During Capricorn, we’re all supposed to be zipped up and buzzed to fight business and political games. And God knows with Pluto at its South node, the world is in a pretty dark place, and seems to be getting darker.

With the pileup of planets in Pisces, some days you have to talk yourself into getting out of bed and into the shower.

You don’t give a damn if the old dinosaurs out there eat each other up. You need a break. You need to chill, even just to sit by the water and veg out.

Ambition alone may not be enough to get you going. Even a higher purpose may not work.

In that case, here’s some practical advice from the ultimate Pisces of all time, actress Elizabeth Taylor. “Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick, and pull yourself together.”

FIRE SIGNS

SAGITTARIUS / SAGITTARIUS RISING
Saturn moving into your sign makes it difficult to appear authentic when you run around screaming, “Life is wonderful and I’m so happy!”

Let’s face it: you’re getting older. That’s not fun. Instead of denying any negative thought that dares to creep into your positive mind, you just lower the level of your manic jubilance, and tell everyone that you are beginning to think more deeply and seriously about your place in the world.

You are genuinely all about liberation—enjoy that. It can help make life truly wonderful.

The planet Uranus in your fifth house is great for enhancing your fearlessness and self-expression, and your attitude toward love is exhilarating, although at times bordering on the hysterical.

P.S. If you’re really interested in participating in society’s growth, you’ve got to get out of bed in the first place.

LEO / LEO RISING
Jupiter’s third house transit helps keep you in motion, and keeps you connecting with all kinds of people. That’s good news, mainly because you don’t want to get stuck in a dreary office. By the same token, if you want a deeper and more fulfilling experience, in work or love, you gotta hang in there. Royal blood or not, you want to do a good job.

Adapt a blue-collar attitude: Work enough to stay healthy, and stay healthy enough to work.

If possible, reduce a little time devoted to naughty vices (not all, of course), and quit worrying about how sexy you are or aren’t. Your mind is expanding now, and you’re able to see life with greater perspective.

Isn’t it amazing how much more you learn once you’re out of school?

Vincent van Gogh, notable Aries. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

ARIES / ARIES RISING
High up on the food chain or not, face it. Everybody works for somebody. With Aries, it’s about autonomy vs. oppression.

Such a conflict creates stormy relationships between the elite bosses and the enslaved employees.

Systems are cracking, and everybody knows it. Wages, ageism, and sexism are all reasons to get younger, cheaper people. Even if you don’t have a job, you’re still an Aries, and full of life. But the planet Uranus in your sign makes you more rebellious than ever and determined not to get mowed down. Your life force is strong. Nobody’s going to push you around. Nobody! And yet you’re still hooked into the system, even if it’s just for medical coverage.

Fight the people upstairs, and then obey them. Obey them, then fight them again.

EARTH SIGNS

VIRGO / VIRGO RISING
Don’t let the transit of Uranus in your eighth house freak you out with notions that lightning will strike you tomorrow or you’re overwhelmed with expenses you didn’t know you’d have. Jupiter in your second house will balance your books and keep prosperity flowing. Your creative performance can be inspiring, provided you pull it off in an unusually humorous way, including your attitude toward current events.

Anyway, it’s not really all about politics or pessimism. All Virgos have personal or emotional struggles that involve love and relationships. When it comes right down to it, any feelings of loneliness and rejection erode your perspective. So try to keep away from infantile mental cases and understand what it means to love without attachment.

Deep down, although family still really matters to you, you’re still better off keeping your distance. It’s difficult to balance good boundaries with your own abandonment anxiety.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, famous Capricorn. Courtesy of YouTube.

CAPRICORN / CAPRICORN RISING
You’re a major player in this current battle. In fact, you’re the star.  You’ve got to take some responsibility for the whole mess. No sweat, though. You’re great at dealing with war, whether it’s with the family or the bank.

Mostly it’s what’s going on deep inside of you. So you’ve gotta fight to reignite your shining life force and continue to lead the pack with wisdom and dignity to enjoy life.

My advice is to stay out of dark places. A lot of people who respect you are looking out for your well-being, and helping to keep the family from pulling apart at the same time. Just recognize that because of your need to control everything, you’re not a picnic to deal with right now.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #581, 2016. Copyright Cindy Sherman. Courtesy the artist, Sprüth Magers and Metro Pictures, New York.

**CONFIDENTIAL TO CINDY SHERMAN
Like many Capricorns, you probably had a lousy time in high school. That’s because you felt like you were 60 when you were 15.

Capricorn is a winter flower, so for Capricorn, 50 years old is the new 28, and so much has happened to you since 2008 when Pluto entered your sign. It hasn’t been all fun and games, though. You’ve got so much going on internally. With your Sun exactly conjunct the Pluto of the United States, your work is mirroring our social transformation perfectly. And it hasn’t even culminated yet.

TAURUS / TAURUS RISING
You’re happiest applying practical solutions to practical problems. Mind games make you dizzy.

The world is such a mess right now that you can’t fix everything with a plate of spaghetti and sauce. There are some life-and-death issues rising from Saturn’s passage through the eighth house—issues that involve high risk to reward behavior.

