The word responsibility contains the word response.

Way too many of us, myself included, learned this word "responsibility" in a way that had us associating it with shame and punishment. We learn responsibility as this word that means, "You better get this done and finish your homework too or else you're going to be in trouble!" Ew! Who wants responsibility if that's the embodied memory of the word?

When I was writing Postcolonial Astrology and doing all this research into colonialism and our archetypal imagination, I kept coming back to the word responsibility and I found myself trying to define it differently. I started doing that by simply breaking down the word.

The word responsibility contains the word response. And that's all it really means.

When you take responsibility for something, that means that you're giving yourself what you need to respond. You're giving yourself the time that you need to respond rather than reacting. You're giving yourself the space that you need to respond as a coming back to the thing, not enmeshing with it because you think you can't leave it alone for a moment. When you take responsibility, you are also valuing your own agency as someone whose response matters.

In September, we're going to see Mars in Cancer move away from its square with Saturn in Aries and towards Leo where it will ingress to towards the end of the month. When Mars is in Leo next month, it'll be co-present with Jupiter. This month of September, it'll stay in Cancer for a bit. This Mars in Cancer won't be lingering as the long Mars in Cancer retrograde around two years ago. However, I do think that it could be a meaningful one because of the Saturn retrograde and because Venus is preparing to retrograde in Scorpio which Mars rules.

This Mars in Cancer, I want you to take responsibility for your emotions. Not in the sense of "You better manage your feelings or else you might be punished!" but in the sense of "You might find or fight for the time, space, and esteem that you need to find the place where your responses matter."

Being responsive to your emotions doesn't mean that you're suddenly left to find the solution to every problem all alone. It means that you regulate yourself when you can, that you understand what's going on inside on your own terms, that you don't let someone else diagnose your feelings as a problem because that diagnosis seems more credible than the still messy and confusing narrative that you're still putting together about what you're going through. Being responsible for your emotions means that you don't try to take on other people's work for them because that's their stuff and their life and having an outside perspective might make you a little cocky but sure doesn't give you any superpowers.

And then, because this is Mars in Cancer that we're talking about, I'm thinking that September will be a month for remembering that just because something isn't only yours to carry doesn't mean it's not also yours to carry. A lot of our responsibilities are shared. Sometimes, we can only respond with people.

Here's to Mars in Cancers, one of my favorite placements, a placement that so many of my loved ones have. Yes, I see you and happy Mars return.

Virgo 2026 September Horoscope

Happy birthday Virgo! This year, as you enter a new year of your life, you're doing it while taking a real hard look at what you have learned to expect from your friends. Being you means that you have learned a thing or two about people, that you know when people treat you well, and that you've developed some standards about who you call a friend.

And then, there's that thing that you do when you get really, really, really excited about someone. You try to get them to face the hard shit. You ask questions that disturb. You show them where the problems are because you care. Since you are someone who have clearly worked very hard on your own competency, people who are close to you usually learn to trust that competency and to lean on it.

This month, I think that you're find the following question worthwhile: what makes you feel safe in a large group of people? Not just close friends but friends of friends or extended family. Not in the way that there's someone out there who might be secreting plotting against you but in the way that you pay a lot of close attention to what could go around when you're with many people, inhibiting you from relaxing fully.

What will help you ease into your friendships as you enter a new year of being you, I think, is to just look around and take note of what people are competent at. You have friends who are good at things, good at talking or fixing or writing or knowing. Pay a lot of attention to that. You'll like it because you're attracted to competent people.

Libra September 2026 Horoscope

Since you are a cardinal sign, the end of August and the beginning of September should feel fairly significant for you. As you challenge yourself to see beyond the need for security that can sometimes help you find the support that you need to dream about the future but, at other times, limit your imagination by making you focus on what you rely on, you're also doing a lot of boundary work in your closest relationships.

