For all we know, in your past life you were a virgin who was thrown into a volcano to appease a fire deity. But whether or not that's an actual fact, we can say this with certainty: At some time in your current life, you made a great sacrifice in an effort to pacify a person whose anger or violence or manipulativeness you were intimidated by. Now I say unto you, Aries, that it's an excellent time to fix any distortions that were unleashed in your life because of that sacrifice. You've got the personal power and insight you need to set the healing in motion. Halloween costume suggestions: the mythical phoenix; a virgin-turned-warrior carrying the severed head of the fire deity; a fireman, firewoman, or firedancer.

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

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
The "Kumulipo" is an old Hawaiian prayer chant that poetically describes the creation of the world. The word literally means "beginning-in-deep-darkness." Here darkness doesn't connote gloom and evil. Rather, it's about the inscrutability of the embryonic state; the obscure chaos that reigns before germination. Talk about the last time you dwelt in kumulipo.
*
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.

"Empathy is the most radical of human emotions," says activist Gloria Steinem. What does she mean by "radical"? I think the word implies audacity, fierceness, and extreme courage. It connotes a revolt against the status quo, a transcendence of what's normal and habitual. And that's exactly the spirit I hope you bring to your expression of empathy in the near future, Taurus. To enjoy life to the fullest, you should marshal an extravagant ability to feel what others are feeling. Halloween costume suggestions: Be a mirror, a psychotherapist, a giant ear, or a sponge.

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

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Imagine that you have been relieved of your responsibilities for a given time. They will be taken care of by people you trust. You won't have to work to make money during this grace period, but will be given all you need. Nor will you have to clean your house, wash your clothes, or buy and make your food. Now here's the big question: What will you do now that you are free to do anything you like?
*
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 writer friend Jeff Greenwald is looking for a publisher for his book Fifty Ways to Leave Your Comfort Zone. I think it's a great concept, which is why I'm surprised that some of Jeff's colleagues discouraged him from using that title. "At this tormented moment in history," said one person, "the last thing anyone wants to hear is how to do what's inconvenient and nerve-wracking." To be true to your current omens, however, that's exactly the advice I'm duty-bound to offer you, Gemini. The most interesting pleasures you can generate in the next few weeks will come from leaving your comfort zone. Halloween costume suggestion: whoever is least like you in the whole world.

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

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
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.
*
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.

Spiritual teacher A.H. Almaas believes that a genuinely creative act is always motivated by generosity. If that's true, how do you explain all the ego-obsessed "geniuses" who treat everyone like dirt even as they churn out their supposedly brilliant art? In any case, I'm siding with Almaas' definition, and I advise you to keep it in mind now that you're in the most imaginative and self-expressive phase of your astrological cycle. To ensure that your creative juices keep flowing in ways that make you feel really good, dedicate them to spreading inspiration and giving gifts. Halloween costume suggestions: a pregnant painter, a flower exuding bursts of pollen, a sexy midwife.

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

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
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.

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.

Meditate on how one of the symbols of plenitude in Nepal is a mongoose vomiting jewels.

Once a year on the night before your birthday, say these words into a mirror: “It’s bad luck to be superstitious.”

Start a club whose purpose is to produce an archive of controversial jokes and obscene limericks about beauty, truth, and love.
*
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 visit the Polish village of Szymbark, you'll find an upside-down house. Philanthropist Daniel Czaplewski hired a team of construction workers to build it in the reverse position with meticulous detail. The floor is above you, with all the furniture hanging down, and the ceiling is what you walk on. I urge you to make this place your power symbol in the coming weeks, Leo. Use it to inspire you as you experiment with changing your home around every which way. Dare to be crazy, wise, and funny as you rearrange, reinvent, and renovate the domestic vibes. Halloween costume suggestion: an upside-down house. (See a news story on the place.)

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

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
I was never the class clown. I am not a troubled but devilishly handsome wastrel living on a trust fund. I've never beaten up anyone, have steadfastly not aspired to write like Raymond Carver, and have never played strip Scrabble with a celebrity junkie on a leaky waterbed in a Key West penthouse. There are so many things I am not and will never be, and I'm glad I know about them. It helps me stay focused on exactly who I am. What about you? Who aren't you? Fantasize about all the paths you will never take. Put it in writing.
*
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.

Writing in the L.A. Times, Rosa Brooks bemoaned the budgetary cuts that have caused the mass firings of reporters at many major newspapers. This sad development means there are "fewer persistent, nosy people with a mandate to wander around the world asking questions." Whatever you do in the coming weeks cannot single-handedly fix this problem, of course. But it will be your astrological mandate to be a persistent, nosy person wandering around asking questions. Halloween costume suggestions: journalist, spy, muckraker, whistleblower.

