Aires   Taurus   Gemini   Cancer   Leo   Virgo   Libra   Scorpio   Sagitt   Capric   Aquar   Pisces   Overview

You are still heading over the waterfall in a bucket, Aries, but at least you are beginning to get used to it by now. Another powerful month for you brings mixed blessings of difficult but transformative energy. This is a contemplative rather than an action-oriented period of time, with Mercury retrograde in your self-expression sector. The pace of conceptual change accelerates but the action slows and the enormous pressure will not fully release until September. There are manic as well as down moments but the experience will in any case be enlightening. Surprises abound. Picking up the pieces and continuing to try to make sense of everything brings its rewards, eventually, as you begin to discern that different place where your life is now heading.

As the month begins, you are facing the stiff breeze of transformational effects on your life in general that have been active over this past year or more, but which are now beginning to reach gale force. You might feel compelled to take action of one kind or another, but this impulse for moving forward has its drawback in the retrograde of Mercury in your service sector and also in your sector of self-expression, so that forging ahead with new decisions are not recommended until the retrograde has passed. Mercury will not leave its retrograde shadow until September 9th, so there might be some benefit to the idea that you watch and wait until then, rather than leaping before you look, so to speak. Although there is also the contrary notion of yielding to the pressure to be doing something, perhaps anything, to carry you forward and get you out of potential dilemmas, forging a middle road is usually the best medicine.

The Leo New Moon of the previous weekend has made you itchy for action, while exacerbating the conflicts that you have been feeling lately between outer and inner worlds. Your pursuit of fame and recognition in terms of career and of service to the surrounding collective has been under fire in recent months as you seek a better fit with important internal prerogatives. You are entertaining a rather vague and almost unformed notion: your inner world really matters far more than previously given credit for. Anything you do to satisfy mundane demands such as having enough money or even control must also yield to the requirement that it match you at soul-level. A strong sense of intuitive understanding possesses you right now, so that your nonsense-detector is fired up when the things that you are planning do not meet these internal requirements of Spirit or your Higher Self. As Mercury begins its retrograde during the first week of the month, these nebulous feelings from deep inside you are give a more powerful voice so that your discontent with certain aspects of your outer situation might become more pronounced.

The First Quarter Moon, coming along on Saturday, August 6th, when tensions increase, represnets one crux of this initial period of the retrograde.

Then the Full Moon of Saturday, August 13th, indicates a time of balance, when your tendency is to bring others, particularly significant partners in your life, into the picture. You are still engaged in a month-long process of refining where you are coming from in your interactions with others, and also with respect to family life. This emphasis on home and family implies questioning the very basis of your security in this world. This is likely to lead to issues that you might not want to face, although it is probably true that sooner or later you must deal with these issues. You benefit from taking the time for inner contemplation in order that you not hide from yourself at this important juncture.

The Last Quarter Moon of Sunday, August 21st, reinforces the contemplative nature of this period, since the lunation cycle is winding down and the natural tendency is to pull back and reexamine the events that have transpired thus far.

Interesting days surround the Virgo New Moon in the last weekend of the month, taking place on the 28th. Mercury is changing to direct motion and everything in your life is undergoing at least a conceptual shift, providing a glimmer of an idea of where you might be headed with all this. These times that you are living through are fraught with crises that are, as the Chinese proverb says, also opportunities. It helps to keep reminding yourself that the rewards are commensurate with the challenges.

Taurus   (April 20 - May 20)  Earth.  Ruling planet Venus.    Top

Your life is a fluttering tapestry these days, Taurus, and the tapestry is in profound transition. What you want to be and do in the world depends more and more on how you see and appreciate yourself at center. You are in an important process of stripping away what doesn’t fit. Your sense of family is potent now, and also your sense of who you really are at the very core of your being. You inhabit these inner places more than outer ones. Deep within, you sense the turning wheels that signal a changing of the guard. Your world view might need to shift to accommodate these coming to you and through you, stemming from the innermost part of yourself.

As the month begins, you are beginning to feel the potentially divisive energy of the Leo New Moon from the previous weekend. Your point of view is irrevocably shifting in a way that takes far more seriously the information streaming to you from deep inner awareness. This month is made even more internal and contemplative with the New Moon in your sector of home and family and with a slowing Mercury opposed Neptune. On August 2nd Mercury retrogrades in your self-expression sector. This has implications also for your finances, which are therefore subject to mysterious fluctuation at this time. You are in a process of refining your self-concept, and of the products of your unique creativity, which come from deep within yourself. Home and family concerns are also emphasized. All in all, this could be both a confusing and a powerful monthly cycle, when you wind up questioning many of the assumptions that you hold dear, but when also you can make real progress on important and perhaps neglected issues in your life, as blinders fall away from your vision you might have been totally unconscious of for all this time.

