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Horoscopes | Week of September 16-22, 2013

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Achieving that 'right balance' we discussed last week in terms of a certain relationship, Aries, might also depend upon the two of you agreeing to accept a certain irreconcilable difference in your respective attitudes toward a rather intricate issue (money? sex? emotional safety?)… and, in fact, to see this dissimilarity as a potential asset rather than a curse. While this admittedly makes it harder to deeply grasp where the other is coming from, it also represents the big evolutionary promise intrinsic to daringly entering intimate territory with another wholly distinct individual: the never-ending lesson of discovering the ins-and-outs in how uniquely we each handle the touchier material, giving us ever-greater appreciation for the diversity of psychological experience. Please remember this, then, should you hit a conversational rough-spot and mistakenly attempt to 'resolve' the situation by repeating yourself with more and more emphasis, volume or punch… as if it's merely a matter of getting them to see it your way. (It most certainly is not.) Your passion must, again, be balanced against their wholly distinct position, complete with its own set of motives and histories and understandings. That's, in fact, why you even bother.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The most important partnership(s) in your life presently sits under the bright unforgiving light of the examination table, Taurus, exposing its every fleshy fold and distinguishing birthmark, the tracks of the trajectory it's followed and shadows from the fences that hold it back. Do not be afraid to look. There's probably a lot that is working pretty well, even if there's an aspect or two that needs attending to. Please explicitly testify aloud to the overall successes, rather than merely fixating on the areas-for-improvement. But if that stubborn lump in your throat is reporting something major between you really is broken, perhaps beyond repair, it's time to swallow the truth. Under this Venus-Saturn-North Node contact, you must stare at the entire interpersonal reality—whatever it may be—to help you re-center in your orientation towards relationships, to bring you into closer alignment than ever to your desired integrity framework. We need reality-checks to support the efficacy of any critical effort we put forth, or we'll never know whether it's creating the effect we're trying for. A 'reality-check' also sometimes reminds us, incidentally, of how fortunate it is to be loved in the way that we are.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): It's the willing recognition that, yes indeed, this mix of tasks and chores and duties you're presently charged with tackling on an everyday basis really is that hard-to-handle which ought to allow you to grant yourself the deserved credit for pushing yourself so strenuously. You are rising to this challenge, aren't you, Gemini? If you've somehow managed to shirk this work, trust me when I tell you: You're not 'getting away with' anything, and you're not doing yourself any favors. Instead, you're short-changing yourself of the tremendous bliss—yeah, I said it: BLISS—of stretching the bounds of your capabilities, striving to surpass prior productivity levels, and strengthening your work-ethic muscles. If that's your case, please take this week to seriously establish a new bad-habits-be-gone precedent, and whip your ass into shape; within just a couple weeks, you'll already start to taste the self-rewarding bliss I've hyped (not to mention get a whole bunch of shit done). If you have risen to the challenge… well, congratulations on the good results I presume you're now reaping in. Once again: It's healthy to work this hard. So many matters-of-the-mind come too damn easy to you clever whippersnappers. This physical-plane crap builds character.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): You'll notice how much more you are relishing both your pleasurable involvement in certain activities and the affirming companionship of those who join along with you in them, Cancer, if and only if you've been successfully saying no to those involvements and companions you don't genuinely enjoy. Pardon me if I'm merely stating the obvious, but in your sympathetically responsive world, it's often too easy to go along with whatever some louder-and-more-emphatic person wants—whether or not their desired interest suits you, and maybe even if their very company creates in you more stress than joy—simply because it might make you feel better, for the passing moment, to give them what they want. As you're hopefully learning, though, the immediate self-satisfying fix of tending to someone else's desires doesn't address the longer-term question of what makes your heart sing, independent of any interpersonal dynamic of caregiver/cared-for. This week, you'll be reaping benefits from surrounding yourself with folks who love that you love what you love… or else feeling the pinch of having allowed naysayers to remain within too close range.

LEO (July 23-August 22): This is a good week to pause, Leo, in appreciation for the strengthened internal-core you've developed over these past many months of private emotional work. Though this work presumably continues as long as we are alive, helping us to increasingly unburden ourselves so we may enjoy our rising age with more and more personal freedom, you have reached a distinct progress-marker point in this process: After all you've been through over the past year, you ought to be much clearer about which shit is legitimately yours… and which is merely unfinished ancestral business, inherited as pressure or criticality or manipulativeness from family members unconsciously leaking their shit all over you, which you have every right to dis-identify yourself from. I suspect you now know this, more deeply than you ever have—and with self-assertive Mars presently in your sign, you're hopefully in the act of outwardly exhibiting your independence in exciting new ways. Quietly pat yourself on the back. Then, go hang out with your pals, content in knowing who you are (and who you're not).

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): Golly, I just want to keep shoving the same damn advice down your throat, Virgo, and I'm really sorry about sounding like such a broken record, but here we go again: Ask additional open-ended questions, allowing the other involved parties to continuing spewing information (and, in some cases, pretty pointless trivia), while carefully protecting yourself against too much exposure. Above all else, this drawn-out moment of seemingly endless discussion does have a purpose: This is an exercise in learning to value process, as an ongoing participant in purposeful interactivity (though, at times, it probably feels as slow as molasses), as highly as you do product. For now, the conversational dynamics are the 'product'… and the more you invest in them, the greater dividends you'll yield in terms of what you can accomplish (in, for instance, development of your ideas and aspirations) by genuinely swapping stories and social-time with those who share this neighborhood with you. I swear I won't keep repeating this story forever—just until the astrology lets me know you've taken these talks as far as they'll go, and that the time to self-determinedly act has arrived.

