Once in a Lifetime From Self-Actualization to Soul Retrieval


Dear Friend and Reader:

First, before we get into Mars retrograde, remember: everything is headed for the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in the first degree of Aquarius. Mars retrograde is preparation for whatever that aspect is about, and whatever that is, it's something big.

At the same time, Chiron is still early in its trek through Aries; we have a lot to learn from this. The relationship is that the individuation of Chiron in Aries is essential for functioning under the intensified group energy of the forthcoming Aquarius planets.

Whether or not you get assimilated into the Borg and reduced to an IP address has much to do with your response to the conditions on the planet as they are developing now.

We are experiencing once-in-a-lifetime events; the pattern we are in will never repeat itself on any timescale relevant to contemporary history. The choice as always is to wake up or go to sleep, though it's never been so crucial as it is today. We were in many ways blindsided by Saturn conjunct Pluto back in January. We are now under new astrology of equal magnitude, which is approaching fast. We are on notice to pay attention and to be ready to take action. Mars Retrograde is Preparation for the Future

Through the journey of recording The Story of I AM, I've been married to the Mars retrograde charts lately, and they are exciting. The retrograde of Mars happens in Aries, something that has not occurred since 1988 (August through October of that year).

My take is that Mars retrograde is preparation for two future developments. One is to fully take up the journey of Chiron in Aries (2018-2027), which is not yet in full force and effect. The other is to be ready for the Aquarian era of Jupiter, Saturn and then Pluto entering the 11th sign, beginning in December. Jupiter conjunct Saturn is a moment for the ages. We have, as yet, not decided what that is about -- and it's a big decision.

What kind of society do we want? What kind of people do we want to be? Do we want to be moving ever-faster toward existence as cyborgs on the "internet of things," or do we value our humanity enough to keep it?

This is a real question, when we are flirting with the notion of citizenship rights being tied to an app on your phone, or a tattoo on your hand, that would give you permission to eat lunch or drive your car. The Special Case of Aries

Aries is a concept that deserves special analysis, as the first sign, and therefore representing initiation and genesis. Aries and its classical ruler Mars provide the basic initiative to commence the affairs of life, and represent a description of the energy to do so.

All of the signs contribute something distinct to the human experience, though several of the signs stand out. The quality of getting things moving is the key to surviving and thriving on our planet, where nothing much happens on its own. As Alice Bailey says right up top in her discussion of this sign, "Aries is the zodiacal sign through which the first Ray of Will or Power reaches our planetary life." And a bit later, "Aries initiates the cycle of manifestation."

This necessarily begins with manifesting the self, and the idea of self, and so Aries gets the distinction of being the sign of I AM. It is here that self is found and is also potentially lost.

As for found, one of my approaches is to look to the location of Aries in any personal chart (including the solar chart) as where a person will seek their personal wholeness. When you do this, you get some interesting results.

By this analysis, Scorpio is deeply concerned with the relevance of work, and develops itself there. This is about having Aries on the 6th house. Virgo, to give another example, will seek itself through merging with others -- then when it comes to a new level of self-understanding, un-merge and individuate and then either move on, or try to re-establish the relationship. This is about having Aries on the 8th house. To give one last example, the solar chart suggests that Pisces has an affinity for money, and needs to orient strongly on its finances in order to feel whole; this in turn is related to the issue of self-value. [I cover all of these in detail in the autumn reading.] The Avalanche Toward Virtual Living

As for losing oneself: I believe that Aries is the scene of radically changing, and for some, demolishing the concept and experience of self through total immersion in the digital sphere. We are living through a vast out-of-body experience: that is what "virtual reality" and "artificial intelligence" mean.

Having your memories on a device (your photos on a phone) is a way of externalizing a brain function to outside of your body. Though it has some similar properties, this is not the same thing as an old-school photo album. For one thing, you actually had to make the album yourself. And none was so large that it could contain 10,000 photos, but the albums were small enough that you could carry one almost everywhere.

One thing that has happened the past six months is an avalanche of physical reality into the digital realm. Everything from concerts to university courses are being created as digital events, not merely ending up there for replay. The concept of a meeting is being replaced by a virtual event.

