Welcome to the Capricorn season to end all Capricorn seasons. With a host of planets moving through Capricorn and some major astrological alignments in the same sign, this month is going to be like a chocolate-chip, triple chocolate brownie drenched in chocolate sauce — only replace “chocolate” with “Capricorn.” In brief, if Capricorn is a sign you resonate with, you’ll find this month full of exciting and motivating opportunities — but if you find it a harder energy, take this time to stock up on your self-care supplies and figure out how much energy you have to work on all the things Capricorn season will inevitably bring up. Because this sign is about putting in the effort — it’s the sign that helps us commit to what we care about. Capricorn helps us understand what matters, and what we need to do about it. It’s not a feel-good, frivolous energy, but it is a deeply nourishing energy for anyone who wants to build stable relationships and act from a place of deep integrity.
The first major shift happens as Jupiter, our cosmic gay cheerleader, moves into Capricorn on the 2nd. Less optimistic and bubbly in Capricorn, Jupiter is capable of helping us feel deep satisfaction in showing up for the work we need to do. Venus moves into Capricorn the next day, and as we move into the end of the month we approach an eclipse on the 26th (or 25th, depending on your time zone) and we’re nearing the biggest astrological news of the century next month, when Saturn (planet of putting in the work) and Pluto (planet of death and rebirth) meet up in Capricorn. These are all fairly heavy energies, and the best way to work with them is to be willing to work, period. But you get to choose what really matters to you. Party queers, perfect your eyebrow drawing. Pleasure activists, make deeper commitments to including massages and orgies in your schedule. Whatever you are being called to commit to, you’ll be facing the hard truths about how we don’t always prioritize what we really value. As much as possible, this month is asking you to shift that.
Especially in our relationships, responsibility is the name of the game right now. This means being aware of how we can cause harm, apologizing and making amends. This means paying attention and listening when people tells us we’ve hurt them. This means no longer blaming our partners or our parents for our own bad behavior. We can be hurt, we can be survivors, we can be systematically oppressed, and we still have to be responsible to others. We can be privileged, we can be ignorant, we can be appalled to learn we’ve caused harm, and we still have to be responsible to others. No one gets a free pass, especially not right now. While this may sound harsh, embracing this kind of Capricornian responsibility is what creates trust. In a time when call out and cancel culture are treating people as disposable, Capricorn energy helps us treat each other as fully human. Because when we’re able to name that we’ve messed up and commit to doing better, we build a world where we understand our impact on each other, where we are willing to try again, and where real intimacy can actually happen.
On that note, your astrological assignments are below, and if you want some extra support I’m available for readings all month. Be extra kind to yourselves around family and holidays this month, and if you’re in the mood for giving astrological gifts, take 40% off any Astrogram using the coupon code HOLIGRAM. And as always, for these relational horoscopes you’ll get best results reading your Moon and Venus signs first. Good luck out there this month, and I’m already proud of each and every one of you who’s read this far and is about to read farther.
Aries
When you’re trying to balance what you want with what people want from you, the struggle is real. You may be tempted to follow your desires as they arise, chasing one exciting adventure after another, and maybe you sometimes do live this way—but there’s another piece of you that recognizes relationships often ask you to slow down, to consider other people’s needs, and to do what you said you would do. How do you decide, when you’re weighing your own desires against your responsibility to someone else? There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, but sitting down to think about how you’d like to make these decisions is crucial growth work. This month is asking you to mature in specific ways—the answer isn’t to give up joy, passion, and spontaneity to put other people’s needs first, and the answer isn’t to ghost on people whenever you see something shinier somewhere else. Rather, what you’re learning right now is how to commit to what you actually want to prioritize, and how to make commitments that are flexible enough to leave room for new ideas and paths.
Make a commitment: Find the balance between self and other. Find ways of living up to your best self, as a free spirit and a responsible friend.
Uproot: Shame about what your real priorities are. You get to focus on the relationships that matter to you—you don’t owe everyone your time.
