Horoscopes | Week of April 27-May 3, 2015

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Have you been adjusting to this different rhythm, Aries… one by which there's far less of an urgent rush to get some certain destination or make something happen right away than that of recent months? This is a trend that's continuing to spread over the coming weeks, leaving you perhaps to question whether much of anything significant is actually happening—or, if you're terribly impatient, to look around and wonder if we're all just wasting our time dicking around. I say: Chill out, enjoy the scenery, and don't freak out about such non-worries. Better yet, take this time to reconnect with friends, catch up on your obligatory communications, and check out the latest developments in your neighborhood or immediate environment. If your focus drifts this way or that, it's totally cool… as long as you're not drifting so far off-course from where you ultimately intend to be, you actually create some sort of ethical quandary for yourself. Trust me, you will regain a more immediate sense of driving purpose again, as well as another burst of astrological fire to propel you that direction, but we're looking ahead to June and beyond before it starts a-blazin' like that again. Until then, see what's up with everyone else. These lightweight social exchanges may prove more relevant or insightful that first appearances suggest.

 

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Please be suspicious of any moves on your own part, Taurus, to reductively and/or prematurely simplify the situation. Though the swell of feelings likely to rise in you, during this Jupiter-flavored-full-moon week ahead, could seem to point unquestionably toward a rather clear-cut foregone outcome, I urge you not to overlook the very-real pertinence of certain extenuating circumstances which undeniably complicate—and, therefore, potentially undermine—what you think you know. Several astrological factors conspire to make this an exceedingly subjective moment in the world of Taureans, obscuring your perceptive awareness of how other people might arrive at quite different determinations if faced with a situation similar to yours. Now, does that mean you've got it totally twisted, upside-down and backwards? Not necessarily. What you're feeling about all this is probably quite insightful, in terms of revealing exactly where your primary concerns and considerations rest. It's just that your feelings are not the whole story. Rather than trying to take some comprehensive leap of summarizing logic which unduly engulfs a more nuanced reality, it's enough to avow this is just how you are feeling.

 

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): This week, Gemini, with both your ruling winged-messenger Mercury coming home to your sign (for an outright luxurious two-and-a-half months!) and a full moon being flared up by Jupiter-in-your-3rd, you're liable to be buzzing with mental activity, enraptured by an ambitious social schedule, and/or basking in loads of verbal effluvia both expressed and received. Venus is continuing to play on your zodiac-team, too, contributing to your emanations an extra sparkle of charm apt to bring you more good favor than usual. Yet, though Mercury has now made it over the border into your 1st house, Mars remains in your 12th… and still makes me a bit nervous on your behalf (along the same lines I drew out for you last week), due to your unconscious potential to stir secret animosities from individuals who may find something distasteful about your excitable energies, split attentions, or miraculous multi-tasking capabilities. With Mercury opposing a 7th-house Saturn, it's likelier than usual some offhand remark you make or nascent idea you throw out there will hit up against someone else's strong opinion, uncompromising judgment, or huffy impatience. Should such an event appear to occur, I'd directly seek out clarification, so as to move any secret loomings out into the open air, neutralizing the extra charge which invisible animosities can carry. But don't 'fight back'. They don't like you or what you said? Fair enough. Plenty of people will, and do.

 

CANCER (June 21-July 22): This is the unofficial start, Cancer, of a prolonged phase in which it behooves you to do a lot of listening, looking, and learning… along with plenty of private daydreaming, contemplating, and journaling… but relatively little externalized discussing, declaring, or deciding. It's not just that the sentiments you might think you're communicating are likely to come out sounding quite different. On a broader level, you might in fact be surprised to hear me tell you that your understanding of what's most important to you (and, similarly, what's not important) is subtly shifting—and rather than put every step of this admittedly befuddlingly subtle evolutionary process on full public display, you'd probably prefer to let it happen more privately. Throughout this coming couple of months, then, you'll need to make ample safe-space for this internal rewiring to occur, away from the glaring lights and prying eyes which would catch you in the embarrassing midst of consciousness-changes that might look pretty weird during their in-between stage. Though this is essentially a spiritual-reorientation phase, you sadly don't have the luxury of assuming a full-on monastic retreat… as you may well discover this week, when details of earthly reality force you out of your head and onto the front-lines of pressing duty.

