Dear Friend and Reader:

The Sun is in Aries and a new season and a new astrological year have begun. Before I get into the equinox chart, we need to look back, because Thursday was the 6th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. It was just six short years ago that a great portion of our country's population, most of its politicians and nearly every mainstream news outlet, believed we just had to do this. I have this vague memory of a former celebrated general with experience in Iraq advising the then-decider, "You break it, you bought it."

Don't you feel like calling American Express and demanding a chargeback? It was a defective, fraudulent product. The thing is, we really, really wanted it. I mean, we needed it. And we used the wrong friggin' credit card -- American Excess. Their customer service is a joke. We really did need a good laugh. But it was a sick joke, and it was on us.

Six years ago, our country drowned our ever-mounting (manufactured) fears of terrorism, our need for someone to blame, and unresolved grief about Sept. 11 in the supposed satisfaction of bombing a population, an act of aggression evil enough even if it hadn't gradually turned out to be based entirely on lies. I seem to recall that the invasion was popular even among many 'progressive' and 'spiritual' people. I remember David Byrne complaining that his friends were turning into zombies. Personally I was stunned that so many who understood the definition of karma, or knew it exists, went along with the feast.

There was another side to the discussion, but it spoke (or rather was listened to) for only a day. Just a month earlier, on Feb. 15, 2003, people and a heck of a lot of dogs came out in cities around the United States and around the world protesting the imminent attack. I often wonder, where did that energy go? Why does nobody mention the F-15 protests? It's like they didn't happen.

Today, few people actually support this war. It's brought us nothing but debt, death and bad vibes. The lesson has come at the cost of 4,259 devastated American families who lost relatives in combat and service, the more than 100,000 who suffered casualties, and the untold millions of lives shattered or lost within Iraq.

Yet there was one last great deception: the crime of the millennium, which took place, early-bird style, during its first decade. Capitalism may be the thing we love and the thing we supposedly are, but at the moment it's eating its own leg for dinner.

I now recognize that the war was a ruse, a real-time, real-life, supersized Wag the Dog episode to distract the nation from the corporate crimes we are now seeing the results of. It is not just that there's nobody to hold accountable for the war (unless you want to list every senator who voted for it, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, who knew better because she and Bill, as the ex-First Family, get CIA briefings).

The actual other side of the Iraq War story would now appear to be what we were distracted from in that orgy of violence, presumed dominance, supposed revenge and false pride: a government that stole the wealth of a nation while shredding its civil rights, and a banking system that gambled it all away.

Remember, we're not talking about money or "the economy" here; we're talking about whether our check cards work at the supermarket. We're talking toilet paper and laundry soap. I assure you that everyone who uses one of those cards has wondered at least once about whether it will work when we need it. We're talking about the dry roof over our heads. It was not merely the nearly $700 billion plus interest that this war has cost the American people, for no good. My own sense, at the time the war was started, was that it was an intentional move designed to drive the economy into the ground.

The chart for the United States' attack on Iraq is an obvious quagmire. I say this because the Sun is in the last degree or two (depending on the time you use) of Pisces. Anyone who wants to start a war they plan to win would wait a day or two until the equinox. Aries is the god of war; if you want a war, you summon him, not a couple of fish having a love affair. The last two degrees of any sign are called the anaretic degrees. In the old days astrologers would say they were associated with death. Today we might say that these two degrees will be associated with persistent evolutionary lessons. Look for any anaretic planets in your chart and tell me if you think this is true (I have Saturn out there).

The Moon is in Libra (a peaceful sign) conjunct Vesta (an asteroid associated with sacrifice). This is in the 6th house, of the military. We were about to sacrifice our army on this disaster, and that is precisely what we did.

Pluto in Sagittarius is in the 8th house of death and surrender, suggesting that we faced a fearsome enemy and had better get the lesson sooner rather than later. Mars, Chiron and Nessus are in Capricorn in the 9th house, suggesting that we would engage the enmity of world opinion, including the opinions of other governments. Does anyone remember Freedom Fries, a name given so we would not have to utter "French" because the French knew better (they learned something in Algeria). Mars conjunct Chiron was a hint that the underdog had the big advantage.

