Who has seen you for who you really are?
Who has helped you become yourself?
Who have been your guides along the way, both the purposeful teachers and the inadvertent helpers?
Who has seen you for who you really are?
Who has helped you become yourself?
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Dear Readers:
I’ve been writing my horoscope column for decades, but have never published a book on astrology—until NOW!
I’m gearing up to publish my book ASTROLOGY IS REAL: REVELATIONS FROM MY LIFE AS A HOROSCOPE COLUMNIST.
It blends memoir, essays about astrology, and oracles for YOU, dear reader.
The 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 Tuesday.
This week, Part Three is available. You can also read Part One and Part Two.
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ANOTHER WAY OF STORYTELLING
It's hard to find modern stories that don't depend on endless conflict to advance the plot. I understand the attraction to such stories, but I don't understand why they dominate storytelling.
Are authors and filmmakers really unable to conceive of the possibility that entertaining adventures might emerge from pursuing discovery and excitement and joy as much as from overcoming relentless conflict and difficulty?
Read what Ursula K. Le Guin has to say about the subject.
"The Hero has decreed that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of the narrative, including the novel, is conflict; and third, that the story isn't any good if he isn't in it.
"I differ with all of this. I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us."
“One relationship among elements in the novel may well be that of conflict, but the reduction of narrative to conflict is absurd.
“(I have read a how-to-write manual that said, ‘A story should be seen as a battle’ and went on about strategies, attacks, victory, etc.)
“Conflict, competition, stress, and struggle, within the narrative conceived as carrier bag or medicine bundle, may be seen as necessary elements of a whole which itself cannot be characterized either as conflict or as harmony, since its purpose is neither resolution nor stasis but continuing process.”
—In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin writes much more on these subjects: https://tinyurl.com/ykures5a
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SPIRALING STORIES
In her essay "Spider Woman as Healer," Nancy Corson Carter writes:
"I am inspired by another way of storytelling—not the linear, singular, 'breakthrough' and 'power over' brilliance of the 'hero' narrative, but the spiraling, juxtaposing, and interpenetrating 'power with' luminosity of the weaver in the act of telling.
“I imagine the weaver as the one who attends and intends while the hero extends; the weaver carefully untangles knots that need to be rewoven, while the hero cuts them asunder with his sword.
"Ursula K. Le Guin writes of an 'unheroic' fiction under the rubric of the 'carrier bag theory of fiction.' This term comes from the idea that the earliest cultural inventions were probably containers, slings, or net carriers used to hold gathered things.
Le Guin decries the hero or 'killer story' as one that 'hid my humanity from me.'
“In its place, she celebrates a new/old story, a 'life story' that many people have told for ages, in the forms of myths of creation and transformation, trickster stories, folktales, jokes, novels.'
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In The Story of Civilization, Will Durant writes:
“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs.”
And yet the focus on evil and conflict comprises 90% of the serious storytelling and journalism in our culture. The rest of the truth is profoundly underrepresented.
We are way past the point where we have to worry about evil and conflict being underemphasized in the prevailing narratives about what human life is about.
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Whenever I hear the term "toxic positivity” or “toxic optimism" I feel it's my duty to say that toxic negativity is as prevalent and as dangerous as toxic positivity.
They're both problems.
The antidote to toxic positivity is not toxic negativity. They are both fed by compulsiveness and fanaticism.
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I am all in favor of critiquing "toxic positivity." When we refuse to look at difficulties and insist on being compulsively optimistic, we spawn monsters.
At the same time, I think toxic negativity is at least as big a problem.
Science says that we actually take pleasure in the negative emotion itself. We willingly dive back into misery again and again for the same reason we willingly board a roller coaster or go bungee jumping: We get a rush from it.
That is, the pleasure/reward centers of your brain light up and release dopamine. And you can get addicted to whatever causes your brain to release dopamine, whether it's chocolate or fistfights.
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IMAGINARY EVIL
Simone Weil said, “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
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WHY THE KNEE-JERK DERISION?
Rebecca Solnit wrote all the text in the section:
What exactly is it that makes so many people (white men especially) think that their job is to disparage, tear down, dismiss, look for flaws, complain, and generally utter "it'll never work" (often of course without basic knowledge of the subject or having read the article)?
It's so reflexive and so pervasive. I mean, obviously it's a form of self-aggrandizement at its most basic — "you are wrong and I am both right and smarter" — but why when talking about the most urgent problems of our time are so many people committed to saying they're insoluble, inevitable, or the solutions are going to fail?
