Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

Pentacles: The final step in the process of manifestation — bringing something into being in the physical world. Actually, the word ‘something’ is really an unnecessary one, because everything that we experience with our five senses makes up the realm of Pentacles.

Ace of Pentacles from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck. Pentacles are associated with physical manifestation. Click on the image for a larger version.

Moreover, as I have written in previous weeks, we are not passive witnesses to the process of manifestation; we are active participants, whether we know it or not, whether we want to be or not. Our minds’ eyes move out into our physical eyes and we ‘see’ our world into life. Our hands move out and touch what is within reach and we know what we touch to have texture, even feeling the breeze through our fingers. Our ears give mental shape to those things that we cannot see, translating sound waves into images in our imaginations. Smell can transport us back to a single moment in time in a way that nothing else can. Taste has the ability to expand and round out our experiences of the physical, just as salt enhances the flavour of the food to which it is added.

So, to recap: Through the direction of libido (Wands) by our feelings (Cups) and our thoughts (Swords), so we are in a constant process of creation and interaction with what it is that we have created (Pentacles).

Pentacles are often associated primarily with material possessions, and, especially, with money. I feel this puts limitations on what it is that tarot is really about, which is life itself. Pentacles might show up as money, or as a means to money (work, for example), but money is also representative of a state of mind, of our beliefs about how the world operates and how we operate within it. Let me give you an example: For someone with boundary issues, money can take on an energy of its own. When they are single, they manage it pretty well. When in a relationship, they tend to lose control of it, in the same way that they have lost a sense of themselves. Frittering money away is a symptom of a tendency to eschew responsibility: They haven’t banked on themselves, nor invested in themselves. (Talking from personal experience? Who, me? Nooooo!) In this way, Pentacles can be expanded from their often limited sense to one that is holistic. Remember: We might be creating our world, but — by design or default — we are creating ourselves too.

Here are the fourteen Pentacles cards and possible corresponding meanings:

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On the eve of Venus entering Aries (which occurred overnight at 1:01 am EST), Rick Santorum — perhaps the most rabidly anti-sex candidate campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination — won the the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses, as well as a nonbinding primary in Missouri. You can read earlier Planet Waves coverage of his views and natal chart to get a sense just how twisted up his beliefs on sex really are.

Rick Santorum readies his rights-popping finger. Ok, not really -- he’s just making a point after his campaign wins last night. Image: video still.

Part of what has become a hot campaign topic for Santorum and the other Republicans this week is a new Obama administration rule requiring health insurance plans, including those provided by Catholic-affiliated hospitals and universities, to offer free birth control methods. In fact, Republican campaigning became heavy against this health care provision this week, as though warming us up for Venus’ entrance into the revolutionary Uranus-Pluto square that has been heating up social movements for months (Venus is now conjunct Uranus).

As if we actually need more things to get riled up about regarding women’s health (although, maybe we do — since this stuff keeps happening, maybe it means we need to step up our efforts for the good of all). Not only do Republican politicians want to limit what women can do after they get pregnant, now they’re trying to limit women’s ability to prevent pregnancy.

Talk about trying to hog-tie women. Luckily, not all Catholic parishioners take the stance on birth control that the bishops of their churches take. In fact, according to Jon O’Brien, President of Catholics for Choice, a non-profit organization that represents the voice of Catholics on reproductive and sexual health, as many as 98% of Catholics in the U.S. use some form of birth control. If these same Catholics vote their reality rather than their church’s dogma, they could perhaps have some weight with their elected officials.

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New York City's Chinese New Year parade, Jan. 29, 2012. Photo by Amanda Painter.

Today is Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2012. The sky is presenting us options in how we handle ourselves in our encounters with others – we would do well to consider them carefully and choose consciously. On one side of the zodiac, Venus is entering Aries; from the other, Mars is making an uncomfortable aspect to its mythological sister, Eris.

Venus in Aries can be challenging. But today Venus is on the Aries Point – that special first degree of the zodiac in which the personal and the political have a particularly symbiotic relationship to each other.

As if in preparation, recent events served up a helping of women’s health issues in the news, via the Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood brouhaha over breast cancer screening funding to clinics that also provide abortion services. The incident has had a bonus effect of getting the issue of women’s health – and the war against it – into millions of households. It completes the loop from personal space out into ‘the world’ and then back into personal space again.

