Backbone > Planet Waves
Horoscopes 2-03
by Eric Francis

Aries (March 20-April 19)
By now you’ve recognized that you must think with precision, but the necessity to act with precision builds with each passing day. Indeed, the current process of your life may be developing toward one specific instance of knowledge, decision, and directed movement. You can be certain of two things. One is that the openings are there. Certain people will be revealing themselves as unexpectedly influential in the role of what might be called gatekeeper, enough to completely change what seems to be the outer climate of your life. Second, you will have the strength of both will and endurance to make what can be reasonably called the last of many decisions of a major growth cycle. People feel different, and not just to you—within themselves, they know it, and you appear to them as someone who has long known something they simply missed. Don’t let this go to your head. Their old fears were honest. Now you can get together and agree that there’s much more to life.

Taurus (April 19-May 20)
Do not underestimate the power of information. This is a lesson that’s been hankering for your attention going back to the summer, but is only now becoming apparent given how you need to know in order to survive. Information is most readily forthcoming from the well-documented mirror effect, the way things we need to work on show up in our perceptions of others. I don’t mind this theory, but I take issue with how little compassion is typically used when it’s applied, that is, compassion for one’s own state of being. The mirror effect is a potent source of information, and it needs to be used gently, in measured doses. And the information must be put to work for optimistic ends: in other words, with the sense that we’re becoming healthier and stronger, not weaker and more fearful. If you’re tending toward the negative, I strongly suggest you use a different therapeutic approach, such as hanging out with people you respect and who really dig you. They’ll have their insights too.

Gemini (May 20-June 21)
You must, for the moment, get accustomed to how powerful certain people are in your life. Many kinds of power exist, and you may sense a variety of negative potentials—fortunately they rarely manifest. Your cosmic mission (I like that better than “lesson”) is to become comfortable in the presence of what you perceive as so much strength of will, force of belief, and the idea that you’ll have to somehow submit. That is merely a concept. From the willing space of awareness and acknowledgement, you can negotiate your way into a position of what we might call equity. You may notice that most arrangements, no matter what the power-sharing deal, have a distinctly voluntary quality. What you would be experimenting with here is, for one thing, your flexibility. Another is your propensity to attract extremes. A third is witnessing just how well you can guide your destiny when it seems most unlikely.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)
All bets, agreements, deals, arrangements, and promises are off—if you want. Consider this a kind of Jubilee month wherein every aspect of your world is subject to complete reassessment and renegotiation. Good times for the bold. From the moment you read this, take whatever efforts are necessary to become clear about what must stay, what must go, and what must be so. Moments of revelation and opportunities for powerfully leveraged decisions don’t come along every minute. We can always go anywhere, but being in certain places makes it easier to get to certain other places. Right now you are at a hub of your own existence, but the truly interesting quality of this moment is that you appear in a way that seems central or pivotal to many other people. Your reward is the freedom to choose, and even the choices themselves are elements of reality that you select. Beware. Attend your intuition and never gainsay the voice of reality.

Leo (July 22-August 23)
I don’t blame you if you have the feeling that there’s very little you can trust in this world. I can fully empathize with how it seems we never really know what other people are thinking, feeling, or what their motives are. But despite these questions, it’s clear that, at least for the moment, what you see is what is real. It would take a lot right now for someone to fool you, and any situation that threatens to compromise your integrity will belie itself with little or no effort on your part. And, more to the point, you are being offered something, a relationship, an opportunity, specific knowledge, or a gift of intuition that has the power to reach you like few experiences you’ve ever known. The price, if there is one, is that you be clear with yourself about what you know is true and what you know is false. In a sense, this is a vow of honesty to yourself. We could all use one of those, but in your case the rewards will exceed all your expectations.

Virgo (August 23-September 22)
After all you’ve been through lately, I suggest you create some kind of environment for yourself where you get to do a lot of spiritual retreating and psychic regeneration. The most important feeling is that such a space be quiet, secure from intrusion or interruption, and—very important—warm. There is an experimental quality to the experience, which is to see how you respond to being in a safe, low-stimulus environment. Do you intuitively relax, or do you get a little tense? When you get into that space of feeling, what are some of the first things you notice, and what are the more intense ones? I know you’re trying to solve what feel like some of the most complicated problems of your life, that is to say, inner situations that are just dearly needing to be worked out. I know you need more information about certain things in your life, and about why you are the way you are. It’s clear that you’re the source of that information, but it’s life-altering, life-giving, potent medicine. You need to breathe into it, stretch into it, and listen to it speaking to you in the silence.

