Dear Friend and Reader:

IN RESPONSE to recent inquiries about my consulting, here are the basics, which cover how to request a consultation, what consultations involve, my availability, and the waiting list policy.

Eric Francis in Book of Blue Studio.

I currently work two days a week as an astrology consultant (Thursdays and Fridays, with other special times as well). After a nearly two-year break, I’ve been working down the waiting list list steadily since last summer, including catching up with clients who requested sessions as early as three years ago. There may come a time when I stop or pause doing sessions because other work takes precedence. However, I am committed, if possible, to working with everyone on the waiting list prior to any decision to stop.

If you are local in the Hudson Valley, we skip the waiting list and work together at our earliest mutual convenience. This is also true for anyone willing to travel in order to do a session (I am fairly near Albany and New York City, in Kingston, NY). In emergency situations, such as illness, accident or serious family crisis, we generally skip the list and get the client in as soon as possible.

I enjoy the work that I do, and after nearly a decade and half it continues to be challenging and satisfying, and I’m well prepared for never knowing what’s going to happen or what I’m going to hear when the phone rings. I bring 20 years of highly eclectic humanistic, transpersonal and spiritual training (including doing A Course in Miracles in residence for a year), plus experience as a tarot reader and about 15 years experience as an astrologer. Many years as a journalist have refined my listening and analytical skills. And I have presented sexuality workshops around the U.S. since 1997, which makes this a topic about which I feel a sense of ease and easy communication.

My work is client-centered rather than chart centered; that is, the chart plays a vital role in the work, but the focus is on you. It is less a straight “reading” and much more of an interactive process where you and your chart both participate in the dialog. I work with minor planets and can address any question you have about their role in your chart and your life; these include Chiron, Pholus, Nessus, Eris, Varuna and others you have read about here and elsewhere.

The work may cover any subject that you need to work with or work through. It is true that people bring to me material they would not dare discuss with their therapist, spouse or even a close friend. While I don’t feel I am capable of true objectivity, I have a viewpoint that can, at least, allow for the presence of any experience or opinion. I will respond from my own point of view, and own my perspective and opinions, making them available to you. This article tells you a bit more about the process I’ve developed.

I also do teaching sessions for professional astrologers currently in practice who want to bring the minor planets into their work.

Once you have had your initial session, future sessions are available sooner and at a reduced rate.

It is an unusual privilege to do this work, and the members of my support team will do our best to provide you with a positive experience at what may be a significant turning point in your life. And we are working efficiently to make sure you get your session within a reasonable time. Please note that I will be suspending client work through part of November, December and January to do Next World Stories, the 11th annual edition of Planet Waves.

In response to questions about whether I travel, I will go to most major cities where there are 10 sessions and a class booked. So if you have a group of people who are interested in doing astrological work and attending an evening workshop. Please call to discuss those arrangements.

To request a spot on the client list, we ask that you be a current subscriber to a Planet Waves product. You can purchase a short subscription, or subscribe to Small World Stories (our very economical annual edition), but working with me personally is a privilege we reserve for those who feel the Planet Waves mission, message and public calling is worth supporting.

Once you’re a subscriber, you can then contact Chelsea Bottinelli, our office manager. That can be by phone at (877) 453-8265 or (206) 567-4455 for international callers. Explain what you need and she will guide you from there. Those who get onto the waiting list before Aug. 31 will be eligible for the current rate. Those who get on the list on August 1 or after will be under the new rate structure, which will bring an increase of about 20%. Those who get on the list prior to this time preserve the lower rate.

If you would like to see my page in Wikipedia, here it is.

Thank you for your interest in my work and in Planet Waves. I look forward to speaking with you soon.

Yours & truly,

Dear Friend and Reader:

ShakeMap of earthquake in China.

Yesterday’s earthquake in China is the second of two recent events that qualify as Aries Point events. The first was the cyclone (known in our culture as a hurricane) that made landfall in Burma on May 2 and has, so far, killed an estimated 100,000 people.

Earlier in May, I explained how the May 5 New Moon was precisely on the cross-quarter — that is, at 15+ degrees of a fixed sign, in this case Taurus. I explained how this is 135 degrees (a sesquiquadrate aspect, which is a square plus a semi-square) to one of the cardinal points, which tends to magnify the news. In the past decade, all these events have the feeling of what used to be called Earth changes (this language originally came from Edgar Cayce and was adopted by the New Age in the 1980s). Two other memorable examples of Aries Point events are the Sept. 11 false flag attacks and the Asian tsunami of late 2004. Each has this sense that “something big is happening” and if you’re the type to use such language, “the end is near.”

The New Moon was square the centaur planet Nessus. A friend summed it up well when she wrote that Nessus “is associated with the dynamics of power and abuse, and in Aquarius is about those situations we are all collectively responsible for.” The concept of responsibility stands tall now: both tragedies are mired in politics, including American politics. We could do more; we cannot (for one example) offend China, from whom we borrow $2 billion a day.

