Dear Friend and Reader:

This is the week of the Democratic National Convention. Being familiar with the astrology of many news events after they happen, I am scanning this week’s aspects for some indication of the size and scope of the events from a historical perspective. This campaign has already been amazing from a historical perspective; imagine how Martin Luther King would feel watching.

Psychedelic rendering of Dr. Sigmund Freud.

I am not a big fan of the political process. Politics itself, I enjoy, primarily when I get to be a campaign writer or an editor in the middle of a campaign, actually influencing the public, conducting endorsements and so on. I’ve known some politicians who I’ve truly loved and who it’s been an honor to serve. That’s the part of the process I like; I don’t like it down here it as a plebe, listening to peoples’ non-thought process.

At this stage in my life, I see the political drama as primarily psychological. I think that most people’s reasons for choosing a candidate are basically psychological and emotional and have nothing to do with the issues or the quality of the person who is running. Psychological to me breaks down to two major components: parental issues and sexual issues. Of course, this is not spoken about; imagine it getting onto CNN. It’s precisely what CNN is there to conceal.

Who reminds you of the guy you want for a daddy? Remember we live in a mainly fatherless society. So many of us are looking for daddy. And the kind of daddy we want is the guy we support or vote for.

Then there is sex. Ladies and Queer men, who would you like to fuck? Straight guys — which candidate is less sexually intimidating to you? Who would you want your wife or girlfriend voting for on this basis? Wouldn’t you love to see THAT as a panel on CNN? This would be getting closer to the heart of the matter.

So I think that it’s interesting, verging on funny, that the night Barack Obama is scheduled to make his acceptance speech, Mercury makes an exact square to Pluto. This aspect would make Sigmund Freud drool, if he believed in astrology (his colleague Jung did, and he would probably just laugh). I’ll try to make it simple without oversimplifying it out of existence. Squares represent internal tension, and this particular tension involves where the mind (Mercury) meets all things Plutonic in nature (I’m capitalizing it so you don’t think I mean “platonic,” which would be the opposite in this context).

Mercury square Pluto is this tension that one carries internally and it involves how one’s mind processes the deep deep, you know, deep stuff of Pluto. The taboo stuff. The stuff you don’t normally say, and you don’t normally think, but you do feel it. And most of all, you experience the tension and you project into the form of something you think you see. We all carry around sexual darkness and some of us carry around a whole boatload of unprocessed sexual darkness, as well as stuff around death and abandonment. What the Course in Miracles calls “the fear to look within” is translated into what we see outside ourselves, and in the process deny ownership of.

A man named Wilhelm Reich was observant of the role that being darker plays for those who are lighter in color. In a book called The Function of the Orgasm, he explains that lighter colored people tend to project the idea of sexual potency onto darker colored people. This can stir up a lot of fear, i.e., you’re an Italian woman and you fall for a black guy and you fear that your father is going to “kill” you or “kill” him. Reich believed and indeed demonstrated that this is the basis of racism, including antisemitism; right up to and including the Holocaust.

I’ll leave you with one Wilhelm quote to start your day. Here ya go…

The character structure of modern man, who reproduces a six-thousand-year-old patriarchal authoritarian culture is typified by characterological armoring against his inner nature and against the social misery which surrounds him. This characterological armoring of the character is the basis of isolation, indigence, craving for authority, fear of responsibility, mystic longing, sexual misery and neurotically impotent rebelliousness.

Planet Waves coverage of the Democratic National Convention will continue through the day and through the week.

Yours & truly,

==

Here are the aspects, written mostly by Genevieve Salerno, with some editing/additions by me.

25 Monday: The Moon in Gemini opposes Pluto in Sagittarius just as tonight’s Democratic National Convention begins. Then she enters Cancer at 8:18 pm EDT, about two hours after the Democratic National Convention opens. Uranus sextile Sedna. Sun opposes Teharonhiawako in Pisces. Leo Ceres trine Hylonome in Sagittarius.

26 Tuesday: Ixion stations direct in Sagittarius. This reminds me of the curiously 1990s and forward issue of what we are willing to do or support in the name of our religious beliefs.

