Edmund Kean (1789-1833) was one of the most famous British actors of his time. But a contemporary, the poet Samuel Coleridge, was frustrated by Kean's inconsistency, regarding him as a great artist who on occasion lapsed into histrionics. "To see him act," said Coleridge, "is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning." Now and then I get that feeling about you, Aries. You have bursts of brilliance that you sometimes don't follow up on. You're like a superstar who loses your concentration. But I've got a strong feeling that in 2014 you will at least partially overcome this tendency. Your word of power will be consistency.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2014. Start dreaming and scheming about who you're going to be in the new year! (Beginning December 31, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming months. Tune in!)

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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You understand that you can never own love, right? No matter how much someone adores you today, no matter how much you adore someone, you can't force that unique state of grace to keep its shape forever. It will inevitably evolve or mutate, perhaps into a different version of tender caring, but maybe not. From there it will continue to change, into either yet another version of interesting affection, or who knows what else?

Describe how you could get the hang of putting this tricky wisdom into practice.

Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) is known as the father of nuclear physics not just because he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. He was also a superb teacher. Eleven of his students won Nobel Prizes. That's the kind of teacher or mentor or guide I urge you to connect with in 2014, Taurus. The coming months will potentially be an optimum time for you to learn deeply, and at a rapid rate. One of the best ways to fulfill that promise will be to apprentice yourself to adepts who have mastered the skills and savvy you want to acquire.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2014. Start dreaming and scheming about who you're going to be in the new year! (Beginning December 31, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming months. Tune in!)

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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"Love is being stupid together," said French poet Paul Valery. While there's a grain of truth to that, it's too corny and decadent for my tastes. I prefer to focus on a more interesting truth, which is this: Real love is being smart together. If you weave your destiny together with another's, he or she should catalyze your sleeping potentials, sharpen your perceptions, and boost both your emotional and analytical intelligence. Your relationship becomes a crucible in which you deepen your understanding of the way the world works.

Give an example of your closest approach to this model in your own life. Then formulate a vow in which you promise you'll do what's necessary to more fully embody the principle "Love is being smart together."

Your last best hope to get rich was back in the latter half of 2001 and the first six months of 2002. From July 2025 to June 2026, the cosmos will again conspire to give you a big fat chance to expedite your cash flow to the max. But why get bogged down dreaming of the past or fantasizing about the future when fertile opportunities to boost your prosperity are in front of you right now? Financial luck is flowing your way. Viable ideas for making money are materializing in your subconscious treasure house. The contacts that could help you build your wealth are ready to play with you. (This offer is good until July 2014.)

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2014. Start dreaming and scheming about who you're going to be in the new year! (Beginning December 31, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming months. Tune in!)

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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"For a relationship to stay alive," writes James Hillman, "love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining."

Make this your hypothesis. The next time you sense that you're about to say the same old thing to your closest ally, interrupt yourself and head off in the direction of storyland.

French poet Edmond Jabes had this to say about the birth of big creative ideas that dramatically transform one's life: "For the writer, discovering the work he will write is both like a miracle and a wound, like the miracle of the wound." Regardless of whether or not you're an artist, Cancerian, I expect that you will experience a wrenching and amazing awakening like this in 2014. The opening you've been hoping and working for will finally crack its way into your destiny. It may be one of the most pleasurable disruptions you've ever had.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2014. Start dreaming and scheming about who you're going to be in the new year! (Beginning December 31, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming months. Tune in!)

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Would you like to make yourself more magnetic to blessings? You could experiment with good luck charms or magic amulets -- objects that you imagine might attract benevolence into your life. How about a replica of Brísingamen, the magical necklace of the Norse goddess Freya? When she wore it, neither man nor god could resist her allure. Or maybe a copy of the thyrsus, a wand wielded by Dionysus, the god of ecstasy? Or the bracelet of meteorite chunks I saw advertised as a luck-bringer in the back of a tabloid?

As fun as things like these might be, I believe there's a superior approach to the art of charging up your mojo. It's embodied by the metaphorical talisman that Tom Waits recommends in his song "Get Behind the Mule": Always keep a diamond in your mind.

Go get one of those diamonds.

In the coming months, I'm betting that you will exit a confined place or shed cramped expectations or break off your commitment to a compromise that has drained you. It may happen suddenly, or it could take a while to complete. How the escape unfolds will have to do with how thoroughly you extract the lessons that your "incarceration" has made available. Here's a ritual that might also expedite the process: Give a gift to the people you're leaving behind, or offer a blessing in the spot where your difficult teachings have taken place.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2014. Start dreaming and scheming about who you're going to be in the new year! (Beginning December 31, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming months. Tune in!)

