Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
July 1, 2020
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See a pretty version of this newsletter:
https://bit.ly/YourSoulfulStory
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IMAGINE THE STORY OF YOUR LIFE
in the coming months:
WHAT WILL IT BE?
Explore the Big Picture of Your Destiny
with my Expanded Audio Horoscopes
for the Second Half of 2020.
What new influences and experiences will be headed your way in the
second half of 2020? What fresh resources will you be able to draw on?
Would you like some inspiration as you imagine how to make best use of
those influences and experiences and resources?
To listen to my IN-DEPTH, LONG-TERM AUDIO FORECAST for YOUR LIFE
during the next six months, go here, then register and/or sign in:
https://RealAstrology.com
After you log in through the main page, click on the link "Long Term
Forecast for Second Half of 2020."
You can also listen to your short-term forecast for the coming week by
clicking on "This week (June 30, 2020)."
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The Expanded Audio horoscopes cost $6 apiece. There are discounts for the
purchase of multiple reports.
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CHAMPIONING AND EMBODYING SPIRITUALITY
Here are practical ways I carry on the work of championing and
embodying spirituality:
I regard relationships as being a crucible for spiritual work.
I think of the practical expression of kindness and compassion and ethical
behavior as an essential spiritual practice.
I assume that a crucial element of spiritual practice is the consciousness
and compassion we bring to the sometimes chaotic and messy and shadowy
details of being human beings.
I understand that loving and caring for animals and plants and the Earth is
the test of our spiritual intentions.
I understand that working to dismantle racism, misogyny, militarism,
plutocracy, economic injustice, and all forms of bigotry belongs at the
heart of our sacred practice.
I regard play and fun and humor as not diversions from "serious"
spiritual work, but rather being at the center of it.
What about you? What are the practical ways you carry on the work?
TruthRooster@gmail.com
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DIVERSITY IS OUR DELIGHTFUL FUTURE
"The plague of humanity is the fear and rejection of diversity:
monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, mono-medicine.
"The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to
regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of
the greatest threat to humans: members of their own species, bent on
ensuring their salvation, security, and sanity."
—Thomas Szasz
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"As a culture, we have wandered into a state of prolonged neurosis because
of the absence of a direct pipeline to the unconscious. As a result, we have
fallen victim to priestcraft of every conceivable sort."
—Terence McKenna
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Why is it so hard for Westerners of the last two centuries to feel the
intimate presence of the divine intelligences? Every other culture in the
history of the world has had a more vital connection with the realm of
spirit.
According to poet Gary Snyder, California's Yana Indians explained it this
way: The gods have retreated to the volcanic recesses of Mt. Lassen,
passing the time playing gambling games with magic sticks.
They're simply waiting for such a time when human beings will "reform
themselves and become 'real people' that spirits might want to associate
with once again."
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"Your body belongs to your ancestors, your parents, and future
generations, and it also belongs to society and all other living beings. All
of them have come together to bring about the presence of this body.
Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole
cosmos — the trees, the clouds, everything."
—Thich Nhat Hanh
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LIBERATION MUSIC
Check out this glorious rendition of the song "Stand Up" (from the movie
*Harriet*), with images from the Black freedom struggle. Sung by the
grandchildren of Civil Rights legend Rev. Dr. Jesse Douglas.
https://tinyurl.com/y9o96o5j
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GO BOTH WAYS
The image I'm posting here — https://tinyurl.com/GoBothWays —
shows how I spent the first half of my birthday last week:
researching occult and hermetic resources about how best to foment a
culture that is more thoroughly permeated with justice,
broadmindedness, actual (not fake) beauty, and practical compassion.
The second half of my birthday was spent with a roundtable of very
earthbound yet visionary activists who provided me with inspiration on
the same subjects.
I'm at my best when I go both ways!
(The off-white suit and stetson hat I wore was provided by the spirit of
Dziadzio Raymond, my Polish grandfather)
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OUR SPIRITUAL DUTY
It's our spiritual duty to remember the African Americans who have been
murdered by cops—to grieve them as our kin, to honor them, to invoke
their tragic deaths as we apply pressure to prevent the police from
perpetrating other such mayhem in the future.
Here's some of the story of Elijah McClain, killed by Aurora, Colorado
police last August: https://tinyurl.com/yd87zc9t
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A SLAVE-OWNER WROTE "THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER"
Recently, protestors toppled a statue of Francis Scott Key in San
Francisco, near where I live. You may know Key as the composer of the
"Star-Spangled Banner," America's national anthem.