Author Thomas Ricks said in a recent interview that the Iraq War "was the biggest mistake in the history of American foreign policy," adding that "we don't yet understand how big a mistake this is."

We won't, until we start to connect Iraq to the global economic crisis.

We are Now in Aries Point Country

With the Sun at the vernal equinox, we are in Aries Point territory. The Aries Point is the vernal point, and today the Sun is there. This is the astrological intersection between personal and collective responsibility. As a conscious thought, this is something that rarely happens; we're usually too worried about our taxes, parking tickets and problems at our kids' school to think about the world at large; much less to act on an issue.

The Aries Point is amplified by the presence of Pluto in early Capricorn, which makes a square and cranks up the energy. On March 23, the Sun makes an exact square to Pluto, which brings in all three elements; and two additional ones as well. They don't appear on conventional astrology charts; I found this information in the ephemeris at Serennu.com.

The first extra point to consider is a hypothetical planet called Kronos. This is a super-Saturn. It represents people in positions of public trust, regardless of how they use that trust. The integrity inherent in this point is something we have to aspire to, rather than fake or take for granted. One delineation I just read gives a novel, intuitive idea: Kronos represents ordinary things that, when you suppress them, come out in consciousness as something extraordinary.

It's a slow, slow moving point, orbiting in 521 years. There is no planetary body connected to it; there is an idea, and that idea is in the sign Cancer at the moment, exactly opposed by faster-moving Pluto.

It's as if our concept of trust, and the idea that we can trust a person in a position of corporate, fiscal or government authority, is being slowly deconstructed by Pluto. To me Kronos also represents the idea that capitalism is legitimate. We've all watched this week as the very AIG executives who brought the world's largest insurer to its knees are collecting million-dollar-plus bonuses. The cost here is not just taxpayer money; the real cost is the cynicism that says we cannot do anything about this, or anything productive at all for that matter. Being cast as perpetual victims is the actual cost.

The other extra point involved is Achilles. This is a weird little asteroid (categorized as a Trojan asteroid) out by Jupiter. Years ago someone on one of the Centaur groups wrote to me privately and handed me a delineation that has proven to be sage. Setting aside the mythical baggage, Achilles is about false confidence and false lack of confidence. We know what false confidence is: you get all pumped up on a war you don't personally have to fight. False lack of confidence is when you're supposed to have some courage (due to your experience, age, talent, experience or such), and you have none. You know you should have some pluck, but you just sit there paralyzed. If you have this problem, look carefully at Achilles in your chart, and maybe stop giving your parents so much credit for who you are.

So the alignment is: Pluto in Capricorn, opposite Kronos in Cancer, squared by the Sun and Achilles on the Aries Point. Gee whiz. What a picture of our situation. How did these Kronos-types get so powerful? Did we let them, and if we did, how ever will we trust ourselves again? And are we succumbing to the appeal of fascism because it relieves us of our responsibility?

If we want to make this T-square into a grand cross, we have two points in Libra to help us do that. First is an asteroid called Circe, which is within one degree of the alignment. Martha Lang-Wescott says of this point, "Helping, being of assistance and coming to the rescue; acting as a facilitator; understanding the motives for help." This could be "helping" the banks and the insurance giants; it could be "helping" the Iraqi people; and lots of big boys helping themselves to the American Excess card, Treasury Bills. Oh, and it's about the help that we owe ourselves.

Circe is conjunct a centaur called Okyrhoe. The daughter of Chiron and Chariklo, and she is a fighter. She personifies helping ourselves out of this mess. The thing we haven't figured out yet is that the problem is not on television and the solution is not going to come from television.

At a certain point we're going to have to confront our fears (less television and more art, sex and exploring the world would help with that). At the moment, we have fear connected to everything. Let's see, it's connected to money. It's connected to what we do, our jobs. We're all under some level of threat (please keep renewing, you need us like you need orange juice). We've got fear connected to having fun; we have gigawatts of irrational fear connected to sex; it's associated with our relationships, which often had a way of being under stress in great times. We're scared of love and scared of intimacy and scared of being alone and scared of abandonment. We're afraid for our health and our kids and the future and the country and the world and the environment. I know too many women who are scared of their own pussies. Is there anything we're not scared of?

