If you are a subscriber and are having difficulty logging in, I have produced this literary masterpiece to assist you. Note that the members page looks like a normal page. You will be asked for your login and password when you click a link.

Dear Friend and Reader:

I had worked for months on the 2010 charts and much longer for some leading into 2011 and 2012, but the my 2010 reports started to unfold first while I was writing about Mars retrograde in Leo (Dec. 21, 2009-March 10, 2010). That was the bit that started making words and ideas easily, because it seemed connected to a motor: that would be Mars and Leo, two fiery energies we need to employ if we want to get things done.

While I was working out Leo Confidential, I discovered that Mars is asking a question: What do you want? Midway through Leo, I burrowed into the Abraham-Hicks material, which basically says that wanting is what drives the human universe. Not the American economy, not capitalism, but all events; and that things go better, not worse, when we want consciously.

Here in the states, we think we have a problem with wanting. I would say we have a problem with not knowing what we want; and with not knowing what is valuable to us, which is the basis of authentic desire.

Metaphysical ideas are rarely proven, but they are demonstrated through use. Abraham’s message seems to be that without wanting, nothing happens except a lot of mishaps; then we figure out what we want and convince ourselves that it’s possible; and then we usually get there. In the end, contact is made through desire; success comes from wanting it enough to do something about it. Without the actual wanting, the alignment of desire, all the action in the world will not do anything.

To work with this idea, one must move through and sort out a few taboos. The Buddhists have cursed wanting as the root of all suffering. The Christians have cursed wanting as the root of all sex. The purists within capitalism have cursed wanting as the thing that is filling the ocean with plastic. But is it really? If we wanted to use glass, we would.

Intent seems a purer concept; more politically correct. I might want to eat her pussy, but do I intend to? Stated that way, it would take about ten times longer to get there. Intend seems like a papered-over way to say want, dodgy as such. Think of it this way: someone says to you, “I want you.” How do you feel? Or they say, “I intend to have you.” You have more power when confronted by someone who simply wants.

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Dear Cosmic Confidential Subscriber:

Cosmic Confidential, the 2010 annual edition of Planet Waves, is now ready. Thank you for your patience as I worked through this unusually challenging annual edition — our 12th, by the way.

Here is the link to the entry page of the member site:

http://www.cosmicconfidential.com/members/

You will be asked for a password to enter the site; and another for each horoscope.

Your login and password were emailed to you at the time you purchased. If you are looking for them, search for the subject header “Planet Waves Purchase Confirmation” and you will find it.

If you have searched everywhere including under the couch cushions and still cannot find your purchase confirmation, please email us soon — to info@planetwaves.net with the subject saying Cosmic Confidential Help. Chelsea is about to travel, and can get to some of these requests tonight. Tomorrow my office will do its best to take care of them, though the sooner the better.

There is one section of the site that will take shape over the next few weeks — the key life transits area. As I have explained in the introductory materials (please give that a quick read before reading your report), I have focused until now on the sign readings. Check the Daily Diary and your email for updates about additions and enhancements to the website.

For those who might upgrade to a second sign (I highly recommend reading your rising sign — as it will align with the houses in your natal chart), then potentially another (kid, significant other), I suggest you upgrade to all 12, plus an extension of your subscription to Planet Waves Astrology News. I’ve designed this to be the most financially enticing option.

Many thanks and, happy Second New Year.

For the Cosmic Confidential team, this is

Dear Friend and Reader:

It’s never too late to begin the year over again; I am sure we could all use a new start to this one. In few hours, we will release Cosmic Confidential, the 12th annual edition of Planet Waves. We’re just waiting on the right chart — for the Moon to reach the zenith.

It now exists, against some long odds: we’ve worked through Mercury retrograde, Mars retrograde, two eclipses and a lot of other astrology going off. Meanwhile, apropos of the moment, the news was a runaway train. It seemed like every time I would get settled back into writing, some other event was calling me to do the chart of God knows what and to be there for the Planet Waves blogging team, so we could fulfill our role as cosmic news desk and for some, psychic bomb shelter. But we did it. I worked through every weekend and every spare moment for four months, and your reading is done, and waiting for you.

Though Planet Waves is a news service, Cosmic Confidential is entirely about you. I have lavished attention on the individual sign readings this year, putting in at least double the time, energy and research as usual. My objective: how can I get as much high quality astrological information into the hands of as many people as possible, for as little money as possible?

The readings are each about 4,500 words. Plus, each sign gets three pages of extra materials: generous selections from past annual editions, reader responses to my queries about how you’re living out your astrology, and a page of resources and out-takes. For many of the signs, I cut large swaths of text, but I’ve preserved most of them in the out-takes section, which gives an alternative view or covers a topic not included in the main reading. The navigation for these pages is across the top of your sign.

Each sign includes substantial information about professional and creative activities, financial strategies, and thoughts about relationships and sex: and all of it is focused on the theme of not just keeping your sanity, but rising to the occasion of a world gone wild.

That I can create this stuff without your birth date is a testament to what can be done with Sun sign astrology. I maintain that this kind of reading — a long essay on your Sun sign — is more effective and more useful than a “custom report” generated from a database. Even though you gave the database your birth date, no astrologer actually sees your chart; nobody takes up the whole matter of your reading holistically. Though I may neither talk to you nor see your chart, what you get from Cosmic Confidential is a whole reading of the planets as they really are, and as they affect you. The interpretations work with interwoven themes; the ideas build on one another; they refer to real events; they combine natal astrology and transits beautifully, in a fresh and engaging way.

