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Dear Friend and Reader:
STUDYING ASTROLOGY, it's not just that we can afford to go past the cultural rhetoric that surrounds a news event -- we have a responsibility to do so. Whether someone is popular or not, or misunderstood or not, astrology's job is to bring its light of awareness where we need it. Our craft is about seeing past the surface of difficult issues, into their depth and often, their contradictory nature. Astrology is a way of looking inwardly, and out at the world at the same time, reconciling the two.
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Turquoise waters of Varadero, on the island of Cuba. Photo by Stephanie Mausset.
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Part of that process includes being conscious of something called shadow material -- that is, our own hidden pain and conflict that we disown and then project onto the world around us. Shadow material can be individual, it can belong to families, and it can be collective, such as belonging to a country. Sometimes it involves all three levels.
This week as Mercury stationed direct and we saw a total eclipse of the Moon, Fidel Castro resigned after leading Cuba for nearly 50 years. Right away, that translates to one word -- Chiron. This is the duration of its orbit around the Sun (50.6 years), so when we have an event that occurs on or close to the half-century anniversary of something, Chiron is making a guest appearance, and potentially taking a starring role. We can be sure that, at the Chiron return of the Cuban Revolution (first pass is exact April 2008) Cuba is in for some big changes. The Chiron return is a process that usually lasts about two years. We didn't need astrology to know that, but it can help keep us informed about the nature of those changes.
A reader wrote in this week and complained that one of our bloggers described Castro's departure from office as poignant. Our blogger was right. In a world where everything is changing constantly, Cuba has pretty much stayed Cuba. Note, it is the nature of capitalism to remake everything every three to five years. You know what, people? It is exhausting.
Meanwhile, life expectancy in Cuba is about the same as in the US (better for guys), school classes are smaller, infant mortality is about the same, and rum is a lot cheaper. They got rid of the missiles in 1962.
One of the reasons that Chiron is not so popular among astrologers is because of its tendency to make shadow material more obvious. Castro has stood in the shadow of the United States for his entire duration in office, and he has often played the role of projection screen for things that the United States cannot see about itself, or does not want to see. Anyone who calls Castro a killer (this is suddenly the popular way to describe him) is not looking at Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, East Timor, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Afghanistan or Iraq -- to name a few of the wars waged or supported by the United States since Castro's revolution.
Who exactly did Castro kill, anyway? Why is it that this point is considered true and automatically does not need to be elaborated or footnoted? In the rhetoric of the US media, anyone we don't like gets the title "brutal dictator." It helps us feel good about ourselves.
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Castro in April 1975. Photo: AFP.
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Castro plays an archetypal role in our minds. We recognize him as the great Leonine leader ("Long live the king!") and we vilify him as an evil dictator. In this particular game, the truth does not matter; only our opinion. Lately, everywhere I look I see a Che Guevara t-shirt. Do people have a clue he was one of Castro's most trusted men?
Because it is so isolated, Cuba minds its own business perhaps more than any country in the world. Are people who call Castro a brutal killer talking about the enemies of the revolution who were executed in the weeks after he took power? That is what happens when you have an armed revolution. Killing is inherent in the nature of war. We don't think of Abe Lincoln as a killer, even though the Civil War was the bloodiest in United States history. The Union army killed a lot of southern boys; Abe Lincoln "killed his own people." The winner wrote history; he's perhaps our most venerated president.
Meanwhile, the United States is one of a very few nations that still practices the death penalty (Iran and China are among the others), and a significant number of innocent people are sentenced to die. We still have a prison or two on the Cuban island at Guantanamo Bay. (We lease this land from Cuba under an agreement made with the prior government; Castro says it is an illegal occupation.) There, you can be held for years without any charges being brought, or a trial. The US Constitution does not exist at Guantanamo. You are likely to be tortured, and you may never leave. When we call Castro a dictator, why doesn't anyone refer to that? I am not here to call Castro a nice guy. I am here to point out the ridiculous double standard: the shadow of "democracy" being cast across Cuban "dictatorship."
When I say that Castro is a projection screen for the United States, this is what I am talking about. If we were to look at what our media and politicians say about Castro, we would learn something about our own tendencies.
