We are pleased to announce that we’ve teamed up with one of our favorite astrologists (and talented yoga pro), Chani Nicholas, to bring you weekly horoscope readings. Check back each Monday to see what’s in the stars for your week!
Aries & Aries Rising
As if you hadn’t already done enough work in this area of your life. As if! As if you hadn’t already spent 10 months delving into the deep domains of dealing with other devious divas and your partnerships to them, but now this.
Mercury.
But not just any zip-right-past-you-don’t-mind-me-Mercury-transit in your Seventh House of relationships. Oh no. This is another thing altogether. This is a pull-every-argument-out-from-underneath-your-breath kind of Mercury movement.
But beware wagging tongues and flapping gums, especially if they are yours. Beware because it’s better not to say a thing you would regret under the best of circumstances but come October Mercury will also moonwalk back through this pretty little ditty. Oh yes.
Mercury retrograde.
It’s not for a minute, October 4th-25th to be exact, but it enters its shadow phase on September 14th, and enters your Seventh House this Tuesday. You can think of this as the pre-game show, the opening act, the warm up. Whatever conversations you venture into in your partnerships and committed relationships will be reviewed in the coming weeks which is no reason to be a nice person. I have little use for “nice” anyway. But being held to what you have said is no reason to have integrity about what you are saying-that desire should already be there-but you may want to use this time too as an exercise in being extra mindful in all your arguments, tales, turns of phrases and tender tunes that you sing to others.
They may very well be used against you in the court of life.
But being put on trial only teaches us more about being who we are, who we want to be and the gap that lies therein. This is a good time to close that gap.
Taurus & Taurus Rising
One of you beautiful bulls just said to me that it wasn’t “empowered woman” of her to ask about love and intimacy in her astrology reading.
I DISAGREED.
Wholeheartedly. Completely. Without a doubt.
I get it though. So much rah-rah, I’m a fierce so-and-so and I don’t need those that reject me, can lead to so much raw. Raw. And that raw can make us want to close up shop. But we need love. We need appreciation. We need to love and to appreciate. Especially you. Especially all of us. Otherwise we are just cardboard hearts that bleed dust. Love is the liquid of life.
I mean, you can’t get almond milk from a hardware store but you can certainly go to the nearest grocery store and fill up on your nut-milk of choice. Know what I’m saying? You also can’t build a castle on sand and expect the thing to last past tonight’s tide. But you and I have been talking all about how to build with healthy boundaries, how to be heartened by the harder edges of commitment and how to stand steady in yourself when someone else blows a fuse (or an engagement).
So this week I want to remind you of the beauty of love, not the fantasy of romance. I want to encourage you to love those in your life exactly as they are, without conditions and without pretending that they are the version of them that they need to be in order to uphold your world order.
I want to give you the permission to want what you want, for that’s the way it will end up on your doorstep in the end. But it may very well come in a different package than you desired. I want you to love what is in front of you. Let the whole thing in, especially if you are afraid to feel it. Especially if you have been hurt. Especially if you have been the one to hurt.
There is more to this life than what you have already lived. There is more to this life that the stories you tell yourself. There is so much more to this life than the stories that we are told about how to love, who to love and when to love.
Be bigger than any version of the tale that you know and be empowered by the experience of wanting and letting love in.
Gemini & Gemini Rising
You can probably feel it. Some shift underneath your feet. Some necessary downtime calling your name. Some home improvement projects giving you the evil eye but also some much needed rest is required. I encourage you to take time out like royalty in the coming weeks especially if you come from family stories of never having enough time/resources/self-worth to do so. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to treat yourself well but you do have to spend some time, energy and consideration on yourself and your needs.
Needs.
Our needs communicate very interesting things to us. They are pointers to deeper desires and fundamental structures that need upkeep for they keep us laced up and able to set out on the course of our life. If we are able to grant ourselves the experience of what we rightfully desire: creative fulfillment, love, meaningful and soul-sustaining sex, progeny of some kind and playful abandon then our yearnings don’t clamor away in the cages we place them in. We aren’t startled out of our skin at the sound of them. We aren’t threatened by their mere existence and we don’t seek to blot them out.
