Dear Friend and Reader:
This weekend is the 244th anniversary of the founding of the United States, usually counted from the date written on the Declaration of Independence.
The U.S. is now well into its Pluto return, an event that has never happened in our history. If we seem to be going through a little extra chaos related to a problem most of the world has already solved, we might consider that astrology.
In all ways, the American Dream is now facing tough times, and some would say it’s dead. I don’t think that’s true, though at the moment, it’s being eaten alive by greed, fear and incompetence.
You could say that was always true, though we’re in an unusual moment now, where so much is at stake, and so much has already been lost, as tens of millions of people file unemployment claims in our newly reset economy.
The only way to get out of that is going to be envisioning something different, maybe better, maybe enough to get by.
Monthly Horoscopes and Publishing Schedule Notes
Your extended monthly horoscope for July is published below. We published your extended monthly horoscope for June on Thursday, May 21. Please note: we normally publish the extended monthly horoscope after the Sun has entered a new sign.
Aries (March 20-April 19) — Your choices matter, and so does your basis for making them. Events this month offer a series of leadership challenges that will help guide you to the place you will want to be for the next few years. Like many things in the world, you’re making the transition from executive authority to new methods of social organization. This is also called informal leadership, though that whole concept must evolve into something more participatory. There’s an issue in that relatively few people care what happens to everyone else. You might, though who among your friends is concerned enough to devote themselves to gathering knowledge, building consensus and focusing action? We can expect a long transition, though with little pockets of successful experimentation here and there. In the long run, here is what I would propose: your experiences as a parent, boss, manager, or any form of elected leader will provide a substantial sampling of where human nature is, and where it needs to be. Meanwhile, surround yourself with people who know how to cooperate. Set that as a standard for who gets to enter your life in an intimate or committed way. The nature of both the intimacy and the commitment must be a certain kind of spiritual bond where you recognize having the same underlying purpose and can work from there. What exists on the more surface levels is of little meaning compared to the true common ground you share — the very thing that holds you up, and a spirit of generosity and goodwill toward all living creatures.
The Journey of You and Chiron | A New Reading by Eric Francis
Anyone who has encountered it is curious about Chiron. Planet Waves provides one of the few dependable online sources of information on this unusual planet. For the 10th anniversary Astrology Studio reading, I will be covering Chiron in Aries — a momentous event for all those born under this sign, and of high interest to everyone else. Get instant access to this reading here.
Taurus (April 19-May 20) — Many things that vexed and challenged you in the past are now revealing their gifts. Yet without trust, you will not be able to receive them. Fortunately, you’ve faced many experiences in recent years that have dismantled the blocks to intimacy, vulnerability and simply being yourself. Most of these were held in false or conditioned beliefs that had the effect of hardening you and emotionally distancing you from others. Take a moment and make a conscious inventory of what beliefs you’ve surrendered, given up, disproven, or which have mysteriously disappeared, since around late 2017. Many things have happened in that time, and you may not associate any of them with the way your ideas about life were being disproven. Yet you might try that out in hindsight, as a thought experiment. Many of those will involve some form of guilt being dismantled, which it will not take much inquiry to associate with religious guilt. This comes in many forms and disguises, which all point back to the same kinds of internally installed social control devices. Their purpose is always the same: to make people more manageable. Once the beliefs that support them start to dissolve, several different things can happen, one of which is that your life experience alters to more accurately reflect the truth about your existence. It can seem like the world is changing and you are adapting, but what is really happening is you are changing and what you witness reflects that. So remember, what is true comes from you, and makes the world you see. Focus your efforts there.
You can now get instant access to your 2020-21 Taurus Astrology Studio here for just $44. This reading focuses on a professional breakthrough toward the end of the year, and preparing you for this development. Venus retrograde in the spring is preparation. Mars retrograde in the autumn is preparation.
Ultimately this is a spiritual development, yet in reality we are talking about aligning your purpose with action, with a calling, and with an opportunity. Elements of the reading go out to a series of power steps in 2021. Read more.
