Tag Archives: Monthly Horoscope

Under a Scorpio Sky

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Dear Fellow Traveler:

The Sun has just entered Libra, yet the emphasis of the sky is already shifting into Scorpio. Everyone’s favorite planets, Venus and Mars, are now there, and we’re about to experience a relatively rare Venus retrograde, of which we’re already experiencing the first sensation.

For the next couple of weeks the Sun will be in Libra; the equinox was just a few days ago. Thursday there is a conjunction of the Sun and Saturn in Libra. This is a reminder of how much we’ve been through in the way of Saturn aspects to outer planets the past two years: five oppositions to Uranus and three squares to Pluto. By contrast this week’s astrology is a celebration that says whatever it is, you can handle it.

Next up, we have an impressive New Moon in Libra on Oct. 7. The Moon is connected to our sense of security, and this is a lunar event that goes to the heart of our questions about what it means to be secure on the planet. For a decade now, we’ve spent a lot of time and money installing metal detectors in schools, taking our shoes off at DHS checkpoints and getting searched on subway trains. I recently had to permanently surrender a mini-Leatherman from my camera bag so I could get onto the Ellis Island ferry. This week the federal government said it wants even more rights to pry into our email and social networking. Do we really live in a safer world as a result of all this control? I don’t think so.

The Oct. 7 chart says stop doing all those things supposedly designed to make you feel safe that really do no such thing. They’re the ones you do over and over again. What we get, though, is a reminder to balance our lives by investigating — and acting upon — that which is the most important to us; that which bestows actual pleasure rather than the fleeting kind.

On Oct. 8, Venus stations retrograde in Scorpio. Venus is retrograde least of all the planets — just six weeks every 18 months, or about 8% of the time (compared to Mercury, retrograde an average of 12 weeks a year, or Pluto, retrograde five months each year). This is a deep transit, in part because Venus is said to be a difficult fit for Scorpio; traditionally, this is called being in her detriment.

The story of this transit is finding within ourselves everything we seek from others. And then it’s about offering those very things back outward. Of course, this contradicts the usual Western society thing of ‘acquire everything from the outside’, and that’s the beauty of the thing. This is an investigation of what we have; it’s an inquiry into what we value, and what is the most important to us. Most of all it’s an inquiry into what we feel.

The message I take away from these charts is that we need to practice our relationships as if people are individuals, not halves of a couple. This is true of how we live our relationships, and how we design them; it’s true of how we treat others around us, as well as partners and prospects. Whether we like it or not, many of the things we take for granted will be up for question. Yet the question may not be outwardly spoken: it’s part of a deep meditation on what it means to be alive in a time of total flux, and when truth seems to hold little currency. That is part of the fraud that we’re all working out how to liberate ourselves from, and if Venus retrograde suggests honing one thing, it’s the discovery process of what is authentically true for you.

Yours & truly,

 

 

Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope – October 2010

There’s only so challenging a relationship should be; only so many times that the same thing happens before a conscious attempt is made by both parties to shift the pattern. Yet you could say that within the seemingly endless workload that we create in our relationships, consciousness is the number one item on the agenda. Add a little of that and you are likely to notice that most of your struggle is pointless; that is to say, it lacks a tangible agenda, goal or orientation. This is true particularly if the pattern is repetitive or if there seems to be some lesson that you’re not learning. The futility is veiled by everyone’s investment in the situation: it’s likely to be some combination of emotional, sexual and financial, though lodged in what seems like an intractable place. It looks like you’re the one who has the power to move on, and the desire to let go of the past. It also looks like, as usual, you’re the one who is impatient and who is less willing to wait for something to happen, and more willing to work for a result. Yet a partner or love interest has a need to investigate a past issue. You may be too biased or too close to the situation to help out, but that does not dismiss the relationship. It does emphasize the fact that a relationship is the meeting of two individuals, not two halves of a couple.

