Assigning Lipsticks From My Extensive Femme Collection to Every Astrological Sign

Culturally, we are in our power top high femme era imo. Blockbusters like Barbie and Mean Girls celebrate high femme aesthetics in ways that aren’t completely hetero. It feels like the Y2K But I’m a Cheerleader vibe reimagined. We’re queer, wearing heels, taking down the patriarchy, and flirting with you. There was a point in my life where all the glittery pink and purple fluff felt immature and too straight. Over the past year, though, I’ve reclaimed some of that as intrinsically gay, and not just for gay cis men either.

Queerleading, femme fatale, and influential queer housewife lore all has me buying cutesie femme products I haven’t owned since I was 13. Among these products is an abundance of expensive lipsticks. I blame TikTok (like I do for most things), but the truth is: I feel empowered when I wear lipstick. I put colors on my lips, and I feel like I can get the girl and get the job. So, in celebration of this, here’s what I think of each star sign as a lip product I’ve owned.

Aries

We all know an Aries, and we all know what an Aries can be like for better or for worse. What’s more fierce, bold, independent, and classic than an expensive long-lasting red? The Rouge Dior in shade Forever Glam is exactly what you want from a go-to red but more vibrant and passionate. It’s almost like it’s too much for a Tuesday, but you do it anyway, because fuck it you deserve to be there. You do what you want, even if it is a bit extra.

Taurus

When I think of Tauruses, I think of this one woman I used to be in love with. She definitely wouldn’t wear lipstick, but if there were a lipstick-wearing, more femme version of her in the universe, she would wear the Chanel Rouge Coco Flash in shade Dominant. It sounds and looks more intimidating than it actually is. This shade is for the hardworking person who doesn’t have a lot of time and still wants to look cute, but not in a way that’s going to draw too much attention.

Gemini

I have a love/hate relationship with Geminis, but then again, who doesn’t? Something we can all agree on is that they’re truly one-of-a-kind, which is why I’ve chosen Tanaïs’ Moon Beam Lustrous Lipstick. I actually discovered them through their book, In Sensorium, which I reviewed for Autostraddle. They’re a writer, author, creator, perfumer, and so much more. I love supporting their work. This shade, however, seems like it would be really loud, but instead has an elusive, mysterious vibe. This is also what makes it so alluring and adaptable.

Cancer

Cancer’s are most certainly Chanel’s Rouge Coco in shade Rose Malicieux. This is fancier than I’d like it to be, but it certainly is a shade that comes with a personality. Even though it’s all the things you associate with a preteen slumber party (crushes, feelings, nostalgia), it’s quite striking and flashy. Underneath all that color, it’s really a tender, creamy, rose-scented kiss of love. Also, I’m pretty sure it’s discontinued, so you get to be unique and elusive.

Leo

Confident, flirty, fierce, and viral! The NYX Fat Oil in shade Supermodel is all of these things and more. I’m always a little skeptical of TikTok dupes, but this one really knocked it out of the park. You can find it basically anywhere, but it stands out from the crowd every time. It gives you a little passionate edge at work or after dark. It’s thrilling and trendy, but definitely not for everyone despite what it looks like.

Virgo

When I think of a Virgo, I think about the more reasonable parts of myself (I’m a Virgo moon and rising), my very practical and calculated sister, and a few people I’ve dated who are all just very solid, kind, and a little bit too perfect. I’m going with the NYX Fat Oil in shade My Main, because it’s clear, fool-proof, reliable, and great for perfectionists because you truly cannot mess it up. I found out about its sister via TikTok (see Leo), but this is a more stable and timeless version of that.

Libra

I’ve never not loved a libra in my life. They’re my ride-or-dies, my go-to gals, the people who will bring the fun, bring the shade, and bring the realness. That’s why Rare Beauty’s lip souffle in shade Fearless is my choice for them. It’s the new classic that gives a little color, a little fun, but isn’t super in your face.  When I think “balance,” I think the whole Rare Beauty collection. It’s intentional, neutral, and for everyone.

Scorpio

It’s too obvious to assign a black lipstick to Scorpio (even though I very much went through a black lip phase). They’re more nuanced than that. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think they would be this matte taupe color from MAC. At first glance, it may seem soft, but a nude lip is a statement and a whole mood. If you’re intentionally doing a well-done muted lip, that means something bold and exciting is happening on other parts of your body. A nude lip is sneaky and stylish, just like a Scorpio.

Sagittarius

I’ve fallen in and out of love with many Sags. Even though many have broken my heart, they’re all pretty well-rounded and a great dinner party guest. e.l.f.’s Glow Reviver Lip Oil in shade Honey Talks is affordable, honest, and will follow you in whatever adventure you take on next. It’s easy to love and versatile, giving just enough glam to lighten up any mood. It’s minty and refreshing, which is definitely an added bonus.

Capricorn

Capricorns need something trustworthy and practical like Thrive Causemetics’ Sheer Strength in shade Melissa. It’s manufactured and marketed by a place that really cares about where their products come from and where they’re headed next. The shade itself isn’t going to necessarily be noticeable, but it will give you what you need and make you feel satisfied. It’s a soft and gentle staple in any makeup bag.

Aquarius

It’s me! Instead of going with my personal go-to, I actually want to introduce a color that surprised me. The Sephora Collection lipstick 69 in shade Werk It is my pick. It’s not what you think it’s going to be. It appears pink and girly but is translucent and somehow also bold. When it shines, it’s captivating and dynamic. However, in bad lighting, it can seem a little off. Also, they no longer sell this in stores, so we’re unique and collectable now 💁🏽‍♀️.

Pisces

Oh, Pisces. You’re always the ones with all the messy feelings, even if you don’t wear your heart on your sleeve 24/7. You might not know who you are, but everyone else does. When I originally ordered Chanel’s Rouge Dior Forever Liquid in shade Forever Famous, I thought it was that one shade that went viral because it was super glittery. Well, it wasn’t that, but I was pleasantly surprised by what it actually was: a slightly deeper brick red suitable for drinks, dinner, and dancing. Sure, it’s a little smudgy if you don’t set it or if you’re reckless, but it’s a beautiful shade that romanticizes even the dullest of days.

Can you believe I’ve owned all these products? I guess I’m a bougie bitch. Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts and recommendations in the comments. What would you suggest for an Aquarius Sun, Virgo Moon, and Virgo Rising? Asking for a friend.

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for January 2024

We begin this year very much in the midst, despite this fresh blank page we’ve turned to with only “2024” written at its top. I think there’s something powerful in the ritual of beginning again that happens at each New Year, like the fleeting feeling we get when we see fresh snow that has no animal tracks in it yet. (Or for us city dwellers, that has not yet become dirty slush on the side of the road.) And yet, I find myself struggling to tap into that sense of possibility right now. I’m still holding so much that has been heart-wrenching from 2023. I want to honor what we’ve all been through in 2023, especially since the violence escalated in Israel/Palestine. I want to hold infinite space for how not-okay everything is as we turn to this new, blank page that — if you look closely — is already dissolving into dirty slush around the corners.

We begin in the midst.

Astrologically, we are at a turning point that’s unlike anything anyone alive today has lived through before. This year, Pluto is continuing its ingress into Aquarius, where it will come to rest for the next two decades. It has been moving back and forth over those two degrees — the last of Capricorn and the first of Aquarius — since March of 2023. It will continue to do so until November 19th of this year. We are at the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, and in these transitional times we find monsters. We also find hopeful monsters, those theoretical creatures that represent huge evolutionary leaps. The last time Pluto moved through Aquarius was in the late 18th century, what is called the Age of Revolutions — including the American, French, and Haitian revolutions.

As Pluto consolidates its move to Aquarius this year, we are revisiting the dreams of that old world — the hope people placed in democracy and equality, in the dream of citizenship — and fully immersed in birth pangs of a new world. In twenty years, what seems normal and inescapable to us now may have been entirely transformed. For each of us approaching this blank page, now increasingly criss-crossed with the tracks of ghosts and the dirty slush of history, we can ask ourselves: How can I begin to imagine an unimaginable world? Our future depends on this.

We need to be able to think the unthinkable.

Our collective imagination needs to take us beyond where the 18th century left us. What can we imagine that is not war, is not poverty, is not colonialism, is not climate disaster, is not nationalism? Where can we nurture and encourage those hopeful monsters, adapted not to our current world but to the future we want to see?

If you want to read more about this Pluto in Aquarius, and a massive Year Ahead Horoscope for every sign, join me on Patreon for only $2 a month. I’m also available for readings, so please reach out if you need some help thinking about your place in the world right now. For more astro details you can follow me on Instagram. May you all feel loved and encouraged at this turn of the year.

Aries

I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: The courage to name what’s wrong, even when it’s an unpopular opinion. The willingness to stay engaged with the trouble. The vision to see a better world.

Taurus

I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: Tools for nervous system regulation. Softness and endurance when everything feels hard and urgent. Pleasure activism.

Gemini

I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: Energy, enthusiasm, and a sense of humor. Willingness to keep asking questions and drawing “wash me” signs on dusty assumptions about how the world works.

Cancer

I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: Snacks for all. Emotional intelligence. The capacity to distinguish between discomfort and danger. An ethic of revolutionary care.

Leo

I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: My voice, my vulnerability, my story. Ways of connecting the personal to the political. My capacity to listen. My love for the world.

Virgo

I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: My fierce analysis. Acts of service. Checking on people who may fall through the cracks. Faith in a better world and strategies to try and get there.

Libra

I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: Capacity to hold multiple perspectives. A sense of when and how to deescalate, and when not to. Insistence on hearing the voice that isn’t in the room.

Scorpio

I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: Ancestral healing. The poetry and spirituality and medicine that can heal our culture’s wounds. Zero tolerance for bullshit.

Sagittarius

I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: Everything I have. All my lived experiences, all my analysis, all my intuitive faith in what is possible. Willingness to keep trying.

Capricorn

I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: The wisdom of my own successes and failures. A longterm vision that tracks generational impact. Integrity and followthrough.

Aquarius

I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: New ways of being human. Insight and inspiration for transforming oppressive systems. Both urgency and revolutionary patience.

Pisces

I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: The capacity to breathe with the living organism that is our species. Sensitivity and attunement to our whole. Boundless love for what lives, what dies, and what is to come.

What Should Your Questionable New Year’s Resolution Be, According to Your Sign?

Listen. 2023 was a little much. And if you’re anything like me, then you’ve already made a plan to kidnap 2024 and MK-Ultra this year into submission in your basement before we even get started. Because listen, we’re not pulling another 2023. So let’s all agree to make THIS year call us “Daddy.”

So how are we going to do this, hmmm? With these totally, absolutely, not not not not unhinged New Year’s Resolutions for you, based on your zodiac sign, many of which are actually New Year’s Projects that I can, at the bare, bottom-of-the-pit minimum, assure you will have an effect on your year. So, raise a glass of whatever fizzy or flat thing you’re guzzling, and let’s toast to a year where we gain a sense of control over our fates by whatever means necessary!

Aries

Get serious about prepping. Now, there are different kinds of disaster preparedness. I am going to say this now, hoping dear Aries that you didn’t just read the first sentence and run off to build a bunker with a tilapia tank. Okay, you’re still here? Good.

Emergency/disaster preparedness can take many forms. It can mean making sure you have enough food, water, shelter, and first aid supplies accessible and well packaged should you need them. It can also mean actually ensuring that your closest people have each other’s’ phone numbers and that you have secondary contacts for them in turn. It might mean that maybe that you’ve undergone some basic first aid training.

But Aries, I know you want more. This year, why not learn some basic electrical, get trained on how to Stop the Bleed, or organize a local group of queers to practice basic self-defense together? If you don’t know self-defense, someone in your network surely does. Download Signal. Start participating in mutual aid and jail support groups if you don’t already. Learn to recognize and treat hypothermia and heat stroke. Get to know your neighbors. Make a go bag.

Why is this questionable advice? Because I know that an Aries is likely to take this too far, get a little obsessive, maybe develop a sense of know-it-all expertise. But, um, hey. At least if there’s a hurricane or other natural disaster in 2024 (not less than likely), your friends are going to know who’s got the generator and the extra food.

Taurus

Stop buying things. Stop buying anything at all except groceries and basics. Do not get liberal when it comes to defining “basics.” See how long you can go.

Even better, shout about it on social media. Make a big deal of it. Really trap yourself in this commitment by making sure your entire circle knows about your year of not buying things.

You heard me. I already know you don’t like it. I also know you’re spending too much money. Now, this is going to tear you right out of your comfort zone. What are you going to do when you can’t get a new candle or robe or piece of quartz or nose ring? You are going to sit there and cope. And if you cannot cope without new material comforts in your life, you are going to have to get there and find clothing swaps or clean out your closet and make trades with people or get crafty.

I don’t know, Taurus, what you might be going through, but it’s time to clear that online shopping cart because it’s not going to help anyway. This might be sound advice, except I don’t know that you’re ready to look at the ways you’re obscuring a deeper connection to yourself and the world around you through your fixation on making the perfect nest, on making sure your appearance is just as you want it. What happens if you say fuck it to coziness? What could you accomplish? I think that if you redirect your energy, you might come out the other side a completely different person.

Gemini

Actually summon a demon, though.* Like, you need some help getting your New Year’s Resolutions moving? You want to feel more spiritually connected? You’ve got at least 72 ancient and tried and true options. Kayla didn’t tell you how to in her post, but in honor of my fellow air sign, our Gemini Managing Editor, I am going to tell you how to do it (draw a scary circle on the floor summoning a demon but also summoning the angel that many recommend you need when doing this as well). Keep in mind that a lot of people have various problems with Thelema/Crowley/Ceremonial style magic, and that’s because it is in fact problematic. But I’m not here to give you Woke Witch advice. You said you wanted to summon a demon. So now I’m here to tell you how to summon a demon.* Don’t say I never did anything for you:

1. Start with a book like this. As Kayla suggested, you may also be able to get one of these books from your local library. This one is recommended for its updated and modern approach, but you can also raw dog it with some Crowley though that is going to be rather more dense.
2. Choose a demon. There are 72 in the Ars Goetia — cool. There’s even a demon for learning geometry. Like, you can get specific.
3. Follow instructions. You might need some chalk, candles, sundry items.
4. Leave me out of this.

*I do not actually advise doing this. Proceed at your own risk, etc. etc.

Now this is absolutely questionable advice to give a Gemini specifically because you know they’re gonna succeed if they try. Those silver-tongued babes are gonna recite their Hebrew and their Latin. Luckily, I don’t actually know Gemini exes to be thaaaaat vindictive.

Cancer

2024 should be your year of asking for help from others, recklessly, with abandon.

Ask for help from family and friends, and then ask for help from strangers. Ask for help when you don’t need it. Don’t get all Ted Bundy and weird about it. Keep it relatively safe for the other person, just emotionally unsafe for you.

Now, why do I think this is potentially a bad idea? Because people are going to disappoint you, Cancer, if you give them the chance to. They’re going to let you down. You might come out of this with fewer friendships than you started with, but also, you’ll know who your real friends are. They won’t just be the people who you’ve been continuously initiating plans with. They’ll be the people who come around on their own. You also might find that you did, indeed, get help with some things that you needed, and now you’re going to have to live the rest of your life with that vulnerability.

Leo

Start sneaking into places and telling elaborate falsehoods. Look, Leo, we know you’re always fibbing a little bit for effect, or, on the other side, being completely blunt for effect. I can’t say what’s going to be on the other side of this, but if you’re really going to push your nature to its limit, I want to see how far you can go. Can you sneak into an event by carrying a box and wearing a pair of coveralls? Can you crash a straight wedding? Make up a new persona when flying. I’ve heard people do this. Get really into it. Start making up new personas on the bus. Start making up new personas at bars. Never be yourself, then ask yourself: what do my fake selves have in common, and “what am I missing from my life and how I treat myself that I could concentrate on in order to bring myself into greater alignment with who I want to be?” Or just have fun embracing your trickster self. Don’t get caught, and if you get caught, don’t get in trouble! And remember, I’m definitely not telling you to do anything illegal!

Virgo

Take up karaoke. In a big way. Tegan and Sara are Virgos — did you know that? No matter what your voice sounds like, I want to hear you sing. Already into karaoke or truly refuse to sing? Fine. I want you to take up doing an even more elaborate public performance, then, like burlesque or stand-up.

Virgo, in 2024, you are going to get on stage. You are going to fuck up. You are going to embarrass yourself, and you are going to persevere — or not, but you are going to say you tried. I want you to challenge yourself with the fact that you can prepare and prepare and prepare and then inevitably there is going to be a drunk person in the crowd or a technical mishap or you’re going to forget one of your lines and you are going to have to cope, or not.

I don’t know how you’ll do, but you can’t live in your little bubble of order forever. As a bonus, leave the dishes undone one night when you’re tired, skip a workout to play video games, get takeout instead of cooking — not all the time, just once or twice.

Libra

This year, as a New Year’s resolution that is really a project, I want you to start writing letters to people you admire. No, not emails, not DMs, not “conversations in your head.” Letters. In the mail. To people who you don’t know, famous people even, or less famous ones, just ones who are doing things you think are cool. I want you to start doing this and I don’t want you to stop (in a non-stalker-y way. Like, please don’t keep sending someone who never answers you letters unless this is some kind of art project). All year. You hear me?

When someone inevitably writes back, I want you to keep up correspondence. If you really hit it off, I want you to find a way to visit or run into each other in person. There, now you know a whole new person who you previously only admired from afar. Good luck out there. People are just people, after all.

Scorpio

Re-wild yourself in 2024. Take this seriously. I want to see you off-grid for extended periods of time this year, dear Scorpio. Sure, you’ve got responsibilities, sure there’s a society that we live in. In 2024, I want you to resolve not to touch grass, but to smell the dank under-belly of a pile of leaves, to sink your fingers into black compost, to having gone so feral that one night while you’re looking up at the full moon in complete dark you realize that you have not one but two sticks or brambles or pieces of debris stuck in your hair. Pull them out or don’t. You should be getting scrapes and bruises, poison oak or ivy, a mysterious bug bite or seven, learn how to react to whatever dangerous wildlife inhabit your area. If your phone screen breaks, let it stay broken for a week or two before you fix it. Take a friend if you need to, for safety. I didn’t say you had to go it alone.

You might think, why me? Why Scorpio? “I’m a sign of secrets and boudoirs, libraries and tombs,” you say. But if you look at the Death card in the Tarot, go and pull it out or google it, you’ll see in the Rider Waite version a five pointed white rose on the flag death carries. This rose represents purity through change — and the number five is one of change — change that comes from stripping yourself down to your most basic elements. In the Thoth deck, Death is depicted almost in their fisherman form, surrounded by sea creatures, symbols of fertility. Dead marine life makes for some of the best fertilizer, and it’s time to consider what needs to die in your life so that you can actually make sure your soul is fed. By making sure you are not just playing the role of a tourist in nature, but instead, fully recognizing your place in the all-encompassing thing that is nature, you can actively work to remember that you are also an animal, as much as you are a human. Our bodies are animal bodies. See what priorities come to the surface when you slip on a wet rock or on a loose patch of dry earth and you think for a second that you might fall.

Sagittarius

Religiously record your weird thoughts as voice memos to a character who you’ve made up. Do not re-listen, share or review these memos until year’s end, when you should have a listening party. I’ll leave who, if anyone, you invite to said party up to you.

Why do this? Because I don’t think you know yourself, Sagittarius. You’re changeable, your heart always wants, but what it wants can be so inconsistent. There’s an ephemeral beauty in that, though, and a challenge to distill the truer parts of yourself at the same time. So, while you’re on those impulsive road trips, crying in the bathroom after rage-quitting, bouncing back after getting your heart broken, slaying it at a costume party, or deep-diving into scholarly articles on your topic of the week — leave yourself a weird little voice memo. Do it.

Then face down who you are and all the moments you forgot about from your year in a medium that is, by its very nature, time-consuming to consume and not very Insta-gram-a-ble. You’re welcome.

Capricorn

Investigate a mystery! I’m serious. You’re always using your analytical skills and work ethic for such normative measures, Capricorn, and it’s time you embraced the darkness within and put those skills toward uncovering things that someone else would rather be left hidden.

Yes, I’m suggesting that, if you go in one direction, you could go all Misty Quigley Citizen Detective. That is one option. Go, go find the message boards. See if you can’t put the pieces together about a local serial killer. Good luck, stay safe.

You could also start taking a look at your local city council or school boards or any number of places where Moms for Liberty types are starting to infiltrate, get to know what they’re going for, do opposition research on them, and start showing up and pushing back.

If you want to go even further, you can start trying to infiltrate and expose local rightwing groups. I don’t know! You can probably get into a private Facebook group or on a Discord pretty easily with a few strategic Capricorn lies. Then, it’s time to screenshot and expose! Remember to protect your identity. Don’t get doxxed, cutie. Remember that finding and exposing fascists is a great way to prevent them from taking future action; it deflates their clout and makes them compromised from a security standpoint and useless to their movements!

You can also, like, go in an old tunnel or something.

