I just figured an aspect of why I think The Onion is so funny involves being a journalist. The kind of local newspapering their writing parodies can be just torture for a writer. It’s real payback to see it spattered like this. Steve Bergstein gave it a name once — Gee Whiz journalimsm. Anyway, I found this tonight: “Area Man Realizes He Has No Interests.” This goes along with a real article that should be titled, “Nothing Happened at Last Night’s Watchung Board of Adjustment Meeting.”

Dear Friend and Leader:

A couple of weeks ago, I got a suggestion from my inner guide to stop interpreting the Aquarius conjunction. I follow this voice carefully in my astrology writing. It’s given me plenty of information but never before suggested that I shut up. “You’ve been working on this for 14 years. Stop explaining the energy and focus on working with it,” is the message I got, basically verbatim. Fourteen years? All my roads lead here; to this desk; all words to this very sentence.

Aquarius. Photo by Eric Francis.

It was time for a break anyway, so I started canceling things (like editions of Planet Waves Radio), farming writing assignments out to my colleagues and doing other things (visiting friends, photographing new people and places, writing fiction, and so on). Finally I slept through the Gemini New Moon and realized that I had indeed disengaged myself. With the first peak of the Jupiter-Chiron-Neptune conjunction upon us, and with Mercury stationing direct on Saturday, I am here with a few additional notes.

Mercury will station direct in late Taurus, square the alignment in late Aquarius, so the two events are intimately related.

It will take Mercury about 11 days from now, slowly walking forward in Taurus, to align at precisely 90 degrees with the triple conjunction (this will be the third pass of this square, and the most precise).В  Mercury is the planet of mind, and vibrates closely with Aquarius all the time; Taurus is the sign of the body. The message is that we are trying to embody an idea. That is to say, it’s time to get it out of our heads, out of the abstract realm, and into the physical, sensory dimension where we can work tangibly with the changes we are making.

I have described the Aquarius alignment as one of the most meaningful conjunctions of our lifetimes. I am speaking collectively and individually. This is a big statement, particularly since (at the moment) there seems to be nothing special going on in the world unless you’re really impressed by Korea’s nuclear test or GM fleeing to China; and yes we have a Supreme Court nominee (see article below) and that is pretty important; but nothing overt (such as on TV) that would lead someone to say, “Gee whiz, what a superb moment of human evolution. What a great time to be on the planet.” Unless of course you’re looking carefully, and unless your perception sees the particular wavelengths that would resolve something so subtle. Because this aspect involves Neptune, and is in a sextile to the Galactic Core in Sagittarius, I am pretty sure it’s invisible to most people. Both Neptune and the Core have the property of disappearing into the background. But so do most big aspects — unless something horrid happens (such as Sept. 11) or unless the planets turn up the dial on sex, drugs and rock вЂ?n roll (the 1960s, 2012).

If we look with the long view, it’s fairly easy to see what it all adds up to, but it’s difficult to see the astrology in its moment, and that is one of the true challenges of paying attention to astrology at all. Also, one’s personal transits can send us into crisis, and I’m hearing a fair bit of that now, but we need to understand the nature of the crisis. To me this is speaking clearly about getting to a lighter density level than the one we’re conditioned to hang out on. This involves adjusting our relationship to matter/mater/mother.

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Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt, taken on V-J Day, 1945.

In 1843, there was a conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune in Aquarius, close to our current conjunction, which predated and in a sense predicted the 1846 discovery of Neptune (see article below). (This is also to say that Neptune recently had the Neptune return of its own discovery position.) Then the next conjunctions were as follows: 1856 in Pisces (the first technologically ‘modern’ conflict, the Crimean War, ends); 1869 in Aries (Wyoming becomes the first place in the world to give women the right to vote); 1881 in Taurus, with Saturn right there (the Sioux end the American/Indian conflict with surrender, Kansas jump starts prohibition); 1894 in Gemini (a new form of communication, moving pictures, are invented); 1907 in Cancer (American financial disaster is stopped by financiers fronting the bill); 1919-1920 in Leo (Germany was not happy, and would be back); 1932 in Virgo (as the ‘Great’ Depression was taking hold); 1945 in Libra, conjunct Chiron (just as World War II ended, appropriately enough); 1958 in Scorpio (Beat Generation, predicting a bit of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll to come); 1971 in Sagittarius (dawn of the modern New Age); 1984 in Capricorn (that form of spirituality known as Paranoid Fundamentalist Neoconservatism); 1997 in Capricorn (more of the same); and finally 2009 in Aquarius — notably, the first in Aquarius since the discovery of Neptune in Aquarius.

