l Looking through the crystal ball l

| Thursday, Nov. 20, 2003 || 8:47 a.m. |

Today�s Libra Extended HoroscopeA close relationship is getting even closer. Intimacy is being taken to the next level in a romantic partnership or the bonds of an important friendship are tightening, making you feel extremely fortunate to have this person in your life. Although you may have had your share of problems with them in the past, the future of this partnership looks extremely bright. Librans who are on the verge of proposing can rest assured that your question will be answered with a resounding yes.

My personal Forecast [get you own here] Neptune square Venus: Unrealistic attitudes

9 November 2003 until 23 January 2004: Unrealistic attitudes in personal relationships may cause problems during this time, and you may experience disappointments that will seriously affect your domestic life. You tend to avoid the truth about yourself and about your relationships at this time, and your reluctance to deal with reality could set you up for a very severe fall. This will undermine your self-confidence as well as the relationships. Your sense of reality in relationships and your ability to accept others as they are is being tested by this influence.

If a new potential lover comes along, you may be swept off your feet. You are not excited by the reality of the person but by something within yourself that you are projecting upon the other. When you finally learn the truth about the other person, you may have difficulty accepting it, even though the truth is perfectly all right in itself.

A danger you should watch for especially with this influence is that of being attracted to an unattainable person. You may be setting yourself up for a situation in which you cannot win. The other person appears as an unrealizable dream, someone who is too far above you to be attained. You have to recognize that your real objective here is avoiding an actual encounter. If you play this as a dreamy kind of game, you are unlikely to do anyone, including yourself, much harm. But if you take your "suffering" seriously, the resulting sense of defeat may be quite harmful to you. Also, others may find your martyred role in love very difficult to be around.

Relationships like these are often born of a feeling of inadequacy. By avoiding confrontations with real people, you also avoid a confrontation with yourself, in which you fear that you will be the loser. Yet a real confrontation is just what you need. If you persist in one of these relationships after this period, you will have to confront both yourself and your partner as real individuals. Whatever the outcome, this could be the most valuable part of the relationship.

Saturn trine Venus: It can happen now

24 November 2003 until 23 December 2003: This is an excellent time for you to achieve real stability in your relationships. Your individual personal needs will not conflict with the demands of the relationship, and you can base them on a realistic understanding of who you are and what others need from you. Your vision is clear, and you are not likely to enter a relationship under the spell of romantic illusions. If you are romantically inclined, in fact, your relationships may seem rather practical and dull now. However, you can use this kind of experience. A relationship should be an encounter between yourself and another individual that helps you define and understand yourself more clearly. That can happen now.

Sometime in the last few years many relationships that were inappropriate for your life were weeded out. That process may have been quite painful, but it was necessary at the time. Now, however, the only relationships left are those that have real value in your life. You should be working on them to improve your understanding of yourself and how you relate to others. This is a time for growth relationships that expand your awareness. For this reason, you may have a relationship in which there is a considerable age difference between you and your partner. The one who is "older and wiser" may act as a guide, exposing the other, through the dynamics of the relationship, to a larger and more realistic view of the world.

Also this influence favors most business and professional relationships, because you now are able to negotiate on the basis of your real needs and self-understanding while appreciating the other person's real needs. And since you understand the need for realism in relationships, whatever you decide on at this time will be mutually profitable.

Creativity under this influence is not stimulated or checked, but it does have greater discipline and rigor. You may be attracted to difficult and exacting techniques or involved in particularly painstaking craft forms. Anything that you make now is likely to be practical or useful.

Jupiter square Neptune: False optimism

4 December 2003 until 4 February 2004: At this time you will work very hard to actualize your ideals and find a concrete way to put your spiritual views into practice in the real world. But you can expect the real world to put up some resistance to your ideas. Among other things, you will be challenged to demonstrate that your ideals are not just irrelevant, impractical abstractions. You will also have to demonstrate that your views are based on realism rather than some dream world, which is where you may very well be now. At any rate, this time will give you the opportunity to find out.

