Beauty & Truth Press

Astrology Is Real

Oracular Soul-Making

Astrology Is Real: Revelations from My Life as an Oracle is the first astrology book from Rob Brezsny, longtime author of the globally syndicated weekly column "Free Will Astrology."

$22.00   print edition

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IS ASTROLOGY REAL?

Is astrology real? Of course! Yes! Astrology is very real—although not in the same sense that the orange vermillion steel towers of the Golden Gate Bridge are real, or the lavender soap you used for your last shower, or the great horned owl you saw roosting in a juniper tree. 

Astrology is real in the way that an Emily Dickinson poem is real, and psychology's theory of the unconscious mind, and the dream of your dead ancestor you had last night, and the myths of Gilgamesh and Inanna, and the story Toni Morrison told in her novel Beloved. 

Is astrology true? Of course! Though it's not true in the same sense that the binomial theorem is true. Not true like the speed of light is 186,282.39 miles per second or like every molecule of water is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Astrology is not true in the same way as the fact that 55 big American corporations pay no federal taxes. 

But astrology is intensely and intimately true in a trillion other ways. It's as true as the epiphany you had when you realized you wanted to move to a new location or get married to a person you loved.  

Astrology is true like the mix of delight and melancholy that seeps into you as summer turns to autumn. True in the same way that you feel cheerful and frisky when the first spring leaves appear on oak and maple trees. As true as the fact that you are sleepier in the depths of winter than at other times of the year. 

Astrology is very much true, deeply and gloriously true, in the sense that Patti Smith is true as she sings her song "Radio Ethiopia.” True like the inspiration Georgia O'Keeffe tapped into as she painted Flowers of Fire. True like the wrathful hope that motivated Martin Luther King Jr. to write his "I Have a Dream" speech. True like the Indigenous Anishinaabe trickster spirit Nanabozho, an unruly, gender-changing hero whose job it is to learn the names of all creatures. 

Astrology is as real and as true as your imagination. As real and as true as the story you tell yourself about your life. As real and as true as your never-ending cavalcade of yearnings. 

ARIES: A martial arts competition on ESPN TV featured a macho dance-off, in which rivals took turns brandishing their high-octane warrior choreography. At one point the announcer waxed poetic as the eventual winner pulled off a seemingly impossible move: “And that was a corkscrew illusion twist rodeo spin!” I invite you to use that phrase as an incantatory invocation in the regular pep talks you give yourself. Ask yourself every now and then, “What will be my next version of the Corkscrew Illusion Twist Rodeo Spin?”

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TAURUS: Your body is holy and magical and precious. I advise you not to sell it or rent it or compromise it in any way. I invite you to attend to your sweet flesh and blood and nerves with consummate care. Find out exactly what your amazing organism needs to feel its best. Lavish it with pleasure and healing. Treat it as you would a beloved child or animal. I also hope you will have intimate conversations with the cells that compose your body. Let them know you love and appreciate them. Tell them you want to collaborate with them to create maximum well-being. Ask them for their counsel.

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GEMINI: Of all the people in the world, you Geminis are the best at skipping, scampering, springing, capering, hustling, and hippety-hopping. You are also incomparable when it comes to twirling, pivoting undulating, gyrating, and rub-a-dub-dubbing. Bonus! No other sign of the zodiac has such an extravagant capacity to rumble, romp, rollick, cavort, and zip-a-dap-doodle. Congratulations! On the other hand, few of you Twins ever develop an expertise in shuffling, drooping, mumbling, and wallowing. You’re most likely unskilled at the low arts of dawdling, sniveling, pigeonholing, or pussyfooting. But that’s a good thing! Congratulations again!

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CANCERIAN: Why are Australian sand wasps so skilled at finding their way back home after being out all day? Here’s their trick: When they first leave the nest each morning, they fly backwards, imprinting on their memory banks the sights they will look for when they return later. In addition, their exiting flight path is a slow and systematic zigzag pattern that orients them from multiple directions. The sand wasps remind me of you Cancerians. One of your key lifelong tasks is to keep finding your way back to your spiritual home, over and over again.

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LEO: You are destined to become a genius of controlled burning. It’s your birthright to be skilled in the fiery arts: to kindle and illuminate and energize and warm. With each passing month, you know more about when it’s smart to turn the heat up high and when it’s right to simmer with a slow, steady glow. You’re a student of luminosity: learning to wield your flames with discernment and compassion rather than with pride or rage. You practice and refine your talent for the creative destruction that burns rot and dross.

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VIRGO: By the time my Virgo acquaintance Cal was seven years old, he was lit up with a desire to know how things work. Sometimes that caused problems. When he dismantled the toaster to examine its innards, for instance, his parents reprimanded him. In a working-class family of 12 kids, losing a valued appliance caused a financial crunch. But Cal kept taking things apart to understand them better. In time his research led him to develop a skill for putting things back together again, often in better shape than they were before he got a hold of them. That is the mark of an evolved Virgo. P.S. As an adult, Cal creates interactive robots that perform in shows all over the world. He's a skillful builder.

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LIBRA: You’re like an estuary, where the salt water of the sea mingles with the freshwater of a river. Your power spots are the boundaries where cumulus cloud and blue sky join; where the grey-brown oak trunk joins the brown-grey earth; where your shadow overlaps your companion’s shadow in the rich double darkness. Rejoice twice! Life authorizes you to brandish and celebrate potent dualities. You thrive on being two-toned and bicultural. You’re a synergized fusion of the yes and the no, the give and the take, the lyrical and the well-ordered. In the description of poet Robert Frost, you’re not confused, you’re well mixed. In the words of the midwife muse in my dream of your rebirth, you’re both the reflection of the white rose in the mirror and the rose itself. Do you agree but also disagree? Excellent! That’s you being true to yourself. Your assignment is to be a humming juxtaposition, not a jagged contradiction. If you do your sacred duty, you’ll never get crushed by the squeeze of opposites because you’ll be faithfully massaged by oscillating complements.

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SCORPIO: In the TV science-fiction show Doctor Who, the title character lives in a Tardis, a time machine that is also a spaceship. From the outside, it appears to be barely bigger than an old-fashioned phone booth. But once you venture inside, you find it's a spacious chateau with numerous rooms, including a greenhouse, library, observatory, swimming pool, and karaoke bar. This is an excellent metaphor for you Scorpios. Anyone who wants your love or friendship must realize how much you resemble a Tardis. They’ve got to understand that you’re far bigger on the inside than you seem on the outside. If they don’t, it’s unlikely the two of you can have a productive relationship. As a public service, I invite you to make sure everyone you're involved with knows this fact.

