You are storing up your forces, Aries, just as the bow does when it is drawn back in preparation for launching its missile. This period of time marks a thoughtful redirection of your aims and arrows heading from a wild New Year into an even wilder summer. For the present, though, you are riding out a wave of powerful energy that has brought heat and light but not a lot of focus. You are entering into a thoughtful period of reflection that leads you to more careful and considered action. Partners in your life are a helpful hindrance, holding you back in some ways perhaps but providing a useful counter-balance to overly hasty action. You are slowly transforming within the pressure-cooker of present circumstance and while to resist is futile it is also unnecessary.

As the month begins, you are feeling the energy of the New Moon in your sign from the middle of last month, riding the wave. You are also somewhat conflicted as you do so, since Mercury is currently retrograding through your sector of resources and values, including your financial resources, and you might find it hard to make progress there. Even though you have plenty of energy for innovation right now, the retrograde period is usually considered a better time to watch and wait than to move forward with new ideas, especially in the area impacted by the retrograde.

Then too, you have Saturn opposite Uranus strongly configured in your chart right now, and which represents a push-pull of archetypal energies rather than a straightforward combination. The energy of Saturn is to remain conservative in the face of proposed changes, while Uranus pushes forward with new ideas. You might feel antsy as a result, uncertain whether to go or to stay. Part of you is done with something and is ready to move on, but another part holds back. Then too, there is enormous pressure right now to radically transform your life, especially in the manner of your outer presentation, including the way that you show up in public and your career issues in general.

You will feel this energy most strongly over the first weekend of the month, May 1st and 2nd, but this is also a harbinger of things to come. The urge to be moving on in some way really hits your consciousness at month's end.

With the Last Quarter Moon of Wednesday, May 5th, these issues magnify. You are looking more closely into the arc of your development during turns out to be a pivotal month for you, as you head toward a season of changes with summer and the Cardinal T-square of outer planets that strongly affects members of your sign. Financial concerns could also come to a head this month.

The New Moon of Thursday evening, May 13th, brings a new approach to financial and other resource issues. Mercury is now direct and you might find that you see things very differently than in early April before the retrograde began. It is also true that Mercury still wobbles a bit until the period of the retrograde shadow has been resolved, on May 27th. During this latter half of the month you will find yourself making many adjustments to the way that you see the world and your place in it. Perhaps you will be aided by the advice of others in your immediate circle or by significant partners in your life, who have an important and ultimately helpful role to play. Throughout this entire period you win when you look for the good in what comes to you through the agency of others, and try not to hear it as criticism.

The Full Moon in the last week of the month, taking place on Thursday, May 27th, is an important turning point for you as well, and a time when many things in your life could suddenly alter. There is always some rain that falls; your job is to make the best of running between the raindrops.

Taurus   (April 19 - May 19)  Earth.  Ruling planet Venus.    Top

In a month of ups and downs, pushes and pulls, you are determined to stay smiling, Taurus. Even though your spiritual vision is energized and you have plenty of go-power -- especially around the mid-month New Moon in your sign -- you are still perhaps suffering these days from lack of direction and too much attention to detail. Not everything that you conceive at this time will turn out, that is a given. You win by keeping your chin up and providing silent witness to your striving and by accepting whatever outcome actually takes place as nature's way of gently guiding your activity. The voyage that you are embarked upon will reach its intended shore sooner or later and you might find yourself actually richer for the experience of the waves and the cross-currents that you encounter along the way.

As the month begins, you are in a somewhat spacey place by virtue of the New Moon from the middle of April in your sector of dream imagination, and also the ongoing retrograde of Mercury through your identity sector. This is perhaps frustrating to the normal orientation of the egoic mind that wants to make things happen in the world of outer events and concrete accomplishments, but it serves you well in another way. Through these inner explorations some hitherto unrecognized aspects of who you are and why you are here might come to light, leaving you startled or at least surprised. The retrograde of Mercury began the weekend of April 17th and continues up to May 11th although for approximately two weeks afterward Mercury is recovering its lost zodiacal ground and events do not follow their normal course until May 27th.

