Weekly Horoscope: Weekly Horoscope: August 21 - 27

Mars conjunct Saturn - Intense Expectations

The Mars-Saturn conjunction this week, ruled by Jupiter conjunct the slowing Mercury (which will be retrograde from August 30th until September 22), sets up a perfectionistic, wildly over-optimistic environment. Mars conjunct Saturn squares Neptune, which is closing in on the South Node, suggesting a heightened danger of self-deception and delusion. This mix of ingredients is likely to produce some serious disappointment along with some tragically misguided pursuits of illusory mirages. There is little hope that intuition will serve as a reliable guide through most of this chaotic, roller-coaster of a week. The Sun arrives in Virgo on Monday, which at least lowers the volume and turns our focus towards service oriented goals with a shy, retiring and cautious approach. However, not everyone will interpret the call to service in the same way — potentially producing some vain attempts to step in and magically try to fix things. Charm and quiet patience will do much better at smoothing this week's troubled waters and dialing down the unrealistic expectations. Bold pronouncements of certainty and confidence in our ability to solve other people's problems are likely to be met with disdain and skepticism — if not outright anger. The shift towards a more restrained, sensitive tone begins on Sunday, even before the Sun arrives in Virgo as we begin to look for ways to build effective cooperation and establish productive partnerships. The Moon arrives in earthy Taurus on Monday afternoon, completing the shift to a more restrained tone. However, optimistic expectations build quietly and may very well be unrealistic. The lure of unreliable intuition is the strongest on Tuesday and could take many of us down a road towards extreme disappointment. We are likely to see a split develop on Wednesday between those who prefer a safe, measured approach and those who's optimism cannot be dissuaded. Misunderstandings are likely on Thursday, particularly if attempts are made to solve problems without actually being invited to help. Intuition continues to be misleading for most of the day on Friday, leading to serious bouts of indecisiveness and doubt. However, by Friday evening, the Moon arrives in Cancer and helps to open an intuitive pipeline to more reliable insight. Those insights may only lead to dissolute despair on Saturday, even though the atmosphere is quite pleasant and sociable. Nonetheless, this week has set up a great deal for us to review and reconsider over the coming three weeks of Mercury's retrograde period. We'll find we need to reduce our demands for perfect solutions and bring our optimistic goals more in line with what is truly achievable. As we move through the retrograde period, we'll hopefully find our way back to those productive partnerships and cooperative efforts which seemed so desirable at the beginning of this week.

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