Pluto Direct

A Hubble Telescope photograph of WR124 (in nebula M1 67) spewing clumps of hot gas outwards from its star core at some 100,000 mph

(photo credit: Hubble Space Telescope, NASA-JPL, March 1997)

Pluto is going direct on September 20th at 3:27 in the afternoon, UT/+0 time. As noted several posts ago, it will be going direct at the exact degree of Facies – a fixed star (nebula, actually) which has a pretty problematic reputation with astrologers.

- link to -

Pluto/Facies: Moving On

Considering how Pluto’s keywords are ‘create, deny, destroy’ we can probably all expect a little of this energy to be circulating through our lives from the simple ‘I don’t want to talk about that’ to the full scale war complete with the horrors of death and destruction.

But there’s a reason why Pluto is associated with the image of the Phoenix. Whether the destruction is brought about by fire, flame or societal…even personal vulnerability or failings, that which is affected by Pluto opens the door to something new which in time will ‘rise from the ashes.’

That Pluto is making its ‘turn’ in conjunction not just with Facies but with Industria tells us the most likely place for challenges to arise…or where we’re likely to have our ‘ship come in’ (get results) is in any area of work or personal effort. This station is thus (more or less) either about what’s we’re working to build, or some structure which is in our life which is preventing us from building what we need to build or building anew.

Not that we’re likely to be all jingles about the thing, no matter what it is. People who are already in the process of ‘transforming’ their lives are going to find it’s a heavy time for details and effort. As all of us do when confronted by such a moment, it’s going to feel like the more we do, the more there is to do!

That would very naturally bring out the Facies ‘many parts, much to do’ and feeling very put-upon (i.e., like a victim). And there’s of course that fact that when we’re feeling all bogged down and overwhelmed how anyone breezing by seems callous, heartless and worthy of a big sign on their back which reads ‘villain.’

A lot of what goes on now is going to be about perspective. With Pluto in opposition to Black Moon Lilith (Lilith/Child conjunct conjunct Sirius) there are going to be a lot of people leaving the physical nest (however old they are!) and a lot of people leaving the emotional nest.

We just know it’s time to be something more real in our own minds. There comes a point when the acquiescing to others becomes less comforting and comfortable and more of a burden on that Self we know we are and which we really want to become.

This would be one of those times.

For those who don’t have anything in particular in the pot or on some back burner, this is likely to be a particularly trying passage as they see change going on all around them. Just to pick one popular harmonic to these placements, the third harmonic (representing the thought and mental attitude) to Pluto-Facies’ position would be Piscean – which is why those who achieve things in the worldly and Capricorn sense (not to mention those with important Capricorn placements) think in universal terms. Where Aquarius is ‘mass movement’ and social interaction, Pisces is the universality of emotion – and let’s face it, we all live in our emotions as human beings. Even those of us who try to avoid our emotions do so because they don’t feel comfortable to us!

The third harmonic to Cancer, on the other hand, is Virgo…telling us why those who are opposing change will now couch everything in terms of whether something is ‘pragmatic’ or ‘workable’ or even ‘healthy’ for us to do.

It’s an interesting oppositional dynamic – the common chord and the level at which humans ‘live’ (their emotional sense of Self) being the key to knowing how to achieve anything versus the localized ‘we need to deal with this right here, right now.’

And that’s pretty much the issue – universality versus localized visions on how life should be structured and what we need to do to make our lives more viable, workable, safe and satisfying at the same time.

Barring the idea that your home is being flooded at the moment (in which case, why are you reading astrological posts on the internet?) or there’s some real-time calamity going on, this gets down to one very simple idea: the safety and functionality of our personal world is predicated on the greater world in which we live.

Now, I know as I say that how there are people who think that if they earn enough money or gain enough power they won’t have to deal with anything.

That might work except for things like famine, earthquakes, world economies, plagues and all that stuff.

Oh yes, that.

Yes, that. We are all subject to the world around us, which is why the statement ‘I don’t care about anyone/anything but my own (insert term)’ tends to not just sound like folly but BE folly.

...Which rather gets back to some of what I was noting here at Ye Olde Bloggery last week when talking about Pluto-Facies (see link above). 

It’s at times like this that such folly reveals itself as follow. For all the resisters and desist-ers, for the anti-change nay-sayers and control freaks of this life, if your chart answers to 8 Capricorn, you’re in for a bit of a steam-roller-ing. Life is trying to unwrinkle your contracted soul – which to you may feel like getting hit with a hot iron.

