Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for April 2017

Aries (March 20-April 19) — One thing that’s fast going missing here in the internet age is something known as an inner life. You can think of this as the sanctity of one’s thoughts; a private inner experience of the world; a relationship with the ‘you’ nobody knows. One reason for this loss is an unwholesome obsession with appearances and glamour: looking like something at the expense of being that thing. There’s another problem: the internet has blown our minds inside-out. We expose ourselves, and we’re invaded, tracked, stalked and photographed. Despite all of this, you have an inner life. Your being extends inward further than it expands outward. Aspects this month will guide you in this direction: toward yourself, into a world of feelings, a dimension of perceptions you may not be able to describe. This may have a ‘scary’ feeling as you step from one form of consciousness to another. If you peer into your mind and see shadow and darkness, give your eyes a moment to adjust. Allow your inner vision to receive rather than pursue what you might see. What you’re likely to discover is a world of light, of ideas, of memories and of unfamiliar desires. It will be worth stretching past any fear, discomfort or strangeness, and allowing yourself to get to know your own being, and discover your inner life. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — You tend to be a private person, and this is understandable enough. You have a clear line between what is your business and what you would feel comfortable with others knowing. Most of who you are is inside that circle. Yet as the next few weeks progress, you will be drawn out of yourself as if by some cosmic or psychic force. You may notice that you’re revealing what you would never ordinarily let out; putting into words what you might never speak; allowing people into your feelings in new ways. Why would you do this? For one thing, what you’ve got going on inside is too compelling to contain. It’s not that you need validation, but rather, when you encounter the world on the level of your deepest truth, you take an extra step in its direction. There’s a confrontation involved, which necessitates a deeper level of both experience and claiming who you are in the context of others. This is not about them. It’s about you. To be fully confident in who you are, you need to be confident in your identity, which comes through a kind of confrontation with the world. The private space of ‘knowing something is true’ will get you part of the way there. Then it’s essential to connect: and that’s what you seem to be reaching for. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — If you want to attain the highest levels of professionalism and success, it’s necessary for you to be vulnerable in ways not usually associated with a career. Emotional investment, cultivation of your talent, and the willingness to serve rather than to be seen are all involved. Your work cannot be separate from who you are; which is to say, in whatever you do. You’re an artist, and that calls for total investment, and taking a hint from your Gemini cousin Bob Dylan that a poet alone can tell the truth. It’s possible that in recent months you’ve become wary or weary of the drive for superficial accomplishment. Your chart is cautioning against falling for appearances and popularity, to the point where you may be openly rebelling against these things. Rather than rebel, draw yourself closer to the very thing that distinguishes you. Be not afraid to stand out, that is; or to be authentically different in a way that challenges you. The thing that you may be concerned is your fatal flaw is the thing to work with. For you that may feel like a longing to hear the true message of the universe, or the drive to connect with others in a common language you feel you might never attain or master. If you pursue the impossible, or even the improbable, you’re heading in the right direction. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Sometimes you come up with a plan, and sometimes a plan reveals itself to you, and you must respond. This month you’ll be at the nexus of where the two meet. You have your ideas about what you must do with your existence, and life seems to have ideas of its own. If you’re not strictly the product of your environment, it’s also true that your environment is only partly the product of your efforts. In order to find the correct blend, you’ll need to experiment. For example, you can set an agenda with no concept of how you’ll accomplish it, and watch what happens. You can let your life unfold without planning things in advance, and use your skills of adaptation and invention to develop seemingly random events into something that really works for you. One thing that remains true regardless of what approach you take is to keep on friendly terms with people in power. They are your collaborators, your facilitators and, in essence, your sponsors. Being friendly with them, and finding the points of contact, is not about kissing ass. Rather, you do your best when you’re working on the human level among other humans. Be truthful about your desires and your motives, and notice who responds supportively. Powerful people are protecting you, and have an interest in your success. Get to know them. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — This month, you’ll need to take some time and resolve a prior emotional or sexual bond. If this is something that did not end well, you’re the one who will need to set aside your ego, extend the proverbial olive branch, and take the risk of vulnerability. This is a complex situation. All the people involved have brought an element of past injury to the scenario, which has little to do with those who are immediately involved. See the situation in that context and it’ll be easier to understand. You may have stepped away because it was just too complex, or because of some uncertainty about whether you were being told the truth. However, your personal truth is more important than some abstract notion of a valid point of view, and you’re now much more confident in who you are. In a similar way, ‘the situation’ is not what needs to be resolved: rather, you must come to terms with your own feelings and your own healing process. You may or may not get the full cooperation of others, though that does not matter. What counts is that you make yourself available for an exchange, without judgment. Then, as you do that, notice what happens: how people respond, what they say and, most of all, the contrast between what you remember and what you see now. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — If you find yourself strategizing how to get or keep a lover, take a step back. Using strategy is a sign of a closed heart, and what happens on the emotional plane cannot be planned or predicted. If you need a plan of action, try being real; which is to say, honest about your feelings. This is a matter of vulnerability. You might feel like it’s someone else who’s not quite open, though even if that were true, you could still respond by staying close to your feelings. If you discover that the past is in the way (such as resentment, guilt, or the feeling that you just cannot please someone), stick with those feelings, too. The real obstacle may be something from your own past entirely unrelated to what seems to be going on. Notice if you feel like you need to prove something to someone; notice if the discussion omits the emotional level; there would be reasons for these things. Ultimately, you will need to submit yourself to what actually means something to you: what matters, what makes a difference, or some motive you have for living and being, rather than being in a relationship. Any encounter between you and another person must be based on common ground, and your part in this is to know intimately the ground on which you stand. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Relationships need a purpose. That is to say, both parties to the encounter need a common reason for being there, otherwise the experience can degrade into something self-serving for people who are mutually using one another. Yet it’s astonishing how rare it is for people to work with a tangible shared purpose. Raising children and paying the mortgage can fill in for a while, though it needs to go deeper. You might ask yourself what the purpose of each of your relationships is — especially the thing you consider your primary relationship. If you don’t have one of those and are looking for one, you might ask yourself why that is. If the answer is companionship, what’s the nature of that? Is it about completing something missing within you, or is it the desire to co-create? Do you have some mutual purpose related to service? Do you have a healing agenda that you can share with a close partner? That would serve your purposes well. When we say love, we mean trust; and trust is about understanding that your presence in someone’s life is to make their life better, as is their presence in yours. As you orient on this, you’ll be taken to a deeper emotional level than you may be accustomed to going, especially in recent years. Hang in with this purpose, and with the people you care about. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Sex is underrated. Yes, it’s ridiculously hyped in some places, and thrown into the gutter in many others. Yet we might take a chance and admit that the source of life, the wellspring of existence itself, has a spiritual and creative purpose. Even so, between you and that state of consciousness are several obstacles. They all involve exploitation, from the most publicly displayed (selling everything from cars to drugs to vacations with some form of erotic bait) to the most private: all the injuries that we’ve suffered, many of them going back to childhood. I think there are two keys to tapping the power of sexuality: one is being open to it; the second is seeing it as the creative core from which all other forms of personal expression emanate. This is potentially controversial, though should it be? Embarrassment is no excuse. You would be well-served to open up to the nuances involved, starting with a careful review of your erotic liaisons the past two years. There’s something you seem to be urgently trying to let go of and to move beyond. Yet there’s something you’re wanting, needing and intending to turn toward. This is a point of inner contact that will melt away your fears and inhibitions and allow you to enter totally unfamiliar, perhaps frightening, strangely beautiful territory within yourself. That’s how you’ll know you’re making progress. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — You’ve been on a creative roll lately. Art and passion (closely related in astrology) are always a gamble, though you seem to keep winning every time you throw the dice. Over the next month, the level of personal risk involved in your creative expression deepens. You’re swimming upstream within yourself, toward a destination. The kind of vulnerability and sensitivity you may experience is the kind that everyone born under your sign knows about, and very few care to admit. Plunge in and go for it. The water is not nearly as murky as it may seem, nor are the questions you’ll face as overwhelming as they may appear. Yet there’s no question: the circumstances of your life, and the aspirations you’re being called to reach for, are summoning you to a new level of introspection and emotional contact. To reach into this place will require facing old pain, legacy material from your fantasy, and those age-old questions of whether you really belong here, and what you’re actually doing here. These cannot be accessed merely by asking, wondering or enduring. Yet you can liberate yourself by exploring, in earnest, the roots of your emotional being. If you’re an artist, your art will get better, and if you’re a lover, your love will grow. As a born explorer, this is one of your ultimate quests. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — You have a curious relationship to your spiritual life. It’s almost as if it hides from you, or you overlook it, while you’re busy pursuing it. This can have a number of effects, including a kind of detachment or separation between what you do in the world, and your sense of a profound truth you contain and cannot express. If integrity is important to you, and I reckon that it is, your inner life requires alignment with your outer activity. If you feel like there’s a gap between the two (by choice or by circumstance) that calls for some investigation. You might feel as if there are things you must do to ensure your worldly existence, which call for a compromise. That was never true, and it’s never been less true than it is today. What you hold as sacred, and what you know to be your ‘original instructions’, are the very thing that you’re summoned to live, to express and in a sense to enforce in your material and worldly life. If there seem to be levels of truth, that’s likely to be the result of the density associated with the various levels in your mind. As an inhabitant of this Earth, there are some things you cannot avoid; there are facts that are true on every level or dimension of existence. This is your starting point, not your destination. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Astrology teaches us something obvious that I’ve never seen in a self-help book or learned in therapy training: money and self-esteem are intimately related. We see this through the 2nd house in astrology, which classically is about cash on hand and available resources, and in psychological astrology is about your relationship to yourself. In your solar chart this is Pisces, which at the moment is populated by an interesting assortment of planets (most of them new discoveries since the 1970s). Now Venus is about to enter Pisces, and will conclude its retrograde journey mid-month with a conjunction to Chiron. This is about deciphering all the ways you hold back love and approval from yourself. Then you can learn a lot by answering those judgments in sane and humane ways. Nobody on our particular planet goes through life without some struggle over the right to exist. Aquarians in particular can grapple with a poignant sense of not fitting in. Yet as you figure out that this whole drama is moderated by your own state of self-acceptance, you will settle down and, in a sense, claim yourself. That means taking ownership of all your personal resources and talents; and that, in turn, is good for business and career. What you might offer to others must be yours to share, and that’s the essence of full ‘belonging’ in every sense of the word. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Your sign stands at the threshold of endings and beginnings. And that’s exactly where many of the planets stand at this moment — distributed between Pisces, the Omega zone, and Aries, the Alpha zone. Yet with Venus in retrograde motion, poised to track backwards from Aries into Pisces, there would seem to be something that you want to retrieve before you proceed forward. On many accounts, a new phase of your life has already begun. Rather than plunging forward without reflection, take a little time and consider what you simply must take with you. You may not be aware of what this is yet, though I reckon you’ll soon find out. I can describe in a vague way by saying that you’re ready to retrieve a memory of your true being and your true purpose. Yet in classical mystical fashion, this is the kind of thing you can become aware of with a sense of profound understanding, and then forget just as fast. Now, when you remember, the thing to do is to maintain that awareness as a central focus of your life. As this consciousness dawns on you, do what you can to acknowledge, record and express what you discover. Said another way, you’re about to rediscover who you are, and remember what you’ve known all along. Make this real by making it the basis of all your decisions. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.