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You Could be Dancing in Toledo Right Now or The Sack of Baghdad Dear Fellow Traveler: It's been an interesting week here in the holographic universe. A wealth of great writing has been crossing my desk, newly relocated from my living room into an actual office. A few days after I moved my three Rift Lake cichlids (inland African fish with the personalities of mildly aggressive dogs, complete with dog houses) to their new luxury tank, we all have a lot more room to breathe. The cichlids, who had previously spent much of their time trying to kill one another and had to be confined to separate dwellings for months, slugged it out for half an hour and suddenly became friends. And just as suddenly my living room has a view, and it's really quiet. One article that passed my desk, which now faces a high window in the southeast rather than a bay window in the southwest, was something about parallel universes from the April 14 Scientific American. This supports the literary law that what starts as science fiction eventually becomes science. I will try to summarize it, even though I have an email out to several astrology lists asking people to explain it to me. Based on elementary laws of probability and assuming that space is infinite, there is a double of you somewhere on a planet just like Earth living your life. They could be dancing in Toledo or making love with your favorite movie star, but the fact that you exist somewhere else is scientifically established by the laws of probability. It seems impossible, but from my understanding of this essay by Max Tegmark (and, noting that this is all according to science, which doesn't like philosophy very much) it's impossible that it not be so. You actually must exist somewhere else. And to think that last week we were debating whether there was life on another planet anywhere. We might wonder whether we'll ever meet our mysterious double -- it could be a really fun encounter. And, sadly, the chances are, probably not, unless you're adept at one of many forms of astral travel, telepathy or teleportation, and are thus able to dial up your cosmic twin on the phone or in person. Or unless you're a waiter in Miami, where several of your doubles work right in the same restaurant. It also seems that there are two Baghdads on our particular planet. One was joyously liberated by the US-led Coalition forces, and that big statue toppled by the people; the other was occupied and a dusk-to-dawn curfew enacted by the occupying army, with the statue toppled in a staged media event, with tanks all around the public park. These days you never know what to believe. Wednesday's full moon, which coincided with the 'victory', had an interesting feature. It included an event -- a triple conjunction -- that occurred in the first degree of the sign Cancer. Now, the first degree of Cancer is noteworthy for two reasons. The first is that it's square (90 degrees from) something called the Aries Point, which is the beginning of our zodiac, the point the sun crosses each Vernal Equinox. The square from Aries to Cancer means the two points function as part of one another, as if they're the same thing only in parallel universes. Events that happen on the Aries Point speak (among other things) of collective reality; the same is true with the first degree of Cancer. Also noteworthy about the first degree of Cancer is that it's where a total solar eclipse happened right before 9-Eleven went down. The eclipse before anything you're studying is potentially very significant. The degrees where eclipses happen can be active for years after the event; they are like an energy vortex in spacetime. Strange, I know, and I didn't believe it till I saw it in action. That was a potent, strange solar eclipse back on that morning in 2001, in which Sol was overshadowed by Luna just hours after reaching the solstice, the 'noontide' of its year, its greatest moment, the longest day, and right that morning the sky darkens. I'll refer to this as the "pre 9-Eleven eclipse" or the "June 21 solstice-eclipse" so you know what I'm talking about. The degree symbol for the first degree of Cancer is, "On a ship the sailors lower an old flag and raise a new one." Regime change, you might say. Now, just as the full moon happened this week, two minor planets formed a conjunction in that exact degree, with a third point just a shade, half a degree, away. The first point involved was Sphinx. This is an asteroid that deals with old, unsolved mysteries and rhetorical questions (such as the 'riddle of the sphinx'). Presumably it could also deal with the artifacts of antiquity, since that's just what the sphinx is. The second point was Isis, which is about things in pieces, or putting the pieces together. Both are Egyptian themes. The third point was Kronos, one of the eight hypothetical points, extremely slow-moving nonexistent planets that act very much like they're really there. Kronos is the planet of high government officials, honor, respectability and official power. At this event, it was in the last degree of Gemini (the symbol for the degree is "a parade of bathing beauties in a pageant before large beach crowds"). So -- Kronos is at a big parade, while Isis and Sphinx are raising a new flag over a ship. My earlier take on this setup, which I did not publish, but instead wrote about in letters to several of my colleagues about, was that because this happened in the degree of the pre 9-Eleven eclipse, we were going to learn something that would help us put the pieces together. Now, since nobody knows what happened behind the scenes till it comes out, I'll just have to keep watching. That the conjunction straddles two signs and two very different degree symbols makes sense -- it follows a pattern of two realities. Here are a few things we know about that actually happened. One thing I've been reading about today is how the entire regime of