Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter http://ezezine.com
Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
December 4, 2013
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Did you read my book *PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA* when
it first came out? Maybe you don't know that the revised and expanded
version of *PRONOIA* is quite different.
The revised and expanded version has over 63,500 new words and 73
new illustrations. That's 55% additional material beyond what the first
edition had.
There are 2 extra chapters, 18 completely new pieces, plus 14 new
Sacred Advertisements. Many of the original pieces of the book have
been revised and expanded, as well. A central piece in the book, "Glory in
the Highest," is 9 times longer than it was in the original.
It's available at Amazon: http://bit.ly/Pronoia
or Powells: http://bit.ly/PronoiaPowells
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Here's praise for *PRONOIA*:
"I have seen the future of American literature and its name is Rob
Brezsny." - Tom Robbins
"With this work -- an instant pop classic -- Rob Brezsny offers a positive,
participatory, proactive vision of the workings of our inner and outer
universe, which will only give us as much pleasure, love, and ecstasy as
we are prepared to accept." - Daniel Pinchbeck
"While it may seem naive to put your faith in optimism these days,
Brezsny's new book offers up a convincing argument for leaving cynicism
and despair behind. This wild, wise, and subversive book is a must read for
those who want to live a more imaginative and free life. Rob Brezsny is a
Culture Hero." - *Utne Reader*
"With *Pronoia,* renegade wizard Rob Brezsny presents an irreverent
manifesto, mixing activism and optimism. It reads like the I Ching on
Ecstasy and is as insightful and puzzling as a Zen koan. He puts the 'pro'
back in 'protest.'" - *Body + Soul*
"I dig Rob Brezsny for his powerful yet playful insights, his poetry, and his
humor . . . I salute him for his dedication to inspiration."
- Jason Mraz, singer-songwriter
"In *Pronoia,* Brezsny tenderly leads us into the practice of re-imagining
the world as a compassionate miracle. He offers a bevy of ideas for
tricksters to re-create the universe." - *Santa Cruz Sentinel*
"Brezsny's *Pronoia* rotates, something like a Tibetan prayer wheel,
around the idea that love underpins being and that it's ours if only we
have the courage to take it. If we don't go to this original and endless
source, then we inherit the classical hell-on-earth of depression, decay
and destruction. Around and around his theme the verbally acrobatic,
mystically literate Brezsny lets fly a thousand zingers, each with the feel
of having been carved with some poetic effort to express a hard reality
instead of a platitude." - *San Francisco Chronicle*
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Here's an excerpt from *PRONOIA*:
Rising rates of intermarriage are helping to dissipate ethnic and religious
strife worldwide.
Death rates from cancer are shrinking.
The birth rate among teenage mothers is the lowest it has been in six
decades.
Acreage devoted to organic farming is increasing rapidly.
Levels of literacy and education and political freedom are steadily growing
all over the world.
If forced to decide between having a bigger penis and living in a world
where there was no war, 90 percent of all men would pick universal
peace.
The rivers and bays of New York City are reborn, having been cleansed of
raw sewage and industrial pollution in recent years.
You have at least a million relatives as close as tenth cousin, and no one
on Earth is any farther removed than your 50th cousin.
With every dawn, when first light penetrates the sea, many seahorse
colonies perform a dance to the sun.
Some Christians really do love their enemies, as Jesus recommended.
The average human life expectancy is 30 years more than it was a
century ago, and is still climbing. Many scientists believe there is no
absolute limit to the human life span.
An average cloud is the same weight as 100 elephants.
The world has become dramatically more peaceful since 1992. The
number of wars, coup d'etats, and acts of genocide has declined by 40
percent. Weapons sales between countries have dropped 33 percent
during the same time, and the number of refugees has diminished by 45
percent.
There are always so many fragments of spider legs floating in the air that
you are constantly inhaling them wherever you go.
A river requires a million years to move a grain of sand 100 miles.
