The Portland Press Herald reports that for the third year in a row, a businessman from the Portland area of Maine has made it a mission to hand out $100 bills at area food pantries, shelters and places like Goodwill and Salvation Army. For those who are truly struggling, it’s a blessing most do not dare imagine — and one often met with tears from the overwhelming gratitude and surprise. It is too easy to feel forgotten, disposable and lost in this world.

Photo by Amanda Painter.

Dubbed the “Secret Santa,” the anonymous man protects his identity with a Groucho Marx-type nose-and-eyeglasses set and hooded sweatshirt pulled over his head, waiting in a car. Meanwhile, an assistant in a Santa suit hands out the bills in envelopes, which also contain a note suggesting the recipient pay the gesture forward in some way or use it to make the holiday a little happier for themselves and their families.

The first year, Secret Santa handed out $10,000 in $100 bills; this year, his goal is $20,000. He does not announce the dates, times or exact locations he is planning, so as to avoid creating a frenzy. But he does announce that he plans to visit several towns in the week before Christmas.

Southern Maine’s Secret Santa says he was inspired by Kansas City’s secret Santa, Larry Stewart, who spent years anonymously handing out $100 bills. He reportedly gave out more than $1.3 million over two decades before his death in 2007.

In an interview with The Portland Press Herald (you can read the full story here), the Secret Santa said, “The whole idea is to convince other people to do something similar. We’d love to see it happen more often. I want to do this every year in increasing amounts if it’s possible. But you never know because the economy is in such a dicey situation now.” He plans to give money away next year as well.

We may not all be able to give away 200 $100 bills — or even just one. But we can all afford to give a smile, a hug, an extra five minutes of our time. How will you play Secret Santa this year?

Photo by Amanda Painter.

Note, Planet Waves Daily Astrology will be off Monday. We will be back Tuesday. Also we will be updating some of our other features through the weekend, though today’s weekend astrology post may appear at the top of the page display for a while. Check below for new posts. Happy holiday.

Today is Friday, Dec. 23, 2011. The waning Moon is in Sagittarius, on its way to the Capricorn New Moon on Saturday. Before we get there, however, the Moon crosses several high-energy points in Sagittarius, which may have you feeling on edge or feeling like you’re about to go out of control. If you’re feeling that way, take a breath and notice that if an astrology website was able to make that statement accurately, maybe it’s not just you.

The Moon square Mars in Virgo, and crossing over a hot collection of points (centaurs, the North Node, the Galactic Core) in a hot sign (Sagittarius is definitely hot), is a factor to consider. Combined with the pressure of the holidays and the short, dark days here in the Northern Hemisphere, this setup may be stirring up issues involving anger, impatience and frustration.

There is a planet in the alignment (Pholus) that says alcohol is a dangerous ingredient to add to that particular emotional brew, if you’re feeling it. Some are figuring out that it’s okay to back off on the ‘festivities’ — and the economic crunch may be facilitating that, and so is common sense. Still, the planets are offering a cautionary note not to drink alcohol if you are not already in a good mood, and to stop the moment you feel any form of depression or anger coming on. If you notice any such feeling, put down your drink and get a glass of water. You will start to feel better.

Once the Moon clears Sagittarius on Saturday, it enters Capricorn, which will have a cooling effect — though there is an aspect to Uranus, the planet of surprises, which may not help bringing the temperature down; you will have to do that (a wake-up call of some kind may help), and you can. Note that a lot of family-related fears, concerns or past issues may be coming up and serving as a point of anxiety if you’re planning to see your relatives over the holiday, or even if you’re not going to. Work out those feelings in advance, or at least give them a voice somehow. The recent eclipse and Mercury retrograde brought losses of loved ones to many families. Stay with your feelings and memories — that is fully appropriate for where you’re at.

At least on the regular affairs of our eventful lives, New Moon offers some sense of closure and a chance to set new intentions and move on. As the weekend passes you may have the feeling of coming through some rough spots and then out of the woods.

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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Scorpio monthly for April 29, 2007.

You may be thrust into a new group of friends this month, and I suggest that your house be where the party is. The reason is less about geography and more about your own space being better suited to the whims of your imagination and your less-than-uptight notions of what it means to have a good time. In other words, your more adventurous boundaries will be more at home where you are at home, and this is definitely a moment in your life when you need to give those boundaries a push, a flying karate kick, or at least invite them to a good old-fashioned naked barbecue.

