Tag Archives: Atlantis

Space Shuttle Lands on Another World

Dear Friend and Reader:

When the Space Shuttle Atlantis glided majestically through the early morning darkness and touched down at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, July 21, it landed on a different planet from the one Columbia first took off from in April 1981.

Shuttle Atlantis lands at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, July 21, 2011. This was the last Space Shuttle mission, ending a 30-year era of space history. Photo: NASA/Kim Shiflett.

Atlantis landed on a hotter, more crowded planet, one engulfed in economic, environmental and ideological crisis. Even if we could afford it, it’s doubtful the religion-obsessed, anti-science, anti-progress politicians who dominate our current moment could muster the vision to develop something so technologically ambitious as a sustained manned space program — which may be a good thing.

We hail the Shuttle mission as a technological achievement, yet Atlantis is an appropriate name for a spacecraft returning to a world that cannot handle the power or responsibility of its own technology. We are very good at making things, and not so good at dealing with the consequences. We are great at making profits from industrial processes, but we don’t look ahead to what those processes might create in the way of consequences or costs to the future. Indeed, we act as if there are no consequences even as they pile up.

The last Shuttle returned to Earth through a more radioactive atmosphere, with its air and oceans more contaminated by a vast (and increasing) diversity of persistent toxins. It’s true that by 1981 the environmental situation was at a critical level, yet in three decades that crisis has grown exponentially. The number of chemicals being produced, and the amounts involved, are unconscionable. So too are the tons of plastic going into the oceans every day, and the dumping of solvents into the oceans to break down the millions of gallons of crude oil that are spilled into seawater every year.

Monster storms, extremes of temperature, rapidly melting ice caps, hurricanes, tornado supercells, earthquakes and droughts are more frequent, to the point where they now seem commonplace. In 1981, most people did not know what the word tsunami meant. They didn’t learn it by studying for the spelling bee. “Earth changes” were something you knew about if you studied Edgar Cayce. Now they are in The New York Times.

Many municipal water supplies are contaminated by the mood-altering drugs being used to quell what is in truth a mass-epidemic psychological crisis.

Timeline of total number of inmates in U.S. prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities from 1920 to 2006. The big jump takes off like the Space Shuttle in 1980.

In 1981, there were 500,000 people in prison in the U.S. Today there are 2.5 million. The world population has increased by 50% during the same time, from 4.5 billion in 1981 to 6.75 billion today.

There is less fresh water left, as water tables are pumped dry for irrigation and animal production. Hydrofracking now contaminates otherwise good water supplies in communities eager to profit from our energy-hungry world. Today’s cars still run on the same basic principle as the Model A — an explosion of carbon fuel inside a cylinder.

In 1981, the national debt of the United States was about a trillion dollars; today it’s $14 trillion. Much of that money has gone for military purposes. Since 1981 (just a few years after we pulled out of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), the United States has fought in or been responsible for wars in El Salvador, Nicaragua, East Timor, Iraq, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq (again) and Libya. The world is still rigged with nuclear bombs. Since the fall of the Soviet empire, many have gone missing. There are hundreds of thousands of tons of nuclear waste piling up with nowhere to go. This waste will be toxic for many millennia, and we have no dependable way to warn future people about it. Try reading script written in 1700. Try reading French if you’re German. Even if future civilizations understand our pictograms warning of danger, who’s to say curiosity won’t get the better of them?

The end of the 30-year Shuttle mission marks a phase in the history of human space exploration, but it also marks a distinct phase in history overall. In the early 1980s the Republican movement began its merger with the Christian movement, turning churches into political clubhouses and morphing the fundamentalist agenda with our supposed national priorities. That blend of agendas has resulted in the adoption of 80 state laws designed to restrict abortion rights in 2011 alone, all of which are based on religious ideology that amounts to a war on women.

In the spring of 1981, when Columbia took off, the U.S. schools — under the direction of the Reagan administration, with help from the Heritage Foundation — began a program of abstinence-only sex indoctrination. This created generations of young people whose most dependable source of sex education is now pornography. In the spring of 1981, the first articles about AIDS appeared in The New York Times. Since then, the number of people living with HIV has increased every year until 2009, the most recent year for which we have statistics.

Shuttle Columbia, on the pad at the Kennedy Space Center on April 12, 1981, about to launch as STS-1. The stunning, glamorous image is the symbol of the promise and power of technology. Photo: NASA.

We are in a moment when we need the most enlightened leaders, with the broadest vision and sense of the future, yet we seem to have precisely the opposite: those driven by narrowness, fear and ideological obsession. As I write, the United States is being backed against its debt limit by politicians who either don’t understand the concept of default, or who are too caught in their own apocalyptic visions to spare a rational thought for the safety of the world economy. Well, we can add to that a third concurrent fact: they lack the maturity to negotiate. Every turning point is used as an opportunity to leverage total power.

While I am describing the world’s problems, which are really our problems, let’s add one more. During July, we in the United States finally caught wind of what has been happening to the news media throughout the English-speaking world (and much of Europe and Asia). The mental sphere was being contaminated by a company called News Corp, which subverted the primary mission of the press — to inform people — with a vast criminal enterprise funded and driven by a propaganda machine. To sum up, it seems like News Corp was designed to serve as the platform for every lie that anyone in power wanted to propagate. The problem has been metastasizing, and it appears that Rupert Murdoch & Co. used the information they had to run a kind of blackmail operation that led many people to stay quiet about how much political influence they really had.

Yet there are many layers of the issue that most people have yet to hear about, such as Murdoch’s role in building up the climate change denial movement. That Murdoch has fallen on hard times is some of the best news in these 30 years since Columbia first took off, a rare moment of transparency and an actual negative result of evil deeds befalling the one who was responsible. Yet the power vacuum that may be created by Murdoch’s fall is not automatically an improvement in our condition; two other things have to happen.

The first is that many people have to take on an increased role in accumulating and distributing valid, relevant information. The second is that many more people have to be interested in hearing about it. World crisis puts people into crisis, which has a way of eating their time and energy and making us less available to participate in change. In the 1960s the youths that participated in the antiwar and environmental movements were not working three jobs. Today the affluent ones who might be available often find themselves being entertained to death.

The door at 10 Downing St. — the headquarters of the British government — is usually used by heads of state, monarchs and dignitaries, but Rupert Murdoch came and went through the back. Official photo from the Prime Minister’s office, taken in 2010.

T.S. Eliot observed in 1936 that “human kind cannot bear very much reality,” though now we have more to bear than ever. Throughout history, most people have balked at exerting their influence on the greater scheme, and it doesn’t help that we’re consistently brainwashed to believe that having an influence is impossible.

It would be far easier for people to have an influence were that actually our agenda. Even when we’re working three jobs, we find the time to do at least some of the things that are important to us. If we opened up to the necessities at hand, we might be motivated to do something about them. But the choice to be informed and aware is strictly optional. That is the nature of free will. So while humanity has not been capable of dealing with very much reality — and T.S. Eliot was describing a very long span of time in that poem — it does not help when we are driven into psychological, emotional and spiritual crisis that paralyzes us further. We would be wise to see that strategy at work.

We are right to wonder how the people of the world are ever going to deal with the problems we face. We are right to wonder how we personally are ever going to muster the strength and focus. Obviously we cannot leave it to our ‘leaders’, who in the United States are obsessed with collective death and wrapping the female body in barbed wire, and who in the U.K. are getting drunk with corrupt newspaper reporters, the police and convicted private investigators. It might help if we didn’t rely on FOX News to tell us what to think, and to remind us constantly how powerless we are. It would help if we understood the concept of “giving up our power.”