Castro and Chiron have some notable things in common. What they don't have in common is worth mentioning -- for example, Chiron ruled nobody. He was primarily a healer and teacher, and his leadership came through the people he influenced. Castro is known for being a head of state. Chiron (when the process is working well) is not given to self-aggrandizement. Castro surely was.
There are parallels between them. Castro was an armed warrior, as was Chiron. He was also a teacher and storyteller, spending anywhere from one to three hours a day lecturing on Cuban state television, anything from philosophy to stories about the way things were. His country existed in isolation from the world community the entire duration of his rule, something that has more than a touch of Chiron to it.
In Castro's natal chart (I use Aug. 13, 1926, mainly because that is the day Castro said was his birthday, and because of his obsession with the numbers 13 and 26), he has Mars conjunct Chiron. In the chart of the Cuban Revolution, Mars is square Chiron -- a very potent aspect, when it is finally expressed.
Chiron specialist Dale O'Brien notes that Mars and Chiron together address guerilla warfare in contrast to conventional warfare by the rules of tradition (Saturn). Lacking a structured army or air force, this was precisely how Castro took power. "As the name guerilla implies, it's 'smart' strategy from an animal's point of view, but horrifying to educated perspectives on 'civilized war', which is an oxymoron," O'Brien said in an email Thursday.
In many ways, Castro did everything he could to take Cuba back to less 'civilized' times. He and his small group of armed forces overthrew the United States-backed government of Fulgencio Batista. Batista was well on the way to turning Cuba into what every other Latin American nation was fast becoming -- the United States of Dole, Del Monte and Chiquita.
Then there is this bit, amusing in retrospect:
Batista opened the way for large-scale gambling in Havana. He announced that his government would match, dollar for dollar, any hotel investment over $1 million, which would include a casino license. Havana became the "Latin Las Vegas," a playground of choice for many gamblers. All opposition was swiftly and violently crushed, and many began to fear the new government.
In 1956, in midst of the revolutionary upheaval, the 21-story, 383-room Hotel Riviera was built in Havana at a cost of $14 million. It was known as mobster Meyer Lansky's dream and crowning achievement. The hotel opened on December 10, with a floor show headlined by Ginger Rogers. Lansky's official title was "kitchen director," but he controlled every aspect of the hotel.
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Fidel Castro, front, on March 14, 1957. He and several others launched a guerilla war in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Photo by Andrew St. George / Associated Press.
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Castro is often blamed for the Cuban Missile Crisis. The name says it all. But that would not have been possible without the arms race, which already existed, and which still exists. When Castro and his crew managed to overthrow the Batista government on New Year's Eve 1958-59, the world was at the peak of something called the Cold War. Despite Ginger Rogers and her fabulous floor show, it was an absolutely frantic time. The term "Cold War" is a little like saying "passive aggressive." You understand it better if you drop the first word. Though highly civilized, polite as a game of chess and extremely expensive, it was in fact a world war, military, economic and technological. Though there was not an immediate body count, the fate of the entire planet was left in a few not-so-sane hands. It was the first time we know of that the gig -- human life on Earth -- could be up in an hour or so. This remains true; we forget. But hey, at least Castro has finally quit.
Just a few years earlier, the H-bomb (hydrogen bomb) had been developed and tested by the United States, delivering about 500 times the destructive power of the atomic bombs used on Japan. One year later, the USSR had the same technology, and by 1957, England -- so recently back to three meals a day in the aftermath of World War II -- had it as well. So, in the late 1950s, the world was gearing up to blow itself into pieces. Kids were doing duck and cover drills, people were investing in backyard bomb shelters, and even learning how to make their stay down there more cozy with special cooking classes. If this makes you curious, check out the film The Atomic Café.
Then suddenly there was a socialist government 90 miles from Key West. This could not be good. They did not like capitalism. They were supposedly friends with the Soviets. The guys all had beards. And what was more, they were not going to play lackey to American business interests. Not that we didn't have plenty of other countries for that; but nobody likes the one person who won't get in line. That was Castro. He was the exception to all the rules, one of the first things you're likely to encounter when you meet Chiron.
He endured numerous assassination attempts, so many it's funny, including one where an armed assassin slept next to him but could not do the job. This gave him a kind of immortal quality; consider how many world leaders have lived and died in his lifetime.
