Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2005

THANKS FOR the incoming feedback on the gray cover format. Planet Waves is in its entirety an experiment...and I appreciate your participation.

We're in the extreme waning phase of the Moon at the moment. As of late Tuesday night, the Moon is in mid-Scorpio. The Sun is in Sagittarius, so that combination means the New Moon cometh.

Earlier Tuesday, there was a Moon-Jupiter conjunction concurrent with a Moon-Mars opposition and a Moon-Neptune square, which may account for some of the emotional intensity percolating around.

Mars is retrograding into an exact opposition with Jupiter, getting ready to spark up version 2.0 of the fixed grand cross, at its most exact on Dec. 5th -- but in reality, happening as we speak. When you have a standing aspect like this, even though some of the planets seem to be "out of orb," the Moon can blow through town quickly and set off the whole arrangement, which is precisely what's been going on today.

Moon-Neptune can feel like a deep and sticky emotional bog -- particularly in a square. Add a square or opposition from Mars and you have some dive-bomber energy; add Jupiter and you've got a lo of exaggeration; add Saturn and you've got a little frustration. There is no way out, on this level of the discussion; it's necessary to go above the whole game.

The Moon continues to make aspects, about to trine Vesta, sextile Venus, conjoin Mercury and sextle Chiron all in the next 24 hours or so, and all from the sign Scorpio. To any who get dragged into this on an emotional level, I would say keep your cool, it's just astrology acting up -- but I realize this is hopelessly impossible so I won't bother; thus those who need to may freak out all they need to, and when the Moon is sprung into fiery, optimistic Sagittarius (after stewing in Scorpio and getting brief flambé from an aspect to Chiron) they'll feel a lot better -- whoever is not having a great time already.

That being proposed, the extreme waning lunar phase can be emotionally tense. The feeling is approximately premenstrual; that is the essence of the New Moon, taken purely emotionally. Guys cannot necessarily relate, unless they have a lot of experience doing detailed interviews with extraordinarily articulate women precisely in the 24 hours prior to getting their period. Given the number of contradictions contained in that sentence, we can only hope to have small samples of this occult knowledge catalogued in the human database.

But here is the feeling, boys. I'll tell you. Just imagine you've gone to a party and have unknowingly eaten a piece of candy that contains some mushrooms. You have the psychically overwhelming experience that your emotional body is like a water balloon that's slowly filling up. You want it to burst, but it won't go. The harder you try, the worse it gets. It just keeps filling. And hanging there, heavier and heavier. You try to stab it with a sharp object, and this strange skin on the balloon just gives, but is not pierced.

But it's all an illusion. None of it's really happening, and you know it, which makes it all the worse. Finally, when it does burst, the feeling is not explosive but rather subtle and a gentle return to normal consciousness.

And then you may wonder if everyone is still your friend; but they are; it was not nearly as intense for them as it was for you.

The moment of the shift is when the Moon reaches Sagittarius exactly 24 hours from this writing -- at 11:32 pm CET. That means the Moon is moving at the rather fast clip of about 14 degrees per day.

Chiron dangling on the edge of Capricorn and two inner planets getting ready to make stations (Mercury first, on Dec. 4, then Mars, on Dec. 11), are all contributing to the edgy effect. That's the basic feeling -- and it can be extremely useful if you figure out what to do with the energy.

Catch you tomorrow, and on http://Cainer.com where the daily horoscopes continue.



Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2005

THANKS FOR the incoming feedback on the gray cover format. Planet Waves is in its entirety an experiment...and I appreciate your participation.

We're in the extreme waning phase of the Moon at the moment. As of late Tuesday night, the Moon is in mid-Scorpio. The Sun is in Sagittarius, so that combination means the New Moon cometh.

Earlier Tuesday, there as a Moon-Jupiter conjunction concurrent with a Moon-Mars opposition and a Moon-Neptune square, which may account for some of the emotional intensity percolating around.

Mars is retrograding into an exact opposition with Jupiter, getting ready to spark up version 2.0 of the fixed grand cross, at its most exact on Dec. 5th -- but in reality, happening as we speak. When you have a standing aspect like this, even though some of the planets seem to be "out of orb," the Moon can blow through town quickly and set off the whole arrangement, which is precisely what's been going on today.

Moon-Neptune can feel like a deep and sticky emotional bog.

The Moon continues to make aspects, about to trine Vesta, sextile Venus, conjoin Mercury and sextle Chiron all in the next 24 hours or so, and all from the sign Scorpio. I would say keep your cool, but I realize this is hopelessly impossible so I won't bother; freak out all you need to and when the Moon is sprung into fiery, optimistic Sagittarius (after stewing in Scorpio and getting brief flambé from an aspect to Chiron) you'll feel a lot better, if you're not having a great time already.

Extreme waning lunar phase can be emotionally tense. The feeling is approximately premenstrual. Guys cannot relate, unless they have a lot of experience doing detailed interviews with extraordinarily articulate women in the 24 hours prior to getting their period. Given the number of contradictions contained in that sentence, we can only hope to have small samples of this occult knowledge.

But here is the feeling, boys. I'll tell you. Just imagine you've gone to a party and eaten a piece of candy that contains some mushrooms. You have the psychically overwhelming experience that your emotional body is like a water balloon that's slowly filling up. You want it to burst, but it won't go. The harder you try, the worse it gets. It just keeps filling. And hanging there, heavier and heavier. But it's all an illusion. None of it's really happening, and you know it, which makes it all the worse. Finally, when it does burst, the feeling is not explosive but rather subtle and a gentle return to normal consciousness.

And then you may wonder if everyone is still your friend; but they are; it was not nearly as intense for them as it was for you.

The moment of the shift is when the Moon reaches Sagittarius exactly 24 hours from this writing -- at 11:32 pm CET. That means the Moon is moving at the rather fast clip of about 14 degrees per day.

Chiron dangling on the edge of Capricorn and two inner planets getting ready to make stations (Mercury first, on Dec. 4, then Mars, on Dec. 11), are all contributing to the edgy effect. That's the basic feeling -- and it can be extremely useful if you figure out what to do with the energy.

Catch you tomorrow, and on http://Cainer.com where the daily horoscopes continue.



Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2005

Just a brief note to our European and UK readers who have been trying to log in -- our new servers were down for scheduled maintenance, but we did not figure that out until they were pulled offline for a few hours overnight Monday to Tuesday, east coast time.

For reference, http://planetwaves.info is our mirror site and the blog will be available there in the event of an outage on the main pages. I'll be back in a bit with a message for today. At the moment, a friendly hobbit up in York is waiting for some copy that I'm just getting going.

    e

PS - a request. We're about to initiate a gray (front page) cover that we'll use for certain editions, and I would like to know if the gray of the background matches the gray of the Planet Waves logo on lots of different systems. On our end, we've calibrated the color perfectly, and it looks good on a variety of Macs and PCs -- but there are lots of operating systems and browsers out there. Can you please drop me a note if it does NOT match? And if you do, please tell us what system you're running, what kind of browser, and what kind of monitor you have.

Here is a sample link, with yesterday's photo. Thank you!!! Please email me at francis@planetwaves.net.

http://planetwaves.net/index_gray.html



Monday, Nov. 28, 2005

I SOMETIMES WONDER what it's like showing up at Planet Waves for the fist time -- is it more like picking up a strange, interesting magazine in the waiting room of a bus station on another planet, or dreaming something odd and unfamiliar, or getting beamed aboard a space ship for a long astrology class?

For me and quite a few people who have helped create Planet Waves over the years, this Web page has definitely been a journey. Contributors come from around the world, spanning 10 time zones, from Seattle to the Ukraine. If you're new to the project, I'd like help orient you a little, just so you have an idea of what's available.

First of all, there's a lot of astrology. This comes in the form of horoscopes (on the horoscopes homepage, above) and articles (which are on the articles & archives page, also above), organized in reverse chronological order; and in archeological layers of the project. All of 2005's articles will come up right away; you'll see prior years if you look around. You're more likely to find what you're looking for by accident than by design.

You may notice a specialty on minor planets, asteroids and new discoveries. The astrology you'll find here is more the spiritual and psychological kind, rather than the predictive kind.

Articles on Planet Waves range from astrological analysis of the news, to articles on sexuality, personal growth, some stuff on the arts and music, and basically whatever I happen to be writing about at the time. There is a bit of erotica, a bit of science fiction, some poetry and quite a few personal essays by many writers, particularly from the 2001-2003 stage of the project.

Next is photography. That's a new feature begun in 2005, though we've always had plenty of artwork. But my own obsession with taking pictures set in at full strength in January, and there's a good assortment of work by other photographers if you look. There are two galleries linked above. Give them a few moments to load and click on the slideshow for a journey through time, and around the world.

We have a subscriber section that includes a weekly horoscope and a couple of other monthly horoscopes. This is called Planet Waves Weekly. It includes three years of searchable archives (including horoscopes), hundreds of essays and birthday reports, and much else besides. Your subscriptions get you a great (twice) weekly service by email and on the Web, and support the whole Planet Waves project from top to bottom, including the Astrology Secrets Revealed column on Cainer.com. Here's a little of what our readers have said this year:

    http://planetwavesweekly.com/feedback.html

Planet Waves Weekly is organized nicely, searchable and is always on top of the latest news, both in Heaven and on Earth. And it's delivered right to you.

Thanks for tuning in!! Enjoy your stay, and we hope to see you back soon. I like to think there's something for almost everyone at Planet Waves. Have fun...!

ERIC FRANCIS
Paris, France



Another Little Project...

Hey all...We are looking for someone to create the monthly astro calendar each month for Planet Waves. This is a PDF (sample on main homepage) that basically lists the main events each month: lunations, planetary sign changes, stations, and important aspects. It's a volunteer job providing a free service to all Planet Waves readers.

The tools and skills you would need are:

1. An ephemeris (preferably Raphael's, American or Aureas), and the ability to use it. You need to be able to read the ephemeris and prioritize the important events.

2. The ability to design a nifty little page, following basic specs, and to type neatly and accurately.

3. Having a friend who will help you proofread the thing each month.

4. Being able to distill it to a PDF.

5. An uncanny ability to be dependably on time, each month for one year.

6. Being willing to fix mistakes that readers point out, quickly.

This project requires astrological experience! It is not for beginners. If you're interested, please drop me a note...

Thank you!!

    e



Not a joke, either...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10174732/

Must be Kafka's birthday...



Not a joke...

http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2005/11/26/riot25.htm

But it was precisely this kind of article that inspired the very existence of The Onion. Long Live Kafka. Okay, enough futzing around online, I've gotta get some work done.



Sunday, Nov. 27, 2005

Hey all. I'm having something of an actual weekend off (except for a modest project today of writing the Wednesday daily) which reminds me -- I'm covering for Jonathan starting tonight. This appears on http://cainer.com/ Subscribers to Planet Waves Weekly will get both the Monday daily and the December monthly horoscope by email tonight. If you're looking for the December monthly on the horoscopes homepage, that will be available soon, within 24 hours. On the subject of updates, Astrology Secrets Revealed was updated on Thursday night, you can click on a new edition from either the subscriber homepage or the open-access one; link is above.

Catch you later with some horoscopes.



Dear Subscribers:

I've sent out the Friday edition of Planet Waves Weekly a few hours ago, but because I was behind schedule, it's in the queue in the list server in New York. It will probably move in an hour or two -- it's now about 1 pm in New York. However, it has been posted to the subscriber homepage, so just use your keyword and look for it there.

Note to other readers: We've posted the lead article from today's Friday edition, "Sagittarians I Know and Love," for all readers on the Planet Waves home page, above or at this link:

http://www.planetwaves.net/contents/sagittarians_i_know_and_love.html

Sorry for the inconvenience re the mailing. I plan to have our own list software working by January, so we don't have to wait in line, or risk sending a mailing when the ISP is closed and cannot maintain its servers.

Thanks for your patience and support --

ERIC FRANCIS
Paris



Friday, Nov. 25, 2005

I'M ALL MIGLED up in finishing next week's daily columns for Jonathan Cainer (he's taking a break to figure out an aspect, as he has said, but I have no clue what aspect that is and I'm not going to ask), so today's will be a short blog; contrary to all the forces of nature and Sagittarius, everything I write today will be short, substantially increasing my average pay per word. This phenomenon of "shortness" has never happened before; usually 3,500 words is my rock-bottom minimum. There will, however, be a plethora of smaller items, including a Sagittarius birthday report and a visit to Esoteric Astrology for its take on the subject of the ninth sign as part of today's Planet Waves Weekly. (This has now been called "Sagittarians I Know and Love," and the birthday report has been bumped to Monday.)

For the one person who is going to click through and make sure I get paid $54.95 for writing a single short paragraph (this one), here is the subscription link:

http://planetwavesweekly.com/sales/home.html

So, a brief commentary about a piece of writing; an English paper, if you will. My favorite installment in The Annals of Journalism this week was an article by The Onion -- not the one on Bush's "hope based initiatives" (the picture they stole is worth the whole visit to the site), but rather the one about Milwaukee parking ramp attendant Brian Haemker, who knows the garage he works in like the back of his hand.

This particular joke is from The Onion's news parody genre of blow up the pointless, trivial details of something absolutely meaningless until they're kind of funny. The guy who has what most people would feel is a boring, dead-end job at a parking garage knows exactly where the customers should park their cars so they have plenty of room, where to avoid getting their cars dented, where to be near the Coke machine, how to find a spot and get to the elevator fast if they're in a hurry, and so on.

In the process, something else comes across, at least to me. The truth is, we all hope to meet people like this in the course of the day; we hope that the toll booth attendant is the kind who cares enough to know local directions even though that's not officially part of the job.

Brian Haemker may have a gig that everyone else thinks is boring, but he's not bored. He's not a victim, and even seems to like what he does. His attention to detail, indeed, paying attention at all, is what saves his mind from rotting, and not coincidentally, he winds up being good at what he does.

Now you may be saying, "Okay, he works at a parking lot. My job at Wal Mart is really boring, and he doesn't work with the collection of assholes I have to put up with. And on the Friday after Thanksgiving, I'm risking my life by walking into the electronics aisle, where DVD players are going for $29.95." This may be true, but I still think you should cut out the picture of Brian and put it in your wallet or tape it into your locker as a reminder.

There's a book written on the theme of Brian's attitude, called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The basic idea is that if we pay attention to what we're doing, and put a little love and attention into it, that will save the world. In fact, it does save the world. You had better hope that the person who applied the grease to the tail fin of the Boeing 777 you're flying on at 41,000 feet at a speed of Mach 0.84 cares about his job enough to put the right kind of grease there, because the wrong kind can wear down the ball bearings and then one day the airplane can fall out of the sky for no apparent reason.

And you can always tell when somebody who truly loves their work made your Big Mac. It just has that well put together feeling, and is so much more nourishing as a result.

The word is dharma -- acting as if to hold the world together.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/42816

While you're there, don't miss "Area Baby Doesn't Have Any Friends." Pathetic, all too true, but brilliant.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/42599



Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005

ALICE'S RESTAURANT, the Arlo Guthrie song, is the greatest shaggy dog story of all time. This is a kind of joke where the story goes on and on and on, seemingly leading to something cryptic and profound, but the long-awaited punch line turns out to be a bad pun, or three ants stranded in a toilet bowl singing a little song.

Alice's Restaurant is a Thanksgiving favorite because, as the story goes, "It all started two Thanksgivings ago" when Arlo and a friend went to visit Alice, but she wasn't there. They decided to help her out by taking her trash to the dump.

"Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the dump saying, 'Closed on Thanksgiving'. And we had never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage."

And so on, and on.

I was amazed to see that its original copyright is 1966, somewhat before it was really understood how serious the Vietnam War was, and long before there was a widespread social movement against it. It is fair to say that this song was one of the early protest songs that helped raise awareness of the injustices involved; and the war did not end until 1973.

I would like to assume most people know Alice's Restaurant, but as with most Sixties culture, it's either a misty recollection or something that many people have heard of but don't quite know of. And of course, it doesn't make it onto the mixing tables of DJs that often. Further, it helps if you hear the whole thing, not just four seconds of it; and there is no bass line to steal.

For reference, any half-decent FM radio station in your community, if it has a shred of self-respect, will play the song today, so stay tuned.

Now, if you haven't heard Alice's Restaurant, I won't give away the joke, unless you have the patience to read through all 2,641 words in the lyrics. But it does involve the irony that only moral, upright individuals can be drafted into the Army to go to a foreign country and kill innocent people. It's not only a song about the war, it's about a time when any young man (unless he had political connections) could have been drafted, at random, and sent to the jungles of Southeast Asia.

Arlo was 18 at the time he wrote it -- of eminently draftable age. Such a time may be coming again soon, as Army recruitment drops to dangerous levels.

Don't forget to leave your radio on, or give a call to the station and see if they plan to play it. Or check in with your friendly neighborhood hippie. No Thanksgiving is complete without it -- particularly this year.

http://www.arlo.net/lyrics/alices.shtml

Here is what someone claims is an original news clipping reprinted in the Arlo Guthrie Songbook, with the story of how the song was written. Super interesting, than you Goo.

http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/alice.html



Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2005

Here's a Web page that I discovered because they discovered an article I wrote in Chronogram recently. AstroCocktail.com is daily site based on Long Island (NY, USA) that specializes in gathering astrological news from all over the world, a great idea that gives a sense of the diverse that astrology plays in our culture. I've never read their reports or done any consulting with them, so I can't vouch for that -- though I had a pleasant discussion with the owner, John, one night for an hour about astrology and sailing. Please let me know what you think. Thanks...!

    e

http://www.astrococktail.com/



Internet reality check: Have any readers attempted to email us at an @planetwaves.net email address and not had a reply? Or are you getting a bounce message of any kind? I probably don't count, as Chelsea is much more efficient at email than I am -- more like customer service emails, as "support@planetwaves.net." We're attempting to ascertain whether all the mail is actually getting to us. Thank you!! If you have NOT received a reply, please drop a note to me at horoscopes@planetwaves.org. Thank you!! -- efc


--

Here's a preview of Friday's cover!!!
http://planetwaves.net/home/home_tjchelsea.html





Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2005

AT THE BREAKFAST in America diner this morning, I was sitting next to the owner, Craig, who was doing a number puzzle from a French paper. A copy of the International Herald Tribune was on the counter. "Between the Internet and BBC, it's really odd how today's newspaper looks like yesterday's newspaper," I whined. I went on for about another minute on this subject and he said he would go get today's paper from the newsstand. It was in fact yesterday's paper, not an illusion. However, I did glance over the article about our true modern day Nixon, Dick Cheney, saying that war critics were reprehensible.

The new paper arrived, I got to apply the official "Breakfast in America" stamps to the top left and right, and behold, there was an article on how John P. Murtha, a conservative Democrat from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and the first Vietnam vet to be elected to Congress. Rep. Murtha, a longtime hawk and high ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, has turned against the Iraq war. He's also the top Democrat on the Appropriations defense subcommittee. These committees are how Congress functions, and they mean he has political pull in Washington as well as access to information.

So it's a big deal that he's called for a troop pullout over the next six months. He is the government's equivalent of Cindy Sheehan. You cannot call him a hippy freak. And he's lost 13 of his local constituents in the war.

"Since shortly after the American invasion of Iraq, he has frequently visited wounded troops at Walter Reed, an experience that he said had gradually convinced him that the American troop presence was exacerbating the violence by giving insurgents more targets to attack," the article says.

Here's a bit more:

At a speech Monday morning to local executives and elected officials, Mr. Murtha received three standing ovations. The talk focused almost entirely on all the federal aid Mr. Murtha has been able to deliver to his district from his seat on the House Appropriations Committee.

But when he spoke briefly about Iraq, the audience seemed unsure about how to react to their congressman's public break with the Bush administration. When Mr. Murtha invited questions after his remarks, no one in the audience of several hundred came forward.