Aries Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

The presence of another person in your life may feel so strong that you’re wondering whether contact on any kind of equal terms is possible. Yet there is no contact with another without contact with yourself. The deeper you go into your own sense of presence in your world, the deeper you’ll delve into your experiences of others. Your solar chart suggests that you’ve been keeping secrets from yourself. These secrets involve your relationship history, and in particular, what your values about deep connection are and where they came from. More specifically, Venus retrograde in Scorpio suggests that you’re deeply involved in a process of understanding your sexuality and how it manifests in your relationships. This is as much a quest for understanding the past and its influences as it is about letting go of out-of-date ideas and emotional responses — which in part means letting go of your attachment to them. This is not as difficult as you may think, particularly when you assess the cost of the attachments and get a feeling for the benefits that can come when you take your life into your own hands. I would offer these queries. What is the meaning that you put on sex, and how did it get there? What is the value you ascribe to it, and has it actually demonstrated that value? And, what did you leave behind in the distant past that you want dearly to retrieve?

Taurus Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

There are times when we take a risk and seem to hit a wall, a limit or a restriction. Sometimes a seeming authority figure renders an opinion that something isn’t good enough. Other times, the idea of a risk is met by the response of fear. If any of that occurs in the next few weeks, remember: how you respond is more important than what happened. Your responses can range from discouragement to resentment to renewed determination. Yet once you go past the level of emotional impulse, there is a question about how you relate to your environment. What supports you, and what interferes with your creative process? I suggest you investigate everything from how your desk is arranged to the structure of your day. In considering people, are you seeking the approval of someone who seems incapable of offering it? The thing about any form of creative process is that it depends on answering to your inner authority; the notion of ‘authorship’ is about you being the one to grant yourself authorization. If you are caught in a loop where (for example) you’re seeking the approval of an actual person in your life, or covertly striving for the approval of parents who never gave it to you, that is something to look at closely. The clue would be that you tend to go in circles specifically where you put in enough love, energy and talent to make actual progress.

Gemini Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

Saturn in your security and home angle is a new development as of this year and in particular the past couple of months. This is a challenging transit; it’s compelling you to be resolute about certain emotional matters that you would rather avoid, to go beyond the appearance of peace of mind and put your roots into the real thing. Every day brings another reminder that the past is over. This transit may be coming with a bottom-heavy feeling and a sense that you cannot escape from certain emotional loops. True, you’ve been through some profound changes in the past year, but you may wonder what they add up to. This is not a matter of setting your standards lower. What Saturn’s presence suggests is the need for some deep cleaning of your spiritual closets. This is a process that will last the next two years. On one level there is no rush. On another, the sooner you focus on what you know you need to address, the sooner you’ll have the satisfaction of progress. Most of what you’re sifting through and sorting out is inherited material that you ended up with. Far from having no effect on your life, these ideas stand on a thinly veiled guiding principle: for example, informing your notion of what is possible. Let’s put it this way. If you don’t feel deeply that anything is actually possible, then someone else’s ideas are holding you down. You can drop that weight any time you want. It’s no source of comfort. Feeling good surely is.

Cancer Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

Nearly all of the heavy lifting of our lives involves thought. It’s true that we still move house, move rocks and build barns, but in the lives of most Westerners, the ‘burden’, if I could call it that, is careful consideration of our situation. With Saturn recently beginning a two-year trip across your solar 3rd house, the house of ideas, of communication and of our relationship to technology, you’re seeing the value of involving yourself with these processes consciously. Recently this has involved finances; you seem to have worked out a complex issue, and are now finishing the cleanup. What you’ve learned the past two months has the power to set you ahead financially, if you will apply what you learned — and this is the time to do so. Early in the month, there’s some revelation where it all makes sense at once. The underlying theme is that money is not the mysterious thing that it’s made out to be by those who make a living flipping and stripping. It is a practical matter that facilitates other practical matters, and also some of the things you dream of. Yet many of the things that give us the most satisfaction require no funding at all. In our financially obsessed world, we need to remember that every single day. In the age of the $5 cup of coffee, few are the reminders that the best things in life are free. And that includes ideas.

