PLANET WAVES By ERIC FRANCIS
Monthly for June 1999. Copyright ©1999, all rights reserved.One Way or Another ARIES (March 21-April 19)
You haven't suffered any permanent loss of power. Recent months may have been confusing or chaotic, particularly in the sphere of close relationships, though it's been a time of gathering your energies and exploring the limits of balance. Now, everything about this process becomes clear enough to enable your steps in radically new directions, surely heading straight for a series of profound transformations and a quickening of the energy of your life. As this happens, as you re-emerge, I suggest you practice the art of allowing people to be who they are, particularly those who annoy you the most, or whom you desire the most deeply. If it's true that we give up something for everything we gain, then study what you value so that when the time comes, you'll be ready to release what you don't need in exchange for what you truly want, and surely deserve.TAURUS (April 20-May 20)
In ancient Chinese mythology, the bull was among the most deeply revered symbols because he broke the ground and helped furrow the seed, as well as fathered the calf, which extended life and enabled the mother to give milk. At the same time, the crescent Moon was seen as the horns of the bull, so he also united Heaven and Earth, serving as a deeply cosmic expression of life. You are that contact point, the place where sky meets land. You are the progenitor. It is now the time for Sacred Fathering. Men, please pay more attention to women and their needs, particularly their needs for loyalty and honesty; take care of the young, and your young; please help mind the planet. For women: pause for a moment, even as the global fathers bomb civilization, and honor the Male, the active, the fiery, and the creative, both within you and around you.GEMINI (May 21-June 20)
Thought is not an abstraction, it is tangible, and exists on many levels. Memory can be stored in the body as well as the brain, as evidenced by medical documentation of people who receive transplanted organs and recall life details from the donor. Healers using touch to trigger and clear traumatic memories employ this principle as well. You're entering a moment when this all comes together for you, when the traditional dividing lines that cut people up within themselves can be transcended. Listen to your body. Feed yourself very well, with food you both like, and feel is nourishing. Try not to be angry at your body for any reason; you will only hurt yourself. And if you slow down, if you feel and listen, you're likely to connect with a sanctuary of consciousness that does not involve the body at all; a place beyond your self-concept, straight to your Self.CANCER (June 21-July 22)
Looking closely at the relationships of this world, one thing has become abundantly clear to me: much of what we call love is really guilt. Much of what we call devotion is really obligation. Much of what we call desire is really obsession. The guilt that we feel, and that binds us to misery, is reinforced by the way other guilty-feeling people (whom we choose) treat us, and by our own failure to call it what it is. It may seem like somebody close to you must now make some important decisions, but it's really you who must face the reality of what has become of loving relationships in your life, and you alone who can make the necessary adjustments. How to do this? Be vigilant. Identify guilt in all its forms, and release yourself from it. The advent of summer is your time of freedom. Make the effort, renounce the dark force, and stand up for love.LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)
While you may have some vague ideas about what you want from life, as the month progresses, it may seem you have no rational basis for knowing what's actually coming. You do not, and cannot know; you are on a journey, not a vacation, and must live by the ethics of the road, not those of a tourist. Plans only count for so much, so don't cling to them. Yet despite the mystery, there will be signs, if you use your eyes, ears and mind -- signs like messages from the people you love; really hearing the things people say to you, which will immediately reveal their true intentions; and how you feel when you are in a particular space. Every drop of your awareness must be now summoned, and this will be your breath and blood from this point onward. And there will be one solid moment in which everything will become absolutely, vividly, undeniably clear. Do not forget it.VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
Yours is the sign of the Goddess, and it's an Earth sign. You have probably considered the idea that the Earth is a Goddess, but consider that technically, "Earth" is not even capitalized in English! In western culture, we treat her as something to mine for resources, pave over, use as a garbage dump, and then eat like a chocolate bonbon on Saturday afternoon with the mountain bike. The Earth is in pain, and there is a very real extent to which you can feel the Earth's suffering in your mind and body. This is likely to be true if you're feeling depressed or confused and there's no obvious reason for it. We share one life with the planet, and we can feel her sorrow. So I strongly suggest you take advantage of the gentle weather, and find someplace beautiful and green and natural where you can take all your clothes off and really feel her joy, delight in her, and experience her lush beautiful Self. Make love to the planet. Why not?LIBRA (Sep. 23-Oct. 22)
