After getting caught in the crosshairs of an astrological boiling point (and let’s be real, maybe even inciting some of the drama), Venus evacuates the storm zone and enters Virgo on July 21st. No longer in the thick of a messy dilemma, Venus comes down from an adrenalized state.
Venus isn’t easily pleased in Virgo, and this can cramp our style in one regard while elevating it in another. In this expression of Venus, standards get fussier and quality control gets more exacting. With the meticulousness of a legendary designer, Venus in Virgo fashions an impeccable garment and occasionally forgets how to take pleasure in the process.
Somewhere along the way, most of us heard that beauty is pain and, to varying degrees, accepted this as true. Somewhere along the way, most of us also learned to accept crude and sloppy imitations of what we actually want. There’s a middle ground between unlearning the former and rectifying the latter that Venus in Virgo is constantly exploring.
Then on July 22nd, Sol returns to its lion kingdom. This year, Leo season will require extra fortitude and flexibility, as the Sun moves toward an opposition with Saturn. The Hermit’s lantern will fall on tough truths, and part of our work will involve integrating feedback that initially dents our mane or ego.
Shortly after the Sun’s ingress into Leo, the full moon in Aquarius on July 23rd will offer a spoonful of pungent medicine. Not only does Saturn rule this lunation, the full moon will occur in proximity to our favorite crone, leaving a base note of “still-striving” rather than “mission accomplished.”
This lunation skirts around the question of completion: how do you know when a project is done or “good enough,” and what does “good enough” mean when we tend to eke more wisdom from the process than we do the final product?
The following horoscopes invite you to heed your idea of perfection without sacrificing too much joy in the process, and to nurse your fire within a flame-proof container, such as a cauldron or ring of stones.
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), Thea Anderson, and Eliza Robertson.
Aries & Aries Rising
Venus in Leo challenged you to play well with others when your own appetites were boiling over. Now, Venus in Virgo asks if you work well with others too, especially if your contributions are undervalued. This transit starts with you nursing a hangover of indulgence around July 22nd, ultimately awakening you to the cravings that haven’t been satisfied.
The Sun rolls into Leo on the same day, illuminating the ways you indulge in pleasure and creativity. To be generative is to understand that all the universe is creation. In this corner of your chart, the Sun’s life-giving energy summons your fertile spirit.
Sometimes creative flames get soused by our own inner critique, and good ideas perish on the cutting room floor. The challenge is to recall pleasure in the face of “no.” The inner artist-revolutionary must be protected and allowed to experiment. If a critique sounds harsh, see the feedback for what it is — artist medicine.
As the week progresses, return to the drawing board and craft a plan, routine, or regimen that gives you more of what you need, and at least some of what you want. Interrogate each step of the process until you identify where the work starts to feel like drudgery. Ask yourself when and how you internalized the notion that you’d never be equitably compensated for a labor of love.
Your community will have something to say about it around July 23rd. With a full moon in the social meeting place of your chart, a friend may be eager to voice their criticism, or a situation could arise that sharpens your sense of personal responsibility. The sound effect for this lunation is a bit of a “womp-womp,” but there’s promise here for single-minded focus and devotion.
Whatever realities you’re trying to forge in your covens, communities and friendship groups, you have the opportunity to do so now with integrity, from the dirt up.
Leo season begins and there’s a Full Moon in Aquarius. Harness gifts of heart + mind with journal prompts in the CHANI app.
Taurus & Taurus Rising
You’re cruising for a musing, and you’ll probably be able to enjoy a few ecstatic highs while Venus is in Virgo. The bigger question is whether you’ll be able to sustain that high note when the vibe at the club falls somewhere short of immaculate.
Bon vivant that you are, you have high standards for where and how you get your kicks, but after the month Venus just had, you’re probably looking to blow off some steam. If there were ever a year to ease up on your desire for a perfectly curated good time, or to let it all hang out in your own creative process, you’re looking at it now. Life can rub you the right way if you let it meet you where you are.
