When a child, certain skies sharpened my vision: all their characters were reflected in my face. The Phenomena were roused. – At present, the eternal inflection of moments and the infinity of mathematics drives me through this world where I meet with every civil honor, respected by strange children and prodigious affections. – I dream of a War of right and of might, of unlooked-for logic.

It is as simple as a musical phrase.

– Arthur Rimbaud

Dear Friend and Reader:

Yesterday I made the case that Israel was being ruthless in its retaliation against the Palestinians. Today I want to look at the other side of this, politically and astrologically. Apparently, Israel is serious about this and is getting ready to move in on the Gaza Strip. My father is currently in Israel. I spoke with him and his wife for an hour today, and want to take a moment and share his thoughts and a few more of my own.

In the days since a cease-fire expired between Hamas and Israel, the Palestinians have been sending about 75 rockets a day over the border into Israeli territory. All the news reports and my dad and his wife agree, this is why Israel is currently bombing and getting ready to invade this small area. Already nearly 300 Palestinians have been killed, and in these air strikes, civilians are always among them.

The Israelis have just one demand: stop the rockets. Stop bombing anything, including relief convoys bringing food and medical supplies into your own territory. The Israelis are the only country providing relief in the Gaza Strip. And even these come under rocket fire.

Though they are low-tech artillery and cannot even be aimed accurately at any significant distance, they are definitely a form of terrorism. Israelis are afraid to send their kids to school, lest one of these things land in the schoolyard. These rockets have killed relatively few people over the past eight years, but they are a form of live-fire psychological warfare.

Falling randomly from the sky, their use is designed to do nothing except provoke fear and retaliation. While we are all inclined to feel sorry for the Palestinians who are being subjected to high-powered air strikes, I am really wondering: what is the point? They send over the rockets and they KNOW what’s going to happen: they’re going to get bombed.

This is a form of “assisted suicide.” It is martyrdom, which radical Islam is famous enough for. I am picking up a subtext: we are inclined to have an emotional response to the dead Palestinians. And this is by design. It works. Nobody wants to see kids lined up in coffins. Not me, not the Israeli people not their families and I would guess not you. The only reason I can think of that Hamas is sending these rockets across the border is because whoever is doing it and whoever is allowing it is insane.

The Israelis for their part are loath to lose even one soldier or airman. In the United States, apparently our troops are expendable — we call them GIs, or “government issued” — like a canteen or a helmet. Our government does not seem to distinguish between the uniform and the soldier wearing it. As a culture, the Israelis are not inclined to fight indiscriminantly, and they are inclined to be hardcore warriors. So it really makes me wonder why, unless one is entirely self-destructive, anyone would fire rockets at them.

I am not saying it’s cool that Israel has killed 300 people the past three days. I am asking, would you walk up to a State Trooper and sock him in the stomach?

Palestinian independence.

Yesterday I posted the chart for the Palestinian Independence declaration in 1988. Here is that horoscope, set for the place where it actually happened, Algiers. It has Virgo rising and the South Node right in the ascendant — a bit stuck in its ways. (The chart can be relocated to Jerusalem as well. When you do that, you get a Libra rising chart with Venus in Libra; they are incredibly nice people who deserve none of this.)

This dualism is depicted in the situation as we see it now. Are they nice people being bombed due to the folly of their so-called leaders, or are they, as a tribe, something a bit more sinister? Is this even a fair question? I am not sure.

There is definitely a Scorpio flair to this tribe, at least in its modern expression. We see this with the Scorpio Sun and we see it with Mercury conjunct Pluto in the 3rd house — also in Scorpio. I cannot think of better astrology to say “death obsessed.” You could also say, “intense everyday life” because the 3rd house represents “everyday life.” But obviously anyone death obsessed is going to have an intense life.

[Notably, on the topic of Scorpio, when Yassir Arafat died and his body was being delivered to the territory from Paris, there was a New Moon in Scorpio, conjunct the centaur planet Hylonome, which has the keywords, "self inflicted." The New Moon and the helicopters landing were synched within minutes, and it was one of the most breathtaking moments of live astrology I have ever witnessed.]

