Aries 4° (March 24)

Chat with D.C. today and that will be fun. Stopped by the laundromat just to eyeball it in case I get desperate in the near future. I realize I somehow lost my hat and restaurant doesn’t have it. I know for a fact that I didn’t even wear it inside and I didn’t stop anywhere so it is a total mystery. Things things do tend to drive me crazy.

IWith Nextrology, however, I will be evolving the subject of astrology along deeper, more personally psychological and spiritual lines, ushering astrology into the personal-development space, activating astrology into a system for self-help and -actualization. At risk of sounding grandiose but, to be perfectly honest, what I realized at some point over the long years working with clients in private practice, leading up to a renewed fire to write this new book, Nextrology, I frankly believe that the true purpose of the zodiac, that symbolically intricate spiral mandala, was actually, originally designed and meant to be used as a system for self-empowerment, success and sustainable happiness. Friends, clients and audience members have heard me joke for years, now, that: The zodiac, with its twelve signs and astrological houses, is in fact the original twelve-step program. (Go ahead and compare AA’s twelve steps with that of the energy and attributes of the twelve signs and houses, and you’ll discover this is no specious notion.)

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2022 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Aries 3° (March 23)

I will pay off my credit cards. I will vacuum (while living in one) I will correspond on the subject of insisting on being cc’d. I will input the necessary number of entries into this Blague. I will arrange a meeting with Gene and Len (vacuum, Cable, outside water? Paint? Wifi code). I will write a sample for A-Scapes. Post office and bank and Sirius and Mapfre and A-glow Petty. Categories from eating out on Wheel: Working dinner/Writing content, Outreach for Astrology, Astro planning, CMP work. Stopped by yet another new dispensary just to poke around and see what’s what. Will take myself for oysters and a raw-tuna and mango “martini” (comes with chips to scoop it all up). Took some shishito peppers home to use in an omelet.

It’s an inside-out job to the metaphysically inclined mind, as our astrological signs go to the core of who we are, in both cosmic and consequential terms, as e’er the twain shall meet.  And Nextrology will take readers by the hand in pulling the myriad threads of their personalities through toward divining desired life paths, so to spiral onward and upward. The word Next itself is primarily an imperative, a call-to-action for new choices and possibilities. On that basic level, Nextrology is the astrology of positive momentum, of getting and keeping things moving in the right direction. Nextin the title also makes a nod to what’s simply next from me, as an author who has “gone dark” for some time since writing a book, Sextrology in particular—I fantasize that, like so many fans of Willy Wonka who long shuttered his works, my own followers will be chomping at the bit for some sweet and starry, gobsmacking new goods as only I can deliver. Moreover, Next in the title speaks to dynamism, activism and agency being encoded into the astrological signs, which are not an end in themselves but means for becoming ever-better iterations of Self. Just as people have deeply recognized themselves, and experienced some a-ha revelations on that score, from reading my words and works to date, so too will they relate to new realizations I have to relate in special regard to guiding them toward and along what the reader will regard as their desired road as yet untaken which, all true things being paradoxical, can also be the path of least resistance.I like to think the first syllable of Nextrology also speaks to the fact that, in writing this book, I am evolving the subject of astrology itself. You might say this was true of Sextrology at the time, as that book dragged the subject out of the occult aisle and plopped it smack dab in the center of the zeitgeist, not to mention designer display windows—the book launched at major fashion bastions aren’t the world; Sextrology made astrology chic, stylish and sexy for the first time.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2022 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Aries 1-2° (March 22)

Been a shut in these past two days. Watched “A Very English Scandal” (again). Prepared to speak with S., postponed from yesterday’s date which slipped her mind. I am feeling quite productive, dealt with AAA and banking and lots of billing and then had a fairly good talk about biz with S. It is slow going through the “minutes” but we are getting there. We discussed what to do with the jewelry and also how to move forward on things. I still don’t have anything in hand from lawyers but I’m hoping there won’t be any big surprises. Cooked up a storm—chowder, oatcake batter, chicory salad (with caramelized walnuts, bleu cheese and pear)—bent on very little kitchen waste. The stress level is through the roof and I have an uneasy feeling about life in general right now. I feel wholly discarded and not only by the usual suspects. Since having a wider view of the situation, in light of social media and so forth, I have been made aware of a great many folks who fall on the other side of the aisle, which is disheartening to say the least. I watched a fascinating JT Leroy documentary. I made a giant list of things to do while I lay in bed. I am dreading going to Boston on the one hand. I will be focusing my efforts moving forward on making sure I start generating more abundance. This is going to be crucial to my mental health among other things. Anyway I have to write a few pages today.

