Your courage doesn’t see in black and white. Your courage sees in color.

I want you to do something with me. I want you to go and look at your natal chart and find Cancer. Look at any placements that you might have in Cancer or where it sits in terms of house position in your chart. Look at any aspects that any planets might make to Cancer.

May starts like this: you have this Mars opposition with Pluto that is still fading from late April. The Sun is no longer squared to both planets.

April was a lot. Israel continues to bomb Gaza. The UK ruled against the existence of transwomen. ICE keeps disappearing people. The FBI raided student homes. Where I live, a 15000 acre wildfire burned through south Jersey, the biggest in twenty years, and interstate 95 collapsed. Every single transportation line here in Philly was defunded by 25%, making it much harder to get around.

Late in May, Saturn enters Aries for the first time in twenty nine years. What were you doing back in 1996 when Saturn was last in Aries? What were you challenged by back then? I think that this Saturn in Aries will be about social judgment and accountability. The first decan of Aries is like an ax. We use axes to split things into two and to cut down old structures so that they can be made into something else. Black and white, good and bad, reasonable and evil—these splits can be useful but we must never allow these binaries to do our moral work for us.

Why? Because your courage doesn’t see in black and white. Your courage sees in color.

Let’s get metallic here. May is the month of Metal Snake and this is a needle passing through fire. Axes divide the world and cut down old structures but needles do the work of mending. Binaries help us cut stuff down. That’s some incredibly idealistic energy right there. To mend, you have to see the imperfection of color. Your axes are courageous but so are your needles.

But the Sun, that thing that helps us see, departs from its square to Mars and Pluto in early May. Taurus Sun tries its best to nurture life. Its ruler, Venus the planet of choices, is no longer retrograde but a morning star in Aries. Whenever a planetary ruler is twelve places from what it is ruling, there is an element of sacrifice involved. What life are you trying your best to nurture and what choices does that help you see? What do you sacrifice for your choices?

The reason why I wanted you to find the part of your chart with Cancer is because Venus last disappeared behind the Sun and became an evening star last June when it was in the sign of Gemini. This Gemini season, which starts in late May, will also be the second time we experience the Sun in Gemini copresent with Jupiter in the same sign. The ruler of Gemini, Mercury, is also copresent.

Whatever we have in Gemini is currently being promoted. Gemini will be resourced and examined in May. Last June, Venus retreated to the underworld in Gemini where it spent nine months trying to peel back layers of deception and the layers that it peeled back have everything to do with the choices that you are making right now.

Gemini loves to disperse. It is like pollen. It will try almost anything at least once just to get a sense of what goes and what doesn’t. Sometimes it fails and sometimes it succeeds.

What the current promotion of Gemini does is that it makes it really hard to believe anything. Xi Jinping is a Gemini and so is Donald Trump. I remember, during Trump’s first tariff war with China, my cousin over in China and I would compare the press releases from both governments and always find that they are 180º apart and in complete contradiction with one another. What is the truth? What is actually happening?

The shape of May is like this: early in the month, we come off of that Sun-Mars-Pluto t-square. It’s important to rest well then because late April was a lot. Then, we get all of these fire and air transits. Mars is in Leo. Venus is in Aries. Saturn enters Aries. All of the fire transits are positioned in a way to sextile with and excite the Sun, Mercury, and Jupiter in Gemini. We miss Sagittarius in May. We feel confused. We want to believe something but that need to believe something just further excites Gemini by opposition. We can’t answer the Sagittarius question of what we believe right now.

There’s no water in late May. There’s very little earth from Uranus in Taurus but Uranus in Taurus doesn’t help us with Gemini. Gemini is too empowered.

What do we do? How do we lower the excitability that Gemini is going through and root ourselves back to something?

We have to use our memories. Cancer is the water sign that puts Gemini in its place. Confusion is defeated by history. Deception is overcome by memory. We have this empowerment of Gemini happening in late May and all of that arousal puts a lot of anticipation on the sign of Cancer. We are reaching for the Jupiter ingress next month. We’re yearning for it. We want to enrich our memories and we want to learn from the previous generations. We want to know our history as we experience it in the here and now.

May is going to be confusing. I’m not here to use astrology to fearmonger but it looks like a confusing time. Use your memories. Anchor yourself to what you know. Remember that there are rich histories of survival all around you and that these histories are real.

Taurus

Happy birthday. Your challenge in May is to rest. The ruler of your sign is in the twelfth house position.