Taurus
Change is in the air for you, and the good news is you’ll have plenty of time to see it coming, game out your possible responses, and adjust to the new reality gradually. In fact, where you’re headed next is entirely your own choice—you may be aware, though, that something in you has been changing while you weren’t paying attention, and you may be surprised by where your choices are taking you. This is a month about dreaming big dreams and then thinking carefully about how things will shift if you pursue them. Who’s on your team in that possible future? Whose path is aligning with yours, and who might you grow farther away from? Don’t let love trap you—you can’t freeze yourself in amber to stay the same for the people who love you, and they shouldn’t expect you to. Your life is expanding, which is a good thing! Deal with your fears about change by being gentle, moving slowly, and believing the best is yet to come.
Make a commitment: This is a time to expand and reach out, not stay in the familiar and comfortable. Set realistic goals about where you’re headed and with whom.
Uproot: Fear of the future. You get to embrace your adventurous spirit, and proceed at a pace that works for you.
Gemini
Audre Lorde writes beautifully about erotics as a way of coming back to life, about eros as how we access the richness and lusciousness of our lives. This understanding of eroticism includes but isn’t limited to sex—our sexual fantasies and experiences are just one way of honoring erotic energy. This month, you are on a path of maturing into your own erotic nature. This might mean interrogating how desire is showing up for you—are you using crushes as an excuse to act irresponsibly? Are you following passion in ways that leave others hurt or confused? Or, are you repressing your passions in a way that’s limiting your joy in being alive? If you look back at your life from an old age, what will you regret doing—or not doing? This is a month for taking seriously all the wild ways your heart and body express themselves, and finding the right way for right now.
Make a commitment: Commit to being someone who accesses desire, passion, and joy with integrity.
Uproot: Behaviors that hurt, confuse, or deceive. Passion without compassion. Self-denial as self-punishment. Fear of pleasure.
Cancer
This is a powerful time for you—as all the planets move through Capricorn, your opposing sign, you’re feeling a powerful pull toward growth that might not always feel comfortable. Particularly, this is a time that helps you grow up in all your partnerships, romantic or otherwise. When you hold your own needs and your partner’s needs as equal, without feeling they owe you more or you owe them more, you’re doing the revolutionary work of rewriting power dynamics that have kept you hurt and off-balance for years. This might mean now is a time to take up more space and to ask for more—as long as you understand that if your partner can’t meet your needs, someone else will. Say goodbye to hostage tactics in love, where you or your partner demands the other do what they want or else…Say goodbye to sentences that begin, “If you really loved me…” or “Why can’t you feel…” Some of the most powerful astrology this month is happening for you, and it’s all about learning to see clearly what’s happening in your relationships—without distortion, without blame, without shame. Be kind to yourself as you do this work. It will dramatically transform your relationships, but at first it might just look messy. Trust that when you claim your own needs and respect your partners’ needs, you are on the way to healing all kinds of relationship wounds.
Make a commitment: Take responsibility for balancing power dynamics in relationships.
Uproot: Fear of asserting yourself and claiming your needs. Demands that others prioritize your needs over their own.
Leo
Let’s talk about what it means to be healthy, dear Leo. You have a real working knowledge of what feels good, and what feels bad, but health in relationships isn’t just about getting that kick of endorphins from having someone adore you—or about avoiding the parallel drop in feel-good neurotransmitters when you’re rejected. On a certain level, Leo planets are always tracking these two poles—do you notice me or ignore me? Do you adore me or hate me? Am I going to feel fulfilled or empty? This month, your relational vocabulary is expanding. What you’re looking for is that part of you that can help you feel calm, happy, and loved even when you’re not getting approval or attention in that moment. Rest assured, you deserve attention and approval and you get to ask for it when you want it! But there are times when the people who love you will be tired, sick, grumpy, or otherwise unavailable. You are learning, this month, how to allow some slack into your relationships, and how to become your own cheerleader when it’s not coming from the people you rely on. Trust that you are loved. Remember that love can be steady and unwavering even if its expressions may be less vocal. Make friends with comfortable silences.
