Author Archives: Eric Francis

“OMG — thank you thank you thank you — just spent this morning listening to my [Spring Report] info, and am so blown away by the accuracy (and relief!) in this experience. Thanks so very much for your part in supporting this work and for showing up in the way that you do!”

With great appreciation,
Donna

“Whoa, I just listened to the Aries and Aquarius reports, and was blown away. I’ve been feeling this for a while but now it’s coming in loud and clear. Can’t wait to see how it all manifests, right now it’s all in motion. Get ready to rock and roll.”

Thanks
April

Spring 2012 is the wildest season I’ve ever seen in 18 years of doing around-the-clock astrology [listen to short audio preview here]. It fits the 2012 pattern of ‘everything, all at once’, even making that sound like an understatement. I am working on the report even as we edit this issue, and it’s coming out beautifully — every sign is coming through loud and clear and distinctive.

We have retrogrades of all three inner planets involved — Mercury, Venus and Mars. There is a rare Venus transit of the Sun — an exact conjunction of Venus and the Sun that you will be able to see if you have a clear view during daylight hours (you will need special equipment to protect your eyes). There are eclipses of the Sun and the Moon. And then, just four days after the Cancer solstice, we have the first exact square of Uranus and Pluto.

In honor of putting all this action to work for you, I’m preparing a special Spring Report for all 12 Sun signs and rising signs, as well as an introduction to the astrology that will be useful to everyone. This is a package of all 12 signs for one price. I’m designing it so that you can actually put many of the signs into use — for example, Virgo will be able to use the Gemini report as a career reading. Pisces can use Virgo’s report as a relationship reading, and so on. I give suggestions at the end of each sign, and will do a detailed description so you can get maximum use from this product.

We are now offering all 12 signs for $24.95, which is still an incredible value for the depth and breadth of material offered. We’re already getting rave reviews from customers who pre-ordered the report, which you can read below. Here is the link to order. Thanks for signing up. Please let me know how you like it — I had a lot of fun creating this report.

Sunrise snail during the Aries New Moon, Portland, Maine. Photo by Amanda Painter.

The sky is crackling with planets in Aries. But today we get a splash of relief: retrograde Mercury revisits Pisces. With the Aries New Moon and a Sun-Uranus conjunction (exact tomorrow), there is some hot, charged energy in the air – and our psyches. And in the spirit of the equinox, Mercury’s shift offers some balance to our mental experience, chilling it out some.

When Mercury steps out of Aries and into Pisces at about 11:18 pm EDT, you may find some sense and feeling returning to the flash, glam and action the Sun-Uranus conjunction is cooking up in this hot sky. Remember, this contact brings the Sun into the Uranus-Pluto square. While Uranus tends to get a lot of attention as it influences news events around the globe, keeping our personal concerns front and center under the guise of ‘politics’, Pluto is working the deeper material. We’ve had a series of events shepherding us along our inner quests and healing journeys: Mars retrograde in Virgo (recently opposite Chiron and square the lunar nodes); the Sun’s last few days in Pisces; Mercury retrograde. And Mercury now brings some emphasis back to the last seven degrees of Pisces.

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The past day or so we’ve been experiencing the Full Moon. One interesting thing about that is that the whole world has one experience, a consequence of it being a celestial event; something beyond the Earth. We, as in all of us here, have also been awash in the remnants of a solar storm that took place overnight Tuesday to Wednesday, resulting from a mass coronal ejection from a sunspot, with the energy bursting out to many times the size of the Sun.

Vesta photographed from the Dawn probe in 2011.

And that energy rains all over us. As fast and as uncontrollably as our technology is moving, or the speed of our minds or activities, the Sun in all its passion and Moon in all its silence embrace the Earth between them and there is some collective awareness that something is happening, happening to all of us, in the background though it may be. A burst of energy comes from the Sun, and we’re reminded that our power grids can be taken down in a matter of moments.

Because the Sun is in Pisces — the last sign — this was the last Full Moon of the astrological year. The Sun is now moving through the last 10 degrees of Pisces, called a decanate or in older terms, the last face of the zodiac. The astrology to watch is how close Mercury is to stationing retrograde — in Aries. It’s in a bold part of the zodiac, the first few degrees, and Mercury is conjunct two other points — an asteroid called Vesta, named for the goddess of fire; and Uranus, representing a kind of fire of his own — the fire of the mind.

Think of Vesta as tending some sacred idea, or core expression of vitality. Her role is to keep the flame at all times, and, we are told, to remain chaste. Yet those initiated into the mysteries know that the chastity of Vesta’s servants represents a preservation of youth and at the same time, conceals a deeper secret, known only to members of the order. Mercury is communing directly with Vesta now, and is about to turn retrograde, make a second conjunction, and then bring a message back to Pisces, the sign representing all of humanity.

