What doesn’t go away the moment you stop believing in it?

There’s one question that I’m planning to focus on in May. I offer the question here to you in case you might be interested in the same question. Of course, you don’t have to be.

The question is—what am I deeply skeptical of?

In all of the zodiac, I don’t think that there is a sign more skeptical than Taurus. Not even Scorpio. Taurus truly thinks for itself because it’s so wildly obsessed with reality. Taurus can tell the difference between the real and the fake.

Have you ever tried to talk a Taurus out of something? You can’t. You can’t talk them into something either. My dad is a Taurus. Once his mind is made up, it’s like a mountain. He grew up partially on a mountain too. I think that mountain Taurus people are particularly stubborn.

In May, Jupiter enters Gemini. Jupiter only makes an ingress around once a year so this is a big deal. For the last year, Jupiter has been in Taurus where it has been trying to grow what is closest to us. In Gemini, Jupiter still doesn’t go that far. This isn’t Jupiter in Sagittarius or Pisces where it flings out an arm and hits something three miles back. This is Jupiter in Gemini with its microscopic glasses on. You can’t believe everything you read or see. Sometimes, you can’t even believe yourself.

Jupiter goes into Gemini and so does the Sun and Venus around the same time. Mercury still lingers in Taurus. Gemini is like the microscopic glasses examining and looking. What is this set of glasses examining? Mercury is in Taurus. It is examining reality.

What is real to you?

What doesn’t go away the moment you stop believing in it?

Philip K Dick had a theory. “Reality is that which doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it.” Under that theory, money isn’t real. Money would definitely go away if everyone stopped believing in it. Many of our social realities could change, too, if only we believed differently. We only see things that we believe in. The mud, the trees, and the bugs seem real because a roach might appear near your head even if you believe otherwise but our beliefs around ecology and life also impact our landscapes enough to change the climate. Humans are stewards of the places we reside and we shape them through our habits and lives.

Reality is social consensus. That means that we make it up by playing with each other. We make up reality by giving permission sometimes and by making prohibitions other times. Maybe there isn’t such a firm line between creating queer fantasy and queer reality. I know that the line gets especially blurry when it comes to intimacy.

Skepticism has a job. It’s very important for the task of interpreting reality. Skepticism helps us say no.

What is most inevitable about reality? What are you deeply skeptical of? When does intimacy ease your trust and when do you need a good dose of skepticism to interpret intimacy?

Right before Jupiter enters Gemini, it will conjoin with Venus on the last degree of Taurus. This happens on May 23rd. I think that this day is a good day to spend time with what the last year has brought closer to you. Jupiter in Taurus has put something in front of all of our faces. The last degree of a sign usually finishes the sign. Jupiter is able to exit Taurus in grace with help from Venus. After that? Gemini season starts with Venus and Jupiter moving into Gemini. Just because something is obvious and clear and in front of you doesn’t necessarily mean that it is real.

Taurus

This is the time to increase all of the things that you truly, hopefully, and intrinsically want. What wants do you attend to with the devotion of a priest? What do you really, truly want? What is the most valuable thing not just to you but to your people? What grows through you when you acquire more of it?

Maybe you want more knowledge. This would be the time to read all the books and take all the classes, to deeply study and to learn everything. Maybe you want more action. This would be the time to get greedy with tasks and assign yourself many things to do. Maybe you want more space. Get greedy with your time. Maybe you want more truth and you have no idea where to begin. You have the intention already and, with that, you can take a look around to see where you might find what you seek.

No one can tell you what to want. Thankfully, you already know. Jupiter is going to start to transit your second house. Whatever you find most important in life, I want you to get more of it. I believe wholeheartedly that the most important things in life can’t be hoarded.

Questions for Taurus for May 2024:
What do you really, truly want? The most important things to you?
Do you know where to look for the things you want?
What has desire taught you?

Gemini

What are some ways that allow you to feel the truth of your own power without exaggerating your sense of importance or defeat? You are enough just the way you are for the moment that you are in. You come to the problems of today with the survival skills needed to understand them and transform them with people. You are enough to be loved. You have enough and you bring enough to the table. You are beautiful enough, smart enough, and skilled enough for right now.

You can always grow. In fact, you will always grow. A dandelion grows without anyone ever worrying about it. Why would you ever worry over your own growth progress or try to measure it? You are enough today and you will be more tomorrow but it’s not your job to worry about the greatness you’ll achieve tomorrow when you already have greatness today.

In May, I want you to feel all of the parts of you that you are already satisfied with. Let yourself feel good about who you already are. Get some swagger in your step. You’re allowed to be confident today even if you might be awkward and then confident again tomorrow.

Questions for Gemini for May 2024:
What is true about your own power?
What is not true about your defeat?
When was the last time someone told you that you are enough and how did that feel?

Cancer

I think that there is tremendous power in taking responsibility over our own lives. I also believe that compassion shows us our responsibilities. Here’s a question for you for May: what is the truth of your responsibility once you have forgiven yourself for what you need forgiveness around the most?

