Today is Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2011. The newly waxing Moon is in Aquarius. Whether you are back to work, still on vacation between holidays or still searching for a job and bracing yourself against next month’s bills, you may be sensing a subterranean evolution at work within you, and possibly some lingering edginess. The main influence is the Sun currently conjunct Pluto in early Capricorn (exact Thursday).

The Sun is almost always about expression. Capricorn, at its most fundamental level, has to do with form, thanks to ruling planet Saturn. At essence, Pluto is about our soul’s evolution. Therefore, this conjunction about the expression of the soul contained within a form – your soul, your form.

For some, working with soul energy is natural. Others waste energy kicking and screaming. Most of us probably fall somewhere in between, having good days and bad days until we get the hang of trust, love and surrender. But it can be done. The thing is, we can only each shepherd or allow our own evolution. You can’t do it for someone, and society can’t evolve as a whole unless all of us individuals are each doing our own work. Sometimes this translates into fully inhabiting a defined space; sometimes it’s bursting a form to allow one to evolve that suits our growth.

Does the idea of bursting forms sound frightening to you? Sun-Pluto in Capricorn can come with some fears: fear of breaking; fear of change; fear of progress, letting go, being real; fear of being trapped; fear of what our parents will think — the real ones, their shadows that we carry with us, the metaphorical substitutes we project onto in the world.

The thing is, Pluto itself is not inherently all about destruction – though that can come into play. Pluto also comes with the keywords ‘deep’, ‘irresistible’, ‘evolutionary’, ‘Dionysian’.

But what does that look like? Watch the video above for a clue.

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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Libra monthly for Feb. 7, 2005.

You’ve known for a long time that you have to get your way where certain family or domestic affairs are concerned — and now you’re seeing the reasons come out in black and white. It’s a shame that not everyone handles their karma with the care and attention that you do. Most people just go on making more when their time would be better spent clearing up the less-than-beneficial results of the past. You just need to beware of these people and continue to hold your ground. And perhaps get them to commit to taking care of what is theirs before the next series of revelations.

Note, The Oracle is a random selection from the Eric Francis horoscope archives. Each day we publish one entry from among the 10,000 in our database. It’s a little slice of horoscope history — but chosen by our Oracle program, which always speaks to the present moment. New horoscopes are published each Friday plus twice a month in Planet Waves subscriber edition and Planet Waves Light. And for your 2012 annual reading, you’ll find Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check.

Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. -- the 2012 Annual Edition of Planet Waves.

Dear Friend and Reader,

There has never been a year in your life, nor will there ever be, like the one we’re approaching. Twenty-twelve will arrive with many life-changing events, and the astrology deserves all the attention we both can give it. For the past several months I have been doing precisely that, developing the 2012 annual readings of Planet Waves — the long-anticpated Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. Included for each sign is an extended audio reading and a substantial written interpretation for your Sun, Moon or rising sign.

Photo by Liz Joyce.

As I’m sure you’re overwhelmingly aware, we are deep into a phase of heightened and accelerated change. The much-fabled 2012 transition is now here. It doesn’t matter whether 2012 has a Mayan calendar root, whether it involves Uranus square Pluto or the extremely rare Venus event in June: the magnitude of this astrology and how it will influence us cannot be overstated. My annual edition breaks it down into three basic experiences for each of the 12 signs and rising signs:

Revelation. That means discovery. Material and information we were not expecting will come to the surface, at times rapidly. We will make discoveries about ourselves, our relationships and our society. Key decision points await you, but at this time so early in the process, it may be difficult to see what those decisions will be about. Here is where astrology can help provide a glance around the corner.

Revolution. We all talk about change. So many of us have been committed to inner growth and healing and outer social progress — going back years or even decades. You may have discovered that major changes are rarely possible. Yet the times, the causes and the conditions are all coming together this year. This is a time of revolutions — they’re not only possible but inevitable. The question is, what does this mean for you?

Reality Check. There will be more reality coming at us than most people have the stomach for. Yet when there is so much power in the air, one needs to check and balance oneself to keep on track. You’ll need to stay grounded, and have clear agreements with yourself about what matters the most. You will need to penetrate the layers of illusion that have delayed you or taken you off track. Things are moving so fast we need to do this on a constant basis.