Uranus (in Aries) and Pluto (making a square from Capricorn) have been keeping the Aries Point warm with revolutionary/evolutionary energy. What does it look like when Venus joins in? Well, one image is that Venus joins the revolution one orgasm at a time. Self-loving could change the world (just ask Betty Dodson, whose video about her famed bodysex workshops was just released). Betty has been working since the 1970s to help women understand – and love – their bodies. Forty years later, with right-wing factions in the U.S. ramping up their efforts to de-fund health services for women and keep teens in the dark about the sexual power of their bodies, Betty’s work is as critical as ever. Sex is still a widely misunderstood and feared topic for many; transmuting that fear is a delicate procedure best done with empathy – a form of love.

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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Capricorn weekly for Jan. 4, 2007.

This week’s Sun-Mercury conjunction in your birth sign brings yet another opportunity to overcome your fears and find some common ground with certain partners who could use a little instruction in the aspect of life known as cooperation. As usual, you are taking a formal and perhaps cautious approach to the question of how you must handle others, which is a good idea considering they may not be able to see past the end of their nose. A calm, straightforward approach to the situation will work the best, as will stating clearly what you need and what you expect. Remember that behind this facade is a well of emotion, passion and drive that has you in the mood to accept nothing other than the best. Live it, don’t talk about it.

Note, The Oracle is a random selection from the Eric Francis horoscope archives. Each day we publish one entry from among the 10,000 in our database. It’s a little slice of horoscope history — but chosen by our Oracle program, which always speaks to the present moment. New horoscopes are published each Friday plus twice a month in Planet Waves subscriber edition and Planet Waves Light. And for your 2012 annual reading, you’ll find Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check.

'Dickens' Dream' painted 1875 by Robert William Buss, portraying Dickens at his desk at Gads Hill Place, surrounded by many of his characters.

Today is the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens. Born in Portsmouth, England, he lived from Feb. 7, 1812 till June 9, 1870. The works of Charles Dickens — which include Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, David Copperfield and of course, A Christmas Carol, have been praised by other authors for their realism, skillful prose and treatment of social issues — and criticized by some for being sentimental, melodramatic and implausible. One thing is certain, however: his books are among the most famous in the world and have never gone out of print.

Natal chart of Charles Dickens, data rated A by the late Lois Rodden.

But who exactly was Charles Dickens, and why should we care today?

Our friend Carol van Strum said, “We should care for the same reasons Dickens himself did, passionately and unceasingly: his books were an early warning bell for civilization of the dangers of industrialization, colonization, empire, the class system and the obscene enrichment of a few at the cost of everyone else. I think his books are scorned today for the very reason that their message is so timely; far better people should think him out of fashion and cliche than that they actually read the books and look around them with newly opened eyes to the poverty and despair all around them; they might see with clearer vision the hypocrites and pompous moralizers dominating our airwaves, and they might learn to laugh at the idiots masquerading as our wise leaders. And to top it off, he is great fun to read.”

Dickens was an Aquarius, and when it’s working well, that is one of the most socially conscious signs. Yet it is his conjunction of the Moon and Neptune in Sagittarius that adds the visionary leavening to his chart. In fact, that visionary quality was truly wide: with both the Sun and Moon conjunct an outer planet (Vesta in the case of his Sun), Dickens could see a big world. That vision, in part, led him to visit the nascent United Sates twice in his life. The U.S. at that point was still expanding into its western frontier, during a rather unruly stage of its history, and an ocean crossing was still a relatively dangerous undertaking. His two trips across the Atlantic are markers of that Sagittarius Moon’s sense of adventure.

Dickens was, in part, a crusader for what he deemed the disproportionate economic burden placed on the backs of the poor in Victorian England, including work and sanitation conditions; a strong critic of class stratification at a time when England was the major world power. In addressing these subjects in his novels, he was able to embody the service aspect of his Virgo ascendant.

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Today, Karen Handel the vice-president of policy and center of the public relations firestorm at the Susan G. Komen Foundation, resigned her post. Handel, a former candidate for governor for the state of Georgia and pro-life activist, was the alleged instigator of the foundation’s decision last week to cut off funding for breast cancer screening at Planned Parenthood.

Since that announcement , the Komen Foundation spent over a week in clumsy damage control of what turned out to be a corporate PR fiasco. It was inevitable that the Foundation would have little else left to do but take the next step to avoid further corporate cratering, tarring and feathering: find the scapegoat and force her to resign.

