From what I can tell, your excursion to Fake Paradise didn't exact too serious a toll. The accidental detour may have seemed inopportune in the moment, but you know what? I think it slowed you down enough to keep you from doing something rash that you would have regretted later. And are you really sorry you were robbed of your cherished illusions? In the long run, I think it was for the best. As for the scratches on your nose from when you stuck it into business you weren't "supposed" to: They're a small price to pay for the piquant lesson you got in how not to live.

I love to write these love letters for you. I also love to record songs and spoken-word pieces for your entertainment and inspiration. Here's a free podcast you might like: It's called PRAYER FOR US. I also have EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that cost money. You can sign in and access them here.

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Philosopher Robert Anton Wilson proposed that the single greatest contribution to world peace would come from there being over six billion different religions -- a unique spiritual path for each person on the planet. The Beauty and Truth Lab urges you to get started on doing your part to make this happen. What will your religion be called? What rituals will you perform? Write down your three core tenets.
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Some people are here on the planet to find success, while others are here to find themselves. In the big scheme of things, I'm not sure which category you fit into, Taurus. But I'm pretty sure that for the next few weeks you'll be best served by acting as if you're the latter. Even if you think you've found yourself pretty completely in the past, it's time to go searching again: There are new secrets to be discovered, in large part because you're not who you used to be. So for now at least, I encourage you to give your worldly ambitions a bit of a rest as you intensify your self-explorations.

I love to write these love letters for you. I also love to record songs and spoken-word pieces for your entertainment and inspiration. Here's a free podcast you might like: It's called PRAYER FOR US. I also have EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that cost money. You can sign in and access them here.

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Most religions designate a special class of people -- priests, rabbis, ayatollahs -- to oversee official communications with the Source. This has led to a prevailing assumption, even among those who don't follow an established faith, that we can't initiate a divine conversation without the aid of a professional class of trained mediators. Among some sects of the ancient gnostics, in contrast, everyone was regarded as a potential prophet who could experience epiphanies worthy of becoming part of the ever-evolving doctrine.

The equivalent today would be if the Bible were regarded as an unfinished text to which every Christian or Jew might be eligible to add new content.

As you create your own spiritual path, experiment with this do-it-yourself approach. What might you do to eliminate the middleman and commune directly with the Source?
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Being a paragon of moral behavior can be fun and rewarding. It's amazing how many interesting people want to play with me just because they think I'm so #%&@ high-minded. But I've got to confess that my commitment to discipline and righteousness is sometimes at odds with my rebellious itch to give you mischievous nudges and outrageous challenges. Like right now, the conscientious teacher in me might prefer to advise you to keep a lid on debauchery, voracity, excess, uproar, slapstick, wise-cracking, fireworks, and limit-pushing. But the rabble-rousing agitator in me feels obligated to inform you that at no other time in 2010 will the karmic price be lower for engaging in such pursuits.

I love to write these love letters for you. I also love to record songs and spoken-word pieces for your entertainment and inspiration. Here's a free podcast you might like: It's called PRAYER FOR US. I also have EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that cost money. You can sign in and access them here.

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What if the Creator is like the poet Rainer Maria Rilke's God: "like a webbing made of a hundred roots, that drink in silence"? What if the Source of All Life inhabits both the dark and the light, heals with strange splendor as much as with sweet insight, is hermaphroditic and omnisexual?

What if the Source loves to give you riddles that push you past the boundaries of your understanding, forcing you to change the ways you think about everything? What if, as Rusty Morrison speculates in Poetry Flash, "the sublime can only be glimpsed by pressing through fear's boundary, beyond one's previous conceptions of the beautiful"?

Close your eyes and imagine you can sense the presence of this tender, marvelous, difficult, entertaining intelligence.
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

It's time for you to stop specializing in furtive glimpses and start indulging in brazen gazes. You're ready to phase out your role as a peripheral influence and see if you can be more of a high-intensity instigator and organizer. Yes, Cancerian, you've earned the right to claim more credibility and clout -- to leave your tentative position outside the magic circle and head in the direction of the sweet hot spot.

I love to write these love letters for you. I also love to record songs and spoken-word pieces for your entertainment and inspiration. Here's a free podcast you might like: It's called PRAYER FOR US. I also have EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that cost money. You can sign in and access them here.

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A few Christian sects now enjoy a new addition to their once-staid church services: holy laughter. Parishioners become so excited while worshiping that they erupt in uncontrollable glee. Some crack up so profoundly that they fall on the floor and flop around like breakdancers. Others repeatedly leap into the air as if on pogo sticks, or wobble and zigzag as if trying to dance while drunk.

