“The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead. To love, to be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of the life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.” – Arundhati Roy
This week’s horoscopes are infused with the endless compassion that only the sun moving into Pisces, on Tuesday, can afford us. As it saddles up to conjoin the intoxicating Neptune on Sunday creative juices, psychic influences and a desire to poetically connect will only increase. To add to the mix, Mercury is about to take on its second of three Squares to Saturn (also on Tuesday). This aspect will be asking us to drop and anchor down into the depths of our minds and the crevices of our hearts. It’s not sink or swim if you can manage to connect to something deeper in order to stay afloat. Hint: Accountability and personal responsibility merged with a steady and mindful gaze makes for a good mainstay.
Aries & Aries Rising
There is a noticeable tonal shift this week with the sun’s movement into Pisces on Tuesday and it’s conjunction with Neptune in your Twelfth House on Sunday. It’s the perfect time for you to spend a weekend reciting poetry while painting naked and feeding your lover chocolate covered kisses. It’s also a time to open oneself up to other realms for healing, feeling and especially for “seeing”. Divination can have to do with predicting the future. However, I think divination is so much more interesting when it’s used as a type of numinous buddy system that inspires a deeper insight into the present moment and its meaning. The question to ask right now is what else is here? It’s like you have a backstage pass to meet the real Wizard of Oz. You can, of course, choose to squander the opportunity. You can skip the trip entirely through the more “normal” channels of drinking, drugging and watching TV. The easy way out is always available but generally you can’t check out and wake the f* up at the same time. Ultimately I believe that we live in a universe that does not judge, no god up on high pointing down at us in condemnation- that would be too simple. I believe that there are only experiences that we live through and create both for ourselves and for others. Some of the behaviors that we have lead to a specific kind of experience. Those experiences can cause us joy, pain, sorrow, suffering, expansion and quite often a mixture of all. It is our responsibility to understand our role in creating our experience as well as understanding what systems of oppression we are actively holding up and therefore supporting the suffering of others. As we move into another round of Mercury Square Saturn (while Mercury’s still retrograde), you are required to cultivate a certain amount of humility and a willingness to drop your anchor a little deeper into water with unknown depths. Friends may show themselves as faulty landing grounds. This is likely because they are people. People do many things for reasons that make little sense to anyone but themselves. If we hang our hat on a moving target chances are it won’t be there when we need it most. Be willing to accept a new level of responsibility for your own well-being.
Taurus & Taurus Rising
Before I say anything about the next seven days I think it’s worth a glance back. Not too far back, just back to this past Friday and the days leading up to it. How did you do? Did the full moon ground you? Freak you out? Settle you? Soothe you? Or did Fridays full moon fail to illuminate the very ground that you stand on? Just because you are an earth sign doesn’t mean that you know how to ground yourself all the time. It doesn’t mean that you remember your value, your worth or your weight in gold. It means that you are here, in part, to learn it and then teach it to others in one form or another. This week continues to taunt your stubborn loyalty. Are the relationships, the most intimate ones in your life working with you? If so, then you have done a stellar job at managing Saturn transiting through your Seventh House. If not then you probably still have done a stellar job but there’s more for you to do. No rest my friend, not now. This week is asking you to have those uncomfortable talks with those you work with, those that hold authority in your life and those that seem like people you can just try to placate instead of deal with. The good news is that it looks as if good friends will come to the rescue. Lean on those around you that are willing to be with you when you are weak and strong, fierce and calm, winning and losing. Be comforted by the relationships that you can release yourself into. Let go because you are getting more than one lesson on how to keep your boarders (permeable as they are) intact.
