Hello, I’ll be back Tuesday morning. This edition needs to stay up top one more day. I am grateful to my longtime reader Anthony Ocone for sending this Wikipedia link about the Canadian philosopher Harold Innis, apparently one of my ideological grandfathers on the role of advertising on our consciousness and civilization.

Dear Friend and Reader:

FOR YEARS, I have kept something secret from you, which as you know is not my style: it costs about $150,000 a year to run Planet Waves. In case you wonder why we market our services, experiment with new ideas and go out of our way to reach you, this solves the mystery.

I’ve been telling this to a few people lately just to gauge their reaction, and most are pretty surprised at this fact. It sounds like a lot of money, but we have a full time professional staff that handles many of our daily routines; we do our own programming; we run a petty tight ship, with a full time business manager, an excellent accountant and two guardian angel lawyers who keep an eye on us and our activities. All articles that are published are professionally edited and proofread, many of them twice.

We manage our ideas, our visual materials and our content. We do research and we fact check. Everyone goes through a lengthy training process and we hold ourselves to the standard of professionalism you would expect from any of our much larger news colleagues. Like them, we are not perfect. But we make a valiant effort.

We pay our writers and photographers as much as we are capable. You would be amazed how far we stretch our budget; most people with business experience are stunned that we do all of this for so little. When you figure how much it costs to produce a 15-second TV commercial, $150Gs sounds like spare change.

For a freelance writer and astrologer (such as I am), it’s a good bit of money. We don’t have an investor; we barely have any debt; we’ve built Planet Waves on love and the pay-as-you-go method. Everyone who gets paid works above the call of duty. Some of our most creative work is donated. Chelsea, our business manager, could make a waterproof tent out of a dollar bill. (I want to co-write a book with her called Livin’ Lean — it could send her kid to college.)

In 2002, we created Planet Waves Weekly (now Planet Waves Astrology News) and began offering subscriptions. That helped get you involved in supporting and building the project and we began (as promised) a long, still-in-progress journey of improving the publication, its staff and its infrastructure. We have established our own post office and created a custom client database that processes orders and gives us product flexibility. We offer actual, on the phone customer service during the business week and online tech support nearly around the clock. We are very much a daily publication and take that commitment seriously. There is never a feeling of nobody home at Planet Waves.

There is an old expression that freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. Planet Waves is the modern equivalent of owning a printing press. Along with owning this digital press comes a daily yoga of how we handle our responsibility to the public, and how we respond to the spiritual instructions that helped us create this venue for art and ideas. We understand the uncertainty of the times we are living through. We understand how scared, confused, inspired, curious, hung up, excited and willing to grow our readers are, and we respond to that.

Free press is extremely important right now. It’s very difficult to get a straight story from the mainstream media. Journalists are compelled to mask their real views on important subjects, and they are often in the best position to observe what’s really happening. As my reader, I am committed to giving you the truth as I see it, and to fearing no issue, theme or subject. And there are exceedingly few professional journalists capable of writing about astrology fairly, or taking an astrological perspective.

When I was at the United Astrology Conference — which we covered in this space for all of our readers, including pre-subscribers — many people commented to me about the quality of the work we do. Some people noticed we are doing real journalism, which happens to be spiritually and astrologically literate. But in particular many commented on the quality of our photography. This is a conscious plan, to create an aesthetically pleasing environment for you to visit in.

As part of that aesthetic, we don’t offer advertising. This may seem ridiculous, but all of us at Planet Waves feel that it would be a serious intrusion on your reading experience. And it would make us beholden to somebody besides you; and we take the integrity of our relationship to our subscribers as a top priority. Instead, we depend on readers to subscribe to our premium services to keep the bills paid. At the time we began offering subscriptions, we also chose to offer comp subscriptions to those who cannot afford to pay. I jokingly describe us as a business that doesn’t discriminate against people without money. I think people use our comp offer responsibly, and I would not want to be offering anything for sale without also offering comps.

