astrology

Madame Clairevoyant: Horoscopes for the Week of October 1

Mae Jemison, a Libra. Illustration: Jenny Sharaf/Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images

Pluto, the faraway planet of metamorphosis, destiny, and rebirth, just finished its retrograde period on Sunday. On Friday, though, love-and-beauty planet Venus will station retrograde in intense and sexy Scorpio, meaning issues around these themes might feel a bit sluggish or frustrating. This isn’t a time for big choices and dramatic actions, but rather for reassessing your desires, and for reevaluating your relationships: What are they offering you, and what do you really need?

Weekly Horoscope Aries

Aries

It’s one thing to say that your vulnerability is your strength, but it’s so much harder to feel it to be true: in your bones, in your blood, in your gut or your throat. How can you inhabit your soft humanity in a way that still feels powerful? It’s possible, but not easy. Start by trusting your ears to tell you when a note is false. Start by trusting your skin to pick up on the difference between love and ill will. It’s only your vulnerability that will let you see the truth.

Weekly Horoscope Taurus

Taurus

There’s a sense of fate in the air this week — as though an inevitable future has now been written, and is moving closer. Your task, right now, is to fight off the feeling that your own actions no longer matter. Maybe it’s true that the world moves according to celestial plans you can’t see, but that doesn’t mean you can know just what that future is, and it doesn’t mean you get to give up. The world has gifts and surprises still in store for you; there’s no wrong path.

Weekly Horoscope Gemini

Gemini

If you find yourself feeling distant from your life, from your friends, from yourself, then allow yourself that distance. If someone you love seems distant from you, try to trust that they’ll return to you when they can. Intimacy isn’t the only way of relating. Sometimes it’s all too much. Sometimes the only way to know anything is to step back from it. Sometimes the way to keep loving something is to travel far enough that you can miss it, far enough that your eventual return home can feel, at last, like a blessing.

Weekly Horoscope Cancer

Cancer

You might notice yourself frequently changing your mind this week — going back on decisions you thought were final, revisiting questions you thought you had settled. This is a sign that your brain is still moving and your heart’s still alive. You don’t ever have to stop growing. You don’t have to stay forever the person you were last year, or five years ago, or when you were only a child. Just make sure that you don’t change course for no reason. You can make any change you want, as long as you earn it for yourself.

Weekly Horoscope Leo

Leo

You’ve built a lush world for yourself to live in, a warm and sweet house to hold you when the world is stormy. It’s valuable to have a refuge in a world as sharp as this one, to create your own softness when the universe provides you none. But sometimes even this isn’t enough to muffle the grinding, clanking sounds of the world outside. This week, you might find that it’s time to show your teeth again, and to remind the world of the fire and steel that you keep sharp and ready.

Weekly Horoscope Virgo

Virgo

This week might bring you surprises, but they won’t be surprises from the outside world — you’re so familiar already with what sweetness and what cruelty the world is capable of. This week’s surprises will come from a place deep inside yourself, like the depths of the jungle, or like the bottom of the ocean, full of bright glittering life more beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen. And there are places in your own heart, too, that can surprise you with what they hold. Is it love, is it tenderness, or is it a vivid and beautiful red anger?

Weekly Horoscope Libra

Libra

Think of the times you’ve spoken and not been believed, and all the times you’ve shown up but not really been seen. Think of all the times the world has looked at your brightness and seen only charm, not force, all the times the world has looked at your kindness and taken that to indicate a lack of power. This week, all your disguises will be able to fall away, dissolving clear into the air. What’s left will be the stuff that counts, and it’ll be undeniable — not just the soft magic but the more potent stuff, too, the strength and the rage as hot as the sun.

Weekly Horoscope Scorpio

Scorpio

What matters most this week is to know the truth, or to seek the truth, or to speak the truth with as much clarity as you can. We talk about the truth like it’s always a bright, golden thing, but sometimes it’s twisty or difficult to understand. Sometimes it can lead you down frightening roads, to places so dark that not even the moon’s light shines. Even if you speak and aren’t heard, even if you don’t see the results of your efforts right away, your search for truth is never wasted; it can always unlock some kind of electric power for good.

Weekly Horoscope Sagittarius

Sagittarius

You put so much work into being honest and real, into showing the truth of who you are so that others will see you clearly. So when you’re misunderstood, when you’re seen incorrectly, you might feel a bright blazing anger, as though all your work was in vain. This week, you have to try not to take it personally. It’s impossible for anyone to perfectly understand, or be perfectly understood all the time. Nobody can know you as well as you do; all we can do is stay alive, and stay free, and keep reaching out to one another.

Weekly Horoscope Capricorn

Capricorn

Remind yourself this week that you’re not required to value everything that’s beautiful, or even everything that appears to be good. You aren’t a machine, and your desires are shifting and alive. Other people might try to make their case to you, to explain to you what you should love and why, but it’s not your job to listen. Love might be endless, but your own body isn’t, your own days aren’t, and it’s okay to draw boundaries around the edges of your energy or your time.

Weekly Horoscope Aquarius

Aquarius

You might be haunted, this week, if not by ghosts, then by old feelings. It’s so much harder to leave anything behind than anybody ever admits. It’s easy to know in your head that you’ve grown, but so rare to feel it with anything approaching certainty, or anything approaching peace. It might help to know this ahead of time, going into the week. The feelings that slam you don’t mean you’re in danger of moving backward, they’re just remnants — ghosts whose presence you can acknowledge, but whose presence can’t stop you from living.

Weekly Horoscope Pisces

Pisces

It’s one thing to know the truth, and another still to speak it: How can you predict just what power you’ll unleash on the world? Sometimes a human voice can be healing as sunshine, but sometimes it can cut like acid. You already know you have a powerful magic, and it’s wise to treat it with care, and to be cautious of what your words might create. And still, keeping all your secrets hasn’t saved the world yet. This week, what would happen if you spoke your truths? What would happen if you let loose?

Read last week’s horoscope here. Next week’s will be here.

Madame Clairevoyant: Horoscopes for the Week of October 1