Horoscopes

Happy Birthday, Aries!

By Deborah Alys Carter

Happy Birthday, Aries!

March 21–April 20

Your month: Wow! You explode into your birthday month like a shot from a cannon. You want, no, need to express yourself, and you should expect lots of experiences forcing you to express yourself differently. You’re powerful this month, so attack any and all enemies head-on. Have faith in your own powerful ability to meet tricky circumstances in your own brilliant way. Walk away from your past and don’t look back, not even at the immediate past. This is your moment. Storm the hill and take control of your career. Like all good generals, you’ve learned from your mistakes.

April is a feel-good month full of fun and good times, opportunities, happiness and plenty of friends. But be wary of overreacting to things. Your key to successfully handling this month’s energy is to respect other people’s viewpoints and compromise.

Taurus (April 21 – May 21): April plops you firmly into roles in which you can pioneer, so take your position as visionary and first responder seriously. You have prophetic dreams, clairvoyant visions, strong hunches and sometimes just an absolute certainty of some- thing beyond the shadow of a doubt. This month, you need to stay out of crowds unless you are leading them; you won’t be able to hear yourself think. and people will follow you this month. So protect your own special energy from distractions and energy drains, and try to believe in yourself without being foolhardy.

Gemini (May 22 – June 21): Groups, clubs and fans, friends, goals and plans: That’s April for you, with a heavy emphasis on fans and plans. Part of the reason you have so many fans this month is that you are so darned cute. And you’re fun. And popular. This popularity puts you in the path of mind-expanding adventures and innovative surprises. And even though you seem a little, well, arrogant, that appeals to your adoring multitude, so it just might be in your best interests to do a little disrupting. let your rebellious nature lead the way.

Cancer (June 22 – July 22): Communicate and educate: That’s your real job in April. Planetary alignments force your career forward with the speed and power of a steam engine, and once you climb on, that train’s not stopping for anyone or anything. Even if you try to take a backseat, you’re thrown out front anyway. Lucky breaks and fortuitous encounters are fuel to keep you barreling full speed ahead down your career track. You have friends who appreciate your feisty side, but try not to take advantage of their good nature and impose your irresistible will on them. Have a heart, learn the art of compromise and avoid conflicts, OK?

Leo (July 23 – Aug. 22): Pack your portmanteau with clothes, get a new passport photo taken and make a phone call to your good buddy in London or Lisbon or Sydney. Let them know you’re coming to stay for the entire month of April. And don’t worry, you’re so charming and interesting, they’ll welcome you with open arms no matter how long you stay. If you’re a writer, this is a perfect, magical time to get your work published, or written, if you’ve procrastinated until now. Go get your degree or connect to some foreign or exotic group, or all of the above. Get the picture?

Virgo (Aug. 23 – Sept. 23): In April, you aren’t interested in anything shallow, casual or trivial. Your head is full of intense issues like death, sex, taxes, insurance and all manner of psychic, esoteric and metaphysical things. It’s no wonder your brain doesn’t have much room in it for light or small things. Oddly enough, it’s a great month for financing or refinancing houses, and here, you’ve got wisdom, good timing and enough common sense (and intuition) to make your master plan work. This stuff can wear out even the cleverest brain, so we recommend meditation, prayer and anything else that stills your mind.

Libra (Sept. 24 – Oct. 23): You may not be aware of this, but you now inspire a growing circle of friends. They’re in- spired by your business partnerships, your acumen, your ability to stay task-focused and your ability to attract the perfect thing at the perfect moment. What they don’t see is the high bar you set for your business and even your romantic partners. a basic requirement for you from any kind of partner is the freedom to follow whatever interests you at the moment while still staying connected. it creates a little drama, but it’s better than boredom.

Scorpio (Oct. 24 – Nov. 22): You’ve always been single- minded about work. You want your own way and are perfectly willing to force your opinion if that’s what it takes. You don’t mean to bully. It’s just that you have a sharp mind and can make sharp decisions in the blink of an eye, so expressing yourself forcefully is second nature. This month especially, you must execute your own plans, and heaven help the wretch foolhardy enough to stand in your way. But you’ll need minions. There is just no way you can do everything on your dry erase board yourself. That’s why this month, you really need to be nice.

Sagittarius (Nov. 23 – Dec. 21): This month, it’s cosmically important for you to focus on pleasure, but pleasure as the result of creativity. Creating is giving of yourself and making something—art, culture, crafts, publicity, music, theater, children, parties, love—so use your time wisely. Everything about April is electric and eccentric, so we aren’t talking about mundane, garden-variety pleasure and creativity, but eccentric pleasure and eccentric creativity within an eccentric lifestyle, at least for a month. The main thing to keep in mind is this: No matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to fly under the radar.

Capricorn (Dec. 22 – Jan. 20): You’re going to have a very busy, unusual and unconventional home life this month. Maybe you experience a sudden change in your home environment. Maybe you fall in love with an unusual home and try to buy it. Maybe you fall in love with an unusual someone and move them in. Relatives could pop in and out. You may start having meetings in your home, or maybe you just want to get independent of your family, create your own identity. No matter how you express your lively and unusual thoughts, try not to demand too much and force ideas on your family.

Aquarius (Jan. 21 – Feb. 19): For you, romance and reliability go hand in hand. You approach relationships slowly and steadily, looking for some- one solid and secure, someone who can help make the home be harmonious, at least this month. You need to make your home beautiful, but more importantly, you need communication. Lots of communication. In fact, this month, you are a master of communication. You communicate with friends, with neighbors and siblings, with partners. You want to know anything and everything, and can’t bear it if someone you know knows something you don’t. And this is the month for a road trip. What better way to acquire information?

Pisces (Feb. 20 – March 20): In April, your focus is on acquiring what you value. It can be money, but you also value what you own, and that’s not always a tangible thing. You own cars, boats, clothes and stocks, true, but you also own your feelings and emotions, or should. Your abilities, needs and wants drive your actions to acquire, and the grown-up steps you take with your career to get you to the place where you can acquire stuff, and the hard work you do to get there is what this month is about, so that probably means no downtime until May.