Which yes, would be two sides of the same experience. But what’s your choice? We cannot retreat from life…not that I don’t know a few people who give that their very best shot. (No, it doesn’t work.)

Thinking back to those harmonics, the universal considerations which go with the implied Capricorn-Pisces connective are certainly heightened by the fact that we are talking not “just” Pluto, but Pluto-Facies. Issues of discomfort, feelings of haplessness and being helpless to do things the way you might want to do them are probably to be expected, at the very least.

Applying this to the idea that we give celestial objects a two-days-before, two-days-after ‘station allowance’ window, with the Moon entering Pisces on September 17th that Moon – representing feelings and values and our susceptibility to them and everything which provokes emotionality – ‘triggers’ the third Pluto-in-Capricorn harmonic on September 18th at about four-twenty-something in the morning (UT/+0) time.

Of course there are twelve ‘natural’ harmonics to any placement (there being twelve zodiac signs). So why care so much about the third?

Part one: because that represents our mentality. The station is the station is the station…and the sign its in is the sign of ‘awareness’ – the first harmonic derivative. But that all-important moment of thinking through things and realizing we need to deal with them and cope with them? That’s the third harmonic.

Besides, Chiron is sitting at 10 Pisces. So this Pluto station atop Facies is going to be ‘setting off’ our Chiron-in-Pisces “no, I don’t want to have to deal with that” feelings…which the Moon is going to trigger early on the 18th (or late on the 17th if you’re in the western Americas). Chiron in Pisces is a whole sea of processes which challenge us to explore our own emotional makeup and to deal with whatever incongruities exist between our vision of reality and our vision of the ideal. Or life in real time versus the life in our head. Or the fact versus the thing we’d like to think is the fact…or how we’d like to feel as opposed to what our real feelings are about anything.

Or yes, anyone.

Moreover, as the Moon set’s off this ‘Piscean thought-wave,’ as it reaches 8 Pisces (the perfected sextile to Pluto at 8 Capricorn) this creates another Grand Sextile…

In case you're wondering, I don't color the signs in red and blue because

I'm an American, but rather to show the alternation between Yin and Yang

signs as we move around the zodiac.

 

…which but an hour later, as the Moon moves forward into 9 Pisces is re-struck by Venus moving into 8 Scorpio.

Scorpio is the 11th harmonic to Capricorn, which brings up the concept of negotiating our way through life and negotiating of/in relationships of all kinds in our life. The Sabian Symbol for 8 Scorpio is an apt one: A DENTIST AT WORK, which astrologer Dane Rudhyar very astutely summarizes as ‘overcoming the negative results of social prejudices and ego-cravings.’ Venus so often manifests as the ‘what we want’ in life and our Venusian challenges are to realize that what we get out of anything depends on what we are going into it and what we do as part of it…which in the wonderful (and as I almost typed that, ‘wound-erful’) world of Scorpio tells us that the basis of relationship with someone – be they our platonic friend, our business partner or employer or our most luscious and beloved squeeze – that relationship doesn’t happen ‘by magic.’ It has to be negotiated. Too often in life we get ourselves in trouble by ‘assuming’ we know what somebody is thinking. Or what they prefer.

Scorpio is all about showing that up as an error on our part.

So often we think we can just ‘go for the standard role’ in a situation or relationship, completely forgetting how unique we are and how unique everybody else is, too.

Scorpio will show up those miscalculations as well.

There’s a longstanding myth which people evidently want desperately to believe that relationships “shouldn’t need work.”

The ‘I don’t have to work at it’ (or me, or my relationship) doesn’t work either.

Sooner or later our not negotiating our relationships backfires. What passion may sustain starting out falls through thin Scorpio ice (which the passion has heatedly melted through, one suspects). Or we find out that beneath the shiny exoskeleton of that Scorpio situation lies something rotten.

You know…which then the dentist has to work on – hence the symbol.

All of this is part of the process of moving forward towards the 11 Scorpio Solar Eclipse which will occur on November 3rd. The watery grand trine from Venus in Scorpio to (Moon) Chiron in Pisces to Black Moon Lilith in Cancer (which is opposing Pluto) is a contradictory energy, one pole of which wants to dig in and forget changing anything and the other pole of which realizes changes are desperately needed even if we don’t know (consciously) how to make them.