Your relationships are dynamics and you have the ability to make choices in those dynamics. If you say yes to someone once, that doesn't mean that the person has access to you forever. You don't have to go and offer up more and more just to keep up the same level of excitement. You can bear disappointing people once or twice, or perhaps just disappointing your own expectations that you put on yourself in relationships, and find that you don't die or disappear.

Your future, the idea of it because the future is imaginary, is a figment of your imagination that exists to nourish your present. It's like soup. You can put a bunch of stuff that takes you back and reminds you of comfort in that vision that you make about what is possible. You're allowed to imagine what life would be like if you felt fully safe.

If you sense anything clashing between who you want to be in your relationships and what you need to be safe, then take a step back. Give yourself time and space to know your feelings before you respond. If in doubt, reconnect with old friends who know you well because they have enough history with you to tell you when you're trying to move too fast.

Scorpio September 2026 Horoscope

As a fellow Martian, I'll tell it to you like it is. There's certain arguments that are taking up space rent free in your mind that really don't need to be there. These arguments haunt you. You rehearse statements, defense mechanisms, and appeals as you do chores, shower, or wait for yourself to fall asleep and you get more and more excited about these imaginary debates with imaginary people even though you might not have these arguments with anyone anytime soon.

These imaginary debates—we all have them but they usually tell us more about what you're currently scared of rather than actual arguments that might happen in your real life. I'm saying that all that rehearsing often turns out to be a waste of time. It's your mind tripping you out!

What you might do, if you find yourself getting very worked up about an imaginary debating exercise, is to shift your focus to areas of your daily schedule that might be too full. You tend to get worked up about your fears when you are stressed, when you take on more than you need to, when you are using your body past its limits. Take a new look at your workload and try to see if there's something that you're spending a lot of time doing that isn't actually necessary. You might be trying to maintain something that just doesn't need to last.

After that, you might find your own mind quieter. Yes, there will always be people who disagree with you but you don't have to be around those people. You can make a decision to stop doing work for those people.

Sagittarius September 2026 Horoscope

A desire isn't the same thing as an obligation. Just because someone wants something from you doesn't mean that you need to drop everything to become that thing. At the beginning of September, I think that you might be extra sensitive to what you know that people around you want from you. I know that you have a strong self protectiveness around stuff like that, that you can go into your own head when you think that you might disappoint.

But there's something that's more alive within you. You have discovered that you are willing to wait for people who wait for you.

You're allowed to want something, try it out, and decide that you don't really like it. You're allowed to hear someone want you in a specific way, try that out, and take time to make up your mind about what it meant to you. Someone else expressing an enthusiastic and eager desire doesn't mean that you need to speed up your responses. Most of the time, you can't. When you feel like you can't take all the time that you need, you either rush the dynamic or completely withdraw.

You're setting boundaries in pleasure and sex in September, Sagittarius, and your best tool is going to be time. Let people wait. You don't need to be ready for what you think someone else might need ahead of time. If they really like you for you and not just for your response, then they're going to stick around.

Capricorn September 2026 Horoscope

Sometimes, you feel this urge to just reach out and gather up all of your loved ones and friends because you want them to feel safe and protected. You're such a reliable and trustworthy friend, Capricorn. You have this protectiveness that is clear to people, that reassures them, that makes you feel solid and true.

And sometimes, that strong urge to protect your loved ones can also scare you because it is so strong. You might suddenly realize that your protectiveness makes you act faster than you mean to, that you jumped right on into a dynamic that actually doesn't make you feel protected back. That can feel freaky! You wanted your friends to feel safe in the first place because you wanted your relationships to stabilize you.

I think that what will feel really nice in September is to make a couple of plans with just yourself that no one else gets to change. If you go on a walk everyday after dinner, take that walk whether your neighborhood friend is around to walk with you or not. Or, maybe you have plans to cook for yourself and watch a television show or go to a music show that your friends are busy for. Once you have made a commitment to yourself, protect it.

Into the beginning of September but tapering off as the month goes, you might be feeling a little activated by friends who are either going through it or relationships that are changing as they do. I want you to give yourself a good dose of independent security as you move through these changes or show up for friends without taking responsibility for their lives. Make your own plans and keep them too.

