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| Those Eclipses Part One - Scorpio Moon Dear Fellow Mystery School Alumnus: Ah yes, as for those eclipses that are coming. I like eclipses. Though you may read doom and gloom predictions elsewhere on the Net (fear-mongering eclipse chatter, in the words of one of my readers) let's get a real discussion going here. First the raw data: there's a total lunar eclipse at 25 degrees of Scorpio on May 15 at 8:35 p.m. PDT. All lunar eclipses occur at the time of the full moon. The full moon appears to go out, so we have a dark moon at the time of the bright moon. They are magnificent to see and profound to feel. If you're east of the Left Coast, you might get to see it. The eclipse will be rising (toward the east) as just it happens in the Pacific Zone, low in the sky in the Mountain and Central zones, and just dandy for viewing in the Eastern zone. A clear night is all you'll need, but dress warmly and bring binoculars. This will be the first time an eclipse of any kind, solar or lunar, has happened in Scorpio for about eight years, beginning a new eclipse cycle that will last about 18 months. That is news by definition. The lunar nodes are currently just on the tippy edge of late Scorpio and Taurus, and where there are lunar nodes, there are eclipses nearby. Every eight or nine years, the eclipses return to each sign, as the lunar nodal axis makes its 18-year orbit. What the nodes are is a little complicated, but they are not exactly things... they are points in space... which act like things... they are intense... on the psychic level, they help us orient ourselves in time -- in long periods of time, as in multiple lifetimes or 'whole life' orientation. They help us establish our purpose on Earth. They are very useful. And as far as I can tell, they are openings or portals that are the direct influence behind the power of eclipses. Think of them as standing waves. At the time of eclipses, the Earth, sun and moon move into alignment with the force of their energy. Let's forget about all the worrisome old stuff that dusty books threaten about eclipses (case in point, next Wednesday's is said to cause dry air and burning fevers, as well as quarrels and seditions, according to Alan Leo, the turn-of-the-century English maestro). As my old boss Chef Eddie at the Beau Rivage Inn in Sheepshead Bay used to say, "Let me do all the worrying around here." (My other favorite Eddieism, good advice for all who brave the kitchen, is, "When you think it's done, it's done.") Eclipses are predictable; we can literally look in the ephemeris and predict them, thank you mathematics. So to the extent that they represent distinct shifts of energy, breaks in continuity and sometimes quite dramatic rearrangements of reality, they also present visible and workable psychic patterns, and we know when they're coming. This is why we have astrology. I'm not suggesting that it's a great idea to mess with natural forces, or to pretend they're harmless. Far to the contrary. I'm saying we are blessed with some foresight, some experience (they come twice a year), and the ability to see themes and spot issues (which astrologers do every day, hopefully). And we have the benefit of some timing ability, since astrology happens in time. Astrology is where otherwise incomprehensible cosmic forces take form, get names and play themselves out in space and time. With us in the middle of it all! Okay, so. Eclipses function in one respect as pressure adjustment devices. They relieve pressure, they stir up energy and they offer a moment of a fully-pressed clutch so that we get a chance to change gears in life. The general energy around them, however, often feels like an acceleration of time or events; a sense of fate; a more dramatic 'instant karma' effect; a sense that thought is amplified and manifests in material form more powerfully. It is! One of my first mentors, Dave Roell, always advised me to do what you really love to do the day of an eclipse, because you're going to generate more of it. I've often worked with this energy, and it's rather dependable. Should you take the day off and do something fun? If I had a job and I had the leave, I would. At times, eclipses feel like a sense of increasing pressure, like we're coming up against a sealed surface. We can get pushed and pushed and suddenly we pop through and we're in another dimension of time; another region of the space known as time. Are you with me? Eclipses represent the most palpable shifts in energy that we experience on a routine basis. They are, generally, the big interchanges where life shuffles around and changes with that feeling of going past the point of no return. They happen about every six months. Within the valley of time between eclipse zones, we get some pretty distinct patterns, which then shift a little, or a lot, when the next eclipses come. I am not being superstitious. Just follow eclipses for a while and you'll become an astrologer. These are some general comments. Specifically, a Scorpio total lunar eclipse, particularly conjunct Centaur planet Pholus, is about an emotional release. I would say that it's an emotional release of stuff that's been passed down through your family for about three generations -- Pholus just works that way, and very dependably. Across the sky, the sun, El Soul, is in Taurus, exactly conjunct minor planet Ceres, who makes sure we eat. You have what you need. But you'll have a lot more if you share your resources, because we humans -- well, we don't survive here alone, we need one another, and if we're in community, we do really, really well. Here's a fairly recent eclipse essay from the For the Faithful series: http://www.ericfrancis.com/daily_june10.html Here is an old eclipse essay called One Way (Or Another) from back before the ominous 8/11/99 event: http://www.planetwaves.net/another.html Have a fine weekend. The stars are running hot -- retrograde Mercury, plus Mars, Jupiter and Neptune all line up wild and free across the fixed signs Taurus, Leo and Scorpio. Measure your drugs carefully, jot down your brilliant insights, please drive sober, and do tell the truth. 