Tag Archives: Great Attractor

And What Are We Attracting?

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Dear Planet Waves Reader:

In recent podcasts, I’ve been tracking a planetary alignment that’s soon to arrive, just as Venus stations direct next week. This grouping, already underway, is a collection of both major and minor planets gathering around a deep-space point called the Great Attractor, located in mid-Sagittarius. These include planets you’ve definitely heard of (Mercury, Mars) and ones you may not have heard of (Pholus, Ixion).

Planet Waves
Image of Pallas Athene as visualized in full grandeur and irony by Gustav Klimt. The asteroid named for her, properly called (2) Pallas, is central to an alignment now forming in mid-Sagittarius. This asteroid represents matters of strategy, law and politics.

On one level this looks like a touch of domestic political chaos here in the United States (not exactly news; U.S. politics is currently verging on requiring a locked ward). But this alignment is definitely news, in that it portends something unusual. Or perhaps it’s describing something unusual that’s already happening. Notably, this in turn will be followed up by Mercury retrograde in Sagittarius and Capricorn at the end of the year, mingled with a pair of eclipses.

Venus for her part stations direct in Libra after a six week retrograde; this is a different event from the alignment with the Great Attractor, but they are synchronous, so they count as one, focused in linear time on Nov. 18 — in less than a week. Venus stationing is going to come with a bit of tension and release, also underway, which will get all the molecules in the sky shaking. I’ll come back to Venus stationing in Libra, because I believe that event holds the key to the rest.

The Great Attractor gets its name because it’s drawing toward it a million galaxies, while it rushes away from them and they follow in endless pursuit. Our galaxy (the Milky Way, a spiral island of 300 billion stars) is one of those doing the chasing; so are all of our neighboring islands in what is called the Local Group of galaxies. Note, I’m not talking about the Galactic Center here. That’s the core of our own galaxy; the Great Attractor is like some giant vortex pulling everything its way, a bit like an anti-big-bang.

We cannot see the Great Attractor; it’s invisible on the normal spectrum of light. We know it’s there because 1. So much is getting pulled toward it, and 2. It’s broadcasting on every frequency except for visible light — such as X ray, gamma ray, and even Miley Ray (Disney owns a piece of the action). The Great Attractor happens to be aligned with the plane of our own galaxy, so we’re peering over at it obscured by thousands of light years of dust, gas and other stars. But we know it’s there, likely to be a vast dark matter point that my colleague Philip Sedgwick describes as prodigious and the largest thing known to science. “It’s the ultimate Sagittarian statement of ‘get away from me, don’t crowd my space’,” he said in a Planet Waves interview.

Planet Waves
We live in a galaxy containing as many as 300 billion stars. The nearest galaxy is two million light years away. Our group of galaxies is called the Local Group, containing over 30 galaxies. This Local Group covers over 10 million light years in diameter, further away than California. The Local Group belongs to the Virgo supercluster of galaxies. The Virgo supercluster is about 200 million light years in diameter. The Great Attractor is a gravitational anomaly somewhere in the Virgo supercluster, pulling the other galaxy groups towards the Hydra and Centaurus constellations. This is an illustration of the Great Attractor by Henrick Summanen.

Though it’s moving very fast, it’s so far away that it appears to be standing still. So it’s considered a fixed point that is located at just over 14 degrees of Sagittarius. Due to this Sagittarius alignment, that point is getting a lot of action the next couple of weeks. But let’s consider it first by itself.

In consciousness, the Great Attractor manifests as a certain kind of intense. It can feel hotly polarized. People with a prominent Great Attractor in their charts will cultivate strong feelings in others, and can often be the subject of contention or controversy. They have the ability to make unusually close friends with equally formidable enemies. There is a potency characterized by this point that holds two extremes and presents them with lots of fodder for spiritual growth.

So now we have this collection of planets gathering around this odd point in space. There are a good few of them. I won’t be able to go over every one in this article, but I’m going to factor them all into my interpretation. And over the weekend I’ll post a full list to the blog, in case you enjoy the feeling of data overload (I know I do).

Let’s start with Ixion. This is a Pluto-like point (a plutino) orbiting our Sun discovered in 2001. My key phrase for Ixion is anyone is capable of anything. I associate it with the quality of amorality. There is also a property of getting a second chance, but what one does with that new chance is up for grabs. Ixion on the Great Attractor during the past couple of years has helped make a big hit out of the idea that there is no difference between right and wrong. Do we need to learn about this all over again, or can we do it more fficiently, say by remembering?

More recently, Pholus has arrived. Pholus, the second centaur planet ever discovered (that was in 1992, after Chiron in 1977), releases contained energy. My favorite key phrase for Pholus is small cause, big effect. With Pholus we can see the dangerous influences of alcohol, of idle curiosity, of idle idealization of an idol (such as the charismatic effects of famous people) and the unleashing of events that have unforeseen and far-reaching consequences. Gee, this is sounding like a lot of fun so far. All centaurs add a quality of reactivity and potency.

Next let’s add Mercury into the mix. That would say apply all of this to words and technology, as well as to commerce. But moreover, something has seized the mind: something besides intelligence. Mars will be there too, which adds a flavor of aggression. Most contemporary astrologers looking at this event merely see a Mercury-Mars conjunction in Sagittarius; the rest of the points are invisible to them — with one possible exception, in the form of a major asteroid. Looking at this event in low-res, you see hot words, such as an argument, thinking too fast and too big at the same time, and some exaggerated issue or situation.

The scale and exaggeration stuff comes from the background sign, Sagittarius. And, it fits; watch a real news program that covers national and world affairs and things will indeed seem weirdly but somehow actually and indeed dangerously exaggerated and bombastic; a kind of sports event.

Planet Waves
Segment of the chart for Venus stationing direct. At the top right are four planets in the Sagittarius alignment. In order going down are Pallas, Mars, Mercury and Pholus. Not shown are Ixion or the Great Attractor.

A few astrologers will be looking at Pallas, the second asteroid (or minor planet) ever discovered. That was in 1802, so she’s been around long enough for a few people to notice. Pallas (associated with the goddess Athena, a warrior born in full armor) has two main themes — strategy and politics. Since Sagittarius has an international theme, this would be international politics and strategy. Mars and Pallas together point to something military or at least strategic.

Are you getting the picture? It looks like some hotly polarized, extremely exaggerated international situation that pops up seemingly out of nowhere. Sagittarius adds the flavor of religious zeal, which we’ve been so lavishly indulging since Pluto went into Sagittarius many years ago and everything became a matter of ‘faith’. Or, we could be talking about the most spectacular international vacation anyone has ever taken in their lives, perhaps including an actual visit to the Galactic Core.

To test the geopolitics angle of this theory, let’s check in briefly with three charts, to see if any of them has sensitive points around this area: the U.S. chart, the chart of Israel and the chart of Iran.

First, the USA Sibley chart, the most commonly used July 4, 1776 horoscope for the States. (I covered this chart over the summer.) Let’s see, that chart has mid-Sagittarius in the ascendant: this whole circus takes place in the USA’s 1st house, with planets making exact contact with the rising degree, 12+ Sagittarius. As my Aunt Josie would say, How about that? What might be brewing deep in the hearts and minds of the enlightened statesmen at the helm of our great empire?

Next, flipping through the indispensable Book of World Horoscopes by Nicholas Campion, let’s visit the chart of Israel. (I must visit the actual country soon.) My preferred chart for Israel (for astrologers, the 4 pm chart) has 14+ Aquarius rising. The Sagittarius event takes place in its 10th house. This alignment makes an exact trine to Israel’s natal Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Leo on its 7th house (that gets a big gee whiz — talk about a chart with a setup for contentious relationships). The trine could well open an energy line from that feisty, conflicted 7th house (the relationship house). Speaking as a psychological astrologer, by the way, Israel likes to project its inner psychological strife onto others outside its borders: very 7th house. If you’re different but live within the country, you can do fine in Israel.

As for Iran, another old place I would love to visit: I’ll use the current chart — that of the 1979 revolution. The Sagittarius alignment is close to Iran’s 9th house Neptune. That represents Iran’s persistent condition of religious delusion, as well as an international vulnerability. Neptune often works like a blind spot. Neptune, which has the widest orb of influence of all the planets, is just four degrees from the Great Attractor. Neptune + Great Attractor can make a lot of waves. People react to those with Neptune + Great Attractor without understanding why they are reacting.

Planet Waves
Iran is a magnificent place on the Earth. This is Mount Damavand, Iran’s highest point, located in Mazandran. Photo by Arad Mojtahedi.

This event also squares the lunar nodes of Iran (which go across mid-Virgo and Pisces). That represents a turning point.

