| An Astrological Note: Sign dates below are approximate. They now overlap by one day -- this is the day the Sun changes signs in 2001. The date and time of the Sun's ingress to the new sign varies a little each year, so check with an astrologer if you want the exact position of your Sun. Or you can use a free chart service, if you know your time of birth (if not, the chart will be a close approximation, minus your ascendant or rising sign). These horoscopes are written for your Sun (birthday) and rising (birth time) signs. Astrologically You Are Your Ascendant. But let's say you get fancy and you know you have Taurus on the midheaven. You can look at the Taurus horoscope for some clues about your career, and work this little trick with any house you know how to read. For more information about how horoscopes work, take a look at The Horoscope Story. |
| Mercury Also Rises |
| |
| Authority figures are known for making stunning blunders, yet we still appeal to authority for truth. "The phonograph...is not of any commercial value," said Thomas Edison, to his assistant, speaking of his own invention. "Well-informed people know it's impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value," opined the Boston Post in 1865. So, watch what you say, and moreover, what you allow yourself to believe. You are inclined, at several points this month, to believe just about anything. And hey, it may even be true. But I really, really suggest that you not repeat -- or act upon -- something that you don't know for a fact is true, tempting though it may be to do so, no matter how reliable the source. What you are dealing with is authoritative misinformation. You need verification, and you're going to get it, but it might not go the way you think. Regardless, the truth is better. |
| |
| So much is happening in your immediate environment, that is to say, right here and right now, that you don't need to spend any time thinking about the past or the future. Recent events were confusing, and we both know how much you love confusion. The future is uncertain; we both know how much you love uncertainty. However at the moment, uncertainty is your best friend. Circumstances are likely to change very fast on the professional front, and you will need to use your intuition, discrimination and honesty. You will also need to remember something that will be difficult to remember in order to have full information when the time comes to make fast changes. This something is something you know, but keep forgetting. It may dawn on you while you're folding your socks or unloading the dishwasher. Then it slips away. It seems like a fantasy, but it is a fact -- a very important, powerful and useful fact. |
| |
| You will need to respond with measured calm to whatever you are presented with toward the beginning of the month. These months and, to some extent, years of your life represent a time of testing, and you are in the peak of one such moment. What kind of tests? Maturity, for starters. Reasoning capability, for another. A test of your ability to look, honestly, beneath the surface of a situation, for a third. But most important, you are faced with one of the more vivid opportunities of your life to undo the inner structures that were laid into you as a child, and which have greatly curtailed your imagination and curiosity. Lacking these vital nutrients, your mind can wander, and your attention may only reach the more shallow depths of your awareness. But this is not a shallow time in your life, and neither is it one lacking in potential, or potential joy. To reach these spaces, all you need is a gentle touch of discipline -- from within. |
| |
| You may be wondering whether your luck will hold out, but I ask: why trust to luck when you can count on fortune? As my friend Aart used to remind me, "Fortune is a god." You do understand that you need to take some kind of a risk in order to have a corresponding gain, but what factors intervene between the two is, at least in part, a matter of your own choice. Hidden issues often obscure choices. Could this be about letting go of fearful ideas you did not know you have, and which were given to you by other people? Could it be about letting go of attachment to people whose self-destructiveness or tendencies to take wild nosedives affects your well-being and energy flow? Could it be about locating that true place of inner sanctuary where you know you are safe, and where you can relax enough to allow the true abundance of life to rise to your awareness? Fortune is a god, one who depends on our acceptance to be real. |
| |
| The quality of being that allows you feel like you stand on a solid foundation is the same thing that terrifies just about everyone else. There's only so deep within themselves most people really want to go. At certain times, you're like everyone else, yet at others, you thrive on your own mystery, and possess a gift for inner depth that is rather astonishing. You know that at the core of the Sun that is your astrological ruler is a dark and labyrinthine world of surrender and transformation. Your awareness is now firmly rooted in this world, as you recall that each time you return here, your inner space is different, and the way back is unknown. But if most of your fellow travelers fear entering this space, it is also true that you usually fear articulating the realities you discover within, telling yourself that it's good enough to feel. But now is a vital time to speak, with discretion and care, about yourself not to those you feel will understand you, but those you need and want to understand you. |
| |
| You seem to live with a wound or trauma from which you feel you may never recover, and you have begun to make peace with this. At times, it is an open injury, at others, a scar, and at others, the memory infuses your emotional process with the deep memory of what you experienced. This has worked two ways in your experience of life, the first of which is to trigger an avoidance of closeness when your vulnerability brings you too close to the scene of the crime or accident. And thus the primary manifestation of living with your trauma is alienation. But you have also built up certain unusual powers as a result of dealing with your situation. Your aptitude for highly skilled work is one outgrowth of a coping mechanism, but in fact, it is one of your less fancy gifts. The coming month would seem to be a time of communicating with your pain, releasing some of it, and making contact with your more subtle and exquisite gifts of having endured your very special karma. |
