An extended Astrobabble. Valentine’s Day for all of us this year will feel awkward so remember romance has so much more fragrance, openness, and honest imagination than a red rose in a tube on a given day of the year. I’m on hols (Yippee) for a few weeks now so ya git two for the price of one this week. You can either hold off and NOT read the second week’s or you can dive right in and plan from here until the end of Feb. This would be a good juncture to say that horoscopes are generally written for the early born in any sign – so mid-late whatever you are-s may find that what is written for one week may not hold true until the following week or the one after. That said, you can often feel the biggest stuff bubbling under before it surfaces. Have a good one. And if you can’t be good be careful.
Aries
11 – 18 Feb
Fingers crossed a quiet week; the calm before the storm or on a much heartier note, the aperitif before the piled platter of comestibles. But it will be weird. To start off on Monday a fog descends in the peaceful hammock / rose garden of your chart. Daydreams and dreams hold the key to something your psyche wants you to know about yourself but is refusing to impart in an orderly fashion. So dreams and daydreams – how our psyche talks to us - are likely to be extra W-E-I-R-D with a capital “Eh?” Keep a book by the bed and in your pocket at all times and write the nonsense down. You owe it to your psyche (and ergo yourself) to listen. By the end of the week and into next week it’ll be percolating into sense. If friends are fudging and can’t be pinned down, leave it til next week. They’ve got their own pea-souper to deal with. Aside from the dreaming don’t let an irksome moment on Thursday (yes Valentine’s day) get your goat. It’s just a bumpy pebble on your path of matching finances with social standing. Own the irksomeness (“irksomeness, irksomeness; trying my patience, trying my patience”) and then move along. Nothing to see here.
18 – 25 Feb
And so it begins. Your ruler is gathering strength and will very soon make a monumental once in every two-years dance with Pluto the planet of creation and destruction. What needs to go out with the bath water shall go. But HARK! What is this here? Why if it isn’t a fabulous denoument/ epiphany/ light bulb prior to the Mars – Pluto ceilidh. On Wednesday expect a clear indication of who you really are and what it is you really want. The Sun is about to spend a month highlighting the ways in which you sabotage yourself (this is a good thing, trust me). Just as he moves into that role he has a fireside chat with Pluto and so, for the first time in your life, you have the chance to really REALLY let go of the energy-sapping extra weight you’re carrying by trying to be someone you are not. The very next day a lunar Eclipse in your 6th house occurs. Your health and your work-a-day world are starred. You may not be handing your notice in on Monday 25th or checking into a health farm but you know which aspects of your health and worky aren’t blowing your skirt up any more. Pluto says “Get with the programme, worm!” and get with it you do. On a beauteous note, if you have not been socialising these past few weeks as instructed on these here pages then get to it Ram. With Mercury heading forwards and Venus in your zone of bosom-buddies, three weeks of friends and gentle-hearted wishful thinking bring a welcome relief from the other schtuff (see bath water above).
Taurus
11 – 18 Feb
Are you doing well? Are you succeeding? Is your approach getting you to the parts of the mountain you wish to reach? With Neptune making a better door than a window early this week you could be forgiven for thinking, “Ummm… Not sure.” Time will tell and from next week you should actually start to feel the rewards not to mention some praise. It’s still not time to make moves vis work anyway so focus on something else for a while. On Valentine’s Day your heart is anywhere but the table for two. You may well feel like your pretty future vision, ambitions to study tapestry, gorgeous travel plans, and/or legal shenanigans are starting to cost you more than you wished for – and/or may not bring you the financial rewards you wanted. (Delete as appropriate). Note the feeling then wait for a cosmic nudge next week.