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

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
"Is it bad to live without a hell?" poet Pablo Neruda asks in The Book of Questions. Let's add these queries to his: Is it dangerous to live without an enemy? Is it naive to think you can achieve great success without the driving motivation that comes from having ideas you hate? There are thousands of correct answers to these questions. What are yours?

Consider the issue from another angle. Dentists love tooth decay. Treating cavities provides them with a steady source of income. Likewise, exterminators are dependent on termites, lawyers need crimes, and priests are hungry for sinners. Lots of people have symbiotic connections with nasty stuff. In fact, isn't it true that most of us nurture our feelings for the things we love to despise and fear?

What's your favorite poison or adversary? Assume that your exposure to pronoia is changing you in ways that will require you to update your relationship with it. Speculate on how you'll go about this task.
*
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.

A survey of Russians revealed their thoughts about the best ways to get rich. A third of them said that stealing is most effective, whether that comes in the form of embezzlement, fraud, extortion, or plain old larceny. I don't recommend that approach to you, Libra, even though you're in an astrological phase that's favorable for increasing your wealth. Instead, consider these strategies: working harder and smarter, expanding and deepening your web of connections, intensifying your commitment to excellence, and reading a book like Personal Finance for Dummies. Halloween costume suggestion: an impeccably styled schmooze specialist carrying a wad of big bills and a Wall Street Journal.

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

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
The factor most likely to drive us to addiction or illness is a lack of intimate contact with spirit. We all need a daily dose of vastness. Paradoxically, many of us would also benefit from more microscopic vision. Because we're so deprived of divine connection, we're half-dreaming all the time; our unconscious yearning for our eternal source makes our minds wander and saps our energy to dig in and master the gritty details that are right in front of us.

Practice seeing the little things. Gather glimpses of colors, shapes, tones, and shifts you usually ignore.
*
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.

Don't eat stale candy from a vending machine where it has sat for six months. Don't seek advice from people who haven't changed their minds about anything since the last century. And don't wear clothes you acquired before 2005 or cling to attitudes you adopted before last month. Catch my drift, Scorpio? You need to evade every influence that tends to keep you frozen in the past. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that it's time to make yourself fully available for the healthiest kind of future shock. Halloween costume suggestions: a grinning exclamation point, a rose bud about to burst open, a welcome sign, a religious devotee dressed in white.

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

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Don't make nasty comments about yourself behind your own back.

Do play soccer in bunny slippers at dawn in a supermarket parking lot with a gang of sadomasochistic stockbrokers who've promised to teach you the Balinese monkey chant.

Don't decorate your thigh with a sloppy tattoo of the devil pushing a lawn mower.

Do wear a t-shirt that says, "Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most."

Don't glide into a bar, scout around for the person whose face has the most pain etched in it, and ask that person to come home with you.

Do eat ripe organic strawberries that have been genetically modified and irradiated, and do chain-smoke Marlboros as you peddle your exercise bicycle, and do wander through a garbage dump while listening to Mozart on your iPod.

Don't get hooked on the fantasy that there are only two kinds of people, those who align themselves with the forces of light and those who align themselves with the forces of darkness.

Do start an organization called POMP (Proud Owners of Multiple Personalities), dedicated to erasing negative stereotypes about healthy non-schizophrenics who enjoy being a community of many different selves.

Don't lie on a floor surrounded by wine-stained poetry books, crumpled Matisse prints, abandoned underwear, and half-eaten bowls of corn flakes as you stare up at the ceiling with a mad gaze, muttering gibberish and waving your hands as if swatting away demons.

Do run along the tops of cars during a traffic jam, escaping from bad guys as you make your way to a helicopter that takes you to a spot hovering over an erupting volcano, into which you drop the Buns of Steel video.

Don't put your soul up for auction on the eBay website.

Do write a cookbook filled with recipes you've channeled from dead celebrities.

If you come upon a lamp with a genie in it, don't wish you had a magic wand.
*
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've been put on a pedestal by a person who admires you a little too much, it's likely you'll have to climb down from that pedestal in the coming weeks. If you've been floating up in the clouds, it's time to get your feet on the ground. In fact, Sagittarius, if there's any way in which you've been too high and mighty, too far outside and beyond, you'd be wise to leave it behind in favor of a more down-to-earth perspective. This is very good news, by the way. After an initial jolt, life will be more interesting and people will become more helpful. Halloween costume suggestions: an angel coming down a ladder, a parachutist, a celebrity drunk in rehab.

