Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for May 2022

May is an action-packed month with a few major plot twists. Imagine you’re watching a movie about car chases, all vrooming and heavy bass music and cars flipping and soaring, but then the lead car disappears under a bridge and ends up at the beginning again, playing out the same race on the same track. And when it reaches the bridge again, this time on the other side we’re on horseback in the Old West. Or in spaceships. Or in some other story where the concept of “car chase” becomes even stranger and we begin to wonder: Were the cars really a metaphor? What were we chasing? Who were we escaping? In short, May has moments of the Fast and the Furious intercut with moments of Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain. Which is to say—we may feel a rush of adrenalin and forward motion, but where it leads us may be much stranger than we anticipated. There’s a lot going on astrologically this month, so let’s break it down piece by piece:

*Jupiter is stirring up trouble.* This gentle giant, the gay cheerleader of the cosmos, has been drifting through the clouds of Pisces for the first part of the year and is now making a major shift. On May 3rd Jupiter will sextile Pluto, planet of tough love and harsh truths. When Jupiter contacts Pluto, we find move with expansive energy toward what’s thorny and in need of healing. This can be a good thing, signaling a time when we’re no longer afraid of that thorn stuck in our paw and we’ve got the tweezers and scalpel at the ready. This can also be a hard thing, if we’re moving toward what hurts without intention or skill—this is where it becomes trouble. Be careful especially this month about naming what you’re noticing about other people’s business.

*Jupiter is revving our engines.* When Jupiter moves into Aries on May 10th, the tone of the year also shifts. We’re moving from idling to speeding, from 0 to 60 in mere seconds, and any other car metaphor you care to choose. Jupiter concerns the collective’s beliefs, hopes, and energy for growth. Aries is the sign that spurs quick growth and immediate action—what’s been simmering all year is now ready to boil, for better and worse. Expect new beginnings in social movements, and ready yourself to start doing what you’ve only been considering so far. Jupiter will stay in Aries till October 28th this year before dipping back into Pisces one last time—use these months wisely, pacing yourself but also moving toward your longterm goals.

*Mercury is creating some time loops.* Mercury also turns retrograde on May 10th, and Mercury retrograde always asks us to go back over familiar ground and reexamine where we’ve been. Slowness is often indicated, as is patience—both may feel harder to access this month, so make plans for how to handle frustrations that arise.

*Mars joins the action.* Mars, ruler of Aries, will join Venus and Jupiter in Aries on May 24th. If we went from 0 to 60 earlier, we’re going from 60 to 90 now. The second half of the year is dominated by Mars energy, and this month begins that shift.

*Eclipses change the plot entirely.* Finally, no big deal, we’re in eclipse season and there will be a Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio on May 16th. Eclipses reveal what’s been hidden and can be jarring and surprising—this month people with planets near 25 degrees of Scorpio, Taurus, Leo, and Aquarius will be most strongly affected. During an eclipse it’s always best practices to watch, wait, and learn rather than jumping to conclusions or taking immediate action, within reason. Don’t put your life on hold, but if you have to make a big decision, expect some unexpected things to come up.

This month is high energy, high adrenalin, and packed full of energetic twists and turns. Drive safely, my friends, and remember you can set your own pace even if everyone around you is zooming around dangerously. Find a gentle side road. Pull over at a rest area and have a snack. Enjoy the momentum of Aries season, but don’t fall for a false sense of urgency when you’re ready to slow things down.

I’m here for you if you need me this month, so go ahead and 9book a reading)[https://www.flaxandgold.com/readings/]. As always, for more astro insights you can follow me on (Instagram)[https://www.instagram.com/corinadross], join me on (Patreon)[https://www.patreon.com/corinadross], and listen to my New Moon podcast (The Hum)[https://anchor.fm/the-hum-and-the-holler]. Good luck out there!

Aries

*You’re ready:* To be exactly how you are in this moment. To claim what you need to thrive. To clarify what works and doesn’t work for you. To choose your own path.
*You’re not ready:* It’s harder in this moment to know which parts of your life are stable and which are unstable. Can you put down roots or should you be ready to cut ties and move on? Which relationships are maturing and ripening and which ones are transforming and releasing? What is solid ground and what is shifting sand? Stay aware and curious throughout this month.

Taurus

*You’re ready:* To fully release what’s been stressing you. To claim your downtime, your dreaming time, your sacred doing-nothing-at-all-productive time. To take seriously your need for restorative sleep, restorative dreams, and deep inner communion.
*You’re not ready:* This eclipse is especially powerful for your sign. Relationship issues may be up for you this month and you’re particularly charged around questions of what’s good for you vs. what’s good for your friends and partners. You may experience some uncomfortable tug of war scenarios where it feels like only one person can get their needs met, but eclipse season is challenging you to see the deeper stories underneath that. Pay attention to what makes you feel defensive or codependent. Keep track of what you’d like to change, in your own reactions and in relationship dynamics.

Gemini

*You’re ready:* To dream big again. To join the larger world and be part of liberating changes. To work toward a future worth living in.
*You’re not ready:* There’s more you need to learn this month about integrating your inner world with your outer—whether that feels like balancing work between mind and body, subconscious and conscious, daily life and your connection to all times past and future. You’re stuck somewhere between the infinite and the finite, the known and the unknowable. How can you find inspiration and creativity through these blockages? What do you need to learn right now?

Cancer

*You’re ready:* To level up. You’ve learned enough to claim your expertise and become a resource for others. This is a month to be honest about your capacity and your ambitions, even if it feels more comfortable not to put yourself forth.
*You’re not ready:* Expect some confusion this month about your role in a group. There’s something you’re learning about how you operate as “we” vs. “me” that may surprise you. Ask yourself: When I’m emotionally activated, does the power of that emotion mean I ask for attention despite what the group might need in that moment? If so, how can I self-soothe and track the needs of others as I tend to my own? Or, do I have a tendency to ignore my needs and hyperfocus on tending to others? What might it look like to speak up more about what I need?

Leo

*You’re ready:* To set sail. To explore. To have adventures. To feel free, expanded, and reconnected.
*You’re not ready:* There may be some stress about your home and family life, or your work life, or how those relate to each other. Responsibilities of all kinds can weigh heavy on you. This isn’t the month where you find the most elegant solutions, you’re merely gathering data and taking notes right now and what feels crunchy and why. Next month is when you get to take steps to shift things toward the better.

Virgo

*You’re ready:* To transform. To face your fears and heal them. To release past traumas. To shed the too-tight skin of old, outdated identities.
*You’re not ready:* To know what it all means yet or how to talk about it. You are still in process, and it may be difficult to name what your becoming. Resist the urge to justify (to yourself or others) what feels right. You don’t need a road map or a thesis statement. You don’t need to make simple what is nuanced and complex. Let yourself be in a process of change without needing to have a plan yet for where you’re headed.

Libra

*You’re ready:* To say yes to partnership that works well. To say no to partnerships that aren’t working. To call in peers and collaborators. To have clarity on what kind of relationship supports your wellbeing and is worth the effort.
*You’re not ready:* To know what you want to keep and what you want to change. To trust what’s growing to keep growing. To know how deeply you’re willing to release what isn’t working. To reckon with the more powerful emotions around loss, fear of loss, and security. You may have intellectual clarity this month, but your feelings may take some time to catch up with you.

Scorpio

*You’re ready:* To be fully present. To claim your body as your own. To tend to your physical health without resentment or criticism of how you’re body is showing up.
*You’re not ready:* This eclipse is especially powerful for your sign. Relationships are a little dicier for you this month—pay attention to your tendency to retreat or stonewall when you don’t have the energy to process what you’re feeling on the spot. Pay attention to other peoples’ tendency to push you or cross your boundaries, even unintentionally or with the best motives. Let these tensions become useful information to sort through later, and by all means resist any doom narratives that come up around them.

Sagittarius

*You’re ready:* To flirt and romance—yourself, your partner(s), new dates, trees, weather patterns, flowers, books—whatever and whoever fills you with that sense of excitement and newness.
*You’re not ready:* Pacing yourself may be a problem this month as you have a tendency to get lost in the big dreams—fantasies, visioning, planning, mapping out potential futures—and ignore basic physical needs (have you eaten enough today? Is it past your bedtime) and responsibilities (who’s waiting on you to get back to them in a timely manner?). As much as possible, let these tensions be instructive. Don’t beat yourself up but also don’t ignore the ones that have valuable insights for you. You are learning a new balance between the world of potential and the here and now.

Capricorn

*You’re ready:* To congratulate yourself on a job well done and take a break. To reconnect with what nurtures you. To say no to anything that’s going to take too much energy. To rest.
*You’re not ready:* It may be harder this month to handle your own need for affection and attention with larger plans and projects you’re invested in. Do you let projects and aspirations take center stage 100% of the time? 90%? What would a better balance feel like between the personal and the political? When and how is it okay to say: “Pay attention to me”?

Aquarius

*You’re ready:* To tell the world. To name your terms. To ask for what matters. To reach out after absence. To laugh long and hard.
*You’re not ready:* Home and work are somewhat fraught terrains this month, with tensions between the two possible as well as just a general sense of overwhelm that might show up most as financial fears. Don’t freak out. Do take notes. Start a list of what’s causing you anxiety and add to it throughout this month, but keep it in a drawer and try not to think about it too much until next month, when you’ll be in a better space to do triage and take action.

Pisces

*You’re ready:* To put down roots. To ask to be held. To value yourself beyond your productivity or popularity. To have what you need.
*You’re not ready:* Language is always a little slippery for you, and this month it might be even harder to find the right words—or the right concepts, questions, or tone. As much as possible resist the urge to find the “right” answer or the “one” meaning while you’re still in a process of uncovering. Let your ideas spill out in abstraction, absurdity, and creative chaos. You can piece them together in more logical ways later.

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for April 2022

Many years ago I took a train ride across the country. For four days I slept, ate, read, and generally mulled over my life in a cheap aisle seat that barely reclined. My seat mate and I politely held our bodies within the boundaries of our armrests until, after a few days, that passenger left and the car emptied out enough that I could claim both seats. I lay flat on my back across them, knees bent, taking in the view out the large window. I watched the massive sky as we moved through an endless flat landscape. It was a bright day with giant, dramatic clouds moving over us. I watched them roll, expand, disperse, and merge. I watched their edges catch the sun and fade into shadow. I saw them take on new shapes and reveal different colors of clouds behind them, or within them, as we moved and they moved and the sun moved. After time all these changes seemed to express personalities, emotions, character arcs. I watched them for hours, as if I were watching an opera in a foreign language with no translation. I’m pretty sure I heard the music in my mind. It was a sweet span of time. I felt both solitary and safe in the company of fellow humans. I enjoyed our sleepy collectivity, plucked from our ordinary contexts for an long span of in-between time.

This is the memory that came to me as I thought about what’s happening in the sky this month. Astrologically speaking, Jupiter and Neptune will meet in Pisces this month, on the 12th. Metaphorically speaking, this can usher in an extended period of cloud gazing, of dreaming into the in-between. The Jupiter-Neptune conjunction opens a portal between ordinary life and the non-ordinary. Every twelve years these two get together and do this portal-opening business, but the last time they met in Pisces was 1856, and they won’t meet here again in our lifetimes. Pisces is a powerful placement for them because both call this sign home. Think of this as the right conditions to be with your own visionary imagination long enough that clouds become opera singers — and maybe some of the music you hear stays with you and you record it, and maybe someone you’ve never met hears it and it helps break something open in their heart and they finally feel ready to leave a bad situation, and maybe as they make this choice they inspire their child who was feeling depressed and trapped and who now realizes the world is full of possibility and that while harm happens, healing also happens… Now imagine this outward-rippling movement of art, emotional catharsis, and empathic actions happening throughout the world, in a million of subtle ways we will never be able to track.

This is the spell I invite you to cast with me this month, and the best way you can do it is to take seriously your own need to dream, to cloud gaze, to hear music in your head, to reach out with love to your collectivities, however temporary or provisional they may be. Think of this as you playing your role in an ongoing, multigenerational continuity of art, love, and care. We may experience gaps and breaks in this continuity, but we also get to keep it going.

These are hard times. This influence isn’t going to make it all better, astrology doesn’t work that way. But astrology shows us opportunities to take actions, and this month I invite you to act from your heart, from your imagination, and from your sense of connection to our beautiful wholeness. If you are an artist of any kind, make time for your art. It is important. Even if you don’t think you’re an artist, you can tap into what inspires you and share what you love. Under this influence, our imaginations are potent. Our collective longing is oceanic. Our dreams are navigational. This is a month to dream what is not yet real into being.

And there are some downsides to this influence. If you identify as empathic or sensitive, you may need to work a little harder to hold your boundaries. When the entire collective is deep in the dreamworld, we can encounter our nightmares. Learn how to tap into what you need without getting flooded by what you don’t need. And opening a Pisces portal can mean that addictions and cravings get stronger, staying embodied gets harder, and we might experience a kind of un-boundaried optimism that can lead entire countries to no longer require that simplest of boundaries (a mask) at a time when the pandemic is still not over. That whole thing. So remember not to trust your optimism more than your realism right now, my friends. And for those who are already energetically sensitive, I encourage you to tend to your bodies: Eat solid, filling meals. Say no. Say not right now. Take showers, swim in the ocean. Stretch. Sing. Massage your feet.

And for all of us, may your mind have spaciousness and rest this month. May your movements be slow and beautiful. May your body be held by time. May you be inspired. May you make and do things that contribute to that energetic scaffolding of love, art, and care that is foundational for us all.

And a quick P.S. — the other main event of April is the beginning of eclipse season! We’ll have a solar eclipse in Taurus on the 30th, but we’ll be stepping through that eclipse portal on the 16th. So. many. portals. I’ll talk more about this next month, but a quick reminder that eclipses bring opportunities to learn, integrate, and make different choices in the future. It’s generally best to not make sudden, big decisions till the season has passed, though, which will be on May 30th. Between now and then, keep dreaming into the in-between.

For a deeper dive through all these damn portals, get in touch for personal support and insights. I’ve also got a free resource on energetic hygiene tips for sensitives that’s available on my website. For more astro details you can follow me on Instagram, join me on Patreon, and listen to my New Moon podcast The Hum. And if you just want to tell me what big or small things you’re doing this month to add to this energetic scaffolding project, please do! I’d love to hear what you’re all up to.

Aries

Dream this world into being: You have time to be with your own depths. You don’t have to be afraid of missing out when you turn inward. You can hush your sense of urgency, knowing you’ll be able to spring into action when the time is actually right. You can follow your instincts and release the need for things to make logical sense. You don’t have to choose survival over togetherness, you get to have both. You are allowed to be mysterious to yourself and you are allowed to be curious about the mysteries (rather than critical).

Taurus

Dream this world into being: You sacrifice not a single piece of your full, complex, beautiful self as you take your place in the larger collective. It makes sense, suddenly, to expect and demand a higher level of empathy and mutual care from this species we all belong to. It makes sense, suddenly, for us all to stop dressing for the job we want and start living for the world we want. Dream a utopia that is not drenched in eugenics or exclusion. Dream a utopia-in-progress, a world that must keep remaking itself but that has the capacity to do so, just as the springtime makes flowers out of frozen ground. It is your job this month to stay whole, even as these times want you to fragment. Don’t get distracted by doom narratives. You get to be whole (even if parts of you are in pain) and you get to be part of the larger whole (even as parts of it are in pain). Wake up into this certainty.

Gemini

Dream this world into being: The world needs your strangeness. Your ambitions don’t have to be practical. You don’t have to squeeze all your unconventional brilliance into some small, pre-defined role. Dream beyond what the world tells you success is. Redefine what you live for. You get to follow the thread of curiosity and restlessness to wherever it leads you. Your process of searching is the point. You get to resist being legible, seeking legitimacy, proving you’re legit. You get to reclaim what some have deemed distractibility as a core talent: You are here to experience the wonder of the world. Keep expanding into possibility. Anything else you do is extra.

Cancer

Dream this world into being: You belong to a larger story than the one you’re currently bogged down in. There are chapters and chapters you have yet to read, twists and turns and sudden revelations, deep love, connections that bring you out of the narrow place of fear and into a larger perspective. Imagine you can have a bigger impact on the world than you usually believe. Imagine we are rooting for you. Find that thread of meaning that’s pulling you toward this future that you get to share with us. We’ll meet you there.

Leo

Dream this world into being: You’re safe enough to say goodbye to what’s been holding you too tightly. It’s okay to let yourself change. We get to grieve what’s over, but we also get to move toward what is yet to come. You find yourself coming back to life when you let go of the need for control. You get to have all the feelings you need to about this. There is a path back to joy, and you are walking it. You are moving toward your next, brightest self.

Virgo

Dream this world into being: You don’t have to do any of this alone. You’re not the only one tracking what’s wrong and what needs to happen. You can ask for loving reflection. You get to know why you matter to the people who love you — why your being matters more than your doing. There is an invitation on your doorstep to completely surrender to the beauty of this present moment and trust that what needs to happen is happening, with no effort on your part. There is a special kind of magic you can do when you hold what is real and what is ideal in your mind at the same time, knowing you are a part of a current pushing the real ever closer to the ideal. Let yourself drift on that current.

Libra

Dream this world into being: You are attuned to your interior landscape and how it poses questions, how you wake up each morning and get to experience yourself anew. You can maintain this attunement even as you turn your attention outward, listening to your friend or lover process their pain or ask for advice. There is a luscious abundance of time to stretch out into, to try to answer the questions of the body, to bring your lovers and partners and dear friends into a deeper intimacy with how we’re all arriving in this strange new world. In short: when you can’t speak, you get to dance.

Scorpio

Dream this world into being: You get to be excited. There’s less need to guard against disappointment or betrayal — not that these things won’t happen from time to time, but that you have the tools for healing from them. You remember how to come back to joy as the default, despite all the pain of the world. And when you forget, you’ve left yourself a map. It’s not even hard work to find the way back, it mostly feels like play. And if this all sounds impossible, tend to the part of you that has decided to stop feeling things. There may be something you need to get out of your system, first, but when you do the map will become clear.

Sagittarius

Dream this world into being: You are at home in the world. On a hillside watching the moon rise with only a thin blanket. In the town where you were born, walking familiar streets. In the house you’ve just moved to, still bearing the imprint of previous lives. In the bed you’ve built into your truck so you can carry your shell with you everywhere you go. Home doesn’t have to be either a trap or an unattainable ideal. In this dream, we all get homes. In this dream, we all get to leave our homes when the urge arises. In this dream, no one has to leave their home if they don’t want to. Carry this collective need for us. Find your own way toward home as you stay fully present wherever you are.

Capricorn

Dream this world into being: Your dream is a collective one: We understand each other. We have room for our differences, in fact we’re curious about them. Surprises delight us. Finding out we were wrong about something delights us, because it’s an opportunity to learn something new. Questions are the new currency. And when we say we understand each other, we mean we are willing to try — with the understanding that so much is always beyond what we can understand, and that we flicker in our beliefs, in our identities, in our ways of showing ourselves to each other. Cultivate hope and desire for a world in which we can be delightfully incongruous and idiosyncratic, in which our inherent mysteries aren’t branded or tailored into résumés but rather admired as we admire a flock of swifts suddenly changing direction mid-flight.

Aquarius

Dream this world into being: You have enough. There is enough time to read, enough food in the pantry, enough yarn to knit another sweater, enough community to feel connected, enough solitude to listen to your own inner voice. In this world generosity is simple and effortless, is the foundation of your life — what you give and what you receive. Now take a breath and remember you cannot single-handedly take down capitalism, or try to live outside it for long no matter how determined your queer land project may be. Remember this world of abundance, interconnection, and generosity as a place you’re trying to create, patiently and collectively. Keep dreaming into how it feels to be there — your imagination will create the map of how to find it.

Pisces

Dream this world into being: A world where you may lose track of time or the thread of a conversation, but you never lose your core sense of self. Empathic connection, deep reverie, imaginative insight; these forces shape you and your intimacies and there may be times when you feel you are larger than yourself or older or have lived many other lives or are highly attuned to how your lover (or cat, or house plant) is feeling — and yet you still return from every flight and find yourself at your own center, knowing if you’re hungry or not and what your truest sense of calling is and when it’s time to stop talking and go to sleep. In short: this month is asking you to show up for your profound talents by centering your own very human needs.

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for March 2022

It is March again.

Two years ago, the whole world shut down. I remember the high adrenalin early in the pandemic — both the intense fear and the intense reaching out for togetherness and hope. Since then, I have talked to so many of you through these surreal times as we’ve navigated collective trauma, relationship stress, care-giving burnout, and fear for the future. And now, we are arguably in a time of even greater uncertainty, and the care that was available early in the pandemic (government aid, eviction moratoriums, friends who aren’t also emotionally burnt out) is vanishing. For some of us, life has returned to something like normal. For many of us, trying to understand risk is even harder and more bitterly disappointing right now. And all of us are still holding unpacked grief — because this pandemic is not yet over. There are ways we’re all energetically still tensed up, still holding our breath, until this thing really changes. Remember this if you’re wondering why you’re not feeling happy, energetic, or excited about the future right now. We are still living through unprecedented global disruption and uncertainty. We’re finding our identities disrupted, our relationships disrupted, our future trajectories uncertain.

I’m not going to pretend these are easy times, my friends, but I’m not here to be a total downer, either. March brings some really sweet astrology. I just want to place it in our real, lived context. As the world keeps shifting, where we have power is in our capacity to be in integrity with ourselves and each other. I believe this begins from locating ourselves in our feelings, in our relationships, in our desires, and in our interconnection with the larger world. I believe this continues when we listen, when we empathize, when we expand the circle of who love a little wider.

And this month brings some potent medicine for doing just that. Specifically, this month begins with a conjunction of Venus and Mars that perfects at 0 degrees of Aquarius on March 6th.

This is a quietly beautiful transit. When Venus and Mars meet, we find it easier to reconcile boundaries and desire, affection and self-assertion, giving and receiving, active love and passive pleasure. When these two planets meet, we learn more about how to love ourselves and each other better. Our loving natures get activated. Our selfishness gets tempered. We are in better balance, and we are better able to balance our needs with the needs of our loved ones. This is welcome medicine for the current moment — our hearts are holding so much. And while this transit alone won’t cure all that ails us, it can give us the motivation to start unpacking our feelings, healing our relationships, and looking toward the future with new eyes.

This can be a romantic transit, but in Aquarius it’s less sentimental and more visionary. We want to tap into the revolutionary power of love, love as the practice of freedom as the late, brilliant, beloved bell hooks wrote. As these planets escort each other from Capricorn to Aquarius, they are teaching us how to move from the old world to the new. Their conjunction began in Capricorn — sign of the past, of tradition, of responsibility and restrictions. This month they escort each other into Aquarius, where they are free to make it up as we go along, to experiment, to liberate, and to take part in a larger collective bending the arc of history toward justice. Activists, artists, healers, ritual tenders, lovers — make the most of this time.

My books are open for readings this month, so get in touch if you want personal support and insights. For more astro details you can follow me on Instagram, join me on Patreon, and listen to my New Moon podcast The Hum. I’ll be doing some magic this month under these potent energies, and I’m lighting some candles for all of you and your beautiful hearts. May this month bring you what you need!

Aries

Align: What you want to be known for (being an incredible friend or lover, or having a killer sense of humor, or being internet famous for your nail art, etc.) with how you’re here to serve the collective. There’s something you do better than anyone else, and there are people who love you and care about the choices you make. From wherever you’re positioned, with the skills you have, map out your impact on the people you influence. That might be family members and friends, or colleagues, students, employers or employees, neighbors, children you care for, collectives you’re part of, communities you stand in solidarity with. We can get so stuck, sometimes, trying to figure out how to help — start by noticing how you are already helping.

Taurus

Align: Your deep interest in the world with what you’re here to offer the world. Find a way to make your calling (may or may not be your job) better aligned with what fascinates you. What you want to learn more about? Where could you pivot and take creative risks? What do you know in your bones that you’re ready to claim as your core expertise? This month brings such a focus on teaching and learning (whether you’re the teacher, learner, or both) and how that practice informs your bigger sense of purpose. Make more room to remember (or discover) what you love and how to do more of it.

Gemini

Align: How your capacity to witness pain (your own or others’) and move toward healing can be something you model for others. Your own courage, attentiveness, and capacity to face the hard things as your résumé for being the kind of person you’re proud of. Too often we don’t get any credit for emotionally difficult things we do — cutting ties with an abusive ex or family member, maybe, or on a more everyday level just refraining from bragging or gossiping when doing so would make someone else feel bad. Developing emotional maturity takes time and patience and you rarely get a party thrown for you. But this month is asking you to teach what you’ve learned — which is a kind of party, really. You get to say out loud where you are now and how you got there. You have permission to celebrate this.

Cancer

Align: You desire for stable, committed intimacy and the reality that even the most stable relationship will change — and keep changing. The longer you’re in it, the more changes you’ll experience. Align yourself with the continuity that underlies all this change, and with the excitement that revitalizing relationships can give you — every difficult conversation is an opportunity to know yourself and your loved one better. Give yourself permission to keep changing. Give your loved ones permission to keep revealing themselves to you in new ways. Let honesty lead you into deeper intimacy.

Leo

Align: How you’re actually feeling in your body with how you make decisions about relationship. Don’t shove down or try to hide what your body is telling you about what it’s like to talk, flirt, cuddle, or get sexy with a particular person. That’s valuable data! Listen to it! If it’s a relationship you really want to deepen into, share this information! Leo energy often fears authentic vulnerability (even though its strength and charm is in offering authentic vulnerability) so watch for how you try to play things off as chill that are not, in fact, chill. No one wins in that game. This month offers you a chance to be real with yourself and deepen into relationships that love the real you, the full you.

