astrobarry.com the web

Horoscopes | Week of June 13-19, 2005

ARIES (March 21-April 19): With Mars happily hop-skip-'n'-jumping along through its natural habitat of your sign, Aries, the enthusiastic self-possession continues to snowball. This jab of energy promises you will stand out from the crowd… but I challenge you to stand out from others without pulling away from them. It's quite possible to serve as a shining example of leadership, and not display the slightest bit of arrogance or self-importance. And you'll be highly inspirational to the rest of us if you remain self-directed in your actions and attitudes, while retaining a group-minded concern in the process. The combination of Mars with mystical healer Chiron in Aquarius is passionately calling on you to model the activist adage 'the personal is political' by living your life in a mode that, while is distinctly suited to your individual needs and desires, also demonstrates (by living example!) how idyllic the world could be if everybody led their own version of such a self-actualized existence. Do what you're going to do for you… but also do it for the rest of us.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): My beautiful bullish creature, I call on you to spend your week in a living meditation on the value of meaninglessness. Meditation insists (in an especially non-insistent, though perpetually gently refocusing fashion) we stay as completely and totally present in the given moment as humanly possible. This is a necessity when it comes to meaningfully exploring meaninglessness, since it's quite common for meaning to refrain from imposing its structures for understanding until after its subject has been undergone. In other words, some events and circumstances and objects will end up bearing meaning for you and others will not, and to some extent you must go in blind, because you cannot decidedly know which are which in advance of your exposure to them. This infinite matrix of life is like a giant flea market, where all possible experiences are self-advertising wares seductively splayed across folding tables… and it's only after you throw down a couple bucks, shove the selected few into your canvas tote bag, and schlep them home that you can figure out how they will fit with what you already have. To that end, there's no use to stress—for this week, if not for always—when approaching every next table, as nothing being offered 'matters' to you yet, until you decide it will. Enjoy the entertainment and energetic stimulation of wandering through this life's marketplace of meaninglessness, and remember, you're fully free to look without buying.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): If you haven't already done so, please firmly state to her or him where exactly it is you are. Then, please invite her or him to firmly state to you where exactly it is she or he is. Essentially, you are calling yourselves out—as opposed to trying to call out each other, and continuing to miss the gist of each other's main drift, in the futile attempts to define or defile or convince the other. Look here, Gemini… with the Sun and Pluto opposed across your 1st and 7th houses (see also: Sagittarius), there's no getting around the potential for a power struggle. Unless, of course, you actively choose not to struggle. Which leaves only power, yours and hers/his, both fully intact and wholly respected. Be honest about your previous (and perhaps current) investment in partaking in the drama, and then step away from it. Let each other be exactly where it is you each are, and move on to other stuff. Use the intuitive acumen of Mercury-and-Venus's incitation of your 2nd house to brainstorm new plans and ideas for solidifying your takeover of your unique little corner of the world. Concentrate first on your own practical necessities, and shelve the interpersonal crap for later resolution.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): For those rare Cancerians who have yet to enjoy the beautiful fortune I've explained would be your fate for these few weeks, let me provide a few brief suggestions for kickstarting the delight. (1) Whenever there's added planetary stimulus in the sign of Cancer, a potential side-effect is increased sensitivity. Unfortunately, too often, sensitivity translates to moodiness—that is, unless it's reinterpreted as 'enhanced emotional engagement'. The main linguistic difference is one of a judgment that somehow this sensitivity is undesirable… and the self-judgment only serves to freeze the lower lows into staying longer. Whatever the variability in mood, bear no judgment. (2) Don't lose yourself in dreamy (read: unrealistic) expectations of others. This fortuitous window of opportunity is for you to use to take self-defining action, not for hovering in reactive mode in wait for some cue from some overvalued outside influence. (3) Don't spend too much energy worrying about what you believed in the past, and whether what you want to do now is too dramatic a divergence from that. You do not owe yourself or anyone else consistent obedience to moralities that served you once upon a time. Let yourself evolve, and shed whatever skin no longer suits your new-and-improved plans.