alleged war criminals in Iraq -- Saddam's cabinet, high government officials and his secret police leaders -- have been allowed to escape, and most of the records of their history of torture have been left to the whims of arsonists by American or British forces. The records, which could be used for both prosecution of the former government officials as war criminals, and for historical purposes, are basically being scattered to the wind. That's an interesting image of Isis conjunct Sphinx. All the while, the Marines were busy guarding the Oil Ministry. We're not pirates! Honest! Now as for those gold teeth of yours... Next, on the morning of Saturday, April 12, looters entered the Museum of Antiquity in Baghdad and stole or smashed the artifacts of the earliest known civilization on Earth, Mesopotamia. Here we have a perfect picture of Sphinx-Isis under the new regime: the shattering of antiquity. Robert Fisk, a reporter for The Independent in the UK and for many, unquestionably the most trusted journalist in the Middle-East, described the scene: "There is no electricity in Baghdad -- as there is no water and no law and no order -- and so we stumbled in the darkness of the museum basement, tripping over toppled statues and stumbling into broken winged bulls. When I shone my torch over one far shelf, I drew in my breath. Every pot and jar -- '3,500 BC' it said on one shelf corner -- had been bashed to pieces. "Why? How could they do this? Why, when the city was already burning, when anarchy had been let loose -- and less than three months after US archaeologists and Pentagon officials met to discuss the country's treasures and put the Baghdad Archaeological Museum on a military data-base -- did the Americans allow the mobs to destroy the priceless heritage of ancient Mesopotamia? And all this happened while US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was sneering at the press for claiming that anarchy had broken out in Baghdad. "For well over 200 years, Western and local archaeologists have gathered up the remnants of this center of early civilization from palaces, ziggurats and 3,000-year-old graves. Their tens of thousands of handwritten card index files -- often in English and in graceful 19th-century handwriting - now lie strewn amid the broken statuary. I picked up a tiny shard. 'Late 2nd century, no. 1680' was written in pencil on the inside." He continued, "A glass case that had once held 40,000-year-old stone and flint objects had been smashed open. It lay empty. No one knows what happened to the Assyrian reliefs from the royal palace of Khorsabad, nor the 5,000-year-old seals nor the 4,500-year-old gold leaf earrings once buried with Sumerian princesses. It will take decades to sort through what they have left, the broken stone torsos, the tomb treasures, the bits of jewelry glinting amid the piles of smashed pots." Remember, this is the civilization to which we trace the very dawn of our own history: either the place where our society was born, or where the refugees of a fallen empire took root. It's the place our historians believe the wheel, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, and writing were developed. And Iraqis, as they are now called, are the descendents of the settlers of that valley, literally the human descendents of the settlers of civilization. Now, for another parallel universe story, from http://www.theaha.org/ "In Florida, Republican Governor Jeb Bush also proposes a simplistic solution to the budget plight -- close the Florida State Library, turn over the Florida State Archives to the parks department, and lay off more than 50 employees," they write. "The situation in Florida is particularly dire and demands immediate action. Under Governor Bush's proposed budget, the Library of Florida will be disbanded and the Florida State Archives will undergo a massive reorganization. In order to save $5.4 million annually, the governor proposes zeroing out funding for the library, eliminating 55 positions, and transferring the library holdings to Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee, an institution that according to inside sources, has 'no money and no space' (an estimated 11 miles of shelving are needed for the book collection alone) for the state library's holdings. Bush does not plan to reallocate any state financial resources to the university to care for the collections." It works out that this isn't you’re average budget cut. Consider this, from the February 16 New York Times: "MIAMI, Feb. 13 -- The contested 2000 presidential election has largely faded into people's hazy memories of pre-9/11 America. But the Florida ballots are still there, nearly six million punch cards and their chads, stowed in boxes, stacked on pallets, wrapped in plastic. "The state has kept them for two years, as federal law requires. Now that the time is up, a pressing question for state officials here is: What do we do with these things? "How about a bonfire?" said Theresa LePore, the Palm Beach County supervisor of elections, who designed the butterfly ballots that led many Al Gore supporters to vote for Pat Buchanan. "For now, torching is not an option for Ms. LePore and her counterparts throughout the state. The local elections offices are responsible for storing ballots from their districts, but it is up to Florida's Division of Library and Information Services to determine which public records must be retained and for how long." We're seeing in these gestures, at home and Iraq, not just complete disdain for human life and welfare. We're seeing a contemptuous desire to erase history, human history, world history. Florida is not exactly the cradle of civilization, but it is the cradle of the Bush administration. In trying to make sense of the philosophy behind what is being done to our world, these events impress me as clues as to the deeper agenda. On some level, it involves crushing the spirit of the knowledge, curiosity and