When I cast this chart I looked immediately at the minor planets, and I noticed two things. One is that a centaur planet called Asbolus is rising. This is a planet associated with surviving abuse. In the long run this is definitely true of the Palestinians. In this chart it’s also associated with an abuse complex: a mental construction in Virgo. It is three degrees from the ascendant, in the 1st house. It’s a very, very strong identity.

Next, we have the thing that to me tips the whole chart. The Sun in Scorpio is conjunct Ixion, exact to the degree. Ixion was the first murderer of human origin, who then tried to rape Hera, the wife of Zeus. To me this point is the symbol of, “Anyone is capable of anything.” It is about the original sin — murder and rape. When a point is conjunct the Sun, that can seize the entire identity.

Last bit: Sun and Ixion conjunct Quaoar, to less than half a degree. Quaoar represents things of a collective, tribal nature — including the creation myth. I dare not say what this represents. It’s just too dark.

Let’s stop the killing, and the suicide. There are fig trees and kids to take care of.

Yours & truly,

Dear Friend and Reader:

Everyone’s mind seems to be on the war that has broken out between Israel and the Palestinians. This is occurring in the days immediately following a New Moon in early Capricorn. This chart’s main feature was a conjunction of Mars and Pluto exactly square the Aries Point, which raises the pitch of the news to an extreme, and which comes with a feeling of deep personal impact. Nobody needs to be reminded that the Middle East is a tinderbox and that millions are obsessed with the idea that Armageddon will break out there first. Therefore, any war in the Middle East is flirting with global disaster.

It would appear that a bar fight has led to all-out war; but so far, this particular one appears to be a one-sided war. My father is in Israel at the moment, and I am sure he does not agree (his apartment there has a bomb-proof room that the family can retreat to if his city is under attack, which it is not). The crude (by modern military standards), unguided rockets being launched from Gaza into Israel have killed nobody in the past few days and very few people ever. Without demeaning their lives, I think we’re wondering about the justification to escalate the battle.

All sources are reporting that nearly 300 Palestinians have been killed in the past 48 hours by Israeli ‘retaliation’ so far, with hundreds more injured and numerous civilians among them. I am reading that the Israelis are now moving into position for a ground assault. If all of this is not a slaughter of the Palestinians, I would like to hear why not.

Saturday’s New Moon was precisely square the natal Eris in the chart for the State of Israel. My psychological interpretation of Eris (the postmodern identity crisis of Westerners) notwithstanding, Eris was indeed the goddess who, in mythology, instigated the Trojan wars of Greek antiquity. The so-far endless war between Israel and its neighbors is one of epic proportions, verging on mythical. Certainly it rivals any war or massacre chronicled in the Bible.

If indeed Israel’s Eris is implicated in this incident, that does not bode well for the future. Its position is 7+ Aries (square that New Moon to one degree), and in the short run, Mars in Capricorn is about to complete the square. We will get a second test of this Eris position in a few days: on Jan. 5, Mars squares Israel’s natal Eris. We need to watch developments between now and Jan. 5 to have a feeling for how this point in Israel’s chart responds. Additionally, a chart of this magnitude can have effects for a season or longer; big charts often as threshold events.

The real problem I see is in the long-term, because many planets are headed for the early cardinal signs, most particularly Saturn, Uranus and Pluto, and everything is close to the Aries Point: deeply personal and larger than life at the same time.

Hassan Nasrallah is the head of Hezbolah, the ruling party of the Palestinians and one of the cleverest minds in the Middle East. He is being pushed into a bad corner, with few options. Some would say he has to fight back with real artillery, or he will be revealed to be a fraud. Will he respond, and how? Does he have missiles that could crater the Israeli runways while the airplanes are out on bombing runs? Israel’s vulnerable point is its air force. It does not want to reveal the existence of its nuclear armed submarines that prowl the planet.

The Palestinians, for their part, have natal Saturn at 1 degree of Capricorn — precisely where the Mars-Pluto conjunction is right now. This is ominous, and it suggests that they will be under sustained attack. Israel is running out of countries to take its compulsive rage out on. They have a peace treaty with Egypt; the Saudis are obviously off limits; the Iraqis are not a military threat; Iran has not revealed itself to be more than a rhetorical threat (in other words, so far, all words and no action). The Syrians get bombed to bits by Israel every now and then and can do little about it. The Lebanese fight back so they are not a suitable target.

