Tag Archives: Mars

Mercury on the Move

Dear Friend and Reader:

But before we get into that — overnight Tuesday to Wednesday there was a positively huge coronal mass ejection, which is to say, an explosion on the Sun. The image below is an actual photograph of the event (taken from video shot by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory). The Sun is illustrated by the small circle at the center; the solid blue ring is blacking out the zone that’s too bright to photograph, and the burst to the upper left is the ejection before it got very large.

Solar flare, which eventually expanded to engulf the Earth this week. The size of the Sun is shown in the small white circle at the center of the image. Photo by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory — your tax dollars doing something besides paying for another war.

In fact it got so large it washed over the Earth. Under the right circumstances, one of these things can take out part of the power grid; it’s happened before. The solar radiation storm triggered by this ejection was rated as an S3 class — “mainly a nuisance to satellites, causing occasional reboots of onboard computers and adding noise to imaging systems,” according to SpaceWeather.

If you could hear it, all that energy would sound really cool crashing into the magnetic pickups of an electric guitar. I often wonder about the effect of solar storms on consciousness. So far, I haven’t been able to discern anything stranger than normal in human behavior, compared to what I observe with many planetary events, but anything that can fry a power plant on Earth or a satellite-based computer has to have some influence on the brain. When I imagine how that might feel, the aspect Mercury conjunct Uranus comes to mind, which happened to be exact at the time of the solar burst and is still in effect now.

That conjunction is an exact alignment of Mercury, the Earth and Uranus, so think of it as a direct line of energy bringing all three ideas together, focused through Mercury — the planet of mind. It could feel like a not-so-subtle jolt of energy, sustained long enough to notice it. In Aries, there is a kind of aggression involved, and there does seem to be some hostility reaching a new peak lately. I’ll come back to that in a moment — first let’s look at the current Mercury retrograde cycle, which includes a series of three Mercury-Uranus conjunctions.

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Mercury Retrograde — March 12 through April 4

Mercury stations retrograde in Aries Monday at 2:49 am EST. Currently it’s in what some astrologers call ‘storm phase’ — when it slows down and changes apparent directions. Mercury retrograde in Aries is a warmup for the vernal equinox on March 20, when the Sun will enter Aries and join retrograde Mercury, plus Uranus, Vesta, Eris and Ceres.

Artist’s conception of a view of Uranus as it might appear from from one of its many moons. Uranus does not have land masses and the Sun is drawn waaaay too large for that distance, but it’s an evocative image and gives a cool sense of perspective. The image is from free wallpaper, and a high-res copy is available.

No wonder (borrowing a phrase) there’s all this loose talk of war; bombing Iran is being sold to us as an inevitability. Yet I guess what you hear depends on who you’re listening to. Better ideas than war are not only possible but inevitable under this series of conjunctions, which seem designed to keep as many people awake as possible. If nobody notices, it would not be the first time humanity has slept through the alarm clock.

Uranus, the first planet discovered by science, is a slow-mover, taking 84 years to go around the Sun. It’s movement produces noticeable effects. That’s the planet that ingressed Aries (and thus touched the Aries Point) the very day of the Fukushima earthquake, last March 11. It’s the quicker-moving side of the Uranus-Pluto square, what I’ve been calling the “2012 aspect” that lasts from this year through 2015 (really, with effects lasting much longer). Uranus-Pluto aspects shake the world, and in many ways, recreate it. (You can learn more at my free audio, The Top Five Events of 2012.)

Think of Uranus as representing the creative breakthrough, or alternately, an erratic quality. It can represent the idea that’s ahead of its time; it can just seem weird. You know your reaction to someone who lacks a well-groomed Uranus: there’s something charming about them, but the quirky, pushy quality can turn you off, they can be a bit too reactionary and they don’t know when to chill out. Think of the person who is shamelessly convinced the CIA is following them from the pizzeria to the taco place to the record store.

When Uranus is expressing itself effectively, the result can be a nonstop fountain of ideas, innovative perspectives and an inventive mind that can have a similar eccentric quality, but now it’s useful and friendlier if still a bit high-strung. Yet in Aries, this can take on a militant quality. We can see this clearly in the tenor of the current political discussion, which is all full of Marsy piss and vinegar that the wannabe fascist fringe is directing mainly at women these days.

Mercury makes two additional conjunctions to Uranus in Aries: the next is March 18 with Mercury retrograde, then the third is April 22 with Mercury direct. Think of this as a process of evolving an idea, and in Aries, an idea about yourself. Mercury retreats from hot, brash Aries into the cooler, softer waters of Pisces, letting go of some of its heat before stationing direct. Then it re-enters Aries and makes its third conjunction to Uranus — and a few days later, makes a square to Pluto. April is when we really start to feel the fact that it’s 2012, and Mercury passing through the Uranus-Pluto square will make this extremely obvious — especially as a media event. But there will be a sobering quality as Mercury finally makes its square to Pluto on April 25.

About What Martha Said

Let’s consider how this might feel, and how we can orient ourselves on the process. Remember that old idea from depth psychology about how when shadow material is not consciously acknowledged, it will wreak havoc below the surface, causing chaos and disease? On the other side of that, when we contact, feel and express some of that darkness, authentic healing is possible.

Our colleague Martha — no wait, it’s the renowned Elly del Sarto; postcard c. 1910.

Last week, Martha Lang-Wescott described Uranus square Pluto as “unbidden empty narcissism surging from the depths of Pluto and all of its psychological scars. People can get distracted by the twinkles and the erratic behavior of Uranus and overlook Pluto,” which addresses deeper material and is a more urgently necessary agent of growth. That erratic behavior includes the conduct of various political movements that want, in effect, to ban women from being people and who are creating a huge distraction in the process.

“There is the show and the excitement of Uranus [in Aries], and then there’s this underbelly of the concealed drives of Pluto [in Capricorn], such as greed. Uranus presents as the perfect distraction — all this technology stuff — when Pluto is often acting invisibly. There’s also the attraction to the dangerous element of Pluto charisma. Nessus accents that quality of Pluto.” [Nessus is the minor planet at the midpoint of the Uranus-Pluto square; I covered this in last week’s issue].

Hence, the argument about Rush Limbaugh’s verbal attack on Laura Fluke (who testified about birth control before congress, and who Limbaugh called a prostitute and a slut) is the side show. His comments and all the controversy they create are a distraction from actual issues, when the more important developments are represented by whatever is taking place over at the Pluto in Capricorn side of the equation. This would include the deep psychological scarring that’s beneath all of the fire and fury, as well as subversive activity on the corporate-government front. (I’ll come back to this soon, but when Mitt Romney or the Supreme Court says that corporations are people, that’s a very serious problem; it’s the essence of the problem.)

Capricorn in this context can represent the disproportional influence of so many institutions that try to run our lives. It can represent unresolved family baggage that we know we’re dragging around. Pluto’s movement is trying to get us to do something about it — and to see the connection between our family material and how susceptible we are to deception by corporate entities. The movement of Pluto can represent the deep inner drive to bring some life back into those regions of ourselves. Yet be aware Pluto will wreak havoc when it’s not worked out consciously and given an opportunity to express itself in a healthy way — and that is part of what we’re seeing right now.

Several readers have suggested that this latest cycle of misogyny and pleasure-bashing is really just an old idea being exposed and thrashing around before it dies. Perhaps, but the only thing that can replace it is getting the discussion of sex out of the political arena. The political arena provides a shield for people who are both hateful and those who are on the ‘correct’ side of the issue who don’t want to speak about sex in anything other than a defensive way. [I cover this in the new edition of Planet Waves FM.]

Once we find a home for the discussion outside of the news, a congressional hearing or the committee room of some backwater state legislature, we will need to talk about healing the sexual and emotional injuries we’ve sustained after being exposed to a society that seems bent on sex-negativity; we’ll need to make contact with sexual desire as being part of an impulse to grow and evolve; and we will need to challenge the veil of guilt and shame and open up about the pleasure aspects of sex. Sex and the relationships that support it cannot be themselves if they are constantly shamed. They will be shamed until we realize that the shaming and guilt are a fraud, and until we claim our right to be alive.

Mars is Still Retrograde

Mars has been retrograde since late January and it will remain so through April 13. We need to work this energy carefully. When Mars is retrograde and tries to act like it’s not, it can shoot itself in the foot. Apropos of Mars retrograde in Virgo (a sign illustrated by a young woman, called jungfrau in German), one historical fun fact is that the last time we had an all-in-Virgo Mars retrograde was in 1965 — the year the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized birth control. Now suddenly that decision is being questioned — granted, by a bunch of religious nut cases who get a lot of airtime on TV.

Microscopic photo taken by Opportunity rover showing a gray hematite concretion, indicative of the past presence of liquid water on the planet’s surface. The rover has been operative on Mars for nearly 3,000 days, though the original specs called for a 90-day mission. The project is organized by Jet Propulsion Lab at Caltech.

There have been other Mars retrogrades partly in Virgo, but the last one entirely in Virgo happened the last time this issue came up for discussion. In true retrograde fashion, we are getting a visit to the past, a review of ideas we’ve seen before, and an opportunity for introspection.

Mars in Virgo has that element of healing desire. The desire part comes from Mars and the healing piece from Virgo. The retrograde feels like making contact with all of the psychological complexities associated with desire. Think of how ‘uncomfortable’ people can get when you want them, or how ‘uncomfortable’ you can get when someone expresses desire for you.

What’s that about, anyway? Despite all of our protestations, do we want sexy without the sex (i.e., nothing but a constant tease), sex without the intimacy, intimacy without the risk, and deep experiences without them having any real influence on us? Sometimes that’s what it seems like.

We might well ask what it is that we’re avoiding with this whole dance. Lots of people would prefer to suppress an entire culture or the whole world just so they don’t have to deal with their own biology, their own feelings, their unresolved problems. That’s what I believe is happening when we see politicians go on their rampages, and we watch them get away with it. This drama serves anyone on any side of the issue whose deeper goal is to avoid some inner truth. It’s easy to scream and yell. It’s more challenging to be with your own pain, or to admit the pleasure that you want, and to confront the possibility of what you might do if you weren’t constantly distracted from your creative potential.

Yeah — what would you do?

Lovingly,

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The past day or so we’ve been experiencing the Full Moon. One interesting thing about that is that the whole world has one experience, a consequence of it being a celestial event; something beyond the Earth. We, as in all of us here, have also been awash in the remnants of a solar storm that took place overnight Tuesday to Wednesday, resulting from a mass coronal ejection from a sunspot, with the energy bursting out to many times the size of the Sun.

Vesta photographed from the Dawn probe in 2011.

And that energy rains all over us. As fast and as uncontrollably as our technology is moving, or the speed of our minds or activities, the Sun in all its passion and Moon in all its silence embrace the Earth between them and there is some collective awareness that something is happening, happening to all of us, in the background though it may be. A burst of energy comes from the Sun, and we’re reminded that our power grids can be taken down in a matter of moments.

Because the Sun is in Pisces — the last sign — this was the last Full Moon of the astrological year. The Sun is now moving through the last 10 degrees of Pisces, called a decanate or in older terms, the last face of the zodiac. The astrology to watch is how close Mercury is to stationing retrograde — in Aries. It’s in a bold part of the zodiac, the first few degrees, and Mercury is conjunct two other points — an asteroid called Vesta, named for the goddess of fire; and Uranus, representing a kind of fire of his own — the fire of the mind.

Continue reading.

As the far-Right’s War Against Women heats up, the backlash is getting feistier, too. Mother Jones writer Hannah Levintova has compiled a list of tongue-in-cheek bills proposed by legislators of both sexes aiming to show just how absurd — though no less dangerous — the attacks on women’s health are getting. For example, Georgia state Rep. Yasmin Neal wrote a bill outlawing most vasectomies because they leave “thousands of children … deprived of birth.”

On a more grave note, Democracy Now! reports that there have been a number of developments in the Republican-backed campaign against reproductive rights nationwide. Virginia’s Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell has signed into law the controversial bill forcing women seeking abortions to have an ultrasound. The Georgia state senate has approved measures that would ban abortion coverage under the state employees’ healthcare plan and prevent employees of private religious institutions from demanding contraception coverage under their insurance.

In New Hampshire, legislators passed a similar measure to exempt religious institutions from including contraceptive coverage in their insurance plans. And Utah lawmakers have passed legislation that would make their state the first to ban public schools from teaching contraception as a way to prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease. The measure would also bar teachings on homosexuality or other issues of human sexuality, with the exception of abstinence before marriage.

One question for you: Isn’t it strange that this is happening now?

In Wisconsin, state senator Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) is proposing a bill (Senate Bill 507) that would formally consider single parenthood — “nonmarital parenthood” — a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect if passed into law. The bill’s language therefore also takes aim at same-sex and unmarried couples. Grothman is an ally of Republican Governor Scott Walker, against whom procedures for a recall election are still underway following his actions last spring to strip collective bargaining rights from unions. According to Grothman, being a single mother is a choice women make, and he says, “we should educate women that this is a mistake.” Grothman also commented of ‘unwanted’ or ‘mistimed’ pregnancies that “I think when you have an epidemic of this great proportion, people are not so dumb that it’s surprising when they get pregnant,” and, “I think people are trained to say that ‘this is a surprise to me’, because there’s still enough of a stigma that they’re supposed to say this.” Opponents are quick to note that one of the articles in the bill states that 41% of children in the U.S. are born to single or unmarried parents. According to Human Development and Family Studies Professor Dave Riley, however, family type has far less impact than the family process. This is something that polyamorous people have noted for decades. What counts is an environment respectful of children and with some semblance of stability. Marriage per se is no guarantee of that.

Mercury stations retrograde on Monday. This means that in your intimate contact with others, you’ll want to listen carefully, stop and think before replying, and if something doesn’t quite make sense, back up a step and ask about it. Mercury in Aries dancing around Uranus may be game for some new ideas; be bold and propose something.

Fire Goddess Vesta.

Mercury and Vesta, conjunct in Aries, are making a fire trine to Juno in Sagittarius. Let’s start with Mercury and Vesta together. The brightest asteroid, Vesta is named for the goddess of the hearth, though there’s a deeper layer to the story. The flame she’s tending is the core creative and sexual flame, giving this asteroid a connotation of erotic priestess.

Core sexuality is usually a veiled dimension, but Mercury is coming along and picking up the subject, and delivering it like a message. Note the proliferation of sex in the news right now, and though it’s been a bit warped, there’s still awareness — and something bigger in the air, and that something has a touch of taboo. One core expression of Vesta is devotion, which can be to pleasure, to healing or to holding space.

Uranus is in the equation — it’s right next to Vesta and Mercury is making contacts with both over the next week or two. Uranus brings the factor of the unexpected, the unusual, the spontaneous — and in Aries it’s glowing with the idea of self-awakening. This will come through the exchange of words, so keep your ears on and your mind open and be willing to say what you’ve never said before.

Juno in Sagittarius is trine this conversation. Madame Jealousy herself is in harmony with something original happening, and she’s in Sagittarius, in full expression in her more dignified role as the Queen of Heaven.

The fiery temperament of the moment is grounded by the physical expression of Venus and Jupiter in Taurus. Stay close to your senses, and follow them as you tune in to the deeper psychological material of Pluto in Capricorn, which is calling for some love and healing; and a source of healing waters in Pisces, coming from Neptune and Chiron. The beauty of riding with the current is that you stay in the moment.

Buddy Up at UAC With Planet Waves Readers

If you’re planning to be at UAC and are looking for a roomie, we may be able to help, by connecting people who are interested in sharing a hotel room. Drop a note to info@planetwaves.net and we will put you in contact with other people who reply.

Featured Class of the Week: Donna Woodwell, my co-presenter for the astrology marketing intensive, May 23 (extra fee, very good information, more info here):

Using the Internet to attract clients and build your astrology business

That’s Donna!

Not only is the Internet a great place to meet new clients, it’s getting easier (and cheaper!) to use successfully. Astrologer and Internet entrepreneur Donna Woodwell will demonstrate free and low-cost ideas to use social media and other online tools to increase traffic to your website and convert those visitors into clients.

During this three-hour workshop, you’ll learn techniques and tools you can go home and implement immediately, including how to:

• Discover your authentic voice and use it to build your unique marketing niche

• Build remarkable websites with enticing content that attracts readers

• Engage clients in social media including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more

• Add sizzle to your content with audio and video media

• Harness free Internet advertising resources such as Yelp, Google Places and Amazon

• Spread the love with your email marketing newsletter

• Measure your marketing success with Google Analytics and other tools

Whether you’re just starting your astrology business and looking for clients, or are a seasoned pro who wants to learn more about the web, this workshop contains something for you.

Pisces 2012 Extended Birthday Report Ready

Dear Friend and Reader:

This week I recorded the 2012 extended Pisces audio birthday report. I just started doing these in 2010, and this completes the first full run of all 12 signs. In addition to Pisces Sun, it will also provide good guidance for those with Pisces rising and Moon. The presentation is one hour of astrology in two sections, plus a 20-minute tarot reading. (Capricorn and Aquarius came out last week. Note, if you have an All Access pass, it works for each of these reports.)

Fish Boy Arlo, photographed by his mom — Chelsea.

In this report I cover the recent arrival of Neptune and Chiron in your sign, and describe the energetic shifts of having these two distinguished, slow-moving points in your sign for the foreseeable future (Chiron till 2019 and Neptune until 2025). My intent with this reading is to help you orient on the new quality that you’re likely to experience both as an inner journey and as many shifts in your outer environment. This report both elaborates on the Reality Check annual edition and enters new territory.