With the First Quarter Moon of Saturday, August 6th, a modicum of tension appears in your process, a tension that can however be creative. You are seeing contrast in everything, and feeling your way through to a better synthesis of inner and outer concerns. You could also harbor a sense of limitation as far as what you might expect from family connection at this time. You are more serious concerning your everyday work in the world, which could present you with some difficult choices at home. An inclusive attitude is the best solution. It is good also to pay close attention to any tendency to reactivity.

With the Full Moon of Saturday, August 13th, you are striving to find the balance point between competing modes of your existence: public and private, inner and outer. All of yourself is necessary to bring to the table of greater wholeness and understanding. In this you must follow your intuition, for that small still voice inside yourself has much to convey. You are sensing that adjustments are necessary in how you see your future unfolding, and how you can more effectively plug yourself in to a society that you can really live with. There can be a confusing sense of what the future holds for you now, but the makeup of these more expansive plans does become clearer over time.

The Last Quarter Moon of Sunday, August 21st, is a time of great questioning and reassessment of what has gone before. This phase is traditionally considered one of attempting to understand the events of the previous three weeks, in order to discover a better way to come to grips with what has transpired thus far in the cycle, and to carry a seed of distilled wisdom into the next. In this case these assessments are accompanied by a great deal of introspective soul searching and even confusion over motivation. This is due to the retrograde of Mercury in your sector of root psychological security and also the opposition of your ruler Venus to nebulous Neptune, on the cusp of your sector of societal connection and future plans. You must reach a little farther outside yourself, and outside of consensus thinking, to find the real meaning of what is going on for you right now. Things resolve somewhat by the time of Mercury’s escape from its retrograde shadow at the end of the first week in September.

Gemini   (May 21 - June 20)  Air.  Ruling planet Mercury.    Top

Your transformation continues, Gemini, and even grows in its pace, although the time for concentrated action is delayed until at least the middle of the following month. Spiritual epiphanies provide occasions for greater intimacy. Your fullest potential is not yet realized, although the concept of what you are striving for is beginning to unfold during the course of this thoughtful and challenging present cycle. Communication with friends and loved ones is vital for you now, and helps you to better define your own position. Home and family could also be transforming in some way over the course of this important month. You are coming on strong but in invisible rather than mundane realms, as you speak your most basic truth, from your heart.

As the month begins, you are poised on the brink of new discoveries about yourself, and regarding your connection to home, family and tribe. You are refining and redefining issues related to your connections with those around you, and possibly contemplating a rearrangement of your physical living space as well. If so, this works on both an actual and a symbolic level, revising the root basis for your psychological reality. This serves to redefine your communication dynamic also, since you are coming from a different place, quite literally. A rather unworldly mode of behavior dominates your activity now, which although it has been the pattern for you lately, could be puzzling or even alarming. You are dwelling as much in the invisible world of inner intuition and visionary imagination as in the so-called “real” one these days. Music and poetry is the language of these other-worldly dimensions of reality and these might speak to you more clearly now than merely mundane logic is able to.

On Tuesday, August 2nd, your ruler Mercury begins its retrograde period that will carry it through both your sector of your psychologically rooted home base and also your communication sector. You might feel the shift, and your tendency to go within, that is, of occupying yourself with your own thoughts and words rather than directing them outwardly. This is a terrific time to journal, and to reflect on where life is currently taking you, and why.

With the First Quarter Moon of Saturday, August 6th, you are facing internal tensions which could become projected out upon others, and also attempting to discern which of your many ideas for future projects is truly viable. Your gauge for this standard of achievement must be other than success in the eyes of the world, however, as much of what truly interests you at this time represents your urge for a soul-level rather than a consensus thinking style of accomplishment. The comforting insight is to recognize that once this is recognized and sincerely attempted, all the rest will fall into place.

The Full Moon of Saturday, August 13th, represents a time of balance, when you might feel more relieved than pressured, although the power of the retrograde period remains, and grows even stronger over the following week. You are striving for an integration of Spirit and inner life into your ordinary day-to-day life and in communication with others around you.

The Last Quarter Moon of Sunday, August 21st, in the heart of Mercury’s retrograde period, represents another potentially quite confusing time for you, when you are driven to the inside for the answers to questions that you never even knew to ask. You are reassessing where you are at these days in the light of what has gone before and what information, upon reflection, you can glean from these events. This involves taking the intuitional information from your deep inner world as even more real than your outer, but it is only with a great leap of insight that you are able to do so. In order to do this you must make the effort to fully accept paradox, even though it is somewhat contrary to your logical mind to do so. The Virgo New Moon of the final weekend of the month, taking place on Sunday, August 28th, will be clarifying and kick start your next stage.