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Seven years ago today, the world watched in horror as more than 250,000 people died within three hours as a result of a massive tsunami off the coast of Indonesia, triggered by a huge earthquake in the Indian Ocean: a sudden large shift in undersea tectonic plates. Of course, the devastation lasted much longer than the tsunami itself, and many more lives were lost in the days, weeks and months afterwards. It’s a little hard to tell what the current status of recovery is today, seven years on. The last rebuilding update in Wikipedia is for 2007, though the entry also notes that in 2009, the government opened a museum costing 5.6 million U.S. dollars, “to commemorate the tsunami with photographs, stories, and a simulation of the earthquake that triggered the tsunami.”

For many of us, the scale of the devastation was unimaginable, previously unknown and heartbreaking; yet, the Earth has made such moves for millenia — and will again. Eric wrote extensively on the chart for the disaster at the time, in a pair of articles for Jonathan Cainer’s site. You can read The Great Wave – Part One here, and In the Wake of the Flood: The Great Wave – Part Two here.

Reminder: The Daily Astrology feature is off for the holiday today. It will be back at 12:01 am EST tomorrow, Tuesday Dec. 27. – amanda

Pluto is now becoming something else.
– Juan Revilla (in 1999)

After renewing its cycle with a New Moon over the holiday weekend, Luna enters Aquarius today, hinting that we have recently embarked upon something more than just a new season. Later this week, Sun will function to broaden that hint by conjoining Pluto in Capricorn. The solar conjunction with Pluto is a very nearly annual event, its date slowly advancing through the years. As such, it symbolizes the growing discrepancy between the slow advance of human consciousness and the rapid pace of human events.

We are on the threshold of a new year that will reveal the depth of that incongruity and compel us to catch up. We can start by allowing the light of awareness to shine where Pluto lives in each of us, and realize that we, like Pluto, are now in the process of becoming something else.

Our knowledge of Pluto’s existence was made possible because astronomy became something else. It was discovered in 1930 by indirect observation. Nearly everyone at the time envisioned astronomers squinting through an eyepiece. Some still do. In fact, the process had transformed. By the early 20h century, scientists were comparing photographs, lots of them, detecting new objects in the solar system by their motion against a field of distant stars. The idea that Pluto’s discovery symbolized the creative potential of transformation was lost on most people, however. Maybe it was the fear.

Long before the 20th Century, the quest for knowledge had encountered the fear of change. From Galileo to Darwin, that fear obscured the fact that science changes nothing except awareness. Thus a great divide developed between consciousness as a value and pre-conception as a cause. Somehow, the perception of planet Pluto got caught up in that divide. Maybe it was the name.

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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Capricorn weekly for Sept. 15, 2006.

The next week or so presents you with a test of your integrity, and raises the question of whether you can bring what some call the ‘higher self’ into the situations you face. This higher self is given many mystical attributes, but really it’s a perspective on life that allows us to exist exclusively in the present and not drag the baggage of the past into every situation. In the current situation, you will have about one single moment to make the choice of how you handle yourself, and it may arise when you least expect it. The story sums up simply as: do what you know is right, not necessarily what ‘feels good’.

Note, The Oracle is a random selection from the Eric Francis horoscope archives. Each day we publish one entry from among the 10,000 in our database. It’s a little slice of horoscope history — but chosen by our Oracle program, which always speaks to the present moment. New horoscopes are published each Friday plus twice a month in Planet Waves subscriber edition and Planet Waves Light. And for your 2012 annual reading, you’ll find Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check.

By Maria Padhila

In 10 years, I’ve read a lot of books with my daughter. She was the type who wanted about 10 picture books before going to sleep (and Go The Fuck To Sleep had not been written yet. As incorrect as it is, I love that book, with its progressively weirder menagerie and shared caretaker despair: “You do so much other amazing shit. Why can’t you just go to sleep?”). Most of the time I was fine with this — I love reading, and I like the chance to try on different voices, have her point to things, etc. On my lap in the rocking chair with a book is pretty much how she spent about a third of the first four years of her life.

Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.

Recently, I gave another big sack of books away — we save the most beautiful and most meaningful ones. But often, as we look the old books over, we wonder what we ever saw in them. One that was read over and over at school, but not so much at home, is If You Give a Mouse A Cookie. It had left both of us with kind of mixed feelings. We veered between thinking the mouse was cute, or scary looking. We ping-ponged between finding his neediness and many requests poignant or overwhelming. Was the mouse a jerk or was he worth the trouble? Could we see ourselves in him? And where were our cookies?