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SAGITTARIUS: Walk your wisdom walk, Sagittarius. Talk your wisdom talk. Dream your wisdom schemes and stream your wisdom memes. Excite us with your wisdom uproars and your wisdom surprises. Gaze out at our broken world with your wisdom eyes. Play your wisdom tricks and risk your wisdom jokes and erupt with your wisdom cures. We need you to be a radiant cascade of irresistible wisdom. We ask you to conjure a restless flow of wisdom exploits and wisdom interventions. What are your wisdom mistakes? Your wisdom aches? We want those, too. And please note: You don’t have to wait until the wisdom is perfect. You shouldn’t worry about whether it’s eminently practical. Your job is to trust your wisdom body, to unleash your wisdom wails, to revel in your wisdom resurrections.

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CAPRICORN: "Most humans have an absolute and infinite capacity for taking things for granted," declared author Aldous Huxley. That's the bad news. The good news is that you Capricorns are the least likely sign of the zodiac to fall under that bad spell. If you choose to develop your natural potential, you can make it a habit to regularly renew your passion for and commitment to all your familiar pleasures and fundamental supports. You will be consistently aware of the everyday miracles that allow you to thrive. You will express your appreciation for the sources that nourish you so reliably.

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AQUARIUS: More than any other sign of the zodiac you have a knack for collecting and making savvy use of ah-ha! moments. Why? I think it's because you have an extra willingness to periodically drop your fixed beliefs about how everything works. You're more likely to respond to surprises as welcome catalysts rather than annoying inconveniences. No one else has a greater inclination to say, "I love to get my curiosity spiked, my hair mussed, my awe struck, my goose bumps roused, my dogmas exploded, and my mind blown.” 

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Pisces: The Japanese term wabi-sabi refers to an interesting or evocative imperfection in a work of art that makes it more beautiful than if it were merely perfect. Duende is a Spanish word referring to a work of art that astonishes and thrills its viewers because it's so emotionally rich and unpredictably soulful. One of your special potentials is to be a work of art exuding an abundance of these two qualities. Notice that in the last sentence we suggested that your life itself might be a tour de force masterpiece. Your wabi-sabi gives you the je ne sais quoi to free yourself from hyper sleekness and excessive refinement in the quest for unruly beauty. Your duende provides you with the lyrical ingenuity to be a maestro of surprise and creative flair.

ASTROLOGY IS REAL

ARIES: Below are responses to the topic "How to Be an Aries." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.

1. Take big, strong steps whenever you move down the street or swagger through a building or hike in nature. Doesn't matter if anyone else is nearby. Walk loudly. Swing your arms forcefully. Imprint your intense presence on your surroundings.

2. Five necessary things:

• Start lots of sentences with "I."

• Be adept at fulfilling your own hype.

• Avoid getting caught up in the unfortunate fact that everyone takes everything too seriously.

• If you get upset about everyone taking everything too seriously, forget why you're mad and run off to play.

• Now and then, be impossible.

3. Always keep three jars of extra charisma under your bed. You may not need it, since you usually wake up every morning dripping with it. But just in case. Aries folks need to radiate charm and magnetism.

4. Proceed on the hypothesis that you are always correct, even if you just changed your mind. —Ama Lessing

5. Be supremely confident of your ability to gather the energy to get unstuck, to bustle, to glide, to initiate—for others as well as yourself. —Norma Quesada

6. Be rational and calm in unreasonable circumstances. Be non-rational and mischievous in reasonable circumstances. —Jason Thompson

7. Be completely unable to understand how anyone can resist you or not find you alluring.

8. On a first date, offer to arm wrestle.

9. Declare yourself monarch and president of absolutely everything, then stage a coup d'état. Overthrow yourself and install yourself as the new monarch and president. Do this on a regular basis.

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TAURUS: Below are responses to the topic "How to Be a Taurus." One of my readers provided some ideas, which are noted.

1. Never stop building! Keep building and building and building: your joy, your security, your love, your beauty, your stamina, your sense of wonder.

2. Trust and exult in the feel of velvet, the taste of crème brûlée, the sound of the cello in Dvorák's Cello Concerto in B Minor, the sight of the full moon rising out of beloved lake, and the smell of the night-blooming jasmine.

3. Have faith that your slow, gradual triumphs will work productive magic and last a long time.

4. If I had to choose ancient deities to be your symbolic helpers, I would of course pick Venus. The planet Venus is ruler of your sign, and the goddess Venus is the maven of beauty and love, which are key to your happiness.

But I would also assign Hephaestus to your sign. He was the Greek god of the metalworking forge. He created Zeus's thunderbolts, Hermes' winged helmet, Aphrodite's magic bra, Achilles' armor, Eros's bow and arrows, and the thrones for all the gods and goddesses in Olympus.

The things he made were gorgeous and useful. I nominate him to be one of your spirit guides. May he inspire you to be a generous source of practical beauty.

5. Taurus says, "If it’s comfortable, sensuous, beautiful, or delicious, I made it or I own it." —Jennifer White

6. You are a specialist in the art of body language. No one wields the power of gesture and posture with more articulate elegance than you.

7. "If you don't love everybody," said the character Dicky Fox in the movie Jerry Maguire, "you can't sell anybody."

In other words, the most effective strategy for getting what you want is to feel tender affection for the world.

Taurus is the sign most likely to employ this advice with utmost integrity.

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GEMINI: Below are responses to the topic "How to Be a Gemini."

1. Bounce up and down when you walk. Have 15 different kinds of laughs. Be impossible to pin down or figure out.

Relish the openings that your restlessness spawns. Keep changing the way you change.

Be easily swayed and sway others easily. Let the words that flow out of your mouth reveal to you what you think.

2. Your worst times are when you lose contact with your other selves. Don't let that happen.

3. Live a semi-dangerous life in your daydreams but not in real life.

4. If you have turned out to be the kind of Gemini who is both saintly and satanic, remember that Goddess made you that way. So let Goddess worry about it.

5. To be a true Gemini, you must yearn for knowledge—whether it is about coral reefs, ancient maps of Sumer, sex among jellyfish, mini-black holes, or celebrity gossip. You need to be an eternal student who craves education.

Are some things more important to discover than others? Of course. But that gauge is not always apparent in the present. A seemingly insignificant clue or trick you glean today may become unexpectedly useful a month from now.

With that perspective in mind, I encourage you to sometimes be quite promiscuous in your lust for new information and teachings.

6. The key to genius is the ability to keep two contradictory ideas in your head and maintain sanity. But it's sometimes fun to omit the "sanity" part.

7. Your mind is always aswarm with zesty mysteries. That's good! It gives you an enhanced power to generate insight and solve problems in daydreams.

8. Your curiosity is your superpower but also potentially your albatross. It entertains and educates you, but may get you into tight spots and awkward transitions.

That's why Goddess armed you with a razor-sharp silver tongue. You can talk your way out of trouble.

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CANCERIAN: Below are responses to the topic "How to Be a Cancerian." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.

1. Be fluid and flexible while still being rooted and sturdy. Be soft and sensitive even as you are also firm and resolute.

