By Len Wallick

Hopefully your local weather provided the opportunity to get out under the night sky this week. We hope you will make a habit of it as we in turn offer encouragement and tips regarding what to look for and where to find it. The idea is for you to form your own relationship with the luminaries, planets, stars and constellations, then pass that information on to your friends, family, lovers and most importantly to children.

In his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury writes of a world where burning books is considered an entirely proper and normal way to preserve the established order. There are even a class of civil servants, ironically called firemen, whose job it is to find books and burn them. However, there exists a secret society of people that seeks to protect and preserve the most important tomes by committing them to memory and passing them on.

Your humble servant suggests you consider the possibility that our personal contact with the cosmos, taken for granted over thousands, if not millions of years, may be at risk just as the books in the fictional story. Perhaps there is no intent, no conspiracy. One would hope. The lifestyle, air and light pollution that keeps us from knowing the sky as our ancestors did may simply be inadvertent, but the consequences are the same, leaving us without important knowledge. One could do far worse than to learn the Moon by heart.
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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Taurus weekly of Feb 06, 2004

Once again you’ve arrived at a point where you are able to break a deadlock on the way your parents’ limited perspectives have influenced the events of your life. I think this is something we need to do every day, but the influence of Friday’s Full Moon across the angles of your chart associated with ambition, security, professional activities and your home base suggest that you’re striving for an unusual degree of independence from the supposed limits that were set on you long ago. It is not necessary to understand their motives in order for you to move in wider circles of your own, but it is necessary to know the difference between being on a longer leash and the ability to roam freely where you will.

(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: This article continues our weekly series on the tarot. You can find some of the earlier ones by clicking the “tarot” category link above. For additional information on this week’s topic, here is an archive article by Eric on the Lovers/Art comparison. In case you want to experiment with the cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator. The formation is called the Celtic Wings spread. It’s based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells how to use the spread. We’re happy to respond to questions and will take direction from readers who comment, so please let us know what you think. You can visit Sarah’s website at this link. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

Side-by-side comparison of The Lovers and Art from the Thoth Tarot by Lady Frieda Harris and Aleister Crowley. This deck, designed and illustrated in the 1940s, was published in the late 1960s.

Today, we are going to use our previous article on The Lovers as a springboard to compare and contrast two cards — this time, though, we’re going to be looking at two different cards from the same deck: The Lovers (VI) and Art (XIV), both major arcana cards from the Crowley-Harris Thoth Tarot.*

But first…

A crash course in alchemy

“What has alchemy got to do with tarot?” you might ask. An understandable question. The answer, in this instance, lies with this particular tarot deck. The Thoth Tarot was created by occultist Aleister Crowley and artist Lady Frieda Harris, and its symbolism is based on several different disciplines. Alchemy played a significant role in Crowley’s life and the practice of his art; and it is alchemy that lies at the heart of both The Lovers and Art cards in the Thoth deck.

Start looking up “alchemy,” however, and you rapidly understand why it is referred to as an occult art. Occult simply means “hidden”; occultism is the study of hidden knowledge; and alchemy not only has many branches to it, it’s also hard to grasp if we take a purely left-brained view of it — its hidden meaning can elude us. So let’s engage our right brain along with our left, take a brief look at alchemy (far from comprehensive, but enough for our purposes here) and see where it leads us in an exploration of The Lovers and Art. (For those who are better versed in matters alchemical, feel free to add any expansions and corrections in the comments section.)

At its most basic and physical, the study of alchemy is the study of turning base metals into gold. Add another layer and it is the study of changing base elements into an elixir of life — a substance that confers immortality. Add a further layer and it is the study of spiritual transformation.

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A page from the AlterNet article unraveling the mythology around cannaibis.

AlterNet recently posted an article called “Five Things the Corporate Media and Government Don’t Want You To Know About Marijuana.”

One of the points covered is that anti-pot ads make people want to smoke pot. (I can vouch for this — the “anti-drug education” in my elementary school made me super-curious about drugs). The article has ad spots that are filled by an ad server. A company pays AlterNet to hold the space open, and then serves up whatever ads its clients provide. And as it happened, on one of those pages, an anti-pot ad appeared just above the part of the article that tells us that anti-pot ads make you want to smoke pot. You would think somebody planned it that way but I’m sure that nobody did.

Our weekly audio is back after I took a one week break — thanks for that. Today’s podcast covers how the cardinal cross has dissolved into something new: many moves by Venus, Mars and Vesta in the relationship-oriented signs Libra and Scorpio. We go from the sense of large, sweeping changes in society to deeply personal influences, but which are no less meaningful as the ripple through our emotions, into our households, circles of friends and the wider community.

I look at the chart of Ken Mehlman, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, who presided over the 2006 elections — Ken came out of the closet as gay last week, despite his long track record of making life extremely difficult for lesbian and gay people. We have an example of how the personal is indeed political, and a great example of what not to be.

I also take up last night’s episode on the Rachel Maddow program where her mic goes out in the middle of a tirade on how the Cheney-Bush administration lied us in to the Iraq war. I look at the chart for the Rachel Maddow Show, which is approaching its second anniversary, and also the ways in which the current Mercury retrograde aspected the natal Saturn of the program’s chart, giving the feeling that Big Brother was watching. Clearly, he is, though I don’t think that her mic going out was anything more than a technical glitch. But it definitely spooked her — a truly human moment along the razor’s edge of telling the truth with love. That’s Rachel.

