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Horoscopes | Week of February 20-26, 2012

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Remove your foot from the gas, Aries, and let 'er glide for a spell. Too much extraneous futzing with what's already been set into motion will just cause impatience to flare, like how slowly the tea kettle seems to boil the water while you're standing there staring at it, but how quickly after you step away and start doing something else you end up hearing its whistle from the other room. The ducks you previously lined up still remain in their designated row, ready to unfurl a somewhat inevitable conclusion based upon the strength of your initiating efforts (though exactly what that is may not yet be visible to you). The best action you could take presently would be to light a magical candle on behalf of 'the best possible outcome for all, and harm to none,' and otherwise keep your hands to yourself. May I also remind you that pretty-princess Venus continues her visit to your sign, offering a few advantageous goodies to those of you who don't insist on staying so fruitlessly preoccupied with the above-mentioned 'futzing' that you hardly look up long enough to notice? You might well be making things harder on yourself than need be, relinquishing the easy pleasures right in front of you, to struggle toward results-in-progress that, for the moment, you can't affect much anyhow.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The greatness of the entire community is at stake, and, these days, your contribution is an exceedingly noticeable one… as would be your lack of contribution, should that be the direction your free-will has taken you. With Jupiter continuing his journey through your sign for another few months, Taurus, your presence is even larger and more impactful than under more typical circumstances… which also implies that any choices you make to somehow separate yourself, forego the group event for a personal indulgence, or absolve yourself from responsibility for the collective's well-being will make a statement. Though there is an astrological tension (courtesy of retrograde Mars in your solar 5th) which could inspire you to draw lines to clearly distinguish yourself from the wider crowd and/or guard something you feel is legitimately yours (rather than 'ours'), I fear that taking such actions will only make you look bad in the public eye. Bluntly put, this is a time for benevolent altruism. Fussing about such self-involved clarifications won't achieve the intended goal, as much as clarify that you are indeed self-involved.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In a follow-up to last week's pep-talk on your career/outer-world situation, I cannot urge you strongly enough to silence the inner 'problem-solver' (or so that's what it likes to calls itself) who seeks to shoot down any emergent, unconventional or unproven ideas for what you might do next before they have a chance to congeal. While this voice in your head (which is really more like a naysayer disguised as a rational thinker) may claim to have your most practical interests in mind, Gemini, it's really just inhibiting your ability to imagine your life manifesting in a manner far different than what's already come forth. How many brilliantly successful and happy visionaries would've amounted to much much less, had they stopped themselves too early in their creative process because of the tough practical questions they couldn't definitively answer that early on? They had to swallow those dangling question-marks, knowing they'd have to address them at some point (by learning as they went along), while still pledging, on the big-picture level, to pursue what they felt to be the right path. Take inspiration: Stop torturing yourself about the unknowns, and just commit to pursuing what you know is right for you.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Use your influence to further what you believe strongly to be right, Cancer, instead of forfeiting your say in the debate to those you perceive as louder, better trained or informed, or more blatantly agenda-pushers. Just because you assess the 'rightness' of an idea or endeavor based upon your heartfelt intuitive vibes, that doesn't make your belief any less worthy of a prominent place in the public dialogue. If anything, your willingness to put forth a stance in simple, emotionally-resonant terms holds the potential to shape others' thinking on the matter in just as remarkable a fashion—if not more—as those who list facts, toss around big words, or speak passionlessly like a robot reading a philosophy textbook aloud. The current astrology's influence on you, in fact, may inspire more than a mere conversational participation in advocating for what's right: You could indeed feel moved to leap into the movement, to travel somewhere that puts you 'right in the heart of it' or to educate yourself more comprehensively on the ins and outs of the issue. This energetic pull is not as absurd as your rational mind might try to claim. If furthering what you believe is right isn't an important enough motive to lead you toward strange new horizons, I don't know what is.

