Planet Waves Astrology | Blog by Eric Francis

Monday, April 24, 2006 | The Celibates

ALONG with National Pork Producer's Month, International Tap Dancing Day and Lawn Mower Awareness Week, there is Masturbation Month, the month of May. It's coming soon.

Yes, it's really true, there is such a thing. While nobody bats an eye at Concrete Appreciation Night, Masturbation Month never fails to get a laugh and, as it turns out, quite a few orgasms. There are different events around the US, including a few in the Bay area, New York, Seattle, Florida and other normal places. What are these like? Well, let your ideas run wild. (In fact, however festive, nearly all are traditionally fundraisers for charity.)

This year must be the 10th anniversary of the event, which was created by the Good Vibrations sex toy stores in Berkeley and San Fran. I have always tried to cook up something for Masturbation Month at Planet Waves, and it's truly what you could call a house tradition here. It's difficult to find good PR for this subject; few places welcome real discussion.

Though the Sun is in Taurus for most of this time (an appropriate sign for the subject at hand), I was told by Goodvibes a few years back that no astrological planning went into the choice of May. But synchronicity counts, and The May is a great Celtic celebration of many centuries age.

While I have often invited our writers to contribute on the subject ("How to Dance" by Giovanna Coppola is a memorable one), and while I have done my share of essaying at various times, I have never taken the subject to Planet Waves readers.

Given the interesting discussion prompted by Sunday's blog on fear between the genders (I have lots of great mail to post), this seemed like the perfect moment to invite you to participate in a community discussion. I've been considering different themes, but something I read in an email today sparked the idea to begin the discussion with the experiences and thoughts of those whose only form of sex, for some phase of time, has been masturbation.

This can be through one's own choice, or due to other circumstances. Write us something, and let it be a an opportunity to speak both to your sexual expression and your relationship to yourself. What have you felt, and how have you grown? Are you satisfied? Why have you chosen the path you have, or has it chosen you? How do your inner male and inner female relate to one another? Are you able to talk to others about being your own lover?

These kinds of things. Give all the detail you like. Try to stick to your feelings and experiences rather than going intellectual.

Entries can be long or short, but let the writing be fresh and immediate.

I'll propose other ideas between blogs, as the week goes on. But this email will be the reference point for relevant information about the project, such as:

Entries will be reviewed by an editor or two including myself, but please do your best to type neatly in an email that holds formatting (called HTML mail; typing style should look as much like this blog as you can make it). Time frame is as soon as possible. Your thoughts need be no longer than this blog entry, or can even be much shorter. We can post them under a pseudonym, or anonymously, or yes even with your actual real name. Just be clear about how you want that to work. And please tell us something about yourself in your letter.

Submitting an entry equals expressed consent to publish and archive that writing on Planet Waves, though we presume you retain any copyright that might apply. No contact information will be published. To reply, please use this email address:

solo@planetwaves.net

To read "How To Dance," Giovanna's piece from one Masturbation Month special a few years ago, here is the link.

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

April 23 | Why Men Are Afraid of Women

MARS is the most active planet in the sky right now, in the sign Cancer where it's not particularly well supported, and making a long square to the lunar nodes, as well as crossing the degree of a huge eclipse. One of my colleagues described this as some shockingly precipitous astrology -- that is, that things are precipitating from the ethers into reality, and fast. Personality traits, unexpected experiences and hidden emotional material are coming to the surface.

In the closing of her last email, she wrote, "I understand completely why men are afraid of women, and I think it's high time women grokked that too." [For the definition of 'grok' here is the Wiki reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok ]

We all know why women are afraid of men. Or do we? Remember that fears are not accurate, they are usually personal psychological prejudices. Sometimes they are based on bad experiences that have nothing to do with the next guy. It is impossible to address fear without also addressing prejudices, since fear is so often based on prejudice.

Anyway, here are some of the reasons I've come up with. As I said, they're not necessarily true, or true for everyone. I realize these may sound incredibly cliché, which does not make them any less true or false. But, since I'll inevitably get flamed, please -- send to francis@planetwaves.net and remember that I am free to use all comments that are sent in, but I'll leave your name off if you want. I would appreciate your constructive ideas, that is, how to build a deeply needed dialog between the genders rather than what we endure through marketing, TV and the movies which is only intended to drive the wedge deeper, thus, divide and conquer. I am not here to offer solutions, only to sketch out the problem as I see it, and hear about it from others.

1. Men seem to have all the power. This gives them many advantages. They know how to play as a team, which gives them even more advantages. Often women are excluded from the game and the guys keep all the marbles for themselves. Men seem to make all the money. This gives them more freedom. After all, money can solve nearly everything.

2. Men have the cock. The only place to get a cock is from a man. This seems extremely unfair since women can provide so many of their own needs if they want to -- but not the cock. The cock can be a love object, a weapon or a power object of some other kind. It can turn into anything. And it does not always give you what you want. You can do all that work to get and keep the cock, and then you get nothing.

3. Most men prefer to be free rather than tied down, which tends to pull the emotional rug out from under those women who just want emotional stability and some form of security as the top item on the agenda. Men are reputed to have no problem having sex with more than one woman, or with as many as possible -- after all, it seems to be in their biology. Still, this is a terrifying prospect -- that another women will come along and simply be more attractive, and that is that.

4. Men and women love differently. Men tend to love women as part of their life, as an aspect of their life. Women are taught to love men as the totality of their life. So a woman can become totally subsumed by the love of a man, whereas a man can keep a woman, or women, as part of his story rather than the main event. This is an imbalance that can lead to deeply unsatisfying experiences for women because men never seem to love as much. All women seem to be endlessly fascinating to many men, whereas once a woman chooses to love a man, he is the one and other guys are not interesting at all, or so it seems.

5. Men can rape women, and easily overpower them physically. Depending on a woman's experience, it's possible to view every situation with a man as a potential rape.

6. Men cannot get pregnant and thus cannot understand the extent to which women are subject to this completely life-changing experience. Men just want to fuck and that's it. They don't care about the consequences.

7. Men are cut off from their emotions and so it's impossible to talk to them about how you really feel. They think feeling and crying are for women. Men have no interest in spirituality. They are not introspective, and have no idea of an interior life. This makes them impossible to have a real conversation with about anything other than golf.

8. Since women tend to communicate in signals, they presume that men will also do the same thing. But this is not usually the case. If a man wants a woman he has the prerogative of approaching her, and generally he will. Men for the most part do not signal or lay bait; they come right out with their intentions. This is boring, and often a turnoff, but it's also experienced by many women as treacherous because they feel they never know what a man is thinking.

9. Men don't understand the phenomenon of the biological clock -- that time always seems to be running out.

Now for a few reasons men are afraid of women. Once again, flame away, francis@planetwaves.net .

1. Women have extraordinary sexual power over men. Unless a woman has felt the same thing for another women, it's nearly impossible to explain the power of the pussy to take over male consciousness. When a woman knows this, however, it can be an extremely potent manipulation device, particularly before sex occurs but often after sex occurs.

2. Women tend to keep their secrets extremely guarded, and to give the impression that you never really know them. This makes them difficult to trust. Because women feel overpowered by men, this can create a mental or emotional atmosphere of "all is fair in love and war" and then men must be prepared for them acting like anything they do or say is perfectly fair.

3. Women tend to deny their sexual desire, at least outwardly. They also think this is a ridiculous notion since they know how horny they are, and everyone else is presumed to know, but most men are left wondering. Women tend to experience their sexual desire as a weakness or vulnerability rather than as power. Most women are excellent at covering up their sexual desire in several layers of inaccessibility, propriety and prudishness that makes it difficult to discern what they are feeling. In covering up their desire/vulnerability, they live constantly with the feeling that they are covering a weakness that could lead them somewhere they don't want to be. This sets up an enormous inner struggle, which often gets projected into relationships as a power struggle.

4. Yes does not necessarily mean yes, and no does not necessarily mean no. And maybe can mean maybe, yes or no. So maybe does not necessarily mean maybe, but maybe it does. Despite all the best efforts of Antioch College and their rules of sexual engagement, we have made very little progress on the meaning of yes and no, the two most important words in the language. (According to these rules, adopted by many colleges and universities in the United States, the man must ask consent at each moment of what the rules term 'sexual escalation'. This automatically presumes women to be victims of sex rather than willing participants.) But this does not reflect reality, even vaguely. Nearly every man has experienced a woman who says no to test her suitor, to make sure he really wants her or because she loves the feeling of having her resistance broken down. Unless you are a man who is bold and who fears no consequences, or have enormous self control and can wait a woman out, until she fesses up to wanting you, this can be an extremely treacherous game, particularly because women can always say they were violated, but men never can.

In actual fact, many of the men women love the most, they start out thinking are arrogant bastards, wimps (or whatever). Some men have figured out that how a woman feels initially has nothing to do with how she will feel ultimately, and thus it's okay to basically ignore the weird messages and make your desires known. But, alas, for any man who just does not have the guts, the heart or the strength to do this, life can be extremely difficult.

5. Women can get pregnant, but when they're really horny (and most likely to want sex), this can matter not at all. Women can also lie about birth control, whereas it's difficult for a guy to lie about whether he has a condom on. Either it's there or its not.

6. While pregnancy changes a woman's life irrevocably, it also changes a man's life irrevocably, which few women give men credit for acknowledging; we are presumed to not give a shit. Women have many forms of recourse, and they begin with all the choices, for example, to prevent pregnancy or not; have the child or not; to involve the man or not. Men, on the other hand, get to go along for the ride, and in the current era, it's very difficult for a man to walk away. It's possible for a man to have a child he does not know about, but impossible for a women.

7. There reaches a point in most women when rationality just runs out. There is no reasoning left. Everything is pure emotion, and it can be dark, and all the rage of the eons can come up all at once. I would dare to say that most men have no idea how to handle female rage, nor do they understand it, and it is terrifying. But short of rage, the overpowering nature of female emotion, and the ability (or weakness) of women to change their feelings every day, makes any intimate experience potentially treacherous, because it's difficult to figure out where she stands (which is a source of power for women) and then, if there is a transgression, the results can be overwhelming.

8. Men are accused of being sexist, but women often hold themselves on an elevated level: as the more moral gender, the more sexually responsible and fidelitous, the one with their priorities clear and who know exactly what they want. The more this is presumed true by anyone but is actually false, the more terrifying it is.

If you would like to respond to this blog, please type neatly, using capital letters at the beginning of sentences. Please send your email as HTML mail, that is, not text only. All responses may be printed anonymously, but I would prefer to have your gender, approximate age, marital status and sexual orientation to post with your response. PS, in that spirit, I am male, 42 (Dragon, Pisces) bisexual but mostly into women, out of the closet solosexual, never married, no kids and single in the sense that I don't have a 'girlfriend' (or boyfriend) in any conventional sense of the word.

Saturday, April 22, 2006 | Concessions in Nepal

NOTE: Here is the mostly corrected version of yesterday's posting:
http://planetwavesweekly.com/dadatemp/260041017.html

WHILE I'm working on the astrology of the Nepal transition, such as it is -- King Gyanendra said yesterday that he would return the country to a constitutional monarchy, and has called for elections of parliament -- here is the video: http://snipurl.com/pjk9 -- and I'll post some recent information from Wikipedia. For those who are new to Wiki, the site functions as a news service as well, since it's an encyclopedia that's updated to the day and sometimes to the hour.

