Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for August 2017

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Life is creative. Most people never figure that out. Some people do, and they often become artists, musicians, dancers, jewelers, writers or some other form of aesthetic contributor — they just can’t help themselves. Yet the creative function is not really about art; it’s about existence. Plenty of cab drivers, hedge fund managers, house moms, crochet masters and printing press operators figure it out too. This month’s rare, magnificent total solar eclipse in Leo occurs on the line in your chart where your creative source meets your daily devotion to service, work and healing. The personal message of the eclipse is to make the connection between these two seemingly different aspects of life. It happens right in that sweet spot where inspiration meets action meets daily devotion. There’s something deeper here, as well. The healing source is the creative source. They are the same thing, applied in slightly different ways. To work this potent zone, whether you think of it as describing astrology or existence, takes a conscious decision. Once you do that, you will tap into a seemingly endless well of energy. Explore that for a while and you will discover, further, that you can direct ‘creative chaos’ in refined, specific and purposeful ways. This is all good practice for Saturn moving in your favor later in the year. Your level of responsibility will increase considerably, and you must bring all of your talent to bear on whatever you do. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — There is, in your solar chart, a brittle line between your need for security and your desire for unpredictable experience. I say brittle because your idea of security is pretty bold; you tend to feel safe on the planet, and you possess a rare kind of confidence. Yet it’s easy to lose track of that, because another side of your nature is averse to taking risks. Part of this relates to your somewhat infamous tendency to overthink things, and to talk yourself out of what you want. So, in many ways, you’re like a Porsche being driven around a parking lot. You need to get yourself on the open road; and for that to happen, it will help if you lure yourself with visions of the great mountain ranges of Montana, the ancient forests of California, or sunset over the Pacific Ocean. Said another way, you don’t need to justify your desire for experience with a theory, or the need for a certain level of expertise, experience or freedom from other commitments. You don’t need an academic degree of certification. Rather, you must feel your curiosity burning like an itch that won’t go away. Feel your urgent need to change the world building tension like an earthquake that’s about to happen. Feel your desire for sex like something that would occur on a cool, moist forest floor rather than in a pristine bed. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Yours is the sign associated with verbal mastery. That’s partly a Mercury thing — the god of mind and alchemy rules your sign. It’s also because Leo covers the 3rd house of your chart, the one about communication themes. This is a bold, hot sign associated with your ability to speak and write. Yet a careful critique of Gemini will often reveal that you don’t usually go to your true intellectual depth. You are too often content with a basic analysis, or something that sounds good, and/or is true enough. The total solar eclipse later this month, which takes place in Leo, your 3rd solar house of thought and messages, is calling you to your full depth. Eclipses often accelerate processes; this one will slow down your mental metabolism and encourage you to be more reflective. You are being summoned to engage all of your mental gears and get to the bottom of things. At the same time, you must alternate that with a wide-angle approach, and see everything you know in the context of everything else you know. This applies to whatever you may be working on. There’s a special message about comprehending the impact that your family had on your intellectual development. You may still be trapped in their estimation of you, which is limited by their own intelligence and perception. It’s time to set yourself free. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — You are in the process of becoming a financial ninja. See if you can set aside all the mysticism associated with money, and the emotional baggage. Set aside the fact that it’s the only thing too many people seem to care about. Pause on the notion that people think money absolves all sin, solves all problems and grants only happiness. This is about the practical matter of ensuring that your life and your creative activities are properly funded. But there is something deeper. One of the most profound struggles of the human race, particularly here in the rather wealthy Western world, is the crisis of connecting one’s personal values, innate assets, and the ability to eat food, keep a dry roof over your head, and support your family. We simply assume it’s only vaguely possible that someone will be able to live on their talents; or, said another way, actually do what they came to the Earth to do. For you, the root of this is to respect your own gifts. That does not mean being proud, boastful or even ambitious. It does mean understanding that you possess something you came here to share. Your part in this begins in that respect, which comes as part of a conscious maturity process. To that, you would add connecting daily discipline to your sense of purpose. That’s not about hope; it’s about action. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — Once again, one of the outstanding astrological events of our lifetimes occurs in your sign. That would be the Great American Eclipse of Aug. 21, 2017. There’s a precedent for this: the total solar eclipse of Aug. 11, 1999. Consider what you were doing that summer, and what you were doing for the next three or so years. When you think of 1999 as a ‘before and after’ moment, what do you get? You are now standing at the threshold of another such moment. What you’ve lived through the past several years is the ‘before'; the moment you’re in is like a dimensional gate; and the future is unwritten. Take the time and the care to point your life in the direction that you want to go. This need not take longer than a few moments, though deep meditation and grounded decisions usually require more investment of thought. Remove the no-longer-valid priorities from your agenda; decide what no longer serves you. Then, search your soul and remind yourself what you simply must do. Be exceedingly honest with yourself about this, and don’t be distracted by whether you think something is or is not possible. You might know what this agenda is without even thinking about it. Use the power of your mind and point your existence in that direction. Then, steady as she goes. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — You rarely reveal your true power. It’s a mystery why; I think you’re afraid of getting in trouble. Yet you would benefit greatly from questioning and challenging the structure of authority that you’ve set up in your mind, and which you seem convinced reflects actual reality. Your fear of what might go wrong, were you to assert yourself, contains a deeper anxiety about challenging authority. Yet anything of any merit that happens in the world, anything that changes something, or that has the unmistakable vibration of the life force, is not about avoiding challenge or friction. To the contrary, anything that’s actually relevant in some way must break the mold of what came before it, and that’s the story of your life right now. The Aug. 21 total solar eclipse will encourage or even push you to let yourself out of your self-imposed container. The effects of this event will come on gradually over the next few months, with a concentration at the end of the year when Saturn, entering Capricorn, moves in your favor. Then it will be obvious that commitment moves providence and that fortune favors the bold. Yet till then, nobody is shackling you to your caution, or to your fear of rattling the surrogate mothers, fathers, ministers and school deans who populate the world. You are larger, braver and more intelligent than them all. Trust that. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — There are moments when your potential feels like pretty balloons floating in the air, and there are those times it feels as if you’re in four-wheel drive. You have traction now; you have ideas about what you want to do; and you have an unusually strong sense of who you are. Yet you may also feel locked into something that you don’t see a way out of — or you may live with this feeling silently, below the level of full awareness. So let’s start with that: in what ways are you stuck in a pattern, and in what ways does that prevent you from living the way you want, or doing what you want? It’s rare that people abandon what they are doing to pursue something else. It’s more often true that, step by step, we convert aspects of our lives to a new purpose. You might cut off cable TV so you have more time to practice music, cultivate a talent or learn a skill. You might clear out a room that’s under-utilized and devote it to a new purpose. You might spend less idle time with friends, and instead choose to associate with people who share a common purpose and commitment. In sum, you must make every moment, every hour and every day count for its full value. Time is your most precious resource. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Long ago, my father explained to me that there are basically two kinds of power: formal and informal. Formal power is the manager of a baseball team. Informal power is the most popular player, adored by the fans and the press. The laws of a country represent formal power; its customs are informal power. You are working with both kinds of influence at the moment, and it’s crucial that you distinguish the two — and that you know which to use in what situation. Most of the time, informal power is what runs the world. Custom trumps law almost every time. You may be out of step with these informal kinds of influences. For one thing, you’re too self-critical, needlessly so, and this interferes with the notion that people might like you enough to play on your team. Of course people tend to like you, and they tend to respect you innately; but it’s hard to take this in if you are in a nearly constant state of self-judgment. One thing that will help is if you catch yourself whenever you think that the past is the present. It may be, until you interrupt that pattern, and get yourself into this moment, and fully inhabit this time of your life. Your opinions, fears, judgments and hang-ups are all products of the past. Forget it! You can only be alive now. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — One of the most challenging aspects of maturity, success or bold achievement is clearing the psychological baggage of others out of the way. Most of the problems we deal with in life are not our own. They belong to our parents and other ancestors, and must be treated as such, if they are to be addressed efficiently. That, in turn, frees up the bandwidth to take care of your actual karma, and to fulfill your actual agenda. With the total solar eclipse later this month, you get an opportunity to purge your consciousness of some inherited problems, most likely ones imposed on you by your dominant parent (and potentially other persons who had power over you as a child). In order to take advantage of this, you must not be afraid of ‘betraying’ any of these people. You must be willing to stand apart. This is about nothing less than claiming your birthright and, in a sense, your destiny. There’s always a delicate transaction when authority and influence are seized from one generation by the next, in each individual life; and for you that time has come. Set yourself free from the fears of your parents and your grandparents. Cut the cords, cut the apron strings, let the dead be gone and commit to living your life on your terms. If this isn’t scary, you’re not doing it right. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — From the wisdom of traditional tantra, we know that spiritual growth isn’t real unless it incorporates and accepts sexual awareness and experience. We know that sexual experience verges on meaningless if it does not invest itself in existential awareness and love, which is the actual meaning of ‘spiritual’. You often struggle to claim yourself back from the sexual situations in which you become involved. Often, money gets mingled up in them, your sense of self-worth and identity gets invested, and it’s just too complicated. Fear of these scenarios prevents you from actually getting to know people, since typically these associations seem to be all or nothing. Yet you don’t commit to having three of someone’s children by smiling at them. A dinner invitation is not a marriage proposal. And you’re a whole person, never half of a relationship. A total eclipse in the angle of your chart that describes all of these issues will feel like a birth from one reality to the next. You may experience yourself passing through a narrow passageway, which may have the feeling of giving something up. Make the trip willingly. It will take some time for the dust to settle; by the time Saturn arrives in your sign later in the year, you will know that you are safely in a new reality and a new experience of your existence. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — It’s time to break the tension of your relationships. To this end, letting go of expectations will be helpful; it’s the source of much stress, and of difficulty getting close to others. Another source involves how you may perceive yourself as a ‘public person’ and a somewhat opposite experience of yourself as a private person. You seem much more rigid than you actually are, though it’s unclear why you don’t take a more relaxed attitude toward the world, and give yourself and everyone else space to be themselves. Then there’s the matter of commitment. Do you really think you can choose what you commit to and what you don’t? Or have you observed that there’s a larger pattern involved, and that your involvements select you just as much as you select them? The total solar eclipse of Aug. 21 is an invitation to be absolutely true to your relationships. It’s bidding you to have the utmost respect for the karma that you share with others. What you want to do is work that karma out and move on to better things, rather than get more deeply mired in it. Therefore, say what you need to say to people. Listen to what they say to you. Honor the bonds you share with them, and honor your need to be independent as well. Both are true at once and are equally valid. For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Every relationship is a collaboration. That’s helpful, since relationships need a purpose, if they are to be happy. Almost any purpose will serve, though it must be sincere. In the coming seasons, people from your past are likely to re-enter your life. Sometimes this will be for the purpose of completion. Sometimes it will be for continuation. A simple exchange of thoughts may complete the conversation; sometimes more time and thought will be required. This will precede moving forward, which will be on entirely new terms. It’s essential that you see people from your past as they are today, rather than as they were in years before. Sometimes there will be a profound difference, and other times it will be subtle. As for the collaborative nature, you set the purpose mutually, based on a full palette of possibilities: your shared mission, assisting with one another’s missions, financial gain, sexual bonding or selfless service — to name a few. What this all implies is a wholly conscious approach to relating, rather than what usually happens on our planet. This kind of focused intention is, perhaps, uncomfortable to some people, and you may need to lead the way gently. One of the most important things you can size up, with everyone you meet or encounter from the past, is what their agenda is. What do they claim their purpose is, and what do they actually do? What about you? For your Eric Francis horoscope this week, please see this link.