| Written in the Stars I have spent much of the past week, weekend and into this week explaining to myself that I am free. Free within the context of my own thoughts and feelings, within my own desires and ideas. Free to, you know, go to the store, or walk around in my own apartment like I belong here, or to remain mildly amused. Free to say what I need to say to people. Rarely have I enjoyed email more. Freedom is about ideas as much as it is about actions. Ideas are like desires yearning for expression, and I have been doing my best to listen and respond: sitting at this keyboard a lot, singing. Rearranging my room. Rearranging my mind. From hour to hour, nothing is the same. Mercury does the turnaround (in late Capricorn) within a short time. Here is what we have on tap, planetarily: As I write this Monday 2/4/2, Luna Scorpio is coming in for a square to Sister Venus, Ceres, Prometheus (Uranus) in Aqueerius. Mercury has backed into the last degree of Capricorn, with a Sabian Symbol worth looking up, a real caper. Cancer 21 degrees is rising. ('What is success really worth? This is a question that few people ask'.) I am facing East. Thursday, Saturn stations direct (s/d, meaning its several month annual Rx or retrograde ends, having begun Sept. 26, in tight with another Mercury Rx) in Gemini, holding its trine to Neptune in Aquarius. Despite a lot of little tempests blowing, the main structures of the psyche are holding steady, and there is a balance of what you might call vision and practical sense. Venus feels the delightful jolt of Uranus, really, Uranus sensing this as a softening process. We could all use to be a lot softer, friendlier on the inside, able to conduct feeling more easily, to allow ourselves to say what we feel -- isn't it true? There are some people who are really good at it, and this is an excellent time to seek them out. Another Mercury year is beginning. We are now in what astro-historian Jim Shawvan calls the 'Mercury Storm', with the winged god moving at about 10 arcminutes (one sixth of a degree) per day (not exactly as slow as Pluto but comparable; Jim considers less than 40 arcminutes of motion per day to be when the more intense effects of the retrograde are experienced, including people wigging out under the psychological stress, depending on how their chart is set up) and s/he stops right around Capricorn 28 degrees and 39 minutes at, drumroll please, 9:28 a.m. Pacific Time on Friday, as Luna sweeps into Capricorn and heads for the degree of the station direct, where Mercury is still basically standing still, holding a charge like a pregnant thunder cloud, and Luna picks up the energy or message and carries it right into Aqueerius, where a New Moon happens on the 11th in the 11th sign in a conjunction to Uranus (on Jebby's birthday), and we then dive into the Chinese New Year (the Black Horse). Good Gods! If you missed New Year in the midst of those wacky holidays, traveling and attending to uncounted or unrequited obligations, this is a really fine time to take the idea of the New Year inward and work with your intentions. Five or maybe it's ten or who knows probably more like twenty-thousand years of Eastern wisdom provide us with a calendar where, miracle, the year commences on a New Moon. They say that this will not be a boring Chinese year. Metal and Fire are both said to be prominent in the Chinese calendar, as they were last year, though this appears to be a Water year in that system, and the very yang Chinese signs Horse and Dragon respond well to water. But the Western astrology is considerably mellower. We are spared an eclipse on the Solstice; we are spared a Mars retrograde conjunct Pluto; there are not three conjunctions to Chiron by Mars. In all, a lot less Mars. Yet we must remember that some things are given us never to change, as long as life lasts, though our interpretation is subject to new points of view all the time. | Sign dates below are approximate. They now overlap by one day. The date and time of the Sun's ingress to the new sign changes a little each year, so please check with an astrologer if you want the exact position of your Sun, and while you're at it, your rising sign -- this horoscope is written for both your Sun and rising signs. If you find that some other sign's interpretations work for you, then go for it. Astrology Readings on CD by Eric Francis | | Aries (March 20-April 21) | | The issue of freedom is indeed worth considering now, or perhaps unavoidable, and this is for everyone because Aquarius is just so illuminated with this aspect of its domain, and for you, it would appear to be the freedom of association. The 11th sign is also your 11th solar house, where you meet your friends, where you find your true role in the culture, and where you collect the cash that comes as the reward of finding your true work. These are all matters of freedom. But moreover, I speak of the freedom for you to be anyone you happen to be at any time, anywhere you are, and the freedom to associate with any aspect of your inner being, in peace and harmony. You can safely welcome any part of you, any voice or any awareness, as a friend. | | Taurus (April 21-May 20) | | With any luck, and luck is with you these days, you are not so confused by your current scene or situation that you can't ease into how excellent things really are for you, and how good it is to be alive at this utterly strange moment of history. I know the question is -- always, these days -- is what is the right life direction for you to choose? Everything around you is so strange, the world is so wild and nothing is the same, and you feel, I have a deep hunch, that you must have some special destiny: if only you could remember it. I will tell you what I told my cousin Angel: listen to your soul, baby. | | Gemini (May 20-June 21) | | The mountain is a snow legend; there, it is winter, there is snowpack and howling winds and there exists a glacial universe at fourteen thousand feet, beyond conception, and most days fully obscured from view, as is the world from that vantage point. It is a glacial island in the sky surrounded in a sea of mist. But not today: the mountain and the mountaintop are in clear view. How does this make you feel? What is your relationship to heights? At the moment, you are part Capricorn and can, in actuality, leap upwards twelve feet onto a barn roof, or into any terrain, if you desire. Am I being too abstract here? | | Cancer (June 21-July 22) | | Remember these days well. I don't know if there is anything I can say to get you to live them more fully, more immediately, and, I bid you, fearlessly. I say this acknowledging that your life is not problem-free: and, likely, nor will it ever be. The real question is how we cope, work through, or turn problems to opportunities. Perhaps you cannot quite see a method for doing this, but be aware of what your choices are at all times, and when in doubt, make up a few more. And I remind you: people have their own destiny. You are among them. | | Leo (July 22-Aug. 22) | | Are you capable of going through this without judging yourself? I have been paying close