One last bit out of the Iran chart. The midheaven or 10th house cusp (the angle of the chart that’s about power, reputation and the government itself) is at 2+ Capricorn. Does that sound familiar? Pluto is right there, right now. Pluto in the 10th, especially in Capricorn, can have a desire to concentrate power. I’m surprised we haven’t heard a lot more from Iran this year, because the cardinal cross that’s been dancing around has been all over this chart.

One last item. There’s a chart about which I seem to be the only person who likes to write, and that is called the Nuclear Axis. This is the chart for the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction (sometimes called the atom split chart, not strictly accurate), which led directly to the atomic bomb. The Nuclear Axis chart has a hot spot, which is a line right across mid-Gemini-Sagittarius. If you read my earlier article, you’ll see that this chart can function like a trigger for nuclear events; it was also directly involved in the Sept. 11 incident, the location of which got the name Ground Zero — a nuclear term.

Now, you have some insight into how astrologers make predictions. There are many techniques, though basically we look at a lot of factors and then see what they all point to; we look at what picture emerges.

However, both the metaphysics and the ethics of prediction are a huge gray area. Prediction is a form of inviting or creating manifestation. So I’m not going to predict what all these alignments seem to be illustrating. Rather, I’m going to propose that deep in our hearts, we might want to get wise to this kind of bullshit being foisted on us again and again. And that deep in our hearts, we might, we just might, want to manifest something different. I believe that we can, because we are creating the world as we go. I am not saying this as a New Age belief. I am saying it from observation and an understanding of history. Unless you believe that the world is run by lizard-reptile space entities, there’s nobody down here but us chickens.

Venus stationing direct can release the power of love and authentic values, which can color this whole event. The way to do that is to want a better world. The people, such as bankers, who are making the world better for themselves, are doing so because they want to. And we on the ground need to muster up the audacity to have more than hope. We need the audacity of a vision.

I am always amazed — stunned, in fact — at the tolerance of Americans for yet another war, threat, attack or conflict. Isn’t anybody sick of it yet? Is anyone sick of the violence for no purpose other than profits, which have this odd tendency to drain our economy of all its resources? Don’t we want something better? Don’t we believe that the resources of society could be more equitably distributed? That the needs of more people — or of all people — can be taken care of?

Planet Waves
Photo by Eric Francis — Book of Blue.

I am, and I do.

Think of how long we’ve been pelted with threats and negativity. We’ve lived through one war after another since going back how many decades? Ask yourself: do you actually want something better for yourself and for the world?

I’m aware that my life started in a bit of a crossfire hurricane. It’s taken me some time to work my way out of it; to allow in a different feeling tone. When my mother was five months pregnant, JFK was killed. When I was six months old, there was a false flag event called the Tonkin Gulf Incident, which set off the Vietnam War as we know it — and which never happened (the Vietnam War definitely happened; the Tonkin Gulf Incident did not happen, but it was used to justify a decade of war that spread into four Southeast Asian countries).

A false flag event is when one person or entity creates an attack on another, then blames someone else to get a desired outcome. Whoever you think did Sept. 11, it was by definition a false flag event because the U.S. government blamed one guy (Osama bin Laden) and then started a war with someone else who had nothing to do with it (Saddam Hussein). The one odd thing both guys had in common was being on the CIA payroll. False flag events take many forms; I believe the banking collapse of 2008 qualifies as one. It served mainly to enrich the people who were caught in the ‘crisis’.

I recognize that we’re talking about seemingly vast powers that seem to tower over us. Yet they get their power because we give ours up. Isn’t that obvious by now? I think that part of the problem is that we tend to be more seduced by fear than by peace. I guess you could blame the devil, but we do choose how to respond when something happens. The moral psychology here, I know, involves ‘security’. That is, there are many who believe that a seeming threat is best responded to with violence or overzealous security. Many, in the face of any seeming danger, have a need to belong and to take sides that trumps all common sense, and in that state of mind it can feel like doing anything else is pandering to the ‘enemy’.

Fear takes many forms, and it makes us susceptible to control. The people who manufacture fear know this. Anti-Islamic sentiments in the United States have never been more whipped up and exploited than they are now. I mean, you would think that Muslims were all gay socialists looking for a place to get married, the way certain political factions want us to feel about them.

When you look at the astrology and feel the current climate of the country and indeed the world, it’s unsettling the way things feel like they’re being driven — and at an extremely fast pace. I’m not predicting an outcome here; rather I am suggesting that we have a choice in the matter of what we create and how we respond to it. That choice is hinted at by Venus stationing direct in the sign of decisions, Libra.

And I’m saying that just in case something a a little extra weird does happen, you get to apply discernment. You get to make up your mind about what it means, whether it’s true and what your correct response should be. You might be thinking, fat lot of good that’s going to do. But I can tell you this.

So far, our silence has been taken as consent.

Yours & truly,

Eric Francis

Judith Gayle’s Political Waves will now appear Saturdays on Daily Astrology & Adventure — the Planet Waves blog. She also has her own blog, called Political Waves.

 

Eric Francis
This image is an artist’s idea of what the gamma ray bubbles above and below the galactic plane would look like if you were far enough away, and if you could see them. Gamma rays are invisible to the eye, but equipment can perceive this form of light. This view of our galaxy is made of real photos — particularly the mushy, foggy horizontal line that’s really a spiral viewed straight-on. This a composite taken from the Earth so it’s, well, it’s very nicely cobbled together. The purple gamma bursts look like they are added by an artist, though likely modeled on visual and geometric data from the telescope. Pretty kooky! PS, the white bulge at the center is the Galactic Core, at 27 degrees Sagittarius.

And In Other Large News

The Sun is still in Scorpio but the news is seeming rather Sagittarian these days. Scientists this week figured out that there are two enormous, ancient bubbles of gamma rays, one each above and below our galaxy. They had to look using extremely fancy eyeglasses — NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope. The discovery creates a new kind of ‘thing’ known to science.

According to Discovery News, among the 1,500 sources of gamma rays Fermi has mapped so far, nothing resembles the bubble-shaped structures, which stretch across more than half of the visible sky, from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus.

“You have to ask where could energy like that come from,” astronomer Doug Finkbeiner, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Discovery News. Hints of the bubbles appeared years earlier in X-ray surveys and in maps of the cosmic microwave background radiation stemming from the Big Bang explosion.

Speaking of big bangs, Obama is poised to go along with extending Bush-era tax cuts to the wealthisst 2% of Americans, that is, those making over $250,000 a year. This is a Republican plan, now apparently embraced fully by the administration as well, that would balloon the federal deficit that the Republicans elected last week said they were determined to cut. “We have to deal with the world as we find it,” said Obama’s top adviser, David Axelrod.

Speaking of — a bipartisan commission appointed by Pres. Obama Thursday issued a proposal for deficit reduction that would cut everything from the military to Social Security to basic tax exemptions for the middle class, such as the home mortgage deduction.

And the European Union is set to ban all medicinal herbs on April 1, 2011. This plan goes back 10 years, and this appears to be a final sunrise provision that takes effect next year. Called the Traditional Herbal Medicines Product Directive, it went into effect in 2005, but blogs in Europe are saying that this new provision takes effect in 2011.

Companies that manufacture herbal products must be able to prove that the product is safe, unlike the pharmaceutical industry, which this law benefits enormously. For more information, listen to this track by Laurie Anderson, from her new CD/DVD — because only an expert can deal with the problem. The CD is called Homeland.

