Today’s Oracle takes us to the Capricorn weekly of Oct. 31, 2008

It’s a matter of a few weeks before Pluto enters your sign to stay through 2023-24. By the time Pluto leaves Capricorn, the long-awaited 2012 will be in history textbooks (rather than New Age books), Barack Obama will be back teaching constitutional law and the physical world will be entirely reinvented. You have experienced the first ripples of this transit as a growth surge, funded by the release of power that comes from letting go of ancient personality structures. This is only at the beginning. And while we are talking about a transit that lasts more than 16 years, some of the most profound developments come at the beginning — that is, at the end of this year. You can do yourself an enormous favor and start sorting out what is important to you and what is not. This includes, above all else, your goals.

(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.)

This article from Alternet.org was brought to my attention over the weekend by our intrepid Carol Van Strum. Unfortunately, I have my doubts that my state of Maine will join our New England neighbor in this endeavor, since we somehow voted a majority of Republicans into our legislature this fall along with a curiously ‘filter-less’ Republican governor. You may have heard about his, um, ‘candidness’ toward the NAACP on MLK Day. – amanda

Constitutional lawyer David Cobb, the 2004 Green Party presidential candidate, recently traveled to Vermont to help draft the resolution. Cobb says it is an historic document. “This is the first state to introduce at the legislative level a statement of principles that corporations are not persons and do not have constitutional rights,” he told AlterNet. “This is how a movement gets started. It’s the beginning of a revolutionary action completely and totally within the legal framework.”

Such an amendment would be the 28th time we have corrected our founding document to reflect political reality and social change. In other words, we’ve done it 27 times before in answer to the call of history, and we can do it again. There is a groundswell of support: 76 percent of Americans, according to a recent ABC News poll, said they opposed the Citizens United decision.

Read the full article here.

By Len Wallick

Do your little bit of good where you are. It is those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
-Desmond Tutu

Two events form the basis of our Daily Astrology this week. Last weekend, Jupiter moved direct into Aries for the second time in less than a year. This coming Wednesday Saturn will station retrograde in Libra.

First, however, a quick review of the big picture will help us keep things in perspective. If it’s Monday, the Moon must be in a cardinal sign. That’s been the pattern for the year 2011 thus far. This week, it’s Libra playing lunar host on the day named after the Earth’s satellite. This completes the circuit of four cardinal signs and we are not done yet. It is a reminder that this year is not some sort of lull between the T-square of 2010 and the longer lasting series of Uranus-Pluto squares starting next year.

Rather we are experiencing a continuum of the astrological theme of our time — the transitional nature of this period and, the contribution all of us make in our daily actions and choices. The idea that the personal is political is now more than a mental concept. It is taking form. That’s what the future will come from. It is an occasion for joy to know that all of us are empowered to contribute. It is also an occasion for sobriety to be aware of the responsibility this entails. As we will find in our discussions this week, the connection between the Moon and the cardinal events in transition is rather more direct and not just implied.

While the outer planets are re-deploying from last year’s to next year’s rendition, the transitional period is playing out on several levels. The Sun and Moon give us the daily pulse, helping us to get oriented because of their visibility and familiarity to everyone. The luminaries also provide the structural basis for tropical astrology just as they underlie the very existence of earthly life as we know it.

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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Aquarius weekly of June 13, 2002

In almost every recent Aquarius horoscope I’ve been working to get at the issue that an element of hidden karma — call it the past call it something you’re carrying from the spirit world — has been the basis of all your growth work. The underlying theme is that certain events or values imposed on you have prevented you from expressing your deepest joy. But those events or values are now just about finished; their power is diminished; certain aspects will remain as guides and reminders but the brunt of the work is done. Now the challenge is exercising your freedom. Exercise programs are best begun slowly and done regularly. You are on the right track.

(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.)

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

This week’s reading is about endings and new beginnings.

Whenever Death appears in a reading, I look at the surrounding cards to explain the quality of that death. Death rarely means physical death. Here, it feels like a death of a part of the self that no longer serves: a death that makes way for a new energy in the way of creativity and connections.

Death, 6 of Wands, 4 of Wands from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck. Click on the image for a larger version.

Although liberating, Death is rarely an easy process to go through. When a part of what we are familiar with is giving way — a habit, a belief, a way of life, a relationship — it may even feel like we are dying. Fears can start to crawl out of the woodwork; anxieties, new and long-forgotten, make an appearance; the world can feel unfamiliar and uncomfortable. These are the states that accompany the shedding of an old skin and the emergence of a new one. The ego identifies with the loss and believes its time is up. What it is experiencing, however, is simply a humbling and the stripping back of defences that were, themselves, the very obstacles to growth.

In the first card, Death rides into the picture, harbinger of change. It might be clad in black armour, but its horse is white, and it carries on its flag a white rose. There is a sense of yin and yang here. That in everything there is balance, and with loss comes renewal. What seems particularly important here is the sense of ceremony. There needs to be a mourning period for what has passed, symbolized by the figure praying beside the prostrate body of a man. The sun rises above his mitre. The observance of loss brings in new light — new life.

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Okay…so let’s see…police infiltrated environmental groups, as if they were a drug ring, and cops were allowed to have affairs with both men and women in these groups as part of their jobs. This flows less like ‘reality’ and more like that episode of South Park where the cop assigned to bust the prostitution ring becomes a transvestite hooker, marries his ‘pimp’, moves to France or wherever him, then busts him a year later. Oh this is the same episode wherein Butters goes into business in a pay for kissing operation behind the science trailer, then moves up to running a prostitution ring. It’s called ‘Bottom Bitch’. And now on with our News of the Weird.–efc

Undercover police officers routinely adopted a tactic of “promiscuity” with the blessing of senior commanders, according to a former agent who worked in a secretive unit of the Metropolitan police for four years.

So cool and groovy -- Mark Kennedy had sexual relationships with several women while serving as an undercover policeman and infiltrating a ring of environmental activists

The former undercover policeman claims that sexual relationships with activists were sanctioned for both men and women officers infiltrating anarchist, leftwing and environmental groups.

Sex was a tool to help officers blend in, the officer claimed, and was widely used as a technique to glean intelligence. His comments contradict claims last week from the Association of Chief Police Officers that operatives were absolutely forbidden to sleep with activists.

The one stipulation, according to the officer from the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a secret unit formed to prevent violent disorder on the streets of London, was that falling in love was considered highly unprofessional because it might compromise an investigation. He said undercover officers, particularly those infiltrating environmental and leftwing groups, viewed having sex with a large number of partners “as part of the job”.

“Everybody knew it was a very promiscuous lifestyle,” said the former officer, who first revealed his life as an undercover agent to the Observer last year. “You cannot not be promiscuous in those groups. Otherwise you’ll stand out straightaway.”

Read more in The Guardian.

Today’s Oracle takes us to the Virgo weekly of March 14, 2002

A certain relationship situation should now be sufficiently clear that you give up on being such a trooper. The fact that communication may suddenly open up does not need to be a sign of hope in a hopeless situation. Rather, take it as a sign that there are certain people in the world who really can relate to you on your level, in your particular way, and that at least on this one issue you don’t have to compromise. For the time being, or maybe for the foreseeable future, let the world, and the people in it, prove themselves to you.

(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.)

She may not wax or shave, but she’s apparently a whiz with the superglue. Not your musical taste? Hit ‘mute’, laugh at the visuals and click here for the lyrics.