Cancer   (June 21 - July 22)  Water.  Ruling planet is the Moon.    Top

You are redefining your values this month, Cancer, and your feeling for what it means to be alive on this earth. Current events have rocked your world, including your feelings toward family and tribe. Significant relationships in your life are also subject to abrupt alteration. What was a steady reliance on a way of life that you could always count on seems far less a sure thing and the only career factor that shines forth for you is the need for continual and sometimes even drastic change. This does not necessarily imply a new career or even a new job, but perhaps an entirely different way of looking at the existing one. You might be in the process of asking yourself to what extent does your career and professional life serve your soul development, rather than the reverse.

As the month begins, you are feeling your way forward in spite of the obstacles to understanding that have been thrown up by recent events. Every experience, even the most difficult, gives you plenty of information about where you are currently in your arc of development when you look at it through the lens of spiritual growth, which many would call the real reason for being here. The New Moon of July 30th from the last weekend of the previous month likely provided a welcome flood of fresh energy and a release from quite so dire an attitude, although your changes are still definitely coming down. As is so for the child being carried screaming to bed or the next activity, it goes better when you accept the transition and cease holding on quite so tightly to the rungs of the banister.

The station of Mercury taking place on Tuesday, August 2nd, in your communication sector presents you with an introspective rather than an extraverted grasp of events, so that rather than reaching out to others you are turning within. This entire month is an excellent time to journal and to dwell on the transformation of your life that you have already seen and, as far as you are able to discern it, what might be still to come. The remainder of the week provides surprising insights into your situation and with respect to home and family concerns.

The crossroad comes with the First Quarter Moon of Saturday, August 13th, when you are drawn to action but when the action also might be stifled by practical limitations. There is also the presence of the Mercury retrograde period to consider, which is by now well-established. For the entire month of August, and on into the first ten days of the following month, it is not considered a good time to push the river or to move ahead with completely novel ideas or departures from an established plan. Ideas conceived and acted on during the time of the retrograde will likely be reconsidered afterwards, by mid-September. This is also a slightly contentious time, when reactivity – either your own or others around you – could run high. It is good to remember to breathe, and to thoroughly investigate the underlying reason for being upset, which could turn out to be your own and not another’s issue.

With the Aquarius Full Moon of Saturday, August 13th, things could mellow out a bit although tensions are still high. You are seeking a point of balance in the energies of self and other. Important areas of your life, including relationship dynamics, are in definite flux at this time, leading to radical transformation. Perhaps you can recognize behaviors that you are finally ready to shuck, in favor of an approach more consistent with where you are currently at in your present stage of personal evolution.

With the Last Quarter Moon of the following weekend, taking place on Sunday, August 21st, you give yourself a chance to slow down and reflect on the changes and challenges that have come up for you over these last three weeks, and on the information that can be extracted by careful consideration of the deepest level of your motivation. This has been perhaps a very confusing space of time, but one that is rich in new understanding. What wisdom you have gleaned becomes a seed for the next cycle, kicked off by the Virgo New Moon of August 28th, when you will be able to open still further to the mysterious process of the death and rebirth of the outmoded and worn out parts of yourself that have been more than ready for revitalization.

Leo   (July 23 - August 22)  Fire.  Ruling planet is the Sun.    Top

These are exciting and even magical times for you, Leo, when you are coming on strong, and when also everything in your life is subject to dramatic adjustment. You have been inhabiting your world from an entirely compassionate place lately and this continues, even as you drive for career success and for a more powerful presence in your surrounding milieu. Surprising epiphanies abound and lead you to a very different way of perceiving and believing. You are also morphing in your concept of what you want to be when you grow up. In your heart of hearts you are very sure that all this is leading up to something truly great and fundamentally transforming; the question now is what. The answers will come over time, and from within.

As the month begins, you are torn between outer and inner concerns. In the surface layers of your psyche, you are doing well. Everything is coming up roses and you know it. Worldly achievement is matched by a feeling of centered exuberance and you are adept socially. Only, there is still a long shadow that accompanies your shining story of success. Somewhere in the neither reaches of your mind and heart, vague stirrings are getting less attention than they deserve, for they point the way to subliminal realizations that hold a powerful intention for you and that may become important in order that you enter the very necessary doorway into your next phase. Neptune is an entirely numinous and mystical archetypal power, and is prominent in your chart at this time, residing in your sector of intimacy and personal evolution. This represents a nebulous and an idealizing energy that you must grapple with in order to understand as you further transcend previous limitations.

