Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images
The sun completes its journey through Leo this week and enters thoughtful, conscientious Virgo on Friday afternoon. For next month — and particularly under Friday night’s new moon in Virgo — try to pay a bit of extra attention to the details. Tidying up your living space will feel incredibly satisfying, and checking tasks off your to-do list could give you a renewed sense of control over your life. Now isn’t the time to get swept away by big dreams, but to buckle down and ask yourself how, exactly, you’ll turn them into reality.
Inspiration, good timing, or just a bit of luck can take you far — the problem is that those things aren’t exactly reliable. You can’t count on a lucky break every time you need one, no matter how fervently you hope. So this week, do yourself a favor by instilling some supportive routines. If you work hard and stay consistent, you won’t need to rely on good fortune alone — you can welcome serendipity when it comes, while knowing you’ll be fine either way.
You’ve probably been doing lots of hard inner work lately, thinking deeply about your emotional needs and baggage, the harmful patterns you tend to fall into, and the changes you’re ready to make. Since work like this happens largely beneath the surface, it’s easy to get discouraged after a while, feeling like nothing is happening at all. But this week, trust that you have, in fact, grown. You’ve learned new things about yourself and developed new skills, and now it’s time to put them to use.
Sometimes, you know perfectly well what you should do in a given situation. You can see what would be most ethical, you’re aware of what risks are most likely to benefit you in the long run — but just because you can recognize the best course of action doesn’t mean you want to take it. Maybe it’s difficult or scary; maybe you just hesitate to trust your instincts. This week, though, take a deep breath and do it anyway. Your instincts are reliable.
You like to think of yourself as an open-minded person, and you’re happy to listen to others, even when you disagree on the finer points. But it can be hard to stay open to viewpoints that challenge you on a more fundamental level: It’s not pleasant to have your worldview shaken or to confront the possibility that you might have been wrong. This week, though, try to keep listening anyway. You might decide that you were right all along, but there’s also a chance that your perspective will be changed for the better.
You care deeply about doing things right; whether that means living up to abstract principles or following specific instructions to the letter, you value integrity. But occasionally, it can be helpful to stop asking yourself whether your behavior is in keeping with your big-picture ideals and instead ask whether those ideals are still serving you. If an activity or relationship that makes you feel great about yourself doesn’t quite align with what you thought you wanted, consider the possibility that your desires have evolved.
Your more critical side tends to insist that there’s no such thing as a true fresh start. No matter how much you wish that you could, you’re all too aware that you can’t just wipe the slate clean and begin again. But while you can’t erase the past, you can decide not to let it determine what you do next. Right now, all kinds of new and exciting possibilities are available to you, and it’s up to you to unburden yourself from the past and take advantage of them.
Nobody’s feelings are warm and generous all the time — but nonetheless, you might imagine that yours should be. When something or someone gets under your skin for no clear reason, you tend to feel guilty, imagining that you’re being unjust. But this week, remember that you’re allowed to dislike people for good reasons, bad reasons, or no reason at all; you’re allowed to desire things that aren’t good for you and things you haven’t earned. You’re responsible for behaving fairly and respectfully, but you don’t have to police your emotions; be honest with yourself about what you really feel.
In your more pessimistic moods, you can convince yourself that it’s too late to live the life you really want. You imagine that you’ve squandered too many opportunities, taken too many wrong paths to turn around now. But this week, remember that you haven’t run out of time yet. If you’ve been longing for a change, now is the time to make your move — even if it seems wildly ambitious, even if you risk failure, it’s still worth trying.
Sometimes, you get the feeling that your life is unfolding haphazardly, completely at random. You take a few steps down one path, then you pivot and try something different, and while you have interesting and worthwhile adventures along the way, you might get the sense that you’re not building toward anything bigger. You worry that ultimately, you’re just wasting your time. In reality, though, your everyday hard work and minor decisions are adding up; just because you can’t see the bigger picture at the moment doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
While some people seem content to go through life sloppily, without much thought or intention, you care deeply about being good at what you do. You want to work hard and act with intention, to be the sort of person others can look up to. Just remember that you don’t need to instantly be good at everything you try. You deserve the space to be a beginner, even to make a mess of things sometimes. This week, especially, remember that you can learn things from others — you don’t always have to be the one who knows everything.
True intimacy requires effort and commitment, and you aren’t always able or willing to put in the work. You understand that your energy is finite, and you need to save it for those who genuinely matter to you. This week, just don’t be more stingy than you need to be. You don’t need to save all your effort for your innermost circle; opening up a bit more with people you don’t yet know well could allow you to build a friendship later on.
It’s easy to imagine that being a good friend means being totally selfless, striving to meet others’ needs no matter the cost to you. But, in fact, that’s not what the people you care about really want. Those who love you don’t want you to suppress your own needs; they want a relationship that’s reciprocal, that satisfies everyone. So this week, make a point of being honest about your needs. Your friends will appreciate your directness, and it’ll build the groundwork for a more balanced connection.
Read the weekly horoscopes for the week of August 10th. The weekly horoscopes for the week of August 24th will be online next Sunday.
Buy Claire Comstock-Gay’s book, Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Stars, here.
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