Planet Waves for August 2003

By Eric Francis

Above, Martian landscape (home of Valentine Michael Smith) as seen from Viking One spacecraft. In August, Mars and Earth make their closest bypass in the past 60,000 years. There are some unusual predictions about this event going around the Internet, and soon enough we shall see if they're true. Yet if Mars's presence in Pisces means anything at all, it's reminding us to Question Reality, particularly the wisdom of the fact of our times that television creates reality. Something or someone has to (preferably you), but I don't suggest we leave the work of the universal creative intelligence to a bunch of demented Hollywood "news reporters" and producers. God is crazy enough!

Aries (March 20-April 21)

One of the curious things about the remaining months of the season is how close you'll be to the feelings and experiences of your own past. What you may be feeling is more than mere sentimentality, and more than a life review. Rather, you're being given an opportunity to directly retrieve something about yourself that is perhaps long-forgotten. Vivid imagination is the quality of which I speak -- your ability to live in a much larger world, but one with far greater input from your own creative fire. This capacity all but vanishes in adults, who lose the ability to envision the development of their own lives. As I have been suggesting in recent months, part of what surfaces when the subconscious world is opened up is old fear. Let it out, and let yourself fly.

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Taurus (April 21-May 20)

Emotional patterns you're now living out (and thankfully surviving) relate back to your siblings and childhood peers. You may be frustrated with the way you've related to people who are supposedly your equals We often think of childhood rebellion and all of its frustrations as something waged exclusively against parents, but in the era of vacuous parenting where so many of us grew up, we typically have a lot more contact with people our own age. Whether these relationships were based on rivalry or cooperation is less important than whether we were actually able to speak up about what we wanted and be heard. In some respects experience trained you to be dangerously passive. Voices you now hear in your heart and mind are the echoes of many words you did not say, and now must.

You really want to click this link.

Gemini (May 20-June 21)

Evaluate carefully whether barriers you encounter to creating your future are about the world, or about yourself. You may be obsessed with finding your "right place" or "right level" in society, but this is not merely a matter of theory. The whole issue of fitting in frequently creates an enormous amount of struggle for people mainly because we seem obsessed with trying to fit in where we don't, at the same time we're unwilling to try it elsewhere. Is it pride? Attachment? Or is it living within the confines of what our parents said or demonstrated was possible? Get to know their limits and you will go past your own. You may notice lately that your deliberations on all issues of your potential are really pointless inner conversations with their energetic residue.

Take the quick route to enlightenment by clicking this link.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)

When we care about people, their trials and struggles can become our own, while at the same time it's important to give them credit for their own success. Your role in this life -- clearly enough at times, and less at others -- is to feed people, to protect them, and to some extent, actually raise them. Your notion of family is rapidly expanding beyond both your old ideas and those that are culturally sanctioned. The necessities of your relationships have been calling on you to let go of all your old ideas about relationship. To fulfill your role, you need to have a well-ordered and well structured existence of your own, and lead a truly nourished life. You have all the basic tools to do this. What you really need is a little more confidence in yourself.

Surreal astrology at this link.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 22)

Good fortune must never be taken for granted, though at the same time it's rarely seen for what it is. Between the grinding drone of anxiety and feeling that the world is one's oyster exists mindful participation with our somewhat risky existence. Existence unfolds in a world with many challenges, even in the best times. There is little that can harm you right now, but there's also a stellar necessity that you express your rather abundant creative energy and spiritual resources constructively, as a matter of will, and that you consciously build for the future. While relaxing into the short-term good life is certainly a temptation, you can't really take it easy when you're feeling restless, and what you're feeling restless for is a secure foundation -- in your heart, as much as beneath your feet.

Explore the outer edges of cosmic reality at this link.

Virgo (Aug. 22-Sep. 22)

Your life is about to become a color wheel of experience. A phase of rather awesome experimentation is coming wherein you will be able to become one version of yourself after the next. One potential problem you face is that to do this, you'll need to embrace a series of fast changes, which is not quite your specialty. Get used to it, because unpredictable experience is very much the theme of the seasons ahead. You face the continued risk of becoming who or whatever you perceive others want you to be, in part based on your desire to keep them in your life. But there is no one person, or group of people, who can determine your identity or the course of your existence. They will shape you, but the final choices must be your own.

