The morning of Sunday, October 30, action planet Mars began its retrograde period, which will last until mid-January. Mars retrograde happens once every two years or so, and it’s usually a bumpy ride. Carefully laid plans might spiral into chaos. Progress toward your goals may stall out or even appear to move backward. And your ambition and motivation seem to enter hibernation. None of this signals failure on your part. Frustration is a natural (if unwelcome) part of life. Don’t try to muscle your way through this slowdown; it’s unlikely to work. It’s better not to fight it but to adjust, temporarily, to a different pace.
Aries Weekly Horoscope
This week, you might feel as if the whole world were inconveniencing you. You’re eager to get moving, to bring your big dreams to life, but you find yourself hindered, distracted, and delayed at every turn. It’s frustrating — you have desires to act on, deadlines to meet! Still, try to accept that some processes simply can’t be sped up no matter how hard you try. If the universe is encouraging you to slow down, listen to it. Settle into the process even if it’s a longer one than you anticipated. Let things take the time they need.
Taurus Weekly Horoscope
You’re a person with strong opinions about basically everything. You know exactly which kinds of clothes and art and food you prefer, how you like to structure your day, and what kinds of people make you happiest. But as much as you love yourself and your comfortable, familiar life, you’re also longing to experience something different. So this week, honor your curiosity. If your desires are strange or surprising, it’s okay to see where they take you. You don’t have to stay the same. We’re supposed to grow and evolve. Let yourself explore.
Gemini Weekly Horoscope
Your life might be more chaotic than usual this week, your thinking less clear, your choices less sensible, and the people around you less predictable. This may cause some frustration, but it’s not entirely bad. Maintaining a completely neat and tidy equilibrium often requires you to suppress parts of yourself that are adventurous, surprising, and weird. Who wants that? If you can’t quite bring yourself to follow the rules, to be “normal,” don’t worry. Shaking things up every once in a while is healthy. It can inspire you, reviving beautiful, long-buried parts of yourself.
Cancer Weekly Horoscope
You do not have to be virtuous all the time or put others’ needs above your own. Every single action you take doesn’t have to be for somebody else’s benefit. You know this already, but the pressure (from others and yourself) to be “good” seems overwhelming lately. This week, push back. Nobody’s motivations are purely selfless, so why should yours have to be? Following your interests and attractions can be a worthy pursuit, full stop, as long as they don’t harm anyone else. Just because your whims and desires don’t override everyone else’s needs, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t matter to you.
Leo Weekly Horoscope
Be ready, this week, for people to irritate you. Friends, colleagues, strangers on the street — everyone’s a bother. Life is complicated and difficult, and resulting feelings of powerlessness can cause us to act in ways that are foolish, petty, and cruel. You aren’t imagining it, and you’re not wrong to be angry. Just try not to default to noticing the worst in other people. It prevents you from finding connections, support, and community you badly need. Leave room for others to surprise you, to be kinder, smarter, more interesting than you hoped.
Virgo Weekly Horoscope
From current events to relationship tensions to the shortening hours of sunlight, it seems as if the universe were conspiring to create a sense of hopelessness in you. As much as you try not to be defeatist (and most of the time, you manage it brilliantly), hope might be hard to maintain this week. The key is not to try to “fix” your emotions but to ensure they don’t stop you from enjoying yourself. You can keep loving the people around you, keep waking up to meet the wild, unpredictable, and still sometimes beautiful world. You’ll find it’s worthwhile in spite of the roadblocks and delays.
Libra Weekly Horoscope
You tend to hold yourself to higher standards than others — standards that are unreasonable, perhaps even impossible, to measure up to. You imagine this isn’t so bad; sure, you’re being incredibly hard on yourself, but you aren’t hurting anyone. Wrong! You are hurting someone: yourself. You matter, too, and you owe yourself kindness and understanding. This week, be at least as gentle with yourself as you are with the friends you love most. It’s not about making excuses or lowering your standards but about treating yourself like a human being.
Scorpio Weekly Horoscope
The trouble with being as visibly competent, brave, and self-assured as you are is that it leads others to believe you don’t need help or support. They witness your confidence and take it to mean you never need praise or recognition; they see your quiet strength and it hardly occurs to them you might also have fears and insecurities just like everyone else. So this week, if you need some extra care, know that you might have to ask for it — not because people begrudge you the help or attention but because they simply don’t know you need it.
Sagittarius Weekly Horoscope
When progress is slow enough, it’s easy to mistakenly believe you aren’t moving forward at all and start making rash decisions in hopes of jump-starting your life. When you feel bored or stuck, you’d rather make a wrong move than no move at all. This week, though, try to avoid acting in haste. Stillness might be exactly what your brain and body need. Give yourself some downtime to process, to adapt, to make sense of the world again. Trust that growth is happening even if you can’t measure the results yet.
Capricorn Weekly Horoscope
Sometimes you convince yourself the most important thing in the world is to be taken seriously. In order to come across the right way, you’re willing to tone down the louder, brasher, wilder parts of yourself. But while there’s a time and place for this (professional settings, often), you shouldn’t have to hide your real personality. If you express yourself this week, you’ll ruffle feathers and may be disliked by some. Let them think what they want. That doesn’t have to be your concern. You could be free.
Aquarius Weekly Horoscope
This week, it’s going to be tempting to think in all-or-nothing terms: Your relationship is either perfect or not worth your time, your ideas are either groundbreaking or garbage, your life is either exactly as you want it or beyond repair. But such extremes are seldom the reality. Your experience of the world is simultaneously lovely and difficult. Your friendships are frequently dazzling and sometimes disappointing. Life is complicated, and there are no choices but imperfect ones. You’re just as mixed up as every other human; don’t imagine it’s your job to be otherwise.
Pisces Weekly Horoscope
There’s a part of you that deems your (perfectly reasonable) boundaries shameful, selfish, in need of constant justification. In your mind, the more you care about somebody, the more minimal your boundaries should be. But this week, people are going to be extra insensitive. They’ll walk all over you out of sheer thoughtlessness if you give them the opportunity, so do your best not to give it to them. Be honest and firm about what you need and don’t back down. It’s always worth fighting for yourself.
Read the weekly horoscopes for the week of October 24. The weekly horoscopes for the week of November 7 will be online next Sunday.
Get Claire Comstock-Gay’s book, Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Stars, out now.