Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
February 17, 2016
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See a pretty version of this newsletter: http://bit.ly/1ol3IFm
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My book *PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA*
is available at Amazon: http://bit.ly/Pronoia
or Powells: http://bit.ly/PronoiaPowells
Below are excerpts.
YOU'RE A LUCKY, PLUCKY GENIUS
You are constitutionally incapable of adapting nicely to the sour and
crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality." You're too
amazingly, blazingly insane for that.
You're too crazy smart to lust after the stupidest secrets of the game of
life. You're too seriously delirious to wander sobbing through the sterile,
perfumed labyrinth looking in vain for the most ultra-perfect mirror. Thank
the Goddess that you are a fiercely tender throb of sublimely berserk
abracadabra.
You'll never get crammed in a neat little niche in the middle of the road at
the end of a nightmare. You refuse to allow your soul's bones to get
ground down into dust and used to fertilize the killing fields that proudly
dot the ice cream empire of monumentally demeaning luxuries.
You're too brilliantly cracked for that. You're too ingeniously whacked.
You're too ineffably godsmacked.
(This is an excerpt from a longer piece. Read the rest here:
http://bit.ly/YouGenius)
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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
This perfect moment is brought to you by those pine trees whose seeds
are so tightly compacted within their protective covering that only the
intense heat of a forest fire can free them and allow them to sprout.
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WHERE THE SPIRITUAL MEETS THE PRACTICAL
"How does my spiritual practice and daily life serve the earth? How does
my spiritual practice and daily life affect the poorest third of humanity?
How will my spiritual practice and daily life affect the generations to come
in the future?"
~ Starhawk
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RECEPTIVITY REMEDIES
Alert, relaxed listening is the radical act at the heart of our pronoiac
practice.
Curiosity is our primal state of awareness.
Wise innocence is a trick we aspire to master.
Open-hearted skepticism is the light in our eyes.
More: http://bit.ly/1KDBQST
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HISTORY OF PRONOIA
My book *Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is
Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings* is the only tome that has ever
been written about the subject of pronoia. But other authors have worked
a bit with the concept.
In his novella *Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters,* J.D. Salinger wrote
about pronoia without using the term. "Oh, God," one of his characters
says, "if I'm anything by a clinical name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse.
I suspect people of plotting to make me happy."
The actual term "pronoia" was coined in 1976 by Grateful Dead lyricist
John Perry Barlow, who defined it as "the suspicion that the universe is a
conspiracy on your behalf."
Another early contributor to the concept was psychologist Fraser Clark,
founder of the Zippies. In the 1990s he referred to pronoia as "the
sneaking hunch that others are conspiring behind your back to help you."
Once you have contracted this benevolent virus, he said, the symptoms
include "sudden attacks of optimism and outbreaks of goodwill."
Neither Terence McKenna or Robert Anton Wilson ever invoked the word
"pronoia" as far as I know, but they both added nuance to the concept.
McKenna said, "I believe reality is a marvelous joke staged for my
edification and amusement, and everybody is working very hard to make
me happy."
Wilson offered advice about the proper way to rehearse a devotion to
pronoia: "You should view the world as a conspiracy run by a very closely-
knit group of nearly omnipotent people, and you should think of those
people as yourself and your friends."
Without using the term "pronoia," Paulo Cuelho added to its meaning:
"Know what you want and all the universe conspires to help you achieve
it."
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Girl Power in West Africa Comes From Tradition—and Wrestling
Female wrestling champion Isabelle Sambou is inspiring a new generation
of girls to compete in a sport long dominated by men.
http://tinyurl.com/hxu9joz
Is Big Food Beginning to Lose Its Sway? In 2015, companies like Coca-
Cola and Monsanto were called out for conflicts of interest, leaving many
in the public health sector to wonder if transparency might soon become
the new normal.
http://tinyurl.com/zttdngl
Meet the Indigenous Eco-feminists of the Amazon. In Ecuador, indigenous
Kichwa women are resisting corporate interests that threaten their land.
http://tinyurl.com/jzpdyct
(Note: I endorse these because I like them. They aren't advertisements,
and I get no kickbacks.)