The Chirotic answer is to allow ourselves to feel our feelings and whatever reluctance or fear or haplessness goes along with them while walking forward through our veil. Chiron always asks that we do something we don’t know how to do and through doing it, transcend who we have been in realizing we can be so much more. As it’s doing that, Venus is sextiling Pluto’s station from Scorpio, guaranteeing that we can change our place in the world and what we conceive of as our place in the world if we will only release our death grip on our current status quo.

This is one of those ‘give a little, get a lot,’ moments.

However, as I say that, I also fully believe that giving a little now means a huge personal evolution – a life transformation – yet to come.

What we need to do may not be popular. No, not even with us. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be done. Plus there is that old metaphysical lesson about energy and energetics. Energy is never lost. It changes form, it can be shifted from one place to another (to some degree) rather as you can do with water in a water balloon. But in the end, the energy we fail to use or that we refuse to utilize becomes energy which life simply brings to us in the form of something which we then have to respond to and which we have no input on.

And that’s a whole other – and more universal – conceptualization of the Facies ‘victim-perpetrator’ concept. We now have a chance to shape our world and life moving forward. If we fail to take that on or follow through and make best efforts (complete with a measure of letting go and clearing/cleaning out) could it be that we’re perpetrating some sort of ‘victimization’ of our greater potential or ability to grow with life…or in our life?

Perhaps.

As always with any such station, those who have major placements (planets, dwarf planets, nodes or chart angles) within 5 degrees of the conjunction, opposition point or squares will experience the greatest focal…or in the case of squares, challenge from these next few days at least. So that would mean anyone with any important placement between 3 and 13 degrees of Capricorn (the conjunction), Cancer (the opposition), Libra and/or Aries (the squares) are going to be most affected now.

Let’s also not forget that such stations also work in the charts of nations, companies and relationships as well.

One other thing worth noting here…on the date of Pluto’s actual station (September 20th) the Moon will be in Aries.

The Grand Sextile is still there, yes. But with Venus now at 10 Scorpio and the Moon exactly conjunct Uranus, not only are we likely to feel whatever energy is around being ‘brought home’ to us, but despite our tendency to react in very personal terms (which is natural and very Aries), those two green lines forming a “V” shape… which in astrological terms actually form the “Y” of a Yod are telling us that our answers lie not in embodying the Uranus/Moon 11 Aries tendency to over-react, exaggerate (in reality or in our mind) or get all about ‘that other person’ but instead to embrace the ‘other perspective’ which is shown through 11 Libra, a degree which asks that we think things through and work through the issue or situation at a manageable rate.

In other words, can the explosions and go for a step-by-step, more managed and interactive, even negotiated (there’s that word again!) solution to the situation. The Sabian Symbol for 11 Libra is one I’ve always liked: MINERS ARE SUFACING FROM A DEEP COAL MINE which is all about ‘digging deep’ into ourselves in how we go about being who we are in the world…which amounts to the ‘cause’ which garners the ‘effect’ from others and from life.

The implication here is that this moment and this station really are about who we are – but in the externalized sense: what we are in the world determines who we get to be in our own life. And thus this Yod is an opportunity… a trying one maybe, but an opportunity nonetheless.

Can we learn from our experiences of others and from life itself what we have the potential to become? Some changes probably need making, yes. But that would be the theme of this moment…and this season as a whole.

With all that said, I know I have left one question unanswered until now: how do we know a good Pluto thing from a "bad" Pluto thing? Be it a relationship or a hobby or a choice of job/career or anything else, the underlying issue is how compelled you feel to do that.

Pluto compulsions tend to be seriously emotion-driven. We crave this, we want to be with that person, we feel 'less than' or lessened by being involved in or not being involved in something.

In a nutshell, that statement pretty much explains Pluto's role as the lure and allure of the Scorpio outcome - and thus the reason why when we go to make our Mars choice whether to initiate or not to initiate, the underlying issue is how conscious we are of who we are and why we're doing/not doing whatever it at stake...or how much of that urgent sort of "competitive" feeling is driving us to make some given decision....the 'to do, or not to do' which in turn gets us into a 'to do' or not.