Aquarius

Start going to sex parties, unless you already are, in which case, take up gardening, and if you already do both, are we friends? We’re probably friends. Anyway, it’s going to be time to start seeds, soon, so get out your seed catalogs and make this our year for blossoms and fruits and eggplants and juicy things galore. You’re never too old to get some more bruises on your knees. From gardening.

Is this questionable because both these practices are great building blocks when it comes to acquiring the skills, aptitude and attitude it takes to be a cult leader? Mayyyybeee. Look, dark times are ahead and if there are gonna be cults, you might as well be heading one up because you know what’s best, right? Gaslight, gatekeep, girlcult.

Pisces

Start and finish an extremely complex and potentially life-altering project.

Some ideas:

• Start an alternate reality game. Tell no one at first. Then, tell only the other people who you bring on as other architects of your game. Watch We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and say, hey, yeah that seems like something I want to both bring into the world and participate in.
• Dig a tunnel under your place of residence.*
• Learn to fly planes.
• Make a plan to hike one of the longest trails in the U.S. either by year’s end or in 2025. Follow through.
• Write a novel.
• Start your own business, and it’s something you’re actually passionate about.
• Find an Aquarius and team up to start an intentional community.
• Go to circus school.

Pisces, you’ve got the deep thinking and the dreams, and also, not always the most practical judgment. This year, you’re not going to listen to the naysayers, though, because it’s time to follow your heart and make your dream a reality, with or without financial reward, potentially with serious ramifications. If you dream it, you can be it, and that includes becoming a literal clown if you want.

*For legal reasons, this is a joke.

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for December 2023

A few weeks ago I was on a road trip. I stopped for a brief visit with an old friend who has hella Scorpio in their chart. While we were catching up, shoes off and sharing a dinner of road snacks and rotisserie, I happened to get a large splinter in my toe. My first instinct was to ignore it. I even told my friend “it’s fine” when it clearly wasn’t. They, in finest Scorpio fashion, insisted it wasn’t fine and went to get their wound care kit. I had to laugh because I was living out the metaphor I use with my clients all the time: Scorpio energy insists that we remove the splinter, even if it means more pain at first. I had been in default road-trip mode — endure and keep moving. I was struck by how hard it felt in that moment to admit I needed care for such a small thing. But I did.

I think many of us have been in “endure and keep moving” mode for a long time now. Nothing is fine and most of us have to keep working and buying groceries and making doctor’s appointments anyway, between the grief and the protests and the numbness. Our social fabric feels especially tenuous. Many people tell me their relationships with friends and family are fracturing along political lines. This distrust permeates other relationships. Even when care is available to us, it can be hard to trust it and hard to accept it.

This collective splinter is lodged deep. We are all in some kind of pain. We may lash out online in pain. Pain may prompt us to withdraw and stop interacting. We may end up feeling we need to defend our pain against someone else’s pain. We may feel our ancestral pain as present pain. And pain just becomes exponential when it’s ignored or dismissed. Even if our personal pain seems like a small thing, we are witnessing vast pain. How do we access care around something so big?

Astrologically, Scorpio is the sign that can witness this kind of pain. Scorpio care is unflinching and can cut deep, as it aims to address the core problems. The ones we haven’t been looking at. This may be Sagittarius season (we’ll get there), but Venus in Scorpio this month is bringing a flashlight and a scalpel to all the painful splinters in our relationships. And odds are good that healing can happen — Venus teams up with all the slow-moving planets from Jupiter to Pluto this month, most in harmonious connections. This means we have many opportunities to take a look at what’s going on and find ways to work things out. Courage and care are two words this month asks you to tattoo on your forearms where you can see them every time you’re about to reach for someone or push them away: Are you reacting from a place of fear or courage? From a place of care or dismissal? How can you set the boundaries you need to protect yourself and also reach with care towards people you want to be in community with, even if it feels potentially fraught?

Because after all we are in Sagittarius season — this is a time of gathering and festivity, of lighting candles against the cold, dark nights. Sagittarius knows there is something aspirational that connects us to each other. Scorpio may show us where we’ve hurt or been hurt but Sagittarius shows us how to keep our hearts alive when we’re afraid they’ll break. Scorpio may show us the brutal reality, Sagittarius shows us what we can do differently in the future. Sagittarius keeps a necessary impulse toward faith in each other alive. And Sagittarius season is a time of coming back into spaces of joy together, even if we are also holding grief. As Bertolt Brecht wrote: “In the dark times / Will there also be singing? / Yes there will also be singing. / About the dark times.” We need Sagittarius to lead us back into the dance of life, of grief and joy, of connection and disconnection, of believing in and trying to shape a better future. May this be a month where you can receive the care that’s available for you.

I’m available for readings so please get in touch. I’ve also got a few cool things I wanted to tell you about: I’m offering Astrograms again—custom artwork drawn from your birth chart — and I’m pretty excited about this. You can get custom designs for you, for you and your best friend, for your whole polycule. And stay tuned in January for my massive Year-Ahead Forecast for each sign on my Patreon! You can also follow me follow me on Instagram for more regular astro content. Meanwhile I’m wishing you warmth and joy and just as much connection as you want this Sagittarius season.

Aries

Accept care: For the part of you that feels like everything is falling apart and you have to keep holding it together, and why aren’t your friends taking these risks with you? For the energy it takes for you to show up to the challenges you face on the daily. For the ways you’ve been changed by the big changes in your life. For the part of you that’s resigned to disappointment. For the part of you that is stubbornly resisting your own need for care, and the part of you that is learning how to reach out for it before the need is urgent.

Taurus

Accept care: For the part of you that wants everyone else to be reasonable and understand what seems obvious to you. For the ways you’ve felt unmet by the people you thought were ride-or-die. For the ways you’ve also failed them. For the deep longing you have to just be able to enjoy your life. For everything you’ve had to give up in order to live according to your values. For the small, nagging voice inside you that feels you should have given up more. For the part of you that is grieving a world that no longer exists (or never did).

Gemini

Accept care: For the ways you work yourself until you’re too tired to care for your body — mentally, physically, or both — often because it is your literal job. For how your social world can feel too small and too large (or at least, demanding) at the same time. For all the many small things in your daily life that numb you to joy and delight, that feel too mundane to complain about. For the poems you aren’t writing and the songs you haven’t finished. For the ways you blame yourself for this, as though you somehow aren’t affected by your world.

Cancer

Accept care: For the part of you that is afraid to and needs to speak out. For the ways you are moving out of your comfort zone and into engagement with things that might have terrified you in the past. For the part of you that worries about centering yourself or taking up too much space. For the part of you that truly needs to center yourself sometimes and is looking for appropriate places to do so. For how big the feelings are. For how few spaces seem able to hold them.

Leo

Accept care: For the part of you that feels very young and unprotected. For the ways you perform competence and cool when you’d rather stay home and stay in bed. For however your family failed you, dramatically or incidentally, when you were learning how to regulate your nervous system — aka feel safe in this world. For the ways that love and belonging can feel circumstantial, like you need to keep performing a self that deserves love. For that part of you that fears what will happen if you stop performing.

Virgo

Accept care: For the conversations you keep having in your head where you say the perfect thing and then someone else finally understands and changes their position. For the pressure you put on yourself to be able to name and notice and debate and persuade. For all the things you’re tracking that seem to be getting lost, flattened, distorted beyond recognition. For your powerful need to be helping and equally powerful doubt that what you’re doing really helps. For the part of you that won’t let yourself rest.

Libra

Accept care: For the part of you that wants both justice and peace. For how much you’re holding that you don’t often speak about. For the part of you that just wants to feel secure in your own life, and the part of you that judges that first part. For the part of you that holds multiple opposing perspectives and doesn’t know what to do about that. For the nagging fear you have that you should be doing more, as though it’s solely up to you to fix all things.

Scorpio

Accept care: For the part of you that needs love to come with honesty and has chosen to walk away from dishonest relationships. For the loneliness that comes from that choice. For the ways others have read you as intimidatingly independent when really you’re looking for trustworthy intimacy. For how long it’s taken you to know yourself as well as you do now, and for how hard it is to forgive yourself for things you did before you knew yourself quite so well.

Sagittarius

Accept care: For the part of you that wants to tune out everything and just go hike the Pacific Crest trail or take an impulsive trip to a country where you don’t know anyone and wander around for a solid month. For all that you can’t hold in your waking mind and need to squirrel away into your dreams. For how important it feels to keep believing in a better future and how impossible it feels to believe in a better future. For what you couldn’t protect. For what you had to leave.

Capricorn

Accept care: For the ways your friends and comrades are disappointing you, even if they’re doing the most not to. For your vision of how things ought to work and the reality of how they’re mostly not working. For the part of you that wants to retreat to cynicism and stop trying to organize or collaborate or come to the protests or public meetings. For the part of you that can’t stop trying. For the ways you can see farther than many around you, and how that’s no guarantee they’ll understand when you try to show them.

Aquarius

Accept care: For all the ways you need to keep hustling and grinding. For the parts of you that wish you could be living an entirely different life, and for the parts of you that take some pleasure in how hard you can work or how much you can accomplish, and then feel uneasy about that pleasure. For whatever peace you’ve made with your own limitations and the part of you that wishes you could push past them. For the part of you that is learning to forgive past you for the mistakes they made so that present and future you don’t have to.

Pisces

Accept care: For the part of you that would rather time travel, smoke weed, or watch a movie than show up to the world as it is right now, thank you very much. For the yearning for a more beautiful existence that once felt much nearer than it does now. For the private world you need to create to come back to center, and how that centering feels harder now than it once did. For the ease with which you reach for escape without it actually feeling restorative. For the ways your intuition or imagination or compassion seem to be struggling like a car running out of gas and you have no idea where the next gas station is. For the part of you that feels alone with all this when you are anything but.

What Dish Should You Bring to Friendsgiving/The Potluck Based on Your Sign?

Holigays 2023

It’s that time of year where queers of every Zodiac sign gather for anti-Thanksgiving, for Friendsgiving, for a fall or autumnal celebration or for a fundraising potluck because we still want to gather but not in the name of genocide at a time when many of us have time off from work. This installment of Trashology is for the as-of-yet undecided, where I will suggest something that you can bring to the potluck/gathering/D&D dinner and a game of your choosing this coming week, all based on your Zodiac (sun) sign.

Aries

Seitan Roast

Hail seitan! Aries, whether you’re vegan or crushing on a vegan or just in the mood to challenge yourself, I see you making something that almost shirks convention — a seitan roast. Sure, it’s vegan, but it’s still decidedly a centerpiece, and while you may not be as known for seeking attention as your fellow fire sign, Leo, you certainly still enjoy it. And you’ll get that attention, too, if you can pull off making seitan from scratch! In my opinion, this is not easy.

(You also might want to bring a can of cranberry sauce because you genuinely like it and it reminds you of your childhood in a way that is comforting.)

Taurus

Macaroni and Cheese

Comfort. Coziness. Macaroni in the pot. That’s you, Taurus — and it’s also what you’re bringing to your Sagittarius friend’s gathering. I don’t eat cow dairy, so had to ask the team what they’re favorite recipes are for you, dear Taurus, and they had Some Thoughts: Kayla our Managing Editor uses this anti-recipe for macaroni and cheese, Carmen, our Editor-in-Chief follows this recipe when she wants something fancy that takes effort and this recipe when she doesn’t have “Martha Stewart time.” If she REALLY does not have time, Carmen will use this recipe which she outlined coveniently for y’all! Riese, our co-founder and Senior Editor, likes this macaroni and cheese recipe that uses three cheeses. Kayla noted the gruyere was one of her favorite cheeses to use. Finally, if you’re vegan or dairy-free, there is still plenty of information out there on how to make a creamy and comforting vegan mac. Listen, so many of our gay hearts can be reached through our stomachs, but for you Taurus, that’s especially true, and making comfort food to share with your friends is one of the truest ways you show your love.

Gemini

Milk Punch

Air signs are all weird, actually. I know when it comes to the Zodiac that Gemini doesn’t usually get the Weird rep when Aquarius is around to be such an ALIEN about things, but listen, you’re an odd duck, often shirking convention in your own way, liking what you like, and maybe bringing an alcoholic beverage called a Milk Punch to the gathering. Who knows!

Cancer

Brussels Sprouts (with Balsamic)

Much like your hard exterior disguises a rich, complex interior, Cancer, the idea and stigma around brussels sprouts (apparently because they used to be more bitter but are less so now!) keeps us from going deeper, realizing something way tastier. Balsamic vinegar and brussels sprouts are incredibly, deeply gay for each other, and here’s a recipe to prove it. I think that whatever you bring, whether it’s these balsamic brussels sprouts or another dish, it’ll either be an adult version of a childhood favorite or a completely transformed and accessible version of something usually considered an acquired taste.

Leo

Cheese Ball and Crackers

Leo, the holidays stress you out just as much as the next person, but when you get in the room and see all your favorite people there, you’re in your element. Your favorite time is the period before everyone sits down to tuck in, the hour or two of catching up with drinks and snacks, so you’re bringing some pre-dinner snacks with you! You really DO want to know how everyone’s DIY project or kids or grad school or rugby team is doing. If you’re going for some EXTRA nostalgia and the specific feeling of getting to eat something only once or twice a year, might I recommend revisiting the classic cheese ball and crackers? It’ll be a hoot!

Virgo

Mashed Potatoes

Virgo, you are making mashed potatoes — but done Exactly Right. You’re a perfectionist, Virgo, but not a blatant show-off. No, your satisfaction will come when someone inevitably mutters these are the best mashed potatoes they’ve ever tasted, and you’ll know they’re not just saying that, because you are going to — even if it isn’t mashed potatoes exactly — take a simple dish and do it so well it’s an art form. Kayla recommends this mashed potato guide, and Carmen reiterated the key is an obscene amount of butter and also to use heavy cream. Kayla said she sometimes uses sour cream, and her “secret” ingredient is horseradish.

Libra

Latkes (samosa-spiced) or Something Similarly Complex

You’re making something that people might not expect, because you like to both delight people and catch them off guard! You’re definitely here for something complex, pretty, and above all — a recipe you can guarantee no one else is bringing. (Yes, there was a shared doc and a group chat, but you know there will always be someone who doesn’t listen, and you’d rather have your cavity stuffed with bread than be the one bringing the less-appetizing apple pie.) That’s why you’ve committed to peeling and shredding and chopping and frying and are bringing something that’ll be gorgeous on the palate and will leave your kitchen in ruins like these samosa-spiced latkes with pear chutney. And hey, that’s the beauty of someone else hosting. You can leave the dishes in the sink, focus on getting ready for the party, and worry about them later when you’re fueled by all the compliments you’re going to receive on your contribution.

Scorpio

Scary-Face Pie

You’re not ready for Halloween to be over, and you’ve got the pie to prove it. This is so scary, bud, but I would be into it, and gays love Halloween so I do think if your Scorpio self wants to bring a “scary face” apple or cherry pie to the function, you’ll get some rave reviews. Plus, it’s very you. Be sure to wear black. You’ll look stunning. Bonus points if you engage in some light knife play before cutting into this beaut.

Sagittarius

Roast Turkey

You’re hosting, and you’ve also told everyone you’re roasting a whole turkey. A WHOLE TURKEY. You’ve got the whole day planned around this, though, including the entire vibe you will be feeling as you simultaneously attempt to make sure the turkey comes out just right AND flit around your apartment cleaning AND curate the perfect playlist. I’m exhausted for you, but as a Sag rising and moon, I also know you’re in your happy place! Anyway, if you’re looking for a recipe, I don’t think I’ve ever forgotten the episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown taught me how to roast a turkey.

Capricorn

Pot Brownies

Everyone is always like “Capricorns are like Bette Porter,” “Capricorns are one of the hardest working Zodiac signs,” “Capricorns never stop,” and yes, actually, these things are on point. But no matter what you’re working hard at (and you tend to tackle whatEVER you’re doing head on and thoroughly), you bring the same level of rigor to your play time. If you’re off work, if you’re eating and enjoying company, you’re going to elevate the occasion. That’s why I think you’re bringing pumpkin pot brownies (the pumpkin’s seasonal).

Aquarius

Creative Simple Syrups

You’re toting along some wild simple syrups that you have made from local ingredients you (sustainably, ethically, safely) foraged…and also sparkling water, so people can make sodas! You’re probably bringing these in still-sticky mason jars, because you’re more function than form a lot of the time, but that’s okay! It still tastes awesome. Just please label them. If it’s your vibe, you also brought some booze to mix in. In your mind, you know everyone else is going to be showing up to win when it comes to food, but you, dear water bearer, are into making sure there’s something interesting filling up every person’s cup, too. Plus, you like to make sure that your friends who aren’t drinking still have something adult and seasonal to sip. That’s the kind of considerate you are — seeing what other people might not think to account for. You also brought a boxed Tofurkey to heat up.

Pisces

Tinned Fish

Pisces, I love you, and also you have managed to run yourself ragged once again. Somewhere between either being hyper-social or turning yourself into a human blanket burrito, you didn’t really prepare. But not to worry, my watery friend, because everyone loves tinned fish and it’ll make a great protein-based appetizer to keep everyone happy until the main event. It’s also a very nice thing to bring to a gathering!

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for November 2023

In astrology, Scorpio is associated with crisis response. It’s the sign that helps us access our emotional courage so we can move toward what is scary, ideally to facilitate a healing transformation. Many clients I’ve worked with who have strong Scorpio energy in their charts are activists, therapists, social workers, acupuncturists, death doulas, and one even worked in municipal waste management. Scorpio moves towards what we as a culture don’t want to see — oppression, ecological disaster, pain, illness, trauma, death, shit. The goal is to understand what help we can bring, and to witness and grieve what we cannot help. As a water sign, Scorpio values emotional intelligence. If we’re going to heal, we need to feel. And feeling can sometimes be unbearable.

As we move into this Scorpio season the crisis that is most on my mind and that I can’t escape in my dreams or in the news or on social media is the one in Israel and Gaza. It is rippling out into my communities, grief and pain and fear polarizing people in support of only Israelis or only Palestinians, as though we cannot hold the full humanity of everyone affected. The highest goal of Scorpio is to be able to face what is monstrous in ourselves — the ways we dehumanize others, the ways we perpetuate harm or oppression. In facing our own most dangerous qualities, we have the opportunity to disarm them with care and skill. The shadow side of Scorpio is the need to control, dominate, and retaliate when hurt or scared. In the years I’ve studied conflict work, it is the need to be right and to take revenge that has most interfered with restorative justice. I have no political vision for solving this crisis, but I know that each of us has the capacity to be foregrounding care for the larger whole. As a Jew, I know my liberation is bound up with the liberation of Palestinians. I stand with calls for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation, while knowing both are just initial steps towards real restorative justice. And my grief right now is for all of us.

Scorpio shows us what we, as a culture, don’t want to see. When we don’t have the space or support to emotionally process this, we can easily leap toward the need to be right, to know what to do, to feel that whatever actions we take are justified. I’m taking the actions that feel ethical and important in this moment, but I’m also taking the time I need to process what I’m feeling and have discernment before I act.

We are still in eclipse season until the Scorpio New Moon on November 13th, so remember that your feelings, all of our feelings, are heightened right now and our fear responses are turned up high. When we are gripped by fear, empathy is hard to muster. As much as possible, I encourage you to find spaces to feel your feelings and come back to a place of empathic discernment this month. This doesn’t mean that I’m counseling passivity or a lack of resistance to injustice. You may act in ways that are disruptive, that have high stakes for you and others, but I hope you do this from a place of care rather than fear.

My books are open for new and returning clients this month, so get in touch. For a day-by-day highlight of all the astrology of this month you can join me on Patreon for only $2 a month. I’m also intermittently on Instagram and hard at work finishing the guidebook for our upcoming oracle deck, Wild Chorus.

Aries

Find the courage to let things change. You’re good at making changes when you need to, but not always as ready to witness and participate in processes of change you didn’t initiate. This month is a good time to notice what’s different, what’s over, what’s ending, and what’s in the process of beginning. Just make sure you don’t jump over all those other parts to get to the new beginning.

Taurus

Find the courage to encounter difference without shutting down your heart. Notice what level of difference you can accommodate right now — if you’re feeling scared or angry you may have lower tolerance than usual. Reach for what feels like a growth edge, but not a traumatic challenge. Practice empathy the way you’d practice lifting weights: a little bit every day, gradually increasing the challenge. And remember that empathy isn’t passivity, isn’t taking on someone else’s values, isn’t excusing or justifying their actions. Empathy is merely honoring our shared humanity, our shared capacity for love and pain.

Gemini

Find the courage to do what’s needed. Stress often presses on you to distract yourself, which can be a useful strategy for self-soothing until it becomes its own kind of trap. Notice when you’re at capacity and need to tap out, but also notice when you need to re-engage. Showing up for small, humble, useful actions is where it’s at right now. No need to spin out into all possible futures, or the biggest, grandest gesture.

Cancer

Find the courage to talk about how you’re feeling. It may feel easier most days to have your feelings alone, or with just the one or two people you usually reach to for support. But this Scorpio season is pushing you into greater self-expression. This can seem intimidating, but it may also expand your networks of mutual care. Seek out people and places that are organized around shared grief, and bring what is true for you.

