Madame Clairevoyant: Horoscopes for the Week of August 4–10

A new moon in Leo on Sunday offers you a much-needed opportunity to add some fun back into your life. The more dull or stressful it’s been lately, the more you’ll benefit from this chance to reset. Venus enters wise and practical Virgo on the same day, where it’ll stay until the end of the month. The best way to demonstrate your love right now is to actually show up for the people you care about. Words are important, but actions count most. Finally, in the small hours of Monday, Mercury retrograde begins in Virgo. The planet of communication will appear to move backward until August 28; during this time, it will be easy to get so tangled up in the details that you lose sight of the bigger picture. Make an effort to get the small stuff right, but keep an eye on your ultimate goals, too. In the meantime, find the weekly horoscope for each zodiac sign below.

Lately, your schedule has been chaotic, your inbox a mess, your brain filled with a hundred conflicting thoughts at once. You keep dreaming about how simple life would become if you could only get organized, how much less stress you’d feel if your brain was a little less jumbled. Stop searching for a single perfect fix, for one trick that’ll change everything. The structure you’re looking for can be built little by little, one small action at a time. Clarity won’t arrive all at once, but slowly, over time.

If it were up to you, you’d work slowly and steadily, turning out consistent, quality work on your own schedule. The trouble is that you’re not entirely in control of your own time: You have other people’s needs and demands to satisfy, too. As deadlines loom and your to-do list overflows, it’s easy to beat yourself up for not working more quickly or efficiently, but try to go easier on yourself. When other people ask the impossible or unrealistic of you, you don’t have to fall in line. You’re allowed to push back.

You’ve had a busy summer so far, and at this point, you’re probably in need of some alone time to rest and clear your head. Every so often, it’s necessary to step away from other people and all their voices and opinions so that you can remember how you really feel. Just be careful not to swing so far in the other direction that you isolate yourself and get stuck in your own head. Personal reflection is valuable, but so is conversation. The key is to find a balance that works for you.

It’s going to be startlingly easy to make silly mistakes this week: mixing up the details, marking the wrong date on your calendar, sending an email to somebody you didn’t intend to. Though it may not cause any huge problems for you, it has the potential to make life harder in small ways. The answer is to build in room for error. Don’t fill every available minute of your day, or expect yourself to operate at maximum efficiency 24/7. Giving yourself time to double-check your work and troubleshoot will make everything easier.

Your heart is probably telling you to go all-in right now. Whether that means dropping tons of money on a purchase you’re convinced will change your life, committing to a brand-new relationship, or spending every waking moment on a big project at work, moderation probably won’t come naturally. There’s nothing wrong with that, but be sure that you’re spending your time, money, and energy on things that genuinely matter to you. As long as you’re thoughtful and intentional about what you’re doing, you won’t regret it.

Communicating your needs is easier said than done. Sometimes, it doesn’t seem like others want to listen to your more complicated or difficult feelings; sometimes, you don’t even know what you need, just what’s not working. But this isn’t the time to retreat or give up. Maybe the answer is to work on expressing yourself in a way that your friends will understand; maybe it’s to reflect on what you really want out of life. Ultimately, you deserve happiness as much as anyone else does, so don’t be scared to fight for it.

Your attention and emotional energy might be drawn back into the past this week as you revisit former relationships, phases of your life, or versions of yourself. To a certain extent, this is useful: From where you are now, you can see how far you’ve come and understand things today that you didn’t before. Still, be careful that you don’t dwell on what’s done and forget about the present. It’s impossible to change the past, no matter how much you might like to. All you can do is learn and move forward.

You’re wise and introspective, and you know yourself well: your strengths, your insecurities, your shortcomings. Sometimes, you imagine this means there’s nothing more to learn, that your personality is written in stone, that it’s impossible to surprise yourself. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. You’re alive, which means you’re forever changing in ways small and major. Your goals are evolving, your relationships deepening, your emotions in a constant state of flux. You could upend your entire life if you wanted to. Stay open to the possibilities.

While you often communicate bluntly, it’s not like you to steamroll others. You’re open to everyone’s opinions, even (perhaps especially) when they contradict your own. This week, though, it’ll be easy to get so excited about your own ideas, so caught up in your own grand vision for the future, that you simply forget to listen. Make an extra effort to ask for feedback, to leave space for discussion. It may feel like it’s slowing you down, but ultimately, your work will benefit from a bit of give and take.

Deep in your soul, you probably long for adventure. You value stability and structure, but that doesn’t mean you want to be bored. You’ve got a wild side, too. You want interesting experiences and stories to tell, and you want to make the most of your time on earth. However, now probably isn’t the moment to make any hasty plans or wild leaps. Hold off for a bit: Think, dream, and research, but wait to take action until you have a bit more clarity on what you’re looking for.

Most of the time, you have a solid sense for social dynamics. You can read a room with ease, and you typically understand why people act the way they do. But this week, your instincts are likely to get a bit scrambled. It will be easy to see problems where none really exist, to read ill will when somebody’s simply being awkward, to take comments personally when they’re not about you at all. Much as you might worry otherwise, people do like you, and their intentions are generally good. When in doubt, it’s better to ask than make assumptions.

You’re yearning for meaningful conversations and a sense of connection with the people close to you, but in spite of your deep desire for closeness, you feel more distant from others than ever. Relationships seem off-kilter with everyone talking at cross-purposes and petty conflicts arising at the smallest provocation. Don’t let yourself become prickly or closed off, and don’t give up on connecting. If you keep making the effort, and you give others the benefit of the doubt, things will smooth out soon enough.

Read the weekly horoscopes for the week of July 28. The weekly horoscopes for the week of August 11 will be online next Sunday.

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