Your July 2020 Horoscope Is All About Changing Your Priorities

It’s July and even if you’re tired of being brave, there’s not much choice in the matter. While the United States acted very un-united, opening and re-opening as if to watch the needle of infections dance across the monthly graphs, we face another cycle of eclipses. Clarifying and purging, on a very general level, Eclipse season encourages us Earthlings to reckon with what doesn’t work and make commitments to what does. This is especially true when the lunar eclipse occurs in Capricorn on July 5 followed by a new moon in Cancer on July 20.

Capricorn represents societal structures and when Capricorn hosts Pluto, Jupiter, and Saturn all conjunct and retrograde, Capricorn isn’t just looking to remodel — it’s looking to burn down the tower. Capricorn, at its wisest, knows that a structure that serves the people outside it and diminishes those within it is a prison and prisons are obsolete.

While Venus has stationed direct in Gemini, a shadow remains, and since Mercury will be retrograde till mid-July, followed by its own shadow, it’s wise to be careful with what you say and who you say it to. This applies not only to your relationships and collaborators, but to your online presence as well. We forget more often than we like to admit but information is powerful, in the sense that it can used for and against you in mundane and legal matters, and in the sense that language is a spell. What is shared without direction beckons guests without invitation. In a time when much of the world is stuck at home and online, what your share can have a wider reach than before. Perhaps July is when many of us will use that position for beauty, like this violin vigil for Elijah McCain which happened in multiple locations.

Aries & Aries Rising

There’s a good chance that despite all the difficulties of living through a pandemic and an uprising, your life these past few months has kept a steady flow. The truth is, like children who push and challenge the rules of their elders, Aries often flourishes under a bit of limitation and restraint. It invites you to imagine a new approach, it encourages your very active imagination. Now that Mars has moved under the stars of Aries, your active imagination is READY to take your dream and make it happen.

Mars is Aries’ ruling planet, so there’s a lot of power to this transit, but we all know that just because you can step on the gas doesn’t mean you should. Mars makes a strong sextile aspect to Saturn in Aquarius and you’ll find that the universe isn’t so much trying to slow you down as it is encouraging you to respect the time a thing deserves.

Which is to say — even if you want to be on to the next one (phase, project, place, person), transitions take time. Emotions have half-lives, they move through you and through your body at their own pace. Nothing in nature and nothing within us is created in a day; birth is a nine-month process, all harvest relies on a cultivated soil. In the tension between the light turning green and the moment you move is a moment to take a deep breath and scan your periphery. Sometimes a path needs to shift for the pleasure of the journey.

Taurus & Taurus Rising

We all know that change is a constant, even if not all of us are comfortable with it. Change doesn’t really care if we’re comfortable; it comes when it comes and if the current political climate is any indication, a change is gonna come real soon. You, dear Taurus, are an Earth-bound creature, and whether you let others see it or not, you’re incredibly sensitive to your environment. What might, at first, have taken the shape of physical dis-ease or somatic unrest rises toward your consciousness this month.

Your understanding of human nature, both your own and that of others, isn’t what it was. For a Taurus, a sign that cultivates a steady ideology, it can be difficult to accept that your approach has been limited, that there’s a great deal that you have left to learn.

With Venus, your ruling planet, stationed direct in Gemini and Mercury forming a helpful aspect to Uranus, it’s likely that your methods for gathering and processing information are getting an overhaul. What’s important for you to remember is that the more you leave your comfort zone for the discomfort of new concepts, the better things will flow. This is especially true following the full moon eclipse in Capricorn that forms a trine to Uranus in Taurus on July 5. Think of it as a meditation on the power of not-knowing. If every encounter is new, no matter the similarities to past encounters, how can you regard it as having something new to teach you?

Gemini & Gemini Rising

Would you believe that the rollercoaster ride of emotions you’ve been on isn’t over just yet? Of course, you’d believe it, you’re a sign that readily accepts new information and the data clearly indicates more “fun” with feelings in the near future. But believing it isn’t the same as knowing what do with it. With Mercury stationed retrograde until mid-month, your usually approach — talking it out — might not be your best one. In fact, with Mercury forming an opposition to the full moon eclipse in Capricorn, communicating what you’re going through might be more trouble than it’s worth.

Perhaps, then, July and its retrograde cycle (which includes a shadow period for the rest of the month) can be a time of introspection for you, dear Gemini. A time you devote to developing your psychic awareness of yourself and your intimate environment.

It’s often said that everyone has the ability to be psychic, but not everyone has access to developing that ability. If it were possible for you to tune to your intuitive gifts more devoutly, what do you think you would need to shift in your daily routine? Would you need to journal more? Would you need to wash your windows and mop your floors and clear the air? Would you need make a morning routine where the first thing you do is acknowledge your physical body and your connection to it? You might have your own list, but if you don’t, this list will do.

