TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The next couple weeks will be an excellent time to purge any nagging karma that has been haunting your love life. You’ll be ready to move on to new romantic frontiers once you clear away the residue that has been subtly burdening you. To achieve the proper spirit of rowdy fierceness, learn the following country music songs and belt them out now and then: "You Done Tore Out My Heart And Stomped That Sucker Flat," "Get Your Tongue Out Of My Mouth, I’m Kissing you Goodbye," "How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?," "I Wouldn’t Take You To A Dawg Fight, ’Cause I’m Afraid You’d Win," "I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well," and "I Flushed You From The Toilets Of My Heart."
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): This is your official too-much-of-a-good-thing warning. To protect and preserve the sweet progress you’ve enjoyed in recent weeks, make sure that abundance doesn’t tip over into gross excess. Refuse to become a slave to your good ideas. Don’t let your triumphs lead to exhaustion. You can keep all your well-earned rewards if you’ll start setting graceful new limits now.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Most practitioners of the healing arts believe in taking a gradual approach. Psychotherapists and acupuncturists, for example, typically see their clients once a week, theorizing that even deep-seated problems have to be undone slowly and gently. Some mavericks take a more radical approach, however. One acupuncturist I know has her clients come and stay at her clinic for six consecutive days, during which time she administers a fresh treatment every two hours. This is the kind of approach I recommend for you right now. You’re on the verge of curing a certain longstanding imbalance, and intense, concentrated attention is the best way to do it.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): I shopped at a local supermarket for months before striking up a conversation with Wendy, one of the clerks. "How was your weekend?" I asked her one Monday. "I worked at my two other jobs," she said. I was surprised, having assumed her career consisted entirely of tallying grocery purchases. "I’m a psychotherapist at a group home for disturbed teens," she continued, "and I’m trying to finish my Ph.D. dissertation." I blushed in embarrassment for having misread her so thoroughly. As she processed my order, we had an interesting exchange about adolescent angst and the politics of psychotherapy. Make Wendy your inspirational symbol. May she remind you to dig beneath the surface and uncover the deeper truth about everything you think you have figured out.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): "The fox knows many things," said the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, "but the hedgehog knows one big thing." The 20th century philosopher Isaiah Berlin used this thought as an organizing principle in discussing types of writers. Hedgehogs such as Dante and Plato yearned to explain life’s apparent chaos with a single, all-embracing theory, Berlin believed, whereas foxes like Shakespeare preferred to revel in the world’s messy multiplicity without feeling a need to unify it all in one system. I’m convinced that most Virgos tend to be foxes. In the coming days, however, try out the hedgehog perspective. It’ll ensure you don’t miss the forest for the trees.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Where exactly does happiness come from, ask David Meyers and Ed Diener in their article, "The Science of Happiness," published in The Futurist magazine. Do you experience happiness primarily through being a good person or contemplating the meaning of life? From indulging in pleasure or knowing the truth? From preserving comfy illusions or purging yourself of pent-up rage and sadness? All the above? Let these questions be the starting point for your own meditations on the subject. Get very serious about defining what brings you joy and making concrete plans to harvest more of it.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The science newsletter, "Mini-Annals Of Improbable Research," polled its readers on the question, "Does reality exist?" Some 42 percent answered yes, while 31 percent asserted that it most certainly does not. The remaining 27 percent were undecided. A few of the latter believed that their reality exists but no one else’s does. Two people said, "Yes, reality exists, but you can’t get to it." According to one respondent, "Reality exists only when it is really necessary." Remember that line, because it will be quite necessary for your reality to exist in the coming weeks. Here’s another response you should make your own: "Reality especially exists right after a thunderstorm." Your reality will become vivid and deep once your metaphorical tempest ends in a few days.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Fate is conspiring to suck you into an intensive behavioral modification program. The goal: to weed out the wishy-washy wishes and leech out the lukewarm longings that are keeping you distracted from your burning desires. Here’s the paradoxical formula that will be at the heart of this process: If you try to maintain the illusion that you’re not losing yourself, you will in fact lose yourself. But if you surrender and agree to lose yourself, you will break through to a new level of communion with the deepest, most eternal part of yourself.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Nice guys finish last. So proclaimed the crusty old baseball player, Leo Durocher, who was famous last century for his rough play and dirty tricks. His once-wicked insinuation has devolved into a decadent platitude. It needs an update. As you enter a phase when it will make sense to become more strategic, try on the following formulas for size: Nice guys finish last because they follow all the rules by rote. Nasty guys often don’t even finish because they break the rules by rote. Smart guys and riot grrls win because they get away with inventing new rules that update the meaning of the ever-evolving game.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Would you consider acquiring a three-foot-long double-edged sword like the one Beowulf wielded in his famous battle with the monster many centuries ago? A blade resembling King Arthur’s Excalibur would be fine, too, as would one modeled after Glandring, which belonged to the wizard Gandalf in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. You won’t need this weapon to defend yourself from physical attack in the coming days; that’s not why I recommend it. Rather, I suggest you use it as a magical prop in a ritual designed to rouse your warrior spirit. Hold it in front of you as you visualize yourself scaring off your inner demons and cutting away the inessential concerns that are bogging you down.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): This may be the time your descendants will tell stories about — the turning point when you outwit an old nemesis and undo an ancient knot, freeing you to finally begin fulfilling your life purpose in earnest. On the other hand, this may be the moment when you shrink back from a challenge similar to one that many generations of your family have faced. If that’s what happens, your descendants will be lacking an important clue when they encounter their own version of the ancestral puzzle many years from now. Which will it be? Answering the call to adventure or refusing it? What Halloween costume could you choose to help you activate a secret or dormant part of your potential? Testify at