Anyone can edit the entries. Rather than serving as a source of disinformation, this seems to keep the Wikipedia honest. But note that it has no one editor or a fixed editing staff with the final word; it is a collective process. When points are disputed, conversations about them, often quite intense, are taken to another area of the site which anyone can browse.

Most Westerners don't know the circumstances under which Gyanendra, the King of Nepal, came to power. He was the brother of the sitting King Birendra. Birendra's son, Dipendra, is reported to have staged a murder-suicide on June 4, 1999 (just prior to the massive Aug. 11, 1999 grand cross-total solar eclipse) in which he is alleged to have killed most of the royal family before taking his own life. Gyanendra, third in the line of succession to the throne, survived the rampage because he was out of town.

I saw a detailed BBC investigation on this recently -- it was the first I had heard of it -- with several accounts of the few surviving eyewitnesses, where there seemed to be absolutely no question about what happened. However, according to Wiki, the account is in dispute, but from what I have read the alternate theories don't carry a lot of weight.

You can see this link:

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

Or this one:

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

Note the "disputed neutrality" tag at the top of the Dipendra article.

Here is the latest from the entry on King Gyanendra:

In April 2006 constitutionalists staged protests and strikes in Kathmandu against Gyanendra's direct rule. These protests drew support from journalists, lawyers, and other groups. The royal government responded by passing a curfew, which police enforced violently by beating protesters with canes or firing on them. The government's response drew condemnation from several countries including India and the United States. On April 21 Gyanendra announced that he would yield executive authority to a new prime minister chosen by the political parties to oversee the return of democracy.

Here is the entry on the Nepalese general strike, from earlier this month. The situation is a bit more complex than people demanding back their constitutional rights versus a monarch who wants to keep direct rule. There is a Communist (properly, Maoist) insurgency that is attempting to take control of the country by both threats and actions of terrorism [link below].

The April 2006 Nepalese general strike was a general strike scheduled by forces opposed to the political crackdown under King Gyanendra to take place from April 5 to April 9, 2006 in Katmandu and other Nepalese cities. The Rebel Maoist forces called a cease-fire in Kathmandu valley for the time period in order to allow for peaceful protests. The general strike saw numerous protests, resulting in three reported deaths. A curfew was announced by the government on April 8, with reported orders to shoot protestors on sight. Despite this, small, disorganized protests continued.

On April 9, a coalition of Nepal's seven largest political parties announced that it intended to continue its protests indefinitely and called for a tax boycott. The government announced plans to step up its enforcement of the curfew and claimed that the Maoists had infiltrated the protests. Prachanda, the leader of the CPN(M), had said that "this is no longer a protest by opposition parties .. it has become a people's movement," and warned that he himself could lead a revolt in the capital.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2006_Nepalese_General_strike

And I did something that you're not supposed to do as a journalist and which I try to make like it will be a cold day in hell before it happens but I spelled McClellan wrong. That is the right spelling. We'll correct it in the official version when we go through the archives in 2026. Thanks to Jude for pointing it out.

e

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can...

Amsterdam is an interesting town. I highly, highly recommend getting here. Stay a week. It's worth skipping the rest of Europe for, but then, I haven't been to Venice. But there are a lot of canals in Amsterdam, and it really is a country of its own.

Friday, April 21 | Psyche Speaks

NOTE: We've got a new version of the McLellan Quits chart with Psyche depicted in the ascendant, written out "psy". That would be here:

http://planetwaves.net/chart.php?c=scottresign

Also, there is a minor gaffe in this article, as I said that Psyche is in the 12th house when it's quite plainly in the 1st house. That would not change my interpretation too much, as it's close to the line...however...definitively in the 1st house.

Dear Friend and Reader:

AS PROMISED, here is the article on this week's shakeup in the White House involving Karl Rove, Scott McLellan and Psyche. This is the subscriber edition to Planet Waves, which we've posted free the past few weeks so you can see what it's like:

http://planetwavesweekly.com/dadatemp/1881888065.html

Here is a little interesting fact about Planet Waves. For every 1,000 people per day who arrive at our Web site, one subscribes. This may seem astonishingly low, but actually, it's in line with other sites that strive to make a lot of content available to everyone, as we consistently do. (For example, truthout.org is supported by 1% of its total readers; they use a different method of counting than we do.) It is, however, amazing what we do with our relatively modest budget.

Everything you see at Planet Waves is paid for by your subscription fees. Our project development, ISP fees, our staff, our toll-free number, our reporting expenses, programming and design -- all of it -- is supported by our subscribers. Indeed, you could say that I work for free, since I put all subscription fees back into Planet Waves, Inc., and support myself other ways (mainly as a freelance writer for other publications, and doing astrology consultations). You thus get a 200% return on your money. Not bad for a buck a week.

If you're one of the people in the "I have thought of subscribing for a long time" category, or one of those in the, "I have resisted subscribing (because I think everything should be free)" category, please think again. When you think of how little $54 gets you in the real world, you'll notice how generous Planet Waves Weekly is, and also the free daily site that it supports.

Your subscription gets you access to Planet Waves Weekly, Parallel Worlds annual horoscope and the Lemonade horoscope area. You can subscribe monthly, quarterly, for six months or one year.

And -- our main page is here around the clock, every day, with a new message and photograph for you, and lots of great pictures by many photographers. And Astrology Secrets Revealed on Jonathan's page is also sponsored by Planet Waves Weekly. We don't mean to take away your incentive to subscribe by being so generous -- but that part is up to you.

So, take action. Make a difference. Help save the world and build a forum for great astrology.

If you don't like making online purchases, you can call our office toll free and talk to a real person, Chelsea, who will help you. If you live abroad, send her your phone number and she'll call you. The number is (877) 453-8265 and the email is chelsea@planetwaves.net.

Here is our subscriber feedback:

http://www.planetwavesweekly.com/feedback.html

Here is the sign-up link, with all the options.

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

Thank you! And please pass it on!

e

Thursday, April 20 | From Nepal to Washington

WATCHING tensions rise in Katmandu in what may be the last days of King Gyanendra, I can see how George Bush could be pretty nervous. The Nepalese capital is now under a 24-hour curfew as people are demanding an end to the king's absolute rule. The king is attempting to suppress a massive demonstration today, using police and the military -- and it's not working so well. A massive crowd has gathered outside the city and is trying to get in. There are always more regular people than cops and soldiers. Shooting to kill is essentially an intimidation tactic, since they can't exactly kill everyone.

Kings know that when people want their freedom, they want their freedom. Many feel that the choice between liberty or death is worth it. And it is clear that when people start to find their voice, the process builds exponentially, which is why you want to nip it in the bud. If Dick Cheney could ban bicycles, I am sure he would. It's an old idea, but you never know, it could catch on again and give people the notion they may be able to live without oil.

Now, the only way you can have people calling for the end to absolute rule is if you have taken that for yourself, and if people have figured it out. When you're the king and you dissolve parliament, that is a clue. When you're the "President of the United States" who stole two elections (yes, two) and somebody called a lobbyist turns Congress into a pay-as-you-go policy mill, basically voting on the basis of a little extra side-cash and approving everything you do, with the big speeches the occasional opposition blowhorn makes meaning next to nothing, it's not so obvious. It can look like business as usual.

To us, that is.

People in power know what they're doing. That is not intended as a compliment. I mean that they know how the power is distributed (because they distributed it), and they know that people may figure it out (because they have figured it out themselves), and it makes them nervous when they vaguely sense that their ruse is failing.

I say this all by way of a psychological assessment, ever-essential in sizing up the real political score. The scariest thing to a person in a high position of power is what they fear that people know. This is why even vaguely accurate newspaper articles that nobody reads make a difference. This is why if you're running a student protest, you can print just 10 copies of an informational leaflet and make sure one gets up to the president's office. Usually you print more, and perhaps students will read it with some interest -- but the administration will study it with a magnifying glass, looking for the implications.

If we look at the astrology this way, we see a lot of implications. Yesterday's chart for the resignation of Scott McLellan, the White House press secretary, is a pretty big one. On one side, it looks like a nuclear bomb has gone off and on the other side it looks like a total loss of faith within the leadership structure. Several key conspirators are out of the game, or in the case of the almighty Karl Rove (who has so far survived the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation), demoted and moved near the door.

And what you see on the outside barely tells the story. It's like watching silhouettes on the shade. Yet the shape of the shadows reveals something about the shape of what's hidden.

April 18 | And now, from the something finally gives files

GOOD Goddess we had to wait a long time. The Aries Point has been in the deep fryer and the planets have been spinning wildly. And finally, two men on the top-10 list of those who most definitely need their mouths washed out with nonoxynol 9 get the heck out of the way: Monsieurs Soft Steak themselves, Karl Rove and Scott McLellan. I'll peck around for the time of the resignation or the announcement (if you have news reports listing it please do pass them onto francis@planetwaves.net if you have a moment) and we'll have a look at the chart/s. [Thanks to everyone who sent in data! That would be 9:39 am EDT, Washingstone, DC that Scotty beamed himself across town, he's probably gonna get Jack Abramoff's old gig.]

At least astrology still works. I mean, it seems like it would be really difficult to run Mercury and Mars past the nodes and spark off Venus by Uranus and all the rest of that and have nothing happen. Again, the early call, as usual, is this is bigger than it seems.

Behind the scenes of politics, there is so much more going on than you see. In fact what you get is like walking past a theater during a performance rather than being inside. There's a lot going on onstage and a lot more yet behind the scenes. In the immortal words of somebody, we shall see what we shall see.

I'll pull this together for the Friday edition of PWW and post it for everyone.

Wednesday, April 19 | Energy

I'VE been whining about evil the past couple of days, but have not been missing the rather amazing emergence of protests in many parts of the world this spring. This is Aries Point, this is Chiron conjunct Nessus, this is Saturn in Leo -- all the recent big ones. And this is: it's time.

In a long series of earlier articles on the Chiron-Nessus conjunction, which I'll poke around and see if I can find [here is a google search: http://snipurl.com/pesu ], it looked like social uprising would be one of the themes of these years, 05 and 06 in particular. I tend to fixate on the United States (with apologies to other parts of the world I neglect, particularly the UK -- but Tony Blair's horoscope brewing and will be an article somewhere, soon), which I take on as one of my responsibilities of American citizenship. Other countries have led the way, and the United States is slowly rousing itself to the necessities of change.

I was looking at images from Nepal this morning on BBC World on a big plasma screen television and the emotion and passion of protesters marching in the pouring rain was beautiful. Protesters who come out in the rain are really dedicated to whatever it is they're participating in. And it was pouring, and they were passionate, demanding back the constitutional parliamentary system that was recently dumped by King Gyanendra.

In Seattle, Chinese president Hu Jintao, arriving for his first United States visit, was met by silent protestors objecting to thousands of meditation practitioners being executed every year by the government. He was also glad-handled (and invited to a private dinner in his home) by Bill Gates, who is looking to develop the fabulous Chinese market -- at least he's got the idea to sell something to the Chinese rather than buy it from them.