Venus kicks off its time in Virgo with an opposition to Jupiter on July 22nd, which makes it hard to ignore if you’re not getting off on whatever you’re having at the moment. On the same day, the Sun enters Leo, the lion den of your chart. There’s a reason we say home is where the heart is. Setting down roots requires courage and love, and from that center, plenty of fires can be stoked.
With the full moon reflecting Sol’s light on July 23rd, a project in your career or public life may be ready to bear fruit. No doubt these fruits will be hard-won, like grapes from a finicky and slow-growing vine. With Saturn so present in this lunation, this initial culmination could feel anticlimactic. Know that the real victory party is yet to come, as a more jubilant full moon will follow this one in August.
Leo season begins and there’s a Full Moon in Aquarius. Harness gifts of heart + mind with journal prompts in the CHANI app.
Gemini & Gemini Rising
For the next few weeks, Venus performs an audit of your domestic sanctuary, zhuzhing up your decor and taking careful notes on where the discord is coming from in your home. Venus sees your mess of electrical cords that you tried to hide behind the TV, and she has some helpful tips to help you untangle them (but make it ~aesthetic~).
Following this protocol to a T can simultaneously wear you out and put you on the path to “camera ready.” There’s a fine line between cultivating beauty in your surroundings and polishing your surfaces so often you forget how to take comfort in them. There’s a subtle difference between maintaining harmony amongst your cohabitors and seeking evidence that something’s amiss.
The imbalances between how fulfilled you feel in your public versus private life will feel obvious to you around July 22nd, when Venus dances off against Jupiter. This isn’t a “bad” feeling transit, but nor is it subtle, and the gap between your outside and inside personas could feel marked.
On the same day, the Sun radiates into the part of your chart that has everything to do with exchange, writing and communication. It’s not that you plan on making it all about you, but your usual text chatter and social posts gleam with few more selfies than usual.
Yet it’s clear that bravado alone will not sustain the fire for you and yours. The people who hear from you daily may want something more than just the Greatest Showman. This pill could be hard to swallow especially if you feel derailed or taken off course by it.
The full moon in Aquarius on July 23rd will have something to teach you, meanwhile. Collecting the light in the corner of your chart that relates to wisdom and adventure, you may be on the verge of a departure, or a homecoming, after many miles and lightyears. There’s a heavy note to this lunation — despite the progress you’ve made, you may find yourself fixating on the mountains you have yet to conquer.
Sometimes the ending feels farthest away when we are the closest we’ve ever been. There will be more opportunities this summer to celebrate your progress. For now: keep plodding, but do take breaks to admire the heights you’ve already ascended.
Leo season begins and there’s a Full Moon in Aquarius. Harness gifts of heart + mind with journal prompts in the CHANI app.
Cancer & Cancer Rising
For the next few weeks, Venus hangs out in the cozy nexus between friends and family where all of your siblings, cousins, besties, and beloved neighborhood characters congregate. To some extent, you’re at the bar where everyone knows your name, and you’re doing your best to have a good time.
Venus in Virgo is skilled at getting the whole crew together, but it tends to remain in busy host mode long after it’s time to relax and be in the moment. Your social calendar might become simultaneously more full and more stressful. Your news feeds both draw you in and leave you feeling discontented.
It would be nice if you could just let it roll off your back and not get too pressed over it, but your displeasure is calling, and it just wants to talk. Use your Venus in Virgo goggles to perceive which aspects of your daily routines, close relationships, and regular correspondences are cramping your style.
Meanwhile, the Sun’s ingress into Leo on July 22nd powers up your area of substance and sustenance. Following Mars’ firestreak through your place of possessions, Sol’s tempered rays invite luxury back to your domain. And yet, there is some sorting to do when counting up your 24K trinkets and chests of baubles. Material girl vibes alone won’t cut it.
With the Sun advancing toward an opposition to Saturn for the first ten days of Leo season, the wet blanket of the solar system will be hunkering down on your self-worth. Where is the value exchange in your life right now? Be willing to sit with new nuggets of truth, even if what you learn surprises you.
