Horoscopes | Week of November 29-December 5, 2004

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Your explanations for macro-level phenomena are unsuitable because they fall short of including your own blind-spot behaviors into their fabric. You wish the world could be more like it would be without people 'like that' in it, but you don't realize that the people you wish the world was without are just like you. Your irrationalities are no more or less irrational than anyone else's, and if only you were able to incorporate that glaring consistency into your view of humanity, you'd be infinitely more tolerant and less inconsistent. The good news is, once you are able to connect with the sheer madness behind some of your most 'logical' assertions and actions, then you can use it more adroitly for what it is—your uniquely damaged and mended, inherently hypocritical and wholly complex psychological essence. Permit others their complexity alongside your own, and then we'll have two powerful beings in place of one, with twice the intricate passion and twice the humanity. Don't try to even the playing field unless you're planning to throw on a uniform and join the game.

 

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): What you thought, back in the springtime, was merely about you ironing out your basic needs is now proving, after all this time, to be more about you and your significant other(s) than you had realized prior. The double boost of Mars and Venus fogging up the windows in your 7th house leads me to tempt your passions out to play… and believe me, they desperately crave peppery play with others. Attempts to save face should be summarily dismissed, making room for you to put it all out there, to risk unrequited lust, crushing defeat or the flabbergasting fruition to every prurient pleasure you've dreamt of this year. Supreme satisfaction, shocking shame and everything in between are all positives to reap from bothering to dare and daring to bother. There is no wrong way to eat an Oreo or to wear your hungry heart on your sleeve. Now is about busting in, out and through—it's the 'where to?' that remains to be seen but need not be apparent to play.

 

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The planets decidedly do not favor the top-to-bottom, trickle-down approach to organizing the week's activities according to highest moral preference. The streamlined efficiency sought through ranking by value loses its validity upon acknowledging that too big a view is too much to manage. A comprehensive understanding begs for more patience, spare time and emotional sanity than is currently available… and meanwhile, there's still work to get done, even as satisfying conclusions remain impossibly caught at the impasse. Stay small and precise, and put every ounce of concentration and every joule of invested energy into each present moment's individual task. The kingdom of your heaven this week, Gemini, should be able to fit through the eye of a needle at any given point in time. So what if all of heaven is far more vast than any day's conducted routine's series of hourly adventure's fragments of minutes of being can contain? All questions cannot be answered ever or at once. Any single one, however, is happily settled right now with a 'yes'.

 

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In the battle to balance light with darkness, it's the dark chasm of spumescent gunk that spins a wealth of inspiration from down below, all the disgusting parts of our 'bad' self somehow appearing seductively glamorous in the dim glow. The light fulfills its role by compelling the darkness to express itself in silly, fun-filled fashion… not where you'd expect to find fragments of the painful past retracing their emotional steps through relived reactions unrelated to current circumstances. Yet, sometimes, laughter and folly is the most surefire method for reconnecting with what hurts on the inside, particularly when it's been left to simmer at low temperatures for long periods of time without stirring. Go on, paint a vaudevillian portrait of just how bad it used to be, with a few maudlin song-and-dance numbers thrown in. Wear silly costumes and too much makeup, to clown your way through the history of what you repress. The best approach to undoing and redoing the most serious internal injuries is to quit taking them so seriously and sing another round of the chorus.

 

LEO (July 23-August 22): Put on your glasses, and look a bit closer. That person over there is not your mom or your dad, so stop behaving in reactive mode as if he or she is. Sure, I understand how the holiday time of year provokes the appearance of ghosts and skeletons to flitter above the faces of existing players and fool us into thinking the past is the present. Thus, I'm not jumping all over your ass, criticizing you for wrongdoings or even telling you how to treat whichever person is standing in for the family members of days-gone-by. I'm just telling you to sort out whichever psychological filter is blocking your light, and don the requisite lenses that will help you see through with clear vision. Your emotional residue is being roused, and you owe yourself the task of calling people and feelings by the proper names. Otherwise, external life becomes one big undifferentiated amalgam of everything that isn't you.

 

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): It's not just Mercury's transition to retrograde madness that brands this week with mental mix-ups. A planetary combo of Mars and Venus squaring off against the perpetually unclear Neptune means that you're zigging and zagging through a trafficky accumulation of trivial bits hanging from clouds like ornaments off an Xmas tree—enjoy the pretty view, but don't get too close (as when trying to read the fine print at the bottom of the flashing TV-commercial screen) or expect an inconvenient mess of busted glass and glitter and little added clarity other than the words starting to look like each other. Take your platonic yearnings to new heights, and let every blurb and byte be the epitome of itself, appreciating all of them for what they are but keeping yourself from stringing them together into chains of meaning. It's time for gathering informations (plural intended) and picking favorites based on properties of pleasure, but not for constructing theses or analyses you hope will hold water.

