Aries (March 20-April 19) — For maximum benefit, focus your life close to where you live, sticking to your neighborhood and your home over the next few days. What is familiar is what will be both nourishing and helpful. What’s more significant is that you be available to sort out the facts in a situation that may require clarification — and direct knowledge of your local environment. If you do what you can now to resolve a small matter, you will prevent it from becoming a larger one. While it’s your inclination to trust and to take everyone at face value, your current scenario calls for careful fact checking and analysis. It’s essential that you not be stuck in any one opinion or point of view; flexibility is your best friend right now. And while you must be discerning and cautious, it’s important that you not give the idea that you’re biased for or against any one side right now. Preserve your objectivity, or at least the appearance of objectivity.

 

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Your current aspects are all about writing. This comes in several flavors. One is writing to express the beauty that you see and feel. This might be expressing yourself to another person, or using words for the sake of creating art. You could count either of these as love letters to existence. But there’s something deeper, which will be in effect over the next couple of months, which is writing to understand yourself. There’s no human who does not exist within their own contradictions; that’s the nature of existence on our planet, or part of its nature anyway. Don’t let this bother you. Rather, use any seeming inner polarity or opposition like a battery that is providing you with energy. Count this time in your life as an opportunity to conduct a sincere personal inventory, which includes your many excellent ideas. Take things in layers. Proceed slowly and gently. Listen to your own words.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — You may have this odd sense of forgetting who you are, then remembering, then forgetting again. But there’s one sure way to know, which is to observe your actions. Notice the choices that you make. Feel your motives at work, and watch what they lead you to do. You are confused if you forget what a kind person you are, and paying attention to your own conduct will help you remember. I would ask, though, about the source of any potential doubts. You have known certain things about your family all your life, though in recent years you’ve started to make new discoveries; well, if you can call them new. It’s more like you’ve received confirmation of what you long suspected; of what was previously impossible to know for sure. Now the question is what you’re going to do with that information.
Actually you don’t need to do much, except for make future decisions based on actual self-knowledge rather than the lies that others told you about yourself.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Venus enters your sign Thursday night, right here in the season of Venus — close to Beltane with the Sun in Taurus. This is a personalized message of blessing for you. That might come in the form of some unusual abundance, affection or relief from worry. Just remember, there’s always something to fret over. There’s always something that might go wrong, even though it usually does not. What you need the very most now are positive mental habits. Keep your mind clear of bogs, be they of your own making or due to the infiltration of others. Therefore, be cautious what you take on board, that others say to you or write to you. You are sensitive — that is one of your main assets, but you need a thicker skin. As for your own thoughts, it’s vital that you have some dependable reality checkpoints now. Those would come in the form of people you absolutely trust to give you feedback about whether what you’re thinking, feeling or planning is realistic.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — You’re protected by a guardian angel and a whole lot more. What you need to do is receive your protection. One form this may take is an intuitive hint that you need to pause before making a decision. You may be inclined to lean on facts and certain other rational modes of thinking; it’s your body that will reveal the most information to you, and after that, your emotional state. If there is a conflict between the two, I suggest you be more confident of your body and your feelings than your ideas or concepts. Notice any discrepancies. I suggest you pay attention to any way in which you feel swayed by public opinion, however you define the public. It might be your friends, it might be your colleagues, or who knows, it might be the actual public. Right now it would be much better for you to set trends rather than follow them; to set opinion rather than be subject to it.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — You seem to be in a position where you have to take leadership, though you might not feel like you’re getting any traction. Remember that in the world there are two kinds of authority — formal and informal. Formal power is the headmaster of a school. Informal power is a student who understands how to win people over and make things happen, having nothing to do with any official line of authority. Your charts suggest you may be in a dilemma that would be described well by these two possibilities. The way to accomplish what you want to accomplish is to win hearts and minds. You do that by socializing and fraternizing with people, though not for recreational purposes. This is for your mission, for your project.