Gemini & Gemini Rising
There is something in your chart that’s about separating yourself from your teachers, gurus or intellectual figureheads through the discipline and rigorous approach of self study that you have been working on. Whatever shifts you have been making in terms of your health, daily schedule and weekly grind will either be assisting you in the next level of your individuation (read: thinking for yourself). Or it will force you to make more appropriate adjustments. The third option is, as always to suffer. That’s totally up to you. If there is travel in the works this week, it may bring glitches and snafus but they aren’t unworkable. What they appear to be assisting you with is a new level of commitment to said journey. Of course journeys don’t have to be physical. Whatever you’re working on that will bring you into new territory is asking for your commitment. Perhaps this week reveals to you why you may have given up, let go of or refused to grab the reigns in the past. This is a very important part of your personality to understand. You see, we all respond to stress differently. We are all threatened by a different set of circumstances, factors and events. To compare yourself or your work with anyone else is absolutely ridiculous for this very reason. As the sun comes to form a conjunction with Neptune in your Tenth House of Your Gonna Make It After All, I want you to know that you can. It’s always more powerful to be our own best cheerleader rather than our worst critic. So why is it so hard for us to do just that? This week has the potential to reveal to you all of your self-misconceptions while inspiring some of your greatest creative inventions. Go for inspired beauty rather than dissolving into self-denial, martyrdom or worse, delusions of grandeur. Just be you and let the good stuff flow through because it looks like this week wants to give you some 15 or so minutes of fame.
Cancer & Cancer Rising
For all water signs this week could float some interesting fragments to the surface. It’s kind of like a trailer of whatever happened for you this past summer. Now, I know that for some of you that was an entirely overwhelming, flooding, boiling point type of experience. This will not be as big as that but more like rousing from a dream of it. The feeling lingers but it may be difficult to string the events together. I’d say that the anchor for you lies in what you are able to actually make out of your creative endeavors. As the sun moves into Pisces on Tuesday and quickly into a fuzzy fling with Neptune, I want you to keep your eye on your perceptions of teachers, gurus and wise witches. Look at how these thoughts can lean towards being a little light on critical reflection and heavy on the infatuation and heroine worship. It’s not good for you to be blind to the faults of your favorite masters. Nor is it wise to throw out the baby with the bathwater; where is the middle ground? This week requires a steady anchor while rising to meet some lofty life-lessons. The other gift that is currently in the cosmic mail is some kind of perfect poetry and prophecy if you can keep your feet rooted to the earth. It’s about using what you have been given and understanding the difference between letting something else take over (the creative process) and going unconscious so you don’t have to deal with your duties. I’d actually like you to draw, paint or find a picture of an anchor. If you aren’t of the visual crustacean clan then you can write something about what anchors you do have in your life. Reflect on how well you are utilizing them.
Leo & Leo Rising
If you expect something in return from those that you are helping, giving to or loving it will actually diminish or erode the good feelings generated from the sweet deeds you’ve done. As you are well aware by now I am sure, Mercury is retrograding through your Seventh House of Other. On the heels of Valentine’s Day’s full moon in Leo, I hope you’ve been thinking about how to be more empowered by your choices and how to be that kind of inspiration for others. I don’t believe that enmeshing ourselves in those around us is the pathway to happiness or fulfillment. Letting the need to be liked run our lives is a dangerous, exhausting affair. Setting things up so that others have to depend on us for the things they’d be better off doing for themselves also isn’t love. Love sees the other as whole, complete and perfect. Love sees the other as awakened before they are. Love sees the potential and the purpose underneath the insecurity and the regret. Help all your “others” to awaken to their inner wisdom and seeing them as that before they do. This week your ruling planet (not a planet at all) the sun changes signs (from Aquarius in to Pisces) and merges with Neptune (cue Into The Mystic by Van Morrison) in your Eighth House (think American Horror Story). This is a good moment to remind you of the archetype of the Mystical Death. It’s that thing where you allow yourself to be filleted open by the jagged edge of love’s razor within an inch of your life. Every time you catch yourself holding on to a flame notice how your grip actually burns you; let go. Let go of every attachment. Every time you catch yourself getting attached to an idea, a principal or a plan, work with yourself to gently, slowly let go of your attachment to it.