"We're all kind of perplexed," said Robert A. Gleason Jr., an insurance executive and chairman of the local Republican Committee, who said he had put aside party loyalties and voted for Mr. Murtha in the past.

This was my favorite word in the article -- perplexed.

I would think you'd be perplexed when a nice boy who loves taking care of cats and dogs decides he's going to go kill people, not when someone says a war is not working and we had better get out. Perplexed, as in: are people who support the war really thinking? This perplexity may be the initially confusing experience of the brain synapses going off.

The full article (which also appears in today's New York Times) is here, and I'll post it to Political Waves as well -- available from the Planet Waves homepage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/politics/22murtha.html

----------

I'll have stuff on the Sun's ever-interesting trek through Sagittarius in Thursday's Astrology Secrets Revealed, as well as Friday's edition of Planet Waves.



Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005

YESTERDAY, I NOTED the prison-like atmosphere of Clichy-sous-Bois, and how it works as a prison of the mind. In retrospect, the place blends the isolation typical of a rural community with the oppression of an urban ghetto. As far as I can tell it's worse than both combined.

Most of the time, if you live in a rural community, you may have little to do, but at least you're in the country, or something resembling it. There is a way of life that you might call traditional, even if it involves hanging out in a quarry or working on your car. For a kid, rural life can be extremely boring, but there is, at least, a way of life. Human beings are rural critters from the beginning. There's usually enough going on in the central school districts that you can do something with your life if you want to -- band, sports teams, and other extracurricular activities exist in all but the most impoverished districts. And at best, you can really get to live in a beautiful part of the country and have that experience shape and affect you positively. In an actual rural community, there's always something to do.

If you live in a city, even in a poor part of town, usually you can easily get to the city center. There, you can see that there is more to life, even if you don't have access to it at the moment.

What is genuinely strange about the northern "suburbs" of Paris is how isolated they are from anything; how complicated and expensive travel into the city is; and the limited opportunities for what to do even within the city of Paris proper, if you can even get there -- as unemployment is high, life is pretty expensive, and the issue of discrimination is significant. It's well understood that as mayor of Paris, Jacque Chirac, now president of France, was involved in the plan to create the Cités during the 1960s (that is, the housing projects, sometimes called estates) and move racial minorities and immigrants out of the city to preserve its image for tourists.

And the people who live in the Cités are on the edge of nowhere. I've lived in some isolated places since leaving New York City, and when that "nothing going on" sense sets in, the feeling is creepy. The detail from yesterday's visit that seems the most perplexing is how little car traffic there was on the road leading to the Cités. True, it was noon on Sunday, but you could have laid down in the street near buildings that house thousands of people. This, supposedly in "Paris," one of the great urban centers of the world.

A comparison with New York City will make the effect of that isolation a little more clear. A friend asked me today whether I thought the architecture of Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan was just as oppressive as the Cités. This is one of many huge housing complexes in Manhattan, and I happen to have stayed in this one for a week when I was in college. The thing about Stuyvesant Town is that you can walk out your door and in 10 minutes you're in the East Village. And despite being this huge red brick behemoth of 30 or so towering buildings, the place felt alive and maintained. There was a sense of dignity.

Even if you live in some of the parts of New York City most comparable to the Cités, such as the South Bronx or Harlem, you're only a subway fare and at most half an hour away from midtown.   If you really have to walk from Harlem to 59th street, you can. You can get to a job, you can meet friends from other parts of the city, you can go out. Columbia University is located right at the edge of Harlem. You have a sense that there is something besides what you grew up knowing.

My sense is that for a great many dwellers of the Cités, that's all that exists. Teenagers have enough problems with boredom unless you really go out of your way to give them something to do. Even if they have energy and talent -- most teenagers do -- this needs to be nurtured and developed to go anywhere. I'm not surprised it was they who led the uprising.

These are the people Nicolas Sarkozy, France's interior minister, referred to as the racaille. But the truth is Paris knows the story of the racaille, and the alleged majority support for Sarkozy during the riots was a form of denial.

The word he used, a nasty insult, is related to "rascals," idiomatically meaning the dregs of society, from an earlier Latin root that relates to gratings (gratter), such as metal gratings or saw dust; the waste products. What a way to describe people who have so little and need so much; who are human like the rest of us but have no extra claim to being anything special.

When I left the Cité yesterday, I was cold and cranky and glad to leave, and very happy to surface again near Notre Dame and Shakespeare & Co. Books. Today, I can't wait to go back, find some friends there and hear what they have to say.

--

Today is the 42nd (not the 32nd) anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This Wiki link might be of interest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy



Monday, Nov. 21, 2005

REGARDING THE Cités of outer Paris. After a few attempts, a friend and I organized a trip out to Cilchy-sous-Bois. Frieda, a young poet, her friend Sam and I headed out Sunday morning to have a look around. Sam attends university fairly near Clichy and is a tall boy with a great sense of humor who speaks fluent Arabic. I was glad to have him along.

The first thing I noticed was the length of the trip. Starting at Gare du Nord, it was about a half-hour ride on the RER, a rail service that takes you out past the inner city and into what everyone outside of France these days calls the "suburbs." Actually, it's the inner city on the outside of the downtown area. Within the city, what everyone normally thinks of as Paris is divided into districts or arrondissments (from the word "around," as they are numbered in a spiral pattern from the inside out). There are 20 of them and though they're pretty diverse, to some extent all feel like Paris.

In a few minutes, the train was in another world -- the world that was built to remove the North African immigrants from the city 40 years ago after the Algerian War of Independence, and concentrate them away from the supposedly real Paris.

After a while we arrived in a town whose name I forgot, and waited for the 613 bus. Looking around the scenery at the bus stop, the buildings were an odd mix of new-styled and old, with the old ones having those rippled, ceramic-tiled roofs that you think of as being so European. At one point a small group of cops appeared out of nowhere and double-timed it into the train station; then a few minutes later they came back out.

Riding along on on the bus, the cityscape reminded me of Germany, which I've seen a lot more of than I have France. Imagine this big bus wiggling through tiny little one-way streets, the buildings, this mix of things that look 200 years old and others that are kind of monolithic modern apartment houses.

Nobody on the bus seemed particularly destitute -- everyone had on warm clothes, seemed well kempt and had the usual urban regalia, like MP3 players.

Finally, we were in Clichy-sous-Bois. At first it's like a little town, with a (once again) odd mix of an inner-city and slightly in the country feeling. I hadn't eaten breakfast, so we stopped at the only open place we could find besides the sandwich shop or the pizzeria. Threre were no cafés anywhere that I could see; coffee would have been nice. I am on a strict wheat-free diet, so we found an alimentation (general store) which was also a butcher shop, and got some nuts, dried fruit, some gross sliced ham and a bottle of water. Then we sat down on a bench in the middle of one of the Cités, a small one about three stories high that spread out a few hundred feet in every direction.

And there, basically, took in the scenery. And what sounds there were. Extremely quiet. Only about two-thirds of the parking spaces were full, which is weird considering how many people lived there, and that it was noon on a Sunday. One would not think that two weeks ago this town was on the front page of every newspaper in the world -- day after day, at that. Sitting there for a while, in the creepy quiet and the cold, I finally said, "The feeling here reminds me of someplace after a really bad environmental disaster."

Frieda said, "Well, it is one."

We checked a map, Sam and Frieda picked a direction that looked logical, and we wandered off down a road with nearly no traffic. Alongside this road, in the grass, was a scorched hubcap, about the only visible remnant of the riots so far. We made a left turn and passed by a school, made in that supremely boring 1960s architecture, with dingy walls and a letter missing from the school's name. Behind it were some towering structures, about the highest I've ever seen in France. In the far distance were others, set against the gray sky.

These were the housing projects that has been described in the press so often. We slipped into the one complex, and walked around a kind of courtyard. Maybe a few thousand people lived in this place, one of many like it. It was about 15 floors high, and composed of several buildings. A total of two kids were playing outside, who looked really mystified by our presence (Frieda has a much better picture of them than I do -- look for it soon). A few people were coming and going, but it was not what you'd think of as alive. Many terraces were piled with junk, others were converted into rooms. These terraces were the only thing that set the place apart from feeling like the inside of a prison complex.

Next to this courtyard, about 20 feet below where we were, was a kind of stadium with a track, a soccer pitch and a grandstand for a couple of thousand people. It was absolutely empty.

Then near one building, members of a wedding party were gathering. The well-dressed people, waiting for the bride and groom, seemed out of place and subdued. Sam suggested this was a good moment to step inside the building because something unusual was happening and we'd probably be safe. I really did not feel like it, but we went inside a lobby, with its dented and crushed mailboxes hanging on the wall, and beaten down plaster and graffiti everywhere. I found a stairwell next to the elevators and took the picture above, the photo that sums the whole thing up for me.

There was no room for idealism in this place, no room for hope or an idea, no mental space for a concept of anything different, or better, or more interesting. The prison has no walls, but it's psychological. It occurred to me it's a miracle that the riots even happened.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerian_War_of_Independence



Planet Waves: What We Are Doing

Dear Friend and Reader:

REGULAR VISITORS to Planet Waves may have noticed some improvements to the site in recent days...in recent months...and in recent years. Every single day that passes, there are least two or three little developments that make our community magazine more useful, more fun, or prettier, sometimes all three. For each of those, behind the scenes, there are others every day that are not so noticeable but which are important -- for example, over the past two months, we've been gradually moving everything onto new, faster and more dependable servers. We will soon own our list servers instead of renting them. And so on...

One level back, in the Plotting, Scheming and Development Dept., there are other projects that are in slow, steady progress. I'll give you two examples. One is the 2006 annual horoscope -- Parallel Worlds, which is a Web page unto itself...with both the astrology for 2006 and going into 2007, both for the world and sign-by-sign -- with numerous excellent news articles summing up the most important issues facing us. You will read the work of some of your favorite old-time Planet Waves writers, and meet several new ones. Another project is the Astrography database, a fully searchable, interactive database of my horoscope write-ups (including all weekly, monthly, annual and daily horoscopes). We've been working on this for more than a year, and it's just about done.

All of this has been made possible by two things: first, by the love and devotion of the people who, together, make up Planet Waves; and second, by the modest budget provided by your subscription fees to Planet Waves Weekly. To "subscribe" means to "underwrite," and that is exactly what each subscriber does -- provides a dose of energy, a quantum of resource, to help us go forward, to grow, and to develop. We put nearly every dollar back into the project. All of us work long hours and we have something of a grand conspiracy going to build something really special with Planet Waves.

Every day it becomes more obvious to me that the world needs such a thing. I am a news junkie, and I can tell you what you already know: the news lacks perspective...and a connection to you. Planet Waves makes "the world" into your world. We take the news on the level of its meaning. Due to the miracle of astrology and the expanded view of life that it offers, we are able to offer a perspective that verges on hopeful but is indeed our honest assessment of the world. There is not one of us who works on the project who lacks deep concern about the times we're living in -- but as I work with people, I notice that everyone here is in their own way working to make the world better.

This is a privilege because, through taking action, through supporting the world, and through a commitment to grow, it's possible to work your way out of both despair and denial. I trust that above all else, Planet Waves is providing an example of what is possible with modest resources, good ideas and focused talent.

I want to point out a couple of things about our project that you may have already noticed. The site is not stuffed with advertising. Every link you see to another site is either a gift, or a link exchange with someone we really care about and trust; somebody we can trust enough to send you to, and take responsibility for having done so.

Notice that we don't use any promotional tactic for Planet Waves public or subscription services that depends on fear, insecurity, worrisome doubt, or plays into your anxiety. We are not trying to "hook" you. We figure if you like the vibes, the ideas and the pictures, you'll stick around.

We give away as much as possible. Even our subscription service is available at no charge to anyone who asks. Several years of experience have taught us that people really do use this  responsibly. We don't want to exclude anyone from any part of Planet Waves. For those who have subscribed, we offer an unconditional refund of your remaining issues if you don't like the service.

And my favorite is that we are a Web service that actually answers the telephone. There must be another one somewhere...but I don't know where. This is Chelsea's job, down in Florida. Our toll-free number is (877) 453-8265. You can even call just to say hello, if you like.

In the long run, my vision for Planet Waves is to develop the site into a news portal that is your first source of information as the world goes through its changes and the adventure of the early 21st century unfolds. As a writer and astrologer, I feel that my job is to support your growth, your creative expansion into the world, your desire to be who you are. Every word I write comes with that intention. As an editor, my job is to connect you with the work of the talented people who contribute to the project.

If you are reading this letter, you're already in the process of discovering what Planet Waves has to offer. I'd like to ask you to help us back a little, encourage our growth, cast a vote for progress, and do your part to facilitate our journey -- so that we can do the same for everyone who comes here.

A little over three years ago, I made the bold decision to create a subscriber service. The entire project had been free prior to then, and I supported it through my astrology consulting fees and lots of creative energy. In August 2002, shortly after I wrote my first stand-in horoscopes for Jonathan Cainer in the Daily Mirror, we began a partial conversion to a subscription site. (To say the least, Jonathan's hand on my shoulder helped me find the confidence to take the step.)

Amazingly -- it worked. A huge pile of bills on my desk disappeared in about two weeks. I hired an assistant named Liana, who got us started and went on her way. A few weeks later, Chelsea arrived in my office wearing her cat-eye glasses, looking and sounding extremely efficient ("At my last job, I scheduled three bosses," she said) and began to get things under control. This freed me up to write more articles; to work with other writers; to develop the vision and make all our progress available to you every day.

Do you need a reason to subscribe, besides the weekly horoscopes, the birthday reports (about 4,000 words per sign each month!), the weekly essays and so on? If you do, this is it. Your subscription makes a difference. And not just for us -- but for everyone who comes to Planet Waves. I don't count it as money but rather as a loving gesture of support that allows us to do our very best for you.

Some of our readers have been uncommonly generous, helping us with equipment, consulting on challenging questions, sending us ideas, donating design projects and artwork -- and so much more. And we love to give it all back to you.

If this seems like an innovative idea today, let's hold out faith that it's how the world becomes in the future. We don't just need to take care of one another -- we actually can.

If you would like to find out more about subscribing, have a look at this link:

    http://planetwavesweekly.com/

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    http://www.planetwavesweekly.com/sales/home.html

If you don't have the cash to sign up, or you want to sign up at a reduced fee, just drop us an email at support@planetwaves.net, or call our toll-free number (during the week) at (877) 453-8265. Comp subscribers can help by spreading the word, contributing ideas, and mainly by having fun here.

We know these are amazing times to be alive. We're also fully aware that many people are struggling to survive, be it for reasons physical or emotional. Our job to help those who can make a difference in their own lives make that difference; and to help raise awareness any way we can.

Thanks for tuning in.

Yours & truly,

ERIC FRANCIS
Paris, Saturday, Nov. 19, 2005
Sun Scorpio, Moon Cancer Aries rising



Saturday, Nov. 19, 2005

Up from the Minors

OF NOTE, in recent years Scorpio has been stirred up by the minor planet Pholus. This has gone on since Oct. 20, 1999. Note that minor planets are akin less to the minor leagues of baseball than they are to a minor scale in music. They are not less important; they are just different, and noticed less often.

Pholus has been working its way out of Scorpio all year, and makes its final transit into Sagittarius Saturday, Nov. 19. I have not written much about this planet, which was the second discovered Centaur, sighted in 1992 (after Chiron, discovered in 1977). But by some odd coincidence, it happens that I wrote a short article on the subject earlier in the week. Here is a brief quote; full article to follow below.

   Pholus has a quality of opening the door to the infinite. Depending on the door, that may or may not be helpful, or seem helpful, but it is what it is and when Pholus has become active, it's necessary to get out of denial and work with the energy consciously.

    But in any event, Pholus has the property of release from situations, opening to new possibilities, and emerging into new states of existence. It is the Centaur of fast-moving changes, or rapid transformations, typically initiated by one's own action. Something as simple as curiosity or a chance encounter may start the chain of events. As Robert von Heeren has so aptly put it, "small cause, big effect."

    The energy of Pholus is, "I would never have done that if I knew what I was getting into," sometimes with the added idea, "but I'm glad I did."

    Pholus, von Heeren adds, is "the catalyst and provider for a landslide-like change (in history for example) and turning points," adding, " Pholus exaggerates energies in their raw state. Pholus is an emphasizer."

So, no major planet activity during the phase of history that brought us the Iraq war, hurricane Katrina and her cousins, the Bush administration, the apparent dissolution of NATO and much else besides. And the personal ramifications are beginning to be felt not just by the families of veterans or by those displaced in storms; most people are feeling some effect, and the more sensitive ones are noticing all the more.

No major planet activity -- just some really significant minor planet movement.

This is the phase of history where we will look back and say enough people finally got it to catalyze a shift in consciousness, at least in our civilization. Unlike one year ago, most people really do understand that climate change is real and that the Iraq war is going nowhere faster and faster, but note the Pholus-like energy involved in both situations and so much else in the world today. There has been a kind of opening that built in momentum -- along with awareness of the problems.

And while some people may on some level be able to deny that these things affect them personally, there is a question that's becoming evermore obvious -- what kind of world we want to live in?

Of astrological note: Pholus entered Scorpio in 1999 under the influence of a fixed grand cross (the famous total solar eclipse of August 1999 just predates the transit) and leaves Scorpio under the influence of a fixed grand cross that unfolds throughout the current season and into the next. The fixed grand cross is an aspect of transcendence; of going from one level to the next.

----

Read more about three Centaurs changing signs and the story of Pholus in Sagittarius in this week's edition of Planet Waves Weekly. Also get your weekly horoscope, birthday reports (that are worth the whole subscription fee, and which are archived going back two years!) and much else, and have the deep personal satisfaction, that reaches from the spiritual level to the most earthy, mud-in-your-toes worldly level that can only following the affairs of the planet and the planets. We always present the news in a personally relevant, growth-oriented way, so if you're bummed about the world or "wonder what it all means" Planet Waves is the place to read your news.

Instant access for all subscribers! I am working on a brilliant new pitch for Planet Waves subscriptions, which will be our best promotional spiel ever! You will love it! But you know why to subscribe, and I invite the readers who have been coming back for years to make their little contribution to help Planet Waves make its way on the ocean of the Internet.

Read our recent, unsolicited reader feedback here! And thanks for signing up.

http://planetwavesweekly.com/feedback.html



Friday, Nov. 18, 2005

Hey. I'm taking a day off from blogging to wrap up Planet Waves and spend the rest of the day working on a programming project. But Melanie Reinhart sends in this lovely little comic strip that begins to warm up the theme of Sagittarius.

http://www.nataliedarbeloff.com/interviewgod.html


And you can visit Melanie at http://melaniereinhart.com/ -- lots of great writing on the Centaurs, and her spiritual approach to astrology is nice and warm, and pretty cool too...

-------------

And from the Paris files, a reader writes in, sending from a French email address:

"Finally I found myself destitute in Paris. Beautiful city. All this time
people had been uncommonly kind with me. Even rough rides had been
supportive too which was lucky because I was at my last gasp and
vulnerable pretty much everywhere. In Paris (during 3 weeks) everyone
smiled at me in the nicest possible ways. The friend of a friend I met
on arrival said as I turned to go no he couldn’t give me a job actually
and he didn’t know why he was saying it but if I ever needed money he
would happily give me some. I asked with some humour (and 30 francs* in
my pocket) and thin for the only time in my life and dressed to the
nines (sharp flattering haircut too with flirty big-cat colours) if I
looked liked the sort of woman who needed money, and he just laughed and
said praps it was the well used walking boots hanging from my rucksack
in reception! People stopped me on the street to tell me I was
beautiful, what a stunning smile I had, to give me free coffee or cake
with a wink/chut!, or keep the time I hadn’t used from the time before
on the internet, or to ask (3 in the space of a km) if they could help,
did I need money, was there anything they could do, when I was finally
in tears. My parents gave me money. In Paris I wrote a list of the
things I needed rather than wanted. Everything I could think of in any
direction of my life. I asked for the blessing of the city, and put a
beautiful flower in the river to honour a beautiful woman and ask her
help really to get myself into the current of my life, and walked and
walked and walked. And smoked and smoked and smoked."

