Here we are, entering the uncharted waters of a new year, somewhere between the doldrums of the past and the depths of what will be. The energy that began in 2011 continues to swell beneath us, but our transformation will not be complete until 2015. In 2013 we continue the journey. If we are wise, we will use our visions and dreams as a compass, yet remain open to exploration and discovery.
The past two years have been fiery in temperament, with lots of activity in Cardinal and fire signs. With the ongoing intensity of the Uranus-Pluto squares (mid-May and again in late October/early November), we feel a continued urgency to recreate ourselves and our world. That said, in 2013 we cross into the watery realms.
What we want and how we feel about the changes we propose can be very different. Water craves safety and connection, yet we remain in a period of dynamic change and growth requiring each of us to set our own course. This year is about minding that gap.
Points of reconciliation? Finding the people who push us toward greater authenticity despite our fear, acknowledging our greatest attachments and determining what we are willing to risk, accepting our vulnerabilities while remaining open and true to ourselves.
Listen to the whispering of longing. These stirrings can help us tap into our deepest needs and clarify our goals. Used this way, they can become a touchstone to ensure our vision for the future is heart-centered and emotionally nurturing, as well as liberating and freeing.
All three Mercury retrograde periods (late February, late June, and late October) fall in water signs, steeping us in nonlinear ways of knowing and opening portals into interior spaces. If our ideas are in conflict with our emotions, these periods offer opportunities to bring them back into alignment.
Come summer, a grand trine in water between Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune brings a wellspring of creativity and the opportunity to launch our aspirations with real-world know-how. And if in August and into the fall, we need to make a few course corrections, we’ll also have a clearer understanding of the waters in which we travel.
Safe journeys, my friends. May the winds fill your sails with glad tidings and carry you forward on a sea of blessings. May the healing waters of love wash over you and everyone you know and meet, until wave by wave, we awaken to the ocean of bliss that supports us all.
2013 Forecast
If you know your rising sign (the sign on the ascendant at the time of your birth), read that description as well as your birth sign. If you don’t know your rising sign and would like to find out, click here for instructions.
As always, a broad analysis such as this is no substitute for a personal astrological consultation based your full birth data. If you are interested in setting up an appointment, please email me or call me at 800.604.0299.
ARIES TAURUS GEMINI CANCER LEO VIRGO
LIBRA SCORPIO SAGITTARIUS CAPRICORN AQUARIUS PISCES
Traditional gemstones: Red coral, Carnelian, Diamond, Bloodstone
If you’ve been doing your work over the past few years, 2012 brought a few seismic shifts in your self-awareness and freed you to move through the world feeling less encumbered and more wholly yourself. The cost for this more fully-embodied you has come at the price of change, some planned, some wholly surprising. The center could not hold, so you created a new center, one more aligned to your authentic self. You can expect 2013 to bring continued shifts in your path and public persona, so roll with the aftershocks that attend this powerful emergence: now isn’t the time for routine but for experiment. Hold on tight and enjoy the ride.
Hopefully, over the course of the past few years, you’ve restructured relationships so that those in your life truly are in your life, on your team, and cheering on your growth. Changes in career or direction occur because you are coming into your power. Be a leader who empowers others, and resist the temptation to control your environment. Consider how you can facilitate the transformation of the world around you by sharing power with others or channeling it for the good of those around you.
On a more mundane level, be sure to take care of any outstanding debt you may have. Through 2015, you can whittle down debts by taking a disciplined, structured approach. The same goes for old fears and doubts: tackle them one by one and they’ll soon be gone. Starting in July, look for opportunity to come knocking. Positive changes at home, within your family, and opportunities for growth, both personally and on the job, are possible. You may even find your new tribe. It’s a good time to be you.
Traditional gemstones: Diamond, White Coral, Zircon, Emerald, Amber
Life could become interesting this year, Bull ─ so pay attention, especially to the people in your life. Who consistently shows up? Who weighs you down or lowers your energy? You’ll find that romances built on solid ground will deepen, become more serious, and turn into full-fledged commitments. Conversely, friendships and partnerships that aren’t built on terra firma may begin leaving your life, sometimes on your request, at other times by their choice. Your responsibility to others only increases over the next few years, so your close relationships need to go through a critical period of review. You want to make sure that those who receive your time and energy warrant it. And you want to make sure that you keep up your end of the bargain, too: show up for those you’re committed to, even if it gets hard.
