There’s one thing that I want you to enter 2023 with: I want you to devote yourself to the wondrousness, the mystery, the banality, and the absolute brutality of life.
There is something that I keep hearing in my head when I look at the astrology of 2023 that I didn’t hear in my head last year when I was looking at the astrology of 2022.
“We’re easing into a new era now.”
I remember writing horoscopes last year and feeling a new type of pressure around the whole activity. I have been writing horoscopes for seven years now. Last year was the first time I became aware of horoscopes being something that people looked to when faced with the uncertainty of large global events. There was a pressure that I felt to make sense of the pandemic, all of that death and crisis, and to predict some kind of ending or unfolding.
Well, pandemics don’t end. I believed that last year and I still believe it this year. And, this year, looking at the astrology of 2023 feels less like the end of an era, the loss of a particular way of existing, and more like the beginning of a new way to live.
We have all been constructing new lives on the ruins of our old ones.
There are some pretty big astrological events in 2023: Pluto finally reaches Aquarius in March where it’ll stay until it retrogrades back to Capricorn in June. Saturn enters Pisces in March. Jupiter takes a quick stride through Aries before going into Taurus in May. The nodes of the Moon go into Aries and Libra which are eclipsed in the fall. There is a Venus retrograde late summer. All year, Venus appears to pursue Mars but it never quite catches up before that fatal retrograde. All three Mercury retrogrades this year happen in earth signs.
Looking at all of this, there’s this feeling of things changing and happening very fast which seems just totally different to the astrology of the last few years. Since 2018, despite all of the changes, there’s been this feeling of stuckness. Maybe you’ll call it frustration or maybe you’ll call it stability. That depends on you. I know that the last few years have been crisis driven but, still, many things have remained the same.
2023 seems more volatile. Things breaking. Rupture. Breakthroughs and breakdowns. Jupiter in Aries is a Mars ruled Jupiter and Mars likes to break things.
I don’t know what will happen with Pluto in Aquarius but I do know this—if global warming continues, the Colorado River will be reduced by 30% by the time Pluto enters Pisces. Maybe, when the disruption and breakage that I am seeing is in part wishful thinking. Things cannot stay the same.
I like to think of Pluto as the bringer of the inevitable. It’s this thing that feels unstoppable. We never go through Pluto transits alone. We always go through them with other people and this is also why they feel inevitable. Pluto is life itself, lived ungovernable and in disregard of control.
And, beginning in 2023, Saturn will reach Pisces this year. Saturn, the fearsome god of connection, moves through the ocean.
In the past few months, I’ve been learning how to play the game Go. I learned one thing from this game: if you can figure out how to live something then you’ve won. But you have to learn how to live. If you can live somewhere, then no one can get rid of you there, not if you can breathe there.
There’s one thing that I want you to enter 2023 with: I want you to devote yourself to the wondrousness, the mystery, the banality, and the absolute brutality of life. If you love life, I want you to fucking love it. I want you to dig your nails in and refuse to give it up. I want you to eat it.
Life is this: that feeling of catastrophe when you love a new crush a little more than you think you should, the heartbreak of rejection because you were brave enough to actually want something, the wince of noticing the that you didn’t quite mean to do something that you didn’t know you were doing, wanting to be a better friend than you can be, being a better friend than you thought you could be, and feeding something everyday until it gets big.
I don’t know about you but I put some parts of myself to sleep these last three years. Numbness is a way to keep living. But no more. It’s 2023 and it’s time to love life. We are in a new era and in an ongoing pandemic under an economic system that prioritizes productivity over life. I say, life is the only thing that is allowed to kill you in the end. Life is the hardest thing to love.
Capricorn
Obsession is a curious thing. You don’t know what it is until you’re very deep in it. Self consciousness does not kill it. You only become self conscious of obsession once you’re past the point of caring. You start to see all of the things that you are obsessed with in the world. It changes the world around you and it also changes you. It doesn’t come when you call and it rarely leaves you just because you will it to.
Obsession is inherently wasteful and very, very creative. Usually, calling someone obsessive is another way of calling them difficult or socially freakish. There is no cure for obsession since it doesn’t always seek what makes you pursue.
I want you to enjoy obsession in 2023. Write 3000 jokes this year. Make a quilt with very fine yarn that takes hours and hours. Ask a single question 700 different ways. Be vigorous and demanding.