27 Wednesday: Moon enters Leo, 10:51 pm EDT, as the convention comes to its peak (where it will remain for Obama’s scheduled speech).

28 Thursday: Mercury in Virgo square Pluto in Sagittarius.

Eros in Virgo square Chaos in Gemini. Genevieve Salerno writes:

Love is the power that created the Universe. It is Love that first began to define the difference between lovers, noting each feature that made them different, making the different creatures, and realms, and skies, and seas. Why do we Love one person one way, but not the other the same way? Because of the differences inherent in each person. And it is also Love that defines the Sameness of everything. This, to me, defines the Chaos aspect for today.

In mythology, Chaos was the primordial force of creation. I envision the freedom that is born of desperation (which occured eariler this month), and the liberation that is born from the shattered taboo of coming out of the closet, loving beyond race, ilk, age, interest. This aspect extends to other things as well.

There is something that every person on this Earth craves that is idiosyncratic to the demeanor they project. Perhaps to seek out this craving is the escape hatch from a persona that has become too rigid. To Love is the first act of expressive desire, and the first proclamation of the power of self. Today’s aspect says: “Love, and you’ll know yourself.”

29 Friday: Mercury enters Libra. Venus square Pluto. Moon enters Virgo at 2:18 am EDT. Mars in Libra sextile Pholus.

30 Saturday: New Moon in Virgo! (Already? It’s been a month since the total solar eclipse in Leo?) Quaoar stations direct in Sagittarius. Venus enters Libra.

31 Sunday: Mars sesquiquadrate Neptune. Eros square Great Attractor. Ceres in Leo square Deucalion in Scorpio. Genevieve sums up her take on Deucalion (which is a planet orbiting our sun slightly beyond Pluto, in the class of bodies called Cubewanos — these are named for creation or resurrection deities).

According to Greek mythology, Deucalion was the son of Prometheus. He can be equated with Noah in that he was chosen, by premonition, to be spared from the Great Flood that Zeus sent allegedly to destroy mankind. He and his wife sailed for nine days and nights, until they reached Mt. Parnassus.

Upon setting foot on dry land, Deucalion made an orison to Zeus, who sent word back that he could have any wish granted that he desired. Deucalion wished for the world to become repopulated. The means to this request came to him in the form of a riddle: “Throw your mother’s bones over your shoulder.”

He and his wife took stones that they found and tossed them behind. These stones became the new race. This myth is crucial in demonstrating the belief ancient people held in the Earth as Mother. It is a Universal theme; many examples are found in primitive mythology. The themes of this aspect with Ceres, the mother of all grains (a human staple for millenia), are heavy.

With Mars sesquisquare Neptune we have our urgent Mars desires making an attempt to call out the delusions spun by Neptune, the master of illusion or faith. Mars is a personal planet. Neptune is a generational, group-consciousness entity, but no less personal.

We know when we are not getting what we want, and it only takes a minute of thought to pinpoint what we need. But it is very hard to swim against the current when we know something is amiss and we feel like we are the only ones. But Ceres, Goddess of grain (a staple of the human diet since (wo)man walked upright in the grass) and version of Mother Earth, is in Leo. The idea that when we walk in tune with the Divine, the Divine provides for us, is a very old idea. For some reason, our current situation is bombarded with hope blackening processes, but this golden idea remains.

When we begin to take little steps, each step becomes easier, until we have to imagine the time when taking the steps was difficult. This is the relationship between Leonine Ceres, and Deucalion in Scorpio. It is very easy to become fixated on the negative aspects of our lives and the life of the environment, but hope is our most important ally. And hope is like a fire. When you feed it, it grows. Today feed yourself some spirit food, seek out a healing pleasure; you will begin to feel the difference. It’s your strength taking root.

Technorati Tags: Astrology, Campaign '08, freud, obama, sex

Dear All,

It was with great interest that I read Eric’s recent article ‘What are we doing when we do astrology?’ and as I already have a copy of my birthchart I followed up his advice to getting an ephemeris with enthusiasm.

However when I followed this up, it wasn’t the simple process I imagined, and I seemed to have far more questions than answers. Which are as follows:

Do I get a ephemeris that covers my year of birth or the current date? Does where you were born and live (the UK in my case) affect which ephemeris one purchases? And why do you need an ephemeris in the first place? And what exactly is an ephemeris? I would be delighted if you could answer one or more of my queries. With thanks,

Cynthia (a Capricorn if you hadn’t already guessed!)