With each breath, you take into your body 10 sextillion atoms, and --
owing to the wind's ceaseless circulation -- over a year's time you have
intimate relations with oxygen molecules exhaled by every person alive, as
well as by everyone who ever lived.
The five most beautiful words in the English language are luminous,
crucible, melody, undulates, and gratitude.
In the next 24 hours, 200 million people will make love on this planet, as
they do every day of every year.
- http://bit.ly/Pronoia
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You can listen to and download over two hours' worth of my music and
spoken word stuff: the soundtrack for my book *PRONOIA.* It's all free:
http://bit.ly/15kyX2o
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Poor people are more generous than the wealthy.
http://tinyurl.com/2veks3m
Sweden to close four prisons, as inmate numbers continue to decrease.
http://tinyurl.com/lgfogfp
A snail's venom could make a pain-killer 1000x more powerful than
Morphine. And it's non-addictive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conus
"The proper response to life is applause." - William Carlos Williams
(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 December 5
Copyright 2013 by Rob Brezsny
http://FreeWillAstrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The standard dictionary says that
"righteous" is a word that means virtuous and highly moral. The slang
dictionary says that "righteous" describes someone or something that's
absolutely genuine and wonderful. Urbandictionary.com suggests that
"righteous" refers to the ultimate version of any type of experience,
especially "sins of pleasure" like lust and greed. According to my analysis,
the coming week will be jampacked with righteousness for you. Which of
the three definitions will predominate? It's possible you will embody and
attract all three types.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In the dreams you're having at night,
Capricorn, I bet you're traveling through remote landscapes in all kinds of
weather. Maybe you're recreating the voyage of the Polynesian sailors
who crossed hundreds of miles of Pacific Ocean to find Hawaii 1,500
years ago. Or maybe you're hiking through the Darkhad Valley, where the
Mongolian steppe meets Siberia's vast forests. It's possible you're visiting
places where your ancestors lived or you're migrating to the first human
settlement on Mars in the 22nd century. What do dreams like this mean? I
think you're trying to blow your own mind. Your deep self and your higher
wisdom are conspiring to flood you with new ways of seeing reality.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): It wouldn't be too extreme for you to kiss
the ground that has been walked on by people you care about deeply.
And it wouldn't be too crazy to give your special allies the best gifts ever,
or compose love letters to them, or demonstrate in dramatic fashion how
amazed you are by the beautiful truths about who they really are. This is
a unique moment in your cycle, Aquarius -- a time when it is crucial for
you to express gratitude, devotion, and even reverence for those who
have helped you see what it means to be fully alive.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest
Hemingway described his vision of paradise. It would have a trout stream
that no one but him was permitted to fish in. He'd own two houses, one
for his wife and children and one for his nine beautiful mistresses. There'd
be a church where he could regularly confess his sins, and he'd have great
seats at an arena where bull fights took place. From my perspective, this
is a pretty vulgar version of paradise, but who am I to judge? I suggest
you draw inspiration from Hemingway as you come up with your own
earthy, gritty, funky fantasy of paradise. It's an excellent time for you to
get down to earth about your high ideals and dreamy hopes.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Sometimes I think too fast and too much. My
logic gets sterile. My ideas become jagged and tangled. When this
happens, I head off to Turtle Back Hill for a hike through the saltwater
marsh. The trail loops around on itself, and I arrive back where I started in
about 15 minutes. Sometimes I keep walking, circumambulating four or
five times. Going in circles like this seems to help me knit together my
fragmented thoughts. Often, by the time I'm finished, my mind feels
unified. I recommend you find your own version of this ritual, Aries. From
what I can tell, you need to get rounder and softer.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In the mid-19th century, French art was
dominated by the government-sponsored Salon, whose conservative
policies thwarted upcoming new trends like Impressionism. One anti-
authoritarian painter who rebelled was Camille Pissarro. "What is the best
way to further the evolution of French art?" he was asked. "Burn down
the Louvre," he replied. The Louvre, as you may know, was and still is a
major art museum in Paris. Judging from your current astrological omens,
I surmise that you might want to make a symbolic statement equivalent
to Pissarro's. It's time for you to graduate from traditions that no longer
feed you so you can freely seek out new teachers and influences.
