Eric Francis, chief of the Skunk Mouse Clan. Image by Sarah Bissonnette-Adler.

From The Pagan Science Monitor

It all started innocently enough — when he was living in Miami shortly before Y2K, someone asked Eric Francis if he wanted to adopt a mouse. A family had just acquired a cat and the two were not going to mix. The mouse was cute, gray and wiggled his whiskers. He named the mouse Jonathan. He came with a yellow Habitrail.

“I don’t know, it seemed karmic,” Mr. Francis said at the time, in a Miami Herald interview.

“It was one of those moments where you know your life has just changed.” He was living in the Dunes Beach Club, a would-be, has-been hotel and casino populated by Miami’s most elite snowbirds and transients. Planet Waves was just over a year old, but he had already acquired worldwide following of people who clung to his every typo.

“I bonded with Jonathan,” Mr. Francis said. “As I got to know him, he seemed more human. There was something unusual about him. He fit in my pocket and weighed 22 grams. On the astral plane he was a giant. And as I got to know him, I began to acquire his tendencies.”

For example, Mr. Francis began to enter buildings through the basement, then come up to the first floor. When eating in a restaurant, he would always sit quietly in the corner and munch unobtrusively.

He began giving talks at local New Age bookstores, and was getting $100 each for channeling sessions. “He was in contact with what he called the Muse Musculus, the part of the soul that is eternally one with the Mouse,” said Florence Dickens, owner of Sagittarius Rising Books.

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Today’s Oracle takes us back to the Scorpio weekly of July 22, 2005

The god of fortune and success is going to fuck with you today, but it’s all in good fun. Or at least he thinks it will be. Note that the supreme entity that created the universe and that uses Mt. Olympus as a brothel uses you to answer the prayers of others. The gods are having too much fun to see to the feeble whims and wishes of mortals. Sure, when they were younger, it looked good on their resume, but they gave up around the time they taught mankind how to scrawl crude letters, make fire and masturbate. Now if others want to be healed, prosper or be relieved of their anxiety, it’s totally up to you, which saves the egotistical gods and goddesses a shit-ton of work. Then, of course, they reward us for all that awesome karma, which partly explains the repeated AIG bailouts. Then, then, then they finally remember you and all the work you saved them and all the laughs you provided and it’s like, wham! You’re actually getting paid to play the guitar.

(The Daily Oracle is a random selection from one of 10,000 Eric Francis horoscopes. New horoscopes by Eric are published weekly plus twice a month in Planet Waves Astrology News and Planet Waves Light. The Oracle itself is a divination tool available to subscribers to either of these services.)

Wednesday morning, Eastern US time.

Sitting down to write today’s daily astrology, I checked my animated chart in Io Sprite and noticed the aspect I had been feeling: Venus in the last degree of Aries, the Moon in the last degree of Libra.

The last degrees of signs can feel edgy, unstable, uncertain and like there’s imminent change coming. There is: bodies are changing signs, but that’s a symbol for something else. Today the two making sign changes have a feminine resonance.

This suggests that their state or condition will harmonize with the feminine side that astrology reminds us we all have. Human is not a polarity but rather a complex mix of mental state, emotional state and gender. Note that the zodiac as we know it is a mix of six different shades of yin and yang — each of the different sign pairs (Aries/Libra, Taurus/Scorpio, and so on).

Mercury is close behind Venus, and will enter Taurus, where it will remain for about eight weeks (an unusually long time for Mercury through a sign) as part of its retrograde cycle (but normal for Mercury retrograde, which is another way of saying Mercury hangs out in a sign or narrow sector of the zodiac for a while). Mercury retrograde involves Mercury slowing down and changing directions. In Taurus, we have an image of becoming aware of and then loosening up thought forms that previously seemed intractable.

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Today’s Oracle takes us back to the Virgo weekly of March 26, 2004

For much of the year your relationship angle (the seventh solar house, which covers partnership, marriage, confrontation and how you meet the world) has been pretty darned interesting. Now your sex angle has become the scene of intrigue (your eighth solar house, which covers all forms of surrender). You must, however, keep these interchanges on a high level. Be leery of anything that looks like it might be a power trip of any kind. You don’t need games, you need pleasure — that, or resolving old entanglements, for which this is a very good time.

(The Daily Oracle is a random selection from one of 10,000 Eric Francis horoscopes. New horoscopes by Eric are published weekly plus twice a month in Planet Waves Astrology News and Planet Waves Light. The Oracle itself is a divination tool available to subscribers to either of these services.)

Note to Readers: It’s unfortunate that we cannot bring astrology into a more open dialog with these ideas, but as I am being reminded by our political writers, it’s unlikely that political websites or news outlets will take seriously any conversation that mentions, say, Pluto in Capricorn.

Photo by Eric.

