MAY GALACTIC RABBIT HOROSCOPES!

Dear Bunny Rabbits,

Here are the little offerings I have for you this May. I love you all so much even though I have a hard time sprinkling my love around willy-nilly. That’s because you make me a little wiser every month and helps me pay my phone bill, too!

So thank you from the depths of my oceanic heart,

Galactic Rabbit!

P.S. It’s May!

P.S. Thanks Claire!

P.S. Money can’t buy love but it keeps me coming back!

 

Aquarius

Some of us were born to drag our heels along the dirt path, to slow the wheel, but not you. You, Aquarius, have an inventor’s heart. When the going is slow, you ask “what would it take to clear the path, to gather momentum?” You turn your delicate eye toward the surrounding world and decipher its inner workings.

Sometimes this drive is your saving grace, the spark that illuminates your darkest moments, the spirit that drags you out of the doldrums and keeps you in good company. Why is it, then, that you spend so much time denying your gift for greatness?

Even as opportunity after opportunity comes your way, even as love opens and closes the chambers of your heart, even after days persistent with small perfect offerings, you turn inward. You must know that you are always on your path. There is no way off. You can choose to deny your purpose or you can move forward with grace. The sun is pouring down from the open sky. It wants you to straighten your back and stand tall in the light.

 

Pisces

You’ve been working hard to cultivate your solitude, figuring out what it means to love yourself and when loving yourself is the best thing you can do. The hot water whistles and you steep the same herbs in the same cup. It’s good for you… or it’s good enough.

It would be better if you weren’t alone. Oh I know that you’re often near another body, I know that you are full of easy charm and infectious good times that draw bees to the bright pollen of you.

I admit, I am afraid of isolation,

and of the way the land breaks off here
into pieces,

and of the woman who says forever
moving her tongue along my skin
like she means it.

If I believe her, I will suffer.
If I don’t believe her, I will suffer.

(Stacie Cassarino, “NW”)

I know too, soft one, that there’s a closed door in you. Lovers and friends come and go, rapping their knuckles on the wood, peering through the keyhole and trying desperately to ascertain what lives behind it. What fear and false knowledge do you hold onto which keeps the door closed so tight? Maybe it’s time you began the slow painful work of opening. All this time you’ve convinced yourself that the ones who come will not be ready for what they find inside of you. It’s you who wasn’t ready. You’re ready now.

 

Aries

Did you see Tracy Chapman’s recent performance of “Stand By Me” on The David Letterman show? Seems to me like America must have summoned her onto that stage just so she could break our hearts a little. I’ve been listening to another Tracy Chapman song this week, “Across the Lines.” When she sings about the riots, part of me remembers the song’s release date (1988) and part of me feels she must mean these riots, in Baltimore, in Ferguson, in our hearts everyday louder and louder.

Who would dare to go? Tracy Chapman would. Because she’s an Aries. Because her heart is full of un-wavering courage.

What would it look like if you channeled the dynamic creativity you harness toward something that truly mattered to you? Why waste your time with what doesn’t inspire you? Aries, you hold in your body the possibility of uncountable exciting futures. Despite numerous disappointments, you rise and meet the day. So why wait? Failure is a small price to pay on the way toward greatness.

 

Taurus

Taurus, I’m writing you from a new cafe situated on Brighton Beach. A grandmother pushes her walker; she’s wearing a red velvet chauffeur-style cap, a bejeweled purple sweater, and there’s a white parrot perched on her arm. Men amble along with their collars starched, silk sleeves rolled up, loafers just shined. Across the street, a babushka is sitting on the cement across from the fruit stand selling intricate white wool scarves.

Years ago, everyone was talking about Coney Island. Performing rituals of closing. There was loss and long-time establishments closed but, concurrently, revived interest, beautiful murals and sculptures. The Steeplechase tower got repainted and you can see someone hammering nails into their nose every Thursday at the Freak Show.

Even after Hurricane Sandy, after so much heartbreak, the Cyclone stands, the flower shops re-open and there, right on the sidewalk, are hills of lilac wrapped in butcher paper. What I’m trying to tell you is that there are places in this world that resist devastation, people who rise up from under crashing waves with their cups full and their hair looking really good. You are one of those.

 

Gemini

It’s May! It’s May! The sun is close, the earth is soft, and flowers bow under the tiny weight of butterflies. Don’t you feel new too? I see you wrapped up in bright colors, washed clean of winter’s dust and despair.

What’s love got to do with it? (It should be about trust it should be about us, baby) Everything. Because love is beautiful and generative, it challenges us to be our best selves, to build bridges over impossible distances.

Has love made a bloom of your heart? If so then surely you must have noticed how strangers are drawn to you, how they bring you offerings in exchange for a little of your light. If love has opened you, then the world sees you open and opens in return. It gives you everything you need and more than you ever expected.

But, Twin-star, if you are reading this with a closed heart, if you are wrapped in the shadow of what might have gone right but keeps going wrong then know this: the world can only offer us what we make room for. It’s simple. The longer you hold onto what doesn’t lift you up, the longer you keep yourself at the bottom.

 

Cancer

You keep a lot inside, much more than many people around you perceive. You set the table and lay each pain separately on the crisp white tablecloth and begin to explain: when this happened, when this was said, when that was done. Emotions don’t scare you and so you find it easy enough to lay them bare like small artifacts, the pieces to the puzzle of your life. You are, in many ways, the master of hiding in plain sight. Except, of course, from those who love you, who have witnessed you separate yourself (time and time again) from your wounded parts, as careful as a surgeon, and dive headfirst into work, errands… anything that will distract you.

Do you return to those wounds at night, Cancer? Do they follow you quietly home after all your work is done? Perhaps it’s not enough to name what ails you, to reasonably state the case as one might if one were a scientist of the heart.

If I could pull you in closer I would. If I could wrap your body up in my body, if you could feel my fortitude, you might let go of yours. And then you could tell me, again, where it hurts. We’d touch each sore spot together. Here? Here.

 

Leo

 There’s this poem I used to carry around with me everywhere, a cycle by Canadian poet (and Leo) Esta Spalding. The poem, “August,” has many beautiful moments but this is the one I held onto:

You said, there are women

I know whose presence

changes the quality of air.

 

I am not one of those.

I want to pretend I don’t know why I loved those words for so long, that I know deep in my heart I am a woman who can, for someone—for many someones, change a room simply by entering it. Truth is, I know how to convince myself that I’m nothing special. It’s easy to believe that what sets me apart is exactly what will turn people away. Out of fear or misunderstanding, out of an inability to relate. I know too that in choosing to believe those words I choose the safety of invisibility over the risk of being seen and in being seen—loved.

When you inhabit your diminished self, when you choose to hide your specialness from the world so that those around you might be comfortable—so there is no risk of loss, you give up the chance to experience being loved wholly. You reinforce a belief (you hate to admit you hold) that being loved wholly is not for you and never was but, darling, you are wrong.

