Astrology

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I invite you to explore the frontiers of what’s possible for you to experience and accomplish. One exercise that might help: Visualize specific future adventures that excite you. Examples? Picture yourself parasailing over the Mediterranean Sea near Barcelona, or working to help endangered sea turtles in Costa Rica, or giving a […]

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The Beat Generation of American poets arose in the late 1940s as a rebellion against materialistic mainstream culture and academic poetry. It embraced sexual liberation, Eastern spirituality, ecological awareness, political activism and psychedelic drugs.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): A mushroom shaped like a horse’s hoof grows on birch trees in parts of Europe and the U.S. If you strip off its outer layer, you get amadou, spongy stuff that’s great for igniting fires. It’s not used much anymore, but it was a crucial resource for some of our ancestors.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): During the coming weeks, everything that needs to happen will indeed happen only if you surprise yourself on a regular basis. So I hope you will place yourself in unpredictable situations where you won’t be able to rely on well-rehearsed responses. I trust that you will regard innocence and curiosity and […]

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Who was the model for Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic painting Mona Lisa? Many scholars think it was Italian noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo. Leonardo wanted her to feel comfortable during the long hours she sat for him, so he hired musicians to play for her and people with mellifluous voices to read […]

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Cartographers of Old Europe sometimes drew pictures of strange beasts in the uncharted regions of their maps. These were warnings to travelers that such areas might harbor unknown risks, like dangerous animals. One famous map of the Indian Ocean shows an image of a sea monster

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Can you sit on your own head? Not many people can. It requires great flexibility. Before comedian Robin Williams was famous, he spontaneously did just that when he auditioned for the role of the extraterrestrial immigrant Mork, the hero of the TV sitcom ‘Mork and Mindy.’ The casting director was impressed with Williams’ odd but amusing gesture, and hired him immediately.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): What themes and instruments do people least want to hear in a piece of music? Composer Dave Soldier determined that the worst song ever made would contain bagpipes, cowboy music, tubas, advertising jingles, operatic rapping, and children crooning about holidays. Then he collaborated with other musicians to record such a song. […]

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Robert Louis Stevenson published his gothic novel Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in 1886. It was a bestseller, and quickly got turned into a theatrical production. In the ensuing 132 years, there have been well over a hundred further adaptations of the story into film and stage productions. […]

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “Penetralia” is a word that means the innermost or most private parts, the most secret and mysterious places. It’s derived from the same Latin term that evolved into the word “penetrate.”