At 12,388 feet, Mount Fuji is Japan's highest peak. If you're in good shape, you can reach the top in seven hours. The return trip can be done in half the time -- if you're cautious. The loose rocks on the steep trail are more likely to knock you off your feet on the way down than on the way up. I suspect this is an apt metaphor for you in the coming weeks, Aries. Your necessary descent may be deceptively challenging. So make haste slowly! Your power animals are the rabbit and the snail.

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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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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During my quest for advice that might be helpful to your love life, I gathered some further words of wisdom.

1. "There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness." -Friedrich Nietzsche.

2. "Love is not about losing freedom; it's about sharing freedom with a partner who's as talented a liberationist as you." - my friend Sarah.

3. "I hunger for your sleek laugh and your hands the color of a furious harvest. I want to eat the sunbeams flaring in your beauty." - Pablo Neruda.

In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made a few short jaunts through the air in a flying machine they called the Flyer. It was a germinal step in a process that ultimately led to your ability to travel 600 miles per hour while sitting in a chair 30,000 feet above the earth. Less than 66 years after the Wright Brothers' breakthrough, American astronauts landed a space capsule on the moon. They had with them a patch of fabric from the left wing of the Flyer. I expect that during the coming weeks, you will be climaxing a long-running process that deserves a comparable ritual. Revisit the early stages of the work that enabled you to be where you are now.

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

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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What advice would be useful for your love life? Not this observation by The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening: "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." Do not, under any circumstances, make those your words to live by.

Instead, consider the following counsel from Norman Mailer: "Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to."

In 2006, five percent of the world's astronomers gathered at an international conference and voted to demote Pluto from a planet to a "dwarf planet." Much of the world agreed to honor their declaration. Since then, though, there has arisen a campaign by equally authoritative astronomers to restore Pluto to full planet status. The crux of the issue is this: How shall we define the nature of a planet? But for the people of New Mexico, the question has been resolved. State legislators there formally voted to regard Pluto as a planet. They didn't accept the demotion. I encourage you to be inspired by their example, Gemini. Whenever there are good arguments from opposing sides about important matters, trust your gut feelings. Stand up for your preferred version of the story.

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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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Clarissa Pinkola Estes said this in her book Women Who Run With the Wolves. "The desire to force love to live only in its most positive form," she wrote, "is what causes love ultimately to fall over dead." She obviously doesn't mean you should seek negativity on purpose. Rather, you should freely acknowledge that even the most sublime intimacy has a dark side. As long as you welcome love's difficulties, it will remain vital.

Ray Bradbury's dystopian bestseller Fahrenheit 451 was among the most successful of the 27 novels he wrote. It won numerous awards and has been adopted into films, plays, and graphic novels. Bradbury wrote the original version of the story in nine days, using a typewriter he rented for 20 cents per hour. When his publisher urged him to double the manuscript's length, he spent another nine days doing so. According to my reading of the planetary configurations, you Cancerians now have a similar potential to be surprisingly efficient and economical as you work on an interesting creation or breakthrough -- especially if you mix a lot of play and delight into your labors.

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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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is 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 need love almost as much as you need food and drink. Not just any old kind of love, though: It has to be high-minded and mysterious, and neither sentimental nor tormented.

Hoping to steer you towards what you really need, I'm offering you the poetic words of Pablo Neruda. Say or write them to the person whose destiny needs to be woven more closely together with yours:

"Our love is like a well in the wilderness where time watches over the wandering lightning. Our sleep is a secret tunnel that leads to the scent of apples carried on the wind. When I hold you, I hold everything that is--swans, volcanoes, river rocks, maple trees drinking the fragrance of the moon, bread that the fire adores. In your life I see everything that lives."

Poet Louise Glück has characterized herself as "afflicted with longing yet incapable of forming durable attachments." If there is anything in you that even partially fits that description, I have good news: In the coming weeks, you're likely to feel blessed by longing rather than afflicted by it. The foreseeable future will also be prime time for you to increase your motivation and capacity to form durable attachments. Take full advantage of this fertile grace period!

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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What advice might beautify and elevate your love life? The following insights should help.

1. "We are not the same person this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person." - W. Somerset Maugham.

2. "People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is unlike the original." - Iris Murdoch.

3. "Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new." - Ursula K. Le Guin.

4. "A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day." - Andre Maurois.

In 2004, a man named Jerry Lynn tied a battery-operated alarm clock to a string and dangled it down a vent in his house. He was hoping that when the alarm sounded, he would get a sense of the best place to drill a hole in his wall to run a wire for his TV. But the knot he'd made wasn't perfect, and the clock slipped off and plunged into an inaccessible spot behind the wall. Then, every night for 13 years, the alarm rang for a minute. The battery was unusually strong! A few months ago, Lynn decided to end the mild but constant irritation. Calling on the help of duct specialists, he retrieved the persistent clock. With this story as your inspiration, and in accordance with astrological omens, I urge you Virgos to finally put an end to your equivalent of the maddening alarm clock. (Read the story .)