This call is further enunciated by the full moon in Aquarius on July 23rd, which Saturn also presides over. This is a time for parsing the boundaries in your joint-ventures: what belongs to you, what’s shared, and what belongs to someone else? Spreadsheets may lack romance, but this precision and transparency can go a long way to promote trust and mutual security.
Leo season begins and there’s a Full Moon in Aquarius. Harness gifts of heart + mind with journal prompts in the CHANI app.
Leo & Leo Rising
Love was a battlefield for the last month or so, and that war was waged directly on your turf. Now, as Venus slides into Virgo to decompress from the soap opera dramatics, you can’t help but dwell on all the ways you’re still undervalued.
You might not be at ease with what you have, but that nagging sense of dissatisfaction is on your side, even if it’s a buzzkill. Tuning into all the ways you’re still coming up short is a roundabout way of acknowledging that you’re worth so much more, thank you very much.
This sense of still feeling hungry after gorging yourself at the feast is most apparent around July 22nd, when Venus opposes Jupiter. Maybe you’re regretting what you ordered when you see the plate of a fellow diner, or maybe you’re experiencing a Goldilocks moment, and all the porridge is too cold or too hot.
On the same day, the Sun enters its home sign, which happens to be your home sign, of Leo. Know that the path to sovereignty is pebbled with challenges, obstacles, and hurdles. No one was made boss simply by desiring it — not without building stamina first. To conquer the beast, you’ve got to lovingly place your hands on the jaws, or ride it into oblivion.
On July 23rd, the full moon in Aquarius cradles the Sun’s glow in your place of committed partnerships. With Saturn lording over this part 1 of two culminations, you’ll find yourself immersed in the relational toil required to co-exist with another ego. Despite the challenges, or because of them: hardwon gratification will follow.
Leo season begins and there’s a Full Moon in Aquarius. Harness gifts of heart + mind with journal prompts in the CHANI app.
Virgo & Virgo rising
A lot of the last month’s drama unfolded in a compartmentalized part of your awareness, with urgent desires surfacing in an out-of-the-way place you could choose to ignore. As Venus crosses over into Virgo, any leftover sense of unfulfillment you may still be carrying gets a bit more in your face.
The tricky part is whether you can become a vessel for your own cravings without taking your dissatisfaction out on yourself. On one hand, Venus in Virgo makes you a little sweeter, a little more magnetic. On the other hand, having more eyes on you might exacerbate your tendencies to strive toward rigid beauty standards, or to treat yourself like unrefined clay that can never be sufficiently sculpted.
A hangover of indulgence greets you on July 22nd, when Venus opposes Jupiter, and it becomes very apparent that other people are leaving the banquet feeling more full than you are. On the same day, the Sun warms into the most cloaked corner of your chart, offering a headlamp with which to navigate the inky tunnels of your psyche.
With the Sun moving toward an opposition with Saturn for the first third of Leo season, this moment brings a sobering restriction as subterranean desires meet real world limitations. The impulse is to throw your light askance, shining from the dingy corners or left-of stage.
Come back to the rituals that keep you anchored. The full moon in Aquarius on July 23rd will offer a peak moment in your health or work pursuits. Maybe you reach a fitness goal; maybe you strike a long-agonized-over item from your To Do list.
You’ll barely feel the glow of accomplishment before you’re onto the next challenge — but there will be more opportunities to lionize your feats next month.
Leo season begins and there’s a Full Moon in Aquarius. Harness gifts of heart + mind with journal prompts in the CHANI app.
Libra & Libra Rising
Venus in Virgo might find you feeling a bit overlooked at your own party or hibernating in an itchy cocoon. Though you might be going through a brief metaphysical moment of “having nothing cute to wear,” you could just as easily turn your dissatisfaction on the societal beauty standards that entrapped you in the first place.