 

LEO (July 23-August 22): Over these next many weeks ahead—as we move towards a mid-year Venus-retrograde spectacle which positions you, Leo, in a rather enviable position (though one which may likely bring with it plenty of baited-hooks, booby-traps, and burst-bubbles)—it would be shrewd to bat around a few different versions of your 'shared vision' (a la last week's horoscope), to help you ascertain which potential comrades or collaborators will flock to which version, and/or who you'd work best alongside. But though an unchecked desire to be liked and/or admired could drive you to articulate nearly any 'vision' that's apt to prove popular amongst a certain crew, not every one of those possibly-popular ideas will ring as genuine coming from you. To take fullest advantage of your present Jupiter-enhanced spot, you'll want to balance a collegial team-player attitude against the non-negotiables of authentic selfhood. Just as you probably shouldn't let your own driving agenda drown out all the other participating voices, you likewise mustn't totally sell that agenda out in an effort to keep everybody else happy. Consciously weighing your personal creative investments against the need for cooperative, collectively-minded thinking is a teeter-totter act which ought to continue, open-ended, a while longer.

 

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): Though public perception and/or professional advancement ought to remain at the forefront of your mind when choosing to speak aloud on basically any topic, Virgo, there are limits to what you can get away with saying… if, that is, you want to feel good about what you're saying. Even when accepting the fact that a certain amount of manufactured positivity, strategic spin, and/or muffling of complaints is part of the expected practice, you know as well as I do that you really mustn't betray your inner integrity by lapsing into empty promises or committing yourself to something you'll later regret. If you harbor reservations, then reserve your commitment for right now… and instead use your wiles to draw out this conversation with supporting questions and informational departures, until such later moment that you've either worked out your internal conflict or strengthened your resolve to call out the problem. If you need more time to think things through, buy it for yourself by building it into the process. Don't falsely believe, however, that the forward progress has stalled: Allowing these discussions to continue for a while longer, so they may yield lots more clarifying data (and, perhaps, a new central character or two), is as helpful as it is crucial to get your whole self on board.

 

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): To be fair—and we know you Librans pride yourselves on being fair—you can't merely draw your own conclusions and just leave it at that. The conclusion won't actually mean much unless you plainly present it to any other party to whom its consequences are relevant. Otherwise, you're basically sidestepping an essential part of the process of conclusion-drawing, which involves standing behind those consequences you damn well know will impact the other party… giving them a fair chance to voice an acknowledgment of what you've concluded, to tell you what they think about it, and/or to present their own potentially divergent conclusion. Offering this 'fair chance' needn't invite the impression you're open to changing your mind if it's already made up; it simply demonstrates that you aren't dodging reactions and responses, or hiding behind an aloof unwillingness to participate. If you feel you cannot stomach this step, I'd recommend probing more deeply into your reluctance… not because I'm implying you've drawn the wrong conclusion, but in order to better understand which dimensions of your own psyche are stoking the aversion.

 

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): For the moment, your maximum advantages come from leaving intricate or perplexing situations to suspend in their complexity, open-ended, for a while longer, Scorpio. Should you cut it off, cut it short, cut your losses, or cut and run, you are needlessly leaving yourself without something which is genuinely yours (well, at least part of it is), just because you may wish to get the whole thing over with already and/or wound another party with your deliberate, dismissive absence. If you resist that impulse, however, and think more deeply on this subject, you ought to realize how many different possible outcomes could become manifest, based on your willingness to apply innovative or experimental thinking to your endgame. What do you want for yourself, beyond the contextual bounds of this circumstance… and this particular individual who, for the moment, has obviously gotten under your skin? With a bit more patient positioning on your part, you can play this thing in a way that suits your purposes far better than 'just get it over with it' could ever serve you. Thankfully, being the Scorpio that you are, you should have a higher threshold of tolerance for prolonging any discomfort—if, in the end, you score some winning point from it.