Castro survived something called Operation Northwoods, a US program designed to create a fake war with Cuba, mainly through the proposed use of false-flag terrorism. He endured the administrations of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush the First, Clinton and most of Cheney-Bush. The one thing all those presidents had in common (with the possible exception of Carter) was that they hated Castro. This long-enduring, long-surviving effect is all about Chiron.
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Tobacco plantation on the Cuban island. Photo by Stephanie Mausset.
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During nearly all of this time, Castro survived a trade embargo from the US and its allies. We forget now that a trade embargo ("economic sanctions") is a direct act of military aggression. It is economic warfare, the modern equivalent of blocking a country's ports with warships, designed to starve the population into submission. If you live on a little island, you need to trade with your neighbors. Even Puerto Rico, an American colony, struggles with this. It is amazing, then, that Castro was able to create the quality of life that he did in Cuba, given that it was impossible for his country to trade with the wealthy Western nations that opposed him. To this day, you cannot bring medical supplies into Cuba from the United States. It is a crime to possess a Cuban cigar. (Someday I will reveal my secret list of who smokes them.)
Apparently, that quality of life included a good bit of sex, drinking and plenty of time to talk about politics -- the lives we wish we had here in the free world.
Ultimately, Castro's sin was being different. As such, he was an embarrassment, most particularly to the United States. He made "the greatest country in the world" seem ineffective. He was a godless heathen, but seemed to be protected by some in comprehensible or invisible force.
What Castro really does is reveal the shadow material of the United States. When you hear the terms "ruthless dictator" or "iron fist," stop and think. Today, we still live in the nuclear shadow. Nobody is talking about disarmament anymore. Civil liberties continue to be eroded in our supposedly free country. Here in our democracy, supposedly protected by the Constitution, you can have your home searched or your phone tapped without a warrant.
"It's a good day for the Cuban people. They're no longer ruled by a ruthless dictator," Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., said to CNN. "The real question is how do we hope for a better day for the people of Cuba, so they can elect their own leaders."
Good point, senator. We seem to have some important work ahead of us on that issue here in the United States as well.
By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
ON TUESDAY night, Barack Obama, Democratic candidate for president, swept Wisconsin and Hawaii to tally up ten straight wins. This was a blow to Hillary Clinton, who had expected to do better in Wisconsin than in Obama's home state. She figured to take one of the two. She did not.
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Hillary and Barack back to back in Las Vegas. Courtesy of Telegraph Newspaper Online.
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Their speeches that evening were fascinating in themselves. Stung by criticism that she is not inspiring, Mrs. Clinton put aside her usual detailed laundry list of proposed policies and tried for a broader oration. The pundits found it flat, as did I. Her attempts to find her authentic voice come and go as her handlers steer her toward damage control in a race for nomination that she had been projected to have nailed down by now. Her talents are more apparent when they are not shoved into a formula.
Mr. Obama's speech was, likewise, adjusted to meet criticism. He added more detail to his policy proposals, while never deviating from his altruistic call for change and embrace of hope. Hope has been a defining theme of Obama's campaign; and his life, as indicated by his second book, The Audacity of Hope -- it also offers his critics an opportunity to attack hope as an empty bag of air. But Obama defends hope very effectively, he is nothing if not convincing. I have long admired his speaking ability, but I am wary of campaign promises; he made many that evening.
At some point I was overwhelmed at how ambitious, how complete, his 'to do' list has become. Ideas enter public consciousness by repetition, by hearing them over and over, which is why campaign speeches sound like echoes. My only cable news channel, CNN, has been running an ongoing series for the last few months on our failing systems entitled "Broken Government." That reality has entered the public mind, punctuated by our daily challenges to stretch a dollar and keep the mortgage paid. Mr. Obama had evidently been paying attention, enumerating the problems he promises to address in a manner that accentuated their sheer number and left me rather breathless. He knows, I thought at one point. He's nailing it -- he's the nominee.
By Scott Kalechstein
DO GRATITUDE, contentment, and inner peace sometimes creep up on you and undermine your ability to indulge your anxiety?
Here's a quick and handy two-step process to make sure you get your M.D.R. (minimum daily requirements) of worry and chaos:
1. Believe and act like your safety, security, and happiness are dependent on people and forces outside of you that you can't control.