==

Dear Cynthia,

I KNOW THAT I have at least one story about everything except milking a pig, but I do have a funny ephemeris story.

Apparently I wanted to be an astrologer before I knew quite what an astrologer (or an ephemeris) was. Here is how I know. I was in my old attic one day rummaging through stuff, it must have been around 1996, and I unearthed a letter from the first astrologer I ever knew, Flo Higgins.

Apparently I had written to her and said that I was an astrologer or wanted to be an astrologer, and she wrote back and asked me if I had an ephemeris. And I said, “What’s an ephemeris?”

Well, she wrote back to me incredulous, and that was the letter I found. “What do you mean you don’t know what an ephemeris is? How can you be an astrologer if you don’t know what an ephemeris is?” She went on for a while, in this approximate tone.

I’m sure you can imagine, I blushed a bit; I was more capable of embarrassment in those days. At least by that point I was well accepted as an astrologer and solidly devoted to it, with a couple of ephemerides of my own. I wish I had that letter; I would frame it.

The ephemeris is the basic astrological tool. It is literally a schedule of the planets and their movement, with various other bits of information thrown in based on the publisher’s or author’s fetishes. It does not include your place on the planet; that is the job of an atlas. The ephemeris gives the positions of the planets in space and the atlas helps you morph that data with your local coordinates and from the two you get a horoscope chart.

The world Long. in the ephemeris table on the right (which comes from Raphael’s Ephemeris) means longitude, which is the east-west coordinate used to determine a planet’s position relative to the Earth; that is, the position in space. You can see the glyphs for the planet across the top; the days go down the left side; you recognize the signs Cancer (for Mercury and Venus) and Aries (for Mars) which are the positions on that particular day. At the top, that month’s Full Moon day, time and position are listed. They are listed several other places as well.

As you will read in Wiki, the word ephemeris means daily. Note also that it is an astronomical tool; it is not specifically made for astrologers. But since there are more of us than there are astronomers, we have helped keep them alive during times when they might otherwise have disappeared entirely (notably, plenty of times before the advent of science, which would have sort of delayed the invention of astronomy).

It tells you what planet is in what degree of the zodiac what day; whether it is retrograde, stationary or direct; and most tell you the declination, or height above the celestial equator. Another section of the page is the aspectarian, which tells you what a planet is doing in terms of its aspects to other planets.

The thing about an ephemeris is that you can do anything with it. If you have a good one, you can write a daily horoscope with it. A one-year ephemeris is about 3mm thick, so that is a lot of data in a small place. Prior to computers, they were the only thing an astrologer used to cast a chart, of course, with the exception of math. There is a third part of the ephemeris called the Table of Houses, which is the thing used to calculate the house cusp divisions in the chart. Now, computers do all of this and people are slowly losing the art of casting charts by hand — something that I never learned to do.

The information you get is the same as in a chart, but the chart is a snapshot of time for a single moment, while an ephemeris gives you all the data you need to cast charts for any time for an entire year.

I’ve given a sample of a few lines from an ephemeris in the graphic above, and a sample of a lunar aspectarian in the graphic below. These are from Raphael’s Ephemeris.

They all used to come in the form of a book, usually a thick one. This book is arranged in columns, and down the side is the date and across the top is the planet and you look up the position of a planet like a train schedule, only it’s less confusing. There are not certain planets available only on Wednesday night but not on Sunday morning.

I recommend that you get a book, even if you can get the same data online. An online ephemeris can provide much more data (for example, it can list a hundred planets, which a book just cannot do) and do calculations, but it is, I think, vital to both keep tradition intact and also to have at least limited data in a portable format, such as a book. Books also make for easier scanning, but here is an example of a printable monthly ephemeris for just one planet, Chiron, that covers a couple of hundred years.

I recommend a full century one, if you want to study astrology. Because we’re near a turn of a century, with most brands of ephemeris this means you need two books, one for the 20th (when most of us were born) and one for the 21st (where most of us are headed, even deeper than we are now). The better ephemerides (pronounced e-femme-a-rides, which is plural for ephemeris) cover periods like 1930 to 2030.

