astrology

Madame Clairevoyant: Horoscopes for the Week of October 12

Angela Lansbury, a Libra. Photo-Illustration: by Preeti Kinha; Photos: Getty

On Tuesday, Mercury stations retrograde in Scorpio. During this transit, your words might be sharper than you intend, and your honesty might do damage you didn’t expect. Other people’s words might do the same to you. Try not to rush to judgment, or to react from a place of suspicion. Try to be generous with the people you love and the people who’ve shown that they’re speaking in good faith. Then on Friday, a new moon in Libra marks an opportunity for setting new intentions: for committing to building a world where beauty and justice are everywhere you look, everywhere you need them.

Weekly Horoscope Aries

Aries Weekly Horoscope

This week, you might be uncharacteristically plagued by indecision, suddenly unable to make a choice and commit to it. It can feel frustrating — as though your energies are blocked, or your blazing confidence has been diluted — but really, indecision isn’t always the worst thing in the world. Sometimes, decisive action can lead you to the wrong places. Sometimes, a rushed answer is worse than no answer at all. As much as possible, this is a week to give yourself time to make up your mind. The right path will reveal itself in its own time.

Weekly Horoscope Taurus

Taurus Weekly Horoscope

People will tell you to be gentle with yourself as though it’s the simplest thing in the world, something that can be achieved with a snap of your fingers. But when it comes down to it, going easier on yourself isn’t very easy at all. It isn’t a passive project; it takes real, active effort to treat yourself every day with kindness, to forgive yourself for making missteps or missing opportunities. Going easier on yourself isn’t a form of lazy or trite self-aggrandizement: It’s real, valuable work, and it’s worth doing this week.

Weekly Horoscope Gemini

Gemini Weekly Horoscope

It’s easy to find ways to blame yourself for the way your life is right now — to dwell on the mistakes you’ve made in the past, on all the wrong steps you’ve taken, on all the moments you wish you’d lived differently. It’s easy to think that if only you had been braver, or if only you’d been wiser, then things would all be different right now. But it’s futile to chastise yourself for your present circumstances. It isn’t your fault, and you deserve better, and all you can do is try to forgive yourself and keep moving.

Weekly Horoscope Cancer

Cancer Weekly Horoscope

In normal times, there are so many places to witness the love that flows between people. You can see it every time you walk down the street, every time you board a bus. Right now, though, so much of that love has retreated into private spaces, has been made secret, invisible to you. It still exists, though. People are still giving and receiving kindness, still caring for each other in small and big ways. Even if you can’t see it right now, this is a week for believing that love isn’t gone — not from other people’s lives, and certainly not from yours.

Weekly Horoscope Leo

Leo Weekly Horoscope

Lately, it’s been hard enough to keep your head above water. And this makes it difficult to be as open and giving as you would like. It’s hard to be generous when your energy is stretched so thin, when exhaustion clouds your thoughts. You might start to worry that you have nothing at all to offer the people you love, but this isn’t true. You still have things worth sharing, even if it’s only small moments of kindness, even if it’s only an encouraging word. You’re still loved and still needed.

Weekly Horoscope Virgo

Virgo Weekly Horoscope

This is a week for realizing you’re not backed into a corner. This is a week for refusing to believe anyone who tells you that you’re out of options, that there’s no hope left, that all you can do is retreat into your own head. Your choices might not be obvious, and the roads available to you might be unmarked, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Nothing is as easy as it should be, but that doesn’t mean that your life holds no space for surprise, for beauty, for change.

Weekly Horoscope Libra

Libra Weekly Horoscope

People are always telling you that it’s enough, right now, just to do your best, that it’s enough just to make it through the day. And while it’s easy enough to believe that this generous attitude is fine for other people, it’s so much harder to believe that it applies to you, too. But the perfection you expect from yourself just won’t be possible this week. So do your best to accept that you’re trying, just like anyone else. Do your best to believe that you, too, deserve all the ease, all the lightness, all the grace you’re willing to offer others.

Weekly Horoscope Scorpio

Scorpio Weekly Horoscope

This week, it might seem as though the world is trying its best to trick you into doubting yourself: into thinking that your own reactions, your own memories, and even your body are unreliable. Introspection can be a valuable tool, and self-doubt can have its purpose, but this week, don’t let anyone make you question the life you’ve built and the person you’ve become. The ground keeps shifting beneath your feet, but you’re still a reliable witness to your own experiences, to your own desires, to your own sense of purpose.

Weekly Horoscope Sagittarius

Sagittarius Weekly Horoscope

This is a week for remembering your personality and your spark. It’s a week for knowing that when given the opportunity, you can glow and shine; you can be generous and sweet; you can light up a whole room. It’s easy to lose sight of that fact right now, when there’s so little opportunity to gather with other people, to interact, to be seen. But that side of your personality hasn’t abandoned you. It’s just waiting to return, and it will.

Weekly Horoscope Capricorn

Capricorn Weekly Horoscope

It can be so tempting to turn to suspicion or cynicism as ways to protect your heart in dangerous times. If you start believing that the world is irreparably broken and always has been, then each piece of bad news, each breaking story of unfathomable cruelty, has less power to shock and shatter you. This week, though, your task is to keep your heart as open as you can. Your task is to make it possible for love, hope, and gentleness to find you. Because they all will, if you can just allow yourself to let them in.

Weekly Horoscope Aquarius

Aquarius Weekly Horoscope

There are things in your life you can control, and things in your life you can’t. This might sound so obvious as to be hardly worth mentioning — intellectually, you know it perfectly well — but it’s easy to forget. It’s so easy to start blaming yourself for the forces you can’t control. It’s so easy to seek control over situations that will always spin out of your hands. But you’re just one person, and the world is terrifyingly, thrillingly unpredictable. This week, it’s important to take ownership where you can, and just as important to let go of what doesn’t belong to you.

Weekly Horoscope Pisces

Pisces Weekly Horoscope

This week, it might feel like the world is just demanding too much of you. It might feel like the people around you have unreasonable expectations for you: that you should know everything, do everything, be everything. Under all of this pressure, asserting your boundaries can require some extra effort, but it’s worth it. You can still be generous, even while setting limits, while refusing to run yourself into the ground. You can still be honest, even while holding onto some unspoken feelings, some private questions, some sweet, secret knowledge that’s just for you.

Read the weekly horoscopes for the week of October 5. The weekly horoscopes for the week of October 19 will be online next Sunday.

Get Claire Comstock-Gay’s book, Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Stars, out now.

Madame Clairevoyant: Horoscopes for the Week of October 12