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, and bats love to drink the nectar that flowers offer. In return, these pollinators are expected to get some pollen stuck on their bodies and carry it away to fertilize other plants.

While the nectar is tasty, it's usually not pure sweetness. If it were, the first pollinator to come along would suck it all dry, leaving nothing for further visitors. And that wouldn't be good from the plant's point of view, because it would limit the number of places where its pollen would be disseminated.

To keep nectar-drinking sessions short, therefore, most plants include a touch of bitterness in the blend.

"Now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good," says a character in John Steinbeck's novel East of Eden. I suggest that you make this your rallying cry in 2014, Virgo. In fact, why not begin right now, wherever you are? Say "Now that I don’t have to be perfect, I can be good." Free yourself of the pressure to be the polished, ultimate embodiment of everything you'd ever hoped you would be. That will allow you to relax into being more content with the intriguing creation you have already become. You may be surprised by how much mojo this affords you.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2014. Start dreaming and scheming about who you're going to be in the new year! (Beginning December 31, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming months. Tune in!)

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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"The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them," wrote novelist Margaret Atwood. "There ought to be as many for love."

Here are a few that the ancient Greeks devised, according to Lindsay Swope in her review of Richard Idemon's book Through the Looking Glass.

Epithemia is the basic need to touch and be touched. Our closest approximation is "horniness," though epithemia is not so much a sexual feeling as a sensual one.

Philia is friendship. It includes the need to admire and respect your friends as a reflection of yourself—like in high school, where you want to hang out with the cool kids because that means you're cool too.

Eros isn't sexual in the way we usually think, but is more about the emotional gratification that comes from merging souls.

Agape is a mature, utterly free expression of love that has no possessiveness. It means wanting the best for another person even if it doesn't advance your self-interest.

Your assignment is to coin three additional new words for love, which means you'll have to discover or create three alternate states of love that have previously been unnamed. To do that, you'll have to put aside your habitual expectations and standard definitions of what constitutes love so that you can explore an array of nuances, including varieties you never imagined existed.

In 1972, English folk musician Nick Drake recorded his album Pink Moon. He finished it in a mere four hours, singing all 11 songs and playing every instrumental track himself. It took years for anyone to appreciate his artistry, but eventually the magazine Melody Maker selected Pink Moon as number 48 on its list of the "All Time Top 100 Albums." Here's one way I suspect your efforts will be similar to Drake's in 2014, Libra: You will have the ability to get a lot done in a short time. Here are two ways your fate will be different from Drake's: First, you will have a big pool of trustworthy allies to call on for help. Second, what you produce won't take nearly as long to get the appreciation it warrants.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2014. Start dreaming and scheming about who you're going to be in the new year! (Beginning December 31, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming months. Tune in!)

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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A common obstruction to a vital intimate relationship is what I call the assumption of clairvoyance. You imagine, perhaps unconsciously, that your partner or friend is somehow magically psychic when it comes to you -- so much so that he or she should unfailingly intuit exactly what you need, even if you don't ask for it. This fantasy may seem romantic, but it can sink the most promising alliances.

To counteract any tendencies you might have to indulge in the assumption of clairvoyance, practice stating your desires aloud.

Eierlegende Wollmilchsau is a colloquial German term for a mythical pig that lays eggs like a chicken, provides milk like a cow, supplies wool like a sheep, and ultimately becomes bacon and pork chops. Metaphorically, it may refer to a fanciful device that performs many functions. Imagine, for instance, a futuristic smart phone that could interpret your dreams, trim your unwanted hair, fix you a perfect cup of coffee, tell you you're beautiful in ways you actually believe, and cure your little health problems. In the real world, there's no such thing, right? Not yet. But there's a chance you will find the next best thing to an eierlegende Wollmilchsau in 2014.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2014. Start dreaming and scheming about who you're going to be in the new year! (Beginning December 31, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming months. Tune in!)

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Write the following on a piece of red paper and keep it under your pillow. "I, [put your name here], do solemnly swear on this day, [put date here], that I will devote myself for a period of seven days to learning my most important desire. No other thought will be more uppermost in my mind. No other concern will divert me from tracking down every clue that might assist me in my drive to ascertain the one experience in this world that deserves my brilliant passion above all others."

