Aries (March 20-April 19) — You may not consider yourself a creative force of nature, though the time has come to not just experiment with that notion, but to step into it like you’re boarding a vessel of light. Your chart has Leo in the vibrant, illuminated 5th place: the art studio of the zodiac, the creative space where the spark of life is transacted from one person to the next, and one generation to the next. This is more than a physical space; it’s like a transport beam that will carry you, through your own creative process, from one experience to the next, from this phase of your life to the next, from your current idea about yourself to the next. Yet there is one requirement, which is your full participation in your own existence. You must admit that you are connected to core source, which is within you. You personally are not that source, nor do you want the burden of being so. Yet you contain it, and can access your strength as a source of energy that feels distinctly like who you are at your best. Bring the small willingness to engage with the strength that you contain. This strength is one and the same as your sexual energy. Saturday’s eclipse may come with a temporary dimming of the light, as if you’re resetting yourself, reforming your personality, or preparing to take some great inner risk. Do not hold your breath. Rather, keep breathing.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Where is home? Who is home? What is family, and where do you fit into the constellation of your own world? The answers to those questions are changing, and if you’re living consciously, so will the questions themselves. Think of these things in the widest sense you can imagine: not, for example, your immediate relatives or your neighborhood, but rather that you live on a planet orbiting a star, somewhere in the deeps of space and time. In such a formative moment of your life, you need perspective, broad enough to contain ideas you might not normally experience. I say experience because with Uranus in your birth sign, ideas are less likely to come floating along as little concepts you can pluck from the air and scribble down, but as full-on confrontations with existence. You may suddenly come face to face with vast new possibilities for yourself. You may wake up to the experience of needing to liberate yourself from the world that you currently inhabit, with the accompanying feeling of thunder in your heart. As one born under the sign Taurus, you value stability above all else, and yet you have fire within you. Make room for new possibilities, and welcome them. Some of those will be revelations for how to transform your current existence into something on another level entirely, as if you’ve suddenly solved some vexing puzzle.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — The world we live in seems to be abandoning reason and rationality in favor of being driven by raw emotion. This is probably not your idea of progress, though it’s easy to either get caught up in, or to experience as something crashing over your head. I suggest you use a method taught to all children who grow up near the seaside: when you see a wave coming, dive straight into it, and you will come out safely on the other side. This takes some faith the first few times, though it works. Now, consider this as a model, as a technique upon which you can base others. You’re at a time in your life when you need a clear plan. This is not always true. Sometimes it’s necessary to throw yourself to the four winds and let them take you wherever they may. Now, however, you need, at least, a sketch; a rough draft; a few notes scribbled onto a paper bag, on which you can build. Your chart describes an urgent calling to express yourself. You know you have a gift for this, a natural inclination to put your ideas into words. This is true even if you’re an artist, musician or potter. Indeed, the less you normally transact your life in sentences and paragraphs, the more this applies to you. Keep your pencil sharp.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Your ethics are your values. Your values are your ethics. Your value is what is right and true for you, and that is the basis of your existence. In reality, you can have no other, so trim away everything in your life that is no longer reflective of your actual being, and emphasize what supports you from your core. What you focus on will grow. Therefore, feed the tree that is at the center of your being, and spend a lot of time in its shade, and feeling its love. Think of this as learning how to value yourself. When your value in yourself is strong, you are strong. Yet in truth, we’re talking about something that’s one of the greatest challenges for nearly everyone, in our time in history: establishing self-trust, self-respect, and the primacy of your existence above all else. For someone as service-oriented as you are, it may be helpful to think of this as being the only way you can be of assistance to others. Yet at the moment, this must be secondary: let that be OK. Allow your central purpose in existing to be the organizing principle of your life. If you can do this for a while, you will find real freedom. You will liberate inner resources, and you will get to decide how to allocate them. It is clear from recent events that the winds of change are blowing, for you and for the world around you. In such a time, you need a clear point of orientation. And that would be what you know to be right and true.

Leo Birthdays 2018-19:
Eclipses, Retrogrades and You — Oh My!

“For what it’s worth: never heard anything so right on, dead on, aligned with what I am looking at, aware of, dealing with, leaning into — especially professionally and emotionally. I can’t even list them all — so many subtle angles and aspects that all resonate and add up. Affirming experiences, potentials, challenges. To a T. Wow. Will be getting these transcribed so I can read them over and over.”

— Robyn Landis, on a previous birthday reading

Dear Reader with Leo Sun, Rising or Moon:

Big things are happening in your sign right now. Can you sense it? Are you feeling energized and excited, on edge, perplexed, stuck, like you’re right in the sweet spot of your flow, or just plain curious?

Remember last year’s big eclipse in your sign? Smile — you have more coming! Photo by Amanda Painter on Aug. 21, 2017.

Any of those responses (and more) would make total sense: Mercury is now retrograde in your sign, and on Friday, July 27, there was a total lunar eclipse in your opposite sign (and relationship zone) Aquarius.

