Horoscopes | Week of June 27-July 3, 2005

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Your continuing challenge, should you choose to accept it, involves uniting (1) expressions of the fullest possible extent of your personal freedoms with (2) the fullest possible participation in your chosen 'something bigger than just myself' membership group. No good can be had for the Aries who attempts to muffle and squash her/his bold lust for life in an impaired imitation of mild-mannered, milquetoasty meekness. But no greater good can be made by the Aries who darts off and forgets to check in… who starts something up and refuses to be concerned with what the rest of us are left to finish. You truly are a superb inspiration to those of us who dither and dally, wondering, 'what if, if only,' and we need you around as a model for brave initiative and bodily action. We also need you to stay around, after the first pitch has been thrown, all the way through the dull 7th-inning stretch and to the end of the game, past any itchy impatience, in kind-hearted support of your more sluggish or sensitive or persnickety teammates, into overtime if need be. And then, when all is said and done and you've persisted, you get to share in a victory celebration, unrivalled by any independent individual pleasure you might entertain, because it's sweeter when we enjoy it together.

 

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): What's the value in faithfully executing your chores if, at the end, you don't feel any better? Don't mistake 'taking care of stuff' with 'taking care of yourself'. If you must put off another dreary series of completing obligations you're always counted on by others for meeting, just so you can stay in your pajamas and tinker about the house, so be it. If you need to call in sick because your soul-wearied body begs for a day's retreat somewhere outdoors, then do it. If these very ideas seem all too frivolous, let me rephrase them in terms you'll more deeply respect. This is not an exercise in self-indulgence, Taurus. Think of it as another step towards a goal, and you'll feel like your time will be well spent. 'The goal?' you may ask. To satisfy that elusive mission of someday feeling less deprived or hungry, more comfortable and unawkward, and perfectly all right as is. Whether any such emotional hunger or discomfort derives from past neglect or fantasies of futures seemingly impossible to realize, the present sense of feeling cared for starts at home with you. If you want to feel cared for, then care.

 

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): No longer must you bear certain burdens on your own two shoulders strictly by yourself. (Not that you ever really had to… but maybe, for a spell, it felt best that you did.) But neither need you equate the load-lightening with prioritizing a sparse one or two relationship partners in your life as 'the only ones who can truly understand or help', because there's a lot more new insight and information to gather than only one or two people can provide. Frankly, this is an excellent time to do what Geminis do best and circulate in wide, witty, casual circles. Though you may quietly sense that more is at stake, in terms of the ongoing development of your life's meaning, than in typical pleasant-and-airy conversation, the best method for plucking helpful tidbits of fresh ethical truth is to enter into every exchange like it both matters and doesn't matter. Don't take anything too seriously, but don't take anything too lightly. Most importantly, don't pass up any opportunities to swap a few meaninglessly meaningful words with whoever crosses your path this week.

 

CANCER (June 21-July 22): If you've learned anything over these past two years—and if these lessons are finally cementing themselves into your being over this past month, as I told you they might be—then it's absolutely time to move the wisdom from 'realization' to 'behavior'. It's time to ditch the tentativeness and step full-on into the power. It's time to make something more of yourself by banking these newfound values into your account, to draw from and spend with greater will and control. While this advice is ostensibly about reinforcing your personal strength by more fully owning the maturity you earned through living life, it also bespeaks tremendous healing in how you undertake your most significant interpersonal liaisons. Whether in romance, business or friendship, the balance of power is preparing to tip… as long as you're able to demonstrate pride in your lived experience. The old you approached the folks you decided mattered most as if they possessed something you wanted—not the most empowering position from which to present yourself. If you do as I advise and assume the confidence you most definitely merit, they will see what you have (not what you don't have) and want some, too.

 

LEO (July 23-August 22): Okay, Leo… no more cryptic 12th-house 'mysteries of the unknown' bullshit anymore. This week is the turning point, with both Mercury and Venus moving into your sign and shifting the global mood to your station. You may remove your foot from the brake, step on the accelerator, and expect clarity and creativity and charm to flow even more effortlessly from your fingertips than usual. As always, I would remind you that your gifts are best used in connecting with others and enkindling a fiery love of life in them, instead of lording your greatness over them with intimidating force and sparking envy or distaste in the process. When I say your light is so bright it threatens to burn the retinas of more sensitive flowers, then you will be polite to lend them your sunglasses or escort them backstage for an 'insider's view' and generate goodwill with your gestures. Do whatever you can to enjoy yourself… and make the fun so contagious, it infects us all, but without making us sick. And with a flamboyant flourish, so begins a 2-year period of perfecting the fine act of simultaneously sparkling and handholding, individuating and relating, being loved and loving, always one with the other.

 

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): What do you do in the face of those particular parts of existence that you simply cannot control? Well, you could pretend you aren't aware you can't control them… and try to control them anyway. But that sure seems like a waste of energy. You could get increasingly frustrated, like some spoiled sport who erupts into anger when her friends throw her a surprise birthday party after she specifically said she doesn't like surprises. Too damn bad. Or you could do what I recommend and use the lack of control as rationale for giggling yourself into surrender. That's right—laughter is by far the best medicine when faced with the sheer preposterousness of life's actual disarray because, truth be told, it's quite funny. This week is ideal for committing yourself to flow more smoothly with the unexpected. Whether or not anything exceptionally unexpected happens this week, it is bound to happen with more frequency and/or glaring conspicuousness over coming weeks and months. And this could be a key turning-point, determining whether you're open to greater joy from those wonders which you didn't plan yourself… or if you'll wind yourself ever tighter in perturbation that your best efforts to organize are often dashed by a blindsiding or several.