If you’re not familiar with this classic work, it’s the cautionary tale of a mouse who, when given a cookie, asks for a glass of milk, and then his requests begin to pile on, each to the last, until they reach a height of absurdity. It’s a formula that got played out several times by the author and has been awarded by both acclaim and book sales.

And I found it referenced in an excellent polyamory blog. The Polyamorous Misanthrope really has to be called authoritative. It provides advice, comment and the occasional guest columnist. And most of the wisdom found there can apply to most any relationship. Who doesn’t need to hear, once in a while, things like: “Look out for some warning signs that say that what you’re experiencing is a boundary violation rather than intimacy,” or “Good relationships require good boundaries, no matter what the relationship form”?

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By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Said the night wind to the little lamb
Do you see what I see?
Way up in the sky little lamb
Do you see what I see?
A star, a star
Dancing in the night
With a tail as big as a kite
With a tail as big as a kite
“Do You Hear What I Hear”
Music by Gloria Shayne Baker, lyrics by Noël Regney

You read this on Christmas Eve, and for me, this is the big push: the feasting, the gift opening, the celebrating. When my kids were little, Santa would leave one big present under the tree on Christmas morning, but by family tradition, tomorrow will be about cooking and leisure. Tonight, on the eve of the event itself, the secular portion of Christmas will play out once again. In Jude tradition, the sacred portion of Christmas — the expectation of Divine love enfolding us, deep gratitude to Spirit for the birth of transcendent possibility and the palpable presence of Higher Angels — happens every day. That’s been my practice and goal for decades. It may also be why I’m sappy about this particular season, when everyone shares a bit of that expectation.

After a year like the one we’ve endured, a quiet moment of reflection — preferably with my feet up — is just what the doctor ordered. But life continues to be fast-tracked, so I’m hoping to find that quiet moment in the next few days. You too? Perhaps you’ve developed a tolerance for the hectic, as have I, even for that hint of winged chaos that perches on the sharp edge of hysteria. I remember those halcyon days when five or six situational fire drills and quasi-emergencies a day — day after day, week after week — would have been unthinkable, even impossible; now, it’s just Tuesday, or Wednesday or whatever. Humans have an amazing capacity to adapt. It’s all grist for the evolutionary mill and another day in paradise.

Politics, even the current sideshow, can apparently no longer startle me. I suppose that’s how it works after you’ve tasted the little cake marked “Eat Me” and played croquette with the Red Queen; at least that’s how it feels. I think Sarah Palin’s candidacy was the last time my mouth flew open in real shock, and that was ages ago. Oh, the headlines are still titillating. I was kind of surprised that little Kim took a powder, not so surprised that Boehner couldn’t control his “patriots” so that the entire nation was forced to watch the Tea Party’s mental midgets take the GOP down in a stranglehold.

Ron Paul, one-trick-pony Libertarian candidate who is always complaining that he can’t get press coverage, walked out on a CNN interview rather than defend his racist newsletters, and Pappy Bush, once again faced with a roster of idjits, came out for Romney as the only reasonable candidate in 2012. Nothing shocking there. That the press is reporting a credible defense for Brad Manning, that’s newsworthy. That the GOP’s attempt at suicide helps the lefties — that’s good news, too.

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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Aquarius daily for Nov. 29, 2005.

How, exactly, do you slow down when you’re in the midst of so much? You may not actually be able to, but you can give yourself some perspective by asking for feedback from the people around you. You can also look back one year and remember where you were, what you were doing and what your priorities were at that time. A simple contrast of four seasons will not only tell you quite a story it will be an encouraging one, and you deserve to give yourself credit for rising above a great deal of fear and uncertainty on the way to getting where you are today.

Note, The Oracle is a random selection from the Eric Francis horoscope archives. Each day we publish one entry from among the 10,000 in our database. It’s a little slice of horoscope history — but chosen by our Oracle program, which always speaks to the present moment. New horoscopes are published each Friday plus twice a month in Planet Waves subscriber edition and Planet Waves Light. And for your 2012 annual reading, you’ll find Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check.