The first annual Planet Waves Almanac includes astrology by Eric Francis covering all 12 months of the year, numerology by Christine DeLorey and the first ever guide to the minor planets that includes the new planet Eris. It's just $9.95 and you can order now with one click right here.

Photo by Eric Francis from the Book of Blue series.

CAN ORGASM create world peace? In our strange but true country known as the Internet, the word is out on the streets that Friday, Dec. 22 is Global Orgasm Day.

Being someone who thinks "every day is Global Orgasm Day," it took some time (and a few reader emails) for me to figure out this is a great idea: an experiment in using collective orgasm to shift the energy field of the planet in the direction of peace, love and understanding.

The plan is this: sometime Dec. 22, experience an orgasm, alone, with another person, or with others, with the intention of creating world peace and harmony. The creators of the event are calling this an experiment in the effects of synchronized orgasm as a means of healing the planet. I think (from looking at their Website) that the organizers, Donna Sheehan and Paul Reffell, have a clue about astrology. With the Sun aspecting the Aries Point, we have a great day to create a ripple effect in the world, where individual choices reach out into collective consciousness and vice versa.

Not everyone has a lover. Many people are their own lover, some by choice, and others because that's all that's available. I have a feeling that a lot of these global orgasms are going to be solitary orgasms. For a long time I've been tossing pebbles into the pond about the idea of getting together with others and experimenting with witnessed masturbation, and sharing masturbation among both lovers and friends, and in small groups. This is less outrageous than it may sound. I could theorize about why, and will not, at this point, but these experiences have a way of being brilliantly liberating, transcending ordinary partnersex, opening up a new kind of intimacy, and transmuting shame and guilt into pleasure and love.

Here's another facet of the story. A lot of people who are alone don't give it to themselves. Maybe they don't turn themselves on enough, or maybe it's something else; some just don't think about sexual pleasure between relationships. However, in case anyone simply needs permission, I'm here to offer it, and say that the wave of energy we're creating will be coming through the neighborhood soon. Anyone can come surfing.

Now, can this stop a war? That would be cool.

Using pleasure as a means to peace works great with individuals. You can almost see on people's faces who's had a good orgasm that day (generally, in the form of a smile). Orgasm is a physical, mental and emotional experience that lets go of tension and floods the brain with pleasure-inducing chemicals called endorphins that really do make you happier. Happier people generally want the same for others.

This is an experience of pleasurable surrender that helps us in a world where so much surrender (of various other kinds) is necessary. As for the multi-level aspect, consider that there are many times we have a mental experience that gets stuck in the head; an emotional experience that yearns for physical expression; a physical experience that begs for closer emotional contact or expression. Often, we get trapped on one layer or another and slowly start to go nuts in the process.

Orgasm reaches right through the different levels, and has a way of unifying our experience of existence. People who are in harmony with themselves tend to be more peaceful and get on better with others. Though it takes some inner freedom to get there, the last few minutes before orgasm tend to be an exceptionally uninhibited time, where we can experience images, feelings, needs and desires -- and do extremely pleasant things to ourselves and others -- that waking consciousness might otherwise hold down or deny.

Stuffing things into the unconscious is a great way to create chaos, which usually surfaces as shadow material like fear and hostility. These things add up, then we find ourselves living in a world where rage and pain are normal, and where pleasure is bad. However, when you shift in the other direction even a little bit, pain and hostility tend to lose their appeal. There is a spectrum, and it goes not from red to violet, but rather from control to pleasure. People who tend toward one dependably migrate away from the other.

Orgasm also transcends differences of gender, sexual orientation, social identity, language, nationality, economic status, house or trance, rock or disco. It can be experienced by people of nearly any age.

Most important, relationship status is orgasm-neutral.

But what is this beautiful and mysterious thing? The mind goes blotto and we come about as close as we can to feeling what it's like beyond ego-consciousness in this life.

It can be a profound moment of inner freedom that (if you're paying attention) is really a deep cosmic joining. It seems plausible enough to try focusing this on world peace -- and at the very worst, it's hot that a whole bunch of people around the world are planning to get off at the same time, thinking about one another doing it.

