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

You are paradoxically expanding your vision outside of yourself by traveling within, Aries. In the midst of an active summer full of the outdoors, you are taking a trip into the vast and yeasty interior of your psyche, delving down to discover your own hidden spaces. Mystical progress surpasses run-of-the-mill achievement in aliveness for you right now, and for the richness of the reward also. Your intuition is sizzling, as it has been for many weeks and months, although with now perhaps a greater edge, since you are more open to receiving the amazing information that comes through your angel guidance from your Higher Self. As you meditate on the ultimate importance to you of home and family, radical change continues unabated in how you see and do your outer world contribution.

As the month begins, you are focused on finding better and more feeling-oriented ways to communicate your truth to peers and also within the greater privacy and security of familial and tribal connections. Mercury is retrograding through your sector of home and family, and the likelihood is that you are mulling over certain concepts in this area where you remain attached, although they might be habitual and more or less outdated.

Pluto in your sector of outer manifestation is also highlighted over the summer, and even more so through the late fall, representing radical transformation in the way that you show up in the world of manifestation and as well as within your more private inner spaces. It is not easy to make changes regarding such deep places within you; nothing new emerges there without a great deal of study. This month is perfect for meditation and for reflection, which might eventually lead you into different life path directions.

The other important outer planet energies — ones that are prominent all month long in sectors of your solar chart representing your emotional centers — are Saturn in Scorpio, corresponding to your sector of intimacy or inner exploration, and Neptune, also Chiron, hidden away in your sector of unconscious process and deep inner work. Since Neptune rules this sector, corresponding to the sign of Pisces, and because of the retrograde of Mercury through Cancer, the remaining Water sign, these inner places are especially emphasized over this monthly period. You could find yourself examining and re-examining yourself at deep and relatively unconscious levels.

What is the likely result of all this inner exploration' First of all, contemplation does come at all naturally to you, since you are by your very nature more outer- and result-oriented than geared for intense inner work. Secondly and perhaps ironically, with prominent Saturn so placed, there is a shut-down of your emotional energy for others and even for yourself, best viewed as slowing down of your process in order to concentrate your involvement. This is for the purpose of more closely exploring and eventually opening up to your inner world, and to the emotions of others also.

We in this culture live too much on the surface of our lives without really touching who we are at the most profound levels of our being. In the end you will benefit greatly from the time spent within. You win when you make a determination that this is what is happening right now; you might as well go willingly into this deep meditative void, with few expectations and with fewer preconceptions of what you will, eventually, find inside.


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

This is a dynamic month for you, Taurus, one where expectations falter and inner trumps outer in significance. Being true to yourself might turn out to be more valid than success by any other measure. Since Mercury remains in retrograde through your communications sector, while you might miss the mark on keeping caught up, you are staying current within yourself, for an important meditative awareness of your issues. Partners can appear as mentors now, or else personify that critical voice reminding you of parental issues that you are more than ready to discard and move beyond. There is room for confusion and illusion as well as the excitement of finally taking significant steps toward ditching old patterns. Or you might be at least getting a better handle on them, perhaps by catching yourself in the very act of enacting them.

As the month begins, you could be feeling challenged and or limited, and yet also with a paradoxical sense of expansion in other, more purely mystical, realms. With Venus, your ruler, having recently moved into your sector of home and family concerns, and just now coming into square to the limitations and practicality of Saturn, you are perhaps fighting circumstances that hold you back from your fullest expression, while also being pulled toward more substance and focus in this important area.

Even though you are full of accrued wisdom that you would like to share, you might feel more like reaching in than reaching out. With Mercury Retrograde in your communication sector, this entire month is ideal for meditation and for journaling on where within your inner landscape you might possibly find yourself. You are on huge learning curve, and the subject matter is yourself.

All four outer planets hit your solar chart in the first week of this month, leading up to next Monday's New Moon. You might feel this as a palpable sense of tension, and also a feeling of evolutionary pressure to get on with your most important business, which is that you figure out what concrete near-future steps you might need to take, to get where you are trying to go. The first few days of July the Sun opposes Pluto in Capricorn. The first weekend of the month, on the 6th and 7th, Venus also aspects Pluto, and begins to trine Uranus. You are therefore getting a preview of the intensity that surrounds the next exact collision of the Uranus-Pluto square by the fall. This is essentially a call from the cosmos to more fully understand your changing worldview. This is vital as it continues to color your interpretation of the events that are actually playing out in your life, which you are more and more beginning to view from the standpoint of soul-purpose.