Before there was the Internet, you could not click this link.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)

You are something of a reluctant hobbit, yet you're now being summoned to larger missions and being asked to commit yourself to stances on public issues. I can't tell you how good this is for you, to get solid on your opinions in a time when the world is ready for you. In truth, however, you are ready for the world. Taking this step means facing up to the value and beauty of what you have to offer, and to the truth that your capacity to make decisions in a leadership role is better than just about everyone you know. Why you might cling to the past is another question, and it has a lot to do with certain definitions of safety that have nothing at all to do with who you are, what you believe or what your calling is.

If you think you've clicked this link.guess again

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)

Mars, the first planet that finds its home in Scorpio, is now retrograde in Pisces, which is another way of saying that this is a great time to flush out the pipes on all your hidden relationship karma. Certain facts about your past exist about which may not know, and about which you may not be interested. Yet there are certain factors in your present life that are most likely really making you wonder what is up. There is a connection between the two. Remember that genuine relationships withstand revelations of your personal truth and deep reassessments of yourself. In fact, that is their whole purpose, to endure change, to facilitate growth and become a point of continuity. And this is no small purpose for you right now; you have waited all your life to experience this depth of commitment.

Your intense curiosity and desire to know everything will make you click this link.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)

You'll get past this stage of emotional turmoil soon enough, but you might want to question the factors leading to the setup for the situation. One thing that happens when we deny ourselves the need for an emotional orientation on life is that we can be very suddenly called to confront our emotions all at once. Had feelings not been used so manipulatively and deceptively against you as a child, you might trust them more today. There may be no retrieving the mutual trust of a parent or caregiver who violated your sanctity as a child. But you can learn to trust yourself again, and that primarily means trusting what you feel above what you think and what you believe. There is no right and wrong in this dimension, only what is, and that's what you work with.

You're the most cosmic person this side of Andromeda Galaxy. So you know you're going to click this link.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)

Your life is unfolding within a totally different dimension than the people around you. Presently you're neither in the world nor of it, as far as they are concerned; you are working on a level between the worlds, beyond time and thus beyond ordinary consciousness. In other words, your supposedly down-to-earth and practical personality is very much in the background of your experience. Events of last month provided a perhaps shocking demonstration of your need for both flexibility and admitting that consciousness creates experience. No matter what limiting factors you may perceive, your new orientation is allowing you access to energy sources, both human and supernatural, beyond anything you've ever known. Just remember, and don't forget: consciousness creates experience, not the other way around.

Cotton candy costs $10 at LA Dodgers games. But that has nothing to do with this link.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)

Stop wondering what you've done to deserve the loving attention you're getting, and focus on taking it in. Accepting nourishment is the only way to get any. Many events in your life, both recent and distant, have vividly demonstrated that something had to change. The question was what, and the answer is how you go about exchanging with the people around you. To exchange is to give and receive on an intimate level, in ways which may seem sentimental or self-aggrandizing to you. Looked at another way, Aquarius is by its nature deeply attuned to the requirements of maintaining society and culture, which so often put the needs of an individual second. You are losing this orientation now, and accepting a more personal notion of yourself as, well, a person. It's not all that bad, is it?

You know it's gonna get stranger, so let's get on with the show -- at this link.

Pisces (Feb. 19-Mar. 20)

At the same time certain aspects are calling you to make amends with yourself, and to free yourself from so many past self-judgments, worlds of opportunity are opening up before your senses. By month-end, you will be looking at both personal and professional opportunities you could not have imagined today. The scale of your life is going to change and enlarge, which means that everything you are becomes magnified and will take root in new circumstances, relationships and arrangements. Therefore, this is the time to make unusually clear decisions about who and what you are not, and stick to them. That will be the simplest criteria for choosing what you do not want once you're presented with more possibilities than you can really manage. From there, making positive choices will be fairly simple.

Surreality is stranger than fiction. Learn more at this link.

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Space graphic above from the Rosette Nebula in Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Sulfur.
Credit: T. A. Rector, B. Wolpa, M. Hanna.