The reason you want a book ephemeris is for ease of research; and so you don’t have to be on both a computer and the Internet to do astrology.

There are other book-formats that are single year. The most famous is Raphael’s Ephemeris. It is the universally accepted bible of the British astrology world, and it’s a good publication. I think they plan to list Chiron in the 2050 edition and Eris in the 2100 edition, but if you can stand having a thing that lists only nine planets, and a lot of other cool stuff, this is something to get. You can obtain them in the United States from the Astrology Center of America. (You can get most other ones there, too, with one notable exception, which I will get to). Here is the ephemeris page from that website. On this page, if you look around, you’ll find samples pages from different publications. They also have their own ephemeris.

Raphael’s is the only truly notable annual. Eventually you will start collecting. If you ever see them in a used bookstore, buy them all; if you don’t know what to do with them, I’ll buy them from you.

My favorite of them all is the Aureas Ephemeris. It is published in Paris, around the corner from where I used to live (that is another ephemeris story, I’ll save it for another time — it’s getting late). You can’t get this one in the United States. It’s expensive; you can only get it from France or maybe England (try The Astrology Shop in Covent Garden), and if you want to be an astrologer or a serious student, it’s worth the approximately $100 it will cost you to have one. The website is extremely cheesy. It’s no reflection on the book, which is amazing, which lists new planets, as well as the intensity of eclipses, the Dark Moon and other cool stuff. It’s the one I use every single day.

The Rosicrucian Ephemeris is okay, but the printing has become sloppy, and the Rosicrucians believe that astrology should only be done for free. So if you’re planning a professional career, I would suggest skipping this one except maybe for your collection. They do list Chiron and I think they have got around to Ceres.

The American Ephemeris is a good one, and it’s a landmark — the first to be calculated by computer, by one of the saints of astrology called Neil Michelson. It was the first to list Chiron, way back in the day; and I think the New American Ephemeris (a major revision of the original, by Rique Pottinger) has some asteroids. However, the problem with this publication is that it’s split along the turn of the century, so you need two volumes; not a big deal, and I would rate it as second best after Aureas.

Once you have the thing, then what do you do with it? I’ll save that question for next week.

Yours & truly,

NOTE TO ASTROLOGY READERS: If you prefer the Daily Picture Page as your homepage, please set your bookmark dial to http://planetwaves.net/main.html and that will take you there. The page you’re on now (called Page Two or the blog page) is always linked from the Picture Page, but you can get to it fast by using our simple domain, PlanetWaves.net.

Welcome if this is your first visit to Planet Waves. We offer published services that are designed to bring the full energy and elegance of astrology to a much wider audience than I could work with one-to-one. Among our tools for doing so are highly unusual horoscope columns. If you would like to get a sense of the feeling and ideas, here is one called Inner Space, for August 2008. More information is directly at left. If you’re curious about the process I go through writing horoscopes, here is a small collection of articles on the subject.

We’re doing a lot more than horoscopes; we offer a viewpoint that integrates personal growth with astrology and the affairs of the planet at this crucial time — the journalism of the future right in this moment. Thanks for tuning in…

Dear Friend and Reader:

I am slowly going deeper into the newest Radiohead CD, In Rainbows. Like everything I’ve ever heard by these guys, I don’t like it at first, then gradually it grows on me like a vine and doesn’t let go.

Thom Yorke is my favorite harbinger of the apocalypse — of the message, It’s Time To Move On. Move on from what? Our obsession with death and negativity; our devotion to escapism; our worshipful devotion of fear; our refusal to feel, including to feel our situations for what they are or are not. It’s time to move on from anything that depletes us and does not nourish us. From the fucked up mess we thought we were.

(I’ll return to Yorke with his chart around his birthday in early October. He is more living proof of my “human blowtorch” theory of Libra.)