But that’s not all! In just two days, there’s a partial solar eclipse on Aug. 11 — in the same part of Leo where a storied eclipse took place in August of 1999.

Your solar year is getting off to a dynamic start — and the events and energy of these weeks will ripple out, develop and influence your life for the next six to twelve months. That’s why no matter when you listen to your newly published 2018-19 Leo Birthday Reading, you’re sure to discover a wealth of helpful and inspiring insights you’ll be able to get to work with right away.

If you’re new to Planet Waves and Eric’s audio readings, you’re invited to listen to last year’s reading as a gift. The 2017 Great American Eclipse occurred in your sign last year, and it has been reverberating ever since — so listening to your 2017 reading is sure to help you review your year and get oriented on what’s to come.

When you order your 2018-19 Leo Birthday Reading, you’ll receive access to two audio segments of astrology (at least 30 minutes each) and an extended description of your sign, plus custom-selected music by Vision Quest, the Planet Waves musical ensemble.

“Planet Waves has been crucial for me lately as I navigate this topsy-turvy landscape; life is in transition on so many levels and it’s been an incredible resource in my life, especially now.”

— Ronny K.

Thank you again for your patience, faith, and for being a valued Planet Waves customer in these wild times.

Wishing you an excellent eclipse season,

Amanda Painter

P.S. If you have any questions or prefer to order by phone, please call us at (845) 481-5616; you can also email us at cs@planetwaves.net. And don’t forget: the 2018-19 Leo Birthday Reading makes a fantastic gift.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — Let’s travel back in time to the summer of 1999. We can only do this in our imagination, though that may be plenty to observe what you need to get from the experience. First, before you remember any specific events, remember where you lived at the time. Then, consider how you felt: about yourself, and most of all, about the future. It’s likely that things didn’t turn out exactly as you envisioned them, or planned, at the time. You probably faced greater challenges and achieved more than you were expecting to. Today, you’re nearly two decades older, which naturally changes your sense of the future. But I would ask you: where are you today, and how do you feel about your existence? And what do you feel is the journey ahead? Are you still able to envision bold possibilities for yourself? This is vital. Stretch your mind. Push yourself to consider your potential. Now that you are older and wiser, you know that you must use your time efficiently, and meaningfully. I suggest you set some boundaries about what that might mean for you, in a tangible way. For example, you might resolve to spend less time online, and therefore devote a smaller proportion of your life expectancy to anti-social media. You might decide that, above all else, it’s time to travel. You probably have the inclination to drive your life in the direction of one major achievement. Choose well, and one will lead to another.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — There’s a whole chapter of A Course in Miracles devoted to “the fear to look within,” and there are many other references throughout the work to this issue. The situation, as described by this particular work of spiritual psychology, involves some potentially wrenching anxiety about what you might find in there. This stands as a barrier between you and yourself, a kind of primal fear to see yourself for who you are. To embrace your own power of witness, though, you need to set this fear aside, and enter your own self-awareness courageously. Let me be the next person to remind you that shadow is only a temporary blockage or absence of illumination, and you contain a river of light, the source of which is beyond you. Yet it’s possible to block one’s view of the entire universe merely by wearing a blindfold. So remove any blocks to your vision, which in this case would be the willingness to see, and dive into your reality and see where you emerge. Let the world vanish for a moment: the one made of petty fears, squabbles, disputes, and misunderstandings created by ignorance. Let a greater world open up, which you will recognize mainly by your own peace of mind. This is a journey, and it may require daily meditation or communing with nature or with your artwork. Yet if you dependably give yourself some time and space beyond the mundane world, and focus inwardly, you will arrive within.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Your role in your community is expanding, evolving, changing: whatever word you like. Yet this may be accompanied by a temporary dimming of the light, and an experience of discontinuity. There is a shift of some kind happening, one that you cannot exactly control, but you can assess and evaluate. Use this to your advantage. In times of change, you can make adjustments to your position and your purpose that will scarcely be noticed by others, but which will make a big difference for you. In essence, a solar eclipse in Leo is about realigning your relationship to your community, however you define that. You may want to do more. You may want to do less. You may want to be a more private person, or a more public one. The change you make will feel natural and at the same time, like a little stretch, or a push, or a leap. It’s not as far as it may seem, and you have the advantage of a wrinkle in time to shorten some of the distance between you and where you’re going. While you’re doing this, make sure of one thing: that you plan for the economics to work out in your favor. This is not merely a marketing project, but one of establishing a new deal. Do this openly, outwardly and wholly transparently. Your value is established. You must trust in this fact, and work with it, and bank on it.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — The one thing standing between you and accomplishing great things may be the desire to accomplish great things. Real achievements rarely happen on those terms. America’s Next Top Model is never America’s next top model. Great achievements are never great in their time. They’re usually controversial, annoying, or seen as irrelevant. They’re the book manuscript that was thrown in the trash, or the solution to a problem that nobody else can see. Therefore, if you want to be useful to the world — and this you seem determined to be — work on your vision, and fully inhabit whatever you count as your workshop. Take all emphasis off of greatness and place it on quality. Subtract the ideas of others, including what you presume are their expectations, and develop your vision. Yet this must happen beyond the realm of your imagination. Bring your efforts into physical, tangible form, on a daily basis. Stand apart from your reputation, and invest in your abilities. Never count yourself as a master, only as a journeyman, or even a beginner. Meanwhile, in any situation where you’re summoned to leadership or management, honor the politics of the situation. Rely on informal power far more than formal power; that is to say, extend your influence through helpful people, and gently bring others into your plan. Just remember: at this stage of your life, the real work is solitary: the cultivation of your gifts, the refinement of your ideas, and most of all, taking care of yourself.