Libra (September 22-October 23)
There appears to be a struggle brewing between the Cut Loose aspect of who you are, and the Play It Safe one. I should just tell you right now, Play It Safe doesn’t stand a chance, and is going to unravel all the more thoroughly for any effort to have its way. Putting up pure resistance to that process will simply hurt. But we could look at a deeper perspective. Play It Safe is mainly seeking commitment, so it feels safe enough to take the risks that it needs to take. Cut Loose is not as rowdy as you might think; this part of you mainly wants an opportunity to create some semblance of a new reality for you, quite literally to create a space of life that facilitates enduring pleasure. Both parts are working toward the same end. I suggest that if you want to maintain your balance, let your imagination run overtime. Let yourself be as wild, inappropriate, daring, and pleasure-seeking as you want, within your inner space. When opportunities to experiment in the physical world arise, and this appears likely, you’ll see your chance.

Scorpio (October 23-November 22)
Only you know how you feel about a situation that only you know exists. It would appear that the status of a relationship is suddenly an emotional maze, and you’re not sure it has anything to do with your partner. The factors involved are diverse and all of them are deep-water influences. Try to sort out what you want and what you need right now, and please be honest. Part of what you need is a more pronounced sense of community, of people really pulling together. Another is any hint at all that you’re making progress on what you might call your deepest healing need. Part of the story is a craving for God that goes far beyond church. In terms of your relationship, or a prospective partnership, perhaps try confiding your feelings even if you can’t exactly get clear on what they are. What you’re experiencing can be an extraordinarily powerful influence toward building and exploring intimacy, perhaps, as the case may be, with one of your own sex.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 22)
This will be an interesting month. I feel a little silly writing that after, you know, everything else that’s been going on. And you may be thinking, wow, thanks, just what I need, another really interesting month. (I don’t blame you if you’re thinking you’d rather be reading the Jonathan Cainer horoscope right now.) Well, this is a different species of interesting entirely. And you’re learning a lot from the others, correct? The particular quality of focus that you’re beginning to attain is extremely rare. You are wielding far more power than you know, take my word for it. This month you get to take action on a very significant decision. You may be feeling unsteady now, but remember, any element of existence you wish to change will require a very light touch. You’ll also find out that your soul feels more like a Harley-Davidson than it does like a candle burning in a church. One thing about Harleys is they actually get you somewhere.

Capricorn (December 22-January 20)
It is not too late. You would be surprised how early it is. The past is certainly an important reference point in life, and it has especially been so lately. But recently, you’ve pulled free of the gravity of a certain mental entanglement, and it would serve you to live as if that were true. Your mind may still have a tendency to get hung up on the ways in which you’re getting the short end of certain power-sharing arrangements, and the effects of how you were disempowered in the past. You have every reason to question that reality, and your awareness alone offers you a dimension of power that is rare to experience. Indeed, there may have never been a time when you needed other people less. There are awesome developments unfolding in the region of your self-sufficiency and financial independence. These will not take you further from other people, as our culture so often insists, only closer. It’s not too late.

Aquarius (January 20-February 19)
You must be figuring out by now that you’re at a stage of your professional growth where your daily activities and long-term goals must address the depth and complexity of your spirit and of the world, if they are to be satisfying. That’s a tall order, I know. Most of what we do even in fairly advanced careers is unbelievably superficial, and we’re fortunate if we’re not in positions where we’re contributing to the destruction of the world. But if your conscience is nagging, listen to yourself. It is very likely that you’re about to discover at least one extremely significant aspect of your life in which you’ve been deceiving yourself. But this deception was based on an earlier family lie that has absolutely nothing to do with you. The problem is, it’s so big that, once acknowledged, it would call your loyalty to your entire heritage, and the actions to which this has guided you, into question. I say this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Pisces (February 19-March 20)
The energy of anticipation must be palpable, and when something huge looms just around the corner, it can be both exciting and frightening. Change is one of the most fearsome prospects among people on the planet. But change of a type you have not experienced in a long time is close upon you. A long phase of your life is drawing to a close, and a new one will arise like the New Jerusalem. The door to the past will close but not lock, and you will spend much of the year in slowly alternating phases on either side of the threshold, which is a threshold of identity. You will change, and the whole world will change in relationship to you. Notice the life you are living now. Notice what you think you want to change. Make a time capsule, take some pictures, describe your current existence in e-mails to your intimates. Read them in one year.

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