These are deep influences that will, over time, transform your life and your perception of yourself. They’re distinctly different from the energy of Uranus in Pisces, which ended one year ago, after seven years.

Chiron and Neptune in your sign will help you bring out your true nature, and establish a kind of inner contact that you may have read about in books on spirituality. Yet there is a cautionary note: Neptune in Pisces will influence you to exist in a world apart. Fortunately, the realistic, high-focus energy of Chiron in your sign for the next seven years will provide an access point to both your quest and your healing mission.

I also take a close look at Mars retrograde in your opposite sign Virgo, which is leading you to rethink the way you do your relationships and the role that others have in your life. The retrograde is an extended question that will help you make decisions about what you want, what is appropriate and how to arrange your boundaries. What’s beautiful is the sense of inner strength that you can now bring to the table; the feeling of substance and a new measure of stability, regardless of what others are going through.

I also look at the Uranus-Pluto square as it will influence your financial dimension of existence — both planets are passing through different sectors of your chart associated with money and the flow of resources. The revolution of this aspect is how you think of, acquire and use all forms of material resources.

There is more; no need to go into it here. The reading comes with resources including the Pisces ingress chart, a photo of the tarot spread, and access to the 2011 annual (Light Bridge) for Pisces, so you can review certain factors from the recent past that may have a bearing on your life now.

Here is the link to order. The fee for this product is $19.95 including everything, with unlimited access (it never expires) and you can download the audio sections as an archive so you can listen in iTunes.

Lovingly, your Pisces astrologer

How (and How Not) To Talk About Sex

In this week’s edition of Planet Waves FM, I look at the Virgo Full Moon, and some of the material that might be associated with this event in your life. I relate it to Mars retrograde in Virgo, which to me is about the healing of desire.

One thing we’re getting with this Mars retrograde is plenty of opportunity to do just that — particularly as sex keeps getting run up the flagpole day after day in the midst of the Republican primary race. I propose, however, that having the discussion of sex in congressional hearing rooms, the news and the Supreme Court is a huge distraction, and I recommend ways we can get the conversation into more intimate settings. At the end of the program I announce an essay contest that anyone (or rather, everyone) can win — check for details. The prize (for the first 10 coherent entries) is a copy of Betty Dodson’s new DVD.

I mention a sex education website — SoloTouch.com — where you can read 50,000 stories that prove that you’re not weird. I recommend a book, Eros Denied by Wayland Young, and I suggest you peruse Betty Dodson’s site, not for the end of the sex conversation but rather for an excellent point of beginning.

This section also includes the upcoming publishing schedule! The March monthly horoscope (long edition) was published Wednesday evening, Feb. 22. Inner Space Monthly was published Tuesday evening, Feb. 28. We published Genevieve Hathaway’s Moonshine Horoscope for March on Tuesday, March 6. The next Planet Waves monthly will be the April edition, which will be published on the evening of Wednesday, March 21. This will include coverage of the spring equinox. There will not be a regular Friday edition that week; Priya Kale will stand in for Eric Francis for the weekly horoscope of Friday, March 23.

Friday, March 9, 2012. Weekly Horoscope #894. | Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Mars is still retrograde. You seem to have been reminded of that fact boldly this week, as some arrangement didn’t quite turn out as planned. It seems like everything in your life comes back to a reminder to pay closer attention to the kinds of details that you normally can take for granted or overlook. In fact though your reputation casts you as dashing and inattentive, focused only on the future, one of the reasons why you can be so bold is that you do have a knack for making sure the finer points are covered. Yet now there seems to be no limit to the number and variety of details that the universe is capable of producing. You may as well slow down. Although all those small elements seem so effective at holding up progress, in reality each question, issue or puzzle that you resolve is specifically an element of progress. The solutions will arrange themselves into something you recognize, and if you look carefully you may discover that this is the constellation of thought you were missing — the one that holds the answer that was right there all along but which you couldn’t see. The name of the game is pattern recognition.

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) — You may be getting the message to be yourself; in fact it’s never been easier. Yet there’s a second theme coming through, which is the experience of being yourself and then experiencing some fear or backlash of guilt as a result. That’s unlikely to stop you, though you obviously would prefer that reaction not be there. Where it comes from is another question, and knowing the history may help you resolve the matter. However, it really comes down to a decision about what part of your mind you want running your psyche — and you do choose. Uncomfortable as this may be, I will say this. There are plenty of people who get cocooned into a crypt by that reaction of every surge of real self being met by some shadowy reaction. It’s enough to make most people stop proceeding in the direction of their reality just so they can avoid the discomfort of doing so. At the moment, anyway, you don’t need to have that problem. I think you’re discovering that opening up your options is better protection than shutting them down.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Now is the time to be a politician, and I mean that in the best sense of the word: someone who can work any situation for maximum benefit, who can work the crowd and who is in control of their image. I suggest you boldly advertise what you think is your best idea, and give those discussions time to propagate. Gradually certain specific goals you have will gain popularity, and those will in turn fit a larger pattern that will follow the scheme of bigger plans. If you’re working with others, don’t delegate the part of your plan that involves public contact. You’re the one for that; you’re the one with the charm and the charisma. In particular you have the gift of being able to engage anyone in any conversation, which has a way of building trust. More to the point, you’re the one with the idea. Even if someone tries to persuade you to have second thoughts or give equal weight to alternatives, trust where you’re going. The so-called alternatives will make handy places from which to adapt improvements and enhancements to your far-superior plan.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — In the current political debate over sex there is the underlying assumption that sex isn’t spiritual. Have you noticed that? Making pleasure a moral issue in any way denies not only that it has some inherent right to exist, but that you’re somehow questionable as well. That might be true were we to define ‘spiritual’ as ‘that which does not approve of sex’ (or the emotion of desire). But if we define spiritual as ‘all that’s natural and real’ and factor in the spirit of freedom that’s supposedly our guiding principle as a society, that would clearly point to other conclusions. You’re someone for whom these connections are inborn, intuitive and interesting — sex is so much better when the natural associations are allowed to be what they are. There are all kinds of control agendas afoot right now, and your role is to subvert their action within your own life. Whether you tap into the highest levels of ethics or the most elementary common sense, liberty means leaving one another be. It also means you’re free in the midst of any debate, and not merely free to be powerful; I mean free to choose your pleasure.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — Others are far less inscrutable than they seem. The feeling that you’re looking at someone who has the capability to transform or change their appearance does not change the underlying substance of who they are. Take that as guidance to bring out the most authentic qualities you have, including your goals, and use every tool at your disposal to put your plans into action. Think through your highest goals, particularly in a professional situation. The seemingly most ambitious and valuable ones are those most likely to succeed; that’s the way your chart is set up right now. You may have to override some annoying inner message in order to think big, though it’s clear which one is true. If you want to give any nagging fears a voice, cut back on waste and do one last check-over of the details, thank your anxiety for doing its job and go back to arranging the world on the largest scale you can imagine. Your best plans aren’t really individual; many will benefit from your success, which I know you find appealing.

Introducing the Planet Waves 2012 Spring Report by Eric Francis

Note: We plan to have this report ready for distribution by this evening. If you’ve purchased, please check your email for the note.

Spring 2012 is the wildest season I’ve ever seen in 18 years of doing around-the-clock astrology [listen to short audio preview here]. It fits the 2012 pattern of ‘everything, all at once’, even making that sound like an understatement. I am working on the report even as we edit this issue, and it’s coming out beautifully — every sign is coming through loud and clear and distinctive.

We have retrogrades of all three inner planets involved — Mercury, Venus and Mars. There is a rare Venus transit of the Sun — an exact conjunction of Venus and the Sun that you will be able to see if you have a clear view during daylight hours (you will need special equipment to protect your eyes). There are eclipses of the Sun and the Moon. And then, just four days after the Cancer solstice, we have the first exact square of Uranus and Pluto.

In honor of putting all this action to work for you, I’m preparing a special Spring Report for all 12 Sun signs and rising signs, as well as an introduction to the astrology that will be useful to everyone. This is a package of all 12 signs for one price. I’m designing it so that you can actually put many of the signs into use — for example, Virgo will be able to use the Gemini report as a career reading. Pisces can use Virgo’s report as a relationship reading, and so on. I give suggestions at the end of each sign, and will do a detailed description so you can get maximum use from this product.

We’re offering it at a special pre-sale price for current subscribers and customers — all 12 signs for $19.95. Once the report comes out, it will go on general sale for $24.95. The report will be ready later tonight, well before the spring equinox — and it’s amazing. Here is the link to pre-order. Thanks for signing up.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — You cannot change your beliefs as easily as you can choose to believe what you know is true. This converts the matter to one of choice rather than something you’re subject to. As you do this, feel the power of your authentic passion as you crack open the influences that were inflicted on you in the past, and notice what’s inside them. Beneath all the control drama is what that control was supposed to be keeping in check — your drive, your independent spirit and your sense of autonomy. Remember that if you ever happen to feel any guilt about being, or wanting to be, autonomous. Notice whether you can trace any emotion to some religious value or teaching — and keep that thought conscious. You might ask yourself how it happened that someone else’s belief became so influential in your life, if only to serve as something that prevents you from taking action. On the deepest levels, this really is about control. You’re taking back control of your life from those who would try to constrain not just you, but everyone. This happens one person at a time, and it has to start from inside, which means with you.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Recent losses, episodes of stress and various disruptions may now be revealing themselves for the gifts they contain. Yet you may not quite be trusting yet, so take your time and listen carefully. It’s true that one or perhaps many aspects of your relationship situations is a work in progress. Yet beneath that is a stable foundation you can build on, and depend on. Make sure you notice this, because it’s the real gift of your involvements with others — the ways that are a demonstration of your common ground and the common values that you share. If you have one reason to feel safe despite the looming sense that one change after the next is acting on you, this is the one. Be confident that your addition to the environment is wholly positive, and is perceived that way by the people you care about. Simply put, you can ignore your doubts and treat your fears merely as psychological or spiritual subject matter to work through and learn from. Whether you’re accepting the gifts that come to you or viewing any changes as an adventure, there’s neither room nor need for fear in your life.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — The thing to go for is not acceptance or approval — it’s the full indulgence in your creative process. There is no audience, or you don’t need one; what will serve you best is the spirit of experimentation. Imbibe experience as if it’s a form of nourishment. Embrace your mistakes as turning points that can send you in new directions you never would have noticed otherwise. While you’re exploring, you may notice there’s a critical voice in your mind, that seems to be shining on you like a projector, complete with soundtrack. However, I would propose that if you notice the critics in your mind, remember that’s exactly where they are. You cannot necessarily silence them, but what you can do is make a conscious choice what voices you listen to. Meanwhile, others around you are available to offer their full support — not as an audience but as peers and potentially as collaborators. Their perception of you is more likely to be the accurate one. I doubt you could think of any ulterior motive they could have, other than to endorse your happiness and affirm your existence.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Your work speaks for itself, that’s true, but don’t expect that to be persuasive when it comes to others investing in you. Far from being ‘not worth it’, the issue is that people rarely recognize quality when they see it. As the one who is being true to your values, make sure that you’re the one who is the dependable investor in yourself. Think of this as a process of building the image and the reality of self-sufficiency. While it’s true that there is no actual autonomy, there does exist a state where you’re more dependent on in-house resources than you are on those external to your direct influence, and that is the longterm direction your life is taking. Obviously resources will flow in your direction; that’s the nature of business and art. Yet the ones you want are the ones you don’t have to pay back. What you’re creating is yours outright, and I suggest you embark on a Buddhist meditation of seeing the value of what you do from a detached place, so you have a chance of recognizing that more objectively. When something turns into cash from any other form, that is a conversion of energy — the actual ‘making’ of that value is what happens long before that.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — One dimension of Pluto in Capricorn is that energy of concentrated lust and soul reaching deep into you and turning over fresh, humid and fertile parts of your psyche. That crust you used to live in just doesn’t fit anymore, though the better news is that you figured out it simply isn’t practical. Now that you have freedom of mobility and a craving for life, look at what’s being offered to you. Notice the opportunities for creative pleasure that you’re drawing to yourself. Don’t misread that one; they are not merely ‘coming your way’ — rather, your inner momentum and willingness to explore a different facet of yourself every day are acting like an energy magnet. Therefore you can trust what’s traveling in your direction, and you never have to give up your power of choice whether you want a certain experience or not. Remember that nothing is stopping you, there are no shoulds or should nots — only action and its results. At the moment, your astrology says that pleasure is prudent.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — It’s good you’ve pulled back from the edge, and that the last few weeks seem to have gone without serious incident. Regardless of how unstable your life has been for how many weeks, seasons or years, this is a moment of settling down for you. Do what you can to make your home more your own; that will be a therapeutic exercise because it involves experimenting with a commitment. You might also open your mind to decisions about where the right place to live is, if you’re not in love with your present location. Whatever it takes to build your confidence, security and sense of grounding, I suggest you do. Time in the kitchen will be more restful than sleep. Make a list of your favorite foods, and go out and get them. This kind of grounding is good for your soul, and it’ll be good for your productivity. One discovery you can get into your body is that when you feel good, your life is easier. That’s easier than the other way around, and gives you clear direction where to invest your energy.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — The beauty of this time in your life is that you have the strength and experience to stand up to even the most complicated or pushy people. That they might have ‘good intentions’ no longer distracts you from your strength and focus, which by the way have their roots in your learning from past mistakes. I don’t think you’ve ever been clearer with yourself that errors in your history are no longer necessary to repeat. Your feeling that you have substance to work with, and to give you a distinct feeling of presence, validates something real, something you suspected. I suggest you proceed as if you expect people to take you seriously. Assume your ideas will be given real consideration. Remember that you’ve been through very nearly everything, and have repeatedly solved issues and learned to turn any circumstance to your advantage. That was then. What you have now is an abundance of both creativity and focusing power. Just remember to use them both at the same time, and to apply them to everything.

Scratch Some Virgo, Find Some Pisces

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Dear Friend and Reader:

The late, great horoscope writer Patric Walker once wrote, “Scratch a Pisces and you’ll find a Virgo under their skin.” Though this was a cute one-liner that I read in The New York Post, Patric was alluding to a real astrological principle: the ‘opposite’ signs contain one another. In a sense, they’re not even really opposite; they are aspects of the same thing, and in this way a polarity of two signs — any two signs — works as one entity.

Daybreak at Gale Crater on Mars. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

When signs on both sides of the polarity have planets or notable events in them, this is especially noticeable — and that’s what’s happening these days with Virgo and Pisces.

Mars is currently in Virgo, making an extremely rare eight-month visit that includes an approximately 11-week retrograde. (The retrograde extends between Jan. 23 and April 13.) That’s placing an unusual emphasis on Virgo, since Mars does not usually move that slowly, and because (particularly when retrograde) it’s not considered the best fit for Virgo. If you have this placement in your chart, however, you’re likely to have a sharp mind, a passion for technology and a drive to make things right. You might have a lawyer-like mind and be a kind of martial artist at argument. Yet you also might need to ‘step down’ your voltage so you don’t blow out your transistors, or those of the people around you.

On the other side of the sky, Chiron is currently in Pisces, where it will be into 2019. Neptune is due to arrive on Feb. 3, and it will remain there until 2025. These are slow-movers that will change the shape of the world, our perception of the world and our experience of existence.

Such events, taken together, qualify as the full activation of the Virgo-Pisces axis — what I will call the axis of practical imagination. Virgo expresses the technical side of nearly anything, based on its tendency toward integrated or applied knowledge. Pisces expresses the imaginative side of the psyche, which can often inspire the more practical modes of expression.

The two have to work together in order for much of anything worthwhile to happen. Think of the circuit board and all the ingenuity required to create it as an expression of Virgo. Think of the concept ‘Macintosh’ as an expression of Pisces. To do anything innovative, it’s necessary to have both ends of the polarity working, which is the challenge that both artists and technicians face every day. Usually someone is oriented toward one side or the other — they like the creative end but not the practical end — or vice versa.

Mars in Virgo: The Mind on Fire

Let’s start with a careful look at the Virgo side of the polarity and come back to Pisces. Mars in Virgo is the mind on fire. This placement can represent a drive for integrity, impeccability or even perfection. Healing and self-improvement can become obsessions. There is the drive to fix things. If Mars in this sign turns on itself, the result can be a painful and even tortured neurosis. Casting Mars retrograde in Virgo in the best light, I see an inquiry of some kind, a questioning of conventional values, and an intellectual quest that continually questions itself.

This is what you look like when you have Mars in Virgo conjunct Uranus and Pluto. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails was not born with Mars retrograde, but he experienced it as a fetal American. He’s seen here during one of his last NIN performances at The Music Box, Hollywood, CA on Sept. 8, 2009. Photo: Mykal Burns/Wikipedia.

This is not going to be so comfortable for everyone, however. If Socrates was right about an unexamined life not being worth living, a good few people may be getting the message that it’s time to do things differently. The self-critical attribute of Virgo is famous. Add to that Mars retrograde and it may be time to open an astrological support hotline.

On the other hand, this will be excellent astrology for those who are in therapy, doing spiritual counseling or who are devoted to their healing — as long as they convert judgment into compassion and perfectionism into the intention of gradual improvement. In Reality Check, my 2012 annual edition, I interpreted Mars retrograde through the signs as a systems check for the astonishing events of late May through late June 2012. Mars retrograde in Virgo will help us clear our mental blocks, preconceived ideas and useless information from our minds before the energy turns up exponentially.

