For the week of July 23, 2020

By Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19): “The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.” Aries playwright Samuel Beckett made that observation, and now I’m passing it on to you as you glide into an extra-creative phase of your astrological cycle. I hope you will regard Beckett’s idea as an open-ended encouragement to improvise and experiment. May it rouse you to brainstorm about novel possibilities. May it inspire you to explore fresh trends you could launch. May it mobilize you to imagine the new worlds you might Big Bang into existence.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Author Diane Ackerman tells us, “So often loneliness comes from being out of touch with parts of oneself.” That’s the kind of loneliness I worry you may be susceptible to right now. You’re a bit out of touch with aspects of your psyche that are crucial for you to include in your total sense of self. You’ve been neglecting to nurture certain soulful qualities that keep you healthy and wise. Please note: It won’t be useful to try to find those parts of you in other people; you will have to locate them in your own depths. Here’s the good news: The coming weeks will be an excellent time to do just that.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “Someone ought to do it, but why should I?” Author and activist Annie Besant identified that sentence as the motto of people who are moral cowards: those who know about an injustice but do nothing to address it. Very few of us have completely avoided that behavior. Most of us, including me, have now and then chosen to serve our need for comfort instead of standing up against corruption or unfairness. But I think it’s more important than usual that you don’t engage in such moral cowardice now. More depends on your integrity and bravery than you realize.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Born in 1936, Cancerian author and activist June Jordan was a black feminist bisexual born to Jamaican immigrant parents. When she was growing up, her father beat her and her mother committed suicide. Later, she raised her child alone as a single mother. Despite the challenges she faced, she published 28 books, won numerous awards and wielded significant influence. How did she do it? She was a highly evolved Cancerian in the sense that she put a priority on treating herself well. “I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect,” she testified. I’d like to make that your keynote for the rest of 2020. Your task is to achieve June Jordan-levels of self-care.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “How can I communicate to wild bunnies that I am their ally?” asked a Twitter blogger named Ghost Girl. That question is a good place to start my oracle for you. In the coming weeks, I think you’ll be wise to meditate on how to enhance your relationship with all kinds of wild things: animals, people, weather, landscapes and your own exotic thoughts and fantasies. In my opinion, you will upgrade your intelligence and well-being by increasing your access to influences that don’t necessarily play by conventional rules and that draw their energy from primal sources.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): It’s never too late to have a rebellious adolescence—hopefully bigger and better and smarter than any you’ve had before. And according to my analysis, now would be a favorable time to get started. Is there any stuffy authority you’d be wise to flout? Any dumb and oppressive conventions you would benefit from breaking? Any stale old traditions you’re primed to ignore so you can create some lively new traditions? In my estimation, you will generate good fortune for yourself if you try some benevolent mischief and creative experiments.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Your word of power for the coming weeks is ubuntu, a Zulu term meaning “I am because we are” or “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity.” Nobel Prize-winning theologian Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes, “A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished.” I hope that between now and Aug. 25, you will put ubuntu at the center of everything you do. Make it an intensely practical practice.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them,” says Scorpio-born Liberian politician Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. “If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” I trust you’ve arrived at this realization on your own in the past few weeks. And I hope you have audaciously expanded and supercharged your dreams so that they do indeed surpass your current ability to accomplish them. If you have not yet done this daring work, please attend to it now. If you have done it, move on to the next step: making definite plans to acquire the power and resources necessary to achieve your new, improved dreams.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): “The soul should always stand ajar,” wrote Sagittarian poet Emily Dickinson, “That if the heaven inquire, / He will not be obliged to wait, / Or shy of troubling her.” I’m confident that this will be a fertile meditation for you in the coming weeks. So what does it mean? By “heaven,” I assume Dickinson meant marvelous interventions, sacred revelations, and lucky accidents—and maybe also soulful invitations, out-of-the-blue opportunities and supernatural breakthroughs. What do you think? What can you do to make your soul ajar for phenomena like those?

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): “Everything is complicated,” wrote poet Wallace Stevens. “If that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.” I agree! And therefore, I conclude, you should shed any resentment you might feel for the fact that our world is a crazy tangle of mystifying and interesting stories. Drop any wish that life will stop being so fascinatingly messy and confusingly intriguing. Instead, why not celebrate the deep riddles? And revel in the intriguing complexity? And give holy thanks for the paradoxical beauty? Everything I just said should prepare you well for the next four weeks.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You’ll be extra sensitive to stimuli in the coming weeks. Every little event will touch you more intensely than usual. Every perception will flow into you with an unusually strong potential to move you and influence you. That’s why I think you should be vigilantly self-protective. Erect a psychic shield around yourself. Make sure your boundaries are firm and clear. Affirm your unshakable commitment to deflecting vibes that aren’t of use to you and welcoming vibes that will enhance your well-being.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Actress Gwyneth Paltrow founded Goop, a company that markets exotic, expensive health treatments. She claims that far-infrared gemstone therapy and crystal-based sound-healing baths will dissolve your negativity. Allowing bees to sting your scars will supposedly cause the scars to fade. Drinking “sex juice,” a blend of watermelon and alkaline water, will enhance your libido. The “collagen martini,” which is a mix of vodka, vermouth, olive juice and collagen peptides, will smooth your skin’s wrinkles. I’m favorably disposed to you taking strong actions to improve your well-being in the coming weeks, but I recommend that you try cheaper, more reliable modalities than those Paltrow recommends. Like what? Ample sleep and good food, for starters, along with fun exercise, time in nature, enjoyable meditation sessions and tender expressions of love.