Your February Horoscopes Predict More Than A Few Miscommunications

Well, we did it! We got through January, with its hard-hitting eclipses, conjunctions, disappearing impeachment trials, WWIII scares, and its sixty-two days, to get to February 2020 horoscopes.

Is there a word, like jetlag, for the weeks that follow the winter holidays in the USA? When the financial anxieties of over-spending on travel and gifts, the residual tension of cursed family gatherings, and depression of being gay disperse into a general malaise that makes productivity both imperative and impossible? If there isn't, there needs to be, and if there is, then let us write in large across the month of January in our calendars, make a big red X right through it, and rip the page from our books! January 25 was the beginning of the Lunar New Year, and February can be the first full month of the moon year, if you want it. Isn't it time we became people of the moon? Haven't we earned it, as a treat?

2020 is a leap year, and this February we get one more day to celebrate the Pisces of the world. Which is good because they need a little celebration, what with Mercury stationing retrograde in Pisces mid-February and Venus in impulse fiery Aries. You know, just in case you're looking to have a few miscommunications around Valentine's day that turn into bigger problems than they need to be. Either that or impulsive getaways fueled by avoidant tendencies that involve a dash of hate-sex and a sprinkle of luxury linens. There's a hotel in Nyack that offers Mercury Retrograde packages. You can diffuse the tense air, bath bomb your auras, and borrow a sad lamp for the night. I'm not making any predictions, I just want the best for you. We live in failed democracy that won't stop calling itself the best nation in the world. The list of banned countries is increasing, and there's a proposed wealth test for new immigrants. If badly thought-through sexual decisions are the only thing left to help you feel alive, then Godspeed. Just remember, whatever happens in February follows you right into March.

February might very well be a busy time for you and, while this January has gone on for 20 years, everyone knows that February is cruel and quick. Cruel because, as the last month of winter, it likes to prove itself with an occasional bout of ice rain. There's an ever-present feeling of something that needs attending, something that must get done but isn't. And, even with the extra day tacked on, there never seems to be enough time to figure out just what exactly that "something" is. Over-extension is inevitable, and it wouldn't hurt you to pick up a physical practice that encourages integration. Meditation, yoga, running, whatever your physical capability allows, that deals in tying breath to body.

With Venus in Aries by the first week of February and Mars in Capricorn conjunct Pallas, there's a tendency to act like all's fair in love and war. Or, more likely, a tendency to act in favor of the results you want.

That's not such a foreign concept for an Aries or Aries rising, who probably invented the phrase "better to ask forgiveness than permission." Trouble is, since this heavy Saturn/Pluto conjunction, not to mention Chiron's progression in Aries, you might find that you have a harder time forgiving yourself when your actions hurt others or cause you to lose face. You're just beginning to recognize the many ways you impact the world around you, not only as a creative force but also as a leader and friend. Power and shame have a deep tie. Sometimes, it's when you're most feeling yourself that you're able to identify the ways you betray yourself. Sometimes being "there" for others, means being honest about your limits.

No matter how slow you take it, no matter how reticent you are to make a false move, your world changes. Even if you have found yourself doing the same thing day after day, or working with the same collaborators, there's a qualitative difference in your life. Can you feel it? And, in feeling it, can you mine it for information? If change is already occurring all around you and to you, if you are no longer standing in the same river and never will, then perhaps you are different too. And, if you are different, then acting like you are the same person you once were with the same ambitions and ideals just won't do. It would be a kind of farce, and you, dear Taurus, are the serious sort.

So, get with the program. Take the information that is available to you seriously. If you are standing in a changing context, then you are part of a sea-change. Pay attention to the moments when you feel most alive and make more of them.

February is a short month, but life is long, and your ruling planet spending time in Aries plans to make the most and best of every moment. Why not? Haven't you earned the right to trust your gut? Haven't you spent your whole life conditioning yourself to recognize what feels real and authentic to you in preparation for moments exactly like this? If I say to you, "Here is one bolt of fabric, and here is another," you will know by texture, weight, and drape which one is better quality, which one is made with attention to detail and reverence for the materials of the earth. If you say to yourself, "Here is one path, and here is another," when you encounter the desires of an old self and the self you are becoming, you will find that you are fully equipped to make a big move in a worthy direction.

It's taken you a long time to figure out what all you've been feeling. I mean, first, you had to restructure your whole life, your whole concept of self, and take some big steps outside of the ordinary. Then, you had to unpack, move in, settle into new rhythms and acclimate to the fresh air. Probably, there were some complications, unforeseen snafus, and an occasional bout of crying or two. So, when you finally had a chance to feel, to understand your internal state in relation to your external drive, it must have been a small revelation. Feelings, when we truly allow ourselves to feel them, can give us a feeling of deep connection—not just with others but with ourselves.