---

*30 francs was about $5, now it is equivalent of about 4 euros.



Thursday, Nov. 17, 2005

"Back in a bit, hang loose, the Full Moon has passed and I've noticed that a lot of the tension is out of the air. Any similar experiences, or different?"

"Well, yes and no," writes Kyla.

I have to agree. This has been one of those weeks that proves astrology true. Basic things have been rather different than normal. The Full Moon and a Mercury station, which I forgot to mention was and is square Uranus (Mercury in Sagg and Uranus in Pisces). Sometimes when you get hung up on the minor planets (as I did in Friday's edition, talking about Mercury conjunct Ixion) it's possible to either miss, or miss mentioning, a major planet aspect. Fortunately there is enough redundancy in the symbolism that one usually covers for the other -- but a Mercury station square Uranus is pretty demented. Shall we say surprising?

What I have noticed most about this week is how just about every routine has been blown. One of the ways I write what I do is I keep to routines, and an intense schedule where I pretty know what I've got to do every day, in theory anyway. This week the whole thing was taken out of circulation, up for grabs, etc. Which I do not mind because the grind gets tired and the best way to keep my creativity fresh is to do things differently and occasionally from a different place.

So on one level, I had the chance to completely ignore my usual early-week horoscope writing schedule; instead, I began work, with help from some very capable astrologers, on my (personally) long awaited project of delineating the first seven named Centaur planets (Chiron, Nessus, Pholus, Asbolus, Hylonome, Chariklo and Pylenor).

As Kyla mentioned, she interpreted, "Back in a bit" as, "Back in, a bit"! That's a good one.

Of note, not everyone handles this kind of energy gracefully. Turning up the heat a bit more, we are still under a Mars retrograde; a grand fixed cross is fading in and out of existence; and Chiron, Nessus and Pholus are changing signs (into Aquarius, Aquarius and Sagittarius, respectively, this time for good). Pluto, also of note, is direct and headed for a very close encounter with the Galactic Core. Jupiter is about to make an exact square to Saturn for the first time in 14 years. These are things astrologers look back on and notice many years later.

I mentioned yesterday that I've begun to interpret Mercury retrograde as "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Over the weekend I noticed that my Canon Eos digital camera was starting to act weird in the download photos mode. There are a lot of variables as to why that could be: the computer, the software, the cable, or the camera. Finally, through about two days of deductive logic, I figured out that it was one CompactFlash card that was the common thread. But by then it was too late: I had filled the card with 259 photos in a session on Tuesday evening.

And there was no way those pictures were coming off the card any regular way. There's a good photo store in my neighborhood (very friendly, that's 51% of "good") and Alexander there took the card, put it into his PC's card reader and said, nothing shows up. I assured him I could see the photos when the card was in the camera.

He said they'd had a lot of trouble with 1gb cards, so I bought a 512mb card to replace it, as well as a card reader (small investment of 29 euros that I planned, in part, as a Mercury retrograde experiment) and got a theory. Maybe I just needed to delete a couple of photos from the card and it would work; full disks are not happy disks, and though I've filled CF cards in the past, this one happened with Mercury retrograde, so the problem surfaced. Merc Rx is a great time to find out what is wrong and, acting minimally, to repair the weak spots in any system.

Anyway I went home, deleted five pictures; took one new one for good measure; and the card's contents appeared and a lot of artwork that could not, in truth, ever have been replicated was saved.

Then, right after downloading the card, the hard drive on my laptop filled up -- a warning I have never personally seen until yesterday. So, I carefully backed up about 10 gigs onto my external drive and deleted some materials.

Regarding whether France is friendly. Yasmin Boland (basically, my neighbor over in the 7th Arronod; I am in the 5th; we do think it's funny and/or some bizarre past life thing that two Cainerite astrologers landed within about 2km of one another, coming from opposite ends of the Earth [Tasmania via Sydney and New York City via Seattle]) commented about how friendly Paris is, how it's the land of saying hello on the streets. Yaz, I believe you!

It is true that different people have different reactions to a place and often see it as totally distinctive than others. It's amazing how unique each response is, and how some people just have a deep sense of belonging somewhere -- or not. I actually meet people who say Amsterdam is full of assholes and is a ratty, boring town, and when I go there, the energy seems friendly, open, it's the most fun I usually have anywhere...and this can have to do with how our personal chart interacts with a locale, or what you were accustomed to growing up; or many other factors. (My Pluto rising line goes through Amsterdam to the degree.)

Also, I hear from a lot of women how they don't like how much attention they get from men in Paris; I have never heard a guy complain that he doesn't like how much attention he gets from women (anywhere, and if one said so, everyone would start laughing). And I say to the ladies, "You took an hour to get yourself together, you look great. You think nobody's going to notice you?" This is not Spain, Miami or the Bronx where the vibes from men are expected to be a lot more high-energy, ranging from assertive personal approaches to horn honking to catcalls. Things seem pretty darned subdued here to me; pretty courtly for Planet Earth in the 21st century. People really do say mesdames and messieurs in their hyper-polite singsong tone.

In response to comments about the riots being a reaction to the repression of France, yes. I see this as a direct uprising against that 'hold yourself in' attitude, at least as done in Paris. (Other parts of France are VERY different -- particularly Brittany). And it seems to be a very good sign, that society is moving from underneath, and that a fire has been lit under the government.

Regarding the creatives we associate with this town, it is true that Paris nurtures expression, but note as well that most of the great artists and writers who have come through have indeed been doing just that: Hemingway, Joyce, etc., etc., etc. Of the artists at 59, rue de Rivoli, a cooperative-artists' squat (search photo gallery please), I would say about half were born outside France (many, however were born here). This town does push people who show up here to flourish in their creativity, but in many ways French culture nurtures and enhances something in outsiders that is not exactly nurtured in those who started here.

I am also pretty sure it would not be so supportive to outsiders if the typically banal social scene was available to everyone. It is not quite available; Paris culture envies its visitors while accepting them (psychologically) only reluctantly. And the way to get art and writing done is specifically NOT to sit in a café talking from 7 pm till midnight.

But for sure, there is an energy here that I have noticed pushes me out of my shell, and I find it a very easy place to focus on what needs to be done. And it nice being able to go out for eggs at 3 a.m.

Do I like Paris? After more than a year -- yes. It has been a challenging adjustment, but at least it happened (it never happened in the Seattle area). I have more friends who are sticking in town, I'm getting over the culture shock, getting better at understanding what people are saying to me, it's great to be in a big city, and the world is changing fast.

It's about to get faster, as Chiron and Nessus make their full conjunction, and as Jupiter and Saturn form their once-per-14 years square aspect.

----------

Parallel Worlds...

http://planetwaves.net/charts/parallel_worlds_charts/

HERE IS a little preview of Parallel Worlds, the 2006 annual edition of Planet Waves. This is the chart section that it's taken a team of four of us about two months to pull together. We'll also be adding a minor planet ephemeris lookup, with one click.

The real question is: what does it all mean???

Parallel Worlds will be the eighth annual edition of Planet Waves. It's included with ALL subscriptions. This is a full Web page, now in development, that includes extended write-ups for every sign; overviews of the year's astrology, into 2007, by myself and several other writers; a Mayan astrology report; an archive of 2005 birthday reports; and articles on a variety of news topics, from the state of water on the planet to avian influenza; and many more little lights, whistles and LCD displays. There will be a review of 2005 astrology as well.

Parallel Worlds is included with every subscription to Planet Waves.

You can subscribe or renew here:

http://planetwavesweekly.com/sales/home.html



Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2006

I'VE RECEIVED quite a few interesting comments on life in Paris from Planet Waves readers, regarding yesterday's edition. I am, however, running super late today -- so I'll be back with a blog in some hours. There is an editor in New York very eager to see the December monthly Planet Waves. And I ain't quite there yet!

Back in a bit, hang loose, the Full Moon has passed and I've noticed that a lot of the tension is out of the air. Any similar experiences, or different?

    e

PS, I've decided that the way to explain Mercury retrograde is, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I'll have the story of the 1GB Compact Flash card for you, a perfect illustration.



Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2005

MERCURY now is retrograde, and as of Tuesday morning Paris time, Luna is about 12 hours from the Full, in the sign Taurus. For the past few days I've been noticing various dependable digital devices just stop working for no explainable reason in that peculiarly Mercury retrograde way. It is difficult to maintain that posture of "don't fix it if it's not really broken" and "stay calm because the main issue with Mercury retrograde is our mental level reaction to what goes wrong."

The Moon has been working its way through the remnants of the grand fixed cross since yesterday, perhaps stirring up some emotions and a little trouble.

According to The Guardian, French president Jacque Chirac admitted to a "profound malaise" in his society, of which the recent (and to some extent ongoing) riots are a result. I don't know where there is not a profound malaise in the world, but I have definitely noticed the French version, living in Paris more than a year.

Over time I've figured out that I'm different than most people, as in really different, and therefore respond to live differently; but living in a lot of different countries and regions over the past eight years has taught me a little about observing my environment. And I ask a lot of people how they experience the same places I do; the responses are often startlingly different.

What is really the most disturbing about people on the streets of Paris is how humorless they tend to be. This is a culture where it's appropriate to shut down tight. You don't say hello to people you don't know, or you're not supposed to. Yes, it happens, but the general grain of society is against it. Once you know someone a little, it's different, and it's different between men and women. As far as the guys go, once I've come back a few times, I can walk into a café and all the waiters say hello and shake my hand -- fulfilling the "fraternity" part of the national motto.

But you have to be a member of some in group to be accepted in this way, no matter how token or trivial that in group may be. Until then, you're looked down on, and this takes some getting used to. And generally "fraternity" does not breach the gender gap.

Contrast this with New York City, where everyone is basically on the same level. That's our version of the game of life. Sure, you put on your little psychic helmet to go out, but generally, as soon as someone talks to you, you're friendly, you respond in an affable way. And basically, few in Manhattan feel like they are in a position to take a huge attitude, beautiful women included. I like to joke about the time Frank Sinatra bought a hot dog from the Sabrett guy on 5th Avenue. He got in line just like everyone else.

I find it somewhat odd that the friendliest people on the streets of Paris are cops, judging from whether someone has their heart open or closed when they respond. I don't know if the typical "holier than thou" attitude, this bizarre refusal to smile back comportment of Paris, has always been so strong; people tell me it's just part of the environment. But it seems pretty thick, and it's taken me a long time to put it together that beneath it is insecurity, loneliness and the desire to break out and be authentic.

I've adapted to life in Paris by really pushing myself to do precisely this. I am fortunate to be a natural born politician and do my best to get to know everyone I encounter regularly, if just a little. I shake the hand of every dog (I am Mayeur des Chiens) and I refuse to play the game of glum. Sure, I can pout with the best of them. But I am thrilled to break the ultimate taboo of laughing out loud in public.

Just don't ride your motorcycle on the sidewalk anywhere near me, or you're going to get the speech of your life in my shitty French.

http://www.sabrett.com/



Riots are a class act - and often they're the only alternative
France now accepts the need for social justice. No petition, peaceful march
or letter to an MP could have achieved this

Gary Younge
Monday November 14, 2005
The Guardian (Manchester UK)

'IF THERE IS no struggle, there is no progress," said the African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass. "Those who profess to favour freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters ... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

By the end of last week it looked as though the fortnight of struggle between minority French youth and the police might actually have yielded some progress. Condemning the rioters is easy. They shot at the police, killed an innocent man, trashed businesses, rammed a car into a retirement home, and torched countless cars (given that 400 cars are burned on an average New Year's Eve in France, this was not quite as remarkable as some made out).

But shield your ears from the awful roaring waters for a moment and take a look at the ocean. Those who wondered what French youth had to gain by taking to the streets should ask what they had to lose. Unemployed, socially excluded, harassed by the police and condemned to poor housing, they live on estates that are essentially open prisons. Statistically invisible (it is against the law and republican principle to collect data based on race or ethnicity) and politically unrepresented (mainland France does not have a single non-white MP), their aim has been simply to get their plight acknowledged. And they succeeded.

Even as the French politicians talked tough, the state was suing for peace with the offer of greater social justice. The government unrolled a package of measures that would give career guidance and work placements to all unemployed people under 25 in some of the poorest suburbs; there would be tax breaks for companies who set up on sink estates; a €1,000 (£675) lump sum for jobless people who returned to work as well as €150 a month for a year; 5,000 extra teachers and educational assistants; 10,000 scholarships to encourage academic achievers to stay at school; and 10 boarding schools for those who want to leave their estates to study.

"We need to respond strongly and quickly to the undeniable problems facing many inhabitants of the deprived neighbourhoods," said President Chirac. From the man who once said that immigrants had breached the "threshold of tolerance" and were sending French workers "mad" with their "noise and smell" this was progress indeed.

"The impossible becomes probable through struggle," said the African American academic Manning Marable. "And the probable becomes reality."

And the reality is that none of this would have happened without riots. There was no petition these young people could have signed, no peaceful march they could have held, no letter they could have written to their MPs that would have produced these results.

Amid the charred chassis and broken glass there is a vital point of principle to salvage: in certain conditions rioting is not just justified but may also be necessary, and effective. From the poll tax demonstrations to Soweto, history is littered with such cases; what were the French and American revolutions but riots endowed by Enlightenment principles and then blessed by history?

When all non-violent, democratic means of achieving a just end are unavailable, redundant or exhausted, rioting is justifiable. When state agencies charged with protecting communities fail to do so or actually attack them, it may be necessary in self-defence.

After the 1967 riots in American cities, President Johnson set up the Kerner commission. It concluded: "What white Americans have never fully understood - but what the Negro can never forget - is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it." How else was such a damning indictment of racial discrimination in the US ever going to land on the president's desk?

Following the inner-city riots across Britain in 1981, Lord Scarman argued that "urgent action" was needed to prevent racial disadvantage becoming an "endemic, ineradicable disease threatening the very survival of our society". His conclusions weren't perfect. But the kernel of a message black Britons had been trying to hammer home for decades suddenly took centre stage. A few years later Michael Heseltine wrote a report into the disturbances in Toxteth entitled It Takes a Riot.

Rioting should be neither celebrated nor fetishised, because ultimately it is a sign not of strength but weakness. Like a strike, it is often the last and most desperate weapon available to those with the least power. Rioting is a class act. Wealthy people don't do it because either they have the levers of democracy at their disposal, or they can rely on the state or private security firms to do their violent work for them, if need be.

The issue of when and how rioting is effective is more problematic. Riots raise awareness of a situation, but they cannot solve it. For that you need democratic engagement and meaningful negotiation. Most powerful when they stem from a movement, all too often riots are instead the spontaneous, leaderless expression of pent-up frustration void of an agenda or clear demands. Many of these French youths may have had a ball last week, but what they really need is a party - a political organisation that will articulate their aspirations.

If Kerner and Scarman are anything to go by, the rioters will not be invited to help write the documents that could shape racial discourse for a generation. Nor are they likely to be the primary beneficiaries.

"During the 80s, everyone was desperate to have a black face in their organisation to show the race relations industry that they were allowing black people to get on," says the editor of Race & Class, Ambalavaner Sivanandan. "So the people who made this mobility possible were those who took to the streets. But they did not benefit." The same is true of the black American working class that produced Kerner.

Given these uncertain outcomes, riots carry great risk. The border between political violence and criminality becomes blurred, and legitimate protest risks degrading into impotent displays of hypermasculinity. Violence at that point becomes not the means to even a vague aspiration but the end in itself, and half the story gets missed. We heard little from young minority French women last week, even though they have been the primary target of the state's secular dogma over the hijab.

Finally, violence polarises. The big winner of the last two weeks may yet prove to be Sarkozy. The presidential-hopeful courted the far-right with his calculated criticisms of the rioters; if he wins he could reverse any gains that may arise. Le Pen also lurks in the wings.

The riots in France run all these risks and yet have still managed to yield a precarious kind of progress. They demand our qualified and critical support.

Power has made its concessions. But how many, for how long and to whom depends on whether those who made the demands take their struggle from the margins to the mainstream: from the street to the corridors of power.

g.younge@guardian.co.uk



Sunday, Nov. 13, 2005

HEARING NEWS that Paris is under some kind of lockdown (see CNN article below) I geared up, bought a Metro ticket for the night, and went out on an investigative tourism mission. Having never been to Champs Elysees, I started there...taking the train to Place de la Concorde and walking the entire distance from the obelisk to the Arc de Triomphe, to survey the forces defending the city from inside.

For this weekend, all public gatherings are banned in France. I kind of doubt that involves canceling plays and movies. So it must pertain to certain kinds of public gatherings by certain kinds of people in certain kinds of places, but of course since France is socialist, it applies to everyone everywhere even though it does not.

From my copwatching activies I can report that there were indeed more than usual for a Saturday night. But it was not the typical French scene of a police-to-ordinary citizen ratio that rivals Smith College’s faculty-student ratio (where everyone has their own private riot officer to read the Shakespeare sonnets into his or her ear), though I realize that quite a few guys have been sent out to the front lines north of the city. Maybe along the length of the entire boulevard, about two miles, I saw 100 of them. Probably far fewer. There was definitely some kind of strategic planning involved in the arrangement, but in truth it would not have been enough to stop even a modest riot. Not that anyone wanted to go wiggy; Champs Elysees is basically like an airport runway with department stores all along either side and a big monument on either end.

There did appear, as well, to be more than usual official movement around the city tonight, although as I mentioned, the French police policy can be summed up in one word, MORE. I was reading some out-takes to the Jerry Garcia biography a few months ago, posted to the author’s web page, and read the story of a little Grateful Dead show in Paris in the 70s where they put out about 400 riot police on duty for a small theatre full of stoned hippies roaming Europe on $5 and a ticket a day.

The thing is this: not rioting is always voluntary on the part of the people, and as we have seen in the northern burbs, no matter how much power you bring to bear on a situation, people still do what they want.

My most exciting anti-establishment moment for the evening was snapping a photo in McDonald’s. I will admit to going in for coffee and fries just to see what was going on in there. Taking pictures is strictly prohibited in McDonald’s, at least in France. And they hire goons to enforce the rule. However, despite this I succeeded in taking one photo (not a masterpiece, but I plan to sell it to Wendy’s) and then strolling past the guy pretending not to see him or notice that he was a security guard. People are not generally confrontational in Paris. Every now and then when I have to revert to being a New Yorker and get in someone’s face, they act like they’ve never seen anything like it in their entire lives; that’s the look in their eyes, like everything they once thought of as reality is melting away.

(When might I do this? Fair warning — don’t ride your motorcycle on the sidewalk anywhere near me.)

The most interesting photo of the night — the Eiffel Tower, through the glass ceiling of a sightseeing boat — should be posted pretty soon. I have some other witty things to report, but it’s way late and I just felt like saying that if there’s a lockdown here, it’s pretty mellow, but then, on the other hand, I am very concerned about Nicolas Sarkozy (mentioned in this week’s Astrology Secrets Revealed). And on that note — my ‘fixed stars’ response in the new ASR is totally screwed up and I’ve asked for it to be pulled till the next edition, when I can fix it.

Fiesta (above, or click “prior covers”) says hello. She’s actually about a six month old kitten, tied for cutest critter in the cosmos. It’s a very large tie. Now for CNN.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/11/12/france.rioting.ap/index.html



Comment: The two brothers, the two towers

Hi, Eric.

