Dear Friend and Reader:

I’m back in the Omega cafe and have a few minutes to do a Monday entry.

We concluded today’s session with a review of Betty Dodson’s chart, by popular request to cover a sexual topic in astrology. Betty’s horoscope is an amazing thing — one of those charts that teaches you astrology as much as it reveals something about her. Actually it reveals plenty about both.

Speaking of Betty, I believe we are preparing a new article by her, released last week on the occasion of the warm-up for her 79th birthday. It’s called “Fucking Like a Feminist,” and it will be a page one feature for all readers.

Betty turns 79 Aug. 24 and she is planning her 80th year as her 80th birthday celebration. We will be participating. Besides adoring her, I am gaining an understanding of Betty as one of the most progressive contributors to feminism, sexuality and culture of our era. You don’t hear about these people on CNN too often, it’s true. So you need use your shortwave radio known as the Internet.

Today, Mercury stations retrograde, making a number of aspects while it does so; the first in an exact sextile to Eris. This is a dialog with all the aspects of the feminine that are cast off, ignored, dispossessed, disrespected: the whore, the witch, the spinster; the unwanted woman in any form, and she takes many forms. Mercury, slow and powerful in the sky, is encouraging us to take part in a real dialog with her, if we find her willing to talk.

Mercury’s station is also trine Chiron, which is an invitation to have those discussions that will facilitate healing. Talking is not everything, but if we use conversation to take us to a deeper level of emotional contact, it is more than words — it’s action.

Venus in Gemini is square Saturn in Virgo. This is potentially an image of alienation, if we take it the wrong way. It’s almost surely a turning point in the emotional tenor of our relationships, or a relationship. Turning point does not mean a reversal; it means a shift of direction, a change of trajectory. Mercury stationing is a reminder to internalize this energy: that is, to take it to the level of an inner dialog seeking an inner commitment or at least understanding.

But that Mercury retrograde is also a comment about internalizing something, absorbing or integrating the many events that have unfolded during the recent passage of time. Obviously, we don’t spend a lot of time contemplating our lives, and when we do, it’s often riddled with anxiety. I know how this feels, having wasted perhaps half of my lifetime-so-far allocation of mental energy on worry and fear. Enough is enough…

Neptune also stations today, adding to the inner intrigue. This is a rich moment, and it has a slow motion quality.

With love from Omega Institute,

Monday 26 May 2008

Venus (1+ Gemini) semisquare Vesta (16+ Aries)
Amor (10+ Taurus) sesquiquadrate Juno (25+ Sagittarius Rx)
Apollo (1+ Leo) sextile M87 (1+ Libra)
Eros (15+ Gemini) quincunx Psyche (15+ Scorpio Rx)
Mercury (21+ Gemini) square Uranus (22+ Pisces) - Near Miss Only
Mars (9+ Leo) square Hidalgo (9+ Scorpio Rx)
Mercury (21+ Gemini) sextile Eris (21+ Aries) - Near Miss Only
Mercury stations retrograde (21+ Gemini)
Hidalgo (9+ Scorpio Rx) septile Pluto (0+ Capricorn Rx)
Neptune stations retrograde (24+ Aquarius)
Venus (2+ Gemini) square Saturn (2+ Virgo)
Ceres (23+ Gemini) sextile 1992 QB1 (23+ Aries)
Eros (16+ Gemini) quintile Orcus (28+ Leo)

Today’s Oracle: Mar 23, 2007 - PISCES - Weekly

You are born under a water sign, but I assure you that the true nature of Pisces is about fire. Your sensitivity may mask your underlying impetuous nature; your willingness to come last for long periods of time conceals your knowledge that you will someday be able to take leadership. The lesson for Pisces more than all the other signs is about learning to take care of yourself so you can take care of the world — in that order. This would be a mere concept for anyone less concerned about the world, but now is the time to experiment, if you even vaguely suspect it’s true.

Dear Friend and Reader:

I’m in the Omega Institute cafe — enough of the cafeteria for a while. Our “Demystifying Astrology” class is going beautifully. By the end of the second day, 15 people, most of whom never owned an ephemeris, were working out one another’s Chiron transits.