Virgo

Align: What feels good and what’s good for you. You have a tendency to focus a little extra on that second piece — raise your hand if you’ve eaten health food that tastes like cardboard or tried to date someone you weren’t attracted to just because they seemed like a reasonable, healthy choice for you. This month is asking you to remember that pleasure and fun need to be part of making good decisions. If you’re not loving what you’re doing, it’s not sustainable and may not even be “healthy.” Joy relieves stress. As does laughter. As do really good orgasms. We know you’re good at working hard toward what matters. Now, how can you make those efforts more enjoyable? And know when you’re done with effort for the day?

Libra

Align: Your desire for staying home all day reading novels and rearranging your house plants (“this one is telling me it doesn’t like the east-facing window”) with your need to get out and be visible as a human with a full body, legs and all. In these pandemic times, staying home and going out are both more weighted than they have been. By extension, there is so much uncertainty about whether to keep things as they are (even if they’re unfulfilling) or to take big risks. Recognize that the unfamiliarity of these times means we reach for familiar structures and routines more and more — but this month, it benefits you to stretch a little farther into the unknown. Pay attention to the excuses you tell yourself about why you should just stay where it’s comfortable — and remind yourself you can make a plan, take baby steps, and make sure you know where you’re going to land before you take any sudden leaps.

Scorpio

Align: Moments of extroverted connection with that deep pull inward. Your inner life is alive with stories, memories, unexpressed language — this month invites you to shift some of it into actual speech (or texts, fine). One fascinating thing about this is that Scorpio energy has a keen antenna for bigger themes in the collective, but they usually get tucked away as impressions and intuitive hits that get buried with all that is personal and private. In unpacking what you are feeling, what you remember, what you struggle to express, you’re also mirroring the feelings, memories and struggles of the larger world. It takes, effort, yes. Go slowly, be gentle, stay hydrated, and nap when you need to.

Sagittarius

Align: Your communication style and what you have to share with the world. This is a month of powerful connections, as well as opportunities for learning (from others and from your own experiences). How can you communicate more effectively? What do you need to know in order to make yourself heard (and understood)? Are there ways that you can improve or refine the way ideas flow through your life? Stay open to questions that don’t lead you down the rabbit hole of what you already believe. Let the world be stranger than your assumptions.

Capricorn

Align: Your ambitions with your resources. You may have a lot of energy this month, and you may also find that you burn through that energy more quickly than expected. Background stress is draining your batteries, so this may not be the time you move that mountain through sheer sweat and willpower. Remember you have friends. Remember that some projects require allies, coalitions, communities. You may always be tempted to just do the damn thing yourself, but this month wants you to remember that you can share both the work and the rewards. Admit when you’re tired — it’s not an admission of defeat, but a call toward connection.

Aquarius

Align: What you need (or think you need) with that part of your mind that’s pulling you in a totally different direction. There’s a lot happening under the surface this month, and your job is not necessarily to excavate it all but to let it show you where and how to drift. Linear, productive activity can only get you so far right now. It may be uncomfortable, but it can also be powerfully revealing. As much as possible, let your rational mind quiet down enough to listen to what the rest of you has to say.

Pisces

Align: Your ideals with your activity. It can be hard to know where you have leverage, what you can change without disrupting your own precarious balance. And yet, you have a knack for bringing your dreams into reality that you can trust. Holding the limitations of reality in one hand and the world you dream of in the other, you are the calm and clear center of this present moment. There will be a time when you know what to do, and when to act. Your assignment this month is just to practice knowing and not knowing, so that you can tell, when the time does come, that your knowing is valid.

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for February 2022

For several years now I’ve been looking ahead to this month, wondering what it will bring.

We’re still getting used to a major shift in mood, as Jupiter moves through Pisces and enlivens our collective sense of dreamy, compassionate, magical thinking. This month brings the first of several major transits Jupiter will make this year as she sextiles (yes, sextiles) Uranus, planet of revolutionary queerness and collective liberation. Picture Jupiter, our cosmic gay cheerleader, hanging out at a loving-kindness meditation retreat called Pisces Energy. Mid-month, she meets and falls hard for Uranus, speculative futurist and lifelong activist of the zodiac who reminds her (and us) that it’s not enough to just feel more love, we actually have to act on it — which means showing up for the work of changing the world. Uranus brings theories, insights, perspectives, rebellion, and a focus on us all getting free together. Jupiter brings enthusiasm, optimism, energy, and in Pisces she’s tapped into her enormous capacity for love and creativity. This, my friends, is a pretty sweet romance.

Around the same time, Mars and Venus are moving into conjunction — a potent transit that will perfect early next month. I’ll go into more depth about it then, but generally this transit boosts our capacity to balance self and other, love and boundaries, giving and receiving. It enlivens us, reminds us we get to experience pleasure, and helps us reach out for what we want. It’s also low-key hot, so add to this scenario any kind of lighting or mood music that works for you.

So, all this sweet, heady, dreamy, sexy energy is happening in February and the world is still on fire. Let’s not forget our context, my friends. Jupiter getting sweet with Uranus can help us tap into our hope, our brilliance, our love for each other and the world — but it’s up to us to act on that. And if you’re experiencing anything like the pandemic I’m experiencing, we are universally and collectively depleted right now. So don’t fall into any stress patterns around “oh no, now is the magic time for me to figure out how to save the world but I can’t even get out of bed, I’m failing the revolution.” That’s not the story here. For the first few months of the year, we are still in moving through the dreamworld. We’re talking about staying in bed and letting your mind and heart expand, meander, break open, heal, and come together in new ways. You don’t have to stay in bed to do this, clearly, but you also don’t have to get out of bed to do this. You get to be slow and, like all true artists and creative geniuses, do a lot of what looks like nothing. That’s the best way to clear a space for this transit to spark in you. Same goes for the Venus-Mars transit and your anxieties about finding love or sex. The bus isn’t leaving without you, you’re on the bus with us no matter what your relational world looks like right now. If you’re not sparking with someone this month, let this transit help you claim your self-love, your boundaries, and your truth about the kind of love you really want.

Meanwhile, the other main event this month concerns the United States of America, a country founded on both high ideals of democracy and equality, on the one hand, and slavery and genocide on the other. This month brings not one but two major transits to the birth chart of the United States — Neptune opposite Neptune and Pluto conjunct Pluto, aka the Pluto Return of the US. For more details on both of these, I’ll be dropping an article mid-month on my Patreon. In brief, both signify a time of crisis and transformation. Neptune opposite Neptune generally denotes a time when we experience discord and confusion around beliefs, with ideologies springing up that can’t be reconciled with consensus reality and are resistant to logical debate. Sound familiar? The Pluto Return, meanwhile, often brings a significant transformation to the government of a country — a metamorphosis, or death and rebirth. With the right-wing of the US growing increasingly authoritarian, with the rise in right-wing political violence (including the attempted coup in January 2021), we are facing a critical year when American democracy will undergo a dramatic change. What that change will be is not predetermined, though. Whether authoritarian regimes gain control depends on so much, including who is willing to fight against them.

Phew. So, remember that your queer brilliance and dreamy imagination and ecstatic love for one another is a key force for resistance, but that you personally don’t have to save the whole damn world. That’s all. That’s what February wants you to remember. Stay open to what dreams come right now. Stay open to what helps you love more fiercely. Stay open to ideas that you might otherwise brush aside as impractical or impossible. You have a part to play in reshaping the world.

My books are open again for readings this month, so get in touch. For the full run-down on the Neptune and Pluto transits to the US join me on Patreon, and for more astro details about these times you can follow me on Instagram, and listen to my New Moon podcast, The Hum. I hope you have the best dreams and sweetest connections this month.

Aries

Stay open to: Ways you can bring what is hidden about you forward into the light. Ways to make decisions that you trust, privileging your intuition over your anxiety. Flashes of insight about how to build toward a life in which you have more of what you need, which includes sweet rest — time when you are beholden to no one for what you’re doing, thinking, and enjoying.

Taurus

Stay open to: How to understand yourself as both and individual and a member of a larger group — without either one making the other seem less important. The brilliance you can tap into when you find that balance. Your needs matter, but not more than everyone else’s. Nor do they matter less. Your positionality matters but it does not determine your worth. Stay open to the fundamental goodness of you being exactly who you are, and how who you are is both shaped by and helps shape the world you’re part of.

Gemini

Stay open to: Retreat as a valid response to overwhelm — even if what’s overwhelming you is positive. Maybe you love your job, your family, your activism, your packed social calendar — and you still need to rest. Stay open to the voices that call you inward and downward. Sit on the ground and stare at the sky this month (if you’re in a warm enough climate — otherwise do this through a window). Pay attention to how the contours of your own mind are reflected in whatever the sky is doing — when do you feel cloudy, when is there dawn in you?

Cancer

Stay open to: Your capacity to learn. No matter how old you are or how much you’ve already experienced, this year is stimulating a strong receptivity to learning what you don’t yet know. There is a social aspect to this, with the potential to be forming lasting bonds with fellow learners or teachers. This may or may not involve being in a literal class or school — you could be learning about relationships through experiences of polyamory, learning about grief through a support group for those who have lost loved ones, learning about your own upbringing by immersing yourself in a different culture. Wherever you find yourself this month, treat it as educational. Take notes. Challenge your assumptions. Notice where it feel good to grow toward the unknown.

Leo

Stay open to: Letting your old painful past ripen and release and drop off the branch and into the compost pile. Shaking yourself out of the muck. Throwing away old love letters from people who did you wrong. Throwing your image of yourself from their perspective, while you’re at it. Believing in what you’re choosing now. Believing in a future where your actions matter, where your creativity matters, where your love matters. Choosing the world, broken as it is, over nihilism.

Virgo

Stay open to: Partnerships as entities that are grow and learn. Releasing the need to do it all (or most of it) on your own. Letting others show they can meet your needs. Expanding your intimate circle beyond what’s familiar. Making new friends. Teaching what you know and learning what you don’t know. Accepting feedback and perspective, especially about anything that makes you anxious. Learning how to build trust. Hint: it’s not your job to trust anyone who hasn’t proven themselves trustworthy.

Libra

Stay open to: Messages from your body. Let sore muscles, twitches, gurgles, blushes, and blockages all teach you what needs tending to. Befriend your nervous system. Remember that rest and digest is the default, and figure out what can help you rest more. There’s a lot that needs releasing right now — years of pent up grief, fear, frustration — but you need to learn the pacing that can help your system heal. Learn more this month about what you need right now — not what you used to need or what you think you ought to need. And when you know what it is, teach your loved ones how to care for you in this present moment.

Scorpio

Stay open to: Letting life surprise you with moments of delight, joy, and connection. Trusting your intuition about people you know and love as well as those you’re still figuring out. Trust your boundaries when your gut says no, no matter how pleasant someone may be, and that means you’ll understand what yes feels like, too. Stay open to sensing that vibe that is a low-key, subtle signal that you’re okay, that you can even be happy sometimes, that you do not owe the world constant vigilance or constant grief.

Sagittarius

Stay open to: Staying put when you want to go on a tear. Not stagnating, but rooting down. Getting curious about the present moment instead of the future. Inspirations about how to enliven your daily routine, like maybe you want to challenge yourself to wake up before dawn and watch the sunrise for 10 days straight, or maybe it’s time to learn a new language or read a beautiful but challenging book for 10 minutes a day. Lead with joy, not self-discipline, or these new activities will stop being generative and become just another chore. The magic of this time, for you, is in making discoveries about how to feel expansive possibility within the limits of your daily life, your physical health, all the circumstances you’ve been chafing against. Change, joy, and discovery are still possible for you.

Capricorn

Stay open to: Unexpected conversations and your own creative impulses. Romance that sweeps away your cynicism. Gorgeous moments that remind you of how sparkly the world was when you were very young. Reaching out when you miss someone, instead of just wishing they would text you first. Brushing off your journal, your typewriter, your camera, your keyboard. You have a lot to say right now. Find your medium and let it flow.

Aquarius

Stay open to: Finding a home in this world that will hold you well without suffocating you. Encounters with soil and animals and delicious food. Journeys that lead you back to your beginnings. A way of living that matches the pace of your own body’s rhythms. Leaning into ease whenever you can. Reaching out toward your chosen family with reminders that we’re all going to be okay, that we’re all still in it together.

Pisces

Stay open to: Being present with exactly what you’re feeling as you feel it, without needing to know what it means. Letting your story change. Finding different language to describe what’s essential to you. An ongoing process of transformation that is moving you from the past to the future, from all sorts of shadowy potential or past versions of yourself

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for January 2022

We’ve made it to 2022 somehow. Through inertia and exhaustion and escapism and tedium and crisis and sheer hanging on, we’ve arrived in a new year.

At the beginning of 2021 I remember our collective yearning for it to be a better year than what came before. This year, I hear much less yearning and much more resignation. We are collectively too tired to hope and too burnt out to want to know any more bad news. As I’ve been prepping my year ahead forecast I, too, have been more hesitant to look at the future and try to wrap a meaningful narrative around what’s on the horizon. There are big questions astrology can’t answer. Astrology tracks themes, cycles, possibilities, and relationships as they unfold over time, and as an astrologer I’m adamant about respecting the mystery of how things do unfold. When messing with astroweather, it’s worth considering how meteorologists predict the actual weather — they may be able to pinpoint that a big storm will begin at a certain time in a certain place, but they can’t always predict the exact nature of the storm (freezing rain? snow? a wintry mix?) and have nothing to say about if you, personally, will be caught without an umbrella and splashed by a city bus as you duck between awnings. Which is to say, let yourself be curious but don’t get too attached to one possible version of the future, especially right now as everything is still very much in flux.

We’re in the midst of life-defining, world-changing times. In 2020, astrologers knew a big storm of some kind was coming — the astrological themes pointed to a death process for the old world and a new world struggling to be born. 2021 brought frustration and conflict as the astrology highlighted the tensions within and between us around the desire for freedom and collective responsibility. In 2022 the weather shifts dramatically. We get a pause. We begin to see this new world a little more clearly, though we don’t yet get to stay there. Looking at the broader picture, we are still within a larger period of major, global change that likely won’t stabilize until all the outer planets finish shifting one sign forward in 2026. In this perspective, 2022 is a year to catch our breath and rest as we get ready for another labor pang.

And rest is a real theme this year. The last two years have been dominated by conflicts between Pluto (goth power top into edge play), Saturn (business daddy into power play), and Uranus (the brattiest of bottoms into rewriting the rules). This year, our headline news concerns Jupiter, gay cheerleader of the cosmos, as she pirouettes and tumbles through one of her favorite signs — Pisces, offering gentle stoner vibes and unconditional love — and periodically cuddles with some of the aforementioned heavy-hitters, as well as Neptune, sensitive empath with food allergies who wants you to turn off your alarm clock and call in sick to work today.

It’s enough to give one whiplash, the shift from years of grinding pressure to this. And while it seems like good news — I mean seriously, who doesn’t want a break? — the astrology speaks more to our collective mood than to external events.

The tricky thing about Jupiter in Pisces is it offers us hope more than certainty. With Jupiter in Pisces, we believe what we want to believe. We want to believe that things will be okay. We want to believe that love can win, as the lawns of liberal America promise us. Living in that possibility can be magical, healing, and connective. Living possibility alone can also be escapist, irresponsible, and dismissive of the real crises that will continue to unfold this year. A change in the astrology doesn’t mean we’re off the hook for addressing climate change, racism, capitalism, and all the other dangers of our world. In the best of all worlds, this shift of Jupiter in Pisces will help us all believe that another world is possible, as the old anarchist book cover promises us. That we are all deeply interconnected. Jupiter in Pisces can increase our capacity for compassion, for social cohesion through empathy, for understanding sensitivity as strength. I want to believe in that world…

January begins with Jupiter having just tiptoed into Pisces and Venus still retrograding through Capricorn. This is a slow and mostly sweet month, best spent ignoring those ads encouraging you to join gyms or actualize your highest potential in 5 easy steps. Instead, let your potential rest for a bit. Curl up with a really good book you’ve been meaning to read. Learn how to cook something delicious. Call up long-distance friends. Write postcards. Don’t be in a hurry to get anywhere concrete just yet. Mercury stations retrograde on the 14th, adding to the slowness of the time. Let 2021 go as slowly as you need to. 2022 will be there when you’re ready for it.

As our collective mood is shifting, we’re still in Venus retrograde. This means we’re still very much sorting through relationships like one would sort through the bill at a restaurant, trying to calculate who owes what and if you’re just going to just put in extra tip money and stop wrangling about it. Relationally, this helps us be realistic about what we want, what we have energy for, and how to stop getting twisted up in dynamics that waste our time and energy. Venus will station direct on the 29th but will stay in her retroshade until March 1st! That means you’ve still got plenty of time to make up your mind about writing that letter to your estranged family member or making a date with your ex-lover who just started therapy. Most importantly, this combo of Jupiter in Pisces and Venus in Capricorn is here to remind you that you can love someone and still have healthy boundaries about how you want them in your life. Saying no to one kind of relationship makes it easier to hold a space for the relationships you do want. So be extra gentle and take your damn time this month when you encounter any relationship stress or relationship longing. It’s okay to consider, to grieve, to long for, to not know yet. And it may be vital, as well, to believe in the possibility of a world where you can have the kind of love you want.

For a full rundown of the astrology of 2022, check out my Year Ahead Forecast on Patreon.

My books are closed for readings till the end of the month, but you can book now for February and beyond! For more details on 2022 in general and your sign in particular, join me on Patreon for just $2 a month (you can quit whenever you like, no hard feelings!) and check out my bonus astro episodes on The Hum and The Holler, a podcast I do with my sister business, Abacus Corvus. And you can always follow me on Instagram to be the first to know when I’m teaching classes, offering free readings, or if I see a cute plant.

Happy New Year, beloved queers. May 2022 be exactly what we need it to be. May you find connection, healing, and strength this year. I believe in us.

Aries

Believe: Your own intuition. That you will feel ready when you are ready. That you can move slowly as long as you need to and you won’t forget how to move quickly when the time is right. That you can trust a longer cycle of time than you usually pay attention to. That the crisis, is not, in fact, lurking around every corner waiting to pounce on you. That it’s okay to prioritize feeling full, satisfied, and slow rather than running on fumes at all times. That your relationships can make room for all your various speeds, and how quickly you might pivot between them. That time is your friend.

Taurus

Believe: That you can make a good-enough home for yourself amidst all the uncertainty. That you can take your time adjusting to changes, even if they’re changes you wanted or initiated. That you do get to rest, even when it seems like maybe you should stay up all night worrying. That there is a network of care and love that is here for you, ready to hold you, as soon as you say the word. That you will find your people, if you haven’t already. That you belong to this world and this time, as alienated as you might feel from it sometimes. That your first, best step into 2022 is to believe that you will be okay.

Gemini

Believe: That you can do more than you give yourself credit for. That this is the year to aim high again, even if you approach your goal slowly. That your happiness is contagious. That what you know is worth sharing. That you can trust the path you’re headed down right now, you won’t need to veer suddenly in another direction. That something like stability will be coming back into your life over this year—which isn’t the same as tedium. You’ll recognize it because it will give you your curiosity and sense of humor back. And when you have those back, remember to share them.

Cancer

Believe: That you will know how to emerge from your cocoon when the time comes. That you’ll get the time you need to chill on a leaf, letting your wings dry in the sun. And after that, you’ll get to fly. Believe in your capacity to expand your perspective beyond the small, the here-and-now, the people you see everyday, your social media feed, your deadlines. Believe in your capacity to join a larger world, to connect the dots, to be part of creative chaos, to be learning as you go along. Believe that you don’t need to feel trapped by your desire to play it safe, or endangered by your desire to explore. Believe that 2022 will teach you how to trust your own instincts about when and how to move toward what you want.

Leo

Believe: That all of this is love. That you are more loved than you sometimes remember. That when you ask, you can receive. If one person can’t give you what you need, broaden your reach. That your talent for being lovable doesn’t depend on you always being happy or strong or carefree. That if you want big displays of affection, you can ask for them. That you get to be specific and extravagant in how you want love to feel. That you also get to learn about the quieter expressions of how love comes to you, in ways that might sneak under your radar. That you can start 2022 in the full belief that you are loved, you will be loved, and your main question will be “What do I do, now, with all this love?”

Virgo

Believe: That you don’t need to fix yourself or your relationships. That whatever you don’t understand can be a beautiful mystery rather than a problem to solve. That you don’t need as tight a grip on control as you sometimes think you do. That you can be kind, even, to that part of you that maintains that yes, it does need to be in control. That when you let yourself drift—in the bathtub, on a meandering walk, in your daydreams—you are coming closer and closer to home. That 2022 is asking you to rip up your to-do list and go for a walk to see what happens.

Libra

Believe: That you can hold the real world and the transformed world in both your hands, weaving them together deftly. That you need possibility as much as you need reality. That your daily life gets to be more magical. That, when in doubt, you can rely on poetry, absurdity, and fantasy. That the most serious work you can do right now is playing. That you are part of creating a better future, day by day, but that doesn’t mean slogging or grinding through your days. That 2022 wants you to love it so hard you remember how to laugh again.

Scorpio

Believe: That repair is possible. That the many harms you’ve experienced, or possibly inflicted, in your lifetime carry with them the possibility of making amends and restoring trust. Repair may not be likely, it may demand much, it will never erase the harm itself, but it is far more possible than you often believe. Even just in your imagination, try to live in this world in which healing and restoration of trust are both possible. Taste the air there. Feel your own strength in this world, and what parts of you may get to melt a little. Then see if you feel ready to enter into this process of repair with anyone in your life. Bonus points for being able to say “nope, definitely not ready” or “never with that person”—knowing what no feels like will help you understand what yes feels like.

Sagittarius

Believe: That you’re not done learning. That you can reconnect to threads you had to hastily break off in the past. That you cannot help but keep growing toward your next metamorphosis, your next adventure, your next epiphany, your next love. That wherever you root down this year can be a springboard, not a trap. That you can be patient with the slowness of the future you want in finally coming toward you. That you can also fill your days with the kind of reaching toward that world that amplifies the here and now: I feast now because I am hungry, and also as a taste of future feasts to come. Believe that the future needs you—which means the present moment needs you, too.

Capricorn

Believe: That it’s okay to carry grief, and it’s also okay to release it. That when you are attuned to crisis you are learning how to become a healer of whatever suffering you witness. That you have the power to draw on your own life history to help others. That your courage steers you in the right directions. That you can rest when you need to, and cry when you need to, and let your heart break open when it needs to. That you can release some of your powerful defenses, this year. That 2022 will allow you to clock out from your shift of standing guard over all you love so that you can finally get some sleep.

Aquarius

Believe: That you don’t have to go back to the old life. Not when the pandemic ends, not if you’re graduating school, not if you finally need to look for another job, not if your complicated but beloved ex calls and wants to get back together. There are experiences you’ve had over the last few years that have shored up your readiness for the next phase of your life, and you don’t need to be afraid that you’ll slip back into who you were before. Whatever opportunities may come or go this year, your wisdom and self-loyalty are yours to keep. If it helps, ask your friends and lovers to describe how they’ve seen you heal recently. It is real, and you get to trust it.

Pisces

Believe: That you can begin again, even if you don’t know exactly how to start. That you don’t have to do it without support, and that support will be available. That things are taking a turn for the better, which means you might finally feel safe enough soon to cry or rage or shake with fear—and when this does happen, believe it is a good omen. That 2022 has something special for you, even if you have to wade through past heartbreak to find it. That you have something special for this time, as well. That you can make friends with these strange, uncertain times as you might befriend a timid wild animal. That 2022 is just asking for some bread crumbs and a calm presence.

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Editor’s Note (1/3/22): Two original lines from this piece were edited after further review, “Covid may not be over, but with Jupiter in Pisces people may just hope for the best and stop trying to restrict their behavior. And who knows, maybe in 2022 this will be a reasonable rather than risky response, if Covid is indeed becoming endemic?” We recognize that these lines left room for misinterpretation away from the author’s original intent.

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for December 2021

As we come to the close of another pandemic year, I can only describe the collective energy as exhausted. We, as a species, have been in crisis mode for almost two years. I want to keep reminding you of this if you start to feel that you, personally, are failing while everyone else has somehow figured out how to survive and thrive in these times. Some people may be more protected from the effects of both this disease and the global uncertainty we’re swimming through. Others are more visibly going through it. But we’re all still collectively just trying to manage in a world whose rules are still being rewritten.

Wouldn’t it be nice, at this point, for me to tell you that December’s astrology will be easy-breezy, and that 2022 is looking totally rosy? Aren’t we all just a little tired of character-building growth opportunities at this point? And yet, my friends, and yet. We are still very much in the midst this month. In fact, December brings the last of the three major clashes between Saturn (boss daddy) and Uranus (bratty power bottom). The themes we’ve been working with all year — personal freedom vs. collective responsibility, safety vs. adventure, traditional world vs. revolutionary new world — once more, these themes will be front and center in the second half of the month.

And of course we’re still in eclipse season as the month begins, with the Sagittarius eclipse on the 4th stirring up big feelings and possible big changes — especially for people with planets + points in any of the mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces). Eclipse season is a time when we’re uncovering what’s been hidden and may need to process what we haven’t felt, integrate what we haven’t integrated, and eventually make choices we’ve been as yet unable to make.

But wait, there’s more! All this AND the stars will throw in a special gift we call Venus Retrograde which is kicking into action on the 19th. As followers of all things astrological may know, whenever a planet turns retrograde is a time to review, reassess, and remap that part of our lives. Venus, planet of loving and being loved, creates a dramatically sludgy tone for relationships when it goes retrograde. This means we’re more likely to be reviewing (calling up exes, going back through old love letters), reassessing (pausing in new relationships to figure out what’s really going on, what you really want, why this feels just like old patterns, and is it really?), and remapping any part of our relational world that isn’t meeting our needs.

And luckily, that eclipse is sure to highlight any unmet needs for a lot of us! With the eclipses revealing new, necessary information and Venus Retrograde urging us to do all this review work, by the time we reach the final Saturn-Uranus square on the 24th we would do well to align ourselves with some major *Release:* release attachment to a past that’s no longer with us, release coping mechanisms that are blocking healing, release old dreams about the future, release the need to be impressive instead of vulnerable, release fantasies that someone else can fix it all for you, release cruelty to yourself and others, release pent up grief and rage.

