The future can’t be calculated. It already exists.

I’ve been thinking a lot about faith.

Here’s the thing with American presidents that I have noticed—they don’t start wars to win. I’m thinking about the United States in the Middle East but also in Korea and Vietnam. When the United States loses wars, other people seem to always bear the loss. It seems like many presidents are willing to fund and deploy military situations without any vision of what peace might look like. They do this from a purely defensive stance, asking for a future from their fear instead of from their courage.

A friend of mine told me this recently: people in power have no imagination. They only care about protecting their own power.

I wonder what it’s like to be the Bidens, the Trumps, the Obamas, and the Bushes of the world. You climb into this position of power by constantly strategizing and calculating your next move, by constantly being on guard to defend the power that you have acquired. Maybe that’s what it takes to be a president. You have to train yourself to be on guard so that you defend your position. Because you are not invincible, you learn how to narrate your pain only in ways that increase your clout.

Yeah, you might lose your imagination. You lose your vision when you teach yourself to only watch for threats and not for inspiration.

November brings Sagittarius season. Sagittarius is the sign of faith.

I don’t know. Maybe this is me projecting on the president but I do think that it takes faith to have imagination and to develop vision. Faith is a wisdom that comes to us not through self interest but through perspective.

I grew up in the bible belt. There are religious spaces where political and spiritual imagination postures in fearfulness and defensiveness. There’s doctrines and prophecies made by fear. In the bible belt, there’s forms of Christianity that focus heavily on armageddon against everything else that makes life meaningful. For those who don’t know, armageddon is a mythic war between good and evil that is supposed to bring the final judgment and end life as we know it. The prophecy of armageddon has a lot to do with the doctrine of predestination and this doctrine declares that some of us are destined for eternal life while others are condemned to eternal death.

While I have nothing against most Christian people, I do have respectful disagreement with some of its ideas. I disagree with letting our fear predict the world for us. I disagree with the value of prophesizing for the end times instead of loving life on earth. I don’t condemn it. I disagree with it.

Fearful faith believes in the necessity for punishment. I think that there are other forms of faith available. Our fear makes prophecies for us but so does our courage, our faith, and our love of life.

I think that real faith believes in life in the everyday. It’s harder to believe in life than it is to believe in death because life takes living while death is certain. But isn’t life just as certain as death? Life needs no justification. If we live in a world where we have to justify why we live—that’s messed up.

This last eclipse season revealed the most fearful parts of the world’s psyches and asked us whether we create our future out of fear or with courage. So many people have died. And guess what? So many people survive. Despite the entrenched cycle of violence and genocidal policies of today, millions of people are continuing to find ways to survive. Every single person who survives tyranny today is a part of a future that still exists.

So, there’s the faith.

We fight for faith, not for fear. Fear makes us shrink, makes us suffer in silence and worry too much about things that we don’t have control over. We acknowledge fear but we don’t fight for it. We fight for faith, for the inevitable survivors whose lives and futures are inevitable enough to believe in.

I don’t think that faith is the same as hope. There’s a reality to faith. Time never stops and that’s certain. People will always survive genocide. Life isn’t guaranteed and, in the words of Audre Lorde, many of us were never meant to survive but, to really live, we have to live as though survival were guaranteed. We have to live as though we are going to triumph.

There’s an inevitability to faith. I’m not sure that you need hope to develop vision but I’m sure that you need faith. To have faith, you simply need to remember that life is too powerful and too unruly for policy to permanently shape.

Let’s demand a ceasefire on the armageddon that our fear fools us into thinking is inevitable. Let’s do it with the faith that life will continue to survive after all of the armageddons that imperialism tries to narrate as meaningful.

November brings Sagittarius season to us. Sagittarius is the sign that tries to imagine the future. What now? What comes after? Those are the questions that Sagittarius asks when confronted with any scenario.

This question helps us. It reminds us that we can live through anything as long as we have a vision of the future.

Wars are calculated but peace happens like an accident in the most unexpected of ways.

The future can’t be calculated. It already exists.

The Sun, Mercury, and Mars all move into Sagittarius in November. Venus enters its domicile and Saturn goes direct. These are all signs that the world is moving. The future already exists and none of us need fake defenders to calculate that vision for us through statistics and models. The future is not a statistic. The future is alive and, being alive, is grown and born. If you believe that, then your faith can never break.

Scorpio

We need your skepticism right now, Scorpio, but—please—don’t be too cautious. Make mistakes that are worth forgiveness. The world offers more grace than our fears know. You’ve been through an awful lot these last two years with the eclipses in your sign. What do you think? Do you feel stronger or softer? Slower or more urgent?

Happy birthday—you have Mars emboldening the Sun this solar return. This is the Sun’s ruler feeding and replenishing it back. Mars gives you the strength of self knowledge over the course of this whole year. Did you know that, when Mars comes together with the Sun, that we receive courage?

You’ve been through some things and your courage is stronger than your caution. Strength doesn’t mean that something is right or that it will win. It’s just stronger, more credible, and more immediate. You are braver than you are afraid. Your courage gives you more options and more imagination than your fear can give to you. That’s just the truth.

