Have you ever seen the edible fungi known as truffles? They are bulbous, warty clumps. Because they grow underground near trees, specially trained pigs and dogs are needed to sniff out their location. In parts of Europe their taste is so highly prized that they can sell for up to $6,000 per pound. In my opinion, the truffle should be your metaphor of the month this November. I expect that you will be in the hunt for an ugly but delectable treasure, or a homely but valuable resource, or some kind of lovable monster. Halloween costume suggestion: a Frankensteinian beauty queen or underwear model, a rhino in a prom dress, a birthday cake made of lunchmeat.

Factual information and reasonable thinking alone are not sufficient to guide you through life’s labyrinthine tests. You need and deserve regular deliveries of uncanny revelation. One of your inalienable rights as a human being should therefore be to receive mysteriously useful omens on a regular basis. In this spirit, I offer you the free weekly horoscopes you read here. If you ever want more, and think it's worth paying for, try my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES or daily text message 'scopes.

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What's true about the word "God" may apply as well to "soul": Much of the meaning has been sucked out of it. It's a flabby ghost that has lost its life force. Say "soul" and you're liable to numb your listeners' attention. At best you may inspire them to picture a vague floating blob that feels more like an abstract concept than a real presence. That's a shame, because the eminence that's lazily referred to as "soul" is as crucial to you waking up tomorrow as your heart.

"If you need to visualize the soul," wrote Tom Robbins, "think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It's a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved."

As part of the Beauty and Truth Lab's ongoing crusade to wrestle the English language into a more formidable servant of the ecstatic impulse, we're pleased to present some alternate designations for "soul." See if any of the following concoctions feel right coming out of your mouth: 1. undulating superconductor; 2. nectar plasma; 3. golden lather; 4. smoldering crucible; 5. luminous caduceus.

If none of these work for you—or even if they do—create your own terms.

P.S. Here's Robbins' conclusion: "By waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe."
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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.