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The Pisces Point: 2003 Annual Horoscope
by Eric Francis; Illustration by Emil Dickin Alzamora

Two thousand three is a transitional year between two vastly
different astrological landscapes. Emphasis gradually shifts from fire and air to earth and water. If you ask me, this is a very positive development.

Uranus, the first of the “modern planets” and the bringer of innovation, revolution, and impassioned freedom, works its way into Pisces, where it will be for the next seven years. Pisces is the sign that works like the deepest level of our collective unconscious, and is the source of dreams, inspiration, delusions, unspeakable fears, and the yearning for bliss. Uranus in this sign means we’ll need more than Prozac or the Internet to feel comfortable in our feelings. Maybe—who knows—we’ll figure out that we need one another, and think we invented something really special.

Next, we have Saturn working its way into Cancer. I can just see the piles of trash lined on both sides of the street as this emotional house-cleaning gets underway. Through the year, Saturn makes three oppositions to Chiron in Capricorn. The combined effect of these planets will give us an opportunity to move some of our mental blocks that work like emotional blinders. If people actually began to feel, even a little, the you’s and me’s of the Western world would become a force to contend with, in our own lives, and in the world.

I provide lots more information about these transits (and a reading of the US chart) on my homepage and in the 2003 Annual CD. Check www.EricFrancis.com.

Aries (March 20-April 19)
Consciousness exists at the edge of an abyss. The little light of our minds floats like a cork on a vast sea of passion, chaos, mystery, and fear, into which we occasionally dip our toe. More than your toe gets dipped this year as you’re met with a magnificent urge to dive into the psychedelic cosmos of your inner world. The end result will be reality, not fantasy. It’s a true gift when we experience moments when our creative peaks are met with unusual business opportunities; that is, when the inner world meets constructively with the outer—but you’re fast approaching such terrain. In preparation, the next few months are a fine time to clean house (emotional and otherwise) and take a good, clear look at your location. Changing the space you’re in may involve a symbolic or actual escape from parental oppression, a practical improvement, a change of scenery, or a deeper settling of your foundation. There’s no question that with the psychic and creative shifts approaching both you and our culture, you’ll want to be standing on solid ground. The course of your existence is set to draw you out to every edge you’ve ever known and many you have never considered, yet your safety is assured. When fear surfaces—and it surely will—trust that it’s for the purpose of being released. Get help if you need it. There’s no need to go through anything alone. You are not alone, but you need to use your voice.

Taurus (April 19-May 20)
The power to change is one of the most enviable traits in our world. Much of what we need, fear, and obsess over is change. Most of what we get is more of the same. Most of how we don’t change involves being in locked-in patterns of relationship that cement us into who we once were. Yet in fact, you are changing, you know it’s true, and you carry the energy of provocation and evolution with you wherever you go. Recent events were merely preparation for a much longer journey. There are several tools you’ll take on this trip. One is recognizing that it’s not love if we have to beg someone to be with us. The second is it’s not love if we have to beg to be free. The third: you now know the difference between not feeling and actually feeling. As so many discover, when we stop suppressing emotions, one of the first experiences we may have is pain, but once experienced, it allows a much deeper sense of reality. We could say that in this world the power to change is simply allowing ourselves the ability to actually experience our emotions. They will reveal that no relationship is an island. You exist within the context of a community, or perhaps many communities. When you have a need, no matter how personal, before you go about trying to solve it alone, frame it in the context of community and work from there. This way, we’ll gain in the process.

Gemini (May 20-June 21)
Many are called but few dare to respond. Saturn’s presence in your life in recent years has no doubt prompted a re-evaluation of your career, along with many other issues of what we might call integrity and integration. But careers as we tend to think of them are personal projects—the most applicable word is usually selfish—in which we pretend to emphasize what we accomplish for ourselves rather than what we do for the community. What really happens in the meantime is that we tend to give our lives and our best ideas to social forces that are rampantly consuming the planet’s resources and giving back nothing in return, and call it good because we need to make a living. And after all people do need beer, cosmetics, corporate litigation, and annuities. And we can’t really do anything about how bad the world is, can we? Well, think please again. You’re in the process of receiving a calling about the work that you do that emphasizes this whole issue. On one hand you’re about to be endowed with extraordinary freedom in your professional life, and freedom means both mobility and excellent ideas to experiment with. On the other, the premium on striving for an impeccably right livelihood is now due. The fewer compromises you make between what you think is right, what works for you creatively and financially, and what works for all of us, the easier your life will be, and the greater an adventure.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)
There’s nothing more powerful than your approval of yourself. The role of certain teachers, healers, or mentors has likely proven vital during the past year, and relationship experiences (both good and “bad”) have been catalysts for astonishing growth. Yet another process is developing, in which you’re building a self-mastery that’s unfamiliar, perhaps a bit daunting and likely to be very satisfying. We could say you’re figuring out that you’re a grownup in the best sense of the word, which will shift your relationships and your work process deeply. Whereas in the past you may have defined meaningful feelings as how much another person moved or affected you, now you may consider your stability and objectivity the sign of a relationship’s strength or promise. Given the advent of this power, there’s no way you could overdo expressing compassion for the people in your life, particularly those who seem either weaker than you are or claim some superiority. The coming seasons will present you with choices so subtle you may not see them. Crossroads will appear as a change in environment, a partner’s decision, or being stuck in any unchangeable reality. The most important thing you can do at such times is see your options. If you can’t, consider that spirituality is not a vague concept or a section of the bookstore. It’s the life of the spirit within you, and this life is going to thunder as the next few seasons turn. Try looking with those eyes and another world will appear.