This basically leaves the Palestinians, whose chart does not look good. Nor does their situation. They have no economy. They can barely feed themselves; it’s a miracle they are surviving at all. (Of note, their chart has Asbolus close to the ascendant, which I have often seen in the charts of the survivors of severe long-term abuse.) They can easily be cut off from all provisions by Israel, and are economically and every other way at the mercy of the Israelis. There have been protests around the Middle East expressing the outrage of the Arab people at these attacks. Here is a photo gallery from the New York Times.

The moral high ground that the Israelis typically enjoy is based on the fact that the Jews and many other people — nearly every nationality in Europe at the time — were subjected to a holocaust between 1933 and 1945, after which the State of Israel was founded. However, this high ground is being slowly eroded by the Israelis’ treatment of the Palestinians, who once occupied the land that they now do.

We are following the story and will check back in if there are further key developments. Otherwise we will resume our break from blogging with this post. Your comments are welcome. Thanks to those on the Planet Waves staff, readers who have written in and Dave Roell at the Astrology Center of America who assisted with this brief entry.

From a growth standpoint, the current development is making peace with the extent to which your self-worth is inextricably tied to the work that you do, and the reputation you have as someone who is regarded as competent, talented and who walks their talk. The thing you are likely to be recognizing is that this is not easy. It’s not easy because you live in a world where we are not taught to live our values; we are taught to make a buck. The job of most companies is not to make an environmentally friendly Big Mac. It’s to collect the 99 cents. This has always bristled your fur and it always will.. — from Next World Stories for Leo, by Eric Francis

Dear Friend and Reader:

I trust this note finds you keeping your sanity, more or less, during the holiday. The astrology is calm and upbeat enough for the next 24 hours (Moon in Sagittarius, picking up the vibes of a lot of Aquarius planets), then it gets interesting and turns a bit intense going into the weekend. I’ll fill you in on that in a few moments.

First, one paragraph of housekeeping, with a few perks included.

Planet Waves will be pausing activity on the Daily Astrology & Adventure feature (a/k/a, our blog) for one week, so that we can free up some bandwidth to finish Next World Stories, the 2009 annual edition of Planet Waves. The annual is our traditional end of the year, well, ordeal would be putting it politely, the result of which is an exciting new website that includes my extended length writeups for each sign. If you would like to read the Planet Waves Monthly for January 2009, which gives an overview of the year’s astrology, you can find it here. Of note to readers, Planet Waves monthly returns to being a free horoscope for 2009 with this edition. There are three other monthly horoscopes in Next World Stories, all of which are also published in Planet Waves Astrology News (along with the weekly horoscope). Please note that the subscriber area for Astrology News is open to the public for the holiday week. This gives you access to hundreds of our best articles and horoscopes going back six years.

Now, as for the astrology that is developing. We are approaching a Capricorn New Moon that I would classify as a “big chart.” I say this for many reasons, with much experience; the first reason being that we are in our first [Northern Hemisphere winter] solstice season with Pluto at 1 degree of Capricorn. This puts Pluto into contact with something called the Aries Point, where it will remain for the foreseeable future. Click that link for the background.

The effect on a personal level might be a higher than usual level of conflict, emotions moving unpredictably, and lapses of consciousness due to overload. You might be feeling incredible, energetic and in the mood to get everything done. I could see Mars-Pluto in Cap being a bit Bacchanalian. We do need that, but please, please, please drive with the attentiveness of an airline pilot when you get behind the wheel. Test how slippery the road is with your shoe. Check the weather. Be professional.

New Moon, Dec. 27, 2008.

On the collective level, the news is likely to have have a sense of being amplified and personal. This is true for the immediate moment (and for quite a while to come, arriveing in peaks as planets move through Capricorn or indeed any of the other cardinal signs, Aries, Cancer and Libra included). The changes of season will arrive with distinct, more noticeable than usual turning points during this era.