18 – 25 Feb
A busier week. Venus bursts into your house of success with a flouncy tutu and a taa daaa! While on the next bus Mercury at last starts a forwards journey in the same zone. They’ll be chasing each other all month until they meet at Grand Central station for a coffee and a bagel on Feb 27th. This is a meeting you’ve been waiting for a long time and success plans that have been stewing in the background finally get to the top of your to do list. You’ll find that the delays have worked in your favour and that they bring you more than you’d hoped for in results and/or joy and yes, Taurus, lucre. Yippee. On Wednesday expect a clearer direction to your pretty future vision, tapestry ambitions, wanderlust, and/or legal shenanigans (as alluded to above). This is akin to a dream wish being granted in reality, mm hmm, like the path you have embarked upon reveals itself to be the yellow brick road bound for a glorious, colourful destiny (Wizard optional. See promotional packs for details). Come Monday week you’ll be getting an urge to revisit a creative project, rethink what kids will mean to your bigger picture, and/or having to stand down on your insistence that love affairs must be a la Hollywood. Remember, Bull, people are flawed. It’s part of their individual beauty. And anyway FYI George Clooney is NOT currently single. At least he wasn’t the last time I Googled him. Sigh.
Gemini
11 – 18 Feb
A fogggyyyy daaaaaaaaaaaaaaay in Lohuhundon tooown – had me low, haaaaaaaaaaaad me dooown… How laaaaaahng, I wondered, could this thing last? But the age of miracles hadn't passed - for, suddenly, I saw you there! And through foggy Lohuundon Town the sun was shiiiiining evreeeewheeere. Do you get what I’m saying airy? This week may well be a crazy fog. Trying to plan where and who and what you want to be in the future will be as difficult as finding a pin in a haystack in the pitch black wearing mittens and a balaclava backwards. So just leave it why doncha? Don’t book anything, sign anything or begin legal proceeding against anyone. Yes yes yes by Thursday you’ll be screaming with impatience and frustration and the itchiness of the balaclava. But we won’t mind your hollering. It’s a sign you are sane.
18 – 25 Feb
NOW you can act! So get to it. After chewing the cud for the looongest time your leader’s trusty stead turns forwards on Tuesday and on into your house of life directions. He will be at a galloping pace within a week just as Venus jumps into action come Thursday bringing love and prettiness to parts of the picture. With the 4th and 10th houses in the frame there’s something here about changing jobs and/or home life to get you a greater sense of satisfaction. The Sun’s moving into you trophy cabinet of social standing. With a blessing from Pluto as he goes there’s an opportunity to change dramatically, letting go of a past vision of what would bring you pride and plaudits and replacing it with something much more in tune with your inner knower. Accompanied by an eclipse and stand off from your home to success this is much deeper than whether you have a gas or electric hob in your kitchen or twisty tops or clicky bottoms in the office. The 4th and 10th are said to respectively reflect mother and father. Perhaps then, in getting a greater sense of a contemporary you you’re being freed from the confines of your parents’ visions of success for the sexes. You're a dang trailblazer, you are. Now git out there and blaze.
Cancer
11 – 18 Feb
It’s a week to take it as easy as you can. A lunar eclipse is coming next week so now is the time to take your vitamins, do some exercise, and get plenty of sleep. If you’re feeling lost on Monday and having difficulty making a decision then just don’t make one – prevaricate, buy yourself some time, ask them to send it to you in writing. The point is with the Sun and Neptune hiding under the duvet together and speaking with socks in their mouths while lying on an airfield, a superhero with superhuman hearing would be hard pushed to make head or tail of it. So no stressy Crab. Have acuppacha and do some T’ai Chi. For you Valentine’s Day looks pretty with Venus swooning in a flowing gown and cinched waist but mind your own inner demons don’t block you from seeing it that way. Pesky Mars is carping in the dank corridors of your hidden feelings (I said CARping) – and this is leaving you troubled and doubtful of your own inner specialness. Whether the worrisome voice is inside your head or has manifested as a worrisome pain-in-de-ass out here in the world, forgive it and reach for higher ground. Right now you can afford to let everything you do be done with love.
18 – 25 Feb
Ok some big contracts, big decisions, deep feelings you’ve been putting off or have been being putting of from making are finally ready to be discussed once more this week. It’s taken this long for good reason and the plans will be better/bigger/lovelier for the delays. And the money will add up. That’s the key. If you can schedule these discussions, meetings, decisions and tings for Wednesday so much the better. You see come Wednesday a partner / significant other is going to help you switch a light on and at last –ohgollymemy - the bigger picture stretching out before you will be brighter than it appeared before. Once done you’ll find almost immediately the worry evaporates to be replaced by energies needed closer to home – your brothers and sisters, community, everyday life. A lunar eclipse here spells an end to something and needless to say, as the caring type that you are, you may be needed. A link across your chart on Monday says this could mean a long journey.
