Without comment — here is your new edition of Planet Waves FM, and as promised, this is what Neptune looks like as seen from Voyager II.
Here is your program in the old player, where you’ll find the full archives and a downloadable zip file.
Did you know that Planet Waves offers you astrological readings for every sign in audio format including birthday reports? You’re invited to check them out in our audio store. If you’d like access to Eric’s weekly and monthly horoscopes, visit this link to access your free trial to our premium twice-weekly astrology service.
Thank You Eric for your insight and the clues to our ‘Saturn on the Move’ – Bridging the signs of Love (Venus Ruled), to Action (Mars Ruled) from Neptune’s perspective can be understood in working through those D’s.
In the spirit of your thought provoking message and the learning journey, here’s one flight through…
Dependency: (co) looking outside for false emotional, physical and mental, substances of/for security.
Delusion: of security = separation
Dominion: Domain of ourselves = taking ‘rulership’ of thought, perceptions, our life.
Deliberate: Freedom of = conscious, consider, careful intent. From Latin– [de- + li br are, to balance (from li-bra, a balance, scales).]!
Discovery: ‘True’ will = Willingness
Destiny = Thy Will Be…
“Done”
Hi Eric, I was thrilled to hear you mention AA and Bill Wilson in your audio today. Thank you so much! Just begging a bit to differ on your characterization of AA as being a religious organization. I would say it is a spiritual organization. As a long-time AA and other12 step programs member, I would say that while AA has made use of many religious ideas–admission of powerlessness, confession of faults, etc., lots from the Catholic, Episcopal traditions but also some contemplative traditions–members are encouraged to develop their own conception, their own unique and individual conception of a Higher Power. There are not too many religions out there that allow for this kind of autonomy. Atheistic/agnostic members are encouraged to use the group or the program of AA, ie, successfully sober members, as a higher power, to allow themselves to benefit from the experience, strength and hope of the program but since there are “no requirements for AA membership,” no one is even obligated to develop a conception of a higher power. If your goal as a recovering member is simply to be ‘teachable’ you can benefit. Some people decide their HP is goddess, nature, a light bulb or a sock monkey; whatever works, nobody cares.
I would love to see someone interested at PlanetWaves work up a chart and explication on Bill Wilson. What a character. While he was a founding member along with Dr. Bob, did you know he participated in legitimate medical experiments with LSD in the 50’s and 60’s after he sobered up? He may also have had an affair after sobriety as well. He struggled with hero worship in the program and often just wanted to be a regular member. His experimentations in the realm of LSD were a form of spiritual seeking for him, as his affair may well have been also. Maybe Amanda will step up. I love her work-ups on other famous people. If someone at PW has already done this, I would love to see it. Thanks for considering the idea.
Such a thought-provoking audio this week, Eric.
I feel things in the offing; surely I do.
And here’s the Mercury/Saturn in the last degree of Libra message we were looking for. Full text pasted below.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/10/would-a-republican-candidate-lie-about-taxes.html
———
Would a Republican Candidate Lie About Taxes?
By Jonathan Chait
Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush (R) listens to his Democratic opponent Al Gore during their debate 03 October, 2000, at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. This is the first of three debates scheduled between the candidates, leading to the 07 November election.
The United States faces a gigantic economic choice next year, and last night’s debate centered largely around what Mitt Romney would do about it. Romney’s plan is to lock the Bush tax cuts into place, reduce the long-term deficit entirely through spending cuts, enact an additional 20 percent tax rate cut that would disproportionately benefit the rich and cover the cost through unspecified closings of tax deductions. But Romney labored tirelessly, and with evident success, to portray himself in a far more egalitarian light. Every time President Obama described the cost of his tax rate cost, Romney dismissed it as untrue, pledged that his plan would not reduce the current tax burden on the rich, and even implied that he would make the rich pay higher taxes by closing their loopholes.
It was a virtuoso performance. But what does it tell us about how Romney would govern if elected? Here he was making promises about how he would govern that flatly contrasted with his plans. Which promises should we believe? Ross Douthat argues that Romney’s soothing moderate rhetoric shows that he is likely to govern as the moderate he presented himself as.
It’s worth considering a similar — in many ways, identical — episode that took place a dozen years before. During the 2000 election, the growth of a budget surplus offered the country a major choice. Al Gore proposed to use most of the surplus to retire the national debt and the balance for public investment. George W. Bush proposed a large, regressive income tax that Gore warned would exacerbate inequality and jeopardize the soundness of the budget.
