Tag Archives: News

One Life at a Time

Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Keep in mind that, much sooner than later, the great avenues will again be opened through which will pass free men to construct a better society. Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!

— Chilean President Salvador Allende‘s farewell speech, Sept. 11, 1973

Dear Friend and Reader:

Finally a bit of good news here in the Anti-Sixties, after a year featuring various scenarios of apocalypse, environmental devastation and intolerance: after more than two months of nonstop work, an international team successfully brought 33 Chilean miners safely home from half a mile beneath the Earth. I stayed up half the night Tuesday into Wednesday watching, one by one, as the men emerged from beneath the ground in a little capsule, and were greeted by loved ones, the president and his wife. It was better than the Beatles.

The last miner out, Luis Urzua, center, gestures with Chile’s president Sebastián Piñera standing on the right. Alex Ibanez/AP.”

In the anxious times we’re living through, this is a triumph of humanity, even though the problem was created by the people who run a massive corporation hiring people to dig for gold under extremely dangerous conditions. This was not a natural disaster. But the solution represented humanity at its best.

We could fault the worldwide vigil around the rescue as a feel-good event, but I daresay that’s what the world needs now: to actually feel good about life and love rather than the stock market or American Idol. We do a lot of getting pissed off and most of that involves how little regard is afforded to the worth of life. Watching those guys come out of the rescue pod one by one, and embrace their families, it was impossible not to appreciate being alive, right then, on the spot.

Yes, we can even feel good about humanity’s ability to cooperate at doing something helpful. There was a time those men would have been left for dead, even if some effort might have saved them. Part of what did save them was publicity — you’re always safer near a TV camera, unless it’s hidden in the ladies’ room. The drilling experts, engineers, submarine scientists, geologists and (actual) rocket scientists got the guys out. The doctors and psychologists on the surface actually seem to have offered some significant help.

Yet in reality it was the miners themselves who kept it together under some strange, extreme circumstances, rationing teaspoons of food and cups of milk for the first 17 days on the verge of starvation. They organized work tasks based on their specialties, keeping their living space clean, digging wells for fresh water and most of all, getting along. Or rather — getting along, eventually. Apparently the sanitized account of events has left out the at-times intense conflict that they experienced, and their darker thoughts of waiting to die during those first 17 days. In the end, the miners decided together that they were going to get out of that stuffy, 90-degree mine alive. For a more complete account of what happened, this article from The Guardian is worth reading.

Efforts for rescue began Aug. 5, without any knowledge of survivors, and for 17 days those efforts persisted nonstop without any success. The government and rescue teams kept trying, drilling bore holes into different layers and shafts of the mine, even sending rescuers down ventilation shafts that collapsed. Everyone is amazed by the success of this enterprise, but if rescuers had given up during those 17 days, there would have been no rescue. From that first day on, the message from the president on down was to spare absolutely no expense. If you look at the news coming out of Chile, you’ll see that the cost was never a factor, was never even mentioned until it was all over.

Chart for the first miner touching the surface had an ascendant of 1 Cancer — activating the Aries Point. Pluto is on the 7th house cusp, representing the escape from a near-death experience. Ceres is also there, as if negotiating for the release of the miners from the underworld. Note the 8th house of death and near-death experiences, which aligns with Aquarius, the sign of groups. The entire sign floats within the 8th house, called an interception. The cluster of planets in that house evokes the image of a group of people, under intense circumstances: the points shown are the vertex, Nessus, Neptune and Chiron.

Let’s go to the chart and see what story it tells. Remember that in doing mundane astrology like this, the first thing to do is observe whether, and how, the chart describes the event. That story starts straight away with the ascendant.

The time the first miner emerged was predicted, er, reported by BBC in its realtime chronology of the event as 12:11 am local time Wednesday. Astonishingly this gives us an ascendant in the first degree of Cancer, activating the world-as-one Aries Point — a kind of astrological jackpot. In case you think this is likely to happen (regardless of how often it’s been happening lately), remember that the ascendant degree changes every four minutes: it flies by. Any chart that highlights the early degrees of any cardinal sign (Aries, Cancer, Libra or Capricorn), particularly the very first degree, qualifies, and in any one location, we get that chance for about 16 minutes out of every 24 hours.

Yes, the rescue of the miners was an event uncannily accurate for the chart for that moment.

With the Aries Point highlighted, the most intimately personal events mingle with the most public. We learned about the family lives of the miners, including some intimate details, but moreover, we felt close to them and their families, a Cancer theme. Over and over this week, we heard reporters from every network comment on how emotional the situation was. Hard-nosed Dylan Ratigan shamelessly asked one man on the scene to describe his experience from an emotional perspective — a giant leap for mankind. We could all empathize with these men and their families. That’s a nice image of the Aries Point with a Cancerian flavor: the world coming together emotionally as a family, including the girlfriends and mistresses.

Exactly opposite the Cancer ascendant is Pluto in early Capricorn, right on the 7th house cusp. Remember the cardinal cross I’ve written about 41 times this year? It made a big cameo Wednesday night, coming up angular: exactly on the horizon. In any chart, that means emphasis, and Pluto was one planet making the point. Ceres (the former asteroid, now dwarf planet) and mythological nemesis of Pluto, was in a conjunction to Pluto, as if directly negotiating for her daughter Persephone to be brought up from the underworld. Ceres had just arrived in Capricorn a few days earlier. It was as if she went down there personally and got the guys out.

Pluto in Capricorn has another incarnation — the corporate agenda that nearly killed these guys. Pluto shows up there as the near-death experience that they’re about to narrowly survive. This is the side of the coin where Pluto actually is the ‘lord of death’ and his realm, his current version of Hades, is the corporate system.

Flashback — one rendition of the cardinal grand cross of 2010, shown in the chart for the June 26 partial lunar eclipse conjunct Pluto. This is an Aries Point event, because all the planets aspect the first degree of Aries. Note the grand cross on the cardinal points — Jupiter and Uranus conjunct in Aries, the Sun and Mercury in Cancer, Saturn in late Virgo on its way into Libra, and Pluto with the Moon in Capricorn. The most intense phase of the cross has passed by, but the energy lingers and key elements remain in effect. This chart is explained in the article The Greatest Aries Point Show on Earth.

