August 2024 horoscopes: Look alive, folks — the astro weather is taxing and testing

Welcome to August, folks, and the lion’s heart of Leo season. This month is wild, with retrogrades afoot and lessons aplenty.

Sunday, Aug. 4, is a power player this month, hosting the progression of Venus into the stickler, manicured acts of service sign of Virgo, a new moon in Leo and the onset of Mercury retrograde.

With Mercury and Venus in Virgo, there’s a general inclination toward criticism and a temptation to hyper-focus on the pragmatic at the expense of the joyous.

Bear in mind that one person’s perfect is another’s failure.

It’s a scale, people — and when pressed, choose and put to practice the immortal words of quintuple Virgo and musician Nick Cave: “I feel duty-bound to unearth, enhance and promote the world’s beautiful things rather than obsess, worry and agitate over the worst of things. I believe in creation over destruction, compassion over cynicism, mercy over vitriol, friendship over hostility, truth over lies and love over hate.”

Stuff starts to get good and level out around Aug. 19 with a full moon in space cadet Aquarius. Amid the reflective albeit necessary drudgery of Mercury retrograde, this future-focused full moon calls us to look up and reach beyond.

Leo is concerned with being the star, while Aquarius seeks to understand how we all fit into a constellation of interdependence. Some real-deal better living through community stuff.

Can dig.

Leo season ceases on Aug. 22, passing the baton to Virgo. That is followed by the end of Mercury retrograde on the 28th, but bear in mind that while we may have moved into an earth sign, we aren’t out of the woods yet, as the shadow period will continue to bewilder us through the early days of September.

The ease-up and buff-out will be aided and abetted by Venus’s move into the orgasms, Aperol spritz and glazed manicure sign of Libra on Aug. 29.

Read on and make sure to scope for both your sun and rising sign. Good luck out there, stay hot, stay humble, speak true, be kind.

Leo season lights up your fifth house of pleasure, Aries, and with your ruling planet war-daddy Mars hanging tough in the loquacious climes of Gemini, you might find that wordplay is your favorite sport.

There’s a temptation to act like a wayward youth in these waning days of summer, but if you don’t get your d–k up and your work done, you’ll be sorry. I urge you to experiment with a strategic reward system rather than your trademark reckless abandon.

Stability can be fun — I promise.

Venus, your ruling planet, spends most of this month in Virgo, the sign of its fall.

Venus wants to luxuriate, but in the sign of Virgo, the planet of indulgence trades whimsy for caution and a smoking jacket for work boots. I know it sounds awful and smells like wheat bran, but you can use this energy to your advantage, Taurus.

Use the discerning lens of Virgo to reevaluate your relationship with luxury. Are you spending emotionally or intentionally, and to what end?

Life is richer out of the red.

With your sharp, mercurial mind, you are not typically what the kids would call “chill,” Gemini, but relaxation and reset can and should be your primary aspiration this month.

The sun in Leo and Mercury back peddling in Virgo highlight/sucker punch the areas of your life related to self-expression and family origins.

From whom did you inherit the tendency to imagine the WCS? Consider the deep, rebellious satisfaction that could come from being an unrepentant optimist.

The past is dead, my mutable babies, but how you rise from and above it could be your latest and greatest act of creation.

Ahoy, you luminous moonbeams. The sun in Leo amplifies the area of your chart connected to worth and wealth, Cancer.

How easily and often do you trade what you know you deserve for what you hope will satisfy someone else? It turns out that relationships can be mutually beneficial and not a weird saga of martyrdom — shocking, I know. In fact, if you’re clear about your own worth and direct about what you will not accept, your gentle power will inspire others.

Win-win, baby.

Happy return of the sun to you, Leo. The new moon on Aug. 4 will serve as a kind of birthday baptism for you, after which you may be made painfully aware of who and what you would rather not drag into your next year of life.

Bonus round: skinny dip under the dark skies of your new moon, and as the water washes over you, ask not only what you need less of but how you can bring more to the people who hold you up and steer you straight.

With Venus in your sign and Mercury moonwalking in it, questions of who you are and what you fear are preeminent, Virgo.

What are you holding onto that is holding you back? As the author Mary Anne Radmacher reminds us, “Courage does not always roar; sometimes it’s the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’”

I cannot conjure a more positive or apt sentiment for you this month than this soft command.

The new moon in Leo lends its leonine light and might to your 11th house of community and causes, Libra, while the density of Virgo energy will have you digging deep into the esoteric realm of spirituality and the unconscious mind.

In conjunction and conversation, this energy is pushing you to consider the role that you play in the world at large and whether that version of you is authentic or merely appeasing.

Be brave enough to dissent from the character you have created so that you might stand up for and out as who you are.

Why be a “yes” man when saying “nope” can be so satisfying?

The sun and new moon in Leo activate/agitate your 10th house of public perception, Scorpio.

When Mercury retrograde dips into the lion’s lair mid-month, you’re called to reflect on the dissonance between the image you project and the intimate truth of who you are. We know you’re a tough bitch, Scorpio, but you are also much, much more.

Consider leading with confident tenderness rather than fearful bluster.

For a portion of this month, Mercury retrograde is going down, or backward, as it were, in your ninth house of journeys and philosophy, Sagittarius.

The move now is stillness — not stagnation, mind you — the teeming becoming what happens when you slow down long enough to empty your mind and steady your breath.

The universe’s messages can only be known when you are clear enough to receive them, and she’s got a doozy for you.

You’re more of a thoughtful burn than a burn-it-to-the-ground type, Capricorn, but Leo season is here to light up your eighth house of sex, death, finances, and radical transformation.

When dealing with a water house such as this, intuition bests logic as the law of the manor. Reflection over reason, feelings over figures, sentience over strategy, my horned, horny friends.

You might be a little terrified of what the abyss whispers back to you, but it’s scarier still to refuse the call.

The sun in Leo shines its mighty light on the areas of your life concerned with relationships, partnerships, handshakes, matching tattoos and other such blood oaths, Aquarius. If I were to prescribe a pop song for you this month, it would be “Open Your Heart,” a pleading banger from Madonna — the most Leo of all Leos.

May I humbly suggest you uncross your arms, soften your gaze and live for just a moment in the possibility that letting someone in can support rather than subvert who you are?

Stop denying the rest of us the supreme pleasure of loving you.

Leo season activates your sixth house of ritual and responsibility, Pisces. While boundaries are notoriously difficult for water signs to contain or maintain, this month is an invitation to create routines that serve you and engage in conversation that fortify you.

There are as many ways to feel full as there are avenues to deplete yourself. Perhaps instead of a boundary, you can think of your limits as a frontier — less about what you cannot allow and more about what expanses of imagination are available when you hold yourself high.

Give yourself the gift of wholeness.

Astrology 101: Your guide to the star

Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports back on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture, and personal experience.