Satellite of Love

And here we are, the month we’ve all been waiting for, the beginning of a new decade. If you follow any astrologers, you’ll have heard a lot of chatter about this month’s astrology. We’ve been talking about it for a few years now, at least! You may have heard that it’s going to be really scary or really wonderful — that capitalism will fall or that it will triumph, that the climate will fully collapse or that we’ll find ways of transforming our relationship to it, or that we’re finally hitting bottom and can only go up from here. Whatever your take on it, what we’re experiencing this month is powerful! To give you a sense of the drama: on January 12th, Pluto, fierce house mother who serves deadly realness, is facing off with Saturn, hard-working gay who champions marriage equality and fears the flamboyant queers are ruining it for the rest of us. They are on Saturn’s turf, but odds are on Pluto to win. This face-off is an astrological event that happens every 35 years or so, and the last time it happened was in Libra, sign of relationships. Whenever these two giants come together, something deeply embedded in our cultural traditions (Saturn) goes through a process of death and rebirth (Pluto). Over the last 35 years, we’ve seen dramatic shifts in how our culture recognizes relationships—about ten years into that time, the term “heteronormativity” was coined, for example. Imagine a time when we didn’t know how to talk about that! The last time this face-off happened in Capricorn, though, was in 1518. That was around the time of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, when traditional structures of power, legitimacy, and authority got overturned. But what does this mean for us, my loves?

These planets represent forces we each have inside us — Saturn is the part of us that wants to be constructive, to play by the rules, to fit in, to work hard, to succeed. Pluto is the part that sees through hypocrisy and oppression, and is willing to cause a scene in the name of the truth. Not only is Pluto willing to name what’s been festering in secret, it’s also wielding a scalpel, ready to cut out the tumor. When they both show up in Capricorn, we’re trying to coordinate these impulses toward a more sustainable way of living. Questions that are already coming up for all of us reflect this: How can we live on this planet in ways that support healthy ecologies? How can we live with each other in ways that are just and cooperative? Who gets to make the rules? Are the rules we have now serving all of us? What structures need to end? What structures are already ending? How do we envision what comes next? Where will we find the courage to do what’s necessary?

Big themes, my friends, big themes. And you may be thinking, “Ech, that’s pretty overwhelming. I just came here to read about my crush.” Fair enough. Coming back to the thrilling realm of queer love in all its variety, we find these same themes coming up in our relationships: a heightened awareness of our responsibilities, a need to manage our time better, a need to deepen into what’s true. Whomp, whomp. Working with Saturn and Pluto together, we’re assessing what we need to release (Pluto) or repair (Saturn). It’s kind of a Marie Kondo moment for our emotional lives. This theme will persist through the rest of the year (and the next 35 years, TBH), but will be strongest this month. Oh and, no big deal, there’s also a lunar eclipse on the 10th in the same part of the sky as the Pluto-Saturn scuffle. Think of it as the cherry bomb on top. Eclipses are portals: doors close and open, sometimes dramatically, during these times. The phrase I associate with an eclipse is seeing in the dark — we learn truths we might not have found out easily otherwise. On this level, eclipses are Plutonian. This takes the themes we’ve already discussed and puts them in all caps: AS THE OLD WAYS CRUMBLE, NEW TRUTHS EMERGE. YOU MUST REORGANIZE YOUR LIFE.
Luckily, Venus — planet of love and tenderness and killer fashion — is hanging hard in Aquarius and Pisces this month. In Aquarius, we feel an expanded sense of love for all humanity and can be inspired to connect with a wide range of people. In Pisces, we experience the deepest compassion possible, for ourselves and others. These influences help soften what could otherwise be an austere month, and help us see our way forward when we may be feeling blocked.

Stakes may feel high right now, but trial and error is still your friend. What we all need right now is the courage to keep showing up, the humility to own up to our mistakes, the compassion to forgive ourselves and others, and the creativity to try it differently next time. I hope you find these strengths in yourself, mentor them for others, feel inspired by the way your loved ones embody them, and create an enormous positive feedback loop of Queers Figuring Their Shit Out and Getting Real About Love.
I’m rooting for you this month. I’ve got you covered if you want a reading, and if you’re looking for an expanded horoscope for all of 2020, hop on over to my brand new Patreon!. For just $2 a month you can get extra astrological insight every month of the year, and you can cancel or skip a month easily. I’m extra excited about this month’s offering, as it sets the stage for all you need to know for this eventful year. As always,for these relational horoscopes you’ll get best results reading your Moon and Venus signs first. Good luck out there this month! Work hard, be kind, and rest when you need to!

