Free Will Astrology


Horoscopes by Rob Brezsny


Week of August 4th, 2011

♈ ARIES

(March 21-April 19)
Symbolically speaking, there is a Holy Grail hidden close to you, and you know it, but you haven't been able to find it. The Grail is a golden chalice filled with medicine that could open what needs opening in you. Luckily, you will soon come into possession (symbolically speaking) of a big, thick magical wand that can give you a new advantage. Here's what I conclude: Use your wizard stick to locate the cup of wonder so you can take a big sip.


To further explore the ripening blessings and interesting challenges in your life, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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You're a star -- and so am I. I'm a genius -- and so are you. Your success encourages my brilliance, and my charisma enhances your power. Your victory doesn't require my defeat, and vice versa. Those are the rules in the New World -- quite unlike the rules in the Old World, where zero-sum games are the norm, and only one of us can win each time we play.

In the New World, you don't have to tone down or apologize for your prowess, because you love it when other people shine. You exult in your own excellence without regarding it as a sign of inherent superiority. As you ripen more and more of your latent aptitude, you inspire the rest of us to claim our own idiosyncratic magnificence.
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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.

♉ TAURUS

(April 20-May 20)
Much of the work you're doing right now is invisible to the naked eye, maybe even to your own naked eye. You're learning a lot while you sleep, drawing sustenance from hidden reservoirs even when you're awake, and steadily improving yourself through the arts of creative forgetting and undoing. Continue this subtle artistry, Taurus. Be cagey. Be discreet. Don't underestimate how important silence and even secrecy may be for you right now. The healing transformations unfolding in almost total darkness should not be exposed or revealed prematurely; they should be protected with vigilance.


Need more whacks applied to your mental blocks? More caresses bestowed upon your growing edge? Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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At the heart of the pronoiac way of life is an apparent conundrum: You can have anything you want if you'll just ask for it in an unselfish way. The trick to making this work is to locate where your deepest ambition coincides with the greatest gift you have to give. Figure out exactly how the universe, by providing you with abundance, can improve the lot of everyone whose life you touch. Seek the fulfillment of your fondest desires in such a way that you become a fount of blessings.
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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.

♊ GEMINI

(May 21-June 20)
Either Way I'm Celebrating. That's the title of a poetry comic book by Sommer Browning, and I suggest that you consider it as a worthy title for your life in the coming days. The adventure you're in the midst of could evolve in several possible directions, each with a different rhythm and tone, each with a distinct lesson and climax. But regardless of what path you end up taking, I'm almost positive you will have good reasons to throw yourself a party at the end. Having said that, though, I also advise you to decide which version of the story you prefer, then make it your strong intention to materialize it.


Where do you want to go? Who do you want to be? For more clues, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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You want hot gold secrets to ripen in your dark candy soul? Then study the ocean's electricity for its teachings about moon victories. Extract a fresh green why from the book of storms you never actually read as a child.

Then, when the lilies' clouds soar over your shadow, your listening will grow tougher and wetter. When the night's chanting sky reveals the birth memories that even time had forgotten, you'll know exactly how to look through the sun to the other side of your best fear.
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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.

♋ CANCERIAN

(June 21-July 22)
During the skunk mating season, two robust members of the species made the crawl space beneath my house their trysting place. The result was spectacular. Siren-like squalls rose from their ecstasy, spiraling up into my kitchen accompanied by plumes of a stench that I imagined the Italian poet Dante, in his book The Inferno, might have identified as native to the ninth level of hell. Being as instinctively empathic as I am, I naturally appreciated how much delight the creatures were enjoying. At the same time, I wished they would take their revelry elsewhere. So I called on the Humane Society, an animal rescue group, to flush them out without harming them. If anything resembling this scenario takes place in your sphere, Cancerian -- if someone's pursuit of happiness cramps your style -- I suggest you adopt my gentle but firm approach.


Would you like to hear me say some more about your ever-evolving destiny? Check out your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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Robert Anton Wilson defined information as data and ideas that are new to you. If it's something you already know, then it's propaganda or dogma, not information.

Terence McKenna had a similar view. He used the terms "information" and "novelty" interchangeably. If you're not surprised, he said, if your curiosity isn't piqued, then the messages streaming your way don't qualify as information.
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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.

♌ LEO

(July 23-August 22)
Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle rejected the prevailing scientific theory that life on this planet emerged by accident from a primordial soup. The chance of that happening was as likely as "a tornado sweeping through a junkyard [and assembling] a Boeing 747 from the materials therein." I do think that something less amazing, but still semi-miraculous, is in the works for you, Leo. What do you imagine it might be? I'm getting a vision of a windy thunderstorm blowing through a junkyard in such a way as to assemble an impressionistic sculpture of you wearing a crown of flowers and X-Ray Specs as you ride confidently on the back of a lion.