the heritage of humanity. Or hey, a simple cover-up of what happened before. I don't think it's possible. That's why they have to do this stuff: they know it's futile. Related: Of Possible Interest (understatement): http://www.sundayherald.com/32895 In Other News Juan Revilla writes on the Centaurs list, "Scott Ritter, long time weapons inspector in Iraq and once the Government's conservative darling, is now one of the strongest opponents of President Bush's policy towards that country. He thinks that this is not a war about oil, but a war about or between ideologies." Ritter said in a March 30 talk in Canada, "This is a war that is being pushed by the Bush administration and neo-conservative ideologies who populate the senior most decision making hierarchies of the Bush administration." He continued, "This is being driven by ideology, this is being driven by, again, a national security vision set for by the Bush administration of global domination, of American empirical hegemony over the world, unilateral application of power. That's what is driving this war ... That's my personal opinion and I'm willing to be wrong on this one. On the issue of the status of democracy I'm very concerned. Extremely concerned of what is happening in the United States of America. I am very concerned that the events of September 11th are some day going to be seen by historians as doing to American democracy what the burning of the Reichstag did to German democracy in the 1930s. "That the Bush administration is exploiting the fear and ignorance of the American people to launch a frontal assault on the constitution of the United States of America, to assault individual civil liberties, and this is not hypothesis, this is reality. Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, the Enhancement to the Patriot Act, the fact that we can arrest an American citizen and call him a non-combatant and hold him without legal representation. That doesn't happen in the United States of America, but it is happening right now. And it's going to get worse." Reference: http://alberta.indymedia.org/news/2003/03/6635.php Venezuela has proof Washington was behind failed coup, general says CARACAS, Apr. 17 (AP) -- A senior Venezuelan army general said the government of the South American country has proof the United States was involved in a short-lived coup against President Hugo Chavez last year. Army Gen. Melvin Lopez, secretary of Venezuela's National Defence Council, said Tuesday "proof exists" the U.S. administration was involved in the mid-April putsch. He declined to give further details. "We have the evidence," Lopez said during an interview broadcast by Venezuela's state-run television channel. Lopez said three U.S. military helicopters were on Venezuelan territory during the coup. A spokesmen from the Pentagon declined comment on the allegation Tuesday night. Reference: http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/030415/w041568.html Also Info on Depleted Uranium http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s580857.htm Vietnam Dioxin Understated http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2954729.stm Mercury Rx Mercury is busy stationing retrograde these days. That means it'll spend a long time in the sign Taurus. Below are the key dates in the cycle in its most complicated form. I am pretty sure I explain this in a back issue -- we'll hunt it down and repost it. The short version is that during Mercury retrograde, pay particular attention to communications and transactions. Plan for delays and don't commit to too much. People screw up, they're late, they forget. This is a psychic weather condition that you can ignore or take heed of. There is a tradition in the astrology world of advising people not to make major purchases or sign contracts during the retrograde. The reason for this is that they will just about always work out differently than planned, or not work out at all. Or there will be delays. It's a great time to compete old projects. Basically, if a new project can't wait, it may not be worth doing -- you will SAVE time in the long run by including a structured delay; experience has taught every astrologer this. If people are in a rush, delay them. If they can't wait, there's likely to be something wrong with their plan. Old plans that are being adjusted and tuned up sometimes get an exemption -- Mercury Rx likes adjustments of existing situations. Mercury retrograde is divisible into several somewhat distinct phases, which surround the direct stations. If you want to be absolutely on the safe side, wait until the shadow phase ends n June 5. If you want to be the next-best-safe, avoid the "Mercury storm" phases. Mercury entered shadow phase (weirdness began) -- April 11 Mercury storm (slowest daily motion) -- Approx. April 22-30 Station Retrograde -- April 26 at 4:59 am PDT Sun conjunct Mercury, interior -- May 7 at 12:20 am PDT Mercury storm II (slowest daily motion) -- Approx. May 16 - 24 Station Direct -- May 20 at 12:32 am PDT Mercury leaves shadow phase (all clear) -- June 5 Mercury changes signs (whole new world) -- June 13 Sun Enters Taurus April 19 at 10:50 am PDT. The moon is new in Taurus May 1. Venus and Mars change signs this weekend. Venus enters Aries and Mars enters Aquarius. The lunar nodes are now in Taurus and Scorpio. There are eclipses in May, to be covered next week. Webcasting Comes to Planet Waves, or Vice Versa Every Wednesday at 8:45 a.m. PST or 11:45 a.m. EST, I do a live webcast at http://www.voiceofvashon.org/ hosted by Susan McCabe. Please spread the word. Planet Waves by Eric Francis http://www.PlanetWaves.net/ Late-Aries Birthdays This year finds you working your way out to the edge of yourself in unexpected ways, with unexpected developments and some surprising results. But the central quality is the edge, the end of major cycles, and wrapping up business in the old location. For many born during this stage of the