Dear Readers:
I am gearing up to publish my first astrology book: ASTROLOGY IS REAL: REVELATIONS FROM MY LIFE AS A HOROSCOPE COLUMNIST.
It's a blend of a memoir, essays about the art of astrology, and a lot of oracles for YOU, dear reader.
The new book will emerge this spring. In the meantime, I’m serializing it on Substack for paid subscribers. It’s available as a bonus newsletter once a week, delivered every Tuesday.
You can wait to buy ASTROLOGY IS REAL until it arrives full-blown in the coming months. Or you can get sneak peeks before it officially arrives.
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I will continue to provide my regular weekly newsletter, which includes the Free Will Astrology horoscopes and a whole lot of other fun stuff. It’s free, though you can choose to get a paid subscription if you’d like to support my work.
Subscribe here: https://newsletter.freewillastrology.com/
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A ROSE IN A WHEAT FIELD
In a wheat field, a rose is a weed—even if that rose is voluptuous and vibrant. Translation: it's your sacred duty to identify the contexts in which you can thrive and then put yourself in those contexts.
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CAST A LOVE SPELL ON YOURSELF
Compose and cast a love spell on yourself. There’s no need to consult pagan books about how to proceed. It may even be better if you improvise homemade conjurations and incantations. Be sure to formulate a clear intention of what you want to accomplish with your mojo.
Example: “I want to make myself irresistibly lovable.” For best results, stand in front of an altar crammed with magical objects that symbolize both longing and compassion.
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KNOW YOUR MEDICINE by Jeanette LeBlanc Know your medicine. Name it out loud. Seek it out. Again and again and again. Honor it. Hold it close. Take it all the way in. Surrender to its power. Give yourself over to its wisdom. Let it be a mirror that reflects what you most need. Let it be the solid ground you rise from. Allow it to unwind your heart. Your body. Your pleasure. Your joy. Your knowing. Your being. Let it serve you. Let it hold you. Let it heal you. excerpted from a longer piece: https://tinyurl.com/KnowYourOwnMedicine
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FIND YOUR SPIRIT MEDICINE
Philosopher Jonathan Zap adds:
“Find your spirit medicine. And remember that what works for someone else, may not work for you—and vice-versa.
“Also what works for you when used consciously, sparingly, in just right the circumstances, might be disastrous as a habit.”
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CRAZY WISDOM
What is crazy wisdom? According to novelist Tom Robbins:
"It's a philosophical worldview that recommends swimming against the tide, cheerfully seizing the short end of the stick, embracing insecurity, honoring paradox, courting the unexpected, celebrating the unfamiliar, shunning orthodoxy, volunteering for tasks nobody else wants or dares to do, and breaking taboos in order to destroy their power.
"It’s the wisdom of those who turn the tables on despair by lampooning it, and who neither seek authority nor submit to it."
And why should you do any of that weird stuff? Robbins: "To enlarge the soul, light up the brain, and liberate the spirit."
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THE MASTER CODEX
1. The Master Codex is hidden in the wall between the Hall of Mists and the Soul Kitchen. When you find it, add graffiti and cartoons to it.
2. The Beasts of the Wheels of Time are quite ticklish. That’s one of the keys to rendering them harmless. Another key is to entertain them with the gibberish they love.
3. It’s OK to steal the celestial trumpet from the stingy angel if you use it to heal a broken soul.
4. At least once a year, dive into the sleep mirror and cleanse the water you find there.
5. Find an animal you trust, and persuade it to help you steal at least two Peaches of Immortality from the Queen of Shapeshifters. (One peach for you and one for an enemy you care for.)
6. Sing your way into the Magic Dumping Ground during a full moon and befriend the Holy Squirmer. She will give you the elegant dreamsquawk signs.
7. The Frost Worm will let you pass unscathed through the Forgotten Realm if you have learned to use your third eye to watch TV.
8. The Pearl of Great Price is much closer than you think. To get another clue about its whereabouts, tell jokes to the Caller in the Darkness.
