Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for April 2010 by ERIC FRANCIS. Click for audio astrology overview for April, also by Eric.

The equinox has arrived, the Sun is in Aries, and the fiery spirit of the air will keep arriving for the next few months — maybe the next couple of years. Aries is the first fire sign, and the Aries Point is the cosmic key fob. When planets push that button, things get moving. And that is what’s happening now, and for quite a while to come.

A Swim by Via Keller / Studio Psycherotica.

Yet this season’s astrology is an exciting interplay between Pisces and Aries, the last sign and the first; the watery depths and the passionate burst forward. The Sun has begun its journey across the sign of the Ram, just like in the Canterbury Tales, and after the long Northern Hemisphere winter with all of our Northern Hemisphere snow, howling winds, rain and flooding, being restless to get out of your apartment or out of your clothes is a beautiful thing.

For the moment, Venus and Mercury are also moving through Aries, and Eris — the planet that changed the solar system — is still doing her 110-year spell in Aries, with lots of company.

Meanwhile, two of the most influential planets are still in Pisces — Jupiter and Uranus. Later in the season, both will move into Aries. Currently there is equal emphasis on Pisces, providing both emotional contact and a sense of difficulty grounding any stable sense of feeling: plenty of feeling, and a challenge getting the water to soak into the Earth. Aries activity is not going to help this, because it’s so impetuous and tends to lack any sense of contemplation. The Pisces angle of your chart wants to meditate, but it’s one of those restless days where you feel like you drank five cups of green tea and then try to sit quietly. Some days it works. Some days you just feel jittery.

Yet what, exactly, is that jittery feeling? What’s the energy source?

I have some thoughts about that. This week, Venus makes a conjunction to Eris, which feels like an explosion of self-aware feminine consciousness. Chaotic, yes, but strong and independent. Then later in the week Mercury makes a conjunction to Eris. Then the Sun arrives, and we really get to see what this vital new discovery is all about.

Eris. Illustration: Ravendusk.

Eris is the goddess responsible for the reclassification of Pluto to dwarf planet. Discovered by Michael Brown and team in 2005 and then named in 2006, in my view, Eris is about the personality chaos we find ourselves in at this time in history. Yes, she is the goddess of discord and the world is a little frayed at the moment; who knows which way is up. But where is that vertigo coming from? I would say it’s coming from the lack of any cohesive self-concept, and this is what Eris speaks to. It’s that odd sense of having no clue who we are, mainly because there seem to be so many choices. Eris, in another manifestation, is also the truthteller, who can be a man or a woman. The idea of Eris is not to be disruptive for its own sake (though this happens), but rather to be focused and pointed about an issue that is actually important.

As a teacher at astrology conferences, I can confirm that the profession is moving at approximately glacial speed understanding these new influences that take us to unusual depths psychologically and spiritually. There are many objections to using the new planets, though I sense that the main issue is human nature’s resistance to anything different. People may have their private view, but there is not a sense of coalescence, excitement or discovery. We are alive in a time of discovery and it’s almost like nobody is noticing.

If this were just about planets, that would be one thing. As astrologers we agree that the planets are about us, and therefore discoveries are also about us. So if we are overlooking the discoveries, we are missing the point of astrology.

Assuming we want to, how exactly do we find out what these influences are about? There are many techniques, from studying the astronomy, the myths and the people whose charts have prominent placements of a new discovery. One of the ways is to observe what happens when the Sun makes a conjunction to the planet in question. On April 11, the Sun makes its annual conjunction to Eris in Aries. This week, and then again for a window of about four days, from April 9 through April 13, we have an opportunity to see Eris in action, in the big world and in our own lives. Note that since this is in Aries, one of the issues is how we define ourselves; how we envision ourselves; how resolutely we allow ourselves to be who we are. Everyone has Aries in their chart and it expresses itself somewhere.

As the spring progresses, this issue is going to take on a life the likes of which we have not seen since the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the issue of self-awareness was (briefly) all the rage. Late in the season, the cosmic fire starts pouring through Aries with extraordinary emphasis. This is a wake-up call of proportions we have simply not seen in nearly half a century and in truth far longer, as Uranus only gets to Aries for seven out of 84 years. The question is not whether we wake up, but rather what will we wake up to? I mean this personally. What is it about yourself that you are trying to awaken, and what about yourself are you content to have asleep? Because the part that is sleeping is the part that is going to get the emphasis.

For all of my readers, here is a free, short eBook ($19.95 value, free while the Sun is in Aries) that I wrote about Eris shortly after the naming, called Eris in Astrology: Facets and Fragments of Self.

Yours & truly,

You’re getting a lot of bold messages to be yourself, but you also seem to have way too many choices for who that self is. Beyond all the seemingly tangible possibilities is a chaotic realm where you simply don’t have the answer. Every time you seem to get a clue, something changes. We’re accustomed to plastering those unknowns over with labels and other assumptions, rather than leaving the question open. While a mystery like this can be uncomfortable to live with, I suggest you stay in a state of uncertainty for as long as you possibly can. Consider it a kind of meditation. Embrace the chaos of who you are, who you are not and who you might be. This is designed to help you have greater access to your potential rather than pretending it doesn’t exist. At the moment far more is possible than you’re likely to be aware of. As the next two months progress, you’re going to get a taste of what this potential is; yet in order to have this potential be real you need to keep your mind open and make sure you’re ready to change, adapt and go on a new adventure at all times. Stay loose. Notice the game of pretend that we’re all taught to play the moment we’re confronted with an unknown. Unknowns are your best friend right now and I suggest you keep them near and dear to your heart.

Aries Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available here. The report goes into detail on the blossoming of self-awareness that is all over the Aries charts this year, and the question of whether your current work situation and personal relationships can withstand the energy. Bringing your personal life and professional life into alignment and a space of mutual support. The audio is about 45 minutes, followed by an Aries tarot reading using the Voyager deck. Use this link to sign up.

The answer is not control; it may seem like control, but I propose that the answer — if there is one answer — is to observe. Mainly observe yourself. Your fantasy life is taking you some interesting places lately, and far from being content with imagination, you want experience. But this is pushing some of your buttons. These buttons include issues about supposed right and wrong, what’s too intense for you to handle and whether you have sufficient ground beneath your feet to handle the swirl of your own desires. The important thing to do is not revert to your mother, or her image of what you’re supposed to be: particularly, what kind of partner you’re supposed to be. Mixed in may be a number of false notions about the kind of partner you’re supposed to want. To be clear, what you seem to be working through is tension between various images of the ‘right’ husband and wife (on the one side of the psychic membrane) and a whole kaleidoscope of possibilities for who you are (on the other side). Consider how much image is bound up in our notions of relationship: in being acceptable to potential partners, in the image of a good relationship, in being seen with the right person. What if all of that was completely, totally and utterly meaningless? Not only meaningless, but a way of perpetuating everything about your childhood that you no longer want?

Your social environment is interesting now, and it’s going to get really exciting as the season progresses. I’m going to start with some conservative advice: rekindle connections to your best friends. You love new friends and you’re a friendly pup, but with the surge of energy that’s coming your way, you’re going to want people close by who know you well, and whose opinions and perspectives you trust because they are so familiar with you. One thing to research with old friends is what dreams you’ve been talking about fulfilling for at least 10 years. The energy of your charts is bursting with new ideas, ideals and craving a new vision for your life. My hunch is that while you want and indeed need something new in contrast to what you have now, there are important elements of past dreams that you are recovering. Some of this involves collecting power that you have given away in relationships. You may be feeling confronted by just how powerful certain people are, and how potent are bonds of sex, shared resources or contractual arrangements. That you are seeing the power of these relationships is an invitation to confront that truth rather than to back down. Your most dependable bellwether is this: to what extent do you feel that you can really make your own decisions, without running into the objections of others who seem to have power over you?

Your focus on professional activities may not seem to be paying off, though I suggest you persist and focus your intentions. You’re caught in the normal ebb and flow of success, at the same time significant changes, soon to manifest, are taking place in the background. It’s crucial that you not confuse the two, and this is going to call for some special attention. At this stage of your life it’s vitally important that your professional choices precisely fit your deepest values. For this to be true, you need to make your investigation into those values a conscious experience, and put what you discover to work starting with the next decision you make. Look back at events of the past four or five months and you’ll see examples of how your quest to act in accord with what is actually true for you has played out in real-life situations. You may not have thought of these circumstances as tests of whether your inner compass and your outer direction are aligned, but that is precisely the situation. And while that inner compass relates to values and intentions on one level, something more significant to explore is whether the direction you’re headed matches your vision for your life. I suggest you organize yourself in this sequence: values, vision, decisions. Here is the thing to remember: your vision will manifest, so you want to make sure it’s the one you really want.

How is it possible to widen your horizons in a world where everything seems to get narrower every day? The process starts with cultivating faith in yourself. Now, we could ask: how can you have faith in yourself when so many aspects of our upbringing and so many aspects of the world we live in are designed to take our power away from us, or to have us willingly hand it over? Your astrology is sending you several direct messages. One is to work with a vision; that is to say, with an inner image and a description of what you want to create in your life. I cannot repeat this often enough and I recognize the challenges inherent in creating and holding that vision. Everything seems to change so fast, and we are presented with new challenges every single day. Given these facts, it’s so much more meaningful to have the one consistent thing be your devotion to focusing your mind’s eye on the existence you want to have. Planets moving into the fire sign Aries, even as you read these words and extending well into the year, will make this easier. At the same time you may feel a sense of urgency or necessity mingled in with a subtle calling toward who you are becoming. You may fear you are being pushed too far, too fast, but really you are being brought up to just the right speed, right on time.

Your hidden nature is more assertive than you let on. But this doesn’t seem to fit the even-tempered, reflective and reasonable presentation you want to make to the world. You’re more outgoing than you seem, but it’s just that you don’t usually want to seem that way. This gets you certain benefits; you can be sure you alienate fewer people, you blend in better, and for a while, you know who you are, while others are left guessing. Yet one side result of holding your energy in is that it tends to convert to self-criticism and anxiety. Another is that you live with the sense of having a secret self who does not fully express his or her being in the world. This, in turn, has an odd way of verifying that there is no real place for you to be yourself; and it sets up negative expectations of what might happen if you actually would dare to be yourself, unrestrained. You’re going to be working this out in theory for a while, and then a moment will arrive — most likely suddenly, and soon — where you break through the whole issue like a sheet of thin paper. Don’t worry, for you being aggressive or assertive would not feel like either of those things to a human, a cat or a dog. You would seem, to them, more intelligent or focused. You would expose that your mind works quickly and intuitively. You would reveal that you have an opinion, and when others respond, you’ll get to talk about it.

You’re heading for a revolution in your relationships. This has been happening gradually and is about to happen more rapidly. This will feel like welcome news to some and like a source of anxiety to others. Reaching for the common ground beneath any potential evolution, leap forward or opportunity to move on, what you’re facing is the opportunity to adapt to the way the world really is. While it’s true that you often seem to float in a bubble of your own imagination, I would propose that the ‘world the way it really is’ and the ‘world the way you want it’ have more in common than you may imagine. In any event, some spectacular transits will be lighting up the relationship angle of your solar chart; then they will take a break; then the adventure will resume. Consider the most interesting events of this time in your life to be an experiment — which is to say, the exploration of an experience. Go in at full strength, and remember that you will have plenty of time to reflect and consider what you felt, witnessed and learned. One last big. I suggest you challenge your belief that people around you are changing faster than you can handle. Most of the pull toward the future is coming from you; lightning doesn’t just come from the sky. It’s drawn to a specific high-energy spot on the ground, and at the moment, that would be you.

This has not been an easy time for you professionally or personally, though you need to shake off your post-traumatic stress and start making clear decisions. Many of those decisions will involve revisiting choices you’ve made since last autumn. You may find that you’re now making decisions opposite to those you so recently seemed settled on. What you may notice is that you are actually reverting to what was your original position, before you reversed it. You may notice that your reversals were based on an emotional impulse rather than a rational one. Here, you walk a fine line. Yours is one of the most psychologically astute signs of the zodiac, at the same time one of the most emotional. If I could send one message to Scorpio forever, it would be: learn to tell the difference. It is not merely enough to be decisive. It is not merely enough to feel, or to think, or to analyze. It’s entirely necessary to know the basis of your decisions, and part of that basis is contrast. Seeing contrast is something we do mostly with our mind, and it’s based on experience. So, whether you’ve spent the last six months feeling like you’re winning the game, losing the game, or totally confused about what the game is, consider what you have learned. Consider who people have shown themselves to be. Consider what you could do if you could do it all over again — because you can.