| |
| God is not mad at you, and won't ask you to sacrifice your favorite cow, your ideas or your ass. One scourge of institutional religion is that we're all infected with a concept of "god," supposedly the ultimate and original creative force, who has limited powers, who is stingy and worst of all, vengeful. If god = love, then love = revenge. This god-concept, which then runs our minds, is not real; the whole phenomenon is internal, but it doesn't help that millions of other people fall for it, and that a mean world is used as substantiation for the existence of a mean cosmic intelligence. While this particular issue seems to be nagging you lately, you're headed for a rare moment of clarity on the true nature of your higher being and its relationship to the universal creative force. The process involves not remembering anything, but rather forgetting. Can we consciously choose to forget something? I don't know, but some strange astrology coming your way suggests you'll have lots of help if you try. |
| |
| This is no time for casual commitments. Birthdays are potent times of realignment, quickening of energy and heightened awareness. Correspondingly, you may notice that people are more aware of you and unusually responsive, as if you're emitting some pheromone that puts them under a stronger-than-usual spell. Unsettling changes in your security base are possible, but please get over it. Shifting, tension and conflict are allowing you rare openings for progress. Unexpected revelations and beginnings are in store, and a sixth sense of trust will stay with you as long as you pay careful attention to how you feel. You may think that, of all things, this is impossible, but you actually know better than you think. Just make the effort to stay aware of yourself, and hold as clear of a vision as you can of something better: an existence that is balanced, integrated and, most vital to your sanity, mutually honest. Such realities, when they happen, are never created by accident. |
| |
| Of all the signs, Sagittarians are the least at home here. You do fine adapting to the uncertain conditions on our little world at the far-flung corner of the galaxy, but it's a great adjustment. Many here seem to lack any sense of the higher laws that govern life, creation and evolution. The thought of death is both overbearing, and deeply denied. At times, your sense of longing, or the calling of some faraway reality, pulls at your every waking moment. You know, though, that many of the crushing lessons people now face are born of their refusal to accept their higher purpose, though there's precious little you can do to help. For you, the truly happy news is that the signals from your distant origins are reaching the Earth more strongly now than they have in decades. There is, for many souls, the awakening to the larger picture, and the deeper reality of existence. To you, this world will seem a lot more like the home you have never forgotten, and I trust that your sense of original mission will pour in stronger than ever. |
| |
| You're working too hard for your own good, or the good of your ultimate goals. If you're losing time, energy or money, then harder is not the way to proceed; we might say clearer, or more creative, or more honest -- but please, not harder. There are certain aspects of your life that are taking care of themselves, but you have to figure out what they are, for you're devoting attention and effort to certain projects that require little or none. Also, your instincts may be telling you it's time to take a big risk, but as far as I can tell, it would be prudent to be conservative, as in, conserve. More appropriately, it's time for someone else to take a big risk on you. Whether you will open yourself to this, or allow it to happen, is the true test of your confidence in yourself. Your striving, willingness to sacrifice and sense of a need to play along with a greater good of which you may not even be a part are all sending precisely the wrong signal to the world. You have no need to need to prove yourself -- just to accept the proof you already have. |
| |
| Can you say, "Identity crisis?" Try it. Make a few sentences with these words that some people pretend not to understand, then go wheeling about the world clueless as to, well, who they are. November finds you as potentially delusional as it does brilliantly successful; the two may be a dangerous mix. Not everything you think or feel is as real as it seems, and you'll need some help sorting out what's in your imagination from what's an actual condition or situation. People are unlikely to come to you for this process. If you have a trusted therapist or advisor you've been avoiding, now's as good time as ever to resume work. Self-destructive actions take many forms, including believing things about yourself that are not true, pretending to accept values that are not your own, and ignoring what you know you need to pay attention to. Please, please, please, don't take chances where your kids are concerned. Stay true to your responsibilities as a parent, or as steward of your creations. |
| |
| This is not the month to pander to your fears. Fear, whatever it may do psychologically and emotionally, creates an opening in the outer world for the negativity and less-than-organic behavior of others. Yet the same force that might entice you to accept unwholesome possibilities will also be a rich source of imaginative passion. The planetary chemistry of which I speak is a mixture of volatile elements, but if you follow some psychic hygiene, you'll ride the high side of this energy. One is to know when you're scared, pause and work it out emotionally; a diary or an even-keeled friend is a good venue for this. (Drugs are not.) Allow outlets for your deepest feelings. Match maintenance work with creative output, and keep the space around you in order; these will pay high dividends. In business, the most favorable deal is likely to be the one you're offered first, though only if it vibrates with good faith and matches your newfound inner sense of who you are. ++ |
 | And now for an endorsement for a free service. For more than a year, I've been reading Planet Forecast readings from our friends at StarIQ.com (on the other side of Lake Washington), which are transit reports keyed directly to your natal chart. They come by email, a few per week, depending on the week. They are excellent. To sign up free, use this link. I can't tell you who wrote them, it wasn't me, but he's one of the best astrologers in the business. |