Because the global crisis depends on individual crisis as a power source, and as a way of blocking solutions, then it’s clear that working to heal ourselves is a crucial step in any wide-scale solution. If we as individuals don’t feel better, and less overwhelmed, then there’s no way we can take on the challenges of the world. If we’re so busy fighting ourselves, and obsessing over petty sins, and demanding that certain people not get to go to the doctor when they need to, we’re obviously not joining together to do something about the problems we perceive. Therefore, working on individual healing is a necessary prerequisite to planetary healing.

That, however, can be a trap of its own. I have met many, many well-meaning people who do all kinds of things to make themselves ‘better’ people who still cannot muster the will power to take on something larger than their own life. I know many people obsessed with spirituality, yoga, attending self-improvement workshops (and so on) but who rarely participate in anything more than that. This has always mystified me, but maybe I’m a little naïve.

Self-indulgence presents a trap, and it’s often wrapped in the cloak of self-improvement. Inner work can be a sophisticated form of checking out. Participation takes time, energy, effort and often requires personal resources. You don’t usually get an expense account working as an activist. You have to figure out how to get to the demonstration, or how to fund your project, and taking on that responsibility is a dependable means of growth. On one significant level this is a question of one’s agenda. If you want to do something, usually you will figure out a way. If you have a goal that takes more than one person, it’s usually pretty easy to find others with the same goal — if you want to. Then of course you have to master the art of getting along with them. That desire might get you to go to therapy. This is different from “inner work.” There are no abstractions involved, but rather confronting practical realities that in turn improve your state of mind. You heal because you get a benefit from it, the benefit being you’re better able to participate in something creative, cooperating with others.

Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression, made on clay wedges or tablets. Emerging in Sumer (a land in southern Mesopotamia, in modern Iraq) around the 30th century BC, one of its main purposes was to record agricultural instructions for future generations. After 50 centuries, pages aren’t even yellow. Photo: Uncyclopedia.

And this brings us back to the purpose of civilization itself. The first cuneiform writing was not created to publish romances or News of the World. It was developed so that one generation could pass the instructions for growing crops down to the next. We created writing not for personal expression but to ensure collective survival. Next time you see a cookbook, remember that’s from the oldest genre of literature.

What we seem to lack in our moment of history is the notion that there’s an intersection between individual needs and collective needs. We have a lot in common, but the obsession of business and government with privatization veils that fact. George Orwell once wrote that it was not possible for the wealthy to light the city streets for themselves but keep them dark for everyone else.

Today, you can count on people to figure out how to do just that. It’s silly because in most matters, collective benefit is efficient, and we invoke the concept of synergy. If we put some of our individual energy into a collective pool, we’ll be able to accomplish more and take care of many more people, at no loss to ourselves. Personally, I don’t find it appetizing when I’m eating to think that other people are starving. I prefer that everyone have food. Here, we can divine something from the current political agenda of no taxes / no social safety net / no care for the future. This agenda defies the notion of civilization itself: that if we need to stand up to the elements, if we need to make buildings to stay warm and dry, we simply must recognize that collective necessities have everything in common with individual necessities.

If we can get clear about that, we would understand that the reason we improve ourselves, and individuate, is specifically to expand into a collective experience. Most people don’t sit hour after hour and learn guitar chords merely for themselves or for the sake of doing it; eventually you want to play music for and with others. So when you take yoga and journey into the underworld and do five-day workshop intensives or read books about growing whole, ask yourself why you’re doing it, and remember — there actually is a reason. Action is the fruit of knowledge.

If we study the moment of history when the Shuttle Atlantis landed on Earth for the last time, we can learn a lot about ourselves. The thing we need to understand the most carefully is a central idea: the one that will tell us about our common interests. In terms of all the basics and many of the flourishes of life, we’re all in this together. There are some who suggest that the space program is a way off of the planet. One of them is the launch director for the last mission, Mike Leinbach. “The Shuttle program to me was an evolutionary step off the planet and into the heavens,” he said before the July 8 liftoff. “We have learned to live and work in low-Earth orbit. I think we as a species need to be thinking about living off this planet, long-term. That ought to be the mission.”

The problem with this approach is obvious, right?

Lovingly,

 

And Just What Was the Space Shuttle?

Before NASA put some guys on the Libra Moon (true fact: the Moon was in Libra when Neil Armstrong stepped out onto its surface 42 years ago yesterday), the space agency was thinking about reusable space vehicles. It had some pretty good development programs, including one for a vehicle that took off like an airplane, gradually went into orbit and then became a space ship. It used a lot less fuel than the spacecraft we see used today. They also didn’t punch a hole the size of a small city in the ozone layer, like the Shuttle did again and again.

Perhaps the strangest thing in this chart, for the liftoff first Shuttle mission, is Ceres conjunct Nessus to the degree, what you might call the fruit of the poison tree. This same aspect appears in the chart for Sept. 11, 2001. The giveaway of the Shuttle’s military intent can be seen in the chart for the first launch — the concentration of planets in the 6th house in Aries is all about a military operation. Both Aries and the 6th point to military action. The Moon is not void of course in this chart — it’s closely trine Uranus in Scorpio, which represents a dark financial agenda. In many ways the program was a four-decade feeding trough for the world’s largest military contractors. Notably, Columbia was the second orbiter lost in a Shuttle accident, disintegrating on re-entry in February 2003. Venus (the ascendant ruler) is precisely, to the degree, opposite Pluto rising in the 12th house has an ominous feeling of impending doom, and not just for this one ship. It was only secrecy, public image cultivation and our love for the early astronauts that let NASA get away with this extended black operations program.

Ideas for low-energy, horizontal take-off ships were abandoned at the start of the Mercury and Apollo programs in favor of a one-time-use, vertical launch rocket eventually leading up to the familiar Saturn V that took humans to the Moon and back.

The Space Shuttle program was formally initiated by Richard Nixon in 1972, shortly before the Watergate scandal broke open and a year before the Apollo 17, the last flight in that program.

While NASA’s mission was always said to be civilian, it openly merged with the military for the Shuttle program. The thing is, the whole civilian image of NASA was just that — an image. The American space program was driven by Nazi technology imported at the end of World War II through something called Project Paperclip. The goal of the German space program involved putting nuclear weapons into space. While the Mercury, Apollo and SkyLab programs were soft peddled as being about pure science, and funded as such, underneath they were driven by military values and a blatant military agenda.

When it came time to do the Shuttle, NASA knew that its continued funding depended on the deeper pockets of the military rather than the relatively poorly financed world of academic science.

“The Shuttle was 50/50 all along. It wasn’t totally military, or totally civilian. That was the problem,” said Karl Grossman, author of Weapons in Space and The Wrong Stuff, a book about the nuclear implications of the American space program. [Read Dr. Grossman’s newest article on Planet Waves.]

“The military compromised the whole program. They wanted the huge cargo bay to be able to service military assets in space, which would include weapons in space. That’s why they did it the way they did it, with the large cargo bay. I would say half the missions were military missions. Some involved reconnaissance up in space, mapping, and God knows what else. Those were the missions where you had seven colonels flying into orbit.” Think about that for a second — colonel is one rank below general.

I would say that the pure-science aspect was merely PR gloss for the military aspect. This overwhelmingly military theme is confirmed in the chart for the first launch in a way so glaring it would be funny if it didn’t involve a plan to wipe out mass populations with space-based weapons. In the chart for the first Shuttle launch, notice all those planets on the right side, just below the horizon. Those planets are all in Aries, a sign associated with Mars, the god of war, and of aggression in general. And they are in the 6th house — the house of military service. Aries in the 6th is about as military as you can get. They include Mars and Eris (in a conjunction), siblings who in various myths were responsible for quite a bit of warfare.