Please tell me your own nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Truthrooster@gmail.com.
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning February 18
Copyright 2016 by Rob Brezsny
http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In the long-running TV show M*A*S*H*, the
character known as Sidney Freedman was a psychiatrist who did his best
to nurture the mental health of the soldiers in his care. He sometimes
departed from conventional therapeutic approaches. In the series finale,
he delivered the following speech, which I believe is highly pertinent to
your current quest for good mental hygiene: "I told you people something
a long time ago, and it's just as pertinent today as it was then. Ladies and
gentlemen, take my advice: Pull down your pants and slide on the ice."
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes
becomes transparent," said playwright Lillian Hellman. "When that
happens, it is possible to see the original lines: a tree will show through a
woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on
an open sea." Why does this happen? Because the painter changed his or
her mind. Early images were replaced, painted over. I suspect that a
metaphorical version of this is underway in your life. Certain choices you
made in the past got supplanted by choices you made later. They
disappeared from view. But now those older possibilities are re-emerging
for your consideration. I'm not saying what you should do about them. I
simply want to alert you to their ghostly presence so they don't cause
confusion.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Let's talk about your mouth. Since your
words flow out of it, you use it to create and shape a lot of your
experiences. Your mouth is also the place where food and drink enter your
body, as well as some of the air you breathe. So it's crucial to fueling
every move you make. You experience the beloved sense of taste in your
mouth. You use your mouth for kissing and other amorous activities. With
its help, you sing, moan, shout, and laugh. It's quite expressive, too. As
you move its many muscles, you send out an array of emotional signals.
I've provided this summary in the hope of inspiring you to celebrate your
mouth, Taurus. It's prime time to enhance your appreciation of its
blessings!
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Coloring books for adults are best-sellers.
Tightly-wound folks relieve their stress by using crayons and markers to
brighten up black-and-white drawings of butterflies, flowers, mandalas,
and pretty fishes. I highly recommend that you avoid this type of
recreation in the next three weeks, as it would send the wrong message
to your subconscious mind. You should expend as little energy as possible
working within frameworks that others have made. You need to focus on
designing and constructing your own frameworks.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): The Old Testament book of Leviticus presents
a long list of forbidden activities, and declares that anyone who commits
them should be punished. You're not supposed to get tattoos, have
messy hair, consult oracles, work on Sunday, wear clothes that blend wool
and linen, plant different seeds in the same field, or eat snails, prawns,
pigs, and crabs. (It's OK to buy slaves, though.) We laugh at how absurd
it would be for us to obey these outdated rules and prohibitions, and yet
many of us retain a superstitious loyalty toward guidelines and beliefs
that are almost equally obsolete. Here's the good news, Cancerian: Now is
an excellent time to dismantle or purge your own fossilized formulas.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): "I would not talk so much about myself if there
were anybody else whom I knew as well," said the philosopher and
naturalist Henry David Thoreau. In accordance with your astrological
constitution, Leo, I authorize you to use this declaration as your own
almost any time you feel like it. But I do suggest that you make an
exception to the rule during the next four weeks. In my opinion, it will be
time to focus on increasing your understanding of the people you care
about -- even if that effort takes time and energy away from your quest
for ultimate self-knowledge. Don't worry: You can return to emphasizing
Thoreau's perspective by the equinox.
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MY OTHER HOROSCOPES
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 four-to-five-minute meditations on the
current state of your destiny and where you're headed.
To listen to your Expanded Audio Horoscope online, go to
http://RealAstrology.com.
Register and/or log in through the main page.
You can also listen over the phone by calling 1-877-873-4888.
The cost is $6 per sign on the Web (discounts available for bulk
purchases), or $1.99 per minute by phone.