Feelings, when they surface out from the clutter of to-do lists and errands, can surprise us with the power of their information. Feelings, un-suppressed, can pose like facts and have us thinking they are facts.

This February, when feelings come strutting out like facts, give them space but give them some time too. Do your best to keep your softest parts protected since not everyone deserves a key to your private self and not everyone knows how to regard it with respect. You deserve to feel whatever it is you feel, of course, but you're better off sitting with whatever it is for a while before you share on social media or with fair-weather friends. After all, the process of familiarizing yourself with new emotional information should be at least as long as the process of familiarizing yourself with a new classroom or living space.

Cancers are summer babies, sure, but most Cancerians thrive in winter. What, with the perfectly good excuse to stay at home rather than stay out late, stay cuddled up in blankets, re-watching old favorites, and ordering in. Perhaps it's winter's beguiling amenities that make going to work or showing up for your commitments that much more difficult. Well, not the part where you get yourself there—your work is very important to you and your sense of self—rather, the part where you deal with everyone else and their inability to take the doldrums in stride. When you leave the soft, safe, cocoon of your fuzzy-blanket ecosystem, you solidify your shell and burrow hard into whatever needs to get done. That counts for everything from invoices to relationship mediation.

Too bad that the rest of the zodiac isn't quite so adept at making the most of the cold and the darkness or, perhaps, they just have different objectives altogether. To expect others to express their priorities in the same way you do is to set them up to fail.

Which is not to say that you shouldn't have expectations, or that it's unreasonable to hope that the energy you put into a project or person will be matched from the outside. It's just that, sometimes, what's coming from the outside might look so entirely different from what's natural to you, you'll have a hard time recognizing the work it is doing. The work others are doing. Compassion, Cancer, I know you have it in spades. This month, let your compassion create space for the possibility that no matter how intuitive you are, no matter how sensitive to behaviors of others, a person's inner life is a life known only to them—if that. You can't plan around an unknown thing or hold your own inner life up to it as a point of measurement. You can't fully know what impact your efforts have on theirs or their sense of responsibility. You can only show up for yourself and do the work that you are called to do.

If comparison is the thief of joy, then why do we spend so much of our lives comparing? Comparing ourselves to our peers, their productivity vs. ours, their accolades vs. ours, their opportunities vs. ours. Or, as is the case with fixed signs like Leos, comparing our potential to our lived reality and focusing on what was not accomplished rather than what was. Leos have a pretty good sense of their strengths, and it this sense that empowers them to pick platforms and social scenes where their talents are affirmed, the kind of beholding a lion loves. But, spending too much time in a spotlight that feels less and less earned and more and more granted will have a lion not only doubting themselves but also their company.

It's not commonly written but it is known, Leos place a great deal of weight on living up to their potential. Because potential is an abstract term, and a wonky frame of measurement, it's easy to fall short of it. When you fall short of your own wild expectations, Leo, it's important that you have a support system around you that isn't fooled by your dramatic performance or your posed detachment.

You need friends and accomplices who recognize when you go out of your comfort zone and encourage you to keep going. You need lovers and partners that see past the social power-player in you, toward the pillar of strength at your core, and do their best to fortify that pillar rather than test its capacity. Ask yourself, are there people in my life who not only recognize my strengths but teach me how to work with my weaknesses? This month, Leo, it will serve you well to act as if the only personal potential worth thinking about is the potential of what is present or presented to you. Ask yourself, Am I growing in this present opportunity, in the present connection, in this present company? Remember, growing can be an act of joy if you choose it. It can feel like getting to know the love of your life, who is and must be yourself.

It's good to put yourself out there, Virgo. In fact, it's more than good, it's imperative. Especially if you're someone who defines themselves and their stature by the company they keep. That might sound shallow, and shallowness is not outside the realm of possible attributes, but there isn't anything inherently vacuous about being a social creature. That is, after all, a mark of being functionally human. We rely on each other for many things, and one of those things is stimulation. For a Virgo, to be stimulated, especially by way of intellect, is to be catalyzed. When you encounter people who think and act in ways that are different from your own, when you are introduced to new concepts of relation, you are enriched with possibilities. For someone who spends all their time sorting and assessing their emotional archive, a glimpse at uncharted possibilities is relief and a gift. There are approaches you've never thought of, there are relationship structures and career paths that exist and are unknown to you!