 

Planet Waves

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, November 12, 2010, #839 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Aries (March 20-April 19)
A relationship is about to reveal its mysteries and secrets, just as you discover that you have bigger plans. The question is, are the two in harmony? It’s amazing what people will sacrifice for special relationships. So I suggest you be cautious of the equation, ‘I would do this, if I wasn’t in a relationship’, or any of its derivatives. I think it makes much more sense to choose relationships that support all of our goals and affirm who we actually are. And this, you can choose. I would caution that you need to check carefully whether what you believe about what someone thinks is really what they think. You may be seeing your own beliefs projected like light into a fog. Then again, you may actually be constrained by the relationship. To sort this out you need to do a careful reality check, both with yourself and with your partner. The next two weeks will prove to be instructive, and instrumental to your progress.
Aries Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

 
Taurus (April 19- May 20)
It’s easier to change your mental patterns than you think. Part of your typical challenge is forgetting that patterns are established in the past. Most of what you’re dealing with is habituation, legacy material and false memory. Patterns are not simply eliminated; usually, when transcended, they are replaced by new, hopefully more productive patterns. The key to the whole process is consciousness. It’s one thing to think; it’s another thing to be aware of your thoughts; it’s yet another thing to be aware that you not only influence the process, but that you run the whole thing. That influence is what you’re gaining power over. Remember, it’s gained by awareness in the present and making choices in the present. The feeling of the decision is an easy deliberation between points of view or potential outcomes; the options should present you with obvious pictures, such as ‘this is judgmental’ versus ‘this is self-affirming’. Remember, obvious.
Taurus Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Gemini (May 20- June 21)
Mercury is now in your opposite sign, so you can take advantage of that as an invitation to open up communication where previously it’s been tense — particularly recently. As the next few weeks unfold, you’ll need this avenue of contact, so I suggest you work it well, and keep it open. That’s another way of saying cultivate trust and respect as a strategy — preferably, your only strategy. Whatever path you take through the unusual relationship circumstances that arise in the next few weeks, trust and respect will be your most dependable tool. These circumstances may be contentious; they may be passionate and strange; they may transcend your old ideas of what a relationship should be, so you may as well check those ideas at the door. The point of forthcoming events, it would seem, is to resolve old sexual karma rather than to make new karma.
Gemini Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

 
Cancer (June 21- July 22)
This time in your life is about questioning the whole nature of commitments. You’ve been struggling with this for years, and now you can ask the questions that get the right answers. What you’re seeking is clarity. On that quest, the first thing to know is when you’re not clear. Obviously, you would need contrast so that you can discern the difference between clarity and lack thereof. In your current solar chart, this translates to clarity in commitments. This in turn breaks down into two main categories — what you’re committed to and what, precisely, this means; and what you expect of others who you perceive as committed to you. Now for the question — what is the source of your data? Are your expectations grounded or ungrounded? Can you have a conversation about them where you could reasonably predict some solid agreement? The time to test your theory is during the next few days.

Cancer Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
Over the next couple of weeks, I suggest you be especially careful in all matters involving children, as well as the sexual activity that might lead to them. Careful means full of care, and I would say a bit cautious as well. I’m not suggesting that there’s danger, but rather the potential for choices and actions to have unexpected consequences. So while your sense of play and adventure are pulling you in one direction (like saying nuts! to the rules), I suggest you guide yourself in another, toward discernment. This might be tricky, and you may really feel pulled in the direction of taking risks you would never, ever, take under other circumstances. Consider all possibilities, yes, and also consider consequences both foreseen and unforeseen. You do have a guardrail: your mind. Intelligence does not present an absolute boundary, just a useful tool for evaluation. This is a fine time to put it to maximum use — and still have plenty of fun.

Leo Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
Events in and around your family of origin will give you some rare opportunity for perspective. As I’ve said a number of times and places, the legacy material from your father’s side of the family is the front-and-center focus of the year — and what happens over the next 10 days or so is something of the big climax. By now, I trust you’ve learned to distance yourself from the situation, though that ‘distancing’ property is part of the equation you might want to question. What other approach can you take? What would it mean to take full ownership of the sense of polarization that you feel? What would it mean to fully embrace the ways religion or mysticism were used as a hedge against emotions? And what would your life be like if you embraced every possibility that having grown up in such an eclectic background has offered you? The next few weeks present a fast-paced adventure in all of the above.

Virgo Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Libra (Sep. 22 - Oct. 23)
Whew. At long last, Venus is about to station direct in your birth sign. That actually happens Nov. 18, before the next weekly horoscope comes out — so let’s consider that transit here. Venus stationed retrograde in Scorpio, and it will station direct in your sign; this bridges the two signs, and that’s another way of saying ‘live as if what you stand for is really true’. One of the most potent values you possess is your desire for everything to work out well for everyone involved. In order to do that, you must make sure that your own needs and basic desires are taken care of. You also need to be in possession of your most vital principles, and own them with a sense not only of responsibility but of active dedication. Even if your mind is telling you one thing and your feelings are telling you another, you know what is true for you, and now is the time to celebrate that fact.

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

 
Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
How you feel about yourself is at stake, and everything — everything — is based on that quality of your existence. Basically, everything in your world surrounds you feeling right with yourself. And that, if astrology means anything, seems like it’s never been a bigger issue. You have such strong opinions about yourself, and they are so deeply polarized, that you may well be questioning which are right and which are wrong. Here is where you fully enter the paradox of selflove. In order to be sane and to keep growing, you have to love yourself no matter what you may ‘think’ of yourself. This is not vanity; it’s about taking a compassionate position toward yourself that is proven by the compassionate way you see others. One warning is when you notice yourself making rationalizations or developing strategies to make things work out against the current apparent setup. You can create your life but you cannot create the lives of those around you. And that is quite enough.

The Scorpio Audio Report is now done. This reading includes more than an hour of astrology and 20 minutes of tarot custom created for those with Scorpio Sun, Moon or rising. Priced at $14.95, it makes a useful and economical gift. Use this link for instant access.

 
Sagittarius (Nov. 22 - Dec. 22)
Planets are gathering in your sign, in a configuration that releases its power as Venus stations direct next week. The alignment is so potent I suggest you touch everything and everyone in your life as though your fingers have lasers on the tips. That includes the words you use, and it includes the feelings you feel and the thoughts that you think. Consider yourself a transmitting station that broadcasts on every frequency. Therefore, the most helpful way to proceed is to hold everyone in a space of love and appreciation. Find what to appreciate even about the people you don’t like so much. Practice guiding your mind in a wholly positive direction. You have so much influence that you are highly likely to manifest what you think and feel in tangible form; what witches call the threefold law is in full operation: it all comes back to you with three times the intensity you put out.
Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
Certain decisions you’ve made or values you hold may not have left you feeling like the flavor of the month, but that’s okay. You have strong opinions, and whether you’re right or wrong, at the moment you’re in a position of leadership that others will have to deal with whether they like it or not. You’re fine as long as you leave room for any of those viewpoints to be improved upon, and are willing to take on board the suggestions of others long enough to consider them fully. I propose, though, that even if you seem wrong or doubt yourself for a moment, you may not actually be; a little time will tell. How many times have you developed an opinion that turned out to be off-base in the short run, only to demonstrate itself as based on sage wisdom in the long run?

Capricorn Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
You’re at the center of a far-flung circle of friends and associates. More to the point, you’re like a node point that is, in itself, a source of energy around which many people gather. And right now that node point is getting hotter by the minute. You’re a powerful attractor of energy, and you’re also influencing the flow of information, the quality of contact and the level of creativity. I suggest you follow the basic rule of improvisational theater: yes keeps the show going. This would be yes, and rather than yes, but. Build positively on ideas rather than whittling them away and seeing what is left. One thing leads to another. While there are clearly many people involved in your life, make sure you know who you’re talking to all the time. Consider every conversation significant, and pay attention to where it leads, remembering that things have impact beyond what seems obvious. People who are the most geographically remote may play the most significant role.

Aquarius Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
The next seven to 10 days are a phase when some stunning career developments are possible for you. One key is communication. Another is foreseeing effects and consequences. I can divide this into several subtopics. One is how you focus your intentions; another is how you set your tone; and the other is keeping the right balance between casting a wide net and being specific in what you say to whom. All of this falls under the general heading of strategy, a theme that holds a key place in your solar charts, particularly where career matters are concerned. What actually gets the results will surprise you, so there’s no use knocking yourself out. Be efficient, and make sure you cover the necessary traditional bases (updated CV, business card, checking email) and that you play the random chances. Small moves will have potentially large effects, so keep mistakes down to a minimum. If you happen to not get it right the first time, backtrack quickly and get it right as soon as possible.
Pisces Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

Mercury Retrograde: What Did You Learn?

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Dear Earthly Voyager:

My old friend Christopher McGregor, a self-taught lawyer who approaches jurisprudence from a metaphysical angle, is fond of asking people, ‘What did you learn?’

Planet Waves
Laser-engraved, dual-honed redundant gigabit network patch board and modem-router at Brainstorm Computers and Technology in Kingston. They will engrave your laptop too! Photo by Eric Francis.

I always thought this was clever, and I consciously picked up the habit. Now when someone visits a foreign country or comes back from Burning Man or a therapy session, or has a relationship encounter they choose to tell me about, I will often ask: what did you learn?

I’ve learned something from their responses. There are people who right away jump into describing what they observed, experienced and deduced from a seemingly mundane experience. They know without thinking that they learned something, even if it’s something ‘small’. Some know that it’s possible to learn something about the world, and to learn something about yourself at the same time.

There are others who look at me and say, ‘What did I learn? What do you mean?’ — as if it’s impossible to learn something when visiting your aunt or from taking a ride on the Staten Island Ferry.