LEO (July 23-August 22): Enter the zone of communion—of sexual intimacy, of financial collaboration, of psychological intensity, of psychic unity—with both eyes wide open. I trust you know what you're getting into, Leo, unless you have been doggedly ignoring everything I've written to you lions and lionesses over the past several weeks (in which case I wonder why you're bothering to read this now). You're aware of the possibility that you were overlooking important areas of divergence between you and the person or entity you're merging with, and you've since accepted and integrated these differences. You've contended with whatever issue or potential problem you'd been avoiding thinking about (because it 'spoiled the moment'?) and made conscious peace with it. You have protected your own self-supporting interests to the best of your ability. And you are under no delusions about the complications you are willingly inviting into your life by going all the way there with this situation. Right? Then you should feel free to proceed… and enjoy all the benefits that come with gambling away tidy-but-dull self-containment for a riskier payoff of interpersonal adventure, economic opportunity, deepened titillation and/or transformational self-development. You're an adult, after all, and can make these decisions for yourself. No matter what we opt to do, there's always a tradeoff.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): Now is a powerful moment for letting the important person(s) in your life know how much you appreciate them exactly as they are. This exercise I endorse, Virgo, has zero space for qualifications, exceptions or corrections. Together, you and I can accept as an unspoken given that there's always room to improve our abilities at certain tasks, to develop and refine skills, and to grow ever more conscious of the underlying motivating factors in our actions. But that is not the same thing as becoming any 'better' a version of ourselves, since we are all already doing a perfect job of being who we are, quirks and complexes and all. So obviously, then, if somebody has ended up assuming a decent-sized role in our lives by our having allowed this to occur, this person possesses a particular spirit-of-being—regardless of what they may do from moment to moment, which will undoubtedly include some behaviors that bug us—we find high value in. Please don't leave your appraisal of their high-valuation as an implicit truth. Voice it. Demonstrate it. Make sure they know. The more purely you can love them, the likelier you'll stop subjecting yourself to the same critical qualifications, exceptions and corrections.

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): Invite the zingy fireball in your life to deliver you from an all-work-no-play existence in a fashion other than what you might escape into, should you leave yourself to your own devices. Yes, Libra, you'll almost certainly find yourself in a better spot if you spend your off-hours with a companion, whether a sweetie or a good pal, than by burrowing any further into the sensory-deprivation chamber of solitary confinement. If you're desperately wanting to hide away from the world, it's probably because you also want to indulge in some activity that you'd prefer to keep hidden from the world… and that smacks of no-good, doesn't it? Not only are such tendencies presently bordering on compulsion, but, beyond that, they merely reveal a certain lack of imagination on your part, as if you can't think of anything else to occupy your leisure-time with other than deep hibernation. That's where the companionship of a zingy-fireball type comes in incredibly handy: They're usually chock-full of spur-of-the-moment suggestions about stuff you two can do together. And as long as you don't swat away their suggestions with needless criticisms, you might actually have a good time playing with 'em.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): Reestablish, or recommit to, your utter faith in romantic love. Now that the ghastly flowers-and-candy holiday of last week is behind us, Scorpio, it's once again safe to remind your heart what truly connecting with another being—without the social pressures of what it's supposed to look like or conform to—actually contributes to your life. And whether you're presently in a spot where there's someone else to experience this with, or whether you're 'in between' loves, doesn't matter much… at least not when it comes down to the precious value of the concept itself, and how tantamount to the Scorpio existence it is to continue believing in its eternal goodness. Though you're surely not one of the signs more susceptible to naïvete, please don't allow whatever world-weariness may periodically strike you to ever engender a bitterness toward the very-real deliverance that interpersonal communion can provide. You are built for intimacy. Launch a wish to the heavens for the next chapter of your holy service to commence. The cynics can fuck off.