Be mostly modest and adaptable, but become assertive and outspoken as necessary. Be cautious about inviting and seeking out challenges, but be bold and brash when a golden challenge arrives.

Be your naturally generous self most of the time, but avoid giving too much.

Got all that, Cancerian?

Carrying out the multifaceted assignments I just described might be nearly impossible for most of the other signs of the zodiac, but they are in your wheelhouse. You are a specialist in fertile complexity.

2. Gently and tenderly haunt people's dreams with your lyrical intimacy and generous mystery and inscrutable magic.

3. Compare your everyday life to the narratives in storybooks and fairy tales and legends. Act as if you have the power to attract experiences that others believe are only true in fantasy. Really, truly believe in fantastic creatures. Whenever you need a vacation from reality, induce waking dreams to whisk you away.

4. Listen attentively to your inner child, but don’t spoil and overindulge your inner child.

5. More than any other sign of the zodiac, you feel the sadness and suffering of the world. Is that a debility or asset? It all depends on how you choose to respond to the inflow. Compassionate action is most likely to make it an asset.

6. When your cup of sensitivity runneth over, MAKE ART! —Sy Pfy

7. To entice people to surrender, flood them with love. —Shiloh Manwaring

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LEO: Below are responses to the topic "How to Be a Leo." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.

1. Without apology or inhibition, be the STAR you are. Yes, people may want to use you for your radiance, your charisma, and your strength. But that doesn't have to interfere with your holy duty, which is MAXIMUM SELF-EXPRESSION. —Hassan Allen

2. Never break your own heart. Never apologize for showering yourself with kindness and adoration. —Amy Clear

3. Be alert for the intense shadows you may cast with your intense brightness. Consider the possibility that even if they seem iffy or dicey, they may have beauty and value of their own.

4. At the moment of orgasm, scream out your own name. —Bethany Grace

5. People should try to understand that you are only bossing them around for their benefit. —Harlow Hunt

6. Stretching and sighing and yawning are art forms for you. Regard each occasion as a potential performance opportunity.

7. Give yourself permission to do just about anything that has integrity and is fueled by compassion. —Azariah Smithie

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VIRGO: Below are responses to the topic "How to Be a Virgo." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.

1. "Love your mistakes and foibles," Virgo astrologer William Sebrans advises his fellow Virgos. "They aren't going away. And it's your calling in life—some would say a superpower—to home in on them and finesse them.

"Why? Because you may be able to fix them or improve them with panache—for your benefit and the welfare of those you love."

2. Take care of yourself as well as you care for others. —Geoffrey Huckabay

3. You can't and won't tolerate unprofessional behavior or a lack of manners and etiquette. Why should you? In the whole world, there are enough skillful people with integrity for you to exclusively stick with them.

4. Write as many lists as you damn well feel like writing. List-making is the Truth and the Way for Virgos. —Cara Inmungilun

5. Of all the signs in the zodiac, you know best that the most useful truths can't be entirely told with abstractions. Key ingredients are concrete facts and specific details.

6. Hooray! A fresh, new project! Analyze the daylights out of its potential, craft an exquisite plan to accomplish it, and then spend more time and work than strictly necessary to bring it to fruition. —Amari Wenendero

7. When your humor and patient focus are amply engaged, you have extraordinary power to create elegant and interesting versions of harmony. —Janicia Waymer Hasko

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LIBRA: Below are responses to the topic "How to Be a Libra."

1. You are a translator. Among your life purposes are:

• to serve as an intermediary between disparate elements;

• to lubricate and facilitate conversations between people who might not otherwise understand each other;

• to find common ground between apparent contradictions;

• to weave paradoxes into amalgamations;

• to never give up on finding the most elegant way to understand a problem.

2. Find beauty in literally everyone and everything. Seriously. There is no good reason you can't or shouldn't do this.

3. Know what it takes to please everyone, even if you don't always choose to please everyone. Know how to be what everyone wants you to be when they need you to be it, even if you fulfill that wish only now and then.

4. Learn to argue with skill and élan. To nurture your vitality, engage in regular debate that amuses and educates you.

5. More than any other sign, you can tolerate and even thrive amidst ambiguities and grey areas.

6. Creating aesthetically pleasing environments is crucial to being a Libra.

7. Do not give others all that you have and, in the process, forget to keep something for yourself.

8. Be reverent and respectful about the language you write and speak and think. Understand that the way you use words will make or break your power to fulfill your goals.

9. So much about being a Libra is the search for interesting stimulation. You are driven to find people, places, ideas, and things that invigorate you with ever-fresh thoughts and feelings.

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SCORPIO: Below are responses to the topic "How to Be a Scorpio."

1. There are blessings in every abyss. You, of all the signs in the zodiac, have the greatest capacity to find those blessings and make them yours.

Likewise, there is an abyss in each blessing. You, of all the signs, have the most power to make sure your experiences in the abyss don't detract from but enhance the blessing.

Take maximum advantage of these superpowers! Be an expert in zeroing in on the opportunities seeded in the dilemmas. Show everyone how to home in on and enjoy the delights in the darkness. Be an inspirational role model as you extract redemption from the messes.

3. Use tasteful disguises. Establish secret identities in several different venues. Own a deluxe squirt gun and a knife made of foam rubber.

Do something ingeniously Machiavellian to a person in authority.

Be merciful to the young souls you know who are living their first lifetime.

Study the Death card in the Mother Peace tarot deck and use it to predict your upcoming renaissance and revitalization.

Make friends with a snake and coax it to go for a walk with you, or buy a rubber snake and pretend it's real as the two of you take a stroll.

Use your ex's picture on a dartboard so you won’t act out more literal revenge fantasies.

4. You know more about how karma works than all the other signs. Scorpio-style intelligence typically has a fine intuitive grasp of how today's realities evolved out of the deep patterns and rhythms of the past.

But that doesn't mean you perfectly understand how karma works. And I urge you to be eager to learn more. Become even savvier about how the law of cause and effect impacts the destinies of you and your allies.

Meditate on how the situations you are in now were influenced by actions you took once upon a time. Ruminate on what you could do in the near future to foster good karma and diminish weird karma.

5. Who can simultaneously love and hate, support and undermine, celebrate and demean with more panache than you? No one!

6. Be like the guardian of a cave of wonders that goes so deep that even you can't find its end.

7. Now and then, you slip into phases when you're poised on the brink of either self-damage or self-discovery. You wobble and lurch on the borderline where self-undoing vies with self-creation.

Whenever this situation arises, here are key questions to ask yourself: Is there a strategy you can implement to ensure that you glide into self-discovery and self-creation? Is there a homing thought that will lure you away from the perverse temptations of self-damage and self-undoing?

The answers to these queries are always yes—if you regard love as your top priority and if you serve the cause of love over every other consideration.