The Last Quarter Moon of Wednesday, May 5th, might present you with a moment of tension in your process of understanding and growth. This is traditionally a time of consolidation of the information regarding what has gone before it in the lunation cycle. Family matters could come up at this time for review and reorientation, or issues surface that amount to a conflict between public and private life. This is actually a crux of powerful energy for you, and although the realizations that come to you at this time might be subtle, they are available when you look more deeply into your situation. It pays as always to take everything slowly and with attention, to look before you leap, and to witness your reactions to events before making them, known.

The New Moon in your sign of Thursday, May 13th, represents a fresh start with many of the ideas and challenges that have been brewing over the period of the retrograde. Now that Mercury is direct, there is a subtle shift. You are feeling cautiously optimistic about the future at this time, although a hint of the shadow of past trauma warns you not to oversimplify. You are redefining your self-concept over this entire period and the more complex your understanding can become, the more closely it can match the true reality of your situation, since you and everyone else are nothing if not multi-faceted.

The next two weeks, most of the latter half of the month, will further your exploration. With the First Quarter Moon of Thursday, May 20th, you are confirming some of what you have figured out over the intervening period of time, and you might have to also let something go. You are experiencing the polarity of time and transformation; while the urge is strong to transcend previous bound Aries, the continuity of life holds you back into the form and structure that you have arrived at over a period of years, so that change comes slowly. It is important to honor the necessity for change, but to also honor the holding back, and the paradoxical nature of reality.

The Full Moon at nearly month's end, taking place on Thursday the 27th, might come as a relief, with your feet more surly placed upon the path that you and you alone must follow.

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

Nature sprites have nothing on you, Gemini. Through a month of contrasts and of pulling back rather than going strictly forward, you are wandering through spiritual and emotional forests of your own manufacture. Partners that you meet along the way will prove themselves to be ultimately trustworthy and helpful to you eventual enterprise, aiding in the intention if not in the obvious parameters of your quest. The dawn of a new day for you is long in coming but when it does emerge, at nearly the end of the month, it is equally sudden in its ascension. Concrete rainbows arrive at that time to match the towering visions of the long fallow period of your preparation.

As the month begins you are betwixt and between -- due to the passages of both the Sun and your ruler Mercury through your twelfth sector of interior process and dream vision. Of course this is to the good if your goals right now are to contemplate your existence and achieve insight into your inner world, and some would say that is exactly all and everything that you really should be doing right now. But of course the world goes on and I suspect that you do not have the luxury of waiting out the three to five weeks of the Mercury retrograde period for it to start revolving again.

Scintillating plans for future growth, the expansion of your career universe and recent successes within it continue to drive your process. You are also in some ways more connected to others than to your own process at this time, so that there is a paradoxical pull to relationship at the very same time that you are so very internal in your basic premise. The communication can only be coming from the deeper levels of your being right now, and so might engender closer connection with significant persons in your life.

The Last Quarter Moon of Wednesday, May 5th, is an interesting time for you, when communication becomes emphasized and exacerbated by the potential conflict inherent in the Moon -- Sun square. This is a time when partnership connection is called to the fore even more strongly, and when philosophical ideas manifest in the midst of your inward turning so that you might begin to see the deficits as well as the advantages of where you are at these days with both personal and professional concerns.

The New Moon a week later, taking oplace on Thursday, May 13th, also provides lively insights and energetic exchanges with partners and friends alike, but a large portion of your interest lies within. You are able at this time to see more clearly into your inner motivations and the evolutionary path that you are taking. This path is like a river that runs largely beneath the surface of your conscious awareness but you might begin to get glimmers of its underground progress now and also at the very end of the month.

