Tag Archives: Environment

Democracy Now! — Wednesday, May 25, 2016

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Demonstration against the AIM pipeline. Image: video still

A key figure in Brazil’s interim government has resigned after explosive new transcripts revealed how he plotted to oust President Dilma Rousseff in order to end a corruption investigation that was targeting him. The transcripts, published by Brazil’s largest newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, document a conversation in March, just weeks before Brazil’s lower house voted in favor of impeaching President Rousseff.

Romero Jucá, who was then a senator but became a planning minister after Rousseff’s ouster, was speaking with a former oil executive, Sérgio Machado. Both men had been targets of the so-called Car Wash investigation over money laundering and corruption at the state-controlled oil firm Petrobras.

In the conversation, the men agree that ousting President Rousseff would be the only way to end the corruption probe. In the transcript, Jucá said, “We have to change the government so the bleeding is stopped.” Machado then reportedly said, “The easiest solution is to put Michel in”—a reference to Vice President Michel Temer, who took power once Rousseff was suspended. Maria Luisa Mendonça, director of Brazil’s Network for Social Justice and Human Rights, spoke to Amy and Juan:

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what’s happening and the significance of these audiotapes?

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA: Yes. They actually see and prove very clearly something we have been saying from the beginning, that this is a coup, because there is no reason, no legal basis, for the impeachment of President Dilma, that the main reason to do this was to actually stop investigations of corruption. And it was clear from the beginning, because the interim president, Michel Temer, appointed seven ministers that are now facing charges of corruption. And also one of the first things he did was to eliminate the Controladoria-Geral da União, which is a state agency that controls contracts between the government and private businesses. So it was clear that it was a way to stop investigations of corruption. And then, the second main reason was to implement austerity measures in the right-wing agenda that has been rejected by Brazilian society since 2002. So, the right-wing forces have not been able to win elections. The only way for them to take power was by orchestrating the coup.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk, as well, about his elimination of all these other ministers that deal with social issues within the—within the government?

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA: Yes, exactly. Just a few hours after taking power, he eliminated the Ministries of Women, of Agricultural Development, of Human Rights and Racial Equality, of Culture, of Communications. So, it was a huge structural change, with very serious consequences. And for instance, the Ministry of Culture is an institution that promotes Brazilian culture all over the world. So you cannot justify that by any argument, even economics. It doesn’t make any sense. Since then, there have been huge demonstrations. Just over the weekend, this past weekend, several office buildings have been occupied by artists. At least in 20 states, the offices of the Ministry of Culture are now occupied. And we have seen huge concerts with demonstrations against Michel Temer. And even in stadiums, in soccer stadiums, we are seeing demonstrations all over the country. So it’s very clear that this agenda will be rejected.

Also, for instance, in the case of the Ministry of Women, there now is a secretary. It lost its status as a ministry. Michel Temer invited five women, academics and artists, that rejected the invitation. So I think it’s actually interesting to see that no woman wants to be part of the new government, which is a positive sign considering what this government looks like. And just yesterday, finally, he found someone for that position, and it’s a former congresswoman who is herself being accused of corruption.

In the case of the communications, the public communications system is actually very concerning. Just a few hours after taking power, Temer fired the head of the public broadcasting system in Brazil and replaced him with an executive from TV Globo, the very powerful network that is calling for demonstrations against the government for over a year right now. So, that is a huge change. Imagine if suddenly the head of NPR was replaced by a Fox News executive. That’s a comparison that we can make. So he eliminated several very important public institutions.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you mentioned Globo. What has been the role of the mass media, of the commercial media, as all these events have been unfolding?

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA: Yeah, that is a key role. What we—I have been saying that—imagine if here in the U.S. all TV stations were like Fox News, and they all started to call for demonstrations against the government and were broadcasting those demonstrations live all day long, and at the same time the large demonstrations in support of the government, in support for democracy in Brazil, were mainly ignored. So, I think it’s very important for people to understand that this was created—this idea of that the main problem in Brazil was corruption was pretty much created by corporate media, and now it’s very clear that, with the recent release of this transcript, that the main goal was to actually stop the investigations of corruption and to implement an agenda, a neoliberal agenda, that not only cut important social programs, but changes legislation, as you were mentioning in the beginning of the show.

For instance, in the case of the spending, governmental spending, for education, right after the end of the military dictatorship in Brazil, the new constitution determined that in local and state administrations, 25 percent of the budget is the minimum that has to be applied, invested on education, and the same as the federal—in the federal level. That is, a minimum of 18 percent. And Michel Temer now is proposing to change legislation so the state is not obligated to spend a minimum on education, which will have a huge impact. This is not going to improve the economy. This will create more economic inequality and more instability.

Today marks six weeks since Verizon workers walked out over contract changes and the company’s refusal to extend high-quality broadband as promised to customers. Striking worker Pamela Galpern explained about the broadband issue.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Pam, I wanted to ask you about this—the issue of FiOS, because obviously it’s one of the best broadband networks, if not the best, in the country. But in many places where FiOS was established as a cable and internet service, Verizon made certain promises that it would roll out FiOS to its—to the public. In New York City, they’re years behind what they were supposedly going to do as part of a cable franchise they got during the Bloomberg era. Could you talk about this and why it’s taken the company so long to actually fulfill the promises it made when it won that franchise?

PAMELA GALPERN: Sure. Well, when Verizon got the franchise agreement from the City of New York in 2008, they agreed that they would make FiOS available to every New Yorker who wants it by 2014. And we have been working hard to build FiOS during that entire time. It’s a huge build. In 2014, the company said, “We’ve completed our obligations to the City of New York. We’ve passed every home.” Now, every Verizon worker and many, many customers know that that’s not true that they could get FiOS. To say that they’ve passed the home doesn’t mean it’s available. So, there is a FiOS build—a lot of FiOS build left to do in New York City. As Bob said, it’s the landline workers who are doing that build. And we want to continue doing it, but Verizon is essentially holding to its position that it’s completed its obligations. To say that you’ve passed a home, but that you’re two blocks away, going down the avenue, and when that customer calls Verizon, and Verizon says, “It’s not available to you, and I can’t tell you when it will be available,” indicates to us that they haven’t completed the build, they haven’t fulfilled their obligations to the City of New York. Beyond New York, of course, there’s whole communities—Syracuse, Buffalo, Albany, lots of other parts of the footprint—where they’re not going to build at all. FiOS is a great product. People want it. We’re building it. It helps preserve good jobs. It’s really a win-win for the company to continue the build, to meet its obligations. And we believe that’s what they should be doing. And what they really need to do is hire more workers in order to complete the build.

Last but not least on today’s show: In Peekskill, New York, just about an hour north of New York City, residents have launched a blockade in efforts to stop the construction of a gas pipeline slated to run only hundreds of feet from the aging Indian Point nuclear power plant. The proposed project has sparked concerns from residents and nuclear experts that a pipeline break could cause a catastrophic nuclear disaster that would threaten the entirety of New York City.

The pipeline is being built by Spectra Energy and is officially known as the Algonquin Incremental Market Project, or AIM pipeline. Well, only hours ago, Peekskill residents and activists escalated the campaign to stop this pipeline’s construction by installing a fully sustainable shipping container at the entrance of Spectra’s work yard—complete with two activists living inside.

For more information on the campaign to stop the pipeline, here is the Resist AIM Pipeline Facebook page; there’s also a #StopSpectra blog.

We are honored to offer this broadcast as part of our affiliation with the Pacifica Network. Find out where the Democracy Now! crew is visiting next during the show’s 100-city tour, celebrating 20 years on the air.

Neptune in Pisces: A Watershed Event

Dear Friend and Reader:

In 2008, Pluto entered Capricorn and within a matter of months, we saw the collapse of the banking system and a massive heist of public resources by different private entities. It was an event so perfectly described by Pluto in Capricorn (which lasts till 2024) that it was a little eerie. Many astrologers had been discussing the potential for various forms of systemic collapse under Pluto in Capricorn, and one happened immediately after the transit began.

Planet Waves
The world’s first underwater presidential cabinet meeting, held by Mohammed Nasheed off Irufushi Island in the Maldives in October 2009. Image is screen shot from “The Island President,” a documentary about Nasheed and his quest to call attention to global warming. As ocean levels rise, the Maldives could become geographically extinct.

Then in April 2010 when slow-moving Chiron ingressed Pisces, within 24 hours, the BP oil platform explosion and spill happened, dumping millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for months (and the well may still be leaking). Once again, an outer planet changed signs and we saw an event that was strikingly similar to the astrology involved — Chiron, which can call attention to issues of wounding and healing, put all eyes on the ocean.

In March 2011 when Uranus made its ingress to Aries, within hours an earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, creating one of the top two worst nuclear disasters in history. Uranium, the primary fuel for nuclear reactors, is named after the planet Uranus, which has a volatile, even explosive quality at times. Aries is hot and fiery, and what happens close to the Aries Point (the first degree of Aries) can affect the world — and once again we had an effect that illustrated the astrology in a vivid way.

Astrologers are on notice: when slow-moving outer planets change signs, there may be an immediate effect. Pay attention.

Knowing that Neptune would be entering Pisces, I was on the lookout for a development at the beginning that would give us some clues about what might be up. I suspected that the rising of the oceans, involving global warming, would be an issue. Neptune is the planet of water, named for the god of the sea (and of earthquakes). Pisces is a big ocean. What happens when you put a lot of water in an ocean? The level rises — and that is exactly what’s happening due to the melting of the glaciers. It’s obvious that with Neptune in Pisces, we will be dealing with the reality and not the concept of global warming.

Planet Waves
Former Maldives president Mohammed Nasheed after his underwater cabinet meeting in 2009. Image from “The Island President,” an upcoming documentary.

In a late edit to last week’s edition, which summarized the history of the past 14 years of Neptune in Aquarius, I mentioned that the global warming controversy was a kind of poster child for denial (Neptune) of science (Aquarius). An inconvenient truth that is convenient to deny, global warming may turn out to be the biggest scandal in the history of the world. Has anyone noticed that the biggest deniers are those who profit from doing so?

But not everyone has been in denial. At the head of the class has been the president of the Maldives, an island nation located just above sea level in the Indian Ocean. It’s the country with the lowest average elevation — 1.5 meters above sea level. One of the country’s outspoken politicians, Mohammed Nasheed, came home from exile in 2008 to be the first democratically elected leader of his country. Nearly 30 years of dictatorship ended with an authentic triumph for the people, and the inauguration of a progressive, intelligent president.

And Nasheed was breathing fire on the issue of global warming. The Maldives are so close to sea level that when the 2004 Indonesian earthquake and tsunami happened, most of the country (which consists of a group of islands) was submerged. That’s to say, most areas were flooded under one to three meters of water, a stark reminder of what is possible if ocean levels continue to rise.

When Nasheed took office in November 2008, he quickly brought global warming to the top of his agenda and became one of its most articulate spokesmen. He stated his intentions to have the country purchase land in India, Sri Lanka and Australia for its citizens to inhabit, saying, “We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades.” If the rising of the seas wasn’t stopped, his own country would become geographically extinct by 2100. He spoke at the United Nations, and he participated in a recent documentary, The Island President.

Among other methods of getting attention, in 2009 Nasheed held an underwater meeting of his cabinet in scuba gear to illustrate the point that his country was being swallowed by the ocean. (For astrology fans, this happened with many planets in Libra, and during the triple conjunction of Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune in Aquarius.)

Then on Tuesday, just four days after Neptune entered Pisces, Nasheed was forced to resign the presidency at gunpoint. He was ousted by allies of the old dictator, who apparently wanted some of their power back, or didn’t want to face prosecution. Nasheed had just ordered the arrest of a criminal court judge who was allegedly refusing to allow corruption cases against members of the old administration to proceed. That was used as an excuse for the military and police to force him out of office.

Planet Waves
The Maldives are a nation consisting of about 1,200 islands, close to the equator in the Indian Ocean. They are on average 1.5 meters above sea level — the lowest country in the world. Image from “The Island President,” which comes out in March.

The judge who Nasheed had arrested “was the chief judge of the Criminal Court, which is one of the middle-ranking courts in the Maldives,” according to one of Nasheed’s aides, quoted on Democracy Now! “And the government had accused him of defending the former dictatorship of [Mohammed Abdul] Gayoom. There was a number of cases against former regime members for [inaudible] and corruption, and some involving hundreds of millions of dollars. And the government contended that this judge was essentially preventing those cases from ever reaching fruition.”

Yet the effect is that one of the few people in power speaking up about global warming and rising sea levels was taken out of commission. As of press time, an arrest warrant had been issued for him. Many fear that he will be imprisoned, and his adversaries have stated that’s their goal. Despite this, he led a street rally on Thursday. BBC has reported that there is no sign of the new government trying to carry out the arrest warrant.

Nasheed has more important plans, focused on the fate of the Earth. He used his presidency to cast the Maldives as a canary in the coal mine of global warming. Many areas of Manhattan, he’s pointed out, are only slightly higher above sea-level than his country.

And there are American scientists who agree with him. One of them is Malcolm Bowman, a professor of oceanography at SUNY Stony Brook, who said in an interview, “Looking at the city, with the setting sun behind the Williamsburg Bridge, it’s a sea of tranquility,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine the dangers lying ahead.”

Planet Waves
Severe beach erosion in the Maldives has claimed substantial amounts of coastal land. Image from “The Island President.”

He told WNYC Radio in New York that as global warming brings higher temperatures and more violent storms, flooding in parts of the city could become as routine as the heavy snows of this winter. We could even have “flood days,” the way the city now has snow days. Higher sea levels will give severe storms much more water to funnel toward the city.

“We could expect the FDR Drive to be underwater,” he told the station, referring to Manhattan’s East Side Drive. “We could expect the water lapping around Wall Street,” he said. “We could see vital infrastructure, hospitals, sewage treatment plants, communication conduits all paralyzed by flooding with seawater, which is very corrosive.” He said the city could resemble Venice in 200 years.

How would the city deal with this? Possibilities include building enormous storm surge barriers like the kind used in the Netherlands, much of which is below sea-level. The Dutch have managed to hold back the ocean successfully for many years. Or, the city could pull back from vulnerable neighborhoods, moving them to higher ground and using low-lying areas as parks and buffer zones. But given real estate values, that seems unlikely. And with half of the world’s population living within 200 km of the shore, we would have to build a lot of dykes to protect even the areas that could be protected.

All the studies in the world may not convince world leaders to take action. It’s going to take actual events, and even then, many people are too despondent or corrupt to deal with a problem this complex. And even when the proof comes in the form of an event, it can take a generation or more to get the physical infrastructure in place, such as happened after the North Sea flood of 1953. This flood affected the Netherlands, Belgium, England and Scotland.

Planet Waves
Official New York City map showing flood zones. This is an actual document, not speculative.

The flooding was caused by a high spring tide and a severe windstorm that caused a storm tide. Existing sea defenses were overwhelmed and many breached. (Appropriately enough, this happened during a Saturn-Neptune conjunction. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita happened during a Saturn-Neptune opposition, which is similar to the conjunction.)

In the Netherlands, where 9% of the country’s farmland was flooded and 1,836 people died, a flood defense system was put into place, but it wasn’t completed until 1998, nearly half a century later.

There is no doubt that Neptune is associated with floods and events involving the sea, and Neptune in Pisces certainly seems to be the image of a lot more seawater. The thing about Neptune is that it’s a slow acting influence, until the drop that spills the cup. The story of floods is always the story of what was not expected, but which was obviously coming.

One thing to keep in mind from an astrological perspective is that Chiron in Pisces is running vanguard of Neptune in Pisces. During its whole time in Pisces, Chiron will be a few years ahead of Neptune’s progress, finally leaving in 2019 (about six years before Neptune leaves Pisces). Chiron will bring sufficient warning-type events that we can have all the foresight we might need. Precaution is another story.

Speaking of Chiron, Nasheed was born in 1969 right at the end of the last run of Chiron through Pisces. His Chiron is placed in the very last degree of that sign, which is also the last degree of the zodiac. It’s theme is the self-created person.

During the Sixties, we learned that martyrdom makes the movement stronger. It was an era of assassinations: JFK, RFK, MLK, names so common we don’t even need to say them, representing people who set an indelible example of leadership. I trust that this time around, Nasheed can make his point without becoming a martyr. In less than a month, he’s about to become a movie star, as The Island President, the documentary about him, is released to select theaters.

Let’s not forget that mythic Neptune can be as placid as the ocean can be, he can be equally violent and wrathful if wronged. The tyrants who seized power might recall just a few years ago when their whole country was under water. Don’t dis Neptune, ’cause paybacks are hell.

Lovingly,

Eric Francis

Additional research: Fe Bongolan, Dale O’Brien, Amanda Painter, Yasa Angelus Sereno, Carol van Strum and Lizanne Webb. If you would like to see the film “The Island President,” here is a schedule.

