#AstroProTips
Monday, July 24th
Venus in Gemini opposes Saturn in Sagittarius, both at 21°
Mercury in Leo trine Uranus in Aries, both at 28°
Tuesday, July 25th
Mercury enters Virgo
Wednesday, July 26th
Sun conjunct Mars at 4° of Leo
Sunday, July 30th
Venus in Gemini sextile Uranus in Aries, both at 28°
Fame won’t heal us. Won’t rewrite the painful plot lines of our story. Won’t turn our sorrow into soaring glory. Won’t wipe away the stains from our broken heart.
Only a compassionate and unflinchingly honest relationship with ourselves can do that. Getting noticed for our efforts should be a side effect of our self-development. An affirmation, not definition of who we are.
We must define ourselves for ourselves.
This week the sun makes a conjunction with Mars in the early degrees of Leo. Leo loves to be loved. Mars in Leo demands it. Mars is the warrior. In Leo, it shines on the battlefield. Mars does have the courage to go its own way, though. Cutting through the societal fabric that swaddles us up for our “safety”, Mars pushes past the boundaries that get in the way of its self-discovery.
Mars conjuncts the sun every couple of years. When it does so, it asks us to reset our commitment to our individuation. Whatever we are dedicated to serving and protecting, no matter the cost to our connections, comes to the fore when Mars and the sun come together. What we stand for distinguishes us. Mars makes this apparent. Mars makes us a target for both reward and hostility. Mars is a sword that cuts ties with whatever gets in its way. Conjunct the sun, the motives of Mars are made more apparent in our lives. Our power is made more palpable.
Wield your swords wisely, dear ones.
As Mercury explores Virgo, one of the signs it is strongest in, it helps us to consider the inner workings of the moment. With the inferno of Leo roaring louder each day, Mercury offers us a quieter kind of conviction. Leo’s call and response style focuses on the reaction that it can get but Virgo gets to work. Diligently. Deliberately. Dedicatedly. Mercury has already entered the shadow phase of its next retrograde, that will begin on August 12th. This means that Mercury will end up coming back to the territory it is currently exploring. Whatever we are learning, we will relearn. Whatever we are visiting, we will revisit. Whatever we are planning will get rerouted to a certain degree. It’s OK though. Mercury in Virgo is strong. Exacting. Perfecting. The edits it helps us to make will only help us slay all the more effectively.
*Horoscopes are meant to be read as inspiration. If you know both your rising sign and sun sign, please read both horoscopes. They both contain important information. You’ll know which resonates more for you from week to week. Take what works for you, leave the rest. If you find inspiration here we love and appreciate donations. If you want to share this work you must quote it and link it to this post and website. Thank you for your support and for spreading the work around, we really appreciate it and you!
Aries & Aries Rising
It takes courage to put ourselves out there. It takes a deep appreciation for learning to risk our safety and give our creative pursuits a chance. It takes siding with the drive deep within us to override the fear that so often dissuades us from moving towards our destiny.
Give yourself a chance.
Give yourself license to be an imperfect artist. A maker of messy masterpieces. A generator of chaotic creations. This week’s astrology wants you to align yourself with your creative energy, not to criticize its process. So much of what we make needs endless edits before it is ready but if we start editing too early, we cut things down too small to be made into anything.
Let yourself become something.
The sun/Mars conjunction is asking that you honor the raw, unrefined and unruly energy of your creativity. Starting is rarely pretty, so don’t worry if what you are making isn’t yet what you want it to be. It will get there. Give it time. Give it permission. Give it the unconditional love and attention that it needs to flourish.
As Mercury moves into Virgo and the part of your chart that deals with work, health and the projects that you need to see to completion, you’ll have plenty of chances to practice getting it right and cutting the superfluous from the shape of things. Speaking of which, this is the perfect time to start reviewing your relationship to your health. Make sure you are giving your body what it needs to regenerate itself into wellness so that you can tackle your to-do lists like a champion.
Taurus & Taurus Rising
It takes courage to build a place for ourselves out in the world, but it takes equal courage to do the much quieter work of building a home that can truly house us. Getting grounded, planting roots, and settling into ourselves means that we must come to terms with all the reasons we were uprooted in the first place.
It takes courage to remember what left us feeling unable to bond with those that were supposed to be bonded to us. Family isn’t always the place that feels safe. We can love those that are our kin until the cows come home, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to work on the issues that we have with them.
This week makes that apparent.
Notice the roles that were set out for you as a young one. Notice the expectation of what you were to become. Notice the ways in which you have clashed with the patterns of the rest of your people and how important that has been to your development. The ways in which you have deviated from the family line are gifts.
Even though it doesn’t always feel like it.