Leo (July 22-August 23)
The eighth house of astrology is a barrel of controversy. Under its domain fall sex, death, wills and inheritances, dowries, control issues, jealousy, marital contracts, power relationships, investments, and a variety of reproductive secrets. What’s the connection? And what’s not in there? Oh, a few things, but these days, it all comes back to the eighth house; it’s where our society is desperately obsessed. To me, it reduces to two issues. One is our culture’s empty spiritual teachings that leave us in terror of death, leading to an exploitation of death that is the essence of the modern eighth. The other is that we’ve created a world in which we can’t survive without money, which is the ultimate power trip to lay on someone. And a third: certain people want us to forget we’re all in this together. You already know that those rules and hang-ups are for other people, the ones who haven’t figured out that life is flexible. Now add Uranus, the planet of revolution, great ideas, and fast, furious change. You’re about to figure out how creative you can be when it comes to irrefutable facts. You’re about to discover that there are no agreements you can’t get out of, and no situation you can’t negotiate to the mutual benefit of everyone involved. But expect to be confronted by people who insist that you rise to every occasion. Creating anything is not a matter of form, it’s one of content. That which you absolutely must express pushes through you and takes on the nearest approximate style. Your role is to stand apart from your fear and let it happen. On the way out, what you create changes you, sometimes beyond recognition. That is art. That is life, if you’re alive.

Virgo (August 23-September 22)
How strange and unsettling is the call for freedom. Feel it rippling in your heart. Feel it calling you to explore the experience you’ve been craving. This is, at its essence, the theme of your life: the quest to be freed from structure enough to actually do, feel, and see the worlds you had not dared to touch in the past, or that you were not allowed to. Now is very likely the time. Your relationships are poised to become as creative, passionate, and chaotic as your work life has been, and your work is about to narrow to a point of what could reasonably be called success. All of it speaks to escaping the established patterns of your life fast and all at once, then again, and again. It’s amazing how good you can feel once you’ve survived the bottom falling out, and once you know that other people are not really the ones inspiring you—that the source of curiosity and the yearning for release is all your own. Decisions must, as you’re learning quickly, have a basis. Choice is guided by a much deeper reference set that has little to do with supposed outcomes. Several times in these four seasons, you’ll stop completely and know you can move in any direction whatsoever; each will be followed by a cascade of changes. Make a decision and trust it. Trust, as well, that your most powerful meetings will happen on a schedule of cosmic convenience. They will happen, and powerful is an understatement.

Libra (September 22-October 23)
You need to raise your standard on what you consider an interesting and meaningful livelihood, or risk flirting with madness. On one count, you’re far more sensitive to your environment than you imagined, and that includes your place of work. On another, your urge to actually achieve some of your dreams is reaching one of its greatest moments, which means you’ll need to increase your level of freedom where work is concerned. What you learned through the end of 2002 has done a great deal to reduce your tolerance for compromise, stagnation, and selling yourself short in work or in love. Yet certain inner changes and values adjustments have made you into a force to be reckoned with, though you may not have figured this out quite yet. But your new energetic charge basically renders you impossible to ignore. Few people grasp what it means to have a reputation. The word itself usually has a negative spin. Yet you’re now being called upon to develop, express, and moreover trust the value of your name and the quality of your work, and seek out projects that will earn you experience, contacts, and recognition. Leadership is the calling of the hour, and if you listen you’ll notice that your most fulfilling—if a bit volatile and innovative—relationships arise among your collaborators and co-workers. Could it all come down to this? Insist on the respect you deserve, most especially from yourself.

