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SCORPIO Sun + Rising for This Week | by Eric Francis
Purpose and meaning are closely related; one is the embodiment of the other. You can feel meaning but you act with purpose. And you’re now at a point where a decision and action are crucial. You may have waited until a time when you’re compelled by circumstances to make a change or an adjustment — and that time has arrived. It’s now time to make a decision and then move with commitment. You know what you need to know; you have studied the situation and had every opportunity to make up your mind. You may be feeling this as a matter of ‘who you want to be’ rather than ‘what you want to do’. And that may make it seem like the stakes are higher. But it’s all the same thing, in the end. What the two ideas have in common is wanting.
Friday on Planet Waves FM — Tales from the Other Side of Astrology…actual ghost stories from various places I have lived and clients I’ve served as a spiritual advisor…watch for an email or go to the PWFM Substack or the PWFM home page at about 8 pm EDT Friday.
Days of the Dead - Scorpio 2025
Where I live, little cemeteries dot the landscape. Most are barely maintained; they are abandoned, slowly withering decade upon decade. Perhaps volunteers or someone from the town cuts the grass and maintains the fence every now and then. I’ve driven past this one quite a few times and over the weekend the light was exactly right — low in the sky at about 5 in the afternoon.
The thing about all these people — each grave marker represents a life — is that nobody remembers who they were. They lived in the 19th century, well beyond living memory. There are no new graves. Maybe their names are recorded in someone’s Bible. Maybe you can find some of the wealthier people in deed records or the local newspaper if there was one, and if it was saved.
Imagine that for one hour, around each of these graves was a solemn funeral service, officiated by the local minister, attended by most of the town. Hundreds of them…one at a time…each grave dug by hand…
The larger graves are obviously for the wealthier and seemingly more important people; the small markers are either footstones (graves used to have two markers), or the graves of stillborns and children. And on a lovely October afternoon 150 or 200 years on, they are all the same.
Nobody knows who these people were, and few people think to care, most people just drive by and don’t notice. The graveyard is part of the environment, invisible in one sense, and a reminder of our shared fate at the same time. Slowly the stones themselves dissolve into the earth, monuments not to eternity but to eternal impermanence.
Melissa at Pere Lachaise, Day of the Dead, 2005 (wow, twenty years ago next week)
For fans of this particular Book of Blue classic image — Melissa and I had the fine idea to do a photo shoot in Pere Lachaise cemetery on a popular day to visit, Day of the Dead (in 2005). Melissa, a saxophone player from Italy who made a living busking, was one of the early Book of Blue models in the second stage of the project (in Paris; the project began earlier that year in Montreal and then Toronto).
It never occurred to me to direct her to go inside the little prayer chapel of the long-forgotten mausoleum. She just slipped in and emerged several times till we got the right look on her face, blinded by seeing sunlight for the first time in 150 years. (The bodies are presumably buried in a crypt beneath the surface.)
Somehow the graves at Pere Lachaise avoided being scooped out and thrown into the Catacombs of Paris; it’s more of a historic spot than a practical cemetery, though there are still new burials there and there are many famous graves (including that of Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, and of course, Jim Morrison).
Hundreds of these chapels exist at Pere Lachaise…in long rows…a kind of necropolis…nearly all of them neglected and abandoned…the people buried there long lost in the foggy ruins of time, ancestors of those who no longer exist, or who have forgotten them. Look around and you’ll also see other types of graves that have been broken into, containing nothing but old leaves. European cemeteries are really interesting…
Nobody interfered with us; we were not worried about the cops as they would have laughed and probably posed for photos, and the eminently charismatic Melissa would have charmed us through any discussion.
This scene is about half a mile from Jim Morrison’s modest grave. Later on the Metro going home, she decided to strip in a crowded subway car. But that is another photo session.
Presale is available. Tap the cards for more information…
See my new article on Inner Light / Inner Peace coming out tonight at about 9 pm Eastern Time.
Planet Waves for Oct. 30 — by Eric Francis
ARIES Sun + Rising.
Thankfully, the Full Moon sweeping across the angles of your chart that address sex, money and power arrives with a gift: Mars in Sagittarius. So you may experience a crisis of resources or commitment, but your ruling planet is soon taking up a journey across the most spiritually-focused angle of your solar chart. This says you have the vision and the faith to move through whatever may be troubling you. Yet the important thing is that you must choose between being caught in crisis and asserting your self-leadership — and almost certainly leadership of the people around you. That may not seem easy at first but you will get the hang of it if you make the least modicum of effort.
