Free Will Astrology


Horoscopes by Rob Brezsny


Week of January 31st, 2008

♈ ARIES

(March 21-April 19)
The Onion newspaper reported on a South Carolina man who was so grateful for what God had done in the previous week that he put an extra $5 in the collection plate at church on Sunday. Brad Thaden was especially pleased with the nice weather and how well his kids had behaved. I expect that by February 18, Aries, you too might feel the urge to give Supreme Being a tip, or do whatever the equivalent might be in your world. Among the extra perks you could be blessed with: a deeper connection with a resource you've wanted to be closer to; the heating up of a promising alliance; a social upgrade that will make you feel more at home in the world; and a vision of where to go next with your ambitions.=


You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2008. Each report in the three-part series of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES is about 6-9 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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Mirabilia is a word that refers to events that inspire wonder, marvelous phenomena, small miracles; it's from the Latin mirabilia, "marvels." Here's your mirabilia report for the coming week: The average river requires a million years to move a grain of sand 100 miles. Kind people are more likely than mean people to yawn when someone near them does. There are always so many fragments of spider legs floating in the air that you are constantly inhaling them wherever you go. Gregorian chants can cure dyslexia. Bob Hope donated half a million jokes to the Library of Congress. Bees perform a valuable service for the flowers from which they steal. The moon smells like exploded firecrackers. Physicists in Tennessee coaxed electric signals to travel through coaxial cable at four times the speed of light, even though the equipment they used was cheap stuff from Radio Shack. Revlon makes 177 different shades of lipstick.
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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.

♉ TAURUS

(April 20-May 20)
If you are a member of the Isoko people in Nigeria, you have three intimate spirit guides. Omo is your guardian angel. Obo, or "right hand," is the ally who helps you get things done. Ivri is a tough, gutsy, and sometimes combative character that pushes you to take a stand and fight for your rights. As an exercise, Taurus, I urge you to imagine that you have these three accomplices working on your behalf in the coming weeks. It's high time for you to forcefully lay claim to all of the vigorous assistance and collaboration that you deserve. While you're at it, ask a few actual humans to deliver their special favors to aid your cause, too.


You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2008. Each report in the three-part series of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES is about 6-9 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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The primary meaning of the word "healing" is "to cure what's diseased or broken." Medical practitioners focus on sick people. Psychotherapists wrestle with their clients' traumas and neuroses. Philanthropists donate their money and social workers contribute their time to helping the underprivileged. I am in awe of them all. The level of one's spiritual enlightenment, I believe, is more accurately measured by helping people in need than by meditation skills, shamanic shapeshifting, supernatural powers, or religious knowledge.

But I also believe in a second kind of healing that is largely unrecognized: to supercharge what is already healthy; to lift up what's merely sufficient to a sublime state. Using this definition, describe two acts of healing: one you would enjoy performing on yourself and another you'd like to provide for someone you love.

Congratulations. Every cell in your perfect animal body is beginning to purr with luminous gratitude for the enormity of the riches you endlessly receive. You are becoming aware that each of your heart's beats originates as a gift of love directly from the Goddess herself. Any residues of hatred that had been tainting your libido are leaving you for good. You are becoming telepathically linked to the world's entire host of secret teachers, pacifist warriors, philosopher clowns, and bodhisattvas disguised as convenience store clerks.
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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.

♊ GEMINI

(May 21-June 20)
HappyWomanMagazine.com sought out several supermodels for advice about spirituality. "Buddhists have the best religion," said 6'1", 102-pound Ilize Bergeron. "They don't believe in heaven or hell or God, and they don't pray. Plus, Buddhism is so mysterious that you could probably fool your boss into giving you lots of random days off work for religious holidays. One more thing: It's the trendiest religion out there right now." In light of your current astrological omens, Gemini, you might want to draw inspiration from Ilize's perspective. In the coming weeks, you need to feed your spiritual side, but in ways that are fun, light-hearted, uncomplicated, guilt-free, and unburdened by concerns about reward and punishment.


You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2008. Each report in the three-part series of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES is about 6-9 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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Is the world a dangerous, chaotic place with no inherent purpose, running on automatic like a malfunctioning machine and fundamentally inimical to your happiness? Or are you surrounded by helpers in a friendly universe that gives you challenges in order to make you smarter and wilder and kinder? Trick questions! The answers may depend, at least to some degree, on what you believe is true.

Formulate a series of experiments that will allow you to objectively test the hypothesis that the universe is conspiring to help you.
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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.

♋ CANCERIAN

(June 21-July 22)
"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive," wrote Mark Twain. "But it is the lightning that does the work." According to my analysis of the omens, Cancerian, your job right now is to be like the lightning, even if other people's thunder is temporarily hogging the credit and the attention. It may take a while, but your bolts of pure energy, not their noisy hype, will ultimately be appreciated as the most important factor in the group success.


