Advertisement
Agnès Varda, a twin.
Photo Illustration: by Preeti Kinha; Photos: Getty Images
On Monday morning, a new moon in Gemini offers a fresh start. But don’t expect that one clear path will present itself to you as the “right choice” or that one vision of the future will shine brighter than the others. Rather, this new beginning is about an increase in possibilities. You don’t have to choose between them just yet – just let them all bloom. Then, early Friday morning, Mercury retrograde finally ends, and some of the stress and confusion of the past three weeks is beginning to ease. If this time has caused you to think—to think about changing your job, your relationships, your life—that work can begin in earnest. Saturn’s retrograde will finally begin on Saturday evening. In the next four and a half months you may face challenging lessons and difficult truths. But as hard as Saturn retrograde can feel, it’s also fair. So if you’ve been working hard – whether at your job or on yourself – rest assured that your work is finally bearing fruit.
Some people build beautiful lives by carefully planning and carefully considering their options. You, on the other hand, prefer to leave room for magic, for surprise. You like to trust in fate, in the unpredictability of the universe and in your own impulsive willpower. But lately you’ve been concerned that none of your bold, bold actions have made much of a difference, that they’ve all turned out to be false starts. But that’s not true. Even if they didn’t produce the hoped-for results, they were useful exercises, necessary steps in the right direction. This week you will see: none of your efforts were in vain.
More than most people, you respond to the needs of your body: eat well, allow yourself moments of rest and well-being. But sometimes you forget that you need mental nourishment as well as physical nourishment. Your inner life—your intellectual vitality, your curiosity, your sheer amazement at how much there is to learn—needs to be cultivated as well. It’s easy to forget to take care of this part of yourself, but this week it’s crucial that you try. You will be amazed how fulfilling it is to read, to dream, to ask questions. Your whole world becomes brighter, more alive.
It’s a gift to be as curious and smart as you are. You understand complexity and abstraction, can immediately keep competing ideas in mind and accept ambiguity without giving up your search for truth. The only problem is that you have a habit of getting lost in abstractions, thinking so hard you forget you have a body and you also have a heart. Let your mind wander and wander this week. Let it do what it does best. Just remember that you can also enjoy physical pleasures.
It’s important to stay on top of things. You are aware that your own sorrows are not the greatest in the universe, your own heartbreak no more painful than what others have experienced. But that doesn’t make them insignificant. This week give yourself the time and space you need to heal and mourn what you have lost. It is painful to be human in this life, and just because others are suffering doesn’t mean it is yours should matter less to you. The answer right now is not to suppress your emotions, but to acknowledge that we all have our own grief and help each other to endure it.
As frustrating as it may be, you won’t be solving any major problems alone this week. You probably won’t be the hero or experience moments of individual genius. Instead, you get something better: the chance to think and discover together with others – to change them and be changed in turn. The loneliness that has plagued you will subside, not because of some grand brave action, but through the ordinary, everyday experience of connecting with people. Your world and your imagination will be expanded once again. The ones you love will activate parts of you that you would never have discovered on your own.
Lately you’ve worried that your gifts are being wasted – that your wisdom, your skills, your courage are all being swallowed up by the long hours at work paying the bills. There’s definitely nothing there not correct to do what you have to do to stay afloat, but you know in your heart that you have more ideas, more love, and more energy to offer. This week try to keep up your belief that more is possible. Opportunities to live the life you have dreamed of are coming and you should be ready to say yes.
From your point of view, you have struggled to see how our world could ever truly be repaired: the forces of violence are too powerful, the injustices too deep. But even if you’ve thought and struggled and found no satisfying answers, no compelling reason for optimism, you still have to keep going. So this week your task is to find something that will make progressing more bearable. Maybe it’s art, maybe friendship, maybe just the stubborn thrill of not wanting to give in. Someday you will see that all is not lost for the simple reason that you are still here, still going, still not defeated.
Honesty is very important to you, even (perhaps especially) in situations where most people would prefer a comforting lie. For you, false hope is worse than none at all. And so it’s easy to forget that you need and deserve a little recklessness every now and then. Take every opportunity this week to make your friends laugh, get outside and feel the sun on your skin, just enjoy the beauty of the world. There’s plenty of time for seriousness and hard work, but occasionally you need a little fun to fuel yourself, to strengthen your heart.
Your life has a purpose, of course, but it doesn’t always do that feeling on this way to you You worry that you are missing a greater purpose and wasting your precious time here on earth. Pay attention this week, however, and you will notice the magic and importance of the everyday in your life. All the little experiences you have, all the tiny moments of connection with others, add up to something beautiful and worthwhile. You don’t have to jump into big drama or embark on a trip across the globe. Wherever you are, there is meaning to be found. It’s just a matter of perspective.
Nowadays you feel guilty for almost everything: because you worked too much, too little or wrong. For your actions, your emotions, your personality itself. But getting through the day has been hard enough without being hard on yourself too. You won’t believe it when your friends confirm that you’re doing your best. Your imagination is active enough that you can always Think of ways you could do more, do better. But calm down that critical voice in your head this week. Be gentle with yourself.
In such a vast and wondrous universe full of fascinating people, places and ideas, you hardly find it necessary to focus on your comparatively calm inner life, your emotional needs. You prefer to direct your energies outward, and you can be magnanimous beyond measure with your attention. This week, while you treat others with open-minded, non-judgmental curiosity, remember not to neglect yourself. It is not selfish or selfish to be interested in your own inner world – your thoughts and feelings, your secrets, your wounds. All of this deserves your attention and also your generosity.
It will seem like everyone you meet this week is trying to tell you what to do. They all have an opinion about the right and wrong way to be, to dream, to change the world. Many of their ideas will be smart, useful and worth hearing. But you can’t live up to every opportunity or fight every good fight. Not in a week, not even in a lifetime. You have to rely on knowing the right course of action to you. Your own inner compass will not lead you astray.
Read the weekly horoscopes for the week of May 23rd. The weekly horoscopes for the week of June 6th will be online next Sunday.
Get the book by Claire Comstock-Gay, Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Starsnow outside.