We seem to have this fear that we don't know who we are. We've spent so long looking for who we are in our relationships that we seem to have forgotten. This Aries season is star-spangled with Venus retrograde. As I have said a few times, Venus is moving back, and back, and back; it will back into a square with Pluto in Capricorn (our parents' fears, and our fear of change), tiptoe backwards, slowly and quietly, over the Aries Point (the fear of being part of something larger, and losing our identity there), and then dip into Pisces, where it will pause for 10 days and help us do precisely that. Pisces is collective water; the ocean refuses no river, and it contains every element on Earth.

Pluto in Capricorn, by the way, is not all about this ongoing, slo-mo financial and moral holocaust we're witnessing and experiencing. This is about learning to have fun. Venus square Pluto is about being so isolated that you decide one day, what do I have to lose by doing something that I actually like?

If the square to Pluto doesn't remind us that life is not an ego trip or an emotional drama; and if it doesn't remind us that our lives are precious; and if the journey over the Aries Point doesn't inform us that we have more in common than we have separate interests; then the plunge into Pisces just may do the trick.

Pisces is where this Venus retrograde comes home. Pisces is the sign that we think of as both spiritual and erotic, as the party and the heart-center; as delusional and creative and filled with omniscient denial and a craving for passion. When you get done with all of that, Pisces is where your soul comes home, and where Venus returns to the salty seas where she was born and where we can, if we want, find our biological instincts revived. If we can connect with primordial existence, with the mere fact that we are actually alive, hey, we might decide it's okay to say have a conversation with somebody we don't know; because why not? Oh, because old J. Edgar Hoover said not to talk to strangers, they might be Queer or Communists (probably both) and then you'll get kidnapped, blacklisted and converted.

Somehow this crisis of confidence has to end. You can end it for yourself by rejecting fear as your religion. It will end the moment we figure out that we're alive. We may notice that we're currently living our actual life in our actual moment of history -- and that we're just passing through, able to truly experience only what we dare. Just imagine if a whole bunch of us woke up one day and decided that there's something better to do with our time than waiting for something to happen.

For Planet Waves at the vernal equinox,




By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

THE SEASON'S TURNING, much as a kaleidoscope shifts to reveal stunning new shapes and colors. Here in the Patch, the freesias and the daffodils have added yellow accents to a faintly greened countryside and I saw a flowering pear tree dressed in pale white blooms the other day; the redbuds will be right behind, pinning Spring into place. We've enjoyed a few mild days and more sunlight than usual -- even more telling, the ants have invaded my kitchen -- so that must mean that Equinox is here. The Mother is speaking loud and clear: we begin again.

That is very welcome energy in a nation whose heart has contracted under the winter onslaught of cold fact and cool projection. My prayer list is burgeoning under the weight of those with heart problems and brain tumors; a long-time Louise Hay fan, it's effortless for me to interpret that as trouble with our hearts and heads. If ever we needed a renewed sense of beauty and possibility, of a world warming to the Sun's kiss and a return of Spring's enthusiastic, initiating energy, it's now. The cycles remain dependable, if nothing else is.

A good many of us would very much appreciate an opportunity to begin again, and under different circumstances. I live in a devastated neighborhood; I will soon be one of a scant handful of people who has hung on, not been forced out or had to relocate due to economic stressors. Endings and beginnings happen simultaneously but very often we come to them at circumstantial gunpoint; on a global level, ethereal as well as literal guns are waving in the air. And in this springing of the year into a new cycle of life, a larger death-cycle is shaking us in its teeth as the paradigm closes; we're birthing something bigger than just a shift of seasons.

In a perfect world, a new beginning would have a sparkly, exciting feel to it, yet in this vast end-cycle of ours too many of us are dragging past 'failure' along with us; unable to slough off sad circumstances, unyielding loss and debt. No matter how productive or willing we've been in these last months and years, great numbers of us have fallen behind. And of all the scams being perpetrated upon us by a corrupt system, that sense of failure -- which we willingly embrace as errors in personal judgment -- is the biggest fraud of all.

Coming Up in Daily Astrology and Adventure

A crying baby tugs at a person on a very deep level. But, it turns out, some people can learn to hear more in that cry -- and perhaps, by extension, other audible cues -- than they were able to when they were younger. The key? Musical education.

