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Horoscopes | Week of February 27-March 5, 2017

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Odd juncture, eh? So much more you don't consciously comprehend at the moment than do, Aries… though if you quiet your mind's need to know enough to just observe everyone else's motions, your surroundings, the psychic temperature of the room, then startling or even amazing emanations of wordless understanding will download directly into your information-center. But how to be 'quiet' and still keep on going? Because, with all this vigorous dynamism overrunning your bodily system, you really can't adopt a wait-and-see docility to pretty much anything. Your instincts say you must act, based on the direct immediacy of what you want, your goals, your dreams, your values. Yet, please realize, you presently lack much more than these initiating instincts. What happens after you act remains to be seen (though, again, it's likely to bring more than you expect). What it ultimately means (whatever that 'means'), even more elusive. So, just step. Then, notice the responses, the changes in the atmosphere. Touch in with your resultant shift in instincts. Step again. Repeat the noticing, the checking-in. And again. Basic, sure… and yet, if you're open to quiet creeping revelation, about to clarify what (or who) really matters.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Keep letting it happen, Taurus. Contribute psychic energy, maybe, but not physical effort. Conserve your bodily verve for self-replenishment. (Trust me: You need it.) Trying to proceed before the time is right won't demonstrate your mettle; it merely reinforces the impulse to claim control when you don't really have it. Destiny has its reasons for urging you to keep your hands clean on this one, but they're written in invisible ink in the grand old Book of Life: not for our trifling human eyes, I'm afraid. Like watching a pivotal world event or gripping political theater from behind the televisual glass, you should feel free to engross yourself in cheering and jeering from the sidelines, hooting and hollering at the screen, embracing how these expressions may help you feel better about your necessary lack of foreground participation… while accepting they don't directly impact the actors' next moves, beyond contributing to the cumulative collective energy-field which surrounds the entire drama. But on that last bit, this contribution is not insignificant (though it's intangible, immeasurable, and unprovable). The environment in which events take place does matter, indeed influencing how everything plays out—and 'environment' is at least partly comprised of the vibes we humans emanate as a factor of our attitudes. Work with your vibes, with this in mind.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): All this talk about the social strain from taking stands and discovering who 'your people' really are is becoming less and less an exercise in actively drawing affiliation lines, Gemini… and more an organic side-effect of your naturally pursuing what's relevant to your larger goals in life. As the weeks roll on, you likely won't have to (let alone be able to) spend as much analytic energy on sorting through such interpersonal matters, thanks to the much more pressing demands of lingering career-crossroads questions, outside-world duties which increasingly call to you, and/or other self-defining participations in the public sphere. Is this what you want to be doing? Is it what you wish to be known for? Is it going anywhere? Now, you may still be wondering who has and doesn't have your back, whether recent breaches or bust-ups will prove permanent or fleeting, and/or if you're likely to stay the course with new or rekindled friendships. But there's not really anything to be done at the moment to hurry along the figuring-out of these wonderings. A more timely 'doing' would center on tangible life-directional efforts, positive action-steps taken straight towards the vision of who you wish to be in the world. The other players, supporters and critics alike, will surely have their opinions about all that. And then…

CANCER (June 21-July 22): What may've most recently looked to be a question of professional duty, accountability to authority, and/or striving to attain an endgame goal, Cancer, could soon reveal itself to instead be an ethical turning-point. It's hard enough to laboriously build a proud career, legacy, or sense-of-accomplishment, without having to contend with the possibility that influential characters and/or the governing structures they rely on are simply out of alignment with your sense of integrity. Integrity is usually predicated upon all involved parties making good on their agreed-upon commitments to each other (as we touched on last week). If any side breaks their word or sidesteps through the loopholes, the whole arrangement starts to feel real icky. How slippery are the 'means' permitted to be—in your personal book of principles, of course, which frankly is the only applicable one in this case—and still prove justly justified by the 'ends'? You good? or is some tradeoff being made that's bringing on the ickys? These are not critically urgent quandaries, but prompts for further investigation and reflection over these next couple months. We just don't want you to keep working this hard if your mounting achievements are serving an ill-suited project, undeserving leader, or corrupt enterprise.

