Don’t waste the clarity and prescience of today’s lunation: A new moon in Sagittarius combined with a dynamic Mars Mercury conjunction, a combination that turns up the power of prophecy. If only for a millisecond, catch a glimpse of what lies ahead for you, beyond your normal event horizon, during the upcoming year.

Dreams will be quick, cogent and hectic during the next three nights; flashing glimpses, too, of new paths, new approaches, new peers and helpmates. Take notes. Follow closely.

Be prepared for truth-telling throughout the biosphere as politicians are forced into disclosures. Meanwhile the zealots, imploding on their anger and resentment, set retaliatory moves into high gear. Red alert during your meal tonight as grandma’s wine-buzz helps her cuts loose with some inflammatory family secrets. Read more

The ongoing Saturn Uranus opposition is a cosmic reminder that the biosphere still remains wickedly dichotomized, despite Barack Obama‘s triumph on election night.

I’ve been calling this recent post-election phase Civil War Reconstruction v2.0. Meaning, once again the South has ‘fallen’ — has lost favor as a participating unit within our democracy. The New York Times recently reported: “What may have ended on Election Day … is the centrality of the South to national politics. By voting so emphatically for Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama — supporting him in some areas in even greater numbers than they did President Bush — voters from Texas to South Carolina and Kentucky may have marginalized their region for some time to come…”

So, how will we meet the fallout? Follow Gandhi‘s advice: “We must always seek to ally ourselves with that part of the enemy that knows what is right.”

On a personal note, tonight’s full moon deserves careful consideration, given the exact square from Neptune that is setting off a fixed sign arabesque. By signs, the full moon activates the Taurus and Scorpio polarity and foments roiling emotional intensity. No two signs of the zodiac are more aligned with the deeper passions of the body and the heart. With Neptune involved we might be putting too much emphasis on fantasy and not enough on the pragmatic. We’re calling the airline to book a trip to Bali but can barely make the mortgage next month. Reality checks are in order.

Not that fantasy is to be shunned. With Neptune, if the rational mind attempts to deny his otherworldly spells and callings, he’ll come through a back door upsetting your sleep with epic dreams or, worse, set you off on a drinking binge. Rituals are in order to honor this burgeoning autumnal passion-fest. Bring it all down a level without dishonoring the impulse. Write a wildly erotic love poem. Take a sick day from work and daydream throughout the afternoon, watching the full moon later in the evening from your back porch. Give Neptune his due. Here’s a wonderful poem by the Norwegian writer Olav H. Hauge to help ease our mind into the different possibilities Neptune communicates:

During this lunation we want the sensual security that Taurus’ garden of delights connotes, that feeling that we’ve found a safe, earthy haven for ourselves — but we are tempted to also engage with the serpent, and enter a more visceral, less “domestic” world of consummation with the mysterious Other. We want the comfort of romance, but also long to experience that which is forbidden, to take a romp in the wild world of taboo. Loyalty vs. licentiousness. How will it all play out?

This is a full moon that opens the floodgates. Passions feel almost irrepressible, off the scale actually, so any mood, be it light or dark, will be amplified and inch towards melodrama. The Taurus Scorpio polarity moves us back and forth between feelings of possession and attachment, to envy, jealousy and sometimes paranoia. The issue is emotional control. Holding the power, or surrendering to it. Try to find a middle path and set the pace slow but sure.

Venus’ out-of-sign conjunction to Pluto telegraphs relationship difficulties. Or at least a challenge to our notions about what makes for a successful relationship. If we have a conventional idea about romance, say from the latest issue of Bride’s magazine, this Venus Pluto co-mingling will show us the darker face of love. For the uninitiated, what appears to be simple on the surface is actually seething and twirling with intrigues and possible betrayals. Planets passing through Pluto’s realm are always taken down, like Persephone’s abduction into Hades, and put through the endurance tests. Trials by fire.

Remind yourself of the following axiom: That which is hidden is often more powerful than that which is visible. We have ideas about how things should be, operate, unfold in our intimate relationships. But Venus married to Pluto says we must learn the following: Beauty is much more than an idyl, pleasing lines, shapes and contours. And love involves a kind of vulnerability that can be devastating should it be double-crossed. And yet that is always the challenge of fully opening to love, that we’ll be taken down, forced to encounter our more regressed emotions: jealousy and rage. Venus with Pluto says: Love and beauty are beguiling and fierce. Not for sissies or the faint-of-heart.

Think fondly of today. You might recall this as the last date where the world as you knew it was like the world that you always knew. “That chef made my eggs just the way I like them.” Happy day!

Tomorrow opens a crack in time. Wild card days. The optometrist advising for the removal of the cataracts. The bank is now closed (again) on Saturdays (and maybe Fridays too). Oh, and dad died suddenly, while getting out of the shower, and you never got to say goodbye.

Tomorrow heralds the exact opposition between Saturn and Uranus, the start of a long two-year match between titans. Father Sky trounces Father Time. But this is also a mirroring dance, a commingling of their seed and shadows. They’re the oddest of lovers, the harshest of enemies (what father and son are not?) Yes, people — it’s the birth of a new world order. Read more