Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Since ancient times the summer solstice has been celebrated as a promise of hope. Between now and the new moon on the 23rd, get focused on your dearest wishes. It’s a time for changing habits. Recent science shows it takes far longer than 21 days to establish a habit, so if you failed before, prepare to give it a longer go this time around.

ARIES (March 21-April 19). Some of the things you believed when you were five years old still hold true today. Not all. Don’t worry; you’re trending toward greater accuracy. This is a perfect time for a review. What do you know to be true now?

TAURUS (April 20-May 20). If you adopted the goals of your closest and most similar friend, they wouldn’t fit you in the least. Goals have to be specific to you to be meaningful. There’s no hollower victory than the attainment of other people’s goals.

GEMINI (May 21-June 21). The melding of your intellect with the physical world makes your reality. Today’s work is about the idea behind it, and the idea is about the work. If you can’t get behind the idea, don’t get behind the work.

CANCER (June 22-July 22). What you’re conscious of knowing is just a sliver of what you really know. Your intelligence goes far beyond the factual. Your resourcefulness will unfold and flourish as you trust your feelings about things.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22). Humor is, in the end, a sense of proportion. The one who can blow out the frame of the picture and see the world as much, much bigger and wider than his own problems has a much easier time seeing what’s funny about it.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Don’t be too quick to call something a waste of time just because it doesn’t fit into any classic category. For today, assume that if you (or your kin, colleagues or loved ones) are drawn to it, there’s something worthy there.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). You may now be able to look back and see where the progress stopped and precisely what stopped it. It was fear. If you can’t see the specific nature of this fear, stop relying on your logic for the answer. Ask your gut.

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). If you’re worried that you won’t be able to moderate a certain behavior of yours, it may be easier for you to abstain entirely. This may require you to go out of your way to avoid a scene rife with triggers.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). What you want to do, you will do. If only part of you wants to do it — well, you’ve got your work cut out for you. You can be the very hardest person to negotiate with!

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). The more you know, the less you sense. Set assumptions aside. Push your feelings into the situation. Try to contact this with each of your five senses and also with your heart.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18). To make more deliberate use of your time you’ll have to guard it from robbers. It may feel mean to take yourself from those accustomed to demanding you, but your loved ones don’t need you nearly as much as they want you.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). Don’t be quick to label your work, and by no means should you take what other people say about it to heart. What looks like a mess can be the foundation of success. Keep going. The most important part of it now is consistency.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY (June 21). To be automatically liked in a new circle is an exciting perk to this solar return. Some of it has to do with a fresh attitude and an uncanny ability to connect quickly with what matters to others. In a lot of ways you’ll be lighter and brighter this year. There’s a breakthrough with a project close to your heart in December. Aries and Virgo adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 30, 28, 17, 40 and 19.

ASTROLOGICAL QUESTIONS: “What’s a ‘decan’ in astrology? I’m an Aries and read that the first decan in the constellation of Aries is Cassiopeia. Can you please explain?”

Decans are groups of small constellations that each rise consecutively above the horizon, one right after the other, every hour for 24 hours. This is how the ancient Egyptians, and later the Greeks, used to tell time. Every 10 days, a new group of decans appears on the eastern horizon, and the process begins all over again. This progression of decans was the ancient people’s calendar. Later on, the Egyptians added an even more ancient astrology to the mix, superimposing the 12 zodiac constellations over the existing decan constellations to create 12 months of the year. The upshot of all this is that every zodiac constellation contains three smaller decan constellations. As these decan constellations rise within the larger zodiac constellation, a different quality — also called a decanic “phase” or “face” — is emphasized. The first decan of Aries the Ram is, as you said, the constellation Cassiopeia, the sitting queen. She is easy to spot in the night sky; just look for the big W (or M, depending on your position).