Virgo weekly horoscope

This week the Sun is in Scorpio, two signs along from yours. You notice the detail everyone else walks past, and half the time you have fixed it before anybody asked.

At the middle of the week the Moon is in Virgo, which runs tidy and faintly critical, soothed by sorting one real thing out. The Moon is a thin waning crescent, the end of the cycle. Rest is the productive choice here, which is a sentence you are allowed to believe. It is 14 per cent lit and shrinking. The Moon crosses into Libra on 5 November, and the mood turns over with it.

Virgo is ruled by Mercury, which governs how you think, talk, write and make arrangements. It is currently in Scorpio, which takes that part of life deeper and makes half measures unbearable. Mercury is retrograde, which means Earth has overtaken it and from here it appears to track backwards against the stars. The old advice holds up better than the superstition around it: reread before you send, confirm the time and the address, and expect conversations you thought were finished to come back round. Because it is your ruler, that applies to you more than it does to most people.

The Sun is sitting right on top of Mercury, your ruler, about 2.1 degrees off and just past exact and widening. A conjunction concentrates things. Whatever that planet does, it does it to this part of your life at full strength and without much subtlety.

Venus is retrograde, which happens far less often than Mercury doing it. It is a reviewing stretch for what you value and who you want near you. Old names tend to resurface. Hold off on the big purchase and the big promise, and just notice what you actually want. Saturn is retrograde, so the deadline pressure eases off a little. The work does not go away, it comes back for a second look when Saturn turns direct, which is the argument for doing it properly now.

Make the list, then cut it in half. You do not have a productivity problem, you have a scope problem.