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Horoscopes | Week of August 15-21, 2016

ARIES (March 21-April 19): But how will it work, Aries? How is your literal physical body going to carry out this enactment, while keeping itself rested and fed and properly conditioned for the ongoing rollout? (And if not yours, then whose?) I don't mean to keep dwelling on the self-evident—or maybe I do, since I'm reiterating these 6th-house-centric themes I already raised the past two weeks (here and here)—but you're at the make-or-break point in terms of functionality. By my account, you are in no shortage of mobilized conviction, that sense of clearly-identified mission which is astutely leading you where you feel you must go... and let's please be thankful for that, since many of your fellow humans often lack that clear drive. Yet, every mission needs its Director of Operations (which isn't usually seen as the most glamorous of executive-positions, not when the Chief Visionary Officer gets to make the fancy inspiring speeches while the Public Relations Supervisor collects the interpersonal perks and freebies), and that's the job you'd better be taking on this month. Otherwise, expect challenges with your facilities management, supply procurement, paperwork compliance, and/or assignment of people-power staffing.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): If we were to begin by summing up last week's edition in basic terms, Taurus, it would boil down to: Be specific in articulating your predilections, penchants, and proclivities. Such advice would therefore also imply an advantage to not beating around the bush, acting like you don't care, and/or conceding your desired result before you've even attempted to attain it, based on the assumption an adversarial character would probably block you from it anyway. This is no time to be coy, oblique, or so conflict-averse that you refrain from forthright self-representation. I cannot offer a guarantee all your specifically-articulated picks will be granted, of course… though you do have both benefics (i.e., Venus and Jupiter) well positioned for magnetizing these asked-for objects-of-desire toward you. And if you should find yourself impeded by someone else's pursuit of cross-purposes? You've reached the point where you probably have to put your foot down, asserting your will even if you know it will be met by an opposing force. Just because you can typically tolerate a lot before taking on a fight, that doesn't mean you aren't one hell of a contender once it's on. But first, let's just start with the detailed statement(s)-of-interest.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The mental purity in silently processing your feelings, in privacy. The corresponding release from any expectation that the logic behind your now-cohering conclusions will pass an outside party's muster, Gemini. Accepting the complexity, rather than trying to reduce it to a simple formula. The willingness to work for clarity in fragments… and only then, studying this tabletop strewn with partial context-specific answers, can you cobble together a storyline to guide your next developments. This will not be a basic lover's-tale or hero's-journey, not if you bravely swap the obvious easy-way-through narrative trope for a deconstructed pastiche of 'getting more of what I want'. More like a collection of short-stories, with a faint-but-present thematic cohesion. (You are a Gemini.) Jumping to assumptions that a single choice automatically brings with it some compulsory set of additional ramifications? Lazy logic, my friend. Putting a lot more precision into your game-plan analysis will yield many more shades-of-option. This plus this doesn't have to equal that, if you just think harder about it. The various emotional facets are your puzzle-pieces; compose the most accurately nuanced self-portrait you can.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Foster the appropriate conditions for a safe-feeling social atmosphere, Cancer, and folks will feed you volumes of information. I'm not saying, however, all that's contained therein will necessarily be interesting, insightful, or relevant to you. More likely, a large portion of it will merely consist of that given speaker's offhand venting about life… which is sure to include petty complaints, groundless wishes, gossipy shit-talking, and/or more detail about trivial shit than you could possibly care about. But if you hope to prompt their uncensored, freely-running-at-the-mouth verbal superfluity (rather than, say, set off their suspicions or provoke a protective silence), you must cast this wide a net—and thus expect to pull in lots of flotsam-and-jetsam alongside the treasure. It'll be your job, after the conversational fact, to sort out the golden pieces. And all the while, you must uphold a patient-and-interested-appearing guise so as to energetically encourage their confessional sharing. The moment your attitude leaves them feeling self-conscious about giving you too much, they'll start to clam up… or at least to pick and choose, too cautiously, what to tell (and not tell) you. A larger swath of raw material is better for you, as the simple mathematical odds of you gleaning nuggets of handy, helpful news goes up.

