Planet Waves by Eric Francis | Monthly Horoscope for December 2000

 

 

My favorite news photo of 2000... Instead of demonstrators storming police lines, Mary Bull of San Francisco and Assistant Police Chief Terrance Gainer negotiated a peaceful arrest at the A-16 demonstrations against the World Bank in Washington DC. Barricades were opened to protesters, who walked through and were arrested. The 400 voluntary arrests defused what might have been the last big standoff. Photo: Jeremy Hogan/Reuters. Photo research: Maya Dexter/Planet Waves.

For December 2000 | By Eric Francis

Copyright ©2000 by Planet Waves Digital Media, all rights reserved.

Dates are approximate. Please consult an astrologer
if you are born on the crossover between two signs.

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ARIES (March 21-April 19)
Easy does it. Go gently, especially where other people and their feelings are concerned. You are trying to make a very big change, and what you need to recognize is that you've done all that you can do, in terms of raw effort. Now you need to allow the momentum of your own progress to carry you, which will require an act of faith. I say this understanding how important and life-affirming effort is to you. Yet there is something else at work in your life: the idea of sacrifice, and it's connected to how hard you try; and no doubt you have both given up a lot to get where you are, and grown accustomed to doing so. What now remains is reaping the rewards of your labors, and this calls for a new and very different state of mind.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)
Have you noticed the wild state of the world? The election debacle is just part of it. This year 2000 has been more than a numerical dividing line, and astrologically, it all went down in Taurus. Indeed, a configuration last spring in Taurus which has not occurred, ever, in the past 7,000 years, marked the bridge from the past to the future. Direct alignments exist between your chart, your life and world events arising from thin destiny. If ever resistance was pointless, it's now; yet resistance is one of your most carefully refined skills. If ever unlikely success was possible, indeed, if ever improbable, impossible or blazing success, or perhaps simple happiness, was right in front of you, it is now. Just remember: Success and happiness imply actual change of heart, not merely change of mind.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20)
You may at last be feeling enough of a sense of your own presence, what you might call a tense of presence, to seek the fulfillment of your own needs in relationship. There can be no underestimating the extent to which you have had to confront isolation born of who you've seemed to attract into your life in recent years: people you could describe as incomprehensible, unreachable, strangely unique and perhaps frightening, but clearly, soulfully human. Your isolation was born of your own ideas about what you thought these people thought of you, and the power you thought they held over you. Yet all you needed is what you now have, which is to meet others with your sense of your own being; this is power, and this you have learned.

CANCER (June 21-July 22)
What you don't know now will be more than compensated by what you find out later in the month, say, for example, around Christmas day. What seems to be an obscure, nebulous and restless state of affairs will emerge into three-dimensional focus as the noise and confusion are subtracted. The old expression is "bide your time," which really means "abide in your time," which is difficult to do if fearful thoughts carry you to the future. What you discover is likely to be far less fearful than what you suspect may be so. You have lived with the lurking suspicion that somebody was about to do you wrong or had suspect motives; perhaps so, but they have troubles of their own. Anyway, you are your only concern, and you really can relax.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)
You still take life far too seriously for your own good, which, if anything, is leading you to believe in limited ideas about your own power. Yet I believe you fear what would happen if you really unleashed your child-self in the world around you. For one thing, you would need to confront all the people who are in relationship to you as surrogate parents who numb you to your sexual power, your creative gifts and your anger. And they have reasons for doing this to you which have nothing to do with you. By being actually you, you would, in essence, betray all these people. But betray also means "reveal," and in the end you would only be giving them the opportunity to deal with their own problems, as well they need.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
If you look, you will see, and if you see, you will see the light. There will always be sorrows in the world to focus on, and usually they will be those of other people. And while you have more than your share of worldly concerns in this lifetime -- born of the fact that you have more than your share of worldly awareness -- in this particular moment, most of those concerns are quite optional. They are, in a sense, born of your personal myth. It was Joseph Campbell who pronounced all the myths dead. The myths are, viewed one way, images of our predecessors efforts to deal with the events of their world, and in them we may catch a glimpse of the seeds of our own troubles from the distant past. I am here to remind you that you are writing a new story, a new song; you are seeing a new vision.