That "competition" is not with others: it's with our sense of Self. We're trying to win our own self-esteem and thus grow our own feelings of satisfaction...you know, all those things which are endemically related to Taurus, Scorpio's polarity sign. Taurus is the personal end of the Taurus/Scorpio polarity and Scorpio is the interactive end - the where we go to try and get what we think will fulfill us.

Whatever the good or bad is in this formula, that is shown by the placement of our natal Pluto and the placement of our Mars...and the placement of Scorpio - and whatever objects/planets we have positioned in Scorpio. Learning how those things work, learning why they tend to manifest in our lives as they do - those are our Plutonic lessons.


There's a lot more to be said about Scorpio (and thus Pluto and its lessons) during these next weeks ahead, seeing as we are not even half-way through the lead-in to the Solar Eclipse which will occur at 11 Scorpio come November. Those places where we tend to be annoyed with others are like as not where the eclipse energy is playing out.

Likewise are those places where we have 'created' something we think is going to 'transform' our lives and 'fix' our sense of self-esteem or security. Anything you have gotten involved in (or are getting involved in) which is all about 'fixing' something in your life through some sort of emotional experience (as opposed to an intellectual experience) is likely to be driven by Pluto.

That's one of the truly odd things about Scorpio. This sign of passion and desire is best handled and wrangled through all things where we are able to be dispassionate. Thus anyone with a really problematic Scorpio or Pluto natal issue (and you surely know who you are!) only solves that issue by...

a.) getting involved in something which allows them to understand the underlying vulnerability...

b.) finding something intellectual and growth oriented to be 'invested in' which will "drain off" some of the Pluto energy to the point where Pluto energetics are not going to be able to run your life...

c.) recognizing compulsive choices when they are made and recognizing that "that choice" is a bad one because it's not about how 'delicious' the 'thing' is but more about life wanting us to trigger our underlying issues so we can maybe (this time) get real about our denied (avoided) emotional/self-worth issues.

Slow growth - enduring growth - is Saturnine. Compulsive growth which tends to end up be "cancerous" on the emotional level (or at any level which 'hits' us in our emotionality) is Plutonic.

And then there's....

d.) finding a way that you can approach those obsessive energetics under the guidance of someone who you trust enough to govern your operation in said realm.

This last choice ("d.") is particularly important for anyone with a Moon in Scorpio or Taurus...OR with a Pluto in Scorpio (Gen Y - this is you!)

And yes, I say this knowing full well that any one of these placements will be part and parcel of a chart of a person who will tend to be highly resistant to that very suggestion even if (deep inside) they know they have issues.

You know, Pluto issues. We all have some Pluto "stuff" to deal with...it's just whether we can manage to dig our way out of it without creating a cave-in.

Going to get my shovel now…
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Earth: A Very Attractive Planet

Taken from Ehrenburg, Walberia, a 45-minute time exposure centered on Polaris (photo credit Udo Kugel - September 2001)

It just ticked me pink to see on of PSRD’s latest 'Cosmo Spark circular.

Link to: Cosmo Spark

Who the heck is PSRD – and what did I find so scintillatingly amusing?

PSRD stands for Planetary Science Research Discoveries, and the team which is behind all that PSRD-ing are a flock of planetary geoscientists at Hawaii’s Institute of Geophysics and Planetology.

(Planetology? Like you’re going to tell a planet to open its mouth and say aaaaaah?)

In any case, they’re a pretty cool group. And every once in a while they sends out a missive. It could be on gas captured in ancient rocks (I know – you’re excited, right) to this week’s thriller, a Cosmo Sparks message on the subject of how popular our watery blue planet really is.

On a celestial basis, that is.

Evidently our lovable Planet Earth has fans. According to PSRD, “At any given time there are at least one or two meter-sized asteroids and about a thousand smaller centimeter-sized rocks also orbiting our planet.” PRSD calls them (oh, shades of Austin Powers!) “minimoons.”

Evidently not all such asteroid-Earth love affairs last all that long. Most of the time, after a brief and chaotic orbital fling (say, after two or three times around) most asteroids go their space-bound ways.

(No, we don’t know what they’re saying about Earth once the attraction cools off, but we can hope they proceed on in stony silence.)

A few find their attraction for Earth truly deadly, plunging to a fiery death in our resistance-laden atmosphere. We call those meteors.