Leo

Find the courage to feel your vulnerability. Notice where you get self-protective, and if what you’re reaching for to protect yourself is actually doing the job. Allow times of retreat and downtime. Find sanctuary. Find your courage to act from the recognition that you, and all of us, deserve safety.

Virgo

Find the courage to speak your truth. Even if it’s only in your journal or to your therapist, there are things you’ve been afraid to say that need to be said. Because speaking publicly right now can feel high stakes, remember that you don’t need to have the widest platform or the hottest take. Start talking in a context where it’s okay to make mistakes and be messy (i.e., not on social media). Let yourself learn as you go. Just begin somewhere.

Libra

Find the courage to prioritize being well-resourced. Know what enough means for you, whether it’s enough time, connection, money, food, knowledge. Know when you have enough to share. You are often quick to over-identify with another’s needs over your own. Remember that sustainable mutual aid requires you to also receive.

Scorpio

Find the courage to know yourself. Know what you love and value. Know what you fear, and how you respond when you’re scared. Know what you’re capable of. Know your history. Know your capacity. Know your needs. Know your boundaries. Know how you feel and how you care for those feelings. Know that you are lovable and worthy in all your complexity. Offer that same love to other messy humans (with whatever boundaries you need in place).

Sagittarius

Find the courage to not know what to do. You like to believe that your politics, your tactics, and your understanding of complex issues are all impeccably correct. There’s a “if only everyone else could understand what I do” kind of despair that may arise when you see people making terrible choices. This month, foreground the profound mystery that is other people and how we manage our differences. Acknowledge and honor the parts of you that you don’t understand, can’t name, that are mysterious and beneath the surface. Allow uncertainty a place on your altar.

Capricorn

Find the courage to be a part of the larger whole. A part of you likes to hang back, assessing and critiquing. That assessment and critique are necessary, but bring them where they can do some good. You are often more comfortable working solo if you can’t guarantee that everyone around you is equally competent — find a way to be part of something larger than yourself right now without taking on more work than your own, and without needing everyone else to have your skills.

Aquarius

Find the courage to be who you are in public. This may be high risk, so be thoughtful and strategic as you do so. Choose your words, choose your audience, have a specific goal in mind. Have an aftercare plan. Your values around collectivity are especially needed right now, and there’s a perspective only you can bring to the people who are paying attention to you.

Pisces

Find the courage to learn more. What’s happening globally, locally, interpersonally, even within you — it’s all more complex than it appears at first glance. Prioritize thought and research. Seek out dissenting opinions. Make room for nuance and complexity. Take time to understand what you can, and recognize what you don’t yet understand.

What Three Horror Movies Capture Your Evil Essence, According to Your Sign

It’s Gay Christmas, my dear LGBTQ family, and what would a celebration be without another round of Trashology? That’s right. This column is called Trashology because it’s “pop” astrology, not like, real in-depth astrology. But, no need to fear…yet because we do in fact have a queer astrologer who writes for us! So go get your October horoscopes before they turn into pumpkins!.

And now, I’m going to give you not one, not two, but three horror movies that capture your sign’s evil essence. And when I say evil, I do in fact mean the aspects of your sign that are…less than pleasant. Take a look at both your sun and your rising sign, if you dare to peek behind the curtain and stare into the abyss that is your shadow side. Is this in any way an endorsement of these movies or an implication that they’re good, bad or otherwise? No, this is about the energy these horror flix bring and how the evil aspects of your zodiac sign are matching that energy. Much like drawing three Tarot cards in a reading to get a sense of a situation from multiple sides (and I am, in fact, a Tarot reader with 20+ years of experience), we are looking at three movies that reflect your sign’s nefarious side, the skeletons in your closet (or maybe deep freezer), the monster under the mask. This is maybe more trick than treat, so, in advance, you’ve been warned!

Aries

Bodies, Bodies, Bodies

Spoiler warning: This is about the twist. It’s not immoral in and of itself to jump quickly to conclusions, Aries, but your tendencies to make assumptions and to, at times, assume bad faith intentions on the part of others can lead to disastrous consequences! Like nearly everyone at your party getting killed! Also, Pete Davidson gives off Aries vibes, even though I looked him up and he’s a Scorpio. So, bonus points for that.

The Purge films, all of them.

The concept of “The Purge” sounds like something my dad, an Aries, would come up with when trying to imagine a way to solve societal issues. He’d be like “universal healthcare…and maybe a purge.” That’s Aries energy, sorry. Why do you always feel like a hammer and like everything looks like a nail? Your blanket solutions are not really going to solve anything longterm, and likely, they’ll make things worse. Also, though, the absolutely ham-fisted anti-Capitalist-ish eat-the-rich-ish bent of these movies likely also speaks to your fiery heart, dear Aries. But you know, maybe think twice before metaphorically declaring THE PURGE in your life. I know you won’t listen, but you know, had to say it.

The Omen

Sometimes you can really keep up that innocent act, Aries, when you are in fact, plotting and scheming and up to no good. I don’t know if it’s because you do in fact have charm and a youthful charisma, but you can genuinely make people forget today that you were only just calling for The Purge yesterday. When you’re at your worst, you absolutely give off Antichrist — but dressed up as a little kid.

Taurus

Midsommar

You long for structure, and you’re stubborn as heck, so, surface level, you’d be truly at home in the cult in Midsommar. However, what we’re here to talk about Taurus, is how deep down, you long for someone else to do your dirty work for you. You like to put on a big show about sticking up for yourself, but sometimes you can’t get out of your head and you find yourself assuming a more passive role, avoiding confrontation. But when that happens, you’re more than willing to engage in an unhealthy codependency with other people or even a whole cult who will help propel the confrontation forward. The problem, though, is there’s no nuance, is there, when you both ask for and give unwavering loyalty against the people you consider your enemies. Your ex sucked, sure, but they aren’t pure evil. I’m not sure they deserve what your friends have planned for them, Taurus. Maybe you just should’ve talked!

I Know Who Killed Me

Your capacity for holding really petty grudges can get the best of you, Taurus! (And then Lindsay Lohan is going to come get you, sorry.) Like, the revenge situation against Lindsay Lohan’s one character in this is so wild? I believe her offense was…not playing piano? So her piano teacher kidnaps her??? That’s you at your worst, Taurus. Calm down.

The Blair Witch Project

This movie has the energy of a bunch of earth signs yelling at each other while camping in bad weather. If you’re going to do a group project, Taurus, you need to remember you actually are not a very chill sign and you have a short fuse and a tendency to lash out when your blood sugar is low. Pack plenty of snacks, take breaks, and maybe don’t plan a multi-day camping / hiking excursion to find a local witch with some classmates because you know what? You’re going to get grumpy.

Gemini

M3GAN

Geminis are GREAT friends. But also, you don’t deal with rejection well. You might appear to have a healthy attitude about it, but I know it secretly eats you alive. You might channel this into working harder, making new friends and connections, or working on your “glow up,” but at the end of the day, being told “no” under the wrong circumstances is sure to send you over the edge. You’re not unlike M3gan, in that way. You should be perfect. You want to be perfect. But other people aren’t letting you be perfect!

Sissy

When people talk about watching out for Geminis, I think they’re often referring to the way you can weave a narrative, spin a personal story or present yourself just the way you like to be seen. This is even more pronounced over social media. In the darkest recesses of your heart, Gemini, you’re tempted to be like Sissy, to take a short-cut around authenticity and to just construct a mask that serves your goals, instead.

Us

You creep! Both of Lupita Nyong’o’s characters in Us, besides the twinning aspect that runs through this film, capture the heart of what can make Geminis so chilling. You, Gemini, can commit to a bit so well that I can never be sure that you’re really who you say you are, that you really feel the way you claim to feel, what you’re actually thinking, deep down. You’ve got layers upon layers and only the first few are penetrable. We just have to hope that deep down, we’re in your good books.

Cancer

Suspiria (2018)

Yes, Cancer, the Witch Mommi vibes of Suspiria suit you, but this is about the evil that lurks within you, which is not the same as the hot witch. Cancer, it’s one thing not to let people in past your hard exterior, to keep your secrets and your spells to yourself. It’s an entirely other thing to want the facade of whatever realm you’ve taken ownership of to appear perfect, no matter what’s going on behind the scenes. The problem with this, dear Cancer, is that when you invite other people into this space — a home, a friend group, a relationship, a workplace, whatever it might be — they only know about the good parts and the good parts appear so much grander than the drawbacks. This leaves the unsuspecting people who’ve been drawn in by your cookie cutter presentation vulnerable to stumbling, to getting hurt. You’ve constructed a dancing school and painted it with prestige, but what’s inside? Witches, pain, sacrifice, and people who should be caring but who actually have their own agendas. It’s a bit evil because it’s a bit selfish, isn’t it, and because it’s not treating the people around you like they’re humans, adults who deserve to know the whole truth.

Superhost

The killer in this one (spoilers, the superhost) gives me Cancer energy when a Cancer is at their most frenetic, least secure. The host is simultaneously bubbly and nosy, over-attentive and invasive and, for whatever reason, obsessed with the running of her small business. Deep down, Cancer, I know there are times where you want to conveniently “forget” other peoples’ boundaries and just jump in there and Make Everything Perfect already because obviously you know best!

What Keeps You Alive

A Cancer that gets tired of harboring watery feelings might get so into building up their defenses that they take it too far, that they stop feeling altogether. The murderous Jackie explains to Jules that she never had any feelings. A Cancer that gives into the temptation to be all hardness, to reject their inner softness, their crab rangoon filling, is a dangerous person.

Leo

Pearl

“I’m a star!” We know. We know. We’re sorry. Please don’t hurt me! You, Leo, at your worst, can get quite upset when the world doesn’t see the talent, the sparkle, the shine you so clearly see in yourself. But the world doesn’t revolve around you! I’m sorry!

Creep

Much like the creep in Creep, you can also be overbearing when you let your ego get the best of you. You want to control every detail, and that includes what other people are doing around you. But please, PLEASE don’t make anyone film you having “tubby time.”

The Hunger

When you’re into someone, Leo, you’re into them, focused on them, loyal to them. But if you’re not careful, you’ll wind up promising the world to to someone you’re not that serious about. And, while they may not be cursed to an eternity of withering and decay like David Bowie is in this movie when Catherine Deneuve moves onto Susan Sarandon (an understandable choice), they’re certainly going to have their heart broken. Naughty of you!

Virgo

Perfect Blue

This psychological thriller about a pop idol struggling as she starts to pursue a career as an actress is terrifying even though it’s animated, and so is your ability to wear yourself down to a nub with your relentless self-criticism. When you turn your critical eye to yourself, it can feel like you’re haunting yourself, taunting yourself, holding yourself up to impossible standards and flagellating yourself when you fall short. You’re your own tormenter, Virgo. It’s pretty scary.

Sick

Judgey judgey! Spoilers: In this movie, the killer(s) pursue people who aren’t taking COVID quarantine and social distancing protocol seriously. The fact that they’ve taken this vigilante justice on themselves? It’s a lot! When unchecked, your self-righteousness can turn into a weapon you’re wielding against others, Virgo.

The Saw Movies

Stop! Judging! People! You could use to remind your inner Jigsaw that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

Libra

The Ring

First of all, we KNOW you can’t resist showing other people a video you found. Second of all, that moment in the movie where Naomi Watts’ character briefly convinces herself that Samara is in fact just a ghost in need of saving and not inherently evil — Libra move. Sometimes people just have bad intentions, Libra! You gotta learn to spot it so you don’t wind up at the bottom of some well hugging a girl who’s about to be making VHS tapes in a world of DVDs. And maybe if you were a bit more aware and didn’t give into your people pleasing tendencies so often, you wouldn’t feel the need to overcompensate by cutting people out when you’ve finally decided that they’ve hurt you too much. This! Isn’t! Balance!

Swarm (I know it’s a TV series, but it’s basically a long movie)

Listen, Libra, you give up on people and cut them out of your life (hopefully not as literally as Dre does in Swarm, but hey you do you) too easily sometimes! You pretend you’re a fair and balanced person who gives a lot of second chances, and you do and are a lot, but sometimes…you just nope right out of a relationship, never speak to someone EVER AGAIN. It’s not healthy! I know they did you wrong, but you are just going “snip snip snip” and if you keep trimming, what are you going to have left?

Carrie

The tragedy behind the ending of Carrie is that there were a few people making fun of her, a decent number of people who felt neutral about Carrie, and a few people starting to care about her, and then she freaks out and burns just about everyone because she hasn’t done any work on her trauma and she doesn’t know how to direct her hurt. Better to burn it all down than suffer any further! Libra, sometimes you’re trying to balance the scales, to see both sides of something, but woah when the scales tip too far, or, even worse, when someone takes a stab at (or dumps a bucket of pig’s blood on) your ego, you will burn a bridge (school).

Scorpio

Hellraiser (2022)

Scorpio, when you don’t remember that other people are their own people, you can be just like a cenobite. Not everyone likes the exact same things you do, and they don’t suck if they don’t! Just because you’re into something niche or dark or scary, it doesn’t make you better than other people. But in that sharp, scorpion mind of yours, you might let yourself feel superior and that will keep you lonelier than anything — and hurt other peoples’ feelings in the process. But it’s a self-perpetuating cycle isn’t it? You distance yourself because you think you’re better, and then you have to think you’re better to explain why you feel so alone.

Lamb

Scorpio, we know you’re loyal. You’re amazing for that. However, sometimes, you put up with too much from a partner and you let things go too far. You would totally just quietly accept a little soft butch lamb/human hybrid that you believe your partner fathered in an act of bestiality and raise it as your own without breaking up with them. But what’s wrong with you??? Don’t you want better for yourself? Wake up, Scorpio!

The Strangers

It’s the fucking worst when you can’t tell what a Scorpio’s thinking or why they hate you so much! Or if they hate you! Maybe this is just their face! Throughout this movie, there’s no reason given as to why these three masked people are terrorizing and torturing this couple. You can lock your reasoning and your feelings away in a vault, Scorpio, but it doesn’t keep you safe, it just keeps you from others.

Sagittarius

The Evil Dead

You would open the book. You would read the book. You would be all like “Hey, guys! I found a book! And some records! A lot of cool stuff down here! Kind of creepy though! I’m gonna put it on Instagram,” because you also can’t resist letting everyone else know how smart and inquisitive you are. You’re also into Eldritch horrors and I do suspect that you kind of want to fuck them? Like you feel as sexual about monsters as they feel about you? Also, giggling and mocking someone else with your knowledge like a deadite is a Sagittarian vibe. Your desire, your insatiable need to be the smartest or most interesting person in the room might sometimes be cleverly disguised, but I think we all know what’s going on (and it’s not that you have ancient and ineffable arcane knowledge).

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Sagittarius, you’re fun and all, but you’re not always the most honest. If I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt, then I might think that you genuinely believe others are in on the game, in on the joke. But your desire to manipulate another person’s reality with your words isn’t a game someone else can consent to if they haven’t been let in on the fact that they’re playing, Sagittarius.

Ju-on

You’re really the least scary of the fire signs, dear Sag. When a Sag is dealing with someone who hurt them, then much like the ghost in this movie, you’re inclined toward revenge, sure, and you might even get it, but you’re also going to be a miserable sad sack the whole time. For you, anger and despair are often intertwined. How dare someone interrupt your carefree adventures in order to cause you hurt?! You’re no stranger to crying rage tears. Dear Sagittarius, take care of yourself out there. Because this isn’t it.

Capricorn

The VVitch

Dost thou like the taste of butter? Yes. You are grabbing that quill. You are signing that book. You are done with this dull life. Capricorn, you’re always after something better, something tastier, something that more exciting. At your worst, it doesn’t matter to you who you discard on the way, who you hurt, who you betray.

The Babadook

You didn’t talk about your feelings and now your depression is a Literal Monster. At least he’s a gay icon. You should work on that though, and also on not making your issues other peoples’ issues in a projection kind of way.

It Follows

When you’re pissed off Capricorn, you’re relentless, like a dog with a bone. I suppose you’re just applying the same level of commitment that you do to any other task, but making sure, really making sure, that whoever you’re upset with gets the message that you are in fact now their enemy, really does get kind of scary, especially when you don’t leave well enough alone when it’s been time to leave things alone. Stop stalking your ex on Instagram, at the very least!

Aquarius

Host

Not enough people talk about your flakiness, dear Aquarius, but here’s the thing, you don’t always flake, but when you do flake, it’s epic and it can leave a lot of people in a lurch, probably because you’ve promised a lot. And then you’ll just be like “oopsie” or deny that it was even that bad! Much like the medium in Host who opens a PORTAL to the SPIRIT REALM that allows a MURDER DEMON through and into everyone’s homes via a Zoom call, and who then peaces out because her internet isn’t working, you, Aquarius, can sometimes have a dangerous relationship with [not] taking responsibility.

Videodrome

Aquarius, you’ve got a god complex, for one, and that god complex can lead you to treating the world like your own personal psy-op. But have you ever considered not trying to MK-Ultra everyone and to, instead, maybe make some friends? No? You’re going to become a cult leader, instead? Because you’re too smart and visionary and brilliant to have friends, you’re supposed to have followers? Great.

The Mothman Prophesies

You were right! Like Mothman, you warned everyone, they didn’t understand or didn’t listen, and then they learned the hard way that you were in fact right. The problem, Aquarius, and the thing that it wouldn’t hurt to set your ego aside (as we’ve been discussing) and unlearn, is the fact that you don’t have a shred of empathy for the people who didn’t listen to you, even though you cared to warn them at one point! Do you only care about people when they tell you how smart you are, and is that then really care?

Pisces

The Descent

Not everyone realizes that a Pisces can be super reckless, but y’all have it in you, and you’ll take everyone down with you, too! You can lie just long enough to get everyone together in an unmapped cave, and then next thing you know, it’s all broken bones and carnivorous cave creatures. The risks you take aren’t just risks that affect you, Pisces! You and others are not immortal or indestructible even though sometimes you forget that. Be more considerate and careful with other people and their lives!

Possession

Even if you’ve never been married, I feel like all Pisces carry a “divorced” energy to them. Maybe it’s because you’re an old (divorced) soul. But the reason this movie is here, Pisces, is because when you decide to cut someone out of your life, it is so sudden and the silent treatment you’re capable of is monstrous. You know how to add in other elements, like glaring, crying diabolically, all sorts of things to really amp up the discomfort. Terrifying of you.

The Lure

This dreamy, watery, artsy, mermaid horror film has Big Pisces Energy. It also, because it’s based on the original telling of The Little Mermaid, has a story of unrequited love, of codependency, of pining. Pisces, you’re at your most destructive (and self-destructive) when you’ve decided to fixate on a person. You’ll convince yourself that they’ll solve all your problems, and then next thing you know you’re getting surgery to replace your mermaid tail with legs for a situationship that doesn’t even treat you right. This is not a noble quality Pisces! It’s not serving you or others to let yourself live in limerence like this.

Thank you for reading and for consenting to being read. Don’t worry, I don’t actually think you’re evil. Oh, and if it makes you feel good to know that you’re giving off Elvira energy this Halloween, then you, in fact, are. And, and, and if anyone wanted to grace me with a photo of their pets dressed up for Halloween in the comments, for absolutely no reason, I wouldn’t say no!

via GIPHY

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for October 2023

There is a common misconception about Libra energy that it is “peaceful.” As we move into this fairly dramatic Libra season I’d like to reframe that. Libra is interested in restoring balance. Often, this means listening to the voices that aren’t speaking as loudly as others or aren’t even in the room. Libra’s goal may be peace, but it’s just as likely to be justice. And you know how the protest chant goes: no justice, no peace. When your focus is justice, you may create friction and conflict merely by naming the elephant in the room (or the elephant not invited to the room). At its best, Libra helps us include and integrate what’s been excluded and marginalized. Libra’s favorite tactic is diplomacy: how can we find common ground even in situations where it’s hard to agree? How do we foster a shared willingness to do the hard work together? What happens when we’re willing to listen, even when we disagree? Libra’s super power is always tracking the “we” over the “me.”

We are also in eclipse season, with both a solar eclipse on the 14th and a lunar eclipse on the 28th. Eclipses are a cosmic record scratch, a time when the ordinary flow and continuity of time, as we experience it by the cycles of the Sun and Moon, is disrupted. Eclipses can feel alarming and jarring, like walking into a room where the lights go out suddenly. With the second eclipse happening so close to Samhain/Halloween, I recommend treating eclipse season like a haunted house — things may jump out at you, but they aren’t actually going to hurt you. Eclipses help us see our lives differently and make changes. Often, what surfaces can seem surprising, like a lawn suddenly dotted with mushroom caps after a heavy rain. The hidden world is revealing a part of itself, and often what feels so scary is just remembering how much is always happening that we can’t see or predict.

Ordinarily eclipses happen in opposite zodiac signs, but as we’re shifting from Taurus-Scorpio eclipses to Aries-Libra eclipses, this month we’re straddling the two. Our first eclipse will be in Libra, the second in Taurus. That means both eclipses will be ruled by Venus, who spends this month in repair-oriented Virgo.