Travel, spiritual contemplation, and big picture ideas and values continue to be a place of transformation for you, so use these pathways to discover new aspects of yourself. Let a journey become a vision quest, or a book upend your existing worldview. As much as you appreciate continuity, you will find you enjoy and are inspired by new frames of reference right now. Take advantage of these points of departure, especially if you feel stale or stuck in a rut.
A place of benefit for you this year is your community. If you’ve been staying too close to home, consider branching out, especially beginning mid-summer. You won’t have to go far to meet people who stimulate your thinking and have interesting stories to share. You may find you have more to say as well. Opportunities come in the guise of everyday interactions with others, so circulate and expand your circle of acquaintances. More importantly, connecting with your community will shake you free of old assumptions and beliefs and expose you to new ways of seeing that will be positively healing – for you and those around you.
Traditional Gemstones: Emerald, Peridot, Jade, Sapphire
You’re in a period of transition, which will continue for several years. Your dreams for the future may take surprising turns, as friends and associates bring illuminating new ideas and prospects into your field of vision. Always quick to bore, you may find yourself itching for new horizons to explore, but which horizon might be less clear right now.
Rely a bit more on your gut and intuition this year, especially when uncertainty arises, and use your values to test tentative ideas or destinations. What do you believe, where do you find meaning, what taps into your highest ideals, where does your longing lie? Use these questions as weather vanes to point you in the right direction. If you approach your life from straight reason – what makes sense – rather than tapping into the inspiration of your dreams and idealism, you may miss your turn for a much more interesting and satisfying journey.
As the second half of the year approaches, opportunities for increased income and a greater sense of wellbeing arise. Lighten your load: by releasing the unnecessary or bringing old aspects of your life to an end, you can free up energy and create space in your life for new bounty. You may want to tackle old debt or transform your approach to money. Focusing on how you give and receive – the rates of exchange in your life – can be enlightening as well.
In 2013, you’re asked to show up and be more present, especially in your day-to-day routines. This can manifest in a various ways, such as a more committed approach to your health, increased responsibility on the job, or more active attention to those around you who need your support. Balance is important, as is a disciplined, mature, methodical approach to the details of your daily life. Don’t let yourself off the hook. Ultimately the payoffs will be worth the perseverance.
Traditional Gemstones: Natural Pearl, Moonstone, Ruby
You may have found 2012 a demanding year, especially at work and in relationships. As empathic as you are, you often find it difficult to stay centered in what you want, losing sight of yourself amid the clamor of your environment or the competing needs of others. But sometimes life’s stresses provoke clarity, steel our resolve, and provide the right juxtaposition – showing us what we don’t want in order to get us into gear.
The focus of this year is growth: in your identity, your sense of place in the world, your self-expression. Any area of your life which feels thwarted or withered deserves scrutiny, and you need to worry less about fitting in and more about full expression of your whole self. Come out of your shell, take risks, and reinvent yourself.
In 2013, you have a window of opportunity to make sudden shifts that land you in new places – both physically and metaphorically. You are ready for a spiritual/artistic transformation, one that frees you to put the focus on living more soulfully and authentically. Situations and environments in which you’re discouraged to be your full self or in which you encounter resistance may simply be urging you to move on.
This year sweeps brings unprecedented luck, good timing, and optimism, so push for the results you want. Use the first half of the year to get your proverbial ducks in a row, so when things begin to pick up mid-year you can take advantage of the opportunities as they arrive.
Relationships this year can be intense and transporting – deeply, deeply impacting you – so be discriminating and intentional in your approach. Situations which feel less than mutually empowering need to be scrutinized, as your current cycle of growth hinges on your ability to become a freer, more autonomous and creative you. Look to those friends and partners who support your longings, gifts and growing sense of excitement, and with whom you can partner in a mature, steady manner.