This is part of a larger astrological picture. The cardinal cross that has been whipping, flogging and stressing us all year is thankfully not quite what it used to be, but it’s still a potent force. While major elements have either moved on (for example, Saturn is now clear of some extremely tense aspects to Uranus and Pluto, heading across mid-Libra) or are out of the way (Jupiter and Uranus are temporarily back in Pisces, about to head back into Aries), the energy pattern is still in effect. These kinds of astrological events have a long story arc, stretching out for years. We’re still close to the center of the story, but we’re coasting on the momentum of recently past aspects, rather than ones that are building up — with one exception, that is, which I will come back to.

That penetrating energy of Pluto in Capricorn has been all over the news. This year we’ve had at least two other major stories that involved digging deep beneath the Earth — the BP oil spill, and the loss of 29 miners at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia earlier this year.  We also heard from a volcano in Iceland, which qualifies as news from beneath the crust. During an episode of Mercury retrograde this year, volcanic dust disrupted air travel all across Europe and by ripple effect, around the world.

The earthquake in Haiti had a similar feeling. All of these events are illustrated by Pluto in Capricorn: our relationship to what is happening deep within a solid substance (mountains, canyons, rocky land or the continental plates). Pluto can represent some immutable or unstoppable force moving beneath the crust of the Earth, such as the movement of the plates and geological faults.

One interesting feature of the chart is that the Moon is in very late Sagittarius. It is literally minutes from ingressing Capricorn. The Moon is a powerful force in this chart, because Cancer (ruled by the Moon) is in the ascendant. So in a sense, the Moon is the lead planet in the chart.

When the Moon is in such a late degree, that is often called void-of-course — when the Moon has made its last aspect to a major planet, but before it changes signs. Normally the void Moon is considered a kind of foul ball; what happens doesn’t count. But this late-degree Moon in Sagittarius seemed to represent the end of a long story involving considerable international cooperation. Even the Americans helped, which is impressive on the part of the Chileans given that the last thing we did in Chile was assassinate their president, Salvador Allende, in a CIA-sponsored coup on Sept. 11, 1973.

Rescued miner Victor Zamora is brought to the surface at the collapsed San Jose mine, 800 km north of the Chilean capital Santiago, on Oct. 13, 2010. (Xinhua/Martin Zabala).

The Sagittarius Moon was exactly trine an odd non-planet (a rarely used hypothetical) called Transpluto (narrowness, specialization) which reflected the apparently flawless passage up the extremely narrow rescue shaft by 33 miners and six rescue workers. The Sagittarius Moon floats; it rises up; it always comes back. Interestingly, the Moon was conjunct an asteroid called Eurydike, the wife of Orpheus, which is a myth about an attempted escape from Hades. That story didn’t work out so well — Orpheus looked back toward the gates of Hades and Eurydike was lost. I don’t think any of these miners looked back once they got out of that capsule.

One last image: the Moon on the edge of Sagittarius has the feeling of something about to be born, and that narrow passage, 24 inches in diameter, resembled a birth canal. Even the Chilean president described the whole experience as a rebirth.

Now for the moral of the story: the safety of mines. Will we get the message that mines and mining are extremely dangerous, and that we have to take better care of the people who spend their lives in them?

Venezuelan journalist Martin Granovsky wrote in Pagiana 12 yesterday: “There is evidence that more than two million people die each year worldwide as a direct result of their employment conditions or diseases contracted there. Nobody can seriously claim that the mere exposure of a problem to one billion people at a time, in transmission from Copiapo, will solve that problem. But if the political and trade union action effectively joined the public exposure it would count in its favor with an obvious fact: the rescue that ended last night made more visible to the world what life is like to a miner and what are the risks with the increasing disproportion between corporate profitability and worker safety.”

Glimpse at Hades: the rescue pod parked in the underground refuge. In just under 24 hours, 33 miners and six rescue workers were brought up in that vehicle, which was 24 inches in diameter. It was equipped with oxygen and digital communication features.

So, in the Aries Point moment, when the world is watching and the personal, the corporate and the political are one, let’s stay vocal on the issue.

Unfortunately, much other news has been pretty misanthropic lately. Earlier in the year, I described our moment in history as the Anti-Sixties. The astrology of 2010 is a kind of mirror image of what we experienced in 1969. The main feature of ’69 was a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Libra. Earlier this year we had one in Aries, opposite the Libra event to the degree. It’s just like the Sixties right now — only exactly opposite. This has come true once again as we are living through an election cycle that has been dominated by openly celebrated homophobia. The supposed love and peace theme of the Sixties has been replaced by publicly displayed hatred directed at a vast segment of our population: people who share affection with members of the same sex. In studying social history, it’s clear that political forces openly attacking any one form of sexual or relational expression spreads to the rest of them; we might want to consider stopping this pattern, if only out of self-interest.

The Teabagger movement has succeeded in floating candidates who have made homophobia their main platform. It’s the current version of red meat for their electoral base. One such candidate is so determined to make the point that she’s opposed to you having sex with yourself (which is obviously gay). Five different Teabagger candidates for U.S. Senate are against abortion even in cases when the pregnancy involves incest and rape. We now have several generations of girls, young women and early middle-aged women who have no recollection of life before Roe vs Wade and to whom the term “back room illegal abortion” means nothing. We might want to set about educating one another.

I am less astonished by this than I am by the tolerance of the American people for the viewpoint of total sexual intolerance. I mean, I’m really amazed. Even as the views of our supposed leaders translate into teenage suicides and a nationwide epidemic of bullying, most people are silent. The silence involves the nature of homophobia, which is the projection of self-judgment onto others. Most of us may not project that self-judgment, often focused on sex, so violently, but we do quietly harbor the judgments. Usually they involve guilt, and some element of jealousy that someone might have more fun than you.

The current sky is featuring a deep exploration of this subject in the form of three planets in Scorpio. One is Mars. That is the straightforward, no-need-to-be-explained nature of desire.

Relatives of trapped miner Florencio Avalos react while watching on a TV screen his rescue operation at the camp outside the San Jose mine near Copiapo, Chile, late Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2010. Thirty-three miners became trapped when the gold and copper mine collapsed on Aug. 5. AP/Natacha Pisarenko.

