By Len Wallick with Eric Francis

First a bit of song to be sung to the tune of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”:

Retrograde for Christmas,
Mars and Mercury,
Shades of us,
In Aquarius,
And Aries Point history.
Murphy’s Law is ruling,
Cars and batteries,
But retrograde for Christmas,
May not be what it seems.

It’s Christmas Eve and thank you for reading. Given the pace of things lately, it’s a very good sign that you are alive and have a moment to take things in. Right off the top, the Sun conjoins Pluto in Capricorn today for the first time in two and a half centuries. The Sun is conjunct Pluto once a year, though this is the first winter solstice with Pluto in Capricorn (that would be summer solstice down under).

That’s a century before Dickens penned A Christmas Carol and at least 50 years before “The Night Before Christmas” was composed. Ben Franklin was risking not only pneumonia and electrocution but also hanging as he networked a bunch of young men who had nothing in common except that they stood to lose their hard-earned wealth to a crazy king. A lot of water under the bridge since then.

Also a lot coming back as Uranus builds to a big (temporary) exit in the sign of water running deep — Uranus is beginning its transition from Pisces to Aries, though in uranian style we’re a little ahead of ourselves here. That happens int he spring.

Also conjoining in Capricorn this day are Mercury (in ‘storm phase’, slowing down to a third of a degree a day, stationing on Saturday) and Rahu, the north lunar node (within spitting distance of next month’s partial solar eclipse — the nodes tell you approximately where and when the next set of eclipses is going to be). Also called the ascending node (because it’s the point where the Moon crosses to the north of the ecliptic) and the dragon’s head (a term of European origin, by the way) it carries a positive implication in Western astrology with overtones of Gemini.

This is not speculative. If you check the rulerships chart used by the great Elizabethan astrologers, a relic of the ancient days, the North Node is exalted in Gemini.

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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Virgo weekly of Jan. 23, 2004

Changes are coming rapidly one after the other, so fast you can barely keep on track. But your life is not a railroad. At this point it’s more of a wetlands safari, and you may be concerned about drowning in emotions. But it’s really the sea of love you’re sailing toward, and there is a logic to navigating it. The focus required is not the usual intense and microscopic perception that you typically bring to your endeavours. Rather, you must see the biggest picture, and embrace the fact that if everything and everyone are already connected, all we need to do is hold that awareness.

(The Daily Oracle is a random selection from one of 10,000 Eric Francis horoscopes. The Oracle is a divination tool like tarot cards, and also can be used to research any horoscope for the past 10 years. It is available to subscribers of Planet Waves Astrology News in all its working glory. This is a brilliant piece of programming combined with a full decade of Eric’s writing — when you have a question, it really works (as long as you’re sincere), and we know that you’ll love it. Sign up to discover how and why. Or enjoy one selection free here every day.)

Hi all, I’m back with another video. Thanks to a new team, we’ve made some improvements over the last round: better lighting (we did this set in my photo studio rather than my kitchen), I had a little coaching on what to wear, and Planet Waves has a nice new camera. There are three videos in this round; I’ll post them all this week. I would appreciate your feedback and suggestions (besides try to keep my eyes open, I already know about that). Thank you for your input — and thanks to Alise-Marie and Sarah, who helped create this segment and the next two.

– ef

Ladies, Gents, I am chilling on the my blog here today, working on Mars retrograde for Cosmic Confidential. I am doing some light blogging at the Confidential Diary, if you haven’t visited, there are some fun posts there. Note, if you comment on the Plant Waves log, your same log and pass will work for the Confidential Diary. We’ve moved all the passwords over to that system.

Back with a photo in a bit.

