Heather Fae at Old Tongore Cemetery in Olivebridge, NY. Photo by Eric Francis for Book of Blue.

Dear Friend and Reader:

It’s dusk in New York, and on Oct. 31, that means that a year is ending. This, in the Pagan calendar. Since the new year doesn’t begin until daybreak, tonight is the night between the years, or as I call it, the night out of time. Its always one of my favorite nights of the year — the veils are indeed thin, and the ancestors are close by. If you’ve been following Planet Waves this week, you know we are at one of the cross-quarter times — midway between an equinox and a solstice.

These are the true Pagan holy days, or sabbats: the current one is called Samhain (it’s pronounced sahwen, and if you don’t want to get on the bad side of a witch, please don’t say sam-hain). This is opposite Beltane (the May, or Midspring). The smaller ones are Imbolc (Midwinter, which became Candlemas and Ground Hog Day, around Feb. 2) and Lughnasadh (Midsummer, first harvest or second planting, either Aug. 1 or 5).

On the 1st of November, Day of the Dead, I try to get to a cemetery every year and commune with those on the other side. I have a new favorite one in Olivebridge, called the Old Tongore Cemetery, and I plan to arrive tomorrow with some rum and frankincense and other offerings. That is, unless my dad gets back to me fairly soon with the grave locations of my grandparents Sam and Vera Coppolino, his parents, down in Orange County.

The photo above, of Heather Fae, was taken a few weeks ago at Old Tongore. Here is a photo of Heather in more or less normal waking consciousness. As soon as she was undressed and touched the ground, she went into a trance and entered the world of the dead. I know her pretty well, and this was no version of personality that I’ve ever encountered. She was describing what it was like to be in the world on the other side of the veil. She tapped into the sense that most of those around us didn’t know they had crossed over. Talking to her quietly through that portion of the photo shoot, I felt like I was talking to someone who was buried in that old graveyard.

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Editor’s note: The following is a re-print from the Nov. 6, 2006 edition of Planet Waves Astrology News that we find particularly interesting as the election approaches. It may not be completely up to date, as it is two years old. Compare the following cases of voter fraud and technical mishaps to recent accusations against ACORN. The Planet Waves archives dates back through ten years of Eric Francis’ writing and horoscopes: access is available only through subscription.

11 of America’s Worst Places to Cast a Ballot (or Try): Machines that count backward, slice-and-dice districts, felon baiting, phone jamming, and plenty of dirty tricks

By Sasha Abramsky
Mother Jones – 11/04/06

WE USED to think the voting system was something like the traffic laws — a set of rules clear to everyone, enforced everywhere, with penalties for transgressions; we used to think, in other words, that we had a national election system.

How wrong a notion this was has become painfully apparent since 2000: As it turns out, except for a rudimentary federal framework (which determines the voting age, channels money to states and counties, and enforces protections for minorities and the disabled), U.S. elections are shaped by a dizzying mГ©lange of inconsistently enforced laws, conflicting court rulings, local traditions, various technology choices, and partisan trickery. In some places voters still fill in paper ballots or pull the levers of vintage machines; elsewhere, they touch screens or tap keys, with or without paper trails.

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Editor’s Note: The following article is a satirical work of fiction, meaning that it’s a joke. I have never actually met Mary Trammell, to the best of my knowledge Planet Waves has no connections to the Christian Science Monitor, and they never said that ‘Spaciness is next to Godliness.” I did. –RA

Dear Friend and Reader,

After reading The Christian Science Monitor’s high-publicity coverage ofВ The Christian Science Monitor’s shift from the age of paper to the age of “the tubes,” as Senator Ted Stevens describes it, I im-ed Mary Trammel immediately (we met at Meow Mix in NYC a few years ago while conducting “research”).

CSM staff interview themselves from space on coming shift from paper to internet-based publishing.

Trammell, editor in chief of The Christian Science Publishing Society and a member of the Christian Science Board of Directors, said that “journalism that seeks to bless humanity, not injure, and that shines light on the world’s challenges in an effort to seek solutions, is at the center of Mary Baker Eddy’s vision for The Monitor.”

“The method of delivery and format are secondary” and need to be adjusted, given Mrs. Eddy’s call to keep the Monitor “abreast of the times. Ha! I said abreast. Get it? Lord, forgive me.”

She added, “we’ve been following what we call ‘The Planet Waves model’ for some time now, studying closely the positive, encouraging spin on their articles. The way they use the blog as a daily news source and Planet Waves Astrology News as a more comprehensive, weekly edition has been a source of inspiration for us.”