I am just now reading your Q&A column at Jon Cainer's site. Fascinating as always. Re: your remark,

"The French national chart has another super-weird connection to the Sept. 11 chart -- involving the Moon's placement at 28+ degrees Gemini. This was the exact position of the Moon when the World Trade Center was attacked; and, in another genuinely bizarre synchronicity, during the earthquake that created the Asian tsunamis late last year, which killed a lot of Muslims. There must be a Muslim connection to this degree, but I don't know what it is yet."

I had a screwy flash:  Gemini is the sign of the Twins, brothers. Isaac and Ishmael were brothers, but one (Isaac) founded the line that generated Judaism and the other (Ishmael) founded the line that generated Islam.

Gemini's symbol is the two pillars -- you can see Twin Towers or a symbol of duality.

28 degrees is down to the wire, the end of the sign, time to wrap things up and move on ... so ... Duality is ending, the Brothers are reunited (we've got a lot of welcoming and working-out of old karma to do with our Muslim brothers & sisters), the incoming energy is Cancer (the Moon), Mother of everyone, a common home.

There is also a Native American prophecy that at the end of this world, the Brothers will be reunited.

When the Twin Towers fell to dust, a lot of hearts opened around the world. This opening of hearts refuses to see Muslim people -- or any people for that matter -- as The Enemy. We are one human family.

What do you think?

Best wishes and tons of love,

Joy Shayne Laughter
Seattle, WA

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes YOU come alive, and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive!."
 -- Harold Thurman Whitman



From tonight's edition of Astrology Secrets Revealed

Dear Eric,
 
This is a super, super-important time for me, like all of us, and I really could use a clear understand of what the 'dark forces' of the universe are. I am asking you because I see you as a surfer riding the feared wave, like the hot veteran surfers who broke through the taboo (and their own growing apprehension) of getting in the path of the tidal wave on a river in South America and found it was the ride of a lifetime...and also inspired courage in the local kids, who immediately started practicing surfing for themselves near their homes on the river banks. I ask for your characteristic compassionate and passionate perspective, because the old dogmatic images mostly inspire fear in me, and I want to go beyond that. I have work to do, and I need more understanding so that I can develop my focus and intentions.  
 
Is there necessarily a balance between dark and light? Or do we really have enemies? Meaning, is a universe of pure light what we want, as in all creation is moving toward full awareness and love? Or is there some evil other seeking to destroy or enslave us? Would that mean our love-universe is not the only universe? Or is the battle actually an internal one between the ego and the true self that we act out personally and make as big as the story of the universe? Then the answer would be simplified, brought down to the questions of self-understanding, selflove, faith, maturity. What is the real battle, Eric?
 
Thanks and a bushel of light to you,

Jennifer



Thursday, Nov. 10, 2005

THOUGH IT may not seem like much to some, particularly those who are used to hearing about people thrown in to Guantanamo Bay with no charges left there four years, the British Parliament's House of Commons defeated a plan last night that would have kept "terror suspects" in jail for 90 days with no charges. That was at 4:56 pm GMT in London.

It is a defeat for Tony Blair who, like Bush, has developed the disturbing habit of making up the God's honest truth out of air. Living in the international world that we do, it's a good example for the Americans, who certainly need a little leadership at this point.

Here is the article from The Independent.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article325954.ece



Bird Talk

Thank you everyone for your really fun words of wisdom on capturing mischievous cockatiels, and other details about the birds you love. When I wondered why I let these two out of their cage, it occurred to me, "Of course you let them out!"

They stayed on top of my bookshelf until Paul, their guy (whose design studio is in my building), came back, put on gloves and basically got hold of them and plunked them into their cage. We did fly them around the room a bit to tucker them out; a good laugh. I knew I was going to get a lot of fun emails, and they really were, including some advice from Garfield that you have to be quiet when sneaking up on a bird. The new cover is co-dedicated to him.

Nice to hear from you, truly! I am sorry I could not answer every response personally.

I've spend the past 72 hours writing nearly nonstop -- three horoscopes yesterday (a record), a massive edition of Astrology Secrets Revealed for tomorrow that looks at the astrology of recent French history, good vs. evil and a bunch besides -- it is time for bed and Simone de Beauvoir -- hey, not such a bad date. We are having a long, satisfying and meaningful affair.

Catch you tomorrow.

    e



Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2005

THE WORLD is in a truly astonishing state -- benighted, and somehow, if I really use my imagination, awakening to its condition and to the potential we have. We have gone through a long, long phase of apathy; that is the word. I've always been annoyed by this word, but if you break it down to its roots, it means not feeling.

Four news stories from yesterday reflected the shape of reality in the dark sense of the word, three of them involving Iraq. To me it seems like the real stories reflecting what you might call the light side are happening on the individual level. And it is true that a lot of people have now become involved in solutions -- purely through getting involved in rescue and rebuilding efforts in troubled areas, from New Orleans to Kashmir.

And kudos to everyone brewing biodiesel in their backyard.

Seeing protests yesterday in the UK over China's occupation of Tibet, timed with the official state visit of President Ho, was like watching a hole in the illusion open up. Her Majesty prancing around with the leader of a country that executes 10,000 people a year. It was good to finally see real rage being vented over Tibet. T-shirts don't quite make the point.

Then there was seeing the video footage of the wreckage of the car where two of the lawyers for one of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants were caught in an assassination attempt; one was killed and the other injured. There is no way they're going to have a trial for this man; who would testify? How will the jury even survive? At the end of this, Saddam is going to be beatified; he is being made into a martyr. That is dark irony. I suggest they move the trial to California and make the movie at the same time they do the real thing; the film will come out faster and they'll save a lot on the budget doing them at the same time.

The third pertained to birth defects in Iraq since the war began. I don't even have the strength to watch the video documentary on http://truthout.org at this point. But it's linked from the cover of that site if you want to see it. I know it's a stretch for people to care about birth defects in Iraq because it's a challenge to get them to move out of a college dormitory that contains chemicals that cause the same problems (i.e., SUNY New Paltz). Nothing has made me feel like more of an ass than explaining to a college woman that her dorm contains dioxin, having her cheerfully say, "Thanks!" and walking back inside.

The last involved the revelation on Italian television that the United States is using white phosphorous bombs, which burn people alive, on civilians in Iraq (that story is below, via BBC). By any reasonable definition, these are chemical weapons, and they are being used on a civilian population. Honestly, I thought I had read about the last of these in all those Allan Ginsberg anti-Vietnam poems.

I guess we really do have to go through this twice. Warning, it may be inconvenient.

Someone who corresponds with me regularly, Pat Bishop, wrote in tonight, expressing my feelings better than I could.

"I'm sitting here with stunned, deepening grief for the unspeakable crimes and torment we have caused these innocent people, who happened to be standing over oil. No, we didn't just kill them, we destroyed them hideously with the deepest evil and cruelty ever witnessed in this world."
 
Of the people who fraudulently created the war -- familiar names, top US government officials, all of whom are now being criminally investigated -- she said, "Now that the lid is off and they're exposed it's OUR karma" if we do not act.

PS, the most brilliant idea ever -- sending White House officials to ETHICS CLASS! That's like sending the rioters in Clichy-sous-Bous to fire prevention training. Hey, maybe that's not such a bad idea.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/08/bush.ap/index.html



Hello world, on a personal note, is anyone into taking care of birds? If so, I would appreciate a little advice on getting two cockatiels back into their cage. They are not tame; they are not wild; they have their flight feathers; Mrs. Oiseau bites; they are perched on my book shelves; happy, calm and cute. I've tried suggesting politely that they go back (and tried picking up the Mrs., but she has a long, flexible neck and a respectable beak), but we're not communicating. I know there must be someone with a plan; this cannot be the first time this has ever happened. If so -- pls drop me a note, bookofblue@gmail.com. Thank you!

    e



US 'uses incendiary arms' against civilians in Iraq

Italian state TV, Rai, has broadcast a documentary accusing the US military of using of phosphorus bombs against civilians in the Iraqi city of Falluja.

In the film, eyewitnesses and ex-US soldiers who served in Iraq said white phosphorus bombs were used in built-up areas in the insurgent-held city. Rai says this amounts to the illegal use of chemical arms, though such bombs are considered incendiary devices.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4417024.stm



Tuesday, November 8, 2005

FOR THE MOMENT, the grand fixed cross has moved on. But the configuration returns in early December and again in mid January (in high style, with a Full Moon), and there is the long-term astrology to think of.

By that I am referencing the ongoing, long-term conjunction of Chiron and Nessus in late Capricorn and early Aquarius that has been one of the more energized minor planet events of the past eight or so months. Both Chiron and Nessus (a Centaur, much like Chiron, discovered 1993) are in their last moments in Capricorn -- a cycle that has pretty much defined the "post 9/11 world" and its nonstop obsessions with corporate and governmental power, or rather their obsessions with us.

At the moment, the Moon is in Aquarius, sextile (at 60 degrees) to Mercury in Sagittarius. Mercury is getting ready to station retrograde on Nov. 14, through Dec. 4 (it's been in shadow phase for about two weeks, which I've neglected to mention in the midst of so much else going on). So what happens in early December is that both Mars and Mercury, two of the more noticeable planets, station direct within about one week of one another. At the same time, Venus is getting ready for a rare retrograde in Aquarius and Capricorn.

The year caps off with the first of three squares of Jupiter and Saturn in the fixed signs, which comes to its first peak when Version 2 of the grand fixed cross returns Dec. 5 (Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune, with the Sun in Sagittarius on the Great Attractor) and then again in Version 3 on January 15 (same planets, same signs, just a little further along and Mars in direct motion -- oh, and Chiron is back in Aquarius to stay, along with Nessus -- and that is a  big difference because with this shift, the emphasis comes back to "the people" rather than "the powers that be").

All in all, we're in the midst of a full-on inner planet shuffle, with Mercury, Venus and Mars chanting directions all around our heads during the next three months, and some slow movers (Jupiter, Saturn, Chiron) setting the backdrop.

It's definitely a time to take advantage of these kinds of changes and seeming instability rather than get caught in the shuffle. But to do this it's necessary to keep obligations down to a minimum and actually deal with your environment rather than expectations, or to be guided exclusively by fear. It's likely that the fear factory is going to keep churning out its fraudulent products over the next few months, and that as the DC dinosaur begins to lose its grip it's going to thrash and continue unleashing the furies.

Your life goes on, but as the planet heats up, your private life continues and develops in ever closer proximity to all the other lives around you. Whether we realize it or not, we are at this phase of history being pushed closer and closer together. And at the same time we are being taken to the core of ourselves. And believe it or not, it's possible to sleep through such intense or awesome developments; under most circumstances, as long as society is functioning, it's possible to withdraw.

By March (once again) an entirely new reality takes hold -- as Pluto comes within a quarter of a degree of the Galactic Center and its massive black hole. And some people will sleep through this as well. Do yourself a huge favor -- stay up, take part, pay attention, reach out. The world will reach back.

Okay, I've got some horoscopes to write, in particular Lemonade for January and the next couple of weeklies. If you'd like to receive those and support Planet Waves, its people and its projects, you're cordially invited to do so. The 2006 annual horoscope is in progress -- called Parallel Worlds. For the past two months I've been organizing the writing team (for the articles) and the astrology research project. With any luck at all, we've got quite a fun astrology project to offer you.

If you'd like to get psyched up, here are some recent comments you may not have seen, from my colleagues...

    http://planetwavesweekly.com/book/quotes.html

And if you'd like to catapult right to the signup page, here you go. Every subscription DIRECTLY supports our work, and as you've seen over the past three years that we've been offering them, our entire project has only grown and improved.

    http://planetwavesweekly.com/sales/home.html

Remember, comp subscriptions are available by writing to us.

Thanks for tuning in, and please do your best to have a clear and loving day.

    live from Paris, staying safe
    
    e

PS, for those who missed the bonus edition over the weekend, you can sign up for it here. It's one of my more recent articles on sexuality -- a true story, too.

Click here: http://planetwaves.net/button.html



This is how easy art is, just be real for a second.

Thanks Danielle for sending this in.

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/





Monday, Nov. 7, 2005

"I take part because it's the only way I can express myself. All the other doors are shut."
-- French youth protester on BBC World, reported by Richard Bilton.


NO QUESTION there is a grand cross in progress...starring Neptune and co-starring the Sun, Mars and Saturn...this is a fixed grand cross (retrograde Mars in Taurus; Saturn in Leo; Sun in Scorpio; Neptune in Aquarius). The trigger is Sun opposite Mars, which (please bear with the time zone listing) is exact Monday morning at 8:58 am Paris time, 7:58 am London time, 2:58 am New York time, 11:58 pm Sunday California time, and in Sydney at 6:58 pm Monday.

The Sun-Mars opposition occurs at the exact midpoint of the Taurus-Scorpio; and it is the exact midpoint in time of the Mars retrograde. In other words, with this aspect the Mars retrograde process, which began over the summer, is exactly half over. At the same time, the Sun and Mars make a precise square to Neptune, which is a shock to this rather sleepy energy.

Of note: this is rather similar to a grand fixed cross on Jan. 10-12 or so, only Mars is direct this next time around (hmm) and the Scorpio piece becomes Jupiter and not the Sun. And Jupiter in early Scorpio is close enough to be in the mix now. With Jupiter at 1,300 times the size of the Earth, we are dealing with the same joke as, "Where does a 600 pound gorilla sit?"

The global news we're seeing is a stunning dramatization of the grand cross: a deadly tornado in Indiana, truly extraordinary rioting and protest spreading across France, a violent uprising against George Bush and disruption of the conference of Americas presidents in Argentina, Bush's administration in serious scandal, the Iraq war descending ever-deeper into disaster, and fears of Avian Influenza spreading the globe.

And a lot of people waking up...as Allen Ginsberg put it in "An Eastern Ballad,"

I have become another child
I wake to see the world go wild

Rare aspects like this are about turning points, and we've had a year of more-than-usual activity heaped on the Aries Point. As astrology would tell the story, it's all part of one long and interrelated series of related aspects, with the Aries Point being the most consistent factor among all of them. Remember the double Capricorn Full Moon, with the first setting off the June 21, 2001 summer solstice total solar eclipse.

The involvement of the Aries Point now is that Venus and the Moon made a conjunction there this weekend, in the first degree of Capricorn. Plus, Sun opposite Mars is exactly 45 degrees (a semi-square) and 135 degrees (a sesquiquadrate) to the point -- aspects related to the square and known to be trigger points in the calendar or the general charts, and in individual charts.

To say the very least, we are in a watershed moment -- and it has been quite a wild 12 months going back to the presidential election last November. Indeed, we could look at the re-selection of Bush as the first of a long series of disasters that have shaken the world in the past four seasons.

Yet was Bush taking power again really a disaster? I mean it was in the stars, meaning it's not a dis - aster. But...it's difficult to see him assuming the position for four additional years as progress, except for one thing: generally, before change happens on any kind of large, there needs to be polarization. This way, people can decide what they really want, rather than floating along without choosing what is important to them -- the precise story of the Clinton years. Today, it's a lot more difficult to be lulled to sleep on the environment, the issue of US imperialist tendencies, and generally how mean the old farts in Washington are to people who are struggling in any way at all.

With the current grand cross, we have one of the first aspect structures where Saturn opposite Neptune makes a major appearance, a rare aspect that is precise Aug. 31, 2006, Feb. 28, 2007 and June 25, 2007. A similar pattern then recurs through 2042 -- a cycle that repeats every three decades or so. This is a subject I'll be developing as the process unfolds, but oppositions are expressions of conjunctions, and the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, which occurred through 1989, was part of a triple conjunction and even longer cycle: Uranus conjunct Neptune. So what we are seeing today is the product of a three-planet alignment (Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, energies of three massive planets with glaringly distinct energies) that happened around the year the Berlin Wall fell -- the same year as the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing.

While we're not quite at the exact opposition yet (as mentioned, it begins in August 2006), Neptune aspects have unusually wide orbs of influence. And yet at the same time, they can be unusually precise in the effects. But we're certainly getting a glimpse of the process now.

Individually, how are you experiencing things? It's not necessarily a reflection of the world condition; it depends on how your chart is arranged and how you personally interpret or direct the energies in motion.

And all is not turbulence in the world; I've just seen a report go by about the discovery of the oldest known church in the formerly Holy Land, with an inscription on the altar that it was dedicated to "the god Jesus Christ" and featuring a fish as its central symbol.

Bush for President by Eric Francis - from summer 2004
http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2004/09/backbone/planetwaves/

Some intense pictures of Paris, sponsored by Stouffers™ Corner Bistro™ foodfill:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9911400/displaymode/1107/s/2/

Here is more on 1989:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

"An Eastern Ballad" by Ginsberg:
http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6613&poem=35410

More on the Aries Point is searchable (or up top in the archives) in the Dancing Subterranean Cult of the Aries Point project, i.e., Astrology Secrets Revealed:
http://planetwaves.net/cainer/



Sunday Reading, 11/6

I JUST found this piece on truthout.org -- on the theme of, "Hindsight is 20/20, But This is Ridiculous." Nice bit of writing. But I can answer the writer's question: people want to be on the side that's winning.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110505C.shtml


Re: French Riots

SOME EMAILS are coming in asking about the situation in Paris. I know most of what I know from a combination of English-language media reports (particularly BBC World) and from talking with friends. For the most part the riots and protests -- outright violent clashes with the police, and a lot of arson using Molotov cocktails (gasoline bombs in glass bottles, still cheap despite the price of petrol) -- started last week on the very edge of the city, in Clichy-sous-Bois and have gone on for 10 nights.

Central Paris and any of the neighborhoods I've visited have been quiet.

The uprising was prompted by the electrocution deaths of two teenagers who were, according to reports of witnesses [reported in the press, not that I talked to], being chased by police and tried to take refuge in an electrical substation on Oct. 27. The police deny this.

The deaths occurred in the area of massive housing projects called Cités, where there has long been tension between police and a lot of young people who have absolutely nothing to do and nowhere constructive to vent their energies -- a very old problem.

Cités exist all along the northern edge of the city, where there is horrendous unemployment (20% to 50%, the worse if you're younger), and a general state of desperation, lack of community, lack of easy transit in to the center of town, and a lot of police presence. The whole thing reminds me of A Clockwork Orange, the Stanley Kubrick film. Except it must be noted that the Cités are entirely black and North African in population, where generations of immigrant population and their children have been stashed away by the government. So they are ghettoes in the true definition of that word.

Late last week, the riots and protests began rapidly spreading across France, in part provoked by a right-wing interior minister named Nicolas Sarkozy, who is basically using this as an occasion to look tough and stir up support among supporters of his would-be presidential campaign -- including those supporters of a guy named LePen, who has dominated ultra-conservative politics here for many years and has in the past decade become something of a mainstream phenomenon. LePen, however, is getting old and I guess Sarkozy considers himself a viable candidate for president.

But if it's any indication, I was photographing a butcher carving up a wild boar Saturday morning at Maubert Marketplace, with a long line of posh Parisites waiting for dibs. He called the pig Sarkozy as he sliced away and whacked some ribs with a big meat cleaver; I started laughing; everyone else stood there with a poker face.

The real Sarkozy, who is a major focus of attention now, used the word racaille to describe the youth in the Cités, a mean word loosely translating to scum, not something that a government official should be saying in public. It was either a super-bad judgment error (dubious), or blatant race baiting (my impression). Meanwhile, he is threatening long jail sentences for rioters.

Despite this, one night last week, nearly 1,000 cars were burned; the next night, about 20 buses; business are getting torched, and so on. It's really out of control, a truly ugly scene compared with the utter (almost satiric) calm and civility of central Paris, verging on an outright revolt that has the feeling of a civil war. And now, like Iraq, the war zone is occupied by thousands of riot police. So there is a lot of pressure being exerted by both 'sides' in this struggle. The truth is, the government really has no way to improve things; there is nothing much anyone can do to solve generations-old problems overnight; and there is apparently an on-the-ground political movement that is keeping the situation stirred up among the youth.