 

Planet Waves

Venus, newly in Aries, made a conjunction to Uranus last night/early this morning, depending on your time zone. Today that energized Venus makes a trine to Juno in Sagittarius. Also overnight Thursday to Friday, Mercury conjoined centaur Nessus in Aquarius. Saturn, which recently stationed retrograde in the last degree of Libra, is trine Pallas Athene in the last degree of Aquarius. Pallas will leave Aquarius for Pisces minutes after midnight EST on Sunday, where it will conjoin Neptune Monday. Later today (Friday) the Moon ingresses Libra at 2:54 pm EST, where it will oppose Uranus and Venus in Aries. Sunday the Moon ingresses Scorpio at 5:01 pm EST. The Aquarius Sun sextiles Eris in Aries Friday, then tomorrow squares Sedna in Taurus. Sunday the Sun makes a conjunction to Nessus. Mercury, also in Aquarius, sextiles the Galactic Center in late Sagittarius Sunday, and then on Monday makes an air trine to Saturn.

 

Planet Waves

In the upside-down world of the Republican presidential primary race, candidates have taken aim against President Obama’s initiative that requires health insurance companies to pay for women’s birth control. In particular, he’s even required that religious institutions that don’t approve of birth control still make it available to their employees, who might benefit from it. (You can read more about this in Venus on the Aries Point in the News on our daily blog.)

Planet Waves
Santorum after winning the Republican primaries this week.

Here is something to consider. Republicans have come out waving the flag of the First Amendment, saying that mandating that a Catholic hospital provide access to contraception for its non-religious employees is a violation of freedom of religion.

Actually, they have it backwards: any employer bound by federal anti-discrimination laws attempting to compel its employees to follow a religion they don’t believe in would be the real violation of the First Amendment — known as compelled speech. This is is so obvious that it’s comical. Many have noticed that modern Republicanism is a religious crusade focused on sex (and little else), but few are pointing out how bizarre this is.

Meanwhile, the competition for ‘most surreal comment’ prize continues at an exciting pace. Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator and representative from Pennsylvania, recently surged from behind, winning Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri on Tuesday. Santorum is famous for a 2003 episode in which he ignited the ire of gay rights activists when he implied a comparison between same-sex marriage and marriage based on pedophilia or bestiality. In response, sex columnist Dan Savage held a contest to coin a definition of “santorum.” The winning entry was “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex,” which was the top Google return for his name until recently.

Following his three-state win, Santorum took the pulpit and claimed that making birth control available was a product of, “The intolerance of the left, the intolerance of the secular ideology. It is a — it is a religion unto itself. It is just not a biblical-based religion. And it is — it is the most intolerant, just like we saw from the days of the atheists in the Soviet Union. It is completely intolerant of dissent, because they fear dissent. Why? Because the dissent comes from folks who use reason, common sense and divine revelation, and they want no part of any of those things.”

Note, this is coming from someone who in this primary race compared gay sex to people having sex with dogs, and from the same man who rebuked a college student who’d suggested people should be able to marry who they want (with regard to same-sex couples) by asking, “So anybody can marry multiple people? What about three men?” Notice that social conservatives are ahead of the curve, getting ready for when people start to speak up in favor of polyamory. That’s why they define marriage as one man and one woman.

Planet Waves
Oops, sorry — here’s the real picture of Rick Santorum, after winning a few Republican primary elections this week.

Meanwhile, multimillionaire candidate Mitt Romney is calling out established D.C. Republicans on their lavish ways with money.

“Republicans spent too much money, borrowed too much money, earmarked too much, and Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have to be held accountable. This is one of the reasons the Tea Party grew up, of course, is that people were unhappy about incumbents, people who had spent their careers in Washington borrowing, spending and earmarking. … And in this race, I’m the only guy that hasn’t spent time in Washington. And Senator Santorum and Speaker Gingrich, they are the very Republicans who acted like Democrats. And when Republicans act like Democrats, they lose.” Once again, right words in the wrong order: Democrats are the ones who have become Republicans, going along with illegal wars and tax cuts for billionaires, among other things.

Newt Gingrich raised the right’s latest favorite bogeyman and invoked the obscene false-flag tragedy of the 9/11 attacks in a transparent appeal to people’s fear in the name of creating manufacturing jobs. “You think about an Iranian nuclear weapon. You think about the dangers, to Cleveland or to Columbus or to Cincinnati or to New York. Remember what it felt like on 9/11 when 3,100 Americans were killed. Now imagine an attack where you add two zeros, and it’s 300,000 dead, maybe a half million wounded. This is a real danger. This is not science fiction. And that’s why I think it’s very important that we have the strongest-possible national security. And so, I wanted to come see how you manufacture, remind the news media and others that manufacturing in America can be the dominant system in the world.”

Apparently Newt is happy to roll up his sleeves and do some manufacturing of his own when it comes to paranoia and its exploitation. Ron Paul, on the other hand, seems to be waging a stealth campaign for the surreal comment prize, given the lack of juicy quotes form this week in a quick search. But maybe that has something to do with the fact that one of the super-PACs supporting him is headed by a supporter of the 9/11 Truth movement.

 

Planet Waves

If you pay attention at all to the news (even if it’s just the articles in this issue), don’t be surprised if you find yourself empathizing with the world’s injustices — and how they manifest in your own life. When the Moon moves into Libra later today, it opposes Uranus, Venus and Ceres, which are within a few degrees of each other on the Aries Point. Activity on the Aries Point tends to raise our personal struggles onto the cultural stage in some way, and brings political issues close to home. In this case, aspects of women’s health, women’s rights, motherhood and the health of Mother Earth may all feel especially compelling to you — especially with Uranus charging up the batteries.

When the Moon shifts to Scorpio on Sunday, watch your feelings closely. You might find your sensual passions intensifying; it’s also possible that any lingering frustration with the injustices you noticed earlier in the weekend could grow into brooding. One release point could come in the form of physical/sexual pleasure. You can also explore how it feels to put your money where your mouth is — literally or figuratively — with regard to your values. Taking action even in small ways can move energy. Neptune and Chiron in early Pisces suggest creative solutions that move from imagination to tangible practice would be a great way to channel your emotions.

 

Planet Waves

U.S. regulators on Thursday approved plans to build the first new nuclear power plant in more than 30 years, despite objections of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman, who cited safety concerns stemming from Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster, Reuters reported. The NRC voted 4-1 to allow Atlanta-based Southern Co to build and operate two new nuclear power reactors at its existing Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia. The units will cost Southern and partners about $14 billion and enter service as soon as 2016 and 2017. How many solar panels could $14 billion buy?

The approval was cold comfort for nuclear industry officials who have touted a “renaissance” that has failed to materialize, undercut by high costs and the cheapest natural gas prices in about a decade. No nuclear power plants have been licensed in the United States since the partial meltdown of the reactor core of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979. After the accident, the NRC adopted more stringent safety standards, which caused construction costs for nuclear plants to skyrocket and stopped dozens of planned plants in their tracks.

 

Planet Waves

Just one day after a federal appeals court ruled California’s ban on same-sex marriage (called Proposition 8, or Prop 8) to be unconstitutional, Washington State positioned itself to become the seventh state to legalize gay marriage following a vote in the State House. Washington State lawmakers approved marriage equality legislation on Wednesday — just a week after it was passed by the State Senate. Gov. Christine Gregoire is expected to sign the legislation into law next week. Meanwhile, this week’s ruling in California all but ensures that the same-sex marriage issue will go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Planet Waves

The Art of Astrological Storytelling with Eric Francis

Note to Potential Participants: This workshop will be at UAC 2012, but I will be doing a test run in New York City at 1 pm on Monday, Feb. 27, 2012, hosted by Nightlight Astrology. Write to nightlightastrology@gmail.com for more information.

Planet Waves
Eric Francis.

How do you write astrology in a way that others understand you? First you must understand the chart, then express it in ways that don’t rely entirely on astrological references. Metaphors, descriptions of form, color and other sensory data, and most of all, a cohesive narrative will help you relate to your readers and clients. Eric Francis, founder and editor of Planet Waves, has been developing astrology content on the Internet since its nascent days. His articles present world events as personally relevant experiences, and reveal how and why readers can participate in seemingly global changes.

In this workshop he will cover how to write astrology for novices that also breaks new ground and makes sense to those advanced in the field. We will work on the details of description, of phrasing ideas in an understandable way, what you assume your reader knows, and how to tell when you have a good idea to work with. Eric’s central idea is that the best way to ‘market’ your website is with excellent content.

If you’re going to be at UAC, come a day early and catch this workshop on May 23. It’s part of a full-day presentation being taught by Eric with Donna Woodwell. Here is the official website.

Eric Francis is an investigative reporter, photojournalist and essayist who has been a practicing astrologer since 1995. He’s a specialist in new planetary discoveries. He has written for many magazines and newspapers in North America, Europe and Australia, as well as for Astrology.com, StarIQ.com, Rob Brezny’s Televisionary Oracle and many other astrology websites. He’s taught astrology in England, Canada and across the United States at many conferences and events.

 

Planet Waves

Planet Waves

Austin Kleon, artist and author of the books Steal Like An Artist and Newspaper Blackout, has taken a unique approach to horoscope creation. Using newspaper horoscopes, he blacks out the text except for a few choice words to create a new message.
It’s a technique he began playing with to create poems out of redacted newspaper stories in 2005, as a way to beat writer’s block. You can read all 12 of his February horoscopes here. What do you think — did he get your sign right?

 

Planet Waves

We’ve received much gratifying feedback on the 2012 annual edition, which provides readings for all 12 signs and rising signs. Here are a few of the notes that you’ve sent in. Subscribers may still purchase all 12 signs at the discounted price (12 signs for the price of three) or just get your individual sign.

“This is like you took a page from my soul and wrote it out for me to look at and remember, when I get lost, that there are breadcrumbs to knowing again. This is my first impression, that this is beautiful and accurate and poignant for us Tauruses this year. Thank you, Eric!”

Planet Waves
Leo. Painting by Carlos Cedillo.

“Ok were you a plant in my house when I was growing up? The Virgo audio and written parts (so far, I still have yet to listen to part 3) are EXACTLY what I have experienced. The section about sex is so true it is as though you have been privy to my innermost thoughts! How can you know these details and articulate them so well? Thank you SO much for doing what you do so perfectly. Like an intense and beautiful light in a dark room, your insights are a wonder and an inspiration.”

“I ride with great glee on the positive, hopeful, visionary challenge you present in your readings. You pour crystal-clear light into the chalice. Thank you. I have been so thirsty.”

“I just listened to Eric’s 2012 Taurus horoscope and it was AMAZING! I learned some crucial, new information about myself that is really vital to my self-healing. I am just constantly blown away not just by Eric’s ability, but also his compassion and sensitivity.”

“I am absolutely amazed and grateful at how deep you went and how accurately you managed to describe or tap into the essential Leo SELF. Some of which I have kept hidden from all except those closest to me… Much Gratitude, Appreciation and Love to you Eric.”

“This roadmap of a horoscope is phenomenal. You nailed it! I have become aware of the power I possess to change my world and use it on a daily basis. We are all powerful beings, we must acknowledge this power. And thanks to Eric’s prediction, I just might save the world (or at least my little corner of it — with lots of love to boot)!”

“I don’t know where to begin in saying thank you. Such a careful and thoughtful package of insights put together with love and craft and care. I am very grateful for this.”

 

Planet Waves The February monthly horoscope (long edition) was published Wednesday evening, Jan. 25. The long edition of the monthly horoscope is now on a new schedule — it will be the only Planet Waves mailing the week that it comes out, giving the Planet Waves team a chance to slow down a bit once a month. The next long edition monthly horoscope will be published the evening of Weds., Feb. 22. There was not an Inner Space monthly horoscope for February due to an overload of work during the production of the annual edition. The next Inner Space will be published the morning of Tuesday, Feb. 28.

 

Planet Waves

Friday, Feb. 10, 2012. Weekly Horoscope #890. | Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19)

Aries (March 20-April 19) — You may feel challenged by a situation that feels beyond your control — particularly one involving the opinion that others hold about you. Obviously what matters more is the opinion you have of yourself, but you’re especially vulnerable to outside influences right now. It’s the kind of setup where one thing could lead to another, therefore, when any one thing points in a direction that you don’t want to go, quickly make a decision to go another way. You seem to have a particular vulnerability where the opinions of coworkers are concerned, when you’re doing your best to mind your business and do your job. I would say do one better — make a point of doing your work in the most competent and creative way possible — and really shine despite what vibes you may feel are in the air or what anyone may think or say. Very simply, that whole head-trip is meaningless. The good part is that right now, many other elements of your life are beautifully meaningful.

Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. has been published and is available. It is still available at the special subscriber discount price for all 12 signs, or the order price per sign. This year’s annual offers an extended written report plus 90 minutes of audio for each sign and rising sign. You will love it.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — There may be some vivid contrasts in what you’re feeling and what others are perceiving about you. They’re not incompatible, but they are different enough that you need to account for any potential contrast. While on the one hand you may be creatively lit up, and have an abundance of good ideas, other factors suggest you want to be extraordinarily careful where communications are concerned, particularly where anyone in a position of authority is involved. What you say matters, and you cannot take it back. Along a similar line, the quality of any idea is only as good as your ability to express it or put it into action in a useful way. This could be a genuinely fortunate time in your life, when actual opportunities are abundant. But you can take no chances on anything other than careful, honest effort, and sincere gestures to cooperate within any group environment.

Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. has been published and is available. It is still available at the special subscriber discount price for all 12 signs, or the order price per sign. This year’s annual offers an extended written report plus 90 minutes of audio for each sign and rising sign. You will love it.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — As you’ve figured out by now, most spirituality has nothing to do with spirit and most religion has nothing to do with anything Divine. The substitute or the excuse is not the reality, though there are many who would — and do — confuse the matters. You cannot afford to be confused, though at the moment it could happen easily. The most likely entry point for misunderstanding is going to be false belief, so I suggest you subject what you hear and what others try to persuade you to an extra high level of verification. This would count for anything that you find is emotionally disturbing or where you get the sensation that you’re shutting down because you’ve encountered some information. That shutdown sensation may be precisely the clue you need to know that something is simply wrong. But doing nothing about it is not a useful option. At the very least, a clear decision is called for.

Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. has been published and is available. It is still available at the special subscriber discount price for all 12 signs, or the order price per sign. This year’s annual offers an extended written report plus 90 minutes of audio for each sign and rising sign. You will love it.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — This week’s Full Moon may still have you feeling like you just got off an entire afternoon on the teacup ride. Clearly, you’ve taken a few steps to renegotiate some of the more sensitive situations in your life, yet you likely figured out how much more you have to change. One particular situation where push came to shove contains a lot of good information for you, and I suggest you do some data mining and make the most of what you learn. There is something fundamental you can discern about your own nature and that of someone close to you. We may be talking about your relationship to a group. The truly important thing to focus on is how to make sure that your values, opinions and sense of presence do not take second place, or get swallowed by, some entity seemingly larger than yourself. Yet the way to distinguish yourself is not with how ‘different’ you are, but with the power and beauty of your gradually awakening sense of self-worth.

Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. has been published and is available. It is still available at the special subscriber discount price for all 12 signs, or the order price per sign. This year’s annual offers an extended written report plus 90 minutes of audio for each sign and rising sign. You will love it.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — Your relationships are in a delicate spot, and you can help yourself immensely by being the person who defuses any tension and lets any seeming insult roll off your back. This may not be easy, because you’re almost as edgy as certain people around you — almost but not exactly. This is all going to come down to communication, which means being a specialist in understanding everyone’s motives: certain individuals around you, certain dynamics as they manifest in a group, and of course keeping a pulse on your own inner currents. Here is the thing to remember — life is more flexible than you remember it being any time in the recent past. Opinions are subject to change, facts are subject to reinterpretation and any situation you may encounter has many negotiable points. What will make that flexibility available is creativity: that is, imagination, seeing the possibilities, and knowing that any problem has a solution waiting to be discovered or invented.

Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. has been published and is available. It is still available at the special subscriber discount price for all 12 signs, or the order price per sign. This year’s annual offers an extended written report plus 90 minutes of audio for each sign and rising sign. You will love it.

Introducing the Planet Waves All Access Pass for 2012

Last year we offered an All Access Pass for subscribers who wanted access to everything we offer in a calendar year. The response from our All Access subscribers was overwhelmingly positive, and we are happy to once again offer one of our most popular products: the Planet Waves All Access Pass for 2012. One price gets you a subscription to the weeklies and all other products on Planetwaves.net through December of 2012.

Planet Waves

Using one password for everything, which you choose yourself, you’ll have easy access to every product, including birthday reports and special audio recordings, weekly email service, the annual edition, and whatever additional projects we create. It’s a great discount on a year of our work.

We trust that this idea is a fun way to meet your needs, whether you use astrology for daily spiritual inspiration, therapeutic purposes or pragmatic decision-making. And it’s truly a valuable resource for students of Astrology.

With the All Access Pass you’ll receive:

– Tuesday/Friday Email editions of Planet Waves weekly content and horoscopes. Follow Eric’s weekly and monthly interpretations for all of 2012.

– All sign birthday/ascendant audio for 2012. This is almost like getting a personal consultation with Eric for yourself and any loved ones whose astrology you track. Each audio report includes a fresh perspective on current transits and how they extend into the future, along with a special tarot reading for that sign.

– Your choice of the 2012 or 2013 annual edition, all 12 signs. This book-length online publication includes written and audio segments, is accessible by password at any time, and always meets rave reviews by readers who refer to it throughout the year for its long-range, big-picture guidance.

