Dear Friend and Reader:

PLUTO IS in its final moments in Sagittarius until Dec. 18, 2241, when it returns to the sign of the centaur. Apropos of a major Pluto transit, the ingress to Capricorn is being attended by much drama and many truly unusual developments. And apropos of a change in historical eras, we are in a moment between two presidencies; two vastly different times of life. Many people have pondered the meaning of the 2012 era without necessarily believing that the whole thing -- whatever it is -- is real. You are about to find out, but your perception is a filter. Everything you witness, you interpret. I suggest you observe that process in motion.

December's pivotal moment, and indeed that of 2008, arrives at the end of December, between Christmas and New Year, when Mars makes a conjunction to Pluto, newly arrived in Capricorn. Pluto's journey across the Galactic Core and ingress into Capricorn have been in progress for well over two years. We've had a chance to get our spiritual bearings; to make some decisions about right and wrong, and how we want to fit into the world we see around us. Sagittarius is a brilliant teacher of ethics, even if certain people under its influence act is if they have never heard of the concept.

The Capricorn journey, which lasts through 2024, will come with a return to practical matters. We will be compelled to validate our choices by a measure of what is true rather than what we want to be true. We will have a chance to reform our horribly outmoded "traditions" and institutions, recycling the pieces into something useful; something that feeds us and not just the pharmaceutical giants.

This is likely to be true in both the long-run and our immediate moment. Pluto transits are often attended by a dramatic event; and Mars entering Capricorn points the way. That conjunction coincides by about a day with the Capricorn New Moon on Dec. 27, conjunct Mars, Pluto and square this odd thing called the Aries Point. All of this adds up to developments certainly both in public life (i.e., the news) and invariably for us as individuals -- and an encounter where the two intersect.

These will not necessarily be the most relaxing holidays, but we live in highly unusual times, and we have to get into a new groove of awareness. The world is on the brink of the most significant changes we have seen in our lifetimes. Though time always seems to be accelerating, we have lived for a long, long time with the sense that we are on the road to nowhere. Now we are approaching the first of several key destinations, where the scent in the air is indescribable, and where the light falls upon the Earth differently than we've ever seen. Tune into your senses; they will reveal most of what you need to know. Tune into your heart: it will reveal what you already know.

Yours & truly,

Correction. In Friday's edition, we misidentified a piece of artwork that is really by Alex Grey. Alex is a painter who depicts both the physical and nonphysical dimensions of the world. He illustrates everything from the skeletal-muscular system to the energy lines in one's aura and how they intersect with the people near us. He is a practitioner of Tantra in the Tibetan tradition, which like all forms of Buddhism explores and celebrates the cycles of birth, life, death and rebirth. Alex's 55th birthday is coming up Nov. 29. He has a Sagittarius Sun and a Virgo Moon, with a good bit of Scorpio (Venus and Mercury). He once personally gave me his birth time; I cannot find it. These images are available in magnificent books. You can visit his homepage here.

Aries (March 20-April 19)
Leadership, when attained, often arrives with what seems like a test. It may be designed by the cosmos as such; it may be that there is an 'equal and opposite reaction' taking place somewhere, and this is the result. What seems like a crisis (from a dense level of perception) is also accessible as a reorganization and opportunity (from a more expanded perspective). Change brings change. This comes in many forms, and it now appears to be arriving in particularly large measures. To me, the astrology suggests that whatever may be developing, you not lose sight of your objectives, your intentions and what are commonly called goals: the big ones; the dearly held ones. Look at any situation and ask how you can use it as an opening. It is true that you are encountering forces beyond your control and are suddenly playing in another league. It's true that the practical matters you are encountering have little to do with the visions you were holding out for yourself so recently, and for so long. This is a crucial point as anything comes to fruition; once you get to the place where practical concerns dominate, keep sight of your vision, your meaning, your truth -- no matter what anyone else says or does.
 
Taurus (April 19-May 20)
There seems to come a point in everyone's spiritual development when they get a handle on a deeper truth, and then have to make it known to the world. A new dimension of reality is making itself accessible to you, and it may be overwhelming. It's shaking up all your reality boxes, and drawing you into new possibilities like falling into a vortex. I have a lot of Taurus friends -- most of them agree, they need the action, they need the shift in energy and the reshuffling of reality. Things have been too much the same for way too long, despite many opportunities to make progress. The pull you are now experiencing transcends anything familiar; it's more powerful than anything close to what you've known in the past. I suggest, however, that to the extent you consider this a spiritual event, you be modest about it. A new version of the truth is making itself known to you. Yet it's not concepts that count now, but rather, it is the results of your actions, and how your beliefs transpose directly into choices. You may feel like you're deluding yourself in terms of what you feel like you can accomplish, even with help. Remember, miracles speak louder than words.
 
