September Horoscopes From Galactic Rabbit

by Gala Mukomolova

Dear Star Bunnies,

Thank you for your patience and your readership. I am honored to write these star-meditations for you. Each month I take a deep retreat into my bunny-shaped third eye and lure the words for you. This time, more than any other so far, I have felt a love knot in the sky. What I mean is: a circle cast that invokes each planet. The chant? Move or be moved. I believe in our collective power, our ability to change the world as it changes us.
Welcome the new season, sweet ones, as it welcomes you.

Yours,
Galactic Rabbit

Aquarius
In the stare, So in between/ I’m feelin bold, I’m in a dream/ I am a mess, I am no god/
It’s just the flesh that bend of the stars… So begins Little Dragon’s song “Brush The Heat,” the perfect end of summer jam for an Aquarian like her and like you too. There are two worlds we build inside ourselves. The ordinary, toast the frozen bread and spread old peanut butter world and the extraordinary, sweep you up into a beat and charge you with electricity world. In the next few weeks you will be asked to navigate between both worlds with grace. Let the ordinary sustain you, without resentment for its lack of obvious magic (for there is magic, yes, in the ordinary). Honor the inhabitants of this bread and butter world, honor their plain truths and their love of small pleasures. It’s in honoring them, a love like tenderness towards each tomato ripe and heavy on the vine, that you transform your own heart, an open circle, the birth and death of stars.

Pisces
Every Pisces I have ever known has had a dual nature. Call it the mutable in you, the two fish swimming in the same river, splitting the current and merging it. I am speaking to the generous witch inside you now, the one who loves so intensely, she trembles whatever river she touches. I am asking her to be patient with the part of herself she hates, I am asking her to love more. Pisces, even if you feel abandoned, even if these last three years have tested you beyond any limits you could have imagined, even if every single body of water has dried up around you — surrender more. Surrender beyond your own will, beyond whatever walls you’ve put up for safety. You must know it’s those same walls that keep the water out. I am thinking of Jhene Aiko now. She’s a Pisces too (although very close to Aries, a good influence for you). I mean to share her songs with you, because each one has a kind of surrender in it. These words from “3:16 am” really stuck with me: I do not feel the fear of falling/ Thought I could fly / It didn’t go well, but oh well/ What do you know?/ I’m right back where I was before/ But I’m not alone.

Aries
This is the month of the slow burn, one ember after the other bluing beneath a handful of flames that lick the air in bright thirst. This month, the pony you’ve been riding into the sunset keeps slowing down, asking for water. Let it drink, Fire-star, let it rest. We are none of us without our limits. Aries, look at the world you’ve chosen. There are so many ways to feel betrayal. There is the small inner sanctum of your heart, which shifts and hardens without your permission. People who drag their endless sadness into your life like found pets — and ask more of you and your patience than they can ever give back. There is this nation, this country that leaves the bodies of young black men dead in the street like road kill, like dogs who were never named. It’s a heartache, this place, and there are days when you are no one’s champion. Let the care you give yourself on those days be enough. When you’re rested and ready to ride, there’s always Le1f : Like, find my horse, I’m feeling kinda headless/ Don’t ask me how i been cuz the answer is relentless/ Innocent until proven filthy/ I’m wildin’ out here. I hope the cops don’t kill me. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKwLsWwlqYk )

Taurus
Lots of people say Tauri are material creatures and when we hear “material,” we often — in error — link it to the superficial. Yet the material is often the only world we have proof of, the only world our bodies bump up against, sensing. A Taurus can hold anything: a gold-plated turtle figurine, a delicious sandwich, your gaze and know that thing’s true value. Taurus, this month Venus will dance with Ceres in the sky. Perhaps this song by The Internet will be playing. Swimming through your galaxy, starstruck on all of you (Yea)/ Perfect love analogy, that’s how I describe you. Their dance will pull a red scarf over the lights that surround you, granting your world a soft glow. I encourage you to sit steady in the warm shade of that dance and look firmly upon the faces that surround you. There is more than enough love around you and within you, dear soft bull heart, to sustain you when the dance ends — when you must go home. Haven’t you spent years learning how to care for yourself best, better than anyone else ever could? As for the material world: there’s a fine line between want and need, there are times in our lives when drawing it is unnecessary.

Gemini
I’m so bored in this town/ Take me away from here/ Play me some kind of new sound/
Something true and sincere. I’m listening to Robyn’s “None of Dem” and thinking of you, dear Gemini. A summer of ripping paper over and over, a summer so tight with frustration your muscles got coiled in permanent ache. Has communication become almost unbearable? Is a change all that you’ve been wanting? A well-marked door you can take your exit through? If so, then this is the season of picking up whatever marker you have on hand and writing your own way out. But, if you are reading this and thinking to yourself: haven’t I done all I can? Haven’t I taken huge risks, explored new art forms, new lovers, new time zones? Then the answer to all your questions is yes. Yes, you have done enough. Yes, you are right where you should be. Yes, my Twin-Star, the universe has felt your ache and heard the soft howl at the center of your heart. She is holding your hand through all of this; she knows what you can do.

Cancer
I’m thinking about this song I know by Diamond Rings called “It’s Not My Party.” Thinking about a beautiful boy with a bruised face, a body listless in a sea of bodies, a body pulled up from the snow. We’re tense and nervous running at the mouth/ Afraid of just what everyone is all about
But keep on keeping on to hide our doubt/And hold a candle when the lights go out. It’s a love song, the way almost all sad songs are. Yet there is another texture here, a kind of longing pushing up against a tight enclosure. Who are these people weaving a web of nothing around his body? How do we, in our own ways, tune out what we can’t bear? I want to ask you, Cancer, about the box you have chosen to step inside of and close. Does it feel good, this tight space? Familiar? Safe? There will be months, even years, when every one of us will crave such a space. The trade-off, I’m sure you know, is the lack of light, an inability to see even your own hands. Cancer, I am interested in your longing far more than I’m interested in safety. Whatever anxiety you feel, whatever angst, it is not worth all this want.

