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Horoscopes | Week of February 3-9, 2014

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Receive the precious scraps of wisdom pouring from the proverbial mouths-of-babes, likely unbeknownst to them… though they'll prove pretty damn squirrely to you, dear Aries, should you try grilling possible interview subjects about whether they are the oracle and/or feverishly hunting for 'Insight!' under every rock and twig. As soon as you set yourself on an insistent quest to become enlightened, you've already forced your receptive brain to play second-fiddle to the ego-warrior. Ssshhhh! We can't hear anything of the so-called background noise (which just might, in the end, be The Main Show) over all that rattling around. Stop fussing and stirring, and have a little faith. Should you meander through your week at a life-as-art detail-appreciating aficionado's pace, you needn't worry about 'missing' something you were supposed to notice: When the resonant glimpse or reverberant phrase meets your awareness, you will feel its significance in your body… no need to question whether this is 'it' because whatever it represents to you, whatever message it's here to deliver, will seem so obvious and yet so profound, it'll be as if you've always already known it. Which you have. Ah, cosmic confirmation... how sweet it is. A month into the new year means one last push for you to pick up ASTROBARRY'S 2014, so you can find out what the rest of the year holds in store!

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): There's the likelihood of a subterranean mixed-message seeping into your communicative tone, Taurus, as Mercury stands still and then shifts to retrograde motion this week. On the one hand, you've been charged with a leadership role (whether by others in the organization or by your own higher-calling), which requires you preserve the sanctity of a certain structural vision (which may or may not have a direct relation to the Guiding Purpose we discussed last week) in your dealings with the other players, inspiring them with the supportive confidence you hold about how best to pull this puppy off. Yet, on the other hand, you're now probably feeling pretty tempted to adopt that collective team-brainstorm approach… for you know as well as I do that empowering others to claim their own piece of ownership in the process is an excellent type of leadership. But are you really open to their ideas totally modifying the shape of this offspring—and ultimately compromising the purity of your vision—or is this unconsciously a mere performance of you desiring teamwork? To be clear, I don't necessarily think you should or shouldn't include others' input; that decision is yours. But please don't ask for it if you're not going to respectfully use it… and if this endeavor isn't actively a collaboration, don't front like it is. A month into the new year means one last push for you to pick up ASTROBARRY'S 2014, so you can find out what the rest of the year holds in store!

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): There are rarely weeks as bad as this one for venting complaints to higher-ups, challenging someone's authority, attempting to make peace with parents (or parent-figures), or mouthing off to officials. A Mercury retrograde kicking off in your 10th this week, Gemini, implies that careless statements made in professional contexts or glaringly public arenas, and/or aimed at those on a higher rung of the proverbial ladder, will likely cause you lingering problems in the weeks to come. And while you're typically pretty good at saying just the right thing in such situations (whether or not it's what you actually want to say), there's an odd possibility that you'll unconsciously behave in an all-puffed-up manner… perhaps an indirect result of the positive self-perception potentials which have been hopefully unleashed in you during recent weeks, as I described last week. Why accidentally turn this burgeoning advantage into a humbling encounter with The Powers That Be? There's really no practical purpose in putting voice to heightened emotions, controversial opinions, or competitive ambitions at the present time—only looming threats to your reputation in certain important-people's eyes. A month into the new year means one last push for you to pick up ASTROBARRY'S 2014, so you can find out what the rest of the year holds in store!

CANCER (June 21-July 22): For a properly flipped outlook perfectly appropriate to Mercury turning retrograde in your solar 9th this week, try to begin from the place of outwardly professing you honestly don't have a clue how best to 'take care' (attention: Cancerian buzz-phrase) of those who haven't explicitly explained how they'd like to receive such 'care' from you, if at all. This advice, of course, flies in the face of everything you're been force-fed about your sign, eh, Cancer? That you instinctively know when somebody's in need, and can effortlessly leap right in with the ideal soul-soothing remedy? Nobody is questioning your intent (which of course would be above-board and genuinely supportive), by the way… merely the magnified potential of you expressing that intent in an accidentally presumptuous, self-righteous and/or judgy manner more suited to making you feel like a 'caring' person than to meeting the other person where they actually are. So, before you bake comfort brownies for your secretly-anorexic friend or spout spiritual affirmations to your atheist co-worker, do everybody a favor and ask what, if anything, they want from you. A month into the new year means one last push for you to pick up ASTROBARRY'S 2014, so you can find out what the rest of the year holds in store!

