August Horoscope: Soft Launching your Existential Rebrand

Written with love by Mariah the Mystic

August is spamming us—like that nonstop group chat you need to put on mute but fear upsetting. With a continued compilation of retrograding planets and nonstop ping of exacting planetary aspects, expect vibration overload in the form of an ear-worm-y elevator soundtrack. Best to take advantage of technology’s finer features: do-not-disturb mode, unsubscribe buttons, and digital detox apps. Summer is flowing languidly, practically steaming under the unbearable sun (sorry Leo). Best to don your shades, apply too much sunscreen, and mind your own damn business. If you have access to vacation time, take it now!

With Mercury, Chiron, Neptune, AND Saturn retrograding, little hiccups will meet you at every turn. Let August become an eternal Sunday: mind your home space, nourish yourself tenderly, dawdle with your responsibilities, luxuriate in the quiet blues. Simple is better. But life is rarely simple, so if it can’t be simple—be strong. When you spill your drink, miss your train, or send an email with a grammar mistake, throw your hands in the air and say oh well. Let the tears fall if they must, but don’t allow yourself to plummet straight into doom.

August is a fruitful opportunity to make an ‘oasis’ out of a burning trash heap. Like that infamous dog holding a coffee mug in a flaming kitchen: this is fine. Ride the wavelengths like a seasoned surfer. Cowabunga! You could run around feverishly spraying your extinguisher to no avail—or you could don your firefighter suit, use the flames to brew a cup of chamomile, and wait for the inevitable rainstorm to do the heavy lifting for you.

A continuous trine dances between Uranus, Pluto, and Mars, testing our ability to stay agile—to surrender to transformation and tumult, either passively like a sun-soaked beach babe or actively with intention and buoyancy. If you’re quick to anger or impulse, lean passive for now: this cardinal energy is feisty and prone to nipping. Play “Shapeshifter” by Lorde 5 times, sneak into a local recording studio just to scream at the top of your lungs, or choose to only eat things out of a ready-made package. Anything you need to do to coax your boiling point down to a steady simmer. Neptune and Saturn Retrograde sit side by side, creating a magnetic vortex pulling us out of comfort and into flux and unknown changes. Surrender—or feel your energy constantly gulped up by their thirsty orbit. The option is yours always.

August 6: Mars enters Libra

Mars, planet of action and passion, moves into diplomatic Libra. You’re being pulled towards expansion and contraction in steady pulses. Together, pumping your heart and keeping it beating. When off kilter, or beat, this is detrimental to the balance. Libra, while concerned with larger, outer themes such as justice and harmony, also falls prey to the beauty standard trap. You might find yourself in a sweet, saucy entanglement, one that blurs love and sex into mixed metals. Or the less yummy option; feeling the instinctual pull to please. In this space, you find yourself paralyzed in the shadows of your own indecision. What seems in essence to be the best way to assuage battling interests, actually speeds up the disappointment and frustration of all parties, including yourself.

Saturn and Neptune Retrograde form an opposition to this ingress, exact on August 8, tugging at a tense cord between ideals and desires. Uranus in Gemini harmonizes here, reminding you that home is a sanctuary you can retreat into for balance. But Uranus also invites that chaos in—turning your basement into a conspiracy corkboard: tacking timelines, swirling deep into the world inside your mind until late evening turns to morning light. Oppositely, you may feel a prompting to seek outside of yourself. A potent day for cuddling up in a beautiful environment with a lover who offers both fertile conversation and radical openness. Seek this wholesomeness instead of slouching into obsessive creature comforts and unhelpful habits.

August 8: Mars opposite Saturn & Neptune Retrograde

Obstacles manifest from the subtle realms of you, haunting you from a shelf out of reach. Something about their presence feels primary and distracting, pulling you out of the present. Lurking below the surface like a predator, you can feel around this week the pull out of your daily routines. Something that is difficult to shake off, creating obstacles that are not visible in our plane. These feelings are real even if they haven't been conceptualized into words yet.

Simultaneously, there are supporting aspects from Uranus and Pluto offering up a flow that is much needed. While you can’t make your impending evolution speed up or disappear, Uranus and Pluto remind us that we can bend like air and shape like water. Welcoming struggle and accepting our inability to control the unknown. Lean into this growth with trust, using intention instead of impulse, pushing into a version of yourself that is misty and moldable.

August 9: Full Moon in Aquarius

This lunation works to emphasize the places where we have been experiencing these subtle culminations. It allows for us to retreat into our own for a moment of debrief. Take tonight to do a little critical thinking, and then allow yourself to unwind into an activity that feeds your inner evil scientist.

Ask yourself where you are sacrificing for the greater good—personally or collectively. Where is depletion multiplying? Where is hope fluttering? Seek ways to restore this delicate equilibrium, bringing your gifts and your consciousness to the struggles of the world while also giving yourself time and space to be human. Mars continues its opposition to the Retrogrades, a repelling force slicing through the cord of this cycle. Venus forms a conjunction to Jupiter and promises a hint of sweetness, a breeze to whip sweat from your brow as you reach the height of your hike. From this peak, you see both how far you’ve come and how far you have left to go. Take stock of what fills your cup and what overflows into the cups of others. Emotional worlds rub against external realities. We are in the process of discovering divisions between what we want and need, and what our reality offers. Measure the distance between them and find a curiosity about how their separate paths might need to forge forward, together or separately.

