For those new to Planet Waves, each January we publish an annual edition that contains detailed readings for each of the 12 signs. It’s always a bit of a miracle that this comes off, though that miracle is well underway.

L-B Aries art by Sarah.

Today I am doing the first draft of Aries, and the first draft of Pisces. My method is to lay a foundation of the first four signs, then return to Aries and work backwards, ending at Taurus. Though I vowed to keep the readings shorter this year, that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Each will get an audio supplement that covers some side issues and offers a perspective that ties the reading together.

Here is a sample from the Aries second draft, from the section about Uranus in Aries:

“Uranus in your sign is about a personal awakening out of that strictly personal state of mind. It’s not that you cannot thrive worrying only what you’re going to have for dinner, or what your next job is going to be. The ingress of Uranus is saying directly that you are having bigger ideas than that, being called to a bigger life. In my interpretation, it’s saying that you want more: a greater sense of correction, an experience of participation, and an openly available influence on the direction of events in the world around you. Uranus entering your life so directly is about shifting the scale of your desires, seeing and participating in the larger life that surrounds you. If you find yourself feeling trapped or frustrated, that is an invitation to go to a higher level.”

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By Len Wallick

Today the Sun conjoins with Pluto, which will be the main subject of today’s blog. We will also take a look at what retrograde Mercury and the Moon are up to.

The Sun-Pluto conjunction has been taking place in Capricorn since December of 2008. That pattern will continue until January of 2024. Every year the surrounding context will be a bit different. Let’s break it down from the general and proceed to examine the specifics of today’s aspect.

Capricorn is not only a cardinal sign but the last in a solar cycle of four. This is a serious sort of energy: make something happen, get things done, bring ideas to form, all of it with a public and collective syntax. The ruler of Capricorn is Saturn, an inter-personal planet closely associated with social order as defined by practical principles of limitation determining structure and role.

The Sun represents the aware, conscious self and its vital, willful expression. As the center of our solar system and the dominant presence in our sky, it is associated with life energy and identifying principles. In Capricorn, Sol is not exalted, nor is it in detriment or fall. The greater luminary can, however, be said to find itself in sympathy with the sign because ingress there represents a defining limit in its annual cycle of apparent movement. It is this sympathy which in turn places the Capricorn Sun in a notable disposition to the influence of Saturn. That’s how the serious nature of the energy comes about.

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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Gemini monthly of April 22, 2008

You need to leave yourself plenty of room to change your mind. I know this sounds like telling a Pisces they need to go to the beach, but it would appear that you are going to reconsider something about which you are at the moment feeling confident and committed. Please don’t let the secret desire for commitment substitute for the real thing. As you progress through these weeks, you will have access to all the information you need; when you look back at this time, you’ll be surprised by what you already knew, and how early you knew it. But in advance, you may not be assembling the pieces. Then one afternoon, a revelation arrives: but is it doubt, or is it a breakthrough? Is it hesitation and insecurity, or are you being given some authentic inspiration? These are the approximate choices you have available. In other words, when you get to the reversal point, you get to define what it is and why you are there. Consciously reach into the wisdom of insecurity. Touch that moment when you have no options at all. If you get to the place where you seem to be standing in a vacuum, remember you can fill it with anything you like.

(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.)

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) – Tedious observations about the severe winter weather are expected to dominate the conversations of uninteresting people for the next 24 to 48 hours, boredom experts warned today.

With blizzard conditions blanketing the Northeast, a powerful front of mind-numbing weather-related banter is expected to pound the Eastern Seaboard from Sunday into Monday, with statements of the obvious stretching from the Carolinas to New England.

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Today marks a change to the format of The Weekend Tarot Reading, which feels fitting in the run-up to the New Year. Given that many of the mid-week articles focus on a single card so that we can build on our knowledge of the tarot deck, I felt that it was time to expand the Weekend Reading to three cards — not only as a point of differentiation, but also to give the reading more complexity. Think of it as an experiment of sorts — an invitation for synchronicity to step in and work with us. Let’s see how things take shape.