The Expanded Audio Horoscopes work on most smart phones and tablets.
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"Your Expanded Audio Horoscopes provide me with the Rest of the Story.
I'm not necessarily a believer in the scientific accuracy of astrology, but I
do think you've got a lot of practical wisdom to impart."
- M. Tennenbaum, New York
"No one knows more about me than me. But you're right up there near
the top of the list of people who do understand something about how I
tick. How is that possible?"
- R. Goren, Albuquerque
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P.S. My long-range, big-picture audio horoscopes for the coming months
are still available. Register and/or log in through the main page, and then
access the horoscopes by clicking on "Long Range Prediction." (Choose
from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)
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VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): You are entering the inquisitive phase of your
astrological cycle. One of the best ways to thrive during the coming
weeks will be to ask more questions than you have asked since you were
five years old. Curiosity and good listening skills will be superpowers that
you should strive to activate. For now, what matters most is not what
you already know but rather what you need to find out. It's a favorable
time to gather information about riddles and mysteries that have
perplexed you for a long time. Be super-receptive and extra wide-eyed!
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Poet Barbara Hamby says the Russian word
*ostyt* can be used to describe "a cup of _tea that is too hot, but after
you walk to the next room, and return, it is too cool." A little birdie told
me that this may be an apt metaphor for a current situation in your life. I
completely understand if you wish the tea had lost less of its original
warmth, and was exactly the temperature you like, neither burning nor
tepid. But that won't happen unless you try to reheat it, which would
change the taste. So what should you do? One way or the other, a
compromise will be necessary. Do you want the lukewarm tea or the hot
tea with a different flavor?
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Russian writer Ivan Turgenev was a Scorpio.
Midway through his first novel *Rudin,* his main character Dmitrii
Nikolaevich Rudin alludes to a problem that affects many Scorpios. "Do
you see that apple tree?" Rudin asks a woman companion. "It is broken by
the weight and abundance of its own fruit." Ouch! I want very much for
you Scorpios to be spared a fate like that in the coming weeks. That's
why I propose that you scheme about how you will express the immense
creativity that will be welling up in you. Don't let your lush and succulent
output go to waste.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Asking you Sagittarians to be patient
may be akin to ordering a bonfire to burn more politely. But it's my duty
to inform you of the cosmic tendencies, so I will request your forbearance
for now. How about some nuances to make it more palatable? Here's a
quote from author David G. Allen: "Patience is the calm acceptance that
things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind."
Novelist Gustave Flaubert: "Talent is a long patience." French playwright
Moliere: "Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit." Writer Ann
Lamott: "Hope is a revolutionary patience." I've saved the best for last,
from Russian novelist Irène Némirovsky: "Waiting is erotic."
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): "If you ask for help it comes, but not in
any way you'd ever know." Poet Gary Snyder said that, and now I'm
passing it on to you, Capricorn. The coming weeks will be an excellent
time for you to think deeply about the precise kinds of help you would
most benefit from -- even as you loosen up your expectations about how
your requests for aid might be fulfilled. Be aggressive in seeking
assistance, but ready and willing to be surprised as it arrives.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): For a limited time only, 153 is your lucky
number. Mauve and olive are your colors of destiny, the platypus is your
power animal, and torn burlap mended with silk thread is your magic
texture. I realize that all of this may sound odd, but it's the straight-up
truth. The nature of the cosmic rhythms are rather erratic right now. To
be in maximum alignment with the irregular opportunities that are headed
your way, you should probably make yourself magnificently mysterious,
even to yourself. To quote an old teacher, this might be a good time to
be "so unpredictable that not even you yourself knows what's going to
happen."
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Homework: What good thing would you have to give up in order to get a
great thing? Testify at Freewillastrology.com. Click on "Email Rob."
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Submissions sent to Rob Brezsny's Astrology 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 submissions for length, style, and content.
Requests for anonymity will be honored. We are not responsible for
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2016 Rob Brezsny
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