 

Virgo

Once, Virgos surrounded me. They came out of the woodwork and into my life. If I needed a romantic walk in the woods, if I wanted to make a silly lip-syncing video to combat depression, if I was filled with the sudden desire to get my nipples pierced …there was a Virgo for that. At that point in my life, I so lacked grounding and nurture, the goddess sent me a Virgo superpack. I was better off for it.

Virgo, I know that you often feel called to take care. When your paid work is done, you find yourself facing the volunteer work. When the volunteer work is done, you uncover old favors you promised to pay. And always, alongside the work you do with your hands, are the labors of your heart.

Virgo, know this: none of that work was wasted on me. Just, sometimes it’s important we let the world give back to us. That’s about trust without expectation, about believing the best in people and letting the story unfold without our help. Virgo, this month I give you permission to let the work come to you. “You have loved enough, now let me be the lover.”

 

Libra

There are people out there who have no idea who they are. They look down at their hands and see only their hands. They allow themselves to imagine what the world tells them to imagine and nothing more than that. You are not of those. Libra, you know exactly what your hands are capable of, how to fall in love with your life and love how you make a living. In fact, these days, seems to me like you know exactly what you want and like you might, with a little grease, have everything you need to work your way toward it.

Except you don’t. You know what I mean, you put on the old songs that strike up the old insecurities, you walk the old walk to the tune of someone you don’t have to be. And that’s how you keep it going, that’s how you keep your magic packed up in the back of your closet where even you forget about it. You look down at your hands and pretend you don’t notice how much more they could be doing. When people come close, you ward them off, you let them see the box put away, never what’s in it.

But you want them to come closer, need them to. Every night you wonder where your magic’s gone but nothing is lost, sweet one. Not your possibilities and not all the work you’ve done to get this far. Just take down the box and hold it like it’s yours.

 

Scorpio

Are Scorpios especially sensitive to SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) or is there another reason that the very same thoughts that made it impossible to get out of bed all winter barely phase you as summer starts to come on? You’re stirring that lemonade and letting all the sour sediment drift to the bottom as you sip sweetness from the rim.

Why not? Is there some law, some ordinance in place that mandates we crawl on our hands and knees begging for salvation until it manifests out of thin air?

If there is then you needn’t worry about it. You are the salvation you’ve been waiting for and sometimes you’ve got to stir the sugar in yourself because who the fuck else is gonna make it just the way you like it? Practicing hopefulness is work and it’s admirable. It’s OK to put planning the future on pause and focus on today. To allow for the possibility that despite everything being entirely up in the air, despite how much sour there is right there at the bottom of your glass, there’s a chance you just might be happy.

 

Sagittarrius

Once, in a PHD class on Feminist Literary Theory, a girl leaned across the table and asked, “Where is the body? Where is the body?” She was talking about the author’s relationship to the text but we rolled with it. It was a joke we took everywhere with us. “Where is the body?” we would ask each other over salmon benedict with not enough salmon. “Where is the body?” recounting sex escapades without substance, without the fruit of desire.

Sagittarius, we spend so much time, you and I, asking each other this with regard to the pulp of our lives. We forget the body itself, the flesh and muscle, the bone.

The body distracted, the body put to sleep or buzzing with anxious energy. The body rummages through empty cabinets looking for sugar. The body takes the same meal every day, sufficient without pleasure. The body, your body, needs you to return with offerings in your hands. Give it a stretch, Archer, give it a run and bring it in. An arrow can’t be strung on a loose bow.

 

Capricorn

There was a time I nurtured the wild heart in me. I fucked girls on midnight park benches and in between train cars. I held their perfect backs as they flew down long avenues on bicycles. I held on and I fell off too. I believed I was a woman with bad boundaries. That I let too many people in too close, that I had a hard time sleeping alone.

I don’t believe that anymore. I know now that wildness is not the opposite of restraint. That one can run naked through the streets and still know nothing about vulnerability. Boundaries, it turns out, are the very thing that gave me strength to love as hard as I did without ever losing myself.

Capricorn, are you sitting at home, sorting through each name in your rolodex, wondering who is worth your company? Capricorn you don’t know everything you think you know. And, you won’t find out unless you let yourself scratch beneath the surface. That means staying out a little later, getting just a little more free, trusting that no matter how wild the wind, you won’t get blown away.

April Horoscopes/ Love Magic

Dear Lovers,

I have inhaled impossibility, and walk at such an angle, all the stars/ have hung their carnival chains of light for me. There is a streetcar runs from here to Mars. / I shall be seeing you, my darling, there

As teenage witches, my best friend and I haunted the carpeted corners of Barnes & Noble on Broadway and 68th and at the edge of Union Square. We loved the occult section (of course) and the poetry section, regularly ferrying books from one to the other. According to “The Secret Language of Birthdays,” she was born on the day of passionate singularity and I was born on the day of passionate actuality. Passionately, we’d read ourselves out loud until we were satisfied with all we knew.

The poems were the important thing. We recited them on long dark walks through Hell’s Kitchen and the LES. After school, we hunted a language that was so big it could fill up the dark spaces we hadn’t found names for. And, although the library of our minds grew thick with writers, we always came back to Adrienne Rich.

Sitting alone, now, surrounded by her books, I am overcome (again) by her wisdom. This Taurus, this bull-headed, stubborn, beautiful poet, whose will to change was a will pulled from a well of endless love. Love for other women, love for this earth, this erring human race she reached for with an open hand. I won’t say she was without fault. Love is not pristine, not a crystal that is born beautiful and clear in the mind. It is a muddy ugly thing, a blood thing, barely shaped and grappling with light. With Venus and Mars casting about in Taurus, and Sun in Taurus on the horizon, it’s only fitting that each of the offerings I give you have a small bit of her words.

With Wild Patience,
Galactic Rabbit

P.S. Thanks again and always for all your donations. Sometimes they feel like they are coming straight from an Angel’s mouth.

 

Aquarius

Sweet one, I’m so glad you’re here. The nearness of you, your mind, which is both electric current and cool lake, awes me. Once, I wasn’t sure how to believe in you. It can be difficult for a water animal to understand wind unless the water animal learns the value of surrender. I am learning the value of surrender, how we make waves together, how those waves change the shape of everything they touch.

No one ever told us we had to study our lives, make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history / or music, that we should begin with / simple exercises first / and slowly go on trying / the hard ones.”

Aquarius, what I have learned about your magic, your valiant heart, is only a small fraction of what you continue to discover. You are the seed of passion and revolution. You were born with a star in you, a star that wants to be known, a star that belongs in a tapestry of relations. In a world begging for light, you must learn (over and over) what light you have to offer. You must learn how to nurture when you feel abandoned, how to be generous when you are afraid.

