By Eric Francis
Aries (March 20-April 19)
There is big business moving in your chart and, right at the same time, planets come storming through your house of achievement and success, Saturn makes its first move into Sagittarius. The theme is ethics. Seen one way, your astrology is perfect for you to take a success-at-all-costs approach to life. It would probably work, remembering the “all costs” factor. Saturn, for its part, is saying that you must be mindful of the spiritual ground you stand on, which would include (for example) the relationship between what you achieve and how you get there. It would include making sure that every statement you make is true for you and also for the person hearing the message. Yes, planets are strongly hinting at a time of boldly claiming your power, your talent, and your authority. Yet unlike most business situations, the final result when we do the calculus on your chart comes down to do the right thing for the right reason. There is one other element: If you encounter a voice of parental authority, whether in the form of guilt, some religious regulation, or a personal hangup with success, listen carefully. I suggest you take notes and map it out. Nobody else can tell you what’s right and what’s wrong, though voices from the past are trying to hijack the issue. It’s not up to them; this is your call.
Taurus (April 19-May 20)
You may have the sensation that something is out of balance, though the way it looks in your astrology, you’re working to put that very thing into balance. You might not feel that way while it’s happening. The changes you want to make are drawing you in like the vortex they are. In truth, you are catching up with yourself. You are closing the gap between what you were told about yourself and the reality of who you actually are. You have made a respectable investment in clearing out karma, clutter, and beliefs to which other people are attached. There are two parts to the equation of what you’re doing: identifying and letting go of what was not true or has served its purpose, and taking full ownership of what is true for you based on actual understanding. The catch is how unstable you might feel through this process. Internally and externally, large forces are at work. This may have you feeling like the substance of who you are is not strong enough to stand up to existence. I would offer this: The seeming substance of who you are not is what is threatened. What you were in the past, what you believed, what you thought you wanted, will crumble under the changes. Who you are is what will be revealed for its enduring strength and vision.
Gemini (May 20-June 21)
You will need to put extra care this month and into January into all matters of a joint financial nature, taxes, investments, and shared resources. You may find this irritating or challenging, though I suggest you devote yourself to the tasks at hand. The thing to avoid is rebellion, whether in words, actions or even thoughts. Go along with the program and your process of tidying up the past. People of power and influence may be paying attention, and your job is to make sure that you do what you’re obliged to do. The most positive aspect of this is that once you clear this material out of the way, you will have a much lighter approach to existence. In addition, the relationships that are involved are struggling under the burden of too much in the way, too many unresolved commitments and a corresponding energy drain. Events this month are your invitation to get clear. You may be nervous about this because fearing that in the process, something will have to give. What is actually happening is that everyone is learning how to give and how to receive. The underlying skill that will make this possible is listening. Learn to do it and do it well. Listen carefully enough and you will get actual insights, and convey the idea that paying attention actually helps. Absolutely radical, I know.
Cancer (June 21-July 22)
Calmly watch the world and observe the subtle fact that you’re in a position of power. You will have to do some sorting out what that power is, how it manifests and how you may use it, but the fact remains, you are in a strong place. This will be helpful information when you get into that moment when so much is happening that you have no idea how to handle it. Come back to the core concept; come back to the egg. Your strength is not power over anyone else. It’s based on having a wide perspective and also on confidence coming from the inside-out. You may think that everything else, everything going on around you, is so much more substantial, so much more tangible. But that does not translate to meaningful, or to long-term influence. It will help if you get in the habit of speaking second rather than first. It will help immensely if you focus your intuition on what is being said to you, and figure out the message under the message. Then you can unravel the psychology of the people around you, and once you do that, you will be unstoppable. Meanwhile, you have an assignment, which is to notice the ways you’ve done things the same way and had the same result. New information will provide the means to new methods and, consequently, new effects.