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/ Birthdays This Week Your birthday falls during one of the most mystifying stretches of the year, though this may be of little comfort if you feel like you're being pushed out to the very edge of who you are. Yet the point is not about dying, it's about being born and as Bob Dylan (whose chart is mostly about Taurus, not Gemini) reminded us, if you're not busy doing one, you're doing the other. In love, the question is simply this. What aspect of the people you desire do you relate to the most closely? Is it light or shadow, is it their generosity or their desire to withhold, is it their gift of liberation or their tendency to control, is it their sanity or the peculiar way they seem, sometimes literally, to lose their minds? And then, of course, find them again? Or we could look at it this way. To what extent do you relate to the hot-tempered, tectonically driven soul you possess deep beneath your often conservative exterior? And how does the core reality of who you are make you feel when you look directly at it, or its effects? Having witnessed what you've seen in this world, it's possible to make up excuses or stories for why you might be apprehensive about letting go directly into the stream of change and the rush of uncontrolled emotion. It certainly seems plausible that you view change as a matter to be taken from the inside out, and one which is inherently private. It may be that you place such a high value on stability that much of what you feel you need is purely in defense of that. But as you will soon see, your foundations are more solid than any image of worldly safety could hope to offer. And that's saying a lot right now. Today you stand quite literally on the cusp of consciousness, the moment before awakening, that dreamlike state when your concept of yourself is not fully present, but you do know you exist. When you awaken, I think you'll see that you live in a world where the types of bindings you fear the most are as thin as air, and where the opposites and contradictions that seem to cause you so much trouble most of the time are reconciled. If you can catch a glimpse of your world from the perspective of a unified self, you will surely see that your life may well be better than many times before, perhaps the best it's ever been. But that is often a matter of perspective. If you are seeking the freedom to be, remember that more than anything, such is, in truth, the freedom to feel. It matters not what anyone else things. Can you stand it? Aries (March 20-April 19) Whatever you may experience in the coming few days to a week, it's going to be with exceptional sensitivity. But the feelings and levels of awareness you can reach at this point are preparation for a birthing to an attitude, an expression of energy and a kind of consciousness that you'll be involved with for a long time. Most of this journey will occur within the confines of your imagination, your creative process and your spiritual life. But events of the next week or two will put you into contact with people who are acting as teachers or guides and who are able to point the way to a quality of existence that you need to become more familiar with. You will be going to them and not the other way around. And while it may not be obvious at first, they are part of you. The more you see that as real, the further you're progressing on this journey. Taurus (April 19-May 20) No matter how perplexing the situation you find yourself in seems, the answer is staring right at you. Astrology is largely about pattern recognition and teaches that if we look at things differently, we see the patterns they're made of differently. In any event, the solution to your problem does not require you to do something more, but rather something less. It is more about forgetting than remembering. And, in the most immediate time frame, it's about seeing one particular deception you've put a lot of energy into attempting to make real for yourself. But with an eclipse of the ever-important moon about to happen in your opposite sign, Scorpio, the spotlight is again cast on a close partnership. You would do well to question its actual role in your life. Gemini (May 20-June 21) Both inside you and around you, life is changing fast, but the deeper shift in your reality is yet to manifest. I mean this. Everything that's happening now is part of the ending process and not the beginning, and endings are times to be experienced carefully with a deep dedication to clarity. Clarity may seem like the last state of mind available to you right now, but through what may feel like an overwhelming flood of feelings, information and plain chaos, there is a distinct message you are giving yourself. I would propose a possible theme, and not to the exclusion of others. You might want to take a look at how easy it is for you to deceive yourself about anger, but more to the point, why it is that you learned -- or rather were taught -- to do that. Cancer (June 21-July 22) Eclipses of the moon can be ominous events for anyone born under your sign, but in reality they offer one of the most dependable antidotes to the cyclical nature of your personality. They do so by keeping your mind attuned to the larger waves of change and creation rather than the small fluctuations. With the upcoming event, you're experiencing something about the cycle of faith in your abilities that can be so challenging for you. As a Cancerian you are very much a creature of this world, at home with its challenges and often dire necessities, as well as the comforts and joys that only physical incarnation can bring. Physical incarnation is impossible without faith, and what most often blocks faith is fear. Fear has its old sources, and you can trust that as you notice them, one by one they will disappear. Leo (July 22-Aug 23) Consider this a time of gathering your power. Whether you're the kind of Leo who lives out in the open where everyone can see you, or the kind of cat who disappears into yourself for days and comes home for food, you are working toward a new place in the world. Part of this involves redefining your relationships to people, but the greater part, at this point, involves defining your relationships in such a way that they are entirely different than what was established between you and your parents. Those might have been productive relationships, or strained ones, or the usual mix. But they established a context and set of pre-defined values for all your relationships. And at this date, place and time, those values are what are under heavy renovation, much to your benefit. Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) Keep your cool. Your options are to respond more like a deer in front of headlights, or more like a skilled negotiator who can pretty much get anyone to agree with anything. It is true that you're surrounded by people, entities and natural forces all of which seem to be more powerful, louder and -- recently -- clearer than you are. But even in the rather tempered, inwardly-directed concepts of your own thoughts, you are tapping into something much larger than yourself or the whole situation. It's a source within you but somehow beyond you. Don't look for logic to support the fact that you have access to this. Just listen carefully and say exactly what you need to say, to exactly the ones you need to say it to, nice and calm. Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) Venus changes signs just as next week's eclipse stirs up your rather sensitive second house, the house of self-value and self-love. The question might be this: do you feel like you're losing something or gaining something in the current transaction? Let's not consider what's really true. Let's check out how you feel and what you perceive. That's going to tell you quite a lot. Next, what are those perceptions based on? Immediate perceptions first, worldly reasons, documented quotes and the like. Then the old stuff: what you were conned into thinking about yourself and so on. Now, how does all of this relate to the actual circumstances of your life right now? What would you do if you were offered exactly what you need the most? What if someone really understood? All those old beliefs would fall flat, that's what. Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) Next week's eclipse of the moon in your sign is designed to give you a direct experience of what your partners or close associates are experiencing when they relate to you. I suggest you do this without any hesitation, because in the process, you'll quite literally absorb a piece of their wisdom, awareness and self-acceptance. People have learned more than you would imagine both from going through this recent stretch of life with you, and through experiences outside your relationship to them. Whatever unfolds will require a level of true emotional bravery, but that's what it takes to cross an insurmountable barrier or take a once in a lifetime chance. The result will be to bring you a lot closer to the people around you, and given how challenging that's been in recent months, I am sure this will come as a welcome development. Sagittarius (Nov. 22 - Dec. 22) Freefall is your best strategy now -- best as in easiest, and best as in most effective. In other words you have no choice but to trust, and you can do so because you're environment and your life path are entirely trustworthy. You may be noticing how things always seem to be one way and in fact turn out to be another way. Watch this phenomenon like a movie, with as little personal investment as you can. You happen to know life is always this way, but it's never seemed quite so dramatic, and it is in fact a kind of drama. In this regard, it doesn't matter whether you make your decisions on bad information or good; something much more encompassing has the situation in its hands, and whatever you perceive is merely a perception, to be read like a sign or a symbol that gracefully leads you to the next space. Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) Because you exist in such a structured world, or because you strive to do so, it may be difficult for you to appreciate the kinds of changes that defy any sensibility, tradition, logic or reasoning process. And, curiously enough, you attract people who spend a lot of time doing just that. Or not so curiously, because you gain so much from the tribulations of other people, in terms of what you get to observe, and what you learn about yourself, even though it takes a while for you to figure out that it really is about you. Then one day you notice. And that day, by all indications, is coming very soon. The part of you for whom logic holds no sway, the part of you moved only by the red blood of desire or the unworldly heat of dreams, is experiencing a change that has no plans of obeying any rules of this world. But in such a time, one must follow what the ancients called Higher Law. Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) You are slowly being drawn into a state of mind that, to many, may seem to have little bearing on reality. What you see, what you feel and what you think you know are not the kinds of things one could commonly read about in the public library, and they are certainly quite out of character for you or your family. But out of character does not mean out of step with your growth or creative process. To the contrary, this seems to be a time of extraordinary self-expression for you, and of learning to trust that you are well-contained within experiences that seem to lack any solid worldly theory to back them up. And for once, you're able to act without considering the moral implications of your actions, which in your case is a definite plus. Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) These weeks have taught you a great deal about the nature of your own fear, and how it feeds on itself. That is the process you want to observe. Fear's ways are not so mysterious, and all fear ultimately comes down to one fear, and by all accounts that fear is baseless. Remember that at this juncture, your relationship to yourself is the strongest one in your life. Every other relationship you have is, at long last, obviously a clear and direct outgrowth of the state of your coexistence with yourself. Fear is nothing more or less than abandoning, or threatening to abandon, yourself. If you can see that in action now, you will learn the lesson of a lifetime and free yourself from untold senseless grief -- and open the way for so much more. All the energy you waste on expecting the worst is yours to create what you want. 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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