Cancer & Cancer Rising

Happy birthday, sweet Cancer, and happy eclipse season. Although, “happy” might really be a stretch. Perhaps it would be too on the nose, to obvious an assessment, to say that eclipses really do you in. Cancers are, after all, our very sensitive water babies ruled by the moon and riding her waves. Well, the truth is the truth no matter how expected it is, and the waves are choppy this summer. If your emotions are on overdrive, if there’s a riptide or a current too strong to resist, you might find that surrender is the only way you’re getting back to shore.

The structures that supported you and kept you afloat through emotional unrest just aren’t serving you this time around, and that’s a good thing. The only way to grow faith in yourself is to rely on yourself, the only way to get stronger is to test your strength.

July begins with Mercury retrograde in Cancer and although Mercury stations direct come mid-July, the shadow of its retrograde transit remains. Meanwhile, the moon rises full in Capricorn, in your sector of partnership and interdependence. Collaboration can be powerful thing when all parties involved feel confident about what they bring to the table. Your understanding of your role in relationship is changing and it hard not to forget what you’ve learned when old patterns pull you in. Recognizing the pattern is riding the wave out and back, toward yourself.

Leo & Leo Rising

Cancers get a lot of spotlight when Eclipse season gets into full swing since Cancer is associated with the moon. But, it takes two to tango and two heavenly bodies to make an eclipse go ‘round. This month begins with a lunar eclipse in Capricorn, and it’s a transit that invites you to sit with the necessary changes you have had to make regarding your work and your health. While certain shifts to routine proved inevitable due to quarantine and circumstance, their effect on you went farther then general convenience.

These past couple of months made it impossible for you to stay in your comfort zone without feeling stuck in it. The months ahead will encourage you to make changes to the way you live and work on your own terms. The more intentional you are, the more powerful the results.

The truth is, you know exactly what changes need to be made and exactly how to go about making them. What’s kept you back are notions of contracts you’ve made with other people or institutions — the idea that you owe yourself and your time to someone else even if you don’t believe in their methods or their vision. Leo, you don’t owe anyone your life and certainly not to the detriment of your health. Not even an older version of you who didn’t yet have the information you have. You don’t have to finish her projects because you can change your mind.

Virgo & Virgo Rising

Perhaps when you were younger, chasing a good feeling felt simple enough. The right project, the right friends, the right song coming on while you’re all together. And it’s not like those things don’t do it for you anymore, it’s just that you want something bigger. It’s hard to feel good when the world isn’t doing so well, hard to lean into joy amid global sufferings even if it’s true that there’s always been suffering and injustice alongside the beauty in our lives. Here eclipse season calls you toward a new kind of celebration: an exploration of the line between personal pleasure and collective euphoria and how to walk it.

It can feel strange to admit it and wild to discover it, but anger is empowering. Righteous anger can turn a whole body on. Imagine: shouts rising over a restless crowd, thrum of bodies risking viral infection to be one of the number who has said ENOUGH. Imagine: sending that reply email telling so-and-so that you don’t owe them sh*t.

It’s natural to feel frustrated but just because you’re the kind of animal that knows how to be of service to others doesn’t mean you owe everyone who comes to call on you your service. Your labor is an act of attention and attention is a kind of love. It’s an intimate thing, to work together, to anticipate each other’s weaknesses and play up each other’s strengths. Even in the most mundane circumstance, the fusion of energy between two or more people is a sacred gesture toward the future. Virgo, this month, if others’ expectations have got you feeling undervalued, it might be time to channel your anger into a more purposeful direction.

Libra & Libra Rising

Venus, your ruling planet, is direct again and even with the shadow period casting its shade — the future is looking a little more manageable on this side of the transit. Coupled with your own indecisive nature, Venus in Gemini tends to spend a lot more time thinking than it does doing — unless you count endless talking about doing as doing. Is it possible for two air-element signs to combine and create the kind of wind that forces an environment to shift on its own? If the universe hasn’t blatantly conspired to move you along,

Mars transiting Aries in your house of partnership might be just the force you’ve been waiting on. Aries, like you, is cardinal, but it has no compunctions about expressing what it wants because Aries knows that change begins on the singular level and they are happy to go first.

While eclipse season might have you dealing with the vestiges of childhood trauma, especially as it has been known to show up in your adult body (mental unrest and immunity issues for example), these symptoms are not signs that you are off course. You are always on a path, Libra, and it is yours. The wounds within you and their many manifestations are your work but you don’t need to tend to them alone. This month offers you the chance to move toward an interdependence that is rooted in self-belief by which I mean, an unshakable faith that no matter what compromises you make, you have faith that you won’t compromise yourself.

Scorpio & Scorpio Rising

If you haven’t been busy already, Scorpio, then expect to be busy. Expect that while the world around you careens between opening and closing, between isolation and mass protest, you are being asked to figure out just how much of your time is precious to you and how you intend to preserve energy for what matters most. On the surface, this might seem simple enough. You’re not a baby, you are an adult who probably owns a planner. Or at least a planner app. But writing it down and getting to it are two entirely different matters.

