Don't take your time, Aries. Move double fast and strategize from many angles, always thinking ten steps ahead. Please don't keep your hands clean, either. Play with the muck and roll in the mud and learn from the dirt. And don't you dare be measured and balanced. Instead, be an intense and relentless initiator of decisive actions. One last thing: Don't play nice and sweet. Be a holy troublemaker, a noisemaker who breaks the silence and keeps it broken.

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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It's time for the Gratitude Fest. Write thank-you notes to the creatures, both human and otherwise, that have played seminal roles in inspiring you to become yourself. Who have been your guides along the way, both the purposeful teachers and the inadvertent helpers? Who has seen you for who you really are? Who has nudged you in the direction of your fuller destiny and awakened you to your signature truths? Who has loved you very, very well?
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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 Powells.

In what areas of your life are you trying too hard? How might you be undoing your good intentions by grasping them so tightly that you've squeezed out all the juice? In what ways are you so boxed in by habitual thoughts that you're not spontaneous any more? It's a perfect moment to fix these problems, Taurus. To begin getting yourself in the mood, relax every muscle in your body -- especially your achy-breaky desire muscles -- and half-sing, half-shout an exuberant "YO!"

How much do you want to know about your destiny? How far do you dare to go? For more insight into your intriguing fate, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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Review in painstaking detail the history of your life, honoring every moment as if you were conducting a benevolent Judgment Day.
Forgive yourself of every mistake except one.
Create a royal crown for yourself out of a shower cap, rubber bands, and light bulbs.
Think of the last place on earth you'd ever want to visit, and visualize yourself having fun there.
Test to see if people are really listening to you by asserting that Karl Marx was one of the Marx Brothers.
Track down people who are impossible to love, and love them defiantly without expecting anything in return.
Steal lint from dryers in laundromats and use it to make animal sculptures for someone you admire.
Fantasize you're the child of divine parents who abandoned you when you were two days old, but who will soon be coming back to reunite with you.
Once a year, say these words into a mirror: "It's bad luck to be superstitious."
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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 Powells.

Your patron saint of the week is Beatrice Wood (1893-1998), whose association with surrealist artists and her bohemian life as a painter and actress earned her the title "The Mama of Dada." At the age of 92, she finished her autobiography, which was entitled I Shock Myself. Your first assignment, Gemini, is to do three things in the coming week about which you'll be able to say, "I shock myself." Your second assignment is to imagine that you're 92 and looking back with pride at the top ten smart things you did to shock yourself into a heightened state of awareness in the years between now and then.

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.

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You're a star—and so am I. I'm a genius—and so are you. Your success encourages my brilliance, and my charisma enhances your power. Your victory doesn't require my defeat, and vice versa. Those are the rules in the New World—quite unlike the rules in the Old World, where zero-sum games are the norm, and only one of us can win each time we play. In the New World, you don't have to play down or apologize for your prowess, because you love it when other people shine. You exult in your own excellence without regarding it as a sign of inherent superiority. As you ripen more and more of your latent aptitude, you inspire the rest of us to claim our own idiosyncratic magnificence.
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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 Powells.

Any strength can turn into a liability if it's taken too far. Any skill may lead you astray if expressing it becomes a compulsive habit that distracts you from responding authentically to the raw truth of the moment. That's why every now and then I have to advise you (and me, too, since I'm a Crab) not to nurture the hell out of everyone, even though it comes naturally to you. This is one of those times. Please suppress any urges you might have to take care of everyone except yourself. In the coming week, your duty is to be your own mommy and daddy.

Want more clues? Need further insight? For more evocative questions and pithy suggestions about your destiny, check out your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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"If you bring forth the genius within you," said Jesus in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, "it will free you. If you do not bring forth the genius within you, it will destroy you." Is there any aspect of the genius within you that you're not bringing forth? If so, what can you do to change that?
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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 Powells.

I have extensive experience with writing in the dark. Every night for many years I have awoken in pitch blackness to write down my dreams. I also take notes while watching movies in theaters, scrawl poems on redeye plane flights while all the other passengers are sleeping, and jot down my meditations as I stroll in the hills after midnight. I recommend that you try this yourself, Leo. It's prime time to peer inward and think hard . . . to sharpen your perceptions of the invisible world . . . to gather impressions from the edgy frontier where your conscious and unconscious minds overlap.

Want to hear more about the hidden factors influencing your life? Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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Life is a vast and intricate conspiracy designed to keep us well supplied with blessings. What kind of blessings? Palatial homes, attractive lovers, lottery winnings, career success? Maybe. But just as likely: interesting surprises, unexpected challenges, gifts we hardly know what to do with, conundrums that force us to get smarter. Novelist William Vollman referred to the latter types of blessings when he said that "the most important and enjoyable thing in life is doing something that's a complicated, tricky problem for you that you don't know how to solve."
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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 Powells.