LEO (July 23-August 22): Doing your due diligence as preparation for making a 'big move', Leo, should definitely involve thoroughly exploring what's down the avenue of not making it. Sounds logical. After all, there's a qualitative moral difference between heading towards something new, eye-opening, and horizon-broadening, and heading away from something familiarly uncomfortable, triggering, or essential to claiming your psychological fullness. Which means, therefore, to ensure you're sincerely oriented toward a positively-defined growth experience—and not merely galloping off in another direction because what's right here right now is too confusing, complicated, or painful—you must look carefully at what you're considering leaving behind and soberly confront whatever you'd have to deal with if you don't leave it behind. This is not 'dwelling on the past'; it's making peace with it. And if you won't make a heartfelt attempt at doing that over these next several weeks, thinking you can outrun the toxic psychic residue from intimate human business left suspended in time… well, let's just say your next destination won't feel nearly as radically liberating as you imagine it'll be. The ghosts of our skipping-out have a funny way of following us wherever we go.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): Expect an eerily insightful rewinding of this past month's relationally-jumbling intensifications to unfold over the coming weeks, Virgo. Not an undoing, per se—for nothing that's happened can un-happen, nor should it—but a back-to-basics reminder of why you came together in the first place. Think of it like your lived life flashing before your eyes in the face of uncertainty. Is this death, or rebirth? How did I get here? Am I right? Am I wrong? My God! what have I done? Any further soul-searching at once continues the intensifying and, oddly, begins a parallel simplification process. The more that's out on the table now, the easier it is to sort through what's a critical psychological need of yours and what's merely a circumstantial ego-hunger. Don't be reluctant to 'reverse' back out of the mud, into a quieter reconnection with the originating essence of this collaboration. Once removed from the middle of the storm (for a few moments, at least), you'll be better able to determine whether this situation has mutated so far from its initial appeal that you wonder if the headaches are worth your continued involvement… or if, despite any bumpy spots, you're still just as eagerly in it as you ever were, perhaps even more so. No final answers yet.