8. Remember that not everyone can handle your honesty, sometimes not even you.

9. Cherish wisdom more than knowledge. Serve soul more than ego.

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SAGITTARIUS: Below are responses to the topic "How to Be a Sagittarius." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.

1. Love vastly, powerfully, and with great depth. Get to the point. Keep it moving. Exult in having the big picture in mind. —Darrell Sanchez

2. Trust your gut instincts. While the world is telling you to take the safe, well-planned route, your inner itinerary provides alternative counsel. Listen to it. —Janell TheSelkie Oelrich Schreiber

3. At random occasions, erupt with sudden epiphanies about the mystery and meaning of whatever-the-hell-this-crazy-game-is-we're-all-playing. Scream it out to everyone. Run away laughing with senseless joy. —Mandy Macklin

4. Be fiercely allergic to fraud and injustice. With relish, rip the mask off the pathetic imposters. With glee, undo the corrupt work of the entitled greedheads. —Anna E. Woolverton

5. Never fake your way through anything. If you are scared, say so. If you don't know how to do something, ask for help. If you feel insecure, tell other people and request feedback. —Kathleen Youmans

6. Of all the signs in the zodiac, you Sagittarians know best how to have fun even when life sucks. Your daily rhythm may have unraveled into a tangle of boring or annoying tasks, and yet you can still summon a knack for enjoying yourself.

And how are your instincts for drumming up amusement when life doesn't suck? Are you as talented at whipping up joy and inspiration when the daily rhythm is smooth and groovy?

When you're at your best, the good times spur you to new heights of creating even more good times.

7. If thou hast pain, transmute it into pleasure. If thou hast guilt, wallow in it until it brings ecstasy. If thou hast hatred, burn in it until thou art ablaze with the infernal truths that will set thy soul free. —Babalon Frieze

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CAPRICORN: Below are responses to the topic "How to Be a Capricorn." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.

1. How to Be a Capricorn: Achieve everything you want while being true to your rigorous principles and expressing high levels of integrity.

2. I hereby authorize you to worry, worry, and worry some more. Stew and simmer as you weigh all the options and mull the correct actions.

But when the time is right, end your fretting with crisp decisiveness. Shake off any residual doubt that still clings to you. And then undertake robust action to transform the situation that provoked your righteous brooding.

3. I feel you Capricorns are wise to commune with rocks, dirt, mud, sand, and clay. I think you should regularly touch the actual earth with your hands and bare feet.

If I'm out hiking with a Capricorn friend, I might urge them to sniff blooming mushrooms and lean down to kiss the exposed roots of trees. Direct encounters with natural wonders are magic potions and miracle medicine for you.

Moreover, you flourish when you nurture close personal relationships with anything that might be described as foundational. Your words of power are kernel, core, gist, marrow, and keystone.

4. All our Capricornian climbing can feel exhausting until we realize we're getting younger and less burdened as we go. —Asha Sanaker

5. Becoming our own fathers can feel arduous for us Capricorns until we're old and sage enough to be good at it. —Asha Sanaker

6. You are not "royalty" in the abusive, oppressive way. People look to you to guide them because you have patience, care, and strength. You serve as anchor and support. You take on lots of responsibility because you can, you're asked to, and you like to.

7. Develop disciplined, well-planned strategies to achieve more freedom. —Alicia Dominic Keenon

8. Embrace your fully realized empowerment without having to negate the power of others. —Lisa Fairman

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AQUARIUS: Below are responses to the topic "How to Be an Aquarius." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.

1. Aquarian actor Tallulah Bankhead testified, "Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it."

2. Dream up creative solutions to problems that haven't materialized yet. Then apply your discoveries as you address problems that already exist.

In other words, Aquarius, your uncanny facility for glimpsing the future can be useful as you enhance your life in the present. Your almost psychic capacity to foretell coming trends can be instrumental as you fix glitches in the here and now.

3. Be a humble know-it-all who is smart enough to realize none of us can ever do more than scratch the surface of the Great Mystery. —Laura Monnig

4. Let your swirling, whirling intuition alight on the stony, muddy earth for longer and longer intervals. Allow your third eye to wear sunglasses every now and then. —Sara Elize

5. Keep getting rid of things that are not yours. —Amber Xanthos

6. Aquarius haters describe this as being an Aquarius monologue: "Help! I think I'm having a feeling. There are five, right? Which one is it? I can’t remember. Who cares!" —Kathleen Hansen

7. But Aquarius lover Chandira Hensey offers a counterargument to Aquarius haters: "We may be called aloof and dispassionate, but the truth is we feel everything and need to work diligently to screen out the constant chatter we absorb. We benefit by escaping to wild places where the airwaves are quieter and where we can think our own thoughts and feel our own feelings."

8. There is a subset of the Aquarius (Aquari-us) tribe that calls itself Aquarithem (Aquari-them). They think in seven dimensions instead of six. They celebrate the end of the world twice a year, not just once, as the Aquarius tribe does. Instead of claiming an unlimited Artistic License and Poet License, Aquarithems insist on wielding Artiztik Lizenses and Poetik Lizenses.

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PISCES: Below are responses to the topic "How to Be a Pisces." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.

1. You're one big harmonious contradiction! You travel through and live in heaven and hell, plus all the sprawling real estate in between.

Other signs might be simply torn between the wild and tame, between the yes and no, between the black and white.

You are spread-eagled across the entire spectrum, forever tugged and heaved in the labyrinthine crosscurrent interwoven wrangle of motley versus patchwork, mosaic versus dappled, paisley versus plaid.

2. Surround yourself with people who don't condemn you for being spaced out or dreamy, but rather know how to have fun with you in the spacey dreaminess. —Elizabeth Kirkpatrick

3. Sometimes, you may feel you're under the influence of a debilitating spell or hindered by a murky curse. Pisceans are prone to such worries.

But here's a secret. More than any other zodiac sign, you have the power to escape from spells. Even if you have never studied the occult or read a witch's grimoire, you possess a natural facility for the natural magic that disperses curses. From the depths of your psyche, you can summon the spiritual force necessary to cleanse the gunk and free yourself.

Do you believe me? Now would be a perfect time to prove to yourself that what I've said here is true.

4. Cry. Write poetry. Cry about your poetry. Sing. Cry about your singing. Cry about your crying. —Cheryl Means

5. See way too much. Know way too much. Yearn for way too much. Give way too much. Take way too much. —Mebbie Jackson

6. My Piscean friend Luna wrote me an email that sums up how I sometimes feel about you. I'll repeat it here in hopes it will inspire you to be perfectly yourself.

Luna said, "Every time I meet someone who was born within like two weeks of my birthday, I end up with the impression that they are the loopiest and wisest person I've met in a long time. They are totally ridiculous and worthy of profound respect. They are unhinged and brilliantly focused. They are fuzzy-headed dreamers who couldn't possibly ever get anything practical accomplished, and they are lyrical thinkers who charm me with their attunement to the world's beauty and impress me with their understanding of how the world works. Hahahahaha. Luckily for me, I know the fool is sacred."