Saturn and Neptune remain in exact trine all through July, with Saturn stationing on the 7th just as Jupiter in Cancer begins to trine them both. By mid-month, the grand trine between Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune emphasize these two intense outer planet energies even more, which are located in your sectors of connection: Saturn in your relationship sector, while Neptune resides in your sector of group affiliation, friendships, and plans for the future. The way that you connect with others, especially with romantic partners, is changing in mysterious ways as you recognize a new mandate to plug into social realities that surround you, as you move ahead with the awareness of Spirit acting through you.

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

This is a special month for you, Gemini. With Mercury Retrograde in your sector of values and resources, you are spending some serious time rethinking all your possibilities. It is perhaps strange, and definitely confusing, to be internally rather than externally motivated. You are questioning your foundations, and this could be a good thing, allowing you to see beyond the superficial reasons for doing what you do. With one part of your being you are very aware of ancient patterns stemming from old wounds that could be holding you back from your life's fullest expression, while another side of yourself goes along with the daily business of living. The sunlight shines into these darker places at times like this, when you can forge a connection between incongruous parts. Good fortune follows sincere inquiry.

As the month begins, you are coming off of an intense last weekend of June, full of surprising realizations and barely verbalized moods and feelings, punctuated by the late Saturday evening Last Quarter Moon. You are possessed at this time with a strange mixture of determination and relaxation, a heightened sense of responsibility for getting things done; and yet a feeling tone corresponding to internal reflection rather than to direct action. There is perhaps a feeling within you of cosmic expansion and resonating depths, and it indicates to you that whatever you do in the world of concrete manifestation is but a small part of a larger story of what you are really up to.

With this lunar phase you are likely to be spending a good portion of your energy and attention in mulling over the past several weeks of the cycle that began in early June, with the New Moon in your sign. You could see things quite differently now than even a few short weeks ago when that prior cycle began, in its rush of energy. You could be struggling to try to fit recent events into this new understanding. The fact that your ruler, Mercury, is now retrograde represents a significant piece of what you are experiencing, as there is a tendency to move toward adopting a more meditative posture. Mercury remains in its retrograde period and the aftermath for the next five weeks. While Mercury's station to direct motion occurs on July 20th, it does not escape its retrograde shadow until early August.

Saturn is also highlighted this month, in your sector of day-to-day events, the workplace, and health concerns, bringing a focus and a practical sense of limitation to these areas. It continues in its long period of trine with Neptune, located near the top of your chart. Neptune there represents idealizations and perhaps illusions concerning the above areas, and as well as for your self-expression in career, profession and other forms of outward-directed energy. You have been on course to make significant changes in the way that you approach your life direction.

With Mercury Retrograde for the entire month, the way that you achieve your goals and make your money could be coming up for review and reconsideration as well; there is a blessing bestowed upon you at this time and your very questioning in this area could come to be seen as part of that good fortune. Over these next five weeks, your subconscious process is in the midst of a subtle process of reorganizing and rearranging your life so that by mid-August you might barely recognize yourself.


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

This is a powerful time of empowerment for you, Cancer, and a thoughtful and almost meditative one as well. With Mercury retrograding through your sign, nothing appears the same as it was. You will come out the other side by month's end, a little mixed up but definitely further along that when you started. You have all the keys at your fingertips, and have, perhaps, only to find the will to use them, and the daring within your thought process to make sudden departures away from previous norms. The universe is calling you to attempt a mystical slant-wise approach to all your conundrums, so that they disappear as they were and become minimized from the standpoint of this slightly different perspective, as though you were able to apply new combinations to old locks.

As the month begins, you are excited, and also a little scared, at the magnitude of the changes coursing through you. This is another big month for you, as your birthday time unfolds, in terms of the pressure to continue to make changes in alignment with the evolutionary arc of your development that you have undertaken, in secret contract with your higher Self, somewhere long ago and far away. The past few days before July 1st might have been a little intense, since the recent Quarter Moon from the last weekend of June made important aspects to both Pluto and Uranus in angular sectors of your solar chart.

Mercury is also retrograding through your sign, and likely contacting key personal planets as it does, giving you a meditative pause from the rat race pressure of events in these modern times. Mercury's retrograde can be considered to last all month when you take the extra two weeks of its retrograde shadow into account. The station to direct motion on July 20th represents a shift in the energy that will make the reflective and inward turning nature of this period of time even more poignant.