Traditional Gemstones: Ruby, Red Spinel, Rhodolite, Peridot, Golden Topaz
Over the past few years, your ideology and beliefs have been going through a process of revitalization. Epiphanies and radical new ideals may have shaken you free of some of your more limited self-concepts and opened new vantage points from which to see the world – or perhaps provided you a wide-angle lens through which new vistas magically appeared. This has impacted your day-to-day world, jumpstarting a transformation of your routines and even the daily work you do. What matters in the long run is shifting, and so is the focus of your daily attention.
Expect 2013 to bring more of the same, as the reorganizing going on in your life begins hitting you where you live. Your innermost home and personal life will require restructuring. It could mean creating a suitable place in the home in which to work, remodeling the house, or it could be more esoteric, looking inward and paying attention to the places within your core that don’t feel “at home” and need to be healed. You must strengthen your foundation so that it is strong enough to support the life you’re building, and those foundational elements are your relationships, your career, your creativity, and your identity.
Responsibilities around home and family may increase, and the need to parent – your children, aging parents, but more importantly yourself – increases. At the same time look carefully at the areas of your life that could be simplified. If you are managing everything and everyone, it’s time to take stock. What is essential? What obligations have you taken on simply because you’re prone to take charge? What situations can be turned over to others or to a higher power?
Opportunities come in the guise of solitude and service. Spending time alone in contemplation brings both spiritual gifts and creative insights. Community and connection can come from reaching out and assisting those around you who are less fortunate. In fact, in 2013, acts of service and compassion can be positively transformative for you. Let the reorganization going on deep within you spill outwards and become seeds of transcendence for those in need
Traditional Gemstones: Emerald, Peridot, Jade, Sapphire
You have embarked on a healing journey through the realm of relationships. Diligent and hardworking, you can be counted on to show up for others, be they bosses, children, friends or lovers. However, seeds of bitterness and resistance can be planted if you feel you carry too much burden, even if it’s your native helpfulness that’s setting up this dynamic. These seeds of self-imposed martyrdom may proliferate if you surround yourself with people in chronic need of repair.
The call here is to transform your sense of fun and creativity, to renew your sense of magic in relationships, and to restore the vital balance between work and play. You’re due for a creative flowering, which will feed and inform how you interact with others. It’s true that you enjoy improving the world around you. But you must first face your wound: what part of you feels you must offer a service, must do something to be of value? Try to unbind your natural proclivity to help from the deep-seated fear that your deservingness hinges on being useful rather than being you.
This rebalancing is critical, as over the next few years you will be called upon to by others who genuinely need you. Your ability to act from a place of compassion, rather than obligation or duty, will allow you to become a healer of the first magnitude and truly of service.
First step: Schedule several hours each week—this is non-negotiable—to do something you love: play guitar, quilt, write, create art, go dancing. Whatever it is, it should feed you and your gifts. Second step: cultivate gratitude. Spend a bit of time, say, five minutes before going to sleep, consciously appreciating what you have – be it what went right that day, something that made you laugh, the people you love, your health. Gratitude is generative for you: the more you actively give thanks, the more you have to give thanks for. Last step: pay attention to the people and ideas that uplift you and help you tap into what’s possible. Part of your rewiring has to do with finding ways to say “Yes” more often, to giving your curiosity freer reign, rather than performing risk assessments all the time. Place yourself in environments that support a more inspired you.
Traditional Gemstones: Diamond, White Coral, Zircon, Opal, Peridot
If you’ve been doing your work, the past few years have been about learning to say no to others, putting boundaries in place, and standing on your own two feet. The coming few years are about learning to say no to yourself, especially with regards to your finances. Belt-tightening, budgeting, restructuring your relationship to money, and saving for the future are good practices for the immediate future.
The changes keep coming in 2013, and relationships and home continue to be areas of challenge, with interactions with others often rocking your stability. Underlying the difficulties is your uneasy relationship to power, often stemming from power dynamics in your early home environment. Your desire for parity makes you suspicious of power; yet your fear of power often means your expression of it is subversive and indirect, making it hard for others to understand your priorities or meet you on your own terms. It is time to work with your fears, stop hiding, and put your cards on the table.