Yet Handel’s resignation will probably not bring an end to the Komen Foundation’s public relations troubles. There is still the issue of her boss, Nancy Brinker. Komen Foundation CEO Nancy Brinker — Susan G. Komen’s sister — has been under equal, if not harsher, scrutiny. The oscillating rationale as to why the foundation cut Planned Parenthood’s funding for breast cancer screening raised enough antennae for the media — mainstream and bloggers — to put legs on the story and interest in the backstory. Brinker was not under the scrutiny of a Congressional investigation, or a press or left-wing blogger jihad. It was simply the unveiling of Ms. Brinker’s political and corporate history, revealing how much of a shield the foundation was for its CEO’s portfolio and history, which is rife with corporate and political conflicts of interest.

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Chime, the teenage Maine coon. Photo by Eric Francis.

You make the rules / you say what’s fair / it’s lots of fun to have you there.
– ‘I am a Child’ by Neil Young

Today is Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2012, the day of Saturn’s station retrograde in the morning, and the Leo Full Moon at 4:54 pm EST. This is the Sun and Moon in opposite signs, which we described yesterday. We also noted that Mercury is conjunct the Aquarius Sun, which brought up the question of ‘How do you think for yourself’? And an answer came through for today: you think for yourself by being curious.

This is the big difference between adult intelligence and child intelligence. Kids are naturally curious – until, often, their curiosity is killed by authority — in school, church, or by parents. Yet at the same time, kids need structure and healthy boundaries within which to stretch and test their curiosity while still feeling safe.

Right now, the child embodied by the Leo Moon may be opposed to the parental Sun in Aquarius (whose traditional ruler is Saturn, Mr. Authority and Boundaries himself), but it has a little help in keeping things balanced. Mercury making its conjunction to the Sun is basically a big reminder of the kid still inside you – a kid who is unabashedly, gleefully curious about the world.

After all, would you be reading an astrology blog if you’d lost all your curiosity? Of course not. So here is an invitation, just in case you sometimes get so curious about your navel that you forget about the world around you: everything from the dirt in your garden to the hottie in the next cubicle at work to the surreal workings (if it can be said to work) of political process are just waiting for you to begin investigating and discovering.

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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Aries weekly for Nov. 7, 2008.

You seem to have broken free from your tether, but what may be surprising is that it wasn’t a physical bond; it was a psychic one. These are the ties that bind, and they are all the more challenging to deal with when we don’t know quite what’s going on. Part involved the influence of one person. Part involved the influence of a group — your friends, colleagues, some version of your tribe. To be an individual, you need to be mindful of how both of these things can steer you off of the course of your chosen existence. If you feel lost now, it’s because you’re free of these influences for a while, but now you have to determine your own path and your own bearing. It may take a while and what you are likely to discover is that ‘it’ finds you. Really, it’s a meeting and you need to be mindful of when that meeting occurs.

Note, The Oracle is a random selection from the Eric Francis horoscope archives. Each day we publish one entry from among the 10,000 in our database. It’s a little slice of horoscope history — but chosen by our Oracle program, which always speaks to the present moment. New horoscopes are published each Friday plus twice a month in Planet Waves subscriber edition and Planet Waves Light. And for your 2012 annual reading, you’ll find Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check.

Greetings! Please pass on a message to Eric that I truly love the 2012 RRR Audios — so much resonates with what has been actually happening in my life, particularly the last 3 years when so much has come to a screeching halt, shaken and stirred like never before.

Cannot wait for May and June to come by to stir it all up even more and bring in the good tidings for everybody. I also believe that there have been so many other people on this planet that have been affected for so long that a new world will be welcomed with open arms.

So happy that I discovered Planet Waves as my knowledge of astrology is growing at a very fast pace.

Taurus Astrology to Go! From Planet Waves.

It’s never too late to start living your life fully, but why wait any longer? After months of hard work, Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. — the 2012 annual edition by Eric Francis — is ready. Each of the 12 signs gets a three-part audio report and a substantial written exploration of the forces that will be shaping your life this year. You can check out the RRR Diary and certain features here, but the written and audio sign reports are a premium service you can access via purchase here.

Below is some of the early feedback we’ve received from people since we released the annual. If you have further questions about all that the 2012 annual by Eric Francis entails, you can post them below, or email Chelsea at chelsea@planetwaves.net or give her a ring at (877)453-8265. Please keep in mind she’s pretty swamped since the RRR release, but rest assured she will get back to you.