For retrograde hunters, the last time Mars was retrograde in Virgo was in 1997, but part of that cycle happened in Libra, so we did not get the full effect. Mars did something similar in 1950, splitting a retrograde between Virgo and Libra. Mars spent a little piece of its 1995 retrograde in Virgo as well.

The last all-Virgo Mars retrograde was the famous one that took place in early 1965, famous in my mind, anyway, because Mars passed through the Uranus-Pluto conjunction. Doing so, it stirred up a lot of collective energy, helping spark what we think of as the 1960s. That conjunction, which happens less than once per century, combined the revolutionary power of Uranus with the evolutionary power of Pluto and set many things in motion.

In January, Pres. Lyndon Johnson made his “Great Society” speech. This was the era of “guns and butter.” Two months later, he sent the first combat troops to Vietnam. The Civil Rights movement was on fire in Alabama, where James J. Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister, was beaten to death — one of several members of the clergy to be killed by the KKK. In April, the first anti-Vietnam War march, organized by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), drew 25,000 people (and that was just the first of many impressive antiwar protests that year).

In May, 40 men burned their draft cards at the University of California at Berkeley, and marched a coffin to the local Draft Board. Good thing, too. By July, Johnson nearly doubled both the ground troop count in Vietnam and the number of men drafted. (He also signed the Social Security Act of 1965, which provided for Medicaid and Medicare). In other words, the historical era that we actually think of as the Sixties emerges during the Mars retrograde of 1965.

Births from this specific era of 1965 include Trent Reznor, Robert Downey, Jr., Eric Cantor and Sarah Jessica Parker. A piece of timeless artwork that manifested in this moment was the recording A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. The Beatles recorded “Ticket to Ride,” a song about abortion. (Later in the year, they went full-on psychedelic, with “Day Tripper,” “Nowhere Man” and “Norwegian Wood.”)

And This is Now

We are now having another all-Virgo Mars retrograde, the very first since then. What’s interesting is that we are once again in a potent Uranus-Pluto phase — the square. This is the first Uranus-Pluto quadrature (90-degree type) aspect since the ’60s, and it’s pretty easy to feel the resonance between our era and that one. This Mars retrograde will awaken Uranus and Pluto in the natal charts of many people born in the ’60s. It’s fair to say that for a while, the world will feel a little more like home to ’60s babies — though this isn’t just about Virgo.

A Love Supreme was recorded by John Coltrane’s quartet in December 1964 and was released February 1965 — right at the peak of Mars retrograde in Virgo. It remains one of the most memorable and enduring recordings of that era, which is saying a lot.

Our current Mars retrograde also arrives with a Pisces awakening. At the moment, Venus and Chiron are in Pisces. The Sun arrives for a month in late February. And most significantly, Neptune is about to arrive, which will shift the story of the world, and allow the realm of imagination to be more tangible and accessible. When the question is one of method, we find a counterpart in purpose in its counterpart energy, Pisces. When it’s one of proof (in Virgo) we have a matter of faith (in Pisces). Looked at another way, our problems are never solved by technology alone. They are solved by the creative use of creative technology.

What our era has in common with the mid-’60s (indeed, nearly the whole decade) is once again the presence of Chiron in Pisces — something that blended the focusing power of Virgo with the softer light of Pisces. I think of Chiron in Pisces as being the side of the ’60s that was about love, peace and beauty. This was a spirit represented, among other manifestations, by The Beatles, who provided a soundtrack and embodied a peace-loving, creative ethos available beneath all the turmoil of the era. Their musical repertoire also tracks the speed with which the era progressed. (It was just 15 months from “A Hard Day’s Night” to “Yesterday,” though it seems like a lot longer.

We’re now entering a time of history that will make the ’60s seem like a day at the shore. The Uranus-Pluto square that fully takes hold in June describes an extended phase of awakening, creative expression and surges forward in many necessary aspects of life. Yet this radically progressive astrology is forming in a world where the human spirit has been all but moralized or legislated out of existence, or worse, subsumed in advertising. Still, we have the strength to wage ideological battles and attempt to prove our points either intellectually or with intellectual bullying.

Beneath the hashing out of supposed right and wrong, of evidence and proof, of bombastic rhetoric, there is a softer reality. Amidst the chaos we’re witnessing and indeed about to witness, there is a calm voice speaking and asking reasonable questions, if anyone is willing to listen.

Of course, there are always those who want us to believe what defies reason and rationality, and plenty are ready to do so, thinking it’s much easier. I think we needed to take notice when Karl Rove made his famous comments making fun of the ‘reality-based community’ — that is, everyone who did not worship at the altar of his delusions. We live in a culture that already extols image above substance and there’s hardly a day when we can get that going in the right order.

Twenty-twelve or Bust! Okay — we got there. This Sixties-styled bus is reminiscent of the highly organized psychedelic vibe that has its roots in the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of 1965-1966. Photo: Johannes Aubele/Wikipedia.

Mars retrograde in Virgo is a reminder to check the facts, to check your logic and to test your perceptions against some other metric. Yet the thing to remember is that all the facts in the world don’t add up to the truth. All the proof in the world does not tally up to something that makes sense. The final gesture of bestowing something with the blessing of ‘being real’ comes from each of us. Let’s consider the rational/irrational spectrum a bit differently, with a physical metaphor.

During 14 years that have led to Neptune ingressing Pisces, we’ve had Neptune in Aquarius (between 1998 and early 2012). Much like Virgo, the realm of Aquarius describes patterns of information, and studying those patterns could help us establish some basis by which we can assess what we perceive, that is, determine what’s real and what’s not.

During this era, the Internet has manifested as a way to give many people access to knowledge and factual information, but for the most part, it has a different purpose. During those 14 years of Neptune in Aquarius, the Internet went from something that existed in relatively few households to something that everyone carries in their pocket. What started as the realm of academic research, repositories of information and a foundation of knowledge has transformed into a realm dominated by fantasy, shopping, games and entertainment.

The Internet has also manifested in everyday life as a communication medium, replacing everything from leaflets to mail to the telephone to shortwave radio.

I would offer two early thoughts about Neptune in Pisces. Consider that the emergence of the Internet as we currently know it — a kind of fantasy shopping dimension — is more about the lack of imagination than too much of the stuff. Neptune in Aquarius encouraged us to use imagination a certain way, basically, the most effective way to either make money or spread propaganda. There is relatively little beauty for its own sake on the Internet. Neptune in Pisces is a reminder to honor precisely that: beauty and truth for their own sake.

Second, we have learned something about communicating over a nonlocal network, by which we’re linked through wires, fiber optics cables and wireless portals. It’s time to move away from this metaphor and recognize that we’re all connected, and we all influence one another, without all the gadgets.

Lovingly,

SCHEDULE NOTE — Next week Planet Waves will publish on Wednesday evening only. That will be the February Monthly Horoscope and monthly overview. For listeners of Planet Waves FM, I will be resuming on Weds., Feb. 1.

PERSONAL ASTROLOGY NOTE — I interpret Mars retrograde in Virgo for all of the signs and the rising signs in the 2012 annual readings. I consider this one of the most significant personal transits of 2012 and key preparation for the events to follow later in the year.

A Decade of Mars Retrograde

Mars retrogrades for 72 days every 25.6 months. A Mars retrograde occurs when the Earth, which moves faster than Mars, passes between Mars and the Sun. This creates the effect of Mars seemingly moving backwards, much like if you’re on a faster train passing a slower train. Both trains are going ahead, but the slower one seems to be going backwards from the perspective of the faster one. The effect is supposed to be an illusion, but it’s one that can wiggle your stomach and get you to question reality for a second — just like a Mars retrograde.

The Vulva on Mars — the biggest canyon in the solar system — dwarfing the Grand Canyon — is on Mars. Photo courtesy of APOD and the Viking Project.

Mars will be visible in the sky through the winter and spring, as it always is when the retrograde happens. Remember that one definition of ‘retrograde’ is ‘close to the Earth’.

The distribution of signs where Mars retrograde occurs is grossly uneven. The retrogrades tend to concentrate in the range of the zodiac between Cancer and Sagittarius. They occur very rarely in Aquarius or Capricorn, and only occasionally in Aries, Taurus and Pisces.

The experience of any inner planet retrograde is shaped in part by the planets that are aspected in the process. This year, planets in Pisces, the sign opposite Virgo, are the main actors shaping Mars retrograde. These include Chiron, Neptune and, briefly, Venus.

Read more…

Aquarius wood cut circa 1826.

Friday the Sun enters Aquarius, the fixed sign of this season, at 11:10 am EST. Fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius) always arrive at the middle of the season, representing its peak energy. We’re approaching the Aquarius New Moon on Monday, just as Mars stations retrograde. We are just two weeks away from Imbolc or Candlemas, the Midwinter holiday.

Once in Aquarius, the Sun aligns in a sextile with the Ceres-Uranus conjunction in Aries, and a square with Jupiter in Taurus. Both those aspects are exact on Sunday. Also Friday, Venus in Pisces is sextile Pluto in Capricorn. On Saturday, Mercury in Capricorn makes a trine to asteroid Psyche in Virgo (talk about it, whatever it is), and a square to outer planet Haumea in Libra (don’t let your mind get in the way of your creativity).

Then on Sunday, Mercury squares Eris in Aries (who am I really?). Venus in Pisces opposes Eros in Virgo (who do I want, really?). Monday, Mercury forms an earth trine to Mars in Virgo, hours before Mars stations retrograde until April 13. The waning Moon begins in Sagittarius today, then ingresses Capricorn at 5:40 pm EST. It enters Aquarius at 9:53 pm EST Sunday, and conjoins the Sun on Monday at 2:39 am EST for the Aquarius New Moon and beginning of the Chinese Year of the Dragon.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

Everyone’s favorite megacorporate sock puppet, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, is now headed for a recall election after citizens there handed in one million signatures demanding his ouster. They were only required to collect half that number but apparently weren’t taking any chances. Walker’s decision to gut public employee labor unions sparked months of huge protests in Madison last winter, though last year he hadn’t been in office for long enough to recall.

In February 2011 he was punked by Ian Murphy, a writer with the alternative-news site Buffalo Beast, who managed to Skype with Walker for an hour under the pretense of being billionaire conservative benefactor David Koch, calling to encourage Walker in his battle against public unions. The recordings were published and Walker’s life was never quite the same.

There is no date set for the recall election because the signatures have not been verified — but as soon as a date is set we’ll have a look at the chart. Walker himself is a 1967 model Scorpio. Just because you were born in the Sixties doesn’t make you a freak. But he should be, with five planets in Virgo (including the Uranus-Pluto conjunction, with Venus sandwiched in) and the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Neptune in Scorpio. I think Scott just needs to put on Pink Floyd, smoke the peace pipe and mellow out for 20 minutes.

This would help especially with Mars about to retrograde over all his Virgo planets, which will no doubt provide some kind of awakening experience for him.

On Wednesday President Obama rejected the proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. He had been forced to make an early decision on that issue in a deal with Republicans over extending the temporary cut to Social Security-related taxes. They got their decision.

Tarsands Mining and Waste Sulfur Piles. Photo: Wikipedia Commons.

The proposed pipeline would stretch from the Alberta tar sands in Canada to the Gulf Coast of the U.S. Tar sands extraction is an energy-intensive process, and has stripped approximately 232 miles of land in the last 10 years in Alberta. According to Canada’s environmental ministry, expected expansions in the next decade could result in the destruction of 740,000 acres of boreal forest and a 30 percent increase in carbon emissions.

Obama announced he was turning down TransCanada’s application for the pipeline because there was not enough time to review an alternate route that would avoid the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska. Granted, Obama said he was only making his decision based on time constraints, not on the pipeline’s “merits” — and Keystone has already said it will reapply for the permit. But in the meantime, this counts as a victory for the health of the Earth and its occupants of all species.

In an interview with Democracy Now! Thursday, Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska said, “This was a real victory for people standing up.” People turned out in record numbers in Nebraska to speak out against the pipeline. Kleeb added, “In Nebraska, you know, this did not kind of fall on party lines. We had folks from our urban communities in Lincoln and Omaha holding hands with our conservative farmers and ranchers on the eastern and western and, of course, in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. We really were united as a state. And for a while, we even had a lot of the Republican leaders in our state on our side. It was only until they realized that President Obama may deny this pipeline that they wanted to be on the opposite side.”

Anti-PIPA/SOPA protest Wednesday in New York City. What they mean is, it’s no longer okay to pretend to not know how the Internet works.

On Wednesday, many Internet sites — including Planet Waves — staged a blackout protesting two proposed laws, SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (the Protect Intellectual Property Act). Both were creatures of old-guard big business, and their proposed method of stopping alleged copyright infringement amounted to giving large media companies and the government the direct power to block access to websites via a kind of blacklist.

By mid-day numerous cosponsors of the bills had backed down, with many admitting they don’t really understand how the Internet works. I previewed the blackout and gave an overview of the basic issues in this article, and then claimed victory in an article called January 18, 2012. In the first article I mention the Righthaven debacle that has fortunately come to an end.
I’m planning to return to the issue of copyright trolling later in the year with more sordid tales featuring Righthaven, Getty Images and Photo Attorney.

Also for Rachel Maddow fans, don’t miss her opening segment Wednesday night about how sponsors of the laws had committed copyright infringement right on their Twitter feeds or official webpages. Hypocrisy or ignorance? “Congress famously does not understand the Internet,” she says. Don’t miss the late Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens describing how the Internet is “a series of tubes.” Really. Don’t miss this one — it’s priceless.

Marianne Gingrich talks about The Newt Thursday night on ABC News.

Even as “social conservative” Rick Perry dropped out of the Republican primary run and endorsed Newt Gingrich, Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne, gave an interview Thursday night in which she said that her former husband wanted to have an open relationship. This brings the polyamory question to the national political stage, though I wonder who will notice. What makes it ‘polyamory’ as opposed to ‘cheating’ is that, at least in that one conversation, Newt actually said what he was doing and what he wanted.

Marianne Gingrich (nee Ginther), who was married to Gingrich from 1981 to 2000, told ABC News that when Gingrich admitted to a six-year affair with a Congressional aide, he asked her if she would share him with the other woman, Callista, who is now married to Gingrich. “And I just stared at him and he said, ‘Callista doesn’t care what I do’,” Marianne Gingrich told ABC News. “He wanted an open marriage and I refused.” She described her “shock” at Gingrich’s behavior, including how she says she learned he conducted his affair with Callista “in my bedroom in our apartment in Washington.”

“He always called me at night,” she recalled, “and always ended with ‘I love you’. Well, she was listening.” All this happened, she said, during the same time Gingrich condemned President Bill Clinton for his lack of moral leadership and indeed helped spearhead the campaign to have him impeached.

Stephen Colbert has cleared the way for an at least theoretical presidential run in Saturday’s now hotly contested South Carolina Republican primary — while pointing out the absurdity of the Supreme Court ruling allowing unlimited corporate spending on elections (see one of his campaign ads here).

If you live in South Carolina, you can vote for Stephen Colbert by voting for Herman Cain in Saturday’s Republican primary election there.

The decision, Citizens United vs FEC, which had its two year anniversary this week, held that corporations are people and that money is speech. Hence, it’s now the law of the land that corporate “people” can speak in elections with as much money as they want. For months, Colbert has been running his own political action committee, or Super-PAC, called “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.”

Colbert has thrown his body into the political machine, proving how ridiculous it is. He took this a step further last week when he announced on his program The Colbert Report that he would form an exploratory committee to make a run for “president of the United States of South Carolina,” his home state. He has been polling at about 15% there, better than many other presumably serious candidates did in other states.

But because he was barred from entering the race and simultaneously running Super-PAC, Colbert gave up control of his organization to Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show. Colbert’s Super-PAC has since been re-named “The Definitely Not Coordinated with Stephen Colbert Super-PAC.”

The problem is that Colbert is not on the South Carolina ballot, and write-ins are not allowed. But someone who is on the ballot is no longer running — Herman Cain. So if you want to support Colbert, he’s asking that you vote for Cain.

Among other projects, The Definitely Not Coordinated with Stephen Colbert Super-PAC has also released a TV ad insinuating that Mitt Romney is a serial killer because be believes that “corporations are people, my friend,” but as head of Bain Capital, he murdered so many of them.

Two days ago it was a foregone conclusion that Mitt Romney would win the South Carolina primary, but that has changed fast this week. South Carolina is considered important because the winner of that state’s Republican primary has won the Republican nomination going all the way back to Ronald Reagan. It’s a state known for its gloves-off political brawls, which helps explain Colbert.

There is not a regular edition of Planet Waves FM this week. I am resting my voice and my soul after laying down some 20 hours of 2012 audio the past couple of months. Planet Waves FM will make its spectacular return to the Internet with the edition of Weds., Feb. 1. 2012. Meanwhile if you are looking for some hot audio, check out the Reality Check readings. Each sign gets three half-hour segments of easy-to-follow astrology that is getting rave reviews.

Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for January 2012 included the written version of the Top Five Events of 2012 (available as audio here). This was the long written horoscope, with extended interpretations for each of the 12 signs. We also published the Inner Space for January 2012, a shorter horoscope that came out one week later. The February extended monthly horoscope will be published to subscribers on the evening of Wednesday, Jan. 25. There will be just one issue that week — the long extended monthly and its introductory materials. There will be no Friday edition. If you are not a subscriber and want to receive all of the Planet Waves horoscopes, you can get a free trial subscription, or you may sign up for up to one year. If you regularly forward Planet Waves materials to friends or relatives, please purchase them a gift subscription. We offer special discounts if you want to sign up several of your friends — if you would like to take advantage of that please call Chelsea at (877) 453-8265 or email chelsea@planetwaves.net.