Whatever may be happening I can't escape the feeling that the world is ice skating along the side of a cliff. Nor the feeling that I can only see a tiny piece of reality, made just a shade more vivid by astrology.

Tuesday, April 18 | Focus

THE astrology I described yesterday is pretty much in exact focus now. It's about 1 pm CET and it's just at the peak. Venus is conjunct Uranus (hmmm, sounds interesting) and Mercury is square Mars, basically simultaneously. The whole setup in involves the Aries Point and the lunar nodes, which are basically amplifying things enormously.

Strong aspects like this are experienced different ways by different people and there's no way to say, for sure, whether they're bad or good. What's possible to say is these are intense, and represent movement, a shift of some kind. As an astrologer, it's fair enough to 'predict' progress, which is another way of saying that we have some leverage available, or that they are going to move us along one way or another.

The Moon is also approaching Pluto in Sagittarius. I saw that and had a bit of foreboding, particularly as I was hearing news reports all morning of Iran and the U.S. seeming to ramp up their little pretend nuclear crisis (Sagittarius is about international stuff, Pluto adds the level of obsession and religious fanaticism). I no longer use television where I live (my cable card in Paris ran out about two days before Parallel Worlds went to press, and I didn't bother getting a new one) so I gave up on BBC World and I only see TV when I'm traveling. I have been shocked at the nonstop tirade of violence in every imaginable form, and how unless you click it off, it just keeps coming.

Honestly, I don't miss it. When I moved to my new apartment, I moved the TV into a closet and put an altar in that space. I would rather get my news from writers and commentators I trust personally and support consciously. Planet Waves gives $1,000 a year to truthout.org. I like doing this a lot better than paying a cable bill, which is not so much less.

I woke up this morning thinking that based on my perception of our current level of social instability, the rate of change, the feeling of restlessness and sense of uncertainty, we've left the 1960s in an antique shop. What is only starting to ferment is the sense that all this can lead to progress, that we can grow as a result, that we have at our disposal a power we can harness and start to bring about some of the changes we know we want to see, and that we know we need desperately (ideas about energy, for one).

The history of the 1950s through the 1970s is fascinating this way, as one subculture after another, and then finally a large swath of the mainstream population -- that is, people who did not associate with being part of any special group -- began to devote themselves to progress, often individual, sometimes for a community, and often for both. It pretty much always came down to the feeling that there's noting left to lose, so we may as well try something.

I've noticed that it often comes down to that one factor in my life. I can cling to stability for a long time, knowing I need to make a change. I can identify the factors that are blocking the change, or which I'm not prepared to give up. Then one day I recognize that basically, I have only to gain by making an adjustment, or only to lose by not doing so. Suddenly the sense of sacrifice can just evaporate, though usually what I find is that I need to be willing to embrace instability and not having a sense of what my future holds -- I've noticed that both of these seem necessary to actually be in the present.

Hmm, and as the future comes rushing on, that's always a challenge. But it tends to keep me awake.

Monday, April 17 | Aries Point Alive

THE INNER space known as astrology is making some exciting patterns right now. We have passed through the firestorm between the eclipses of Sept. 2005 and March 2006, with all the inner planet retrogrades and much else besides. The stretch between now and autumn is entirely different territory with a different feeling, probably a lot less chaotic (though we have yet to see what the Saturn-Neptune opposition is really about).

However, the one thing that really distinguishes the current phase from many others, at least through the spring, a focus on the Aries Point, or the first degree of the tropical zodiac, 1 Aries and thereabout.

Such as right at the moment. In the past few days, Mars entered Cancer and Mercury entered Aries. At the moment, the two are in an exact square, with Mercury applying to Mars (that is, Mercury's degree is slightly earlier than that of Mars, and the aspect is reaching exactitude now). I'll put the article summarizing the Aries Point (from Astrology Secrets) at the bottom of this blog. As I repeat nearly as often than McDonald's reminds you of its existence, the first degree of Aries and by extension, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, is a sensitive double axis (a cross) of the zodiac where we pick up the theme "the personal is political." It's also been summed up as, "The 'I' embodied on Earth" and was considered by the German astrologer Witte to be the second most important point in a chart, after the midheaven.

I just googled this term and found an editorial from Z Magazine, by Mike or Lydia (it's not signed, but I think it's Mike) that gives some of the history of the phrase. I first heard it in the American Women Writers graduate English seminar of Prof. Carol Smith at Rutgers.

Z writes: "The phrase 'the personal is political' first took hold via the women's movement of the 1960s. It provided useful insight, dear to Z, which, however, has recently been turned into its opposite.

"In the 1950s to mid-1960s there was sexism, racism, poverty, and so on, but little public recognition of these oppressions. Folks assumed each individual's plight was personal and of their own making. To improve one’s lot meant overcoming one’s own character inadequacies.

"The civil rights movement demonstrated that many of the conditions that each Black person faced were duplicated in the conditions most other Black people faced. The enemy was no longer one’s own inadequacies; it became systemic and political and we called it institutional racism or, later, white supremacy" [underline added for emphasis].

This is just an example from history, and the leaders of the social movements of the 50s and 60s were probably not studying Witte's astrology texts. But they identified an idea that rings true with the Aries Point. It is an intersection of public and private realities. As Adrienne Rich explained it, there is no private life that is not, at least in part, determined by the larger public life.

Z continues,

"The 'personal is political' -- meaning that personal outcomes are largely a product of systemic relations and of structures beyond each individual that need to be addressed—came to mean, instead, that all political phenomena arise from the accumulated personal choices of individuals, so that what needed to be addressed to win better circumstances was primarily people’s personal choices."

Okay so, now there are personal planets on the Aries Point: Mercury is right there, setting off Mars. Mars, for its part, has just walked over the degree of the June 21, 2001 total solar eclipse that ushered in so much change that summer, and which I think we're still living under the influences of, both collectively and to a large extent individually.

What's also interesting is that the lunar nodes are walking toward the Aries Point as well. A lot of astrology students struggle with understanding the nodes, and it does take some time to get a feel for them (questions on the subject are welcome at Astrology Secrets Revealed). There is something that the nodes and the Aries Point have in common, which is that intersection of the big world and the individual world. They are the points near where eclipses happen, and eclipses have this feeling too. What's interesting about the nodes is how people with them prominent in their charts (angular, or with key planets aspecting them) tend to make contact with the public so easily. So the feeling of the Aries Point and the nodes has a similar feeling.

But it may be that the nodes are more personal, because they do seem to direct the individual path so intensely. They are the thing you cannot quite escape -- whether it's your past or whether it's what you must do. No matter what, you just have to work with the information and influence coming from the nodes.

One trick to reading the nodes is to look at what the planets that rule the nodes are doing. And that's interesting right now. In the case of the North Node in Aries, we have Mars, the ruler, in Cancer, squaring the nodal axis closely. This represents a change in direction, a decision point, or an orientation on distinguishing the past from future.

Second, Venus, ruler of the South Node in Libra, is in Pisces, and about to form a conjunction to Uranus. This is just basically one of those 'good for all' aspects, since it vibes with adventure and freedom and brings together so many different sign energies. Liberation from the past, inventing the future, lots of creativity and some unusual encounters with others are suggested; Uranus and Venus are a pretty sexy match, and if you're ever curious, you'll find that the two have an impressive list of astronomical similarities (a steep inclination to the ecliptic, rotating backwards, and so on).

So yeah, a new time. Something other than the feeling of taking a ride in a row boat in a blender that we've grown accustomed to since late last summer.

Here is the Z magazine editorial on the personal being political.

http://zmag.org/zmag/articles/julyeditorial97.html

Here is an illustration of "the political is personal," courtesy of Pink Floyd. The illustration of the cow and the association with atomic energy is a message about how nuclear fallout, from bombs, experimentation and power production (a political and industrial issue), winds up in the grass, which winds up in the cow, which winds up in the milk, which winds up in you and your kids.

http://www.allfloyd.com/images/covers/atom.jpg

Here is the Astrology Secrets page on the Aries Point. There are others.

http://planetwaves.net/cainer/archive/003790.php

-- Eric Francis
Den Haag

April 16 | Feast or Famine?

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."

-- Ernest Hemingway

ARTISTS and writers seem to pour through Paris. I didn't meet a lot of writers while I was here; it was easier to find artists, but then, you can find them in art studios (such as 59 Rivoli, well documented in the 2005 galleries), whereas writers tend to work alone in rooms. And art is easier to see than writing; it's often quite large, and hung on the wall and people are invited in.

Dead writers were all around me in Paris. Where I sat and wrote hundreds of horoscope columns was on a little plaza, Contrescarpe, situated on the path to where Hemingway and Orwell had lived. I could feel them walking on the paving stones and through the passages. They kept me company far more often than the living ones.

Shakespeare & Co. Books, one of my spiritual bases at different times, had not only been home to tens of thousands of writers over the years, for a week or three or a few months, but also the scene of visits from many of the old Beat Generation writers. It was always interesting to be in a place where Allen Ginsberg had read, slept, written and got off. But as a creative hotbed, the place often feels like last night's barbecue.

It is difficult to imagine this city as the place where Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Gertrude Stein and William Somerset Maughm found the community, inspiration and intellectual freedom that they did. It was difficult to see this as the place where James Joyce found so much acceptance and respect. I kept asking myself where Simone de Beauvoir would fit in. When you study art and literature, Paris takes on mythical dimensions. Of the 'great names' we know, many were touched in some way by Paris.

It's true there's a lot of art here, and people think that means it's a place that 'supports art'. But I've had to give the talk on living vs. dead artists a lot of times. The dudes hanging in the museums, who get most of the attention, are the dead ones, and typically they get all the money. A place that supports art supports its living artists. This is not, of course, exclusively the problem of Paris. When was the last time you heard of a van Gogh sold at Christie's where half the proceeds went to support living painters? You could sell one of those paintings and endow an arts foundation for 25 years.

To call the currrent atmosphere of Paris antintellectual is a most courteous understatement. There is still an energy to tap into, this thundering surge of power; and there is a crystallized quality to the environment that focuses the written word, at least in my experience, and according to the librarian. But on the surface, in 3D, in the current here and now, the mental climate verges on banal. I am not speaking for the youth movement. I have no idea what it felt like to be in their planning meetings for the recent Reve General, the most exciting strikes and protests since 1968. I bet it felt pretty good.

But I am talking about Paris itself, not the underground. In many ways it's as if anything that matters doesn't matter. I had relatively few discussions oriented on real problems or real solutions; I could rarely talk about what I was doing for more than a few moments. It does not help that most people feel that astrology is a specific area of expertise and out in meatspace, the physical world and not the Net, I don't meet astrology fans, meaning energized students, every day.

It's strange, as I'm saying this now to myself for the first time, I actually have felt a bit selfconscious being an astrologer. I also felt pretty selfconscious having any alternative views of sexuality -- alternative as in something besides marry your first boyfriend. Thank the Goddess there are a few people I can really talk to, but let's put it this way: I don't think it's a town where it's easy to be out of the closet. Gay is gay and gay is an accepted part of life. Gay is no longer queer. Swinging is a business (plenty of swing clubs in Paris, too). I mean queer. You might say, well, sex is so taboo, but we need to expect a bit more from our world cosmopolitan centers.