Aquarius September 2026 Horoscope

Right now, you might be feeling some light friction between what you need to actually feel close to people and your deepest relational habits. You do have a tendency to try and understand problems for your friends, to examine and analyze and to put yourself in another person's shoes because your mind works methodically and your buddies know that, when they ask you to think on things, you can usually come up with some pretty compelling insights.

Then, you have your need for excited, passionate, and hopelessly selfish intimacy. You want people to want you selfishly, to want you around not for the problems that you might manage for other people but because they get so eager for you that they make more problems for themselves. You want relationships where you're not just a problem solver but someone who is allowed to be difficult, allowed to be inconvenient and still wanted.

People might think, "Hey, why is this person who is usually so understanding and caring suddenly trying to provoke me?" What changed was that you realized that you wanted to be wanted for being yourself. That realization made you put your full self into the dynamic. That chaotic devil that comes out to play when you truly like someone isn't here to cause you trouble. That inner devil comes out in relationships that you truly want because it's trying to make sure that you don't become your lover's manager or caretaker.

In September, give yourself enough time to trust your wild side in addition to the wise you. You have both, this wildness and this wisdom, and you need both to care and be cared for.

Pisces September 2026 Horoscope

What if pleasure weren't just a reward? For hanging in there and being tough but held its own value? What if fun wasn't just an act that you saved for the moments of leisure that you protect from work and obligations but play were the main set of values that animate and move your world?

I think that the beginning of September will ask you to think about your motivations very hard. You're motivated by what you want, by what you feel to be good, and by the places that allow you to create rather than discipline you to stay in one particular shape. If your motivations currently feel messy to you, then get precise with it. Protect your pleasure. You don't want what other people want you to want. Your desires aren't abstract ideals about what is good in the world—they are site specific and they respond to your decisions.

I know that sitting with desire can bring up a lot of feelings around worthiness for most people. That's because there's an argument to be had around time—"If I need patience to know what I want, then how can I justify that use of time?"

Actually, the argument between pleasure and practicality might be more superficial than you think. The practical reason for why we play is that playing helps us find our creativity and creativity is the only thing that can help us find solutions that we don't arrive with. Knowing what you want will help you see the resources that you have, not just the set of values that you have inherited. You have to know what feel right to grasp your motivation.

Aries September 2026 Horoscope

As Mars departs from its exact square with Saturn all September, I think that you're going to find routine really regulating and instructive. The routines that will help you find your place in the world are going to be the ones that make you feel like yourself. Do your morning pages or listen to heavy metal for the ten minutes that you use to brush your teeth and wash your face in the mornings. Give yourself something small to be responsible over, that you don't ask for anyone else to interfere on, for your everyday.

What early September might ask of you is to hold your own space to be yourself when you face emotional differences with the people who you are most close to at home. You don't have to confront every issue right away, don't have to talk someone into seeing your side of things immediately. You don't have to convert yourself into believing what the other people thinks is true. You can merely take some time to hold space for yourself so that the fact of your existence isn't contingent on how people might feel about you.

Sometimes, self protection is just about sticking with what you know works for you—listening to music that you like at home, eating regularly, and sleeping in your bed even when you are in conflict with people who you live with. You don't always have to win to feel safe.

And sure, sometimes you'll feel awkward around your roommates or family or partner if you've disagreed and are taking time. But the point of September is to show yourself that your emotions don't have to change your routine. You don't have to break a routine that helps you stay steady just because you think that someone else needs your time.

Taurus September 2026 Horoscope

From the beginning of September on, tapering off as we move through the month, you'll be confronting certain dynamics in your relationship with your siblings that can show you more about what needed to be said or done in your house growing up but was not.

As you were coming of age, you learned all kinds of things from your siblings. You learned from the brother who kept taking your things but was also responsible for feeding you your meals. You learned from the sister who never went and did her own thing because she kept getting pulled in at home. Because you are who you are and your siblings are who they are, there's things that y'all have left unsaid about your parents, family, and so on. Do you want to say these things? If you do, you'll first need to figure out what they are.