But we don’t all have the privilege to let these babies scream out loud. Or play. Or learn to crawl, then walk, then run like hell.
But if we do have that privilege, if we do live lives where we are free to roam where our creativity wants to take us, then we also have a great responsibility to the ones that do not. We have a great responsibility to live our lives to the very best of our ability every day. For our own soul’s sake and for the sake of the soul of the world.
There will be much action in this domain of your chart over the course of the next two months. Sex, love, intimacy, creativity and those needs that you just can’t shake.
I mean, you can keep ignoring them, you can. They will get louder, prouder and more pronounced-but you can try to starve them if you wish. They will scream and hurl things, things like regrets, both recent and imagined, at you if you refuse them a place at the table, but you are free to live your life as you see fit. You are free to serve your fears of rejection or your desires for fulfillment. Totally free.
Cancer & Cancer Rising
Perhaps John was wrong. Perhaps we need more than love.
In order to truly thrive we need safety. We need justice. We need equality. We need to know that our children will be safe from police and not harmed by injustice. We need to know that we are valued, that our lives matter and are worth protecting.
You need your friends this week, because they want to give you all of that and then some. You need their guidance, their tenderness, their wisdom and their understanding. Good friends are like our kin. Good friends are often our lifelines if not a part of our bloodlines. Good friends can talk some good wisdom into the parts of us that have grown dumb and numb.
Friends fortify us. Sisters sing songs that are like salve to our scared souls. Brothers bear burdens with us, lightening our load. Our kin of choice carry us when we have been too lost for too long and have given up hope. Stop and rest in the shade of the grove of good grown-ups for as long as you can.
You’ll have to get up soon enough.
There is rumbling reaching the surface, something that is starting down at the root. Change is on its way. Movement is mandatory come this fall. So rest a spell, cast a spell and come up with some entertaining traveling songs because you are going places and that’s a good thing, albeit a tad unsettling.
Leo & Leo Rising
The question is always what do we do with all that have been given? You are being given a lot right now, but abundance isn’t always a feel-good operation. Abundance can be overwhelming. Abundance often exaggerates what is already there. Small problems can become big ones. But a large scale healing crisis can also become a massive healing opportunity.
Like the kind that is so big all you are left with at the end is the wisdom of the experience.
No hate. No malice. No resentment. Just a knowing. Just an understanding. Just a lot more trust and a lot more faith that you will always find your way. Always.
There’s a lot more coming your way. The next year unfolds with some fabulous and fortifying fiestas but it’s up to you to make the most of them, to take them and turn them into something that can withstand the test of time and your own impatience.
Opportunities also tend to take root when we allow ourselves to take hold of them. We have to feel like we are worth it to work it. You have some of this work winding its way to you now. Some effort on your part to find more creative ways to love yourself would definitely help matters out.
Just because the outside world praises and applauds doesn’t mean that the deafening clamor within grows any dimmer. For that we must make special effort, but might I suggest something? Make a special effort. Turn down the volume of the nit-picky super whiner within so that you might drink in some of the softer sounds of feeling alright.
Virgo & Virgo Rising
Condemnation of what is natural when in the guise of morality is a disease of the mind. It blocks out beauty. It hides the soul’s brilliance from view. It’s a blight on our soul. Beauty is in the eye of all who look for it.
You have a unique opportunity these next few weeks as Venus graces your sign and that opportunity is one that you want to work with consciously. Venus attracts and sometimes attacks. It most definitely brings us into connection with others. It will oppose Neptune later this month, just to confuse you and your love/relationship life. There will also be a full moon in your seventh house of intimate affairs next Monday.
Generally Venus in our sign is thought to make us more attractive to others, but attraction can sometimes be a double edged sword. What are you attracting? What place are you standing in while you are attracting.
Are you standing in need, apology, apathy, power, prayer or possibility? Get clear on the ingredients you mix into your magic.
Don’t make me say “Law of Attraction”. Don’t. But you get the idea.
The point is not to be perfect, pure or untouchable by life’s grief. Never evade being in pain consciously. It’s what wakes us up. The point is what we do with it when it arrives and unpacks its bags for a spell.