Even though it can be lonely to forge our own path. This week’s astrology wants to highlight the ways in which your difference is also your blessing. It is what will help you make your own way through the world, make your mark and make your mind up to trust yourself above all else.
Gemini & Gemini Rising
Tackle your schedule courageously by putting the most meaningful tasks at the top of your to-do list. Do one thing everyday that challenges you to get out of your comfort zone. Do one thing this week that you have been telling everyone that you would do but have not. Do yourself this favor: talk about what you want less, do what you want to do more.
One of the ways we all trick ourselves out of accomplishing what we want is to leak our energy flapping our gums about it. You might be tempted to do so. Deliver yourself from the temptation by doing it first and then talking about it later, if you have to. Otherwise keep it to yourself for now. So you can build upon the energy that permeates your days. So you can change direction if you need to without having to explain why you did so. So that you feel in alignment with your current calls to action.
Life is busy for you. Stay on top of it all by being focused on what you can accomplish day-to-day. Reward yourself at the end of each.
Cancer & Cancer Rising
You have within you the raw talent to proceed. You have within you the courage to take your unrefined assets and make them into masterpieces. You have within you the power to accomplish great feats with the tools that you naturally possess.
But it won’t happen overnight.
Keep cultivating both an unrelenting patience and the willingness to work with what you’ve got in the ways that you can at the moment. As you develop new skills, new techniques and new ways of working, so to do you develop self-respect, awareness and understanding. The process of developing your resources into great wells of riches requires that you look long-term at your reasons for doing so. Do your reasons excite your soul? Does the work feel like it gives you more energy? Do you imagine infinite possibilities for it? When our work outlives us, when it moves beyond the scope of our lives, when it touches more than just our bankbook, it has the ability to regenerate us. It has the ability to heal us. It has the ability to awaken within us a roaring beast that demands to be fed.
Feed the beasts that ward off complacency. Feed the beasts the show you the way to greater vitality. Feed the beasts that demand you overcome your hesitancy and master all that you have to work with and work towards.
Leo & Leo Rising
Just because you have the energy, doesn’t mean that you have all the answers. Just because you have the charm, doesn’t mean that you have it worked out. Just because others easily project their hopes and dreams onto you, doesn’t mean you have what they need.
Let everyone find their own way forward.
Trust in their ability to do so. Trust in your own as well. Trust that you aren’t meant to live out anyone else’s glory but your own. Focus on your way forward without feeling like you need to know where you’ll end up. Sunday’s new moon renewed you. Wednesday’s sun/Mars conjunction in Leo will too. These aren’t days to rush yourself. You are most likely still a little raw from the process. You are most likely becoming more aware of the raw power that your anger possesses.
Let this moment teach you about your drive. So that you can become more familiar with its reasoning. So that you can understand where it is trying to take you. So that you can learn to successfully steer yourself towards what feels soulful, wise and worth the effort.
Virgo & Virgo Rising
Courage comes in many forms. Sometimes loud. Sometimes demonstrative. Sometimes quiet. Sometimes unseen. No less heroic, our internal battles are some of our most difficult. Some of our most gruesome. Some of our most honorable.
What you currently face is requiring that you become more acquainted with what goes on within you. What tends to trip you up internally. What gets in-between you and your drive.
Our faults are not our enemies. They are our key to understanding how to be a better friend to ourselves. They are our key to understanding how to outsmart our inner obstructionist. They are our key to winning in a game we can only play against ourselves.
This week puts you in touch with what might tempt you to self-destruct, but it also tips you off to the kind of gift your natural ability to critique can be. Turn your searingly accurate eye towards your excuses, your unfounded complaints, and towards any temper tantrums should they erupt. Search them for legitimacy. Scour them for accountability. Scrutinize their sensibilities. If they come up short know that you don’t have to buy their brand of defeatism. Take your time finding another way through. One that is a little more conducive to flourishing and a little less aligned with what won’t allow you to grow.
Libra & Libra Rising
This is no time for social niceties. It’s no time to fake your way into favor with others. It’s no time to pretend that you fit in the spaces that require you to crumple your hopes and dreams.
Your future deserves better than that.
It’s also no time for outright dismissiveness. Disdain. Deciding that you are better than, above or beyond being humble.
This is a time that requires you to investigate ways to inhabit honesty, forthrightness and courage when amongst your peers. It is a time to demonstrate your ability to risk upsetting the masses in order to be right with yourself. It is a time to fight the urge to be complacent in the face of what is contrary to your core beliefs, values and ideals. As you do so, you model integrity and flexibility for others. As you do so, you open up possibilities for those that feel like the only way forward is to fake it. As you do so, you help yourself know that not only is it possible, but it is preferred because it attracts to you those that wish to live with the same kind of commitment to authenticity and awareness.