Insights stem from examining the conflicts in your life and how they might echo dynamics from your early life. Who is speaking power to whom? If you are in the position of authority, how can you move past your fears and empower your subordinates? (Clue: When you were younger or feeling upset and unheard, what approach would have staunched your concerns?) If your conflict is with someone who has authority over you, how can you move past your fears and stand up for yourself? You are a powerful person and you are in control, whether you see yourself that way or not. If you don’t acknowledge this truth, you may be tempted to use power unconsciously to selfishly serve your own ends.
Given the nonstop pace of the coming year, take care of your sensitive nervous system with restorative, spiritual health routines—qigong, yoga, thai chi—and regular contemplative practices. Own your power but be gentle with yourself.
Traditional Gemstones: Red Coral, Carnelian, Citrine, Obsidian
Finally, 2013 is here and you can get started. Energy is beginning to move, and important decisions must be made. It’s time to declare yourself, to shape your identity in this emerging world.
For the next two years, you will be redefining who you are. This is not an abstract exercise but painstaking work, and you may find yourself busier than ever before. Pay attention and keep your focus on essentials. This is not the time to scatter your energies but to consolidate. The people, activities and situations that arise now will have continued influence for the next 29 years of your life.
If you have wanted to revamp your work life or reinvent your health routine, you may find that change can happen rapidly. Fun, innovative and unusual approaches to old problems – whether they be health or work-related – can lead to breakthroughs, so don’t be afraid to experiment. Shifts in technology or surprises in the workplace may also abound. Though you are normally not a huge fan of change, this time try rolling with it. You may even discover the disruptions to be freeing.
You need space and time to explore your growing need for spirit and new ideologies to replace older, more limited ways of understanding your world. This need increases as the year unfolds. Plan a trip that feeds your spirit as well as your need for retreat. Travel can unlock opportunities, expose you to new ideas, soften fossilized opinions, and provide insights into your unfolding development.
Traditional Gemstones: Yellow Sapphire, Topaz, Citrine, Ruby
Because you love forward motion, the faster the better, you may find this year’s pace agonizing: you can feel things shift, you can see what could be, but nothing seems to be happening.
Take. Big. Deep. Breaths.
Trust your sense of what could be and keep your faith close. This year, patience is the virtue you must cultivate. Acting too soon will quickly and unequivocally show you just how unstable your foundation is, so sit tight. The ground beneath you is not quite solid, and blind optimism can’t force a garden to take root in the muck.
So, what to do while you’re in limbo? Get your financial house in order. I know, I know, visionaries such as yourself shouldn’t have to be troubled with these details, but put it on your to-do list anyhow. Everything you will do starting in 2016 requires that you be on a better financial footing than you are now. Slip off your wizard’s cap and put on your hard hat. You need to build something, foundation to roof, brick by brick. Guess what? If you’re patient, you’ll still end up living in the penthouse.
Over the next couple of years, you need to clean up old business. What have you avoided, delayed, put off, or need to finish? Focus on that. Get the kids through high school, finish your memoir, complete those home repairs. Whatever you have started, bring it to a close in preparation for the next phase of your life, which will undoubtedly come – sooner than you realize, though slower than you’d like. In short, put one foot after the other, clear your plate, and make room for the future.
Traditional Gemstones: Blue sapphire, Amethyst, Tanzanite, Garnet, Black Onyx
The changes of the past few years will continue, fast and furious, so remain open to possibilities and ready to roll with whatever comes your way. What’s on your long-term agenda? Personal transformation that helps you feel more at home with yourself and which empowers you to influence the world around you.
But this is not a DIY project. This year life sweeps in new people who can speed up your growth by introducing you to new ideas and helping you tap into your dreams. Collaboration, exchange and collective efforts take you farther than going it alone this year, so look for allies and projects that allow for a co-creative approach. In the reflective gaze of another, you can see yourself more clearly. Not everything reflected back will make you happy, but it will give you the information you need to keep working to become the person you yearn to be.