There’s a necessary element of chaos in authentic creative and sexual experiences. This is part of the lure: we want something different, and most of us secretly crave that feeling of going out of control. Yet this is a source of the phobia connected with moving creative energy: you don’t know what’s going to happen. Now, as a Sagittarian you might think, what fun! As a human, you might think, not so fast. I want to know the outcome in advance. I want to be able to Photoshop that little piece of reality, and I want the ‘delete’ button right nearby. That’s fine if you’re not going for the real thing: an actual experience of life and a true adventure rather than a trip to Epcot Center. I suggest you embrace your favorite flavor of chaos. Using art as a metaphor, it’s time to make a big mess out of your studio, work on five projects at once and paint naked till 5 am. If you’re into sports, it’s time to make that the focus of your life and ‘work’ the thing you do to support it. If you’re a musician, well, you get the idea. Remember, this is not really art you’re playing with: it’s an experiment in feeling and experiencing who you are. Every drop of astrology, now and for the foreseeable future, is about drawing you into the unfamiliar territory of your own existence. You are safe; go boldly.

Consider the past six months a test run for your new experience of life. Notice the trajectory; size up your perceived successes, failures and experiments pending outcome. One of the primary themes of this year is leadership, and you’ve certainly come a long way in redesigning your role within your community or profession. Yet this is just the beginning. Events of April are a kind of review phase, likely to take you back to a position of carefully sizing up key details of what you do. While you’re there, I suggest that you embark on a thorough reassessment of your goals. You have the luxury of relative calm, particularly compared to what was going on over the winter. In ways that only an astrologer might perceive, my sense is you’re driven more by service than by ambition. Yet the world seems to require that you exist in a competitive environment. Most competition is for the sake of sport. You are being driven by a set of mandates not only alien to most citizens of the Western world, but also terrifying to many. I am speaking of an impulse to make contact with your soul-level motives; with your willingness and indeed urgent need to take yourself apart over and over again until you see where the elements of your existence come from, and where they belong; and your drive to make peace with change to a depth that nearly everyone you know would run from. Nearly everyone — but not quite.

Tuning into the wisdom of your feminine side feels more like walking and less like driving a car; more like breathing and less like blowing up a balloon. Your movements are intuitive rather than deliberated. The feminine side of the brain and indeed the body is the aspect that understands intuitively rather than finds out. And this aspect is coming to life in a new way, that may feel unfamiliar and at the same time deeply welcome. Another process is underway, which is letting go of a dimension of rationality that has finally served its use and is no longer helping you. I don’t mean all rationality, or all reasoning process; I mean the kind that takes you out of your body rather than helps you find your way in. The kind of reasoning you want combines what we think of as intuitive and intellectual. The logic does not need to proceed in a line; circumspect is better, recognizing that any situation, idea or person will appear different when perceived from a different point of view. I suggest you experiment with this, literally walking around things to see them from another angle; switching places with people (sides of the bed, places at the kitchen table, household roles); and listen to what your intuition is whispering to you constantly. Your entire field of perception is evolving, and this is evidence that your perception of yourself is evolving.

How exactly do you take advantage of the protective umbrella that’s suspended over your world, and your heart? How do you tap into the potential of so much activity focused on your sign? Well, you need to be alert, but a kind of alertness that is based on receptivity and not fear. This is a subtle, critical point to be clear on, as you learn to focus your mind and your intentions. The world is in a freaky state right now, and it’s getting freakier — but if you get in the habit of trusting, you will see that your faith is productive. One compelling reason to trust is so that you don’t waste your energy on fear, suspicion, negative expectations or on perceiving complexities that don’t exist. Jupiter is in your sign, and this is offering you a source of energy, resources and an invitation to experience pleasure — something more vital to the wellbeing of a Pisces than for any other sign. Yet Jupiter tends to magnify everything to another proportion; personal issues are likely to seem exaggerated, while the potential you feel may seem less than accessible. You may feel large fears, where you used to feel small ones. You need to compensate for these distortions. First this is a matter of self-observation, and second a matter of evaluation. Chiron is still extremely potent in your solar chart, and this is calling for precision, clarity and most of all, compassion.

Dear Friend and Reader:

I hope you’ve taken dozens of workshops and gone to yoga class three times a week for at least five years and been devoted to your live juicing, your mantra, your karma and extra vitamin D, because all of a sudden it’s going to come in handy all at once.

March is the month of the Northern Hemisphere spring equinox, when the Sun enters Aries. Spring 2010 is the season that we make our first very close pass to this thing being called 2012. I’ll get to that in a moment: first let’s consider the immediate news.

The Sun is now in Pisces, the last sign. This may be a reflective time, as Pisces is one of the signs of completion, but it holds a strong memory of the past. Like with seawater, you can find every element in Pisces: traces of every planet and sign. This is overwhelming to some people: a kind of emotional saturation can accompany Pisces, bringing with it the potential for maddening instability and equally mad passion. There is creative freedom in Pisces, though it’s essential to work with some kind of container: a narrative, an agreement, a time boundary — and a focus on pleasure, while you also may be busy focusing on solving problems.

On March 10, Mars stations direct. This is the last bit of the winter 2010 astrology working itself out. Do you remember the stress factor back in December and January? It may seem like a distant memory now, but your body remembers; and the last of that energy is bottled up in Mars, which has been retrograde since the winter solstice. This has been a long, long sorting out of what we want, and for some, the discovery of their desire.

For some this has involved determining what they don’t want; for others, a struggle to come to grips with the truth of their needs. I suggest you translate this into the most positive terms that you can: just admit what you want and set that as a goal. On this plane of reality, there is little more powerful than human desire; but we tend to complicate it with guilt. Now, if you’ve been involved on any spiritual path at all, you know the negative power of guilt and the supreme importance of getting this emotion out of the way, which paves the way for everything better.

Look for this inner conversation to come to a peak around the 10th.

This gives way to the mighty spring equinox, when the Sun moves over the Aries Point and aligns with the planets already gathering for the 2012 celebration. Yet this is nothing compared to what happens in mid-June; and while that may seem far off, astrology is a seasonal tool: and the outset of the spring is the time to consider the whole season. And, to put it in mild terms, the energy explodes this spring: so much that has been pent up for so long comes out, and comes out all at once. This is about the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Aries.

We will learn something about our boundaries and, in truth, something about how hung up we’ve been. Nobody wants to be tangled in their own desires or scared of their own potential, though there are so many influences in that direction we can’t even keep track of them. This spring, the planets align day after day to bring us out of this dark dream, and into some of the promise of self-awareness, community and bold humanity that we in truth carry and possess within ourselves.

More at Planet Waves Daily Astrology and Adventure.

Yours & truly,

What you need to conclude the matter is to begin. That is often the way of endings, and that’s how it is now: to resolve or free yourself from the past, reach for the beginning and commence. You are likely to experience one or two significant moments of insecurity as you do, which I would classify as a false lack of confidence. One may involve money, that is, the idea that you don’t have enough of it or you can’t handle yourself. That is part of the risk. In business, there tend to be two kinds of ventures: someone’s father-in-law buys them the whole thing; or someone starts with a roll of postage stamps, a used computer and an idea. You are better suited for the second kind, the one that takes more nerve and leaves you with your independence. I’m not sure you’re the guardian angel type, but if you are, you can trust those critters — you seem to have two of them watching over you. I know you’re wondering whether you’re really fated to survive or succeed; I suggest you put all of your energy into trust and as little as possible into worrying. The people around you are committed, and everyone is ready for change, if you will stand up and lead the way. Progress is focused around the 10th, when Mars stations direct, and the 20th, when the Sun enters your sign.

Stop hopping and walk on both feet. Just because you don’t know something doesn’t mean you won’t find the solution; to the contrary, you’re all the more likely to discover it because you know that you don’t know. As usual, the main thing standing between you and your own intelligence is fear. I don’t think you’ve quite discovered that rather than solving anything, fear scatters your intelligence and shatters your confidence. In case you ‘get that intellectually’ but need it explained to you on another level, fear is simply negative expectation. Such never creates a positive outcome. Something else always does. The calculus that you tend to run is: if something changes, the change will be for the worse. Therefore, it’s better not to change. This, consequently, blocks your eagerly-wished-for or sought-after progress. Frankly, this is a lame excuse not to make your life a better place. Those steps begin with committing to guiding your life with something besides insecurity. What would that something be? Tangible, focused, unfettered desire. Set a goal and work for it. It does not matter what — as long as it’s something you want specifically. For example, don’t try to ‘get a job’, aim for exactly the work you want to do. Focus your intentions; know what you want, and act on it. This will take up all that space that fear was taking from you.

The whole spiritual thing seems to confuse you; however, it’s clearly growing on you. Think of it as a level of thought without words: a dimension of concept free from structure. Think of it as an opening in your mind, and what comes through is living information. If you relax and allow and let go, this information will help you structure your other ideas and indeed your whole life around it. If you want to live for a principle, this is the one: the steady flow of energy that’s the essence of consciousness itself. Meanwhile, in the outer world, focus on cooperation. Move past out-dated acquaintances and stale hostilities quickly. Don’t hold onto them; let them go with the ease of exhaling. Make a habit of transitions. Know when the time for something has arrived, and when it is up. You are preparing for one particular transition that you may not know about yet. It involves the work you do. Themes involve 1) doing something with this brilliant quality you have of not fitting in and 2) focusing your misty notion of a goal into a clear sense of mission that is guided by the living information. This will require trust because you will be making moves that are not preceded by the usual astonishing amount of mental chatter and debate. You will simply know and trust. The time has come.

Get ready to make the big moves: a series of them, which coincide with a sequence of events focused on your house of career and reputation. Prepare to depart from hangups about money and confidence and notions of your mission being too weird or unattainable. The first thing you are claiming as part of this process is your originality. In case you haven’t experienced it personally, consciously, originality doesn’t feel like you think it will. It has two main properties: a feeling of fun, and a sense of clarity. And I would add: function. There won’t be a professor looking over his glasses saying, ‘That is original’. The feeling comes come from you. It may be subtle. If you get the message ‘hot idea, let’s do this’, then do it. Give yourself permission to act, to initiate, to be different. One of the inner entities you must address is the part of you obsessed with self-control. Ask yourself what kind of authority you want to be in your own life. Since you’re in the position of being your own boss, what kind of boss do you want? You have a variety of choices. One of them is whether to orient on the past or the future. Another is to state your desires as an affirmation or as a negative; to deny or to desire. Finally, how do you plan to work with the limited time you have? Consciously, or not?

Through the winter you’ve been focused on some close-to-home, practical matters: emotional, mental, inner stuff based on simple necessity. Over the next few weeks, your orientation shifts rapidly, seemingly to bigger dreams and a bolder vision, but in truth a new alignment with yourself. This involves Mars stationing direct in Leo; to be precise, in the first degree of Leo; and over the next two months Mars will move clear through your sign. You’re likely to feel a lot of fiery motivation to achieve many things at once. I suggest you take this process one goal at a time, starting with modest ones; one day at a time; and keep sight of your earlier set of priorities involving your inner work. You have an opportunity to define an objective, then align your energy with it. Think of this like standing straight and aligning your spine; only it’s with energy. As you do this, bear in mind what’s drawing you toward the future. Something is; but you may think you don’t know. You do know, and so do the people around you. Don’t keep this secret from yourself. This is not the time to indulge yourself in mystery; there is plenty of that in life, if it’s what you want. You will be stronger and have more access to your motivation if you move with conscious awareness of your inner truth.

To what extent do you allow others to define who you are? And if you’re the one doing the allowing, isn’t this a kind of farce? You don’t need to negotiate for your identity. This includes with yourself. You don’t need to get it back from anyone who has it. You don’t need to ‘look for your identity in others’, though you can use them as a foil, as a barometer or as a reality check. Looking at your charts this month, a theme stands out boldly, which is the abject fear — I could use much stronger words, but I will not — of losing yourself in another. This might be the fear of being possessed by another, the fear of having someone else control you, or of making a commitment that you cannot get out of, and which compromises your freedom. Yet closer to home is the fear that you have to seek yourself in another; that somehow, you cannot find yourself without the benefit of a relationship. Imagine the challenge you might face with boundaries in any relationship, or in any committed situation, if you have any of these beliefs working silently in the background, in effect undermining your right to exist. In my reading, the planets say thus: notice what feels missing within yourself. Rather than ask where it went, ask how it could have gone anywhere at all.