The worst part of obsession is that it blows apart all of your precious routines and steals from you the things that you thought you needed to maintain yourself. This is also the best thing about it. Obsession is for the strange. You are very strange. Give yourself the permission that you need to become obsessed with something that makes you feel alive.
Questions to ask yourself 2023:
What were you obsessed with as a child?
What would need to give in your life to make more room for obsession?
What is the pace of your obsession?
Aquarius
I want you to focus on nutrition in 2023.
There’s food as nutrition: rich egg yolks, stinky natto beans, sour citrus freshness, and luxuriously velvety salmon. There’s books as nutrition: wonderfully confounding texts that have you sitting in the dark just thinking about this, poetry that makes you see in a new way, and turns of phrase that make your heart skip a beat. There’s touch as nutrition: those soft little pets that your cat asks of you, those big tight bear hugs that you give when you see your lover hunched over, and the self touch that you do for yourself generously because it is free. There’s movement as nutrition: feeling the sunlight against your face as you make your way to the train, getting the opportunity to go to a new place with new plants, and looking into the horizon to remember that the world is large.
2023 will be about feeding yourself. Saturn enters your second house. The second house is the house of nutrition. It’s the house of the things that you touch and deliver into yourself. It’s the house of absorption.
Where does your nutrition come from? Where is your food grown? If a part of you is anxious about putting things in your mouth, could these questions be a clue as to why?
Imagine that you are a curious sponge in 2023. Saturate yourself. Soak it up until your sponge self is heavy and satisfied. Get a lot, read a lot, and feel free to get greedy about these things. There is enough for you in this world.
Questions to ask yourself in 2023:
What are you most hungry for?
What will help you trust that you know what is good for you?
What is the texture of your enjoyment?
Pisces
Saturn moves through you this year of 2023. Saturn—she’s the matriarch who knows all of the stories and who doesn’t say a single fucking word. She’s the parking lot goddess who cracks the cement so that the old field can grow between the splintering and rise to the top. Her name is also Integrity and she commands that you only do things that you want to do, that you only do things that you have time for, that you only do things that will pay off ten years from now.
You have no more time. That’s the spell of Saturn.
You have no time for running around and fucking around. You have no time for caring about what the sycophants say about you behind your back. You have no time for immediate gratification. You have no time for lying. You don’t have the time for trying regimens that only make you feel good but don’t feed the solidity of your bones.
So, keep living your life. You have no more time. Your grumpiness will be the first clue as to what you can do without. Then, it will be your seething rage. Lastly, you will find undying devotion in what is willing to remain with you when you cut from yourself all that is not your own.
Question to ask yourself in 2023:
What are you tired of?
What don’t you have time for?
What do you have time for?
Aries
You’ve spent the last seven years pondering the outside world. You’ve been affected by the pull of other people’s opinions, trying to feel out how you fit in or don’t. You’ve found a way to make a big noise about things when you need to and you have been running to your goal posts for a very, very long while now.
Tuck yourself into a corner. Find a tree trunk and burrow inside of it. This is the beginning of seven years of inner growth.
I want you to imagine the center of your body as a giant tree. Just feel that solidity of just that image for a second. See what has been holding you together. It’s not that stick you had up your ass and just figured out how to remove—it’s your core sense of self. Notice what things feel smooth and safe inside of you. Know, clearly, what you trust most about yourself.
Now, see if there are any erupted corners—soft spots that suffered corrosion. See if there are any things that you don’t know about yourself yet. See if your body feels responsible for holding onto any secrets for you.
All of this is the source of your power. Your strength is your power but so is your fear. Your pride is your power and so is your humility. Your love is your power and so is your hatred. I want you to spend 2023 figuring out how to be yourself for yourself. This isn’t about where you fit in. This is about growing as yourself.
Questions to ask yourself for 2023:
What is holding you together?
What is pulling you apart?
What makes you yourself?
Taurus
No one needs to know where you are or what you are thinking this year. It’s not a time for you to be understood or declarative or even very clear. It’s your year to indulge in the art of secret keeping.
Keep yourself private. Protect your fantasies. Enjoy them to the fullest. Let them get bigger and bigger. Go places where no one knows you. Talk to groups of people who don’t comprehend where you came from or who you are. Live like you have shed a skin and are currently walking around wearing a new one.
There is freedom in privacy. It’s that freedom of the hour of dusk—that shallow wading pool of time you keep to yourself before anyone else is up, before you are a parent, before you are a student, before you must figure out how to get yourself to work or a job. It’s your hour to do whatever it is that you desire. The hours of dusk is what happens when life is removed of everything that it is expected to do and be.