Leo
11 – 18 Feb
Just when you’ve been feeling that perhaps your lovelife is going well Monday arrives and you awake to find that Neptune has your head and heart at the bottom of the sea babbling rubbish to molluscs. Alternatively just when you’ve been feeling that perhaps your lovelife is going down the pan Monday arrives and a Knight in shining armour is standing at the foot of your bed with a mug of Tetley’s, some hot buttered toast, and a smile that says you may look like Wurzel Gummidge and smell like a sheep dip but you’re mine all mine, Princess. This is what Neptune does: makes you mad with delirium or brings you the ideal, dreamlike creation. So, if your lovelife is actually going very well and you awake to scenario (a) wait for the confusion to pass before you let the paranoia out. If, however, your lovelife has not been going well and you awake to scenario (b) have another look. Do you think you keep awaking to scenario (b) when in fact you are frequently babbling to molluscs? Give yourself some time, but schedule your Valentine’s Day for next Wednesday and watch re-runs of Scrubs in your pyjamas this Thursday instead.
18 – 25 Feb
Whatever Neptune had you wondering last week about your heart department it’s going to get sorted out this week. Mercury is going forwards wearing a kiss me quick hat at a jaunty angle so the LOVE conversation which has been simmering on a shelf at the back of the garage is becoming unavoidable. What’s more, Venus, with her cherry lips and gentle curls is wafting into your heart zone too so whether it’s you loving others, you loving yourself (a little more), or others loving you back LOVE is on your mind. It’s a three week thing. Chest out. Make it count. Go GIRL!! The other ting on your mind, besides your uplifts and sling backs, is dough. There’s a tension building between what you’re putting in and what you’re getting out. And you eesa no happy. Perhaps a business colleague is making like a bowling bag and getting carried all the time or perhaps a windfall or commission you were banking on clashes with contractual obligations. Thursday’s eclipse in your piggy bank of earned income sez enough is enough. You’ve Jupiter in your work space bringing you the potential to expand, grow, succeed all year and with May through to August looking like your key times this year for attracting money, start looking, talking, and schmooozing now.
Virgo
11 – 18 Feb
It’s all about work at the moment Virgo though nothing seems to be quite coming out in the wash. It’s a matter of time. For now think business schmissness on Monday. Don’t believe a word of it. Don’t try and start anything. Don’t go on what you have or have not been told. It’s all under water. It’s all out of view. Give it until Wednesday to shift. If you’ve an on-going health problem which has yet to be really understood, a diagnosis or a gut feeling early week could bring the answer. As Mercury’s still facing the wrong way on the carousel the results may not be in until next week. Decide then. But with things looking up in your astrological medicine cabinet from next week I suspect a breakthrough or at the very least some much welcome respite is in order. On Thursday there’s an uncomfortable feeling in your waters. Creativity and social standing – can you make it fit? Children and a place in the hall of fame – probably a no-go you suppose? Love affairs with charismatic public figures/ a hypnotic older lover and/or the dynamic boss with the foppish fringe – ‘Whattami thinking?’ you’re thinking. Let the oddness bubble and then get on with a crossword instead. By next week you’ll have your answers.
18 – 25 Feb
Big week, Virgin. Monday Venus moves into your office and medicine cabinet. Tuesday your esteemed leader Mercury stops changing his mind and begins direct motion in this very same house. Wednesday as the Sun skidaddles into your zone of partnerships he makes a link with Pluto in your fifth house of love affairs, children, and creativity. And simultaneously the moon prepares to burst into a lunar eclipse in your sign on Thursday. What does it all mean? Certainly a work project or idea which has been stalled and under review is at last getting some buckshot in its trousers. With Venus’s help it’s likely to be bigger, juicier, more creative and possibly much more lucrative than you’d first imagined. Those dilemmas about creativity and social standing (from last week) are consigned to the past and you'll realise you’ve been fretting the rosary for no good reason. This is something much bigger, much more cosmic and a clearer vision of how to make IT work. This is you and a creative business partner, or this is a new affair shining way off into the distance like never before, or this is you, your kids, and your other half, working it out. Phew. From Fri to Sun take a breather and let it percolate. You'll need a level head on Monday 25th. A board meeting between you and a significant other takes place. Hold your ground, play fair, you are both bringing much to the table. Compromise will likely be necessary. For now.
