Mars retrograde begins May 11. Additional information is available here and here. May is National Masturbation Month (no kidding).
Check for continuing coverage of this important issue at Sexuality.org.Aries (March 21-April 19)
It would seem that you've evolved or stumbled upon some very powerful ideas recently, and that in this moment you are likely to be feeling just how precious these ideas are. Yet there is more, something much more subtle, that is coming your way; though if you approach the world with a conquering spirit you're not necessarily going to be a bad conqueror, you'll just miss some of the more beautiful dimensions of what you're being offered. Take a moment and be still; there is a place within you where galactic wisdom and your body's wisdom meet. There is a healing being offered to you now, and in the coming weeks and months I trust you'll recognize a healing gift you have to offer to others. The healing relates to men: if you are a man, to the crippled sense of maleness that our culture passes through the generations; if you are a woman, to the anger and frustration you may feel with men, and to your own wounded desire nature.Taurus (April 20-May 20)
Lots has been going on just where you like it: in that secret place nobody else can get to. It's as if you've been in a private screening room watching movies about yourself. Some have been documentaries; others have been action thrillers; others have been romances. Maybe I'm wrong. The test for whether these were movies or real life events is the extent to which other people have been involved in your inner emotional process, which is admittedly more difficult now than usual. It may seem pointless, risky or embarrassing to let others know your secrets, but the benefit is that you get back in the loop, and you get feedback. This is not information you can survive without. Changes to one set of circumstances have lifted enormous burdens from your shoulders recently; perhaps you feel some sense of relief. This is nothing compared to what you'll feel when you give yourself permission to be you all the time, or even most of the time.Gemini (May 21-June 20)
Do you now see the nature of the prison in which you were living? Is it clear yet that by refusing to identify yourself clearly, you struggled with a vague notion of your existence that allowed others to define (and even create) you? This cannot persist, and it will not, but in order to build your freedom, it's now important that you focus on who you know you are -- and that you watch vigilantly both what other people project onto you, and what they really know about themselves. Your overwhelming tendency has been to view others as more powerful, more important, more spiritual and more threatening then they really are, or were. There is no way you can force people to take a certain view of you, but it is surely possible to define yourself in such a way that does not use others as reference points. That was their game; now, you seem destined to touch the reality that self-knowledge and freedom are the same thing.Cancer (June 21-July 22)
There are pivotal moments in everyone's life, and it's a good time to alert you to one June 21. The technical reference is a total solar eclipse the day of the Summer Solstice, which is an rare and beautiful combination of events. For Cancer Sun, this occurs right before your birthday; for Cancer ascendant, when the Sun and the Moon align exactly with your rising sign. What this means in practical terms is that it would serve you well if everything you do for the next two months were designed and conducted in preparation for that moment, and the season that follows. It is vital that as few trivial matters as possible interfere with your life now, and then. This will take discipline; treating yourself as something of an athlete preparing for a major match is an apt metaphor. Keep your focus. Drop the projects that don't work for you -- other influences will help you do this like never before. You surely want to make the most of this time, and you'll know a lot more about why in the weeks just before and after.Leo (July 23-Aug. 22)
It's often difficult to see what actually binds us to other people. There are some who believe in past lives because it creates a sense of the future. Others, though, find that reincarnation is the only way to explain how things became the way they are, or why people just show up and take certain roles in our lives, which seem both predestined and very difficult to change. This about karma, but the notion of karma is another way of saying "living with the effects of what we create." You are in an exceptionally creative stage right now, like nothing you're familiar with, and like nothing you'll ever quite experience again. I don't just mean creative in terms of art, music or writing. I mean creative as in giving birth to circumstances, relationships, ideas and experiments which will take on a life of their own. You are also blessed with exceptional insight into people and their motives. Just make sure you apply your insights about people to your creative process with them; that is, if you're going to create life with someone, make sure you're working the same agenda.Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
Virgo rhymes with Vertigo. Vertigo means you can't get clear about which way is up. There are certainly some compelling issues pulling you down, in the direction of your roots, your home, your inner emotional world; they are as compelling and ambitious as what most people feel as aspiration that reaches into the outer world. Your problem with up, with reaching outwardly, has been that for a long time it's registered more like a theoretical exercise than as actual experience or opportunity. Yet you are now entering a new stage, a level of maturity thus far unbeknownst to you. You are blessed with the ability to reach from vision into manifestation. The true story about your highest visions is that they've been rather conservative, rather subdued. Try having bigger, wider visions. Try reaching for them. It will suddenly become very clear which way is up.Libra (Sep. 23-Oct. 22)