LEO (July 23-August 22): Do you need to come clean with any yet-to-be-revealed feelings which are churning uncomfortably around your insides, pleading for revelation… though you may remain reticent to do so, since you aren't exactly sure what the end-result of such an act might be? First, let me zero in on the phrase 'come clean', in case you're reading it as some sort of indictment that you've done something wrong and must confess in order to absolve yourself: It's the keeping-things-bottled-up-inside which creates the corresponding shame, a self-imposed burden you'll never get out from under as long as you're caught in that reductive story you keep repeating to yourself. Second, Leo, let me add that the planets seem to want you to leak your churning feelings at the moment… under the bald-faced acknowledgment that, yes indeed, the 'end-result' is unclear at this point, but the process of finding your path through these feelings with any other relevant parties will prove fruitful regardless. You needn't know what to 'do' with an emotional state prior to letting certain individuals in on it. Sign on for figuring it out cooperatively, over the course of several weeks. Ignore my advice and instead go along with whatever will keep the dynamic smooth and perturbed—and Mercury retrograde (which begins this week) will put you in excruciatingly awkward encounters with your dishonesty-by-omission. A month into the new year means one last push for you to pick up ASTROBARRY'S 2014, so you can find out what the rest of the year holds in store!

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): Trust me, Virgo, you will get an earful from any certain somebodies who feel they're not getting sufficient face-time with you to discuss items they find pertinent to your relationship. This is especially relevant to any on-the-job collaborations, client or contractor communications, household-duty strategy sessions and/or service-worker exchanges, in which you might be unconsciously giving off a vibe that suggests completing the task-at-hand is far more important to you than how you treat your fellow comrades in the efforts (though we both know this couldn't possibly be true). Dare you treat anybody else in an inadvertently dehumanizing fashion, you ought to expect for the interaction to quickly become something very, uh, human: You could be smacked in the face with whatever circumstantial emotions happened to be lurking beneath the other person's surface, forcing you to now pay more attention to the humanity of that soul in front of you (unless you're a total asshole, which you're not), even if you barely know them. Nip that off at the pass by proactively approaching anything which 'needs to get done' with unerring awareness that the people involved in doing it are your most important asset in the process. A month into the new year means one last push for you to pick up ASTROBARRY'S 2014, so you can find out what the rest of the year holds in store!

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): A big part of where you currently stand with regards to your work, Libra, involves willingly accepting you aren't quite sure where to go with it next. And as far as the astrology's concerned, that's a perfectly acceptable place to be at the moment. That needn't mean, however, you shouldn't be doing any of your work… but merely that you probably ought to take it at a more modest pace, tackling smaller subsets of larger concerns, tasks which don't require your utter clarity in order to make a few bits of progress. Whereas you may mistakenly believe you've fallen behind and are eager to catch back up as quickly as you can, another just-as-accurate version of this story might position you as being, in fact, at a rather early stage of a process just barely now coming into view—and, as such, you could actually be ahead of schedule. Following this alternate narrative, then, I'd want to encourage you not to lurch foolhardily ahead or rush yourself… especially during a week when Mercury's turning retrograde in your day-to-day-duties house (the solar 6th), suggesting the possibility of minor goofs, glitches, and/or delays. Rather than aggravate yourself trying to get something to work that's not quite ready yet, I recommend stepping back an consciously pondering what else might (or might not) end up included in this 'process just barely now coming into view'. A month into the new year means one last push for you to pick up ASTROBARRY'S 2014, so you can find out what the rest of the year holds in store!

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): Sudden declarations of love—whether romantic or platonic, whether you're on the giving or receiving end—should, unfortunately, be treated as suspect at the moment, Scorpio. It's not that the love itself doesn't exist or isn't real (which may or may not be true); it's the declarative act which threatens to somehow misrepresent the current state-of-affairs. Love may be appealing, titillating and/or downright transcendent… but like any other emotion, in its most ecstatic form, it is often ephemeral and fleeting (though we may not like to discuss this inconvenient angle, since it goes against what we've been taught by fairy-tales). Likewise, there are likely few topics which have been written about and discussed more than love, described with flowery poetics or encapsulated by a singular poignant vignette. Such odes not only communicate our high-valuing of love, but also serve as seductive tools in themselves. If we can only wax beautifully enough about our object-of-love, they will fall deeper and deeper into our soul, so moved we'd dared share such devoted sentiments about them with them. Herein lies your present risk: There's likely a subtle undercurrent of wishful manipulativeness to such declarations this week, under an idealizing watery-Mercury-turning-retrograde effect. And who would want to have to 'undo' such an utterance later, once things come in clearer? How awkward. A month into the new year means one last push for you to pick up ASTROBARRY'S 2014, so you can find out what the rest of the year holds in store!