So, on the cusp of Mercury stationing direct in Virgo (that happens Sunday, Sept. 12), I’m here to ask: what did you learn during these past three weeks of Mercury retrograde? And, since Pluto returns to direct motion Sept. 14, we can expand that timeframe a little — but first let’s consider Mercury.

This has been one of the psychologically deepest, edgiest and most challenging spells of the Mercury dance in a long time. These qualities relate to Mercury being retrograde in Virgo, one of its home signs. Virgo is not an easy energy, being so mentally focused to the point of obsession, often on self-criticism. It’s given to bearing down on small details rather than the bigger scenarios of life; whether we love the details or despise them, they require attention.

Political news during this retrograde has verged on psychotic, in the clinical sense of the word. Rage about the economy is being directed into racial hatred, emulating a condition that those who know 20th century European history might be familiar with. We are living inside an economic and political tinderbox.

Speaking of, there have been an unusual series of fires this week in the United States, in or near urban neighborhoods — one in Detroit, where 85 homes were destroyed, with the cause still unknown. There was a gas explosion and fire in San Bruno, CA, last night, where so far 120 homes have been damaged or destroyed. As of late Thursday the fire was only half contained. Residents said they smelled gas coming out of sewers for weeks. And 169 homes were destroyed and 1,000 families evacuated in Boulder, CO as a fire engulfed the forest near the city, and moved in on residential areas. City residents were being asked to prepare for possible evacuation. As of last night the fire was still expected to burn for 10 more days. Wind gusts up to 64 mph were fueling the fire and making it very difficult to contain.

Speaking of fire, the little minister down in Florida who was going to burn the Koran seems to have put his plans on hold. Everyone but him seemed to get that this was a bad idea. Thursday the Department of Homeland Security descended on his church and set up a security checkpoint. He also got a call from Robert Gates, the defense secretary, explaining that this could cause serious problems for our troops were it to happen.

Fire has been a factor in the minds of some as well, and not necessarily as passion. Mercury retrograde in this sign has stirred up all kinds of doubts and, in a way typical of Chiron (another factor related to Virgo), revealed the weaknesses in the various systems of our lives. If this is true for you, the question is, what did you do about it?

Virgo is a key energy in our lifetimes because it’s so closely related to information technology. In 1990, hardly anyone had a computer in their house, and next to nobody had the Internet. Now many people carry the Internet in their pockets and have three separate connections. When we get a compact set of events involving Mercury or Virgo, that can get overwhelming; hardware and software can fail; we can sense how meaningless it all might be. Yet there are gems at the bottom of all the static.

Planet Waves
Gigabyte logic board photographed at Brainstorm in Kingston. Photo by Eric Francis.

We’ve also had a few visits from the land of shadows. As I described last week, Mercury has been, and still is, contacting a diversity of points in Sagittarius. These are minor planets and a deep-space point called the Great Attractor, which was closely involved in Wednesday’s New Moon. One minor planet is called Ixion. It’s a Pluto-like body, with a 249-year orbit (Pluto’s is 250), though it has a particularly dark theme. My key phrase for Ixion is, “Anyone is capable of anything.”

Among the themes that came up are: what is the world like when people lose any perception of ethics? Everyone knows that locks keep an honest man honest and that there’s a sucker born every minute. So what keeps people from prying into our doors or lying about anything that can give them an advantage? Well that would be ethics. Ixion on the Great Attractor is stretching that concept a little thin. And, it’s going to be with us for a while.

The connection between Virgo and Sagittarius is asking about what material we have inherited from our family line, going back several generations. This includes the information contained in the deeper pool of our DNA. What is the influence of alcohol on our lives, and how has it shaped the emotional environment of our families?

What about those unfinished healing projects indicated by the retrograde (reference to the past) in Virgo (all matters of healing and wellness; holistic themes; mind-body connection). What’s the story with this little kid we contain, who so often tries to get our attention?

Mercury stations direct on Sunday, Sept. 12. The learning process is not over, but by now we should have the hang of things. In fact, thanks to the fact that Mercury covers the same ground three times, we get one last review of the subject matter as it moves from 5+ Virgo to 19+ Virgo, covering the territory where it was just retrograde for the third time — known as the ‘second shadow phase.’ Then in late September, Mercury will take new territory for the first time in six weeks.

The day of a Mercury station can have that feeling of the truth revealed. Odd bits of missing information can come out. Something that made no sense can suddenly make a lot of sense; what you know can assemble itself like a puzzle, though of course it’s really your mind doing the assembling. There’s a question, though: do we use that information? Do we assemble the final piece, which is bringing it into a decision process?

Pluto Stations Direct in Capricorn

Pluto in Capricorn is still a new influence. It’s the transit that is, in many ways, the pivotal energy of nearly every other event we’ve been experiencing this year and indeed going back nearly two years. Pluto was extremely active prior to that, because it spent the last few years of its trip through Sagittarius crossing over the Galactic Center. It was quite a culmination to a long transit that was dominated mainly by warfare and religious obsession.

Planet Waves
DFI Lan Party logic board, sans CPU, at Brainstorm in Kingston, NY. Photo by Eric Francis.

Then came Pluto in Capricorn. Astrologers have understood this pretty well long in advance; Capricorn is about the structure of society, so the combination of the two meant a lot of changes in society’s institutions. Yet it also portends a refreshing of passion and celebration for which Capricorn is lesser known.

Pluto is about the soul’s journey. Often it’s difficult, here on the dense material plane; at other times we can easily flow with synchronicity. Yet in this phase of history, when we’re so obsessed by fear and when so many people live entirely dispassionate lives, and when so many are afraid to have new experiences, we need help: and Pluto in Capricorn is just that. It represents a new phase of evolution wherein we can crack the casing on those areas where we’re entrenched or stuck, and break out of the many ‘traditions’ that low-grade Capricorn represents in our era of history — like the one that tells us how cool it is to be totally hung up, smug or centered on personal ‘necessities’. This is not a time for purity, for orthodoxy or for leaning on the past; it’s a time to be flexible, adventurous and face the future, and that engine is coming right from Pluto in Cap.

Pluto first ingressed Capricorn on Jan. 25, 2008, staying for about five months. It returned to Capricorn to stay on Nov. 26, 2008. That was the year of the Wall Street banking collapse (the official beginning of the economic crisis, in the public’s perception) as well as the election of Barack Obama. It was the year that we began to see the hideous split in American culture between the Obsessive Regressives and the Supposed Progressives. Obama was elected during the last gasp of Pluto in Sagittarius, and we’re starting to see that have its manifestations now.

Pluto is retrograde the most of all the ‘nine planets’ — 44% of the time. This is because of its great distance to the Sun. This is the third retrograde in Capricorn; lately, it goes retrograde in early April and direct in mid-September. Because it’s retrograde so often, it’s a normal feeling for Pluto, which is a deeply introverted, introspective process most days. Then when it turns direct, it will have a moment of expression: growth and evolution are something that seem obvious, necessary, even desirable.

Of course, Pluto has been the focus of a good bit of stress and enforced changes the past year or so. We’ve recently experienced the third of three squares between Saturn and Pluto. This is the turning point we felt but didn’t necessarily see; it’s the one that actually made the difference. But it may take a little time to manifest — and Pluto direct is the time that’s likely to happen.

Among the first events of this Pluto direct is the Ceres-Pluto conjunction. This is about food. It’s about the food we eat as individuals, and the food we all eat collectively — the food supply, particularly the corporate one. The recent egg scandal, where half a billion eggs were recalled for salmonella, and then the disgusting conditions at the factories were revealed, is a hint of Ceres-Pluto — and that is a reminder to go small, to rely on local farmers as much as possible.

The Sky on the Cusp of Many Other Changes

Planet Waves
Coils of Ethernet network cable at Brainstorm. Photo by Eric Francis.

After so many unbearably intense aspects and events through 2010, the sky (believe it or not) is currently at a bit of a lull. Jupiter and Uranus have backed off the Aries Point a little; Saturn has passed its square to Pluto. However, soon enough we will enter one of those phases when everything will seem to happen all at once. Over the next few weeks I will provide articles that detail these events.

Meantime, this segment of a chart will give you a clue. In the image at this link, take a look at those four planets with very high numbers — close to 30. To the left is the Chiron-Neptune conjunction, which is in its last months. Both planets are heading for Pisces; Chiron makes its last ingress in February, and Neptune transitions in during 2011 and 2012.

To the right is the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. We’re about to experience the second of three; this one takes place in Pisces. As I mentioned Tuesday, this is the first Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Pisces since 1334. In astrology, rare qualifies as potent. There will be one other exact alignment early next year, and then both planets will head into Aries again.

