years uncovering corporate fraud, I want to add one point. There are two sides to fraud. One side is the person who lies. The other side is the person who believes the lies.

While it is true that fraud is by definition a self-concealing crime, it’s also true that in any such analysis, people are responsible for what they already know — and right now, we know a lot. Something is not fraud if one is aware they are being defrauded. Legally and morally, this gets subtle; it can be slippery, because liars are so often so slick, and operate with veiled intent.

That presents all the more reason to pay attention: to promises, to supposed commitments, to what you sign, to what you eat, to what you believe, to what you delegate and most important, what you trust to the so-called experts.

One Last Thought — the Late Degrees of Scorpio

For tonight, Friday and overnight into Saturday, the Sun will be transiting through the late degrees of Scorpio. For Americans and for many people around the world, this is the solar return of one of the worst traumas of the 20th century, the assassination of Pres. Kennedy.

Caroline Kennedy and her father John, at Hyannisport, Mass., aboard the “Honey Fitz” on Aug. 25, 1963. Photo by Cecil Stoughton.

We will be getting used to the content of these degrees over the next year, because Saturn is going to be moving back and forth across this degree range between now and next September.

Pres. Kennedy was killed with the Sun in the last degree of Scorpio, astrology so fitting you might think someone hired an evil astrologer to figure out when to plan the event.

Regardless, that’s how things happened, and I would suggest pausing for a moment and considering the effect that this had on our parents and grandparents, and on us even if we were not alive. It cemented the pattern of governance by the “shock doctrine” — shocking events followed by the consolidation of power.

Notably we are also at the Chiron return of this incident, which brings it up in an even deeper way. I have published two detailed articles on the death of Pres. Kennedy, which I would re-post for you here. One is called Storm Warnings, published in 2012, and the other is called The Ancestor, published in 2013.

It may be true as Sting said that “there is no political solution to a troubled evolution.” Still, we must mind our politics. This goes for locally, nationally and internationally. In our era, I believe we must take to heart the elementary truth that we all stand at the intersection of the personal and the collective. The world’s problems are our problems. Our individual problems are the world’s problems. We live together in the world, as one human family and one web of life.

How Naked Are You Prepared To Be?

By Amanda Painter

As we transition from Scorpio (erotic energy and secrets, among other things) to Sagittarius (spiritual questing and deep focus, in part) you might be able to tap into the idea of ‘standing naked’ — that is, letting down the veil that surrounds who you secretly are inside, and standing fully, boldly in your soul’s truth before all. Which is not to say that it will necessarily feel easy.

Self-described poet-filmmaker and “disruptive influence” Nic Askew makes weekly short films — Soul Biographies — he describes on his website as “Disarming authenticity. Souls caught between the frames of black and white film. Unique transformational human portraits.”

The one he made about Sting’s guitarist and writing partner, Dominic Miller (one of the world’s leading session guitarists), crossed my path first, with the title “The Balls to Stand Naked.” Miller muses on the creative opportunities that arise when you see the meaningful relationships between things, and even more, the power in allowing your truth to shine through — as the subjects of Askew’s films are invited to do.

I had four horoscope columns to write this week, so to free some bandwidth I took the week off from Planet Waves FM. I will return with a new edition on the evening of Tuesday, Nov. 25.

 

Your Monthly Horoscopes — and our Publishing Schedule Notes

Your extended monthly horoscopes for November published Friday, Oct. 24. We published your extended monthly horoscopes for October Thursday, Sept. 25. Your Inner Space horoscopes for November published Thursday, Oct. 30. Moonshine horoscopes for the Taurus Full Moon published Tuesday, Nov. 4. Please note, we normally publish the extended monthly horoscope on the first Friday after the Sun has entered a new sign.

 