Today I did a theory class that covered the types of signs (cardinal, fixed and mutable), the Aries Point, and then the first four asteroids. We concluded the morning session today with a look at the Sagittarius New Moon conjunct Pluto and the Galactic Center.

I am discovering how much I love teaching. I’ve taught before, at conferences and seminars; writing is a form of teaching; but I’ve never been given a forum like this, to work in a top-level center in a structured environment where people have traveled, planned to be here, most of them older than me.

It’s time for lunch — I’ll check back in the next chance I get.

– Eric Francis, in Rhinebeck, NY

Dear Friend and Reader:

Our Friday edition of Planet Waves Astrology News went out to subscribers. The lead is called “Crossing the Borders and Boundaries of Time,” and it’s an introduction to Chiron and astrology as a healing art. This is followed by our article from Planet Wiki introducing the basics of Chiron, with additional links. We also have Judith Gayle’s weekly essay and my weekly horoscope.

Our subscriber edition is an excellent weekly periodical (with a Tuesday supplement most weeks) that has gradually gained the recognition of the astrology community and of readers around the world. We’re occasionally asked why it’s not free — the reason being that each issue costs about $1,000 to write and produce. This may sound incredible, but that’s the cost of solid journalism, with real editors, researchers and a business team supporting the project. We are advertising-free: you are our sponsor.

Proceeds from Astrology News are put to work for the free side of Planet Waves, sponsoring this blog, the daily photo, many other in-house projects such as Psychsound, Lunations, Political Waves and Book of Blue (all under the Featured tab, above). It is true that we give a lot of content for “free,” though I suggest you give to Planet Waves in the proportion you feel that you receive from us. We have been here 365 days a year for 10 years, and we know many of you visit nearly as often.

Tonight I begin a four-day workshop called “Demystifying Astrology” at the Omega Institute across the Hudson River in Rhinebeck, so I’m spending the day preparing for this. I won’t be blogging from Omega, so the next time you hear from me will be Monday night.

For those who need to reach Planet Waves, our webmaster Anatoly is online at anatoly - at - planetwaves.net, and Chelsea in our business office checks messages a couple of times during the weekend. That number, where you can also subscribe by phone, is (206) 567-4455.

I’ll catch you late Monday night with a rundown of what I learned at Omega.

Have a safe and sane holiday weekend.

Aspects for Friday 23 May 2008

Mars (7+ Leo) sesquiquadrate Uranus (22+ Pisces)
Apollo enters Leo (direct)
Apollo (0 Leo) trine Aries Point (0 Aries)
Venus (27+ Taurus) sesquiquadrate Atlantis (12+ Libra Rx)
Pallas (1+ Taurus) quincunx M87 (1+ Libra)
Eros (12+ Gemini) trine Atlantis (12+ Libra Rx)
Asbolus (4+ Taurus) sesquiquadrate Logos (19+ Virgo Rx)
Sisyphus (8+ Libra Rx) sextile Pholus (8+ Sagittarius Rx)
Venus (27+ Taurus) square Orcus (27+ Leo)
Ceres (21+ Gemini) sesquiquadrate Chariklo (6+ Scorpio Rx)
Eros (12+ Gemini) septile Eris (21+ Aries)
Mercury (21+ Gemini) trine Chiron (21+ Aquarius)
Sun (2+ Gemini) semisquare Varuna (17+ Cancer)
Ceres (22+ Gemini) quincunx Jupiter (22+ Capricorn Rx)

Oracle for Jan. 31, 2003 - Sagittarius - Weekly

The seeming detachment for which Sagittarians are famous is but a thin veil over how much compassion and awareness you carry for what happens on the cosmic physical plane. It’s just not always that easy for you to express, and sometimes a little challenging to access the feelings in the odd language of Earth emotions. But may the world know that you surely do feel them — that is, that you feel yourself, and feel, beyond that, feel and experience your connection to the greater spheres. You have the power to make this very personal right now. You have the power to turn the fury and chaos of human emotion to soft, penetrating soul.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Today the Sun in Gemini is square Saturn in Virgo. This is Sun square Saturn — the first aspect I ever learned; though Flo Higgins, my then-editor and the astrologer who would rant about it, would call it “Saturn square the Sun.” This is incorrect astrological syntax because when describing a mutual aspect, that is, an aspect between two moving points, you state the faster one first.