Friday, Jan. 20, 2012. Weekly Horoscope #888. | Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — In truth, it’s all a family affair. The ridiculous standards we put on our happiness, our mental habits, our eating habits — all have their origins in our family. When you strive to change any of these things, you’re actually going against your ancestral pattern. Remember this as you improve many aspects of your everyday life. Remember, too, that as you change seemingly personal things, like what you eat, you’re engaging with a deeper emotional layer, and making the changes might come with the feeling of ‘betraying’ the people who gave you the habits you’re trying so diligently to change — and as the Bible tells us in one of its more astute moments, you cannot serve two masters. I suggest you be ready to engage with the patterns underlying whatever ordinary kinds of things you want to change. What you eat or going to the gym in that case could amount to authentic therapy.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — One of the most deeply ingrained patterns involves sex and — more significantly — how we think about sex. Mars making its retrograde in the angle of your chart associated with pleasure and experimentation is also involved in the Virgo dimension. If you’re looking for why, so often, you have to think about whether you’re going to think about something, rather than just trying it as an experiment — look no further. There’s something for you in Mars retrograde about being comfortable with taking risks, and most of those risks involve how you think of yourself as a sexual being. Many people spend their lives seemingly trying to impress others with their purity, which is another way of saying with their hangups. There’s an old expression: free your ass and your mind will follow. Or is it really free your mind and your ass will follow? Actually, you can do both at once.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — The issue of whether you feel safe on the planet is the essence of the forthcoming Mars retrograde for you. In our time of history, when it’s impossible to feel too threatened and when there’s no such thing as a long enough password, and when (as The Onion put it recently) 98% of Americans are afraid of 98% of Americans, feeling safe is an act of faith. Fortunately, that’s the very door that’s opening for you right now. Ultimately, all the reasons you can give yourself for not thinking you have enough, or contemplating all that could go wrong if you take action, or all the seemingly external pressure you’re under, add up to very little. You will end up trusting your situation because you don’t have any other choice. Now, if you can work backwards from there, you will see that you have more reasons to trust what is actually true than to trust your anxiety, which only misleads you.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You may be concerned that if you want to renegotiate a partnership situation, you’ll be giving up the whole thing. Whether this is true, or whether it’s an idea you have, amounts to the same thing — a feeling you have that could influence how you make an important choice in a partnership. I suggest you look at your history and see if you can find parallel moments, or one parallel moment, where you encountered a loss because you wanted to make a change, that would be helpful. Yet there seems to be something else going on: your need to let the past go. That this is easier said than done is not news to anyone, but discovering why it’s so challenging would qualify as an actual breakthrough. Here is a clue: What we call letting the past go involves two parts: one is reckoning with what happened, and the second part is embarking on something else. Which is harder for you?

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — In a few days there will be a New Moon in your opposite sign Aquarius. This event is a reminder that you need to include more of you in your life. If you follow the teachings of Jell-o pudding, you can declare it “me o’clock” and have “time to yourself.” Yet the actual challenge seems to be about seeing every aspect of your life as something where you not only should be included but to which you are in fact integral. At the moment, however, this involves a lot of other people. When you’ve integrated yourself in that integral way, you may wonder what is left: what time, what space, what freedom to choose. I can tell you one thing from your astrology — you’re looking at the world with a blind spot in your vision. When that shifts, which it’s about to do, you will see that your involvements hold the key to your freedom. There will be an art to seeing just how that works.

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.

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) — Mars stations retrograde in Virgo on Monday, which is a somewhat famous event in the astrology of our lifetimes. There hasn’t been an all-Virgo Mars retrograde since 1965, and it was an extremely eventful time in history. For you this phase, lasting through April, is a review of how you handle your will; said another way, it’s a question of what you do with your strength. One thing this retrograde seems poised to teach you about is the ways in which you use your power against yourself (and what to do about it). Another turning point involves how you might go about correcting something within yourself that you’ve identified as having outdone its use. One thing I would suggest is that you’re not alone. One mode of self-improvement is the “fix yourself” model. Another is the “look to a trusted example” method. Exemplars are never 100% pure positive examples; often they present a mix of what you want and what you don’t want. But there is someone in your life who understands your situation better than you do, mainly due to their experience and perspective.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — It’s time to notice the relationship between vulnerability and anxiety. For many people who strive to be whole, loving and authentic, this is the very thing they stumble over. Currently the planets are arranged in such a way to illustrate a certain point — that point being that anxiety is one thing and vulnerability is another. They seem to be more closely related than they are, and if there is a relationship, it’s not cause and effect. More often it’s circumstantial: fear and openness happen in similar times and places, though for different reasons. Try to see each of these things as its own entity. You will learn about your fear if you consider the nature and causes of that emotion; you will learn about how to be open, and how to handle yourself when you’re vulnerable, by exploring that sensation. If you confuse them or think of them as one experience, you’re likely to miss learning benefits — and the pleasure that comes with a bit of emotional freedom.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — You think people are a lot harsher toward you than they actually are. I mean, I’m not there; I’m just reading your astrology, and I’ve known a few Scorpios here and there. It seems that you might project a certain ‘critical factor’ onto your friends, assuming that you’re being judged or scrutinized when this is not true. I suggest you test the theory in a somewhat oblique way, which is to be encouraging of everyone around you. Affirm what they want, what they do and what they accomplish. You don’t have to be sugary about this — saying yes, and taking opportunities to lend your actual, physical, material support, will teach you a lot. I am suggesting that you personally take action to reverse the dynamic that you may perceive in your environment. Notice when you give support or affirmation and when you withhold it. Notice the role that jealousy plays in your interactions with others. Most of all, notice how good it feels to say yes.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Does it matter what the boss thinks? No — if you set your own standard of excellence. Speaking as a boss, I can tell you that’s the one thing I’m looking for in the people who work for me: self-regulated quality control, and clear internal motivation to grow and improve. If you fire up those qualities in yourself, and find your own reasons for being motivated to do good work, you will set yourself free from a whole bunch of external bossiness in your life. Pay attention to the details of what you’re doing, and notice the implications of decisions you make and you will find yourself enjoying some actual autonomy. Unless, that is, you work for a petty tyrant — in which case you might just need to cut yourself loose from that situation sometime during the next three months. One thing I suggest you not do during that time is attempt to be in charge of anyone but yourself. That comes later.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Many religions feel that if you’re a good person, God rewards you with wealth. I’m wondering how you feel about that theory, and related issues, like how many patently evil people have so much. My theory is that financial success involves two things: one is how you feel about yourself, and the other is motivation. Now, many people feel positively horrid about themselves and make a lot of cash — I don’t count that as success. Your astrology is encouraging you to work out a meaning of success that includes faith in yourself and faith in something beyond yourself. However, I suggest you take them in that order, and do everything you can to withdraw energy from the expectations of others — especially your parents. In case you’re in a religious mood, every time you think of the concept God or spirit, insert your parents into the equation and see how it adds up.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Monday’s New Moon in your birth sign commences the Year of the Dragon. More specifically, it’s the year of the Water Dragon, a yin manifestation of bold, brash (and lucky) Dragon energy. This is the perfect image of Aquarius, the sign of the water-bearer. Yours is a masculine sign associated with a feminine substance. The blend for you is about asserting yourself, and taking chances, and depending on your popularity, and pushing your luck — in that distinctly Dragon way. Yet the way to do this best, with the Water Dragon as your mascot this year, is to hold feminine energy at your core. This is possible for both men and women — this is a matter of energy and not of sex. No matter how bold or cocky you are, stay open and receptive. No matter how lucky you are, be grateful. No matter how much you want someone or something, be open to it wanting you.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Most of the action in the sky right now (most, not all) involves your sign and your opposite sign Virgo. This is a study in you and your relationships. Mars in your opposite sign is turning up the contrast in your experiences. Lately everything has seemed to be in greater relief, with brighter light and darker shadows. At the same time, Venus and Chiron are in your sign, heightening your self-awareness. For the next few months you get to work out the details of your relationships. You get to see where the tense points are, and better still, you will have the opportunity — and the skill — to do something about them. The key will be seeing the origin of any relationship experience as being the extension of an inner dynamic. I am not saying ‘blame yourself’ but rather notice how you might contribute, or how a personality you have might lead you to respond a certain way. You will see the solutions within yourself — and benefit greatly from that discovery.

What I’ve Learned About 2012 Astrology (So Far)

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Dear Friend and Reader:

We finished the 14th annual edition of Planet Waves last night and — lo and behold — we have a weekly issue for you today as well. As you may know, I woke up Saturday morning with one sign left to write (Pisces) and discovered that four signs I had written, and their backups, were not turning up on my laptop. My MS Office database was crashing and Word could not remember where it was putting anything. So that was a job for the data recovery guys at Tech-Smiths in New Paltz, who recovered every deleted or ‘deleted’ file on my drive, including the lost ones. A few doses of arnica, a bit of panic and a couple of days’ delay — and we have your readings for you. This link tells you more about them.

The Whirlpool Galaxy NGC 5194 in Canes Venatici is one of the most stunning showpieces of the evening sky and perhaps the best example of interacting galaxies. As indicated by the image above, aside from being a very impressive face-on spiral galaxy with distinct and highly resolved arms, it is cannibalizing a smaller galaxy (NGC 5195, M51B) in the immediate vicinity with a very clear and distinct ‘bridge’ between them. Read more here. Photo by Anthony Ayiomamitis.

In sum, what I’ve learned about 2012 astrology after studying it from numerous viewpoints, over and over, is that it is real. Whatever you may make of the turnover of the Mayan Long Count calendar on Dec. 21, 2012, the Western astrology suggests a time of progress, growth, healing and some cultural turmoil. These forces combine to make a perfect storm of progress — and as these conditions gather, there will be no denying what’s up. The astrology is active from so many angles I doubt there will be anyone who does not feel in some way drawn in, called to participate, or called to do something more with their lives.

I have been looking at 2012 charts my whole astrology career, and preparing my clients for these changes for many years. Over the past six months, what started as a few charts has grown into an organized little heap of them, including studying many, many of the minor planets and what they are doing.

What this astrology is about — that is, the story that it tells — has arisen like a vision in the mist, but gradually. We have been living through it, in phases, for a long time. Planets started taking their positions in 2008 and then in about six different stages between then and now, the energy has gradually taken shape — but we have not yet experienced the first peak, which comes on with a wave of changes that will span from mid-May through late June 2012, getting things rolling at full strength.

Two things are going to happen, before then. First, Mars goes retrograde in Virgo on Monday, Jan. 23. I have interpreted this through the signs as a preparation phase; a kind of mental and psychological systems check that lasts about 10 weeks, so that we’re ready for the fast changes of the late spring and early summer (said in Northern Hemisphere seasons). Virgo is where we ‘store’ many of our mental scripts, our concepts, our psychological patterns, and our ideas about being on the Earth and part of the Earth. Mars retrograde presents us with a phase of inquiry, investigation and working out (such as issues, and maybe at the gym; if you make time that will have extra benefits). This lasts through April 13 (though Mars remains in Virgo through July 3). It will influence each of the signs and rising signs differently, as it appears in a different house (that is, department of life) for each of them.

Then on Feb. 3, Neptune is going to ingress Pisces. Not counting a brief visit last year, the last time Neptune was in Pisces was between Feb. 17, 1848 and Feb. 13, 1862. Just as Neptune was leaving Pisces the last time, the Civil War was getting going, which is a reminder not to be caught in a fantasy bubble as this transit develops. Note also that just as Pluto was leaving Capricorn the last time it was there, the American Revolution was getting going (both of these sign changes will repeat, nearly simultaneously, in the mid 2020s).

Bands of high-altitude clouds cast shadows on Neptune’s lower cloud deck. Photo: NASA.

We could surmise that Pluto in Capricorn and Neptune in Pisces predate eras of massive structural change, yet changes are evident in the moment we occupy right now. While many things about human nature have remained the same, some have evolved, and Neptune in Pisces is part of accelerating that process, granting us the potential for a deeper connection to faith, beauty and inner truth than we usually opt for. Neptune joins Chiron in Pisces, so we will have a strong focus on the most elusive of the signs — the one that represents the oceans that cover three-quarters of our planet’s surface.

These placements are encouraging us to go to greater spiritual depths, and to clear our emotional bodies as we can. If there are incoming energies, we need to make space and free up bandwidth for them. These transits, as well, influence all of the signs and rising signs differently. That enhanced sense of spiritual contact — which you might experience as love, as affirmation or as a healing crisis — will be useful when we reach the first of seven exact squares of Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn in late June. I have interpreted this from three angles — the Aries angle of self-actualization; the Capricorn angle of participation in the world; and the midpoint, which is in Aquarius — the cooperation factor. This Aquarius factor is significant because it provides a release point on some of the darkest aspects of human nature, which tend to show up when people form groups.

One last. Perhaps the most interesting (and visually spectacular) astrology of 2012 happens when Venus passes between the Earth and the Sun on June 5 or 6, 2012 (depending on your time zone). This happens in Gemini, and it seems to be a kind of emergence — the two ‘halves’ of the psyche indicated by Gemini emerge as a sum greater than the parts. We all struggle with dualism to some degree, with multiple facets of our nature, with aspects of ourselves that conflict. This astrology seems to offer a way through that, helping us make contact with something much more tangible than ‘the split’ that we often feel.

Venus transit of the Sun on June 8, 2004. This image shows Venus crossing the disk of the Sun, and the smaller images give details of the egress. This will be visible from some parts of the world on June 5 or 6, 2012, and will not be seen again by human eyes until the 22nd century. Photo by Anthony Ayiomamitis.

The Venus Transit of the Sun is about the emergence of the solar feminine (I’ll be adding a special audio about this to the annual site in the next few days). That is, the feminine that is under her own power and providing her own light, not the reflected light of the Sun (for example, as is the Moon). As I’ve noted before, the Venus transit of the Sun is extremely rare; the one in June had a counterpart back in 2004, and there were none in the 20th century. The next pair after this year’s begins in 2117. The annual edition has an article explaining what to do if you want to see this event with your own eyes.

There is one point from the Dec. 21 2012 chart that I want to mention. When the Sun makes its storied, much-mythologized alignment with the Tropic of Capricorn at the solstice, it’s in an exact conjunction with Juno, one of the first asteroids, discovered early in the 19th century. If you consider that the Mayans oriented their 5,125-year cycle on the Capricorn solstice of 2012, consider that on that very day the Sun is conjunct the Queen of Heaven. This by the way will be the second time, on a key day of 2012, that there is a solar conjunction with a major feminine archetype.

In psychological astrology, Juno represents the concept of marriage, certain attributes of one’s spouse, and on the shadow side, the bone of contention in a relationship. She’s strongly associated with jealousy, after the infamous tyrannical controlling fits of her Greek predecessor Hera.

We arrive at 12/21/12 — day 13.0.0.0.0, at the end of a 1.89 million-day cycle — with a message about relationships. In particular, there is a message about jealousy. We don’t need it. It’s not good for us. It may well be the root of all evil. And the beautiful thing is we can do something about it.

Lovingly,

The Sun remains in Capricorn, though the sky has a Pisces theme at the moment. Friday there are two inner planet to outer planet conjunctions: Mercury conjunct Pluto in early Capricorn and Venus conjunct Neptune in the last degree of Aquarius. Venus also makes a trine to Saturn just before it conjoins Neptune, though it is essentially all one event. Saturday, Venus ingresses Pisces, running vanguard for Neptune (which follows suit Feb. 3). Once there, Venus sextiles Jupiter in Taurus and then on Monday makes a conjunction to Chiron in Pisces. Mercury sextiles Vesta in Pisces on Sunday. The Moon is in Virgo all day Friday and into Saturday, when it enters Libra at 8:28 am EST. Monday at 11:33 am EST the Moon enters Scorpio. Also on Monday, the Capricorn Sun squares minor planet 1992 QB1 in Aries.

Tomorrow Venus enters Pisces and on Monday makes a conjunction to Chiron. Barbara Hand Clow described this conjunction as the orgasmic fusion with the cosmos. That is no small thing. And neither is surrendering to love — or erotic energy. But what is the key to surrendering to love in creative, holistic fusion rather than getting caught in a tsunami of delusion (which is quite possible, with Pisces and Neptune involved)? Self-knowledge. Anais Nin put it this way: “Eroticism is one of the basic means of self knowledge, as indispensable as poetry.” And she should know: her Venus was in Pisces, sextile Chiron. This weekend Chiron is going to focus this sense of love and surrender and show you where and how you can use it to heal your relationships — beginning with your relationship to yourself. Specifically, with Venus involved, expect the focus of healing to be your feminine, receptive side. Find your inner Nin. Catalyze the fusion of the cosmos this weekend. Know yourself — and know you can heal.

The Republican party seems to have a bad case of Eris — total personality fragmentation and identity crisis (on the light side) and vicious infighting (on the dark side). Yes, the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt has been reduced to a bunch of fundamentalist, self-contradictory millionaires who are creating so much bad press for one another that it’s amazing that any of them will withstand a general election. Mitt Romney won Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, with Ron Paul coming in a strong second place. Romney is the corporate raider who thinks that forcing companies into bankruptcy and laying off workers makes him a ‘job creator’. Ron Paul is the supposed libertarian who thinks we need to arm ourselves against African-American carjackers. In last week’s Iowa Caucus, Romney and Rick Santorum tied for first place, though Romney spent 18 times more on his campaign than did Santorum — whose entire platform consists of an anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-polyamorous sexual morality trip.

