Charles de Lint is a novelist whose stories are influenced by folklore, myths, and science fiction. In his book Yarrow, a wizardly character named Toby is skilled at conjuring. He can make small objects appear and disappear, for example. But Toby yearns for more. "I want to be magic," he says. "I want to be a friend of elves and live in a tree. I want to marry a moonbeam and hear the stars sing. I don’t want to pretend at magic anymore. I want to be magic." If you have ever wished for a comparable upgrade, Aries, now is an unusually favorable time to work on it.

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What fresh blessings will life bring you? What questions should you be asking? To explore the ripening trends further, 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 "Kumulipo" is an old Hawaiian prayer chant that poetically describes the creation of the world. The word literally means "beginning-in-deep-darkness." Here darkness doesn't connote gloom and evil. Rather, it's about the inscrutability of the embryonic state; the obscure chaos that reigns before germination. Talk about the last time you dwelt in kumulipo.

An imaginative Welsh man named Liam Bennett has developed a "dausage," which is a blend of a doughnut and sausage. One of his most requested treats is pork meat stuffed with strawberry jelly. Even if this novel blend doesn't appeal to your taste buds, it serves as a good prompt for my advice: The coming weeks will be a favorable time to expand your notion of what types of nourishment are fun and healthy for you. I mean that in the metaphorical as well as the literal sense. Experiment with new recipes, both with the food you provide your body and the sustenance you feed your soul.

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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 Laboratory researcher Romney Austin adorned her Honda Civic with her first-ever bumper sticker, "Give Yourself to Love." While proud of announcing her compassionate philosophy to the world, she was also nervous. Hadn't she raised the pressure on herself to live up to her noble ideals?

A week later, she snapped. A guy chatting on a cell phone in a Lexus SUV cut her off in traffic, and road rage moved her to give him a middle-finger salute. Soon she added a new bumper sticker to the left of the first: "Get In, Sit Down, Shut Up, Hold On."

When I asked her about the contradiction, she confessed, "I've just accepted that I've got a split personality."

A week later, her conflicting sides reached a compromise. Romney pasted the word "and" in the space between the two stickers, to create a new thought: "Get In, Sit Down, Shut Up, Hold On, and Give Yourself to Love." She called to announce the good news: "I'm whole again!"

In the woods, living matter isn't segregated from the decaying stuff. Rotting tree trunks are host to teeming colonies of moss. Withered stems of ferns mingle with cheerful saplings. Audacious mushrooms sprout up among scraps of fallen leaves. The birds and beetles and lizards and butterflies don't act as if this mix is weird. They seem to be at peace with it. I suspect they thrive on it, even exult in it. That's the spirit I suggest you adopt as you enjoy the paradoxical mélange of your life in the coming weeks, Gemini. Celebrate the mysterious magic that emerges as you simultaneously fade and flourish, decline and increase, wind down and rise up.

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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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Every act of genius, Carl Jung said, is an act contra naturam: against nature. Indeed, every effort to achieve psychological integration and union with the divine requires a knack for working against the grain. The 18th-century mystic Jacob Boehme recommended the same technique. The great secret to becoming enlightened, he said, is "to walk in all things contrary to the world." Qabalist teacher Paul Foster Case agreed: "The basis of the spiritual approach to life, the foundation of the everyday practice of a person who lives the life of obedience to esoteric law, is the reversal of the more usual ways of thinking, speaking and doing."

Name the ways you already use this approach, and brainstorm about others you might like to try.

Here are some tips on being the best Cancerian you can be: 1. Cultivate your sensitivity as a strength. Regard your emotional vulnerability as a superpower. 2. Nurture yourself at least as much as you nurture others. 3. Learn to know the difference between your golden hunches and the glimmering delusions that your demons stir up. 4. Be kind, but don't be exorbitantly nice. 5. Remember that others' unhappiness is rarely your fault or responsibility. 6. Keep reinventing the way you love yourself.

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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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Every January 1, many people make New Year's resolutions, promising to embark on programs of self-improvement. But your assignment now, should you choose to accept it, is to create a list of ANTI-resolutions.

