The ancient Greek god Dionysus did not, in fact, encourage people to get sloppy drunk, lose control, and do stupid things. His preference was that they free themselves from their inhibitions by imbibing moderate amounts of alcohol. With this medicinal spur, they might get unstuck from their worn-out old behavior patterns and invite refreshing doses of wildness into their lives. Healing was the intention, not craziness and frenzy. It is true that if someone was not willing to escape their rigidity -- if they clung to their hidebound attitudes and refused to open up to the call of self-transformation -- Dionysus might lure them into reckless inebriation. Keep these thoughts in mind in the coming weeks, Aries.

If you'd like to get an idea of what my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES are like, tune in to my free podcast, "Fear Versus Intuition." It's a meditation about the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions. My approach there has a close resemblance to the style of my weekly EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES.

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

No better evidence exists for the saying, "History is a tale told by the victors." Keep this in mind as you strategize your way through your personal War of the Stories. Your account of events may have more truth in it than everyone else's conflicting tales, but that won't carry much weight unless you obtain the power to enforce your version.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

In her 1960 song This Bitter Earth, Dinah Washington sings, "If my life is like the dust that hides the glow of a rose / What good am I, heaven only knows." I bring this to your attention, Taurus, because you now have the power to prove once and for all that your life is NOT like the dust that hides the glow of a rose. So please get out there and reveal the glory of the world you inhabit. Draw out and enhance the radiance of people you encounter. By week's end, you may be able to say, as Washington does in the final line of the song, "This bitter earth may not be so bitter after all." (Hear the song here: tinyurl.com/BitterEarth.)

If you'd like to get an idea of what my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES are like, tune in to my free podcast, "Fear Versus Intuition." It's a meditation about the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions. My approach there has a close resemblance to the style of my weekly 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 new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

More than one-third of adults under 35 confess that right after making love, they tweet or text-message or check their Facebook pages. In the coming week, I strongly advise you not to do that or anything remotely like that. You should give your best, brightest, most focused attention to every phase of every adventure you have. The foreplay and the aftermath are just as important to the total revelation as the height of the action. This is a time in your long-term cycle when you can't afford to scrimp on completion and closure and resolution.

If you'd like to get an idea of what my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES are like, tune in to my free podcast, "Fear Versus Intuition." It's a meditation about the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions. My approach there has a close resemblance to the style of my weekly EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES.

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

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

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

Now Firenze has two punch lines for his tale of redemptive pronoia.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

August is Banish Your Superstitions Month, Cancerian. To celebrate this auspicious festival, purge yourself of every irrational belief and unfounded fear you can stand to live without. But also keep in mind that you may have to keep a crazy delusion or two, at least for a while. You've become so used to your chronic anxiety that it might be risky to get rid of it all at once. So proceed deliberately, casting off one false belief today and another quaint fallacy tomorrow and a third rotten figment of your imagination next week. By September 1, you may be surprised to see how high you've ratcheted up your level of fearlessness.

If you'd like to get an idea of what my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES are like, tune in to my free podcast, "Fear Versus Intuition." It's a meditation about the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions. My approach there has a close resemblance to the style of my weekly 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.

For a special episode of her TV talk show, Oprah Winfrey wanted a stage set that was fabricated out of chocolate. It took workers 1,400 hours to construct it. When the day came to unveil the decadent monument, Oprah offered her audience members the chance to tear it apart, eat it, and take it home as plunder. They dismantled it in half an hour. Let this be a cautionary tale, Leo. I dearly hope that the creation you're beginning to work on will endure for a long time and continue to provide meaning and pleasure far past the time it makes its initial splash. Build your baby to last.

If you'd like to get an idea of what my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES are like, tune in to my free podcast, "Fear Versus Intuition." It's a meditation about the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions. My approach there has a close resemblance to the style of my weekly 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.

New Age author Bob Frissell wrote a book called Nothing in This Book Is True, But It's Exactly How Things Are. It contains a host of seemingly far-fetched theories about UFOs, crop circles, ascended masters, earth changes, and monuments on Mars, all of which adds up to a beguiling Theory of Everything about the hidden nature of reality. I see your life right now as having resemblances to this curious tome. If I had to give a title to the next chapter of your story, it might be "Nothing That's Happening Will Make Much Sense Until It Has Finished Happening, Whereupon It Will Yield a Burst of Insight about the Big Picture of Your Destiny."

If you'd like to get an idea of what my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES are like, tune in to my free podcast, "Fear Versus Intuition." It's a meditation about the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions. My approach there has a close resemblance to the style of my weekly EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES.

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What if the Creator is like 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 deepen your perceptions and change the way you think about everything? 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 book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

One of the best ways to cultivate your own radiant brilliance or native talent is to look for excellence in other people. So if you suspect there's some half-hidden or partially dormant reservoir of genius within you -- a mother lode of intelligence that you have not been fully successful in tapping into -- I suggest you make it a point to identify the genius in everyone you know. Whether it's your cousin's knack for flower arrangement or your co-worker's telepathic capacity to read the moods of people she wants something from, you can fuel your own luminosity by noticing and appreciating others'.

If you'd like to get an idea of what my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES are like, tune in to my free podcast, "Fear Versus Intuition." It's a meditation about the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions. My approach there has a close resemblance to the style of my weekly EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES.

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Pronoia is the antidote for paranoia. It’s the understanding that the universe is fundamentally friendly. It’s a mode of training your senses and intellect so you’re able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it. Are you interested in becoming a wildly disciplined, fiercely tender, scrupulously curious, aggressively sensitive, lyrically logical, lustfully compassionate Master of Rowdy Bliss? Act as if the universe is a prodigious miracle created for your amusement and illumination. Assume that secret helpers are working behind the scenes to assist you in turning into the gorgeous masterpiece you were born to be.
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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.