LEO (July 23-August 22): To be the truest, realest, most confident and secure you is to revel in those demonstrations of self that rouse those around you to be their truest, realest, most confident and secure selves. With your unquestionably commanding presence of being, you benefit yourself and everybody else by refusing to overwhelm those who struggle and stumble in trying to convey their honest feelings and ideas. Consciously work to promote mutually comfortable environments in every interaction, motivating with your strength of character rather than lording over with how naturally you rise to the attentions. It is no competition—you will win every time you display your instinctive mastery over charismatic conversation, but it'll be lonely if the company is afraid to pronounce a single peep from fear of falling short. Adopt the larger view, and embark on the exciting adventure of observing everyone becoming more authentically him- and herself… and assist the process by offering to chaperone the journey, free from any condescending tendencies, promoting its success by genuinely praising anyone who dares step out on a limb.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): Safety is traditionally sought through the usage of belts, straps, nets and clauses in contracts designed to ensure the possibility that any unpredicted occurrence has been predicted in advance and headed off at the pass. But for you right now, Virgo, there is no epiphany to be had under the auspices of being safe. Instead, please direct your mind toward whatever activities and allegiances will maximize the feeling that you have been freed up, as opposed to tied down… or else you will remain exactly where you are, snug as a bug in a hermetically sealed rug and without the slightest bit of new insight. These current few weeks should amount to an unfettering, uncrossing, dismantling, detangling extrication from all those albatrosses whose time has come for dignified extinction. Favors from characters far crazier than you should be called in now, for you need the encouragement to stand up for the living-out of the impossible dreams, instead of sitting tight for the third coming when the second hasn't even shown its face. Bond together with those personalities who share your affinities but lack your inhibitions, and beg for them to break you out. They'll be so pleased you've chosen to live for today, you can fly on their wings for at least several thousand feet.