Nonetheless, it meant what it meant, which is that you had to work harder than usual. She thought of it as an aspect of discipline, of needing to push ahead, a kind of strict and matronly way for the cosmos to whip your ass. Of course, in that newspaper office, we were always getting our ass kicked, producing 80 column inches of copy a week (about six hefty articles, which took about 60 hours) for a $250 paycheck. This is the thing about writers. Usually, they are not in it for the money, and it’s a miracle any of them ever learn.

Notably, Mercury is about to go retrograde, one of the first astrological events I learned about. Here is an entertaining book chapter telling these stories.

Mars is square the centaur planet Chariklo. This is a symbol of women getting frustrated taking care of men. Can they do anything about it? Well, that remains to be seen. Men and women are frequently raised to be helpless in their own way, the more so as time goes on and we are all just little consumers of packaged products. In recent decades it seems like exceedingly few people are taught to actually take care of themselves, and it’s even odds who learned how to cook food and who did not. Cook usually translates to how talented you are making cold cereal, scrambled eggs and putting what used to be called TV dinners in what is still called the microwave. Then when kids show up, who knows how to do all this basic housework?

I think Chariklo is about more than domestic chores, however; she is about that deep, abiding process of taking care of another person, and because Chiron (Chariklo’s husband) is transpersonal in nature, taking care of people in general. The square from Mars seems to be about resentment directed at this necessity. However, if we are not going to take care of one another, who is going to do it? We’re not exactly able to be autonomous on the physical plane. We depend on one another for support in nearly everything. Some notice and some do not. Some enjoy assisting the world and some do not. And indeed, some get quite resentful that anything is demanded of them at all.

There are, however, a few people who could use to rebel against taking care of other people as a way of life. They may not rebel today, but they may feel angry or resentful about it. And we all know that plenty of them don’t have the inclination to simply ask for help; to open up and speak of their necessities. This is a positively awesome formula for resentment. Anyway, in this whole equation, “thank you” goes a long way. Don’t be too proud to express gratitude.

Finally, an aspect of potential interest is Amor opposite Hidalgo. Both of these are interesting points. Amor is about the “conditions on unconditional love,” referencing Martha Wesott here; Hidalgo is a revolutionary against the patterns of unconscious social conformity. So do we have some kind of revolt against faux unconditional love? This little hook within romance that says that everything is always supposed to be perfect, or that we are expected to produce perfect fidelity with our patchwork of emotions, loyalties and needs?

There is a caution here that when we expect unconditional love, we’re going to get a revolt; when we expect ourselves to do so, we may find ourselves rebelling.

Below are the full aspects and today’s Oracle. The Oracle is a device that randomly selects a horoscope from the past nine years of my writing the things, in response to a question. It does not use keywords; the device is seeded by the time of day, and then it goes to the database and selects one sign entry totally at random. It is a popular feature among subscribers. You can also use it to research a horoscope, searching by keywords, date, frequency, sign, and so on. You can search how many times I said “God” or “sex” or “Chiron” in my horoscope over nearly a decade.

Tomorrow’s edition of Planet Waves Astrology News features an article on Chiron, a new piece by Judith Gayle and a new weekly horoscope. You can subscribe for three months, six months or a full year. When you sign up for Planet Waves, you not only get the most innovative, on-top-of-it astrology publication on the ‘Net; you provide a vital source of funding for the whole Planet Waves project, which is free from advertising and corporate sponsorship and thus a truly independent voice in the industry.

Regular readers of this daily feature please note, I will be presenting at Omega Institute this weekend, so I will be unlikely to do blogs for Saturday, Sunday and Monday mornings (though I may do a weekend edition in advance). I’ll be back to a regular schedule Tuesday morning.