Soon, people will watch reruns of The Office, and think that's what it was really like to go to work, since nobody will remember having done it. Children will believe that professional sporting events always had cardboard cutouts in the seats; they will be amazed to learn you could actually go in person.

And I am eagerly awaiting the advent of the virtual vacation, where a family lies in a pod, is given a dream-inducing drug, and goes to Paris for a week, in the style of The Matrix. All of this is equally out-of-body experience, and that is the keynote of our time in history.

When living out of body is the norm, the body can be considered extremely weird, and the potential for disease can feel terrifying. Note that one of the purveyors of the vaccine is a computer programmer who believes that he has the ideal means of injecting seven billion people with an upgrade to their DNA. Reintroducing Self-Actualization

New media innovations tend to retrieve something old. This tells you why young people in the digital age have an interest in being farmers, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. Something that would be excellent to retrieve is self-actualization.

This is the core curiosity that people have about what it means to be human. It is a tropism for existence, just like plants are phototropic and reach for the light, and tree roots are aquatropic and grow toward underground streams and the water table, and even crack through water and sewer mains.

Self-actualization is the process of "finding oneself" and also of bringing that self into actuality. This is a lifelong process that deserves to be treated with some reverence and also an understanding that growing, expressing yourself, and fully claiming your existence all require embarking on this journey and staying with it.

In our time, actualization of self means primarily existing in physical space and time. In virtual reality, everything is virtually real. The challenge in physical reality is that things seem "too real." But really they are just ordinary real, which means they exist in space and time — and need to be addressed.

You can think of Mars as the agent of self-actualization. Often, part of becoming involves searching through the past, noticing the many ways you have compromised and sacrificed yourself, and claiming back elements of who you are. The retrograde describes consciously searching your past for where you left yourself behind, or have cast yourself off. This is mostly a psychological (secular) process. One does not need the idea of a higher power to make it work. You would only need the idea that, as Joni Mitchell put it, "I'm not sure who I am, but life is for learning." We Could Also See This as Soul Retrieval

In the course of reading the 12 charts for Mars retrograde -- one for each of the signs -- I began to see the astrology as representing not just self-actualization but also soul retrieval.

This is generally thought of as something you get from a shaman in Sedona, Arizona, to whom you pay a visit and who helps you get back your soul. This treats the soul as a thing, an object of some kind. Maybe it's a little bit of flame that can be rekindled and that lives up on a cloud when you die. (As a child, I imagined this was shaped like the bottom of a shoe.)

From the standpoint of the seeker, I think of it as being assisted in collecting that seemingly missing thing, the lack of which is making life unfulfilling. Yet this can never be done by another person.

In the 1983 film Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, the corporate boardroom scene (set in the headquarters of The Very Large Corporation of America) contains a short monologue that got my attention, which begins with a discussion of the profit potential of people not wearing enough hats. This is from the transcript:

"In the universe, there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person's soul. However, this soul does not exist ab initio [from the beginning], as orthodox Christianity teaches. It has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved, owing to man's unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia."

In this sense, Mars retrograde offers the possibility of soul retrieval. There will be plenty to observe about yourself. And remember: soul is not a thing but a process of guided self-observation. That must be true: it comes from Monty Python and they are never wrong. Mars Aspects During the Retrograde

Mars makes many aspects during the retrograde, and it makes them to the planets that have cracked open the world as we knew it prior to Jan. 12. These are primarily chaos-goddess Eris in Aries (not an asteroid but an ultra-slow moving planet in the same sense that Pluto is); and 90-degree aspects to Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto.

Mars has made all these aspects in direct motion since midsummer through the present time, and will now make them in retrograde motion. In the mundane world -- the outer physical world, where things like pandemics and elections happen -- this will be a real shit show. People are going to be wondering how this is happening, though you can see the many elements of the setup going back for months.

The United States in particular has signed up for, and is paying handsomely for, the current state of perpetual crisis, and this is likely to be grossly accentuated. Remember that the U.S. Pluto return is running in the background of everything. This crisis associated with the election will reach new peaks as Election Day approaches, which will seem related to politics.

It goes much deeper, whether we are talking about the underlying emotional issues faced by individuals, or a culmination of the problems our society has been facing for generations. All of this will be enhanced by the immediate astrology of Mars retrograde squaring all those planets in late Capricorn — the sign of big business, government and the mental structures associated with them.