7. Is it better to seek spiritual enlightenment than to wander around lost in your fantasy world? Maybe. Maybe not. Who's to say your fantasy world isn't where you can find spiritual enlightenment?

8. Float in the salt watery sea foam, always gravitating toward the waves of melancholy ecstasy. —Renee Schildkraut

ASTROLOGY IS A MYTHOPOETIC LANGUAGE

PART 1

Should I engage in conversations with people who long ago decided that astrology is nonsense? It’s not a good use of my time. Their minds are as irrevocably and self-satisfyingly closed as an evangelical Christian Republican who already knows forever there's no such thing as human-caused climate change.

But if an open-minded person agrees to consider my rational discourse, I begin with the thoughts below.

The majority of those who deride astrology with kneejerk derision don't know that four of history's greatest astronomers were practicing astrologers: Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Tycho Brahe, and Pierre Gassendi.

Most of the deriders haven't read smart astrological philosophers like Dane Rudhyar, Alice O. Howell, Clare Martin, Steven Arroyo, Richard Tarnas, Antero Alli, Keiron Le Grice, and Liz Greene. They aren't aware that pioneering psychologist Carl Jung cast horoscopes for all his patients and believed that "astrology represents the summation of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity."

The deriders don't know about astronomer Martha Maiden. She was a program executive at NASA for years and achieved such prominence that she now has an award named after her (https://tinyurl.com/MarthaMaiden). Martha is also an excellent astrologer. I know because she and I were friends who attended Duke University at the same time. We lived next door to each other in Durham and carried on an astrology study group with two other friends.

The closest approach that fraudulent "skeptics" often make to studying the ancient art of astrology is to glance at a tabloid or internet horoscope column. To match their carelessness, I might make a drive-by of a strip mall and declare that the profession of architecture is shallow and debased.

That's one reason why the ill-informed "skeptics" spread ignorant lies about the subject. For example, every few years, there's an uproar in the press when an astronomer falsely declares that there is a 13th astrological sign, not just 12, and that therefore all our personal horoscopes are different from what we think they are.

Those astronomers haven't bothered to do the most basic research about how astrology works. Their "rationality" is profoundly irrational. I've compiled more information about this subject here: https://tinyurl.com/IgnoreTheHoax.

Here's another gross misunderstanding by “skeptics” who have eschewed basic research. They say that all astrologers think the stars and planets emit invisible beams of energy that shape people's lives. The truth is, some Western astrologers believe that, but many don’t.

Science popularizer Carl Sagan provided an egregious example of this ignorance. In his TV series Cosmos, he portentously dismissed the straw-man notion that planets might impact a newborn baby.

He said, “How could the rising of Mars at the moment of my birth affect me, then or now? I was born in a closed room. Light from Mars couldn’t get in. The only influence of Mars which could affect me was its gravity. The gravitational pull of the obstetrician was much larger than the gravitational influence of Mars. Mars is a lot more massive, but the obstetrician was much closer.”

I’m still aghast that a scientist of Sagan’s caliber could have been so poorly informed.

Every single one of the many astrologers I respect agrees with what expert astrologer Richard Tarnas says in his book Cosmos and Psyche: The planets don't emit invisible forces that shape our destinies as if we were puppets. Rather, they are symbols of the unfolding evolutionary pattern. Just as clocks tell time but don't create it, the heavenly bodies show us the big picture but don't cause it.

I don’t want to provide space for every spurious argument made by unscientific scientists. But here’s one more howler. Several self-described rational skeptics have assured me that astrology is nonsense because it believes "our behavior depends on the positions of the stars."

I laugh out loud when I hear such comically ignorant drivel. The fact is that Western astrology has nothing to do with any stars except our own: the sun. It's all about planets.

The "rational skeptics" make another fundamental error. The truth is that smart astrologers are not determinists, not dogmatists, not superstitious manipulators. They don't believe that our behavior is dependent on or controlled by heavenly bodies.





PART 2

Many scientists deride astrology as being a "pseudoscience." In making such a fallacious claim, they reveal they have shunned the most basic principle of science, which is to actually investigate the subject they aspire to understand.

If these incompetents took the trouble to do research, they would have discovered that Western astrology's best practitioners don't claim that astrology is a science—which means that it can't be a pseudoscience!

The lyrical and practical truth is that astrology is a blend of psychology, storytelling, and mythology. As Carl Jung said, it's an aid in understanding and articulating how the psyche works. Like any language, it's both logical and messy; it's useful in making sense of the world, yet full of crazy-making ambiguities.

Astrology is a symbol system that, when used with integrity, engenders soulful approaches for deepening our connection to life's great mysteries—not predictions of literal events. It liberates and fertilizes our imaginations and encourages us to think less literally. It teaches us to visualize our destinies as mythic quests and deepens our connection to life's gorgeous mysteries.

Psychologist James Hillman spoke of the joyous work of learning our soul's code—the blueprint of our destiny. That's what astrology does best. To imagine that this can be done in a scientific way is irrelevant and delusional.

ASTROLOGY IS NOT A SCIENCE! Nor is storytelling, depth psychology, mythology, dream interpretation, or poetry.

It makes as much sense to criticize astrology for not being scientific as it does to deride Joseph Campbell treatises on the world's mythic traditions or Ursula K. Le Guin's science fiction novels because they don't explicate and illustrate the quantum field theory of physics.

The scientific method is a wonderful method for achieving some understanding of the world. But we can't use it to analyze the Indigenous Bororo people's myth, "The Bird-Nester's Aria." It's not a reliable strategy for uncovering deep truths about how a Beethoven symphony might alter the way we think about a problem we're having at work.

We profoundly need the scientific method and logical deduction and objective perceptions. They are crucial to being human. But we also need mythopoetic storytelling and art that moves us emotionally in mysterious ways and playful fun that frees us from our fixations.

Does it make sense to say that analyzing and working on dreams is "pseudoscience"? Of course not. You can't design a repeatable experiment to test your hypothesis about those slippery marvels. And yet, working with one's dreams, analyzing them to find subconscious patterns that affect our behavior, can be intensely practical.

Astrology is not designed to compete with scientists' logical analyses of why things are the way they are. Rather, it's meant to open our minds to the mythic elements that underlie the surface-level interpretations of what we're all about.

I can't imagine any intelligent person who would believe that the scientific way of knowing is better and more important than the mythopoetic—or vice versa.

CULTIVATING HOLY DESIRES

Some traditions preach the value of banishing or renouncing or eluding your desires. I don't subscribe to that view.