There’s a diligence to this version of Venus that often gets mistaken for fussiness. In coming up against the expectations (of prettiness, of politeness, of demureness) that you’re constantly feeling pressured to perform against, this moment finds you unpacking a few boxes because you’re suddenly not happy with how they’re stacked in your mind.
Around July 22nd, coming up hard against your limits shows you exactly where you could stand to infuse a little more joy into your self-care praxis. The Sun enters Leo the same day, and your friends will look to you for doses of fun, glory, and daytime dance parties. It’s not a popularity contest, but if it were, you’d take home the sash and crown.
As Sol moves towards its show-down with Saturn, clouds of limitations interrupt your sunbathing session. Your light is needed, but better if it were to come from a place that is authentic and humble. The greatest humbler, Saturn, is asking this of you. Answer by doing the work, even if the tasks at hand lack glamor.
This time around, your work will involve your creative mind, as the Aquarius full moon fertilizes your place of fun and self-expression. You’re on the cusp of completing a creative project, or you’re learning the how-to of a hobby, which will probably be fun once you get the steps right.
A more convivial full moon awaits next month. This first one has more to do with laying the necessary, if exacting, groundwork.
Leo season begins and there’s a Full Moon in Aquarius. Harness gifts of heart + mind with journal prompts in the CHANI app.
Scorpio & Scorpio Rising
For the next few weeks, Venus scans the room and encourages you to mind the company you keep. Zeroing in on who’s cramping your style (and why) gives you fresh grist for the mill. Allowing yourself to sit back and enjoy the garden of friendship you’ve weeded with so much love gives you a chance to actually enjoy the fruits of your diligence.
The challenge is ultimately whether you can identify the subtle tipping point between what you can and can’t accept. Community is an inherently flawed organism. But if your people aren’t sharing with you in joy and celebration, what’s it all for?
Around July 22nd, the tension between your good time and their good time might feel especially palpable. On the same day, Sol returns to the pinnacle of your chart, gilding your public sphere. This Leo season though, the rays get filtered through Saturn’s polarized shades. Even the flashiest pop diva concert is an exercise in exactitude; this is the polish and luster that make the gold thigh high boots shine.
The Aquarius full moon on July 23rd reiterates this message: that patience and prudence bring you more than boasting alone. Especially when it comes to family or home dynamics: you can’t light a fire in your hearth without the proper fuel or foundations. You can’t rush intergenerational healing after bonds or trust have been ruptured or interrupted.
After all that construction work though, these pillars of home and family have a way of everlasting.
Leo season begins and there’s a Full Moon in Aquarius. Harness gifts of heart + mind with journal prompts in the CHANI app.
Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising
Some of your hard work is about to get noticed, but is perfect reciprocity ever possible between the effort you put in and the recognition you get for it? This is more or less what you’re grappling with as your fans, friends, and teammates lavish their appreciation on you and all that you do.
To some extent, this subtle disquiet you might be feeling is an outgrowth of the fact that your work in the world never feels finished. This is about more than just learning to take a compliment, and yet — can you suspend your disbelief long enough to receive the flattery in that testimonial someone wrote you?
On July 22nd, the Sun returns home to Leo, and the great beyond reignites your imagination.
If the journey to self, to the place where you can unleash self in full confident glory, feels tough, know that Sol is opposing Saturn, the planet of “don’t get so excited.” The belt on what’s possible tightens. The full moon on July 23rd echoes these themes: what writing projects need weeding? To what extent are you inclined to self-censor right now, and are you being prudent or self-effacing?
Where Saturn is concerned, the answer likely has something to do with moderation — even if you’re moderating your tendency to backtrack, second-guess, or self-edit.
Leo season begins and there’s a Full Moon in Aquarius. Harness gifts of heart + mind with journal prompts in the CHANI app.
Capricorn & Capricorn Rising
A crisis of “not getting your needs met” in early July might now be prompting a larger cross-examination on your part. Wherever things happen to stand with your balance sheet right now, Venus is zeroing in on any lingering signs of discontent and letting that lead to the bigger questions.
