astrology

Madame Clairevoyant: Horoscopes for the Week of July 26

Kate Bush, a Leo. Photo-Illustration: by Preeti Kinha; Photos: Getty

On Tuesday evening, Mercury enters Leo, and all the playfulness you’ve hidden, the confidence you’ve lost touch with, the warmth you’ve kept under wraps, will come roaring back to the surface. You can say what you mean, and say it with complete, sunny conviction. Then on Wednesday morning, Jupiter — still retrograde — moves backwards from Pisces into strange and inventive Aquarius. Good fortune becomes less predictable, but if you keep your mind open to wild possibilities, it will find you all the same. Finally, on Thursday, action planet Mars enters Virgo, and you may feel your sights narrow and energies focus. It becomes less appealing to try to do everything, and more satisfying to do a few small but important things right.

Weekly Horoscope Aries

Aries Weekly Horoscope

As good as it feels when everything runs smoothly and work barely registers as work at all, this week will remind you that a little bit of tension isn’t the worst thing in the world. Sometimes it’s just annoying to be challenged, but other times, it’s thrilling, productive, electric. Don’t shy from the conflicts that promise to spark something inside you, to reward your hard work with fresh insight, or new creativity, or the satisfaction of a victory fairly won. Your successes might not come effortlessly, but that doesn’t mean they won’t happen. It means they’ll be even sweeter when they do.

Weekly Horoscope Taurus

Taurus Weekly Horoscope

It feels terrible to be scoldingly told to be gentle with yourself, when what you really need is for the world to treat you gently. Every time you’re admonished to take care of yourself, it feels like an admission that no one else is ever going to give you the care you deserve. The frustration is real, and it’s unfair, but even so, this week it’s still worth making the effort to treat yourself right. There’s no reason to suffer extra, just out of principle. Even if it seems like no one else thinks so, you deserve all the happiness you can find.

Weekly Horoscope Gemini

Gemini Weekly Horoscope

Everything feels so difficult right now, so wrong. Sorrows and injustices keep accumulating, so that the load you bear keeps getting heavier. But you’re still here, enduring. You still know how to love and fight, and most miraculously of all, how to play, to laugh, to have beautiful, silly fun with the people you love. Heartache hasn’t taken away all of the best things about you. If you wonder whether you’re strong enough for this world, this week will offer you some real joy, as a way to remind you: You are.

Weekly Horoscope Cancer

Cancer Weekly Horoscope

The frustrating truth is that nobody’s going to know what you want until you tell them. No matter how clear and how bright your desires glow in your own eyes, they remain mysterious to others. Even the people who know you best can’t always intuit your secret feelings. And while sometimes it’s wise to keep emotions hidden, this week, it’s worth sharing — not because all your desires will instantly be granted, or because all your heartbreak will suddenly be healed, but because it opens the door to connection and intimacy, to a different, deeper kind of love.

Weekly Horoscope Leo

Leo Weekly Horoscope

There are ways to understand yourself other than sitting forever in silent meditation, thinking and reflecting in the isolation of your own interior. Emotional growth doesn’t have to happen in private. Your inner world is deep and complex and fully your own, but you’re also a social creature, meant to share this world with others. So this week, don’t expect to do all your thinking by yourself. You can learn so much in the company of others. The people you love reflect your true image back to you. They can illuminate truths and possibilities that you’d never have seen on your own.

Weekly Horoscope Virgo

Virgo Weekly Horoscope

Even if you appear wise and calm from the outside, there’s always more going on beneath the surface: anger, pain, despair you struggle to keep at bay. There’s so much needless cruelty in this world and so many beautiful possibilities that have been closed off for no reason. When you dwell on it all too much, it’s hard not to be devoured by fury. This week, though, the world will remind you that all isn’t lost. There remains friendship, and solidarity, and the vivid green of the trees out on the street. The world’s still worth living in, and fighting for.

Weekly Horoscope Libra

Libra Weekly Horoscope

People constantly cling to incorrect ideas about you. Whether because of miscommunication or lack of information or simply because they don’t take the time to pay attention, they see you as someone other than the person you know yourself to be. This week, when others get you wrong, you can tell them. You can push back — loudly, if you have to — against stories that diminish you, or disrespect you, or just don’t depict you right. You don’t have to give in or change yourself to match others’ perceptions, or forever wonder whether they might see something you don’t. Instead, you can set them straight

Weekly Horoscope Scorpio

Scorpio Weekly Horoscope

For you, it may be strangely easier to feel comfortable with your bleak emotions than with your soft ones. Anger can seem powerful, cynicism masquerades as maturity and sophistication, and distrust looks like the only sensible response to a treacherous world. This week, though, will ask you to let your brighter feelings sit alongside the dark ones: to reacquaint yourself with some kind of optimism, or confidence, or happiness, however fleeting or imperfect. You can be brave enough to express it all. Your anger isn’t a shameful secret to be borne in isolation, and your hope isn’t, either.

Weekly Horoscope Sagittarius

Sagittarius Weekly Horoscope

The wonderful thing about living is that, ultimately, no one else gets to tell you what to do. But sometimes, this seems like the very worst thing about it, too. There’s no infallible source of wisdom, no one to offer you perfect guidance, no one to take responsibility for the wild, shimmering thing that is your life. Nobody will come along to tell you how to go on from here, or to confirm that you’re doing a good job in life. And it’s okay. You already know what to do, if you’re willing to be brave and trust yourself.

Weekly Horoscope Capricorn

Capricorn Weekly Horoscope

This week, you may find yourself itching for perfection in all areas of your life: total wisdom, harmonious relationships, an unimpeachable reputation. This kind of yearning can serve as fuel sometimes, and spur you to greatness, but it can also get in your way. It prevents you from seeing the beauty all around you, from noticing how wonderful you already are and how much you’ve achieved. Right now, you don’t have to give up on wanting something better — just allow yourself the space to appreciate yourself, too. You’ve come unimaginably far, and you deserve recognition for that.

Weekly Horoscope Aquarius

Aquarius Weekly Horoscope

It’s both comforting and terrifying to be reminded, again and again, that life is an unending cycle. As much as you work to progress, to move forward, to become someone brilliant and noble, there is no point at which you can stop trying, no finish line. You learn lessons, and you learn them again. You succeed in broadening your world, and it only serves to show you how much broader the rest of the universe still is. Difficulty returns again and again, but so does sweetness. And this week, even if there’s struggle, there will be love and kindness, too.

Weekly Horoscope Pisces

Pisces Weekly Horoscope

It’s not such a bad thing to pour your energy into big dreams, into futures that seem, from where you stand, nearly impossible. The world needs people who are willing to imagine something better, who won’t be constrained by the current sad state of affairs. This week, though, you might be asked to change course a bit. Your dreams might not give off the same warm glow they sometimes do, might not cast the same protective light around you. Instead, see what happens when you devote your energy to the world that exists right here and now: solid, beautiful, in need of ordinary, everyday love.

Read the weekly horoscopes for the week of July 19. The weekly horoscopes for the week of August 2 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 July 26