Paris, Friday, April 14, 2006
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Threading the Eye of the Nuclear Needle
 
READER WARNING -- there are intelligent people who believe that nuking Iran is a good idea. You may be one of them; I don't know. If so, please don't take offense. This article is not directed personally at you. I'm just trying to save the world.
 
Before I type another syllable, however, I want to say I just cannot even believe I even have to spend my Thursday evening writing about this. Or my days thinking about it, for that matter. But, alas, I cannot seem to check my email or log onto any of the news sites without reading about it yet again. I guess it's better that we know, and you have to admit, it's all pretty suspenseful and awfully exciting wondering whether our species will survive the Cheney-Bush administration, even after Ronnie Reagan rode in on his white horse and personally saw to the downfall of the Evil Empire.
 
Furthermore, I just finished an Instant Message session with an unidentified elder male relative, who grew up during the Cold War doing duck and cover drills as a kid, that went a little like this (after I pointed out that the inconvenient fact that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were involved in setting up a plutonium program in Iran in the 1970s, under the Ford administration):
 

Unidentified Elder Male Relative: So do you want me to believe that just because the names stay the same, the positions and alliances do too?
ME: It's very lowbrow politics. These guys are arms traders.
UEMR: Maybe, but the one problem with the critics is that they never have any solutions.
ME: But this isn't really a problem. It's a manufactured crisis. And this is THE classic way to manipulate people, you quickly make an 'us' and a 'them' and it's a done deal.
UEMR: Tell me some solutions.
ME: To what?
UEMR: Reducing the threat of terror in the US and around the world, or should we all become Muslim extremists?
ME: Iran is a country that can't even manage to get nuclear power online, and I can tell you that a solution is NOT bombing the Islamic world. This is how you make the problem worse.
UEMR: It didn't in Japan.

So much for seeking ethical guidance and wisdom from our elders caught in The Spell. No, using nukes didn't make the problem worse in Japan. Unless you happened to be in Hiroshima that day. Then it made your problem a lot worse, if you even had one. I used to have discussions with my unidentified elder male relative like this when I was five years old. This is why we're both so good at it. We've been practicing since back in the days of Vietnam.
 
So where else do we go for some guidance? If we're looking to astrology, there are at least three charts to consider. One is the chart for the Islamic Republic of Iran, from April Fool's Day 1979. The second is a chart called the Nuclear Axis, which is the first time a self-sustaining atomic reaction was created in 1942, under the Manhattan Project. The third is the chart for Hiroshima a few years later.

In reporting on these charts, I don't mean to harsh anybody's mellow, or interfere with the gradually rising tide of optimism that something good is going to come out of all this insanity that we're seeing. I'm not here to get in God's way, to trip Jesus or draw a picture of Mo. Personally, I'm not allowing that to bias my interpretations. Nor am I predicting disaster.

I'm just saying slippery when wet, and caution: don't stop on the tracks. Just because you put up a railroad crossing sign is not a prediction that somebody's going to get wiped out at the intersection. Quite to the contrary. And there's quite a few trains going by these days. Here is what the charts say to me.
 
The Iran chart is slightly disturbing, but mostly because it's confused about some fundamental values and seeks to impose that confusion on others. Here is the chart:

http://planetwaves.net/chart.php?c=iran

At first it looks innocent enough, with lots of sweet friendly Pisces, until you notice that there are six planets in the 8th house -- the house of death. Say the word 'death' six times and then think of Iran and you'll have a feeling for its chart. So many planets stuffed into the frightening, scary old 8th house, which is a relationship house where we strive to share our value, can make you a little obsessive in that department.

The 8th is also the house of sex, and it can surely make you obsessive about that as well, and a magnet. Where Iran is concerned, it would seem that death gets higher official approval ratings than sex. You can be executed there for suspicion of being gay. But then, there are places in the United States this has proven to be true in recent memory.

Tucked into that 8th house is a conjunction of Mercury retrograde conjunct Mars. That is backwards rhetoric that should remind us all of the 14th century or so. Mars in Pisces seeks pleasure and creative expression. Mercury retrograde pretty much makes that a real struggle. The conjunction is square Neptune in Sagittarius. Slippery when wet.
 
It turns out that the Nuclear Axis chart and the Iran chart have a lot in common, specifically, many planets placed early in the mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces). When these planets come under transit, that is, when the planets where they are now align with the planets back then, the nuclear issue comes up, and it does so dependably. Extremely dependably. Usually there is an accident or a crisis of some kind. Chernobyl is a most unfortunate example, but they haven't all gone so badly. For example, the June 2000 fire at the Hanford nuclear facility in Washington was a miracle, and a warning.
 
As fate would have it, Uranus and Pluto are currently dancing around the mutable signs (Pisces and Sagittarius, respectively), stirring up both the Iran chart and the Nuclear Axis chart. These are the planets for which uranium and plutonium were named.
 
