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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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ARIES (March 21-April 19): When life gets weird, should you take refuge in decorum and tradition? Or intensify your commitment to the humdrum? Is it wise to dress more conservatively, act more dignified, and smile more automatically? I say no. I say it’s prime time to gleefully depart from The Way Things Have Always Been Done. I advise you to cultivate your rebellious questions and celebrate the unusual impulses that bubble up. They will help you harvest the epiphanies that life’s weirdness is tempting you to pursue.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “When you die,” says the Koran, “God will call upon you to account for all the permitted pleasures you did not enjoy while on earth.” And in the Talmud: “A person will be called upon to account, on Judgment Day, for all the permitted pleasures he might have enjoyed but did not.” This thought should serve as a central theme in the coming weeks. You won’t die for many years, but to activate your spiritual potential in the near future, you must plumb the depths of bliss, joy, amusement, and fun.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Your intentions have been fine, but you’ve been a bit off in executing them. It’s like you were building a love nest in a parking garage or hosting a dinner party with fascinating guests at McDonald’s or confessing secrets to a narcissist who wasn’t really interested. In other words, you have been doing the right things in the wrong places. But I expect that a lucky break will soon shove you out of this awkward disjunction, bringing your style and content into harmony. Why not go out and induce that lucky break immediately?
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Lishui is a rapidly growing industrial city in China. With the government’s help, developers have been transforming rugged farmland into level parcels for manufacturing facilities. Engineers have used dynamite to flatten 108 hills and mountains. The official motto is “Each person does the work of two; two days’ work is done in one.” While I don’t normally recommend that you engage in such extreme labors, the coming weeks will be a favorable time to make an exception. You’ll have cosmic forces on your side if you do the work of two as you carry out the equivalent of demolishing mountains.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The bad news is that Indonesia has the fastest rate of deforestation on the planet and is one of the top three producers of greenhouse gas pollution. The good news is that on Nov. 28, the people of Indonesia are scheduled to plant 79 million saplings in 24 hours. You Leos might also consider undertaking a massive display of fertility in the next three weeks. Your creative powers will be at a peak; your ability to coax abundant life out of seeds and sprouts will be extraordinary.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Because of changes in agricultural techniques, food is not as nutritious as it used to be. Vegetables from modern factory farms have 27 percent less calcium and 37 percent less iron than they did in 1975, for example. Are there any other areas of your life where sustenance levels have dropped? Or an activity that no longer provides you with the boost it used to? If you find something’s lacking, take immediate measures to make up for what you’ve been missing. (For more info about food’s shrinking nutritional value, go here: tinyurl.com/yrw4ht.)
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Talk normally as little as possible in the coming week. Instead, try to communicate primarily by whispering, singing, laughing, speaking in rhyme, using foreign accents, making animal noises, and imitating cartoon characters. This could free you to express feelings and thoughts that you’ve been unwisely suppressing. It would give you the power to access potent information that neither your monkey mind nor your rational mind has much interest in.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): A while back I asked, “What conditions would you need in your world to feel you were living in paradise?” “My utopia,” wrote Sandra Boyd, a Scorpio of Vancouver, “would require me to be desired, loved, and satiated amidst messy order and cockeyed perfection.” I urge you to create that exact set of conditions. Get out there and cultivate the funny logic, wild discipline, and chaotic organization that will help ensure you’ll be fiercely adored.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Isaac Newton revolutionized science and math. His biographer James Gleick says he discovered “more of the essential core of human knowledge than anyone before or after.” Ostensibly, Newton was humble, writing that “if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” But he did not actually believe that, writes Salon.com’s Farhad Manjoo in his review of Gleick’s book. And the fact is that Newton’s breakthroughs “were not incremental, not the logical conclusion to centuries of study,” but rather the result of “a supernatural, superhuman intuition.” I suspect you’ll be able to summon such intuition in the coming weeks as you expand your understanding of your place in the world.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were instrumental in creating the United States, but they shared a flaw with most of the other founding fathers: They owned slaves. Only one of the men who midwifed the birth of the nation freed his human chattel — Virginia plantation owner Robert Carter, whose heroism has been largely unsung. Make him your role model in the coming weeks. It’s a good time to meditate on those people you’ve held down, oppressed, or manipulated (even if it was inadvertent or unconscious), and then correct for how you’ve interfered with their full blossoming. I’m not saying you’re any guiltier than the rest of us, just that this is your special time to atone.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): In coming weeks you will have an unusually large capacity to see what has been invisible and name what has been unspeakable. You will be adept at solving dull old problems and creating brilliant new ones. You will also have extraordinary power to dissolve restrictions and impose creative limitations, outwit evil and dream up tricky ways to be good, drum up freedom and escape apathy, and rebel against or uphold tradition as necessary. Use your amazing mojo craftily, Aquarius!
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “You owe it to us all to get on with what you’re good at,” said poet W.H. Auden. Make that your motto in the coming weeks. Your motivation for doing the useful work you love to do should not come from you alone. We, the rest of the world, want to be there inside you so that we can root you on and encourage you to give us your very best gifts. Tap into and refine and explore your talents for your own sake, yes — but do it for us, too.
Homework: What gifts do you want for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule, and the winter solstice? Write to Buddha Claus at uaregod@comcast.net.
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