2. Try to control them.
For those of you who prefer to keep it complex, here are seven habits to develop that will help you go deeper into your practice and guarantee a daily overdose of adrenaline. Allow me to be your drama director as we shout out the traditional opening words... "Lights! Camera!! RE-ACTION!!!"
1. Harness The Power Of Negative Thinking -- Everybody accentuates the negative on occasion. What if I can't pay my bills? What if I lose my house? What if I get sick? What if I'm alone for life? What if I'm in this relationship for life? But as your drama coach, I want to inspire you to master 'The Secret' by focusing all of your attention on the most negative possible outcomes all of the time. When this discipline has been achieved, you can relax into the certainty that you will always find something to freak out about in any situation, and fear will never abandon you again.
2. Be Busy Till You're Dizzy -- Being too busy to still your mind and take good care of your body is essential on this path to drama-realization. With temptation all around us these days -- health food stores, spas, gyms, yoga studios, and meditation classes, it takes courage to maintain abstinence while everyone is stretching, sweating, chanting, and going organic. Remember, as our parents tried to warn us, engaging in meditation can lead to blindness, losing sight of all the things right in front of you to worry about. So wake up every morning painfully early, splash cold water on your face, brew up your caffeine, and go, speed racer, go! Have you answered all your emails? Who needs a shoulder to lean on? Is there something on TV? Always make sure your life and your mind are filled with clutter and free of those annoying empty spaces between your thoughts that can disturb your absence of peace.
3. Have A Swinging Good Time -- Drama majors are often found swinging like a pendulum from one extreme to another, churning with the thrill of constant crises, skillfully sidestepping the monotony and boredom of emotional stability. Would you like to be able to create, at the snap your fingers, a soap opera drenched in drama, anytime you want? All you need to do is to stuff your feelings till you can't hold them in any longer, and then explode without restraint or care for anyone, especially the ones you care most about. As a practice, try being 100% nice and sweet. Stretch yourself to accommodate someone as much and as long as you can, and then take the lid off and let the steam out, like Mt. Saint Helens does once in a while. There is nothing as satisfying as having a good eruption after being good and silent for a spell.
4. Leave Your Inner Child Alone Without Parental Guidance -- When the child inside the adult gets scared, some really juicy drama can happen, but only if we withhold our compassion, re-assurance, and loving boundaries. When we can resist such mushy self-help nonsense, our inner children usually wreak havoc trying to get those things from others, usually through some very exciting acting out in the drama department. When two or more people abandon their little kids at the same time, oh boy, that's when the fun begins. The adults have left the vehicle, and you can guess who's in the front seat, banging on the horn, flooding the accelerator, yelling out the window, and playing extreme bumper cars. Yippee!
5. Set Huge Goals, Maintain Unrealistic Expectations -- There is nothing more beneficial to your lifestyle than the habit of reaching for the stars, falling short of your lofty goals, and feeling like a colossal failure. Taking big leaps and falling flat on your face is paramount for maintaining healthy low self-esteem, which is the foundation of all good drama. Go for the mountaintop, and don't look down at your feet on your way. One step at a time is for people satisfied with proceeding at a snail's pace, always leaving behind their slime trail of serenity, gentleness, balance, and other dismal downers that drama kings and queens take royal pains to avoid. You can do better than that!
6. Judge Your Judgments -- Every human being judges, but only the ones who have learned the art of judging their own judgments excel in creating melodrama. Have you ever been known to shame and blame yourself for feeling afraid and stuck, telling yourself that there is something really wrong with you for not moving forward? Good! You are on the right track. Now, take your next step. Judge your judgments! Tell yourself that you should know better than to shame and blame yourself. Heap truckloads of guilt on yourself for stooping so low to the curb of self-criticism, yet again. This will make you quite an energetic downer that can't help but suck energy from those around you. You'll be the lifelessness of the party!
7. Get Grounded In The 3 B's (Blame, Blame, & Blame) -- Blaming yourself has already been covered. But don't rest there. Blame everyone else too. Life's not going the way you want? Blame, blame, blame! Blame first, ask questions and take responsibility later, if at all. Appropriate targets are Mom and Dad, friends (if you still have any), your mate (if they are still around), the Bush administration, the Clinton administration, big corporations, small minds, and, of course, God. Self-responsibility can lead to issues finding solutions, which flushes good drama right down the drain. Instead, let it overflow, uncontained, uncensored, unedited. Blame, Blame, Blame!
