Americans love anti-heroes because our nation’s origin story is a crime story.

In August, four planets will be dignified throughout the course of the month. Saturn is in Capricorn, Mars is in Aries, the Sun will be in Leo until the 23rd, and Mercury will enter Virgo on the 21st where it is both dignified and exalted. Having a lot of planets ruling themselves and providing for themselves without needing to answer to anyone else is the equivalent of having a bunch of sovereign states—a lot of kings in power. It can be hard to hold room for all of them at once. This kind of thing happens most often around Leo season.

A dignified planet is a planet that is in its own home. The ability to be at home comes from power, according to Sara Ahmed. Home has to do with the family.

The story of Romeo and Juliet is really a war story. War stories are often told as love stories since gender has often been an allegory for the state. Defensive states are gendered as feminine while foreign states are gendered as masculine. Romeo and Juliet, like love stories and war stories often do, tells a story about civility and barbarity. It tells a story in which “civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”

Out of all the planets that are dignified in August, two are malefics. Mars, the protestor, approaches a square with Saturn—the outcast. The other set of characters involved in this royal drama are the Sun (capital) and Mercury (labor). Some of us are overworked and terrified of the pandemic unemployment fund running dry. Overwork and unemployment are both symptoms of a larger issue.

The symbol of a red hand signifies indisputable guilt. Often used in mystery or detective stories, the red right hand is often found on villains. Villains serve a specific function in the police story. They contrast violence with the state and make violence seem exceptional.

The red hand originates from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The first time the red hand was used in western storytelling was to describe God. In Paradise Lost, God’s “red right hand” and “vengeful arm” comes to “plague us.” Paradise Lost is also the story that invented Satan. Before Satan, there were various devils and demons but God was not seen to have any rival with a human face. Milton’s Satan was the first anti-hero, which later became America’s quintessential hero. Americans love anti-heroes because our nation’s origin story is a crime story.

When Angela Davis was asked for her thoughts on violence, she said “Ask me—if I approve of violence!? This does not make any sense.” Years later, when asked why she responded this way, she said that “I was attempting to point out that questions about the validity of violence should have been directed to those institutions that held and continue to hold a monopoly on violence: the police, the prisons, the military.”

Guilt is an emotion. Like all emotions, we can’t do anything about guilt. What we can do, however, is make changes to the environments that our emotions are responding to.

Leo

The reason why you might grieve and feel guilt around time is because you have such powerful ideals around how you want to spend your life. Whether you are overworked or not able to work, internalized capitalism might mean that you are terrified that time is slipping through your fingers like sand. This can also be birthday angst.

You don’t have to do everything, Leo. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist and also the world’s best cook. You don’t have to perform well in a majority of the things that you do. You’re here to live—not to perform. Have the audacity to do things half assed. Celebrate your life—not your achievements.

Virgo

Let your erotic power destroy any illusions around love that you might have. Your erotic power is not about playing quid pro quo during sex or about thinking that your pleasure cannot be asserted without the friend on its back called shame. If you are made to feel guilty about pleasure, then accept the feeling as a consequence of seeking pleasure in the places where you are currently seeking it—not as an inevitable factor that will always affect how you enjoy your body and your spirit.

You can’t change feelings by choosing the same pleasure sources over and over again. Feelings come around when they want to be acknowledged. Your pleasure is not static but always in a process of transformation.

Libra

In what ways are you still reacting to people who are not in your life anymore? August is less about making new decisions and more about noticing the decisions around environmental change that you are already making. Stop reacting to your ex. They’re gone. August is about challenging deep seated emotional patterns around who you choose and who you let choose you.

Are some of your choices triggering your ancestors? They will let you know and you will have to listen even if you have different opinions. Your grieving process is about starting conversations with your most rageful ancestors first. Those are also the ones who are the funniest.

Scorpio

Learning is not about sitting in one place and reading or scrolling on your phone. Learning is about messing up. The word praxis means a practice of disrupting institutions. Praxis is about institutional failure. When you engage in praxis, you will be called in for accountability so that you can listen and learn.