I prefer to encourage us to cultivate excellent, holy desires. Here are a few I recommend:

• a desire for beguiling riddles and enchanting challenges that excite both our minds and our hearts;

• a desire for allies who enjoy our distinctive idiosyncrasies and eccentricities;

• a desire to attract ongoing encounters with evocative, nonstandard beauty so as to always ensure a part of us remains untamed;

• a desire to help create a world in which everyone gets the food, housing, and health care they need;

• a desire for energizing surprises and unpredictable fun;

• a desire to engage in group collaborations that enhance the intelligence of everyone in the group;

• a desire to keep outgrowing what worked for us in the past and a desire to ceaselessly explore renewed approaches to being ourselves;

• a desire to be playful and imaginative with our libidinous energy;

• a desire to foster and protect the health and beauty of the natural world;

• a desire for revelations and experiences that steer us away from thinking and acting like the machines we interact with so much;

• a desire to keep recreating and reinvigorating our relationships with those we love;

• a desire to steadily refine and expand our ability to learn from non-human intelligences;

• A desire to regularly refresh our quest for freedom and deepen our capacity to be free

• a desire to move our bodies in ways that delight our souls;

• a desire to extinguish bigotry, misogyny, plutocracy, racism, and militarism.

ASTROLOGY FOR THE SOUL

As I compose horoscopes, I like to imagine how I might inspire you, my Beloved Champions, to know and fulfill your soul’s code. I would love you to get a steady gaze at your life's blueprint.

My aspiration is to see you ripen into the most interesting and colorful version of your deep self.

Maybe it will take a year. Maybe it will require five years, even longer. But in a sense, it’s irrelevant how long it will take. That’s not your concern, or at least it’s not under your control. What you can manage, and what is your concern, is to develop a vigorous, rigorous drive to live the life that best expresses your soul’s code.

How do you do that? The most important thing is to know the destiny that your soul yearns to live.

Please note that the destiny your soul yearns to live may be at least somewhat different from the destiny your ego wants to live. It probably is at least somewhat different.

For example, in the case of my story, my ego longed to be a famous rock star, whereas my soul mostly just wanted to create and play and perform music. And I got what my soul wanted, but only got a part of what my ego wanted.

To be candid, I have come to believe that if my ego had gotten what it wanted—if I had become a famous rock star—it would have been harder for my soul to get what it wanted, which was simply to exult in making music.

When we talk about ambition and the drive for success and the pursuit of excellence, it is crucial to discriminate between the soul’s ambitions and the ego’s ambitions, between the soul’s drive for success and the ego’s drive, between the soul’s pursuit of excellence and the ego’s pursuit.

How does all that play out in you? Maybe your ego wants to own 10 million dollars and have a stunningly attentive lover and win awards for the work you do.

Your soul, on the other hand, may be less interested in that stuff. Your soul might want to create elegant environments, or heal the wounds you suffered in childhood, or get into a dynamic relationship that teaches you how to love. Your soul might want to conquer your fears or travel widely or develop a close connection with nature.

So here’s the thing: If you want to develop an indomitable drive to create the destiny you want, make sure it’s the destiny your soul yearns for. As long as you are obsessed with your ego’s goals, you may never be able to access the core fuel of your ambition.

There may, of course, be an overlap between the destiny your ego wants and the destiny your soul wants. If your soul wants to heal the wounds you suffered in childhood, such a longing could be compatible with your ego’s desire to be rich and famous. Maybe you could write a bestselling book about how you healed the wounds you suffered in childhood.

But the soul’s vision must be primary: your highest priority.

To derive the best inspiration from my horoscopes, I encourage you to emphasize your soul’s ambition. Do everything you can to supercharge your soul’s desire to succeed and strengthen your soul’s drive for excellence.



Here's a problem: Many ultra-rationalists and fundamentalist materialists imagine "soul" to be imaginary and delusional.

Even to believers, it may be hard to define. Some regard it as a ghostly blob of magic stuff within us that keeps us connected to the world of dreams and the divine realms.

So what is the soul?

Is it an amorphous metaphor for the secret source of our spiritual power? Is it a myth that people entertain because they desperately want to believe there is more to them than just their physical bodies?

Here's what I suspect: The soul is a perspective that pushes us to go deeper and see further and live wilder. It's what stokes our imagination to flesh out our raw experience, transforming that chaotic stuff into rich storylines that animate our love of life.

With the gently propulsive force of the soul, we probe beyond the surface level of things, working to find the hidden meaning and truer feeling.

Just as astrology is real and true, but not real and true like the Golden Gate Bridge or the binomial theorem, so is the soul.



"If you need to visualize the soul," wrote novelist Tom Robbins, "think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information.

"It's a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved."



As part of our ongoing crusade to wrestle the English language into a more formidable servant of the ecstatic impulse, I'm pleased to present alternate designations for "soul."

See if any of the following concoctions feel right coming out of your mouth:

• undulating superconductor;

• nectar plasma;

• golden lather;

• smoldering crucible;

• luminous caduceus.

PS: Here's Robbins's conclusion: "By waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe."



owned and operated by lazy thinkers and superstitious supernaturalists.

As evidence this isn't the case, below I offer references to "soul" by great thinkers and feelers and writers. I will start with Walt Whitman:

I am the poet of the body,
And I am the poet of the soul.
The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself—the latter I translate into a new tongue.

★

How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our bodies; how slow to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our souls!
—naturalist Henry David Thoreau

★

I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!
—Emily Bronte

★

The soul should always be ready for the possibility that the divine may come to call at any moment, wrote poet Emily Dickinson. It's not a good idea to risk ignoring sacred intervention.

★

This earth is honey for all beings, and all beings are honey for this earth. The intelligent, immortal being, the soul of the earth, and the intelligent, immortal being, the soul in the individual being—each is honey to the other.
—Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

★

Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.
—dancer Martha Graham

★

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
—author Oscar Wilde

★

"There is a saying that when the student is ready, the teacher appears," writes Clarissa Pinkola Estés. But the magic of that formula may not unfold with smooth simplicity, she says: "The teacher comes when the soul, not the ego, is ready. The teacher comes when the soul calls, and thank goodness—for the ego is never fully ready."

★

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
—artist Pablo Picasso.

★

The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through.
—poet Edna St. Vincent Millay

★

"The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness," wrote painter Joan Miró in describing his artistic process.

★

The soul is a fire that darts its rays through all the senses; it is in this fire that existence consists; all the observations and all the efforts of philosophers ought to turn towards this ME, the center and moving power of our sentiments and our ideas.
—author Madame de Staël

★

Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.
—environmentalist Edward Abbey.

★

I feel the flame of eternity in my soul.
—Helen Keller

★

Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
—William Blake

★

The words "passive" and "passion" come from the same Latin root, pati, which means "to endure." Waiting is thus both passive and passionate. It's a vibrant, contemplative work. It involves listening to disinherited voices within, facing the wounded holes in the soul, the denied and undiscovered, the places one lives falsely.
— author Sue Monk Kidd

★

The soul moves in circles.
—philosopher Plotinus.

