"Choconiverous" is an English slang word that's defined as having the tendency, when eating a chocolate Easter Bunny, to bite the head off first. I recommend that you adopt this direct approach in everything you do in the coming weeks. Don't get bogged down with preliminaries. Don't get sidetracked by minor details, trivial distractions, or peripheral concerns. It's your duty to swoop straight into the center of the action. Be clear about what you want and unapologetic about getting it.

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All of creation loves you very much. Even now, people you know and people you don't know are collaborating to make sure you have all you need to make your next smart move. But are you willing to start loving life back with an equal intensity? The adoration it offers you has not exactly been unrequited, but there is room for you to be more demonstrative. For help in cultivating this approach, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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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In the Western Hermetic version of the Qabala, every Hebrew letter is paired with a number, and so every word is also a number derived from the addition of its letters. Gematria is the practice of finding hidden resonance between words that have similar numerical values. Of the many poetic truths revealed through this art, one of my favorites is this: The Hebrew words for both "serpent" and "messiah" add up to 358.

Let's suppose this can be interpreted to mean that the snaky potency of your reproductive drive is potentially the source of your salvation. What implications might that have for how you cultivate the art of ecstasy?

The American snack cake known as a Twinkie contains 68 percent air. Among its 37 other mostly worthless ingredients are sugar, water, cornstarch, the emulsifier polysorbate 60, the filler sodium stearoyl lactylate, and food coloring. You can't get a lot of nutritious value by eating it. Now let's consider the fruit known as the watermelon. It's 91 percent water and six percent sugar. And yet it also contains a good amount of Vitamin C, lycopene, and antioxidants, all of which are healthy for you. So if you are going to eat a whole lot of nothing, watermelon is a far better nothing than a Twinkie. Let that serve as an apt metaphor for you in the coming week.

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What is the obvious secret you can't quite see? How could you turn your challenges into daily gifts for yourself? For clues to mysteries like these, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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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Elijah, the beer truck driver who lives in the trailer with old tires, rusty tools, and the husk of a 1975 Chevy El Camino littering the driveway, tells me that everything he knows about God can be summed up in the bumper sticker on the back of the El Camino, which reads "Theresa and Johnny's Comfort Food -- Live Free or Die."

Mythologist Joseph Campbell, on the other hand, suggested we should imagine a deity to be like a floating ball of fire that would immediately kill anyone it touched.

Then there's the poet Rumi. He envisioned God as your tender Best Friend and Unpredictable Ally who's always as close as your own breath.

Which version do you prefer?

You may be as close as you have ever gotten to finding the long-lost Holy Grail -- or Captain Kidd's pirate treasure, for that matter, or Marie Antoinette's jewels, or Tinkerbell's magical fairy dust, or the smoking-gun evidence that Shakespeare's plays were written by Francis Bacon. At the very least, I suspect you are ever-so-near to your personal equivalent of those precious goods. Is there anything you can do to increase your chances of actually getting it? Here's one tip: Visualize in detail how acquiring the prize would inspire you to become even more generous and magnanimous than you already are.

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Grace emerges in the ebb and flow, not just the flow. The waning reveals a different blessing than the waxing. Where are you in the great cycle of your life? For inspiration in figuring it all out, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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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"Take time to stop and smell the flowers," says an old homily. Albert Hoffman, the Swiss scientist who discovered LSD and lived to age 102, had a different approach. "Take the time to stop and be the flowers," he said.

That's my advice to you. Don't just set aside a few stolen moments to sniff the snapdragons, taste the rain, chase the wind, watch the hummingbirds, and listen to a friend. Use your imagination to actually be the snapdragons and rain and wind and hummingbirds and friend. Don't just behold the Other; become the Other.

People are paying attention to you in new ways. That's what you wanted, right? You've been emanating subliminal signals that convey messages like "Gaze into my eternal eyes" and "Bask in the cozy glow of my crafty empathy." So now what? Here's one possibility: Go to the next level. Show the even-more-interesting beauty that you're hiding below the surface. You may not think you're ready to offer the gifts you have been "saving for later." But you always think that. I dare you to reveal more of your deep secret power.

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Whether it's your time to ferment in the shadows or sing in the sun, fresh power to transform yourself is on the way. Life always delivers the creative energy you need to change into the new thing you must become. For more help in understanding it all, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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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Beauty and Truth Lab researcher Rebecca Rusche coined the word "careenstable." Here's her explanation of how it originated: "In high school, my mom used to let me use her VW Beetle to go to basketball practice. One night after practice, a friend and I were chatting and drinking Coke when we decided to see how fast we could get the Beetle going down a nearby dirt road. Soon we were careening at 65 mph, shouting 'careen!' every time we hit a bump and flew into the air.