For More Benefits of the All Access Pass, Visit This Page.


 

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — You would be wise to pull your punches over the next few days — that is to say, meet aggression with something other than aggression. This won’t be easy but it’s definitely possible. If something makes you angry, start by shifting perspectives and figure out where someone is coming from. Merely empathizing with them will have a healing effect from the outset of the discussion or encounter. You will then be less inclined to think or act in a way that is self-judgmental — which is one of the best ways to defuse tense situations. You are the one who is dealing with the inner-violence dynamic. The person you’re connecting with is working through a mix of an identity crisis and self-deception. Therefore, be honest with yourself, listen with care, and set the example that there’s another way of looking at the world. Once you actually observe and acknowledge that, the whole relationship will shift.

Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. has been published and is available. It is still available at the special subscriber discount price for all 12 signs, or the order price per sign. This year’s annual offers an extended written report plus 90 minutes of audio for each sign and rising sign. You will love it.

Libra (Sep. 22 - Oct. 23)

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Mars retrograde (now through April 13) is about you turning a corner in your relationship to fear. The thing about fear is that it seems so real, yet it so rarely works out to be true. Have you ever noticed that? Here is the thing about fear that is true, in my experience: it points to an energy source. What could be creative potential is converted into something, heavily tinged by the negative elements of the imagination, and something ‘unreal’ is created. The objective your charts seem to be describing is learning how to convert fear back into something creative. This would start first with feeling the fear or inner tension, acknowledging the inherently neutral nature of energy. Then notice how you color it one way or the other; how you make it into whatever it is. Though it’s emotionally difficult, stay with the feeling a little longer than you might otherwise, so you can get to the good stuff.

Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. has been published and is available. It is still available at the special subscriber discount price for all 12 signs, or the order price per sign. This year’s annual offers an extended written report plus 90 minutes of audio for each sign and rising sign. You will love it.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — One theme of this season is discerning what you think from what is true. Thoughts are powerful in that they have the power to subsume the mind. Whether you believe in ‘manifestation’, thoughts are creative, and they can also be destructive. It’s not a coincidence that the most destructive ones are those that are not true, by which I mean, the ones that are based on fear, attack or have no basis in verifiable reality. Yet one challenge you face is discerning those thoughts from what is real for you. The easiest way to tell the difference is going to be by the results. What leads to a creative outcome was a creative thought; what leads to conflict was a destructive or deceptive thought. To use this method of discernment you’ll need to track your mental process, through the actions it leads to, and then observe what happens. Think of this as observing yourself, which is a vital skill any time, but especially with Mars traveling retrograde for the next few months.

Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. has been published and is available. It is still available at the special subscriber discount price for all 12 signs, or the order price per sign. This year’s annual offers an extended written report plus 90 minutes of audio for each sign and rising sign. You will love it.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 - Dec. 22)

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — You need to apply effort, but a certain kind that to you might feel passive. The idea is to slip into the flow, and know when you’re there. You’re in one of the richest and most abundant creative moments for many moons — though this also has a potentially disruptive quality if you don’t ride the tiger just right. This is why I am suggesting a move-with-the-energy, no-resistance approach to what you have to do, and for engaging with the thoughts and ideas that pass through you. Definitely keep a notebook, and remember that not everything is worth acting on — but nearly everything will be worth considering, and some will be worth developing. Ideas for career development may have to wait, but it’s never too early to prepare with knowledge, strategies and most meaningfully, with a vision for what you want to do. Remember, visions develop in layers, and are combined of adding what you want and removing what you don’t want.

Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. has been published and is available. It is still available at the special subscriber discount price for all 12 signs, or the order price per sign. This year’s annual offers an extended written report plus 90 minutes of audio for each sign and rising sign. You will love it.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — I suggest you be cautious of any ideas that equate money to power. They are likely to be turned against you. You can think of money as creative potential or energy, but that is different than this thing we call power, as in the power to get people to do things, or to motivate you to action. If you’re looking for motives or inspiration, find more imaginative ones. You might think in terms of what inspires people to cooperate toward a creative goal, or any goal, for that matter. These days it seems that ideas have more energy than cash when it comes to focusing the energy of groups, and there’s certainly no shortage of those right now. I would note that there is a bold, new quality to what is coming through, which may seem to challenge your preference for what is tried and true. Yet it’s a fact that time marches on, and you’ve been trying to light the fires of progress for a long time.

Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. has been published and is available. It is still available at the special subscriber discount price for all 12 signs, or the order price per sign. This year’s annual offers an extended written report plus 90 minutes of audio for each sign and rising sign. You will love it.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — One of the defining characteristics of our moment is the refusal to think in terms of consequences. Notably, this is happening at a time when a lot of consequences of the past are emerging for everyone to notice. An aspect between the Sun in your birth sign and a small, potent object called Nessus, are a reminder to think your plans and desires through. Consciously consider a diversity of what-ifs. This is not for the sake of ‘worry’ but rather for the sake of considering your options based on the potential of what they might create. At the same time you’re doing this, you may be experiencing a boomerang effect of things that you initiated in the past and to which you did not devote this consideration. Now is the time to make the necessary corrections, one at a time, as you become aware of what needs to be done. Note that some will require going through layers to get to the core of the matter.

Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. has been published and is available. It is still available at the special subscriber discount price for all 12 signs, or the order price per sign. This year’s annual offers an extended written report plus 90 minutes of audio for each sign and rising sign. You will love it.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — There seem to be many hidden factors at work in your life, though the most significant, useful and creatively rich are the ones you can see, feel and hear. Certain factors in the astrology suggest that you have a line into the unseen aspects of your life, which you can navigate intuitively. Therefore, use your senses. Look and listen for opportunities, both to express yourself and to exchange with others. Most of all, feel what you’ve got: notice your resources, your potential and how much freedom you actually have to make choices. The truth is that many options are open, and your freedom is available to the extent that you can mix potential with focusing power. To get that equation right, it’s necessary to work both sides, and I suggest you experiment with one and then the other till you can put them both together. If you keep your eyes open and your mind on your priorities, that ability will come sooner rather than later.

Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. has been published and is available. It is still available at the special subscriber discount price for all 12 signs, or the order price per sign. This year’s annual offers an extended written report plus 90 minutes of audio for each sign and rising sign. You will love it.

About that Rapture (or, What is a Sex Scandal?)

Dear Friend and Reader:

As I write today’s issue, the Gemini Sun is moving into an exact square with Chiron, still in full effect Friday, and this has been stirring up a lot of hot air and tales of wounded men. Through today and into the weekend, the Sun then aspects Pluto (a quincunx from Gemini to Capricorn) and through the holiday weekend makes a trine to Saturn. That’s a lot of contact between the Sun and outer planets, nearly all of which are concentrated at the beginnings of astrological signs.

Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain — here, in the form of a twister photographed by a NOAA storm chaser in 1973. There were 80 tornadoes in the United States Wednesday; even the Hudson Valley where I live, a mountainous region, is under a tornado watch as of Thursday night. Credit: NOAA.

While that tumultuous Saturn-Pluto square seemed to be behind us, it’s still within just five degrees of orb — just fine to have a strong effect. Saturn is getting ready to station direct, so it’s all charged up with piss and vinegar (and Libra-styled, impeccably dressed).

It’s been another week of sex scandals coming out into the open; and it’s been another week of environmental disasters. The world didn’t end last Saturday. Followers of ‘prophet’ Harold Camping, who had predicted the Rapture for 6 pm on May 21, were disappointed — but I just don’t get why. Wednesday, there were 80 tornadoes in the United States, including a massive one that came through Joplin, Missouri; 232 are missing, and the death toll is uncertain.

This comes on top of the most massive floods since the 1920s (much of the Mississippi River Valley is still underwater), which came on the heels of another week of ultra-high-powered tornadoes, including the one that ripped through Tuscaloosa, Alabama. These, by the way, are not any ordinary tornadoes that might take out part of a block or one side of the street. They are part of massive storm cells that defy comprehension, leveling entire neighborhoods. I personally doubt these are natural events. As I deduced in an article earlier this year called Here at the Edge of the World, these could well be manipulated events using nearly century-old technology created by Nikola Tesla.

There is some video going around featuring one of Wednesday’s tornadoes shredding a tractor-trailer as it speeds down the highway. To see the video you would not believe anything (such as a germ) survived, but the driver landed someplace with just a fractured shoulder and lived to tell the story, albeit a bit stoically.

As rescuers arrived in Joplin to find what one described as a “smoky, barren wasteland,” Eric Cantor, the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, said that disaster relief funds could be approved for Joplin only if another item were cut from the federal budget, so as not to add to the federal budget deficit — this, as people search the ruins for their loved ones. The same people, I might add, whose taxes pay Eric Cantor and his colleagues.

This is a little like making sure your phone bill is paid up before you dial 911 to report a fire. They never say that when they bomb somebody. “Yes, general, you can have these cruise missiles, as long as we cut from the aircraft carrier budget.” (You know how there are those people who make your cat hunch down, bristle and make that weird, low growl when they come within 100 feet? That’s how I get when I see Eric Cantor. Out of curiosity, I checked his chart the other day, and it’s every bit as pleasant as breaking glass. Perhaps I’ll do an edition titled, “Just What Exactly is an Asshole?” Aaah yes, my brother and fellow child of God.)

Meanwhile, Congress is getting ready to cut the tornado forecasting budget, which could reduce by half the accuracy of those predictions — which by the way save a lot of lives because the few minutes of warning provided by the tracking system helps many people get to a safe place before their home is splintered.

In other news, straight from the Sun square Chiron files, Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb general accused of ordering the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, was arrested this week after a 16-year hunt.

And in the midst of this, we still have time for appreciating sex scandals. Let’s see, John Edwards, the charming guy who was a presidential contender in 2004 and 2008, may be facing charges for using campaign funds to bribe people to keep hush about an extramarital affair. Arnold Schwarzenegger kept a relationship and child with a household employee secret from his wife (and the American people) for 10 years. Newt Gingrich is all over the news with his $250,000 line of credit at Tiffany’s; a true man of the people. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund, is free (under house arrest) on a $6 million bail package after allegedly raping a woman who came to clean his hotel suite [we have been covering this on the Planet Waves blog].

Sen. John Ensign resigned his senate seat earlier in the month after bribing people to keep quiet about one of his affairs; his case has been turned over to federal prosecutors. Ensign is the guy who said in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, “Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded. For those who say that the Constitution is so sacred that we cannot or should not adopt the Federal Marriage Amendment, I would simply point out that marriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation.”

This all sounds very Sun square Chiron — the wounded male/father figure, whose injuries are displayed in public. Sun-Chiron contacts call to attention the plight of men. The plight of men is not understood by our culture. I say that boldly. The emotional and spiritual progress of men is also not acknowledged in our culture. And notably, we don’t generally display alleged female adulterers and ogle over them these days, only the men. We can still watch this parade of alleged nogoodniks and think that this has something to do with all men. It does not, but we at least have more fantastic reasons never to take moral advice from a politician.

In her 2000 book Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, Susan Faludi describes the plight of men in the 20th century. It’s a revealing documentary of what our fathers went through, emotionally, professionally and economically. You didn’t really know; he probably never told you — or your mom.

To understand the plight of men, you either have to be observant, or read books. If you hold judgments against men or think they are at some special advantage in society, I suggest you read a book called Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi. She portrays just what happened to your father during the 20th century. And if you think you hate men, or if you think they are inherently untrustworthy, I suggest you read a book called Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly. Far from inherently being cocky power-mongers, we learn from these books that men deal with many of the same insults and injuries inflicted on women, sometimes much worse, with relatively little in the way of refuge offered by women. The men who do abuse power are products of the environments that not only reward but necessitate that abuse. It is a kind of conditioned last resort.

When we look at a sex scandal, though, I would remind you we’re looking at two things. One is the private life of a human being, distorted by the media; the other is our response to that private life when it’s paraded across television screens everywhere. We may get the impression that the underlying theme of all these sex scandals is how men in power abuse that power. I believe the underlying theme is that we have a morbid association with sex. Indeed, it goes far beyond that; sex scandals are about an obsession with death. That’s partly why we watch them on the same TV programs where they talk about wars and holocausts.

Understanding this deeply conditioned obsession is what you might call a spiritual step. It stems from a worldview that existence is divided into good and evil, and that sex is on the evil side. This is an idea that has its roots in Orthodox Christianity and manifests in nearly every sect of that religion; the Christians have always been particularly hateful toward sex, while fascinated by it at the same time. Yet this is an idea with a complex history that has roots in deeper (all but forgotten, but still influential) Persian religious views.

An author named Wayland Young, one of my favorites of all time, explains in Eros Denied how there are mainly four items on the list of things that perpetuate sexual repression, and by that he means the free expression of love and pleasure. It is at first painful to recognize the ways in which we assume sex to be inherently evil, wrong, sinful, dangerous and deceitful — not as an interpretation but based on what we think of as an inherent fact. It takes both an examination of history and some deep self-reflection to see this, but the result will help set you free, in case you’re interested in that. We can learn a lot from our fascination with scandal.

So, those four modes of sexual repression. They are: accident, absence, scandal and suicide — and the first three are merely substitutes for the last one. Basically, every so-called love story we read or see in a movie is infused with one or more of these obstacles to love, and from that we decide that the nature of love is morbid and that death rules over it at all times. This is an option. There are other views of love, but they are not the romantic view, that is, the one certified by the Church of Rome. Romantic love is love associated with death, death usually manifests as accident or suicide; absence manifests as death or its potential in warfare; scandal is often punished by death, or is considered a fate worse than death. Remember that scandal thrives in an environment of loneliness and repression, and is direct evidence of these things.

Young explains something we are familiar with: the church always tells us that it’s more important to love God than to love one another. Yet to most people God is entirely abstract and our fellow mortals are what are real to us. Further, Jesus and others taught that to love one another is to love God. Still, love is considered evil (that is to say, potentially scandalous) because it might lead to sex. If we love one another, we anticipate often the worst and we expect punishment or betrayal. And we don’t count the cost of these fears, much less challenge their validity. Young explains that we don’t need to follow church dogma to imbibe these views; we merely need to be entertained — in particular by romance, of which he describes European literature as “one big example.”

Dido, about to kill herself for no reason at all.

He uses as an example the story of Dido and Aeneas, a late-17th century opera by English composer Henry Purcell, based on the epic written by Roman poet Virgil in 29-19 BC. It tells the story of the Queen of Carthage and the Trojan hero, and is described authoritatively as, “A monumental work in Baroque opera, remembered as one of Purcell’s foremost theatrical works.” In the story, Aeneas leaves Dido when he goes off to found a new kingdom, and then she kills herself.

Young asks: “Now, why do we find the story noble, and why is Purcell’s chaconne [the sung finale of the opera], in its setting, so moving? On the surface, the story is ridiculous. There was nothing in heaven or earth to stop Aeneas taking Dido when he went on to follow his destiny and found Rome. Neither was married, both were young, royal and eligible; a dynastic alliance with the old state of Carthage would have been an advantage to the new state in its formation. But no; off he goes, for no reason, Dido for no reason climbs singing onto her suicidal pyre, and we are all left in tears. Why? Why not giggles?

“Simply because there is no reason. There never is.

“In the Dido and Aeneas legend, there isn’t even a pretense of one, and that is why it moves us; because of its integrity, its refusal to compromise with likelihood. It moves us in the same way it moves us to see a skeleton. Stripped of the lively and interesting flesh, the bare bones make us gasp and say: ‘So that’s what makes us stand up’. Stripped of all invention and incident and especially all excuse, Dido makes us gasp and say: ‘So that’s what makes our feelings stand up’. And mixed with our amazement, there is, as there is with skeletons, pity and a touch of ridicule. St. Augustine liked Dido. Pelagius did not.”

St. Augustine, of course, believed in Original Sin. The less familiar Pelagius, a Celtic monk and an accused heretic, did not. What Young is saying here is that romantic love is regarded as the only true love, and this is regarded as the only suitable format for sex. It is obsessed with death, and out of that obsession, we get many obstacles to love, and with which love is obsessed: and these are primarily accident, absence, scandal and suicide.

Wayland Young, author of “Eros Denied,” Grove Press, 1964. Illustration based on a photo provided by the publisher.

Just flip through the TV channels, browse a magazine rack, stroll around a bookstore or tune into the nearest opera, and this is just about all you see. We might think these things don’t influence us — but they are very nearly all that do.

Novel after novel that purports to be about love is really a story about suicide. Any story not ending in marriage (as comedies do) must be a tragedy (and then all love affairs of romantic literature are doomed). It’s as if we know no other stories; no other plot line. No wonder polyamorous people are terrified to tell people how they live. No wonder so many folks are terrified to love; we are told — and shown — over and over again that the wages of ‘sin’ is death. In essence, this morbid notion has contaminated the whole realm of human love. And a lot of us want it back.

Scandal is only a slightly milder shade of this same sickness; it’s the partially decomposed corpse of love, rather than the bare skeleton. The mere fact that we are fascinated by it, indeed, that we love it, spend money on it, expect it to happen and moreover fear it in our own lives, tells us something about our notion of love. How many people believe that sex must have a victim, and that when we make love, someone must always be betrayed? How many feel that to love is to risk ruin? It’s not that our fears lack some justification; I would question how that justification got there and what beliefs led to its existence.