One is retrograde Venus. That is an inquiry about how we really feel about our inherently sexual nature. Humans are the most hypersexual animals, and most of us go through the day acting like nuns and monks, mortified that anyone might realize we’re so much as thinking about sex. So this hypersexuality meets a kind of resistance that can only be put forth by the human mind, and the result is that many people are like walking pipe bombs. The question being asked by Venus retrograde is, how can we unravel that? What is the source of the challenge, the struggle, the difficulty, the resistance?

Venus retrograde in Scorpio is about going to the deepest aspects of these questions, describing a quest to understand our sexual histories and how they influence us. The retrograde describes a process of exploring how our sexual values influence our relationships and the kind of involvements and entanglements that we create.

Then there is Vesta. She’s just recently joined Venus and Mars, and she is the astrological guardian of what you might call sacred sexuality. Vesta is the faceless (never depicted) goddess of fire; her servants, the Vestal Virgins, tend the sacred hearth, keeping the fire burning around the clock. So there is a call to devotion here: of devotion not to ‘a relationship’ but to your sexuality. She stands as a kind of witness to the journey and the quest for self-understanding described by Venus and Mars in Scorpio. In a few words, I would sum up this transit at its best as a quest to be submissive to one’s own desire.

Vesta is the centerpiece of the home: the hearth. But this is no ordinary hearth; it’s the inner flame, which we must tend, lest it go out. And I daresay many of us have taken that sacred flame for granted, or used sex as a commodity rather than the beautiful celebration that it can be. Which leads me back to Pluto.

Pluto is one of the planets associated with Scorpio. And over the next phase of astrological history, Pluto is going to come into a kind of focus that we have not experienced in half a century. The Uranus-Pluto square of 2012-2017, which is about to start rumbling loudly in 2011 as it warms up to the first exact contact of June 2012, talks about total revolution of both the psyche and something much larger. Part of this revolution will be about the intersection of sex and identity. Then that meets up with the religious/corporate/governmental structure that we try to fit sex into — and where it doesn’t go.

Some of us will burst free because it feels great. Some of us will have to be extracted in a capsule through a 24-inch tube, one at a time. Some of us have no plans to come back to the surface. It would help if you decide which you want.

Yours & truly,

 

 

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

 

Astrology Looking Ahead: Aries Full Moon #2

We are now at the Mercury-Sun exterior conjunction, which is the exact midpoint of the Mercury direct phase. The next Mercury shadow phase starts in a month, and the next retrograde starts in two months. Looking ahead, that retrograde will stretch from early Capricorn into Sagittarius, crossing a number of planets, the Moon’s North Node and the Galactic Center in the process.

The second Aries Full Moon of the year is next week. The first was on the equinox, across the first degrees of Aries/Libra, on Sept. 23. The next is on Friday, Oct. 22, in the very last degrees of Aries/Libra. Mercury will be in Scorpio, joining the conversation between Vesta, Venus and Mars; and then about 12 hours later, the Sun joins this grouping in Scorpio as well. Many Scorpio-type questions and themes that have long been ignored, suppressed or neglected will come up for conversation, healing and playtime. Part of that will involve speaking the unspeakable. Mercury makes conjunctions to each of those points in the next few weeks, giving them a voice.

Over the past week or so, the first four discovered asteroids — Ceres, Juno, Pallas and Vesta — all changed signs. Ceres entered Capricorn and is now in a conjunction with Pluto; Juno entered Virgo, Pallas entered Sagittarius and Vesta entered Scorpio. A more detailed description of these sign changes is at this link on Daily Astrology & Adventure.

The Chiron-Neptune conjunction is close to its most precise; the two points will not make an exact conjunction for their third encounter of the year, but rather a very near miss that comes within one-sixth of a degree. This is the aspect of clearing the fog, of seeing through the spider webs of deception and of fully appreciating the gift of inspiration, fantasy and ideas that we can manifest. Chiron can bring us out of the isolating feeling of Neptune and into contact with our own awareness and that of the people around us — especially in Aquarius.

Eric Francis

Archive Flashback: Horoscopes — How Can They Possibly Work?

 


Light Bridge, the 2011 Planet Waves annual — Watch your email next week for information about pre-ordering Light Bridge, the 2011 annual edition of Planet Waves. The first letter you receive will tell you how to get the best price as a current subscriber to Planet Waves or Cosmic Confidential. This initial pre-order price will include all 12 signs, a substantial (like 75%) savings over purchasing signs individually. The email header will have the words “Light Bridge” in it — a reference to the last year before 2012. That letter will contain a fairly short, limited-time offer for all 12 signs — valid for about 48 hours). So watch for that email! I will send it twice and post it to the subscriber homepage. Thanks! — efc


 

 

 

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, October 15, 2010, #835 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

I’ve been emphasizing the theme of relationships in your horoscopes for a while. With Saturn in your solar 7th house (pair bonding, meeting the other, marriage, enmity), that’s as basic as it gets, though I’ve recently been asked by an Aries brother about your financial picture. It looks as though you’re trying to sort out your economic worth within a contractual situation, wondering how you could have got so involved in something that you’ve grown to question. In fact, at the heart of the matter is a question: Who sets your fee? Who determines your wage? Venus retrograde in Scorpio is a long episode of claiming back your power, which could be in a business deal, or it could be in some other kind of partnership. Remember that you set the terms of the negotiation, though this is a skill in itself and, as it turns out, it’s a human skill that will always come back to how you feel within the relationship where the transaction occurs.

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

Our experience of life ripples from the center of our existence outward into the world. Sometimes it seems like it’s happening the other way around, but that just switches the order of operations. At the moment you seem to be deciding how you feel about yourself based on how you perceive someone else to feel about you. Remember that your perception, that is, your experience and opinion of how whomever may feel is in actual fact your experience. This is the tricky part about sorting out projections. While it’s not a good idea to take responsibility for how everyone else feels, nor do you control how they feel, you interpret the data that you get, and you do so through your own inner filters. These, in turn, are based on your opinion of yourself. It’s strange, fun and true: change that and everything changes.

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

Even here in one of the few moments in modern history where Pagan is considered valid and interesting, many people still make a face when met with the idea that what we think of as ‘sexual’ and what we think of as ‘spiritual’ have anything in common. To some it’s obvious; others see a divide, and contemporary Evangelicals are on the warpath like they haven’t been since the crusades. I would note that both of these are false categories. If sex is at the root of our physical origins, then it’s not just sex. If the cosmic force that is within us, and surrounds us, is a real thing, then it embraces all forms of creation. You may say you believe this, but I would ask, as a reality check: what is the role of guilt in your life? And do you say yes when you mean yes?

