After two months of clever hijinks and signal-scrambling in Gemini, Mercury is moving on to the more bashful waters of Cancer from July 11th to July 27th. As much as we might welcome a change of pace for our messenger, who is moving mercifully quick and direct once again, we’ll also have to attune our radars to perceive the sort of subtle innuendo that often flies beneath the water’s surface tension.
Mercury is still zipping up its wetsuit in the early degrees of Cancer when it trines Jupiter on July 12th. Words land sweet around this time, and good news memos scatter our desks. This is a moment to give compliments freely, sing in the shower, and pack a notebook to catch all the inspired ideas as they froth.
Classical astrologers considered water signs the quietest of the bunch — officially because they’re represented by creatures that don’t make discernible noise; unofficially because water Mercury placements express themselves through ~vibes~ more than direct words, at times. A substantial percentage of all communication is nonverbal.
Sometimes what we don’t say is louder than what we do. And when we’re traveling through Cancer’s waters specifically, it’s not what you say, but how you say it. You can hurt your own feelings by misreading someone’s emotional cues. At the very same time, you can detect subtle energy shifts as evidence of another person’s state of mind and be entirely on point.
This sort of mood-reading will come in handy around July 13th, when Venus makes a conjunction to Mars. Archetypally speaking, Venus and Mars are the lovers of the solar system. They are the anode to the cathode, the magnet to the iron, the alchemical salt to the sulfur. They are the albatross beloveds who spend years at sea but return to each other every mating season, greeting each other with a 20 minute flap dance. This is the hieros gamos, or sacred union between two. Maybe it’s two people. Maybe it’s two sides of yourself. Maybe it’s two parts of a creative project. In a sign like Leo, the call is to let your mane down, kindle the bonfire, and tend your sacred flames.
The Sun’s trine to Neptune on July 15th invites more courting and cavorting with the muses. While the Sun rules our powers of self-expression, Neptune offers that singular intoxication only the imagination can deliver: the kelp-fringed depths of our inner worlds and fantasies. This is a day to dream unabashedly. Schedule time at your easel, dance studio, or writing desk.
Meanwhile, the Sun’s opposition to Pluto on July 17th delivers us to subterranean lairs. Pluto represents the dusky, mineral depths of our souls, while the Sun smears its celestial high beam straight across at it. On the one hand, our secrets, crevices and private parts get exposed. On the other, this is an opportunity for radical honesty, and the radical integrity that goes along with it.
These horoscopes invite you to read the room, experience all communications in 3D, and rely a little more on your intuition for wayfinding.
Your horoscopes are meant to be read as inspiration. If you know both your rising sign and sun sign, please read both horoscopes. You’ll know which one resonates more for you from week to week. Take what works for you, and leave the rest. If you want to share this work, please credit the source by quoting it and providing a link to this post and website.
Thank you for your support and for spreading the work around. We really appreciate it and you. The following horoscopes were written by Steph Koyfman (The Daily Hunch) and Eliza Robertson.
Aries & Aries Rising
During Mercury’s brief cruise through Cancer, the usual calculations you run when organizing your schedule might require some adjustments to factor in more time at home or among kin.
Writing an “around the house” to-do list is a love language that speaks directly to the hearth. Making yourself more available for phone calls with family is not unlike feeding your ancestor altar with hot tea and candid words.
No matter who’s on the other end, Mercury in Cancer helps you translate the emotional tenor into actionable intelligence. One of the actions to center this week involves tending your creative and romantic cauldrons. As Venus and Mars hitch together on July 13th, your fertile juices feel synchronous and fated.
Maybe an art project will find a mind or engine of its own, or you’ll meet someone who inspires you to flirt shamelessly. This particular bunny trail will feel magnetic and propulsive: see where it leads you.
What begins as a sort of memory retrieval around July 12th leads you to a deeper inquisition once you realize you’re one puzzle piece short of a cohesive picture. Just try not to take things too personally — there’s a small (but healing) mindframe shift you might be able to make instead.
This week Venus and Mars initiate a powerful new creative cycle. Listen to your reading for the week ahead to learn more about where this is happening for you on the CHANI app.
Taurus & Taurus Rising
Here for a quick but sweet time, Mercury in Cancer sends you down a breadcrumb trail of inspiration through the streets you already know like the back of your hand. A routine corner store conversation might put you directly in touch with the muse again. Your favorite neighborhood bar might provide the setting for you to reignite a romance with life itself.