Weekly Horoscope for Thursday, Nov. 20, 2014, #1025 | By Eric Francis

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Easy does it till the Sun ingresses your fellow fire sign Sagittarius on Saturday. By easy, I mean that what takes 25 pounds of effort today will take five pounds after the Sun has changed signs. Therefore, I suggest you invest your energy in something efficient, like planning ahead. You might want to try this thought experiment, just for fun. On Friday, sketch out what you consider to be some wide, far-reaching and extravagant plans. Then review them after the Sun has changed signs and ask yourself whether maybe you could expand your idea of your own potential. This will be the theme of your life over the coming year — stretching across the divide between who you are and who you could be. Just because your ideas get bigger doesn’t make them more difficult, or further away. Discovering yourself is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — There seems to be some difficult conversation you want to have with a loved one, though I suggest you pause and reflect until the Sun has entered Sagittarius on Saturday. It will be easier with the Sun in a fire sign. Whoever you’re speaking with will have a better perspective on what they have to gain by at least listening to what you want. What you’re going for here is a greater sense of potential than you might ordinarily feel within the confines of one relationship. You seem to want to express the full spectrum of your potential, and you also have an idea that one path to doing that is through intimate relationships. Consider how rare it is that any other person in the world would have a close enough idea of their own potential to match yours. That’s why this discussion must be encountered with an open mind and an even more open heart.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — You seem to be hung up on one particular strategy for making something happen. Yet I suggest you check whether it’s really working, and in turn whether you need to throw your old plan to the wind. You might not get an idea of that until the Sun enters your opposite sign Sagittarius on Saturday, and you realize how much more is possible than you had in mind. The thing is, you may be stuck in the past, even if that past is what seemed like a brilliant idea one week ago. I suggest you set aside your entire strategy as you contemplated it earlier, including anything that seems like an emotional strategy or the desire to get someone to change their mind about something. Once the Sun changes signs, you will see that none of that matters, though you may feel like you’re getting way ahead of yourself. You’re not; you merely need to catch up with yourself.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You seem to be in a time crunch, though I think that will let up as the next few astrological developments unfold. You could benefit from experimenting with the idea that you actually have plenty of time to accomplish what you need to. This is an idea more than anything else; being rushed is often an idea rather than a reality. Often but not always, and I think this is one of the times when the pressure is more conceptual than it is real. There are, meanwhile, plenty of things you can do over the next week or so to move obstacles out of your way, and clear the space in front of you. Just doing that will help you feel like you’re in a more spacious reality. And that might reveal in a bold way that time is entirely a function of thought, closely related to belief. Most important, using your time is a matter of priorities.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — Right now it’s easier to work out any emotional blocks or tension through creative activities than it is through other forms of ‘sorting yourself out’ or ‘getting to the bottom of things’. You may think this is cheating — painting your troubles away, or working it out on drums, or maybe even in bed. Well, on the art studio couch would be better. Art serves a purpose to humanity, and it’s not a luxury. It’s an absolute, bottom-line psychic necessity, and by the way it’s entirely unrelated to how creative you supposedly are or are not. The blank canvas or page, the silent space into which you can make sound, represent a more than symbolic encounter with total potential when you allow yourself a moment of anything at all being possible. Then you dare to do something, anything. The result is an effect that can soak through your entire being and inform every aspect of who you are.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — You seem to be running circles in a small, dark space. There is a vast expanse just outside your door. Yet you have to step outside to see it, to feel and experience it. What you’re really doing is giving yourself a break from a particular mental thought pattern, which is also a change in environment. You can accomplish this most easily with a change in physical space, even if it’s a day trip or a few nights away. One method I use is that I have several work spaces, all equally functional. In weeks when I have 10 projects due, it helps to bounce around from space to space. Café-hopping can do the trick; there are many possibilities. The idea is to actually see and use the relationship between mental space and physical space. The constant change of perspectives will help you keep your ideas fresh and your mind interested in what you’re doing. Right now that is essential.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — From the look of your charts, the heavy feeling that may have been stalking you the past week or so is about to clear out of the way. However, it remains an option. That’s the thing to remember, and to remember all the time. State of mind, and emotional state, is optional. The problem is that it doesn’t always feel that way, and when you need that information the most you may be the least likely to have it available. Now is a good time to memorize the fact that you have a choice, because your options are not only wide open, they have equal magnetism, equal accessibility. You can move between them like moving from room to room in a physical space. Notably, all of your options have value right now; once you start exploring them you are likely to see that each supports the other. The most significant point here is learning how not to get stuck in any one of them.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Don’t worry about how to do it, just take the first step and get moving. You seem to think that you need to have your whole strategy or agenda planned out, but that’s never the way things work. Sure, you can sketch out a rough plan, but I think that even that would go against your purposes because you could easily get hung up on having that plan be the right plan. What you need is some momentum; what you need is movement in what seems like it might be a good direction to go. If you meet resistance or challenges, then take them one at a time. You are embarking on actual terrain, which has geographic features like hills and streams. These have never stopped the human race from getting anywhere, most of the time without a map, and I don’t think they will stop you.

 

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Once the Sun enters your sign Saturday, followed immediately by a thundering New Moon, you will see how little you had to worry about. But that never stopped anyone from ruminating unnecessarily. Two points come out of your chart, besides the timing of the big turning point of the moment, that New Moon Saturday at 7:32 am EST. One is that you seem determined to follow your intuition. I would suggest rather than doing that, you allow it to lead you. There is plenty of intuition to go around, but one of its properties is that it has nothing to do with fear. Second, you may have a tendency to take on the emotional baggage of others. Be especially aware around your mother or anyone who reminds you of her, or when you slip into some of her tendencies. It is vital that you stick to your own values, with passion, awareness and determination.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — You know what you want. You’ve earned that knowledge and you’ve earned the privilege of striving for your preferences. At the risk of stirring up revolt against this currently derided thing, privilege, I will say this: Semantically, the word privilege has its origins as a law that applies to one person. Later, it came to mean an advantage granted. If you have some advantage, you have granted it to yourself. Though there are obviously precursors to that — for example, you know how to read, you are educated, you have a bank account, and others — the privilege I am talking about is something you have given to yourself by your own effort. If you want a balancing factor, I suggest that you proceed in full awareness of your environment, and strive to be responsive to your environment. If everyone did that, we would all be privileged and we would live in something close to utopia.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — If you can get your mind off of work and responsibility, you will discover that this is a perfectly vibrant time in your life. True, you are the kind of person who is at home in your work. You seem to be more oriented on ‘my work is my life’ than the natural ‘I have boundaries and I punch out at 5 pm’ type. Sometimes, however, it’s good to make some distinctions in this area, and now is a fine time for that. Anyway, your astrology is magnetizing you out into the social world at the moment, and by the weekend this will pick up considerable momentum. So get among friends, get out into society, and tell only your best stories about what you’re accomplishing and the many trials and tribulations that you’ve surmounted on your way to being a master of the game.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — This weekend’s stunning New Moon in Sagittarius will put you into the spotlight. You’re already visible at the moment, though this will increase in a series of degrees over the next four weeks. Visibility is a good thing, for you. Contrary to the notion that Pisces people are reclusive and prefer to be invisible, there is also the extraverted, performance art type of Pisces. And this comes out in every fish person at some point — such as right now. Whatever you’re doing, visibility will help. Even if you’re a smuggler, be the kind who attends the Senate gala ball and you will blend in all the more perfectly. Other factors in your chart describe this moment as one of high achievement. Yes, there are issues brewing in the background, but you’ve got your wheels on the ground and have enough traction to be moving steadily. You may meet some truly influential people this week and next. Take phone numbers and make sure people remember your smile.