Then, too, on August 2nd, Mercury stations retrograde, and when it gets going in its reverse direction, will begin to move backward through your sign, casting you into a morass of reflection and retrospective calculation over who you are and where exactly it is that you are heading. All this is happening under the radar of your more normal waking consciousness, which is cruising and finding rewards for hard and useful work in terms of outer world recognition.

With the First Quarter Moon of Saturday, August 6th, there might be a more obvious conflict as you compare and contrast these antithetical forces operating simultaneously within your psyche. You are definitely drawn to the inside at this juncture. At the same time you continue to revel in the productions of this physical world, including your own. It is important not to lose sight of the fact that though your inner world is vast and mysterious, and seemingly unavailable to the more surface flow of your conscious process, it underlies everything that you say or do from this more obvious and accessible space.

The Full Moon of Saturday, August 13th brings to bear a different mix of these energies. You are now responding to issues of self and other, and to finding a sense of equilibrium between them. The Mercury retrograde period, now well underway, is productive of fuzzy reasoning and idealistic thinking, especially where intimate partnership is concerned. For you, “logic and proportion” have indeed “fallen soggy dead,” as the song goes, but you might be the better for it.

With the Last Quarter Moon of Sunday, August 21st, you are opening your thought process still further, attempting through meditative review of the past three weeks to discern the lessons that can be distilled from your experiences in the month thus far.

The New Moon of the final weekend of the month takes place on Sunday, August 28th – with Mercury turned to direct motion – and gives you fresh energy for your voyage into greater integration of all your parts. It pays not to push the river or make any sudden departures from your prearranged script until after Mercury regains it lost Zodiacal ground on September 9th. Until that time, watch and silently witness the progression of your dynamic changes.

Virgo   (August 23 - September 22)  Earth.  Ruling planet Mercury.   Top

You are moving to the inside this month, Virgo. With your ruler Mercury running backward, a profound meditative sense overtakes you in which you are dreaming your life into new being. As you revision your possibilities over the course of this important monthly cycle, you are tending to let everything else in your life shut down in favor of inner development. Sudden epiphanies are more than likely, especially regarding old patterns of relating to others that no longer serve you. You will emerge from this tunnel of time ready to re-enter the battle with a refreshed viewpoint; older in experience and wiser in years compared to where you started.

As the month begins, You are feeling poised on the brink of descent, pulled to vast inner realms by the energy of the recent New Moon in your sector of dream vision and deep unconscious process. This is a powerful theme for you, in a powerful time of transition. You might find yourself approaching this inner world with a degree of trepidation, almost like a lover. Your inner world is very alive for you now, and tunes you in to greater reality, Reality with a capital “R” – that mysterious space that surrounds and underlies this one, and that deepens your understanding of this surface world we most of the time inhabit so lightly. You are simultaneously inhabiting this outer world where much always remains to be accomplished. Still at the very center of your being, you are engaged in discovering a hidden treasure trove of numinousity and meaning.

Your ruler Mercury turns to retrograde motion on Tuesday, August 2nd, in your identity sector, and almost exactly opposite numinous Neptune, creating an even greater degree of introspection. You could be redefining yourself in some sense as this monthly cycle unfolds. It has been an interesting year for insight, both regarding yourself and also for your process of evolutionary development. Significant partners in your life have an important role to play, and in fact might appear to your inner gaze in idealized form; you might need to beware of over-idealization or illusion.

With the First Quarter Moon of Saturday, August 6th, some sense of contrast appears and conflicts could arise. These could actually serve to give you a better idea of what you truly want, and what in the end you are trying to accomplish. Through this spring and early summer you have been growing in your understanding of who you are and how you got this way, and are beginning to get a handle on where you might be heading. You are motivated now to act, although any sudden moves are better postponed until after the Mercury retrograde period has passed, not until September 9th if you take Mercury’s retrograde shadow period into account.

The Full Moon of Saturday, August 13th, represents a time of relative balancing of the swirling energies that surround you now, although tensions could still run high. Old dysfunctional patterns of relationship that have been activated over these past two weeks could come up for greater acceptance and understanding. Any reactivity that has been triggered could also ease at this time. It is always helpful to remember that you are never angry for the reason that you think you are.

With the Last Quarter Moon of Sunday, August 21st you are taking a hard look at everything that has gone before it in this lunation cycle, attempting to come to an understanding of the underlying motivations for your actions and for the events that have transpired. You could still be subject to illusions regarding relationship components of your life, and are perhaps also striving to more fully understand the paradoxical nature of the human condition. Recognizing this aspect of your situation requires the ability to hold contrary truths simultaneously, which is after all perhaps the most accurate way of looking at things.