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

Venus, Mars and Vesta are now transiting across Scorpio, your solar 5th house. The 5th and Scorpio are two of the most erotic archetypes in astrology, as are all three planets involved. Mars is keeping your desire at the center of your emotional experience. That, you can depend on. Venus is calling you deep into your experience of how you respond to the world. There seems to be a question about how, when you respond, it’s based on something happening now, or something that happened long ago — and that something may be hidden or veiled. Venus retrograde is guiding you to understand yourself better, and to be entirely present in your environment. As for Vesta: she’s calling on you to be devoted to the full spectrum of your erotic and creative potential. Devoted, as in attentive around the clock.

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

You’re more open to the ideas of others than usual — and they are more willing to share, and to listen. The results can be productive, healing, nourishing — and fun. You’re the one who needs to initiate the contact and get things flowing. I suggest that you take your time in any conversation; that is, let it last for a few days, maintaining some continuity, and allow the deeper subject matter to come forth. You have a lot to share, and you’re more likely to do so when you feel an authentic rapport with someone. You have some questions; you’re free to ask. The subject matter is likely to reach beyond what is considered ‘appropriate’, crossing boundaries with an ease of contact that is unusual for our particular place and time in history. Keep one eye on that, and notice how you respond to this kind of depth.

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

I suggest you consider erotic and creative activity as vital as food and air. I also suggest you notice where your blocks are, for example, to admitting what you want. If you find yourself having any defensive reactions to your own desires, that’s a good time to pause and consider that you’ve actually made a discovery. The thing to do is take this revelation to the level of experience. Let your curiosity lead you there; it’s one of the most seductive, honest emotions. You seem to be drawn to things that you think you’re too old to do, that you’ve outgrown. It’s true that curiosity is one of the defining features of a child. It’s also one of the best ways to reach into your heart and soul and come back with the spirit of a child. Curiosity dissolves guilt. Remember, if you ever need a dependable solvent.

The Virgo Audio Birthday Report is available. In the format of all the birthday audios, this offers more than an hour of astrology for Virgo and Virgo 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 Virgo and Virgo Rising. Only $14.95, this also makes a meaningful and economical gift.

We’ve all noted the tenuous relationship between fantasy and reality. You can be all kinds, and do all kinds of things, in your imagination. Then when it comes to trying them, that little barrier known as the ego can get in the way. For the next few days, that crude psychic device that causes so many issues will be tame and under your command. It won’t disappear completely, but you will be able to override its fears and expectations and grant yourself experiences that surpass your usual barriers. The thing to remember is that the real-life experience will be different than the one you envision in your mind; it may be more fun, or it may seem to be less, till you acquire a taste. Where turning fantasy into reality is concerned, I have a motto I keep close to my heart. What’s worth trying once is worth trying twice.

The Libra audio is done. This reading includes more than an hour of astrology and 20 minutes of tarot custom created for those with Libra Sun, Moon or rising. We’re still tying up the technical end of the project and will have the product code available shortly — so check your email in a little while for that.

The thought of consciously pausing sexual activity sends chills down the spines of many people. I don’t mean encountering a dry spell or a phase of low libido; these are considered necessary (if annoying) facts of life. I mean a conscious decision. Vesta, newly in your birth sign, suggests that you may be walking the line between the two points of view, wondering how to handle your situation. Here’s how it looks from another perspective. Mars, also in your sign, suggests that your desire is running at its usual strength. Venus retrograde in your sign indicates a kind of hesitancy, and a calling to be introspective not only about what you want, but what your desire says about your state of growth and healing. Together, all of this points to a contemplative pause: neither denial of your desire, nor of your questions, but a moment to consider what they mean together. Remember a key concept of Vesta: for a specific purpose.

You finally seem to be working with a cohesive plan, or you see the good sense in doing so. You already know the value of moving based on inspiration, initiating action on the energy of your ideas and of riding the waves of synchronicity. Now a guiding or organizing principle has entered your life. It may be a personal code; it may be the clarification of an agenda; you may have decided that it’s time to state a goal, and then create a plan of action based on where you want to end up. Work backward from there. You don’t need to overplan, but rather, sketch out some basic steps that you know you’ll need to take to get where you want to be. The most important of them is stating the goal in a clear way. Make sure it’s what you really want. Remember, you’re free to change your mind.

‘Food first’ would be an excellent guiding principle for the next few weeks. Americans in particular have a knack for eating substances that are clearly other than food: things with ingredients that cannot be pronounced, where the source is unknown, or that we know harm our bodies. Ceres conjunct Pluto in Capricorn is suggesting that focusing on food will have a much greater effect than you think, and also that the topic deserves your focus right now. You came close to making some changes earlier in the year, and now it’s time to bring those developments to fruition. You may feel on some level that this is a matter of life and death; that’s a mental factor any time Pluto is involved in one’s chart. A better way to say it is that your quality of life is directly involved, in the deepest meaning of those words.

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

All the factors that astrologers would normally describe as Aquarian are now focused on qualities related to Pisces. For example, there’s a conjunction involving Neptune (a Pisces planet) with Chiron in your birth sign. Your non-traditional ruling planet, Uranus, is conjunct Jupiter (another Pisces planet). And your traditional ruler, Saturn, is in Libra, a sign connected to Pisces through the planet Venus. What this suggests is that your mind may be stepping outside of its normal processes of logic and reasoning. You may be more inclined to focus on your inner life; on art; on faith; on mysticism. You may find this disorienting, as if your mind is going soft. More likely, this is providing solace and relief in that you no longer need to have everything make so much sense. Relax a bit and appreciate that feeling. There’s a whole new kind of sense available to you.

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

For more than a decade, Pluto was crossing your solar 10th house of professional aspirations, reputation and drive for worldly success in many forms. That provided a sense of drive and seemingly boundless energy — as well as a guiding principle. Pluto in this house served as the impetus to pour your soul into your work, recognizing that this is the unstoppable force. Now that Pluto has moved onto Capricorn, you’ve reached a phase of attending to the practical details of applying your ideas; notably, ideas which may be ahead of their time. Over the past few days, a new influence entered your 10th house — Pallas Athene, the goddess who guards the city of Athens. Her presence is suggesting that it’s time to work with a strategy. Not very Fishy, I know — but helpful in ways you’ll soon discover.

