Hookay…it’s written. I’ve selected 11 unpublished photos and one very nice photo published a long time ago that everyone has probably forgotten, of Paris in the snow (these are for the 12 signs). The intro takes apart Saturn in Libra, gives some new spins on Pluto in Capricorn, talks about how the two meet in Novemner; and for the most part looks at this very curious total solar eclipse that is approaching. Our proofreader has gone through the whole thing and it’s all currently sitting in the Ukraine, where I belive Anatoly has finally gone to bed at about 6:30 am. I will leave the pre-publication price through the July 4 weekend and raise the price on Monday. If you’re a subscriber expect it in your inbox mid-day the 4th; we still have to go through a light production process; but we’re basically almost done. It’s been a LONG day. Good night and happy Bastille Day!

Dear Friend and Reader:

What a year it’s been. I’m sure you could think of a few things that haven’t happened, but not many. The past six months have taken us from one full-on burst of astrology to the next.

Eric Francis in Brussels.

I can’t offer you the three-week vacation you need, but I can offer some astrological insights about what the astrology of this year has really meant, and about what is on the radar.

So far we have experienced a high-intensity clustering that took us through Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces time; a Venus retrograde from Aries to Pisces; a Saturn-Uranus opposition and the Aquarius conjunction of Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune. I know a lot of you know exactly what I’m talking about, and if you don’t I’ll break it down in plan language for you.

As for what’s coming — a summer of eclipses, followed by Saturn changing signs shortly after.

This overview will be followed by a 12-sign horoscope available in three packages: Aries trough Virgo, Libra through Pisces and all 12 signs.

Thanks for the chance to do this — it’s great to have some extra time to consider the aspects and what they mean for all of us.

The links in purple above take you to order pages. Paypal is also available. To subscribe by phone, call (877) 453-8265.

I will end by saying this — we are in a very special time of history. You don’t need to look far to see this, but you do need to take in what your eyes and ears are telling you. And this is only the beginning. I have a feeling the most interesting years of begin an astrologer are before me. It’s good to be with you.

Yours & truly,

Scientific American reports:

Michael Jackson probably wasn’t a pedophile—at least, not in the strict, biological sense of the word. It’s a morally loaded term, pedophile, that has become synonymous with the very basest of evils. (In fact it’s hard to even say it aloud without cringing, isn’t it?) But according to sex researchers, it’s also a grossly misused term. If Jackson did fall outside the norm in his “erotic age orientation”—and we may never know if he did—he was almost certainly what’s called a hebephile, a newly proposed diagnostic classification in which people display a sexual preference for children at the cusp of puberty, between the ages of, roughly, 11 to 14 years of age…Based on this classification scheme of erotic age orientations, even the world’s best-known fictitious “pedophile,” Humbert Humbert from Nabokov’s masterpiece, Lolita, would more properly be considered a hebephile.

Editor’s Note: This article is from Next World Stories, the 2009 annual edition of Planet Waves. We will be posting these regularly, and you’ll be able to identify them by the yellow icon you see below. They are written by a writing team consisting of Jordan Merrell and Carol van Strum, both in Oregon. They are fictional satires; when you see that yellow icon, you’re reading science fiction, not a real news article. — efc

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Dee Dee Ann Barstow – Long Life Pharmaceuticals

The Social Satisfaction Chip (SSC) has finally been approved as an option for public use. Developed originally to conform the mentally ill into socially functional entities, the SSC has now been approved by the Food & Drug Administration for use in maintenance and repair of families and love lives.

For decades, the SSC was shrouded in controversy and conspiracy theories, although claims of alien abduction were not regarded with much credibility. Some victims claimed a chip had been implanted in them in an attempt to brainwash or control their minds. Government denials merely intensified the widespread belief in such a conspiracy, although the government has seemed as surprised as anyone else by increased UFO sightings.

The most controversial use of an implanted behavior modification chip, however, was its well-publicized use in control of unrehabilitatable criminal offenders. A major objection to the Criminal Rehabilitation Chip (CRC) was that individuals programmed to avoid violence and to obey all laws were thus rendered ineligible for military or mercenary service as well as politics, thus severely limiting career options. The chip developed for this use was undetectable without a special scanning device, to prevent unauthorized removal, and courts were liberal in allowing implantation without the knowledge or consent of the patient.

Unfortunately, the skyrocketing sales of three wildly popular electronic toys imported from China and Uraguay – the best-selling Vampire Finder and companion Zombie Detector, and at least one programmable Christmas tree topper – turned out to be due, in part, to their electromagnetic frequencies, which permanently de-activated the Criminal Rehabilitation Chips when used within twenty feet of the implanted person. The number of habitual criminals released with such implants and subsequently deprogrammed will never be known.