With the station of Mercury on Friday, August 26th, and the subsequent New Moon in your sign taking place on Sunday, the 28th, the energy shifts and you are somewhat out of the dark woods where you have been dwelling. You have at least temporarily returned from the underworld – and with important insights gained.

Libra   (September 23 - October 22)  Air.  Ruling planet Venus.    Top

You are voyaging into the unknown, Libra, although it is getting more familiar all the time. August is an interesting month, in some ways a continuation and in some ways a departure. You might have a difficult patch to get through over the first week or so, but the positive side is that circumstances will provide you with much food for thought and with plenty of impetus to keep moving forward. As you drift toward mid-month you are visioning your possibilities. You are in the process of forging a new life direction for yourself and in it is good to keep firmly in mind that this is your most important product. Your creativity is calling and it will let nothing, not even you, stand in its way

As the month begins, you are striving for new vision regarding how you plug into the surrounding society and how you plan to do so in future. You are seeing the world a bit differently these days as a result of everything that you have been going through. Perhaps most significantly of all, you see yourself differently as well. With important and radical changes coming down that affect partnerships with others and your most basic self-concept, you are finding your way forward into greater wholeness by fits and starts. There is a strong spiritual component to everything that you do right now, so that your best asset through these intense migrations might just be your underlying faith in the intentions of the universe to see you through.

Mercury starts to move backward in the apparent sky on Tuesday, August 2nd, beginning a rather intense retrograde period that lasts to the end of the first week of September when you take into account the time to leave its retrograde shadow. This initiates an intensely introspective and reflective period of time, when you will be reviewing and calling into question your most fundamental assumptions. This first week of the month is generally a peaceful time for you, when you feel sociable and free, but with a decidedly internal slant.

The First Quarter Moon of Saturday, August 6th, introduces a degree of tension into the proceedings, when you will want to make progress but could feel thwarted in that desire, and when matters that seem antithetical to each other could come out of the woodwork into open conflict. Tempers could flare, even yours. At the time of the Full Moon of the following weekend, taking place on Saturday, August 13th, although the pot still simmers, it is a time when you are striving for greater balance and integration, finding creative solutions and outlets. Everything is still somewhat confused and vague at this time and indeed for the two weeks leading up to it, especially regarding what you feel you need to be accomplishing in this world in order to make a difference and be of true service. This might seem a poignant and distant goal right now, an idealization that is very difficult to see actualized.

The Last Quarter Moon of Sunday, August 21st, is naturally a time within the cycle of looking back and reflecting on where you have been, and what course adjustments might be necessary in future. With the Mercury retrograde still in major flow this tendency is even more pronounced. You are looking within to try to find what Jung referred to as “the matrix of a mythopoeic imagination which has vanished from our rational age.” Indeed, poetry and music are highways into this invisible world which is so hard to reach and to acknowledge, but which has so much to offer.

With the station of Mercury on the 26th and then the Virgo New Moon of Sunday the 28th, an important shift is reached that will carry you through to the middle of the following month. These last weeks of summer are precious ones. They are redolent with wisdom coming through to you from the beneficence of the surrounding cosmos, as you are able to receive it.

Scorpio   (October 23 - Nov 21)  Water.  Ruling planets Mars, Pluto.   Top

This is a summer of metamorphosis, Scorpio. You are gradually drifting toward a new vision for yourself and your world and it begins with redefining your worldview. The changes might come at times rapidly and at times more slowly but they are definitely rolling and with the inevitability of a slow-moving freight train. You benefit from framing everything into the largest possible picture. Your work in the world, perhaps entering a new phase, is also bound to be affected, as you navigate turbulent waters that do not allow you to see clearly, perhaps not until almost the middle of September. In the meantime watch and wait, and seize your chances when they present themselves.

As the month begins, you are riding high on the energy of the previous New Moon from the last weekend of July, taking place in your career sector. With at least one part of yourself you are fully enjoying the rush – and the glories and the rewards of this material world. At the same time however, since nebulous and otherworldly Neptune is also quite prominent now in your sector of self-expression, you can feel the undertow of mystical magic that takes you to the inside, and that equally represents an important part of your current self-definition. The deep unconscious layers of your being are thus more exposed to your awareness than usual, even though they in actuality always represent a large factor in running the show. No real wonder in it; although this dual impulse is infinitely paradoxical. But paradox is commonplace and a necessary component of actual reality, a reality that is unfiltered by the blinders of mere logic.

