Free Will Astrology

by Rob Brezsny
November 29, 2006

ARIES (March 21-April 19): "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom," wrote Norwegian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. That's vividly true for you right now, Aries. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you'll thrive on the whirling gaga that overwhelms you as you play in vast, open spaces. Your best decisions will arise as your mind is boggled and wobbled by liberating dramas. So let's celebrate the disorientation you're feeling, and do everything we can to make sure that more is on its way.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I know how you're feeling, Taurus. I've done time in the same psychic prison you're trapped in. Because of my exemplary behavior while incarcerated, luckily, I was freed well in advance of my scheduled release date. Would you like to know what I did to win my early release? Four things: (1) I took responsibility for the ways I had perpetuated my own suffering. (2) I practiced feeling grateful for the lessons my pain had taught me. (3) I thought deeply about the actions I could take to atone for how I had hurt other people. (4) I vowed to use the shame I felt as a motivation to become smarter and kinder and wilder.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Does one of your pretty good relationships need a boost? Does one of your challenging partnerships need some slack? If so, I'd like to help. Here's my offer. I'll perform a healing ceremony for a relationship of your choice. In return for doing you this favor, all I ask is that you, too, carry out a ritual in behalf of the same relationship. Think of it as being akin to a "matching funds" grant: I'll help you if you help yourself. It is the perfect astrological moment to do this–to make splashy gestures that invoke blessings for relationships that are in need of a shift. Now send me a brief description of the relationship you'd like me to shower some magic on. Write to uaregod@comcast.net. I won't be able to write back, but I will definitely carry out a ritual for you.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): "They might be small, spiky, and spineless, but they're still family." So begins a National Geographic story about sea urchins, creatures that biologists now know have far more in common with humans than anyone realized. (They share 7,077 genes with us, and are actually on the same branch of the evolutionary tree of life.) Let that opening sentence be your motto during the coming week, Cancerian, as you adjust your attitude towards not only the runts and outcasts of your tribe, but also towards the parts of yourself that you tend to neglect and underestimate. Now say this: "They might be small, spiky, and spineless, but they're still family."

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): I hope that one day you will learn how to give all the extraordinary love you have to offer. Another one of my greatest desires for you is that you will cultivate, earn, and seize all the freedom you need in order to become yourself completely. To my great pleasure, you've recently begun to tune in to the possibility that these two goals might be extremely fun for you. During the coming weeks their hold on your imagination should heat up considerably. In 2007, I hope they'll become your modus operandi, your Weltanschauung, and your raison d'être.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In one of Aesop's fables, a donkey becomes enamored of the crickets' serenades. Longing to produce the same sound himself, he goes to a cricket for advice. "What kind of food gives you that sweet-sounding voice?" he asks. The cricket says, "My food is the air and the dew." The donkey then begins a new diet, hoping that by eating nothing but air and dew he too will be able to make beautiful, whirring melodies. It doesn't happen, of course. The donkey merely starves. Let this be your teaching story for the coming week, Virgo. Sing your own song with your own voice, whether that sounds like a hee-haw or a warble. And get the exact nurturing that will help you sing your own song with your own voice, not the nurturing that helps others sing their special tunes.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): As a general rule, standing your ground and dealing squarely with a problem is the best policy. But for you right now, escape is a viable option. In fact, I think that running away is actually preferable. All I ask, though, is that you choose a specific place to flee to, so that you're not just running from something but also running toward something. As long as you're driven solely by a big NO, in other words, dashing around will weaken you and aggravate the problem you're dodging. But if you're also motivated by a vivid YES, you'll find the strength and wisdom to make all the right moves.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Earth Island Journal says scientists have discovered natural ways to clean up old munitions sites. If you plant periwinkle and parrot-feather plants in soil that's been bombed with TNT, they'll soak up and neutralize the noxious stuff. Likewise, pondweed absorbs and transforms nitroglycerin in land where explosives have been detonated. I urge you to find the metaphorical equivalents of periwinkle, pondweed, and parrot-feather plants this week, Scorpio. It's a perfect moment to detoxify the places in your life where past battles left behind toxic debris.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): On Jupiter's moon Europa, there is an absolutely straight narrow line about 125 miles long. NASA'S photos show it clearly. Commenting on this improbably regular feature, renowned author and inventor Arthur C. Clarke says he finds it hard not to conclude that it was constructed by intelligent life. "I'm beginning to think the unthinkable," he writes. Make that sentence your watchword in the coming week, Sagittarius. Be ready to imagine the unimaginable, see the unseeable, and think the unthinkable. And I mean that you should do that with the most optimistic attitude possible. According to my reading of the astrological omens, the almost unbelievable prospects coming into your sphere are interesting and invigorating.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): As I see your situation, it's like you're acting famished even though the cupboards are stocked with goodies. You're pining and moaning to be close to a treasure that's right next to you. You've got 98 out the 100 things you need, and yet you just can't stop obsessing on the two that are missing. If I'm wrong about this, Capricorn, just ignore what I'm saying and rejoin me next week. But if you suspect I may be on to something, please act fast to purge your delusions.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): This week I propose that you feel gratitude for every person who has ever told you that you were inadequate, that there was something wrong with you, that you would never amount to anything. You might even carry out a little ceremony in which you bow down to an altar containing their photos or slips of paper on which their names are written. And why am I suggesting this? Because those jerks helped motivate you to become as cool as you are. And if I'm reading the omens correctly, it's time to summon a huge new burst of creative energy as you disprove their misbegotten ideas about you even more completely.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Why do cigarette-makers put ammonia in their product? For the same reason that drug addicts use ammonia to turn cocaine into crack: It helps render the nicotine and cocaine into a gas, making it easier for the lungs to absorb them, and dramatically amplifying the high. I hope you can find a healthy, legal, and metaphorical equivalent to this process in the coming weeks, Pisces. You have both a poetic license and an astrological mandate to squeeze at least three times more fun and insight out of every single thing you do. It's the Intensity Season.