We have some firm guidelines about how we offer our work. For example, we don’t scare you (”click here to find out how to avoid making the biggest mistake of your life”) and we don’t make false promises (”I see love in your charts, but you have to sign up to find out when”). Nearly every other astrology site sells its services using these bottom-trawler kind of tricks.

When revenue falls short, I personally make up the difference. Let’s just say this gesture has taught me the extent to which I believe in what I am doing. My outside writing fees, astrology consulting fees and donated work make sure that we are here for you every day. I estimate that I put twice as much money into the company as I take out. And this, in short, is why I personally need you to subscribe to one of our services, and to stay subscribed as long as you feel it’s worth it.

You come here and dip into the spiritual and artistic well. You get straight talk about sex and the astrology of sexuality. You rely on the many ways we feed you. You rely on our dependability and professionalism, and if we make a mistake or misstep, we hear about it fast. You browse through our many archives and features — everything from Options to Hysterectomy to Lunations to Psychsound, our civil rights blog. I know you appreciate that we’re here every day, every single day approaching 10 years in December.

We offer all kinds of odd, useful things — such as the daily minor planet aspects that (trust me here) no other astrologers can calculate with any accuracy. We have pushed the edge of this field of research and continue to develop our Planet Wiki feature.

We’re the only astrology website that I know of that is professionally accredited press; Planet Waves is recognized as a news service by the European Union, and I am personally accredited by the writer’s unions in England and the United States. That’s a fancy way of saying that I have this thing called access, and that when truly significant news breaks, you’re going to read about it here. Meanwhile, you can follow the news daily with Judith Gayle’s Political Waves feature. We do some pretty meaningful public service work as well.

I read your astonishing letters of goodwill and gratitude, and I try to return them all. (Click on this link and see what our subscribers and clients have to say.)

Now I am asking you to put your money where your love is and sign up for one or more of our services. If you are already a subscriber, thank you — and I trust that what you’ve just read is a reminder of how important your subscription renewal is, and how important it is to get your friends on board. Your subscription makes a difference. If we doubled our subscriber base, we would become a profitable company. Given how many people forward our materials to others, it certainly seems that the interest is there.

If you cannot afford the full fare, call up Chelsea at (877) 453-8265 and make her an offer. If you can’t afford anything right now, write to clare - at - planetwaves.net and request a comp. If you’re one of those folks who walks around spending money and buys the things you want and need, and if you show up here on a regular basis, please sign up and enjoy the benefits of our truly excellent services.

If you are feeling visionary, and you’re in a position to offer a major gift, which you may earmark for a special project (for example, photography, investigative journalism, astrology education or sex education), that would be most welcome — please call Chelsea directly.

Whether you sign up or not, whether I’m kicking in tens of thousands of dollars a year or making a good income from this website, I’m going to come to work every day. I’m going to recruit, hire and train the best people so that the work you get is top-quality professional stuff, and so that the people leave Planet Waves with a portfolio and real editorial training. We will be here even if you’re not.

But while you’re here, let’s be here together.

Yours & truly,

PS, you can help by posting our link from your website or blog, and by consistently referring us readers. If you want some banners to use, write to anatoly - at - planetwaves.net and he will send you some. We encourage linking to and blogging about our stuff; we appreciate it if you send our links around to your friends and tell them what we’re up to. So yes — please spread the word, and contact me directly at info - at - planetwaves.net if you have any ideas for how we can convey this message better.