 

Pisces

There are days, I know, when you feel like nothing has changed. Like the person you are arriving, is the same one you’ve always been, is the same one you’ll be when you leave. Those are the days when you choose irreverence, when you hold on to a part of yourself you’ve already outgrown so that you might not have to honor all the work you’ve done. Honoring that work would mean continuing, continuing whether or not you are alone on your journey, continuing without an end in sight.

If you feel alone, then you are alone. There are years of our lives when we learn how to be alone and those are the years that save us.

“The moment when a feeling enters a body / is political. This touch is political. // Sometimes I dream we are floating on water / hand-in-hand; sinking without terror.”

The distant future is not a fruitful promise for anyone and this world has no intention of proving you right or wrong. It can only give you what you decide you deserve, it is—believe it or not—your most steadfast witness.

 

Aries 

“We did this. Conceived / of each other, conceived each other in a darkness / which I remember as drenched light. // I want to call this, life. // But I can’t call it life until we start to move.”

Many years ago, an Aries I was dating told me that she hoped to be the kind of lover who was entirely selfless. Back then, I believed I understood something about love that she didn’t. That love could never be selfless—that to be selfish was to be human. I didn’t know, then, how to imagine god—or the impossible. Now that I’ve dived to the bottom of my darkest self, now that I’ve learned how to live without breathing, I know that love is not being human. It’s what humans aspire toward.

Selflessness can be a tall order, especially for those of us who’ve spent our entire lives sacrificing our needs in order to care for those around us. Because we are less fragile, because we know how to put pain somewhere else and wait for it to eat itself. But selflessness can also be a kind of freedom, a meditation on forgiveness.

Selflessness could mean the difference between being right and being loved.

 

Taurus 

Sweet bull, last night I took too many stimulants and stayed up late reading and re-reading Adrienne Rich, writing and re-writing the same sentences. I lay awake, muscles twitching, listening to the squirrels meticulously scratching their way into my home.

“I am an instrument in the shape / of a woman trying to translate pulsations / into images     for the relief of the body / and the reconstruction of the mind.”

What is a body, Taurus? This thing we haul out of bed, rinse and empty? All my life I have been shown how to care for it, eat the right things, move enough. All my life caring for it was not the same as loving it.

You store your treasures in tough boxes, take the glass from the edge of the counter, and polish what needs polishing. Taurus, in caring for yourself, you are re-entering a web of connectivity. Your physical presence will reconstruct your mind. There will be days when touching yourself will mean inspiration; there will be weeks when tears will emerge as a new language.

 

Gemini 

“when I think of landscape I am thinking of a time. / When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever. / I could say: those mountains have a meaning/ but further than that I could not say. // To do something very common, in my own way.”

My Tender Prince, your star is so bright these days, I feel illuminated just looking at you. You, more than anyone I know, have learned what a year is made of. Who was that dark cloud moving erratically over the blocks and avenues? You wouldn’t even recognize her.

She was doing the necessary work of shifting so much sadness from her heart.

I love your will, the way you build the space rocket piece by piece before setting off for the moon. The way you trust your path—even when it’s uncertain, even when all forces seem ranged against you. Magnolia trees bloom in early spring, before their leaves develop, and in late summer—after full leaf development. Perhaps you missed your first chance to open, to bring all your color to the world. I know that you can feel summer coming and summer is your season, you’re ready now.

 

Cancer

Today winter is a hush sound over Lake Seneca and there are crocus coming up, bright and without responsibility. We are not like them, simple with beauty. We must live through every season. I want to walk with you down the rock path by the water, hold your hand, small gesture.

I know you are heavy, see you straining with the weight of responsibility, the suffering of those closest to you. Family relations are not fixed; they are vulnerable to the people that choose them. They are subject to waves of chaos just as much as they are places of refuge. More than that, they are a part of us, something that can’t be erased with busy schedules or distance. Your family isn’t what you’re doing; it’s who you are.

” …No person trying to take responsibility for her or his identity should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors.” In the dim light of evening, when your work is done and time sits still between us, I am waiting for the opportunity to hold you up like you have done for me time and time again.

 

Leo  

Once I adored a Leo boy. In winter, we walked the Coney Island boardwalk and took our love slow. For my birthday he gave me a tiny jewelry box. Inside: a blushing porcelain rabbit and a long rusty nail. His love: so precious I couldn’t stop imagining it breaking in my hands. His love: drove right through me, sharp and without compromise. He was bipolar. He told me he was undeserving of love. He called himself a god and I worshipped at his feet.

“this we were, this is how we tried to love,/and these are the forces they had ranged against us,/and these are the forces we had ranged within us,/within us and against us, against us and within us.”

When I write you about this mad love, it’s only because I want you to know that I see both sides of you, the rabbit and rusty nail, the fragility of your affection and the iron-strength of it. Each time you have loved, each time you have been the lover, you thought you had to choose. You don’t have to choose. If you can learn to love as both, the ones you love will honor both. If you can learn to love as both, you won’t have to lose.

 

Virgo

In the middle of the city is a verdant field; in the middle of the field is your body. Through your body runs a heavy branch, a branch the fell from a powerful tree, a branch that belonged to your ancestors and also to no one because it is made of what you are made of. To get this far, you’ve had to protect that little piece of life in you. You’ve employed deliberate coping mechanisms that allowed you to feel in control. But, you can’t control your relationships. You can’t control how you are seen and how you are loved. All you can do is drink the light and water around you and use it to grow.

“what in fact I keep choosing//are these words, these whispers, conversations/ from which time the truth breaks moist and green.”

When you speak your truth, not what you want to believe but what you’re afraid to admit you believe, buds break from the branch and open like small green promises. Sometimes the truth might feel ugly, unmanageable but aren’t you tired of carrying the hardness of winter inside of you? Be warned, Virgo, it hurts to bloom, each opening a small wound and so delicate.

 

Libra

A woman outside is pushing her walker through a half empty parking lot. I watch her from the third floor of the room I am sleeping in. I feel her look up at me, or she feels me looking and there we are, watching. She moves on and I turn back to my friend who is doing yoga stretches on the living room floor. To see someone is an ordinary thing. Everyday, we take each other in. These are already moments of love, small openings we create in ourselves so that someone’s humanness can pass through.

“Am I speaking coldly when I tell you in a dream or in this poem, there are no miracles?”

You’ve been waiting for the big sign, the promised thing, a bird with your life in its mouth. I’m not saying it’s not coming but what if it’s not coming? What if all you have is this ordinary life? There must be something beautiful here, your beloved brewing your tea, your cats preening on your lap, your limbs stretching out with their fleshy mystery. There must be something beautiful here and if you can’t see it right now—that’s ok. It sees you.

 

Scorpio

When your heart breaks even though you thought heartbreak was impossible, consider your heart. Consider the wealth of it, how it pumps blood everywhere like a perfect engine, a hungry mother in the kitchen. Lie down. Lie down and don’t move. In the kitchen of your heart, a mother lies down and the tile is cold.

