"Dear Rob: Have your apprentices been composing your column lately? Or have you outsourced the writing to Vedic fortune-tellers in Calcutta? The horoscopes just don't sound like you. They're, I don't know, goofier or something. Have you been smoking more dope than usual? - Lonely for the Old Rob." Dear Lonely: I always write every horoscope, and I never take drugs. In fact, I think it's YOU that have changed. Many of you Aries have been so deeply immersed in mutation lately that you don't realize how much you've mutated. You assume everyone around you is different only because you don't know how different you've become.

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 HOROSCOPES

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Beauty and Truth Laboratory researcher Firenze Matisse traveled to Antarctica. On the first day, the guide took him and his group to a remote area and left them alone for an hour to commune with the pristine air and unearthly stillness. After a while, a penguin ambled up and launched into a ceremonial display of squawks and stretches. Firenze responded with recitals of his favorite memorized poems, imagining he was "engaged in a conversation with eternity." Halfway through his inspired performance of Thich Nhat Hanh's "Please Call Me by My True Names," the penguin sent a stream of green projectile vomit cascading against his chest, and shuffled away.

Though Firenze initially felt deflated by eternity's surprise, no harm was done. He soon came to see it as a first-class cosmic joke, and looked forward to exploiting its value as an amusing story with which to regale his friends back home.

Beauty and Truth Laboratory researcher Michael Logan was the first person to hear Firenze's tale upon his return from Antarctica. "You might want to consider this, Firenze," Michael mused after taking it all in. "Penguins nurture their offspring by chewing food—mixing it up with all God's enzymes—and then vomiting it into the mouths of the penguin babies. Perhaps you weren't the butt of a cosmic joke or some Linda Blair-esque bad review, but in fact the recipient of a very precious gift of love. Who knows?"

Now Firenze has two punch lines for his tale of redemptive pronoia.
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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 am in continuous pursuit of the color red," says artist Andy Goldsworthy, whose specialty is creating large outdoor sculptures made of natural objects. "As I approach the source of the color red, the more I understand it." That's why he's so fond of red rocks, whose hue comes from iron, the same element that makes our blood red. Your next assignment, Taurus, is to develop a more intimate and expansive relationship with red. Color therapists say that it inspires vigor, zeal, determination, and primordial longing. But don't just let the experts define your connection with red. Find your own meanings, too.

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 HOROSCOPES

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Quoting geneticists, Guy Murchie says we're all family. You have at least a million relatives as close as tenth cousin, and no one on Earth is any farther removed than your 50th cousin.

Murchie also describes our kinship through an analysis of how deeply we share the air. With each breath, you take into your body 10 sextillion atoms, and--owing to the wind's ceaseless circulation--over a year's time you have intimate relations with oxygen molecules exhaled by every person alive, as well as by everyone who ever lived. Right now you may be carrying atoms that were once inside the lungs of Malcolm X, Christopher Columbus, Joan of Arc, and Cleopatra.
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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 his poem "The Two Trees," William Butler Yeats says that one tree is holy and grows within the heart. Its branches and trembling flowers thrive on joy. The changing colors of its fruit please the stars, and its leaves give the waves their melody. The second tree has broken boughs and blackened leaves, and is full of "the ravens of unresting thought." I bring this to your attention, Gemini, because in the coming week it really is up to you and your free will which of these two trees you spend most of your time with. The astrological configurations have nothing to say on that matter.

Want to explore the coming week even further? Dig deeper? Push harder? Consider tuning in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

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You're like an arrow in flight. You're a half-cooked feast, the fifth month of pregnancy, the week before a big election. Have you ever mastered a second language? You resemble the time right before fluency arrives.
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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.

If you cooperate with the cosmic rhythms in the coming weeks, they will stimulate some interesting changes in the way your brain works. Here are a few of the developments you can expect: a five-point rise in your IQ; a boost in your ability to solve puzzles; a growing knack for heading off bad moods before they even erupt; a sixth sense for distinguishing between what people say they're doing and what they're actually doing; and a dramatic improvement in your ability to know what you don't want.

Need more help with your riddles? Crave more support in your efforts to build your courage? Check out you EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

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At a concert in California, devotional singer Krishna Das told a story of escorting his revered teachers, a frail old Indian couple, to an acupuncturist in New York. They had to walk through a neighborhood dominated by strip clubs, prostitutes, and drug dealers. Every few feet, a new salesperson approached with an offer of crack, weed, crank, or sexual adventures.