If you have your doubts whether any of this was planned in advance, that is understandable enough, and will be revealed in time. The thing to be wary of now is when political officials have an easy route to solving a problem and instead, complicate matters and drag out a crisis indefinitely — in effect, turning it into an industry. One of the ways to complete something is to embroil it in politics, the most dysfunctional level of human interaction in existence.

We are all too accustomed to this, and that is a serious problem.

The Capricorn alignment represents a lot of business going on behind the scenes, and some of it is going to burst out from behind the scenes. None of this will be flattering to the image of government or the political process. The last three weeks of the campaign occur with Mercury retrograde, which stations direct on Election Day. This is a situation comparable to what we experienced in 2000 with Bush v. Gore, with potentially delayed results, a lot of uncertainty, and the winner hanging in the balance for some time.

Yet I propose that most people will go along with it credulously because that is what they are used to.

Cynicism is a lazy point of view. Fortunately, this pattern has personal implications. Family Dynamics and Patterns

On the personal level, Mars and Eris versus all those planets in Capricorn are likely to stir up family dynamics, including unresolved stuff from the past. This of course relates to the drama that society is in. It always does; the problems of the family become the problems of the culture.

It is for this reason that the problems of the culture are unlikely to ever be resolved before there are a lot of people who have taken care of their family karma, and the damage that it did to them. This does not happen by accident. Most of the time, it happens in therapy, and I am wondering whether that exists anymore. There must be other ways; if you know of one, please tell me.

We are about to have a grand opportunity to do some of this work. It might show up in an annoying form; it might show up as a challenge that you know you can rise to, or not. Mars retrograde has the power to probe deeply into the past, and it's about to make contact with a group of retrograde planets that are themselves keepers of secrets from the world gone by. The Nature of Mars

As I've written before, Marshall McLuhan described how violence is always a quest for identity. He got this idea from Ray Bradbury, the author of The Martian Chronicles, and adapted it to media study.

This is a perfect description of Mars as most people experience it. There are alternate ways to find ourselves, but nothing so convenient and available all the time as starting a fight, an argument, a war or some other form of conflict.

Learning about ourselves peacefully -- that is, to embody the peaceful expression of Mars -- takes patience, time, long experience, and commitment to a conscious growth path that is itself not a diversion. Growth must include reckoning with sexual desire, which turns pernicious when not expressed in a wholesome way.

We began with Alice Bailey, and I want to end with one of her ideas, which have an odd way of being borne out by developments of science. In Esoteric Astrology, she refers ot "System One" and "System Two," meaning the two major revisions of our solar system. She says we now live in System Two. That turns out to be true. The original solar system originally had about 40 planets -- that is, the one before the Earth was formed. The planets smashed into one another, shattered, and reformed into other new planets. The asteroid belt is a leftover material that did not aggregate into a planet.

Mars, as I understand it, is a holdover from System One. It's a remnant of the original solar system. A lot has happened there, and somewhere in that history is the powers on that planet making war with one another just when they needed to be solving an environmental crisis.

We would do well to look to Mars as a potential future of life on Earth, if we don't learn how to express this energy peacefully. That is to say, we have some decisions to make.

The next few months will present many opportunities to do so. Let's get this correct now: we will never pass this way again.

With love,
2020 Autumn Reading — Instant Access The Story of I AM is Now Published


Dear Friend and Reader:

We have now published The Story of I AM — the 2020 autumn reading. These are a set of 12 astrology readings for each of the Sun and rising signs, each lasting 40 minutes.

The preview is available — a 30-minute discussion of what Mars retrograde is about, how it relates to the Capricorn alignment, and what its message is likely to be. We will learn more as we go through the experience (which lasts from Sept. 9 through Nov. 13).

	Still from the Scorpio edition of The Story of I AM. You may watch the free video preview to the whole series at this link. There are also samples for all 12 signs linked below this letter.

This series is available well in time to consider the implications of this unusual transit. Mars has not been retrograde in Aries since 1988; Mars favors retrogrades over on the Leo-Virgo-Libra side of the zodiac, so like many things happening in 2020, this is a generational event.

