Aries (March 20-April 19) — You may not make sense to others, and this is something that you’ll need to get used to. What you want, how you think of yourself, how you explain yourself — indeed, the essence of who you are — are all changing. This is happening while others may be expecting you to fit their idea of what is reasonable. It’s easy to fall for this. Being different, and going through a process of change that reaches to your roots, are vulnerable places to be. Often others who are intent on conforming and doing things the supposedly right way will try to make others hold the line. The key to doing this successfully will be choosing to not worry about what others think. Get accustomed to doing this now, and then get better at it — you’re going to need this skill the next few years. It’s not your job to live up to anyone else’s presumptions or expectations. You can go through five years of therapy or you can embrace this simple fact. This remains true no matter how much authority anyone exerts, or tries to claim. Look for any hint of religion or religiosity as the basis of the head-trip. Such rationales are almost always rooted in hypocrisy. Part of what you will learn over the next two years, beginning now, is to never, ever put up with that kind of bullshit.

 

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Venus finally stations direct on Sept. 7, which signals that you will soon be seeking broader horizons — especially at home. On one level you need more emotional space. You need the space to change and grow; to stretch into different feelings than the ones you’re so accustomed to. To what extent does your domestic space, and your relationship space, allow you this? If you get a change of scenery, you will get a good basis for comparison. Yet this also extends into the aspect of life that you might think of as creative and expressive. You are ready to take greater chances in whatever you think of as your true art or craft. You may be finally giving yourself permission to embark on this at all, or for the first time in a very long time. Be aware of your tendency to be cautious. It’s one thing to exercise restraint when you’re driving through the rain on a dark highway. It’s another matter entirely to contain yourself when you’re encountering a blank page or canvas. You don’t need to overthink any of that; in truth, when you want to express yourself, the less thinking you do, the better. Trust what you’re feeling, and connect that to what you say and what you express. Being this real with yourself might make you nervous at first, but it’s also great fun.

 

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Saturn enters your opposite sign Sagittarius — which reveals the quality of your relationships; it’ll be there, working the territory, for the next two years. This is an extended get-real, get-serious moment. Relationships that belong in your life will go through a series of transformations and become stronger. Those that do not will likely be cleared from your energy field. It’s in the nature of Saturn to favor action taken voluntarily, and honoring the boundaries of time. This is where you will need the maturity to know what’s appropriate for you and what is not, or said another way, to honor what you may have known for a long time. Every situation in your life must support your emotional growth and nourishment. Notice when you have an exchange with someone that leaves you feeling fulfilled. Notice when an encounter leaves you feeling depleted. These contrasts will encourage you to continually improve your situation.

 

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Most people make the majority of their decisions on emotional grounds. They do what they think feels right; that allows for a diversity of unwholesome motives to enter the environment. It’s essential now that you do what is right, rather than what temporarily seems to feel right. Open your mind to embrace all of the facts, and the viewpoint of every person who has a stake in whatever decision you have to make. Ultimately you must do right by yourself, and you have the choice to ignore the interests of everyone else. I would propose, however, that it’s entirely in your interest to make sure you understand where everyone else is coming from. For one thing, their feelings are likely to reflect something that’s true for you, which you may not have considered. For another, there is a diversity of common interests involved, and you’re in a position to honor the greatest good for all concerned. There is actually such a thing, especially for you now, and the only way you’re going to get there is to observe the facts and take the known data into account. There is one situation underlying everything in your environment: the emotional needs that everyone has in common. On some level everyone is longing for their mother, perhaps the mother they never had. If you remember that, it will be easier to figure out what to do.

 

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — Venus retrograde in your sign for the past six weeks has been a bold reminder that it’s necessary to embody your purpose if you’re going to have one at all. Purpose is something you must eat like food that nourishes your blood, rather than wear like clothing or a mask. Yet this calls for a different kind of commitment than is currently fashionable. Most anything that’s worthwhile takes a long-range plan, and persisting through many ups and downs and unexpected twists in the plot. Your vision of ‘self’ must expand to embrace yourself and everything and everyone you influence. You must take on a higher level of responsibility, which means accountability; the buck stops with you. At the outset, and often for many years into the journey, you may question whether this process will be worth the effort, with no ready answer. Yet the reward is knowing that you are indeed engaging with this plane of reality on the level of what is meaningful to you, and what has relevance in the world around you. That, in truth, is the expression of the larger self-concept that means you’re a living part of the world and that it’s a living part of you. As I said, this is not in high fashion, though over the next year it will become an increasingly important value for you — and something you will want to honor. Begin — or continue — in earnest.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — What does it mean to truly embrace another person? That question could also translate to: what does it mean to be fully in the world, rather than observing or allowing it to act on you? You may have noticed a tendency that humans have, which is to cut themselves off from their surroundings, including physical places, people, the weather, how a room smells, or the sounds coming in through the window. Jupiter in your birth sign means that you will be far more sensitive to your environment; in a sense it describes you merging with everything you see, touch and become aware of. As this happens, you will feel numb places come back to life. You will ‘re-member’ in the sense of reattaching what you may have cut off, and allowing certain facts to percolate out of your memory and into full awareness. Given the prevailing chaos of the world, and the extent of the struggles that so many are facing, you might well question whether that’s the best approach to life. But there’s a bigger question, which is: can you do anything else, and still count yourself as alive? You came here to be involved with this dimension of reality: to allow it to change you, and for you to change it. You now have many new opportunities to do that in the most creative and constructive ways. It’s about time.