That is to say, whatever sign you are, you are not locked in to a static, two-dimensional experience of that sign. There is agency involved, and yet just as we can pinpoint a great many static specifics about what it means to be a Virgo man or a Gemini woman, for example, we can also delineate and define such dynamics associated with any given sign by which an individual native of that sign might set and stay upon their own upward spiral toward success, fulfillment and self-actualization. This is exactly what Nextrology is determined to do.

As thoroughly detailed and “eerily accurate” (credit publication) as the book is—a major, unique selling point that has contributed to its success—Sextrology is comprised of twenty-four static snapshots, albeit intricate portraits, of the sex-signs. It answers the question: who am I? from an astrological perspective. Nextrology not only offers that much more insight into the who-am-I?, benefiting from twenty-years more of accumulated empirical knowledge since I wrote that first book, but Nextrology also answers the more burning question: what am I going to do about it? Thus Nextrology bridges into personal development activating our astrological assignations into a primary source of empowerment, offering precise guidance and prescriptions to help each of the individual twenty-four signs optimize their life-experience. Readers of Sextrology sang the book’s praises for seeing more deeply into their personalities, psyches and souls than any other astrology book ever had before—still, hitting the nail on the head for readers meant they were already aware of these things I was hammering home to them. Although the power of validation should never be underrated, I wasn’t really telling them anything about themselves they didn’t already know on some level. What they have never been told before, and what Nextrology is uniquely positioned to do, is where their natural abilities and challenges, their motivations and obstacles, their strengths and weaknesses, and positive and negative patterns stem from and how they can accentuate all the former positives and mitigate any latter negatives.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2022 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Aries 0° (March 21)

Today is an absolute fog. I didn’t sleep very well and woke up feeling rather grim and nervous, reasons for which I cannot put my finger on. And then my morning chat with S. was aborted. She ended up making a doctor’s appointment which is fine. I am just going to binge on television. I really didn’t end up wathing anything good except I did find a new so-so show called Minx. I also ended up watching a bad documentary about the Bad Vegan. There was some news sprinkled in. I tried to watch a few other things but couldn’t. Turned to the news and then the Gilded Age followed by the best of the night, my Brilliant Friend. More chicken chili.

We think of the zodiac as this static circle, a pie with twelve slices, if we think of it at all. It is the height of irony to me is that people take what is a mighty mandala for granted, some people even pooh-poohing it, unaware of the great power—call it cosmic or metaphysical divine or what have you—encoded in this symbolically rich system. People mainly associate it with horoscopes they find hokey or new-age mumbo jumbo, when practically every ancient culture on the planet had its own zodiac—Chinese, Celtic, Egyptian, Hindu, various Native American, and our western one, to name a few—all of which arguably derive from that of the Babylonian zodiac dating back over three millennia. There are also four score plus schools or branches of astrology. As mentioned, I am a humanistic astrologer whose life study has been dedicated to understanding the psychology of individuals born, generally, under the signs (and more specifically, in private practice, in terms of every detail found in a client’s natal chart); and, yet, even through the lens of general sun-sign astrology, I found there is such a wealth of information and inspiration to, well, write whole volumes of books on the subject, which bumps up against metaphysical studies such as in Theosophy, as well as Jungian psychology, in particular.We see the zodiac as this static circle and yet that is just a sort of cross section we can slide under the microscope of our rational minds, when in fact the zodiac is, like so many patterns in nature, a dynamic spiral—imagine a stretched out piece of DNA with twelve main points of interconnection—a living thing, a moving thing, it, too, both the essence of, and a vehicle for, human and, more practicably, personal evolution. 

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2022 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Pisces 29° (March 20)

I will have a bit of a morning after. I will head for a late bite to Bayside Betsy’s which is apparently under new management and have a nice chat with T.J; but I only have a little guacamole and tortilla before heading to Mac’s for a dozen oysters. I am making it an early night. Frankly I’m exhausted. I did give Gene a ring and turns out he wasn’t feeling well which might explain things fairly well. Conversation with Nick and also Joe who mentions that Bayside is being managed by Tracey.