When outer planets change signs, life changes in sweeping ways. At such times, it’s vital to become a visionary of your own life. You have many precedents for this working — all the times you actually did something you previously thought was impossible. It’s wise not just to go with the flow but look where you want to be, and guide yourself there. And where would that be? I suggest you give that some thought as Mercury and Pluto change directions in the next few days. If you’ve been keeping any secrets from yourself, they’re likely to come out. Just remember, they’re coming out for a good reason.

See you next week.

Yours & truly,

Eric Francis

PS: In this week’s podcast, I stated my plans to write about the Sept. 11 chart in this week’s edition, but every time I would touch the chart or the associated materials, I would get a heavy feeling that warned me off the issue. So, I will spare myself the umpteenth article about the incident, and provide you with a link to three back issues: Sept. 11, 1984, The Gingerbread House and Were It So. I think that the most interesting current development in the chart is that the lunar nodes (and thus, eclipses) have returned to Cancer and Capricorn, where they were when the initial event happened, only they have reversed positions. This is a little like saying that the karma of Sept. 11, whatever it was, has done a 180, which is partly why this anniversary is getting so much attention.

Meanwhile, in case you don’t know his name, I suggest you check into the work of a guy named Steven E. Jones, an engineer who has proven that the World Trade Center could not have been taken down by an airplane crash or diesel fuel. He is not a hippy conspiracy theorist; he’s a physicist who understands how buildings go up and how they come down. And there is only one way a steel skyscraper comes down: you demolish it. Nearly a decade on, we only know one thing for sure about the Sept. 11 incident: it could not have happened the way the official account says it did. It definitely happened and all those lives were lost — but it happened some other way.

The Courage Of Our Convictions

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Editor’s Note: This article covers the antics of a Florida pastor named Terry Jones, who plans to have his second annual burning of the Koran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 incident. Thursday afternoon certain cable stations were reporting that Jones, under pressure from just about everyone, had called off his book burning. He’s been saying all week that he would await the word of his god, but I don’t think Barack Obama counts. Jude cautioned that there are conflicting reports and that Mercury is retrograde. Let’s hope the little weasel is telling the truth. Meanwhile, last I heard, DHS and other fancy cops had turned the entry driveway to his church into a security checkpoint. The things people will do for a little attention. — efc

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when Americans lost their sense of themselves. I’d be surprised if the majority still considers our country the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave,’ but I’d probably be in the minority in thinking we’re more free than courageous. Deeply polarized, we take advantage of our constitutionally-protected free speech, a liberty exploited by those who limit, hate and oppose the tolerance that democracy requires. We are free to speak our hearts in this nation, and some of our hearts are very small and dark, indeed.

In a tiny church in Florida, a minister named Terry Jones plans a book burning. He intends to gather his handful of parishioners together on Sept. 11 to burn copies of the Islamic Koran. This obscure little group, which calls itself the Dove World Outreach Center, believes that Islam is the antichrist. Last year, Jones’s book burning was attended by about 30 congregants and local press, including The Independent Florida Alligator. Now, thanks to the liberal use of YouTube and an uptick in hatespeak from the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, Jones’s book-burning has become a current cause celebre.

General Petraeus, seconded by Hillary Clinton and the White House, warns that Jones’s media event presents a danger to U.S. troops. Even the Vatican disapproves, but Jones is determined. A YouTube segment showing an American tossing Korans into a bonfire will be a made-to-order recruiting video for terrorists, gasoline on the fire of global jihad. Someone from Homeland Security might have a chat with Dr. Jones in the next couple of days.

Nine years ago we surrendered freedom for ‘safety’ and declared war on an emotion: terror. Bush the Younger had systematically dismantled the programs and protections that Americans counted on in emergencies, but we didn’t notice because we weren’t expecting any emergencies. And then it happened, televised on a clear September morning. The planes came, the Towers fell. We were shocked that anyone would want to wound us, horrified that the sanctity of our shores had been breached. We looked for answers and found the easy ones, the kind of simplistic mythology we tell our children to lull them to sleep: don’t worry about a thing — America is a shining city on a hill and Daddy’s got a gun.

It’s About You: Capricorn Birthdays for 2010

Dear Capricorn or Capricorn Rising:

The Capricorn birthday audio presentation for 2010 is ready. This is a combination of astrology and tarot, suitable for Capricorn Sun, Moon or rising. I know Capricorn birthdays often get glossed over in the midst of the end-of-year/new year holidays, so I’m happy to be able to offer you this fresh look at your current astrology now.

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

It was an exciting report to record, since the focus of everyone’s astrology right now is Pluto in your sign, putting you at the vanguard of internal evolution as you develop your mission in the world — a world ready for your participation and, as I’ve been suggesting in recent horoscopes, your leadership.

Your Capricorn reading is a careful look at your astrology from before your last birthday through 2010. I touch on the significant astrology from the past few years and make connections to Capricorn’s role in the 2012 alignment.

The current astrology directly influences all the most important aspects of your life: your personal evolution, your career, your home base and sense of security, your family life and your relationships.

You are being called to develop your integrity, Capricorn; in fact, one of my readers once described Uranus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn as mandatory integrity. As you’ll hear in this audio birthday report, you are up to the task of leading by example.

I’ve included a 20-minute tarot card reading, using the Voyager deck by James Wanless. You can order now and get instant access. This is high-quality stereo audio which you can listen to as many times as you like, for as long as you like — these files will be preserved in their original location. It’s priced to be affordable — $14.95 for about an hour of material (this is an extra-long edition of birthday audio).

Because my astrology writing is focused on the houses, I recommend this audio for Capricorn rising as well. This audio report makes an excellent companion to Capricorn Confidential, the 2010 annual edition of Planet Waves, which is in written form.

Thanks for your participation, and for doing your metaphysical shopping at Planet Waves.

Yours & truly,

Eric Francis

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

Dear Planet Waves Reader:

Join our Facebook group!

As this Mercury retrograde draws to a close, 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!

Eric Francis

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.

Planet WavesWeekly Horoscope for Friday, September 10, 2010, #830 – BY ERIC FRANCIS
Aries (March 20-April 19)
In many relationships there is often that feeling of one person being ahead of the other. This might involve personal growth, apparent commitment to the relationship, desire to experience new things within or outside the partnership, and many other possibilities. The current distinctions may involve whether one partner is more into sex, more into relating, or able to understand the way that these things integrate. With Venus and Mars doing an interesting dance in your partnership angle, this theme may surface, and the way the planets are arranged, the story is going to evolve. One day someone may seem to be running ahead of you; another day they may backtrack or need to revisit something from the past. I suggest you participate in this dance as an active partner, which means knowing what you want, and listening to what others want. Remember, desire is subject to change.
Aries Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Taurus (April 19- May 20)
The most dynamic and creative angle of your solar chart is connected to the sign Virgo, which suggests that your passions can get bogged down in many layers of psychology. By passions, I mean your creativity, your curiosity, your sexuality and your desire to experiment with anything new. By psychology, I mean things like rationalizing, guilt, denial or critiquing your desires and ideas out of existence. You alone know how much time you waste doing these things, and by time I mean hours and years. Mercury is about to end its retrograde phase in this part of your chart, suggesting that you can work out a chunk of this material with something that equates to a single idea. You may not be familiar with the power of ideas to transform your life; to you, one may seem like another. Yet ideas are no more abstract than you are. If you are handed a solution or an approach, I suggest you try it for a while and see where you end up.
Taurus Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Gemini (May 20- June 21)
Lately, it seems that everything comes back to safety and security. From airport screening, to every package coming with two or three safety wrappers, to Net Nannies and spam filters and a password for everything, we are a world obsessed with security. Yet rarely do we notice that security is in our minds. Whether we actually feel safe is a thought; it’s not connected to how many locks we have on our door. You inherited your concept of safety from your elders, who in turn got it from your mutual ancestors. If you’re a clear observer of yourself, you see the way the ideas of all these other (mostly neurotic) people influence whether you feel safe at night. Yet you’re entitled to your own absolutely unique concept of what constitutes peace of mind. If you’re paying attention you might notice that it has very little to do with secrecy, guns, locks or things that filter your email for you.
Gemini Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Cancer (June 21- July 22)
Mercury’s retrograde in Virgo, your 3rd solar house — communications, ideas, writing, state of mind, your neighborhood — has likely come with a reassessment or a crisis. Let’s talk about mental health first, a topic we need to consider in how colonized our minds are by a constant barrage of ‘information’ and messages, all of which we’re supposedly responsible for. This is enough to drive anyone into madness and frustration. You’ve seen the need to not only reorganize but to also be vigilant about the workflow and the impact of data as it moves through your life. But there is something deeper, which is an idea that may be deeply meaningful to you, and something you’ve wanted to act on for a long time. I suggest you do what you need to organize your life around making that happen. Small moves will mean a lot, and one step will lead to another.