You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2008. Each report in the three-part series of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES is about 6-9 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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A thousand years from today, everyone you know will be long dead and forgotten. There'll be nothing left of the life you love, no evidence that you ever walked this planet. That, at least, is what the fundamentalist materialists would have you believe. But suppose the truth is very different? What if in fact every little thing you do subtly alters the course of world history? What if your day-to-day decisions will actually help determine how the human species navigates its way through the epic turning point we're living through? And finally, what if you will be alive in a thousand years, reincarnated into a fresh body and in possession of the memories of the person you were back in this era? These are my hypotheses. These are my prophecies. Which is why I say: Live as if your soul is eternal.
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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

(July 23-August 22)
Daniel Tammet is a savant who can quickly perform complex mathematical calculations in his head. Every number up to 10,000 has a special shape and feel for him. He experiences 37 as a lumpy, warm goo, while 89 invokes visions of snow falling. Although I don't normally have this relationship with numbers, I did get a vivid psychic vision of 77 while meditating on your current astrological omens. It appeared to me as a scene of two people bobbing and tumbling while wearing scuba gear and trying to make love underwater in a heated swimming pool. Assuming this is an oracle, what does it signify symbolically? Maybe it's time for you to seek a new kind of union in the depths. Or perhaps you should get more playful in your approach to sex. It might also mean you should enjoy playing with deep emotions.


You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2008. Each report in the three-part series of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES is about 6-9 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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Psychologist Carl Jung believed that all desires have a sacred origin, no matter how odd they may seem. Frustration and ignorance may contort them into distorted caricatures, but it is always possible to locate the divine source from which they arose. In describing one of his addictive patients, Jung said: "His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst for wholeness, or as expressed in medieval language: the union with God."

Therapist James Hillman echoes the theme: "Psychology regards all symptoms to be expressing the right thing in the wrong way." A preoccupation with porn or romance novels, for instance, may come to dominate a passionate person whose quest for love has degenerated into an obsession with images of love. "Follow the lead of your symptoms," Hillman suggests, "for there's usually a myth in the mess, and a mess is an expression of soul."
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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.

♍ VIRGO

(August 23-September 22)
After studying your challenging astrological aspects, I decided to do a mid-winter ritual in your behalf. Waking at dawn, I took a frigid hour-long bike ride to the top of Mt. Tamalpais. As I ascended, I murmured a prayer: "I give the energy of this cold, hard labor to Virgos. May it inspire them to meet their own tasks with exuberant stamina." When I began the ride, I was miserably uncomfortable. Within ten minutes, I had broken a sweat and was thoroughly warm. Soon the endorphins kicked in, and the climb to the top was blissful. That's the progression I wish for you.


You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2008. Each report in the three-part series of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES is about 6-9 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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Like all of us, you have desires for things that you don't really need and aren't good for you. But you shouldn't disparage yourself for having them, nor should you conclude that every desire is tainted. Rather, think of your misguided longings as the bumbling, amateur expressions of a faculty that will one day be far more expert. They're how you practice as you work toward the goal of becoming a master of desire. It may take a while, but eventually you will get the hang of wanting things that are really good for you, and good for everyone else, too.
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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.

♎ LIBRA

(September 23-October 22)
The planet's biggest annual orgy of pollination is about to take place. A million beehives from all over America and Australia are on trucks headed to a 600,000-acre patch of almond orchards in California's Central Valley. For the next three weeks or so, 40 billion bees will be in service to almond flowers as they facilitate the mixing of male and female reproductive materials. This scene could rightly serve as your metaphor of the week, Libra. You, too, are primed for a tremendous pollination event -- a time of intense mingling in service to fertility.


You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2008. Each report in the three-part series of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES is about 6-9 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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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.

♏ SCORPIO

(October 23-November 21)
One goal of meditation is to empty the mind of its obsessively generated thoughts, rationalizations, and images. Alas, much of the media functions as a reverse meditation machine. Not only does it stir up your own mental clatter, it also floods you with the seething surge of other people's private pandemoniums. Furthermore, it delivers this rattling racket with entertaining words and brilliant color and crystalline sound, driving it as deeply into your psyche as your own flotsam. Keep this in mind throughout February, which is Clean Out Your Brain Month. Cut way back on your media intake. Snack lightly rather than gorging continually.


You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2008. Each report in the three-part series of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES is about 6-9 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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Below you'll find three messages. One is an authentic communiqué from the Divine Wow, which I channeled while in ecstatic trance. The other two are fakes that I made up. If you’re as thoroughly in tune with your inner purpose as you need to be, you won't have any trouble knowing which is the true Word of the Creator.

