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Photo by Krystle Merrow

Dear readers,

Oh boy.

I haven’t written horoscopes now for several months, having hit a serious wall of writer’s block at the end of the summer coupled with the inability to write about astrology that felt increasingly spooky, describing a political climate that is indeed also quite spooky. OMG.BLOG approached me to write a 2026-upcoming-year astrology post that could deviate from usual form, so here I am doing so. I’m writing a long form introduction discussing this year’s astrology at large, followed by a few keywords for each sign to take into 2026.

An aspect of astrology I cannot participate in and deeply resent is doomstrology. As a counselling astrologer I always want to hear when clients have been told something terrifying about their own astrology that has made them feel doomed (it’s almost always bullshit). I avoid clickbait astrology sources that tell us every eclipse is gonna change our lives (it’s probably just gonna change our mood). So when I have to deliver truly not great news as an astrologer I can feel a bit resentful, or at worst like I’ve cried wolf on optimism.

2026 is one of those years. Astrologically this is a decisive year characterized by tons of change, dynamic planetary movements, and an unusual conjunction Chris Brennan is calling a “reality distortion field”.

Part of why I avoid doomstrology so much is that I know how seriously people take things. I can’t tell you how often someone has come up to me to tell me about an off handed comment someone once made about their astrology and how it’s always stayed with them. But when done well, astrology gives us a language for talking about hard things that we already know are happening. We already know this moment is tumultuous. I watch fascism emerge on my tiny glowing rectangle of bad news like an extremely bleak spectator sport while trying to work and keep my laundry under control. The astrological descriptors for this time aren’t telling us anything we don’t already know, just like telling someone that their Moon in Pisces means they’re extremely sensitive is not something they don’t already know about themselves. Astrology often surprises me in how a moment or personality unfolds (often for how literal it is), but never for describing something that comes out of left field. 

The “reality distortion field” Chris Brennan describes is the conjunction of Neptune an Saturn in Aries occurring first February, and once again in April. They already came into this position once last August, so it’s familiar to us, but this year’s conjunctions will be important because neither planet will move back into Pisces as they did last fall. Think about this as these planets having tested the waters before but are now fully in it – or, as the case may be with moving into Aries, they previously lit a match that went out but now they’re starting a fire.

This conjunction takes place at zero degrees of Aries – the very beginning of the sign, and since Aries is often considered the beginning of the Zodiacal year, it’s sort of like Midnight on New Year’s Eve…but with this astrology, it’s like if a really major new item happened exactly at Midnight on New Year’s Eve. Saturn is structure and boundary, where Neptune is spirituality and illusion, so together they both dissolve structure and dispel illusion.  The last such conjunction happened in 1989 – fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet Union and an astrological moment we’ve been referencing a lot throughout this decade. These signifiers combine to form an astrological sentence that’s about dissolution and newness, the need for bravery, and a shift into individual thinking. 

Throughout Neptune’s journey through Pisces, that lasted from 2012 until this year, we saw a rise of interest in community care, collective action, and spiritual growth. We also saw this alongside weaponized therapy speak encouraging people to protect their own peace at the cost of relationships, a position not rooted in emotional bravery but in putting your head in the sand to avoid conflict (in my own humble opinion). The forthcoming astrology in Aries asks us to be deeply brave and to believe in ourselves. It asks us to consider the use of our anger, and how to be direct and structured with it. This year’s astrology rethinks our collective opinions about violence, with Aries the warrior always raring to go into a fight. I’m already noticing a lot more posts on my feed about violent vs. nonviolent resistance, as if a fog is lifting (or descending) around us asking how much peaceful protest has been accomplishing for us. 

As an astrologer, I tend to follow the movements of the outer planets more than the inner. The fast-moving inner planets describe our day to day life and relationships: a Mercury retrograde describes your inconvenient day, a Mars square your energized afternoon, or a Pisces moon your foggy brain. The outer planets describe what is fated. We can’t control these events in our lives. The outer planets – Jupiter through Pluto – the signs they are in, and the relationships they form, describe the shape of the world we live in. We don’t think about them as much when they’re talking easefully to each other. But in years like this, when they’re all in conversation and they’re all changing sign, it’s useful to take note of what they’re doing and see how they can help us articulate the global moment we live in. This is a time to be brave, be honest, and be curious, and to take our heads out of the meme-ified sand they’ve been stuck in.

In solidarity,
Amelia

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Photo by Krystle Merrow

Happy August, readers.