Yesterday’s was a 7.9 magnitude earthquake, the worst in the region since 1976. For the record, 7.9 is not the same thing everywhere. I felt a 6.8 once and though this is significantly less, it felt like a Jell-o mold jiggling; the beer bottles didn’t fall of the shelf in the local tavern. If the waves hit a different way, you can level part of society.

This is the second major disaster since the Taurus New Moon. As Judith Gayle writes in our Political Waves feature about the cyclone in Burma or, officially, the Union of Myanmar:

Take the Myanmar tragedy, with the complications projected to take a million lives; relief is still being kept out generally, but the junta continues to vigorously export rice to Bangladesh and other points, while throwing their citizens the spoiled leftovers. The “election” went on as planned, even though 100,000 people are dead or unaccounted for and the country is in chaos.

I sincerely feel that astrology needs to get out of the business of predicting disasters — you won’t read that stuff here — but we do need to see the patterns for what they are and know what we are dealing with. So, an estimated 10,000 have died at one time in one day (it’s China, so you can quadruple it), and 10 to 100 times more in Myanmar. This is beyond comprehension — think of the families of all those people, the communities lost, the networks.

What is particularly sad regarding the event in China is the proximity to Tibet, one of the true points of historical grief on the planet at the moment. Associated Press reported that the earthquake occurred along a faultline “where South Asia pushes against the Eurasian land mass, smashing the Sichuan plain into mountains leading to the Tibetan highlands - near communities that held sometimes violent protests against Chinese rule in mid-March.”

Rescue workers in China uncover rubble where 900 students are trapped under their collapsed school. Image: Shanghai Daily.

Then consider how about 154,000 people a day leave the planet, every day. Consider how an estimated 24,000 of those people a day die of hunger, every day — many thousands of them children. Consider in light of the Sept. 11 false flag attacks, wherein 2,998 people died, and then the United States tore up Afghanistan and Iraq, and is apparently still planning an attack on Iran. To be clear, on Sept. 11, many more children died of starvation than New Yorkers perished in the event. And we don’t hear about them except on late night infomercials. We still hear about Sept. 11 in one form or another every time a politician opens his or hear mouth.Therefore, while it’s deeply tragic and truly beyond the sphere of an individual’s understanding to hear of these events, I suggest that what we need to be questioning is the death manufacturing industry. We are not impressed until these deaths happen all at once; it’s like we don’t notice the pain of the world otherwise.

And there is plenty of it now. And that, too, presents a paradox: awareness immediately leads to the awareness of the world’s pain. We have a lot of incentive not to pay attention. At least these events cause us to notice for a little while.

This being said, we have the question of how to respond. Is this rightly an excuse to stop living the adventure of our lives? Well, not if we really are doing that, and many of us know perfectly well that we are not. In which case, we can remind ourselves of the fleeting transience of existence as we perceive it, take a breath and resolve to live every day.

Tuesday 13 May 2008

Pallas (26+ Aries) trine Galactic Center (26+ Sagittarius)
Mercury (14+ Gemini) septile 1992 QB1 (22+ Aries)
Atlantis (14+ Libra Rx) sextile Great Attractor (14+ Sagittarius)
Mercury (14+ Gemini) quincunx Pandora (14+ Scorpio Rx)
Juno (27+ Sagittarius Rx) trine Orcus (27+ Leo)
Venus (15+ Taurus) sesquiquadrate Pluto (0+ Capricorn Rx)
Mercury (14+ Gemini) trine Nessus (14+ Aquarius)
Atlantis (14+ Libra Rx) sextile Ixion (14+ Sagittarius Rx)
Mars (2+ Leo) quintile Atlantis (14+ Libra Rx)
Venus (16+ Taurus) sesquiquadrate M87 (1+ Libra)
Eros (4+ Gemini) opposite Hylonome (4+ Sagittarius Rx)
Ceres (17+ Gemini) quincunx Psyche (17+ Scorpio Rx)
Psyche (17+ Scorpio Rx) trine Varuna (17+ Cancer)
Amor (6+ Taurus) quintile Neptune (24+ Aquarius)
Apollo (26+ Cancer) quincunx Galactic Center (26+ Sagittarius)

January 10, 2002 - Cancer - Weekly

Sitting here wondering just how to put into words such a beautiful new moon in your house of relationships two Grateful Dead songs come to mind both with the idea of rolling in their words: Let the Good Times Roll and Franklin’s Tower (roll away the dew). You can trust the flow of what is happening in your life. I know things got strange with people for a while there and it really shook your faith in the one attribute of this life you cherish the most. And we both know there can be no doubt that to open your heart involves risk. These days it’s a risk well worth taking.