As you know, it's everywhere.
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CRAFTY OPTIMISM
Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the world at a standstill.
The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual.
Pessimism kills the instinct that urges people to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world.
—socialist, anti-militarist, labor rights activist, suffragist author Helen Keller
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GO LIGHTLY
Aldous Huxley was the renowned 20th-century intellectual who wrote the book Brave New World, a dystopian vision of the future. Later in his life he came to regret one thing: how “preposterously serious” he had been when he was younger.
“There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,” he ruminated, “trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.”
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UNHAPPY HOUR
Hear my spoken word piece “Unhappy Hour”
Here’s how “Unhappy Hour” begins:
You're invited to celebrate Unhappy Hour. It's a ceremony that gives you a poetic license to rant and whine and howl and bitch about everything that hurts you and makes you feel bad.
During this perverse grace period, there's no need for you to be inhibited as you unleash your tortured squalls. You don't have to tone down the extremity of your desolate clamors. Unhappy Hour is a ritually consecrated excursion devoted to the full disclosure of your primal clash and jangle.
Here's the catch: It's brief. It's concise. It's crisp. You dive into your darkness for no more than 60 minutes, then climb back out, free and clear. It's called Unhappy Hour, not Unhappy Day or Unhappy Week or Unhappy Year.
Do you have the cheeky temerity to drench yourself in your paroxysmal alienation from life? Unhappy Hour invites you to plunge in and surrender. It dares you to scurry and squirm all the way down to the bottom of your pain, break through the bottom of your pain, and fall down flailing in the soggy, searing abyss, yelping and cringing and wallowing.
That's where you let your pain tell you every story it has to tell you. You let your pain teach you every lesson it has to teach you.
But then it's over. The ritual ordeal is complete. And your pain has to take a vacation until the next Unhappy Hour, which isn't until next week sometime, or maybe next month.
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YOUR BIG STORY
I've gathered all of the long-term, big-picture horoscopes I wrote for you, and bundled them in one place. Go here to read a compendium of your forecasts for 2023:
https://tinyurl.com/BigPicture2023
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning February 16
Copyright 2023 by Rob Brezsny
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Some people I respect regard the Bible as a great work of literature. I don't share that view. Like psychologist Valerie Tarico, I believe the so-called good book is filled with "repetition, awkward constructions, inconsistent voice, weak character development, boring tangents, and passages where nobody can tell what the writer meant to convey." I bring this to your attention, Aquarius, because I believe now is a good time to rebel against conventional wisdom, escape from experts' opinions, and formulate your own unique perspectives about pretty much everything. Be like Valerie Tarico and me.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): I suspect that arrivederci and au revoir and sayōnara will overlap with birth cries and welcomes and initiations in the coming days. Are you beginning or ending? Leaving or arriving? Letting go or hanging on? Here's what I think: You will be beginning and ending; leaving and arriving; letting go and hanging on. That could be confusing, but it could also be fun. The mix of emotions will be rich and soulful.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries director Francis Ford Coppola was asked to name the year's worst movie. The question didn't interest him, he said. He listed his favorite films, then declared, "Movies are hard to make, so I'd say, all the other ones were fine!" Coppola's comments remind me of author Dave Eggers': "Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them." In accordance with astrological omens, Aries, your assignment is to explore and embody these perspectives. Refrain from judging efforts about which you have no personal knowledge. Be as open-minded and generous as you can. Doing so will give you fuller access to half-dormant aspects of your own potentials.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Artist Andy Warhol said, only half in jest, "Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art, and working is art, and good business is the best art." More than any other sign, Tauruses embody this attitude with flare. When you are at your best, you're not a greedy materialist who places a higher value on money than everything else. Instead, you approach the gathering of necessary resources, including money, as a fun art project that you perform with love and creativity. I invite you to ascend to an even higher octave of this talent.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): You are gliding into the Season of Maximum Volition, Autonomy, and Liberty. Now is a favorable time to explore and expand the pleasures of personal sovereignty. You will be at the peak of your power to declare your independence from influences that hinder and limit you. To prepare, try two experiments. 1. Act as if free will is an illusion. It doesn’t exist. There's no such thing. Then visualize what your destiny would be like. 2. Act as if free will is real. Imagine that in the coming months you can have more of it at your disposal than ever before. What will your destiny be like?
