There is poetry in your life. There is perversion in your life. Accept that.

February will be weirdly arousing—sexy but weird. Horny but for weird things. Aroused but in a weird way.

Aquarius season is the coldest season of the year and we’re in the middle of it. The Sun is in Aquarius and we’ll get a Leo full moon and Pisces new moon this month. Venus is exalted. It entered its exalted late January and it will stay in its exaltation until the 21st. When it enters Aries, it joins Jupiter and both will be ruled by a Mars that moves direct now in Gemini, a Mars that aspects both benefics.

Meanwhile, Mercury runs past the nodal bendings sometime in mid February.

There is something arousing about Venus being in Pisces. It’s the first hint of spring approaching even though we are still deep in the winter season. We know that, at some point, our bodies will wake up. Our skin will be exposed. We will perspire the way early morning plants dew and frost. Our juices start to run.

Or, maybe, you do not want to get horny in a sexual way. That is completely fine. There is something else that makes you feel alive.

Last time Venus was in Pisces I did a workshop about noticing the erotic (I’m doing the workshop again in Nadia Shah’s Synchronicity University) and I think back to that time now. There was this incredible list we explored that Octavia Butler made of all of the concepts that she thought were most sexy. In this list there are some circled words: fear, striving, desire, transformation, self-reliance, self-confidence, self-discipline, dependency, evil, opposites, and symbiosis.

Human beings find an incredible range in what we find to be sexy or not. Sometimes we assume that people are into conventional beauty standards but this isn’t always true. We’re all into weird shit. Some people are turned on by the incredible hulk. Many of us are furries. Some of us are into headless people for its metaphorical castration and some of us fantasize about being swallowed whole by a sexy alien. There is even a kafkaesque kink about people becoming insects.

I think that the power of Venus in Pisces is in its willingness to accept. When we accept something we find a way to be curious about it. Only when we are curious about something can we learn more about it.

I want you to get curious about the things that make you feel like a freak in February. I think that, as queer people with often indescribable yearnings, sometimes we fall into the trap of borrowing labels and fixes from science or consumerism with the hope that these fixed and easily understood terms will ease our confusion and make us more accessible.

I want you to be indecipherable when you need to be. I want you to invite confusion in, knowing that confusion is just a state of learning.

There are feelings and wants and fixations that you have that need no language, that resist language, that you try to adhere language to and end up changing language in order to better shape the symptoms of your aliveness. Honor the parts of you that remain a mystery, that remain a puzzle. There are undecipherable feelings of melancholia that result from the early morning sun and wayward feelings of disgusted satisfaction from the simple and routine task of taking out the trash. Can you be with all of your feelings? Can you be fully sensitive without being sentimental?

There is poetry in your life. There is perversion in your life. Accept that.

Aquarius

In February I want you to do something that is really hard. In February, I want you to try and trust your resources.

It’s very scary to try and trust resources. We might theoretically understand that there are friends all around us but we might not trust enough to blatantly ask for help. We might theoretically understand that we use resources like food and water everyday of our lives but we might feel deep fear when asked to consider the origins of where those life materials come from because we are aware that growth is precarious. We might know that we are good at something but shy away when we are asked to use that gift-skill towards some useful end.

When you trust a resource, it doesn’t mean that you fix into it the expectation that it will always be there for you in exactly the same way. It means that you increase your capacity for noticing more resources. It means that you are willing to use your resources. It means that you are willing to be more resourceful.

In February, know your resources even if you are willing to trust the parameters of all of them. Perceive them. Know what is out there and brainstorm how to use them. Touch them and hold them. Know what you have.

Questions to ask yourself in February 2023:
What are some resources you are familiar with?
What are some resources you are unfamiliar with?
What resources are you willing to call your own?

Pisces

I want you to stick with one question in February. The question is: what is the value of your peace?

There are two layers to this question. One of the layers is the question of what your peace is worth to you. What are you willing to do or release so that you have your peace? What is the meaning and significance of peace to you? The other layer of this question is one of cost. When does inhabiting peace feel more like playing ostrich and sticking your head beneath the sand? What does your peace cost you or the world around you?

I want you to ask yourself these questions not because I want you to jeopardize your peace but because I want you to understand it. I want you to value it when it’s valuable and to be willing to move out of peace when combativeness is more appropriate to the situation at hand. I want you to protect peace by understanding when it is a choice and when it is no longer one. When you push peace aside to fight, I want you to fight while knowing that you who is doing the fighting has value.

Questions to ask yourself in February 2023:
What is the value of peace?
What is the cost of peace?
When is peace appropriate?