As Venus was so recently retrograde, we’ve spent several months this year deep in relationship-resources-creativity-values review. Many of us have ended relationships that weren’t working, recommitted to sustainable and ethical spending, taken an inventory of our true values, and put to rest old creative projects or mediums that were no longer the right fit. This month’s eclipse season won’t undo all of that work, but it will expose any cracks we hadn’t yet noticed. Again, it doesn’t make these cracks. If your relationships are mostly caring and respectful, eclipse season won’t turn you or your beloved into a monster. If you’re enjoying becoming a YA novelist after years in academia, the eclipses won’t rob you of that joy. All they do is help us see more clearly whatever has been hidden. And when I say “help,” I mean jump out of a closet and yell “Boo!” or rather “Boo! And by the way have you considered that when you minimize your real needs in order to keep the peace in your relationship, you are weakening its foundation of radical honesty?” When you learn something new, lean on that Virgo Venus energy to do what needs doing, whether that’s pruning or mending.

My books are open for readings this month, so get in touch for some personalized care in these chaotic times. And if you are an artist, writer, creative, or maker of any kind you may be interested to know I’m expanding my practice to include Creative Coaching.

So many of my clients are brilliantly creative! Often our sessions stray into creative coaching territory, and I’ve found astrology offers unique tools for overcoming blocks, generating material, clarifying your focus, and knowing when to edit. My books will open for a limited number of coaching clients in January, so get on the list now if you’re interested. You can also find me on Instagram and join me on Patreon for a lot more astro content for less than a dime a day.

Aries

Don’t get too spooked: This eclipse season may have you anxious about security — specifically the stability of ongoing partnerships (platonic or romantic) and a generalized low-level doominess about having enough (love, money, healthcare, clean air, etc.). Pay attention to the information coming your way right now, but promise me you won’t leap to unfounded conclusions and then leap toward supposed solutions that fail to take into account the big picture, okay? And even if you do, be kind to yourself about it. Laugh it off and try again tomorrow.

Taurus

Don’t get too spooked: This month’s eclipses want you to love your body more and appreciate its special strangeness without alarm or shame. It can feel nearly impossible to become an adult in this world without learning to hate your body for some reason or another, and this month is shining a bright light into some of your deepest held stress patterns about who you are, how you inhabit your body, and what that means about who you get to become. As much as possible, resist the story that anything about you isn’t lovable as it is. You may feel inspired to make changes for your own comfort, health, or gender euphoria — can you do this without hating what you’re trying to change? And as you consider bigger changes, maybe postpone committing to them until eclipse season is fully over on November 13th.

Gemini

Don’t get too spooked: You are not past your creative peak. There may not even be such a thing. Don’t get too spooked that your best ideas are in the past or that you’ll never have time to play or explore again. Part of what this eclipse season offers you is opportunities to look into parts of your own mind, heart, and history that you usually ignore. Don’t be afraid to get non-linear, to not have a plan, to experiment with how things feel before you know what they mean. You have weird things to do right now, and you don’t yet know what they are.

Cancer

Don’t get too spooked: Just because something reminds you of your past doesn’t mean the past is repeating itself. This month may bring situations where your self-protective drive goes into high gear, but what you’re reading as a cause for alarm may not be what you think it is. That rapping at the window may just be some tree branches, y’know? When in doubt, crowd source. Your community has things to teach you right now if you’re willing to learn.

Leo

Don’t get too spooked: There’s a disconnect right now between what’s filling your daily life and something big you’re wanting to dedicate your time to. The specter haunting you this month is the fear that you’ll never do that big thing that you know you have it in you to do — that the routine chores of answering emails and navigating bureaucracy will kill your creativity by a thousand small paper cuts. But is it the incessant demands of daily life or is it your own fear to sit down and try? What if you start it and it isn’t any good? That’s a fear worth facing this month, even if you have to wake up early or call in sick to carve out some time. Cut the big thing up into many smaller goals, and see how it feels to do just the first one.

Virgo

Don’t get too spooked: Your worth does not depend on you being brilliant, beautiful, or accomplishing great things. If you are fortunate to live a long life, you’ll have moments of brilliance and changing phases of beauty and may accomplish a few great things. And in between, you will be in a messy and slow process of becoming. Let this, too, be worthy of you. Let your best self be less important than your everyday self. This month’s eclipse may scare you by just showing you how far you are from where you want to be, but resist the idea of failure as some final form. You have so much you’re still exploring, give yourself permission to not know where you’re headed.

Libra

Don’t get too spooked: With the eclipse on the 14th falling in your sign during your damn season, this is a month to LOVE your innate complexity. Make room for all of your parts to be present, visible, and loved. Don’t scrunch your nose in disgust at any of them, if you can help it, and definitely don’t accept anyone else’s unhelpful opinions. This may be a time of big revelations and big decisions, and if so be sure to keep breathing and thinking realistically. You’re not going to make your wisest choices when you’re feeling alarmed, so find ways to move through your startle response (or your panic disorder, as the case may be) with patience and compassion on the way to making meaningful changes for the better.

Scorpio

Don’t get too spooked: In general you are more adept than other signs at looking into the shadows and seeing what other people flinch away from. During this eclipse season, you may find yourself needing to pace yourself. Your tendency is to rush in fully or to wall yourself off, but you’re learning that sustainability requires a slower, steadier pace. Be patient with yourself and with any intimacies that are growing, stabilizing, or changing. Listen to your gut but follow that up with learning more about what other people are experiencing — not to negate your own feelings, but to have better info to act on. Love and trust are always a little scary for you, but this month is trying to help you level up your capacity for building trust with trustworthy people.

Sagittarius

Don’t get too spooked: Your innate optimism has a lesser-known and less fun twin, which is the pessimism that sneaks in when you can’t find your way toward actually believing in a better future. Whether it’s climate change and natural disasters, reactionary legislation, or the rise of fascism worldwide, we aren’t in easy times and they don’t seem about to get easier. But for you, the future is supposed to be your best friend — it is the place where the grass is greener and where all the annoyances and suffocating boredom of your present circumstances will be transformed. I’m giving you a hard time, but in reality your capacity to believe in a better future does help you create one. Hold onto that this month when fear narratives try to twist you toward gloom and doom. The future is still unwritten. You can still help shape it. Remember what you love and keep moving toward it.

Capricorn

Don’t get too spooked: This month can feel a little like those dreams where you’re going on stage but you haven’t memorized your lines. Don’t stress, though: you may be in the spotlight, but you have permission to improvise. This isn’t a time for perfection, but for play. Reach for what you find fascinating and it will make an impact. Don’t succumb to the stress-narrative that control is what keeps you safe — rather, this is a month that rewards creative risks. What did you love doing as a kid? How much can you make room for that right now?

Aquarius

Don’t get too spooked: You have an admirable quality of holding wide open borders for who you consider family — collaborators, comrades, co-conspirators, friends of friends, exes, exes’ new dates — your ideals around friendship insist that all these people matter. And yet, where anxiety can seep in this month is around the very human limitation of time and resources. You may not be able to show up well for every single person you love, and that isn’t a personal failing, but just the nature of reality. Give yourself permission to have an inner circle of favorites and to prioritize them.

Pisces

Don’t get too spooked: There’s a swampy feeling to this month for you, kind of a humid Southern gothic vibe, so watch out for your tendency to play any kind of role in someone else’s drama. Trust that any tragedies or farces unfolding around you doesn’t require your participation, and reach for some mirrored sunglasses to deflect anything directed your way. Meanwhile, you’re toying with some interesting new ideas right now and will need to reach out to the right people who can help you take them further.

The Cozy Under-The-Covers Sex You’re Having This Fall, According to Your Zodiac Sign

Hey there my absolutely down bad zodiac-sign havers. Wondering what kind of queer sex your sign’s going to be having this fall? I’m going to tell you, don’t worry. Take it as a suggestion, by the way, not a prediction. These are goals to lean into, vibes to ascend to, hot thoughts to think. YMMV.

Virgo season is over. And as horny and kinky as Virgoes can tend to be, this season also occurred with a Venus Retrograde, which I’m hearing is all about discovering, learning, accepting the kind of love you need and deserve — and if breakups were involved, facing facts about the kind of treatment you do not deserve. Now, it’s time to put away your to-do lists and get out your Who-To-Do lists because temperatures are dropping, there’s a chill in the air, and Michael’s apparently has pastel Halloween decor on sale.

It’s time for our favorite thing, which is finally being able to sleep under heavy covers again — a gift that climate change is slowly, gradually robbing us of as it shaves off more and more cool nights every year. Might as well enjoy it while we got it, right? Also, Mercury is pulling out of retrograde, so get ready to feel like you can actually communicate again. Which, as a frequent advice giver and editor here at Autostraddle — I can tell you that one thing we will never shut up about is the fact that when it comes to sex and queer sex, communication is key.

So get ready to hop under the covers, rot (hotly) under a weighted blanket, or dive into that pile of stuffies with someone sapphic and sexy and read on for your fall sex horoscope!

Virgo

Hand Sex

Put down your pencils and do your carpal tunnel stretches because we’re getting back to basics. Not only is this a classic for a reason, it’s also coming up for your zodiac sign’s sexy horoscope outlook because this fall, you’re going to want to pay attention to your partner and learning more details about them. With hand sex, fingering your partner, muffing your partner, fisting your partner, or receiving any of these things — the meeting of those sensitive nerve endings under the pads of your fingers and the blood and nerves and energy pulsing under your partner’s skin (or vice versa, can’t leave the bottoms out of this) will teach you so much, about what feels good, about what your partner desires, about where you are, how to be present, and what you want.

Libra

Edging

Libra, you’re not exactly known for your enjoyment of delayed gratification, but as we move out of the recent convergence of retrogrades and embrace intentionality and slowness, there’s no better time to get comfortable under the covers and draw things out, nice and slow. New to the concept? Here’s how to edge. Whether you’re edging yourself during some under-the-covers-autumnal-masturbation, edging a partner or being taken to the brink again and again by someone yourself, this exercise will help you let go of your need to always be thinking three steps ahead. It’s time to be present, Libra, maybe so present you forget your own name.

Scorpio

Putting Your Secret Fantasy Into Words

It’s time to put in the effort to enact a long-thought-about but under-discussed or under-realized fantasy of yours. Whether you’ve been hesitant to explore these thoughts yourself, or you’ve given yourself pause with a partner, it’s time to ask yourself what you’re losing by not opening up the floor to give these ideas some air. You’re a dark Pandora’s box of desire. What’s the worst that could happen if you cracked the lid? Maybe not the best metaphor, but you get it. That thing that’s pulsing inside of you? There’s no better time to whisper it into someone else’s ear than when you’re snug and cuddling under fluffy blankets in the dark. It’s like they can barely see you. And then, who knows, you might just get what you ask for.

Sagittarius

Outdoor Sex

It’s still under the covers… but you’re outside. Under the covers and outside! The covers here might be a sleeping bag, but it still counts! And really, aren’t you under the ultimate cover, the stars and the night sky? There’s something that comforts you deeply about the crisp outdoor air catching on the spit leftover from kissing someone, while your body is toasty and wrapped in your bag. Out here, your roommates aren’t going to hear you moaning. Plus, your hair probably smells like campfire and so does your partner’s. Inhale deeply and appreciate the fact that you’re alive. This activity can be done solo, with a partner, even with one or more friends! And while outdoor sex scratches one itch, the fact that you got away for a little while before winter sets in is sure to do it for your get-up-and-get-out tendencies.

Capricon

Strap-On Sex

You’re a deep one, Capricorn, but you’re also a horny goat who wants to bury yourself deep inside a partner (or experience same). This fall, you’re pitching a tent under the covers as you wear your favorite strap-on harness — or test out a new one — and generate so much friction and heat that you’ll be able to delay turning your thermostat on for yet another night. A lot of people love to rag on the “work hard” aspect of your zodiac sign, but they really should give the “play hard” side you keep wrapped up a chance. Why? Because you’re hot.

Aquarius

Costumed Sex

When it comes to the zodiac signs, dear Aquarius, your thriftiness is oft-overlooked. This fall season, in pursuit of making under-the-covers sex more weird than cozy, your zodiac sign is hitting up the clearance section of your local Spirit and other Halloween stores. What for? You’re on the hunt for creepy contacts, realistic vampire fangs, wigs and body paint and long, sensually scratchy claws. You’re in the mood to invite the monster that lives under your bed up to join you under the covers, to be the monster, to let something nefarious and queer take over your soul and turn you into a cannibalistic succubus or a vampire priest or whatever your heart desires. Your heart does desire some pretty out-there things, though.

Pisces

Sex Inspired By Your Latest Erotic Reading Material

Hey there, friend. I know summer was hard, maybe a little busy, and that you needed some time to escape into some erotica or fanfiction or sensual audio stories. You might even be feeling like that time was lost. Not so. I think you learned a lot about yourself and your desires during. Now, comes the dare. Either share a sensual scenario with a partner or revisit one by yourself — and bring it to life. You wanted to be seduced by a sword-fighting lesbian? Did you know you can roleplay that? Did you listen to a story where someone used a certain technique or toy and found yourself absolutely pulsating thinking about the possibility? It might be time to make it a reality. You’re a dreamer, but under those soft covers, it’s a safe space to weave words from a page into out-loud moans and slippery fluids that feel like the exact opposite of paper when they’re sliding between your fingers.

Aries

Sex With Rope

Babe, I don’t even know if this is special for fall, but you are all about it. You’re spending a little more time indoors, now, maybe practicing your knots. If you’re currently sexing it up solo, self-bondage can be a soothing avenue to explore. And if you’re tying up a partner, it can’t hurt to revisit some classic ties. Plus, all of the tension between the rope and the fabric of the blankets, the comfort and the restraint, will make for some delicious play!

Taurus

A Threesome! (Or Fantasy Thereof.)

That’s right, Taurus, your zodiac sign has the potential to have a threesome if you can actually get everyone else involved on the same page. It’s no time to feel like someone else, even a Virgo or a Capricorn, is going to take the organizational load. They’re off in their own world, dealing with their own stuff. If you want people to step up to the plate and step into your bed, trust that the other adults who are into you might be willing, but you might have to do some admin work to bring the plan home.

Gemini

Morning Sex After Hot Coffee in Bed

It’s a little past your season, you sweet spring babe, and you might be tempted to sleep in. But, hear me out. What if you (maybe with a partner or two) poured yourselves some hot coffee (or tea or beverage of your choosing) and crawled back into bed to flirt while you woke up just enough to manage some sleepy kisses, and then some sleepy hands slipping under the sheets. Bonus: when your friends and coworkers ask about your healthy glow, you get to be a little coy.

Cancer

Sensual Sex While Wearing Robes Fit for Divorcées

It’s getting cold but, Cancer, your zodiac sign is having hot sex any time of the year. People think of you as a crybaby sometimes, and a nurturing figure other times, but they don’t think enough about the fact that when you’re between the sheets, you’re practically a boudoir model. You’re in search of soft or silky or lacy fabrics that make you feel like a deity. Whether you’re topping or pillow royalty, I recommend that you turn your attention to primping your appearance just before sex, so that you can really lean into the fact that it’s fall and your face no longer feels like it’s melting off. You’re trading feeling sweaty and hot for hotness, lighting scented candles, breaking out the massage oils and taking things at a measured steady pace. Maybe take a few photos to save for the winter, for when even poking your head above the covers will feel like a trial. You often worry about the future, but my recommendation is to take that energy, and use it to make memories now that you can hang onto in the long run.

Leo

Butt Stuff

Leo, you’ve been running around all summer, feeling the spotlight shining on you. But now, the spotlight has turned to your butt, or your partner’s butt, or all of the above. New to butt stuff? My dear, brave, Leo. Look no further than this butt toy guide. Anal play need not be about railing or finger-banging or moving quickly. It can also be sensual and spicy — like a Pumpkin Spice Latte! If you’re finding that your under-the-cover sex could be bolder, then it might be a good time to try some impact play. You can always soothe your partner’s peach (or have your partner sooth yours) with soft touches and warm kisses under your quilts and weighted blankets when you’re done. Feeling the distance with your long-term relationship? Start your morning by using the golden hour to take a butt selfie to send them to admire over their morning coffee.

So, what kind of under-the-covers sex are you hoping to have this fall?

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for September 2023

For me, Virgo season always conjures the smell of sharpened pencils and fresh paper. Maybe there’s an open window with the tang of fallen apples and wet leaves coming in. We’re in the golden hour before dusk, before the world loses color and all crisp edges soften. This is a time of readiness, every sense still awake and alert. I like to imagine the fresh paper in front of me as not exactly a second chance but a return. Whatever was on this desk before has been cleaned away, recycled, carried out of the field of vision. What remains is clarity.

If you can’t tell, I’m a Virgo child of the ’80s and back-to-school was legit my favorite season.

I often describe Virgo energy as being able to see both the real world and the ideal world at the same time — holding one in each hand, as it were, and trying to move them closer together, make them overlap a little bit more. This takes not only vision, but action. Virgo is an analytical Earth sign — theories are only as useful as the practices they inform. A core Virgo question: Is this useful? Another: If something is broken, how can I mend it?

In this time of retrogrades (we begin the month with Mercury and Venus both retrograde, as Venus goes direct Jupiter will move retrograde) we may feel more stuck as we hold our pencils ready, encountering this blank page. We may need to close our eyes and smell the breeze coming in, or even wander outside and lie under a tree for awhile to look at the sky. But because this is Virgo season, we are doing this in service to what we’re trying to envision, create, or solve. The shadow side of Virgo is a kind of non-stop hustling, where each small task accomplished offers a rush of endorphins but doesn’t map onto a larger goal or plan. You can look productive, feel accomplished, but be deeply out of touch with your real ideals and what actions help bring your real world closer to that ideal. From that perspective, these retrogrades are a welcome corrective. Wander out into an orchard, not to distract yourself or forget what you’re working toward, but as a necessary part of knowing yourself. There is much in this world that needs mending, but you are only one of many, many menders. Remember this if you get stuck feeling like you just need to write these last ten emails before you can wander outside and remember who you are. The golden hour is now.

And as we complete this Venus retrograde cycle and begin the Jupiter retrograde, we have the first few days of this month to integrate our Venus lessons (relationship needs, how we think about money and resources, how we create art, how we seek out beauty and pleasure) and then turn the page and start asking ourselves Jupiter questions: What do we believe in and why? Are we overly optimistic and ignoring red flags? Or are we veering towards cynicism and quiet despair?

Belief systems can run deep, and when I talk about belief I’m not just talking about believing in a certain religion or astrology or aliens, all the things people ask about when they say “Do you believe in…?” I’m talking about how you might walk around every day believing that you don’t actually deserve love so you should take what you can get. Or the belief that other people are inherently untrustworthy so you need to watch your back and fend for yourself. Or the belief that a certain baseline misery is the best you can expect from life. You get the picture. We pick out certain experiences and wrap a narrative around them, and then project that narrative on the world to protect us from being hurt. Jupiter retrograde gives us a chance to reexamine what experiences we’re extrapolating from, add new ones to the mix, and rewrite some core scripts.

And as this Jupiter retrograde is happening in Taurus, a sign Venus rules, what we’ve been learning throughout Venus retrograde will directly inform how we reexamine our belief systems during Jupiter retrograde. If you and your partner have been fighting about money during Venus retrograde, Jupiter retrograde is going to open a space for you to reconsider what your core beliefs are about money, or capitalism, or what it means to live “a good life” or to reach for security. If you’ve recently broken up with someone, Jupiter retrograde will prompt an inquiry into who you want to be now that you’re single, and what parts of your own worldview might have been hidden and now need to come forward.

Jupiter retrograde helps us reexamine the meaning we make from our lives. Now is an excellent time to ask yourself: Do I still believe X? What is this belief based on? What impact does this belief have on my behavior and happiness? What new experiences have I had that might complicate this belief? How might I expand or change this belief?

Above all, Jupiter in Taurus invites us into the process with luxurious slowness. Don’t let Virgo season hustle you. Lie down under a tree and let the tangled threads of your thoughts gently loosen themselves.

Before my usual sign off this month, I also want to share that my sister and I have created a new oracle deck called Wild Chorus. We’re currently crowdfunding, and we’ve got great rewards including live and pre-recorded card readings with me. If you’ve had an astrology reading with me in the last two years, I’ve pulled a card from this deck for you. I’m so excited to release this magical tool into the wild and start using it more regularly in my client work. You can pick up a deck and support our campaign here.

And on to the usual sign off! I am available for readings so please get in touch. As always I get into far more astro details, including astro weather for important days all month long on Patreon, and to keep up with all the things follow me on Instagram.

Aries

Offer yourself slowness in: Taking action, especially if you’re anxious. Deep-rooted security needs could be waving their arms wildly at you to get your attention, but what you need to feel safe is NOT to rush around putting out a million small fires. Notice what isn’t actually urgent and treat it accordingly. Give yourself room to experiment, try and fail, try again, and give up for the day. Taking a walk to address your restlessness is a far better idea right now than implementing what seems like the perfect solution from a place of anxiety.