Make a commitment: Learn to uplift and adore yourself when the people in your life can’t. Learn how to regulate feelings of lack or abandonment, trusting you are loved.
Uproot: Anxieties about needing to be perfect in order to get approval. Fear that if you lose someone’s attention they’ll lose interest in you.
Virgo
You have a hard lesson this month, my studious and hard-working Virgo friend. You often approach relationships as a set of problems to solve, and you’re well suited to researching, implementing, and refining your problem-solving strategies. One of the sweetest things you offer to a partner or lover is this humble, nuanced ability to improve their lives and improve your relationship steadily over time. This month, though, your homework isn’t about working harder, but about taking seriously your need to goof off. It may feel safer to be the nerdy kid staying inside helping out the librarian during recess, but right now you need to go outside and play. Ask yourself what you’ve been wanting to make or do that might seem self-indulgent. Paint a self-portrait? Bake a cake? Go roller-skating? Have a slutty photo session with yourself and a mirror? If you’re in a partnership that’s been low on romance lately, now is the time to demand a date night. Only you can prevent lesbian bed death, and other ridiculous gay/Virgo stereotypes! So take off your glasses (or put some on) to reveal your hottest queer self—and bust some moves in whatever endearingly awkward or highly proficient way you know how.
Make a commitment: Be accountable to your creative vision. Be accountable to joy, laughter, dancing, and romance.
Uproot: Workaholism that prevents you from playing. Fear that you need to know the steps before you try the dance.
Libra
Your comfort zone is in that sweet spot where you’re getting to know someone and each of you is still putting in the effort to listen carefully, to share themselves thoughtfully. An eternal thoughtful conversation is one of your fantasies about love. And you get to seek that out from friends and lovers, but this month is also asking you to deepen into some parts of yourself that are less comfortable. They’re the parts of yourself that you share with family, with your closest friends, but that you would never show on a first date. They go back to your childhood, to things that scared you and soothed you when you were small. They help you understand what it means to feel safe, now. They’re integral to all your intimacies, and you may sometimes wish that they weren’t. Like it or not, in this month that’s all about growing up, you’re lesson is to let yourself be more of a little kid. Get serious about letting yourself feel your feelings, without shame, and ideally with support. Get serious about choosing relationships where it’s safe to relax and show your less thoughtful side from time to time. Get serious about all the ways you can make it safe to feel sad, scared, or angry. You get to be messy, and you get to communicate about it in ways that will keep your relationships sweet and calm.
Make a commitment: Choose your family. Claim your home. Find the safety that will let you be vulnerable.
Uproot: Patterns of defensive aloofness. Avoiding feelings.
Scorpio
However else you may feel about love, if you have any planets in Scorpio there’s a part of you that looks at all relationships as little ticking time bombs. Scorpio planets are talented in working with crisis, with trauma, with healing pain—and if you spend enough time in the emotional ER you start seeing everyday life as full of accidents waiting to happen. Your growth challenge this month is to hold on to the reality of your experience without believing you can predict the future. There is more to people than you expect, and your fears can block you from seeing what’s really true. Take the risk of saying what’s on your mind as way of opening a conversation, not a way of shutting it down. For example, “I know you’re going to leave me” may feel like a true statement, but will you learn anything more by saying it? What if instead you said, “I’ve been rejected before in ways that make it hard to trust. When you do [x] it brings up those fears. Can we talk about what’s really happening when you do [x]?” Trust that you can survive the worst of what people throw at you, and commit yourself right now to understanding what else they can offer you.
Make a commitment: Speak your truth. Share your love.
Uproot: Paranoia. Overthinking it. Getting stuck in your head.