Cancer Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
How is your financial reassessment coming? Have you figured out that your resource base comes in many different forms, not just money? We’re obsessed with cash in our current era, to the extent where there is a price connected to very nearly everything. Yet when your neighbor knocks on your door to borrow a cup of sugar, do you write it down in a book? Or have we stopped depending on our neighbors for that kind of thing? I suggest you consider what you’ve learned about how resourceful you are, and how this connects to the diversity of forms of wealth. What they all have in common is that they arise from the Earth. That makes a case for developing grounded ideas about how you come to have enough. Meanwhile, cash itself is the focus, and as I mentioned at the beginning of this Mercury retrograde, taking a look at your accounting methods and, at the least, knowing how much money you actually have.

Leo Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
I am going to take an educated guess that these have been psychologically trying weeks for you. That won’t be true for all Virgos but I know that this has been a particularly challenging Mercury retrograde for some, given its presence in your sign. What may be making the difference is how much progress you’ve made, till now, addressing the past. If you’re someone who lives with a sense that the past is unresolved, you may be feeling this more than others. It’s true — family history presents us with many challenges. Ghosts of the past can arise in the form of people with new names and faces. Old relationships can haunt our current ones and patterns tend to repeat themselves. However you may handle the past, you still need to navigate through the present, and this comes down to making decisions. Once Mercury stations direct this weekend, you’ll be working with information or at least an angle you haven’t considered yet — and this will make the correct choice seem obvious.

Attention Virgos — Mercury retrograde has NOT eaten your birthday report, but I’m a little delayed. I plan to do it early next week. A thousand pardons! I still suggest checking in with the Mercury retrograde in Virgo report which is like taking a trek on Virgo through the 12 houses of the zodiac. There is an abundance of information in there offered in service of a sign that deserves more attention than it usually gets. Here is the link to connect with that product. Here is the link to connect with that product.

Planet Waves
Libra (Sep. 22 - Oct. 23)
If you hesitate, you’re in a position where someone else might make a decision about what is important to you. The thing is, you may not be sure quite what to do, or what feels right. And you may need some time to decide, especially if the question involves a relationship. I suggest that, despite however much influence someone has had on you, that you pause for long enough to get a sense of where you’re really coming from. That may take you a couple of months. This is a deep situation, and parts of it are veiled in shadow. But here is what I can tell you at the outset. Relationships are based on shared values. Yes, they are based on chemistry and other kinds of attraction, but what makes a relationship last, and grow, is a foundation on values. So I suggest you evaluate this carefully in your inner world, and listen to those you meet and get a sense of what is the very most important to them. Make this a way of life.
Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
I don’t think anyone has to encourage you to experience desire, but what I think could be meaningful to you is some encouragement to explore that desire on the level of curiosity, creativity and play. You don’t need to participate in the exceptionally uptight times in which we live. I don’t think you want to. However, it may be that ‘other people’ have an idea of commitment that interferes with your concept of what it means to simply be free — to breathe, to socialize, to explore your curiosity, to explore your feelings, to experiment. You know, all those things that commitment supposedly prevents. I suggest you not be afraid of what you want. I would also suggest that you ask directly and find out what the people or person closest to you wants. And if you’re not in a relationship situation that prevents you from being a different person every day, well — there are some amazing options available to you.
Sagittarius (Nov. 22 - Dec. 22)
The next few days offer something of a cosmic trigger for you to move forward on a career or professional matter that has taken its time, and recently been beset with delays or complications. I suggest that you go over all of your prior work; sort through your files and correspondence records, and give yourself a sense of perspective. You need to know enough of the details to make a timeline, and to have a sense of how this idea has evolved. Remember, you need this overview because you’re the one who has to manage the project. Your role is in part political — that of getting people to work together toward a common goal. For that to happen, you have to know what the goal is, and that means what it was and what it is becoming. And the missing factor you’ve been seeking for so long — it may well make itself known this weekend or early next week.
Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
Be particularly mindful of any correspondence that goes across the ocean or the continent. You can also put this to work for you. If you’re trying to figure something out, call your friends on the other coast, or across the pond. Look for someone with a distant, removed or elevated perspective. In fact whatever mystery you’re now facing would look easier to solve if you personally traveled and looked at it from across the plane of reality. If you’re trying to solve a problem, look carefully about how your beliefs influence your perspective on the situation. You seem to be caught in a small idea where a big one is called for; you’re using an analytical tool where a creative solution is what you need. What you think is the issue may not be the issue at all — and as the next month or so progress, you will focus on what you’re trying to change and become, within yourself.

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.
Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
You have more freedom than you think; you’ve done the deep work of breaking free, you’ve endured the pain and the struggle, and you have experienced many enforced changes. Now comes the greatest challenge and the true reward — taking up life as a creative journey. That journey, if you allow it to, could take you far from where you are today, but you still seem to have some lingering emotional attachment or nostalgia. Just remember, that’s what’s keeping you tethered rather than some huge obstacle or impossible task. Yet if you’re not accustomed to the idea that you create your reality, the notion of doing precisely that may itself be daunting. I suggest you tempt yourself with the idea of what you truly want, especially if it seems impossible to attain.

Aquarius Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
Once people start cooperating with you, you will recognize how vital it is that you cooperate with yourself. Or perhaps if you are true to your own cause, others will feel compelled to get behind you. Either way, this is the time to focus on your deepest, highest or best vision. It’s also time to stop assuming that it’s not going to happen and, to the contrary, assuming that it is going to happen. Indeed, what is possible, even probable, is something extremely rare, in fact, a development that may be unprecedented. And while others may play a supportive or pivotal role, I suggest you not delude yourself with any idea of not having exactly what you need right now. The more you focus on the truth that you are exactly who you need to be, and that you have exactly the resources you want the most, the more you will let go of your resistance, get into the flow and let your dreams manifest.
Pisces Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

The Great Attractor (and our 10th Anniversary)

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Are you enjoying getting toasted, warped and pushed by all this edgy Sagittarius energy? The Sun is not only conjunct Mars in Sagg, which would be more than enough to give you a dark tan indoors on a cloudy day. Both are at this moment magnifying the most potent source of electromagnetic radiation in the known universe, the Great Attractor. There may have been a time when we were oblivious to this kind of energy, but not anymore. We have opened up to the point where you can’t drown this out no matter how much whipped cream you squirt on your karma macchiato.

Planet Waves
The Milky Way at center, surrounded by galaxies, clusters and superclusters — and the Great Attractor, at lower right. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. Click image for larger version — really cool.

Philip Sedgwick, the first to delineate the astrology of the Great Attractor, noted that people with the point prominent have lives that impact the world in ways they often cannot see, far beyond their perception. He also noted a polarizing effect; people with it strongly placed (for example aspecting Chiron, the Sun or an ascendant) will evoke strong, opinionated responses from others, a typically Sagittarian trait, but amplified significantly. I have noticed that the people who don’t like them or what they stand for cannot do much about that fact; they can bark and growl but that’s about it. The Great Attractor puts reprisal out of reach and in a sense encourages cooperation. These are, however, subtle effects compared to when our planet and other planets align with the thing and its effects rain down on our consciousness, like they are doing now.

[This astrology is developing as the Big Three US automakers head to Washington DC to negotiate bailout loans, suggesting that this particular meeting has bigger implications than we may be noticing. The Sagittarian theme of the conjunction suggests that today’s hearing in Washington is a global event rather than merely a national one. Also in the news, security is at an all-time high in India as the government received warnings of another imminent terrorist attack there.]

Defined as a gravity anomaly in intergalactic space, The Great Attractor is as dense as thousands of Milky Ways. It is the biggest thing known to science. If you are wondering about the strange sense of time compression this time of year, the Great Attractor is our prime suspect. Consider this: how long ago was Thanksgiving? Hmmm, it was a week ago. How long does it feel like? To me, about two to three weeks, back in the good old days. How long ago was the US election? It was one month ago yesterday. To me it feels like it was about four months ago; or was it last year? Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.

The GA is located at 14 degrees of Sagittarius, one degree from the midpoint of that sign. If we could see it, from our viewpoint it would be on the level of the galactic spiral arms, though 200 million light years beyond them. The clouds and dust of our own galaxy make it difficult to study. We know that it broadcasts across every spectrum except the visible ones. Its gravity is so powerful that it’s drawing toward it a million galaxies, including our own, at the rate of about 24 million miles a day. Astronomers know this because the light of all these galaxies, clusters and superclusters shifts toward the red side of the spectrum, pulled in the direction of the Great Attractor. In other words, they are all moving away from us, toward it; and we are getting vacuumed along by this strange gravitational force.