I am sure you will recognize some themes of that transit, and of the Saturn-Pluto square, in this article. It seems true enough that what gets started under Republican administrations is institutionalized under Democratic ones, though that’s partly a result of setting the whole machinery of government into motion over a period of many years. Anyway — I saw this article tonight on Truthout.org and thought you might be interested. Note, none of these issues are new. I’ve been watching many of these conversations develop since the late 1980s. — efc

By Justine Sharrock | AlterNet

In her bestselling End of America, Naomi Wolf outlines the 10 warning signs that America is headed toward a fascist takeover. Using historical precedents, she explains how our government is mimicking those of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin through practices like surveillance of ordinary citizens, restricting the press, developing paramilitary forces and arbitrarily detaining people.

The book was lauded by liberals under Bush: the Independent Publishers gave it the Freedom Fighter Award; the Nation named it the best political book of 2007. Now, under President Obama, Wolf’s book is providing ammunition for the Tea Partiers, Patriots, Ron Paul supporters and Oath Keepers, who also warn of impending tyrannical government. Even when the book first came out pre-Obama, Alex Jones, Michael Savage and Fox News invited her on their shows, and agreed with her.

It’s not just her message. She speaks their language, referring to the Founding Fathers and American Revolution as models, admitting to a profound sense of fear, warning of tyranny, fascism, Nazism and martial law. When Glenn Beck warns of these things we laugh. When Wolf draws those same connections, we listen. How can both sides be speaking the same language, yet see things so differently? Or are we just not listening to each other? I telephoned Wolf to ask her what it means when your book ends up bolstering policies you oppose.

Justine Sharrock: First off, is your book still relevant under Obama?

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By Len Wallick

If yesterday’s Full Moon in Libra was an occasion for reflection, today’s aspects may well be an indication that we should direct ourselves towards contemplation. Contemplation of thresholds. Since it is not the intent of this blog to engage in semantic discussion, please, for the moment, be open to your correspondent’s posit that reflection is the more passive and contemplation the more active and forward looking. Let us contemplate the intimations of three thresholds soon to be crossed.

Today begins with the conjunction of Mercury and the slow-moving minor planet known as 1992 QB1 in the 25th degree of Aries. Perhaps the most distinguishing thing about 1991 QB1 is that it has not yet been assigned a name beyond the cryptic code that designates the year of its discovery, the type of object and the numeric order among others of the same classification. This despite the fact that many subsequently discovered bodies have received their monikers.

Perhaps this is because astronomers can place it into more than one group. It is an object in the Kuiper Belt, a huge ring of rocks and ice cubes in the region of Pluto that resembles the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter except that it’s about 20 times wider and at least 20 times more massive. It is also referred to as a trans-Neptunian object, which includes all the objects in the solar system that orbit the Sun at a greater average distance than Neptune. Finally, the “QB1″ part of the name gave birth to a group of objects called cubewanos, defined as Kuiper Belt objects with orbits not controlled by the orbital resonances of Neptune.

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Today’s Oracle takes us back to the Libra weekly of September 13, 2004

Don’t go chasing luck; let it find you. Just like when you were little and were taught to stay put when you get lost, you merely need to be accessible now, in the emotional sense and the technical sense. Hang out where you are; look good; take a little pride in your accomplishments, which have been somewhat more than subtle lately. Meditate on a list of three things you would do, if you could, to make your life significantly better. Then be patient.

(The Daily Oracle is a random selection from one of 10,000 Eric Francis horoscopes. New horoscopes by Eric are published weekly plus twice a month in Planet Waves Astrology News and Planet Waves Light. The Oracle itself is a divination tool available to subscribers to either of these services.)

By Len Wallick

Today (or tonight, depending on where you are), the Full Moon in Libra furthers the cardinal sign ambiance that has consistently been the daily tableau since the Vernal Equinox. With frequent emphasis on the first degrees of Aries, Cancer, Libra and or Capricorn this pattern is consistent with the events that have taken place in our public and private lives. The political has now become continuously personal. This phenomenon is a clear indicator of a new era.

Before attending to the Full Moon, however, please allow us to pause and consider a rather momentous transit that concluded the eventful week just past. The point that represents the center of our galaxy has clearly and cleanly moved into the twenty-eighth degree of Sagittarius.

When we look at an ephemeris, the Galactic Center, if it is listed at all, is classified as a “fixed” point or “star.” Indeed, it would seem to be so. However, it does in fact progress along the zodiac at the almost imperceptible rate of about one arc minute per year. In other words, it takes over sixty years to move one degree; This is longer than it takes for Saturn to orbit the Sun twice. And it’s not really what’s moving — the Earth is wobbling, creating the illusion of movement.

The Sabian Symbol for Sagittarius 28 is “a splendidly built bridge, a heritage of unknown ages, still spans the beautiful and wildly primitive stream.” This image is consistent with the vision that Eric has forged into his annual editions over the last several years with titles “Bridge to the Core” and “Spiral Door.” It brings us into immediate appreciation of the vision he has unwaveringly held and communicated through Planet Waves.

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