Sagittarius
It’s easy to leave and start over. It’s easy to be a firecracker, rocketing off toward the horizon whenever things get too hot. A piece of you will always want to do this, and you’ll benefit from keeping this skill in your back pocket. You do get to leave a bad situation. You do get to renew yourself, again and again, by traveling across the world or just across town. You need to keep shaking up your perspective to understand yourself. But sometimes, leaving is a way of giving up on what you’re trying to build. If you keep planting gardens and then moving before you can harvest them, you’re missing out. This month, you’re learning how to stick by your efforts and watch them bear fruit. This means seeing what happens when you make a commitment to a partner, a lover, a home, a place. What do you do when you start to feel trapped? What would you discover if you went deeper in instead of farther away? Do you believe you get to hold on to anything? Do you need to grieve love and safety that you’ve had to leave? Figure out what it means, right now, to gather what you need and hold on to it, and to stay a little longer than you usually do. Risk being fed. Risk putting down roots.
Make a commitment: Know your values. Know what you deserve.
Uproot: Patterns of uprooting instead of holding on to what nourishes you.
Capricorn
Oh honey, this month is everything for you. This month and next month are the peak of a mountain you’ve been climbing for several years now. What you learn about yourself, your path, and your relationships right now will reverberate far into the future. So, no pressure or anything, but it’s a good time to rely on your natural desire to live with integrity and make careful choices. What’s most likely up for you in this moment, though, is the impossibility of living up to your own very high standards. Remember that you are not alone, and that your actions take place in a network of relationships that support and challenge you. Come back to the community of humans that hold you, reflect you, inspire you, and help shape you. If you feel like you’re climbing a mountain right now, or about to fall down one, keep breathing. Stretch. Take naps. Turn off the voice that tells you that you should have done better. Commit to doing better when you can. Let yourself be imperfect, even as you open to transformation. Who you are becoming is wiser, stronger, and more nuanced. Your path to that future self is through insight and compassion.
Make a commitment: Self-acceptance and self-awareness. Loving yourself as you are, even as you strive to transform.
Uproot: trying to improve yourself in order to deserve love
Aquarius
As rational as we’d like to be, we are creatures of mysterious desires and strange urges. Love is a wild ride, and as much as we strive to understand our own and our partners’ desires, we remain fundamentally unpredictable. Of all the signs, Aquarius planets have the strongest need to be true to themselves in ways that might rock the boat in stable relationships. The goal is to help everyone you love feel as free to grow, learn, and change. The goal is to have relationships that help each person become more and more fully themselves. And sometimes you get stuck—you notice that you’re holding onto a fantasy that things are all okay when the reality is a little murkier. This is a month to clean out those closets—where is shame still living, in you or in your relationships? What haven’t you come clean about? What is someone else afraid to tell you? It’s time to get your house in order, and let go of all that heavy, built-up tension.
Make a commitment: Focus on what’s hard to see and harder to talk about. Be brave! Be compassionate! Seek the truth.
Uproot: Fear that you’ll end up lonely if you’re honest. You don’t need to appease anyone who isn’t as brave as you are about what’s real.
Pisces
Love can make us all a little lazy—we soak up the pleasure of being with our friends and sweethearts, or we crawl into bed and avoid the world when we’re feeling unloved. For you, there’s an added risk of love warping you into the shape of whoever you’re with. Pisces planets tend to be shapeshifters, taking on the likes and dislikes of their friends, feeling what their lovers’ feel. This is a talent—it’s part of how you experience deep love and empathy—but it can also block your sense of motivation. This month, you’re growing into the part of yourself that knows how to lead, how to inspire, and how to mobilize people around your dreams and visions. Whether you’re a networker, an activist, or a shy dreamer who hates crowds, this is a time for stepping into community as you define it, and figuring out how to shape the communities you want to be in. Even if this is normally your hibernation season, challenge yourself to do at least one thing this month that will benefit the worlds you belong to.
Make a commitment: Show up for your communities. Create the experiences you want to see happen.
Uproot: Paralysis that comes from not knowing how to help, feeling overwhelmed, or feeling disconnected.
Printing out that paragraph about responsibility so I can hand it out at parties
Beautiful on point reading thank you.
As someone with a Capricorn stellium, I am more than a little afraid of what the next 2 months will bring, but I am cautiously optimistic. My sun and rising readings were super spot on.