Emily Rubin invited authors to write about a specific theme for a literary reading she organized in New York last September: stains. "What is your favorite stain?" she asked prospective participants, enticing them to imagine a stain as a good thing, or at least as an interesting twist. Included in her own list were chocolate, candle wax, lipstick, grass, mud, wine, and tomato sauce. What are yours, Libra? This would be an excellent time to sing the praises of your best-loved or most provocative blotches, splotches, and smirches -- and have fun stirring up some new ones.

To further explore the ripening blessings and interesting challenges in your life, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Is there really such a thing as free will, or are our destinies shaped by forces beyond our control?

Here's one way to think about that question: Maybe some people actually have more free will than others. Not because they have more money. (Many rich folks are under the spell of their instincts, after all.) Not because they have high-status positions. (A boss may have power over others but little power over himself.)

Rather, those with a lot of free will have earned that privilege by taking strong measures to dissolve the conditioning they absorbed while growing up. They've acted on the advice of psychologist Carl Jung: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.