The High Priestess, The Hermit, Queen of Wands from the Rider-Waite tarot deck, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith.

This reading feels spiritually significant, and it feels like an integration.

Given that two of the three cards are from the major arcana, the reading is not so much about the outer, day-to-day workings of life, but rather inner processes and transformation.

The first things that I notice in this reading are the figures themselves. All three cards have as their subject one lone individual that dominates the picture. Female, male, female. Seated, standing, seated. The background blue, grey, then blue again. Each has two ‘props’: The High Priestess her scroll and the crescent Moon, The Hermit his lamp and staff, the Queen of Wands a sunflower and a black cat. Together, the three figures and their symbolic companions tell a story.

The High Priestess works in the dream state. She is mistress of the liminal, that psychic space between spirit and everyday life. She is ethereal, and embodies the energy of the Moon, exuding a quiet luminescence. When she is doing her work, she travels to a source that is in but not of her, and brings its light to bear on the matter at hand.

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In addition to being Boxing Day, today is also St. Stephen’s Day. This video is a performance of the Grateful Dead doing “Mountains of the Moon” and then “St. Stephen” at the Playboy Mansion, on the program “After Dark” in the late 1960s. Shel Silverstein, a friend of the band (who wrote “A Boy Named Sue,” for Johnny Cash and did cartoons for Playboy, along with writing Where the Sidewalk Ends) was the contact that got them the gig.

There is a description of the evening’s escapades in the book Living with the Dead that’s so funny you’ll need oxygen. This was in part owing to the fact that Owsley (chemist, sound man and the band’s financier) spiked the coffee with LSD in revenge for not being allowed to set up the band’s sound system. Some people drank a lot of coffee, turning what was usually a totally stilted, stuck-up atmosphere into mayhem. Warned in advance, Hefner had a servant sitting on a cooler full of Coke in sealed bottles, who would open them one bottle at a time and pass them directly to him. Someone on the crew described it as “the closest thing to a party to ever happen at the Playboy Mansion.”

The song “St. Stephen” has references to the first Christian martyr and also Stephen Gaskin, founder of The Farm, sometime presidential candidate and friend of the band (I knew his daughter — she once bought me a lot of Elvis Costello CDs). In the early days he would sit on the stage and take questions from the audience during halftime at shows. Hence the line, “Wherever he goes, the people all complain.”

This link will take you to the annotated lyrics. This will take you to a different recording of just St. Stephen from the same night, not as sharp but a bit louder. If you find cool versions in You Tube or elsewhere please share them in the comments. This song can go 8 to 10 minutes — there must be some great recordings out there.

Hook up some speakers or headphones and turn up the throttle.

Did he doubt or did he try?
Answers aplenty in the bye and bye
Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills
One man gathers what another man spills

Saint Stephen will remain
All he’s lost he shall regain
Seashore washed by the suds and the foam
Been here so long he’s got to calling it home

– Robert Hunter

Today’s Oracle takes us to the Aries monthly of Dec. 1, 2000

Easy does it. Go gently, especially where other people and their feelings are concerned. You are trying to make a very big change, and what you need to recognize is that you’ve done all that you can do, in terms of raw effort. Now you need to allow the momentum of your own progress to carry you, which will require an act of faith. I say this understanding how important and life-affirming effort is to you. Yet there is something else at work in your life: the idea of sacrifice, and it’s connected to how hard you try; and no doubt you have both given up a lot to get where you are, and grown accustomed to doing so. What now remains is reaping the rewards of your labors, and this calls for a new and very different state of mind.

(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.)

Without looking in Wikipedia, can you describe where the name of this holiday comes from?

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It’s an occasional Christmas tradition of mine to read The Cremation of Sam McGee, by the Canadian poet Robert W. Service. This is reading of the poem this morning.