Aries

You don’t need to search and dig to find the core of your arousal this month. Instead, all I want you to do is to find and feel the affect of arousal. Find the parts of you that grow large, engorged, when you are turned on by something. Feel how good it feels to swell and do not worry about how or why or when. Allow your pride to swell with just a touch of the right kind of attention. Let your heart get bigger when you accidentally catch someone’s eye. Let your belly grow full after a good and satisfying meal.

Often, growing large can feel scary. We worry that we are taking up too much space. We feel exposed for things that we are reluctant to reveal. We are concerned that the world around us is not large enough to hold us. And, yet, I want you to be defiantly present. I want you to be there—here, in this world. I want you to be in this world and feel the impact of your presence living life here on this earth. I want you to live large.

You’re someone who does things not because you feel that you are ready to but because you want to. You’re someone who know that things are only hard when you don’t know how to do them yet and that they become easier after you have already tried them once. Do this, live fully, and be yourself.

Questions to ask yourself in February 2023:
What are some things that you want to make bigger?
What would making those things grow larger look like?
What gets easier when you do it more than once?

Taurus

If I’m not mistaken, then the presence of the north node in your sign in the last year or so and the presence of Venus in your eleventh house this month signifies gain. You’ve gained things and you will gain things. You might have gained with new work, with new income, with new friends, or new toys. There are things that you have gained this last year and there are more things that you will gain.

By mid February, I imagine that the ruler of your chart approaching the twelve house means that you are a bit sick of, even when you are quite happy with, all of the gain. You might find that your calendar is just too full. You might find that you have your fingers in too many pies or that you have too many pieces that all require at least a bit of your attention. You have collected too many books that you have yet to read.

I want you to relieve yourself in February. Figure out what you want to let go of and let those things go. Things only have significance in your life when the timing is right—never before and never after. Let things go if the timing for them is not yet right. Let things go if you are satisfied and no longer stimulated. Relieve yourself of the burden of carrying too much.

Questions to ask yourself in February 2023:
What have you enjoyed?
When are you satisfied?
What are you ready to end?

Gemini

There is something in February that smells like self reckoning in store for you. This self reckoning has to do with the things that used to feel like potential or freedom and no longer do. To put it in simple terms, I think that you will be finding out what you no longer hope for in February.

Sometimes, dreams are not images that need to be proven concretely to hold any truth. Many times, dreams work to say things to us in the present. They are messengers of information rather than predictive things. In February, I want you to find the dreams that you want to remain a dream.

There are many reasons why someone might choose to limit possibility for themselves. Someone might limit the scope of a project so that the project does not begin boundless but start finite and can be carried to completion. Someone might choose to move to a place with very little going on because they have decided to focus on one very important thing. Someone might decide to refuse an opportunity because they want to practice choosing exactly who they already are for a change.

Choose who you are. You do not need to carry hope if it starts to feel like a burden.

Questions to ask yourself in February 2023:
What did you used to hope for?
Are there any things that you no longer choose to believe in?
What is relieved when you find that you are finite?

Cancer

It is time to think about your next move. I know that you are prone to being the type of person who hangs onto the same things but, in these last few months, you have felt as though the air around you has grown stagnant and stale. You know that it is the right time to make a move through the world, to put yourself in a new frame of mind, and to do something about the patterns that seem to try to encase you into habit.

The world around you asks for more from you now and you have the exciting suspicion that you are able to step up to the task. You have prepared, you have studied, and you have deliberated. You know exactly what you are talking about and you have the help that you need so that you never go where you go alone.

Step up into the world. You’ll feel it change to make room for you. Move deliberately or spontaneously. This doesn’t matter since plans don’t mean that the world won’t change. What matters is that you trust your self guidance as you step forward. What matters is that you know the person who is bringing you into the future is yourself.

Questions to ask yourself in February 2023:
What would moving forward mean for you?
What are you ready for?
What have you already done to move forward?

Leo

In February, I want you to enjoy the sensation of appreciating things that are not, or no longer, yours. In a discord group that I am in, someone wrote a lovely essay on the phenomenon of compersion and I think about that essay a lot. Compersion is the joy that we feel when we participate in the happiness and success of other people. Compersion is whole hearted which means that it involves the whole of us. It tickles the whole of us when we feel it.

There is joy for you in February. There is the pride of seeing your child try a new skill and succeeding after a few tries. There is the awestruck of watching a friend make an emotional breakthrough. There is the guarded elation of seeing a lover fall in love with someone else and sharing in their play because you know for a fact that they love you too. There is the relief of seeing an ex move on and thrive.

Compersion exists and is just as real as jealousy. It takes just as much social structuring as jealousy does and our world is designed to be competitive and asks us to forget our compersion. There is as much pleasure and romance in compersion as there is in falling in love for yourself.

Questions to ask yourself in February 2023:
When are you willing to wholehearted participate in someone else’s joy?
When are you not?
What happens if both of these things are okay?