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Despite all the talk about focusing on the “here and now,” you need to focus on the future. That doesn’t mean in any way abandoning your current projects, talent development, or investments. Rather, your primary task is to trace various trajectories into worlds beyond the one you currently inhabit. In doing this, you simply must have a vision for who you want to become. The old and somewhat annoying job interview question — “Where do you see yourself in five years?” — is really a question about how you envision your future. Right now, you might say that a door is open, allowing you a porthole into your own possibilities, and your own potential. Imagine you’re a science fiction author, describing yourself as a character. Imagine the story is unusual, strange and a little spectacular. Imagine the person you’re writing about has some rather unique talents, which will emerge into some form of rare distinction if they are consciously developed, and if the principle of synergy is activated. This idea means “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” Exclude no aspect of who you are from your vision. Include nascent abilities, longings, and forgotten accomplishments in your assessment. Come up with three vastly different possibilities for yourself: for example, the virtuoso musician who becomes a theater director. The search and rescue team leader who becomes a historian. The devoted mother who leads a nation. This kind of thing.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Tectonic forces are at work in your life. Look up that word. It involves the pressure of one geological plate upon another, which is the power that shapes continents, mountain ranges and oceans. It is the power driving the friction along fault lines. There is no way to understate this idea. As the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of 2020 approaches, the pressure will mount, and there will be more frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions. What you need right now is awareness. You will find a vast resource of information by studying late 2001 through 2005, when Chiron was in your birth sign. Consider everything: all of your relationships, your work, and most significantly, your relationship to yourself. You also need self-mastery, though the first step in this process is self-knowledge. I know this concept has taken a beating lately, which is primarily a function of our whole world being driven into illiteracy by digital consciousness. You must go deeper than you ever imagined. One way you know you’re approaching core territory is that your experiences become indescribable, though you’re also met with a pressing need to reveal them to someone. Lay back on that for a while, and let yourself stand in an inner confrontation with the unknown within you — and what, in truth, can never be explained. Consider another possibility: if you think you want to be enlightened, what you really want is to be a mature adult: someone who can make decisions; someone who honors your values and your desires; one who takes responsibility for the course of your own life.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) —
Through much of the year, Mars has been retrograde in your birth sign; nothing like it has happened since 1971. This was accompanied by a total eclipse of the Moon two weeks ago, conjunct retrograde Mars, making this perhaps the most unusual spell of astrology you’ve experienced in your current incarnation. Rare and perhaps strange things are likely to be happening in your physical reality as well. A mix of ‘conscious’ and ‘unconscious’ forces are driving events, which means things you may have been aware of previously, combined with certain facts that you missed. Their combined effort is driving you to find yourself, and to individuate in ways you didn’t know were possible. While Aquarius is famous for its liberal-mindedness and commitment to being one of a kind, too often you fall under the thrall of what you perceive as the expectations of others, of cultural patterns, and the need to be seen as a good person. This is simply impossible now, with Mars (the planet of desire) running roughshod through your existence. There is no conforming; there is only taking charge of your life. Expectations are not merely meaningless, but plainly obvious as the toxic influences that they are. In a few days, Mars will retrograde into your 12th solar house, Capricorn, where it will remain for a month (and where it stations direct on Aug. 27). This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you to peer within yourself, to gain a new depth of understanding, and to make contact with the influence of your sexuality as a primary, driving force in everything that you do.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — You set the terms of your existence. I recognize that we live in a universe of many forces acting upon one another. Right now, the primary thing acting on you is an internal factor, described as retrograde Mars in your 12th house, and a potent eclipse conjunct Mars two weeks ago. This is a description of an inner condition or circumstance, either resulting in the illusion of an outer one, or describing how your power over an outer circumstance can be gained through inner mastery. It is not an easy position to be in, to command the role of what A Course in Miracles calls “the dreamer of the dream.” Even the most sincere efforts to take responsibility for one’s life and one’s choices can be fraught with peril and seeming failure. And as many have noted, the theory that “you create your own reality” is dangerous, especially when someone is in a tight spot, involving something they cannot control. Yet the Mars retrograde process talks about something you can influence through your awareness. The tone of Mars retrograde is about to change, as it re-enters Capricorn on Aug. 13, and something that is now veiled or difficult to access emerges where you can work with it. This involves your commitment to your values and your ethics. It involves your commitment to your work. You live by one set of rules, no matter what you may do.