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Horoscopes | Week of June 17-23, 2013

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Setting work and/or other worldly pursuits aside for a second, Aries, I want you to imagine what it would feel like on the inside to just relax into the peaceful sense that your emotional comfort has been satisfyingly tended to. Obviously, this is a feeling definitely worth striving for. More than that, though, it's something you may actually be inching closer to achieving than ever before… though, admittedly, such a tall order can't be filled overnight. No matter what else is going on this week, I encourage you to put some thought toward what your path to this more peaceful, easy feeling might look like. And then, notice if and when your thought-process abruptly freezes, likely at the consideration of a certain impediment along this path—a feature in your home that constantly irritates you, or the home itself; a quality of your geographic locale that's out-of-sync with where your heart wants to be; a person you're living with who grates on your last nerve, intrudes upon your space and/or doesn't hold up their end of the housemate agreement; an unresolved relationship with a family member which weighs on you in your quietest moments. Over these coming months, you have a benefic window-of-opportunity that supports any actions you take to eliminate this impeded feeling, to remedy the situation and thus greatly ease any corresponding inner turmoil. For now, it's best to just identify what needs attention, with a consciously hopeful attitude.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Please start getting used to this mushrooming degree of social interactivity. Not only is your increased presence as casual companion, chit-chat partner, brainstorming contributor, friendly devil's advocate, and all-around member of the local chorus continuing to be deeply desired amongst your immediate scene, Taurus, but it's also a sign of things to come. Much of your best luck, in the months ahead, is likely to present itself circumstantially, serendipitously, based upon your stumbling into the place where the right people will just happen to be talking about the right thing at the right time, opening up avenues which otherwise would've been inaccessible to you had someone not happened to made such mention. Of course, none of this will just 'happen' if you don't continually situate yourself in the social environments necessary for such serendipity. Should you feel that faint (or less-than-faint) intuitive sensation of knowing, without rhyme or reason, that you should be out-and-about, joining along, saying yes to the invitation, doing your reading or writing in a local coffeehouse or watering-hole (rather than home, alone, again), please please follow that feeling. Give it a try this week, and repeatedly, for the next year or so.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): If you were to pause and think back on all that has changed since your birthday last year—presumably and hopefully, for the better, Gemini—you might actually be somewhat startled at how different things are, since perhaps you hadn't noticed these monumental developments along the way (considering, of course, that you were in the midst of their developing). Even in the event that a certain less-than-pleasant circumstance has in fact worsened over these twelve months, there's something positively productive about it having reached enough of a crisis point that, presumably and hopefully, has forced your hand into finally actively addressing it. So, please take this thoughtful pause during your week ahead… to get current with yourself and your place-in-life (rather than continuing to describe it all, in your own head and/or to other people, as it used to be), and to help you begin to formulate an action-plan for how to bank these advances into lasting existence. As I'm sure you know, it's way too easy to slip backward in time, reliving old behaviors that we clung to as survival techniques during a moment when we desperately needed to survive at all costs—and, therefore, not making the most of the newly opened opportunities our future is laying out before us. You have more than you did a year ago, in some manner or another. It's time to create even more from that, riding the momentum you've already gotten started, so you have some fallback resources, too… instead of just idly feeding off those fleeting successes until your stores run dry again.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Here comes the Sun, Cancer, headed straight into your sign on the occasion of this week's solstice… but, unlike in other years' solstice arrivals, the Sun will be followed shortly thereafter (next Tue Jun 25) by Jupiter, good-hearted king of the planets and bestower of big cosmic blessings. And did you know that Jupiter is traditionally considered to be especially happy (and, therefore, likelier to share his benevolent temperament with us all) in Cancer, the sign of his exaltation? This transit, incidentally, is a main reason why your recent horoscopes have been so damn upbeat and encouraging. But let's get one thing straight: Despite his glowing reputation, Jupiter will not make good things happen in your life. He merely creates an extra-supportive environment in which any efforts you proactively make will be helped along by invisible gusts of fortuitous tail-wind. On the other hand, if we don't make any new efforts, Jupiter has a knack for encouraging us to lazily settle into our status-quo indulgences, allowing things we'd been majorly dissatisfied with to seemingly improve just enough so that we don't bother making change at all. (What a waste, right?) This week, with a Mercury-Venus conjunction also in your sign, I urge you to give this more proactive way-of-being a try, explicitly asking someone for something you've previously been too bashful to speak up about. As long as you're being clear and direct, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