You might tend to approach your beliefs with analytical precision. Venus in Virgo asks you to check in with your values, which is just another way of checking in with your heart. If something isn’t sitting quite right with you, this might be an opportunity to get clear on what you need in order for things to come back into integrity.
The tension between faith and skepticism becomes especially pronounced around July 22nd, but then you have the rest of this transit to figure out what’s behind your reticence to take pleasure in glib half-truths. On the same day, the Sun enters Leo, illuminating your balmy entanglements and prompting you to shore up joint accounts.
The call here is to clarify shared assets or debts and understand how creative forces and collaboration benefit everyone involved. For the first third of Leo season, Sol will be facing off with the blackout curtain that is the planet Saturn. Saturn’s bandwidth for flimsy plans and insincere antics is thin. You’ll be asked to take a seat and listen to sage advice, even if it’s delivered crisply.
The full moon on July 23rd reiterates these themes, especially when it comes to your personal treasure chests and piggy banks. You’re no stranger to Saturn standards, so these stopgaps and safeties should be easy for you to abide by. If your revenue stream feels more arid at the moment, know that Jupiter will return to this area soon, yielding a more abundant mindset.
Leo season begins and there’s a Full Moon in Aquarius. Harness gifts of heart + mind with journal prompts in the CHANI app.
Aquarius & Aquarius Rising
If what you get doesn’t measure up to what you give, you’re going to have a hard time focusing on much of anything else for the next couple weeks. If someone else is feeling shortchanged in the equation of you having (or not having) the spoons to engage, some of this will invariably bring up questions of what you owe to yourself versus what you owe to others.
Right off the bat, this transit kicks off with Venus opposing Jupiter on July 22nd, which finds you unabashedly reaching for the bigger slice of the pie.
If default mode for you is one where you’re always anticipating someone else’s needs, that creates a very different context for your self-indulgent mood. What would it mean to let someone else feel slightly dissatisfied while you fill your own cup?
Also on July 22nd, the Sun returns to Leo, shifting your focus westward to your prime partners in this life. The divine sparks of dependability originate from your number one(s) and the dialogue you engage in together, even if the tone sometimes turns stern or serious.
Saturn will be blowing storm clouds into your landscape view for the first third of Leo season. While the full moon in Aquarius will spotlight your personal projects and identities on July 23rd, Saturn’s prominence over this lunation emphasizes what remains to be done, rather than the peaks you’ve already summited.
Relations could feel tense around this time, with you playing the role of the responsible one — but the Sun has a way of burning through fog, and it always, miraculously, rises.
Leo season begins and there’s a Full Moon in Aquarius. Harness gifts of heart + mind with journal prompts in the CHANI app.
Pisces & Pisces Rising
For the next couple weeks, Venus puts the “love language” in your habitual acts of service. Though you might be racking up a metaphorical bar tab in your efforts to extend yourself, Venus pours an aphrodisiac into the libations and helps connections unfurl a little more sweetly.
If you wind up focusing more on the bar tab or the effort, that wouldn’t be out of character for a Venus in Virgo transit. With an initial opposition to Jupiter on July 22nd, this brief spell begins with you in an especially generous mood, but what happens when you lavish your all on someone else and it somehow leaves a weird aftertaste?
Sol enters Leo on July 22nd as well, infusing your work and health rituals with sun-soaked vitality. At first, the Sun will be more intent on revealing the hurdles you’re up against as it confronts Saturn, the planet of go-no-further. The full moon in Aquarius on July 23rd emphasizes this trend, making the underwhelming reality of a situation hard to ignore.
Recall that viewing the world through gloomy glasses is its own kind of distortion. This first third of Leo season may have fewer pool parties than usual, but the weather is optimal for building containers around your negative self-talk or harmful thought patterns. While the work now lacks glamor, the rewards will be enduring.
Leo season begins and there’s a Full Moon in Aquarius. Harness gifts of heart + mind with journal prompts in the CHANI app.