The Full Moon that takes place on Thursday the 27th is accompanied that same day by Uranus moving into Aries which will shake things up quite a bit, for you and everyone else on planet earth. The changes following this moment in time come swifter and lead into a rather glorious summer, as long as you are fine with massive changes in both societal and personal spheres.

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

This is a big month for you to see the progress that you have made on yourself, Cancer. A time of reflective pause graces an important season of new ideas and new vision, as you prepare for a bright and even surprisingly dazzling future. Starting at month's end and on into June the excitement builds. In the meantime you can foresee your coming transformation of the relationship energy that you hold so dear. Just don't expect any aspect of your life to remain the same after the next eight weeks have passed. Your concept of pending breakthrough is being refined over the intervening period into something rich and strange, to emerge full-blown by the time of the Summer Solstice and the entrance of the Sun into your sign.

As the month begins, you are celebrating self as well as other, as you reflect on and continue to revise future plans, imagining your prospective journey into a new world and thinking about how far you have already come.

The Last Quarter Moon of Wednesday, May 5th, reminds you that to devote yourself to a sense of your own progress demands a separation from the influence of others and yet in subtle ways depends on them also. You might at this time feel the tension inherent in the human condition especially when one person collides with another. You are finding your own way through, and yet there are subtle ties between you and intimate others in your life that constrain your path. This first week of the month is a crucial turning point for you, when you begin to discern the outlines of your arc of development over the next few weeks.

With the New Moon of Thursday, May 13th, you are establishing yourself as your own command post for your continued journey of exploration. This is an important time also, since you are now in a much better position to see where you are heading. Your ability to visualize a different future for yourself is powerful now. Mercury is direct in your sector of wishes and hopes for the future but still wobbly, so that it pays to examine each option slowly before committing to it. You might look back to where you were at in your thinking a few short weeks ago, when the mid-April New Moon took place. It is useful to compare your attitude then and now. Certainly more information has come to you, and more ideas as well, but the basic angle of your attack remains the same. Discernment counts for quite a lot at this time, as you prepare for a major breakthrough in the following month.

The First Quarter Moon of the following week, taking place on Thursday, May 20th, is an interesting time, when you will be challenged in some way and perhaps feel the need to prove something to yourself. The ideas that shape your progress now must be tried in the fires of actual experience. You are coming to some startling conclusions as a result of this working out through the agency of the world and of others. There might be confusion at this time, as well as a determination to make concrete the ideals that have fueled your recent advances. You might feel quite a bit of restlessness as well, since Uranus is getting closer and closer to your career sector.

With the Full Moon at month's end you are ready of make a change there in the manner if not in the actual particulars of your performance. Partnership is a shifting ground as well for you right now, and those changes filter into what you are attempting for yourself in career and outer world work. Continue to keep the mystical side of life close to your heart and everything will turn out just fine.

Leo   (July 22 - August 21)  Fire.  Ruling planet is the Sun.    Top

You are moving from a philosophical challenging spring to a raging summer, Leo. To this end, you will undoubtedly be feeling a burst of energy this month, especially in the middle weeks when the New Moon lights up your career sector. You have been passionate about traveling lately, and about digging into higher-mind perspectives. This month might provide the key to better understanding of these impulses. Certainly by month's end you will be well on your way to another viewpoint on reality. But nothing is as simple as it seems. The mixed blessing in all this is that the force that holds you back from novel schemes and dreams will also see you through and keep you at least partially grounded. The whole world is not enough for you right now; you contain multitudes.

As the month begins, with the Sun in your career sector, and Mercury retrograding there as well, you are scaling the heights of achievement with an eye on the ground below, even as you fix your gaze on the accomplishments that you are so ably courting. The changing tides of your worldview and the excitement of physical travel -- or perhaps of the armchair variety -- have given you the preliminary impetus for your preoccupation with outer world success. Private life is also important to you at this time and serves as a counter-balance to your public adventure.