Message #1: "I, the Supreme Designer of Heaven and Earth, am totally pissed off at your lazy sins and lack of faith. Cut the crap and shape up."

Message #2: "I, untouchable and unknowable CEO of the Universe, couldn’t care less what you do. Don’t bother me."

Message #3: "I, the Universal Jokester who runs all of creation on the fuel of my sublime pleasure, am well-entertained by the stories you've been living. Thanks! I can’t wait to see what you do next."
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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.

♐ SAGITTARIUS

(November 22-December 21)
"There are two things to aim at in life," wrote essayist Logan Pearsall Smith. "First to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second." As you have probably already guessed, Sagittarius, one of your main challenges in 2008 is to be one of the wise who accomplishes that second thing. And you're about to experience a major turning point in your ability to pull it off.


You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2008. Each report in the three-part series of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES is about 6-9 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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Many people believe that happiness is a rare commodity attainable only through dumb luck. "One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness," said novelist Willa Cather. "One only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere." I disagree. My perspective is the same as the Buddhist researchers Rick Foster and Greg Hicks. In their book How We Choose to Be Happy: The 9 Choices of Extremely Happy People, they reveal that the number one trait of happy people is a serious determination to be happy. Bliss is a habit you can cultivate, in other words, not an accident that you stumble upon by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere.
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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.

♑ CAPRICORN

(December 22-January 19)
"Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica," said Capricorn writer Stephen B. Leacock. I encourage you to adopt a similar attitude in the coming weeks. Unleashing your heated creativity will be more important to your success than gathering the cool facts. Being an irrepressible devotee of the wild mind will be more practical than marching in lock step to logical necessity.


You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2008. Each report in the three-part series of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES is about 6-9 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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Meditate naked under a waterfall.
Relive the last day of your childhood.
Sip the tears of someone you love.
Rebel against your horoscope.
Create a luxurious orphanage in Romania.
Pick blackberries in the rain.
Feel sorry for a devious lawyer.
See how far you can spit a mouthful of beer.
Give yourself another chance.
Dream of stealing the peaches of immortality from a dragon guarding Plato's cave.
Write a love letter to your evil twin during a lunar eclipse.
Sing the first song you ever heard.
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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.

♒ AQUARIUS

(January 20- February 18)
You're reading a horoscope column that's designed not only for the benefit of true believers, but also for people who don't necessarily buy into the validity of astrology. If you're one of those who enjoys my writing even though you're skeptical of my attempts to divine oracles from the planetary positions, I thank you for being willing to find value in an approach that your rational mind may regard as questionable. And I thank you for evaluating the information I present here on the basis of its usefulness rather than on where it originates. By the way, Aquarius, the attitudes I just described will serve you in good stead in your dealings with the whole world during the coming week.


You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2008. Each report in the three-part series of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES is about 6-9 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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Robin Norwood's self-help book Women Who Love Too Much deals with a theme that has gotten a lot of play in recent decades: If you're too generous to someone who doesn't appreciate it and at the expense of your own needs, you can make yourself sick.

An alternative perspective comes from Blaise Pascal, who said, "When one does not love too much, one does not love enough." He was primarily addressing psychologically healthy altruists, but it's a good ideal for pronoia lovers to keep in mind.

Decide whether you need to move more in the direction of Norwood's or Pascal's advice. Develop a game plan to carry out your resolve, then take action.
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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.

♓ PISCES

(February 19-March 20)
Neither God nor the gods are dead, but they've virtually disappeared because so few people are capable of carrying on authentic relationships with them anymore. The materialist delusion rules our world: Millions believe that nothing's real unless it can be perceived by the five senses. Churches and temples are full of ethical people, but most of them have no clue about how to know or feel or converse with the divine presences. So what can the deities do, having been banished from our midst? Psychologist Carl Jung said the gods have no recourse but to worm their way into our lives as sickness and pathology. And that's how you may encounter them in the coming days, Pisces. But get this: As soon as you see through their distorted disguises and recognize them for what they really are, they can be themselves again, whereupon they will bestow the exact blessings you need in order to become a smarter version of yourself.


You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2008. Each report in the three-part series of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES is about 6-9 minutes long. A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.

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Most people associate innocence with naiveté. Conventional wisdom regards it as belonging to children and fools and rookies who lack the sophistication or experience to know the tough truths about life. But the Beauty and Truth Laboratory recognizes a different kind of innocence. It's based on an understanding that the world is always changing, and therefore deserves to be seen fresh every day. This alternative brand of innocence is fueled by an aggressive determination to empty one's imagination of all preconceptions. "Ignorance is not knowing anything and being attracted to the good," wrote Clarissa Pinkola-Estes in Women Who Run With the Wolves. "Innocence is knowing everything and still being attracted to the good."
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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.

© Rob Brezsny 1995-2024