Today’s Oracle takes us to the SCORPIO weekly of Feb. 26, 1999

In the annals of church and state history, sexual desire has been made out to be anything but what it is. Deemed evil, untrustworthy, a disease, sinful, the source of all pain, the source of madness and the divider of reality, a simple fact has been obscured. Sexual desire is an instinct, and an instinct that can lead to many different kinds of awareness. The theme of this month in the Scorpio dimension — though it’s also powerful for Aries, Capricorn and all other people (rather than signs) who are of the Marsy variety — is faith in desire. Assume that your sexual level of consciousness is always telling you something about all of your reality. How people respond to you sexually tells you about them, and about your relationship with them, and about your role in the situation. In particular, all changes in circumstance and perception on this level are particularly noteworthy this month; the rest is trivia.

(The Daily Oracle is a random selection from one of 10,000 Eric Francis horoscopes. The Oracle is a divination tool like tarot cards, and also can be used to research any horoscope for the past 10 years. It is available to subscribers of Planet Waves Astrology News in all its working glory. This is a brilliant piece of programming combined with a full decade of Eric’s writing — when you have a question, it really works (as long as you’re sincere), and we know that you’ll love it. Sign up to discover how and why. Or enjoy one selection free here every day.)

By Len Wallick with Eric Francis

Yesterday was the Capricorn solstice (first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, first day of summer south of the equator). There were a lot of big aspects that day, particularly Jupiter making its last conjunction to Neptune in 14 years. It’s also the first solstice with Pluto in Capricorn. Coming down off those momentous events today heralds something more subtle but perhaps useful — the Sun and several minor planets in the degree of their respective signs.

For as long as astrology has been around one would think that there would be consensus on what the first degree means. That, however is not the case, leaving your sophomoric reporter to stick his neck out with some opinions of his own.

First, it’s either/or. Just as there is no such thing as a little bit pregnant, neither is there a little bit Capricorn. Just as Mercury stations on a dime, the cusp between signs is a razor’s edge, not some sort of gradient. The change is abrupt and total. Another observation is that the first degree of any sign exhibits a cardinal point quality, not just in the sense that the personal is political (as Eric has so often said) but also the idea of a reset, a new beginning in a new pattern. Finally, the first degree has a quality that ranges from refreshment to excitement, depending on who you are, and this can most often serve to awaken awareness.

With the Sun there is a 5th house quality of daring self expression, in the first degree of Capricorn, the key words might be structured use of creative energy.

Capricorn also implies a social role — a role in society, which all of us have, but few of us recognize.

For a few days things will seem to hang in the balance awakening us to the awareness that this is a turning point in the the cycle of darkness and light; we might be reassessing that role we don’t quite know we possess.

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Good morning. Today I’m posting one of our monthly horoscopes for January 2010, called Inner Space. This has been quite a solstice, and it’s not exactly over: the Sun makes its conjunction to Pluto and square to Saturn this week. Here is how this astrology shakes out by sign. The column you have here covers Mercury retrograde in Capricorn, the eclipses in Cancer and Capricorn, and the sign change of Jupiter.

If what you feel you read about on this page is mostly the technical side of things — the place to look is the horoscopes, which sort out the information on a personal level. My weekly and monthly horoscopes are available to our subscribers — those who have signed up for Planet Waves Astrology News and Planet Waves Light.

Occasionally (such as today) we sample them for the readers of our main page. Here is your link. That takes you to today’s edition of Planet Waves Light, our “horoscope only” product that’s published each Tuesday and Friday. Since the Sun is in Capricorn, here is that horoscope:

CAPRICORN –The key is to think gently, rather than obsessively. The thing about obsession is that it tends to get us from below or behind, so you need to cultivate some new habits. One of them is positive stroking. While it may be difficult to see how we ‘manifest things’ with our thoughts and feelings, it’s more obvious how we manifest our state of mind with our thoughts and feelings. Or is it? Do we assume that our thoughts are the result of how we feel, rather than what creates it? The next few weeks are designed to be one of the most effective lessons of cause and effect you’ve ever had on this topic. So remember — think gently.

We’ll be back in later this morning with a daily astrology roundup from Len Wallick.