The general consensus is that Americans are getting dumber. A recent study, for instance, reported that more people can name the characters in The Simpsons TV show than know the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Yet an article by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker notes that Americans' I.Q. scores have been steadily rising for a long time--so much so that a person whose I.Q. placed her in the top ten percent of the population in 1920 would be in the bottom third today. One possible explanation: Our "growing stupidity" may better be described as a difficulty keeping up with the ever-growing mass of facts, whereas we're actually becoming better at solving problems. That's a key issue in my advice to you, Aries. You're in a phase that's favorable for upgrading your intelligence--by which I mean improving your problem-solving skills, not accumulating more facts.

Need more help with your riddles? Crave more support in your efforts to build your courage? Check out your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.

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If you're typical, your natural curiosity was virtually extinguished at an early age by mediocre teachers, boring lessons, and oppressive classrooms. Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if your imagination hadn't been squelched? What interesting adventures might you have sought out if your natural love of learning hadn't been crushed?

Let's launch a quest to undo the damage. Imagine I've handed you an undiploma: your official release from the soul-death of your formal education; the beginning of the healing of your wounded love of learning. What's the first thing you'll do to invoke a steady stream of inspired teachers and invigorating lessons?
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

This is a time when you must put one concern above all others: being true to yourself. Don't you dare elevate other people's needs above your own. Don't you dare let their guilt trips manipulate you into watering down your interesting quirks. You have simply got to devote yourself exuberantly to your idiosyncratic dreams. You owe it to yourself to learn all you can about your innermost secrets and ripening mysteries. You need to be ingeniously obsessed with serving your deepest, wildest, most noble longings.

No one knows you better than you do. But maybe you'll be inspired to dig up even more self-knowledge in the coming week if you tune in to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.

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After seeing the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, the ancient writer Philo of Byzantium wrote, "He who has laid eyes on it will be convinced that the world of the immortal gods has moved from heaven to earth."

Seek out an experience that provokes an equally breathtaking response in you. Or do whatever you can to generate feelings of sincere reverence and awe.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

"It is not possible to get the blessing without the madness," wrote Norman O. Brown in his book Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis. "It is not possible to get the illuminations without the derangement." His words ring true for you right now, Gemini. Lately you've been pursuing (and getting pursued by) wickedly twisted yet fertile opportunities, and now you're near the climax of the madness and derangement. Next stop: blessings and illuminations.

What greater adventure is there than exploring the enigmas of your unique destiny? For more hints about the week ahead, listen to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.

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Jungian analyst Arnold Mindell explores the relationship between mind and body. He believes you can achieve optimum physical health if you're devoted to shedding outworn self-images. In his book The Shaman's Body, he says, "You have one central lesson to learn—to continuously drop all your rigid identities. Personal history may be your greatest danger."

Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us, agrees. Raised as a male, she later became a female, but ultimately renounced gender altogether. "I love being without an identity," she says. "It gives me a lot of room to play around."

What identities would be healthy for you to lose? Describe all the fun you'd have if you were free of them.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

According to the Bible, Jehovah gave Adam the job of bestowing names on everything. But in Ursula Le Guin's story "She Unnames Them," Eve decides to reverse her mate's work. She yearns to return to a primordial state when the misunderstandings caused by words no longer stand between her and the rest of creation. So she unnames all the animals, from the sea otters to the bees. When she's done, she marvels on how they feel "far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier." Take your inspiration from Eve, Cancerian. Bypass the ideas and language you use to cage your raw experience, and instead commune with the primal essence of everything.

Got enough clues to chew on for a while? If you need more, give yourself the luxury of your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.

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Write the following on a piece of paper and keep it under your pillow. "I, [put your name here], do solemnly swear on this day [put date here] that I will devote myself for a period of seven days to learning my most important desire. No other thought will be more uppermost in my mind. No other concern will divert me from tracking down every clue that might assist me in my drive to ascertain the one experience in this world that deserves my brilliant passion above all others."
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Even if you're in your twenties or thirties or forties now, someday you'll be an elder. At that time you will be in a position to guide and inspire younger people with the wisdom you've gathered. Obsessions that motivated you at an earlier age will have become irrelevant to you. You will have learned to move with relative grace in and out of periods of darkness and uncertainty. You'll be less inclined to look back toward your own personal childhood and more oriented toward the future of your immortal soul, of your family, and of the human race. In the coming days, you have an excellent opportunity to tune in to the elder you will ultimately become. The veils between now and then are lifting. You have the power to prophesy your own evolution.