With the retrograde station of Mercury on Tuesday, August 2nd, in your sector of societal connection and future plans, you are drawn even more poignantly into the contemplation of your inner world. You might well find that over the next few days your passion will be to get to the bottom of what you feel, to come to the place that you started, as it were, and to know that place for the first time. Significant partners in your life are potentially very helpful in this quest, although there can be tension there as well, particularly with the First Quarter Moon of Saturday, August 6th. This is however an inspired tension that can provide the impulse for creativity. You might need to beware of sudden outbursts of reactivity at this critical juncture. Just breathe and count to ten, and try to remember the principle that you are never angry for the reason that you think you are. If you can suss out old and largely dysfunctional patterns of behavior stemming from early conditioning you are that much ahead of the game, although it is also quite true that these sorts of interactions can be confusing and unclear.

The Full Moon of Saturday, August 13th, can represent either a real point of balance or else a fresh departure into another form of intensity, which can also however be revelatory. Through all this you are making great gains of insight that enable you to see more clearly what it is that you truly want for yourself, going forward. Things go better the more you are able to listen to the dictates of your higher self that come to you through your developing sense of intuition.

With the Last Quarter Moon of Sunday, August 21st, you find yourself in a mode of summing up what has gone before in the three weeks of this illuminating lunation cycle from the very beginning of the month. The information gained will be valuable for years to come, as you are prepare to investigate a way to fit yourself into a future that you can really live with, and for.

Sagittarius   (Nov 22 - Dec 21)  Fire.  Ruling planet Jupiter.   Top

An interesting year thus far is about to get even more interesting, Sagittarius. Your worldview is likely to undergo further visions and revisions, or perhaps a more thorough-going transformation, during the course of this month’s cycle, ultimately leading you to a better understanding of what makes you tick at soul-level. Deep reflective spaces open up that connect with your sense of mission in this lifetime. Although your ebullient nature makes it at times more possible to do outer work than inner, the convoluted and potentially confusing events of this month tend to pertain to the internal. You seek to be of true service to others but before you can be fully present in that role you must first become your own advocate in being of true service to yourself.

As the month begins, you are engaged in an important mode of discovery, seeking how to better define your worldview to match up with how the world actually appears to be. This involves in large measure an investigation of your inner depths, that soul-level part of yourself that is the wellspring of emotion and feelings of psychological security. Nebulous mystical Neptune is located in your sector of home and family and the psychological roots of your being, and is powerfully constellated at this time. Those feelings have been in flux over these past few months, creating uncertainty and confusion at least potentially, so that you need a new form of vision to see beyond apparent illusion and even self-deception. There is another way of framing the things that continue to happen to you, a way that involves surrender: an acceptance that while Goddess or the cosmos is definitely having its way with you, she he or it has your own best interest in mind, however appearances might seem to contradict this assumption. With a concentrated effort of will you can let go, improvising a trust fall out of your situation, confident that the universe will hold you up.

Mercury retrogrades on Tuesday, August 2nd, almost exactly opposite Neptune, bringing an even greater degree of introspection and reflection to the mix of energies swirling around you. Then a few days later, on Saturday, August 6th, the First Quarter Moon interjects a modicum of tension as not everything that you have wanted to turn out a certain way does, so that you must back away from some of your activity. You are caught between your clear intention to make a new start and to create a different outcome for yourself going forward, and a stubborn urge to hold back that also has a great deal of potency.

The Full Moon of Saturday, August 13th, might serve as a plateau of balanced forces; although your desire nature is also very strong at this time and so could give you trouble in spite of yourself. If reactivity arises remember to breathe. The dharma or clear cut path of what you have to accomplish in this lifetime is very poignant for you now. You are seeking a weaving wandering way through the horns of the dilemma, a leap of faith that crates synthesis to take you forward into a vision of service that might make for a better match to your own higher nature.

With the Last Quarter Moon of Sunday, August 21st, you are in an even more contemplative mode, if such is possible, seeking to uncover the lessons inherent in what has been taking place over these past three weeks both in terms of outer experience and what is within. You continue to benefit at this time from inner work. You are more fully energized than ever but also perhaps more fully cognizant that the timing is wrong to pursue any major departure from previous plans.

Although Mercury changes to direct motion before the end of the month, the period of the retrograde lasts well into September when you take the ten-day shadow period into account. Even so, with Mercury’s station on the 26th followed by the New Moon of the 28th, you are filled with the impulse to scale the heights of fantasy and produce miracles.