9. You are the Chosen One, but then so is everyone else.
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THE ART OF REBELLION
“Study the dynamics of disobedience, the spark behind all knowledge. To disobey in order to take action is the byword of all creative spirits.
"The history of human progress amounts to a series of Promethean acts. But autonomy is also attained in the daily workings of individual lives by means of many small Promethean disobediences, at once clever, well thought-out, and patiently pursued, so subtle at times as to avoid punishment entirely.”
—Gaston Bachelard
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REBELLING AGAINST STATIC FORMS OF REBELLION
Revolutionizing the art of rebellion:
1. Cultivate mischievous optimism
2. Perpetrate benevolent trouble
3. Practice insurrectionary generosity
4. Refuse to be chronically fearful
5. Experiment with transgressive acts of beauty and love
6. Aid and abet emotionally intelligent geniuses who have practical plans to foster a populist paradise on earth
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Art by Cameron Gray
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WHAT LIFE STORY WILL YOU CREATE FOR YOURSELF
IN THE COMING MONTHS?
Get inspired by listening to my 3-part EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES about your LONG-RANGE FUTURE.
These forecasts will be available for just a few more weeks.
Who do you want to become between now and January 2024? Where do you want to go and what do you want to do?
How can you exert your free will to create adventures that'll bring out the best in you, even as you find graceful ways to cooperate with the tides of destiny?
To listen to my three-part, in-depth reports, go here:
Register and/or log in through the main page, click "Play Readings", and then select "Part 1" or “Part 2” or “Part 3” of the "Long Term Prediction for 2023."
Each of the three parts is a separate report, though related to the other two.
If you'd like a boost of inspiration to fuel you in your quest for beauty and truth and love and meaning, tune in to my meditations on your Big-Picture Outlook.
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Each of the three-part long-range reports is seven to nine minutes long. The cost is $7 per report. There are discounts for the purchase of multiple reports.
P.S. You can also listen to a short-term Expanded Audio Horoscope for the coming week.
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning February 9
Copyright 2023 by Rob Brezsny
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): To get the most out of upcoming opportunities for intimacy, intensify your attunement to and reverence for your emotions. Why? As quick and clever as your mind can be, sometimes it neglects to thoroughly check in with your heart. And I want your heart to be wildly available when you get ripe chances to open up and deepen your alliances. Study these words from psychologist Carl Jung: "We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy."
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): "In love there are no vacations. Love has to be lived fully with its boredom and all that." Author and filmmaker Marguerite Duras made that observation, and now I convey it to you—just in time for a phase of your astrological cycle when boredom and apathy could and should evolve into renewed interest and revitalized passion. But there is a caveat: If you want the interest and passion to rise and surge, you will have to face the boredom and apathy; you must accept them as genuine aspects of your relationship; you will have to cultivate an amused tolerance of them. Only then will they burst in full glory into renewed interest and revitalized passion.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): During my quest for advice that might be helpful to your love life, I plucked these words of wisdom from author Sam Kean: "Books about relationship talk about how to 'get' the love you need, how to 'keep' love, and so on. But the right question to ask is, 'How do I become a more loving human being?'" In other words, Aries, here's a prime way to enhance your love life: Be less focused on what others can give you and more focused on what you can give to others. Amazingly, that’s likely to bring you all the love you want.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): You have the potential to become even more skilled at the arts of kissing and cuddling and boinking than you already are. How? Here are some possibilities. 1. Explore fun experiments that will transcend your reliable old approaches to kissing and cuddling and boinking. 2. Read books to open your mind. I like Margot Anand’s *The New Art of Sexual Ecstasy*. 3. Ask your partner(s) to teach you everything about what turns them on. 4. Invite your subconscious mind to give you dreams at night that involve kissing and cuddling and boinking. 5. Ask your lover(s) to laugh and play and joke as you kiss and cuddle and boink.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): You are an Italian wolf searching for food in the Apennine Mountains. You’re a red-crowned crane nesting in a wetland in the Eastern Hokkaido region of Japan. You're an olive tree thriving in a salt marsh in southern France, and you're a painted turtle basking in a pool of sunlight on a beach adjoining Lake Michigan. And much, much more. What I'm trying to tell you, Gemini, is that your capacity to empathize is extra strong right now. Your smart heart should be so curious and open that you will naturally feel an instinctual bond with many life forms, including a wide array of interesting humans. If you're brave, you will allow your mind to expand to experience telepathic powers. You will have an unprecedented knack for connecting with simpatico souls.