Though we are in challenging times, I take a positive approach. I'm reading astrology, through the philosophical lens of self-actualization and human potential: ideas we have not heard discussed in a very long time. And they are ideas we can benefit from now, and which a few of us remember.

To this work, I bring all of my experience supporting countless individuals through many sensitive transitions in their lives. My training in Gestalt Therapy (in the tradition of Fritz Perls), Hakomi Therapy (personally with Ron Kurtz) and Holistic Therapy (with Joseph Trusso) contribute greatly to my knowledge base, all of which take a client-centered approach rather than a theoretical or analytical one.

I take a positive and practical perspective, and a deep one. Astrology grants the ability to see behind the scenes, and to spot issues that might otherwise get missed. When done, astrology can save years of work. In our time, anyway, we don't have years, and cost is a factor. With an astrology reading, even one gem of an idea can focus your intentions and your progress.

These days a video chat with a therapist costs about $100. For just $99, you will get a series of 12 videos, all of which you will gain something helpful from. Your Sun and rising signs will be the ones to go to first, though Aries and Aquarius are the reference readings for this series. [The price for all 12 will go up to $111 very soon.]

These are readings that call for multiple viewings, and which will be worth watching again in six months.

You can get all 12 signs of The Story of I AM as one purchase per household — you may share with loved ones and intimate partners if you think the work will benefit them. Alternatively, you may choose your individual signs.

Thank you for your business, and for trusting me as your astrologer.

With love,

PS — This reading is included with the Backstage Pass.

Here are free five-minute reading samples for each sign:

Aries		Taurus		Gemini	Cancer		Leo		Virgo
Libra		Scorpio		Sagittarius	Capricorn		Aquarius		Pisces

Chiron Return, our nonprofit arm, publishes Covid19 News every day, in fact several times a day. We have updated about 740 times since we began publishing on March 3. This old-style news weblog takes a panoramic view of the virus situation. We offer news and viewpoints from a wide diversity of sources, science news, international reporting, videos and other resources to help you see the wide diversity of information not making it onto television or major websites. We are tracking the vaccine and testing issues carefully. Each Friday night, Chiron Return publishes Planet Waves FM. Running since 2010, with roots into Radio Woodstock in the 1990s, Planet Waves FM covers current events, current astrology, science history, personal growth and other themes. Includes music by Vision Quest, the in-house Planet Waves orchestra. Planet Waves publishes daily astrology and birthdays through the week. This feature includes a daily extended birthday reading and ongoing commentaries on developing astrology as it happens. Check in whenever you want — no password required. Monthly Horoscopes and Publishing Schedule Notes

Your extended monthly horoscopes for September are published below in this issue. We published your extended monthly horoscope for August on Monday, August 3. Please note: we normally publish the extended monthly horoscope after the Sun has entered a new sign.

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Aries (March 20-April 19) — To claim your desire is to claim your confidence. When you acknowledge what you want, letting nothing stand in the way of your mind and feelings, then you will emerge as the truly bold person that you are. For the next two months of Mars retrograde, you will find yourself on an inner quest to make contact with your passion, your yearning, and your needs. You will see all the ways you did not take possession of your feelings, and you will also get a kind of grand tour of all the emotional obstacles you encountered when you tried. You may notice a theme emerges, which is the influence your family had. They may have been wholesome and well-meaning people. They may have been deeply flawed. They may have existed a few places on a continuum between the two. Yet they made their mark, and in many ways it curtailed you. It is time for the consequences of that to end, and you are the only one who can make it so. This will come not through psychologizing or spiritualizing, but through direct experience. That means the exercise of your volition. The exploration of your curiosity. Experimenting with your determination and your drive. Allow yourself to ask all the most challenging questions, knowing that to do so is to challenge the authority others have exercised over you -- and knowing that in doing so, you are seeking the light of your own soul.