Capricorn   (Dec 22 - Jan 19)  Earth.  Ruling planet Saturn.   Top

It’s a hard road you’re traveling these days, Capricorn, but it might be even harder to refuse the challenge and attempt to avoid any issues that continue to come up. You could be feeling a bit lost at sea as you struggle to find your way in an alien world where the rules of the game keep rewriting themselves. Your changes are in fact only just beginning, as difficult as that might be to imagine, and this monthly cycle provides one more chapter in your on-going saga, and rather a contemplative one at that. Your attempts at thinking yourself out of your dilemma, while admirable, will only take you halfway there. Sooner or later, and perhaps by the end of summer, you will have to jump in with both feet.

As the month begins, riding the energy of the previous weekend’s New Moon, you are pushed to a different sort of achievement than the usual ones of outer world recognition. You are taking a turn to the inside, feeling your way through to novel revelations upwelling from the core of your psyche to create an upside down effect whereby nothing in everyday mundane existence is quite what it seems and “the first one now [becomes] the last.” The outer world continues, unmoved, all around you with its routine successes, but another dimension is added that changes your perception of it forever. Over the next few weeks this unordinary set of perceptions, vague and mysterious at first, becomes more fully present to your thought process and more available to your conscious understanding. The trick then becomes to integrate these radical variances from consensus thinking with the normative behavior and activities that carry you forward in the seen as well as in the unseen world, to find an appropriate amalgam of interior perception and surface competence so that you neither ignore the promptings of your deep unconscious nor go crazy from them.

When Mercury retrogrades on Tuesday evening, August 2nd, it brings you even further into an introspective stance that is ultimately productive of such powerfully numinous insights and departures that contribute to your changing worldview over the course of this climactic monthly cycle. While in this newfound set of perceptions, all that glitters is not the gold of outer achievement, although it would be a mistake to eschew this mode of activity entirely, since your ego layers as well as your deep soul-level needs to sustain itself.

The days surrounding the First Quarter Moon of Saturday, August 6th, is a time when a degree of tension could arise within this important arc of development. Significant partnerships are active in your life now, either to provoke you or to enhance your process of increasing self-awareness. You might feel torn apart between the demands of outer accomplishment and inner contemplation. This is a testing time for you, when you could be struggling to find a thoroughly productive middle ground. It is basic common sense that will aid you most in the long run, enabling you to rise above reactivity to more closely examine the inner motivation that is the root cause. As you mull over what is actually transpiring, heart-felt communication is key, and helps you to clarify your own thinking.

The Full Moon of the following weekend, taking place on Saturday, August 13th, represents a balance point, at least potentially, although on some level the storm still rages both outside of yourself and within.

The Last Quarter Moon of Sunday, August 21st reinforces the essentially contemplative nature of this month’s cycle and provides even more food for thought. This final full week of August represents perhaps the best chance of all to really integrate inner and outer concerns. It is vital that you not neglect either point of view, as difficult and tricky as the actual working out of this conception might be. When the Virgo New Moon dawns on Sunday evening of the last weekend of the month, it provides new energy for a fresh start on achieving this important balance of your perspectives.

Aquarius   (Jan 20 - Feb 18)  Air.  Ruling planets Uranus, Saturn.   Top

You are at an interesting cross-road, Aquarius. You are contemplating eternity in the specifics of day-to-day life on this planet and exercises in partnership interaction. Everything is fuzzy and vague, and yet somehow brings you closer to understanding yourself at the core. You are getting used to the notion that relationship can be fun even if you fail to commit yourself to any one course of action. By mid-month you will have found a dozen ways to see the bigger picture and the amazing fact is that all of them have a certain degree of validity. It’s an excellent time to dwell in the paradox and to renew your vow never to push the river. It takes you at the very least until mid-September to even begin to sort things out.

As the month begins, you continue to find yourself in a rather searching time, when you are striving to discover a point of view that will enable you to make sense of this world and its changing physical and political climate. Archimedes declared that what was needed in order to move the earth was a place to stand, and the same can be said regarding a working perspective that gives you a handle on your life. Part of this quest is that you must dig deep for the answers, and for even being able to appreciate what some of the questions might truly consist of. Several factors are operating. You have the rational and surface-oriented part of your mind, well-developed in you and encouraged by the lens of society. Then there is the entirely mystical approach represented by a prominently placed Neptune in your sector of values and resources that has been making itself more clearly felt. This second factor is largely unseen from the standpoint of the world of logic alone. Trouble is, neither one provides a complete picture, nor do they cooperate well with each other. In this regard, and at this time, significant partnerships in your life are vital as they provide a third and quite valuable take on all these conundrums.

The retrograde of Mercury from August 2nd onward contributes greatly to the introspective nature of this time, and encourages you to look within yourself rather than anywhere else to find the answers. As Mercury turns backward and for the first two weeks of its retrograde period it opposes Neptune exactly, greatly adding to the confusion of this time period from the standpoint of mundane rationality and to the numinous power of the more internal and feeling-centered point of view. The First Quarter Moon of Saturday, August 6th, brings some degree of tension in this process to the fore. You might find yourself squaring off against relationship opponents and taking on a frenemy stance with them, or digging in your heels and refusing to alter your decision even as it proves to be unworkable. It helps to remember to breathe.

