Aries Birthdays 2018
On the Cusp of a New Journey

“I love that he does not just give ‘information,’ like what planets are coming and going, but also what that means for my sign, and how to make the best use of that transit or placement. Like having the issues that might be a challenge, and he offers insight on how best to work it for my highest good. Always informative! Presented with humor, and sensitivity.”

— Laura Garrity

Dear Friend with Aries Sun, Rising or Moon:

Not only is this your time of year, but this year marks the beginning of a uniquely dynamic time in your life. Just a couple days before the Sun leaves your sign, Chiron arrives for a nine-year journey.

Snapshot of objects in Aries when Chiron arrives. Top to bottom: Chiron, Mercury (in direct motion), Eris, the Sun and Uranus (which is getting ready to leave).

As Eric recently wrote to Aries readers, “It’s time to pull your life into focus, and to devote yourself to the changes you know you have to make,” adding, “It represents an extended opportunity to devote yourself to a concentrated, meaningful healing process.”

Whether you anticipate Chiron’s arrival with eagerness to get started on what’s coming next, or you’re feeling nervous about the changes and challenges in store, one thing is clear: beginning the process with Eric’s 2018 Aries Birthday Reading in your pocket could make all the difference in the world.

Eric designs these readings to provide encouragement, reassurance, and actual information about your transits — in language you can understand, and with ideas you can put into practice immediately.

In the two astrology segments (each at least 30 minutes long), he’ll walk you through the opportunities you can expect in your relationships, career, finances, family dynamics, self-esteem and healing process, to name a few typical areas. When you pre-order your 2018 Birthday Reading early, you lock in the lowest price we offer: just $33 for the downloadable audio, the extended description of your sign, and all supporting materials.

Please note that the price will increase the closer Eric gets to publishing your reading.

“Today I was listening to last year’s reading and I kept feeling that I needed to get this year’s reading; I’m so glad I did. It answered everything, or at least helped me to realize I’m okay and actually very excited.”

— Rhonda Benson

I hope your solar year has begun with a surge of energy and creative ways to use it.

Wishing you the best for your Chiron journey,

Amanda Painter

P.S. You can listen for free to last year’s Aries reading here, to review Eric’s accuracy, before you pre-order the 2018 Aries reading — for yourself, or as a gift for a loved one.

