Knives aren’t just weapons. They have fed you all this time.

Besides the Sun, which changes like clockwork every season, the only planet to make an ingress this month is Mars.

What do you know about Mars? I like to think of Mars as a knife. Knives are used for cutting, for ending life, and they are also used for repairing—for elongating life. Surgeons use knives. So do butchers. Someone who has built a relationship with a knife is also someone who has taken on the responsibility for nurturing and pruning life.

In August 2023, I want you to refine your relationship with your knives.

Sometimes, people give their knives or their swords names. I haven’t. My most important knife is my kitchen cleaver. I use one of those huge cleavers that Chinese cooks use. I use it to cut vegetables, meats, to pound garlic, and to even break through bone. Once a year, I sharpen it. I understand the weight of this knife and I struggle to cook without it. Everyday, I wash it clean and I place it in the same spot for drying. This knife has fed me for years.

My parents use a similar knife. I don’t remember a time without that knife. I think one of them brought it with them from China. We’ve used it for more than two decades. Almost every meal I’ve eaten has come from one of two knives.

I do think that there’s something about August that says to us, “Not yet.” August in general can sometimes feel this way. The heat is sultry when it's kind and punishing when you’re not. Sometimes I think that astrology is just a game of describing temperament through changes in temperature. What do you get when you’re in one of the hottest periods of the year, stuck in a heat wave, and Mars is one of the faster planets that still moves forward? Tempers are hot. Maybe we get a little pissed at each other.

Cultivate a relationship with your knives. Knives aren’t just weapons. They have fed you all this time. They’ve played a hand in nurturing you. Being with a knife, holding one, and learning how to use one can feel really good. It can show you how to care for things and what self protection requires.

Maybe I like to think of my anger like a knife not because I’ve ever thrown a sharp object at anyone but because I am inclined towards sitting and stewing when I am mad. Like I said, I like to cook with my knives. I like to cook with my anger too. I get pissed off and I become a soup in a pot. I’m sitting there boiling, cutting things down to size and letting my feelings get all mushy until I end up with something that’s part spice and part nutrition.

I don’t know. Maybe you’re a cook too. Or, maybe you like to carve into things and make really cool designs. Maybe you have a pocket knife that you keep in your back pocket like a secret. Maybe anger feels most powerful when it’s a secret for you. Maybe your anger is a needle and you use that needle to repair all of the torn patches that abrasive things have left behind.

Find your knife and take care of it. Cherish it. It does so much for you.

Leo

Happy birthday Leo! Are you excited? This is the first birthday you’ve had in years that hasn’t involved some kind of Saturn opposition to your Sun.

Don’t get me wrong. I think that Saturn periods are illuminating. They make you grow up fast. Saturn is the world’s disenchanter and the past three years may have made you sharper in tone and intellect. You’re more discerning now. You have developed your critical eye. You’ve peeled off a layer of persona so that you’re far more sensitive than you used to be.

This birthday is different. This birthday is about relief. It’s about not taking things or taking yourself as seriously as you’ve had to in the recent past. Did you know that the more you can laugh at yourself, the closer you feel to the person you’ve been all along? You’ve grown up quite a bit in the last few years. I want you to enjoy your personality now. That new sensitivity? You get to teach yourself all of these new ways to make yourself feel good.

Questions for August 2023 for Leo:
Where do you source your silliness from?
Where do you expel your silliness towards?
What in life makes you feel good?

Virgo

Don’t worry about Mercury retrograde. Just let Mercury do its thing.

I think that August will be when you get a fantastic idea about something. Maybe it will feel like just a fancy or perhaps it will be a long and drawn out myth that you’re startled to receive when stuck in traffic. The question is—will you be aware of this stroke of brilliance when it decides to strike you?

Sometimes, we get the best ideas but the idea isn’t meant for us. The universe likes to remix things in this way. Your idea might save someone else’s life or act as their catalyst towards great deeds but feel incredibly small and barely meaningful to you. I like to think that this is the reason why we have language, so that we can share our ideas and hope they get to the right places.

You’ll only find that you have a great idea when you talk about it, when you see it make the light in another’s eyes brighten. You become aware of your brilliance when you impress someone else. This August, listen very closely. Try to keep all of your good ideas. Share them. Talk about them and make them known. This part is key.

Questions for August 2023 for Virgo:
What makes you feel smart?
What makes you feel brilliant?
What makes you feel generous?

Libra

In August, I want you to only compare yourself to yourself. Have you ever seen a wall that’s repurposed to become a measuring stick for a growing child? There’s all these notches and lines drawn in with dates penciled next to them. That’s what I’m talking about. Only compare yourself to yourself in the past.

