Two areas of your life reign supreme for you in 2018, Leo; your work and your love life. While always of utmost interest to you, this year they require much more of your attention and energy than usual. The fiery cosmic uplift that has supported you for the past couple of years is giving way to a more practical, grounded approach.
As the year opens, the demands of your job supersede all else. In January, influences of long, medium and short duration converge in your Solar Sixth House of Work, Health and Service, known back in the day as the House of Slaves. You have little choice but to put in the extra effort and time required at your job. Being a Leo means being a leader, so a promotion to supervisory or managerial role is likely if you are not in one already. Hey, better the boss of slaves than to be one! Unfortunately, you may have to wait for the raise. Document your successes from the beginning. This will fuel your request for that pay increase in a few months time.
Your health, too, must be taken quite seriously. Saturn, the planet that brings both obligations and consequences, is one of the objects moving through your 6th house. Re-commit to your health regimen, or finally get one started. Good habits lead directly to measureable improvements in your stats and physical condition. Sloth and gluttony do the opposite and it doesn’t take long. Whichever way you choose, it will all catch up to you with Saturn in the Sixth, which will be in effect until 2020.
The eclipses, those harbingers of change, have been in your sign for over a year now, with one more to go. The eclipses that occur on January 31, February 15, July 27 and August 11 continue to highlight the Self-Other continuum in your chart, showing you imbalances of power or effort in your relationships. Some partnerships blink out: others emerge stronger but fundamentally changed. Events and conditions conspire to reveal new aspects of your union. There’s no going back, no un-seeing what you saw, and one or both of you must adapt to this new reality.
Something else is adding fuel to this fire, or perhaps it’s fire to the fuel. The self-centered planet Mars will spend over six months this year in your Solar Seventh House of Relationship, crashing in and out three times. In this context, Mars represents your partner. So we have a hothead, one who craves freedom and independence, and who seems, shall we say, commitment-phobic. At the minimum, he’s antsy, irritable and restless. At most, he may do something downright shocking things from May through mid-September when celestial conditions appear most stressful. None of this impacts you well, because you had totally different and much more permanent plans. You’re very sensitive to the responses of your subjec…partners, so this instability is very stressful. It makes you mad, too. You’d like to do something really dramatic, but instead this is where you must stick up and care for yourself. Find and hold firm to your principles, integrity and strength of character. Your exercise program too, because you have to burn off steam somewhere, so it may as well be appropriately.
In the middle of all this and just in time for your birthday, Mercury will be retrograde in your sign from July 25 – August 18. No need to cancel travel plans or put your devices in deep freeze though. In fact, the little earworm of Mercury Retrograde is just the nudge you need to look inward and check your own level of situational awareness. Your partner may be off the rails, but what might you have said or done that could have contributed to it? Get clear on who, what, when and where without obsessing over it. You’re simply reviewing and reconsidering. Converse with your partner using “I” sentences instead of “You dog.” Everybody wants to be heard, and really, he feels just as roped in as you do.
None of this lasts forever, and by November, a shift is literally in the stars. Six planets change sign or direction this month! That’s your cosmic cue to take a deep breath, shake it out and let it all go. Looking back, and now that the dust has settled a little bit, you can see how conditions have shifted since January. You worked hard. You got that raise. The relationship thing really needed a refresh, anyway. By year’s end, you’ll be poised to take off in a whole new direction, Leo! Don’t weigh yourself down with the past.
By Linea Van Horn