"We don't accomplish our love in a single year as the flowers do," says Rainer Maria Rilke in the Duino Elegies. Do you promise to take that truth into consideration in 2014, Sagittarius? Will you pledge to diligently devote yourself to creating the right conditions for love to flourish? In the past, you may not have been fully able to carry out this slow-building marvel; you may not have had quite enough wise perseverance. But you do now.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2014. Start dreaming and scheming about who you're going to be in the new year! (Beginning December 31, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming months. Tune in!)

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Even if your heart's not exactly shattered at the moment, it has no doubt been so at some time in the past. I invite you to feel a wave of sadness about your suffering, then move on to this possibility: that having a broken heart is one of the best things that can happen to you.

Why? Because it strengthens your humility, which makes you smarter. It demonstrates to you that you have a tremendous capacity for deep feelings -- far more than you're normally aware of. It breaks down defense mechanisms that have desensitized you to the world's secret beauty. It may also inspire you to treat other people's hearts with greater care, making it more likely that you'll be able to create intelligent intimacy in the future.

In 1588, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the ruler of Japan, confiscated the swords, daggers, and spears belonging to every citizen. He announced they would be melted down and used to make a giant Buddha statue. I'd love to see you undertake a comparable transformation in 2014, Capricorn. You shouldn't completely shed all your anger and pugnacity, of course; a certain amount is valuable, especially when you need to rouse yourself to change situations that need to be changed. But it's also true that you could benefit from a reduction in your levels of combativeness. What if you could "melt down" some of your primal rage and use the energy that's made available to build your personal equivalent of a Buddha icon?

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2014. Start dreaming and scheming about who you're going to be in the new year! (Beginning December 31, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming months. Tune in!)

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Compose and cast a love spell on yourself. There's no need to consult pagan books about how to proceed. It may even be better if you improvise homemade conjurations and incantations.

Be sure to formulate a clear intention of what you want to accomplish with your mojo. Example: "I want to make myself irresistibly lovable." For best results, stand naked in front of an altar crammed with magical objects that symbolize both lust and compassion.

The period between last July and next June is prime time to find or create your dream job. That might mean simply upgrading your existing gig so that it serves you better. Or it could involve you rethinking your relationship with work and going off in quest of a new way to earn a living. So how are you doing on this project, Aquarius? If you are proceeding on schedule, you should be halfway there by now. The goal should be clear, and you should be more disciplined, organized, and determined than ever. If for any reason this isn't the case, start playing catch-up.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2014. Start dreaming and scheming about who you're going to be in the new year! (Beginning December 31, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming months. Tune in!)

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Bring the spirits of sampling and the mash-up into your relationship life. Sampling is what happens when a musician openly lifts a riff out of an existing song and inserts it into his or her own composition. In a mash-up, a producer takes parts from two different songs to assemble a new song that has elements of both originals but is an entirely new creation.

How might you apply these approaches to your collaborations with intimate allies? For example, you could "sample" a close friend's favorite catchphrases or clothes, and use them as your own. Or tell that person a story from his or her own past, but recount it as if it happened to you. The two of you could write a journal entry together, taking turns spinning out each new line. You might even switch roles for a day, trying out what it actually feels like to be the other person.

"Singing teaches two skills that are essential for any creative process," says author and vocalist Rachel Bagby, "the ability to listen and the ability to be flexible and spontaneous." I bring this to your attention, Pisces, because 2014 could potentially be a Golden Age for your creativity. It will be a time when you will benefit even more than usual from exploring and enhancing your imaginative originality. That's why I'm encouraging you to sing more than you ever have before. Make a list of your 50 favorite singable songs. Be aggressive about expanding the music you get exposed to, and learn the melodies and lyrics to a lot of new tunes. Cut loose with your vocal stylings whenever you have a chance, and take a vow to propel yourself out of funky moods with the creative energy of your singing.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2014. Start dreaming and scheming about who you're going to be in the new year! (Beginning December 31, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming months. Tune in!)

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Play the game called "Tell me the story of your scars." It's best to do it with a skilled empath who is curious about your fate's riddles and skilled at helping you find redemption in your wounds.

"How did you get that blotch on your knee?" he or she might begin, and you describe the time in childhood when you fell on the sidewalk. Then maybe he or she would say, "Why do you always look so sad when you hear that song?" And you'd narrate the tale of how it was playing when an old lover broke your heart. The questions and answers continue until you unveil the history of your hurts, both physical and psychic. Treat yourself to this game soon.