Aries (March 20-April 19) — You do exist. If you consider that long enough, and carefully enough, you will cause an earthquake. Much of the crisis of our society, its sickness and its violence and its obsession with identity, is all about a struggle to acknowledge existence. There are many ways to do this. Marshall McLuhan, the brilliant and infamous media theorist of the Sixties, said that identity is always established through aggression. I would say that’s true, when other more elementary biological factors are missing, such as living passionately, and engaging your sexuality. Chiron is about to enter your birth sign and, after a brief phase-in, will be there for the next nine years. Along with Chiron is a potent, more recently discovered point called Salacia. Representing all things salty, you might say that Salacia offers the opportunity to grow and evolve through understanding and exploring your sexuality. When you combine this with Chiron — which will be the case for the next few years — you get an extended, though once-in-a-lifetime, opportunity to focus on an aspect of healing that everyone seems to understand needs emphasis, but few know how to approach. And how do you approach it? You just start; and keep reading, having conversations and exploring physically till you catch on to the rhythm. There is a world awaiting you, and the taboo is rapidly falling away. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Inner awareness is a gift, and it’s one you can cultivate for yourself. This month, the very search-beam of consciousness — the minor planet Chiron — moves into the most sensitive and, in truth, amazing angle of your solar chart: your 12th solar house, Aries. I am always amazed when I hear about the lack of personal association with the notion of inner life or inner awareness, as if the whole universe exists outside of us. You, however, are aware that your reality is mostly within you; and though at times you may feel like a hot mess (particularly in recent years, with Uranus passing through Aries), you are very much awake and alert to your existence within yourself. Chiron is going to focus this for you, and make your quest for identity feel like a natural process — if you are willing to cooperate. People tend to cling to ideas about who they are, rather than seeking to understand what exactly they are drawing up out of the Earth, and synthesizing into the fabric of their soul. This is not a conceptual process. It’s not an intellectual exercise. You are a cosmic being, co-creating yourself with the universal creative force that sustains all life. You bring your absolutely unique approach to existence. Chiron will help you let yourself grow, and let yourself shine. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Yours is one of the most social signs. This is partly about your being willing to converse with anyone, such as gangsters, monks, fromageurs, philosophers and space aliens. Yet the more interesting thing is why you do that: you establish and stabilize your presence in the world through social means. It would be nice if everyone did that; we would have more potluck dinners and fewer school shootings. However, there is an astonishing social phobia in the world, which is fueled by an obsession with elitism that is just torturing many, many people. Psychologists have studied ingroup/outgroup phenomena for years, and that has not helped matters much. You can, however. Your healing role through the extended run of Chiron in Aries (which will last into 2027) is that of social ambassador. You are excellent at subverting absurd social rules, mainly by walking up to people and talking to them. In everything you do, you will be helping usher people through the barriers, the security checkpoints and the glass walls of our world. This is the work of a master healer; and if you don’t qualify today, you will embark on that path. At the outset, consider that what benefits others benefits you — and that the secret to your magic is self-acceptance. A fairer, more open and communicative world, without absurd social barriers, will be a much happier world. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Chiron in Aries is the transit you’ve been waiting for. You will either discover your true calling or, more likely, confirm that you’ve been following it all along. The added factor of Chiron is one of leadership. You must be willing to be visible, and to be an example and mentor to others. And it’s essential that you venture into some new territory every single day. You may not think of yourself as a pioneer, though at least you tend to be an early settler in new and unusual country. You are counted on as someone who establishes basic norms, roles and protocols, because your mind works well that way. You might think of these as family traditions. There is more, though. Chiron moving through the 10th has been described in the early literature as taking on the mantle of power. This may be subtle; it may be overt; though one thing is for sure: our world and our society needs a new concept of authority; one that is responsive to people’s feelings, needs and personal gifts, and is not strictly centered on profit as its concept of the greatest good. If all this sounds appealing, the potential downside will be the need to live as if you have a TV camera trained on you at all times. In terms of your ethics, you will have zero wiggle room. You don’t need much anyway. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — The notion of “God” or even “god” has been so abused over the centuries that it’s warned many people off of their natural spiritual quest. Then, looking at things from the other direction, the notion of religion has been turned into a kind of mental virus, turning everything from Coca-Cola to the Republican Party into an act of worship. Yet you have a relationship to existence, and your sense of being and your relationship to the world depend on it. Enter Chiron into your 9th house, which is the astrological sigil of the spiritual quest. This is not about theory or armchair travel: it’s about gaining experience. It’s about the genuine practice of Know Thyself, seek and ye shall find, and learning as discovering that something is possible. There is an aspect to your journey that will benefit from reading and study, though I suggest you go to the old books rather than the new ones. You want literature written by authors, not marketing execs, and that never came close to the New York Times bestseller list. The way to travel places is by yourself, not with a group. You want the independence to spend three days somewhere that a group might spend three hours. Most of all, you need to seek your own understanding of reality and of existence. This is the beginning of a great adventure. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Barbara Hand Clow, author of one of the original books on Chiron, said she had very few clients with Chiron in the 8th house, because they were so secretive. Now, Chiron is about to enter your 8th solar house; after a nine-month transition in, it will remain there for almost a decade, which is similar to a natal placement. One thing we can say for sure is that this will take you on a journey through the mysteries of sex, death, transformation, rebirth and money — all usually cloaked from view or considered too taboo to discuss. Your most vital task in these years will be to practice self-disclosure. Virgo has a way of acting conspiratorially, concealing your plans till the last minute and conducting your life on a “need to know” basis, like in a spy novel. While this focuses your sense of your own power, it limits your capacity for intimacy. It has a way of isolating you, and making you seem self-centered in a way that you don’t want to be. Revealing the truth of your reality, especially to the people you consider intimates, is the very essence of what will set you free. Allowing yourself to transcend any fear that might block you from doing this will help you learn how to be vulnerable; which, contrary to popular belief, is the only way to feel safe. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Have you been able to make any sense at all of your relationships during the past seven years or so? There have been nonstop changes, genuinely odd people coming and going, various misadventures, and perhaps some who have stuck with you through thick and thin. With Chiron entering Aries, your mirror house of partnerships, you will soon feel drawn to engaging in a healing process where close partners are concerned. This will apply to relationships in general, and the way that you see and experience the world (all of which also count for your experience of your environment). Chiron is going to drop a lens in front of this facet of your reality, and all at once you will see what you’ve been missing. I propose one discovery you’ll make is that you’ve learned things you would never give up or do over, even if it meant your life being simpler or more stable. One of the crucial things you did during this phase is a kind of unlearning of patterns and tendencies that may have ruled your life in the past. You now get to re-focus, and redesign your relationships in a way that works for you. Or, at least, you get to set some goals and boundaries, and experiment with whether the people currently in your life are interested in playing along. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Work is a vital part of your life, your growth, your wellbeing and who you feel you are. This is sometimes said to be an American phenomenon, though anyone who likes going to work is extremely fortunate. Seen another way, such people are not wasting their lives — and this is something that you of all people cannot do. Your work must be meaningful to you, and you must be the person you really are, when you’re in your day job. If this does not apply to you, you can still have a good long (or maybe short) talk with yourself about what you really want to do with your precious time and your precious mind. You have a calling. There is something you want to spend your days doing. Does it pay as well as what you do now? If it does not at the beginning, there’s nothing blocking your success in that regard, since you happen to be good with money. However, money is not the issue. Your ability to live with yourself is. Your ability to thrive is. Whatever you do, you will find a way to identify with it. Therefore, invest your energy into what you value, what you can be proud of, and what you can actually love. There is a word for this: Dharma, acting as if to hold the world together. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — You’re in something of a personal renaissance. That’s a beautiful thing. From the look of your solar chart, you seem open to all kinds of experiences, which you want in actual, physical form — not in virtual form. You can afford to push your courage, and try things you never would have done, as long as you remember that life is an experiment (which I like to call an experi-o-ment, because it’s about gaining experience). Now, Chiron is about to enter Aries. This is going to push the matter more than it already has been, which is quite a lot, over the past few years. If you’ve been living out your astrology during that time, you may have made a decision similar to my Sagittarius bandmate and music teacher Daniel Marc: you quit being the assistant manager of a little club in upstate New York, so you can play music all the time. This is the moment when your art has to take over your life. Your art is the thing you do where you stay awake and alive the whole time. Your art is where you want to keep extending your awareness, creativity and consciousness into existence, and you don’t want to pull back because it gets too intense. Your art is your passion, your true erotic connection, your sense of personal quest, and validation that you’re alive for a very good reason. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — The theme of your life these days involves understanding your family connection. Family is tribe, in the closest sense we as members of Western civilization can get to the hunter-gatherers roaming around Africa eating magic mushrooms a million years ago. You identify strongly both with family and with the concept of the tribe; though, with Chiron’s arrival in Aries, you may start to question that. The thing with a tribe is that it tends to subjugate, or outright ban, too much individuality. And it would seem that the thing you want the most is to live life as a discrete being rather than as a member of a hive or collective organism. One way to do some reality testing is to consider all the things you cannot say to your family of origin or your family of choice (including your closest friends). What you cannot say may be something you’ve stuffed so deep under the surface, in order to conform, that you’ve lost track of it. If you retrieve that feeling, thought or idea, you get a little panicky about whether you’ll still be acceptable to those you seemingly identify with so strongly. Pick the thing that would potentially be the most offensive, shocking or embarrassing, and imagine having a little coming-out party. Could you actually do it? Could you say what you really say, do, feel, want, or know is true? For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Yours is somewhat famously the sign associated with inventors, inventions and technology. That’s another way of saying that Aquarius is one of the signs most associated with ideas. This appears astrologically for you as Aries, the sign of identity, in your 3rd solar house of ideas. You are your ideas; you cannot help yourself. Others may think you’re into abstractions and concepts for their own sake, but they are like food and water to you. Later this month, Chiron will make its first foray into Aries since the late 1960s. Your experience of life as mind as idea as invention will find a new peak and, in particular, a point of focus. Here is a clue: apart from any intellectual pursuit you may spark up, or deepen, the 3rd house is also about your community. It has its origins in describing the little cluster of homes that starts as a family farm and then becomes a hamlet and then a village. This is not community as in all the nurses of the world, or people on a Facebook group; this is the community where you can walk around, open doors and visit people face to face. It’s the community that can have potluck dinners and Scrabble night or contra dancing, or a political event; that can get together and solve a vexing problem requiring the brainpower of intelligent people. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Chiron has been in your sign since April 20, 2010. That was a long time ago. In a certain way, despite much other astrology going by, this one transit has been a defining factor in your life. Chiron (a not-so-minor minor planet discovered in 1977) has a way of doing that: it makes itself known, and the more you acknowledge the subject matter that it’s presenting, the more productive that is. Chiron can also bring crisis (or one after the next), which would be especially possible if you were born between 1960 and 1968 and experienced your Chiron return in recent years. Yet despite any inconvenience, the role of Chiron is to help clarify and resolve the past, and to put you in contact with your deeper being. It is fair to say that in these past eight years, you have made significant discoveries about who you are. Now that Chiron is entering Aries, you’re being called to invest these ideas into yourself, with full commitment. Aries is about taking action, based on what you have learned. You’ve been experimenting with this for a long time, since there’s been no shortage of planets in Aries, going back many years. Yet Chiron’s change of signs will enhance your focusing power, help you identify your priorities and, most of all, guide you to connect with the resources (both inner and outer) to make things happen. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.