Virgo & Virgo Rising
Stress is the number one causes of illness, imagine. However, when we think of those we love and those that love us there is a natural healing that takes place in our body. In fact it’s been proven that pain diminishes when we think of those we care deeply for. Try it right now (even if you’re reading this on the subway); get comfortable, close your eyes or look down on your cheeks. Think of one or a couple of folks that you love deeply and notice what happens to you physiologically. Better yet, play a song that reminds you of someone you love and/or some time in your life that was especially celebratory. Notice what happens to your body, your mood, your thoughts and your outlook on life. This week there is an especially inspired dance occurring in your relationships. It could manifest as a sweet second serving of Valentine’s pudding. Or it could be a powerful experience dueling your distorted damsels, dragons and demons that you meet out on a date. Your ruling planet, Mercury, has just moved through the heart of the sun (otherwise: its inferior conjunction with the Sun. This is what happens at the heart of the retrograde. Yes we are half way through!). Hopefully this brought you a moment of clarity like Ellen Page. This week Mercury is going to annoy Saturn. Saturn will certainly try to harness some of Mercury’s rambunctious ramblings like a Master teacher with a teenage student who’s had too many Mochachinos. We need forces that demonstrate how we can grab the reigns and take ownership over our lives. This week looks like it wants to teach you through both pleasure and pain, through love and through discipline, by having a container and by moving beyond it; and then back to it….and then beyond it. When we know we have a home base to return to we are more at ease to roam about the world. Both are important and both available for you know.
Libra & Libra Rising
If we are to truly shine, like truly shine in this life we cannot give one iota of a sh*t if anyone likes us or not. We can’t. How do you achieve that unless everything is really going your way and you have success awaiting you in at least one domain of your life? Where does the confidence come from? It’s entirely different for all of us. Some of you are born with it. In fact I’d say Libra naturally has their fair share of it publicly at least. Or shall I say socially? However the spiritual work is to always lean into the darker corners the places where we aren’t so confident, secure or even familiar with. This week has a lot to do with garnering wisdom that is hard won and it’s very likely to come from your children if you have any. If not it could come through lovers, love interests or from whatever creative projects you may be working on. An Issue that started back in January looks like it’s ready for another round in the ring; hopefully you’ve been using this time to do some heavy mental lifting. Perhaps you’re now able to come at it from another angle; one less gripped with fear, ceased by anxiety and confused by criticism. Remember that your job is to not waiver from loving yourself through everything; the good, the weird, the atrocious and the unthinkable. Whatever comes your way this week it’s just another thing to shepherd yourself through while still doing the work that is yours to do. And yes, that means keeping the boundaries you have set. Let your children grow up. Let your lovers find their own way. Let your art struggle to find itself under your careful and loving gaze.
Scorpio & Scorpio Rising
Like a box of sea salted caramels and the hangover you get after eating them all in one sitting, this week holds both sides of the equation. The tides of its sweet, salty sea water will wash ashore the results of your latest race. This’ll make the consequences of former actions inescapable-thank goddess! Being called out on our behavior is an important part of the Getting to know who we are and the kind of b.s. our ego is capable of process. The interesting thing about the astrology right now is that there is a combination of being held accountable and holding others accountable. The combination to work with is being extremely forgiving or open to being forgiven. This week is asking you to be an anchor for your family and/or those you live with. You may want to scream and shout and let it all out instead of being the stabilizing, steady force that is needed. That’s the thing about growth-it requires doing exactly the things we do not ever want to do. Like, ever. Listen, your ruling planet, Mars, is slowing its roll to retrograde right quick (in your 12th house of all things left unforgiven no less). As the feelings that go bump in the night party on into the dawn you are going to need to develop new levels of self-awareness. From there develop ways to deal with all the things you’ve been avoiding at all costs. This week’s Lessons in Loving, Forgiving and Forgetting can give you a hint as to some of your upcoming strategies and your best plays; especially if this is in regards to lovers, love interests and romancing ramblings. There should be a little more emphasis on fun and play in the coming weeks which I want to ride until it bucks you off. Also, you may fall head over heels for the cool kid who’s really just a jerk in cute glasses. Don’t be fooled by your own vanity, lust or teenage-like angst. If you suspect they’re bad news, they are.
Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising
You can learn to be good at anything. You may not be able to be as good as those naturally talented at it, but you will get better over time. You can learn to do anything better than you already do it if you can learn how to take constructive feedback. If you’re really listening to the words someone has carefully crafted for you, knowing that feedback (if it’s true) the person giving it is really trying to give it to you so that you can be better equipped to move through your life successfully. And even if you doubt that is the case, see if there isn’t something in what another is saying to you for you to learn about anyway. There’s no use in only being sweet to each other, life isn’t only any one thing. To be willing to also give each other a loving lecture once in a while to illuminate what a dear one may be unconscious of is a way of showing love, but it’s tricky. We need to be invited to give such a gift or we need to at the very least ask if said person is open to some reflection. You can see how this can go awry in all sorts of fashions. We have to be willing to check ourselves while giving and receiving feedback. So if someone takes the time to do so in a way that is helpful, hopeful and loving, can we really receive the wisdom being offered? There could be an issue that comes to light in your family/home life or something from a parent that helps you resolve and old tension. Unless you tense further then the only option is to completely disassociate. That would be such a waste of time if we are in fact able to stay with the grittier parts of our lives and not check out.
