Horoscope

With Venus now in Cancer, emotional well-being follows the same rules as the swimming pool. There’s safety in matching abilities with the depths in which they’ll be used. While learning, stay in the shallows or near the wall. Practice until strongly skilled. After that, it’s the same moves whether the water overhead is one inch or one mile.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Life is pretty simple when you think of it in simple terms, which you very much will do today. You will do what you need to do to attract what you most desire.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The ones who are lying around and having a good ol’ time are either doing it very right or very wrong, and you’ll likely have a strong opinion about that today.

GEMINI (May 21-June 21): The way people treat one another when they are in public versus in private will be two different things. The discrepancy is one to ponder or, if applicable, remedy.

CANCER (June 22-July 22): You’ll find yourself mentally weaving an alternate version of things. Not all fantasy is escape. Sometimes it’s a creative way of understanding reality.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The guitarist can’t play with silk gloves on. Friction is what vibrates those strings. Don’t be afraid to dig into life with your nails. This day is waiting for you to give it a rhythm and sound.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Study past successes and failures for the keys to victory. To skip the research phase of a project is to waste time, as there is no use in repeating what didn’t work before.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23): You were not born with a serene air of confidence, rather the aura is well-earned through the extensive planning and preparation you do long before the moment of truth is upon you.

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21): When you are doing it your way, unselfconsciously and unapologetically yourself, you have no competition. No one can be you better than you can be you.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): There will be a certain amount of peacocking involved in the discourse of the day, pretty feathers fanned out to impress, enlarging the perception of the bird without upsizing the bird itself.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): People become associated with that of which they speak. You are drawn to intriguing facts, stories of warmth and kindness and descriptions of beauty. No wonder people feel elevated around you.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You’ll fiercely agree with what is happening around you one minute. Then, in the next minute, fiercely disagree, And there is no predicting what will bring the turnaround.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): You’ll absorb some enthusiasm as you find yourself with bright, curious and passionate people. What you may not realize is how much you are rubbing off on them, too, in a very positive way.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY (Aug. 9): Bounty will accrue in the way of friendships, love and exciting twists of your personal plot. A change that you’ve long dreamed about transforms a formerly ailing situation. Note that your personal luck sometimes rides against an unlucky backdrop of what’s going on in the world. Find a tactful way to celebrate regardless. Aries and Aquarius adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 7, 10, 3, 45 and 46.

FORECAST FOR THE

WEEK AHEAD: Home can mean so many things. It can refer to the shelter where you sleep, the town where your family resides or the wheelhouse where you feel most comfortable. Home can be something else, too, less of a structure and more of a feeling of being rooted, regardless of where you may find yourself in the wide world. As the Venus transit gets underway in Cancer, we settle into key comforts in the domestic realm, and also in our psychic abode. Many will be inspired to make changes or invest in what seems necessary to create a strong and more lovely sense of home.

Though some like the rush that comes with people popping up and yelling “surprise,” a surprise birthday party is not, in and of itself, all that unpredictable a happening. Such is the case with many so-called surprises as Uranus rides direct. Recently, it has seemed that, with the right mindset, almost anything is potentially predictable. We choose to ignore prudence and then get surprised by what happens even when it’s the most logical outcome. A reversal of Uranus comes at the end of the week, pausing the unsurprising surprises for some next-level thrills.