Horoscopes | Week of March 27-April 2, 2017

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Yes, Venus is still retrograde in your sign, Aries… but, by week's end, it'll retreat back into your solar 12th, where its puckish blessings and aura-fluffing favor will be far less immediately accessible. Therefore, if I were you, I'd utilize the week ahead to put out feelers, make propositions, set balls into motion, and/or invest the vital face-time necessary for indicating your sincere interest in that venture or endeavor which promises to be potentially lucrative, stabilizing, and/or esteem-building. But don't push for fast replies or counter-offers. Allow what's introduced or suggested to sit out there a bit. Release the expectation that you'll promptly receive any reassuring sign or reliable glimpse of how it's likely to go. This needs further time to metabolize into workable fuel, or else to be passed as unusable material. Hell, with Venus still retrograde, you can't even be altogether sure you'll continue wanting this. A proposal or possibility commits you to nothing more than continuing a conversation. Once Venus is direct and returns to your sign in the final days of April, you'll start getting clearer answers—both from the other involved parties and your own desires.

 

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Not until Friday (Mar 31) will communication-agent Mercury leave the mystifying wonderland of your solar 12th (which was one of the main influences informing last week's horoscope) and arrive back in the 'real world' of your sign, Taurus. Until that happens, please continue postponing any important discussions, transactions, and message-deliveries. The bigger opening chunk of your week, then, would be better served by reflecting on how your forthcoming game-move will, by intentional design, either (1) preserve a firm psychic boundary that protects your emotional fate from being unduly invaded by someone else's bag of unsettled issues or (2) draw you closer to someone with whom you wish to keep incrementally developing relational intimacy and/or trust. Let's not forget that Mars remains in your sign, too, granting you a decisive edge when it comes to setting the precedent for the next chapter of this dynamic. If this Mars-in-your-1st also perpetuates an increased threat of ruffling others' feathers, at least make sure you're doing so in a calculated process of claiming more of what you want—not just because you got pissed off and let somebody have it.

 

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The only possible thing left to say, Gemini, would be a corroborating inclusion of friends' or associates' sentiments which might better establish that you're not alone in your thinking. Other than that, if I were you, I wouldn't invest much attention in trying to appeal, inform, convince, or pressure. Furthermore, if any critical communications need to be handled soon, please do it prior to Mercury entering your solar 12th on Friday (Mar 31)… and, even so, please stick close to what's already been established (rather than making any sudden changes or dramatic turns). Once Mercury's in your 12th, where Mars has already been sequestered for the past few weeks, you'll be that much more fully into the 'hands-off zone': Whatever's already been said and done must now be left to settle, sputter, mature, or mutate. Any additional attempts to fiddle or futz won't dependably help your case, but instead will be likelier than usual to unleash undesired side-effects, including potentially detrimental confusion. It's not that you'll never have another chance to deliberately shape these developments… only that your next best shot is still a few more weeks away.

 

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Broaden the scope again, Cancer. Get beyond any head-to-head 'you vs. me' friction, a context in which you're likelier to allow superfluous emotion (whether outwardly expressed or internally endured) to color your responses with too subjective a tint. Open it up to additional opinions, others' voiced stakes, perspectives which reposition any fraught concerns as systems-level questions and/or immediately relevant to a wider swath of players than just you and that singular certain someone. Argue on behalf of a faction or group-consideration, using terms that create a rhetorical distance between the principle-at-hand and your own self-serving interests, rather than fighting to score a personal victory and/or defeat an unnerving adversary. Attaining your concrete ambition or goal as you've defined it mustn't be your only aspiration. How you attain it—as well as which collegial allies and/or institutional supporters you bring along—will prove just as important, for reasons both ethical and reputational.

 

LEO (July 23-August 22): Don't let yourself become distracted from your main goal, purpose, aspiration, or ascent, Leo. With Mercury now joining Mars in your solar 10th, this is a critical moment for confidently presenting yourself to that world in which you seek to advance… attracting attention (and, god willing, admiration) from tastemakers and power-brokers, for the ways in which your experience, expertise, and/or approach set you apart from your striving peers… and, as such a moment warrants, communicating your aims and attitudes in an unerringly professional tone. When you mindfully consider the importance of all that, you will hopefully understand why it'd be a mistake to pay too much mind to side comments, busybody whispers, petty dramas, or any other tangential nonsense which might otherwise suck you in (because, let's be honest, such diversions can be super-entertaining). This isn't a fixed judgment on 'nothing else mattering' other than your main goal, purpose, aspiration, or ascent… merely an instance in which it behooves you to strike while the iron's hot. There will be no shortage of 'nonsense' to entertain you later, once this iron cools down.

 

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): It's no longer a case of who said or did what, when it happened or how many times, Virgo. Such a statistical score-card approach can never properly account for which disappointments, disagreements, or dirty-deeds are more and less important to you, based on what you're personally discerned to be your non-negotiable set of guiding life-principles. An irritating habit or thoughtless misstep of theirs, for instance, should not be on par with an intentional slight or overtly offensive act. Dare I rely on a tired cliché to make my point, but it's on you to choose your battles wisely rather than singularly spelling each one out in a long (though factually accurately, I'm sure) list and expecting its sum-total tally to itself be a winning measure. You're reaching that stage in your thinking where these various data-details matter less than the overall meaning you draw from them, in terms of which value(s) they serve as evidence for having been either upheld or forsaken. That is the angle from which you now ought to frame your thoughts, if you wish to effectively convey why this, that, and the other observations you've made are so integral to your take on this situation.