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

Glimpse Behind the Veil

Dear Fellow Seeker Along the Road to Xibalba:

Earlier in the week, a reader sent me this article from Monday’s New York Times about the government wanting expanded powers to wiretap the Internet, and asked what I thought was up. I had a feeling she was curious about the current Scorpio astrology covered last week. Scorpio often has a sense of the covert, and Venus retrograde looks like a search for inner secrets of some kind. I also get the feeling of Chiron conjunct Neptune — the truth about the technosphere (represented by Aquarius) coming into focus (Chiron) after a long dreamy delusion of privacy (Neptune).

One sure way to reduce the federal deficit.

After I give you the background on the story, I have a question for you, which you may respond to or take rhetorically.

“Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is ‘going dark’ as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone,” the Times article began.

Basically, federal officials want Congress to require that all communication services, such as Facebook, BlackBerry and Skype, have prebuilt interception capability — that is, to be plug-and-play ready for surveillance on you. “The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages,” the Times reported. Under the proposed law, new services and devices would be designed to have back doors built in, and existing services would need to be retrofitted. In theory, only the government would have the keys.

But the Times relayed a story it heard from Steven M. Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor, about an episode in Greece. In 2005, it was discovered that hackers had taken advantage of a legally mandated wiretap function to spy on top officials’ phones, including the prime minister’s. “I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” Bellovin said. “If they start building in all these back doors, they will be exploited.”

In reality, this is nothing new. Law enforcement has the ability to use the GPS in your cellphone to easily track your location, and as long as the battery is installed, they can activate the phone’s mic and listen to you. In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, we learned that the Bush administration was organizing wiretaps and secret home visits in the name of national security, bypassing a special top-secret federal court — the FISA Court — designed to oversee just that function. Historically, FISA has been extremely generous granting permission to wiretap, approving 99% of the government’s requests. So if the administration wanted to go around the FISA Court, we can imagine it was up to something that was especially inappropriate. (I once had an assignment to write about the FISA Court from the well-respected journal Covert Action. After researching the thing I was so spooked that I turned the assignment over to my friend Phil. Here it is.)

And just what was the administration up to that it couldn’t collect rubber stamps on its pro-forma, all-purpose search warrants? That may have been the Porn.gov project that I’ve been proposing for a while as a solution to the national debt. The government would take all the millions of photos, videos, text messages and voice recordings that it collects, and make them available to everyone for a subscription fee. This would also fulfill the nearly universal desire everyone has to spend a day as a porn star. I would definitely sign up — for the good of the country.

Don’t Worry!

The Bush-era spy program seemed to be a revival of an older FBI program called Cointelpro that ran from the 1940s through the 1970s, spying on everyone from the Black Panthers to John Lennon to Howard Zinn. Well, it did more than spy on them; agents working on the program would destroy private relationships of movement leaders by leaving fake love letters in dresser drawers, try to get people deported, or in the case of Zinn (author of A People’s History of the United States), worked to get him fired from his teaching post at Boston University. Zinn’s crime was being ‘liberal’. (Note to Universe: I am a member of the New York State Conservative Party*.)

The website Raw Story summed it up this way: “The new Cointelpro records on Zinn show the government was obsessed with the Brooklyn-born university professor who served as a fighter pilot in World War II. He turned against the Vietnam War and led rallies in the 1960s and 1970s. One of his targets was government surveillance against anti-war activists. Did he know the government was spying on him? He probably suspected it.”

In a paper published shortly before he died, Zinn encouraged activists to keep exposing these spy programs. Commenting on the FBI, he wrote, “They don’t like social movements. They work for the establishment and the corporations and the politicos to keep things as they are. And they want to frighten and chill the people who are trying to change things. So the best defense against them and resistance against them is simply to keep on fighting back, to keep on exposing them.”

Now the Obama administration wants to be able to intercept your BlackBerry messages, your texts, your Facebook posts, your email and your Skype calls — clearly, they know how dangerous you are. The phone tap started recording when they heard you say, “Yes we can.”

“We’re talking about lawfully authorized intercepts,” Valerie E. Caproni, general counsel for the FBI, reassures us. She told the Times, “We’re not talking expanding authority. We’re talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority in order to protect the public safety and national security.”

Aah yes, good old national security, and the safety of we, the public; and working to preserve existing authority. Tell that to the FISA Court. Note to those outside the United States — if this becomes policy here, it will most likely become policy everywhere except places that have a particular obsession with and respect for their citizens’ privacy.

For those who live in the U.S., have you ever read the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution? It’s short and sweet and one of the foundation stones of our Republic. It says, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

In other words, as a citizen of the United States of America, you have the right to your privacy. And every time we turn around, the government or some company is mining your data, willy-nilly. Phone company employees have confirmed for me that yes, certain words used in ordinary conversation start the recording devices back at headquarters.

And Now For That Question

Why don’t we care?

Do we believe these surveillance programs will help make our lives safer? I don’t think anyone does, and besides, we don’t need to spy on the entire population for that — and such is not really useful. If we did, everyone would need their own personal spy to keep up with them, and certain teenagers would need one of those black vans with five dudes in suits sitting there — just to keep up with the text messages.

Photo by Eric Francis, Blue Studio – New York.

I took a survey this morning and two of my colleagues said they thought that being spied on makes people feel more important. After all, if the government spied on Martin Luther King and John Lennon, and now they want to spy on you, that makes you special, like them. (It makes me feel less special; I’ve always felt honored that I earned having my phone tapped by writing about GE and Monsanto; now every shmoe with a smart phone is going to get the same treatment.)

I think this is a pretty good theory, by the way. We all want to feel like somebody cares about what we’re saying or thinking. We want to feel dangerous. It’s the same mentality that enables us to update our Twitter with what we’re making for dinner, or update Facebook about having gas.

To sum up, there are three trends that I can identify:

1. We’re being increasingly surrounded by recording and data transmission devices that the government can spy on, and then corporations can use that data to do marketing research and keep the world safe from terrorism. That’s why when I visit obscure websites, they feature ads from B+H Photo (where I shop) showing me pictures of, and providing links to, exactly, precisely the lenses I want to buy (to wit, the Canon 16-35 L Series, f 2.8). Do we think someone installed a cookie on my disk drive? Or are they just taking a wild guess that I love somewhat exotic, top-of-the-line wide-angle lenses??