Maybe this is what love is. The opposite of death, a constant hunger. Maybe you are stronger than you ever imagined yourself to be and all the secret small regrets you’ve stored inside have taught you how to forgive, have made a good animal out of you.

Your heart breaks and you close a door. A new door is possible. “…The door itself makes no promises / it is only a door.” You know that you’re leaving, you just don’t know what’s worth taking with you, what you’ll need. Scorpio, there’s always more on the other side. You just won’t know what’s there until you walk through.

 

Sagittarius

It seems like I am always in a car with you. You’re dropping me off or picking me up. You’re driving me across this country, amnestic with dead cotton fields and corn rotten in the ear. In the small privacy of this machine, you’re telling me the story of your life, or your day, which is emblematic of your life. I know I am taking care of you with my listening, I know that now is the time for feeling not acting.

“Until we find each other, we are alone.”

Sagittarius, I know that in doing for others you seek to understand them but it’s not your job to protect everyone you love, it’s not your job to uncover everyone’s small pain so you might feel it for them. No one expects that from you, certainly not me. I want you to know that I see you trying, working doubly hard to overcome your own disappointments so that you might be a good partner, a good friend.

Let’s just listen to each other for a while and let that be enough.

 

Capricorn

Dear Sea-goat, it’s true that you have psychic powers, that the river of this world pulses right through you and onward. It’s true that when I have spoken badly of you, I felt your face enter my mind like a warning, a librarian leaning over the stacks and shutting me up.

It’s true that you are capable of great generosity, that there is a healer in you, that you are the one who taught me how to poultice a wound and sweeten lemonade just right.

“Only our fierce attention / gets hyacinths out of those / hard cerebral lumps, / unwraps the wet buds down / the whole length of a stem.”

I won’t deny the good, how it comes in waves, how it cloaks you in a rich colors. It is what keeps those who love you close. But there are those who leave, who refuse to stay, who see the unkind parts of you. In your worst moments, you blame them for their leaving, you throw up your hands, dress yourself in one thousand masks that only a hint at your real face. But at your best, you are a fighter, a soldier of love, a woman without artifice who is willing to change so that she might protect what means the most to her.

Don’t let your ego get in the way of your heart.

MARCH STAR OFFERINGS

Dear March Hares,

This is the month when winter begins to leave us, when we dive into love like sparkling fish into oceans or roast our desires over the fiery spits of our hearts. There is Neptune in Pisces and Mars in Aries and Pallas Athene in Sagittarius. These are momentary homecomings with bright and pulsing impact. We are changed by what comes again. We are dual now, as we are always, but there is hope too—something about spring, about rebirth. I am right here with you, coasting on the edge of surrender and it is not easy. It’s not supposed to be easy.

But it feels good, even the aching, And, as one Janis Joplin once sang, Feeling good’s good enough for me.

Thank you so much for coming to me, for reading these small love letters/offerings.

 

My Very Best,

Galactic Rabbit

 

P.S. Thank you for all the donations, no matter how small. They give me hope. I love you all.

Here is a link towards donations if you are so moved:

P.P.S. I would not be able to write these horoscopes without Claire Skinner, this is a fact.

Aquarius

Night walking together, I can feel your hand empty beside mine. I want to reach over and hold it but I don’t. Instead, I imagine the cups of your palms filled with the buzzing light of stars that dot the sky above us. I imagine you the keeper of uncountable small universes. I think you must be very powerful. You talk to me as we move together, you tell me beautiful things but you don’t speak about your heart.

In her poem “Waiting,” Allison Benis writes: When I hear her set her coffee back on the counter, I look at my napkin to pretend I’m occupied with my love of circles. This could be an aerial sketch of twirling ballerinas, I think – each dancer ignoring the small white pain in her ankle.

Aquarius, I can see the dancer in you, the pain moving in quiet elegant circles. When our hands are empty together, they are never empty of stars, and for this reason we often forget to touch. But if you wanted to come closer, if we placed our palms together, we could dance instead of walking. If you trusted your own softness, it would not let you down.

 

Pisces

I can’t give you what you want although I try. I visit you beneath the big tree and bring you small gifts: plums, amethysts. They please you but they’re not enough. When I am away from, you do not write and I miss you. The universe sends me missives, a piece of glass reflecting your wet face, sequence from a dress you loved left scattered in the dirt.

Water-animal, you’re not so weak. I have seen you flood a room with love, a river not gentle. When you ask me to care for you, you do not mean as I would care for a small child or an exhausted lover. You mean that I might reach into dark water and cup the moon reflected there. You mean that I might cup the moon. But, Pisces, it’s only a reflection, a piece of light, a fragment in the eye.

You ask for the impossible because you won’t let yourself be cared for. I hold you in my hands, and then you’re gone.

 

 

Aries

Imagine we are in a dim room, my kitchen. I give you my Tarot deck and, as you shuffle, I boil water and pour you a cup of tea. When the cards unfold, they are too close, first the eight of wands, then the seven. I sit across from you and watch you try to make sense of it. I can feel you imagine the eight of wands: clear communicator and creator, successful in your ventures. And then the seven: defensive, trying—often with difficulty—to balance your footing, your ideas, your goals. Which one are you?

Both, I think, as I cut you a piece of cake and add hot water to your cup. On your best days, when you can see yourself, you are exactly the creator you have always wanted to be. The days open up like treasure chests around you, treasure you have dived tirelessly for, going down again and again so that you might find the rewards you seek. On your worst days, there is a part of you that cannot see beyond what’s missing, and you spend your hours wondering whether all your work is worth it. You forget how to trust the world around you because you can’t remember how to trust yourself.

Put the cards back in the deck, Aries, you are the only one who decides which life you want to live.

 

 

Taurus

There are those of us who always expected we’d become adults. We spent our childhoods taking care, not only of ourselves, but also of our parents. We often did this quietly, simply denying ourselves what we wanted or imagining we were never meant to have those things at all. When sadness rose up in the throats of our loved ones like driftwood, we quieted it away.

Now, walking along the path of our grown-up solitude, it’s hard to ignore the houses we’ve built with all that sadness—small structures made of twig and twisted wood no one could live in, not even us.

My beautiful bull, I hope that one day you look back at yourself at this moment and see someone newly learning how to be young again—young in the heart and in the spirit. It’s not your job to maintain what never belonged to you so, whatever sadness you’ve inherited from the world around you, let the world hold it while you practice being free.

 

 

Gemini

There’s no getting bored with you, Twin-star. If there’s music playing then you are the one playing it, or dancing to it, or raising your friends up out of their seats so that they might dance with you. In the gauzy fog of the beauty you offer up, it’s hard to see what’s missing, what you hide away.

Perhaps you forget yourself too. Perhaps, under hundreds of tiny disco lights or innumerable unfinished projects you convince yourself that being busy is enough.