LEO (July 23-August 22): Are you thoroughly confused yet, Leo, about any recent turns-of-event? If so, I say: Good. You are right where you're supposed to be. In fact, whatever symptoms of certain realities unraveling before your eyes, characters surprising you with sudden interest or disinterest in their involvements with you, job-responsibilities materializing or disappearing according to no clear logic, and/or your own surprising shifts in desire which may now be showing themselves are mere precursors to a lengthier period of so-called 'confusion'. Another way of putting this now-in-progress metamorphosis: First, we must release our belief that we know where our life is headed before our consciousness will even allow us the room for enriching, exhilarating reinventions to occur. The caterpillar, after all, weaves a cocoon in which it hides during its 'confusing' period, in advance of emerging into the world as a breathtakingly beautiful butterfly. My guess is that something will happen this week or next—it may be a quite small moment of recognition, an strange quirk-of-fate, or an oddly different reaction to observing someone else's behavior—which hints at the fact that you're at the very beginning of leaving an outdated piece of your identity behind. Embrace that magical acknowledgment, and tuck it behind your ear for safe keeping. This shedding process will take many months. And on the other side? Damn, you're going to shine… !

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): How can you spread what you've already been working so hard on, Virgo, more extensively among the people? How can you tap into the like-minded enthusiasms of your many allies in this work, who have also been investing sweat-equity in their different-though-complementary manifestations of this vision, so none of you are needlessly duplicating efforts in support of the same goal? And how might you come to find more joyful camaraderie in these efforts (rather than fueling those all-too-familiar grumblings about 'always being the only one who cares') by coordinating with those who actually get it? I know it's probably far more comfortable to remain inside your tidy cube of solitude, where you can retain control over all the little details. But I hope that, by appealing to your desire to maximize both efficiency and effectiveness, you will see it makes more sense for the overall success of your passionate purpose to join forces… not to mention (as I already did) it might also prove to be surprisingly enjoyable. For the next many months, heeding this call to build community is your single best method for increasing your likelihood of success, as well as broadening its reach—which also means you're unnecessarily robbing yourself of certain tangible advantages if you insist on staying the solo path.

