Give Your Best
and Take What You Need
In this bonus newsletter, I offer a free excerpt of my book ASTROLOGY IS REAL above the paywall — and an excerpt from my upcoming trilogy of novels below the paywall.
First, here’s an excerpt from ASTROLOGY IS REAL. These oracles are not like my regular weekly horoscopes. Rather, they are lyrical meditations on the natures of the signs. ASTROLOGY IS REAL has 15 additional sections like this one.
ORACLES FOR YOU #13
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ARIES: My readers and I have collaborated to provide insights and inspirations about the topic "How to Be an Aries." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.
• If it isn't challenging, do something else. —Jennifer Blackmon Guevara
• If it's easy, it's boring. —Beth Prouty
• Turn on your sense of wonder full blast and chase the white rabbit right down the rabbit hole. —Suzanne Shettles Charleston
• Every now and then, test the hypothesis that many of the rules just don't work on you or for you.
• Argue for fun. Be playful and frisky as you banter. Disagree for the sport of it, without feeling attached to being right or needing the last word.
• You are a great initiator of ideas who's willing to let go of them in their pure and perfect forms so as to help them bloom to fruition.
• Friends may tell you, "If I ever need a dragon captured or slain, I'll call you."
• Don’t be shy about telling yourself, "I don't have time to do this right now. I need to go drum up an unpredictable escapade and have as much unruly fun as possible." —Kymberlee della Luce
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TAURUS: Below are hunches and guesses about the topic "How to Be a Taurus." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.
1. Work harder, last longer, and finish with more grace than everyone else. —Destiny Cavill
2. Be in love with beauty. Crave it, surround yourself with it, and create it. Be especially enamored of beautiful things that are also useful. —Wanda Lookser
3. Be relentlessly practical. Know how to get things done. Pick up a shovel and dig the grooves for the water signs to flow their feelings through. Grab an axe and chop the wood so the fire signs can burn bright. Gather bricks and mortar and build the structures for the air signs to talk about. —Artis Frevoli
4. As a Taurus, you are always wise to be reverent toward your five senses. They are your glorious treasures. Your marvelous superpowers. Your sublime assets.
As you deploy them with all your amazement and appreciation unfurled, they will boost your intelligence. They will heighten your intuition in ways that guide you to good decisions. You will tune in to interesting truths that would otherwise remain hidden.
Here's the climax of this counsel: You can cultivate your sensory apparatus with such alacrity and daring that they work almost as extrasensory powers. They are so sharp and clear that they virtually make you psychic.
5. Know how to make impossibly appealing chocolate hazelnut biscotti. —Grace Gamulto
6. Listen to the moonrise, taste the mist, smell the clouds, kiss the music, woo the earth. —Azariah Edgolas
7. Taurus artist Joan Miró loved to daub colored paint on canvases. He said he approached his work in the same way he made love: "a total embrace, without caution, prudence thrown to the winds, nothing held back."
To serve your highest potentials, adopt a similar attitude. Summon the ardor and artistry of a creative lover for all your important activities.
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GEMINI: Below are hunches and guesses about the topic "How to Be a Gemini." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.
1. Relish the fact that your curious mind and mischievous heart and inquisitive soul will ensure you never need to be bored. —Jonquil Remedy
2. Create big spacious realizations by weaving together several small hunches.
3. Do not, under any circumstances, grow up to be a serious adult on the inside. Keep the innocent gaze you had when you were five and use it often—even (and especially!) when looking at mundane things. —Kim Breeding-Mercer
4. Find at least seven best friends because you will need them all in the long run.
5. Keep a little angel on your right shoulder and a little devil on your left shoulder. Enjoy listening to them argue and don't get attached to anything they say.
6. Have fun even when you're not.
7. Remember that your paradoxes are not as obvious to others as they are to you. Those who met you when you were Amy Schumer may wonder what's wrong with you when you are Tupak Shakur. Smile and be patient with them. Explain that tomorrow you may be Anderson Cooper or Joyce Carol Oates.
