Poppy Folly YOUR STARS: IT COULD HAPPEN

Repression is good for the soul, and good for everyone else's soul as well, in your view. There's not enough restraint in the world, there's not enough discipline, people are too scared of the bit and the whip these days. Not you though, no, it's the horse that terrifies you. So you keep yourself on a very tight rein, but people are never satisfied are they?

For all the example you so selflessly give, they wish you'd repress more rather than less. For Virgo is a thin-lipped sign of suffocating rules and catastrophic pruning and intrusive mothering; there is no escape from the methodical inspections of your hygiene regime.

The bathroom becomes a place of fear and humiliation as Mommie dearest snaps on rubber gloves to see for herself that we have cleaned ourselves - not just thoroughly, but to her intricate specifications of thoroughness. It's bad when you apply this regime to your children: it's far, far worse when you apply it to yourself. But there's no denying you're intelligent, and sometimes highly intelligent (that's not necessarily a good thing). The mind moves across the face of the water, thinking, always thinking - analysing, counting, measuring, adding that which can't be quantified to that which can't be grasped.

Your rational, negative mind is said to be the essence of science; actually it's the mind of a lab technician. It's easy to criticise, you may say, but obviously it's not. Look at yourself: how intellectual you are, how little you understand. On the good side, you do well in the workplace, and the habits that make you remote from people when young will sustain you as age makes you decrepit and incapable.

Many and varied are the defences you have - the systems, constructs and prophylactics to keep the world at bay. But the underlying rule which will ultimately defeat you is this: that which keeps the world out also keeps you in.