Those who study history know other facts about him. Like: He owned
slaves. Writing in *The Smithsonian*, Christopher Wilson says ,"Key
was a slaveholding lawyer from an old Maryland plantation family, who
thanks to a system of human bondage had grown rich and powerful."
As a lawyer, Key represented the legal interests in court of men trying to
recover their runaway slaves.
As District Attorney in Washington DC, Key defended slavery, and
suppressed and attacked abolitionists. He referred to Blacks as "a distinct
and inferior race of people."
Christopher Wilson writes: "Key sought to crack down on the free speech
of abolitionists. For example, he prosecuted a white doctor for possessing
abolitionist pamphlets—in fact, sought the death penalty for him. In the
resulting case, Key proposed that the property rights of slaveholders
outweighed the free speech rights of those arguing for slavery’s
abolishment. Key hoped to silence abolitionists, who, he charged, wished
to 'associate and amalgamate with the negro.'"
Abolitionists ridiculed the lyrics he wrote for the "Star-Spangled
Banner," saying that instead of "home of the brave" he should have written
"home of the oppressed."
MORE: https://tinyurl.com/yan8dop8
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GEORGE WASHINGTON AND SLAVERY
Facts About George Washington & Slavery, from a longer piece at
https://tinyurl.com/y2hoe4tf
1. George Washington first became a slave owner at the early age of
eleven, and remained a slaveholder for 56 more years.
2. At the time of George Washington’s death, the Mount Vernon enslaved
population consisted of 317 people.
3. George Washington's marriage to Martha Custis significantly increased
the number of enslaved people at Mount Vernon.
4. In his later years, George Washington believed that harsh and
indiscriminate punishments could backfire and urged overseers to
motivate workers with encouragement and rewards. Still, he approved of
"correction" when those methods failed. Mount Vernon’s enslaved people
endured a range of punishments depending on the alleged offense.
5. The enslaved people at Mount Vernon practiced diverse religious
traditions and customs
6. On numerous occasions, people enslaved by the Washington household
ran away in an attempt to regain their freedom.
7. People at Mount Vernon also resisted their enslavement through less
noticeable means.
8. With little free time and control over their everyday life, Mount
Vernon's enslaved population attempted to exert some free will and choice
when it came to their private lives.
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PRAYER by poet Aurora Levins Morales
Say these words when you lie down
and when you rise up,
when you go out and when you return.
In times of mourning
and in times of joy.
Inscribe them on your doorposts,
embroider them on your garments,
tattoo them on your shoulders,
teach them to your children, your neighbors, your enemies,
recite them in your sleep,
here in the cruel shadow of empire:
ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE
Imagine winning. This is your sacred task.
This is your power.
Imagine every detail of winning,
the exact smell of the summer streets
in which no one has been shot,
the muscles you have never unclenched from worry,
gone soft as newborn skin,
the sparkling taste of food when we know
that no one on earth is hungry,
that the beggars are fed,
that the old man under the bridge
and the woman wrapping herself
in thin sheets in the back seat of a car,
and the children who suck on stones,
nest under a flock of roofs
that keep multiplying their shelter.
Lean with all your being towards that day
when the poor of the world
shake down a rain of good fortune
out of the heavy clouds,
and justice rolls down like waters.
Defend the world in which we win
as if it were your child.
It is your child.
Defend it as if it were your lover.
It is your lover.
When you inhale and when you exhale
breathe the possibility of another world
into the 37.2 trillion cells of your body
until it shines with hope.
Then imagine more.
Imagine rape is unimaginable.
Imagine war is a scarcely credible rumor
That the crimes of our age,
the grotesque inhumanities of greed,
the sheer and astounding shamelessness of it,
the vast fortunes made by stealing lives,
the horrible normalcy it came to have,
is unimaginable to our heirs,
the generations of the free.
Don’t waver.
Don’t let despair sink its sharp teeth
Into the throat with which you sing.
Escalate your dreams.
Make them burn so fiercely
that you can follow them down
any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way.
Make them burn clear as a starry drinking gourd
Over the grim fog of exhaustion,
and keep walking.
Hold hands. Share water. Keep imagining.