PPS, today Mercury is conjunct the asteroid Eros. That sounds like a lot of fun; it sounds like a love letter. It’s also my mother’s birthday, so hi Mom!Minor Planet Aspects for Saturday 31 May 2008

Apollo (2+ Leo) quintile Sedna (20+ Taurus)
Venus (7+ Gemini) trine Sisyphus (7+ Libra Rx)
Juno (24+ Sagittarius Rx) quincunx Admetos (24+ Taurus)
Mars (11+ Leo) semisquare Hades (26+ Gemini)
Venus (8+ Gemini) opposite Pholus (8+ Sagittarius Rx)
Mars (11+ Leo) sesquiquadrate Galactic Center (26+ Sagittarius)
Pandora (10+ Scorpio Rx) septile Logos (19+ Virgo Rx)
Jupiter (21+ Capricorn Rx) square Eris (21+ Aries)
Venus (8+ Gemini) semisquare 1992 QB1 (23+ Aries)
Mercury (20+ Gemini Rx) septile Mars (12+ Leo)
Eros (20+ Gemini) semisquare Asbolus (5+ Taurus)
Psyche (14+ Scorpio Rx) quintile Saturn (2+ Virgo)
Vesta (18+ Aries) sesquiquadrate Hylonome (3+ Sagittarius Rx)
Venus (8+ Gemini) quincunx Hidalgo (8+ Scorpio Rx)
Eros (20+ Gemini) quintile Saturn (2+ Virgo)
Pallas (4+ Taurus) sesquiquadrate Logos (19+ Virgo Rx)
Apollo (3+ Leo) sesquiquadrate Quaoar (18+ Sagittarius Rx)
Mars (12+ Leo) sextile Atlantis (12+ Libra Rx)
Mercury (20+ Gemini Rx) conjunct Eros (20+ Gemini)

Today’s Oracle takes us to March 20, 2006

Libra - daily from the Jonathan Cainer series. It’s interesting how many of these columns from the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror are in the database, and how infrequently they come out. This appeared in the Daily Mail.

You may be concerned that someone else’s changes are going to spill over into your life, even causing you to lose control of your affairs. You can always distance yourself. But that would be sending a false message that could complicate things. It would seem the real difference you need to work out is that you’re a lot calmer under pressure, and are willing to take bigger risks. But you may be surprised over the next week or two how willing certain partners or loved ones are to rise above their own fears and take a real chance on life, and on you.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Do you ever get into those really paranoid moods? Anything from FEMA camps to the economy collapsing on your head to your friends seeming to raise an insurrection against your ideals?

There has to be a better way. But it’s natural to be paranoid in freakish times; it is most unnatural to be chill and hang loose, while aware. Plenty who hang loose tune out; I think we, as in you and I, have a different agenda.

Paranoia seems to persist: disease is a big one; the fear of never finding a real relationship is another, borne out often enough to make the point.

One layer beneath that is the fear of abandonment, which is a death-related fear. It can affect anyone no matter how excellent a relationship they have managed to create. Then we’re jolted daily into being totally paranoid about sex, if you stop and think about diseases or tune into the latest herpes drug commercial on TV (anyone can spread it at any time so you better always be paranoid!). Not only that, anyone could be a spy, your house is bugged, they are reading your email and collecting your naked pictures in a big database.

Psyche square Nessus. The mind pressed into the corner of its own worst thoughts. Moreover, the thoughts that relate to this aspect would seem to come from a sense of having been psychologically abused or emotionally neglected. Psyche is the sense of the mind’s injury; the ‘wound of the soul’ that seems to arrive with the consciousness of the soul. Awareness of the soul is not always painful, but to be done well, it requires a continuous, Zen-like surf along the waves of feeling and compassion.

To do this, it helps to be aware of your own injuries and your own fears. Let’s consider the signs involved — Psyche in Scorpio, a sign that we all relate to individually as our desire nature and in particular sexual desire. Tell me, do you ever wonder if someone is going to come into your life who is able to give you the sex you really need? Or is that thought connected to a more or less permanent fear that it just will not happen; that your own needs are too buried to be reached by another; or that they are too unusual to even reveal? Psyche in Scorpio is like the sense of the perpetual erotic mental or emotional existential injury that will not resolve.