 

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): With Mercury now joining Venus in your relationship house (the solar 7th)—and, for the record, staying to hang out there into early July (rather than the typical three-or-so weeks)—you presently have an unrivalled capacity to get into the heads of anyone with whom you're in relationship, to speak their language for maximal message-delivery impact, and to tell 'em what they want to hear if, in fact, you want them to hear what they want. But along with this ease of interpersonal communication comes a danger, Sagittarius, whenever you concentrate too intently on pitching surefire hits to a particular audience… at the potential expense of frankly communicating your own truth, regardless of whether or not the other person connects with it. Therefore, beware of crafting partial facts, hollow niceties, or insincere marketing spins intended to woo, wow, coddle, convince, or get a rise out of a certain someone, especially if you're offering a statement or sentiment you wouldn't necessarily offer to someone else and/or in a different context. On the other hand, with Mercury opposing Saturn-in-your-1st this week, you also don't want to be so closed-off to others' perspectives that you miss a chance to see an alternative angle to the situation, and possibly to learn something useful in the process. Play their receptive ears to your advantage, sure, but minus any disingenuous pandering or deception-by-omission… and don't forget to listen, too.

 

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): You've moving into an excellent period for optimistically re-examining how your days flow, Capricorn… how your day-to-day work can best get accomplished and how your day-to-day habits can best support your bodily health. Please don't take this news as if it were a hard-labor assignment, though, for then you're liable to dread it as just one more item on an ever-lengthening list of tasks. While I'll stop short of saying this will be fun—though, to be honest, it wouldn't be unreasonable to imagine it may well be—this ought to be a chance to flex your creative muscles, with an eye toward directly benefitting your productivity and well-being through methodological smartening, streamlining, shifting and shaking-up. Remember: There are no 'right' or 'wrong' answers here, in terms of how to meet your daily-regimen improvement goals… simply an astrologically-favorable opportunity to play around with different approaches, schedules, routines, plans, diets, and time-management tricks, to see which work best for you. In fact, if you take this on with a genuinely developmental mindset, you may be trying, testing, and tweaking for several weeks. To begin with, it might be enough to simply talk yourself into accepting this undertaking, since I wouldn't be surprised if your first response is resistance… which is more about fear of the unknown than whatever practical excuse you might be feeding yourself.

 

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): This upcoming week represents one step back out into the world, Aquarius, even as you also remain somewhat in a relatively inward-facing period, in terms of where to most wisely aim your productive energies. Think of this as a modest, unremarkable beginning to a couple-months' experimental span of tentatively sprinkling around your latest creative ideas and/or prospects for fun-time antics… to see what brings you the most immediate delight, attracts the most attention from those you seek to wow, and/or seems to organically muster the most momentum or traction. There's a faint qualitative difference between (1) playing with potentials and (2) pushing any particular potential forward, and I urge you to deliberately veer towards the former behavior, holding off on the latter while you're still working your way through this most-recent layer of inner discontent. In this playing-with-potentials phase, you're likely to discover that a certain idea-thread or antic-trial hits up against a rather unequivocal dead-end: Friends, colleagues, and/or community-mates seem not to like it (or, perhaps, strongly dislike it). Rather than either back off or double-down right away, just notice. You're still experimenting, remember.

 

PISCES (February 19-March 20): If you haven't been able to transmit the core-content of your contribution to the ongoing discussion, debate, or (if your patience is totally blown) 'dilly-dallying' by now, Pisces, I doubt it's worth continuing to try with as much sincere effort. Whether your conversational clarity has been marred by an indistinctly unresolved mindset on your part, or whether certain other participants are just self-concerned dolts deaf to your objections, your mental energy is once again turning more introspective. Looking forward, you've got many weeks of internal processing and re-processing ahead… a ripe occasion for gazing into the nooks and crannies of your most recent set of emerging emotions (including whatever's behind the possible 'indistinctly unresolved mindset'), and trying out this and that manner of verbally encapsulating how you feel, to see which words and frameworks seem to most fittingly describe your present subject-position. Put a different way, it's time to update the language you've been applying to your emotional state—mainly because your emotional state has shifted since last you developed a working language for it, and your self-characterizing rhetoric needs an update. As far as professional responsibilities and any corresponding exchanges with bosses or VIPs are concerned, however, please don't dicker around: Speak plainly and straightforwardly about what's true now, even as you quietly suspect you may be changing your mind in the coming months.