Uranus is currently tromping all over that array of Pisces planets in the Iran chart's 8th house. Uranus is always full of surprises, and they tend to appear quickly. Often they are solutions or technological breakthroughs, and other times they are simply the unexpected. Pluto, the planet of obsession, is in Sagittarius, the sign of religious fervor, and it's been making a lot of squares to Iran's 8th house, and also making a lot of aspects in the Nuclear Axis chart the past few years.
 
So, astrologically, we have something of a setup, at the very least for the kind of rhetoric we're now seeing go around so abundantly: Iran proud that it's made enough uranium to light up one of those little green glow sticks; and Washington proud that it has yet another evil country to save us all from. Both leaders are seeing this as the perfect opportunity to dazzle us out of noticing their idiotic choices and ridiculously low public approval ratings.
 
At the moment, Pluto is squaring both Mars and Mercury in Iran's 8th house, which in part accounts for their apparent death wish. But it's largely a head trip. It also accounts for all the talk, talk, talk -- Mercury is involved, and you tend to talk about the Mercury aspects you have going on. And Uranus is basically provoking the Iranian government to be extremely petulant and 'independent' and not let anybody boss it around, kind of like a healthy 15 year old, only this is a grownup country with a lot of guns and rockets.
 
The planet that reveals the prevailing psychology of the moment is Ixion, which is in Sagittarius. You've never heard of this planet, about as distant as Pluto and somewhat smaller, unless you have really strange reading habits (such as visiting PlanetWaves.net), but it is a real planet discovered in 2001, and it was named for the first murderer in Greek mythical history. Ixion was brought to Olympus by Jupiter, for rehabilitation, where he hatched a plot to rape Hera, the Queen of Heaven. Ixion had problems, and astrologically, I give this new planet the keywords, 'that which we are all capable of'.
 
Ixion getting mixed up in the Nuclear Axis chart has been bugging me for a while, because this is anything but a rational influence. Ixion thinks like a perpetrator, but also reveals that quality of thought. It reveals something of the common thread that runs through the human psyche's long shadow. In a sense, it does not matter who is wrong or right where Ixion is concerned; the subject matter arises, and we can all become accomplices, just as Zeus was the unwitting accomplice in the attempted rape of his wife (she outwitted the little brat, however, and was safe).
 
Ixion in this position would be about thinking the unthinkable, and assuming that people are capable of the undoable -- that's exactly the page we're on. And whether we are actually risking a nuclear volley with Iran (or rather at Iran, since they can only retaliate with glow in the dark stickers at this point), we're going to see more and more of the twisted psychology emerge that would underlie such a stupid possibility. In a sense, it's a kind of purge that we're seeing this kind of thinking come to the surface of consciousness rather than stay stuffed down. Once it comes up, we have a choice. Until then, it remains hidden and we have no choice.
 
Then there is the Hiroshima chart. As you would expect, this is not a particularly pleasant chart. It drips with weight and karma. I think we need to think about Hiroshima every time we consider the existence of nuclear weapons. When you bring the chart up to date using a dependable method of called 'secondary progression', you find out that we're going through the eye of the nuclear needle. We're at the end of a long cycle in this chart's history, spanning about 30 years during which the world was in fact gradually becoming somewhat safer, from the standpoint of nuclear war, and during which time the Cold War ended (the chart is having a New Moon by secondary progression).
 
The end of a long cycle like this does not portend a disaster, but it does raise the issue: what are we really doing at the turning point? What plans are we making for the next cycle? This is the moment of seeding, the nuclear dark of the Moon. Are we sowing the seeds of nuclear war or nuclear peace for the next generation? What will our kids be saying to us in the Instant Message sessions of the future?

We are choosing, and we're choosing now.

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More on the Nuclear Axis is here:
http://www.stariq.com/pagetemplate/article.asp?PageID=1116

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Astrology Secrets Revealed is updated here:
http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/eric.html

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Planet Waves by Eric Francis
April 14, 2006 - weekly horoscope 606
  
Happy Birthday Aries!
Emotional grounding is what separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls. Summed up in one word, that word is maturity. In some ways, maturity eventually shows up. In other ways, it's a quality we seek, aspire to, define and embrace. Its greatest benefit comes from how we relate to fear, and whether we're able to feel safe in the face of uncertainty. You have seen the ways that dividing your mind between two commitments, two possibilities or two different worlds creates fear. You will soon experience how making a firm commitment to yourself and your peace of mind does precisely the opposite.
 
Aries (March 20-April 19)
With your ruling planet about to change signs, you may be feeling like you don't know up from down or left from right. Indeed, distinguishing right from wrong may be pretty challenging as well. You've been through quite a lot in the past two months, some of which you'd rather forget and some you'd never give up for the world. But get ready to give up what you don't want and to leave behind a phase of your life quickly and decisively. Mars in Cancer promises a time where you will not give into your fears or questions about life, but rather confront them directly and with a unified mind and a brave heart.
 
Taurus (April 19-May 20)
What may feel like fear or apprehension is a turning point leading you toward something much better. You've grown accustomed to expecting a bit less out of life these days, so you may be surprised by a development that feels a little like a wish coming true. Will it be a big wish, or a small one? Perhaps there's no difference -- one is like another in that they all demonstrate the possibility that better things come our way when we least expect it. The interesting aspect of the situation is that you've put a lot of energy into improving your lot in life, but with mixed results. What happens will show you the meaning of success.
 
