Dear Friend and Reader:
The government changing the time proves that time is an illusion. I learned from my dad’s wife yesterday — though I haven’t fact checked this — that moving the clocks was an old Jewish tradition, which basically affected what time the Sabbath started. Sabbath is timed to sundown, but what time you call sundown is a variable. I’ve always thought Ben Franklin gave us this brilliant innovation, which serves to do little other than throw off everyone’s body clock.
Speaking of, while I have your attention. I need to write this daily astrology piece in the morning. For me, astrology writing is daytime work. This owes partly to the Kabbalistic tradition of not doing esoteric work after sundown. While I may do some privately, for the most part I do the astrology that you will see during the day. Since I can’t always predict how my morning is going to go, I cannot promise when this piece will appear every day. Generally I aim for between 9 and 10 Eastern Time. Also note, we are reorganizing our editorial team under a new editor, so some of our publishing patterns will change over the next couple of weeks.
And one last thing — business. Daily Astrology is a “free” service, which is sponsored not by advertisers but by our subscription service, Astrology News. New visitors tend to be the most ready to subscribe. It’s the longtime visitors who are the least likely. On one level this makes sense; on another level it makes very little sense. I hear all kinds of stories about reluctance to subscribe, or feeling guilty about not subscribing. I suggest you simplify things and consider it like paying for a sandwich in a restaurant, which most people do without thinking about it. We give you more than a sandwich: more like a full-course, organic, vegan meal. Extending this metaphor a bit, we consider advertising to be the bacon lard mixed in with the tofu — we leave it out.
Your subscription helps me pay the staff that it takes to create Planet Waves — including some of the writers, Chelsea who handles customer service, Anatoly who keeps the website running, and other key people without whom it would be impossible for us to provide the quality work that we do. So please click here for your subscription options and find out what amazing work we do every Tuesday and Friday. Or sign up for Next World Stories — which gives you an annual horoscope reading for 2009 as well as lots of other really amazing content that you won’t see here.
Of note, Venus is retrograde, as of Friday. For your trivia files, Venus is retrograde the least of all the planets — for about six weeks out of every 18 months. I think that’s about 8% of the time, compared to Pluto which is retrograde about 40% of the time and Mercury which is retrograde 100% of the time (that was an astrology joke). So we’re not really accustomed to Venus retrograde; it’s odd in an introspective kind of way. People and things from the past show up; there can be the feeling of a time-warp.
However, the astrological mood is dominated by the verging Full Moon in Virgo. The Moon just entered Virgo and is opposing Mercury, newly arrived in Pisces. This Moon-Mercury opposition is tense, and you may feel like you’re running to stand still. Oppositions feel polarized, and Moon-Mercury oppositions feel especially so. This opposition creates a mirror effect between various emotional and mental metaphors; between precision of speech and just getting out what you feel. If you’ve had a weird or unproductive morning, that had a little something to do with the Moon being void of course in late Leo. That is over; your wheels are touching the ground again.
When the Moon reaches the opposition to the Sun tomorrow at 9:37 pm, this is very close to the Saturn-Uranus opposition. The Full Moon contacts Saturn-Uranus to just two degrees, which is enough to set it off like a cascade. This could precipitate big news in the public sphere, and it’s sure to shake out some emotions in the personal sphere. I can’t say for sure where the two intersect at this point, but in a word, it may be everywhere.
It’s difficult for us to see how emotionally manipulated we are by television. I know that a lot of PW readers are the type to not have a television at all, or to keep it in the closet except for when they really need it. (Heck, I was in my dad’s living room yesterday and noticed that one of the reasons it’s so nice there is because there’s no TV — he keeps that down in a finished den). Television is a source of psychic contamination. The vibe is so harsh and hectic that it’s hard to imagine that anyone can think after they turn the thing off.
The Virgo/Pisces emphasis of the Full Moon (Ceres, Moon, Saturn in Virgo; Mercury, Sun, Uranus in Pisces) is playing with this tension. We are in a moment for something soft and inconsequential to sound loud and important. The main thing you can do when you hear or even feel anything is to stick to the facts. Literally, make a list of the known facts and unknown facts and size things up, rather than getting tugged into the emotional undertow.
And please let me know your Full Moon stories. They are always really interesting.
for now,
Mystes: Yeah, if you went to a Soto temple in Japan, you would be woken at 3:30am and then do zazen, etc until 10 or 11pm. In USA, if you go to a sesshin at a formal practice center, clocks run everything even though incense and/or candles burn on altar to mark time, you get up and start day at 5:30 or 6am and run the schedule until 8 or 10pm. So structured, you can’t HOLD ON and DO IT. People try, but end up in massive pain; one really must surrender to the structure – as a thinker, it really does end up shutting down your mind and opening your heart… then time DOES become IRRELEVANT. While many in zen are highly intelligent, zen buddhism is actually about wisdom beyond wisdom aka not knowing which requires little to no academia when it comes right down to IT.