Currently (as in starting when the Moon reaches Capricorn on Friday, Dec. 26 at 6:55 pm EST), we are heading for a lot of action in Capricorn. Capricorn is a difficult energy right now because it has been so strangely denatured by puritanical culture. On the public or collective level (not the personal level!) Capricorn has been reduced to discussions of governments, business, obligations, parents, religion and guilt. It is all structure and no release of energy — but the energy is working its way to the surface.

So, with Pluto sitting there in early Capricorn, picking up the Aries Point by a tight square, we are about to have Mars arrive there shortly after the Moon overnight Friday, making a conjunction to Pluto all weekend. This will amplify small things and magnify the impact of larger ones. Then on Saturday, the Moon and Sun form a conjunction (the Cap New Moon) during the Mars-Pluto conjunction. Mercury and Jupiter are already in Cap and will be conjunct for this event, which closes a kind of energy loop (Mercury and Jupiter are ‘opposite planets’, as they rule two opposite pairs of signs: Gemini/Sagg and Virgo/Pisces). And in a fourth noteworthy conjunction, Venus is meeting up with Neptune.

This is a very interesting chart. Basically, it’s a wild card. It could literally mean anything to anyone, though we are the wiser for focusing our intentions around such potent energy. Pay attention to who you meet. There is no such thing as an ‘insignificant meeting’ under so many conjunctions. This chart has enormous potential for opportunity and equal potential for destruction. The presence of Saturn in an earthy sign (Virgo) and Vesta about to enter one (it ingresses Taurus late Friday) will keep things relatively stable, but the presence of both Vesta and a strong Virgo planet say: keep busy, keep your focus on service and consider your plans and intentions carefully.

I am understating things here a bit, for the sake of those inclined to read the worst into a chart. This is not an alignment for the faint of heart, though we all get to live through whatever it has to offer. In the event that unusual global news breaks Friday or over the weekend, we will of course resume publishing this series to offer our bit of information and reassurance. If not, we will see you either New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. Meanwhile, we will be busy with Next World Stories.

Here is a beautiful letter from Fe Bongolan, one of our regular contributors to this space, in the genre of the “true meaning of Christmas.”

For Planet Waves, this is

Editor’s Note: The following script was written by Matthew the Astrologer, for his blog last year. Shanna sent it along, and we agreed it was too funny for you to miss. Happy Holidays! –RA

Scene: The Nativity. Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar gather around the Christ Child. Mary and Joseph listen intently in the background.

Balthazar: …my major concern with this birth chart is that it shows potential for conflict with authority figures. You might want to teach him to be a little more respectful of Caesar, just to be careful. At least publicly.

Caspar: Don’t be silly. He’s a revolutionary, and the world needs more of that. This Jupiter/Saturn configuration, though… could be liver trouble.

Melchior: Look at the stare on this kid. He probably has something we haven’t even heard of yet, right on the Ascendant.

Caspar: (chuckling) You and your undiscovered planets, Melchior. Seriously.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

On Saturday, the Sun and Moon align in early Capricorn and form the New Moon. This is exact Dec. 27, 7:22 AM EST. For many of us, this will be a life-changing New Moon that calls us to a new (and truer) understanding of selfhood and service. This an extraordinary chart, because Pluto is in Capricorn for the first time during the [Northern Hemisphere] winter solstice season. Mars will be right there, in a conjunction. The two are aligned on the Aries Point, which is a kind of cosmic magnifier that will bring whatever unusual news occurs that day or the days surrounding it, into a deeply personal context.

Landscape with Vesta temple in Tivoli, Italy, c. 1600. By Adam Elsheimer.

The most potent aspects of the chart make a close trine to Vesta in Taurus. Vesta, for its part, is precisely on the discovery degree of Chiron. So this chart opens up a flow of energy from that Chiron/Vesta dimension.

Not long ago I read about a French woman (let’s call her Vesta) who, for 30 years, lived with and cared for the people in a Cairo trash dump colony. By choice. The community — men, women and kids– tended the burning piles of trash and raised pigs for their meat. No devout Muslim would touch them because they ate pigs and lived in filth. Their kids climbed mountains of other people’s broken furniture, and the stiffest brush couldn’t scrub the smell of burning refuse and pig shit from their little bodies. Even straight from a bath, they were grimy, as if the soil were part of them.