Though Planet Waves has some “inappropriate, un-Christian, heathen tendencies” (Trammell cited a recent article by Genevieve Salerno on Satan as an example), she was willing to accept that “we both look at the heavens for guidance. Also, off the record, you guys are awesome! I live forВ my weekly and monthly horoscopes. Did you read the Eriscope for Libra this month? LOL!!!”

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Dear Friend and Reader,

THERE IS SO MUCH going on right now in the human world that I would like everyone to take a few moments to extricate themselves from their surroundings for one moment. Allow yourselves the pleasure of soul-suspension and enter the state of timelessness that Samhain, or Halloween, provides.

Grendel. Photo by Genevieve Salerno.

I was talking to a friend today about voting and he said something that I thought was very real, and very wonderful. Upon asking him if he cared about what was going on in the political spectrum, he replied, “Political concerns are short-lived.”

As angry as I get about all the issues coming to the fore, as frustrated as I have been at the stagnation of life’s progress, these words rang true to me, and they came from the very spirit of this Sabbath. The process of life is a brief one. In that spirit, the best revenge is living well and to the fullest. Like what King said, you cannot fight violence with violence, nor can you fightВ ignorance with ignorance. A warrior of Light must understand life’s brevity and gravity and have a sword tempered by heavy doses of joy. There are things much higher than what gets discussed at a table. The processes of the Sun, Moon, stars, for example, and the mysteries of the deep forest are a few.

But especially, this day is about those who have passed. And so, in that vein, I would like to tell you all a story aboutВ a loved one who has passed from this world in order to pay him homage. His name was Grendel and he was my first cat.

When I turned eighteen I decided it was time to get a place of my own.В My partner at the time was working on the road and I rarely saw him. It was only a matter of time before I decided to get a cat. It just so happened that a friend of mine’s mother had a kitten. He was under a year old and too mischeivious to keep in the woman’s house. I guess he was knocking stuff over all the time, getting into things that he wasn’t supposed to. In either case, my friend told me that his mother wouldn’t miss this cat much and so I could have him.

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Dear Friend and Reader,

The Friday edition of Planet Waves Astrology News will be mailed to subscribers momentarily. It is THE place to read about the election astrology: Eric Francis lowers himself into the dank cave of Nov. 4, shines a flashlight around and reports back all he sees in the major and minor planet alignments.В 

The three largest planets, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, form a close to exact alignment on Election Day.

Eric says:

“The thing we need to watch carefully is that the Moon and Mercury both change signs on Election Day. If we count the election chart as 12:01 am in the traditional first community to vote — Dixville Notch, New Hampshire — the Moon is applying in a sextile to Mars in Scorpio and a square to Eris in Aries. So, at the commencement of the election, the Moon is NOT void of course. But its aspects to Mars and Eris (occurring nearly simultaneously) are its last until it enters Aquarius that evening. For the rest of the day, the Moon drifts through late Capricorn without making aspects to major planets (that is the modern definition of void of course).

Mercury, for its part, starts the day in the exact degree where it was for the infamous “election” of 2000: the last degree of Libra, in fact at the very end of the very last degree of Libra. That was a pretty tricky day because Mercury was stationing direct, and it did so aboutВ five minutes before the polls closed in Florida. Imagine this: Mercury (the planet of media, communication and anything countable such as money and votes) changed directions in the sign of the scales just as the polls were closing. Hence we had a situation where things dangled “in the balance” and we didn’t know the winner for a month, and oddly enough the winner had fewer votes.”

An annual subscription to Planet Waves Astrology News costs $7.33 per month, and includes access to the Archives and The Oracle, two features used here in Daily Astrology and Adventure. You’ll also receive three different monthly horoscopes, emailed on Tuesdays, plus the weekly horoscope, delivered with astrojournalism coverage, on Fridays.”В 

This is the premier astrology site on the web, with an accredited journalist at the helm. Read about your subscription options here.

Yours & truly,

Mars sextile Saturn and trine Uranus.В 

Image by Roasting Asher.

Happy Halloween!

Make sure your costume is not too tight today, these aspects suggest a real feeling of wanting to bust out in all directions, particularly away from what you had been formally influenced by. In fact, today would be a great day to try to bring some of your intentions for a better life onto the physical plane in order to get them moving in the right direction. Nessus trines Chaos and this can cast a feeling of polarization over everything you interact with.

Luckily, these aspects occur during the High Holiday pagans know as Samhain. The Shadow World and the Light World are open to visitors today: so tread freely through the illusions you have upheld, and the dreams you’d like to flesh out. You have the power more so today than at any other time to have fun with the confusion.