What, in the past, was accomplished by the wire with the strength of your will and determination wants to be approached a different way. You are being called to witness your methods of communication, assess your commitments, and practice new modes of boundary-making.

This can be as simple as creating a new scheduling system that attends to your hours of productivity and your…let’s face it… general malaise when it comes to working for others. But, on a deeper level this is about taking a proactive approach to your daily life that is attentive to not only the facts of your patterns (over-extension, eating issues, procrastination/anxiety) but the personal roots of those patterns. If there is a part of you that is still operating like a teenager that believes the only way to prove your worth is to either run yourself dry or opt-out of opportunities lest you disappoint, now is a great time to remind yourself that your worth is intrinsic but both money and energy are not.

Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising

Of course, things are changing for you; they’re changing for everybody. A global overhaul is a great stimulant for a personal overhaul, don’t you think? For a good deal of time now, Uranus in Taurus has been activating the sector of your chart that pertains to your health and work and it’s likely you’ve experienced sudden onsets of physical or psychological difficulty (more likely in a pandemic, I know). While it’s true that illness is illness and pain is pain, we all know the body keeps the score so we all know that there’s more to an ailment than its symptoms.

The trouble with Uranus in the sixth house is that the messages can be a little distorted. And, with your ruling planet retrograde conjunct Pluto in your first house, there’s a good chance that while you have a sense of the treatment, you have a hard time actively embracing it.

It’s a common problem, the difficulty of choosing wellness when wellness means choosing yourself. Especially if the underlying issues confront old beliefs about yourself and your abilities that no longer apply to who you are. A triple conjunction of Jupiter, Pluto, and Saturn all retrograde in your house of resources and values at the same time as the lunar eclipse that trines Uranus won’t make that problem any easier although it might make it more approachable. In fact, these transits are unrelenting in their insistence, linking up and raising the stakes until you can do nothing else but choose to yourself. What if, instead of testing their influence, you get ahead of them instead?

Capricorn & Capricorn Rising

You can’t control the world, you know that, of course you do. The world has a mind much bigger and vaster than your mind and besides, controlling is a lot of responsibility and you have enough of those. Given those indisputable facts, it stands to reason that since the world is a mess and you are drawn to cleaning up messes, it would be in your best interest to discern when you are working/assisting within your wheelhouse and when you are leaking energy into places it doesn’t belong. You’re probably wondering if this applies to your personal relationships as well, and you’re absolutely right: It does.

Faithfully, this month wants to act in your best interest. It promises you a great deal of domestic harmony, a sense that your presence in relationship is considered and valued. While your words might not always come out clear, your actions are deeply felt.

It would serve you then, to direct the anger you feel about the state of things and the energy you’ve gathered to make it right toward strengthening your intimate sphere. Invest more time in making your home a sanctuary, spend time deepening your connections. The change you want doesn’t have to happen to the detriment of your joy. It can be your joy. Invite your close ones to meet you where you are and, when it’s time, to fight alongside you.

Aquarius & Aquarius Rising

FEELINGS. What are they good for? Absolutely everything. And, funnily enough, also nothing… if you don’t give them room to become realizations. Perhaps you do. Perhaps you can welcome a wave of emotion and ride it faithfully toward the shore of self-compassion. Perhaps you are also a gifted magician who can pull the tablecloth clean out from a set table. Truth is, most people are not good at either of those things and attempts to get better at them often result in riptide disasters and broken tableware. The good news is, while you’re learning what it means — exactly — to accept what you feel, you are getting better at expressing the little you know about it so far.

In fact, there may be a force to your self-expression that feels surprising to loved ones and it’s important that you don’t use the feelings of others to measure the veracity of your own.

While feedback and processing has its place in relationship, your current exploration is not about other people. It’s about learning to communicate who you are so that your gifts can be easily recognized and put to good use. This eclipse season will only make this clearer for you, stimulating the parts of you that remember what it was like to imagine your future as a child, asking that part of you if she might like to remind you how it’s done.

Pisces & Pisces Rising

Community is a buzzword, for sure. People use it to win over constituents and companies plaster is over their capital drives in the hopes that they can convince you that buying from them will make you feel a little less alone. Since the uprisings ignited in May, most of our inboxes have been flush with mass emails addressed to “our community.” You know that community is more than an abstract address. It is shared resources, it is fellowship of mind, it is a fertile place where new things and nurtured and history is archived in the sacred words of elders and the tireless libraries.

Still, if you are a Pisces that has felt rootless and unsupported, you’re not alone. Despite what you know about community’s precious power to invigorate and sustain you, you find yourself on the outside quite a bit. You find yourself wondering who your community is.

It’s not that you’re without friends. It’s not that you don’t have people you’re down with who come pick the apples from your tree. It’s just that whatever changes you’ve had to make in your environment the past few years, whatever moves, job shuffles, break-ups, took up a lot of your energy and left their mark too. This month, finds you better stocked to extend yourself and more inclined to do so without proof of what you’ll get back. You’re likely to find satisfaction in volunteering your time and energy, and maybe a sense of belonging too.