Today is Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012 – and just in case you haven’t heard, yesterday’s Internet blackout action worked (yay!). As emails and phone calls poured into Congressional offices, prominent supporters of the SOPA and PIPA bills (Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect I.P. Act) backed off – including co-authors of the bills.
Now there needs to be deeper discussion of the issues raised: copyright infringement, intellectual property, piracy, freedom of speech, and so on. Planet Waves knew that any short-term risk in blacking out this site was grossly outweighed by the long-term implications of this legislation. So THANK YOU for supporting our decision to participate.
Talk about an interesting way for the Sun to spend its next-to-last degree of tradition-loving Capricorn, right? Hanging out with its neighbors Neptune in the last degree of Aquarius (technology) and Saturn in the penultimate degree of Libra (justice) – while just across the street, the intensifying Jupiter-Chiron sextile focuses the social justice angle with immediacy. And it all adds up to a Uranus square Pluto moment: a citizens’ revolt against traditional Capricorn structures with a spontaneous, innovative action. This is what it feels like to have a multi-outer-planet ‘thing’ happen.
You can see how the astrology plugs right into this summary by The New York Times last night:
“Yet on Wednesday this formidable old [media] guard was forced to make way for the new as Web powerhouses backed by Internet activists rallied opposition to the legislation through Internet blackouts and cascading criticism, sending an unmistakable message to lawmakers grappling with new media issues: Don’t mess with the Internet.”
So, now what? Well, astrologically, the sky is still full of ‘fun’ as we head toward and through the weekend. Tomorrow the Sun enters Aquarius at about 11:10 am EST. We can usually feel a palpable shift in energy when the Sun changes signs, and tomorrow it plugs into a couple of those planets just mentioned — the Sun sextiles Uranus in Aries and squares Jupiter in Taurus. What do we feel when the ‘self’ archetype plugs into those conversations — but does so from a cool, detached, individualist-in-a-collective, techno-sign like Aquarius? It sounds like a lot of energy – bright, expansive, spontaneous self-expression, with drive and determination but without a lot of emotional attachment – or concern about what others might think.
Back in 1997, an Apple Computers ad campaign urged us to “Think different,” lauding “The crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels.” The ads noted that “the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
We just saw a little of that kind of crazy yesterday, with the Sun about to enter the same sign Neptune was in the process of entering when that ad came out – and is now about to leave. For the next few weeks, we may find it noticeably easier to push at the edges of our lives, to try something new, to think outside the box. This is a valuable time for us because Aquarius holds the secret of how to live within our society without being bound up in those things that would stifle our creativity. Aquarius makes it possible for us to be so ‘out there’, that it becomes a part of ‘normal’ culture.
This is how paradigms are changed, and that change has to start somewhere. Tomorrow’s ingress of the Sun into Aquarius is one starting point; the Aquarius New Moon on Monday is another, a time to plant the seeds of intention. We’re on the verge of a couple others, as Mars stations retrograde and the Chinese Year of the Dragon both start Monday, too. Daily Astrology will take a deeper look at those events tomorrow.
Today, feel around for the Venus-Pluto sextile (Pisces to Capricorn), exact now, if you’re feeling at all unsure about making use of these starting points – or changing a paradigm. Perhaps the most important paradigm to challenge is the one that suggests you must be anything other than who you really are to succeed. Venus-Pluto wants you to know that if you can let yourself feel your true beauty, strength and love down to your bones, it can’t help but be expressed creatively in a world that needs you to live in it fully.
Looking for insights on how this week’s astrology affects your personal Sun and rising signs? Try out Planet Waves Light, our streamlined horoscope service. For deeper cultural context and astrological investigation, the premium Planet Waves subscription includes the same horoscopes, plus extensively-researched articles on Fridays.
susyc,
Me too! I want to go out to college students and start a conversation about sex, relationships, power, masturbation, and all that fun stuff. It is the doing of it that I have no idea how to start.
I also want to write so people read what I write because I have so much useful information to share it is fairly bursting out of me at times.