Need more help deciphering the riddles and enigmas that are fueling your amazing story? Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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Having ridden my mountain bike through Marin County's hills for years, I've watched the central shrine, Mt. Tamalpais, go through thousands of changes. Depending on the weather, the season, and the time of day, it has been a different event on each occasion I've seen it. When the low-slung sun illuminates the thin layer of mist covering it late on a winter afternoon, it's not the same mountain that lies beneath a full moon beaming down on it through a hole in the streaming clouds on a summer night.

The realist in me says I'd be justified in giving it a new name each time I'm in its presence.
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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.

♍ VIRGO

(August 23-September 22)
In the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, the yellow brick road symbolizes a path leading to all of life's answers, to a place where fantasies can be fulfilled. Dorothy and her companions follow that road in the belief it will take them to the all-powerful Wizard of Oz in the Emerald City. While I don't mind you playing with the idea that you may eventually find your own personal yellow brick road, for the immediate future I urge you to adopt the attitude Elton John articulated in his song, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road": "Oh I've finally decided my future lies beyond the yellow brick road." It's time to add more nuts-and-bolts pragmatism to your pursuit of happiness.


No one knows you better than you do, but maybe I can help you dig up even more self-knowledge. Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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In her book Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes suggests that we all need to periodically go cheerfully and enthusiastically out of our minds. Make sure, she says, that at least one part of you always remains untamed, uncategorizable, and unsubjugated by routine. Be adamant in your determination to stay intimately connected to all that's inexplicable and mysterious about your life.

At the same time, though, Estes believes you need to keep your unusual urges clear and ordered. Discipline your wildness, in other words, and don't let it degenerate into careless disorder.
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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.

♎ LIBRA

(September 23-October 22)
Some readers get enraged about the "crafty optimism" I advocate in my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia. Given what they regard as the miserable state of the world, they feel it's a sin to look for reasons to be cheerful. One especially dour critic said that after reading a few pages of the book, he took it out in his backyard, doused it with gasoline, and incinerated it. You may face similar opposition in your attempts to foment redemption, smoke out hope, and rally the troops, Libra. I urge you to be extra fierce in your devotion to peace, love, and understanding.


Wouldn't you love to learn more about who you really are? What better adventure is there than learning about your soul's code? For more hints, listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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"The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words," said Terence McKenna in Alien Dreamtime, "and that if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish." Here's my version of that hypothesis: What world you end up living in depends at least in part on your use of language.

Do you want to move and breathe amidst infertile chaos where nothing makes sense and no one really loves anyone? Then speak with unconscious carelessness, expressing yourself lazily. Constantly materialize and entertain angry thoughts in the privacy of your own imagination, beaming silent curses out into eternity.

Or would you prefer to live in a realm that's rich with fluid epiphanies and intriguing coincidences and mysterious harmonies? Then be discerning and inventive in how you speak, primed to name the unexpected codes that are always being born right in front of your eyes. Turn your imagination into an ebullient laboratory where the somethings you create out of nothings are tinctured with the secret light you see in your dreams of invisible fire.
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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.

♏ SCORPIO

(October 23-November 21)
Of all the adversaries I will ever face, my ego is the supreme challenge. It tries to trick me into thinking its interests are exactly the same as my own. It periodically strives to bamboozle me into believing that I should be motivated by pride, competitiveness, selfishness, or judgmental evaluations of other people. When I'm not vigilant, it lulls me into adopting narrow perspectives and subjective theories that are rife with delusions about the nature of reality. Don't get me wrong: I still love my ego. Indeed, being on good terms with it is my only hope for keeping it from manipulating me. I bring this up, Scorpio, because it's prime time for you to come to a riper understanding of your own ego so you can work out a tougher, more no-nonsense agreement with it.


I hope the oracle above provides you with the inspiration you need to do what you've got to do and change what needs to be changed. But if you need more clues, listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE, where I go further in exploring your mysteries.

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Is there really such a thing as free will, or are our destinies shaped by forces beyond our control?

Here's one way to think about that question: Maybe some people actually have more free will than others. Not because they have more money. (Many rich folks are under the spell of their instincts, after all.) Not because they have high-status positions. (A boss may have power over others but little power over himself.)

Rather, those with a lot of free will have earned that privilege by taking strong measures to dissolve the conditioning they absorbed while growing up. They've acted on the advice of psychologist Carl Jung: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."
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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.

♐ SAGITTARIUS

(November 22-December 21)
Sagittarian author Derrick Jensen wrote the book A Language Older Than Words. He weaves together the tale of his abusive childhood with an angry analysis of the damage human beings have done to the earth and each other. It's a wrenching text, but in the end it offers redemption. A review by Publisher's Weekly says that "Jensen's book accomplishes the rare feat of both breaking and mending the reader's heart." I invite you to pursue a similar possibility, Sagittarius. Summon the courage to allow your heart to be broken by a blessed catharsis that will ultimately heal your heart so it's even stronger and smarter than it was before the breaking.


