How much more can you hold? How much further are you willing to reach? How much bigger of a big picture can you open your mind to see? We will soon discover the answers to those questions, as well as several others that have to do with the themes of unbinding, emancipation, and the loss of inhibition. Judging from my reading of the astrological omens, I'd say the prospects are high for you to achieve a record-breaking state of relaxed and curious expansiveness.

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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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 Powells.

Explore the off-limits area of your imagination, Taurus. I'm talking about that barely conscious part of your psyche where taboo fantasies and unruly notions have been steadily growing in the dark, accumulating the dark luminosity that all secret things do. If you consort with them now, you'll be just in time to prevent them from becoming monstrous and reeling out of control. Even better, you'll have a good chance of shaping them into resources that will serve you well.

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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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 Powells.

I recommend that you read one of those ground-level books on intimacy skills, like Relationships for Dummies or The Complete Idiot's Guide to Romance. It's not that you are any dumber about these matters than the rest of us; it's just that this is a favorable time for you to work harder than usual on boosting your Love IQ. Remedial efforts taken now will generate assistance and inspiration from unexpected sources. For best results, I suggest you consider keeping a journal about the lessons you'll be asked to master. Entitle it something like "How I'm Becoming as Smart about Love as I Am about Everything Else in My Life."

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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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 Powells.

During the heyday of samurai culture, the Japanese word tsuji-giri meant "to try out a new sword on a passer-by." After analyzing your astrological omens, Cancerian, I'm appealing to you not to commit the metaphorical equivalent of that in the coming week. Here's what I mean: You've got good reasons to use the metaphorical equivalent of a new sword, and you will wreak some constructive havoc if you direct your warrior attitude at the right targets. But if, on the other hand, you carelessly slice and dice passers-by and other innocents who don't deserve it, you'll waste that valuable resource and won't correct the problems that have piqued your sense of injustice.

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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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 Powells.

"When love is not madness, it is not love," said Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderon de la Barca. But according to my analysis of the astrological omens, you will dramatically disprove that notion in the coming weeks, Leo. In fact, I'm betting that love will make you stark, raving sane. It will calm you down, heal a wound or two, improve your eyesight, help you understand yourself better, improve your digestion, and stimulate you to become more tolerant and forgiving towards the entire world.

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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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 Powells.

First let me make it clear that I'm not predicting you will face difficult events in the coming days. Not at all. Second, I'm not saying you will have to endure more pain than usual. Third, I believe your suffering will be about average -- similar to what normal people bear in normal times. Having said all that, though, I encourage you to be aggressively exploratory toward the pain you feel. Have long talks with your murky fears. Gaze bravely into the parts of your life that make you sad. Why? Because it's a favorable time to search for treasure that's buried in the shadows -- to enhance your psychological health by dealing with what's not so healthy. Recall Carl Jung's wise words: "The foundation of all mental illness is an unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering."

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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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 Powells.

Some years ago, in an advertisement designed to attract Spanish-speaking flyers, U.S.-based Braniff Airlines bragged about its leather seats with the phrase "viajar en cuero." But that phrase actually means "to travel stark naked," not "to travel on leather." The marketing department goofed. One of your main goals in the coming week, Libra, should be to prevent comparable outbreaks of the "lost in translation" syndrome. In fact, I urge you to act as an interpreter in situations where different worlds overlap. Be sure, for example, that extroverts and introverts understand each other. Facilitate the communication between cynics and optimists, morning people and night owls, caffeine addicts and pot heads, dreamers and realists. Be especially alert for misunderstandings that may arise during interactions between the right and left sides of your own brain.

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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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 Powells.

Are you ready for your next big initiation? Probably not, but that's OK. Your upgrade to the next level should go fine, even if you wobble and sputter for a while before and after. Just to let you know, there may be no single striking event to dramatize it for you. It could arrive almost secretly in a roller coaster dream, or announce itself with a warm rush of unfamiliar emotion while you're in the middle of lunch. But however it insinuates its way into your awareness, Scorpio, it will open you to the possibility of seeing things that have been invisible to you before now.

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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You are potentially a genius. Maybe not in the same way that Einstein and Beethoven were, but still: You possess some exceptional capacity that is absolutely unique. You're a masterpiece unlike any other that has ever lived in the history of the world.

Furthermore, the precise instructions you need to ripen into your genius have always been with you, even from the time before you were born. In the words of psychologist James Hillman, you have a soul's code.

You might also call it the special mission you came to Earth to carry out; the divine blueprint that contains the open secret of how to be perfectly, unpredictably yourself; the master plan that is your heart's deepest desire.

Would you like help in deciphering it? The Divine Intelligence Formerly Known as God is always on call, ready to help. It's your birthright to ask Her a specific question every day about what you need to do next to express your soul's code; it's also your birthright to receive a response.

