Free Will Astrology

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “When I grow up, I’m not sure what I want to be.” Have you ever heard that thought bouncing around your mind, Gemini? Or how about this one: “Since I can’t decide what I want to be, I’ll just be everything.” If you have been tempted to swear allegiance to either of those perspectives, I suggest it’s time to update your relationship with them. A certain amount of ambivalence about commitment and receptivity to myriad possibilities will always be appropriate for you. But if you hope to fully claim your birthright, if you long to ripen into your authentic self, you’ll have to become ever-more definitive and specific about what you want to be and do.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): I invite you to try the following meditation: Picture yourself filling garbage bags with stuff that reminds you of what you used to be and don’t want to be any more. Add anything that feels like decrepit emotional baggage or that serves as a worn-out psychological crutch. When you’ve gathered up all the props and accessories that demoralize you, imagine yourself going to a beach where you build a big bonfire and hurl your mess into the flames. As you dance around the conflagration, exorcise the voices in your head that tell you boring stories about yourself. Sing songs that have as much power to relieve and release you as a spectacular orgasm.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): When poet Wislawa Szymborska delivered her speech for winning the Nobel Prize, she said that, “Whatever else we might think of this world — it is astonishing.” She added that for a poet, there really is no such thing as the “ordinary world,” “ordinary life” and “the ordinary course of events.” In fact, “Nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone’s existence in this world.” I offer you her thoughts, Taurus, because I believe that in the next two weeks you will have an extraordinary potential to feel and act on these truths. You are hereby granted a license to be astonished on a regular basis.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Fantasize about sipping pear nectar and listening to cello music and inhaling the aroma of musky amber and caressing velvet, cashmere and silk. Imagine how it would feel to be healed by inspiring memories and sweet awakenings and shimmering delights and delicious epiphanies.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Be interested in first things, Aries. Cultivate your attraction to beginnings. Align yourself with uprisings and breakthroughs. Find out what’s about to hatch, and lend your support. Give your generous attention to potent innocence and novel sources of light. Marvel at people who are rediscovering the sparks that animated them when they first came into their power. Fantasize about being a curious seeker who is devoted to reinventing yourself over and over again. Gravitate toward influences that draw their vitality directly from primal wellsprings. Be excited about first things.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): The more unselfish and compassionate you are in the coming weeks, the more likely it is you will get exactly what you need. Here are four ways that can be true: 1. If you’re kind to people, they will want to be kind to you in return. 2. Taking good care of others will bolster their ability to take good care of you. 3. If you’re less obsessed with I-me-mine, you will magically dissolve psychic blocks that have prevented certain folks from giving you all they are inclined to give you. 4. Attending to others’ healing will teach you valuable lessons in how to heal yourself — and how to get the healing you yearn for from others.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Your immediate future is too good to be true. Or at least that’s what you, with your famous self-doubt, might be inclined to believe if I told you the truth about the favorable developments that are in the works. Therefore, I have come up with some fake anxieties to keep your […]

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “We cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever,” writes Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. “We must stand up and move on to the next action.” That’s your slightly scolding but ultimately inspirational advice, Pisces. According to my astrological analysis, you have done heroic work to identify and investigate your suffering. […]

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Who would have guessed that Aquarian Charles Darwin, the pioneering theorist of evolution, had a playful streak? Once he placed a male flower’s pollen under a glass along with an unfertilized female flower to see if anything interesting would happen. “That’s a fool’s experiment,” he confessed to a colleague. “But I […]

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The word “naysayer” describes a person who’s addicted to expressing negativity. A “yeasayer,’ on the other hand, is a person who is prone to expressing optimism. According to my assessment of the astrological omens, you can and should be a creative yeasayer in the coming days — both for the sake […]

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): As I was ruminating on your astrological omens for 2017, I came across a wildly relevant passage written by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman. It conveys a message I encourage you to memorize and repeat at least once a day for the next 365 days. Here it is: “Nothing can hold you back […]

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): A journalist dared composer John Cage to “summarize himself in a nutshell.” Cage said, “Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.” He might have added, “Avoid the nutshells that anyone tries to put you in.” This is always fun work to attend to, of course, but I especially […]