It has a meeting place in the common world — square Nessus in Aquarius. This is the pressure from society to conform, to suppress yourself, to be someone other than who you are, to conceal in all social contacts that you are a person with a sense of having been hurt and thus responding to even casual social encounters with a real sense of alienation; of needing attention; of needing to be who you are and NOT be rejected for it.

And obviously we are talking about so many layers of reinforced social and individual injury that if you really look at the problem there can seem to be no way out. I hold out the faith that this is not true; that there is a way out, that the aspects that point out the problem always have the solution. But I can tell you this, to find our way out we’re going to need to muster up the courage to express ourselves and the perhaps greater courage to respond to other people who are doing so.

It’s 8:25 am and Planet Waves Astrology News is a few minutes away from being distributed to our subscribers around the world. Are you one of them? Today’s edition covers the ethics of prediction in astrology, how to use astrology as a healing art, and my notes from training a group of astrologers last weekend at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY.

Our subscription service works on the honor system — sign up if you want it and can pay; sign up for a comp if you can’t pay. We keep it not only affordable, but worth every cent and guaranteed. You get a truly unique, professionally edited and illustrated astrology service with the Eric Francis horoscope; and your funds sponsor this blog, the daily photo and our many other features such as Psychsound by Steve Bergstein.

Friday 30 May 2008

Pallas (3+ Taurus) quincunx Hylonome (3+ Sagittarius Rx)
Eros (18+ Gemini) semisquare Pallas (3+ Taurus)
Vesta (18+ Aries) square Varuna (18+ Cancer)
Venus (6+ Gemini) quincunx Chariklo (6+ Scorpio Rx)
Mars (11+ Leo) square Pandora (11+ Scorpio Rx)
Venus (6+ Gemini) semisquare Eris (21+ Aries)
Vesta (18+ Aries) trine Quaoar (18+ Sagittarius Rx)
Venus (6+ Gemini) sesquiquadrate Jupiter (21+ Capricorn Rx)
Arachne (0+ Libra) quintile Varuna (18+ Cancer)
Juno (24+ Sagittarius Rx) opposite Ceres (24+ Gemini)
Psyche (14+ Scorpio Rx) square Nessus (14+ Aquarius Rx)
Sun (9+ Gemini) septile Vesta (18+ Aries)
Eros (19+ Gemini) square Logos (19+ Virgo Rx)

Oracle takes us to May 21, 2004 - Pisces - Weekly

You are about to take that big chance on the count of three. Taking a chance means no guarantees; that’s written right into the deal. But we are also not talking about going to Vegas and betting the house on a roulette wheel spin. Einstein was right. God does not play dice with the universe, and God does not play dice with you. So what happens over the next few days is anything but random, even though the events that feed into current developments have roots so far in the past you may not remember them. But think back; there are obvious connections.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Today the Sun is opposite Pholus.

We also have a Ceres aspect, trine Neptune. Though a number of different minor planets get my attention as needing to be front and center, I know that in my life Ceres needs a lot more attention — as a planet and as a habit. I am a pretty good eater, but I could be a lot better at it. I am sure that most people would say so! Try eliminating wheat from your diet and watch the list of junk food you get to cut out grow to the size of Santa’s New York City itinerary. Let’s come back to Ceres in a moment.

Pholus was the second centaur planet discovered. It’s discovery defined the class of small, orbit-crossing planets. Some encyclopedias say that all centaurs are icy and comet-like; Pholus is actually reddish and rocky.

Skipping over the mythology involved, Pholus tends to be about changes that come on rapidly. Chiron can come with a long ascent, struggle or cycle of activity: Pholus, in one of his incarnations, is fast acting. Its energy is like opening a hot, shaken-up bottle of ginger ale. It also has some subtler properties — things from past generations showing up, for example. And the keywords small cause, big effect (of Robert von Heeren) are some of the cleverest in the history of minor planet astrology.