Space Shuttle Atlantis stands on Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it is set to liftoff on STS-135, the final shuttle mission. Photo by NASA/Terry Zaperach.

Those planets are opposed by Pluto, which emphasizes the point. Pluto is in Libra, lurking in the 12th house of the chart, a kind of veiled zone. There is a hidden agenda, and it seems to involve something nuclear, such as plutonium (a lot of which has been put into space). It is precisely opposite Venus (the ascendant ruler). By precisely I mean to 1/6th of a degree, which blends Pluto and Venus into one concept.

We can only guess what all those colonels and other well-decorated officers were doing up there all those long days and nights in orbit, and just what was sent up in the cargo bay of that big bird. Yes, we get a lot of pretty pictures from the Hubble telescope, but the price to humanity has been pretty high.

Some comments from the military can give us a clue that the original intent of going into space at all — nuclear weapons in space — was in fact the agenda. Why nuclear weapons? They power the space-based lasers that Ronald Reagen was all excited about. And to my thinking, if the HAARP program exists (which it does) then its orbital components were installed during Shuttle missions. Here you have it in the military’s own words.

Gen. Joseph Ashy, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Space Command, said in 1996: “It’s politically sensitive, but it’s going to happen. Some people don’t want to hear this, and it sure isn’t in vogue, but — absolutely — we’re going to fight in space. We’re going to fight from space and we’re going to fight into space. That’s why the U.S. has development programs in directed energy and hit-to-kill mechanisms. We will engage terrestrial targets someday — ships, airplanes, land targets — from space.”

And in a 1999 publication called New World Vistas, the Air Force said, “In the next two decades, new technologies will allow the fielding of space-based weapons of devastating effectiveness to be used to deliver energy and mass as force projection in tactical and strategic conflict. These advances will enable lasers with reasonable mass and cost to effect very many kills.”

It is tempting to be caught in the romance of space travel, and to respect the bold spirits of those who risked their lives to sit on top of 535,000 gallons of liquid rocket fuel as they light the thing up for launch. It’s tempting to get caught in the Buck Rogers image of men in space, and to confuse it with the peaceful mission of the starship Enterprise. Unfortunately, the Space Shuttle was not science fiction. It was science fact, and after 133 successful missions (two ended badly, but that’s still a lot of trips into orbit; think about it), we can only speculate what kinds of weapons systems are now orbiting our planet, or what anyone plans to do with them. It is little comfort that these systems are not exactly in the hands of the wise and the enlightened, but those whose careers are driven by subterfuge and the quest for power.

Photo by Anthony Ayiomamitis.

To discover how the developments of the next six months influence you personally, check out the Planet Waves 2011 Midyear Report by Eric Francis.

 

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, July 22, 2011, #868 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Revised and Updated! Click for Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — You are at a leverage point where you can make progress on connecting your financial goals to your creative flow. While you’re doing this, you might ponder why, or perhaps how, it is that so many people find this so mysterious. Is there really any way to create or attract wealth other than creativity? One of the unfortunate elements of Western thought to get over is that there is some other way. Since you don’t look like you’re becoming a bank robber any time soon, I suggest you consider the idea that — for you, anyway — there’s just one practical way to fund your life, which is with the thoughts that emerge from your mind, the products of your hands, and your vital participation in the world. I wonder, does that match your view of yourself? What would you need to do or adjust in your life in order to get over any lingering anxiety or outright fear about money, creativity or both? Now is a great time.

Click here to order your 2011 Aries Audio Birthday Report.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — I suggest you spend some time trying on the feeling of being more fortunate than you think you are. This may feel like an exaggeration — go for it. Don’t imagine the cup is half full; imagine the cup is overflowing, and that you’re strolling down your favorite street of your favorite city in any style you like. Allow yourself to think and indeed to feel like your life exists on a larger scale than it does. I suggest, specifically, that you allow yourself to feel safe being more, and having more, as both an experiment and a kind of exercise. If you can get over the feeling that it’s somehow silly to do this, you may discover that the way into success is to allow your mind to expand and make room for it, so that you have space to grow into. Small feelings and thoughts lead to a cramped life; more expanded, generous thoughts lead to a more spacious, abundant life.

Click here to order your 2011 Taurus Audio Birthday Report.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — You seem to be in the process of making a decision about whether you feel right where you are, and by that I mean domestically (in your home), geographically (in your city or region) or both. Just make sure that you distinguish the logical piece (what you’re thinking, or what your mind is telling you) from the sensory and intuitive piece (what you’re feeling, and what your instincts are telling you). You have some time to sort this out; I suggest you not try to convince yourself of anything, and set a boundary on how long you’re going to ponder this issue. On the surface, it seems like the primary issue is your sense of safety. Really, I think you’re grappling with a sense of belonging: do you belong where you are? Do you feel grounded? Your mind and your body may have two different opinions about this, and the next six weeks or so will help you work out any differences you find. PS, one other clue: what if the past was not such a potent factor?

Click here to order your 2011 Gemini Audio Birthday Report.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You may be feeling out of step as the Sun leaves your sign, as if you are somehow adrift in a world of possibilities you cannot seem to grasp. I suggest you set a boundary around yourself, and explore within a smaller sphere of reality than you might ordinarily. In a sense, I’m suggesting you experiment with a limit, which could be your backyard, it could be a phase of time that you define, it could be a group of friends, or it could be a purpose that you’ve embraced. When you’re consciously existing within that enclosed (or clearly defined) space, how do you feel? The world is indeed large and wild, and there are a lot of possibilities. I suggest you experiment with seeing the potential that already exists within you. I also suggest you experiment with being content and comfortable within that self-imposed limit or idea, at least for a little while. There’s more available for you in there than you may imagine.