8. Do the unexpected until it becomes expected. Then abandon it and try a new unexpected experiment.
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CANCERIAN: Below are hunches and guesses about the topic "How to Be a Cancerian." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.
1. Start all your sentences with, "I feel." —Demetrius Orloff
2. Enjoy hours of entertainment as you explore the unleashed wondrous powers of your imagination. —Deirdre King
3. Your memory is SUBSTANTIAL. Your sensitivity is MONUMENTAL. Your urge to nurture is DEEP. Your complexity is EPIC. Your feelings are BOTTOMLESS. Your imagination is PRODIGIOUS.
Because of all these aptitudes and capacities, you are TOO MUCH for some people. Not everyone can handle your intricate and sometimes puzzling BEAUTY.
But there are enough folks out there who appreciate and thrive on your gifts. Make it your quest to focus your urge to merge on them.
4. Either be a literal mother or else be motherly in metaphorical or spiritual or unexpected ways that make you feel deep and strong.
5. The health and well-being of your stomach may be a barometer of your emotional state. If it's off-kilter, and you don't know why, check to see if you're hiding a secret from yourself.
6. You hate it and love it when people seem able to read your mind. You don't want them to know you all the way through, but you do want them to know you all the way through.
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LEO: Below are hunches and guesses about the topic "How to Be a Leo." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.
1. Be confident that YOU ARE THE PARTY! Everywhere you go, bring the spirits of fun and revelry. Be educationally entertaining and entertainingly educational. Charm yourself by making life more interesting for everyone.
At the same time, be kind and humble, never arrogant or insensitive. A vital part of your assignment is to nourish and inspire others with your glow and magnetism. That formula will ensure bounty flows your way.
PS: Regularly reward your admirers and followers with your magnanimous Chesire-cat grin. —Lani Decourse
2. Play at least as hard as you work.
3. Set your sleeping position next to an east-facing window so the rays of sunrise fall on you as you wake each morning. —Ryan Impalba
4. Love yourself more and more each day, forever. Have fun doing it. Laugh about how easy and how hard it is to love yourself so well. Make it into a game that brings you an endless stream of amusement. —Larissa Lanes
5. It's always advisable for you Leos to carry on a close personal relationship with mirrors. I'm speaking both literally and metaphorically. For the sake of your mental health, you need to be knowledgeable about your image and monitor its ever-shifting nuances. You thrive by undertaking introspective explorations and creative self-inquiry.
Please keep it all tender and kind, though. You're not allowed to bad-mouth yourself. Put a special emphasis on identifying aspects of your beauty that have been obscured or neglected.
6. Always be looking for supporting actors and understudies, because it can get tiring having to always get the crowd going all by yourself. —Laurie Brauss Evan
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VIRGO: Below are hunches and guesses about the topic "How to Be a Virgo." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.
1. At your best, you are a flexible purist, an adaptable stickler for detail, and a disciplined yet supple thinker. Maybe more than any other sign of the zodiac, you can be focused and resilient, intense and agile, attentive and graceful.
Non-Virgos very much appreciate it when you serve as a role model for these talents.
2. Your to-do list must always include "Relax!" —Karen Moshier Mara
3. It's your birthright as a Virgo to become an expert at capitalizing on difficulties. You have great potential to detect opportunities coalescing in the midst of trouble. You may have a knack for spotting the order that's hiding in the chaos.
Wield these skills with artistry, my dear—both for your own benefit and for the betterment of everyone whose lives you touch.
4. As often as necessary, lie down on the mossy, piney, leafy forest floor. Breathe in the earth. Sip the mist. Caress the breeze. —Conna Meader
5. You understand the intimate, intricate connections between mind and body. As you get older, you become better and better able to use this knowledge for the enjoyment of yourself and others.