The book was a hit with adults of all ages and proved wrong any foreboding skeptics who warned that younger audiences wouldn’t appreciate or absorb the headier, more academic and archetypal material. Indeed, the twenty-four characters I divined in Sextrology profoundly resonated with younger readers, especially; and next, again under the dual byline, I wrote Cosmic Coupling: The Sextrology of Relationships (Random House 2010), which characterized in chapter form all of the possible gay and straight relationships, three hundred in all. (Sadly, the gay chapters were given only one page each while the straight chapters received two—a sign of the times.) Neither book has ever been out of print and Sextrology, especially, still sells briskly. Since then, but for yearly horoscope ebooks I wrote and published under my own steam, I shied away from undertaking a book project of Sextrology’s magnitude;  and, as a humanistic astrologer, instead focused fully on consulting clients in private practice, which ultimately led me back to writing this proposal for this new book which I see as being even more innovative and groundbreaking than its predecessor: will be unlike any astrology book to ever hit the market for a number of reasons, the main one being that it bridges into personal development, providing the reader an original platform by which to grow not only into their sign but via their sign. My nearly three decades experience working with private clients, and especially over the last fifteen years, provided what became field research in exploring the many nooks and crannies of the various signs and their associative archetypes, myths and symbology to exactly identify and isolate the specific perks and pitfalls to each and every one of the twelve astrological personalities, and to extract the inherent wisdom encoded in the zodiac’s signs to diagnose the slice of basic human condition that each of the signs represents, to help the reader gain fuller understanding of natural abilities and talents (their sign’s superpowers), which so often go ignored, while pointing out their inevitable challenges, character defects and negative patterning, of which we are all often to aware (yet keep repeating) and then to prescribe changes in perspective and behavior that will send them along their desired astrological path. 

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2022 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Pisces 28° (March 19)

Leftover cucumber, tomato and feta salad. Bumped into someone West End who seemed to know me and I pretended to know them. Not unusual in this town. I will end up tonight having dinner at Jimmy’s (spring rolls and salmon) and I’m seated near Siobhan and her friend Gene, who runs and lives at the Vorse house. Siobhan gives us a lift back as it is around the corner, basically, and I get a bit of a tour. Everything goes smoothly until it doesn’t. I am a bit taken aback when I realize he’s not actually in charge as he seems to pretend to be, but never mind. 

I wrote the seminal astrology book—Sextrology: The Astrology of Sex and the Sexes (HarperCollins 2004)—under the shared byline, Starsky + Cox, with my life and creative partner, who played in-house editor in the process. The premise of the book was that men and women of the same sign were actually, often radically, different from each other, and that there were indeed twenty-four, not twelve, distinct star signs divided along binary lines. Sex in the title referred primarily to gender, “the sexes,” and to sexuality, secondarily, which could be viewed through an astrological lens as readily as any other aspect of an individual’s being. Sextrology was considered groundbreaking as it was the first major astrology book to explore straight, gay and bi sexuality of all the signs as an organic extension of their characters, which, in my astrological philosophy, are steeped in various archetypes that draw upon specific symbols and associative myths and metaphors inherent in each of the individual signs. These archetypes then echo through fairy tale, literature, art, film and television, comics and other media. Feeding readers serious mythic and metaphysical medicine, including some bitter truths about the challenges their signs presented, went down far more smoothly with heaping spoonfuls of pop-culture references, heavy doses of humor and bold dashes of erotica, a gumbo of elements that came to define my brand of content, while the seamless and seemingly effortless mixing of these myriad elements, some might say, characterize my signature writing style. 

