| I arrived at the end of my client workday Wednesday and could not bear to sit inside during the gorgeous clear evening. So I took a notebook and my charts (and my copy of Stupid White Men by Michael Moore, highly entertaining and disturbingly informative) over to a beach on the west side of the island where I hang out these days, and wrote the horoscope at a picnic table. The column, if you ask me (I know you didn't) reads like I'm looking west, directly into the 7th house. And a full house it was: Mercury, Sol, Luna, Mars, Jupiter and Vesta were all setting, the day of a most auspicious New Moon which will be blessing us for quite some time. I meditated on a mantra-for-the-moment: partnership, justice, the rewards of work -- all attributes of the 7th house, all magnificently illuminated in that moment by our local star and many of its planets seeming to disappear beyond the Olympic mountains. It was a nice change from sitting at a desk (granted, a desk with a view), and it's always beautiful to see the chart in real-life, to watch the Earth turn. Wednesday's New Moon had some very rare attributes set among its more obvious gems (the Vesta-Mars-Jupiter conjunction for example). An alignment of planets in Cancer was, and still is, talking to an alignment of largely unacknowledged planets in Capricorn. Mercury was in exact opposition to Chiron; the lunation in close opposition to Nessus (the Sun perfects that opposition today); and Mars in a precise opposition to Asbolus. These three are called 'centaur' planets, new (but really very, very old) worlds in our solar system. A simple interpretation of theme could be that what we consider to be the ordinary is in direct contact with the extraordinary; the conscious with the unconscious; the near with the distant; the familiar with the unfamiliar.
On a personal note, these days have been filled with many once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and it's really been a rare joy to be alive. If my column is ever posted late this summer, you can be sure I've been outside having fun, or some such adventure. On an astrological note, Mercury, now in Cancer, is heading for a conjunction with minor planet No. 20,000, Varuna, the first trans-plutonian besides Pluto's moon Charon to bear a name (remarkably, Varuna was both discovered and named in 2000). Mercury, the 'messenger of the gods', is about our immediate sense of mind/soul consciousness, which can put us into dialog with whatever it contacts. Varuna (orbit of about 250 years), writes small planet meister (the beloved) Juan Revilla in Costa Rica, "is 'beyond'. It is entirely plutonian or non-human, like a cosmic order instead of a social order, like the impersonal laws of nature instead of the laws of society, representing what is behind all that. Varuna is very literally behind everything." | | Sign dates below are approximate. They now overlap by one day. The date and time of the Sun's ingress to the new sign changes a little each year, so please check with an astrologer if you want the exact position of your Sun, and while you're at it, your rising sign -- this horoscope is written for both your Sun and rising signs. If you find that some other sign's interpretations work for you, then go for it. | | Aries (March 20-April 21) | | There is an energy of newness and clarity in your home, or you can put it there with a wave of your hands. And there's a new sense that this is really your space for your purposes. Your home is your kingdom now, and while it does not appear to require much in the way of defense, you are free to fill it with your own ideas about life, your own customs and your own morality. And, within a week or two, you're likely to be consumed with a creative passion the like of which you have not seen any time recently -- please send me an original! Remember: hearth is home. Keep the sacred fire burning and it will continue to keep you warm. | | Taurus (April 21-May 20) | | Notions of marriage may be occupying your thoughts to some extent, perhaps quite a bit. Yet you may want to take this more as metaphor than reality. The unfortunate logic of the marriage contract is so often borne out as such relationships progress: due to the power structures involved, they tend to be based on parental energies and situations, rather than eye-to-eye meetings of peers. A lot comes up for healing in this process, I know, and you are most assuredly moving in the right direction with that work anyway. But if you want healing, seek healing, and if you want love, seek to love. That's all you really need. | | Gemini (May 20-June 21) | | The difficult part of having feelings is that when we allow them to be present, we can get hurt. And make no mistake: most people you see on the street 'solve' the issue of sensitivity by going numb (let me count the ways). And most people, in part as a result of this, have no sense of their own worthiness, since it's cloaked in insensitivity. You are not in that position right now, though you may be feeling a tendency to want to retreat. I don't recommend it; every encounter and exchange in the coning days and weeks can teach you not merely that you belong on this planet, but that you are here and that it's a very good thing. | | Cancer (June 21-July 22) | | There are all kinds of beginnings, and you are now poised in a mighty one. Over the next few weeks, the winds of fortune may begin to shift directions, but your ability to maneuver in them has grown in rare and powerful ways. There is an image akin to something like amassing wealth coming up in your chart, but the greatest gifts are not physical ones. In particular, you have been recently granted a direct means to access information from what may seem like un-ordinary sources, and