Life shouldn’t be a collection of beginnings without ends and destinies you dreamed up for some future girl you convinced yourself you haven’t got the time to be. Gemini, what if all the other dance floors melted away and the only one left was the one you wanted to base your life on? What songs would you let define you? Who would you invite to dance? How dark would you let it get?

 

 

Cancer

Did you know that in the Tarot, The Chariot is most closely associated with Cancer? I must admit that my knowledge of astrology comes in waves, intuitive understanding layered by study and obsession. For a long time, I couldn’t quite place the word control, why it came up so often when I thought of you. The Chariot opened something up for me.

Plato once described The Chariot as an allegory for the human soul. The charioteer drives two horses, one noble and one ignoble, toward his destination. The driving is troublesome yet the journey is necessary—toward truth.

I don’t believe in noble or ignoble. There is wisdom to be found in darkness and in light, neither one is inherently good or bad. I want you to remember this as you desperately try to pull the reins tightly on the dark horse. You must honor the chaos in you; it is just as much your guide.

 

 

Leo

Remember when your hair was long and thick with secret patches of color? I listened to you sing sad songs on old Brooklyn rooftops and I cried into the concrete, I was so in love with your big love. Then you cut it all off. You were bright blonde and brave, you fell for a mean woman who told you what to eat and how to speak. You let her. Later you moved across the country, grew your hair out the color of buckwheat honey. A sweet-hearted boy held space in your heart and you knew all along he wasn’t the one.

Lioness, my photos of you are an archive of who you were with each lover, each life you lived and left behind.

It’s not a bad way to be, not a bad way to move through this world of revelation and heartbreak, changing yourself a little bit each time. Even if you’re afraid to look deeply—even if there are days when the face you see in your reflection scares you. I think you are the best version of yourself now, the best you’ve ever been, getting better all the time.

 

 

Virgo

In “Once,” Mary Jo Bang writes: Once there was my life and it was a thing / Filled with difficulty but it was mine. Virgo, this is the part where I ask you the same question I’ve been asking you for years. Whose life is the one you’re living? Only, this time, I’m not looking for an answer. I’m not interested in your accomplishments, or all the things you’ve done to get this far. I know you know how to work hard, how to tie and cut off any visible loose ends.

I want to know if you’re tired, yet, of proving yourself to no one. Of waiting on all your good deeds to bring you just returns.

No one owes you anything, not their approval, not their understanding. And that’s a good thing. Love, it turns out, is not about equality. Not about who loves whom more, or most, or not enough. It’s about being strong enough to care for each other. It’s about learning how to truly care for yourself, in your most lonely hours—with no one watching.

 

 

Libra

You know everybody’s secrets. Not because you have one of those faces a person can trust, not because you’re always asking just the right questions. There’s just something about your steady gaze, your unflinching commitment to an honest moment. That’s how come I always wind up making out with you, or wanting to, or calling you up the moment I get to where you are. You’re easy to be around.

In my most selfish moments, I find you unquestionable. I marvel at your firm grip on what I drunkenly call reality. I praise your big dreams and your romantic nature. Who else would let me fuck them in plain sight under the apple blossoms of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens like we are both Pablo Neruda? In the morning, sober, I find myself wondering who you really are and if, all these years, you’ve ever really let me know you.

I’m not saying you owe me your secrets. I just want you to know that if you ever want someone to hold a little space for what you need—all you have to do is ask.

 

 

Scorpio

It’s International Women’s Day and you don’t have enough money to buy your mother a bouquet. You call your best friend and, next thing you know, there’s 40 dollars in your Quick Pay account with a note: “flowers for mama.” It’s the end of a long week and you can barely get out of bed. A different friend tells you to be ready in twenty, you get dressed and she pulls up, takes you to breakfast. She asks all the right questions and doesn’t turn away when you begin to cry.

Listen, I know it’s been a hard year. I know you didn’t get what you wanted and you lost more than you ever thought you could live with losing. It’s going to be ok.

A long time ago, you told yourself you were on your own. You kept letting people in, sure. You are good at being the lover. It’s the being loved part you have trouble with. It’s hard to allow yourself to be vulnerable when it takes all the energy you have just to convince yourself you’re strong. Well, despite your best efforts, all around you are people who would love nothing more than to hold you up. You should let them because you need it.

 

 

Sagittarius

Let me tell you about Pallas-Athene, who you might know as Athena, goddess associated with creativity, logic, and war. It’s easy enough to find icons of her, Amazonian in stature, lesbian in their vibe. These icons don’t allow for a complex understanding of the goddess they depict. They leave out the woman who, in order to please Poseidon, stripped Athenian mothers of their citizenship, their vote, and their rights over their own children.

When she is in your house, Sagittarius, you must be careful how you treat the feminine energies in and around you.

I want to remind you that the divine feminine, however it manifests, is in each human and it is necessary. Like the moon is to the Sun. Like the way you hold the universe inside you. Honor the maker in you, the intuitive, and the healer. Honor your time and what you create with it. When you let others (or yourself) devalue the feminine in you, you are making yourself small for no one’s benefit.

 

 

Capricorn 

Seagoat, ask me to get in your river and I will go down. That’s the weight you have, a looming shadow cast by a skeleton made of steel bones. As above, so below—I trust your magic. I would lie down on your altar and drink from your cup. Knowing this, you must not abuse your influence and or mistake other peoples’ weakness for your own power.

It’s not that you don’t know how to be alone; it’s just that you are stronger in the company of others. Be careful how you choose your company. Collective love, action and grief are a lot like sharing a home, not everyone is fit to live with everyone. Someone leaves the dishes in the sink too long, someone forgets to close the door and when you return everything is gone.

That is the cost of casting your net too wide, of holding too many up. You can’t account for everyone, you can’t always see who needs care most.

February Horoscope Love Magic!

Dear Rabbit Friends,

Long ago, when I lived in Portland, Oregon, and drank only rain and locally squished almond milk, I dreamt I would meet a crone. I dreamt that she would teach me how to poultice any wound. We’d walk through her wild garden and she’d make me rub each leaf and bloom. Burdock root for the gut, she would say, and dig it up tenderly, without breakage. Sadly she never came to me or I never left myself open enough to receive her. The closest I came was a Vedic meditation group, wherein a woman who was also not a woman (something more like an energy field or a tiny planet on two legs) introduced me to the rivers of knowledge that flow over us always. Paired off two by two, we stared into each other and reported what we saw: there’s a woman who loves the color blue, you just lost a friend, the number 24.  She showed me how to reach in.

I’m a beginner. I have spent the past week reaching in for you hoping what I have found rings true. Pulling out each time has been hard, sometimes painful, and I hope it is of use the way a tree is of use or a flower that opens for a few hours at daybreak. I want to tell you that you, dear human stars, are collectively the crone I’ve been waiting for. I have learned more from you than I ever imagined.