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): This is an altogether excellent week for making one precedent-setting announcement or request that demonstrates which direction your most imminent professional (or public-world) aspirations are leading you, Libra. One benefic (your ruling planet Venus) sits atop your solar chart in the career/outer-community-related 10th house right now, conjunct Mercury and thusly dusting your public transmissions with a touch of magic fairy-dust… while the other benefic (Jupiter, the 'greater' one) lands in your 10th next week, to stay for a whole year. How you like them friggin' apples, eh?!? To take fullest advantage of these positive out-in-the-world transits, however, you needn't spend too much time plotting your strategies or editing your official script: Instead, your luck will come from your authentic connections (with certain important individuals, an organization or entity whose purpose you're enthusiastic about, and/or the issues or activities you've committed yourself to supporting), which require little-to-no rehearsal on your part to cultivate and nurture. You'll come into your own, blossoming more brilliantly where everyone can see, if you get out of your head and into your heart. Feel what I've just told you, rather than thinking about it. This is merely a beginning.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): A cloud, which has been casting a certain all-encompassing shadow over your view on everything (whether by coloring the facts in too blindingly an either unrealistic or depressive tone), is really starting to lift. And along with it, Scorpio, your feelings on just what's possible for you in the foreseeable future should also be lifting… but only if you actually look out on the horizon, way ahead of where you are right now, and see exactly what it is out there that stirs a giddy excitement in your tum-tum. The biggest danger in how you engage this now-in-effect transition—and, therefore, the biggest threat to that rise in mood that's due you—stems from the possibility of your having become so habituated to this particular filter that you forget to explore your options, resigned to things apparently always continuing along this trajectory (or is it a rut?) they've been on (or stuck in?). Please remember you have choices… many more, perhaps, than you're even aware of. The worst lens through which you could presently view your life is that you're in any way stuck. I would much rather you feel slightly overwhelmed by the possibilities than boxed in by a single circumstance. From the overwhelm, you can begin to hear your heart singing more loudly and clearly once again.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): A hallmark of genuine intimacy is freely exposing when you don't have it all figured out. Whether you have willingly upped the stakes in a relationship or instead find you've inadvertently gotten yourself more deeply embroiled in a sticky situation than you'd intended, and whether you're exploring a more intimate manner of connection with another person or simply developing more intimate self-knowledge of your own inner contradictions… whatever the specifics of your case, Sagittarius, it seems that you need to acquiesce to being in it, at least in the short-term, without fully understanding where it's leading and/or how long it'll take before you finally do understand. This tangle could end up serving as your vehicle for attaining something (or things) you've always wanted, but never knew how to reach. Or it could prove, further down the road (if not already so), to be a 'worst nightmare' scenario… though, even in that event, you will learn a key lesson on how you'd been fooling yourself about a supposed desire for a very long time. In any event, it sure seems like you've got to risk the exposure in order to reap the rewards—all while nervously holding the uncertainty, bare, in your hands.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): I'm always just a wee bit hesitant in my reporting, Capricorn, of the news that greater-benefic Jupiter is moving into someone's house of interpersonal relations (the solar 7th) because, too often, folks get their expectations way too high about how this typically-positive transit means they're on the verge of finally meeting the man or woman of their dreams. While, yes, the 'good-luck planet' entering the one-on-one relationship house—as is happening for you early next week—for its one-year-out-of-every-twelve visit does sometimes bring a new partner or an upgrade-in-status with somebody we already know or are involved with, that's not its only possible expression. Sometimes, in fact, we will lose a relationship during Jupiter's 7th-house visit… though it's typically because we have outgrown the relationship, and it's the kind of loss we look back on, in hindsight, as 'the best thing that could've happened'. Other times, this interpersonally expansive transit is simply about the personal growth we undergo, as a result of broadening our perspective on what's possible in relationships and/or the type of people we might join together with. Most importantly, none of these manifestations is likely if we don't take active steps to make them happen. (In other words, you won't meet your next soulmate if you never leave the house and refuse even to log on to an online dating site.) In the week ahead, think about opportunities you might have to expand into new territory in this critical zone of your life between now and mid-2014: Thanks to Jupiter, the tangible efforts you put in will produce bigger results than at other times in your life.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): If you have been on the fence about whether to make those much-needed changes to your physical-health regimen—you know, the ones that'll require you to be more immediately mindful of how certain activities impact the way you feel in your body—let me be an encouraging influence, Aquarius, with the knowledge that you're now arriving at a moment when it would be easier than usual to make such changes. Aquarians are renowned for thinking of themselves as disembodied heads, strange aliens from another dimension who've been temporarily shoved into incommodious fleshy containers, or some other metaphoric description of their common experience of prioritizing mental concerns over bodily ones. So, yes, I understand that perhaps the choice to alter your daily practices—with more or less sleep, a different way of eating, an increase in physical exercise or a shift in the type, a breaking of indulgent habits, etc.—isn't the first sort of life-transformation you'd instinctively devote conscious effort to effecting. You'd have to take my word for it, then, that such a choice might actually feel good in the longer-run (say, after a few months). But perhaps I should add this, then: Though Jupiter (whose arrival in your 6th house next week is what's inspiring this advice) is typically thought of as good luck, his more general role is simply to make things bigger… which also means, if you've been quietly neglecting a dormant or modest health concern for a little while now, it's likelier to make itself more distinctly known to you in the months ahead, if you don't grab this bull by the horns soon.

PISCES (February 19-March 20): In case you haven't noticed by now, Pisces, the horoscopes I've been writing you lately have been pretty fucking awesome. They have mostly centered around accepting yourself for who you are, right here and right now (instead of mooning over what could've been or might someday be), and just reveling in the giddiness and gorgeousness and general good-time feelings wherever and whenever you can find 'em. Now, I don't want to be a sugarcoating bliss-ninny and give you the mistaken impression that everything in life will be sunshine and rainbow and tutti-frutti ice-cream cones from here on out—hell, I bet even at the best of times, there are still some things that are functioning poorly and/or mainly serve the role of 'giant pain-in-the-ass'. And yet, here comes a year full of Jupiter-in-the-5th, starting early next week, which is one of the loveliest astrological happenings a sign can experience: an increase of encouraging planetary energy in the house of love and romance, children and child-like wonder, pleasure and play, and all leisure-time activities which bring creative self-fulfillment. Raise the roof on that one, dear fishy! While this will not magically remove all bumps-in-the-road or thorns-in-your-side, it does support you whenever you take steps to improve your appreciative enjoyment of the world. Knowing you, the hardest part just might be determining what you most genuinely enjoy… without unduly considering everyone else's preferences and pressures. Doing more of what you really really love, by the way, is an incredibly attractive quality.