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Beyond the Eclipses

Dear Friend and Client:

We're fast moving beyond the eclipse system that has dominated the cosmic weather of the past couple of months, but eclipses help set the tone and pattern for at least the coming six months to one year. They have a funny way of showing up at odd and unexpected moments long after you've forgotten them, and can represent a story that can go on for two or more years. I had read stuff about this early in my studies, but it was astonishing to see signature patterns in eclipses delivering messages months and years later. For astrology students, watch the degree in which an eclipse occurred and treat it like a permanently-situated planet. That degree is alive. Then, as you look at event charts or natal and progressed charts, watch for when that degree appears, that is, when a planet or angle is in that degree.

There is always an interesting story, and it may come back to the time of the eclipse. Seeing these connections will start to rearrange your picture of how time works. Time is not a Chevy driving along I-90. It is a spiral dance, and the spirals overlap and cross in most unexpected ways. Eclipses represent nodal points and potent interchanges where past and future converge in the present.

The point being, remember what you've just lived through in these immediate weeks, and all through this autumn, because those experiences are like maps or pictures of a landscape that expands for many weeks and months. Relationship patterns, feelings, revelations, experiences, needs you've identified, desires: they are all likely to be living, breathing factors as the next stage of your life unfolds. One way to work with astrology and not use 65 planets is to track eclipses. It's very simple; you pay attention to the cycles of the Sun and Moon (and their combined cycle, the eclipse cycle) and you loosely track your biography around these events. Eclipses are like the highest points in the mountain range of life. You can navigate and find your way by using these peaks as references.

If you're not studying astrology, just track the dates of the events, which you can find in any astrological calendar, such as the We'moon Calendar, Jim Maynard's astrology datebooks, and a variety of others. I suggest you use one which has Chiron and some asteroids. We'moon does a good job of that. If you are remotely entertaining the possibility of being an astrologer, get a copy of the Aureas 1920-2020 ephemeris. If you're an astrologer, you'll know from your curiosity. It will draw you right in. Check http://www.aureas.org/ to acquire this. It's the best multi-year ephemeris in print, and it's not available in stores in the U.S.

While every astrological event is unique, a lot of psychic energy was invested in the Harmonic Concordance, and its corresponding solar eclipse -- which was just six days ago -- was quite impressive. At least from where I'm sitting, things seem a lot calmer now. But I still have a lot of respect for that fine cosmic storm. Remember that it was an eclipse at the New Moon, which means that we're about to see some of its most distinct manifestations at the Full Moon on Dec. 8, which I'm calling the Great Attractor Full Moon, because it happens as the Sun aligns with an intergalactic point called the Great Attractor. Yes, there is such a thing as intergalactic. Once again, here is the link:

http://www.ericfrancis.com/sagittarius/sagittarius10.html

If size, gravitational pull and radio emissions mean anything, the Great Attractor is the most powerful point in the sky. (Thanks to Phil Sedgwick for turning me onto its existence and its obvious importance, which rang bells in the first three minutes he was talking about it.) The Great Attractor, whatever it is (scientists don't know) is a distant object or energy source pulling a million galaxies toward it at the rate of a million miles per hour. You're sitting in a chair reading right now, but actually, this is what it feels to fly through deep space at a million MPH. Don't stick your head out the window.

The Great Attractor emits an enormous signal on every frequency except that of visible light. You could describe it as a colossal electronic beacon in space, but it's obviously a lot more, since it's pulling all those galaxies toward it. Our galaxy, a pretty average spiral galaxy, is a grouping of 200 billion stars. So multiply that by a million, spread it out over many, many light years, and imagine one point, one thing, one entity, pulling all those galaxies together. It is a kind of anti-big-bang. This is what's going on in Sagittarius, just exactly in the middle of Sagittarius, in a direction that the Sun crosses each year on Dec. 7.

When the Moon reaches full phase on Dec. 8, it's going to do so with the Earth and Sun aligned with this point. There have been some interesting predictions made about a shakeup in the U.S. Government around this time, which is actually reflected in the charts of George Bush and Dick Cheney, both of which have some rather intense and unusual timing indicators that point to a turn of events around that day. We'll see: a lot of different charting methods point to this particular time as a breaking point, shift of moment when something gives. Combined with the Dec. 8 lunation on the Great Attractor, it will at least be interesting. But let's hold the light around that whole crazy scene in the Middle East just in case interesting means volatile, turbulent or violent.

As an astrologer who has been tracking the national charts with some care for the past five years, I have been amazed at how horrendous Bush's chart has been and how little it seems to affect him. His chart very accurately represents his personality. It is a lesson in how the chart gives you a picture of a person. But his transits (for example, Saturn, Varuna and Elatus crossing his natal Sun simultaneously, with Chiron opposing his Sun) suggest pressure like few people can imagine. Were I his personal astrologer, I would have him on the highest level of personal and professional awareness right now, and I would be very concerned were there not outward manifestations of his transits. There is only so much one can hold in.

[Note: I'll have a full report on the US chart that I use in the Aquasphere 2004 annual horoscope.]