 

Rivers of Honey, Prisms of Light

Galactic Rabbit

 

P.S. As Always, If you are moved to donate towards the creation of these horoscopes, consider donating! I have buttons plugged into the side bar of this website as well as here: 

P.P.S. Big Shout Out to the Poet Claire Skinner who is my clairvoyant assistant.
P.P.P.S. My best friend and life-sister is struggling to fight horrible Lyme Disease. Here is a link to her funding campaign. I am offering Tarot-Style portraits, spells and tinctures.
P.P.P.P.S. Thanks to Catherine Hayes for helping me build this site and Maya West for photoshop magic.

 

Aquarius

We are all subject to habit and ritual, the small things we do day in and out that call our most constant selves forward. Sometimes one must go beyond the ordinary. Sometimes one is destined for more. I am thinking now of an old Aquarian friend who invoked her feminine power by tattooing a rose on her ass. I swear to you, that rose transformed her body. We all watched her bicycling around town and considered rose-ing ourselves. Or was there another symbol we could imagine, another part of us that needed power and transformation? I got a mermaid etched around my right breast; another friend got a sweet dragon on her arm. Caution, this is not a tattoo advisory. A tattoo is just one example of a spell. Use your beautiful mind and conjure the possibilities. You are a rare thing, a flower that blooms bright in the deepest winter. While the Sun transits through you, Aquarius, consider the grander gesture. What does your body need from you? Imagine yourself standing inside the full light of your power. Behold yourself.

 

Pisces

If you’re hurting, sweet one, it’s not your fault. Some of us were born with wilder hearts. Some of us lie down in the dirt road just to feel the crazed pony of love galloping toward us from miles away. Some us know that a healing wound is a prelude to a fresh new ground made for breaking. So we rip ourselves open each night just to get it over with. The moment I began to write this my heart tightened into a fist. Pisces, it’s painful where you are, it’s a dark place and I don’t want to go. The good thing is that you don’t need me, or anyone. You and you alone know the way out. That’s your dark power: the rope that descends from the sky like a god wove it herself. I can feel you climbing, can feel your magic hands stack one on top of the other. Slowly you are learning what it means to take care of yourself in every sense of the word: financially, ambitiously, and passionately. It’s just that the climb is long, arduous. It’s just that there are days when you need rest and resting might mean letting go. Don’t let go. You owe yourself this.

 

Aries

You were the one who taught me how to be in awe of love, how to say yes, to be the kind of lover who bent time and space in the name of desire. You stretched yourself over me and my skin became a cloud of fireflies. You taught me about light. I remember the nights of trying to let go, how I knew you’d walked into the bar before I saw you, my body already gravitating towards yours. I remember the exact way your fingers held onto my hips, how we moved as one although we were already broken. We made out in the alleyway by the Lex, our hearts burning up into ash. And I went home with you. And I went home with you. Fire-star, you taught me to be fearless in my surrender and generous in my forgiveness. This month, tonight, under whatever moon we share, I am asking you to do the same for yourself. Of course there will be loss, there is always loss, but you are a necessary soldier in an army of lovers. What would it look like if you chose to be brave?

 

Taurus

I’m writing to you at the edge of a blizzard. The steps to my home are slick with danger and the salt I shake there just lies on the surface. I am writing you at the edge of a blizzard, the snow coming down and down around us, obscuring the color of all things. O beautiful bull standing in the great white fog, who are you now? Who will you love? Who will take care of you when you need taking care of? Stop asking. The sky is larger than the snow will have you believe and the road continues where your vision ends. If you’re not ready, then this is the part where you come inside, make your own meal, and stoke your own fire. But, if you want it be, then this is when you choose to walk toward the unknown. Consider desire, yours, and locate it within you. Remind yourself that desire is not rooted in fear, is not interested in limitations or illusions. It only wants your consent, your surrender. Ask yourself what it might take for you to truly let desire course through you as if it were blood, as if it were vital to your survival. Now hear me when I tell you that it is.

 

Gemini

I have, in my own way, loved you all of my life. You were my childhood best friend, my crush, my wolf-pack sister, and my brother. You were the first girl that ever broke my heart and for a long time I held myself at a distance. For this reason, it has taken a long time for me to see you. I want to tell you that there is an incredible generosity in you, a desire to stand guard tirelessly before anyone who needs your protection. It manifests as a beautiful shield you carry. It glimmers in the light and attracts others to you. You are so beautiful in those moments, so clear. But, there is also this loneliness, a quiet thing that eats at you and holds your truest self back when all you want is to call it forward. These days, you can feel it coming on more and more, a dark cloud that gathers in your throat, a restlessness with little release. Twin star, I know that you have had to look for beauty in betrayal one time too many, that you have had to lose. I want to say I’m sorry. I want to say that it’s lovely just to witness you, that anyone should be so lucky.

 

Cancer

You are both the moon and the crow’s black wing spread open. I adore your quiet power, your tireless work toward holding up the night. In your heart is a space few can imagine, a capacity for love that is boundless and without conditions. It is not a space, however, that is invulnerable to cruelty and the unkindness of others has the power to affect your greatly. Perhaps this month you can skip the meditation on forgiveness, on maintaining your gentle core while protecting yourself from pain. It is wise to remember that cruelty is a tool, a gesture that demands attention. It is a letter you don’t need to open, a word you can leave filling up someone else’s mouth. It is hard to be the moon. Emotions lapping at your feet wave after wave. Their source and intention are not your concern. You have bigger things to accomplish. There is dancing to be done, after all, in the company of stars.

 

Leo                  

Remember the night we talked about everything? The hours kept coming on and we leaned into them, laughing. You were wearing that funny fur hat you love and pouring me whiskey after whiskey. We were casual about our sadness, sprinkled it like salt on the bread and butter necessary-ness of our friendship. I felt like kids again, I let the Leonard Cohen records you put on flow over me like melodramatic medicine and I couldn’t love you more. Now that we are apart, I worry. I worry that you wake into a day that is without music. You are so busy blaming yourself for the shortcomings of the night before you forget how fucking amazing you are, how much power you have over the world around you. It doesn’t suit you, this refusal to find humor in life’s harsh lessons. Things end, they fall apart, they disappoint you; even stars burn up and die. Should we forever drag ourselves across a dark sky repenting? You are the Sun, a small universe, create something new, start again.

 

Virgo 

Once, every woman we knew stroked the witch in her. We covened in small apartments and wove together like tight baskets filled with midnight. We let the fire call us by our names and we burned the books of men who did not deserve our company. Once you thought you knew what stood in your way, now you know better. Now you know that the only book that needs burning is the one you keep buried in your heart: book of lies, book of wish I was what I am not, book of regret, book of impossible. Last year was the year you let your heart destroy you. Wild one, remember the river? The beer and oranges you placed around its mouth as offerings? This time around there is nothing left to sacrifice; you are the one you’ve been waiting for. Every step you make towards self-care is a step toward power. Imagine the book of what your life cannot be. The book you wrote that has ruined you. Breathe deep and strike a match. Now you’re awake, now you’re on fire. See your reflection? Clearer and clearer.

