When Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro laid waste to Peru in 1532, his soldiers found green stones on the land. Were they emeralds? A priest who was traveling with them gave them bad advice. He said that the way to determine whether they were merely colored glass or else precious gems was to test their hardness by pounding them with hammers. In this manner, many actual emeralds were shattered into fragments. Learn from this mistake, Aries. Make sure you recognize treasures for what they are. And don't force them to submit to unwise tests that misconstrue their true nature.

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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Is it really healthy to have a shrill, 25-words-or-less opinion about everything, as radio and TV talk shows seem to imply? Would anyone mind if now and then you served as a compassionate witness about the hot-button issues? Is it conceivable that you could simply sit on the fence in the midst of the wars of words and beam articulate sympathy at both sides?

Yes, you can. You have the rebellious resourcefulness to be a freedom fighter without hating anyone. Go out and prove it.
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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.

Someone at Reddit.com posted a question to the community: Could anyone help him recreate the aroma of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland? He said he loved that smell. It was a blend of damp earth, rotting wood, and gunpowder. It had musty overtones, a hint of chlorine, and a tantalizing freshness. If only he could get that fragrance to permeate his house, he testified, he'd always be able to work at peak efficiency. You might want to follow his lead, Taurus. It's a good time to identify and gather all the ingredients you would need to make sure your environment inspires you to the max.

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

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If you're typical, your natural curiosity was virtually extinguished at an early age by mediocre teachers, boring lessons, and oppressive classrooms. Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if your imagination hadn't been squelched? What interesting adventures might you have sought out if your natural love of learning hadn't been crushed?

Let's launch a quest to undo the damage. Imagine I've handed you an undiploma: your official release from the soul-death of your formal education; the beginning of the healing of your wounded love of learning. What's the first thing you'll do to invoke a steady stream of inspired teachers and invigorating lessons?
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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.

If you asked me to be your personal advisor, I would prescribe supplements and herbs to build up your immune system. I'd insist that you eat nothing but healthy food and get at least eight hours of sleep every night. I'd suggest that you meditate daily on images that symbolize your most inspiring desires. For fun, I might even advise you to do a ritual in which you create a big circle around yourself using violet yarn and then do a series of playful acts to pump up your freedom, like dancing as wildly as you know how and chanting "love is my creator." Finally, Gemini, if you sought my counsel, I'd urge you to use your exuberant imagination in concert with your disciplined intellect as you design a long-term plan to charge up your well-being.

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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"Is it bad to live without a hell?" poet Pablo Neruda asks in The Book of Questions. Let's add these queries to his: Is it dangerous to live without an enemy? Is it naive to think you can achieve great success without the driving motivation that comes from having ideas you hate? There are thousands of correct answers to these questions. What are yours?

Consider the issue from another angle. Dentists love tooth decay. Treating cavities provides them with a steady source of income. Likewise, exterminators are dependent on termites, lawyers need crimes, and priests are hungry for sinners. Lots of people have symbiotic connections with nasty stuff. In fact, isn't it true that most of us nurture our feelings for the things we love to despise and fear?

What's your favorite poison or adversary? Assume that your exposure to pronoia is changing you in ways that will require you to update your relationship with it. Speculate on how you'll go about this task.
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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.

"Dear Free Will Astrologer: I found your website by accident today and was drawn in fast and hard. No matter what I did I could not escape and get back to my work. Your messages were too interesting for my own good. You gave me too many answers to questions I've had for too many years. I felt like I was being cured of problems I didn't even know I had. Many hours went by until finally I was able to pull myself out of the vortex. How did this happen? - Freaked Out." Dear Freaked: I was born under the sign of Cancer the Crab, and it so happens that the people of my tribe are currently emanating an intriguing and inscrutable aura. We're at the peak of our ability to attract and seduce. Many of us are using our power benevolently, but our mysterious mojo could still be a bit unsettling.

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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The factor most likely to drive us to addiction or illness is a lack of intimate contact with spirit. We all need a daily dose of vastness. Paradoxically, many of us would also benefit from more microscopic vision. Because we're so deprived of divine connection, we're half-dreaming all the time; our unconscious pining for the eternal source distracts us from the vivid little glories that are splayed out around us. And so we miss the Divine Wow from both directions.

Try this: Prime your connection with spirit by focusing your attention on tones and shapes you usually miss: reflections in windows, the sky between the oak tree's branches, the shadows on the water, the two different emotions in a friend's eyes and mouth.
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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.

The past is headed your way bearing gifts, Leo. I recommend that you make yourself available for its blessings, which may be delivered to you in unexpected ways. For example: The spirit of a dead loved one could impart an enigmatic but useful tip in the middle of the night. An abandoned dream you assumed was gone forever might return from limbo to grant you a wish. A favor you did for someone long ago could finally be repaid. Are you ready to let history reward you in its own unique style?