Libra
11 – 18 Feb
A trying few weeks ahead but you know that already. The way through this narrow path, shoeless and blistered is slowly, gently, and to focus on the scenery. Look up, look forward, look around. Week one starts with a nothing conversation, lack of order par excellence as Neptune smears your sunnies leaving you rattled. The children and lovers around you are not listening and not making any dern sense. It’s all abstract. It’s all rubbish. What can we take from this apart from a little nip in de morning coffee? Well, wishing yourself away onto a sunny shore wid a boddle of Lambrini ees not de answer. Creation is. So it is. Invention. Indeed yor royt. Necessity is de mother of invention. Out of the blear and muddle a creative lightning bolt may catch you off guard. Write it down and give it a few weeks to germinate. It’ll put you right.
18 – 25 Feb
You’ve got endings and changes and some pretty, pretty times this week. There’s love for children and or lovers, quality, beautiful, cherry-blossom times. There are conversations that at last reach a conclusion to do with children and lovers, conversations that haven’t really hit the mark, got down to brass tacks, revealed the honest hoojaa of how you’ve been feeling on some or all of the above. Wednesday a cosmic rocket goes off linking your housey and worky – giving you a clear direction to resolve the imbalance that’s been praying on your mind. (The fourth house also rules Mother so this can also be a cosmic letting go of Mother and healing/health links). And then, this week, there are endings. A powerful lunar eclipse on Thursday in the dank prison cell of your locked up memories blows the bloody doors off. It’s the final one in a series and may well release some of your deeper, heretofore random behaviour patterns. The reasons for your pride/low esteem/martyr complex/fear/control freakery/addiction to cheese will be limping into the light. Before you run, remember “To know thyself is to love thyself.” / “You cannot love anyone else until you love yourself.” It’s a dirty job mopping up this sort of fall out but the silver lining is that the real you at last gets the chance to be loved by the real you. Can you do it? By Saturday the new all-out-in-the-open you is thrown into irksomeness with kids or lovers. Then on Monday a difference of opinion with a boss figure looms. Watch as the pride / low esteem / addiction to cheese etc knee jerks – then own it and send it back to its basket so it learns there’s no need to bark at the window in future. Reassure it. You’ve now got it covered.
Scorpio
11 – 18 Feb
Neptune rugby tackling the Sun in your 4th house on Monday has a number of upshots. Plumbing issues at home maybe diagnosed - or misdiagnosed (don’t tsk! It’s Neptune we’re talking about here). If you’re selling you may be offered a deal that will never come off – and likewise if you’re buying you may be guzzomped. Your mum may be drivelling. You may be drivelling to you mum. Or together you may come up with a winning formula for something appertaining to the home – pouring cheese, stain removal, moving radiators. That’s Monday. By Thursday you want to get out, get away, break away from your neighbourhood. Hang fire. It’s no time. Next week will get easier.
18 – 25 Feb
Venus and Mercury are homeward bound. This is beautifying your four walls, deciding to move, sorting out the plumbing and feeling happier about decisions you’ve been holding off for some time vis a vis your mudhut. On Wednesday as the Sun moves into the lighter side of life – babees, lovers, potato painting (and other creative pursuits) - he makes a happy hello with Pluto, your mighty lord and master, currently standing on the first step to your loft of earned income. Now I’m not saying sell your children or your body but I am saying align earning with creativity, or having a family, or get creative about finding/enjoying a relationship and you’re going with the energy that’s available. Over the next few months these are the areas of life that are coming into focus for you. Exercise one for now is streamlining. An eclipse in your 11th house of friends and wishes means a friend leaves your life or a wish you’ve wished for and been fighting to hold onto for the past couple of years has to finally be let go. It’s a clearing up job and you’ll be lighter and more focussed by doing it. The next challenge will be aligning your remaining wishes with the sprogs/squeezes/potato-painting, above.
