LEO (July 22-August 23)
My phone rang at 2am the other night. It was a young Leo friend, freaked out. She had a house-sitting gig and had arrived home later than planned to discover that Lilly, one of the cats she was watching, had not come home. This was in a wild part of the area, where coyotes roam. She called Lilly, heard a faraway cat squeal, then some coyotes yelping. She concluded that Lilly had just been eaten. She was beside herself and crying about what a failure she was. I listened to her for a while, dialed in St. Francis, and cast the astrology. The chart looked good, and as I woke up, I remembered many feline moments of assuming the worst. I hung out on the phone with her till she calmed down. At first light, Lilly came strolling home after a warm night of sitting under a bush, sniffing ferns, or whatever it is that cats do. (Nobody really knows). I would guess she was never more than 100 meters from the house. August is a growly month, with coyotes yelping and weird sounds in the night. Chiron makes one last visit to your opposite sign Aquarius, giving you a chance to clean up any leftover work in a relationship healing project. Many other planets get into the act and make a lot of noise. I suggest you stay centered and calm, take care of yourself, and remember Lilly.
VIRGO (August 23-September 22)
You seem to be caught in a time warp, as if you’re retreating into old patterns that are heedless of all the work you’ve done on yourself. Think of this as a cleansing process. There’s always another closet to clean, another organ to revitalize, always something harmful that you can cut out of your diet. Just make sure that for everything you eliminate, you add something you like. For every closet you clean, keep some of the treasures and appreciate what they remind you of. For every aggravating food you eliminate, add one or two things that are nourishing and give you pleasure. A core element of this process involves how you feel about money. There’s a subplot about how you present your finances to the world. Many are intent on showing the world how rich they are; others make a point of how poor they are. I suggest you try for no pretenses, and for doing nothing that “makes a statement.” You’re in a phase where your primary financial goal needs to be investing in yourself. Your old attitudes toward money are crumbling or soon will be. Even as they hang on for dear life, the new ones, the more nourishing and creative ones, are coming in. One is necessarily recognizing that financial growth means developing the awareness of money and its power, building infrastructure, and maintaining balances, such as between income and expenses, or assets and debt. Just remember, all of this is for real, not for show.
LIBRA (September 22-October 23)
It’s now clear that you’re initiating the changes in your life. This is coming from a commitment so deep that nobody could stop you anymore than they can inspire you. It’s a little like when the root of a tree splits apart a huge boulder. That is coming from the life force energy of the tree, and its determination to thrive in its environment. In a similar way, you are putting down roots. You are solidifying something about the nature of your character, and are confident that you’ve found the pattern into which you want to grow your life. With Saturn in your sign for the next two years, you have two special gifts to work with. One is some extraordinarily materializing power. You have the ability to grow things, ideas, projects, and enterprises. You need to use this carefully and be extraordinarily fair in your use of that power. The second gift is the potential for profound psychological growth fostered by potent, mature introspection. No matter how old you are, the next two years will feel like a distinct phase of entering adulthood. Note that those born in the early 1980s are going through their first Saturn return, no matter what Sun sign they’re born under, though all Libras will have a similar sense of transition into what I will describe as a phase of culmination. You are arriving somewhere real, which will serve as a foundation on which to build the next decade or more of your life.