And all of this — all of it — comes down to the notion of sin, which is based on the religious notion of good and evil. Then sin is always mixed up with sex and murder. We think nothing of this, and it’s so commonplace that we barely even notice; but you really do need to notice if you want to be free of it. Only through noticing can you start to wean yourself off this obsession, which includes most forms of gossip.

Next is to stop being impressed by how supposedly pure you are. Forget it; it’s not true — it’s just what the press release says. Existence is not about purity or perfection, and expecting it to be only leaves us feeling impure and imperfect. John Edwards and Arnie do not make any of us any better as people. They only make us more paranoid and mistrustful, and that does not help love at all.

It helps a lot to allow the people around you to live their truth. We can hardly blame people for keeping secrets when we don’t let them tell us about what they really want, what they really do, or who they really care about. We cannot be honest in an environment where we fear judgment. The more you allow others to live their truth, the more free you will feel to do so. This will gradually shift your environment, and your state of mind, which are closely related.

And at a certain point we must become more fascinated by life, creation and beauty than by loss and disaster. A Course in Miracles puts it succinctly: “Accept no compromise in which death plays a part.”

Oh — and about that rapture thing. It’s not the kind of belief or activity that emotionally fulfilled or creatively driven people take part in. You would have to be pretty frustrated to take that seriously, or to push it on others. Yet that frustration, even in its subtler forms, is starting to add up to something that it would really help if we understood.

Yours & truly,

 

Weekend Astrology: Sun and Moon On the Move

The Moon entered Aries Thursday night at 8:36 pm EDT, promptly making a conjunction to Uranus at 4:19 am EDT Friday. That conjunction will be stirring the pot all day as the Moon makes a square to Pluto at 10:46 am EDT. So this is an emotionally intense overnight and morning, and the Moon is going to be vibrating with this energy for a while. Then at 6:10 pm EDT, the Moon opposes Saturn. I know this sounds complex. Let me see if I can make it super simple. There are three planets aligned in what is called a T-square, which is behind much of the mischief and turmoil of the world right now. And in our current stretch of time, the Moon sweeps through that T-square, knocking all three of those planets like cue ball on a pool table, stirring up all kinds of deep feelings, past and present fears, insecurities and so on.

Meanwhile, as we mentioned yesterday, The Gemini Sun is making a series of aspects as well — to Uranus, Chiron and then Pluto. This is serving up a similar kind of intensity, only of a solar nature: that is, on the level of ego, expression, pride and confidence. The Sun clears that last aspect on Saturday morning. Sun-Pluto in a quincunx (150-degree aspect) is like enforced growth and maturity. It’s less abrupt and shocking than a square, but not quite the easy opening of a trine. It represents a series of situations, most of them what you might call ‘everyday’, that compel ongoing awareness of one’s evolution. So there may be the exaggerated feeling that situations mean more than they do, or that there are ‘lessons’ involved. So ease on through this sensation and take some notes on how you feel.

This is all unusual activity for the Sun. Now, there is some relief when the Sun clears Pluto and approaches a trine to Saturn. This is like a release, and though the Sun is going to be in aspect to Saturn, there’s a sense of ease; think of the Sun and Saturn resonating from one air sign to another (Gemini to Libra). That trine will be applying all weekend, and the trine is exact Wednesday, June 1 — just a few hours before a partial solar eclipse (the Gemini New Moon). I’ll have more to say about that early next week; but I suggest you keep in mind that an eclipse is approaching, and this can come with a sense of pressure. Indeed, the next three lunations are eclipses: a partial solar on June 1, a total lunar on June 15, and another partial solar on July 1. This is to say we’re taking a little ride on an accelerated sky (as if things aren’t going fast enough at the moment). This whole sequence of events may take a little breathing into (as Len Wallick suggested Thursday). I’ll have more to say about the use and experience of eclipses in Tuesday’s edition.

 

Planet Waves FM: Looking For Ourselves Everywhere

This week’s edition of Planet Waves FM includes a discussion of “the end of the world,” the most interesting explanation of Gemini you’ve ever heard, a long rant about advertising and a 70th-birthday shout out to Bob Dylan. Bob, you have something rare: you’re one of the most fantastic artists and chroniclers of your decades — and we all know. The first song break happens at about 29 minutes, with talent provided by Dave Harnetty. Right after that music break is potentially a good time to pause the action if you need to. Here it is in the old player.

 

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, May 27, 2011, #861 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

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

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Listen for the sound of the future calling you. I mean that literally — the information is going to come through your ears. It might be spoken, it might be music, it might be some sound in an urban landscape, or it might be the sound of a natural event — but keep your ears open. That would include the things you hear in dreams, and what is known as clairaudience, a kind of ultraviolet dimension of hearing that some consider a psychic phenomenon. In any event, listen. Listen until you understand what someone is saying, not what you think they’re saying — there is a difference, we all know there is a difference, and we often ignore it. The reason we ignore this feeling of not really knowing is halfway between being lazy and not caring. Repeat back what you’ve heard, and what you think you understand, till you’re sure that you really grasp it. I will pass along my one sentence of advice for young journalists, which is know when you don’t know.

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) — There is a longterm visitor to your sign named Sedna, one of the strangest known objects in our solar system. These visitors that can spend decades moving through one sign tend to color our whole experience of that sign, and Sedna has the theme of nobody is ever good enough. In our world of things, that would translate to nothing is ever good enough. I am not suggesting you settle for second best, or that you suppress the hunger that is so essential to both surviving and thriving on the hotly competitive physical plane. Rather, I am suggesting that you notice how much you have, and how good your life is, rather than making endless lists of all the ways you need to improve. Yes, there are few key areas that are calling out for improvement, and you would do well to focus on them as longterm projects. Yet especially where people are concerned, notice who is around you. Notice the fact that they are taking an interest in your life. Stay open that way.

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) — You seem to have the impulse to rise up against something without being entirely certain what it is. When you’re going to rebel, make sure that you know what you’re rebelling against. The deeper you look, the deeper you will see. For example, you might think you need a revolution in a relationship, which could be true at the same time you’re working through an issue that involves one of your parents, particularly your father. If someone sets an impossibly low standard, you may be holding everyone else to an impossibly high standard. If you find yourself insisting that the people around you wake up and get real, the easiest solution to that is to be real yourself and notice what happens in your environment. You might discover that you’re in the wrong place, and notice somewhere better that you can be. Don’t ‘work to reform the system from within’. Figure out what you want to do, and do it.

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) — You are starting to figure out something about your career path — and the information is arriving neither too soon nor too late; this particular FedEx is right on time. For quite some time, you’ve been under what has seemed like external pressure to change and evolve. True, there have been elements of that, but you also know that outside influences have been pushing you to make long overdue changes that you might not have made otherwise. Now, the time has come to go on the offensive. You need clear goals, and that’s going to require that you have clear boundaries, particularly involving your use of time and space. And you will need to be clear with yourself that there’s a limit to how much you can let your mood influence your efforts on any given day or week. In the immediate moment, you are getting some clear sense about the direction you want your life to take. Envision that future, and begin taking the necessary steps.

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) — There is about to be an eclipse in your 11th solar house, which for you is Gemini. This house is about fitting into your environment, and making the most of that environment. It’s also one of the most visionary houses of the 12. Because you have Gemini in this house, there always seem to be a lot of people involved with your future plans. They always seem to influence you, with their ideas and with their physical presence. Now, however, I suggest you let your own creativity dominate your agenda. You have the power to tune out what may even be an exceptionally loud or demanding influence of some kind. You have the ability to take risks that they might not be willing to take, for benefits that they might not be willing to see. Therefore, listen to yourself. Pay attention to what you know is right, and set the terms of your own existence. I think you will be pleased with the results.

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) — Have you figured out that the division between religion and sex is a fraud? Now would be a good time. Most people underestimate the extent to which they’ve been influenced by religion, whether it’s the pressure to get married, the notion of sin, or the idea that you must strive for the same type of family structure that your parents tried to have (whether or not they succeeded). Looked at one way, you’re at a moment where you can break away from the influences of the past, mainly by making a single decision. The characteristics of this choice are, you know it’s right, and then when you make a move, you feel daunted, guilty or otherwise frightened. This second layer — the fear/guilt layer — is the enforcement boundary that religion has installed. It’s like one of those invisible fences that keeps dogs inside a perimeter that you no longer need to activate once the dog has had a few shocks to the neck. It’s time to take off the collar, look both ways and cross the road.

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) — Remember that while there may be two sides to every story, there is only one version of the truth that’s going to work for you. I suggest you make that the one you know is true, rather than the one you hope is true. The one you know is true will work a lot better for you, even if you like it less; at least you have something solid you can work on and develop. One thing that may be affecting you is the expectation that something you actually recognize as the truth will turn out to be wrong, or based on deception. For a long time, it seemed, any time you took a chance on someone’s word, when it came down to practical matters of experience, facts later came out that proved you wrong. You’re now in a new phase of cultivating trust in both people and situations, but that really amounts to trust in yourself. As you learn to do that, remember to check your instincts against the available facts, and back again.

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) — Most — and by that I mean well over half — of humans are not monogamous, but we are all expected to be, or at least pretend. So why don’t we adjust our expectations to match reality? Aaah, that is a very good question. That question has answers, and those answers point to the need for some other adjustments of our minds to reality. Your solar chart suggests you have a number of options open. Further, I see some clues that you actually like it that way. I suggest you not get down on yourself for failing to live up to some standard of the right kind of person who wants the right kind of relationship and is capable of only that. Rather, it would come as a relief if you would embrace who you are, and who you’re attracted to. It helps to know a mental construction when you see one, such as ‘you’re supposed to be this way’. While ‘society’ may send messages, ultimately we send them to ourselves, and we’re the only ones who can stop.

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) — We are now in the last days of Jupiter in a fire sign, Aries. Its next home will be Taurus. Both of these are passionate signs, but they have a different pattern of how both events and creative impulses unfold. Aries wants everything, right now, but of course this rarely happens. Taurus is willing to wait so long that things sometimes never happen no matter how much we may want them. But Aries has real ideas, and Taurus is a passionate energy, capable of real persistence. For the next year, your task is to combine spontaneity with passion and persistence — the best of all worlds — and proceed steadily. Don’t worry about fast or slow; focus on steady, dependable, documentable progress. Know what you want to do at the beginning of every day, and know what you accomplished at the end of every day. The two may not always match; indeed, they may rarely match — but you will have a dependable marker of progress, and there will be many happy accidents.

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) — You may be feeling like your professional life is all work and very few rewards, and that is partly the result of the demanding and complex times we are living in. But you’re also at the end of a fairly long spell where you’ve had to handle many serious responsibilities, and this has taken an emotional toll on you. You also haven’t fully backed yourself away from the sensation that you live on the edge of a cliff, even though you’re a lot further from that edge than you were, say, three years ago. It’s true that anything can go wrong at any moment, but as Lou Reed said, you can’t count on the worst always happening. And frankly if you don’t act like you’re always expecting the worst, you will live with a sense of potential that starts to feel stronger than your sense of paranoia. Potential means living with a sense of what is possible in the best sense of the idea; that is closely connected to your creativity, which thrives on love and appreciation rather than on fear.

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) — Some longterm plan that has been on hold for a while is now ready to start moving, maybe for the first time. Going back to around late 2008, this idea has been beset or delayed by factors outside of your control. Now that you’ve addressed them, however, you’re unlikely to have a sense of control; rather, that you need to gradually acquire. If you want to accomplish some of your bolder visions, your ability to be disciplined and focused needs to keep pace with your ability to come up with ideas. Remember that any initial idea usually needs to be grounded, developed and evolved over a period of time before it manifests. When it does, it will usually take a form different from the original. Therefore, having good ideas is not enough. You have to work those ideas like clay, see how they look in a new form, and then see if they make it through the kiln. This is the creative process, which is radically different than this abstract thing we call creativity.

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) — You are starting to discover that you’re in financial territory different from what you’ve ever been in. You face many of the same issues as you have in the past, but something is different, and I have an idea what it is. You are beginning to see that your ingenuity and inventive nature are your best financial resources. For these to reveal their full value, you must access them, and use them, and depend on them, every day. For a while this will feel like you’re constantly reinventing yourself, which is actually true. Your sign is one of the most adaptable of them all, so this will be easier for you than it will be for nearly everyone else. The solutions you seek are not one-offs that instantly get you to a new place; rather, you get where you’re going one step at a time, only to discover that certain steps turn out to be quantum leaps. Get used to the fact that you cannot predict these in advance. Just let one moment of clarity or small accomplishment lead to the next, and the next.

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

Through the Looking Glass

Dear Friend and Reader:

Neptune entered Pisces this week. In astrology, one of the measures of significance is how rare an event is. Neptune has not been in this position since 1847, just one year after its discovery, and a good while before the Civil War ripped the United States in half. No living person has experienced this transit before. So that qualifies as news. It’s especially news given that for the past 12 years, Neptune’s presence in Aquarius has worked like a fog machine to obscure the difference between truth and lies, to the degree where many are pleasantly oblivious to any distinction at all.

Planet Waves
Illustration of Humpty Dumpty by John Tenniel, from Through the Looking Glass, 1871.

I realize that playing games with public perception is a time-honored tradition among the rich and powerful. Even as individuals, we have PR departments that work overtime, to make sure people think we’re pure and feckless. But the tools for manipulating perception have never been more influential, and it seems like the minds of most people have never been more susceptible to corruption (unless you count the ministrations of religion, which set us up to believe anything at all).

To be fair, the world has problems more serious than most mortals have any concept of how to confront, deal with or process emotionally. One could argue that denial is a reasonable approach. Yet the background fear level, coupled with that denial, is precisely what makes people so vulnerable to psychic attack. There is a direct relationship between denial of what is going on in the world around us and denial of our own personal material. And at times, the exaggerated sense that there is ‘something wrong with us’ can send the whole mind into denial — and this now has lots of cultural sanction.

Meanwhile, during Neptune in Aquarius, tsunami has become a household word. We have seen the flooding of New Orleans and many, many other places — too many to count (some days it’s hard to tell the difference between a tornado in the Bronx from a flood that covers a swath of New Jersey; it all blends together). Ice caps are melting and sea levels are rising to the point where island nations disappear under the water before our eyes — while climate change deniers tell us it isn’t so.

We’ve witnessed the contamination of the Gulf of Mexico with crude oil, and the federal government is back to issuing deepwater drilling permits for rigs using blowout preventer technology that predates the BP platform explosion. Thursday night, Rachel Maddow had on her program Michael Bromwich, the federal official responsible for issuing those permits. He defended using the old blowout preventers on the grounds that the federal government knew all along that they don’t really work. That’s what he said! It’s supposed to be an acceptable answer! If you would like to have the awakening experience of being really pissed off, here is that video.

For the past decade-plus we have been living with water on the brain. The first major example of a world-changing event under Neptune in Aquarius was the fraudulent impeachment of Bill Clinton — you know, the president who was dealing quite well with the federal deficit. That is to say, under Neptune in Aquarius we have been experiencing a wide-scale failure of logic. Though we can see the roots of this particular thought form going back a long way, the process has accelerated exponentially in these years of Neptune in Aquarius, which are now, finally, drawing to a close. Yet the damage done by floods is insidious.

I speak as someone with a lot of both Neptune and Aquarius in my chart. I respect these influences, and I know how destructive they can be. It is challenging to get your head above water; you have to really want not to drown. In order to function, Aquarius requires intellectual discipline, and Neptune requires discernment and a bit of detachment. When you subtract these, the psychotic politicians and the directors of television commercials set the tone of consciousness. We can, and did, end up with a political system that is ruled by people under no obligation to make any sense; no obligation to have any empathy at all.

Planet Waves
Barack Obama greets Republican mastermind Karl Rove at a White House reception for freshman senators in 2005. Photo by Doug Mills for The New York Times.

Does anyone remember this bit from The New York Times Magazine, written by Ron Suskind? It’s an interview with a presidential aide to George W. Bush, from 2004, and is to me the essence of the Neptune in Aquarius era:

The aide said that guys like me [the author, a Times writer] were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Did you get that? He said, “You, all of you.” His psychic posture is demanding the total submission of the writer and his audience, that is, the whole population, to his own hallucinations. He is saying, we set the terms of reality, we will build our empire on this, and you must surrender (your mind and your will). Do you know who the speaker was? In a recent book, he was revealed to be Karl Rove. It’s no wonder that Rove is the reputed mastermind of the plot to get rid of Julian Assange, the creator of WikiLeaks. We cannot have any leaks of reality (such as our own documents) into this fantasy empire.

Now, it’s one thing that someone says this kind of thing, though it’s more appropriate for Shakespeare or a psychiatrist’s office than you would hope it is for anyone to be saying or even thinking in the White House. It’s another thing that Rove and his colleagues were and apparently still are involved in the military, the economy, the whole world. It’s what Lewis Carroll was getting at when he wrote this passage of Through the Looking Glass:

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’,” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!'”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”

Planet Waves
All paranoia, all the time — Glenn Beck, live and on the air, for now. Photo from Fox PR department.

