As a tumultuous 2023 draws to a close, we cast our eyes ahead to the new year and another chance to get it right.
This year, New Year’s Day coincides with the end of Mercury retrograde, a time when the planet of the mind slows its proverbial roll and through calamity, hiccup, delay and miscommunication instructs us to revise, reflect and resolve.
New Year’s resolutions have their roots in ancient Mesopotamia when some 4,000 years ago Babylonians began celebrating the new year (which for them fell in March and coincided with a religious festival known as Akitu) with vows to the gods to repay their debts and return what had been lent to them.
If they honored their commitments they would be favored by these deities in the year to come. If not? Not so much.
In 46 B.C., the born-to-be-betrayed Julius Caesar established Jan. 1 as the official beginning of the new year. January held a certain importance for Romans, as it was named for Janus, the two-faced, doorway-dwelling god of time and transitions.
These ancients believed Janus, by nature of his dual visages, looked backward at what had been and forward to the future. To honor him, they offered sacrifices and pinky-promised to be better-behaved in the year to come.
As we have lost touch with ritual, rather than make a vow to the gods, modern man has taken to making resolutions for self-improvement — and the results, my dudes, are grim. While as many as 52% of Americans will make a resolution, just 5% will see them through.
As New York divorce recovery coach Leah Marie Mazur shows with her viral f–k it list, sometimes quitting behaviors or putting a moratorium on tendencies is more important than jumpstarting a gym plan. Mazur proclaims, “I am only saying yes to things that are going to get me closer to where I want to be and who I want to be moving forward.”
In that spirit, we bring you an easy to apply, necessary to employ list of New Year’s resolutions for each zodiac sign.
As the fire-breathing first sign in the zodiac, your MO is often first, fast, and more, Aries. Yet, by practicing a little delayed gratification, you will gain a better understanding of your own desire.
How can you sustain your wants beyond conquest? Whether you take a long walk rather than a short run, wait ’til after the first date to f–k, or enroll in an online class rather than perform a quick internet search, you would be wise to play the long game when it comes to pleasure. A slow burn will keep you warm longer than a quick fix.
Forgive one single person whose name dots your garden of grudges, Taurus. You need not do this publicly nor even let the offender know you have released your resentment.
Just think of them, of the injury they have imparted, and resolutely decide to cease your punishments or fantasies of punishment. As the sign of wealth and worth, I assure you that nothing can make you richer than letting go.
With a curious mind and a silver tongue, you are the zodiac’s divining messenger and trickster meddler, Gemini. Bridging worlds and connecting dots, give your beautiful mind the chance to work its wonder and restore its inventory by leaving your phone at home at least one day a week. Take a walk without aim or agenda and marvel at what floods your mind and crosses your path.
In the words of Seneca (likely addressing a Cancer), “There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
As a sign of deep feeling and bottomless imagination, it is easy for you to premeditate negative outcomes — either out of fear and anxiety or a desire to control your response to an uncontrollable world.
In either case, you undermine your own power when you fail to believe that a best-case scenario is not only possible, but probable. You are the master of your mind, Cancer, and the captain of your life — consider that the winds to come are here to carry you forth and forward.
You have a reputation for operating like the sun that rules you, Leo — a warming, showboating, benevolent death star around which all things grow and all life revolves.
The best and truest part of that metaphorical equation is your ability to spur aliveness in others. The word “mentor” comes from Homer’s “The Odyssey,” wherein Athena, the goddess of wisdom, appears to Telamachus in the guise of his family friend, Mentor.
As Gregory Nagy, a classics professor at Harvard University, imparts, “A mentor is someone who instills a heroic mentality in somebody.” I can think of no other sign more capable of convincing others of their own capability than you, Leo. And I can think of no victory as sweet as the earnest elevation of another person.
You do not need to labor to be deserving of love, Virgo, and your worth is not tied to what you can provide. Your innate mutability can function as an adaptive power or a sacrificial tendency.
In caring resolutely for others, you forfeit your responsibility to yourself. This year, rather than tend, inspire; rather than lend, lead. Let the life you live be a kind of compass of care and your own well-being the high altar of your efforts.
There is no sign quite so civilized as you, Libra. A bearer of beauty and an avoider of awfulness, you bring a gentility to a brutal world. And yet, repressing your animal nature and mastering it are not the same thing.
Balance is not the absence of conflict, but the solution to it. You fear the fallout of hard truths and raw emotion, concerned that letting it out will mean losing control. Fair (no pun intended) enough, but unless you allow yourself the gift of ugly catharsis, you will never know true release or absolute acceptance.
You are the sign of extremes, Scorpio, of death blows and no returns, capable of standing in the dark and facing the shadow chambers of the human heart. Yet, in being the keeper of secrets more often than the bestower, you keep yourself bound to a power dynamic that doesn’t allow for true intimacy.
Fun fact: The word “confess” comes from the Latin “to acknowledge, or an admission of faith.” In this sense, the confidences you share are tantamount to acknowledging your faith in another person. Start small with an embarrassing childhood anecdote and build up to existential fear and long-buried shame.
Blessed be, Sagittarius, you are a truth expeller and a big-picture thinker, but often your lofty message gets lost in a tactless delivery. We need you to outwardly express and to sling your d–k arrows of hope to the high heavens — but you need to stick the landing with a touch more softness and a lot more receptivity.
A little less swinging Yang and a little more flexible, feminine Yin, if you will. You’ve got the vision, baby, but you’ll need to make believers before you’ll have builders.
You go hard, Capricorn, ever trying to make a buck, scale a mountain, and prove to yourself your own indomitability. Rest is not a reward — it is, in fact, an essential part of the process of creation, ascension, living, restoring.
There’s a popular jock adage (probably written by a Capricorn) that maintains, “If you rest, you rot.” What this jargon fails to recognize is that rot is the compost of creation, and every single thing in nature falls silent and still — follow suit.
Space, as both a final frontier and a restorative concept, are important to you, Aquarius. Yours is an interesting hand to be dealt, as you are an air sign who craves solitude, but yet also rules the 11th house of community.
Oftentimes this leads you to feel alone in a crowd, caring about everyone in an abstract way while failing to connect in a tangible one. As both a cure and a command, may I suggest you make at least one in-person plan per week.
Descend from your tin foil tower, spend an hour or two without distraction, make eye contact, speak openly, and climb the ladder later feeling closer to another human being and closer to the true version of yourself.
As mutable water, you can be talked into all manner of containers and contamination, Pisces.
There is an emphasis on surrender and sacrifice for those born under these stars — but also a call to define and defend your personhood. Do not be swayed, do not settle, and start small by saying “no” at least once a day.
Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports back on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture and personal experience. She is also an accomplished writer who has profiled a variety of artists and performers, as well as extensively chronicled her experiences while traveling. Among the many intriguing topics she has tackled are cemetery etiquette, her love for dive bars, Cuban Airbnbs, a “girls guide” to strip clubs and the “weirdest” foods available abroad.