 

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): Knowing you remain steeped in unresolved complexities that could ultimately rewrite an essential boundary-line in your life, Libra, doesn't mean you must constantly be doing something to push the complex situation one direction or another. Maintaining the awareness itself is, at certain moments like this, enough to ensure you're psychically engaged with its corresponding magnitudes. For much of your week ahead, careful communicative control—in other words, not rushing ahead into the touchiest territory, even though it's obvious that's where it's imminently headed—seems like the wisest tactic to proceed with. As the weekend arrives, you can begin touching on the touchy… but with the understanding, again, there really isn't a rush to reach agreements or hatch action-plans that might so profoundly and/or irreversibly impact your life. In fact, over the few weeks to come, your attention is likely to pivot back toward your work and/or other considerations that are more explicitly your own independent responsibilities. How exactly this ongoing conversation proceeds at the same time as this personally-purposeful pivot could tell you as much as the actual conversational content.

 

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): First, just a reminder, Scorpio, that willfully-assertive (and, when circumstances warrant, combat-ready) Mars remains in your relationship house (the solar 7th) for another few weeks. As I wrote when Mars initially arrived, this placement both emboldens you to make your interpersonal interests and/or desires palpably obvious and increases your chances of attracting strife from those whose own interests and/or desires are at odds. If either possible Mars-in-the-7th manifestation (or something somewhere in between) has been actively occurring, I have a touch of good news. On Friday (Mar 31), message-sender Mercury will enter your 7th, lending some communicative mojo to your efforts. Following that shift, you'll have a much better ability to persuasively express yourself, in the tone and manner likeliest to 'speak' their particular 'language'… and especially so when speaking from your heart about your rosiest ideals. For much of the week, then, stay focused on practical work and other tangible concerns. Once Mercury's in your 7th, revisit the interpersonal business.

 

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): It'd presently be very easy to get swept up into what everybody else around you is doing, Sagittarius—whether because you want to join in, egg on, call to task, or try to convince otherwise—at a time when you've got plenty of your own responsibilities to worry about. Even if whatever they're all up to is probably far more dynamic, dramatic, and/or compelling, the planets are clearly directing you to get back to work. This is not a punishment for recently having had too much fun, by the way… though, if that 'fun' has involved a lot of consumable indulgences and/or not enough sleep or exercise, your body's likely ready for some compensatory health-supporting attention (before it caves from overextension or exhaustion). You simply have great astrological support for slowing the frenetic pace, regulating your routine for the coming few weeks, and zeroing in on jobs which require basic repetitive labor or persistent force. Not choosing to use this support for practical, productive purposes would be an utter waste, when these synergistic currents are helping your efforts along.

 

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): It's time to remind yourself that life isn't merely a series of duties to meet and obstacles to overcome, Capricorn, though it can sure feel that way sometimes. The whole reason you strive this hard to excel at such accountability—at least an implicit one, though you may often forget—is in order to appease your industrious mind enough so that you're able to then enjoy the rewards earned by your excellence (as well as those many more which are freely due you, by virtue of being human), unfettered by guilt- or angst-ridden thoughts about everything you haven't yet accomplished (according to your own high standards, that is). The week's astrology both (1) warns against you getting excessively worked up about your worldly responsibilities, whether you're properly taking full advantage of opportunities at your disposal, and/or how to best maintain an impressive public profile, and (2) encourages you to actively pay more mind to appreciating the present moment, through maximizing your participation in activities, interests, and/or interpersonal relations which just leave you feeling good. Only you know how hard following such advice can be for a Capricorn.

 

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): This is no time to wade, knowingly or not, into contentious debates about what you believe and/or where you stand amongst the others in your social milieu, Aquarius. I'd be surprised, actually, if you weren't already pretty plainly on record about any such relevant matters. But if you absolutely must make a statement, I recommend relying heavily on quotes or links from reputable like-minded sources, adding, if anything, merely a brief few words of non-provocative assent. Your attentions are being drawn increasingly inward, away from necessary participation in public discourses or political positioning… and towards unapologetically subjective, self-involved, and/or largely private concerns related to defining, establishing, and/or securing your own place in the world. What's most relevant to making a 'place' so satisfyingly yours must come from within, if it's based on you prioritizing your emotional well-being over a performative acquiescence to some societal expectation or peer-pressure persuasion. Don't make a big deal about redirecting your attentions away from 'them' and towards yourself, though. They probably wouldn't quite 'get' it anyway.

 

PISCES (February 19-March 20): I'll admit your recent horoscopes have laid a certain pressure on you, Pisces, to take more seriously both your own functional needs and the vital opportunities available for seeking help from others to get those needs met. This has mainly been a result of Venus's retrograding through your 2nd, with Mercury hanging out there too, which has afforded you a ripe chance to actively reconsider how you attend to your practical-business matters (especially as related to income-and-expenditure management) rather than assuming the way you've been doing it is your only possibility. An astro-shift occurs during this week ahead, however, potentially lightens the mood somewhat… provided that you invite more nonchalant socializing into your schedule, allowing you to spruce up your energy-field by exchanging pleasantries and anecdotes and ventings (and juicy gossip-bites?) with other interactive beings. Simply put, situating yourself more frequently around people (rather than hiding out by your lonesome) will yield you fresh reenergizing input. By next week, Venus will have retrograded back into Pisces… and you'll return to a more conspicuously magical, magnetic role.