 

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — You must check your logic carefully, at every opportunity. In order to do this, you’ll have to slow down and observe your own thought process. If you do this, you might discover places you have not taken certain facts into account, or ways you’ve jumped to conclusions without taking steps you can retrace or explain to someone else. This will be especially meaningful if you find yourself exerting effort that’s not resulting in progress. Step away from the idea that things must be difficult for the sake of paying dues, or because ‘that’s the way things are’. To a real degree you get to choose the difficulty level of your life, which differs from other factors such as success and achievement. If you apply reasoning and intelligence, you will come up with another analysis. To this end, you need to be mindful of the logical steps you take toward any conclusion. Notice the way you collect observations of your environment to prove or disprove any theory you may have. While many people can get away with making assumptions or taking guesses most of the time, you need to do better. You’re accountable for what you know and for what you don’t know. You are responsible for how you assemble the facts into a theory or a conclusion. Take each step consciously, and take notes.

 

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Saturn leaves your sign this month, after being with you from late 2012 through late 2014, and for three months this year. This is a good time for a review, which I can sum up in one question: have you discovered that there’s no point in being anything but real? It is, of course, easy to play things off, to pretend, to remain silent, to look the other way, to believe what’s convenient. Saturn has made that more difficult, and revealed this approach to existence as the folly that it is. In the process, you may have been squashed a few times, as if to squeeze out a few drops of truth. You may have run head-on into authority figures, and into your own resentment. When you finally did the emotional calculus, you’re likely to have discovered that this is the result of being something other than the master of your own affairs. If you got Saturn’s message, you came into your strength and committed to living with consciousness and awareness, mostly of who you are. This month Saturn enters Sagittarius, which is calling on you to be realistic rather than idealistic. This may seem to be a high price, though your Saturn journey continues into the phase of engaging with the world on the level of what you know is true, rather than what you wish was true. This will be easier and more productive, to be sure.

 

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Have you ever had a splinter or shard of glass that took a few years to work through to the surface of your skin, and when it did, that little rip and removing the foreign object was delightful? That’s the feeling of your current astrology, only on the level of an emotional rebirth. Your recent astrology describes you embracing some dark elements of yourself — deep fears, feelings of alienation, and encountering a few moments of being totally lost. Now it’s as if all of that melts away like a dream, though one that you should write down so you remember what happened. The challenge of the coming two years will be to focus your identity and to merge that with a clear vision for your life, based in action. It’s as if who you are morphs into who you want to be, which is connected to a sense of mission unlike anything you’ve ever felt. Indeed, the combination of planetary forces influencing you has not aligned this way in your lifetime. You are in wholly new territory, though it will take you some time to get your bearings. To that end, the first thing you can do would be to take total ownership of everything in your life — and begin a deliberate, vital process of sorting what you want from what you don’t.

 

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Your attention is now being drawn inward; you are on an inner quest, and you will be on this journey for the foreseeable future. Yet you clearly have plenty else going on; you won’t be living in a cave in India (though you may visit one). It is therefore essential that you harmonize your inner life and your supposedly outer one. The way you would do this is by making sure that you have the confidence of people who are tuned into your deeply personal journey. It’s true that not every aspect of this can be shared, or understood. There is plenty that will be yours alone to consider and experience. Yet it’s possible to engage with others who understand the concept of the introspective quest. The ones who do will honor your sensitive interior space. They may also offer some clue about the territory you’re entering, which is as much transpersonal as it is personal. In other words, this is about you, but it’s not strictly about you, because your deepest interior space is a collective one, where many people, places and ideas are connected. Most of all, though, you and the people around you must respect your solitude. Don’t be afraid to simply take the space you need, when you need it. Your true friends will understand and support you on that mission.

 

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — There’s plenty of talk in the world about right livelihood, and even some that’s sincere. You’re now fully engaging the challenges of doing what is right for you, as a participant in society. The compromises of the past, and of past generations, are behind you. You can no longer divide your life or your character in half; you are deep into the work of integrating your entire reality. This can consume plenty of energy at first, as you’ve been seeing. You’re being compelled by your choices and your circumstances to stand fully in who you are, right now, rather than pretending that you’ll be something in the future. I suggest you do this gently, persistently and a little at a time. Small, steady steps count more than attempts at major changes. As you experience this process, remember how much of the world’s ideas are negotiated on the basis of belief. You have an idea what is true for you, though most others merely believe what they want to believe without regard for verification. You would be wise to avoid controversies that play into this difference. Work with what others believe, and don’t attempt to prove your point. Rather, demonstrate what’s true for you, and let that serve as a practical expression of what is possible. This is a universe apart from proof, and indeed sidesteps the whole issue rather neatly.

 

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — By all indications (mostly, Jupiter and Saturn changing signs) it’s time to stretch your potential. By that I mean it’s time to widen your conduits for emotional exchange, for productivity and for relating to the world in all modes that involve love and work. Everything is in the right place; you will soon discover that the sometimes-meandering journey you’ve taken to get here led you to the right place at the right time. For you now, there is one thing you must do above all else: be yourself. This may seem like the most obvious idea in the world, and it is. But it’s also the idea most easily forsaken, or denied or resented. It’s typically seen as the thing that’s ‘impossible’ to do, because it’s seemingly so difficult, or because it will allegedly blow up on you. Here’s the thing: Nothing else will work. You cannot afford to veil yourself, or to compromise your actual reality in any way. That means: be true to your goals, to your feelings, to the necessities of your environment, to your ethics and most of all to what you want. Notice and track even minor compromises of your reality, and tidy up as you go. Truly great achievements are possible for you now and well into the foreseeable future. Give yourself every advantage.