Free Will Astrology: Week of Oct. 7, 2021

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ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries poet Anna Kamieńska said her soul didn't emanate light. It was filled with "bright darkness." I suspect that description may apply to you in the coming weeks. Bright darkness will be one of your primary qualities. And that's a good thing! You may not be a beacon of shiny cheer, but you will illuminate the shadows and secrets. You will bring deeper awareness to hidden agendas and sins of omission. You will see, and help others to see, what has been missing in situations that lack transparency. Congratulations in advance!

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): "There is something truly restorative, finally comforting, in coming to the end of an illusion—a false hope." So declared author Sue Miller, and now I'm sharing it with you, Taurus—just in time for the end of at least one of your illusions. (Could be two, even three.) I hope your misconceptions or misaligned fantasies will serve you well as they decay and dissolve. I trust they will be excellent fertilizer, helping you grow inspired visions that guide your future success. My prediction: You will soon know more about what isn't real, which will boost your ability to evaluate what is real.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Afghan-American novelist Khaled Hosseini writes, "People mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really what guides them is what they're afraid of—what they don't want." Is that true for you, Gemini? The coming weeks will be an excellent time to meditate on that question. And if you find you're motivated to live your life more out of fear than out of love, I urge you to take strenuous action to change that situation! Make sure love is at least 51 percent and fear no more than 49 percent. I believe you can do much better than that, though. Aim for 75 percent love!

CANCER (June 21-July 22): "Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking." Oglala Lakota medicine man Black Elk said that, and now I'm passing it on to you. It's not always the case that dreams are wiser than waking, of course, but I suspect they will be for you in the coming weeks. The adventures you experience while you're sleeping could provide crucial clues to inform your waking-life decisions. They should help you tune into resources and influences that will guide you during the coming months. And now I will make a bold prediction: that your dreams will change your brain chemistry in ways that enable you to see truths that until now have been invisible or unavailable. (PS: I encourage you to also be alert for intriguing insights and fantasies that well up when you're tired or lounging around.)

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): "Don't hope more than you're willing to work," advises author Rita Mae Brown. So let me ask you, Leo: How hard are you willing to work to make your dreams come true, create your ideal life, and become the person you'd love to be? When you answer that question honestly, you'll know exactly how much hope you have earned the right to foster. I'm pleased to inform you that the coming weeks will be a favorable time to upgrade your commitment to the work and therefore deepen your right to hope.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): "To be truly visionary, we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality." This shrewd advice comes from author bell hooks (who doesn't capitalize her name). I think it should be at the heart of your process in the coming days. Why? Because you now have an extraordinary potential to dream up creative innovations that acknowledge your limitations but also transcend those limitations. You have extra power available to harness your fantasies and instigate practical changes.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): "Some people are crazy drunk on rotgut sobriety," wrote aphorist Daniel Liebert. I trust you're not one of them. But if you are, I beg you to change your habits during the next three weeks. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you have a heavenly mandate to seek more than the usual amounts of whimsical ebullience, sweet diversions, uplifting obsessions, and holy amusements. Your health and success in the coming months require you to enjoy a period of concentrated joy and fun now. Be imaginative and innovative in your quest for zest.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Scottish Poet Laureate Jackie Kay, born under the sign of Scorpio, writes, "It used to be that privacy came naturally to everybody and that we understood implicitly what kind of things a person might like to keep private. Now somebody has torn up the rule book on privacy and there's a kind of free fall and free for all and few people naturally know how to guard this precious thing, privacy." The coming weeks will be a good time for you to investigate this subject, Scorpio—to take it more seriously than you have before. In the process, I hope you will identify what's truly important for you to keep confidential and protected, and then initiate the necessary adjustments. (PS: Please feel no guilt or embarrassment about your desire to have secrets!)

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): "All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretense that pain is the proper price of any good thing," wrote feisty author Rebecca West (1892–1983). I am very happy to report that your current torrent of good things will NOT require you to pay the price of pain. On the contrary, I expect that your phase of grace and luck will teach you how to cultivate even more grace and luck; it will inspire you to be generous in ways that bring generosity coming back your way. As articulated by ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, here's the operative principle: "Opportunities multiply as they are seized."

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): "If you don't ask, the answer is always no," declares author Nora Roberts. In that spirit and in accordance with astrological omens, I urge you to be bold and lucid about asking for what you want in the coming weeks. In addition, I encourage you to ask many probing questions so as to ferret out the best ways to get what you want. If you are skilled in carrying out this strategy, you will be a winsome blend of receptivity and aggressiveness, innocent humility and understated confidence. And that will be crucial in your campaign to get exactly what you want.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): "Few persons enjoy real liberty," wrote poet Alfred de Musset. "We are all slaves to ideas or habits." That's the bad news. The good news is that October is Supercharge Your Freedom Month for you Aquarians. I invite you to use all your ingenuity to deepen, augment, and refine your drive for liberation. What could you do to escape the numbness of the routine? How might you diminish the hold of limiting beliefs and inhibiting patterns? What shrunken expectations are impinging on your motivational verve? Life is blessing you with the opportunity to celebrate and cultivate what novelist Tim Tharp calls "the spectacular now." Be a cheerful, magnanimous freedom fighter.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The brilliant Piscean composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) wrote, "I wish I could throw off the thoughts that poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them." What?! That's crazy! If he had been brave enough and willful enough to stop taking pleasure in indulging his toxic thoughts, they might have lost their power to demoralize him. With this in mind, I'm asking you to investigate whether you, like Chopin, ever get a bit of secret excitement from undermining your own joy and success. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to dissolve that bad habit.