Speaking of anything meaning anything, Glenn Beck didn’t last but a few days with Neptune in Pisces before he bailed out of, or was heaved overboard from, primetime TV. The imminent end of his psychopathology hour was announced by Fox this week, though sadly, no date was given. Beck has viewers, but apparently not sponsors (besides those selling survivalist gear, and gold, which qualifies as such). As Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out, you can’t really sell cars or insurance policies or anything particularly useful when you’re also telling people the world is going to end.

The End, however, is a popular item among the populace. Expectation of the world ‘ending’ is the ultimate release from responsibility, from the drive for growth and, well, from just about everything else in our particular world and on our level of existence. In this context The End can translate to, ‘Why should I bother going for that new job, if the currency system is going to collapse?’

Because The End is near, you don’t really have to do anything. We don’t have to do anything, such as set about the challenging task of solving global problems that have amassed during the past century; why bother? Here is the thing not said often enough about the many, many people, including every single fundamentalist Christian politician, who are into The End. It’s the projection of individual mortality onto the collective. In other words, when a person is not mature enough to have a conscious relationship to death, one way out is to say that ‘the world is going to end’ and thus ‘we are all going to die’.

Suppressed orgasm — the very stock-in-trade of religion — pushes conflict around death to the level of a psychic frenzy. Everything, including every relationship, becomes a survival drama. It is a condition wherein the mind cannot let go or embrace the idea of change. If political leaders know a lot of people are simply not dealing with death or sex (matters of the 8th house), then the money aspect of the 8th house is open to being pillaged. Money becomes the symbol of survival and the symbol of power, and that in turn can be used to manipulate anything.

Proposed Shutdown of the Federal Government

At the moment we are witnessing a drama wherein the federal government may be shut down today. I guess this happens every few years (the last time was about 15 years ago), but I don’t remember any such incidents directly. As it’s being explained to us, the Tea Party movement’s new representatives in Congress are pushing the more traditional Republicans into an agenda disguised as ‘austerity measures’.

Planet Waves
Pushed by the Tea Party movement, Speaker of the House John Boehner is trying to use the budget crisis as a way to get rid of Planned Parenthood and take regulatory power from the EPA. Wire service photo of the great man.

Congress could pass a temporary law to keep things funded as the different sides work out the issues. This has been going on for a while, and each time, the Mad Tea Party tacks on conditions: We will vote for this temporary extension if you cut this much more money and include this brilliant idea.

The latest version of such a temporary spending law was passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives yesterday, which includes 60 measures that read like the right-wingnut wish list: de-funding Planned Parenthood, taking away regulatory power from the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce clean air and water laws, stripping from ATF its ability to collect information on people who want to buy multiple weapons, and on and on. There is an agenda in operation. The problem with these wild conservative proposals is that they are unpopular with most Americans, so it’s necessary not only to sneak them in but to force them though using this kind of blackmail. Then they get on TV and talk about how they want to be fiscally responsible. In truth, the Mad Tea Party agenda includes threatening to cut funding to the troops (which means their families) and hold that as ransom in order to withhold reproductive healthcare for young women.

This is similar to how Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, has tried to bust his state’s public employee unions as a supposed austerity measure. In fact, he created Wisconsin’s budget deficit by giving huge tax credits to big companies. And the unions themselves are budget-neutral; they merely give a lot of money to Democratic candidates. This strategy is becoming standard fare for our times — create a fiscal emergency, then do everything in the name of responding to that emergency. Here we have an example of pure Shock Doctrine politics: everything is done in the name of a crisis, or of responding to an enemy, and generally in the name of fear. It still amazes me to see my fellow human beings stand in front of a TV camera and spew out lies right in front of everyone. It amazes me that we cannot look at them and recognize: these people are so messed up emotionally, how do we trust them with that much power?

Planet Waves
Fred Rogers testifies before Congress on the importance of Public Television on May 1, 1969 when Nixon was threatening funding to the program. You can watch the video here — it is amazing.

Among the other items on this same legislative agenda are getting rid of Public Television, NPR, Medicaid and Social Security. Clearly, our nation is in the grip of an opportunistic infection of the mind, based on its weakened integrity. Under this theory, tax cuts for the rich remain the answer to all the world’s ills. I watch a lot of cable news. I keep hearing guys from the Mad Tea Party come out of the room and say, “Yeah this is gonna create jobs. Lots and lots of jobs.” Most newscasters just let this go by unquestioned, and the general public — outraged by high taxes — just swallows it whole. But they (which is to say we) don’t get the tax breaks!

I am wondering how much Americans must have taken away from them before they figure out that something is missing. How long before we wake up from our ADD around social consciousness and realize we can do something? I wonder what we think is the purpose of all these taxes we pay. If the social programs all disappear, all we’ll have are bombs and guns. For those who live in a world of pain and fear, that does make some sense.

I will add, however, that the introduction of Chiron and Neptune in Pisces is a game-changer. Like anything involving Pisces, it may take a while to get tangible results. The first thing that will change is perception. Outer planet transits always shift the whole climate and our perception of the world around us. For a while the lies will be transparent before we figure out what to do about them. There are other game-changers that are en route, particularly Uranus square Pluto. That is the action piece. I’ve said in previous articles that this presumes something against which to take action — and now we’re starting to see what that is. The next essential step is coming from a positive vision for the future, and I know that seems like a heck of a lot to ask right now.

When In Doubt, Raise the ‘Safe’ Level

Also this first week of Neptune in Pisces, Japan dumped 15,000 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. Engineers managing the cleanup of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant were making room in ‘low’-level waste tanks to hold high-level water (some of it reported to be 5 million times more radioactive than the allowable levels). Thus, the ‘low’-level water had to be flushed, and the only place to flush it was the Pacific. The official line is that these persistent toxins will he harmlessly absorbed by the ocean, but one would need to have no understanding of biology to believe that. These toxins will migrate through the entire globe through a process called diffusion, while at the same time moving up the food chain in a process called bioconcentration.

Planet Waves
Finally, a clear image of the external damage at Fukushima. This picture, taken by a small drone aircraft, shows the destroyed reactor building of Unit 4, the one with the spent fuel pond that kept bursting into flames. The photo shows the scale of the building, which has been nearly impossible to see in previous photos. Photo: Air Photo Service Co. Ltd., Japan. More photos here.

A strong aftershock hit northeastern Japan on Thursday. Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS) reported: “Today’s earthquake (which we have seen variously reported as between 7.1 and 7.9 in magnitude) has knocked out power in some sections of northeast Japan. The single-unit Higashidori Boiling Water Reactor and the Rokkasho reprocessing plant have lost offsite power and are running on emergency diesel generators. Offsite power may also have been lost to the three-unit Onagawa nuclear complex, although there is a report that power remains for the reactors themselves, but not for the fuel pools and that those are relying upon emergency diesel generators.”

Meanwhile, as radiation continued to spread across the United States, the EPA raised the supposedly ‘safe’ level of radiation exposure — something that Japan did recently as well. According to The Tennessean, a Gannett newspaper (associated with USA Today), “The EPA is preparing to dramatically increase permissible radioactive releases in drinking water, food and soil after ‘radiological incidents’, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.”

The newspaper reported that the rule does not require public airing before it’s decided upon. The article continued, “Drinking water, for example, would have a huge increase in allowable public exposure to radioactivity, the group says, that would include: a nearly 1000-fold increase in strontium-90, a 3000 to 100,000-fold hike for iodine-131 and an almost 25,000 rise for nickel-63.” Gee, when the going gets unsafe, redefine safe. This would not be the first time in history that the ‘safe level’ has been raised to just above the probable exposure level. That’s how it’s done with PCBs and dioxin. You clean as much as you can (or feel like paying for), and call it good.

For some reason this reminds me of Alan Hale, the state legislator in Montana who is arguing in favor of abolishing drunk driving laws. He also happens to be a bar owner. Here is some video of that. But back to nuclear power.

Planet Waves
Physicist Michio Kaku, one of the founders of string theory, has been outspoken about the nuclear crisis in Japan. Photo: BBC World Service.

Michio Kaku, a professor of physics at City College of New York, is warning that “three raging meltdowns” are underway at Fukushima. Here is that video interview.

But probably the most distressing news of the week came in the form of speculation, though based on history and the available facts. Yoichi Shimatsu, a Hong Kong–based environmental writer and former editor of the Japan Times Weekly, has proposed that the nuclear installation at Fukushima was housing a covert nuclear weapons program. She believes that several of the reactors were functioning as enrichment devices rather than as civilian power plants.

She writes:

“The smoke and mirrors at Fukushima 1 seem to obscure a steady purpose, an iron will and a grim task unknown to outsiders. The most logical explanation: The nuclear industry and government agencies are scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan’s civilian nuclear power plants.

“A secret nuclear weapons program is a ghost in the machine, detectable only when the system of information control momentarily lapses or breaks down. A close look must be taken at the gap between the official account and unexpected events.”

The Way Forward, Through Pisces

I recognize that none of this is pleasant to think about. But it all points to the need for something better. If we want the quality of life on our planet to get better, we need ideas, and we need ways to apply those ideas. But first we are going to need to understand our thinking, and the thinking of the people who are pushing the world into various nightmare scenarios. Or maybe we don’t need to understand them, actually — maybe we only need to understand ourselves. That might actually work.

For example, if we challenge our tendency to believe lies, that blocks the process of deception. It actually stops the pathogen of deceit in its tracks. That is about shifting our own motives toward valuing truth. Sooner or later, we will need to face this shadow that is cast over humanity, yet for now we can begin with our own hearts, minds and souls.

One of the most dysfunctional beliefs is that what we think, feel or do does not make a difference. That is to say, if you ask the question, “What does my being more informed about nuclear power do to prevent a nuclear accident?” you may get a null answer: logically, it may make no difference at all.

You may decide that, if you live within 100 miles of a nuclear power plant, you need an evacuation plan. That will help you and your family but it won’t help solve the larger problem. In fact, however we analyze it, there may not seem to be an answer to the larger problem. We can make token gestures, which make small contributions, which might add up — but that takes a good bit of self-convincing.

So what if we take the whole situation as a matter of personal integrity? What if that’s the only thing on the line? What if we make just one decision — to stop believing lies? That is by default a commitment to be more discerning. It is a decision to be better informed. It implies a decision to be more honest with ourselves, and in turn, more honest with others. Doing this would shift our relationships toward integrity. I know we don’t usually think of this as being associated with Pisces, but that’s what time it is.

Yours & truly,

Eric Francis

Check this audio announcement for information about Eric’s
new e-book, Light Bridge: The 25-Year Span.


Planet Waves

Light Bridge: The 25-Year Span by Eric Francis is the story of irrevocable change told through the lens of astrology, history and self-awareness. This is a carefully selected set of articles and essays by Eric written since 1987, which take you through the transition of the millennium into 2012. The essays are a continuing meditation on the experience of confronting global changes from long before anyone was certain they would really happen. It begins in a spiritual community in 1987 and comes to the present day, including a look at the astrology of the 2012-2015 era. Included are Eric’s best essays on sweeping world changes, relationships and maintaining some sense of one’s inner life in the midst of it all. The book, available as a printable PDF, is 174 pages and is illustrated by Carol McCloud. It’s just $14.95. It’s the perfect companion to Light Bridge, the 2011 annual edition of Planet Waves. Purchase your copy here.

 

Mercury Retrograde: A Change of Mental Perspective

Dear Friend and Reader:

Mercury stations retrograde on Wednesday. This is a little like turning up the volume on our mental environment.

Planet Waves
Poster by Kevin Paulsen. Photo by Eric Francis.

And that environment has been overwhelming lately. Monday’s news that plutonium is leaking from one of the crippled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant is a reminder of what you might encounter on an hour-to-hour basis, if you pay attention. For more than two weeks, events at this fairly typical nuclear plant have been spinning out of control — the latest in a very long series of developments that are reminding us how close to the edge the world really is. Since Sept. 11, 2001 we have lived through a decade of one calamity after the next. Just how many of the ‘one of the worst earthquakes ever’ can we have in a few years?

Heck, we’ll go back merely to the first week of January, when the prevailing news was birds falling out of the sky by the thousands and fish floating to the surface of streams. If that seemed a little ominous, it actually was; the day after we reported that, the shooting happened in Tucson. Then there was a wave of revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa. Then the corporate puppet Teabag party governor tried to shut down the public unions, leading to three weeks of the most massive U.S. protests since the 1960s. Some governments gave in; others started shooting at their people (Bahrain, Syria, Libya). Then came the quake and nuclear crisis in Japan, which, by the way, is every bit as serious as it was the first day; the threat of a meltdown is just as great. Radiation is leaking into the atmosphere, the groundwater, the oceans and has spread across half of Japan. Then the US, NATO and its allies went to war in Libya, with no plan to get out.

So, let’s be clear. While the world needs attention and its systems need updating and rethinking, and while things fall apart, those who have taken over society are spending most of their time making war and taking money. The two are related. And one way or another, this is affecting all of us: energetically, emotionally, spiritually, economically. If you happen to know people in Japan, you will be feeling that personally. If you’re one of many people who loves Japanese culture for some inexplicable reason, you are feeling this. If you live near a nuclear power plant, you’re feeling how vulnerable we are. You have probably never had to abandon your home and the pattern of your life as a refugee, but the way the world is, you may be able to relate to the feeling.

I don’t care how deep a person has their head stuffed in pillows as the alarm clock goes off again and again: everyone is feeling the global call to awakening. For some this is exciting, for some it’s annoying and for others it’s literally terrifying. As you watch videos of that tsunami sweeping away cars, tractor-trailers and warehouses full of goods, you realize the power of the natural world to impact our lives; the order of nature becomes apparent, and I think that’s liberating.

Planet Waves
Everyone’s favorite nuclear power plant operator.

It is easy to lose context in the midst of all of this; to lose connection with the greater scheme of existence. It’s also possible to be brought into connection with that greater scheme, with others who care, with others who want to grow and make a difference rather than freak out. I would remind you — maybe I don’t have to — that plenty of people are actually, genuinely scared. By that, I mean certain people among your coworkers, friends and neighbors, who are feeling the potential for everything to fall apart, or maybe even yourself. I mean kids who might have a clue what’s going on in the world, yet not fully understand or have a way to process the information.

One morning about 10 days ago, I woke up, looked out my bedroom window and saw the rain dripping from the neighbor’s roof. I was grateful it was not radioactive rain. Here is the truth. We may not be able to say that for long, and in fact there is a large, densely populated part of the world where rainwater is carrying elements like cesium and iodine. Tap water as far as Tokyo is contaminated, and radiation has turned up in many crops. Plutonium has escaped from Unit 3 and has been found outside the plant. Remember that there are numerous nuclear plants with the same design currently operating in the United States. I would note also that while actual increases in radiation are not apparent everywhere, there are some individuals who can feel an energetic breach like this, or an injury to the Earth, no matter where they are.

And here is something else: there may be a lot of people who just don’t care. Part of the skill of being alive now is not letting the zombies and the green, three-eyed space aliens get you down. Part of how you do that is by maintaining a sense of who you are. Note that this is not usually experienced as certainty but rather as an active question. Once you become comfortable with the question, you will be a lot more comfortable with who you are. If you keep asking the question the same way, you may get frustrated. Therefore events and astrology come along to shake up the whole matter — and that is what Mercury retrograde in Aries is about.

Here is a short summary of that transit, which goes from March 30 through April 23.

Mercury represents the mental environment. It is not merely the ‘theme of communication’ or ‘the mind’, but rather where consciousness intersects the world around us. The two patterns overlay one another and create a totally unique pattern within our minds. Because it’s so compelling, and dominates consciousness so thoroughly, we tend to associate this pattern not merely with what we are experiencing, but also with who we are.

Planet Waves
Chart for Mercury stationing retrograde.

Aries, where Mercury will be retrograde, has lots to say about who we are and who we think we are — and at the moment Aries is the scene of a revolution. When Mercury stations retrograde Wednesday there will be six major points collected there — the mean lunar apogee (Black Moon Lilith) on the Aries Point, Uranus one degree away, the Sun, Jupiter, Eris and Mercury. Not shown on any commercial chart is a point you’ve read about here — 1992 QB1.

Here are a few highlights:

Mercury is making a series of conjunctions to Eris. The furthest known planet from our Sun, Eris represents the personality chaos that marks our era in history. It’s the obsession with not knowing who we are. There is a lot of freedom in over-emphasizing that ‘you don’t know’ — such as being liberated from the need for authenticity. Once you tune into who you are, the next logical step is to stop bullshitting yourself and anyone else. Awareness of self implies commitment. You can gradually become powerful in that way that you always struggled with not being. Mercury is stationing retrograde very close to Eris. It’s just made a conjunction and over the next five weeks as the retrograde works out (the process is longer than the actual 24 or so days that Mercury’s apparent motion is in reverse), there will be two more. This is an opportunity to see your issues for what they are, and to assemble the seeming pieces of yourself into a cohesive idea.