For more help in understanding your relationship with the game of life, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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In 1971, astronaut Edgar Mitchell was the sixth person to walk on the moon. Since then he has cultivated an interest in matters that hard-core fundamentalist materialists like to call "the paranormal."

He once asked Buddhist lama Norbu Chen to attempt a psychic healing of his mother, who was legally blind. Norbu's magic worked. Mom's sight returned, and she was ecstatic.

A few days later, however, she made a discovery that horrified her: Norbu wasn't a Christian like she was. "My mother believed that if such healing didn't come from a Christian," says Mitchell, "then it must come from Satan, and she didn't want to be healed by Satan."

She soon had a dramatic relapse, completely losing the gift Norbu had bestowed. (Source: Kindred Spirit magazine, Summer 1997)
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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.

♑ CAPRICORN

(December 22-January 19)
Right now you may be feeling especially squeezed by one of the apparent contradictions in your life. But I'm here to tell you that it's not as contradictory as you think. Its seemingly paradoxical elements are in righteous harmony with each other at a higher level of understanding. Can you rise to that higher level so as to see what has been hidden from your view? I believe you can. For best results, let go of any temptation you might have to act as if you're oppressively defined by your past.


Would you like further inspiration as you scheme and dream to make the most of life's sometimes puzzling opportunities? Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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The bumper sticker I saw said, "Having abandoned my search for the truth, I'm now looking for a good fantasy." Though it's meant to be sarcastic, it's a useful piece of advice.

Consider this hypothesis: The truth is so complicated and ever-shifting that it's impossible to pin down. Why try to understand the nature of reality when it's more productive and interesting to aggressively create the nature of reality? Why be preoccupied with conjuring up concepts to approximate the structure of the universe when the point is that we change everything we observe merely by looking at it?

As another bumper sticker says, "Life isn't about finding yourself. It's about creating 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.

♒ AQUARIUS

(January 20- February 18)
Psychologist and priest David Rickey counsels people who are about to be married. "You are perfectly mismatched," he likes to tell them. "As much as you think you have chosen each other because of beauty or shared interests, the deeper reason is that unconsciously you know the other person is going to push your buttons. And the purpose of relationships is for you to discover and work on your buttons." I share Rickey's views, and offer them to you just in time to make maximum use of their wisdom. You see, Aquarius, you're in a phase when you have extraordinary power to learn from and adjust to the challenges that come from having your buttons pushed by those you care about.


What exactly are you looking for? How would you describe the experiences you want more than anything else? It's possible my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE could give you additional help in figuring that out.

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Discordianism is one of the rare religions that takes account of Ralph Abraham's assertion that heart physiologists find more chaos in the healthy heart than in the sick heart. Here's a sampling of Discordian tenets. 1. Everyone is a saint, especially you. 2. Meditation consists primarily of cruising around looking for good luck. 3. Eating hot dog buns is prohibited, except on Friday, when it's compulsory. 4. When you're stuck in a rut, you must speak in tongues, handle snakes, and experience phantasmagoria. 5. Your guardian angel loves you better when your room is a mess. 6. Bowling alleys are sacred; you must protect them from ­desecration. 7. The Goddess will solve all your problems if you solve all hers.
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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.

♓ PISCES

(February 19-March 20)
In his song "Crazy," British singer Seal repeats the following line numerous times for emphasis: "We're never going to survive unless we get a little crazy." I recommend it as a mantra for you to rely on in the coming days. Your emotional health will depend on your ability to laugh at yourself, play along with absurdity, and cultivate a grateful reverence for cosmic riddles. Being a little crazy will not only keep you robustly sane; it will also allow you to enjoy and capitalize on the divine comedy life presents you with.


Want to hear more about the subconscious factors and hidden forces that may be influencing your life? Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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Thank your mother for the pain she endured while birthing you.

For three minutes on the first Friday of every month, close your eyes and imagine yourself riding a wild horse through a cemetery.

Fantasize that your so-called "dark side" is sweet and creamy.

When you come home after a day of triumphs, take out the garbage.

Dream you're a red-tailed hawk soaring over a shopping mall.

Forgive yourself for the blindness that put you in the path of those who betrayed you.

Buy seven used gowns worn to the Academy Awards show by famous actresses, and send them gratis to seven Guatemalan teenagers.

Visualize two versions of yourself, one male and one female, holding hands as they gaze into a reflection of the moon on a river.

Keep an image of a sphinx with you at all times.
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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.

© Rob Brezsny 1995-2024