Full aspects for Thursday 22 May 2008

Venus (26+ Taurus) septile Varuna (17+ Cancer)
Mars (6+ Leo) quintile Admetos (24+ Taurus)
Venus (26+ Taurus) quincunx Juno (26+ Sagittarius Rx)
Juno (26+ Sagittarius Rx) opposite Hades (26+ Gemini)
Eros (12 Gemini) quintile Aries Point (0 Aries)
Mars (6+ Leo) square Chariklo (6+ Scorpio Rx)
Psyche (16+ Scorpio Rx) semisquare M87 (1+ Libra)
Amor (9+ Taurus) opposite Hidalgo (9+ Scorpio Rx)
Arachne (29+ Virgo) sesquiquadrate Nessus (14+ Aquarius Rx)
Venus (26+ Taurus) quincunx Galactic Center (26+ Sagittarius)
Ceres (21+ Gemini) sextile Eris (21+ Aries)
Sun (2+ Gemini) square Saturn (2+ Virgo)
Eros (12+ Gemini) quincunx Pandora (12+ Scorpio Rx)

Today’s Oracle, fully apropos of “Saturn square the Sun,” is:

July 08, 2005, Pisces - Weekly

You’re in the process of coming to closure on something that had long remained hidden in your life and which has finally revealed itself to you. I suspect that there has been a deep insecurity you carried, not knowing quite why that was, and at times not even knowing it was there. Saturn has lifted a burden off of your shoulders and your emotions. You will soon see what you’re free to do once your strength and power can finally be directed toward a positive cause, a mission in life, and a way to express your commitment to service and well-being with full creative power.

Dear Friend and Reader:

I am home safe on the ground in New York. This was my first trip away from the Hudson Valley since returning from nearly four years in Europe last summer, and it was all worth it for the feeling of opening my studio door and walking into my creative space. The odd scent in the air of the semi-industrial building, the roar of the overpowered heater and the familiar faces of my photographs all reminded me that I was home.

The drive down the Thruway was easy and the cool night air reminded me that I love New York. Cruise control protected me from radar traps, and I glided through the dream of state-of-the-art automotive travel toward home. I got tired of music and listened to skip signals on late-night AM talk radio: picking up a kind of New Age fundamentalist explaining to a guy of 38 that he was an alcoholic and suffered from anxiety because on a deep level he lacked confidence and was spending his life trying to live up to what everyone else thought he should be.

“You’re not a bad person,” he said to the guy. “But you’re not a good person yet either because you lack contact with the source at the core of your being.”

On the second leg of my flight (Chicago to Albany) I was sitting next to a woman from the San Francisco Bay-area who turned out to be a psychotherapist specializing in 8th house themes — sex and money; but specifically money.

She was not an astrologer but she knew her chart; lots of Sagittarius with Venus retrograde in Scorpio. She had some of the most interesting views on sexuality that I’ve ever heard another human being describe, including the awareness that it is shadow material such as jealousy and abandonment that bring us into the deepest erotic feelings we can experience. I have noticed this many times, and it was gratifying to hear someone from another world, a hardwired monogamist as she described herself, and a well-experienced therapist, make some of the same observations I had made as someone exploring a very different path. In my own walk of life, I call it compersion.

I will have more to say about what I learned at UAC, and a number of other audio interviews that will be posted through the rest of the week. Thank you Lion for producing the broadcasts and to Anatoly for maintaining the audio database of conference coverage. I was very happy to fold up my Planet Waves banner and leave the hotel complex in downtown Denver where the conference took place. Nearly a week inside a building is a lot. I got out, but not much — my evenings mainly consisted of writing and photo editing. In addition to providing you with plenty of conference coverage, this had the advantage of making sure I got some of the internal time that I need to keep my creative well full. I went through nearly all 10 pounds of Epsom salts that I bought the first night, comfortably avoiding burnout by keeping an inner focus, avoiding parties and anything not directly associated with what I was writing or photographing.

My best social time was one-on-one, some of it with a mystery Planet Waves reader who picked me up at the airport with a picnic basket, took me to my hotel, did all of the copying of articles that we distributed to give readers a taste of what Planet Waves is about and then showed up with a cooler full of gluten-free food so that I could avoid restaurants. Several times she told me that the reason for this treatment was that for several extremely difficult years of her life, my writing is what got her through. I heard the whole story. They were indeed extremely difficult times, she is a fighter and she is all soul — a fact with which she connected in the process of a struggle being slugged out on one of the top floors of corporate America.