Notice who amongst your peers encourages you to be true to yourself. Unthreatened by your power. Encouraging of your energy. Respectful of your agency.
Scorpio & Scorpio Rising
Make sure that you are clear about what you fear that you’ll fail at. Or succeed at. Make sure that you understand what feelings arise when you consider being more visible than you already are. Make sure that you are able to be honest enough with yourself to acknowledge when envy gets the better of those that are supposed to cheer you on. Or gets the better of you when you are supposed to cheer others on.
Envy is a mighty monster. One that we are often powerless to the moment it engulfs us. One that makes known what we most wish for ourselves. One that we can use to encourage a greater effort from ourselves. We can learn to become grateful for it when it arises in us. We can learn how to dodge it when it is aimed at us. We can learn to be compassionate for those that are seized by it. At a distance.
It’s not your job to make other people comfortable in the face of your power. Your job is to make sure that you are using it to uplift the best that you’ve got. Your job is to use your power to take the most life-affirming actions that you can. Your job is to acknowledge when you’ve lost your center so that you can come back to it as quickly and compassionately as possible.
Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising
While this week begins a long and important process of uncovering the misconceptions, misunderstandings and communication glitches that trip up your career trajectory, it also helps you to make preemptive clarifications that can help redirect future missteps towards success. To do this, make sure that you are paying special attention to anything that tips you off as suspect, ill-formed or in need of immediate attention. Pausing to clarify, gather data and keep records of what is going on will help the future edits that you’ll be making in professional matters.
Don’t be afraid to be specific. Detailed. Driven to perfect the concepts your career is built upon.
Give in to your convictions. Protect what you believe in. Say yes to the journeys that make your heart beat faster just by thinking of them. Future generations need you to. If you are on this patch of road because your convictions got you here, remember that this is about more than just you. This is about the fact that the truth is trying to find a way to live through you. Act through you. Demonstrate itself through you. Let yourself be used by it. Be willing to be a servant of it. Give your effort, courage, and energy to it.
Capricorn & Capricorn Rising
There’s no use going forward unless it is honestly. There is no use going through the effort of collaborating unless it feels fair to all parties involved. There is no use pretending that everything is working out with someone else if it isn’t.
This week wants you to come clean.
It wants you to admit what you need from others. It wants you to be clear about what you have to give in return. It wants you to understand the resentments that can build in you when you aren’t honest with yourself about how things are feeling for you.
This week wants you to remember that if something isn’t working on your end, it most likely isn’t working out on their end either. Don’t be afraid to speak about difficulties that need addressing. Instead, have faith that it is what you are supposed to do.
Connect to your desire to find a suitable match to your creative energy. This might require that you end certain partnerships, but make sure that you are giving the partnerships that you are in the conditions that they need to thrive before announcing that they aren’t the right fit. Put in a solid effort before you throw in the towel.
Aquarius & Aquarius Rising
Caring is a passionate endeavor. Loving leaves us open to an array of feelings we wouldn’t volunteer to explore on our own. Being in partnership is an invitation to have our hearts opened, widened, stretched. Sometimes against our will. Sometimes against all odds. Sometimes to the benefit of all involved.
How can your quest to bring more love into your life benefit all involved?
This week’s sun/Mars conjunction conspires to have you care more. About the potential of your relationships. About the strength of the container that you are building with others. About the boundaries that you need to protect when it comes to your unions. And to your heart.
If a relationship is worth fighting for, it’s worth working through the ups and downs you’ll go through. This week might test your ties, but it will also help to purify your heart. Helping you to get clear on which patterns you are reliving unconsciously in your relationships. Helping you to get clear on which of your defensive behaviors keeps love at bay. Helping you to get clear on the things that you are most passionate about serving and protecting in the relationships that mean the most to you, and how to do so effectively, passionately, and purposefully.
Pisces & Pisces Rising
Get wise to the messages that you receive from others. By listening to what they tell you. By believing what you hear. By accepting what is in front of you, even if it’s opposite to what you most want to be true.
As Mercury enters your 7th house of relationships, it will spend weeks wandering through the corridors that connect you to others. Throughout this extended transit, you are bound to find clues as to what clogs your cooperative systems. Reorganizing, reprioritizing and reviewing your most important relationship dynamics will deepen the level of intimacy that you are able to experience. Beginning the process now will only help you make the most of Mercury’s upcoming retrograde through this part of your chart.
This week also has a solo mission in store for you. To get clear on what fuels your days. To get clear on what helps you accomplish your tasks. To get clear on what motivates you to do the work that you need to do. Getting applause for all the hard work that you have been putting in is important. Getting some recognition for all of your labour is essential. Getting some love for the efforts that you make isn’t out of line. It’s necessary and much needed at this point in your process.