In recent years, groups of students at Yale and other Ivy League universities have pioneered a unique cultural trend: naked parties. Those in attendance at one of these invitation-only affairs agree to spend the evening in their birthday suits. "The dynamic is completely different from a clothed party," reports Yale coed Megan Crandell, quoted in The Scotsman. "People are so conscious of how they're coming across that conversations end up being more sophisticated." Your assignment, Aries--should you choose to accept it--is to bring the phenomenon of the naked party to your own locale. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you're meant to be a social catalyst who inspires people to strip away their defenses and practice the art of radical authenticity.

You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2007. Each report in the three-part series is about 6-8 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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If you've ever watched The Simpsons TV show, you've probably heard Homer Simpson's favorite toast. "To alcohol," he proclaims, "the cause of and solution to all of life's problems." My own salute is different. "To the Divine Trickster formerly known as God," I say, "the cause of and solution to all of life's problems." Compose a prayer in which you simultaneously curse and thank the Primal Source.
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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.

Your web of allies is a crucial part of your pursuit of happiness. The stimulation and support you ask them for are vivid evidence that you love life and have a strong sense of what's good for you. Every now and then, however, you need to remember that it's important to avoid falling completely under their influence. You've got to resist peer pressure, and declare your independence from the crowd's power to shape you. Now is such a time, Taurus.

You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2007. Each report in the three-part series is about 6-8 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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You are a metropolis of 50 trillion citizens, says biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton. Each of the cells in your body can be considered a sentient being in its own right. They all act together as a community, performing an ongoing act of prodigious collaboration.
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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.

"Never eat food you did not prepare yourself," wrote journalist David Filipov about the lessons he learned while traveling in the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan, "and never eat out of the same dish as 12 paramilitary stormtroopers you've just met." Draw inspiration from Filipov's approach, Gemini. Dare yourself to explore an exotic frontier, but exercise great discrimination while you're learning the ropes and getting the lay of the land.

You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2007. Each report in the three-part series is about 6-8 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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Thousands of amazing, inexplicable, wondrous, and even supernatural events occur every day. And yet most are unreported by the media. The few that are cited are ridiculed. Why? Here's one possible reason: The people most likely to believe in miracles are superstitious, uneducated, and prone to having a blind, literalist faith in their religions' myths. Those who are least likely to believe in miracles are skilled at analytical thought, well-educated, and yet prone to having a blind, literalist faith in the ideology of materialism, which dogmatically asserts that the universe consists entirely of things that can be perceived by the five human senses or detected by instruments that scientists have thus far invented.

The media is largely composed of people from the second group. It's virtually impossible for them to admit to the possibility of miracles, let alone experience them. If anyone from this group manages to escape peer pressure and cultivate a receptivity to miracles, it's because they have successfully fought against being demoralized by the unsophisticated way miracles are framed by the first group.

At the Beauty and Truth Laboratory we're immune to the double-barreled ignorance. When we behold astonishing synchronicities and numinous breakthroughs that seem to violate natural law, we're willing to consider the possibility that our understanding of natural law is too narrow. And yet we also refrain from lapsing into irrational gullibility; we actively seek mundane explanations for apparent miracles.
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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's Be Your Own Muse Week, Cancerian. How should you observe this festival? Here's one suggestion. First, visualize in detail your dream lover . . . your ideal soul mate . . . the embodiment of everything you find attractive. Second, imagine that though this person feels the same way about you, there is a very good reason why the two of you can't make love or be together as a couple for a long time. Next, feel the sweet torment of your unquenched longing for each other, the impossible ache of fiery tenderness. Finally, picture all the ways you will work on yourself in the coming years to refine your soul and perfect your love, so that when the two of you can finally be united, you will have made yourself into a gorgeous genius--a pure blessing and exquisite gift for your beloved.