– Eric Francis / Melanie Andrews

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By Philip Sedgwick from Next World Stories, published in January 2009. As part of our annual edition, this article looks at all of 2009 and all of it is relevant for today. Philip Sedgwick is one of the leading minor planet pioneers, one of my most dependable astrology teachers and a longtime friend of Planet Waves.

No doubt the Saturn-Uranus sequence of oppositions and Jupiter conjunctions to Chiron and Neptune shall receive ample play in astrological articles, blogs and lectures. A plethora of promises about changing entrenched doctrines and such shall appear. In the United States it seems perfect that President Obama takes the reigns in the very near future to invoke the planetary promises. There’s a whole world out there, and above, an array of dwarf planets that underscore the more noted trends with exceptional potency. In short, the next three years contain powerful patterns involving classical strong planets and the recently discovered dwarf planets. If humanity plays its collective cards well, 2012 might be a piece of cake, leaving end of the world fear-hype mongers with the egg of the fertile myth of Makemake on their faces. Square one in this progression starts now.

While the Saturn and Uranus patterns represent a template of change, the dwarf planets contribute a deeply rooted substrate that seeks to invoke a series of changes in collective thinking patterns. Without this shift in thinking, those seeking to invoke the potent patterns of Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune to the far-reaching, innovative-thinking black holes in Aquarius might go for naught for another decade. So these densely rich, gravitationally succinct dwarf planets enrich our hopes for change that evolves and cannot later be undone and in the next critical era, cannot be missed…especially by those choosing to track.

As January closes, Chiron squares Sedna and days later sextiles Eris, setting the stage for Jupiter’s identical transits in April. Chiron, especially with his proximity to Neptune, favors Sedna with the consciousness of saving the seas, and more specific to Sedna, demands preservation of Arctic and Antarctic regions. A prevailing theme of global restoration commences and on the personal level, Chiron nudges Eris who declares any apple cart of life that prohibits making clear, conscious choices – that would be Sedna’s two cents — be upset and that a person choose a healthy opt-in policy of using all the powers of cognition and physical senses to (re)create a life worth living. Sounds nice, but how?

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Nation’s Girlfriends Unveil New Economic Plan: ‘Let’s Move In Together’

Does anyone recognize the actor playing Kelly Ambrose? She’s the dark-haired woman in the still before you press “play.” I almost feel like I’ve met her, but I cannot place where I’ve seen her face.

Mercury is slowing to a station in Taurus. With about four days to go, that puts in the Mercury storm phase; as of this moment Mercury is retrograde moving at less than one-quarter of a degree per day. Saturday night it will stop (relative to the Earth) and, instantaneously, commence direct motion. There is no actual station (i.e., the planet appearing stationary in the sky or in the chart). Something like Eris, which is currently 97 times the Earth-Sun distance, may station for a number of minutes, but even that is surprisingly brief, when you actually look at the math.

Eric Francis. Photo by Kristos.

Mercury, slow and powerful, is currently square the Aquarius alignment of Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune, which personalizes that aspect and brings it to the forefront of consciousness while it’s at peak intensity. Mercury retrograde, or a Mercury station, are challenging enough for most people, particularly if attempting to swim against the tide.

When you add squares to a diversity of planets which are themselves in a tight alignment, the stage is set for revelations and for all kinds of psychological pain and confusion. Check your intuition against the known facts and give matters where there is an uncertainty factor time to work out.

What can seem urgent during a Mercury station can disappear like a puff of smoke. What can seem trivial or like a mere clue can lead to a significant revelation or discovery. If unattended or handled poorly, small problems or misunderstandings can become serious ones.

Particularly at this late stage in the retrograde cycle, it’s not the time to make investments, commitments or to push events or arguments forward. For the best value, it’s definitely time to avoid purchasing things.

All of the above could be filed under ‘mundane astrology’ — the ordinary and the worldly. The triple conjunction itself defies easy explanation, though we can say for sure that it’s a collective spiritual event that may drop entirely below the radar for most people because it involves two points that have a tendency to disappear — Neptune and the Galactic Core. What we think of as the spiritual level of reality can hold surprisingly little sway over the affiars of the rational mind or the ego.

Usually it takes some kind of a crisis to get us to change directions, revise our method of thinking or question our assumptions. The triple conjunction points to great things, but not if we are tied up in petty ones.