Story of I AM: All 12 signs | Choose your signs | Aries preview video

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Taurus (April 19-May 20) — The unusually anxious state of the world the past six months may be catching up with you. You're strong and durable; you know you're built to withstand the ongoing crisis that is life on Earth. Yet with Mars going retrograde in the most psychologically sensitive angle of your chart — Aries, the 12th house — you will want to be mindful of your mind and sensitive to your sensitivities. Powerful aspects are influencing you in a zone of your chart where they could be amplified, or where they could also disappear under the surface of your conscious mind and apply pressure that you cannot easily identify or point to. But we can see it in the astrological chart: retrograde Mars in the 12th is enough to stir the point, and more so as it will be conjunct Eris, square Saturn and square Pluto. These squares need a point of expression; you will not thrive if you bottle up your feelings. You will do well if you honor your inner search for truth, and acknowledge to yourself and to others what you're experiencing. Most important is that you have a dependable way to express yourself, including your sexuality (a deep, often unacknowledged theme of the 12th that we know about from Vedic astrology practiced in India). If you feel in some way caught or trapped, note that this is likely to be a trick of the mind. You will feel more liberated if you can share with someone who you trust will not judge you. And then do something creatively bold, in the physical tangible world, i.e., a new webpage does not count. A sculpture definitely counts.

Story of I AM: All 12 signs | Choose your signs | Taurus preview video

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Gemini (May 20-June 21) — You are a social creature, and you thrive among people. It's not like this is an option: your happiness depends on it, and so too does your personal growth. The time has come to claim back your social existence from the internet. As an air sign, it is easy for you to find a home in the ethereal, vapid world of "social" media, and yet you lose most of your power, beauty and charisma there. You get the challenges but not the benefits of true human contact. Indicated by Mars retrograde (Sept. 9 through Nov. 13), this is part of a much deeper awakening for you, which includes asserting yourself as your own autonomous, independent critter. What may seem first to influence your quasi-public life has deeper roots into your most intimate affairs. It is time to question the presumptions of any association you have with others. Those are likely to be rooted in ideas far beyond your generation; relics of your great grandparents are turning up in your underwear drawer, and it's time to see them for what they are. You don't have to live by these codes and rules, which exist mostly in our minds rather than as active ideas circulating in society. This begins and ends with being your own person, which for you will come as a benefit of asserting your physical existence in your social relationships. Call yourself fully present in the world. Be exactly who you are, and say what you need to say. Yet to have its full force and effect, eye contact is required.

Story of I AM: All 12 signs | Choose your signs | Gemini preview video

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Cancer (June 21-July 22) — For you, Mars retrograde in Aries is about asserting your privilege of what you want to accomplish, and your unique ability to do so. Your work is more important to you than you may recognize. You do not respond to a job; you respond to having a mission, and by all indications, you do have one. Over the next couple of months as Mars works its way backward in time and space, you will have the opportunity to retrieve many gifts and abilities that you may have left behind. This includes reviving contacts with people you worked with in the past, where you will be in a leadership position. This is helping you fully claim the calling of Chiron in Aries (2018-2027), your house of responsibility and personal authority. This has the potential to be a bona fide period of achievement in your life, though you can think of Mars retrograde as basic training for the next seven years. Impeccability is the order of the day. Others are looking to you for both instruction and example, and your actions will always set the tone. Your words matter, though only for the finer points of clarification, and only if they are in full alignment with how you actually live and breathe. We live in decadent times, when people seem to abuse power as if it's the natural thing to do. You, on the other hand, must be a crystal of integrity. That is responsibility on a level few are interested in taking, which in one sense is a good thing. There won't be much competition for the job.

Story of I AM: All 12 signs | Choose your signs | Cancer preview video

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Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — You will find your best advantages where you feel the least stable. Whatever might rattle, shake, crack or creak is the place where movement is already happening, and where something has become outmoded. It's also the zone in your world, or your psyche, that will be the most responsive to ideas. This would all be in the spirit of turning mere change into evolution; anxiety into imagination. There is much in your world that would benefit from light editing, heavy rewrite or a whole new storyboard. Yet the thing that is moving the most deeply is your experience of yourself, which is calling for you to be fully present for a personal revision. This is going to happen whether you like it or not. It's as if you're at the bus station, and you have to go somewhere. You can take a bus anywhere. Which one do you take? What about the one heading for the place you want to go? Yet now consider that first, that place must be within you. What is the "self" that is calling you with the greatest appeal? Considered the other way, what about who you are today is ready to go the way of all dross? What do you absolutely need to change? If you start there, and actually begin making the adaptations to your inner world, you will find that concepts for what you want enter the cleared-out space without any effort. Remove the obstacle and you will discover what it was obscuring. It's not really a block. This is about perspective more than anything.