You will give readily when called upon now, because this influence signifies a great generosity to people who are less fortunate than yourself. But you may not be very discreet in choosing the people on whom you lavish your charity. Some people can be helped, and it would be worthwhile to spend your time on them. But others are not worth wasting time on, although with this influence you may not be able to tell the difference.

On another level, this influence can signify the kind of false optimism that makes you take foolish risks, especially with limited resources. In any financial dealings be very careful that everything is exactly as represented to you by others. Otherwise you could be taken for a ride.

This time is a test of your grasp of reality and your ability to translate ideals into practice. There is no reason to assume that you will not pass the test, but you do have to be careful.

Religious or spiritual delusions are another danger of this influence. You may be tempted to run after false messiahs or teachers whose ability to dazzle with spiritual phrases exceeds their ability to teach you how to cope with your life.

Pluto square Saturn: The forces at work

18 January 2004 until 1 May 2004: During this time you will have to withstand severe challenges to your way of life as it is set up now. As we grow up, we structure our lives to a certain degree, and we come to depend upon this structure for predictability and order. Sometimes, however, the structure is repressive rather than expressive of our true selves. But if it is safe, we tend to keep it regardless of whether we are happy with it. Nevertheless, at some point in our lives the internal energies of this arrangement of our world must evolve or be totally destroyed. Now is such a time in your life. You must adapt to the forces at work during this period for your own sake! You may feel like the victim of some massive external force beyond your control that is forcing you to move, but actually the dynamics for change are inherent in your own life structure.

During this time some circumstance or situation will create forces that seem to push against you. You may feel very pressured to do something that you don't want to do at all, and you will probably put up tremendous resistance. If your life structure is a valid expression of who you are, your efforts to resist will probably be successful. Otherwise you will be forced to change. In either case this period will be characterized by enormous expenditure of energy. If you handle it successfully, you will be able to strive forward and reach new heights as an individual.

As this influence begins, you may find that certain resources - financial, material or otherwise - are no longer available and that you are forced more and more to fall back upon your own devices. This is part of the test of this time. It is not usually a good time to expand your operations in any field of activity, especially business. Nor is it a good time to spend your energies making everything around you as solid and safe as possible. The best course, which you will be least inclined to take, is to openly and honestly examine all aspects of your life and voluntarily give up whatever you don't really need - those things that make you feel secure but do not aid your personal evolution.

Neptune opposition Mars: Dubious opportunities

27 February 2004 until 1 May 2004: During this time, be careful not to get yourself involved, wittingly or unwittingly, in any kind of bogus enterprise. This influence can mean "deceitful actions," and it may involve you in such acts either as the victim or as the perpetrator of some swindle. To avoid becoming a victim, you should scrutinize with great care all seeming "opportunities" that come up now and stay away altogether from any speculative or high-risk ventures. With regard to the second danger, you should avoid perpetrating any kind of swindle, not only because it is unethical, but because you are not likely to succeed. Schemes do not usually work out as anticipated during this time.

At this time you should also be careful of your health. This influence can produce illnesses such as anemia, which weaken you, making you feel tired all the time. It can also make you subject to infections that are hard to diagnose and cure. Even at best you are not likely to feel as vigorous as usual. Be particularly careful about taking any kind of drug, prescribed or otherwise, under this influence.

You should not plan to launch new activities during this period. Because your energy level is low, you can't put the necessary energy into a new project to make it work out as you want. This influence can produce a crisis of self-confidence, resulting either from personal defeats by others or from a totally unpredictable and irrational spell of depression. Consequently you will find it hard to continue with projects that require great exertion. It would be best to avoid starting any new projects at this time, and you should try to maneuver yourself into a position in which you don't have to do anything critical. But above all, don't take these feelings of defeat too seriously; you are just going through a period of low energy. There is no reason to contemplate giving up, because very soon you will be back to your old level of competence. The only permanent effect of this influence is that you may learn to have a more realistic understanding of your limitations and to be more conservative with your energies.