You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2007. Each report in the three-part series is about 6-8 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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You Are Almost Everything

You taste delicious

Animals understand you

Your importance is unusual

The funny faces you make are interesting to look at

You fight for power in all the right ways

Gratitude pours out of you

You have strong feet

No one can overflow as well as you can

You are famous with God

A lost tribe salutes you from the other side of the veil

You belong to yourself
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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.

Chinese scientists have discovered that the behavior of snakes is a reliable predictor of earthquakes. In the lead-up to a temblor, the reptiles act oddly, slithering frantically out of their nests if they're in their natural habitat, or hurling themselves head-first against walls if they're being kept in laboratories or zoos. I mention this, Leo, because I've had two dreams recently about snakes wearing party hats, sipping cocktails, singing karaoke, and dancing on tabletops. Each dream also featured several of my Leo friends acting pretty much like the snakes. If I factor in these nocturnal portents with my analysis of the current astrological omens, I interpret them as prophecies that the Leo tribe will soon be experiencing metaphorical "earthquakes" of liberating pleasure and cathartic fun.

You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2007. Each report in the three-part series is about 6-8 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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The 17th-century surgeon Wilhelm Hilden had an interesting theory about healing. He developed a medicinal salve that he applied not to the wound itself but rather to the weapon that inflicted it. Though today we may sneer at such foolishness, the fact is that Hilden's approach has great potential if used for psychic wounds. Jesus understood this when he articulated the revolutionary formula, "Love your enemy." More than any other action, this strategy has the power to cure you of the distortions your enemy has unleashed in you. Try it out
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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.

The swan is a beautiful bird, right? If you see one gliding across a pond, it evokes in you a feeling of calm. In fairy tales, it's a symbol of natural grace, an emblem of animal elegance. But those lovely associations are becoming irrelevant in England, where swan populations have grown so massive and voracious that they're threatening ecosystems and damaging biodiversity. I guess we could say that their destructive overabundance exemplifies the theme of too much of a good thing. It's an apt metaphor for the challenge I believe you'll face in the coming days, Virgo.

You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2007. Each report in the three-part series is about 6-8 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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The English language is in a state of rapid ferment. New words are barging into the dictionary at an unprecedented rate, even as old familiars fall into disuse. There's one exception to this trend: profanity. Hoary favorites like "fuck," "shit," and "asshole" have gained an acceptance unthinkable 30 years ago, but fresh curse words are rarely coined.

At the Beauty and Truth Lab, we find the overused classics inadequate for expressing our evolving rage at injustice, ignorance, and ugliness. Furthermore, as deadening clichés, they don't satisfy the pronoiac mandate to use language with sonorous precision.

There's another problem. Anger has become one of the trendiest emotions of all. In moderation it can be a righteous force for constructive change. But its hackneyed omnipresence means the vast majority of its outbreaks are trivial. The paucity of colorful obscenities is aggravated by an abundance of frivolous fury.

How can you purge the clichéd ire that dilutes the useful, inspired stuff? One good method is to make fun of it by expressing it bigger than life. Try this. Go alone to a place where it's safe to feel blind rage. Envision a person or thing you love to hate, then unleash the following mantra 15 times in the most vulgar tones possible: "You miasmic heap of shaved-off cemetery warts. You mangled preen of politicians' tongue scabs. You brackish tripe of experts' ego tinkles. You fragile crap of orphaned tyrants. You demented cluster of fickle weasel vows. You curdled slosh of rotting fracas-spawned opinions."
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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.

You recently went through a phase whose quality I might compare to a dry, crunchy, bran-heavy breakfast cereal without milk. It fed your hunger, though it wasn't particularly tasty or thrilling. It was highly concentrated and good for your digestion. Now you're slipping into a kind of Cracker Jack mode, with lots of airy puffs of popcorny sweetness and an occasional nut, climaxed by a toy surprise. The Cracker Jack phase will be more like a snack than a meal, though, and it won't last too long. By next week at this time, I'm guessing your life will have resemblances to a hearty, organic, five-grain hot cereal sweetened with maple syrup and cinnamon.