Aries

How are you trying to be seen right now? Where are you longing for recognition? Who’s attention are you trying to catch? Take a minute to tap into your longings to become the best version of yourself — what do you see yourself doing? Who are you surrounded by? What are you proud of about yourself? Really paint a picture of this super-accomplished and impressive version of yourself. And now, dig a little deeper. Think about the people that make you feel good about yourself — what do they love about you? This month is asking you to do a complicated dance that involves being inside your own experience and also looking at yourself from the outside. The goal is to understand what your true gifts are, and how to use them in ways that will benefit everyone you love. Get real with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses, and you’ll be closer to learning what’s yours and yours alone to offer this world.

Release or repair: Your relationship to status. What are you trying to be known for? Are you working too hard to impress people, especially those who aren’t worth impressing? Are you goofing off so no one takes you seriously and won’t expect much from you? Where do you need actual recognition? What are you trying to commit to?

Taurus

My sweet friend, I’m sorry to say this month continues and intensifies the theme of major changes in your life. Since Uranus first moved into your sign in May of 2018, you’ve been exploring new paths you may not have known were possible. Your relationships have been changing, and as they grow and evolve your life choices are suddenly up for reconsideration. These could be externally dramatic, like a lover asking you to move across the country for them, or externally minor, like coming out as non-binary long after all your friends already know. Either way, they represent big shufflings and shiftings inside you as you reorient yourself to what it means to be you, and who you are in relationships. This month, you’re given a push to explore and expand even farther. What if all the changes you’re anxious about (if I move I’ll be lonely or lose my identity — if I come out as non-binary I’ll be misgendered and dismissed) are actually your ticket to a vastly more fulfilling life? As much as possible this month, practice believing that as your life changes it’s getting better and better. Don’t be afraid to take a few dramatic leaps. You’ll stick the landing.

Release or repair: Your adventurous spirit; your stubborn attachments. In the quest to get comfortable, you can get stuck in the mud. Changes are happening whether you like them or not, so how can you psyche yourself up for new horizons that will teach you, develop your wisdom, and bring you in contact with worlds that are new for you?

Gemini

Sweet, delightful Gemini — how are you handling stress and pain? Because it turns out there will always be some stress and pain, even if you try to avoid it at all costs and live your life as a constant experience of wonder and discovery. That’s the bad news, and this month might be turning up the heat on a situation that’s been simmering for awhile and is now ready to boil over. The good news is you get to choose how you respond, and in those choices you will be doing something magical: you will be creating the life that you deeply need, and you will be becoming the person you need to be. Don’t be afraid of the depths right now. You may feel anxious or grumpy when faced with external urgency, but each of these circumstances is really an opportunity for you to practice feeling safe in this world, safe in your body, and safe in your relationships. So don’t shut down or run away—stick it out and figure out what you actually need to heal.

Release or repair: Your capacity to go deep into where it hurts and find the healing you need. Are you pushing too hard already and re-traumatizing your nervous system? Or are you distracting yourself and staying busy so you won’t feel the harder feelings? What containers do you need to feel safe as you touch into old wounds and let them fully heal?

Cancer

The events of this month are hitting you where you live, relationally. As all the major drama is happening in Capricorn, it’s all opposing you—which means it’s calling up questions of relationship, of self and other, of balance, of longing. Particularly, you’ll be learning a lot about what you need to choose partnership with anyone—friend, lover, business partner, creative collaborator, housemate, co-parent. Your feelings may be a little extra intense this month, so make sure you take the time to calm yourself down at the end of each day and remember that worst-case-scenario thinking isn’t your friend. And that you have many friends. And maybe a really important partner or two. And each of these people wants you to understand yourself better, which will help you understand them better. That’s your entire homework for this month: Stay present, don’t get carried away by strong feelings, and see what you learn. It might not be an easy month, but if you accept its challenges you’ll be creating a foundation for deeper, more honest, and more nourishing intimacy than you’ve experienced yet.

Release or repair: What it means to partner. How does commitment work in your life? Does it come with a sense of obligation, resentment, dread? Or a sense of longing, scarcity, and the desire to finally feel chosen? What parts of yourself do you need to commit to honoring and loving in order to commit to someone else?