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Good morning lovelies,

I won’t be blogging today, at least not till later — I am finishing the midyear horoscope report, which looks in detail at our summer of eclipses, the sign change of Saturn into Libra and the Saturn-Pluto square that pretty much defines the last few months of the year.

Today we will have plenty of writing by other Planet Waves writers, including a selection from Next World Stories — and later in the day, a few more photos from Europe. (For Book of Blue readers, I’ve written a new installment in my compersion series, which for the first time recasts compersion as something associated with the opposite of guilt rather than of jealousy. I think this is a discovery.)

The Moon is in mid-Scorpio, about to square the triple conjunction (it’s currently precisely square Nessus) and about to oppose Venus and Mars overnight tonight. Lots is written about that alignment that in several articles below.

Please stay tuned.

Eric Francis

Oft times nothing profits more Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right Well manag’d.
– John Milton, Paradise Lost; 1667

Dear Friend and Reader:

When we look back honestly on this phase of history, we’ll see that one of the most profound issues of our day is a pandemic-scale crisis of self-esteem. We don’t need to look far for the manifestations of this, or for the causes. They surround us so completely that we barely notice them; or if we do, we assume they are an indelible part of existence. They are built into our relationships, which are often designed as shelter from the storm, but which don’t usually work.

Photo by Eric Francis / Book of Blue.

As Brian, my editor at Chronogram magazine put it when I ran this article idea past him, he’s noticing this most in people feeling like they are going insane because the world doesn’t appreciate who they are or what they have to offer. This is particularly strange in a world that has nothing but ever-increasing needs; in theory we should all be in greater demand.

To describe something as a crisis of self-esteem is to use a byword covering a great many potential situations. Ultimately they all come back to how we feel about ourselves and our existence. Do we feel good about who we are? On a deeper level, do we consciously notice our existence? Do we feel like we have a right to exist?

We may not be so articulate with ourselves. Usually, we get the data in emotional form. If we’re struggling, it may arrive as anything from depression (literally, the sense of being pressed down) to the challenges of adapting in a world that is not the same place from hour to hour. Adapting takes energy and being in a constant process of adjustment can consume nearly all of our energy.

But there is something else unique to our time in history that I think may hold the key: as a society and often as individuals, we live as if we have no responsibility to anyone or anything; not ourselves, not our society, not the world. I’ll give you an example. There is a large swath of society that feels like it’s entitled to do absolutely anything at all. There is a larger swath that allows them to get away with it.

It’s not just how we feel about ourselves that is suffering, but rather how we feel about very nearly everything. And in a word, that would be cynical. Cynical is another way of saying having no respect. Another way is suggesting that we live in a time of ethical bankruptcy, which is taking a personal toll in the form of a great many people feeling worthless. It should come as no surprise that most have done very little to earn that sense of worth from themselves.

Let’s get a definition of esteem up on the blackboard. According to Etymology Online, esteem means to estimate the value of something. The word dates to 1450. It was initially used the same way we currently use the word estimate, so that a conscious evaluation is implied, not simply a notion or a quality. The term self-esteem is neutral: it can represent a high value, a low one or something in between, pending evaluation. There is an accounting involved; and that implies accountability. This is precisely the opposite of getting away with anything you can, or letting others get away with anything.

As for self-esteem, Oxford English Dictionary defines it, perhaps too simply, as “a favorable appreciation or opinion of oneself,” and one of the first to apply the term was John Milton. The term was popularized by phrenology (a kind of pseudo-science involving reading bumps on the head), which assigned it a bump in the early 19th century.

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Photo by Eric Francis / Book of Blue

I was searching my Paris files, just in by Fed Ex from Belgium, for street photos of Parisian women. I didn’t find any of those today, but (along with several missing Book of Blue sessions from England, praise the gods) I did find these two images from 2005 that convey the energy and scale of the city, particularly the part where I lived, the Left Bank. Both of these photos are in the 5th Arrond. I knew it was a past life thing, but I could barely stand to cross the Seine to the Right Bank, where you find things like the Marais and the Hotel de Ville (city hall, not a Marriott). It just felt strange there, and I later discovered that some of the places I liked the least had been the home of a mass grave with more than 7 million sets of human remains (now Les Halles; the bones, about 16 centuries worth, were stashed down in the catacombs circa 1750). I had one haunt on the Right Bank, the artist squat at 59 rue du Rivoli, one of the first places I hung out with Danielle Voirin. In the image above, the Seine is to the right side of the photo — toward the north. The street along the river changes names about every 100 feet and nobody knows what it’s actually called. The image below, taken a few minutes earlier or later, is a common scene you see night after night, dinner cruise boats going by. Notice how high the river wall is behind the boat. Difficult though it is to believe, there have been rare times when the city has actually flooded. The cafe downstairs from my apartment had a nice collection of photos of people being rescued on the city streets in canoes.

