DECEMBER 8, 1994 » BENNETT BANNER • 7
im iSTEOlOGY
FOR AN UNREAL WORLD
ARIES (March 21-April 19): If the world
were organized according to my dreams, there’d
be over five billion different religions — one for
every person alive. Five billion altars. Five billion
saviors. No priests or ayatollahs or gurus would
ever again insinuate themselves as brokers
between any individual and God. Sure, people
would borrow spiritual beliefs from each other, and
there’d be a free trade of hints and tricks about
how to achieve ecstatic union with the divine mojo.
But ultimately, most sensible souls would
assemble their ovvn idiosyncratic blend.
I bring this up, seeker, because now is a perfect
moment for you to define and name your very own
personalized religion. What do you REALLY
believe, anyway?
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Be as sly as an
eagle diving towards a meal. Be as coy as a puppy licking
its master’s face. Be as strategic as a ram butting its head
against its rival’s. In other words, Taurus, prepare for
close encounters with a bunch of folks acting like snakes
and foxes and weasels. Be as stealthy as a springtime bull
that’s greedy to mate. Be as full of guile as a lion
bellowing its intentions. Be as inscrutable as a horse
that’s loping and bounding for joy.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Contrary to popular
belief, chameleons are not all that good at changing their
skin color to match their surroundings. Biologists say that
octopuses are actually far more skilled at the art. To be
accurate, then, all the astrology texts that refer to Gemini
as the “chameleon of the zodiac” should be changed.
“Octopus of the zodiac” would be a better designation for
your ability to mutate your personality to suit the
demands of your environment. Come to think of it, that
title fits you in other ways, too — especially these days.
Metaphorically speaking, you are rather like a creature
that has eight arms covered with suckers. That, combined
with your talent for camouflage, makes you as adept as
an octopus at nabbing your prey.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): I know a secret
about you. I know you have a strict unoffical rule, which
is: No one’s ev'er allowed to criticize you — no one but
yourself, that is. You’re the most thin-skinned of all the
signs, except when you decide it’s OK to rip yourself to
shreds.
Do you think we could strike a happier medium here?
Like maybe you could torture yourself a little less and
accept other people’s constructive feedback a little more?
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Welcome to your second
childhood. I predict you’ll be hanging around the land of
eternal youth through much of 1995. Seems like a perfect
time to quote a Leo author who’s very wise about the
subject of magical thinking. “If you’re afraid of the dark,”
Cooper Edens says, “remember the night rainbow. If
tomorrow morning the sky falls, have clouds for
breakfast. If you lose the key, throw away the house. If
the clock stops, use your own hands to tell time. If you
find your socks don’t match, stand in a flowerbed. If the
birds forget their songs, listen to a pebble instead.”
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): To get yourself in the
right mood for this week’s challenges, you might
consider perusing a book by Jan Adkins called Moving
Heavy Things. It gives detailed instructions on how to
manipulate weighty objects without hurting yourself. Of
course it deals primarily with physical things, not psychic
forces. But it may give you a subtle advantage when you
decide to cart away mental blocks, stumbling blocks and
road blocks.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I’m no expert in learning
disabilities, but my hunch is that they’re not confined to a
few unfortunate people. I think each of us has some kind
of learning disability. An otherwise brilliant physicist may
go blank when he tries to grok poetry. A fact-loving
journalist may freeze up when exposed to the ambiguous
truths of astrology. Me, I'm seriously deficient in my
ability to learn from the Wall Street Journal.
What’s your blind spot, genius? Whatever it is, this is
prime time, astrologically speaking, to throw a spotlight
on it. Maybe your learning disability isn’t as congenital or
unmassageable as you imagine.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): For a glimpse of
what I wish for you in the week ahead, read what Jon
Pareles wrote in his review of the whirling dervishes of
Konya, Turkey. “Their ecstasy derives from discipline.
[There’s] no chaos, no abandon in their ecstasy...Their
ritual is geared not to pleasing an audience but to
creating a precise mental state for the participants.”
In other words, Scorpio, discipline is bliss.
Organization and order are freedom. Nothing will get
your yayas out better than slaving away to systematize
your priorities.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
Remember the flap about “cold fusion” a while back?
Two physicists claimed they’d discovered a method for
generating energy using only water and a metal called
palladium. Their claims that the process was the result of
a “cold” nuclear reaction were ridiculed by mainstream
scientists. But since then, their experiment’s been
repeated by 30 reputable researchers, leading to the
conclusion that though a nuclear reaction isn’t
responsible for the phenomenon, some other
inexplicable effect is.
The moral of the story is this: Just because you're at a
loss to explain the source of your new power and
inspiration does not mean they’re useless illusions.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In 1940,
when Hitler ordered all Jews in occupied Denmark to
wear yellow armbands, a Danish leader proposed that all
Danes do the same. That idea inspired me as I meditated
on how I could respond to a dew law in my home state
banning educational and health services to “illegal
immigrants.” I now wear a yellow button that reads “I’m
an illegal immigrant.”
And what exactly does this have to do with
your astrological future? Well, my
friend, there comes a time in
everyone’s life cycle when he or ^ ^
she feels out of the loop...cast
adrift...exiled from the
consensus. And this is
your time. Even if you’re
usually at the heart of
the action and the hub
of the network, this
week you can and
should get an inkling
of what it means to be
an “illegal immigrant.”
AQUARIUS ^
(Jan. 20-Feb. 18): A
character in “Three
Postcards,” a play by Craig
Lucas and Craig Carnelia, says
“Wouldn’t it be incredible it all the
secrets of the universe were aware when we
started to get close to them, and they changed'’ I've
often wondered about this. Sometimes I suspect that
life's greatest mysteries literally don't want us to figure
them out.
That's the weird news. The good news is that this
week you can get so close to those great mysteries,
those secrets of the unlveise, that you'll be able to taste
them. And they may even let you figure them out iust
a little.
PISCES (Feb 19-March 20): Astronomers
recently detected the existence of vast amounts of watei
more than 200 million light years away. The source? The
Markarian 1 Galaxy, located within the constellation of
Pisces the Fish, This omen cleared away any doubts I
might have had about what all the astrological portents
were telling me, namely, that it's time for you lo
specialize in everything that flows: juicy emotions,
delicious beverages, skin moisturizers, gravy and
sauces, the milk of human kindness, warm baths and
saunas, and maybe even a baptism that initiates you into
a new professional niche.
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