I was just wondering yesterday what music or art or writing would represent our moment like a DNA capsule, and a song I’ll introduce you to in a moment reminds me that usually, Radiohead does it for me. One of the central dilemmas of our lifetimes is that so many of us have so much power in our hands, yet ultimately feel inert at the prospect of using it — perhaps because we are so attached to our comfort that we can’t embrace the need to do something more primal and just survive for the long haul. And on the other side of the tracks, some of us are so wedded to the raw struggle to survive that there’s just no way to embrace any greater possibility. How many people think they have “succeeded,” but fear they have done so at the cost of their own soul?

I think we’re in a moment with very little hope but that offers no choice except to take in whatever joy life has to offer, and to be real — as real as we know we are inside, realer than we think we’re capable of being, so real that it feels dangerous — with ourselves and the people around us.

Usually when you’re interpreting poetry, it helps to be able to point to references in the text that support your interpretation. Just as in life, this is not always possible with poetry or lyrics. Yorke writes like he’s thinking specifically about something and describing it precisely. But he often does so in an open and elliptical way that allows you to feel what he’s saying without being to express it, then to bring your own story to the words.

Here is a song called Reckoner from In Rainbows. I would love to know what you think, to know where this song takes you. I’ve included the words on the page at PlanetWaves.FM and I’ve played it about 11 times so far tonight.

So, astrology, and life. We have come through these eclipses, hopefully no worse for the wear. I am hearing that a few of us got banged up, I know a friend who was in a pretty good car accident with her kid but everyone is fine. Another friend got a tick bite and needs to take antibiotics. I had a profound aspect of a prior incarnation open up during a healing session in the interclipse interval, and I have been feeling better since having the chance to process even a little of the emotional material that came up. I’ve also been handed two assignments by a top environmental journal in the UK, and then I was referred onto one of their best sex journals and hired to write my first professional foray into erotic fiction. I’ve been having plenty of fun with the amateur stuff lately.

Here are Genevieve’s interpretations for this week’s aspects, which are calculated by Serennu.com and a bit of help from Raphael’s Ephemeris. I’ve mingled in some of my own commentary among Genevieve’s, I won’t distinguish who’s is who’s. We begin as of this writing Sunday night with the waning Moon in Pisces about to make a conjunction to Uranus/Prometheus, which could make for some pretty wild overnight dreams.

18 Monday: Mercury trine Jupiter. Pholus stations direct in Sagittarius. In the final degree of Virgo, Mars sextile Ceres in Capricorn. Pholus is like a battery, and it can hold its charge for generations. Stationing direct in Sagittarius, still harmonized with Nessus and Chiron in Aquarius, is like a release of pent up faith in ourselves.

19 Tuesday: The Moon enters Aries at 10:10 am EDT. Mars enters Libra at 6:03 am EDT. The opposition takes place while both planets are at the end of mutable signs. The inspiration to make connections with people or places could be overlooked if you don’t look it over. Speaking of look, yes, and anyone you can stare at longingly you can walk up to and say hello.

20 Wednesday: Sun trine Pluto sesquiquadrate Jupiter. Generosity is the result of a level of the ego being dissolved. That level is the level that decides what we need and do not need. This feeling is part of the discernment process of Virgo, who separates, puts things in order, digests them, and breaks them down. The Sun has entered Leo’s final degrees, and the energy of life-force that emanated from the Leo Sun is transmuting into Earth energy, where all those heat and rays were picked up by the metabolic processes of all creature.

On a practical level, this translates into the desire for a more pristine existence, to finally go through your wallet and throw out all the old receipts, business cards, coupons and expectations in anticipation of new arrivals. Have you ever cleaned out your fridge of all the old food and condiments, and then immediately wanted to go buy new food? You might want to wait a while, and see what comes in.

Look closely at those phone numbers and that jar of mustard in the back of your fridge. It’s possible you’ll need them soon.

21 Thursday: Moon enters Taurus at 2:38 pm EDT. Mercury conjoins Venus in Virgo. Sedna stations retrograde in Taurus. Pholus opposite Pallas. The Sedna station is deeply introspective, almost intuitive. This suggests that among our values must be some ideas and resources to help us cope with how difficult life can be, and how we must keep our hearts open as part of the process of bridging moment to moment. Pallas in Gemini opposing Pholus is like a dual response to how good life can be when we keep our hearts and minds in a state of grace. You do get to pick.