The Last Quarter Moon of Wednesday, May 5th, represents an important turning point in your thinking and might lead you into a deeper understanding of where you are truly heading. This is traditionally a time of reassessment, and could represent a moment of tension in your process when the opinions of others could be weighed against your own and judged either favorably or not.

The New Moon that arrives on Thursday, May 13th, represents a fresh start. Issues of sickness and health could come up at this time for review and revision. Career goals could be seen in a new light and with renewed energy. This is also a time when you are getting a better handle on day-to-day activities, trying to find the larger purpose in your striving. You might find yourself questioning whether what you do in the world is a good chime with your highest purpose. All these ideas will be magnified and perhaps suddenly focalized by month's end.

The First Quarter Moon that follows a week later, taking place on Thursday, May 20th, comes at a time when you are finding yourself close to an important breakthrough in your thinking, with one part of your mind ready or more than ready to go forward and another part holding back. There is an inherent conflict in your position right now but the dilemma can and must be resolved by a third way of proceeding. Although this synthesis might be slow in coming its eventual ascension is assured.

The Full Moon that comes along at almost the very end of the month, on Thursday, May 27th, brings with it the concept of graceful epiphany that might help to further your arc of development. Imagination flourishes at this time, and indeed precedes action. Your perspective is changing almost daily at this point in time and for the weeks ahead, producing a yet more profound shift.

Virgo   (August 22 - September 21)  Earth.  Ruling planet Mercury.   Top

You are somewhat stuck lately, Virgo, and also somewhat on the go as well considering all the positive energy that surrounds you. Old ideas that are too firmly lodged might have to give way before you will be as flighty as you desire to be. The mid-month New Moon energizes you and new experiences beckon, but only part-way. The good news in all your hesitation is that you will have plenty of food for thought allowing you to eventually resolve your situation over time. This is a big step that will take you most of the rest of this year to complete, but you get a huge head-start with the Full Moon at the end of this month in the sector of your psychological roots.

As the month begins, you are revisiting various aspects of philosophical perspective that you have been mulling over for many weeks now. Your ruler Mercury is retrograding through your sector of higher mind, and things that were once settled in this area might need to be revisited both during this time and after the retrograde period has passed. This includes your understanding of other cultures, the law and education system, and your beliefs in general. Travel or educational plans that you made last month might need to be altered to accommodate new ways of thinking about these matters. This can obviously be a bit dizzying especially considering that Saturn and Uranus have been facing off and confounding you over tug-of-war concerns of self and other. One recommendation is that you not take setbacks too seriously right now, preferring to wait for next month, and until then regarding them as necessary ingredients for research on how much stock you actually put in various aspects of your belief system. This is obviously a terrific time for journaling or just discussing things with trusted peers from a reflective standpoint but not a great time for forging ahead.

The Last Quarter Moon of Wednesday, May 5th, might present you with quandAries over how to integrate your overall perspective and outer world intentions with an equally important ongoing deep commitment to personal evolution. The steps that you take concretely in meeting your obligations to real-world commitments might have been also up in the air somewhat for you lately with the changing tides of life circumstances, and this juncture could bring out the contrasts there more than ever.

With the New Moon of Thursday, May 13th, which follows just after one peak of the retrograde period on May 11th, you might be looking for a new way that synthesizes various approaches regarding significant others in your life as well as your own agenda independent of others, and allows you to embrace the basic paradox of your situation. You have been through many changes lately and your self-definition is morphing into a richer conception, taking you further along an arc of development that leads you inexorably toward a new idea of who you really are. Each stage along the way illuminates how your everyday intention fits into a grander scheme of things that embraces soul purpose as well as mundane commitment. There are also wounds from early childhood that could come up for review now, issues buried away that have become habitual patterns of relating appropriate to an earlier time in your life. These may now be ready for you to acknowledge and move on from. Thus there are deeper issues that you might have to confront in these last two weeks of the month as you grope toward wholeness.

