astrobarry.com the web

Horoscopes | Week of April 6-12, 2009

ARIES (March 21-April 19): This is an interesting week in your latest process, Aries… and considering how very interesting I presume your life has already been lately, that's really sayin' something. On the one hand, by the week's second half, your mind should finally be slowing down a bit, giving you a moment to catch your proverbial breath and review the current state of affairs with a more level head. To be specific, the 'state of affairs' you most need to review are your financial ones, since I imagine the whir of constant activity hasn't given you much of a chance to balance your accounts or pay your bills… let alone strategize as to whether you can continue at the present rate, or if you need to put some brakes on somewhere. On the other hand, as this week builds into next, the pull toward ever more bizarre and far-out-of-left-field breaks from your typical reality intensifies—with the potential to create an uncomfortable psychic pressure upon you that's simply got to give (meaning: you must do something wild and liberating) or you'll just explode. Needless to say, these two strains of astro-influence appear to be in some degree of conflict, since we don't usually associate being protective and practically-minded on the financial level with wild-and-liberating releases. If I could toss out one possible sentiment (though it's not the only one) to help you reconcile these conflicting trends, it would be this: Find or create a safe environment for yourself (perhaps using trusted friends or respectable institutions) in which you can consciously choose to go off the very deep end (whatever that means to you) with proper bounds of 'beginning' and 'end' established in advance.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): If you have important items to discuss, decisions to make or truths to convey, you'll definitely want to wait until after Thursday morning's full moon to do so. Not only will the recent emotional ebbing (not just within you, but amongst the populace at large) begin to subside, but an even more exciting astro-event is due to occur: Mercury will be moving into your sign, Taurus. Now, ordinarily, I wouldn't go all bonkers tooting Mercury's horn, as if he's ever been a trustworthy savior. (Trickster is more like it.) Yet, his return to your altogether pragmatic sign does seem to signal a much-welcome step back toward common sense. After what has been a perplexing retrograde visit of your ruler Venus through your least intelligible house (the 12th), I at least hope you've had some fun… and collected a couple experiential teachings or psychic hunches along the way, which you otherwise wouldn't have had you actually retained your wits. (This hints at the reasons why they say there's a thin line between genius and insanity.) Soon, however, you will be able to put two and two back together again. You will be able to explain what you've recently reaped from living on the edge… and what you plan to change, or preserve, about your longer-term existence as a result. Still, give yourself a bit more time to feel fully yourself again. After all, it was only a couple weeks ago that I told you to try being somebody different for a little while…

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): I want to revisit last week's episode, first and foremost because, due to Venus-retrograde electric-sliding back into your 10th, you are due to reevaluate recent openings in your life out there (i.e., career, community, what you're trying to accomplish in the world) since they may no longer seem so opening after all. What I was trying to tell you last week, Gemini, is this isn't a conundrum to decode with your head. It's a heart issue, my dear. If your heart isn't in it, it ain't gonna work. Capiche? But I couldn't blame you for over-relying on your brain juice in an attempt to render the understanding of what it is you want to do with your life next, or how you'd best go about it, since you are a terribly mercurial creature (ruled by Mercury and all) and your wits usually get you where you need to be. Not in this case or at least not right now, the astro-forecast seems to say, punctuated by this week's movement of Mercury into your 12th, where trying to astutely analyze options with a clear head is a dead-end street. I will, however, encourage you to pray for a sign… or if you're not the praying type, to do whatever it takes to put you in that cosmic-interconnectedness meditative mindset, full of gratitude and wonder for how the universe manages to step in at just the perfect moment, with clues or breaks or messages that miraculously illuminate a long-vexing problem in a mere couple of seconds. Lightning could very well strike in the coming two weeks or so, instantaneously bestowing you with an enlightening notion your poor brain never would've come up with on its own, with all those excuses and justifications it would've manufactured to prematurely close doors.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Gravitate toward the people in your life who tend to provide you new ways to look at the same old situations. If there's a friend who you admire for the manner in which they live, first and foremost, according to the beliefs they hold, this is someone you want to have a lengthy conversation with this week. If you know somebody who comes from such a radically different background than you that their totally foreign attitudes always make you stop and think, get in contact with 'em and snag yourself a dose of mindset-flipping. You definitely need the social reinforcement, Cancer, to feed your sense of vastness… vastness of possibilities, vastness of human diversity, vastness of this earthly sphere we dwell upon and the unimaginable spaces beyond. Left to your own devices, alas, I fear you might instead fixate upon an emotional experience all too familiar to you, one that I will not claim you don't have some legitimate right to still be focused on, yet also one that does nothing but make your life and its potentials feel claustrophobically smaller. And what good will that do you? This is why other people—and I've been fairly specific about the kinds of other people presently best suited to enlarge your vision—are such a key piece to your having a successful week.

