When Mercury goes retrograde in Virgo, your feelings might swell, like they’re growing, like they’re magnified, like they’re under a microscope. This is not a time for rushing ahead. Look through this lens that the world is offering you: What can you see now that you couldn’t before? What calls out for your attention?
Aries: If you took a break from trying to prove yourself to other people, what could you do? You could sit on the porch just watching storm clouds cross the sky, letting your heart fill with thunder and rain. You could write down your dreams for no one to see but you. You could stay up late, alone, windows open and a song in the night. You don’t need anyone’s approval to live.
Taurus: Sometimes it’s easier to look for meaning in clear skies and forests and light, not muddy streets or chipped paint or concrete. It’s easy to look so hard at the stars that we forget our own skin. But there can be wisdom in long days, and sweetness even in the moments that don’t sparkle. A tired heart beats as much as a joyful one. You’re as alive on the quiet days as you are on the wild ones and this, too, is good.
Gemini: This week, think about how you’re using your powers. You’re bright and good and needed by so many people, and it’s important, sometimes, to hold space just for you. Your energy is golden and wild but it isn’t infinite; don’t use it to block your own path. You have your own exploring to do. There are cities and deserts and lakes you haven’t yet been to.
Cancer: This is week for processes, a week for thinking out loud, a week for showing your work to other people. You don’t need to do everything on your own. You don’t need to have thought of everything. You don’t need to hide your messiness or your desires or your truest, weirdest soul. Even the mosses need rain to survive. Even the trees communicate underground.
Leo: This is a week for really living in your physical self; it’s a week for feeling your own place in time. It isn’t always easy to live in such a soft human shape when you’re so full of fire and dreams, but it’s a gift, too. Think of the feeling of a cool breeze after a hot yellow day. Think of the feeling of clean sheets on skin. There are good ways to be anchored to our green world. Try to remember them this week.
Virgo: This is a week for decisiveness and action, and there are so many ways this might look. Sometimes change is quiet, and sometimes it’s invisible. Sometimes it looks the same as standing still, the same as sitting on a park bench in the sun. Change doesn’t need to wrench your heart right out of your chest. You’re sharper and tougher than anyone, even yourself, gives you credit for. You have strength as hard as diamond, and still you can change your mind.
Libra: The people around you — the ones you love and the ones you barely know — all have their own ways of understanding the world. There are so many ways that a person can move, so many sounds a throat can make, so many stories and so many dreams. You have a right to your weirdness, too. You have a right to defy expectations. You have a right not to make sense. Hold fast this week to your wildest unknowable core.
Scorpio: There will be days full of fog and days when your limbs feel like stone. There will be days when you need to move slowly — but it won’t mean you aren’t moving. Some days are for being more careful than others. Some days are just for feeling the ground beneath you in a new way. Watch the bees hovering above the flowers, and watch the crows up in the trees. Listen to the music in your own voice. Pay attention: There are different kinds of grace.
Sagittarius: There’s so much you can do to open your life up, you’d hardly believe it. You’ll hear, over and over, about everything you have no power over, but even then, there’s space to move. Even then, light gets in. There are people who will let you be gentle and people who will let you be wild. There are stories and songs that will let you weep. These are all ways of building your own life. These are all ways to push back against a heavy world.
Capricorn: This is a week for feeling a little tender, maybe, a little sappy, a little soft. It’s not always easy, but softness can be a worthwhile project. You can value justice and courage and beauty, too. You can see the world spinning dark around you, you can see evil and sorrow with clear eyes, and you can still believe in love. Your body holds steel, and feeling, and silliness too. This week, claim your right to all these things.
Aquarius: Sometimes life’s cycles travel in loops bigger than you can see. This can be frustrating when you’re looking for a pattern, when you’re aching for a story, and all you can see is an open field stretching out wide and empty. Try to remember: Earth is big enough that you can’t see its curve from where you stand, but this doesn’t mean that it’s flat. The world has an orbit and so does your life. So much magic waits for you up ahead.
Pisces: Sometimes you live in ways that are bad for you, but this doesn’t mean you don’t love yourself, and it doesn’t mean you’re moving through the world wrong. Survival can work in stranger ways than we understand. Desire can be expressed in languages we haven’t yet learned to speak. This is a week to practice seeing the ways you make yourself small. You don’t have to do anything, if you don’t yet want to, just practice seeing with clear eyes. What are you trying to show yourself? What do you really need?
