2015: YOUR YEAR OF HOPE

Jonathan Cainer on a year of significant astrological events — and what they mean for YOU

REMEMBER the credit crunch of 2008? An icy wind of recession was soon matched by a gale of revelations about cheat and deceit in what were once bastions of respectable behaviour.

All those stories can be linked to a series of seven antagonistic alignments between Uranus and Pluto.

When such slow-moving heavenly bodies form ‘right angles’ to each other, the impact can last years.

This clash between heavenly archetypes, one of sudden awareness and one of deep, dark hidden power, began in 2008. It hit its first peak in 2012 and has been exploding ever since. The final alignment is due in March 2015.

Astrologers knew this was coming. We’d been predicting it since the early Thirties, which is when the sky last saw a similar set of ‘squares’. Some thought it would bring the collapse of the entire global economic system. Others had even been dreading war.

Yet there has been something markedly different about the impact of this latest celestial sequence. Yes, there’s instability, intolerance and conflict, but international mechanisms of trade have so far proved surprisingly robust.

And the internet has organised us into new collectives, no longer defined by traditional boundaries. More people than ever are declaring a commitment to peace. Pacifists are now activists!

Though each of the seven alignments has caused the great and the good to look less worthy, the rest of us have started to find our hearts and voices. In 2015, nobler ideals may yet prevail.

Indeed, given the imminent influence of the great solar eclipse, due in March, we have every reason to be hopeful.

ARIES ARIES March 21 - April 20 March 21 - April 20

‘ If YOU really want to know truth, at least once in your life you must allow yourself to doubt everything you ever thought you knew.’

This is not, word for word, what french philosopher Rene Descartes said. But then, he spoke in another era, in another language. This, in essence, is what he meant.

He, like you, was born under Aries. He, like you, lived at a turning point in history. His story isn’t fully told. Even now, people discuss him and his ideas.

Your story isn’t fully told, because 2015 is only just about to begin. By the time it is over, you’ll be a different person and the world will watch that change with amazement and respect.

This year, you embark on an adventure that eventually facilitates the fulfilment of a lifelong aspiration. It completes a process you began last year when you began to consider carefully all you ever thought you knew about yourself.

You have already decided that you need not be bound by limitations that you once accepted as inevitable. Now you have a dream, though you’re still not sure if you dare trust it.

Exceptional astrological factors insist that you’re not just entitled to this vision — you were born to fulfil it.

Descartes once said: ‘I think, therefore I am.’ To paraphrase him again: ‘ You intend . . . therefore you will!’

TAURUS

April 21 — May 21

‘ MORALITY i s not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.’

So said the Taurean philosopher Immanuel Kant. In this respect, at least, he spoke for you.

As the turning tides of 2015 bring forth new waves of opportunity and surging breakers of challenge, all depends on you finding the centre of balance on your psychological surfboard.

At the essence of your sign is a quest for stability. To attain that, you must convince yourself you are worthy of happiness. How hard can that be?

It can be hard if recent events have caused you to doubt yourself. Or if you’re sinking under the weight of heavy childhood memories. Or if there are other people in your world who seem to be causing continuous conflict.

If you don’t know what you have done to deserve this, how can you be sure those sins don’t justify further deprivation? But aren’t there others who depend on you to set an example, to find the way ahead, to show stoic acceptance of hardship, yet seize gratefully upon help where it is offered?

If only for others, if not yourself, you’ll naturally embrace 2015’s many chances to become a living embodiment of life’s highest virtues. And you’ll encounter much real and lasting happiness.

GEMINI

May 22 — June 22

‘SINCE we cannot know all that there i s to be known about anything, we ought to know a li ttle about everything.’

So said Blaise Pascal, t he french physicist, mathematician and christian philosopher. He was a Gemini, too.

How can we ignore his wise words as we contemplate the cosmic climate for the New Year?

Mars, towards the middle of 2015, will pass through Gemini just as Saturn opposes it from the point in its orbit that brings it nearest to Earth.

for astronomers it is a reason to take out the telescope. for Geminis, an invitation to hold up a microscope . . . to the mirror! You might never know all that there is to know, but there’s one thing you ought to realise about your own determination to learn a little about everything. It occasionally causes you to close doors that ought to be left open.

The trouble with all those doors, leading off so many corridors in the great maze of the Gemini brain, is that their hinges have a tendency to seize. Even when born blessed with an intellect as quick and copious as yours, ‘out of sight’ can swiftly become ‘out of mind’.

Events, this year, will provoke you until eventually you rediscover an abandoned plan. That may be awkward, but the enormous rewards will yet affect every area of your life.

CANCER

June 23 — July 23

‘THREE o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.’

Jean-Paul Sartre was a great philosopher and a cancerian, too. So, given the celestial circumstances we find you facing this year, I have to ask: ‘Is it three o’clock?’

Do you, perhaps, suspect it is now too late to change something that you are mightily reluctant to accept — and too early to find some way to feel OK about it?

You may feel that way now, but you’ve yet to experience the great Solar Eclipse in March and the way that life feels once the world is out of the shadow of the seven rare squares from Uranus to Pluto.

You’re about to discover that you’re ready to be brave, to take charge of a delicate situation and find the glorious solution to a niggling problem.

You’re due to spend a year protecting people you care about from threats you have no fear of, defending causes that matter to you from threats that have no right to exist — and discovering the full extent of your own amazing hidden power.

It’s not three o’clock; it’s 9am sharp. And you’re just in time for a year in which you shine and thrive, conquer an old fear and yet also find more time and freedom to enjoy delights that have long been denied to you.

LEO

July 24 — August 23

‘IT IS impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.’ So said the philosopher Karl Popper.

These words are true for everyone. But Popper was a leo. And they have a special resonance for you, given all that you seemingly face as you wend your weary way into yet another daunting year.

If I were to tell you that 2015 holds only more frustration, confusion consternation and conflict — on the communication front at least — you’d be inclined to believe me, no questions asked. It would fit with what you have come to expect.

Yet if this is what you have come to expect, there is something wrong. And it is absolutely not what you should expect. You might much more appropriately see yourself as a caterpillar, midway to becoming a butterfly.

It is all too easy for others to look at your current cocooned condition and make judgments about your usefulness or assumptions about your future.

Yet the question is not ‘who did you used to be?’ or even ‘what have you become?’, it is simply: ‘Who, in 2015, will you turn out to be?’

What i mpressive powers will you develop? What amazing freedoms will you find? coming up, sooner than you think in this New Year, are answers. You’ll like them. A lot.

VIRGO

August 24 — September 23

‘ WHAT worries you, masters you.’

So said the philosopher John locke. He was a Virgo, of course, and you know why I have chosen this quote to begin your forecast for 2015, don’t you? What’s been worrying you during most of last year? What’s worrying you right now? Isn’t it much the same thing?

Whatever else you may one day have to concede defeat to, surely it’s not going to be that? can’t you have a little private word with yourself?

Even if you insist on spending 2015 being haunted by some lurking spectre, can’t it be one which, when finally revealed in its full glory, turns out to have been a tad more imaginative?

You may as well invent an exotic enemy with sharp, shiny, luminous teeth in a drooling mouth that smells as if a fridge failed at the fishmongers, because frankly, this ‘ big t hing’ that’s bugging you is as irrelevant as it is ordinary.

Or you could, of course, just decide to make 2015 the year that you finally stop letting stuff get to you. If you do, the planets will surely support you.

And while being free from fear may not, in itself, constitute a happy-everafter, it will be a big step in the right direction. One that takes you a lot further than you expect.