In the current edition of Planet Waves FM [link to program] I take you on a tour of the coming Mercury retrograde, Ceres in Scorpio and also revisit Venus in Capricorn. Then I look at the charts of Philip Seymour Hoffman. Our musical guest is Big Spoon.
Options for Apple users and a downloadable MP3 are available on the Planet Waves FM page.
Thanks for the podcast, especially the parts regarding Hoffman. I happened to catch a bit of Charlie Rose’s show on Hoffman the other day, and I was really struck by something Hoffman mentioned in one of the clips. In an interview with Charlie Rose that was done years ago, Charlie asked Philip what he looked for “in terms of getting inside the character” that he chose to play. Hoffman replied that he looks “for the thing I really don’t want to find”. The combination of curiosity and resistance in that comment held an interesting kind of tension that seemed to reveal a bit about his own inner world.
Via email —
Dear Eric,
Thank you very much for your beautiful written and audio work regarding Philip Seymour Hoffman. On top of your already amazing, incredibly supportive and healing work — I’m very grateful I have had access to your writing and spoken words through the toughest and most challenging years of my life. You helped me to understand what I was going through. (I’ve had pluto conjunct my natal cap sun in 2012, and pisces rising — so I’m sure you can imagine). Thank you again.
As a former actor, I’ve been a huge fan of Philip’s work, and really appreciated your empathic reading of his charts.
As an amateur student of astrology (you’ve been my teacher through Planetwaves), I wondered what you read in the charts that made you write below statement.
He may have had a long-distance love interest who actually did inspire his passions yet who was not in the area and with whom he could not actually be with, someone who was deeply important to him — and this added to the sense of isolation.
I’ve been enjoying your work since 2005, and would love to learn this from you. Thank you again for everything you have done, and are doing for my evolution and spiritual journey.
Much love,
Clarissa
Via email —
Hi Eric,
I wanted to thank you for this week’s podcast on Mercury retrograde in Pisces as well as commentary on the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. I was shocked and greatly saddened to hear of his untimely passing. I greatly appreciated hearing about the challenges in both his natal and transit charts. To be honest, I wasn’t completely surprised to hear about them – I could get the sense of how deep this man was through the amazing spectrum of the emotional lives of the characters he portrayed. He was a man who could translate on film so brilliantly the high heights as well as the deep depths for the many who cannot or would not acknowledge such experiences for themselves. So, thank you.
I was also intrigued by a couple of things you spoke about, namely, that signs that are right next to each other have more opposition than the signs that are 180 degrees from each other – I understand that this is due to one sign being “masculine” and the other “feminine”. But I’m wondering, besides being two feminine signs, in what other ways are Pisces and Virgo the same (as well as Cancer and Capricorn – I’ve always felt Capricorn to be masculine – like “the father” and Cancer to be feminine like “the mother”)? I’m a Virgo Sun and have always been a bit envious of my artistically/musically infused Piscean brothers and sisters. To think I’m more similar to Pisces than not, excites me!
If you have written on this before as well as the idea of masculine and feminine signs, I would love to know where I can find such articles.
Again, thanks so much for the podcast!!
Warmly,
Erica