Leo Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

Go beyond appearances — all of them. I suggest that you question anything you do to appear a certain way, from wearing makeup to ‘dressing for the occasion’, to purchasing anything so that others know you have it. Question whether any belief you hold is designed to please another person, or whether it’s coming from the core of who you are. If you notice that you’re presenting yourself in a way designed to conceal something, or to please another person, it’s time to ask yourself the question so rarely asked: why? The answer ‘I do it for myself’ is not adequate now; you need to peel back that motive and see if there is something else. Knowing your real motives will only help you. It will help you, in particular, to move beyond any situation where you do the same thing over and over again, or where you don’t seem to get what you think of as ‘the lesson’. The only lesson you actually need is the awareness of what drives you. Making all of your motives conscious may be challenging and it may shake up certain things you think of as commitments, but at least you’ll be living on honest terms with yourself. It is almost always an unconscious motive that drives us in circles; that creates set-ups that prevent us from attaining what we think of as our goals. That level is usually the hardest to get to, and the most productive. If you get there, be grateful.

Our lives are filled with way too much effort. You have a knack for finding the efficient route, and the blessing of being easygoing enough that you’re able to keep your cool despite the considerable chaos that the world can inflict. But now is the time to focus on a kind of efficiency that will be remarkable even for you. You have a lot to do, and the first item on this agenda is to sort out several items that seem urgent but are not. This will leave room in your life for two focal points. One is a kind of external pursuit; something or someone you want and that wanting can be expressed by action, such as making a major decision, particularly a financial one. The other is an inward quest you may not be aware of yet. That quest is drawing you toward a contradiction about yourself that you’ve wanted to resolve for a long time. It typically has a repelling quality; involving yourself with it has all the allure of setting out to achieve the impossible on a day when your clothes and shoes don’t fit right. Yet something subtle is drawing you in; you may simply feel that it’s time, or you may decide that in order to feel like a complete person you must come to terms with this issue. It involves how you feel about yourself, and you might describe it as finally unraveling the conditions you place on unconditional love.

What happens in your most intimate relationships this month will tell you more about yourself than it tells you about a partner. This is information you’ve wanted for a while, and now it seems certain that you will make the discovery you’ve been seeking. Yes, you have plenty to learn about your relationship dynamics, and this month’s unusual Scorpio astrology — involving both Venus and Mars in your sign — will help you make observations about the person or people closest to you. Yet the planets are set up to reveal one of the most difficult things about human nature, which is the source of what we project. Projection is when someone outside us becomes the subject of a drama that is purely internal. The implication is that the source of an image or a light is inside the projector. Nobody going through a challenge wants to hear that, and it will take some emotional processing to get you beyond any potential self-blame that comes up. One thing I suggest you remember is that the source of this situation is in the distant past. It’s back there, and it involves a specific person. Discovering this will require you to reassign new roles to colleagues and loved ones currently in your life, such as: ‘I had you cast in the role of the one who was holding me back. Now that I see I was doing that, I can give you some other role’.

For months I’ve been hinting at a time when you could start to get things done: the real things, the big ones, the ones closest to your core passions. That time has arrived. Note that the planets are not offering you a free pass to anything — they are offering an extended opportunity to put the best of your talents to work. I don’t mean toil and I don’t mean what the Germans call ‘Sisyphus work’ — pushing the boulder up the hill, only to do it again. To the contrary, your mission is to create such a state of inner harmony, willingness to succeed and authentic passion, that you evoke the cooperation of the world. You need to be observant and see specifically where your talents meet a need, or provide something that doesn’t exist. The key here is being authentic. Authentic, in part, speaks to the specificity of your mission. Your niche is not ‘kind of’ what you want to do, it’s precisely what you want to do and what you do best. This is the objective that, in my reading, the planets are pointing to. So I suggest you pause and refine your plans. Be clear with yourself. Cross off the list anything that is not really supposed to be there. Now is the time to forget the details of how things are going to happen; pour your energy into the creative aspect of your mission and be precisely who you are.