LEO (July 23-August 22): Here's when you deftly demonstrate your competence, Leo. What really needs to get done won't actually require many theatrical flourishes or the rousing support of audience-members… just a relatively reserved, cards-close-to-your-chest confidence in your independent capacity to 'handle your business'. In a certain sense, this is a replay of last week's horoscope, only with a distinct emphasis on the less concrete (though no less real) relationship between capably flexing your earthly-realm muscles and further strengthening your sense of self-assuredness. Not only will your handling-of-business yield its obvious essential results (such as money, clarity, and/or organization), it'll also stoke an inner faith in yourself, which is a resource that always comes in handy (and can never be taken away from you by bill-collectors or tax-agents). While you should expect to continue needing other people for companionship, entertainment, and emotional support, you're at a promising juncture for adjusting your thinking away from presumed reliance on others for basic sustenance, shelter, or material security. You've got this. Believing it's true, deep in your bones, feels amazing.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): Consciously conceive of this moment, Virgo, as the epitomizing culmination of this past year's evolutionary breakthrough. You're cruising through the final three weeks of horizon-broadening Jupiter's yearlong visit to your sign (a relatively rare affair you won't enjoy again until 2027)… and at a time when you also have Mercury and Venus (and soon, too, the Sun) along for the ride, to assist in further actualizing potentials which are still hovering in an almost-there, so-close-you-can-taste-it state. If you're merely waiting for the appropriate 'when?', I think you'll be hard-pressed to find a better one than now. Meanwhile, if you can only shrug your shoulders and wonder what the fuck sort of 'evolutionary breakthrough' I could possibly be talking about, then I strongly encourage you to take this chance to stop and consider: What has occurred over the past year of your life? What have you focused on? What has changed? What have you left behind? come to accept? grown into? I suspect any inability to recognize your developmental strides is at least partly a problem of personal perspective. You aren't noticing the progress you've made because you innately fixate on what still needs fixing. Perhaps your 'almost-there' advance is simply learning to give yourself more credit?

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): Those precious few moments of expectant serenity, noiseless except for the remote echoes of future revelry, majesty. A party in your honor, Libra, not yet begun… though, from behind your dressing-room door, you can hear the furnishings being rearranged, preparations being made, guests murmuring their beforehand sentiments on their way down the stretch of entryway carpet. Let everybody do their guise-adjustments, their preliminary chitter-chatter, their initiating inquiries into your state-of-being while you remain absent, awaiting those first trills of processional music to signal your grand entrance. Loiter in front of the mirror. Check your appearance, your readiness for the spectacle which is about to unfold, the faithful glint in your eye. Give yourself the fitting pep-talk, allowing your own wisest voice-among-the-voices to drown out the sounds of others' fidgets and fusses. Pray to the gods and goddesses of burgeoning opportunity, asking them to draw down into your field of vision that which will both put your latent gifts to greater use and show you how much satisfaction is possible. Breathe in, breathe out. It's not much longer now; you know it, I know it. Meanwhile, the fawning admirers have the barest hint, but can't possibly foresee the gorgeousness you're about to unveil.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): Please accept their helpful hints, Scorpio, instead of letting personal pride convince you that'd somehow be a sign of weakness. Listen to others' testimony on their experiences in similar situations, with sincere curiosity about their lessons learned and hiccups successfully neutralized. Allow them to explain how they've arrived at the particular ideas they espouse; even if you ultimately disagree with their position, it'll be useful to trace the rationale behind it. All the while, do your very best to prevent any discussions from becoming debates or disagreements. Don't fall prey to bickering over big-picture perspectives or guiding premises, since, after all, nobody's likely to change anybody else's mind on the level of values. And besides, the most constructive insights you're apt to extract from these talks aren't about 'who believes what'… but, instead, good examples of how to organize your intentions into an accessible format other people will be able to work with. It's your distinct passion, dedication, and vision which will ultimately set your efforts apart from the rest. As far as some of the nitty-gritty process-oriented stuff is concerned, then, there's really no need to reinvent the wheel.