Do you know why rest is so hard to do? Because it’s not something that you can actively do. Rest calls for all kinds of sacrifices. You have to do it. You have to sleep eight hours a night no matter how dedicated or committed or inspired you are. There’s things that you have to not do because you give yourself time to rest.

You know when kids get all upset because they have to give up play time or together time just to go to bed? They know that they’re missing out on time with adults who get to stay up later in the night. That’s how most of us still feel deep down inside when we have to go to bed. Rest takes sacrifice. You know that you’re giving up something.

You will sometimes have to give things up to rest. You might not be able to do the gig. You can’t come out that night. You have to say no to some obligation that you really wanted to be responsible for just—guess what? Rest isn’t that negotiable. You can’t replace sleep with something else.

Yes, your ruler is in Aries. That’s the little kid getting upset because they wanted to keep playing cards past their bedtime. Let that little kid tell you what is important to you and tell them that you will honor that importance of that thing when you get up.

Questions for Taurus for May 2025:
What do you suddenly want to do whenever your bedtime approaches?
What does that tell you about sacrifice in your life?
Why might the thing you want to do past your bedtime be important to you?

Gemini

May calls for some pretty big decision making on your part. You’re going to be moving around quickly, as busy as a bee. You’ll spend plenty of time with friends and people early in the month. Mid month is about returning back to some previous decision making. Late May will have you asking yourself questions about who you are and what is right for you right now.

This will be the last full month of Jupiter being in your sign. Jupiter is power. What has the last year showed you about your own power? Most power is unearned because power is given to us by other people. We might have power because we are adults interacting with children, power because we are citizens interacting with non-citizens, or power because we speak a language fluently interacting with people who are learning that language. We might lack power when we interact with someone who has employed us but we also have leverage in those relationships where we perform labor.

Astrological transits don't empower us. Only community can do that. But Jupiter in Gemini says that you are understanding your own power. This transit has been teaching you all year.

In May, take time to reflect on the actual power held by your decision making. Where is your leverage and with whom are you connected? Know your power. Recognize your leverage. Use it according to your own principles.

Questions for Gemini for May 2025:
In early May, what becomes clearer about your friendships?
In mid May, what becomes clearer about your leverage?
In late May, what becomes clearer about your power?

Cancer

You’re a bit ahead of your time right now and that’s alright. There’s this feeling that I get when I look at the astrology of May that tells me that you are currently preparing some kind of big project for June. May will be the month that you need to wrap up loose ends. Do your editing. Review what you have done. Ready yourself for the debut.

Review is actually a very grueling activity. Review calls for self criticism. Never fall in love with critique for the sake of critique alone. You can always find something to nitpick at if you try but what’s the point? You have to have a reason for criticizing what you criticize or else you’re just stopping yourself from trying.

Love is the goal. Let’s take inspiration from bell hooks and wake up every single day thinking about how we will resist domination today. Use that as your purpose and review yourself according to that purpose. Never pick yourself apart just because you can. Remember that your goal is freedom.

I know that you have a very big memory. You have this memory that helps you remember everything, all of the sensory details that most people forget. Cancer never forgets. You’re going to use that powerful memory with compassion in May. Use your memory to connect the dots and to connect people. Remind us that we all came from somewhere.

Questions for Cancer for May 2025:
What details tend to stick in your memory?
What details show up in your memory when you give yourself compassion?
What details fade away from your memory when you give yourself compassion?

Leo

The role that you play in your community has started to feel really big. Can you break that role down?

Sometimes, when we call ourselves things we start to feel tired by all of the implications of what that name might mean. But doing something for other people isn’t just about role playing. It’s about action. A role is just a series of actions that you make a habit of doing.

As you break your habits down, let your friends act as your teachers. I don’t know why but there’s this popular idea floating around out there that, the more responsibility you take, the less you need support. You need more support when you take on more responsibility. You need more feedback, more questions, and more curiosity.

And there’s something else you need too—you need comfort. You know that thing you do when you knock into something and you just put your hand to where it hurts to give yourself a little touch? That’s you giving yourself comfort.

Your role in community is getting larger. Your friends are curious. They give you feedback. You’re around endless conversation and a lot of it can feel uncomfortable. That’s alright. Feedback can feel uncomfortable because feedback puts us in the position of receiving guidance. You can be uncomfortable while giving yourself some comfort.

Questions for Leo for May 2025:
What are some questions that you wish people would ask you?
Do any of those questions make you uncomfortable?
Do any of them give you comfort?