True responsibility isn’t diving in and trying to fix everything at all once because we feel bad about something else. It’s not about feeling guilty or grievance and jumping the gun. True responsibility takes understanding what you are capable of changing, takes accepting and using your gifts, and requires love as its aim. There’s a lot of room for maneuvering here. Sometimes you think that you can do more than you can and you prove yourself wrong. Sometimes you think that you can do more than you can and you prove yourself right.

You never really owe anyone anything. That’s not quite the right language. You owe the world everything because you are part of the world. The world is where you find your everything, your home, your people, and your food. The world around you is always inviting you to do things. Try to see if you can hear any of those invitations.

Questions for Cancer for May 2024:
Where do you need forgiveness the most?
What do you take from the world?
What is your responsibility to tend?

Leo

For the next year or so, you’ll be fully immersed in friendship power. Friendship power is very special. It’s not heteronormal. It’s not fraternal. It’s not decided even as friendship can be between people of vastly different ages, between species, or even between lovers. Some people like to say that your lovers should be your best friends. I like that a lot and believe it to be true.

Who are your real friends? When does a friendship feel real? Maybe you’re the type to want a friendship to feel like a home that you return back to each and every night. Maybe you text your best friend everyday. Maybe you’re more comfortable when you can go for months without talking with someone and pick right back up where you left off. For most of us, friendships keep us alive. Our lives would look isolated and weak without friends.

Friendship is very powerful because it’s undefined. You can be friends with anyone. You can create intimacies and solidarities that are still unseen. The most basic principle of friendship is just that it’s a relationship between equals who respect one another. Take that and run with it. Do what you will. Make some cool friends.

Questions for Leo for May 2023:
Who comes to mind when you think about real friendship?
What knowledge do you already have about friendship?
What blessings do you want to give your friends?

Virgo

This is your time for believing, truly believing, that more is possible. What are your real dreams? The ones that you feel inside of you? The ones that don’t feel fake? Not the things that you think success entails or has to entail even though you’re so sick and tired of the system but the real dreams? The ones you had as a child that you believe in forever? What are the dreams that will survive capitalism with you?

Think about all of the words and images that you associate with liberation. I know that when I try to sit down and imagine the same, I find it easier to think about fighting for liberation than liberation itself. When I think of freedom too I think it easier to think of what I want freedom from than what freedom is on its own.

Maybe dreaming is a bit like that. What is a dream but a collection of wishes and hopes that are informed by a context? A dream is nothing without content, it’s just a container. It’s just like the sky. We only look at the sky when there’s something in it—the moon, clouds, stars, a bird. The sky is your limit. Look up at it. What do you see in the great expense of your own inner sky?

Questions for Virgo for May 2024:
What do you see in the sky right now?
How big is the sky to you?
What do you see in your inner sky and how big is that sky?

Libra

This May, I want you to never confuse online discourse for political community. The internet is just a communications technology. Certain topics are prioritized. Ragebait is usually quite popular. No one really knows each other and everyone makes a lot of assumptions. Real political community responds to the most urgent questions, questions about home and food and love and time.

Who grows your food? Who do you come home to? Who do you love and who grows old with you? These are the real questions. Today, these questions are also global questions. Strangers with opinions don’t feed you and don’t grow old with you. Never allow the trending online discourse to influence your most important choices. Always allow your real friends to impact your life.

Get off the internet. Stop reading truncated thoughts and snippets of conversations. Go out and find your political community. The best way to be with people is to all do something together. The more action you take, the more people you will attract. I know that there are many people who believe you about who you are and what you go through. I know that your relationships with those people are the real deal.

Questions for Libra for May 2024:
Who grows your food?
Who do you come home to?
Who do you love and who grows old with you?

Scorpio

Usually, Jupiter transiting through the eighth house has to do with growing your shared resources. Jupiter will start to make a year long transit through your eighth house in May. I like to think of this transit as being about asking for help.

Sometimes, people like to act like there’s really no reason to not ask for help or something. The reasons to not ask for help are actually quite plentiful. People often say no. Everyone is so busy. People don’t do things right and we often don’t even know what to ask for because we don’t know what we need.

This means that asking for help and then receiving it is a bit like a miracle. It’s relieving and it’s sweet. It’s often surprising when it happens and guess what? Getting help when you ask for it does happen and happens often. Our world wouldn’t look the same if it didn’t happen. Everyday miracles, man. They do happen.

So, ask for a bit of help when you feel up for it. Sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes it’s not. I think that, because Jupiter is transiting your eighth, that sizable miracles will take place when you ask.

Question for Scorpio for May 2024:
When was the last time you asked for help?
What is one object you use everyday that someone gave you?
What is one word you learned from someone else that you didn’t invent yourself?

Sagittarius

I think it’s really fun to join a new friend group. It’s not something that happens all the time so it’s special when life brings you into a swirl of new people. You look around and you’re like, “Whoa, who are these people?” Everyone feels so cool and intimidating when they’re in a group and you don’t know them that well yet. You get crushes on everyone and you don’t even really know them yet.