Since Pluto is highlighted now, and located in your opposite sign, symbolizing relationship issues, you are in a long-term phase of accumulating important transformational realizations concerning how you connect with significant partners. This process will continue to take place within you at different levels, and for different degrees of intensity — those that are more difficult and others that are mere nudges in a particular direction — until your soul's intended result is reached. You can cooperate with Pluto and make your own path easier by recognizing that something inside you is changing in a fundamental way, and trying to stay as open as possible to your process.

Uranus in square to Pluto was also triggered by the recent lunation, continuing into the first week of July. Located in your career sector, Uranus symbolizes sudden departures from what was expected, so that you might be witnessing surprise career moves that you perhaps didn't even know that you had in you. These are illuminating in demonstrating to you how much you need your own unique viewpoint to be honored. There could be intuitional leaps that cut corners to information arising from somewhere deep within you, and you do well to pay close attention to what you can glean in this unorthodox fashion.

The big news for you this month is the Saturn-Neptune trine in your growth sectors, which is marvelously enhanced by the entrance of Jupiter into your sign, making a grand trine in Water. You will likely feel quite comfortable, and even lucky, also inspired, especially through the first three weeks of July, and at the same time a bit foggy and confused. The energy of Neptune is to go beyond the physical for new ideas, information and inspiration. You are calling in angel guidance to help you with necessary perspective shifts that will prepare the way for further transformative experiences in the late fall.

Simultaneously, Saturn in your self-expression sector creates a slow-down and a focus there, and also grounds your aspirations in practicality, so that this becomes an excellent time for producing visionary art of some kind, or for expressing yourself at extremely deep levels. All in all this is a pivotal month for you , wired up not for action but for inner contemplative work.


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

The time is right for exploring interior realms, Leo, as you link your head more fully up with your heart. Your usual out there persona is taking a break this month and it gives you the chance to meditate on what lies within. Strange happenings could transpire to affect both business concerns and your relationship scene, and these could throw a temporary monkey wrench into anything that you have entirely planned out. In a time of Mercury Retrograde you can expect the unexpected. Such starting events do succeed in bringing enlightenment in unusual ways. While not a good time to make anything happen according to a pre-arranged agenda, on the other hand this is an excellent time to journal or to simply reflect on where your life is leading you.

As the month begins, you are uncharacteristically taking time off from outer pursuits, settling into a more meditative stance with the retrograde of Mercury through your sector of dream imagination and inner realities. You might try thinking back to last March when a similarly staged retrograde of Mercury stimulated inner realities. You also could still be reflecting on transformational realizations and startling epiphanies stemming from just the previous weekend, when the Last Quarter Moon late evening of June 29th triggered you into big thoughts regarding life direction. You have lately been dealing with potential illusions, and also potentially with certain stumbling blocks also, that are perhaps even beginning to affect career decisions, although if so, these can definitely be surmounted. Such trials could come to be regarded as a form of blessing, getting you to think more deeply into your situation.

You are placing your faith in stabilizing home and family influences, and also in respecting the vast potential of your inner world as productive of fresher insights than that of which your outer world is capable. The retrograde of Mercury is especially poignant in this regard since it is taking place in the sector of your solar chart that elicits the deep unconscious parts of your psyche. You are this month exploring these deeper aspects of your earthly existence more productively than ever before, and with greater delight. It is a paradox that life in the interpersonal planes and regarding concrete manifestation needs these subtle and eve mystical interior realms to fully succeed, and yet, as you are finding out more and more, this is a baffling but simple truth.

As you continue to find new places inside yourself that you had previously only suspected were there, you benefit from the long trine of Saturn and Neptune, which both subvert and reinforce each other and lead you to greater possibilities for connection as well as potential partnership confusion. You are also quite focused and a bit mystified regarding the prospect of making a better integration within you. The nature of Neptune is mystical and vague, and since it is located in your sector of intimacy and personal evolution, and strengthened by Saturn, you have tremendous focus now for delving within your own interior nature and finding new seeds of intimate connectivity.

This is a pivotal month for you in many ways. Although not much appears to change, the rearrangement of your psyche that is proceeding throughout this month and into next, is profound, and will lead, eventually, to a thorough-going transformation in your life direction and in how you see the world around you. The confusion comes in as you attempt to apply logical categories, or any form of expectation, to this endeavor. The recommendation for Mercury Retrograde is in any case to adopt a "wait and see" attitude toward as much of your life as is humanly possible. This idea goes double for you right now as you continue to explore the deeper places within yourself and discover new facets of interpersonal connection with significant partners.