 

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): It's a good week to call in favors from community members, professional allies, and ideological comrades. And when doing so, I strongly suggest you pay close mind to last week's counsel and do your best to be direct in your requests. You're more likely to achieve immediate benefit by opting against any beating around the bush and adopting a bold, brash and self-secure tone to your voice. For you, Libra, this is a compound lesson in (1) the realization that your easiest successes in this next expanse of time will come from efforts made in conjunction with groups and teams of compatible compatriots and (2) the necessity for you to take an active initiatory role in bringing the group together and explicitly articulating what you envision the group's goals should be. Your involvement in this process can be both as serious as organizing an activist coalition to end poverty as we know it or as frivolous as planning the next big theme party for your coterie of pals. But you need to be sharing ideas and delegating tasks among several other friendly faces… and you need to be taking some type of in-charge position. It's nothing less than a question of making your life happen as you desire or waiting around for someone more gutsy than you to assume your desired pose and then wondering what went wrong as you watch from the sidelines, irked and ireful.

 

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): Sometimes, maintaining the poker face (a guise at which you're uncannily gifted at holding) can work against you… for instance, when you really really want something, but the people in the capacity to help you get it don't know how much you really really want it because you appear so casual about it. I think you're right in understanding that too much panting desperation or brazen audacity will jeopardize your chances for success. But that doesn't mean a healthy stance of enthusiastic spunk, combined with a grounded non-attachment to outcomes out of your direct control, isn't worth the calculated risk to your cover. The instinctive hesitance to seem too excited or invested is actually your inhibitions getting the best of you—the idea of externalizing your desire so nakedly and then possibly not attaining it would leave you in such a vulnerable light. And that's exactly the light in which the powers that be want to see you before they'll give you the keys to the castle. No one wants a superhero (or one with the poker face of a superhero) barking up his tree… it's too threatening. We want a real person.

 

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): I think this could be a fun-filled week for you, Sag… as long as you do what you want to do because you want to do it, not to prove to somebody else that you can. The astrological transition is moving you out of heavy interpersonal territory and into the kind of broad-based, shake-you-out-of-everyday-life venturesomeness in which you thrive. But if you truly crave to experience the vast freedoms associated with leaping out into the great big world, then you must sincerely free yourself from any residual hostility, jealousy or hurt left over from your recent several months. You have to be able to get some decent perspective on it, to make it into an ethical lesson you teach yourself as opposed to some vengeful lesson you're trying (unsuccessfully, I might add) to teach someone else. If you have other places to go and other people to meet, make sure you're off on the journey with as few psychic strings binding you to the past as possible. Otherwise, you'll carry it with you to the next destination, and its unresolved feelings will dampen the mood once you get there. It doesn't mean you have to cut the people associated with the feelings out of your life completely. But you do have to close this last chapter in order to keep reading into the next and have the story display any narrative progression.

 

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): When I look at your astrology for the week, Capricorn, I keep coming up with the word 'danger'—not so I can warn you against possible danger, but more like I want to encourage you to woo it. I see you devilishly cackling in the act of cultivating death-defying adventures, the very riskiness of which provide titillating thrills that remind you how amazing is this fleeting feeling of being alive. Of course, the responsible astrologer in me is obliged to point out there are different levels of courting danger, some of which can provide the same titillation without actually inviting undue bodily or emotional harm, e.g., the distinction between going skydiving with trained professionals or simply jumping out of a plane, the safety of role-playing a submission/domination scene vs. totally surrendering to another's will without guidelines and safewords. You have the potential of transforming some long-standing repression by consciously and carefully orchestrating a dynamite daredevil deed, letting go in some wild way to prove to yourself that now is better than never. Push your comfort zone to its max, but make sure when gambling with your safety, it's your psychological safety—not your physical safety—that you're betting with… and invite the kind of fun that comes with scaring the living hell out of yourself and screaming in ecstatic reaction to facing fear head-on.

 

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): Now that both Mercury and Venus are moving into your 7th house, the realm of one-on-one relationships of various persuasions, a little healthy flirtation is in order. When I use that word, flirtation, I do so in the most general sense—to encourage the most innocently playfully theatrical enjoyment of the other person, whether romantic/sexual in nature or not. What's so interesting about flirting for you, though, is the flippant way in which genuine connection is dangled in front of the object of attention and then yanked away. If this description sounds familiar, Aquarius, it's because there's something about your typical manner of being that is flirtatious in this sense-you're a people person, but you don't always 'go all the way' with your connections. You're a bit of a tease. For these next few weeks, I'm granting you carte blanche to flirt to your heart's content and see where it goes… but only so long as you pay close attention to what part of your ego gets stroked and caressed by the responses you get. On a longer-term basis (as in the next two years), you're just beginning a soon-to-get-more-challenging maturation process involving how you interact in relationships. For right now, you don't have to worry too much about where it's going. Consider this the pretest, to determine your current skill level, in advance of the upcoming series of lessons

 

PISCES (February 19-March 20): Gee, getting those little tasks done is so much fun, especially if you whistle while you work. Just like '90s postsomething poster child Ally McBeal had the little theme song she sung to herself to give herself the confidence of an empowered TV character (how meta!), you'll enliven your next few weeks by adding your favorite background music, dance steps, dramatic monologues or other snippets of self-entertainment to the routine. It's one of those time periods where the very act of taking care of usually-a-nuisance chores has the potential to keep you happily singing and dancing for hours past when you'd usually be bored or stir-crazy. You might even surprise yourself with how easily you attend to the pressing duties, without complaint or problems concentrating. The hardest part will be to move from inactivity to action, if you're currently sitting on the couch and/or feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of different to-do items on the list. Don't concern yourself with finishing everything (even if you know you must)—that's too big a bite to swallow. Just start moving, with a deliberately hammy spring in your step, and pull whatever mind tricks you must in order to convince yourself that all this toil is actually one big game and so far you're winning.