Affirmations For Good Drama
Every day in every way I am stressing out over everything, real or imagined.
Everything is working together to conspire to bring the worst possible outcome to my doorstep.
Life is against me and I am doomed.
This, or something worse, is now manifesting for the highest cost to all concerned.
I no longer have to work to create drama. Drama happens effortlessly and naturally, all around me.
Whatever calamity I can conceive, I can achieve.
I always have everything I need to manifest everything I don't want, and all is hell in my world.
Editor's Note: There is another way of looking at the world. Scott Kalechstein is an ancient friend and writing partner of Eric Francis who turned him onto just about everything. Today he is an inspirational speaker, a transformational humorist, a life coach, and a modern day troubadour. He makes his home in Marin, California and loves presenting at conferences, giving talks, concerts and workshops. In his phone counseling practice, he is a relationship specialist, helping both individuals and couples heal, manifest, and awaken into conscious relationship. Call 415-721-2954 to schedule a session, or email him at scott@scottsongs.com. You can visit www.scottsongs.com to read more about his workshops, to hear his talks or to sample songs from his nine CD's. Sign up for his free muse-letters to receive writings like this one on a semi-occasional basis.
By Sam Stark
Courtesy of Harpers, all rights reserved.
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A million bucks in one dollar bills. Courtesy of the Business Reference Services.
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SENATOR BARACK OBAMA beat Senator Hillary Clinton by huge margins in primaries in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, and Senator John McCain beat former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. The close Democratic race worried party superdelegates, who will play a decisive role in choosing a candidate. Nancy Larson, a lobbyist and superdelegate from Minnesota, characterized superdelegates in general as "big schmucks." Alaskan superdelegate Cindi Spanyers received a call from former president Bill Clinton, who recalled his wife's work on a fish cannery slime line there, and Obama was endorsed by the fishing village of Obama, Japan. McCain was endorsed by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and ex-president George H. W. Bush. Representative Tom Lantos (D., Calif.), a Holocaust survivor and superdelegate who was expected to back Clinton, died. At a memorial service, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni compared Lantos to "a shining blue Star of David emblazoned on an American Air Force jet." Bono led mourners in an a cappella version of John Lennon's "All You Need Is Love," and Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R., Florida) interrupted the closing speech by Elie Wiesel with a call for a vote to adjourn. An album of hair collected from the first twelve presidents was displayed at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. "It is an awesome sort of sight," said curator Robert Peck. "Pieces of presidents."
President George W. Bush visited Africa to tout the success of his policies there, including his decision not to try to stop genocide in Darfur. "I'm not one of these guys that really gives a darn about elite opinion," he explained. "What I really care about is--are we saving lives?" Sudanese aircraft and Janjaweed militiamen attacked three villages in West Darfur, killing as many as 114 civilians and driving 12,000 more refugees into neighboring Chad, where they joined hundreds of thousands of refugees already there. Chadian President Idriss Deby declared a state of emergency. Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah was killed by a car bomb in Syria, and Jose Ramos-Horta, the president of East Timor, was shot and seriously injured. A graduate student in social work, specializing in mental health, shot up a classroom at Northern Illinois University, killing five people and then himself. Patty Hearst attended the Westminster Kennel Club dog show with Diva, her French bulldog. "When people find out it's me," said Hearst, a veteran of the Symbionese Liberation Army, "it's like it doesn't make sense." A suicide bomber killed at least 100 spectators at a dogfight near Kandahar, Afghanistan.
It was revealed that the U.S. Treasury Department met with
Iran last month to discuss terrorist financing, and that the CIA wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on a failed counterterrorism plan involving fake companies overseas. A suppressed RAND report from late 2005, critical of every aspect of the Iraq war planning, was leaked, and French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet, author of such novels as "The Erasers," died. The Bush Administration announced that it would seek the death penalty for six men allegedly linked to the 9/11 attacks. It will build its case in part on confessions elicited with Starbucks coffee rather than on earlier confessions obtained through waterboarding. Starbucks announced that 7,100 stores will close for three hours so that 135,000 employees can learn again how to make coffee. A bill that would have made permanent the government's expanded surveillance powers and granted immunity to companies that helped the government spy on American citizens passed the Senate but failed in the House. The Centers for Disease Control reported that fewer children died while playing the "choking game" last year than in the two years prior. In a thousand-square-mile, low-oxygen zone growing along the coast of Oregon and Washington, every fish, crab, and sea worm was dead, and the floppy ribbon worms of Antarctica were expected to meet their first predators in millions of years due to warming water. A moose fell from a 150-foot cliff in Alaska, just missing state trooper Howard Peterson. Peterson thought the moose might have been lonely, as the area is populated mostly by sheep, but state wildlife biologist Rick Sinnott disagreed. "They occasionally have bad days," he said of moose, "like the rest of us."