With the First Quarter Moon of Thursday, May 20th, you might feel on the brink of uncovering something important regarding these ideas, poised for breakthrough.

Then when the Full Moon hits in your home sector, taking place on Thursday, May 27th, you will know that you are really onto something; an important new beginning. The many ideas that come now, fast and furious, will smooth your way forward in the weeks ahead.


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

You have entered the calm eye of the hurricane, Libra, and it gives you the leisure to start looking around. As you reassess the recent past with an eye to the future, you are in this current month preparing in many ways for breakthrough in your life rather than breakdown, rearranging the puzzle pieces into a better fit for an idealized vision of your soul purpose. Philosophically active times during the early going give way to energetic changes by month's end, when significant partners in your life will provide important and surprising input as grist for the mill of change that you are accessing right now.

As the month begins, you are ruminating about life and love and where they are currently taking you. You are also engaged in reviewing and reflecting on the importance of significant partnership in your life, and as well the ways that they continue to affect your choices. You find yourself in a more inward-turning mode than usual, taking the information from internal sources as truer than the intelligence that you receive from important others in your life for a change. You are self-motivated and self-evolving right now, and it might feel a bit lonely at times, although big changes in your relationship dynamic are only just around the corner.

The Last Quarter Moon of Wednesday, May 5th, is an important turning point of this time period, and highlights this period of reflection and reassessment. There could be tensions that arise between the authority of significant partners in your life and your need to express your own individual creativity in your own way. Group activities involving partners or other important persons in your life might present another occasion for divisive sparks to fly, but the working out of these types of conundrums could lead to creative solutions.

The New Moon that follows in the next week, taking place on Thursday, May 13th, presents you with fresh energy for your process with others and takes you further along your chosen path, whether a conscious or a relative unconscious one. Home and family are key for you right now, and provide the underpinning of security that allows you the freedom to make progress. A metamorphosis is brewing in that area of your life as well, which is really the resumption of changes there that have been in the works for some time now. These changes could involve the material dimensions of your physical home structure as a symbol for all that that psychological base means to you.

Over the remaining half of the month and for weeks to come you will find a greater and greater emphasis there. In this and other areas, you are also likely becoming more cognizant of a crucial attempt to balance the requirements of innovation and holding back.

With the Full Moon of May 27th you might be able to tune in to the preliminary flowering of momentous rearrangements that are not only possible in your life, but necessary for its fulfillment.

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

This is definitely an exciting and transformative period of time for you, Scorpio. Your month starts with a bang, not a whimper. You are evaluating the importance of relationship in your life, and simultaneously equally concerned with making your own splash in the world of action and events. A somewhat stressful beginning two weeks of May leads to a more graceful finish after the mid-month New Moon in your opposite sign, implying that new energy is available for managing the significant relationships in your life, an activity that progresses in distinct stages over the final two weeks of the month. In the end you will find a plethora of new ideas both for partnership concerns and also for finding your footing amidst the changing tides of career and financial issues.

As the month begins, you are involved with outer and also with inner priorities. It is an interesting mix that you have created for yourself, as symbolized by the planetary alignments in your chart, with Mercury retrograding through your partnership sector at the very same time that your ruler Mars is emphasized in your sector of career and of public stage achievement. There is potentially a degree of tension in your preferences now, and also plenty of food for thought. You are spending many a quiet hour engaged in reviewing and revising your concept of relationship and how it manifests and contributes to your life energy, and how it sometimes traps and overly engages you as well. This process of reassessment applies to partnerships of all kinds, both business and personal.

Then also, with the Last Quarter Moon of Wednesday, May 5th, you are very engaged in making your way forward in the world, and in feeling the variance surrounding these concerns that in some fashion conflict with each other. You might be discovering at this time the flaws rather than the successes in your arrangements and do well to simply take the information in, without judgment, as the seed material for considering a wider set of choices that might ultimately be available to you.

