The Real Folk Horoscope

By Cody Lyman
Reader Columnist

Cancer

As patron saint of food and fellow Cancer Anthony Bourdain once said, “I’m not afraid to look like a big, hairy, smelly, foreign devil in Tokyo, though I do my best not to. I really do.”

This month, life will feel a lot like your own personal Tokyo.

Leo

The painter and occultist Austin Osman Spare, who was a devout worshipper of all that is the subconscious, was highly suspicious of the leading lights of his day in the realms of the psyche, going so far as to refer to Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud as “Junk and Fraud,” which, I won’t lie, makes me laugh. This, however, is not Spare’s place to speak to or for you, my dear Leos. CG Jung is the one who was on your team, and it is he who said, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” See what he did there?

You might find it useful to take a page out of his playbook this month. Quibbles be quashed!

Virgo

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, whatever else she may or may not have been, was astoundingly practical in her approach to life, saying things like, “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one,” and, “What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family,” and, “I want you to be concerned about your next-door neighbor. Do you even know your next-door neighbor?” It is that sort of straightforward stick-to-itiveness that will be most valuable to follow this month. Next month you can move on to her more abstract lessons––for instance, “Never travel faster than your guardian angel can fly,” or, for the masochists among us, “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”

Libra

Greetings, Mr. and Mrs. Balance. With an entourage like yours, comprising Gandhi, Putin, Nietzsche, Heinrich Himmler, Henry Wallace, Jimmy Carter, needless to say Sigourney Weaver and Snoop Dogg, I think it best you keep sampling a bit of everything.

Carry on.

Scorpio

And now a bleeding word from the sweet, tar-stained, old fingertips of humanist Kurt Vonnegut––“About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday, and almost everybody has a palm.”

Sagittarius

I wonder if you can guess who in your tribe said, “Nothing in the world can one imagine beforehand, not the least thing. Everything is made up of so many particles that cannot be foreseen.” Then went on to say, “Mankind will discover objects in space sent to us by The Watchers.”

Consider yourself forewarned. Don’t be a Nostradamus.

Capricorn

An out-of-whack aspect in your third house will amplify an existing discrepancy this month, so that you may find yourself relating across time and space with your sister Janis Joplin, when she said, “On stage, I make love to 25,000 people. Then I go home alone.”

Aquarius

Between shrieking like a banshee and breaking up The Beatles, Yoko Ono said a wonderful thing: “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is a reality.”

Pisces

Understand that behind Mr. Rogers, there was Mrs. Rogers. And behind Dr. Seuss, there was Ted Geisel.

Aries

Charlie Chaplin, made famous for his silent films, uttered what might be the greatest pun of all time. “In the end,” he said, “everything is a gag.” It’s an idea that transcends cultures. Act accordingly.

Taurus

Shirley Temple said, “When I was 14, I was the oldest I ever was. I’ve been getting younger ever since.” We can all be so lucky. It’s a good month to revisit your childhood. Let the philosophy of Ms. Temple be your beacon.

Gemini

It’s telling that between Donald Trump, Kanye West, Marilyn Monroe, Prince, JFK, Walt Whitman, Dean Martin, Bob Dylan, Barbara Bush, Angelina Jolie, Anderson Cooper, the Olsen twins, Morgan Freeman, Che Guevara and Stevie Nicks, I was unable to find a single pertinent quote that bears repeating to you. It’s as though the Universe were saying, “Be your own person.”

Cody Lyman was chemically engineered in a lab with orange walls to bring frustration and/or good fortune within your reach. Which will it be? It’s anybody’s guess. Check back next month for another peek into the void.