Ted Kennedy’s departure from the planet marks the end of a dynasty in American politics. It’s interesting that we consider it so: John served as president a little more than 1,000 days, more than four decades ago. Robert was mainly known as attorney general. Teddy was a senator — being hailed, probably accurately, as the most effective in the history of the Republic. A dynasty is something with persistence over time; mainly that was him.
Welcome to the Electric Tide, the Mercury Retrograde Special Report. The retrograde that goes from Sept. 7 through Sept. 23 has a few distinct properties that are an incentive for awareness, excitement and astrological study. Mercury is doing a lot of talking to Saturn, Uranus and Pluto — the three big players who dominate the astrology of 2012. Mercury also shifts back and forth over the Virgo-Libra line, activating the Aries Point (which is pretty hot these days, as it is).
Events of September represent a culmination of the astrology of the past 12 months, and if we look as far as late October, we see a culmination of developments of the past two years. For the next few weeks we get to ask, if not answer, the question: what have I been doing with all this time? Implied here is the question of whether you’ve been wasting your precious days, and seeking some sign from the cosmos that you have not.
Here is the question everyone has asked at least once: how exactly do you not get your ass kicked by Mercury retrograde? Here’s a better question: how do we use these phases, which come dependably three times a year, to spark our creativity, solve problems and improve communication with the people around us? In other words, having the benefit of honoring astrology, how do we get it to work for us??
It’s a pleasure to be able to write about a solar-lunar event that is not an eclipse, or something sitting on the Aries Point. That has been the story behind every New Moon or Full Moon so far this summer. With the Leo New Moon of Aug. 20, we close the book on those events and move on to new territory.
This weekend is the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival, which was actually held in Bethel, New York — a town whose name translates to “house of God.” We’ve always paid tribute to Woodstock at Planet Waves, and commemorated the event in some small way almost every year. The original, one and only festival, held Aug. 15, 16, 17 and 18, 1969, was one of the great watersheds of the modern human experience, defying everything that our society is supposed to be, and exemplifying what we can create if we want.
Friday morning, today that is, I will be in Toronto presenting a seminar at the American Psychological Association (APA) conference called “The Inner Goddess and the Inner Gaze.” My presentation, as currently planned, will explore the phenomenon of the inner feminine, or anima, and its relationship to both men and women in our journey of growth and healing through the use of mirrors and photography.