2. We are using social networking, text messages, cameras, and video cameras to record ourselves and share all sorts of information with people we know, and with lots of people we’ve never heard of. There are people who tweet away all day and night; nothing gets left out. We put everything into emails, post it to our blogs, and store it in various locations in ‘the cloud’. Many people back their whole disk drive onto remote locations in ‘the cloud’. Lots and lots and LOTS of people share sexy photos, videos and text messages. Once we press ‘send’ on a photo, video or document for the first time, it then exists in the virtual world, it can be reproduced infinitely and basically attaches itself permanently to our karma.

3. We are obsessed with privacy. God forbid that anyone knows what we’re thinking or what we want. If some website shares your email address and you get an extra spam, your health insurance will still cover you if you get so freaked out you have a heart attack. Your physical address may be available free in 100 databases you’ve never heard of (start with various online White Pages listings), but you’re still allowed to panic when you think that someone will find their way to your house via your IP address. We would be mortified if people knew what we’re doing or what we’re thinking, or who we’re emailing or what we say to them. That’s private information! But we broadcast it like wildfire.

Yet we do nothing when we find out that we’re being spied on. I have another theory about why.

There Are No Private Thoughts

Those who have started A Course in Miracles (many have started the lessons; fewer have finished) have encountered the idea fairly early on that minds are joined. The whole basis of the Course and many other concepts of healing work with the idea that the boundary we perceive as separating minds (and bodies) is not only a leading cause of sickness, it’s not actually there. One of the most helpful ways we can facilitate healing is to see past this nonexistent veil and dissolve the ‘spell of isolation’. On a linguistic note, the word cancer derives from the Latin carcer, which means to be alone or imprisoned, such as incarcerate.

Male Gaze theory of cinema. Photo by Eric Francis – Blue Studio, New York.

Early Course lessons that cover this idea include “I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing” and “I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.” One of the concepts here is that how we see the world affects others; we are not perceiving privately, we are transmitting our ideas and feelings with every brainwave.The boundary that we think of the ego as presenting is a penetrable veil. It exists, but mainly in our imaginations. At the heart of the healing theory of A Course in Miracles is the idea that what we keep in the shadows makes us sick and that minds joining their light makes us well.

In the past couple of decades, as cultural beliefs and customs have changed, and as the quickening of energy has proceeded, we have all had some experience of going through or beyond the veil. It might come as a dream that reveals or hints at the future, or becoming aware of another person’s thoughts without any conventionally sensory means of transmission. Nearly everyone has had contact with a dead relative, even if they chose not to believe it later (that is the ego at work, pretending the boundary is really there). Increasingly, the notion that we can ‘keep a secret’ is being recognized as a farce.

Even people who don’t necessarily believe in ‘psychic powers’ assume that eventually others will ‘pick up’ the truth of what they’re thinking or feeling. Or they fear people will, and that experience of maintaining the boundary can consume a lot of psychological energy. It almost always comes as a relief when the ‘wall’ falls down and we can live with the truth.

One of my observations about the Internet is that it’s a model of how our minds really work (with unique identities and locations, but sharing a common psychic space), but established in a mechanical way. Looked at one way, the entire Internet is a kind of low astral plane that, for the most part, is easy to access and is still there when you go back. Looked at another way, we are pioneers in a new dimension of reality, which we are establishing with our thought forms both in data, and in our belief that the thing exists. The Net exists on two levels: as a collection of data, and a collection of what you can think of as everyday archetypes that we build up with our attention and belief in their existence.

In this environment, we get to experiment in revealing ourselves. We get to voluntarily pierce the veil of privacy and express many of our most personal thoughts and feelings. We can do so ‘anonymously’, but always with the feeling that somehow the anonymity might come back to us. The process of revealing, as you may have figured out, can be an incredible relief. We finally have a place to reveal the depths of our thoughts, and be heard by someone who can relate.

We also get to experiment with being different people — that is, with alter egos. The boundaries of name, age, gender, location, social status, marital status, career, sexual orientation and any other ego definition you can think of are temporarily suspended on the Internet. This has provided incalculable relief to many people who otherwise feel totally trapped in their ego constructions and think they have no other way out; no other way to be themselves. This again is a model for what is happening on various astral levels that we can access through dreamtime experiences, meditation, creation of art and use of certain plant allies.

And, finally, we can have our veils pierced for us. We know that people really can feel, sense and sometimes know explicitly what we’re thinking, without our having revealed it to them. Some may invade our borders, and this can be an actual violation, as we saw at Rutgers University this week. Some we may invite in; others find their way there, with us aware of it or not. We hope they feel our fantasies of them. On one level we might be mortified that anyone would know what we’re thinking the last 15 seconds before orgasm — and on another we want people to know precisely that.

On the Internet, we’re immersed in this potential all the time, as we share many of our most intimate thoughts. I think it makes us feel better to know that someone, somewhere is watching; that someone out there cares.

Yours & truly,

 

 

*Before the elections, I will reveal my plan to take over the conservative movement and wage a revolution from within.

 

Who Cares?

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

You’ve got to hand it to our Republican brethren. Even their infighting and vote-splitting do not daunt their confidence that they are destined to rule the world. As is written into its standard operating procedure, the Party of No gives no quarter, admits no fault, and blames the other guy for everything. Some might see that as dedicated and disciplined, but I have had a political month, working the county Democratic booth at local fairs and events. I’ve seen this attitude close up. I’ve debated with it, and I think it displays the temperament of a stereotypical Missouri mule: thick-headed, unteachable and immovable. The GOP expects victory because they’re sure they represent the actual, if unrecognized, will of the people, given by the Divine in a New Testament verse that reads, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” See there? God doesn’t care about business, so they get to do whatever they want.

Pushed in these last months to put forward a leadership plan, and threatened by the popularity of their more radical members, House Republicans issued their newest version of Contract with America this week. The original Contract was fashioned from Newt Gingrich’s alliance with the religious right and Libertarian-leaning conservatives, resulting in a referendum blitzkrieg that ripped both houses of Congress from Clinton’s hands in 1994. The original Contract with America was one of those cyclic flirtations with ‘purity’ that the right can’t seem to do without, drawing in religious conservatives akin to Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and giving them a movement to rally around. In such a climate, Monica was the gift that kept on giving, dragging Clinton down into the same impeachment frenzy that the right plans for Obama the Muslim.

