For the week of April 30, 2020

By Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19): I always hesitate to advise Aries people to slow down, be more deliberate and pay closer attention to boring details. The Rams to whom I provide such counsel may be rebelliously annoyed with me—so much so that they move even faster and with less attention to the details. Nevertheless, I’ll risk offering you this advisory right now. Here’s my reasoning, which I hope will make the prospect more appealing: If you commit to a phase in which you temporarily invoke more prudence, discretion and watchfulness than usual, it will ultimately reward you with a specific opportunity to make rapid progress.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Is there an area of your life where you would like a do-over? A chance to cancel the past and erase lingering messiness and clear a path for who-knows-what new possibility? The coming weeks will be an excellent time to prepare—not to actually take the leap, but rather make yourself ready for the leap. You will have God and fate and warm fuzzy vibes on your side as you dare to dream and scheme about a fresh start. Any mistakes you committed once upon a time could become irrelevant as you fantasize practically about a future breakthrough.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In 1855, Gemini-born Walt Whitman published his book of poetry Leaves of Grass. A literary critic named Rufus Wilmot Griswold did not approve. In a review, he derided the work that would eventually be regarded as one of America’s literary masterpieces. “It is impossible to imagine how any man’s fancy could have conceived such a mass of stupid filth,” Griswold wrote, adding that Whitman had a “degrading, beastly sensuality” driven by “the vilest imaginings.” Whitman’s crafty intelligence responded ingeniously to the criticism. In the next edition of Leaves of Grass, the author printed Griswold’s full review. It helped sell even more books! I invite you to consider comparable twists and tricks.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In your efforts to develop a vibrant community and foster a vital network of connections, you have an advantage. Your emotionally rich, nurturing spirit instills trust in people. They’re drawn to you because they sense you will treat them with care and sensitivity. On the other hand, these fine attributes of yours may sometimes cause problems. Extra-needy, manipulative folks may interpret your softness as weakness. They might try to exploit your kindness to take advantage of you. So the challenge for you is to be your generous, welcoming self without allowing anyone to violate your boundaries or rip you off. Everything I just said will be helpful to meditate on in the coming weeks, as you reinvent yourself for the future time when the coronavirus crisis will have lost much of its power to disrupt our lives.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Now is an excellent time to take inventory of your integrity. You’re likely to get crucial insights if you evaluate the state of your ethics, your authenticity and your compassion. Is it time to boost your commitment to a noble cause that transcends your narrow self-interest? Are there ways you’ve been less than fully fair and honest in your dealings with people? Is it possible you have sometimes failed to give your best? I’m not saying that you are guilty of any of those sins. But most of us are indeed guilty of them, at least now and then. And if you are, now is your special time to check in with yourself—and make any necessary adjustments and corrections.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): I predict that you will have more flying dreams than usual in the coming weeks—as well as more dreams in which you’re traveling around the world in the company of rebel angels and dreams in which you’re leading revolutionary uprisings of oppressed people against tyrannical overlords and dreams of enjoying eight-course gourmet feasts with sexy geniuses in the year 2022. You may also, even while not asleep, well up with outlandish fantasies and exotic desires. I don’t regard any of these likelihoods as problematic. In fact, I applaud them and encourage them. They’re healthy for you! Bonus: All the wild action transpiring in your psyche may prompt you to generate good ideas about fun adventures you could embark on once the coronavirus crisis has ebbed.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): It’s time to work your way below the surface level of things; to dig and dive into the lower reaches where the mysteries are darker and richer; to marshal your courage as you go in quest of the rest of the story. Are you willing to suspend some of your assumptions about the way things work so as to become fully alert for hidden agendas and dormant potentials? Here’s a piece of advice: Your fine analytical intelligence won’t be enough to guide you through this enigmatic terrain. If you hope to get face to face with the core source, you’ll have to call on your deeper intuition and non-rational hunches.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): When was the last time you researched the intricacies of what you don’t like and don’t desire and don’t want to become? Now is a favorable time to take a thorough inventory. You’ll generate good fortune for yourself by naming the following truths: 1. goals and dreams that are distractions from your primary mission; 2. attitudes and approaches that aren’t suitable for your temperament and that don’t contribute to your maximum health; 3. people and influences that are not in alignment with your highest good.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky believed that the cleverest people are those who regularly call themselves fools. In other words, they feel humble amusement as they acknowledge their failings and ignorance—thereby paving the way for creative growth. They steadily renew their commitment to avoid being know-it-alls, celebrating the curiosity that such blessed innocence enables them to nurture. They give themselves permission to ask dumb questions! Now is a favorable time for you to employ these strategies.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): What wonderful improvements and beautiful influences would you love to be basking in by May 1, 2021? What masterpieces would you love to have as key elements of your life by then? I invite you to have fun brainstorming about these possibilities in the next two weeks. If an exciting idea bubbles up into your awareness, formulate a plan that outlines the details you’ll need to put in place so as to bring it to fruition when the time is right. I hereby authorize you to describe yourself with these terms: begetter, originator, maker, designer, founder, producer, framer, generator.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): If I asked you to hug and kiss yourself regularly, would you think I was being too cute? If I encouraged you to gaze into a mirror once a day and tell yourself how beautiful and interesting you are, would you say, “That’s too woo-woo for me.” I hope you will respond more favorably than that. In fact, I will be praying for you to ascend to new heights of self-love between now and May 25. I will be rooting for you to be unabashed as you treat yourself with more compassionate tenderness than you have ever dared to before. And I do mean ever!

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In the coming weeks, I’d love to see you get excited about refining and upgrading the ways you communicate. I don’t mean to imply that you’re a poor communicator now; it’s just that you’re in a phase when you’re especially empowered to enhance the clarity and candor with which you express yourself. You’ll have an uncanny knack for knowing the right thing to say at the right moment. You’ll generate blessings for yourself as you fine-tune your listening skills. Much of this may have to happen online and over the phone, of course. But you can still accomplish a lot!