6. You may not always get the answer completely right, but you are skilled at finding the best answer available. You scan for practical, compassionate solutions that address some of everyone's needs. If anyone can be a expert at creative compromise, it's you.
7. When the party is over and everyone leaves, you know you are going to stay until the kitchen's clean. Be proud of that! It's one of your charms. —Monica Lark
8. It's impossible to be perfect. It's neither healthy nor productive to obsess on perfectionism.
You know these things. You understand you can't afford to get bogged down in overthinking and overreaching and overpolishing.
And when you are at your best, you sublimate such manic urges. You transform them into the elegant intention to clarify and refine and refresh. With grace and care, you express useful beauty instead of aiming for hyper-immaculate precision.
LIBRA: Below are hunches and guesses about the topic "How to Be a Libra." One of my readers provided some ideas, which are noted.
1. Practice, practice, practice the art of moderation. Do so with the intention of making it a flexible, genial skill rather than an unthinking habit.
2. Everyone knows that "balance" is a keyword for you Librans. However, there are many interpretations of what balance entails. Here are some:
• an openness to consider several different ways to capitalize on an opportunity, but to ultimately choose just one way;
• the ability to see and understand all sides of every story, while also knowing that for pragmatism's sake you may ultimately need to endorse a single version of the story;
• the capacity to be both constructively critical and supportively sympathetic;
• the facility to be welcoming and inviting while still maintaining healthy boundaries.
3. You need the following on a regular basis:
• rapturous encounters with unexpected grace;
• elegant eruptions of steely willpower;
• encounters with inspiration that propel you to make some practical improvement;
• brave adjustments in your understanding of how the world works;
• sacrifices of OK things, freeing time and energy for you to cultivate really good things.
4. In one sitting, listen to Pavarotti, Van Halen, Bruce Springsteen, Bach, Lenny Kravitz, Ray Charles and Barry Manilow. Or do the same with Edith Piaf, PJ Harvey, Hildegard von Bingen, Megan Thee Stallion, Joni Mitchell, and Billie Holiday. —Jodie Hoyster
5. Be beautiful in the smartest ways you can imagine. Be smart in the most beautiful ways you can imagine. —Ariel Hoover
6. Make sure your cool attention to detail never gets too chilly. Warm it up now and then. Invite your heart to add its counsel to your head's observations. Tenderize your objectivity.
7. Is it true that relationships are like sharks? If they don't keep moving, they die? Some Libras need to believe that. —Artie Regolio
8. Always be willing to be puzzled. Always be entertained and educated by your puzzlement. Remember that nothing ever changes unless somebody is puzzled.
9. Applying the Goldilocks attitude is essential. Everything must be just right: neither too much nor too little; neither overly grand nor overly modest.
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SCORPIO: Below are hunches and guesses about the topic "How to Be a Scorpio."
1. Self-command should be your blissful quest, your steady source of inspiration, your fascinating struggle. And what is self-command? Your soul's ingenious management of your intense yearnings and fervent feelings.
2. Molt like a snake at least once a year. Or twice. Even three times wouldn't be too much.
3. When you are functioning at your best, you Scorpios crave only the finest, top-quality highs. You embrace joys and pleasures that generate epiphanies and vitalizing transformations.
Mediocre varieties of fun don't interest you. You avoid debilitating indulgences that provide brief excitement but spawn long-term problems.
4. You belong to no one but yourself. No one can possess you.
5. Many Scorpios imagine sex to be a magnificent devotion, a quintessential mode of worship, an unparalleled celebration of sacred earthiness.
I endorse and admire this perspective. If our culture had more of it, the art and entertainment industries would offer far less of the demeaning, superficial versions of sexuality that are so rampant.
Here's another thing I love about Scorpios: So many of you grasp the value of sublimating lust into other fun and constructive accomplishments. You are skilled at channeling your high-powered libido into practical actions that may have no apparent erotic element.
