The Navigator's Sign By Sign for July 1998 By Eric Francis Copyright .c 1998, all rights reserved. ARIES (March 21- April 19) -- What could be the (allegedly) hardest things for an Aries to learn? How about patience. Discipline. Foresight. Completion. And true self- confidence. Well, congratulations, I have checked six different versions of your astrology, looked at twelve different Tarot decks, called five different 1-900 lines and visited my fortune teller in Asbury Park, and they all say the same thing: You got the picture, you have come through your cosmic initiation splendidly and have finally learned how to harness enough of your beautiful stupendous Marsy fire-power in a kind of a newly-created psychic furnace that can not only boil water and heat a home, but can also pull a train, run a factory and double as an electric tooth brush. As for the one major thing you've left undone and are feeling somewhat uneasy about, give that a chance to come around in its own time. There's no rush. TAURUS (April 20-May 20) -- Looking into your aura, I got an image of you floating in a tiny boat out on the ocean. It was dark and foggy and you had no idea where you actually were. Then, through the mists of the fog, a huge sailing vessel seemed to materialize behind you. There was no chance of a collision, but the experience of this immense, beautiful ship appearing was stunning, both on a poetic level and because you recognized that what you were seeing was the materialization of possibility. That ship, which may not even be aware of you, represents potential. It may be sailing to any port in the world, which means that any opportunity may arise from this one single momentous experience. Of course, you always have the choice to stay right where you are. GEMINI (May 21- June 20) -- I am writing this horoscope on a warm evening in a place called Oscar's Cafe in Freiburg, Germany. The place is packed and there are conversations all around me, and beautiful women are serving tall pints of beer as the free-spirited Sagittarius Full Moon rises over this ancient city. Now that His Royal Highness Saturn, who sometimes masquerades in a silly costume as the Lord of Stiffness, Conformity and Propriety, has exited the 11th house of your highest personal visions and your social circle, I would propose that this place or someplace like it would be the perfect setting for you to make some new friends and casually discuss just what you no longer wish to be doing with your life. CANCER (June 21- July 22) -- I am again working through an 800-page textbook called *Esoteric Astrology* by Alice Bailey, which for half a century has created confusion, controversy, hysteria and spontaneous enlightenment among the members of my profession. One of its teachings is quite conveniently applicable your life right now, so I will put it straight to work. Bailey says the planet Saturn is about opportunity. What an outrageous prospect! Most people want to kill Saturn. I bet Ronald Reagan (against the advice of his astrologer) aimed a Star Wars missile straight at it. Well, if you consider that Saturn represents opportunity, and that for you, Taurus, his new home, represents how much you get paid in your career, as well as what possibilities actually exist for you to share your greatest gifts with the rest of us, plus who you know and what you really tune into when the Great Rays are shining through your mind... need I say more? LEO (July 23 - Aug. 22) -- A complex planetary configuration associated with your sign caused me to stop and think deeply about the nature of your life and fortunes, twisting the lobes of my brain until it suddenly occurred to me that what the planets were saying is quite simple. You now have the karmically legal and very available opportunity to steal brilliant, inspired ideas from the eccentric, original people around you, light your passion and divine inspiration on theirs as innocently as you would stick an unlit match in a candle-flame, and then put whatever you learn to work in the world, building your power and solidifying your reputation for things at which you are the very best. You've done enough studying the theories and concepts in the library. The world is now your playground, and everyone is your playmate. VIRGO (Aug. 23- Sept. 22) -- I recently had dinner with a physicist and professor at the University of Hanover, which really is my idea of a good time, or one of them. He explained that science is very good at describing what happens, but not so good at explaining why it happens or what it means. That, he said, is the job of philosophers. "And astrologers," I said, explaining: Scientists find things out there, and astrologers figure out what they mean. But that can't be possible, he said if astrology is meaningless. So I gave him my theory that astrology works on the level of poetic understanding. You can't prove whether it's right or wrong, but that doesn't stop it from making a very big difference. This he could accept, and knew I had discovered some kind of occult key or perhaps a well- beaten path into the mind of rationality. Appeal to beauty. And, for some reason, then it dawned on me what I needed to say to you this month, something you can take with you for the years ahead: Remember, if it ain't friendly, it ain't God. LIBRA (Sept. 23- Oct. 22) -- There is no way to keep some things contained, you