Central Paris and the city itself have been quiet -- you would not know something was up except for media reports. However, the protests seem destined to spread to the campuses at some point, though I doubt there will be rioting in the city itself. The anger is just not here basically because the money, jobs, culture and good life are here. It would be encouraging to see some real solidarity within the city with the plight of those on the outside -- but I don't think it would go over well with most people, who may have some sympathy for the rioters but mostly see them as trouble.

There have been some peace marches in the Cités, calling for an end to the violence.

That's what I can tell you for now.

    e



Saturday-Sunday, November 5-6, 2005

FEAR SEEMS to be issue #1. This is always the case in the land of swift death and little bliss, but now that the list of things to be terrified about is getting heaped higher and higher, it suddenly dawned on me one day last week, it was Thursday, to raise the question of fear itself, now. I don't think in all my spiritual explorations and planetary wanderings I have ever put it to myself, or felt this reality within myself, in such obvious terms, where I could actually experience the choice as real. I have always just figured that nearly overwhelming fear was a given; that I would always be scared; that I would have to live with it, work around it, and do my best to get by.

As we can see from homeopathy, which is an excellent window deeper into our physical and psychic reality, the most vivid mental property of influenza is fear. Fear and flu are synonymous, in homeopathic terms. They contain the same energy signature and the same feeling. The planetary fear level has clearly been rising in the years since September 11, since the Iraq invasion, since the pretense of democracy has been stripped away by a system of government that makes monarchy look fair, and since a series of not so natural disasters have made everyone feel vulnerable that they could be next and nobody can help.

The world has never seemed smaller, never more like a little island surrounded by oceans and the mystery of space.

Love and fear may be opposites, and on some level they may be mutually exclusive. But they have a strange way of mixing into a truly strange psychic potion that leads us to question whether we're dead or alive -- or worse, to be going through the nightmare of the split/conflict and having the question swim around beneath consciousness. So while you could say the choice is love or fear, the choice can also be stated as the decision to first become aware of the struggle and then as the choice to be alive or not. As far as I can see and feel, this is actually a decision we make -- not a given. And it may be a choice we need to keep making every single day.

I have not mentioned lately that we reach the peak of the Mars retrograde over the next 36 hours, as the Sun, Mars and Neptune form an exceedingly close T-square on Monday, with Saturn in Leo making it a grand square covering the fixed signs Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. This is the basic astrology of the protests now spreading across France and in Argentina, and many other places.

This is the astrology that says "something gives." Wake up and focus. Snap out of your trance. Stand up and say your name. Take up your mantle.

---

I've got a bonus edition of Planet Waves on hand for anyone who wants it. It's an out-take -- an unused Friday essay. This is what I was writing the Thursday afternoon that all the other political junkies and I were waiting, barely able to breathe, to see if Patrick Fitzgerald was going to close up shop, or whether he was going to close in on the cabal. I could no longer deal with politics, and the stress of this one pending event in government being the one possible indication that there was some vestige of a fair system operating in the United States. The article is called "Cunnilingus and Clover."

In the past, I've given my email address and said "send for the issue" and answered them personally, clicking away...but now we have a mini-me in the form of a script that will send it to you all by itself.

I was thinking of a way to characterize this article, and cruising along on the Metro tonight, I decided that one way to describe it is the story of a fearless moment. Each fearless moment really does deserve its own story. The setting is the Northwest Herbal Faire, one August afternoon in 2003 in the far-flung corner of the United States, way out on the Western frontier, walking distance to British Columbia.

To have this sent to you, please click this link: http://planetwaves.net/button.html

Then you'll get a URL with a form on it...enter your email address...the article should come right back. We are using this as an opportunity to test some new programming gadgetry.

Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for your amazing emails, they have been so clear and to the point and right on and real and a pleasure to get -- you are beautiful and it's an honor to be in contact with you, riding the planet waves.

    e


PS, a photo from this past spring...these are the same cops who are out in Clichy and many other areas dealing with a very serious uprising...I feel like I know these guys.

http://planetwaves.net/contents/bastille12.html



Friday, November 4, 2005

IN MY MOST RECENT post a few hours ago, I reserved a 10% stake in Avian Influenza being something other than pure pharmacop wannabe fascist shock the masses playtime for profit. There's a man in New York State, in state government, whose word I take rather seriously, if not as gospel. Nobody's word should be taken as gospel, but Ward B. Stone comes close. He's been the Wildlife Pathologist for the state for decades, he "knows which way the wind blows" to borrow from Bob Dylan, and I've known him since 1992 mainly through my work on environmental toxins -- one of his specialties.

Ward was one of the first people to document that PCBs were loose in the everyday environment, at the base of utility poles in New York. The chemicals had dripped from electrical transformers on top of the poles (most of which have since been removed). From that point on, he became the PCB Avenger, and our paths were bound to cross.

I've had very little chance to work with Ward specifically on wildlife issues, but now there's one on the radar.

On the way to talking to Ward, I called Ellen Connett, longtime editor of a publication called Waste Not!, now working to raise awareness of the dangers of fluoride in drinking water and toothpaste. I asked her opinion, since she generally has her finger on the pulse of every important environmental issue. Why is this such a concern?

She said, "It's the mortality rate of the cases on record. That's what's got everybody by the neck."

She added, "There is a big concern here, but how it's going to end up, nobody knows."

I reached Ward Stone on my first try.

"Certainly, the virus is there and the virus is spreading," he said. "It's moving in wild birds," with cases appearing in Turkey, Greece, other parts of Eastern Europe and a quarantine case involving a parrot in the UK. And many birds are smuggled illegally, thus avoiding quarantine.

Avian infuenzas, he said, "Are always out there, and periodically, one mutates. The more you have, the more mutations you have. It's a matter of statistics." But what differs about H5N1, the strain causing so much concern, one is "the pathogenicity for the birds." In other words, it spreads easily, and it's unusually deadly to birds -- and when people get it, it's unusually deadly for them for them, by percentage of cases. About 60 people have died from H5N1, more than half of the total cases.

The problem with how contagious it is in the bird population is that the more birds that are sick, the more chance they will come into contact with a person who happens to be carrying a human-borne influenza, which will give it an opportunity to mutate. And because of how deadly the bird version of the virus is, and how fast it's spreading among birds, that's not a pleasant thought. So this in part explains why there is such a response.

"Mutation can make it more or less pathogenic," he added, "more adaptable [to humans] or not. What hasn't happened is it hasn't taken off in people. It has not adapted to people. So there is no mutation that has gotten out that has made it adaptable to humans. That is what some virologists say is going to happen. But it may not."

Mental note: find the leading virologists advocating this theory. If anybody out there in Internet Land sees any of them quoted, please send me the URL. We need to trace their business interests carefully.

Ward explained further: "There are several places where it may not occur. One is it may not come here [to the US] at all. One is it doesn't show up for years. And another is it doesn't mutate to go from person to person. In that case it will certainly kill a lot of birds, but it won't kill people. And mostly it would affect people like hunters," who come in contact with the blood of wild birds when dressing them.

One last little problem: Ward said that looking at the genetic structure of the current strain of Avian Influenza, it's similar in many ways to the Spanish Flu virus of 1918-1919 that killed so many people and sickened 28% of the United States population to some degree.

However, this was nearly a century ago -- and human DNA may have evolved to the point where it's not easily susceptible to a virus of that kind of structure. Also, Spanish Flu petered out in 1919 after raging havoc for about 12 months. It left as fast as it arrived.

Okay, so, what did I learn? In part, I can see the basis for the concern. H5N1 is unusually deadly to birds and to the few people who catch it. It's unusually virulent in birds -- it spreads far and wide. Also, I know from other research that there are cycles of pandemics and some scientists are basically expecting one. My own homeopath said that we're about 10 years late for a major pandemic, a fact that epidemiologists are obviously aware of and that is feeding their fears. But what is actually going to happen -- nobody knows.

We do need to keep in mind that Donald Rumsfeld makes money every time someone takes a dose of Tamiflu. And I need to get a real sense of what the astrology says -- something I don't have.

This weekend I'll be taking care of my neighbor's cockatiels, and I'll ask them what they think.

--

Speaking of business interests, we sell subscriptions. Just think -- for $54.95, you get your own personal investigative reporter working to untangle Bird Flu for you on a Friday night! And your own personal astrologer. Planet Waves covers The Planet and the Planets...

Lots of subscription options are available...click here because you'll be glad you did!

http://planetwavesweekly.com/sales/home.html



One last for tonight...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/31/politics/31war.html?emc=eta1



Friday, November 4, 2005

WELL...I geared up and attempted a mission to Clichy-sous-Bois, the Paris "suburb" -- really a high-rise ghetto just outside the city -- where there has been rioting all week. But when I got to the RER station, they said that no trains were running there. So I'll need to figure out how to get a ride, or plot another train route when there is a bit more daylight -- rather than depending on fussy Paris cab drivers. I have some clear ideas for daytime photos in mind; let's see if they vaguely line up with reality, or if I can get out that way any time soon.

Regarding "Avian Influenza," at this point, I am about 90% convinced that it's a scam. The issue as stated is so serious, I've even suspended my "Don't believe a single word the government says" editorial guideline; I've been open minded about this. But a few things have set off my bullshit sniffers lately.

What I find curious is that apparently there is nothing unusual about influenza in birds, indeed, influenza is all about birds, so the threat is constant; that this particular flu resists human infection; that a global shock-panic has set in; and suddenly, billions of dollars are changing hands for drugs that have no demonstrated effectiveness and for vaccines for viruses that don't exist. I find it galling that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is directly in line with the cash flow.

I am not saying that there will not be some kind of outbreak. This issue has been news in Europe (at least) for a year, and when I heard about it my first impression was that it was a biowarfare project aimed at North Korea.

Meanwhile, as usual, the theme is fear and its incestuous first cousin, control. We now, thanks to news reports, have to think about shutdowns of the mass transit systems; travel restrictions; quarantines enforced by the media...oops I meant the military...it seems they are itching to declare martial law. We had better not be itching to escape from freedom.

So please...be free! It's better for me that way. Oh, and better for you and the rest of us.

First have a peek at this...posted here a few days ago...

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110205I.shtml

Then...

http://www.rense.com/general67/avianflufright.htm

I'm also receiving some information from readers about how deadly vaccines are. If I were a parent, nobody would be sticking my infant with needles. When I can weed through those I'll post any interesting links, if applicable. But a lot of people are onto this issue, in part due to excellent work over the years by Mothering magazine, which has not shut up for a minute.

Here is a bit from the Wall Street Journal from yesterday...not sure where the rest of the article is available (WSJ is strictly subscriber access) but this gives you the drift:

Generics Challenge Roche's Tamiflu Claims

By Nicholas Zamiska And Jason Dean
01:07 am, 11/03/2005
The Wall Street Journal (Internal Content)

Recent, surprising reports that generic Tamiflu can be made quickly and easily may have important implications for the global supply of the drug, which is seen as a hedge against a bird-flu pandemic.

The reports also raise questions about why Roche Holding AG, Tamiflu's maker, said it would take years for its rivals to copy the drug.

In early October, with world-wide concern about bird flu spreading, the Swiss pharmaceutical company was under mounting pressure to allow other manufacturers to produce the antiviral drug as well. Roche resisted, saying Tamiflu -- widely considered the most effective drug in fighting avian influenza in humans -- was too difficult for other companies to manufacture. Roche even pointed to a potentially "explosive" chemical step in the production process and said repeatedly that it would take several years for anyone else to make Tamiflu.

Yet even as Roche executives were warning of the rigors of the process, scientists at Taiwan's National Health Research Institutes and at Cipla Ltd., an Indian generic-drug manufacturer, had already finished reproducing Tamiflu, according to both entities.

--

And an email...

Hey Eric --

I don't have any particular "evidence" to proffer with regard to the purported avian influenz scam, but intuitively it does feel like yet another scare tactic. It's easier for Bush & Co. to deal with natural disasters like hurricanes and avian flu, and even dramas like 9-11, than to actually run the world's largest democracy in any kind of coherent way. Or the avain flu scare may just be a paranoid outpicturing of our collective semi-unconscious fears, which perhaps amounts to the same thing, given that 3-D life is an illusion or a dream anyway. Whatever the case may be, it seems to be "just what the astrologer ordered," with Uranus in Pisces in mutual reception with Neptune in Aquarius. To me, "avian flu" is a fairly literal translation of Uranus-Neptune, given their traditional keywords. Uranus can relate to flight or the airborne, and Neptune to anything organic like a flu bug. As reflected by the Uranus-Neptune mutual reception, avian flu is hard to predict and difficult to diagnose, impossible to contain yet spreading at the speed of lightening, aqueous yet airy, nebulous and amorphous yet electrifying, dissipating yet galvanizing, dissolving yet catalyizing - all of the usual Neptune vs. Uranus dichotomies. To me this combination of energies conjures an image of lying semi-comatose in the opium den (Neptune), but with your finger in the electrical socket (Uranus) at the same time. I see it as catching us asleep at the switch and waking us up with an electrifying jolt at the same time. Or maybe not. It's just too hard to predict, based on the astrology and based on the (lack of) evidence. At any rate, I look forward to your further sharings on homeopathy! Now I've really scared myself...
 
Love, Eliz.

Check back later in the weekend for a bonus article available by email.





Overnight Reading Dept.

Here's an article sent in by a reader...I may pass on blogging Friday as I wrap up Planet Waves and head on a photo mission to the suburbs. This article is for mature audiences with a good stomach.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/051107ta_talk_collins

I've had some interesting email correspondence today from readers commenting that they feel that Avian Influenza is, basically, a ruse. If you happen to have information about this, I'm open to reading about it.

Thanks for tuning in.
    
    e



Thursday, Nov. 3, 2005

IF YOU WANT to know why public health officials are so concerned about the possibility of an Avian Influenza outbreak, just learn a little about the 1918-1919 worldwide flu pandemic, called the Spanish Flu.

By one estimate, 5% of the world population was lost to this disease, which had the power to kill people from within six hours of the first onset of symptoms. Nearly one in five people suffered from the disease worldwide to some extent, according to Wikipedia (link below). In the United States, some 28% of the population suffered from Spanish Flu, and more than 500,000 died from it. There were reports of people falling off their horses dead, or dying walking down the street.

Entire ships of US soldiers returning from World War I were turned to "floating caskets." It was as deadly and more virulent than the bubonic plague.

It tended to attack the young and healthy rather than the old, very young or infirm.

And it was a disease over which the traditional medical profession had no power whatsoever.  But homeopathy, a branch of medicine founded by Samuel Hahnemann in the early 18th century, had close to complete success dealing with this disease. Homeopathy is uniquely suited to handle large outbreaks of virulent diseases in the population, both preventively on a large scale, when an acute case is developed, and within households and communities.

But at the time of the Spanish Flu, not everyone knew about homeopathy, and the new school of thought -- new, but based on ideas going back to Hippocrates (like cures like) -- was under attack by something called the American Medical Association (AMA), which had been founded about 75 years earlier specifically to deal with the business threat presented by homeopaths. To the current day, conventional doctors will tell you that homeopathy is absurd, a sham and pure quackery. But I assure you that no person making such a claim is homeopathically trained.

Business interests continue to dominate the medical field. Note carefully that George Bush's plan for dealing with an influenza outbreak consisted largely of giving billions to the pharmaceutical industry. Note also that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was the chairman of Gilead Sciences, the California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy "that's now the most-sought after drug in the world," in the apt words of Fortune magazine. His stock portfolio should be doing very well right now. The problem is that Tamiflu doesn't work against the strain of Avian Influenza that is now decimating bird populations, H5N1.

While this particular flu probably does not pass from human to human, it does not need much help to do so. If a person already infected with a transmittable form of human influenza also gets H5N1, then the human flu they carry can mutate into a disease as bad as H5N1 that people can get from one another. What is frightening to public health officials is that H5N1 has some chilling similarities with the Spanish Flu, including being passed from birds, how deadly it is, and the similar way that autopsied patients look like their lungs have exploded. It progresses from ordinary flu to pneumonia very rapidly. And few patients survive.

But with the right help, there is a very good chance that even the worst flu pandemic is both preventable in communities, and treatable in those who come down with it. Keep this in mind amidst the mild panic of the fear of a pandemic, or if something does come along that people start to get.

This is a large subject area, and I plan to devote time and resources to covering the issue; these are some introductory comments that I'll cover as a mini-series in the blog, and then develop in future articles.

The success of homeopathy in the Spanish Flu pandemic has been studied. But for obvious reasons you won't hear about the results many places.

A doctor named Dean W. A. Pearason of Philadelphia collected 26,975 cases of Spanish Flu treated by homeopaths, and determined that the mortality rate was 1.05%, "while the average old school mortality is 30%."

On two ships returning from Europe whose regiments were fortunate enough to have homeopaths as the physician, there were no outbreaks, just isolated cases. The remedy used was gelsemium simpervirens. Like any homeopathic remedy, you can purchase a bulk supply sufficient to treat a fairly large community for a few hundred dollars -- today.

There were other studies that indicated similar success rates for homeopathy. You can read about them here, in article by Julian Winston:

http://www.nesh.com/main/nejh/samples/winston.html

Now, every disease has individual properties, and that is what homeopathy studies in finding the right remedy. Gelsemium may or may not be the right remedy for whatever form of Avian Influenza may propagate -- if it does -- but once more is known about the symptomology, homeopaths will figure it out.

Hahnemann, in The Organon, his set of guidelines for homeopathy, said that "the strange, rare and particular should be foremost in the physician's mind" -- and that these unique properties are what give the clues to the right remedy. And homeopathy has more than 5,000 choices to work with, all of which are available at low cost today, and which can be manufactured quickly because the process for making the remedies is relatively simple.

So homeopathy is clearly not a "one size fits all" science. With this many remedies in the pharmacopia, there is always one or more that applies directly to any new situation that arises. Most of the highly effective remedies have been used for centuries, and as botanical preparations (herbs) before that.

The reason they don't know how to treat the disease today is that there have been very few human cases of H5N1, and since this strain apparently does not spread from human to human, the actual strain that would cause a pandemic is not known. Therefore, its specific symptoms are not known, such as how it progresses, the specific kinds of pain involved, the mental state of the patients, and many other factors -- and these are what homeopathy needs to make its prescription. Once known, this information can be distributed worldwide and used anywhere, if necessary.

Such was true during the outbreak of cholera in Europe in the 1830s, during Hahnemann's lifetime. He did not ever see a single case, but was able to prescribe a remedy that was effective at both curing and preventing the disease in Europe -- where his prescription was known and used.

However, according to Peter Gold of the National Institute for Homeopathy, the most likely remedy to work as a preventive until the specific remedy is known is called Influenzinum, which is a highly diluted form of the common flu -- a little like a homeopathic vaccination, but it's not poisonous. Homeopathy dilutes its remedies hundreds or thousands of times to eliminate the physical properties of the substance and keep only the energetic ones. It's a little like giving your aura a vaccine while leaving your body alone.

Influenzinum, he said, could be used as a preventive in the event of an outbreak in one's community, until the more specific remedy information becomes available. And you can keep a decent supply on hand for about $20 or less. If you order, you will be asked what potency you want. It's best to keep a variety of potencies on hand, such as 30CH, 200K and 1M. Then if and when the time comes, use the correct potency as recommended by a homeopath. These should all be available without a prescription. In the United States, many health food stores can get remedies, but often not above the 30CH potency. For that, it's necessary to go to a lab or special pharmacy (see below).

On this note, however, I highly suggest you look up the names of homeopathic practitioners in your area and get acquainted with one or two of them. If you can afford a consultation, it's a good idea to have one -- this way they know you personally and have a file on you. Homeopathic consultations, which are like a 45 minute interview, are usually fairly inexpensive compared to a five minute doctor visit.

Remedies are available in any pharmacy in France, at Nelson's Pharmacy in London, and in the United States from Hahnemann Labs in San Rafael (by phone or Internet order).