I want you to live like every hour is that hour of dusk in 2023. Get up earlier if you have to. Stay up later if you need to. Don’t adhere to a strict routine. You are a goat trapped in a dessert starved and thirsty for time, for freedom and for necessity. You’re a thief of time and your thieving tools are skiving off of work, getting lost somewhere, and forgetting things that weren’t so important anyway. Be forgetful. Cut yourself slack. Never be less careless than you have to be.
Questions to ask yourself in 2023:
If you had an extra hour of time every day, what would you do with it?
What does your boredom drive you to do?
If you weren’t expected to be yourself, who could you be?
Gemini
You’re thinking these days about your future. What a demanding presence the future sometimes feels like! It’s like this great big hump on your back. You’re a camel, swaddled in the weight of carrying this future around with you like a great big tote bag filled with things that you hesitate to take too close of a look at.
The weight that you attach to the future just wants you to understand and to exercise care with what is important to you.
Take a look at all of the items in that heavy bag that you call the future. What is in there? Is there something that looks like a career in there? Is there something else that looks like partnership or success in love? Another thing that looks like your mother’s story of success? No, I want you to really look at the things in the bag. I don’t know what’s in your bag. I don’t know what’s riding on your vision of your future.
Just look at these things. Don’t toss them aside or anything. Get curious about them. Who put them in there? Have they always looked this way? Talk out loud to yourself while holding the thing and see where the conversation goes.
You might feel an impulse towards taking greater responsibility towards your own future when Saturn enters Pisces in March this year. Don’t stress. It’s just an angular Saturn transit. Saturn may ask for a plan from you. You can make one but you can also remind Saturn that you reserve the right to change your mind.
Questions to ask yourself in 2023:
What do you see when you imagine your future?
If you were responsible for making your own future, what would you shape it into?
What is the first step to making your own future?
Cancer
There’s a narrative that you tell yourself about yourself. I don’t know what it is but you do. It’s a narrative about yourself that you don’t mind disclosing to other people. When you narrate this story of yourself, it sometimes feels exactly right and, other times, you feel this awareness of performing your story of yourself as yourself.
I’m not here to contest your idea of who you are. You are who you are and you know what you are doing.
I’m wondering if the narrative you have of yourself is enough to hold the entirety of yourself. If you are curious about this question, you might prop this narrative up and see if there is anything hiding underneath the hood of the vehicle. This narrative might be just that—a vehicle to take you from one place in your life to another place. I’m wondering if you are curious about what you are bringing with you from one place to another.
There is a lot of joy for you in 2023, maybe more so than anyone else. This is a fantastic year for Cancer placements. I’m asking you to be curious enough about yourself to know that you never know all of yourself because I want you to not be fooled by thinking that you can describe what you want. I want you to be open to recognizing joy when it catches you without preparation.
This isn’t about pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. No astrology horoscope is going to make you try things or do things that make you uncomfortable without a good reason. This is about seeing if your idea of joy is sufficient. This is about wondering if, maybe, joy is larger than your idea of who you think you are and seeing if you are willing to enjoy things that you don’t think you will like.
Questions to ask yourself in 2023:
What is the story you tell of who you are?
When is this story not enough?
When the story is not enough, what else is there?
Leo
Most of the time, it is better to build slowly than to not build at all. I think that, and this is my opinion, that you tend to credit your will with far too much. Sometimes, rigidity in decision making is not overcome by attaching a life philosophy to the process. Sometimes, Leos tend to focus a lot on who is right for them and who is not.
Maybe there is no answer. What would happen if there wasn't one? What would happen to your defenses? Your openness?
Life is just lived with whomever you stumble upon. Sometimes you bond with someone and sometimes you do not. Sometimes you hurt someone and sometimes someone hurts you. Sometimes you have to burn a bridge. Sometimes you have to build one, as painful as that might be.
The only thing that I am certain of is that the chances of you developing close and resilient attachments increases when you actually choose your relationships. There is no morality with relationships, you see. There are no right types or wrong types. There is only the certainty of your choice. If you want stability, then go move slowly. If you go too fast, then you are not building at all.
Questions to ask yourself in 2023:
What makes you stay?
What makes you choose something when you’re not sure of its rightness?
What if life is an accident?