Throw in wingnuts Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann (now withdrawn from the race), and erstwhile pseudo candidate Herman Cain, and we can see that the Republican party has become a collection of fragments, each representing a slightly different but equally nutty concept of conservatism. Looked at another way, the ‘Pubs are trying to exist as a coalition, which is the usual style of the more diversified Dems. Perhaps it’s time to consult with the Rev. Al Sharpton for advice about how to better manage themselves. Next week’s South Carolina primary will probably decide who the Republican candidate will be. Reminder that on Election Day 2012, Mercury stations retrograde right in the middle of the proceedings. The last and only time anything like this happened for a presidential election was in 2000, when Gore won and Bush got to take office.

There may be a lot of places like home. In a new paper appearing in the Jan. 12 edition of the journal Nature, astrophysicist Kem Cook, as part of an international collaboration, says that planets around other stars are the rule rather than the exception. The results of his study point to more planetary systems resembling our solar system rather than being significantly different. An exoplanet is a planet outside our solar system. Over the past 16 years, astronomers have detected more than 700 confirmed exoplanets and have started to probe the spectra and atmospheres of these worlds. While studying the properties of individual exoplanets is undeniably valuable, a much more basic question remains: How commonplace are planets in the Milky Way? The team found that approximately 17% of stars host Jupiter-mass planets. However, cool-Neptunes and super-Earths are more common, occurring 52% and 62% of the time, respectively. “This is what I have felt all along, wrote one commenter to the article. “It was only a protestant fantasy that assumed earth centricism and uniqueness of life only here on this world. We will probably find out that life is also prevalent on many of these worlds. Bearing in mind the tiny fraction of time that we have been able to be self-aware nothwithstanding communications abilities with regard to geological time not to mention universal time scales, the fraction of these worlds inhabited by people we can communicate with electronically or gravitationally or thru superspace could be quite small.”

Tend to feel behind the curve in getting the hang of technology? Check this out: apes might be on the verge of Skyping with each other. Six months ago, the Milwaukee Zoo introduced iPads to its orangutans. The gadgets are used as part of the daily intellectual and creative stimulation the zoo is careful to provide captive great apes. While iPads are too fragile to be handed over to the orangutans — who are up to seven times stronger than humans — handlers are able to show the apes videos through glass and let them play with finger-painting and drumming apps through a mesh barrier. As you might expect from one of our most closely-related species, they’re a bit vain, and like to watch videos of themselves (in the case of a four-year-old) and each other (a 34-year-old female displays particular interest in videos of males). From this, Richard Zimmerman of Orangutan Outreach said the idea sprang up to eventually incorporate cameras so they can watch each other — and eventually try video chat, perhaps between faraway zoos. Orangutan Outreach is careful to note that donation of the iPads did not involve public funds; their hope is that if people identify more with these endangered animals, they’ll support conservation efforts. No word yet how quickly the apes’ communication may devolve into abbreviations and emoticons.

Planet Waves will be providing pre-coverage and on-scene coverage of the United Astrology Conference, which takes place in New Orleans from May 24-29, 2012. Before I get into what that conference is, if you already know about it, be aware of the registration fee increase on Jan. 15. Here is a link to the conference’s website.

Rob Hand and his left hand at UAC 2008. Photo by Eric Francis.

So, what is UAC? Well, it’s the Burning Man of astrology, only it happens every four years or so. Looks like there will be about 2,000 people at this event, which its organizers describe as follows: “This global conference will be the largest gathering of astrologers, and astrology-lovers, in the world. From China, Nepal, Russia, India, Serbia, Argentina, Brazil, Bali, Germany, Australia, France, Great Britain, Mexico — from everywhere — we will gather to commune and share.”

Conferences are one useful way to learn astrology; many of your favorite astrology writers will be there. It’s a great opportunity to meet the people you’ve been reading or studying for years, and even participate in a class with them. I am appearing as faculty in two presentations — collaborating on a daylong marketing your astrology business seminar for professional astrologers (which will be good for holistic practitioners in any field). I will also be on the media panel, helping astrologers handle public and press relations. To see these presentations you will need to arrive a day or two early — please check the schedule!

Planet Waves is serving as ‘official conference press’, a function which I will be handling mostly by creating a channel on Planet Waves FM that will feature interviews, reports and panel discussions from the conference. (Lots of coverage of prior conferences is on our FM site.) During the few months between now and UAC, I will be providing pre-coverage in this space, including short items and interviews with conference faculty and organizers. If you are on the faculty and would like to be one of the people we interview, please write to me at dreams@planetwaves.net.

Hugo Farrant as 2012 expert Terrence Moonseed, on Rap News.

Talent is abundant these days, but some projects manage to stand tall. One of my favorite discoveries of recent seasons has been Rap News, created by The Juice Media. Their newest edition is the best summary of 2012 I have ever seen, heard or otherwise encountered. The video takes on the political, environmental and spiritual angles, all at once — brilliantly. The only thing they don’t mention is Uranus square Pluto, evidence that they did not work with an astrologer to create the piece.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if 2011 was a prelude, a portent of things to come, then it’s dramatically clear we’re in for a massive year,” says Rap News host Robert Foster (played by Hugo Farrant). “This year’s headline: will we avoid the precipice, or dive off the edge of it? Whatever your preference, creed, conspiracy or party membership, our fate could depend on what we want 2012 to represent. This date that we’ve subconsciously identified as our collective, self-imposed deadline for correcting our way of life, with so much energy aligned on this point in time, with all that we are, and could be, potentially on the line — could this be our final meeting point, prior to the rising or turning of the tide?”

Speaking of turning the tide, this episode actually has Noam Chomsky making an excellent cameo appearance. The scripts are written by Giordano Nanni and the whole thing is produced in a home-studio/suburban backyard in Melbourne, Australia. Zoe Tame is Rap News’s in-house Photoshop blackbelt and graphic designer. Check out their archive of episodes, one more brilliant than the next. I am working on getting Hugo Farrant’s birth data. Any guesses?

This week’s horoscope is written by Priya Kale. Eric Francis will return next week.

Aries (March 20-April 19) — You’ve been working hard and it won’t be long before you receive solid recognition for your efforts. But what do you most hunger for? And what is your definition of success and where did this come from? If you are conscious of your own motives in a professional situation, you can let go of ambitions that no onger serve you. This will allow you to reclaim authority and redirect your energy constructively into what feeds your passion and deepest purpose. Let go of some ‘idea’ of success, and you can achieve the kind of success that not only looks good to the world, but also feels good right down to your bones. In a close personal relationship and your friendships, the same idea holds: seek truth and depth rather than appearances. Offering freedom and acceptance to another can strengthen a bond, offering tangible results.

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 pre-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) — We each have a special role to play in this cosmic drama called life. Yet until you embrace and accept your individual talents, you’re likely to feel like a fish out of water, or worse, one swimming in a sea of endless comparison. Something you’ve been working towards is stabilizing this week, bringing you the recognition you’ve long deserved professionally. Along the way, events are asking you to move past subconscious limitations you carry regarding your success (baggage that may be related to your religious or moral beliefs) as you recognize your authority and power. You don’t need to impress anyone, nor do you need to worry about what others think. Even if others are impressed, I suggest you remain grounded in your self-awareness and a soul-truth of what you are working for and you won’t get carried away or lost in a crowd. You were born for greater things. Accept it.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Powerful changes are taking place beyond your control, particularly in a financial situation or sexual relationship you fear you cannot live without. Confront any fears you may have honestly and investigate your values surrounding sex, marriage, money and commitment. You can then consciously uproot those that prevent you from going deeper within a commitment and exploring the beautiful opportunities beckoning on the horizon. Our world can be harsh, but as long as you play fair and are conscious of your own motivations, you don’t need to fear being taken advantage of or losing anything or anyone precious to you. If you are feeling a sense of loss right now, trust this is creating space for something rather heavenly to enter that can enrich your life, lifting your spirits and heart. Financially as well as emotionally you’re on solid ground. Loosen your grip and you can be liberated to discover just how blessed, loved and safe you truly are.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — A conversation this week is deepening your understanding of a relationship, revealing a sweeter reality than the one you’ve been clinging to. We tend to subconsciously base our expectations of relationships on the roles enacted in our childhood by caregivers, that is, until we get tired of running the same old dramas. What is the subconscious imprinting you need to let go of? You cannot control others, nor can you erase the past. But you can consciously let go of expectations, past resentments, anger, and fear and acknowledge your desires and needs to yourself first. Then you can be warm rather than scalding, and ask for what you need rather than demanding it and creating tension. You are in a process of building trust. Be less critical, keep an open dialogue and you can have the financial support, as well as the deep intimacy, trust and acceptance you need from a sexual partner and those to whom you are connected in flesh and spirit.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — You may be obsessing about work, or a situation you care deeply about that you think is out of your hands. Rather than fret about what you can’t control — since worry never solved anything, or hardly anything — recognize how much you have to give and what you have the power to do. It really doesn’t matter what you do, rather how alive you feel each morning when you greet the day. Be conscious of what motivates and drives you, and let go of what is no longer working. The love and financial support you need is indeed present, but it will require you to move past pride or mental resistance and have honest conversations that deepen your trust. As long as you are not being blinded by shallow beauty, or being too rigid or picky, you can open yourself wider and heal something that has been irritating you for a long time.

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Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — If you’re feeling like a part of you is dying, it’s natural to want to cling to all you once loved. We do indeed create our reality, or most of it, even though it’s not always clear how. If that reality currently seems a little too much to bear, look for the blessing. You can deny a truth to the world till you’re blue in the face, but you can’t deny it to yourself. There is no shame in admitting that your childhood desires for yourself, what you want out of love, life, and even your creative goals are changing. It may feel risky, but you don’t need to compromise your values. Just dig past superficial desires and be honest about what truly matters to you in your heart of hearts. Then you can unearth the golden nugget: your authentic potential. Let go of an old desire, and you will see how beautiful life can really be right here, right now, if only you surrender to it. You are unearthing and reclaiming your Self now — the real dream you can live.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Events this week are asking you to confront the past and let go of your attachment to it. What this really means is letting go of an idea you have about someone. This may not be easy, but relax long enough to stay in the present and you will see your strength in the light of all you’ve been through. As you more consciously confront the shadows cast on your early life, you can reclaim it and your authority to live your life by your rules. Use this opportunity — and the space you’re clearing — to create a more colorful reality with this newfound power. You may be making up your mind to trust a situation even though you have no real proof of why you feel this way. As long as you are being honest with yourself and are in no denial of the lessons you’ve learned, you can trust your judgment and be guided by the love you feel. Give your shadows their place, and then freely dive into the soulful pleasures stirring in your heart.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — What do you believe? And why do you believe this? And what are the ideas surrounding success and failure you need to let go of? You’ve been obsessing about something, and the time has come for you to pull your head out of the sand and face the truth. This may scare you, but in truth reality is a lot sweeter than you think or fear. Financially as well as within a domestic relationship or situation, you have more support than you realize. Consciously let go of expectations and assumptions, especially the negative ones. If you speak for what you know to be true, you can reclaim your power in a situation, freeing you from a worry, bringing you the security you’ve yearned for. Hint: that sense of security originates with you. As you feel safer, you will experience the world as a safer place, where love feels more natural. You will be more likely to notice what you want rather than what you don’t want.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — What defines your sense of self-worth? Is it success? Respect from your peers? Wealth? Your relationships? You’re in the process of discovering that it’s really none of the above, which will arrive with the sensation of setting you free from something that has long felt like a trap. Don’t forget what you learn today and this weekend. Only you have the power to define your worth, though sometimes you will discover this through a process of reduction. In other words, as you let go of every influence that did not work, or that was incorrect, you will eventually figure out that you had the right idea all along. The key to your longterm happiness is reaching a balance between radical self-sufficiency and healthy dependency. If you learn toward independence, you will make room for a more natural exchange of support. Yet if you lean too far in that direction, you will push others out of your life.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — You’ve been questioning your role in the bigger picture and here comes a moment of deep clarity. Remember though, clarity also means confronting important truths and getting to the core of the only question that matters: “Who am I?” You are evolving and letting go of a carefully carved identity you’ve long ago outgrown. In letting go of false ideas about yourself, you can be free to reach for your noblest ambitions fearlessly, with the curiosity of a child in a new world. Choose your mountains wisely and you can reclaim your power to make choices that feel right for you as you pursue goals that are truly worthy of your efforts. Trust the rewards of this process; this will go way beyond just the tangible. And if you haven’t looked in the mirror lately, you are beautiful — body, heart and soul — and worthy love, not just the hope of love.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Have you been feeling like a small cog in a big machine, rather in the dark about a situation that is drawing you deeper into the unknown than you may care to venture? Sooner or later you will figure out that fear is the scariest thing in the world. Although a financial commitment or sexual relationship is heating up, you can trust it is evolving just as it needs to even if you can’t see it yet. Trust your intuition about what you might sometimes feel is out of your control. That will help you be more aware of the subconscious fears that haunt you. These fears prevent you from making the progress you’re so devoted to these days. Recognizing this will help you summon the support you need. Yes, most people walk around the planet feeling little to no support for who they are and what they want. Yet that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Be your own friend and you will make some fun discoveries about who else wants to be your friend.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Are you wondering if you can trust another’s motives? You’ve been burned before, but it is also true that a lot of your disappointments have come from your own illusions, expectations and fantasies. You have an incredible psychic gift that allows you to peer into people’s hearts. First you must admit your own secret longings and desires; then you can see through others’ without fear of projection. Doing so lets you choose friendships in which you feel safe enough to bare your heart, body and soul, as they evolve and strengthen. You may think you know the way the world works, but being less critical can liberate you from darker doubts that prevent progress. You are deeply loved by this Universe and more people than you realize. Inspire the support you need and there is no Earthly reason you can’t bring a collective dream to life.

Neptune to Chiron: from Denial to Awareness

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Dear Friend and Reader:

I’m wondering what kind of week you had. What did you experience and what did you learn the past five days? It’s been an unusually interesting sky, as Mercury and Venus (personal planets associated with emotions and senses) first made aspects to Neptune (denial, delusion) then to Chiron (painful revelation or healing impulse) and Uranus (sudden awareness, ideas, invention). The story arc of these transits is like the psyche passing through a fog of denial, then getting caught in the spotlight of instant karma, then experiencing a wave of awareness that might lead you to make a decision and act on it. This has manifested in large and personal and collective ways, but let’s start with you. (You may email me if you want to share your experiences.)

Photo by Eric Francis, Book of Blue – Paris series.

These aspects describe not only the need to wake up and grow up, but the inevitability of doing so. There is a prevailing theme of noticing what’s going on, then connecting actions with consequences — something that we humans are not especially good at. We are very good at pretending there is no connection, and then wondering whom to blame when the catastrophic results suddenly become obvious.

In what we think of as public life (while we have the luxury of thinking there’s a difference between that and anything else), we’ve just lived through a truly incredible week of the personal as political. It was so revealing of the astrology — and what I can only call our moral crisis of leadership — that I’ve prepared a little news roundup for you.

As the United States gets ready to decide who will lead us deeper into the 21st century, two more Republican presidential campaigns burst into flames. Herman Cain, the gospel-singing pizza guy, found himself all over the news as several past cases of sexual harassment were revealed by the news website Politico. First Cain made a series of bumbling denials that anything happened or that any settlement was made, and finally admitted that something had indeed happened.

When confronted on video Wednesday, he lost his cool, telling reporters to bugger off and mind their own business — churning up even more interest in the situation. We will likely be hearing from some of the women involved, all of whom were given cash settlements and signed confidentiality agreements, and for that reason could not come forward. It looks like his campaign is road pizza.

Next, Rick Perry, the sitting governor of Texas, found himself in the news when he regressed into a kind of giggling, giddy man-child speaking to a bunch of New Hampshire conservatives, apparently under the influence of some substance or a manic episode. This was not the Rick Perry of, “No, sir, I’m not worried that I executed any innocent people” fame. (More executions have happened under his administration than under any governor in American history.)

Photo by Eric Francis, Book of Blue – Paris series.

Rather, it was a Rick Perry brimming with sentimental enthusiasm about the Live Free or Die slogan on New Hampshire’s license plates, then clutching a little bottle of maple syrup wearing a sappy, Texas-sized grin. When you see the whole speech, it’s not as twisted as it seems when you excerpt it. He seems more like the religious huckster that he is, who goes over the top a few times and then ends seeming like he’s mentally unstable.

Next, here’s one you may have heard about by now as the story goes viral — the most personal of all. In Dallas, Hillary Adams, the daughter of a family court judge, posted a seven-minute video of her father viciously flogging her with a belt when she was 16 years old, while her mother looks on. Apparently she had been caught downloading potentially-pirated video games and music (her father didn’t think she should have one of those computer thingies).

Hillary, who has cerebral palsy, says she was beaten regularly and finally posted the video this week when he would not stop harassing her. Her father, Judge William Adams, now faces a police investigation and a judicial probe, and has been suspended from his duties.

“In my mind I have not done anything wrong other than discipline my child when she was caught stealing. I did lose my temper, I’ve apologized. It looks worse than it is,” Adams told Texas television station KZTV.

Hillary Adams, now 23, told television station KRIS on Wednesday her father was “making light of the situation,” adding, “I just can’t believe he would say something like he doesn’t think it’s a big deal.” The story is replete with twisted details: for example, Hillary doesn’t blame her mom for the situation because she was emotionally abused by Adams too, and has since left the marriage.

It’s like our political process itself has ended up on the set of The Jerry Springer Show. It reveals what is going on beneath the surface of so much that we see.

Isle of Tinos,
Greece. Photo by Anthony Ayiomamitis.