I have noticed lately that sexual rules are starting to relax. Who knows, maybe the whole phenomenon is a creature of my mind, and I'm projecting it onto the world. But the existence of Global Orgasm Day says something. It used to be you would round people up, or network around the world, only to pray. During the Harmonic Convergence era of 1987, something like this would have been an unmentionable act.

This was part of a larger trend. It should come as no wonder that the people who keep dragging us into wars are the same ones who spend billions on "abstinence education" that turns people (starting with young children) against themselves.

Global Orgasm Day is an experiment running this so-called logic in reverse. Maybe if we open up (and are open about it), we will find ourselves living in a world where love is seen as natural and where getting along is considered a wholesome purpose of living. Getting good at anything, including being open, takes practice, and this is a fine start: all the people sending out Global Orgasm Day emails are in effect admitting to their friends that they plan to masturbate or have sex that day, as part of a world movement. This alone is not only progress, it's cosmically kinky.

There is a serious side to this; the world is teetering around with some dangerous wars. Most people don't get it. There is also something of a balancing game that seems to be being played with good vibes and reassurance, and negative ones such as fear and hostility. The planet has arrived at a point in time where it's necessary to bring some sanity to the equation. We are aware enough of human influence over the energy patterns on the planet to create a better world, a safer world and one that's a lot more chill. Love is the wave.

Orgasm and God are next door neighbors. So, my friends: let it out.

How To Be Your Own Lover

The Other Sex (from the Organic Love series)



The Sun in Another Season. Photo by Danielle Voirin.


EL SOL squares the Tropic of Capricorn at 22 minutes past midnight Universal Time on Friday, Dec. 22, 2006. Here is what that translates to around the world. This is the moment the Sun ingresses the sign Capricorn. But before it begins its northward journey along the horizon, it stands still for a week (Dec. 18-26, when the Sun is at about 23 degrees and 26 minutes declination), rising and setting at the same time and place. After Christmas, the days gradually begin to get longer in the Northern Hemisphere and shorter in the Southern Hemisphere, but winter has just begun.

This is a difficult time for many people, particularly given that the prolonged lack of sunlight has known psychological, psychic and physical effects. We can indeed experience the dark side of human nature, it can be difficult to stay optimistic, and the world's outer gloomy quality can mirror something inside us (notably, it doesn't work like this for everyone). Darkness is all around us and those 12 weeks till spring can seem interminable. (This discussion is not designed to annoy residents of Australia and New Zealand, who are currently bleaching in the midsummer Sun. If we have a few more photos from you we'll post them to the Planet Waves cover.)

Winter Solstice has long been celebrated as the birth of the Sun. For example, Isis, the Egyptian mother goddess, gave birth to Horus, the Sun god, on winter solstice. In Greek myth, Leto gave birth to Apollo (on the island of Delos; his twin was Artemis, the goddess of Moon).

Donna Henes, in one of the most useful esoteric books I've ever found, Celestially Auspicious Occasions (out of print, but if you look you'll find it), notes the obvious coincidence between the solstice and Christmas. "Since the Gospels [in the New Testament] don't mention the exact date of [Jesus'] birth, it was not celebrated by the early church. It seems clear that when the church in the fourth century AD adopted Dec. 25 as his birthday, it was in order to transfer the heathen devotions honoring the birth of the Sun to he who was called 'the sun of righteousness'."

The astrology this year is interesting. With the exception of Saturn in Leo, the familiar planets are concentrated in the last four signs, Sagittarius (Jupiter, Mars, Mercury and Pluto), Capricorn (Sun, Venus, Moon), Aquarius (Chiron, Neptune, Ceres) and Pisces (Uranus, North Node). Eris/Xena is in Aries. Here are the minor planets.