in this situation, everything is a positive omen: even warnings, and even promises. | | Leo (July 22-Aug. 22) | | Your need for fellowship is as real as your need for love and security, and in our world of shaky relationships, I propose it's far more important. Our drive to connect with that special someone is driven, in our culture, to the point of obsession because our homes tend to be lonely, and our social experiences hollow. Fill your home with love and your circle of friends with light, and you will draw the right people to you. In fact, from the look of things, you might want to go shopping and keep some extra vittles and libations on hand. | | Virgo (Aug. 22-Sep. 22) | | Only you know the secret pain you've been working so conscientiously to heal. It is an old issue, perhaps the oldest one. Yet is it possible that its cause or nature is sexual? Use your imagination here -- it can't be said often enough that everything comes back to sex (since, among other facts, without sex we would not have been born in the first place). But where sex is the wound, love is the balm, followed by gentle pleasures, and I promise that both are available to you now if you choose to let them into your life. Healing is less about work and more about awareness; it's always a mysterious process, but when we devote ourselves to it, the logic slowly becomes apparent. | | Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) | | In recent weeks, if I recall (I admit it, I don't read old columns) I've mentioned career developments that were likely to emerge, and the time hath arrived. This is the seed moment, perhaps this very day. However, to get that seed growing, you will need to plant it carefully, and then do two things that are not particularly Libran: one is put your reputation front and center among the friends who can help you. Second, stop deliberating about what you already know is right. your intuition has rarely been a sharper tool, particularly as it filters down from your dreams, which is where your clearest intelligence and most vivid sense of self are taking up residence at the moment. | | Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) | | You've always known that faith was the source of all great fortune, but it may be many moons before that property of the cosmos works as well as it promises to right now. Beautiful things are about to materialize in your life, but the cosmos is asking you to have a healthy respect for pausing, for connecting with your deeper intentions, and giving a good listen to the voice of your higher power, which knows the shortest distance to the right destination, and the easiest means from idea to manifestation. How do you do this? Just ask, and be still for a moment. | | Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) | | The pressure is easing off, and you may correctly have the hunch that what feels like luck is now sitting on your side of the table. If not, pay attention! This is a good thing, because you still have one significant and potentially dangerous task ahead of you, which is likely to feel like a process of releasing an old situation that may in many respects seem much bigger and more daunting than it really is. I surmise that you need to take life more seriously, and at the same time take it less seriously. Remember, the truth of God is contained in what some call the cosmic joke. The Lord may mean business, but She is not somber. | | Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) | | People close to you will be of great assistance in giving a voice to the unspeakable realities you may be feeling inside. We have a tendency in our culture, particularly in recent years, to classify the need for intimate partnership as a kind of spiritual disease, but psychological pundits and the political correctness police are usually rather misguided, particularly in matters of a mystical nature. You really do need a safe, intimate space within which you can express some rare senses of reality that are finally coming into focus for you, and more than that, you need the feedback of someone who really knows. By all indications, you have several choices for who to select for this sacred assignment. Communicating in their space may work better than in your own. | | Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) | | If you were to put yourself under a little less pressure to be powerful or psychically aware, you'll have a lot more magnetic energy to draw things you need and people you love in your direction. You could not wish for friends, partners and loved ones to be better poised for generosity, emotional exchange and fair deal-making than they are today. But it's vital that you keep a slow, steady pace in all matters of heart or soul, and negotiate with yourself on the issue of all you're not ready for. In fact, things are moving a lot faster than you think, so there's actually no hurry at all. | | Pisces (Feb. 19-Mar. 20) | | Life is calling on you to take chances, and I suggest you listen. Be it love, be it work, be it adventure, risk is the harbinger of reward. You need, however, to listen, down deep in there. What usually gets in the way of listening is fear, but if you listen to your fear, you will hear it speaking in its weakest voice ever. Acknowledge your fear, but remember that fear is different than caution, concern or conscience. But as I was saying, life is calling on you to take chances. Whoever said that fortune favors the bold knew what they were talking about. I say go for bold italics. | Search | Horoscopes | What's New | Index | Consultations  Space graphic above from the Rosette Nebula in Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Sulfur.
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