Rob Brezsny crop
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):Pablo Casals was one of the greatest cello players who ever lived. Among his early inspirations was the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Casals discovered Bach's six cello suites when he was 13 years old, and played them every day for the next 13 years. Have you ever done something similar, Gemini? Devoted yourself to a pleasurable discipline on a regular basis for a long time? I invite you to try it. The coming months will be an excellent time to seek mastery through a diligent attention to the details..
CANCER (June 21-July 22): "I know that I am not a category," said philosopher Buckminster Fuller. "I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process." Philosopher Norman O. Brown had a similar experience. "The human body is not a thing or substance, but a continuous creation," he mused. "It is an energy system which is never a complete structure; never static; is in perpetual inner self-construction and self-destruction." Now is an excellent time to imagine yourself in these terms, Cancerian. You're not a finished product, and never will be! Celebrate your fluidity, your changeableness, your instinctual urge to reinvent yourself.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Renowned 20th-century theologian Karl Barth worked on his book Church Dogmatics for 36 years. It was more than 9,000 pages long and contained over six million words. And yet it was incomplete. He had more to say, and wanted to keep going. What's your biggest undone project, Leo? The coming months will be a good time to concentrate on bringing it to a climax. Ideally, you will do so with a flourish, embracing the challenge of creating an artful ending with the same liveliness you had at the beginning of the process. But even if you have to culminate your work in a plodding, prosaic way, do it! Your next big project will be revealed within weeks after you've tied up the last loose end.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Susannah Cibber was a popular 18th-century English contralto whose singing was expressive and moving. On one occasion, she performed Handel's Messiah with such verve that an influential priest responded by making an extravagant guarantee. He told her that as a result of her glorious singing, any sins she had committed or would commit were forever forgiven. I'd like to see you perpetrate an equivalent amazement, Virgo: a good or beautiful or soulful deed that wins you a flood of enduring slack. The cosmic omens suggest that such an achievement is quite possible.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Johnny Appleseed was a 19th-century folk hero renowned for planting apple trees in vast areas of rural America. During the 70 years this famous Libra was alive, he never got married. He believed that if he remained unwed during his time on earth, he would be blessed with two spirit-wives in the after-life. Have you ever done something like that yourself, Libra? Is there an adventure you've denied yourself in the here and now because you think that's the only way you can get some bigger, better adventure at a later date? If so, now would be an excellent time to adjust your attitude.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): "It is kind of fun to do the impossible," said Walt Disney, a pioneer animator whose cartoon innovations were remarkable. Judging from your current astrological omens, I think you Scorpios have every right to adopt his battle cry as your mantra. You've got an appointment with the frontier. You're primed to perform experiments at the edge of your understanding. Great mysteries will be tempting you to come closer and lost secrets will be teasing you with juicy clues. As you explore and tinker with the unknown, you might also want to meditate on the graffiti I saw scrawled on a mirror in a public restroom: "Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible."
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Astronauts on lunar expeditions have orbited the moon and seen its entire surface. But the rest of us have never seen more than 59 percent of it. As the moon revolves around the Earth, it always keeps one side turned away from our view. Isn't that amazing and eerie? The second most important heavenly body, which is such a constant and intimate factor in our lives, is half-hidden. I'd like to propose that there is an analogous phenomenon in your inner world, Sagittarius: a part of you that forever conceals some of its true nature. But I'm pretty sure you will soon be offered an unprecedented chance to explore that mysterious realm.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Anglo-Irish novelist Laurence Sterne married his wife Elizabeth in 1741. Twenty-five years later he fell in love with another woman, Eliza. In composing love letters to his new infatuation, he lifted some of the same romantic passages he had originally written to Elizabeth when he was courting her. Try hard not to do anything remotely resembling that, Capricorn. Give your intimate allies your freshest stuff. Treat them as the unique creatures they are. Resist the temptation to use shticks that worked to create closeness in the past.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): It's important that you not punish yourself or allow yourself to be punished for the sins that other people have committed. It's also crucial that you not think nasty thoughts about yourself or put yourself in the presence of anyone who's prone to thinking nasty thoughts about you. Self-doubt and self-criticism may be healthy for you to entertain about ten days from now, and at that time you will probably benefit from receiving compassionate critique from others, too. But for the moment, please put the emphasis on self-protection and self-nurturing.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): For over three decades, a man in Assam, India has worked to build a forest. When Jadav "Molai" Payeng started planting and tending seeds at the age of 16, the sandbars bordering the Brahmaputra River were barren. Today, almost entirely thanks to him, they're covered with a 1,360-acre forest that harbors deer, birds, tigers, rhinos, and elephants. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you could launch a comparable project in the next 12 months, Pisces—a labor of love that will require your persistent creativity and provide you with sanctuary for a long time.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Maybe you've seen that meme circulating on the Internet: "My desire to be well-informed is at odds with my desire to remain sane." If you feel that way now—and I suspect you might soon if you don't already—you have cosmic permission, at least for a while, to emphasize sanity over being well-informed. Lose track of what Kim Jong-un and Kim Kardashian are up to, ignore the statements of every jerk on the planet, and maybe even go AWOL from the flood of data that relentlessly pours toward you. Instead, pay attention to every little thing your body has to tell you. Remember and marvel at your nightly dreams. Go slow. Lay low. Be soft. Have fun with unspectacular influences that make you feel at home in the world.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I expect you will be called on to move fluidly between opposing camps or competing interests or different realities. Maybe you'll volunteer to serve as an arbiter between the crabby good guys and the righteous bad guys. Perhaps you'll try to decode one friend's quirky behavior so that another friend can understand it. You might have to interpret my horoscopes for people who think astrology is bunk. You may even have to be a mediator between your own heart and head, or explain the motivations of your past self to your future self. You can't be perfect, of course. There will be details lost in translation. But if you're as patient as a saint and as tricky as a crow, you'll succeed.