The GOP calls this paler 2010 playbook their Pledge to America, a promise to carry Reagan and Bush policies forward until government is completely privatized and as thin as their talking points. To sum up this ‘new’ leadership pledge in the esteemed words of Nancy Reagan, they will ‘just say no’ to anything Obama wants, along with investigating and repealing everything he’s accomplished in the past two years. In their spare time they will continue to promote corporate welfare so that taxes aren’t unfairly raised on the very rich, and attempt as best they can to shut down government. In short, there’s nothing here to see, citizen, move along. Even their own members yawned as they got in party line, save a few who found the economics objectionable. On that front, New York Times economist Paul Krugman said the Pledge was “nonsense,” adding, “Banana republic, here we come.”

Continued at this link…

Virgo Birthday Audio: The Revolution Has Arrived

Dear Virgo Sun, Moon or Rising:

I’ve just finished your 2010 birthday/ascendant audio, and it is fun — a breakthrough audio product in a year when I’ve been learning how to work in this medium.

I appreciate your patience; the letters have kept coming in steadily asking when it would be ready, and I’m happy to say that it is, and it’s excellent. In fact I didn’t realize how much was going on in so many of the most meaningful houses of your solar chart, and how they all work together. Mercury retrograde is over, the fog has cleared and I’ve focused on several other significant transits — though I do offer a new interpretation of Mercury retrograde in your sign. And I have some thoughts about what it means that Saturn has finally left.

I focus on the revolution in your identity that will arrive with Uranus in the 8th house, Aries. This will help you divest from all that you don’t want to be invested in, and establish your true identity in your own life and in your relationships. I look at the movement of Saturn, which has left your sign and is now in your 2nd solar house, Libra — and how this is about identifying your true values, and standing strongly in them.

Venus retrograde in Scorpio is a quest for what it means to be a woman, what women mean to you, or both. This transit, which takes us through late November, will help you discover skills and information that you will depend on for the next 10 years, and I explain how to make the most of it. In the audio I describe Venus retrograde as a course in personal investigative reporting. This transit is designed to help us understand the truth about who we are.

Chiron and Neptune are moving into your 7th house — Pisces — and this suggests many new experiences and reference points in your most intimate relationships. I describe this as putting on 3-D glasses and the whole world jumping into perspective.

And I cover how you identify with your work — that is, how you can become your true calling rather than “doing a job.”

This astrology reading is more than 60 minutes, plus an additional 20 minutes of tarot. It’s direct, intimate and personal, and will offer you much in the way of insights. Is it as effective as a personal reading with me, costing 20 times as much? I would say — it will come close. This will give you all of what you are looking for on some topics and get you most of the way to what you need on others, always leaving you plenty of room for your personal interpretation. In the end you decide what your astrology means to you; in this audio, I do my best to offer some useful interpretations.

Here is the link for instant access.

Thank you for your business.

Yours & truly,

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, October 1, 2010, #833 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Now that you reached the bottom line of a relationship, what have you learned? What is that seemingly ‘final’ piece of information about a person or a situation? I think that what you’ve demonstrated to yourself is that you can see the potential for letting go entirely, that is, the potential for having no attachments. You’ve also encountered an example of how situations have limits, including time limits. Then, having come to these recognitions, you’re in a place to choose based on the information. You may again be feeling your attachment or investment; you may be wondering whether you’re going to get the contact you need. And you may be wondering about someone else who you’ve noticed. I think that the clearest revelation you can have involves something about how relationships are not so simple, but they’re simpler when you make choices based on what you want.

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

You’re starting to see the value of your commitments. They serve many functions, including keeping your life on track. What you may be figuring out lately is how, to be valid, these arrangements have to work well for both people. We’re used to spending our lives saying “what’s in it for me?” chasing the next check, though I suggest you look at all equations from both sides. If you think you’re worth the price of your paycheck, ask yourself why that is. Consider the experience of anyone to whom you devote yourself or your energy. I suggest you set a goal of these relationships being oriented on maximum profit for all the parties involved. There is an efficiency factor here; energy conserved becomes profit made. There is a creativity factor as well: everything that exists owes its life to one creative process or another. Feed them generously.

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

Mercury has finally entered new territory for the first time since being retrograde on Aug. 20, though the sense of being bogged down in something may have begun several weeks earlier. It’s been a while since you felt emotionally free, and you may be taking your first tentative steps in a while. Life would be easier if you didn’t critique yourself every 15 minutes. There are few places to turn for advice about how to worry less. I would suggest this: take steps where you feel like you’re on solid ground, rather than where you feel yourself sinking in. That goes for thoughts, it goes for people and it goes for actions you take to create a safer world for yourself. Everything you need to know, your mind and emotions are going to give you in direct feedback. And that will work great — as long as you listen to yourself.

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

You seem to want both certainty and a sense of adventure. Many would argue that you cannot have both. But there is such a thing as having a foundation; then there is what you do with that foundation. Some people keep pouring the concrete; others would build something innovative. This isn’t so much about a structure as it is what you do with your creative and erotic energy. Remember that most of what we cling to that offers a sense of security rarely delivers, and usually leaves us bored and wanting something else. You have the foundation you need; you have some confidence. Now, your quest is to give yourself permission to actually be the person you want to be and to have the experiences you want to have. And if something that ‘makes you safe’ is preventing you from doing that, it’s definitely time to reconsider things from a new point of view.

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

You are at a turning point, but it’s less like making a left turn in a car, and more like the ocean tide changing directions. You seem to be taking the future more seriously. You seem to be devoted to grounding yourself in work that leads to success rather than just a paycheck or something to do. The planets suggest that you take every step consciously, and be certain that you’re not skipping any steps along the way. These involve paying attention to your environment and your relationships. Of the first, it’s clear that you’re involved in a process of many reforms and changes that are long overdue and will help get the energy moving. Of the second, remember that your life is intricately interdependent on the life of someone else. Their success is your success; yours is theirs. Therefore, put the relationship first and the success will dependably follow.