What you might do is just observe the way you and your siblings interact. When you fight, how do you fight? Who tends to get listened to and who tends to get quiet? Who was expected to be responsible and who was expected to rebel? When you move past a disagreement, try to see if you usually leave anything hanging and if what you have chosen to resolve is something that you have resolved in the past.

I think that studying your relationship with your siblings will teach you a lot about how you know closeness, community, and all that jazz. A lot of us think that, with friends, we are so different from who we are with family but you know that, because you've been you for a while, that your history can move in circles a bit. Look at those circles in September.

Gemini September 2026 Horoscope

Right now, around the end of August or the beginning of September, you're experiencing some clashing between your aspirations in life and your values. At the root of your internal contradiction is one question: Are my values helping me see what is possible or did I absorb them because I needed to limit my imagination of what I could do out of a distorted sense of safety?

Values aren't just about what we think is good or important or what matters. Values can also be what we were told we had to become just so that other people might treat us as good people, important to them, or people who matter. Our values might really help us be someone who others can rely on while also compromising on several things that feel invisible to us because we're used to not taking those things into account—dreams, desires, and pleasure. When that happens, doing what we think is the right thing can make us feel invisible. Sometimes, the set of values that we inherited could even help other people make money off of us.

Do you find certain things valuable because you truly enjoy them or find them necessary? Or do you find that certain ways of being feel more right because they seem to help other people enjoy you?

There's a big part of you that wants more, that wants your friends to want more, that knows that more is possible than the finite amount that you have adjusted yourself to. That part of you knows that, if you want something that doesn't exist yet, you have to make it yourself. If that part of you betrays one or two values that you thought were set in stone, let it and see what happens.

Cancer September 2026 Horoscope

Confidence isn't about pushing yourself to do a bunch of things that you don't feel comfortable doing because you don't actually want to do them. Confidence is just about knowing yourself, about trusting that you're going to stay within the limits of what you want instead of what you're used to or what other people want. To trust confidence, you gotta take your time.

I think that, these days, you have this really strong sense that you want to get out there in life and try something unexpected. You want to build a career, a practice—you are trying to move towards a goal. That goal should impress you to some extent, should feel worth putting real work into because it makes you try instead of accepting what you already know you can do. However, the pace at which you go for your goals can also feel comfortable rather than stretched.

You'll know when you try to take on too much too fast. You will feel shy, reluctant, and you'll try to hide your effort. If you get there, don't beat yourself up. There's nothing wrong with you just because your sense of safety conflicts with what you'd like to be capable of for just one moment. Just take a step back and come back to where you are more comfortable.

One word of advice: don't add people into projects that you're wary of taking on just to have company. If you're wary of something, then listen to that. Adding more people might make things more complicated and could fool you into following another person's pace instead of noticing your own.

Leo September 2026 Horoscope

There's an aspect of Leo that, I think, is under discussed in typical of the zodiac sign. Usually, we think of Leo as charismatic, dynamic, and playful. All of these things can be true. A Leo's sheer presence will make itself known but there's something I want to say about that. A Leo will only bring out its big heart and big personality when they feel comfortable enough to.

When Leo doesn't know how they will be received, when they suspect that they will be ignored or belittled, they will withdraw. They will erase themselves before people can do that. That's why Leo typically has such a strong sense of caution about where they would like to be and who they would like to be around.

These days, around the beginning of September and tapering off as we get further into the month, you might make a mental of catalogue of the places where you do tend to withdraw. Make that map and pay special attention to the familiar places, the places where you came of age. As you make that mental map, try to figure out the shape of what you have been taught to neglect from how you have learned to expect places that might neglect you.

If you have been grieving since that solar eclipse in Leo last month, then let yourself feel something about what you miss. You don't have to be socially on this month. You might need some time to understand more about what you have learned to deny.