"When we arrived back at the gym and got out of the car half an hour later, we saw my Coke can sitting on the front bumper next to the license plate. I nudged it softly to see if it was lodged in there, but it fell right off -- wasn't stuck at all. I thought, 'There must be a word for this magic,' and thus 'careenstable' was born. It came to mean anything that maintains its poise in the midst of wild, fast movement."

Give an example of how you could experiment with making careenstable work in your own life.

Some people believe unquestioningly in the truth and power of astrology. They imagine it's an exact science that can unfailingly discern character and predict the future. Other people believe all astrology is nonsense. They think that everyone who uses it is deluded or stupid. I say that both of these groups are wrong. Both have a simplistic, uninformed perspective. The more correct view is that some astrology is nonsense and some is a potent psychological tool. Some of it's based on superstition and some is rooted in a robust mythopoetic understanding of archetypes. I encourage you to employ a similar appreciation for paradox as you evaluate a certain influence that is currently making a big splash in your life. In one sense, this influence is like snake oil, and you should be skeptical about it. But in another sense it's good medicine that can truly heal.

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You can learn to be lucky. It's not a mystical force you're born with, but a habit you can develop. How? For starters, be open to new experiences, trust your gut wisdom, expect good fortune, see the bright side of challenging events, and master the art of maximizing serendipitous opportunities. For more help, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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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Here are some ways to get more respect:

1. Do your best in every single thing you do -- whether it's communicating precisely or upholding the highest possible standards at your job or taking excellent care of yourself.

2. Maintain impeccable levels of integrity in everything you do -- whether it's being scrupulously honest or thoroughly fair-minded or fiercely kind.

3. On the other hand, don't try so compulsively hard to do your best and cultivate integrity that you get self-conscious and obstruct the flow of your natural intelligence.

4. Make it your goal that no later than four years from now you will be doing what you love to do at least 51 percent of the time.

5. Give other people as much respect as you sincerely believe they deserve.

6. Give yourself more respect.

7. Others?

According to the Biblical stories, Peter was Christ's closest disciple, but acted like a traitor when trouble came. After Christ was arrested, in the hours before the trial, Peter denied knowing his cherished teacher three different times. His fear trumped his love, leading him to violate his sacred commitment. Is there anything remotely comparable to that scenario developing in your own sphere, Virgo? If you recognize any tendencies in yourself to shrink from your devotion or violate your highest principles, I urge you to root them out. Be brave. Stay strong and true in your duty to a person or place or cause that you love.

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Somewhere there's a treasure that has no value to anyone but you, and a secret that's meaningless to everyone except you, and a frontier that harbors a revelation only you would know how to exploit. Why not go in search of those things? For inspiration, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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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Many life processes unfold outside of your conscious awareness: your body digesting your food and circulating your blood; trees using carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight to synthesize their nourishment; microorganisms in the soil beneath your feet endlessly toiling to create humus. You don't perceive any of these things directly; they're invisible to you.

Tune in to this vitalizing alchemy. Use your X-ray vision and sub-sonic hearing and psychic smelling. See if you can absorb by osmosis some of the euphoria of the trees as they soak in the sunlight from above and water from below.

Marketing experts say consumers need persistent prodding before they will open their minds to possibilities that are outside their entrenched habits. The average person has to be exposed to a new product at least eight times before it fully registers on his or her awareness. Remember this rule of thumb as you seek attention and support for your brainstorms. Make use of the art of repetition. Not just any old boring, tedious kind of repetition, though. You've got to be as sincere and fresh about presenting your goodies the eighth time as you were the first.

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When they say "Be yourself," which self do they mean? Certainly not the self that wants to win every game and use up every resource and stand alone at the end of time on a mountain of pretty garbage. So which self is it? For guidance, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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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In certain Native American traditions, the hole was a symbol for the female genitalia, through which souls enter this realm. In American scientific lore, a wormhole is a backdoor shortcut between two places in space separated by an astronomical distance. In my personal mythos, those are my two favorite nuances in the archetype of the hole.

When I was a kid I loved to fantasize that I'd obtained a magic hole like the one Bugs Bunny had in the comic books. It was a portable hole that Bugs could take with him everywhere and apply to any barrier he needed to slip through. Once he even managed to slap it up against the sky, giving him access to another dimension where the whole world was inside him, not outside. (Or was that a dream I had?)

What would you do with your portable magic hole?

In Cole Porter's song "I Get a Kick Out of You," he testifies that he gets no kick from champagne. In fact, "Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all," he sings. The same is true about cocaine. "I'm sure that if I took even one sniff that would bore me terrifically, too," Porter declares. With this as your nudge, Scorpio, and in accordance with the astrological omens, I encourage you to identify the titillations that no longer provide you with the pleasurable jolt they once did. Acknowledge the joys that have grown stale and the adventures whose rewards have waned. It's time for you to go in search of a new array of provocative fun and games.