Now that you've been run through the Hall of Mirrors, I would propose that it's time to bring everyone in your life to the contract negotiation table. You've had a good look at yourself. You've been honest, perhaps brutally honest. You have, very likely, seen the ways you made people out to be something other than they were; the ways in which you held people to their past, and allowed them to hold you to yours. Okay, honoring commitment is a form of integrity. But commitment, to be meaningful, needs to be based in reality, and it needs to be flexible. Most of all, it needs to be mutual. There are many small things you would not do if you held yourself to the larger guiding principles you treasure and value. Try this for a while and you'll see a whole bunch of the famous "ambivalence" of Librans disappear like smoke.Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
I want to suggest, in a big, bold way, that you get with yourself and take a look at your priorities. Who am I to say that anybody is doing the right or wrong thing in life (with the obvious exceptions of people creating human cloning, bioengineering, nuclear bombs and dioxin pollution, which ain't you)? However, the priority system of our culture is so messed up that it would make sense to stop one's life every single day and ask what really matters, before doing anything else. You might be surprised, even shocked, if you track your answers for a month or two. You might find that some of your motives make absolutely no sense. You might discover you have some exceptionally clear, sane and necessary priorities that deserve your action and your attention. You may be sick of power struggles and of blaming others for your feelings. You just may observe that it really is your life, and that you have a right to change your mind. It's not too late.Sagittarius (Nov. 23-Dec. 21)
It is difficult to know when we are wasting our time in this world, but not impossible. Often after making a big change, we look back and see how we really did know much earlier on that we were in the wrong place, with the wrong person or pursuing an empty dream. We manage to get ourselves free, but there is a cost: time, usually time spent, in theory, deciding whether we were really ready. I would propose that most of that is actually time invested hesitating; time spent knowing, but not acknowledging. One particular question has come up repeatedly for you, practically for as long as you remember. It's surfacing again now. In about three months it will come up for what may be the last time. Who knows; maybe there's lots you'll learn between now and then, or perhaps you already know it all. But it's best to act on what you know.Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)
You may have been under so much pressure and living with so many restrictions these past years that it was nearly impossible for you to focus on what your real purpose was. There's little chance you ignored the question, however. And I would imagine that there have been several choice moments where the light shined through so bright that everything else disappeared from sight, or was seen in its real context. Search your memories and databases; read your diaries, your notebooks, your recorded Tarot card and rune spreads; check old emails and letters you sent to others. You made promises to yourself. You vowed to create opportunities. Some of these commitments and revelations may still hold true; you're the judge. In any case, several dates stand out as particularly illuminating, even if some were a little strange: June 1998; March-April 1999; January 2000; April 2000; November 2000. Do they tell a story?Aquarius (Jan. 19-Feb. 18)
We all have hidden karma, those places in our life where there are debts, issues, talents and rewards we did not suspect were present. Or, in earlier years, we have deferred certain questions and issues to the future, put off important conversations, or have in some way failed to look at the effects of our creations. With Saturn now beginning its two-year sweep through Gemini, you can reasonably expect a number of these accounts to come up for a spiritual audit, and for final reconciliation. At least be glad the books are still open, that it's not too late to adjust, and make amends or amendments with both others and yourself. It is in the nature of Saturn to both give and take, but experience teaches thus: the more you give, the more he gives back; the more fair you are, the more fairly circumstances will treat you.Pisces (Feb. 19-Mar. 20)
No doubt events at the end of last month provided you with a little surprise revelation about your true worth, and no doubt you are feeling a more clear calling toward a destination you long suspected you'd go. I cannot overemphasize how strong the possibility of change in all aspects of your life truly is right now. I don't mean small change or major change, I just mean real change, which starts inside you and reaches outward into every facet of your reality. You know you need this, and know you want it. But you'll need to allow it to happen. You can still resist; you can still stand in the way of the cosmic plan, or look away from the light. So, in a sense, the less you do the better. Of what you do, being thorough counts for more than holding yourself to a high standard, which in reality you've already attained. In the music of your life, the spaces between now count for more than the notes.++