Now the ash is gone, collected in big black garbage bags, turned into fertilizer for bananas and concrete for buildings. The skies are blue over Quito again. The masks have been put away, and if I kept a 25-year calendar, I'd be marking down "Expect an explosion from Reventador" in 2027. (But who knows to which far clime I will have roved, by that time?)

We also had an election in Ecuador. Lucio Gutiérrez made me a little nervous because he wore a military uniform when he campaigned, and because he was involved in a coup which deposed an elected president a couple of years ago. However, Gutiérrez' opponent was clearly worse: a banana billionaire, rumored to have pulverized his brains with drugs quite a while back. (Inevitably, I make comparisons with the president of my own country.)

At first, Gutiérrez was a fiery leftist. (He has a very fiery chart, with the sun in Aries and planets in all three fire signs.) But during his campaign, he edged away from this, to the extent of saying nice things about the IMF. Leftist Ecuadoran friends, disillusioned, decided to vote blank.

Why did Gutiérrez go for a more expedient approach? With the moon in Capricorn, squaring his sun, he is divided between his practical side and his passions. Both Capricorn and Aries are very ambitious signs, but in different ways. Capricorn treads patiently upward, working hard to do whatever is required, while Aries assumes leadership by taking bold initiatives before anybody else does. Capricornian success tends to last longer, but Aries success gets people more excited.

Gutiérrez has made some very worthy promises - to make housing and health care available to more people, to cut down on corruption in government. If he makes it through his term, he will be the first elected president to do so in recent Ecuadoran history. (The last two were overthrown in coups.) Although his economic compromises have angered many of his followers, he could still do some good in this poor and unbalanced country.

In December, there's a lot of energy for transformation, with the eclipse on the 4th. A new moon is always powerful, always a time of new beginnings - but a new moon with a total solar eclipse increases this power exponentially. One of the things that happens after an eclipse is that people have sudden revelations. Light flashes in, illuminating some dark corner of the consciousness.

The sun and moon come together at 11 degrees of Sagittarius. And so this eclipse will be particularly important for those of you who have planets around 11 degrees of mutable signs (Gemini, Sagittarius, Virgo or Pisces) or fire signs (Aries, Leo or Sagittarius). Or if you have planets around 11 degrees of Taurus and Cancer, a yod would be formed, and you could get in touch with some karmic material following the eclipse.

For all of us, a state of new awareness is likely. Sagittarius is a sign of passionate allegiance to particular philosophies, religions and causes. It's active, independent, optimistic, forward-looking, sometimes fanatical. Perhaps, with the eclipse, people will suddenly become aware of the ways in which certain beliefs have limited them. Perhaps people's beliefs will suddenly become more three-dimensional, rather than centering on cardboard cut-out concepts like "democracy" and "freedom". We could use some pithy dialogue about what these things actually mean.

Sagittarius is a sign of community. We've already seen the peace community coming together in so many different ways, in so many places. People have gathered in numbers, everywhere from Boston to Florence, to protest the cold-blooded preparations for war.

And, speaking of cold-blooded, how do you think it makes me feel when I read this headline in El Comercio, the Quiteño paper? (Translation is mine.) "The U.S. tramples on help to the poor." And underneath, "George W. Bush announces that aid of 5000 million dollars annually will not go necessarily to the most dispossessed, but to the countries which demonstrate their willingness to go along with the policies of Washington."

Is this what you're reading in the papers in the U.S.? Or is the news slanted a little differently there?

Another area that will be stimulated by the eclipse will be 1 to 3 degrees Scorpio, since Mars and Venus will be there, conjunct each other. Look in your chart for any planets around these degrees, especially in fixed signs - Taurus, Scorpio, Leo and Aquarius - and in water signs - Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. Or if you have planets in 1 to 3 degrees of Aries and Gemini, a yod would be formed.

Scorpio is an intensely sexual sign, and Venus and Mars are the planets of sex. And so I am eager to see how this influence will manifest in the world. There could be quite a few scandals, as prominent people are suddenly revealed as having the same sexual drives as the rest of us.

Whenever sexual issues come up, women's issues and lesbian's issues are in the forefront. There are places in the world where women have very little voice, and lesbians none at all. In many Islam countries, it's true that women are oppressed - but does that mean that the women would prefer that westerners come in like cowboys and rescue them from their oppression? Isn't that a little condescending? We need to think of more subtle ways to give all women a voice. Or, rather, to listen to the voices that they already have.

Freedom to live, freedom to live as our true selves, freedom to live as our true selves without risking death at the hands of other humans - that is what everyone in this world wants. Lesbians are only beginning to claim this basic right to live and love as we choose. The Venus/Mars conjunction at the eclipse may make us more visible everywhere, and that will take some courage. But visibility can only help us in the long run.

And so let the eclipse bring new states of consciousness. Let everything that is hidden be revealed. The strongest and most durable changes are those that are based on truth.

Index of Jenny Yates' Writings on Lesbian.com