Horoscopes for Week of August 30

Personal Evolution Astrology – Week of August 30, 2010

Mercury remains retrograde in Virgo this week.

Aries – The good news is that with Venus and Mars in your relationship house making a beneficial trine to Chiron and Neptune in your 11^th House, your relationship partners are gently helping you get back in touch with what you’re really trying to do here. If you’ve been deluding yourself into thinking you can just play small and go along with the herd, you’ll probably get a lovingly-delivered, diplomatically-stated kick in the pants from someone who cares this week. With Mercury retro in your house of work and daily routine, you might find it almost impossible to stay focused through the delays and interruptions. Use the frustration to pull back and look at what you really need to create a sense of efficiency and flow in your day-to-day patterns.

Taurus – With Venus and Mars in your 6^th House this week, you can get super-creative about a work or health situation. By creatively shifting the energy in the office or in your daily routine or by making a positive health choice, you might also find you’re inadvertently answering a career question – along the lines of “What should I do next?” – that has been puzzling you for quite some time. Your thinking about money could be hazy this week, so please try to avoid make any important financial commitments now. You’ve got plenty of work to do and it seems to be work that you enjoy, so stay focused on what’s in front of you – this shows the Universe you’re open to more and better.

Gemini – It seems as if you’re still struggling to figure out a home, family or parental situation this week. My advice would be to set aside a certain percentage of time to focus on this issue and use that time to look back at your personal and family history. It’s enough this week to start discerning the underlying patterns; with your ruling planet Mercury overwhelmed by the Sun you’re not likely to come up with the ultimate solution this week. The good news is that Mars and Venus in your 5^th House are activating your creative spark in a major way. Pay attention to your dreams, because a part of you is working in the dream realm to bring beautiful, creative ideas back into this level of reality.

Cancer – I would love for you to take a nice deep breath, exhale slowly, kick your legs up on your desk or go make yourself a nice cup of tea…and spend the next five minutes honoring yourself for making it through the last three months with integrity, dignity, honesty and heart. You did it! Whatever comes next, you’ve just made it through an energetic portal that’s about as intense as any you’ll experience in this lifetime. With Mercury still retrograde in your 3^rd House this week, now is a great period to buy yourself a little extra time and space to write about your feelings and to notice where your thoughts are running. You might need to do a little cognitive psych on yourself; talking yourself through what you’ve experienced in the last few months can help you put the past behind you and open to the opportunities that are coming your way later this year and in 2011.

Leo – Even though I keep encouraging you to pay attention to your money during this Mercury Retrograde, you might not find the detail-oriented thing that easy to pull off this week. With your money planet Mercury “combust” (overwhelmed by its proximity to the Sun) for much of the week, you might find it easier to feel your way around your money issues than to make lists and fill out spreadsheets. (On the other hand, be on the look-out for a couple of awesome, illuminating flashes of insight about money on Thursday that more than make up for the haziness of the surrounding days.) With Mars and Venus in your 3^rd House of thoughts and communications, your mind seems to be making up for the lack of focus with exceptionally creative imagery – this is a great week for making art and bringing romance and beauty into stale situations.

Virgo – Just to be clear – this Mercury Retrograde is trying to help you upgrade/update your identity to reflect who you are now. Sometimes Mercury accomplishes this by activating people, patterns and memories of who you were in the past. So if you feel like you’re stuck in a moment you can’t get out, stop struggling. Notice what these thoughts and feelings are trying to show you about yourself. Don’t waste time feeling guilty or stupid or inadequate; those are all ego-traps. Instead, notice that these thoughts and feelings are coming up from your subconscious so you can be aware of them and release them once and for all. How cool is that?! By the way, this is a creative money week for you. Focus on what you want to create financially in your life and then look for ways to take one small step in that direction. You might be surprised at how quickly opportunity finds you.