year, the old company or the relationship is ending, or completely starting over. Resolution, careful resolution, is what's called for. Treat every situation as if each and every word you say will get you deeper in, or further toward the door. You may want to stay -- but if so, do it consciously. More likely, you're looking for your freedom, and if you remember that freedom is based on either having nothing left to lose, or having completed what's hanging over your head, you'll actually start to get some of the stuff back into your life. True, you've been confronting a lot of responsibilities in the past year. True, you've had to take life way too seriously. But it's also true that you're really seeing the benefits of this. Your restlessness is your best friend right now. Feel not guilt: the chances are that the people around you are just as restless as you are. When the forward motion starts, you'll possibly end up in the same place, and possibly not. Yet with the amount of inner shifting and changing you're going through, with the depth of your re-evaluation, the more important person in any equation in your life is you. This doesn't mean that you're being 'self-centered'. It means you're taking care of yourself, and that will make you a lot stronger, a lot happier, and a lot more available to the people in your live who you care about so much. Aries (March 20-April 19) Get ready for a strange set of paradoxes, which will no doubt fuel your appreciation for the strange, the beautiful and the ancient. Just imagine you can walk through life seeing all time simultaneously, that all the whispers of history and the visions of the souls of previous times are open to your eyes. And that by seeing the past so vividly, you can peer straight into the present, because in a very strange way, the present is exactly like the past, and when you see that, when you look directly at it, the past disappears. But other things are possible: you can become your opposite, you can feel the experience of your lover or the one you desire in your own body, you can give yourself away entirely and have yourself completely. Taurus (April 19-May 20) With the sun moving toward Taurus and Venus moving toward Aries, you're about to realize how far you've come, and how close that puts you to the beginning. There comes a point in resolving the past when that's exactly what you do: see it for what it is, in the visual sense of resolve -- to see clearly -- and then in the sense of Middle English (to untie) and Old French (to dissolve). Resolution is not necessarily total completion but rather an agreement with yourself that you've completed a cycle of experience and are actually free to do what you want next. Make your move and you will likely find that partners or associates have a lot more independent-minded attitude, because your attachment to the situation is at least half of what's holding it together, and not necessarily for your benefit, or theirs. Gemini (May 20-June 21) Though there's been a major shift in energy recently allowing you to relax, you're going to be carrying a kind of 'push' quality for a while because over the past year, you've fairly well made it part of who you are. But it's an inner push, like something in your soul has been activated and is supporting you from the inside with a pressure directed outward. In other words, you've learned something new about supporting yourself from the inside. Like one of those athletic bubbles, it doesn't actually take a lot of pressure to hold up a strong, stable structure, but it does take a higher level inside than there is in the atmosphere. You will feel the winds shift and change outside, but instead of feeling like you're going to snap, you'll just gently flex. Cancer (June 21-July 22) Intense activity in Capricorn may be leaving you wondering what on God's Green Earth is up with your partnerships, or with a primary personal love interest. The next few days are likely to bring a development that both clarifies the situation and offers some relief. Please trust me when I say that their lessons have been more difficult than yours. In life we do have to deal with the sudden changes in the desire level of the people around us; plans change, but not always for the worse. You are in demand in an unusual way right now, and it may not be exactly to your liking specifically because it's so different than the way you've been. But you may feel called upon to give up something important as a result, which is not a conflict that's going to sit well with you. There are other ways to view this situation, and to negotiate it. Leo (July 22-Aug 23) There may seem to be mixed signals coming from a professional issue. One involves a higher level of visibility and success, which is more or less inevitable; the other involves a cash crunch of some kind, or reconsidering an important plan that has an effect on income. The financial side of the deal is part of the normal cycle of ups and downs in the process of doing business. The visibility part is a relatively rare opportunity to make some real progress. In a personal or partnership matter, someone close to you may seem to be demanding a more direct meeting. With Mars crossing your relationship angle in the next few days you'll be experiencing certain individuals at their most intense and opinionated. This will, at the least, give you an opportunity to feel safe expressing who you are and what you feel. Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) A certain arrangement is changing, and the result is going to be that you'll need to think of someone else's interests even more than you have to now. If there's a struggle, it's because you haven't identified your common interests in this situation. That would be a really good start. One clue might come from considering what happened when you had similar needs or interests in the past, and someone was in a position to help you. What happened then, and what lesson did you take from it? Look back and see how much common ground there was. What you have is yours, but it's yours to share. The reason for this is that you cannot live on your resources alone. If others did not share what they had -- and they are often very willing to do so, and remain so now -- you would be in a bit of trouble. There are some aspects of life that would get really boring if we couldn't do them together. Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) You're approaching an extremely rare meeting point with someone, and an unlikely encounter is likely to be the result. It's more than a physical meeting, and it will touch more lives than just your own, though you may never be aware of the contacts. Somehow you have a hunch that there's telepathy involved, that you can actually reach across an unseen conducting medium and make yourself known. It's a fair bet. You may also fear that once that meeting happens, something will change, and nothing will ever be the same again. Yet every meeting changes everyone involved, and we can never undo an encounter once it happens. But in truth, we can never skip an encounter and still hope to get to the next place. Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) Being known for exactly who you are is not an experience that most people would put up with, or want to put up with, for long. I feel that most of the insanity of the world is a vast, elaborate dance that's designed to hide people's relationships with a few basic facts of life, coupled with a shocking inability that most people have to answer one another honestly. Oh, I meant to write 'laugh at themselves'. Anyway, it's really a crummy deal: suppress awareness of who you are so that nobody else gets to know. The edge you're moving toward is about radical self-awareness. It's like your whole past just surfaced one day, everything you'd ever forgotten, but now you can see the humor, for one thing, and now it doesn't seem like such a good tradeoff that to conceal your truth from everyone else you have to numb out. But it is edgy, for sure. Sagittarius (Nov. 22 - Dec. 22) Sudden relief. What was for so long your responsibility, the cross you had to bear, and ultimately something that restricted your flexibility, has now been passed onto the appropriate person, or surrendered to the appropriate spiritual realm. In part, you asked for help, in part, you waited long enough, and in part, you simply decided that your life was no longer going to be held back by the factors that had restrained you for so long. But much of why you're feeling better is a shift in collective responsibility. You could not have decided to make this change on your own because someone had to take up the slack, or take responsibility for rectifying the past. That happened once it became clear what the real issue was, and who was thus more suited for the job. This is not just a matter of opinion. Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) Based on the thoughts you've been harboring, it might surprise you that people are treating you with such equanimity and are persisting in holding open acceptance of whoever you think you are. But much of what you're experiencing involves a question of the interpretation of the past. It would be safe enough to say that the past exists specifically as an interpretation, be it neurological, psychological, or illogical. That interpretation has been speaking to you, and it is speaking to you, and part of what you're struggling with is listening alone, and having to make sense of the message alone, and that time is over. Any significant meeting, when it happens, will likely be far out on the edge, not in some speculatively safe space with boundaries turned up to high. Remember: conspiracy means 'breathing together'. Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) My take on asteroid Lilith is that she represents the Original Woman within. Not every person born under Aquarius is especially at peace with their inner feminine. Lilith, embodying the concept of the 'core woman' and which has just entered your sign, does not meet any of our expectations for who this woman is supposed to be. That's precisely the issue. Another expression of this is we're supposed to deny entirely that we know she even exists, or that she ever played a role in world culture; we are trained to accept the imitation and have disdain for the real feeling. As Adrienne Rich said it, "The wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth." When you get there, notice how you feel, because that's why you've made the trip. Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) Inbound email: "You know it's funny, everyone is so supportive of my 'other' relationship, like I must be in love with another man because my husband failed me somehow . . . but if it had been him everyone would be calling him an asshole. What a funny double standard. When women are promiscuous they are sluts, but if they have extramarital affairs they are justified because their husbands were probably callous and unfeeling. What's up with that?" Possibility: We're working our way through layers of cultural denial right now, especially those born under the Pisces ray. You're describing a situation where nothing can be what it is: everything is identified as what it supposedly is based on a previous cultural prejudice. You're under no obligation to believe, or argue with, anything that's not true. How do newspaper horoscopes work? Planet Waves Weekly and PlanetWaves.net are edited by Eric Francis, with help from Chelsea Bottinelli and the Vision List. This newsletter is $49.95 per year and published 52 times per year plus the monthly horoscope. We encourage our readers to contribute their artwork and writing to the Planet Waves project and to cultivate themselves as creative forces in the unusual and socially formative times in which we live. |
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