Most of the time, when we’re comparing ourselves to other people we’re doing it to try to feel better about ourselves anyway. “That other person got the residency over me but at least I’m not a phony like he is!” “I’ll never act as crass as her on social media.” At least, I hope we’re trying to make ourselves feel better about ourselves. Sometimes we compare ourselves to others to feel bad about ourselves. That’s another story.

Most of the time, when we compare ourselves with other people, we don’t even know that much about the other person. It’s more like we’re just comparing what we think is us with all of the things we attribute to someone else.

Comparing yourself with yourself is a wonderful experience. You get to celebrate your growth. You get to watch yourself inch into another shape. Maybe you’re still growing or maybe your bones are shrinking now. This is about praising the longevity of your life, about recognizing that you’re still here and kicking fierce. Out of all of the billions of people who have lived in this world, not a single one of them has lived life just like you. Isn’t that so cool?

Questions for August 2023 for Libra:
Where have you grown over the last five years?
Where have you grown over the last ten years?
The last twenty years?

Scorpio

This August, I want you to appreciate all of the things that you have already done in life. You know that feeling when you look around and realize that you’ve set your bedroom up exactly the way you like it? When you’re pickpocketed but left a wad of mad cash for yourself in an inner pocket? When you know exactly what you are doing because you’ve already done the work to get yourself to this point?

Give some love to the past you. You didn’t get here all in one day. You fought with yourself, you planned, and you made a lot of things before you got to working on what you’re working on today. All of these things build up, you know. You have so many habits that all work to keep you alive. Most of your best habits, you don’t even notice because they just fit around you like a second skin.

Appreciate these habits. Love them. A lot of the time, when we think about habits we go right into what we need to do better. Habits are things that you have already learned to do for yourself. They’re things that you have already given yourself. Notice your habits and all of the things that you already trust about being you.

Questions for August 2023 for Scorpio:
What is your favorite habit?
How long have you had this favorite habit?
What do you like about it?

Sagittarius

What do you do when something asks for you? There might be all kinds of things that are asking for you all the time. There’s a drying plant on your windowsill. There’s people who think of you and text you out of the blue. There’s the whistling kettle on the stove. There’s that huge field near your apartment where a stray cat wonders when you’ll next walk by with a treat.

What about the difference between someone asking you to do something and someone asking for the whole you? It’s hard to tell the difference, isn’t it? A person might ask you to please text them back when they really just want to ask for you—the whole you. Another person might say that they just want you to be yourself but then have all of these weird regulations about who you should be for them.

In August, feel the call of the world. Try to tune into all of the things that ask for you, what they are really asking for, and how they are doing this asking. You’re never required to answer a call but you may want to because being asked for feels really nice. There’s no turmoil here. Just you and things that know how to call your name.

Questions for August 2023 for Sagittarius:
Who is asking for you?
What are they asking for?
How do you want to answer?

Capricorn

August is about stretching the limitations that are wrapped around your inner world. You’re never the person you think you are because you don’t remember everything about yourself. Isn’t that a creepy thought? There’s things that you’ve lived through that you don’t even remember. You’ll never remember all of it and this means that you’ll never know yourself completely.

Take this one step further and you can apply it to your lineage. There are things that you don’t know and never will know about your parents. Your parents! The people who gave birth to you. There are things that you’ll never know about the people who birthed them and things you’ll never know about where you came from.

All of those things you don’t know sometimes come to possess your inner world. These secret memories show up in your fantasies, your instincts, and even in your circumstances in weird ways. That’s right. We make all kinds of choices that we only come to understand later. This is your later right now in August. You get to explore your inner world and you get to try to figure out just how you came to be.

Questions for August 2023 for Capricorn:
What do you not know about yourself?
What do you not know about where you came from?
What do you not know about where you’re going?

Aquarius

Go into your email and all of your apps that give you notifications. Select all and click read. Make all of your notifications go away. We are starting on a blank slate. If they really need you, they will email again. Now, go to the bag that you use when you’re walking around outside and throw out all of the loose receipts and trash.

This August, I want you to get rid of all of the little tasks that you think you’re going to do but never will do. Just release them. Get rid of them. Pretend like you’re about to catch wind of a hugely groundbreaking idea, as though you have to put all of your horses into one basket.

Because you will. There’s going to be things that you want to do. You can’t have all this nonsense in your space and in your head to attend to. There’s something happening that will require all of your attention. Meal prep. Get your laundry done early. Just prepare. When the idea comes, have everything set up so that you can sink deeply into it.

Questions for August 2023 for Aquarius:
What tasks are you sure that you will never get to?
What ideas have now become burdensome?
What could getting rid of those things look like?