LEO (July 23-August 22): Last week was probably fairly instructive for you, Leo, in terms of discovering where you stand in relation to that seemingly eternally entangling situation—and/or the other person at the heart of its entanglements—and whether or not you're still as entangled as you once were. In your previous horoscope, I discussed 'keeping your eyes on your own paper', which spoke quite directly to this instruction… though I'm not terribly confident that, between both you and them, everybody was minding their own business. I am not here, however, to judge you for not obeying my advice to the letter. Especially since the advice was not intended to save you from some unimaginable doom, were you to persist with whatever bedeviling (yet undoubtedly compelling) interrelations are 'distracting' you from more squarely self-serving concerns… merely to provide you a progress report. If you or the other person/situation were challenged to leave each other to your own devices, then it's safe to conclude you aren't nearly as free from the ties that bind as you might've thought, wished or prayed for. That's okay. Don't freak out about it; just acknowledge the reality of the situation, and continue doing the unavoidable work to either repair or more comprehensively settle the relationship, once and for all. (Give this two, three weeks or more.) If, however, it wasn't so bad to do your own thing (or maybe it was actually fantastic?!?), go ahead and celebrate your hard-earned interpersonal freedom; the next similar situation you find yourself in should go much more smoothly.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): Negotiations (if you can call 'em that) remain tense, following last week's Mars-Saturn standoff in the 'me vs. you' sector of your solar chart, Virgo. But the discordance isn't likely to be quite as direct as it was, blessedly, now that each side has been duly confronted with what the other is up to… and so that at least buys you a bit of room to do some more thinking. By the second half of the week, in fact, you may begin to gain additional clarity you couldn't possibly have achieved any earlier. (Timing, you see, is exquisitely perfect.) Being the Virgo that you are, then, you mustn't give into the temptation to beat yourself up for seeing things now you didn't see before. That said, this interpersonal condition you find yourself in isn't fully wrapped up yet, whether the continuing developments will actually transpire between the both of you or whether it's just an inner development that's due to take place. In either event, the direction I see it heading is toward you letting go—in sort of a big way—of how it's been up until now, of any expectations that the future will look much like the past, and of your need to dip and swerve and bend to accommodate a relationship dynamic increasingly out of step with the shit you're trying to do for yourself. Next week, this story seems to come to a climax, in some fashion or another. Do not fear what happens in the next chapter; such forward-minded bravery will help you through the climactic moments of the here-and-now.