Taurus

Offer yourself slowness in: Getting it right. This Jupiter retrograde highlights both your fear of change and your desire for change, but you don’t like to make big changes unless you’re sure what you’re moving toward will be better than what you leave behind. Seems reasonable, but there’s no guarantee you’ll get it right. Give yourself permission this month to move at a slow enough pace to have a good sense of what needs changing and how to do it, but also allow plenty of room for adjustments and adaptation to imperfect conditions. Most importantly, don’t get paralyzed at any part of the process and just give up on what will improve your wellbeing. It may not be perfect, but it could be a little better.

Gemini

Offer yourself slowness in: Healing from something hard. There is no timeline for this, so don’t bother looking over your shoulder at someone who seems to have a similar experiences — whether it’s grief, illness, existential panic, or anything else that’s cropped up in the last year, give yourself the time and space to mourn and to heal. Be gentle, be patient, and flip off anyone who implies you should get over it already or pretend to be for their convenience. Remember, slowness isn’t the same as paralysis and so much healing happens under the surface and in erratic cycles. Give yourself time to encounter your depths and get comfortable there.

Cancer

Offer yourself slowness in: Creating community. If you’ve felt more isolated over the past year, if you’ve moved and still haven’t found your people, or if you’re surrounded by relationships that sometimes feel suffocating or like you’ve outgrown them — whatever your social map looks like right now, you’re reaching for something new in how you feel togetherness. It’s a long process and you may not be anywhere near where you want to be yet. Best practices as you navigate the need for community include a deep dive into how your needs may have changed, and how you’ll recognize your people when you’re with them. Focus on how you want to feel, and what you want to be giving and receiving with others.

Leo

Offer yourself slowness in: Rushing to critique yourself. You can have high standards for yourself and others, but this isn’t the best time to demand perfection. You may be caught up on definitions of success or accomplishment that aren’t right for you, and this is keeping you from seeing what’s alive and interesting and right in front of you. Stop stressing about living up to your highest potential right now or being your most impressive self, and there maybe be something generative and important in the cracks and failures you find. At the very least, this is a time for deepening into self-compassion.

Virgo

Offer yourself slowness in: Knowing what comes next. You are not, in fact, a train conductor peering into the fog while hurtling towards a blank horizon. Knowing what’s coming up right now may soothe your anxiety, but you’ll be missing out on a kind of creative co-participation in your life — your capacity to look within and understand what direction you’d like to head, whether or not that path seems scary. There’s a larger picture that you’re missing right now as you hyperfocus on possible threats and challenges — it’s how to work with what is glorious and powerful and complicated right here and now.

Libra

Offer yourself slowness in: Rebuilding what’s been broken. You may want to rush over the steps of repair to get back to a feeling of calm, but that won’t do you or your relationships any favors. Really take the time to feel what’s changed, and the pace at which rebuilding can happen without bypassing your needs and your boundaries. More importantly, you’ve changed through this process so what you’re building next will be for your future self, not your past self. Measure and cut accordingly.

Scorpio

Offer yourself slowness in: Building trust. You tend to hold people at arm’s length indefinitely or let them in immediately, it’s hard to find a middle ground. Jupiter retrograde is inviting you to slow that process of deciding you’ve got a new bestie or soulmate or domestic partnership when you haven’t lived into that relationship long enough to see all the different angles of how you two connect. Because intimacy for you can feel like it’s all or nothing, this is a beautiful time to find out how it feels to take things one step at a time and peace out if things aren’t going in a direction that feels good to you. Of course, the flip side is that when you are compatible and you take the time to really build trust together that relationship can withstand a lot.

Sagittarius

Offer yourself slowness in: Wanting to start over. I know the idea of permanence can make you feel trapped, and that stressors can trigger a flight reflex — like you know what would be better than dealing with this mess? Going literally anywhere else. Your ruling planet Jupiter going retrograde can create a little bit of a panic around not being able to move as fast or with as much forward momentum as you’d like, to offer yourself this reminder: You are not stuck, you are exploring, investigating, trying things out and gathering data for making a major decision later. Ideally anytime after December 31st, when Jupiter stations direct.

Capricorn

Offer yourself slowness in: Coming back to life. All the fun times aren’t in the past, there’s still more to enjoy—but you’ve let some part of you heart fall asleep like how your leg might fall asleep if you sit the wrong way for too long. You’re not to blame for this — it’s a necessary response at times when your personal life or the whole damn world feels hard and overwhelming. But this month brings back opportunities for joy, for romance, for mischief, for creativity — for all the fun things that came more easily to you in the past. Find your way back to them, but move at a pace that makes sense to you. There’s no rush, they’ll still be there.

Aquarius

Offer yourself slowness in: Many small moments throughout the day. Your daily life, your home, your inner world are all calling to you right now. Hit the snooze button again on your alarm. Linger over your lunch. Make room for all sorts of internal experiences to swirl and settle. There’s something about how safe (or not safe) you feel at home that needs paying attention to and sorting through. There’s something about your family of origin or your chosen family that can be up for healing right now. Make time to notice what’s changing and cheer it along.

Pisces

Offer yourself slowness in: Understanding your story. Don’t be too quick to jump to easy answers about what’s true for you, and resist the urge to explain yourself to someone who can’t or won’t understand you. Release deep-seated fears about not sounding articulate or smart enough, or needing to be more rational, and let yourself sink into some deep inner weirdness. Get curious about parts of yourself that you haven’t gotten to know yet, and ask them what they have to say for themselves. Their answers may fascinate you.

Questionable Life Choices You Can Make During Tomorrow’s Blue Supermoon

Tomorrow, August 30th, 2023, we will experience a Blue Supermoon in Pisces. It’s not really important that it’s a blue moon. That’s just a byproduct of our calendar system. What IS interesting, however, is that a supermoon is a full moon that occurs when the moon is closest to the Earth during the course of its elliptical orbit. For those of us who want to look at it, that means it appears bigger — especially as it’s rising. There’s also speculation the moon may have more of a gravitational effect when it’s closer. Regardless, this lunar lesbian in Pisces is going to be kicking up some changes.

For the fixed signs — Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius — it’s going to be asking you to change things up before change comes for you like a car door opening into a bike lane when it’s too late to swerve. You choose to change lanes or the lane change chooses you. The cardinal signs — Aries, Capricorn, Cancer, Libra — are going to experience shifts in power and a lot of intensity. Everyone, but mutable signs especially — Sagitarrius, Virgo, Pisces, Gemini — will see truth come to light.

Uranus is going retrograde, and that means we’re going to see realities that were previously hidden start to surface. Lies will come undone. Hidden truths will emerge like bats out of cave. No matter your sign, you should be warned. This supermoon in Pisces is going to show you some things — about yourself, your life — you might not be prepared for. Hopefully your actions don’t leave you with too much to clean up when all’s said and done. No matter the advice below or anything else you might feel compelled to do, do be careful.

So, hey, as an Aqua sun, Sag rising, Sag moon, I need to warn you. There are other places on the internet where you can find good advice. This is questionable astrological advice. Take it with a grain of salt. Or, better yet, maybe don’t take it, if you can help it, if the moon’s pretty little chokehold on you isn’t too enjoyable.

Still here? Let’s see what the blue supermoon in Pisces is telling you to do on your worst behavior, based on your zodiac sign.

Aries

If you knew what was good for you, you’d take a step back, you’d rest. But you don’t know what’s good for you or you don’t want to, do you, dear Aries? It’s been a hard year. You’re wounded, and the truths erupting around you from this blue supermoon in Pisces are making you feel things you weren’t prepared to feel. What if you gave in, and while you took a step back, engaged in some light, harmless emotional manipulation. Go ahead. Dramatically step back. Announce a social media break for mysterious reasons. Tell your side of a story that is really not so based in reality after the number of revisions you’ve given it in your head. Leave cryptic breadcrumbs that make your friends go hmmm. Really try to make your enemies feel guilty. Bask in the little bit of power you’ve gathered in your corner of the world. You’re the youngest of the signs, so why not set things up so that you can be babied a little?

Taurus

Quit your job (or your relationship or your shitty friendship or your living situation). Burn it down. They don’t love you, never have. Or at least, that’s the story you’ve been telling yourself because you’re unsatisfied. The good advice would be to take a careful look at your circumstances — especially work and career — and assess what’s working and what’s not. Make some serious yet reasonable changes that center on how you, yourself, are moving through the world. But sometimes how you’re moving through the world is like a bull in a china shop with mommy issues. And this full moon has you leaning into your feelings. Sometimes it feels good to tell at least one person to fuck right off. I can’t be held accountable for any consequences you might face from your actions, however. After all, you’re the one who makes your choices, regardless of the stars, the planets, the blue supermoon, or this shitpost on a queer website.

Gemini

Your spells are working, Gemini, whatever magic you’ve wrought over the course of the year — whether that’s hard work in your career, the careful and steady seduction of a lover, the plotting of perfectly planned revenge (but of course you’d never) — now is the time to claim your crown. The only thing that stands in your way is a parental or authority figure. What are you going to do about that, now, hm? You can stand up to them, sure, but that can look all sorts of ways.

Cancer

The moon is at its natural home in the waters of your sign, and its powers and waters are flowing through you. Full moons are a time for a harvest, and your harvest is tears. All of the hardships you’ve faced this year, all of the people who’ve caused them, let those sorrows run through you. Collect your tears in a glass vial. Send them to the one who hurt you. Text your ex.

Leo

You’re facing some hard truths Leo. Where are you being taken advantage of? Who isn’t respecting your boundaries? Sure, you could communicate, but you could also take a well-deserved, hard, non-communicative break. Turn your phone off. Let it go to voicemail. Go outside, into the moonlight, into the water, take care of your damn self. Never respond to their texts.

Virgo

Yeah, you should absolutely, assuredly, rabidly, ravenously, consensually fuck them. There might be consequences, but lust wants what lust wants. This supermoon in Pisces is calling you to take care of your body, to get your parts in working order, and I think we all know about certain acts that count as really good exercise.

And if it winds up being love? Well, Venus is kicking things up in your sign, so that’s not surprising. Mind you, though, Venus is still in retrograde, so things that start now burn hot and bright but not necessarily for long. I told you there would be consequences.

Libra

Sometimes balance is unbalance, Libra. You can’t even out what’s happening right now because you are in such a seismic shift that to try to correct anything would be counterproductive (and there are many such seismic shifts predicted with this blue supermoon). We’re balancing the Big Scales here, and that means it’s going to feel like you’ve tumbled down a bottomless rabbithole. What if you enjoyed it, though? I’m not saying you could do with a bit of a spiritual journey, but I’m also not not recommending you take some shrooms and see what you learn about yourself. What could letting go do for you?

Scorpio

This supermoon in Pisces is getting your creative juices pumping, pulsating in your claws. After all, you’re powered by the dark waters of the River Styx, by the cycles of death and rebirth, by the knowledge there is fecundity in decay. The summer’s harvest will soon be rotting in the fields beneath dry leaves and it will be your time. So, as your season approaches and you prepare to wait it out patiently through the rest of Virgo and then Libra season, start plotting. What kind of shit can you start? Most importantly, who are you going to rope into this? Plan a night escapade with some close, trusted friends or frenemies. Go swimming in a quarry under the stars, do shots at the gay bar and dance with hot dykes, write things in your journal that you’d rather pluck your eyes out than ever have someone find and read — and then make art about them. And then show someone that art.

Sagittarius

Take that trip back to your hometown Sagittarius — or plan it and don’t back out. There’s something there calling you. It might be a shitty parent you need to level with, a friend who’s fallen out of touch, a deep needling sense that there is some trauma you’ve forgotten that you could unearth if you just went back to that place and looked around, smelled its smells, saw with your memories. The aftermath? That’s what therapy is for, baby.

Capricorn

You need to say something. It’s been bothering you. You have to get it off your chest, bleat it out, hear it echo in the air like a cry through the mountains. And you know what? You’re also going to mess this up. You might be able to make things right if you can communicate well enough, if you can explain. But I don’t think you’ll be able to resist letting the words out because you want so badly to be heard, don’t you? Even if you’re not understood. Maybe try not to do it over text message.

Aquarius

You are a fixed sign, and that means this full supermoon in Pisces will have you shaking things up, letting them spill out. If you’re in the right mindset, you’re going to welcome the cleansing flood. The problem is that what it’s sweeping away are the things you once thought were your dreams. Where there once was hope, you’re feeling an empty hole. The better advice would be to take this full moon to stay home and reflect and plan on what you’re going to build next. My questionable advice is to realize that this change has made you all the better. Go out. Show yourself off. Download some dating apps. Stay up late. Your eyes are sparkling and your tongue is sharp, and the only thing that stays constant is change so you might as well help it along with a sledgehammer if you need to. Burn your planner. Trash your routine. There is no longer any such thing as “normal” time. You can sleep in the fall.

Pisces

You, Pisces, are the most effected by August’s blue supermoon because it’s in Pisces, your sign. You’re a psychic, a dreamer, and with Neptune and Pluto sextile, we’re seeing the supernatural come to the surface, the veil thinning. So, my questionable advice for you, Pisces, is to believe your dreams. Literally. Believe. Your. Dreams. Is your partner mean to you in your sleep? Ask them about it. Does your best friend turn into a monster at night in your head? Maybe they are. Look into that. Listen to your intuition. Your dreams might be unhinged but they are not necessarily wrong.

Or, you could be absolutely missing the mark! But that wouldn’t be any fun. Because this is questionable, barely even astrological advice. Whether you decide to be a responsible human, or not, remember you’re under no obligation to be anything but yourself. Here’s hoping August’s blue supermoon’s truths are more revelatory than harsh. Good luck out there, kid.

Barbie-ology: Your “Barbie” Character, According to Your Zodiac Sign

I went to see Barbie as one must in order to be a part of The Conversation happening right now, and also, with the express purpose of trying to assign a Barbie (or Ken) to each of the zodiac signs. 

As I sat next to my friend in the “Ken” jacket they embroidered and listened to the echoes of explosions from Oppenheimer coast over an emotional moment between Margot Robbie’s Barbie and Ryan Gosling’s Ken, clarity visited me — I knew which zodiac sign Stereotypical Barbie was and the rest of the pieces started to fall into place after that. Because what better thing to think about as wildfires rage and the hand of state repression slowly closes around us than which Barbie character you are according to your zodiac sign? But in all seriousness, let’s have a little Barbie astrology fun!

And also do you ever think about dying?

Aries: (Mar 21 – Apr 19)

Ken played by Simu Liu

You’re kind of an antagonistic guy, aren’t you? But it’s really just because competition is just a part of your character, like it came packaged with you in the box with all your accessories. Still, at the end of the day, when push comes to shove and pecs come to pecs, you know where your heart is (it’s under your pecs). But also, your friends have your heart, even if you give them a hard time sometimes. It’s only because you’re secretly just as vulnerable to getting your feelings hurt as the next Ken.

Taurus: (Apr 20 – May 20)

Supreme Court Justice Barbie played by Ana Cruz Kayne

Work hard, play hard, and do it with a smile so bright it’s blinding. As a Taurus, you’re stubborn and bullish enough to push yourself to the highest court in Barbieland. And hey, if so many of our IRL Supreme Court Justices can have the morally bankrupt backgrounds that they do, I don’t see anything wrong with you being a bit of a (plastic) party girl.

Gemini: (May 21 – Jun 20)

Gloria by America Ferrera

Just when we think we know who has the most Main Character Energy, you show up. You’re a dark horse of a main character because you don’t have a problem letting other people shine, but when you open your mouth and throw down a monologue — you can bet it’ll be some serious truth. No one can pick a friend up out of a depressive funk like a Gemini, and if my alternate dimension city-state without real food ever had a crisis, I’d call on you.

Cancer: (Jun 21 – Jul 22)

Mermaid Barbie played by Dua Lipa

Pools! Fins! Glamour! Glitter! Big Siren Energy! You’re ruled by the moon, by dreams and psychic visions — and what kid didn’t secretly wish they could breathe underwater, swim like a dolphin, find sunken treasure and sing out across the ocean waves? You might be an adult, now, but you still carry that dreaminess, that vision of something that is just a little bit more than reality with you wherever you go — and the tail thing is kind of hot.

Leo: (Jul 23 – Aug 22)

Ken played by Ryan Gosling

When you’re bringing the camp and the peacocking and the loyalty — you’re a lot of fun. But, Leo, when you’ve had your pride wounded, I know we all need to watch THE FUCK OUT. You’re kind of scary when you get on one, did you know that? Anyway, keep stylin, try to keep that fire energy in check and know that you, Leo, are Kenough, whether it’s your turn in the spotlight or not, you always bring your own shine with you wherever you go.

Virgo: (Aug 23 – Sep 22)

President Barbie played by Issa Rae

Barbie, Virgo, Madame President, you have a presence that holds the attention in a room. It’s not because you’re showy, it’s because you’re In Charge. However, there’s also a bit of michieviousness to your character, played by Issa Rae. Rae recently said she regrets not stealing something, anything from the Barbie set for her niece. I love that you’re in charge, but that you also know you have to let off some steam and get a little naughty sometimes, too. When you’re going about your day today, know that the rest of us are all grateful for the items you check off your to-do list, because in so many important ways, you make the world go round.

Libra: (Sep 23 – Oct 22)

Sterotypical Barbie played by Margot Robbie

IIIIIT’S STEREOTYPICAL BARBIE! Libra, you’ve got a closet, but you’ve also got brains. The thing is, you might just be the most glammed up person at the party, everything perfect and on point — and then, yes, you will totally just say “Do you ever think about dying?” while some of us are just trying to chill. You’ll be painting your nails or bedazzling an item for your next dance night and telling your friends about this serial killer you were researching. When faced with unfairness, you’re at once inspired into action and overwhelmed because it guts you. You just want people to get along and for the world to be just! And it isn’t! That can be hard to hold, Libra, but I believe that you’ve got this. You’re pretty and pink, you’re staring into the abyss, you’re cognitive dissonance, you’re Barbie!

Scorpio: (Oct 23 – Nov 21)

Mattel CEO played by Will Ferrel

You trade in pink plastic and dark secrets, all with a smile on your face. Even if a Scorpio has never said “Call me mother” in a soft voice to me while trying to restrain my wrists, I do believe it is exactly what a Scorpio would do.

Sagittarius: (Nov 22 – Dec 21)

Lawyer Barbie played by Sharon Rooney

Sagittarius, you have a lifelong love of learning that could certainly lead to you obtaining an advanced degree and passing the bar, but this is less about being a lawyer and more about the energy that Sharon Rooney is bringing to this role. The way she screams, the way she moves, the way she tricks the Kens when she snaps out of it — and above all, her introductory impassioned speech. This is you, your energy. You’re a little (or a lottle) silly, but you’ve got a razor sharp wit and are fueled by that firey Sag electricity that anyone who knows a Sagitarrius is familiar with.

Capricorn: (Dec 22 – Jan 19)

Doctor Barbie played by Hari Nef

Capricorn, you would be both a medical doctor and a DJ. It’s just what you’re bringing to the table. You’re not afraid of a little blood (or…? whatever is inside these Barbies? now I’m picturing a Barbie full of blood). You’re smart as heck, but you’ve also got a side that is in touch with your most primal desires. You can lose yourself in a good beat, in another person’s embrace, in a night of revelry — and show back up the next morning to do it all again. You might not have the most comforting bedside manner, and this might extend to social situations as well (please see: being the first to vomit at Barbie’s flat feet), but when you need to take charge and handle a crisis, we’re just lucky to have you around.

Aquarius: (Jan 20 – Feb 18)

Weird Barbie played by Kate McKinnon

I think you knew this was coming, Aquarius. How many times have you had to be the queer that your straight friend seeks out when her life is falling apart? How many times has this straight woman not even really been your friend, but still needed your Doc-Martin-Wearin’ perspective? You’re so individualistic that people often feel like they can be open about how strange they think you are to your face. But don’t let that get you down. Your Tank Girl / anchoress / model-building sense of self and un-brain-wash-a-ble perspective have frequently been life-saving. Guard what makes you precious, even if it isn’t always so pink or pretty. You — and the people around you — need you just as you are.

Pisces: (Feb 19 – Mar 20)

Allan played by Michael Cera

There’s only one Allan! Ken’s clothes fit you! Allan is deeply queer, not in ways that are about flash and camp, but to his core — and so are you my dear friend. Allan is also the perfect embodiment of the oldest sign of the Zodiac for his quiet wisdom. He doesn’t side with the Kens, and instead, does his own thing, often socializing with the Barbies or taking his own place between the strict binary worlds of the Barbies and the Kens. I swear that if we got to spend more time with you, Pisces / Allan, we’d find out you were an oracle or something. You, Pisces, know that you don’t have to be loud and flashy to be Queer with a capital “Q,” you just have to kill the gender cop in your head (and drop kick anyone trying to build a wall). Thank you for showing us the way to a quiet kind of freedom.

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors who are currently on strike, movies like Barbie one would not be possible, and Autostraddle is grateful for the artists who do this work.

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for August 2023

Leo season is here in all its exuberance. Leo, ruled by the Sun, is a surprisingly vulnerable sign. In these times full of hot takes on each sign, I want to re-introduce Leo energy: think of a burning candle cupped between two hands on a windy day. There’s beauty and warmth and the high drama of that flickering flame— but what will help steady that flame is another pair of hands.

