On Tuesday, Venus — the planet of beauty and love — enters intense and searching Scorpio.You might be surprised by the depth of your emotions, in a way that’s exhilarating but not entirely comfortable. In your close relationships, you might find yourself unsatisfied with anything less than the real thing. You might find yourself craving real intimacy, real connection, and real love.
Aries
It’s so easy to forget to value boundaries — your own, and other people’s, too. It’s easy to think that the only good way to live is to give our entire selves, all the time, as though any distance at all is inappropriate, and holding anything back is an unbearable obstruction. This week, try to relearn how to respect and uphold your boundaries. Inside the word “no” is a whole universe of shimmering, magic possibility. It’s a way to love yourself, and to remind yourself that the potential for a different world still exists.
Taurus
Often, your intensity can come as a surprise to other people—it’s not flashy or loud enough to draw consistent attention to itself. It’s a brand of intensity that’s quiet and steady enough to go unnoticed most of the time. Other people overlooking your power wouldn’t be so bad on its own; the problem is when you, too, start to forget your intensity, or think you need less than you do, or imagine that you’re weaker than you really are. This week, make sure you’re not giving too much weight to other people’s limited knowledge of you. It’s a week to stop underestimating yourself.
Gemini
The best gift you can give yourself this week is permission to walk away. You can turn away from useless arguments, walk out of movies halfway through, give up on books after just a few pages. This isn’t to say you should blithely leave behind everything challenging in your life. But this week, when it’s possible to choose your course, there’s no reason to stick around in bad or boring situations, hoping that they’ll somehow get better. Your time belongs to you, and you’re allowed to act like it.
Cancer
It’s exhausting to think about how much is expected of you. It takes so much energy just to survive, and the people in your life want more than that, too. Everyone wants your time, your attention. Everyone wants to be loved exactly right. This week, if that starts to become too much, or if it all feels unfair, try to take a step back. Consider what you need, and what you can give. This is a week to untangle what everyone else wants from you, and what you’re able and willing to offer them.
Leo
This week, it might feel particularly grating when someone advises you to compromise or find middle ground. It might feel like what they’re really advising is that you give up on everything you really want — everything that makes you unique and makes life worth living. This week, remember that it’s okay to push back. Don’t let anyone convince you that the only way forward is to give up. Compromise is a tool, not an imperative. Absolute generosity is an option, but it’s not the only permissible way for you to live.
Virgo
You can expect, this week, to feel some nagging irritation at the world. You can expect to feel some frustration, verging on anger, that everyone — from the people who run the world, to the strangers you see on the street, to your friends, to yourself — is so consistently imperfect. Normally, you might respond to this with the determination to work harder, to be better, to let nothing get past you. But this week, forget about working so hard. See how far your kindness will take you: it’s likely to be farther than you think.
Libra
If you expect your life to look like a smooth line forward, pointing steadily upward, you’ll end up disappointed. This is a week for moving along your own bending path and accepting the unpredictability of it all. This is a week to remind yourself that some secrets need to be uncovered more than once, and some truths need to be learned again and again This isn’t a bad thing. Everything you lose, you can come back to. You can return to yourself, again and again, stronger each time.
Scorpio
It’s worthwhile, right now, to think carefully about your time: both the ways that you use it, and the ways you simply live inside it, doing nothing much at all. If you’re unsatisfied with your life, think about how you spend your days. Maybe you could be doing more — working harder, speaking up louder, building houses or movements or a whole different future. But there’s a possibility, too, that the answer — at least for right now — is to do less of everything. This week, try to live in your time and enjoy it, and let the world’s beauty overtake you.
Sagittarius
The possibility of being misunderstood might feel particularly nerve-wracking this week, like a curse waiting to strike or a cloud you just can’t shake. You might find yourself more aware than ever of all the ways a person can be misjudged. This week, try your best to put all that out of your mind. There’s really no way to make yourself impervious to criticism, and no way to defend against every possible misunderstanding. Some people will see you truly, with love. Other people won’t, and this won’t destroy you. You just have to keep living, and keep doing your work.
Capricorn
You’ve worked very hard, for a very long time, to be good and to live right in the world. And though it can feel like this work goes unnoticed, the people in your life see you. They see how you carry yourself, and how you care. So this week, if you need to, give yourself permission to call upon some of the goodwill you’ve built for yourself. If you need a favor, or some kindness, or a friend to spend an afternoon with, you can ask for it. None of this is a burden. You deserve it all.
Aquarius
It’s natural, over time, that your image of yourself will change. As you get older, you start to see yourself more clearly, and in new contexts and different light. This week, though, might call for a return to the versions of yourself you’ve forgotten. This week, try to remember the kindest, bravest, most loving you’ve ever been. You’re still every bit as brave as you were then, and every bit as good. You can relearn right now how to see those qualities in yourself again.
Pisces
It’s possible to become so closely tuned in to other people’s needs and feelings that your own needs fade into the background. There’s something noble about this, and there’s real magic in knowing that you aren’t alone, but deeply connected to the people around you But it’s important, this week, not to take this to mean that your own personal desires are insignificant, invisible — of no real use at all. Having your own needs doesn’t make you selfish. This week, let yourself want deeply.