attention, in my own life, to the whole issue of 'taking on' that which does not belong to me. Fuck! it's difficult. It is a kind of trap that leads to a prison, and the main thing you may be taking on is akin to confusion that's not your own, surrounded by a haze of denial, or hey, it could be denial surrounded in confusion. And yet in this life, we do indeed have awakening experiences, and fortunately they can be more pleasant than the alarm clock going off on Friday morning when you wish it was the weekend. But with the approach of a New Moon conjunct the awesome planet Prometheus (Uranus), which says you are moving steadily toward a shift in consciousness, particularly around what you call love, and if you really want, it's gonna be really good. | | Virgo (Aug. 22-Sep. 22) | | So, watch how Chiron works. It is not all 'wonderful' but yet there can be an affirmative outcome to just about everything if we do not lapse in our attention. Chiron is usually about attention to the more subtle shifts in awareness, and about the application of very specific healing technologies, including concepts, to very specific problems. But Chiron opposing Jupiter is very much a big-picture phenomenon. The concept of healing shifts from the medical/medicinal, to access to wisdom where it is needed, and, with the involvement of Cancer, compassion. I say this to you and all who are under the influence of this aspect, and I assure every reader that there is some major part of your life that is being touched by this experience, and it is very likely to be happening in relationships: hold your heart and mind open to the necessity and the authentic potential that we are not trapped in any of this that we experience, and know that we, or at least you, may enter a far better reality without anyone else needing to lose, suffer or be abandoned. Far to the contrary. But the condition is that we be open to receive, and this is not always easy to understand, I know. | | Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) | | Venus is associated with three signs: Taurus and Libra, its traditional rulers, and Pisces, where it is 'exalted', a special kind of rulership. Currently she is in Aquarius, where she is readily accessible to the Libra spirit, and that spirit is rather feisty at the moment, like a child, with little regard for right and wrong and a lot more regard for what is fun. Fun is nourishment, or let's say, if fun is nourishing, then we know it's wholesome fun. Spectacular astrology through the end of this week may leave you feeling not so stable, not so mentally put-together and not so placid, but for sure, you can enjoy the spice and unpredictability of life while you have it -- and don't forget to keep some in a jar for later. In a little while Venus enters Pisces, a whole new sweet world, easier, less exciting, but deeper pleasures and warmer seas. | | Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) | | It has never, or rarely, been easy for you to get any sense of emotional grounding in the place you call home, which relates back to the conditions of the place you called home as a child. In some way or another, were the misfit, or felt like it. But as a child it's far more difficult to make use of being the misfit than it is as an adult. And among the gifts of whatever maturity you have attained in these years of growing up is the power to be different, and the freedom of decision, including the power of choosing how you feel. In other words, you are not a victim of your feelings, you are their creator, and you have a lot of flexibility right now. | | Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) | | It is so good to see that life is turning around for you, and if you feel that it is not, please have faith. For years, I have plotted the Sagittarius charts and wondered why it was so difficult, and squirmed to find the words to express hope, caution and possibility so that I could actually convey these things to you. It always seemed that your real struggle was not originating from the outside, though it rarely seems this way when we are in the thick of it all. But now, you can see the power, beauty and freedom that are available when you make contact with the inner being who has been trying to reach you all along. And I suggest that when certain outer crises just vanish like smoke, don't ask why, just respond to life's invitations as you feel appropriate, and remember, everything is an invitation. | | Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) | | In order to truly experience the extent to which we are free, we need, mostly, to be free from compulsion. I know that this issue has not been easy for you recently (I speak of the past year or so), as so much in the way of what must feel like subconscious volcanic forces have influenced your attempts to make up your own mind. And you may suspect that this can happen again at any time: particularly the fear that fear has the power to seize your reality and force you to make decisions that you don't really want to make. Yet at long last, there is relief in the picture, in the form of Chiron slowly making its way across your birth sign, and now aligning with Jupiter. Chiron is the other voice, which says, if you can make one choice at a time, you will get where you are going. | | Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) | | We are coming up on one of those New Moons, like really new moons, and it happens to happen in Aquarius, the 11th sign, on Feb. 11 at 11:41 p.m. PST. It's an aspect that I might expect to see chronicled in an the notebook of an astrologer long gone, but looking ahead at the possibilities of what might be. The only way I can say it is this, without going so far as to make astrology seem like the huge act of cosmic magik that in one sense it is, but really it's all just a miracle, a natural phenomenon of the natural world. There are just certain times when many cycles align in truly unique and propitious ways, and certain doorways to certain of the less likely but more desirable potentials open up, and some people feel it in their hearts and bones and others are clueless and others follow astrology. Welcome to now. | | Pisces (Feb. 19-Mar. 20) | | There is a great deal taking shape in the unmanifest world right now, cousin Fish, and there are many omens (I typed 'opens') of stability, prosperity and lucid thinking in your life. Can you feel the rare clarity of this moment of your personal history? Can you feel the illusions giving way to layers of truth, even as they make faces and bitch a little? This is the most awesome time in many years for you to get your priorities in order, and this may involve staging several insurrections over belief systems that have nothing to do with you, what you want, or what you need. If those beliefs come from people, remember, you need to deal first with the beliefs, and second with the folks. Both, gently. | Search | Horoscopes | What's New | Index | Updates | Consultations  Space graphic above from the Rosette Nebula in Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Sulfur.
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