Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2005 THE SUN IS SQUARE SATURN and the new lunar month has begun. The Moon is in Scorpio and Venus is conjunct the core of the galaxy. Mars and the Sun are approaching an exact opposition, as Mars squares Neptune, stirring the cosmic pot. In Mexico and other countries with Spanish blood or custom, today is Day of the Dead, which followed All Saint's Day Nov. 1 and All Hallow's Eve on Oct. 31. Today's photo is of graves with housing in the background taken as I was walking toward the exit of the rather amazing Pere Lachaise cemetery in northeastern Paris. Admittedly this picture went against my 'no photos of sunsets' editorial guideline (we need to see more sunrises in the world), but it seemed like a pretty special moment to put into jpg format. Iren, wife of our webmaster Anatoly in the Ukraine, asked why there were graves located so close to civil housing. All I could say is they do it the same way in England and the United States too. In London, I turned down an apartment that was across the street from a crematorium. In the United States, highways and trains go right through the middle of vast, suburb-like cemeteries, at least where I come from in New York City. I visited Pere Lachaise with a friend to do an [informal] Day of the Dead ritual. The cemetery was a mob scene and apparently a hot place to bring a date, as everyone was strolling around hand in hand. I happen to know the lady who works outside selling maps and postcards (Melanie, an expat Brit and long-time Parisian) and we were joking about the need for mounted riot police as people herded into the main entrance, weighing her jacket down with two euro coins for maps as they went. It started like that at 8 am. This is a city where people just don't seem to get up early, but the throngs were up and at 'em for this occasion. We don't really do Halloween here, but this awesome memorial park is a big hit, with many thousands of mausoleums, above ground crypts, and lots of other ornate stuff you just don't see in most US cemeteries. Not to mention Jim Morrison, who I skipped after my first visit last year. First we selected, intuitively, the grave of a family that had been there since about 1900. Candles, resin incense that filled the whole area, a glass of very good rum, an eggplant, apples, and a  long cellular call that came from Chelsea about handling a technical situation that was vaguely apropos of the ritual itself, were part of this visit. The scent of the resins (frankincense, myrrh and I think copal) drew people from all over, wondering what was going on. We then found our way to the memorial and grave of Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy. He died in the mid-19th century after a long, intense life that ended in Paris. Hahnemann led a nearly successful countermovement to traditional medicine, called homeopathy. After resigning from his practice as a medical doctor because he felt the field was so unethical in the extent to which it hurt people with its medicines, he became a translator. (Daring move -- he had about eight children.) It's a story for another day, but it was through translating a study about a case of quinine poisoning, which created the symptoms of malaria, that he discovered the idea that "like heals like" or the Law of Similars, and developed an entirely new medical theory and practice. I left two tubes of china, the remedy made from quinine -- his first remedy, used to cure malaria -- on his monument, along with some lit candles and one of my frankincense and myrrh olfactory beacons that you can smell for miles around. Tomorrow, I'll tell a story relating to the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918 that relates to homeopathy and how its practitioners were able to cure the flu when no ordinary doctor could. The remedy is still known and still available. It may not work if there's an Avian Flu outbreak, but the remedy is known for its effectiveness against all forms of flu. And any disease can be 'repertorized' based on its properties. Remedies all have psychological and physical properties. The mental property of this particular preparation is anticipation anxiety, sometimes manifesting as stage fright and other times about the expectations that people have of us in the world, or how we perceive them. On the mental level, influenza has a mental state of fear of the future associated with it. That hints at a problem for the world, because I can barely think of a time when more people were harboring fear, consciously or not, of the future. Avian Flu is a respiratory disease. The lungs deal with air, which is about life force and inspiration. The words 'respiration' and 'inspiration' sound similar for a reason. They are based on the same idea. And the lungs are where we process grief, as nearly any healer can tell you. Have a good day if you can, and remember, the sky is cooking. But the beginning of the new lunar month is the time to establish patterns, so set those patterns now.     e -- PS, If you're a regular reader of Planet Waves materials, please consider subscribing. There are very good reasons for doing so -- which become even more obvious once your emails start coming. For example, your subscription gets you some very cool services (weekly horoscope, a weekly birthday report that's worth the whole price, a weekly essay on anything from the news to some saucy topic, two extra monthly horoscopes not available online anywhere, and a fully searchable three-year archive of subscriber materials and horoscopes). 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