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

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Have you ever had permission to indulge in a marathon of braggadocio? Have you ever gotten an invitation to bluster on endlessly about your own charms without feeling even a touch of guilt or inhibition? I hereby grant you such a license right now.

When you're ready, carry out the exercise called Brag Therapy. Grab a good listener or a recording device, and boast extravagantly about yourself for at least 20 minutes. Expound in exhaustive detail why you're so wonderful and why the world would be a better place if everyone would just act more like you.

Don't be humble or cautious. Go too far. Heap extreme glory on yourself. Brazenly proclaim the fabulous qualities about you that no one has ever fully articulated or appreciated. Don't forget to extol the prodigious flaws and vices that make you so special.

What does this have to do with pronoia? When you audaciously identify your existing gifts, you set yourself up to become a magnet for even greater abundance. In fact, we recommend that you treat yourself to a Brag Therapy session regularly.

To whet your imagination, read an excerpt from the boast of Eric Baer, a participant in a Brag Therapy session I hosted in Milwaukee. "I have opposable thumbs," Eric exulted. "I can read. I breathe all the way through the night even though I'm asleep. I have access to emporiums where I can choose from 25 different brands of toilet paper. I know how to turn food into energy. I live where knuckleheads run everything and yet nothing ever blows up."
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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.

Just for you, it is Shark Week. During this dicey holiday, you should be wary of all sharks, especially the kind that look like human beings. Don't get in their way, and don't underestimate them. On the other hand, I'm not opposed to you getting to know some sharks better. They could teach you some valuable lessons on how to get what you want. Not that you would ever be as cold-blooded and predatory as they are, of course. But it might be energizing to your ambitions if you add just a bit of shark-like thinking to your repertoire.

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

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Don't make nasty comments about yourself behind your own back.

Do play soccer in bunny slippers at dawn in a supermarket parking lot with a gang of sadomasochistic stockbrokers who've promised to teach you the Balinese monkey chant.

Don't decorate your thigh with a sloppy tattoo of the devil pushing a lawn mower.

Do wear a t-shirt that says, "Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most."

Don't glide into a bar, scout around for the person whose face has the most pain etched in it, and ask that person to come home with you.

Do eat ripe organic strawberries that have been genetically modified and irradiated, and do chain-smoke Marlboros as you peddle your exercise bicycle, and do wander through a garbage dump while listening to Mozart on your iPod.

Don't get hooked on the fantasy that there are only two kinds of people, those who align themselves with the forces of light and those who align themselves with the forces of darkness.

Do start an organization called POMP (Proud Owners of Multiple Personalities), dedicated to erasing negative stereotypes about healthy non-schizophrenics who enjoy being a community of many different selves.

Don't lie on a floor surrounded by wine-stained poetry books, crumpled Matisse prints, abandoned underwear, and half-eaten bowls of corn flakes as you stare up at the ceiling with a mad gaze, muttering gibberish and waving your hands as if swatting away demons.

Do run along the tops of cars during a traffic jam, escaping from bad guys as you make your way to a helicopter that takes you to a spot hovering over an erupting volcano, into which you drop the Buns of Steel video.

Don't put your soul up for auction on eBay.

Do write a cookbook filled with recipes you've channeled from dead celebrities.

If you come upon a lamp with a genie in it, don't wish you had a magic wand.
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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.

Visualize yourself heading out on a high adventure with interesting people -- but all the while being distracted by the memory of a trivial insult you experienced earlier that day. Picture yourself getting intimate with a lover who inspires you to lose your self-consciousness -- up until the point when you decide to interrupt your fun by answering a phone call from some random person. Imagine toning yourself down and holding yourself back because of misplaced politeness or unnecessary guilt or delusional fear -- even though you're feeling a rushing instinct to surge and soar and overflow. Finally, Libra, understand that in getting you to envision these parodies of your current inclinations, I'm hoping to shock you into making sure that nothing like them happens.

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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Every fundamentalist divides the world into two camps, those who agree with him and like him and help him, and those who don't. There is only one right way to interpret the world -- according to the ideas the fundamentalist believes to be true -- and a million wrong ways.

The fundamental attitude of all fundamentalists is to take everything way too seriously and too personally and too literally. Imagination is a sin and a crime. Correct belief is the only virtue. Every fundamentalist is committed to waging war against the imagination unless the imagination is enslaved to his or her belief system.

And here's the bad news: Like almost everyone in the world, each of us has our own share of the fundamentalist virus. It may not be as dangerous to the collective welfare as, say, the fundamentalism of Islamic terrorists or Christian politicians or CEOs who act as if making a financial profit is the supreme good or scientists who deny the existence of the 96 percent of reality imperceptible to the five senses. Our fundamentalism is not as virulent as theirs.