Leo

Although you are a being of fire and light, you still live in a body and you’re still subject to the laws of linear time and cause and effect. You might find this kind of a drag — the endless tending to your body, the way time changes it, the way your inner spark can only sometimes move through your body effortlessly and joyously. Maybe you’re a dancer who has bad knees, or an actor whose race or gender or size makes it impossible to get good roles. Maybe you’re a warm, charming lover whose past trauma makes it hard to open up to someone new. Whatever experience is blocking you, you may focus on your body as a place to put the blame. This month, you may find that’s no longer an option. If you lean into it, this month begins a new era in your life, in which you become a close collaborator with your body — with all its injuries and exhaustion, its scars and its size and its strangenesses which are yours to cherish and protect from this world that hates all our bodies (it only loves idealized pictures of them). This love affair with yourself begins through acknowledging that you’re going to die one day, and if you’re lucky your body will get old before then, and you’re along for that ride. And guess what — you get to be a being of fire and light, of grace and beauty and charm and warmth and surprising creativity, through all this time. Right now, you’re learning how to collaborate. The first step is acceptance and love.

Release or repair: How do you manage the endless tasks of the day? Are anxiety and perfectionism constant companions? Do you have an antagonistic relationship to your body, or parts of your body? If you were to love your daily life, moving through each moment in the body you have, what would help you get there? What rhythms and rituals help you relax and love life?

Virgo

You get what looks like an easy assignment this month — your job is to reconnect to your sense of fun and playfulness. For such a heavy month, you’ve gotten a pretty light assignment, huh? Never fear, hardworking Virgo, there is some deep challenge built into this for you—what this month is really asking is for you to let go of control. When you are behind the scenes directing, it’s easy to focus outward. When you stay busy with responsibilities, it’s easy to focus on the future. What this month asks is for you to step into the spotlight, and to be fully present in the here and now. What happens when you take up that kind of space? What happens when you leave time open for experimentation, flirtation, possibility? What fears come up when you don’t know which way things will go? This is your work right now, dear one. Gather your courage and step onto stage. Reach out to that unknown future.

Release or repair: Your relationship to playfulness, flirtation, and fun. Do you associate excitement with danger? Are you afraid to be in the spotlight, to ask for what you want? Do you keep yourself busy with obligations and freak out when you have free time? Deep play will help you understand your true desires. Do what you can to claim joy.

Libra

I hope you had an amazing childhood and that your parents and other family members support you unconditionally and check in on you regularly (but not invasively) to see what you’re up to and what you need. That’s what you deserve. But many of you probably have a more complicated situation than that, and you probably see your old family patterns playing out in your romances and friendships, too. I see the work you’ve done to heal these patterns, and the more of that work you’ve already done, the easier this month is going to feel for you. Because family is up for you, and chances are there’s a younger part of you that’s still longing for that unconditional, absolutely supportive and non-invasive love that you still deserve. Your job right now is to claim that part of you and to offer it all the love you possibly can. You can let other people love you, but don’t set anyone up to be your parent — they’ll fail and you’ll both feel bad about it. Only you (and maybe a good therapist or trusted animal friend) can offer that younger you the kind of love you need right now.

Release or repair: Your relationship to your home and family. Any family-of-origin issues that you haven’t fully healed from (ha, who has those?) will be showing up for you right now. Any chosen family issues that mirror those older issues will be present, too. You get to make choices that prioritize healing, again and again. You get to create a sense of security, groundedness, and profound intimacy in your life. This month will teach you how and where to begin.

Scorpio

Ruled by Pluto, your sign is good at handling crisis. There’s a part of you that’s intrigued by the collective freak-out happening this month, and there’s a part of you that’s getting tugged into your own deep feelings and would rather not, thank you. What you’re learning this month is all about perception: How can you trust your intuition, your feelings, and your brain if they’re all giving you different information? Which one usually wins? This month, you don’t get to be lazy about this—you’ll have to sort through a lot of contradictory perceptions (Is this person available or unreliable? Do I like them as a friend or lover? Do I feel safe or anxious with them? Etc….) and you don’t get to know the answers immediately. Your decision-making and the stories you tell yourself about what is true are in a process of growth. Your work looks like asking yourself—how do I know this? If you feel sketched out by someone, what you know is you feel sketched out by them. You can trust that enough to not pursue friendship, but you don’t actually know that they are sketchy. If someone stands you up, what you know is that they didn’t show up for your date. You can be pissed off enough to not make another date, but what you don’t know is why they bailed on you—they could have been nervous or deeply depressed or lost their phone or just fallen in love with someone new—the possibilities are endless. If you decide you know stories that you don’t know, this month is going to trip you up left and right. So do the work—let yourself be in the mystery, and learn how to trust what you DO know, which is a lot!