Virgo
You’re actually just ready for something new. You’re sick of being around all of the same old hang out spots, talking about the same things over and over again. Maybe you’ve watched some of your friends move on. Maybe you’re unsure of whether something is holding you back. You feel more and more tired of taking the same route home. You know too much about what there is to know.
Move on. There are going to be times when you move on from things. This is one of them. This is the beginning of a fifteen year period where you will be living a different life from the one you are living now.
You might actually move locations sometime in the next two to three years. If not, then you might move through the world differently. You might get up at a different time of the day, working a different job than you used to, and walk through the world differently. You might hold a different title or move towards a different type of legacy. Your direction will not be the same.
Give yourself the time that you need to ease into change. You need to make sure that this is your choice. Give yourself time to move back and forth if you have the room to and if this feels okay. Remind yourself that regret usually follows most every big choice and that this isn’t necessarily an indicator of things gone wrong. Move with some certainty and with the willingness to just try some things out to see how you might fit.
Questions to ask yourself in 2023:
What are you moving on from?
What feels open to you?
What feels closed?
Libra
You’ve been holding things within yourself for a very long time now. There are things that you hold so dearly and preciously that they feel like they have become a part of you. In fact, some of these things you were born holding onto like the guy who was born holding a jade amulet in his mouth. These are things that you learned to hold onto for the sake of people who did not ask you explicitly to do so but implicitly.
These past few years, you’ve learned the wisdom of holding onto what you hold onto. You’ve learned this through learning that you can also let go.
To clench can be a beautiful way to let someone know that they are dear to you and to let yourself know that you won’t let go of what you want because your grip is strong. Clenching is a choice when you are allowed to release. There are things that you can do with open fingers too. You can tap, you can flick, and you can swish.
I won’t tell you that 2023 is for letting yourself release things. That sounds like a prescription. I think that 2023 is about letting yourself dance and move. There will be movements that allow you to clench and hold. Clenching can be incredibly pleasurable. There will also be movements that recall a different type of strength. You are an air sign. Variety is what you need.
Questions to ask yourself in 2023:
When did you start clenching?
What are you clenching on?
What or who are you clenching for?
Scorpio
You know, there is one thing that no one can ever take away from you. A great deal of things can be taken from you—your credentials, your belongings, your reputations, and even your name which is a legible representation of you that the government tracks. Hell, someone could even take your life away from you if you want to go that far.
However—there is one thing that no one can take from you. This is the work, the joy, and the play. I’m talking about the self respect that you develop for yourself when you do something that you want to do no matter how hard or annoying or tiring it is. Your self respect is something that no one can take away or co-opt for their own purposes because it belongs only to you.
I want you to love your self respect in 2023. I want you to explore the depth and the rigor of it. There’s so much of it that it becomes a whole universe onto itself when you let it unfold. This is something that no one can define for you. It’s something that no one can earn for you. It’s something that can never be taken away from you.
Bind yourself to your respect for yourself underneath your clothes. This is true discipline—beautiful discipline. Enjoy the way this binding of you rubs against and warms up your skin. Get a thrill when it hurts in just the way you like. Wear it like a weapon and know, always, that you have it with you.
Questions to ask yourself in 2023:
How have you earned your self respect in the past?
How will you continue to earn your self respect in the future?
What do you appreciate about discipline?
Sagittarius
You want what you want and you want it now. You don’t care anymore. You just want the things you want. You’re tired of not being allowed. Your thirst is too much. You’re gonna go after it. You’re going to reach. You’re going to go for the thing that scares you and if you never really gave a shit about a scraped knee then you’re not about to start caring now.
Ooh, can you feel this wild impatience in you? This dictator called desire that won’t let you go until you’ve done all of its bidding with the devotion of a fanatic?
I actually think that it is important for you to connect with your hunger in 2023. You are not tired of yourself. You are tired of living a life half starved.
Your hunger is as blunt as life. There is no morality in hunger—only life. Hunger is sexy when it is honest and cowardly when it acts self denying. Hunger refuses preciousness which you are also sick of. Hunger is sure. It is accurate. It acts now and it can be existential. It forces you to contend with the fact of your survival.
What happens if you approach your hunger with curiosity? There is a piece of desire that is sadistic, isn’t there? There might be a piece in there that feels very young or a piece in there that feels very old. You have what it takes to know your own hunger more than anyone else in the world.
Questions to ask yourself in 2023:
What are you hungry for?
What does your hunger want for you?
What is it trying to do for the world?