“I’m really, truly grateful to work for a company headed by a person who can see the long view, believes in activism, and is open to doing something like shutting down for a day when the long-term risks to our ability to work our mission outweigh any potential short-term financial losses (which, gratefully, do not seem to have manifested). most of all, i’m grateful to work for someone who is willing to take a suggestion like this from an employee. i knew we had to get involved in this.”
Amanda,
Eric’s accessibility to his readers and his employees is one of the things I have always admired about him and the PW concept. He said way back when that he wanted to set up a new way of doing business…and there you have it. The new way. Isn’t it an amazing way to work and live?
If only all business owners changed to be open, accessible, listening to their employees as much as their customers and having the long view. Oh what a world that would be!
BR: oh fun! yes, the Whos were Heard!
Huffy/n/Susy: and “oh fun!” again – sex toy parties are loads of fun. Very girl stuff and a venue where many feel comfortable to purchase something a little more “personal” than they might otherwise feel comfortable shopping for. Totally a worthy endeavor for extra cash.
Ah Ceres…this is the last time I will prepare “treats” for an art gallery …. the baking project has moved off my radar. A different kind of ‘food’ needs my attention. (Meaning, I must get focus back on writing and painting. ALthough my baked goods are amazing, that is not “my business”, my path.) I’ve chosen to go “out”with that now just prior to the new moon and “in” with a spiritual quest just after. Perhaps Horton will speak to me in the meantime, helping out with understanding just what the heck my new path is.
The blackout was a great statement. The shift here is bigger – I believe it has to do with what supposedly perpetrated SOPA in the first place – something with the entertainment industry and copy-rights. There is something else that has to “give” to make balance for our new equation — re: creation and distribution of multi-media.
xo
susyc — rock those career options!
🙂
oh, and len — there have been at least a couple of other times a photo has been switched out shortly after publication. usually it’s for technical reasons; at least once, i’d apparently missed the mark thematically. in this case, i decided i could see more of the themes i’d written about in this one than in the other — and eric agreed.
don’t worry — eric’s vest will find its moment. kind of like the starfish photo i used last week. that one had two false starts in the Daily before it finally found its perfect moment.
Susyc – when my best friend got laid off last year, she seriously contemplated selling sex toys, it actually looks like a great job – you get invited into someone’s home (à la Avon), and show your wares to a group of women over tea and biscuits. Just a thought to add to yours… Good luck with it all! ps my friend is now teaching English in Cairo, and is extremely happy. So you never know where this search will take you…
hi len — changed my mind on the photo — we’ll use eric’s another time. 🙂
and thank you — everyone — for supporting our decision to go dark. the moment i read that some astrology bloggers were planning to do it, even for a little while, i knew it was something we needed to do & pitched the idea to eric.
that other astrologer was planning to use a WordPress plug-in that would allow people to click through. between the fact that we have not had good luck with some WP plugins, and more importantly, eric’s conviction that to have any meaning, the blackout had to be real and total, we did it our own way.
i’m really, truly grateful to work for a company headed by a person who can see the long view, believes in activism, and is open to doing something like shutting down for a day when the long-term risks to our ability to work our mission outweigh any potential short-term financial losses (which, gratefully, do not seem to have manifested). most of all, i’m grateful to work for someone who is willing to take a suggestion like this from an employee. i knew we had to get involved in this.
really, planet waves rocks — i am a lucky lucky gal to get to work and play here!
Horton heard the Who
So this is fun to read because it supports me in following up on the more ‘outrageous’ aspects of my employment considerations as I go through this period of transition in my worklife. Unemployed. My husband asked me what I was thinking and I replied, “Well the first two things that spring to mind are becoming a occupational sex therapist or opening up a 900 number.” Hmmm….maybe those two things are the same….the hilarious idea of running around all day, my greying hair put up in my big pink rollers, wearing my robe, talking to folks about sex. I have been told I have a nice voice…hmmmm….Or I can be a practical resource for disabled people who want to experience a satisfying sex life…hmmm…either one quite shocking in our Puritanical age, yes? Well. I have a lot of research ahead of me.
zerosity, PW writers & readers,
Let’s hear it for the goddesses, esp. Ceres and the Moon, but also Pallas-Athene and Eris, let’s not forget Eris. As to zero’s question/hope, now that we have proven to ourselves that we DO have the power to scare the bejezus out of Washington, we have no where to go but up, or out depending on your perspective.