If this all sounds like a lot and you are as exhausted as I think you are, I have a final piece of advice. Reach out to your future self. Write a letter to them. Ask for a lucid dream. Do some deep fantasizing. Find a way to connect with the you that is on the other side of whatever feels hardest in this moment. See that person thriving, wise, and loved. Hold that channel open to receive whatever messages you can from this future you.

And then take a nap.

My friends, I am available for readings throughout the holiday season so please get in touch. For more astro details you can follow me on Instagram, join me on Patreon, and listen to my New Moon podcast The Hum. Best wishes to you in these potentially turbulent times. Keep being gentle to yourself. I’ll see you in the new year!

Aries

Reveal: There are times when we all need to pause and assess the impact of our words and beliefs — like, how does your internalized fatphobia actually show up in how you talk about yourself, your body, your worth, other people’s bodies, their worth, etc.? I don’t say this to shame you in particular, but of all the signs you are the tiniest bit more likely to act/talk impulsively AND of all the impulsive signs the most capable of staying with the trouble that comes up and actually learning and growing through it. Believe in the possibility of learning and repair this month, and while I’m focusing on your words and actions it’s also likely you’ll be navigating other people’s internalized bullshit as well. So sorry, and also what beautiful learning opportunities!

Review: Venus retrograde is drawing back a curtain on what you expect from yourself and others in relationships. Related to your lessons around the eclipse, this is a time when it’s worth asking yourself what standards you hold for yourself and others. Are your standards for yourself and others unrealistically high? Appallingly low? A related theme is what accountability looks like; what it looks like to repair and make amends after harm happens — who are you willing to do that with? Who’s inviting you to do the same? Are your standards for actual repair unrealistically high? Appallingly low? Rinse, repeat.

Release: Ongoing tension about what you get to have for yourself vs. what you need to share with others or do for others. A zero sum mentality that if someone else has more you will have less. Fear that you’ve got to look out for yourself because no one else will support you if you need help.

Taurus

Reveal: It’s always fun times when the stars ask Taurus to let go of anything. Literally anything. But whatever you’re emotionally hoarding has gotten so stale that this eclipse brings a welcome opportunity to clean out some stagnant corners of your psyche. Start sorting through what patterns, what habits, what feelings you’re ready to be fully done with.

Review: Our important relationships are a form of continuing education about how to be a human among humans — we’re all susceptible to insecurities, miscommunication, changes of heart, and most of all unspoken assumptions about what we have to offer and what we can ask for. You, my friend, aren’t the world’s champ at asking for what you need, as you’re far more comfortable in cozy retreat mode than braving the world of mutual vulnerability. What do you need to learn right now to help you be braver and more vulnerable in your most important relationships? What do you want to look different for you when you do this Venus Retrograde dance in another eighteen months?

Release: Ongoing stress about living up to your own very high standards, and how you might be asking others to live up to them as well. Questions about how you’re showing up authentically, if you’re being seen clearly, and what it means to aim for something big.

Gemini

Reveal: Something is taking a turn in your partnerships, platonic or romantic. The people you rely on and who rely on you are posing new riddles for you to solve right now, and the answer has a lot to do with something deep in you that you’re ready to bring forth. These eclipses are hitting home for you, and you may find yourself in unfamiliar territory. Move slowly, ask questions, notice big feelings without believing all the stories they tell you. You’re going to know a lot more in just a few weeks and months than you do right now.

Review: What’s stuck in your nervous system / energy body / tender little heart than you need to unstick? What old wounds have you bandaged over and decided “I guess I’m healed enough” and never looked at again? Maybe it’s time, honey. Maybe it’s time to love yourself just a little more, in all your in-process messiness.

Release: A near-constant background tension about what you can control and what you can’t control. The desire to make things real and concrete while what you’re dreaming of is still mysterious and out of reach. A default habit of letting this paradox rattle your nerves instead of inspiring deep, rich laughter.

Cancer

Reveal: Something isn’t quite aligned in how you’re balancing work, rest, productivity, and social time. I mean, duh. Hello, 2021. But I’m talking about what you do have control over — the choices you make when you can make a choice about how to spend your time. What are you trying to learn right now about your own internal rhythms? What would it feel like to give yourself as much permission as you can to obey them? Can you release shame about how much you might need to sleep, or cuddle, or watch TV, or eat? Can you give yourself as much as you can of what your body really needs?

Review: In every committed relationship, we’re constantly tending our edges. For water signs, those edges can get very blurry. As Venus turns retrograde, your homework includes taking a look at where you’ve dissolved a little into the people you love and vice versa. Clean up those boundaries, recenter your own needs and wellness, and notice how true intimacy sparks back to life.

Release: Ongoing tension about the pull between going deep with the people you love — healing, crying, holding each other through these tough times — and trying to show up for your bigger work in the world, whether that’s activism, leadership, or just trying to get through your 9 to 5. There is no perfect balance, really, so stop beating yourself up trying to find it. Just notice when you need to shift, and get curious if something internal tries to prevent you.

Leo

Reveal: You can get a little lost sometimes in the dance between “Pay attention to me, I’m important!” and “I shouldn’t take up so much space, I’m not that important.” Depending on how the people who love you have responded to your need to be seen and cherished, it might feel easier or harder to own that there is a piece of you that does need the spotlight. This eclipse season is helping you see how to balance that real and valid need with understand your place in a larger collective. You are unique and important, yes. And so is everyone else. Can you feel them both at once, as equally true?

Review: How is your body handling anxiety right now, my friend? Are you freezing up? Are you pacing? Are you in a disordered relationship to food? Are you sleeping enough? Are you having a hard time getting out of bed even? However your daily rhythms have been disrupted, this Venus Retrograde is here to remind you that loving yourself first means becoming curious about how to tend to your body and heart — lovingly, consistently, responsively.

Release: Ongoing tension about commitment, especially if the people you love are at all at odds with your big dreams and ambitions. Where do you compromise to stay in connection? How do you know if it’s worth it? What are the consequences of leaning too far in the other direction? Your deepest values have been tested this year, and what you’ve found may surprise you. As this aspect passes, gratefully release the need do it all at once.

Virgo

Reveal: Are you asking way too much from yourself right now? What would it look like to not say no to your ideals and ambitions, but to extend the timeline of when you hope to reach them? In many ways, you’re most comfortable when you have a project — a relationship to fix, a pattern to heal, a problem to solve. But this eclipse is asking you what it would mean for you to let go a little more, to recenter in what you’re feeling rather than what you’re doing. If you can heed the call, where you launch yourself to after this pause will be far more authentic and sustainable.

Review: It may be more comfortable for you to play a support role in most of your relationships (informal advisor, accountant, assistant, manager, agent, etc.) but this Venus Retrograde is asking you about your unmet need to step into the spotlight. Where do you need to be taking up more space, asking for more, chasing your own dream instead of supporting someone else’s?

Release: A near-ceaseless anxiety about how much you need to worry about all the things—the global pandemic, your daily commute, the supply chain, that one mole on your thigh, the health of your loved ones, feeling stuck in a rut, the need for adventure, how exhausting it is to just keep worrying and still not feel actually prepared for whatever’s coming next. The tragedy and relief of your situation this month is just that: Worry will never prepare you for what comes next. How will you prepare instead?

Libra

Reveal: You’ve been tactfully not mentioning something that it is far past time to mention. This eclipse season is highlighting your default diplomacy, which means you rarely speak up about the things that are only minor annoyances until they become so major you have to do something about them (which may, still, not involve speaking up about them). What do you need to surface? Who needs to hear your truth? Can you let yourself in on the secret, even? I recommend some free writing time to let the words flow — you may surprised by what you’ve been holding onto.

Review: What’s feeling hard to you right now about your home? Do you live in a collective that’s been rocked by lockdown protocols and different desires about freedom and mutual care? Do you live with just your partner and are you down to your last nerve about that thing they do that you can’t stand? Have you been living alone and feeling isolated? Having you been living with family and regressing back to childhood patterns? Have you had to move when you didn’t want to? Whatever is happening for you right now around home, it’s worth paying attention to. Venus Retrograde is asking you to notice and heal what’s been hurting you in your efforts to just root down and feel safe somewhere.

Release: All year it’s been an awkward dance between the desire to connect (romance! first dates! dance parties! camping trips!) and the desire to retreat (I finally get enough time alone! No one can make me go to their art opening! I’m not missing out on anything!). As the world grinds awkwardly between reopening and re-closing, your entire social map has been similarly off-kilter. Let it be awkward. Not even you have enough grace to dance these steps without tripping sometimes.

Scorpio

Reveal: Of all the signs you are most skilled at tracking how things go wrong, when they’re on the way to wrong, and what the real consequences are when they inevitably go very wrong. This is a talent, my friend, but it also means you’re not always tracking how things go right, how to repair what went wrong, and what it looks like to build trust (instead of just offering trust freely then pulling it away when things go wrong). This eclipse season is asking you: How do you know what’s good, and grow what’s good? How do you focus on building what you do want, and knowing how to recognize it when you have it?

Review: Most Scorpio placements hold their secrets close, but if you’ve got more extroverted signs in your chart (I’m looking at you, Leo, Sagittarius, Libra, and Gemini) then you may find yourself torn about how much to share and with whom. This Venus Retrograde is bringing your focus to what you say, what you don’t say, and what to do about what you’ve already said and done.

Release: Ongoing tension in your current romances or platonic partnerships that’s steeped in old family dynamics. Notice how easy it is to expect the same old stories to play out now that you’re most familiar with. We humans love to recreate what’s familiar, even when it isn’t good for us. Dedicate this month to releasing your need to cast your current partners and lovers in roles of past family dramas. It’s time for a new script.

Sagittarius

Reveal: Like Gemini, you’re experiencing these eclipses right where you live. That means the first week of December is shining a bright flashlight into that box near your bed where you keep old journals, tarot cards, and lube. Which is to say, there’s a need right now to look more closely at who you are, what you need, and where you’re headed — especially in light of your partnerships (current, past, or desired) and how relationship has shaped you. Be prepared for big shifts. Be willing to look clearly. Your next best self is around the corner.

Review: Sagittarius gets a bad rep for being too freedom-loving to commit and put in the hard work. That’s not true for every Sadge, but what is true is that if you want a long-term romance of any kind you’ll need to periodically keep refreshing it (and yourself) by doing new things, having new adventures, and taking new risks. You are on a path of lifelong discovery and learning but that doesn’t mean you can’t have stability and longterm commitment, if that’s what you want. Venus retro is asking you this month: what do you want to cultivate and hold onto? What do you need to do about your current or past relationships now so that you’ll be planting seeds for continuity and growth in the future?

Release: Okay, this might sound like a harsh read, but I’m going to call out something you may be doing that is entirely normal and human. Specifically, the end of the month highlights a yearlong pattern of tension between what you say you want and what choices you’re actually making. And I say this not to be mean, but to remind you (and anyone else reading this horoscope for you) to have some damn compassion for how hard it is ever, and especially now, to reconcile these two things. But you might want to release patterns of confusing yourself and others by not naming when you need to pivot. Pivoting is okay, change is beautiful, but your goal is to call it when you see it instead of finding yourself somewhere very different than where you thought you’d be and noticing all the bewildered emojis piling up in your text threads.

Capricorn

Reveal: A notoriously realistic sign, you might not always realize how your fantasies (and anxieties) distort your perspective on what’s actually happening in your life. This month’s eclipse brings into focus something you’ve been ignoring about how this inner world creates your outer world — we often unconsciously create the very conditions we’re afraid of by trying to indirectly prevent them. Pay attention to what part of your psyche is currently whistling in the corner, trying to look innocent and hope you won’t connect this horoscope to that pattern.

Review: With Venus stationing retrograde in your sign, it’s a time to review your innate tools for loving and being loved. What friendships are actually meeting you how you want to be met? Have you let them know how you want to be met? Do you even know? What relationship patterns are you ready to grow out of? What old heartbreaks are you ready to fully integrate and stop fixating on? What will it look like to choose more honest, intimate, reciprocal relationships now and in the future?

Release: Finally, the Saturn-Uranus square on the 24th is activating an ongoing cycle of tension around your need for self-sufficiency and an almost equal (if not always recognized) need to reach out. Capricorn energy is great at self-sufficiency (with sufficiency to spare) but not historically skilled at vulnerably asking for reassurance, witnessing, support, or attention. Nevertheless, you need all these things from time to time. If you haven’t already, now is the time to start balancing these two very different modes of being.

Aquarius

Reveal: You, more than most, understand the 70s feminist rallying cry that the personal is political, and this month’s eclipse will highlight this for you in bright lights. Pay attention to your own defensiveness and recognize the ways in which you might discount the validity of your own personal experiences while paying attention to someone else’s. For example, “Well, I’m not a trans person so what do I know about gender oppression?” when you are, perhaps, a fat femme non-binary person who has had plenty of gender oppression of your own. Or, conversely, you may find yourself needing to claim your own experience as more valid than someone else’s — both of these come from the same source, a fundamental confusion about your own worth within the collective. Your positionality isn’t the same as your fundamental human worth.

Review: You don’t love mystery in a relationship — it reminds you too much of the potential for being misaligned with someone in an important way that will lead to later ruptures. But this Venus retrograde is asking you to plumb the depths of your own mysterious desires and make room for your friends, lovers, ex-lovers, and polycules to be full of a similar swirling uncertainty. Clear communication is a beautiful goal, but only works in practice when our desires are crystal clear. Are yours? Are anyone’s? Be patient with a little confusion right now in your trusted relationships (which is not permission, btw, for people to gaslight or deceive you. Make sure you understand the difference!).

Release: All year, something has been at odds between how you’re just trying to do what you must in the world and how your family / chosen family has responded. Maybe your housemates want you around more, or your domestic partner wishes you’d practice different Covid protocols, or your parents wish you’d come visit them even though they’re not vaccinated — this year has been full of no-good-option choices that often pit our individual needs and against what our people want from us. Get ready to compost this whole mess, but be aware that like any weed its seeds may sprout anew. What are your tools for finding balance between your own boundaries and your people’s requests?

Pisces

Reveal: Early in December you’ll be noticing what needs rebalancing in your current balance between home and the outward world — a balance that has been strangely shifted for all of us since the beginning of the pandemic. Have you been too anxious to go out, even when risk is minimal? Are you not yet or no longer in a home that’s meeting your needs? Which way do you need to focus your attention so that home can be a place of rest and ease — specifically, easy to relax in and easy to leave when you want to.

Review: What is your current relationship to the collective “we?” What groups were you once a part of that are no longer happening? What new communities did you find this year? What parts of yourself are known, held, and reflected in these groups? Are there ways you’ve lost your sense of collectivity entirely? Venus retrograde is asking you to notice what you need to understand and integrate about how you fit into the whole, and what groups help you be a part of things without losing your separate sense of self.

Release: Dreaming is your superpower, and this last square between Saturn and Uranus is activating a yearlong tension in your personal world between your dreaming self (poetic, empathic, living in speculative fictions as though they are the real world) and your ordinary, waking self (needing to write an accurate grocery list, letting your friends know when you’ll arrive, navigating the here and now alertly). What can you do this month to make peace with this internal conflict? What steps have you already taken to better integrate these very different needs?

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for November 2021

You know that feeling when you wait and wait for a bad situation to shift, keeping your mouth shut and hunkering down, and then when it finally starts to change you can’t stop yelling about it? That’s a little like how November feels this year. Pent-up tensions and such, screaming at the rooftops. On the one hand, yes, let us all holler already. Yes to forward momentum, yes to that tingly rush of life returning. I’m thrilled to expand my palette of available feelings beyond low-key dread and apocalyptic “I guess this is fine now” normalcy. On the other hand, imagine your entire neighborhood hollering all at once — but not in unison like a pack of wolves, rather a cacophony of growls and snarls and teeth-gnashing more like a dozen leaf-blower soloists stopping and starting.

In brief, November grounds us in the our need to have the feelings and take the actions we’ve been putting off for a long time. As we gear up for this, it might not look or sound pretty. Expect at the very least some grumpiness, some conflict, some need to blow off steam. Be aware of your own or other people’s tendency to bounce straight from crash position to self-righteous attack, and remember that no matter what oppression you personally experience you are still capable of doing harm — fight for what you need, yes, but don’t dehumanize anyone else or ignore their needs in the process. There’s much Mars energy afoot this month, slam-banging up against our fears and desires and exhaustion; whenever we work with Mars we do well to honor our need for anger, passion, and self-protection while making sure we’re not using our feelings to justify hurting others. This can be tricky — the part of the brain that takes over when we feel threatened also effectively smothers our more considerate, compassionate selves (witness the history of white supremacy calling itself “self-protection” for one chilling case study). So working with Mars this month also means getting curious about who and what you feel threatened by, and why.

Many tender queers also choose relationship styles that reject Mars — privileging cooperation, collectivity, gentleness, non-violent communication, caring for each other as one would care for a baby rabbit. I am not here to turn y’all away from this path of downy sweetness, but I’ve been witness to relationships like this crumbling from the weight of unspoken needs. When you’re afraid to have direct conflict, you end up meeting your needs indirectly — snarky side comments, self-denial that becomes resentment, self-censorship that blocks true intimacy. Mars, as the ability to assert what we want and don’t want even if it will make someone else unhappy, is foundational to honest, healthy relationships.

With Mars in Scorpio all month, there’s a need to look more closely at what activates us and why. Scorpio helps us transmute toxins, compost hard feelings, and fully release old patterns. We just need the willingness and the support to do this hard work.

Oh and no big deal, but there’s an eclipse coming up on November 19th that is sure to catalyze these themes in a big way! If you have any planets near 27 degrees of Taurus, Scorpio, Leo, or Aquarius you’re going to feel this as a more dramatic wake-up call than everyone else. More on this eclipse and more details on all the transits of the month on my Patreon. I’m also available for one-on-one support and insight about your specific life transitions, so go ahead and book a reading if you’re curious! My calendar has been filling up more quickly than usual, so book now if you’d like to see me soon! Good luck out there this month, my friends, and remember that you have the power to harm or heal with the same damn tools.

For this month’s horoscope, I invite you to take a look at how you do conflict. If you know your Mars sign, read these for your Mars! If you don’t, reading for your Sun, Moon, or Rising sign will give you a piece of the puzzle but not the full story. And even if you know your Mars placement, your expression of Mars is unique — informed by the rest of your birth chart, your formative experiences, what our culture has taught you about gender, and so so many things. So take what resonates, my friends, and compost the rest.

Aries

Your conflict style: When you are excited or stressed out, you want to do something about it. Like, right now. What action you actually take has a lot more to do with the rest of your chart, but Mars in Aries wants to act quickly to ease the discomfort of feeling uncertain or unsafe. As Mars moves through Scorpio this month, you’re learning an unfamiliar skill set but a necessary one: get quiet, get still, and breathe through the discomfort. Instead of needing to change or solve a situation right away, see if you can get more information about why you feel the way you feel. Knowing what instinctive responses you bring to a conflict can make it easier to assess what the hell is going on instead of leading with “I feel unsafe, I’m done here, bye!”

Taurus

Your conflict style: You’d rather not fight, but if you have to fight you definitely want to win. Mars in Taurus has powerful inertia — slow to get riled up, and then powerfully riled up until it finally winds down. Many people with this placement can endure a lot until one day they’re totally done. No negotiation, no debate, just “I’ve taken all I can and I don’t even want to be here anymore.” As Mars moves through Scorpio, you’re likely going to get activated by your closest relationships this month, which means learning two critical skills: 1) Don’t project your shadow side onto your partner(s). Pay attention to what’s your own trauma story and what’s actually happening here and now. And 2) learn to release pressure more frequently. Don’t let it all build up until your structures collapse. Set aside regularly times to check in with your dearest ones about how things feel and if there’s anything not feeling great that needs repair.

Gemini

Your conflict style: Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee is your default conflict style. Everything is fun until you get your feelings hurt, and then you may lash out instinctively. But instead of throwing punches, your stinger is in your words. In medieval Ireland soldiers would go to battle with poets whose job it was to satirize the enemy. Words have always been powerful weapons, and you wield them well. But as Mars moves through Scorpio this month you’re deepening into the wisdom that comes from your body, not your mind. Your main assignment this month is to pay attention to what happens in your body when you feel angry or afraid. What muscles tighten? Do you feel hot or cold? Do you need to move or do you curl up? Paying close attention can help defuse the need to react immediately, so when you do show up to battle you know what you’re actually fighting for.

Cancer

Your conflict style: With Mars in Cancer, conflict at its heart should be able to deepen intimacy, not fracture it. Often this placement makes it harder to approach a conflict head-on, in the moment. Cancer needs time to think and feel and brood and then come back with a decision or a request. The goal, though, is to complete that last step. Too often the mulling things over process can become general avoidance — like, “I need to tell my Mom to stop misgendering me and I’m not looking forward to this conversation” becomes “Oh damn, I haven’t returned my mom’s calls for six months and she doesn’t know why.” As Mars moves through Scorpio this month, you’re getting an extra boost to actually say the things you need to say. Say them lovingly, if you like, but make sure you set those boundaries clearly and firmly. Doing so lets the people who love you know how you need to be loved.

Leo

Your conflict style: You’re generally not afraid to speak up when you need to, but you sometimes regret the consequences of how and when you speak up. Like with Mars in Aries, acting in the moment often seems like the only possible response to an intolerable build up of energy. With this placement, it’s important not to stifle this response but also to learn how to channel it. You get to be intense. You get to blow off steam. You get to be irrational, childlike, stamp your foot and throw tantrums all you want. But — and this is a very important but — you don’t get to do these at the person you’re in conflict with and expect them to stay calm and mature. Take your big feelings and work them out with a friend or therapist or your journal or by taking a long run or a hot shower. Honor them, express them, let them move through you and only then show up to the conflict ready to do it well.

Virgo

Your conflict style: If everyone would just get over their egos and be willing to think more carefully about what’s actually happening, disagreements would be a pure joy in your life — the capacity to cross-pollinate opinions and beliefs with research, evidence, and all of this in service to the greater good of collective diversity and intelligence! And yet, here we are in our ego-driven flurries of activity. With Mars in Virgo, you want everyone to be doing this better, including yourself. That critique can be useful, but knowing how and when to offer it is an important skill. Mars in Scorpio is reminding you that you, too, have a powerful ego at times, especially when you think of yourself as the most humble, the most helpful. Pay attention to those superlatives, my friend, and don’t be afraid to get a little muddy with the rest of us growling puppies.

Libra

Your conflict style: In your perfect world all disagreements would be courteous, articulate, and debated with a sense of respect and curiosity. One of your strongest motivations is to understand and be close to people. Conflict, at its best, helps you understand yourself and your loved ones even better. In this very imperfect world, you may fear that disagreements will fracture your closeness — many people with Mars in Libra keep quiet about what doesn’t feel great for them in the interest of preserving the peace. This month, it’s worth recognizing the much stronger foundation you can build when you assert your true needs and desires respectfully, holding curiosity and care for your loved one’s needs and desires even when they don’t match your own. Too many people believe wanting different things in a relationship will end it — often what’s needed is an acknowledgement that it’s okay to have differences.

Scorpio

Your conflict style: With Mars in Scorpio, you have several modes available when you feel threatened: fight, flight, or freeze. Fighting tends to be absolute and final, flight may look a lot like ghosting or avoidance, and freeze is the mode you use when you don’t have the energy to even feel the pain or fear. There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of these modes, they are literally hardwired into our nervous systems, but you have a tendency to stick with just one mode for a little too long.

Lean too hard on the “fight” mode and your life is full of blocked numbers a wary resentment. Lean too hard on the “flight” and it’s hard to ever get close enough with someone to work through the harder parts. And when “freeze” is your default vital parts of your lived experience are never fully processed and released — like eating a heavy meal but never digesting it. You may feel uncomfortably full for a very long time. Luckily, as Mars moves through your sign this month AND there’s an eclipse on the 19th, you’ve got ample opportunities for change. Let yourself thaw if you’ve been frozen too long. Let yourself rest if you’ve been fighting too long. And if you’ve been in non-stop flight, now is the time to hold someone’s hand and say, “I’m scared. Will you stay with me through this?”

Sagittarius

Your conflict style: When confronted with a belief you find baffling, a desire you don’t share, or a request for behavior you’d rather not perform, your first instinct is generally “No, and let me explain to you why I’m right.” That’s if it’s a relationship that really matters to you. In less central relationships, you may just bounce before having that conversation. And when you have an unmet need your first instinct is to seek out a new experience that might offer you what you’re lacking.

Sagittarius at its best leads with joy and wants to educate, synthesize, and collaborate on the making of meaning. At its worst, Sagittarius energy inclines toward skipping out whenever things get too thorny, which deprives you of really deepening into the kinds of relationships that have the capacity to hold you and teach you. And it’s okay if you don’t want normative romances — it’s okay to be poly, to be ace, to be only interested in long-distance or short-term hookups. I’m talking about love in its purest form — with best friends, with animal friends, with ecologies, with birth and chosen family. These are the relationships where you’re being asked to deepen right now, to stop running away when things get alarming and do the work of self-soothing, being vulnerable, and staying present. You may be surprised by how much you can have what you ask for when you’re willing to stay in the connection and actually ask for it.

Capricorn

Your conflict style: You honestly don’t have time for a lot of drama. On the one hand, this gives you a talent for taking the high road and working through conflicts maturely. On the other hand, this can give you a tendency to believe you’re above the petty human drama that is other people’s feelings. Watch out for a tendency to relax into self-righteousness. Remember the times that you’ve been inarticulately emotional, and remember them not with shame but with appreciation for that mode of being. You’re most comfortable when you can solve the problem, but often conflict needs you to be present with the feelings first — however irrational they may seem. This month, extend some generosity to your lovers, collectives, and even the parts of yourself that are too mad or sad or scared to choose their words wisely.