Say the following words aloud, please: "Give it to me raw!" How does it make you feel when you allow that demand to come out of your mouth? I hope it fills you with a sense of playful power. If you're in alignment with cosmic influences, "Give it to me raw!" is a pithy embodiment of your proper relationship with the world. Now try these corollary statements: "I want the full blast of purity! Don't hold anything back! Serve me up the maximum dose! I want the elixir of life, not the hors d'oeuvres! Bless me with the whole truth and nothing but! I'm in love with the flood, not the trickle!"

What blessings will life bring you? 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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At the heart of the pronoiac way of life is an apparent conundrum: You can have anything you want if you'll just ask for it in an unselfish way. The trick to making this work is to locate where your deepest ambition coincides with the greatest gift you have to give. Figure out exactly how the universe, by providing you with abundance, can improve the lot of everyone whose life you touch. Seek the fulfillment of your fondest desires in such a way that you become a fount of blessings.
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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 Powells.

My archaeologist buddy Frank is of course a devotee of the theory of evolution, but he likes to have fun being blasphemous about some of its conclusions. Recently he told me, for instance, that all the ancient bones that have ever been found and used to deduce the course of human evolution, from homo habilis to homo sapiens, would fit in the back of a pick-up truck. "Pretty slim evidence for ideas that purport to explain millions of years of history, eh?" he said mischievously. Can you identify a comparable situation in your life, Libra? Is there a fundamental assumption you're loyal to even though the data that prove it are scanty? This is a good time to gather more information and re-evaluate your assumptions.

Need a few more whacks applied to your mental blocks? 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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Push hard to get better, become smarter, grow your devotion to the truth, fuel your commitment to beauty, refine your emotional intelligence, hone your dreams, negotiate with your shadow, cure your ignorance, shed your pettiness, heighten your drive to look for the best in people, and soften your heart—even as you always accept yourself for exactly who you are with all of your so-called imperfections.
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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 Powells.

America's former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky addressed an assembly at my daughter's high school. He read from his translation of Dante's Inferno and took questions from students. After hearing Dante's description of the nether regions, one boy asked Pinsky what his personal version of hell was. The poet said that each of us creates our own hell. The fearful and negative interpretations of reality with which we infect our imaginations constitute curses that we cast on ourselves. They terrify and enslave us so thoroughly that most of the difficult outer circumstances we encounter are mild in comparison. Your next assignment, Scorpio, is to work on dissolving the hell you carry around in your own mind.

Where do you want to go? Who do you want to be? For more clues, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is composed of stories, not of atoms. The physicist Werner Heisenberg declared that the universe is made of music, not of matter. And we believe that if you habitually expose yourself to toxic stories and music, you could wind up living in the wrong universe, where it's impossible to become the gorgeous genius you were born to be. That's why we implore you to nourish yourself with delicious, nutritious tales and tunes that inspire you to exercise your willpower for your highest good.

Astrologer Caroline Casey offers an apt metaphor to illustrate how crucial it is for us to hear and read good stories. She notes that if we don't have enough of the normal, healthy kind of iodine in our bodies, we absorb radioactive iodine, which has entered the food chain through nuclear test explosions conducted in the atmosphere. Similarly, unless we fill ourselves up with stories that invigorate us, we're more susceptible to sopping up the poisonous, degenerative narratives.
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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 Powells.

There used to be a store outside of Boston called Venus Envy. It sold sexy religious supplies and holy sex toys. I wish there was a place like that near you, because you're in a phase that's ideal for learning more about erotic spirituality. In lieu of that, here are other ways you could milk the opportunities. (1) Read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, in which she gives vivid accounts of her ecstatic communion with divine beings. (2) Invoke the wild intelligence that rises up in you when you're infatuated with a romantic partner, then redirect that feeling toward the entire world. (3) Pray while you're making love and make love while you pray.

Do you want further explorations of the intriguing twists and turns of your personal evolution? Check out your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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With the authority vested in me by the little voice in my head, I'm pleased to give you permission to add another job title to your résumé: prophet.

Am I being ironic? Only partially. The truth is, you generate numerous predictions every day. The source is your imagination, which tirelessly churns out visions of what you'll be doing in the future. The featured oracle of the moment may be as simple as a psychic impression of yourself devouring a fudge brownie in an hour or as monumental as a fantasy of building your dream home in Hawaii.

Your imagination is a treasure when it spins out scenarios that are aligned with your deepest desires. Indeed, it's an indispensable tool in creating the life you want; it's what you use to form images of the conditions you'd like to inhabit and the objects you hope to wield. Nothing manifests on the material plane unless it first exists as a mental picture.