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Weekly Horoscope for Friday, February 22, 2008, #702 - By ERIC FRANCIS |
Aries (March 20-April 19)
Are you comfortable with the division between worldly lust and your own cosmic nature? Do you really believe there is one? And if there isn't, and if you say you know that, what exactly is holding you down? You seem to be caught in one kind of split inwardly, and another outwardly. One is all in your head, consisting of wrangling over which set of judgments you have about yourself is supposedly accurate. The other involves your tendency to see that which is exalted, holy and moreover in harmony with itself as outside of yourself. These two seemingly different issues are actually one and the same. There is no inner split, and what you see outside of yourself tells you nearly everything about who you are right now.
Taurus (April 19-May 20)
You are not alone, but here is the thing about your charts, now and perhaps for always: the greater things you aspire to, the less they tend to happen solo. In other words, the hotter your creative fire is burning, the more people are drawn into the process. Reach out if you want to -- but meanwhile, notice who you just happen to pull in your direction. Notice how people respond to you in group situations. Observe the impact you have on the people around you, and the way the light you are emitting colors the whole landscape. The fact that you may feel self-conscious is not, and I repeat, is NOT a reflection on the way you are perceived. As much as any two things can be different, the way you experience yourself among others and the way that others experience you bear nearly no relationship. To see the truth of this, you're going to need to look.
Gemini (May 20-June 21)
You can afford to push harder: you're pressing against something strong, something stronger than you are, and which is encouraging you to build your strength. You are doing this in the relationship you share with whoever or whatever it is; that is its purpose and in truth the deepest source of pleasure that it offers. Though you tend to be concrete and reasonable in your beliefs, this would be the time to open your mind and recognize that there is plenty about the world that you don't understand. In a sense, what you are in right now is a relationship specifically to the unknown. You may think that your world-wise, brash, sometimes deeply cynical approach to life is nothing compared to the mysterious cosmic force you have encountered in another. But the symbiosis is perfect; this is really a case of the power of mutual need.
Cancer (June 21-July 22)
You're likely to have experienced a breakthrough of some kind relating to an idea you're developing. Since I am a writer, I'm hesitant to say that it involves writing, but that's what the astrology says. Anyway, writing is not just for writers. It is one of the best ways to focus your mind, figure out what you're thinking and evolve your ideas by one or two orders of magnitude. It also happens to be an excellent way to relate to the people around you. I suggest you take this thing that's burning a hole in your mind and work on it for six months straight. Work at it every day, even if on certain days, you only have time to devote a single word to the effort. What you have is an opening. Now you can, if you want or more likely, if you must, go through that opening. Don't plan -- just feel, and write.
Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)
You now have something of a fresh start on a key financial matter. As you are no doubt seeing, attitude plays a big role, and you seem to have let go of an old idea, value or hang-up that was preventing you from making the decisions you needed to make. Someone had an influence on you; it would appear that someone who changed their mind about something or expressed a long-withheld idea prompted your re-evaluation. In any event, you need to focus on money for the next six months. You've been getting this cue since Saturn left your sign several months ago, but you've been viewing that as a long-term process that was giving you no particular reason to rush. The long-term part is true; the other part, about focusing on making some significant progress before the next set of eclipses in the autumn, is even truer.
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
You have caught a glimpse of the mind behind the emotions. Now you need to look for the deeper emotions behind the mind. These layers are interesting, and you love them. The way to do this is through exploring art. Art makes anything possible, and by all rights it would be a significant part of your life for well beyond the foreseeable future. I say this if you think you have no creative talent whatsoever, or if you fancy yourself one of the true explorers. At the moment, you are on the brink of significant, deeply positive changes. This is developing at the same time that Pluto and Jupiter are working their way through the most creative, passionate angle of your chart. Little interior pockets of consciousness are bursting free, releasing their energy and their vintage ideas. They seem to want to be expressed in the world in three dimensions rather than two: for example, sculpture rather than drawing.
Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
Thank the gods and goddesses, Venus and Mercury are in fine form in one of the most dynamic angles of your chart -- Aquarius. This adds up to an interesting astrological equation. You do something creative, and you get one result -- and then you get another one that you weren't expecting. You set out to make beauty, and you have a strange discussion; an unusual sexual opportunity arises, and you get to have a deep discussion about healing; you seek an experience for its own sake and you learn something you could not have learned any other way. In this angle of your chart, there is a kind of hidden layer, and the only way to get there is through experience. Rest assured, you can't predict what's going to happen, and it may not be convenient. But for sure it will be satisfying at least two different ways.
Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
As a Scorpio, you are one motivated by deep passions. Usually they run so deep; it takes you weeks to decipher them. At the moment, being aware of what you're feeling is much easier, and all of those dark and watery sentiments are translating into words and images quite nicely. Take this excellent opportunity to explain yourself. You no longer need to use the excuse that you don't have to explain yourself; that remains true, but it's less significant when it becomes so easy to do so. If your solar chart means anything, I would say you're feeling downright cerebral, and now that you have the newfound ability to do so, you might want to explain yourself to very nearly everyone. Well, you are free to -- it would make an excellent experiment in a little-remembered thing from the good old days of Human Potential -- self-disclosure is liberating. Liberating is fun. And right now it's really easy.
Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)
The emotional security you have been struggling for is finally beginning to find a home in your life. I mean this literally; a sense of security is something you must make space for. You declare your home a safe space, and then stop obsessing over the locks. This really is possible. One of my favorite Sagittarians hasn't locked her front door a single day in the past 15 years that I've known her. Yet she is highly conscious of her boundaries; she knows where the perimeter is. It is then up to you to declare what happens and what does not happen inside that space. You set the definition of liberty, of respect, of conscience. One thing that would help is if you declare a symbolic hearth. Unfortunately most houses don't have fireplaces or wood stoves any more, but this can be done symbolically. Let this be the center of physical space and of awareness, and organize everything around this one focal point.
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
Now that you can finally see the surface of your desk, what else do you want to see? Who do you want to know? What truly meaningful diversions have you been avoiding because you've been so busy balancing your checkbook over and over again? Speaking of, you are in one of those phases of your life when it is time to share your wealth. I don't just mean money; I mean your human wealth, your values and priorities, your ideas, your friends, the pleasure of your company. Look around at all the bored people in the world. You have mysteriously been spared this affliction. Most people don't understand how, and it's finally safe to reveal that beneath your well-tailored image of propriety, you are a revolutionary. Only those who respect the past are free to do something about it. You definitely qualify. And a lot of people can benefit from your perception.
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
The Sun is now in Pisces, but there is still a beautiful story developing in your birth sign. Mercury has stationed direct, which is releasing a stream of pent-up energy. Venus has arrived, and is easing her way into conjunctions with Mercury, Nessus, Chiron and Neptune. Whether you're a man or a woman, this is about trying on the many facets and expressions of feminine experience and consciousness; of femaleness itself. You may feel like a different person every day, craving an entirely different relationship to the people around you. This is a time to experiment, with an aim toward feeling your reality in the world, but most of all, with the intention of liberating something inside yourself. If you encounter any dark emotions, which you surely will, listen to them, feel them through to your core, and express them in some tangible way. Freedom is the freedom to feel. From there anything is possible.
Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
The air is starting to clear up and you can finally see the light of day; and for that matter, the light of night. What a difference the Sun in Pisces makes. You know more than you did one week ago, you know a lot more than you did a year ago, and you finally have considerably less of that annoying, thinly veiled anxiety stressing your mind. You're also free from certain obligations imposed by others in ways that you may not quite recognize yet. The question is: to what extent will you let yourself be free? I suggest you aim for a very large extent. Every factor in your chart is nudging you toward revolutionary independence, of mind and body as well as spirit. Remember, if you want others to be free, at the moment, you're the one who has to lead the way.
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