With Uranus in your 12th house, constant last-minute reversals demand quicker thinking than you’re normally comfortable with. But even if problems seem to be compounded by impossible unknowns, you’re unshakable. Just find the right helpers, and remember to rely on your endurance, and never forget you can last through everything. Understand that not everything that you’ve been taught to believe is true, and you’ve got a lot more to learn than you’ve ever thought. It’s a little fun mind twister for you.

AIR SIGNS

AQUARIUS / AQUARIUS RISING
Although you have remained angelically dedicated to your chosen path, there are times when you feel like a complete idiot for doing so. Especially when you have felt like chucking the whole thing and taking the next flight out, it’s scary to realize that there’s nowhere to run.

You do, however, still maintain your mobility, and are certainly looking forward to liberation from a byzantine web of loyalties and altruistic dreams that hook you into the system in the first place. Luckily Jupiter provides the options, or at least partial options, to find allies who possess alternatives to any crisis.

Just how much can higher consciousness and staunch beliefs in justice go in counteracting any negative forces? The big question is that we know you would like friendliness peace and goodwill, but when will you be free enough to pursue those ideals?

Swiss sculptor and Libra Alberto Giacometti (1901 – 1966). Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images.

LIBRA / LIBRA RISING
What’s your role right now? Try but don’t drive yourself crazy mending the fences of the family. After long periods of time, separateness may be godliness—who knows. To the best of your ability you may have to accept certain truths about early life that are hard to face. Happy memories of childhood do help to heal scars that naturally reopen when the planet Pluto moves from North to South in the heavens.

Revelations that are shocking because issues have been hidden for years eventually leak out to destroy the myths of what a normal family is supposed to be. Sudden reversals can sometimes yield happy surprises.

Especially in relationships. People don’t just drop out of your life—sometimes they drop in.  Everything that happens makes us wiser and more able to face a future. You can sure prove that to be true right now.

GEMINI / GEMINI RISING
What a whopper of a Pluto transit. You’re like a surfer on a surfboard trying to outrace a 300-meter wave. You have amazingly stayed stable ahead of the crash, and despite the heart palpitating odds, you defied disaster.

It’s not as much fun as people think you’re having. Living on the cusp of danger does have its upsides, though. Luckily, your choices and behavior contribute to it. You size up situations and circumstances and you play them to your advantage. Survival is a rush, but one has to wonder how many close calls you can stomach.

Exciting as all this may be, just as the surfer must stay perfectly balanced against the onslaught of an approaching tsunami, Geminis must stay on top of the financial prospect of debt to turn potentially disastrous liabilities into assets.

At the moment, your life is a Wagnerian opera.

WATER SIGNS

PISCES / PISCES RISING
Although many of us these days are distracted by what’s going on in the world, it’s harder for a Pisces to just stick to the program without a doubt. Granted, you are trying to stay buttoned up and businesslike, despite the elevated position of Saturn in your horoscope.

Truth is, hanging out with stiff, narrow-minded control freaks takes all the compassion you can muster. Remember that as sweet and spiritually correct as you try to be, you’re also a revolutionary whose primary goal is to undermine any system you’ve been invited into.

And now especially with Mars in January crossing the South node Neptune and Chiron in your sign, your deviance is also your genius.

Whether the people upstairs like it or not, how long can you play their game? How long can you pretend to be comfortable with political games? How long can you wait for them to realize what an asset you are? Keep manipulating those finances.

Las Dos Fridas (The Two Fridas) by Frida Kahlo. Courtesy of ALEJANDRO ACOSTA/AFP/Getty Images.

CANCER / CANCER RISING
When fate comes strolling along and clobbers you over the head with a relationship you are never going to get rid of, eventually you have to accept it. With Pluto in your seventh house, you have definitely met your teacher. It does not have to be romance, although it usually starts that way. Alive or dead, you have forged an unbreakable bond with that other person, whether they’re in the bed beside you, 5,000 miles away, or in a distant, distant galaxy. So as bonded as you are, you cannot get too close.

The connection remains, however. That’s the deal with Pluto in the seventh house. Reputations and careers can be heart-stoppingly exciting, ecstatic, and tragic. That’s what life’s all about. But they depend upon the whims of the fickle mob.

At the end of a wearying day, deeper, more private, and lasting intimacies persist.

SCORPIO / SCORPIO RISING
When you take a gander at all the madness, it’s hard to believe in miracles, guardian angels, or any of the hippie dippy platitudes we’ve all been hearing about since the ’60s. With Jupiter in your 12th house, however, you actually are being guided by a benevolent force. Just remain generous and compassionate. That means no petty Scorpio vengeance nonsense now.

Relationships with siblings can be tough, and to keep them from degenerating, be honest as well as kind. In your work life, don’t look for security now. There is none.

Apply creative imagination and ingenuity. Believe in risk and spontaneity. Add your sense of humanity to your marketing, and you’ll relieve all financial anxiety. You want to be healthy? Get off the grid.

Leave a little room for some obsessive, romantic adolescent behavior, though.