Mercury is close to a conjunction with 1992 QB1. This is the planet that helps us get past the notion that ‘death rules’. I suggest we take a look at how deeply and unconsciously we accept that. In our current version of the world, whoever has the power to kill is the boss. Have you ever considered this one? Oh, Mr. Policeman has a gun. My husband might beat the snot out of me (and kill me). That nuclear power plant might blow up — we better treat the guy making millions off of poisoning our kids as a god. Taking that to another level, we are fond of the phrase, ‘death and transformation’. Oh, doesn’t that just make the notion of change sound like a wheelbarrowful of fun? 1992 QB1, as the first planet [ever] discovered beyond Pluto, offers another notion of change; another idea of transformation. Its energy feels more like gradually slipping into orgasm than someone coming along and saying, ‘change or die’. The thing is, this requires willingness.

Planet Waves
Tags on the wall, Kingston, NY. Photo by Eric Francis.

Mercury is making a series of conjunctions to Jupiter and oppositions to Saturn. This sounds like an experiment in understanding the difference between willingness and resistance. Human consciousness is not merely dualistic; it requires contrast to be able to sense distinction. People who either blur everything into one gray mess or see the world hotly polarized in stark black and white are not seeing the subtle shades. Jupiter and Saturn are more similar than most astrologers acknowledge, representing complimentary rather than contradictory energies. It just helps to know the difference between the way the water feels and the way the edge of the pool feels, and Mercury getting into the opposition of Jupiter and Saturn is here to offer us the sensation of that contrast.

Part of the contrast is the difference between self and other. Oppositions imply relationship. On the most basic level of astrology, Aries represents self and Libra represents other and our relationship to other. We now have a kind of revolution happening in the sign of self, complete with the planet of revolution (Uranus) right there. But we tend to get stuck in out-moded concepts of relationship and then caught in the confusion of not understanding why we feel so trapped. Conventional wisdom holds that there is no other way, except to seek self in other and then get stuck there. But at the moment the influence of self-awareness is so strong we’re likely to figure out that we don’t need another to be who we are; we can be who we are and relate to others if we want.

One last. The Moon is conjunct Neptune waaaaaaay at the end of Aquarius. There have been more than 150 Moon-Neptune conjunctions in Aquarius over the past 12 years or so, and now there are just a very few more before Neptune takes up residence in Pisces in 2012; and just one more before Neptune visits Pisces starting next week. Cutting a long story short, the conjunctions in this last degree of Aquarius are an opportunity to help us transform our emotional body into a living instrument tuned to subtle energies (rather than the sticky, heavy thing that we so often experience it to be). Most of what we think of as growth, transformation and healing involves our emotional body, which is the thing that tends to get stuck in the past no matter how smart we are. However, part of the challenge is about doing this at a time when there is an enormous emotional strain on the world, indeed many; it is daring to open up and let yourself feel at such a moment.

Mercury retrograde offers us many chances to shift our mental perspective as an experience and not merely as an intellectual concept. As you take this ride you can actually experience different sensations based on seeing the world differently, which is another way of feeling your own existence differently. That starts with consciously exploring with curiosity and willingness rather than resistance and judgment. Those are your basic choices. And in them more is contained than you may think — for example, we are actually face to face with the potential to spark a global awakening.

Catch you Friday with a weekly horoscope.

Yours & truly,

Eric Francis

PS, looking at the minor planets, there is also a triple conjunction of three asteroids — House, Hera and Memoria. It’s time for something other than jealousy, shame and control drama to rule the roost. True, one has to have some authentic confidence to allow in another idea. It’s possible, and it’s easier if we’re willing to consider the alternatives.

PPS, here is the article about the most recent Mercury station direct, in early winter. And here is the article about the corresponding Mercury station retrograde three weeks earlier.

Check this audio announcement for information about Eric’s

new e-book, Light Bridge: The 25-Year Span.


Planet Waves

Attention Light Bridge Subscribers: Light Bridge audio readings are now available for half the signs — the rest are coming soon! 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.

 

Light Bridge: The 25-Year Span

Dear Friend and Reader:

Planet Waves has just completed a digital compilation of my writing about 2012 dating back to 1987. It’s called Light Bridge: The 25-Year Span. The span extends from the Harmonic Convergence through to the winter solstice of 2012. [Here is an audio introduction. Here is the purchasing link. Note that this is a different project than the Light Bridge annual edition.]

Planet Waves

The articles in the collection are drawn from a number of sources, including Planet Waves and our various annual editions, as well as blog entries, my notebooks and one from an earlier book called 313. The book begins with a new piece that covers the history of the Harmonic Convergence and its possible influence on world events. I then present a retrospective of writing describing events that fit the pattern, either historic or philosophical, of how we approach the topic of irrevocable change. Even if you’ve read some of this writing before, the pieces will now come together when you see the ideas in context.

I have consistently treated the concept of 2012 as something we are creating now, even as time accelerates and we race toward the future. Different articles offer perspectives on the Mayan day count as well as the Western astrology associated with 2012. I am not making predictions; rather, my intent for all of these articles has been to focus our minds on the present moment and enter the future through immediate awareness. I am describing the process of opening up to the moment.

The book is beautifully illustrated with Mayan-inspired glyphs created by Carol McCloud.
These are like no artwork you’ve ever seen before. Light Bridge: The 25-Year Span comes with a separate file of historic charts. We have done our best to leave links to other sources embedded in the text.

As you may have read, Jose Arguelles, who created the Harmonic Convergence and first called attention to 2012, died Wednesday. According to his website, before he departed he said to his apprentice, Stephanie South, “I have done all that I could on this planet. I am being called to assist in the closing of the cycle from the Other Side.”

Arguelles was the author of The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology, which became a kind of platform for creating the Harmonic Convergence. He was also author of Dreamspell: The Journey of Timeship Earth 2013 which was a book and a game that came out in 1990. Dreamspell is an interpretation of Mayan daykeeping that teaches one to use the Mayan calendar in a practical, accessible way. Arguelles was the father of the current movement to adapt Meso-American calendar systems and other alternative models for considering time. In a sense, what we think of as time is really a prison that locks us into a time/money orientation of consciousness.

I was never Jose’s student, but his ideas have touched my life and informed my astrology through different teachers, friends and colleagues. We think it’s an intriguing synchronicity to be making this work available when so much attention is being given to Jose’s ideas.

Here is ordering information. Delivery is instant. The format is a downloadable PDF with images solid enough that they will print nicely.

Thank you for your interest. I think you’ll love this project. It’s been a lot of fun to create.

It’s only change —

Eric Francis

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.

Wave Pulse One

Dear Planet Waves Reader:

Most of us are pretty creeped out by all these reports of birds suddenly falling out of the sky and fish turning up dead. It’s been an unusual week in other ways, here in the days following Tuesday morning’s solar eclipse and the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction.

Planet Waves
Map showing recent incidents involving fish and bird kills in the continental United States. To see the world map, and for an explanation of the points indicated, please use this link.

On New Year’s Eve, about 5,000 redwinged blackbirds fell from the sky over Beebe, Arkansas. This happened a day after 100,000 drum (freshwater bass) died along the Arkansas River near Ozark, fairly close by. As this news rippled out, reports of fish and bird kills during the past few days started coming in from all over the world. Collectively, these reports indicate an environment in distress, a fact of which most people are usually oblivious.

Yet this was just one type of incident in a week of certified News of the Weird. The body of John Wheeler III, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (one of those World Manager groups) and a former military advisor to three presidents (Reagan and the two Bushes), turned up in a dumpster in Newark, Delaware, on New Year’s Eve. Press reports say he seemed to be mentally disturbed for two days prior to his death, which has been ruled a homicide.

Scientists in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, succeeded in using weather-altering technology to make it rain in the desert. While the story is novel in our era, in truth this is nothing new. The U.S. government was involved in using weather weapons during the Vietnam War under a program described in a 1973 Long Island Newsday article as “a weather arsenal.”

BBC reported this morning that more than 4,700 farms in Germany (most of them raising pigs) were closed after large amounts of animal feed were found to be contaminated by dioxin, the most potent chemical toxin known to science. In a fashion typical of these incidents, BBC reported that “officials insist the levels of dioxin do not pose a risk to humans, and that the closures are only a precaution.” Note that whenever there is a contamination incident, someone from the government apparently has a sacred duty to tell us how safe the poison is.

Ali-Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s former shah, died in an apparent suicide in Boston on Tuesday. His friends and family said he had suffered from depression for many years. The shah was the last secular leader before the theocratic Muslim government took over in 1979, forcing him and his family into exile, leading to the Iran we now know and love.

Planet Waves
If I had a hammer — John Boehner, the ‘tan man’, is now Speaker of the House of Representatives.

And given that all these events surround a solar eclipse in Capricorn, it was a bit ominous that the 112th Congress commenced on the first day after the eclipse, with the ‘tan man’ John Boehner taking charge with his keg-sized gavel. Boehner is famous for being a corporate shill, known among other things for a 1995 incident wherein he distributed campaign donations from tobacco lobbyists on the floor of the House of Representatives.

A New York Times article from September 2010 said Boehner “maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R.J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.”

In an attempted display of patriotism that seemed to fool nobody, members of the now Republican-ruled House of Representatives on Thursday read parts of the Constitution on the House floor. They left out many of the more embarrassing sections, such as the bit about how a slave counts as 3/5 of a person and other things that were later updated by amendment. However much modern legislators deny this fact, they read the part that says that, “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.”

One of the first issues the new Congress will have to handle is raising the debt ceiling so that the country can make its payment obligations for things like wars.

Oh one last bit of News of the Weird. Israeli Defense Forces shot down an unidentified flying object from the sky above the Dimona nuclear power plant in the Negev Desert. The air force was scrambled when an object appeared in the no-fly zone that surrounds the plant. The IDF has since speculated that the UFO “could have been a party balloon” and according to press reports, it has not been able to find the debris of whatever it shot from the sky.

And as for all those fish and birds?

The Internet is buzzing with theories as to what happened to those fish and birds in Arkansas. The fact that the dead fish and dead birds appeared within one day and 200 km seems an odd coincidence, and the fact that it was on New Year’s Eve imparts an ominous feeling, even if you don’t follow astrology. If you do follow astrology, the proximity to the solar eclipse and major conjunction is difficult to miss.

Planet Waves
Redwinged blackbird. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

There seem to be two basic camps on this issue. One proposes that masses of fish and birds die all the time, which is to say that this is a normal occurrence. What is interesting is how few of these sources are reporting actual data, such as toxicology tests. Remember, if a scientist says something but it’s not supported by data, that is not scientific in the true sense.

The other camp is proposing that the die-offs are the result of some kind of atmospheric manipulation, a weapons program or chemtrails. I haven’t covered any of these topics on Planet Waves yet. One candidate for a weapons program might be HAARP. There is also an Air Force base in Little Rock. As for chemtrails, in case you’re not familiar with this term, these are sightings, going back well over 20 years, of airplanes apparently dispersing chemicals in the lower atmosphere. It is not an officially acknowledged issue, but neither is it your ordinary conspiracy theory. Many people are aware that it’s happening, including those who report respiratory symptoms in themselves and their pets.

A third possibility pertaining to the Arkansas incidents that I have not seen mentioned anywhere but Planet Waves involves the presence of many dioxin waste sites in the area around Little Rock. There are many dioxin sites in the United States, but these are some of the worst in history — including a former Agent Orange manufacturing plant once run by a company called Hercules. There are lots of other sites, including an old chemical weapons depot. I’ve detailed some of them here.

George Badley, the state veterinarian with Arkansas’ Livestock and Poultry Commission, says tests on a handful of the thousands of dead birds all showed internal injuries.

“The 17 birds we did a necropsy on had internal bleeding that looks like blunt force trauma — like they ran into something, would be our best guess,” Badley told CTV’s Canada AM Tuesday morning.

Now, potential chemical exposure does not account for midair blunt force trauma, which in turn may have nothing to do with fish underwater. There is no direct evidence available so far that the Arkansas fish incident is related to the nearby bird incident, but that doesn’t mean the evidence doesn’t exist. It’s stunning how casually this is all being taken by public officials and the degree to which many sources seem to be going to ignore any larger issue that may be behind these incidents.

Planet Waves
HAARP facility in Alaska is a device for focusing massive amounts of sound energy into a weapon, capable of consuming a billion watts of power. The system can also be used for weather control and as a sonar device for searching for oil and gas below ground. The array is now comprised of 360 antennae, many times larger than the original size installation.

For example, the affected area along the Arkansas River was never closed and fishing is still being encouraged. “Right now it’s fine to fish. If you go out there you can still fish for bass and crappie, catfish, it will be fine. Obviously don’t eat the dead fish,” Badley said. Of course, never mind all the dioxin in the area, which tends to hang out on the bottoms of rivers. Bass are bottom feeders, and will therefore concentrate dioxin in their bodies. It’s amazing that they’re legal for consumption.

The Christian Science Monitor reported in an article this week that, “The United States Geological Survey has noted 16 incidents in the past 30 years where more than 1,000 blackbirds have died at the same time, usually the result of tightly-packed flocks flying into bad weather. What’s more, more than 5 billion birds die of natural causes in the United States each year, so it is, in a way, unusual that Americans don’t witness more major bird kills.” Of course, many of these mass deaths happen in remote areas where they cannot be observed.

However, Greg Butcher of the National Audobon Society, said that, “Birds can be really good indicators of environmental problems, so I’d hate to think that 5,000 would die and nobody would care. It’s worth investigation to find out what happened because there is potentially something we should worry about and it’s potentially something that has an odd, but benign cause.”

One potential way to explain this is as a phenomenon of awareness. The Internet has turned every local story into a potential global story, and allows people to compare notes and reports of far-flung incidents rapidly. In this way, unrelated events can seem to be connected.

The Arkansas Bird Incident Chart

Once you remove the need for scientifically proven causation, other possibilities emerge. All of these events are related; they happened around the same time on the same planet. But what we observe and group together is always a matter of consciousness. Remembering that, let’s take a look at the bird incident chart.

Using the time reported by CTV News, I cast the chart and the Aries Point came up on all four angles. You can see that because the early degrees of the cardinal signs (Libra, Capricorn, Aries and Cancer) are on the ascendant, and the cusps of the houses are directly vertical or horizontal. Take a look — even if you can’t read charts, it’s easy to see. Remember, it’s called the “Aries Point” but the first degrees of any of these signs count as part of the same energy structure, and placing them on the angles of the chart emphasizes their role.

Planet Waves
Blackbird Incident, time from CTV-Toronto. The chart emphasizes the Aries Point, which means the first degrees of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn — all of which occupy the mundane angles of the chart — the horizon and the meridian. The presence of the Aries Point says to look for larger connections, and the ones that are the most personal. The solar eclipse appears in the chart’s 4th house, and the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction on the right side, below the horizon.

The eclipse appears in the 4th house, down on the bottom of the chart. The Sun is in Capricorn, close to the North Node (the orange horse shoe); the Moon is close behind in Sagittarius, about to complete the eclipse. So much Capricorn in a chart does hint at a cause that is corporate and/or involves the government. But the 4th house is the homestead.

The South Node is up in the 10th house — another indicator of corporate or government involvement, but ‘hitting home’ in that the sign involved is Cancer. We find the Moon in Sagittarius in the 3rd house. Sagittarius says global and the 3rd house says local. So we have an overlay of local and global themes, of government and corporate themes, reiterating through the chart.

Based on the available data, I am not yet seeing the numerous wildlife events reported the past week as causatively related to one specific source. But I am seeing them as factors of the same global environment, which includes two things: an overload of toxicity that goes back several generations (see Silent Spring by Rachel Carson), and the awareness phenomenon that is accentuated by the feedback system of the Internet. This is turning human thought into something that moves like plasma through what we are discovering, with the help of computers and other devices, is the collective mind. What we are seeing is nothing new — but the fact that we’re noticing it is new.

One last aspect — and a takeoff point for another article. Notice the conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus, exact to the degree — that’s on the right side of the chart, close to the horizon. In fact, the conjunction has just set, and all the major planets are below the horizon when this event happens. This conjunction suggests the need for honoring science. Jupiter-Uranus almost always arrives with scientific breakthroughs, though we don’t always notice them at the time.

The conjunction, combined with the eclipse, marks a transition in astrological eras, conveniently happening the first week of a new decade — one of those things some future astrology student may look back and marvel at.

As I mentioned in my podcast of Wednesday, Jan. 5, we are leaving a lot of truly challenging astrology behind us and entering entirely new territory. A decade of Saturn making oppositions to outer planets started phasing out in 2010. These included Saturn opposite Pluto (Sept. 11, the commencement of the multi-front war and the Enron/Arthur Andersen scandal), Saturn opposite Neptune (hurricanes Rita and Katrina destroying much of the southeastern Gulf Coast, entering the peak of the Iraq war, the bird flu lie) and Saturn opposite Uranus, also square Pluto (involved with the vicious partisanship in Washington, the banking collapse, the housing bubble collapse and the recession). Gee whiz, it’s been an exciting decade, hasn’t it?

A whole category of astrological events that loomed in the background of all of these worldly events is behind us: Saturn opposing outer planets. These events always portend big changes, and are part of cycles that basically spin the world in their fingers. Three such oppositions, all historically documented to be associated with the kinds of effects we’ve seen, are now behind us.

Planet Waves
Saturn-Neptune conjunction came with the twin hurricanes that flooded the entire Gulf Coast, temporarily calling attention to climate change. Photo: Vince Laforet / New York Times.

