This is an excerpt from Cosmic Confidential for Cancer.

Whatever experience of life we have tends to be mediated entirely by how we feel about ourselves. It’s possible to get fired and be ecstatic; it’s possible to win the lottery and be suicidal. What’s the difference? How we feel about ourselves. That’s the environment into which all other data flows; the circuits through which it flows; the reference by which all else is measured.

We live in a culture that puts incredible emphasis on money, and we are taught that our value involves money. It’s funny how few bother to put the donkey in front of the wagon: how we feel determines how much money we have and whether it means anything at all.

Mars retrograde in your 2nd solar house, Leo, is stirring up this whole confluence of issues. Note how a house (any house) works: it offers different topics that are really one topic. The confluence of the 2nd house is self-value, self-worth, self-esteem, personal resources, sense of self, spiritual bank account, monetary bank account.

Mars is retrograde in this house, stirring the pot and sending you on a deep inner search. Mars rules the houses in your chart associated with playful sex, creativity, pleasure and risk-taking (the 5th house); and reputation, career, mission and profession (the 10th house). This translates to something so easy a Jack Russell Terrier could work it out, to wit: your self-worth is based on the extent to which you blend the properties of these two houses, and recognize that they have both a value on your self-worth and your financial value.

I have a good friend who has Cancer rising. She is a gifted artist, but she refuses to sell her work because she does not want to be any kind of whore: the cheap kind or the expensive kind. I’ve never asked her how she supports herself or acquired her wealth, but unless one is independently wealthy or fully supported, you have to sell something: your labor, your ideas, your time or the products of your hands and mind. Call this prostitution; I know a lot about prostitutes and prostitution, and I can tell you that it’s nothing of the kind. Most prostitutes hate what they do and hate themselves for doing what they do. They hate their clients and by extension tend to hate men. Few that I have ever spoken with see the value of their work in the lives of the people they serve. If that’s how you feel about offering your best work to humanity, then you’re definitely a prostitute.

I am talking about being passionate about what you do, with intention and love and a sense of devotion and nurturing, and honoring the value that your work has on the lives of others. This, in turn, will help you cultivate your sense of self-esteem, which is in truth your sense of belonging on the planet.

How boring are these updates? I’m working my way back toward Taurus. I’m in New Paltz at the Muddy Slut cafe…and I’ve just posted Virgo. Note, all the signs will be released at once. If you’re a CC subscriber, you will get an email confirming this when the member site goes live. The site you’re on is the public version.

That leaves four signs in the queue for final rewrite: Leo, Cancer, Gemini and Taurus, in that order. As far as I know they are all in pretty good shape. It’s always a little surprise when I open up the file, which I may not have seen in a couple of weeks. They all get a line by line edit; and some get a complete rewrite. With a brilliant day tomorrow, can wrap up the last four signs and move onto some of the articles: in particular, something called “The One and the Many.”

Cosmic Confidential 1.0 will have a rich offerings of extra materials; and there is plenty — a lot — that is about 3/4 finished and will manifest through the end of January and into February. So this will be an annual to keep coming back to.

I don’t ever remember working so hard on the sign readings. I don’t usually write them over three times. But the astrology has never been quite like this. Whatever everyone is calling 2012 is right here, right now — and we don’t even know what it feels like for Uranus to go into Aries.

This annual has some unusual features. Every sign actually gets four pages: the interpretation itself; excerpts from the prior three years of annual editions; survey responses from readers on how they have experienced their astrology; and then a resources page that includes the ingress chart for your sign, the short version of the annual, and any out-takes from my earlier drafts. Not all the signs have out-takes; obviously, if I didn’t cut a big bunch of text, that won’t exist. But many of them do, and these give alternate ways to explain the same basic material.

Each year as I go through this project, it’s like learning astrology from scratch all over again. I am starting to understand it a little.

Dear Cosmic Confidential Subscriber:

We are in the home stretch on your annual horoscopes. After lots of astrology blowing through and shaking up the world, and a virtual gauntlet of obstacles, I am posting the signs as I complete them, editors are proofreading and artists are illustrating the articles.

The signs are in their second or third rewrites. At this stage, I post the final drafts beginning with Aries and then work backwards, through Pisces and Aquarius, toward Taurus (in the tradition of Esoteric Astrology by Alice Bailey: the reverse wheel as the direction of the soul). I am more than halfway there. When I come to a draft that needs a total rewrite, I don’t hesitate to do that.

When the site goes live, we will send an email to all subscribers. Please stay tuned, and thanks so much for your patience.

Eric Francis

Hi all, just to be clear: I will release all 12 signs at once. I am not going to give a time for that; I am working as steadily as I can, remembering how many people weigh my words how carefully. Thank you for your patience and I will be in touch.

efc

Well — signs are getting posted to the member area. So far three are done, and I am about to take a 20 minute break and embark on Capricorn. The signs are now in their 3rd draft; I would love to have the time for a 4th draft. But good enough will be good enough. Part of the benefit of the delay is that I’m getting the opportunity to rethink my interpretations, something I don’t usually have the luxury for. I am aiming for 4,000 words per sign; some are coming out a little longer. I have cut segments from all three signs and am adding them to an out-takes section, under sign resources. Each sign gets four pages: the main reading, excerpts from past annuals, reader responses from that sign, and a resources and outtakes section — we’ve never done this before.

Each of these pages has a comment area, so that there will be a conversation available for each sign and each sub-page of the sign; another new development.

The password system went up today, with the help of our database guy Chris Clark, who hacked WordPress for us (we can share this hack if you want — nothing like it exists on the Net, that we know of, allowing multiple passwords for individual pages). We completed the main site structure yesterday. Our graphics editor will begin to tackle the project later int the week; she did an initial round of research in December.

I am working in New Paltz right now, using a trick I learned in Europe: surf cafes from project to project, changing scenery at least once per article to keep my energy fresh.

I will post all 12 signs together, when they are done. Stay tuned, and keep easing through Mercury picking up speed and Mars still spinning backwards through Leo.

So the great news is: I am in the stretch on the Cosmic Confidential horoscopes. I am down to final edits on the 12 signs. There is more to do after that, but I’m aiming for getting the 12 signs done, and I will worry about the rest later. Today I have completed Aries and am in the last phase of Pisces. For those to whom this is interesting, in the last draft I work my way backwards from Aries, through Pisces, to Taurus: treading the great wheel in the direction of the soul’s journey.