Hello Cancerians! I am doing your birthday report today. (Oops! It’s a week later and I’m going to have another go at it.) We will send a special mailing when it’s ready — and post it to the main PW blog.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — The Sun enters your birth sign this weekend, and I’m guessing that always comes as a relief. This is the season of your birth, and for as strange as life on the only known inhabited planet is right now, you can welcome a sense of familiarity and a drop in psychic pressure. For the past couple of months there has been a lot going on behind the scenes of your life, and you might discover that many of the situations and issues you were working with have resolved themselves. I suggest you focus your energy on coming to terms with one particular fear that has been more persistent. Now is the time to develop an understanding of the source of the feeling, as well as build some confidence that it’s something that cannot actually hurt you. One advantage to the current moment is that you can actually get the sensation into your direct vision and see it for what it is. This information will come in handy in the near future.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Leo, please go to this link.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Many of your best attributes are hidden from plain view. You may even walk around with the sense that if people could only see you for who you really are, they would be amazed. But you’re the one who deserves to be amazed: by what you possess within yourself, by what you’re capable of, and by what you want to share with the world. I’m wondering what could be standing between you and your full expression. One hint that the charts are offering is that you’re uneasy about power. Offering your strength or creativity is indeed a kind of power. There is a risk involved, and though I’m uncertain where it comes from, you seem to carry some anxiety around the whole theme of aggression. It’s as if you feel that when you start to let go and assert your potential, you are somehow being pushy or even violent. You are currently in a moment when you can experiment with having absolutely no fear of that; where you can assert yourself a little more strongly and be confident that you’re safe doing so.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Virgo, please go to this link.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Isn’t it weird how attached people get to their religious beliefs, even to the point of enforcing them with laws, judges and police? And when you think about most religious beliefs, they are based on very little, or absolutely nothing — which may be why so many people feel like they have to be so pushy about them. This works with many other kinds of beliefs, such as in sex roles, social roles, with money, or with a worldview. The current moment is all about belief melting away and the presence of something real making itself known. The presence may not be obvious; in fact it may be subtle, such as something that was there all along but which you’re just noticing now. You will notice more elegantly if you let go of belief, arguing about belief, or trying to convince yourself (or anyone) of anything. The truth that will emerge from the background of your perception is more likely to express itself in an atmosphere of relative calm, with your mind in observer mode.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Libra, please go to this link.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — You’re about to get the answer to a mystery — you might say, the mystery of where your power goes. I mean, you must have figured out that it goes somewhere, because you can go from being influential and creative in the flow of your life, to suddenly being subsumed in another person or a situation larger than you. This can and often does happen so dependably that you don’t even notice it at the time. Yet you’re embarking on a turn of events that are poised to give you a big clue what happens when you suddenly discover you have no influence. I think you’ll catch yourself before things go too far — that’s the whole point. This arrives not a moment too soon, because with the Sun about to enter Leo, you have everything going for you right now. You are visible, you’re perceived as competent and qualified as you are, and this is a moment to shine, especially in the work that you do.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Scorpio, please go to this link.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — When the Sun enters Leo this weekend, it picks up on a load of fiery energy that’s concentrated in both Aries and your own sign. This seems custom-designed to give you momentum, and it will — but I suggest you be aware of one thing. What you might currently think of as a highly focused goal may be changing. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing. The result will be an opportunity to expand your horizons in a way that you’ve been lacking for a while. Expanding may come in the form of new space, new ideas, or new locations, perhaps at a distance. Whatever may emerge, it’s time to stretch out of your familiar territory and reach into different possibilities than the ones that have surrounded you for many months. You may have an idea to return to someplace you’ve been before. This would not be a step back, or backwards — rather, you would arrive there and see it as an entirely new place.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Sagittarius, please go to this link.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — There is an opening in your life that did not exist a month ago, and you can go through that opening and explore an unfamiliar world. This is likely to be in the form of a relationship. It could be a new person, or an experience of someone currently in your life that is ready to open up in a new way. I suggest you let the experience attract you, and draw you toward it — rather than plunging in, not knowing what you’re getting yourself into. Easy does it; this is gentle territory. Stay close to the feeling of what you don’t know; stay close to the subtle curiosity that may be leading you. If you find yourself losing confidence, stay close to your curiosity and treat it like it’s emotional oxygen. Feel the sensation of not knowing, and loving the anticipation of discovery.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Capricorn, please go to this link.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Here is some news: This week, a spacecraft originating on Earth traveled 117 million miles, reached an asteroid for the first time, entered an orbit around the thing, and sent home photos. The ship is called Dawn and the asteroid is Vesta, who I think of as the guardian of ‘the sacred space of self’. This took place in your birth sign, which at the very least is an astrological honor. But I think it’s more than that. Vesta is a representation of interior consciousness, a dimension that eludes many people most of their lives. This stark metaphor of a long journey to a remote location, and images traveling back to us over that vast distance, suggests that you’re making a discovery. It may be as simple as coming fully to terms with the existence of your inner universe. You don’t have to concern yourself with what that means; you can look within your consciousness with wonder and appreciation.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Aquarius, please go to this link.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — In our world, we must come to terms with the conflation of sexual desire and violence. We don’t like to think of it this way, but there is a relationship between the two, it has many expressions, and we all experience them in one way or another. There’s an element to your astrology this week that reminds me of a drain of violent impulses from your emotional body. The chart feels as if pressure is being released from your psyche, and one way that can express itself is the healing of dualism. Part of what pushes sexual feelings into a violent dimension, and indeed all of human emotion, is the perception of difference, which extends one more layer into duality — an us versus them feeling, or me versus the world. The challenge of your current astrology is about relaxing and experiencing some element of the common ground we all share, from moment to moment. This will offer you a whole new way of exploring pleasure and desire.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Pisces, please go to this link.

Here at the Edge of the World

Planet Waves
Atlantis as envisioned by computer graphic artist, for the Nat Geo program Finding Atlantis. The producers say that the image is a composite of many ideas from classical monuments.

Dear Friend and Reader:

In the midst of all of this nuclear madness, Nat Geo channel premiered a special about some scientists who have discovered the remnants of what they believe is the lost city of Atlantis. Its location, according to the theory? Some mud flats in southern Spain, near Portugal, called Donaña. The program, called “Finding Atlantis,” was created for the Nat Geo channel by a Canadian production company, and with a little research is revealed to be controversial.

Planet Waves
Beneath this concrete dome on Runit Island (part of Enewetak Atoll), built between 1977 and 1980 at a cost of about $239 million, lie 111,000 cubic yards (84,927 cubic meters) of radioactive soil and debris from atomic bomb tests on the Bikini and Rongelap atolls. The dome covers the 30-foot (9-meter) deep, 350-foot (107-meter) wide crater created by the May 5, 1958, Cactus test. Note the people atop the dome. Credit: Defense Special Weapons Agency.

The original archeological project, started by a Spanish team and then joined by Richard Freund of the University of Hartford, searched the Donaña bogs using a kind of MRI device, looking for underground evidence of a civilization of which they seem to have found some additional clues (this is a previously researched site). Freund proposes that the location of the presumed Atlantis focused on by the special was destroyed by a tidal wave. “This is the power of tsunamis,” he told Reuters. “It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and that’s pretty much what we’re talking about.”

“Debate about whether Atlantis truly existed has lasted for thousands of years,” Reuters reported as background to the program. “Plato’s ‘dialogues’ from around 360 B.C. are the only known historical sources of information about the iconic city. Plato said the island he called Atlantis ‘in a single day and night…disappeared into the depths of the sea’.”  Yet though many have gone searching for Atlantis, others believe that Plato was speaking in a kind of intellectual metaphor.

Of the things about the archeological find that Freund claims exist, the most endearing are models of the fabled city that were supposedly created as memorials by its refugees who landed in Spain — something denied by the Spanish scientists who say that no such models were found. For our purposes, though, it doesn’t matter whether the TV special is true or not — what matters is that the symbol of Atlantis makes a spontaneous appearance in our culture just as the world is on the brink of nuclear disaster.

Though we know very little about the actual Atlantis — including what it was called, when it existed, or whether it existed — the archetype of the lost continent is a persistent aspect of human consciousness. Sometimes it’s called Lemuria, or Mu. From one past-life regression about 10 years ago, I have a direct memory of being captain of a merchant marine vessel when Antarctica was inhabited, at the time of the mass evacuation from that continent. According to what I learned in my regression, one of the destinations for refugees was Spain. My wife went there. I stayed behind. It turned out that the leaders of the society who ordered the evacuation were about a century or two early in their predictions.

The myth of the lost civilization is persistent and it is intriguing. So, too, is the notion that a civilization, such as our own, might fall by its own undoing. I don’t think there is anyone who hasn’t considered whether this is inevitable; not out of any particular meanness or religious belief, but rather because we’re such a bunch of dumb asses who refuse to wake up.

Planet Waves
Until 1970, solid low-level and transuranic waste at the Atomic Energy Commission’s nuclear weapons facilities (shown here is Hanford Reservation, circa 1950s) was frequently disposed of in cardboard boxes. Once filled, this unlined trench would have been covered with dirt, leaving the cardboard to deteriorate and allowing the waste to contaminate the soil and leach into the groundwater. Photo from the Brookings Institution archives.

