Late on Saturday night, Mercury, the planet of communication and expression, entered practical, ambitious Capricorn. During this transit, you might notice your thinking becoming less scattered and more focused, less optimistic but more rigorous and precise. Then, early Friday morning, assertive Mars will enter restless Sagittarius, where it might activate a different kind of optimism. Even if your thinking is more rational and realistic now, another part of you will continue to hunger for exploration, refusing to be held back or confined.
Aries
It’s a gift to move through the world with the full blazing strength of your confidence, with an unbreakable faith in the power of your will. Other people might treat your confidence like it’s dangerously unmanageable, but that doesn’t mean that you have to believe it. This week, it’s possible to live responsibly and well, while still loving yourself fully and wildly. It’s possible to be thoughtful about your place in the world without ever, not once, doubting that you belong here, and that you have valuable magic to contribute.
Taurus
It can be difficult to manage when so many opinions keep flying back and forth, when so many people express themselves so loudly and with such forceful authority. It’s tempting, sometimes, to spend all your energy resisting other people’s wrong opinions, pushing back against them with all your might. This week, though, your real task isn’t to counter other people’s thoughts, but to strengthen and deepen your own. You haven’t reached the end of your growth yet — you’re still changing and still learning, and even the most loudly wrong people in the world can’t stop you.
Gemini
It isn’t a bad thing to carefully reconsider the life that you’ve built and the personality you’ve created. It isn’t a sign of weakness to find yourself wanting different things, nor does it mean your desires were wrong before. All this means is that you’ve grown some, that you’ve let the world change you, that you’ve lived fully. You don’t have to be afraid of doing too much, or wanting too much, or being too much. When your heart is pure and you’re willing to learn, it’s okay to make some mistakes.
Cancer
Sometimes, real curiosity can be intimidating, even threatening: It’s so much safer to ask questions you already know the answers to, to travel the routes you’ve traveled before. But his week, if you open yourself up to your curiosity, you can find that it’s more like a compass, pointing you steadfastly in the right direction. You can’t predict the future, but you can wait for it with an open heart, and let it take you wherever it will.
Leo
This is a week for being realistic with yourself about how big the world really is. There are places you’ll never visit and colors you’ll never see, and there are more people than you’ll ever know, and all of this is okay. This week, consider that there is no center of the world and no supreme authority — just vast, multitudinous life. The world is too big for you to run out of opportunities. You still have so many chances to be wild, to decide which rules you’ll live by, to thrive.
Virgo
On a broad level, you already have all the tools to do what you need: a curious mind, a strong heart, and a willingness to see the world in all its messy reality. But don’t take this to mean that you already know every fact worth knowing, or that you’ve already picked up all the skills you have the capacity to learn. It isn’t too late to learn to cook, or to sing, or to fight. It isn’t too late to learn new ways of looking, new ways of speaking, new ways of existing in your body.
Libra
Sometimes, when you feel an urge to be generous — with your friends, your neighbors, even the people who irritate you in the store or on the bus — it’s easy to distrust it. After all, a tendency toward generosity can quickly morph into a willingness to let every person get away with rude behavior; once you’ve gotten in the habit, it’s so easy to make excuses for other people’s cruelty. This week, though, you can be generous without letting anyone take advantage of you. You can give to other people without dimming your own bright humanity, without denying your own needs.
Scorpio
It might go against your nature to look outside of yourself for power, for thrills, for energy — after all, so much of what you need is already inside you. Your intellectual life is rich and complex; your emotional world is strange as the sea. Still, this week, try to resist the desire to retreat into isolation. No matter how much you’d prefer not to need anyone else, you’re connected to the world. You aren’t alone.
Sagittarius
This is a week for facing the truth. The world’s structures and systems are constantly asserting themselves around you, beneath you, through you. Power snakes its way into every part of life on earth, and no matter how wild your intellect, no matter how rebellious your dreams, you aren’t exempt. So this week, don’t look away, or pretend that none of the world’s injustices can touch you. Acknowledging that evil exists won’t diminish your powers. Living in this messy and dangerous world makes your joy more impressive, not less.
Capricorn
It’s possible to use your time well without forcing yourself to make endless forward progress. It’s possible to live a valuable life without spending every moment at work. This week, think about what space might open up in your life if you decided, just for now, to ease up on yourself. You can live with honesty and rigor without driving yourself into the ground. Some amount of aimlessness is good for the spirit; some time spent moving without any real destination in mind can bring clarity and strength. It can make your ambitions big again, too.
Aquarius
This week, try to be careful about what you let into your mind. It’s okay to be selective about which ideas you’ll allow to rouse you, and which stories you’ll allow to move you. Your time is limited, and so is the space in your head; you don’t have to let yourself get provoked by just anyone. A little armor can be valuable. It can give you a chance to protect your inner life, and to decide how you’re willing to engage with the world around you.
Pisces
Sometimes, the way to be kinder to yourself is to be kinder to other people, too. If you can manage to look at other people with understanding, you’ll find yourself able to extend that understanding to yourself and your own life. This isn’t a matter of cause and effect, of one kindness leading directly to another. Rather, it’s about recalibrating your whole relationship to the world. Once you allow yourself to relate to the whole world with love — even the parts of it that frustrate you — you may become more compassionate towards yourself, and find your resolve to live a good life strengthening, too.