I have always been in cycle with sun and moon; as field geologist I could be told clock time in morning and then be within 5-15 mins of clock time all day without a watch. Flowing in and out of the systems is cool, I think/feel 🙂
Sunset with full moon rising above Sangre De Cristos – gotta grab camera and run or just build a fire, hmmmm….
Conformity is also why schools at all levels have bells and set periods of work: those future factory workers have to be trained to obey somehow, right? What better way than to get them started early in life to obey the clock. Pavlov had something to say about this…
Of course, we merry band of commenters are locked into the clocks that run our computers – without the core timing system, the CPU doesn’t work, period. Ergo, no Web, no comments.
Even my watch synchronizes each night: it has a radio receiver that decodes a high accuracy signal from Colorado and sets everything anew.
Am I too synched? Probably. Tell people that it’s 14:15 and they think your crazy. Tell them it’s quarter past two and they understand. I try to maintain the analog references at all times…
Here’s to analog thinking and non-linear love!
Mystes, me either. I think the union mindset is one thing that needs to change. The unions were wonderful for the work they did with safety and child labor, but now it is time to cross the bridge, or step off the elevator, or whatever.
The laws around work hours are part of what is wrong, but also what is right. This current money crisis is probably mostly a move to finish off the unions and push wages back to around $1.50 an hour or so. The question remains what will replace it. I don’t see socialism as an answer, as it puts the masses’ mindset to reliance on government. I’d rather see individual freedom as the answer. The KIVA organization is helping poor people everywhere be successful – and it might hold a key. Individual freedom, global responsibility. Use time the way YOU want to use it.
KristenB, et al… I didn’t know that Zen was using clocktime to pattern its contemplative cycles; maybe its a gestalt kind of thing? separate before integrate? I am well aware that certain branches of Buddhism go Islam one better (6 meditations instead of 5).
Patty’s muse suggests to me (in the wandering goat path my thoughts take) that the factory may have been patterned on monastic hours. So institutional control marks both beginnings. But I am not all that eager to recede into peasant time either.
I guess the Catholic church was well known for its accumulation of wealth, territory AND souls. They didn’t have to own it outright but they collected rent from all over the planet. Likewise with the Jewish and Islamic faiths. Islam prays many times a day, but when I was a catholic child, we prayed 5 times a day as well, ending with the angelus. During lent we prayed a rosary every night too, in addition to bedtime prayers. That was during the 50s.
Ahhhhh the cocks of the world are losing control of the little flocks? Flock and cock? Was flock a precursor to the other F word? where did the FL come from? Clock the flock, make sure they put in their hours in the fields.
Real poverty started when laws were created that forbid peasants from farming the public lands for personal use back in the middle ages. Land ownership was given to the few. Before that, I’d guess that people lived more like the indigenous peoples, making use of what was available and living by the light of the moon, sun and stars.
Eric, Just checked my email and discovered my planetwaves weekly update, which confirmed the radio show is at 11:00…oh well!
Eric, Speaking of clocks: You had mentioned (somewhere) that this week’s blogtalkradio program might be scheduled for 10 pm instead of 11:00. I just checked and it says 11 pm; is that the final, scheduled time? I always have to listen to the podcast on the weekend; I get up at 5 am and just can’t hang too late at night any more! If the program was at 10 pm I would be able to listen live and perhaps even get lucky enough to get on air!
Well Misty, I cannot imagine that is very matriarchal or organic…it’s a left-brain kind of construction…that tends to suppress awareness of natural patterns…
Mystes: So true. Zen Buddhism takes penultimate advantage of time/clock! The schedule is SO structured, folks don’t have time to think, only to feel, and then to simply become ocean seaweed gently waving in the flowing waters, if one can let go.
There’s an argument to be made that clocks weren’t developed to measure labor so much as mark off the day into prayer or contemplative periods; and that monasteries, not factories, were the first beneficiaries of this consciousness of time and time’s passing.
This is interesting about the clock and money – our methods of measuring time are new; there were not clocks in proliferation like there are now even just two centuries ago. Think of the demands we have based on time now. I run a little website and astrology newsletter and my schedule can be so structured that I feel like I’ve got Keith Olbermann’s job. To get people off the phone I tell them that I am counting minutes. “Excuse me, I have 24 minutes till this column is due. If you don’t mind I have to go.”
Farmers work when the animals are ready. The cows’ milk comes in twice daily and they will bawl their heads off if you aren’t on time to do the milking. The chickens and birds begin chirping at early daybreak as they look for worms and bugs, and the cock crows and struts to show his bravery at having survived another dangerous dark night.
The clock is all about money, one letter change from cock. It has to be a guy thing.
Oh no! You’re much earlier with the daylight shavings – so what time is it the noo?!