As Venus and Mars fall into step on July 13th, embers glow at the center of your home and family life. Here lies the hearth, that anchor of your abode where the ancients prayed to household gods and ancestors. Use this sacred merging to rekindle family connections, spruce up your abode, or leave fresh flowers on your ancestral altar.
As Mercury in Cancer lights up your phone, embrace the invitation to catch up with friends you haven’t seen in a while. Reunions are fun, and also, at least one of those connections might lead you to a deeper interrogation.
While it’s here, Mercury also sensitizes you to the full impact of what you communicate. Words reverberate with an emotional pitch, texts land in places you don’t always intend, and hurt feelings initiate breakthroughs in self-awareness.
This week Venus and Mars initiate a powerful new creative cycle. Listen to your reading for the week ahead to learn more about where this is happening for you on the CHANI app.
Gemini & Gemini Rising
These next couple weeks might find you organizing your collections and running inventory on what you have to help identify what you need. Hardly here to be dry and systematic though, Mercury in Cancer creates its own logic through the nonlinear routes of sentimentality.
Rummaging through your closet doesn’t have to be a chore, but an opportunity to linger over the belongings that connect you to your memories. Tuning into the messages your body sends you when you hold them — whether they spark joy or spark pain — helps you remember where you came from.
Mercury’s journey through Cancer begins on an encouraging note, and ends with more questions than answers. A bit of good news comes your way on July 12th, reassuring you that you have more than you thought you did.
On July 13th, strut your local streets as if the God/esses of love are watching. Your local haunts are the site of star-crossed eye contact, and love poetry becomes your lingua franca. Use your powers of language for good and flirting. Whether your conversation style is coy or candid, this is a time to say what you want and whisper love spells into the welcoming ether.
This week Venus and Mars initiate a powerful new creative cycle. Listen to your reading for the week ahead to learn more about where this is happening for you on the CHANI app.
Cancer & Cancer Rising
As Mercury settles onto your horizon for the next couple weeks, it gives you a crash course in what it means to be liminal — to occupy two spaces at the same time; to be both a body and a soul; to exist at the crossroads of many emotional states all at once.
Though your felt experience is ineffable, the messenger planet gives you the writing implements to translate your existence into words. Though you already cycle through a series of moods on any given day, Mercury gives you wheels and makes you a busier body for a brief spell.
Your newfound flexibility makes your world feel large around July 12th, and you translate that optimism into gold on July 13th, when the lovers meet and perform their sacred alchemy. This conjunction between Venus and Mars represents the holy merging of two contrasting, even contradictory, drives.
In the place where you earn a living, the lovers inspire you to slot together the parts of your livelihood that feel inimical. That might involve adjusting the proportions of your income stream like fluids in alchemical beakers. What do you need more or less of to transfigure the lead in your situation into a precious metal?
By the end of the week, you may hit a snag that activates a core wound around how you’re perceived in the world, but a small mental breakthrough awaits you on the other side.
This week Venus and Mars initiate a powerful new creative cycle. Listen to your reading for the week ahead to learn more about where this is happening for you on the CHANI app.
Leo & Leo Rising
As the messenger planet sails through the mists of your veiled awareness, leaning into your capacity for nonlinear reasoning will propel you further in pursuit of a real answer. As you take a brief plunge into the secluded pool of your own biggest mysteries, leading with your spidey senses can help you decode some of the hieroglyphs painted on the walls of your subconscious.
Mercury’s transit through Cancer is useful for puzzling through some dense emotional material, but it might also be a tricky time for getting an accurate read on what your friend or Twitter mutual meant when they sent that comment. Your intuition can help you read into what’s not necessarily being said, but it’ll be just as important to seek confirmation before you make assumptions.
On July 13th, the lovers meet in your neck of the woods for an al fresco romp. This conjunction between Venus and Mars in Leo invites you to marry disparate sides of yourself. Maybe two parts of your identity feel incongruous, or two parts of your life tug you in opposite directions. How can you honor the sacred distinctions between these drives while you also coax their sublime merging?
A careless comment or gesture may feel personal by the week’s end, but the sting of that papercut eventually leads to a valuable breakthrough.
This week Venus and Mars initiate a powerful new creative cycle. Listen to your reading for the week ahead to learn more about where this is happening for you on the CHANI app.