Though you are usually a fine, pragmatic thinker—grounding your reasoning in your experiential wisdom—this year asks you to listen more to the whisper of intuition. Straight logic can only take you so far when the lay of the land is shifting beneath your feet. Stay attuned to what feels right.
If unattached, you may find yourself in the presence of someone you met in the past few years who becomes significant to you this year. Clue: this person should be a champion, someone who supports your dreams and aspirations, and whose vision for his/her own life is in alignment with yours. More importantly, this person will hold you accountable to what you say you want, making it more likely you land where you want to be.
As has been true for the past few years, physical moves are possible. If you need to relocate, know that every move frees up emotional energy that fuels the breakneck growth you’ve been experiencing, which will paradoxically make that leavetaking a homecoming—to your true self.
Traditional Gemstones: Blue Sapphire, Amethyst, Tanzanite, Moss Agate
Over the past few years you’ve gone through a philosophical shift that pointed out the need for more balance and peace in your life. Hardened stances may have softened or been reevaluated, and you may be rethinking your direction. In 2013, work, income, career and self-definition are all works in progress. If you are happy with your current direction, now is the time to reap the rewards of your past effort. If you are less than satisfied, then the next few years will require you to make serious adjustments.
Preparation matters: if you’ve been building the world you want, you are positioned for gain. If you have been taking shortcuts or shirking hard work, you may find the next few years difficult. In short, you’re coming into the harvest; whether the crops are fruitful or barren very much depends your past efforts. If you worked hard, the second half of 2013 could be one of enormous growth, assuming you take advantage of the opportunities coming your way.
If the harvest isn’t bountiful, acknowledge what isn’t working for you and do something about it in 2013. If you feel stuck, the onus is on you. What practical action needs to happen to turn your life and direction around? Discipline, effort and perseverance pay off right now. Inaction and entrenched positions don’t. You are better off if you rise to the challenge and adopt a mature approach—accepting responsibility and plowing through difficulties.
Right now your mind is alive with innovative ideas that can shake up old material and revitalize your life and your community. Write, speak, share your inspirations—let your genius shine. In the process you can liberate yourself and those around you from outworn and limited ways of thinking. Let this be a two-way street: let yourself be shaken awake by the fresh insights of others as well.
Traditional Gemstones: Yellow Sapphire, Topaz, Citrine, Aquamarine, Rock Crystal
The world may look a little topsy-turvy at present, but 2013 may provide opportunities for you to express yourself more wholly and to restructure your values so that they genuinely support the person you wish to be.
If not already in transition, your dreams and goals are due for an overhaul, as are the allies who can help you arrive at your destination. What brings meaning to your life and who around you has the focus and can provide the impetus to foster change? This year, especially the latter half, will provide opportunities for you to ground your ideals in reality. Though you excel at holistic visions and seeing the connective fabric of what could be, you’re well aware that you can struggle with translating your ideals into brass-tack plans. You need people around you who energize you and inspire you to take action rather than spin dreams.
If your finances continue to be a source of instability, you need to examine your relationship to money. Are you paying too high a price for security and certainty? Are you hoping others will swoop in to handle things rather than taking control and creating order for yourself? How might you liberate yourself from old ideas about money that keep you victimized? Use your creativity and invention to turn your thinking on its head; entertain fresh approaches.
Your sense of identity and of value is shifting. Be open, playful, and imaginative in your approach to life and your approach to yourself. Let your sensitivity be a source of strength, the lift that allows you to ride the winds of change. Experiment with who you think you may be. Try on things for size: the thing you said you’d never be or do? Maybe it’s just right for the emerging you.
TO FIND YOUR RISING SIGN (the Ascendant):
You’ll need the following information: date of birth, place of birth, and, most importantly, time of birth. Go to the following webpage and select “Extended Chart Selection” at the bottom right section of the page.
- Select the bar which says “Click here to show the chart,” which is to the right and above the “Options” area of the page.
- You should find yourself at another page. Select “Click here to go directly to data entry page.”
- You’ll be taken to the data entry page. Enter your birth data and click on “Continue.”
- Your natal chart with the positions will appear. At the upper left, look for the information in red text. Your rising sign appears after the word “Ascendant.”
- You can print the chart if you like, too.
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