Free Will Astrology

ARIES (March 21-April 19): The bad news: Charlie and Sharon Reed, a couple in Dallas, had their old VW convertible stolen. The good news: By the time police recovered the car three months later, the thieves had given it a new paint job and had fixed its cracked windshield and dented bumpers. Let’s make this your metaphor of the week, Aries. I predict that you, too, will be reunited with something you lost, and it will be in better shape than it was before you were separated.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In the coming week, I doubt you’ll misplace your keys or forget to set your alarm clock or spill soup on your shirt. While shopping, you’ll be intuitive about picking the checkout line that moves fastest. If you take a plane somewhere, your luggage will show up promptly in the baggage claim area. In other words, Taurus, the little things in life will go well for you, reducing your wasted time and inconvenience to near zero. May I suggest that you respond to this grace period not by cramming in more busy work, but by giving yourself regular opportunities to enjoy the luxury of taking deep breaths and gazing at the big picture?

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): You may think that the lights you see in the night sky are single stars, but most of them are not. They are binary systems, with two stars orbiting around a common gravitational center. Our lonely sun, with no companion sun, is a rarity. Unless, that is, we’ve been overlooking clues that our sun does in fact have a twin. Although the jury is still out, circumstantial evidence is mounting that our system is binary, and that somewhere out there way beyond Pluto is a brown dwarf star carrying on a secret relationship with our sun. If it exists, it’s relatively cool and small for a star, and difficult to see, which would explain why we haven’t actually detected it yet. Now I’m suggesting that something similar may be true about your life, Gemini: that you have long had a shadowy link with a counterpart whose destiny is intimately interwoven with yours. If you’re ever destined to forge a more conscious connection with each other, it will be in the second half of 2007. And the initial breakthrough would occur soon.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): A reader named Michael McCarthy wrote to say he plans to start a new religion, the “First Church of the Rude Awakening.” It will be based on the principle that having a pleasant life cannot serve as a motivation to seek enlightenment and salvation. McCarthy believes that no one ever bolts up out of bed one morning and says, “I’m so happy, I think I’ll go meditate and pray and make myself into a better person for as long as it takes, so I can find God and say THANKS.” Even if his theory is true (which I doubt), you Cancerians will be an exception to it in the coming weeks. I bet you’ll have a series of epiphanies precisely because you’re in an excellent mood, leading you to embark on a groundbreaking new phase of spiritual exploration.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): A unique variety of freedom will be yours to enjoy in the coming week. You’ll be free to be aimless and clueless; you’ll be under no pressure to be focused and smart. You’ll be free to be quiet and meek; you won’t have to be brave and articulate. You’ll be free of wanting to be needed and understood; you won’t be plagued by the longing for someone to love you and see you for exactly who you are. You’ll be free to be anarchistic and apathetic; you won’t have to believe in or care about anything. And finally, Leo, you’ll be free to not be yourself. You will have so much freedom that you’ll even be free of freedom!

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): When Adam sampled the apple from the tree of knowledge, he was expelled from Paradise. After Prometheus stole fire from his fellow gods and gave it to humans, he was punished by being chained to a rock and getting his liver chewed on for years by an eagle. You, on the other hand, won’t have to suffer for the nervy coup I hope you’ll pull off in the coming weeks. So don’t look over your shoulder as you do your daring deed. Throw yourself into it with unconditional love and fervor.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): British astronomer Martin Rees was told about a colleague who felt so puny and insignificant in comparison to the stars that he committed suicide. Rees responded with dismay, rejecting the perspective that had led a fellow astronomer to take his own life. “We are more important than the stars,” he said. “I don’t have a despairing attitude because what makes things important is not how big they are, but how complex and intricate they are, and human beings are more complicated and intricate than stars.” While this is always good to keep in mind, Libra, it’s especially apropos now. You’re in a potent and radiant phase of your yearly cycle—a time when you have a mandate to show why you’re more important than the stars.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Before I suggest to you what your next assignment should be, read this passage from poet Adrienne Rich. “Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language—this will become not merely unspoken, but unspeakable.” What I hope you will do in the coming week, Scorpio, is rescue from obscurity any important thing that is on the verge of becoming unspeakable. Be a retriever of that-which-is-about-to-disappear. Be a rememberer of that-which-is-close-to-being forgotten.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): One of your power spots is in a valley where a melted glacier has made a new river. Another is in a place where a forest fire has cleared room for the opportunistic purple blooms of the fireweed. A third hot spot is a once-dismal school that has been refurbished so that it no longer resembles a prison. I urge you to spend quality time in transformed places like these, Sagittarius. Doing so will put you in the right mood to get the most out of current cosmic rhythms.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): It’s Unity Week. You have rich opportunities to negotiate truces, whip up collaborations and knit together seemingly irreconcilable elements. Maybe it has previously seemed insane for you to try mixing oil and water, apples and oranges, or Israelis and Palestinians, but it makes sense now. You’ll tend to attract good fortune whenever you conspire to turn matches made in hell into heavenly blends. Here’s a motto to inspire your work, from the rebellious unification expert Gandhi: “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Nature artist Andy Goldsworthy is a skilled rock balancer. With infinite patience, he arranges stacks of them in seemingly impossible arrangements. Though he has a highly developed sensitivity to the heft and shape of his raw materials, his work still requires him to persist through frustration. While building one particularly intricate structure, he said, “The moment it collapses is disappointing. But since it has collapsed four times I’m beginning to understand the stones better.” From what I can determine, Aquarius, you’re at a stage in your own labor of love that’s equivalent to Goldsworthy’s third collapse. Keep at it.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Here are a few of the fine developments I expect you will have enjoyed by the end of July: growing pains that feel pretty damn good; the dissolution of wishy-washy wishes that had been keeping you distracted from your burning desires; a vivid vision of what you want to be when you grow up; living proof that you’re not just an armchair adventurer; the friendliest lust ever; a new plaything; and insight into why fanaticism can be very useful in moderation.

Homework: Make a prediction about some world event that will happen in the second half of 2007. Testify at RealAstrology.com; click on “E-mail Rob.”