I am aware that Saturn is approaching an opposition to Eris in late October, though I have a different theory about that one — that it’s a more internally focused event. I plan to give this plenty of coverage this year; it’s one of the first stand-out aspects directly involving Eris, since its discovery.

With so much tumultuous astrology behind us, we are left to clean up the damage and take advantage of new opportunities. This places us directly in the vortex of 2012 astrology, as the biggest event on the horizon is the gradually accumulating square of Uranus and Pluto. While this one has been showing its colors for a while and was part of the wild ride of 2010, it now has a chance to stand on its own, without so many tense aspects from Saturn. These constant oppositions to outer planets, and the recent square of Saturn to Pluto, have come with a sense of constant instability, both inner and outer. That is, the feeling is internal and we also experience it as outer events.

Uranus square Pluto is an aspect of revolution. It is one of the most dependable harbingers of progress of them all, part of a cycle that is known to topple empires. That aspect builds to its first exact contact on June 24, 2012, with five exact contacts spanning through April 2014. It is the guiding star of the 2012 era, and we are now looking right at it.

Catch you with a short edition Tuesday (possibly on audio, to save writing and editing resources) and the weekly horoscope will resume Friday. The horoscope below is Inner Space for January.

Yours & truly,

Eric Francis

 

Ron Kurtz, Founder of Hakomi Therapy, Dies

Ron Kurtz, the founder of Hakomi Therapy, died in Ashland, OR, Tuesday morning. He had what was described as a massive heart attack. He was 76 years old. About a year ago he had suffered another smaller heart attack and cut back his travel and seminar schedule, and concentrated on organizing his writings and recordings.

He was a native of Brooklyn and educated at the University of Indiana. He began his first Hakomi Therapy practice in Albany, NY in the early 1970s, eventually settling in Oregon.

Planet Waves
Ron Kurtz, founder of Hakomi Therapy.

Kurtz worked tirelessly to develop his therapy method, training thousands of people over the years. Kurtz’s first book was called Body-Centered Psychotherapy, published in 1990. He co-authored The Body Reveals: An Illustrated Guide to the Psychology of the Body, which came out in 1976 and more recently, The Body Speaks Its Mind.

Hakomi is one of several offshoots of Gestalt Therapy, which was created by Fritz Perls and others in the 1940s. While Gestalt has a confrontational quality, Hakomi is mellower, designed to penetrate the ego’s defenses rather than encounter them directly. Kurtz described the process as “applied Buddhism,” using mindfulness, nonviolence and the holistic relationship between ‘mind’ and ‘body’ — concepts that are often separated in the theories of more traditional forms of therapy. Though I don’t have his data available now, I’ve done Kurtz’s chart, and his therapy method reflects his deeply Piscean nature.

The word Hakomi came to Kurtz in a dream one night during an early training session when an anonymous person handed him a small piece of paper on which it was written. At the time, the therapy process had no name, and he did not know what Hakomi meant. It actually shows up in many languages with different meanings; in Hopi it is said to translate to “who are you.”

Compared to traditional talk therapy, Hakomi sessions are minimalist. Therapists are trained not to get involved in the client’s narrative, instead making contact with the emotional movements on deeper layers of consciousness. Hakomi also discourages the asking of questions, instead using gentle probes — or simple statements such as ‘you are welcome here’ — to which the client then responds intuitively.

The method teaches therapists to track the client, monitoring their speech and body movements and assessing the ways in which their words and gestures relate to one another — a technique that has roots in Gestalt.

He is survived by his wife, naturopath Terry Toth, and their grown daughter, Lily Kurtz.

Toth said Kurtz’s family and work were the passions of his life. “He never stopped learning, expanding his theories and helping people, teaching them to heal,” she said.

 

Planet Waves Inner Space Horoscope for January 2011

Mercury’s station direct and the solar eclipse we just experienced marked the end of a tense and chaotic holiday season, providing the sensation of a surge forward. I suggest, as we move on from these events, that you let the cosmos provide the momentum, while you provide the vision.

Rather than pushing, or attempting to manipulate the flow of events, I suggest that you strive for clarity. That would include knowing what you want, what you want to accomplish, and being clear how you feel about the people in your life. Notice the way that what you believe is possible can be distorted by believing emotional matters are dictated by pre-existing structures. When you put your authentic values and desires first, and allow your true vision for yourself to come forward, seemingly intractable ideas and structures can change before your eyes.

Aries (March 20-April 19)

Aries (March 20-April 19) — You must know intuitively that astonishing changes are just around the bend. Yet to make the most of what is truly a once-in-a-lifetime moment, I suggest you muster up all the trust you can. It’s true that your professional life may have felt like a shambles these past few weeks, but that will soon be behind you, and I suggest you slough off any energy of frustration as soon as you can. Invest your emotional energy two places: in what is working for you, and in what turns you on the most. I recognize that nearly every message ‘the world’ is sending runs contrary to this idea; we’re supposed to hide under the bed until the recession ends. You have another, far more exciting path forward, and by the end of this thing we’re calling 2011 you won’t recognize your life.

To pre-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) — It is amazing how fast it’s possible to change your beliefs. I know that they can often seem petrified, then suddenly they turn to living things. You could make a long list of the old beliefs that don’t work for you, and you could make another list of how each one represents a loyalty to someone (generally, a spouse or relative) who expects you to subscribe to that idea. The result can be a psychological maze that seems impossible to escape. Then one day you get some perspective. It’s like you fly above the maze, you see the pattern, and notice that you choose what you believe. You choose who you are loyal to and why, and you can decide not to carry around the burden of what others believe. There are days when this can seem like waging a revolution, and on other days it feels like a miracle. Have your pick.

To pre-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) — Mercury retrograde in Sagittarius, which is your relationship zone, has potentially sent the signal that there is someone you must give up — though I would encourage you to take a more positive outlook. What seems in order in any event is creating a relationship where you actually have the freedom and space to discuss your mutual needs and desires. You may have a tendency to think that relationships are all-or-nothing arrangements where power and obligation trump love and freedom. It’s likely that everyone and everything in your life is negotiable right now, no matter how dominant or powerful someone may seem at the moment. There are situations, particularly financial, where the kind of give-and-take suggested by the concept ‘negotiation’ will be helpful. Yet in matters of the heart, remember: it’s more about give and receive.

To pre-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) — An eclipse of the Sun in Capricorn, your relationship house, may feel like an ending, but if you open your eyes and look, you will see that it’s really an opening. The world is a different place every minute, and (even despite ourselves) people are changing, growing and evolving as the days progress; that is the definition of ‘alive’. While our culture advocates ideas of relationships that are prefabricated and supposedly based on tradition, your ideas of and the circumstances of those you are with are evolving, progressing and opening into new potential that you had never dreamed of before. I recognize that it can be disorienting to have no choreography or script to follow. I suggest you relax your expectations and forget what your mother told you is the only way — and let the adventure begin.

To pre-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) — The solution to a financial problem may surprise you, but I suggest you have faith in what develops. For years, you’ve been fighting a kind of economic instability that overtakes your life from time to time. You’ve likely been trying to get that instability to go away; but what you can do now is make it work for you. Your charts suggest that there is some unusual potential for creating a source of income that most people would consider risky or uncertain. The difference in your situation is that this method is close to your most deeply cherished values that manifest in your relationships and your inner life. Though most people don’t care where their money comes from, you surely do — or at least, you’re learning how much this fact matters. Focusing on that process of discovery, with a wide-open mind, will be lucrative.

To pre-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) — The thing about sex is that when the energy is right, and we’re paying attention, it draws us deep into our psyches. We may think we’re being drawn into the experience of ‘the other’, though I believe this is secondary to what we experience in our minds and feelings; and that would be everything. What has been coming to the surface these past few weeks has been all about you: your history, your relationship to yourself, your karma. It would be too easy to say that this is about someone else — and it would deny the rather amazing potential that your current relationships are offering to you. Said another way, as you take responsibility for your own issues, the potential of your relationships reveals itself to you. And in that process you are likely to discover the healing and the pleasure that you seek.

To pre-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 life lately has been an extended, perhaps enforced, study in getting to know yourself. I trust you’ve noticed certain ways you work against your own interests, and you have made adjustments to cooperate with yourself more actively. It’s as if you’re in a process that I could describe as settling into yourself; though there has been a layer where things seem uncertain or like the ground of your being is constantly shifting, events in the first week of the year have a feeling of slipping into your confidence. Emotional independence is one of those things that makes you an authentic adult, and many people will tell you it’s one of the most challenging things to learn. But you seem to be getting the hang of it just fine, even if some days are more challenging than others.

To pre-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) — If your mind and emotions are simmering in chaos and anxiety, what does that tell you about your life? You clearly need to make some adjustments. Those come first as revelations, then as decisions. Yet one of the things you’re adjusting and deciding about is your mental approach to reality. It seems you’re figuring out that attempts at exercising control, whether over your own mind or your circumstances, do little other than burn you out. Worrying does not guarantee that you have something to worry about, though you do seem to be trying to get a grasp on why things have developed to the point where your life seems out of control. When the revelation about why that is comes, and it is indeed on its way, let the information settle in, then decide what to do about it.

To pre-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) — I’ve written many recent horoscopes focusing on the relationship between your emotional state and your ability to access your creativity. It is possible that financial concerns have influenced your mood lately more than your imagination or inspiration. I suggest you do your best to set economic concerns aside, and focus on what you are creating. It’s not merely that anxiety does not bring in cash. It is that focusing on your ideas, your vision and your desire to create beauty (in whatever form that takes) opens you up to the flow of abundance. Now more than any time in recent memory is a vital moment to keep your mind focused on what you want to create rather than on trying to solve problems. Solutions will indeed come — from your devotion to what you love.

To pre-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) — There’s a fine line between asserting will and raging against yourself. Or at least the line has been thin lately, and you’ve sure been exploring it. Since Mercury shifted direction the last week of the year and we are still working through its shadow phase, make sure you shift your emphasis toward being in harmony with yourself. I don’t suggest you go through a list of grievances you have with yourself; rather, resolve to let go of one phase of your life and commence another. I know these are words more often spoken and less often embraced, though with the recent solar eclipse in your birth sign on Jan. 4, your intentions carry more energy than usual. For this to work, you will need to reach that spot where you just let go of the frustrations of the past month, and decide in your heart you want something better.

To pre-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) — The solar eclipse that’s right around the corner seems designed to release you from a wad of karma that’s been bogging you down very nearly forever. Before you get there, you may feel backed into a corner, either by your circumstances or by your state of mind. This may be a prerequisite to your embracing your desire to break free and let go of whatever situations have held you hostage to the past. You may feel hesitant to act from a point of frustration, though I suggest you let it inform you of what you don’t want, and let that inspire a taste for freedom. Remember that freedom is only partially the ability to move at liberty in the world around you. This time, freedom begins from the outside and transforms into a new perspective on the world.

To pre-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) — Pisces is often described as a laid-back sign. Yet clearly that is no longer true for you, if it ever was. The astrology of January brings the peak of a long process of personal re-creation (which connects directly to recreation) This process goes back about a year, and has come in a series of stages, some of which have been extremely challenging. Yet these are challenges past and in most ways resolved, learned from and grown from. Open your heart to the truth that new adventures are ahead, though I can tell you that there is nothing random about this. What transpires next is based on your creative devotion to who you are becoming: you are becoming your own invention, and you are committed to shining in the world. Open up, face each day like its potential is new, and let the love in your heart shine. This you know — it’s time.

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

———

Eric Francis, the founder and editor of Planet Waves, is an astrologer and investigative journalist. He was working in his first job as a municipal newspaper reporter when he discovered that his editor also owned an astrology bookstore. This began a long relationship between astrology and journalism, which has taken Eric through the pages of many newspapers as a horoscope writer, including the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror plus numerous other venues. Today, Eric covers global turning point events through the lens of astrology. He is a specialist in newly-discovered planets.

Something in the Night

Dear Reader:

Venus and Mars are dancing around in a conjunction in Scorpio. Mars was retrograde in Leo earlier in the year, and now it’s moving ahead at full speed. Venus is about to be retrograde, and is moving slowly. So we have a fairly rare condition with Mars, which is further from the Sun, moving faster than Venus, which is closer to the Sun, while the two are neck and neck in a near-conjunction. That will happen when Mars overtakes Venus on Oct. 3. Venus goes retrograde five days later.

This setup puts emphasis on both Venus and Mars. These are planets we feel, and energies we live with consciously from hour to hour. Most of us are aware of the interplay between and among men and women in various configurations, particularly as we respond to our various attributes of gender and sex. Some turn us on. Some piss us off. Some are just there. But there it all is.

Scorpio tends to be competitive and it’s a sign associated with power. Putting Venus and Mars in close proximity there may have a feeling of power imbalance, or some struggle to get on top. Of course it could also be a picture of hot and intriguing contact, but that often happens in an environment of competition. We don’t have many other psychological or emotional paradigms within which to consider sex, or for that matter, sexual relationships. If you so much as mention the idea that jealousy does not need to rule over our erotic or emotional experiences, most people will look at you like bees are flying out of your mouth.

There are some interesting features to this setup. Mars is in its sign of traditional rulership; Venus is in its sign of detriment (opposite Taurus, one of the signs Venus rules). Mars is direct, and Venus is about to be retrograde. In theory, anyway, these factors all favor Mars energy. Yet Scorpio is really a feminine sign, despite being ruled by Mars, the planet of masculinity. Venus retrograde in a feminine sign represents a kind of extreme yin condition, what you might describe as the paradox of self-penetration. So looked at one way, this is a study in bringing out the yin sides of both Mars and Venus.

All in all, this sounds like an astrological experiment in gender, sex roles and sexual orientation. I would imagine that this ongoing conjunction is having its influence on many or most relationships. Scorpio is sexual, and it’s also hormonal, and emotional, and ties into reproduction and DNA. Scorpio is an energy field where power in nearly any form (biological, economic, emotional, erotic, relational) is transacted, exchanged and where it mutates into new forms. This astrology suggests strongly that relationships and the people in them are poised on the edge of some transformation that will occur as part of the conjunction, and as part of the Venus retrograde process. One question is whether we’re willing to go along with the process, take it up consciously, or whether we are more prone to resist it.

We’re also seeing the latest wave of gender drama unfold in the world. On Tuesday, the Senate, our most enlightened group of leaders here in the United States, voted 56 to 43 to keep in place the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military. Originally designed to protect the privacy of those in service, the rule actually facilitates investigations that are used to kick gay people out of the armed forces. A majority of senators wanted to repeal the measure, but they didn’t get the 60 that were necessary. So in essence the Senate voted to keep playing charades, and to allow the military to keep playing its mean game of hide and seek.

Katherine Miller resigned from West Point earlier this year in protest of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. She began attending Yale this fall.

We could partly account this to election year politics. Conservatives never want to seem friendly to gay people or their needs, and the conservative movement is fixated on sex (abstinence education, banning abortion, etc.). But it seems like the gay thing has dominated the news for years and years, and it’s at a new frenzy now. Isn’t it weird that every night there are two or three more gay or lesbian news stories about some story or another? Such as: gay marriage, gay adoption, gays in the military, gays who were recently the boss of the Republican party while it put all those anti-gay constitutional amendments onto the ballot, this Republican senator allegedly not being gay while he taps his foot in a public men’s room, what the Bible says about being gay, the gay parade or any other new permutation you can or cannot think of?

You would think there was a gay bar and gay legislative action center on every block, and gay publicists working tirelessly around the clock to bring the latest in gay news to the gay networks and cable news programs. Let’s face it. We’re obsessed. With our friend, who is gay.

In the past 40 or so years since Stonewall, the event in Greenwich Village that started the modern gay movement, it’s true that the definition of gay has expanded from gay to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ). That’s an inclusive definition. It may finally include everyone. Who isn’t questioning?

My impression, though, is that this fuss we’re experiencing/witnessing really isn’t about sexual orientation; it’s about gender, on a deeply personal level. Venus and Mars in Scorpio are making the issues that much more introspective.

Gender is something we all experience and live with. It’s partly biological, partly culturally prescribed and — as we are seeing — partly optional. People have experimented with gender for a long time, but usually it was a kind of secret, or private obsession. Men have dressed like women and women have dressed like men, probably for as long as there were differences in clothing.

Gender bending has been popular for a while — and not just for Boy George. In ‘Tootsie,’ Dustin Hoffman played Michael Dorsey, an unemployed actor, who takes on the role of “Dorothy Michaels,” a female soap opera actress and later falls in love with the show’s leading actress.

We are as a culture going through an ongoing evolution in gender roles; that’s one of the identifying factors of our time in history. This has many sources, including the many women’s rights movements of the 20th century. (Quiz question — what year did women first get to vote?) I am sure that one of them is our postmodern phase of history, where the constructions of the prior eras are basically falling apart, losing their definitions and leaving us to figure out what to do. Many men are wanting to be more emotionally present and many women are expecting them to be that way; that’s a long stretch from the mandatory silent, stoic image of a man that so many of us were told we had to live up to. Many women are moving into intellectual and leadership roles that were unthinkable even when I was a kid. It is no longer a ‘fact’ that a woman cannot design a bridge. Not that long ago, many people would have agreed. And yes that is incredible.