Leo, at its core, leads from the heart and needs connection. And not just any connection, but deep recognition. Leo needs to feel cherished. Are you cringing yet? So many of us try to circumvent this core human need by creating a version of ourselves that others will like. This isn’t necessarily a fake self, but it’s a curated self — what you’d write on a résumé or say on a first date. Curation is sometimes important, but your goal isn’t to stay there forever You shouldn’t be trying that hard with your partner of several years or your close friends. We all need relationships where we feel loved, chosen, and special merely for being ourselves — we feel safest in these relationships when we are able to bring our full selves, warts and all. So while you may think of Leo as big glitter energy, it’s really waiting for you to see through its glamour and love it when its underslept and unshowered. I often think of Leo energy as a puppy: heart-melting merely by being, without being particularly helpful or accomplished. Merely being, and being lovable.

And as Venus moves retrograde through Leo this month, we’re all taking some time to reflect, review, and revise the ways we reach for and offer love. This is a time to heal, release, learn, and replenish that part of you that reaches for connection — and it’s all happening in the sign that asks us to keep being more brave, more authentic, and more vocal about what you really need.

Expect a slower pace for all things ruled by Venus right now — promising new relationships may need time to unfold, you may need to put off big purchases or pleasure trips as you assess your real resources and what you really want. Your goal this month is to notice what’s going on. In what ways are you letting your flame go out rather than asking for help? When do you feel most seen and loved, and is it a good feeling or does it make your deeply uncomfortable? How open is your heart on a daily basis? How’s it all feeling, sweetie?

I know Venus retrograde can feel alarming, like there isn’t enough going on in our lives and our relationships right now. But the key to this retrograde is not to stress about getting it right. With Leo, you’re leading from your heart. If you get lost, look for that sweet, small flame. Bring your hands a little closer. Notice the light on your palms. Look around and see who you can bring this candle to, who may already be smiling in your direction and opening their hands. And most importantly, remember that you deserve love that feels appropriate, specific, and unwavering. Whether you have that from others right now or not, this retrograde gives you a chance to reconnect with what is most lovable about you.

I’m booked up this month as I get ready to launch a big project. Follow me on Instagram to hear about it first, but you can book now for September and beyond. If you want more astro insights, including highlights of important transits for each month, join me on Patreon for as little as $2 a month. Wishing you all a gorgeous Leo season, may we all become what we need for ourselves and each other.

Aries

Release the need to be impressive and be playful instead. Reconnect to the pleasure of playing music, playing games, playing in the dirt, and role playing. Be as enthusiastic as you feel. Let someone know what’s in your heart. Take romantic risks, knowing you’re worth loving no matter the outcome.

Taurus

Release the need to be impressive and don’t even leave the house if you aren’t feeling it. Embrace comfy clothes, comfort foods, and curling up with your closest people (or animals) for long talks. This Venus retrograde offers you deep restorative energy for healing family issues (the ones that can be healed) and letting yourself off the hook for always doing for others. Remember to rest as much as you need to right now.

Gemini

Release the need to be impressive and say exactly what’s on your mind. Find the friends who help you shape your thoughts and challenge you to deepen them. Start from your first ideas, brainstorm, change your mind, switch sides in the debate, let it be a game. Your goal this month is to reconnect to the kind of conversations that help you feel deeply seen and understood, even when you don’t always understand yourself.

Cancer

Release the need to be impressive and remember that your worth isn’t based on anything about you that can change. Not your looks, your intelligence, your fashion, your wit, your health, your productivity, or whether you’re in a good mood. Reconnect to what’s essentially lovable about you underneath all the ways you change. Notice what you need and nourish any part of you that is hungry for care.

Leo

Release the need to be impressive and… risk showing up exactly as you are. Maybe you’re feeling burnt out or cynical, maybe you’ve been wearing the same hot pink bathrobe for days. Remember that your presence is a gift to the people who love you, no matter how messy you feel inside. Reach out when you need support, or if you notice someone else has gone into hiding. Start normalizing staying intimate even when we’re all not okay.

Virgo

Release the need to be impressive and… release all the problems you think you need to solve right now. This Venus retrograde is taking you on a journey through your memories and dreams, and there’s nothing in particular you need to do but notice how you’re feeling. And then, can you feel a little better? Would your dinner taste better with a little more seasoning? Would your bed be cozier with another pillow? Would this relationship feel better with a little more honesty or cuddling or kinky sex? Again, nothing here is a problem, it’s all an invitation.

Libra

Release the need to be impressive and… embrace the beautiful imperfection of community. Whether it’s your collective house or your workplace, your school cohort or your gay kickball team, you are moving within groups that will always have their share of secrets and pettiness and hard feelings. Such it is to be human. Your homework assignment for Venus retrograde is to keep the dream alive of how we could be better together, and to keep a sense of humor about how it really is.

Scorpio

Release the need to be impressive and… ditch impostor syndrome. You know what you need to know, you can do what you’re trying to do. This Venus retrograde may expose some insecurity about others seeing your strength and capacity — or, fears that people only see you as capable and won’t let you be vulnerable. Either way, this month invites you into your integrity and asks you to stress less. Give your energy to what matters most, and give yourself slack for the rest of it.

Sagittarius

Release the need to be impressive and… remember that your life is still an adventure. You haven’t reached your final form. You may not even have a final form. Enjoy the process of becoming you are in, even if you’re scared it might mean changes are on the horizon. Many good things may also be on the horizon, if you keep reaching for them. Choose your own happiness over responsibilities that are weighing you down, especially if you’re making sacrifices for others that they don’t need you to make.

Capricorn

Release the need to be impressive and… release the need to be in control. Good changes are possible right now, even if they’re coming slowly and you don’t quite trust them yet. Spend some time focusing on what you really want, even if you don’t know how to get it. Write wish lists and prayers on scraps of paper and hide them in bird nests or drop them on the subway tracks. There is no rational, linear way forward right now but there doesn’t need to be. You’re still on the right track.

Aquarius

Release the need to be impressive and… celebrate the love you’ve worked for. Some love comes easily, but some relationships get better and better as you work through differences, handle conflict, grow apart, and then grow back together. Whether it’s a partner, lover, best friend, or family member, think of who’s been helping you learn how to love them — and how they can love you — for awhile now. This kind of learning is the most important thing in the world, and something you get to practice more deeply and celebrate more joyously right now.

Pisces

Release the need to be impressive and… merely be in your body. Stretch, nap, snack, yawn, cuddle, dance, sprawl across the back of a couch like your cat. Venus rules pleasure and this Venus retrograde wants to bring you back into what feels good about living in your own skin. Bodies are hard, yes. We’re all in pain a lot of the time and many of us would rather get high or dissociate, thank you. Honor your coping mechanisms, but also see how much fun you can have sober and embodied this month.

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for July 2023

I want to send some love to Cancer energy right now, in this political climate that is stripping care and protection from so many of us. In the zodiac Cancer is where we establish fierce protection for our beloved ones, our chosen families.

Each sign brings an array of necessary tools, but I often find myself reaching for words that don’t exist when I’m trying to tell my clients what’s so powerful about Cancer. So let me tell you a story instead: We humans are social mammals. We rely on each other for our survival, and much of what we need to survive is care. We are all here because somebody fed us, cleaned us, and clothed us when we weren’t able to. When we are sick or injured, we need care. When we are old we need care. When we think of ourselves as able-bodied and self-directed, we still need care. In the US we’re fed a myth of being self-made individuals. We’re taught that we can and should achieve without needing care, while ignoring all the care work that goes into supporting people who are achieving. Because our culture doesn’t value care work, we don’t have the language we should about how badass Cancer energy is. We’ve got Capricorn able to pride itself on long-term visioning, work ethic, and integrity. We’ve got Leo preening about it’s creativity and artistic flair. When we come to Cancer, we say: well, you really feel your feelings. How is that a strength, much less a super power?

So let’s talk about why feeling is perhaps the most important thing we can do. When we know what we feel, we inhabit the full dimension of our humanity. We can empathize with others and build bonds across conflict or difference. We can track the emotional and energetic cost of what we ask others to do. This helps us move from a theoretical desire for more egalitarian collectivities to the lived experience of how to make them inhabitable. Cancer energy is what helps humans create safety together, and at it’s best it is always striving to expand the circle of care and protection beyond its current borders. Not just my family, but my neighborhood. Not just my neighborhood but my city, my country, all countries, all humanity, all mammals, all living creatures, the ecosystem, the planet, the solar system, and beyond. There are infinite circles we can cast within the loving, protective energy of Cancer.

As queers, we know how to do this. The tenderness and the fierceness. The recognition of who needs to be taken in and who needs some tough love. As governments are stripping protections, we need to reinvigorate our movements for care and protection. And this month brings a good reminder of how to do this differently this time: Venus is moving retrograde on the 22nd. Venus takes this backward journey every 18 months, and this one will last until September 3rd. Venus is what helps us connect to each other — it’s where we experience love, pleasure, and how we create our values. Whenever a planet moves retrograde it’s a time to reassess, review, and revise how we’ve been using that part of ourselves. As Venus stations retrograde we’re entering a period of slowing down and reviewing all things Venusian: our relationships, our creative practices, our finances, our values, our relationship to pleasure, harmony, and beauty.

Right now, we need each other more than ever and so many of us feel isolated, alienated, and wary. Many of us are experiencing worsening mental and emotional health, and it can feel like there just isn’t enough care to go around. You may be scared to let your friends know how bad you’re doing, knowing it’s hard for a lot of them, too. You may be setting new boundaries with family or close friends who aren’t able to treat you with the care you deserve. You might be doing both, and worrying that if you ask for care you’ll be overstepping boundaries in the way others have done with you. As we continue to face collective hard times, there’s no easy way to repair our fractured relationships to each other and to collectivity. But Cancer season can point us in the right direction, and this Venus retrograde can give us an opportunity to retreat, replenish ourselves, and and revise how we approach connection.

My books are open but I have very few spots left this summer, so if you want a reading before September get in touch. For more astro details you can follow me on Instagram or join me on Patreon for expanded transit information and more each month.

Aries

Retreat and replenish: Your relationship to joy, especially as experienced through romance, flirtation, or creative play. Restore consistent experiences of pleasure. Reconnect with your art supplies, your baking tools, your half-finished novel, your sense of style. Go on dates, platonic and romantic. Collaborate. Remember how to have fun with other people.

Taurus

Retreat and replenish: Your spaces that offer sanctuary: your home, your bedroom, your body. How can you be enjoying these more? Where might you have become too stagnant, too comfortable in something that isn’t actually pleasurable or life-giving? Don’t feel you need to spend a lot of money or time coming back to balance, just pay closer attention to what helps your shoulders drop and your breath slow down.

Gemini

Retreat and replenish: Your social network, especially the people you’re closest to (geographically and emotionally). Weed out activities or relationships that drain you, confuse you, or spin you out away from your center in ways that are hard to recover from. Fall back in love with your own strange ways of seeing the world, and the people who help you locate delight in being here together.

Cancer

Retreat and replenish: Your relationship to security, especially as represented by having (or needing) resources. Have you been spending or giving away too much money and always feeling anxious that you’ll run out? Or have you been restricting joy or generosity in order to hoard money? Are you in any similar pattern of imbalance around food, belongings, clothing, or how rely on others for emotional support? Venus retrograde wants you to sort out what enough actually looks like right now, and how to reach for it.

Leo

Retreat and replenish: Your own desire to be seen and cherished, or to hide and be cherished. The vulnerability of showing yourself to someone and asking to be loved. Step away from exhausting cycles of trying to hard to find the right tone, the practiced yet casual vibe, the “I’m not trying too hard” way of looking effortlessly impressive. Embrace messiness, cringe, and all the ways you are awkward. Jumpstart your project of redefining cool as whatever you happen to be doing.

Virgo

Retreat and replenish: Your inner life and connection to what fills you up. Retreat is a good word for this retrograde in general, but it’s extra critical for you as it’s pulling you away from productivity, efficiency, and problem-solving and toward long afternoons of staring at clouds, walking wherever your dog wants to go today, and being gentle to the part of you that is exhausted from putting out all the fires, all the time. Remember the pleasure of doing nothing.

Libra

Retreat and replenish: Your love for this complicated, heartbreaking, world-in-transformation. Reconnect to your dreams for what we can do together. Notice where you’ve been burned and grown wary of collective organizing, or collectivity in general. Fall back in love with the human species, especially in our capacity to maybe someday be better comrades to the orcas, and to each other.

Scorpio

Retreat and replenish: Your willingness to do what’s needed for the good of the whole. You generally give your all or need to completely retreat, and this Venus retrograde is asking you to find more nuance, a gentler swing of the pendulum, between what restores you and how you show up for your responsibilities. You’re looking for joy, not just satisfaction, in what you do right now. And you’re looking for deep pleasure, not just stillness, in the ways you rest.

Sagittarius

Retreat and replenish: Your vision for the future. Your sign’s inherent optimism is sorely tested during these times of global upheaval and crisis. You are looking for that thread that will reconnect you to your own sense of agency in building a meaningful, beautiful life as you move toward an uncertain future. If you end up in despair, you’ve lost the thread. If you end up in “It’s all going to be okay and I can just keep distracting myself” you’ve lost the thread. If looking for the thread is exhausting, rest for awhile. When you’ve rested enough, try again.

Capricorn

Retreat and replenish: Your capacity to deeply heal. You are good at pushing through, especially in relationships. You often feel safest being the one others rely on, but this Venus retrograde is asking you to step out of that comfortable role and recognize where you need to be more vulnerable: what do you need from love that you aren’t getting? What do you need to heal in order to ask for and receive that kind of love? This is deep work. If you show up for it you can radically transform patterns that have been stuck for a long time.

Aquarius

Retreat and replenish: Your longterm commitments. Any relationship, project, place, or way of being that you’ve committed to is up for review right now. Not in an alarming, “I have to break up with everything” kind of way — rather, you’re being asked to notice how much energy you have for what you’ve said yes to, and how much meaning and joy you derive from those commitments. This is an entirely self-directed review of the emotional work you put into maintaining things, with the goal of letting you take a break or change the terms of anything that’s depleting you more than it’s filling you up.

Pisces

Retreat and replenish: Your enjoyment of the rhythms of daily life. This Venus retrograde is pulling you out of your preferred realm of fantasy, meditation, or other forms of living slightly outside your body and back into your physical form in the here-and-now. But this shouldn’t feel like a chore: rather, the invitation is to find more pleasure and joy in routines that might otherwise bore you. Reach for all your sensual tools: music, aromas, colors, textures, flavors. Play games. Get weird. Your goal is to remember why it’s fun to have a body.

How Is Your Zodiac Sign Celebrating Pride This Year?

Autostraddle Pride

It’s Pride, and I’m starting this gay astrology post with a warning. Should you have found your way here from the broader internet, first, welcome. We’re hospitable. Second, yes, everything is gay. Every zodiac sign is gay. This is a Pride Horoscope. It’s going to be queer. Last time I whipped up some extremely wise and totally even-keeled astrology here, I got comments asking why it was gay! To that, I say “shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” in a tone that maybe makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up because it is, in fact, a little threatening. Happy Pride.

Gemini

If queer astrology isn’t real, then explain how this photo screams GEMINI.

Having your zodiac sign’s season usher us into Pride has always made you feel like you’re born anew just in time for the season. Your annual Gay Pride Party, in that way, also doubles as a second birthday celebration — but you don’t tell anyone that. You spend weeks constructing a menu, testing gay cocktails and rainbow-colored mocktails, and experimenting with allergy-friendly ways to create colorful hors d’oeuvres. I have a friend who says that if you’re shy or a little unlucky, all you need to do is find a Gemini and follow them. The guests at this soiree are people you’ve met on all your travels, from all your social groups, from all these different eras of your life. This Pride, I hope you can look up from your duties as the commensurate host, and realize that your truest talent lies in the way you connect so many queer people, like a second, other, gayer kind of gravity. People are just drawn into your orbit, but it’s not a bad thing, because you’ve always taken care of your fellow travelers. Happy Pride, Gemini. This Gay Pride Horoscope-er says is raising their glass and saying cheers to you!

Cancer

You’ve got one source and one source only for your Pride celebration inspiration — and that’s the music video for Janelle Monaé’s Lipstick Lover. You’re choosing pools over a hot sticky parade. You’re choosing pleasure over worry (okay your zodiac sign is Cancer so you’re probably still concerned at times but you are WORKING on letting go. But if we’re being real, you are a little worried about your Sagittarius friend who hasn’t texted back in a few days, until you reassure yourself that this is normal for them — and then there are bills and…) SHHHH You are choosing PLEASURE OVER WORRY.

This Pride you’re locating a pool, your friends, any and all crushes, the outfits and music and beverages that make you feel the hottest. Then you, Cancer, are washing your troubles away in the crisp splash of chlorinated liquid crystal, the smack of flip flops on rough pool-side concrete and the laughter of chosen family. You deserve.

Leo

My dear Leo, performer of the queer zodiac, you are somehow ON STAGE this Pride. And, if for one second, you are thinking that this queer Pride horoscope might be in the wrong about that, consider whether you at any point have been “on stage” during Pride — center of a dance circle, or the one cracking everyone else up with their gay-ass jokes, you get it. Whether you’ve spent hours perfecting your Drag King look or your five-minute standup routine for a fundraiser at the local Gay Bar — or you pretended your friends were pushing you to sing YOUR song at queer karaoke but actually, secretly, you were never more ready for this moment — your heart and soul long for the spotlight. You don’t need it all the time, just like we only need 10 minutes of sunlight a day to get adequate vitamin D, but when you get the chance, Leo, you are going to soak up that sunlight, those stage lights, that attention. Don’t ever be ashamed of who you are this Pride. Your boldness lifts all our hearts.

Virgo

How did this happen, Virgo? One moment, you were sweating your first Pride, and now, at least according to this particular gay horoscope-er, you’re a source of stability, support and mentorship for someone else. Whether you’re the queer auntie, a teacher, the 30 or 40 or 50-something friend to a much younger gay, or involved in your local queer community in a way that puts in you in a position where you can offer your wisdom and support, you’re a pillar of strength, now. Of course, all that inter-generational queer responsibility doesn’t mean you’re not going to let loose. Of course not. You’re an absolute freak in the spreadsheets and the streets after all. And if our overall culture weren’t so repressed, it wouldn’t seem like there were any contradictions at all between being a mentor to the younger queer(s) in your life and loving a raucous party now and then. You might be ushering a kid to their first Pride, taking a friend to their first gay bar, or just having some deep heart to hearts this June. Whatever form your contributions take, thank you for everything you’ve done and that you’re doing for our fellow queers, Virgo. Hats off to you! Also, no, thank you, I do not need to be spanked right now, but thank you for modeling good consent practices.

Libra

Libra, you’re going to the kind of Pride Party that either a) requires an invite and the location isn’t published, or b) feels like that’s the case even if it isn’t — and yes, I’m a little bit jealous. There will be actually good dance music, celebrities, local or otherwise, and a good smattering of your friends because you also know everyone in your town. Your outfit will be on point, except for the fact that your shoes might make your feet bleed a little. It’s okay, though! Because you’re having fun dancing and blisters are a Tomorrow Problem, much like what you’re going to eat for breakfast because your fridge is empty. Here’s to letting go for a night and living in the now, Libra, because goddess knows you’re always living in the future despite what a pleasure it is to be around you in the present. Breathe. Breathe again. Dance. And don’t forget that the rest of us would very much enjoy living vicariously through your Instagram stories.

Scorpio

Scorpio, you are either literally doing magic this Pride season or, you know, you’re metaphorically stirring the cauldron. Your zodiac sign is known for its mystery, and also its proclivity for revenge. You could be doing a spell with your besties to attract love, or you could be pissing into a jar because your ex won’t return your vintage lesbian pulp fiction collection. Whether you’re going to roll up your black lace sleeves and dig into actual spellwork, or you’re simply leaning into your bewitching side, you’re here to remind us all that we can wear black any time of the year. Thank you for reminding us that the season’s not always about the rainbows and the shouting, and that sometimes queer life’s about leaning in a doorway mysteriously in good lighting.

Sagittarius

Sure, you’re queer all year, but as I consult my room-scaled mental model of the cosmos for this queer Pride horoscope, I can see that nothing fills your heart with the urge to go absolutely rogue like the sound of Pride flags snapping in the wind on a climate-change-turbo-charged-record-temperatures-hot June day. Pride is a celebration, but you’re not going to forget its riot roots. That’s why you’ve enlisted several of your craftiest friends to construct an effigy of Ron DeSantis and several protest signs to go with. You cover your faces and tattoos, leave your phone at home and keep the plan locked down — no one but your small group knows about it. When all is said and done, the image of your Ron DeSantis effigy, latched to the outside of a pedestrian bridge over a highway, burning against the starless sky will be one of your most treasured Pride memories. You go to sleep that hot June night wrapped in a wet sheet, next to your window A/C unit, still hearing the echo of banner drops flapping over the sound of traffic and car horns below.