Then, as now, the Republican simply denied over and over that his plan would do what the Democrats said it would. Bush portrayed his plan as devoting just a small fraction of the surplus to tax cuts and described his tax cut itself as benefitting the poor far more than the rich. And you certainly could find circumstantial evidence to suggest that Bush might govern the way he portrayed himself, rather than the way his plan read. He had governed in a bipartisan way in Texas, he had explicitly denounced the conservative wing of the Congressional GOP, and he had surrounded himself with moderate advisers like Michael Gerson and Karen Hughes.
But Bush in fact followed through on what his plan actually did, which happened to be what Gore described it as, and not what Bush described it as. His promises to maintain the budget surplus and direct most of the tax cuts to lower-earners fell by the wayside. What mattered was the party, and the Republican Party was committed to a policy of regressive tax cuts.
The Bush-Gore debates centered primarily around Gore’s endless, frustrating attempts to pin down Bush’s priorities. I compiled pieces of Bush denying he would pursue what turned out to be the centerpiece of his administration’s economic agenda.
Here’s Bush in the first presidential debate:
I want to take one-half of the surplus and dedicate it to Social Security. One-quarter of the surplus for important projects …
tonight we’re going to hear some phony numbers about what I think and what we ought to do. …
this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers. I’m beginning to think not only did he invent the Internet, but he invented the calculator. It’s fuzzy math. It’s a scaring — he’s trying to scare people in the voting booth. Under my tax plan that he continues to criticize, I set one-third. The federal government should take no more than a third of anybody’s check. But I also dropped the bottom rate from 15% to 10%. Because by far the vast majority of the help goes to people at the bottom end of the economic ladder. …
After my plan is in place, the wealthiest Americans will pay a higher percentage of taxes then they do today…
Let me tell you what the facts are. The facts are after my plan, the wealthiest of Americans pay more taxes of the percentage of the whole than they do today.
The second presidential debate:
First of all, that’s simply not true what he just said, of course. And secondly, I repeat to you —
MODERATOR: What is not true, Governor?
That we spent — the top 1% receive 223 as opposed to 445 billion in new spending. The top — let’s talk about my tax plan. The top 1% will pay one-third of all the federal income taxes. And in return, get one-fifth of the benefits, because most of the tax reductions go to the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder. …
GORE: I think that what — I think the point of that is that anybody would have a hard time trying to make a tax cut plan that is so large, that would put us into such big deficits, that gives almost half the benefits to the wealthiest of the wealthy. I think anybody would have a hard time explaining that clearly in a way that makes sense to the average person.
BUSH: That’s the kind of exaggeration I was just talking about. (LAUGHTER)
The third presidential debate:
But the top 1% will end up paying one-third of the taxes in America and they get one-fifth of the benefits.
Under my plan, if you make — the top — the wealthy people pay 62% of the taxes today. Afterwards they pay 64%. This is a fair plan. You know why? Because the tax code is unfair for people at the bottom end of the economic ladder. If you’re a single mother making $22,000 a year today and you’re trying to raise two children, for every additional dollar you earn you pay a higher marginal rate on that dollar than someone making $200,000, and that’s not right. So I want to do something about that.
Yes — and it does!!
Cheers Eric.. At one point I think I realised that.. and then contrived to forget that incredibly obvious detail!! So although the Earth takes more than 4.2 times Mercury’s orbital period (viewed statically) it nonetheless only happens 3 times a year because the Earth has moved a further quarter cycle around the Sun with each Mercury cycle.. and so Merc has continually to catch up..
😀
Hi Alex
This is about the resonance — because the Earth is moving too. So the resonance comes out to about 3:1 (Mercury makes three interior conjunctions to the Earth in one year).
Echoing the HuffPo congrats again. However, curiosity has got the better of me!
There seems to be an official line on Mercury retro 3 times a year that is being explained as 3 Mercury years equalling 1 Earth year… Now, Mercury orbits in just under 88 days and Earth in just over 365.. So… Mercury seems to orbit approximately 4.2 times in an Earth year, not 3 times. Not being an Astronomy buff, I thought to ask whether I am missing something glaring here?