LIBRA (Sep. 23-Oct. 22)
Nothing can stop you now. You have every reason to enter all the situations in your life with an open heart, a generous spirit and the full embracing of compassion. Pay attention and you will experience an extended moment in which you experience yourself in your future enlightened state, as if the person you will eventually become is visiting you from the past and inhabiting your current world. While this may fade like an enchantment, remember it well, and remember what you learned, for the events of these very days contain important teachings of the most gentle kind, and promise rewards that will someday be yours. To receive these gifts is a matter of point of view: a matter of the perspective from which you perceive reality, as is the distinction between who you are, and who you are becoming.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)
Planetary aspects speak of fated events from which there is no turning back, and the initiation of reactions over which you ultimately have little control. But you're not there yet. The alchemy of those changes is still in formation, and as such, what you need is information: the necessary mental equipment to make rational decisions which, if possible, cheat neither you nor the people around you. Yet you may need to look with extraordinary discernment, for in your particular case, tribal needs may appear to conflict with personal needs. The dilemma is false, but if you see it, the way out is looking beyond your own lifetime. Keep in mind the idea three generations, and act in ways which benefit people across time rather than just right now. In any moral quandary, put yourself second. Please don't worry: regardless of how it seems, you will also benefit in the long run.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 23-Dec. 21)
If the words "around and around" describe your life, you are headed for the exit ramp that may point you to a new destination. I say "may" because to get to a new place you will need to consciously and consistently exercise choice, and to observe a single direction and select it to the exclusion of others. This means making decisions and leaving certain specific conflicts behind, but the way is going to seem fairly well marked compared to past opportunities to do the same thing. It's vital to your freedom that you see the choices that your parents made for what they are, note carefully how they influenced your thinking, and make different ones. Your father, in particular, shows up as a character whose troubles you would do well to look at and move beyond -- as is surely within your power.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)
I suggest you take what seem to be personal challenges and spread them among your circle of friends and what you consider to be your true community. Among the tremendous problems of our world are causes that create difficulty for all of us, yet being raised to treat the resulting difficulties like they were ours alone. Everyone will benefit from you learning to experiment with the awareness of mutual needs and the exploration of community-based solutions. You'll benefit from learning to experiment with leadership skills and take the offensive. More than our culture is physically lazy, we live in a media-induced coma of false isolation designed to make us consume compulsively rather than seek one another's support. Ring the bell now and you won't need to sound the alarm later.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 19-Feb. 18)
Freud asked, "What does a woman want?" But it is ancient wisdom, perhaps Avalonian, which teaches, "A woman wants her own way." That way, if you are a man, is likely to be truly beneficial to you, if you'll listen. If you're a woman, you merely need to believe in yourself enough to state your case, difficult though it may seem. Is the universe joking with us when it presents a picture of women as victim, as prisoners of the will of men, when we really know that so many men are more thoroughly captive to their own failure to recognize feminine wisdom and power? In truth both sexes are trapped in a collection of lies about who they are. This is your moment to shine your light clear through those deceits, and to know thyself. Far from recoiling in fear, the world will embrace you with the love you deserve.

PISCES (Feb. 19-Mar. 20)
The road ahead may today seem far from certain, but that is only in terms of outcome, not process. We are so accustomed to thinking of eventuality as a matter of fate and not of working-out, and therein lies the difference between destiny and choice. You can be sure that an intelligent sequence of events has led you to where you are today, and if you look at those events you will see a distinct pattern. I would suggest that it will be a very different pattern of events leading you to the places you will arrive in the years ahead, and it may be too soon to have any idea of its qualities. But no doubt you sense the reality of the change. Your business now is primarily to discard, disregard or deal with the past only to the extent you know in your heart is necessary, and allow the new tale to unfold.++

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