Acutung: Mercury Stationing Direct Thursday, Nov. 1 Mercury is nearing the end of its current retrograde, and is now slowing to a station in late Libra. A month ago, I published an essay summing up the retrograde effect, which you can review here. The days surrounding the exact station are the time to proceed with a little more care and caution than normal. It's a time of fast-changing circumstances, and when we can focus our intentions and ideas and get ready to be sprung forward. The important thing to do after a Mercury retrograde is to remember what you have learned. It's time to address all the weaknesses and flaws you may have discovered, even if they are minor, and to begin to put your 'retrograde' ideas into action. The exact station direct is just before 7 pm EDT on Thursday, which means overnight Thursday to Friday in many time zones. Take it easy, don't sign till at least Friday, let the facts come out, and remember that a short delay now will save a much longer delay in the future.

Aries (March 20-April 19)
You seem to be struggling pleasantly enough with your quest to reconcile your private insecurities with those surrounding your role in the community. At first they may seem to have nothing in common, like a knife and a sharpening stone. But when you put the two together, you will see that they not only fit precisely, but each allows the other to be what it is. This is to say, your most private needs, desires and fears are intimately linked with your quest to be an individual in the world around you at the same time you honor that you are part of that world. It is true, you may feel you're a long way from agreeing to the compromise you think you need to make. I suggest, though, that rather than striving for compromise, you work to explore the maximum tension between your inner and outer worlds; that is, go deeper into both. There is a factor developing that you have not considered, which will take you far beyond the limiting concepts that currently define your life.
 
Taurus (April 19-May 20)
This is a powerful moment of relating for you; you seem to have broken free of your sense of being stuck to the past as if by the tentacles of an octopus, and stand in a rare space where communication and commitment are experiences that you have the power to relate with directly. However, I don't suggest you simply count the past as over, as distasteful as some elements of it are to you. Rather, you need to persist in an ongoing, daily process of getting acquainted with what limits your ability to be spontaneous, creative and passionate in the moment. Taurus is one of the most physical and practical signs, and at the same time the sign that seems the most steadfastly devoted to living in its cerebral cortex. Listen to those thoughts and see if you can determine who is standing guard as you try to go into your bedroom, art studio, or healing space. The point is this: don't negotiate. Tell them to get out of the way, because your passion is your passion.
 
Gemini (May 20-June 21)
You no longer need that umbilical cord wrapped around your neck. You no longer need to live as if you were born out of your father's head, possessed of all his thoughts and totally enamored of his approval. At a certain point, every healthy child recognizes that he or she is a distinct individual, with individual will, volition, desire and independent ideas. While there are certain factors that currently seem to be binding you to what you've always felt was expected of you, this time in your life has a certain daring quality that will give you many incentives to take risks that nobody in your family would ever dare. You need to beware of the potential self-judgment that what you are doing or desiring is "not real" or that if something is too much fun, it cannot be productive; it cannot be a real relationship. You could spend some time questioning where you learned those ideas, and where those people who taught you got their information -- but not too much time, please. Once you determine something is not true, drop it fast, in favor of what is.
 
Cancer (June 21-July 22)
What you express to yourself is what you have available to express in relationships. I suggest, therefore, that you be abundantly open with yourself and within yourself; keep absolutely no secrets about what you want, who you want, what you need and who you need. As you do this, you will obviously stumble into inner pockets where revealing your own feelings to yourself will have a daunting quality, as if the world might end if you admit some urgent necessity to yourself. You may feel self-righteous if you dare to claim your identity or your desire to be a certain way in the world. I would add that you may feel it's unethical to concentrate so deeply on self-knowledge, because somehow that negates the existence or reality of others. I promise you, it does no such thing. The more you know yourself, the more you will know, love and appreciate others. The freer you are with yourself, the more others around you will feel free, and the wider and brighter space they will have to love you.
 
Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)
As I write, a very good Leo friend is getting ready to have her first child; and Jupiter and Pluto are working their way together on the Galactic Core -- in your 5th solar house; the house of birthing and also of daring, creative ideas. For Leo, this is the time to take those ultimate creative risks that are characterized or symbolized by childbirth. The central reminder in the stars is that true creativity is something that comes through you, and generally not something you consciously do. The Jupiter-Pluto conjunction will take you to the core within yourself that puts you into contact with something all of humanity has in common. This commonality, the golden thread that weaves together all cultures, religions, races, wisdom, tradition and geographic locations, is the dominant force in your life right now. You are like the living soul of humanity, and you have the gift of being able to extend that soul energy. With the touch of your finger, the sleeping will awaken, awareness will stir to life and that which is created through you will draw its first breaths.
 