Story of I AM: All 12 signs | Choose your signs | Leo preview video

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Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — Mars retrograde in Aries is about extracting yourself from some of the places you've invested your identity, and recognizing a pattern that has likely followed you from back to your earliest years. At minimum, you will be able to see the ways in which you've lodged your identity outside yourself, and in some ways may seem to have lost it. However, recognize that of itself, identity means very little, or rather, it has only as much meaning as you give it. Who you actually are and what resources you possess are far more significant. You are not your identity. You are your actual self, though this distinction gets blurred in contemporary times. Mars retrograde will feel like the rumbling to claim your whole being within the context of relationships where you have invested yourself. This may feel strange, and have you feeling insecure, as you may entertain the notion that others will not fully accept you if you present your true being to them. But do you want anything else? How is it possible to compromise something as basic as who you are? Make a note if financial needs play a role. Observe whether there is any matter associated with approval by your family, for instance, the expectation that you will be a certain kind of person or play a certain role. If you're feeling agitation or discomfort, address that with those whom you consider your intimates. You do not need to ask permission to be yourself; you are already that person. Others however must bend and accommodate to your process of making peace with who you are, including giving you space to work out your inner conflict. Give yourself space to do so as well.

Story of I AM: All 12 signs | Choose your signs | Virgo preview video

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Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Long ago there was a thing called the "Gestalt prayer." It comes from a book called Gestalt Therapy Verbatim by Fritz Perls. In it, he offers his most basic message about relationships, which is that "I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine." In today's society, this is an especially bold statement, as we tend to drown in codependent tendencies and have handed one another so much power over who we are. One of the ways this happens is that many people are averse to conflict. That is understandable, though there is a deeper issue to address, which is what to do with the feelings of sacrifice and resentment that may lurk under the surface of tacit agreements. The thing to do is talk about them, and take the chance of asking others where they are really coming from. Silence can conceal disagreements, but it can also obscure the many things that people have in common that they don't necessarily recognize. This can take a leap of faith, and the exercise of trust in people you care about. Here is one thing you can count on: whatever may seem to be the case, people close to you are on a path of self-discovery. With Mars stationing retrograde in your opposite sign Aries, they will be coming to revelations about who they are that may be a little shocking to them. This is a good time for you to practice unconditional love, which is really the only kind of love, because the conditions are usually placed on who someone is, supposedly to make them acceptable.

Story of I AM: All 12 signs | Choose your signs | Libra preview video

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Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — Your work is of profound importance to you. This is a keynote of Scorpio, and it's the essence of your life right now. The fact that what you do every day, what you produce, where you go, who you work with, are all so crucial to your happiness is something to come to terms with forthwith. Your work must be service that you know is of value, service that leaves you with a feeling of self-respect. Aries for you also represents wellbeing. Mars will be retrograde in the house that covers these matters for the first time in 32 years. If you're old enough to have experienced this as, at minimum, a young adult, that means revisiting the whole issue of why you do what you do. And this reevaluation will inevitably call for a decision or a series of them. Here is the thing: your focus, I propose, must be on the basis for deciding, not the decision itself. What is motivating you? Who are you now and how is that influencing your choice of how you take action in the world? You cannot rush this question; developments will proceed quickly enough, as the short-lived Mars retrograde stirs the pot and raises many interesting questions. These will answer themselves if you not only do what you love, but also love what you do, and find yourself through what you do. One thing that stands out of your chart is that you must never aspire to fame or notoriety. Rather, aspire to demonstrate true, sincere dedication to your purpose as you define it, and as you explore it.

Story of I AM: All 12 signs | Choose your signs | Scorpio preview video

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Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — The theme of Mars retrograde (Sept. 9 through Nov. 13) is creative confidence. One of the ways to facilitate that is to not compare who you are or what you do to anyone else, in the competitive sense. Rather, learn from everyone and everything you see. Mostly, learn from yourself. Whatever you may do with your life, the place you seek your true being is through your creative experiences, and doing whatever you do artfully. That's another way of saying invest yourself fully in whatever you engage yourself in. There is no such difference as "work" and "real life." You are who you are and you do what you do. There is another element to creative confidence, which involves connecting what you actually do every day to your financial wellbeing. There are several keys to opening up this passageway, one of which is being true to yourself and to your values. Then there is the structure element. Money flows toward structure, and you are the person who must maintain this, or see that it gets done. It's not easy to hold things together these days; between flaky people and constantly shifting ground, you must depend on yourself to provide your own framework more than at any other time in your personal history. The benefit here is that you have the power and also the motivation to make sure this is done correctly, and done well. The next three months will provide you with an ongoing experiment wherein you can tinker with various formulas and get a sense of what works for you and what does not. Take care of what feeds you. Nurture the ground that makes your food.