What is yet unknown can be known to you and more, Virgo. The catch is, you can't drag your emotional archive to the new gathering. What I mean is, the more you treat a situation or a person like you've seen it before, the less likely you are to see something new.

And, isn't seeing something new exactly what you're aiming for? Aren't you tired of being hemmed in by the parameters an old self built around your life? If you are sitting there, reading this and nodding your head yes, ask yourself why you're dragging a satchel of old grievances to a new destination. If you have unfinished business, dear Virgo, this is the month to finish even if finishing means simply putting something down. Allow the present moment to be itself, a place where change is already happening. Where you are already changing. Try your best to remember that no matter how perceptive you are, or how astute, you're not above being surprised. People, despite predictability, have the power to surprise you. You, no matter what you've seen before and what you think you know, have the power to surprise yourself.

Anger is a pure emotion. Like joy and like sadness, it can arise in relation to a known event, or it can come unbidden from the core of you. Babies cry out in anger when they are hungry or when they are cold. Babies refuse what they need, so overcome by anger they can't stop crying, until their caregiver holds them to their chest and rocks and rocks and until the calm of the rocking motion supersedes the turbulence inside the child. It would be a kind of miracle if all through our lives, something like a rocking motion would come over us when we felt overcome with anger. To soothe the onslaught of distress and attend to the needs that triggered it. Instead, we are taught from a young, conscious, age to suppress our anger rather than deal with it or respect it for the information it offers us. We are not given the tools to recognize our anger for what it is (a part of us) so that we can hold it mindfully and without judgment.

February is a short month, always, but this one might prove a heavy-hitting one. Dense with social engagements and work opportunities, it will offer you plenty of chances to subsume whatever it is that's been bothering you into your work.

You can choose to bury yourself and your feelings, if you want. Free will is a powerful gift, and you, of all people, know just the right way to distance yourself from your emotions and call it balance. But, if your free will and your buried emotions get the best of you, if you find yourself brimming with an anger that's larger than you anticipated, you're better off acknowledging that balance isn't what's been achieved at all. Remember, just like grief, like joy, anger has got to be felt all the way through before you can know what it is and why it has got a hold of you. That means no rationalizing, no story-telling, no wrapping it up to look like a clear-cut case of right and wrong. Just holding it close to your chest and rocking for a long time until that anger is a child in your arms, soft and ready to receive what it needs.

It used to be that you had to choose. You could be the person completely bowled over by their emotions, ruled by them, so much so that making choices in your best interest proved near impossible because your view of your best interest was obstructed by tears and obsessive altars. Or, you could be the person flying so high above your emotions that they looked like clouds covering a city you barely visited, let alone lived in. And, from that distance, you could attend to the demands of daily life, however dispassionately. How wonderful that you have come to a time and place in your life when you no longer have to choose. How positively beautiful (and downright awful for you) that your emotional life and your daily obligations have become integrated enough for you to weep right through your emails, invoices, and deadlines.

What they don't prepare you for, on the other side of integration work, is the experience of feelings free from their triggering events or their subjects. What can feel either destabilizing or empowering, is the way waves of emotions followed by tears can rise out of you without ever notifying you of their reason or purpose. The purpose, it appears, is just moving through.

Whether it's destabilizing or empowering, dear Scorpio, is all about expectation. If you expect your feelings to be quiet when they feel powerful and loud, if you expect them to give you psychic information about the future when they're deeply rooted in the past, then you will find yourself feeling unmoored. The lack of information will be a hindrance to you, and, despite your balancing act between capable Cathy and weeping Wanda, your work will suffer. Truth is, you don't always need to know the why of things. You can fly low to the heavy clouds without searching the shape of them for clues. You can let it rain over the city of yourself. You can bear witness to what moves through you without solving it.

It can be hard to feel like you're doing enough in a world suffused with chaos. Despite your best efforts to conceal your permeability, especially from yourself, you can't quite escape the fact that you are the sensitive sort. And, being sensitive to the world around you, its ever-devolving state where no news source is credible and no solutions prove effective against corruption, means being sensitive to the small upheavals of daily life. It means feelings of powerlessness and self-negation that creep in and make you doubt all your best efforts to be of service in whatever capacity is available to you. It means feeling like you don't know how to be good to those you love.

You know how to be good to those you love, Sagittarius, you're a straight shooter and your aim is true. It's not your fault that, sometimes, the target is not where it once was. It's not your fault that, occasionally, hitting the mark means someone gets their feelings hurt.

