Dear Adorable Humanoid Earthling:

View from my dorm room on Tiarra. Photo by Eric Francis.

We know you love astrology, and that you seek it out for wisdom and assistance in our complex planetary moment. I have news for you which my marketing department has been urging me to relate for several hundred years. When I was a student in editing school on the distant planet Tiarra down in one of the globular clusters south of our galaxy, I knew I would be assigned to Earth for a while. From everything they were telling us about how weird life would be at this time, I knew that Planet Waves was just what we would need to have a clue what is happening in our world.

"You need to use mythology, because it's the only thing people believe," my writing teacher said. "Also, astrology works, because human minds take the shape of the solar system they incarnate in. This is a property of nature anywhere there's human life."

So anyway, I incarnated, did journalism for a while, went to spiritual training camp in New Jersey, learned astrology and started Planet Waves. I can now offer it to you, advertising free, designed specifically to work with your particular model of mind -- the kind with the planets built in.

They love it on Tiarra, and it's become a big hit over in the Sombrero Galaxy. Now you too can experience Planet Waves, the the only astrology magazine that remembers the real elements are hot, wet, earthy and breezy.

Sign up for the journey here.





Dear Friend and Reader:

Northern Hemisphere summer begins Monday with a series of planetary events, and as often happens, events in close proximity describe a theme. When the Sun makes its ingress into the cardinal sign Cancer, it will be conjunct an asteroid called Vesta.

This magnificently complex asteroid, I believe, holds the key to understanding how we might go about healing our often injured, burdened and confused sense of our sexuality. In one word, the method is devotion.

In this article I'll do my best to describe the qualities of Vesta in a way that makes it possible to feel and experience them -- and to put them to use in our relationship experiences. Vesta is primarily about tending the fire within. That fire, and that experience of constantly caring for it, becomes the focal point for organizing space; that is, the psychic space of our lives, our priorities, and our beliefs.

Vesta is represented by a hearth (actually, a chevron, though in mythology it's a hearth), and that hearth is the center of the home. We make our homes, comfortably or not, primarily within our psyches. The fire is the core fire of human existence, which is inherently sexual and creative. We use this fire for light, for heat, for creative purposes (you could say, to prepare our meals, whatever form they may take on the physical and nonphysical levels of existence).

Honoring this would give our daily lives and our relationships, whether sexual or not, a central concept to work with. Vesta is inherently about one's relationship with oneself, which is the thing we share with others no matter what form that sharing might take. It may seem a paradox, but there is a touch of the impersonal to Vesta, which to me is about a boundary between self and other that gives everyone a little extra space to be who we are. Yet there is something collective about Vesta as well: we all share the same inner fire, whether we recognize it as the same thing or not.

In the solstice chart, the Sun meets up with Vesta in Cancer, a sign associated with nourishment, nurturing, emotions, mother and the experience of incarnating. The Sun is about expression. It is the source of all light in the astrological system; it is the central point that holds the solar system together and provides an anchor for awareness and for one's tangible place in the world. So Sun/Vesta in Cancer is one version of the full expression of Vestal energy.

The next day, there is a New Moon, with Sun, Moon and Vesta in a precise conjunction. This is the first of many potent lunations (including three eclipses in July and August) that defines the current stretch of time. Happening so close to the beginning of a season (with the Sun still at solstice), this New Moon activates events that occur on a large scale that feel personal; and personal events that reach past our individual lives toward a collective experience.

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When a kid -- especially a boy -- gets a scar, he'll usually come up with a story to tell his friends that's much more interesting than the truth. Say, "I was attacked by pirates" rather than "I tripped on my shoelace and fell."

But a German teen named Gerrit Blank won't have to bother with that, since it's pretty hard to beat the truth: "I was hit by a meteorite."

Gerrit, who is 14, caught a glancing blow from the streaking space rock as it plummeted to the earth late last week. He wound up with a three-inch scar on the back of his hand, according to a June 12 article in The London Telegraph. It reports that Gerrit saw a ball of light headed his way, then "a red hot, pea-sized piece of rock hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot-wide crater in the ground."

The rock has been confirmed by scientists as having originated in space, making it a pretty rare thing: A meteorite that survived a trip through Earth's atmosphere, where they usually burn up.

So, how rare is it to be hit by a meteorite? The odds usually applied to the incident are one in a million. In fact, the folks over at Space.com dug into their archive and found only one other recorded incident where a person was struck by a meteorite. That was in 1954, when napping Alabama housewife Ann Hodges got a rude awakening after a 3-pound meteorite fell through the roof of her home, bounced off the furniture and struck her in the hip, leaving a bruise.

Space.com also tracked down a few near-misses over the years, including a spectacular 2004 event when a meteor weighing a ton and bigger than a fridge blew up in the night sky over Chicago, showering the Windy City with bits of space debris.

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Weekly Horoscope for Friday, June 19, 2009, #771 - BY ERIC FRANCIS

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
You may be wondering what you have to give up. This question has nagged you for the past month or more. Part of you has one idea and part of you has another idea, but I wonder why you're thinking about this at all. One potential reason involves the depth to which we are indoctrinated into the idea of sacrifice. Offering willingly is one thing. Offering from a sense of owing others is another. The difference can become obscured if we lack a healthy sense of self-worth. In my experience, the first obstacle to self-worth is figuring out that you might be lacking in the stuff. As long as we keep telling ourselves we're fine, we will overlook the issue. I suggest you phrase it as a series of questions, beginning with the words "what if?"

Coming Soon: the Next World Stories Midyear Horoscope Edition. Look for signup information Monday for the midyear edition horoscope by Eric Francis. And if you haven't read your Next World Stories annual edition, it's still waiting for you! Sign up here.

Libra (Sep. 22 - Oct. 23)
These past few months may have resonated with more potential than success; with more crisis than creative opportunity. But think of all that as preparation; consider how much more aware you are now than you were just a few months ago. Now comes the moment of truth: focusing your priorities and making sure that you put your potential to the best possible use. The sky is about to light up with an opportunity. As I have been suggesting in the other signs, it may not be specifically about you. Your job is to hold space (Vesta theme) for something much larger to occur. How large is large? Look around you. Look at what you say you support, and what you know feeds the world. If it's within reach, throw your support behind it.

Coming Soon: the Next World Stories Midyear Horoscope Edition. Look for signup information Monday for the midyear edition horoscope by Eric Francis. And if you haven't read your Next World Stories annual edition, it's still waiting for you! Sign up here.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
Everyone has the gift of healing. When you get a little cut on your hand, have you ever marveled at how your body knows how to repair it? Your role might be to make sure the injury stays clean for a while, but then the body does its part. That is how being a good healer works. There are ailments you are suffering that will yield to this formula; there are injuries that others are suffering to which you can offer your consciousness and support. Monday's spectacular New Moon in your 6th solar house -- the house of healing, service and your best work -- resounds with one message from ancient wisdom: let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food. Practice this and you will help many.

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