A study by Northwestern University, located in Evanston, Ill., which found that musical training can apparently change the way our brains are wired.

In short: A group of people -- half with serious musical training, half with none to speak of -- were hooked up to electrodes that measure electrical activity in the brain, then they each watched a nature film on a monitor. Occasionally, an infant's cry was played over the headphones the participants were wearing, and the reaction of the listeners' brains was measured.

What the research team discovered was that a baby's cry is actually composed of different types of sounds, including "brief bursts of complex sounds that vary in intensity, frequency and strength," according to Dye's report.

And musicians were able to pick out those complex sounds, the study found. Not only that, but they could also tune out less urgent sounds like so much background noise.

Nina Kraus, director of Northwestern's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, told Dye that the study provided "the first biological evidence" that the study of music really can alter how the brain works. As for further applications, she noted that the processes enhanced by musical studies are the same as those that have been found deficient among certain children with language disorders, indicating musical training could possibly be developed as a therapeutic treatment for such disorders.




As Lee Pullen reports for Astrobiology Magazine, during the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life Conference in Florence, Italy, a new theory was floated about where in the solar system life first originated.

Photo by Danielle Voirin.

Not Earth. Not Mars or any of the other usual celestial subjects, but the main asteroid belt -- Ceres, its largest member, to be specific. Ceres accounts for a third of its total mass of the asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. Even so, it is just a tiny dwarf planet: At 590 miles in diameter, Ceres would fit comfortably in America's heartland, spanning the distance from Kansas City to Denver.

In astrology, Ceres represents the nexus of food, family and emotional issues. She is our connection point to the harvest, and the results of our cultivated emotions. She is also about seeking balance, such as the balance of the seasons. Taking a more mythological view, she's the goddess who feeds us and sustains our lives.

Joop Houtkooper from the University of Giessen finds merit in the idea that Ceres, which has a rocky core believed to be covered in a vast water-ice shell topped with a thick crust, was a point of origin of the biological process. In the article, Houtkooper says, "This idea came to me when I heard a talk about all the satellites in the solar system that consist of a large part of ice, much of which is probably still in a liquid state. The total volume of all this water is something like 40 times greater than all the oceans on Earth."

And since Earth's oceans include hydrothermal vents that produce chemicals and, in chilly depths, sustain life, Houtkooper reasoned that the same could be true on icy bodies within the solar system. "In the ocean, there could be life," he told Astrobiology Magazine. "On the surface, it would be more difficult. But there are some possibilities. There could be hydrogen peroxide-based life, able to withstand the low temperatures."

There are still holes in the theory -- for instance, it is not known if hydrogen peroxide is to be found on the dwarf planet, and then there's the problem of how such life could have reached Earth. Some of the scientific questions, at least, could be answered in 2015, when the DAWN Mission from NASA reaches Ceres.




Parliamentary elections in India begin on April 16 and extend into May, but astrologers on the subcontinent are worried that the timing of the 15th Lok Sabha poll will be inauspicious. According to a March 12 article from The Times of India, astrologers have predicted that unrest and even violence may follow the elections.

"This election is not good for the Indian constitution. The country has seen too much criminalization of politics and it does not point to good times ahead," astrologer Jagannath Mishra, associated with the Arya Samaj Mandir at Harit Vihar in the capital, told the newspaper. "The period post-election will be marked by terrorism, treachery and violence."

However, he also predicted smaller political parties could do well in the polling, possibly leading to another coalition government for India.

The Times also spoke to astrologer Ashok Sanoria of Vivek Vihar. He predicted, "Around September, when five planets converge in Scorpio, the climate will prove fickle. Storms, those that originate in water, will ravage the US and will also affect India."

Possible natural disasters -- from earthquakes to "mini-tsunamis" -- are also foreseen in the astrological portents, the paper reported.

Not all astrologers saw only bad signs, though. The newspaper also spoke with Bejan Daruwalla, a well-respected astrologer, and while he hadn't calculated the positions of the planets during the elections, he was quoted saying, "I think India will ultimately do well."

"I had predicted last year that the country would win an Oscar either in 2008 or 2009," the astrologer was quoted as saying.