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

This is an interesting month for you, Virgo, but not one for making large-scale investments in a wavering series of targets. Since your ruler, Mercury, is retrograde all month long, in your sector of friendship, societal connection, and future plans, you are likely to be tempted to change course with life direction and social groups that you favor not once, but several times. You are in the midst of deep reflection, that's for sure. As you spend time thinking over and then again re-thinking all that you do to connect up with where you feel your life heading, you ultimately involve yourself in greater social commitment. Although not good for new decisions, this is nevertheless an excellent period for depth research into these and other, more personal, issues.

As the month begins, you are feeling lucky and also somewhat mystified both with love and in your life in general. You also might feel as though you can actually address whatever has been bothering you recently regarding partnership concerns and over-idealizations. It is not that you see nothing but blue skies ahead, but rather that you feel an increased optimism that you can somehow manage to sort things out eventually, even though that might in fact be a tall order that will take many weeks to fill. You are possessed with a fierce determination to get to the bottom of whatever seems to be bothering you, moving in on them from the perspective of the innermost portions of your psyche.

The timing is right to be taking your time. Your ruler, Mercury, is retrograde for most of this month, and beyond when you allow for the two weeks of the retrograde shadow, when Mercury is making up its lost zodiacal longitude, and therefore still shaky. With that in mind, this is an excellent period to relax and to look within, rather than to continue straining for answers amidst the distractions of the competitive rat race that we call 21st century civilization. Since Mercury is retrograding through your sector of group affiliations, friendships and networking circles, and as well future plans, you are likely mulling over and refining your understanding of these important areas of your life. The July 8th New Moon also takes place in this same sector, and gives you fresh energy for your purpose, which is essentially to reinvent yourself and your societal connection in light of newfound and exciting knowledge that corresponds to the exploration of your inner world.

Since Uranus remains prominent in your intimacy sector, which also represents inner exploration and personal evolution, insights are coming to you from interior realms both fast and furious, while you also might conceivably be undergoing some unexpected ups and downs in your connections with important others. Meanwhile, since Pluto is riding high in your sector of creativity and self-expression, these areas plus your self-concept are undergoing radical transformation, as they have all year. The Pluto effects accelerate again in the fall, with the drawing closer of the next hit of the Uranus-Pluto square, coming up to exact on November 1st.

All in all, this month represents an excellent time to regroup and to vision new possibilities for yourself into being. It is perhaps more important than usual to exercise caution in adopting new pathways forward, as the retrograde will continue to provide new perspectives that take Spirit ever more fully into account as the month wears on. In August, and heading toward the fall, you will find further and even more significant changes that await you.


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

This is an entirely multifaceted month for you, Libra. On the one hand, with expansive Jupiter and the New Moon lighting up your career sector, you have all cylinders firing as you get ahead in outer world pursuits with verve and panache. On the other, Mercury is retrograde there all month long, and the recommendation is for you to allow the murky stream of your life activities to settle and clear before making any drastic forward-going decisions. If you are stung by vague fears and internal controversies, you are right on time with how the cosmic forces now incline. The good news is that you will emerge out the other side, in August, both more informed as to your inner world and, from this integrated place within yourself, better able to make good choices.

As the month begins, you are networking like mad, and yet taking largely an internal stance. With Mercury currently retrograding through an angular sector of your chart, namely your career sector, things are likely to be in the mode of inner predominating over outer, lasting all month. You have likely been mulling over recent events and trying to place them into better perspective, now that you have arrived at this final phase of the lunar cycle that is now ending.

At this turning of the month you are also incredibly tuned in to the restrictiveness of Saturn, operating in your second, or resources, sector. This means that you are perhaps having trouble getting your financial and other resources lined up, amidst the general limitations of the current world economy. The benefit to you however is greater focus on this area, so that you can do something about the situation. It could also be that less reliance on material forms of security implies greater reliance on Spirit to see you through, a trend that has been noticeable for you over these past few weeks.

With Jupiter surging through your career sector you are fortunate in your work at this time, and able to see consistent progress. Jupiter completes a grand trine in Water signs involving both Saturn and also Neptune, residing in your sector of day-to-day experience, an aspect pattern that has been forming in several different ways lately, continuing through the first two thirds of July. This configuration encourages you to take an otherworldly stance on resources and on life direction, so that the only way to get ahead that means anything to you now is, indeed, the path with heart.

