ARIES (March 20-April 19)
The only reason developments will take you by surprise this month is because you’ve become distracted by less important things. In particular, I strongly suggest you not get involved in petty dramas and seeming problems in your workplace. These will only ensnare you in trivia. If you’ve already become involved, then snip and slip out of the web, cease giving your opinion and focus on working out old, persistent problems rather than anything that makes its appearance as something seemingly new and exciting. One thing it’s time to consider carefully is if the work you do every day matches your passion, your intelligence, and your creativity. If it doesn’t, that could be the root cause of any turbulence in your life. Yet there are deeper regions that the current Mercury retrograde is guiding you to explore, and one of them is your family’s connection to religion. This may be the source of a “work ethic” that consistently guides you a way from what you love to do, and what you’re the most talented at. One last factor is understanding the way in which your state of mind influences your relationships. This factor is not imaginary—how you feel, and the thoughts that you think, influence the people who are closest to you. Many of these ideas are, in turn, influenced by your relationship to the past, and that is what is coming to the surface now. Remember: Love brings up everything unlike itself.
TAURUS (April 19-May 20)
We often hear the admonition that “relationships are mirrors,” and often that works out to be true. Yet there is a mirror we often don’t consider, which is the looking glass of gender. Part of the “other” we seek in relationships is the seemingly polar opposite that lets us feel or experience existence from the viewpoint of the other sex. The differences between men and women are so exploited that we live with many false ideas about who this mysterious other really is. We make expectations on them, and on ourselves, that emphasize artificial differences rather than natural similarities. And we lose sight of something even more precious, which are the subtle shades of humanity that are authentically male and female, and which give us access to something that we can’t quite reach any other way. Yet what these differences also teach us is that we contain our opposite. That is part of the beauty of the reflection: What we see is interesting or beautiful because it shows us something within ourselves that we don’t usually see. That something exists in same-sex relationships as well, where we see another beautiful or challenging or curious reflection of self-as-other and other-as-self. As Venus and Mars move into your opposite sign Scorpio, you’ll be taken to some deep places on these explorations of the mirror effect in your relationships, and can gain some unusual insight into yourself. Mercury retrograde in Virgo emphasizes what I’ll call the psycherotic nature of this journey: the mind as the most profound sexual instrument.
GEMINI (May 20-June 21)
One of your parents had a mental sticking point, and it’s the place where you most often get stuck. This affects your work, your emotional health, and most of all, your sense of safety (which could translate into habitual anxiety). In other words, something that belonged to one of them—your father was the likely source—is affecting your life in ways that you may not recognize. The problem is that it’s a blind spot; you can look directly at it and still not see it clearly. Also, you may have a question about whether the issue even exists; in the face of considerable evidence, you still don’t believe it consistently enough to address the situation, or even to have specific information about what to address. The planets are set up such that a new level of truth is dawning on you, in a series of revelations. It’s like you’re unearthing layers of the past, including from past generations, that are influencing your life today, and that you can actually process and let go of. A few of these may take you by storm. Others will gradually come into focus. Whatever you suddenly discover, keep paying attention to the details, and gather your facts meticulously. Be aware that certain aspects currently in force, lasting well past midmonth, could be stirring up more than the usual amount of fear or emotional discomfort. Think of these feelings as being set free and bubbling to the surface. Then let them go.