Good morning critters,

I’m getting up and going and about to start your audio, which will cover Mercury conjunct the Sun, Venus getting ready to be retrograde, and other details and sweeping cosmic panoramas that tell the story of our wild world.

Please check back at about 10 am EDT.

ef

Today’s Oracle takes us to the Aquarius monthly of July 1, 2003

There are times when we are lucky, and there are times when we are lucky in love. You have both going for you right now, but they’re not separate experiences, and you can take neither for granted. In any case, what’s happening is a testament to the strength that’s released when necessary and long overdue growth finally comes. There are very good reasons why you’re destined to feel, to develop your feelings and understand your emotions as a primary way of being in the world, not as a long-term goal or extracurricular workshop theme. To put it simply, the more responsive to people you are, the more extraordinarily rich your rewards will be, and the more they will feel the gift of your company.

(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.)

Did anyone see this? A moment ago Rachel Maddow was tearing apart those who lied and slimed us into the Iraq war, dismantling all the excuses that were used by the Bush administration, when suddenly her mic went off. Now, a moment before, she was showing Bush joking at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner about “no weapons here, no weapons there,” and there was a brief interval where the audio goes off on the video — you can’t hear Bush for about the first seven seconds of that clip; then you get about seven seconds of Bush kidding about WMDs.

Audio goes out on Rachel Maddow. This chart is cast for Kingston, where I am -- it's a horary chart. Maddow herself is in New York City. Notice the Moon newly in Gemini, and the new planet Eris rising. Maddow has a prominent Eris in her natal chart.

Then they cut back to Maddow as she summarizes how disgusting it is that Bush had joked about this, and her audio goes off. She’s talking but you can’t quite hear her; it takes her a moment to figure this out. You can hear her on a microphone off to the side of the set. She taps her lapel several times and says, looks at the camera and says, “This is unusual.”

They cut to commercial — a few commercials. When she returns, they go back to a series of video snips that we just saw of Bush telling lie after lie. So there is a bit of backtracking but you don’t see Bush joking at the Correspondent’s Dinner.

After the video, they cut back to Maddow — and in her first words, she describes how she’s in her “home studio, not on a satellite feed,” and describes how the mic is hard wired to her lapel, keeping her “pinned to the desk.” Then she adds, “I’m such a conspiracy theorist, I cannot tell you what I’m thinking right now, it would discredit me forever.”

Then she resumes the segment. She’s still in that same segment, and one of her colleagues asks how she’s doing and she says, “Alright, I think.”

Astrology note: Mercury is retrograde; the Moon has just gone into Gemini. It was void of course in Taurus as Obama gave his short speech. Of the three MSNBC reporters who were commenting after the speech, including Chris Matthews and anchor Keith Olbermann, she was by far the most critical — actually angry (not that Keith was tame). Maddow’s piece is called “Credit Where It’s Due,” a comment on how FOX News and McCain and others want Obama to credit Bush for the “victory” in Iraq.

Maddow, who was more outspoken about the war at Air America, went gloves-off when her 9 pm time slot came up. Credit where it’s due. Indeed.

New Orleans Flood.

Editor’s Note: the following has been adapted slightly from the Cosmic Confidential Diary. There’s also an earlier article from the time as well — Katrina the Awakener. — Amanda

With all the interesting news this past weekend and a bit of travel thrown into the mix, I neglected to make note of the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina — the costliest natural disaster in United States history according to Wikipedia. Given what a huge event it was, I knew Eric must have some astrological insights about it tucked away in the archives. So off I went to search Astrology Secrets Revealed, Eric’s column that ran for years on Jonathan Cainer’s page.

The site did not disappoint, as this article from September 9, 2005 shows. Eric notes a couple of important factors in the astrology of that event, both earlier in the summer: Saturn entering Leo and a Capricorn Full Moon exactly on the solstice — that date when the Sun enters Cancer. In other words, it was an Aries Point event with exponential potency.

Eric writes:

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By Len Wallick

The cardinal T-square grinds on, as transitional as other cycles — earthly, celestial, big and small. The idea that one cycle can inform others is at the heart of your faithful servant’s work here on Planet Waves. Please keep that in mind through the days of our mutual service.

Up until now, the cardinal T-square has been a gathering of sorts. Where it all really began is up for discussion, but in 2008 Pluto got the whole shebang really rolling with its double ingress to Capricorn, a cardinal sign. The irresistible force of the metamorphic transformer came to shake immovable pillars of the established order.

The last time this happened was during an age of revolution in our lives on earth and our consciousness of the heavens: the revolt that originated the United States of America and the discovery of Uranus. For two centuries afterward, the revolution precipitated emulation all over the world. Uranus’ discovery opened our consciousness to the skies, science and mathematics as a means to extend our reach — even as our grasp was left behind.

In many ways we are still absorbing, adjusting to and struggling with the consequences of what happened the last time Pluto moved through Capricorn. That leaves open the question of whether we are prepared for this time around, even as we are two years into the process, and makes us question what direction the unavoidable evolution will take. Will we choose to leave the dross of the past behind, moving forward with the rare and refined? Or will we elect to become one with the dregs as our fine spirit evaporates? Continue Reading »