Libra – I hope you’re in the process of making something beautiful. You usually are, but I know you’ve had a lot going on lately and you might have been so busy reacting to the jabs and haymakers life was throwing at you that you’ve put down your brushes, tossed your axe in the corner, or ditched your word processor for empty thrills on Facebook and Twitter. Well, just so’s you know, you’ve got Mars and Venus cruising through your sign together for another week and a half. This gives you a special power to weave together the yang and the yin, artfully blend the dark and the light, and tap the creative stream of the Universe for fertile inspiration. It also makes you appear extraordinarily sexy and exciting to the other members of the herd. If you allowed yourself to tune into this vibration, you might be able to use it for the higher good.

Scorpio – You might be tempted to dive into the dream world with a lover whom you probably know isn’t that good for you this week, with your ruling planet Mars and your relationship planet Venus slipping hand-in-hand through your 12^th House of self-undoing.  I do want to encourage you to protect yourself, especially since Mercury retro in your 11^th House of ideals and dreams for the future is trying so hard to get you to focus on why you came to this planet in the first place. Mercury wants to help you formulate a plan that is grounded and focused enough to make your soul’s dream for your life an eventual reality. But if you must follow your heart into unexplored realms (and to be sure, this is one of your great passions), do yourself a favor and expose some of your illusions about mom, dad, family life and what you need in order to be happy along the way.

Sagittarius – Your Mercury retro task of rewriting your business plan and reformulating your career strategy might involve more of a felt sense of what’s working and what’s not than a series of tightly-organized and finely-considered critiques this week. The mental clarity will come with time; your best bet this week is (a) not to stress about the things you don’t understand or can’t see clearly, while (b) taking notes each time you notice a flaw in your design, a fly in your honey, a ghost in your machine. Put the notes in a pile and bear in mind the fact you’ll know better what to do with them once Mercury returns to direct motion mid-month. Meanwhile, with Mars and Venus flying high in your 11^th House of friends, networks and community, it’s a great time to get out there and meet some of the new people who are going to help you expand your influence in the next three years.

Capricorn –You’ve got some powerful mojo working for you in career matters these days. I’d wait to sign any major contracts until after Mercury goes direct on September 12 if I could, but that shouldn’t stop you from developing new business, reaching out to new clients and enjoying the fact that for the first time in quite some time you’ve got strong momentum at your back. It looks as if someone you admire or look up to is challenging you to let go of a toxic – though socially-sanctioned – belief about money and what you have to do to have enough of it. Your creativity is implicated here. Once you see the core limitation of this belief system for what it is – an arbitrary falsehood that someone else is profiting from – you can open up your creative channels and take your game to a whole new level. By the way, that’s your destiny over the next fifteen years.

Aquarius – I sure hope you’re following your curiosity and learning as much as you can about how the Universe really works for you at this unique juncture of time, space, and your consciousness. Because with Mars, Venus, Saturn and Vesta (the asteroid goddess of transpersonal love and devotion) all packed into your 9^th House of the higher mind, you’re being blessed with multiple opportunities to gain some real wisdom. Not only that, but Mars and Venus make a helpful trine to Chiron and Neptune in Aquarius, blessing you with a couple of key insights into the journey you’ve been on over the last several years to come home to your Authentic Self. Being unique has never been your problem; the big shift is in allowing yourself to be who you are without punishing yourself with angst, alienation or self-imposed exile.

Pisces – With Mercury retro in your 7^th House, you’re being given the opportunity to formulate a mental summary or checklist comprising what you learned in a series of heavyweight relationship lessons over the last three years with Saturn in this part of your chart. Because Mercury spends much of this week overpowered by the Sun’s rays, you might have a few moments where you feel as if you’re actually more confused about your boundaries than ever before. (Watch for a couple moments of brilliant clarity on Thursday, on the other hand.) Here’s a good litmus test when forced to set a boundary or make a choice in relationship – ask yourself how you habitually handled this situation in the past, then do something that breaks that pattern. If your habit is to avoid confrontation, maybe it’s time you got in that person’s face and said your piece. If you habitually let your partner make all the decisions, step up and risk being wrong. You might find that ‘decisive’ fits you better than you imagined.