★

Sensual pleasure passes and vanishes, but the friendship between us, the mutual confidence, the delight of the heart, the enchantment of the soul, these things do not perish and can never be destroyed.
—philosopher Voltaire in a letter to his partner Marie Louise Denis

★

The soul on earth is an immortal guest.
—author Hannah More

★

You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.
—author Albert Camus

★

I note the echo that each thing produces as it strikes my soul.
—novelist Stendhal

★

When I consort with crowds, when I dwell amidst normal people, I am influenced by them. I adopt their habits; I neglect to use my mind in my unique ways. They seem to want to separate me from who I really am, steal my soul. Then I get mad and fearful, and have to withdraw to solitude to become good again.
—paraphrase of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche

★

Rhythm is our universal mother tongue. It's the language of the soul.
—dancer Gabrielle Roth

★

Were it not for the leaping and twinkling of the soul, human beings would rot away in their greatest passion, idleness.
—psychologist Carl Jung

★

Soul is the place,
stretched like a surface of millstone grit between
body and mind,
where such necessity grinds itself out
—author Anne Carson

YOU ARE A PROPHET

One of my beloved tasks as an astrologer of the soul is to help readers learn to distinguish between the wasteful, demoralizing use of the imagination and the uplifting, regenerative use of the imagination.

A good way for me to earn the right to discourse on this subject is to keep learning more about how to distinguish between my own wasteful, demoralizing use of the imagination and my uplifting, regenerative use of the imagination. I was not adept at this early in my adult life. My skill has improved, but is still far less than expert.

Here’s the foundation of my meditations: Our imagination is the most important asset we possess. It’s our power to create mental pictures of things that don’t exist yet and that we want to bring into being. It’s like the magic wand we use to shape our future.

We are all prophets. Our imaginations tirelessly churn out images of what we will be doing later. The featured prophecy of the moment may be as simple as a psychic impression of ourselves eating a fudge brownie at lunch or as monumental as a daydream of building our dream home.

Our imagination is a treasure when it generates scenarios aligned with our deep desires. In fact, it’s an indispensable tool in creating the life we want. We call on it to formulate images of the conditions we’d like to inhabit and the objects we hope to wield.

But for most of us, the imagination is as much a curse as a blessing. We may use it conjure up fearful or distasteful premonitions that are at odds with our conscious values.

That’s in part the result of having absorbed toxic programming from the media and influential people.

Chaotic, disturbing, and even sickening fantasies regularly pop up into our awareness, many disguising themselves as rational thoughts and genuine intuitions. Those disheartening fantasies may hijack our psychic energy, directing it to exhaust itself in dead-end ruminations.

Every time we entertain at length a vision of being rejected or hurt or frustrated, every time we dwell on a memory of a painful experience, we blast ourselves with a hex.

Meanwhile, ill-suited longings are also lurking in our unconscious mind, impelling us to want things that aren’t healthy for us and that we don’t need.

Whenever we surrender to the allure of false and trivial and counterproductive desires, our imaginations are practicing putrid magic.

This is the unsavory aspect of the imagination that Buddhists dub the “monkey mind.” It’s the part of our mental apparatus that endlessly exudes pictures in the manner of an agitated critter. The teacher Jeff Brown adds a crucial nuance. He says our “monkey hearts” are forever churning up forlorn, fractious, frightful feelings that are at the roots of the monkey mind’s disquiet.

Is there an antidote? Maybe. If we stop locating our sense of self in the relentless surge of the monkey mind’s and monkey heart’s slapdash chatter, we may become gracefully attuned to the life that’s right in front of us.



Whether our imagination is in service to our righteous desires or in thrall to our compulsive commotion, there is one constant: Its prophecies play a prominent role in shaping what happens to us. Many of our visions of the future do come to pass. The situations we expect to occur and the experiences we rehearse and dwell on are often reflected back to us as actual events that confirm our expectations.

The well-documented placebo effect in drug research, for which there is plentiful evidence, has broader implications. So much (not all!) of what unfolds in our lives, for good and for ill, is shaped by what we believe will happen.

Does that mean our mental and emotional projections help create the future? Let’s consider that possibility. What if it’s at least partially true that what we presume will happen does tend to materialize?

Here’s the logical conclusion: It’s downright self-destructive to keep infecting our imaginations with pictures of loss and failure, doom and gloom, fear and loathing. The far more sensible and practical approach is to expect blessings.

That’s one reason why I’m reverent in composing my Divinations for you, my readers. If I’m to be one of the influences you invite into the intimate sanctuary where you hatch your self-fulfilling prophecies, I want to conspire with you to disperse fear and invoke relaxation and joy.

WHERE DOES HELP COME FROM?

I get many requests from people who are slogging through challenging dilemmas and would like my personal advice.

I wish I could help! The inquiries are often well thought-out and infused with emotional intelligence. I feel poignant pangs of empathy.

Unfortunately, I can’t respond. My various projects are delightfully consuming; I can’t add further tasks, no matter how interesting they might be. But I’ve developed a response to people who seek my direct input. I offer it below.



Dear Beloved Champion:

I’m honored that you regard me as a potential helper who might provide answers or solace. But it wouldn’t be responsible for me to offer advice without knowing more about the complexities of your problems. And I can’t give the time necessary to explore those complexities.

As you seek to clarify your situation, I suggest you go on a retreat. During this time of withdrawal from the world’s madness, you would try to avoid all media and to be as silent and relaxed as possible.

You don’t necessarily have to travel to a distant sanctuary. You can do it in your own home. And there’s no need to strive to do the retreat perfectly. Do the best you can.

During the first part of your retreat, spend a few hours visualizing in your mind’s eye the entire story of your life, from your earliest memory to the present moment.

During the second phase of your retreat, establish contact with the highest source of wisdom and love within you. You can call this source God or Goddess or your Guardian Angel or Higher Self. Spend luxurious time in dialogue with this source, making sure to ruminate on these questions:

1. “What is it I want more than anything else?”

2. “What is true about me? Who am I, really?

3. “What is the best way to serve the mission I came to Earth to carry out? What are the best gifts I have to offer people and animals?”

4. “What path will allow me to ultimately learn the most about wise love?”

5. “How do I need to change so as to get what I want, carry out my life’s mission, and learn about wise love? What influences and attitudes do I need to eliminate?”

During the third phase of the process, write a mission statement: what you want to accomplish by the time you die many years hence. Then create an overall plan of the actions you will take to fulfill that mission statement. Include three actions you will take in the next month to get more serious about accomplishing your mission.