And while all this goes on, our Luna Moon continues serenely on her way, securely captured by Earth’s gravity and eternally capable of tugging on Earth’s watery mantle. (Sounds like a lot of marriages I know.)

So why am I bringing all this up – apart from the fact I obviously got a big charge out of thinking of asteroids as planetary suitors?

Ah yes. Now we come to the interestingly astrological part. It seems that these asteroids take up this madcap courting of our planet at two very specific times of the year. And those two time periods happen to be a week or two after Earth’s perihelion and aphelion – what we the astrologically inclined tend to call the Summer and Winter Solstice.

This part where it happens after the solstice got me to thinking…after all, part of that solstice thing (or at least its affects) has to do with exactly where Earth is in its seriously complicated tilt-wobble-precession sort of process.

Believe me – it’s hard work being a planet.

We talk more or less often about precession. It’s a 25,920 year cycle which is about the fact that the imaginary ‘stick’ we think of as being stuck through Earth’s polar axis orbits clockwise as earth rotates in a counter-clockwise direction.

(At least that’s the way it looks if you’re looking down on the North Pole….so for you in New Zealand, Southern Africa and Australia, g’day and switch the terms around!)

 Planet Earth, showing it's Axial Tilt, the circle of precession

 its poles describe over 25,920 years and the difference

 between Earth's celestial equator (the thing we think of as an

 equator) and the plane of the ecliptic - the path Earth takes

 around the Sun each year. 

(diagram credit - Dennis Nilsson,, December 2007)

The tilt thing? Well, Earth’s tilt is pretty stable – between just over twenty-two and twenty-four and a half degrees off vertical. At the moment it seems to be at about 23.44 degrees off vertical and apparently people are still able to walk around without looking entirely cockeyed (or drunk) so all’s well.

And listen – it could be worse. Uranus rolls. That’s right…Uranus’ axis is at 90 degrees off vertical. And because of this, it presents one pole to the Sun for about 40 years then turns the other way. (No, don’t’ ask me which one its its planetary tush! I have no idea!)

The more science comes to know about Uranus, the odder Uranus really seems. Despite this pole-to-pole toasting it gets from the Sun, the “equatorial” regions of the planet still register as being warmest. No wonder astrology associates Uranus with the ‘non-status quo,’ the change, the discovery, the innovation, the breakthrough. As a planet, Uranus seems to break all the rules.

Isn’t it interesting how astrologers figure these things out in advance of science and yet the science backs the astrology up? Says a lot for research and testing points on a whole lot of charts!

Just to wrap up here before we get back to those asteroids…the wobble thing. Yes, Earth wobbles. Here’s a diagram made by the International Terrestrial Reference System (ITRS)…a project overseen by the Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) (Yes, they skipped a few letters.) This is the group which keeps track of Earth’s orbit and the syncing of clocks, including the need to insert ‘leap seconds’ and such.

In any case, here’s their diagram of Earth’s polar motion from 2005 to the present.

 Polar motion from 2005 to present

(credit: hpiers/obspm, France)

So what’s all this got to do with asteroids which get the hots for Planet Earth?

It’s just all part of the celestial mechanics. Some of the above is a bit of karmic veggies I’m slipping in before we get to the astrological dessert, and all of it is good for us to know.

The part which got me to thinking was why do these asteroids hook up with Earth AFTER the solstices?

That answer...in the metaphysical sense that I'm thinking of it, has to do with precession. (And who am I to not share factoids I find so fascinating?)

That ‘circle of precession’ we talk about…which currently has Earth’s north pole ‘pointed’ at Polaris? That picture looks pretty much like this:

 Time diagram of Earth's north pole precession

 by  Tau'olunga (June 2006)

Polaris is the star at the very tail of Ursa Minor - the constellation known as the Little Bear. On this diagram, it's located just beside the marker for the year +2,000, meaning 2,000 CE.

There were pole stars before Polaris and there will be pole stars after Polaris. And that’s what PSDR’s Cosmo Spark sparked in me. The fact that Earth is attracting its latest batch of suitors after the solstices made me wonder if Earth is already sort of ‘over’ Polaris. Obviously on a scientific platform this wouldn’t be the case – Polaris is 434 light years from Earth. But metaphysically, this ‘disparity’ speaks to us.

Here’s a diagram of the ‘precessional circle’ Earth’s north pole would appear to ‘trace’ in the heavens.