With Uranus also highlighted in your opposite sign, still in square to Pluto, there are relationship surprises in store for you this month, but it is nothing that you can't handle, especially if you have the steadiness to make reliance on your inner world, and on Spirit, a priority. Additionally, as you feel your way you through, a vast reservoir of intuitive information could come to you via the agency of significant partners. Tribe or family ties are also shifting and morphing in interesting ways that could prove to be life changing. You are shaping your future self, and the apparent raw materials seem to include a healthy dose of old habit patterns that are ready to be outgrown.


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

This is a mystical month for you, Scorpio. In the midst of an action-oriented summer that is full of surprising turns of events, you are spending much of your time meditating on how you make sense of your surroundings. New perspectives beckon, and threaten to confuse, as you continue to handle a sense of limitation in your activities while simultaneously accepting that a very foggy and unconstrained sense of yourself and your happenings continues to bemuse your soul. You desire above all to get further into your own internal truth of these matters, which is anything but simple, and in pursuit of that aim are going out on some very spacey and otherworldly limbs. Although the truth will set you free, it might be quite another story altogether, discovering which of many truths you intend.

As the month begins, you are more aware than ever of the presence of Saturn in your identity sector, as it has been for many months. The symbolism suggests that the limitations and holding back action of Saturn could have had you feeling somewhat stuck and unavailable for socializing, or for yourself either. The upside however is greater focus on what truly matters to you.

With Mercury Retrograde in your sector of higher mind, from just before the beginning of the current month, you are even more internally constituted. Rather than looking outside yourself, you are seeking answers within your own deep places. Intuition provides an important key to soul purpose, when you can allow yourself to fully tune in and soul purpose is everything.

As you mull things over, there is in general an emphasis on issues of identity, and for understanding your life direction, with Saturn leading, augmented by the grand trine in Water signs which highlight these areas of your solar chart. Your self-expression is mystical I intention right now, expressive of the deep unconscious places within you toward which cosmic forces now inspire you. As Jupiter makes its way through your sector of higher mind, peaking around the middle weeks of the current month, a sector that includes in its meanings new perspectives, learning and travel, you have an excellent opportunity to truly dig into these interesting and intellectually stimulating areas of your life.

Even though the Mercury Retrograde cramps your style somewhat, especially when it comes to anything along the lines of new decisions or departures from existing plans, this is a great time for getting your career on a better track. Success indicators are present with the presence of graceful Venus, planet of relationship connection, located in your career sector and prominent from the very beginning of the month. As you meditate within your private places, and reflect on where you are going and how you might be able to manage to get yourself there, it could easily be that significant others in your life are helpful to you now in securing a better handle on what, in the final analysis, you are really up to.

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

This is a month of emotional logic and intelligent feeling tone, Sagittarius. Key relationships in your life are getting a boost and this involves greater closeness with others, as indicated by the retrograde of Mercury through Cancer and the subsequent entrance of Jupiter there. All this is true, and yet the most important intimacy that you can discover is within yourself. While you encounter greater closeness with significant others you are exploring your depths with similar passion; and the one feeds directly off the other. You are meditating on inner attitudes, and prior wounding, to the point where you almost cannot distinguish your inside from your outside. This can be maddening but ultimately gratifying as you find in the end that you are more integrated in your feeling nature and as a result more whole.

As the month begins, you are likely still feeling the intensity of the recent Last Quarter Moon from the final weekend of June, as you move into another and more potent phase of the Mercury Retrograde period that also colored the end-of-June time frame. Your ruler, Jupiter, having entered the sign of Cancer, corresponding to your sector of intimacy and personal transformation, you are seeking within yourself for answers to what makes you tick in these important areas. The Mercury Retrograde period implies a process of deep reflection, directed toward issues of self and other, as you continue to assess in a soul-level manner the on-going question of your own basic identity.

Saturn is sitting in your sector of dream imagination and inner work, and is also emphasized by the recent Last Quarter Moon, and this places an important focus on your own inner world, the underpinning of everything that you say and do. You are going down, diver's weights attached, to see what you can see and to bring back what you can of the treasure guarded there by the dragons of your unconscious process. The several planets traveling through your intimacy sector in trine with Saturn, and as well Neptune in your home and family sector, all contribute to this recognition. Meantime, Pluto percolating away in your resources sector, contributes the symbolism that what you are ultimately attempting is nothing less than a thorough-going transmutation of values and priorities.