Aquarius

Your conflict style: There would be no conflict if everyone understood things as well as you do. Okay, I’m kidding, but there’s a part of you that really wants to believe that, right? You pride yourself on how well you understand the systemic patterns, root causes, and hidden undercurrents of any situation. And you’re on the side of what’s best for everyone, even if they don’t know it yet. Can you see how this might get you into dangerous territory? Working with Mars in Scorpio this month means working with your own fears of vulnerability — what would it mean to accept other people’s narratives as valid for them even if they seem like dangerous nonsense to you? What different ways can you find to disagree with love and respect?

Pisces

Your conflict style: With Mars in Pisces your tool of choice for self-protection is just not being where the conflict is. Which means, sometimes, not being embodied when you feel threatened. You are like a wizard who dissolves into mist before being stabbed — what body? Who had a body here? I am just dewdrops and wind. While this is a magical talent, it also puts you are risk of disincorporating each time a loved one raises their voice in frustration and this month is asking you to expand your toolkit. Where Pisces dissolves, Scorpio dives deep. Become a diver. Notice where you’ve buried your weapons and your treasure. Find ways of doing conflict that honor your edges and your connections.

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for October 2021

I don’t know about you, but pandemic fatigue is just starting to hit me. My inner introvert found things to love during the intense lockdown phase, when for more than a year I only breathed the same air as two or three other people. I was also excited to get vaccinated and begin to take a few tentative steps back towards regular life. And now as we find ourselves in a new kind of uncertainty — Are the vaccinated still protected? Will the Delta variant burn out soon? Will another rise up to take its place? Will the richer countries distribute enough vaccines to spur global immunization? Will this pandemic ever be truly over? — I find myself hitting a wall. I begin to wonder if this long slide into apocalypse-with-Netflix is just our lives now.

And then I look at the astrology.

If any of you have been paying attention, we astrologers have been frantically waving flags and dropping podcasts and creating memes about the astrology of these couple of years for some time now. The astrology of 2020, 2021, and 2022 is era-defining. And we are still very much in the midst. Remind yourself of this, my friends, if you find yourself wondering why you’re not exactly at your best right now — not doing the things you want to do, not being as patient with your loved ones, not as joyous during times of celebration or as moved during times of grief. The crisis is still here with us, it’s just become background noise that we’ve decided we need to ignore and get on with our lives (or so seems to be the feeling here in the United States).

Astrologically, we’re still in a high-intensity year. But sometimes we get a month like this one — this October brings us the kind of ease and forward momentum that’s like a cool breeze lifting your hair from your forehead after a stiflingly hot day. It’s time to open your windows, air out all those stuffy places where you’ve been congealing in daily misery (or at least daily disappointment and unvoiced grief).

This month, we’ve got a handful of planets shifting from retrograde to direct. Not one, not two, but four planets — Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto — will all turn direct. This brings with it a rush of forward momentum. Think of the planets like those toys with springs that you drag backward to wind up and then release. As I write this we’re still in the being-dragged-backward phase — the energetic sludginess of “why do I even have to shower if I’m just going to get dirty again” and “it’s too much work to schedule a phone call with my dearest friend, I should probably just keep doom scrolling.” By mid-month (the 18th to be exact), we should feel a distinct shift toward possibility and enthusiasm. Jupiter, planet of “you look beautiful in that pantsuit and you should definitely ask her out” has been wallowing in regrets and reminiscences since June 20th. Jupiter retrograde is like your best friend — the one who always knows how to cheer you up — has lost her cell phone and been unable to text you back for three whole months. But she’s back now, and she’s typing furiously, reminding us that we all look amazing in our pantsuits again.

So at the risk of sounding like a corny wellness guru who believes a positive attitude is all you really need to succeed in life (it isn’t, and what even is success?) I want to team up with Jupiter to remind you to keep the faith. Not because I believe in keeping calm and carrying on. Not because I think we can self-improve ourselves out of late stage capitalism or ongoing colonial devastation or climate change. In these very bleak and stressful times, very little is certain about what kind of future we’re headed toward and we’re all carrying a global level of grief right now that we haven’t yet been able to process. So when I talk about faith, what I’m talking about is the way the heart can open again even after the worst experiences. The way our bodies know what we need. The ways we can surprise each other through tenderness and vulnerability. I’m talking about the kind of faith James Baldwin had in humanity, because he could not afford to be a pessimist. I’m talking about what’s needed not just to survive, but to strive for a better world for all of us.

This month, I invite you to lean into that kind of faith in yourself and each other. It will probably feel stiff and awkward at first. You may feel dismissive and judgmental. You may need to get angry or cry. That’s okay. There are many ways in.

And if you need some extra insight or support, my books are open for readings. You can also find more notes on the astrology of this month on my Patreon and follow me on Instagram to hear about upcoming classes and offers. Good luck out there this month!

Aries

Have faith: That the future can be wildly different from the past. That you don’t have to be naive to hold onto your values and visions. That you belong to this world, here and now, and to the future you can help create. That your friendships are the most potent magic you have to work with. That it’s worth it to try to learn from conflicts, reach toward each other, find that ever-shifting-center in any collective effort. Trust your love of this world. Trust your love of people at their best. Trust that most of us, most of the time, are trying hard.

Taurus

Have faith: That you can trust the wisdom of your experience. That what has been hardest for you to experience has also taught you how to make those experiences easier for someone else. That whatever age you are, you can step into your oldest self — the one who has a long view, who has expertise and humility, who has a sense of humor about it all. That even when you feel most confused and humbled by not knowing, there is a piece of you that remembers that your body understands things before your mind does — and may understand things your mind never can. Trust your gut.

Gemini

Have faith: That your larger life will soon be possible again. That however you have contracted this year (or more), you will be able to expand again. Maybe you are already, or have plans very soon — maybe it’s still a dream for someday. This may be a month for action, or just for preparation. Your main assignment is to get acquainted with what it means, now, to be reaching for your future. Who do you need with you? What support can you call on? What support can you offer? What parts of your old life are you ready to let go of entirely? What do you know now that you didn’t last year?

Cancer

Have faith: That whatever you’re facing right now will keep changing. That when you move toward what you’d rather avoid, it gets less scary. That you can choose your pace, that you can soften the shock. Whatever is causing you pain or frustration right now — you may not be able to change your conditions, but you can be kinder to yourself as you go through it. And what seems right now like it might never end — a heartbreak, an illness, grief, depression, restlessness in the face of this seeming endless pandemic— it will end. And something new will come. And what you’re learning right now will help you welcome that fresh new life, and all the changes to come.

Leo

Have faith: That you can trust the people you’ve chosen, and who are choosing you. Even as partnerships change. Even as your feelings within those relationships change. That you can also say no to longstanding relationships that are not founded in trust. That solitude is not your doom, unless it’s a solitude you’re choosing with relish. Remember that life is long, that connections will ebb and flow, that who you become through love will also keep evolving. Remember that partnership can look so many different ways — some quite different than what you expected. Welcome the ones who are sticking it out with you. Recommit yourself to the ones you’re devoted to.

Virgo

Have faith: That your days will be magical again. That each meal can be a time to remember how luscious life is. That your body is always asking you for the kind of love you usually reserve for lovers or, these days, pictures of cute people and animals on the internet. That healing isn’t an assignment to add to your to-do list, but a party you’re invited to that you don’t even have to leave your house for. That you can’t do it all alone, which is beautiful because you don’t have to. Who are you going to call right now and remind them you’ve got them, too?

Libra

Have faith: That you’re not too old (or cynical or hurt or mad) to feel sparkly about someone again. That you can trust what your heart moves towards, and listen when it’s ready to pull back or move on. That queer romance is as magical as you’ve always hoped it might be. That you can remember where your edges are even when you’re holding someone tight. That you can remember how to hold yourself even when you’re not being held.

Scorpio

Have faith: That the home you need exists, and you will find it if you’re not already there. This home being not only a building but a network of loved ones and chosen family, of a broader community nearby, an ecosystem of trees and maybe frogs or maybe pigeons and voices that raise in laughter from bright windows at night and music that streams from car windows or maybe just from the treetops. That this home will never be without grief or conflict, that it may not last forever, but it will be good enough that you’ll know how to find it again if you have to. You’ll remember that feeling of taking off your boots and letting your shoulders fully relax.

Sagittarius

Have faith: That you won’t lose touch with the people you miss. That the people you love still love you, even if you haven’t talked in a long time. That it’s easier than you think to just call someone out of the blue, just surprise them while they’re walking their dog or folding their laundry or staring at their phone feeling just as lonely as you do. That if you have a wide-flung network of loves it’s okay to not check in on every single one all the time. Trust that some loves can endure months or years of silence, and come back together just as strong as when you parted.

Capricorn

Have faith: That you can have what you need. That in this world of crisis and scarcity and separation and grief, you will remember how to orient toward what is good and abundant. That support may come from surprising places. For you, asking is the hardest part. Practice asking — an invitation to the world, to those who love you and those who’ve never met you — to collaborate with you in creating a strong network of mutual care. Imagine that this is not only possible, but necessary.

Aquarius

Have faith: That you are worthy. That of the countless visions and projects and rebellions and inventions that you have not yet brought into the world, you are at the center of them all and this being here now as you are is the core magic. Imagine a life in which merely being is enough sometimes. Imagine love that finds you there and recognizes you. Offer yourself this kind of belonging.

Pisces

Have faith: That it’s not over yet. That whatever you’ve been too tired to address, or too scared to confront, or too sad to let go of — that all this is one part of a much larger story. Relax into the slowly flowing stream of your future days that will bring so many new chapters to this story. Remember that whatever feels like too much effort right now can lie dormant. And while it rests, it will change. And so will you.

Satellite of Love: Queer Horoscopes for September 2021

As we move into this Virgo season, let’s take advantage of the analytical energy of the times to take stock of what is happening right now. Astrologically, Virgo is the energy that transitions between the bright expressiveness of Leo and the calm equanimity of Libra. It’s a sign of adjustment, of adaptation, of discernment. I always think of Virgo as what helps us see what is actually in front of us in the here and now while holding a vision of what it could be — working with Virgo, we’re constantly nudging the imperfections of reality into something slightly closer to perfection. Relationally, Virgo season helps us stay authentically humble — not denying our own worth, but also not needing to inflate it. Finding a willingness to grow and learn, to name if something isn’t working and to start problem-solving about it.

This Virgo season blends some influences that promote clarity and commitment with others that might stir up a little extra drama (for full details check out my expanded horoscopes on Patreon!). Notably, Venus, planet of “yes please, just like that” will be scuffling with Pluto early in the month and then moving into Scorpio, Pluto’s sign on the 10th. When Venus moves into Scorpio, think good girl gone leather daddy. Scorpio is where we keep our secrets, especially around sex and fear and power. With Venus in Scorpio during Virgo season, there’s a lot of energy for figuring out our relationships and a tendency for us all to get a little extra intense about what we discover.

Intensity itself isn’t a bad thing. What really bites us is shame — when we can’t confront something in ourselves that we’re ashamed of, we tend to project it outward and turn it into something we blame or fear in others. So if you learn nothing else in this Virgoan, back-to-school month of sharpening pencils and choosing layered outfits, I encourage you to learn this: whatever you are ashamed of in yourself can become a weapon you use against others. And, of course, against yourself. So I invite you all to lean into this energy and treat it with the respect and curiosity it deserves. Let yourself be intense. Let your feelings be big. Be curious about what makes you you. Leave aside the urge to attack or blame anyone else right now, as good as it might feel. Prevent harm, by all means, do what you need to in defense of who and what you love. Just be suspicious of anything you condemn in others that you believe you don’t have in yourself.

For deeper insights into these times, you can check out my podcast and follow me on Patreon. And my books are open again to new clients, so go ahead and book a reading if you want personalized support navigating how to even be a human in times like these. Wishing you all love and courage and patience this month!

Aries

It’s okay to be intense about: Actually engaging with what scares you. Anxiety as a form of information. Change as a teacher. How easier it would be to run away and how you build strength by doing the hard thing. Not to mention to the joy, the deep transformative joy, of staying with the trouble until you watch it transform.

Taurus

It’s okay to be intense about: How important it is to team up with someone you trust to make it through the tough times. The kind of radical self-love that can grant you enough courage to let yourself be completely seen and loved by a partner (romantic or of any kind). Choosing your friends and lovers wisely, with an understanding that some of the most beautiful hearts and minds you’ll meet may not be the right fit for meeting you where you need to be met. Releasing blame and releasing fear about saying no to what you don’t need and yes to what you do.

Gemini

It’s okay to be intense about: What you need to do everyday to keep yourself whole, grounded, and ready to take on what the world throws at you. The preciousness of a daily walk, of a full meal, of a meditation practice or finding something that makes you laugh so hard you feel renewed. Finding joyous routines — which isn’t to say trying to enjoy things you “should” do every day, but rather taking seriously the need to experience joy regularly.

Cancer

It’s okay to be intense about: The restorative and life-giving properties of flirtation, when properly performed. That warm, sparkly feeling of knowing you are special to someone, of being amazed by yourself and them. Leaning into the dorkiness of being freshly in love — with a human, with a vision, with the world. Holding this bright spot not as a way of hiding from all the shadows, but as a way of being able to keep facing them.

Leo

It’s okay to be intense about: How exhausted you are and how often you need to complain about it. The validity of what your heart and mind and body require. Your big, true feelings. Your loneliness. Your love. Your need to be recognized and cherished. Staying in conversation with your closest people about what matters most.

Virgo

It’s okay to be intense about: Wanting to find the right language. A love of nuance and accuracy. Adding to and editing existing narratives as a form of love. Choosing words as carefully as a chef chooses ripe fruit. Enchanting the everyday with a kind of poetry. Letting this open some portals for talking about what’s underneath it all. Letting your mind and your conversations lead you where you’ve been afraid to go and are finally ready.

Libra

It’s okay to be intense about: Having what you need to thrive. Releasing shame about eating the foods that make you happy. Heaping your plate high. Keeping some energy, some time, some money, some plans in reserve for yourself. Not needing to share so much that you feel panicked about if you’ll still have enough. Gathering into yourself and actually deeply absorbing what nourishes you at the deepest levels — love, safety, inspiration, pleasure.

Scorpio

It’s okay to be intense about: Everything! Whatever you’re feeling most riled up about, don’t let shame block you from feeling the truth and the bigness of it. Let the secret shames and old old wounds air out in the bright sun. Risk loving knowing loss is not only possible but inevitable. Risk fighting knowing there’s no guarantee you’ll win. Let love deepen you into how much your being here matters.

Sagittarius

It’s okay to be intense about: The need for retreat. Stealing away as much non-productive time as you can get away with. Redefining your worth based on your dreams, not your accomplishments. Believing in a better future. Letting your hopes be technicolor. Trusting your friends and lovers to keep learning alongside you. Not giving up, even when you don’t know the way forward.

Capricorn

It’s okay to be intense about: How much you want to change the world. How desperate it feels, here and now. The deep wish for complete collective liberation. The ache of wanting a future that seems unimaginable from where we stand. The necessity of working alongside good collaborators. The celebration of what we can accomplish together, despite it all.

Aquarius

It’s okay to be intense about: What you are here to offer to the world, and how deeply that rests on the hard experiences you’ve had. How relationships can expand or diminish your self-confidence. What support you need to be giving what you want to give more widely. How to step into your power as teacher, mentor, parent — as one who has learned much and still has more to learn. Needing to be seen in your competence. Needing to love yourself for more than your competence.

Pisces

It’s okay to be intense about: Your hopes and dreams for a day when your friendships feel different — more intimate, more boundaried, more in-person, merely more. Your deep love for the courage, intelligence, and caring of those you love. Your aspirations to be part of an even larger world of brave, brilliant, and caring people. Your ability to expand into whatever shape you find, and the necessity of demanding shapes that permit the fullness of your being. Getting uncramped. Stretching out toward your future.

Queer Horoscopes for June 2021: Buckle Up

My sweet friends, perhaps you’d like to take a deep breath and notice if there’s any stress in your shoulders before you sit down to read this. Not in a bracing-yourself-for-the-worst kind of way, just in a “I’m someone who takes in a lot of information all the time and maybe I can take a moment to relax right now” kind of way. There’s going to be a lot of information in this post about all kinds of wacky astrology happening right now, and before we get into it I want to remind you that 1) there’s almost always something wacky happening astrologically and 2) we are all still carrying pain and uncertainty into this present moment which means we need to be slower, gentler, and more attentive as we navigate paying attention to the future. From a traumatized space, every future looks like the worst parts of the past coming back to get you. So my short pro tip is don’t read these horoscopes from that traumatized perspective. The astrology of this month has just as much potential to spur you towards deep insights and healing as it does to overwhelm you or bum you out. So use your agency and your self-compassion as you read on.

I invite you to take this breather because we are in the midst of eclipse season and moving into some of the harder energy of the year. In this month alone we have a solar eclipse on the 10th, Mercury will be retrograde until the 22nd, Jupiter will turn retrograde on the 20th, and we’re getting the second exact square between Saturn and Uranus on the 14th. This is, in short, a lot. So let’s take them bit by bit:

Eclipses usher in big openings and closings, dramatic revelations, sudden reversals, emergent information that unsettles and remaps our lives. Eclipse seasons last about six weeks (from the lunation before the first eclipse to the lunation after the second eclipse) and for most of us they create a kind of background sense of unsettledness. This solar eclipse on the 10th will affect you more personally, though, if you have any planets close to 19 degrees of Gemini, Sagittarius, Virgo, or Pisces. If that’s true for you, expect the next six months to be a time of rebirth of sorts, in which you may find yourself living into a different version of your life than what you expected.

The Saturn square to Uranus happened once already on February 17th, and will happen once more this year on December 24th. This is the big theme of this year, astrologically, and it’s all about the tension between structure and chaos, responsibility and freedom, commitment and flexibility, government and revolution, heteronormativity and queerness. Culturally, we’re seeing this playing out in fights about how to control the pandemic, as well what collective responsibility looks like for huge social problems that have been with us for a long time, like racism and capitalism. Personally, you might feel this influence in the ways you’re torn between doing what you have to in order to survive (Saturn) and living into the most audacious and liberated version of your life (Uranus). It’s not going to feel easy right now to just wave one of those flags and say to hell with the other side — we’re all feeling the crunch between how we would like to be more free and the compromises we have to make with reality and survival. In our relationships, this is accentuated by all the ways we’ve been less free throughout the pandemic. Whatever you’ve been doing, you’re probably ready for a change. Whatever change you’re longing for, there’s probably something you still need to be cautious about. None of it’s going to be easy right now, so be patient with all that is unsettled in your heart, as Rilke says.

And then, on the 20th, Jupiter stations retrograde. Jupiter is our cosmic gay cheerleader, and when she goes retrograde it turns down the volume on our faith in joy and adventure. Specifically, it’s a time of questioning our faith. What have we been trusting that we maybe should have investigated a little more? What did we used to believe dogmatically that we now need to see with more nuance? What happens when our faith slips and our identities need to shift? For people with Sagittarius planets, this transit is going to feel a little extra tender. For all of us, it can help us do some reality testing and get curious about stories outside the ones we usually tell ourselves, but watch out for a sense of deflation or disappointment. Jupiter will station direct on October 18th, so the next few months all carry this theme. If you want a sense of what this retrograde might kick up for you, think back to the last Jupiter retrograde, from April 10th till August 11th of 2019.

Finally, all this is going down while Mercury is retrograde. Sometimes, when times are chaotic and our hearts are feeling tender and we are poised on the brink of transformation in uncertain and transformational times, we just need that extra reminder that sending emails efficiently is not going to save us, you know? Any frustrations, glitches, or mistakes that come up for you during this Mercury retrograde, I invite you to take them as reminders from the universe that you’ve got bigger things to be concerned with right now. Don’t just cry if you lose your keys, y’know? By which I mean: do cry if you lose your keys because that moment of small frustration can actually open up much bigger feelings that have been waiting for you to claim them, and in letting yourself slump to the floor and cry might be the kindest thing you can do for yourself in that moment. And being kind to yourself, you can be kind to your friend or lover or coworker who is also finding it hard to keep their shit together right now. Which should really be the motto of this month: June, 2021: We have no time to be mean to each other because none of us have our shit together.

My books are closed to new clients till later this summer, but you can always find a deeper dive into the astrology of the month at my Patreon and follow me @corinadross for updates on astrology, artwork, and all sorts of things.

Good luck out there this month. Cry when you need to. Let the world transform you. Participate in your own healing. I’ll see you all in July!

Aries

Stay with the trouble: Acknowledge that part of you likes to throw yourself into big dreams and projects, while another part of you wishes you would root down a little more and make sure you have the resources you need. Name the different desires for wildness, experimentation, and revolution on the one hand and security, stability, and abundance on the other hand. Know that both these sets of desires are valid, even if you can’t yet find a way to integrate them. Recognize that some deep-held beliefs might shift this month before you’re even aware of them. Learn to love the chaos of loving without knowing what happens next.

Taurus

Stay with the trouble: This year’s tension and transformation is hitting you where you live, and who you are becoming is at stake. Remember that your process of reinvention can be slow and thorough, that change can move at the pace of your own energy. Expect discomfort but don’t welcome exhaustion as a sign that you’re doing enough. Acknowledge the world might be asking you for more than you have energy to give, and that you don’t have to comply. Consider how much less you could be doing right now, and still manage have your shit as together as it can be in times like these. As Jupiter moves retrograde, you may have some doubts about big aspirations, especially if they involve a collective or community you belong to. Trust your gut on specific situations that aren’t the right fit, but don’t give up on the bigger dreams.

Gemini

Stay with the trouble: Name your restlessness, and trust that all the big ambitious desires for adventure and love and learning are still in your future. Name your confusion, your frustration. Trust that the fogginess of this present time won’t last forever. Recognize that as you step into a new year of life, your flexibility is your best asset. Entertain all options and keep your options entertaining. Keep your imagination strong, your heart open, and your curiosity ever at hand. Remember that you are more than how you are seen. If the eclipse on the 10th is affecting your Gemini planets (any between 17 and 21 degrees of Gemini), expect this month to surface things you haven’t been able to look at until now. Don’t feel you have to make rushed decisions about the new information, just watch and learn.

Cancer

Stay with the trouble: Remember that falling apart is an essential part of being human. You get to dissolve, you get to be fragmented, you get to put yourself back together again in new configurations. And it’s not just you—you’re in good company, there is a vast constellation of other humans falling to pieces and reassembling themselves right now. Who knows what shapes y’all are going to end up taking? Who knows what new combinations will be possible? As you’re in that free-fall just remember that some people jump out of airplanes for fun. This, too, can be an adventure.

Leo

Stay with the trouble: It’s easy to dream of reinvention, of showing a different face to the world, of coming up with a stage name and a new social media handle and playing into some highly curated version of your ideal life. And then there is the reality of your actual relationships—the people who know the best and worst about you, the people who sometimes get irritated with you and have feedback about when you miss the mark. Loving yourself more means having less to prove to the world, and more to say to those people who are in it for the long haul with you. Accept the challenge to be more honest and more vulnerable with the ones you trust. Let love be the foundation of all your ambitious plans. And remember that healing is always possible, no matter how old or big the wound.

Virgo

Stay with the trouble: Which daily rituals are keeping you soothed and grounded, and which ones are just keeping you from being present with your feelings? As your sense of possibility is shifting, as you’re learning more about how your future might look, what does it take to stop planning and drop into the reality of the here and now? In relationships, this often means making room for fear of all the things you cannot predict or control. Let this fear pass through you instead of pushing you toward more activity. It can be hard to trust that the people you love most are going to make all the wisest choices you want them to make, and this month will expose what’s at stake in choosing to trust or not trust your important people. How do you make those decisions? How do you know when someone has earned your trust?

Libra

Stay with the trouble: Intensity isn’t always a bad thing. As much as you strive for equilibrium, sometimes that just means bouncing back and forth between different desires and priorities. Welcome your restless urges, those sparks and flares that mean you’re getting un-numb. And notice what lies underneath them might have you reaching again for anything that can numb you. Find a rhythm that you can sustain as you shuttle between these states. Find a pace that feels gentle and curious. And don’t be too disappointed if your efforts at self-care don’t always feel caring to your full self—release the responsibility to always be at your best.

Scorpio

Stay with the trouble: You can’t go home again, but you do get to redefine what home means. If you’re feeling trapped or confined, trust that this won’t last forever. Relationships are a source of wild inspiration and possibly wild stress right now, as you’re navigating a new way of understanding partnership and commitment. The balance you’re looking for is that space where you can stay grounded while being open to change. What helps you find that balance? And if you’re feeling disappointed by love right now, remember that every failed romance has taught you something and you’re not doomed to replay that one story over and over.

Sagittarius

Stay with the trouble: To be honest, you’re not going to love this month. This is not the month you emerge from your quarantine cocoon, ready to fall in love and get picked up by a record label and generate all kinds of buzz for your upcoming bestseller about how your health and your creativity and your relationships all got so much better during a global pandemic. Nope. This month will find you in process, damp-winged, fluttering a little on a nearby leaf, wondering when you’ll feel strong enough to fly. Which is a totally normal and necessary state of being after big changes (or in the midst of big changes). Mostly you just need to remember that there is still joy, ease, and love to be found in these times, and that it’s not going to feel this exhausting forever. If you’re having deep feelings about home and family right now, make some space to grieve or to plan visits or to process what’s coming up. And let your day-to-day routines be informed by exactly what you feel ready for, not what you think you should be doing.

Capricorn

Stay with the trouble: When you’re under stress, you’re good at being a mountain climber. Which is to say: you can endure harsh conditions for a long time with the minimum of resources. Feeling that cold wind whip around you, feeling that ache in your muscles—that can feel like a kind of safety, or at the very least like what’s familiar. This month asks you to take a different kind of risk that has everything to do with not being in control. What kind of mica wonderland is starting to glitter under the snowmelt? What if this gets to be more magical? Are you afraid of falling into a crevasse or causing an avalanche if your heart opens? How can you stay grounded and resourced while lifting up your eyes and taking in what you see with love and awe?