Question for Scorpio for November 2023:
What makes your courage strong?
What makes your courage credible?
What makes your courage imaginative?

Sagittarius

We need you more than ever, Sagittarius. We need your big energy and your big will to believe and your big heart. It’s not that you entertain nonsense. You just know that anything is possible. You understand that, to keep living in a surreal world, we all need faith more than cynicism.

Do you know what your sense of surrealism gives you? It gives you the ability to learn even when things don’t make sense. You don’t need things to straighten out and become logical for your brain to pull out meaning and life and hunger. You don’t need to be told what you are looking for to feel the thirst of wanting more.

Sagittarius season is almost here. You want more for yourself and you want more for all of us too. It’s that spark of hunger that illuminates the rest of us. Talk about what more you want loudly. Speak on it. Make sure that everyone knows it when you are not satisfied. You don’t have to offer any kind of plan to simply point out what we are lacking. Your desire is enough.

Questions for Sagittarius for November 2023:
What do you know you want more of?
What do you want more of that you don’t know how to name yet?
What is the name of your desire?

Capricorn

Did you know that your dreams are prophetic? Even if you don’t remember them, they remember things for you. Every dream you have breaks open the assumption that reality is banal. You happen to be someone who refuses banality.

November is about getting rid of everything that bores you. You can’t afford to let reality bore you. Boredom is about desensitization and it’s about apathy. You’re more willing to get angry, to love life painfully, and to even feel joy that your body has to grow to hold than to feel boredom. You can tolerate pain but you can’t tolerate boredom. You’re simply not a person who is willing to entertain the idea that life is boring.

Figure out every single thing that bores you in life and figure out a way to get out of it. It doesn’t matter if it takes you a day or if this is the beginning of a longer plan. Getting out of boring things sometimes takes a second and it sometimes takes years. All you need is the reality that one dream you’ve had has meant something to you other than it simply being a dream. All you need is the belief in one dream.

Questions for Capricorn for November 2023:
What bores you?
Can you get rid of it?
How?

Aquarius

Do you still believe in friendship? Do you believe in friendship with those who are suspicious of you? With those who annoy you? Do you believe in friendship with people who seem to never have enough time for you? Do you believe in friendship with people who interrupt you? Do you believe in friendship with people who have temporarily forgotten you?

I do—friendship is just as painful as our dramatic narrations of romantic love. Friends will sometimes forget friends but then they will remember them again. Friends will interrupt one another but then we learn to listen from there. Friends will lack time and get too busy but schedules change while friendship endures. Friends can be annoying! But we get over it.

And then, friends can be suspicious of each other. We are taught to fear one another, to denounce one another, and to dehumanize living people. But then we learn things other than suspicion through friendship. Sometimes we are afraid of our friends. That’s fine. We can get over that. The fear of other people opens up when it’s cradled by our stubborn love of friendship.

Questions for Aquarius for November 2023:
Do you still believe in friendship?
What makes friendship possible?
What scares you about friendship?

Pisces

In November, I want you to give up your fear of caution. There’s something about caution that makes us fearful, I think. We tend to think that, in order to be cautious, that we will have to hold our hearts back or that we won’t be able to do the things that we really want to do. Caution sounds like a disciplinarian. Why would someone be cautious unless it’s because they are hunched over and expecting punishment?

Caution is about deliberateness. You know what you’re doing. You have faith in it. There is no punishment waiting for you. You are cautious because you have faith in the effectiveness of your task. You know your practice and you will commit to everything that is required to render it powerful.

Believe in your own perception. Use your doubt. Comb through your life with an eagle’s eye and feel confident that your own scrutiny is enough. Only god can judge you but god lives in every bird and every flower. That’s the caution speaking. You know your task when you allow friction to tell you where your path already is.

Questions for Pisces for November 2023:
When do you go with the flow?
How do you interrupt flow?
What helps you do both with confidence?

Aries

For November, I actually want you to see how far you can see when you hold completely still. When you hold each and every one of your principles to yourself, how far can your imagination stretch? When you believe resolutely in the justice that you understand, how much are you willing to love? When you come back to who you have always been, how much more do you believe?

It doesn’t take much to stretch an imagination as elastic as yours. You can do it by remaining exactly where you are.

Don’t give up. That’s all I’m saying. Keep doing you. It takes so much endurance to not give up and to keep holding onto the things that you’ve attached your faith to. You’ve gotten to where you are because of a variety of reasons. Hold steady now. What you have done already, what you are doing today, is already enough. You don’t have to become someone that isn’t you to believe in the future.

Pretend that you are a mountain this November. A mountain doesn’t need to prove itself. It’s already a reservoir for life. A mountain has the furthest gaze of all landforms simply because it has not moved for a very long time.

Questions for Aries for November 2023:
Where is the center of your gravity?
When you focus on that gravity, how far can you see?
What do you know to be possible?

Taurus

November is about sharing your ideas. October saw your chart ruler going to rest. In that condition of rest, you might have interrupted normal routines or even just have felt out of sorts. Rest is supposed to be an interruption of what is usual. October is about putting something to rest, about holding something in your heart so that it can ferment and develop there.