Now, allow yourself the space to dive into something that feeds you, connects you, or allows you to feel whole again.

August 11: Mercury Retrograde ends Hallelujah.

The post-retrograde shadow will linger overhead until August 25, but communication resumes with newfound confidence and reinvigorated courage. You’re beginning to see the worthwhile fruits of your slow progress. Any exhaustion you’re facing is permission to indulge in comforts today. Touch something soft, furry or silky. Take a bath or enjoy a sweet without any guilt.

August 12: Venus conjunct Jupiter in Cancer

A kiss of pure luck and aesthetic pleasure clangs through the retrograde haze like a clash of thunder. Bottle its lightning quickly, a little zing to spritz into your financial, creative or romantic spheres. Focusing on yourself isn’t vanity today, it’s well earned love and care. Groom yourself. Adorn yourself. Not just for appearance, but to reflect your inner life outwardly. Apply for a job you think you’re not qualified for. Try a new haircut, a new polish, a new look that brings a touch of your personality into your visible self. Perhaps let yourself indulge in purchasing a new outfit or item you’ve been eyeing! You’ve earned it.

August 22: Sun enters Virgo

Virgo reorganizes your repression box, coaxing you to confront your desire for control—especially around things vulnerable, chaotic, or not up to snuff. Virgo asks us to embrace mess in our creative process. Virgo reminds us that punishing ourselves for imperfection severs us from the joy of the challenge and the sweetness of the process. Functioning in that way is only relevant to the shallow outer layers that are not relevant. Virgo is the gruff and tough old witch who gives you a glare but slips you an extra roll for your soup.

Virgo Season is a radical reminder of the pecking order: where you serve, where you allow ourselves to be served, where we pull back before letting others serve us. The parts of you that might feel unworthy of receiving; whether it be care, indulgence, or love. Virgo is magic mushroom medicine, it holds endless healing capacity and skill, but with its intake valve in need of repair.

Virgo season pulls us closer to the crust of the Earth. Not just as a traveler or a human, but as a protector, custodian, and conduit of our environment. We have the power to wield herbs for medicine and rocks for bombs. Virgo season warns us that this power can be life-giving and it can be life-taking.

With her relationship to Uranus this year, we are being invited to practice organized dissent. Planned carefully, but in service of revolution. This is a space to mind-meld spreadsheet sorcery and herbalism, with technology and mischief. Learn the rules attentively to break them better and more sneakily. Topple the foundation back to the ground, to be rebuilt stronger, and more ethically.

August 23: New Moon in Virgo

This Moon baptises you into a new cycle, one where your tools have been sharpened, your studio cleaned, your garden beds weeded. Let Virgo care for you while you prepare your moves. You are welcoming in a sense of hope again, one that feels curious, one that holds onto the importance of the collective as a whole. One that is concerned with where our values lie and how our values speak. This lunation is fascinated with bringing your talents into play, enticing you from the sidelines towards the center of the action.

Obstacles hum below, as they do this whole month. During later August, we feel their reverberations through the ways we move through the physical world. However, while the ground outside of our home is shaking, the true catalyst is brewing deep within our basement. The place where we have imprisoned our personal traumas, banished our discomfort, and sent our fears to be ‘vanquished’ for us. In order to quiet the chaos, we cannot expect to keep repaving the crackling driveway. We need to go downstairs, to the organs of our cellar, and face the monsters deep inside that are causing the ruckus. This unraveling project is simply not possible to solve overnight. This New Moon is reminding us that we have all the tools at our disposal and that they will keep a watchful eye over us as we descend. It brings our attention and awareness away from the external symptoms to deep within the core of the issue rooted below.

August 25: Venus enters Leo

Venus in Leo trails a feather boa across your collarbone: activating every nerve ending, and awakening parts of us that felt dormant while it was traveling through Cancer. Your love life and aesthetic world jolt forward with spunk and a touch of theatrics. Lean into this fresh courage, allowing romance to lead. Maybe it starts with a wink to a stranger or an extra bouquet—one for a friend, one for your own windowsill. Let your generosity ripple outward, feeding something vital in you that is budding. Embody Leo’s radical softness in order to gravitate toward the people who amplify your joy, to speak up for what you need from your circle, and to firmly set boundaries with sources of negativity or toxicity.

August 28: Uranus sextile Neptune Retrograde

A gentle recalibration is underway—one that redefines abundance not by accumulation, but by alignment. We’re sorting through what truly matters, whether it’s possessions, principles, or the soft scaffolding of our ideals. This transit stirs the urge to declutter more than closets—it’s about timelines, attachments, identities that no longer fit. There might be an urge towards the nomadic, playing with the idea of parting with things, timelines, or people that don’t mesh with our incipient selves. Our sense of hierarchy may be collapsing and resetting, questioning what ‘having it all’ looks like for us.

As Uranus and Neptune harmonize in retrograde motion, we catch a glimpse of something more esoteric, more sovereign—the opportunity to redefine our contributions, our community, our sense of self. Outside of material accolades, outside of power dynamics set by capitalism. In this new paradigm, you can’t buy happiness, you hold the power over what holds weight in your sphere. In this new paradigm, you don’t buy happiness—you decide what holds value. You hold the weight, the scale, and the ledger.