But still: We are infected, you and I, with fundamentalism. What are we going to do about it?

I say we practice taking everything less seriously and less personally and less literally.
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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.

Sometime soon you may dream of being naked at a public event like a class at school or a committee meeting. I think this would be an excellent omen, so I hope it comes to pass. It would signify that you're ready to shed the disguises that have been making it problematical for you to reinvent yourself. Who is the New You? Stripping down to the bare essentials in your dreams will help you see raw truths about your waking life.

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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Receptivity is not a passive state. Nor is it a blank, empty waiting around for whatever happens to come along. In urging you to cultivate receptivity, I don't mean you should become a lazy do-nothing bereft of goals, reacting blindly to whatever life throws in front of you. Receptivity is a robust readiness to be surprised and moved; a vigorous intention to be awake to everything you can't control. When you're receptive in the pronoiac style, you have strong ideas and a powerful will and an eagerness to disseminate your unique blessings, but you're also animated by the humble certainty that you have a lot to learn.
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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.

As you cross the great water in search of the unknown treasure, navigate by the light of the clouds. That's your dreamy oracle, Sagittarius. What does it mean? Well, the work you do to figure it out is essential to activating its potential, so I don't want to give away too much. But here are three further hints to inspire you on your quest. 1. Be willing to go a long way to find a secret you don't even know you're looking for. 2. Consider the possibility of cultivating faith in a goal that you don't quite yet grasp in its entirety. 3. Rely on shadows and reflections to give you accurate information you can't get directly from the thing that's casting shadows and being reflected.

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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Where exactly does happiness come from? That's the riddle posed by David Meyers and Ed Diener in their article, "The Science of Happiness," published in The Futurist magazine. I invite you to write your own answers to their question. Map out the foundations of your own science of happiness. Get serious about defining what makes you feel good. What specific experiences arouse your deepest gratification? Physical pleasure? Seeking the truth? Being a good person? Contemplating the meaning of life? Enjoying the fruits of your accomplishments? Purging pent-up emotion?
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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.

Everyone has some kind of power. What's yours? In the coming days, I suspect there will be some crisis and opportunity regarding how you use it. Maybe you will be invited to assume more authority or exercise greater influence. Maybe your ability to wield your particular clout will be questioned or doubted, and you will be challenged to either stand up and express it with more integrity and purpose, or else relinquish it. For best results, take a moment right now to visualize the precise power you would love to command.

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

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Whatever you choose to focus your attention on, you will get more of it. If you often think of everything you lack and how sad you are that you don't have it, you will tend to receive prolific evidence of how true that is. As you obsess on all the ways your life is different from what you wish it would be, you will become an expert in rousing feelings of frustration and you will attract experiences that assist you in rousing frustration.

If, on the other hand, you dwell on the good things you have already had the privilege to experience, you will expand your appreciation for their blessings, which in turn will amplify their beneficent impact on your life. You will also magnetize yourself to receive further good things, making it more likely that they will be attracted into your sphere. At the very least, you will get in the habit of enjoying yourself no matter what the outward circumstances are.
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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.

"Dear Rob: I really enjoy reading your horoscopes. You feel like a friend I've never met. When I try to picture what you're like, I keep getting a vision of you as being fat, short, and bald with a strawberry blond moustache. Am I right? - Curious Aquarius." Dear Curious: It's great that you've decided to do a reality check. This is an excellent time for all you Aquarians to see if what you imagine to be true is a match for the world as it actually is. To answer your question, I am in fact tall and thin, don't wear a moustache, and have an abundance of long silver hair.

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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Evil is boring. The universe is friendly. Life is on your side. Joy is your birthright.
Cynicism is idiotic. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy. In fact, all of creation wants you to succeed.
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. Retrain 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.
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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've got just the right message to set the tone for you in the weeks ahead. It comes from writer H.P. Lovecraft, and captures the essence of your astrological omens. "Pleasure to me is wonder," said Lovecraft. "It's the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability. To trace the remote in the immediate; the eternal in the ephemeral; the past in the present; the infinite in the finite; these are to me the springs of delight and beauty." Now get out there, Pisces, and gather up all the mysterious marvels you have coming to you -- all the bracing encounters with uncanny grace.

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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George prayed every day for three years to win the lottery, but never heard from God or hit the jackpot.
Finally, God woke him up in the middle of the night. "George, is that you who's been praying so hard to win the lottery?" the Supreme Being boomed.
"Yes, Lord, desperately!"
God paused for a moment, then said thoughtfully, "George, I'll tell you what. I want you to meet me halfway. Buy a ticket, OK?"
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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.