This amazed me, so much so that she lived in my mind for weeks afterward. Whenever I threw out my own trash, I added some detail of what I imagined her life was like. My potato peelings and the onion skins became her dinner. My snotty tissues, her kindling. My foot-high pile of mail order catalogs, a guilty offering of expiation to the recycling gods. “Please, please forgive me: I signed up because I thought the stuff was pretty; I never had an intention to buy it. So sorry…” I offered them to this woman, too, who once tended the flame and smoke of Cairo’s burning trash heaps.

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Dear Friend and Reader,

As we approach a potent Capricorn New Moon later in the week, Mercury is forming an exact conjunction with the asteroid Juno. We normally think of Juno as being about marriage and the marriage partner; I am getting another message at the moment, which is call your parents.В  Mercury the communicator is conjoined with Juno who, in this respect (to me, anyway) represents the traditional family. And the good lord knows most of us will be getting some of that during the next couple of days.

Photo by Danielle Voirin.

This aspect is also a reminder to pay attention to who you are talking to, when you are talking to them. Especially if it is someone’s spouse.

Juno, like Capricorn, often arrives with issues regarding contracts, shared resources, score keeping and contention. Strange that the asteroid is the symbol of both the eternal vow and the eternal hair in the ass, isn’t it? I would say that what these two things have in common is how the individual feels. The supposedly eternal vow is based on quite a few mundane things.

I had a public speaking teacher who told us once that any feeling of anger or contention can usually be traced to one person feeling as though another has power over them. Once the perception changes, and the person who is angry learns that the other has no power over them, the anger almost always evaporates. The dynamics of power seem to be a big theme in the sky recently. Mars has just finished a conjunction with the Sun and is drawing nearer to a conjunction with Pluto. Power, transformation, courage and individuality are all ringing out across the Universe. How this plays out in human relationships is brought to the table by Mercury and Juno today.

As with everything that Mercury touches, communication and thought patterns are heightened. Perhaps this aspect speaks of a conversation or interaction with someone who plays a traditional role to you. How do you know what to say to this person? Are these interactions real in the respect that they are living, changing interactions?

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Dear Friend and Reader,

Have you ever been headed out the door and then you paused at the mirror and what you saw changed your attitude for the worse? Perhaps you fussed with your hair or reapplied your rouge, or even changed your clothes because a certain word flashed in your head that you wouldn’t want anyone to direct at you. The word I am thinking of is “ugly” and I wonder if today’s Venus-Chiron conjunction isn’t about our fear of being seen as unattractive or as anything else but a commodity.

Photo by Danielle Voirin.

Chiron, the first centaur planet, is an energy with the capacity to bring about tremendous healing in the way of making a system whole again. It is about deep, life altering wounds that translate into flaws in the system. Flaws can be enhanced by first accepting them. Only then can we go on our personal missions of whatever comes next in the journey the flaw in question requires to mend.

Venus is the energy of love and attraction. She is also the planet that symbolizes women-folk, though the Moon is an important significator o women as well. We have come a long way, it is true, from what our grandmothers survived, but there is more work to do, as I know almost everyone can testify. One of the ways our culture affirms our “inequality” is by reinforcing that we have no value unless we are gorgeous. They give us examples of gorgeous models who really only have the body types of prepubescent boys. No curves, no bumps, no juice. Then we are told that we are only half as good unless we have a partner or “better half.” The result of this poison is a race to be the most beautiful woman in the room at all times, which, if we are not careful brings about envy, hatred and all around bad feelings and vibes.

We live in a time of real fear over what one thinks of another. Many of us have felt the cold slice of gossip or rejection from a click. Many of us have burned in the cheeks by gossiping about someone else just to fit in. It is a sad state of affairs when I walk into a room and I am more worried about the women being cruel to me than anyone else. Unfortunately, it takes a little manipulating to understand the exercise being set up in these circumstances. It’s hard to say and to keep saying “I am who I am and I may be alone because of it” over and over again, but I would suggest that is what this conjunction is about.

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