And there is a distraction effect. Efforts to solve Greece’s rapidly escalating financial crisis fell apart this week, and the country may not be able to avoid defaulting on its loans. The government itself seems on the brink of collapse. What you may not have heard is that earlier this week, the government replaced the heads of the Navy, Army and Air Force due to the fact the armed forces were allegedly planning a coup similar to the junta which ruled Greece between 1967 and 1974.

If Greece defaults, there could be an economic ripple effect that spreads across Europe and possibly to the United States — so everyone is watching this carefully. Here, the political could become intimately personal. As one of our colleagues in Greece wrote to me Thursday, “It really is a very pathetic situation and something I would not wish on anyone.”

Meanwhile, Pres. Obama is in France at the moment, at a meeting of the G20 group of nations that has this issue on its agenda. Democracy Now! noted that Monday, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou angered many European leaders by announcing his support for a popular referendum — allowing the Greek people to decide if they want to accept the conditions of the $179 billion European Union bailout. Papandreou is now facing calls from within his party to resign after days of increasing criticism from European leaders.

The Greek debt scandal has also pitted U.S. banking interests against France, Germany and other European powers. “The Americans are putting immense pressure on Europe, saying, ‘We will wreck your economy, if you don’t wreck Greece’s economy,'” says economic analyst Michael Hudson. President Obama is “basically telling Europe, ‘Don’t go the democratic route. Support Wall Street’.” Clearly the irony of Obama’s position while the Occupy protests are still taking place in cities around the United States is not lost on many.

The Common Thread

The common thread of these events is power-based relationships, and personal responsibility (or the total lack thereof). There is something here about where the public trust intersects with deeply personal values. Presidential candidates are included in the ‘power relationship’ category by default, as they want to be the presumed ruler of the nation. And we are seeing this for the power trip that it is. What we’re witnessing are not individual cases of abdicated responsibility but rather the death of a model of leadership that is disconnected from any ethics at all.

Graffitti mural in Battery Steele, Peaks Island, ME. Photo by Amanda.

Herman Cain, like many people, managed to turn sex (or rather the idea of sex) into a power trip. By the time it comes down to four (and counting) accusations and at least three different women receiving cash settlements to settle sexual harassment charges, obviously this is a way of life. This person wants to be president, with access to nuclear weapons? That’s also a power relationship, to the whole world. Why, exactly, does he want to be president?

Rick Perry, the executioner, also wants access to those nuclear bombs. He’s a Dominionist, which means he feels it’s his duty to accelerate the end of the world, on behalf of God. But he’s delusional and he can’t hold his shit together, even at a public event with the television cameras on. It’s all about the power and glory. What I see in these presidential campaigns is people trying on the ‘I am the president’ trip with no sense of what that might mean to the people they’re supposed to serve. It’s like something has become hollowed out and feels like it’s going to collapse on itself. But I don’t think this is going on exclusively ‘up top’. We see many examples of how it manifests in more humble places, and to some extent we all enable the dysfunction in other people who live from power trip to power trip — until we don’t any more.

As for Judge Adams: all judges spend their days rearranging the private lives of others, more or less arbitrarily. They hold themselves above the law, and few mechanisms exist to keep them in control. If not for YouTube, we likely never would have found out about this situation. Everyone is shocked that a family court judge would beat the daylights out of his daughter. But that’s merely an extension of the same power he holds over everyone who comes through his courtroom. I’ve met very few people who have the guts to call out a judge on their illegal or immoral conduct.

Economically, we are facing a similar betrayal on a vast, even incomprehensible scale. We may not have seen the worst of it yet. It is no longer the paranoid who are predicting another collapse of the banks and a massive tsunami of defaults. It’s the people who know the most about economics. Part of the betrayal is on the part of the people with the most power, and part is on account of those with the very least. By that I mean that our economic woes are in part due to predatory lending, and the rest is due to people who could not resist their own greed and signed up for loans they could not afford. Meanwhile, countries and massive corporations have been busy doing the same thing. In this economic crisis, the conduct of governments, corporations and many private individuals has been nearly identical — and I rarely ever hear about that.

Everywhere we look around us, we see the aggressive use of power. The question is, how is this playing out in our own lives? Most individuals are more in the position to squander their power and creativity than abuse it, but opportunities to do both abound. The question is, what part of the problem are you willing to take responsibility for, and what are you going to do about it?

The Next Alignment

I ask because the same story is continuing in a different form. Mercury and Venus are now making an unusually long, exact conjunction that is moving through Sagittarius. Looked at one way, this aspect is brimming with idealism and potential. It’s a kind of astrology about having the best intentions.

Mercury and Venus (toward the right) in a long, near-exact conjunction. The two planets are moving at about the same speed for a while, but they don’t ever align precisely for this cycle. (Mercury, usually the faster planet, goes retrograde before catching up with Venus.) They form a conjunction in June 2012, which takes place in Gemini. Points above left are Pholus and the North Node.

Yet Mars in Leo is making a long opposition to Neptune, and soon it will make an opposition to Chiron. Like Mercury and Venus have just done with their squares to Neptune and Chiron, Mars is going make an opposition to Neptune first and then, when it changes signs, to Chiron. So we get the same sequence of denial/delusion with a subsequent feeling of radical awakening.

Treading this path with Mars is a little more dangerous because unlike Mercury and Venus, Mars is a sharp, hot and potentially flammable object. Opposite Neptune, we have a warning about going out of bounds, taking too much for granted or pushing an issue or a lie of some kind. There is a caution about emotional violence, psychic attack and severely compromised judgment. Because Aquarius is involved, this could involve some form of group denial or delusion (that would be nothing new, but as the astrology develops we can see a distinct event approaching — just in time for many local elections in the United States).

With Mars-Neptune aspects, the theme of motives needs to be investigated carefully, especially where any form of violence, force or power-over is involved. Deception needs to be considered an example of all three.

You might think of it this way. When power itself becomes the goal, that is dangerous territory. If you keep asking yourself about your motives, that is the time to call a timeout. Fortunately, there is a built-in boundary in the current planetary setup: as Mars opposes Neptune, the Sun makes a square to Vesta.

Vesta defines space, and will help focus the terms of the discussion. If you take action from the place of true and sincere devotion, you’re on solid ground.

Lovingly,

PS: In case you missed our special offer sent to subscribers for Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check, the 2012 annual edition of Planet Waves, here is that link again. Also, check your email Sunday evening for a special announcement.

Note that in the United States and Canada, daylight savings time ends and standard time begins this weekend. Mercury’s shadow/echo phase begins Saturday, heralding a retrograde that runs from Nov. 24 through Dec. 13. Mercury will be retrograde entirely in Sagittarius this time around. Speaking of planetary stations, Neptune stations direct on Nov. 9, just before the Taurus Full Moon. Mars forms an exact opposition to Neptune on Nov. 7, just before Neptune stations, so the two events are related. The opposition from Mars emphasizes the presence of Neptune at a sensitive moment in its cycle. Notably this will be the last Neptune station in Aquarius; it’s headed straight for Pisces, where it will remain until March 25, 2025.

The Moon entered Pisces early Friday morning, in a conjunction to Chiron. The Pisces Moon is already sensitive enough, especially after just having passed through the Mars-Neptune opposition. As with many other points this week that have aspected first Neptune and then Chiron, the message seems to be about gaining clarity, in this case emotional clarity. If after any potential disruption you consciously focus on healing, you’re likely to make actual progress. Then the Moon ingresses Aries at 2:02 pm EST on Sunday. That’s an aspect full of interesting surprises, as the Moon makes a conjunction to Uranus shortly after arriving in Aries, and squares Pluto that evening (overnight Sunday to Monday in the UK and Europe). This is a good day to avoid drama and keep your focus. Such conflict might come in the form of the sensation of ‘not fitting into the group’, being ‘too much of an individual’ or the notion of being too much in general.

Mercury and Venus remain in a long conjunction, which suggests making your desires verbal, or looked at the other way, feeling the words that you speak. In Sagittarius there may be a sense of adventure. At the same time, the Mars-Neptune opposition is providing some fuel for the imagination, the desire for something a little dangerous and the craving to push some boundaries with the help of a consciousness-altering substance. The thing to be aware of when doing that is that one does indeed negotiate one’s boundaries differently when consciousness is altered, and it’s good to keep a pulse on just how that works for you. No matter what you’re doing, be mindful of limits and boundaries. On that theme, perhaps the most interesting aspect with erotic overtones this weekend is Sun square Vesta. This aspect is developing all weekend and is exact Monday. Vesta can work like an organizing principle, such as within a physical space. There is the message here that if you set a safe container, you can do some bold experimentation within that container.

After repeated attacks from the police, with the enabling behavior of the mayor, Occupy Oakland became a general strike on Wednesday. Thousands of protesters shut down many stores and the commercial ports (Oakland is the nation’s fifth-largest port, where many of our imports from China come in), and nearly 20 percent of the city’s teachers did not report to work. The strike — the first general strike in Oakland since 1946 — was largely peaceful, though tension escalated overnight. Police arrested at least three dozen people and repeatedly fired tear gas and other projectiles to break up late night protests.

Elsewhere in #Occupy protests across the country, pepper spray has been used repeatedly by police. Police in Seattle used pepper spray to clear a side entrance to a hotel where JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was invited to speak Wednesday, so patrons could leave. Police in Tulsa, Oklahoma, pepper-sprayed Occupy protesters when they refused to vacate a local park. Police have made arrests in Seattle, Tulsa and Philadelphia, where demonstrators denounced Comcast for failing to pay taxes in a city with severe poverty issues.

Denial and Awareness

This week’s edition of Planet Waves FM develops the story of Mercury and Venus making aspects to Neptune and Chiron, a theme we’ve been exploring all week on our daily blog and covered in today’s edition. This is a fast-moving 30-minute presentation.

Here you’ll find the full archives and a downloadable zip file. They’re also available on iTunes.

Friday, Nov. 4, 2011. Weekly Horoscope #881. | Eric’s Zodiac Sign Descriptions

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Resist the temptation to be dishonest, which also means stand up to anyone who is less than forthright. Most people resist straight talk because they expect to be punished for it. As for why we don’t call people out on their deception: there are two big reasons for that. One is the fear of being seen as a liar. Second is to keep the peace, or rather, what passes for peace. There are other mucky, cloudy excuses for denial, ranging from social lubrication to the camouflage that a little deception offers. But this is not the time for that. Now is the time to look at the fog, admitting that it exists. It’s time to apply every available form of perception to your situation. Be sure you cross-check and don’t rely on any one source of information. Mostly, it’s time to be true to yourself. You may have to face a relationship issue that you’ve wanted to address for a long time. Get used to that idea — the time is nigh.

Aries, your birth sign or rising sign, is getting some of the most potent transits of them all right now. I’ve recorded an hour of astrology and a tarot card reading for you. Learn more by visiting this page.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You’ve finally gone past a point of a deep personal crisis — and now the real work begins. Just as when there’s a fire, a flood or an earthquake, the first response process is different from the long-term repair, the same is true for personal matters. You have discovered the places where your integrity is compromised. You have learned the ways in which you need to be more honest with yourself. You have probably figured out that it’s not only ‘okay’ but necessary to use what you know. And now you can apply these discoveries to your daily experience of life. There is no special time for growth and healing. If these words have any meaning at all, they are things we do all the time, even in our sleep — just like breathing. Many have noted that we’re a culture of shallow breathers, which describes our spiritual condition. Therefore, when in doubt, take a few deep breaths.

I’ve recorded an hour of astrology and done a tarot reading especially for you. It’s information that will help with your relationships, your professional life and your personal growth. Visit this page to find out more.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Your relationships don’t exist outside of you. There is no ‘third party’ known as the ‘relationship itself’, though at the moment it may seem that way. The risk in perceiving the relationship as a kind of corporate entity is dissociating yourself from a direct experience. It also dissociates you from the direct experience within someone close to you. I suggest you ask what’s happening on their end of the universe and listen carefully. This goes for anyone who would fit the definition of partner or close friend. You might even check in with those you consider your adversary or enemy. Those, too, are ‘special relationships’ that offer us plenty, and can sometimes be even more fruitful than the things we describe as relationships based on love. The question to keep in mind throughout your inquiry process is, ‘what does this say about me?’ I don’t mean this in the sense of a judgment, but rather a reflection.

Gemini is one of the most misunderstood signs — and as someone born under this sign, part of your role is to hold a mirror to the world. I’ve recorded an hour of audio for you, plus a 20-minute tarot reading. You can get access to these by visiting this page.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Scorpio is your house of playful sex, and the Sun is still there — but since last week, two other planets have ventured from Scorpio into Sagittarius. This puts the emphasis onto two themes: one is on what some call spirituality. Another is what some call healing. Typically, sex is considered as ‘unspiritual’ as you can get, and what we think of as healing usually exempts sex from the conversation. You may be figuring out that not only are these areas of life related, but for you they are the same thing. You might want to investigate the mental constructions that would tell you otherwise. Or, you can experiment with the idea that they are one and the same. This would involve coming out of denial, though it seems that you’ve recently had an experience that helped you do just that. Let’s start the process with desire. For the next week, try being scrupulously honest about what you want. Forget about why you might want an experience. Consider judgment and guilt forms of dishonesty, and keep going.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — Hugh Prather once wrote that it takes ego to see ego. I would add, it takes ego to miss the point entirely. Your human journey needs a container, and for most people that container is this thing we refer to as ‘I’ or ‘me’. But it doesn’t stop there; we then take that ‘I’ or ‘me’ and seek affirmation of our existence in our experiences of other people. At the moment, some of those may feel a little strange: such as, the more you assert yourself, the less of a response you get. Or you act one way and you get a response that makes no sense at all. Here is the thing astrology reveals that you may not have a pulse on yet — there is a whole level of response that you cannot see but soon will. In part this involves the filter you’re looking through, and in part it involves the way someone is cloaking who they really are. Changing either one would go a long way toward clearing up the scene.

The 2011 Leo birthday report is 70 minutes of in-depth astrology plus a 20-minute tarot reading for you, exploring relationships, personal growth and your professional life. Visit this page for additional information.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — The heart of the matter is emotional, but that means something different to you than it means to nearly anyone else. To be valid, something has to make sense to you — and there’s a good chance that you’re finally getting some clarity that is starting to feel like ‘making sense’. I would propose that this particular issue is going to make sense in a slightly different way every day for the next week or so. Give yourself the space to come to a different revelation that’s related to the prior one but still contains a unique idea. The key is to feel the idea and its implications. Try it on with your physical body and your emotions. Translate your discovery into words and decide how you like them. Consider what action you would take if that day’s possibility were actually true. Then, move onto the next one — with no special concern about where you’re going to end up.

The 2011 Virgo birthday report is ready! I’ve recorded 70 minutes of astrology plus a tarot reading for you, exploring how you’re working through family material, your use of spirituality, some new energy in your relationships and your professional goals. Visit this page for additional information.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — You recently came to terms with something, and this has had a liberating effect on you. You’re more of a free spirit than your astrology has enabled you to be the past couple of years, and you seem to have turned a corner that has come with the feeling of desiring freedom. At the same time you have greater clarity what it is — and from the way the planets are lining up, that has something to do with your ability to express yourself in words. For a while you may have felt beyond any hope of a cohesive idea, much less being able to express it tangibly. Why that has changed may be something of a mystery — perhaps something that stabilized your tendency to go from one emotional rush to the next. You may have noticed the pain you caused someone, or that some experience caused you — and the result is liberation that comes with acknowledging that simple truth.

Your Libra birthday audio for 2011 is finished. I’ve prepared a comprehensive reading for you, covering the astrology for your sign in about 70 minutes (in two segments) and offering a tarot reading of just under half an hour. Visit this link for additional information.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — It’s your birthday season, and I have a few messages for you. One is that this is going to be a good year for money, if you prioritize integrity above all else. That means being true to yourself, and to the people in your life. You will have opportunities to do anything and everything but be honest, and which only emphasize the point. In the old days when I used to train professional tarot card readers, I heard several of them say, ‘But I can’t charge money to help people’. And I would say, ‘Well what do you want to do, charge money to hurt them?’ This defines the first half of the integrity issue. The other half is not kidding yourself about the concepts ‘hurt’ and ‘help’. If you sell your soul, you cannot buy it back. You have to get it back some other way — but it’s far better to keep it in the first place.

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) — Two planets have just entered your sign — Venus and Mercury. The real-life version of that story may be an encounter or event that jolted you into a new level of discovery of who you are. It may have come through your dreams the past week or so, and in that dreamy way you may have forgotten what it was. Yet it’s had an influence on you. It feels like you unexpectedly resolved some old emotional pain. One clue about that pain is that it’s connected not only to your father but to some pattern involving his whole side of the family. You don’t necessarily need to analyze this, but it might help if you understood the connection. Your father had injuries and was subjected to influences that he did not understand. For a while that was the story of your life — and now a new story is finally beginning.

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) — Leadership is about having your act together. Using that as a standard, just about everyone in political authority today, and mostly everyone in corporate authority today, would need to be described using a different term than ‘leader’. One story that your charts are telling is that you’re making the connection between emotional integration and your success in the world. By emotional integration, I mean getting the different parts of yourself to have the same conversation, and recognizing that they are aspects of the same whole entity — you. It’s not possible to divide your character (for example, trying to be honest with some people and dishonest with others). It’s useless to be constantly at odds with yourself. Insecurity of any kind simply must become a thing of the past. As you take action on these ideas, you will take yourself more seriously, and so will the people around you.