In essence, I am talking about the freedom not just to be oneself, but the freedom to express oneself within a contained social environment and actually be accepted. Perhaps I am not the greatest judge of this; and it is also true that the world gets more Disney DNA injected every hour; and that most people don't know how conservative they actually are -- or why.

Ah, but where in the world is freedom the community ethos? Where is it really possible? Where do we not have to walk that fine line between prejudice and envy that seems to crowd our originality off of the mental bandwidth? Where isn't Prozac the drug of choice? There must be someplace. Must we always have to make it? Perhaps this is the requirement of creativity, to create the space where it can be itself, and then to bring the energy to keep that expression going.

I know there are places where strong cells of affinity foster growth; there are always those who make it a point of holding open a space for creative expression and for the community to interact with it. But I'll tell you one thing about Paris that won't make you faint -- it's bloody expensive. You don't have to be rich to live there, but you also cannot exactly be on an experimental path unless you have some serious means of support. And most of the world doesn't. So the very expense of being in Paris prohibits those who want to experiment from staying there.

When I first got to town, I met these youngsters named Heather and James. They were recovered Witnesses and were some of the most enlightened people I've met since, well, high school or summer camp. James had read every word of Wilhelm Reich, and was a kind-hearted, emotionally centered intellectual. He spent something like 25 euros buying me an ancient copy Reich's The Function of the Orgasm while they were staying in my living room, talked me through some of the main points and gave me some helpful advice for studying it: read a page a day if you have to (it took me six months to read).

Heather and James really only had one problem in Paris, which is they could not afford to stay. I'm going to guess that scares off 95% of Paris's brightest young recruits. Trust me, you could feel them missing.

You know -- thank heaven for the Internet. That is what I say. I know I have not poured out my heart on this subject, but the Net, for all its spam, scams and bullshit, and people who want to charge by the letter, is one of the most extraordinary places in the universe. If you can get here, you can be free here. You can find people here who say,'Yes, I know what you're talking about'. Maybe they're 3000 miles away.

But yes is yes, and somehow in our over-the-edge moment of neocannibalistic world politics, where the walls get narrower and a new law against what you do is passed on a daily basis, where you're always on camera and every word you type is recorded in a database somewhere, you can pretty much say what you want and somebody's going to hear you. That is, if you're brave. But that's always the price of admission.

Anyway, what does Paris give? I don't know, but it gives something and it gives a lot of it. Oysters are very popular. It may be just one enormous oyster, and when you get trapped inside, you become something else.

Not a Blog

But a reading recommendation:

Meet Mr. Republican: Jack Abramoff by Matt Tiabbi
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041406E.shtml

Tiabbi is the guy who recently crashed a U.S. Senator's $500 per plate birthday party posing as a lobbyist for a fake Russian gas company that wanted "regulatory relief" to drill in the Grand Canyon. And everybody took him seriously.

He's even got himself a little place in the Wikipedia. He was born in 1970 -- he is a Dog. And a cute one, too. We don't know his birth data though.

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

In March 2005, Taibbi wrote a column for NY Press, entitled "The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope". The column was denounced by Senator Hillary Clinton, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Matt Drudge, among others. In a subsequent column entitled "Keep Pope Alive", Taibbi defended the controversial piece as "an off-the-cuff burlesque of Truly Tasteless Jokes", which he said was designed to give readers a break from a long run of "fulminating political essays" in his column space. Taibbi claimed his parody had been a protest against "the agonizing marathon of mechanized media grief and adulation we so inevitably go through after the passing of each and every hallowed leader or celebrity."

PS, I just googled the Pope piece. Thanks Matt, the Pope deserved this if only for personally getting in his airplane and going to Africa and personally telling the people there, in person, it was a sin to use condoms.

http://www.nypress.com/18/9/news&columns/taibbi.cfm

April 14 | 22 Views of Paris

COMMEMORATING my last few days in Paris, we'll be posting a series of 22 images of this city, changing the photos every few hours through the weekend and into next week. The photos will be archived in the cover gallery, linked directly from the caption. Appropriate Wikipedia entries will be included so you know what you're looking at. Some of the photos are new; some are old; all but a few have never been published on Planet Waves.

Enjoy. Paris has been a real trip and for me, a lot of it has been about photography. There is something photogenic about this town. It just makes good pictures like no other place I've visited. I am told by those who know more than I do that this was an important town in the development of photography itself. I'll post some information on that if I can put my hands on it. Meanwhile -- enjoy.

April 14 | Weekend Update

Whan that April with his showres soote
The drougnt of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every vein in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flowr;
Whan Zephyrus, eek, with his sweet breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tender croppes, and the yonge sunne
Hath in the Ram his halve course y-runne
And small fowles maken melodye
That sleepen al the night with open ye
(So picketh hem Nature in hir corages)
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmers for to seeken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kouth in sundry londes:
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Canterbury they wende...

===

I'll be taking the weekend off from blogging. For those considering subscribing, I'm posting the Friday edition of Planet Waves Weekly, with the horoscope, for everyone. There is also more information about Mercury completing its shadow phase and Mars changing signs at Astrology Secrets Revealed. For Aries Point fans in the audience, note that mars squares the lunar nodes as well as planets in the early degrees of Libra in the Nuclear Axis chart (posted in the edition below)

http://planetwavesweekly.com/dadatemp/2062900410.html

To everyone who responded to the typist ad -- thank you! We are set, and I will be responding soon.

Catch you Monday.

Yours & truly,

Eric Francis
Paris

April 14 | Teach Your Parents

From tomorrow's Planet Waves Weekly...which covers the astrology of the Iran nuclear situation, including the Nuclear Axis chart I've written about for StarIQ.com...

READER WARNING -- there are people who believe that nuking Iran is a good idea. You may be one of them; I don't know. If so, please don't take offense. This article is not directed personally at you. I'm just trying to save the world.

But before I type another syllable, however, I want to say I just cannot even believe I even have to spend my evening writing about this. Or my days thinking about it for that matter. But, alas, I cannot seem to check my email or log onto any of the news sites without reading about it yet again. I guess it's better that we know, and you have to admit, it's all pretty suspenseful. We are currently living through times when very nearly every bad thing it never occurred to us to worry about seems to come true.

Furthermore, I just finished an instant message session with an unidentified elder male relative, who grew up during the Cold War, that went a little like this (after I pointed out that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were involved in setting up a plutonium program in Iran in the 1970s):

Unidentified Elder Male Relative: So do you want me to believe that just because the names stay the same, the positions and alliances do too?
ME: It's very lowbrow politics. These guys are arms traders.
UEMR: Maybe, but the one problem with the critics is that they never have any solutions.
ME: But this isn't really a problem. It's a manufactured crisis. And this is THE classic way to manipulate people, you quickly make an 'us' and a 'them' and it's a done deal.
UEMR: Tell me some solutions.
ME: To what?
UEMR: Reducing the threat of terror in the US and around the world, or should we all become Muslim extremists?
ME: Iran is a country that can't even get nuclear power online, and I can tell you that a solution is NOT bombing the Islamic world. This is how you make the problem worse.
UEMR: It didn't in Japan.

To subscribe, please visit this link!

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

Hello out there in Internet land. Is there someone who is a good typist who has about an hour to type in an article? This is the "Weekend of Listening" piece I wrote toward the end of the existence of Miracle Manor. My father has dug it out of my box in his basement on Long Island (thanks Dad), digitally bounced it off of Chelsea in Florida (thanks Chelsea), and it now finds me 20 years after I wrote it in a café in Paris, never having dreamed it would some day take up existence as a PDF. If you'd like to type it in (it's fairly legible, even), please drop me a note at francis@planetwaves.net -- I would appreciate it greatly, and we'll package it up as Planet Waves article soon. Thank you!

Also - Astrology Secrets Revealed has just been posted, see link above.

    e

    Café Metro
    5th Arrond., Paris

April 13 | Full Moon

WHEN the Moon visits the sign opposite the Sun, the Full Moon is never far away. And that's where we are now -- with the lunation happening at 5:40 pm Thursday London time, Thursday afternoon in the eastern United States and in the morning in the western states. The Full Moon is overnight Thursday to Friday in Oz.

Though the Moon is basically a big rock and the Sun is a star many millions of times its size, the two have proportionally similar degrees of expression in the personality, from our viewpoint on Earth.

It's an odd phenomenon, when you think about it, symbolized by the visual illusion of both bodies being about the same diameter from where we watch. The Moon serves as a counterbalance to many other celestial influences; it sets a steady rhythm and helps stabilize our lives; and astrologically, it works like a projection screen on which we shine the movie of the personality and its story.

That screen is a veil, concealing another level of reality, indeed, many levels. The Full Moon is one of those times when the veil is thin, and when we can see and even reach beyond it for a new level of understanding, or enter a new dimension of experience.

While this is not an eclipse itself, the Sun and Moon are currently occupying the signs of the lunar nodes, so there is the impression or image of a lunar eclipse without there really being one. The implied message is accelerated change, but more to the point, resolving something that has been building for a long time.

More in tonight's Astrology Secrets Revealed on http://Cainer.com

Here's a tragic story we need to get out there. School officials are going to need to pick up some skills at being chill with students who stand up for their rights. This article is courtesy of Ursula in Toronto. Please spread the link.

http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-1/584/584_01_Soltero.shtml

April 11 | Stop Everything And...

THERE'S this movie that everyone talks about but nobody has seen recently enough. That film is Dr. Strangelove. I'm gonna keep this a mercifully short blog on the theme of "leadership" and invent a way for you to do the writing -- go rent that film. I say this especially to those of you who have never seen it, and I am sure there are plenty of people. We are not all cultural gluttons, and some of us have jobs.

Go. Get it.

Trust me. Rent it and watch it. Tonight would be good, tomorrow will do; if you absolutely must, wait until the weekend -- but no later than Friday night. If you saw it "a few years ago" go rent it again right now, this week, because you need to see it right now, especially if the world [i.e., the news] is giving you a serious headache.

If you've ever taken heart from the words of one of my horoscopes, go rent this film and watch it. If you're pretty sure I'm not getting kickbacks from the distributor, which I'm not, pop it into your laptop or home entertainment galaxy and give it a spin. Watch the first 20 minutes and you'll wish it would last forever or end immediately. It is one of the funniest, cleverest, most shocking films ever made. It leaves the last 50 blockbusters in the shade, wiping their sweaty foreheads.

Peter Sellers plays three roles: Dr. Strangelove, the President of the United States, and the British assistant to a top U.S. Air Force general who goes psycho one day. De facto, Sellers plays a fourth role, that of the Soviet Premier because many of the President's lines are actually one side of a long phone conversation with the drunk chief of the USSR, improvised by Sellers.

I super duper mean it -- go. Rent. Watch. Invite a really close friend, and let the kids watch. Then, write me an email and tell me what you think and what it says about our moment in time.

Have at it: Dr. Strangelove. Starring Peter Sellers. Directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick.