6. Remember that levity, liberty, and the pursuit of fun are as crucial as ambition and status and getting big things done.
7. To be a Scorpio you must adore the frozen hot water and the calm cool churning molten lava and the fiery liquid ash rising from the nasty sacred roots and the quiet explosions of orgiastic serenity.
8. You sometimes feel you have to tone down your smoldering intensity, avert your dark-star gazes, conceal your sultry charisma, dumb down your persuasive speech, pretend you don't have so much stamina, disguise your awareness of supernatural connections, act less like a saint and martyr in your zealous devotions, and refrain from revealing your skill at reading between the lines.
But none of that avoidance stuff usually works very well. The Real You leaks out into view.
In the coming decades I hope you won't engage in much of the hiding behavior I described. I'd love to see you freely pour forth your Scorpionic blessings.
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SAGITTARIUS: Below are hunches and guesses about the topic "How to Be a Sagittarius."
1. On a regular basis, ruminate about the meaning of life and why we are here and how you could contribute to creating a paradise on Earth. Find at least three reasons to laugh uproariously each time you do this. —Jasper Jacobs Jarry
2. Embrace optimism for both its beauty and its tactical advantages.
3. You are a teacher, and you love to teach. You are a student, and you love to learn.
4. Be amazingly wise, be impossibly brave, be expansively visionary—and forgive yourself anytime you can't remember where you parked your car.
5. Give your fears names like "Gaffe" and "Wheezy" and "Lumpy."
6. Inspire other people to love being themselves and not wanting to be like you. —Ellis Manosian
7. Begin three new projects that are beyond your capacity and impossible to achieve with your current levels of intelligence, skill, and experience—and then accomplish them anyway.
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CAPRICORN: Below are hunches and guesses about the topic "How to Be a Capricorn." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.
1. Keep clambering upwards even if you have no competitors and there's no one else at the top. —Adam Roman
2. Let's imagine you are in your office or on the job or sitting at your kitchen table. With focused diligence, you're working on solving a problem or improving a situation that involves a number of people.
You think to yourself, "No one seems to be aware that I am quietly toiling here behind the scenes to make the magic happen."
A few days or a few weeks later, your efforts have been successful. The problem is resolved, or the situation has improved.
But then you hear the people involved say, "Wow, I wonder what happened? It's like things got fixed all by themselves."
If scenarios like this happen, Capricorn, I urge you to speak up and tell everyone what really occurred.
3. Always look older than your age until you are about 30, and then always look at least eight years younger than your age. —Alexanne Wabry
4. Do you sometimes fall under the influence of discouraging thoughts and demoralizing feelings? The best way to chase them away is by doing absorbing work and compassionate service.
5. When you are right, time is generally on your side.
6. People look to you and regard you as a role model more than you realize. Your statements and actions often have a disproportionately big impact. Your influence ripples out beyond your sphere.
In light of these facts, which may be subtle or barely visible, I encourage you to always be thinking about how you can upgrade your sense of responsibility. Keep checking to make sure your integrity is impeccable.
One other piece of advice, too: Be an example to people without making them feel like they owe you anything.
7. Get comfortable with your stern, stern ways so you can be the first to laugh at yourself and let your rules bend. —Carrie Cleveland
8. As you take care of everything in your purview and you fix the glitches created by others who have given less than their best, do it in alignment with your own highest standards. Nobody else's standards matter.
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AQUARIUS: Below are hunches and guesses about the topic "How to Be an Aquarius." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.