Monthly Horoscope April 2009, and Weekly Horoscope #758 - By ERIC FRANCIS

Aries (March 20-April 19)
At a certain point we all learn to stop judging ourselves. It could be sooner; it could be later; but in terms of saving time, emotional energy and conserving opportunities that only come once, the sooner the better. One thing you might have to get over is the notion that the kind of self-critique you're accustomed to makes you a better person. I don't think it does. I would say that the only possibility we have of being better people is awareness, and the gradual, repeated choice to surround ourselves with aware people. In the trapeze act of life, we need to work together and the main thing we need support in is consciousness. What you seem destined to learn over the next few weeks is that having a fixed concept of who you are, or who you're supposed to be, is the basis of your overly critical opinion of yourself. Judgment requires criteria, and when those are unconscious, unreasonable or unrealistic, then the assessment is more of a mental or emotional trip than it is a growth process. You're working toward an extraordinarily rare moment of being able to let go of the self-concept that is at the heart of this crisis. With it, you may find yourself letting go of certain ideas of why exactly you deserve so much attention. You do, but it's for reasons other than you think.

Read your 2008 annual for Aries. Order your Next World Stories 2009 annual for
Aries and Aries rising here.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
Visualization is one of the tests of what is possible in the world, or rather, what is possible for you. If you can imagine something, then you can assume it's possible. One reason we stop ourselves doing this is because we assume that if we fear something, then it may happen; then we shut down the process of imagining, even of the things we want or worse yet, what we actually are. This is a way of letting fear rule your life. I want to propose two exercises that involve the theme of how you see yourself. The first involves observing yourself now: how you move through your day, and how your mind navigates the ocean of consciousness. Notice your moods and what affects them; how you respond to people and how they respond to you. Notice every time you make a decision, and observe the basis of each decision you make; that is, the information you're working with that leads you to action. This is an exercise in mindfulness; that is, paying attention and staying awake. The second involves envisioning yourself in the future: not what you will look like or what you will be doing, but rather how you want your presence in the world to feel. This is subtle, but not so subtle as you may think.

Read your 2008 annual for Taurus. Order your Next World Stories 2009 annual for
Taurus and Taurus rising here.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
Every time you tell yourself how open-minded and flexible you are, I suggest that you question this assessment. I'm not saying you're wrong; but you won't know if you're not asking. Every time you discover that you're actually less progressive than you think is an opportunity to make a choice to open your mind to other influences. Part of the problem is that we currently have exceedingly few examples of what it means to actually be open. Our entire social climate is so guarded right now that the smallest modicum of depth or authenticity feels completely radical. This is a distortion. If you're on a path of self-development, seeking your freedom and willing to explore, I suggest that you open yourself to the ideas of other cultures and other times in history. What is normal now is not what is or was normal at other points in space and time. We live in a unique moment, most notably because so many people feel so paralyzed and indeed passive, waiting for something to happen. You seem to be among those who have decided that you've waited long enough. One thing to look at closely is everything you avoid; check out what you pretend you don't want; make a little note every time you decide something is impossible. Then, ask yourself how you came to be in this place.

Read your 2008 annual for Gemini. Order your Next World Stories 2009 annual for
Gemini and Gemini rising here.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
The ethics of a professional situation may be weighing on you, but I would propose that's a waste of your imagination and thus your potential. You seem intent on proving yourself right, or demonstrating who you are; give it up. You're as right as you need to be, and it's only a point of emotional confusion, based on the past, that is leading you to believe that you've got a problem that you do not have. So what's really going on? You want more, with urgent, yearning, lustful passion. You may not even know what that passion is pushing you toward. This seems to conflict with a self-image of certainty that you've been trying to project. This image, however, is different than the substance of what you actually want. True, you may be thinking in terms of status and social acceptability, but your real quest involves expanding your horizons. I suggest you think less in terms of results and more in terms of your potential. That will mean devoting yourself to new things rather than sticking with the ones you've been pushing with such determination. You're much closer to connecting with one of those fresh experiences than you imagine. The key is this: give up on whether it's right or wrong by an external standard. Connect with the calling that only you can articulate to yourself.