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.

The Obama administration is continuing to come under intense criticism from civil liberties groups for saying it will sign a controversial defense spending bill that some legal experts say would authorize the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world without charge or trial. While much of the media focus has been on the bill’s provisions regarding indefinite detention, Mother Jones magazine has revealed the bill also contains text that could make it easier for the U.S. government to transfer American citizens to foreign regimes and security forces–a process known as rendition.

Democracy Now! spoke today with Mother Jones’ national security reporter, Nick Baumann. He also details the cases of several U.S. citizens who have already been detained abroad by foreign security forces, interrogated, sometimes abused, and asked questions they believe could only have come from U.S. law enforcement. You can watch the interview here (rush transcript not available at time of this posting). Baumann’s article is available here, and includes a section with the detention and transfer provisions of the NDAA.

In spite of how things may appear now, you can go into this coming holiday weekend knowing that next week has the potential to begin on a promising note. That’s because Jupiter resumes direct motion in the first degree of Taurus shortly after 5 EST on Sunday evening. This optimistic anticipation is not an empty concession to a holiday season. It is based upon the the nature of Jupiter’s archetype, the implication of direct motion, the sign Jupiter is in and the aspects that Jupiter will make when it turns around. Most of all, it is a matter of timing, and timing will be your key to working with the positive side of the astrology to realize that the blessings you make are the blessings that count.

Regardless of what system of astrology you favor, Jupiter is known as a planet associated with good news. It is variously a teacher, lawgiver, source of abundance and the expansive, inclusive presence of divine authority to be found somewhere in us all. One of the planet’s alternative names, Jove, is the root of the adjective jovial, an attribute poignantly associated with this time of year. Every planet, however, has two sides, as retrograde periods most often reveal.

In reality, planets never reverse their course. Retrogrades are a product of our perspective from Earth and the sensory perception that we are residing on a fixed place of reference. Our planet passed between Jupiter and Sun earlier this year but that is not how we perceived it. Instead, we saw Jupiter’s apparent motion gradually slow down and go backwards, rising a little later from one night to the next. The whole process began soon after Jove entered Taurus on June 4, 2011. As result, much of what we have seen of Jupiter’s archetype over the last six months has been the pathological flip side of legal authority and a sense of our own physical resources in depletion. Starting next week we can apply what we have learned towards an opportunity to go back and try again through the symbolic auspices of a sign that supports Jupiter’s better expression.

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What's large and blue and can wrap itself around an entire galaxy? A gravitational lens mirage. Pictured above, the gravity of a luminous red galaxy (LRG) has gravitationally distorted the light from a much more distant blue galaxy. More typically, such light bending results in two discernible images of the distant galaxy, but here the lens alignment is so precise that the background galaxy is distorted into a horseshoe -- a nearly complete ring. Since such a lensing effect was generally predicted in some detail by Albert Einstein over 70 years ago, rings like this are now known as Einstein Rings. Strong gravitational lenses like LRG 3-757 are more than oddities -- their multiple properties allow astronomers to determine the mass and dark matter content of the foreground galaxy lenses. Caption by Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD). Image created by ESA/Hubble & NASA

Today is Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. Whether you have been spending your solstice in quiet meditation — in the dark or on a sunny beach — or have been too busy with holiday bustle for such a ‘luxury’ as stillness, it’s time to stay on your toes. Now that the Sun has just entered Capricorn, it very quickly makes aspects to a number of planets. This could represent various shocks to various systems; luckily there are tools and solutions being offered at the same time – be ready to use them.

The Sun first makes a square to Uranus in Aries, and that puts it within arm’s reach of a conjunction with Pluto. In other words, we’re stirring up 2012 on the way to 2012. Pluto brings some mysterious potency into the equation – kind of like the solstice itself, but with a good deal more gravitas. That said, the more immediate sequence is Sun-Uranus and Sun sextile Chiron in Pisces.

Have you ever played softball or Little League baseball? The players practice all sorts of plays, but then in the game the unexpected line drive gets hit, and the coach is shouting to the outfielders, “Look alive!” (or whatever they actually shout). This is one way to illustrate Sun-Uranus and Sun-Chiron. Squares bring challenging internal tension pushing us to act, and Uranus likes to surprise us with lightning strikes. Chiron not only indicates something that has been thought through a few times before (wound, problem, nagging intuition), but its placement in Pisces brings creativity to the process. So if you find yourself faced with a sudden problem, immediately shift into solution mode. Remember, if something does not have a solution, then it’s not a problem.