Photo by Eric Francis / Book of Blue

Whatever is happening for you right now is what it feels like for the sky to have a lot of Chiron going on. We know there is a conjunction of Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune that has lasted for months, in the style of slow-moving planets. This is in Aquarius, the sign of ‘all of us here’.

Valencia, Spain. Photo by Eric.

Today Venus in Taurus is exactly square Chiron; Mars is close enough, applying in a square to Chiron, to be able to feel and represent something that is happening or developing. I’ve suggested before that Venus square Chiron is about a wide open erotic/emotional expression of Venus and that Mars square Chiron is often expressed as a kind of piety, purity or block.

They are something of corollary expressions and the interesting thing is they are happening at the same time. Any of us may be picking up one or both of the energies, through ourselves and/or another person; but the moral of the story is that we’re both going through the same experience, with ourselves and with one another.

They are different planets doing the same thing, and the emphasis here is on what our experiences have in common; on the fact that we have one another’s experiences in different ways; and that we might encounter an awareness-raising factor from differing emotional registrations. And they will be experienced by ‘the public’ (that is, the people around us, represented by Aquarius planets) in different ways.

There are many pleasant ways to experience this, many unpleasant ones and in the end the whole point is to have fun and pay attention; which would be about paying attention to how your past injuries are triggered by your experiences; what effect that has on others; and what we can do to treat one another more humanely in the midst of this all.

This story from yesterday’s Associated Press, however, is a vivid expression of the dynamics. Consider that he is a public person having normal human experiences. Follow carefully the words used, and what they represent in the coded language of a newspaper.

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Today the Moon in Libra and Mercury in Gemini are creating a grand air trine with the triple Aquarius conjunction. The Moon is also exactly opposite Eris at the moment, which turns the grand air trine into what’s called a kite pattern; there is a fire planet at the midpoint at two of the air positions, opposing the third. It’s easier to illustrate visually, but the pattern does indeed look like a kite — a triangle that is stretched at one end. At the same time, Venus and Mars are making a square to the conjunction from Taurus. So for today and the next few days we will experience this Aquarius pattern two ways: by trine from Mercury (flow of data) and by square from Venus and Mars, (which is less of a flow and more of a plunge). It should be vurry interesting. (I will be busy writing your midyear horoscope edition.)

Valencia, Spain. Photo by Eric.

Grand trines catch us in cycles or patterns that are easy to get into and difficult to get out of; the way out tends to be the point of the kite, and in this chart that would be Eris. She is suggesting we deal with the sense of high energy, high flow of mental power or simply lots and lots of thought by embracing a bit of te chaos; this includes the uncertainty of who we are (one of the key concepts of Eris in Aries; this being a placement that in all lasts about 110 years, which ends in 25 years or so).

In one sense, the grand trine — a highly organized pattern — has formed focusing around Eris in Aries, so it looks like we’ve piled a lot of air-sign-themed patterning (the Internet and all those portable devices, for example) around a sense of uncertainty. Why exactly does everything take five phone calls to arrange?

Meanwhile, Venus and Mars are still within three degrees of an exact conjunction, and they are moving into a square with Jupiter, Chirion and Neptune, a subject that was at the core of Friday’s edition of Planet Waves Astrology News.

Here is an excerpt, complete with the illustration:

During the next week or so, the celestial drama unfolds, if you can imagine such a thing. In astrology, imagination counts for a lot. The whole thing is a kind of legal fiction. It’s like a cartoon based on reality that creates reality as it goes; the more you notice, the more fun you have.

Celestial drama, artist’s rendition of SN 1993J. The bigger star sends seven suns’ worth of mass to its little partner, then explodes in a fiery death. Credit: ESA

Venus and Mars are in Taurus. Both are gradually sailing into a square aspect (90-degrees, fixed sign to fixed sign) with the triple conjunction of Chiron, Jupiter and Neptune in Aquarius. Can you visualize that? First Venus (the faster moving of the Venus/Mars pair) will square the triple conjunction, starting on July 1 when Venus squares Chiron (followed soon after by Jupiter and Neptune) then four days later, Mars squares Chiron. Of course, Venus and Mars will each square Chiron, Jupiter and Neptune; so this is a very complex dynamic, and it involves every sex, gender and gender role. Even a cross-dressing bisexual can’t worm out of this one.

A square also has a way of triggering events, but it has another way of being deeply introspective. It’s as if something that’s inside ripples out, as an event. Or as may be the case, a lot of events. My intention for explaining this astrology to you is so that you can use the aspects consciously and not get dragged into something negative — but rather, apply it to deepening your relationships, to raising consciousness and for some interesting sexual experiences.

To sum up in advance: the key to taking this astrology on a positive, constructive and interesting level rather than a negative and entangled one (abundant possibility here) is tossing hypocrisy out the door of your life. This astrology is a beacon for honest transactions.