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2022 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Pisces 27° (March 18)

Staying in today and will do a bunch of cooking. Making a lovely chicken chili. And for dinner I will make a simple feta, cucumber and tomato salad. Did a little run of the shops and saw someone from Chatham whose name I couldn’t remember. Tall and obviously older than when we lived there twenty-three years ago. Where does the time go one wonders. Also ran into R. Costa. Nice long chat with Moo as well. The point was being made about closely held family companies are difficult to dissolve. Back to the future. Some notes on conversation regarding A-S. What strikes me most about the agreement is that nowhere does it mention Astro-Scapes, in fact, in point 17.3 (Publicity) it still speaks to both the T-S and the S+C marks needing to be represented by the two company logos, one on top of the other. The other thing is that, point 5, business terms, there is no mention of sales at all and how they occur and who is responsible. That said, since we have proof (and many emails and even photographs to this effect) that Tim was selling the collection in his shop as well as online, and given the fact that in one of his last text to us he said “We need to figure out how to end this business venture…I will not be caring [sic.] any Astro-Scapes pieces in the store…” this signals a shift from what was the normal operations thus far. Which brings us to the main point. Under item 10. Termination: Either one of the companies may terminate “if” the other company is in breach. (10.a and 10b.). We are not in breach so he can’t go that route. Breach means not adhering to Business Terms (point 5, page one) which isn’t the case. Wheel is not in breach. And even if we were he would have to provide us written notice and we would have 30 days to cure the breach. So his only option is 10.2 (c) which states that he would have to give written notice if he “chooses not to produce, sell, use or distribute the Joint Works under the terms of this agreement, provided that notice of such termination shall be made prior to the sale or distribution of the Joint Works whch are the submect of this agreement….and provided that the terminating party has fairly compensated the other party for the creation of the Joint Works which are subject to this agreement. Then if you skip to point 13, Equitable Remedies, it states that “a breach or threatened breach (which Tim has already threatened)…may cause irreparable harm to the non-breaching party for which monetary damages would not be an adequate remedy…(and) in the event of a breach or a threatened breach by the breaching party…, the non- breaching party (that’s us) shall in addition to any and all other rights and remedies may…be entitled to seek a restraining order, injunction, specific performance and any other equitable relief that may be available from a court or tribunal or competent jurisdiction. Then skip down to Attorneys Fees 17.9 which basically states that if he takes legal action and we need to hire lawyers we may be entitled to have our legal fees paid by the party that institutes the legal suit….We should then send a letter/email saying. We have discussed the issue at hand, specifically, your threatening to terminate our Creative Works Mutual License & Business Agreement, signed and notarized on November 12, 2021, between T-S and Wheel. For our part, we wish and plan to continue with the venture between our two companies for the joint works, A-S/T-SxS+C. We continue to uphold our responsibilities, and then some, as outlined in the “Business Terms” of the agreement. If you wish to terminate the agreement, as you have threated to do in your text of Monday, February 27, wherein you also threatened to no longer carry the Joint Works for sale in your store, which has been the prevailing plan, as documented many times in our correspondence, you may pursue your threats as outlined in the Termination section of the agreement, which determines that we shall be “fairly compensated” as a result. We would also point you to the Equitable Remedies section of the agreement. We remain hopeful that you will reconsider your threat to terminate and continue to work together with us both on this venture.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2022 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Pisces 26° (March 17)

Saint Patrick’s Day. I don’t have plans to go out but fuck it, I’m going to the local pub for corned beef and cabbage. It’s a warm rainy day and I have a fittingly green umbrella. It wasn’t a total hoot or anything, but it felt good to be out and strolling. Tired from a few Guinness and crash pretty early and pretty hard. When it comes to the practicable suggestions sprinkled into every chapter, though they are especially designed for individuals of the particular signs, there is nothing wrong, and everything right, in anyone of any sign taking them up and trying them out (especially in relationship to those areas of life linked to your planets or astrological houses, as determined by your individual birth chart). Our hope is that every reader will get the most out of their individual chapters, foremost, as well as insight into their loved ones by spying into their chapters, but ultimately work all the practical magic the book has to offer. You are, after all, as your own birthchart vividly illustrates, a snapshot of the entire zodiac itself, not just one sliver of it. As we like to say: People are pies! You have all the signs, planets and houses, elements, qualities, polarities and archetypes in you—you are an ever expanding, upwardly spiraling universe all your own. So, have some fun applying all the chapters to the various aspects of self to which they relate, bearing in mind that your primary chapter illuminates your primary path toward self-actualization on your own hero’s journey through this most precious lifetime.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2022 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Pisces 25° (March 16)