Here are some questions to guide you: 1. What outlandish urges and controversial tendencies do you promise to cultivate in the coming months? 2. What nagging irritations will you ignore and avoid with even greater ingenuity? 3. What problems do you promise to exploit in order to have even more fun as you make the status quo accountable for its corruption? 4. What boring rules and traditions will you thumb your nose at, paving the way for exciting encounters with strange attractors?

"What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them?" This question was posed by Leo author Ray Bradbury in his book *Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity.* Even if you're not a writer yourself, you will benefit from responding to his exhortation. It's one of the best things you could possibly do to activate your dormant creativity and intensify your lust for life. This is one of those times when working with your extremes is not only safe and healthy, but also fun and inspirational. So do it, Leo! Get excited and expressive about the best and worst things in your life.

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Sometimes it's a challenge to try to figure out what's important and what's not important. If you'd like more of my input, 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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I invite you to say any or all of the following lines out loud:
I love everything about me
I love my uncanny beauty and my bewildering pain
I love my hungry soul and my wounded longing
I love my flaws, my fears, and my scary frontiers

I will never forsake, betray, or deceive myself
I will always adore, forgive, and believe in myself
I will never refuse, abandon, or scorn myself
I will always amuse, delight, and redeem myself

It's time to leave behind the golden oldies. You'd be wise to tiptoe away from tradition, and give the ghosts of the past one last kiss goodbye, and wean yourself from nostalgia for the good old days. Frankly, my dear, you've got numerous appointments with the future, and it would be a shame to miss them because you're mucking around with memories. In the coming weeks -- for that matter, in the coming months -- you're most likely to thrive if you become an agent of change. And the most important thing to change is your relationship to the person you used to be.

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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 some seekers, spiritual enlightenment is the ultimate commodity. They believe that through diligent meditation and self-improvement, there will come a day when it will no longer elude their grasp. Breaking through to the singular state of cosmic consciousness, they will forever after own it, free and clear. Permanently illuminated! Never to backslide into the dull ignominy of normal human awareness!

Here's what I have to say about that: It's a delusion.

The fact is, the nature of perfection is always mutating. What constitutes enlightenment today will always be different tomorrow. Even if you're fortunate and wise enough to score a sliver of "enlightenment," it's not a static treasure that becomes your indestructible, everlasting possession. Rather, it remains a mercurial knack that must be continually re-earned.

If you want to befriend the Divine Wow, you must not only be willing to change ceaselessly -- you have to love to change ceaselessly.

Lucky you: All of creation is conspiring to help you live like that.

In Indonesia, the term gotong-royong is defined as the "joint bearing of burdens." In practice it means that you and I and our allies get together voluntarily to help each other achieve a shared goal. It may also be an agreement to provide mutual aid: I help you do what you need to have done, and you help me with my task. Gotong-royong also implies that we enjoy working together. The emotional tone that we cultivate is affection and care. By sharing a burden, we lighten the load that each of us has to bear. I bring this to your attention, Libra, because it's the gotong-royong season for you and yours. Be the ringleader who initiates and sustains it.

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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 Golden Rule is a decent ethical principle, but it could be even better. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" presumes that others enjoy what you enjoy. But that's wrong. There are many things you'd like to have done unto you that others would either despise or be bored by. Here's a new, improved formulation, which we call the Platinum Rule: Do unto others as they would like to have you do unto them.

Using this improved formula is not just a virtuous way to live, but is also the best way to ensure the success of your selfish goals. The rituals and spells of various occult orders purport to be supercharged techniques for imposing your personal will on the chaotic flow of events, but I say that practicing the Platinum Rule outstrips all of them as an exercise to enhance your power and happiness.

In one of his poems, Jack Gilbert mentions "the incurably sane," who are "uncrippled by beauty" and "unbutchered by love." When I read those lines, I felt a surge of protest. Is there a single person on the earth who fits that description? No! I was miffed by such starry-eyed idealism. Later, though, as I studied the astrological omens for you Scorpios, my attitude softened. I realized that the coming weeks may be a time when many of you will at least temporarily be incurably sane, uncrippled by beauty, and unbutchered by love. If you're one of these lucky ones, please use your blessed grace to spread an abundance of blessed grace everywhere you go.

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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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HELP WANTED. Practical dreamers with high emotional intelligence needed to become experts in the following subjects: the art of possessing abundant resources without feeling greed or a sense of superiority; the science of cultivating luxurious comfort in a way that does not lead to spiritual sloth; and a knack for enjoying peace and serenity without diluting one's ambition.