The revolution in your relationships begins right about now. While it would be difficult to overstate the case of what is brewing and shaking in your personal affairs, I have been doing my best to explain the process more in the style of water than of fire. Be aware of potential stress points within yourself, which is the tension between changing and staying the same. You may not be feeling it yet in such vivid terms. Yet beginning this month as planets, and I do mean Planets, begin to move into your opposite sign Aries, the energy is going to mount. You will be looking at options you never dreamed of. Well, sorry for underestimating you. You may have dreamed of them but are unlikely to have thought you might actually be handed the options. In the external world, this could represent literally any creative potential in any relationship; any invention; any incredible meeting. Internally, you have two main choices: resist at all costs, or choose. Resistance is likely to come in the form of a high-energy struggle with making a decision; conscious choice will arrive with a feeling of your own influence in your own life-flow. I say this well versed in all the various [mostly true] prejudices about Libra and decision-making. I can assure you of this, no prejudice can substitute for your full and conscious presence in the moment.

This is one of those months wherein you’re likely to have an overwhelming amount of stuff to do. However, among the many things that are not predestined is what you choose to do with your time and energy. Another is what basis you would use to decide. The important thing to remember is that you decide. To the extent that you’re feeling a calling to leadership, it’s the leadership of making decisions, particularly about your most meaningful goals. You do not merely seek activity; so far as I can tell, you seek a connection to existence on the level of purpose. Moreover, your ‘identity’ must be connected to that purpose, and that purpose is an expression of your identity. Get rid of any lingering abstract notions; you came here to do what you came here to do, and nothing less. The ‘activity’ angle of your chart comes under increasing focus as the spring unfolds. This is fiery energy, which resonates deeply with you because of your sign’s connection to the original arsonist of astrology, Mars. This moment in your life is offering you many unique pleasures, but you’ll miss the point if you feel like you’re being pushed beyond your limits. I’m reminded of some words written by a very young Allen Ginsberg: “Only return of thought to / its source will complete thought. / Only return of activity / to its source will complete /activity. Listen to that.”

It took the petroleum industry a while to get gasoline to burn slowly and evenly, without adding extremely toxic lead. Now you can go to a fuel pump and choose your octane level. Yet most people don’t know that gasoline itself was originally a waste product of the petroleum industry, burned by the ton until it went on to become the main event. Your life parallels all of these developments. You need to go for the slow burn in whatever you do: even, efficient and just hot enough to make full use of your fuel. You need to make careful use of waste products, and see their potential sooner rather than later. Take beginnings slowly, not quickly. Accelerate evenly. Slow down early. Follow at a safe distance. Practice all of this when you drive. Use the metaphor of manual shift; the automatic transmission has been horrid for driving skills. In sum, the planets are suggesting that you’re about to experience a surge of energy, a release from the past and a willingness to take new risks and have new experiences. You can afford to take this slowly, moving from idea to gesture to experiment. Remember that you are handling live flame and potentially live ammunition. I am not saying be obsessed with control, but you will benefit from being obsessed with awareness. Monitor your changes carefully and make sure you’re heading in exactly the direction you want.

The pressure comes on, then it comes off. Then it’s back. You deal with it just fine, though I suggest you take over this process internally, rather than constantly dealing with ‘circumstances’. True, there is plenty going on in your world. You’re being summoned to take up true authority, though that is merely a figment of the changes you are going through internally. This, during what turns out to be the most rapid acceleration of growth of your life. While the impulse to grow and grow and grow isn’t going to end anytime soon, you’re still at the beginning: in the pattern-setting mode, creating a new set of skills to help you adopt to constant internal movement. You’re also in the goal-setting phase, staging an insurrection against your parents, against society and against any expectations that have ever been laid on you. Yet you cannot simply get rid of these seemingly external influences; learning goal #1 goes something like this: You took on plenty of what was not your own, and then it became your own, and now you’re going the whole distance on claiming that fact and taking on the full power to set your own agenda. Remember that this is a growth agenda first, and worldly agenda second. I can’t say that often enough. If you proceed in that order, you will be unstoppable, and that (if you ask me) will be good for everyone.

There are certain details of a partnership or contractual arrangement that you can now resolve, though I would offer you one reminder. Consensus, or mutual agreement, is reached based on values. The specifics tend to follow gracefully once the fundamental values are understood and agreed to by all the parties involved. You and a partner may have a tendency to re-hash details lingering from a prior incarnation of the discussion. Plenty seems unresolved; but in many ways the details are irrelevant. In making a return to this subject, I suggest you work with a goal of going to the next level: that is, a deeper level. What are your shared goals? What meaning do you both agree is of primary importance? A conversation focused on circumstantial details will likely evade the deeper ones. In your case, deeper means really deep. In a sense, it’s fair to say that no other person is involved; any involvement with anyone else is superficial when contrasted to the inner depths you are being summoned to plumb by your own soul. What you’re seeing on the display screen of the outer world is a kind of projection of your distant past, including that of your family. I could probably write a book chapter about this based on this month’s charts, but I will sum it up in a question: what is the true nature of commitment? Clue: take the issue back one century, or three generations.

It’s time to consider the concept ‘selfish’ with only the most positive implications. You have a need to take care of others; that goes without saying. Yet the time has arrived for this in no way, form or design to include the concept of being a victim of that impulse. Therefore, put yourself and your needs first. This is in service of your greater agenda: the whole thing. At this point you may still be wavering on the notion of prioritizing your personal agenda, whatever that might be. The logic might not be clear, though your resentment level is the most accurate measure of whether you need to adjust your course. There’s nothing violent or dramatic about this, though you may secretly fear reprisal: deal with that issue. I am suggesting a day-to-day exercise that will guide you to make different decisions than you’ve made in the past. Whatever you may think now, by the time Jupiter and Uranus arrive in Aries later in the spring, a new kind of logic will take over your life. You can wait, but you’ve had many tests of your prior logic, and you keep coming up with the same basic results. Underneath all your emotions and reactions and ideas about what you may want is a question: how could it be vaguely possible that your life doesn’t matter? Get this one right and you will finally feel like you’ve pointed your airplane down the runway.

Dear Friend and Reader:

If you are reading this, you survived some of the must tumultuous, shocking astrology in nearly a decade. Yet the truth is, what we lived through in December and January was like the weekend-long training ride that American Youth Hostels required for everyone taking the summer-long, coast-to-coast bicycle trip. I suggest that you put the events of the past two months to a thorough review and make an inventory of everything you learned, or wish you learned.

February brings in a whole new dimension of astrology: I dare say easier, but in truth, with a new agenda and a new sense of adventure. There are, of course, always two sides to the story. For example, the Chiron-Neptune conjunction finally peaks early in the month. That is about seeing clearly and embracing the truth of the world. But to do that, you might have to survey quite a bit of damage and pain and make room in your spiritual philosophy to give that some context, without just turning the other way.

Phase two of the Saturn-Pluto square that is shaking up so much, so deeply, is also in full force right now. Change is possible, but to have that change happen, we need to be willing to risk losing the benefits we reap from not changing. We need to meet the forces that exist to perpetuate fear and hold back progress, most of which come from within our own minds. It’s easy to be brave in a yoga studio; it’s more challenging when you find yourself needing to make a decision that is about acting on your values for the first time. It’s easy to have an opinion. It’s more challenging getting involved in the kind of movements for social justice that your father told you a hundred times were too ‘dangerous’ to bother with. [Dangerous to whom?] This is another way of saying: guilt can be a thing of the past. You can have a whole bunch of fun and contribute to progress as long as you’re not scared of your own shadow [material]. And as long as you’re not scared of progress itself.

Jupiter is now in Pisces, which is great — as long as you know how to use sensuality, wine and erotic play as vehicles for transformation, and as long as comfort does not make you complacent. Jupiter in Pisces is about depositing moralism into the nearest toxic waste dump, which is another way of saying, it’s about figuring out that guilt is quite literally a thing of the past. Pluto in Capricorn is helping us with this one, and Mars retrograde is helping us figure out what we really want.

As you sit here reading these words, the world is heading for one of the most stunning awakenings of both individual and group consciousness that we have seen in four decades, or longer. Yet to embrace this means taking full responsibility for your own awareness; and for the decisions you make. Once we start at the center of our own choices, it will be easier to see that we also choose collectively. Yet it starts with us, as individuals, deciding. To be individuals we need to slough off the toxic conformity that has characterized the past 30 years of American history, and embrace the adventure of existence as the bold and honest people we’ve been claiming to be for so long. Cousins: the time has come.

Yours & truly,

Updates daily at Planet Waves and Cosmic Confidential Diary.

Your charts suggest strongly that you are making some decision involving marriage. You might be thinking of creating a marriage or of ending one; or you are formulating your thoughts on the subject. Here is what I see: You have a concept that marriage simplifies things. This is consistent with the old expression ‘tying the knot’. There’s nothing so simple going on, however. In truth, your charts present a complex situation regarding not just a relationship, but also your whole idea of what a relationship is. What I suggest is that you shift the entire thought process from ‘relationship’ to yourself. The most important relationship is the one you have with you. When we confuse our inner relationship with the one we have with others, that is called projection. It may not be literally true that whatever you are saying about, or appreciate about, or dislike, in others is true of you; but you would be wise to look for the connection points. In this project, you will learn something from photos. Photos are interesting because they are historical documents and projection screens. Photographs of you, of loved ones, family photos and in particular wedding photos will tell you a lot right now, in the sense of providing useful information. At the moment, certain pictures will paint a thousand words.

Nearly every Taurus I know is struggling with their career. This seems to be a life-theme of your sign. Let’s pretend that has something to do with all the activity in Aquarius, your career house. Going back quite a long way — five years, 10 years, even 15 years, depending on how you count — there’s been constant change, movement and an odd sense of insecurity about what you want to do, or what you ‘should be doing’. You’ve had plenty of ideas along the way, some of them excellent, but less in the way of traction or stability. Perhaps you know what you want, not how to make it work for you. Remember that most of our experiences train us to compromise passion and curiosity, or to expect certainty and incontrovertible correctness of the plan. Sure, that happens. More often, we find ourselves involved with events, uncertain where they will lead. Through many such experiments, we can arrive in an interesting place. What you have going on is subtler than either of those usual paths. At the moment, you have a rare perspective (think of it as visual, from a high place) that you didn’t have before. Use it to observe the ways you have been conditioned to not know what you want; to want what others want for you; and to doubt your own ideals, for the sake of others. What would your life be like, if you moved all that out of the way?

Last month’s Mercury retrograde was pretty impressive, and its affects are still working out. For you, it was all about agreements. You tend to live your life trying to figure out what others expect from you, rather than determining what you want. In the tangle of opinions, obligations and pushing and pulling and sorting out the details, I trust you’ve learned to make this distinction. It’s not only okay to want; whatever the Buddhists may say, desire is your organizing principle. It’s the value by which you decide what to decide: including what to do and who to associate with. Jupiter in Pisces, which just crossed the potent midheaven angle of your solar chart, is offering you a wildcard of desire. This may be arriving as an idea or a vision; or it may be an opportunity you’re not sure is solid. I promise you one thing: this qualifies as something different. It may take you a few weeks to catch on, but now that you have a clue, I suggest you look carefully and make a decision while you’re still excited. One of the distinctions between this and the kind of opportunity you’re accustomed to involves going beyond your usual sense of scale, to something much wider: so wide, indeed, that you may not recognize it for what it is, or selling yourself short because this seems too good to be true.

Life would be easier, were the playing field level. Usually it’s not; and it’s slippery, and some people cheat. The deeper issue, though, is what game you are playing, and the rules that you apply. Deeper still is making sure you take full authority over your own life. Two games show up on the radar as being particularly dangerous to your peace of mind. One is retribution; the other is teasing. It’s possible to tease yourself, and it’s possible to get revenge on yourself: if humans are good at two things, it is luring themselves with what is unavailable, and self-loathing (in its many subtle forms). Remember that guilt is not an indicator that you are wrong. Rather, it suggests you have an issue to work out, potentially that you don’t believe your life is your life. It’s altogether better if we get those around us on board with the process of mutually freeing ourselves from guilt. But you don’t need anyone’s permission; that’s part of the game. When we feel guilty the tendency is to blame ourselves or seek forgiveness; a better approach is to offer forgiveness for what you think has been done to you. It may indeed be unclear who is responsible for what, or who is perpetuating any dysfunction; account for the ways you are perpetuating anything distasteful to you, and change your act on the spot.