Aquarius

Stay with the trouble: Stay open to the possibility that your identity isn’t fixed, despite the reality of your history. Refuse the burden of being predictable. Notice, instead, how much you change in different environments and also what remains constant. Above all, don’t believe that the past is the sum of your story. Even as Jupiter retrograde may spin you into a tiny whirlwind of cringe about your past beliefs and behavior, keep your full self in view: a multidimensional being of many shapes and sizes patterning across this present moment and into unknown futures.

Pisces

Stay with the trouble: So much can happen behind the scenes. In the edges. Between sleep and waking. Between knowing and naming. If you feel buffeted between those currents—back inward to remember your dreams, reaching out to name what happened—let yourself float. If you feel the riptide pulling you farther and farther from shore, remember that you are made of water and can become the waves themselves. Let yourself break and reform and break again, just as you do in dreams.

Queer Horoscopes for May 2021: What Assumptions Should Your Sign Question This Month?

In this springtime of chaotic newness and sporadic reunions and ongoing pandemic exhaustion, May brings us a few new themes. The first is a renewed faith in the beauty of what we all are (or could be) together. This comes as Jupiter moves from Aquarius to Pisces on the 13th. After spending roughly a year in the heady Air sign of revolution and rebellion, this shift to Pisces brings us deeper into our soft, gooey molten centers. Jupiter, gay cheerleader of the cosmos who likes to chant “Go! Go! Go! More! More! More!” in response to whatever the collective energy might be finds itself shifting teams from the intellectual to the intuitive, from theory and praxis to deep communion. And as Jupiter is associated with what we believe in, this marks a shift toward a year-long journey of renewing our faith in compassion, imagination, restful retreat, and love. Pisces, as the last sign of the zodiac, gathers all our energy in for the night like a parent calling their children in for dinner. Pisces wants us to remember that all that noise and bustle of our waking lives is surface, but there is something deeply nourishing underneath. Pisces loves the fact that on an atomic level we can’t actually distinguish edges and boundaries—that zoomed in close enough, I don’t know where I end and the world begins. With Jupiter in Pisces, we are moving into a year of re-enchanting the world, of renewed idealism, of no long agreeing to hustle as hard as we do for lives of drudgery, fear, and scarcity. Jupiter in Aquarius may be all about the revolution, but Jupiter in Pisces brings in revolutionary love and joy. With this influence, we remember that restoration, rest, and retreat are valid practices to keep us connected to our hearts and to each other when the world is overwhelming.

As I write this, my social media feed is full of deaths. Untimely deaths of queer and Black beloveds. Friends who have no words. Grief that is raw. I want to ground all this discussion of revolution, rest, and joy within the very real context of what we are up against in this moment—more people across the world are grieving loved ones as Covid has claimed millions of lives. More white people are paying attention to what the Black community has been suffering for many generations. More people are becoming aware that there is no “safe” place to retreat to—no getting away from the collective reckoning with centuries of racism, with ongoing colonialism, with the rising urgency of climate change. So when I speak of joy and rest, I don’t mean distraction and isolation. I don’t mean tune out, change the channel, pretend it’s all okay and find some private sanctuary where none of it can touch you (although believe me, there are times when that sounds mighty appealing!). What I mean is the kind of joy that comes from knowing that you are a part of the world, that you are always connected. Your body knows how to take in food from what this world offers and turn it into you. You are made up of millions of moments of interaction with others; they have shaped you as you have shaped them. There is no taking you out of the space you hold in this world, and the grief we feel for those who have passed is a testament to this. We feel that lack. And in grief, we reach out to one another. This is what Jupiter in Pisces is promising: when you open your heart to the grief, the joy will also come. When you retreat from the bustle and noise, you will be able to reconnect to what and who you love. From that place of reconnection, a different kind of power and a different kind of vision of the future can emerge.

The second theme May brings is one of disruption, questioning, and a challenge to get curious about our assumptions. This comes with the lunar eclipse on the 26th, although the full eclipse season lasts from the New Moon on the 11th to the Full Moon on June 24th. Eclipses always bring flashes of new information—they disrupt the ordinary cycle of the Moon waxing and waning, or the Sun shining all day, and in the unseasonable darkness they create we are able to see things differently. This year, the eclipses falling primarily in Gemini and Sagittarius means that we are going to be learning a lot about our belief systems and assumptions (Sagittarius) and our ways of understanding and questioning the world (Gemini). If you have planet in one of these signs (or Virgo or Pisces), this eclipse season might be a powerful one for you. Remember that eclipses bring revelations but not necessarily certainty—it’s a good time to get curious and explore what you find, not quite as good a time to take decisive action.

My books are closed for readings this month as my sister and I work on the 2022 calendar, but I’ll be excited to talk to you all in June! If you want to see how our art process is going you can follow us @abacuscorvus and if you want a little more astro insight for this month (and a chance to win a free reading with me), head on over to my Patreon and follow me @corinadross.

Aries

Get curious about: How you connect the dots between your smaller and larger worlds. Why you believe what you do about love, relationships, and your own capacity to be loved. What new adventures are calling you, pulling you away from what’s comfortable. Who you need to talk to in order to get a fresh perspective on something you feel blocked by. The limits of ever understanding another person, no matter how much you learn about them. The beauty of those limits, of the mysteries they protect. The beauty of what you’ve gotten used to and assumed had no magic left in it. How to stay open to the unexpected.

Taurus

Get curious about: What you’re trying to build on and what you’re ready to release. How it can feel good to say goodbye, even to something you’ve loved. How to feel held by this present moment, which is to say how to be fully in this present moment. How love can hold a safe enough container that you can risk discomfort and disagreement without injury. How safety really means being ready for what comes, and how that readiness relies on the resilience of knowing what you love, who you love, and how to love all this broken, imperfect, in-process mess of life.

Gemini

Get curious about: How an eternal quest for more information can leave you uncentered and without meaningful direction. How many conversations you need to have, books you need to read, articles you need to reference, before you understand your own truth. How the phrases you’re quick to use may be more about deflection than self-reflection. How it feels to settle, to slow, to sink into knowing. How it feels to find the wonder and beautiful surprise of learning something only you could know, without needing to go chase it down.

Cancer

Get curious about: All the ways you take on emotional labor without realizing the cost to you. All the ways you take out the cost on others without realizing it. What it means to find gentleness, forgiveness, and release in relationships that have gotten tightly wound. Your own need for ritual, routine, and stillness. The way you understand yourself through relationship, and the way you understand yourself alone. What it means to let go without giving up.

Leo

Get curious about: Why it’s okay to want attention. How love is the foundation of meaningful social change. How being loved is part of that equation, not just offering it endlessly and selflessly. How to ask for the care, focus, and affirmation you need. How to offer it and keep that energy circulating. How you are incredibly important—but not on a scale where some people have to be less important or more so. What it means to be in your center, to radiate and attract love from your truest innermost heart, while acknowledging you are one of many centers, many nodes in many interlacing networks, that are all incredibly important.

Virgo

Get curious about: Why you compare yourself to people who you don’t need to be anything like. What’s happening when you fall into scarcity stories. What you’re here to do and be that only you can. What you know in your bones, even if you don’t yet have the language to describe it. What you’ve learned and healed from to get where you are now, even if no one has witnessed your whole path. All the pieces you’ve picked up and woven into your sense of self, into the self you are still becoming. Becoming as a finely tuned instrument, or a skilled hand. Your own beautiful capacity to keep absorbing the meaning and the potential of your experiences and distilling them into something precious.

Libra

Get curious about: How two people can say the same words and mean totally different things. What happens beneath the language, what assumptions aren’t said out loud. What it means to love people you can’t communicate with. What it means to communicate even better with people you might have given up on. That special magic that happens when a conversation shifts your entire sense of self, expanding and grounding you all at once. How many perspectives you need to try on before you know which one is yours. How much of language is really gesture, feeling, and play.

Scorpio

Get curious about: Where there is joy, not just sorrow. What rhythms set your heart dancing. What you are here to uphold, to maintain, to offer in abundance to the broken-hearted of this world. What you know from having been through the fire. How to share this wisdom without needing to literally return into that fire to remember how it felt. How to let yourself heal. How to let go of the guilt that you have survived what others haven’t, and that you get to heal from what others haven’t. How to be whole.

Sagittarius

Get curious about: Information that doesn’t fit the story you think is true. What your sweetheart (or ex-lover or best friend or sworn enemy) has been trying to tell you that isn’t what you thought they meant. Details that disrupt your assumptions. The possibility that things are more strange and wonderful and especially more unknowable than you assumed. Why your belief systems protect you and why they might need updating. The difference between core values and ideological dogma. Where there is room for nuance, for curiosity, for learning even more about the marvelous people you love.

Capricorn

Get curious about: The lure of laziness. The urgency of bustling. The seesaw between “go, go, go!” and hitting snooze a dozen times. Why relationships start to feel like work, like the same kind of stress of every other damn responsibility. What deep trust offers to change that. How to get to deep trust. How to get focused on what’s under the surface of your urgency, your stress, your worry about everyone. How to dip into calmness without floating away into disassociation. How to show up fully present. How all these movements toward and away can be fluid, graceful, and grateful.

Aquarius

Get curious about: Why you matter, as an individual and not as a demographic. How your social power or lack of social power has become part of your life story. What else makes up that story. Why that also matters. Why you are more than a summary of your privileges or lack thereof. How self-consciousness can block you from feeling the real feelings underneath the analysis. Why it’s more comfortable staying detached and having an outside observer status, even in your own personal life. What happens when you get more vulnerable. Who’s there to hold you when you get more vulnerable. What becomes possible when you let some rigid worldviews crumble. How to touch into a deeper level of what matters.

Pisces

Get curious about: How you can claim and hold onto your silence, your privacy, and your stillness even if springtime and vaccines are pressing you to emerge from your cocoon. How to balance emergence and deep retreat. The dance of there and back again. The deeply grounding pull of being alone with your feet on the earth and your eyes closed and no one texting you or yelling in a neighbor’s yard—just this long, slow moment of sinking slightly into the gravity of the earth you are made from. How to model the kind of self-love that lets you forget about FOMO and stay attuned to these silences, these satisfactions of merely being.

Queer Horoscopes for April 2021: Where Can You Find Your Fire?

We’re in the season where every day new plants burst into exuberant life, bright leaves popping on stately old trees as the sap rises. Aries season pulls us out of winter hibernation, and this particular month brings a different kind of hope. For some in the US and a handful of other countries, the vaccine rollout is offering a promise of increased movement, connection, and ease in the coming months. Many are daring to dream of an end to the painful separations that have marked the last thirteen months. For others across the world, that reality still seems distant. Meanwhile, the countless fractures and tragedies we’ve witnessed over the past year are far from healed. The world we could create in the aftermath of this crisis is one of the major astrological themes of this year. Meanwhile, we as a collective are learning to think of ourselves collectively, which begins with the capacity to hold both joy and grief at the same time instead of just turning inward and shutting down.

This year and the years to come call for dramatic reversals, renewals, and reimaginings of how we can all live on this earth together. This month stimulates our desires—Aries is a sign that wants what it wants, when it wants it. Can this inherently selfish impulse can be harnessed for the greater good? Aries is traditionally seen as self-centered, survival-oriented, and can be impatient. Sound familiar? A long crisis brings out that survival-oriented flavor Aries energy in all of us (if we’re in touch with our desires at all). This month, I invite you to welcome your impatience in and begin a conversation with it.

Impatience is always about how our desires clash with the limitations of reality. If we maintain the strength of our desires at all costs, we can act recklessly. I’m reminded of an acquaintance who got an STI diagnosis but had a hot date lined up that night, and wanted reassurance they could keep the date, have sex, and not disclose their infection (clearly we all said, no, of course not!). Impatience can lead to unethical behavior with bad consequences for more than just ourselves. There are reasons patience is praised as a virtue while impatience is something we try to restrain.

And yet.

Sometimes impatience is vital and necessary—like when genocidal and soul-crushing systems have held power for several hundred years. When your actual survival and the survival of your loved ones is at stake. When the status quo is robbing future generations of a habitable planet. In this case, Aries energy offers us the revolutionary courage to upend the status quo and fight for a better world.

And yet.

There are a handful of ideas floating around about what “a better world” might look like and many of them rely on paranoid conspiracy theories. Millions of people believe that a cabal of politicians are stealing eating children, which is a new spin on a very old anti-semitic conspiracy (just Google “blood libel”), and that white supremacist hero Donald Trump is some kind of messiah. And the astrology of this month is a bit of a powder keg. So notice what you’re scared of right now and what you’re willing to fight for, and ask yourself: Who do I consider my people? Am I willing to fight for a better world for people outside that circle? Or am I quick to see anyone who disagrees with me as a dangerous enemy? How do I know what kind of threat I’m facing? Where do I find evidence? Is there counter-evidence? What if more collaboration is possible? From global struggles to interpersonal tiffs, this is a month that’s bringing us face-to-face with our impatience, our fears, and how we use power. If you find yourself in a high-stakes struggle right now, be willing to look at your own beliefs, your own tactics, and your own shadow side.

Apart from the more thorny energies, this is also a month that can revitalize, re-energize, and motivate us all to pursue our desires. If you’ve been stuck in lockdown a long time, if you’re still stuck in lockdown, if you’re exhausted and emotionally shut down—do what you can this month to find your fire, to reconnect to your desire for the lusciousness of life. Aries is the sap of springtime, rising up through the frozen ground. Tap into your own life force, spend some time with your feet on the earth, remember that you are not alone.

This is a time we are living through, my friends! Reach out for a reading if you want to talk more about how to navigate it. And for more astro insight including a monthly podcast, join me on Patreon!

Aries

Find your fire: Trust that stirring in your heart that’s telling you where to find your next adventure. Trust your body’s need for movement. Trust that what you feel most passionate about is worth your full presence and attention. Trust that you are becoming who you need to be by noticing what you love. Move your body in ways that remind you of your power.

Taurus

Find your fire: Welcome a slow simmer of warmth instead of a blazing fire. Trust that you have untapped reserves of energy, waiting for the right occasion. Trust that the changes you sorely need will happen, are already in process, even if you can’t see them yet. Trust your dreams, your fantasies, and your sources of inspiration. Trust that you can slow down when you need to. Welcome your body into this new season by moving in ways that reconnect you to joy.

Gemini

Find your fire: Welcome your strong love for your community. Welcome a wider perspective. Trust that spark of inspiration that catches you and lights you up. Trust your most naïve and hopeful utopian desires. Trust that conflict can expose truths we need to hear. Trust that conflict can transform communities without breaking them. Trust that each voice in a group has something important to add. Welcome the desires, the loneliness, the grief lurking beneath the surface when conflict arises. Lean into the love that exists despite it all.

Cancer

Find your fire: Welcome your future, yourself as an elder, the world you have helped to create. Trust your intuition about what will get you toward that desired world. Trust the wisdom of what you’ve learned from the worst year of your life (whether that was this past year or any other). Trust that you have the answers you need. Trust that you can lead others forward. Welcome the responsibility of standing in your own integrity, even when it would feel easier and safer to fold. Trust that you won’t be alone.

Leo

Find your fire: Welcome your aching longing to reconnect to a larger world. Welcome what connects you now, even imperfectly. Trust that you haven’t forgotten how to be inspired. Trust that there will be more stories to tell in the future. Trust that it’s better to feel heartbroken about the world than to fall out of love with the world. Welcome the part of you that knows what you do next, and watch them go.

Virgo

Find your fire: Welcome the healing that comes with finally facing and releasing what hurts. Trust that trauma isn’t your whole story or your only story. Trust that your feelings can move through your body and leave you intact. Welcome what’s changing in your heart. Welcome the opportunity to really feel your grief—it ushers in the capacity to really feel your joy. Trust that intimacy has many beginnings and many endings, and that each ending is also a beginning.

Libra

Find your fire: Welcome conversations that dip deep below the surface. Trust the boundaries that keep you connected rather than enmeshed. Trust your choices, and trust you can make new choices if you’re no longer aligned with the old ones. Trust people when they show you who they are. Trust your instincts and your gut sense. Trust what someone who loves you loves about you. Welcome a new balance of self and other—not leaving yourself behind to stay on a team, not burning any bridges when you need to center yourself.

Scorpio

Find your fire: Welcome the messy imperfections and minor adjustments of real-life love. Trust what your body relaxes into, even if your mind is looking for reasons never to trust. Trust that you know how to heal if you get hurt again. Trust your instinct for noticing the details others miss. Trust your insights, especially when they point to imbalance of power. Trust that real devotion exists and is quiet, consistent, and matter of fact. Trust your distrust of showier, louder declarations. Welcome love that heals you quietly, consistently, and without a lot of fuss.

Sagittarius

Find your fire: Welcome levity, laughter, and completely and joyously wasting your time. Trust your impulse to play, to flirt, to create, to take a break from anything and everything goal-oriented. Trust what helps you feel that special sense of wonder that reminds you of being a small child, curious about something. Unlearn cynicism for a little while. Trust that it’s okay to take a nap. Trust your desire to be seen, cherished, and validated. Welcome (and request) compliments, affection, and appreciation in all forms.

Capricorn

Find your fire: Welcome gentleness and slowness. Trust your desire to do less, to stay in, to root down, to find safety. Trust your impulse to plan and structure and stay busy, but direct all that energy toward your private world. Make your own comfort and pleasure as important as the work you do for the world. Trust your desire to be witnessed. Risk being witnessed. Trust that a little vulnerability won’t undo a lifetime of competence. Welcome tenderness. Welcome what will restore you.

Aquarius

Find your fire: Welcome a fresh perspective. Trust that the truth is stranger than you know. Trust that the world can surprise and delight you. Trust your desire to talk it out, to debate, to holler, to hum. Trust the words that come to you, even if they’re stranger than you expect. Let the familiar become new. Let your worldview expand to include the here and now. Welcome a way of seeing your life where you are one node in the center of a network where everyone else is their own center node, but you still get to be in your center.

Pisces

Find your fire: Welcome a way forward. Trust that there’s solid ground beneath you. Trust your resilience, your resources, and your capacity to rest if you need to. Trust that you deserve what is reliable, sustainable, slow-growing, and trustworthy. Trust your sense of self-protection. Trust your readiness to connect. Welcome what you’re ready to claim and hold onto.

Your Completely Queer Guide To Horoscope Hookups

I promise that I’m an intelligent educated person who understands that science is real and facts are facts. I am extremely well-read. I believe in evolution. I have a degree from a very reputable college. If your discovery of the fact that I’m totally obsessed with the zodiac and lesbian horoscope compatibility changes your opinion of me, so be it. I will try to win you back by posting a picture of myself in boy briefs.

All that said, you’re allowed to take or leave horoscopes, tarot cards, and other things that I find fascinating and worth exploring. I know there’s a question about it on your OkCupid profile (and don’t even pretend like you didn’t know that), so I know that at some point in your hook-up seeking lives, most lesbians, gays and queers have to confront the question of whether or not you “believe in it, don’t believe in it, or find it fun to think about”. And weirdly enough, I know that most queers seem to be super into things like the horoscope and the otherwise “esoteric”? Is it because we all went through a The Craft phase? Is it that whole thing where lesbianism equals witchcraft? Whatever it is, it’s working.

I’ve been studying the zodiac until I felt that it wasn’t highway robbery to charge people for star charts. I’m always flipping through my three decks of tarot cards. I find all the results equal parts fun and fascinating.

For those of you who want a little guidance in your queer bedrooms, you might find your horoscope and lesbian horoscope compatibility chart can be of aid. “What’s your sign?” Is a totally valid pick-up line, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. For this guide, I’ve chosen to deal with sun signs only, as the multitude of combinations involved with moon signs and ascendants and planets is an intense commitment, to say the least. If you’re genuinely interested in your complex compatibility with someone else, think about getting a star chart done or checking out our series “Starstruck,” as it will tell you multitudes more than sun sign alone.

Oh, and I’m a Leo sun. Just in case, you know, you were wondering.

Click on your sun sign and check out who you should be hitting on and who you should be avoiding like the bubonic plague.

ARIES | TAURUS | GEMINI | CANCER | LEO | VIRGO | LIBRA | SCORPIO | SAGITTARIUS | CAPRICORN | AQUARIUS | PISCES

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ARIES (March 20-April 19) As an Aries, you’re all about the chase. You want what you can’t have, so the more unattainable, the better. You want to be teased, led on, and challenged right into the bedroom. While you’re not known for settling into longterm gigs, if only because you crave the excitement of conquering something new and unconquerable, you do well in relationships where your partner is an equal who knows when to fight and when to let you play the big brave queer. You’re going to tear it up in the club and the bedroom, so those who find themselves crushing on an Aries – watch out! It’s always a wild and hot ride with this one.

U-Haul Material – Sagittarius, Aquarius, Cancer

Explosive Fingerblasting Chemistry – Leo, Gemini, Aries

Beware of Trainwreck – Scorpio, Libra, Virgo, Capricorn

Best Lesbros Forever – Taurus, Pisces

ARIES and ARIES Aries wants to play a love game? Good, so does the other Aries. Chasing, teasing, pleasing, and all sorts of intense sexual stuff is about to go down. Both love a challenge, and are more than willing to provide. They’re fiery and passionate people who are going to be dynamic in bed, even if it only lasts a night or two. This is a fantastic bet for a hook-up but maybe not so much for the longterm. Challenges could go too far and drive one of them away, or their selfish sides might take away from the relationship itself. They’re two powerhouses that love to bang down whatever obstacle is in their way, but when that obstacle is the relationship itself, it’s going to get ugly.

ARIES and TAURUS This is a major lesbromance. We’re talking “take a bullet for each other kind of lesbromance. These two have each other’s back no matter what. They both party hard, dig the same values in their partners, and are super great wingmen. Taurus is extremely loyal, and Aries needs someone to stick around when they’re jumping headfirst into one thing after the other. Aries completely respects Taurus; mutual respect is essential to their bond. If this turns into love, it’s going to be soul-crushingly beautiful, but more often these two are the best of friends, and that’s just fine, too.

ARIES and GEMINI You can’t turn down the heat with these babes. Aries is everything Gemini finds attractive in a partner. The sex is mind-blowingly good. The chemistry flows with witty banter, and you better believe their brains have been doing the dirty before they even got undressed. This is sexy librarian shit right here. While the sexual compatibility is off the charts, longterm relationships might not be in the cards for these kids. Count on Aries to get hot and bothered when they spy Gemini, but Gemini doesn’t like the constant attention and neediness of Aries, while Aries needs to be entertained in order to maintain interest. At the end of the day, these two might actually be too good for each other. They’re smart enough to realize that it’s worth being fuckbuddies, but they’ve got very different needs in longer relationships and there’s no need to sour the sex with emotional malarkey.

ARIES and CANCER Aries and Cancer are the kind of pairing that is perfect for a night of intense loving, or for bringing home to meet the parents. The sex is equal parts emotion and animal lust. Cancer opens up the less-emotional Aries, and Aries throws all their passion into loving Cancer, which is enough to make any sensitive Cancer swoon. A long relationship will require some compromise, since Cancer’s feelings are easily hurt and Aries are not known for their subtlety. Luckily their differences are not enough that they can’t be learned and adjusted. The sex is fantastic and keeps Aries coming back for more, while the deep love and compassion makes Cancer pretty hopelessly in love with Aries. Expect commitment ceremonies and sperm donors in the near future.

ARIES and LEO Aries and Leo will definitely bang. If it hasn’t happened yet, it will happen soon. Aries loves to make the first move and Leo loves to feel attractive. Both of them know they’re good, so the bedroom becomes an epic wrestling match for two giant egos, but it’s a win-win for both parties. There will probably be a lot of fighting over who gets to top first, but it’ll be super hot. When you put two fire signs together, it usually means explosive sex olympics. While they have the potential to be a powerful duo, they’re both egotistical, stubborn, and prone to wandering eyes the moment they don’t feel their needs being met. Unless they’re both actively flattering the other, it’s going to be hard to keep the flame of longevity and commitment going. Better to just be lesbros with benefits.

ARIES and VIRGO Virgo makes Aries want to show off and charm them the old-fashioned way, and Virgo loves Aries’ courageous streak. Expect Aries to woo Virgo by sticking up for them in public, beating off the gross dude at the bar, or straight up asking Virgo to go home with them. While it’ll definitely be a fun night, this is dangerous relationship material. Aries’ ego is needy, and Virgo gives and gives and gives. Borderline abusive behavior could easily become part of this dynamic. Virgos are already prone to worrying and fussing, and trust them to pour all of their energy into loving and caring for Aries, regardless of Aries reciprocating. And Aries might not reciprocate, given the fact that Aries is going to think of Aries first and foremost. Aries also do best with partners they respect, and their differences will make it difficult for them to respect Virgo, which is a recipe for disaster. Aries will get bored and look for something else, and Virgo will likely cling until they’re shaken off, coming away bruised and sorry. Proceed with caution, clamdivers.

ARIES and LIBRA You know that couple who are such utter and complete opposites that no one can understand why they bought a cat together? Aries and Libra are that couple. Opposites in every single way, the “opposites attract” mantra will only work for the first encounter or two. Once they start fully expressing their personalities, it might be time to divide up the fiestaware and vegan cookbooks. Libra values fairness and deep consideration before decisions, Aries values being headstrong and sticking to your gut. Libra thinks Aries is a pompous ass, Aries thinks Libra is a wishy-washy weakling. It’ll take a lot of processing to make this work, and even though we queers love processing, this pair might murder each other before getting all their feelings out. If you can avoid this hookup, it will save you a lot of frustrated tears and grudge-watching The L Word.