The best you can do this month is make space for the experience and truth of others, even if making space means keeping your distance. Taking a step back doesn't have to mean shutting yourself off. It can mean figuring out new ways to be accountable. It can mean picking up a ritual that strengthens your compassion. Or, a physical practice that bolsters your ability to stay present and alert to moments of dysregulation. Whatever enables you to take your ego out of it long enough to assess what is and is not yours to fix. Everyone's interior is complex. Few conflicts follow logic. Sometimes the stories don't match up, sometimes people would rather take it personally than take one for the team, and sometimes you have no idea what's going on with your clients or your coworkers or your friends, even if you ask them. Better to let their truth be their truth, even if it's not yours. Better to work for what you want to happen next than try to hash out what's past.

You know how people say, "If you don't like the heat, then get out of the kitchen." Well, that saying only really works when it's not your kitchen, or when you're not the one cooking. It's a good thing that this time the heat is in your kitchen because I have it under good authority that you like heat. In fact, it's a known fact that you thrive under pressure and aren't above manufacturing a little bit of drama to get the wheels spinning. Even if that drama is something akin to imagining a deadline is earlier than it is, or that the consequences for a broken commitment are worse than they really are. Get a load of Capricorn with its eclipses, its Saturn / Pluto conjunctions, its ability to make the month of January last twice as long as every other month of the year.

Well, if January had you cooking up a storm, then February has got you right back in the kitchen labeling and freezing so that you can have everything you need for the last few weeks of winter. You, dear Capricorn, have some plans to cement and some loose ends to tie up.

You're probably thinking, Yeah? What else is new? And, you're right. The moment a Capricorn wraps up one project, they're well on their way to working on another. This month, the focus isn't so much on responsibilities and errands as it is on finishing the big projects and commitments so that you can create space for what brings you pleasure. And, yes, sometimes finishing something you've been putting off means creating the right conditions so that your efforts are sustained. Eating better, taking breaks to stretch, beginning and ending your days with little moments of peace or beauty. Reward yourself even when you think you haven't earned it. You probably earned it in everybody else's book but your own.

It's almost your birthday dear, Aquarius! What will you do to celebrate? What I love about Aquarius Sun time is the way it transforms an, otherwise, lonely brooding season into a moment of collectiveness and play. An Aquarius in your life means constant opportunities to get together with people who are close but not too close and shake the wintry blues off. It's not heavy and it doesn't come with expectations. Come if you want, flake if you need to, drugs are probably available but also a karaoke machine, a hot pot, and two vegan lasagnas.

For your friends and for your community, you are a channel for connection and communication. You bridge social groups and scenes, carrying water from one shore to another and back again. As is often the case, what we offer others is far from what we're able to offer ourselves, and it's not unusual for a star like you to get blue this time of year.

Making connections and having adventures is one thing, but feeling known is another. It takes someone of great perspicacity to pick up on the subtle cues of sign that would rather cover themselves in cadaver hearts than wear their own heart on their sleeve. Birthdays have a way of bringing up old wounds around attachment, around vulnerability, and expectation. Couple that with some financial anxiety and some inter-community tensions and it's likely that a bout of moodiness is not far behind. Consider the idea that your moodiness might be a kind of loneliness. You can share what's on your heart even if you haven't figured it all out just yet, especially if you need help figuring it out.

It's that time of year again, Pisces. Time for you to call back, email, and text all the lapsed communiques that have stacked up since November. February is here to kick you into gear and remind you that you are part of a social ecosystem and, in order for you to thrive in that ecosystem, you have got to feel like an intrinsic part of it, not just a visitor or a supportive onlooker. But, feeling like an intrinsic part of your social ecosystem isn't all group chats and drink dates (although those are lovely too), it's sharing what you're passionate about with like-minded souls, it's getting others to dream up new projects with you, it's making good on some long-standing plans with collaborators.

Mercury, the god of information and technology, can get a little muddy in dreamy Pisces so don't be surprised if all your reaching out doesn't get you the responses you expect. In fact, with Mercury in retrograde motion this month, don't be surprised if your communications and plans take strange and unusual turns.

Hey, maybe that sounds whimsical to you, and maybe it will be. Like an old letter that's finally made it to you after years of re-routing or an old love note in a bottle. More likely, you might get notified to opportunities you had no way of anticipating. Take your time considering whatever it is that arrives and don't rush into a yes when a "I'll get back to you" will suffice. The new moon might have you inspired to plunge into the unknown, especially after a slow and lonely season. But, Pisces, whatever bouts of isolation or insecurity winter has brought to your doorstep, whatever dashed dreams or crushes gone wrong, you are ready to push through the heavy sludge of months past and make a path for what you want, not just what wants you.