There has hardly been a more magnificent time to get clear on the intentions of your relationships. Indeed, it is happening without your deliberate intervention; you seem to be coming into alignment both with yourself and with the people around you. In an odd way, this quality is morphing from your sense of individuality to your sense of mutual purpose in one-to-one experiences; and this is shifting your group encounters. By alignment, I mean sense of purpose and mutual understanding of one another’s most important values. One of your gifts to the world is to love people despite their seeming flaws, and to hold yourself out with dignity as a whole person, understanding perfectly well that you’re not perfect. You now have an opportunity to see how those seeming imperfections provide sources of strength and awareness. This really is the key to enlightenment, in these days when one of the most pressing psychological issues is self-loathing, and when the lack of self-understanding seems to verge on total. It’s deep in your nature to use mistakes, misunderstandings and paradoxes as footholds for learning and awareness; it’s good times when the people around you get into that same mode, and that is approximately what you have going on now. In simple terms, everything is an opportunity to raise awareness. Every seeming fact implies a question. How you see yourself directly influences how you see others.

You may not have counted the rewards of so much restless instability in your relationships, going back so many years. The planetary setup has not lent itself to your romantic ideals; you probably canceled your subscription to Modern Bride in 2004. Yet one benefit of what you’ve been through has been to take nothing, and nobody, for granted. There has been no prefabricated scenario that was supposed to come true; you developed a knack for liking and loving people despite their wild oddities, despite what your parents would think; despite what you thought you would think. People have pushed you and challenged your beliefs and made sure you couldn’t hide in your mental box for long. In moments when spontaneous changes happened, you learned to move on. You leaned to envision the future rather than obsess over the past. But something has been missing: a degree of comfort, a space of authentic respite, an actual sense of benefit. Over the past year, you have gained an unusual new depth of clarity and focus, and I imagine you determined that was an omen of positive developments to come. Let that clarity give you the discernment to know healthy, loving influences when they manifest for you. You have been through enough, over enough time, for this to be truly possible. Lay down that restlessness for a while and open the door to love.

You are not really caught in a situation you cannot get out of — but someone else may really be certain they are. You cannot convince them of the reality of their situation; but you can figure out for yourself that you have options. Having options is another way of saying that you are at a turning point. I suggest you make peace with the possibility that someone you care about may not quite see themselves at that place where a decision is necessary; to the contrary, they may be at a point of maximum chaos and confusion. Even on a good day, you have little choice but to negotiate with the world on your own terms. You are, at least, aware of your situation, and that provides the closest thing to a guarantee that you are going to work it out sooner rather than later. The risk you run is getting drawn into someone else’s drama, their romantic ideals, or their sense of fragmentation. Keep an eye on that third one. It’s the one most likely to drive you nuts, because when people are feeling fragmented those around them tend to respond in fragments. Note, the issue that is troubling them is likely to be a past idea of what a relationship should be, and the way that gets tangled up in the simple reality of life. Give the situation till mid-March to work out; I think it will.

You may be questioning your treatment of someone important to you. You have become deeply sensitive to how someone feels in the environment of your emotions. In any form of emotional healing, step one is getting beyond the guilt that is so deeply entrenched in our relationships. The usual way to do that is by ‘not caring’, and obviously that’s not the answer: you would not be here unless you cared. One way to process guilt is to forgive yourself so that you can forgive everyone else. Most guilt, indeed, nearly all of what we think others think, is projection. Projection is something that is happening internally that we are then perceiving or ascribing to some experience or event ‘outside ourselves’. Just like you cannot write on a movie screen and change the plot, you cannot write on the world or on your relationships and change the underlying feelings. That is why you have to start with you. One thing that is clear is the extent to which you are subject to group dynamics. Much of what you’re dramatizing in your relationships right now involves what happened to you as a child; and that, in turn, created a situation where you don’t feel safe being yourself. So, let’s short-circuit this whole psychological process and summarize it as one question: what would you do if you felt absolutely safe being exactly who you are?

I’ve noticed something about some Sagittarians I know, which is that they don’t seem to mind living in half-renovated places. I guess when you feel like you came from a different galaxy, living on Earth like it’s a camping trip isn’t so bad; so you don’t mind if your house is wrapped in Tyvek or your bedroom floor is made of plywood as long as it keeps out the rain. Or do you? Jupiter has arrived in Pisces, which is the place we look for information about the home environment of Sagittarius. I suggest you take a series of swift steps to transform your home into someplace you’re actually comfortable. Finish work in progress; make a list of anything that’s broken or out of place and repair or remove it. Get someone who knows Feng Shui to come and help you arrange things to maximize the efficiency of energy flow. Clean, clean, clean — with Dr. Bronner’s soap and water, not chemicals. If you don’t like where you are, now is the time to make an easy move to someplace better. All of this will have useful material effects, and the sense of closure that you get from fixing that which was long broken will help you feel more settled, like you’re here on the planet to stay for a while; and your home is a place where others who love you feel welcome.

Do you know those email things designed to prevent you from writing to people if you’re drunk? The one with a series of arithmetic questions to make sure you’re clear enough to handle yourself? I suggest installing one of those on your entire life this month. Be careful what you do under the influence of any substance; ‘do’ includes say and do; it includes what you don’t do; and most of all, this includes how you respond to what you feel and what you think. You’re under a mix of influences that could lead you to act uncharacteristically: impulsively, or ‘not really coming from you’. Your emotional confusion is calling on you to take conscious, careful steps with the people you love, particularly with yourself. This month’s planetary setup won’t prevent you from feeling clearly who you are, unless of course you let it do so. Yet you must be especially careful with substances, which will emphasize some emotions over others, sometimes contradictory. In itself this is not a bad thing: every emotion is valuable for what it teaches you. It’s just that you don’t want to act on certain darker sentiments; better to acknowledge and make peace with them. To give another example, if you want to have sex with someone on a few glasses of wine, first make sure they’re still interesting when all you’ve had is a coffee — preferably not the next day.

Why are you the way you are? You seem to have lost contact with your motives — which you’re finally figuring out, now that you’re back in the groove of listening to them again. In the journey of awakening, you’re in that delicate space of playing snooze tag with yourself, only it’s not a single day you’re preparing to embark on; it’s the rest of your life. Denial is a peculiar state, unique to human consciousness: the ability, in essence, to pretend we’re not aware of something that we are actually aware of. Denial presumes that there is something to deny; and that we have a motive to keep it from awareness. If you notice that you’re struggling to admit something to yourself, break it down into what that something is, and why you might not want to acknowledge it. While you’re pondering that, here is another question: is this whole thing a dance around how you were treated as a child? Are you covering up for someone else’s psychological stance toward you? Once that pattern is established, it can establish a pattern that the mind copies, which then propagates and takes root in many other relationships. See if you can get to the original motive; the original transaction that led you to learn any mode of response that involved pretending or denying that something obviously true was not. Get clear about that and much else will come into focus.

For a long time, longer than you may care to admit, you’ve grown accustomed to a certain kind of progress in your life: behind the scenes, or in theory, or in principle. Fortunately, you have a rich inner life, and this enables you to stay interested in existence even in times when movement is slow or invisible, or when fulfillment seems unlikely. Yet this has caused you to live in two worlds: one being a world where so much is happening, and where you can envision what is possible; and another where the people around you seem oblivious to their own potential and where potential, in general, seems frozen. Get ready for something different. Jupiter arriving in your sign is going to do a lot in a short time, all of it in visible, tangible ways. If you write plays, you may find them suddenly being produced on the live stage. If you write books, you are likely to discover people interested in publishing you. If you drum alone, you will surely find other drummers. What was solitary can now become social; what you were sure was worthless to the world now suddenly may have a high value. Yet to manifest this potential, you must do what is perhaps the most challenging thing for a Pisces: think in a forward direction; exist outside your previous states of confinement; leave behind your prior role of victim of existence for your new role as benefactor.

Dear Friend and Reader:

The Saturn-Pluto square is not over; its story has really just begun. The feeling of every important issue coming to a crunch point is typical of this aspect, but so too is a wave of fear in the population that can only be addressed by individuals willing to take their minds to another level of reality.

Thankfully, slow-movers such as Saturn and Pluto go through their cycle of an aspect in about nine months, or three seasons (this counts for personal transits as well, though the actual range of influence of any aspect is much longer). It’s vital to make adjustments through gradually working out of the process, rather than getting wrenched into a new reality in one eruption. Yes, eruptions still happen, but they are usually part of a gradual pressure release — and the sooner we initiate our changes, the better. One problem with this theory is that change often involves others, and human nature resists. Therefore, the best you can do is work on your own resistance.

And here, we have some help on the way. In December, we have two other amazing aspects, perhaps even better deserving of the description focal point: first Jupiter makes an exact conjunction to Chiron, in late Aquarius. This has been developing all year (there was a peak in the Northern Hemisphere springtime), though the Dec. 7 conjunction offers a new kind of vision — making it easier to see the world as one world, easier to participate and best of all, giving you a way to apply the knowledge that you’ve worked so hard to gain in the community that surrounds you.

Then later in the month, Jupiter makes a conjunction to Neptune, which has the feeling of opening up another dimension of what you might call invisible light, just at the dark time of year when we need it the most. These experiences are worth all the more if we’re open to them and recognize the change in energy when it happens. This one is subtle — it may come in through dreams, altered-state experiences and as an unusual kind of compassion in heightened states with loved ones or groups of friends.

Remember why you’ve been doing all this self-improvement — or why you want to. In my view, it’s not really about being a better person; rather, that makes something else possible, which is the ability to participate with the world in a meaningful way. Chiron is excellent at grounding the wisdom and potential of Jupiter in tangible ways.

The end of the year ends on an exciting note, which will take some expert navigation skills. There are three events.

Mars stations retrograde at the winter solstice, which lasts till early March (and will be visible in the night sky; the thing that obviously looks like Mars really is). The theme of this particular Mars retrograde (which happens in Leo, opposite many Aquarius planets) is where we stand as individuals in relationship to the many people who surround us — in particular, how we deal with the expectations of groups.

Then Mercury stations retrograde Dec. 26, which ends Jan. 15. The Mercury retrograde effect will actually start vibrating around Dec. 9 when Mercury enters what’s called shadow phase.

Finally, there is an eclipse of the Moon in the sign Cancer on New Year’s Eve. My advice: plan as little as possible for the holidays. If you can, stay close to home and keep things simple and cheap. The focus is inward, toward your growth, your family and how exactly you’re processing all these changes.

Yours & truly,

In Friday’s edition, I made a reference to this guy Rick, who wrote this book Cosmos and Psyche. What I meant to say was that that Richard Tarnas took about 30 years to write a book called Cosmos and Psyche, which I quoted from. In this work, Rick (Pisces Sun, Aries Moon) takes the long view of astrology, tracing planetary patterns back for 2,000 years and looking at the cycles of history. Doing so, he has created one of the most innovative astrology books I’ve ever seen; really, there is nothing that even compares.

What Rick establishes is not merely that astrology, human awareness and the story of humanity follow visible patterns, and are basically intertwined as one living thing; he goes further and suggests that this effect points to the need for a new way of looking at the world.

If we pause for a moment and consider how remote an aspect between two distant planets should be from anything that happens on Earth, or anywhere, the fact that those planets trace a predictable (for lack of a better word) course of history is pretty incredible. What Rick is doing is showing us that astrology is, in fact, credible. He presents astrology as an everyday miracle that most people simply don’t notice; but more to the point, we need to take the step of seeing the implications of what is happening. In a word, that would be connection.

I think those of us who read Planet Waves see the implications: one of which is that we really are part of something larger than ourselves, and that something is part of us. What to do with this connection is the obvious question — and the Gestalt answer is, first, be aware that it exists.

Rick has been an excellent mentor and has at times stepped in as my personal philosophy professor. Several times recent years he has helped me clarify my thoughts on complex, difficult subjects, and took considerable time in the winter of 2007 to help me understand the concept of postmodernism, for my monograph on Eris, which is called Eris: Facets and Fragments of Self. Note that Rick does not use the newly discovered planets (he goes as far as Pluto), but was willing to lend me his mind to make sure that I had half a clue what I was talking about.

For those interested in seeing Rick speak, check the schedules of the big astrology conferences. There is a particularly cool one coming up in Boston in February — the NCGR conference — which I’ll be telling you more about and covering at the time it happens. I am privileged to be on the faculty as well, presenting on how astrologers can apply newly discovered planets to their consulting work.