How much do you want to know about your destiny in the coming week? How far do you dare to go? For more insight into your intriguing fate, tune in to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the coming week.

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Everyone influences the world in some way. No matter how powerless we may feel, each of us is a creator who continually churns out energy that bends and shapes our world and the people in it. What is the signature of your effect? How do you change the environments you pass through? What magic, for good or ill, do you exude from day to day?
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

When lightning strikes a human being, it's usually bad news. Not so in the case of a man from Maine named John Corson. After experiencing a whitish-blue bolt shoot through his body during a thunderstorm, he testified that his health became better than it had been in a long time. "I feel lighter and 100 years younger," he marveled. I predict a comparable (though less shocking) rejuvenation for you, Virgo. What you're going through or about to go through might cause a breakdown in some people, but for you it will lead to a breakthrough.

Want more help in exploring the Great Mystery that is your life? I discuss your coming week in greater depth in your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.

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You probably don't grow much of your own food or sew your own clothes, and you didn't build your own house or car. You may not know where your water comes from or where your wastes go. The last time you doffed your clothes for a whole day was when you were two months old, and you may not know the names of your great-grandparents, let alone what they were like.

Maybe it's time, then, for you to find some sources to return to. How might you do that? Here's one suggestion for how to begin: Sleep all night under a tree, lulling yourself into the dreamtime with a cruise through your oldest memories. What other things can you try?
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

"Dear Rob: In my dream last night, it was my wedding day and I was flying like a superhero over hills made of millions of jewels and jelly beans. My superhero sweetie was soaring alongside me, and we were headed toward an ocean-side amusement park with a futuristic theme. Unfortunately, we overshot our landing and ended up plunging into the sea. Fortunately, we could breathe underwater just fine. We swam down to a superhero convention that was taking place in a museum on the ocean floor. When we arrived, we were given a wedding cake shaped like a giant key. What does my dream mean? -Mind-Boggled Libra." Dear Boggled: Like many members of the Libran tribe, you're currently enjoying tremendous opportunities to blend adventure and intimacy. Your dream reflects how wide open your imagination is to the possibilities.

Want more clues? Need further insight? For more evocative questions and pithy suggestions about your destiny in the coming week, check out your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.

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Have you ever played the game of "Tell me the story of your scars?" It's best to do it with a skilled empath who is curious about your fate's riddles and skilled at helping you find redemption in your wounds.

"How'd you get that blotch on your knee?" he or she might begin, and you describe the time in childhood when you fell on the sidewalk. Then maybe he or she would say, "Why do you always look so sad when you hear that song?" And you narrate the tale of how it was playing when an old lover broke your heart. The questions and answers continue until you unveil the history of your hurts, both physical and psychic. Treat yourself to this game soon.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

"We should take astrology seriously," says zoologist Richard Dawkins. "No, I don't mean we should believe in it. I am talking about fighting it seriously instead of humoring it as harmless fun." In his view, astrology is a bogus discipline that fosters superstition and undermines clear thinking. Opposing Dawkins' perspective was that of seminal psychologist Carl Jung, one of the 20th century's greatest thinkers. "Astrology represents the summation of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity," he wrote. He routinely used astrological birth charts to help understand his psychotherapy patients. Dawkins and Jung can't both be right, can they? I suggest you entertain the possibility that they are, Scorpio. In fact, try this dual approach with every major idea you care about. Experiment with what happens when you assume that both sides of every story have a piece of the truth.

Want to hear more about the hidden factors influencing your life in the coming week? Listen to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.

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"Love is being stupid together," said French poet Paul Valéry. While there's an element of truth to that, it's too corny and decadent for my tastes. I prefer to focus on a more interesting truth, which is this: Real love is being smart together. If you weave your destiny together with another's, he or she should catalyze your sleeping potentials, sharpen your perceptions, and boost both your emotional and analytical intelligence. Your relationship becomes a crucible in which you deepen your understanding of the way the world works.

