The Six Weeks I Do Not Change My Hair

venus turns backward tomorrow morning, and the first thing i did was move the appointment.

The humidity here has already started to turn, the way it does in Bali every October before the rain settles in properly, and hair knows it before the calendar does. On 3 October Venus stations retrograde at eight degrees of Scorpio. She stays that way until 14 November, when she turns forward again at twenty-two degrees of Libra. Six weeks. Partway through, on 25 October, she backs out of Scorpio and into Libra, which is her own sign, and the whole thing softens when she does.

If you want the full map of what she is asking for, it is here, with every date. This letter is about one small thing inside it. The hair.

The oldest piece of advice about Venus retrograde

There is a rule that has been handed between women for a very long time. During Venus retrograde, you do not change your appearance. No new colour. No decision at 11pm that six inches have to come off. No fringe, no piercing, no tattoo.

I want to be honest about what that is. It is tradition, not evidence. No study, nothing measured, and no astrologer can tell you why it would work. It has lasted because enough women made a drastic decision inside these six weeks and sat in the car afterwards feeling strange about it that the advice kept getting passed on.

And if there is a mechanism, it is not mysterious. Venus is the part of the chart that governs what we find beautiful. When she moves backward, our sense of what we want goes unreliable. Not wrong. Unreliable. The restlessness underneath is real and usually pointing at something true. The plan it hands you is almost never the thing.

What I do with the six weeks instead

Six weeks is a long time to do nothing, and doing nothing is not what the rule asks. It asks you not to change. It says nothing about care, and care is the part we skip in the months we spend deciding things. So this is the window I give to it, and it turns out to be the most useful stretch of the year for hair.

• Oil once a week, warmed in the palms first, worked in with the fingertips along the scalp rather than smoothed over the ends. The ends are not where hair is made.
• A trim instead of a cut. Half an inch off what is already split is maintenance. It is not a decision, and the rule has never been about maintenance.
• Less heat. If you are not asking the hair to hold a new shape, you do not need to force it into one every morning.
• Timing by the moon rather than by the mood. The October lunar hair calendar has the actual dates, and if you want the longer reasoning, why a waning moon trim holds differently is written out in full.

By the middle of November you will have better hair than the cut would have given you. And you will know whether you still want the cut, which is the part that actually matters.

The same rule, worn

This is where it stops being about hair.

The retrograde impulse to change how you look does not only arrive at the salon. It arrives in the cart. It is the late decision that the problem is you have nothing to wear, when the problem is that you have not worn what you own in three weeks.

So I do the same thing with clothes that I do with hair. Nothing new. I go back into what is already hanging there and wear the good piece on an ordinary Tuesday, the one being saved for something. Venus retrograde is not a season for acquiring. It is a season for returning, and returning is the more uncomfortable of the two, because a wardrobe you already own is a record of what you have actually chosen.

If something does come in during these six weeks, let it be the thing you have wanted for a year rather than the idea you had on Thursday. The old want, finally answered. That is the one door the rule leaves open and it is worth walking through.

And if you already cut it

Then you cut it, and nothing is broken.

This is a suggestion about timing from women who have watched this cycle for longer than either of us, not a law, and the sky does not keep a list. If you love it, that is the end of the conversation. If you do not, it grows, which is the one thing hair is reliably excellent at.

A piece for a season of returning

The Oracle Virgo Kaftan is the kaftan this house has made longest, made once in a version it will not make again. A spiral and a river are worked by hand in thread along the neckline, stitched by the artisan women in Pererenan who have sewn for us since the beginning, so no two carry quite the same hand. Crinkle linen and cotton, no iron, better after every wash. Fifteen were made. The right piece for a season of returning, because it is the one she already owned.

With love from Bali,
Myrah