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Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for December 2009 

By Eric Francis

Aries (March 20-April 19)
Every person who dares to step out of their conditioning or routine and do something original goes through a crisis of whether their ideas or work will be accepted by others. The prevailing reason why people don’t express themselves involves the expectation of a negative reaction; of judgment; of some kind of consequences. Yet anyone who is interested in breaking free of this needs to take the journey inward and figure out what inner obstructions are breathing life into those fears. It’s convenient that this inner journey is some of the best fodder for the creative process, which is really about an inner journey. Most of the meaningful art and literature you find is more like a postcard from a deep inner space rather than being a “creative product” of any kind. Mars turning retrograde in the most creative and dynamic angle of your solar chart is saying that it’s time to plunge deep into these personal fires. The key is not what you create — it is what you learn about yourself, and in the process, document or illustrate. There is something hidden you are looking for: something about which you may have no clue. Think of it as ‘hidden karma’ or think of it as the pearl of great price. Remember, a journey is involved: a journey that will last for months, and whose destination is not clear.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
You are in the midst of a stroke of good fortune regarding what we here in the Western world call ‘profession’. The question lurking beneath this theme is, what do you profess? Who do you say you are, and what is its relationship to what you do, or want to do? It’s time to align your theories, your goals and your actions. It would help if you aspire to more than you think you are capable of. It would help if you accept, with total willingness, the need to inconvenience yourself in order to attain your stated objectives. When I say help, I mean truly assist you in getting out of your previous pattern. For you, any truly satisfying professional experience must be humanitarian in nature, though I propose you take a wide view of this concept; not ‘doing good’, but rather acting as if to hold the world together. There is an essential, even urgent ingredient involved in breaking out of your individualism and being willing to participate, and openly seek the cooperation of others. This involves accepting the extent to which you have felt that you don’t fit in — and then daring to do something about it. That is a step on the way to something greater — what you might call locally aware global consciousness, and acting on that basis alone.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
Family financial arrangements may come up during the holiday season; I suggest you be prepared for the conversation, including remembering what I told you. Listen for the guilt trip and don’t fall for it. You risk being convinced you’re not an adult, i.e., that you have no power. You can minimize this with preventive strategies. First and most meaningful is to be absolutely on the level of your significant other. Agree what information you’re willing to reveal, and why you would reveal it. Anyone seeking information from you has something to hide, and is also looking for power. While I would not advocate being deceptive, it’s another matter entirely to have boundaries. Those boundaries might include outright avoiding anyone, anything or anyplace where you feel you have no business, or where your presence would detract from your own sense of integrity. I suggest you avoid alcohol entirely at any group gathering, no matter how tempting it may be as a sedative or painkiller; it is the elixir of deception, and in such a compromised state, you risk making significant errors in judgment. Stick close to the ones you truly love. One side benefit of all of this is that the sex promises to be incredible. Even if you don’t have a partner, think of someone you trust.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
This is a moment of extraordinary developments in your relationships; there is likely to be more than one that comes into prominence. I suggest you work with an expanded definition of relationship, for example, an emotionally moving encounter with anyone you care about. I suggest you remember your ethics and forget your expectations — particularly about what a relationship is, or what form it’s supposed to take. If you’ve been working to change your concepts in this area of your life, the opportunities you have now are likely to be the ones where you learn the basics, or rather, apply what you have worked so hard to learn. In endeavors of love, you want to encourage the feeling that you’re always at the beginning. Sincerity and simple directness will help you rise above any sense of overwhelm or the ‘power of the other’ that you may feel. The passion that you’re experiencing is coming from you, though others close to you may be a source of encouragement or inspiration: hot is hot, and the best thing you can do is submit to the beauty of that. While you’re doing this, be aware of everything that you’ve left behind: the history, the sense of identity, the crisis and turmoil; and if you feel yourself going in that direction, remind yourself that you have options, if you choose to explore them.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
You’re one of the most skilled at this elusive thing of being yourself, this thing that so many people struggle with, or are terrified of. That’s partly because you know the difference between your image and your substance. Your relationships the past four seasons have provided you with many opportunities to make that distinction — but you’re just getting cooking. The primary key to this is and has always been that you strive to use your relationships as an experience to get to know yourself. Second key is that you understand that ‘self’ is a spiritual concept and that as a direct consequence of this, ‘relationship’ is a spiritual concept — the most basic one there is. Both of these ideas now come out of the common sense background of your life and into full focus. This could mean a new level of understanding of what you’ve been exploring; it could mean that it’s time to return to some deeply held principles you’ve wandered from without intending to. Basically, the solution to any problem in a relationship, or any quest for realizing the potential of a relationship, or for creating a new experience, is to get to know yourself better. Use every experience as fodder for self-understanding and don’t be afraid to take that complex reflection you see in the universe as an image of yourself.

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
You spend an inordinate amount of time and energy dealing with your fear, and you must be getting sick of it. There are many processes available to work this out, though I suggest you move away from anything that resembles an analytical approach. That is only likely to make matters worse. So, too, will eliminating the alleged ‘sources’ of fear in your environment, or doing things to make yourself feel safer. Defensive measures will reinforce the idea that you have something to worry about. Seen through the lens of astrology, the issue looks existential in nature: you are dealing with fear based on fear of existing, and it then gets projected onto the many different facets of existence. That’s why it takes up residence so many places, so many ways. Considered another way, you may be caught in a fear of being yourself rooted in a deeper concern that you either don’t know who you are, questioning whether your deeper self exists. Suffice it to say, you exist and your existence goes all the way in, through an opening to a wider space of identity that we all share — and this is the space you are now searching for. You’ve tried to define yourself by comparing yourself to others, though I assure you: this is how we find conflict rather than common ground.

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Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
You would do well to ask what is the source of all the upheaval in your life. No you weren’t expecting it, though somehow you were expecting it. You’re in a challenging process of dealing with the past, that is, with a past so deep that you don’t remember it, because most of it didn’t happen to you. It happened to your ancestors, and then you inherited it. From one perspective, your astrology illustrates a sense that you are being swallowed in history, that is, overwhelmed by all that you cannot change. Looked at another way, there is an almost violent process of breaking open locked compartments of emotion, history, karma and attachment to the past. This is combined with a stern wakeup call informing you that you must come to terms with who you are and what you want out of life, in short order. Part of what you are struggling with is false pressure; this process, such as it can be defined, will take longer than you think, so therefore you can afford to go one step at a time. Yet the other part of what you’re addressing is your tendency to avoid certain matters and thus have them fester. This is likely to be one of those circumstances where things seem to get worse before they get better, but in fact every step is a step toward healing.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
You will need your best Scorpio radar to navigate your professional life for the next few months, though I can boil matters down to a few basic concepts. First, pay attention to the ways you work against your own cause. This could be by focusing on goals that are no longer valid, or basing decisions on values that you outgrew years ago. Second and more significant involves distinguishing your emotional trip from that of the people around you. Nobody would call you a conformist, but you’re often under pressure to ‘feel the way you’re supposed to feel’ rather than the way you actually feel; which is to say, be scared of what everyone else is scared of. This is your challenge in group situations: this pressure leads you to feel like you’re trapped, yet if you express how you actually feel, you’ll be excommunicated. Here you have a great place to start when it comes to understanding your family’s influence on you. On one level things seemed friendly and open, but you lived with a measure of tyranny that you’re just beginning to understand. What you learn about yourself over the next few weeks will take you a long way toward freedom. You are growing toward the understanding that what was previously defined as rebellion is not rebellion at all; it is simply being yourself. And this will change your life.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
Lately I’ve had so much to write that I’ve adopted a strategy of exploring my local region, working in as many towns and cafes as I can. This keeps me in slightly unfamiliar territory, constantly needing to notice, adapt, find the best place to work, and meet new people. This month’s positively incredible astrology involves your ruling planet Jupiter, and it takes place in your 3rd solar house — Aquarius. This is the house of your local environment. In the current version of the world that means anywhere within one hour’s driving distance. Have you ever had that experience of noticing some really interesting detail right outside your door, even though you’ve walked past it a thousand times? That’s the effect that is being multiplied radically in your local environment. Therefore, get outside. Get to as many group events as you can. Meet your neighbors and take your time listening to them. Notice what you notice; write and take pictures — both. Yes, I am assuming you have some concept you’re developing, some invention or some idea for how to improve the world. True, this does not include everyone, but it includes you. The key is to think not only larger but differently than you thought yesterday. Constant change needs to become your new comfort zone. Not (if you will notice) the mental rut the world seems so thrilled to be caught in.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
If you’re feeling slammed to the max, too busy to eat or too restless to sleep, you’re missing out on the best of the astrology that is shaping the world — and which is based on events involving your sign. This is not a “busy time” in your life — it’s one of the major turning points. I can say this with no knowledge of your natal astrology; it plays second fiddle to such a potent force as Saturn square Pluto. If you have a struggle, it’s being clear about your values. As my old friend Arthur Joseph Kushner used to say, you’re doing “some of the right thing.” The question is: are you reaching deep enough into your core and bringing out your deepest goals? You need to get yourself unbusy enough, and your mind loose enough, and out of crisis mode, to see the larger landscape of why you’re doing what you’re doing. The planets are offering clarity, but it’s of little worth unless you pause and are receptive. Deeply inlaid patterns are involved, and all of your astrology is focused on rewriting those patterns: in getting you out of automatic mode. We tend to use auto-mode as a defense against the packed quality of our lives, but actually it’s the most efficient way to waste your life, or to evade the risks involved in living from the heart.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
Jupiter is making big moves in your sign this month, and this means long-delayed opportunities coming to fruition. Back in April, I was talking about taking your ideas to the bank. I was also talking about how you probably filled two notebooks with ideas about your own life. Now, the cosmos is responding with clear points of contact. The first is Jupiter conjunct Chiron in your sign; followed by Jupiter conjunct Neptune in your sign. The first of these is about focusing your intentions, your abilities and your understanding, in one gesture. The keyword is alchemy. Consider this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If you feel yourself balking because you’re afraid, admit that to yourself, and then see if you can get to the root of the fear. That may be the principal benefit of the aspect. Second, the meeting with Neptune will make what is difficult seem easy; that is, you may have the sense of your commitment flowing through you. This does not happen every day; you are accustomed to far more in the way of mental resistance and rigidity. You may be inclined to relax and enjoy the moment of not feeling trapped in your mental patterns, but this is not designed as a vacation; it’s designed as a moment of sufficient freedom and compassion for yourself to be able to get out of your own way.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
“I went to a therapist once, because everything I think, it comes true. I can’t explain to you the feeling.” So says the Pisces waitress at the Greek diner where I’m writing this horoscope. Now, to turn this around from the passive role to the active one: rather than information coming to you, consciously envision what you want. Or as a surfer once said to me, “Look where you want to be.” The idea of a conscious visioning process sounds nice, but it has two liabilities. One, we don’t necessarily know the implications of what we’re trying to manifest, and therefore it’s better to make sure that it’s directly within one’s deepest values. Second, it takes you out of the passive/victim role and puts you into the role of co-creator of your life. This is not as appealing as it sounds. The reason most peoples’ lives are in the condition they are in is a direct result of resistance to take up any real measure of responsibility for what they create. This is in part a function of lack of awareness; if this is intentional or convenient, it’s called ignorance. As the Sun and Venus cross the powerful, energetic midheaven of your solar chart, it is essential that you take responsibility for awareness, and for making your decisions based on what you know. You have room for error — but not to pretend that your choices don’t matter.

Note to Readers: Apologies for the delay in this mailing. This morning we ran into an unexpected database issue that hung up our blogs, mailing scripts and other resources, which we’ve just resolved. Thanks for your patience. — Eric Francis

Dear Friend and Reader:

In a matter of hours, Saturn will begin its first visit to Libra since 1983. That happens Thursday in most time zones. How it worked back then was, Saturn entered Libra for the first time on Sept. 21, 1980, right before Ronald Reagan was supposedly elected. History has not properly recorded the stolen election of 1980 due to Reagan/Bush involvement with Iranian militants during the hostage crisis. On the day it entered Libra, Saturn was exactly opposite as-yet undiscovered Pholus, suggesting that the genie was indeed about to be let out of the bottle. By the time Saturn left Libra and entered Scorpio on Aug. 24, 1983, the Neocon movement was born and many other changes had been foisted on the American people and the world.

That was then; for some of us, this is now.

Once in Libra (as of early Thursday afternoon in the EDT zone), it will oppose the Aries Point and continue to approach perfect 90-degree angle (that is, a square) to Pluto in Capricorn. This is one of those “something happens” aspects (occurring in a series of three instances over the next nine months, though the first contact is the one to watch carefully). Nothing like this has happened since the challenging events of 2001-2002. At that time, Saturn opposed Pluto, precipitating events that changed the world and from which it has only begun to change again. The Saturn-Pluto cycle can be associated with fear, contraction and the fear of contraction, for example, the paranoia associated with influenza and warfare. This sounds more like 1918 than 2012. Fortunately, there are many other cycles in motion that provide a greater sense of innovation, strength and new ideas. As always, we will have a choice which path to tread, or to make a new one.