The other outer planet that is currently aspected as the current month unfolds, trickster Uranus, resides in your self-expression sector and brings surprises and unexpected enlightenment to both your own creative output, which has a kind of wild start-and-stop energy to it now, and to your life plan and sense of future direction, somewhat up in the air at this time and, especially with Mercury moving backwards, based more on intuition than on logical reasoning.

With Neptune emphasized at the very nadir of your chart, the place of your psychological roots, as well as that corresponding to concerns of home, family and tribe, this moth is a crazy-making period of time, when everything about your quest is vitally important but when nothing seems very solid or very definitive. What you are currently up to is therefore amorphous, contrary to sensible reason, and subject to rather rapid fluctuations. Nevertheless it is important. You do not really know what you will discover but it will have long-term significance for the remainder of the year, as you move toward the next exact collision of Uranus and Pluto this fall. Your life is changing in a major way, and you benefit by paying the closest possible attention to all that transpires, while remaining interested, yet not attached to any particular outcome.


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

The cosmic energy is right for relating, Capricorn. At the same time you are mulling over the essence of what relationship really means to you as you partake of the meditative spirit that is another hallmark of this month's energy. As you chart newer and more open paths toward a livable future, attempting to integrate strange information from the very deepest parts of your psyche, you are making a fresh start on joint solutions that include others in the mix as well as yourself. Others count with you very much right now, and can be helpful in business arrangements. You have a tightrope to walk between paying respect to the opportunities represented by honoring your partnership connections of all kinds and continuing to toe the line for fostering your own self-development.

As the month begins, you are feeling the transformational pressure on your life, either in terms of events that force you into new ways of perceiving and doing, or perhaps in more subtle ways. The last weekend of June might have been especially powerful for you in this regard, since the Quarter Moon highlighted Pluto in your identity sector, as well as Uranus in another angular sector, also emphasized by the recent Quarter Moon, which therefore represented a tiny time window of intensity on their years-long collision in square formation that so perfectly hits your solar chart. The Uranus-Pluto square that has been so strong these past few years is backing off lately, before it comes roaring back at several more exact hits over the remainder of the decade, with its next one taking place in early November.

With Uranus highlighted in your sector of home, family and tribe, the few days preceding July 1st have been more than just a bit unstable in this department as well, and full of surprising insights into issues that you perhaps thought were more or less settled. You are in a process of reconsidering the significant relationship in your life, including familial ones, and might come out the other side after month's end with some very new takes on these important connections. A sense of security that feels shaky could become solidified by taking on a more individualized definition of what your basis for psychological security truly consists of. Mercury is retrograde in your relationship sector all month long, counting the period of Mercury's retrograde shadow, indicating that July will likely be a reflective period that will allow you to mull over much of what has been happening for you lately, especially in the area of interpersonal connection.

In addition to the outer planet heaviness of Uranus and Pluto, Neptune has been very active for you these past few weeks also, and becomes a touchstone for a more spiritual basis for communication. You could find yourself adopting a mystical stance with your written and verbal output over the entire first two thirds of the month, peaking in the mid-July time frame, when Jupiter in your relationship sector come closest in combining with your ruler, Saturn, and Neptune in a grand trine formation. There is a huge focus now on key relationships in your life; how these can make for greater spiritual involvement and enhance rather than inhibit the arc of your own unique development. This is a fortunate as well as a somewhat difficult time in that regard.

With Mercury in retrograde, this is an important month for research and for realizations, and not so great for direct action. There will be time for making significant changes after the dust has settled in early August.

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

You are fairly bursting at the seams this month, Aquarius. Something is pulling you to excel and not in the usual ways of the world but with your own voice, although discovering what exactly that might mean for you might be an odyssey in and of itself. Meanwhile you are also, in view of the retrograde of Mercury passing through your sector of higher purpose, thinking carefully in a deep form of meditation regarding the life choices that you have made in the past and where you are now headed with them. Something important is calling you, and it comes from deep inside yourself, and it is uniquely your own. All the talking and purportedly causal thought process of the normative world around you cannot touch it. Only your intuition holds the key.