November is about sharing. When you hide something for long enough then that thing becomes more striking. Strike using your words and using your thoughts. Inspire. You know that when one of your ideas is ready that it is at its most beautiful and brilliant. You’re ready after November 9th.

When you start a new project or debut an idea, remember that you’re not trying to spread one message. You’re not here to make up slogans. You’re here to start conversations. Whatever you do, start a good conversation. You’re still here after you try something new. You’re still here and you’re just as ready to engage. This means that you don’t need to have all the answers to proceed. Readiness is actually a state of incompleteness because, if you were complete, then you wouldn’t have anywhere to go.

Questions for Taurus for November 2023:
What are you ready for?
Where are you ready to go?
What do you have prepared?

Gemini

What makes partnership possible for you? Not what makes it perpetually uplifting or always affirming or even constantly safe. Not what makes it challenging or painful or even exciting? What makes partnership possible? What makes you feel like there is a relationship there? That being in a relationship is an option?

That’s the question for November. You can be in any kind of relationship as long as you are choosing that relationship. There’s all kinds of relationship styles. There’s people who spend every waking moment together and there’s people who live hours away. Love is about possibility. You have to believe it and then you have to choose it.

Everything else is secondary to possibility. Once you believe in something, then you can see how it feels on you. You can measure its safety and its constancy. You can figure out what makes a relationship exciting. You can seek contrast or attraction. But possibility comes first. What makes a partnership possible for you?

Questions for Gemini for November 2023:
What makes a partnership possible for you?
What makes it impossible for you?
What makes you choose a partnership?

Cancer

I like you because you’re a dreamer and a pragmatist. You believe in what you can do. And you can do a lot.

There’s something really potent about your brand of magic because you tend to take things step by step. Take nutrition for example. Nutrition seems simple until you consider how taking living things and preparing them into meals can feed a community and a movement. Then you start to think about how the question of who gets fed is one that is justice oriented.

When it comes to possibility and imagining the future, consider what is within your control. Even if you just have dirt, you can grow things in that dirt. You can make bricks with the dirt. Everything we have is really made from some combination of dirt and careful attention.

When you desire possibility, you get busy. You make things work. You figure it out. You do that using the tools that you already have available. You pick up things, do things, and you create possibility.

Questions for Cancer for November 2023:
What type of work makes you believe in the world a little better?
Is there work that shuts off possibility for you?
What work feels too normal for it to matter to you?

Leo

Believing in the possibility of love doesn’t mean that you need to believe in any specific person. It means that you believe the potential for knowing someone and still being curious for more is there. You know that gut wrenching feeling of developing a new crush? That’s not about expecting love or about having certain standards. It’s about hope. You believe, for a moment, in the possibility of new love coming to be.

In November, believe in love. You might have all kinds of doomsday prophecies around you when it comes to love. Maybe you’ve been told that love will only come when you obey. Maybe you’ve been told that you have to be cool to be loved. Make it your mission to prove every prophecy you’ve ever been given about love wrong and still believe in its very existence.

You don’t need to become an expert on relationships or marry for thirty years to simply believe that love is possible. It’s enough to know a little and to proceed from there. You don’t plan for love and you don’t need a plan to recognize possibility when it strikes you.

Questions for Leo for November 2023:
What makes love possible?
What makes love recognizable?
What makes love naive?

Virgo

I want you to get out all of the history books you bought but haven’t read yet. Get out all of the history books you’ve read many times too. Get some more history books from a bookstore or from your library. Grab whatever catches your eye. You’re going to do some research in November.

When you do your research, focus on possibility. What are the ghosts of history that no one talks about? Where in history do you see resistance? I want you to look for successful resistance and I want you to see all of the times those movements failed before they succeeded. I want you to look for failed resistance and I want you to look at what seeds they planted in that failure.

Look at movements that have names but also look at everyday resistance. There are nameless people of all genders who resisted every single day whose actions did something without acquiring titles. There’s a world of possibility available to you from the past. Every single one of the ghosts you encounter have something miraculous to tell you.

Questions for Virgo for November 2023:
What do you know about history?
What don’t you know about history?
Which one of these questions opens up possibility more for you?

Libra

The first question in the Audre Lorde Questionaire to Oneself is “What are the words you do not have yet?” The last question is “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” There are four questions in total.

Many of us have been told that lying will help us create a sanctuary where we can be safe from fear. But what if we don’t need protection from fear? Fear is an emotion that tells us where danger is. We need fear because we need our instincts.

There are many forms of lying—making excuses, justifying, staying silent, waiting, commodifying, obfuscating, and escaping. There are also many forms of truth—speaking, withholding, escaping, obfuscating, justice seeking, listening, recording, and amplifying.

November is about finding possibility through your voice. Your voice isn’t a tool. It’s a part of your living body. It shakes when you’re scared and it closes when you’re stunned. It also works when you believe that what you say has meaning. Find your words and you’ll find possibility.

Questions for Libra for November 2023:
What are the words you’ve taken as your own?
What are the words that are not yours?
What are the words that you do not have yet (from Audre Lorde’s Questionaire to Oneself)?