In modern mythology, Atlantis represents a society that was stricken from Earth because it was unable to handle the technology that it created. In some versions of the tale, that is specifically what we (in our era of gadgets) would think of as spiritual technology (telepathy, mental manipulation of matter and time), yet where the ethical capacity to handle these talents has failed to evolve along with the power we hold.

It is the same basic idea; and it’s the same issue we’re facing now. It’s what Kurt Vonnegut was talking about in Cat’s Cradle, which we read about two weeks ago when I covered Borasisi. In a particularly literal moment of astrology, the idea for the chemical that ends the world came out of General Electric, when Vonnegut was a PR man there. Notably, GE manufactured the transformers that are now threatening to spin totally out of control. This gives us a hint, by the way, that Borasisi has a resonance with the long history of crimes committed by GE.

Atlantis shows up as a factor in astrology as well. Minor planet specialist Martha Lang-Wescott delineates the asteroid (1198) Atlantis with the following themes: “Sense of impending doom; belief in deserved punishment/negative karma; invasions of privacy; access to inside or confidential information; abuse of resources, talents or information; importance of confidentiality/use of knowledge; water disasters; warnings.”

In a phone interview Thursday, Wescott added another theme: “The other part of Atlantis is a negative projection, and we’re seeing a lot of that. Atlantis is ‘doomsday is here’.” For example, she says that, “People with Venus/Atlantis aspects doom their relationships. If Atlantis is prominent [in a public chart], then you’re going to hear astrologers talking about doom and gloom.”

Here in our era dominated by the negative obsessions of fundamentalist Christians, there’s plenty of that; it’s a religion based on the Revelation or the Rapture or the Apocalypse, which is the supposed ‘end of the world’ — predicted relentlessly for the past two thousand years (blended artfully with a radically sex-negative message), and presumed in modern times to be nuclear. I often wonder whether all these negative projections about cataclysm are adding up to the thing itself. Human thought is powerfully creative, and the federal budget has a lot of potential.

Planet Waves
Museum display replica of the ‘Fat Man’ bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. Photo is from the Digital Photo Archive, Department of Energy (DOE), courtesy AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives. It is part of the Manhattan Project collection.

It is little known that J.R.R. Tolkien, in a work called The Silmarillion, gives his own version of the fall of Atlantis, an island he calls Numenor, located off of the western shores of Middle Earth. Numenor existed about 35 generations prior to the commencement of action in The Lord of the Rings. Anyone who has read this book has met and loved one of the descendants of its refugees — Strider (Aragorn, son of Arathorn), who becomes King Elessar I. Most of the wondrous places that readers visit along the way as Frodo and Samwise seek to destroy the ring were created by former Numenorian refugees and their descendants. The fictional empires of Arnor and Gondor were founded by a handful of people who escaped to Middle Earth right before a quake and tsunami destroyed Numenor. That is why they were described as the ‘race of kings’. They founded empires. Incidentally there is a direct bloodline back to Elros, the founder of Numenor preserved by Strider in the group of which Strider is a part, which is known as the Rangers of the North. In other words Strider would be heir to the Numenorian throne, had that civilization existed in his day.

The most beloved fantasy novel of the 20th century has its early origins in a version of Atlantis. Numenor falls because its people, who live long and abundant lives in a kind of paradise, are terrified of death. They first become obsessed by wealth, then they crave the power and immortality of the gods who live on islands further west. Their downfall is propagated by Sauron, in an earlier incarnation than we know him in The Lord of the Rings. Their hubris is spiritual rather than technological: based on their fear of the unknown, they want to live forever.

More recently, in Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch, there is a part that I think of as the Atlantis passage. “As I have said, this isn’t the first time your civilization has been at this brink,” God says to Walsch at one point in their dialogue.

“I want to repeat this, because it is vital that you hear this. Once before on your planet, the technology you developed was far greater than your ability to use it responsibly. You are approaching the same point in human history again. It is vitally important that you understand this. Your present technology is threatening to outstrip your ability to use it wisely. Your society is on the verge of becoming a product of your technology rather than your technology being a product of your society. When a society becomes a product of its own technology, it destroys itself.”

Whatever you may be hearing about the nuclear crisis in Japan, this week human civilization is now revealing how close it is to doing just that.

Fukushima Daiichi: Thousands of Tons of Radioactive Waste

As of this writing on Thursday evening, here is the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. All six of its reactor cores are in some level of distress after being damaged by an earthquake and tsunami one week ago. We’ve been covering this extensively on the Planet Waves blog — here are some of those articles, and my most recent audio. In short, the tsunami damaged the reactors’ cooling systems, which has allowed the fuel to heat up and in three cases, partially melt.

Planet Waves
Uncapped spent nuclear fuel stored underwater in K-East Basin on the Hanford nuclear site in Washington. Photo is from the Department of Energy archives.

As a result, there have been hydrogen explosions in reactors 1, 2 and 3. From what I am reading, it’s fairly certain that the explosions in 2 and 3 breached the steel inner containment structures. Fuel cores have been exposed in all three due to cooling system failures, and there is a struggle to keep any water level at all in units 2 and 3. This means the fuel cores have melted partially and may melt entirely if they get too hot and the self-sustaining reaction goes out of control. When you hear news reporters use the word ‘catastrophic’ to describe something worse than is now happening, that’s what they are hinting at.

While a full meltdown creates a worst-case scenario for reasons I will explain in a moment, Unit 3 has a special issue: about 6% of the fuel is called MOX, or mixed oxide, which contains plutonium.

Plutonium is another universe of toxicity than uranium. Inhaling as little as one-millionth of a gram can cause lung cancer, according to Dr. Helen Caldicott, co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility. I would dare to say it’s more toxic than the worst dioxin, TCDD. Every single gram of the stuff is supposed to be highly regulated. So there is a special focus right now on Unit 3, though the presence of plutonium is rarely being mentioned; it is getting a bit of attention and I’m glad of that. Here is an NPR article that covers the issue, even as the Tea Baggers try to pull federal funding for that station. And it is mentioned in this New York Times article.

Impressively, the Times reported Thursday night, “The decision to focus on the No. 3 reactor appeared to suggest that Japanese officials believe it is a greater threat, since it is the only one at the site loaded with a mixed fuel known as MOX, for mixed oxide, which includes reclaimed plutonium.”

Planet Waves
This is a tank farm under construction on the Hanford nuclear site in Washington. The principal function of the tank farms is the storage of byproduct material left over from plutonium extraction operations prior to permanent disposal. This byproduct material has no useful purpose and is stored in 177 underground storage tanks with a cumulative total capacity of 55 million gallons, with individual tanks ranging up to 1,000,000 gallons (pictured). This waste material is composed of toxic chemicals that were used to remove fission products from irradiated reactor fuel. Photo is from the Department of Energy.

Unit 4, meanwhile, has another issue. The spent fuel pond (a storage area for massive amounts of old fuel rods) has run dry (or was pumped dry in an emergency need for water) and the old rods are getting very hot from fission reactions that are stirring to life — hot enough to potentially melt down. Unit 4 has burst into flames several times, apparently not from hydrogen explosions but rather from the fuel rods themselves starting to burn (most likely, the explosive zirconium cladding). The problem with spent fuel is that it contains high concentrations of the degradation products of fission, a whole stew of isotopes that move through the food chain and can jeopardize many organ systems.