In August, stop being so goddamn careful. Your life is not a curation project and your mind is not a series of Russian dolls. You’re here to learn in a chaotic way, with people, and in a way that moves with change. Engage with your fear of being called out by getting called out. Learn that accountability is a love language that turns the expectation of cruelty into tenderness.

Sagittarius

Your deepest and most unspoken fears are also what brings people towards you. Are you afraid of growing apart from your partner? Of your parents dying? Of your future children hating you? People are scared during pandemic times. Historically, people have also been most powerful during pandemic times. You’re not scared alone. You’re scared with people. Make sure that your body understands that.

There are some things that you are unable to do. There are some things that you are unable to control. There are also some things you don’t want to do or control. Grieve the self that thought it could perform exceptional roles and give your real self a hug.

Capricorn

Commit to the landlessness of all settlers within settler states. Divestment is also the treatment of land as kin rather than property. Divestment cuts into capitalism’s dichotomy between foreign and native capital, between capitalism’s dichotomy between the market and land which always ends in ownership. Listen to other people and leave when you’re told to and show up when you’re asked to. The work that you’re destined for is also work that you will never be able to do alone.

August is about kin making. For you to make kin, you will have to understand any feelings of shame that were given to you by your family. Those feelings are yours, which means that you don’t have to get a second opinion. It’s your responsibility to talk back to those feelings.

Aquarius

If you are relying on your emotional attachment to busy work to fill your time, then you are putting your growth and awareness on hold. Growth requires awareness which requires noticing things, which you can’t do with your gaze stuck on a screen all the time. You won’t want to do this but you need some useless time. Useless time is unassigned time, which is time you don’t spend doing anything.

If useless time makes you feel guilty, accept that guilt. If it makes you grieve, accept that grief. Your emotions are here to inform you about things. When you accept them, you will also know your actual work.

Pisces

You don’t have to be anyone to anyone. The idea that you could take on roles that make you uncomfortable is both an inferiority and superiority complex. It’s a superiority complex when you think you can play any role like something almost inhuman. It’s an inferiority complex because you’re not treasuring your real self when you play so many roles.

It’s your responsibility to rest when you need it. You don’t have to be the ultimate anything—not the ultimate friend, activist, or worker. It’s your responsibility to recognize your emotions and to communicate them so that they don’t alienate you but connect you.

Aries

Protest is valid when you need to politicize issues in environments in which you have no political power. When you raise awareness issues on which you do have political power, then you are exploiting that issue to perform a certain role. An example—there is no point in politicians joining protests when we need them to stop denying their power and to start using it.

Understand where you might have power. These are not the places where you need to disappear off the place of the earth but the places where you need to show up. This will be deep accountability work and you will not be able to do this alone.

Taurus

If your politics are not imaginative, then there’s at least a possibility that you’ve outgrown some of your political alignments. It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. What does that tell us? It is easier to imagine fascism than a world without prisons. What does that tell you?

August wants for you to have the audacity to imagine the unimaginable. It wants you to imagine that you have power. Everyone you love is a home. Every home is a future world. Every future world is also a changing, collapsing, and emerging world.

Gemini

Your deepest and unspoken ambitions are not really yours but belong to everyone. Are you afraid of being power hungry? Your hunger for power may be a symptom of powerlessness. Are you afraid of being violent? Your violent impulses can be a response to normalized violence. Do you lust for wealth? You might be frustrated by capitalism.

Understand that your ambitions are emotions and that feeling guilt or shame around them will not change them. Instead, accept that your cruelest ambitions are simply responses to the type of environment that you live in. Then, focus on changing said environment if you are unhappy with your ambitions.

Cancer

It’s actually possible to trust people. You don’t have to do everything for everyone. People will sometimes come through for you and that’s okay. People will sometimes be the ones to feed you. People understand your need to be embraced. Other people are not as scary as some of your younger selves believe them to be.

Worldbuilding is about caretaking, one person at a time. It’s not about bridging ideological differences or about entertaining fascists by debating with them. It’s about drawing people in by making sure that they understand the places you inhabit are also places where they are taken care of. Do the work that’s needed to make sure that the people in your life are also the people you want to build worlds with. Ask your people to build worlds with you by asking them to take care of you.