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): My Cancerian friend Juma says, "We have two choices at all times: creation or destruction. Love creates and everything else destroys." Do you agree? She’s not just talking about romantic love, but rather love in all forms, from the urge to help a friend, to the longing to seek justice for the dispossessed, to the compassion we feel for our descendants. During the next three weeks, your assignment is to explore every nuance of love as you experiment with the following hypothesis: *To create the most interesting and creative life for yourself, put love at the heart of everything you do.*
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ALL YOUR LONG-TERM, BIG-PICTURE HOROSCOPES
I gathered all the long-term, big-picture horoscopes I wrote for you, and bundled them in one place: https://tinyurl.com/BigPicture2023
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LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): I hope you get ample chances to enjoy deep soul kisses in the coming weeks. Not just perfunctory lip-to-lip smooches and pecks on the cheeks, but full-on intimate sensual exchanges. Why do I recommend this? How could the planetary positions be interpreted to encourage a specific expression of romantic feeling? I'll tell you, Leo: The heavenly omens suggest you will benefit from exploring the frontiers of wild affection. You need the extra sweet, intensely personal communion that comes best from the uninhibited mouth-to-mouth form of tender sharing. Here's what Leo poet Diane di Prima said: "There are as many kinds of kisses as there are people on earth, as there are permutations and combinations of those people. No two people kiss alike—no two people fuck alike—but somehow the kiss is more personal, more individualized than the fuck."
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Borrowing the words of poet Oriah from her book The Dance: Moving to the Deep Rhythms of Your Life, I've prepared a love note for you to use as your own this Valentine season. Feel free to give these words to the person whose destiny needs to be woven more closely together with yours. Oriah writes, "Don't tell me how wonderful things will be someday. Show me you can risk being at peace with the way things are right now. Show me how you follow your deepest desires, spiraling down into the ache within the ache. Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart."
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libran author Walter Lippman wrote, "The emotion of love is not self-sustaining; it endures only when lovers love many things together, and not merely each other." That's great advice for you during the coming months. I suggest that you and your allies—not just your romantic partners, but also your close companions—come up with collaborative projects that inspire you to love many things together. Have fun exploring and researching subjects that excite and awaken and enrich both of you.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Scorpio writer Paul Valéry wrote, "It would be impossible to love anyone or anything one knew completely. Love is directed towards what lies hidden in its object." My challenge to you, Scorpio, is to test this hypothesis. Do what you can to gain more in-depth knowledge of the people and animals and things you love. Uncover at least some of what's hidden. All the while, monitor yourself to determine how your research affects your affection and care. Contrary to what Valéry said, I'm guessing this will enhance and exalt your love.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In his book Unapologetically You, motivational speaker Steve Maraboli writes, "I find the best way to love someone is not to change them, but instead, help them reveal the greatest version of themselves." That's always good advice, but I believe it should be your inspirational axiom in the coming weeks. More than ever, you now have the potential to forever transform your approach to relationships. You can shift away from wanting your allies to be different from what they are and make a strong push to love them just as they are.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): I analyzed the astrological omens. Then I scoured the internet, browsed through 22 books of love poetry, and summoned memories of my best experiences of intimacy. These exhaustive efforts inspired me to find the words of wisdom that are most important for you to hear right now. They are from poet Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Stephen Mitchell): "For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation."
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Homework: Name one thing you could do to express your love more practically. Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com
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No money to subscribe and I have loved you a long time. Had a wonderful dream this a.m. not about you but I pass it on: I was at a beautiful simple retreat center somewhere in N. CA, chatting and drinking coffee at breakfast. Next thing I knew I was in bed with a beautiful man, asking "may I have a kiss?" May our days be full of kisses. I stayed in bed in a spell a long while....
The Master Codex - thank you for this.