The past few seasons have taken you around a curve in your life, but it was more like taking an endless right angle, half expecting for the car to crack in half. It never did, but you had some tense moments. This goes back to about one year ago. The sensation involved a transit called Saturn square Pluto, and this or something like it happens only about once every nine years. But this was different than any other; it involved not only your ruling planet Saturn, but also Pluto in your sign. At the same time, Saturn made a series of oppositions to Uranus, and the effect was: one thing after the next; this is never going to end; where am I going to get the strength? But you had the strength and you are stronger today. I want to offer one thought from my experience as a counseling astrologer and survivor of many Pluto transits. When such alignments end, there can be a kind of post-traumatic stress. If you’re expecting the next thing to go wrong or shake up your life, consider that potential. Your current planets suggest that you have an open road ahead; that you are free to create plans and bring them into reality. Yet you may find yourself needing to deal with negative expectations first. Don’t stuff those feelings; let them out, listen to them, and allow yourself to have some authentic confidence from having gone through so much so well.

The Capricorn Audio Birthday Report is now ready. This is more than an hour of astrology for Capricorn and Capricorn rising, covering the cardinal T-square from a personal perspective. I’ve also included a 20-minute tarot reading using the Voyager Deck. For instant access, order here for Capricorn and Capricorn Rising. Only $14.95, this also makes a meaningful and economical gift.

Is everything a matter of faith? It may well be. No matter how much preparation, planning, studying and vision you apply to an idea, or to yourself, the last step in the process is faith. You simply trust that you’re doing the right thing, or that you’ve done the right thing. So you may want to consider starting from that point, rather than aiming to eventually end up there. This would be particularly true for any ‘impossible situations’ you encounter, or for anything that you’ve tried dozens of times but never managed to get right. You may be confident you have the fortitude to get through anything. But that’s not the kind of strength you want right now. What you want to stoke is the faith that there is a ray of fairness in the world. You want to feed the fire of equanimity. You want the people around you to trust that the decisions you make for yourself are the right ones, and call nothing less than that love. Short of all that manifesting right now, you need to hold these values openly in your heart. It’s true you’re still living with a contradiction, a seeming split in how you feel about something or someone. Or this may be an inner division over what you want. When a deeper layer of the truth is revealed, you will see that it wasn’t a contradiction because one of those desires was something you could only give yourself.

Aquarius Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

How’s it going? I trust your sponge is getting soaked again after being wrung out a few times, and that you’re gradually forgetting the long dry spell you went through; those come and go. I trust you’ve sorted out some of the details of a relationship that was draining so much of your energy, and learned the value of detachment. Ah yes, that thing — supposedly, the most challenging lesson for a Fish, so attached to how everyone else feels. Yet with the high-stakes quality of your life lately, that is, with so many discussions where so much seems to matter, you need to be cool. Not to play it cool, but to actually be cool, so that you can use your mind and remember what you want. This is different, indeed, precisely opposite than having expectations or hopes. Think more in terms of demands. Don’t use the word outside your mind or your notebook; maybe call them requirements, or something polite, but be clear that they’re demands; the things without which you don’t commit your energy or time. So, remember what you want and stick to it. Remember to consider every situation you’re in, and consider what it will take to have that situation work for you. Don’t sign any contract or agreement, or make any promise, that you don’t think is eminently, admirably fair. This is also the time to allow what is distant to come to you, rather than you having to go to it. Take a breath and allow.

Pisces Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

Sun in Virgo, Pisces Full Moon

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Note to Readers: The introduction for this horoscope was published at the time of the Pisces Full Moon. We are now at the time of the Virgo New Moon. For more information about that event, please see this Tuesday edition.

Dear Fellow Traveler:

The Sun entered Virgo overnight Sunday to Monday in most time zones, beginning the last month of the season. Virgo is a mutable sign, which means that its energy is that of dissolving and blending into the next season — when the Sun enters Libra one month from now. The Sun entered Virgo with Mercury retrograde in that sign, and very close to the last Saturn-Pluto square (which was Saturday). Though we feel it in subtle ways, and the exact meaning is not clear, we are in a time of profound transition between eras of history. The feeling, on a personal level, is the sense of constant change, stress and exploring potential that it would take some imagination to describe as progress — and imagination is the very thing we need.

