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Horoscopes | Week of April 11-17, 2005

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Though the big burst of Aries energy officially ignited during last Friday's eclipse, the effects will still be felt for the duration of this moon cycle. That means you aren't off the hook yet, and still must ensure you're breaking all the way out of old patterns and all the way into newly inspiring projects, all without stepping so hard on others' toes that they scream out in pain. By now, you already have a good idea of which current of change is carrying you along in which direction. At this point, it wouldn't be so wise to try reversing direction or refusing to move with it. Rather, effort is well spent in observing how the eclipse has also shifted others' lives, to hunt for collaborators and teammates and people who you could easily assist in their pursuits while simultaneously pursuing your own. It doesn't take an astrologer to point out that momentum will increase with the more hands that are building and pushing and hoisting together.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): If you can't name at least one significant instance last week in which serendipity gifted you with an unexpected lift in spirits or boost in morale, then something isn't right. You're overlooking the pots of gold and magic mushrooms right in front of your face. You're not paying attention. The success you're looking for is probably not going to show up in the form of something outside yourself, a material reward or a bold increase in position. Professionally speaking, it'll more likely manifest as an increasing energetic sense of connection to what you're doing (or hyper-awareness of a lack of said connection), raising the issue of whether what you do is what you're 'meant to do' (at least right now) and inspiring you to dissolve the boundary between work and pleasure. In all parts of your life, this end of the rainbow is not a destination where you finally get to lounge around and eat bonbons. It's a limited-time-only shortcut corridor to intense healing you must choose to enter, an opening framed by the 'chance' happenings of these eclipse-heavy days. Will you follow the signs?

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): As you move through the social world, recruiting allies and explaining the details of shared ideologies, you might discover that one or more assumed sympathizers are harboring some unexpressed-until-now resistance. While you navigate from the (perceived) safe distance of multiple acquaintanceships and no-strings-attached connections, some hairier gnarls and weightier words may rear their ugly heads. It's all part of your longer-term process of killing off unhealthy dynamics in how you relate one-on-one, as slow-moving Pluto hovers in your 7th house and trines the eclipse-active Aries business. It's more important to honor your personal ethics of universal fairness than to submit to coercion—as victim or instigator—in relation to whichever individuals are stirring up the soup. Continue to favor your ideals, and let those who'd prefer to chip away at their sanctity for dramatic interpersonal reasons meet your own toughest resistance. If, in serving the good, it gets nasty, so be it.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): The big goal in the sky is not miraculously clutched, secured and possessed one day, leaving you in perpetual unsatisfied desire between now and then. It is lived every day. It becomes part of the way you chew at every meal, the flutters of your lashes as you sleep and the rhythm of the water hitting your back in the shower. It's not merely a status, but more a process always in motion whenever you exert the force to move a hand, a finger or your head. Many of you are already living it, yet might not even notice because you're looking for some powerful distinction between 'achievement' and 'real life' that only exists in the movies. Ask some of your more 'successful' friends about it… or maybe you don't have to ask because you already know they don't lead the lives you imagine one day you'll lead, if only that final impression is made or ultimate promotion is granted. Extract the fantasy from the intent, and use your intuitive understanding of others to get closer to the reality of your most desired life. Feel how it works in them, so as to give yourself more reasonable expectations.

LEO (July 23-August 22): No one can save you, nor you them, and neither can anyone be held responsible for somebody else's own worst misfortunes or highest contentments. The combination of Mars and Neptune in your 7th could lead you down these roads of various interpersonal delusions, so watch the borders of your reasonable expectations of the other person. Yet, the same planetary duo provides impetus for acts of incredible compassion and intuitive understanding, if all parties can be upfront about their motivations. It's an ideal moment to confess that all you want is a little tenderness, that you're reacting this way due to family history or unresolved hurt from a previous relationship, that you need help in producing the show of your life. With this healthy self-knowledge on the table, forces join into easy synergistic unison. The journey to farther outside your comfort zone requires you to hail the cab and tell the driver what the destination is. But he might know a better, quicker and/or more scenic route. Fasten your seat belt, and give up control. Kick up your feet, and let him guide you there.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): Many people (especially pragmatists like you, Virgo) don't like to talk about the possible soul-level link between hard feelings and grudges we hold onto and the disease (dis-ease) that can develop in our physical bodies (as a result?). It feels as if we are blaming the victims of ill health for their own ill health, rather than showing care or empowering them to battle the illness. Obviously, not everyone who gets sick is manifesting sickness due to unresolved emotions (what about hunger? poverty? outbreaks of communicable conditions?), and no one wants to blame her dying grandmother for too much bitterness and envy. So let's take the inverse proposition instead. Whether or not it's detrimental to your health to hold onto old emotional garbage, we're certain that forgiveness and release are most definitely good for your health. This week's combination of astro-factors make it a great time for spring cleaning, not of your home so much as your inner landscape. Admit how pissed or hurt or jealous you've been (for years, perhaps), and then let it go. Why? Because it promotes your own best physical, mental and spiritual health.