The question is how we see this in the form of an opposition to the Sun. I would be looking for what is influencing (Pholus) how we express ourselves (the domain of the Sun). Pholus can represent a barely noticeable influence that turns out to have a profound effect. For example, someone explains something to you that shifts your perception of reality, or of yourself.

A conversation I had last night with a Pisces woman comes to mind. I found her outside my shop copying down the modeling info that’s in my window. I invited her in to see my work. We talked for about two hours. It was like hanging out in zero gravity. There was something about her mind, her speech and the way her thoughts are paced that was gradually shifting my consciousness.

In the last half hour, she started talking about David Bowie and Bono — how she feels that they are trying to convert her to being a lesbian. Now, thankfully I am an astrologer in my other job, so I am accustomed to people saying all manner of extremely interesting things, and I am great at giving the benefit of the doubt to the person talking. I may not “believe” them but I take what they are saying as true for them and as potentially true for me.

I am in the midst of yet another a deep exploration of my sexual orientation and gender identity, which has been going on quite a long time (Bowie was there at the beginning, incidentally, and photography is guiding the process in the present); and exploring my concept of what it means to be male; and how this influences my relationships with women. So I was very interested to hear her somewhat frightened notion of someone remotely accosting her sense of sexual orientation. I could feel her repulsion at the power afforded to these men by society; they are portrayed and treated as demigods.

Even though it seems like a conversation had in passing, her whole situation…her inner trip…is having an influence on me, if only because I can empathize what it feels like to have this kind of external control imposed on you and to not really understand what is going on. And as my own profile rises in the world, in particular as I refine my viewpoint and visual message to the point where their impact reaches out further, I need to keep a close eye on just what influence I have, as positive as people tell me that it is. What she expressed most was her disgust that she seemed to not have a choice in the matter, under the influence of these guys; I think that particularly in terms of sexuality, the prevailing message needs to be one of choice and emphasizing the fact that we have options.

So — a touch of Pholus. I plan to be completing a Book of Blue article about pornography for use with a series of articles Rachel Asher is developing for Planet Waves, and it will have some of this energy imprint.

Neptune is also in the picture today, with Ceres making a trine from Gemini to Aquarius. This is a caution to make sure your compromises are authentic. Tell the truth in any situation wherein you are called upon to compromise — that is the power you bring to the discussion. If you don’t fool yourself about what is true for you, you can make sure you hold other people to the fact of your existence.

Thursday 29 May 2008

Ceres (24+ Gemini) trine Neptune (24+ Aquarius Rx)
Sun (8+ Gemini) opposite Pholus (8+ Sagittarius Rx)
Amor (12+ Taurus) septile Kronos (3+ Cancer)
Sun (8+ Gemini) semisquare 1992 QB1 (23+ Aries)
Pallas (3+ Taurus) sextile Kronos (3+ Cancer)
Eros (18+ Gemini) opposite Quaoar (18+ Sagittarius Rx)
Arachne enters Libra (direct)
Arachne (0 Libra) opposite Aries Point (0 Aries)
Sun (8+ Gemini) quincunx Hidalgo (8+ Scorpio Rx)
Amor (12+ Taurus) quincunx Atlantis (12+ Libra Rx)
Mercury (21+ Gemini Rx) trine Chiron (21+ Aquarius Rx)

Today’s Oracle takes us back to Oct. 11, 2002

Aquarius - Weekly

In any aspect of your life that needs reshaping, strategy continues to be the main concept that will help you. There is a place in the world for written strategy, be it a business plan or agenda, but in any event, thinking strategically will be more than fruitful. Strategy involves thinking in terms of contingencies: that is, a series of possibilities, which can be combined with if/then statements. This may seem mathematical, and it is. While life is not made entirely of math, there are many aspects of living that respond well to mental structure. At the moment, professional plans and the way they intersect with personal relationships happens to be one of them.

Sponsored by Planet Waves Astrology News.