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Take inventory of the extent that "No" dominates your life. Notice how often you say or think: 1. "That's not right." 2. "I don't like that." 3. "I don't agree with that." 4. "They don't like me." 5. "I'm not very good." 6. "That should be different from what it is." For help in retraining yourself to say "Yes!" at least 51% of the time, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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 people of future generations will win many a liberty of which we do not yet even feel the want," said German philosopher Max Stirner. See if you can become aware of an interesting freedom that has not previously been on your radar screen.

The English writer William Wordsworth (1770-1850) wrote hundreds of poems. Among his most famous was "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," which is also known as "Daffodils." The poem sprung from him after a walk he took with his sister around Lake Ullswater in the English Lake District. There they were delighted to find a long, thick belt of daffodils growing close to the water. In his poem, Wordsworth praises the "ten thousand" flowers that were "Continuous as the stars that shine / And twinkle on the milky way." If you are ever going to have your own version of a daffodil explosion that inspires a burst of creativity, Sagittarius, it will come in the coming weeks.

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How's your fight for freedom going? Are you making progress in liberating yourself from your unconscious obsessions, bad habits, and conditioned responses? For assistance and inspiration, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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 Doctrine of Original Sin? We spit on it. We reject it. We renounce it and forget it and annihilate it from reality. In its place we embrace the Doctrine of Original Fun. This reformulation asserts that it is our birthright to commune with regular doses of curious beauty and tricky truth and insurrectionary love. A robust, heroic joy is even now roaring through us, bringing us good ideas about how to apply the metaphor of ingenious foreplay to everything we do. We will not waste this euphoric deluge on any of the million and one numbing little diversions that pass for pleasure among the ecstasy-starved pursuers of mediocre joy. Rather, we will remain ever alert for the call of primordial delight."

Your subconscious desires and your conscious desires seem to be at odds. What you say you want is not in precise alignment with what your deep self wants. That's why I'm worried that "Don't! Stop!" might be close to morphing into "Don't stop!" -- or vice versa. It's all pretty confusing. Who's in charge here? Your false self or your true self? Your wounded, conditioned, habit-bound personality or your wise, eternal, ever-growing soul? I'd say it's a good time to retreat into your sanctuary and get back in touch with your primal purpose.

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Assume that your drive to experience pleasure isn't a barrier to your spiritual growth, but is in fact essential to it. Proceed on the hypothesis that cultivating joy can make you a more ethical and compassionate person. Imagine that feeling good has something important to teach you every day. For inspiration in practicing this approach, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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 really important kind of freedom," said David Foster Wallace, "involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day."

Is that an interesting kind of freedom to you? Can you imagine any scenario in which practicing it would crack you open and pour you into an ecstatic state?

Sometimes you're cool, but other times you're hot. You veer from acting aloof and distracted to being friendly and attentive. You careen from bouts of laziness to bursts of disciplined efficiency. It seems that you're always either building bridges or burning them, and on occasion you are building and burning them at the same time. In short, Aquarius, you are a master of vacillation and a slippery lover of the in-between. When you're not completely off-target and out of touch, you've got a knack for wild-guessing the future and seeing through the false appearances that everyone else regards as the gospel truth. I, for one, am thoroughly entertained!

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"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." So begins Charles Dickens' novel David Copperfield. I'd like to inspire you to write a story of your own that begins like that. For help, tune into your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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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Poet Kay Ryan told the Christian Science Monitor how she cultivates the inspiration to write. She rouses the sense of a "self-imposed emergency," thereby calling forth psychic resources that usually materialize only in response to a crisis.

Please note that she doesn't provoke an actual emergency: She doesn't arrange to have a loved one get pinned beneath the wheels of a car. She doesn't climb out onto the window ledge on the 22nd story of a high-rise. Instead, she visualizes hypothetical situations that galvanize her to shift into a dramatically heightened state of awareness.

What imagined emergencies could you invoke to inspire your deep self to rise up and make its mark?

How can you ripen the initiatives you have set in motion in recent weeks? Of the good new trends you have launched, which can you now install as permanent enhancements in your daily rhythm? Is there anything you might do to cash in on the quantum leaps that have occurred, maybe even figure out a way to make money from them? It's time for you to shift from being lyrically dreamy to fiercely practical. You're ready to convert lucky breaks into enduring opportunities.

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I invite you to keep a running list of all the ways life delights you and helps you and energizes you. Describe everyday miracles you take for granted . . . the uncanny powers you possess . . . the small joys that occur so routinely you forget how much they mean to you . . . the steady flow of benefits bestowed on you by people you know and don't know. What works for you? What makes you feel at home in the world? For inspiration in this noble effort, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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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All of creation loves you very much. Even now, people you know and people you don't know are collaborating to make sure you have all you need to make your next smart move. But are you willing to start loving life back with an equal intensity? The adoration it offers you has not exactly been unrequited, but there is room for you to be more demonstrative. For help in cultivating this approach, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.