"I'm sorry, too, Dimitri. ... I'm very sorry. ... All right, you're sorrier than I am, but I am sorry as well. ... I am as sorry as you are, Dimitri! Don't say that you're more sorry than I am, because I'm capable of being just as sorry as you are. ... So we're both sorry, all right?! ... All right." (Dialog improvised by Sellers)

Iran Hint at Nuclear Milestone

From al-Jazeera:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/11A69B00-8004-4D87-997B-953ECD94C22A.htm

Excerpt: "Iran's president has promised 'good news' within days about the country's nuclear programme and a newspaper said he might announce uranium enrichment to a level used in power plants.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the northeastern city of Mashad, where newspapers said he would spend five days, said: "I will give you, the Iranian nation, good nuclear news during the time I am [here]."

From the Iranian News agency:
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-234/0604112017002803.htm

Ahmadinejad: Tomorrow night, Iranians would be delighted hearing good news

Excerpt: "madinejad-Nuclear-Good News President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here on Monday night, "By grace of God and to the grandeur of Imam Reza (PBUH) the entire Iranian nation would be delighted hearing good news tomorrow night.

Addressing the families of Mashhad martyrs and war disabled veterans, Ahmadinejad added, "After hearing the entire good news tomorrow night the Iranians should prostrate before Almighty Allah, since it would be high time for thanks given to Him."

He added, "By grace of Allah and relying on brave resistance of you, the families of the revolution's martyrs and war disabled veterans our enemies cannot do a damned thing in their confrontation with us, and they know this very well."

Further stressing that "They know they cannot do a damned thing, the president said, "The thirty-day moratorium, too, is in fact a time they have given to themselves, since what do we have to halt here, save for abandoning our absolute right?"

He added, "We are the only country in the world whose entire (nuclear) activities are under the supervision of the (International Atomic Energy) Agency and they are liars in their claim that we have breached (the rules), since we conduct all our activities openly." The President said, "We invite them to come here and see everything personally," adding, "We have no hard feelings for any one."

Ahmadinejad added, "We have a legal right, based on the laws written by they themselves, and we would proceed based on those laws, and if there needs to be any restrictions, it should be for them, not for us." Ahmadinejad added, "The Iran crisis they talk about does not exist in Iran, but is a crisis for those who are confronting us and the strong Iranian nation is relying on its faith and its scientific achievements capable of defending itself."

-- Courtesy of Mandy Hall

# # #

Tuesday, April 11 | Leadership in the Next Age

FIRST, a clarification. In yesterday's edition, I said that to get into government on the top level, one had to be a crook, an idiot or both. This was not intended as an insult to public employees, and I apologize because it may have sounded like that.

I was referring to specific entities and levels of government, particularly the president and vice president, senior level cabinet positions under both Democratic and Republican administrations, most related political appointments (director of FEMA, for example), 98% of the the Senate, and to a great extent, the House of Representatives. These are what I observe to be the "power for its own sake" positions.

I was specifically not referring to career civil servants or those people who survive from one administration to the next; they are the ones who get the job done.

When I think of government by crooks, I think of Congress, which doesn't follow it's own laws, such as the minimum wage; I think of Madeline Albright, who participated in, and approved of, and admitted to complicity in, the murder of 500,000 or more Iraqi children under the late Bush I and Clinton administrations; I think of Janet Reno, who supervised the murder of children in the Branch Davidian compound disaster in Waco, Texas.

There are some who would take issue that all people on this level of government are corrupt, and it's clear that there are always exceptions. But exceptions are exceptions, and these are not what I was talking about. They can make a difference, and perhaps they are doing so. But at the moment, I think we need more, and to demand more, from those who allegedly govern us.

===

MANY leadership styles exist besides the ones we have heard of, or are typically accustomed to. At Miracle Manor we were consciously preparing for the New Age, and were conscious of the fact that leadership needed to be different than in the 'old age'; and we were open to different ideas. Though it wasn't talked about much, there was a notion that we ought to try being true to the leadership principles of the Course.

One of the concepts it presents is that, "Everyone teaches, and teaches all the time." So that requirement spread out the responsibility.

Another concept is a notion of radical equality, and also the idea that everyone needs to be prepared to take any role at any time -- based on the idea that ultimately, we are not special, we just do what we have to. However, the Course recognizes that certain people are gifted with certain special talents and that since, in the philosophy of the Course, everything in the world needs to be put to use for the one purpose of healing, those talents are included. There was also a sense of devotion that we could, if we agreed, let Spirit work through us and the right thing would happen.

From outside the Course, we were familiar with ideas about non-competitive interaction; leadership from behind; circular models of leadership; and working through consensus (which is an idea I no longer think is so smart, actually). A few people had done a lot of work with organizations so we had an idea of how things generally got done in the world, when they did get done.

But we were not a very regimented bunch; I think everyone would have liked the place to run itself, and not to have to take responsibility for one another. Also, everyone had some other important personal commitment, since most of us had full-time jobs along with being part of the community and working with the Course.

The leadership system we came up with involved creating a rotating, three-person committee which basically ran things, and decisions were made by a quorum the full group (that is, more than half of us had to be present for it to count). This is actually a fairly traditional model. Something else fairly traditional happened, which is people took roles they were suited for.

Vicki and Dan had a talent for negotiating with Mario, the landlord, so they were often our representatives to him and would relay back his orders. Patrick was a chef who had worked as executive chef at the Columbia University Faculty Club, and as saucier at Windows on the World (on top of the World Trade Center). Patrick had a mid-career conversion and had become a macrobiotic chef. He had a flair for being able to recreate anything out of tofu, you name it. I have a talent for group meal preparation and I also wanted to apprentice myself to Patrick, who "knew his onions," as they say in French. Between us, we kept a grip on the kitchen and could knock out meals for everyone with nearly no effort.

In theory, everything should have gone great. Yet in our era, people are not really socialized to live in groups; we can barely handle a family and in truth, compared to a century ago, the family is basically extinct. It's weird because we humans are tribal animals.

But any form of group involvement, particularly cooperation in a circular style, rather than top-down, takes a lot of adjustment for everyone. There is a situation we all have to deal with regarding the way that most women are socialized in industrial societies, which is to compete against everyone -- including close female friends (often for men) as an individual; whereas most guys are taught to organize themselves into teams, play a good game, and go out for beers when it's over. Women are, organically, brilliant cooperators, but modern society has decayed that, and even feminist models tend to push the 'heroic' role of the individual, and as a result tend to be alienating. And when people feel alienated, that does not help group dynamics.

One thing that's required in group situations is willing participation both in the group itself and in one's own inner process. People have to take a lot of responsibility for their state of mind, because we can quickly see how it affects others profoundly.

And more attention needs to be paid to decisions. Typically, we are used to letting others run our affairs and make our important decisions. There are a lot of things that happen in the world, or in our communities, that we don't care to know about or think about. So the need for taking some measure of personal responsibility for the whole required a certain degree of coming out of one's shell.

However, the necessities of accelerated spiritual growth also require a definite inner focus. And, for sure, when you put people together for the shared commitment of growth, everyone is affected in some way, whether they love it, or whether they go kicking and screaming toward awareness. So this represented something of a paradox -- the need to be internal much of the time, as well as the need to participate with one another. For many, it was a very difficult balance to strike. Some people really clung to their individuality and seemed to feel that cooperating with a group was a form of giving in.

Another thing we found was who had a taste for peace, and who had a taste for war. Much of what happens in any therapeutic situation is that people project their inner scenario onto the group, and the group acts out in patterns resembling the family of origin.

We had two women firmly committed to getting in everyone's face about anything they felt like; there was always a showdown looming with Rosalie or Marina. They did a nice job of grounding neurotic mother energy. Mario, the landlord, took the role of psycho control freak father, to whom we paid tribute (rent) and strove to make happy at any cost, but could never succeed.

Dan, a young lawyer, was always the one doing conflict resolution, much like an older brother. He was smart and funny and understood the Course better than anyone; he practically had it memorized. Janet and Vicki were pretty good at older sister energy and generally at suggesting things that helped move things along. Vicki took a lot of personal responsibility for the community.

Dave Crismond, a doctoral student at Rutgers University down the road, was the elder statesman of the group. He provided a kind of philosophical last word, including on certain spiritual issues (he was also the only astrologer). He was not stuck on Course dogma and also had considerable experience in leadership of another spiritual community -- that of a well loved guru named Hilda in Manhattan (at St. John the Divine) and upstate New York. He seemed to have the "decent father" energy but he was a bit aloof and did not want to get involved in family drama. He had more important things to do, in truth.

In group situations, people take their roles pretty quickly, and the dynamics emerge. I found the kitchen easily, and was also the scribe and one who took the idea of how we would govern ourselves quite seriously -- two familiar childhood roles that you could easily say were the result of a kid who was given too much responsibility too young in a too-chaotic situation. I was probably the biggest complainer that there was no structure to our work with the Course, but I was very structured about it in my private time; I did all the lessons that year, and read the textbook three times.

At the end of the day, real leadership involves coming out of familiar roles and finding ourselves in the present. It is nearly impossible to overstate the power of the psychological and emotional material that cements us to the past; the language that does so (literally, the words we use); the expectations we have; and our ability or inability to trust. And there is often a lot of chaos that can emerge when we start to come out of those seemingly intrinsic roles, face our feelings, and find our true voices.

And this always needs some facilitation. This is where real strength, maturity and experience come in. Basically, in any group situation where people are going to be triggered, and where you don't want things to degrade to toxic chaos, you need at least two people (preferably many more) with a LOT of experience in seeing and addressing the dynamics, and who don't get lost in them. This is not only something that requires a natural gift, plus learning and enormous patience, but those people need to be willing to take on vast personal responsibility for holding the space of the group process. And the people in positions of leadership have to be willing to bear the brunt of other people's projections, their authority issues, their rage at their parents, and much else besides.

Part of why society has so many problems is that people are encouraged to suppress rather than expose and process their problems. This is done for the sake of order, and there is something natural about it; but it's also true that many people currently in leadership are not qualified to address that kind of intimate personal material in people's lives. But ask anyone who has been in charge of anything and they will tell you that "psychologist" should be the first thing on their job description.

In our particular group, one person turned out to be suffering from psychosis and it was clear that at least one was suffering from fairly severe, debilitating depression. How to handle these situations, which will inevitably come up, is an important part of leadership where any group is concerned, particularly if it's residential. These problems are more common than most people realize. They are just well masked most of the time.

Finally, the group itself needs to be committed to moving in some direction that everyone agrees to as a common purpose. With semi-political groups like the Library Society or the PTA, that's kind of obvious. Where personal growth is mingled with group process and householding, it can be pretty difficult to pin down a purpose.

At Miracle Manor, we just did not have enough of these things. We had the experienced leaders, for sure, but none of the people who had that experience were willing to take on the kind of leadership that was necessary, at that time. I also remember a big issue in the fact that many people had other spiritual involvements (Hilda, for one thing) and the Course played second fiddle for enough people that it was not really a group priority. So we had no unity around our stated primary purpose, that of spiritual community. It was in the background. In the days of Allan Cohen, there was meeting in the chapel every night, with a meaningful discussion and meditation on the Course.

