Dear Friend and Reader:

It’s that time of year again. As Mars wends its way back toward Scorpio, Mercury this week also turns retrograde. The station takes place on Thursday at 1:20 pm EDT (17:19:39 UTC).

The chart for this event is remarkable, and highlights a lot of points — including Mars, which contacts Eris all but precisely in a sesquiquadrate, or 135-degree angle. Also noteworthy is Vesta, which has accompanied Mercury on its passage through Taurus and is just a degree and a half away at the moment in question. This describes many forces of nature and of psyche acting on one another simultaneously. Friction has a way of making fire.

Don’t forget to leave yourself a little extra time.

Each Mercury station has its own nuances, but the themes tend to be broadly similar.

We know enough about Mercury retrograde, especially the first few days before, to remind you to use your head, slow down, and be alert and aware. This will save you time and trouble. Also, make backups, perform extra checks and avoid signing contracts.

Eric also suggests you leave yourself extra time to get places. Calculate accurately, including things like parking; and then add on 15 minutes as a buffer. That’s helpful any week, though it will save you inconvenience this week; and the Taurus influence will make itself felt most pleasantly if you make sure there is some ‘you time’ factored in.

Approached with calm and caution, Mercury retrogrades can be a restful and gentle moment. This is especially the case in mellow Taurus, with the mood already set by Mars. Plan, deliberate, think before you speak or act. Then, hopefully, all you’ll need to do is relax and enjoy.

Your weekly horoscopes are below.

With love,

Amy Elliott

Planet Waves Client Services

PS — Thanks to Eric for helping me write this week’s piece and making sense of the astrology. Here is a thoroughly informative article from the PW archives on Mercury retrograde.

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Religion is the contract that you have with your existence. It’s your understanding of why you’re here and the code that you live by. Rare activity in your solar chart is describing you in a process of questioning your old agreement and striving to make a new one. To do this well, you must question all of your beliefs, including ones that you may not have known you had. Be bold and brave about this, and trust that you’re up to the task. People tend to hold on to beliefs that don’t work for them, only because they’re afraid that their life would be unstable if they did the very thing that you’re doing. Yet for you this is not an option; you’re growing and evolving far beyond what your previous beliefs could contain. Here is the thing: you’re actually going deeper than that, deeper than mere opinions or hunches about what is true. You have begun a journey that’s no less than a search for your deepest personal truth.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You have extra support right now from what we might describe as ‘unseen forces’. The way to activate that help is to extend cooperation any time you can, and to open up to receiving it every time you need it. Support is a kind of exchange; and for that to work, it’s essential both to offer and to accept. The thing is that you will have no less for offering, and others will have no less when you receive their gifts. There is an abundance of whatever you need, and it’s likely to be somewhere accessible in your environment already. This applies to the most ordinary material objects — look around your house if you need something – and to emotional support, love and friendship. The mantra ‘I have what I need’ will serve you well. Yet you can trust that this effect is percolating deep beneath what is visible and obvious. Keep your heart and your mind open, and let the good karma circulate in your world.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Listen to yourself. Listen to the words that you say, and how you say them. Sense the feeling beneath your words, which can sometimes conflict with what language alone implies. Imagine for a few days that everything you say, you are saying to yourself. Everything you write, you’re writing to yourself. Everything you perceive is some element of your own mind. When you do that, how does your approach change? Are you sterner or gentler toward others? Are you more or less sincere? It’s not a stretch to say that everything you express has you as its first and ultimate recipient; and that, in a sense, everyone else is coming along for the ride. It’s just so easy to forget this, and it can be a profound experience to remember.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You can do wonders healing your self-image by working with photos. I don’t mean contributing to the endless stream of selfies, but rather with conscious and intentional self-portraits that you study and grow with. I suggest you pay special attention to photos where you’re inclined to judge some aspect of your appearance or of your personality, and make peace with what you don’t like. This will take you deeper than the seemingly surface level of appearance and personality. There’s actual material for spiritual growth and self-acceptance right under the surface. Pay attention to whatever you have seemed to ‘always’ judge about yourself, or the thing you think you can never get over. Right behind those negative feelings is where you’ll find the healing power you seek, not hiding so much as waiting for you to reach in and make contact with yourself. Right with that is the discovery that you do indeed have the gift of self-healing.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — At present, your solar chart describes how your life is set up to accomplish some rather large goals in some unusual ways. You are under no obligation to follow convention, as long as you don’t piss off your higher-ups or people to whom you’re responsible. This leaves you plenty of room for unconventional approaches to leadership, to meeting your goals and to succeeding in some special way. Focus on the task at hand and ask yourself what you’re really trying to do. See if you can strip away any need you have for maintaining an appearance. That kind of goal will typically lead you to some pointless places. However, remember that you’re being observed by others who may hold some power and influence in your life; and you want to do things well, and maintain a policy of genuine honesty. You will save yourself precious time and effort. Better still, you will thrive on any demonstration that the truth is your greatest source of strength.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Mercury is the planet associated with your sign. Later this week, it turns to retrograde motion, which typically happens three times a year for three weeks. For you this is an introspective moment. Focus your life on your most genuine priorities. Everyone on this planet spends plenty of time pursuing goals that turn out to be meaningless, and following rules they had no part in setting. Your main task in the few weeks ahead is to ask yourself: what is really true for you? What gives your life meaning? And, perhaps most significantly, what is your long-range goal? You don’t need to answer that as much as you will benefit from extending your present life five or 10 years into the future. Imagine the work you do, the people you’re associating with, and the things that you think are important today. If you were to write a story about each of them, and extend that forward, where would each of those scenarios be? If anything seems like a dead-end, or if the story doesn’t seem to write itself naturally, you might consider other investments of your time and emotions.