Full moon – wide awake last night, could not sleep, but in a good way, busy, busy head. 3 things happened yesterday, a very good (out of the blue) work contract came good, my mum offered to take me and my partner on a trip to France in May and we booked the thing there and then, and the work coming means that I finally got myself signed on the dotted line of two personal development programmes that have been awaiting my attention (and the funds). Hip hip hooray. Crabs rule. Love H x.
PS – This is not, I repeat NOT a gloat. It’s just been one of these intense stop, start, go back, start again periods – saturn in the 2nd house and a battle not to give in to doubt. I haven’t, which pleases me more than anything up there.
Being in a healing office lately, DST sounds like hormone replacement therapy! Just kidding, sorta, as sunlight affects our bodies so much. Even though I get MORE tired from traveling 1-3 time zones or shifting 1 hour on clock, I do appreciate the sunlight when I have time to myself or to spend in the garden or with friends hiking, especially the magic evening hours in the forest.
My incident was yesterday when the internet connection dude turned up at 12:45pm instead of 10:15am. That page is very interesting, and frightening in the economic details 🙂
It’s finally dark where I am at 8pm. Beautiful red-orange sunset which I was home for tonight.
Well, the Romans would mess with the water clocks in different seasons; that’s pretty old. Ben Franklin did not invent Daylight Savings Time, but he did write a satire aimed at the French – and proves once again that he is fuckin’ funny. Also, it’s bad for farming – not helpful to farming. It benefits anything that happens in the afternoon, such as retail shopping or sports, say the Wikipedians with lots of footnotes to shore up their reasoning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#Origin
PS, I’m just reading the rest of this page – really interesting. Have I ever mentioned that the only things I can read these days are The Onion and Wikipedia?
PPS, and astrology charts.
PPPS, we had a Daylight Savings Time incident today – by some miracle Chelsea did not know that DST began this weekend (it’s gotten earlier the past two years) and my first client was in the UK…and British Time did not change this weekend. So we had a little domino effect which basically ate all the time between sessions. I felt like I had to adjust my click five separate times, starting yesterday morning when I ran exactly an hour behind a busy schedule all day…and again today…
actually, i heard from a very close friend who grew up on a farm that daylight savings time was something created to give farmers an extra hour of daylight during the spring/summer months. that’s why it starts just before spring.
Home for quick lunch; born under a full moon, i always feel best at this time of month, generally – my morning was incredibly productive followed by a brief emotional chat with a very Virgoan (emotional for her) who is needing to make some personal choices, but just can’t make words/actions match which is a tad frustrating for me as I support her, but her fluidity is making it hard, momentarily; as for tv, yeah, don’t have one of those, left behind in puget sound as i had to admit i’d already seen all the bbc reruns i needed to see on pbs (great, intelligent laughs!) so now have shifted to same feelings, thoughts re: CNN, etc online. There is the place of doing tonglen practice with any news service and then there is realizing one’s boundaries and just opting out. This is why I feel artists should not be dismayed by explosion of internet because quality is always hard to find, quality with words matching actions even harder.
So support PW? Absolutely. Quality is a rare gift. And, quality w/o adverts? Cosmic heaven 🙂
Ah, correction: “The fact that this triad [Ceres/Luna/Saturn] is sitting in the 3rd house Pisces…
I *meant* The fact that this triad is sitting *across from* the 3rd house Pisces…
That 3rd house of course will be stacked with the Mercury/Sun/Uranus energy. Yowsah. Do I remember correctly that Mercury is the mini-me of Uranus? All up in the fellow water sign that usually triggers the soft-lit, fuzzy motifs in my character.
(Seriously. One dear Piscean friend knows we can have about an hour of real conversation before her triple Pisceanness starts wearing away my shell. After that hour I become drunk on that Ocean she carries around, and I’m sobbing/guffahing big ol’ Crab tears back into the Fishoverse. (Right, Kat?) It’s disgusting. And funny. And really, really, really time to retool that effect.)
Hmmm… ‘e writes… “The Virgo/Pisces emphasis of the Full Moon (Ceres, Moon, Saturn in Virgo; Mercury, Sun, Uranus in Pisces) is playing with this tension. We are in a moment for something soft and inconsequential to sound loud and important. The main thing you can do when you hear or even feel anything is to stick to the facts. Literally, make a list of the known facts and unknown facts and size things up, rather than getting tugged into the emotional undertow.”
In my chart Virgo falls mostly in the 9th House, opposite Pisces in the 3rd. Luna/Ceres/Saturn – fortunately I did a boatload of karmic work with Saturn last year, so we’re on schedule for an organizational breakthrough. The fact that this triad is sitting in the 3rd house Pisces… well, there’s a special ~communication/professional~ place for Pisceans in my world, but so far their company tends to trigger sentimentality – to the point of maudlin. Maybe my dry-eyed, persnickety, hyperproductive 9th house self will use this moon to create an offset.
Fingers crossed.
And. So On.
M
Ah! there you are~ Happy to see/have you back with a new post.
Now I must read it 🙂