Saturday, May 13, 2006 | Full Moon, Toronto THIS is a great conference. First of all, I'm invited as a speaker, which personally adds a lot of fun. I'm not a big "conference guy" (with Aquarius Moon and Aquarius Saturn and a ton of gravel strewn between, I am fussy).   It's a small group, about 75 people, which is the perfectly manageable size; you can actually know all the faces. The classes range from being big enough to accommodate the whole group to seminars of 10. I thought both of my presentations so far went just fine, I had a lot of fun and felt the energy flowing. I'm very much looking forward to Arwynne O'Neill's presentation later this morning -- she is doing a talk called Heavy Water, on the Saturn-Neptune cycle, based on work she's published on Planet Waves. She was placed in the prime time Saturday morning time slot to draw the biggest crowd of the event, and I've seen parts of her presentation -- it looks excellent and she's a high-energy, clever and friendly woman devoted to research astrology. Yesterday I warmed up my Chiron talk playing a live version of the Grateful Dead's Terrapin Station, which includes my new key concept for Chiron: "Some rise, some fall and some climb to get to Terrapin." We made some extremely interesting discoveries of tree mythology connected to Chiron, which deserve a much closer look. Chiron's mother asked Zeus to turn her into a tree, a fact which I have not seen the rather rich symbolism of addressed much at all. There was a brilliant synchronicity yesterday. During the discussion of the "Rabbi" Sabian symbol in a remote conference room on the 10th freaking floor of a hotel in Canada, an actual rabbi (guest at the hotel, not part of the conference) walked into the room! Heh. He said, "Well, I guess I belong here" and joined the discussion, bring some excellent info about Kaballa. Somebody wrote to me yesterday and asked if I'm taking a little writing break and the answer is YES. I've actually gone an entire week without writing a horoscope column (whereas I usually write two to six a week). I've written a few short easy blogs like this which take about 15 minutes and just one essay. That's a vacation around here! But I do plan to gradually turn up the gaz next week. I'll catch you soon. == The annotated Terrapin Station http://arts.ucsc.edu/GDead/aGDL/terr.html Deadheads in the reading audience are ALWAYS welcome to contact me, especially if you live in the Hudson Valley!