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): The relationship-related antics continue getting even more interesting, Libra, on account of Venus snapping into retrograde gear in your 7th by week's end. The symbolism of this tells us to expect some sort of retracing of steps you recently traveled together with someone… a follow-up development to negotiations already begun, a return of a figure from your past (in the flesh or by archetypal recurrence), a previously-unearthed piece of information or perspective heretofore underexamined or pushed away. Don't let yourself get consumed with the premature shape of apparent outcomes, please, since this is decidedly not the right moment for settling into either fairy-tale endings or tragic partings. Despite the anxiety these words could stir in you, there's nothing for you to 'decide' right now. Strangely, in fact, the pressure to make such 'decisions' seems to recede in the weeks to come... as your attention is brought back to still-unresolved work, health, and/or daily-routine issues which, as mundanely uninvolved with the seemingly-receded relational concerns as you might assume, are ultimately quite relevant to the whole unfolding. Confused? Start noticing how any party-in-question behaves in response to whichever practical item(s) necessarily steal your attention away.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): A challenge? Not to fall prey to the discouraging worry that you're contributing all these efforts, Scorpio, only to watch their cumulative effects 'disappear into the void'. That isn't what's happening, I must reassure you, but it can sure seem like it… if you aren't paying proper attention to the feelings actively assembling in the farthest back-reaches of your consciousness, which, contrary to what you're now seeing (or not seeing), are excitedly aware of and anticipating what you'll eventually yield from your current energy-investments. In other words, really good shit is beginning to occur; it just isn't slated to full-on materialize (at least in unmistakably obvious ways) for another several months. I hope my words are enough, then, to perpetuate your motivation to continue this day-in-day-out grind—and, perhaps more importantly, to separate this essential motivation from too much personal attachment to the superficial appearance of your current circumstances, to whether this is 'all there is' or if it's incrementally adding up to something that, later on, will prove to be the start of something much bigger. Who needs the specifics now, though? It's enough to believe in the anticipatory excitement.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): What's perhaps most interesting to me about this current rush of imminently satisfiable desire, Sagittarius, is how its ready fulfillment only opens up more questions about what it is you really want. Along lines comparable to 'being careful what you wish for', it's the very fact of your successfully scoring so much of a certain kind of gratification that'll likely make you second-guess pursuing that over any number of other possible delights… especially including those which are subtler, less conspicuous, and/or for your own private eyes only. But this is not a second-guessing to shy away from. To reexamine how pleasurable a particular 'pleasure' actually ended up feeling doesn't mean you wrongly chose the curtain with the booby prize behind it. An earnest reexamination might, in fact, yield a reconfirmation of the results you're already attaining. It's the process of not taking for granted that nabbing 'something good' (in the admiring and/or envying eyes of other people, at least) will necessarily be good for you, knowing that such discernments always evolve over time. Don't fear this growth process. If anything, it might produce enlightening glimpses of something you'd want even more.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): Obvious emotional lucidity, sure. You've got it in spades these days, it seems. It would actually be hard to convolute what's grown exquisitely clear, Capricorn, because the embodied truth is almost too simple in its lack of ambiguity. You know how you feel. What's not quite so apparent is how these now-indisputable feelings will affect your interactions (even the most supposedly innocuous ones) with any characters those feelings relate to, because they played an actual role in the begetting event or merely remind you of it due to their oh-too-familiar behaviors… or perhaps how they should affect them. You can't un-know how you feel, and return to some edenic pre-fall innocence wherein y'all can shoot the shallow shit as if nothing questionable ever occurred. Even if it happened a long time ago and you used to be able to posture stoic through the distress just fine, things have changed. You'll have to find a new interrelational equilibrium (which'll probably have to begin with acknowledging your woke-up understanding)—or else accept you won't be able to, your heart too bared to shoot the shit with them, unsafe in their repudiating any or every reason you might be upset.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): That capacity to put your distinctive touch on rhetorical expressions, making them stand out from everyone else's, which we've been discussing lately? It's one thing to own that you've got it, Aquarius. It's another to thoughtfully reassess when it may and may not prove practically valuable, even lucrative, to deploy this capacity… not only so you can persuasively contribute to the 'marketplace of ideas', but to also serve your own interests in actual marketplaces. But don't jump to conclusions; my drift might not be headed exactly where you think. While it'd be all too obvious to consider whether restraining your stream-of-consciousness might be necessary in certain contexts, in order to protect your economic interests, the less-obvious opposite is also worth considering: By fearlessly positioning yourself as a mouthpiece for unapologetic free-thinking, you could actually boost your relative worth amongst those who genuinely value that very quality. When does something distinctive become worth more than something diplomatically bland? And when would fearless self-expression eat away at an otherwise promisingly-sized market share, for no purpose other than the passing thrill of being contrary?

PISCES (February 19-March 20): Well, of course doing things differently in your life will inevitably impact the existing give-and-take patterns in your most intimate intermeshing(s), Pisces. And isn't that the whole point? By reconfiguring your own end of these patterns—by giving yourself more immediately self-serving goal-oriented attention, an essential element of continuing to emphasize the earthly work which drives you—the other participant(s) have to accordingly respond, one way or another. We don't know which 'way' that patterning overhaul will go, though. Not yet. Your radical willingness to worry less about helping them manage their practical life-circumstances (which is not the same as caring any less, for the record) could spur them to take more responsibility for themselves. Or it could engender in them a retaliatory resentment of you daring to change the rules-of-engagement. You might come together as a stronger-than-ever unit: two (or more) individuals deeply supporting each other on this trip through uncomfortable territory, but without enabling any denial in one another. Or the underlying rift between your competing interests will become painfully apparent… and then what? Let's see how the next couple months play out.