There are many dimensions to Saturn square Pluto. Considering the personal realm, we might encounter what we typically call private factors that compel us to rethink the structures of our personal lives, relationships and commitments. Some will be taking up this issue thoughtfully for the first time. What are the rules of the game that we play by in our relationships? Do we strive for balance and honesty? To what extent are the rules taught to us by our parents influencing us? Right now those are undergoing a revolution involving Pluto in Capricorn. We need to evaluate how our relationships are working or not working, and make the necessary adjustments. It is likely that circumstances will play a large role in this process, rather than doing things for their own sake.

Next, we may encounter some unusual turn of events in history, likely to manifest by December. The astrological epicenter is Nov. 15 — the exact day that the first of three squares takes place. News of the flu is a probable focal point here, though as we approach the one-year mark to the election of Obama, we’re likely to experience some kind of shakeup or shakedown.

Saturn square Pluto, with both planets exactly aspecting the Aries Point, is the most recent in a long sequence of events that ramp up the energy to a wild peak in June 2010. All of this astrology, focused on the Aries Point, has the energy imprint of what everyone has been calling 2012. We are embarking on an extended Sixties-like moment of high energy, adventurous challenges and unexpected historical twists; not, as some are suggesting, the “end of the world.” This is indeed the end of something, and the beginning of something else. Proceed with awareness; keep your lights on; hold that flame of ethos up high.

Yours & truly,

Glimpse at the Grandmother Land in High Falls, New York, where I was sketching out the 2010 annual edition on Sunday afternoon. Photo by Eric Francis.

Aries (March 20-April 19)
Keep your sense of humor; exercising that on a daily basis is more important than going to the gym. Humor is not just about getting a good laugh; it’s about taking a light enough approach to life so that you can see your options, and have a sense of flexibility. That said, the ability to laugh at something means one thing: you’re not afraid of it. You’re being summoned for the first time in years to make enormous changes, and you may indeed be nervous, and reluctant to move forward, lest you make an error from which you cannot recover. Remember that you’re not in this alone. The whole point is that a relationship is getting your attention, as is your sense of priorities for what to do with your life. Most people take these as separate issues. The planets in their courses are giving you little choice but to see these seemingly separate things as one topic: your existence. The meta-theme is maturity: having adult relationships and an adult sense of purpose. Finally, this is not something that might happen in the future; rather, it’s something that’s calling your name right now. You may feel like certain elements in this equation are being dictated to you, and you might be right. If you take a light touch, you will see how many options you really have within reach.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
Do you need to take your life more seriously, or less? The answer is, some of both. They’re not actually opposites. Most things that you think of as opposites aren’t really opposites. Most things that you think of as difficult aren’t really that difficult, but how you apply your mind to the situation is another story. What you usually think of as a mental approach involves getting snagged in your emotions. If you’re in an endless loop of any kind, you can be pretty sure that you’re trying to handle a situation that calls for an analytical approach in a way that avoids real analysis. The ‘more seriously’ piece of the original question involves the dismantling of your sense of being stuck in something you cannot see but can only feel. Then you can reassemble the pieces in a way that actually makes sense. The ‘less seriously’ approach involves letting go of your sense of fate, doom or looming imperatives. Clearly, you’re being summoned to take on a new level of responsibility, and then to take action. Other factors suggest that you examine the beliefs that have so far dictated the course of your life, most of the time below the level of full awareness. Awareness is light, and you’ll know it’s increasing because you will have a greater sense of your power of decision.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
There is such a thing as overfocus. It’s true that concentrating your mental energies is something you must do consciously, but you tend to compensate for this by laying all kinds of rules on yourself and then attempting to follow them like choreography. But the way dancers actually work would serve you much better. Just like a dance routine is composed of many smaller parts that are brought together, improving your mental process is about learning separate elements of something, and the gradual acquisition of discipline. Connect to the creative impulse at the core of what you’re doing; your true motivation. That will make the effort seem worthwhile. I suggest that you be leery of telling yourself you’re doing anything for altruistic or ‘service’ purposes, and instead, stay focused on the creative and business aspects of the work. The same would hold true in personal relationships, though there is an added caution here: beware of approaching anyone with a set of expectations about how he or she is supposed to feel, in advance of the experience actually happening. Indeed, be cautious about approaching anything with a set of expectations about how you are supposed to feel. At the moment, your life is about being in the moment, taking a risk on suspending your beliefs about the presumed outcome. Those beliefs are a burden that interferes with your true creative process.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
If you knew how guilty people felt about money, you would be shocked. That’s why they try to get rid of the stuff so fast. Then there’s debt. A colleague in the UK suggested that one of the places that sex energy is being drained faster than we can fill it up is credit card debt. Debt is like negative worth or lack of worth, and at the moment the world is overrun with it. For the next seven months, Mars is going to be taking up residence in your house of self-worth, self-esteem, your financial resources and ‘how you really feel about yourself’. With Leo in this solar house, you’re well suited to have a strong relationship with yourself and a balanced, mutually profitable relationship with others. The issue with Mars here is: how deep can you go, making peace with your existence, your values and your sense of belonging? How useful can you make that value, to yourself and to others? Do you have the guts to make the money you want to make? One of the forms that guilt about money takes is that money is considered ‘unspiritual’, and we’ve all met enough people who seem to demonstrate that quality quite effectively. Yet one theme here is learning that you and nobody else gives the things in your life the value that they have.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
One of your greatest talents is that you’ve learned how to doubt your doubts. That ability has proven useful, as so much of what you were uncertain about in recent months has either revealed itself to have little basis in truth, or has worked out better than you were planning. Even as your confidence and sense of purpose build, you’re still going to need that skill. You have some unusual discretion now, the ability to apply your power in a direct, focused way. At the same time you may run into a few more puddles of self-doubt, particularly about your involvement in a family situation that seems too complicated for your tastes. The key here is to not overreact, or to apply too much strength or force when a little will do just fine. Indeed, you can safely put off smaller actions, solutions or possibilities for resolving things in place of larger ones that come a little later in the month. Something that seems obvious today is still coming into focus. You don’t know details that you cannot quite see yet, but those details exist. Some of them will emerge when an event or circumstance represents the universe making a move; then suddenly it will be much more obvious what you need to do. You can safely wait for any strong emotions or confusion to fully clear before you say or do anything.

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
Understanding your obsessive tendencies will be the key to your freedom, and your enlightenment. First, I suggest you see them for what they are, and note the complications they bring into your life: for example, your struggle to let go emotionally, the difficulty you have forgiving yourself and therefore others. Obsession is a quality so inherent in your makeup that you take it for granted, but you also take for granted the damage that it does to the fragile fabric of your existence. Saturn’s presence in your sign the past few years has provided a compelling influence to question why you are the way you are, and why you feel the way you do. Yet another factor suggests that there is a hidden source of energy lurking deep within your makeup, there is a notion of who you are supposed to be. You are trying to live up to this idea, even though you’re not aware of it most of the time. I suggest you bring it out into the open. Perhaps make a scrapbook called The Perfect Me, and collect images and examples of what you are trying to be. This will teach you that your prototype is not really you; it is a concept that was installed into you, and modified over time. This is your moment to take control over the process. If you must strive for a certain ideal, it’s best that it be consciously chosen.

Stone slabs on the Grandmother Land left over from millstone mining operations of the 19th century.
Photo by Eric Francis.

Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
Self-awareness is the thing. THE thing, as in the VERY thing; the only thing and the thing to value above all else. Nobody is perfectly self-aware, so you can let yourself off the hook for that one. Yet there are those who value the stuff and those who really, truly don’t want to be bothered. Now is the time to bother; to take every step you have to take to hoist that flag and raise it high. Saturn beginning its 30-month journey across your birth sign is some of the best astrological news that has come your way in many years. You have faced challenging transits (as have we all), and while this one will indeed bring its challenges, they are the kind that are worth every bit of effort five times over. Saturn is here to bestow you with one of the most precious gifts of the postmodern age: maturity. Among the very most serious problems our society faces is the collective lack of maturity among its members. This not only leads to people being unable to take care of themselves and one another; it’s contributing to a significant failure of ethics and sense of awareness about the future. All of this and more are the gifts that Saturn is here to offer you; in due time, of course, but that time is close. And what is the cost? Self-awareness.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
You are accustomed to constantly having to adapt to your circumstances; it’s rare enough that your circumstances must adapt to you, but that’s precisely what is happening. You may be thinking, that would be a lot easier, were it only true. Here’s how to help make it true: The first thing you can do is to be clear about your intentions, mainly with yourself, then in any conversation or encounter where you need to state your agenda. Or perhaps the correct word would be understate. The key is to say things once and then allow the energy to align around your goals. Don’t expect anyone to read your mind, and don’t overstate your position. Next, maintain a continuous awareness of how things have been done in the past, including the distant past, and then make conscious, gradual modifications to those methods, never veering far from the wisdom of tradition. You are in the rare position of rewriting tradition, which is best done incrementally, with the awareness that evolutionary steps are what keep the intelligence of the past alive. I suggest you take any opportunity you can to actually feel the strength of your position. If you feel it, others will respond, even those you don’t actually talk to. Your mind reaches to other minds; but among those in your immediate environment, clarity is of the essence; it will be the vector of your true strength.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
Be aware which of the sweeping changes that flood through your life the next month exist in your consciousness, and which of them have a definite source in your environment. There is a valid theory of existence which says that everything the mind perceives begins and ends in the mind, and what we perceive is strictly a matter of interpretation. Let’s take this one two ways; there may be more. First, let’s assume that it’s not true. Let’s assume that there really are elements of existence that come from the outside; over which you have no control, except how you respond. Then let’s assume that the nature of everything you see and experience is strictly a matter of your own interpretation, based on your level of awareness, your prejudices, your personal history and your imagination. (A Course in Miracles sums this up in three words: ‘projection makes perception’.) In the end, the difference between the two viewpoints may be subtle, but I would ask: which gives you a greater sense of influence over your life? Which puts you in the more influential position of co-creator of your existence? Bear in mind, the current dominant philosophy of existence is that only externals matter, and that everyone except the supposedly famous and powerful are victims of circumstance. That is not an option.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
Saturn has moved across the midheaven angle of your solar chart, and later this month will make a high-powered aspect to Pluto in your birth sign. This is your moment to wake up to who you’re supposed to be in the future. Everyone has an image of that, but who exactly comes along and tells you when the time has arrived? Your astrologer, that’s who. In the past, you’ve had transits that have called on you to reach for higher goals. You’ve had transits that have focused your sense of identity. But you have never had a transit like this, and the truth is, neither have most of the people you see walking around on the street. If this astrology is working right, that is to say, if you are responding with awareness to the conditioning forces that surround you, you will be feeling a mix of certain key elements: one of them being a sense of responsibility. Another will be the urgency to rise to the occasion; that is, to be the very best person you can be, under the circumstances of your life and your professional situation. This is a calling to leadership, but the kind that requires you to contemplate every decision carefully, and to make sure that each step you take comes with an actual change in your psyche; actual growth, no matter how challenging that may be.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
Humans learn a bit in school, but mainly we learn from example. One of the most useful methods of example is mentorship. I suggest you take this two ways. One is by working with people far more experienced than yourself, setting aside any notion that you ‘know more’ than they do. This will give you sufficient freedom from your own preconceived ideas to be able to adapt new approaches to what you do. The second is teaching someone younger or less experienced than yourself the basic professional methods that you are developing. You will know you’re doing this right when you are the one learning from your student. It’s not that your student ‘knows more’ than you; it’s that you know enough to learn from those both more and less experienced than you. Advancing your education is a key theme of the next two years of Saturn in Libra, and you’re the one who is in charge of the process. Part of the story involves an exploration of why ethics matters more than anything. There is an emphasis on learning fairness, as a prerequisite of having the additional authority that is going to be given to you after you pass what amounts to a series of personal tests of your integrity. The first of these challenges begins now; and for the moment, the whole process is on the honor system.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
During the past year, you’ve grown increasingly aware of how important your friends are to you. The sense of having old, established friends is vital to your sanity, your sense of personal security, and your ability to get things done. It’s been worth every bit of the effort you’ve put into the relationships. From among those friends, it’s now time to select certain ones as partners in an important series of ventures in both your personal and professional endeavors. Looked at one way, these people will be self-selecting: they’re ones who stick around, who demonstrate their love and loyalty, and most of all, who demonstrate their commitment to growth. Once you apply those criteria, you’re not going to be left with a lot of candidates, but you will have just enough; and certain people you can depend on are about to come out of the woodwork. The feeling you’re looking for in partners is the sense of needing to collectively rise to a challenge; individuals who are moved to action by the times we are living in. Emphasize your encounters with people who are responding in the present, rather than being stuck in the past. Keep your mind focused on this and you will remind yourself over and over to keep your focus in the moment, where it belongs, and where you access your true power over your destiny.