Leo (July 22-August 23)
Get ready for an adventure—artistic, creative, erotic, childish, challenging, risky—and remember to pace yourself. You can be as bold of an adventurer as you want, as long as you remember to sleep at night and eat real food. I know that what often seems like the most fun involves being up 24 hours a day, neglecting one’s health and otherwise going over the deep end. You may be inclined to do that, though I am looking ahead to the charts after you come back down to the ground, and they are suggesting a conscious approach to whatever bold thing you do. In essence I am saying to take a balanced approach when you will have lots of opportunities not to do that. Perhaps as encouragement I can offer the idea that you will go deeper, learn more and get more accomplished if you do the food/water/sleep thing than if you don’t. The kinds of edgy adventures, experiments and thought excursions indicated by your charts will benefit from presence of mind. Much of what you learn will come across in subtle ways, in hints and in cues. Plus, in anything risky there is at least some potential danger, and the way to mitigate that is to be present in your own mind and body. That said, your astrology really is calling for a bold and fearless approach to it all.
Virgo (August 23-September 22)
What does it take to unravel conditioning, guilt and resistance? What does it take to be the person you are every minute of the day, with no pretense? Usually it takes a process. For some people there can be a breakthrough or sudden awakening, and ultimately no matter what the process or lead-in may be there is that moment of choice, of full awakening. Your chart suggests two parallel experiences, as if you’re digging a tunnel from two sides of the river. From one side of the river is a trip through your conditioning, which is resulting in heightened awareness of your environment. You may have some shocking insights as you take this journey, and you may figure out that your perception is mostly the result of past impressions. At times they may seem impossible to escape, but once you see them you’re most of the way there. From the other side of the river, you are determined to express yourself. This is the external side of the journey, where you are setting yourself free to say what you want to say and make what you want to make. No matter how you look at this experience, the ultimate point of arrival is the same thing: not being trapped in the past. To most, this seems like a pipe dream or an absurd notion. To you it’s a necessity.
Libra (September 22-October 23)
We all live in “the environment,” which we usually think of as the air, the water, the neighborhood, the cityscape, or some other external factor. You’re about to be taken on a journey through your mental environment. You will have the option and the ability to see how real, or unreal, it is. Yet real or unreal is not the actual dilemma. The dilemma is the relationship between inner and outer. To what extent is your inner environment influencing or even controlling your perception? The boundary between inner and outer may seem extremely thin at times, and at others, it may seem like it’s as wide as a canyon. The thing to do, while you have an excellent opportunity, is to experiment. Is it really true that when you smile the whole world smiles with you? Is it true that when you’re feeling depressed you cannot tune into happiness in a sincere way? How powerful is the mental filter? This question matters a lot, because if the answer is, “It controls everything else,” then you may decide that you need to learn how to master this element of yourself. Or at least, you may decide that you need to master the art of exploring your own mental environment. Events over the next few weeks will facilitate that, as long as you remember that everything you perceive is not necessarily what it seems to be.
Scorpio (October 23-November 22)
This month, a pressure you’ve endured for quite a while starts to lift from you. You might also think of it as an external support system. Its absence will be an experiment, and a test of how strong you’ve become. You may not feel entirely confident, similar to the end of healing a physical injury, uncertain whether you’re up to who you were before. Yet this experiment is about going far beyond who you were, and it’s about exploring and developing new forms of strength. In the past, you have put great reliance on your emotional power to get the world to bend to your will. What you are learning now is how to reason carefully. You have also been able to sidestep the idea of self-reliance, in part due to your ability to take part in structured entities and know how to work within the tribe. Yet Saturn making its first foray out of your sign this month is an indication that you will be learning some significant ways to be self-sustaining and emotionally independent. This also translates to a greater degree of freedom, which often you’ve been willing to sacrifice in exchange for certain social bonds that have sustained you. This will be a gentler process than you may think. Yet it will also be more meaningful and more necessary than you believe.