Story of I AM: All 12 signs | Choose your signs | Sagittarius preview video

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Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Two astrology assignments for you, both in the form of lists. The first one is: What remains incomplete in your life? What changes have you been wanting to advance for the last few years that you have not come to closure on? Second, which of your personal attributes are you most concerned your family will not accept if they knew the truth? This can include any group of people you are close to and on whom you depend for your security. If your original family no longer exists, which were you concerned with in the past? The two sets of ideas are related. You are in the process of extracting yourself from many former investments, where you left behind aspects of your being -- in fact, some of the very best of who you are. Your solar chart describes a situation, going back to the beginning of your life, where your identity became conditioned on what makes you feel safe. Therefore, you had to lie low and not rock the boat by revealing who you actually are. There is another side of this; it can work the other way: you will only feel grounded and confident when you present yourself as you are, and don’t give a toss about the opinions others have of you. It might seem like this would take some real guts. However, push has now come to shove, and through the Mars retrograde process, you are likely to discover that you simply cannot hide your reality any longer -- nor do you want to. None of this is a luxury; your wellbeing depends on it.

Story of I AM: All 12 signs | Choose your signs | Capricorn preview video

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Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Yours is the sign of mental patterns, and of crystallized ideas. As the digital age has progressed, these factors have increased by orders of magnitude; once ideas take hold, it's extremely difficult to change them, or to get anyone to rethink their position. This is particularly risky for you; at this time in your life, the thing you need the very most is flexibility. I mean this in all senses of the word, from how you define yourself, to how you think, to the ways you filter and define your perceptions. This also includes how you think of your past, including how you experience any pain or frustration that you carry from the past today. Mars retrograde through Nov. 13 is here to provoke your inner awareness, and help you get in contact with what some would call 'unconscious' motives and conditions that drive you. You are the one who wants to change. You are the one who wants to take a fresh approach to living. You want new ideas to guide your life, and new ideas about who you are. This is a discovery process, and there is no need for it to be painful or even difficult. There are things you were told about yourself that were not true. You also carry the past karma of many generations of people, which has accumulated around you, and which you are now in a position to clear. Your whole being is moving toward a rebirth. This will happen one way or the other. You can go through this experience with more or less resistance, more or less pain. If you allow your preconceptions to thaw, you will discover what an amazing place you are in.

Story of I AM: All 12 signs | Choose your signs | Aquarius preview video

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Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — One great benefit of the past three years of Saturn in Capricorn is that you have carved out a niche for yourself. This has happened by hook and by crook; by shake and by quake. Notice the ways your world has been rearranged since late 2017, and evaluate where you stand right now. You may have suffered some losses, though if so, consider whether what you lost is actually something you needed. As Patric Walker once wrote, "Saturn always gives more than it takes away." One of the things that Saturn has given you is some clear space to work. Yet to take advantage of that, you will need to move into that space and occupy it consciously. You have learned who your friends really are, and it's likely that a good few people who were not your friends are no longer in your personal circle. Just this alone was worth the price of admission for Saturn in Capricorn, though you have learned and gained a good deal more. It is up to you to take your space in society. You do not need to be invited any place, appointed to anything, or crowned by anyone. Rather, it is now time to step up to whatever challenge you choose. I suggest you reach a little higher than you think you're capable of, because you are capable of far more than you may believe. You will not know unless you try. Meanwhile, Mars retrograde will be provoking you, and I suggest you grab onto this as motivation. The major theme for you is recognizing the power of money, and the validity of using financial gain, and organization, as your motive. Stay with your values and you will do brilliantly.

Story of I AM: All 12 signs | Choose your signs | Pisces preview video

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