Our control-happy landlord noticed our lack of spiritual cohesion and psychological leadership, started making ridiculous overtones about being the guru, and then lost his temper one day over a minor issue (a file cabinet in the 'wrong' place). It was not long after that we all found ourselves looking for different living situations.

But you can't say we didn't try, and I don't think there's anyone who lived at Miracle Manor in 1986-1987 who didn't feel they learned something vital and fundamental about themselves. We would jokingly call the Manor 'spiritual boot camp' and one thing is for sure, we all had a clue that where the world was concerned, there were some challenging times ahead, and we were going to need to be prepared.

About today's photo | By Paloma

It's three o'clock in the afternoon and I am in the metro exit. I can't see nor hear them yet. Something inside me has moved. I can feel it. It is as if a smell or an intense boiling inner sensation invisibly touches my skin from the inside out. Maybe it is because I come from a country (Puerto Rico) that took out the US Navy out of Vieques: my body's memory recognizes power.

And my eyes, beauty.

Kids in the streets, expressing themselves, together, hand in hand. What I see is a collective embrace, the overall feeling is joy. My word: mesmerizing

Hey, who do you think you are? We are the future, not you. Your law is not good for us, we deserve something better.

They are claiming the future.

You can feel it is their first experience of a collective trance. They are taken by the energy: the one that makes you feel everybody as one, the one that gives you the experience of a collective union.

I am in the middle of them, with them, taking their pictures -- they are present, always smiling, making real contact -- and while feeling the electric current that runs from my back to my head, I am thinking, this is healing. Youth is healing.

A couple of hours before, a baby boomer friend of mine had told me, we are the first generation living the world in a worse state than we got it.

It's true. But after this march, what strikes me as even more devastating than this statement, is where does this energy goes once into adulthood? what happens to us? and who does it?

In French the word grève means, strike, and the word rêve, means dream. Rêve Generale, was the claim.

I think it says it all.

April 10 | Governance

THE ISSUE of who will run society is one of those things that lives at the root of the human experience. Usually it's the guy with the biggest stick, who knows how to use it, and who has done so a few times. It is a sad fact that for the most part, in history as we know it, we are ruled by killers, conquerors, thieves, and their descendents. But, in a way, it's only natural.

Then look what happens. These sorry bastards don't usually have a clue how to take care of people, but that's one of their job responsibilities. Theoretically. At least it's on paper somewhere.

But that doesn't get the cows milked. And we may well wonder what does, if you think for half a sec. The answer is that people who are willing to do it and have a sense of responsibility get the cows milked. The basic jobs always get done by people without vast sums of power, money or guns. And the people who do have the power, money and guns generally neglect the rest of what they're supposed to do, and in the United States there has long been a move to cut anything that helps people out of the budget.

Let's put it this way, does anybody realize what a pain in the ass it is to run society? I mean, how much do you LOVE taking care of the astonishing degree of bureaucracy necessitated by your relatively miniscule life? So multiply that by 250 million, add keeping the lawns mowed in the national parks, chuck in Hurricane Katrina, don't forget The Pentagon, and you can see that the only person who would want to get involved high up in government is 1. An idiot, 2., a crook, or 3., both. The result is we wind up with people who want power for its own sake.

So, onto my story, which is about Miracle Manor, which once existed in New Jersey. I lived there for one year in the late 80s, with about 15 other adults in a community housing situation. We lived in what used to be a convent. We all had little rooms, like monks. There was a chapel, and a nice kitchen and common area. I still occasionally have strange dreams set in the place.

Our spiritual theme was A Course in Miracles, and while our spiritual tastes were pretty eclectic, the Course was indeed the thing we had in common. Actually, now Miracle Manor has a claim to fame, which is that Allan Cohen, its co-founder, wrote a book called Chicken Soup for the Soul (which is patiently waiting on my reading list).

Allan, the somewhat charismatic sort-of leader (he was actually pretty low key), had moved onto other adventures the year I lived at 'the Manor', as we called it. So we were left to basically run our own show. A few people who were holdovers from the one and only previous year had natural seniority, but they were open to leadership. Of those, Marina, Dan, George, Patrick and Vicki stand out. Then there was Rosalie, who was obsessed about the kitchen floor, and who could cause more turmoil and consume more energy over the milk being left out once than it would take to put it back in the refrigerator 100 times.

So there we were, 15 adults (at 22, I was second youngest, and my girlfriend Ginger was six months younger), needing to do nothing but run our household. How should we organize? What did we need to do? How would we get the work done? Who was in charge? How would we plan for the future? Who would deal with the crazy landlord, Mario?

And here was the real kicker: since were were living in a community and doing spiritual psychology work designed to bring up personal material, how would we handle that at the same time? Growth work and housework don't necessarily go so well together, and people who have one kind of authority or role in our lives (such as spiritual teacher) don't necessarily do so well with (the ones to tell us it's our turn to deal with the trash). And it might work worse going in the opposite direction.

At the beginning of the year, I volunteered to be secretary of a loosely defined organization we created. I took the minutes of meetings and because I had some organizational experience, began writing a charter that defined how we ran our meetings and organized our responsibilities. I have a copy somewhere. But essentially, the charter/organization project got nowhere. People seemed to either have too many outside commitments, or to be too triggered by the spiritual work, which induces instability, to actually be organized and functional.

As things developed, there was basically a complete breakdown of communication. It turned out to be impossible for us to organize, govern, or even loosely orchestrate a sustainable life. Just handling the diversity within the community made basic things like dealing with food extremely challenging. Leadership was full time work, but there was no way to pay anyone to do that.

In the end, the crazy landlord, who was not really part of our community, took over, then he threw us all out on a week's notice. He had got the idea that we needed a guru, and that it would be him. Since we would not have him as guru, he would get some people who would. Mowing the lawn, fixing the pipes and owning 16 acres in New Jersey somehow qualified him for this responsibility. So, in no time at all, without the ability to take care of our own needs, and focus our power, we were helpless.

I don't know if the meaning of my parable is clear, so let me state it: it's not easy for people to govern themselves and their communities, but it's 100% necessary. Very few people have the skill, the experience or the willingness. Exceedingly few have the patience to deal with other people and their problems. And, unfortunately, not so many people really understand how to organize their individual lives in a way that's truly compatible with the lives of people around them.

Right now, we are witnessing a vast vacuum of leadership in our society. In many ways, indeed, in every way, at some point, that need for leadership is going to come back down to us. Our lives tend to be organized around work places and homes. Our boss or the admin assistant runs the work place and we tend to handle the household as best we can. Besides that, there is not much -- at the moment -- that needs to be run, and what we have is pretty challenging. However, as society changes the next few years, that will not always be the case. At a certain point, the responsibilities of community will need to be taken up by more people closer to the ground.

That could involve organizing ourselves to save energy, create energy, get specific tasks done, make changes, or make progress. We may need to organize how we acquire, prepare and eat food differently than we now do. Transportation is going to change -- a lot. These things take specific skills and experience, which unfortunately, most of us have never had the chance to get.

As we look at the decay not only of 'leadership' [such as it was, based entirely on lies] but of centralized power in the federal government, we may well ask how we're going to fill that void, and it's a lot to think about. Since generally when there is a void of power, it's filled by a crook, an idiot or both, we need to spend some time thinking about other options and how we might get them. Is it even possible? Is it even worth thinking about? Should we really just withdraw energy from the whole thing and pay no attention to what's going on up on top, because we can't do anything anyway?

And are we willing to face what happens when we do that? If we really knew what that meant, I would say not.

From the Holy Living Fuck files...

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040906A.shtml

April 9, 2006 | About that Glass Vase - and the News

THERE is this thing called the MSM. It includes television, the big newspapers, many smaller newspapers that are owned by big chains, as well as the news magazines (Time, Newsweek, US News and others), and is characterized by a few sites on the web: CNN.com, MSNBC.com, and anything else that is linked to a national TV network. The abbreviation MSM is for "mainstream media" and guess what, every now and then, some bit of it is true.

The problem with the truth the way it's presented in the MSM is that you have to assemble it like you would put a glass vase back together after it had fallen. It takes a long time, you definitely need patience, and at the end, you get something not quite vaguely resembling the original. In fact, it's been smashed and reassembled so many times, nobody has a clue what the thing is supposed to look like.

Another troubling thing about the MSM is how tight the mesh is, that is, the barrier between what happens and what gets through. When information makes it from one side of that barrier to the other, it's a little like smashing strawberries through a strainer and calling that washing them off. And what we see is filtered based on how much people are going to like it (ratings), and when you combine the ratings system with news you get something so disgusting that it should be banned by the health department.

Along the American ride for the past 40 or so years, there has been an alternative media developing in the United States. It grew out of the social movements of the 1960s, and was designed to provide other viewpoints on events and politics. But because it was confined to print, and print is so expensive, and the United States so big, it was difficult for it to really get anywhere.

In half a decade of utter political madness, counting back to the impeachment because that's really when it began so its really more, the voice and message of the alternative press has focused and sharpened itself. The Internet has made it possible because writers need an audience, and the Internet has done more than anything to put The Washington Post and the blog of an interesting commentator on the same level.

Before I became an astrologer, my own journalism career was an interesting hybrid of alternative media and MSM. I have founded several of my own news outlets, and written for many of the tried and true alternative outlets as well. In addition, as an independent journalist, I've often had the benefit of my articles being "picked up" by the MSM, and on occasion having my work tracked and followed, gaining national coverage of issues I was developing. The number of times my work has been covered in The New York Times would make most mainstream journalists envious.

But my first loyalty has always been to small, independent news outlets that are committed to relating their message their way. And when given the option, I have preferred to create my own news organization to fill a niche that nobody else has noticed.

Enter Planet Waves.

This web magazine actually began as a horoscope column, which has always come with a topical essay. When I started writing horoscopes, it seemed natural enough to present that with some more in-depth commentary on the planets, news events or something going on in inner space. Out of that grew the Planet Waves concept, which includes a steady stream of horoscopes as well as coverage of the planets from the viewpoint of an observer on Earth -- that is, real life perspective. We don't skimp on either, which keeps both parts of our audience satisfied -- those that like a lot of news, and those that prefer a lot of astrology. And if you happen to like both, you cash in.

To Planet Waves, I bring my perspective as a trained, experienced and fully credentialed investigative news reporter (and editor), as well as my skill and viewpoint as an astrologer. The result is that from Planet Waves, you get an angle in life like no other. The writing team that has gathered around this idea includes some of the most talented journalists I've ever known.

All the writing on Planet Waves is created from the perspective that those who watch the planets need to be aware of life on the planet's surface, and those of us on the surface need to keep an eye on the heavens for additional news, information and confirmation of what we're seeing.

I could hardly imagine a more relevant concept for a news source in these wild, strange, mystifying years of the 21st century. We have consistently shown that that our astrological analysis is often months ahead of the news, we have spotted trends and reported many specific events long before they actually developed. And our after-the-news commentary helps make sense of the chaos that seems to move too fast to understand. What we lack most of all -- and what is the most difficult thing to find -- is perspective. And if I had to sum up in one word what Planet Waves offers, that is it. More than inspiration; more than information; we strive to see the world in context.