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) — You’re involved in an extended process of cleaning up some relationship issues, which may involve an actual encounter, several different experiences or your long-term patterns with others. This has less to do with those others and more directly with you. You are collecting the parts of yourself that you’ve scattered or invested in others, and which you are now claiming as your own. Think of this as a form of soul retrieval, or as a spiritual growth experience — it’s both. In either case, there is a special focus on the hidden psychological legacy of your mother. Repeat those words to yourself a few times. Note that such a thing even exists and that it influences you profoundly. Most of the unprocessed material of parents is passed directly to children — and we all know there is plenty. You’ve been in possession of the tools you need for a while; you’re now getting a handle on how to use them.

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) — The time has come to be known for what you are best at, for what you want to be known for and most of all, for who you are. To some extent, your actions speak for you; your reputation precedes you. But you’re the one who has to provide the point of crystallization for an idea, and take the steps to assert yourself. While this takes energy, knowledge and the desire to succeed, most of what you need now is trust. That means trust in yourself, in what you’re offering and that the right people will respond in the ways that are in harmony with your process. Trust also means acting without hesitation or delay. Assert yourself, assert your message, and push beyond the containers that have held you in the past. Then be prepared to do this for a while, until you get either the results you want, or something better that you were not expecting — and could not have expected.

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

The Light in August: Your Monthly Horoscope

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Dear Friend and Reader:

August 2011 is one of those months when it will pay to know a little astrology — or even a little bit about the current astrology. The planetary movements of the next four weeks present a number of challenges, just as many opportunities and an occasion to peer into the future. There also seems to be an extended window in which to address certain matters of the past, and to work with the question of emotional balance.

Photo by Eric Francis.

We think we’re a mentally driven society, but I suspect that’s only on the surface. Deeper in, we are moved and in a sense stalked by our own emotions. That’s why we’re so easily manipulated. Since Mercury is retrograde for nearly the whole month of August, let’s consider some of what that suggests — then go into the deeper emotional material.

Mercury starts its retrograde Aug. 2 in Virgo. Because it’s in the early degrees of Virgo (at the beginning of the sign), it will promptly retrograde back into Leo, where it has spent much of July. The image is one of moving inward through layers. We start by questioning some idea of who we are (Mercury stationing retrograde in Virgo, the sign of ideas) and we gradually backtrack toward what seems like an answer, but what is in truth really a deeper inner reality, represented by Leo.

Leo is a unique sign in that it’s ruled by the Sun rather than a planet. Only one other sign is not ruled by a planet — Cancer, which is associated with the Moon. The Sun has a special role; it’s the center of the solar system, around which all the other planets orbit. Every bit of light that we see from planets, the Moon or on our own planet comes from the Sun. Its dual role is a gravitational center, as well as an energy source. When a tree grows, that energy comes from the Sun. When you burn coal, that energy came from the Sun. When you express yourself, you’re using solar energy to do so, and that’s the basic meaning of the Sun in astrology.

Photo by Eric Francis.

Most of us don’t identify ourselves as creative people. That’s another way of saying that we tend not to identify with the Sun in our charts, or rather, we can get distracted by the personality represented by our lunar placement. It’s intriguing that most people don’t know what sign their Moon is in — if you like astrology, I suggest you find out. The ‘aha’ will validate astrology for you, and give you a whole new element to work with.

Mercury retrograde into the sign of the Sun is a way of saying that we’re exploring for, searching out and feeling for the expression of our solar nature. Remember — this isn’t an idea; it’s not a story. It’s an atomic reaction that’s burning so hot, one can be blinded looking into it for a few moments even at our distance. As you feel for this energy, you will feel for how you want to express yourself. Don’t just think about it — reach in and pull out the expressive energy and give it away, just like the Sun does.

As you’re doing this, be aware that something else is happening. For most of August, Mars will be in the sign Cancer. It arrives Aug. 3, just a day after Mercury stations retrograde. That suggests some confusion between the mental level (our ideas about things) and our emotions (energy moving on a sub-verbal level). So remember that. Then Mars does something pretty fancy: it moves along what’s called the cardinal cross — aspecting all those planets in the early cardinal signs (Uranus in Aries, Pluto in Capricorn and Saturn in Libra, among others).

Mars is highly energetic, impetuous, hot, passionate and at times raging and confrontational. Be careful not to pick fights over what turn out to be misunderstandings or incorrect interpretations. Indeed, get your facts right; wait a while and see if you can get to a new level of understanding. Try to see where the people around you are coming from. And be careful when you’re driving. We all know not to drive drunk, but I would add to that under the influence of any alcohol at all, or when you’re overtired or upset. Stack the deck in your favor. And please don’t even ride as a passenger with someone who is out of sorts.

Photo by Eric Francis.

The generous perk of this astrology is opportunities for maturity. Moments when we go out of balance in any way are great times to learn why it happened, what was going on below the boards, and what we can do about it. There are other perks: if you slow down and don’t try to do too much (almost always good astrological advice with Mercury retrograde), there is a lot of passion and creative mojo in these Mars aspects. If you remember that the opposite of depression is expression, you may find yourself in a creative zone like no other.

As for peering into the future: Mars in particular is tracing the regions of the zodiac that are the most involved with the 2012 phenomenon. When that happens, we get a taste of the energy of the future months or years in advance. This works on the personal level and the global level. If you pay careful attention, you will be able to see and experience what is developing. We will, of course, be covering these developments on every channel as they happen.

If you’re curious how this astrology influences you personally, I invite you to check out my midyear report. And of course, you can tune in every day at PlanetWaves.net, and don’t miss my podcasts each Wednesday at Planet Waves FM.

Yours lovingly,

Now Playing: Planet Waves Mercury Retrograde Report

Dear Friend and Reader:

The Planet Waves Mercury retrograde report is done. I’ve recorded an introduction and about 25 to 35 minutes of audio for each of the 12 Sun signs and rising signs. The audio introduction to the Merc Rx phenomenon in general is available to all readers, in which I give a primer on Mercury retrograde and describe key details of this one. The product itself is the sign-by-sign interpretation, which I offer in clear, easy to follow language. As you may know, I am always reaching for the point of sanity in the astrology, the solution set to what seems like an overly complex puzzle. I trust these readings will bring you some comfort, clarity and a few good ideas to work with in these wild and unusual days.

Analemma & the Tholos, Delphi, Greece. Photo: Anthony Ayiomamitis.

Mercury retrograde is a challenging event for many people. I do my best to counter those challenges with creativity and the intelligence made available by a careful reading of the charts. Whether you’re looking for work, sorting out your relationships or trying to turn a corner in your life, I trust you will find these readings helpful.

I’ve had an amazing time creating this report all week in the midst of much other activity — it seemed to create itself as the days went on, and I was a little wistful letting it go as I finished the 12th sign, Pisces. Now it’s on your hands — and I’m happy to offer it to you. If you’d like to hear the general introduction, you may listen to the audio above. (Please note one correction — when I say that the retrograde is 88 days, I mean the full orbit of Mercury around the Sun; the retrograde is usually 24 days.)

One thing about this particular Mercury retrograde is that it crosses the line between Leo and Virgo. We got the first such crossing in direct motion on Thursday. Then we get another in retrograde motion on Aug. 8, and a third in direct motion again on Sept. 9. Some astrologers describe the Leo/Virgo line as the sphinx point — where cat (Leo) meets human (Virgo). The crossing of house/sign cusps blends themes and helps us navigate unfamiliar territory. There are planets hanging out here — Transpluto on the Leo/Virgo line, and Neptune on the Pisces/Aquarius line. This adds some intrigue and depth to the circumstances surrounding this retrograde.

Leo/Virgo is the line where play meets work; where self-expression meets service; where passion meets the details of creative process. For each of the 12 signs I explore that relationship. You will find out what this means in your chart — whether you know your birth time (and hence your rising sign) or not. This report is brimming with personal guidance, strategy points and hints that will help you benefit from this retrograde, based on my experience covering (as in writing about) the past approximately 51 Mercury retrogrades.

If you’re vaguely interested in studying astrology, all 12 signs will be worth listening to because I go over all of the house cusps in one place. The house cusps are each a special zone of their own, each having unique qualities (like an extra 12 houses).

This is a one-purchase-gets-all-12-signs product, so you can read your Sun, Moon and rising sign — and those of your friends and loved ones. You may download or listen as many times as you like. There are some special offers included on the project’s homepage, in case you want to expand your self-inquiry. We’ve also included last year’s audio and the prior year’s written report (The Electric Tide), for the super-curious.

Here is how to get instant access.

Lovingly,

Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope – August 2011

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

Additional research on horoscopes for Capricorn and Aquarius provided by Arlene Kramer.

Aries (March 20-April 19) — We have yet to account for how individual emotional turmoil ripples into the world around us, affecting everyone and everything. One step in the evolution of humanity is each of us learning to handle our emotions. I have an old friend who believes that everyone — everyone — needs anger management training. The movement of Mars this month, through one of the most sensitive angles of your solar chart, suggests that you want to be a master of your emotions rather than a slave to them. In all sincerity, both are possible; the more probable of the two will depend on what you want. This is all about what you want, and by that I don’t mean a new surfboard — I mean your definition of happiness. Let’s start with your domestic life; what is your idea of a home that sustains you? What energy do you put out, and what do you take back in? What is it that makes you feel safe? Notice whether events that unfold this month are like or unlike what you want. Notice how you conduct yourself with others; notice what is motivating you as carefully as you can. While you’re observing, I will say this: there is little use for anger, except when expressed as a matter of fact, with the intention of awareness and healing. We all get angry. We have a lot to be angry about, and rage is driving most of the world’s biggest problems. Make sure you use the stuff constructively.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — I know that lots of political movements the past few decades have tried to claim pride as a good thing, as something healthy. In a sense it is, if you think of it as an alternative to shame. But I’m not sure that it is. Pride seems to be more of a form of insulation against the complexity of emotion. This would count for both the emotion of ‘proudness’ and one’s pride being hurt. They’re really not that different. One of the strongest qualities of your astrology this month involves an investigation of emotions that seem loud and bold on the surface, but are in truth sublime and intricate on a deeper level. Yet to discover this, you will need to ask yourself certain questions, and be content, for a while, that you don’t have the answers. Part of having a strong mind is being able to live with mystery for a while. This thing we call the ‘ego’ loves to rush in with an answer, before questioning much of anything, and your charts are rather packed with that right now. Yet just below the answer is a question. To get to there, you will need to follow your curiosity: for example, about why you feel a certain way, or why your reactions to certain people, events and emotions are so strong. The questions may lead to more questions for a while. That’s a good sign. Be as patient as you can be under the extremely restless astrology of August. There is a beautiful moment when understanding will come.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — When seeking money, remember your ethics. When working for advancement in your career, remember your ethics. I say these things knowing we live in a world where the concept of ethics seems outmoded and even useless. I assure you, it’s not. Whatever the current trend in thought, no matter how popular, useful and effective it may be to forego questions of authenticity, or matters of right and wrong, there is such a thing as karma. We are all subject to it. I don’t think you’re an unethical person; rather, I see a spell of astrology where the ends might seem to justify the means. They do not. How you go about something, from the specific methods you use, to the motivation that drives you, is every bit as meaningful as what you accomplish. Indeed, the two are so closely related as to be the same thing: if you notice you’re being driven by some form of ambition, you might want to check your goal and make sure that it’s really something you want. For an extended phase of your life, you are being granted a mantle of power. You have an aura of authority, and that connotes responsibility. I suggest you live like your telephone is tapped and like you’re being followed around by a television crew. Live as if you are actually accountable for your actions. You are. You are also accountable for the constructive, creative and sincere deeds to your credit, but on that particular theme, I suggest you let others do the talking.

Gemini is one of the most misunderstood signs — and as someone born under this sign, part of your role is to hold a mirror to the world. I’ve recorded an hour of audio for you, plus a 20 minute tarot reading. You can get access to these by visiting this page.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You will need to watch your tendency toward what some call passive aggression during the next few weeks. There’s nothing passive about aggression in any form, but it can wear many disguises, and have many motives. One motive would be insecurity. The planets this month are a setup for attempting to convert an extra-fiery temperament mixed with lack of confidence into conflict, which would be a purely self-destructive combination. The way to recast this into a creative equation is to be in contact with your desires, also with your sense of entitlement. They are two different things, though typically experienced as one. The first thing to do is sort them out. It’s absolutely vital that you be in touch with your desires; that you discover what you want. And it’s equally vital that you experience desire itself as a source of pleasure, without resorting to a sense of entitlement. Of its own, wanting is healthy — especially if you can find in your desire the authentic need to share and nourish others. Yet when you retreat into obsession with having, with achieving or with conquering, or with a drive for getting attention at any cost, that can turn negative fairly quickly. Therefore I would say, give what you want to receive. Get in contact with your deepest desires, and express them in a way that is generous and loving. Be especially kind to women; that means listening, in the first instance, and offering your support in gentle ways, with no strings attached.

Hello Cancerians! Your birthday report is ready. It’s more than an hour of astrology plus a 20 minute tarot reading. Please visit this page for more details.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — We all have those moments when an idea seems to manifest instantly into reality, and for many people they seem to be coming closer together. This is likely to be true for you during the next few weeks. We may not know how this process works, but it may be enough to say that thought is creative on many different levels. The first thing to do is create a space within your mind and your emotions where you feel safe. You can give yourself reasons, or you can stretch into an inner spot that requires no particular rationales. Once you know you’re safe, then fear is a moot point. And from there, it’s possible to apply an abundance of newly liberated energy into creative ideas. I don’t just mean art; I mean ideas for creating the world around you that works for you and your family or loved ones. Every situation you encounter has a positive solution, and is an opportunity for expanding your consciousness. Notice how every one of those encounters is a passing phase, but the thing that remains consistent is you exploring the flow of existence. The world is full of threats; we all know this. And I don’t think there is a person walking the face of the planet who has not noticed how powerful love is, and I mean by the results they got at least once. Yet the mental balance between love and fear can be a delicate balance; we decide which way to go from thought to thought, and moment to moment.

Hello Leo! I’m now working on the birthday report for your sign. Watch this space for additional information.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — The human psyche seems to be arranged in layers. Those who have endeavored to address any significant personal issue have observed something like this. When you go into one layer and explore in a sincere way, you eventually come to another layer, and another. All healing processes work like this: the different attributes of a situation can be experienced as some form of physical, then emotional, then spiritual, which are arranged like the skins of an onion. The deeper we go, the more we can experience this elusive thing we call self-awareness. Mercury beginning its retrograde in your sign on Aug. 2 will take you deeper into yourself than you’ve gone in a while. You will have the opportunity to go past the surface layer of your ideas about yourself, closer into the core material. You have an invitation to challenge every stereotype about Virgo, whether it’s true or not. When you journey toward your own core, past the busy, questioning layer of your mind, you experience something akin to pure heat. When you get to this layer, you might recognize that everything you were told about yourself as a kid was true but only so far. It would seem that your primary impulse is creative rather than service, expressive rather than passive, passionate rather than intellectual. As Mercury retrogrades into Leo through most of August, you will have access to that original core of your psyche — the vibrant, fearless child. While you’re there, light the fire of your adult mind. Don’t just remember what you learn; become that person you once were and in truth always have been.

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) — The planets say that this is truly an extraordinary month for you on two accounts, which are closely related. One is an opportunity to be the vibrant socialite we know you are. Libra is one of the most laid-back signs, but you’re turning into an honorary redhead with a shock of vibrant hair and an aura to match. The second is that you get to make some wishes with the actual prospect of them coming true. Perhaps ‘wishes’ is a little too passive of a word, but ‘goals’ is a little too business-like. What I mean is discovering in your heart what you want, feeling the pleasure of that and knowing that you’re creating it in that moment. Make contact with your most cherished desires. Most of those involve the pleasure of developing your talent and expressing your brilliance. You have the opportunity to let go of many negative messages from your past; indeed, to transcend nearly all of the typical childhood conditioning about being ‘less than’, or needing to tone it down so you would not threaten your early caregivers. By now you’re familiar with what some of those messages were and how they have influenced you. You’re also familiar with the potency in you that burns karma, turning it into creative fire. I often describe Libra as the human blow torch. If there was ever a moment when that was true, that would be now. Though I rarely give dates in my horoscopes, I’m looking at an amazing chart that says pay attention on Aug. 16 and the few days surrounding it.

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

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — You’re embarking on an odyssey this month. This may involve actual travel to an exotic place that feels like your spiritual home, or the astrology may be referring to an emotional and spiritual journey into some extraordinary inner territory. A third possibility is that you’re taking a ride in a time machine that is giving you a hint what the next three to five years will be about. Whether one or more of these is true, or something else entirely, there are profound encounters in your chart that promise to stretch your capabilities, including your ability to relate to people. There is an element of mastery that will be required from you, however. You are in the zone where your desires directly influence and indeed have an impact on the spheres of others. Some people will be engaging and welcoming. Others will be less thrilled that you’re so confident in yourself. One vital lesson from what you experience is not taking the responses of others so personally. That said, if you notice (as objectively as you can) what those responses are, you will be able to determine your best, most creative points of contact. Another lesson is being bold enough to really, truly understand in your heart and soul that you are loved. This is not something to take advantage of in the negative sense but rather to remember, and feel, and work with in the most creative ways you can. People can see you for who you are, at the same time you’re able to bring forth the best of who you are.