Capricorn

Your Pride look is impeccable. You’re ironed and lint-rolled and you’re, in fact, not going to Pride. You’re attending a tasteful hang with some of your older friends where the host is a Gemini. You know she’ll have a tasteful array of cocktails and mocktails in an array of rainbow colors, but you’re also bringing what you remember is her favorite wine. You arrive an hour late, but are still one of the first ones there so you help set up, and once things kick off, you’ll enjoy moving, with poise and ease, from conversation to conversation, because this is about being among your people, and these are the people you’re proud to call your friends.

But what you’re really excited for is the fact that you meticulously cleaned and laid out each of your sex toys because you’ve got some personal Pride plans for your partner / sweetheart / date / yourself tonight. Enjoy, you multi-faceted horned and horny babe.

Aquarius

Oh Aquarius, the visionary of the queer zodiac, this gay pride horoscope finds you completely forgetting that it’s Pride. Sometime during the weekend, you’ll wrap up whatever project you’re working on and hear the call — like the graze of a feather made of seabreeze in within the folds of your ear — of the magic mushrooms that you’ve had stashed just for a lazy afternoon such as this. It’s possible, that as the day starts to balance on the glimmering, pulsating, rainbow-outlined edge of the evening that you might get that old familiar “get-up-and-go” call to action. You’ll pull on some sneakers and remember to pack water and your keys and head out for a walk. The walk might take you downtown, where, through no intention you’re aware of, you stumble upon your city’s Pride festivities. You accept the universe’s invitation and make your way inside, walking around slowly, smiling, complimenting others’ looks and basking in the love and joy and beauty of humanity in the way that only someone who’s a little bit of an extraterrestrial — and a little bit of an outsider — can.

Pisces

Oops, you’re enjoying nature again! This gay Pride horoscope finds that you, Pisces, in that particularly effervescent and watery way of your zodiac sign, have decided that you’re overwhelmed by the fast pace of parties, the noise of parades and the pressure to have a memorable Pride. Instead, you and a select close friends are electing to spend time outside of the city and paying attention to your own mental health. You’re focusing on listening to the birds, smelling the June flowers and tending to your food over a fire. This might be a low-key backyard barbecue, it could be a multi-day camping venture, or it could be a day-trip to a hiking trail you’ve wanted to try for a while. Pisces, your zodiac sign’s lesson for the rest of the queer community is that it’s okay to need to escape sometimes, okay to prioritize healing and that it’s okay to be present in our bodies in ways that are, well, objectively quite healthy. You’re the oldest sign of the zodiac, and though your wisdom is often quiet, it’s so, so meaningful.

Aries

SOMEONE had to actually go to the Pride Parade, and according to this gay pride horoscope, it’s you, Aries, the baby of the zodiac! The youngest of the signs! The cycle starts anew with you and there is no one better to carry on old traditions with fresh energy than you! Get out there and do what you’re good at, shout and party and play and show us all what the intersection of riot and revelry really means! Whether you’re going in your best leather or draping a trans flag across your shoulders, your very presence is going to make the Pride festivities this year feel that much fuller. We love to hear you over the megaphone, shouting Pride slogans! Lez march.

Taurus

Taurus, Taurus, my comfort-loving, boundary-setting, snack-munching, gay and proud Taurus. According to all the power vested in my grasp of gay astrology, I am seeing that you’ll be in bed, on your couch or firmly ensconced in some outdoor furniture with queer movies flickering in the warm, firefly-lit evening air. Now, listen, the writer of this gay pride horoscope knows that this isn’t a last-minute-canceling-plans kind of decision. No, this is the event. You’ve been planning this adventure for yourself, you and a partner, or you and a close friend or two — FOR LITERAL WEEKS. You have the list of movies, you have them downloaded. You have a cooler full of drinks. You have snacks. Snacks that you pre-prepped. You’re showered and pampered and in your comfiest loungewear. This is an at-home chill hang, but you are doing it to a T. (The T is for Taurus.)

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for June 2023

What I love about Gemini season is that when the going gets tough, Gemini gets curious. Gemini energy is acutely attuned to the world as it is, manages to stay light-hearted during hard times, and is always making surprising connections, sometimes thought-provoking and sometimes ridiculously funny. Gemini helps us laugh at what might have made us cry. It helps us shake off stagnation and depression. It turns up the music at the party, gathers everyone feeling socially awkward in the corners and invites them to dance. It’s pretty gorgeous that Pride Month begins in Gemini season, although the Stonewall Riots that originated this holiday happened in Cancer season at the end of June.

As we move from Gemini to Cancer this month, we move from our minds to our hearts. The first half of the month rewards social and intellectual activities, while the shift to Cancer season on Summer Solstice drops us back down into our deepest feelings. And though I am deeply a feelings witch and always want to be in the watery depths of it all, I’ve gotta give it up for all that Gemini offers us. As a mutable Air sign, it’s adaptable, clever, and invites us to reconsider what we thought we knew. Its goal is to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, to keep questioning the status quo, to stay one step ahead of tired old stories that can make the world feel like a stifling trap.

And damn if the world isn’t feeling mighty stale right now, with regressive social policies and authoritarianism once more on the rise. Pluto is dipping back into Capricorn right now, reminding us that there’s still more work to do to transform deeply entrenched systems of power — and those who see their power slipping are holding on tight. This Gemini season isn’t going to save us from everything that’s hard in the world, but it can help us see things through fresh eyes, and that can help us devise brilliant and unusual interventions. It can start by reminding us that the future is unwritten, and the present is stranger and more full of possibility that we usually notice.

This Gemini season, this Summer Solstice, this 54th anniversary of Stonewall, I encourage you to tap into the courage and genius of our queer ancestors who have found ways to, resist, adapt, and laugh at cultures that criminalized them. We’re carrying on that work as Uganda increases its already harsh criminalization of LGBTQ+ people, as US states try to legislate away the existence of trans kids, as corporations like Target and Bud Light yoink back their performative allyship in the face of conservative pressure. Pride Month is going to feel different this year for those of us in the US who have grown up seeing LGBTQ+ acceptance steadily growing. In the face of increased repression, its vital for us to keep showing up for each other. Our brilliance, our wit, our compassion, our collective care, our capacity to keep celebrating. You’re holding a necessary piece of this. What are you going to bring to the party?

I’ve got limited summer client hours so if you want a reading so please get in touch sooner rather than later! And as always you can follow me on Instagram or join me on Patreon for more trauma-informed, queer, liberation-oriented astrology.

Aries

What you’re bringing to the party: Fresh ideas. Dad jokes. A book you want to read aloud from. Your new friend who just moved to the neighborhood. A song you haven’t finished writing but will sing anyway. All your unanswered questions.

Taurus

What you’re bringing to the party:  Fresh fruit, flowers, and nice cheese (it can be vegan). Your capacity to make people feel at home (TBH you are probably hosting this party). Your memories, your story-keeping, the continuity you can weave between past, present, and future.

Gemini

What you’re bringing to the party: You know how sometimes when you ask, “What can I bring?” the host will answer “Just yourself!” So, mostly that. But in bringing yourself you are bringing your insights, your curiosity, your history, your vulnerability, your aspirations, your sense of humor, and your keen interest in everyone you meet. These are pretty sweet gifts, so don’t be afraid to actually show up.

Cancer

What you’re bringing to the party: The vibe. Your knack for knowing who wants to talk and who wants to be left alone. Permission to leave whenever you want to. Permission not to cook anything or do any emotional labor. Permission to talk to your favorite people in the kitchen and not meet anyone new if you’re not feeling it.

Leo

What you’re bringing to the party: Your crew. Your dreams of collective liberation. Your summer of 2023 dance mix. Your willingness to keep trying. Your plans for the next party. A circle of belonging that you create for yourself and fellow misfits.

Virgo

What you’re bringing to the party: Your talent. Your lifetime of experience in being you. The unique ways you shine. Your capacity to be a resource for your community, and your understanding of when you’re done and can clock out.

Libra

What you’re bringing to the party: Your vision. Your big-picture analysis. Your hope for the future. Your deep convictions. Your storytelling prowess, especially your talent for bringing the unheard voices into any conversation.

Scorpio

What you’re bringing to the party: All the hot gossip, even and especially if you don’t share it. Condoms and dental dams. Safe words. Your deep knowing of how to transform an experience from something awkward to something intimate and affirming.

Sagittarius

What you’re bringing to the party: Exactly what you said you would bring. Willingness to be the designated driver. A listening ear. Enough self-knowledge to say yes to what you really want to do and no to what you really don’t. Feeling ready to say yes to something big.

Capricorn

What you’re bringing to the party: Supplies. Behind-the-scenes organizing and logistics. Extra snacks. Somatic awareness. Consensual foot massages. Your capacity to make things happen.

Aquarius

What you’re bringing to the party: Costumes. Consensual glitter or, in certain scenarios, attack glitter. Your crush. Your unique style of flirtation. Enthusiasm. Your willingness to be seen and to belong.

Pisces

What you’re bringing to the party: A safe space for introverts. Empathy. Ancestral healing. Excellent boundaries. Permission to go home early, or JOMO if you decide not to go at all.

Queer Tarotscopes for Gemini Season 2023: What Are You Learning About Who You Are?

This season’s tarotscopes feature The Realest Oracle (I was lucky enough to get sent an advance copy, but you can preorder now to get your own set in July!) and the Astrol-OG Deck.

When we think about the element of air through the lens of the tarot, we’re often talking about the suit of swords and its accompanying themes: communication, truth, perception, ideas, insights, information, processing, objectivity, and logic. Air is the element of the mind, and is considered a fast-moving element. With air, we can find sharp clarity or foggy, uncertain confusion; powerful facts or off-center arguments. And when we think about Gemini, we’re talking about mutable air in particular, air with a flexible and adaptive nature.

Gemini is a curious and playful sign, one that wants to discover and share as much information as possible. As a mutable sign, they take the strong ideas and focused intensity of the signs before them and use their intellectual resilience to explore, expand, analyze, and express. If you had a big, bold idea in Aries season, if you’ve spent Taurus season growing and developing your goals, Gemini can be a perfect time to wrap up that first phase of work, to clarify your purpose, and to recognize what has felt good about the process — and what might need to shift. What are you learning about who you are? How are you transforming, both internally and externally?

In the major arcana, Gemini’s birth archetype of the Lovers is associated with the number six. And in numerology, the number six is all about making authentic choices, joyfully investing in community, giving back to those we care about, and taking responsibility for our own happiness. The Lovers is a card of stability and support, of knowing that we are loved for exactly who we are, of celebrating how far we’ve already come. There’s a spirit of reciprocity here that is echoed in the mutable air of Gemini: wanting to learn and grow not only for ourselves, but to make everyone around us stronger, safer, more empowered. How do we share information? How do we support those we care about? What do we give and receive in equal measure? And in allowing ourselves to be intellectually flexible instead of stubbornly clinging to specific ideas, how do we grow together as a community?

In this season of Gemini, remember that it’s okay to keep asking questions, to stay curious, to want to keep growing and learning along the way. Experienced tarot readers or astrologers can plug the cards I’ve drawn for their sun, moon, and rising signs into the spread below to create a custom reading for this season. Gemini is ruled by Mercury, planet of movement and information, so if you know your Mercury placement you can also include that card in this spread template for a more complete picture of your Gemini season. We’re trying something different this season and featuring readings with The Realest Oracle rather than a standard tarot deck — I hope you love it as much as I do!

My first book, Finding the Fool: A Tarot Journey to Radical Transformation, is available now at your favorite local bookstore! If you missed my recent book club event with A+, you can read the transcript right now, and I also recently opened a shop on Etsy with some new spread collections and study printables. The best way to stay up-to-date on my writings, offerings, and latest tarot spreads is by subscribing to my newsletter, Devils & Fools. I’m offering client readings on a limited basis again, as well as different email courses, and subscribers always get first dibs on these offerings. You can also find me on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.

As always with these readings, take what you need and leave what you don’t. Happy Gemini season!

Aries

All Eyes On You

You have no problem being in the spotlight, and this season, you may find yourself the object of more attention than usual. Soak it up! If you’ve been working hard towards something, this may indicate that you’ll get the recognition you so deeply deserve this season. And if you’ve felt sidelined during a project or goal, allow yourself to receive the accolades or compliments that are your due. Don’t dim that natural flame and brilliance — instead, let yourself shine brightly. What does it feel like for you to be the recipient of attention? How do you hear and understand praise?

Taurus

Body Work

You’re no stranger to self-care, but this season, pay particular attention to the ways that you are physically tending to your health, wellness, and sense of comfort. Your body has the capacity for so much joy, wonder, awe, and magic, but it also requires consistent, tender loving care, gentleness, and compassion. If you’ve been feeling particularly tense, stressed, anxious, or any other intense emotion, pay attention to how that feels in your body, and make an effort to prioritize ease as much as possible. What are your rituals and routines around pleasure? How do you invest in your body’s joy?

Gemini

Momentum

Happy birthday, Gemini! Projects, ideas, or collaborations may be picking up steam this season, propelling you forward in a way that might feel extremely empowering, joyful, and exciting for you. This card also speaks of rapid, necessary change, the kind that feels invigorating, so be ready for quick shifts or powerful growth. What has been holding you back, and how might you take advantage of this new freedom? What have you been working on, that you can continue to fly forward with? Where have you been waiting for a break, that might come at just the right time?

Cancer

Shadow Work

This season may bring some opportunities to look deep within, confront some unexpected truths, or grapple with a seemingly contradictory aspect that you carry. All of us have pieces of our spirit that we may not acknowledge on a daily basis — and there’s truly nothing wrong with that. But if you’ve been avoiding thinking about something, tackling a problem, or owning up to a choice you’ve made, give yourself an opportunity to sit with that truth instead of continuing to ignore it. How can you show yourself kindness even in difficult moments? How might being honest with yourself empower you?

Leo

Fill Your Cup

If you’ve been giving of yourself more than usual these days, showing up for those you love or making an extra effort to be generous, consider this card your sign to take a step back and fill your own cup. Offering your time, space, energy, attention, love, devotion, or other skills is a beautiful thing, one of the best parts of being a human in a joyful and compassionate community. But there’s only so much you can give before you start to be parched yourself. What nourishes your spirit, your mind, your body, your heart? What does hope mean for you? How can you be more intentional about recharging, so that you can continue to show up for those people and things that you love?

Virgo

Finish Line

You’re known for your work ethic and attention to detail, and this season, you may find yourself within sight of an important ending, literally or figuratively crossing a major finish line. Celebrate this victory wholeheartedly, rather than focusing on any perceived flaws or unfinished aspects — you’ve been working hard to accomplish or complete something, and this is a time to honor all of that effort. What does it feel like to sit in stillness and revel in how far you’ve come? How can you be intentional about celebrating, instead of immediately looking to the next set of tasks ahead?

Libra

Boss Up

As you move into Gemini season, you may find yourself stepping up to the plate in more ways than one: owning your desires, taking charge of a situation or project, and otherwise demonstrating that you are more than capable of being in charge of something important. You have more authority than you may realize, and this season may bring opportunities to get your shit together in more ways than one. Don’t let fear hold you back — instead, take this chance to write your own rules. What makes you feel strong, powerful, badass? How can you take ownership of the things you care about?

Scorpio

Study

You’re known for your intensity, and this season, channel all of that power and focus into devoting yourself to learning something. It could be a new topic or interest, or this could mean that you’re meant to dive deeper into something you already know. We are in the time of Gemini now, and that means you can indulge your curiosity as much as possible, whether that means in literal classwork or by working with a mentor to develop specific skills. How do you learn, and what does it mean to gather information and absorb it? What are you ready to devote yourself to?

Sagittarius

Divine Timing

If something has felt out of control, uncertain, or frustratingly stuck lately, you may find a sense of trust and even ease as we move into this new season. Call it luck, call it karma, call it whatever you like, but sometimes we are deeply conscious of forces moving around and within us, taking action in ways we may not be capable of doing ourselves. Patience might be hard for you, but trust that things are clicking into place, that movement is happening even if you can’t see it, and that whatever you’ve been waiting for is on its way. What do you believe in?

Capricorn

Manifest

You’re known for your ambition and ability to get shit done, but this season, make sure you take the time to really clarify what those goals are, and to be sure that what you’re working for is truly something you want. Instead of obsessing about targets or specific objectives, give yourself the opportunity to get real with yourself, and to be honest about what you’re craving. When you know what you want, you’re unstoppable, so this season trust in your capacity to get shit done and believe in your future. What are you ready to pursue wholeheartedly?

Aquarius

Fresh Start

As we shift into Gemini season’s mutable air, you may find yourself beginning a new journey, with an opportunity to leave something that’s felt stagnant or complete behind and begin another chapter. There is such rich magic in fresh starts, in looking at something with a new perspective, so take full advantage of where you are and enjoy the ride. This is a time of courage and optimism, when anything feels possible, so don’t limit your own desire — lean in and truly honor what it is you’re ready to work towards. What are you dreaming about? How will you make those dreams come true?

Pisces

Outer Strength

How’s your sense of resilience these days? It takes a lot of strength to be vulnerable, and this season may bring a few roadblocks on your path to success. There’s no shame in feeling disappointment or discouragement, but remember that sometimes, it’s important to not take no for an answer, to keep pushing toward those big goals. What supports you in challenging moments? How are you showing up for yourself? What do you still believe is possible, and how are you pursuing that ambition?

Required Reading for Jupiter in Taurus

Wherever Jupiter falls in your birth chart, it hints at a certain kind of joy. For one person that joy might smell like an armful of library books. For someone else it may feel more like the exhilaration of climbing the tallest tree in your neighborhood and being able to see your house from there. Jupiter offers us, in various ways, a sense of giddiness when we expand our horizons. It rewards making connections between ideas we already have and brand new ones. It likes to point us toward what’s possible, often with the encouragement that this is going to be really fun.

Wherever Jupiter is in the sky, it speaks to our collective experience of delight and exploration as our culture opens up to new ideas. Jupiter moves signs about once a year, and on May 16th Jupiter moved into Taurus. What we are learning here is all about pleasure and embodiment. Taurus energy insists on us returning to a sense of goodness in being alive in our bodies. But Jupiter is interest in learning something, in expanding on what we already know, so this isn’t just a time to smell flowers and get massages (although by all means, you do you). Jupiter wants us to climb a little higher in that tree. Or read a few more books. What is it about pleasure and embodiment that you still need to learn? Where do you notice resistance, apathy, or the feeling that there isn’t much there to think about? Most of us have fairly complicated relationships to our bodies and the ways they can experience pleasure or pain. Most of us could benefit from accepting Jupiter’s friendly encouragement to dive a little deeper into what this means.

So in that spirit, here is your required reading list for Jupiter in Taurus. You have a year to complete this assignment, and there will be no test. In fact, dozing off between chapters is encouraged. But you might just feel that heady sense of feeling your world expand that is the reward of working with Jupiter. And if you find yourself in that space, you may be able to rewrite some old, worn out stories you’ve been carrying around for years.

Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey

Taurus is the sign that reminds us we need to rest, and Tricia Hersey’s brilliant manifesto speaks to how something so simple can be revolutionary. Tricia Hersey is the creator of The Nap Ministry and this book has a resounding, inspired message. With powerful stories from her own life, she identifies how capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy become embodied in a kind of grind culture that we perpetuate ourselves — and the harm that causes. She calls for a return of what has been stolen: space to dream and imagine, space to rest, space to have experiences that do not lead to productivity. This is the angriest, most uncompromising book about rest I’ve ever read, and I consider that high praise.

Pleasure Activism by adrienne marie brown

This iconic collection about the politics of pleasure is slightly uneven, but that’s entirely aligned with what it’s offering: permission to play, experiment, get messy, and pay attention to what makes you feel good. Informed by Audre Lorde’s groundbreaking essay “The Uses of the Erotic” and ranging from interviews with activists and organizers to (fictional, I think?) interviews with sex toys, Pleasure Activism asks us to recognize which bodies and identities have commonly been denied experiences of self-determined pleasure, and to reach for that freedom.

Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology edited by Michael Walsh

A generously thick book, collecting poems from hundreds of queer writers, Queer Nature rewards settling in and slowing down. You may think you don’t like poetry if you consider it a code language you need to crack. But this anthology of nature poems doesn’t need you to solve for x or answer any riddles, instead it offers lush worlds full of gender weirdness, seasonal changes, stickiness, and longing. You may find yourself wanting to live there for awhile.

The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor

My body has changed a lot in the last few years. I can come up with reasons why — the pandemic, new health issues, getting older — but then I wonder why I’m coming up with these reasons. Who am I apologizing to? Many of us hold this cognitive dissonance of believing all bodies are valid but then holding ourselves to a different standard — which, Sonya Renee Taylor argues, causes more harm to ourselves and others than we think. Taylor describes radical self-love as a blueprint for a transformed relationship with our bodies, and by extension all oppressed bodies and the planet itself. That may sound grandiose, but I invite you to imagine how different our world would be if we stopped investing in hatred for our own or other people’s bodies. This book offers critical tools for making that transformation real.

Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction edited by Joshua Whitehead

This collection opens with a line from a poem by Natalie Diaz: “Am I / what I love? Is this the glittering world / I’ve been begging for?” Written during a time of loss and global crisis, these stories turn away from dystopia as the only way to imagine the future. Editor Joshua Whitehead gathers stories of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer love in futures that weave together the natural world and cybernetics, ancestors and AI, to create glittering worlds where love is palpable.

Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat

Nothing brings me into my senses so immediately as the smell or taste of food. On the surface this cookbook may seem out of place in a list of books that connect the dots between pleasure and resistance, and I did consider choosing a book about unlearning diet culture and restoring intuitive eating, but I kept coming back to this one as giving me the most Jupiter in Taurus vibes. Samin Nosrat is not telling us diets are bad or that we should experience more pleasure from food. Instead, she takes it as her premise that we eat for pleasure and that we, like her, are interested in how to make that experience more pleasurable. The entire lack of apology for this premise is what landed this book here, and what makes this book subtly subversive. Nosrat wants you to learn how to taste your food with more care and attunement so that you can make your food tastier intuitively and I fully support that mission.

An Immense World by Ed Yong

When I was a teenaged Buddhist committed to non-violence in a way I interpreted as not killing any living thing, including insects, I read a book about how insects perceive the world, and it blew my mind. It didn’t make living in a roach-infested apartment any easier, but it did humble me. This new book by Ed Yong goes beyond the insect realm to help us understand how all kinds of other creatures experience the world through their senses. I would argue this is an innately queer experience as it expands our understanding of what bodies can be and do.

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

Poet Ross Gay’s essays on delight arose from a lighthearted idea that turned into a daily discipline: writing about delight every day for a year. Having this schedule, he says, developed in him a kind of radar for delights. You may be imagining, at this point, something in the genre of self-improvement through gratitude or having a positive mental attitude. This book is not that. These essays are alive with tragedies and complicated family dynamics. The delights are not plucked from the larger tree of ordinary life but admired where they are growing, ripe for a brief moment, just as real as whatever sorrow has recently watered that tree. Gay’s language is itself a delight, but by zooming in on these moments in his own life he is also showing you (without telling you, more by waving an arm) how to look differently at your own life.

What about you? Any Jupiter in Taurus must-reads you want to add to the list?

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for May 2023

The first half of this month unwinds like a hijinks-drenched, shenanigan-forward movie where you may be yelling at the characters on the screen: “Why would you say that?” or “You’re only making things worse” or “Just change clothes and tell the truth about your twin sister!” Such, at least, is how I invite you to experience this particular eclipse season, with the upcoming Scorpio lunar eclipse on the 5th. Otherwise you’re in danger of taking the potential misunderstandings and revelations way too seriously. There may be important healing work for you to do this month, and I certainly encourage you to do it, but I also recommend being able to laugh even as you’re cringing. Venus is in Gemini after all, during this eclipse, helping us see the humor in it all.

If you have planets near 15 degrees of Taurus, Scorpio, Leo or Aquarius it’s especially important that you not get spooked by this eclipse, as it may feel a little more personal for you. Eclipses show us what we need to see, and that’s generally whatever we’ve been invested in not looking at. New information can be unsettling and hard to integrate. And with Jupiter in Aries till mid-month, we can be quick to jump to conclusions, act from a place of urgency, and overestimate how much energy we have to tackle things alone. This is the recipe for screwball disasters of all kinds — going it alone and acting too quickly on false assumptions. So let whatever you’re learning right now simmer. Barring real emergencies, give yourself space to think things through before leaping into action. Ideally, talk them through with a few friends who can share different perspectives.

The vibe shifts on the 16th when Jupiter moves into Taurus, a few days before the Taurus New Moon on the 19th that marks the official end of this eclipse season. Jupiter, our cosmic tenderqueer cheerleader, is fairly happy in Venus-ruled Taurus. When Jupiter changes signs, about once a year, our collective experience of faith, hope, joy, and enthusiasm changes gears. With Jupiter in Aries, we’ve been excited about getting things started and taking bigger risks. It’s been a little high-octane, a little caffeinated, and quite a wild ride. As Jupiter moves into Taurus, we’re slowing down and grounding ourselves in the pleasures of embodiment. If Jupiter in Aries is that feeling of flying as you bicycle down a steep hill, Taurus is the picnic in the sun after your bike ride when all your muscles are pleasantly sore and there is nothing to do but eat and nap.

Jupiter will stay in Taurus for about a year, until May 25th, 2024. To tap into its highest potential, your main homework is to learn to love being alive in your body. That may sound like a wellness platitude, but I mean it in its most revolutionary sense: When I say love I mean it the way bell hooks did when she spoke of love as a dangerous and meaningful practice we need to learn, not just a feeling or an obligation. And when I say body I mean trans liberation, fat liberation, the sacredness of Black and brown bodies, the beauty and strength of disabled bodies, the vulnerability and tenderness of all our bodies — I mean learning to love our bodies is going to be hard because the world is becoming increasingly unsafe for us and we will need to work harder to create safety within ourselves and for each other. And when I say hard work, I don’t mean the grind and hustle and stoicism of pushing yourself hard to be the best, I mean the discomfort of being with grief and love as they wash over you, of noticing where you’ve swallowed the poison of dominant culture, of striving to stay present when you want to disassociate or check out. I’m talking about the practice of relaxing a little more and a little more into that discomfort so that it starts to feel more comfortable to be there. And to be here, with us, as you.

Jupiter is a social planet, it connects us to each other. It reminds us that we can link up, share ideas, inspire each other, and enjoy each other. Jupiter in Taurus wants us to experience the lushness of what we can do with our bodies together — not just sex, but all forms of communal pleasure. I’m reminded of queer parties where people eat cake off each other’s bodies, flog each other with nettles and cut flowers, paint each other’s nails while eating chocolate and cheese. We need this vibe as we face all the bullshit that’s coming our way — not as a distraction or escape, but as how we maintain our resilience. And as these are still Covid times, despite the world wanting to pretend otherwise and move on, this transit also asks us to be creative and caring in how we make these spaces for gathering, for pleasure, and for safety.

May this month bring you joy, pleasure, and restoration. I know we all need it.

I’m available for readings this month, so do get in touch if you feel so inspired. For more astro updates you can follow me on Instagram, or join me on Patreon for expanded horoscopes each month and ritual prompts for each new moon, plus the chance to win a free reading with me. And if you want to hear me talk more about this eclipse season, tune into episode 110 of the Mind Witchery podcast, where I talk more about a trauma-informed approach to astrology and eclipses.

Aries

Know when you’ve done enough and can rest — which may mean tiring yourself out so much that you actually want to rest. As much as possible, find green spaces and spacious days where nothing is demanded of you except your absolute presence. Use up any excess energy by tending to plants, cooking food, stretching, or holding an impromptu dance party. And give yourself permission to sleep through whatever fun thing you thought you wanted to do but are genuinely too exhausted to enjoy.

Taurus

Feel the sunlight on your skin. Fill your house with flowers. Welcome Jupiter into your sign like you would welcome a longed-for friend — one who likes to braid your hair or cook you your favorite foods while telling you about what they’ve been reading. This month brings opportunities to drop your shoulders, relax into connection, and find those oases of “it’s okay right now” in the midst of all the not-okay that is the world. Make the time to celebrate, relax, and enjoy something beautiful about your life as it is right now.

Gemini

If you wake up from dreams that you were an animal, light-footed and keen, and you can still smell the night air on your fur — don’t wash your face just yet, don’t brush off that other life as though it wasn’t real. You are coming back to life in new ways, parts of you here in the ordinary world and parts of you only catching up with the rest in your sleep, or in daydreams as you’re looking out of train windows, or sometimes when you yawn at night and half-remember something exciting you wanted to tell your friend—but you can’t piece together the whole story yet. It’s okay. The fragments themselves are beautiful.

Cancer

If this year is a dance party, this month is the moment when you overcome your shyness and either let yourself be pulled out into the middle of the floor or do it yourself without anyone pulling you. You are learning what kinds of togetherness feel right for you now. You may want to go home after just a few songs. You may want to retreat to a dark corner and dance alone. This month says yes to all of this — yes, join the party, yes leave the party, yes have your own party. In any order that makes sense for you. Follow your own sense of what feels good and when you’re done.

Leo

One of the scariest things about Leo energy is how much it asks you to keep exposing parts of yourself that you may rather hide. The goal of Leo is to be truly, authentically seen — ideally by people who understand and appreciate you. That’s a tall order. Many people handle this by crafting an impressive public self of some kind. This month is asking, if this has been your strategy, for you to gently relax all the muscles you’ve been using to hold that pose. There’s nothing more impressive than your own relaxed authenticity. Share that with someone special, share that with the world, share it with just your dog — it doesn’t matter as much as you arriving there and feeling your body hum with relief.

Virgo

You may be at a crossroads this month, but it’s not a maze. You don’t need to search for the one right path that will take you where you need to go. Here, not a single path is the wrong one. Each one will take you somewhere interesting, with the potential for renewal and growth. You can also wander back and take another, your choices aren’t shutting down future possibilities. Explore more. Try it out. Double back and try another if you’re not having fun. Get lost midway and wander off the path entirely. It will be a glorious adventure.

Libra

Extend one paw toward that water glass and bat it gently off the table. It’s okay to let a few things smash right now. This is not the month to be impeccably dressed, ready to impress, or overly polite when something inside you is clawing to get free. Respect your complexity enough to allow for some mess, some irritation, and some confusion as you wrestle with what you need to change. Experiment. Let something end. Be curious about what could begin.

Scorpio

Your strength is appreciated right now, but it’s not what’s strictly necessary. Focus instead on your softness, or on where you may be able to experience softness. No one doubts your capacity to show up for the hard things, to witness, to facilitate healing. But this month begins a time when you can choose to have more stability, more calm, and more beauty in your life. This is especially true in important partnerships, romantic or platonic. Start by setting boundaries — what do you need to limit or insist on right now? When you have a little more breathing room, start considering what you really want.

Sagittarius

A secret you are learning right now: your body isn’t a set of daily chores, or a work-in-progress that needs adjustments, or fixed thing that will remain the same from day to day. Your body is more like a lens that focuses your perception and can also color it — who you are is more dependent on hormones and sleep quality and the last time you ate than you like to admit. And in your restlessness you may always try to outpace your body, like an older sibling yelling “keep up” to a younger one that can’t possibly. But right now the adventure is right here. You don’t have to go anywhere else. Invite your body into a new kind of conversation, one where you’re listening more closely to the beauty and the strangeness of moving through time with it.

Capricorn

Your main question for this month is deceptively simple: How could you be enjoying this more? This isn’t an invitation to ditch all responsibilities, duck out of hard conversations, and dedicate yourself to the kind of hedonism that you’ll later regret. Rather, asking yourself this in both easy and hard situations will invite your body into the collaboration with you. Maybe you really do want to keep writing all night, but you’d enjoy it so much more if you stood up and stretched or got some snacks. Maybe you’d enjoy a serious conversation more if you went somewhere beautiful to talk, or held hands. Pleasure isn’t here to take you out of the business of living, but to invite you in.

Aquarius

A breath of fresh air is blowing in through your bedroom windows. Can you linger here a little longer? In your mind’s eye there is always a world beyond this one — the future or the community or the whole Earth—and they seem to call you outside this ordinary space of home. But this month and especially right now as you read this please come back home to yourself. Wrap your bedsheets around you like a shawl as you rub sleep from your eyes. This is the miracle you came here for.

Pisces

Permit yourself moments of unbridled enthusiasm, unwarranted optimism, and uncharacteristic talkativeness. If you struggle to find the right words, consider: what if your goal isn’t clarity, or sounding authoritative, or having the most convincing argument? What if the feelings coursing through you—lyrical, complex, unnameable — are their own language? What if what you thought were to-do lists all this time were actually poems?

Queer Tarotscopes for Taurus Season 2023: What Does Friction Teach Us?

This season’s tarotscopes feature The Queer Tarot and The Astrol-OG Deck.

Before we get into our Taurus season ‘scopes, I want to take a moment to remember the magnificent Rachel Pollack. If you aren’t familiar with her, I would invite you to read her story and pick up a copy of one of her many brilliant books. Pollack was a trans pioneer in the worlds of writing, comics, and tarot, and I can honestly say that I would not be writing about tarot in the way that I do if it were not for her work. Pollack’s presence will be deeply missed by myself and so many others, and I am so grateful for all that she shared with the world.

Welcome to Taurus season, friends. These tarotscopes are built around the astrological correspondences created by The Order of the Golden Dawn, and while some of them can be useful for more deeply understanding zodiacal signs and major arcana archetypes, others can feel strange, off-putting, or straight up confusing. In particular, the association between Taurus and the major arcana’s Hierophant can be a perplexing one for many, as Taurus’ earthy sensuality and fixed-sign devotion may feel at odds with the common depictions of the Hierophant as a priest or pope, someone celibate and intentionally removed from the pleasures and pitfalls of daily life so that they can focus on more spiritual concerns. But this correspondence provides us with an excellent opportunity to free the Hierophant from this narrow religious depiction, allowing them to become someone a bit more relatable.

The Hierophant is associated with the number five in the major arcana, which is a digit tied to freedom, adventure, friction, change, and necessary shifts. After the Emperor’s organization and dedication to systems, the Hierophant encourages us to consider those traditions through a new lens, and to be deliberate about what we keep, and what we leave behind. This archetype can teach us about finding power in what we don’t understand, and having courage to pursue the unknown. In the same way that Taurus works hard but also prioritizes pleasure, the Hierophant holds their own contradictions, encouraging us to reach for knowledge but not cling to it so tightly that it can’t grow or transform.

Put another way: the Hierophant doesn’t have to just be a holy figure, someone who holds spiritual keys of knowledge or serves as an uptight gatekeeper of truth. Instead, the Hierophant can be a door opener, a change bringer, someone who shares and absorbs information simultaneously. Think about the best instructor you know, whether they teach professionally or not: is this someone pompous, who believes they already understand perfectly, who insists that their perspective is the only true way? Or is this instead someone open-minded, curious and competent, who is constantly questioning and delighted by contradictions? What kind of teacher do you learn better from? Who do you want your Hierophant to be?

Taurus teaches us about birth, growth, abundance, pleasure, and comfort, and the Hierophant similarly empowers us to not be afraid to stretch beyond what we have always been taught. We can be both physical and spiritual, can delight in the present while respecting the past, can dream of more while still being grateful for what we have. In this season of Taurus, don’t neglect your physical self at the expense of spiritual aspirations. Consider where you may be feeling restricted or restrained, where an old way of being might be getting in the way of new desires or dreams. How can you give yourself permission to break free, to evolve? Where might internal friction help you find external movement?

Experienced tarot readers or astrologers can plug the cards I’ve drawn for their sun, moon, and rising signs into the spread below to create a custom reading for this season. Taurus is ruled by Venus, planet of values and balance, so if you know your Venus placement you can include that in your spread for more insights into your season.

My first book, Finding the Fool: A Tarot Journey to Radical Transformation, is available now at your favorite local bookstore! I’ll also be hanging out with the A+ book club in May to chat about it, and would love to have you join us. My tarot numerology course, Devils & Digits, is starting up again at the end of April, and I do have payment plans and tiered pricing available if you’re interested in joining us. The best way to stay up-to-date on my writings, offerings, and latest tarot spreads is by subscribing to my newsletter, Devils & Fools. I’m offering client readings on a limited basis again, as well as email courses, and subscribers always get first dibs on these offerings. You can also still find me on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.

As always with these tarot readings, take what you need and leave what you don’t. Happy Taurus season!

Aries

Page of pentacles

There’s something so invigorating about a fresh start, and for you, this season is an opportunity to explore something that connects to your sense of safety, community, and support. Pentacles are the suit of earth, representing the tangible resources that empower you to do everything that you want to do, and with the page, we find an energy of curiosity, exploration, and rule-breaking. Where are you ready to plant some new seeds, to see what might grow in your world? How can you look at something with a fresh perspective, instead of limiting your ideas to ones that fit within old expectations?

Taurus

Ace of swords

Happy birthday, Taurus! It may feel like this season brings a sharp new sense of clarity, insight, or truth, as something is revealed to you or within you that changes everything. As the sign of fixed earth, you are usually associated with dedication and focus rather than flexibility — yet in looking at something with fresh eyes, in allowing yourself to reconsider something that you have preciously taken for granted, you may find a new willingness to explore. What is opening up within you? How can you start down a new path of discovery? What are you ready to learn?

Gemini

The Chariot

As an informative-gatherer, you have a skill for asking questions that do not always have easy, simple answers. And this season, that’s something to celebrate about yourself, as the Chariot often pushes us to consider the road we are following, and to pay attention to how our actions may serve (or get in the way of) our true sense of purpose. What feeds your imagination, your joy, your spirit, and how do your more tangible goals contribute to those more lofty aspirations? How can you make sure that your choices are in alignment with your most personal truths?

Cancer

Eight of swords

It may feel this season that you are stuck in a situation with no exits, that all of your choices have been stripped away. Yet eights are numbers of power, and in spite of the challenges you may be facing right now, you have an opportunity here to reclaim your magic, to own your strength, and to take control of the narrative. Instead of getting lost in your own fears or anxieties, take a hard look at what is really happening rather than just what you’re concerned could happen. How can you change your perspective? Where do you have more options than you may realize?

Leo

The Magician

You have so much power, so much energy, so much strength within you, and this season is the time to say yes. Yes to what? Literally whatever you like. The Magician is an archetype of courage and potential, of looking at absolutely anything and believing that there is a way to accomplish it. If you find yourself doubting your own abilities, talents, or ideas this season, remember the Magician, and let their boldness and innovative spirit flow through you. What could you accomplish if you stopped letting fear influence your decisions? What is worth pursuing?

Virgo

Nine of wands

As you move into Taurus season, it may feel that you’re in the home stretch of a big project, ambition, dream, or working. And you’re often comfortable in this space, in cleaning up the final details or reviewing everything carefully to ensure that nothing is out of place. Yet in your desire to dot every I and cross every T, don’t forget to also celebrate everything you’ve accomplished, and to glory in where you are. As you race towards the finish line, make space for rest, for joy, for pleasure. How long have you been working towards this, and how does it feel to be nearly finished? Where can you slow down and enjoy the ride?

Libra

Page of swords

 If last season demanded rest, perspective, and healing, Taurus comes charging in with fresh ideas and a reinvigorated sense of purpose. You’re known for craving balance and harmony, for working in alignment with your values, and the page of swords is a figure of curiosity, clarity, and discovery. Pay attention to what you are taking in this season, to the information that is presented as absolute truth, to the ways that perspective changes what is shared and what is kept hidden. How do you recognize fact from fiction?

Scorpio

Seven of swords

There are times when we need to act, and times when we are better served by waiting, observing, and choosing our moment. This season, you may find yourself holding back information, or feeling reluctant to make a decision until you have more information. There’s nothing wrong with being cautious, but don’t let not knowing every single detail about something or someone keep you on the sidelines — sometimes all we can do is grab the blade and move forward. Where are you hesitating, and why? What is living beneath your fear, and how can you take control of the situation instead of letting something pass you by?

Sagittarius

The World

You’re someone that is almost always on the move, whether it’s creatively, energetically, spiritually, physically, or intellectually. Yet the World is a card of endings and completion, of declaring something finished, of reveling in your accomplishments. And sometimes, this can be a really hard energy to sit in! As you move into Taurus season, give yourself permission to celebrate and rest, to respect how hard you’ve worked, to allow others to acknowledge all that you’ve done. How have you been transforming, and what does it feel like to recognize a completed metamorphosis? How do you know when something is done?

Capricorn

Nine of pentacles

If last season was all about planting a new seed for your future, this season may find you reaping what you have sown, and celebrating just how far you’ve come. Cycles don’t always move quickly, and what you began in Aries season may not be already coming to fruition now that the sun is in Taurus. Yet you have gotten more done than you may realize, and this season offers an opportunity to take satisfaction in your progress, to recognize the stability you have built, and to begin to look forward to the next beginning. How can you make space for pleasure, for rest, for pride? What have you created, and how can you take the time to actually enjoy it?

Aquarius

The Star

After difficult times or tumultuous periods in our lives, it can feel challenging to remember who we are, what we need, and where we might be going. When the Star comes forward, it’s a reminder that all is not lost, and that hope is a mindset rather than an emotion. The Star is your birth card, and so as you move into Taurus season, give yourself the time and space that you need to check in with yourself. How can you create intentional room for healing, and what does that healing look like? What makes you feel safe, comforted, protected? When you shift your gaze from the present to the future, what do you see?

Pisces

Four of swords

Last season may have felt like an intense period of putting your nose to the grindstone, getting your hands dirty, and putting in consistent, daily effort towards a big goal. And after all of that hard work, Taurus season offers you a chance to slow down, give yourself a break, and take some much-needed rest. But while Taurus is known for sensual, physical pleasures, the four of swords is also about mental recovery, about giving your mind a chance to settle and calm. How can you set boundaries that allow you to truly unplug, unwind, unclench? What would it look like for you prioritize self-care, in both a physical and mental sense?