Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter April 16, 2008

Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
APRIL 16, 2008
FreeWillAstrology.com

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"Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action."
- Gandhi

"I can't understand why people are afraid of new ideas, I'm afraid of the old ones."
- John Cage

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My book
PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA:
How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings
is available for sale at
tinyurl.com/qaj62

Here's an excerpt:

HYPE-OCALYPSE

Rank your favorite doomsday scenarios in order of preference.

____A new ice age

____Destruction of ozone layer

____Dramatic upsurge in earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes

____Universal drug addiction

____Mass starvation

____Takeover by monsters created through genetic engineering

____Genocide of the imagination; lethal proliferation of dangerous images

____Terrifying, contagious superstitions spread by apocalyptic pop prophecy

____Insects and bacteria conspire to cull planet's most dangerous species

____Multinational corporate criminals create a single, globe-spanning totalitarian state with concentration camps that are the setting for popular reality TV shows

____Mutated flu strain becomes unstoppable plague

____Extraterrestrial invasion

____Cataclysmic degeneration of language into incomprehensible babble and cliché

____Anthrax and LSD dumped in water supplies

____Revolt of super-intelligent machines

____Stupidity becomes popular

____Mass hypnosis by evil political and religious leaders

____President, suffering from mental illness, goes berserk and nukes Mecca, Moscow, Beijing

____Virus from outer space

____Virus from inner space

____Essential natural resources run out

____Global addiction to porn results in accidental mass suicides through excessive masturbation

____Psychic terrorists administer mass brainwashing that causes millions to buy so many products they can't afford that they become destitute, can't afford health care, and die from diseases caused by eating junk food out of garbage cans

____The Internet births itself as a sentient global brain, but it's so riddled with spam that it becomes a god-like cripple suffering from the Artificial Intelligence version of Alzheimer's

____Earth is hit by comet, asteroid, or mini-black hole

____Wealthy philanthropists give everyone in the world $100,000, causing mass insanity

____Sun goes supernova

____Breakthroughs in disease control make it hard for people who are tired of living to die, leading to a pandemic of depression

____The devil possesses everyone in the world

____Nuclear war

____Other (describe)___________________________________________________

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My docu-fiction memoir
THE TELEVISIONARY ORACLE

is available for sale at tinyurl.com/2ftyq6

and can be read online at tinyurl.com/3c2j4x
(Scroll down the page to find the link to Chapter 1)

Here's an excerpt:

Please answer as many of the following questions as you can. Work with ferocious intensity and/or gentle reflection. Don't push on till you're exhausted, but try to come as close to total combustion as you can.

Be innocently truthful and spontaneously thoughtful, or else gratuitously sarcastic and recklessly flippant. If you find yourself responding with ideas that you used to believe but don't any more, abandon them and start over.

Take advantage of this rare opportunity to be creative and authentic for no reason. Don't save yourself for "something better."

Send answers to sacreduproar@sbcglobal.net.

1. What did you dream last night?

2. What image or symbol represents the absolute of your desires?

3. In what ways has your fate been affected by invisible forces you don't understand or are barely aware of?

4. Tell a good lie.

5. What were the circumstances in which you were most dangerously alive?

6. Are you a good listener? If so, describe how you listen. If not, explain why not.

7. Compose an exciting prayer in which you ask for something you're not supposed to.

8. What's the difference between right and wrong?

9. Name something you've done to undo, subvert, or neutralize the Battle of the Sexes.

10. Have you ever witnessed a child being born? If so, describe how it changed you.

11. Compose a beautiful blasphemy that makes you feel like crying.

12. What do you do to make people like you?

13. If you're not familiar with the Jungian concept of the "shadow," find out about it. If you are, good. In either case, give a description of the nature of your personal shadow.

14. Talk about three of your most interesting personalities. Give each one a name and a power animal.

15. Make up a dream in which you lose control and thereby attract a crowd of worshipers.

16. Name your greatest unnecessary taboo and how you would violate it if it didn't hurt anyone.

17. Give an example of how smart you are in the way you love.

18. What ignorance do you deserve to be forgiven for?

19. What was the pain that healed you the most?

20. Make a prediction about yourself.

EXTRA CREDIT

In the ancient Greek epic, Odysseus and his men become stranded on an island belonging to the sorceress Circe. In a famous scene, Circe uses magic to turn the men into pigs. Later, though, in an episode that's often underemphasized by casual readers, she changes them back into men -- only they're stronger, braver, and more beautiful than before they were pigs. Tell an analogous story from your own life.