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): Don't be so certain you totally understand why you're feeling what you feel this week—or even that such feelings are legitimately yours, Sagittarius, though you might understandably question how any feelings which aren't yours ended up ricocheting around inside you. Without trying to answer such a question with any clarifying specifics about the feelings in your unique case, I will tell you that your intuitive sympathy is presently operating on overdrive… which means you're liable to become palpably influenced, on the emotional level, by direct exposure to anyone you care about having their responses and reactions to events or emerging awarenesses in their life. In other words, others' moods are more contagious than usual. This applies both to (1) cases in which you say or do something that has impacted this other person's emotional state and (2) those in which you've played no relevant role in stirring their feelings but just so happened to show up on the scene at a critical moment. And whether these feelings ultimately demand further unpacking or will merely pass through of their own accord remains to be seen. Thus, please steer clear of making first-person statements which claim to describe how you're feeling; just feel, without the explanatory component. A month into the new year means one last push for you to pick up ASTROBARRY'S 2014, so you can find out what the rest of the year holds in store!

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): When I instruct you not to take anything that folks say this week too seriously, Capricorn, that's not quite the same as telling you not to treat the folks themselves with serious respect. Rather, it's that the words are liable to be awkward, jumbled, imprecise, and/or downright wrong… which indicates you can quietly take their self-convincing assuredness with a grain of salt, and unobtrusively presume you've tuned into a mere partial segment of a larger conversation still in process (one that you're eagerly willing to participate in again later, yes?). What's far more critical about your interpersonal comings-together at the moment is the experiential reality of the interactions: that you were there, that you both offered and received tidbits of talk, that you locked eyes or touched hands or otherwise used non-verbal cues to mutually affirm the connection, and that you appreciate how this unique individual differs so greatly from you. Where you're likeliest to go wrong, as Mercury stations retrograde in your 3rd, is trying to hold somebody to fine-point specifics (which may or may not actually matter) in order to assuage your linear-mind's anxiety at being unable to 'put the pieces together'… instead of just letting the other person ramble, backtrack, and/or contradict themselves in the act of simply sharing what they're thinking at the moment. A month into the new year means one last push for you to pick up ASTROBARRY'S 2014, so you can find out what the rest of the year holds in store!

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): Donning your dress-for-success best and acting all businessy won't make your mind any better-suited for straight-line pragmatics than its currently dreamy state will allow, Aquarius. We covered this ground last week, insofar as I attempted to reframe your relationship with the 'practical' as presently needing attention on the overriding dimension of Consciousness itself. This week, though, I'm actually going to offer you (heh heh) practical advice on this same topic: Don't front (whether consciously or by not checking in with yourself on where you really are) about your confidence regarding best practices or promising initiatives, especially if money (yours and/or anybody else's) is on the line, when you in fact don't know exactly what to do next. Though I believe you probably have a fair degree of psychic clarity around what you value on the heart-level (and are due to attain even more over the next month if you don't distract yourself by 'playing grown-up'), you sincerely aren't sure quite how to maximize the corresponding activities… and, likewise, how to get yourself out of situations which don't exactly 'profit' you in the ways you'd most like. Mercury, turning retrograde this week in your 2nd, may be tempting you to lay out a strategic way-forward right away. Don't take this bait; keep feeling it all out. A month into the new year means one last push for you to pick up ASTROBARRY'S 2014, so you can find out what the rest of the year holds in store!

PISCES (February 19-March 20): With Mercury's retrograde beginning this week in your sign, Pisces, I'd first like to urge you to reread last week's still-madly-relevant edition... and then to start repeating to yourself that mantra I introduced therein, 'Don't jump the gun.' Under an unstable influence which may indeed hit you the hardest, it's best to keep your exchanges largely centered around happy-go-lucky remarks about whatever you're most enjoying at any given moment—and to limit the range of all conversations that start heading to a place that's too serious, sentimental or sensitive, before you speak too freely and off-the-cuff. Despite your trademark intuitiveness, you're presently too likely to miss noticing a certain angle to what you're saying which threatens to hurt someone's feelings, offend their sensibilities, and/or reveal dimensions of your emotional complexities that are better kept to yourself. Should you experience that surge of communicative enthusiasm sometimes associated with Mercury moving through your 1st house, let me suggest doing some creative writing or informal journaling as a form of therapeutic release that also safeguards you from falling into the Mercury-retrograde trap of foot-in-mouth misfirings or misunderstandings. Otherwise, you're liable to experience an unseemly amount of internal regret if and when you actually do cause an unfortunate hiccup through your spoken words. A month into the new year means one last push for you to pick up ASTROBARRY'S 2014, so you can find out what the rest of the year holds in store!