As the month begins, you are coming off of an intense last June weekend when the Last Quarter Moon highlighted all the outer planets. The Moon itself connected strongly with your co-ruler, Uranus, in your communications sector, making it an exciting time for information flow back and forth, perhaps from some rather deep places within you. Jupiter having entered Cancer, your sixth sector was lit up by a combination of Jupiter, Sun and Mercury, with Mercury Retrograde, and with the Jupiter/Sun midpoint in a grand trine with Saturn and Neptune. Thus, issues of day-to-day concerns and health regimens were then and now continue to be really up for you, colored by a sense of transformational pressure and with the availability of important realizations.

Overall you are receiving a mixture of both tough and generous love on the part of the cosmos. You have been given a real boost of energy over these last few days, leading up to and including July 1st, while also being subject to both a sense of limitation, as symbolized by Saturn at the very top of your chart, and also sensing the idealism implied by nebulous Neptune in your resources sector. The meditative influence implied by the retrograde of Mercury is echoed by the lunar phase that obtains in this first week, of looking back rather than forward, and of attempting to see past events in the light of present knowledge in order to better understand them and in order to take that seed into your next stage.

In fact the entire month of July partakes of this mixed bag of energies. You are being drawn to the inside; there to experience what truly makes you tick, with the result that you come out the other end of the tunnel more whole and better able to deal. The outer world holds its promise and its charm, but what you experience in these inner realms is the underlying piece, without which the outer world becomes a mere superficial phantom and charade. The fresh energy that you feel at the time of the July 8th New Moon lights your way to new partnership perspectives and to a better take as well on your own home base.

With the aid of this retrograde month of inner work you will appreciate more directly the relatively unconscious core of your personality, and be ready to move beyond this initiation to emerge like a butterfly after the first two thirds of the month. You might come into yourself in an entirely new way, sealing the arrangement over the remaining weeks of the summer period, as you head into the further intensity of the fall time frame.

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

This is a month of conditional empowerment, Pisces. Your playful expression is sizzling as is your sense of what you bring to the table, especially in terms of artistry and creative vision. You are feeling also the constraint of wanting to be fully in alignment with inner purpose as you are coming to know and understand what, indeed, that might truly consist of. Mercury is retrograding all month long through the self-expression sector of your solar chart and you might be spending more time in quiet inner contemplation of who you really are than in spinning out that overflow of personality into the world around you. As you go through this monthly cycle you will come much closer to getting a handle on a big-picture viewpoint that has both its fanciful and as well its practical elements.

As the month begins, you are feeling the heat. You are reaching out to others in new and different ways, feeling a fresh burst of self-confidence and self-expression. With your co-ruler Jupiter moving into your creativity sector, and making a trine with Neptune in your sign, corresponding to your identity sector, which is also the sign of its rulership, you are more fully you somehow and that feels right. It is interesting however to note that this is only one part of a more complexly layered story of what is going on for you in the heavens during this present somewhat fractured monthly cycle.

Mercury is simultaneously retrograding through this same creativity sector of your solar chart — considered also to be your sector of self-expression — and making several intense aspects as it does. You might find that you are stirred in unexpected ways during and even after the retrograde period. Although difficult, the passages that you are going through will prove enlightening, throughout the month. While the energy does shift somewhat when Mercury stations direct on July 20th, this retrograde period lasts all month long, into the first few days of August, when you take Mercury's retrograde shadow into account. This is therefore a very meditative month, good for journaling and for serious contemplation, rather than a time to go out and paint the town or start a new business venture.

The trine between Neptune and Jupiter is also mediated by a further trine with Saturn; this dims the experience and brings a dour sense of practicality into the picture, as well a focus and a grounding influence. This month's grand trine in Water includes Jupiter and eventually Mars, and begins with the very onset of July. It finds one peak around July 15th when the First Quarter Moon aspects both Saturn and Neptune by parallel, while Jupiter inhabits the same degree of Cancer as the other two heavyweight outer planets in their respective signs; thus a partile grand trine in Water — Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn. This strongly aspects your solar chart, so that you get the powerful message that partakes of social action, spiritual exploration, and grounding ideals into worldly conception. Another strong moment of the grand trine comes with the Full Moon of July 22nd, when Mars conjuncts Jupiter while still in close aspect to the others.

Because this grand trine in water takes place in your sectors of understanding and of your sense of identity, your 'fire houses,' and in the context of Mercury Retrograde in Cancer as well, there is also an internally contemplative element that is very important for the fullest understanding of what your life and your higher self is offering to you in this preciously present month — that is also distant and detached. At month's end you might thus be able to say, along with T.S. Eliot, "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time."