Rob Brezsny
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): You remind me of a garden plot that has recently been plowed and rained on. Now the sun is out. The air is warm. Your dirt is wet and fertile. The feeling is a bit unsettled because the stuff that was below ground got churned up to the top. Instead of a flat surface, you’ve got furrows. But the overall mood is expectant. Blithe magic is in the air. Soon it will be time to grow new life. Oh, but just one thing is missing: The seeds have yet to be sewn. That’s going to happen very soon. Right?
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Here’s an excerpt from “Celestial Music,” a poem by Louise Gluck: “I’m like the child who buries / her head in the pillow / so as not to see, the child who tells herself / that light causes sadness.” One of your main assignments in the coming weeks, Gemini, is not to be like that child. It’s true that gazing at what the light reveals may shatter an illusion or two, but the illumination you will be blessed with will ultimately be more valuable than gold.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Would you like to forge new alliances and expand your web of connections and get more of the support you need to fulfill your dreams? You are entering the Season of Networking, so now would indeed be an excellent time to gather clues on how best to accomplish all that good stuff. To get you started in your quest, here’s advice from Dale Carnegie: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Does Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt run faster than any person alive? As far as we know, yes. He holds three world records and has won six Olympic gold medals. Even when he’s a bit off his game, he’s the best. At the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, he set the all-time mark for the 100-meter race—9.69 seconds—despite the fact that one of his shoelaces was untied and he slowed down to celebrate before reaching the finish line. Like you, Bolt is a Leo. I’m making him both your role model and your anti-role model for the foreseeable future. You have the power to achieve something approaching his levels of excellence in your own field—especially if you double-check to make sure your shoelace is never untied and especially if you don’t celebrate victory before it’s won.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In his unpublished book The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koenig coins new words that convey experiences our language has not previously accounted for. One that may apply to you sometime soon is “trumspringa,” which he defines as “the temptation to step off your career track and become a shepherd in the mountains, following your flock between pastures with a sheepdog and a rifle, watching storms at dusk from the doorway of a small cabin.” To be overtaken by trumspringa doesn’t necessarily mean you will literally run away and be a shepherd. In fact, giving yourself the luxury of considering such wild possibilities may be a healing release that allows you to be at peace with the life you are actually living.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “The supreme pleasure we can know, Freud said, and the model for all pleasure, orgasmic pleasure, comes when an excess tension built up, confined, compacted, is abruptly released.” That’s an observation by philosopher Alphonso Lingis. I bring it to your attention, Libra, because I expect that you will soon be able to harvest a psychospiritual version of that supreme pleasure. You have been gathering and storing up raw materials for soul-making, and now the time has come to express them with a creative splash. Are you ready to purge your emotional backlog? Are you brave enough to go in search of cathartic epiphanies? What has been dark will yield light.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The potential turning points that might possibly erupt in the coming days will not become actual turning points unless you work hard to activate them. They will be subtle and brief, so you will have to be very alert to notice them at all, and you will have to move quickly before they fade away. Here’s another complication: These incipient turning points probably won’t resemble any turning points you’ve seen before. They may come in the form of a lucky accident, a blessed mistake, a happy breakdown, a strange healing, a wicked gift, or a perfect weakness.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): If you happen to be an athlete, the coming week will not be a good time to headbutt a referee or take performance-enhancing drugs. If you hate to drive your car anywhere but in the fast lane, you will be wise to try the slower lanes for a while. If you are habitually inclined to skip steps, take short cuts, and look for loopholes, I advise you to instead try being thorough, methodical, and by-the-book. Catch my drift? In this phase of your astrological cycle, you will have a better chance at producing successful results if you are more prudent than usual. What?! A careful, discreet, strategic, judicious Sagittarius? Sure! Why not?
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): My interpretation of this week’s astrological data might sound eccentric, even weird. But you know what? Sometimes life is—or at least should be—downright unpredictable. After much meditation, I’ve concluded that the most important message you can send to the universe is to fly a pair of underpants from the top of a flagpole. You heard me. Take down the flag that’s up there, and run the skivvies right up to the top. Whose underpants should you use? Those belonging to someone you adore, of course. And what is the deeper meaning behind this apparently irrational act? What exactly is life asking from you? Just this: Stop making so much sense all the time—especially when it comes to cultivating your love and expressing your passion.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You need to take some time out to explore the deeper mysteries of snuggling, cuddling, and nuzzling. In my opinion, that is your sacred duty. It’s your raison d’etre, your ne plus ultra, your sine qua non. You’ve got to nurture your somatic wisdom with what we in the consciousness industry refer to as yummy warm fuzzy wonder love. At the very least, you should engage in some prolonged hugging with a creature you feel close to. Tender physical touch isn’t just a luxury; it’s a necessity.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Your body contains about four octillion atoms. That’s four with 27 zeroes after it. Believe it or not, 200 billion of that total were once inside the body of Martin Luther King, Jr. For that matter, an average of 200 billion atoms of everyone who has ever lived and died is part of you. I am not making this up. (See the mathematical analysis here: http://tinyurl.com/AtomsFromEveryone.) As far as your immediate future is concerned, Pisces, I’m particularly interested in that legacy from King. If any of his skills as a great communicator are alive within you, you will be smart to call on them. Now is a time for you to express high-minded truths in ways that heal schisms, bridge gaps, and promote unity. Just proceed on the assumption that it is your job to express the truth with extra clarity, candor, and grace.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): If for some inexplicable reason you are not simmering with new ideas about how you could drum up more money, I don’t know what to tell you—except that maybe your mother lied to you about exactly when you were born. The astrological omens are virtually unequivocal: If you are a true Aries, you are now being invited, teased, and even tugged to increase your cash flow and bolster your financial know-how. If you can’t ferret out at least one opportunity to get richer quicker, you might really be a Pisces or Taurus. And my name is Jay Z.