If you're not skirting the edges of the forbidden zone, you're playing it too safe. If you're not serving as a benevolent mischief-maker for someone you care about, you're shirking your duty. Your allegiance should be with X-factors and wild cards. You will thrive to the degree that you cultivate alliances with mavericks and instigators. Are you shrewd enough to mess with time-tested formulas? Are you restless enough to rebel against habits that stifle your curiosity?

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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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Most religions designate a special class of people -- priests, rabbis, ayatollahs -- to oversee official communications with the Source. This has led to a prevailing assumption, even among those who don't follow an established faith, that we can't initiate a divine conversation without the aid of a professional class of trained mediators. Among some sects of the ancient gnostics, in contrast, everyone was regarded as a potential prophet who could experience epiphanies worthy of becoming part of the ever-evolving doctrine.

As you create your own spiritual path, experiment with this approach. What might you do to eliminate the middleman and commune directly with the Source?

Name the ways you already use this approach, and brainstorm about others you might like to try.

How to be a Capricorn, according to my Capricorn reader Sadie Kennedy: When you are younger, take yourself too seriously. Look and act older than you actually are as you serve what's most practical. Sacrifice fun and frivolity, working doggedly to achieve the goals you yearn for, until you reach some level of accomplishment. Then realize, as if struck by a thunderbolt, that fun and frivolity have practical value. Begin to age backwards like Benjamin Button as you balance work with play and discipline with leisure. Enjoy the fruits of your intense efforts as everyone tells you how relaxed and supple and resilient you are becoming.

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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 Indian activist Mahatma Gandhi lead many peaceful rebellions against oppressive governments, first in South Africa and later in British-controlled India. At first he called his strategy "passive resistance," but later disavowed that term because it had negative implications. He ultimately chose the Sanskrit word satyagraha, meaning "love force" or "truth force." "Truth (satya) implies love," he said, "and firmness (agraha) is a synonym for force. Satyagraha is thus the force which is born of truth and love."

Give an example of how you have employed satyagraha in the past, and another example of how you might invoke it in the future.

Cracking open the shell of a soft-boiled egg is a tricky task. You must be firm enough to break the shell, but sufficiently gentle to avoid making a mess. If you live in Germany, you have access to a metal instrument that provides just the right measure of soft force. It's called an Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher, translated as "soft-boiled egg shell cracker." Your assignment in the coming weeks is to cultivate a talent that is metaphorically similar to an Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher. I believe you will need that blend of sensitivity and power on numerous occasions.

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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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Say this: "Novel intuitions are now erupting from my smart heart, awakening me from any trance I've been ensnared in. I am hereby breaking and escaping obstructions that have hindered my ability to express my soul's code. All of my unique capacities are being unleashed, all of my potentials activated. I recognize that I'm a miraculous work of art, a masterpiece unlike any other ever created in the history of the world."

Say this: "I am a genius. I am a lucky, plucky, good-sucking genius."

Americans often regard Cuba as impoverished and backwards. There is an element of truth in their prejudice, primarily because the U.S. has imposed a stifling embargo on the Caribbean nation for over 50 years. That's why, for example, many Cubans drive cars that were manufactured in the 1950s. But I wonder how my fellow citizens would respond if they knew that in some ways Cuba's healthcare system is better than America's. The World Health Organization recently congratulated Cuba for being the first country on earth to eradicate the transmission of syphilis and HIV from mothers to babies. Can you identify a metaphorically similar situation in your personal life, Pisces? Are there people you regard as inferior or undeveloped who could teach you an important lesson or motivate you to grow? Now is a perfect time to benefit from their influence.

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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 ancient Rome, gladiator contests were as popular as today's football games. The warriors back then were not hired heroes as they are now, however. They were slaves or convicts who were forced to fight. Even if they won, they were usually required to return and risk their lives another day. Now and then a grizzled veteran of countless struggles-to-the-death was awarded with the ultimate prize: a wooden sword, symbolizing the end of his role as a gladiator and the beginning of his life as a free man. I'm telling you this because I believe you have earned your own personal equivalent of the wooden sword. Make one for yourself.