Late on Wednesday, communication planet Mercury enters precise and analytical Virgo. Your thoughts might become clearer than before, or your words might carry a different kind of weight, or it might just be easier to say exactly what you mean. On Thursday, stern Saturn ends its retrograde — maybe your boundaries and responsibility will come back into focus. Maybe the structure of your world will make sense again.
Aries
Sometimes it’s easier to focus on what’s missing than on what’s whole. It can be easier to set your gaze on the dark empty sky than the trees and the people around you, and the solid ground beneath your feet. This week, if the wild unknown starts to become frightening in its vastness, remember the shape of the body that holds you. Remember the shape and size of the earth and the feeling of sun and air on your skin. In spite of everything, you’re still warm and good and real.
Taurus
There are certain rules and equations and formulas that you’ve already tried that have done well for you, that have kept you alive. But that doesn’t mean they’ll work forever — maybe some of the rules you’ve based your life on don’t work for you anymore. Certain truths and certain stories have taken you as far as they can. Sometimes, knowing the rules means knowing when to abandon some of them. Sometimes, knowing the roads means knowing when to get out of the car and walk.
Gemini
You’ve been dreaming of a future that’s broad and bright and wild, dreaming of a lush and magic place. But this isn’t a week for gazing out into the distance. It’s not the time to imagine all you’ll have done a hundred years from now. This week, let your thoughts be wild and unpredictable while also letting your plans be specific and clear. Right now, your energy doesn’t have to carry you to the vast and faraway future. It just has to carry you to a good tomorrow, and then to the day after that.
Cancer
So much of the time you feel yourself seeking the one perfect answer, seeking a key that will finally, once and for all, open the door to the rest of your life. So much of the time you feel yourself looking for a word, a phrase, a song, that will make every mystery suddenly clear. This week, the key that you’ll find won’t unlock the whole world, but it will unlock something. Maybe it will help answer a riddle that’s been haunting you. Maybe it will open up a new space, however small, for you to move through.
Leo
Behind you are all the wild days you’ve lived through already, and ahead of you are all the glittering futures that call your name.
Here, right now, is your life on planet earth, solid and ordinary and good. This week, you’ll need to do the work that might not be thrilling, that might not shimmer with magic. How can you avoid getting restless? How can you avoid getting bored? How can you live right now in the world as it is?
Virgo
Sometimes there are grand, curving narratives that make everything look like a hero’s journey — or, alternatively, like the end of the world. Sometimes there are deep, twisting stories that make everything look like darkness. This week, though, you’ll be able to see through the big stories to get to the truth of your own life. All the world’s trouble and all the world’s beauty will be noticeable in the details: in the clear blue of the morning, in a small, sweet moment of understanding between you and someone who cares for you.
Libra
This week, all the external demands on your energy and time might feel like doors closing, or like walls rising up between you and the wild, abundant world. You won’t be able to do every single thing you want to this week, but this can be okay. What you’re doing right now — all the ordinary small tasks, all the chores that feel dull and heavy as concrete — is valuable, too. You’re building momentum. You’re gathering power. You’re moving toward the life you want.
Scorpio
It’s natural to keep wishing for a miracle —something large enough to sweep you up, something pure and undeniable. It’s natural, yes, but it won’t help you find what you need this week. Waiting for perfection will leave you frustrated and hungry. Waiting to act until you’re absolutely certain will leave you unable to move at all. This week, you’ll have to rely on your own energy and your own drive and the blood in your own veins. If you’ll let it, your heady, imperfect desire can be enough to carry you forward.
Sagittarius
Sometimes it’s easier to think of time in its biggest units: years, lifetimes, centuries. There’s a thrill to imagining time passing this way, immense and unknowable as the sea. This week, though, is for thinking about the minutes, about the hours, about the days. This week is for thinking about the time it takes to move your body from one room to the next, the time it takes to tell one true story. How will you live in the days that belong to you?
Capricorn
If your life around you stops making sense, or if the world around you seems to burst into an unimaginable, unfathomable wildness, trying to wrestle everything into a different shape won’t help. The world is larger than you are, and it answers to its own powerful logic. If you can’t move the world, you can try moving your body. You can try looking from a slightly different angle. Sometimes, viewed from somewhere else, or viewed against a different backdrop, the pieces all shift into place like magic.
Aquarius
If you’ve been following a plan you made for yourself, this isn’t the time for changing course. If you’ve been moving toward some glowing distant star, this isn’t the time for an abrupt about-face. This is a week for moving forward with consistency and with courage — even through your doubts, even through the days when it all seems too difficult or too boring. You’ve found something important, and your job is to keep trying. Your job is to refuse to give up yet.
Pisces
There are days for floating, loose, with the tides, this is a week for taking a more solid approach. If you’re facing a complicated problem, you can map it out, you can write it on paper. If you’re filled with a thorny emotion, you can break the feeling into its parts, into its history. You have the power to simplify, to clarify, to make sense of the complicated world. You don’t have to wait and see how everything resolves itself. You can let your curiosity stretch its legs and move.