Written each evening from the real sky over London ·
Virgo horoscope tomorrow
The Maiden, 23 August to 22 September · Earth, mutable, ruled by Mercury
The sky Moon in Virgo all day · new moon, 1% lit · Saturn retrograde. New moon tomorrow, at 4.27am.
One page for the year ahead
Two things about today: the Moon sits in your sign from morning to night, and the new moon follows tomorrow. That makes this the last evening of something rather than the first morning of it. Clear one surface tonight. Not the house. One surface.
Love
You have been keeping the standards for two people and the other one was never consulted. Ask what they would actually like changed, and be ready for the answer to be nothing at all. There is a kind of care that feels like inspection from the receiving end, and the difference is one question asked beforehand.
Work and money
Before tomorrow, write down what you want the next twelve months of work to look like. Half a page, plain words, no headings, no system. You will do this better than most people because you are honest about what things cost. Keep it where you will find it in December, having entirely forgotten agreeing to any of it.
Body and mind
Self-criticism is your background noise and it is loudest in the hour after work stops. Fill that hour with something that has an obvious ending: a shower, the washing-up, half an hour of a programme you have already seen twice. Nothing that asks you to decide when it is good enough.
If you read nothing else
Clear one surface tonight and leave the rest until the weekend
The sky Moon in Virgo all day · new moon at 4.27am · Saturn retrograde. First quarter on Friday at 9.44pm, seven days away.
Begin it badly this morning
A new moon in your own sign at twenty-seven minutes past four this morning, which you slept through, and quite right too. What it marks is a beginning, and beginnings in your hands get postponed until the plan is immaculate. Skip that part today.
Love
There is a friendship you would like to restart, and you have been drafting the message since spring because it feels obliged to explain the silence. It is not. Two lines will do: that you were thinking of them, and one specific thing you remembered. The explaining can happen over coffee in October, or never.
Work and money
Start the thing today in its worst possible version. Four hundred rough words, a sketch, one page you would be embarrassed to show anybody. A poor first attempt is something that exists, and you are exceptional at improving what exists and completely helpless with what does not.
Body and mind
Your standards make excellent work and rather thin evenings. Notice tonight how often you get up to check something that does not need checking: the door, the hob, tomorrow’s bag. By then it is not tidiness. It is a body that has not been told the day is over.
If you read nothing else
A rough version today beats a perfect one in November