Scorpio (October 23-November 22)
Existence is a gamble. You might say it’s all a big game of You Bet Your Life. Everything in this world involves some measure of risk and nothing is guaranteed—especially failure. When the wheel spins, we can place our chips on one of two squares: create or destroy. When we bet on the destroy category, it’s most often because we’re acting out the pain and unconscious impulses of our predecessors, usually the unfinished business of our parents. When we choose to create, we accelerate our growth and healing exponentially, and live our own particular way. One of the most hideous aspects of relationships is the way we’re conditioned to stay at the most wounded levels, thinking that if we bleed together we’re going to be stronger. This conditioning pervades our culture, from the patterns of “don’t ask, don’t tell” that we all indulge in some ways to the plethora of “support” groups and all the ways we buy into terrorism and fear. In the most personal contexts of your life, you’re now fully responsible for maintaining vigilance that relationships rise above these games, and now more than ever it is likely that you’ll do so. You’re getting a mighty upward push in your strength and awareness. You have unusual support in making substantial inner adjustments, ones for which you’ve waited a lifetime. And perhaps the greatest miracle, your curiosity has been restored to full strength. Given all this, you have a chance to share love with others that’s based on faith and not on the fear of abandonment. And that, as you know, is your life mission.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 22)
What would it mean to proceed with absolute clarity and single-minded determination? We can always count on the world to deliver raving chaos, to push our patience, and be lost in its monotony. We can count on almost every question being a trick question. Ever will the hall-of-mirrors effect of physical reality obscure fact from illusion, or whether there’s even a difference. Something else more important is true. You can count on yourself to see the larger scene, or at least look for it in earnest. I’m making several other presumptions about your life. I suspect that recent events have connected you with a much deeper level of your own mastery, which was always there but was concealed by your doubts. This, in turn, will attract more of your peers. I think you’ve been able to quite literally forget many things that were not true. But the top of the agenda: finding your sense of your value. We may doubt our value in life, and go to great lengths to reassure ourselves that it’s really true. But we’ll never be convinced until we live it and feel it in action, that is, in a process of exchange with others. The deepest crisis of Sagittarius is always about being a stranger in a strange land. Therefore you could, for a long time, count anything that offered you a sense of belonging here as affirmation of your mission. Now in the interests of happiness and world service, your standard must be far higher.

Capricorn (December 22-January 20)
Capricorns are among the people who age backwards, seeming to be mature adults as small children and developing into sweet young babes as the decades collect. Yet for everyone in the Western world, growing up is a painful, even abusive process. Thus, as you become young, past hurts can surface consciously for you to feel, but then allow you to reclaim the next sphere of your child soul. Watch this process unfold now, paying particular attention to others who seem to hem you in, place limits on your time, or struggle with their own rigid nature. You’re getting a replay of what it was like to be an awesomely powerful kid dropped in amongst adults who just didn’t get it. The word “triggered” comes to mind, and more than a touch of frustration. Yet trauma hides resources. If you survived, and you did, you have power, but much of it has been concealed by pain. See yourself through. The ability to start any new project, relationship, or stage of growth is vital. Calling forth your ability to nourish and cultivate a beginning or decision into fruition is another trick entirely. So everything, including discomfort, adventure, or revelation, must remind you of what’s necessary and who you’re becoming. Work this process and your life will gradually morph into a transformational gateway between two vastly different worlds. On the other side, you’ll finally close the gap between you and those you love, and tap the rich resources, passion, and intelligence with which you were born, not so long ago.

Aquarius (January 20-February 19)
Freedom, brotherly love, working together, planetary healing, and devotion to others: these are cherished Aquarian values. We don’t generally suppose that living them in 3D is daring, difficult, and even dangerous. We forget that we may meet resistance from friends and partners, trigger our deepest wounds, and risk vulnerability and rejection when we put our highest ideals out into the world for everyone to judge. We forget that to make far smaller desires real takes sustained daily effort and devotion. It’s enough to make most people run, or worse, hang up a Shamans R Us sign and offer Tantric sex classes. Authentic Aquarian reality must first take up residence in our personal relationships. What would it require for the idea of “compersion” to become reality in your life? Compersion is loving the passion and pleasure of the people we say we love, supporting their other relationships, and owning jealousy and resistance we feel as exclusively our own. As Jupiter and Neptune, two of the most spiritually-oriented planets, align with your sign, your evolutionary imperative is finding the ability to nourish and support another—and that means everyone in your life—as they become who they are, rather than trying to make them into a reflection of yourself. To do this, your ego must surrender a million times, and you must forgive the conditions and expectations you had previously placed on accepting them. The paradox of Aquarius is indeed “if you love someone set them free.” It’s not necessarily easy. Anything less is a charade.

Pisces (February 19-March 20)
When in doubt, clean the kitchen. You’ll need to make token offerings to the god of discipline on a fairly routine basis. Clearing your desk will work too—anything you don’t consider especially fun but which emphasizes organization and function. Another suggestion: express your feelings just half the time, not all the time. It doesn’t matter which half. The point is that energy speaks louder than words. The voltage, you see, is being cranked up on every aspect of your life. Uranus moving into Pisces for a seven-year stay tells us that your push for liberation, creative celebration, and freedom from your nagging conscience will become more effective than ever. You become some kind of Tesla device, beaming the waves through your mind and into every person who comes in contact with you. Energy requires structure to be of any use. Saturn in through the fifth solar house can have a chilling effect on fun, but for you something else entirely is occurring. You’re likely to be presented with so much innovation that you’ll need every opportunity to contain it and bring it into manifestation, and this Saturn offers. That you’ll seek your freedom is an understatement. It’s an impulse so powerful you’ll want to push everyone around you to cast off their chains and wake up to the modern world. Yet when it comes to freedom, one’s own is all there can be. And in this world, freedom ultimately means being released from fear you didn’t know you felt.

The Planet Waves Weekly Horoscope is now available by email subscription. Chronogram readers can get a full year for the price of six months.

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