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LISTEN TO AN EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE
Factual information and reasonable thinking alone are not sufficient to
guide you through life's labyrinthine tests. You need and deserve regular
deliveries of uncanny revelation.
One of your inalienable rights as a human being should therefore be to
receive mysteriously useful omens on a regular basis. In this spirit, I offer
you the free weekly horoscopes you read here.
If you ever want more, and think it's worth paying for, try my EXPANDED
AUDIO HOROSCOPES. They're available here: http://RealAstrology.com
Register and/or sign in at http://RealAstrology.com.
You can also access them by phone:
1-877-873-4888
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GEMINI (May 21-June 20): "Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us
from evil," is a request that Christians make of God when they say the
Lord's Prayer. If we define "temptation" as an attraction to things that
feel good even though they're bad for you, this part of the prayer is
perfectly reasonable. But what if "temptation" is given a different
interpretation? What if it means an attraction to something that feels
pleasurable and will ultimately be healthy for you even though it initially
causes disruptions? I suggest you consider experimenting with this
alternative definition, Gemini. For now, whatever leads you into
temptation could possibly deliver you from evil.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): "You get tragedy where the tree, instead of
bending, breaks," said the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. But you don't
have to worry about that outcome, Cancerian. The storm might howl and
surge, but it will ultimately pass. And although your tree may bend pretty
far, it will not break. Two weeks from now, you won't be mourning your
losses, but rather celebrating your flexibility and resilience.
Congratulations in advance!
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): It's a perfect time to start reclaiming some of the
superpowers you had when you were a child. What's that you say? You
didn't have any superpowers? That's not true. Before you entered
adolescence, you could see things and know things and feel things that
were off-limits, even unknown, to most adults. You possessed a capacity
to love the world with wild purity. Your innocence allowed you to be in
close touch with the intelligence of animals and the spirits of the
ancestors. Nature was so vividly alive to you that you could hear its
songs. Smells were more intense. The dreams you had at night were
exciting and consoling. Your ability to read people's real energy -- and not
be fooled by their social masks -- was strong. Remember?
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Not all darkness is bad. You know that.
Sometimes you need to escape from the bright lights. It can be
restorative to sit quietly in the pitch blackness and drink in the mystery of
the Great Unknown. The same is true for silence and stillness and
aloneness. Now and then you've got to retreat into their protective
sanctuary. Dreaming big empty thoughts in the tranquil depths can heal
you and recharge you. The magic moment has arrived for this kind of
rejuvenation, Virgo.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In the movie *Clueless,* the character played
by Alicia Silverstone describes someone as a "full-on Monet." What she
means is that the person in question is like a painting by the French
Impressionist artist Claude Monet. "From far away, it's OK," says
Silverstone. "But up close, it's a big old mess." You may still be at the far-
away point in your evaluation of a certain situation in your own life, Libra.
It appears interesting, even attractive, from a distance. When you draw
nearer, though, you may find problems. That doesn't necessarily mean
you should abandon it altogether. Maybe you can fix the mess so it's as
engaging up-close as it is from far away.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Your power animal for the coming months is
the Bateleur eagle of Africa. In the course of searching for its meals, it
covers about 250 square miles every day. It thinks big. It has a spacious
scope. I hope you get inspired by its example, Scorpio. In 2014, I'd love
to see you enlarge the territory where you go hunting for what you want.
Fate will respond favorably if you expand your ideas about how to gather
the best allies and resources. As for this week, I suggest you get very
specific as you identify the goals you will pursue in the coming months by
exploring farther and wider.
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Homework: Everyone fudges the truth and hides the whole story now and
then. What are your top three deceptions? Confess at
Freewillastrology.com.
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2013 Rob Brezsny
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