 

Libra

You might not be my lucky star but you’re lucky. You have, time and time again, found your way out of a dark forest using only your heart for a compass. In the clearing, where the moon could finally reach you, the city sparkled below like a promise and you forgot to look back at the thicket you had narrowly escaped. Looking back might have meant realizing that there were parts of you that never made it out of that darkness, parts of you that you would just as soon forget. In your own way, you have begun you descent toward the future you have always wanted. Or, at least the future that makes the most sense for you as you are now. But, forgetting is an active practice. One must commit to the art of it, to its consequence. One must decide that forgetting is better than learning and in doing so one must admit a love of disappointment. Don’t you think you can do better? Under this new night sky, shine your heavenly body on me, Lucky Star. Don’t be afraid to honor your mistakes, they are your quickest path to being the lover you always knew you could be.

 

Scorpio

 I have done my hitch over the plain houses, light by light: lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. A woman like that is not a woman, quite. Remember when your heart was a fortress, a kingdom indestructible? Women loved you without protection, moths sacrificing themselves to your flame. Was that what power felt like, to love and love more without breaking? To let the broken come to you? Now it seems as though your nights are meant for sleeping. Women come or they don’t come. Who can know these things? Who is allowed the privilege of knowing? There is too much water in you; a cup that can’t stop spilling and it shames you. You were meant to roam the dark forest of desire, not to build a home from the bones of lovers gone. Now your heart, that bastard, keeps gorging itself on the wrong meal. Or, the right meal but the wrong mouth. Fuck it. The right mouth. It’s everything else that’s wrong. It’s you, the burning kingdom, the wayward witch and empty house. Let it burn; leave nothing behind.

 

Sagittarius

Billy Idol (Sagittarian rock god) is on the radio and we are dancing along in our seats, pumping our fists softly in the air, trying to do our work. Our backs hunch in concentration and our coffee gets cold with all that thinking. Truth is, you are so tired of doing. You would rather be sleeping. Little sister what have you done? Nothing. You would rather be drinking. What’s with all these big questions that just keep coming on when you haven’t got answers? Who does this world need me to be? How do I make something that matters? Oh archer, sometimes questions are just doors we walk through. They lead to hallways, exits, whole towns we never knew we wanted to explore. Each one with its own significance. Sometimes the biggest baddest bravest thing you can do is stop looking for answers and take pleasure in the asking. Here is a door, and here, and here. Open them. Open them. Open them.

 

Capricorn

Often you have asked the world to prove itself to you, knowing all along that every deal has a debt that needs repaying. “If there is a shred of goodness in you, you will grant me this,” you cried, knuckle deep in the dirt. And the dirt gave way, and you got… something. Sometimes it was exactly what you asked for, often late, often to your great surprise. And sometimes, what you asked for shifted to become what you needed, what you could not have known was missing until it came to you. Perhaps the world has proved itself enough for a while, even though turning on the news will break your heart, even though the living feels irreparable. If there is work to be done, it is your turn to do it. In your hands, the earth you clawed up in the name of goodness had begun to dry up. How will anything grow there if you refuse to water it?

 

January Stars/ 2015

**Pre Note Note**

I am working towards setting up my own website of astrology and advice for the New Year and hope that by February, you will be enjoying a new set-up with me! Feel free to send me some love questions!

If you feel moved to leave a donation toward the making of these horoscopes, anything is welcome and everything is appreciated. Here is the Link:

 

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Dear Rabbits of the Four Corners,

 

This time around I am writing the letter first, trying so hard to pull myself back into the cosmos. My best friend (who is the Prince of Pluto) taught me once that we are never lost from our orbit. But, one cannot help feeling lost. Or let go. It’s the crux of a painful season for many of us. We’ve survived the open wound of the holidays and the darkest night of the year. I try to remember that the light keeps coming on more and more (one day at a time).

I’m listening to Mazzy Star, keeper of the softest hearts, (Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star is a Cancer which makes every sense there is) and sucking up WIFI at the Brighton Beach Starbucks. A weirder Starbucks more full of criminal Russian elements there never was! Why I just stole a bottle of juice.

This is the year of the blue wooden goat. I don’t know about you but I’ve never known a year to have a color. I’m glad it’s blue because I’ve been blue for years. The goat is gregarious, gets things done in her own way: steady with faith. I’ve heard that the only way to receive the treasures of this universe is to stay open so I’m trying and I hope you are too. In that spirit, I am sending the goat’s fortitude in your direction. And her grace.

With Blue Love and Dark Light,
Galactic Rabbit

 

 

Aquarius

When we were young things, we obsessed freely. We bought one cd and, lying in our secret beds, listened to it on loop until it was useless. Posters of our idols covered our walls and the names of crushes filled up our notebooks. We bent the spines of books over and over like tireless lovers, committing their bodies to memory. It’s harder now to love that way. Our attention is stretched so thin and we know too much about the nature of beauty, its limitations. What can you do, at this age, with such an ardent heart? This month, think about obsession like a wand of honey dripping into the cup of your life: sweet in small doses, overwhelming in large ones and sticky when it spills over into the wrong places. The opening of a new year is a great time to begin moving steadily towards what moves you. Romance ideas and lovers alike, Aquarius. Drip a little honey at a time until it tastes just right.

 

 

Pisces

“Everyone is mad at me but I’m just telling the truth,” my mother, the Capricorn, has more than once complained to me. Despite feeling like a broken record, I have each time replied: “No one needs your truth. They have their own.” With Mars knocking on your door after leaving Capricorn’s house, it might be a good time to evaluate how you connect with others. Mars’s bold energy might have you wanting to tell everyone exactly what you think of them and why but, Pisces, rein that impulse in. There are few souls in this world that can hold two truths in their hearts. If you’re weighed down by your perceptions, Pisces, if your disillusionment is a heavy brass ring around your neck, consider the benefit of transforming your truth into your compassion. Start with love, start with listening. Then be firm and gentle when it’s your turn to speak.

 

Aries

Did last month near wipe you out? Capricorn’s work ethic mixed with your drive must have had you working harder than anyone likes to work in the holiday season. Well, with Mars sliding into Pisces in the middle of this month, you might find you can breathe a little easier. Don’t get me wrong; the work keeps coming on, as it must. But, you have never been afraid of a little work have you Aries? No. Work keeps you moving, keeps you alive. What brings you down is tedious drudgery. Well, get ready for the influence of Pisces’s cosmic consciousness! You’ve done the legwork and now it’s time to dream, to complicate, and make new what has felt stuck and stagnant. The pleasure you will find from this creative time will give you a great balm for whatever ails you. Keep yourself open to visions, Sweet One. This is a world that refuses to give up on you, no matter how tired your body, how bad your hand or how broken your heart.