Units 3 and 4 are currently being doused with seawater by helicopters, a technology better suited for fighting a forest fire. This is an utterly desperate measure. Units 1 and 2 are, we’re told, being refilled ongoing with fire hoses and water cannons. As of late Thursday, engineers were still trying to restore power to the plant, which could provide some hope of the remaining cooling systems coming back online. And, by the way, there are problems with the spent fuel storage facilities heating up in Units 5 and 6, though the reactor cores in those units are presumably in fairly good shape compared to the others. But I have not heard the words ‘cold shutdown’ applied to them.

Assuming the situation stays stable for a while and is eventually brought under some vague semblance of control, that still implies the release of a plume of radioactive steam, an underground plume and a flood of radiation into the Pacific Ocean. This will contaminate much of Japan, and because the Jet Stream carries air east at a fairly rapid speed, I’ve read the plume will reach North America (particularly the West Coast) as early as this weekend. The levels may seem low at the moment. But relatively low levels of radioactivity can cause the same issues as higher doses based on what is known as the Petkau effect.

In addition, there is the issue of bioconcentration. Radioactive materials move through the food chain quickly, concentrating not only in predators but (for example) also in grass-eating cows. There is no such thing as a little radiation, and every drop of the water being dumped onto these reactor cores is turning radioactive and being released to the biosphere.

Planet Waves
Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Laboratory presents award to Robert Oppenheimer, a key scientist who developed the atomic bomb. Left to right are Oppenheimer (the wraith in the white hat), General Leslie Groves and Robert G. Sproul. Photo is circa 1945, from the Digital Photo Archive, Department of Energy (DOE), courtesy AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives.

That was the good news. Borrowing from Rachel Maddow, I know this is a difficult time to say worse, but it actually can get worse and has been hovering close to it from day to day.

Remember that we are in new territory where nuclear accidents are concerned. This specific thing has never happened before. However, it is probable that if even one of these reactor cores or spent fuel ponds goes into full meltdown, it can sink below the land, reach the water table and create an underground explosion that destroys the small swath of land where this drama is unfolding, causing all of the reactor cores and spent fuel to go out of control. In any event there would be too much radiation for anyone to stay on the site keeping a grip on the others.

That would make Chernobyl into something that seems like a Science Fair experiment by comparison — and it wasn’t. There were about 180 tons of radioactive fuel involved in Chernobyl. At Fukushima, there are at minimum 1,000 tons and so far as I can tell, as much as 3,000 tons (including spent fuel) based on comments made by our government Wednesday, all concentrated in this one facility. (Rachel Maddow covered this in some detail last night).

The Full Moon, and the Aries Sun Conjunct Uranus

The astrology for the next five days is not particularly encouraging, though if the workers now sacrificing their lives at the plant can keep a grip on this through around March 24, I would say the situation might de-escalate. Here’s my reasoning.

Planet Waves
Leó Szilárd, one of the co-inventors of nuclear fission and the atomic bomb. Recalling the night of his invention, he wrote, “We turned the switch, saw the flashes, watched for ten minutes, then switched everything off and went home. That night I knew the world was headed for sorrow.” Original copy of this image is held in the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, Oregon State University Libraries.

We are currently building into the Full Moon in Virgo. This is a close Full Moon, happening at perigee. It’s running with a lot of momentum, and it’s happening at the very end of the astrological year, with the Sun at equinox — about to enter Aries. Hence Saturday’s Full Moon is an Aries Point event, which (as we have seen) tends to magnify things greatly and brings a lot of people into whatever situation is involved. It’s the world crashing into your living room. It’s you taking part in collective destiny in some direct way, just like we saw the people of Wisconsin do.

The Full Moon represents a peak, and the Sun-Uranus conjunction exactly on the equinox represents a kind of collective surprise development. Let’s hope that’s about some friendly space aliens showing up with their radiation extinguishing devices and cooling off the whole situation; that’s approximately what we need right now, because so far, things could use improvement.

A number of other features make this a pretty special Full Moon. For example, it’s directly involved with the lunar nodes (which I covered two issues ago, and in the second article down). It’s exactly square the nodes, which gives the event the feeling of an eclipse, or a point of no return.

The lunar nodes are aligned with two particularly meaningful points. The node in Sagittarius is pointing to the Galactic Core; hence, this Full Moon is square the core of our galaxy. This stirs up a spiritual crisis. To me the core represents our connection to Source, or our homing signal. The star that Planet Earth hangs out with is located 25,000 light years from the core — far out near the edge of the galaxy. And our star is located between two of the spiral arms. So we are in a distant, remote location, in the boondocks of the galaxy — and for this reason I am not surprised our particular planet so often has a ‘god forsaken’ feeling. The square between the Sun, the Moon and the Galactic Core suggests strongly that we have to seek inwardly for our spiritual connection. It also represents events that might provoke us to do that, and I would say if you have not noticed that fact yet, this is an awesome time to pay attention.

Remember that on our plane of reality, emotional impulses are binary: love and fear. Many have a hard time telling the difference. Here is a clue. If it does not feel like love, then it’s probably fear.

Planet Waves
The ground crew of the B-29 “Enola Gay” which atom-bombed Hiroshima, Japan. Col. Paul W. Tibbets, the pilot, is in the center. Photographed on Mariana Islands in Guam. The entire Enola Gay’s flying crew on Aug. 6, 1945 consisted of 12 men. The plane was famously named after Colonel Tibbets’ mother. Photo: UPI.

The South Node, opposite the Galactic Core, is conjunct a point that keeps showing up again and again in charts. The point is at 28+ Gemini. This is a very strange spot in the zodiac that shows up prominently in the charts for Sept. 11, the Asian tsunami of 2004, WikiLeaks, two key charts for Japan — and then for the quake one week ago. These are events that involve the breakdown of systems, turning points in history and in one case someone who is working to tell the truth about those systems.

I happen to have the asteroid Beagle there, and I’ve been hunting this point like a hound for several years. Up till now I was aware that the connection could not be a ‘coincidence’ (I covered this in my first article on WikiLeaks, by the way). Now, this is not merely a point that appears in the charts for catastrophes; it comes with an odd kind of disaster that seems eerily out of place — and it’s also present in people or things that raise our awareness. For example, WikiLeaks just published memos that prove Japan knew it could have this problem years ago.

When I saw how involved it was in both the charts for Japan and the quake, that made me more curious. There is a fixed star at this point, called Betelgeuse. I knew this star was there but I never researched it. A friend looked into it this week, and she dug something out of a 17th century astrology textbook — no ordinary one, the first one ever published in English, called Christian Astrology by William Lilly. He associates the star with “rare engines of war.” That is a quote. Now, that is interesting, since at the time he wrote that there was no such thing as a jetliner or a skyscraper.

Checking Wikipedia next, we learned more. Betelgeuse is a red star, connected with Mars. “With the history of astronomy intimately associated with mythology and astrology prior to the scientific revolution, the red star, like the planet Mars that derives its name from a Roman war god, has been closely associated with the martial archetype of conquest for millennia, and by extension the motif of death and rebirth.” Notably this star is opposite the Galactic Core, facing toward intergalactic space. It feels that way.

Planet Waves
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Here is what I am thinking. As these global events come closer together, it’s starting to feel like someone is doing all of this. I got that feeling the strongest over the weekend pondering how this extremely rare quake — the 3rd most powerful on record — struck a region in Japan just where there are numerous nuclear reactors (including others not currently in distress). When I read the phrase rare engines of war, I suddenly felt like I was sitting in the middle of someone else’s war.

The question is: whose war, and over what? I don’t know, but I can tell you that the atom was not split for peaceful purposes. It was split with the intention of killing a lot of people. That much is history. Most wars are fought over the usual stupid reasons — power, greed and egotism. Heck, why not? The world is ending anyway.