One of the facts of physical existence is being in constant motion. First of all, we run around like idiots. Then, the Earth is turning; it is orbiting the Sun. The Sun is orbiting the Galactic Core once every 250 million or so years. Our galaxy is being pulled in the direction of this huge, dark, ominous hunk of whatever the heck the Attractor is, along with all these other galaxies. Think of this when you’re stuck in traffic and you’ll feel better.

Einstein demonstrated that gravity bends space-time. A black hole, an ordinary star, a planet, and I would presume even a teacup, warps the fabric of space and time (which are functionally one thing, the space-time continuum). As Mars, the Sun and Earth (with Mercury right nearby) align with the Great Attractor and all its incredible gravity, we are in a very real sense passing through a time warp.

The psychological result might be that when you go to bed you feel like you had five cups of coffee, but in reality the last one you had was at 8 o’clock that morning. You might feel fried; events breaking off from the whole and going their own way; or the sense of people and events polarizing (taking sides, or hunkering down in their position). We might sense that everything is about to go out of control. Who knows, it may be. There can be various shades of domination/submission in our relationships, pushed to cartoon-like proportions. Oh wait, this sounds like life as usual. Just turn up the volume to 11.

Planet Waves
The Time Warp from a production of the Rocky Horror Show by the Castaway Players, Kingston, New York. Photo by Eric Francis.

Just 12 degrees away on the zodiac wheel, also in Sagittarius, is the Galactic Core, the center of the Milky Way (our home galaxy). We know about this point because Pluto has just finished conjoining it, which lasted from 2006 through 2008.

Compared to the Great Attractor, the Galactic Core (at a mere 26,000 light years distance) is so close as to be comparable to the neighborhood deli. This is true even as we know that our Sun is nowhere near the center of the galaxy; we are out on one of the remote arms of the Milky Way, though firmly held by its gravity. I think that our relative distance from the core is partly accountable for that close to the edge, God-forsaken feeling that so often exists on our planet. The core itself To me it feels like a homing signal, where we are drawn toward our deepest faith and sense of unspoken protection — if we bother to notice it’s there.

During Sagittarius time, the Sun (obviously, visible only during the day) aligns first with the Great Attractor (which is happening now) and then the Galactic Core (in about 12 days). The familiar cloudy smear of our galaxy is not visible in the night sky, as it is during the summer months. Rather, the current night sky looking out toward Gemini offers a view into the deeps of intergalactic space.

I always find it interesting and reassuring that long before these points were discovered in the 20th century, Sagittarius was considered the sign associated with all things distant, with spiritual matters and with events and ideas that exist on a vast scale.

Sagittarius calls for perspective. Even as all these fireworks are going off, Pluto has grounded itself in Capricorn, calling our attention to necessity. Precisely contrary to the infinite expansion mentality of Pluto in Sagittarius, the official recession was announced this week just after Pluto went into the sign usually associated with things being contained, such as growth; to wit, Capricorn. A recession means the economy shrinking rather than increasing. The news gives us the impression that every single person will be unemployed in a matter of days, but obviously the economy keeps functioning. It’s just that, as we are seeing, there is going to be a lot of restructuring going on. This will be a special recession in that everyone is needing to rethink how they do business and (in true Capricorn style) survive. I recognize that there are a lot of doom and gloom predictions out there and that the people predicting a total collapse are certain that they are correct. However, it works out that the future is unwritten, and no matter what the trends may say, we need to consciously seek a future that is different than the past.

Planet Waves
Sparkled army man. By Andrea LaHue.

During those last days, indeed on the very last day of Pluto in Sagittarius, Bombay (Mumbai) was taken under siege by terrorists who were demanding, among other things, that the entire nation of India, consisting of more than a billion people, “become Muslim.” I could say a lot about this, but the thing I want to point out is the extent to which there is a misunderstanding of how belief works.

You don’t point a gun at someone (such as a nation) and say, “You must believe this,” and then actually have them convert their faith. While you might think that this is the reasoning process of insane terrorists with grenades, this kind of thinking is pretty much par for the course in the history of the Western world, and has been made a major revival over the course of Pluto in Sagittarius. In particular, this is true in the United States, which became a theocracy run by men bearing false witness to Jesus Christ. For the most part, we went along with the game, to wit, nearly everyone fell for Iraq.

We fall for a lot of belief bullshit. We pile a lot of beliefs onto this whole strange space odyssey we are on, out on the edge of a galaxy getting vacuumed down a vortex 200 million light years away with very little solid information about how we got here. The mystery is held in Sagittarius, and so too is the shadow baggage that becomes religion, indoctrination and phony worldviews that are enforced at the point of a machine gun.

Yet the vision factor of Sagittarius is what we need to preserve as Pluto makes its way across Capricorn. As the structures of the world are taken apart, we need to put them back together with a plan; or at least a plan for how we are going to relate to the scheme of things. As I have suggested many times, we are about to witness and participate in change on a scale we never imagined possible — but we need to start imagining.

The Sagittarius-Capricorn line is the place where we work that border between the vision and the reality of something.

The Planet Waves 10th Anniversary

As it turns out, the natal Sun of Planet Waves (the Internet project, rather than the corporation) is situated right on this line where Sagittarius meets Capricorn, and Pluto has been working its transformational magic across our Sun as we reach our 10th anniversary. That would be on Sunday, Dec. 21, 2008. On that day, Planet Waves will have been on the air a full decade, or 3,650 days.

Planet Waves

Little did I know at the time, but Planet Waves turned out to be very much about grounding a vision. We are preparing some retrospective materials for the next couple of weeks, which will give you a sense of how our mission was conceived and has developed. During this time, I will be passing the horoscope to Genevieve Salerno through the end of the year, so that I can lay low and finish the Next World Stories horoscopes. These are my extended-length annual astrology analyses that cover all the signs.

Given the prodigious astrology of 2009-2012, I am sure you can appreciate the depth at which I want to do these, and the quality I am putting into them. By now you may already know the main events: Pluto entering Capricorn; the Jupiter-Neptune-Chiron conjunction; Saturn entering Libra and squaring Pluto; and the continuing discovery of Eris in Aries.

We are adding new extra features every day, including a tarot spread generator, and a full-length monograph (short book) on Eris that I did for the 2007 annual, called Facets and Fragments of Self. This is included for all those who participate in Next World Stories.

Now I have to write the horoscope that appears below, and then gather myself for a short trip this weekend. I’ve been summoned to our nation’s capital to teach investigative reporting to gay and lesbian bloggers, an opportunity I would never miss.

Stay tuned.

Yours & truly,
Eric Francis

 

Claiming Our Own Unique Holiday
By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

ON THE DAY after Thanksgiving, what is called Black Friday to indicate a turning point in corporate profit, stores opened at dawn and before to welcome bargain hunters. This happens every year, yet this season it brought with it a dark side.

Planet Waves
A swarm of bees. Photo by Robert Durell.

A young man in Long Island, a Wal-Mart greeter, was trampled by hundreds of anxious customers in an attempt to get to discounted goods double-quick. They pushed the front door off of its frame and mowed down anything in front of them. The 34-year-old part-time clerk died at the scene — few people are reported to have quit shopping, and cameras caught some of them laughing.

This feels like swarming behavior to me; in pursuit of stuff, we can become a singularly destructive force — like locusts descending on a fertile field, consuming everything in sight. While I don’t discount the psychology of this horror, I’m wondering how much our current financial insecurity factors into this. Maybe we have more of an edge, this year. Yesterday, the nation was finally informed that it was in a recession (as if we didn’t already know); statistics show we’ve been in one for almost a full year.

I don’t get a paper in the Pea Patch. Here in Southern CA, the paper arrives, slim enough, but is fleshed out with pounds of fliers and ads. They’re irresistible. I have to look, then I pine for a while. It’s no wonder we’re all made crazy by this season. The stuff — shiny, inviting, appealing, cheap — is everywhere. But ultimately, in dicey times, it’s not cheap enough.

 

Next World Stories, the 2009 annual from Planet Waves, is coming on Jan. 3, 2009. Click here to learn more.

 

Gods (and Goddesses) be Praised: Minor Planets for Mac

At long last, Time Cycles Research, the main developer of astrology software for Mac, has added new points to its programs. This is the first revision to include new points since the software came out in the early 1990s. The revision includes Centaurs, Eris, the oscillating lunar apogee (sometimes called Lilith and not to be confused with the asteroid by the same name) and the nearly obsolete Transpluto. Time Cycles also now displays the Vertex, a point left over from the conversion of three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional chart and considered by many astrologers to be significant.