Image from MESSENGER’s second Mercury flyby. Photo: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Dear Friend and Client:

Events of September represent a culmination of the astrology of the past 12 months, and if we look as far as late October, we see a culmination of developments of the past two years. For the next few weeks we get to ask, if not answer, the question: what have I been doing with all this time? Implied here is the question of whether you’ve been wasting your precious days, and seeking some sign from the cosmos that you have not. The astrology involves an extra-fancy Mercury retrograde that runs from Sept. 6 through Sept. 29. I say fancy because it does three unusual things: one is that it dances between Virgo and Libra and back again, which represents a balance between the mental level (analysis, Virgo) and the appreciation of beauty (aesthetics, Libra). Next, we have Mercury passing through the long-standing opposition between Saturn and Uranus. This rare aspect was exact first on Election Day 2008 and takes about two years to work out. Mercury playing in the realm of Saturn-Uranus will show us how deep thought, respect for the past, and provocative breakthroughs can work together. Finally, Mercury in Libra makes a series of squares to Pluto in Capricorn, warming up the territory for when Saturn gets to that same place later in the season. Focusing the actual evolution of our minds, for some, this will represent pain that serves as a wake-up call. For others, this series of Mercury/Pluto aspects will remind us that what keeps us alive from day to day is the awareness that we exist. By association we are reminded that existence is meaningful — no matter how many forces in society are working around the clock to make it seem otherwise.

Yours & truly,

Aries (March 20-April 19)
You must be strategic in both personal and business plans. Understand your short-range goal, such as where you want to be by the end of the year, and set your agenda accordingly. Do so in the context of your long-range goal, which in the current speed of the world would take you through about December 2011. This may seem like a lot of planning for an Aries. Accept this fact. The influences that are conditioning your life for the foreseeable future are calling upon you to rise to a new level of awareness, competence and deftness that may indeed be unfamiliar to you. Developments are in the offing that you cannot see or imagine, which you are in the position of having to be prepared for. In addition to maintaining a conscious plan or agenda, subject to revision, that preparation might include three basic steps. One, stay caught up on your work. Two, maintain healthy working relationships. Three, strive for efficiency. You need your energy to use wisely, not to waste. Remember that energy comes in the form of ideas, of money, and of many resources that are not exactly money but which may be far more valuable. Your most important resource is your wellbeing. Coming in a close second are the people in your life. Treat them well.

Taurus (April 19- May 20)
I don’t blame most people for not pursuing their creative talents as a way to make a living. Yes, our parents usually tried to talk us out of them. It’s also true that developing talent takes a lot of work, and there are absolutely no guaranteed rewards. The rewards for getting an MBA or passing the bar are not guaranteed either, but at least there are people waiting with jobs for those skillsets. Creativity is a total gamble, and taking that risk is associated with plenty of justifiable fear. The only thing is, sometimes one’s sense of necessity far exceeds that fear. The Taurus mind may be the most obsessive of the entire zodiac, and you’ve certainly been ruminating on this issue for a long time, particularly the past month, which caps off nearly two years of simply knowing you must do something better; something more worthwhile with your time and with your talent. I am pretty sure you even know exactly what that thing is and how rewarding it will be. I am not here to tell you that you will get there; but I am here to tell you that you can get there if you work with a conscious plan, if you strive to understand the nature of your own resistance (which is mostly fear) and most of all, if you want to.

Gemini (May 20- June 21)
Some people take their family and its issues for granted. Some people work these issues out in therapy for years, and get nowhere. Others set their intentions, trust themselves and blaze through the past and all its people and themes, and go on not only to lives of achievement but also lives of emotional contentment. I don’t think that one of these has to come at the expense of the other. I would propose a viewpoint where the two support one another mutually. After the equinox as the new season opens up, you’re going to feel a much more palpable sense of calling. There is something in these charts about doing what you need to do, and being willing to do the personal work to get you there. You seem to have started this work, but now you know there is really a much longer agenda than you were originally planning for. This month seems to be wrought with all kinds of loops and minor emotional torments; and one or two truly significant ones. Do the work you need to do. Get the help you need, from people who understand these kinds of issues. This will involve understanding why you might refuse to seek assistance, be it practical or directed at inner healing, and not letting that be an excuse.

Cancer (June 21- July 22)
Reckon with how powerful ideas are; with how much work they save; and with how good they are. You may not think so, at least not right now. You may not be the best judge. You seem to be working out a complex equation, for which there is no easy solution. It may involve a business, your profession, or something in your community. The issue actually surfaced a year or two ago, but you didn’t necessarily give it a name, or set a goal associated with resolving it. I can assure you that your mind has been working to develop not just solutions but something original through most of this time. That effort is now coming to fruition, though it seems to be preceded by a moment of uncertainty. There are true gems of thought amidst any mental turbulence, overwork or doubt that you may be feeling. You can therefore afford to relax, on several accounts. Trust that you’re making progress; trust that the answers will come to you as you need them. Be particularly sensitive to ideas that seem too subtle to be effective, or so strategically clever that you can’t believe they would work. There are some very good ideas that are in the ‘tried and true’ category. The touch of genius may come as applying an old idea in an original way. It often does.

Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
Your particular genius with money involves caring about the value of things: and by things, I mean everything, from effort to love to actual cash; from a concept to your value on serving others. You are — or have the potential — to be good with money because you are someone who puts thought into your life and who recognizes that everything and everyone has value. Therefore you survive in tough times, you thrive in good times and you have the potential to do quite nicely all the time. Remember that, and tell yourself a few times a day. We’re all participants in a culture that is sick with greed; you take part as a matter of necessity and in truth as a revolutionary. Events this month and into next month give you a series of opportunities to outsmart some pretty big players in some complex games. They may be the bank, they may be your boss, they may be the stilted values of your parents, or your actual parents. More to the point, you have the ability to put whatever you encounter to work for you, though you have to be clever about it. The invention of a lever makes a simple metaphor. It’s hard to roll a boulder; it’s easy to put a lever underneath it and have that do most of the work.

Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
For a while, no decision may feel like the right decision, and no set of facts may seem to fit the scenario you are in. I suggest you stop looking for any ultimate explanations or solution sets and accept that currently everything is a variable. True, there are X-factors all over the place most of the time, but the current aspects include Mercury retrograding in and out of your birth sign, which will accentuate the effect. The more room you make for things to change not just around you but within you, the more you will be able to profit from those developments. This being said, an observation or conclusion you reached in late August will provide a reference point for what you know to be true, or at least what you are assuming to be true. By a reference point I mean a basic set of facts on which you based a series of derivative ideas or assumptions. I suggest going back to what you were thinking and doing during that timeframe (around Aug. 15 through 18) and considering the various people and situations that you were involved with. There is a phase of history that you want to avoid repeating; recognizing that, knowing and understanding the recent past and what motivated you then will be your first and best ally.

Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
You often struggle with being influenced by others when you make up your mind, but you’re currently involved in a decision-making process that is pretty much airtight. Those around you might feel a certain distance or alienation as you work through some deep material. I suggest you not chalk it up to Libran indecision if you can’t resolve the matter quickly; this one deserves true contemplation. You’re attempting to get clear on something that may go back decades and is indeed part of your family’s legacy. It’s truly strange when we discover that something that occurred years before our own birth actually affects the way we see and think about ourselves generations later. I would propose that nearly all of our self-concept is the product of a past so distant that we don’t even know when it dates to, much less with whom it originates. Part of the reason why we don’t attempt to work these things out involves the feeling that the past is intractable; that we cannot do anything about it. What you are discovering is that the most meaningful thing you can change is your interpretation of what it means to you, and therefore revise how it is shaping your idea of who you are today. The distant past is always an influence; whether it runs our lives is another story.

Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
If you shift your awareness regarding a professional question into long-term mode, you’ll have the ability to take advantage of events later in the year and early next year. If you keep your nose to the grindstone and don’t look up, this will not be as easy. I am suggesting specifically that you think ahead and stack the deck in your own favor. Moreover, consider that you recognize that in any situation involving your reputation or the focusing of personal power, there is almost always a setup involved. Very little ‘just happens’. Yes, providence can intervene, and we do seem to be in a moment when pushing pushes us backwards. Clearly, this is a risk. You need to use your mind, and you need to think in more than one dimension. I’m suggesting something gentle, which is maintaining awareness of the diversity of factors necessary in attaining success. Closer to the point is having a clear enough definition of success that you know it when you see it. The angle you are working for is quite specific in nature; not the success of a new car, but rather of knowing that you have your role to play in the cosmic drama, and that you are playing it well.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
Progress has been slow in coming this year, while many other factors seem to be moving out of your control. Certain activities that have gone well on one level may have produced less than satisfactory results. I suggest you keep your faith. You are now in what I would call the ‘finishing phase’ of a long process of self-reinvention. You are a person of the world, so your self-reinventions need to be something other than purely introspective or oriented on growth; there has been plenty of that, anyway. What you want are results. You’re in a phase now requiring your undivided attention if you’re going to collect the gains on so much effort. This will call on you to focus on your single most important objective; that, in turn, will call on you to figure out what that objective is. This may seem strange — putting the goal at the end of what may indeed have been a two-year process. Think of it this way. What you’ve mainly created for yourself are viable options. This month you will get to test them out one at a time, and by the time Mercury stations direct on the 29th, make a choice that will not feel like a sacrifice. More accurately, it will feel like a discovery.

Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
Most breakthroughs are mental or emotional. They don’t actually involve things in the physical world, and when they do, the change is in the mind. Some of these changes come over many long evolutions; others come with what seems like a quantum jump to another dimension. You are carrying plenty of tension right now; so is the world. There will be times this month you feel like you’re at a snapping point, like you’re carrying the weight of the world or like a decision you need to make has much greater consequences than anyone knows. It is true that so much that you’ve been working toward has the opportunity to come to fruition in the coming weeks, but it’s an odd-feeling kind of progress, and it’s likely to be preceded by a measure of real discomfort. The key will be to persist, but to persist gently. At times you will need to know when to apply less pressure to the situation or to count a reversal as a kind of progress because of the opportunities it reveals. The breakthroughs over the next few weeks will arrive mainly in the form of what you learn from challenging circumstances but at what turn out to be opportune times.

Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
Once again, the two planets that are involved with your sign are approaching to an exact opposition. This would be the Saturn-Uranus opposition, which was exact for the first time on Election Day 2008. Most interpretations you read will describe this as a clash of energies; to me it’s about a synthesis. Here’s my take. You’re an innovative person, and you constantly run into resistance from people who want life to be like it was yesterday. Of course, were you not so focused on progress you would not encounter this, but that’s not your karma. The problem is that it rarely comes down to a real conversation about what was, what is, and what can be. Now the sky comes into focus where just such a conversation can happen. It may not be easy and you’re going to need to keep your head. Plan for nothing to be resolved for a while, but also prepare for all the necessary facts and viewpoints to come out. You will learn a lot, and discover more than once how people whose views differ from yours can make your own position stronger.

Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
Aspects that have been unfolding for nearly a year involving your sign and your opposite sign, Virgo, are particularly personal, and that may mean that the stress has been manifesting as an emotional condition. You have been a rolling stone; you want progress and you want it now. If you want progress, I suggest you be content, at least, with change. One implies the other; improvement implies movement. Through this process you’ve encountered one person after the next who seems intractable. It’s not that they desire stability as much as they seem to be making a case for being stuck. You are mainly what they are using to help themselves get unstuck: and you’ve learned to watch where your energy goes and why, because part of being stuck is that you get to skim off of the energy of everyone else while taking exceedingly few chances. I suggest you think of this as a dialog rather than as a power struggle. Certain individuals in your life who have been obsessed with the past are about to figure out that this is serving nobody. You, in turn, will figure out that it really does pay to give the people you love the benefit of the doubt.

BY ERIC FRANCIS

Aquarius. Photo by Eric Francis.

