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Free will astrology

Week of April 23

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Astrology and Tarot cards are my favorite divinatory tools, but I also get a lot of use out of magnetic poetry kits. These are boxes full of evocative words and symbols in the form of refrigerator magnets. Sometimes after analyzing your astrological omens, I'll close my eyes, beam a question out into the ethers, and pluck a few magnets at random from one of my poetry kits. I just did that for you. "What are the keys to unlocking the enormous reserves of energy that are potentially available for Aries folks right now?" I asked. Here's the message that came: "swooping orgasms & laughing tears." (Or it could also be arranged this way: "laughing orgasms & swooping tears.")

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Rachael Yanetta, a young English woman, got a bellyache while working her regular job at the local pub. Despite the pain, she toughed it out until her shift was over, then went home. Her distress increased, though, and at 3 a.m. she checked into the hospital. A little over an hour later, to her shock, she gave birth to her first child, having been unaware she was pregnant until the very end of her nine-month term. I predict a comparable sequence for you in the coming days, Taurus. You'll power through some perplexing anomaly that leads to the unexpected arrival of a new creation or vital revelation.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): As I close my eyes and ask my deep self for a psychic vision that symbolizes your current astrological omens, here's what I see: You're trying to look relaxed even though you have one foot on a dock and one foot on a boat as the boat pulls away. How should we interpret this scene? Here's what I think: It seems likely that at any minute now you will have to commit yourself to either the dock, the boat, or the water.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): This would be an excellent time for you to lead a populist revolt to overthrow the abusive authorities or out-of-touch elites who have been working their dumb magic for far too long. It would also be a perfect moment for you to stop cooperating with energy-draining situations that undermine your autonomy. The Age of Passivity is ending, thank Goddess. Launching the Age of Awakening may not be easy or fast, but you will attract extra help and encouragement if you do it now.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): "I am not interested in money," said actress Marilyn Monroe. "I just want to be wonderful." Consider the possibility of trying out that approach for a while, Leo. I'm not, of course, encouraging you to be apathetic toward financial matters. But I do think it's an excellent time to for you to specialize in making yourself more wonderful. The cosmic signs say that you now have access to unprecedented reserves of the most profound kind of charm (not the cheap, fake, manipulative stuff). They also suggest that certain qualities in you that have previously been merely fine are primed to evolve into being amazingly marvelous.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): I once had a Virgo girlfriend who was exceedingly well-organized. The capstone of her heroic efforts to keep life rigorously ordered was her approach to her underwear. Each of her panties was embroidered with the name of a day of the week. In the large drawer where they were kept, all the Mondays were in a neat pile at the upper left-hand corner, followed by the rest of the days in their proper sequence. She was always able to grab the correct pair, even when she was half-asleep and the room was dark. If I were going to contact her now, I'd recommend that she should, for a change, arrange her intimate items out of order, and maybe wear Monday on Friday, or put Tuesday on inside-out on Saturday. According to my reading of the omens, this kind of playful self-trickery would set the right tone for you Virgos; it would encourage the universe to send you the benevolent interruptions and interesting interventions you need.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): "Being understood is not the most essential thing in life," said actress Jodie Foster. While that may be true for her, I bet you won't turn it down if a flood of appreciation and acknowledgement comes your way in the next few weeks. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you now have the potential to be better understood than maybe you've been in a long time. I suggest you take maximum advantage of this good fortune. Make it easy for people to see you for who you really are.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The famous physicist Robert Oppenheimer sometimes displayed a disarming humility. "There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics," he said once, "because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago." I invite you to consider the possibility that you, too, could learn a lot from people you regard as beneath you or utterly unlike you. It's one of those rare phases in your astrological cycle when useful revelations are likely to arrive from outside your normal frame of reference. (P.S. Animals might be great teachers as well.)

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): It's a Love Emergency! Am I right? There's a growing itch in the romantic sphere, and it needs immediate scratching. I mean it really can't wait for a few more days to pass; something's got to be done soon. It may be true that this thickening of the plot has been underway for quite a while, and its growing urgency may have snuck up on you. It also may be true that the shift will ultimately be a promising development. But that doesn't mean you can afford to be casual about it. Take action!

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): From an astrological point of view, the coming weeks will be an excellent time to start a band and record an album. Your creativity is waxing, your attunement with the right side of your brain is especially sweet, and you will benefit immensely from anything you do to become less of a spectator and more of a participant. To jumpstart the process, go to Wikipedia and click on "random article." That's the name of your band. Then go to en.wikiquote.org and click on "random page." The last few words of the last quote on that page will be your album's title. Finally, go to flckr.com, click on "the last 7 days," and choose a photo from the new page to be your CD cover. (My band is Widemouth Blindcat, our album is "More Time for Dreaming," and our cover art is a spiral staircase from here: tinyurl.com/c89rt7.)

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You've said enough for the time being. You have expressed the hell out of yourself and have been thorough in providing your vision of how the collaborative efforts should unfold. But now I think you should cultivate the power of silence. Keep your evolving thoughts to yourself for a while so that they can ripen in your imagination, and allow the ideas you have already put out there to fully work their way into the imaginations of others. In early May, it will be time to jump back in with a new dose of your insight and inspiration. By then, people should be begging you for more.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): As a leading practitioner of magical thinking, I regard it as my responsibility to serve as a kind of Quality Control Board. Excessive trust in invisible forces and odd coincidences, after all, can be as hazardous to your intelligence as blind faith in pure reason. This week, in fact, I'd rather see you operate like a scientist than a mystic. I hope you'll evaluate every situation by invoking the powers of unbiased perceptivity and lucid objectivity. So please don't heed anyone's mumbo-jumbo, especially if it's fear-based. Reject supernatural explanations if natural ones make equal sense. Be assured that when superstitious fantasies pop up, they'll have little to do with what's actually happening.

Homework: Go outside at night, make two fists, and punch the sky ten times while you announce, "Hey God, listen up! I'm gonna fight for what's rightly mine!"