Cosmic Confidential is designed as an interactive community. Each sign’s reading is open for comments and questions. I will respond to as many of these as I can, so take a moment to participate there and share your thoughts, ideas and queries.

Your reading includes a section on Key Life Transits, which will be finished over the next few weeks. These cover the Saturn return, Uranian opposition, Pluto transits and Chiron transits. Then there are articles. My favorite is called Everything Old is New Again. There is a mini-series on Saturn. There’s a generous excerpt from Cosmos and Psyche, courtesy of Richard Tarnas.

Once you read one sign, you’re likely to want to read more. You will want to read the sign of your kids or significant other(s). I have a suggestion: it’s better to start with all 12. The most economical option is to get all 12 while you initiate or extend your subscription to Planet Waves. The combined offer (Planet Waves plus all 12 signs) is truly the best deal, in a time when pennies, dimes and dollars count: but not as much as quality. And here is the link to order sign-by-sign, at the original price of $19.95. All 12 go for $73. Considering that people travel halfway around the world and pay me hundreds of dollars an hour to read their chart, I would say that this is a delightfully efficient and sustainable way to get you some wholesome astrology information you can really use.

Cosmic Confidential is designed to be a map to this moment, and lasting resource: astrology for a world on the edge.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Let’s start with a reminder: astrology is a form of divination. It is not a science and it is an odd sort of art; it’s the kind of art we expect life to imitate. As a writer of fiction and nonfiction, I assure you that it finds its home somewhere in between the two. I am using the charts — many of which are published here — as the outline of a story. This is the interpretive part. We all agree that the chart is there. Astrologers don’t all agree what belongs in a chart; I use a lot of current discoveries. The story charts tell is up to the storyteller. That would be me in this case, but then you respond to that, and tell yourself another story based on what I offer. I have done my best to leave my margin notes in the articles; that is, to tell you what aspect I’m interpreting. My opinion is designed to cast the issues in a way that is helpful and that leaves the ends open. I try to state problems in a way that lends itself to solutions. But with astrology, we are all making up stories.

Beware you’re doing this. Pay attention to the narratives you tell yourself about your astrology, and what they are based on. In my method of reading charts and telling stories, I take the role of creative problem solver and inventor. Knowing something about what people go through, and how people in my society (which I consider to include the US, the UK and Europe, all places I have lived) I design ideas that get us around the usual psychological pitfalls, and offer alternative ways to view our lives.

When I predict, I try to be archetypally predictive, explaining the basic conditions and presenting options. I don’t say, “You will get a great new job,” but rather, “This is a good time to make some changes in the work that you do, and move toward what you want. This is a good time to rethink your notion of what a career is.”

This is going to be an unusual year; it’s already shaping up as one. The astrology stands out in part because we are in the midst of so many slow-moving planets changing signs around the same time. Within a two year span between 2009 and 2011, Jupiter, Saturn, Chiron, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto will all be making sign changes. That is quite a cluster.

For those of you who follow transits a bit, this presents a completely different reality than the long-familiar Uranus in Pisces, Neptune in Aquarius, Pluto in Sagittarius setup. These are all nervous placements. Two of them are in mutable signs and one is in Aquarius, where the energy can stay nervous and seem to go nowhere fast, forever. Uranus is heading for Aries and Pluto is well into Capricorn, and these transits have turned the energy up high. The Uranus-Pluto square of 2012-2015 is already crackling, and we will have our first full taste in early June when Jupiter and Uranus form a brief conjunction on the Aries Point.

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This is an excerpt from Cosmic Confidential for Capricorn.

With astrology like this, there is no room for dividing your character: being this kind of person in this circumstance and that kind of person in that circumstance. Rather, you will both draw strength and energy from allowing different aspects of yourself to teach one another how to be, and from maintaining an inner dialog.

In particular, the emphasis is on integrating your actual self, be it personality or soul (however you think of it) with how you present yourself in the world, particularly the professional world. Beware of any equation in which you present yourself as one way at home, another way at work; beware of any situation where you seem to have “two personal lives.” This is a little like a potter working the clay so that there are no air bubbles trapped in the material before it goes into the kiln; bubbles cause the pot to explode.

The essence here is about existing as one unified individual; which is of course a profound challenge in this world, but it’s one that you’re up to. You have every individual component you need to make this real, including being intimately acquainted with your fears and your potential. Recent years of Pluto in Sagittarius took you, perhaps unwittingly or less-than-willingly, on a tour of all your worldly insecurities; you have been through a trial by fire which has, with any grace at all, left you with the awareness that your soul not only exists, but is fully intact. Pluto in Capricorn is the practical application of this learning.

As Malvin Artley has written of your sign that Capricorn “completes the person and endows a person with their higher qualities. It is this higher intelligence and our ability to blend it with the lives that make up our [instinctual] nature that make us uniquely human. If that higher intelligence is used to good ends it leads us to the heights of achievement. If otherwise, it can lead us to the depths of depravity.”

The high and the low: that is indeed Capricorn; the deciding factor is always integrity. Integrity is likely to involve working with the aspects of yourself that are not what you would call pure. But they are just as purely human as any other. Pluto is going to push up your sex drive. That is human; to live in integrity, be truthful about it. Pluto is making you conscious of your power; that is human; be honest and fair. So in the end, your choice is not about the high or the low; the choice is whether to walk a path of integration or a path of fragmentation.