A year of incredible activity in the sign Aquarius reaches another peak with an eclipse of the Moon on Aug. 5. Think of the Moon as a veil and an eclipse as drawing back the veil. When this happens, a small, meaningful planet called Nessus is revealed. Nessus orbits our Sun and was discovered in 1993. It’s in the Centaur group of planets, the third in that group after Chiron. We live with this energy every day, but like most of the facets of astrology we don’t give it a name in real life. In Aquarius, Nessus is about the tendency of people to hold one another to harsh codes of social conduct; to brutally enforce rules on one another; and to outcast anyone who dares to show a little individuality — this, regardless of the alleged belief systems of the group. Powerful influences are inviting us to step out of our narrow boxes of limited self-concept, which we tend to live in like crates that define our whole reality. There are people who can individuate in the face of harsh adversity from their peers, but not everyone is strong enough. You may not be strong enough to do it without support, and the planets in their courses are saying: we’re all in this together. Give to the world what you need the most. We will all be better for it.

Aries (March 20-April 19)
In our society we don’t generally see the ambivalence we have around the concept of ‘friend’. We accept that friends might betray us, hold us down, con us out of our values and enforce the laws and expectations of our parents. The past year of your life has had, as a dominant theme, redefining the concept of friendship. Events this month invite you to look directly at the shadow side of that concept, and give it a name. Look at the ways that codes of conduct are enforced; expectations are placed on people; and the harsh punishment for daring to exceed the limits that others place on themselves and try to enforce on everyone else. The thing you may fear the most, being an outcast, is at the moment your most potent ally. Before we can actually accept ourselves and be accepted, we have to confront this one. Think of the alternative: you spend your life, in ways direct, subtle or both, avoiding any possible situation where you might potentially face rejection. And rejection for what? For being who you are. The result of this would be a life of pretending to be someone else. It worked for a while, but it’s not going to work any more.

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Taurus (April 19- May 20)
I don’t think we can ever question the theme of self-esteem carefully enough. First a simple definition: self-esteem is how we feel about ourselves that influences every other aspect of existence, what we do, how we feel, how we relate to others and how we judge our worth. Putting it mildly, this has been a theme for you lately: specifically that you seem to have two entirely different opinions of yourself, that you try to maintain simultaneously. What tends to happen is that you alternate from one value system to the other; one judgment or evaluation to the other. Lately the split grows worse if you aim your ambition upward; in a sense this inner division is revealed when you aspire to something better than you currently have. This does make sense; if you want something better you’re going to tend to evaluate whether you deserve it or not. I’m here to tell you that one side of the story is not inherently true. It was taught to you initially, and you continue to teach it to yourself: this, through any experience of guilt. If you experience guilt, you can be sure of one thing — you are responding to someone’s early conditioning. You are playing back an old tape that says you’re powerless; and it will help if you recognize this fact and see if you can determine who put it into you. Then, take it as a question rather than as a true statement.

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Gemini (May 20- June 21)
I’m sure things have gone weird more than once with Mars slowly working its way across your birth sign. Odd bouts of panic, conflict, doubt, guilt and confusion are all potential developments. This is the necessary result of finally reaching for your will, your intention, your voice. If, every time you reach, you get psychic blowback, that’s not a very good advertisement for continuing the endeavor; I am here to offer you some encouragement. I won’t call the blowback a natural result, but it is a consequence of purging unnatural, self-defeating ideas. It is these concepts that exist at the core of your extremely restless inner dialog, which appears to be coming to a peak in these very days. You may rightly wonder how you can think in the much greater concepts that attract you if you cannot settle a simple score within yourself. This is the issue you need to put to your advantage. It’s not that you resolve this and then move on to a perfect life; it’s that you work with your conflict and your tendency, subtle or not, toward cruelty to yourself, and explore this with the full awareness of your mind and body. Asserting your will is not an option. If this has consequences, they must be dealt with directly, and in this case, directly means constructively. Here is a clue: you are much bigger than any conflict you perceive.

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Cancer (June 21- July 22)
Part of how you measure your value is your value to your community. Perhaps you’ve never made this a conscious process; it may be lurking in a back room. It may be hiding behind other ideas about relationships, which tend to be dominated by the one-to-one special relationship; those arrangements rarely make room for a greater level of commitment or responsibility in life. Significant sharing is presumed to end with the significant other; if there is not a significant other, the search for one generally consumes any energy not required to acquire food, rent and getting around. The time has arrived to think bigger: to see yourself as part of something larger than you are, but as an essential part. This theme has been growing in intensity for many months. You’ve experimented with methods for going forward; now it’s time to investigate what is blocking your way. Consider your most intimate relationships carefully. Is the person you must be in those relationships a big enough person to contribute to the world around you? Is that value shared and supported as part of the culture of the relationship? And if it’s not, why not? Relationships are based on two things: shared values, and trust; which in turn facilitate an honest exchange. Settle for nothing less.

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Leo (July 22- Aug. 23)
Maintain your focus clear through the end of your current agenda. Don’t let yourself be distracted, even if you get the feeling you have to be overly narrow in your approach. Set aside everything unnecessary, or that does not support this single goal that you know is dear to you. The piece where actual progress occurs happens after you feel and confront the resistance to the very progress you are trying to make. That resistance may feel like doubt; it may feel like you’re making the wrong sacrifice of certain other goals; you may be questioning whether you’re approaching your objective with your usual positive attitude. There is a double ending here: by practicing a kind of over-focus (that by the way is a therapy term used to describe people who take things a bit too seriously) you pass through a narrow mental opening and come out in a different place with a new goal. I suggest you be both sensitive to this transition, and welcoming when it occurs. This is a fairly typical step in any creative process. The time spent on the prior activity is never wasted; the information you are gaining right now is precious; the skills you are acquiring will reincarnate with you from goal to goal. Keep your focus — whether what you’re planning seems like it will take days, months or years.

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Virgo (Aug. 23- Sep. 22)
You are entering the final push in a process that has taken you a couple of years to set into motion; and to establish the validity of, in your own mind. You may need to check your method and infuse a new idea or two. In fact, by the time you’ve already moved on into the future, you will have already done so: that is what constitutes moving on. As usual, the idea or seed of action can come from you, or it can come from circumstances around you. You currently are in possession of the idea. This could even be called original. The meaningful thing is that it comes from inside you. I cannot overemphasize how important this is, particularly since you are surrounded by so many people who are extremely powerful in their innovations, concepts and creative talent. The value is to your self-respect, which is your key to any future collaboration. You seek stability, but that is not really the answer; what I suggest you seek is a sense of movement and innovation that is self-activating and has sufficient momentum to match the energy of what enters your awareness from outside. You’ve yet to learn that you are as brilliant as the most talented and ingenious people in your life. Events this month may not prove the point, but they will give you sufficient clues to do so yourself.

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Libra (Sep. 22 – Oct. 23)
The privilege of exploring a creative passion is countered by the necessary risk that you will encounter shadow psychic material. This is the vital difference between creative process and a hobby. Creative process turns shadow material to fuel; art would go nowhere without pain, doubt and deep self-reflection. The reward is that you get to process these emotions, on the spot, into beauty. This is the part not to doubt, and the part where trust is essential: stick to the process and let yourself be free of any concerns about the potential results. From the look of your charts, you won’t be able to see those results for what they are for a while: they will slowly pour out over the next two to four seasons. The simple key to this process is embracing points of darkness rather than avoiding them. By doing this you will see what they are made of; but the most significant change that will occur is the fixed mental patterns that are the single most significant block to your free expression of your ideas, your sexuality and in truth your sense of personal identity. Exploration of the kind I’ve described above is designed to do one thing, mainly, which is to teach you the kind of spontaneity without which true self-expression verges on impossible.

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Scorpio (Oct. 23- Nov. 22)
Does it have to be that in every arrangement someone comes out ahead and someone comes out behind? Yes, if you consider no other possibilities; or if you’re content to live in a world where this is the first and only rule. You see alternatives to this, but I suggest you consider the reasons why they are less than appealing. Look carefully at the deeply rooted notion of competition, and consider why you retain any vestige of it in your heart. One possible reason for it is a sense of entitlement. I recognize that in a capitalist society we are all seemingly inbred with this attribute, but it’s a good idea to take out that part and put it on the workbench. Is it really sustainable? Does it even work? Then there is the way that competing makes us feel alive; but this is a substitute for actual achievement, which tends to stand apart from all competition. Finally there is personal insecurity, which we are taught to compensate for by figuring out how to tell ourselves we’re better than others. This does little other than reinforce the belief that we are somehow less; that we are undeserving of the most basic attributes of existence rather than ‘being the best’. You don’t need to be the best: you need to be you, which fortunately you already are.

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Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 22)
Part of why you’ve been living in a state of potential more so than a place of accomplishment involves seeing the larger implications of your ideas, your efforts and your dedication to a healing process. The most noticeable results will come during the next year or so, but you’ve now got a chance to take a concrete step toward something you recognize. You need to think about whatever it is you’re doing as having implications further from home. It’s not a stretch to say there is clearly an international angle that opens up later this month; or it will open if you knock on that particular door. This may involve a specific person, location or point of interaction, rather than a general idea or approach, though in any event something that opens up around the time of the Leo New Moon on the 20th. It may seem odd or overly restricted at first; your idea may seem to be reduced down to a fragment of its original form. Think of it as a formula: reduce before you enlarge. Get a small part of the process right before you move onto reproducing it in a larger way. Keep track of your seed idea, and remind yourself again and again what it is. An idea is something at the essence of one’s motivation or effort; as you experiment you will have different notions of what it is. They all have something in common.

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Capricorn (Dec. 22- Jan. 20)
You have returned as far back to the beginning of a process as you can; you are poised at a point of origin. Stay there for a while; look for the thought that got you started, the idea that reminded you that you could renew your entire existence, and focus on that idea. Notice your impulse to evolve and grow, notice your willingness to change and more than anything feel the passion that is swimming at the center of all of this. As you go through this, be mindful of the values that guide your life from day to day, in ordinary consciousness. Be aware of your routines; the ways you respond to yourself and to others; notice how you feel every time you handle money. Notice what you are and are not willing to invest in, particularly as relates to yourself. You are dealing with two distinct layers of who you are. One is deep at your core. The second involves a layer where everything is or was imposed on you. Your core layer is far stronger, more informative and more likely to get results, but you have to work with the process of learning and teaching in the mundane sense, because so much of your energy is trapped in what I will call unquestioned values. You tend to assume things must be a certain way, in denial of another property, something so much more potent and authentic: but so much more is possible.

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Aquarius (Jan. 20- Feb. 19)
Continue to inventory what has shaped your psyche and how it continues to do so. Many people go through existence as if how they are stands without a cause. Cause and effect are inseparable, and if you want to understand the effect, look for its origin. It will become so obvious at a certain point soon that if you’re not seeing it you really don’t want to. The issue may be connecting a particular result with a specific root source; the link will be made by your intuition and verified by your intellect. One reason you want to observe and heal this issue is that you feel so much more potential within yourself than you are able to access. You feel the grandeur of your mind, and then it seems like something intractable is in the way. It’s not intractable as long as you recognize that you don’t need to become anything different than you are; rather you need to identify and come to terms with what is not you, and the effects that it’s having on you. The karma it would be most helpful to witness is how your own thought patterns create, reinforce and in a sense blind you to anything besides a certain kind of negativity that is entirely, as in 100%, unnecessary. This same cosmic property can inform you that your creative and loving thoughts can have just as powerful results; but the results are far happier.

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Pisces (Feb. 19- March 20)
Wouldn’t it be beautiful to live in a world without betrayal? You can, but you have to hack into the code of a psychological pattern that’s in a blind spot of your awareness. You don’t need to take this personally: it’s a pattern in society, though it would appear that this thing we call society has a diversity of microcosms that reduce down to groups, families, couples and the people who interact with them, and finally the shape of an individual’s mind. If you believe the research of a therapy process called Internal Family Systems, our minds represent a model of our family of origin, which is based on a model of society; we carry around the whole thing. It may sound like a lot of responsibility, but the beauty of this condition is that we have access to the deepest levels of programming if we are willing to see the inner-outer connections, and go in and make the adjustments. You can afford to be daring now. You can take the risk of leading with love and seeing what happens when you allow yourself to feel in an expressive way. Your love is bigger than anything that it might encounter; it’s more powerful than any form of culturally engrained negativity, and can handle any potential other than love. Trusting this is your bridge to freedom. The Planet Waves Midyear Horoscope Edition by Eric Francis is ready. Here is product and signup information. And we’ve reduced the price of Next World Stories, which is now just $24.95 for all 12 signs.

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