Gemini (May 20-June 21)
It's time to say: 'Good heavens, Mars in your birth sign has been quite a ride'. The current turning point is inviting you to sum up your gains and losses the past couple of months, particularly dating back to the Mercury retrograde that began Feb. 16. By these two accounts, you are entering all new territory in life, and if you feel that moment of letting go into a bit of uncertainty, you know you're in the right place. You may experience this another way, which is as a decisive moment of pushing ahead with doing, creating and gaining whatever is most vital to you, with a sense of adventure and freedom from the past.
 
Cancer (June 21-July 22)
The sense of drama you may be feeling at the moment will give way to a state of clarity and commitment. You'll be pleasantly surprised what you can accomplish by aiming for steady progress toward whatever goals you set -- and in truth, the more interesting, the more unique, the more innovative, the better. If you take the attitude that there's no problem without a solution, that will invoke a certain mystical quality that helps you take steady steps and speak with trustworthy authority. You've come a long way toward facing your fears the past couple of months, and a combination of factors is offering you a chance to be on top of your game.
 
Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)
Be careful that you don't let unspoken or unacknowledged fears take hold of your relationships. The best way to prevent that from happening is by saying what you would not normally say, and identifying the emotion associated with it. The time to do so is right when you start to feel stuck. You're not the type to get lost in the sauce of your own psychological complexity, but then, there are all kinds of cats. When in doubt, try making a few statements that begin with the words, 'I feel', 'I need', and 'I'm scared of'. This is a trick that keeps the responsibility for your feelings on you -- but allows others to assist if they can.
 
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
Time has been working for you, not against you; the decision you're now making, and which seems so monumental, is something you've decided before. It wasn't so long ago that you need to search through your diaries, but at the time you may have felt you were acting ahead of yourself or that you wanted to give the circumstance more time to work out. That time has come and gone. It's now time for an honest, simple assessment of where the situation is at, and for a review of your options. In practical terms, there is one direction you need to go in, and you know it's the right one simply because it feels that way.
 
Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
You're humble enough to know when somebody has a better idea than you do, and smart enough to put it to work. But whether others take that same approach to you is another question. You do, however, have the solution, and you seem ready to take authority in a situation where you can put it to work. Reach people on the level of their feelings, and inspire them with how smart and innovative you think they are; then, jump right into expressing those same qualities yourself. You're brewing an idea that can certainly change your world, and may even be able to change the world. Don't worry if it's not what anyone was expecting.
 
Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
Faith is generally thought to be a passive experience, where one relaxes and lets the right thing happen. There's another kind of faith, where you seek the truth and aspire to live it. This is a lot more your style, fitting with your 'make your own luck' way of approaching life. At the moment, it would not surprise me if you've decided that doesn't quite work anymore, since there are so many factors out of your control. But where a particular financial commitment is concerned, you can indeed make your own luck, and it turns out that it will work just fine for everyone else.
 
Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)
You now realize that what you were waiting for another person to decide is really a matter you must decide for yourself. It would seem that whoever has been delaying mutual progress in a domestic situation or a matter of emotional wellbeing has been confused and has been waiting for you to take a clear stand. Often in the world, it doesn't matter who sets the boundaries; it's just good to know they're there. You've had many realizations about this and you seem to have resolved to wait the situation out in a gesture of fairness and compassion. If that didn't get productive results, the time has arrived to use the backup plan.
 
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
You'll need to use some of your excellent political skill to keep your closest partnerships on an even keel for the next few weeks. It may seem like partners or loved ones will be taking you to task on your shortcomings, but you can if you like interpret this as a sign of love and affection. It's true that people have strange ways of demonstrating their appreciation of you, but then you have some strange ways of expressing your cozy feelings for them. Once everyone and everything is sorted out, we're really just friends who can find comfort and prosperity through one another's mutual involvement. Keep that spirit in mind, and act on it, because not only does it work; it's appealing.
 
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
You need to keep working for that balance between productivity and emotional serenity. For a long while, the two have seemed like the properties of an entirely different cosmos. In one world, there is peace, rest and nourishment. In another there has been a revved up level of movement and aggressive work. In truth the answer is less about balance and more about integrating these seemingly opposite halves of your recent life. Adjust your work environment to support you better. Seek help with difficult tasks, or begin them before they intimidate you. But most of all, be a leader in your work space. Colleagues and partners are counting on you.
 
Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
You seem to be hanging out right on that edge where insecurity meets creativity. Expressing oneself authentically is not what you would call safe or stable work. It's necessary to court a certain quality of fringe mentality, so that the ordinary obstructions of the ego get in the way less, and so that one is inclined to take more chances. You've become familiar with this territory over the past few months, and as Mars moves into your sympathetic sign Cancer, you will reap the rewards as creative drive, inspiration, and the ever-necessary urge to go a little further than you did yesterday.

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