being one of them. It is possible to delay. It is possible to encounter strange obstacles. It's possible to have every person in your life suddenly turn into your mother, as if you were in some kind of psychic fun-house designed to make you face the things you dreaded the most, just so that you could learn how utterly meaningless they really are. It is possible to have everything appear to be a barrier in your way until you touch it and test it and give it a shove, and in doing this you find out that what looked like a brick wall is actually made of soft foam, and what looked like big boulders falling all over your path were really rubber blobs that you could kick out of the way. And then you find out, right around now, that the cement crypt you thought you'd been stuffed in for many, many moons turned out to be made of exact the same stuff. SCORPIO (Oct. 23- Nov. 22) -- At the moment Saturn, the Lord of Karma, entered your 7th house of marriage-like partnerships - also known as The Cosmic Mirror - there was a most spectacular display of planetary ebullience in your 8th house of orgasmic delights. I am not quite sure what that means, but I will do what any good astrologer does when faced with the unknown: stare at the chart for a while and take an educated guess. I have a hunch that there's some unresolved sexual guilt lingering in your energy field in what could otherwise be a long season of rip-roaring passion. And I suspect that this guilt originates with the most silly idea of possession in relationships. Hunt it down, clear it out and fling it down the cosmic garbage chute. You don't need to own anyone, they don't need to own you, and you don't need guilt. And please don't shake your head. I may not know what I'm talking about, but I'm a good guesser. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 23- Dec. 21) -- There is an idiotic New Age teaching which says that in order to change our experiences in the world, we merely need to change our ideas about it. The trouble is, it works most of the time. One place it would be very good for you to start changing your ideas would be in at work. While you could always order in regularly from a good practical joke catalog, my deepest religious beliefs hold that pranking is a do-it- yourself matter. How about typing outrageous fake newspaper articles about your company and tacking them to the employee bulletin board? Or perhaps producing satires of corporate memos? Or faxing in a bizarre menu from the "new coffee shop" across the street? One gag a week will suffice. The modern office was made for partying, and you'll need to become a master of the game, because the work is coming on strong. If you're not having fun, there will be no point at all. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22- Jan. 19) -- The Lord of Limitation and Maturity, your esteemed ruler Saturn, has now entered your fifth house of boogeyboarding, hamming it up and getting laid. This can only mean one of two things: either you are destined to three years of being an utter bore, or that you must now take your fun very, very seriously. I suggest you make it a discipline on the level of yoga. Organize doing one thing just for fun every single day, and take a day off once a week with that beautiful Capricornian devotion of yours, just to celebrate. You must now pay off the karmic debt you accumulated during the past three years of very heavy emotional purging that is now, for the most part, over. AQUARIUS (Jan. 19- Feb. 18) -- If I were you, this is what I would be feeling. I would want to be getting into this heavy space of how deep things really are, but it would be hard because of how peculiar and mysterious things really are becoming. I would be very concerned about all my emotional baggage that I had hidden away over the years, and dread the thought of going down to the basement and dragging it upstairs to see what was there, only build up the gumption to do the job and then discover that I had taken care of it all last year. And why would I think I was subject to such strokes of cosmic good fortune? Because somehow, some way, I had really taken to heart those things I value the most in life, and realized that it makes everything else a whole lot easier. That is, if I were you. PISCES (Feb. 19- Mar. 20) -- Having survived what I thought were thirty months of money hell, I decided to investigate and see whether this was really true, for the sake of all my fellow Pisceans in the world. As it turns out, there were some difficult times, but I ate every day. Then there was the time that I didn't have adequate backing for the radio version of this column, which broadcast for 75 weeks in Woodstock, NY, and my friend Jerry personally wrote checks and floated the program. And then there was the time that I knew we deserved a much better deal, and Gary, the owner of the station, went ahead and gave it to us. Then there was my expensive rent, but my very kind, flexible landlord. Then there were all those months of having no other choice but to stay in one place and finally make up my mind about what is important in this world and what is not. And to think, it's getting better. ++ _________________ Eric Francis is a professional astrologer and investigative reporter traveling Europe. Visit his Internet sites at http://www.Star-Navigator.com, or e-mail him at: ethos@Star-Navigator.com.