Gemini (May 20-June 21) — If you’ve been working to get your financial house in order, keep going, and if you have not, get started. A diversity of factors are coming into alignment that are making it easier to get results. The place to begin is the details: knowing exactly what you have, what you owe, and what you need. This is the personal element. The more you know about the specifics of your situation, the more power you will have over it. You need clarity above all else: the real thing, not just the feeling. That would best come as columns of figures that give you the basic facts. Get help if you need it; make this happen, or catch up if you’re behind. This is essential energetic preparation to open the way to greater income, resources and investment in your work. To be ready for that on all levels, you must know where you stand with yourself, and be confident in that. The remaining seasons of 2020 and into 2021 are about a near-total renovation of your life where professional income is concerned. Your opportunities will widen in other ways toward the end of the year, including geographically. Yet in this whole process, it will be best if you proceed from the personal, close to you, then outward from there. Make sure you’re clear with yourself before you try to get clear with others. If you’re intending to advance your business projects, you need a plan. It might be 1,000 words; not a whole binder, but rather a basic outline of the purpose of your enterprise, who your clients are, where you’ll find them and how you’ll serve them. You must clear this fog that’s been hanging over your professional life, and these are the first crucial steps.
Your 2020-21 Gemini Astrology Studio, The Sacred Space of Self, is now available for instant access. The reading covers Venus retrograde in your sign, Vesta in your sign, Saturn in Aquarius, and the momentous astrology at the end of the year.Thank you for your business and your trust.
Cancer (June 21-July 22) — The scale of your life is expanding, potentially in ways you were not expecting. There is a scheme to all of this, though you may not have figured out quite what it is yet. Stick to your sense of purpose. That’s likely to be coming in strong now, and as Mercury stations direct in your sign at midmonth, you will gravitate toward a way to focus your ideas. Where you stand now is walking a long trail between attracting what you need toward you, and going after what you want. These would seem to be two distinct approaches or philosophies to existence. Yet that is the essential balancing of the in-breath and the out-breath, finding space you can enter the moment in between. Then it’s all one experience, one state of being. You experienced a version of this recently as Venus stationed direct in Gemini, which was (and still is) an exercise in balancing seeming opposites. You’re getting a sense of it soon when Mercury stations, and you will again as Mars makes its way across one of the most sensitive angles in your chart and turns retrograde in September, again emphasizing matters of purpose. There is vast and fertile space between opposites, though to find it, you need to know what those opposites are, and then start to see the opening between them. It’s going to look more like an alleyway than a vista; a feature in the landscape you may have walked past many times without venturing in. The purpose, the invitation, is to allow yourself to be guided into yourself, to the space where you contain all that you need to know.
Your 2020-21 Cancer Astrology Studio is available for instant access. This year, the time of Cancer began with an eclipse on the solstice, as well as Mercury retrograde in your sign. This is astrology that points to you in a personal way, describing a transition you may not feel ready to make but have been preparing for over long years. Chiron in Aries is also a prominent factor, pointing to some pioneering developments in your professional life. I cover these aspects, and much more.
Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — The past three months have come with an experiment, described by Saturn making its first visit to your opposite sign Aquarius. Note carefully what happened during that time. The area to focus first is your partnerships of all kinds. What shifted, whether in theme or direction? The action of Saturn is going to redefine the way you relate to people as individuals and as groups. Yet there is something greater that you will benefit from cultivating, which is an enhanced sense of your environment, including everything from people to technology to the direction in which society seems to be heading. You are going to have a role in the significant changes that are on the horizon; you are looking right at them and will be in a position to understand them better than most. Yet a very careful review of events from late March through late June is essential, because when this thread of astrology resumes in mid-December, you will need all the data you can get; you will need all the benefits of experience you can get. Hence, do a careful study of both your life and that of society. We all know that mid-to-late March was when we experienced the beginning of cascading changes in society that nobody alive had ever seen before. This seemed to involve an illness. Yet a holistic analysis tells a deeper story. What we really experienced were the overwhelming effects of the digital environment and its peculiar way of amplifying things. It has changed the definition of what a person is, and those changes are not over. You must know where you stand with yourself on the matter of your humanity and how you intend to preserve it, in the face of much pressure to give it up.
You can now pre-order your 2020-21 Leo Astrology Studio, Notes on Love and Courage. The two giants of the solar system meet up at the end of this year in your opposite sign Aquarius. Eric will explore what this seminal conjunction means for you, and much more. Get your copy here for just $33.