Next, it occurred to me that this was a war in which environmental disasters were being used as weapons. When Friday’s quake happened, there were a spate of posts that went around about how the federal HAARP facility on the Alaskan tundra was turned up to full tilt at the time. I wasn’t in the control room taking pictures — I don’t know. But many people believe this is an electromagnetic device capable of changing weather patterns and inducing seemingly natural disasters. But this is not my field of inquiry; it was a little too tinfoil hat for me, that is, until I was looking at video of nuclear reactors blowing up one after the next.

So, I started asking around. I asked a friend who is an engineer if you can make an earthquake. He sent back a number of references, the most interesting of which was a quote from Bill Clinton’s secretary of defense, a guy named William S. Cohen, during a news briefing. The quote comes from the Department of Defense transcript of that briefing.

Planet Waves
The atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

He said he had read about the prospect of “some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic-specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others are designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others are engaging even in an eco- type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves” [emphasis mine].

Gee whiz: the very secretary of defense speaking, not some conspiracy (or astrology) website? And, um, like — others are doing this? Like who for instance?

Saddam Hussein? Castro? Russia? Darth Vader? Well, whoever.

When the United States is talkin’, it’s always someone else. We’re nobody special, just the only country ever to use the Bomb on a population. And we happen to have one of these electromagnetic wave thingies — a really big one and it keeps getting bigger. That would be HAARP. And this is not particularly new technology. Stuff like this was being developed by Nikola Tesla, an electrical engineer who was busy in the early 20th century. Tesla, who invented alternating current and thus the modern electrical grid, was ahead of his time. In 1897 he was researching cosmic rays.

I just looked at his chart. He has Mercury in that mysterious 28+ degree of Gemini: Mercury, the planet of the mind, of ideas and of messages. By the way — for what it’s worth — he was the biggest rival of Thomas Edison, the founder of GE — the company that designed those nuclear reactors that are melting down.

Thank you, that was all very interesting

— but at the moment we’re sitting here wondering what to do. Wondering what’s going to happen to all that radiation. Wondering if they’re going to get a grip. And the show is not over — far from it.

In addition to the 2012 configuration (Uranus square Pluto) I’ve been describing for weeks, there are many other aspects gathering around the Aries Point that I haven’t mentioned yet which hint at the possibility of a confrontation. These are about self-awareness awakening us to the forces of darkness that have, so far, kept themselves rather well cloaked. I mean, one definition of the perfect war is one that nobody knows is going on. It looks like something else.

In terms of how to process all this disaster by design, my own preference is to be aware rather than to pretend something is not happening. My preference is to stay connected and creative and curious rather than to pull away. I choose to embrace this moment with a sense of adventure rather than dread. This is a moment of collective awakening.

It may be the beginning of the very moment of collective awakening, here at the edge of the world.

I just have one question for you — what are you doing?

lovingly,

Eric Francis

Additional Research: Tracy Delaney, Amanda Painter and Carol van Strum. Photo Research: Sarah Bissonette-Adler. Many readers have contributed ideas, facts and proofreading — thank you.

Planet Waves
Waterfall at the Grandmother Land on Earth Day 2010. Photo by Eric Francis.

A Full Moon in Virgo: Turning a Corner

Saturday’s Full Moon in Virgo represents a turning point on many accounts, illustrated mainly because the axis of the Full Moon is square the nodes of the Moon. This is being called a ‘super’ Full Moon because the Moon is at perigee particularly close to the Earth. You can think of this as opposite Black Moon Lilith, the lunar apogee, or you can just think of it as large and close.

Planet Waves
Full Moon chart set for Kingston, NY.

The Moon and Sun are also square a point out of a system of astrology we don’t usually use here — that point (a hypothetical, without an actual physical body but with a symbolic and mathematical presence) is called Hades, and it’s in late Gemini. This seems designed to help us become aware of anything that is “unpleasant, useless, antique or deeply buried,” in the words of Arlene Kramer, such as power generation inventions that don’t work and that we don’t need. Similarly in our own lives we might look for defenses, ways of relating to ourselves, ideas or concepts of dualism that no longer serve us.

Hades (not shown in the chart, but at 28+ Gemini) also represents the occult, and the secrets of the atomic world would clearly qualify, making any dark sorcerer proud — except for the fact that no sorcerer likes to see his spell run wild. Still, we need to go deeply into whatever it is that we encounter, make an authentic inquiry and check our basic facts. This is a slow-moving point covering just a degree a year, so it’s going to be hanging around that odd degree that binds together many of the biggest news events of the past decade.

Part of what makes this chart influential is the proximity to the lunar nodes. When the Sun and Moon are conjunct or close to either of the nodes, we usually get an eclipse. When they are square the nodes, there can be a similar sensation. This is an especially close square, coming in at less than one degree away, so this chart indicates both a turning point and an opposition one needs to integrate into one’s psyche in order to proceed with a growth process. That opposition might involve the emotional nature of Pisces and the mental nature of Virgo, an opposition which can cause significant struggle (as if the two have nothing in common).

The nodes themselves align with the Galactic Core — the North Node points right to it. There is an idea that we need to focus on the homing signal represented by the core of the galaxy — that irresistible pull toward the center of consciousness that might be at odds with the normal human experiences of feelings/thoughts and that can seem to exist on a different plane of reality. In fact it can seem so different that we pretend it’s not there, or get entirely distracted in the rest of the sensations we’re feeling. The intensity of this Full Moon suggests that the polarity between the male and female principles (illustrated by the Sun and Moon) becomes so intense that it dawns on the mind that there might be a better way.

This is also an Aries Point event; the Sun and the Moon are both close to Aries and Libra. The Sun is close to an exact conjunction to Uranus in Aries, which it will be through the equinox. This suggests something new; a new idea about oneself (Aries) or about where we fit into the community (Uranus). The world is not always based on the choices we perceived yesterday — often there are other alternatives that we can invoke, though they will take us on a seemingly narrower path.

For an interesting comment on the Full Moon chart, please visit this article on the Planet Waves blog.

Last chance to tell…

For three years, Mark Cocker, the author and conservationist, has been working with BirdLife on a massive and remarkable initiative that documents how birds fill our lives. Called Birds and People, the project is building an international chorus on just why birds are so important to people, how they resonate throughout human cultures, and how they influence our responses to wider nature and the environment.

Planet Waves
Eagle Hunters crossing the Altai plateau in Mongolia (David Tipling).

Mark is now calling for more stories, and the next few months will be that last chance to contribute and get your personal experience into Birds and People.

Birds and People will be a unique book for many reasons, but particularly because it contains original contributions from people around the world. Already, the stories of more than 420 people are woven into Mark’s authoritative text — from Paraguay to Portugal, from India to Australia, Azerbaijan to the Bahamas. More than 60 countries are represented already.

Images for Birds and People are being gathered by renowned bird photographer David Tipling, who has already travelled widely seeking pictures. In these examples of his work, red-crowned cranes are trumpeting at dawn on Hokkaido in Japan (shown in link), and the Eagle Hunters are crossing the Altai plateau in Mongolia, en route to the Ulgii hunters festival in October 2009.

Read More at Bird Life Community.


Planet Waves

Attention Light Bridge Subscribers: Light Bridge written readings are now available to those who pre-ordered. If you have not signed up yet, you may do so here. Everyone is invited to read the articles on the Light Bridge blog, which will update periodically. Customer reviews of Light Bridge are collecting here. Don’t miss the free audio introduction to the project that explains how I created these seven-year readings. To everyone: thank you for your patience while we completed the written phase of Light Bridge.