Read your 2008 annual for Cancer. Order your Next World Stories 2009 annual for
Cancer and Cancer rising here.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
Long ago you decided that the simplest way to deal with life's complexity, and with the many agendas people have, is simply to be authentic. This has proven to be an excellent policy, though it's had results you were not expecting, one of which is bringing out the deeper truth that others close to you were not planning to reveal. You've only seen the beginning of this process. Your life has simplified somewhat from the circus of the past few months. This has cleared emotional and mental space to work through a key matter in a relationship, and to put to good use the information that you have spent so much time acquiring. There's a point of discussion that has for months seemed non-negotiable. It's as though you or someone else was taking a kind of parental authority over the matter. You may therefore be surprised to discover that soon enough it will be up for discussion. This is an emotional or spiritual matter, which will open common ground that previously seemed impossible to reach. Give it time; let the new environment settle into place, and prepare to proceed in this relationship with an entirely new understanding. If you take the opportunity to get clear, a side benefit of that clarity will be making you aware of shared financial resources that were there all along.

Read your 2008 annual for Leo. Order your Next World Stories 2009 annual for
Leo and Leo rising here.

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
Yours is one of the signs that puts the most profound emphasis on finding yourself through relationships. I know this is nowhere in the traditional delineations of Virgo. If you're wondering why you feel so volatile or unstable at times, this involves the many ways in which your sense of self is invested in what you think other people expect of you, and how you think they define you. As Venus moves retrograde in Aries and many other developments take place, you're starting to see the extent of this situation. The idea is not to divest yourself of deep or risky contact with others. You will always be relationship-oriented and you seem determined as ever to clear the haze and fog where you seek clarity. Venus is suggesting that you stop deciding in advance what other people think, and more to the point, why they think it. You don't really know their true thoughts and you don't know their motives -- that is, until you find out. You're more sensitive than most to this dimension of existence. The more people express themselves, the more there seems to be the potential for misunderstanding. Therefore I suggest you give yourself the benefit of the doubt in any situation that's bothering you. The chances are when you discover what someone you care about is really thinking, it will be a lot happier than you feared.

Read your 2008 annual for Virgo. Order your Next World Stories 2009 annual for
Virgo and Virgo rising here.

Libra (Sep. 22 - Oct. 23)
By one measure, the purpose of life is healing. It's not the only measure, and healing takes many forms. Not all of them are boring or arduous; many are inadvertent results of exploring honest pleasure. Your current involvement in a relationship is a good example of this. There seems to be an undertow of some kind pulling you toward some destination that you were not expecting and could not have predicted. This is including an inner confrontation that is potentially coming with a sense of loss or sacrifice. You might ask what you're having to give up, and more significantly, what you want that would have an even greater emotional value. The situation you're in is compelling you to assess what is important to you in a deep way, particularly where a key relationship is concerned. You know you cannot go forward from this point without being absolutely honest with yourself; and the bottom line is that if someone close to you is not willing to be equally honest, there's not much of a meeting. You haven't seen the end of this particular discussion, so I don't suggest you predict how it's going to go -- only that you be real with yourself from day to day, and make sure you have some of the beauty and pleasure you seek in the present, not in the future.

Read your 2008 annual for Libra. Order your Next World Stories 2009 annual for
Libra and Libra rising here.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
You seem to be having a difficult time understanding why someone in your life is being so self-centered. The ongoing result has been an emotional disconnect that for you is the next worst thing to sleeping on a bed of ice. This is particularly true with Mars, the planet that best sums you up, moving through emotional, impassioned Pisces at the moment. The phenomenon of so close and yet so far may be the most difficult part of the situation. Given the astrology, I can offer the following suggestions. First I would counsel patience, and remember that historically, you've kept plenty of people waiting. Do your best to vent any frustration in a constructive way. You can get all intense, but that's not going to help. This is a significant risk at the moment, but the truth is that all this energy and creativity you're feeling is a rare resource. If you have to express sexual energy, figure out how to do it in a way that won't create alienation. Also, you can go cover a lot of territory simply by expressing your basic needs with the understanding that if there's a meeting place, that's excellent and if there is not, you will live. Your situation is moving toward a meeting point, and it's closer than you may think; and in fact, it's a mutual turning point: a place to have a real conversation about what you both want.