ARIES and SCORPIO This is a bad idea for quite a few reasons. The sex will be enticing because they’re both intense personas, and everyone knows that steam is a result of water and fire. This is dangerous because the incredible sex is misleading – Scorpio is controlling; Aries refuses to be controlled. The two of them will start a battle for unhealthy domination as soon as they try to make decisions together. Unfortunately, Scorpios can be manipulative when they don’t get their way, while Aries will run and make bad decisions in retaliation, like cheating with all the girls at Queeraoke. The feelings will be intense and heavy, and they’ll probably say “I love you” on the second date, only to hate each other by the third. Hot grudge sex will be the only way they can work out their feelings or stop fighting, but they’ll swear to be each other’s one true love even while they’re pulling each other’s hair out. Their friends will do a lot of facepalming and suggest dialing things back, but like a car accident, it will be impossible not to stare at this glorious hot mess of a thing. This is that couple you see screaming at each during Pride, and then making out in the bathroom at the afterparty.

ARIES and SAGITTARIUS This is the real deal. This is love that springs from friendship and a deep mutual respect for each other. Sagittarius loves excitement and adventure, Aries loves to provide the fun. They both love their independence and freedom, and they’ll get it. They’re both blunt and don’t like to tiptoe around issues, so decision-making is a piece of cake where they constantly find common ground. They make each other happier than they’ve ever been before. Did I mention that the sex is crazy good? Because it’s crazy good. When they’re not being incredibly passionate, they’re also best friends who offer support in everything they do. These two bring out the absolute best in each other, and love is a guarantee.

ARIES and CAPRICORN Capricorn is no nonsense, and Aries just wants to have fun. The two are an odd couple, and one that probably will fall apart after lots of irritating habits and fighting about nothing. Capricorns are focused on their career, success, and all the goals they’ve made for themselves, but Aries isn’t one to cheerlead or give all their attention to someone else’s dreams. Capricorn doesn’t want to waste time with someone who isn’t going to get them where they want to go, and Aries gets bored so easily that Capricorn’s life strategies will seem predictable and dull. When it comes to actually confronting situations, Aries will yell about everything and Capricorn will be silent. Aries love the gestures and the chase, and Capricorn’s reserved until the last, so sex will be a whole lot of teasing before it gets to the pleasing. This results in pretty great sex from all that pent up frustration, but it’s not enough to keep either party invested for the longterm.

ARIES and AQUARIUS These lovebirds will try anything once, when in the bedroom. The sex is fun because Aries loves an exciting challenge and Aquarius just wants to see Aries get weird in the sack. They’re both independent, but Aries’ intensity works well with Aquarius’ free-spirited side. Trust them to do wild things together, with Aquarius bringing their quirky creativity to Aries’ daredevil recklessness. It’s rare to see any level of dependency or neediness in this relationship, but when there’s drama, hoo boy is there drama. One of those rare combinations where this could be fantastic for hooking up, or fantastic for the long run.

ARIES and PISCES You know those two queers who started out fucking but are now the best of friends? That’s Aries and Pisces. They probably hooked up a few times and it was totally fantastic, but there’s no way they could do a real relationship. The connection between them is life-changing and deep, and as friends they are bosom buddies. Pisces is the compassionate sidekick to Aries’ rough rider ways, and they balance each other perfectly when they’re out on the town trying to pick up girls. As lovers? Not really. Pisces idealizes Aries, and Aries will walk all over Pisces without realizing it. Aries won’t respect Pisces as a longterm partner, but they will respect Pisces as a friend. This is one of those things where you know you need to keep the person in your life, but not necessarily up in your privates.

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Jump to Another Sign:

ARIES | TAURUS | GEMINI | CANCER | LEO | VIRGO | LIBRA | SCORPIO | SAGITTARIUS | CAPRICORN | AQUARIUS | PISCES

Queer Horoscopes for March 2021: How Will You Let Pisces Season Restore You?

Hello my exhausted friends, my grieving friends, my optimistic friends, my lonely friends, my friends who have gotten so used to these unusual times that they’ve sealed over their feelings under a thick callus of “life must go on.” After many months of tumultuous, high-pressured astrology, March brings us an opportunity to rest and recover. This month brings a whopper of a Pisces season with the Sun in Pisces till the 20th, a New Moon in Pisces on the 13th, and several conjunctions to Neptune, ruler of Pisces. We are swimming in a veritable ocean of Pisces energy most of the month, which means it’s a beautiful time to hit the snooze button, sleep a little longer, and write down your dreams when you wake up. And then instead of reading your email or the news, take an hour just to sip a hot beverage and daydream or make some art, letting the deeper layers of your experience as a human rise to the surface and help you remember your connection to the past and the future, the actual and the possible, embodiment and being a creature who leaves your body every night to have wild adventures.

For some of you, this is a welcome energy. For others, the pull to slow down and explore your hopes, dreams, and deeper feelings may feel unsettling. Pisces is the energy of dissolving boundaries, of feeling more intimately connected to the whole. For those of you who are already highly sensitive, empathic, or who struggle to set and hold boundaries, this much Pisces energy can challenge your capacity to stay grounded and centered. For those of you who have lost loved ones recently, or relationships, or are feeling deep fear about your own beautiful queer life, this energy can bring up powerful grief and should be dipped into lightly and tenderly. And for those who are already struggling with addiction, or any compulsion to not be here in this present moment, this influence can make it harder to have good boundaries with your escapist tendencies.

Ultimately, though, working with Pisces energy means working with healing. This happens when we slow down and let our real feelings surface, without urgency or any agenda about how they should look. The best use of this time is to create a daily ritual of doing nothing. Turn off all your screens for at least an hour. Let yourself be bored. Brush your hair. Take a bath. Take a nap. Do anything non-productive where you don’t need to be thinking about anything in particular. And if you find certain thoughts or feelings coming up, let them come. Make room for them. Notice what stories they’re telling you, even if those stories feel alarming or untrue. You don’t have to believe the stories, or fight against them. Just keep brushing your hair, or stretching, or soaking. Let them move through your body. And remember that you are loved.

Recovery after crisis is a skill many of us have unlearned, especially as certain crises are ongoing: racialized violence, climate change, this particular pandemic. Remember that taking time to attune inward, to rest and restore yourself, is not a selfish or foolish turning away from these ongoing crises. When we’re in it for the long haul, we need time to rest and recover wherever we can take it. As this month also brings a lot of communicative energy, it’s worth writing down what’s changing for you as you slow down and start listening to all these buried stories in your body. Just remember your words may be more poetic than factual — and that any kind of conversations you have with others about your needs, feelings, and perceptions may also be less clear than you’d wish. Be patient with yourself and your loved ones if you struggle to find the right words but still feel the need to reach out right now. If you can, connect non-verbally. Write your best friend a song. Make a collage for your sweetheart. Hug those it’s safe to hug. Remember your connections run deep, even if you’re feeling disconnected.

If you want more personal support this month, get in touch for a reading. And for more in-depth astrology this month and every month, you can join my Patreon or check out my new podcast, The Hum and the Holler. Go get some good rest! You deserve it!

Aries

Restore yourself:

Let’s be real, you don’t really love slowing down. The first few weeks of this month may feel hard this Pisces influence pushes you to rest and recover—if you ignore its messages, you may find yourself slowed down through exhaustion or illness anyway. So take the time to sleep more, say no to more projects or plans, and live a little more quietly while the Sun is in Pisces. As it shifts to Aries on the 20th, you’ll be able to get started on something new with a fresh perspective. As you slow down this month, try to make friends with your anxieties and also shush them a little bit, like noisy dinner guests that you’d rather feed than listen to. Pisces is the sign of letting go of all the stress and complication of the past in preparation for a big new push; Aries is the energy for that big new push. Let yourself have the time you need now so you’ll be better able to meet the future.

Taurus

Restore yourself:

Self-reliance is your comfort zone, and both a strength and a weakness for you. It’s often easier to do things yourself than work with people who might let you down, and then to turn inward when you’re exhausted instead of asking for support from people who might not do it right. In the short term, you’re good at doing what you need for yourself. Over the long haul, though, these practices can disconnect you from others and lead to deeper loneliness, isolation, and exhaustion. This month, you need to reach out to be restored. Let a friend know you’re lonely. Go on a socially distanced walk. Take a nap with someone in your germ pod. Remember that you’re connected to a larger world of creative, inspiring, surprising humans. Remember that whatever you value and want to see more of the world, there are people who are working on that with you. If your world has felt very small lately, take some time this month to expand it in nourishing ways.

Gemini

Restore yourself:

For many people, the pandemic has created a crisis of purpose. When the world as you’ve known it is shaken up and remains so a year later, how do you plan your future? What are you supposed to become, learn, or create in this uncertain world? What is your work, and how do you do it? This month you may feel internal pressure to know the answers to these questions. The stars and I, however, invite you to rest in the uncertainty just a little longer. Make time to be curious about the answers, rather than needing to be sure of them. Make time to be inspired about possibilities, even if they seem unlikely. Make time to get lost in daydreams, to consider multiple paths, to be open to change. You have a lot of motivation to act, do, and decide right now, but you still need a wider perspective (and a little more experience) before settling on a decision.

Cancer

Restore yourself:

Cancer energy is on a lifelong quest to be as open as possible to love and experience without harm to the self. Accordingly, Cancer is very good at sensing when it’s time for Shields Up and when it can melt down its defenses and be merged with the world. Sometimes this intuition gets skewed, but the cyclical nature of Cancer means there are always opportunities to reassess and repair— unless you get caught in a trauma pattern (oh like, say, a global pandemic in the midst of a world in crisis). Then, you may feel stuck on Shields Up indefinitely. Which makes it hard to feel connected to that flow of love and experience. Which makes it hard to trust that it will ever feel safe to drop your guard. This month brings some healing to that guardedness, but I recommend you approach it slowly and gently. Something is breaking through your shields and reminding you there is still love and beauty in this world, and in the future. Let it in, as much as feels safe for you right now. Remember that the trauma story isn’t the whole story.

Leo

Restore yourself:

The healing this month offers you is profound, but might require more effort on your part to access it. There’s something painful you’ve been putting off feeling that needs your attention before you can deeply relax. Are you holding a grudge? Are you still stinging from a betrayal? Is there grief you haven’t been ready to face? Whatever it is, this month is coaxing you to move through it cleanly instead of letting that pain fester. It may hurt to feel it, but on the other side is a profound capacity to love and be loved. Watch out for the tendency to get lost in distractions right now (internet drama, other people’s problems). Make room for doing your inner work. Reach out to the ones who can hold you as you do. None of us need to be doing this alone right now.

Virgo

Restore yourself:

Pisces season has a tendency to pull you out of your comfort zone. You’re most comfortable feeling like you have a handle on things: you can analyze the situation, see what needs fixing, make a plan, make a list. Pisces season spills water on your to-do lists and tugs on your hand to stop working and go outside to play. And Virgo needs Pisces to disrupt the tightness, the worry, the feeling of “if I could only identify every problem I could solve them all, so there’s no time to relax.” Pisces whispers in Virgo’s ear: “What if this were a mystery to enjoy, and not a problem to solve?” Uncomfortable, unsettling, and yet it can be deeply healing to listen to this voice. This month asks you to lean into the discomfort of letting yourself rest in the midst of the messiness. It’s an especially good time to pay attention to partnership, too—to ask for and accept love without feeling you need to earn it, to justify it, or to worry about losing it.

Libra

Restore yourself:

Hello, beautiful struggling being that is always seeking some kind of balance and rarely gets to stay there. In this struggle for homeostasis, what would it mean to listen more deeply to the cues your body gives you? What would you learn about the disconnect between what your body asks for and what you actually do? In what ways has control of your body become a way of feeling control over your whole life? This month invites you to relax into collaboration with your body, to feel tenderness and acceptance for however you’re showing up right now. You may feel tired all the time, you may have gained or lost weight, you maybe starting or going off of hormones, you may have a totally different experience of how the difficulty of the past year has landed in your body. Nevertheless, here you are. Your body tells the story of what has happened so you can survive. Moving toward acceptance doesn’t mean giving up on feeling better, it means acknowledging how your body protects you and how you can protect it. And yes, your desire to control is also a part of you that deserves tenderness and acceptance. Don’t feel shame about what’s helped you survive, even if it’s hurting you now. Let this Pisces season teach you to slow down and deepen your empathy with all the rhythms of being in a body in time, in culture, in healing, in transition.

Scorpio

Restore yourself:

What do you do when it’s time to stop focusing on the crisis? Can you shift your focus? Can you give yourself permission to rest, to play, to giggle, to lie on the ground and watch the clouds? Scorpio energy can tend toward hyper-vigilance—a price to pay for being so attuned to what needs healing in this world. Attune to your own healing this month by making room for laughter, silliness, and even romantic love letters. Get corny. Be open to compliments that make you blush. Ask for attention in ways you normally wouldn’t. Let healing come to you from the circle of loved ones and lovers—those who adore you even when you’re at your worst. Keep all the emergencies at bay for awhile, as best you can. Whenever possible, return to what heals your heart.

Sagittarius

Restore yourself:

Your longing to live as many lives as you can in this lifetime, to never fully close any doors, means that sometimes you get spread so thin it’s hard to remember what it feels like to wake up in the morning with nothing in particular to do and see what the day brings. Whether it’s an abundance of work opportunities, educational opportunities, social events, or self-generated schemes and projects, your cup runneth over fairly regularly. In relationships, you may have too many people you check in with briefly rather than a few loved ones you make time to go deep with. After a full year of pandemic, you may be restless for travel and adventure, for new horizons, for that next big learning opportunity that will help you synthesize all the strange and hard and sometimes beautiful experiences of the past year. I’m sorry, my friend, but this month is asking you to drop down deep into exactly where you are. Find your feet. Find the ground. Find your feet on the ground. Take a few deep breaths. You’re motivated to connect right now, but choose depth over breadth. Challenge yourself to focus on the nearest and dearest to you.

Capricorn

Restore yourself:

The floating, dreamy quality of these times is decidedly not your favorite energy. Where you want to be clear and focused, you may find yourself confused and unfocused. Or, from another perspective, inspired and expanded. This shift in perspective is important. You may not know exactly the right answers right now, but making room to imagine wild possibilities can help you get back on track. Resist the urge to narrow your focus just yet. Let inspiration come from unexpected sources. Dare bringing a little more poetry into your daily conversations. You’re getting in touch with what is irrational, beautiful, and impossible. These kinds of ideas don’t fit into a to-do list. Where do you need to put them?

Aquarius

Restore yourself:

Moving from the crackling Aquarian visionary energy of last month, this month brings a necessary pause to assess your visions and plans from a less intellectual angle. What are the feelings lurking beneath the big ideas? What needs tending in your soul, in your relationship to your dream world, in your capacity to love the unknown? The stakes feel high right now, but this month reminds you that urgency isn’t your only setting, and that the future is always built on the buried dreams and nightmares of the past. Get right with yourself and your world by making more room for silence. Resist your resistance to what comes up from the depths. Know that you can find safety when you need it. Above all, be gentle with yourself right now, and let your vision be clear while your pace remains slow.

Pisces

Restore yourself:

Repeat after me, dear fishes: I am connected to the entire universe, but I am always the center of my own. Give yourself permission this month to disengage with the outer world, to discharge all kinds of stress and pent-up feelings, to not make sense, to ugly cry, to make ambitious and confusing performance art, to not say the right thing, to say too much or too little, to be whatever kind of mess you need to be as you find your way back toward center. The Gemini influence of the month may pull you toward sharing things that you’re not ready to share, so be wise about your audience—reach out to those who adore you first, before posting something for the whole damn world to critique. Above all, remember that your feelings matter, even if they don’t make sense. Don’t feel the need to justify what you feel, but do question the beliefs about the world that come with the feelings. The feelings are always true—the stories they tell might not be.

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Queer Horoscopes for February 2021: How Can We Get Somewhere Different from Here?

Can you feel a change yet? We’re in that strange transition during the winter when Spring is near, but still feels so far away. In this time of massive global transitions — political, social, and environmental — we’re so primed for the next catastrophe that it can be hard to notice what’s changing. And many people, clinging to the trauma logic of having lived through the worst year, think of “change” as “it will go back to normal.” But the strong Aquarius wind blowing through this month isn’t really interested in normal, it’s interested in different. Given where we’ve been, how can we get somewhere different from here?

There is a liberating feeling with Aquarius, kind of like that moment when you step outside before a lightning storm and smell the ozone in the air—that stillness that’s crackling with potential. But it’s still potential until we use it. And there are many different ideas about what liberation could or should look like. February is always a month when change sneaks up on us, when what is growing and rising in the living earth is still hidden. Many of us are also holding an open secret right now: we don’t want the status quo back. We’re not ready for any semblance of “normal.” And after the traumatizing year we’ve all had, we may not even be ready to trust good news when we hear it.

This is all totally normal. Resist the urge to shame yourself for how you’re showing up right now. It’s about harm reduction and maintaining, as we are still very much in the midst.

Throughout this year, we’ll be facing tension between the old world and the new — between how things used to be (or still are), and how they’ve transformed or will transform. Astrologically, we see this in the challenging aspects between Saturn (status quo daddy) and Uranus (anarchist glitterbomb) that happen three times this year — kicking off this month on the 17th. As these two forces wrestle it out, we’re going to be feeling torn between what we want to preserve from the old, familiar world and where we want to be more free in the future. Or we may feel trapped by the same old Saturnian restrictions (is it safe to see my family yet? Will I ever get to quit this job? How long will this illness last?) while longing for a different life.

It’s not a comfortable time, my friends. If anything, it might feel like we’re getting more polarized this month. In your partnerships, your collective houses, your polycules, your germ bubbles, you may feel a little more tension about how to balance everyone’s different needs around freedom vs. safety. In your solitude, you may feel this tension internally. With Mars in Taurus, we have the goddamn stamina to keep up this fight, too, once we start it. So be intentional about what conflicts feel worth it, and what your goals are for engaging in them. Remember that none of use really knows what’s right for anyone else, we can just keep trying to live by our ethics and ideals. Remember that no one is really getting their needs met right now, so we’re all a little extra. Be generous and forgiving, when you can, and that includes with yourself.

This year is bringing change. We can’t quite feel it yet, but we’ll be building it, shaping it, and learning to name it over the coming months. Keep this in mind as you face the struggles of this time: what are you trying to build through this?
I’m here if you need me, oh queerdos of the world. Get in touch for reading, follow my Patreon for a deeper dive into the astrology of this month, including a new monthly podcast that will be dropping before each month’s New Moon! You can also hear the podcast for free every month by tuning in to The Hum and The Holler, my new podcast with my sister for 2021 that goes into depth on all the spells in this year’s Abacus Corvus calendar.

Aries

Between the old world and the new:

In the old world, you had a different sense of where you belonged and what you wanted to be contributing to the world. You may have had big dreams. You may have been about to embark on a big new passage of your life and seen that cut short. In the new world, your decisions have been so dominated by the idea of safety that for an Aries who loves risk and challenge, you may be feeling particularly deflated right now. It may feel like you can make very few choices, like you are no longer the captain of your fate. The tensions arising this month between old and new are hitting you in the conflict you feel between wanting to stay safe and well, on the one hand, and wanting to be part of what you find inspiring in the world. Challenges come easily to you, but it can be harder to prioritize your own wellbeing. Right now, you’re being challenged to choose what actually serves and nourishes you on a deep level—what helps your nervous system rest, digest, and restore itself. What inspires you will still be part of your life, but you can’t chase it at the expense of your wellbeing.

Taurus

Between the old world and the new:

Survival fears might be strong for you right now, whether they’re based in current conditions or past traumas. During the pandemic, you’ve been coming into yourself in new ways—dropping a social mask, dropping expectations that drained your energy and bank account, and dropping into a sense of who you could be without all that external pressure. But can you keep this up? Part of the tension of this month is whether you’ll be able to bring this newfound authenticity to the world and have it accepted, respected, supported. There’s a visionary energy coursing through you right now that could bring you deeper into your power, if you’re brave enough to step into the spotlight. Just remember that what you offer the world cannot be quantified. You are a unique event, not a product. As such, you don’t have to be perfect each time.

Gemini

Between the old world and the new:

In the past, the unknown was often a source of delight. Research, discovery, a new crush, a new fact about the sex lives of the spotted hyena—all continual sources of delight. But when we’ve been in trauma patterns for a long time—which includes 2020 for all of us, not to mention whatever life history you had before—the unknown can take on a more menacing aspect. The tension of this month is primarily playing out between your sense of the known and the unknown. What will help you heal isn’t actually clinging to the known, though, especially when it includes your anxiety patterns. If you’ve got an anxiety loop playing on permanent repeat in your head, it’s there to serve a protective function and it also blocks you from paying attention to what you might not notice—when the threat is over. What happens if you start telling yourself a brand new story based on the same data? What if your doom-and-gloom conclusions are only one of many possible conclusions? What if the unknown can become, once more, a source of joy?

Cancer

Between the old world and the new:

We’ve all got our emotional wounds, but people with strong Cancer energy in their charts are experts at deeply feeling what needs to be felt. The only problem is when they get stuck in the feeling instead of letting it release and letting the nervous system reset back into it’s humming along merrily mode. Prolonged crisis and prolonged grief can get us stuck in a loop of feeling things without resolution (or refusing to feel things anymore). The tension for you this month is in how to get unstuck without just pushing away or dismissing the reality and strength of what you feel. How do you know when it’s time to turn toward the future again? Are you ready to feel anything like hope? What is between you and your capacity to envision and dream a better world? It might be a lot right now, and that makes sense. Just start digging through it, with the understanding that pain teaches us not to make the same mistakes in the future again—like touching a hot stove and then learning not to touch it. Trauma, on the other hand, can teach us that the future will be just as terrifying as the past. Trauma keeps us stuck in that one bad time, forever. Getting unstuck is a long process, but it will give you your future back.

Leo

Between the old world and the new:

Relationships are up for you right now. Whether you’re partnered, in germ pod, looking for connection, or flying solo right now, you’ve got a keen longing for the kind of love that is bigger than one person will ever be able to give you (or even two or three). Leo energy is here to magnetize love—you are the puppy memes of the zodiac. You are here to melt hearts, and to have yours bursting with love as well. In pandemic times, with such restrictions on easy intimacy, with so much grief and loneliness and fear swirling around, getting that dose of love is much harder. Begin by accepting your need for love, but recognize that it’s always a two-way street. Whether you feel lonely or filled up right now, it’s your responsibility to start filling the world with whatever love you have. Hoarding it will never help it grow. This will feel much harder, obviously, if you’re not feeling filled up, so remember to keep asking for what you need and grieving if your needs can’t be met. And remember that love in action is more than affection and cheerleading, it’s solidarity, listening, material support, and deep recognition. You know how to do this. Start being the love you need.

Virgo

Between the old world and the new:

Oh my dear sweet anxious and well-meaning Virgo friend—you may be doing better than you expected to right now, because you are inherently adaptable. But in wanting to offer up your comparative wellbeing as a resource for others, you’re going to come up against your own limits. This month’s tension arises for you as that pull between what you want to offer and what you need to keep for yourself. This is particularly important if you’ve got an ambitious project in mind, something you finally have the focus and motivation to follow through on—remember that you will still have lower capacity days (and weeks, and months) and that not a single one of us is here to single-handedly save the world. If you’re planning toward something big, you have to be gentle with the ways you’re showing up each day, exactly as you are. Let your capacity determine your pace. And congratulations for finding balance, even if you lose it and have to keep finding it again!

Libra

Between the old world and the new:

This month brings relationships into strong focus for you, but less in a “I’m processing with all my partners and friends and we’re really making progress” kind of way, and more of a “oh my god I just miss getting dolled up and going to a QDP and making out with strangers” kind of way that’s immediately followed by “dear goddexx, how will I ever get over the pain of all the ways my relationships have failed me in the past year?’ In other words, your feelings are big right now and both the longing and the pain have messages for you. If you’re ready to start sorting through (and you may not be, which is legit!), you’ll notice that leaning into joy will keep bringing you through the territory of grief, each and every time. It’s useless to try to untie them, honestly. The best you can do this month is to be present with each of them as they arise, to acknowledge that they are part of a larger cycle of response that is deeply attuned to your world. You are still connected, even when you feel disconnected.

Scorpio

Between the old world and the new:

The way the tension of this month activates you has everything to do with how you were raised. Your family patterns are up for review—for healing, for forgiving (if it feels safe), for purging (if you need to). Everything you learned about love, safety, and belonging as a child is present in your current adult relationships, and you may have noticed that the conflicts of the past year have mirrored a lot of your early family dynamics. It’s tough work, relearning how to love. It’s also hella worth learning, slowly and thoroughly. For you to choose healthier relationship dynamics, you first have to believe that you deserve them. Start with that. Start with a daily ritual of believing that you deserve the kind of love that never scares you. Start with a commitment to loving yourself, completely and without any reservations.

Sagittarius

Between the old world and the new:

It’s been a long time since most of you have felt free and adventurous, I know. And we’re not yet in a world where hopping on a plane and visiting far-away friends is an easy, relatively risk-free choice to make. If travel isn’t your drug of choice, you may have found new ways to expand your sense of possibility and lean into that larger perspective that helps you feel refreshed and renewed. For most of you, though, being confined to the local when you’re used to thinking of yourself as post-borders has been a major, grinding, crushing loss. This month brings you opportunities to face that feeling of stuckness and start appreciating what can be learned in what seems most familiar—your daily routine. This is a year of wake-up calls for you, and your old patterns aren’t going to cut it anymore. For better or worse, there’s something you can’t outrun in your relationship to your body that needs to be noticed, appreciated, investigated, cherished. Get curious about what seems boring. Start connecting the dots between the local and the global, the personal and the political, the ways your experiences connect you to the larger world, even if you’re mostly trapped in a bedroom these days.

Capricorn

Between the old world and the new:

We all know you love to know what your job is, and the tensions coming up for you this month have a lot to do with that pull between doing what you must to make sure you have the resources you need (love, medicine, money, infrastructure, etc.) and the pull to do something creative, expressive, and playful that will help you tap into your unexplored (or languishing) talents. One of the biggest tragedies of capitalism is that it’s taught us only a few people get to be artists and everyone else’s creativity doesn’t matter. Your creativity matters. You don’t need to get paid for it. You don’t need to share it with anyone, if you’re not proud of what you end up making. But you do need to be making things, playing games, getting weird with it, letting the process take you somewhere new. Despite what your security needs might be screaming at you (keep working! no time for play!), your real responsibility this month is to keep showing up for your creative impulses, and to let yourself play.