Work the room, speak to people one by one, address them by name, and get them on board with what you are planning. Offer your help with what they might need. There’s a special kind of sharing involved: people are your assets, and more significantly, you are theirs.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — You deserve to be recognized for what you do. Please never, ever doubt that. I know how easy it is to forget or deny your own accomplishments. It does not help that many celebrities and media figures who pull in seven figures are famous for absolutely nothing. This waters down the whole concept of recognition. You must evaluate yourself on another scale. Begin by giving yourself credit for what you’ve accomplished. In particular, focus on the ways in which you’ve taken leadership in your own life. Look back a few years and note the changes that you’ve made, particularly the ones you thought were impossible. This proves that you’re made of tougher stuff than you may think. Nobody should confuse your friendly exterior and elegant style with any kind of frailty — especially yourself. Your combination of style and grit will get you places, though for now the thing to do is count your victories.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — You may need to make some difficult decisions, but they only seem difficult because you’re hesitating. Every corner of your chart is shouting the same message: Get clear. Focus your mind. Take action. Focus your words. There’s nothing about you that’s inherently passive, though it’s possible for you to pretend. But we might ask why. Focus, commitment and action all imply vulnerability. You might describe that as feeling. Their opposite force in the universe is apathy, which is an interesting word: it means not feeling. If you want to make progress, dare yourself to feel and to take action as a result. There are far greater risks in your mind than there are in reality, and the truth is that the most serious risk you face is from hesitating or refusing to direct your energy when you know that is precisely what you need to do. Remember, when you take action, that will change you. If you want results, be willing to adapt, to grow, to change.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Some situation seems to be calling for urgent focus on finances. There seems to be plenty of determination, intelligence and money to go around. So why are you hesitating? Does it involve some lack of faith or confidence in yourself? It would seem that way. I suggest you not count yourself out, or deem yourself incapable, of anything — particularly before you’ve tried. I would also suggest skipping the part about how nobody has decreed that you’re qualified to do what you need to do. That is something that you must tell yourself; yours is the only permission you need to do anything, or to be anything. You may have the idea that someone else needs to be committed to the cause before you can be. That would count as one more mental obstacle to something you can in fact do yourself, and do brilliantly. Notice whenever you’re hesitating, for whatever reason, and start making decisions. Then, click a stopwatch and take action in under one minute.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — You may feel like the harder you try, the less you’re getting done. It would help if you focused your energy differently. You’re likely to be thinking in terms of the number of hours you put into something rather than the quality of your ideas. You may be thinking of how much effort you apply rather than the results that you get. In any mature endeavor, all that counts are the results. Yet the results are not subject to your measure alone; there must be some idea of what is necessary for the whole system. Your thinking seems to be isolated, as if you’re holding onto certain misunderstandings that could be easily cleared up by communicating directly with the people around you. It’s true that by one measure, your astrology describes you containing your feelings and your thoughts, as if you’re alone. You are not alone, and more than that, you need the people around you and they need you.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Take some time out for R and R this weekend — the real thing. It will help you beyond measure right now. Think of it this way. There’s an approach that says every hour of sleep you get before midnight counts for two hours after midnight. Right now, every day of rest and reprieve from the daily grind that you get counts for several days under other circumstances. Going into next week, the same counts for slowing down, ending your work days earlier, and getting into a place where you can actually disconnect and relax. This may or may not be your usual style, though it’s vital to admit that we are all working way too hard. This is especially ironic considering we’re surrounded by allegedly labor saving devices. You still need contact with the outer world, but you can safely afford to put a few gadgets in the freezer for a while.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — Mercury square Neptune is not exactly doing wonders for your clarity in relationships, though in service of resolving that, I suggest you listen more than you speak. If you find yourself speaking because you feel like you’re not being heard, start asking questions. Find out what people know and what they don’t know. Get them on the record. Find out what they’re doing and what they’re not doing. You need to know more than you currently do in order to guide your life the way that you must. I would remind you that the people around you know more than enough. There’s just this odd thing that happens when strong people exert their leadership — and you would count, especially since Saturn entered Sagittarius late last year — that others feel like they can slack off. You can avoid that by involving people in clear agreements that they state out loud, face to face or on the telephone. Email is not enough. Text messages don’t count at all.