Dear Friend and Reader:
Here is your Planet Waves monthly horoscope for March. While I have your attention, I need to mention Iran: Washington is ready to start bombing, according to Sy Hersh in an article in The New Yorker. I’m not saying it’s going to happen — only that we now know the U.S. is ready to attack, despite repeated statements that it will do no such thing.
For those who would like to relate this to the astrology, we are now in the week of the Saturn-Neptune opposition, a difficult aspect and one that typically comes with concentrated loss of life. I would propose that this is a time to get a handle on the astrology, rather than living the same nightmares over and over again: to make a choice, to be aware, to live out the aspect consciously and not be its victim.
To put it simply, if we bomb Iran, WE are bombing Iran and it is our karma. Judith Gayle has put together a collection of articles on our news blog, Political Waves. Please keep this discussion going among your friends and loved ones.
Aries (March 20-April 19)
Breaking free is the theme of this moment, and it will take all your experience of the past two years to do so, as long as you have the confidence that you can. Breaking free of what? Well of course, the social expectations that keep more people trapped in their role, mode, frame of mind and geographic location than I care to imagine. You seem to be relating to the world as the underdog, and in the coming weeks as Mars makes its once-per-two-year conjunction to Chiron, the stars favor those who tend to feel less favored, particularly in certain social aspects of life. For example, this strongly favors those such as yourself who can abide by rules only if you helped create them. Indeed, the rules do need to change and you appear to be one who is noticing this, and who is willing to do something about it. Remember that your strength comes from awareness and strategy, rather than from brute power, be it mental or physical.
Taurus (April 19-May 20)
Before Venus finds its way through Aries into your birth sign and its home sign, much happens, to you and to those around you. It would appear that a close friend or partner is going through a significant change of some kind, perhaps a coming of age, a social debut, or a process of total reinvention. You seem to be in a supporting role, able to provide enough grounded feedback to at least ease their mind about the intensity of it all, the risks involved and the peculiar challenges involved in really living out their idea of individuality. The more present you are, the more you may get the feeling you don’t exist or are not part of the story — but that set of facts has yet to manifest. Keep doing what feels right to you, and trust that before long, indeed, around the first day of spring, you will know where you stand; you will find a sense of direction, and a sense of home.
Gemini (May 20-June 21)
I’m having some difficulty describing your astrology this month. Maybe you’re having a similar experience thinking about your life, or your sense of connection to it all. Something is getting awfully, well big is the first word that comes to mind, and intense is another; not too poetic I know. Big and intense as in significant and focusing rapidly. Anyway, the point is you have the power to shape your life through your ability to envision your life. Architects know that all buildings start with plans on paper, but others are perhaps less inclined to respect the might of sketches and schematics. Now imagine your consciousness has a property like that; you can work ‘in theory’ or ‘in principle’ using what are called morphogenetic fields — the flexible but highly stable psychic architecture of the world we live in, including the way that a soul morphs into a person which in turn expresses itself in the world in an ongoing creative process. Draw and sketch consciously; work with awareness; remember your eraser.
Cancer (June 21-July 22)
Eclipses are blowing through town, a time in the life of any Cancerian when events arrive with that once-in-a-world feeling. To you more than to most, eclipses feel like going through a series of gateways, though what you may not be so clear about is how your journey ripples out into the world and shapes what you think of as destiny, including that of the people closest to you. Couple this with a lot of intensity in your 8th house, Aquarius, the one governing the nitty-gritty of your relationships and your community. You are connected to it; it is connected to you; there is an absolutely rare alchemy happening where the part you play in the drama of life is transforming even as you notice what it is. Nervous would be a natural feeling for now, but don’t waste your energy being anything but cool and calm. Even if you freak out a little, do it in a mindful and straightforward fashion. By this time next month, you will be mayor.
Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)
It’s a good thing you’re a confident person, because any other kind of kitty would be hiding on the bedroom closet shelf. Who are all these people and how did they get into your life? Why are they all looking at you like you know everything? Stranger yet, why do they all seem like Titans and are still looking at you like you know everything? Don’t let on that you don’t. Listen carefully and give them back the best advice you hear them giving themselves. Remember that the real order of reality has yet to reveal itself, and it looks a lot different than the past. Take some of your own counsel from someone not directly involved, and who has a sense of humor. You’re in a position to profit wildly from the advances others make, and that you helped them make. Say as little as possible: save it up for the one beyond-brilliant idea you have simmering like a great invention about to happen or discovery about to be made.