We will fantasize and get lost. We will look for saviors and try to be saints. We will fail. We will fall. We will force others off of their pedestals. We will be needy and we will have distain for the neediness we see in others. We will do all of this and then some but that’s not really the point.
If all is fair in love and war the only question is, how are you engaging in the battle?
Libra & Libra Rising
Your relationship to yourself is the thing. It’s the thing because it has always been and will always be. The longest love affair. The sweetest source of solace and the most reliable rest stop.
Some of you may be filled with a haunting sense that things are just a little off in this department. Maybe you need to buy yourself some flowers? Ask yourself how you are? Compliment yourself on your new haircut? I mean, when was the last time you told yourself that you did a good job?
Some of you could be engaged in relationships that aren’t so swell for the self-esteem and/or in situations where there are subtle relationship dynamics that have a way of chipping away at your sense of self. There may also be partnerships that you are in that live more behind the scenes, like in the board rooms of your back rooms. Whichever relationship dynamics you are dealing with it’s important that you stay out of fantasy, out of lust and out of pulling the wool over your own eyes.
Whatever unsettled feeling that may be lurking due to these situations we can say, OK! Thank you for the information. Now I have choice! Do I need to keep my feelings about this under wraps? Is it really urgent that I understand everything in this moment or do I have time to let these feelers keep feeling?
Most likely you have more time than you are allowing yourself to settle into. Don’t try to rush yourself into feeling one way or another. Let yourself ponder what arises. Let yourself stay with feelings that make no sense, feelings not yet fully formed, feelings that may be fleeting if you chill for long enough.
October holds enough action to make any super-hero want to take a nap. Rest when you can. Slow down when you are able to. This is one of those weeks that lets you, hopefully.
Scorpio & Scorpio Rising
I had a long talk with a good friend tonight. We watched the sun go down and the crescent moon grow bright in the summer sky. We spoke about what had been plaguing us, what had been playing us and what had been bringing us particles of peace in a very fractured world. We spoke about how disturbed we were with the state of this country. We spoke of where we could find more healing and if we thought things were getting worse or if they were just getting more airtime on social media.
We spoke of our hearts’ greatest yearnings and the small moments that gave us big relief. We held each other’s life with our silence, our ability to listen and drink in all the layers and nuances present in each tale. We kept wondering what the solution could be to the common human ailments of fear, greed and the desire to control.
We wondered and we walked, and of course we talked some more.
I think that if we all did this, did more of this, with the skills to do it well, we might find our way to some peace. I think if you do this, more of this, with the listening skills and the reflective mind you most certainly posses, you will come to find a greater sense of peace in your life, in your heart and perhaps even in the hearts of those around you.
There is a lot in your chart this fall about listening to another frequency. But the listening is only as good as the assimilation of heard information. Take time to digest what you take in but first make the time to take it in. Especially with good friends. Especially with good friends that can share, from their hearts, from their experience and from there own desire to listen in return.
Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising
Keep on greeting those in your work place with the grace of a thousand Ms. Kellys. Princess of Monaco or not, your stage is set for you to be the bearer of best manners. If you need to you can lay it on, thick.
For the moment.
However, sometimes (and at some point) the most decent thing we can do is tell it like it is. Come September 13th and onward this will be much easier for you to do. You are still assimilating information, like a lot of very intense information that may have been hidden from you until now, and trying to discern what it might mean for the trajectory of your life. You might very well be closing up a two year loop and planning how you would like to start your next one. This has everything to do with understanding loss and love-however that is unfolding for you.
Sometimes we have to give it up to get it at all.
Another piece of your astrology straddles your current career situation and a family (or home) one. It looks a little less than straight forward. It looks a little sticky, slippery and somewhat sneaky. You might have to use the grace mentioned earlier to evade a situation or you might be actively avoiding something in these domains that need your attention. You might not be able to be honest with yourself or others. You might have to hide the truth or you might be hiding from it.
No horoscope can sort out that piece for you.