1. Aquarius announces to the world, "I go my own way. If you don't comprehend, to hell with you. You'll catch up someday, and when you do, I'll be there with open arms." —Rebecca Sweet
2. You are an extra authentic Aquarius if people say that you get yourself into the weirdest, most interesting trouble they've ever seen. You are an ultra-genuine Aquarius if people follow the twists and pivots of your life as they would a soap opera. —Abbie Wisener
3. Notice shit. Get excited and full of wonder about shit. Talk about shit with others who love to talk about shit. Laugh endlessly about shit. —Washington Ponder
4. People might say to you, "Just when I thought I had you figured out, you do something unexpected to confound me."
5. Accept that you don't really have to understand yourself. Be at peace with how you constantly ramble, swerve, and weave to become more of yourself. Appreciate how each electric shift leads to the next electric shift, always changing who you are forever. Within the churning, ever-yearning current, marvel at how you remain eternal, steady, and solid—yet always evolving, always on a higher ground than before. —Georgie Lee
6. Politely confuse and even unsettle people with your radical social ideals about how compassion, empathy, and emotional intelligence will overthrow predatory capitalism to create a utopia where inner dream space is respected as much as the frenzied marketplace. —Fortune Rebecca Buchholtz
7. Listen to and secretly enjoy death metal music and rockabilly music, but make your friends think you do so just to flummox and discombobulate and flusterfunk them.
Also, use outlandish words like "flummox" and "discombobulate" and "flusterfunk."
8. Things you Aquarians might do:
• Be a hopeful cynic and a cheerful skeptic.
• Be able to grasp and articulate complex theories, but sometimes pour salt instead of sugar in your coffee and put your shoes on the wrong feet and get lost as you return home from the grocery store.
• Zig when others zag. Zag when others Zig.
• Rage blithely but fiercely against injustices and cruelty.
• Be owned by a cat. Or by several cats.
• Play with the fantasy that you're an interdimensional being or extraterrestrial who's engaged in an experiment on planet Earth.
• Have pillow fights instead of arguments.
• Fall in love with everything and everyone: a D-List celebrity, an oak tree growing sideways out of a hill, a neon sign with one letter that doesn’t light up, a feral cat with two different color eyes, a slightly chipped mirror in a thrift store, and the newly invented color Neochrome™.
• Pace in your bedroom while listening to slow, mournful music.
• Desperately want to be alone even though you're lonely.
• Just for the hell and the fun of it, walk backward in public places every now and then.
• Hold midnight sex picnics in the park and swing on the swings before the sex starts.
* Fantasize that because you can fly in your dreams, that maybe somehow you really can, but just haven't figured it out yet when you're conscious.
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PISCES: Below are hunches and guesses about the topic "How to Be a Pisces." My readers provided some ideas, which are noted.
1. Pisces says, "I believe in all this excruciating beauty, therefore I am." —Christy Williams Dunton
2. Now and then, logic may be of only partial use to you. Information acquired through your senses might prove less than fully adequate, as well. On the other hand, your talents for feeling deeply and tapping into your intuition can often provide you with highly accurate intelligence.
3. Go often to rivers and springs and creeks and streams. Converse with the fairies and undines. Pledge your reverence to the fish and frogs and turtles and beavers. Learn the ways of the crabs and crayfish and eels and water snakes. Sing songs for the dragonflies and whirligig beetles and caddisflies and lacewings.
4. A mature Pisces says, "It's not personal, it's not personal, it's not personal."
5. Always be on the lookout for more angles and more feelings and more stories. —Gretchen Knapp
6. "The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight," wrote mythologist Joseph Campbell. As long as you recognize and appreciate that you are a whoosh of rich contradictions, a vortex of fertile struggles, and a whirl of tantalizing wonders, you will be a mystic swimmer.
7. Here's the good life, the Piscean way: ever dreaming the impossible dream, ever spinning out fresh fertile fantasies, ever reaching into the depths of your own soul and others' souls. —Jacqueen Willims
8. When in trouble or in doubt, worship at the altar of creativity. —Kate Bair Lovins
9. Confuse everyone, but in a friendly way. Keep a sweet, rich air of mystery about you. Somehow, figure out how to use this to your advantage.
Below the paywall is chapter 62 from my upcoming trilogy of novels, collectively called Love Stories for the Earth: Holy Rivers, Lucky Storms, and The Other Real World.