Think of an example of your closest approach to this model in your own life. Then formulate a vow in which you promise you'll do what's necessary to more fully embody the principle "love is being smart together."
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Did you know there are about 200 mass protests in China every day? The Chinese people's enthusiasm for righteous complaining puts the rest of us to shame. How could we have become so passive in the face of all the crazy injustices that are going on in the world? I exhort you Sagittarians to rouse us out of our collective apathy. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you're currently the astrological sign with the most potential to unleash constructive criticism.

What blessings will life bring you in the coming week? What challenges will you be invited to dive into? To explore the ripening trends further, tune in to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.

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"The more accidental, the more true," wrote Boris Pasternak in his poem "February." Scholar Mikhail Epstein expanded this observation: "The more accidental the phenomenon, the more divine its nature, for the divine is what has not been envisioned, what cannot be deduced from general rules, nor irreducible to them."

If we pursue this line of thought to its logical conclusion, we may decide that the most useful sources of illumination are not always holy books, revered dogma, and great truths that everyone has heard. They might also be serendipitous anomalies that erupt into the daily routine and break the trance of ordinary awareness. "The tiny spark," Epstein writes, "is the precise measure of the holiness of the world."
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

An old African proverb says that cattle are wealth, and there are no cattle without dung. This idea is applicable to you right now. The source of your greatest riches has produced some waste matter that needs to be cleaned up. Ironically, if you act expeditiously, the waste matter could be turned into more riches. Take a hint from the Masai people, who use cattle dung as plaster in building their homes. The scent helps repel lions, who dislike it, from venturing too close.

Need a few more whacks applied to your mental blocks in the coming week? A few more caresses administered to your growing edge? Cruise on over to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.

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Robin Norwood's self-help book Women Who Love Too Much deals with a theme that has gotten a lot of play in recent decades: If you're too generous to someone who doesn't appreciate it and at the expense of your own needs, you can make yourself sick.

An alternative perspective comes from French philosopher Blaise Pascal, who said, "When one does not love too much, one does not love enough." He was primarily addressing psychologically healthy altruists, but it's a good ideal for pronoia lovers to keep in mind.

Decide whether you need to move more in the direction of Norwood's or Pascal's advice. Develop a game plan to carry out your resolve, then take action.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Albert Lexie has shined shoes at Pittsburgh's Children's Hospital since 1982. From the beginning, he has taken portions of his meager earnings and contributed them to a fund for sick kids who are poor. Recently his donations topped the $100,000 mark. He's your role model, Aquarius. The astrological omens reveal you will have everything going for you if you choose this time to launch a long, slow ascent toward a goal that may now seem improbable.

Where do you want to go in the coming week? Who do you want to be? For more clues, tune in to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.

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Close your eyes and visualize an alluring person standing in front of you. Now imagine that he or she is gazing at you with affectionate desire.

Add to the scene another enchanting person who is also beaming with adoration. Insert still another such character, and another, and another. Don't stop until you have arrayed before you in your mind's eye 10 enticing people of your favorite gender--and they're all glowing with love and appreciation.

Let the scene develop further, like a waking dream, unfolding in directions that surprise and delight you.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Excessive consumption of junk food has contributed to rising obesity levels in humans. Now wildlife experts report that bears are suffering a similar fate. The animals are so fond of the greasy, sugary scraps they scrounge at campsites and dumpsters that many are getting fat. The weight gain has had a surprising side effect: Many female bears are giving birth to three cubs at a time instead of one or two. You can draw metaphorical guidance from this vignette as you meditate on your own life, Pisces. Is there an instinctual part of you that has become overly fond of artificial sustenance and clever but worthless confections? If so, has this caused changes in your creative expression? I'm not accusing, just asking. In any case, it's high time to give the wild woman or wild man within you some gourmet soul food.

Want to explore the coming week even further? Dig deeper? Push harder? Consider tuning in to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.

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The Doctrine of Original Sin? I spit on it. I reject it. I renounce it and annihilate it from reality. In its place I offer the Doctrine of Original Fun. This reformulation of the truth asserts that we are all born with a mandate to have as much liberating joy as possible. Present three arguments of pieces of evidence in support of the Doctrine of Original Fun.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.