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): All the recent coaching I've given you about being more direct in relationships, asking for what you want and expecting to get it, sounds great in theory… but what about putting it into practice? Well, the keyword here is practice, and how else are you supposed to make perfect (or at least an effort at much-improved comfort) unless you try out some new tactics over and over again? The transformational zeal from Pluto in your 3rd supports you in making the active investment in social experimentation more serious, rather than taking any one interaction with any single individual too seriously. The planets and I are hoping to encourage you to circumvent the inner censor and speak your true desires more freely in any given moment—even if you know that those desires could change in the blink of an eye. You won't spoil anything if you say too much too soon. You just might get an answer more quickly than you're used to, waste less time spinning your wheels, and buy yourself more opportunities to practice being socially forthright.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): How many times can I frame and reframe and rephrase the same ol' advice about getting to work? Not just doing any ol' work, but the right work for you. Working to support your health. Working in a fashion that provides some degree of service to the universe. Work that challenges you, stimulates you, satisfies you, keeps your spirit nurtured and intact. Work to help transform your relationship to material resources, so that you feel like a true master of that domain, rather than allowing it to lord over or dominate you. Has anything I've written so far provided even an ounce of fresh insight, or am I rehashing and repeating… and if the latter is true, is it because you need the reminder or are you already embracing this call to your fullest ability? What is left to say, Scorpio? This is where your head ought to be right now. Or let me append, it's really also your heart. In fact, any sense of a broken heart in your life, even if it seems it must be about a failed relationship, is more likely about this work issue and having let yourself down. Luckily, as long as you're alive, it's never too late to get to work.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): This week's trine from Pluto in your sign to the Sun and Venus in Aries intensifies the force of personal magnetism you're exuding, especially with regards to any intentional expressions set forth in conjunction with last week's eclipse. Right about now, you're the person I'd want to invite to my party, take on a hot date, hire to manage my publicity campaign, enlist to egg me on to take a big risk, or otherwise guarantee to be on my side and advocate for my cause. You are appealing and influential. You make it all seem like an extra dose of fun, and do so effortlessly. You pull us in. All that said, what an amazing opportunity this week to generate good will by using this fleeting power to draw others out of their shells, convincing them to act on their submerged or shame-ridden fancies and assisting them to let the creative spirit soar. Instinctively, you will be in their heads and can give explicit voice to what they sincerely want to say but fear. Your loving, adventuresome enjoyment of life is a model for those who struggle to get in touch with their own. This week, share the love.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): Though it might seem there's a massive disconnect between (1) staying totally on top of every little detail in your life (a reliably Capricornese method), whether through manic mental preoccupation or constant controlling action and (2) keeping 'the faith', some impalpable and amorphous sentiment that threatens to rest the final outcome on someone or something else's shoulders, in fact there's not. They are totally compatible with each other. The wise approach is to both appreciate your comprehensive management techniques and let go of the need to obsess past the point of being able to do anything beyond what you can actually do. This is a roundabout way of reiterating the old ode to serenity, through which you acknowledge the difference between what you can control and what you cannot, so you don't keep pounding your head against a stone wall that will still be standing long after you're dead and buried. Remember this whole tongue-twisted sentiment when you go to get a handle on your financial concerns and home-life changes and find that it's not quite to the point you'd have it, if you were ultimately in control… because guess what? You're not.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): Everything is just so this week. You are in an optimum position to embody the perfect Aquarian balance between connectedness and detachment. Be present for whomever you're with at the moment, without allowing them to place pressures on you to be more than that. Be everything right now, but not anything all the time. Give as much of yourself to establish genuine caring contact, yet don't let their needs for repeated reassurance start sapping you or making you feel uncomfortable. A smile, a sentence or two of exactly what they need to hear, and on to the next. No guilt, no obligatory participation. Light as helium, and sharp as a tack. Serve your favorite role, as the just-passing-through instigator of change, on a lifelong multi-stop tour across the vast frontiers of social relations… and if you stay too long in one place, you miss the connecting train to the next destination. Glide, on automatic, engaged.

PISCES (February 19-March 20): It's a making-something-out-of-nothing week, and you'll miss the chance to pull dollar bills and washing machines and brand new cars out of thin air if you stress too greatly in trying to make everything out of the disappointing something you've already been served. Do a rain dance, and charm the clouds into opening up above your house and dumping manna from heaven directly into the cauldron on your stovetop. You'll eat for weeks from just a crumb of that stuff. It's the Mars-Neptune conjunction in your weird-and-wacky 12th house that leads me to believe a magical mix of belief, surrender, dream-logic and ecstatic babbling is more likely to work toward your desired aims than a polite letter to the vice-president of the bank. Dip straight into the otherworldly source, rather than routing your requests through the illusory middlemen who appear to hold some power over you. Sometimes, the things that make a Pisces a Pisces feel like a drag… this week, they make you the envy of all your friends, only they don't know it and possibly neither do you.