Then, with the Full Moon of Saturday, August 13th, a kind of accommodation of all the disparate positions might be able to be arrived at, perhaps through concerted effort. There is still the basic polarity of dreaming within your rich internal world versus the practical doing of here and now existence, but it is worthwhile seeking a synthesized approach.

The Last Quarter Moon of Sunday, August 21st brings up an increased consciousness of everything that is not viable in what you are attempting this month, and puts you in an even more contemplative state if such is possible. You are still torn between outer and more customary values versus what are essentially spiritual ones, but perhaps better able to recognize that each has its place. It’s what is meant by the famous phrase in the Bible that counsels giving unto Caesar meaning the government – or to the dictates of consensus thinking – only what is appropriate to that venue while keeping something important for yourself. Keep this perspective alive within your heart and you will emerge from this tunnel of inner contemplation in good condition and better able to handle the paradoxical situation implied by the human condition.

Pisces   (Feb 19 - March 20)  Water. Ruling planets Neptune, Jupiter.   Top

It’s getting to that point, Pisces. You are feeling compelled to find out what it takes to be all that you can be. Your future is calling, and you’re doing the research. This could involve taking another look at partnerships in your life, how they help or hinder the arc of your own development, and could also have implications for refining your concept of where you are in your life right now versus where you need to be. Ideas continue to pour into your brain, and your resistance to them is slowly beginning to melt away. The time for action has not yet arrived, for this month is mainly one of preparation. That time is fast approaching however and then you’re headed over the waterslide.

As the month begins, you are feeling the pinch of the evolutionary pressure to move onward. As far as you have been able to come in recent months, still the universe seems to feel that it is not yet enough. You are weathering this pressure well, surviving in the center of the hurricane, the eye of this perfect storm of circumstance. Much of this is happening for you below the range of normal waking consciousness but it is still observable in moments of quiet contemplation on a level that is deeply felt rather than more obviously seen. You are striving for coherence and unity in what you are accomplishing in both outer and inner worlds, and in how well these ideas match up with what you feel to be your most important mission for this lifetime. With the recent New Moon in the sector of your discipleship to your Higher Self, you are in general approaching this area with greater awareness and intention. This mode of beginning to settle into your inner world is enhanced when Mercury retrogrades in your relationship sector, heralding a period of time that is even more intensely introspective, and one that makes it an important part of your process to begin refining and even redefining the meaning of significant partnerships in your life.

The First Quarter Moon of Saturday, August 6th, represents a few snags in your process and also an increase of tension between you and others around you that could actually serve to sharpen your awareness of what you are really up to, and the obstacles to getting there. You are also dealing with the paradoxical and potentially dicey relationship between inner and outer concerns. The thoughtful and contemplative nature of this entire period does make direct action less promising than it would be otherwise, since there will undoubtedly need to be further course adjustments once Mercury regains its lost Zodiacal longitude by mid-September.

The Full Moon transpiring a week later, on Saturday, August 13th, represents an interesting time when you are attempting to come to some form of balance between disparate viewpoints. In the week that follows, you might be tempted to an over-reliance on naïve optimism on the one hand, or falling back into a form of cynicism on the other, but the truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between.

With the Last Quarter Moon of the following weekend, taking place on Sunday, August 21st, you are coming into a space and time that is even more intensely introspective, since this phase is naturally occupied with mulling over the ups and downs of the previous three weeks and the information that is thereby gained. You are still dealing with issues of self and other at this time, and of finding another golden mean in seeking their equilibrium.

You will feel the shift in the energy accompanying this late stage of the cycle, and also a further one with the station of Mercury to direct motion taking place a few days later on the 26th. This is a time also when old patterns of past woundings could arise to haunt you. These small complexes of split-off parts of ourselves usually stem from early childhood, when trauma too hard to bear at the time became buried away without being available to consciousness. If such patterns of knee-jerk reactivity do arise for you at this time or earlier in the month, it is helpful to regard these events as an opportunity rather than a challenge, giving you the chance to more fully accept these walled-off parts of yourself, tinged with childish hurt emotions, and move on with a better sense of integration. In the last weekend of August, the Virgo New Moon of Sunday the 28th gives you energy for moving forward with contemplated changes. Significant partners come into the picture as well at this time, and on into the ensuing September cycle that takes as its starting point this current month of powerful recognition and fresh insight.