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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning April 17
Copyright 2008 by Rob Brezsny
http://FreeWillAstrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*

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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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
http://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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