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
Mercury retrograde constantly keeps the world wondering what you’re about to do next. Given that you have recently done quite a few exciting things next, those around you may not be expecting your upcoming maneuver any more than you are; but all the others have led up to this one, in such a way as you have personally yet to recognize. You’ve been too busy keeping up with one detail after the next, and one small breakthrough leading to another, to see the whole scenario working itself out on so many different levels. While you will indeed notice, you may want to do something soon that shifts your perspective before that occurs: go someplace new, move all your projects to a room with a different view, listen only to classical music for a week or watch a new movie every night, one that you’ve never seen. Meditate on unfamiliarity and let your mind drift into the abstract. There and then, the light will dawn.
Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
Libra is the sign of beauty, but let’s face it, the creative process is kind of ugly. This may be why you so often perceive beauty as outside yourself, and needing to exist in your environment. The nervous chaos that so often leads to beautiful experiences is not something you want to identify with, but now you have no choice but to dive into those electric-eel-infested waters of uncertain depth. Anyway, forget your doubts; forget that you don’t know how to weld or solder, and that half the paints and chemicals in the workshop could eat your liver for breakfast. Forget that creating anything really new feels so, well, egotistical to one so attuned to the world of relationships as yourself. Put on your Mad Scientist hat, get busy and stay busy till something impressive and inevitable happens. If you get up one morning and say, “I have to call in sick to work to do my real stuff,” do two things: first congratulate yourself handsomely, and second, pick up the phone.
Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
Whatever shakeup is rumbling through your world, it’s not what you think, and the people who have so recently appeared in your life are about to take on new and unexpected roles. Indeed, you can safely judge nothing by how it appears today, how it seems in your mind or what you fear the most. Your whole idea of what makes you safe seems to be running in reverse, hence you can eliminate all the factors that are, for one thing, not true, and for another, which create the illusion that you’re not standing on solid ground. Notice, though, that the firm earth you seek is a clear sense of ethics in a time when right and wrong are for many people either indistinguishable or matter not. Yes, you’re needing to revise all your ideas about who and what is helpful, who and what feeds your soul, and how you define the truth: but I suggest you be thankful that you’re bothering with the exercise.
Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)
You have little patience for politics, perhaps too little. On our planet, when people get together, the collective power created by the encounter must be distributed. People have a synergistic effect, that is, greater than the sum of the parts. Any group can only hope to have someone in its midst who has some worthwhile ideas about what is fair and what is not, what is necessary and what is not — and who has the strength to stand up for them. Yes, there are honest and ethical people all around, but few give a voice to their heartfelt values. Too few are bold and creative. Too many fear ‘stepping on the toes’ of those who step on heads. These days you not only have little choice in the matter of whether to voice your ideas, you also have every reason to speak up for the world you want to see born around you, indeed, a world you can live in and where you are welcome. That world needs you to act — before it takes up a life of its own, not after.
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
Another big wave has come in, but like a child at the beach for the first time, you’re learning to dive through head-on. Capricorn is an earthy sign, however, the goat that symbolizes it has the tail of a fish. In fact you are perfectly attuned to live in a world where the facts are wrong, where emotion is shaped and guided by advertising and where it’s cool to lie as long as you do it well. You thrive in this world because you can see through it all, and because you’re not limited to any one particular dimension or way of doing things. Anyway — the current chapter is about money, using it better, getting clear about it, and making sure that you’re on the winning end of any game where shared resources are being moved. You’ve made large investments into the community chest and the community itself, and what comes back to you is not only destined for a worthy purpose, it is in fact your own to have and share.
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
For many months now, the planetary action has gone from sign to sign like the circus going from city to city. But every now and then it stops somewhere for a while, usually due to a retrograde — in the current instance, that of Mercury. While you may be rethinking some pretty deep stuff and are likely to be making decisions about what is right for you in the long run, make sure you don’t make the mistake of counting yourself as less influential than you are. Remember that you cannot see your actual influence, for the most part. Because of this, I suggest strongly that you work with what you can see and feel, which is your state of mind. Though you will discover this at some point soon, it was at work long before your awareness takes over: you are broadcasting so loud and so clear that you’re influencing your entire environment. Keep your focus ‘in there’ and you will have excellent results ‘out there’.
Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
Who really knows why some events, people and circumstances call you into focus and why others do not. Life is full of cycles, the cycles have relationships, and there are intervals when several of the big ones gather and have unusual effects. I concede that the presence of six planets in Aquarius may have you feeling a little nervous because so much seems out of your control, tucked into a blind spot. The point is, you can actually feel what’s going on back there, and at least you’re aware of some unusual activity. If you focus on what you can in fact see and feel rather than what you cannot, and let your instincts guide you in the crucial decisions you’re now making, they’ll work out far better than you can imagine at the moment. Typically people wonder What was I thinking? when they screw up royally. It seems you’ll look back on some unusual breakthrough and wonder much the same thing.