Virgo

You’re gearing up to make some big decisions in May. Your priority? Make choices that give you more possibilities for the future.

A lot of people try to use astrological transits to predict the future. That’s made up. The future is what you make. You nurture it each and everyday the same way you make bread. To make bread, you look at the tradition of making bread and you learn how to do it from someone. This education doesn’t replace the act of making. You still have to put effort into that part. You have to collect ingredients and wait and knead and make the thing.

May is about making up your own future. What are the recipes or traditions that you are referencing as you embark on this project? What are the ingredients or the tools that you have at your disposal? What does your act of making look like and where do you have to be to do all of this?

The future can feel like a very big concept. Break it down into actions, into recipes, and into tools. Never fall into the trap of thinking that you must contend with limited options. You make your own future and your own options. That’s creative work.

Questions for Virgo for May 2025:
What traditions do you draw on to make your future?
What tools do you use to make your future?
Where are you doing this act of making your future like bread?

Libra

Other people are not judging you nearly as much as your brain likes to think they are, particularly if those people have children, spend time with friends, run errands, or take care of aging parents. What I’m trying to say is that people have a hundred things going on all the time. No one is sitting around thinking about how to judge you. If they are, then something weird is going on.

May is going to teach you that you can get away with a lot more than you think you should. Part of that is because our individualism centered societies don’t have that much public accountability built into our social promises. Part of that is because people should be forgiven for making mistakes when we’re all trying to learn.

What kinds of social accountability would affirm the true enjoyment that you experience when you are around other people? To answer that question for yourself, you have to get really precise about what you actually enjoy about connection. I like being around people because laughter is contagious and because people who call me out on my own bullshit is a nice reprieve from the loneliness that my mind likes to manufacture when left alone for too long. Why do you like being around people?

Start with that. What do people bring to life within you? Then, consider the art of making and keeping promises. Promises work when you want them.

Questions for Libra for May 2025:
What do you enjoy about being around people?
What are you supposed to be accountable for because of how old and wise you are?
What are you supposed to get away with because of how old and wise you are?

Scorpio

I think that one of the hardest things in contemporary life is the question of trying to figure out what we owe to our coworkers. I’m not even kidding. I mean, we don’t really get to choose our coworkers. We spend so much time with them. We feel like we have to compartmentalize around them because the idea of thinking of work life and real life often feels soul sucking.

And, yet, labor is a real and powerful part of our daily lives. We have leverage over the people who employ us because we do work for them. Our work also puts us in contact with people who we might not know otherwise.

In May, I’d like you to think about what would empower the relationships that you already have with your coworkers. These are incredibly important relationships. So much of work life is set up to encourage us to get bored with our coworkers but you know that your coworkers are not boring people. Your coworkers are complex people whose lives change all the time. They’re the people who you trade shifts with when you fall ill, the people who you watch out for even when you don’t think you are.

And, as a part of all of this, what makes you more interested in who you are as a worker? How do you comprehend the enormity of the sacrifices that you have made for your working life? What is the history of your role at work?

Questions for Scorpio for May 2025:
What makes you interested in the lives of your coworkers?
What makes you interested in your own life as a worker?
What are you bored about and what does that tell you about the sacrifices that you have made?

Sagittarius

You’re an incredibly generous person. What do you do when you’re in a situation where you can’t give but have to receive?

Most of us don’t do well with that. We like to help, to share information, to give people stuff and food. That feels really good and empowering too. But there’s going to be moments when we can’t give because we aren’t in a position to give. That happens when we are new to something, when we have more to learn than to share.

I think that this is why so many artists have a tougher time with sharing than with making. When you’re making, you are giving your energy to other people. When you have shared what you made, you’re receiving other people’s creative energy inspired by what you made back. You might be invited to places where you’ve never been and that’s scary because you receive income, information, and guidance when you are in a new place.

May is going to challenge you to receive support. If receiving feels boring to you, then try to figure out why and when it gets interesting. If receiving feels confusing to you, then try to read into what that says about your knowledge about yourself. If receiving feels flattering or humbling, then try and figure out what you want to receive.

Questions for Sagittarius for May 2025:
What are you willing to receive?
What are you not willing to receive?
How do you tell the difference?

Capricorn

May is going to be all about the question of home. I want you to delineate your own experience of comfort.