So that we,
and the children of our children’s children
may live
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Good News from DailyKos.com, https://tinyurl.com/y8d43r9w :
A grand jury indicted Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael and William
Bryan on murder charges in the death of Ahmaud Arbery
Pope Francis told his 1.2 billion Catholic faithful to disinvest from the
armaments and fossil fuel industries
The legacy of "Hidden Figure" Mary W. Jackson, as NASA named its HQ in
D.C. after the pioneering mathematician, aerospace engineer and, in
1958, first Black female engineer
Air Force Chief Master Sgt. JoAnne Bass became the first woman to serve
as the highest-ranking non-commissioned member of a U.S. military
service branch
Voto Latino won a lawsuit that forces Arizona to meet higher standards for
early voting flexibility and voter outreach & education
The "Stop Hate for Profit" campaign persuaded companies including
Verizon, Unilever, Patagonia and Ben & Jerry's to pull their ads off of
Trump's boot-lickiest social media outlet Facebook
The Democratic-led House passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act,
which puts the Senate's toothless bill to shame, and then voted to approve
D.C. statehood
40 lawsuits were filed, contending that "unchecked" and "indiscriminate"
police violence was used against protesters in demonstrations tied to the
death of George Floyd
CHEERS, as well, to an American revolution. In June 1969, a ragtag
gaggle of customers at a seedy Greenwich Village gay bar run by the
mafia—the Stonewall Inn, now a National Monument—decided they'd had
enough police harassment for one lifetime.
So they got mad as hell—especially the drag queens who had no more fucks
to give—tipped over a police car, hurled some rocks and gave new life to
the LGBT rights movement.
As the deputy police inspector said: "For those of us in[the public morals
division, things were completely changed...Suddenly they were not
submissive anymore."
What a difference half a century makes. A huge majority of Americans now
embrace their LGBT family, friends, co-workers and neighbors.
LGBTers can serve openly in the military. (Trump's ban on new
transgender enlistees will be overturned the second he leaves office.)
The vast majority of businesses support LGBT employees and many of
them sponsor LGBT advocacy groups.
When right-wingers pass anti-LGBT laws, there's always severe
blowback.
And as of this month, thanks to the wisdom of the Supreme Court and the
tenacity of the plaintiffs who argued their cases before it, employment
discrimination is now verboten in every state.
And best of all, those aging protesters in New York who got mad as hell
that hot June night and refused to take it anymore are now celebrating five
years of having the legal right to take their fights where straight
Americans have waged them since 1776: the institution of marriage.
Please tell me your own nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Truthrooster@gmail.com.
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning July 2
Copyright 2020 by Rob Brezsny
https://FreeWillAstrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Some readers wish I would write more like
Cormac McCarthy or Albert Camus or Raymond Chandler: with spare
simplicity. They accuse me of being too lush and exuberant in my prose.
They want me to use shorter sentences and fewer adjectives. To them I say:
It ain't going to happen. I have feelings similar to those of best-selling
Cancerian author Oliver Sacks, who the *New York Times* called, "one of
the great clinical writers of the 20th century." Sacks once said, "I never
use one adjective if six seem to me better and, in their cumulative effect,
more incisive. I am haunted by the density of reality and try to capture
this with 'thick description.'" I bring these thoughts to your attention, my
fellow Cancerian, because I think it's important for you to be your lavish,
sumptuous, complex self in the coming weeks. Don't oversimplify
yourself or dumb yourself down, either intellectually or emotionally.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Travel writer Paul Theroux has journeyed long
distances by train: once from Britain to Japan and back again, and then
from Massachusetts to Argentina. He also rode trains during part of his
expedition from Cairo to Cape Town. Here's one of his conclusions: "It is
almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places."
I'd like to offer a milder version of that counsel as your metaphor for the
coming weeks: The funky, bumpy, rickety influences will bring you the
best magic.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Philosopher Miguel de Unamuno declared,
"Everything that exalts and expands consciousness is good, while that
which depresses and diminishes it is evil." This idea will be intensely
true for and applicable to you in the coming weeks, Virgo. It will be your
sacred duty—both to yourself and to those you care about—to enlarge your
understandings of how the world works and to push your awareness to
become more inclusive and empathetic. What's your vision of paradise-
on-earth? Now is a good time to have fun imagining it.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): What do you want to be when you grow up,
Libra? What's that you say? You firmly believe you are already all grown
up? I hope not! In my vision of your destiny, you will always keep
evolving and transforming; you will ceaselessly transcend your existing
successes and push on to accomplish further breakthroughs and victories.