And we will develop this story and keep you posted as often as necessary. Till next time -- rest easy, because homeopathy can help.

Hahnemann Labs
http://www.hahnemannlabs.com/

National Institute for Homeopathy
http://www.homeopathic.org/

Wiki on Spanish Flu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Flu

--------------------------


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Overnight Reading...the U.S. government's Bird Flu Plan...

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110205I.shtml





Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2005

THE SUN IS SQUARE SATURN and the new lunar month has begun. The Moon is in Scorpio and Venus is conjunct the core of the galaxy. Mars and the Sun are approaching an exact opposition, as Mars squares Neptune, stirring the cosmic pot.

In Mexico and other countries with Spanish blood or custom, today is Day of the Dead, which followed All Saint's Day Nov. 1 and All Hallow's Eve on Oct. 31.

Today's photo is of graves with housing in the background taken as I was walking toward the exit of the rather amazing Pere Lachaise cemetery in northeastern Paris. Admittedly this picture went against my 'no photos of sunsets' editorial guideline (we need to see more sunrises in the world), but it seemed like a pretty special moment to put into jpg format. Iren, wife of our webmaster Anatoly in the Ukraine, asked why there were graves located so close to civil housing. All I could say is they do it the same way in England and the United States too. In London, I turned down an apartment that was across the street from a crematorium. In the United States, highways and trains go right through the middle of vast, suburb-like cemeteries, at least where I come from in New York City.

I visited Pere Lachaise with a friend to do an [informal] Day of the Dead ritual. The cemetery was a mob scene and apparently a hot place to bring a date, as everyone was strolling around hand in hand. I happen to know the lady who works outside selling maps and postcards (Melanie, an expat Brit and long-time Parisian) and we were joking about the need for mounted riot police as people herded into the main entrance, weighing her jacket down with two euro coins for maps as they went.

It started like that at 8 am. This is a city where people just don't seem to get up early, but the throngs were up and at 'em for this occasion. We don't really do Halloween here, but this awesome memorial park is a big hit, with many thousands of mausoleums, above ground crypts, and lots of other ornate stuff you just don't see in most US cemeteries. Not to mention Jim Morrison, who I skipped after my first visit last year.

First we selected, intuitively, the grave of a family that had been there since about 1900. Candles, resin incense that filled the whole area, a glass of very good rum, an eggplant, apples, and a  long cellular call that came from Chelsea about handling a technical situation that was vaguely apropos of the ritual itself, were part of this visit. The scent of the resins (frankincense, myrrh and I think copal) drew people from all over, wondering what was going on.

We then found our way to the memorial and grave of Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy. He died in the mid-19th century after a long, intense life that ended in Paris. Hahnemann led a nearly successful countermovement to traditional medicine, called homeopathy. After resigning from his practice as a medical doctor because he felt the field was so unethical in the extent to which it hurt people with its medicines, he became a translator. (Daring move -- he had about eight children.)

It's a story for another day, but it was through translating a study about a case of quinine poisoning, which created the symptoms of malaria, that he discovered the idea that "like heals like" or the Law of Similars, and developed an entirely new medical theory and practice.

I left two tubes of china, the remedy made from quinine -- his first remedy, used to cure malaria -- on his monument, along with some lit candles and one of my frankincense and myrrh olfactory beacons that you can smell for miles around.

Tomorrow, I'll tell a story relating to the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918 that relates to homeopathy and how its practitioners were able to cure the flu when no ordinary doctor could. The remedy is still known and still available. It may not work if there's an Avian Flu outbreak, but the remedy is known for its effectiveness against all forms of flu. And any disease can be 'repertorized' based on its properties.

Remedies all have psychological and physical properties. The mental property of this particular preparation is anticipation anxiety, sometimes manifesting as stage fright and other times about the expectations that people have of us in the world, or how we perceive them. On the mental level, influenza has a mental state of fear of the future associated with it.

That hints at a problem for the world, because I can barely think of a time when more people were harboring fear, consciously or not, of the future.

Avian Flu is a respiratory disease. The lungs deal with air, which is about life force and inspiration. The words 'respiration' and 'inspiration' sound similar for a reason. They are based on the same idea. And the lungs are where we process grief, as nearly any healer can tell you.

Have a good day if you can, and remember, the sky is cooking. But the beginning of the new lunar month is the time to establish patterns, so set those patterns now.

    e

--

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Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2005

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Today is the first day of the new Pagan year, everyone. To celebrate, MSNBC has run an AP article on witches in the Netherlands getting a tax break for their classes -- something that's not so revolutionary because I am sure there are plenty of Pagan teachers who hold classes and conferences in the United States whose business expenses are considered tax deductible, just like when the president of Exxon-Mobil goes out for a $2,500 dinner.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/10/31/witchcraft.tax.ap/index.html

I've received a number of responses to a comment in Monday's Scorpio Birthday Report about the summer of 1999. This was the summer when there occurred a grand cross and total solar eclipse in the fixed signs. Today, we have a New Moon and grand cross in the fixed signs -- described yesterday (see below, a couple of entries).

A number of readers were stunned at the connection between then and now, and what a significant time in their lives that was. It was quite a moment, one of several "millennial" events that served either as a vibrational bridge to convey people into the future, where many went through enormous growth, change, or progress; or, alternately, as a point of enhanced and accelerated chaos for certain people in power, feeding their evil counterparts on the astral who thrive on pain on Earth.

Summer '99 was a mixed bag. I became aware of the grand cross researching something called the Cassini Space Probe, which passed the Earth nearly simultaneously with the eclipse, bearing its cargo of 72 pounds of plutonium (a little nuclear battery called an RTG), bound for Saturn. This was in the summer of 1998, when I was traveling in southern Germany, writing a column called Planet Waves for Rob Brezsny's web page, and reading Esoteric Astrology for the first time.

My report from that summer is here, called "Thinking of You on Judgment Day."

http://www.planetwaves.net/thinking.html

The summer of 1999 had quite a unique energy. Put it in context; it was six months after the unsuccessful impeachment of Bill Clinton, six months before Y2K. Let's visit, courtesy of PBS:

Following the 11-minute vote, Chief Justice Rehnquist read the verdict.

WILLIAM REHNQUIST: On this article of impeachment, 45 senators having pronounced William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States, guilty as charged; 55 senators having pronounced him not guilty; two-thirds of the senators present not having him pronounced him guilty; the senate adjudges that the respondent, William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States, is not guilty as charged in the first article of impeachment.

KWAME HOLMAN OF PBS: In all, ten Republicans joined the Democrats in voting down Article I. They were Chafee of Rhode island, Collins and Snowe of Maine, Gorton of Washington, Jeffords of Vermont, Shelby of Alabama, Specter of Pennsylvania, Stevens of Alaska, Thompson of Tennessee, and Warner of Virginia.

Note, the so-called Republicans (Karl Rove?) launched an impeachment and could not even get a simple majority in the Senate -- much less the 67 votes needed to actually remove him from office. Chaos is their name. These people are not about politics; they are about raising hell.

Here's a visit to the summer of 1999, folk history-styled. Note, this is part four of a four part series, which is (probably) linked from the article, and in Google. This article is called, "Flashpoints: the Continuation of Burning Man." I still like it, as it covers a lot of ground and includes three pretty amazing stories, but now the Y2K intro seems a little long and boring. Maybe that's because I've read it 38 times. However, as a "period piece" (not a New Moon pun) Flashpoints includes this reminder: that summer, we were thinking about a looming virtual apocalypse wherein all the computers and street lights and the work of all the allegedly terrible programmers in Russia and the global power grid would simultaneously lose their minds when the year turned over to 1/1/00 and spazzed out all little computer chips hidden everywhere that would allegedly think it was New Year's Day 1900.

Were it so.

http://www.planetwaves.net/burning_flashpoints.html



Monday, Oct. 31, 2005

TWO MORE reasons we're the awesomest "astrology" Web page in the history of the galaxy, nay, of the Greater Nebadon Intergalactic Quadrant -- Inner Space, the house, home and weird little apartment horoscope, has been posted to the all new child-friendly Horoscopes Homepage (see "November Horoscopes" above) and...reason #2...we have created a new homepage for the Astrology Secrets Revealed column, with two different search facilities that allow searching the full archives of the Q & A project on Cainer.com. Thank you Anatoly for putting this together the past couple of days...

http://planetwaves.net/cainer/


If you play around, you will discover that I have never mentioned Huya...never used the word "automotive"; mentioned Varuna 10 or 11 times, depending on which search engine you ask; referred to sex or sex roles in some context 35 times, love 64 times (nice number), said the word "Venus" 60 times, "quantum" but once and Alice Bailey twice (which I don't believe).

And congratulations to the Halloween costume contest winners, above (on main home page). Also, for some intense breaking news, see this link:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/41899





Monday, Oct. 31, 2005

TODAY IS Halloween, or the approximate day of the Pagan festival Samhain. This is a holiday rich in both social and astrological tradition. This holiday, which recognizes the final harvest and acknowledges death and its rituals, is the 'opposite' of a festival called Beltane, which celebrates birth and sex. These are the two oldest festivals in the Pagan calendar and for some time before, and Halloween is one of the longest continuously celebrated holidays of our culture and many before it. Details are at this link:

http://www.stariq.com/Main/Articles/P0001670.HTM

Depending on where you live, Nov. 1 or 2 may be acknowledged as the Day of the Dead, covered in Jeanne Treadway's excellent article on the PlanetWaves.net homepage. This is time time of year when the veils between the worlds are said to be thinnest, and the "afterlife" and the current, physical life merge. The dead can visit us. This is the origin of the tradition of costumes at this time of year -- if you're dressed as someone else, maybe they won't recognize you.

This is the Pagan New Year. Today is the last day of the year in the old calendar. Nov. 1 is the first day of the year. The night of Oct. 31 is the "night between the years" and is really part of neither year.

And the current astrology is rather fitting of such an interesting and cosmic moment.

----

THIS WEEK we have a New Moon in Scorpio arriving with a grand cross in the fixed signs. The New Moon is exact Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. The fixed signs (explained in more detail in a question on Jonathan Cainer's page last week) are Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. The following planets are involved in this aspect structure:

-- Mars retrograde in Taurus (16+ degrees).
-- Saturn in Leo (10+ degrees).
-- Jupiter (1+ degrees of Scorpio), Moon and Sun (conjunct at 9+ degrees of Scorpio) and Pallas Athene (18+ degrees of Scorpio).
-- Neptune in Aquarius (14+ degrees).

Except for Jupiter, the Sun and Moon have the lowest degrees -- so they are applying to everything else, namely, Mars, Neptune and Saturn.

This is a pretty good grand cross and it's, activated by a lunation that is in a close square to Saturn. So in addition to a variety of symbolic and/or distant forces at work, we also have a whole lot of gravity acting on the Earth and its critters. It is the closest replay to anything vaguely like it since the grand cross and total solar eclipse of Aug. 11, 1999 -- remembered in Europe simply as "the eclipse."

Conventional wisdom says it's a safe week for astrologers to predict disasters. But they would not really be disasters, that word means "against the stars." But the job of astrology is to help us move through challenging times with as few problems as possible. The stars are challenging, and the best way to handle it is one step at a time. Each aspect tells a story, or a phase of a story, and by the end of the week, it pretty much has blown through like a storm. How this affects you in part depends on your chart -- but not entirely, because the transiting aspects around us are akin to the shape of the landscape we are standing in.

The emphasis on this chart is in Scorpio, which is more emotional and somewhat less cognitive than all the Libra energy we've been accustomed to for some months. At least we have Pallas Athene in that sign to help us think under water.

Sun square Saturn aspect (which appears twice a year), reminiscent of the first astrologer I ever knew (Flo Higgins, who used to use it as a whip in the newsroom), says to apply yourself to whatever mission you're on in a Saturnian way: carefully, thoroughly, persistently. But the necessity is for focus.

Mars retrograde by itself is somewhat unpredictable; often the most potent effects come after Mars stations direct, which is not until Dec. 11. But it's very much part of this aspect structure, and it is retrograding into an exact square with Saturn (the second of three), which is exact Nov. 18 (then again on Dec. 28). There are two signposts that that Nov. 28 (which is a bit out of range of our discussion, being in more than two weeks) brings a fairly significant development on one or more levels, which include the Moon in Cancer sitting on the Aries Point, as well as an exact conjunction of the Sun and Pallas Athene. When the aspect repeats Dec. 28, it is conjunct Ceres. Both solar aspects to feminine asteroids suggest the prominent involvement of women in whatever is developing now.

Though it's not part of the grand cross, there is great emphasis on Sagittarius. This manifests many ways. We are in the midst of a triple conjunction of Ceres, Quaoar and the Great Attractor in mid-Sagittarius. I suggested in Bridge to the Core that this has something to do with rearranging family structures (Quaoar), in the context of mother (Ceres) in a very big way. The Great Attractor is always a point of high polarization and many opinions.

Pluto is at 22+ Sagittarius. It makes its first close pass to the Galactic Core by early Spring, coming within one-quarter of a degree of the GC. Venus is about to cross that point this week, reaching it exactly on Nov. 2 (Wednesday), exact in the New Moon chart.

So -- we shall see what manifests.

    e



This is a good one. Thanks Pod.

    cc: Political Waves
    
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1849201,00.html
    
PS, so is this: http://snipurl.com/ja6c

PPS, here is the quote of the week, my choice, from Cindy Sheehan, who said she welcomed any indictments because such would offer proof that the Iraq war was based on lies. This is quoted from the UK Independent.

"The responsibility for lying to the American people and targeting critics and dissidents needs to go all the way up the chain of command. Scooter Libby was clearly one of the administration's attack dogs unleashed on opponents of this fraudulent war, but he serves higher masters."



Inside, as the president spoke, a man on the second level interrupted him, yelling "Mr. President, war is terrorism. War is terrorism. Step down now Mr. President. Torture is terrorism." Bush continued speaking as security officials escorted the man from the hall.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051028/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush


----


The body of the 92-year-old [Rosa] Parks, who died Monday at her home in Detroit, was brought to Montgomery on a chartered jet flown by Lou Freeman, the first black man to become a chief pilot for a U.S. carrier, according to Southwest Airlines.

"It makes you want to tear up and cry when you think of what she did and what she accomplished," Freeman said. "She told us all to stand up for our rights."

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/10/29/parks.viewing.ap/index.html



Saturday, Oct. 29, 2005

Note to subscribers -- a link to the Friday horoscope is on the subscriber homepage at the blog on that page (now, one entry down). We have also emailed the link directly to all subscribers. The full newsletter has gone out by email but due to an Internet problem on our end, some people may not receive it until I resend it Sunday.

ENTER OSIRIS.

Pod sends in this bit: "The Discovery of Osiris [Inventio Osiridis] was the great autumn festival of the religion. It celebrated the death of the God on October 28th, and His resurrection on November 3rd."

Naturally, I checked the position of Osiris in the Indictment chart. I am gathering that this will finally replace the Sept. 11 chart as a historical chart that helps us understand our era. We will have several versions of the chart soon. The data is Oct. 28, 2005, 12:37 pm EDT, Washington, D.C. Some details covered in the editions below.

Anyway, as you may know, I am the creator of the Gee Whiz School of Astrology. The main devotional ritual is to look at the chart till you see something interesting, and then say "Gee Whiz" with a dumb look on your face. Welllll, this gets a Gee Fucking Whiz. Click here to indulge:

    http://snipurl.com/j9r8

Remember how important Chiron in Capricorn is...Capricorn being the sign of government and corporate power...of officialdom...and of actual, solid, ethics in action. Chiron is conjunct the Sun in the presidential Inauguration chart...a totally appropriate placement.

In the Indictment chart, Osiris appears exactly as in extremely exactly conjunct Chiron in Capricorn, which has been the bane of the world's conspirators since this four-year phase began in late 2001, moments away from the Enron scandal emerging. The Chiron-Nessus conjunction has been wafting back and forth over the Capricorn-Aquarius line all year; it's exact meetings occur in Aquarius. If we keep a vestige of freedom...if we escape a totalitarian government...if Pluto in Capricorn does not turn out to be as bad as everyone is saying...we can thank Chiron and Nessus working over Capricorn nice and good, and turning a few mean people and their mean plans to steak tar tar.

I am not any kind of Osiris expert, except that I know he was the Humpty Dumpty of Egyptian Mythology...reassembled, sans penis, by his sister Isis...and that the "president" is in pieces...and that we are indeed putting a lot of pieces together...and that the expression "All the President's Men" or lately "All the Vice President's Men" is a kind of pun on the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme from Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland. To Wit:

 Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall:
 Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
 All the King's horses and all the King's men
 Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.

I will say that with the arrival of Osiris exactly conjunct key player Chiron -- indeed, the generation-shaping Chiron-Nessus conjunction -- we are seeing a classic Chiron power-wounding crisis going down in America -- on a major Osiris holiday exactly as the biggest news since...November 2000 breaks...is just another example of the astrology being extremely literal these days, literal as in, if you do the chart for the moment when you decide it's time for some cheese and crackers, you might find a conjunction of the asteroid Cheese and the asteroid Crackers making a conjunction in the ascendant of your chart.

Well, have at it. And I do wonder what November 3rd is about.

Please don't forget to subscribe, or to request a comp subscription if you don't have the cash. http://www.planetwavesweekly.com/sales/home.html



Friday, Oct. 28, 2005, revised Saturday morning.

Note to subscribers -- a link to the Friday horoscope is on the subscriber homepage at the blog on that page. We have also emailed the link directly to all subscribers. The full newsletter has gone out by email but due to an Internet problem on our end, some people may not receive it until I resend it Sunday.

AS OF 12:30 pm Eastern Time, the world -- those who know, those who care, and those who happened to be watching television -- were on edge, waiting for the release of documents charging one or more members of the Bush administration with crimes relating to the buildup to the Iraq war, and the revenge against the wife of someone who dared to speak the truth.

It was an extremely tense week for those who have been following the Valerie Plame issue, its connection to the lies leading to the Iraq war, and the sordid history of the Bush administration.

The news is now in. And from the look of things, CNN and I am sure other networks are in furious backspin node, attempting to keep control of a story they really lost control of in 2003. CNN is telling us over and over again that Libby is innocent until proven guilty, and Bush himself repeated this line -- yet this is not a standard they, not the government and not particularly the media -- have held for the sake of others. The policy under the Cheney-Bush administration, in the US prison at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, has always been guilty even if nothing is accused. Nobody is making this connection.

Perhaps Libby should be sent to Guantanamo Bay or Abu Gharib to await his trial.

We need to remember that the real crimes of Bush administration conspirators would properly be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, because they are crimes of torture of prisoners, murdering civilians, genocide, and an illegal war against a sovereign leader. It does not matter who or what Saddam Hussein was; the answer is not to bomb his people in retaliation for him harming them. And it is painful to think that anyone believes that.

But it's not possible to have a war crimes trial over Iraq in The Hague because upon George W. Bush taking office, the United States removed its name from the Rome Treaty, which grants the ICC jurisdiction over member nations, their soldiers and their leaders.

It is worth mentioning that from the standpoint of political chess, it's highly advantageous to We, the People that the damage is being centered on Cheney's office. It is simply not safe to remove Bush from office if Cheney is still vice president. The prospect of having Dick Cheney be president makes George W. Bush look like a picnic without ants.

Even if Cheney has not personally been accused of committing a crime, this is an extremely severe blow to his credibility (assuming he had any to begin with), and we may see see him resign from office on some excuse like "health reasons" -- as is suggested by the upcoming conjunction of his progressed Moon to progressed Chiron.

His transits also suggest that with Pluto squaring his Pisces Moon, he is now at one of the biggest turning points of his life. His absence from Washington was notable yesterday. He spent the day doing political fundraising in Georgia even as his very chief of staff faced criminal indictment.