Editor’s note: The following article, written by Eric Francis, was originally published in December 2007 for the Chronogram magazine. It is now part of the Planet Waves archives, which are only accessible to Planet Waves Astrology News subscribers. We’re interrupting our Days of the Dead celebrations to bring you this important coverage on the final days leading up to the Nov. 4 election. –RA

Dear Friend and Reader,

SOMEONE FINALLY EXPLAINED to me why, when I was living in Europe, so many people asked me if I was from Canada. I didn’t have a maple leaf patch stitched to my backpack, nor did I tote around a hockey stick. I figured it was because my accent isn’t easily recognizable.

It turns out that’s the polite way to ask if someone is American without actually saying it. If, for example, you’re a Belgian cab driver and you can’t sort out the various accents in the English language but you want to know if you’re dealing with an American, you just ask if the person is Canadian. Europe may be attempting to become ‘one country’ but where you and your parents are from is still the hottest topic of conversation that most people can muster.

If you ask a Canadian if they are American, they will typically be offended. They don’t want to be confused with those weird people south of the border who wear huge hiking boots or white sneakers and shirts with the name of a university — and who blow up countries. (Of course as I sit here in Kingston, I am wearing clunky hiking boots and a pink shirt that says B-U-F-F-A-L-O across the front.) If you ask an American if they’re Canadian, they’ll either think you’re a bad guesser or be flattered to be confused with those nice friendly people up north whose tall, handsome cops all have super white teeth and ride horses. They will politely correct you and say they’re from St. Louis, or wherever.

Now that I’m back in the United States, I can see what I was missing all this time. I have always read that you have to leave your culture in order to appreciate it, or even to see it. That is what I did these past four years. Europeans view Americans as naГЇve, which I would say is true. Living in three different countries in Europe and spending a good bit of time in about three others, I slowly figured out that most people from the Old World have something else going for them, which is cynicism. That is, a less-than-subtle bitter haughtiness born of certainty about how bad the world sucks, so you may as well drink your wine by the bottle, smoke a lot of cigarettes and never quite get to the point.

Americans and Europeans both specialize in being extremely self-absorbed. Members of both cultures shop as if the world depended upon it, and politely step over the homeless. There are fewer homeless in Europe, though. And I don’t think any of them are war veterans. (A quarter of the homeless in the United States are vets.)

I find cynicism the more objectionable mental state. Part of why I came back to the States, besides being sensitive to cynicism and cigarette smoke, was because I wanted to be on the front lines to fight side by side with my countrymen when the shit hits the fan for the 2008 elections. I decided I needed a year’s running start to get re-established, amass a war chest and a modest army, and be ready to go to the mats (as we Sicilians say) when Dick Cheney declares himself president for life.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

We were remiss here at Planet Waves for neglecting to tell you that inВ yet another indicator ofВ the Apocalypse,В October 29, 2008 was theВ ”Day of Prayer for the World’s Economies.”

We give you this opportunity to comment on the image belowВ of one celebration of the event in New York and to enter your prayers retroactively:

В 

The bull in NYC's Financial District.

Have at it, Planet Wavers.

Yours and truly,

Fe Bongolan from San Francisco

Editor’s note: The following article is written by Judith Gayle, a regular Planet Waves blogger on her own page, Political Waves. She also contributes regularly to the Friday edition of Planet Waves Astrology News. –RA

Dear Friend and Reader,

Today we’ll look at the shift toward Obama in the ‘least likely’ places in the nation — good sense and calm leadership may have made a comeback; if we can keep the GOP from discounting the hundreds of thousands of new voters by scurrilous accusations, ID card rules and disenfranchisements due to handwriting, missing initials, etc. You know, that stuff they ALWAYS do to keep the class war going.

Voting machines are giving the wrong candidate Obama votes (you KNOW which wrong candidate it’s going to), which is called vote flipping,В and long lines, shortages of ballots and such have made early voting difficult. If this is happening now, think what will happen on November 4th!

On the three-hour trip to the airport yesterday — and through what can only be called deeply entrenched Red Country — I saw more Obama signs than McCain. Miracles DO happen, don’t they? It’s becoming increasing difficult to vote against the just-plain decency and intelligence of Obama in the face of shifting hate-speak and irrational accusations from the Righty team.

I read this article from Alternet this morning, sayingВ Obama and McCain are now in a “statistical dead heat” among born-again evangelicals, those Rovian foot soldiers of two successful Bush elections, according to a recent survey; and the same seems to be true in Sarah Palin’s “real America,” those rural and small town areas she’s praised to the skies. According to a poll commissioned by the Center for Rural Strategies, in those areas which Bush won in 2004 by 53%-41%, Obama now holds a statistically insignificant one point lead. To complete this little trifecta, Gallup has just released a poll showing that Jews are now likely to vote for Obama by a more than three-to-one majority (74% to 22%).

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