“Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful”

Titania in Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Night’s Dream (3.1.75)

Horoscopes for 8-18-2026

Sun into Virgo 8/22 9:19 PM
Venus oppose Saturn 8/22 14° Libra/Aries

Year overview, in short: the long form.

Horoscopes for 8-18-2026

astrofish.net/books

The Leo

I was talking to a client, through earbuds, an astrology chart on the screen in front of me. Late afternoon, current events, a number of problems percolating in the back of my mind? Wonderful Leo time ahead? I had an open bottle of water on the desktop, some scrunched up papers beneath it as a makeshift coaster. I reached for a pen, and I knocked the water over. Water dribbled out onto my narrow desktop, towards a spare tablet streaming music, and puddled under a paper notebook I keep for comments, doodles, targets, and to-do items. I didn’t break stride, righted the bottle, and then pulled everything off the desktop. I mopped it up with some old fast-food napkins, then sprayed a little bit of off-brand Pledge furniture wax. My notebook wasn’t ruined, but the few page-tops around the date were dampened, permanently wrinkled from water. In the bigger picture, this isn’t a real calamity, but to a good Leo, this could seem like an insurmountable obstacle to moving forward. It was water. The cap was on loosely. Wasn’t a major mess. Wasn’t sticky Dr. Pepper, tea, or coffee that stains, no, just a little bit of water. A small problem can quickly escalate into a huge mishap, given enough time and energy. Or, given those pesky planets, we can allow ourselves to be clumsy and know that no one will see that wrinkled, water-logged page. Happy Birthday to the very best fixed-fire sign there is.

Virgo

I’ve been at this job for a while. Dig through the archives, and there’s over three decades of horoscopes, and some of those? They are pretty embarrassing. There are gaffs, grammatical errors of the highest caliber, faulty logic, and construction that doesn’t age well. There are also bits and nuggets that are pure gold. Sometimes, in the mistakes? In the errors? Buried alongside the embarrassing errors are pieces of pure heart, super-sexy written words that appeal across time and space. As an archive, I’ve found it particular useful. As the author, I’ve found it both heartening and despairing. But in my past indiscretions and imperfections?

Over there years, I’ve corrected a couple of my past mistakes, times when the tense, verb form, or punctuation wasn’t clear. It’s OK to go back and make sure the verb form and tense agree. My more common misspellings include capitalizing the first two letters, especially in “the” and oddly enough, “Mars.” My simple typographical mistakes, I’ll correct those when, if I happen upon them. However, the structure itself, often flawed, sometimes too syllogistic, rhetoric and logic that only makes sense to me? I leave that. In the imperfections? Dear Virgo? In the imperfections is a kind of majesty.

(8.19.1996, 8.17.2006, 8.18.2016)

Libra

One astrology teacher was adamant about planetary cycles. Strident, vocal, and hemmed in by an immutable set of conditions. Definitions were not fluid or dynamic, but more like laws, and in that one teacher’s mind? Might as well be engraved in stone. Canonized, to be sure. Therein is our Libra conundrum, facing the week, weeks ahead. Etched in stone for ever and ever? Able to bend and flow with current conditions, as times (and trials) test our patience? Or just stamp a wee-Libra foot to the ground, saying, “It was always like this, so it has to be like this!” From my own family, a suitable axiom to follow? “If the facts do not fit the situation, then the facts must be changed.” That’s not really how this works, but you know, if it fits the situation?

Scorpio

I use the term “lottery win” as an example. I don’t think this is a real “lottery win,” for Scorpio, but the other day, it was a local organization’s fund raiser, and I tossed a few of my own, hard-earned dollars into the bucket. It was a raffle or something, and I didn’t see any chance of winning, nor, for that matter, did I care. A few days later, I get a call from one of the event’s organizer, and I won. I mean, you don’t want to know what I won, but I did win. Wasn’t big, just was a fun thing. Products that were marked up to their highest retail price then what was left over was auctioned, and after that, given away to raffle ticket holders. Wasn’t looking for a win, was trying to figure out how to write off the donation as a charitable contribution, but I didn’t have a receipt. “Kramer, you won, when can I get this to you?” Don’t look for it; don’t bet on it; but do gracefully accept the largess of the Scorpio luck.

Sagittarius

My usual walking patterns defy any kind of normal route. I like highways and byways. I was behind an industrial setting, in the alleyway, and happened across a piece of wood, not quite a foot long, and pointed at one end. I thought to myself, “Look: a wooden stake!” I picked it up and slipped it into my cargo pocket. I was thinking about “energy vampires,” a very real thing, and I was also thinking, the way to deal with vampires, according to the literature? Drive a wooden stake through the heart of the vampire. Holy water and a crucifix are also supposed to help, but that’s just from books and then, movies. Wooden stake? I doubt I’ll ever really need a wooden stake to drive through the heart of a vampire, but having a tool at hand, having one right there in my pocket? It serves as a useful touchstone to remind me that it is an option for dealing with certain issues, real, or imagined. I have a wooden stake to drive through the heart of merciless undead predators.