Uranus has a role here: this secret may come in the form of an invention, such as an idea that can change the course of events, in a world that seems to be going madder every day. I could think of no better time to have a message from a central goddess, one whose servants were called upon to stand guard at all state functions. So deeply entwined were the Vestal Virgins with the state that Cicero revered them as central points of integrity for the empire, without whom he believed Rome would surely fail.

Now, let’s be on the lookout for some information that Mercury would be delivering. It may literally be coming through our news distribution systems, at least on one level. Certain elements in government and politics have lately revealed the true nature of their agenda, which is the control of women, which is to say, attempting to relegate women, through proposed laws and marginalization, to the role of birthing pods who bear fetuses that have more rights than they do. While this is wrapped in piety, self-righteousness and everyone’s distaste for abortion, the agenda is belied by the fact that so many, indeed, nearly all ‘pro life’ people are so casually in favor of the death penalty.

Martha Wescott, one of our respected colleagues, cautioned last week that the flash and glamor aspect of Uranus in Aries might be a distraction from the real needs, and some other agenda, indicated by Pluto in Capricorn. We are, after all, in the time of the Uranus-Pluto square, and this interweaving of Mercury with Uranus and later (once Mercury is direct) with Pluto is worth mining for information.

The Sun moving through the last few degrees of the zodiac is in a kind of disseminating phase. The Grateful Dead have a song with an unusual line: “Different seasons, with their treasons,” meaning what the changing of the season betrays or reveals.

When the Sun and the Moon get together for the New Moon in less than two weeks, they do so on the heels of the vernal equinox, which means the Sun conjunct the Aries Point — the first degree of the zodiac that acts like an echo chamber. Uranus is in the aspect, meaning that something unexpected might emerge; Mercury is there, ensuring that there is a coherent message; and Vesta is there as well, bearing her secret amidst her hot coals and sacred flames tended only by women.

Listen to the audio introduction, which covers the astrology of spring 2012.

Subscribers and recent customers have received their discounted offer for the Spring 2012 report. You can order the report here at the current price. This is a 12-sign audio report that covers the highly unusual cluster of events over the next four months. I’ve just finished recording the report today — it was a one-week project — and we’ll have it through production and ready for you in about a week. If you’re a subscriber, please watch your inbox for the discount link. If you’re not, just watch this space and we’ll have it available here soon. The intro goes over the events of the coming season and is available to everyone at the audio button above. If you click on “read more” you will get a written list of the events that I cover in the report.

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This is the second entry of a two-part series. Here is the first.

Today the Earth aligns with the Sun and Chiron to form a conjunction in Pisces. The conjunction is an extension of Tuesday’s New Moon, which was at the Neptune-Chiron midpoint. So today’s aspect is a kind of culmination. Whatever it represents has been brewing a while, and we will see different manifestations through the weekend and in truth for much longer.

The Sun is the only star used by many contemporary astrologers, and Leo is the only sign 'ruled' by a star. In this image, a huge loop of material shooting up from the solar surface in March was one of the first events witnessed by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Known as a prominence eruption, the loop was born from a relatively cold cloud of plasma, or charged gas, tenuously tethered to the Sun's surface by magnetic forces. Such clouds can erupt dramatically when they break free of the Sun's unstable hold. We live in a extraordinary era when it's possible to actually see these detailed images of something previously invisible.

In astrology, the Sun represents the adult ego. The ruling body of Leo and the one exalted in Aries, the Sun is the expressive principle — the big I Am. Egos come in all shapes and sizes. The adult ego is supposed to have a sense of both self and other; it wants a role in the world; it wants to shine out. It’s the basic statement of existence, but many more processes are operating that help that ego/I Am to mature — and those are usually represented by the outer planets (spending most of its orbit outside of Saturn’s orbit, Chiron has that property and in many ways exemplifies it).

As we mentioned yesterday, Sun-Chiron aspects can come with a struggle around maleness and around father. We live in a culture that doesn’t produce so many emotionally mature men. Whatever we can say about women, we might say that our culture specializes in the man-child — and the warrior.

We’re really great a creating warriors, who possess qualities which we then conflate with male maturity and extol as heroism. When you add Chiron to the Sun, by aspect or by transit, that hero can take a fall or be exposed as something less. Consider all the scandals involving corrupt cops and politicians previously venerated as heroes. For psychology heads, this is where the concept ‘shadow material’ comes into the picture, and the question of how we process it.

Taken another way, Sun-Chiron aspects can represent the very conditions that allow an immature man to grow into an expressive and responsible one. Often the way that happens is that a man gets hurt at some stage early in life, or experiences a sense of injury or of being outcast, and as a result of that injury or sense of injury goes through a healing process that allows him to gather power. What we think of as ego begins to express something deeper — that elusive quality we describe as soul, or in non-religious terms, you might say authentic personhood. Typically there is, however, little appreciation in our culture for the long process of initiation that it takes to get there.

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