Virgo & Virgo rising
Now that Mercury’s dialing up all your connections, you might finally feel ready to workshop some of the material you’ve been revising in front of a live audience. Any website revamping, portfolio zhushing, and big splashy launches you’ve had waiting in the wings will flourish with the attention of your friends, followers, and wider community.
In so many words: sharing is caring. And right now, sharing more of yourself — and by extension, sharing more of your work — will put you back in touch with the emotional frequency of who it’s all for. Of why you do it in the first place.
The conversations you have around July 12th will likely leave you feeling more supported than you thought you’d be. This unsolicited cheerleading will help light your path through the dark as you detangle a riddle or paradox the next day.
With Venus and Mars snuggling in the corner of your chart emblazoned with a Do Not Disturb sign, you may feel quite solitary as you try to hold two seemingly incompatible truths. This reckoning is an alchemical process in its own right, and chances are you’ll make more discoveries in the work of knot-loosening than by skipping straight to the solution.
Still, something about the exchanges you’re having right now might leave you with more questions than answers. You might not feel satisfied with anything anyone tells you around the end of the week, so do your best to inquire without bringing the inquisition
This week Venus and Mars initiate a powerful new creative cycle. Listen to your reading for the week ahead to learn more about where this is happening for you on the CHANI app.
Libra & Libra Rising
Mercury’s prolonged detour in Gemini found you pinpointing your cosmology and clarifying your politics against a blitz of half-truths or outright misinformation. As the messenger planet decamps to the most visible reaches of your chart, you might feel ready to broadcast your updated mission statement to the public.
In Cancer, Mercury speaks softly but carries a resolute stick. Being emotionally responsive to the world you’re in goes hand-in-hand with speaking your piece decisively.
Around July 12th, this transit kicks off with some good news or exciting announcements involving your work, which you may be the recipient or the mouthpiece for. Meanwhile, on July 13th, gazes meet across the beach bonfire of your social life. The cheek-to-cheek tango between Venus and Mars is a relatively rare one, leading to fateful encounters and synchronistic meetings.
Even if you’re not searching for a romantic other at the moment, all this ambient chemistry emboldens your pre-existing friendships, making your comrades the most inspiring folks to be around.
This week Venus and Mars initiate a powerful new creative cycle. Listen to your reading for the week ahead to learn more about where this is happening for you on the CHANI app.
Scorpio & Scorpio Rising
Here for a sweet and quick sojourn, Mercury in Cancer greases your wheels and encourages you to venture, if only temporarily, to a place you’ve never been before.
This might be as literal as a trip you’re taking or as abstract as a foray into a new field of knowledge. Maybe what this actually amounts to is that you’ll glimpse through someone else’s periscope. In any regard, your pathmaking follows a circuitous route, heeding the little intuitive hits you get along the way. A vibe is a perfectly good reason to change course.
Your voyage begins with a sunny outlook and clear horizons around July 12th. This might be the encouragement you need to set sail initially, and ultimately, to confront a more shadowy lagoon at the far reaches of your map. Your line of inquiry will travel you the rest of the way, but be mindful of when to let the matter rest, too.
Meanwhile, the rare-ish encounter between Venus and Mars on July 13th unfolds in Leo, your place of career. This conjunction represents the holy merging of two contrary parts. What sides of your public or professional life are edging subtly closer together? Which path feels fateful or magnetic right now? Where does your inner compass needle keep spinning back to?
The work ahead may not be totally easy or comfortable, but it will possess a tantalizing momentum that keeps you chugging along.
This week Venus and Mars initiate a powerful new creative cycle. Listen to your reading for the week ahead to learn more about where this is happening for you on the CHANI app.
Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising
For the next couple weeks, Mercury moves into psychopomp mode, ferrying messages back and forth across the rivers that separate you from your beloved dead. Whether Mercury is moving things along in a grief process, or helping you connect the dots around something you have yet to let go of, the messenger is here to help you to let sleeping ghosts rest.
You might receive good news or an uplifting intuitive hit around July 12th, only to become less and less satisfied with the information being readily supplied to you. By the end of the week, you’ll be digging for receipts, and it may become a matter of knowing when to stop.
On the other hand, it’s not all that deep. While in Cancer, Mercury delivers a felt sense of where you stand with your debts and potentially runs some calculations for you to settle some scores.