We will get some, with the Full Moon in Pisces [view charts]. That happens at 1:04 pm EDT the afternoon of Tuesday, Aug. 24. This Full Moon makes aspects to Saturn, Pluto, Chiron, Neptune, Uranus and Jupiter, and trines the lunar nodes — it’s another one of those precipitation points that ‘draws down’ the energy of the slow-moving cardinal T-square.

The whole aspect structure feeds into the Pisces Moon, which might be emotionally or psychically confusing — so it’s a good time to focus on a clearer vision of who you are and what you want. There is an emotional peak involved in this process, which may help you work out a deadlock or blockage about what you feel vs. what you think. Remember that the Pisces Moon always has an absorbent, psychic nature, so you may need to filter a bit. Remember that being open means being open to many different levels of reality. It helps to be selective where you tune in, and be aware that the energy of others may affect you in ways you’re not expecting.

Both of the planets associated with Pisces are involved in conjunctions now, so all things with a Pisces emphasis, and everyone with this sign highlighted in their charts, are coming into view in that soft lunar light. The conjunctions (as you probably know) are Chiron conjunct Neptune in Aquarius; and Jupiter conjunct Uranus (soon to happen twice in Pisces). Note that both of these conjunctions are blending the energy of Aquarius and Pisces, signs that work and play quite well together.

We need that soft, subtle, beauty-seeking Pisces energy in our lives, but it’s often dominated by things like advertising, alcohol and denial. Pisces is the quality of our souls that seeks art, love, passion, sharing and the dissolving of the many, many boundaries that our society has set up. Boundaries are necessary, but too many are detrimental to our ability to share and explore ourselves and one another. So given that there is so much Pisces energy in the sky right now, this is a great time to drop some of your defenses and let in what you can only let in when you’re not in a guarded state of being.

As for Virgo — there is plenty going on there as well. I referenced that in Friday’s edition of Planet Waves Astrology News, describing a truly unusual Mercury retrograde in this sign, which is picking up many facets of psychology from Sagittarius. At the moment, the detail-oriented, self-critical sign Virgo is working as one element with the broad-minded, visionary sign Sagittarius. Both of these signs stand to learn a great deal from one another.

So, as appropriate for the Pisces Full Moon, this is a time of blending, of merging, of exploring the space of overlap between ourselves and the people we care about, and the ones about whom we are curious.

This Planet Waves horoscope for September explores some of these themes.

Yours & truly,

 

 

PS: In Friday’s Aries horoscope, a misprint resulted in the meaning of an idea being skewed. The correct word is ‘purge’ rather than ‘urge’. Here is the corrected edition.

 

Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope – September 2010

The only reason developments will take you by surprise this month is because you’ve become distracted by less important things. In particular, I strongly suggest you not get involved in petty dramas and seeming problems in your workplace. These will only ensnare you in trivia. If you’ve already become involved, then snip and slip out of the web, cease giving your opinion and focus on working out old, persistent problems rather than anything that makes its appearance as something seemingly new and exciting. One thing it’s time to consider carefully is if the work you do every day matches your passion, your intelligence and your creativity. If it doesn’t, that could be the root cause of any turbulence in your life. Yet there are deeper regions that the current Mercury retrograde is guiding you to explore, and one of them is your family’s connection to religion. This may be the source of a “work ethic” that consistently guides you away from what you love to do, and what you’re the most talented at. One last factor is understanding the way in which your state of mind influences your relationships. This factor is not imaginary — how you feel, and the thoughts that you think, influence the people who are closest to you. Many of these ideas are, in turn, influenced by your relationship to the past, and that is what is coming to the surface now. Remember: love brings up everything unlike itself.