On the lunch menu is leftover chicken with rutabaga and gravy. I will have a rather late-night meal of turkey bacon + potato hash with fried eggs. Cooking and sleeping and writing: In nutsy-boltsy terms of personal development, the text of this book works on a number of levels. The main text itself digs more deeply and widely into character analyses of the signs than our published work has ever done in the past, and the language is more motivational in spirit and inspirational in tone, addressing the reader more directly, while hopefully still retaining what we believe to be our seriously fun, sometimes funny, style. We go further with our signature smarty-pants references, exploring ancient and modern archetype and astrological reasoning, focusing on the upshots of these emerging insights, not just their philosophical meanings but their practicable impetuses and suggested moves you can make. Secondly, on that note, the chapters include prescriptive text boxes that outline a wee bit of homework you can do, action items to undertake, a little practical magic you can perform, designed to help the desired alchemy of personal transformation take hold. And thirdly, the margins of each chapter are sprinkled with empowering sidebars that we intend to work as written talismans that you can take on board and further explore for yourself, little bits of totemic guidance and wisdom that can keep you aligned with your particular astrological powers, as you journey toward increased self-realization via the stars. 

As mentioned earlier, you might choose to enjoy and engage in this book from cover to cover, gaining fuller insight into your astrological self than the one chapter dedicated to your particular sign. Like other books on the market that actually require you to have your own natal chart in hand in order to process the information the author is providing, Nextrologyprovides you a wealth of knowledge and guidance, if you have your chart handy. There are a couple of ways you can approach this. First, you could take the basic information regarding what signs rule which astrological houses in your chart. For instance, if Virgo rules your fourth house, you can apply the Virgo chapter(s) and their archetypes to the aspects of your life that fall under the pie-slice of fourth house rule. Or you can take the planetary approach and determine which planets, which also rule aspects of your life and self, fall into which signs and thus apply the contents of those chapter(s) to the realms of those planetary rulers. (There is an at-a-glance glossary provided at the back of the book to help guide you in this, while there are countless books out there that focus solely on the signs’ relationship to the planets and the astrological houses, which you may readily reference.) 

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2022 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Pisces 24° (March 15)

Ides of March and Mom’s birthday. S. and I chat. We are trying to slowly chip away. Will have dinner at Fanizzi’s of mussels, mashed and Caesar. I see Audrey which is nice. Lastly, the next in the title points to the fact that (our pop appeal as supposedly smart, sexy and, hopefully, funny books aside) we are respected academics in the field of humanistic astrology and Nextrology, in its own way, evolves that branch of study in which we are considered frontrunners by our respected peers. Our work is continually touted by other popular astrologers and authors working in our genre and, even, outside of it, including award-winning novelists like Eleanor Catton (The Luminaries) and others who have credited us with inspiring their own creative process of divining artistic themes, storylines and characters.

Astrology itself is something of a noble lie. That is to say, one must buy into the notion that the movement of the planets and their relationships to one another has meaning, without having any proof. This is especially true of one’s natal chart, which is a snapshot, a freeze frame, of the planets’ positions, at the time of the individual’s birth. Once we accept this conceit, however, we enter into a world that functions quite scientifically, with rules and math and endless associative, interpretive meanings. Reincarnation, too, is a sort of noble lie that is nonetheless at the center of major religions and belief systems. Like astrology, it can’t be proven but it is the basis for an entire world of philosophy and codes to live by, Karma chief among them. Of course, any belief in God or gods involves acceptance of a noble lie. None of us (that we know of) has ever seen God, and yet nothing impacts our human existence, our morality and our judgements, not to mention the wars we wage, as does our notions of this or that invisible God. At least we can actually see the stars, which appear to us all, nightly. In a sense, our brand of humanistic astrology involves the acceptance of both the noble lies of astrology and reincarnation: you were born the sign you are (with all the intricacies of your individual birth chart, pin in that) to learn a whole set of life lessons endemic, primarily, to the estate of your particular sun- and sex-sign archetype. In this view, astrology, and particularly, the humanistic branch thereof to which we subscribe, is foremost about personal evolution of the individual in this lifetime as it relates to the more esoteric notion of the evolution of an individual’s soul, over many lifetimes. And you can certainly enjoy the exercise of exploring the former application, without accepting the latter, should you find reincarnation a spiritual bridge too far.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2022 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.