 

Taurus

The bull runs again in my heart, Taurus. How wide is the sky where you are? How open is that field? I want to run with you until running is a kind of flying. I want to roll in the dark grass of our sadness until it is just a small indent in the earth—something we can walk away from. Want, I have found, is only half the journey. We must, unfortunately, make room for seeing what we have and what can be salvaged thereof. This month, air elements will surround you with their influence and you will feel (what relief) diplomacy and peace where you once felt a burning hole in your chest. This month, you might find yourself in service to beauty, a work you find safety and comfort it. Just be careful that you don’t retreat so far into the diplomatic recesses of your mind that you forget your body with its beautiful desires. Always there, that want you feel is as essential as logic and twenty times more powerful.

 

Gemini

There is nothing sure in this world, my Twin Star. I want to write that you’re “practically another person,” but that’s not right. You’ve been journeying toward your truest self and the closer you get the harder the walking becomes. Personal journeys are never easy but transformations take energy, the kind of energy you’ve got less and less of. Thankfully, this month Mercury (your planet) slips softly into methodical Capricorn and you might find yourself with a little more time. For two weeks Mercury will move slow and direct in the sky, and you can feel free to do the same—being careful with your actions and agreements. You might find yourself re-thinking your relationships, re-evaluating your work, re-tracing the steps that got you where you are. This behavior will fit hand in glove with Mercury’s retrograde motion at the end of the month. Twin Star, the trick now is to look forward and act like you’re sure you’re where you should be. The rest will come.

 

Cancer

Soft bright heart, what could non-individual success mean to you? The whole working with the help of its parts: one red kite, paper, string, and sticks, rising as if weightless in the air. What does the whole look like for you? Perhaps it looks like your family or maybe your workspace. Perhaps it’s a non-traditional relationship. However you define it, this month will ask you to surrender to it, to find pride and relief in working toward something bigger and beyond yourself. This might require a little divinity, a little more faith than you have on hand. It’s your challenge to find more, to press the most vulnerable parts of you against whatever difficulties come. Just think about how January opened: the moon full in Cancer. It filled your heart with more than you thought you could bear but you’re here, unbreakable. The moon is light and darkness, consort to the sun and the sea. If faith is transferrable from one star to another, then I want you know I have faith in you.

 

Leo

Not many people know that there are days you have trouble speaking. Words come, but they’re not the words you want, not the ones you intended. You want people to perceive the nurturer in you, but not so much that they use you. It’s a tough balancing act and your soft secret self gets tired, resentful, retreats. It might feel safe in the quiet cave of your solitude but it’s debilitating too, feeling like your lesser self. Loneliness is not for you—no matter how good it sounds. You are not that kind of animal. This is why it’s so hard for you to let go of intimate relationships in your life, even when you perceive their detriment to your wellbeing. It takes so long for you to truly open up, then it’s over. You might ask: what’s all this work for anyway?! It doesn’t matter what it’s for. Losing is ok. Starting over is ok. Solitude is ok. Love is a work no one has made simple. Learn to love the work for how it changes you and teaches you what living is.

 

Virgo

Recently I was reading up on ruling planets, as one does. Under Mercury (who rules Virgo and Gemini), I found this description: “Virgos take control of their world by establishing hierarchies that they alone understand.” I am thinking about this description as we enter the New Year. What hierarchies have you constructed in your life? Have you found yourself unable to communicate your needs because you yourself have set them aside for the sake of something you deemed more valuable? Perhaps this past year has been an emotional roller-coaster for you, and you spent all of winter running from one promising adventure to another. Now that it’s January, you find yourself wondering what you were searching for to begin with. With Mercury still in Capricorn and slipping into retrograde, there’s no better time to figure that out. Start slow, Virgo, start with the parts of yourself you set aside, they’re more valuable than you’ve admitted to yourself.

 

Libra

It’s easy, sometimes, to forget how our hearts work. We get busy; we make plans and get through the day. Whatever stones collect in our throats, we push them down with whiskey or coffee or someone else’s stones, anything we can find. When it comes to our emotions, we are at times wild with our avoidance but avoidance brings us little relief. You can’t, after all, go through life collecting the weight of secret sorrow until you sink into the ground. The ground, that stubborn thing, keeps refusing you. This month, you might be tempted to put mind over matter yet again and, although the planets will support your choice, I encourage choosing otherwise. Use this slow and thoughtful January to spend some time figuring out how to care for whatever wounds you’ve chosen to ignore for the sake of getting through. Let yourself remember the workings of your secret heart, it’s necessary work, it’s the only work that matters.

 

Scorpio

 

Scorpio, I write to you and to myself. To every Scorpio I have ever loved and love still. You are my closest witch-sister, the hawk and the phoenix, the scorpion and the snake. You recklessly sacrifice yourself on night’s alter again and again just to feel the pulse of power that lies there. You die and resurrect. You are no more a woman than Christ was a man. There are laws in this universe. There are things we cannot bury beneath the velvet of each other’s bodies. There is a girl inside you whose hand you let go of every time you choose to ignore that. I don’t know who ever taught you that love is enough to save you. It’s not enough. Not unless you start with yourself. Not unless you are the animal that loves you. So be the animal that loves you. Whatever has held you back from being the one you’ve been waiting for—let it go or drown.

 

Sagittarius

This is the year everything falls into place! That feels nice to hear doesn’t it? I wish I could guarantee the truth of that statement—alas I’m not a fortune-teller, just a girl with some clairvoyance in her blood. What I can do, is tell you that this month offers you the chance to make better use of your workspace; make better time of your calendar. All these endless errands and small fights have a way of catching up with you and they don’t serve you. Not the part of you that matters anyway. You’re a dreamer. Perhaps there’s a dream you forgot to aspire to. An opportunity you forgot to give yourself. Are you really so busy or do you keep busy so that you might not have to spend too much time wondering what’s missing? I know you’re a tough critic Archer. I admire that about you. Problem is, you don’t give yourself a chance! Put your tireless determination and work ethic to good use and turn it toward yourself. Take charge of all your rituals; let your life be more again.

 

Capricorn

How can a sign whose planet (Saturn) influences so many, feel so pressed upon by circumstance beyond her control? The weight of this world wasn’t meant to sit on your shoulders alone. Isn’t a time of great loss the perfect time to love more? Oh Sea-Goat, I don’t think that you feel powerless. All around you there are lovers and friends who come to you easily and without hesitation. Do you let them? You have won the admiration of many with your good and generous presence, your quick full laugh and easy gait. Yet you feel unable to fully trust in the connections you make and it is this distrust that separates you, keeps you isolated and unsure of your best qualities. You are right to be discerning, to hold your secrets close. You are right to wait before you let the right ones in. The only catch is that sometimes you wait too long. Sometimes in the course of all that discerning, you lose your belief in magic, in trusting the good to come to you.

 

 

*****I would like to send a special shout out to Katie Jaeger of Angst Cat who is amazing. You should check out the Angst Cat Tumblr here:

http://angstcat.tumblr.com/