22 Friday: In the final degree of Leo, the Sun conjoins Orcus and then enters Virgo. Mercury and Venus sextile Varuna.

23 Saturday: Mercury and Venus oppose Uranus. This is a cool one. Under this astrology, you can say anything to the people you’re most intimate with, or that one person; you could say anything to anyone or anything to yourself. Tell yourself everything and let the truth spill over to your whole existence. The Moon sextiles Uranus before entering Gemini at 5:48 pm EDT. Mercury and Venus trine Sedna, allowing us to think, feel and express what we feared a few days ago was too dark for words. Words are light.

Chiron square Psyche. Psyche is like a psychic version of Chiron. It often represents an injury based in belief only. Chiron may prod you to remember this fact, and to take advantage of an opportunity to get real, to move on, to set yourself free of your belief that you were hurt irrevocably by anything or anyone.

24 Sunday: Pallas in Gemini square Eros in Virgo. It’s not necessary to negotiate with love. No debate is possible.

Daily aspects and oracle will be added overnight.

Technorati Tags: Astrology, Eric Francis, planetwaves, radiohead

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Wednesday is our Q & A day. This week we have two questions and two comments from the Planet Waves audience. Instructions for participating in this feature are below. Please note that this is not a substitute for either therapy or astrological consulting. A written reply to a query maybe gives 1% of the power of astrology. I don’t get the chance to listen, to check transits or to engage in a dialog — and these are very much elements of the work that I do with people.

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And now here are your questions for the week.

Oh! PS - I would really appreciate it if you enter our blog entries into Digg and other networking/sharing engines. This can be done by scrolling to the bottom of this entry, and clicking on the green icon next to “Share.” A list of networking websites will appear, and you can promote this blog by clicking on any of the sites where you have a username and password, or by registering. Google, Technorati and Digg would be particularly helpful.

===

Shifting Sexual Orientation

Dear Eric,

I’ve been following Planet Waves now since Fall 2005, when the first step in my current process began to unfold.

I left a ten year relationship with a woman at the beginning of June after struggling since early December and am working with issues of dependence/independence, the rediscovery of my libido and shifting sexual orientation (which began, I think, in Fall 2005).

All of this has led to decisions driven by intense emotions (after priding myself on rationality for years), intermittent feelings of self-betrayal (I’m no longer who I thought I was, and I ask myself how I’ve destroyed my own life and how I will build it back up again) and, on the flip side, cautious optimism for a future I define on my own.

In the mix is a potential new relationship with a man to whom I am deeply attracted to and respect greatly — and now that something seems to be starting, we are separated by an ocean indefinitely. I seem to be going through some pretty serious Pluto squares, in addition to Saturn entering my sign, and I’m wondering where the light is at the end of the tunnel. I also wonder how my T-squares fit into all of this and influence the situation. How can I best negotiate these changes and stay sane?

– Shifting

===

Dear Shifting:

I would say that your sexual orientation is not the only thing that’s shifting. Your entire identity resembles an earthquake simulator.

First I would like to take a sentence or two and debunk the myth of a fixed sexual orientation. You are personal evidence of this fact. There is no such thing, unless you’re a concrete yard ornament, and I’m not even sure about them. Every person has their own individual sexual orientation, and it is mutable. It changes as we change and grow. So to me it seems natural enough that you are orienting for what may be the second or third time. If you look at your life carefully, you may have gone through several more than that, even during the time that you were lesbian-identified. For example, I think that we (clearly) shift sexual orientations each time we change lovers.

Let’s be astrologers and look at your chart.

You have important planets in the 12th house (particularly the Sun), which is like saying your life is one long quest for identity. And you have a very late degree Mercury exactly rising, which is the image, in your own chart, of the kind of changing identity that you describe. You are always “on the line” and that line is an idea about yourself. But what I hear is that you’re taking this out on yourself. You describe “priding myself on rationality for years,” your “intermittent feelings of self-betrayal” and “how I’ve destroyed my own life.”

And all of this for no longer being who you thought you were? I think you’re exaggerating a little, even though it doesn’t feel that way: Mercury is exactly square Jupiter. This is a struggle between “realism” and “idealism” and hey it’s getting a big old Pluto transit.