This bears repeating: Chiron tends to bring up things we’ve encountered before. Therefore part of the trick this time may be recognizing the problem for what it is. This is not a time to let it go by again, with that feeling in your gut that you keep ignoring. Take note, and take appropriate action. There is a creative solution. Sun square Uranus is bold, obvious and inventive.

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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Sagittarius weekly for Sept. 5, 2003.

Recent contact with family members or long-time friends may have you pondering the complicated patterns that make up your life. Are you ever really free from them, or must you live like a rat in a maze, free to choose which way you turn but with the possibilities limited by the design of the experiment? The answer depends on awareness. Current aspects are calling on you to review your past choices and assess your methods so you make critical professional decisions in the near future. Try to keep your complicated emotional state at arms-length from your equally complex mental state. Take situations one at a time. Move on to something else if you get frustrated.

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.

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Yes, it’s just one year till the winter solstice of 2012 — that is, at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. The Sun enters Capricorn tonight (Dec. 22) at 12:30 am EST. Yes, it is winter where I sit — if you live in the Southern Hemisphere please don’t be the Grinch Who Stole Winter Solstice. It’s a big turning point in the year for us.

If you would like to share your culture and open up your beautiful hemisphere to us Yankees up here in the north, send photos, your stories and tales of how you handle the opposition of the seasons in the context of so much astrological folklore being centered on places like England and Europe. We’re curious what it’s like down by you, and send some warmth to those of us who not only have short days but who also would freeze if we stood still for 20 minutes.

As for what I get into — it looks like the euro got bailed out today, to the tune of half a trillion in cool cash (or about $670 billion), despite the Sun entering Capricorn square Uranus. This may seem trivial but it’s a big deal because if the euro, or one too many countries in the Eurozone, or one too many banks there, goes belly-up, we’ve all got a big problem on our hands.

I cover the New Moon on Saturday as well as give an overview of what I am up to with Revolution. Revelation. Reality Check. — the 2012 annual edition of Planet Waves.

That, by the way, is now available to all readers.

Here is your program in the old player, where you’ll find the full archives and a downloadable zip file.

Lovingly,

Did you know that Planet Waves offers you a variety of astrological readings for every sign in audio format including birthday reports? You’re invited to check them out in our audio store. If you’d like access to Eric’s weekly and monthly horoscopes, visit this link to access your free trial to our premium twice-weekly astrology service.

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 explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

This week, I selected a card (if I can refer to it as precisely as ‘selected’) on a hunch: I decided to pick the 25th card of the minor arcana in recognition of the date of December 25, and my counting brought me to the Page of Cups. Right now, I’m hard pushed to think of a more appropriate card for the occasion of the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus.

The Page of Cups from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck. Cups represent emotions, our feeling natures. Click on the image for a larger version.

As a court card — along with the Knight, the Queen and the King — the Page will often represent a person in a reading, more often than the rest of the cards in the minor arcana, which tend to represent events, moods, traits, experiences. More specifically, the Page is associated with someone who is, if not younger, then youthful in outlook — childlike.

The Pages are also progenitors, in that they carry in them the seed of potential of their suit expressed in human form. This seed then grows through the worldly experience of the Knight, and matures when we assume responsibility in the guise of the Queen and King.

Finally, as one commenter pointed out in an earlier article that included the Page of Cups, the Page is an outsider in that his title implies that he is not strictly tied to the Queen and King as a blood descendant. He is in the royal family, but not of it. As writings about Jesus have described, from conception he was considered an outsider, and was ostracised throughout his life because of this. In this way, he developed a deep empathy for those who were cast out from society, and enraged many of those in authority for his teachings These were inclusive rather than exclusive, and served to bridge the divide between the outsider and the rest of society, between the individual and the collective.

When I look at the Page of Cups, I see someone who is youthful and energetic, simultaneously accepting and curious. He might be considered naive, but his openness means that he welcomes the strange appearance of a fish from the vessel that he is holding. Even an outsider has its place, no matter how strange we might judge it to be.

The Page’s dress is also a mix of red and blue: flesh and feeling. He is at once physical and ethereal, walking a line between both worlds. And yet his boots are brown, like the earth. He is grounded.

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