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

Mercury has finally entered new territory in your birth sign, and this is your signal that it’s time to start moving your life forward in a way that felt impossible three or four weeks ago. Notice how the obstacles that seemed so enormous now look like little models you can move around on the table. Notice how the time pressures have eased enough to give you some flexibility, and how you’re not struggling with exhaustion on a daily basis. Still, you would be wise to conserve your energy and make choices one at a time. Economy and efficiency are two of the most important themes of your life. To a great extent that involves what you do with your mental energy, and I strongly suggest you do a kind of audit accounting for how much anxiety costs you in the way of time and creative potential. In fact there are days when most of your energy goes into fear. There is a better way, and you’re going to find it because you want it.

The Virgo Audio Birthday Report is available. In the format of all the birthday audios, this offers more than an hour of astrology for Virgo and Virgo 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 Virgo and Virgo Rising. Only $14.95, this also makes a meaningful and economical gift.

You seem to be pulled in two directions, as if you want two different things that you believe conflict. Or, you ‘want something for someone else’ that doesn’t quite align with your personal desires. In the next few days you will see that there is indeed a point of reconciliation. You may not get a look at it for very long. It may show up as one of those fleeting possibilities you notice in a slightly altered state of mind or think of right before you fall asleep. But there is in fact a point where everyone’s needs meet in a way that benefits all. Once you have that potential in mind, and you believe that it’s real, you’ll need to go through a process to have it happen. But this will be simpler if you remember that the goal of the endeavor is happiness. If you focus on that at every step of the way, you’re more likely to have it.

Libra birthday audio is coming soon.

There are two basic ways to have intimate relationships. One is to seek another person for a sense of completion, because they have something you’re missing, and hopefully vice versa. The second way is to be a complete person and meet another complete person and have a kind of partnership, journey or human enterprise. Most of the time we seek the first option. The planets are reminding you that your mission is to work with the rarely used second method — another way of saying work with your inner sense of balance. Make contact with the male and female principles you contain, no matter what your sex or sexual orientation. There may be conditions in your life that are compelling you to take a more introspective view of your relationships. Indeed there are some Scorpios or Scorpio ascendant natives that may be experiencing an unusual sense of isolation. Yet by now you know that this is serving a useful, even vital, purpose.

You’re in one of those moments when if you do what you love, the world will respond with love. Remember not to question your chosen purpose. That’s another way of saying proceed with the quiet confidence that you’re doing the right thing. You may not feel like you’re at your creative peak; you may still be taking care of what feel like the minor points. I suggest you keep taking care of those things at the same time you nourish your larger vision. The thing about larger visions is that they don’t take shape immediately, and they do a lot of their taking shape when we can’t quite see what’s going on. However, I strongly suggest you trust that this mysterious process is underway, and that you’ll get results. Even if they’re not quite the results you’re expecting, you will have plenty to work with and some pleasant surprises. For now, every detail counts toward the whole.

There are those moments when you figure out what you’re good at because you do it and discover you’re doing it well. Those moments can be points of decision without you even recognizing that. They can be moments of putting your feet on the true path of your life, and you had no idea what you were doing. Thanks to astrology you have a clue: you can be aware that you’re now at an intersection where the past, the present and the future converge. At this juncture you have the ability to shift the flow of your destiny; in a sense, you can make a choice that does something to resolve the past and activate the future in one gesture. I am not sure you’ll recognize this moment when it happens, but I can tell you that if you live consciously and pay attention to who and what is around you, and what opportunities are open, you will be that much more open and available.

The Capricorn Audio Birthday Report is available. In the format of all the birthday audios, this offers 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.

I suggest you shift modes quickly, if you were or are currently doing the push/discipline/focus thing — you’ve gone as far as you can go with that for now, and over the next few weeks you have a nice opening for flow/inspiration. The idea here is not to ease back entirely and coast along, but rather to apply your ideas as they come and develop your talents on an ongoing basis, as a kind of intuitive experiment. You can afford to be a little less goal-centered and a little more exploratory. You will find something that hooks your interest or qualifies as a plan that you can get into through a more circumspect approach. This is the part that may qualify as learning, which is suspending rationality, linear thinking and logic, and allowing your intuition to take over. I realize there are skeptics who argue that there is no such thing as intuition, right along with ghosts and UFOs. But in this situation seeing will definitely mean believing.

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

You’ve fulfilled several key commitments or responsibilities recently, and I suggest you give yourself a break. This continues the theme of “do what makes you feel like a Pisces,” which might involve music, art, sex, poetry or ‘alternative’ states of consciousness — you have one foot in the dreamtime, so put that to good use. I’m suggesting that you do this as a way to create ‘inner space’ — that is, to open up a space in yourself that can be filled by the inspiration that is currently pouring in, and that will do so increasingly over the next couple of weeks as the Sun makes a trine to the Chiron-Neptune conjunction. For the past week of the Sun in Libra, you’ve been looking right at Saturn, which has been about keeping your focus and maintaining your relationships. Now that the Sun-Saturn conjunction of 2010 has joined that thing known as history, you’re being invited to go freestyle for a while — and that is what I would, in a word, describe as Pisces.

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

Something in the Night

Dear Reader:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours & truly,

 

 

 

When Reality Bites

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

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

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

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

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

Continued at this link…

 

 

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

Dear Planet Waves Reader:

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

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

We really appreciate it. Thank you!

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mercury Retrograde: What Did You Learn?

Dear Earthly Voyager:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pluto Stations Direct in Capricorn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sky on the Cusp of Many Other Changes

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

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

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

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

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

See you next week.

Yours & truly,

Eric Francis

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

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

The Courage Of Our Convictions

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

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

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

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

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

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

It’s About You: Capricorn Birthdays for 2010

Dear Capricorn or Capricorn Rising:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours & truly,

Eric Francis

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

Dear Planet Waves Reader:

Join our Facebook group!

As this Mercury retrograde draws to a close, we’re tidying up some projects and following through on old plans. I have a favor to ask.

We have a Facebook fan page. It’s a great page that gives you access to all our free services, such as new blog posts and new weekly audio.

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

We really appreciate it. Thank you!

Eric Francis

PS, I also have a personal page and you’re invited to “friend” me. I promise not to get sucked into Facebook! But it would be great to see you there.

PPS, In this recent edition of Astrology News, I publish an interview with one of the big gaming websites about my feelings on Facebook. I thought I would share it with you — it’s the second article down, at this link.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Planet Waves

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

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

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

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

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