But for most of us, the imagination is as much a curse as a blessing. You're just as likely to use it to conjure up premonitions that are at odds with your conscious values. Fearful fantasies regularly pop up, many disguising themselves as rational thoughts and genuine intuitions. They may hijack your psychic energy, directing it to exhaust itself in dead-end meditations.

Meanwhile, ill-suited longings are also lurking in your unconscious mind, impelling you to want things that aren't good for you and that you don't really need. Anytime you surrender to their allure, your imagination is practicing a form of black magic.

These are the imagination's unsavory aspects, which Zen Buddhists describe as the chatter of the "monkey mind." If you can stop locating your sense of self in the endless surge of its slapdash fantasies, only then might you be able to be here now and want what you actually have.

But whether your imagination is in service to your noble desires or in the thrall of compulsive fears and inappropriate yearnings, there is one commonality: Its prophecies can be pretty accurate. Many of your visions of the future do come to pass. The situations you expect to occur and the experiences you rehearse and dwell on are often reflected back to you as events that confirm your expectations.

Does that mean our mental projections create the future? Let's consider that possibility. What if it's at least partially true that what we expect will happen does tend to materialize? Here's the logical conclusion: It's downright stupid and self-destructive to keep infecting our imaginations with pictures of loss and failure, doom and gloom, fear and loathing. The far more sensible approach is to expect blessings
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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 Powells.

"Women are much more willing to talk about both their disasters and delights than men," says poet and workshop leader Robert Bly. I hope that you men refute his assertion in the coming week, because it'll be a favorable time for Capricorns of all genders to spend quality time testifying and singing and wondering about the most vivid experiences from your past. You're liable to attract a variety of blessings if you come to new understandings about your disasters and delights. The best way to do that is to revisit them and revision them with fresh language.

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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Evil is boring. The universe is friendly. Life is on your side. Joy is your birthright.
Cynicism is idiotic. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy. In fact, all of creation wants you to succeed.
Act as if the universe is a prodigious miracle created for your amusement and illumination. Assume that secret helpers are working behind the scenes to assist you in turning into the gorgeous masterpiece you were born to be. Retrain your senses and intellect so you're able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.
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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 Powells.

Are we being sentimentally unscientific when we refer to the heart as the seat of the soul? Or does that idea contain a truth that surpasses reductive rationalism? In A Dictionary of Symbols, J.E. Cirlot reports that in the Jewish tradition, meditation involves "speaking to one's heart." According to Christian tradition, the Kingdom of God resides in the heart. Hindus say the supreme god Brahma lives there, and in Islam, the heart is referred to as the throne of God. If you can get your modern prejudices out of the way, Aquarius, your next assignment is to have a sustained, intimate, heart-to-heart communion with your heart. Learn more about its secret thoughts. Converse with it as if it were the literal source of your emotional intelligence. Proceed on the hypothesis, as French philosopher Pascal did, that "great thoughts come from the heart."

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

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If I ever produce a self-help manual called The Reverse Psychology of Getting Everything You Want, it will discuss the following paradoxes:
     a. People are more willing to accommodate your longings if you're not greedy or grasping.
     b. A good way to achieve your desires is to cultivate the feeling that you've already achieved them.
     c. Whatever you're longing for has been changed by your pursuit of it. It's not the same as it was when you felt the first pangs of desire. In order to make it yours, then, you will have to modify your ideas about it.
     d. Be careful what you wish for because if your wish does materialize it will require you to change in ways you didn't foresee.

     Review your own life and identify experiences that exemplify these four principles.
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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 Powells.

"Dear Rob: I appreciate your help in cueing us in to the mysterious workings of our unconscious minds. I describe what you do not so much as reading the planets to predict our future. Rather, you conspire with us to expose and then overcome what we're hiding or repressing or fearing. It's often a daunting task, but I love it! -Ever-Braver Pisces." Dear Ever-Braver: I believe the upcoming weeks will be a Golden Age in your tribe's efforts to expose and then overcome what you're hiding or repressing or fearing. I expect that you'll break up the artificial dam that has been clogging up your imaginative flow, thereby unleashing a flood of creativity.

What greater adventure is there than exploring the enigmas of your unique destiny? For more hints, listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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When you're an aspiring master of pronoia, you see the cracks in the facades as opportunities; inspiration erupts as you careen over bumps in the road; you love the enticing magic that flows from situations that other people regard as rough or crooked. "That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal," wrote poet Charles Baudelaire, "from which it follows that irregularity—that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment—is an essential part and characteristic of beauty."
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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 Powells.