Leo
O Lion-heart, this September I am thinking about what it must feel like to be the Sun. Each month a different house; each planet aching toward you. If I could sit with you on a green patch of grass or a wood bench warm from the day’s heat. If we were two planets sustaining each other’s survival with a shared meal, with laughter, a song we love. If I could then I would. Often, we find the ones we love are furthest from us. And when I say far, I do not mean the body, although the body leaves in its own way. I mean your solitary path, your refusal to retreat in the face of shadow or the unknown. Your love of the unknown, which brings out the brave in you and the callous, the lover who refuses the ordinary no matter how good the ordinary has been to you. I was a dagger/ but in whose heart? Those are some lyrics from a song by Lovers. Sometimes, in order to honor the wild heart in you, you must be both the lover and the knife. Leo, you were born to hunt, I know. You never asked to be the Sun.

Virgo
In Greek lore, you were once a goddess named Astraea, last of the immortals to live in the Golden Age. As the Iron Age came on and Pandora’s box crept open, you fled to the heavens — up and away from the monstrosity of mortal life — and became the constellation Virgo. Legend states that one day you will return and bring with you the Golden Age you represented. I have no idea what that Golden Age would look like in this century but Virgo, I do know that this world is ready for you so come back.
There is nothing on Earth that you can’t face, nothing you have to be afraid of. Let this be your year of disillusionment, of staying present and asking for exactly what you need. Here is a beautiful song by BOY. Play it for me?
Happy Birthday Bright Star. When you return, from wherever you’ve been, there will already be a table set in your honor. You don’t need a costume or even an offering. Your arrival, your truest self, will be all we’ve been waiting for.

Libra
It’s September, Libra, your season. Aren’t you relieved? There’s something about autumn that comforts you, predictable in its classes, leaves turning, co-workers back from summer vacations with bad burns and offensive hair choices. Meanwhile, you’ve been on that grind, throwing yourself headfirst into work, into self-improvement, into anything that can get you up and over to the other side — whatever that side is. Libra, I see you and I feel you. Not that I need to tell you this but all the work you’ve been doing has not in vain. Everyday, every week, every month you have taken steps towards a version of yourself you can be proud of. This is your own form of healing, a methodical balm layered over the wounds self-doubt can cut into any one of us. Mid-month mercury in retrograde (in Libra) is sure to slow your stride but no matter, use the time to meditate on who you used to be and who you are ready to become. I chose this song for you, because Jesse Ware is a Libra and because if there’s anything I know about you, it’s that all you need is a little sweet talk to get you up and get you going.

Scorpio
When your dreams are on/ a train to train-wreck town/ then I ask you now/ what’s a girl to do? That’s Bat For Lashes singing the song of her Scorpio soul. The woods are dark, the bike ride long, those weird ghouls riding in masques d’animaux — terrible. Is each one a part of you? Are you full of ghouls? What’s a girl to do, Scorpio? Here’s what I know: nothing gets solved while you are hiding in bed eating yoghurt-covered pretzels (besides you know, your dutiful contribution towards the maintenance of pretzel population overgrowth). Refusing to move, is a choice too and it is one you can’t afford to make. So, probably, you need to find a trail that leads you out of Dark Wood Wonderland. Maybe feed those ghouls some snacks, thank them for their loyal clapping and synchronized bike dancing. Scorpio, learn to care for even the worst most shameful parts of you, the parts that know only how to sting when threatened and run when confronted. You can’t know what you will find along your path if you refuse to walk. You can’t grow if all you do is roam in darkness.

Sagittarius
In her song “Passenger,” Emily Wells sings: I’m a passenger, I’m a passenger/ Give me the keys I wanna drive. / I’m a passenger, I’m a passenger/ If you give me the keys you know I won’t survive. Clearly, this is a Sagittarian feeling, a direct conflict between the experience you want and the experience you create for yourself. You’re not happy being the passenger but neither do you trust yourself to take the wheel. Why not, Sagittarius? Wasn’t there a time in your life when each map you followed was the one you drew for yourself? A time when you could have been anyone: captain of a ship, lone cowgirl at a cowboy school. Perhaps you think you’ve changed and I think you’re right. You’re smarter now, you know when to cut your losses, how to look disappointment squarely in the eye before you let it go. Perhaps it is time, then, to trust your instincts again. Shoot your arrow toward the destination that feels most true. Draw your own map, drive. I can’t tell you that there’s nothing to lose but losing something you never needed is no great disaster.

Capricorn
Dear Capricorn, in some warehouse or loft thick with what I can only describe as indoor fog, there are dancers who cannot stop dancing. I am thinking about movement now, how the shape a body can take — alone or against another body — redefines the space it is in. Do you know that the parts of a dance, the sequences, are called phrases? Phrases like one sentence into another until we are telling a story together; until we are woven in the universe that story creates. Watch this dance (by FKA Twigs) with me. FKA Twigs, Capricorn, one dancer defining the beat with her limbs and her hair — extending. One dancer, two, then three, each one linked and reflecting the other. I don’t mean to go on or to seem indirect. I am trying to give you an image, a distinct sense to hold onto whenever you feel alone, whenever you feel isolated, whenever you feel like the space you are in and the people who surround you are shrinking the spirit in you. You have the power to invoke the support you need, Capricorn, with each phrase. You define the space you are in, so extend.

Gala Mukomolova is a poet ruled by Pluto, a planet in our hearts.