I would call attention to the Moon at the time of the blackout was at 27 Scorpio 58. She sextiled the Sun, among other aspects (like trine Ceres), and that sextile connected to the asteroid Hera at 27 Gemini 57 by quincunx’s to form the ever popular yod, or finger of god aspect. Hera was the Greek version of Juno (Juno was conjunct the Moon at the time) and by virtue of her position in the sign of communication, powered by Scorpio and Capricorn energies, she made her point regarding equality of power.
It seems to me that PW and other sites are qualified for Capricorn status due to their longevity in the cyberworld. They have well established structures of protocol and process and power. Moon and Juno in Scorpio provide ample power themselves, along with a demand for equality and sensitivity to what are shared resources. The pressure to make this energy known was channeled to Hera in Gemini who is/was opposite the Galactic Center, the source of knowledge and love and higher consciousness. It is/was up to Hera and the GC to find a balance that worked for all.
Eris too, at 21 Aries, was sextile Pallas-Athene (with Nessus the centaur) at 21 Aquarius and they put that same yod pressure on Mars in Virgo, heavy with stationing-power to make his point regarding the details of the 2 bills and how they affect the service of the people who use the Internet. ( I would add the reminder that trans. Mars is also now conjunct the U.S. Neptune and the President’s Mars) Eris we know can make trouble when necessary, but having Nessus joining the goddesses really made the black-out impossible for Washington to ignore. But it is not for us to overlook the goddess-power, who, alongside the defining Uranus-Pluto square, which has pin-pointed the specifics of the revolution-of-the-day.
be
Thank you, HS. I’m mindful of the hurt that I caused by choosing something other than what we had been planning. I’m learning goodbyes are never easy, no matter how much we might try to temper their outcome.
Please, what happened to the fabric-close-up photo?
Thank you for your alternative photo, Amanda. It evokes the same textures on a different scale. Just curious. One does not often see a photo 86’d on Planet Waves.
Good for you Sarah! I’m very happy for you! I’m sorry about the ending too, but it feels as though you’re emerging the stronger for it, and merging with deeper sense of clarity. I wish you much joy and empowerment!
HS
“Perhaps the most important paradigm to challenge is the one that suggests you must be anything other than who you really are to succeed. Venus-Pluto wants you to know that if you can let yourself feel your true beauty, strength and love down to your bones, it can’t help but be expressed creatively in a world that needs you to live in it fully.”
Thank you, PW! I just ended a relationship that, momentarily, took me back into the land of feeling broken, which is a land I inhabited (through no-one else’s fault but my own) in both my marriages; my personal “formidable old guard”. It is no reflection on my partner-as-was, but what I realised was that I couldn’t stay in that paradigm any more. I’ve experienced the potential for something different over the past year, and I’m moving forward.
Thanks for the fantastic news! First read it here – as I’ve been teaching all morning, stuck in a classroom. Hope this incredible, mass online community protest sets a precedent for more such protests, power to the people… And simply GORGEOUS photo, Amanda.
Oooh, oooh – Sun in Aquarius sextile Uranus in Aries also means Sun sextile Ceres in Aries: can we expect some of this planetary “fun” we’ve just witnessed/experienced to extend to Earth and food issues?
Given Tuesday’s PW discussion and yesterday’s ‘net events, I surely would love to see something similar happen.
JannKinz
Eric,
Talk about defying convention. Thank you for a photograph that breaks the old rules and sets a new standard.
Many thanks to Eric, Amanda and others who conceived and executed the intentional and conscious participation of Planet Waves in the day the Net stood still.