Read your 2008 annual for Scorpio. Order your Next World Stories 2009 annual for
Scorpio and Scorpio rising here.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 - Dec. 22)
In a word, participate, and keep at it. Involve yourself in your close-to-home community and with the most important people in your life. I suggest you not concern yourself with the rewards for doing so, but rather count the opportunity to share and grow as its own magnificent benefit. You're learning so much that I cannot imagine a better environment for you to put that knowledge to work. There's something about your current life journey that has only begun to come into focus, or for that matter, into manifestation. You consider yourself an idealist, a problem-solver and someone who respects a beautiful idea when you have one, or see one. Your role is therefore pivotal. You are able to process information into knowledge; you're in a central position to many people and have the ability to create a rare nexus point. This will continue to focus through the year, so I suggest you make friends with being in for the long run; that's how you will get results. The other way that communities and organizations get results is by sticking close to the common values that you share. Close partners are intent on one thing, which is doing what they truly have faith in; and this is a baseline truth that you can depend on, and that will nourish you deeply.

Read your 2008 annual for Sagittarius. Order your Next World Stories 2009 annual for
Sagittarius and Sagittarius rising here.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
You're under enormous pressure, and you're turning it into power. There is one simple truth you must face, which is that you are now in a position where you establish or at least observe the basic terms of reality. Give them the space to agree or disagree and you will discover that you have far more in common than you thought. Even disagreements, psychological tension and your own inner emotional struggle can be turned into common ground. Do this and you'll focus the considerable impact that you can have on the world. We both know that 'the world' is involved. You may not be president, a news anchor or a Supreme Court justice, but your choices have impact that is greater than anything you've known, experienced or imagined. You're also being influenced by external forces in a way that few people would admit or even notice. There are other influences on you that could cause you to be hot-headed, or leap to false conclusions. If you keep your fear in its place, you will have access to some of the most stunning intuition that a human is capable of. After all is said and done, this will turn out to be the key, and the gift: understanding the role of fear.

Read your 2008 annual for Capricorn. Order your Next World Stories 2009 annual for
Capricorn and Capricorn rising here.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
You need to be careful with your finances, and conscious where debts in any direction are concerned; but I suggest you recognize that your true wealth is not in cash or assets bur rather in ideas, intelligence and your perceptive abilities. You may be thinking that you cannot take ideas to the bank, but some would say that once you graduate from the chicken factory, that's all you actually can take to the bank. However, at the moment, the most important ideas you're having are about yourself. The past year has been full of 'aha' moments. There have been hundreds of them. You've probably filled two notebooks. You keep figuring it out (yourself, that is), then you figure it out again. The look of your charts over the next two months suggest that some perceptive gift is coming into focus for the first time. When you start to notice this shift, you will also notice that it's been dawning for a long time, but like eyesight itself, the brain takes time to get accustomed to it. I could also describe this evolution in terms of events, which promise to be highly unusual and shift your whole sense of existence. But this is truly one of those moments when you don't see things as they are; you see them as you are.

Read your 2008 annual for Aquarius. Order your Next World Stories 2009 annual for
Aquarius and Aquarius rising here.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
If you think you're getting no results, have no fear. Not only are you a Pisces, but your sign is the dominant energy in the sky right now, owing to many aspects involving Jupiter and Neptune in Aquarius. What happens in Pisces or involving Pisces planets takes longer than most things, but the outcome is more complete, it goes deeper and it lasts longer. Processes involving water, emotional energy, creativity and turning ideas into tangible form have little in common with pure logic, and if they cooperate with linear time, it's usually a coincidence. So don't depend too heavily on time as a metric, though it will be a powerful tool when you need it the most. In recent months you have been seeking something, or working to create something, that seems to be all investment and little in the way of results. You can see the process unfolding, but so far you haven't been able to put the pieces together. In a sense it's like you've been assembling a puzzle blind. And you have no way to tell if all the pieces are even there. The puzzle you're assembling has an odd property: the pieces mold to fit one another. The image is fluid, like an animation. But there is a solution, and you're rapidly approaching the moment when you know you've found it.

Read your 2008 annual for Pisces. Order your Next World Stories 2009 annual for
Pisces and Pisces rising here.