But mostly what you get is a lot of really great astrology writing, from the weekly horoscope to the birthday report to our excellent annual horoscope pages, which are still relevant.

I'd like to personally invite you to subscribe to Planet Waves direct email service, and see what we've got going on. For about a dollar a week, you'll get our three-times a week service (called Planet Waves Weekly), as well as access to our subscriber homepage, and the Parallel Worlds annual page, and the fun new Lemonade horoscopes area. This may seem like a lot of information, but it's presented in a way that's easy to follow, and we connect the dots so you get the relationship to everything else.

The horoscopes are easy to find and come out at least twice a week.

Here's how to sign up quickly, safely and easily -- and if you don't like making online purchases, there is an 800-number you can use right on this page:

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

Here's what our subscribers have to say. These are real, unsolicited comments about how people feel about Planet Waves and why they support this project --

http://www.planetwavesweekly.com/feedback.html

Thanks for checking in. We look forward to being your primary source of cosmic news and personal astrology in the months ahead.

Please write to me if you have any questions or comments -- francis@planetwaves.net

Catch you soon,

Yours truly --

ERIC FRANCIS

P.S., Planet Waves is guaranteed. In fact, I'm tempted to offer a "double your money back" guarantee, because the point is, nobody's ever going to have to use it. But we are indeed guaranteed, so your investment in our publishing adventure is safe. But your old ideas about reality are not! So subscribe today!

PPS, note, the most recent issue is posted a couple of blog entries down, in blue type.

Gentlemen, he said,
I don't need your organization, I've shined your shoes,
I've moved your mountains and marked your cards
But Eden is burning, either brace yourself for elimination
Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing
of the guards.

Peace will come
With tranquility and splendor on the wheels of fire
But will bring us no reward when her false idols fall
And cruel death surrenders with its pale ghost retreating
Between the King and the Queen of Swords.

-- Bob Dylan

Saturday, April 8 | Morning Dew

I'm sitting here listening to an apropos of the moment song by the Grateful Dead, the song Morning Dew written by Canadian singer-songwriter Bonnie Dobson.

I thought I heard a baby cry this morning,
I thought I heard a baby cry this today.
You didn’t hear no baby cry this morning,
You didn’t hear no baby cry today.

Where have all the people gone my honey,
Where have all the people gone today.
There’s no need for you to be worrying about all those people,
You never see those people anyway.

Immediately post-apocalyptic is the setting, a world woven by the tragic, imploring rock music that the lyrics walk on.

Walk me out in the morning dew my honey,
Walk me out in the morning dew today.
I’ll walk you out in the morning dew my honey,
I guess it doesn’t really matter anyway,
I guess it doesn’t matter anyway,
I guess it doesn’t matter anyway,
Guess it doesn’t matter anyway.

So, here we see the potential aftermath. We have seen it before. Now, for the alternatives.

I first considered the possibility of spiritual intervention in nuclear conflict at this guy Jim's house, in Brooklyn. He led a Course in Miracles group every week and one night the subject came up and he said, "There are people on the planet now who have the power to stop the missiles," aligning with the power of God.

Over the years that I've considered the nuclear issue, I have felt the presence of a kind of protective sphere in the probability field that was preventing anything from going down. In my earliest encounters with it, it felt like a mesh barrier around the Earth effectively blocking such a possibility. Maybe I was reading a few too many New Age books at the time, but there were a couple of moments in there when angelic presence was not just a concept.

Anyway. I think that we may want to keep our antennas on high and pointed to this issue. I have heard too much nuclear chitter chatter about Iran lately, starting with news reports and big posters in the streets of Paris, depicting the supposed ambitions of Iran's president with a mushroom cloud coming out of his head.

But before we get too carried away, we may want to consider who is nuking whom. In actual fact, among conventional weapons, we have something that is basically a radioactive bullet which spreads shocking levels of radiation, not just in battle zones but also into the environment generally, particularly the Middle East. We are quite literally nuking Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and much beyond with depleted uranium shells. It's funny, this is one of those family secrets that doesn't get on the news so often.

It is ironic that at the heart of what is perhaps the most horrendous scandal in a US presidency involves lies told about the supposed nuclear ambitions of Iraq, which have proven to be troublingly false.

And it is unnerving to hear sociopaths, obviously unfamiliar with the psychological concept "projection," talking about how whacked-out and dangerous everybody ELSE is.

I suggest that the solution set to the current world problem begins with allowing no war in Iran, and CheneyCo taking the nuclear option off the table, unconditionally.

I mean seriously. That would be a good start.

April 7, 2006 | Planet Waves Weekly

Here is the full text of Planet Waves Weekly, including the article, "The Hole in the Bucket," as well as the weekly horoscopes.

http://planetwavesweekly.com/dadatemp/1443549694.html

"Row Jimmy" - The Grateful Dead

Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia
Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission.

Julie catch a rabbit by his hair
Come back step, like to walk on air
Get back home where you belong
and don't you run off no more

Don't hang your head let the two-time roll
Grass shack nailed to a pine wood floor
Ask the time? Baby I don't know
Come back later, we'll let it show

And I say row, Jimmy row
Gonna get there?
I don't know
Seems a common way to go
Get down, row, row, row
row, row

Here's my half a dollar if you dare
double twist when you hit the air
Look at Julie down below
the levee doin the do-pas-o

And I say row, Jimmy, row
Gonna get there?
I don't know
Seems a common way to go
Get down, row, row, row
row, row

Broken heart don't feel so bad
Ain't got half a what you thought you had
Rock your baby to and fro
Not too fast and not too slow

And I say row, Jimmy, row
Gonna get there?
I don't know
Seems a common way to go
Get down, row, row, row
row, row

That's the way it's been in town
ever since they tore the juke box down
Two-bit piece don't buy no more
not so much as it done before

And I say row, Jimmy, row
Gonna get there?
I don't know
Seems a common way to go
Get down, row, row, row
row, row

Wednesday, April 5 | Astrology Secrets

WEDNESDAY is usually the day I write Astrology Secrets Revealed for Jonathan Cainer's web site, which updates late Thursday. After a break of running the column every two weeks, we're back to a weekly cycle, and I'm sifting through the questions people have sent in for something that will work, and work for now.

As for the past, an organizing project has been underway for some time, and just about everything I've written for the Q and A feature has been organized into a web page, organized by individual question, comment or introduction. We still have to put the questions in order, but except for the past week or two, they're all there. One of the next steps is choosing about 20 for a Frequently Asked Questions section. We'll have that soon and it will be fun. The whole thing is fun...try to print the question list, it's 17 pages all by itself.

http://planetwaves.net/cainer/archive/

As for the Mars-Pluto opposition still reaching its peak (see yesterday's blog), I must concur with one reader wrote in and said: that the world is curiously quiet and that it's not quite over. The thing with a big eclipse is that it can portend something in the future (understatement of the century). An unfortunate example from recent history was the June 21, 2001 total solar eclipse, which everyone missed and which occurred about four hours into the summer (i.e., on the summer solstice and thus exactly square the Aries Point).

Now, just because history played itself out one way with one eclipse does not mean it's going to do the same thing with this one -- despite the similarities (falling close to the change of seasons, in particular). There are other times when the Aries Point has fast repercussions, such as the Full Moon square the Aries Point that led to the tsunamis in Asia in late 2004.

There are times when it's kind of medium speed -- such as the Capricorn Full Moon on the first day of summer last year, which pointed directly to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. A second Cap Full Moon 28 days later emphasized the point.

Then there are times when the effects are subtle. A New Moon exactly on spring equinox of 2004 came with the first publication of casualties arriving home from Iraq and that 'secret' being exposed -- but seemed to have relatively little impact. It's true that a slide in public opinion against the war occurred then, but we may wonder if history will remember.

Still, that was a tipping point, and if I recall correctly, the asteroid Photographica was involved in a rather blatant way.

So -- we can speculate what this time will bring, or we can watch. This week, Tom DeLay, arguably the single most corrupt politician in Washington, said he would not seek re-election as he faces felony charges for his politically-related crimes. Jack Abramoff and Adam Kidan were sentenced to jail in the same scandal. A Department of Homeland Security official was just busted for soliciting sex with a cop posing online as a 14-year-old girl. But even to those who are observing, these things are like a movie going by in the background of our lives, if that.

Is something gathering momentum here? Could we have imagined this two years ago?

However -- I think we're more deeply touched by stories of extreme weather conditions, such as floods and tornados, and of elderly couples sleeping in their car outside their locked FEMA trailer outside their destroyed home. They're closer to personal reality and have more potential to touch our lives, and I think we can empathize with the people involved.

Still, when we wake up from this dream of the early 21st century, I think a lot of people are going to be shocked at what they let go by 'in the background' and wonder where they were, and what they were doing.

Here is the link to the Jan. 28, 2005 horoscope -- the one I mentioned this morning from back the day of the Mars-Pluto conjunction in 2005. Here ya go, from the mysteries of the Planet Waves Weekly archives --

http://www.planetwaves.net/blog_files/050128.html

Hi again

I was gonna write a thing based just on the last fact Will Pitt presents in his article here...but frankly, Rivers said it as good as it's gonna be said. Here is your link,

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040406A.shtml

CNN Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room transcript for 4/3

WOLF BLITZER ON CNN: Carrie Lemack is joining us on the phone now from Boston. Her mother died aboard American Airlines flight 11 on 9/11. You know, your mother, Judy, Carrie, give us your reaction to this unanimous decision by the jurors in Alexandria, Virginia, that Zacarias Moussaoui is now eligible for the death sentence?

CARRIE LEMACK, DAUGHTER OF 9/11 VICTIM (on phone): I think disappointment is probably the best word to describe the feeling here. I'm here with many other family members from the Boston area. And of all of us only one was happy with the verdict today.

BLITZER: Why are you disappointed? The normal reaction would be you want this guy dead if in fact he participated in this conspiracy?

LEMACK: Well, I don't know if it's normal to want someone to die. I think that's actually abnormal and in this case for us we don't want to make him a martyr. This is somebody who said he hates America. He wants to die killing Americans, and the last thing that a lot of us want to see happen is to allow us to die with the name martyr by his side.

I think that we feel that he should rot in jail without a platform to spout his anti-American sentiments and without having the notoriety that he's now gaining. You're spending all this time talking about a man who we were told was an al Qaeda wannabe.

BLITZER: So, is it your position that he should not get the death sentence because of the facts in this case? Or are you in principle opposed, Carrie, to the death sentence?

LEMACK: It's from the facts in the case. From everything we saw the prosecution did not prove that he had anything to do with my mother's murder. More that he wished that he had to do something with it. You know, we were saying earlier -- you were saying earlier that Moussaoui was his own worst witness.

And it sounds to me like he's someone who likes the attention he's getting. His reaction today was almost nothing when they said that he's going to be eligible for the death penalty, and I think what is really sad here is we are spending all this time talking about someone, who as we said, he is a want to be.

He wanted to do these things, and al Qaeda didn't want him. He wasn't even good enough for them, if you can imagine it. And yet we're spending all our time and energy and taxpayer dollars on this man. If he's found guilty for the death penalty in the next stage there's going to be appeal after appeal. It's going to be millions of dollars.

