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Horoscopes | Week of September 30-October 6, 2013

ARIES (March 21-April 19): You must accept the strong pressure now resting on you, Aries, to communicate the whole unmitigated ball-of-wax… even if it upsets somebody, even if it's scary to be that vulnerable, even if dramatically enhances the mutual intimacy (so much? so abruptly?) or just-as-dramatically establishes a new boundary (never to be crossed again?), even if you have no fucking idea what's supposed to happen after all that. You're playing a high-stakes game, in which everyone's most tender spots are susceptible to either irresponsible treatment (whether intentional or not, and with the potential to deeply injure one or the other of you) or a concentrated dose of loving care (though it might necessarily contain a tinge of 'tough love' as part of it). Therefore, the manner in which you choose to handle the full unadorned reality of how you feel—whether you put it all on the table or try sweeping it under the rug, treat your important disclosures with the delicacy they warrant or rashly toss out such statements without regard for their impact—will determine a lot about where this dynamic is headed (to deeper waters? to a more polite distance?). No communicative option, in this context, is especially neutral.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Something weighing on your mind, Taurus, which really must be said to a certain someone? Any important relationship issue you've been waiting for the right time to bring up? Well, now the critical shit-or-get-off-the-pot moment has arrived: Burning-hot topics or headline news which you're nervously sitting on, and which is directly relevant information your partner-in-crime absolutely needs to know, must be broached as soon as you can. There's just no getting around it. If you're allowing your nerves to talk you out of making this necessary disclosure, please think about what your opinion of a hypothetical someone-else-in-your-shoes would be if they withheld a similarly necessary fact, feeling or issue-to-discuss from their close companion, leaving that person to look a fool by not having as full a story as they deserve. You wouldn't think too highly of them, would you? This indeed is a matter of 'doing the right thing'. On the plus side, once you get beyond the scary introductory part, you're likely to reach a satisfying new level of mutual understanding (even if it takes a moment for first-reactions to simmer down) based on unadorned truth. Omissions and withholdings, however, will take their eventual toll.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Though a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, short-attention-span, multi-tasking attitude toward your daily routine is probably more your usual speed, Gemini, I strongly encourage you to spend this week drafting a fairly structured work-plan and/or diet-fitness-lifestyle-regimen, which would provide you something to adhere to for the remainder of '13 in order to attain your desired results. A healthy investment in efficiency-minded forethought at this current time will directly lead to months of smarter work, sleeker health, and/or an enhanced sense of purposefulness. By contrast, an adamant resistance to organizing your to-dos into a more orderly state than they've recently been will, unfortunately, cause you to spin your wheels in increasingly fruitless circles… trapping you in a negative-feedback-loop of diminishing returns when it comes to what you can get done. In other simpler terms: Without taking this opportunity to strategize how best to apply your efforts during this next stretch, you will end up wasting a lot of energy chasing a bundle of moving-targets—when, instead, you could just be getting a shit-ton of stuff accomplished. Which approach will you choose?

CANCER (June 21-July 22): You've got to believe, dear Cancer, that repeatedly putting spoken words to those specific building-blocks of that relished life you most desire will, in fact, help draw them to you. I'm not woo-woo enough to think that's the only thing you need to do to manifest a heap of wonderful goodies, but it's certainly a good start. And if you can't even dare to speak these cherished hopes aloud—with the sufficient glimmer of faith that identifying as somebody who values particular involvements does improve the likelihood of eventually involving yourself in that very experience—you shouldn't expect much to tangibly come of them. Worse, if you find you're cutting yourself off in the middle of trying to claim your desires because your supposedly 'practical' mind keeps telling you to knock off the silly fantasies and be more realistic about what's possible, you're letting your inner naysayer shit all over your creative-visualization process. Shame on that inner naysayer! This is a time for radical belief in the power of voicing your dreams. (Having your most magically potent friends bear witness to what you voice adds a power-boost.) Even if you haven't a friggin' clue how to make those dreams happen just yet, you should at least proudly own them.

