Zora Neale Hurston, a Capricorn.
Photo: Photo Illustration by Preeti Kinha/ Photos: Getty, Everett Collection
On Tuesday night, a new moon will take place in wise and cautious Capricorn, opening a door and offering the opportunity to set new intentions with consideration and care. Late on Wednesday night, Uranus retrograde ends, and the planet of progress, revolution, and surprise begins moving forward again. On Sunday evening, luck planet Jupiter squares Uranus, marking a moment of unpredictable opportunity. Right now, so much is possible — a new world is doing its very best to come into being — but the path is still strewn with snags and surprises, and it’ll require you to move with patience, with care, with all the wisdom you have.
When it comes to listening to other people, taking their desires and opinions into account, it can be challenging to find the right balance. Listening to others is a valuable skill that can bring great rewards, but it isn’t possible, or even desirable, to listen to everyone. There are so many people with nothing to offer you, so many people spreading bad information, bad analysis, bad feelings. This week, being open to the world doesn’t mean you must heed every piece of advice you’re given. Be as discerning as you can with your attention.
Even though you’ve grown stronger over the past months and years, it might not necessarily feel that way. If anything, you may be more aware of how tired you are, of the ways your emotional reserves have grown lean and depleted. But all this time, you’ve been strengthening new emotional muscles, practicing new kinds of movement. And now this week, in rough and imperfect ways, you’ll start to feel some of the power you’ve slowly been building. This week, in fits and starts, you’ll be able to remember that you’re strong and worthy, and justified in making demands of the world.
This week, you’ll benefit from thinking carefully and clearly about your loyalties and your commitments, about the values that mean the most to you. It’s very possible that these things have changed; if so, it’s important that you can express — even if only to yourself — what matters to you now. This week, this clarity will be crucial. When you’re clear on your deepest values, you can respond to any situation with integrity. When you know what matters most, you can find your way through any unmapped terrain.
This is a week for thinking seriously about your desire, and for treating it as the formidable power that it actually is. It’s far too easy to envision it as a kind of soft and wispy haze, as something wistful, dreamy, light as air. But that’s not the only way that desire can feel. Sometimes, desire can propel you forward, can fill you with strength, can put some surprising steel in your voice. You aren’t stuck forever yearning for the world you want. Instead, you can go out and find it, go out and build it.
It can be so difficult, right now, to hold onto any kind of perspective. This isn’t your fault: everything around you keeps changing and reversing. What seemed major can reveal itself to be inconsequential; what seemed unimportant can reveal itself to be life-changing. It’s hard to know what matters and what can be ignored, and even harder to know what your own role should be. This week, don’t let yourself be convinced that your own life is trivial, or that your own skills and gifts are inconsequential You’re needed more than ever; over time, the world will show you how.
Reality doesn’t progress along a smooth, upward trajectory. You know this perfectly well, but it’s still so hard not to wish that everything moved on a linear path. It still feels unfair that your hard work and your good heart don’t lead directly to the rewards you deserve. But that doesn’t mean your efforts have been wasted. All this time, you’ve been creating the foundations you need. All this time, you’ve been building networks of care. You might be surprised, this week, at the ways all your love comes back to you.
The weight of other people’s analyses can weigh so heavy on your shoulders. There are so many opinions and so many angles, but nobody knows anything for sure — no one can see the future, and nobody’s figured out how to fix all that’s gone wrong. This week, make a point of not getting too tangled up in everyone else’s ideas. That just prevents you from seeing all the possibilities available to you, all the opportunities to live the best way you can.
This is a week to avoid game-playing and intrigue, a week to avoid all kinds of petty maneuvering for power. There’s just too much unpredictability in the air, too much potential for wild and unexpected outcomes. No matter how hard you try to plan for everything, the world can still surprise you; that’s especially true right now. Even though it can make you feel painfully vulnerable to be too forthcoming about your intentions, this week, it’s best to plan simply, to take each day as it comes.
It can be difficult to strike the right balance between confidence and wisdom — to let your confidence fuel you without carrying you away, and to let your wisdom ground you without weighing you down so much you can’t move. This week, it will be particularly important to pay attention to this balance. Right now, things are going to be up-and-down, messy, unclear. Right now, so much is possible that even you haven’t yet dreamed of. Confidence alone won’t carry you through this, and neither will all the practical wisdom in the world — you’re going to need them both.
Sometimes, when things are particularly challenging, or when you’re feeling particularly tired, it can seem like it makes sense to give up your unfulfilled ambitions. It can seem like a good strategy, to somehow fool your brain into being satisfied with the things that you already have. But this week, there’s no reason to pretend you don’t want what you actually do. This week, there’s no reason not to dream beautiful long-term dreams. You don’t have to do all the work just yet — you don’t even have to plan — just don’t talk yourself out of dreaming.
Resolve and clarity come naturally to you — you know who you are, and you know what you value deep down. The difficulty comes in carrying this clarity with you through a messy world. The difficulty comes in keeping this clarity without holding it too tight. This week, the world is going to surprise you. It’s going to require you to bend and adapt and change your mind. Your job is to keep living, to trust that your values and integrity are strong enough to withstand a changing world, a changing you — because they are.
Lately, the emotional ups and downs of everyday life have felt so intense, so heightened, that it’s hard to see beyond them. Lately, each day has been so full of drama and surprises that it’s been hard to have energy left for anything else. This isn’t your fault; there are times when the mere act of survival is enough. But as much as you can, try to remind yourself of the long term, too. Try to remember that this isn’t the end — that you still have a future, and that you can move with intention and courage into it.
Read the weekly horoscopes for the week of January 4. The weekly horoscopes for the week of January 18 will be online next Sunday.
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