Imagine you and I and a bunch of our friends are seven years old. We're playing the rough game "King of the Mountain" on a huge pile of dirt. Since there are some girls among us, we've changed the name of the game to "Awesome Magic Boss of the Mountain." Today, you're the strongest one, warding off all challenges to your authority, pushing away everyone who tries to knock you off your place at the top. It's like you have extra power you've never displayed before; as if you're drawing on reserves of determination and stamina that were previously unavailable. I believe this is a metaphorically accurate portrayal of your actual life right now.

If you'd like to get an idea of what my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES are like, tune in to my free podcast, "Fear Versus Intuition." It's a meditation about the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions. My approach there has a close resemblance to the style of my weekly EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES.

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Rainer Maria Rilke: "For one human being to love another is the most difficult task of all. It’s the work for which all other work is mere preparation."
Teilhard de Chardin: "Someday after we have mastered the winds, the waves, and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for a second time in the history of the world, human beings will have discovered fire."
Leo Tolstoy: "Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love."
Blaise Pascal: "If you do not love too much, you do not love enough."
Emily Dickinson: "Until you have loved, you cannot become 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.

My Sagittarius friend Lisa dreamed she was at a party with Jon Carroll, a writer she admires. In the dream, she managed to join a circle of people with whom he was conversing. Twice she tried to insinuate her way into the conversation with comments she thought were flattering to Jon. But he ignored her. Finally she opened an oversized picture book she had with her and showed him a striking photo of a huge nest containing a speckled, glittery dragon's egg. This caught his eye. He took her by the arm to a table where they pored over this fascinating image together. Learn from Lisa's dream, Sagittarius. To captivate the attention of the people you're interested in, appeal not to their vanity but to their imagination.

If you'd like to get an idea of what my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES are like, tune in to my free podcast, "Fear Versus Intuition." It's a meditation about the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions. My approach there has a close resemblance to the style of my weekly EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES.

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The Mystic Chaos Wizard Helper says: Close one eye. Tap your forehead twice with your left palm. Think of a memory in which you found something you'd lost. Lick your lips and murmur the words "Love Whisperer." Insert your middle finger in the "Delight-O-Meter" slot. Keep your finger there until the "Passion Lamp" turns on. Flash. Flash. Flash. Thank you. Now write the first thing that comes into your heart's mind.
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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.

Homeboy Industries is an organization in East Los Angeles that helps former gang members find jobs. One of its most successful programs has trained over a hundred ex-cons as solar panel installers. That's the kind of dramatic conversion I'd like to see you make in your own life, Capricorn -- getting face to face with the most messed-up part of yourself and conspiring to transform it into something brighter and more useful. Now would be an excellent time to dive into that worthy project.

If you'd like to get an idea of what my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES are like, tune in to my free podcast, "Fear Versus Intuition." It's a meditation about the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions. My approach there has a close resemblance to the style of my weekly EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES.

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ARGUMENTS WITH GOD is the only organization on the planet that specializes in the art of debating with the Creator. Our trained Prayer Warriors are standing by, ready to deliver the protests and complaints that you want to convey. Send your mad, rebellious, poignant appeals to Truthrooster@gmail.com, and we will relay them directly to the Cosmic Trickster with persuasive eloquence. Write your first draft.
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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.

I'm all in favor of you pumping up your yearning and stoking the fires of your ambition and fantasizing in explicit detail about a fantastic dream -- on one condition: The object of your craving has to be real and achievable. It can't be an impossible idol or remote delusion, nor can it be an escapist distraction. The longing you feel must empower you, not demoralize you. The vision that gets you activated each morning must be something you can actually manifest by carrying out a detailed, step-by-step master plan. If you're willing to satisfy these provisions, you have my go-ahead to get more than a little wild with desire.

If you'd like to get an idea of what my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES are like, tune in to my free podcast, "Fear Versus Intuition." It's a meditation about the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions. My approach there has a close resemblance to the style of my weekly EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES.

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Even if you don't call yourself an artist, you have the potential to be a dynamic creator who is always hatching new plans, coming up with fresh ideas, and shifting your approach to everything you do as you adjust to life's ceaseless invitation to change.

It's to this part of you -- the restless, inventive spirit -- that I address the following: Unleash yourself! Don't be satisfied with the world the way it is; don't sit back passively and blankly complain about the dead weight of the mediocre status quo. Instead, call on your curiosity and charisma and expressiveness and lust for life as you tinker with and rebuild everything you see so that it's in greater harmony with the laws of love and more hospitable to your soul's code.
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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.

When you try to communicate with a baby, you get nowhere if you talk as you normally do. Nor can you rely on your usual assumptions about human behavior as you read the baby's verbal cues and body language. There's a similar principle at work when you interact with animals: You have to speak a different language. And that brings us to your current challenge, Pisces. Life is currently sending you signals that will remain incomprehensible if you insist on interpreting them from the viewpoint of a rational adult. To decipher the encrypted code, you'll have to get into a mindset that is equal parts child, animal, and angel.

If you'd like to get an idea of what my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES are like, tune in to my free podcast, "Fear Versus Intuition." It's a meditation about the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions. My approach there has a close resemblance to the style of my weekly EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES.

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When the spell is broken, you will be able to tap into resources you've been cut off from. When the spell is broken, you will finally notice the big, beautiful secrets that have been lying in plain sight. What is that spell? Can you break it 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.