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): Rely on your keen psychic wisdom for determining the next couple professional and/or public steps, and suspend the necessity for logical understanding. You will know it's intuition talking if the call to action makes no sense, causes some degree of ego discomfort, and feels (in the gut and/or the heart, not the head and/or the feet) as there's no more truly authentic choice. The problem comes in distinguishing intuition from desire, for these two often run counter to each other in the short term, as if to test our commitment to ultimate satisfaction and meaning by placing a chunk of our favorite cheese on the mousetrap. Though your internal fairy-godmother is whispering words of powerful truth about what you need to do right now to achieve your highest external-world destiny, your ego speaks louder and carries a bigger stick and easily bloats its urges for today's recognition and reward to proportions that drown her whispers out. Reassure your ego that it will get what it wants in the end, and then soothingly shush its whiny cry so you can obey the gentle guiding voice with its immaculate instructions, which contain directions to the next surprising stop essential for your arrival in the right place at the right time.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): There's an inherent messiness involved when you opt to enmesh by throwing all your stuff into the pot, mixing it up with someone else's stuff, and then supposing you'll both share and share alike. The most obvious quandary arises when, at some point, you try to figure out what's yours (as in belonging to 'you' in the singular) and either cannot accurately identify it in a lineup or detach the snaky tentacles suctioning it onto something else not belonging to you. 'That's okay,' you might say to yourself, 'it doesn't matter what's mine because I'm quite content in this commingling state.' Don't fool yourself. Inevitably, a time will come when you both have different plans for the same item, one of you wants to share some with somebody else and the other doesn't like it, or you just get plain tired of sharing everything. No matter whether the relationship lasts forever or not, the terms will change again and again—it's the dynamic nature of life, and the reason why the more stickily superimposed your life is atop the life of another (as Scorpios often arrange themselves, so as to be close as possible), the more deep the pain of the change ends up. The more vigilant among you might notice this horoscope is somewhat of a rewrite of last week's, but with the Sun opposing Pluto this week, I felt compelled to rephrase and restate. Go for the simplest, most self-centered, unenmeshed version, or expect it to be even messier later… which, incidentally, is a totally valid option… but don't act, in retrospect, like you didn't know.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): The activation of your 1st/7th-house axis, which I wrote of last week, continues this week… only this time, the Sun opposes Pluto, continuing its decade-and-a-half trip through your sign and ensuring that no Sagittarian on earth will remain as casual with life as she/he had previously acted. Pluto or not, the quintessential Sag must be permitted the freedom to gallop gallantly across the hills and dales of life, taking in the views, swapping anecdotes and abstractions with the colorful figures met along the way, or else his/her quality of being alive is no better than a calf in a veal pen, restricted from movement so that someone else's meal is tender. Don't lay down and play veal chop, if there's a butterfly you need be chasing. The keyword for you this week is differentiation—that is, in whatever relationships you're engaged in (whether ultimately healthy and happy or somehow otherwise), you've got to insist (to yourself or the other person) on being your own raucous individual Self (either within the unit or in necessary separation), differentiated from any other identity. Don't kowtow to the status quo… but if dramatic action need be taken, please make sure to be respectful and kind to anyone in the line of fire.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): When it comes to all contact with people, subscribe to a page from the self-help gurus and stay firmly planted in the Now. Go on, just love people. Appreciate them for their oh-so-hilariously human quirks and complexities, even when they play out in acrobatics which get in your way and would normally torment you to strangle-ready proportions. Look through each face into the soul behind it, and watch as each color in this tapestry of humanity is so cleverly woven together. I'm purposely being cheesy to pull you out of your more usual strategy of trying to figure people out, rather than just flowing with however they end up being… mainly because the planets would really prefer that you take the enjoyments of observation and interaction, without letting your mind carry you past them into expectation. This is especially true when plans or promises or connections that purport to offer the supposed promise of being relied upon later present themselves. Let's just put it this way: There's so much pleasure to be had in this Now, there's no reason to bank on the possibility of turning it into something else for some later Then, for any specific purpose whatsoever, nor to count on the permanence of the vibe… which is a nice way of saying, Don't count on it.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): Is it possible to shut your brain off for a spell and just move with your heart? I know, a better question from your higher-intellect perspective would be, 'Why should I do that?' Well, for starters, the work you have to do has already been 'figured out' in the sense that you've been thinking and envisioning and problem-solving and visualizing long enough… and now it's time to actually put your body to the task. Plus, your automatic drive for mental superiority (not necessarily over anyone else… ahem… but certainly toward being at the top of your own game) has the likelihood of snagging up the enactment of your vision by driving you to overthink every last possible scenario (which is all hypothetical nonsense anyhow), rather than just doing it. Furthermore, your in-flux self-conception of who you are is, frankly, too in flux to give you an accurate sense of what your involvement in finishing the job will necessitate—and how it will change you to the core of your bones. And, if you needed any more reasons, then what about the simple fact that sometimes it feels good to shut up and work?

PISCES (February 19-March 20): You're the one with the most inventive ideas of the moment, Pisces… and if you don't believe me, it's just another case of judging yourself according to standards too confusedly emotionally engaged to be fair. If you cannot unsnarl yourself enough to bear direct personal benefit from your current windfall of imaginative vision, then at least let those with whom you associate enjoy the creative boon by association. Feel free to interrupt their tales of stalemate and stagnation with peculiarly direct and forceful suggestions for fantastic trap-door escapes and hidden-passageway shortcuts. For every widely accepted practice for accomplishing something, there are at least two other road-less-traveled, vividly-technicolored, all-the-fun-is-in-the-journey and you-just-might-learn-something methods to more magical madness… and, at least for right now, you are the best envoy to said wonderland. Of course, I'd like to believe you'd be willing to put your own most boring behaviors on the line and take personal advantage of this vacuum of creative sparkle. But if for some silly ego reason you can't get yourself to self-apply it, then please use it as a way to show loving support to those of us who need an altered outlook.