Now, I recognize that I’m talking to someone with Mars, the Sun, Mercury and the ascendant in Virgo. You could go to the Post Office and change your name to Self Critical. In fact, they would probably deliver mail addressed that way right to you without even asking. I think that is the issue — not the details you describe. You do have a lot of ideas about yourself and, yes, a lot of them are based in rationality. And while many of your planets are in a mutable sign, the thing that mutable signs mutate between is fixed and cardinal. In other words, you have two modes: assertive/aggressive; and wedged in/just as you are. Currently you seem to be straddling the line (much like your Mercury on the Virgo/Libra cusp).

You may think of yourself as distinctly one thing. Actually, you are very much on the edge, nearly all the time. I could see wanting to be a little more one way or the other, given this. In other words, given that you’re so accustomed to being on the edge, I could see wanting to retreat into one way of being to the exclusion of another. It’s quite a trick for a human to learn how to integrate themselves.

At the moment (and a very long moment it is) you have outer planets working on your chart: Pluto is squaring your Sun/Mercury/ascendant, and has been for about 18 months. Uranus is opposing your Mars, and will soon oppose your Sun, Mercury and ascendant. If you don’t change now, you better hook up the ECG and check for cardiac activity.

Change is the purpose and theme of your life now, and the truth is you ain’t seen nothing yet. You, Miss, have just about every darned thing in your chart at or near 29+ degrees of the mutable signs. Okay I exaggerate — just about half of your chart, but half is plenty. At the moment, Pluto is doing them all. In just a few short generations of geckos, Uranus will show up in the last degrees of Pisces and it, too, will do them all.

So I suggest you hang loose. Like, really loose. The gods of change are upon you and I assure you, based on what you’re describing, it could be worse — a lot worse, and I’m going to cast a little spell and make sure it stays this way (unless you have some motive to indulge in some extra chaos). Chaos, however, is mostly about resisting what is obviously necessary; and what is obviously necessary is that you need some progress and some pick-up-and-go and some gitalong and (as you suggest) a man.

Oh that. There is such a thing as bisexual. I have heard that dyed-in-the-wool queers don’t think so, but a lot of other people think that they don’t exist. I understand that when one’s sexual orientation shifts, it can seem to take the rest of you with it. There are matters of pride involved, and the crisis can be far reaching. People have an odd way of feeling guilty when their sexual orientation changes, though many report feeling liberated. There is a kind of internal death; a letting go of a way of being. People who don’t think that sexuality is at the core of the psyche have not gone through the kind of change you are describing.

While I’m here, one last note. We are always our own lover first, if we are anyone’s. While there are definitely people who are more self-oriented erotically, I think that self-sexuality is the first and most meaningful sexual orientation and the one we need to hold at the core of existence. And as long as we’re loving and making love to ourselves, we’re always queer, because we’re always the same sex as who we are - physically, anyway.

So, cheers to life, love and sex with yourself and who you want, and when you want, if you can arrange it. And hey, remember - we’re all Queer.

Yours & truly,

===

Confessions of a Stressed Mom

Dear Eric,

Being a mother feels like some of the most important spiritual work I will do in this lifetime. I share custody of my child with my ex. We separated a year ago, and I am struggling to rebuild a life that had become very constrained, cold and soul-numbing.

At this difficult time in our family’s life, my child needs (I think) a mother who is stable, reliable, steady, and reassuring. Instead, what she has is me: stressed, emotionally maxed out, isolated (but working on it), weepy and inconveniently rediscovering her sexuality. My child, reasonably enough, is reacting to all this with lots of bossy demands, whining and annoying behavior. The dynamic between us is draining.

Rationally, I see before me a child who is desperately grasping for her mother, and I am grasping back, but it feels like we cannot reach each other, and that terrifies me, as if this might be the fork in the road where she begins to be one of the people who have lots of heavy-duty healing to do around childhood. Is there anything in my chart or our synastry that suggests what I need to be doing to reconnect to myself and my child right now? And is our situation as perilous as it feels?

Thank you,

Stressed Mom

===

Dear Mom:

First, a question - what was your life like in 1977? It will tell you a lot about your life in total.