During the fourth phase, visualize the following scenarios in lush detail:

• That God/Goddess/Something Very Big and Mysterious and Intelligent loves you

• That the entire universe is conspiring to give you the lessons and blessings and kicks in the ass and liberations you need exactly when you need them

• That you are primed and eager to welcome love and guidance

PS: I’m a big believer in trusting your intuition. Even if it doesn’t lead you to what your ego thinks is a successful outcome, your intuition will inevitably guide you to the experiences your soul needs.

FEAR VERSUS INTUITION
I love to help readers learn to distinguish between their fearful fantasies and authentic, accurate intuitions.

A reliable way for me to earn the right to discourse on this subject is to keep learning more about how to distinguish between my fearful fantasies and my authentic, accurate intuitions. I doubt I will ever gain full proficiency at this skill. But I’m making progress. I’m better at it than I used to be.

In the history of civilization, has there ever been a time when this skill was less than critical? I don’t think so. But it’s even more essential nowadays. Humans are in the midst of a thrilling and unnerving pivot point. Decrepit habits of thought are unraveling. Structures that have kept us enthralled to fake values are crumbling. The coming decades will be ripe with opportunities to forge a world that empowers the soul to flourish.

As the monumental mutations proliferate, many so-called leaders cram our imaginations with scary visions and angry emotions. They sell us the delusion that their visions of gloom and doom are rooted in logical analysis.

In the face of their toxic propaganda, it’s wise to remember that we have the power to shun their fearmongering. As a partial antidote, we can tune in to the guidance of the demure but potent voice within us—the muse-like intuition that will, if we allow, lead us capably through the zigzags of our destiny, even when we experience the personal ramifications of civilization’s colossal transformations.

★

Knowing the difference between our fearful fantasies and our authentic, accurate intuitions is a spiritual superpower.

Let’s explore what it means to grasp the distinctions between the frightening, alienating pictures that pop into our imaginations and the warm, clear directions available from the deepest source within us.

Many people confuse these two. I’ve done it myself on countless occasions. When an alarming future possibility wells up in our imagination, we worry it’s a sign that our intuition is foreshadowing a real event that will literally assail us.

For instance, we may fantasize about getting in a car accident or falling down a flight of stairs. Maybe we dream of a loved one becoming sick or a beloved pet getting lost.

On a few occasions, demoralizing fantasies like these are authentic warnings from our deeper knowing. Maybe we should indeed drive more carefully or urge our loved one to get a medical check-up. But mostly, these dire scenes invading our mind are not accurate premonitions. True intuition is rarely fueled by fear. It’s not prone to motivate us with dread.

Our true intuition emerges from the part of us that knows love is the ultimate law. It blooms in the spirit of affinity and intimacy. Like a slow-motion fountain of lucid compassion, it reveals the objective truth about the riddles before us. It shows us the big picture.

Forbidding fantasies, on the other hand, burn and itch and demoralize us. They drain our energy and cloud our judgment. They fill us with obsessive urges to run and hide or act desperate and melodramatic.

★

I don’t believe our true intuition is always calm and emotionally neutral. It isn’t, necessarily. But I will say this: The feelings that accompany true intuition aren’t alienating. They don’t arouse hate or revenge, and they don’t encourage us to act superior to others. When true intuition flows, we are usually empowered, not rendered hopeless or helpless.

True intuition may provoke our anger. But if so, it’s an invigorating rage that leads to clarity and constructive action.

True intuition may show us difficult truths, but it offers directions about how to deal courageously with those truths. True intuition may suggest changes and adjustments, but it does so in ways that groom our poise and grace.

I will emphasize this point: True intuition may not reveal that everything will turn out fine or that we can keep living exactly as we have been. True intuition isn’t falsely optimistic. But if it does alert us to how we need to transform, it does so with love and aplomb, not with loathing and panic.

Here’s another key theme. Just as our true intuition never works by spooking us, neither does it flatter us with grandiose suggestions about how faultless and superb we are.

It may even inform us to correct our attitude or abandon a delusion or fix a wrong conclusion. It may tactfully but firmly show us that we have been suffering from some ignorance and need to wise up.
True intuition reveals the story of our lives from our soul’s point of view, not our ego’s. It’s the voice of our inner teacher.

The certainty that true intuition provides is never strident or overconfident, but reliably humble and impeccable.

★

Now is a perfect moment to ruminate on these ideas and add insights of your own. I invite you to have fun flushing away any disquiets and perturbations and trepidations that may have distorted your relationship with your true intuition.

I’m giving myself the same invitation, too. I always need to do more work!

PS: One way to facilitate the process is to cut back on the amount of horrifying and disorienting images we allow to flow into our imagination from the TV, internet, newspapers, movies, and other mass media. 

RELATIONSHIP WITH INTUITION

“Intuition” refers to the capacity to get insight without calling on logic and rational thinking. It seems to enable us to skip steps as we quickly and directly home in on a clear insight. We may have the sensation that the crisp, lucid realization has been fully formed for some time, and has been waiting for us to pounce on it.

Surprisingly, many scientists don’t regard intuition as being the province of pseudoscience. Researchers have studied it in lab experiments.

But as I meditate on intuition here, I speak as a poet and creative artist, not a scientist.

In seeking intuitive help, one reliable spur comes from formulating specific, timely questions, like:

“What is it I most need to learn right now?”

“Who is it I most need to learn from?”

“What practical measure can I initiate to live my life with more vigor and rigor?”

“How could I attract new experiences that will enhance my intelligence and decision-making?”

★

Intuition often reveals the action we need to take next. It doesn’t necessarily show us the entire plan of the big picture and all the particular steps required to assemble the big picture.

So we shouldn’t try to pressure intuition to give us a mountaintop perspective. Instead, we might ask, “What one or two things should I do in the immediate future?”

Four more things I’ll mention about intuition: One is to work with dreams. That takes study and expertise. Our nightly adventures speak a different language from that of our waking life.

But if we develop even a modicum of skills at translation, we can draw a steady stream of useful clues from our other brain in that other world.

Dreams have been crucial in helping me do shadow work— dealing with aspects of me that are unripe and dumb. And that has helped me transcend my imprints and conditioning, thereby fostering my true intuition.

Another good practice for intuition is to ask the question, “What does my death say?” On one’s deathbed, what does one want to look back at and say, “That was important. That was important. That was important. No, that wasn’t so important.” This exercise can be a tonic informant that helps intuition focus and work with maximum efficiency.

Another aid to intuition, at least for me, is walking and moving. Nature hikes and strolls around town often rouse realizations that turn out to be useful and enduring. I take a notebook or recorder with me to capture them.

Here’s one more aspect of my relationship with intuition. I’m most successful in accessing sudden outbreaks of fresh truth when I have gone as far as I can in doing research, thinking hard, employing logic, and being objective and reasonable. This usually involves invoking the help of the scientific method.

Then I hand over my ruminations and questions to intuition and say, “What more can you tell me, given that I’ve come this far with all my analysis? What treasure can you add?”