EXTRA EXTRA CREDIT

Discuss and act out the following:

To survive war, you must become war.
- Rambo

To survive love, you must become love.
- The Televisionary Oracle

Send answers to sacreduproar@sbcglobal.net

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To read news and features from my book, go here: tinyurl.com/lhwx2

You can buy the book here:

AMAZON
tinyurl.com/qaj62

POWELLS
tinyurl.com/3dsx6q

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OTHER PRONOIA RESOURCES:

BREAKTHROUGH EMOTIONS
Scientific American says "You Can Learn to Be More Compassionate"
tinyurl.com/ys9qxv

MAKING BEAUTIFUL POSSIBILITIES OUT OF ABSURD IMPOSSIBILITIES
10 Impossibilities Conquered by Science
tinyurl.com/6d6rcx

NEVER SAY NEVER
Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
by Michio Kaku
tinyurl.com/3n3jrl
"IMPOSSIBLE! Preposterous! These words are often thrown about when people declare certain things to be scientifically ridiculous. Aliens cannot reach the Earth in spaceships, they proclaim, because the distance between stars is too great. Telepathy is impossible since the brain does not emit or receive messages. And it's impossible to instantaneously transport an object from A to B because you cannot know the location and momentum of all its atoms -- teleportation would violate the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

"Yet if you carefully analyze these examples, you realize that they are merely impossible today or in the near future. The real question is, are they impossible with technologies that lie decades, centuries or even millennia beyond ours? Perhaps these 'impossibilities' are merely very difficult engineering problems. The late Arthur C. Clarke once said, 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.'"

(Note: I endorse these because I like them. They are not advertisements, and I get no kickbacks.)

Please tell me your own personal nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES.

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning April 17

Copyright 2008 by Rob Brezsny
FreeWillAstrology.com

ARIES (March 21-April 19):

A reader from Fiji is encouraging me to pay a visit. "Fiji is heaven on earth," she says. "You'll be ecstatic here." While I have no doubt that's true, it's hard for me to imagine being any more ecstatic than I am when I travel to Hawaii. It, too, has resemblances to paradise. And the plane flight there takes five hours less and is $600 cheaper than the jaunt to Fiji. Do I really need a more heavenly heaven on earth than, say, Waimoku Falls Trail in Maui? I expect you're facing a metaphorically similar situation, Aries. The question you may want to ask yourself is this: Should you pine and aim for a state beyond perfection, or will mere perfection serve you just as well?

TAURUS (April 20-May 20):

The Washington Post solicited ideas from readers about innovative strategies for wasting time. I'll offer you a few in the hope that they'll inspire you to take a major break from the Big Pressing Issues you're obsessed with. It's high time, in my opinion, to give yourself an enormous amount of slack . . . to forgive yourself for not being perfect . . . to dissolve any guilt you feel for not having accomplished all your life goals yet. In that spirit, consider the following time-wasters: (1) Send letters to the editor about grammatical mistakes in the classified ads. (2) Make yourself the world's top expert on a person randomly chosen from the phone book. (3) Keep a logbook in your bathroom to verify that the toilet bowl cleaner really does work for 1,000 flushes. (4) Set the Guinness record for time spent reading the Guinness Book of Records.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20):

In her book Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation, biologist Olivia Judson extols the male members of the fruitfly species Drosophila bifurca. Although they are barely one-eighth of an inch long, their sperm can be up to 2.3 inches long. If a man were capable of the same prodigious production, his sperm would be as big as a whale. Metaphorically speaking, you Geminis now have the ability to generate phenomena on this scale. That's why I hope you will devote all your ingenuity and resourcefulness to creating an intricate, beautiful masterpiece, not a humongous, complicated mass of confusion.

CANCER (June 21-July 22):

Lewis Thomas was a physician who wrote elegantly about biology in books like The Lives of a Cell. I want to bring your attention to his meditation on warts. "Nothing in the body has so much the look of toughness and permanence as a wart," he wrote. And yet "they can be made to go away by something that can only be called thinking . . . Warts can be ordered off the skin by hypnotic suggestion." (tinyurl.com/3clzc5) Thomas regarded this phenomenon as "absolutely astonishing, more of a surprise than cloning or recombinant DNA." According to my astrological reckoning, Cancerian, you currently have a comparable marvel at your disposal. Using the power of your mind, you can shrink, dissolve, or banish a wart-like vexation.

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EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

In addition to the horoscopes that come to you in this newsletter, I create audio horoscopes for your inspiration. They discuss themes and cover material that I don't have room to deal with in the written horoscopes.

They're $6 if you access them on the Web, or $1.99 per minute over the phone.

Try them at RealAstrology.com.

They're available by phone at 1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700.

"I always feel like I know myself better after listening to your audio 'scopes."
- June R., Austin, TX

"Your audio horoscopes calm me down when I'm too manic and pep me up when I'm down."
- Arthur T., Cleveland, OH

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LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):

This would be a perfect time for you to write your ultimate personal manifesto. I'm talking about composing a sweeping statement of the core ideas that fuel your lust for life. To get you in the mood, take a look at the following lyrics from Danny Schmidt's song "Company of Friends." "I believe in restless hunger . . . I believe in private thunder . . . I believe in inspiration . . . I believe in slow creation . . . I believe in lips on ears . . . I believe in being wrong . . . I believe in contradiction . . . I believe in living smitten . . . I believe our book is written by our company of friends."