The divine revelation may not be as unambiguous as a little voice in your head. It might appear in the form of a TV commercial, an odd dream, or an encounter with a stranger. It could be demanding and difficult, delivering information you'd rather not have to deal with. Or it might show up as a clear and simple feeling of knowing exactly what to do, and it could be easy and fun.

What question will you ask the Divine Wow today?
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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 need a strategy for bringing constructive change into my life on an ongoing basis," a Sagittarian reader named Ursula wrote to me. "I want to figure out how to arrange for a never-ending series of gentle wake-up calls. When that happens, I will have mastered the sinewy magic of being permanently unstuck. I will have made it a habit to be highly alert and wildly responsive in the most relaxed ways possible. The world will look completely different to me then; reality itself will have mutated. I won't cling to little scraps of hope that make me feel secure, but will instead be on the prowl for fresh challenges that constantly expand my love for life." Ursula's longing is a brilliant articulation of what I think all of you Sagittarians should quest for in the coming weeks.

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 response to our culture's ever-rising levels of noise and frenzy, rites of purification have become more popular. Many people now recognize the value of taking periodic retreats. Withdrawing from their usual compulsions, they go on fasts, avoid mass media, practice celibacy, or even abstain from speaking. While we applaud cleansing ceremonies like this, we recommend balancing them with periodic outbreaks of an equal and opposite custom: the Bliss Blitz.
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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 think it's a good idea for you to give up mediocre pleasures that drain your energy and diminish your intelligence. I also wish you would sacrifice irrelevant fantasies and deluded hopes that lead you away from your riveting dreams. On the other hand, I will rejoice if you commit yourself twice as intensely to the robust pleasures that refine your energy and boost your intelligence. And I will love it if you take three practical actions to supercharge one of your riveting dreams.

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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Is there anything more dangerous than getting up in the morning and having nothing to worry about, no problems to solve, no friction to heat you up? That state can be a threat to your health. If untreated, it incites an unconscious yearning for any old dumb trouble that might rouse some excitement.

Acquiring problems is a fundamental human need. It's as crucial to your well-being as getting food, air, water, sleep, and love. You define yourself--indeed, you make yourself--through the riddles you attract and solve. The most creative people on the planet are those who frame the biggest, hardest questions and then gather the resources necessary to find the answers.
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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.

What if I told you there will be 13 militantly helpful angels in gossamer armor standing guard around your bed every night, fighting off nightmares and ensuring that your dreams are blessed with floods of sublimely practical revelations? Would you regard what I said as a poetic metaphor, as the hyperbolic fantasy of a kooky astrology writer? Or is there a chance you'd take me literally? That you'd consider my vision to be the prophetic truth about an actual event? If it's the latter, then I urge you to be aggressive about asking the angels for the very best mojo they can muster. This is one time when you have license to be greedy about tapping into the primal power of supernatural goodness.

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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Conventional wisdom implies that the best problems are those that place you under duress. There's supposedly no gain without pain. Stress is allegedly an incomparable spur for calling on resources that have been previously unavailable or dormant. Nietzsche's aphorism, "That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger," has achieved the status of an ultimate truth.

We half-agree. But it's clear that stress also accompanies many mediocre problems that have little power to make us smarter. Pain frequently generates no gain. We're all prone to become habituated, even addicted, to nagging vexations that go on and on without rousing any of our sleeping genius.

There is, furthermore, another class of difficulty--let's call it the delightful dilemma--that neither feeds on angst nor generates it. On the contrary, it's fun and invigorating, and usually blooms when you're feeling a profound sense of being at home in the world. The problem of writing this book is a good example. I've had a good time handling the perplexing challenges with which it has confronted me.

Imagine a life in which at least half of your quandaries match this profile. Act as if you're most likely to attract useful problems when joy is your predominant state of mind. Consider the possibility that being in unsettling circumstances may shrink your capacity to dream up the riddles you need most; that maybe it's hard to ask the best questions when you're preoccupied fighting rearguard battles against boring or demeaning annoyances that have plagued you for many moons.

Prediction: As an aspiring lover of pronoia, you will have a growing knack for gravitating toward wilder, wetter, more interesting problems. More and more, you will be drawn to the kind of gain that doesn't require pain. You'll be so alive and awake that you'll cheerfully push yourself out of your comfort zone in the direction of your personal frontier well before you're forced to do so by divine kicks in the ass.
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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.

This would be a good week for you to tell people's fortunes at parties and help the police solve crimes with your clairvoyant abilities and read the minds of those you love in order to communicate with them better. What? You say you don't have any psychic powers? That's a dirty lie! You most certainly do. It may be true that your culture has brainwashed you into denying and suppressing them. But I assure you that they are lying there half-dormant, just waiting for you to believe in them and use them for everyone's benefit. And this is an ideal time, astrologically speaking, for you to do just that.

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

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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 Powells.