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): In case this hasn't already been made clear to you, Sagittarius, you're presently grooving through a peak of professional (and/or public-world) opportunity… a time when any meticulously-executed projects, programs, and productions will be generously helped along by benefic planetary tailwinds, making them both easier to complete and likelier to receive a warm welcome. But despite its general favorability, this astrology won't cause such peak-level experiences to just miraculously happen, not without you actively harnessing the advantages to your carefully-selected ends. And, as you might've inferred from other recent horoscopes, this 'eased-up' condition could actually threaten the lasting quality of your attention-grabbing efforts: When something is easier for us to accomplish, we're more prone to becoming careless, breezy, or inattentive in our work-process (because it doesn't take that much concentration or alertness to produce results which are 'just fine enough'). Is that the sort of work-ethic you wish to be known for? If not, then please don't use this superb window-of opportunity merely as a vehicle for gliding by on convenience, mediocrity, or goodwill. Use it to proudly promote your very best work.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): Proceed according to principle please, Capricorn, not whim or chance or impulse. Your powers of logical reasoning, philosophical engagement, and moral analysis are operating in prime form, enabling you to do whatever you're doing how you do things best: by design. Prior to deploying any decisive maneuver, you should study the hypothetical scenarios such a move would kick into action, following each possibility several stages down the forks-in-the-path it would carve out, surveying all these potential landscapes for their overall amenability to your intended purpose(s). While it's categorically impossible to account for every unknown, you presently have a better-than-usual capacity for identifying the cause-and-effect chain of events likeliest to transpire, given this or that choice—and thus for minimizing the disruptive impact of any 'surprise!' factors. What might your response be, should a certain someone veer off-script? if a 'sure thing' doesn't live up to its premature label? when an availability becomes unexpectedly unavailable (or vice versa)? The more thoroughly you've thought through these prospects, the more cleanly your reaction will be aligned with your overall motives… and you'll still pretty much know exactly where you're going.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): Inconvenient questions beget the emergence of very telling feedback about the underlying dynamics everyone would probably prefer not to otherwise discuss, Aquarius. That's why it's far more powerful to just come out and ask that dreaded question you're half-afraid to hear an answer to… even if you're pretty sure it'll initially land with an intimidating thud. After that will come a more revelatory response, whether an expressive belch of heightened emotion that'll show you exactly what the trigger is, a heartfelt confession, and/or a ripe opening for some mutually ruthlessly honest conversation. In any event, you'll gain greater access to the sensitive material lurking underneath the constructed covers of control. Your present astrology strongly favors going into these usually-hidden areas now, as opposed to biding your time for some imagined future occasion when you wouldn't feel quite so freaked out by what could potentially go wrong. (With Pluto still lodged in your solar 12th for many more years, there's just no getting around the dull persistence of partly-or-totally irrational anxieties.) The personal favorability only increases, too, with every awkward follow-up question and painfully precise clarification.

PISCES (February 19-March 20): This is an especially effective week for getting on the same page with your partner, best-friend, teammate, or collaborator, Pisces… or, at the very least, coming to a clearer understanding about what they're thinking. Under this 7th-house-supporting astrology, you'll have an easier time securing unambiguous answers to whatever questions have been lingering in your head, provided, of course, you ask them in sufficiently frank phrasing so that the other person knows exactly what information you're fishing for. In this context, open-ended inquiries offer them too much room to conversationally cascade into excessive amounts of wordy self-expression that don't draw you any closer together (but instead gives them free-rein to vent, dawdle, detour, or pontificate)—and, likelier than not, you'll end up nodding and smiling in friendly assent (rather than interrupting their monologue to redirect it toward your intended discussion-direction) while still not assuaging your unsettled mind with the data it desires. It is not rude to pose direct inquiries and expect equally-as-direct replies. If you're caught up in second-guessing your interest in gain greater clarity between you, you've confused this information-gathering step of relational development with the emotional-response stage, which should necessarily come only after you've become clearly informed.