Krishna Das worried about subjecting his beloved guides to such a degrading experience, but they were unfazed. "This is heaven," said the woman. When a surprised Krishna Das asked what she meant, she replied, "Heaven is any place where one's needs can be met."
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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.

Leo writer J.K. Rowling is the second-richest woman entertainer in the world because of her seven best-selling novels about Harry Potter. It wasn't easy for her in the beginning, however. Her first book in the series was rejected by eight publishers before Bloomsbury decided to risk it. I nominate Rowling to be your inspirational role model for the rest of 2007, Leo. According to my analysis of the omens, you should be working (and playing) hard to produce an enduring creation that may take a while to make its mark.

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 HOROSCOPES

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Scientists have confirmed what we all knew: You do indeed have a little voice in your head that warns you when you're about to do something dumb. It's called the anterior cingulate cortex, according to white-coated authorities at Carnegie-Mellon University. If you're receptive to it, it's as good as having a guardian angel.

"Don't do it," the voice whispers when you're on the verge of locking your keys in your car or leaving the bar with the cute drunk you just met. "Go back," it murmurs as you start to walk away from a huge, though initially inconvenient, opportunity.
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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.

Jaeyana Beuraheng, a mother of eight, decided to travel from her small village in southern Thailand to Malaysia for a day-long shopping trip. But she accidentally boarded the wrong bus, transferred to another wrong bus, and ended up in a distant city where everyone spoke a language she didn't understand. Her money ran out, and she started begging in the streets. Accused of being an illegal immigrant, she was given shelter in a social services hostel. Years went by. Finally three people from her village visited the hostel by chance, and she was able to communicate in her native tongue. Through their assistance, she went home. The moral of the story, as far as you're concerned, is this: Whatever wrong turn you made, and however long ago it was, you're ready to go back home.

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 HOROSCOPES

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More and more creative people find they do their best work when they're feeling healthy and secure. We know writers who no longer need to be drunk or in agony in order to shed the numbness of their daily routine and tap into the full powers of their imagination. We have filmmaker friends whose best work flows not from the depths of alienated self-doubt but rather from the heights of well-earned bliss. Singer-songwriter P.J. Harvey is the patron saint of this new breed. "When I'm contented, I'm more open to receiving a lot of inspiration," she has testified. "I'm most creative when I feel safe and happy."
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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.

If you don't want to peter out with a whimper in September, you should exit with a bang as soon as possible. In another couple of weeks, you'll have to answer to fate, whereas right now fate still has to answer to you. So pull out your calendar and schedule splashy goodbyes, last laughs, and colorful climaxes that leave no room for misinterpretation. Give going-away gifts to part-time nemeses so that they can't possibly go away mad. And make sure that the Day of Reckoning happens on your home turf.

Got enough clues to chew on for a while? If you need more, give yourself the luxury of your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

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What causes happiness? Brainstorm at length about this question. Map out the foundations of your own personal science of happiness. Get serious about defining what makes you feel good. To get you started, I will list a few experiences that might possibly arouse your deepest gratification: physical pleasure; seeking the truth; being a good person; contemplating the meaning of life; enjoying the fruits of your accomplishments; escaping your routine; purging pent-up emotion. Do any of these work for you? Name at least ten more.
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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.

Physicist John Cramer has made progress in his research into the feasibility of time travel. But he can't take his work to its next phase without an infusion of $20,000. You might want to consider donating, Scorpio. If you did, and he managed to perfect time travel in his future experiments, you'd no doubt be high on the priority list to use the new technology. And that means you could go back and correct for the wrong turn you made in April, which I'd really like to see you do. If you don't have the inclination to contribute to Cramer's research, at least try this alternative: Go to each person affected by your deviation and make a thoughtful attempt at atonement and correction.

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 HOROSCOPES

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Go to the ugliest or most forlorn place you know--a drugstore parking lot, the front porch of a crack house, a toxic waste dump, or the place that symbolizes your secret shame--and build a shrine devoted to beauty, truth, and love.

