Aries (March 20-April 19) — As preparation for your new life ahead, start working with language. Listen to how you speak, and study how you write. This includes what you say, though how you say it is the more significant factor. Both matter and both are essential. You need to do this like you’re going to an unfamiliar country where you know you’ll need to speak the language as a matter of necessity. You know that the language will open up possibilities that would not otherwise be there, because you would not hear about them or understand them if you did. However, at the moment, you don’t know what country that is going to be, or how things are necessarily said. So what you want to work on, therefore, is your ability to put your ideas and feelings into words. Work on this process deeply enough to reach the point where you have a shift in your ideas as you refine their expression. This aligns with how the writing process is often a thinking process; but when you have a tangible thought, it has a way of writing itself. Work both sides of this equation, and make sure this happens in actual writing. The closer you get to pen and paper the better. Begin as if you’re sketching something you cannot see but know exists. This is intuitively educated guess work that you can practice and practice until you slip your hand into the feeling and know the glove fits. Keep at this, somewhat relentlessly, and trust that it will all make sense soon enough — but not too soon to get real preparation.
Taurus (April 19-May 20) — In a very general sense, here is the shape of your life. For a good long time, you struggled to rethink, transcend or escape from ideas that guided you for a while, though at a certain point they clearly no longer served you. Part of doing that was figuring out how, specifically and in fact, they were useless. Then all of a sudden a jolt ran through your being, and you knew you had to shake it all loose. I mean really loose, like diving into the water naked for the first time. Wow, what a transformation. Now, Saturn is about to take up residency in your life in a new way. You are likely to feel the instinct to contain, constrain and shape your reality. You may give that a little taste, just to see how it feels in the context of your new fiery restlessness. However, before you get too cozy, I am here to tell you that you’ve still got some shaking and some loosening to do. And if that is going well, it’s definitely too soon to determine what form it, meaning your daily life and central mission, will take. Here is some news for you: forget the form, for now. Stick to the content, your ideas, your exploration and even your confusion, and let it do its thing, without the notion of what to do with or about it. Losing or loosening your tendency to pull focus will be helpful, because ultimately you will be dropping a self-limiting tendency. That is the thing you’ve been after, though it’s been a little like the trap where the monkey gets his hand caught only because he won’t let go of something.
Gemini (May 20-June 21) — It’s time to rethink the career question, on the basis of what you would do if your commitments to others were not hemming you in. You’ve invested yourself in several different relationship situations that have proven difficult to get a handle on. The question, “Where did my power go?” might be easier to answer if you understood where it came from in the first place. Ultimately it is your ability to change and adapt, though in some situations, this has had the effect of wedging you into a corner. One of the walls that constrained you is about to move, and reveal an exit. At the same time, possibilities for what you might do with your power (meaning your creativity, and your ability to make decisions about how to use it) are opening up. You may notice some option or possibility and ask yourself boldly: do I want to do that, or be there? If you feel your reality expand with just the question, don’t be too surprised. You might even wonder if you’ve been caught in a conceptual trap all this time, which you could have shifted with your thoughts. Well, you could have, but you would not have experienced the feeling of being pushed so hard in directions you might never have gone. Having liberty is never so obvious as when you have some prior constraints fresh in your memory. And you encountered a certain kind of closeness that you might never have experienced otherwise. You can still have something akin to that, though without the pins, the barbs and the emphasis on power. Remember, there are some things you should never have to negotiate for. And at least you know.
Cancer (June 21-July 22) — For a person who appreciates stability as much as you do, it’s been difficult to go through so many years of living on shifting ground. Yet one of your approaches to handling this has been to cling to grounding in small ways that may not work for you anymore. Be aware of what those are. Your opposite sign Capricorn is involved, so this could relate to anything in your environment or the universe of your relationships. It could relate to how you perceive the world. It could relate to where you are physically located. There may be some nexus where all of the above meet, and this, in turn, will invariably affect your professional calling. Speaking of, the bold sigil in your chart is Chiron in Aries, and it’s not possible to say too much about that. This placement is a compelling calling and an urgent inner need. It is your drive to be yourself in all that you do, and to be your own guide. You have taken authority from the usual set of responsibilities and self-imposed limitations to something much better: you must be your own best example. The thing you can no longer seek from outside yourself is how to be who you are. Exemplars have gotten you so far. You have learned some important methods, and taken in some key ideas that all got you where you are. Now you must aspire to be who you are inside, in truth and in the future: the actual, real you that you know you must become. Much has shifted and is shifting that will move you there.
Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — A particular struggle has persisted for some years, and you are now gradually coming out of it. This will happen in degrees rather than all at once. There is plenty of talk in the world about setting boundaries and limits, though rarely do we apply this idea to difficulty or effort. Rarely does it apply to wasted time. Maybe you’ve experienced something like this before. You have a lot of little problems that have persisted for a long time, and a couple of big ones. Then you face a new challenge that you embrace wholeheartedly. In the process, you transcend all those problems and suddenly they no longer exist. It’s almost as if they never did, and you wonder where they went. This is the power of engaging yourself with a greater purpose. Your charts describe a similar scenario over the next season. You’re about to enter a test phase of what is really a new paradigm. That is a framework, both conceptual and physical. One bad example of this from history is how the automobile solved the rapidly growing problem of horse manure in cities. Yet as time went on, it caused a whole new assortment of even bigger problems. You must choose the options that resolve issues rather than create them. During Saturn’s initial three-month visit to Aquarius, study the law of unintended consequences. Note the solutions that cause other problems, and the ones that do not. There will be obvious distinctions between the two, if you slow down and notice them. You must be observant, and organize your observations. Work with them ongoing.
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Being creative and having lots of ideas is one thing. Yet you’re rapidly approaching the time when you must put your own brilliance to work for a whole new purpose. This is likely to involve transposing your personal and creative breakthroughs into a collective or group situation of some kind. This has always been a calling for you, though you had some territory to cross before you could actually do it, and you’ve reached a borderland. That is the one between individual creativity and creative leadership. You have been through one heck of an initiation the past few years. You have been pushed, pulled or dragged into learning how to open up, take a chance and express something bold. You may have done so reluctantly, or resisted with everything you had, though you probably shifted your attitude at a certain point and decided that the risk was worth it. You may not have full faith in your ideas, or confidence in your abilities, though you might review where you were at three or four years ago for some contrast. You are now starting to get the message that people don’t accomplish that much working alone. However, it takes special talent to coordinate individuals with their own tendencies and approaches into a synergistic effect. That’s the thing we all know about how the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This is easier said than done, due to various ego issues, struggles with authority, and a general state of immaturity that pervades so much of human existence. You are on the wave front of progress.
Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Your personal history is starting to loosen its grip on you. Or maybe you are loosening your grip on it. As you do that, here is something to consider. To what extent do you make decisions with a need to please others, before you are true to yourself? If so, and this could be subtle, the question is whom are you attempting to make happy? Way in the back of your mind, or in the crevices of your emotions? Ask yourself and observe what comes back in reply. Whatever that may be, you are ready to let it go. You have been attempting this for a while; maybe for months, maybe for years, maybe in some cycle you’ve noticed and then forgotten about. One result of whatever this may be is an indirect approach to relationships and also to your whole existence. That in turn is the result of your attempts to form a compromise between your purpose and what you perceive to be some other purpose, as if you are trying to serve two masters. Every now and then, a confrontation with a different reality gets your attention. Someone might throw you into crisis. A spiritual teacher, mentor or exemplar may enter your life, from whom you know you want to learn. Then it becomes especially difficult to stretch yourself across the contradiction. What if you worked with the idea that it’s impossible to be in two worlds at once? What if you dared to involve yourself with something that, for you, represents a new reality? That will feel like moving in one direction without being pulled in another. That would be your direction rather than that of someone else.
Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — It is time to carefully re-evaluate your emotional attachments to your family. Matters such as your sense of belonging among them, and by extension, any other group you are associated with, are front and center. This comes down to the squishy issue of whether you feel secure without them. Keep your finger on the pulse of how much approval you need from outside yourself. There are those people who always have to go somewhere with someone (whether it is out to dinner, or getting on an airplane). Others are portrayed standing next to someone in every photo. Where do you fall along those spectrums? One of the themes of your forthcoming extended phase of your life will be greater emotional independence. This does not mean facing existence entirely on your own, but rather the growing desire to liberate yourself from habits that bind you to others in limiting ways. This includes your family, to the extent that you have one. It includes your rituals and traditions associated with the past, whether we are talking about putting up Christmas decorations, where you live and why, or why certain people are your friends. Where do you stand, when you set yourself apart from all of this? What do you do specifically to feel secure? Dredge all of this up to full awareness. Make a map of your comfort zones. Shift or outright bust your routines and your persistent habits, just to see what happens when you do. One major reassessment is soon to involve your work. Is what you do actually representative of you? Were your life to end tomorrow, would you be satisfied with what you have accomplished?
Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Mars in your birth sign has been provoking your desire nature. Yet rather than certainty about what you want, an experiment is called for, ongoing. Your chart poses a question that is easy to state and more difficult to answer. To what extent do your desires and impulses align with your principles? Or said another way, do your actions align with your intentions as you state them? I suggest you consider that for a while, and perhaps score yourself on your past activities as well as your current efforts. The experience of time wasted, of goals not met, or of making decisions that ultimately serve to work against your interest represent one set of criteria. The feeling and actual experience of evolution into who you are inside is another. Your quotient of frustration versus a sense of accomplishment counts for a lot. Statements such as, “I’m doing this, but I really wish I could be doing that,” are worth keeping track of, for both their content and their frequency. Relationships are calling for a similar set of tests. Are you in any relationship just because you are, are you growing and learning and having fun, or are you feeling the itch to do something else? You may not have ready answers to these questions. They may bring up some uncertainty and anxiety, because certain responses to any one of them could lead you to recognize the need to make big changes that you don’t feel ready for. The placement of the eminently Sagittarian planet Chiron in Aries is saying that none of these matters are theoretical. The experiment is testing them through direct contact, and noting carefully the results.
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — You are in the last few weeks before Saturn leaves your birth sign for a test run into Aquarius. Let’s contemplate the Saturn principle. Were someone to know only one thing from all of astrology, this would be the one. The idea is that you take responsibility for yourself, such that nobody has to tell you what to do, or why to do it. This involves being aware of your environment and its boundaries and regulations, and adapting yours to work with them. You understand your commitments, and you keep them without being told to. You become your own parents, your own boss, and your own police department, so that you don’t need things nagging you from the outside. Drive safely and you won’t get pulled over. Pay your parking tickets and you won’t get booted. Pay your taxes and the revenue department won’t come after you. Honor your responsibilities and they become privileges and opportunities. Those who do not do these things are the ones whose lives either become a rolling disaster, or who never seem to reach their potential due to seemingly external factors. There is always some obstacle. What most well-seasoned therapists would tell you is that this is a game: refusing to internalize your authority structure is the perfect way to block yourself, and not embrace the responsibilities that would lead to the greater possibilities. Given the state of society and of so many people’s lives today, this leads us to a question: are you done with that? If you want to be, the timing is perfect.
Your 2020-21 Aquarius Astrology Studio is
now available for instant access. As you know, Saturn is changing signs this spring from Capricorn to Aquarius. The Astrology Studio is a perfect complement to the Respect annual edition, and a great birthday gift for yourself or the Aquarius you love.
Order here.
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Saturn entering your birth sign or rising sign is an event to prepare for. The date of arrival is March 21, just past the forthcoming equinox. So you have a little time, which I would suggest you use consciously. One question you might ask yourself is the nature of the internal struggle you’ve been through during the past few years of Saturn in your 12th house (which began in late 2017). What, exactly, have you been working through? Were you even aware of the depth of the material you were processing, or did you plod along attempting to maintain your life as usual? Some deep questions have been nagging, and at times, dragging you into situations you may not understand. Superficial explanations will be of no help, despite their immense popularity. You need to be honest with yourself about the ways the past has held you down, and the role of denial in this scenario. You may have some completions to do with people from your past, or who are in your life now. The central question is what it means to be honest with yourself, and how you know whether and when you are doing it. Then there is the matter of connecting with your actual creativity, and your desire to do something that is more fun. When you have tried that previously, what has held you back? That is something to get real about, and upon which to focus your intelligence and your desire for healing. Said another way, you must have no secrets from yourself.
Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — You are establishing yourself in new social and professional territory, in a process that will take some surprising directions this spring. Those, in turn, will emerge from deeply personal discoveries that you are making currently. For now, you want to resolve the past rather than do anything that will bind you to it. Most people know very little about resolving anything, and tend to drag their personal history behind them in ways that are not useful. This prevents them from making any actual progress, which is another typical condition on the planet. I suggest you establish a relationship with your future and with your potential, and take your mission seriously. This will require you to do something beyond what most of your peers are up to, and to have a different approach and attitude. Devotion to your purpose sets you apart. It makes you visible, and just that will carry an aura of success. You must maintain your public relations position in a sincere way, and at the same time attend to the details of your friendships and your work. Relationships matter a lot now, which means honor your commitments, and pay attention to who does and does not honor theirs. People you do not know are observing you, so assume that, potentially, any of your actions are visible. This can and must work for you. For several long and possibly difficult years, you have been establishing yourself and making a place for yourself. Now it’s time to move in on your own territory. As Sir Paul said, when you got a job to do, you gotta do it well.