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): Have you managed to escape interpersonal intrigue and excitement, if not explicitly romantic then surely entertaining enough in some other fashion, over this past couple months? If I were the bettin' kind, I'd bet not, Libra. Your present relationship situation (with a longtime honey, an old flame, a new possibility, or some convoluted concept involving one or more of the aforementioned) appears full of excuses to be testing out the waters, if not because you're having a damn good time testing 'em out then surely because you're discovering alternative ways to behave in relationships that don't sell your own needs out. If you are conducting these tests with another person, it is now time to deepen the conversation. Wait, don't freak out… I'm not saying you must have The Talk (about what we do next, where this is going, etc.), merely a talk about your past scars and present fears and there's no need to commit to, or ask about, the future. Let each other know where you are right now, on a more intimate and vulnerable level, and a certain future will organically evolve. And if you are one of those Librans who has seen no movement or development on the relationship front since February, it's also time to deepen the conversation—with yourself, and with close confidantes. Past scars and present fears are still relevant topics, if they are blocking you from a connection you desperately crave… and projecting into an unknown future is still a likely trigger for closing yourself down. Of course, it's also possible you (consciously or not) don't want a change in your relationship status, which I wholeheartedly advocate, if that is consciously how you'd like to live. In that case, just make sure you're reaching out in the non-romantic bonds you consider most important, rather than isolating yourself on an emotional level from all human beings. Even if you think you'd prefer to be totally alone, the planets say that, right now, you really need to remain in a relating state.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): This week's full moon (Wed night/Thu morn) is likely to be a more emotional one for you, Scorpio, in that it lights up the usually-unconscious corners of your psyche with greater intelligibility… and once you come to better understand what's really behind some of your less-conscious, more-automatic behaviors, you very well may feel a bit shaken. (Even a psychologically astute person like you can overlook key formative imprints that play a huge role in determining how you react in certain circumstances.) This is a natural, productive use for a full moon, so I urge you not to try covering up the emotional experience, overcompensating, perhaps, with daring gestures of bravado, as if to prove your impenetrability to a world that isn't doubting you as much as you may be doubting yourself. On the contrary, the planets are aligned to favor you having level-headed one-on-one conversations with those individuals who sincerely care about you (rather than fear you or just want to jump your bones). With such folks, you needn't pretend to be anything other than the small, vulnerable, wounded creature that you are. (We all are.) A wound you might not have been fully aware was there may become a little tender or sore this week. Allow your loved ones to help tend to it.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): You're likely to find, by the tail end of the week, the reappearance of a more serious mindset… which will hopefully serve as an impetus to re-attend to some family matter or other equally private concern that you didn't quite deal with fully a little while back. Please don't get down on yourself, Sagittarius, if it feels like you're riding something of a mood rollercoaster over this past month or two. It comes with the territory of leading a rich life filled with many different facets of experience, any number of which may be passing through either triumphant crests or demoralizing lows at any given time, and not in any neat correlation with each other. While your Sagittarian brain may gravitate toward more black-and-white interpretations of your emotional state (i.e., 'Things are great!'; 'Things are rotten!'), it's now being pushed to incorporate a more subtle reading (i.e., 'Some things are great… and some things are rotten!'). And if that multivalent experience of life going both smoothly and not-so-smoothly, based upon which topic we're discussing and what week it is, is indeed what you've lately been witness to, then of course it's okay to vacillate between feeling fantastic and feeling not-so-hot. Give yourself a mental break, and ride the ride where it wants to take you this particular moment. And when the barometer drops to low spirits, try your darnedest not to form dramatic verbal descriptions of how terrible everything is; the very act of putting it into words too cut-and-dry (and not entirely accurate) may just elongate and exacerbate the unpleasant emotion. I recommend sitting it out, quietly, alone or with a person you needn't explain anything to, until it passes.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): I'm hoping Mercury's move into fellow earth-sign Taurus midweek will provide you some much-needed mental grounding. I cannot recall exactly when was the last time I composed you a horoscope that spoke of drawing conclusions. That's because the astro-scene has been recently weighted toward fire-and-water energy, creating an environment where action and emotion have been more the name of the game. This Mercury sign-switch, then, should definitely help you bring a little rational clarity to a recently strange, even disjointed, month or so. This is the week to use your wits, Capricorn, turning back to 'on' whatever need to make sense of things you may've (hopefully) temporarily suspended. As far as you're concerned, sense is now back in vogue. Of course, if we want to be frank with each other, I suspect the 'sense' you're in the process of coming to may not resemble your prior, more reasonable versions (and when I say 'reasonable', we're talking about predictable and safe). Thank goodness you've got Mercury working for you again, since you'll need his help to, over the next week or two, muster the right words to authentically represent the conclusions you're now drawing. It's getting to that moment when you're going to have to utter your radical new declaration of intent aloud, both to those whose lives it's going to affect and to anyone, friend or stranger, who might be helped along on their path by your inspiring thoughts.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): Be on the lookout for unintended situations in which your spur-of-the-moment decision to go beyond the comfort-zone of surface-level discussion and actually disclose something more private or provocative, may well help change somebody's life. I know this is a fairly melodramatic opening sentence, Aquarius, but I don't want you to underestimate the power of a simple exchange of personal stories—even between two total strangers, or people who ordinarily don't converse with each other in such confidence—to alter the course of the future in unimaginably big ripples. I'm not saying this to pump up your ego, so that you spend your week bestowing your (supposed) infinite wisdoms upon the masses like a messianic messenger. By the time you're starting to think up your clever quips in advance of an immediate context, your insights will not really be relevant. (In fact, they're likelier to grate on folks' nerves.) This is an exercise more about really being present in the moment, especially in moments with other people (which includes shop clerks, meter maids, gas-station attendants, customer-service phone reps and any other service workers who, way too often, we forget to consider as people when we carry on with our cell-phone inanities while they are trying to interact with us). Every interpersonal interaction, no matter how miniscule, holds the potential to either lift the involved parties up to a more mutually appreciative place… or to get 'em grumpier than they were before. In these tiny instants, you just might change somebody's life.

PISCES (February 19-March 20): Due to that strange quirk of celestial mechanics known as retrograde, you are lucky enough to welcome Venus back into your sign at the very tail end of the week (Sat Apr 11), where she will stay for a quite brief thirteen days (during which time she will station back to direct motion) before heading back out on Fri Apr 24. During this same momentous window, your sign will also host a Mars-Uranus conjunction (exact next week, on Wed Apr 15), which is one of the most extraordinarily erratic and electrifying ambassadors of sudden change there is. (Example: Six years ago, a Mars-Uranus conjunction delivered a power surge that sizzled my computer. It happened again four years later, at another Mars-Uranus conjunction.) The crazy good thing about the timing of this one, dear Pisces, is that Venus has magically decided to re-grace you with her benevolent presence at precisely the same time this 'sudden change' transit hits—and as far as I'm concerned, nothing happens by accident. Therefore, I must declare this unique concordance of astro-factors, which occurs from Apr 11 through Apr 24, is an amazing wrinkle in time for finally rocketing yourself off the cliff, away from what holds you back, toward a sizzling blank in your future ready to be filled with self-possession and fearlessness. I've spoken to you like this before over recent months and years, but this one's really good. Your other choice, of course, is to wait around for your computer to sizzle or some other rug to be pulled out from under you. But should such a thing happen, Venus's bewitching glance tells me even that could eventually prove to be a stroke of luck in disguise.