You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2007. Each report in the three-part series is about 6-8 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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In order to live, you've got to be a demolisher. You take plants and animals that were once alive and rip them apart with your teeth, then disintegrate them in your digestive system.

Your body is literally on fire inside, burning up the oxygen you suck into your lungs.

You didn't actually cut down the trees used to make your house and furniture, but you colluded with their demise.

Then there's the psychological liquidation you've done: killing off old beliefs you've outgrown, for instance.

I'm not trying to make you feel guilty—just pointing out that you have a lot of experience with positive expressions of destruction.

Can you think of other forms this magic takes? As an aspiring master of pronoia, it's one of your specialties--a talent you have a duty to wield with energetic grace.
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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.

Don't feel bad if you come from a dysfunctional family. Studies done by The Institute for the Study of Universal Addiction indicate that 97 percent of all families are dysfunctional. You should, however, feel bad if you pass up the opportunities you now have to heal the ravages caused by your dysfunctional family. Here's a good place to start: By trying to dissolve your habit of feeling victimized, damaged, or burdened by the people with whom you shared your original home, you could release yourself from a curse you've been casting on yourself--and magically set in motion overdue changes in your other family members.

You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2007. Each report in the three-part series is about 6-8 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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Cancer cells are constantly developing in our bodies. Luckily, our immune systems routinely kill them off. Similarly, our minds always harbor pockets of crazy-making misconceptions and faulty imprints. They usually don't rise up and render us insane thanks to the psychic versions of our immune systems.

How can you stay strong in your ability to fight off sickness and madness? You know the drill: Eat healthy food, sleep well, get physical exercise, minimize stress, give and receive love. But as an aspiring pronoiac, you have at your disposal other actions that can provide powerful boosts to your immune system. Here are examples:

Scheme to put yourself in the path of beautiful landscapes, buildings, art, and creatures.

Exercise your imagination regularly. Get in the habit of feeding your mind's eye images that fill you with wonder and vitality.

Eliminate uhs, you knows, I means, and other junk words from your speech. Avoid saying things you don't really mean and haven't thought out. Stop yourself when tempted to make scornful assertions about people.

Every night before you fall asleep, review the day's activities in your mind's eye. As if watching a movie about yourself, try to be calmly objective as you observe your memories from the previous 16 hours. Be especially alert for moments when you strayed from your purpose and didn't live up to your highest standards.

With a companion, sit in front of a turned-off TV as you make up a pronoiac story that features tricky benevolence, scintillating harmony, and amusing redemption. Speak this tale aloud or write it down.

Take on an additional job title, beautifier. Put it on your business card and do something every day to cultivate your skill. If you're a people person, bring grace and intrigue into your conversations; ask unexpected questions that provoke original thoughts. If you're an artist, leave samples of your finest work in public places. If you're a psychologist or sociologist, point out the institutions and relationships that are working really well. Whatever you do best, be alert for how you can refine it and offer it up to those who'll benefit from it.

If you're going through a phase when you feel you have nothing especially beautiful to offer, or if you think it would be self-indulgent to inject your own aesthetic into shared environments, turn for help to great artists and thinkers. Sneak O'Keeffe or Chagall prints onto unadorned walls in public places, for instance. Memorize poems by Rilke and Hafiz, and slip them into your conversations when appropriate. Program your cell phone so that its ring is Vivaldi's Stabat Mater in C Minor. Scrawl passages from Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk on the walls of public lavatories.
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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.

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person," observed Oscar Wilde. "Give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth." Using that as our hypothesis, Sagittarius, I urge you to adopt playful disguises to help you express yourself this week. You could go to a costume store and buy a mask of one of history's great communicators. (How about Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, or Eleanor Roosevelt?) Or you could simply pretend to be a slightly different person than your normal self. Speak in a foreign accent. Take on the body language of a hip-hop artist or professional wrestler. Or imagine that you're already the person you'll be three years from today.

