PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): When Arnold Schwarzenegger became Governor of California in 2003, the state had the eighth largest economy in the world, right behind Italy and just ahead of Brazil. Schwarzenegger had never before held political office. When Cambodian doctor Haing Nor performed in the film The Killing Fields, for which he ultimately won an Oscar, he had no training as an actor. He was a novice. Will you try to follow in their footsteps, Pisces? Is it possible you could take on a role for which you have no preparation or seasoning? According to my divinations, the answer is yes. But is it a good idea? That’s a more complex issue. Trust your gut.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): To depict what lay beyond the limits of the known world, medieval mapmakers sometimes drew pictures of dragons and sea serpents. Their images conveyed the sense that these territories were uncharted and perhaps risky to explore. There were no actual beasties out there, of course. I think it’s possible you’re facing a comparable situation. The frontier realm you are wandering through may seem to harbor real dragons, but I’m guessing they are all of the imaginary variety. That’s not to say you should entirely let down your guard. Mix some craftiness in with your courage. Beware of your mind playing tricks.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Whenever I close my eyes and seek psychic visions of your near future, I see heroic Biblical scenes. Moses is parting the Red Sea. Joseph is interpreting Pharaoh’s dream. Jesus is feeding 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish. What’s the meaning of my reveries? Well, this psychic stuff is tricky, and I hesitate to draw definitive conclusions. But if I had to guess, I’d speculate that you are ripe to provide a major blessing or perform an unprecedented service for people you care about.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In a New Yorker cartoon, Tom Gauld outlines “The Four Undramatic Plot Structures”: 1. “The hero is confronted by an antagonistic force and ignores it until it goes away.” 2. “The protagonist is accused of wrongdoing, but it’s not a big thing and soon gets sorted out.” 3. “The heroine is faced with a problem but it’s really difficult so she gives up.” 4. “A man wants something. Later, he’s not so sure. By suppertime he’s forgotten all about it.” In my astrological opinion, Gemini, you should dynamically avoid all four of those fates. Now is a time for you to take brave, forceful action as you create dramatic plot twists that serve your big dreams.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): “To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright,” said heavyweight German philosopher Walter Benjamin, a fellow Cancerian. I am happy to report that there’s a good chance you will soon be blessed with an extraordinary measure of this worry-free self-awareness. And when you do—when you are basking in an expanded self-knowledge infused with self-love and self-appreciation—some of your chronic fear will drop away, and you will have at your disposal a very useful variety of happiness.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “As you get older, the heart sheds its leaves like a tree,” said French novelist Gustave Flaubert. “You cannot hold out against certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves; and then there are the storms that break off several branches at one go. And while nature’s greenery grows back again in the spring, that of the heart never grows back.” Do you agree with Flaubert, Leo? I don’t. I say that you can live with such resilient innocence that your heart’s leaves grow back after a big wind, and become ever-more lush and hardy as you age. You can send down such deep, strong roots and stretch your branches toward the sun with such vigor that your heart always has access to the replenishment it needs to flourish. The coming weeks will provide evidence that what I say is true.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “I will not wait to love as best as I can,” says writer Dave Eggers. “We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love.” That’s your keynote for the coming weeks, Virgo. That’s your wake-up call and the rose-scented note under your pillow and the message scrawled in lipstick on your bathroom mirror. If there is any part of you that believes love will be better or fuller or more perfect in the future, tell that part of you to shut up and embrace this tender command: Now is the time to love with all of your heart and all of your soul and all of your mind.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I love the song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” by Pink Floyd. Other favorites are Tool’s “Third Eye” and Yo La Tengo’s “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind.” But all of these tunes have a similar problem. They’re more than ten minutes long. Even before my attention span got shrunk by the Internet, listening to them tested my patience. Now I have to forcefully induce a state of preternatural relaxation if I want to hear them all the way through. In the coming days, Libra, don’t be like a too-much-of-a-good-thing song. Be willing to edit yourself. Observe concise boundaries. Get to the point quickly. (You’ll be rewarded for it.)
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Sneaking around isn’t necessary, Scorpio. There’s no useful power to be gained by hiding information or pursuing secret agendas. This is not a time when it’s essential for you to be a master of manipulation who’s ten steps ahead of everyone else. For now, you are likely to achieve maximum success and enjoy your life the most if you are curious, excitable, and transparent. I invite you to embody the mindset of a creative, precocious child who has a loving mommy and daddy.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first humans to reach the summit of Mount Everest. It took them seven weeks to climb the 29,029-foot peak. In 1960, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh got into a bathyscaphe and sailed to the lowest point on the planet, the Mariana Trench at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It took them four hours and 47 minutes to go down 36,070 feet. Based on my analysis of your astrological omens, I think the operative metaphor for you in the coming weeks should be the deep descent, not the steep ascent. It’s time to explore and hang out in the depths rather than the heights.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The African country of Ivory Coast has two different capital cities. Yamoussoukro is the official capital, while Abidjan is the actual capital, where the main governmental action takes place. I suspect there’s a comparable split in your personal realm, Capricorn: a case of mixed dominance. Maybe that’s a good thing; maybe it allows for a balance of power between competing interests. Or perhaps it’s a bit confusing, causing a split in your attention that hampers you from expressing a unified purpose. Now would be a favorable time to think about how well the division is working for you, and to tinker with it if necessary.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I’ve gone on three book tours and done my spoken-word show in scores of bookstores. But one of my favorite author events took place at the Avenue C Laundromat in New York City’s East Village. There I performed with two other writers as part of the “Dirty Laundry: Loads of Prose” reading series. It was a boisterous event. All of us authors were extra loose and goofy, and the audience offered a lot of funny, good-natured heckling. The unusual location freed everyone up to have maximum amusement. I see the coming weeks as a time when you, too, might thrive by doing what you do best in seemingly out-of-context situations. If you’re not outright invited to do so, I suggest you invite yourself.
Homework: Devise a plan not to get back to where you once belonged, but rather to where you must some day belong. Testify at FreeWillAstrology.com