Imagine that the holy books of your religion prescribe laughing prayers as a reliable way to know the Divine Wow. Recite one of those laughing prayers.
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

"Nature seems to exult in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy," wrote Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. "If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe . . . No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe." (Dillard's entire passage is here.) Reading this passage is a good way for you to prepare for the immediate future, Leo. Why? Because you'll soon be invited to commune with outlandish glory. You'll be exposed to stories that burst from the heart of creation. You'll be prodded to respond to marvelous blips with marvelous blips of your own. But here's the catch: It may all remain invisible to you if you're blinded by the false belief that you live a boring, ordinary life.

I love to write these love letters for you. I also love to record songs and spoken-word pieces for your entertainment and inspiration. Here's a free podcast you might like: It's called PRAYER FOR US. I also have EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that cost money. You can sign in and access them here.

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"Believing" in God is like "believing" in the taste of fresh-baked bread without ever having tasted actual fresh-baked bread. But what if you could commune with the Divine Wow through up-close, personal encounters that are as vivid as eating fresh-baked bread? Some people have. You could, too. Formulate the intention to do so.
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

The storm is your friend right now, Virgo. So are the deep, dark night and the last place you'd ever think of visiting and the most important thing you've forgotten about. So be more willing than usual to marinate in the mysteries -- not with logical ferocity but with cagey curiosity. The areas of life that are most crucial for you to deal with can't be fully understood using the concepts your rational mind favors. The feelings that will be most useful for you to explore are unlike those you're familiar with.

I love to write these love letters for you. I also love to record songs and spoken-word pieces for your entertainment and inspiration. Here's a free podcast you might like: It's called PRAYER FOR US. I also have EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that cost money. You can sign in and access them here.

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In Judeo-Christian cultures, many people associate the sky with the masculine form of God. According to this bias, the Supreme Father rules us all from on high -- up, away, far from here. But if you were an ancient Egyptian, the sky was the goddess Nuit, her body its very substance. She was a loving mother whose tender touch could be felt with each new breath.

For one day, act as if you and the sky goddess are in constant contact.
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Here's your mantra for the coming week: "I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity." Say it and sing it and murmur it at least 100 times a day. Let it flow out of you after you've awoken each morning and are still lying in bed. Let it be the last sound on your lips as you drop off to sleep. Have fun with it. Dip into your imagination to come up with different ways to let it fly -- say it as your favorite cartoon character might say it, like a person with a Swedish accent, like your inner teenager, like a parrot, like a grinning sage. "I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity. I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity."

I love to write these love letters for you. I also love to record songs and spoken-word pieces for your entertainment and inspiration. Here's a free podcast you might like: It's called PRAYER FOR US. I also have EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that cost money. You can sign in and access them here.

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In some ancient Greek dramas, a god showed up out of nowhere to cause a miraculous twist at a crucial point in the tale. This divine intrusion was referred to as theos ek mechanes, literally "god from a machine," because the symbolic figure of the god was lowered onto the stage by a crane. In modern usage, the term is Latin -- deus ex machina -- and refers to a story in which a sudden event unexpectedly brings about a resolution to a baffling problem.

Write a tale in which you're the beneficiary of such an intervention.
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Have you ever heard about how some all-night convenience stores blast loud classical music out into the parking lot in order to discourage drug dealers from loitering? In the coming days, use that principle whenever you need to drive home a point or make a strong impression. Your aggressive expressions will be more effective if you take the darkness and anger out of them, and instead fill them up with forceful grace and propulsive compassion.

I love to write these love letters for you. I also love to record songs and spoken-word pieces for your entertainment and inspiration. Here's a free podcast you might like: It's called PRAYER FOR US. I also have EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that cost money. You can sign in and access them here.

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Neither God nor the gods are dead, but they seem to be disappearing because so few of us are capable of carrying on authentic relationships with them anymore. The materialist delusion rules: Millions believe that nothing's real unless it can be perceived by the senses. Churches and temples are full of ethical people, but many of them have no clue about how to know or feel or converse with the divine intelligences.

What can the deities do, having been banished from our conscious knowing? Jung said they have no recourse but to worm their way into our lives as sickness and pathology. Repressed, they come in the back door.

Which of your maladies or pains might be gods in disguise? How might you get them to take off their masks and begin knocking on the front door?
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

The Hebrew word chalom means "dream." In his book Healing Dreams, Marc Ian Barasch notes that it's derived from the verb "to be made healthy and strong." Linguist Joseph Jastrow says that chalom is related to the Hebrew word hachlama, which means "recovery, recuperation." Extrapolating from these poetic hints and riffing on your astrological omens, I've got a prescription for you to consider: To build your vitality in the coming weeks, feed your dreams. And I mean "dreams" in both the sense of the nocturnal adventures you have while you're sleeping and the sweeping daytime visions of what you'd like to become.