The New Moon, when it comes along in the following week, taking place on Thursday, May 13th, could exacerbate these issues or else could more positively succeed in sparking your movement forward into something like compromise with regard to all the factors at play within your complex psyche at this time. You are in some ways very other-oriented right now, aware of significant partners as contributors to your own efforts to plumb the depths of your experience and to shine more brightly while doing so. Of course the open secret is that your own path forward is yours and yours alone, as you discover the ways that the information that comes to you through the agency of others matches your understanding of your own situation and the groundwork that you must lay to take the next step forward.

The last two weeks of the month, punctuated by the First Quarter Moon of Thursday, May 20th, will be spent in working out what you truly need and what is incidental to your journey.

Then the Full Moon nearly at month's end will represent the full flowering of what you are intending in this cycle. This is a time of integration of self and other, and a time of finding greater confidence and greater clarity regarding your own way forward, in spite of difficulties.

Sagittarius   (Nov 22 - Dec 20)  Fire.  Ruling planet Jupiter.   Top

This is for you an intense time of becoming, Sagittarius. You are seeking a mode of service to others that will not compromise your values or yourself. Lately you have been revisiting issues with your commitment to your highest purpose going forward, and also with what you have to work with in order to get yourself there. The middle of the month provides a boost but it is at nearly the very end of May and on into June when the real fireworks begin. As Uranus enters Aries in conjunction with your ruler Jupiter, you will feel your creativity start to flow in unexpected ways and as well the transformational push resume to be all that you can be in this lifetime. You benefit if you can heed the call

As the month begins, you are feeling comfortable and assured, although a little at a loss perhaps regarding a seismic shift in values and resources that will become more pronounced as the month wears on. You are reviewing and refining your concept of what you do in this world, and how your endeavor translates into a necessary fit that you are honing in on over this monthly time period with ultimate soul purpose.

The Last Quarter Moon of Wednesday, May 5th, could help to resolve your thinking somewhat. You will certainly be more communicative at this time about where you are heading at this time in your life, and how your beliefs justify your actions. There could be minor confrontations that arise especially if you yield to your tendency to wax dogmatic in the face of seemingly reasonable objections. You are consolidating your efforts now at coming to a better set of realizations concerning both outer form activities and the deeper core issues that underlie them.

The New Moon a week later, coming along on Thursday, May 13th, gives you fresh impetus for your continuing journey down through your depths and back out again, in unending cycle. You are feeling strongly now that something in the way that you do things must shift, and radically, in order that you maintain your integrity in the face of new awareness. Something is brewing deep underground in your psyche and the more that you can tune in to this distant rumble, the sooner you can react appropriately and the more prepared you will be when the time comes that cannot be postponed. Old patterns of behavior that have been good enough to get you by until now just might not be working for you any more. These correspond perhaps to an earlier time in your life, when you had fewer choices and less power to act, but might not be appropriate to your current reality. Intimations of these deeper issues are not only subtle and therefore not easy to become fully cognizant of but also difficult to face; however there you are.

The First Quarter Moon of Thursday, May 20th, could serve to bring these issues more out in the open, and also to alert you to the drawbacks as well as the possibilities of the road that you are attempting to traverse in this cycle.

With the arrival of the Full Moon in your sign, on Thursday, May 27th, you are more in the flow of your arc of development and more able to cope with the inevitable changes that will find you there. With Uranus making its entrance into Aries, in your creativity sector, this end of the month period is powerful for you, and will take you farther along your soul-level intended course than you would have dreamed possible only a few short weeks ago.

Capricorn   (Dec 21 - Jan 19)  Earth.  Ruling planet Saturn.   Top

Fluctuation has by now become the norm for you, Capricorn. Although the great mystery is how far they will take you, you are getting use to the tides of change and even developing your sea-legs. Perspectives keep shifting and this affects your own self-concept as well as the story you tell yourself regarding personal creativity. An even greater transformation is just around the corner, signaling a new turning point that takes private and public concerns into a larger integration. By month's end your home environment will be reborn in some way that honors inner priorities over external ones. Significant partners in your life participate in a complex tuning of soul-purpose and physical world intention as these join together in greater coherence and almost musical harmony.