Aries Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

We often hear the admonition that ‘relationships are mirrors’, and often that works out to be true. Yet there is a mirror we often don’t consider, which is the looking-glass of gender. Part of the ‘other’ we seek in relationships is the seemingly polar opposite that lets us feel or experience existence from the viewpoint of the other sex. The differences between men and women are so exploited that we live with many false ideas about who this mysterious other really is. We make expectations on them, and on ourselves, that emphasize artificial differences rather than natural similarities. And we lose sight of something even more precious, which are the subtle shades of humanity that are authentically male and female, and which give us access to something that we can’t quite reach any other way. Yet what these differences also teach us is that we contain our opposite. That is part of the beauty of the reflection: what we see is interesting or beautiful because it shows us something within ourselves that we don’t usually see. That something exists in same-sex relationships as well, where we see another beautiful or challenging or curious reflection of self-as-other and other-as-self. As Venus and Mars move into your opposite sign Scorpio, you’ll be taken to some deep places on these explorations of the mirror effect in your relationships, and can gain some unusual insight into yourself.

Taurus Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

One of your parents had a mental sticking point, and it’s the place where you most often get stuck. This affects your work, your emotional health and most of all, your sense of safety (which could translate into habitual anxiety). In other words, something that belonged to one of them — your father was the likely source — is affecting your life in ways that you may not recognize. The problem is that it’s a blind spot; you can look directly at it and still not see it clearly. Also, you may have a question about whether the issue even exists; in the face of considerable evidence, you still don’t believe it consistently enough to address the situation, or even to have specific information about what to address. The planets are set up such that a new level of truth is dawning on you, in a series of revelations. It’s like you’re unearthing layers of the past, including from past generations, that are influencing your life today, and that you can actually process and let go of. A few of these may take you by storm. Others will gradually come into focus. Whatever you suddenly discover, keep paying attention to the details, and gather your facts meticulously. Be aware that certain aspects currently in force, lasting well past mid-month, could be stirring up more than the usual amount of fear or emotional discomfort. Think of these feelings as being set free and bubbling to the surface. Then let them go.

Gemini Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

Yours is said to be an emotional sign, ruled by the Moon. In truth, Cancer is one of the most mentally active signs. The two are related. Mental habits affect emotions and emotional tendencies affect our habits of thought. Think of the emotional realm as the energy source (sea currents) and the mental realm as the resulting expression of energy (waves crashing on the beach). Mercury’s current retrograde in Virgo seems to be suggesting that you reorganize, sort out your ideas and focus your mind. I suggest that if you start deeper, on the level of your emotions, the mental level will sort itself out without much intervention. You can use your frustrations or complications as hints that you need to focus inwardly, though think of this more as needing to meditate and find some inner peace than needing to clean out closets or reorganize your desk. If you’re the genuinely restless type, then cleaning your desk might make a good meditation, but I suggest that your ultimate aim be to move away from the mental realm and go in as deep as you can. Once you do, you’ll see that your immediate concerns are actually of little relevance, and that your energy will shift in the direction of your longterm plans and your true aspirations. Let’s admit, you want more freedom than you have, and the way you’re going to get there is by tuning into the feeling of what it would be like to experience that freedom and letting that sensation guide you home.

Cancer Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

In good times and bad, anywhere you go people seem to be obsessed with money. That’s because it’s one of the few tangible ways we have to express power. It can be acquired; it has the potential to make people equal. But more often it stacks the deck in strange ways, creating the illusion that if you have money you’re somebody; if you don’t, you’re not. I think you recognize the futility of this philosophy. You’re also talented at making your money go a long way, and the reason, I believe, is because you recognize the value of money, and invest yours in ways that are actually meaningful to you. Mercury retrograde in your 2nd house — both your cash and your values — suggests that it’s time to re-examine your opinions and attitudes that pertain to your resources. Make sure that your spending is actually in line with your philosophy of life. Most important, make sure that all your cash outlays are accurate. Read your bank statements carefully. Spot-check going back six months. Check the interest rates on various credit cards and adjust your commitments accordingly. You are likely to learn a few things that you didn’t know, but another discovery awaits: your real wealth has nothing to do with your monetary assets. It’s all about what you share with others and what they share with you — those places where the whole adds up to more than the sum of the parts.