Virgo

Busyness has always been a very good look on you and I think you know this too. There is something quite romantic about being off to do something else all of the time. There is something satisfying about loading up a calendar with events and proving to yourself that time can, too, become for you like an effortless machine. There is something pleasurable about moving beyond stress and getting shit done.

I want you to reckon with the role that stress plays in you in February. I wonder what shorthand the word stress implies. I wonder what it stands for. Does it stand for the hope of excitement? Of hoping for more than you dare? Does it stand for managing disappointment? That weary feeling of love when you do something that no one else is going to do?

Get real with stress. If it feels like anxiety, then get deeper. There is always something happening beneath the anxiety. Stress is often a guard and its ways are often not as logical as they first might appear. Remember that it’s not stress that holds you together. It’s you.

Questions to ask yourself in February 2023:
What does stress do for you in your life?
Does stress do anything for you that you are grateful for?
Is there anything that you think stress does that it doesn’t actually do?

Libra

There’s a call out there for you right now. The call asks you to step up, to show up, and to reveal things that you have never felt ready and will never feel fully ready to reveal about yourself. I wonder how you feel about the call to show up more. I wonder what your first instinct is when someone asks for you.

I think that, very often, when someone asks for us we lean forward and in. We lean in wanting to prove that we can help with something and with the desire to please. Other times, we might look down. We look down when we are afraid that what we have to bring to the table is inadequate or fits wrongly with what is being asked of us.

Whether you are more likely to lean in or look down, I want you to appreciate something else when the world asks for things from you. I want you to appreciate the structures behind your back or at your feet that support you. When you are asked to step up, I want you to appreciate the fullness of your support. I want you to go into the ask from the position of being supported, from the position of knowing that you know how to rest, and with the solidity of being able to rest your feet.

Questions to ask yourself in February 2023:
What is the world asking of you?
What is your first response to something or someone asking for you?
What supports you as you are asked to step up?

Scorpio

In February, I actually want you to think about the pleasure of being small. I know that there is a lot of popular emphasis out there on being big, on thinking big, and on moving big. We are encouraged to move in a big way and to take up more space because we doubt that we will ever find power if we do not enlarge ourselves. But there is also a defiant pleasure in being small.

Being small is this—it’s allowing yourself quietness and privacy. It’s listening to your body when it tells you to shrink and letting it happen without the judgment of forcing yourself open when you don’t want to be. Making yourself small is about being with yourself exactly as you are, with all of the parts of you that are still immature because not all of you will ever be mature and old at once. Making yourself small is about appreciating all of the things that you don’t have to do yet.

Like a lot of us, you might sense a tension when making yourself small. Shrinkage does not always feel safe because it makes us feel quite vulnerable. And, yet, it is inevitable. You do not have to be the bigger person all of the time. Expecting yourself to be would be inhuman.

Questions to ask yourself in February 2023:
Where are you the most small?
Is there anything that prevents you from being small?
How does allowing smallness shift your capacity for growth?

Sagittarius

I understand that you are falling in love, bringing forth new life, and having a good time. You will feel this strongly throughout February. There will be no games or schemes or plans in your fun. It will be imbued with the spirit of adventure. You will laugh until you cry and you will cry until you laugh. You will come many times in February and most of these times it will feel really good. You are seeking release from something and, my god, will you find it.

Have a good time. Do things that you want to do. You are an adult who treats life the way a child treats playtime—you try to cram as many good things and fun games as you possibly can in a single segment of time. You know that you will not be around forever and you want your life to be worth living.

Play. Have fun. Don’t apologize for having fun. Live exactly as you please even if you don’t know what that looks like yet. Chase freedom to the end of the earth. Be your sexy self. A lot of people are in love with you right now.

Questions to ask yourself in February 2023:
What do you want?
How do you get it?
What else do you want?

Capricorn

February will be about refusing concepts around success so that you have more time for play. There are things that we think we need simply because we find that we enjoy something. Maybe we used to love stories and cartoons so we thought that we needed to become a successful illustrator. Maybe we used to love books so we think that we need to work in publishing. Maybe we have a lot of people and, so, we believe that we must do big things for people.

Part of this is self negotiation. We have to work in some way. Why not in something that we enjoy? Some of it is also about validating desire. We want the things we enjoy to feel real.

I want you to just enjoy the things that you enjoy in February. Enjoy weird things. Play niche games that you’ll never build a streamer career playing. Read things that you’ll never write about. Write dirty stories that you’ll never try to publish under your own name. Enjoy things the way a lazy cat enjoys the sun. Enjoy things simply because you enjoy life.

Questions to ask yourself February 2023:
What are some forms of play that have become part of your identity?
What are some forms of play that will never become part of your identity?
What happens if you have time for both of these things?