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):

"The Japanese believe that crying babies grow fast," wrote John Flinn in the San Francisco Chronicle,"and that the louder an infant wails, the more the gods have blessed it." The astrological omens suggest that a similar principle will soon hold true for you: The more you sob and blubber, the smarter you'll get. The louder you howl and moan, the more likely you'll be to attract benevolent influences and unexpected help.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):

In order for some plants to thrive in the tropical forests of South America, they need bats to eat their fruits and poop out their seeds while flying around. Biologists call the bat excrement by a more lyrical name: seed rain. It's not too much of a stretch to invoke this relationship as an apt metaphor for your life right now, Libra. Like the bat-dependent plants, you now require the help of fertility agents whose work may be a bit messy.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):

It's the Week of the Fabulous Smirk. Not the Week of the Arrogant Smirk or the Vengeful Smirk or the Hateful, Whiny, Passive-Aggressive Smirk. Rather, the Smirk that Passeth All Understanding. The Wise, Charitable, Forbearing Smirk. The Uber-Smirk that says, "I've figured out what everyone's hiding, and I love them anyway." You are ready, Scorpio, to explore the Divine Smirk that arises naturally when you have outwitted an obstacle that was obscuring the truth from you; when you have finally seen through the delusion you were under and guessed the secret you weren't smart enough to see before.

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AUDIO HOROSCOPES

In addition to the horoscopes that you're reading here, I create audio horoscopes for your amusement and inspiration. Find out more at RealAstrology.com.

The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at 1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700.

"Your audio horoscopes work better than my therapist and cost me five percent of what he charges."
- Chris M., San Francisco, CO

"You've helped me remember important things about myself that I'd forgotten."
- Ruth V., Toronto

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SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

This would be a good week for you to compete in a flamethrower competition. You'd probably win. Why? Because according to my analysis of the astrological omens, you currently have an unprecedented knack for playing with fire. You would most likely also be victorious in a marshmallow-roasting contest or a jump-over-the-bonfire tournament. And you would probably do surprisingly well in any activity that might be described as "sitting in the hot seat."

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):

"The great theme is not Romeo and Juliet," said poet Anne Sexton. "The great theme we all share is that of becoming ourselves, of overcoming our father and mother, of assuming our identities somehow." This is certainly your great theme, Capricorn. And it's especially important for you to devote yourself to it now. You're at a turning point in your life-long transformation. You're being presented with a clear-cut choice between sinking back into the ill-fitting yet comfortable mold that others have shaped for you, or else striding out into the frontier in a brave push to become a higher, deeper, more complete version of yourself.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):

"We only hear questions that we are able to answer," said Friedrich Nietzsche. Luckily for you, Aquarius, there are two big, long-simmering questions for which you have recently begun to sniff out the answers. That means you're now able, at least potentially, to hear those questions. I have three pieces of advice to help ensure that you actually hear them. First, wash your brain out so it's got more free space in it. Second, give your listening skills a tune-up. Third, meditate on Edgar Allen Poe's idea that "Those who dream by day know many things which escape those who dream only by night."

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):

Back in 1995, I began seeing a psychotherapist whose influence ultimately improved me in a thousand ways. At the end of our first session, she handed me a note as I left. It read: "If you don't articulate your conscious desires, your unconscious patterns will come true." She gazed at me firmly and said, "Don't come back until you've proved to yourself that those words are true. All my work will be of no use to you unless you take them to heart." It took me exactly 23 days to prove to myself that what she'd written was true. Now I offer you the same challenge, Pisces. Spend the upcoming week in intense contemplation on the hypothesis, "If you don't articulate your conscious desires, your unconscious patterns will come true."

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HOMEWORK:

What's the bravest thing you ever did? What do you imagine will be the next brave thing you do? Testify! Go to FreeWillAstrology.com and click on "Email Rob."

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WANT TO GET YOUR CHART DONE?

I'm not doing personal charts, but I highly recommend my astrological colleague, RO LOUGHRAN. Her approach closely matches my own. In our many discussions about astrology over the years, we've had a major influence on each other's work.

Ro utilizes a blend of well-trained intuition, emotional warmth, and a high degree of technical proficiency in horoscope interpretation; she is skilled at exploring the mysteries of your life's purpose and nurturing your connection with your own inner wisdom.

Ro is based in California, but can do phone consultations and otherwise work with you regardless of geographic boundaries.

Ro's website is at YourSoulJourney.com

She can also be reached at roloughran@comcast.net

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Submissions sent to the Free Will Astrology Weekly Newsletter or in response to "homework assignments" may be published in a variety of formats at Rob Brezsny's discretion, including but not limited to newsletters, books, the Free Will Astrology column, and Free Will Astrology website. We reserve the right to edit such submissions for length, style, and content. Requests for anonymity will be honored with submissions; otherwise, reader names, screen names, or initials will be used. Please be sure to note your preference when sending to us. We are not responsible for unsolicited submission of any creative material.

Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright 2008 Rob Brezsny

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