Gemini (May 20-June 21)
Your primary responsibility to yourself is to avoid power struggles. That may not sound very creative. Yet given both recent and imminent developments in your solar chart, it's a key skill you need to master. You have come through a long phase wherein you learned, by one method, to meet people you perceived as powerful face-on; you learned that your ideas are as good as their ideas. That one belief has saved you incalculable grief and it is basically still true. However, you are in a new country with new laws and new metaphysics. You need to think strategically; you need to pre-empt any situation wherein you may be compromised or challenged, long in advance. What is different now is that certain people in your life are themselves coming from a different level; they wield the power of structure and establishment, more or less justly. In any transaction where you feel like the weaker party, look at the contract; look at the by-laws; consciously examine any agreements that you have. Everyone has to play by the rules; therefore, know the guidelines, and enter any situation having already complied with the basics. There will be times when it's appropriate to go directly to the human level, to seek assistance or acknowledgement; just know when you're doing it.
 
Cancer (June 21-July 22)
You have long sought more direct contact in your encounters with others. You have wanted relationships that did something other than dance around the point. Soon, you may be wondering how direct is too direct. Meanwhile, it's crucial that you get accustomed to a new way of life; that you adapt to a new metaphysics of the human dance. Any encounter that matters will require you to make some change to the structure of your beliefs about relationships and about yourself. Most people don't recognize how rigid these ideas are, those contained within themselves and within society. You are about to discover how rigid you thought your ideas were, and how flexible they can be. The rules as they exist are generally designed to make sure that nothing (meaning, nobody) new or out of the ordinary gets in. This, in turn, is designed to sustain a model of 'self' that counts a living, breathing, pulsing human life as a fixed or static entity, rather than ever-changing and in continuous motion. If you are in an established partnership, you'll need to become truly honest with yourself about the extent to which this whole setup is true for you. The time has arrived for new concepts that account for change and still preserve some sense of loyalty and commitment; remembering that honesty trumps everything -- when we don't let fear do it first.
 
Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)
You are not somebody with commitment issues; rather, you intuitively understand that your presence means something. Nobody has to tell you that. Yet too often you try to demonstrate this simple fact. I suggest you make up your mind that you have nothing to prove. Once you do that, you will feel your thrust come on, born mainly of trusting yourself. You will feel the profound influence that you wield, particularly in those areas of life where people feel the most helpless: work, their health and dealing with bureaucracy. You understand something about simple wellbeing, mainly because you've had to work so hard to feel that the world is here to support you. For the next year or so -- and for sure, during the next few months -- expect some kind of grand reorganization to dominate your awareness. Recognize that change is happening, and is happening around you. There are corresponding changes within your psyche; there are old ideas that you're dragging around that are simply no longer helpful and are begging to be revised, reconsidered or removed entirely. It is not easy being born under a fixed sign (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or Aquarius) these days. It is like a giant cosmic wedge is being driven into the world, threatening every known structure or establishment, even down to its very existence. You are one of the people on the design team for the new reality. You must be dauntless and flexible, in equal measure.
 
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
It's time to get the ship out of relationship. Typically, we drag around an iron hull full of garbage when we relate to others: expectations, supposed needs, unstated desires, issues with language, stereotypes and countless things that need to be melted into something useful. For you, these issues do nothing but suppress your ability to be spontaneous; to be creative; simply put, to have fun. If you feel like you have sexual hang-ups of any variety, you need to look no further than this theme to find out what they are about. It is true, as you have so often divined, that this story is old; it goes back a long way; and those with a strong Virgo signature in their charts were often the kids who were forced to be adults before they had a chance to be young. At the time, this was held as a virtue; the adults appeared to respect you because you were so 'grown up', but you were unwittingly deprived of many opportunities to be young when you really were young. As an adult, one common manifestation is taking an excessively serious, at times even formal, approach to relating to others. Folks are folks, no matter how much money they make, no matter how hot their ass is, no matter how famous they are, and no matter how much they remind you of someone from your past. At a certain point you must crawl from the wreckage of history and into the adventure of the day.
 
Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
Where do you live, and why do you live there? Do you feel safe and nourished? Can you, in particular, stretch into any moments of feeling perfect safety based on where you are on the planet? I suggest you monitor this theme carefully for the next month or two. Play a mindfulness game with yourself. Start with your emotions; notice when you feel safe in the psychic sense. Who inspires this feeling, rather than something else? Next, do you feel safe within the passage of time? Do you feel safer thinking about the past, the present or the future? Do you cling to tradition, ignore it, or consciously work to evolve it? Next: your environment. Do you feel safe walking down your own street? Do you feel safe in your home? In your room? Last query: What did your family teach you about trust? I suggest you go over all the angles here: are men dangerous or supportive? Are women honest and fair, or are they some shade of manipulative? Are people trying to steal from you, or help you? Do they keep their commitments or break them? These queries are going to provide you with a lot of data. Coupled with the transits you are exploring this month, your environment will too. You may decide you need to make some adjustments. If so, then soon is the time.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
Many teach basically the same thing: we walk around the world trapped in a maze of our own thoughts and ideas, all of them from the past. The yoga path calls them samskara, or "latent past impressions." A Course in Miracles has the lesson, "I see only the past," which reveals basically the same thing. Anyone who has experimented with altered states of mind has probably, at least once, encountered that feeling of our fingertips and our thoughts sticking to everything we perceive. Even the sanitized Christian notion of forgiveness implies that we are hung up on what has happened before, and it's from this that we must release to be free. If you are wondering what is going on right now, the theme is about liberating yourself from the maze of old ideas and realities. You experimented with this earlier in the year, with some success. Now this mission is back, with a vengeance: but don't take revenge on what you have done and what has happened to you; gently disentangle yourself. Let go of beliefs that were fully supported by yesterday's data and facts, and which (if you look carefully) are not supported at all today. Don't worry about what's coming; that space will fill up like a new iPod. So quickly in fact that you must exercise discernment about what new programs, files and recordings you want on your system -- consciously, one at a time.
 
Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)
Your astrology gives you an interesting relationship between the old and the new. Your outer image is clearly that of one who pushes forward. Your inner truth is about someone who is deeply invested in the ways things have always been done. Maintaining this tension feels like serving two masters. For a long time you have tried to push into the future -- that of your ideas, words and community -- without being able to do very much about the values that have kept you trapped in a bubble of the past. We can't change the past, but we can change our interpretation of it. Part of how we do that is by looking deeper. Part of how we do this is by looking at what matters most to us in the present, and making our investment here and now. You are likely to make a discovery this month, one you've been working up to for a while, which has you pouring your energy and resources into something that has great meaning now. You will recognize it because it has lasting value from antiquity, and it's subject to the kinds of re-visioning that you do so well and with such feeling. In other words, the activity or idea most vital to you now also makes room for a future that you cannot see. Like many of us, you will have to move some debris out of the way to make room for what is coming, but as you are no doubt feeling, that effort is well worth your energy and time.
 
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
There are those times when one's life changes (and I mean really changes) in the course of a month, and this may well be one of them. Sometimes that change involves outer events and others when progress is precipitated by an inner shift that comes 'out of nowhere'. I don't mean an epiphany but rather a complete reorientation of your perspective, which makes it impossible to see or experience the world like you did in the past. We may wonder why these moments don't come sooner, or how we can induce them when we feel we need them. Some say the changes happen when it's time; astrology suggests that we live in two worlds at once, and when certain transits occur (another way of saying 'it's time') a bridge is built between these worlds -- and this is what is happening now. There are facts about yourself that it's been easier to deny. Now it's easier to make friends with them, and to admit their reality and their impact. Once you do that, you realize you are someone different than you thought you were. You don't become different; rather, you recognize that you changed a long time ago, and your awareness is finally catching up with that progress. That is the shape and size of things now; but I am understating the case by about tenfold so as not to frighten the faint of heart; not you, of course.
 
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
You are the last person who would want to exist in a state of isolation from the world -- and in some respects this seems to be happening to you. Yet in truth you are at the beginning of a process of inner confrontation that will free you from specifically what has kept you trapped in your own world, away from contact with the very people you crave. In a fairly simple statement, if you divide yourself, you cannot make contact with others; or if you do, it will happen in a fragmented way. Your journey now is about dismantling inner psychic structures and partitions that have literally divided you from yourself. Many factors have influenced this pattern, over a very long period of time: most surely before your parents were born. You may wonder how it's possible to be influenced by events so far in the past. Here is an analogy that will make it clear how strange this situation is. Obviously, your parents were taught by their parents and they were taught by their parents, and so on. Most people would deny that the transfer of information is so direct; after all, most of us can't even name all of our great-grandparents (try it and see). Yet their words, feelings, ideas and experiences are conveyed by communication and by our DNA. These are the influences you need to identify. These are the very influences you are confronting right now: invisible, but not invincible.
 
Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
Some years before she died the morning of Oct. 31, 2008, Rockie Gardiner (beloved author of the Rockie Horoscope) penned one of the most touching things I've ever read by an astrology writer. Forget about eavesdropping or skimming my email; it felt like she was reading from my Akashic records. I must paraphrase, but it went something like this. The distances you are crossing lately have been so vast, there is really no way to see or feel how much progress you've been making. It all just seems like one endless stretch across the abyss. In the long and fleeting years since that appeared in print, you have continued to move across space and time, guided by some kind of homing sense. Now, a series of developments this month and in early January indicate a kind of arrival. Surely you feel this: the sense of the ship of your soul drawing a little closer to dry land; the excitement of a plane making its initial descent into a country you've read about and wanted to visit all your life. You are still a traveler -- you always will be, on the level of your soul. As a Pisces, you are indeed visiting a strange land. But you are here to grow, and you are certainly accomplishing that. You have lived the wisdom that life is not about the destination but rather about the journey, which makes getting there all the more poignant; all the more meaningful.
 
[For online editions, here is something I dedicate to Rockie, by Laurie Anderson.]