CANCER (June 21-July 22): The ethereal, dreamy side of your nature must continually find ways to express itself beautifully and playfully. And I do mean "continually." If you're not always allowing your imagination to roam and romp around in Wonderland, your imagination may lapse into spinning out crabby delusions. Luckily, I don't think you will have any problems attending to this necessary luxury in the coming weeks. From what I can tell, you will be highly motivated to generate fluidic fun by rambling through fantasy realms. Bonus! I suspect this will generate practical benefits.
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EXPLORING THE BIG PICTURE OF YOUR LONG-RANGE FUTURE
My long-range, big-picture EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES for the coming months are still available, but only for 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?
Go to https://RealAstrology.com
Register and/or log in through the main page, and then access the horoscopes by clicking on "Long Range Prediction." (Choose from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)
A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.
The cost is $7 per sign, with discounts for bulk purchases.
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"Your audio horoscopes help me love myself better, and I mean that in a non-narcissistic way."
—Deva Paramaus, Indianapolis
"I'm really grateful for the way you pick up my telepathic requests and answer them in your expanded audio 'scopes."
—Marion Houseman, Birmingham, AL
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PS: The person depicted here was rescued: https://tinyurl.com/SheWasRescued
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LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Don't treat your allies or yourself with neglect and insensitivity. For the sake of you mental and physical health, you need to do the exact opposite. I’m not exaggerating! To enhance your well-being, be almost ridiculously positive. Be vigorously nice and rigorously kind. Bestow blessings and dole out compliments, both to others and yourself. See the best and expect the best in both others and yourself.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Is there a bug in the sanctuary of love? A parasite or saboteur? If so, banish it. Is there a cranky monster grumbling in the basement or attic or closet? Feed that creature chunks of raw cookie dough imbued with a crushed-up valium pill. Do you have a stuffed animal or holy statue to whom you can spill your deep, dark, delicious secrets? If not, get one. Have you been spending quality time rumbling around in your fantasy world in quest of spectacular healings? If not, get busy. Those healings are ready for you to pluck them.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): There's a weird magic operating in your vicinity these days—a curious, uncanny kind of luck. So while my counsel here might sound counter-intuitive, I think it’s true. Here are four affirmations to chant regularly: 1. "I will attract and acquire what I want by acting as if I don’t care if I get what I want." 2. "I will become grounded and relaxed with the help of beautiful messes and rowdy fun." 3. "My worries and fears will subside as I make fun of them and joke about them." 4. "I will activate my deeper ambition by giving myself permission to be lazy."
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): How many people would fight for their country? Below I list the countries where my horoscopes are published and the percentage of their populations ready and willing to take up arms against their nations' enemies: 11 percent in Japan; Netherlands, 15 percent; Italy, 20 percent; France, 29 percent; Canada, 30 percent; US, 44 percent. So I surmise that Japanese readers are most likely to welcome my advice here, which is threefold: 1. The coming months will be a good time to cultivate your love for your country's land, people, and culture, but not for your country's government and armed forces. 2. Minimize your aggressiveness unless you invoke it to improve your personal life—in which case, pump it up and harness them. 3. Don't get riled up about vague abstractions and fear-based fantasies. But do wield your constructive militancy in behalf of intimate, practical improvements.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): By the time she was 33, Sagittarian actor Jane Fonda was famous and popular. She had already won many awards, including an Oscar. Then she became an outspoken opponent of America's war in Vietnam. Some of her less-liberal fans were outraged. For a few years, her success in films waned. Offers didn’t come easily to her. She later explained that while the industry had not completely "blacklisted" her, she had been "greylisted." Despite the setback, she kept working—and never diluted her political activism. By the time she was in her forties, her career and reputation had fully recovered. Today, at age 84, she is busy with creative projects. In accordance with astrological rhythms, I propose we make her your role model in the coming months. May she inspire you to be true to your principles even if some people disapprove. Be loyal to what you know is right.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Charles V (1500–1558) had more than 20 titles, including Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain, Archduke of Austria, and Lord of the Netherlands. He was also a patron of the arts and architecture. Once, while visiting the renowned Italian painter Titian to have his portrait done, he did something no monarch had ever done. When Titian dropped his paintbrush on the floor, Charles humbly picked it up and gave it to him. I foresee a different but equally interesting switcheroo in your vicinity during the coming weeks. Maybe you will be aided by a big shot or get a blessing from someone you consider out of your league. Perhaps you will earn a status boost or will benefit from a shift in a hierarchy.
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Homework: Imagine a good future scenario you have never dared to visualize. Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com
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