Planet Waves
Birthchart 6. By Andrea LaHue.

Charts for Time Cycles popular Io Edition program have long included Chiron and the first four asteroids, Ceres, Pallas, Vesta and Juno. The software set now includes two additional centaurs, Pholus (discovered 1992) and Nessus (discovered 1993). Also included is the oscillating apogee, a standard feature in all European charts, which is a point based on the Moon’s presumed closest distance to the Earth. Two options are given, true and mean.

Transpluto is a hypothetical point that was somewhat popular in the 1970s, then used infrequently in the 1980s and 1990s, and finally fell out of common use in the United States and England as Chiron and actual planets beyond Pluto were discovered. We have never mentioned it in Planet Waves.

Lynn Koiner writes of Transpluto, “Used constructively, self-criticism and the perpetual alert for imperfections can motivate the individual to continually strive to do better, to achieve a standard of excellence and to make improvements where needed for the betterment of all. If a child has one experience of approval from a perfectionist parent, this will be carried over into adulthood as a pattern for finding contentment. The more experiences of approval from the perfectionist parent, the more contentment the individual will find in life.” Lynn’s full, well-documented delineation can be found at this link.

Two years after its naming and designation as a dwarf planet, Eris has been included. It’s always a good idea to invite her to the party. The only problem is that the glyph used is very similar to the European glyph for Uranus retrograde, a downward pointing Mars. Henry Seltzer, the owner of Time Passages software company, proposed this glyph at the 2008 United Astrology Conference and collected a number of signatures in favor of it. In a phone call Thursday, he said that his design was based mainly on practical considerations, and that it was a “provisional” glyph and that he would be open to a discussion among the minor planet specialists to solicit their opinion on this and other options. [He asked me to convene that discussion. If you would like to participate, please contact me at editorial@planetwaves.net.]

Time Cycles is still considerably behind Astrolabe, the producer of Solar Fire, which allows for more than 50 asteroids, trans-Neptunian objects, the hypothetical Uranian points, and several Centaurs. In case you need them, all of those points and manymore excellent features are available free at Serennu.com.

For Time Cycles, the inclusion of these points is great news for Mac users and the first major step forward for the software maker, which produces elegant charts, easy-to-use features and comes with an excellent database of famous charts. You can reach them at TimeCycles.com.

Eric Francis

 

Close Conjunction: Scientists find Canadian asteroid debris
It is extremely rare for an asteroid to hit the Earth these days, though there is often much talk about it, but one entered the atmosphere just in the last days of Pluto in Sagittarius. Canadian scientists say they have located debris from a 10-ton asteroid that exploded in the skies over Canada’s Prairie provinces last month [see very cool video here].

Dr. Alan Hildebrand and graduate student Ellen Milley found several fragments late Thursday near the Alberta-Saskatchewan border.

They are searching for what they say could be thousands of fragments strewn over a 20-square-kilometer (seven-square-mile) area near the Battle River. Residents of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta were delighted by the huge fireball that lit up the night sky on Nov. 20, which was fortunately smaller than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs just as the Great Pyramid was being built.

Because it hit the ground before astronomers recorded its existence, it has not been named, it has no glyph, and it is not listed in the Serennu minor planet database. We have hastily convened a naming committee, which overnight decided it would be called “the asteroid that hit near the Alberta-Saskatchewan border” and its glyph will be Mars pointing toward the left.

 

Planet Waves
Weekly Horoscope for Friday, December 5, 2008, #743 – By ERIC FRANCIS

 

Aries (March 20-April 19)
Let this weekend’s emotional turbulence serve to wake up your imagination. At first you may find that it’s waking up your shadowy, dreamy paranoia and emotional insecurities. If you don’t cower from your own shadow and follow those feelings past the veil, you are likely to discover something much more creative and vivid is going on back there. Our deepest pleasure is often hidden behind a veil of embarrassment. Our boldest ideas often arrive with a fanfare of psychological crisis. Keep your focus inward and write down some of the strange things you come up with. One or two of them will turn out out to be brilliant.

Taurus (April 19-May 20)
You may feel like something imminent is going to happen, or be walking around terrified that you’re about to die. You may be worried that you’re going to be swallowed by a partnership situation, or that the arrangement you have with another person is somehow larger than you are — too large to handle, too intense, too direct. All these feelings add up to a bold invitation to break out of your cage. You have recently discovered some old beliefs that you know are absolutely obsolete. What you have yet to discover is just where new beliefs come from.

Gemini (May 20-June 21)
You typically live with the sense that others have more power than you do, but for the past week or so you’ve been learning a lot about how to stand up to people and in a sense, how to speak their language. You accomplish everything else in your life with language; the discovery that direct communication can solve nearly every problem has occurred to you many times. It’s just that you now have the guts to do something about it, perhaps because you see no other option than to enter a dialog. This is not a situation you can get out of easily; perhaps see what happens when you get into it.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)
After being told for 2,000 years that passion and pleasure are sinful, it’s not easy to change that belief; but you have come a long way in a short time. You’ve also rightly observed that erotic pleasure is not all sweetness and starlight; there is growth to be done, there are cobwebs in the corners and there is the extraordinarily fragile space of discovering who you are in the presence of another person who may not understand. The question I suggest you ask as you go into the space once again is why human belief seems to stray so far from what our DNA tells us is necessary, desirable and healthy.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)
You may be concerned that someone is about to renege on a deal, but I suggest you keep your faith and hold up your end of the bargain. For you the the entire exercise is indeed about faith, but it’s also about looking honestly at your influence over how the situation works out. And that, too, is a question of faith in the sense of being faithful to your original purpose. You have more influence than you may think. True, you don’t like to get emotionally involved, but that is largely based on a hidden fear that, sooner or later, you will need to face.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
Adventure is calling you, and there is a fire burning in your soul that’s hot enough to feel in your head. It’s about time. You know that if you respond to this calling, there will be no turning back — and that is the thing that’s making you hesitate. You might want to add up how much of your life you’ve spent doing just that, and if your total adds up to years rather than decades you can count yourself doing well. You may feel that you’re not quite ready for this one, though if that is true, you may want to set some criteria for just what ‘ready’ actually means to you.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
You currently seem to have ideas and the willingness to dare trying them in about equal measure. The question is why you would hesitate. My theory is that for you, ‘in theory’ is enough. And it may well be enough, but I propose that you remember that there is a difference between an idea and an experience. Most people would say that it’s daring enough to play with the concept. But this is a little like studying maps without taking the trip; making the blue prints but not building the house.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
If you are on some kind of quest for money, remember just one thing: you’re here to learn how to make money in an ethical way. I recognize that this is often a handicap, but personally I think that it’s a pretty serious debility to sidestep your own values and pretend that everything is going to be fine, as so many of our comrades so often do. It comes down to the simple idea that the ends do not justify the means. The truth is that the means must justify the results. The world is making progress, and this is one form that it will take. Your common sense should be telling you this.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)
You are coming into your own, and it’s about time. Finally you are driven not by the obsession with being someone, but rather with the realization that you are indeed someone. This is never a discovery that you can take for granted on Earth, and I don’t suggest that you do so. It may be difficult for you to feel the scale of the impact that you are having, and that you can have in the future; but you may have a clue. What you can feel is what is important to you. If you focus on that, and allow that to grow, you will at least be able to direct the course of your impact, even if you don’t quite know what it will do.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
Finally, some of your potential is manifesting. But we may want to ask why this is, and I would say that the reason is because you have finally got some of your fear out of the way; and if not out of the way, you have put it on the surface of your psyche, where you can see it. When you are aware of fear, it can become a force for positive change, growth and consciousness. It is when fear lurks in the background that it is paralyzing and does the most long-term damage. You still have a long way to go, but from the look of your charts, you will get there in a relatively short time. Then the real quest can begin.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
Doors are opening for you, and there are people who wish you would walk through them a lot faster than you are. You may be one of those people, and you seem intent on making sure that you are included in the fast-moving plans of the world. You know that you have to go at your own thoughtful pace. And you also know that many times, opportunity does not repeat itself. It is true that you are in the final moments of a chance to take a step toward the unknown. And while this exact situation will not repeat again, there will be many like it for several years to come. You can afford to do, or not do, what you feel is right.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
There is a difference between a friend and an ally. Most of the people you count as friends are actually allies, and that is often a relationship of convenience. I suggest you sort out the people for whom it is not entirely convenient to be in your life, but who persist in being there anyway. These are the people to accompany you on the next phase of your journey. They are the ones who will not hold you to your past, but rather who will help you envision and create the future that is just starting to come into focus; that is just beginning to seem real.

Copyright © 2008 by Planet Waves, Inc. All Rights Reserved.