Adventure beckons around July 13th, when Venus and Mars join forces in your place of self-expansion. The teacher or mentor you’ve been seeking may cross your path, or your attention may drift to a farout horizon: geographically, intellectually or otherwise.
The word libido simply means desire or lust, and at the moment you’re channeling this vital force toward life itself: exploring a city, country, or concept as you would the contours of a lover’s body — and vice versa.
This week Venus and Mars initiate a powerful new creative cycle. Listen to your reading for the week ahead to learn more about where this is happening for you on the CHANI app.
Capricorn & Capricorn Rising
For the next couple weeks, Mercury in Cancer encourages you to suggest, not just tell, what you mean when in dialogue with others. Your body language and tone does much of the heavy lifting. Reading between the lines provides a great deal of necessary context.
In some respects, this might also be an invitation to get a second set of eyes on a project you’ve been doing and redoing over the last couple of months. Even if others don’t verbalize all their input, their body language and emotional cues can loudly proclaim what’s resonating and what still needs tweaking.
This transit begins with good news or spirited exchanges around July 12th and ends with a compulsion to dig deeper. This is an invitation to understand the ways you unintentionally wear a poker face or withhold information from others. Breaking your resting witch face with a smile or heart emoji now and then goes a long way to bolster mutual connection.
Sacred flames are lit on July 13th when Venus and Mars nuzzle in your place of sharing, shadow, and sub rosa exchanges. This is the slow burn that love stories are made of. In a part of your chart that relates to shared resources, you may find yourself engaging in the alchemical processes that transfigure lumps of lead into gold.
Or perhaps you’re ensconced in a deep and mutual witnessing, tending to each other’s shadow, lighting each other’s candles, and walking each other home through the night.
This week Venus and Mars initiate a powerful new creative cycle. Listen to your reading for the week ahead to learn more about where this is happening for you on the CHANI app.
Aquarius & Aquarius Rising
If the last couple months of Mercury in Gemini had you playing games, Mercury in Cancer might be your opportunity to take one or two of your new inventions and put them through the ol’ project management pipeline.
Not all creative expression needs finessing, and sometimes you can throw stuff at the wall without waiting to see what sticks. You might be in the mood to make something of your recent word play, however. In any case, Mercury in Cancer encourages you to follow the circuitous routes of your body’s changing whims, remembering to rest your mind when you need to as well.
You might start out with a sunny outlook when it comes to how much you think you can take on around July 12th, and this serves as a road-opening spell in its own right. The next day on July 13th, your partnerships gain a propulsive quality as Venus joins together with Mars.
This once-in-two-ish years conjunction represents the hieros gamos, or sacred marriage ritual. If you’re perusing for love, fated connections may abound, and love potions carry extra charge. Equally, this union is about celebrating your own integrity, your own holy wholeness, whether or not you have a sidekick.
This week Venus and Mars initiate a powerful new creative cycle. Listen to your reading for the week ahead to learn more about where this is happening for you on the CHANI app.
Pisces & Pisces Rising
As Mercury decamps to Cancer for the next couple weeks after a longer-than-usual detour in Gemini, some of your mental resources are freed up from having to puzzle out your family or living situation. In that space, creative exercises beckon.
Here for a brief but sweet time, Mercury in Cancer encourages you to play with your words and write notes to your inner child. Operating without a linear agenda, this busy spell of self-expression prompts you to journal in a stream-of-consciousness style and experiment with evocative formats and mediums that transcend words themselves.
You’ll have more than enough of yourself to give around July 12th. When your cup runs over, new creative openings beckon. Ultimately, at least one of these openings might lead you to a door without an obvious key. You’ll be confronted with an inscrutable mystery by the end of the week — the way out may not be directly through, but via metaphor.
On July 13th, the cosmic lovers two-step in your place of work and health rituals. If you’ve been puzzling over how to slot together incompatible parts of your work schedule or workout plan, this conjunction provides the chemistry and momentum to see how things align in a fresh and gilded light.
There’s also a chance that the person you’ve been crushing on at your gym, or in your workplace, or at the doctor’s office, or in the dog park, will return your intrigue. Consider that these points of human connection possess a magic of their own, even if nothing grave or momentous or obviously life-changing stems from it.
This week Venus and Mars initiate a powerful new creative cycle. Listen to your reading for the week ahead to learn more about where this is happening for you on the CHANI app.