The 13th Zodiac Sign Causes Mass Hysteria... It's All Okay.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="295" caption="This About Sums It Up."][/caption]

I knew something was afoot when I had a freaked out and confused message from my Aries pal, Nick. "Have you heard this? There's a thirteenth zodiac sign! Apparently, I'm a Pisces." There was a long silence as he tried to wrap his brain around this one. When I got the message, I was astounded as well.

My Aries pal is as Aries as they come. He's a staunch self-starter, a fire-brand through and through. He's currently running two businesses and somewhere in there, he finds time to sleep and go to the bathroom. While he has Piscean planets, the idea of his sun sign, which casts your entire solar chart, turning backwards one entire sign? Clearly unthinkable.

My Aries-turned-Pisces friend is not the first innocent bystander of the recent "13th Zodiac Sign" kaffuffle.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people have been wandering around since the story broke Tuesday, looking at themselves in the mirror and in the windows of storefronts, confused about their astrological identity. Twitter has been blowing up (as noted in the CNN story below) with frantic tweets of people wondering if they need to surgically remove the Scorpio tattoo and replace it with a more accurate one (Gotta love your Scorpios!).

Ghostbusters Venkman, Egon, and Spengler are also clearly upset. They're not sure of their sun signs either.



It made Yahoo! news and my good friend, Astrologer-Singer Solaris weighted in, amused, to wonder if *this* 13th Sign business might be all that 2011-2012 predictions were about, after all.

Which led to me pacing and hitting the books tonight. Does this mean that 4000 years of astrological knowledge has just, with one quirk of the cosmos, been rendered useless? For my money, not until the next 2011 crop of astrology textbooks includes this 13th sign. Not until all the charts and ephemerides change. At that point, I might become (and now I'm sounding like the detail-oriented Virgo that I might be!) buried in paperwork and adjusting to a world in which the old ways don't work. But that day is thankfully not today.

Relax. Shhhh. It's ok. See? CNN said it's ok. (Read their article and get the facts here.)

No worries, friends. My Aries friend is still an Aries. And you are whatever sun sign you began the week as, when this story exploded the internet. That's the official Happy Ganesh weigh in.

Blazing Blog and UK Band Bloc Party's "Mercury in Retrograde"

It's that time again. Bob and I are back! (Due to some now resolved computer issues, but better late than never!) We talk about the Princess of Disks (Page of Coins), Judgement, and 4 of cups. Click below to see how these cards impact your week.



Also, here's a musical accompaniment to Mercury in Retrograde! As of tomorrow, August 20, we'll be in Virgo Mercury Retrograde. (In order to read more about it, go here.) I love this song - it's rare that bands talk about astrology in their songs, but the lyrics to this one are pretty dead on. No, this is NOT a good time to sign a lease or find a new love - or start anything new.

Turn it up to eleven.



Til next time,

Marissa

(This video belongs to Bloc Party and was posted by jimbodoteleven . The copyright, the lyrics, and the song all are Bloc Party's.)