Sagittarius (November 22-December 22)
This month, Saturn enters your sign for the first time since Nov. 12, 1988, when the prior Saturn in Sagittarius phase ended. Since this promises to be big news on the Internet, here are some time details, then one thought: Saturn enters your sign on December 23, then retrogrades back into Scorpio on June 14, 2015, and finally settles into Sagittarius on September 17, 2015 (where it will remain for two years). As for that thought: You’re entering a time of transition. Part of what will make that real is focusing what you’ve learned about yourself since this time in 2012, and taking that to heart. In particular, the central topic is the nature of fear and how you respond to it. You might say we live in the age of “I know a lot, but I don’t do anything with the information.” You are entering the age of, ‘I must use everything I know about myself’. In essence, this is the time of mastering your accountability for yourself, which means being accountable for that elusive thing known as self-knowledge. This is the thing you’ve been waiting for. You may not think so, but as this quality of existence begins to pick up momentum, I think you will get the idea. Central to the theme is being the master of your own life. Yes, you can do it.
Capricorn (December 22-January 20)
If this isn’t the most interesting month of your life, it will likely come up on the top 10 list. It may be challenging to hold your center. You may feel like some vast change is about to sweep through your world. The astrology illustrates a scenario where you are surrounded by a vast amount of activity and energy, yet you appear holding yourself steady at a still point. Let the energy move around you. Allow yourself to be central rather than peripheral. Allow yourself to be the one sought after rather than the seeker. Allow others to be changed by you, without imposing any plans or intentions on them. There is so much momentum carrying you and your whole environment that you don’t need to. You will feel sane and stable if you observe rather than explain, if you allow your attention to expand rather than reacting to what others are saying or doing. I know that on Earth this is all easier said than done, but that’s true of just about anything. This will be worth the relatively small effort, with the greatest reward being the recognition of how many options you have open. To succeed at this you must do one thing, really — resist the temptation to rebel for its own sake. Speak softly and clearly when you truly have something to say — and trust that you will be heard.
Aquarius (January 20-February 19)
Don’t let the pressure get to you. Keep your sense of humor. Get as much of your work out of the way before the holidays as you can, and give yourself a little space to live and breathe. Make sure that you plan plenty of time alone, get enough sleep as if it’s as important as oxygen or food. You are processing a lot. By that I mean that many of the revelations of past years are starting to make sense to you. Their truth and relevance is catching up with you and you are catching up with them. Yet this may be overwhelming, and I would propose that you need a vent. It might be a creative vent, an erotic one, or some time-shifting experience that helps you shift your context. Remember this if the inner pressure gets to be too much. While it’s also true that you have many worldly responsibilities at the moment, that is about to shift, and shift suddenly. You will still possess your influence, your insight and your modes of participation, but the burden of responsibility and perhaps of leadership is about to let up. I suggest you move with that, which for you will be a matter of trust. You have accomplished a lot the past two years, and I suggest you reflect on that with some true appreciation.
Pisces (February 19-March 20)
You’re about to get a taste of a kind of success that you may have decided was in the past, or that existed only in theory. You will not get there alone. What you are doing now, however, will take you further, and has a tangible quality that you may have been lacking. You are certainly someone who is motivated, even driven, by your dreams—though that is not nearly enough to satisfy you. From the look of your chart, what you want is accomplishment, which brings me to the ‘not alone’ part. The wealth in your life is the people in your life. This is not a fact that’s lost on them, and neither is their respect for you as an organizing principle. That, if anything, is how to think of yourself, rather than (say for example) as an achiever or leader. Your job is to pull the scene into focus. Your role is to propose purpose and to serve as a stabilizing factor in what is clearly an increasingly chaotic world. Your own stability will come from your ability to dance with the chaos rather than to resist it; and to gather energy rather than have it be depleted from you. To this end, food is a critical factor right now, as is water in all forms. Yet the real message of your charts in this rather large moment is to notice who is around you.
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