Sagittarius
11 – 18 Feb
Your babbling sister is at her most wappy on Monday. Give her time, by next week she’ll have got the news she’s wanted or found her ability to speak your language. The wash is coming into its final cycle and not before time. On Valentine’s Day if you find yourself picking up the tab for the Chinese banquet, drinks at the bar, theatre tickets and the taxi ride home, and you feel cross about it, don’t! Get honest instead. Sulking and sleeping on the far edge of the bed is no way to behave. If you’re feeling unappreciated do yourself a favour and say so. And if it’s a work situation where someone isn’t paying the whack you feel you’ve earned then likewise, have a word in their shell-like but do it constructively and with a solution. At the moment in all areas of life it may be hard not to take the words coming out of people’s mouths as loaded missiles but you’ll do yourself so much good by being upfront and detached about everything. Vis money, it’s an energy. Pluto is saying if you open the channels truthfully, you will receive.
18 – 25 Feb
Where there’s been disharmony and/or disarray/and or complete confusion around your neighbourhood and or with brothers and sisters, now it gets sorted – and even better than you’d hoped. This is now replaced with the energy to sell up, extend, release the capital in your home. As Pluto picks up the cost of a call from your bank to your home fires on Wednesday you get a feeling he’s trying to tell you something about linking the two. Certainly the planets are all heading for your housey over Spring and early summer so if you are building a tennis court, selling your igloo, or releasing the equity to send your mother a Chippendale you’re going with the energy at hand. The eclipse on Thursday lands at the base of your current image of social success. After two years of rethinking what exactly that means to you, you can finally let go the old image and stack a new picture on the plinth. It will be hard work, but hey, you’ve got the energy and determination. In all this planning and movement you may get some disparaging comments from siblings and neighbours. Don’t wast your energy worrying. Instead use your grey cell to contemplate a workable balance between home plans and worky success.
Capricorn
11 – 18 Feb
Money and the horizon are your watchwords this coming fortnight. First up, money. Deals that are too good to be true… tsk! Cock on Goat. You’re a savvy hard-to-swindle sort of being so don’t fall for it. Watch for phishing. Watch for money that melts near a teapot. Watch for a man in a fur coat driving a Cortina. If it doesn’t add up don’t touch it with a barge pole. The Sun and Neptune are playing hide and seek with your inner accountant. And with Mercury still trying to locate batteries for your calculator this is no time to be decision making or spending like a sailor. Review, research, rethink. The delays will bring kerching soon enough. Back to the studio: and in other news Venus is still holding your hand wherever you go. By now you should have realised that you’re a gorgeous Goddess whether coiffed and fluttering in your ball gown or lounging like a stoodent in your joggy bottoms and mussed up hair. This is you knowing you’re alright as you are, inner beauty being de ting. As Venus moves her magic into your cash register next week and your attentions are diverted, don’t forget it. Knowing you’re alright as you are, Baloo, means you always gat a handle on the bare necessities of life. Mmm, hmm.
18 – 25 Feb
Kerching! Venus shuffles into your bank vault shimmering in diamonds just as Mercury finds the calculator batteries. The financial delays and befuddlement that have been driving you mad as a badger begin to lift. From Wednesday move forward aiming for a deal, contract, large cheque to land with a thud on 27th Feb. Vis horizons - a long-range plan, responsibilities and companies overseas, ambitions to study or just an aching desire to snooze in a hammock where palm trees grow hits a ding in the road on Thursday. A lunar eclipse here earmarks the final letting go of something that’s been troubling you for the past two years. You’ve known in your waters since mid December last year that this was going to need re-basting. So here’s the alarm on your slow-cooker. Breath in, breath out, let it go. With your ruler taking an overextended sabbatical it will be early May before you can really get this into shape. On Monday Saturn’s lengthy sojourn in his kaftan and open-toed sandals comes to the attention of the sun and he’s not best pleased. Expect to start blaming your close-to-home commitments for blocking any resolution to the foreign, long-range doodah mentioned above. Nononno. It's not so. The delays are right. Your everyday is where you need to be right now. I said May. I mean May.