Here are some suggestions about what to put in your shrine: a silk scarf; a smooth rock on which you've inscribed a haiku or joke with a felt-tip pen; coconut cookies or ginger candy; pumpkin seeds and an origami crane; a green kite shaped like a dragon; a music CD you love; a photo of your hero; a votive candle carved with your word of power; a rubber ducky; a bouquet of fresh beets; a print of Van Gogh's "Starry Night."
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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.

To avoid getting set in my ways, I have a policy of changing my religion regularly. I've tried every variation of all the biggies, but in recent years I've preferred creating my own. In July my chosen faith was the First Church of the Last Chance. This month it's the Tempestuous Temple of Babbling Benevolence. Given that your personal spiritual tradition is a little worn around the edges, Sagittarius, you might consider a similar approach. It's time to experiment! Whatever fresh religion you invent, I hereby name you the Chief Rabbi, High Pope, and Dalai Lama of it. (P.S. Want to borrow two of my current commandments? 1. Thou shalt serve humanity while having lot of fun. 2. Thou shalt find the hot spot in your soul where your deepest longing and wisest compassion overlap.)

Want more help in exploring the Great Mystery that is your life? I discuss your coming week in greater depth in your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

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Late at night when there's no traffic, stride down the middle of an empty road that by day is crawling with cars. Dance, careen, and sing songs that fill you with pleasurable emotions. Splay your arms triumphantly as you extemporize prayers in which you make extravagant demands and promises. Give pet names to the trees you pass, declare your admiration for the workers who made the road, and celebrate your sovereignty over a territory that usually belongs to heavy machines and their operators.
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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.

Welcome to the Season of Temporary Insanity, Capricorn. According to my analysis of the omens, your imminent immersion in lunacy, delirium, and freakiness won't hurt a bit -- and may even stir up exotic varieties of pleasure and amusement. For best results, keep the following advice bubbling and frothing in the back of your mind. (1) "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things." - Edgar Degas. (2) "Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment." – Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. (3) "All of us are crazy good in one way or another." - Yiddish saying. (4) "You are either losing your mind -- or gaining your soul." - Julia Cameron.

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 HOROSCOPES

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The sage and her student were standing by a pool discussing longing and ambition.

"What do you want more than anything else?" the sage asked.

"To perfect my ability to love all of creation the way I love myself," the young man replied.

At that moment, the sage tackled the student and shoved his head beneath the water. Accustomed to letting his teacher shape the unpredictable contours of his education, he did not resist.

One minute went by. Then another. The student began to struggle and kick. His teacher was strong.

Finally she released her grip and the student surfaced, fighting for breath.

"What did you want more than anything else during these last few minutes?" the sage inquired.

"Nothing else was in my mind except the desire for air," gasped the student.

"Excellent," beamed the sage. "As soon as you are equally single-minded in your desire to perfect your ability to love all of creation the way you love yourself, you will achieve your goal."
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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 you unsure about whether you should leap into a lasting bond with a certain numinous creature you've been fooling around with? If so, you might be interested in obtaining a Sacred Certificate of Short Duration Marriage. It's available at tinyurl.com/ypxz7y. This convenient license can provide you with the security of knowing that your commitment doesn't have to be forever. Maybe that will free you to hurl yourself headlong into the experience. It's just a suggestion, Aquarius. Do you have any other areas in your life where you'd like to achieve maximum combustion while maintaining a sense of safety and security?

Want to hear more about the hidden factors influencing your life in the coming week? Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

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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.

Mahatma Gandhi called his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth. I suggest that you give the same title to the next chapter of your own epic quest. From an astrological perspective, it's an excellent time to make the experimental pursuit of truth your top priority and greatest joy. The best way to launch the process is to exuberantly suspend all of your fixed ideas about the way the world works. Be a cheerful skeptic who loves evocative questions. Be an innocent and curious explorer who thrives on getting your mind blown by unexpected insights.

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 HOROSCOPES

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In the early years of Christianity, there were hundreds of books interpreting the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. But by 325 A.D., a group backed by the political and military might of the Roman Empire had determined which few of the stories about Christ would thereafter be considered the canonical New Testament, and which would be regarded as heretical bilge.

No better evidence exists for the saying, "History is a tale told by the victors." Keep this in mind as you strategize your way through your personal War of the Stories. Your account of events may have more truth in it than everyone else's conflicting tales, but that won't carry much weight unless you obtain the power to enforce your version.
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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.