Release or repair: The stories you tell yourself (and others) about what’s true. Your tendency to hold on to your truths and hoard them, not letting others into what’s real for you. Or, your tendency to use truth as a weapon, lashing out at people’s vulnerabilities. How it feels to find a balance where you can be less defended, but not less safe.

Sagittarius

Libra and Gemini are famous for being indecisive, but decisions aren’t easy for you, either. The main difference is that instead of putting your life on pause as you weigh out what you could do, you realize you’ve made a decision while you’re doing it — over and over, you learn who you are by analyzing the choices you’re already making. You’re always catching yourself mid-stride, mid-date, mid-adventure, and realizing, “Oh, this is what I want.” Or sometimes, “Oops, this isn’t what I want.” Right now, though, you’re being asked to develop a little more foresight. The decisions you face this year are asking you to really dig deep and choose the life that will be most nourishing to you — to have a sense of who you are, what you value, and where you want to be in 5 years or 10 years or 35 years. Practice living into a decision before you actually live it out. Say to yourself what you’re choosing, and see how it feels. What doors open up for you? What doors close? Knowing that you can’t keep all the doors open all the time, which one are you ready to walk through?

Release or repair: Your understanding of what you deeply value. Knowing how to choose what nourishes you most deeply. Letting go of older, instinctive patterns that take you down roads you already exhausted years ago. Learning what the mature choice is, now — which isn’t necessarily the conservative choice.

Capricorn

What shores up your sense of self-respect? What do you do that makes you feel ashamed? How much time do you spend doing things in the first category, and when do you find yourself dipping into the second category? What needs are you trying to meet when you do? This is a month where all you Capricorny ways are amplified — your striving for integrity, your capacity to work hard toward what matters, your future visioning, as well as your intense criticisms, resentment, and exhaustion. What you are learning right now is how to hold all these pieces in compassion, even as you start practicing new behaviors. Every time you choose a behavior you’re proud of instead of an easier, harmful response, you are laying down a new pattern for your future self. It is slow and painstaking work. You will be tired. There may not be anyone around to see how hard your working and give you a cookie. I see you, though. And your future self will thank you.

Release or repair: Patterns of letting yourself down or excusing your bad behavior. Patterns of expecting so much from yourself or others that everything is a disappointment. Patterns of holding back from doing the thing you care about most, for fear of not getting it right. Patterns of holding yourself aloof from others. Compassion, awareness, and more compassion are your tools for all this work.

Aquarius

You’re finding your own inner guide again right now, and you’ll need to hush the noise around you and in your own head. So much will try to pull you out of yourself right now, and there’s a piece of you that’s happy to go — it’s fun being a backseat driver on someone else’s road trip. It’s easy to weigh in on decisions that aren’t vital to your own wellbeing. But there’s something missing for you right now, and it’s you. Where will you find yourself? Not on anyone else’s road map. It can feel counterintuitive in this time that might feel pressured and intense, but you’ve got nothing to prove right now. You are responsible for being aware of your own deepest dreams, though. You are responsible to your inner vision, your inner knowing. Find the paths back into center, and you will be able to walk them more easily for the rest of the year.

Release or repair: Outward activity that neglects your inner life. Focusing on others as a distraction from what you need to heal. Being busy for the sake of looking impressive. Feeling you need to know the answers to every question. Not letting yourself release, relax, and get curious. Doing what you need to do to come back to centered, intuitive awareness.

Pisces

The sensitive among us, and you are one of us, dear Pisces, have an ambivalent relationship to groups. You thrive in one-on-one situations, and can be an excellent performer or teacher, but finding your role in a larger group can be tricky—you’re easily overwhelmed by multiple competing needs and emotions, which tend to swirl around you and settle inside you and make you grumpy and reclusive. This tendency toward introversion can get much more pronounced if the groups you’re part of are experiencing tension, conflict, and change. And yet, you don’t want to feel left out, either. You may tend to duck in, get your hit of love and uncomfortable unspoken tensions, and then duck out to let those bad feelings dissipate in their own time. Right now, though, you’re being asked to step up more for your community, which means knowing how to care better for yourself. It’s time to get serious about all kinds of boundaries, and understanding what you can and can’t help people with. Most of all, it’s time to explore the idea of mutual support — not just you offering empathy and tenderness infinitely to people who do nothing but receive that gift. Not just others rescuing you when you’re overwhelmed and exhausted. Wherever the balance is skewed, now is the time to restore it. Slowly, step-by-step, as you have the energy to do so.

Release or repair: Your relationship to your larger community. How you take responsibility for your own needs when faced with the needs of others. How to balance group energy. What it means to be committed to a whole crew. How you can trust and feel supported by their commitment to you.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!