Capricorn & Capricorn Rising
The theme for this week is dropping our anchor in some pretty deep waters and utilizing the creative currents by disciplining our minds and steadying our thoughts. This insures that fluctuations don’t get the better of us and waste a perfectly good gift. The gift for you looks like it comes through some sort of communication perhaps with a sibling, perhaps with a neighbor or perhaps with a spirit no longer in body. You could receive a teaching through a piece of music, through a painting, through watching a piece of performance art. It matters not just that you stay open to inspiration from the unlikeliest of sources. There is something this week that gets stuck and then something else that gets dislodged. The water is choppy at times which is what makes an anchor so important. Like we’ve talked about in the past year, your job in part is to move into your community with whatever gifts you have. You see what you do all the time becomes who you are at any and every given moment and everyone can see that feel that and mirrors that back to us. What I think your astrology is pointing to is that as you value the ways in which you live your life, so do those around you. As you are able to, solidify your sense of self in your chosen communities.
Aquarius & Aquarius Rising
I have a little piece of homework for you. Don’t worry it will be interesting, to say the least. I’d like you to watch these videos, or one of them at least. They are documentaries about the lives of queer, African American women that defied the gravity of the intensely oppressive times they lived in. They are grandmothers of queer culture, they were extremely important figures in the civil rights movement. Their efforts, sacrifices and resiliency have all but faded from public consciousness (much less so with Alice Walker, but I think few know what she was actually up against as she grew up in the South). I am assigning these ladies to accompany you on your journey this week because there is a lot in your chart about reputation, perception, elders, teachers, teachings and what wisdom is and where it comes from. Lived experience reveals our strengths, our weaknesses and our abilities. Right now you are undertaking a review of how to best utilize your personality so you can get the most bang for your buck. I suggest noticing all the ways that your persona may act as a hindrance to your growth, making a few subtle shifts so that your pride is secondary to your experience and your monetary wealth serves your ethical inclinations. The biggest question here is how can you serve your work in the world and how can your work serve generations to come?
Pisces & Pisces Rising
It could be one of those weeks where everything overflows. The thing about astrology is it isn’t judgmental. Astrologers are, for sure, but the art itself isn’t in its essence, it merely describes conditions. This week is built on however last Friday’s Leo full moon roared for you. The outcomes depend on what you need from the depths of watery wisdom. Water issues speak to unresolved feelings, emotions, memories, mysteries, magic, fountains of feel-good fondue; an endless supply of inspired intuitions and prophetic poetry. Water flows and stagnates. We are made of water and we need water. Every being born begins its life in water. Water distorts our vision and comes and goes when it wants to-just like the feelings it represents. The sun moves into your sign (Happy Birthday!) on Tuesday and then on Sunday it joins Neptune there. Neptune has this funny way of blurring boundaries, starting rumors and has the greatest disappearing act this side of Houdini. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention that Neptune is not only what modern astrologers assign as your ruling planet (I do not). It’s the kind of cosmically creative energy that inspires the greatest works of art, the most magnificent kind of lovers and an unrelenting desire to have some sort of spiritual meaning at the center of one’s life. This is your time to anchor more deeply into your spiritual practice and the rules that keep you sane and in your lane. I know that many of you enjoy creative chaos but this week is asking you to curb that cacophony and keep it in a sturdy container so that it doesn’t mess with your spiritual practice. If you know your spiritual practice(s) need a kick start do what you can to facilitate that. Take a course, go to a meeting, start a book club/study group or cohort of like minded thirsty thinkers. And please, this week especially, don’t forget to fill your soul with poetic prose and the ponderations of your favorite teachers.
*Edited by Laurence Joseph Jones