Planet Waves

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, March 18, 2011, #853 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19)

Aries (March 20-April 19) — I’m sure the past week has been interesting but what happens over the next few days is likely to take you by surprise. What matters most is that you take any unexpected developments as the occasion for an actual turning point in the course of your life, rather than as an opportunity to think about making a change. There is a very narrow opening between your fantasy of change and the real thing through which you can guide yourself. The characteristic of this particular moment of evolution is that it involves something specific that you’ve been cultivating mentally for a while — that is to say, you know what it is — and you make a small but significant actual change in the course of your life. It is not the size that matters, but your sense that you’ve shifted your momentum with a clear decision. A wave of energy will carry you the rest of the way.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Aries, please go to this link.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You may be headed for an encounter with your past, such as the consequences of something you’ve done, chosen or experienced. Yet what you’re getting are not the consequences at full-strength, but what I would describe as a reduced form of the karma. You need to see the results mainly so that you’re reminded that the things you do actually have a persistent life, and so that you see something that you don’t want and then create options for what you do want. This contrast seems essential in your goal-setting process. You may be concerned that if you work with contrast between a ‘negative’ that you don’t want and a ‘positive’ that you want, you are still grounding yourself in negativity. What matters most is that you have enough contrast by which to make a decision, and that you focus on affirmative choice.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Taurus, please go to this link.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Self-expression is rarely perfect; you know what you want to say or demonstrate, but it can seem to come out in a skewed way. Or you may discover that you’re unconsciously speaking in reaction to someone or something, perhaps the influence of a parent or authority figure. I suggest you not let any of that deter you. You’re working with a better idea than you think, it’s coming across more reliably than you are able to perceive, and it’s going to have a bigger influence on a situation than you imagine. Even though this seems to be well underway, you still have time to redirect your intentions and make sure that your mental and emotional energy are working toward a specific goal. I really, truly mean something that you really, truly want, based on your highest vision. Invest some time getting that right.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Gemini, please go to this link.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You have to pass through one last rift of dark psychology before you break free into an emotionally clear space. You’ve grown accustomed to being a little less than clear, and more sensitive than usual. This combination can create a situation that stirs up some emotionally rooted fear — old fear, related to some cryptic ancestral material. This may have you feeling fogged in at the moment. I know that when you’re experiencing emotions in your immediate psychic environment you’re going to assume that they’re exclusively about you, but I suggest you consider the possibility that you’re burning off something from the distant past. Do so boldly, let yourself be carried by the wave of emotion and let yourself be lofted to a higher, safer orbit. Through this process you will gain an incredible perspective, where you will see your potential and your options clearly.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Cancer, please go to this link.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — It’s up to you to propose or, at least, hear proposals on renegotiation of key agreements in your life, but you alone must make sure they are integrated with your larger life plan. In that respect where the ideas come from doesn’t matter. Yet holding the inner vision to know that something does or does not align with your ideas about where you want to take your life is the thing that you must provide, and I suggest you do so actively. The emphasis is less on revolution and more on ideas that work. Start with small revisions to your current plan; think of them as a series of course corrections that get you a little closer to where you want to be. Remember that a real solution will work for you and it will work on a mutual basis for the people you’re closest to. It’s not about one or the other.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Leo, please go to this link.

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — You may believe you’re the more flexible party in a relationship situation, though someone important to you is experiencing an emotional issue that you’re not yet able to perceive. I suggest you give them the benefit of the doubt, and the benefit of your understanding. Mostly give them space to work out an issue that is a little out of your grasp at the moment; once this person is able to move through a fairly deep concern or inner question, their movement will come faster than you’re expecting — and that might even be too fast for you. Therefore, if you’re feeling impatient, I suggest you reverse your approach and ask yourself how much change in the situation you would be happy with, so you have sorted that particular issue out a couple of times when the moment comes.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Virgo, please go to this link.

Libra (Sep. 22 - Oct. 23)

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Your sign is the one associated with balance in relationships, and a level of harmonious stability that nearly everyone seems to want. Lately, though, the universe has been dishing out a variety of other options, and you’ve been spurred to make some adjustments of your expectations. It’s come to the point where if others want to proceed faster than you’re ready for, you might just have to step back and let them do so. Yet in your own life, the same forces that are influencing your desire for stability are also sending a clear message that the past is over. The kind of future you’re embracing moves too fast and does not have the closet space (for example) for massive amounts of family baggage. I suggest you ask yourself why you would need any at all.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Libra, please go to this link.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — I suggest you welcome the disruptions to your normal pattern of living. One little problem with our world is how tightly it’s packed, how much energy is contained in structure, and how predictable we want everything to be. I’ve a hunch you’ll agree that freeing up some erotic energy is a great reason to drop some of your expectations, your adherence to time structures and the sense that you have to do so much. A little bit of expecting the unexpected will open up a lot of space for you to play, explore and fire up your spirits. Remember, though, you’re a creature essentially made of water. You need an environment where you can soak, and I mean that both literally in water, and emotionally in some honest affection.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Scorpio, please go to this link.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 - Dec. 22)

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — You may find yourself in an edgy professional situation, calling for effective decisions under some intense pressure — but guess what, you were made for this moment. Don’t bother yourself with the notion that anything developing is a distraction — whatever transpires will lead you to an unusually interesting place, with new ideas to carry on with a recent creative adventure. Life is about nothing these days if not being able to juggle and skate at the same time; to balance in the midst of imbalance, and to be able to do it well. One key is to not think too much about how you’re doing what you’re doing — just focus on the main topic at hand and let your mind do its marvelous thing. Remember at this point that creativity is almost always more efficient than labor. This is a lesson most of the world has yet to learn; but you’ve got the truth right in your hand.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Sagittarius, please go to this link.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Recent news events seem to be reminding everyone what an elusive concept ‘safety’ really is. That goes right along with ‘security’ and ‘stability’ and ‘predictability’. What is real, though, is knowing where your sense of grounding comes from. This, you need access to under all circumstances, no matter what you may be feeling. Your life right now is a study in staying connected to your emotional center, and moving through the world in a way that reminds you that you always carry that center with you. What you are likely to find is that far from offering you a stuck notion of what it means to be ‘safe’, you are poised to discover the strength and flexibility you can experience allowing energy to flow up from the Earth, through you and into your environment: not safe — connected.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Capricorn, please go to this link.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — In a moment you’ll experience the sensation of motion from feeling to action. It seems like such a far leap, sometimes even an impossible one. It starts with sensation going from a passive experience to an active one. That can mean choosing what you expose yourself to or what you allow in; it can mean responding directly and immediately to what your senses are delivering rather than merely absorbing it. It’s the difference between reading and reading with a pen in your hand scribbling in the margins. Apply that to everything you witness and feel and you will get the difference between passive and active sensing. From there, it’s a very short step to having immediate, original ideas, and putting them to good use.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Aquarius, please go to this link.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — The Sun’s trip through your sign wraps up with a spectacular Full Moon in Virgo on Friday. This reflection will offer you a vision of where your life is at the moment, how far you’ve come in such a short time, and what options you have ahead of you. Start, however, with the first of these. There is a soft light that’s surrounding you right now, offering you something unusually nourishing. Look into the mirror of your relationships. Look into the mirror of your view of the world. Look in an actual mirror and notice if you see someone other than who you’ve seen so many other times. The key with any of these mirrors is to drain away as much push and pull as you can and allow your seeing to be something that is gentle and flowing. That Moon you see up in the sky — it’s faithfully reflecting the pure light of Pisces.

To order Light Bridge, your full-length 2011 reading including written and audio segments for Pisces, please go to this link.