Second, it’s great that you’re getting your concerns out onto the table. You are admitting that you have a situation that you need to address. This is a good start. In terms of assessing the damage or potential damage that one is doing to one’s kids, the main theme that divides the universe is awareness. If you are aware, you can address your situation.

Generally, the kinds of things you’re describing are usually passed from one generation to the next. Let’s take a look at your chart for clues. The first place to look is your 5th house, the house of children, childhood, taking risks and experiencing pleasure.

You have two planets here - Saturn and Chiron. Saturn in the 5th is not so much fun. Chiron in the 5th wants a lot: a lot of fun. This is the picture of a raging child that never got to have quite the fun that it wanted to have. This child, if not contacted and spoken to and in a sense raised consciously, will wreak havoc. You can pass this onto your own child if you don’t address it. So I think you need to remember that your child is a child, and you were not really able to be one of those.

Note that during the next year, Uranus is going to make contact with this conjunction; there will be a lot of Pisces activity in your 5th house. This whole theme needs to be front and center. Note also that the 5th house is the house of creativity, and you have plenty of that. Despite being a parent, you need to learn to express yourself and grow into the creative person that you are. In other words, don’t avoid living your life and doing your thing and blame it on your child.

Allow me to ask you an exceedingly personal question: who exactly taught you to be a mom? I mean it. Try to figure this out, and then ask yourself if they were qualified to be a mother, much less train you to be one. So you may want to get some training. Training usually comes in the form of therapy.

Once there was a guy named Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and among his very good points was that if parents are concerned about their kids, get therapy. This is not so shocking of an idea - if you need to help the people around you, particularly if they need you to be emotionally available, and at peace with yourself, then you need to get a grip on your existence and basically grow up. I know you’ve been trying to do this for a while, though I think that we really do need help. Here is an article about someone born right around when you were who does work with young mothers (second section down).

Your chart says you have a lot of unmet relationship needs. I suggest you find a way to express those needs without creating a disruption in your kid’s life. That is to say, keep your boyfriends and romantic intrigues out of the way of your kid, until you have tested them and you are pretty sure the relationship is stable. In my opinion the most disturbing thing in a child’s life is the parent or parents not having a stable relationship(s). You obviously need to experiment, and you may need to get a little wild. So just figure out a way to keep that project separate from your parenting project.

One interesting thing in your chart is that you have the Moon in Cancer, but it’s conjunct Vesta. This speaks to both you as a lover, and you as a mother. That can combine the property of mothering with the property of sacrifice, and sexuality with the property of being a kind of sacred whore. First things first. I suggest you either go for it and give yourself totally to being a mom to the exclusion of everything else (unlikely) or work to process through and eliminate the notion of sacrifice. Can you really do this? Well, you can. But you need to get really serious about getting your needs met; at least some of them and, over time, hopefully more of them. This is doubly true with Vesta close to your Moon - your tendency will be to give to others erotically; Vesta is the one who bestows erotic gifts on others, and she can do a lot of doing without herself.

I know — this may be the last thing you think you can do, but it’s probably going to be the only thing that works. And I know I say this a lot, but find a cool therapist who is a lot smarter than you and get yourself together. You will never regret it.

Yours & truly,

===

Reader Comments

Eric and Staff,

Thank you very much for your response to my question. A tip of the cap to all of you. I can’t express how much my eyes have opened to the world events through your writing and associated articles except to say I was a Bush lovin’, Iraq hatin’, Republican until I was turned on to your site by a friend.

Regards,

Gary Burris (Mr. Cardinal)

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Dear Planet Waves:

I thought Eric missed the point when responding to a reader question last week (the would-be artist who was also drawn to lead a cloistered life). On the one hand, the advice was good: do the work you are called to do and deal with the consequences as they come. But I thought it was a bit hard to say that this reluctance is the result of being too self-involved. Maybe it is in her case, I don’t know, but I do know more than one artist who has really struggled with this dilemma. In each case they have found a way to continue to work, while dodging the mainstream because they haven’t felt up to playing the games that are part of success. They know success isn’t guaranteed in any case but, if I understand them correctly, they also value the freedom that comes when you live a relatively obscure life: the privacy, the lack of pressure, the sense of being more grounded, more part of the everyday.

— K

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