The Leo Audio Birthday Report is now ready. This is more than an hour of astrology for Leo and Leo rising, covering the cardinal T-square from a personal perspective. I’ve also included a 20-minute tarot reading using the Voyager Deck. For instant access, order here for Leo and Leo Rising. Only $14.95, this also makes a meaningful and economical birthday gift.

Honesty with yourself is not just the core issue; it’s the best reward that you can give yourself. Self-honesty may be the most important necessity faced by our society. Indeed, we live in the midst of an epidemic of denial that many people comment on and few have ideas for how to help our culture sober up. The current Mercury retrograde (through Sept. 12) is bringing many things to the surface, facets of your emotional life that you cannot deny. You may be feeling an urge to criticize yourself for not having worked through this material sooner, or for allowing it to still bother you. I suggest you do nothing of the kind. What you’re experiencing has roots in the distant past, most likely several generations. Multigenerational material has to be worked with carefully, and approached gently. If you take any form of a self-blame position, you’re doing neither. Search carefully the various people on your father’s side of the family who have influenced your life. Look at their patterns of alcohol use, what may have motivated their choices, and how they responded to their limited choices. Don’t be afraid to notice when you were actually treated without any moral or ethical sanity. The idea here is not to lay blame as much as it is to witness what has shaped your character, at a time when you actually can make some decisions about who you are and who you want to become.

The Virgo birthday report will be ready next week. However, I am offering a Mercury retrograde in Virgo report which is like taking a trek on Virgo through the 12 houses of the zodiac. There is an abundance of information in there offered in service of a sign that deserves more attention than it usually gets. Here is the link to connect with that product.

A tense dynamic is gradually leaving your life; it has been slipping away with the season, so gradually you may not even know that it’s gone, though I hope you feel a sense of relief. You’re replacing this tension with an element of stability and familiarity that leaves you free to explore more of the subtle facets of life, and of your own mind. Saturn is now in Libra for the longrun, and Saturn’s presence in your life is easier for you than it is for most other signs of the zodiac — this, owing to a long and deep friendship between this planet and your sign. You may be feeling a deep craving to reveal the true nature of who you are, and to expose your layers. This, rather than doing the usual thing we’re brainwashed into doing, which is to hide them behind several coatings of excuses and ulterior motives. So, take the chance and be real; be true. As you do, you’re likely to discover something that is a threshold in any growth process, which is tapping into what’s called the unconscious level of the mind. Of course, it’s not so unconscious once we’re aware of it, but it has a way of dipping back down below the surface. So keep your inner eyes open. When we see the ways that our fears and self-criticisms have dragged us through the psychic mud, we’ve got that much more motivation to pay attention.

Sex always seems to ask more questions than it provides easy answers. Indeed, with the many ways sex is exploited by people and by business, it’s amazing we have any peace of mind at all. You’re in a healing process right now, one that is focused on your sexuality, though in ways that are not usually discussed in women’s magazines or on Oprah. One involves a deep exploration of your sexual orientation, and by that I include your gender orientation. We are given a lot of rules about what it means to be male or female, and we’ve usually swallowed and digested them long before we know what happened. Perhaps the most meaningful aspect of this involves cultivating your relationship to your feminine side. Men are by modern standards expected to be feminized, emotional, sensitive…women are expected to compete in the business world, leave their children and the household, and act like men, thus suppressing their feminine sides. With Venus about to be retrograde in Scorpio (Oct. 8 through Nov. 18, with early effects beginning now), you’re being summoned to some deep introspection about who this inner woman is, and how she expresses herself in a world still dominated by conflict and consumerism. It seems like you’re embarking on exploring a lost or concealed attribute of your inner nature. She may have hidden herself away because the environment feels so hostile. As regards sex, I would leave you with one question: is it about power, or is it about pleasure?