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) — Someone needs to point out how much energy is consumed when we have to deal with the insecurity of others. Even if you only count the direct results of those who make every move based on their lack of confidence in themselves, that’s a lot of energy. Then there are people who build empires based on their lack of faith in themselves, who become petty tyrants, who spend their lives judging others, and far worse. You may need a strategy for such people this month, and the first element in that plan would be recognizing the phenomenon when you see it. The first sign is when you notice difficulty: in any communication process, in negotiations, in the flow of events. This may not be mere circumstance, and though you may not be experiencing intentional acts of disruption, check this factor of insecurity in those you’re addressing. Once you’ve figured out that someone is coming from a weak place and therefore overcompensating by being disruptive or exerting unnecessary authority, the key is not to get caught up in it. At the worst, the phase will pass, as long as you don’t complicate the issue in any way. For the most part you can feel confident going about your business on the policy that you don’t need permission from others to live your life. You may think you’re pretty good at that one and usually you are, but not always. So this month you will get to master a new level of the game of independence and freedom.

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) — I read recently that Ray Bradbury wrote the original draft of Fahrenheit 451 on public typewriters that cost a dime for every half-hour. He didn’t have a lot of money and had to work swiftly, even a bit furiously. He invested a little over $9 in dimes to write the original 25,000-word manuscript. The result became one of the most enduring works of 20th century science fiction. Your astrology has this feeling to it this month. You seem to be in line for some kind of creative or professional project that you do under adverse conditions but which benefits from the challenges and the pressure. These situations are not always comfortable at the time; there are some deadline junkies who love those conditions, and I don’t think there’s anyone who hasn’t noticed that constraints around time, space or resources can have a positive effect on the outcome. Therefore, I suggest you not complain about the demands of whatever you have to do, how much time you have, or be especially fretful if things don’t work out as planned. Rather, apply yourself to the goal and more importantly to the process, and get to work. Count on extending your talent right out to the edge of whatever boundary you’re in. Stay close to your purpose and remember, a committee of one gets things done. One other point — Mercury is retrograde (or close to it) just about clear through August. That suggests that you will need to think differently, think your way, and count on the odd chance.

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) — It’s time to make peace with the truth, as you’ve established it over a long time, about whether your family is a help or a hindrance. Working as an astrologer for as long as I have, I’ve heard many stories of people and their relationships to their families. There seem to be three basic configurations. One involves those who are unconscious of their situation, and who are often under the thrall of the expectations of their parents, no matter how old they are. Another involves people who have made what’s sometimes known as ‘the break’ and have declared their independence in a way that is both physical and energetic. Another common pattern is people who are outcast by their families, which can be devastating or is considered well and good enough because they have nothing in common with them. I suggest you evaluate your situation, and acknowledge what you want. I don’t mean what you want that would please someone else. I don’t mean what would require you to compromise any important personal value. I mean what you know would work for you. It’s true that you may need to transcend guilt and a sense of obligation. It’s possible that you will find yourself in the position of starting over. It’s a beautiful thing that in the current version of Western society, we distinguish the concepts family of origin and family of choice. The truth is, you choose in either case. Choose on the basis of what is truly right for you.

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 have a lot of pent-up energy: your charts suggest you’re like a battery of sexual energy in particular. That also means creative energy, which is the basic life force that fuels all of existence. Consider for a moment what a stretch it is for many people to relate that which is creative and that which is erotic. Perhaps the confusion arises from the many ways in which our culture denatures the creative process in total, buries it in deception and tends to choke off the curiosity that leads directly to expression in every form. Curiosity, too, is a vital factor that often has to be explained. If you would allow yourself to be absolutely curious, about anything you liked, well, where exactly would you go with it? Anyway, at the moment you have a lot of energy, and it’s sitting in a kind of a container. You could view that as repressed, or you could view that as saved up for just the right moment. Indeed, a diversity of such moments are on their way. The question I suggest you work with involves how you release your energy. One big explosion is obviously not a healthy option. I suggest you look for situations that feel appropriate, constructive and healthy. You obviously have patience and the ability to stay self-contained, so use that to your advantage. You also want the right connection. That’s likely to feel like the intersection of curiosity and a place where you feel yourself open up with no effort. You arrive, you start to unfold, you crave the unknown.

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

On the Solstice, Mars square Neptune, then Chiron

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Dear Friend and Reader:

I’ve been describing the solstice and the eclipses that surround it for weeks on end. Click back through the prior issues linked on the top left and you can review some of what I’ve said — there’s plenty of new stuff that will emerge when you do. If astrology is a picture, it’s a Polaroid picture that develops gradually, no matter what form you take it in. Today is indeed the solstice — the longest day in the Northern Hemisphere. The Sun ingresses Cancer at 1:16 pm EDT, which will be followed by the Sun’s southbound movement along the horizon. Strange as it seems, here in the north, the days get shorter from here. Note, as described last week, we are in Aries Point country — which is likely to stir the pot on the news.

Schiaparelli basin within the layered hills in Arabia Terra on Mars, photographed in 2003 by the now defunct Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. Photo by NASA/JPL and Marlin Space Science Systems, which seems to have outfitted MGS with its cameras. Link to the original with a full caption about the geology of scene.

I’m not quite ready with the July long monthly, and today’s scheduled distribution coincided with the Sun in late Gemini; we only distribute the monthly with the Sun in the new sign. Of note, I am just at the end of the Planet Waves Midyear Report, which will be available by Friday. This is like a mini-annual, presented as audio, with all 12 signs going for one modest price. More on that later in the week.

Today I want to offer you a few ideas that relate to Mars aspects, which may prove to be useful. As of yesterday evening, Mars ingressed Gemini. Because Neptune is occupying the first degree of Pisces, the two planets make an aspect: Mars square Neptune. Mars is in talkative Gemini and Neptune is in watery, emotional Pisces. The square (or opposition) between these two aspects can be poetic, dramatic or excessive in a rock star way, and is often a caution not to overreact, not to drink any more than you can handle and not to let your paranoia run away with you. Personally I urge caution with any mind-altering substances under Mars-Neptune aspects such as this one, and to be cautious of the dosages of any drug, remedy or medication. If you’re going to sign any kind of contract or make a commitment, give it a few days if you can. If you cannot, get a couple of opinions and listen to your subtle instincts.

This first meeting of Mars with Neptune in Pisces is also a good opportunity to remind you to keep this moment creative rather than self-destructive. Mars-Neptune can have a weird effect on one’s thought process, and thus on one’s judgment — and none of us have ever experienced this aspect from Gemini to Pisces. This is indeed something new under the Sun, for us, anyway. The practical advice here would be to keep your dealings honest, knowing that deceptive tactics are sure to backfire. You might notice a tendency to say too much; walk away before you do. Mars in Gemini loves a good argument, even over nothing — the square to Neptune suggests this is a losing proposition. It’s better to seem wimpy or rude than to betray yourself or anyone else.

Layered hills in Arabia Terra on Mars, photographed in 2003 by the now defunct Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. Link to the original.

Air to water can be a dangerous mix because you might think it feels good to say a lot, when in reality that’s like a kind of high that is followed by a crash. Said another way, persist in truth, but gently, and as silently as you can — not aggressively. Mars square Neptune is perfectly poorly suited for aggression. So with both subterfuge and rampage out of the question, the solution is to gently lean into integrity — and there’s no rush. This aspect involves two mutable signs, which are the slowest-moving of the lot. As Jerry used to sing, watch each card you play and play it slow.

The next aspect Mars makes is a square to Chiron, which will be developing over the next week. This is an interesting one, in my experience — in people who have this as a natal aspect (and plenty of people do) there is often a struggle against their own resistance. Resistance feels like integrity except for the little problem about how it blocks experience and learning.

Well, it may not actually be integrity but the resistance is presented to the world as such; as a kind of purity. The thing to remember under Mars square Chiron is that we humans have a lot of desires in common. We’re a lot saucier people than we let on. We are more curious, hungrier and kinkier. One thing we may have in common is to speak the truth to the people we care about, but with Mars to Chiron (again air to water) you may have the urge to burst and say everything. There also may be a little more truth than you can handle, so you could go the opposite way and say nothing or make something up. You will have to feel the situation out for yourself, but I can tell you this from some experience.

Chiron is about process. Focus on the healing aspect of that process and you will make excellent use of this aspect. Focus on inner integrity rather than trying to enforce outer integrity and you will get to explore being an inner seeker. Mars square Chiron says, you cannot prove how spiritually advanced you are any way other than by being that. There’s also a reminder not to pit the body’s natural instincts (such as desire) into competition with the impulse to heal and grow (Chiron). The two need to work together, and they can, if we allow them to.

As the Sun enters Cancer, it will make a trine to Neptune in Pisces; that aspect offers a way to ease the pressure created by the Mars squares. It’s a reminder to emphasize experiencing what you feel inwardly rather than pushing it on anyone. If you’re seeking compassion, feel for it first, and you will find it all around you.

Lovingly,

PS, Watch your email this week for a separate announcement about the Planet Waves Midyear Report, a really cool audio product that covers all 12 signs, updating the astrology for our exciting moment of personal revelation.

Let’s keep an eye on this one — or better yet, both eyes

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Confess your passion, your secret fear
Prepare to meet the challenge of the new frontier
— Donald Fagen

Dear Planet Waves Reader:

Normally we distribute the early-week edition on Tuesday, but there’s an intriguing astrological event that takes place starting today. This extends overnight and into tomorrow afternoon, so I’ve decided to run this edition today. It’s based on a blog post from over the weekend though please note that there are some reinterpretations of the astrology in this version. Monthly horoscopes for January will be distributed after the solstice, schedule to be announced.

Mercury stationed retrograde in Capricorn Friday morning, close to a number of other planets and points. Monday night and into Tuesday, there is an unusual triple conjunction of Mercury, Mars and Pluto, all conjunct within one arc minute (that’s 1/60th of a degree). Perhaps you have to know a little astrology to appreciate this, but imagine three moving points of this potency just happening to be aligned with the Earth at the same time, with the added spin or influence of Mercury retrograde.

Planet Waves

Chart for 11:15 pm EST on Dec. 13, 2010, set for Kingston, NY — an exact Mercury, Mars, Pluto conjunction. The other points from left to right are Vesta, Pholus, Sun, Pallas, and the North Node; then to the far right is the largest asteroid, Ceres.

In case you’re new to charts, you’re looking at the three bodies with the bold 4 next to them. That’s the degree value; the arc minutes, or fractions of a degree, are the small numbers, and look how close they are as well. Mars and Pluto are in an exact conjunction, to the arc minute. And just as that’s happening, Mercury backs over them both within a few minutes of one another. I have to say, that is laser-like precision. Just consider that these planets are millions of miles from Earth, all moving at different speeds, and there are not three bodies aligned but four of them — that precise conjunction means they align not just with one another but with the Earth.

There is a message involved; that’s the nature of Mercury. Whatever this chart is about, there is a message. In personal matters, this is a day to either stay silent or if you want to speak, to choose your words carefully. That would include listening, a skill rare enough to find. Listening would include to yourself and to others. The retrograde advises introspection, thinking before you act, and focusing on psychology and motives, especially your own. The theme of ‘motives’ comes from Pluto, the prime mover, the unstoppable force, and the scent and sensation of hormones. The ‘think carefully’ theme comes from Mercury conjunct Mars, which says thinking fast, but Mercury may not be perceiving accurately: I am not suggesting you ‘second guess’ yourself but that you not be overconfident. A little conscious humility will suffice.

Mix this up with Capricorn and, in one dimension, you get the astrological incarnation of kinky. This would be kink in the form of wordplay and power exchange. On the most basic level, it could be a moment to speak softly and slowly with intimate partners and tell the truth about sex, something we need to do if we plan to reclaim the sensation of being alive. Capricorn adds the predisposition to guilt (or an inquiry into the topic), which is a response to perceived authority. The retrograde suggests you may be able to get beyond the sensation of guilt as a restrictive force, and allow your truth to come out. Once it does, you will begin a process of working that reality through the rest of your mental field, like kneading dough.

Though it’s not shown in the chart sample above, the Moon is also in the neighborhood — by aspect. In astrology planets can be grouped by being together, or being in the same degree range. Tuesday at 2:14 am EST, the Moon enters Aries and thus crosses the Aries Point, and soon after squares its own nodes; then Tuesday at 10:57 am EST it makes a square to Mercury, then to Pluto, then to Mars in rapid succession (in about the space of one hour). This is the Moon ‘setting off’ the aspect. A square is shorthand for ‘something happens’ and there is added emphasis in that the Moon is making a 90-degree aspect to its own nodes, which are hot and vibrating in anticipation of an eclipse on the solstice. And of course we are in Aries Point country — never left, we’ve been here since Pluto first touched Capricorn in 2008, though thanks to eclipses and other planets showing up lately, we are going through a series of peaks.

While this setup has some dark shades, I suggest that there is something to be learned about the current circumstances of the world. We are seeing some unprecedented things going on, as I described last week. There are mainly two groups of people who know what is in the rest of those 250,000 cables that WikiLeaks has not yet released — the Obama administration, and the WikiLeaks crew. (So do a bunch of Bushistas.)

Has everyone heard that Anna Ardin moved to the West Bank? I got this news a bit late. It was reported by the Australian website Crikey on Thursday and republished in The Huffington Post. She was the older of the two women who claimed that something inappropriate happened between her and Assange. She has stopped cooperating with prosecutors and has headed to do missionary work in the Holy Land. That sounds like a true calling.

According to Crikey, in a recent tweet she said, “CIA agent, rabid feminist / Muslim lover, a Christian fundamentalist, frigid & fatally in love with a man, can you be all that at the same time…” Yes, this woman sounds like she knows exactly what she wants out of life. Wait — she’s admitting to being a CIA agent? She seems to be kidding, but she makes a convincing case — and disappearing to a remote corner of the world when she’s become a star in this global crisis only emphasizes the point.

That leaves the stalker/groupie in the pink jump suit. Oops, that would be jumper, a sweater in England — my fantasies were running away with me. Is she a CIA agent too? She was recently seen in a police station collaborating with one.

I just read that Assange’s first extradition hearing is scheduled for Wednesday — right in the wake of this planetary alignment. You can be sure that there will be some interesting negotiations going on during the next 48 hours.

The Swedish sex case (such as it was) is unraveling, and the Brits and Yanks are going to be falling all over one another to figure out a way to keep Assange in jail. So far, no charges have been filed by Sweden for the alleged sexual misconduct, and no charges have been filed by the United States relating to the leaked documents. The Espionage Act was considered, but apparently that didn’t work when the US government tried to prosecute Daniel Ellsberg for releasing the Pentagon Papers. Instead, Nixon went after The New York Times — and that, too, failed; the Supreme Court would have no part of banning the newspaper’s coverage of the secret Vietnam War file that Ellsberg released. Besides all of which, Assange is a direct collaborator with the news entities of the world — not the leaker with security clearance as was Ellsberg.

Minor planets, 90-degree sort, at Mercury-Mars-Pluto conjunct. Calculations by Serennu.com.

So, back to the astrology. Let’s look at some minor planets. Here is what’s called a 90-degree sort, looking only at the early cardinal signs. That’s another way of saying this is a list of planets and points that make conjunctions, squares or oppositions to the triple conjunction of Mercury, Mars and Pluto. A few stand out.

One is Hermes, an asteroid — that is right in the conjunction with Mercury, Mars and Pluto, to the degree. The Sabian symbol for this degree is: “Indians on the warpath; while some men row a well-filled canoe, others perform a war dance. Wait, didn’t this one turn up in the WikiLeaks cables?”

Hermes tossed into the mix adds a touch of the miraculous, or pertains to some secret matter. He is a rather meaningful figure in the history of astrology and other forms of magick, alchemy and science. (In the ancient astrological literature being translated by Project Hindsight, he is referred to as one of the ‘founders’ of astrology).

Across the dial in Cancer is Cyllarus. This is a centaur (Chiron-like body) that is exactly opposite the triple (quad, if you count Hermes) conjunction. One key phrase for Cyllarus is ‘out of the blue’. That is conjunct Kronos, a very slow-moving point (not a planet) that involves authority. Think of Kronos as a super-Saturn. This is not a day to cuss out a cop or to get pissed off at an IRS operator. It does seem like a great day to make some choices and take authority over your affairs.

Asteroid Amor is square the arrangement in Aries; that can represent “the conditions on unconditional love,” in the words of Martha Wescott, and this is conjunct Pelion — a centaur planet named for a mountain in Greece — but not just any old mountain. We are climbing the mountain of unconditional love. But it’s perilous, dark and shadowy. According to Ovid, Pelion is a remnant of the original creation of the world. It is prominent in the charts of Marilyn Monroe and Hitler, seeming to have a flare for drama and revenge.

Ophelia, an asteroid, is in Libra, also square the big conjunction; she is a character from Hamlet, the one who is “‘incapable of her own distress,” a reference to her being dead. With all this Mercury-Pluto going on, let’s give a big cancel-clear on that kind of message.

So what’s this all about? I don’t know really, except that we’re in the mix of it all right now; and I know that we’re likely to see the story of the ‘man from Mars’ advance this week, one way or another. We have an extremely angry, nervous political establishment in Washington, and we have a lot of banks on the brink of making a large investment in canned sardines seem sensible.

We also have a lot to learn — about knowledge, gaining knowledge and what to do with it once we have it. Mercury conjunct Hermes certainly emphasizes that point.

So, let’s keep an eye on this one. Pay attention to what you say, what you write and what you hear, and for sure, don’t text, or for that matter sext, while you’re driving. Especially in Buffalo.

Keep an eye on the Planet Waves daily blog for realtime updates, and remember to tune into my weekly podcast on Wednesday morning.

Yours & truly,

Something in the Night

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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…

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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.