LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)
Last
year, a young Nebraskan entrepreneur changed his name from Tyler Gold
to Tyrannosaurus Rex Gold. He said it was a way of giving him greater
name recognition as he worked to build his career. Do you have any
interest in making a bold move like that, Leo? The coming weeks would be
a good time for you to think about adding a new twist to your nickname
or title or self-image. But I recommend something less sensationalistic
and more in line with the qualities you’d actually like to cultivate in
the future. I’m thinking of something like Laughing Tiger or Lucky Lion
or Wily Wildcat.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)
African-American
jazz singer Billie Holiday was the greatgranddaughter of a slave. By
the time she was born in 1915, black people in the American South were
no longer “owned” by white “masters,” but their predicament was still
extreme. Racism was acute and debilitating. Here’s what Billie wrote in
her autobiography: “You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with
gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be
working on a plantation.” Nothing you experience is remotely as
oppressive as what Billie experienced, Virgo. But I’m wondering if you
might suffer from a milder version of it. Is any part of you oppressed
and inhibited even though your outward circumstances are technically
unconstrained? If so, now’s the time to push for more freedom.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)
What
resounding triumphs and subtle transformations have you accomplished
since your last birthday? How have you grown and changed? Are there any
ways you have dwindled or drooped? The next few weeks will be an
excellent time to take inventory of these things. Your own evaluations
will be most important, of course. You’ve got to be the ultimate judge
of your own character. But you should also solicit the feedback of
people you trust. They may be able to help you see clues you’ve missed.
If, after weighing all the evidence, you decide you’re pleased with how
your life has unfolded these past 10 to 11 months, I suggest you
celebrate your success. Throw yourself a party or buy yourself a reward
or climb to the top of a mountain and unleash a victory cry.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)
Monmouth
Park in New Jersey hosts regular horse races from May through November.
During one such event in 2010, a horse named Thewifenoseeverything
finished first, just ahead of another nag named Thewifedoesntknow. I
suspect that there’ll be a comparable outcome in your life sometime
soon. Revelation will trump secrecy. Whoever is hiding information will
lose out to anyone who sees and expresses the truth. I advise you to bet
on the option that’s forthcoming and communicative, not the one that’s
furtive and withholding.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)
You
have both a poetic and a cosmic license to stretch yourself further.
It’s best not to go too far, of course. You should stop yourself before
you obliterate all boundaries and break all taboos and smash all precedents. But you’ve certainly got the blessings of fate if you seek to disregard some boundaries and shatter some taboos and outgrow some precedents.
While you’re at it, you might also want to shed a few pinched
expectations and escape an irrelevant limitation or two. It’s time to
get as big and brave and brazen as you dare.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)
When
I was 19, a thug shot me in the butt with a shotgun at close range. To
this day, my body contains the 43 pellets he pumped into me. They have
caused some minor health problems, and I’m always queasy when I see a
gun. But I don’t experience any routine suffering from the wound. Its
original impact no longer plagues me. What’s your own personal
equivalent of my trauma, Capricorn? A sickness that racked you when you
were young? A difficult break-up with your first love? The death of
someone you cared about? Whatever it was, I suspect you now have the
power to reach a new level of freedom from that old pain.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
Want
to take full advantage of the sexy vibes that are swirling around in
your vicinity? One thing you could do is whisper the following
provocations in the ear of anyone who would respond well to a dose of
boisterous magic: 1. “Corrupt me with your raw purity, baby; beguile me
with your raucous honesty.” 2. “I finally figured out that one of the
keys to eternal happiness is to be easily amused. Want me to show you
how that works?” 3. “I dare you to quench my thirst for spiritual
sensuality.” 4. “Let’s trade clothes and pretend we’re each other’s
higher selves.”
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20)
Some
people put their faith in religion or science or political ideologies.
English novelist J.G. Ballard placed his faith elsewhere: in the
imagination. “I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the
world,” he wrote, “to release the truth within us, to hold back the
night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves
with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.” As you make your
adjustments and reconfigure your plans, Pisces, I suggest you put your
faith where Ballard did. Your imagination is far more potent and dynamic
than you realize—especially right now.
ARIES (March 21-April 19)
“You
have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own
blessings,” says author Elizabeth Gilbert. I recommend that you
experiment with this subversive idea, Aries. Just for a week, see what
happens if you devote yourself to making yourself feel really good. I
mean risk going to extremes as you pursue happiness with focused zeal.
Try this: Draw up a list of experiences that you know will give you
intense pleasure, and indulge in them all without apology. And please
don’t fret about the possible consequences of getting crazed with joy.
Be assured that the cosmos is providing you with more slack than usual.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20)
“I
am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which
everything fits,” writes Taurus author Annie Dillard, “but instead am
wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose
gnawed trees breathe a delicate air.” I recommend you try on her
perspective for size. For now, just forget about scrambling after
perfection. At least temporarily, surrender any longing you might have
for smooth propriety. Be willing to live without neat containment and
polite decorum. Instead, be easy and breezy. Feel a generous acceptance
for the messy beauty you’re embedded in. Love your life exactly as it
is, with all of its paradoxes and mysteries.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20)
Studies
show that when you’re driving a car, your safest speed is five miles
per hour higher than the average rate of traffic. Faster than that,
though, and the danger level rises. Traveling more slowly than everyone
else on the road also increases your risk of having an accident.
Applying these ideas metaphorically, I’d like to suggest you take a
similar approach as you weave your way through life’s challenges in the
coming week. Don’t dawdle and plod. Move a little swifter than everyone
else, but don’t race along at a breakneck pace.
CANCER (June 21-July 22)
The key theme this week is relaxed intensification. Your
assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to heighten and
strengthen your devotion to things that are important to you— but in
ways that make you feel more serene and self-possessed. To accomplish
this, you will have to ignore the conventional wisdom, which falsely
asserts that going deeper and giving more of yourself require you to
increase your stress levels. You do indeed have a great potential for
going deeper and giving more of yourself, but only if you also become
more at peace with yourself and more at home in the world.
Go to RealAstrology.com
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