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Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — You may have the feeling of others not making sense to you all of a sudden — even people who made perfect sense yesterday. But who is actually changing their perspective? It would seem that you are asking some deep questions, going places philosophically where your friends and cousins rarely go. This is a sign of your advancing maturity. You are someone who cares about real ideas, to an extent that can leave other people bewildered. You probably wonder why they don’t care as much as you do; why they don’t read the books that you do, or ask the questions you do. I suggest you keep reading and keep asking; and when you have the chance, ask out loud and see who joins the conversation. You are developing a rare or even unique aspect of your intelligence, which is your ability to see through false ideas and notice the ones that have relevance. You can have plenty of fun doing this, and fill a notebook you will treasure for a lifetime.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — You might pause your persistent concern about finances, and focus on the people in your life. Money is important, though it matters far less than most people imagine. Dependable friends, health and emotional contact matter more — and are more challenging to attain and to maintain. If you invest your energy into loving and sharing with people you genuinely care about, you may notice that many other concerns either disappear or find their correct place in your life. One thing about friends is that some of them know more than you about the challenges you might be facing, and will be able to offer ideas and potential solutions you might never have thought of. Remember to do as much of this as you can in person and as close to home as possible. You will have more intimate conversations in private spaces than you will in public ones — plus the food and wine are better.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — It’s necessary to have tension to create movement. The poles of a battery must oppose one another; an ordinary car engine contains the force of many explosions per second. You have energy of this kind moving in you now, though I suggest you be careful about taking out any negative feelings on yourself. You’re in a particularly sensitive and vulnerable place in your life, which is entirely necessary if you want to make full contact with your talent, your creativity or your life purpose. Just make sure you remember that vulnerability when you approach the tasks you must complete, or when you strive for discipline. You are in a phase of your personal journey when it will help to do less and to feel more; to say less, and to contemplate more. You have in fact accomplished so much that it would be wise of you to choose two or three long-term goals and focus on them exclusively for a while.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — You’re someone who is accustomed to living on strong foundations. These days, however, your foundations are moving, and you need to move with them. It will not help to cling to anything old and familiar just for the sake of doing so. It will help immensely to immerse yourself in your own creative flow. That means staying awake and alert in the moment, and deciding what you need to do at any given time based on what you notice, and what you perceive your needs are. Keep updating your awareness and asking yourself what is relevant now. This will be especially true if you feel insecure or as if some long-trusted source of support seems not to be there. In many, many ways the universe is reminding you that you must be your own most dependable friend and ally. Once you tap into the strength of that position, you will never want to turn back. And one of the best benefits will be seeing how much you have available to offer others.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — The Sun is now in Taurus, and this places the emphasis of your life on your home. You might have noticed that you feel less appeal in going out, especially if you’ve been engaging in what we could politely call mindless diversion. You have important work to do at home, which is your actual base of rest, renewal and repair. Your mind has been active lately, and there are few people in your social sphere who truly understand what you’re going through. If you move your social activities into your living room, you will filter out most of the people who don’t quite get it, and you’ll be able to focus on the ones who do. I suggest you make an effort to prepare your own meals for the next few weeks, shaking off the distinctly modern habit of letting others control your source of nourishment. In this and many ways, you’re really the very best person to do that for yourself.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Your life at the moment is about mind over matter. Your imagination can get more done than any amount of effort, making it your most effective labor saving device. If you see a problem, start by reminding yourself that it has a solution. If you see a need, remind yourself you can meet any requirement you have for existence, and more. In other words, the first thing to do is not to talk yourself out of trusting your creativity and ingenuity, and the second thing to do is to affirm and most of all experiment with them. If you have an ability you don’t use, you’re not as likely to trust it, and neither will you have as easy access when you need it. This week’s alignment of the Sun in Taurus with your guiding planet Neptune will give you many opportunities to test, and stretch, what you may have thought were limitations on your ability to manifest. There is one requirement that turns the key to this process: knowing, and admitting, what you want.