Dear Friend and Reader:
If you’re one of our new visitors from Yahoo in Australia (thank you Yasmin Boland for referring us basically your entire readership), you’ve landed at Planet Waves.
You were probably expecting an astrology website, which we are, at our core. Yet we do a lot more: lately, we publish an enormous amount of original political and financial coverage, some of it rooted in astrology and most of it in facts and common sense. At other times we put our energy into sexuality and new relationship models, and at other times into art; but there is always the heartbeat of astrology pulsing below the surface, or right at the surface.
We are funded by our subscribers, who mainly sign up for our online magazine, Planet Waves Astrology News. My horoscopes (published in both weekly, plus four times monthly formats) appear there, as does the best of my writing every week. It is true — most websites give away the horoscopes; we charge for them, and thousands of readers are happy to participate in that. We also have an annual edition. For 2008 it was called Small World Stories. For 2009 it will be called Next World Stories (look for news in November about that).
Whenever someone new subscribes, we ask them why they signed up. Read below for a response we got from a reader yesterday. It’s written to Chelsea, our business manager, who you can call directly at (877) 453-8265.
Thanks for dropping in. Scan around this blog and the rest of the site and see what you discover. Samples of our subscriber edition are at the top left, and also reprinted here from time to time. If you’d like to know more, drop a note to info@planetwaves.net.
Very truly yours
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Hi, Chelsea!
In answer to your question – I googled Alan Oken and on the first page of the results was a reference for May 17, 2008, about Oken on Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. I checked it out and kept going on Planet Waves.
I’m primarily interested in tarot, at least, I was. Looks like I’m headed toward a tarot/astrology mix – I like the connections. Anyway, had read Oken years ago after taking a class taught by one of his students. It may be the messiness of everything that’s going on right now that drew me back to his books. When I first read him, I didn’t have a computer, let alone the internet. My 11 year old son has also been interested in Chinese astrology because of a friend from school and has been asking questions. We watch the sky together, also, and pointing out the constellations and planets has brought up a lot to talk about.
I like the seriousness of Planet Waves — the seriousness about astrology and life, the universe and everything. You know…it’s just not the everyday astrology/love/relationship/dating/he-she stuff. The humor is grown-up, the language isn’t jargoned to the max – the feeling of being in a group is intense. There aren’t hearts and flowers everywhere and psychic reading signs blinking in glowing purple. Having a cosmic cross in the cardinal signs is also a good reason to find a place that is truly interested in real life and people-people, not celebrity people.
We also live in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area — a very uptight, rigid kind of a place [my husband worked for the Dept. of Energy — also an uptight, rigid, also looney kind of a place.] The mindset around here can be stifling — people are driven, tense and performance oriented. We are oddballs in this place and finding fellow oddballs is difficult, especially in the suburbs. In the city itself, I think it would be more comfortable. Our worldview is as open as we can make it, not religious in the church way, rather unorganized and we don’t agonize over our son entering magnet schools and gifted and talented programs. The no-child-left-behind mindset rules the schools around here and test scores are handed out by real estate agents.
So, I like the context Planet Waves gives the news. I like the view that can be gained over time by astrology, the cycles taken note of, the effects watched and explored. Planet Waves makes it feel like an adventure, a journey which we are in the midst of on this planet, not a contest or a race for power. [I haven’t watched the news or listened to the radio for a week or so. I have seen the headlines in the paper, though.]
The intensity of the waves coming from the city is overwhelming at times — it feels dense and dark. We’ve been avoiding taking our son downtown for a few months — maybe he wouldn’t notice, but the fear of change is in the air and the need for change is in the air. People just don’t want to let go of what they have — although I’m sure all the political appointees have found their places in the lobbying firms and in the structure of the gov’t itself before the gov’t changes. I look forward to November and I dread it at the same time.
Sorry to go on. I look forward to having your service and observations through the next years.
Regards,
Nelda