As the month begins, you are engaged in a process of revising your self-concept. You are still in the midst of on-going changes that are simultaneously more natural and more far-reaching than you have allowed yourself to imagine. The next round is just around the corner, coming at the end of the month when Uranus enters Aries and your sector of home and family. This accelerates a creative instability at the very core of your being; the good news is that it will blast you out of any potential rut in which you might otherwise remain trapped. These coming changes are presaged in the present set of circumstances that you find yourself reacting to, as Uranus continues to oppose your ruler, Saturn. Meanwhile, Mercury retrogrades through Taurus where it has the effect of bringing inner experience closer to the outer layers of your awareness.

The Last Quarter Moon of Wednesday, May 5th, has the effect of exacerbating this awareness at least temporarily, since the old lunar cycle that is dying leaves behind a few gems of wisdom in its wake. This is a time when you might feel a degree of tension in your process as you attempt to sort out the wheat from the chaff regarding your recent experiences. New ideas for what you intend to be when you grow up might be coming to you fast and furious, but they should be taken more lightly than earnestly at this time, since Mercury is in retrograde until the 11th and then recovering for another two weeks after that.

The New Moon that takes place on Thursday, May 13th, provides you with plenty of fresh insights and energy, although with also the possibility of contentiousness resulting from a pace of change that is rather too fast for you to handle easily. You can drag your heels for the moment but any way that you can get on top of a rapidly shifting worldview puts you ahead of the game for when the pace quickens even more over the next few weeks and months. Your understanding of what is going on around you and within you is definitely a moving target for you right now. These quickenings of awareness do not necessarily connote an actual change in the work you do or the plans that you concretely make, but everything looks different by the time you fully assimilate them.

The First Quarter Moon that follows a week later, taking place on Thursday, May 20th, and that represents in-flight adjustments to what is only just beginning to dawn at the earlier time, might prove to be a confusing time for you. Something magical is trying to be born deep inside you, perhaps a new way of being in the world, perhaps only a new way of seeing family and loved ones, and your tribal connections also.

The Full Moon in the last week of the month, taking place on Thursday, May 27th, represents a fuller flowering of these nascent feelings, and segues into an extremely powerful summer.

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

A season of change is once more upon you Aquarius, although in some ways it could seem as though it never left. Over these past several weeks you have been dipping back into the past for clues that you might have missed along the way. You are encouraged to take action and engage with your circle of friends but words fail you regarding what you are actually up to, which could be described as a decidedly mystical state of mind. Home and family are even greater in importance than usual in the midst of these ruminations. A great shift is coming but its approach is stealth. Be patient. At the end of the month and into June, communication blossoms and you'll have almost too much to say regarding your amazing and emerging situation.

As the month begins, you are focused on family, perhaps revising your attitude somewhat regarding their impact on your life. You are finding your way through a maze of inner feelings lately, searching for the exit but also enjoying the discoveries that you are making along the way. Everything that you fully explore and that you really get to know changes you in some way, and leads you closer to wholeness. These kinds of reflections and revisions are logical, since Mercury is currently retrograding through your sector of home and family and your psychological roots, at least until mid-month. Your self-expression will also emerge from this period of time in altered fashion.

The Last Quarter Moon of Wednesday, May 5th, in your sign is traditionally a time of tense feelings as the impulse from the mid-April New Moon runs up against the realities of your current situation. This is especially so this time since Mercury is also simultaneously retrograde while your ruler Uranus opposes Saturn in Virgo. You might be feeling just a bit more stuck, or run into conflicts with others, at this time. The solution might not be far away, however, when you can rise to the occasion and truthfully examine your feelings.