You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2007. Each report in the three-part series is about 6-8 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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The Shinto monks of Iso, Japan, have a curious custom. Every 20 years since the year 772, they've dismantled their central shrine and rebuilt it from scratch. In so doing, they pass down the knowledge of their sacred construction techniques from generation to generation. It's also an effective way for the monks to participate eagerly in the transitoriness of life, rather than merely being resigned to it. They practice the art of death and rebirth not just in meditation but through a practical long-term ritual.

Can you think of an analogous custom you might create for your personal use?
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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.

My analysis of the astrological omens suggests that you'll be more animalistic than usual in the coming weeks. Your instinctual intelligence will be high, which means you'll have a good sense of who to trust and who not to trust. In fact, your body will be offering you a stream of valuable information about other matters as well, from tips on how to rise higher in the pecking order to clues about where to find the best hunting grounds. It's also likely that you'll be hornier and wilder than usual. That could be quite fun or it could get you into trouble. Which way it goes will depend on how well the human in you both respects and controls the animal in you.

You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2007. Each report in the three-part series is about 6-8 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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Oceans are not exactly teeming with life. In fact, they're mostly barren, and could rightly be called "wet deserts." Likewise, not all your emotions, even those that come in floods, are fertile. Some are automatic reactions that have discharged thousands of times since they were first programmed into you many years ago. They're mechanical, not organic. They became fixtures when you were a very different person than you are now. Identify these.
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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.

The cosmic powers-that-be are encouraging you to be a brazen instigator of novelty, a pioneering magician who dares to initiate inspired trends that may upset the status quo. If you can summon the charismatic nerve to cooperate with this prod, Aquarius, there's no telling what drastic acts of benevolent disruption you could conjure up. And they would ultimately lead, I have little doubt, to constructive innovations. (P.S. Would you believe me if I told you that a previously dormant section of your genetic code is primed to spring into action?)

You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2007. Each report in the three-part series is about 6-8 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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Celebrate Unhappy Hour at least once a month. During this ritual blowout, you have license to complain and rant about everything that's driving you crazy. Get a sympathetic listener to be your receptacle or deliver your blast straight into the mirror. If you prefer, write it all down. One way or another, grouse nonstop about your secret shame, raw sorrow, bottomless wrath, unspeakable guilt, and unnerving twists of destiny. Feel free to unleash guttural moans or rueful cackles.

If performed regularly, Unhappy Hour serves as an exorcism that empties you of psychic toxins. Pronoia will then have a chance to flourish as you luxuriate more frequently in rosy moods and broad-minded visions.
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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.

In her book Frankenstein, Mary Shelley created a monster who was smart and sensitive. He felt empathetic pain for the suffering of Native Americans. He desperately wanted a mate. He read Milton's Paradise Lost, and felt a grieving kinship with the struggles of Adam depicted therein. In accordance with current astrological omens, Pisces, I encourage you to acknowledge and express love for your own inner Frankenstein monster--the tormented, disfigured, and yet powerful part of your psyche that needs your compassion. I'm sure that this will prevent it from doing what Shelley's fictional character ultimately did, which was to go on a rampage--and will maybe even set it on a course to become a force for good.

You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2007. Each report in the three-part series is about 6-8 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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Yua is a term the Yupiit people of Alaska use for the spirit that inhabits all things, both animate and inanimate. A rock, for instance, has as much yua as a caribou, spruce tree, or human being, and therefore merits the same measure of compassion. If a Yupiit goes out for a hike and spies a chunk of wood lying on a frozen river bank, she might pick it up and put it in a new position, allowing its previously hidden side to get fresh air and sun. In this way, she would bestow a blessing on the wood's yua. (Source: Earl Shorris, "The Last Word," Harper's, August 2000)
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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.