Slowly, as the years progress, we forge an identity out of the chaos of our psychology and the confusion of our past. Often, we do this through exploring polarities, for example, in our relationships. Many men exalt as their ideal partner the woman they feel they are within, and many women seek outwardly their own inner man. Or, conversely, hating our opposite inner identity, unable to bear the fact that within a big, macho guy may live a gentle, soft woman, we can manifest violence and rejection in our partnerships. Now, this whole process stops long enough for you to really see and feel what is happening. Indeed, everything you experience in these weeks, down to the slightest detail, may vibrate with deep knowledge of life and death, of the cycles of time, and the profound inner mystery that both unites and divides Self and Other.SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
Working out our deepest, darkest fears takes guts. That may seem like a contradiction -- that to deal with fear, one must be fearless. But having guts is about commitment, not bravery. For the purposes of your life right now, I am will propose a working definition of the dreaded "c" word: Commitment is understanding necessity. Now, as for those deep, dark fears: How about the fear of being a total alien in this world, and living in psychic isolation? Or the terror of being unbearable to the people close to you? Or the fear of having suffered so deeply as a child that there is no hope for you today? I believe that all of these seemingly separate ideas have their roots in a single concept, which is subconscious guilt about being alive. A strange concept, I know, but if you pay attention, you'll see it at work, and once you really see it, it's possible to choose another way of life entirely. In fact, it's inevitable.SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 23-Dec. 21)
Not so long ago, the realm of collective consciousness -- a dimension in which minds are joined, where time flows in many directions, and from which many people can draw information -- was considered a kooky notion of UFO freaks. Today, both the physical and psychological sciences are finally acknowledgment documentation that memory can be transmitted genetically, that spontaneous symbolic eruptions called synchronicities can be both real and deeply meaningful, and that past-life recall sometimes occurs. This is called the "transpersonal" realm. For the foreseeable future, will be dipping into transpersonal reality on a fairly regular basis. You may have experiences which take you "beyond yourself" and into a much larger reality. You may feel like this has all happened before, or like we've all met before, or like you're directly connected to something much larger than the "I". Is this really true? Well, see what you learn.CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)
Learning means becoming. To really assimilate information or experience, we must digest it like food, and absorb it into our entire reality. It's clear that you've been repeatedly getting stuck on something, and that your process of digesting reality may be blocked. It's important that you examine your life and your problems, looking for where you've skipped steps along the way to going where you are trying to get. A skipped step could be failing to resolve one relationship before beginning another; it could be attempting a creative or business project that far exceeds your ability to understand what you are doing; or any other pattern in which the present and history do not add up. Go back, complete the step, then make one or two small advances. This will help you balance the past, the unknown and the moment in which you stand, and thus actually make progress rather than run in circles.AQUARIUS (Jan. 19-Feb. 18)
My new least-favorite word of all time is "spirituality," and I am proposing that my readers and editors delete it from their vocabularies. Spirit is the essence of someone. It is formless and ineffable. "Spiritual" warps the concept and describes an outer condition that is supposed to demonstrate the inner state of spirit ("He's very spiritual" or "She's so unspiritual.") "Spirituality" perverts this into a material thing, a noun, that one can possess, and therefore buy, sell or trade in the marketplace. But there is no such thing. Spirit remains at the hidden center of our reality. It has its expressions, but most people would not recognize them for what they are unless -- maybe -- their life depended on it. Your job now, as I see it, is to maintain faith, not belief; silent knowledge that the invisible is real and doing its job as the coming world events unfold. Indeed, your faith may be what makes it true.PISCES (Feb. 19-Mar. 20)
Someone told me a story today of the magnificent (and now gone) Isabel Hickey speaking at an astrology conference 20 years ago, blowing the doors off the room with a scathing commentary on the karma of a society dropping bombs on people (i.e., atomic bombs on Japan). She said, essentially, what makes you think we can get away with this and suffer no consequences, individually or as a society? My friend said she's been warning her students of the psychic arts, all of whom are very sensitive, that war has its effects. It has its effects on our minds. People are suffering and dying. Children are terrified; their homes are being bombed. Their parents and siblings are being murdered. You are sensitive. You feel this. You are intelligent. You know it's wrong. I've read -- I guess it's been studied -- that Pisceans make good war generals. If that's true, then we'll make excellent peace activists. There is no time to bullshit around. This is no time to follow style and just live normally like nothing is happening. Your life should be pretty good these days. The Gods are smiling on you. You have some resources. Put them to work. I am calling for a revolt. You can help. Stop the bombing. End of horoscope.++What's New | One Way or Another