And for a lot of us it's not how we want to spend our energy focusing on Zacarias Moussaoui. I would rather our government spends their time finding Osama bin Laden, for example.

BLITZER: There's Carrie Lemack, co-founder of Families of September 11. She lost her mother on American Airlines flight 11.

Carrie, thank you very much for giving us your reaction.

COURTESY OF POLITICAL WAVES

April 4 | Mars opposite Pluto

http://planetwaves.net/chart.php?c=mars_opp_pluto

THERE is still one bit of the 3/29 cluster left to happen, and that is the opposition of Mars and Pluto. Occurring once every two years, it's not one of those super rare aspects, but anything between Mars and Pluto moves energy. The opposition, which factors prominently into the eclipse scenario, is about to reach its exact peak in about three days, which partly accounts for some of the tension still dangling in the air.

When looking at an opposition, it makes sense to go back and look the conjunction that preceded it, and assess what was developing at the time. This is a little like looking at the New Moon chart when you're seeking some understanding of a Full Moon chart. The metaphor in planetary cycles is similar. Related to the Mars-Pluto opposition that occurs April 8, there was a conjunction Jan. 28, 2005, about 15 months ago*. That same day, there was a conjunction of Mercury and Chiron, with Venus close by. This second aspect opposed Saturn -- particularly Venus.

I remember the feeling well...that week I happened to be standing in for Jonathan Cainer, and the feeling of the two conjunctions approaching was palpable and made for the most intense week of horoscope writing I ever remember. I'll include my daily horoscope from that day at the end of this blog, which we'll redo shortly as a non-subscriber page (currently it's behind a password).

These aspects were what I would call 'all over' the lunar nodes. The Venus-Mercury-Chiron group in Capricorn squared the lunar nodes (then in late Aries/Libra), and the Mars-Pluto aspect made a trine/sextile to the nodes. The nodes are like an energy orientation line, and when planets make aspects to this line, they tend to have added impact or expression in the world.

This was a week after the re-inauguration Bushco, which was Jan. 20. In the chart of that event, which we've discussed a lot here and which I'll include at the end for those who are interested, cycles involving Mars, Mercury and two outer planets (Pluto and Chiron) are about to come to a close and a new story begins a matter of days later -- and now we're at the point of manifestation.

What I find interesting about the current Mars-Pluto opposition is how many ways it weaves into the Inauguration chart and the 3/29 cluster of events. The conjunction and thus the cycle involved link directly to the Inauguration chart.

Then, on 3/29, we had a triple grouping of events: the total solar eclipse, the progressed Moon reaching opposition to Pluto in the Inauguration chart, and Pluto stationing retrograde on the Galactic Core.

What all three have in common is the Mars-Pluto opposition. Mars recently came through the progressed Moon / Pluto setup in the Inauguration chart; Mars is the ruler of the eclipse and the North Node; Mars about to oppose Pluto and the Galactic Core; and the opposition itself dates back to a conjunction at the time of the Inauguration.

And, this week, we are getting a little taste of the unthinkable: the United States and England really do appear to be getting ready to bomb Iran. Once again they are going after "weapons of mass destruction" to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. It is almost believable, except for the last time they told that very same lie. Does everyone remember? It's the lie that we're all living right now in the nightmare of Iraq.

There is something to be said for first impressions. I happened to be in the home of an Iranian friend in Canada when the results of the 'election' of the 'hard liner fundamentalist Muslim' were announced, and my first thought was: the United States set this election up so they could go in and bomb the guy. Heck, I wonder if he even knows.

Protestors against a second Cheney-Bush term had signs and stickers that said "four more wars." It is a sick irony, but just as sick that people get high on war and feel that because it's so -- hmm, dramatic, urgent, justified by and justifying of racism -- that it's always right, it's always for a good reason. Then there's the point where war is its own reason. We seem to get there a lot these days.

---

Jan. 28, 2005 daily horoscope (currently password protected with the normal Planet Waves subscriber area passwords -- we'll fix that soon):
http://planetwavesweekly.com/drdc8/cainer/050128.html

Feb. 2005 monthly horoscope (not password protected, and not 2006 as previously printed here -- this is the horoscope closest to the Mars-Pluto conjunction.)
http://planetwaves.info/astrology/horoscopes/050200PWM.html

Inauguration chart - basic version with four asteroids and Chiron:
http://www.planetwaves.net/charts/inauguration/inauguration3.html

*NOTE, the Mars cycle is about 24 months, but the opposition does not happen exactly in between the two conjunctions, because Mars retrograde delays the process. The next conjunction is Jan. 13, 2007, less than one year away.

Dear Eric,

There have been a lot of changes for me in the events leading up to the eclipse of March 29.
I was laid off from a company I had worked for over thirteen years in January. It was a small shock, but more of a relief to me. It felt like a blank slate had been granted to me & I hoped this was my chance to find a job that I could love instead of ‘just a job.’

But my expectations that I'd be one of the ones to pick up & step into a new job quickly were dwindling as the weeks passed & the interviews lessened. I began to read career books & seeking out staffing agencies, while still job searching on the Internet. I didn’t spend any of my severance on travel or home improvements, instead saving it in case I might be unemployed for longer than I expected. And I did have a dry spell where I didn’t get any callbacks or replies to my applications for over a month. It was a long month.

But then I got into a spell (likely near company’s fiscal year-end summaries) where there was a lot of interested stirred up. And for a few weeks it just seemed like every day there was a different phone call, or email of interest of some sort in me. Whether in response to an application I had already sent in, or to the company seeing my resume posted somewhere. In the weeks leading up to the eclipse, I probably had about five interviews until the day of the eclipse & maybe about four other companies who had called or emailed with interest in me! It was amazing after that dry spell!

And then after the eclipse, on March 30th, I got my first job offer, from a company I had interviewed with on the 20th & hadn’t heard from since. I didn’t have any second interview, so it was with surprise that I received the call! After some discussion with friends & family, I decided to accept their offer, debating the differences between the other interviews & companies I had had & what each had to offer me. So I accepted the job offer & I start my new job on April 10th.

Thanks,
Jamie

Monday, April 3, 2006 | Into the Season

Dear Diary,

It's been a really weird series of days since the Mercury station and the solar eclipse. What a combination. These kinds of events really 'stir the pot' and keep a definite edge of not taking too much for granted. Does anyone else have the feeling they just walked through a car wash? Now is a good time to reckon what is different in your life now, as compared to about one or two months ago.

The 3/29 Cluster seems to have come and gone without a lot of excitement in the world. However, sometimes it takes weeks or months for eclipses to show their true nature, particularly where events 'in the world' are concerned. The cluster included Pluto stationing retrograde on the Galactic Core; the progressed Moon in the Cheney/Bush inaugural chart reaching opposition to Pluto in that chart; and the total solar eclipse, along with much other astrology surrounding it.

We would do well to ask ourselves what would constitute news. After the past five years, it seems like nothing would even count. And has it really been five years? Yes it has, loosely calculated: five years of nonstop, well, pick your word.

Amidst all the discussion of the role that people, that is, individuals who hold no official positions of power, will play, I can discern two possibilities. One is a kind of mass uprising that shakes those on the top of the pyramid to wake up. But given how insulated it is up there, and given the tendency of human beings to get lost in the sauce of their own existence, I'm glad that's just one of two possibilities that I see at the moment.

The other is that a small number of aware people will carry something into the future that might not otherwise get there. That something might be an idea, it might be information and experience, it might be their own genetic material, it may be a feeling, it may be their children, and it might be something that they create and leave behind that others take forward.

Writing this, I recognize that I have been thinking in a purely linear way: on the assumption that there will be some factor that intervenes in the historical process, in a visible sequence of events. Yet it's rarely that way. I recognize that it often looks that way at the end of a sequence of events -- something "happens." But we rarely consider how it happened, or how long ago the process was begun.

e

Subscription Q & A | April 2, 2006

Dear Eric:

I am paranoid about buying things on the Internet, but I want to subscribe to Planet Waves Weekly. What can I do? I can't seem to get over the unsettling feeling of typing my credit card into the Internet.

-- Digitally Impaired in Cardiff

Dear di Cardiff,

We offer phone-in and snail mail order options where you have the experience of shopping just one step removed from the Four Corners General Store. In fact, you can place subscriptions in person if you visit our extra-friendly Cedar Rapids, Idaho factory outlet! Yes, we are a company that broadcasts on computers, but we appreciate the human touch, and our readers do too. Therefore, we answer the phone; return calls; and have time to talk to you.

Email info@planetwaves.net inquiring about either of these old-timey options -- or call (206) 567-4455 during Eastern business hours. If you're in the USA we have a freephone -- it's still a free country -- (877) 453-8265.

All this information is contained on our orders page, which is here:

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

Please send my regards to Wales!

    e

Dear Eric:

Do you offer Paypal? Why or why not?

-- Logic Minded Elf

Dear Elf,

Some people love Paypal; some people despise it; for some, it's what there is. Therefore, we offer the option for all subscriptions. Paypal is also the most convenient way to pay recurring monthly, if you want that option. You can also do that by calling the numbers above.

Here is the Paypal link:

http://ericfrancis.com/Paypal/orderlist.html

Thanks for asking...

    e

Dear Eric:

You offer a lot on Planet Waves -- you know, the free site. Why should I subscribe? Do I get more?

-- My Mother Said Caveat Emptor!

Dear Caveat's Child:

Yes, more is what you get -- and more is what we get. It's a good balance. Subscribing gets you access to three special content areas -- Planet Waves Weekly, our astrology news service with the weekly horoscope and more; as well as Parallel Worlds, the 2006 annual horoscope and special edition; and Lemonade, home of the Lemonade horoscope and reorganized content archives.

And we get to keep gas in the Chevy, the dogs fed and the roof dry as my old Uncle Lars used to say. Seriously, though, "free press belongs to those who have one." We have one, and we use that privilege to keep you as updated as we can, as entertained as we can, and good astrology does not grow on trees. If you ask me, that's the best investment you can make here in the wild wooly 21st century.

Since you asked, here's a link into Parallel Worlds. Explore for a week and see what we're up to.

http://www.planetwavesweekly.com/parallel/

    e

PS: What are your free services?

Dear PS:

We call them open access services: the monthly horoscopes in the Planet Waves series, as well as Inner Space horoscopes (also monthly). There are picture galleries, article and horoscope archives going back about seven years, Eric's daily blog, the daily photo, and other articles as well. We also have two extra blogs: Political Waves by Jude, which distributes news articles with commentary; and Psychsound by Steve Bergstein, a civil rights lawyer in New York.

Note, we offer comp subscriptions to those who request them. If you're interested, just drop a note to info@planetwaves.net .

=-=-=-=

Well that wraps up another splendid week here at Planet Waves! Thanks for visiting -- and we'll look for you in Monday morning!

Yours truly,

-- ERIC FRANCIS

francis@planetwaves.net

Archives 2006: December 1 to January 4 | January 5 to February 14 | February 15 to April 1

Archives 2004: Oct. 25 to Nov. 9 | Nov. 10 to 23 | Nov. 24 to Dec. 28