Aquarius
11 – 18 Feb
Monday and you may be forgiven for thinking that you don’t know your own mind. It’s just Neptune dunking your inner knower under the bubbles. What reveals itself during this strange phase may seem outlandish, but then you are an Aquarius so worry less about reality (as much as is safe to do so) and enjoy. This week is likely to feel busy without feeling like you’ve accomplished much at all. By Thursday, ie Valentine’s Day, a catch up with lovers, children, and creative ventures will be where the energy is calling you. Just don’t let yourself be put upon and don’t let yourself in for being the martyr. Likewise if you’ve got a hot date don’t give the game away too soon. With Venus at her most nursing and sympathetic for another week, you could come round this time next week to feel you’ve been taken for a ride. You are not a doormat. You are a person.
18 – 25 Feb
At last, sense prevails. Mercury the planet of chitty chat and technology turns his notepad the right way up and begins to untangle the knotty ball of string that has been life as you know it these past three weeks. You are understood. You understand. Miracles happen. Things don’t break down just because you walk into a room. Things that have been broken have easier solutions than you’d imagined. If only life was always this straightforward. With Venus heading into your first house too you can expect to feel brighter, more positive, and happier with your wash. Thursday’s lunar eclipse falls in your 8th house of tycoonery, taxes, letting go, and all things ooh la la. A two-year exercise in, experience of, or acceptance over any of the above reaches its final word. At just 1 degrees left in this zone this is the final, idiot check of the room before you close it up. With the sun linking to Saturn in this 8th zone on Monday there may be some financial cost involved in closing this door. Try not to worry. Venus moves into your 2nd house of money in mid March bringing a healthy, financial glow with her as she goes.
Pisces
11 – 18 Feb
If you are feeling paranoid at all and have been for the past month or so this is quite a normal reaction. With four planets stacking up in your house of causes-for-nervous-ticks-and-random-behaviours and/or hidden enemies, who wouldn’t? And today, as your sun and ruler join forces and start whispering about you just out of eyeshot from behind the sofa, guffawing quite loudly at times, you’ll be forgiven if hiding out in an Andersen shelter with a tin of corned beef is the only thing on your mind. If you can shift your attentions to the revelations being, er, revealed through this paranoia you’ll be making the best use of this strange time. Peruse on these: How you sabotage yourself. What bits of yourself you keep locked in their room when other people come to call. Why you think other people are big and you are small. With this focus, as the planets move from the dark and into the light of your first house next week, you’ll be ready to act and behave in a revolutionised way. But ya gotta focus now.
18 – 25 Feb
This week brings the start of your month of being truly a glorious, shiny fish. The last few months have had you properly worried and unable to act. As that energy shifts from your back to your front foot try to move forward with t’ai chi in mind rather than physical assault. The upshot of all this paranoia and hiding is that once the energy shifts from thought into action you may find yourself wanting to right all the wrongs you feel have been plaguing your life - and to right them this goddam, cotton-picking minute. An eclipse in your 7th house and a face to face with your Sun and Saturn also in your 7th house means that significant others – spouses, business partners etc are likely to cop the lash of your scalding/scolding tongue first. Two points to raise. Firstly – your anger is anger at yourself for having been a doormat for so long. Forgive yourself first, you’ve learned that lesson, and you’ll be more likely to have your tete a tete with the significant other in a calm, direct, authoritative frame of mind. Secondly an eclipse doesn’t necessarily mean things are over/ another suitcase in another hall/splitting the CD collection. What it does mean is that where aspects of these relationships have been trying your patience and/or exploiting the fact that you are prepared to sabotage yourself/ hide bits of yourself when other people come to call/ consider other people big and you small – then these aspects have to change. It’s been going on for two years. From Monday the 25th it need go on no more.
The Music of Type Design
1 week ago