LEO (July 23-August 22): A key facet to readily appreciating your recently-strengthened inner core, Leo, involves humbly and courageously accepting responsibility for the present state of your emotional attitudes… and refusing to blame anybody else for 'causing' you to feel this way or that, when you and I both know it's impossible for another person to 'cause feelings' in you. While others' actions might indeed have contributed to a cascade of responses (yours then theirs and so on and so forth), when it comes to settling on a stance that represents your ultimate emotional resolve on the matter, the buck stops with you. There's much self-empowerment, incidentally, to be derived from admitting (to yourself, if not to the other relevant parties) the ways in which recent and/or current developments have eerily paralleled events from your past, thus triggering recurrences of familiar feeling-patterns that are unmistakably yours (since, after all, you are the common denominator between all these experiences). Once you acknowledge these patterns—minus any defensiveness or shame about having emotions that sometimes overwhelm your clearest thinking—they no longer control you. From there, it's much easier to distinguish past from present… and to understand and explain what you're feeling now.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): The people around you should be slowly growing to trust your opinions more firmly, Virgo—as long as you've been following my last several weeks of advice and allowing your thoughts to emerge organically, gently and casually over time, instead of shoving them down anybody's throat. This less insistent approach actually builds a certain standoffish appeal to your ideas… much in the way an aloof hottie at the bar who seems not to care about trying to get anyone to like them ends up being the object of everyone else's admiring attentions. 'Take it or leave it' reflects your confidence isn't dependent on external affirmation, which increases the likelihood you'll be taken rather than left. With that in mind, I recommend freely and willingly contributing lots of your own material to the ongoing swapping of perspectives and points-of-view, in a genuinely collegial spirit of social exchange—and granting the other participants a wide berth of their own free-will to ruminate on what you've shared, to ask questions and pose challenges and suggest alternatives, without urging them to climb aboard your train. The ideas will speak for themselves and, if pertinent to your colleagues' interests and attitudes, they will climb on board. Adopt a more haughty, self-contained approach, however, and they'll instead be cutting ties.