When it first came out in the late ’70s, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was borderline scandalous. Now it is normal fare, and I think that indicates a process of cultural change on a pretty deep level. Of note, on dollars returned for investment, it was one of the most successful films in motion picture history.

For some this is no big deal. We just go along, watching the show, and perhaps exploring our feelings. But for others who have been forced by their cultures into sex roles and beliefs about what constitutes the one-and-only form of proper sex, it can be terrifying to feel the ground shift, within them and around them. For many people their identity as a man or a woman, and as a partner in a heterosexual relationship, is a key component of their identity. If that changes, there are many people who feel they have nothing. When someone feels that male-female marriage really is the building block of society (and in a sense, they are right), they can get defensive when they read about a gay couple who wants to adopt a kid. And that defensive can go pretty far; it’s also subject to being abused by people who themselves don’t care, but who see it as an opportunity to harvest it as political power.

Then there is the chemical hormone issue. For many years, scientists have been warning us that the many chemicals that we encounter both in products and as waste disrupt our hormones. These range from actual hormones injected into meat and sprayed on plants, to products to chemicals that act like hormones (such as in plastic) to flame retardants collecting in the fish we eat.

In 1991, a group of scientists met at the Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, WI. They reached a consensus which included the following language: “A large number of man-made chemicals that have been released into the environment, as well as a few natural ones, have the potential to disrupt the endocrine system of animals, including humans.” They then listed several characteristics of persistent compounds that accumulate and magnify in the food chain, including pesticides, dioxins and PCBs.

Plastics which find their way into the environment through dumping and burning are likely candidates to turn up as endocrine disruptors in fish. They also leach directly into food. This scene looks like somewhere in the North Pacific Gyre, probably Hawaii. Photographer unknown.

Nearly twenty years ago, they noted, “Many wildlife populations are already affected by these compounds. The impacts include thyroid dysfunction in birds and fish; decreased fertility in birds, fish, shellfish, and mammals; decreased hatching success in birds, fish, and turtles; gross birth deformities in birds, fish, and turtles; metabolic abnormalities in birds, fish, and mammals; behavioral abnormalities in birds; demasculinization and feminization of male fish, birds, and mammals; defeminization and masculinization of female fish and birds; and compromised immune systems in birds and mammals.”

Since that time, the science has become clearer what is going on, and the stories coming in from nature have been increasingly weirder. So, we are swimming in chemicals that alter our internal gender characteristics, by messing with our hormones and our DNA. And this, I think, is influencing our perception of both gender and sex, as well as our emotional experiences of both.

So in our chemical environments we live in hormone chaos. Personally I think everyone is actually experiencing this as some degree of gender anarchy. We can feel the effects, however subtly, and when you combine them with other movements in society, the sensation can be extremely unsettling to those who are camped out in traditional gender roles and don’t want to budge.

We can also factor in one last thing — our imaginations. The Internet has created a giant field of gender variability. One website specializing in role-play games (RPGs) reports that, “Men are 3-5 times more likely than women to gender-bend” in such games. “The demographic that is most likely to gender-bend are men over the age of 25. We know that 85% of [RPG] players are male, so if you do the math, at any given moment, half of all female avatars are actually being played by men.”

How we see ourselves in our fantasies is anyone’s guess, and will often surprise us. Often it does not fit the prescribed model of what our gender is supposed to be. Photo by Eric Francis / Book of Blue.

Then there is cosplay, which is playing roles of comic book and graphic novel characters in full costume. This is apparently a wide-open space for gender exchange, called crossplay. The UK Guardian reported on this recently:

“Allison, an American cosplayer from Georgia, enjoys crossplaying (dressing as a character of the opposite gender), in part because ‘it’s really satisfying when you play your part so well that an observer doesn’t realise you’re a crossplayer until you speak’. Fans such as Allison challenge gender presentation in their fan communities, illustrating the fluidity of gender in the context of their subcultures.”

And finally there is what happens in our actual erotic imaginations. Most people are curious about sex and that curiosity can lead to various thoughts that we could file under the general heading ‘bisexual’. Those thoughts can be pretty hot, they can slip into the oddest moments, and at the same time they can threaten our ideas of what our relationships are supposed to be.

We don’t really account for the extent to which this thing known as heteronormative is like a house of cards within which our identities live. Even those of us who are a little more flexible, and a little more experimental, can basically be deeply identified with heteronormative ideas, and when these start to shake or quake or vibrate, even a little, the feeling can be unsettling. But magnify that into outright terrifying if you believe, or if the people around you believe, that you’re going straight to hell.

And this is one reason why, in our current moment of history, it’s so easy to make political hay out of the gay thing, and why the reactions are so strong. Everybody’s feeling, experiencing or at the very least noticing what you might call the global gender shift. At the same time, there is a sense of inevitability that we will have to accept the gay thing as normal even if we don’t like it. To some, even a mild experience of gender dysphoria will feel like their heterosexuality is melting like salt. That’s not what’s really happening. Something else is, but the fear doesn’t quite speak that language.

So now we have Venus and Mars about to do their gender experiment in Scorpio, and in particular, Venus, which is poised for a kind of introspection rarely seen in our world. This is going to be a journey, and it goes deeper than all the superficial expressions of sex, gender and relationship roles that I’ve described. We will be feeling some aspects of this viscerally, and others will stir up material from the deep unconscious. Scorpio is not just what we see, and it goes deeper than what we feel. You could say that on some of the deepest levels we can actually reach, it’s about how we become who we are — that mysterious process, that we often try to keep secret from ourselves.

Yours & truly,

 

 

 

When Reality Bites

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

It’s been more than a decade since populist policy came easily; actually much longer than that, had any of us noticed. Even the Clinton years proved an uphill slog against the Republican culture warriors and their “Contract With America.” With the help of Clintonistas like Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, the infamous triangulation tactic that prompted Rachel Maddow to call Big Bill a “Republican president” was born. We might have raised an inquiry over Clinton’s welfare reform and NAFTA legislation, but we didn’t. Monica was the distraction of the moment, and the economy seemed sound, so we let it go. Then the bubbles began to pop, the jobs went overseas, the Supreme Court picked our next president for us, and any hint of progressivism disappeared.

While Dubya played commander-in-chief, hunting imaginary WMD — and adding well over a trillion dollars to our military debt, another 1.3 trillion for his tax cuts and 1.5 trillion for Medicare D — his Congress passed six years of laws that favored business over public interest. When the economy tanked three years ago, the least affected were the upper-class, who continue to reap the rewards of corporate welfare and laws designed to protect them. This is an example of the dreaded ‘redistribution of wealth’ eschewed by conservatives everywhere, but don’t mention that to the average class-conscious Republican, who thinks redistribution is only about giveaways to welfare recipients.

The basis of trickle-down economics is a collection of unproven, fanciful myths that play well to uncritical media. Myth #1 is that the business class deserves those big breaks in order to keep opportunities trickling down. Myth #2: top-loading the profits keeps the American Dream alive, even as the disparity between the high rollers and a growing underclass widens. Myth #3, biggest of them all, is that we need those business advantages because some of us plan on winning the lottery some day in the form of founding the next Apple Computer. This is known as “when our ship comes in.”

At a time when one in every seven Americans lives in poverty and a fourth of our families are identified as “near poor,” the notion that we must keep the rich swimming in dough lest they refuse to throw us a crumb from time to time is ludicrous. Statistics show that the trickle-down nonsense promoted by St. Ronnie the Reagan really IS the elusive ‘voodoo economics,’ named by Poppy Bush. In fact, very little trickles back down the pyramid because the rich traditionally keep their money, favored by laws that give them latitude to tuck it into some convenient tax shelter.

Continued at this link…

 

 

Do You “Like” Planet Waves? Please Visit Our Facebook Fan Page!

Dear Planet Waves Reader:

Right now we’re tidying up some projects and following through on old plans. I have a favor to ask.
We have a Facebook fan page. It’s a great page that gives you access to all our free services, such as new blog posts and new weekly audio.

Please click on the page and “like” us. This used to be called “join” but Facebook changed that recently. Also — there is another option, to invite your friends, and I’d appreciate if you spread the word by doing just that.

We really appreciate it. Thank you!

 

 

PS, I also have a personal page and you’re invited to “friend” me. I promise not to get sucked into Facebook! But it would be great to see you there.
PPS, In this recent edition of Astrology News, I publish an interview with one of the big gaming websites about my feelings on Facebook. I thought I would share it with you — it’s the second article down, at this link.

 

 

 

 

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, September 24, 2010, #832 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Venus and Mars in Scorpio are all about desire. But it looks like you want that desire to hunt you down by scent and give you what you need without having to say or do anything. Depending on who you are, this planetary setup might work that way, yet at the moment more pragmatic matters of relationship seem to be interfering with your hormonal drives. The two seem to exist as realities apart from one another, which is often the situation given our society’s concepts of relationship that dependably honor human needs only to the extent of providing air and water. I suggest you make peace with yourself about how a situation with a partner, or your ideas about what constitutes a proper relationship, may be entirely different than some deep elemental needs you also have. This feeling will be stronger if you’re feeling trapped, which does not make it invalid: to the contrary, this just emphasizes the point.

Aries Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

It would appear that you’re trying to remember what you want from a relationship, from life or from both. It’s one thing to let others do the wanting for you; that’s the safe option, because if they are wrong, you are not; and if they are right, you benefit. So step one is to make a commitment to wanting what you want. Just slow down and want whatever that might be, not for its own sake, but for yours. Don’t forget that Pluto in Capricorn is helping you stir up/burn up about 100 lifetimes worth of religious guilt, and that may be one of the things you’re tripping over. If you happen to slip right from desire to guilt, be grateful for the efficiency of that, and notice the sequence. Be grateful that you’re enlightened enough to know that liberating yourself from guilt is vital to both enjoying the life you have and creating the life you want. You can do it — though it will take active, articulate honesty.

Taurus Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

You may feel that your wounds are still tender and that your psyche is still fragile. That’s a good reminder to tread lightly on the Earth, as you gradually make your way up the other side of the rather deep place you got yourself into the past few weeks. You are still going over old territory, but you’re doing it with a new perspective and a new purpose. That is to say, you have the potential now to benefit from your errors and to learn from your own personal past. But more to the point, you are taking important steps in your journey of transcending the past of the people who came before you. We forget that we stand on the slag pile of history left behind by our ancestors. Yet we also forget their living spirits. You might try contacting those ancestors, in their realized form, where they can guide and support you. They are watching, and they are aware.

Gemini Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

Keep moving. Do what you need to feel good and stay visible. Part of you is being pulled back into your cave; part of you knows it’s high time to get yourself more involved with the activities of life and actually create or achieve something that is meaningful to you. You will need to address that dual impulse more or less continuously. Make sure you get enough rest. Make sure you get enough time alone. Then, whether you’re feeling certain about it or not, go out and engage the world. You don’t need to impress anyone; you need to be present, alert and sincere. This is a low-energy output mode. It’s actually easy; you can listen more than you speak, but don’t hesitate to speak when necessary. Meanwhile, Mercury has spent a month making various weird moves in your house of words and ideas. It’s now moving forward at a steady pace. Writing is your best friend right now. I promise.

Cancer Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

You may be seeking a balance of opinions or trying to please everyone, but soon you’re going to come up against a natural limit and be forced to make a decision. Think way ahead to that time and decide what elements of your plan are the most important and which elements are the ones you can forego. Do the same with others. You can actually reach a compromise here, but it’s going to be a creative one and that mainly means that you don’t want to be doing it under pressure, on the spot. Don’t announce your proposal until the end, but make sure that you know what it is, that you know what your options are and you understand what’s the most meaningful to whom. There are a good few elements that are part of the fringe, not part of the core; but certain points are the meat and bones. Protect those; don’t compromise on what you know is actually useful.

Leo Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

Finding oneself is so much work, it’s amazing anyone would manage to lose themselves again after they do so. However, what we call self tends to change, when we’re healthy; which is to say, not stuck. And there are times that change can feel plenty uncomfortable, vulnerable and pushed up against limits. You have pushed back against those limits lately, and stretched open your potential. I suggest you not be so fast to fill the space up. Rather, look and feel for what’s there. Consider the new dimensions of your psychic interior, and see if you can notice changes in how you relate to the exterior landscape as well. That would include your physical environs and your emotional landscape: in a subtle way, everything is different; you are different; all your relationships have shifted. I suggest you notice the changes that appeal to you and emphasize them, steering clear of old patterns and old feelings.

Shifting your emotional perspective requires those moments of discomfort, the ones that tell you that you have something to process. Move through them quickly and get into the new space, more like a backstage costume change than a session with a psychiatrist. Expect a quick series of these encounters over the next few days — take them in stride, adjusting rapidly. After about a week of this you’ll see that this series of small adjustments offers you a small clue to your mental orientation, and then after several you can deduce where you stand with yourself and with others, particularly those you’re inclined to think of as authority figures. This method of adaptation is preferable to some of the other methods that you have experimented with in recent seasons, where outer circumstances showed up all at once and compelled you to adjust instantly. This is more your style — progress in meaningful, manageable increments.

Part of our shifting psychic landscape has involved the revelation of how androgynous so many people are. Even those who don’t quite admit it are feeling the shift (hence, the vast homophobic backlash of our era). For you, from one perspective, the gender-blending quality feels natural. From another, it’s odd and disorienting. Yet you’re in a particularly rich moment of embodying your gender and sexual opposites. The more you emphasize one polarity, the more you’re likely to encounter the other. If you’re paying attention you will notice many subtleties and nuances, particularly when receiving sensation and acting on desire. At times you may encounter the seeming paradox of needing to fertilize yourself, and having to stretch across certain beliefs and seeming physical barriers. That is one of the great themes of the spiritual and creative history of our era. At first the territory can seem impossible to navigate, then after a while it can seem entirely natural, with many variants in between. Yet that sense of exploration is unlikely to abate, particularly after we’ve all spent so much time seeking inspiration and contact outside ourselves.

Pretend you’re a politician running for office and Election Day is rapidly approaching. You’re probably not running for office and you likely never would, though I suggest that this is the time to keep your focus on your actual goal and the many small steps you need to get there. Unlike in recent months, you see, those steps are likely to go well. You can work with the version of Murphy’s Law that says, “anything that can go wrong already has,” and if it hasn’t something close to it has, so you know what to do when a new variant arises. With a focus on your goal, with determination and most of all with truth in your heart, there is nothing that can stop you. The one place your chart suggests you bring out a little more energy from the reserve tanks is that seemingly elusive, arguably nonexistent thing called creativity. Don’t let it elude you and don’t forget that you have a lot of the stuff. Use it liberally and remember — if you do, it will never run out.

There’s a subtle tipping point involved in your quest for leadership and professional success. I cannot emphasize the point strongly enough that, no matter how much chaos the world is in, and regardless of how much inner tension you may feel, and how much is unresolved, you’re the person most capable of leadership in your environment. As you embrace that role you will see that it’s a fairly large environment we’re talking about, certainly more meaningful than the Thursday night scene at the local bar. I mean real success, whatever that actually says to you. Yet this calls for collecting yourself and focusing on your independence, particularly emotional. Your success is balanced on your becoming a person independent of the emotional traps of the past and the people in your environment. This will allow you to focus what may feel like an uncomfortable amount of energy on your inner development. Feel for that balancing point and lean gently into the changes.

The Capricorn Audio Birthday Report is now ready. This is more than an hour of astrology for Capricorn and Capricorn rising, covering the cardinal T-square from a personal perspective. I’ve also included a 20-minute tarot reading using the Voyager Deck. For instant access, order here for Capricorn and Capricorn Rising. Only $14.95, this also makes a meaningful and economical gift.

The Sun moving into your solar 9th house — Libra — says it’s time to start considering your longterm vision in a new way. It may be that as soon as you get any momentum here, you come up against some idea of why something cannot happen, or what is in the way. Therefore I suggest you abandon the logistical angle and stick strictly to the sketch. Draw the building you want to design from the outside in; consider its shape and size. To do this you’ll have to give your analytical mind a rest and activate the illustrative aspect. With Jupiter and Uranus conjunct in Pisces, that ought to be pretty easy, and you’ll like it. Keep making those sketches until your vision has a life of its own. At a certain point you’ll start to awaken to the inward aspects of the concept: the specifics of how to develop what you want. I am sure you follow the logic of proceeding in this order, which is to maximize encouragement and allow a sense of creative freedom.

Aquarius Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

Feed the Pisces in you, whatever that means. Fertilize your creativity. Focus on emotional movement, ideas and comfort. Jupiter and Uranus are continuing to hold a long and rare conjunction in your birth sign, which to me suggests a seeding phase. Both are retrograde, which is a clue that your mission is to become so familiar with yourself that you always feel confident being you, no matter what the circumstances that surround you. This is also a time to take in worldly learning, in whatever form you want. The art you see, the books you read and the music you hear will profoundly influence the person you are becoming, so choose well and select on the basis of what feels nourishing, inspiring and which offers you a sense of freedom. The same is true of the people you meet; don’t be so eager to take anyone into your life, but keep a keen eye for the ones who you know can truly feel you.

Pisces Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.