Now would be an excellent time to rededicate yourself to this noble
aspiration. I invite you to dream and scheme about three specific wonders
and marvels you would like to experience during the next five years.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has advice
that would serve you well in the coming weeks. She says, "Keep a little
space in your heart for the improbable. You won't regret it." In
accordance with your astrological potentials, I'm inclined to amend her
statement as follows: "Keep a sizable space in your heart for the
improbable. You'll be rewarded with catalytic revelations and intriguing
opportunities." To attract blessings in abundance, Scorpio, be willing to
set aside some of your usual skepticism and urge for control.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Author Malidoma Somé lives in the U.S.
now, but was born in the West African country of Burkina Faso. He
writes, "In the culture of my people, the Dagara, we have no word for the
supernatural. The closest we come to this concept is *Yielbongura*, 'the
thing that knowledge can't eat.' This word suggests that the life and power
of certain things depend upon their resistance to the categorizing
knowledge that human beings apply to everything." I bring Somé's
thoughts to your attention, Sagittarius, because I suspect that in the
coming weeks, you will encounter more than the usual number of
experiences that knowledge can't eat. They might at times be a bit spooky
or confounding, but will mostly be interesting and fun. I'm guessing that if
you embrace them, they will liberate you from overly literal and
materialistic ideas about how the world works. And that will be good for
your soul.
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BRAINSTORM ABOUT THE BIG PICTURE OF YOUR LIFE
with my Expanded Audio Horoscopes for the Second Half of 2020.
In the coming months, what areas of your life are likely to receive
unexpected assistance and divine inspiration?
Where are you likely to find most success?
How can you best cooperate with the cosmic rhythms?
What questions should you be asking?
To hear my LONG-TERM AUDIO FORECAST, register and/or sign in here:
https://RealAstrology.com
After you log in through the main page, click on the link "Long Term
Forecast for Second Half of 2020."
You can also listen to your short-term forecast for the coming week by
clicking on "This week (June 30, 2020)."
The horoscopes cost $6 apiece. Discounts are available for multiple
purchases.
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CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Pioneer Capricorn scientist Isaac Newton
is often hailed as one of history's greatest geniuses. I agree that his
intellectual capacities were sublime. But his emotional intelligence was
sparse and feeble. During the time he taught at Cambridge University, his
talks were so affectless and boring that many of his students skipped most
of his classes. I'll encourage you to make Newton your anti-role model for
the next eight weeks. This time will be favorable for you to increase your
mastery of three kinds of intelligence beyond the intellectual kind:
feeling, intuition, and collaboration.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): When future writer (and Aquarius)
Charles Dickens was 12 years old, his parents and siblings got
incarcerated in a debtors' prison. To stay alive and help his family, he
took a job working 12 hours a day, six days a week, pasting labels on pots
of boot polish in a rotting, rat-infested warehouse. Hard times! Yet the
experiences he had there later provided him with rich material for the
novels that ultimately made him wealthy and beloved. In predicting that
you, too, will have future success at capitalizing on difficulty, I don't
mean to imply you've endured or will endure anything as harsh as
Dickens' ordeal. I'm just hoping to help you appreciate the motivating
power of your challenging experiences.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Maybe you feel that the ongoing pandemic
has inhibited your ability to explore and deepen intimacy to the degree
that would like to. But even if that's the case, the coming weeks will
provide openings that could soften and remedy your predicament. So be
extra receptive and alert to the clues that life reveals to you. And call on
your imagination to look for previously unguessed and unexpected ways to
reinvent togetherness and tenderness. Let's call the next three weeks your
Season of Renewing Rapport.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries author Marge Piercy writes, "The
people I love the best, jump into work head first without dallying in the
shallows." The Aries people I love best will do just that in the coming
days. Now is not the right time to wait around passively, lazily hoping that
something better will come along. Nor is it prudent to procrastinate or
postpone decisions while shopping around for more options or collecting
more research. Dive, Aries, dive!
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): *Calvin and Hobbes* is a comic strip by
Bill Watterson. It features a boy named Calvin and his stuffed tiger
Hobbes. In the first panel of one story, Calvin is seated at a school desk
looking perplexed as he studies a question on a test, which reads "Explain
[Isaac] Newton's First Law of Motion in your own words." In the second
panel, Calvin has a broad smile, suddenly imbued with inspiration. In the
third panel, he writes his response to the test question: "Yakka foob mog.
Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz." The fourth panel
shows him triumphant and relaxed, proclaiming, "I love loopholes." I
propose that you use this scenario as your victorious metaphor in the
coming weeks, Taurus. Look for loopholes! And use them to overcome
obstacles and solve riddles.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): "It is a fault to wish to be understood before
we have made ourselves clear to ourselves," wrote philosopher and
activist Simone Weil. I'm hoping that this horoscope of mine can help you
avoid that mistake. In the coming weeks and months, you will have a
stronger-than-usual need to be seen for who you really are—to have your
essential nature be appreciated and understood by people you care about.
And the best way to make sure that happens is to work hard right now on
seeing, appreciating, and understanding yourself.
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Homework: Decide on three special words that will from now on serve as
magic spells for you. Keep them secret! Don't even tell me.
FreeWillAstrology.com
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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
2020 Rob Brezsny
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