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): If this were technologically possible, I would encourage you to dial the volume-knob down a few decibels, to reduce the amount of sound blaring from your present life-situation. Such an action would hopefully create an overall lessening of the nervous-system stress that subtly occurs when the background-setting's white noise bleeds into our subconscious, contaminating our internal experience of everything. The only loud outbursts I suggest allowing, Sagittarius, would occur during those few brief moments of leisure socializing you're able to squeeze in between (1) the persistently demanding uptick in earthly duties with your name on 'em and (2) the desperately-required respite necessary for counterbalancing the former item. So when you're actually out-and-about and having a good time… sure, be loud. You must cram in a whole bunch of revelry in a small window of time. But during all your other participations, whether on the job or at home, busily productive or thankfully not, please keep the volume low. Little discussion need occur. And getting vocally upset about inconveniences or irritations won't even make you feel better. Tiptoe around as if a baby is asleep in the next room. It'll have a gently positive influence on your well-being.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): Wherever you go, and whoever you find yourself keeping company with, you still ought to be doing the same type of work: to cultivate whatever outwardly-expressed qualities you'll be most proud of being identified with. According to this rationale, then, Capricorn, it becomes much harder to ever confidently stipulate that what you're doing, and who you're doing it with, is meaningless or somehow 'beside the point'. Each chance encounter or seemingly arbitrary exchange is another lab-experiment during which you may test out your ever more engaged-and-psychologically-honest manner of participation. Social evolution transpires like this, bit by bit, as we demonstrate real presence and commitment-to-caring to all the stray individuals we ordinarily don't pause to consider as 'important' to our lives. The sincere kernel of advice or explicit show of support, the extended glance of connection or smile of camaraderie… these voluntary tokens of shared humanity generate far more significant ripples of warmth than we often imagine, when so gruffly we rush off to where we falsely assume all the meaningful action transpires. Caught as you are in a temporary realignment with Your Rightful Path, the souls alongside you in this proverbial transit-lobby are each little microcosms of all the universe's lessons.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): It's one thing to think you're a cool person… likable, intellectually engaged, welcoming, fair. But it's something entirely different, Aquarius, to believe in the practical value of your skills and talents for firming up and holding down a viable earning strategy. And that belief, of course, is what you ought to be working to foster right now, as we discussed in last week's edition. Let me contribute two perspectives for looking at the situation, to assist you in developing the requisite faith in your practical abilities. (1) There's a high likelihood that whatever underlies your resistance to concentrating on these economic obligations is emotional in nature. In other words, you may need to nurture the rebellious kid inside you who found it easier to receive adult recognition for successfully standing out and/or shirking convention than to risk not getting it by doing a merely adequate job at the same stuff everybody else was involved in. No one says the adult you has to be the best money-manager, however. In this context, 'merely adequate' is enough (and far superior to 'subpar'). (2) You will have to make certain compromises in your worldview, in order to properly prioritize developing this belief over other more dazzling commitments. On the pragmatic level, we do have to rein in our radicalism at times, to ensure we're properly fed and clothed and housed… which ultimately affords us the grounding to properly nourish our radicalism. See?

PISCES (February 19-March 20): It is said that Pisces represents the cumulative sum of all the qualities, attitudes and experiences of the other eleven zodiac signs… which goes far to explain why you Piscean souls possess the broadest capacity to psychically relate to other beings, regardless of their lot-in-life or whatever their present level of functionality may be. (It also provides some justification for the wide swings of variability one can witness in Pisces, whether within a single Piscean individual or among the whole group of you.) There's a little bit of everyone in you, therefore, and likewise all the aspects of others which you valorize or detest can be found in trace amounts (or more) in your own behaviors. By continuing to develop discrimination in how you participate in one-on-one relationships, then, you ought not seek to judge the overall worthiness of another person based upon certain of their behaviors you'd prefer not to foster in the sphere of your chosen life. (You and I both know that, when it comes down to it, you aren't at your best when you're that judgey.) Rather, the most impeccable approach to best interpersonal practices involves modeling your own version of the behaviors you want others in your life to demonstrate… and graciously-but-firmly expecting nothing less from them as well, if they want to continue a relationship with you. Attacking them as people, on the other hand, is like attacking yourself.