TAURUS (April 20-May 20): There are no longer enough Catholic priests in North America to fulfill all the requests for divine intervention that are received from parishioners. The requests are therefore outsourced to churches in India, where up-and-coming young clergy pray over them at $5 a pop. It’s too bad the powers-that-be apparently don’t know about me and my team of Prayer Warriors, because we perform the same service absolutely free. To demonstrate our effectiveness, we plan to unleash a series of powerful prayers on your behalf. Specifically, we will beseech God to bless you in the coming weeks with cathartic pleasures that will permanently expand your capacity for happiness.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): "Most of us cannot imagine the wheat beyond the bread, or the farmer beyond the wheat, or the history beyond the farm," writes Wendell Berry in *Resurgence* magazine. "Most people cannot imagine the forest and the forest economy that produced their houses and furniture and paper; or the streams and the weather that fill their pitchers and bathtubs and swimming pools with water." In my astrological opinion, Gemini, you can’t afford to be like the people that Berry describes. To give your life the ballast it will need in the coming weeks, you need a vivid appreciation of all the good things that sustain you, as well as a more intimate understanding of their origins.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): You haven’t been singing and dancing and laughing and playing enough lately. You haven’t been telling yourself jokes as you drop off to sleep or leaping off the couch during the exciting parts of your favorite television shows or going ten miles out of your way to track down the exotic sensation you’re in the mood for. Either get more serious about having fun, Cancerian, or I swear I’ll show up in your dreams in the form of a giant crab running amok in a place where you take everything too seriously.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): I have nothing against Leo diva Jennifer Lopez, but I wouldn’t normally recommend her as a role model for you. She’s a bit chilly and remote and self-absorbed, whereas I always like to encourage you Leos to cultivate warmth and conviviality and generosity of spirit. But after seeing the magazine ad for Lopez’s perfume, I’ll make an exception. "In the eye of the storm," the text reads, "I am still Jennifer Lopez." Please adopt this for your own use in the coming week. Say to yourself ten times a day, "In the eye of the storm, I am still [your name here]."
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Some astrologers say that Virgos tend to be so obsessed with small details that they neglect the big picture; that they get so bound up in seeking perfection that they miss out on life’s messy beauty and slightly flawed glories. But even if there is a grain of truth in those ideas, they’ve temporarily become irrelevant. In the coming weeks, you’ll be drawn to carry out the task Henry Miller described as follows: "to keep the miracle alive, to live always in the miracle, to make the miracle more and more miraculous, to swear allegiance to nothing, but live only miraculously, think only miraculously."
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): You may think you need a teacher or genie or rescuer, but I say you don’t. I say that what you need most is to realize that right now you are your own best teacher and genie and rescuer. In my astrological opinion, you should drop any fantasies you have that there’s someone out there who will save you or give you what you lack or reveal the secrets that will fix everything. For the foreseeable future, you won’t get what you need until you’re prepared to provide it entirely by yourself.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): You Scorpios can be controlling manipulators, but sometimes that’s a good thing. For example, when you have a leadership role in a group project, you may *have* to be a bit controlling and manipulative in order to keep other people’s raging egos from sabotaging the goals of the project. But you also have a great responsibility to monitor your own power drives. You’ve got to make sure you don’t get so juiced up by the battle of wills that you end up sabotaging the goals of the project yourself. These meditations will be crucial for you to keep in mind in the coming weeks.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian poet Emily Dickinson had little interest in traditional religion. She referred to the Bible as "an antique volume written by faded men," and called the god worshiped by her conventional parents many unflattering names, including "The Eclipse." And yet, writes critic John Burt, "her poetry is charged with an anguished, naked, mystical confrontation with the divine." This is a perfect astrological time for you to shift towards a more Dickinsonian approach, Sagittarius, and seek out raw, sweet, wild, direct communion.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Here’s one of the few mottoes it would be healthy for all of us to live by: *Wash your brain once a month, whether you think it needs it or not.* If you haven’t faithfully followed that rule in recent months, please do the job with extra vigor in the coming week. Scrub and dry-clean and disinfect your brain until it’s purged of all shoddy theories, decrepit dogmas and ill-fitting beliefs borrowed from people you no longer trust. It’s especially important to do this now because you’ll soon be in astrological phase when your capacity for expanding your worldview will be at a peak.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Through a friend of a friend of a friend in the publishing business, I’ve caught wind of a mysterious manuscript that may soon be turned into a book. It’s called *I’m the Boss of My Underpants.* My source was maddeningly vague about the subject matter, but it sounds like something I’d love you to get your hands on as soon as possible. In the coming weeks, you’ll need to get crystal clear about who exactly *is* the boss of your underpants. You should also devote a lot of thought to defining the rules that will govern your underpants in the future, including the important issues of where and when and with whom you’ll take them off.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): One of my specialties is trying to be tolerant of people who are intolerant of me. My motto is "I refuse to dehumanize anyone, even those who dehumanize me." I recommend that you practice this difficult art in the coming week, Pisces. You’re in a phase when it’s crucial to bolster your integrity, and playing nice with those who don’t play nice would be great exercise. But there’s another important reason to do this: Feeling even low levels of contempt and disdain would shut down your intuition. And that’s something you can’t afford as you come to a turning point in your work on the dark side of your life. Here’s this week’s homework: What are the conditions you’d need in your world in order to feel like you were living in paradise? Testify