I love to write these love letters for you. I also love to record songs and spoken-word pieces for your entertainment and inspiration. Here's a free podcast you might like: It's called PRAYER FOR US. I also have EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that cost money. You can sign in and access them here.

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In Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke urged an aspiring bard to change the way he imagined the Supreme Being. "Why don't you conceive of God as an ally who is coming," Rilke said, "who has been approaching since time began, the one who will someday arrive, the fruit of a tree whose leaves we are? Why not project his birth into the future, and live your life as an excruciating and lyrical moment in the history of a prodigious pregnancy?"

How would your life change if you made this idea your working hypothesis?
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

I just found out the American shipping company UPS has legally trademarked the color brown. The grass-roots activist in me is incredulous and appalled. But the poet in me doesn't really care; it's fine if UPS owns drab, prosaic brown. I've still got mahogany at my command, as well as tawny, sepia, taupe, burnt umber, tan, cinnamon, walnut, and henna. That's especially important for this horoscope, Capricorn, because I'm advising you to be very down to earth, be willing to get your hands dirty, and even play in the muck if necessary in order to take good care of the basics. But don't do any of that in a boring, humdrum "brown" way. Do it exotically and imaginatively, like mahogany, tawny, sepia, taupe, burnt umber, tan, cinnamon, walnut, and henna.

I love to write these love letters for you. I also love to record songs and spoken-word pieces for your entertainment and inspiration. Here's a free podcast you might like: It's called PRAYER FOR US. I also have EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that cost money. You can sign in and access them here.

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A reader named Michael McCarthy wrote to say he plans to start a new religion, the "First Church of the Rude Awakening." It will be based on the principle that having a pleasant life cannot serve as a motivation to seek enlightenment and salvation. McCarthy believes that no one ever bolts up out of bed one morning and says, "I'm so happy, I think I'll go meditate and pray and make myself into a better person for as long as it takes, so I can find God and say thanks."

Disprove this theory. Detonate an epiphany precisely because you're in an excellent mood.
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

You are hereby excused from having to know a single nuance about the inside story of Angelina Jolie's secret love tryst with Lady Gaga, or the addictions of conspiracy theorists who lose huge sums of money gambling on the end of the world, or the agony that millionaires suffer from having to support social services with their taxes. In fact, it's a good time to empty your mind of extraneous, trivial, and useless facts so that you can clear vast new spaces for more pressing data, like how you can upgrade your communication skills, why you should do some upkeep on your close alliances, and what you might do to streamline your social life.

I love to write these love letters for you. I also love to record songs and spoken-word pieces for your entertainment and inspiration. Here's a free podcast you might like: It's called PRAYER FOR US. I also have EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that cost money. You can sign in and access them here.

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In Frederick Buechner's book On the Road with the Archangel, the star is the archangel Raphael. This supernatural helper has a tough gig: gathering the prayers of human beings and delivering them to God. Here's how he describes the range of pleas he hears: "There are prayers of such power that you might say they carry me rather than the other way around. There are prayers so apologetic and shamefaced and half-hearted that they all but melt away in my grasp like sad little flakes of snow. Some prayers are very boring."

Compose a prayer that's so powerful and entertaining that it could thrill an archangel.
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

In my astrological opinion, you don't need anything that shrinks you or deflates you or tames you. Influences that pinch your imagination should be taboo, as should anything that squashes your hope or crimps your life force. To make proper use of the vibrations circulating in your vicinity, Pisces, you should gravitate toward situations that pump up your insouciance and energize your whimsy and incite you to express the most benevolent wickedness you can imagine. You've got a mandate to fatten up your soul so it can contain a vaster sense of wonder and a more daring brand of innocence.

I love to write these love letters for you. I also love to record songs and spoken-word pieces for your entertainment and inspiration. Here's a free podcast you might like: It's called PRAYER FOR US. I also have EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that cost money. You can sign in and access them here.

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The German word selig can mean "ecstatic," "blessed," or "holy." It implies that profound bliss can be a divine gift; that deep pleasure may generate or come from spiritual inspiration.

The English language doesn't have a term comparable to selig, maybe because our culture regards ecstasy with suspicion. Religious people tend to believe that the blessed are those who are good and kind, certainly not those who are skilled at cultivating rapturous states. People who worship rationality, on the other hand, like intellectuals and scientists, often think of ecstasy as at best an irrelevant state, and at worst a nonproductive or deluded indulgence.

What would you have to do to place yourself in intimate alignment with the values embodied by the word selig?
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.