The New Moon a week later, taking place on Thursday, May 13th, brings fresh energy to your quest, and to your concentration on your home base ahead of other areas of interest. You are seeing the world through underwater eyes right now and while the outlines might get a little blurry the essence of the objects and especially the people that you encounter will be more readily apparent. You are seeking active partnership to help to bridge the gap between what you can conceive and what can actually concretely happen. Collaboration is helpful to you at this juncture; seeming differences of opinion need to be resolved but in so doing you will make an important movement toward better understanding of your own depths.

The First Quarter Moon a week later, taking place on Thursday, May 20th, might be the occasion for a period of increased tension in interpersonal relations, but also serves to keep the creative sparks flying high and wild. A natural alteration in your perspective blossoms into increased communication over the next few weeks. Information that comes your way over these last ten days of the month will be extremely enlightening. If you also listen to what you are saying in response you might learn even more.

The Full Moon that marks the last week of the month, coming along on Thursday, May 27th, also signals the entrance of your ruler Uranus into Aries, a much-heralded event that brings to you a transformative element arising out of your own deep places. Communication sparkles. Although nothing is definite perhaps matters are a little less unresolved. You are learning to live with ambiguity, and that takes you far.

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

The roller-coaster ride of values and plans continues into the present month, Pisces. You're actually not as crazy as you think you are but then again you're not as normal as consensus thinking would like you to imagine. You win when you acknowledge all your parts no matter how strange. It's a stretch perhaps but no more so than many others that you have put yourself through lately as you practice your yoga of the mind and heart. Over the second half of the month your communication sizzles and leaves very little unspoken. If not to yourself, you might be able to get your point across to others regarding the multiple paradoxes of your situation. The end of the month presages breakthrough, and the weeks that follow will be like nothing you have yet seen.

As the month begins, you are investigating your possibilities for future growth based on new assumptions and a desire to communicate your truth to others. Your actual conversational abilities might appear muted unless deeper matters are being discussed, since with Mercury retrograding through your communication sector your mind is turned inward at this time.

The Last Quarter Moon of Wednesday, May 5th, is an occasion for greater scrutiny of your process. This is what Rudhyar called "the crisis of consciousness" referring to the way we finally come to see things as the cycle of lunation that began last month wears down almost completely. Obviously there are lessons. Yours could have to do with an educational approach to the world you are living in, as mediated by your own particular development as you interact with that world now and in your own way. A time of relative tension could appear as you wrestle with new concepts that are being formed in response but you won't let that sidetrack you from your underlying objective to break free of conditioning and sail ahead into wholeness.

The New Moon of Thursday, May 13th, provides fresh energy and a determination to find new ways of being and doing. Your concept of where you are headed is, it seems, a moving target right now, but one that will come into greater clarity by the end of this month and on into the summer, when radical change will assert itself more fully and you will begin to accept a very different view of future plans. You have an even greater urge to investigate your psychological surroundings now than ever, and the urge to communicate your ideas to others also. Some of these might involve the recognition of past patterns of behavior that stem from ancient wounds to your self-esteem, have become entrenched, and have outlived their utility in the present era. If you can feel the tingle of a hint of these dark places within you, now in this second half of the month is the time to explore it.

The quest for self-knowledge might become more poignant with the First Quarter Moon of Thursday, May 20th. This is a time when the rubber meets the road with changes that you are contemplating, and when you are forced to look more closely at the arc of your development to see which parts of it are truly viable. You also might be able at this time to tune more fully in to awareness of early trauma that might be rising up out of the past to hider present growth. Recognizing these buried parts of yourself is an important first step toward moving beyond them.

The Full Moon at nearly month's end, taking place on Thursday, May 27th, is another turning point for you, when you will feel both the urge to go deeper into your experience and also the pull of the mundane world as a reaction and a counter-balance. You will inevitably honor both sides of this seesaw and it makes illogical sense from a deeper level that you do so. It pays not to question the essentially paradoxical nature of your experience.