This coming year, there’s something about the energy of a new friend group coming your way. When you gain friends, your context also changes. You feel as though there’s just more for you out there. You stretch your social muscles a bit and in ways that they haven’t been used for a while. It’s awkward but it’s also fun!

Getting to know new people can also bring up the question of who you really are. We all pick up traits and habits from our friends so, when we see ourselves behave differently around different people, we get all excited about ourselves and shy again. I wish you a lot of new friend energy and a lot of excitement in that. I think you’ll have a really good time.

Questions for Sagittarius for May 2024:
What makes someone really freaking cool to you?
Who are you most excited to hang out with?
What do you call a new friendship in your own words?

Capricorn

There’s such a thing as a schedule but there’s also such a thing as being too scheduled. What I want you to focus on in May is the idea of developing freedom from your own rules.

We all have rules about how to exist. Some people go to bed at the same hour every night. Some people only wear certain colors or believe that they hate certain foods. Some people avoid certain bus lines because they remind them of an ex. Rules are totally okay and can make you feel stronger about yourself but they can also be broken in instances of needing to live your life.

Give yourself a lot of flexibility in May and the coming year. Breaking your own rules means that you trust your sense of discipline enough to not have to follow procedure all the freaking time. If you are someone who gets up at 8 AM, you don’t have to get up at 8 AM every single day to be someone who gets up at 8 AM. You can get up at 8 PM one day and 8 AM the next day.

It’s also possible that you have and follow rules that you don’t know about yet. Most of us do. In that case, you would need to find out what your rules are. Perhaps the only way to do so is to break them first.

Questions for Capricorn for May 2024:
What are some rules that you know you have?
What are some rules that you are comfortable breaking?
What are some rules that you aren’t comfortable breaking?

Aquarius

May will begin a year long period of opening up your erotic life. This isn’t just about Sexuality with a capital S. The erotic includes all of your emotions. It’s your sensuality but also your vitality, it’s your courage but also your fear. The erotic isn’t just emotional. It’s also spiritual. You too, like all other living things, hold erotic power.

What do you get turned on by? For me, recently, it’s the smooth silk of riverside mud. You dig your feet in it and you can barely walk out. That kind of mud just clings to you like a lover. It’s skin against skin but all of your skin, even the crevices.

In May, I want you to find the reality of your eros. What are you really turned on by? What is sexy to you not just conceptually but also certainly? I think that fantasy is useful for eros because fantasy gives us permission to feel things we usually don’t feel. But I also want to be turned on as myself, in my body, and by the real world. Maybe you want that too. I don’t know. Fantasy can become reality when enough people believe in it. Maybe, to feel pleasure, you have to believe in it first.

Questions for Aquarius for May 2024:
What turns you on about yourself?
What turns you on about other people?
What turns you on to the world?

Pisces

What language do you have around movement and stagnancy?

I’ve been reading about and thinking about the true nature of diaspora lately. The word itself has to do with dispersion and implies exile. Critics of the term usually say that people who are not exiled, people who have bourgeois or citizenship status, co-opt the word, turning it from legal political status to an issue of non-normative representation. While I agree with this critique partially, I also feel that exile is as hard to define as safety itself. What kinds of securities are dictated by legislation? Who is examined by the condition of diaspora and exile? I know of many queer exiles and almost none of them can be properly qualified as diaspora.

There are other words that describe mobility for sure—immigrant, expat, nomad. I notice that many of these words describe status and that few of them describe place. The word river, too, describes movement and so does sea. I like journey as a word but sometimes it focuses too much on the path.

What language do you have around movement itself? What is the reality of movement and dispersal in your eyes and feet? What journeys are you allowed to take and are you willing to take any that you are not yet allowed?

Questions for Pisces for May 2024:
What words do you have for movement?
What words do you have for stagnancy?
What journeys are you willing to take?

Aries

What are you actually connected to? What are you in conversation with? I believe that real connection isn’t just association. You’re not connected with someone or an institution just because that person or institution can dictate what you are allowed to think or not think. That’s just not real connection. Real connection is a conversation. Real connection takes a lot of back and forth.

As Jupiter enters your third house, I want you to think about who your ideas are in conversation with. If you write about your homeland, do the people you are writing about speak the language you are writing in? Who are your words and thinking and actions for? Who do you work for? The best answer is, “for oneself” but I do think that the difference between telling one’s story and speaking for others can get quite confusing because most of us exist inside of collectives.

A friend of mine recently taught me that a writer’s work is making what we care about matter to people. I’m not sure if you call yourself a writer but I know that you are an Aries. I know that Aries is good at the art of attention and getting people to care about things. So, I bring my friend’s teaching to you and ask you to give some love to the conversations that you are already part of.

Questions for Aries for May 2024:
What do you care about?
Who cares about these things with you?
Who are you in conversation with?