Aquarius

Between the old world and the new:

This is a momentous year for you, and this month brings a veritable abundance of Aquarius energy. Which means that for a little while, the whole world is vibing on your level more than it usually does. This is also a year of challenges for you, challenges that will mainly ask you how to balance your need for self-determination—being as strange and questioning as you are—with love, belonging, and stability. Part of your mission as a human is to bring something new into this world, even if it’s just a new way of looking at things or offering love and understanding. The world doesn’t often understand what’s new, and often won’t love it until it becomes familiar. It’s your job to keep loving what the world rejects, fiercely and with commitment, especially when it’s aligned with your deepest values. Send a little of that love to whatever part of yourself has also struggled with rejection, with that feeling that you don’t belong here. You do.

Pisces

Between the old world and the new:

You know that you absorb a lot from your environment. It can be your comfort zone—that wordless communion with all the feelings and impressions that happen beneath language, beneath conscious thought. It’s why you can be such an empathic friend and partner. It’s why you often need time and space alone to recharge. And it’s hard to put into words what you feel and sense this way. But the tension of this month is asking you to lean into speaking the kind of truths that you usually just feel. This could be for yourself, or on behalf of someone you love who’s having a hard time shaping the chaos of their own feelings and responses. Just remember that as you start to name things, they will want to wiggle away. That’s okay. You don’t need 100% accuracy, or to be right about everything. Let the words you offer be like opening a door, letting in some light. Knowing it’s okay to start talking about all the things. Showing someone else you’ve been listening this whole time.

Queer Horoscopes for January 2021: How Will Your Sign Move Through Crisis and Remap Your World?

Oh, my sweet friends. I want to reach through whatever screen you’re reading this on and hug you, or maybe braid your hair and fix you a drink with fresh mint in it and let you tell me about all the ways 2020 broke your heart. And I want to promise you that 2021 will treat you better. I hope it will.

But we’re still in the middle of everything that 2020 ushered in, and it’s not going to suddenly reset because the Gregorian calendar has turned over. There is no clean slate this year. We have to drop the illusion that we’re in control of what happens to us next—that if we just make the right choices we can have the life we deserve. I’m sorry I can’t give you all the life you deserve. Or even a hug. I can just congratulate you on surviving what may have been the hardest year of your life, and encourage you to stick it out with us a little longer.

Because, though some of us might be feeling that everyday is grindingly like the last one, we’re actually in a time of tremendous change, and 2021 will be different from 2020 in some key ways. We’ve moved through what some astrologers have dubbed the “Covid cluster”—that once-in-a-lifetime crunch of planets in late Capricorn, sign of restrictions and responsibility, of doing what you have to and not what you want to. That was a game changer. That was intensely difficult. And that particular piece of astrology, while it’s informing what happens next, is over.

As we move into 2021, new themes are popping up that have more to do with tension between the old world and the new—do we cling to the past or rush toward the future? I’ve heard of people who survived a tornado and when all was clear emerged from their basements to astonishing sights: one house completely demolished while the one next door was unharmed, while yet another had been picked up and set down a few blocks over. Bits and pieces of the old world sat uncomfortably next to the new. They wandered through their neighborhood in a state of grief and wonder, not knowing what familiar landmarks would be gone or rearranged. If nothing else, 2021 will be a year of rewriting our maps.

Last year I posed some questions we might need to answer in 2020. One that still feels appropriate for 2021 is this: “How do we envision what comes next?” This year (and particularly this month) is heavily dominated by Aquarius energy. Aquarius demands change—specifically that we question the rules and structures of our society. Aquarius is the queerdo revolutionary of the zodiac—against assimilation, for free love and collective liberation, willing to be unpopular in pursuit of a better, stranger world. Both planets that have to do with society and its rules and beliefs (Saturn and Jupiter) are newly in Aquarius, and the Sun will meet them there this month. Mars, planet of hissy fits and catty vengeance, finally moves out of Aries but runs smack into a square with Saturn. When these two clash, it has all the subtlety of Dawn Davenport denied her cha cha heels.

Which is to say, we are moving out of a year of crisis and toward a remapping the world, which won’t come without some conflict. All year we see the theme of tradition vs. revolution, of old vs. new, of responsibility vs. freedom. And our allegiances may not be as clean cut as we think they are—is the kind of freedom we’re looking for the freedom to risk other people’s lives so we can party without the inconvenience of masks? This year will complicate any belief system you hold that needs only one right answer, only one good way to be. We are moving out of a need for security and toward a need to experiment — which might mean failing, dusting ourselves off, and trying again. It might mean breaking with an ideology that doesn’t allow for change or nuance. It might mean finding new friends. Whatever it means for you, expect this to be a year of surprises. And if you are aligned with any kind of movement for collective liberation, this is a year to get serious about the limitations of your imagination. Aquarius asks us to escape the limiting perspectives that trap us in “that’s just the way the world is,” and the tensions of this year ask us to better understand what is and isn’t possible.

I’m excited for the changes this year brings, and I have some exciting news to announce! First, if you want a much deeper dive into how the astrology of 2021 will affect your sign, hop on over to my Patreon for the complete download. It’s easy to sign up for one month and change your mind later if you don’t want to stick around—I won’t be hurt! And if you’ve been waiting for a reading with me, my books are finally open again so grab your spot now as I’m often booked at least a month in advance.

I’m also thrilled to announce I’m offering two new classes this year! Two of them! Both live on Zoom—one for astrology newbies and one for those who want to level up and use astrology as a healing tool. Check out my live Astro 101 class here, and my Healers and Weavers apprenticeship program here; registration for both closes soon!

I wish you beautiful acts of bravery and experimentation in all your relationships this year. May 2021 heal your heart and help you remap your world.

Aries

Redraw your map:

Heteronormativity believes in all our needs being met through the couple, but queerness takes a goddamn village. And often, that village is a hot mess. So let’s talk about “community.” What communities are you a part of, whether you like to identify with them or not? What communities do you feel betrayed by? Which ones are literally saving your life right now? What failures have you experienced in community? These themes are coming up for everyone right now, but they’re especially important for you. In redrawing the map of your world, you need to address the core question of who you’re showing up for and who’s showing up for you—and why we mess it up. Part of your work this year is to learn why you can forgive and keep going with some people, and why you can’t with others. Part of your work is to remember that collectivity will always challenge you, on some level, even as you want it—you’re going to feel more in control of your life (and therefore safer) when you can act without stopping to get consensus approval. And yet—you need your community, and they need you. This is the year to work it out a little better than you did last year.

Taurus

Redraw your map:

If you’re being totally honest, you’re happiest when your relationships don’t have a lot of upheaval. You love the familiar, the comfortable, the predictable presence of the people you love. However your relationships changed in 2020, you’re probably still indignant about it, still unwilling to let go of their past forms—even if those changes were for the better! It takes you time to get used to new maps. So in this year of continuing change, when Uranus, planet of change, is still in your sign and stirring up trouble with all the planets moving through Aquarius, you’re being invited to notice where you do want change. Specifically, what about you do you want to be more visible? Are you trying to step into more leadership in your work or your friend group? Or do you need to take on less and open a space for others to come forward? What relationships help you feel capable and strong? Who do you trust to hold your vulnerability? If there aren’t at least two people on that list, how can you change that this year? What relationships drain your energy? What boundaries have you set in them? What boundaries do you need to set? 2021 is going to keep rearranging your relationships, but not all the changes need to be bad, I promise. Your job is to stay honest about what’s giving you life and what’s become a burden. Your job is to hold onto what you actually need and learn to lovingly release the rest.

Gemini

Redraw your map:

This is a year of growth and change for you, and most of it will be aligned with what you already know you want. You’re growing toward a future you can imagine, but 2021 wants you to stay aware of what is marvelous, unfamiliar, and even unimaginable in what you thought was familiar. Your map this year doesn’t need to get totally redrawn as much as defined: your existing map has many possible entries and exits, roads overlapped on other roads, landmarks that go by many names, possible future roads that haven’t been built yet….this is a year of making choices, of clarifying, of committing to certain paths and not others. And you can only do this by getting curious about why—what do you gain by delaying choices? Where do you feel that deep sense of truth that can help you decide? What stories are blocking you from feeling into that intuitive sense of rightness? Who’s helping you unlearn those stories? Who might be reinforcing them? You will always be love the questions more than the answers, but this is a year of making firm commitments. Let your sense of wonder and curiosity guide you.

Cancer

Redraw your map:

Whether you name it or not, the pain you’ve experienced shapes you. The pain of 2020 has reshaped your relationships, your daily routines, and even how you hold and move and love your body. In redrawing your maps this year, take time to commemorate the places where you’ve been hurt. Leaves flowers at specific landmarks. Rename the streets. Let yourself cry. Hold your beloveds in your body, in the way you are kind to yourself, in the way you let yourself rest. Remember that it’s hard work to feel grief, to remember what is lost, but that crying is an act of alchemy: it rearranges the places that pain has claimed for its own. Remember you have the power to reshape yourself in collaboration with your past, in collaboration with what you love. You have the choice to keep aligning with healing, and that doesn’t mean going back to a way of life that didn’t really serve you—it means renaming, reclaiming, and learning to love your current shape. Only then is real change possible.

Leo

Redraw your map:

When you were younger, you might have confused getting positive attention with being loved. Even so, attention never really filled that empty feeling. Whether you were single or partnered, friendless or wildly popular, it was hard to shake a feeling of deep loneliness. This year, you’re being asked to grow up a little. And I don’t mean that in a shaming way, like “grow up and stop feeling so lonely!” I mean that in a profoundly loving way: Grow up and start claiming that loneliness as something you need to address for real. Grow up and recognize you can tell the difference between what’s nourishing and what’s a temporary thrill. Grow up and learn how to choose the kind of love that sees you in all your wholeness—not only how you dazzle and impress, but also how you’re sometimes kind of selfish or ordinary or boring. Love that may not shower you in praise, but does keep collaborating with you, keep prioritizing what you can build together, keep showing up for the project of growing up together. Are you ready to grow up and commit to being loved this way, and to offering that kind of love? Are you ready for loneliness to be just one chord in your symphony, and not the diva running the whole show?

Virgo

Redraw your map:

When we talk about revolution, I don’t want you to think about something as literal as violent overthrow of the government or as meaningless as an advertisement for a new kind of soda. I don’t want you to think of the hippies in the 1960s, I don’t want you to think of the antiglobalization movement in the 1990s, I don’t want you to think about anything that was ambitious and failed and became a slogan for capitalism. Instead, I want you to think about what you see happening in your everyday life that’s giving you a glimpse of how the world could be different. I want you to think of what small acts you could be doing regularly to support this change. I want you to notice where in your body you hold the stories and trauma of oppression. I want you to start moving your body in ways that offer release. I want you to start understanding your own healing as part of and in service to collective healing, which is the same thing as revolution. The map you’re making in 2021 is a map of devotional, restorative, audacious, unthinkable, somatic, and deeply personal interventions that will help you show up as a mentor, as a healer, as a friend to those who are trying to change the world. If you are descended from enslaved Africans, I encourage you to check out @TheNapMinistry for guidance and support. If you’re descended from white settlers, I encourage you to question your need to produce and perfect instead of being and being with. If you’re in any other category or in many categories of identity, I want you to remember that what you demand from yourself you will demand from others. What can you offer yourself, instead, that will also benefit others?

Libra

Redraw your map:

Ah, Libra, what a sweet change this year brings you! Many of the pressures of 2020 are easing for you, and the new Aquarian energy is stimulating your need for creativity, playfulness, and romance. If the current map of your relationships is a little too weighted toward other people’s needs and interests, 2021 is the year you start balancing this out with more emphasis on what gives you life, whether or not your friends or lovers share that interest. You are learning about your own desire nature this year, and I’m not just talking about sexual desire but about what makes life joyous for you. Do you remember joy? Do you remember the paths that take you there? Is it time to map out some new ones? I recommend trying your hand at anything that feels like it might be really fun but maybe not exactly productive or worth your time. Make some really bad art. Write some incredibly self-indulgent poems. Dress up and take selfies. Play some silly, time-wasting games. As long as you’re having a lot of fun, it’s worth doing. And if it feels strange and frivolous to be prioritizing fun at a time like this, remember that joy is what’s going to keep us going. Flirtation, romance, and exciting new friendships are also good compass points for you this year—don’t feel that any of them need to get too serious, though. Practice being in the moment. Practice sharing passion and playfulness for the shared endorphin boost. 2021 will have its pain and obstacles, but your main responsibility this year is to stay aligned with joy, and how joy opens up a space of possibility.

Scorpio

Redraw your map:

Let’s talk about your past. Maybe you had an idyllic childhood with only good memories, but more likely you’re carrying some kind of wounds from your early life into all your adult relationships, including your relationship to yourself. Aquarius, key energy of 2021, isn’t any easy one for you—it’s all future-focused and excited about what’s possible, while you’re holding the scars of what went wrong. You have the wisdom of the past guiding you, which can make you suspicious of any progressive project that looks too idealistic, that seems to ignore the traumas and obstacles that arise when people try to work together to change the world. And yet, it’s time to redraw your map. Not to erase or ignore the wisdom you hold, but to allow for the possibility of the future looking different than the past. This means drawing deeply from your roots, but aiming yourself at an unknowable future. This means holding your pain with love and attention, but not letting it tell you what your future will look like. This means making family with those you trust and letting your witnessing of each other redraw all the maps you were given—maps that told you what parts of you weren’t worth loving. 2021 will be a year of intense change for you, and you may not always welcome it, but you can always choose to align with what heals your heart and keeps you able to trust and witness.

Sagittarius

Redraw your map:

You are quite good already at redrawing maps—no sooner have you drawn one possible map of your life than you want to draw a dozen more. So what this year is asking from you isn’t to lean into your flexible, adaptable, adventurous side, but rather to notice what you’ve been overlooking when you fly off into a new adventure (or flight of fancy). There are problems that you can solve if you sit with them, give them more of your time and attention. There are conversations you need to have that you’ve been avoiding. What will help you feel ready? What gives you the courage to look more closely at the present moment? In this year of Aquarius energy there will also be eclipses in your sign, so this is a year when anything you’ve been trying to ignore is going to come up and demand your attention. Start now, and start small. Remember that you have the power to connect, to act, to call a damn friend when you’re thinking about them. Remember you can use your words and not just your imagination. Get specific about what you’re trying to make happen this year. Get up close and personal. Listen more closely to what the people you love are telling you. Let yourself be surprised, and then let yourself be still long enough to be surprised again.

Capricorn

Redraw your map:

You are so talented at being able to do without. You’ve got a map of where you’ve stashed only the most essential supplies and when the shit hits, you’ve got your bug-out bag and you’re ready to roll. In intimacy, this means you’ve got a lot to give and you don’t always remember that you get to receive as well. The thought of asking for care might even feel distinctly uncomfortable. But the map you’re drawing in 2021 asks for more than scarcity mindset, it asks you to recognize the value of abundance. What could you accomplish if you had not just barely enough (money, love, support, feedback, learning experiences, sex, food, etc.) but more than enough? Enough to share, enough to trust that you won’t be out in the cold if you take a risk or take a break? Having enough material resources may or may not be in your reach, but what about having more than enough inspiration, love, and trust? What about having more than enough creative ideas and people to share them with? What about risking more vulnerability in your closest relationships and seeing what grows from these acts of courage? These are your goals for 2021—to increase your capacity by increasing your resources, so you can be prepared for all the surprises to come.

Aquarius

Redraw your map:

However 2020 reshaped your world, now is a time to start asking yourself what you’ve given up to stay in some relationships, and what you’ve given up by drawing back from others. Specifically, this year asks you to question the logic that intimacy (or independence) means making big sacrifices: you’re damned if you’re loved and damned if you’re lonely. Old experiences of rejection have taught you what you needed to learn. Don’t knit them into a tight, itchy sweater of I Will Never Truly Belong Amongst the Humans and commit to wearing that one outfit until you die and being buried in it. Instead, consider what you are maturing into and how the people who may have hurt or disappointed you are also maturing. You’re all a little older and some of you may be much wiser now. As you embrace this year that calls on your specific gifts and perspective, remember that what you’re learning about possibility is that it can’t be all or nothing—that you are capable of adapting to changing circumstances, and capable of learning how to feel safe even if you’re uncomfortable.

Pisces

Redraw your map:

It’s normal that as we age we start to give up on certain dreams—we’re not all going to be astrophysicist opera singers with a side hustle of hip-hop dance. But what happens to the parts of you that are still attached to the motions of the planets, to singing, to expressive dance? For so many of us 2020 was a year of dreams deferred, or maybe cut off entirely. Maybe you’ve learned to do your dreaming as pure fantasy, getting high in the bath tub or binge watching gorgeously designed TV. I’m not saying that 2021 is the year you’ll get to be all you’ve ever dreamt of, but I am saying it’s worth reconsidering some dreams you’ve given up on. Specifically, now is the time to clearly map out how you get in touch with your deep intuition, to what restores and heals you. If you have a way of accessing those, you don’t need a clear map for anything else. When you’re feeling lost, point yourself in the direction where you find beauty and hope.

Queer Horoscopes for December 2020: Finding the Heat & Joy of Sagittarius Season in a Cold Moment

Yes, it’s December already. I know, I can’t believe it either. If you’re like me, you usually love December — it’s Sagittarius season, a time of gatherings and feasts and candles glimmering on dark nights and a huge mad rush to get ready for whatever holidays you celebrate, followed by a deep stillness with days that drift together and feel blanketed by snow, even if it doesn’t snow where you are physically. Needless to say, this December will be different. The mad rush and the deep stillness have been with us all year long — from the fierce conflicts for racial justice to the isolation and monotony of quarantine, 2020 has both spiked our adrenaline and tested our patience. And none of it has really ended yet. Trump may be voted out, but he’s still president right now. A vaccine may be on its way, but it’s not here yet. The world economies may recover in time, but those shot by police or killed by Covid-19 will not.

And if you’re anything like me, this may be the last thing you want to think about right now. In this darkest time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, Sagittarius season is usually a time for optimism, for joy, for that warm feeling you get when everyone you love is in the same room and dressed to kill and there’s that glimmer of hope that next year might be better than this one, because it’s got to be, right? Sagittarius is the energy that allow us to breathe between the intense crisis-management of Scorpio and the serious, practical realism of Capricorn. And when I say breathe, I also mean laugh. And this year, when we have so many reasons to cry — but more likely than not we’re invested in staying shut down to survive so we aren’t even crying — it’s really important to do whatever you can to safely celebrate this season. And I emphasize safely. If you’re one of the 40% of Americans that’s planning to gather with family that you don’t already live with / germ pod with, I really beg you to think about the lives you might be risking — maybe no one in your family will get sick, but what about the grandmother on the plane next to you who is African-American and already has worse health risks and a shorter life expectancy than white Americans? Or the person working checkout at the grocery store, who has asthma but can’t afford to stay home? Even getting tested isn’t a guarantee of safety. I know you don’t want to hear this, because it’s been so long and we’re all so tired of the isolation. And you deserve to celebrate. And it’s heartbreaking not to gather. All this is true. And yet, I’m writing to you as someone with a compromised immune system who absolutely cannot take that risk. And the more risks you take right now, the greater the danger is for all of us, and the longer that danger will last. I invite you to consider your connection to all of us right now — old and young, sick and healthy, disabled and temporarily able-bodied — and how you can celebrate these connections. Your holidays will look different this year, no matter what. Choose connection that respects all of our lives.

I’m preaching a little hard right now because this month brings us a total solar eclipse on December 14th, which is also the new moon in Sagittarius. Eclipses are times of doors opening and closing, times of big change, heightened activity, and sudden revelations. And Sagittarius is a sign that tends to believe the grass is greener elsewhere, and tends not to look before it leaps. So there’s a chance this holiday season that people will be taking greater risks because they want to have fun, and relax, and gather, and tap into that exhilarating, care-free Sagittarius party energy. I feel you, my people. I would give almost anything to be at the raunchy queer holiday party my friends throw every year, doing some hand sewing while my exes get naked in the hot tub and read Diane DiPrima to each other over the strains of Dolly Parton karaoke from the other room. Except I wouldn’t risk other people’s lives to be there. You, you can make your own choices about this. But I encourage you to notice who you’re connected to, whose health might rely on you. For me, this is what this season is about — expanding our capacity to feel love and solidarity. Staying connected in ways that enhance our mutual thriving. Y’all are creative. I know you can figure it out.

Okay, end of lecture. As always, when we’re in eclipse season it’s important to pay attention to the insights and surprises that might leap out at you — but it’s usually wise to wait before taking decisive action. That’s because what you’re learning right now is incomplete, and it usually takes a few weeks for all the information to emerge. Another key change that’s happening this month is that both Jupiter and Saturn are moving from Capricorn to Aquarius, and they’re meeting up in the sky together on December 21st, also known as winter solstice. This is a major, mega, huge deal and I’ll be writing more about this shift in January as it will define many of the themes of 2021. For now, just be aware that we’re shifting from a time of intense focus and concentration around all things Capricorn (survival strategies, structures, status-quo, discipline, loneliness, tradition, established power) toward all things Aquarius (revolution, queerness, visionary thinking, experimentation, unorthodox relationships, social progress, inventions, technology). And if you were born with Saturn in Aquarius, you’re coming up on your Saturn return!

As we close out 2020, let’s remember a few things together: 1) This year may be ending, but the revolution is just beginning. 2) There is no “return to normal” but there can be a better future. 3) Let’s keep each other safe.

I’m taking a break from client work until the new year, but I do have my class on Pluto Transits available for download for just five dollars! And if you want to join me on Patreon I’ve got expanded horoscopes there every month, and I’ll be releasing an exclusive year-ahead look at 2021 at the end of this month.If you’re able to give and want to expand that sense of loving solidarity, I also encourage you to donate some money to help the Canoe Journey herbalists buy some land. Support native medicine and sovereignty!

Aries

Let yourself notice:

How much has this past year thrown you into trauma patterns? Are you still braced in crash position, waiting for the next bad thing? Are you able to make room for any optimism, or is is still hard to imagine what will come next? What parts of your life and future can you start considering now? What can you see when you start examining the map of your life? How connected or disconnected do you feel when it comes to joy, adventure, and expanded horizons? What bridges between your worlds are you alone capable of building, and how can they help you feel less trapped?

Taurus

Let yourself notice:

What recovery looks like after heartbreak, and how cycles of endings in relationships can even help them thrive. What it means to move fluidly between connection, disconnection, and reconnection. How it feels to choose movement. How to open a space for grief that becomes a space for future joy. Who and what are supporting you right now. The depths you’re now ready to explore. The rest you’re now ready to sink into. The balance between intensity and stillness. What in your life has been ending, and how to grieve it and let it go. What in your life is on the verge of beginning, but hasn’t yet fully begun. How it feels to be in the in-between. How the view looks from here. What you can name and describe and toast to now, before the next big chapter opens.

Gemini

Let yourself notice:

How it feels to have chosen the ones you love and said yes, I will keep returning to these ones again and again and let them shape me. How it feels to have said no to others, to have closed the door on other possible versions of your life. What committing to love means in your version of commitment. What it means to be seen at your best and at your worst. What it means to keep choosing yourself as worth loving. How it feels to choose this even when others reject you. How it feels to choose this as others love you and choose you, too. How the project of self-acceptance informs your ability to truly love and accept others. Where you get to relax and let yourself off the hook. Where you get to keep showing up everyday, as you are, maintaining connection even when it’s hard.

Cancer

Let yourself notice:

What you want to be in service to — whether that’s a cause, an ideal, a healing practice, a hope for the world. What you do in your daily life that’s in alignment with this, the acts you could call a devotional practice, whether it’s donating money or volunteering time or doing deep research or writing down your vision, your analysis, your story of how things are and how they might be. What it means to relate to those you love from this deeper sense of purpose. How devotion and service can get twisted when you’re aiming them at just one person (or even two or three). What you do from a sense of purpose, and what you do in search of security. Can you do the same gesture from two different motives and two different times? Do they have different impacts? Are your hands open or closed? When do your hands need to be open, and when do they need to be closed?

Leo

Let yourself notice:

How important it is to play. What new stories you have now that you’ve lived through (most of) 2020. How important it is to be telling the stories of the past in ways that will make the future possible. How much you miss easy flirtation and dance parties and orgies and cuddle piles, even if you never loved them that much before quarantine. How important it is to share erotic energy with others, even if you can’t or don’t want to touch them. How the burning passions of our lives have not been extinguished, even as we continue to choose each other’s safety over immediate gratification. How to fill that space of longing with yourself and all that you can create in honor of wanting.

Virgo

Let yourself notice:

How your relationship to home has changed since the pandemic began. What the shape of your days looks like if you’re still leaving the house constantly for work, or if you’re working from home, or if you’re unemployed. Notice that shape, in contrast to what your daily rhythms might have looked like before. Notice how you’re dressing differently, if you’re holding yourself differently, if there’s something different in how you soothe yourself or fall asleep at night. Notice what’s helping you feel safe, without judgment or shame. Notice if you haven’t been able to feel safe. If this is the case, start looking for clues. What do you need to heal from? Are you ready yet? What first step would you take?

Libra

Let yourself notice:

The stories you’re telling yourself about what is “true.” What you think you can expect from the world, from love, from this time. Whether you’re asking for what you need. If you’re feeling isolated but also aren’t reaching out — if you’re feeling stretched thin but don’t let yourself rest. Where your scales are tipped on that balance point between self and other, but particularly between what you deeply believe and what how you’re sharing that with the people you care about. How much of your opinions do you need to keep hiding or smoothing over? What would it mean to risk saying more? Is it time to clear up an old misunderstanding? Is it time to give up on an old conflict? Let your heart settle and find a centered place before you speak, but don’t wait forever to speak your truth.

