Astrology is a clock with many hands, and each of those hands comes with a distinct cycle and an identity (what we call an archetype).
Planet Waves

New York, March 12, 2017 | Read on Web

Dear Friend of Planet Waves:

Your response to our membership drive has been amazing. If you've signed up or reactivated your subscription, thank you. We'll be working well with the funds you've provided -- my first priority are some programming tasks that will smooth things out a little, and improve what's called UX or 'user experience'.

I want to send a special shout out to the many people whose names I recognize from 10 or 15 years ago. It's good to have you back. We've missed you!

Planet Waves
The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali, painted in 1931, at the very beginning of our now-completing Uranus-Eris cycle.
Today I want to talk about time, as it relates to the current madness of our society and why astrology is so necessary. This involves the perception of time, our most precious resource.

Last night, the United States 'sprung forward'. Daylight Savings Time began, which sends a jolt through everyone’s lives. But this does something useful, which is to remind us that linear time is a social construction.

We know that the world is, in many ways, rather obviously going insane. A Course in Miracles would say it always was that way, though with the exponential growth of digital technology, the chaos is undeniable.

Most people have not made the connection between the crumbling of thought, of society's institutions and of civility, and the stress on our relationships, as being a specific outgrowth of our digital environment. Everything has happened so fast, we've barely had a moment to think about it.

Electric technology, from the beginning -- telegraph -- collapsed space and time. Electricity is the basis of the global village (a term first applied to radio, then to the modem), and fostered an environment where everything happens simultaneously. This is deeply disorienting. Imagine if you woke up and all the days of the week were shuffled, with an extra Monday thrown in randomly every few weeks, and the day shortened to 21 hours, or maybe 18 or 22-1/2. 

Then imagine that the pattern changed randomly several times a month. Most people would feel completely scrambled. We depend upon concepts of space and time to orient ourselves, to navigate through our lives in a workable pattern.

Digital has done much more than this to us. Everything -- all of our points of spatial and temporal orientation, including how each of us relates to our body -- is changing on an almost daily basis. We get little glimpses of how strange this is, but we quickly forget. There's no less struggle in not remembering, though.

Planet Waves
Sample of the paper-and-pencil Pisces chart used for The Book of Your Life, my annual readings for 2017. I use up to 100 newly-discovered points to do my readings. I can also work from the simplest traditional chart (the seven visible planets) and anything in between. This chart contains enough information to write a 6,000-word chapter, and much more.
Why does it seem like 20 years ago was yesterday, but last week was too long ago to remember? What about the question of where you are in your development, based on your overall life cycle?

This was all difficult enough to track when our concepts of space and time held up. In the digital environment, they are melting. And this is influencing everything: self-concept, sense of place, sense of purpose, and whether anything has meaning. 

Perhaps some of this struggle could be eased by a more useful model of time. Whatever else it may be, astrology provides a more sophisticated approach to the question of time.

Astrology is a clock with many hands, and each of those hands comes with a distinct cycle and an identity (what we call an archetype), and all of this works together to form patterns where synchronicities happen regularly. The job of an astrologer is described in The Celestine Prophecy: use those unusual coincidences to see meaning, and guide you to a better place.

When you read astrology, or have access to a good source of interpretation, you can see that time flows not in a thin strand, but rather, multiple streams of ideas. Reading astrology is not about fate, destiny or even the future. Rather, astrology describes where we are now -- each of us as individuals, and as a collective -- and shows us where else we might go; where else we might want to be.

The concept of fate limits the possibilities. Astrology, used properly, reveals many potentials or potential realities. In the words of Seth (channeled by Jane Roberts), astrology can help us access our 'probable selves'.

Planet Waves
If you put a camera on the same spot and photograph the Sun at the same time once a week for a year, this is the pattern that it makes in the sky. The image is called an analemma, and it was photographed by Anthony Ayiomamitis, an astrology-friendly astronomy photographer in Athens who we know and love.
More than anything, astrology is an orientation tool. It can serve as a psychological guide, a source of emotional intelligence, and can help make your way through the many dimensions that our lives exist in.

As the chaos of the world increases exponentially, it's useful to have a system of tracking movement, change and progress that's complex enough to contain the questions that we live with, and the mysteries that confront us. We need a better model of time -- and we have one.

This is how I think of astrology, and what I offer you. Yes, this takes special training, discipline, creativity and some natural talent. And it's important to recognize that astrology can indeed be harmful or toxic if it's used insincerely, or carelessly, or followed in a too-rigid way.

I do my best to find the right balances, such as between discipline and creative flow; between the public view and the most private; between opening up the possibilities and offering a few words of caution where necessary.

One other thought. I offer Planet Waves in many formats, to reach you where you're at (and what's appropriate to the topic). Spoken word audio, video, writing in various formats, and the use of illustration, are all designed to give you the best format for you, and the most suitable for what I'm presenting at the time.

This is what you get when you subscribe to Planet Waves. Please renew, upgrade or restart your subscription today. I do all of this for you -- and I do it with you.

Thank you for participating. Here are some fun options.

With love,

PS -- Since we have such excellent momentum, I have set a fundraising goal of an additional $25,000 for this drive. It would not take many renewals to do that -- just 250 or so. If we can reach that goal, I can pay some bills, solve some technical problems and have a cushion left over. Please join with me to make that happen. Thank you. Here are your membership options. You may write to me if you want to become a Galaxy Pass holder.

PPS -- If you're already a member or subscriber and would like to make a donation, here's a link where you may do that. Thank you.