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): Setting explicit intentions for what concrete goals you'd like to achieve (or at least make significant chunks of progress towards achieving) between now and, say, the middle of next year would be a very wise way to spend your week ahead, Libra, building up to an extra-zingy new moon in your sign this Friday (Oct 4). The planets are aligned in just such a configuration to situate you in a unique spot: super-primed to bust through old limiting thought-patterns, simply by deciding, yes, you will start doing things differently. And this current act of defining whatever distinct, measurable results would signify real advancement serves as an especially useful step in your process… to prevent yourself from later adjusting the goalposts in a subtly self-undermining move (so you can somehow 'prove' you haven't gotten anywhere when, indeed, you have?). If you'll fast-forward into the not-so-distant future with me, I can confide that you will host action-initiating go-getter Mars in your sign for more than seven months beginning in early December (including 2½ months of retrograde in Mar-May 2014), promising you the potential to profoundly alter your life-circumstances with the right focused effort—or to wreak a heap of chaotic havoc, if you get caught in reactive (rather than proactive) mode. Use this week's new moon to anchor your future, the best that you can, to a grounding batch of self-identifying intents. Months from now, you'll be glad you did.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): At your best, you Scorpios are able to pick up on whatever's the most off-limits, taboo, transgressive or other sensitive topic lurking out there in the atmosphere, unspoken… and, with a most merciful motive, shepherd it into material being by putting words to the vibes, leaving no one to fear what isn't being said or to wonder if they're just crazy. Addressing the difficult-to-address—from a trusted place of sincere concern for all involved, and with patient willingness to see it through all the response-stages—is definitely a strong suit of yours. On the other hand, that same overt act of calling attention to the confronting pink-elephant issue can also be a rather harmful communicative gesture if you proceed recklessly, without proper respect for the other person's present position in their psychological process with regards to said issue (that is: they may not be ready to hear it)… and especially so if you use your knowledge about this hot-button material to manipulate their emotions to your own undisclosed ends. This week, you'll possess a shrewd awareness of certain sensitive stuff that others may not be consciously tapping into. Whether you choose to broach the topic, and/or with what tone and intent you do so, will have profound ramifications for someone else's psychic state. Go forth, then, if you can help someone deal and, hopefully, heal. But please hold back if all you're going to do is hurt 'em.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): Be extra-mindful of observing what terms or phrases bubble up from your subconscious this week, Sagittarius. You're looking for two different categories of noteworthy notions, the identification of which can greatly assist you in cleansing the back recesses of your psyche, so you're vibrationally fresh-faced and ready to receive what's in store for you next: (1) cynical stories you've been telling yourself about 'how life works', which end up bearing a strong detrimental impact on the type of reality you create, and (2) oddly-worded and/or out-of-left-field whims to suddenly try this or that behavior, which make little-to-no logical sense in terms of your other principal life-components. The messages in this first category are not authentically yours; they are mere remnants of the indoctrination you received from parents, friends, society-at-large, etc., and do not serve the present-day you. You're charged with the job of drawing a firm line-in-the-sand, separating out what doesn't belong to you, in order to better affirm what does. The second category, meanwhile, holds mystical messages from whatever spirit-friends or higher-self-doppelgangers are attempting to point you in the most fruitful direction—one which your know-it-all mind might never have decided upon, mainly because it doesn't possess the copious amounts of divine information that this Agent-of-the-Sentient-Universe, who's now whispering in your ear, apparently does. These guiding riddles, therefore, ought to be granted your highest regard. And great news: Venus hits your sign next week, bringing a lot of this 'waiting for my turn' to an end.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): There's presently much pressure on you, Capricorn, to express yourself in a manner that strengthens your social ties instead of alienating you from potential allies… and it's all boils down to how you can most honorably own your distinctive power-position while not lording it over those less fortunate, confident and/or privileged. Your communications with your friends and colleagues this week, then, must be conducted with your utmost conscientiousness: in a spirit of collaboration and camaraderie, phrased in common language that all parties can understand (but not condescendingly 'dumbed-down'), with the intent to lift everybody up rather than put anybody down, and, above all else, with humility and grace. If you really know what you're talking about (and/or know exactly what you don't know), you should have no problem embodying a trustworthy certainty without being a pompous ass about it, fully aware that you need not prove anything to anyone. (Insufferable uppityness, meanwhile, is always a cover for something.) However you handle this will set a precedent in these relations, whether beneficial or troublesome, for a while to come.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): Consider the week ahead your ideal occasion for making official professional announcements (if, that is, you are confident in the reliability of the news), reaching out in modest gratitude to important figures who can help you get a leg up (if, that is, you've indeed earned their support), and/or presenting a distilled mission-statement that defines the scope and intent of your work (if, that is, it accurately describes your mission). At the same time, Aquarius, please notice any examples of a lack-of-confidence in what's going on in your career zone, a shortage of VIPs to connect with, and/or a mixed-message confusion about what your prime work focus ought to be. If you can't muster the necessary self-assurance to guarantee the soundness of your messaging, then don't say anything at all (other than perhaps an honest admission of 'still being in the process', and only if the situation calls for it). With Mercury approaching Saturn in your solar 10th, it's better to err on the side of safely-underplayed, rather than, say, fudging any accuracy or exaggerating for ego's sake (a lapse from which consequences will unfold). But if you're sure you're sure, then please don't hesitate to sing those sentiments far and wide: They'll happily imprint themselves on your permanent record.

PISCES (February 19-March 20): This is, frankly, a terrible time to permit a lapse in personal ethics to occur, Pisces, due to a fear-driven desire to avoid a tense interaction or some other clumsy moment. Those who witness you participating in such a lapse (including, in fact, yourself) are likely to lose quite a bit of respect for you, lumping you into an unfavorable category of person-type I don't think you'll be happy to be identified with. Thought I should warn you. On the other hand, though, it's a fantastic time to do basically the opposite—to proudly proclaim what you believe to be the most upstanding opinion on a controversial issue, to say no to any activities or associations which run counter to what you've established as your guiding values, and/or to refuse to compromise about something you see as a non-negotiable black-and-white issue. You will gain mad props and a higher level of esteem among those who share your way of looking at the world (including, in fact, yourself). They will trust you more than ever, and admire your unwavering backbone. But what about those folks who strongly disagree? I say: Fuck 'em. These are obviously not 'your people' on the level of fundamental values, so who cares what they think?