We are getting through to the end of some of the wackiest astrology of 2025 this month with the Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Aries coming to a close at the end of August, and the current Mercury retrograde finishing on the 11th. The summer’s astrology has been tense, combative, and a little bit me-first. While that doesn’t completely clear up after this month, the Mercury retrograde has made for some interpersonal irritation against the backdrop of global catastrophe. This is astrology of very limited windows of tolerance.

The Saturn-Neptune conjunction has been one of the biggest astrology news stories of the year, and is a transit that happens about every 36 years.  Saturn, of structure, Neptune, of mystery, in the sign of Aries, of the individual, points to a current confusion about how to be in the world. The tension between wanting to protect ourselves with the structures we need to individually feel safe; the belief that a single hero could come swoop up and save us all; and the lingering feeling that maybe we should actually be working together.

The last time this transit happened was in November of 1989, in the sign of Capricorn, which is itself about structure, boundary, and order. November 1989 is the month that the Berlin wall fell and the Soviet empire collapsed. 1989 is also the year that commercial internet became available for the first time, beginning the lead towards a more technologically interconnected world. The astrology of this year is so intensely busy and I don’t want to write a thesis about how these years relate, so… do with that what you will.

Mercury’s retrograde through Leo has been adding some spicy daily grievances. Having started in late July, this transit that affects our communication, schedules and technology has been moving through the creative, expressive, and also a bit me-first sign of Leo. One thing about Mercury retrogrades that I don’t think gets talked about enough is that they can make us very nostalgic. They tend to bring us into the past and the way things could have been, in the sign of Leo, particularly relating to our creative expression of the self. Mercury stationed direct on August 11th and will still be in the shadow phase until the 25th, so you can expect some of these feelings to linger throughout the month.

Throughout this month of self-centered astrology, try to use it for the better and think about how your own self and self-worth are affected by the world at large, and how the opposite may be true.

Happy summer, August, and Leo season,
Amelia

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Photo by Krystle Merrow

Happy May, happy Taurus season, happy Spring to you all!

I started writing these horoscopes the day before the Taurus new moon, and they tucked back into bed for a bit while my other life took over for a couple weeks. Their emergence will be just before the Scorpio full moon on May 11th, making these horoscopes a little baby lunar cycle project.

For your astrological edification, a trick: new moons are always when the sun and moon are in the same sign, and full moons are always when they are in opposite signs, so if you ever want to impress a date, you can look at the sky and say “oh, it’s a new moon in Taurus/Full moon in Scorpio/insert sign names here” depending on what season it is and what the moon looks like. New moons are about new energy, beginnings, times to plant seeds, so I hope that this emergent springtime finds you on the cusp of hopeful beginnings.

This Taurus season we finally get a break from the exhausting astrology of the first months of this year. We started 2025 tough, with a series of retrogrades from all three of the personal planets, Mercury, Venus, and Mars. People have been irritable, depressed, isolated, neurotic, angry, and lacking the skills to work through those feelings. I am happy to report that we are moving out of this astrology.

We don’t get a complete break from the tough feelings, but we have better capacity to choose what to do with it. The end of April closed out the worst of the Mars related astrology: after a retrograde to start the new year, we dealt with an existentially long time of Mars in the sensitive and vulnerable sign of Cancer (where the planet of anger and will does not so much love to be). After all that, Mars will spent several days in opposition to Pluto. These two planets are both very intense, with Mars being our interpersonal intensity and Pluto being more societal and geopolitical. This opposition well-describes the way that living in a very scary and challenging time in the world affects our bodies, our selves, and our relationships.

Here now in May, Mars will be direct in Leo, taking the tough lessons he’s learned over the past few months forward into the creative energy of Leo. This is a great spring for making art, or just expressing yourself in general. Mercury and Venus are now in Leo’s fellow fire sign Aries: lots of fire, this Springtime.  With lots of Aries happening currently in the sky, we move into a place of bravery, individualism, and more open attitudes to conflict. I’m hopeful this could be helpful, but I do have to give the fair warning that there are obvious hard things about this kind of astrology. Neptune is just in its early days of its long transit through Aries that will see us into 2039, so we’ll all need to work extra hard to fight against toxic individualism and towards collective liberation.

Overall readers, I hope that this astrology can give you hope. Here in Toronto it’s been a very long and difficult winter, but the bulbs blooming are getting me through. I’m looking for the metaphorical bulbs all around me right now, which is a perfect thing to do in this astrological and meteorological season of flowers.

Amelia

PS: You may notice that I go back and forth on indicating that these horoscopes are for your rising vs. sun sign. I made a reel about this on my Instagram recently, you can see it here.

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