Scorpio

Let yourself notice:

The soft pull of gravity when you let yourself lie down and rest. The many small pleasures of the day that you usually don’t take time to savor. The voice that says, “hey, you’re doing okay despite it all” that you might want to debate with or ignore. How would it feel to take in some small successes? What have you managed to establish this year, despite the chaos? Where have you grown? What part of your body doesn’t hurt right now? What have you maybe even felt guilty about enjoying at a time when there’s so much pain? How does it feel to let your shoulders drop and trust that you’ll be ready to spring into action for the next crisis, but that there can be lulls between the waves? If you’re in a lull right now, how does it feel to let it lull you back into your connection to your sense of pleasure?

Sagittarius

Let yourself notice:

How this past year has changed you. What you believe in now. What you’re doing that’s in alignment with those beliefs. What you’re doing that’s not in alignment. What you’ve survived. When you know you’re ready to get out of mere survival mode. What gets you through in the meantime. What you changes you can make in this time, and what changes you can look forward to. How it feels to take yourself seriously and pay less attention to outside validation. How it feels to love the beauty or strangeness or strange beauty of your body. How it feels to be taking steps toward becoming a wiser, stronger, more beautifully strange version of you.

Capricorn

Let yourself notice:

That deep longing that you’re usually too busy to pay attention to. The discomfort of not knowing what to do about it. How if you sit with it longer than is comfortable it begins to pull you toward grief or love or creative expression. The secrets that emerge when you let yourself be pulled. What’s available in times of stillness, like if you wake up too early and the world is still silent and dark. The comforts that emerge in times of need. The rest that comes at last when you’ve given up on it. The fear of letting go, surrendering to sleep, surrendering to inactivity and not knowing. The trust that you will wake up, that there is a future in which you will feel restored, awake, and clear-eyed. What you need to do to find that sense of trust.

Aquarius

Let yourself notice:

Where has the pain of this year lodged in you? Has it crystallized into cynicism? Have you stopped dreaming of a better future? This month is calling you back into your visionary self, your curiosity about how the future can be different than the past, and the ways you need to heal in order to show up ready to make that difference real. Notice your loneliness, and notice how it connects you to all of our shared loneliness. Notice your anxiety, your not-daring-to-hope, your crash-position tension, and remember that you are with all of us in this strange time. What are we to make of it? What are you here to make of it?

Pisces

Let yourself notice:

Your faith in your own knowledge and experience. Do you understand your capacity? Are you able to claim your talents and say, yes, this is something I’m very good at? Your relationship to being “good” at things, and any inner tension that brings up. Your desire to be not just loved but recognized for your accomplishments. What helps you move from fear or being left out toward awareness of you capacity to draw others in? How can acts of love also be strategic and practical? What would it mean to be good at loving people? What acts, what motives, what boundaries, what tenderness, what militancy, what confidence, what choices do you envision as part of that project?

Queer Horoscopes for November 2020: Big Change Is Coming; How Will You Claim Your Power?

Aries

Taurus

Gemini

Cancer

Leo

Virgo

Libra

Scorpio

Sagittarius

Capricorn

Aquarius

Pisces

Queer Horoscopes for October 2020: What Was Planted in March That You’re Sowing Now?

In this year of isolation, disruption, and anxiety we’ve reached a halfway point of sorts: On the 1st, we’ll have a full moon in Aries. That means we are six months past the new moon in Aries on March 24th, which for most countries was the week when we entered lockdown to control the spread of Covid-19. Aries is the sign of getting shit started and doing what it takes to survive—at its best it brings courage and initiative and at its worst a panicked, hot-headed individualism. As a full moon completes what a new moon begins, this month we’re coming to the end of a specific Aries cycle: our relationship to fear and courage, to beginnings and momentum, to independence, and to what makes us feel passionate and riled up. As of the 1st, we’ve reached a reckoning where the seeds we planted in March are now ripening.

If you’re thinking, “Well that’s swell because I’m pretty sure the seeds I planted then were panic, relationship conflict, and worsening mental health,” you’re not alone, my friend. You might find issues coming up around Aries themes, and they may remind you of how your life has changed since late March, but this full moon isn’t here to throw back in your face every coping strategy you’ve been using to get by. Rather, it can help you reflect on what kind of person you are becoming this year—how the times are shaping you, and how you can participate in shaping yourself. And while Aries is an energy that taps into our glorious courage and fierceness, it can also push too hard and go it all alone — cooperation and collaboration aren’t its strengths. If we stay stuck in the Aries response, we fight hard and fierce and all alone until we burn out. But the Aries full moon always happens when the Sun is in Libra, sign of patience and balance, and it’s that Libra energy that’s bringing us the opportunity to move from fear to understanding, from imbalance to balance.

It can be hard to think about balance in such unbalanced times, and hard to imagine what we can do that will be sufficient to meet the needs of these times. Six months into the global pandemic, Covid-19 is still shaping our response to the unbalanced world around us. From the wildfires in Oregon to the wildfires in the Brazilian rainforest, from the infuriating lack of justice for Breonna Taylor to all the fears around the upcoming US presidential election, we are in a time of massive grief and massive change. There’s no way we can face this as isolated balls of rage (Aries’ shadow side). We need Libra right now to bring us into encounter with each other, to help us listen better and slow down. To hear what’s really being said. To make room for each other’s experiences and perspectives. Libra is the diplomat of the zodiac, but it’s also deeply invested in justice and speaking for whatever is being ignored or left out. Libra is a sign that wants all voices at the table. And this Libra season we’re experiencing two retrogrades: Mars, ruler of Aries, is still retrograde (until November 13th) and Mercury will be stationing retrograde on the 13th (till November 3rd).

Retrogrades always ask us to review, revise, and retrace our steps to figure out what we’ve missed. With Mars and Mercury both retrograde in the second half of the month, watch out for impatience and wanting to know the answers and the action plan NOW. The changes we are experiencing are vast and have a long arc into the future—we can only do the best we can where we are now, knowing what we know. With all the astrological intensity of these times, it can also be a beautiful time to get real with yourself. There is time, there is space, and there is an energetic pressure to be examining your own fears and impulses, your assumptions, your tendency to overwork or escalate conflicts or feed your own anxiety. Relationally, this is a beautiful time to repair and find balance, though it will take works. Astrological influences are still stirring up all our harder feelings and fears for the first half of the month, and with Mercury retrograde in the second half clear communication may be difficult.

Six months into the global pandemic, closing out what was initiated at the Aries new moon, it’s okay if you don’t know where you are or who you are. It’s okay to be at your growth’s edge and making mistakes. It’s okay to have no idea what’s coming next. It’s okay to set boundaries to conserve your energy and preserve your wellbeing. It’s worth understanding who’s got the same values and goals as you, even if they’re also making mistakes, and who is worth forgiving. It’s worth seeing past language and understanding people’s actions. We are moving from fear to understanding this month, and to do so we need to do some internal balancing first and foremost. The better you understand your internal world and make room for all the parts of yourself to add their voices, the better you’ll understand everyone around you and what a path forward looks like. This attempt to understand and balance is the gift of this time.

Ordinarily I close with a shout-out to look me up for a reading, but this month I’m not booking clients as I’m recovering from surgery! (more about that in an upcoming Balsamic Moon Blog post. I’ll be giving readings again sometime in November and you can check flaxandgold.com/readings or my Instagram for updates. And if you want a little more astro knowledge every month, join me on Patreon. First tier starts at only $2 a month and higher tiers include entries for free readings.

Good luck out there, my friends! I’m wishing you courage and patience, good solitude and deep connection, and being held in divine queer love as you navigate this time!

Aries

Find the balance: When you’re afraid, you need to act and move. Running, chopping wood, swimming, dancing, even a hot shower if your body isn’t capable of more exertion. If you don’t move fear through your body it can lodge as an innate sense that you can’t trust anyone, can’t trust life, can’t trust yourself. This month, find the balance that will help you know who in your life you can rely on, and help you remember you don’t need to do this alone. I repeat: you don’t need to do this alone. Maybe you’ve had experiences of love where you felt trapped by other people’s expectations and rules. It doesn’t have to look that way, and you get to choose commitments that don’t limit you but help you expand. You deserve this, and you’re capable of it. Tip your balance back toward letting people in and learning what’s going on for them.

Taurus

Find the balance: You may be feeling sluggish or bogged down by your daily life—there is too much drudgery and routine where there used to be familiarity and comfort. Especially if you’re still experiencing social distancing and a dramatically reduced external world, you may have become so used to this that you’ve forgotten the stress it causes. And most likely you’re handling the stress through escapism, whether that’s playing games on your phone whenever you have a free moment, or drinking an extra glass of wine every night. However you’re escaping the drudgery, it’s time to swing the balance back toward being here and now. Basically, you deserve a better vacation than that. To get unstuck from habits of escapism that have become numbing rather than enlivening, ask yourself: How could I be enjoying this time off more? What would help my body feel alive and relaxed?

Gemini

Find the balance: There is a specific loneliness you’re feeling right now that has nothing to do with how many people love you or how they’re showing it. There is a part of you that’s asking for love and recognition that can only come from you, first. Until you claim this part of you, whatever nets you cast out into your social world won’t bring home what you need. No amount of emojis or likes or flirtatious texts, no amount of heartfelt listening and support can take the place of you learning to love you—especially the parts of you that feel unloveable. Swing the balance back toward your own specialness right now. Recognize that you are important in ways that have nothing to do with your social capital, privilege, or productivity. Especially if you are in conflict or unpacking oppression (what you’ve experienced, perpetuated, or both), this is a time to swing the balance back toward total love for yourself as you’re learning and growing.

Cancer

Find the balance: Though this may feel impossible right now, the balance you’re seeking this month is all about your home and family: If you work from home, how can you dedicate places of your house where work doesn’t bleed in? How do you set limits and make sure you’re able to deeply relax and let your mind go inward when it needs to? If you live with family or loved ones, what kinds of negotiations do you need to make sure you’re not stuck in patterns of avoidance or overextension? The magic of this time for you is potent, and it’s offering you a chance to reflect on what will help you feel safest, most held, most loved, and able to heal from all the daily stresses at the end of the night. What new arrangements will help you release stress patterns that need to get unstuck?

Leo

Find the balance: There are conversations you need to be having, and they may not be the ones you’ve been having. They definitely aren’t the one-sided conversations you have with yourself—wondering what a friend meant when she said that thing, or fighting with an ex-partner in your mind. You have a tendency right now to want to solve it all through language. If language is your tool, how are you using it against yourself? Or are you carelessly hurting others by gossiping or saying something unkind without thinking? Or are you obsessively scrolling through social media, looking for novelty and distraction when what you need is deep connection? Find balance right now by dipping under the words and getting into the heart of what you’re trying to share, and what you need to hear. Who do you need to be talking to right now? What do you want that conversation to change?

Virgo

Find the balance: You have a talent for dissatisfaction — which is to say, you are an idealist at heart. You know how it should be, how you long for it to be, and the real world so often disappoints you. So you go back and forth between trying and giving up, exerting effort and retreating into a self-protective mode. Where are you in this cycle right now? Can you let your dissatisfaction help you understand your deepest desires? Can you start honoring those desires in your daily life, in small rituals or gestures that let you know you get to have what you need, what brings you pleasure and peace and stability? Right now you have a delicate balance to strike—finding that sweet spot between over- and under- exerting, between wanting to fix the whole world and then giving up on changing anything ever. Remember to be slow and steady. Remember the work is never done, but you are here to find joy in doing your part of it.

Libra

Find the balance: This is a month for facing fears, particular the fears you have around relationship. Raise your hand if you’ve been hearing these voices in your head lately: “everyone will always leave me, I can’t be alone, I need to hold on to what I have even if it’s not great, can everything stop changing, relationship changes mean I’m abandoned.” Any of that sound familiar? In this month of Libra energy, one of your tasks is to bring your sense of what’s missing to that one-sided conversation: Who are you glad has left your life? Who are you happy you’ve left? What can you do alone that’s better than trying to do with someone else? How does stepping away from others and towards your own heart teach you who you are? What changes are you welcoming? Take all the time you need to work with these questions and start reframing your fears. And remember, you don’t have to be all alone or do this all alone—what you’re looking for are the times and ways that being alone can be luscious.

Scorpio

Find the balance: It’s so easy to be checked out right now. Reality is extra real, and there’s no shame about the need to retreat from time to time. But if you do feel shame about that, you might find that your retreat time isn’t actually doing what you want it to do—restore you, heal you, help you access more parts of yourself. If you’re feeling stuck, start retracing your steps. What have you turned away from that you’re able to reconnect with? Have you gotten too comfortable in isolation, in low-level depression, in obsessing about the election as a way to not feel your own grief? How do you claim your here and now as somewhere worth being? How do you retreat in ways that are actually restorative, that help you get back in touch with your dreams and with the beauty of existence? Find the balance that will gently swing you back toward joy (which means you’ll need to move through grief on the way).

Sagittarius

Find the balance: It’s hard to think about the future right now. Everywhere we see signs of systems collapsing, of past stability crumbling, of people driven by fear and greed doing irreparable harm. We are at a turning point, and through the smoke we need people who can still see a horizon worth heading toward. This is a talent you may have, especially when people you love turn to you for encouragement or inspiration, but your reserves of optimism may be pretty low right now. If you’re obsessing about what you can do to save the world (or your community, or your forest, or your collective, or your children’s future), now is the time to remember that you are acting not as one individual but as part of an infinite network. People you have never met, people in other countries, people from other times, people who might look like plants and animals, people who you’ve only read about in books—there is a larger fabric of meaning holding you, if you look for it. If you remember it. Begin with this recognition. And find your balance by recognizing the real power and scale of your actions. Who can you help, today? Do you need help, too? What are you modeling for the people who look up to you? What are you learning from the people you look up to?

Capricorn

Find the balance: Let’s talk about control, honey. You thrive when you have a plan, when you know what your work is, and when you know how to do it. The upheaval of the past six months has thrown all this sense of control out of balance — maybe you’re lost at sea and don’t know the way forward, or maybe you’re holding even more tightly onto the control you think you have. In your relationships, this could translate into self-control (no one gets to know how I really feel) or control of others (if you really loved me you would do what I want). Finding balance means starting to understand what you can and can’t control, and where that energy is best directed. You do need a plan, you do need a project. And it needs to feel aligned with the world you’re trying to create, and the self you’re trying to become. If you’re at a loss, remember to do the counter-intuitive move: Let your mind rest. Let yourself dream. Dream your way back to yourself.

Aquarius

Find the balance: You come to life when you’re engaged in world-building—when you have an opportunity to help shape the future through your own specific vision. Whether you apply this energy to activism, your career, or your relationships, you need to be working with what is possible—not just what is. But in times of crisis and upheaval, your vision can get stretched thin. While you have a powerful sense of purpose and mission, you aren’t always flexible. It takes you some time to adapt to new conditions, especially in your closest relationships. Your optimism can quickly become pessimism, and you may find yourself shuttling between “this can be the best” and “this is actually the worst.” Right now, finding balance means finding your faith—finding that intuitive sense of being carried along on a wave of momentum, and getting to drop your oars and lean back in the boat and rest. Of course, in this metaphor you aren’t in the boat alone. Someone else is scanning the horizon, someone else is making sure the oars don’t fall into the water. Can you trust this? Can you name who’s watching over things right now so you can rest? If you can’t, it’s time to ask for that kind of help.

Pisces

Find the balance: More than all the other signs, you are attuned to the collective feelings—which right now are strong grief, rage, and fear. It’s exhausting, isn’t it? You probably have ways of blocking the big waves of feelings from the world at large, but it can be harder to block them when they’re coming from your nearest and dearest, who are part of the bigger pattern. So ask yourself, have you waded too deep into the waters of grief without actually letting yourself cry? Have you witnessed too much pain without believing in the possibility of healing? Are your eyes opened to the crises of this time without being able to see a transformed future? Finding balance for you means remember that this moment is going to change, and that there will be something else on the other side of it—and that the work we do now to grieve, to heal, and to transform what’s killing us and our loved ones matters. What you do now, however small, matters. Find your way back toward making the future happen, step by step.

Queer Horoscopes for September 2020: Virgo Season Brings a Controlled Burn in the Face of Burnout

We are living in a time of fires. Right now wildfires spread in waves across the West Coast of the US, while new fires are lit in protest of ongoing, incessant racist violence. Each summer is getting a little hotter, and as this summer ends it isn’t letting go of us so easily. Our back-to-school feelings are distorted by confusion about what school means now. Everywhere we look, the past is catching up with us. From large crises to small, from the existential pain of these times to the frustrations of navigating health care or accessing services, very few of us are free from feeling the intensity. There is so much in need of our attention so much to heal and repair, so much to grieve. With the Sun in Virgo, we’re ready to get to work. Give Virgo a task and it will be happy. Virgo offers boundless energy for mending, for repair work, for weeding and editing, for making medicine and caring for the daily tasks that ground us. In a time of overwhelm, Virgo brings a list of clear tasks and priorities. In a time of burning, Virgo brings calendula and fresh lavender.

But these fires have deep roots, and our goal shouldn’t be to extinguish all of them. In forest management, controlled burns are often the way to prevent further spread. And energetically, we need fire to connect to passion, to advocate for justice, to restore our sense of vitality. Too little fire and we become stuck in our grooves, unable to make meaningful change. Too much fire, though, and we burn out or burn bridges or get burnt. And although we are in Virgo season of thoughtful tending and mending, the major story astrologically this month is Mars in Aries, which turns retrograde on the 9th and won’t station direct until November 13th.

Mars is the planet that rules our fiery energy — it’s how we fight, how we access our sexual energy, and how we defend and protect what is close to our hearts. Working with Mars can be physical, emotional, political, and spiritual. When Mars is in Aries, the sign it rules, it has much fuel to burn and can blaze hot and bright. But when any planet turns retrograde, its energy becomes slower and more inward. Retrogrades are a time of reckoning and reassessment‚ and with Mars retrograde we are reassessing how we handle our anger, our passion, our momentum.

There is tremendous urgency pressing upon us from every direction right now. It’s not the time to give up, or to burn out. I encourage you to develop a serious practice of rest and restoration right now. I recommend learning how to use your fire more efficiently, like a swimmer learns to breathe in rhythm with their strokes. This is a time for getting smarter about how we show up, and when, and why. And above all, it’s a time to cultivate patience and slowness. In the words of Rainier Maria Rilke to a young poet:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything.”

I wish you strength in the living of it.

And if you want more personalized insight and support, you can get in touch for an astrological reading. For a deeper dive into the astrology of this month, join me on Patreon. Only $2 a month gets you extra horoscope content every month, and for $10 or more you’ll be entered into regular drawings for free readings.

Aries

Take your time: Understanding when to act. This is an extra potent time for you. Your desires and your anger may both flare stronger than normal, but expressing them in your usual ways isn’t going to feel right. You’re learning to pause, rest, and assess. If you tend to be impulsive, find a trick to slow you down: count to ten, name the colors of three objects in the room, anything to disrupt the sense of urgency. So, the bad news is the next few months might feel a little sluggish and frustrating, but the good news is that you have a chance right now to understand and repair your relationships. Slowing down and reviewing your patterns of impulsiveness, defensiveness, or anxiety can help you sense what you really need. Do this work with self-compassion rather than shame, and you’ll be acing this transit. And remember: patience, patience, patience.

Taurus

Take your time: Checking in with your inner world. What’s changing for you right now is more under the surface, which means you might not notice the changes as dramatically as other people. That said, it might be harder this month to access your intuition. Anxiety and obsession could block your ability to center and focus, so do what you can to notice and address the ways you might get stuck in fear. Mars retrograde is a time of turning our energy inward, and for you this inwardness is especially strong. On the plus side, this is a beautiful time to do therapeutic work and any artwork that involves tapping into your dreamworld. Just know that your energy may be slower and and you may need more time alone right now, and adjust for that accordingly.

Gemini

Take your time: Building a transformed world. This is the work of generations, not something you’ll be able to finish by the end of this year, or next year, or the next. Whether you are feeling disconnected and deflated or inspired and invigorated, tend to the energy you’ll need to hold onto your vision. Don’t let fear or impatience distract you and send you spiraling. You’re going to need your people this month, but all of you are also going to need to make room for the real feelings that come up with a sustained effort to push back against oppression and suffering. Whether you’re doing any activism or not, these currents are affecting you and all your relationships. This means cultivating patience and generosity when people (including you) aren’t at their best. Who could be at their best right now?

Cancer

Take your time: Stepping into your power. By next year, you will be much farther along the path of knowing what you have to offer the world, and how to make it happen. Right now, you may be aware of your skills but not always sure about how to use them. Relationally, this might mean taking a step back from offering solutions or mapping out where you hope your relationships will be in a year or several years. Mars retrograde is reminding you that you have tremendous personal power to use toward your goals, but that using it skillfully means remembering what you don’t know. It’s okay to be quiet and watchful right now. It’s okay not to have it all figured out yet.

Leo

Take your time: Reconnecting to what you believe in. These have been times to test our faith. Whatever you’ve relied on in the past to help you feel like you’re headed in a good direction, it’s probably no longer working the way it used to. We are all a little (or a lot) disoriented and distracted, grieving and raging, exhausted and introverted. For you, this means it will take some time to come back to that sense of enthusiastic appreciation for the future and what it might bring. Your heart needs some time to heal. Your perspective will shift when it does. Don’t force it, but also remember that change is coming, change is possible, and that the intense pressures of this present moment will lift in time.

Virgo

Take your time: Surrendering to transformation. This month is digging up a lot that has been buried, and you don’t really have the choice to ignore it anymore. Something in you is ready to be healed, and that process means facing big changes. Take all the time you can to adjust to what’s shifting. Have faith in the healing it offers, even if it’s hard to see right now. Start picturing yourself several months from now—how will you feel when you’ve aligned yourself with these changes? What waits on the other side of fear and uncertainty? And most importantly, who do you need close to you right now as you face this transition?

Libra

Take your time: Saying yes. There’s no rush to know for certain yet. Avoid any big commitments you can right now. Practice saying maybe. Practice saying “Let me think about it” or “Let’s try it and see how it feels.” A part of you is so ready to just know for sure, to have a clear sense of what you’re committing to—time, place, person, job, home, future. But this isn’t a time for clarity just yet. Anything you rush into now (or have rushed into recently) is up for reassessment, so why give yourself more work? Your goal right now is to gather data—how does it actually feel when you try it? What does that tell you about your real needs? What other options do you have if the first one isn’t working? Let yourself experiment, but remember there’s no rush.

Scorpio

Take your time: Loving your body. It’s a project you’ll need to return to again and again, when you find yourself falling out of love with yourself. Remember when it’s a struggle that you have a lot of cultural messaging to wade through, a lot to unlearn. Find the communities that reflect you and cherish how you’re showing up in your skin. Take the time to listen to what your muscles and nerves and organs are telling you. Acknowledge that there is no real separation between the beauty that is you and the body you’re walking around in. Love yourself from your very cells and microbes up to your full height and beyond. It’s not self-indulgent, it’s a matter of survival. We protect what we love. We strive to understand what we love. We delight in what we love. Slowly but surely, it’s time for you to show up for this work.

Sagittarius

Take your time: Rediscovering romance. Let’s be real: unless you thrill to the adrenalin high of protesting or the self-sacrifice of nursing the ill, there hasn’t been a lot to wax romantic about in recent months. Some of you might be finding love among the chaos, but many of you probably have your love life on hold (or in a holding pattern). As you get used to a transformed social map, you’re probably noticing how much you miss a sweaty queer dance party or making out with someone new. There is a spark of life and joy and healing that comes to you through your erotic connections, whether those are sexual or merely free-floating physical pleasures. It’s harder to tap into this energy right now, but not impossible. And if anyone can find a way, it’s you. Just remember to be responsible: your own health may not be at risk, but your neighbor’s or mail carrier’s or grandparents’ might be. You don’t get a free pass to ignore safety precautions, but you are encouraged to get creative about how to (safely) feel that spark.

Capricorn

Take your time: Restoring your sense of safety. You often feel safest when you’re in control, and let’s face it, the world is bonkers out-of-control right now. There’s so much you can’t control, honey. I know you’d do it better if you could. But this is the mess we’re in. So, what do you do to calm down your nervous system and get some good sleep at night? Who knows about the anxiety you’re constantly carrying? What stops you from reaching out and asking for some support? Your assignment this month, if you choose to accept it, is to recognize what you’re doing to try to feel in control and assess how well it’s actually serving you. Anything that’s causing stress to you or your relationships needs to gently transform. One tool that will help you in this task is to create some kind of refuge, ideally in your home or car or anywhere you feel mostly protected. Let yourself be a mammal in a cave. Let yourself regroup. Turn off your cellphone for awhile.

Aquarius

Take your time: Being in touch with people. Resist the urge to instinctively signal boost or blast a message that you haven’t thought through. What is it you’re really aiming for? Who are you trying to collaborate with? This Mars retrograde rewards a slower pace in how you’re communicating with the wider world, especially through social media. Releasing a sense of urgency may feel like a loss of control, but even as there are real crises all around us, you have the time to think through how you choose to respond, and to articulate your position thoughtfully. Whenever possible, shift your focus to the big picture—to the whole damn world, and to generations into the future. Then take a breath, and take a break.

Pisces

Take your time: Rebuilding your strength. How do you recover if you’re feeling depleted? If the resources you need are scarce? Hibernation is a real and viable option. You may be noticing how exhausted you are on the regular right now. If you’re tired, let yourself sleep. If you don’t know where you’re headed, it’s okay to stand still. Under capitalism, it can feel scary or sometimes be impossible to rest when we need to. So if you must keep pushing past your energy limits, remember that now isn’t the time to expect anything extra from yourself. The more you can let yourself be nourished by real food and real sleep, the sooner you’ll restore your inner sense of resilience.