As for the rest of us, many of us are in some way experiencing these transits directly*, and we all experience the transiting planets as they move regardless of what we have in our natal charts. I would say move with extra focus and awareness for these weeks and maintain a close relationship between intention, desire, choice and response. I don't suggest over-emphasizing any one, but rather keeping them in balance. The approach to the holidays is often a frenzied time (in part due to the time compression of the shortest days in the northern hemisphere), and a lot of important information can get lost in the sauce. I suggest that "traditional obligations" are very much secondary to your immediate needs and those of the people around you. You can do what you feel is right, not merely what other people have said (or implied) is somehow mandatory.

If you have children, try putting there needs first, second and third. The past two years of madness has been extremely hard on kids, even the ones who don't seem to be aware of what's happening in the world -- kids are very susceptible to psychic climates and know far more than most adults imagine. Even if they don't know, they respond and react.

Although Sagittarius is home to the most prodigious points in the sky -- the core of our galaxy and the Great Attractor -- it is still a mutable sign, and mutability implies choice, flexibility, adaptation and using thought as the notebook to work out those choices and changes in advance.
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*Most notably, anyone with planets (particularly Sun and Moon), points (particularly the Moon's nodes) or angles (ascendant or midheaven) in the middle degrees of any of the cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, or the middle degrees of the mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces) -- i.e., most of us.

Sagittarius Birthdays This Week

You need to pace yourself. This is posed to be the most eventful year of the recent past and far beyond, with changes running far, wide and deep, just like you need them, and just like you can handle them. Whether this would be your preference is another question, but preference is going to emerge as a moment-to-moment and week-to-week reality, not an abstraction. Keep all your preferences in mind. The really good thing about change is that we get a moment when all the patterns of life are in flux and we can match up needs with possibilities.

This is not a time of passively rolling along as life progresses. Rather, it is a time when you absolutely must take leadership in your life. Leadership equates to conscious a conscious vision and making conscious choices. Those factors are born of one thing only: awareness.

For those in committed partnerships and marriages, this is a time of solidifying your identification with the commitment in which you find yourself. This is your life; this is your partner. Yes, these things can and often do change, but the present is what counts now. I suggest you go fully into your experience of the relationship and moreover into your role in that relationship. I know role may have an implication of acting or role playing, but I mean it in the most authentic way: the act of being someone's consort.

If you are not in a situation where this applies, I suggest you work with it on the imagistic level, homing in on the specifics of what you need from partnership and who you want to be to someone in a relationship. All the rules that guided past encounters are off. New environments, new situations, new surrounding factors are all real now. You are seeking direct soul knowledge in this process, guidance from the highest sources and deepest innate wisdom with which you can make contact.

The "who am I?" question is likely to be raging for you. There is quite a bit of chaos around this right now, and that chaos is one of your spiritual allies. This is not a time for firm and inflexible dogma. It's a time for quickly adapting to what you perceive. Don't content yourself with small answers, or general ones. Know the difference between a piece of the solution and a prospective whole solution. In time, the difference between a vague sense of what's right for you and an actual understanding will become clear, but experience is the only test. No matter how good things look in theory, you need the hands-on experience to know your personal truth.

This is a time for developing discernment and realizing the power of specificity, that is, of stating ideas and needs in direct terms. These can always be amended, but as you test out what's right for you, you need to try on, experiment with and feel the reality of precisely what you're testing. In other words, you won't know if you want a certain job or to be with a certain person until you actually have the experience.

You will benefit enormously from travel, particularly in your professional life. You need to expand your ideas and have much wider, more visionary goals, and seeing the world from other perspectives, and witnessing other cultures, will help shake up the marbles in your head and clear away the cobwebs of old concepts and mental patterns. If you are feeling some stress as you do this, that's about the right quality. Over time, it will seem less stressful, but real change tests structure, bends it and at times breaks it. The breaking is nothing more or less than breaking free.

Aries (March 20-April 19)
Developments this week give new meaning to the phrase 'a world of possibilities'. You don't need to act on all of them. But the mistake that most people make, fearing that they might act and be challenged, or not wanting to be too overwhelmed, is to cut off awareness of what's available. It works out that a lot more is available than you need, but to find the right choice among so many options, you need to go through them carefully. I suggest you feel your way through them. Travel if necessary, ask questions if necessary, talk to people, and seek insight and understanding. Consider a few different places. Then follow your heart.

Taurus (April 19-May 20)
Oh familiar Capricorn, where your planet, Venus, has recently returned to one of her favorite homes. For you, this is a harbinger of faith in love. In this world, there is faith, and there is love, but the two are rarely brought together into one experience. Love takes a lot of faith. Love is contrary to the facts, contrary to reason and quite often, contrary to history. And it's quite often confused with possession, control and inflexibility. Faith takes you beyond all that and to a real extent renders love unnecessary. Give yourself and the people around you the gift of your trust beyond words and acceptance beyond measure.

