Madame Clairevoyant: Horoscopes for September 18, 2024

Coming off of yesterday’s eclipse, Saturn, currently traveling through Pisces and directly facing Mercury in Virgo, will help you see what’s not working in your life and relationships. Prepare to feel clear-eyed and unsentimental and ready to make difficult, potentially unpopular, but necessary decisions. But no matter how resolved you feel, consider waiting, at least a day or two, before taking action on your new insights. Let the dust settle. Right now, things almost certainly seem bleaker than they really are.

Find the daily horoscope for each zodiac sign, below.

You’re not one to do anything by halves: you throw yourself whole-heartedly into your work, your hobbies, your relationships. This means that when you’re feeling introspective and self-critical, you don’t hold back. And today, you’re much more likely to be too hard on yourself. You’ll blame yourself for situations that aren’t your fault, chastise yourself for all your perceived flaws, no matter how mild or harmless they are. Try to be a little gentler with yourself. You’re not perfect, but then, you don’t have to be.

It’s important to you to be a person your friends can rely on. Anybody can say that they value friendship and community, but as far as you’re concerned, talk is cheap. You actually show up when it counts. That said, it’s possible to be so dependable that others grow to take you for granted. Today, you might feel like the harder you work, the more others ask of you; the more you give, the less you receive in return. Remember that you’re allowed to say no, even to the people you love most.

You understand that the universe is much too chaotic for you to plan out every twist and turn your life will take. For the most part, you’re happy going with the flow of whatever; you’ve found so much joy simply because you were open to the possibilities. But today, take a moment to assess whether you actually like the direction you’re moving in. If you don’t, remember that you aren’t helpless. You have the power to make a change. Why not start now?

It’s easy to slide into pessimism today, whether because you’re experiencing obstacles and frustrations in your personal life, or because you’ve been reading the news, or both. There’s a voice in your head whispering that there’s no use even trying to make the world better, that things can only get worse from here. Your job now is to find something that’ll keep you going — not a shallow, false cheerfulness, but something deeper. You need and deserve a sense of hope, so do your best to find it — and if you can’t find it, you can create it yourself.

Sometimes, you think that your life is just too small for you. You’ve got so much energy sparking hot and bright within you, so much love to give, so many ideas of how to change the world, but instead of making the most of it, you’re stuck spending your time working, paying bills, cleaning the bathroom. But while some everyday tedium is inevitable, it shouldn’t get to override everything else. Today, turn away from whatever feels most like a waste of your time, and prioritize the people and activities that make you feel most alive, most tuned into your greater purpose.

As you take stock of your relationships, today, you might feel surprisingly lonely. Though you’re surrounded with people who care about you, you’re not sure that any of them actually get you. And you want to be around the ones who will see your complicated personality, embrace it, put in the effort to learn what makes you tick. Just don’t be too quick to write off the people already in your life: If you give them a chance, you may find that they have more to offer than you realize.

Taking care of your body can sometimes seem like more trouble than it’s really worth. Between your job, your family commitments, and your social life, you’re already busy enough, and things like eating well or getting enough sleep often fall to the bottom of the list of priorities. Today, though, is a good time to make a change. You don’t have to dive deep into “wellness,” just treat your body and its needs like they matter.

Maybe you’ve felt for a long time that something in your life needs to change — but you haven’t been able to put a finger on what, exactly. You’ve felt stuck, languishing as you wait for a sign or some guidance. It’s easy to get discouraged, to feel like the universe simply isn’t on your side. Today, you can resolve to stop sitting around and take matters into your own hands. If you want to move, then move; if you want to act, then act. You don’t need to wait for inspiration to strike.

Sometimes you daydream about how different your life would look now if you’d been given more support, more resources, more love, more understanding along the way. It’s painful to envision what could have been, to know how much more you could have achieved, or at least, how much more you could have enjoyed yourself. But today, try not to dwell on any of that. Life can be massively unfair, but you’re alive now, and you have the power to change everything if you want to.

Today, you might feel stressed about all the gaps in your knowledge and experience, all the things you don’t understand about the world or the people in it. You feel like there are important ideas you’re missing, classic books you haven’t read, facts you really should know by now. But of course, nobody can know everything. Treat the gaps in your knowledge not as failures, but opportunities to grow and to indulge your curiosity. If you already knew everything, life would be so boring.

Looking for external validation is likely to lead to frustration and disappointment today. The problem isn’t that other people don’t respect and admire you — they do! — but that no amount of praise or recognition will ease your mind. Other people can’t offer what you’re truly looking for right now: a sense of self-worth, pride in your achievements, or the knowledge that your work is valuable. They can’t force you to love yourself. You don’t have anything to prove to others, so stop trying. The person you need to impress is yourself.

Most of the time, you’re comfortable with vulnerability. If anything, you prefer conversations that get deep and personal to the ones that stay blandly superficial. You want your relationships to be real, not simple. Today, though, vulnerability seems unbearable. It’s stressful and scary to feel like your imperfections are under the microscope, and you’d rather be left alone. But try to resist the urge to run away. If you can work through the fear and embarrassment, you’ll find a renewed confidence on the other side.

Buy Claire Comstock-Gay’s book, Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Stars, here.