Pluto is creeping up to its first exact conjunction with the Galactic Core in nearly 250 years -- and for the first time since the discovery of both by modern science. There was a near miss at this time last year, a kind of warm-up. All through 2007, Pluto will be conjunct the Galactic Core, making its first ingress to Capricorn on Jan. 26, 2008, and, after a brief return to Sagittarius in mid-2008, it will enter Capricorn for good Nov. 27, 2008. (Pluto begins its transition in to Aquarius on March 23, 2023, amidst a massive concentration of planets in Aries and Taurus.) In terms of calendar years, and solar years, this is our last full solar cycle with Pluto in Sagittarius, and it promises to be interesting as they have been in a long time, as we're experiencing what is in truth the rarest event of our lifetimes. What's it all about? We shall see.

As you'll be reading in the almanac and the Spiral Door, we are entering a global 9 year numerologically. From her article in the Planet Waves almanac, she writes:

"Nine is the number of diversity, dramatic situations, endings, completions, giving, dealing with loss, letting go of what has gone, emotional expression, sympathy, compassion, generosity, love, tolerance, acceptance, creativity, evolution, and seeking the road to peace. 9 must learn to keep itself together by only giving what it can afford to give. 9 must learn to be more patient with those who do not live up to its high ideals, and remember that each number (person) is evolving at their own pace, in their own way, and in their own time."

We do seem to have a lot that's calling for completion, resolution and preparation for some new phase of life; so we begin.




So many planets currently in Sagittarius, combined with the Pluto-Galactic Core conjunction, means that your most active solar house is the 12th -- the deepest and strangest of the lot. Themes of the 12th include the deep unconscious, the most subtle spheres of emotion (so subtle, we usually deny their existence outright), the invisible, overwhelmingly large, strange fears; that which contradicts normal waking consciousness; dreams, bliss, and surrender; and in many astrology schools, death and/or ego death. The 12th also describes the pre-natal era and the circumstances of conception.

Pluto tends to focus energy into an obsessive, concentrated expression, and itself can focus fear, passion, and the profound sense of transition into a tight little ball of intensity.

Yet because Pluto has been working this house since 1994, you are to a real extent accustomed to so much intensity, indeed, this has been a long era of your life involving facing your worst fears, getting to know yourself on deep levels and in strange ways, and spending many seasons poised at the edge of an abyss. What is different this year is that it's the last hurrah of the Pluto in Sagg era, arriving with Pluto's conjunction to the Galactic Core.

This is a phase of reckoning, and a preparation for another universe of experience when Pluto enters your sign for the first time in early 2008. In many ways, it's an extended phase of review, and of assessing what you experienced in the past dozen years, particularly focusing on the very beginning of the phase in 1994-1995, as well as the first major peak from 2001 to 2002.

It would be an understatement to say that anything you've decided up till now is subject to review and reconsideration, and that you may be discovering many presumptions you've made that you had no clue were influencing you. The conscious judgments that have been so important and which have shaped your nature for so long are likely to dissolve like so many sand castles, as a compelling force deep within you births a new core identity.

Externally, this may manifest as an ongoing self-esteem crisis, where you strive to make up your mind that you really do matter to others, or are worthy of association with them. Capricorn is widely regarded as the sign of guilt, but the source of that guilt is rarely ever acknowledged. Usually, guilt is the result of being turned against ourselves and taking on the external oppression that we lived with as children and subjecting ourselves to it.

Once this material becomes conscious, we have the opportunity to reverse the process, take it over as an act of will and awareness, and do what is called "claim back our projections." This will particularly hold true for projections onto groups and organizations with which you've been attempting to confirm or align your goals. This is a time of extreme need for self-guidance in your life, for breaking free from any situation where group-think is a factor, and finding your own way.

It may not be easy, but it will surely be meaningful.


NOTE TO READERS: As announced earlier this week, the weekly horoscope, and all monthly horoscopes, are on hold until the Planet Waves Weekly edition of Friday, Jan. 5, 2007. This will be followed by The Spiral Door several days later. Note, the 2007 Almanac is a separate product which will be available as a downloadable PDF about 70 pages long. Please order yours today.

Happy holidays!