Capricorn & Capricorn Rising
Memory can be a funny thing. The recalling of history many times benefits the situation of the one doing the recalling. Your current version of your romantic life, past and present, is extremely important to your mental health. Or I should say the truth about it, like both versions of the truth about it, benefits not only your mental state of mind but also your spiritual one.
Our soul suffers a little indignation every time we tell an untruth unnecessarily and the next couple of weeks look to be putting you on the spot in terms of being honest about how, when and where you may have been less than.
I say this because this week offers you a moment of power and that carries a greater impact if you are living in alignment and integrity to the best of your ability. The next few weeks demand that you bring that kind of transparency forth, especially in regards to your work in the world.
If I were you I would be on the lookout for your most powerful teachers, teachers whom most likely will come in the guise of disruption or destruction. But don’t be fooled by appearances. Or your own perceptions of disaster. The most productive, life enhancing changes often appear as less than inviting mothers of mayhem in the early days of becoming butterflies.
There is something quite unmistakable about your outer appearance that is shifting from now until the late fall so let the layers of outdated self-protection fall away. You don’t need training wheels when you’re entering a marathon. Appropriate protection is always advised but fearful reactive protection is not.
Aquarius & Aquarius Rising
Your recent rouse and battle for self determination has either been fought or (more likely) is still in the process of being waged, strategized and on the way to being won. However the next little twist in the road could lead you to face a few speed bumps. You are positioned to either start to doubt, reconfigure or realign the principles that you have held steadfast to thus far.
You can change your mind.
In fact it’s the only thing that we really ever can change. It’s the most powerful thing to change. Because we can’t change anyone else’s. Because we can’t convince anyone of anything. Because we can’t fight our way into understanding or into being understood. Because it’s our only real point of freedom, or it’s the place where our freedom begins, takes flight and comes home to roost. It’s important that you take this understanding into every relationship that you have where you share resources, receive inheritances and/or feel romantic love.
A piece of this has to do with your connection to the family systems you’ve come from. When held unconsciously it’s near impossible not to continually put yourself back in the position you are most familiar with. If you were forced into an uncomfortable position in your family’s constellation you might want to shift your position in that galaxy.
When we do so consciously we might catch ourselves still operating from the same location but we will have the chance to witness why we do it, how we feel about it and how to change our coordinates for good. For our good and the good of all involved.
But.
You can’t be coy. Or confused. Or concentrate on what anyone else did or didn’t do or say. I mean you can, but it won’t help you. You aren’t confused, not really, but you may need more information. Ultimately you know what to do. You know what you need. You just have to let yourself know it so wait until you do.
Pisces & Pisces Rising
Who do you love? Like, who do you love? And why do you love them? Is it conditional? Is it fantasy? Does it hold up to the tests of time and tension? Where are you in this equation? Do you fade from view, are you held up too high or are you in equal partnership with those you do the dance with?
Win-win or win-lose love is a game we all have to get into sooner or later. Or live a life frozen in fear, frenetic activity or spaced-out-drowned-out-unlived-desire.
Love is life. Or in my estimation the only reason to live it.
But it’s easy, too easy, to get lost in. Love is the ultimate screen to project our personal movie on to. Every ouch, every ooof and every ooooh gets going as soon as we meet a sweet sweetie. This goes past love affairs, this goes out to all those we love at all. It’s so hard not to have expectations of those we come to rely on for the source of feeling good.
But you are sniffing out a different scent right now, or you would be well advised to. With the full moon coming to bloom in your First House of self (not sacrifice) next week in your sign, the focus is equally divided between your need for intimacy with others and your need for self-love-alone-time. It’s a very revealing full moon for you, highlighting the specific pieces of healing that you have done and the ones that are ready for a review. This is a healing of your self image so that you might be able to show up more fully in relationships. It could also very well signify a time when those that show up help you dive deeper into this material.
Keep those that hold space for you to heal and that don’t try to get too mixed up in your melodies, melancholy or otherwise.
Sturdy partnerships provide real talk and really solid agreements. You do your work and I’ll do mine and together forever, or just for now, we can hang.
For more information please visit Chani’s personal blog, ChaniNicholas.com, or for personal astrology readings please contact Chani directly at chani [at] chaninicholas.com.
