Welcome to February, folks. Though this month is brief, it is mighty, amounting to a collective turning point.
The word February comes from Februa, or the Roman rites of purification.
In the days of yore and within the Roman calendar, February was the final month of the year; a season concerned with death and endings, clarity and closure, honoring the ancestors, and making sacrifices to Terminus, the god of boundaries.
Apropos of this, Aquarius, the sign that rules the bulk of February, is itself a boundary. Ruled by two planets, it rides the line between constraint (Saturn) and liberation (Uranus), the established and the inspired.
In this way, we can begin to view purification rites for their true intent — to empty and to invite.
To that end and beginning, February kicks off with the Full Cold Moon in Leo on the 1st. This full moon reminds us of the value of creation, which at its highest octave is not about ego but offering.
Leo rules the heart, and under the light of this moon, we’re called to move from the cerebral (Aquarius) to the vital (Leo), not to think but to beat, dance, sing, throw paint, and otherwise let our insides out.
On February 3, rabble-rousing, freak-flag-waving Uranus stations direct in Taurus. We are in the last gasp of Uranus’s tenure in Taurus, as the planet moves into Gemini in late April; as such, there is a heightened sense of urgency, a proactive need to break free before we burn out and cut ourselves loose from any cycles unaligned with our bold, brilliant becoming.
On February 6, Mercury leaves the objective heights of Aquarius for the muddy depths of Pisces, where it’s easy to conflate facts with feelings. While the temptation to fall full length into fantasy is nigh, if we can muster a little discipline, we can use the inherent magic of this transit to bolster our intuition and bridge the gap between the intangible and the tongue.
Venus follows suit on February 10, moving into Pisces, the sign of its exaltation. Under these skies, we are primed for healing, spiritual communion, and deep compassion, as well as romantic delusion and the urge to hurl ourselves headlong and foolhardy into a victim/savior dynamic.
Do less.
Saturn sets up shop in Aries on February 13, where the lord of the rings will continue his reign of fire for the next two years. As a Mars-ruled sign, Aries is about conflict, and Saturn represents the systematic — in this way, this transit is the art (Saturn) of war (Aries).
The Chinese New Year begins on February 17, ushering in the era of the Fire Horse with the first eclipse of 2026, a new moon solar eclipse in Aquarius.
Giddyup.
The energy of this eclipse is radical, asking, neigh, demanding that we explore and evolve in our understanding of creation, collaboration, and commitment to the human collective.
On February 18, the sun moves into Pisces, where edges are softened, primary colors bleed to pastel, and we all find the divine where we least expect it, in the augury of beard hair in the bathroom sink or the odd glint of glitter in the gutter.
The month closes out with the year’s first Mercury retrograde, going down, or back, in Pisces from February 26 to March 20. Retrogrades are always a time to be mindful of how we speak to and about others and ourselves, but never is the need more pronounced than when the transit falls in Pisces, where words hold a greater capacity to mar or mend.
Speak sweet, stay true.
Good luck out there.
Read for your sun and rising sign.
Ahoy, Aries!
Your purpose is surfacing, with Saturn (boundaries) and Neptune (dreams) in your sign by mid-month, you might feel more serious than usual, ruminating on long-term commitments and who you are building yourself to be.
Take heart that you are the architect of this becoming, and as you draft your plans and lift your chisel, take heed of the personal motto of Jean Paul Sartre, “Commitment is an act, not a word.”
Get to it.
Welcome to the fallow fields of February, Taurus.
Saturn’s residency in Aries lights up your twelfth house, which rules the subconscious mind, dreams, the occult, isolation, and hidden enemies.
As a tactile earth sign, you’re more comfortable with the material than the mystical, but under the influence of this transit, the former requires the latter.
To borrow from Evelyn Underhill, “the night of thought is the light of perception.”
You can’t be it until you dream it, baby, so trust that the unseen is sowing seeds.
Hello, Gemini!
The sun and solar eclipse in Aquarius this month highlight your ninth house of horizons and higher calling.
Writer and general luminary Octavia Butler explains, “I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything, and there were no walls to hem you in, and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.”
Your February assignment is to find a similar expanse, Gemini. What could you make, could you be made of, if there was no edge in sight, no finite answer to your asking?
Ahoy, Cancer!
The sun and later this month the solar eclipse in Aquarius throw the lights up on your eighth house of sex, secrets, intimacy, death, inheritance, and other people’s resources.
I recently watched Ralph Arlyck’s documentary “I Like it Here.”