So my friend — for making sure my trips to and from the airport were fun and easy and warm; for enough to eat in a world where Food # 1 is wheat; for all those copies we gave out; for your ideas and brainstorming; and for your faith and encouragement, thank you. This enterprise would in truth have been impossible without you.
I am grateful to a number of other Planet Waves readers who supported me and provided a high-vibe presence at the conference: Renee, Csilla, Jennifer, and Duke, who took the lead on our outreach efforts. Ray Merriman, Madalyn Hillis-Dineen and Shelley Ackerman, three of the key UAC people I worked with, were cooperative and generous with Planet Waves and seemed to genuinely appreciate our presence. Shelley, a New York astrologer who I met when we both appeared in the same article in The Wall Street Journal, served as the UAC publicist and managed to spin-doctor the event into world news. Go figure.

Two of my deepest, most amazing astrological mentors were there — Rick Tarnas and Melanie Reinhart — and I got to spend generous amounts of time with both of them. I’ve become Rick’s personal paparazzo (I am striving for the definitive photo of Mr. Tarnas and I may have succeeded), and Melanie also spent a good half hour in front of my camera outside in the Denver sunshine as she talked with two of my oldest friends from Planet Waves, Denice Taylor and Carol Burkhart.

Then came a real surprise: Keiko Ito appeared at the Planet Waves table. There is no way to explain Keiko except to say that she is a human being of infinite complexity, curiosity and the most subtle humor. She makes her way through the world as a simultaneous interpreter in four languages (Japanese, Italian, French and English) who one night in the winter of 1998 visited me in New Jersey and sat there with the Adobe Pagemill instructions in her lap as I posted the first-ever Planet Waves website. I hadn’t seen her since 2000 at latest and had not heard from her in perhaps seven years.

So — quite a journey. UAC was a most amazing meeting of human spirits, all in the name of astrology — a moment for the ages, as Ray Merriman said with a smile on his face one fine evening over the weekend.

* * *

Scanning the aspect list below, it looks like Wednesday is Jupiter retrograde sextile Uranus — a major alignment that comes with a reminder that great meetings are taking place, and that science and art are gathering their strength for a leap forward.

Mercury is conjunct Ceres, which is giving us the words and the ideas necessary for balance and healthy compromise. Vesta is sextile Nessus — the sexual healer talking with and working with a potential sexual perpetrator. Pallas has entered Taurus and is exactly trine Pluto, picking up the theme of the power of negotiation.

Sounds good to me.

Thanks for tuning in.

Today’s Oracle: Feb. 09, 2007 - PISCES - Weekly

The important thing is this: don’t expect others to go along with your plan 100% all the way right at this moment. You can, though, trust that people know you’re onto something, and reasonably expect them to do a little thinking and catch up. Meanwhile, keep your focus on appreciating life and doing your part to feed your own happiness. No law requires you to be happy, but no law prevents it, either. Some say that the key to contentment is compromise, and I would agree that this is one ingredient; the lock itself is knowing who and what matters to you, and keeping your focus there with no guilt, only love.

Today’s Aspects: Wednesday 21 May 2008

Atlantis (12+ Libra Rx) semisquare Orcus (27+ Leo)
Sun (0+ Gemini) quincunx Pluto (0+ Capricorn Rx)
Mercury (20+ Gemini) conjunct Ceres (20+ Gemini) - Near Miss Only
Jupiter (22+ Capricorn Rx) sextile Uranus (22+ Pisces)
Sun (1+ Gemini) trine M87 (1+ Libra)
Ceres (21+ Gemini) trine Chiron (21+ Aquarius)
Vesta (14+ Aries) quintile Hades (26+ Gemini)
Apollo (29+ Cancer) sextile Arachne (29+ Virgo)
Pallas (0+ Taurus) trine Pluto (0+ Capricorn Rx)
Vesta (14+ Aries) sextile Nessus (14+ Aquarius Rx)