Pisces

There’s a lot that most people would go through in order to develop a sense of embodied agency. Embodied agency can look like this: “I am the one living life for myself and I get to make choices with that agency even if I have limitations around what choices are available to me.” Losing embodied agency can look like this: “Life is something that happens to me and dealing with all of that means that I have to become someone else.”

A lot of people would put things—their reputation, various belongings, certain relationships, attachments to places, ambitions and professions—at risk just so that they can figure out how to embody agency. Of course! Living life as yourself is so, so important. It’s often vital to existence. And, sometimes, embodying agency doesn’t take much at all. Just a little nudge.

The reason why I say all this is because I think that August will present you with the opportunity to embrace agency into yourself. That opportunity may come as a choice, a gain, or even a letting go. This is your life. No one gets to tell you how to live it.

Questions for August 2023 for Pisces:
When was the last time you felt like you were being yourself?
What does remembering that moment make you think about?
What do you enjoy most about that moment?

Aries

There’s something that you possess within your character that is very important—that thing is your persistence in the face of obstacles.

I’m not talking about persistence in general. I think that you get bored when you have to go for too long. I’m talking about your persistence in the face of obstacles. It’s like you get excited when you face a problem. You figure out how to destroy it or you grow around it. You enjoy that process because you like to put your mind to use and figure something out.

In August, try to remember that not everyone around you has the same attitude when it comes to facing problems. Some people feel defeated when they encounter problems. This can mean a variety of things. It actually means that there are unique things you bring forward due to your tenacity that not everyone has. It can also mean that you need to slow down and wait for other people. It can also mean that there are easier paths for you to take, that your excitement for rushing into boulders has got you missing the smoother shortcut that you walked right past.

You can take on an obstacle. You can also choose when to take one on and you possess the discernment required to figure out when problem solving is necessary or when other things are more important.

Questions for August 2023 for Aries:
What obstacles are you sure are meant for you?
Are there any that you are sure are not meant for you?
Are there any that you are unsure about?

Taurus

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about—I’ve been thinking about how the transaction model is so built into how we visualize care. What happens if both giving and receiving feel like huge burdens? What happens if someone asks for our reception and that in itself is some kind of giving?

I think that this is relevant to you because I think that there is something about giving, withholding, and asking for nurture for you in August. I wonder how you feel about the role of nurture in your life. I wonder if some of those three types of relationships are easier for you or harder.

Sometimes, it’s easier to nurture one another when you feel like you’re actually together. That fucks with the transaction model, in my view. It’s easier to care for someone when you’re partners in crime or on the same team. Maybe you talk about your need for nurture with someone who shares the same needs and that conversation in and of itself, that recognition of you as a person with needs alongside another person with needs, is meeting the need.

Questions for August 2023 for Taurus:
Who (human and animal) are your partners in crime?
Do you have any non-animal partners in crime?
Are there any places that feel like your partners in crime?

Gemini

August is about uniqueness. There’s all of these hidden little things about you that make you really weird and really different from all other people. Do you know that? I bet you do. I want you to thoroughly enjoy your uniqueness in August.

Actually, you don’t need to show it at all to enjoy it. Having something that sets you apart can just be that. This is the enjoyment of deviation and perversity that we’re talking about here. Your private and personal enjoyment of such a thing is such a relief. It means that there’s parts of you that don’t want or need any social complicity whatsoever.

Maybe you like to chew your vitamins because you like the surge of bitterness. Maybe you like to smell your own feet when they’re sweaty. Maybe you can only masturbate in a really specific way. Maybe you don’t necessarily need anyone to know these things about you and they don’t really cause much shame. They’re just things that you like to do and you’d much rather do them when you’re by yourself thank you very much.

Enjoy those things. I don’t know what they are for you. Just have fun whatever it is that you’re doing.

Questions for August 2023 for Gemini:
What is the weirdest thing about you?
What is the second weirdest thing about you?
What is a third thing about you that is kind of weird but not that weird?

Cancer

August is about accepting your own expertise.

Find a tool, any tool, that you’ve had for a very long time. Take that tool into your palm and watch how you play with it. There’s an ease there. You can slide it knowingly around your fingers and you can tinker with it in just the right way. If you like the draw, you might do this with your favorite pen and if you like to paint, you might do this with your oldest paintbrush.

In August, there’s tools that you already know and love to use. Treasure them and use them. Pay attention to just how well versed these things are when you take them out and play with them. Take heed how the way they come alive through your touch. This spark of life contains the same brightness that your talent carries.

Spend time with the enjoyment you feel when you are really good at something. Really do take some time here. You might have developed talent but you’re putting your knowingness into use now. This is the best part of the whole process. Savor it.

Questions for August 2023 for Cancer:
What does expertise feel like in your hands?
What does expertise feel like in your head?
What does expertise feel like in your heart?