In it, one of his friends admits to being exhausted by hearing people talk about the ways their parents “f–ked them up.” He calls the practice an infinite regression, as the damage our parents do can usually be traced to their parents, whose dysfunction was informed by their parents, and so on and so on forever and ever amen.
Given the healing potential/portal of the eighth house, can you look at the past and entertain the idea of infinite progression? Consider how suffering has been refined and reduced through the generations that came before and your own capacity to render it yet to sweetness.
Hello, Leo! The full moon in your sign lights up your first house of the self while the swarm of activity in Aquarius activates your seventh house of trusted partnerships.
German polymath Albert Schweitzer maintained, “In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”
Here, in the darkest and coldest corner of the year, I hope that those who are kindred will be your kindling.
The French philosopher Michel Foucault understood the human body as a ‘surface of inscription’ of past and current systems of power, making the physical form a legible object.
As the glut of Aquarius energy this month throws your sixth house of health, ritual, and physical routine into focus, I urge you to consider the story your body is telling, Virgo.
How can it be rewritten with habits, markings, radical tenderness, and mantras of your own making?
How goes it, Libra?
The movement of bootstrap daddy Saturn and dreamweaver Neptune into Aries activates your seventh house of marriage, contracts, and trusted partnerships.
The lord of the Rings will be turning and burning in this section of your chart for the next two years, while Neptune will be hanging out until 2039.
This is a new Aries era for your relationships.
While Saturn is definitely more formative than fun, and Neptune is more about questions than clarity, their conjunction on February 20th is a game-changer for you.
With the braid of discipline and imagination, these two luminaries are reshaping how you relate to yourself and others.
Because you can sometimes struggle to take direct action, and as Saturn is about commitment and Neptune is about possibility, I leave you with the sage words of Esther Perel, “Love is a verb. Not a permanent state of enthusiasm.”
The film “Sentimental Value” begins with a monologue in which a child writes from the perspective of her family home, considering whether the house likes to be empty and light or heavy and full, if it can feel pain, and whether the noise of a quarrel is preferable to the quiet of loneliness.
As the Aquarius season highlights your fourth house of home and origin, I bring this exercise to your attention, Scorpio.
Imagine yourself as the physical form of either your current home or childhood dwelling; what time of day suits it best, what room feels safe, and which seems charged?
As the axiom maintains, as within, so without, and I hope that in reexamining these rooms, you may yet disentangle your roots.
In Karla McLaren’s “The Language of Emotions,” she argues that every human emotion carries its own specific message and comes calling for catharsis and the medicine of movement.
“I began to see the upwelling of powerful emotions as the human version of what the kicking, trembling, and struggling animals do when they come back to full consciousness after a serious injury,” she writes.
As the sun in Aquarius moves through your third house of communications, Sagittarius, I urge you to treat your feelings not as noise to be managed or muffled but as a message to be received, an open call to consciousness.
Bear in mind that the more you fight the information, the louder your body will transmit it.
The sun and new moon solar eclipse in Aquarius this month highlight your second house of wealth and worth, throwing a light on financial patterns, self-concept, and the mirror that is money.
In what ways are your financial habits tied to your unprocessed emotions? Where and when are you static with fear, and when are you fearlessly generous?
Feelings and currency are meant to move.
As eclipses can bring about great change and unexpected flashes of insight, I bring you a preview in the wise words of Seneca, who espoused, “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”
May the weeks ahead satisfy and fortify not because of a windfall but because you recognize the plenty at your feet.
Happy return of the sun to you, Aquarius.
The February 17th solar eclipse in your sign brings a rush of energy that can feel very much like the dam is breaking.
This alignment of the sun and the moon in your sign highlights your first house of vitality and the physical form. Now is a prime time to adopt grounding practices to keep you centered, even and especially when the winds are blowing, and the water is rising.
As you are a child of Uranus, whose domain is electricity, and the blood represents the circuitry of the body, consider acupuncture therapy.
Practitioners of Chinese medicine maintain, “if there is no free flow, there is pain; if there is free flow, there is no pain.”
Here’s to getting and flowing, free.
In her novel “Ghost Wall,” Sarah Moss shares that Bronze Age denizens, desperate for change, relief, or divine intervention, would offer their most precious resources to nearby bogs: giving over swords, amulets, hair, even human beings.
“You give what you most want to keep,” she writes.
As February sees the sun and other personal planets moving through your twelfth house of letting go and into your first house of being born, I wonder what you’re holding tight to that could be surrendered in service of a season that sees you freer, walking with a lighter step and hands held open to receive.
Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture, and personal experience. To book a reading, visit her website.