And we need to consider this little notion that ought to be hanging over the head of the remaining members of the Neocon cabal. Scooter Libby is now a White House outsider, whose main job in life is to save his own skin. The White House and the Neocon movement that occupies it needs to consider the possibility that he could turn "state's evidence," reveal what really happened, and take a plea bargain, saving himself spending the rest of his life in federal prison. We can only hope.

----

INDICTMENTS WERE HANDED UP to the judge by the Grand Jury at 12:37 pm in Washington DC, and their contents were announced at 12:44 pm. Capricorn was in the ascendant. The Moon's next aspect was a sextile to Pallas Athene in Scorpio, and then a trine to retrograde Mars in Taurus.

There was an extremely close conjunction of Venus and Pluto, to which the Virgo Moon was applying. This aspect was lingering in the 12th house, one placement signaling that there is a great deal yet to come out.

The Sun and Jupiter were close to the MC. Leo is the ruler of the 8th house of secrets, and the Sun, its ruler, and the universal significator for the king or the president, was highly visible on the MC -- meaning that we will really see an airing out of state secrets as part of this process. Jupiter, interestingly, appeared as ruler of the 12th house -- a secret player in this situation, perhaps the "flipper" referred to the past week or so. It it appears to be someone quite close to Bush himself. As Jupiter in Scorpio, we have the image of a corpulent, uncle-like figure who is shrewd and in possession of many secrets. As someone who appears behind the scenes in the 9th house, we are dealing with a high ranking key player but one who is not usually seen on the front lines of politics.

All of the crimes Libby has been charged with are associated with his conduct within the Valerie Plame spy leak investigation itself. He was not charged with leaking classified information to the press. Apparently the 1982 law which forbids intentionally leaking the name of a covert agent is very difficult to prove a violation of, and from what I am hearing passing classified information itself may not be a crime.

When questioned about his conduct in the Plame affair, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said that Libby lied to federal investigators and the Grand Jury repeatedly. Indeed, in his testimony, he allegedly fabricated an entirely false version of how he initially heard about Plame -- claiming to have heard it from a journalist when he had seven prior discussions about Plame with White House staff and other high-ranking government officials prior to that phone call with the journalist -- a call in which Plame was not even discussed.

Why did he lie? When fraud of any kind is committed, this is always the operative question. The facts beneath the lie are usually the real issue. And from the look of things, we will be learning quite a bit as this develops in the remaining three years of the Bush administration. Let's hope people care, because this is so painful that the instinct not to care is understandable enough.

The charges are:

    1 obstruction of justice count
    2 perjury counts
    2 making false statement counts

All are felonies...the investigation continues...the wording of the indictment is damning. Libby faces 30 years in jail and rather large fines if convicted.

This development has been in the stars for a long time. There are other more serious ones brewing, with a particularly deep moment coming in late March 2006. Here is how I reported it in August 2004, in Chronogram magazine. The reference to "nine months" from the Inauguration takes us to late October 2005 when the media start to get a clue. This segment refers to the chart of the Inauguration of Bush and Cheney earlier this year.

The [Chiron in] Capricorn era, which so far spans the Bush presidency (post 9/11), has brought an astonishing diversity of scandals that have forced many millions of people to pay attention to boring politics, to see what a "corporation" is, and to have their illusions about politics destroyed.  This is Chiron the iconoclast, shattering the idol of denial.

Taurus is rising.  That makes Venus the second planet to symbolize the new president.  We find Venus in the 9th house (spirituality, international affairs) conjunct Mercury.  Given that this is conjunction in Capricorn in the 9th, we have an image of religiosity and piety.  Venus, however, is opposed by Varuna, a planet beyond Pluto (discovered in 2000), in Cancer. Varuna is the equalizer.  Mythically, this is a deity who was deeply concerned with the punishment of liars, and also one designated with the protection of water.  He is often depicted carrying a noose.  In eras past, Varuna was the supreme creation deity, whose name still evokes reverence in Vedic cultures.  Somebody who often talks about God (Venus in Cap) has an actual meeting with the guy (Varuna in Cancer). And Varuna is not laughing.

One last note.  The 8th house of this chart has a conjunction of Mars and Pluto in Sagittarius.  Given that the 8th, Mars, and Pluto are all images of passion, power, and power struggles, that the 8th is about money and death, and that Sagittarius is the sign of religious ideals, there is more than a whiff of jihad to this chart-though it doesn't manifest right away.  But the values are all in place, and the game is set.  The early Gemini Moon will slide along for about nine months before the media really figure out what is going on.  But they will get it, guaranteed.




Saturday, Oct. 29, 2005

FOR THOSE accustomed to reading US-prepared news reports, here is a bit of what the BBC online edition has to say about the Scooter Libby indictment (link below). If you get your news in the United States, it's necessary to understand the concept of "spin." Spin is how you tell the story that controls or influences how the facts are interpreted by the reader or viewer. UK news outlets tend to claim their spin. Everyone agrees the Daily Mail is on the conservative end and the Daily Mirror is on the liberal end -- and the editors don't deny this. You read a paper for its point of view.

In America's marketing rich environment, you have to spin your materials while keeping the illusion of "fair and balanced." We have this ideal of "objectivity" that denies the fact that everyone has an opinion, and everyone has their business interests.

Most of the time, the BBC -- which is not influenced by commercial sponsors (unless you count a few ridiculous ads on BBC World), and which is in a country where reading, education and a slower-paced assimilation of knowledge are still taken seriously -- does a reasonable job. In England, if you can quote Shakespeare, nobody throws a rock at you, or cuts your budget for kicks.

From what I have seen, BBC has a pro-American, pro-business slant. Consider that when you check out this article.

What I find most interesting is that suddenly, the Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, is starting to make the news. -- mentions only, but the name is surfacing (I saw it on CNN yesterday). The political machine you see in power in Washington is neither Democrat nor Republican, not properly so. They are a small cabal of men involved with what I can honestly call a radical political movement that is centered around a neoconservative" think tank" (i.e., a political machine) that recruited George Bush as their candidate (familiar name, familiar looking face, folksy drawl = winnable) and set about implementing their agenda.

The behind the scenes players are Libby, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and a variety of others. Not Bush, not Rice, not Colin Powell -- they just came along for the ride. Google Project for the New American Century for more information. Hey, they are a dot-org, just like Craig's List and the World Bank.

One last thing -- I am interested in what you have to say about the indictments and the Plame affair, and I would like to quote readers in this space next week. Please drop me a note at horoscopes@planetwaves.org.

Indictment Rocks Bush Administration
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4386076.stm

Thanks for tuning in. Subscribers -- please remember your Friday horoscope is on the horoscopes homepage. We are slowly working our way out of mailing list purgatory. Please send your prayers, and please subscribe or request a comp if you can't afford it.

Have fun, pay attention --

    e



Friday, Oct. 28, 2005, revised Saturday morning.

Note to subscribers -- a link to the Friday horoscope is on the subscriber homepage at the blog on that page. We have also emailed the link directly to all subscribers. The full newsletter has gone out by email but due to an Internet problem on our end, some people may not receive it until I resend it Sunday.

AS OF 12:30 pm Eastern Time, the world -- those who know, those who care, and those who happened to be watching television -- were on edge, waiting for the release of documents charging one or more members of the Bush administration with crimes relating to the buildup to the Iraq war, and the revenge against the wife of someone who dared to speak the truth.

It was an extremely tense week for those who have been following the Valerie Plame issue, its connection to the lies leading to the Iraq war, and the sordid history of the Bush administration.

The news is now in. And from the look of things, CNN and I am sure other networks are in furious backspin node, attempting to keep control of a story they really lost control of in 2003. CNN is telling us over and over again that Libby is innocent until proven guilty, and Bush himself repeated this line -- yet this is not a standard they, not the government and not particularly the media -- have held for the sake of others. The policy under the Cheney-Bush administration, in the US prison at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, has always been guilty even if nothing is accused. Nobody is making this connection.

Perhaps Libby should be sent to Guantanamo Bay or Abu Gharib to await his trial.

We need to remember that the real crimes of Bush administration conspirators would properly be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, because they are crimes of torture of prisoners, murdering civilians, genocide, and an illegal war against a sovereign leader. It does not matter who or what Saddam Hussein was; the answer is not to bomb his people in retaliation for him harming them. And it is painful to think that anyone believes that.

But it's not possible to have a war crimes trial over Iraq in The Hague because upon George W. Bush taking office, the United States removed its name from the Rome Treaty, which grants the ICC jurisdiction over member nations, their soldiers and their leaders.

It is worth mentioning that from the standpoint of political chess, it's highly advantageous to We, the People that the damage is being centered on Cheney's office. It is simply not safe to remove Bush from office if Cheney is still vice president. The prospect of having Dick Cheney be president makes George W. Bush look like a picnic without ants.

Even if Cheney has not personally been accused of committing a crime, this is an extremely severe blow to his credibility (assuming he had any to begin with), and we may see see him resign from office on some excuse like "health reasons" -- as is suggested by the upcoming conjunction of his progressed Moon to progressed Chiron.

His transits also suggest that with Pluto squaring his Pisces Moon, he is now at one of the biggest turning points of his life. His absence from Washington was notable yesterday. He spent the day doing political fundraising in Georgia even as his very chief of staff faced criminal indictment.

And we need to consider this little notion that ought to be hanging over the head of the remaining members of the Neocon cabal. Scooter Libby is now a White House outsider, whose main job in life is to save his own skin. The White House and the Neocon movement that occupies it needs to consider the possibility that he could turn "state's evidence," reveal what really happened, and take a plea bargain, saving himself spending the rest of his life in federal prison. We can only hope.

----

INDICTMENTS WERE HANDED UP to the judge by the Grand Jury at 12:37 pm in Washington DC, and their contents were announced at 12:44 pm. Capricorn was in the ascendant. The Moon's next aspect was a sextile to Pallas Athene in Scorpio, and then a trine to retrograde Mars in Taurus.

There was an extremely close conjunction of Venus and Pluto, to which the Virgo Moon was applying. This aspect was lingering in the 12th house, one placement signaling that there is a great deal yet to come out.

The Sun and Jupiter were close to the MC. Leo is the ruler of the 8th house of secrets, and the Sun, its ruler, and the universal significator for the king or the president, was highly visible on the MC -- meaning that we will really see an airing out of state secrets as part of this process. Jupiter, interestingly, appeared as ruler of the 12th house -- a secret player in this situation, perhaps the "flipper" referred to the past week or so. It it appears to be someone quite close to Bush himself. As Jupiter in Scorpio, we have the image of a corpulent, uncle-like figure who is shrewd and in possession of many secrets. As someone who appears behind the scenes in the 9th house, we are dealing with a high ranking key player but one who is not usually seen on the "front lines" of politics.

All of the crimes Libby has been charged with are associated with his conduct within the Valerie Plame spy leak investigation itself. He was not charged with leaking classified information to the press. Apparently the 1982 law which forbids intentionally leaking the name of a covert agent is very difficult to prove a violation of, and from what I am hearing passing classified information itself may not be a crime.

When questioned about his conduct in the Plame affair, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said that Libby lied to federal investigators and the Grand Jury repeatedly. Indeed, in his testimony, he allegedly fabricated an entirely false version of how he initially heard about Plame -- claiming to have heard it from a journalist when he had seven prior discussions about Plame with White House staff and other high-ranking government officials prior to that phone call with the journalist -- a call in which Plame was not even discussed.

Why did he lie? When fraud of any kind is committed, this is always the operative question. The facts beneath the lie are usually the real issue. And from the look of things, we will be learning quite a bit as this develops in the remaining three years of the Bush administration. Let's hope people care, because this is so painful that the instinct not to care is understandable enough.

The charges are:

    1 obstruction of justice count
    2 perjury counts
    2 making false statement counts

All are felonies...the investigation continues...the wording of the indictment is damning. Libby faces 30 years in jail and rather large fines if convicted.

This development has been in the stars for a long time. There are other more serious ones brewing, with a particularly deep moment coming in late March 2006. Here is how I reported it in August 2004, in Chronogram magazine. The reference to "nine months" from the Inauguration takes us to late October 2005 when the media start to get a clue. This segment refers to the chart of the Inauguration of Bush and Cheney earlier this year.

The [Chiron in] Capricorn era, which so far spans the Bush presidency (post 9/11), has brought an astonishing diversity of scandals that have forced many millions of people to pay attention to boring politics, to see what a "corporation" is, and to have their illusions about politics destroyed.  This is Chiron the iconoclast, shattering the idol of denial.

Taurus is rising.  That makes Venus the second planet to symbolize the new president.  We find Venus in the 9th house (spirituality, international affairs) conjunct Mercury.  Given that this is conjunction in Capricorn in the 9th, we have an image of religiosity and piety.  Venus, however, is opposed by Varuna, a planet beyond Pluto (discovered in 2000), in Cancer. Varuna is the equalizer.  Mythically, this is a deity who was deeply concerned with the punishment of liars, and also one designated with the protection of water.  He is often depicted carrying a noose.  In eras past, Varuna was the supreme creation deity, whose name still evokes reverence in Vedic cultures.  Somebody who often talks about God (Venus in Cap) has an actual meeting with the guy (Varuna in Cancer). And Varuna is not laughing.

One last note.  The 8th house of this chart has a conjunction of Mars and Pluto in Sagittarius.  Given that the 8th, Mars, and Pluto are all images of passion, power, and power struggles, that the 8th is about money and death, and that Sagittarius is the sign of religious ideals, there is more than a whiff of jihad to this chart-though it doesn't manifest right away.  But the values are all in place, and the game is set.  The early Gemini Moon will slide along for about nine months before the media really figure out what is going on.  But they will get it, guaranteed.




Friday, Oct. 28, 2005

WHATEVER HAPPENS TODAY -- whatever happens to White House officials or to the Bush administration or the Neocon movement that has seized control of United States society, the UK and in many ways the world, it's not really going to be justice.

It will be a genuine, certified miracle if someone in the Bush White House is accused of a crime in connection with the fraudulent march to the Iraq massacre and the outing of a CIA agent whose job was to protect us from terrorists getting weapons. Even one good harpoon will connect us that much more firmly to the truth. And that will hopefully raise awareness and assist with some of the progress the world rather desperately needs to make right now.

But it won't bring back the people who have been killed, from those who fell with the World Trade Center after repeated warnings were ignored and indeed capitalized on; to those whose lives were lost in the apparent charade of not catching Bush family friend Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan; to the untold thousands whose lives have been lost and homes and families shattered in Iraq.

The political process has the power to do damage that it cannot undo. And that is why we must pay attention to it. It is difficult to imagine the loss of one life, but we need to remember that according to a study published last year in The Lancet, the respected British medical journal, 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives as a result of the US invasion and occupation. This has been reported by The Guardian, the Washington Post and CNN. And the estimate is one year old.

Even if you consider the widely reported underestimates of 25,000 (remembering that the United States is, conveniently, not counting the Iraqi dead), you cannot say that this is any way to "liberate" a country, unless you mean liberating a lot of people from their bodies. And with 25,000 to 100,000 dead, you can be sure the number of injured and grieving is many, many times this. So people who say we are doing the noble deed and protecting Iraqis from a dictator and spreading freedom are, basically, in total denial.

Iraq is a country that has been ravaged by war since around 1980. Even if you don't count the effects of living under the Saddam dictatorship -- much of which occurred when he was an official or unofficial ally of the United States, funded by the CIA and provided with many horrifying weapons -- there was the 10 year war between Iran and Iraq. The United States provided guns to both sides of that war, legally to Saddam, illegally to the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Then there was the bombing of the country in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Then there was the ongoing bombing between the end of that war and the beginning of what we now think of as the Iraq war. So we are now occupying a country that has been bombed nonstop for a quarter of a century. This sounds a little like Vietnam, where we had a behind-the-scenes war going back into the late 1940s that lasted until 1973. At the time US forces left Vietnam, American newspapers all cried, "A quarter century! Never again!"

Millions of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians killed. Fifty-four thousand American servicemen and women killed. Hundreds of thousands injured, poisoned, sent home half-mad. And the massacre continued in Cambodia, where Pol Pot took over where the United States left off, killing millions of his own people -- a situation ignored by the United States.

It did not take long to start again. Indeed, it was just seven years between the end of Vietnam and the beginning of the United States messing with Iran and Iraq. And now the dead are piling up on our doorstep once again.

But statistics of body counts are fucked up. They are stupid and we pay too much attention to them, or not enough; we hide our feelings behind them, and just about everyone ignores history. Images on today's and yesterday's Planet Waves cover speak much louder than numbers. The anonymous fallen soldier arriving home at Dover Air Force Base, depicted yesterday, is somewhat more ominous than a number. The Hildebrandt family, now shown on the cover, is the other side of yesterday's photo (linked at bottom). Multiply this grief by 2,000 families for a sense of the impact. Don't forget to include the friends of the men and women who went to serve in Iraq in a war based on lies and treason.

Prosecuting Scooter Libby for outing a spy, for lying about prewar intelligence, or for whatever he gets nailed for, is not going to solve, or heal, any of this. In truth, whatever criminal prosecutions may come today are the beginning of a long, hard slog -- to borrow a phrase from Donald Rumsfeld, who should be in jail, where he cannot hurt anyone. And we really need to remember that there are many, many people involved who will walk away from mass murder and treason with impunity. As of last night, Karl Rove was apparently in a very good mood. But he is not prescient.

While we may be marveling at what happens, what strange political developments occur in Washington and denying that we ever voted for the Bush-Cheney ticket, we cannot forget the actual effects of what has happened; we cannot forget the motives for what was done to Iraq and to the United States. We cannot forget the damage cannot be fixed, and that politics does not heal human grief. We cannot forget that this is our world.

--

Fallen soldier arrives at Dover Air Force Base
http://www.planetwaves.net/home/home_soldier.html



Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005

Discomfortable cousin! know’st thou not

That when the searching eye of heaven is hid

Behind the globe, and lights the lower world,

Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen,

In murders and in outrage bloody here;

But when, from under this terrestrial ball

He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines

And darts his light through every guilty hole,

Then murders, treasons, and detested sins,

The cloak of night being pluck’d from off their backs,

Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves?

So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, (or choose your criminal)

Who all this while hath revell’d in the night

Whilst we were wandering with the antipodes,

Shall see us rising in our throne, the east,

His treasons will sit blushing in his face,

Not able to endure the sight of day,

But self-affrighted tremble at his sin.


-- W.S., Richard II




Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2005

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

-- Dylan




Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2005

I AM TRYING to focus my thoughts and am not having very much luck. But hey if I am feeling a little tense and nervous, imagine how Dick Cheney is feeling. If he is not personally indicted tomorrow, whatever happens affects him profoundly. His current transits include Pluto square his Pisces Moon; his progressed Moon is about to make a conjunction to Chiron; and in his solar arc directions, there are two significant points of contact to the MC, which can involve the government.

Further, he was born with Varuna conjunct Hylonome in the 8th house (a bit grim and menacing, to say the least). Currently, transiting Varuna is making a square to that position. He is having his Varuna square, this being a planet very heavily concerned with matters of truth, lies and agreements. Oh, and floods. If I were his astrologer...well...thankfully, I am not.

The Valerie Plame grand jury traditionally meets Wednesdays and Fridays, i.e., tomorrow; thus both of their meetings this week are under Jupiter in Scorpio; and some have commented that Patrick Fitzgerald is unlikely to wait till the last day for an official vote to indict because if something happens to any of the jurors...or if they don't meet quorum at the last meeting...the whole effort, 22 months of investigation, is potentially lost.

Marc Ash, executive director of truthout, dropped me a note this morning with the cautious reminder that yes, this could well be the week -- but not to underestimate the extent of corruption in the broadcast media. What he means is the alarming degree to which everything we see broadcast is a wholly owned subsidiary of the military machine; that it's one vast, oceanic, commercially driven disinformation campaign and never seems to tell the truth, much less the whole truth. I get most of my TV from BBC World, which is actually bearable, and acknowledges the existence of poverty.