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

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Every fundamentalist divides the world into two camps, those who agree with him and like him and help him, and those who don't. There is only one right way to interpret the world—according to the ideas the fundamentalist believes to be true—and a million wrong ways.

The fundamental attitude of all fundamentalists is to take everything way too seriously and too personally and too literally. Imagination is a sin and a crime. Correct belief is the only virtue. Every fundamentalist is committed to waging war against the imagination unless the imagination is enslaved to his or her belief system.

And here's the bad news: Like almost everyone in the world, each of us has our own share of the fundamentalist virus. It may not be as dangerous to the collective welfare as, say, the fundamentalism of Islamic terrorists or Christian politicians or CEOs who act as if making a financial profit is the supreme good or scientists who deny the existence of the 96 percent of reality imperceptible to the five senses. Our fundamentalism is not as virulent as theirs.

But still: We are infected, you and I, with fundamentalism. What are we going to do about it?

I say we practice taking everything less seriously and less personally and less literally.
*
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.

A 12-year-old sea lion at the Pittsburgh zoo has taken up painting. Maggie's trainer had to coax her at first, but now she truly enjoys swabbing canvases with paint-soaked brushes. Let's make her your inspirational role model, Capricorn. It's an excellent time to cultivate and refine your instinctual nature . . . to teach your inner animal new tricks . . . to bring more conscious intention to things that come second-nature. Halloween costume suggestion: the creature you'd be if you weren't human.

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

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Every act of genius, Carl Jung said, is an act contra naturam: against nature. Indeed, every effort to achieve psychological integration and union with the divine requires a knack for working against the grain. The 18th-century mystic Jacob Boehme recommended the same technique. The great secret to becoming enlightened, he said, is "to walk in all things contrary to the world." Qabalist teacher Paul Foster Case agreed: "The basis of the spiritual approach to life, the foundation of the everyday practice of a person who lives the life of obedience to esoteric law, is the reversal of the more usual ways of thinking, speaking and doing."

Name the ways you already use this approach, and brainstorm about others you might like to try.
*
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.

A 30-foot-high shaft of concrete draped in straw sprouts from an altar at an amusement park in Changchun, China. According to the China Folk Culture Association, this phallic symbol celebrates "our ancestors' pursuit of happiness and prosperity." Even if you're a lesbian, I suggest you make a comparable tribute to divine virility, Aquarius. Perform a ritual to tap into the archetypal energy of the Wild Man. Make or buy a lucky talisman that will inspire the full bloom of your martial exuberance and primal will. Halloween costume suggestions: Dionysus, Pan, a shamanatrix with a strap-on, a transgender magician with a huge wand.

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

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
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."
*
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.

Bending the rules of the game? Blowing off the expectations of the pack? Circumventing the conventions of the way it's always been done? Good work, Pisces. But why stop there? How about if you invoke an outrageous spiritual truth so you can suspend a humdrum old law of nature or two? After all, lyrical transgression is your specialty these days. It's one of those rare times when your "sins" are likely to be so sublimely necessary that they will generate no bad karma. Halloween costume suggestion: Blend a deity with a superhero, like Buddha and Spiderman, or the goddess Athena and Storm from X-Men, or Jesus and Neo from The Matrix.

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

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Have you ever had permission to indulge in a marathon of braggadocio? Have you ever gotten an invitation to bluster on endlessly about your own charms without feeling even a touch of guilt or inhibition? I hereby grant you such a license right now.

When you're ready, carry out the exercise called Brag Therapy. Grab a good listener or a recording device, and boast extravagantly about yourself for at least 20 minutes. Expound in exhaustive detail why you're so wonderful and why the world would be a better place if everyone would just act more like you.

Don't be humble or cautious. Go too far. Heap extreme glory on yourself. Brazenly proclaim the fabulous qualities about you that no one has ever fully articulated or appreciated. Don't forget to extol the prodigious flaws and vices that make you so special.

What does this have to do with pronoia? When you audaciously identify your existing gifts, you set yourself up to become a magnet for even greater abundance. In fact, we recommend that you treat yourself to a Brag Therapy session regularly.

To whet your imagination, read an excerpt from the boast of Eric Baer, a participant in a Brag Therapy session I hosted in Milwaukee. "I have opposable thumbs," Eric exulted. "I can read. I breathe all the way through the night even though I'm asleep. I have access to emporiums where I can choose from 25 different brands of toilet paper. I know how to turn food into energy. I live where knuckleheads run everything and yet nothing ever blows up."
*
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.