Thank you for this, dear Eric. And thank you for pointing out again how low self-esteem has a negative impact on others – so true, and turns the whole issue on its head, gets one out of navel gazing obsession.
BTW, big congrats on the Huffington Post piece!
Pause for a moment to consider what it means for the archetype of Bacchus to be the outermost major planet — that the Dionysian spirit is now the official designated driver at the edge of our reality. I hate to say this but it makes perfect sense for our era, in its own extremely fucked up kind of way.
Astrodem
Gee fucking whiz
cheers.
I think you are dead on about the Mercury/Saturn conjunction in the last degree of Libra. Note that there has been some major news this week about voting rights. Let’s keep listening — there could be more still to come.
Here is a list of Mars ingresses into Sagittarius over the past decade from Serennu with some helpful comments from me:
Exact Conjunct 14 February 2001 20:05:46 0 sa 0′ 0″ (Bush takes office)
Exact Conjunct 17 January 2003 4:22:24 0 sa 0′ 0″ (build up to the Iraq War)
Exact Conjunct 25 December 2004 16:03:58 0 sa 0′ 0″ (Indian Ocean Tsunami)
Exact Conjunct 06 December 2006 4:58:15 0 sa 0′ 0″ (debate over surge in Iraq)
Exact Conjunct 16 November 2008 8:26:31 0 sa 0′ 0″ (Obama transition)
Exact Conjunct 28 October 2010 6:47:30 0 sa 0′ 0″ (GOP takes the House)
Exact Conjunct 07 October 2012 3:20:51 0 sa 0′ 0″ (stay tuned!)
With Neptune involved, I wonder if we’re going to get some kind of drug-induced disaster from the right over the weekend? Maybe a high-level Romney staffer or a GOP state party chair gets drunk, gets behind the wheel, and runs over somebody. Probably (hopefully) not that exactly, but something along those lines.
One other thing that just popped into my head. In the same way that Rick Tarnas argues the true archetype for the planet Uranus is actually Prometheus, I’m beginning to think the true archetype for the planet Neptune is actually Bacchus/Dionysus. Several other random astrologers on the web seem to have noticed this too. As the old saying goes, “Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune.”
I would like to contribute more “de-“ words for Neptune, inspired by Junko Edahiro, who is involved in the sustainability movement in Japan. This talk was recorded at TEDxTokyo on May 21st 2011, at the Miraikan, Odaiba.
She declares that this is the era of “de-“. The de-lifestyle.
The “De” generation = instead of moving up corporate ladder, climb a ladder to get apples
Deownership = a shift to sharing
Dematerialization of happiness = seek happiness in contact from person to person, with nature and at being in harmony with one’s self
Dematerialization of life = happiness in own life without burdening other generations and Earth
Thank you Eric for Planet Waves FM.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y395J6W6i1E
aaand with lightning speed, there it is. Thanks Eric and Anatoly. All is working smoothly.
The Capricorn in me has great respect for the steady rhythm. It’s such an admirable quality of the work that goes into Planet Waves! Thanks again team.
Anatoly:
Hello Sally,
Here is direct link to the zip file.
http://planetwaves.fm/current_sky/October_3_Eric_Francis_Audio.zip
Let me know if you still cant load it.
A.
Thanks Sally I will tell Anatoly about the Zip file issue.
So happy to hear you note the consistency theme — I work hard for that and I am a taskmaster with our team: in pro publishing, esp news and astrology, it’s all about consistency, a steady rhythm.
be well…
Hi friends,
Looks like the zip file didn’t make it up for download. Just wanted you to know! You all produce the best content, with such consistency. Thanks for making these recordings happen every week.
For me, I remember the very day of the Saturn change two years into Libra. It was like a floor dropped out from under me and the new one was still being dialed. I had just got the hang of SERVING others…VIRGO perfection for HOMEOSTASIS… extraordinaire for clarity. Slowly but surely I got my footing into Libra, which was social, light and to me now very distracted from the last hauling with Saturn in Virgo. Now we have Scorpio Saturn coming, and that change for me from this…fantastic Libra energy will drop not only from under my feet but the new floor of which I will find my self standing will most likely be a subterranean one, one of great depth in myself, and Neptune there to delude…perhaps this change will be a universally triggered one, of great common good awakened, and with great purpose and great depth. I only hope those still waiting for the elevator to stop for them know that they have to walk down a few levels to catch it.