Television news in the US is not really covering the Valerie Plame spy outing issue, which is complex and sinister; they would rather leave that for their prime time hallucinations. And I hardly hear it mentioned on BBC World, though they are not exactly pro war. Many millions of people have no clue the case even exists.

And I replied to Marc: let's not imagine a world without the Internet. Our hits do add up. Planet Waves is not CNN, but combine its efforts with 10,000 other Web sites slowly spreading the word and you do have something worth mentioning in history. Then there are the many people who know what the forward button is for, who send interesting clips to their parents, their friends, and so on.

Remember that Watergate -- the issue that brought down Nixon -- was not a television story. TV refused to cover it until the very end. It did not "make pictures" -- the evidence was on paper (boring); the tapes were not released (pathetic); the conspirators were ugly bureaucrats; and so on. Not exactly James Bond stuff. Watergate was covered mainly by the famous Woodstein team at the Washington Post; and The New York Times soon got in on the act, spurred by their adventure covering the Pentagon Papers (which exposed the fraud of Vietnam); and finally the LA Times broke some good stories. But the story of the president turning the FBI and the CIA into his own personal mafia did not exactly make big news in Middle America. It was really news only on the coasts.

Eventually, at the end, CBS remembered its reputation and did a two-part segment which explained it to Ma and Pa Kettle (actually, Ma Kettle was already hip).

So if you wonder why I have explained Valerie Plame at least 10 times in this space, why we have kept a link to truthout.org up on the homepage every day for three years, why I donate a chunk of cash to them every three months, and why I am generally such a pest, the reason is that I don't see a choice; television is full of shit; newspapers and the mainstream Internet are a little confusing to say the least; and you have to take your news where you can get it, and if you're a writer, you put it where you can.

Meanwhile, back in the Pisces Department, we are picking over Dick Cheney's chart like vultures, and will have a full report later in the week. And now, in these last hours before the cosmic trigger of Jupiter entering Scorpio, I have a lot of horoscopes to write, because the in-house Planet Waves horoscope editor is about to give birth to a child, and she said hurry up.



Monday, Oct. 24, 2005

THIS IS GOING to be an interesting week in the news. I feel 100% confident saying this. But there is an equally vast question hanging over whatever happens. Let me see if I can sum it up, and I may need to do so in the context of my personal feelings...about government and justice and the way society works or does not work.

There is no reason at this point for anyone to have any faith in government or its mechanisms. In the United States, the federal government, particularly on top, is very nearly at the total corruption point. For federal employees reading this, I am not talking about the hardworking non-political employees who actually keep the gears of society ticking along. People who have devoted their lives to public service and who hardly get noticed for the benefits they bring to everyone, for their dedication, and for a quiet patriotism that's expressed mainly in hard work, taking care of people, risking your life or doing what you're told to do every day. You know who you are -- including just about everyone serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I speak, rather, of the people who get flushed when a new administration comes in: the political appointees, those who serve at the leisure of the president. And at the moment, this is definitely a mountain where shit rolls downhill.

It is obvious to [nearly] anyone following the Valerie Plame case that something very wrong has happened. (Yes, there are apologists, but they are a sorry lot.) This is the situation in which administration officials exposed an undercover spy network in the press to get revenge on Plame's husband for exposing the lies leading to the Iraq war. Remember that this would all be meaningless if the invasion and occupation of Iraq had not turned out to be based on blatant deception, had not gone disastrously, and had not worked mainly to the profit of Halliburton (Dick Cheney's company) and the Carlyle Group (the Bush family company, formerly partly owned by the Bin Ladens).

That last paragraph alone should be enough to make anyone who has heard of the US constitution want to throw up. But we have developed quite the stomach for "anything goes -- anything at all." That, and "nothing matters anyway."

This is the week when we find out what has happened with the 22-month effort of a special prosecutor named Patrick Fitzgerald. He is the dedicated, zealous, even obsessed federal lawyer who has the former governor of Illinois under prosecution, and has the current mayor of Chicago neck-deep. How he got to be the special prosecutor on the Plame incident is interesting. But the short version is that because he was involved in bringing the case against terrorists in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, some people in the Bush administration thought he since he was against terrorism, thus would he be a good person to look into the Plame incident when John Ashcroft (remember him? The former head of the Justice Department? Prayer meetings in his office every day?) recused himself for a conflict of interest on the case.

That fact alone is really weird; it means Ashcroft may have been involved; but anyway, Patrick Fitzgerald, the US Attorney for the Chicago area of Illinois, got the assignment.

Whoever Fitzgerald is and whatever my real and imaginary reasons for trusting him (i.e., he is from Brooklyn; he is Irish; he doesn't care what political party anyone belongs to; he is young; he likes to work), he is the guy whose government job involves making sure the government does the right thing. If there is evidence that the almighty vice president of the United States of America committed a crime, it's Patrick Fitzgerald's job to get him indicted and prosecute his case at trial. The same is true for the capos in the White House, Rove and Libby, and for whatever "journalists" participated in the treasonous exposing of a US spy or the careless distribution of other classified information. There are also likely to be people involved whose names we have never heard.

We have absolutely no reason to have faith in any such process, as a government mechanism. Common sense would say the whole thing is a ruse. Speaking personally, I have seen governments and their watchdog agencies ruin people, their children, their homes, their entire worlds, over and over again. I could write 5,000 words in an afternoon on the New York State Health Department, starting with the story of the contaminated Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, or the General Electric murders of thousands of PCB-contaminated employees in Hudson Falls and Fort Edward; another on the State University of New York; yet another on the federal EPA; and on and on.

And then very now and then, somebody does their job. It's not because they work for a good system; it's because they know what they need to do, and because their personal sense of values is functioning accurately. Far more important, it's because they have the guts to stand up, to speak, to risk their lives. The guts to fight. The guts to fail. I have had the privilege of talking to some of these people, and even having their help when I needed it. The main advantage I get from this experience is that I know they are real. I've heard their voices, I've visited their labs, hung out with them at conferences, and thanked them personally for risking their necks and protecting people from what would otherwise be unmitigated deception and evil. I know their limits; they do what they can; and sometimes that gets results.

So I can set aside my disbelief. I can hold out faith. And it still remains to be seen what Patrick Fitzgerald will do this week. My instincts and my intuition tell me he's the real thing. The astrology for the week is spot-on. And finally after the last half decade of Bush one administration travesty after the next, something is bound to go right.

If it turns out that he issues a one-paragraph press release that says "close but no cigar," will I be let down, disappointed and pissed off? Yep. Will I take that as a cue to quit working for justice, for change, for awareness?

Not for a second.



Sunday, Oct. 23, 2005

THE SUN IS in Scorpio. We are in a 30-day phase of the solar cycle where we can ask some of the deepest questions about life, or where they will ask themselves. As just about everyone knows, Scorpio is the sign that deals with the mysteries of sex and death. We could just as easily say "birth and death" but we would miss an important point -- birth and thus life itself is the result of sex.

Every now and then I get an email from someone who has delved into the sex-related articles on Planet Waves, and they ask: is it possible to avoid the whole sex issue? This is an earnest question. And my basic response is: I don't think it is possible. It is true that religious systems attempt to offer us a life that is supposedly free from the burdens of our sexuality. In the Christian mythology, it is noteworthy that God is born "without sex." Most religious systems make concrete prescriptions about what we should and should not do, and suggest that there are actual domains of right and wrong, but never saying, "It's best to do what is right for you."

There are reasons for this, and most of them involve a very large pile of gold, much of which was collected from the selling of indulgences, that is, sin permits signed by the pope -- one of the darkest moments in Roman Catholic history, which prompted the Reformation.

In Scorpio, the questions of sex and death come up as one subject: existence.

It's extremely interesting, to the point of being funny if you like gallows humor, the extent to which we usually avoid the question of existence. If you ask the questions, people are liable to think you're weird. I have a friend Neal, who is known to ask the questions. For a long time he was involved in his church, I think it was Episcopalian, and he was the one pushing the envelope, that is, attempting to have the real discussions about life and death that you would hope would be inherent in a spiritual community.

One day someone said to him (I must paraphrase), "You speak with the awareness of someone who is dying of cancer."

As if the only people who would typically think about existence are those who are aware that it might vanish.

I was watching BBC World last night, and they've got a program running about humans colonizing the rest of the solar system. The program began with the premise that some day an asteroid or meteorite is going to hit the planet and wipe out life; it's a question of when, not if. One of the space scientists said, the chances are it will be in some faraway time like 80 million years, but it could be a week from next Tuesday. They gave a brief tour of well known meteorite craters and showed pictures of the Tunguska Event, a 1908 atmospheric entry of some kind that wiped out a huge swath of the Siberian forest.

The solution to this problem, the program proposed, was to colonize Mars. They suggested that since Mars is kind of dry and not quite what humans need, we could do some "terraforming" -- that is, making the atmosphere and surface habitable by artificial means, including pumping a lot of greenhouse gas into the environment, to warm the planet up, and melt the ice caps and free up some water; then send some algae (Fed Ex, I guess) -- and then move things along by planting...lots of...yes...TREES! Why? Because trees produce oxygen. Then, eventually, we could live there. And the first thing I thought was: Gee whiz, why don't we plant some trees on Earth? We could sure use a little oxygen here.

They also suggested that when the Sun went nova, another inevitability we need to worry about (1 billion years and 21 days off) we could colonize one or more of the moons of a gas giant planet, such as Europa (conveniently located near Jupiter) or Titan (just a hop and jump from Saturn). If we went to Titan, we could live in little capsules, in colonies, underneath the methane oceans on that "proto Earth."

And of course the first thing I thought of was: Gee double whiz, I could write some interesting erotic science fiction about that.

Aside note: the program was sponsored by Duracell. The real question is, once our current planet is smothered in batteries and the toxic waste created in making them, where are we going to go to make batteries next?

Rather than go to Titan and living in a sea of grease, it would seem simpler to a) take care of our world and b) accept the fact that the totality of what we see as existence, on this planet and plane of reality, is transient, temporary (that is, a product of time), and subject to change. We surely seem to be doing our part to aid and abet the process in the most dangerous ways, however.

The notion of individual death, in this context, becomes the greatest question we do not face. I believe that all discussions of the "end of the world" are some form of the projection of the fear of individual death. And in not really facing either question at all, we transfer a lot of the energy and subject matter to sex, which we typically confuse with death and think of as being as threatening as death.

There is a relationship: as the beach ball sitting on top of the file cabinet near the entrance to the Seattle Wet Spot (a kind of sex coop) used to say, "Sex Changes Everything." We often confuse change and death. And often, the specter of death puts a puppet on its hand and shows up in our relationships as jealousy -- and just as often, as experiencing the changes of another person a fear level associated with individual death. In other words, I've heard about as many stories of people getting jealous that their lover likes someone else as I have heard that someone in the relationship gets jealous because someone wants to go back to school.

Sex is inherently part of the process of change, and of exchange. And if I dare say so, from 41 years of living, 10 of them spent covering death (journalism) and 10 spent covering life, change as such, and hearing stories about everything (astrology) -- generally change is the thing that we just don't want to consciously embrace. But every now and then, we do, and usually, it's really good.

It would, of course, help a whole lot if we cooperated with one another; if one of the primary commitments in our relationships became, "I will help you change in the ways you want to change, or least least be supportive, or at the very least, get out of your way." As I write, I know: this is scary territory. And I also know: not so many people are giving it away free. But in honor of the Sun entering Scorpio, I would propose we celebrate by doing this: ask your partner, if you have one, and a friend or family member if you happen not to, the ways they are trying to change that are the most important to them. See what response you get. Ask how you can be supportive.

Here is a link on the Tunguska incident.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

Here is more in Titan.
http://www.nineplanets.org/titan.html

Here is one of the best articles on jealousy I've ever read.
http://www.planetwaves.net/abyss.html



Saturday, Oct. 22, 2005

Okay, an astrology interlude. Our lists are working better, by the way; you can be sure that lots of people on our friendly, kitchen-based, coffee-fueled technical crew have been working this one out all week. And I've bought Chelsea a brand new whip.

Both the Sun and Jupiter are about to change signs from Libra to Scorpio. Planets seem to move in patterns; studying astrology one notices fairly soon that nothing much seems to be random. The simultaneous ingress of both a gas giant (i.e., Jupiter) and the Sun into a fixed sign is reminiscent of the Sun and Saturn (also a gas giant) going into Leo more or less together back in July. This is another way of saying the events are separated by about 90 days -- and when you have big events separated by 90 days, something budges; the budgie goes tweet; something happens Monday. Imagine a lot of light (El Soul) and a big magnifying glass (Jupiter) are dropped into Scorpio, the sign of secrets, money, power, and for those who register a pulse, erotic, reproductive and hormonal strength.

At the moment, the Moon is in late Gemini, indeed, late in the 29th degree, applying in a close trine to the Sun and Jupiter, which are now in the 30th degree of Libra. Sun and Jupiter form an exact conjunction in the last degree of this sign, bringing a very interesting month to a close. With the Moon applying, this sign change is in the spotlight right now. The Sun-Jupiter conjunction is exact just before 3 pm European time Saturday, and both the Sun and Jupiter have been square Chiron the past week or so -- and that aspect is close enough to count. In fact, the Jupiter-Sun conjunction is in a much closer square to the Centaur planet Nessus, a Chiron-like world that influences matters of an even edgier nature than Chiron itself, a discussion more appropriate for Scorpio time -- soon enough.

Chiron and Nessus have been in a fairly close conjunction for nearly a year, and this is one of those aspects that is defining the times in which we live. But much like Pluto-Uranus defined the 1960s, most astrologers and the mainstream astrology community does not quite recognize the significance of Nessus (people are just now waking up to Chiron) to really grasp that this is a conjunction that is on the mind-blowing level.

People are worried about Pluto in Capricorn, and the world turning into a giant police state. But here is where I've put my money in the cosmic casino. The combined influence of Nessus and Chiron through Capricorn has utterly fucked things up so badly for "the powers that be" that they ain't gonna be eating that particular cake. (They apparently don't eat other kinds of cake either, or they would be thinking about war and money during less of their waking hours.) The Halliburton Boys should take a lesson from the man they admire so well, Germany's former chancellor (1933-1945): you can't conquer everything all at once no matter how crazy you are.

In other news, the opposition of Mercury in Scorpio and Mars in Taurus is happening now as well. These two personal planets are in a less-than-one-degree opposition, with Mercury direct applying to Mars retrograde (applying means the aspect is forming, not dissolving). Mercury is rising in my chart, cast for The Hague (usually I use Paris, but the annual horoscope project uses charts cast for The Hague, the world capital of peace and justice). But while Mars-Mercury hardly feels like "peace and justice" -- we could say that communication provides a distinct advantage in all matters.

Another noteworthy opposition is Juno opposing Pluto, now applying to a fraction of a degree across 23 degrees Gemini-Sagittarius. Not sure about this one, but Juno (the spouse, divine consort, or jealous bride) reminds me a little of what Laura Bush must be going through right now, realizing that most of her husband's friends are war criminals and that he can't handle the stress of the job. This may signal a general awakening in conjugal relationships; a conveniently intense point of inevitable transitioning. We like to say that relationships are "for work" but often what we really mean is that we are willing to suffer for the illusion of security.

If something is for work, it's perhaps sensible to ask what work is getting done.

If the problem with the way we are taught to construct our emotional and sexual relationships involves piling all our eggs, figs and glass trees in one basket and balancing it on our heads and calling that safe keeping of the soul, the solution is simple enough: open up to people and take some of the pressure off. I recognize that popular culture has made it seem like you can come down with a fast case of AIDS from having a conversation with someone you don't know so well, but I assure you this is not true. I say this recognizing that often the shadow of freedom manifests in someone telling you you cannot be free. And I say it recognizing that often, this is an assigned role that someone is going to get, until we stop giving the assignment.

Venus has just crossed the Great Attractor in mid-Sagittarius. Ceres, which moves considerably slower than Venus most of the time, is a few degrees behind. By the way, Ceres, which possesses 25 percent of the mass of the inner asteroid belt, is a planet by any logical definition thereof. Neptune is retrograde, in Aquarius, closely sextile the Great Attractor (for more on this point, read this link, posted for the 3 millionth time until you get totally bored of it :)

http://www.ericfrancis.com/sagittarius/sagittarius10.html

And while I'm wrapping up the Opposition Report, Saturn is just four degrees away from an opposition to Neptune. As with all Neptune aspects, which sneak up on you, this one kind of just appeared. It will be reaching greater exactitude next year, but I have seen Neptune work with full force from a distance of 10 degrees. For those who like to ponder Orb Theory, I offer you that observation. Neptune's orb is wide enough to drive an ocean liner through, even when sloshed.

Have fun, take notes

Love

    e



Friday, Oct. 21, 2005

IMPORTANT NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS: We are still having some difficulty with our mailing lists, and possibly our email addresses. If you are a subscriber and have not received mailings recently, 1. Please email us at support@planetwaves.net and 2. Please get your most recent materials from the Subscriber Home Page using your keyword.

We're doing our best to resolve this -- but we cannot help you if we don't know you're having a problem. If you have already emailed and have not received a reply, please contact me directly at bookofblue@gmail.com.



In-House News: Charting Project, What's Up with Our Lists,
Monday Horoscopes & a Note for Yahoo! Subscribers

First, I want to thank everyone for an enthusiastic response to the chart casting project. For reasons you'll read about in a moment, I have not been able to get back to everyone who expressed an interest. I would appreciate hearing back from you so that I can complete our correspondence or deliver anything I promised. Thanks for your cooperation-- I have a heck of a lot of email to keep up with.

I am working with someone on the chart resource for Parallel Worlds, the 2006 annual edition and horoscope, but I am open to other proposals for projects or ideas, including those involving statistical research (and other research). It helps to have a specific proposal on a topic you're very enthusiastic about. Thank you again for your interest.

Servers & Yahoo!

We are in the midst of a project that involves changing servers, and we have as part of that changed the address of our primary mailing lists from planetwaves.net to planetwaves.org. Please keep BOTH of these domains in your address book or spam filter.

Meanwhile, we are having a persistent problem with Yahoo! addresses, so please double check that you have your settings correct (including the new domain) while we work out the issue on our end as best we can. Please watch this space for more details. FYI, we have not missed a mailing in some months, so except for minor fluctuations, everything has been on its usual schedule.

The reason we offer a Web edition is because email is subject to the whims and wiles of the Internet environment. So if you don't find what you're expecting in your inbox, please use your keyword and find your horoscope on the same day it normally arrives by email. If you're having a problem you'd like help with, please call the U.S. office at (877) 453-8265. The international dialing number is +(206) 567-4455.

If you do not get your mailing one day, please check the Subscriber Home Page and you will find it there, on the spot or a bit later in the day.

Monday Horoscopes

Last (due to popular demand), we will be resuming email posting of Monday horoscopes with the coming Monday's Planet Waves Monthly.

The Monday series are all monthly horoscopes from various magazines (think: Monday, monthly). Some already appear on the Net; some do not (FYI, the Friday horoscope does NOT appear anywhere on the Net but the Planet Waves Subscriber Homepage). You will therefore have two postings each Monday -- a horoscope, and the extended birthday report. Both will also be posted to the Subscriber Home Page.

Please bookmark the Subscriber Homepage and drop in regularly. Though the URL will change a couple of times a year, it stays pretty consistent and will be a useful place to check in for information that might not have made it to your email inbox, or which we only post on the Subscriber Homepage.

Thanks for keeping up with our growth, development and squirming.

Yours & truly,

Eric Francis
Paris


Archives 2005: Dec. 29 to Feb. 7 | Feb. 8 to March 15 | March 16 to April 25 | April 26 to May 25 | May 26 to July 17 | July 18 to August 9 | August 10 to September 19 | September 21 to October 19

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