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — For years, you’ve been working toward a breakthrough, whether consciously or not. The power, purpose and determination of your soul has been driving this in a way you cannot block or effectively resist. While it may have manifested many ways for you personally (affecting your relationships and professional life, for example), in astrology it’s about your relationship to your creative core. In your solar chart (or natal chart, if you’re Virgo rising), Capricorn represents your 5th place (house). That is an odd combination, because Capricorn wants things to be structured, orderly and contained, and the 5th house wants play, celebration and to take risks. But there’s all of this internalized parental authority that mostly serves up inhibition. Enter Pluto in 2008, which has been driving, pushing, pulling, dragging and otherwise motivating you to dismantle all of those influences, and to express yourself in a way that actually feels free. Mostly, you need to feel free to take personal risks, most of them expressive. This is not a luxury, like browsing the aisles in a lavish art supply store. It’s more like the feeling of urgent passionate impulse to bust out and create anything so you can create yourself, including painting with condiments on the wall, or chopping up books to make a collage, or dancing till you drop from exhaustion. This astrology has now reached its peak. You are at the point where the benefits are coming through. I would remind you though: as passionate or sexual as you may be feeling, this is about you. Anyone involved is merely assisting — everyone needs to understand that.
Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — In one of her most passionate poems, your fellow Libra Adrienne Rich talked about “the drive to connect; the dream of a common language.” Let that be the theme of your life, remembering that they are one and the same. To connect is not to dominate, to convert, or to take possession of. Rather, rise to the occasion of every person being their own sovereign creature of the universe. Meet people where they are, and do something daring, which is learn their language. Learn their idea and their cosmology. Commonality begins with you. On one level, you’re being summoned to leadership — the eclipse in the first degree of Cancer a couple of weeks ago was an initiation into your strength and power. Yet the focus of your astrology is now in your 7th place (house) of relationships and partnerships. This calls for another kind of leadership, such as learning how to say hello, goodbye and thank you in ten languages. You may notice that people will come on to you with more directness than you would like. Some could well do so with less than full confidence, or the finesse you prefer. When that happens, pause, and interview them. I mean it. Calmly get anyone who comes to you, or at you, into a discussion and get them to explain where they’re coming from, until you actually understand it. This may seem like a lot, though it’s actually the efficient and friendly approach to Mars in your opposite sign Aries for more than five months, including retrograde from Sept. 9 through Nov. 13. This opens the potential for adventure — though also for contention and controversy, of which you must be the master and the referee: so nobody else is.
Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — You probably think of yourself as a rational person driven by logic, though you may have noticed how emotional you actually are. By that I mean motivated (or discouraged) by emotional factors, which also tend to set your limits on what you think is possible. The more you offer your voice to what you feel, and to the potentially irrational currents that run through you, the better access you will have to your significant intelligence. That includes reasoning power, memory and willingness to be contrarian, though that is only the beginning. Your true wisdom will come through when you connect the concept of knowledge to what you feel (which is different from what you emote). Feeling is receptive. Emoting is expressive (including when you do it by yourself). The receptive element is the one that connects you to your power, including being receptive to your own observations — and those of others. The theme of the rest of the year could include working with the process of disruption. This can involve disrupting your idea of who you are, or allowing it to happen. Events in certain relationships will shake you up, so hang loose and move with the energy rather than resisting it. Many factors are helping you bust free of your false security or primal need to be accepted. Therefore, you can afford to ask yourself real questions, including on matters you might have never dared to inquire about. As for one particular relationship: you cannot truly love a person until you understand who they actually are. That seems to be happening.
Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — The recent Venus retrograde in your opposite sign Gemini has provided you the opportunity to see people from many different viewpoints. That’s a function of double- or quadruple-sided Gemini, as well as the shifting perspective of the retrograde motion placed right where you can see it (in your opposite sign). You may notice that a sense of play gets the dialog further than intensity, heaviness or an agenda. Your real concerns have nothing to do with others, anyway, and I suggest you make a point of setting aside that illusion. You are, at this moment, in the process of getting right with yourself. You have the opportunity (by which I mean, it is happening), to work out some titanic issues involving family, and the way that extends into all of your relationships. Because Capricorn is involved, this extends into your relationship with society, the government and the business community. Yet the core is your relationship to yourself, and examining the conditioning to which you were subjected. When you’re doing this kind of work, it helps to know what projection is. Please write that on your bathroom mirror: know what projection is, and when you’re doing it, so you can stop doing it, and get to the actual business at hand. If I seem to speak with some urgency, it’s because the nature of this moment is so unusual and beautiful. You have a rare opening to understand the values that were imposed on you, to see them for what they are, and to push through that and establish your own purpose, ethics and understanding of yourself.
