Leo (July 22-August 23)
Once I was listening to a speech in Harlem, and whoever was talking was doing an excellent job of explaining a complex situation; and someone in the audience called out, “Break it down!” The speaker was taking apart mystifying concepts and revealing them as the simple truths they possessed. Hearing analysis of ideas presented as something to get turned on about was eye-opening for me as a writer. Most of the writers whose work you read are more often ordered to keep it down to 1,200 words. I don’t suggest you do any such thing. Certain complex aspects of your life are beginning to reveal their elements. They don’t seem so daunting when you see them in pieces, or in layers, rather than as one mass. You’re certainly being assisted by people around you who are willing to analyze and account for their own complex minds. Bear one thing in mind, however. One or more key individuals in your life are being provoked by a force they don’t understand to reveal more than they normally would. Though this may qualify as “too much information,” I don’t suggest you respond that way. What they are revealing about themselves affects everyone; it is tribal property and deserves to be honored both as individual process and as part of a necessary collective one.
Virgo (August 23-September 22)
If only you could get your relationships to do what you want them to do. But here is a question: are you willing to do what they want? I would think the feeling, as in most things relational, would need to be mutual, and mutual has been something that has not exactly worked out as well as you need in recent years. You seem to have a set of minimal, rock-bottom requirements, and you can’t wonder why creating something so basic is fraught with so much challenge. The people who approach you often have various wild ideas that not only seem untenable, they threaten your delicate sense of stability and, moreover, your predictions of the future. You tend to steady yourself with mental constructions that are not as solid as you think; when you get to a point where you feel some semblance of balance, it often turns out to be a kind of theory that can be shaken by another theory. You will find real stability as you embrace your process of coming to terms with yourself, your intentions and your deepest needs. But there is something else. Though few people are willing to come out and say it, the older models of relationship are not what’s going to get us into the future. Something else will, and part of what you are doing is helping co-create precisely that.
Libra (September 22-October 23)
All careers involve service, but the question is to whom, and for what purpose. Then there is the bigger issue. Though we often speak of this, we rarely pull it off: the need serve our own creative needs in a way that blends with the needs of the larger community. There are very few people whose daily work involves experiences that provide nourishment and fulfillment to both sides of this equation. We might wonder why this is so difficult, but the coming season presents an opportunity for you to align with just such a purpose. What is not often said is that the purpose starts with your own mission. It’s about abandoning every sense of “should” and every false prophesy that was given to you. We are almost always told that the one thing we need or want to do is the one thing that’s not going to work. The formula, basically, amounts to this. What you are the best at, or the most devoted to, is the point of compatibility with the world around you. The difficulty is getting over the belief that precisely the opposite is true. There’s another challenge in that to do something even vaguely original, you’re the one in the position of building a structure around your intentions. Get used to the idea, and sketch your plans. One basic concept is enough for now.