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
Events this month will point you to how much you're working with, in both tangible resources and the ones that can't be seen: intelligence and ideas. The important thing to remember is that you have options for how you think of those resources, and how you apply them. There may be a number of occasions to reallocate money, concepts and people to different tasks or situations than you had originally thought of, and events early in the month (around when Mercury stations direct Nov. 1) will provide you with ample opportunity to change your mind. Don't make a drama out of this; simply make decisions. Remember that what you're working with is indeed yours to work with, and I mean that in the most personal sense of the word. The process you're in now is one of taking ownership of yourself. Commitments to others are not only a bit foggy at the moment, they are not what they seem. Focus on your own goals for a while and the ones that involve others will come into focus when they need to.
 
Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
It's as if you become aware of something obvious that you knew all along, but didn't realize you knew. Is this not the story of life? Awareness is often contained in layers, and we can't always see through them all. What is revealed to you is another thin slice of reality. What you learn may seem subtle or insignificant at first, until you start to consider the context. Any time you learn something about yourself and are inclined to say, "Oh, that's interesting" and leave it at that, I suggest you make a mental note, or a note on paper, and work it through a few more times. Small truths lead to the bigger ones, and hunches can lead to truly significant revelations. Any time you change your opinion about yourself or something important to you, you access a level of your awareness that you can use to guide you deeper. Indeed, any point of decision can lead you to a major discovery, but you must proceed methodically, and remind yourself constantly to look for the meaning that events have right on their surface.
 

Scorpio the animal. Courtesy of Wikipedia. Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) You are confident, and you have all the faith in yourself that you need. That confidence is leading you to make affirmative decisions that carry your life and your plans forward; you will need to have the same confidence if and when it comes time to reconsider a long-range plan, or to slow down the process for long enough to work out the bugs. Your tendency to doubt yourself at critical times is no excuse to dismiss any doubt you may be feeling now; your intuition is sharp at the moment, and you are striving for nothing less than true innovation. Therefore, everything must be used as a means to that end. Part of the situation may involve a hunch that you need to plan shorter term and closer to home. Where there is a question of something happening at a distance, consider the environment where that thing is happening, rather than your own local environment. The best information will come from on the ground. Your most brilliant ideas will form gradually, which I know is contrary to how you usually proceed. Here is a link to the Spiral Door annual horoscope for Scorpio for this year. The first Scorpio birthday report will come out one week from today.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)
You may, for the moment, not quite understand where a certain person is coming from or the agreements they need to live by, but you do seem destined to find out. You also have a sense that they speak for a hidden dimension of yourself that you wish would be more directly available, but different people around us always give voices to different aspects of our psyche. In any event, he or she has adopted a viewpoint that on one level seems unusual and on another level involves exploring the most basic questions of relationship. Here is the central difference between you: for them, the experiment is the central reward. For you, there is beauty in the secondary reward or recognition. What you have in common is that you are both obsessed with living in an elegant way. The beauty factor is essential, and there is beauty both in balance and in the process of working out the adjustments and chemistry that lead to balance. Then comes that mysterious moment when something that has been created takes on a life and message of its own.
 
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
Facts only seem to add up to the truth. Actually, they are like the heat-resistant tiles outside the truth that have the same exterior shape, and which protect something sensitive inside. But they can just as surely prevent us from getting to that something, and they can also conceal its existence. You are now in possession of a wealth of information. The problem is that most of it is what you could call bad information, some is way too specialized for what you are doing, and there seems to be an issue about needing to analyze every fact until you really understand it. You can afford to be a little more reckless. You can also afford to credit yourself with the considerable experience and wisdom that you have gained, and not get bogged down in the micro-details that block something much more obvious. Here is a simple test to determine the truth of something. If it feels like wild animal, it's probably true. If it feels like cardboard box, it's probably false.
 
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
Be careful that you mean what you say and say what you mean where a significant partner is concerned. In addition to all of us having come through a delightfully slippery time as Mercury returns to direct motion early in the month, someone you care about is vulnerable to you in a way you may not see. You need to beware that you don't convey an injury or sense of weakness to someone who may be its unwitting recipient. Be honest about where you are hurting and what you are doing about it; be honest with yourself about how powerful you are, and how that may impact others. Of this you can be certain: there is no reason to doubt the people closest to you. They love you and have your best interests at heart; and that means they will put up with your difficult streak if they must. It would only be arrogant to presume you deserve that support; it is given freely, and through the gestures of love being offered to you now, you have the potential to go beyond what has proved to be a difficult-to-transcend limitation.
 
Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
An agreement that has been the topic of ongoing negotiation is ready to move forward. You will need to tread carefully over the next three weeks as the details are allowed to set and settle, and you need to make sure that you are both fair and confident of the trustworthiness of others. Along the way, you are coming to terms with the views of a partner on a sensitive matter of relating and sexuality. You have pulled back from the raw emotional edge and have allowed yourself to become a visionary. You've done all of this by not making up your mind about what is possible based on what you thought was possible in the past. Rather, you have taken others at their word and accepted their intentions at face value, and it turns out that they were on the level all along. What has remained a constant is that you are an ongoing source of one particular idea: that it's better to be free than in any other state. To be free, you have proven you're willing to be free of the influences of others, which leaves you available to accept them when you feel both ready and willing. That time happens to be now.

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