Comfort is not apolitical. Comfort isn’t always pleasurable either. It can be painful. Comfort can be the simple act of touching your own wound tenderly. It can be a memory world of the space and values that you inhabited when you were smaller. Comfort is a reminder. Knowing your own comfort means that you understand what is familiar to you.

And that’s quite a mindfuck. You know what I mean? How does one exercise enough distance between our own familiarity enough to truly comprehend how our memories and the expectations that we built inside of them are shaped? Delineating comfort can feel sisyphean. It’s not something that you do once and are done with. Delineating your own comfort happens on the daily.

What are the expectations that you continue to carry in order to give your body some familiarity? What are the habits that you do that give you comfort? What ideas feel comfortable to you and when are those ideas enjoyable? Are they ever painful? Walk on old roads. You store comfort in a very deep layer of your muscles. You know comfort but do you really know it?

Questions for Capricorn for May 2025:
What are the habits that give you comfort?
What does comfort help you remember?
When is comfort enjoyable and when does it hurt?

Aquarius

What is at the root of your loneliness, dear Aquarius? There’s history in the way that you learned how to wield words and laugh with other people. There’s also history in the way you learned how to ignore what’s happening and not speak about what you know.

Sometimes, you just don’t want to get caught up in the trends. There’s real value to the independence that you have put real sweat into cultivating. Whenever you try anything, you think about how to build it yourself with community and for community. You refuse to become dependent on the mega corporations that run the mainstream.

May will ask you to take care of the tools that you use to build your independence while contextualizing and understanding the reasons why you try to stand apart. Independence doesn’t mean solitude. It never has. Independence is only possible when you are connected. Independence is a structure.

Consider your need for independence. Consider your need to move slowly and to learn how to be in this world with people. Consider the roots of how you learned language in the first place. You have this way of speaking that is idiosyncratic. Your uniqueness in how you reach out is in your words.

Questions for Aquarius for May 2025:
What is the history of you learning to speak?
What is the history of your friend group?
What has your friend group taught you to say?

Pisces

There’s a question that I like to ask myself before agreeing to commit to work: can I afford to do this work right now? I like to ask this question not just when I participate in wage labor but when I sell art or any of my own offerings. What this question helps me do is to center the question of income back onto my own responsibilities.

I have a lot of responsibilities. I have responsibilities to my parents, to my peers, to work that I have been doing and know that I want to keep on doing. You probably have responsibilities too. You have needs that you are taking care of. Sometimes, you can afford to do work that takes a lot out of you because you have energy or time or you’re making a good income. Sometimes, you can’t. Sometimes, you really want to do the work but you need to ask for more support before you can afford to give.

People might ask you to or invite you to do all kinds of work. Serve food, teach kids, and clean up places. Yes, yes, and yes. The work that you do is necessary. How do you support your own needs as you do it so that you can feel strength when you think about being in it for the long haul? You can clean but you will make messes too. You might teach and you might learn. You will feed people but you will also need to eat.

How do you afford the work that you want to do for the world, the work that you know to be necessary? That’s the question that fuels the business part of my astrology practice and I give it to you to consider for May.

Questions for Pisces for May 2025:
Can you afford to do the work that you are currently doing?
If the answer is no, then how can you ask for more?
If the answer is yes, then what is working about you are currently doing?

Aries

I want you to use style this May. I’m not talking about style as your shopping habits or something that you can pick off of a shelf. I’m talking about style as that way of being that allows you to live in a less timid manner.

Style is very important to living because style gives you color and color gives you more possibilities than any binary including the one we make about black and white. Style is a boundary. A boundary is your attempt to reach out to people and connect in a way that is not only satisfying but also safe. The way you talk and walk and hold yourself up isn’t armor. It’s a permeable and fleshy way of feeling.

What does the timbre of your voice sound like when you sing? You hear that echo when you say hello to people and introduce yourself. That’s your style. Your style is not personal. You didn’t make it yourself. You made it by piecing together the hodgepodge of people who you have brushed your hips with and walked amongst, from the gestures that you saw your grandma make at other people on the bus. History hides in your style.

So, use it. You have great style. Use it to connect with people, to feel like you can be a part of something without losing yourself. Use it to build and to cheer and to lament. Your style is your personhood shining through in a world that tries so hard to separate. That sense of life you feel when you see your own style? That’s something splintered coming back together.

Questions for Aries for May 2025:
What colors do you associate with your own style?
What colors do you associate with your best friend’s style?
What colors do you associate with your grandmother’s style?