Brussels, Monday, July 17, 2006

Dear Friend and Reader:

Like everyone, we are watching the news regarding Israel and Lebanon with grave concern. As an astrologer, part of what troubles me is that since the cluster of events around March 29, as well as several other clusters, including Beltane and the Cancer ingress of the Sun (solstice), the astrology has far outpaced events in the world.

We have seen repeated concentrations of events around the Aries Point, but a response in the world that's not quite proportional. It is true that there is sometimes a delayed reaction involving eclipses and eclipse-like events. And it's also true that the energy can accumulate and be released all at once, unexpectedly. For example, my only evidence of being aware of the Asian tsunami of 2004 was a note on top of the Full Moon chart, in Dec. 2004, that said "Aries Point alert."

Now, however, we are witnessing a situation between Lebanon and Israel that seems to be spiraling out of control. This is happening at a time when pretty much all observers agree that some kind of war involving Iran is inevitable. I am hearing much discussion that the Israel/Lebanon developments are a kind of proxy war with Iran, the United States, Israel and other Middle-Eastern factions playing out their ambitions and aggressions in this particular way.

Yet I can see where this situation feels so distant.

As someone who has made it my life's work to personalize global events, and show the relevance of individuals in the planetary story, I often wonder about how or where those connections may arise in individuals; how, why, or when one might care, when caught in the midst of daily existence, with its very real concerns, responsibilities, and the desire to have some of life for oneself; that is, the need for pleasure.

Then there is the taboo on unclean "politics."

"I suppose I've been ignoring politics for quite some time," someone writes to me, even as I write this to you. Yes, well, that's appealing enough. I understand -- usually what we call politics ranges from boring to violent to inaccessible. True, Wilhelm Reich said it was the very height of neurosis, and that all politics as we know it is the direct result of suppression of sexual energy -- which it's not surprising repeatedly emerges in a more toxic and destructive form as war.

But perhaps this will be meaningful to you. It was a policy of the Nazi regime to basically convince people that the affairs of state, all being too far over the heads of ordinary individuals, should be left to the supposed experts. And it was. People certainly want to be left to carry on their own affairs and pursue their pleasures, as well as solve their problems of living without the bearing the burdens of the big world. Understandable enough. But we might want to notice who those experts are and what's on the agenda.

It usually works out that people take an interest in what they once called politics after it's already too late. What could have taken an ounce of prevention takes a ton of cure. Meanwhile, here is something you may find inspiring, but also a barometer of how much the world has changed in less than half a century, and how the language that defines our reality has changed. Pay particular attention to the use of references to religion and God: it was a very different time, with a truly different feeling. We had an idea that there would be tomorrow, and we were allowed to care. http://snipurl.com/tdpd

Today, we live in the era of the Aries Point -- when the personal is political. We live in the era of Pluto on the Galactic Core -- our personal evolution needs to, and inevitably will, become focused on a much larger picture or definition or actual sense of what reality is. We need to orient our sense of belonging and participation on a much wider universe than we ever have before. Our Sun is part of a vast community of stars and solar systems, though we are way out on the edge, where it's easy to feel lonesome and far from home.

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Note, due to writing schedule adjustments in June, we are fresh out of July monthly horoscopes. I am posting today's daily edition instead. These continue on the front page every day, along with a new photo.

Thanks for tuning in.

Yours & truly,

ERIC FRANCIS
francis@planetwaves.net

Monday, July 17, 2006 | The Trib Trib

SO perhaps it will comfort nobody to hear this, but when I was but a tadpole in the spiritual training pond known as Miracle Manor, most people would talk openly about a "tribulation period." This was held by my fellow future amphibians to be an anticipated timeframe of life on Earth characterized by intense and life-changing developments, including environmental changes which were generally sorted in with the general term "Earth changes." There was the continuous suggestion that it would really be good to know how to swim.

There was no proof that this was coming, and the traditional basis for the prediction was probably Edgar Cayce: but it seemed to be coming into consciousness through a few different sources. I never really had an opinion on the issue, nor did it concern me that much, except that for a while I worked on a parody of a future newspaper which you could read from the front or the back, depending on your point of view. From the front, it was the New Age News. From the back, it was The Tribulation Tribune, also known as the Trib Trib.

Ah that's right, it was David Crismond, our resident doctoral student and approximate equivalent to the Professor on Gilligan's Island, who would refer to it casually as The Trib. That is, he would call the forthcoming Tribulation Period or Tribulation Phase the Trib. This must have been an in-house joke at Hilda's, this guru he had a relationship with who (as gurus do) had some really fun stories of the "this is impossible but it happened" genre. Like the night all the dogs showed up at their land upstate after Hilda prayed to the Archetypal Dog seeking assistance finding a lost dog.

Anyway, theologically, it's easy to lump the Trib in with all of the The End and Rapture stuff we keep hearing about. All you need to do is sit at home, wait for your doorbell to ring, and you will have a Junior Religious Scholar or three tell you all about The End and how you can prepare for it. The fact that the initials of this particular church are an anagram of LSD adds but a little irony, yet The End is in fact a fact of life for these folk and many others. There are also Rapturists, who are awaiting that glorious moment when we are all shed of our clothes and go ascending, in body, to heaven; except for those going to hell. There are the Left Behinders, the scifi-ish book series telling the tale of the sinful who inherit the Earth after all the good people are taken back by God -- sells better than ice cream.

To millions and zillions of people, this is all as real as I-5 blazing down the West Coast. I don't quite know how to put this any more politely, but a fuck of a lot of people are not concerned about the future because they think there is no future. Where do you fit in?

The whole joke of my newspaper was basically this. We have a choice in the matter. We humanity can head for the "New Age," a world in which people try to get on together, and heal their stuff, and help the world; or the Tribulation, a daemonic catastrophic dystopia. I'll tell you one thing, it never occurred to me that the political process could be so abused, and I am a hardened cynic when it comes to the Corporatist entity.

I am sitting here working very hard right now to not go into a tirade on the arms trade. I'd like to stick to my main point, but it's not easy these days. I have a feeling we're in the midst of the beginning of this supposed Trib at the moment: a test, a journey, an experiment in creating the future.

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