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Do you have a sense of who you’re becoming? You might not, at this point, since so much becoming is happening. It may be difficult to tell what is progress and what is a setback. It is easier and more productive to seek for what is false rather than for what is true. Work with a process of elimination. Keep spotting falsehoods and eventually you will be left with many fewer possibilities to choose from. It’s more fun, less confusing and it actually works. After you spend some time narrowing down the possibilities, you will be able to evaluate what is on the landscape. One place you’ll be focusing is your family. Here’s how that looks. One property of Capricorn is (in my experience) over-investing one’s identity in family. This is based on very early conditioning. There are layers and layers to this, though one way to describe it is: you may have an idea that who you are is subject to the consensus of others who hold power over you, or who seem to. The bottom line is your sense of safety, which means belonging, which in turn translates to acceptance. Yet you can only feel safe being accepted if those accepting you know the truth of who you are. So this is where expressing the truth of who you are can seem rebellious, dangerous, and even self-destructive. Yet until you notice that you’re accepted as you actually are, in truth, you will not feel safe. And to do that, you must decide that it does not matter what anyone else thinks, which is the actual evolutionary or even revolutionary step.
Your 2020-21 Aquarius Astrology Studio is available for instant access. This coming winter, your sign hosts a major conjunction: Jupiter conjunct Saturn, the traditional ruler of Aquarius. That event is exact on Dec. 21, 2020. Eric also covers Saturn moving into your sign from Capricorn during the year, in this not-to-be-missed reading. Order your copy here.
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Saturn has been in your sign since late March, and has now retrograded back into Capricorn. This presented an experiment, and an opening for something new, or different, to happen. Plenty did, that’s for sure, and not just to you — though your experience is essential to your understanding of Saturn entering your birth sign or rising sign. The next five months present another kind of experiment: an introspective one. The changes that are about to cascade through your life over the next three years are emerging from the inside out. This has been developing for years, and it may have been confusing to see manifestations in the world around you that seemed extreme and which you did not understand. Saturn is making one final return to Capricorn, a transit that began in late 2017 and has stretched out this long (unusual for Saturn, though that’s the mathematics of it). You may not be able to complete your inner work in that time, though you can use this opportunity to make an honest assessment of what it is. This is not about goals or setting intentions, but rather understanding certain truths about the landscape of your psyche which are easy to ignore, deny or just miss. What I am talking about is the seat of your conditioning, which you are likely to be resisting with all your might, and want to break free from. I would point out that your growth is not about resisting but rather going with the movement you are experiencing. Use the next five months to gain perspective, which means knowing the lay of the land. Make a healing agenda.
Astrology Studio for Pisces | A New Reading by Eric Francis
This is a momentous time in collective history, and a turning point in your life. As the year develops, most of the movement — including Pisces’ ruling planet Jupiter, and the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction — will be pointing into Aquarius, the most sensitive and innermost angle of your chart. I will also cover the retrogrades of Venus and Mars, and the forthcoming Jupiter-Pluto conjunction in your friendship sign Capricorn. Mostly, I will help you orient on your profound journey, and offer guidance how to harmonize with the world at this unusual time. Get instant access to this reading here.
Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — In the age of the internet, we are all to some degree public people. Even grandma’s corkboard next to the phone, with mementos and photos of the family, is now broadcast to the general public via social media. Everything is inside out; it’s not that there is no privacy, but rather the whole concept has been nullified. You are experiencing this in an especially direct way, as Jupiter and Neptune continue their conjunction in your most open, available and public house — which at the moment may feel like a building without a roof to cover it. I suggest you move with this, and stay in the open, where people can see, hear and feel you. There is vulnerability in this, though that ultimately is the door to your strength that must open for you to have access to it. Your connection to others — particularly in your circle of friends, and your personal public — is directly associated with your professional success and your income. You may feel that to succeed at all, you must do so in a big way, one that may seem to exceed your intentions or your abilities. Whether true or not, you’re working on a much different scale from even one year ago, though you’ve been heading in this direction for a long time. So stay on message in all that you do, and actively learn from your experiences. But there is one other thing. Maintain impeccability with money. Consider this the most sacred and spiritual of dimensions of your life. Get help. All financially successful people work with a bookkeeper and an accountant. You don’t need investment advice — you are your own best bet. What you need is accurate data, and to know exactly where you stand with yourself and all whom you transact business with.