It looks like your ability to express yourself is at odds with how much you have to express. I suggest you take the long view of your creative process. Rather than focusing on your immediate desires, what are the ideas and projects that have been on your mind for years? What have you attempted many times and not actually brought to fruition? The amount of creative energy that you’re holding in your body, and its particular extraordinary quality, suggest far greater things are possible than you’re currently imagining. Indeed, the petty frustrations that may be hanging you up at work, or that are throwing delays and stumbling blocks into your immediate plans, are part of where your vision is getting stuck. None of those things are really the issue, or speak to the deeper possibilities — I suggest you not let yourself get too hung up. Separate what must be done or solved this week from where you want to be in a year or five years. Or, forget time — consider what is your highest creative vision for yourself, and organize your life and your mind around focusing on that. There’s an element of this that involves how you think of relationships. You may be caught in some old-fashioned (that is, outmoded and painful) concepts of what a relationship is supposed to be. Part of your creative process is reinventing your way into an entirely new concept of love and sharing, despite many past impediments to that.

You have not just turned a corner in your life — you have turned many. Your ruling planet Saturn has been through a series of oppositions to Uranus and squares to Pluto. This has been a two-year project, and the peaks of energy and the most difficult transitions are behind you. Yet I want to caution that you may be carrying trauma in your energy field from so many changes — indeed, what may feel like too many changes. This can affect your sense of wellbeing, of what it’s possible for you to achieve, of your freedom of movement, and whether you’re trusted by the people whose lives you influence. I suggest you suspend your doubts, and work on your own mind and feelings. All of these changes, and all the work you’ve done, both on yourself and in the world, is going to pay off. The signs are likely already there. There have been times when you’ve felt not just safe but invincible, as if you were protected by a force beyond your own understanding. Who knows, that may be true, but your best moments have come at times when by being uncompromisingly yourself, you notice the world moves over and makes room for who you are. As I have said many times, you are on a mission at this time in your life, one that blends the deepest levels of personal growth and the highest calling to leadership. On with the show.

The Capricorn Audio Birthday Report is now ready. This is more than an hour of astrology for Capricorn and Capricorn rising, covering the cardinal T-square from a personal perspective. I’ve also included a 20-minute tarot reading using the Voyager Deck. For instant access, order here for Capricorn and Capricorn Rising. Only $14.95, this also makes a meaningful and economical gift.

You know you’re intelligent, indeed, in a way that few people get to experience or even know exists: quirky, analytical, able to see five sides of an issue. You have a connection to the future that can seem strange even to you. Yet the discipline and luck that it takes to manifest your ideas can be rare commodities in the world, which tends to want the kind of innovation that was big last year. That said, you’ve recently had a taste of how influential your ideas can be. I think you figured out that there is a connection to being unequivocally yourself in the development of those ideas, which is to say, fearless about who you are. You see, this really is the key. Among the few things that could actually stop you, and have ever stopped you, is hesitation, self-doubt and the odd sense that your mind is divided. These are all deeply personal matters, barely even environmental; true, your relationships can exaggerate the effect, but you know that how you use your mind is all about you. You’re in a moment of relative calm, though it does seem like you have a lot on your mind. I suggest you take whatever you’re working through and make it as simple as possible. Does it come down to money? Does it come down to what’s important to you? Does it come down to the fear of being independent? Name your issue, and address it directly.

Aquarius Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

I suggest that in your relationships, you count on what you give without even trying. Trust that people are drawn to you for good reasons, though they may not fully understand them. Those reasons are about who you inherently are, which is something that you’ve gradually been getting a grasp on over the years. In terms of what years, let’s count back just seven. That’s long enough, and it happens to define a phase of your existence, your development and your self-discovery that is reaching its last culmination right now, in the current season. It’s true that you’ve paid a price in terms of instability and enduring constant change, both inner and outer. This has been the influence of Uranus in your life that dates back to your birthday in 2003. Around that time a process was set in motion. It took a little while to heat up, though by 2004 the signs were unmistakable. You’ve learned many things, and lots about yourself — among them being, how to exist with any peace of mind on a planet where so little is certain. And yet all the while, you have no doubt noticed that you sacrifice very little when you give up any form of false certainty. Now you’ve reached a point where the benefits of your journey, of your many journeys, will gradually become apparent. Yet you have a few peak moments about to arrive, hinting of the gifts you have yet to receive.

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