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): Your financial standing will prove more sound than it's been in a long while, Libra, if only you adopt a no-holds-barred realism in how you look at the numbers. It's nearly impossible to create an increasing profit-margin atop a foundation built upon wishful thinking, avoidance, or a lack of hard data about what's really going on. Nobody expects your situation to be perfect, by the way, with mountains of money to easily cover every last actual-and-projected expense and a budget completed through next February… though if you can pull all that off, more power to you, rockstar! It's more about dealing with what currently is, facts first, without getting freaked out or judging yourself harshly for past choices. And if, in the act of evaluating your economic snapshot, you happen to notice it's been a little while since your last pay-raise and feel like you're rightfully due for one, this isn't a bad week to initiate this conversation-topic with whichever higher-up can make this happen: Mercury's square from your 1st to a 10th-house Jupiter signifies your enhanced knack for phrasing such suggestions in a tone that'll appeal to an authority-figure's big-heartedness.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): There's something cosmically exceptional about these days ahead, specifically for you Scorpios, on account of a triple-conjunction of Venus, Saturn and the Moon's North Node in your sign… though you aren't being charged with any particular call-to-action, other than basking in the grounded sense of gratification that comes along with all that personal work you've done to quit trying to be something you're not. Surely, you know what I mean. Every departure and farewell, every disrupted pattern and newly-constructed practice, every case of not-taking-the-bait and leaving-things-be: It's all been adding up, grain by gradual grain, to this just-starting-to-settle circumstance of improved reality now due to reveal a glimpse of its hard-earned blessings during this special week. Graciously and gratefully receive the dividends from your investment. Spend them on reaffirming yourself. Wait, what? You're not seeing anything? Perhaps, in fact, it's what you're not seeing (episodes of insane intrigue which overwhelm your whole life? ill-fitting relationships? an obsessive compulsion to prove your point, get to the bottom of it, or get even?) that's the big news.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): What's most profitable for you, Sagittarius, is to consciously tend to your self-control. There's a direct correlation between (1) your capacity to not fall prey to exaggerated emotions, paranoid power-tripping, and/or unproductive personality-collision drama, and (2) an increase in self-confidence, based on having finessed this talent for not taking the bait, that'll help you hold out for what you really deserve. In this current context, the universe (and its money-doling minions) will reward you for what you don't do—out of respect for the other players involved, the proper protocol, and the most principled long-view—rather than for taking foolhardy risks. With that in mind, please resist the temptation to mention that palpable pink-elephant-in-the-room (especially if it deals with someone else's sensitive psychological material or some other psychic snag). Sensing it doesn't mean you ought to bring it further into being. What would you tangibly have to gain?

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): As sappy as it may sound, Capricorn, this is quite a potent week for pushing through the discomfort of being vulnerable and informing key friends, allies or colleagues how greatly you appreciate their role in your life… especially if you've had to put in some extra effort to cement the relationship, build trust, and/or arrive at important mutual-understandings. 'Officially' acknowledging this effort, and the now-evident results of it, is like both simultaneously giving and receiving a hard-earned, and thus well-deserved, gift. Embrace the awkwardness inherent to such meaningful interpersonal moments, instead of negating it with shame. Even in professional circumstances and/or other contexts where a certain level of public decorum is expected, I encourage you to be more consciously relational (rather than, say, goal-oriented) in your approach. Your willingness to make space in the proverbial boardroom for the tender-and-flawed-and-desirous-of-connection humanity of the players—yes, even including yourself—will actually better enable you to communicate the important business with befitting audience-responsiveness.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): Instead of pointlessly picking fights with anyone (since, as we covered last week, Mars-in-your-7th means you're not especially easy to get along with at the moment), I really urge you to fix your gaze upon the present status of your career (or whatever outside-world activity you've been devoting ongoing effort to). The glimpse you catch right now, Aquarius, holds gobs of beneficial (and potentially lucrative) information about which of your strokes, strategies, and undertakings are actually yielding fruit—and which may be merely making things needlessly complicated, with relatively little big-picture payoff. Even if you end up identifying potential roadblocks, it's useful to know about these, too: Obviously your aspirations need to be psychologically deconstructed, to determine whether you are setting yourself for energy-squandering struggle due to some lurking fear that you must carry out those twelve extra steps in order to ward off hypothetical (though highly unlikely) disaster, and/or refusing to accept outside feedback due to your stubbornly contrarian D.I.Y. sensibilities. Regardless, though, the outlook's pretty promising: You're hitting a new level of achievement… and/or seeing, more clearly than ever, exactly what's holding you back from it.

PISCES (February 19-March 20): Most important is the self-reassurance in the fact that you are presently pointing yourself in the right direction—'right' for you, Pisces, not necessarily anybody else—and have committed to continuing that direction for the indefinite future. Agree to that, and your broader network of relationships (both intimate and more casually social) will organically rearrange itself so that the 'right' people (i.e., the ones moving in a similar or compatible direction) move more markedly closer in… leaving the others to do what they're doing, without distracting from or negatively impacting your journey. Should you confront a situation in which somebody else with an agenda inconsistent with yours veers too far into your sphere-of-influence (whether they're actively trying to pull your attentions their way, or even if they're unintentionally yanking at your psychic field as you struggle to hold good boundaries), you'll probably need to explicitly tell them you are working towards something else entirely (helpful hint: center your comments around the concept of your personal 'work'). If they react poorly, so be it; shouldn't change your priorities at all.