Brezsny will
speak and present The Televisionary Oracle at Powell's
on Hawthorne, 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 238-1668. 7:30 pm
Thursday, June 8. Free.
Of the 250 e-mails
Brezsny receives each week, only about three of them say,
"You suck!"
Brezsny's basic
recipe for optimism: "Give 50 percent of your psyche to
being aware of the darkness and 50 percent of your psyche
to cultivating happiness."
Brezsny thinks
it's his responsibility to watch three or four hours of
television each week just to see how people are being polluted
and brainwashed.
Every Wednesday, people across the state flip past Willamette
Week's political exposés, gossip, music coverage,
arts stories and the weekly scathing theater review to arrive--at
last!--at the horoscope. Finally, some good, useful news
to guide the self-interested soul through the next seven
days.
Rob Brezsny's hugely popular horoscope column, Free Will
Astrology, appears in 118 publications and reaches more
than nine million readers. But Brezsny's fans have had to
worship him from a distance, communicating only through
e-mail, calls to his 900 number, occasional long-distance
clearing ceremonies or snail mail to his home in Northern
California. Now, the multitudes have a chance to grovel
before his greatness as he embarks upon a tour to promote
his novel, The Televisionary Oracle, which brings
together his dedication to the occult, rock-and-roll and
feminism. And Brezsny, who has never had to actually hang
out with his flock, is now hip-deep in devotees. Though
Brezsny may have a magical mainline to the elusive future,
he never imagined he would achieve New Age guru status.
"I was a left-brain-dominated, all-A student in high school,"
Brezsny recalls, "very skilled in thinking logically and
analytically. I think I probably would have turned into
an alcoholic if I had kept on that path. Luckily, I discovered
rock-and-roll and astrology at about the same time. They
lit up the other side of my brain and showed me the beauty
and power of using intuitive functions and playing with
the mystical side of things."
Brezsny took astrology very seriously and hated newspaper
horoscope columns for their superficiality. "I stumbled
upon an opportunity to write such a column in 1978," he
explains, "when I was looking through the classified ads
in the Santa Cruz Good Times for a used bike--mine
had been stolen." He answered an advertisement for an astrology
writer; Good Times paid him $15 a week. At the same
time Brezsny was studying poetry at UCSC. "I had the sly
idea to perpetrate poetry through the astrology column--that
was one of the ways I felt I could do it with integrity."
The people who turn straight to Free Will Astrology every
week are certainly entertained by Brezsny's irreverent and
intelligent writing style, but they are also searching for
a positive spin on their immediate future. "My column is
built on the belief that we all live self-fulfilling prophecies
every day of our lives," says Brezsny. "Every one of us
tends to live the life we expect will happen. One of the
reasons I fill my column with optimistic or expansive information
is that it activates people's desire to live more optimistic
and expansive lives."
Brezsny uses a simple formula to write his column, starting
by drawing up a chart for each sign. "There is a systematic
or scientific basis for what I do," he says. "Within that
matrix I improvise with imagination and receptivity."
Brezsny describes imagination as the ability to make pictures
of things that don't exist yet--people use it to shape their
lives. "In the occult tradition in the Western world," he
explains, "the imagination is actually an organ of perception
of things that are invisible to the five senses." The receptivity
task requires that Brezsny soak up information that he would
normally tune out. "I just picked up a copy of Military
History magazine," he says, "and I'll read Reader's
Digest now and then. Or I'll go to Matucci's, a working-class
bar in San Anselmo near where I live, and listen to the
conversations."
In his column, Brezsny urges readers to honor their own
receptivity. For those who aren't tuned in to the extrasensory
message network, Brezsny has developed an easy divination
technique called Videomancy: "Formulate the question that
you want the oracle to address," he instructs, "approach
your TV reverently and flick on the power button. The first
human speech that comes out is the response."
A few weeks ago in San Francisco, a radio show invited
Brezsny to do some phone prophecy. "I devised this system
whereby we used the characters of Friends to provide
oracles. I typed transcripts of the shows, then cut out
lines and put them in a big hat. The point being, the best
prophecy doesn't tell you what you should do, but rather
gets you thinking about your problem in different ways."
Brezsny enjoys sending messages to his adoring masses through
his column, over the airwaves and even psychically. Now
he's learning what it's like to meet his fans face-to-face.
"Most people are very respectful and intelligent. The line
is long and they're one of many; they keep their conversation
to pithy comments. There are very few people who say, 'Hey,
I'm falling apart, help me.'"
Some go so far as to call Brezsny a spiritual leader, but
he discounts that notion. "I've always tried to convey the
message that I'm a stand-in for their own inner teacher,"
he says. "In a way, it's been good that I haven't been very
visible, because people are free to project onto me all
sorts of fantasies and ideas about who I am, which I think
actually helps activate their relationship with their inner
sources of wisdom."
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 26,
2000
|