Capricorn

An old Jimmy Buffett story surfaces, ties to the term, “Leitmotif.” The recollection was seeing his live, in concert over a decade or two. One of his big songs, always done in concert? Landshark. The concert introduction included a few bars of music from the theme for the movie Jaws. In its era, both amusing and scary depending on the setting. Why I didn’t use that as a perfect example, drawn from contemporary culture, about the idea of musical recurrent theme, and then how a single thematic element can define a character. Buffett’s song itself is from his early canon, but the elements play well over time. Either way, the idea of recurrent theme that creates an atmosphere, that’s the point. What’s the music of the spheres playing for Capricorn, individually? Sounds like that intro to Jaws, but is it humorous? Like Jimmy Buffett? Or ominous, like the old movie?

Aquarius

Watch out for Sagittarius. It’s that simple. Not complicated. Could be a Sagittarius-flavored sales person, could be a Sagittarius-infused lover, or it could be a Sagittarius-style special friend. You’ve been warned. We make good friends, but anything else? Maybe not right now.

Pisces

I really screwed up. I was digging around for the location of planets, notably Mercury, and I was answering a question about Mercury’s relative position, and I got it wrong. Apparently, I didn’t realize it at first, but seems like I got the year wrong in the book I was looking at, and that meant, I got the data points posted incorrectly. Quick fix, and this comes from using two and three sources for everything, which, in the bigger picture, should prevent this kind of a mishap. The most recent and most correct data are the horoscopes; that hasn’t changed. It was posting about something, and in my hurried state, I didn’t realize I was looking at a different year. Same month, different year, and why are those letters so small in the fineprint? I quickly updated the material, and it was only online for a few minutes, but still. As a mistake, it wasn’t that bad, honest mistake. As a learning tool for me — and Pisces? It was back to triple checking all data points, like with a program, then looking it up in a book, then looking online, where I posted it first. A good week to triple check.

Aries

Old buddy, used to live in Austin, and worked in downtown San Antonio. Most weekdays, the commute was ‘virtual,’ as in, logged in from a home office in Austin. But maybe once a week, depending on the workload, have to commute to downtown, to the office, and show up. I know the reverse of that, now, the San Antonio to Austin commute, for me, two or three times a month. I tend toward fuel-efficient, hybrid cars as that is more emotionally comfortable for me. Costs less, too, and that is part of the equation. Commiserating about the commute, we both agreed that the secret was good audio and my buddy used to listen to books on tape. Historical tomes, the weighty behemoths that none of us would probably really read in their entirety but stuck in traffic? Over the course of my own career, I managed to listen to all of Shakespeare’s plays read aloud, three or four times. But this is about filling up what feels like blank spaces with something that is useful and entertaining, My buddy listened to history in that commute. I listened to Shakespeare. Adjust as needed be to fulfill your own, Aries needs, but fill the time wisely.

Taurus

There is an ingrained, “singleness of purpose,” that goes with Taurus. One way, one path, one set of instructions, and only one answer? In my own life, the wrong answer helps. For Taurus? This is about experimenting. “I’ll try this, see if it works correctly.” It should. It might not. If it does? Then good, proceed to the next step. If it doesn’t? Stop, recalibrate the Taurus machinery, and try another way. In its most simple form, there’s a fork in the pathway leading ahead, and you try the right-hand or left-hand path. Might lead to success; might lead to a dead-end. Either way is a win for Taurus. But if it turns out to be a dead-end? Was this a waste of time and mistake? No, it was just gathering more data about which way doesn’t seem to work. That “singles of purpose” is tested. There are no wrong answers.

Gemini

The other afternoon, I dashed into a store to pick something up. The woman behind the counter had long, dark hair with silver streaks throughout, obvious premature grey. Olive complexion, flashing dark eyes, framed with long lashes, and hints of merriment. While I’ve seen her before, I didn’t realize until after I made my purchase and was walking away, she a was grown-up doppelgänger for an old friend, back in the Austin days, at the time, a chimera for me. Gemini. I have a long history, almost a tradition, of one Gemini after another, breaking hearts, messing with minds. What I ran into was adult-version of a child-like fantasy, from many years distant. For Gemini? That’s what this is about, running into a situation, and like me, it’s not until you walk away do you realize the connection, in my case, points towards a distant past. Echoes? Reminders? Something that jiggles the Gemini brain, that’s what it is about.

Cancer

Mars, in any sign, always brings up a single passage from Shakespeare apocrypha, and the image is an actor on stage, swinging around a stage broadsword, defiantly charging into a battle. The staging of the sword fights, when done well, it’s a brilliant bit of choreography. It’s a dance with clashing steel, sometimes actual sparks flying off the metal as the fencing ensues. But it is staged. Choreographed, rehearsed. What the gentle Moon Children, Cancer, the sign of the crab best watch for? Sallying forth unto a fight, only, is this choreographed? Did you rehearse? Are you prepared? This is just staged for show, not an actual battle?