The ‘dot’ in the center here is where the ‘axis’ of this (Earth’s) precessional circle would be. Positioned within what some might call a ‘protective’ circle of constellation Draco (which others might feel is our inner spirit ‘surrounded by Draco) 

Anyway…here’s a few astrological concepts to chew on while you’re not living such an apparently tilted life. (I guess Earth’s tilt is why we say we’re inclined to do this or that? Would we therefore be prone to doing things if on Uranus?)

Our current pole star – give or take exactness here – is Polaris. Astrologically, Polaris is the leader. The director. The one who points the way. Given how e metaphysical ‘north’ is always a reference to intellect (just as ‘south’ is metaphysically a reference to emotions or emotionality), Polaris thus becomes exactly what it says it is: the leader versus the director…the one who inspires and who is part of the effort, or the one who tells others what to do but who isn’t intrinsically ‘hands on.’

Is there a good or bad here? Maybe, maybe not. It’s probably all in how you handle your Polaris (so to speak). Currently positioned at 28 Gemini (conjunct Betelgeuse, a star all about aiming to have things ‘work well or easily’) there is great portent for good and great possibility for selfishness from anyone as they attain a position of leadership.

Of particular interest this year (2012) would be knowing that Thuban was Earth’s pole star between 3,000 and 2,700 BCE (give or take)…which would make it the pole star for the Egyptian and Mayan civilizations, among others. Very much linked to the constructive/destructive ideas of the dragon, Thuban is a symbol of value, worth and ‘the treasure.’

Back when Thuban was the pole star, it was in Gemini – just about where Polaris is today, though Betelgeuse and Polaris were then in Aries (at around 19 Aries or so).

It’s all rather curious, seeing as we have the Mayan ‘creation calendar’ drawing to a close this year with the Galactic Center now positioned at 27 Sagittarius, in direct oppositional alignment with where Thuban was then…and where Polaris (and Betelgeuse) are now.

Was the Galactic Center in Sagittarius back then? No. Back in the year 3,000 BCE our Milky Way’s center (and its resident Black Hole) was at 15 Libra, rather in opposition to…(yes!)…Betelgeuse and Polaris.

With Polaris having been in Aries back then, survival was the key and trying to make it through the day or year with a modicum of ease (Betelgeuse) was the rather simplistic optimal and learning (Thuban) was the treasure, the symbol of one’s value. Being someone of learning has lasted through the years since then as a guiding precept.

And maybe that’s what the Mayans (and the Egyptians, as others) wanted us to know – that learning and choosing to learn and to use what we know (thought, thoughtfulness)…that those Gemini precepts would be our ‘guiding light.’

With Polaris now our guiding light and in opposition to the Galactic Center we would appear to be polarized by the need to be ourselves and to learn enough…and yet to remember to contribute. That’s the requirement of the Galactic Center. The GC (as it’s known among astrologers) is always a point which describes where we have to give and wherever 27 Sagittarius (the position of the Galactic Center in 2012) falls in your chart, that’s where you will rise and probably also fall to your highest and lowest nature.

In a sense, that’s the price we pay for living in a time which combines the challenge of being with that of leading. For the Maya and the Egyptians and other great cultures of their day, the aspiration of learning (Thuban) was something other than the struggle to survive and to be a head of household or society.

Not so now. It’s just another sign that the Age of Aquarius – an age which stratifies, separates and distinguishes and requires that we treasure our differences asks that we join together in making things work.

 Aquariusurania as pictured in Urania's Mirror,

 a set of 32 constellation cards published by

 Samuel Leigh (London) in 1825

No, we don’t all have to like each other. But in the Aquarian Age we’re going to need to recognize that as different as we are and should be…how that doesn’t mean one person, one idea, one culture, one gender, one profession, one way of living is any better than any other. Those who don’t…well, like those Earth suitors which come along and end up going off on their own, we’ll be ‘deep spacing’ ourselves. That’s pretty cold.

Meanwhile, Earth goes on collecting it’s minimoons and leaving most behind. Our lovely blue planet remains in its monogamous relationship with Luna Moon while making friends along the way…just as many of Earth’s inhabitants do. For a minute there, I wondered whether Earth was just plain fickle.

Then I realized that when you’re a charismatic planet with a lot of magnetism and local space mass, you’re bound to pick up fans along the way!

Yup, I guess it’s all good...live and learn, right?