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

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is 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 want to remind you, in case you've somehow forgotten, that you'll never be able to bask in the love you want to receive from another person until you master the art of loving yourself with great skill and imagination. I'll go so far as to say that it's pointless to search for a perfect partner if you're not already your own perfect partner.

Here's what a wise Buddhist had to say about the subject: "You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, but that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anyone, deserve your love and affection."

Was Napoléon Bonaparte an oppressor or liberator? The answer is both. His work in the world hurt a lot of people and helped a lot of people. One of his more magnanimous escapades transpired in June 1798, when he and his naval forces invaded the island of Malta. During his six-day stay, he released political prisoners, abolished slavery, granted religious freedom to Jews, opened 15 schools, established the right to free speech, and shut down the Inquisition. What do his heroics have to do with you? I don't want to exaggerate, but I expect that you, too, now have the power to unleash a blizzard of benevolence in your sphere. Do it in your own style, of course, not Napoléon's.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Borrowing the words of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, I've prepared a love note for you to use as your own. Feel free to give it to the person whose destiny needs to be woven more closely together with yours. "I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out."

"Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit," said French playwright Molière. I'm going to make that your motto for now, Scorpio. You have pursued a gradual, steady approach to ripening, and soon it will pay off in the form of big bright blooms. Congratulations on having the faith to keep plugging away in the dark! I applaud your determination to be dogged and persistent about following your intuition even though few people have appreciated what you were doing.

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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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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What wisdom might energize your love life? here's some excellent advice, courtesy of psychologist James Hillman: "For a relationship to stay alive, 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."

How will you act on this excellent counsel? Maybe you could take you and your closest ally to a sanctuary you've never dreamed you'd go to in a thousand years. Or do an exercise in which you ask each other questions you've never broached before. Or devise an experiment in which the two of you get to face an unfamiliar challenge together.

The growth you can and should foster in the coming weeks will be stimulated by quirky and unexpected prods. To get you started, here are a few such prods. 1. What's your hidden or dormant talent, and what could you do to awaken and mobilize it? 2. What's something you're afraid of but might be able to turn into a resource? 3. If you were a different gender for a week, what would you do and what would your life be like? 4. Visualize a dream you'd like to have while you're asleep tonight. 5. If you could transform anything about yourself, what would it be? 6. Imagine you've won a free vacation to anywhere you want. Where would you go?

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

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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"Everyone carries with them at least one piece to someone else's puzzle." So wrote Lawrence Kushner in his book, Honey from the Rock.

In other words, you have in your possession certain clues to your loved ones' destinies -- secrets they haven't discovered themselves.

Wouldn't you love to hand over those clues -- to make a gift of the puzzle pieces that are most needed by the people you care about?

Search your depths for insights you've never communicated. Tell truths you haven't found a way to express before now. More than you know, you have the power to mobilize your companions' dreams.

You may think you have uncovered the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But according to my analysis of the astrological omens, you're just a bit more than halfway there. In order to get the rest of the goods, you'll have to ignore your itch to be done with the search. You'll have to be unattached to being right and smart and authoritative. So please cultivate patience. Be expansive and magnanimous as you dig deeper. For best results, align yourself with poet Richard Siken's definition: "The truth is complicated. It's two-toned, multi-vocal, bittersweet."

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is 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?

Are you making any progress in getting the hang of this tricky wisdom?

The posh magazine Tatler came up with a list of fashionable new names for parents who want to ensure their babies get a swanky start in life. Since you Aquarians are in a phase when you can generate good fortune by rebranding yourself or remaking your image, I figure you might be interested in using one of these monikers as a nickname or alias. At the very least, hearing them could whet your imagination to come up with your own ideas. Here are Tatler's chic avant-garde names for girls: Czar-Czar; Debonaire; Estonia; Figgy; Gethsemane; Power; Queenie. Here are some boys' names: Barclay; Euripides; Gustav; Innsbruck; Ra; Uxorious; Wigbert; Zebedee.

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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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Imagine that the merger of you and your best ally has created a third thing that hovers near you, protecting and guiding the two of you. Call this third thing an angel. Or call it the soul of your connection or the inspirational force of your relationship. Or call it the special work the two of you can accomplish together. And let this magical presence be the third point of your love triangle.br>

Now that you have finally paid off one of your debts to the past, you can start window-shopping for the future's best offers. The coming days will be a transition time as you vacate the power spot you've outgrown and ramble out to reconnoiter potential new power spots. So bid your crisp farewells to waning traditions, lost causes, ghostly temptations, and the deadweight of people's expectations. Then start preparing a vigorous first impression to present to promising allies out there in the frontier.

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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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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As I meditated on what advice might purify and supercharge your love life, I got to thinking about a statement attributed to French poet Paul Valery. "Love is being stupid together," he said.

There's an element of truth to this notion, but it's too corny and degenerate for my tastes. I prefer to focus on a more interesting and complete 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 your IQ.

Your relationship should be a crucible in which you deepen your understanding of the way the world works. If you can't share your love with such a person, don't share your love with anyone.