VIRGO HOROSCOPE

Ruling Planet Mercury comes out of retrograde on April 25th. This will be a huge relief to any Virgo who’s been dealing with faulty merchandise, botched sales, and misfired emails that wound up in the wrong person’s box. Although a pain-in-the-derriere, Mercury retrogrades remind us not to take anything for granted and now that you’ve done that auto tune-up, home repair, or computer back-up you’ll be more proactive in the future. However, Mercury retrogrades aren’t all bad. They can also bring strokes of fortune too. For instance, a bureaucratic snafu made 3 ½ weeks ago could yield an unexpected refund or credit. Look for it!

It can’t hurt to look. Putting out feelers and exploring options is something you should be doing now as the world is undergoing a sea change. Hunkering down in place and waiting for the storm to pass doesn’t mean you have to put your life on hold. If anything, this is the perfect time to step outside your routine and research things like your market value, the financial health of competitive companies, or maybe even a change in career. Don’t waste this time wiling away the hours – not when you can put it to good use mapping out a new and different future course.

This week proves revelatory when you see someone who’s always practiced supreme self-control – blow it. Maybe they waited too long to exercise their prerogative or suffered from a last minute bout of cold feet; in any case they’ve lost their lead and won’t regain it soon. So what can you take away from this? It doesn’t matter how accomplished, experienced, or clever somebody is – everyone is fallible. Put this revelation to use by easing up on those expectations you burden yourself with and regarding mistakes as stepping-stones rather than setbacks. After all: how will you ever learn from your blunders if you don’t make them?

You may think everything’s signed, sealed, and delivered but retrograde Mercury says not so fast. Did the other party actually sign? Did you seal the deal or just talk about it? And as far as delivered: are you actually holding said object in your hands? Things have a tendency to go right to the brink and then pull back when Mercury turns retrograde in Aries so it would be a good idea to bird-dog all sales, tweak pitches, and spearhead enterprises from April 1st to April 25th. People may accuse you of being too hands-on, but better to be sure than to be left hanging.

If you’re going to change horses in midstream, do it now. Not only are circumstances conducive thanks to the Lunar Eclipse in Libra, but if you don’t act then you’ll have to settle for what you have for the foreseeable future. Your window of opportunity is short-lived. That’s because your Ruling Planet Mercury turns retrograde on April 1st and by the time it resumes direction on April 25th, Saturn will be out of range of its Jupiter sextile. Translation? You won’t have the cosmic support you currently enjoy. Don’t overthink it. Change brings a new lease on life free of old rules and outworn expectations.

Mars begins its tour of duty in the zodiac sign opposite yours on March 22nd. Named after the Roman god of war, Mars can be very confrontational and combative when it’s traveling through this part of your solar horoscope. However, Mars is more passive-aggressive than it is “in your face” when it’s in Pisces, so expect to contend with a sea of sad sighs, forlorn looks, and waves of guilt trips from your nearest and dearest. The best way to counteract the emotional manipulation will be to respond with some inertness of your own. Mars will be in Pisces from March 22nd to April 30th.

Co-workers, clients, and even your boss will be treating you like their personal confessor this week. They’ll be sharing their doubts, confiding misgivings, and divulging some sensitive information. It will be tempting to chime in with some criticisms of your own – especially when they talk about faults that you yourself have accused them of – but don’t. They trust you and really feel like they can open up to you, and that’s the highest compliment that anyone can hope to be paid. Know that they are working things out for themselves and will likely come to the conclusions you want them to come to on their own.

You might want to wait a few days before making up your mind. Yes, things look dire, and you’re under pressure to cut your losses and get out while you can, but a planet changing zodiac signs often brings a dramatic change in disposition, and you don’t want to do something you’ll regret. Ruling Planet Mercury has been traveling through a bumpy patch of sky, so it makes sense that your nerves are fried; however, Mercury’s entrance into Aires on the 9th should bring the clear and confident thinking that’s been missing. Moreover, it looks like it will be arriving with an opportunity in tow.

The reason you can’t placate a demanding boss or appease a dissatisfied partner is that this person doesn’t want to be pleased. And it’s not because they have high standards or that you behaved abominably. It’s because they enjoy withholding the approval you seek. It’s the telltale signature of a Sun/Saturn conjunction (February 28th). The best thing to do is to stop trying. That will feel tremendously awkward because it’s Virgo’s nature to accommodate, but once you stop focusing attention on this person, they’ll come looking to see why you stopped showing up. That’s when you can start a constructive conversation about making things right.

You may want to place sticky notes as reminders around the house, leave voice memos to yourself, or come up with your own version of Ariadne’s thread while Ruling Planet Mercury is in Pisces. Mercury is in both detriment and fall in the zodiac sign of the fish, which means that you may feel at times like Ingrid Bergman in search of her heirloom brooch in the movie Gaslight. So are you being deliberately misled, or is this all a trick of the mind? It’s hard to tell, but that won’t always be the case – especially when the mental fog lifts on March 9th.