 

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): I imagine you trying to divvy up your energies, dropping pennies into figurative jars to dole out, as fairly as possible, what goes to which purposes. Perhaps your mantra should be something resembling, 'Five to keep, one for fun,' since the important thing to remember is that cosmically fair isn't always arithmetically fair. The vast bulk of time, money and effort must be reserved for what really matters, and only then should the scarce rest be guiltlessly frittered away on penny whistles and moon pies. And what really matters, by the way, must be redetermined from scratch if you expect it to be accurate. As Jupiter/Neptune breezes blow gentle and natural across you, a gauzy enlightened fun coats your spirit, light as air. That's why your conscious deeds are best spent on whatever supports grounded stability, to counter an undercurrent you barely even detect. This is how to act toward balance.

 

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): The union of Mars and Venus in your sign this week is the culmination of several months of almost-there-ness, a subterranean lust for uncompromised selfhood that, until now, has gone unquenched due to this or that piece of life surging in front or lagging behind the rest. Whatever situation this past April and May appeared to promise an idyllic multicolor fusion of interpersonal passions has, over time, revealed itself to have two or more faces. That's because Mars and Venus threatened to conjoin back then in Gemini… but the solar system had different plans, which it made known through a couple eclipses (May and October) with specially intense consequences for Scorpios. What you now feel throughout your body this week is the truer fusion—and it all happens within you, with no additional person or external entity needed for the fullest empowerment of forces. With or without another person, self-care starts at home. You can do virtually anything you want, but to those ends, you only have the power to use what you—and you alone—possess. And it's more than enough.

 

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): Be on the lookout for unintentional slippages between your conscious and unconscious minds, between what you mean to say and what you say really means. This week, Sag, your most preferred role is as an unattached-to-outcomes channel for Spirit to pass through, unobstructed. The inspiration you'll receive from the process will still be in raw form, not to be deployed for personal purposes until maybe a month or two down the road. Work with your ego to keep your own motivations out of the way, since (please listen to what I'm saying) attempts to forge forward with any subtlety will blow as your covert feelings seep through to the surface. It's best to stay open, loving, faithful and relatively unambitious while the mysteries of the universe decide what next to do with you. Whatever version of prayer or quiet contemplation suits you, rest on its footing.

 

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): You're in this position because of a series of unforeseen and seemingly unconnected events, operating according to a convoluted logic that goes against much of what you've come to believe about how individuals travel from one point in their lives to another. And, in light of this, you still think you have a clear understanding of what you've got? Heh, heh, heh. Whether you're cursing the ground you stand on or thanking your lucky stars, cultivate a humble and forgiving outlook toward any single individual's contribution (including yours) to the current situation. What's happened here—the good and the bad of it—is a joint product of many individuals' big and small actions and reactions. We got here because of each other, and we will surpass this place only with each other, so don't go tricking yourself into thinking what's yours is yours and what's theirs is theirs. That's far too simple.

 

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): There hasn't been a stronger moment all year to push hard into becoming the person you want to be known for being. And there continues to be little evidence to clarify who the 'real' you underneath that person is, both in relation to the old you you've been putting out there and this new you you're striving to substantiate. This could be one of those instances when you can't take anyone else's word for it, since the you you're expecting them all to see is somehow escaping their sights, though it's sitting in front of their faces. Reiterate the goal. Then, chop it into smaller action-plans for immediate completion, one of which should include spending the next month refining the action-plan for 2005, so that the blustery blessings of secluded strategy are usefully utilized. The rest of 'em mean well with their opinions, but they're momentarily under- and/or misinformed.

 

PISCES (February 19-March 20): This week, the enthusiasm to know with specificity hardly seems dampened by the awareness that the truest knowings lack words, details or any rational knowledge. Both the excitement of comprehensive synthesis and the necessary inclusion of 'the big unknown' into the formula for integrated comprehension are simultaneously at play, Pisces. You are the metaphoric news producer, charged with manufacturing the 'Best of 2004' special when only 11/12ths of the year is in the can—a combination of delicate artfulness, uncanny prescience and awareness of limitations is called for in preparing the script. Tell the story. It begs to be heard. But stay honest, and don't artificially stuff the blanks that haven't yet been filled by real events, or risk a fiction mistaken for truth that's stranger than fiction.