Gemini (May 20-June 21)
It is all just one more interesting thing happening to you. It's fun to be a little blasé when the world is going wild, when people are spinning and when nothing is like it was yesterday. But I think your cool-calm sense is mostly on the outside. Inside, you can access a hot sense of focus and power to penetrate through the chaos, static and showmanship and make contact with the growing sense of what you want and what you need with a decisiveness that's been rare for you in recent times. Rare, not because you're waffling but rather because your world is hardly what you could call predictable right now, and that's been a little confusing. But it is perceptible, which is a lot better.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)
Please put some emphasis on your health, as in rest, nutrition, exercise, de-stressing, that kind of thing. You don't need to pump iron, walk to Cuba or drink protein shakes; a mellow approach is sufficient. Slowly raise the level of order in your environment, cut back the number of hours in a day you're working, and do a few things that help you nutritionally. If you're the hamburger type, eat a fresh salad. Do this all with the feeling of ritual de la habitual, the careful attention paid to mundane acts. Your real improvement agenda is a lot deeper, but once you get started with the mundane, the deeper agenda will fall into place.

Leo (July 22-Aug 23)
I often wonder about the concept of freedom, and the reality. I've used the word plenty of times, and as I move through Western World existence, I wonder if it's not just a fancy notion. In practical terms, to the extent that there is such a thing as freedom, I think it comes as choice, curiosity, and the willingness to take a risk. I think it manifests as looking at something ordinary and seeing unusual possibilities that other people miss. I think it shows up as allowing one's creative process to go past one's control impulse. Freedom is relative, and such as it is, you have a lot of the stuff right now.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
Emotional complication is not your favorite flavor, but I think you just learned that between denial and being overwhelmed another mode of existence is possible. Here's what it looks like in the charts. The past contains a lot of clutter (conditioning, karma, or whatever you prefer) and the past and the present can seriously interfere with one another. Once you sort out your real feelings from what you were told you're supposed to feel, and have discerned your own response from those of your (inner) parents, you can actually determine what your choices are in response to the current circumstance. If you're feeling complicated, go deeper. It's simpler there.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
Keep grounded. You're doing well. It is easier to resolve deeply personal circumstances when you're feeling good, when you know you're safe, and when you feel mutual assurance with the people close to you. Such is quite possible right now, and it will lead you to the precious conclusion that problems are much smaller than love. Should a discussion arise, remember how much you've learned about yourself in recent seasons; that knowledge is powerful, and you've earned every bit of it. May it grant you permission to proceed with a sense of safety and truth.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
You are now free to leave behind a reactionary approach to life that came from the example of someone older than yourself. False overconfidence covered up a false lack of confidence that you can now finally address, which is to say, you can be solid in who you are and it's not an especially big deal -- there is nothing to compensate for. A particular desert-dwelling critter for which your sign is named is an arthropod, and thus it molts, or sheds its shell, every now and then. That is approximately what's occurring for you, but it's a very small shell leading to a very big world. The moments after molting are the most vulnerable.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 - Dec. 22)
Forget about trying to process this all with your rational mind. Oh, right, you've already figured that out. It only gets more interesting from here, and I don't mean that in the "Old Chinese Curse" sense of the word. Interesting means life holds your interest, which is good for everyone. Take it easy with the cosmic messenger energy; deliver your updates to those who will partake in measured and thought-through doses, interspersed liberally with theatre reviews. Take your friends out to dinner or put a big pot on the stove and listen to their stories. You already know a lot; you will discover the missing information you seek.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
An impossible quest of some kind awaits you, and those are the ones that distinguish the Cub Scouts from the Explorers. Impossible means it's time to dedicate yourself to the quest and make the journey. A limit that seemed to be in your path has been removed. In reality, you've merely gotten out of your own way, a clear violation of those dumb rules. It was only a matter of time before that happened. For you, breaking the rules means feeling what you feel in the moment rather than feeling what you're told. It means being conscious now rather than holding yourself to what was demanded of you in the past. Adventure is inevitable.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
The privilege of being real belongs to those who are not afraid of the consequences that might come from those who cringe at that potential in themselves. Rather than vanquishing the shame and fear of existence -- that is, the fear of being real -- the situation is perpetuated and society as we know it becomes an act. You've seen through this hypocrisy and I know you don't like it. Here is the passport beyond: everyone already is different. One does not need the right to be different, that's just the way it is. You cannot change that reality; nobody can. See the awesome diversity in the people around you, and accept the people who are quickly coming into your life as if you were some kind of high-voltage magnet. That is a fact.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
By process of elimination, you can figure out what love is. When you're feeling defensive, that's not love. When you're feeling anxious, that is not love. If you feel like you have a need that can't be met, that's not love. If you expect a negative outcome for no special reason, that is not love. If you are judging yourself or someone else, or expecting to be judged, that's not love. Loving yourself as you are has a strange way of going from the most difficult thing there is to the easiest thing there is. You want to project that ease to the world, because if you do, you're going to create a lot more of it, and it's about time.

Aquasphere is the 2004 annual astrology keyword-access Internet area from Planet Waves. Full-year Planet Waves Sun and Moon horoscopes for all the signs, lots of stuff on transits, ecological articles and much more. Visit http://www.PlanetWaves.net/aquasphere or call (877) 453-8265 during Pacific business hours.