ARIES (March 21-April 19): According to a Sufi aphorism, you can’t be sure that you are in possession of the righteous truth unless a thousand people have called you a heretic. If that’s accurate, you still have a ways to go before you can be certified. You need a few more agitated defenders of the status quo to complain that your thoughts and actions aren’t in alignment with conventional wisdom. Go round them up! Ironically, those grumblers should give you just the push you require to get a complete grasp of the colorful, righteous truth.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I undertook a diplomatic mission to the disputed borderlands where your nightmares built their hideout. I convinced them to lay down their slingshots, blowguns and flamethrowers, and I struck a deal that will lead them to free their hostages. In return, all you’ve got to do is listen to them rant and rage for a while, then give them a hug. Drawing on my extensive experience as a demon whisperer, I’ve concluded that they resorted to extreme acts only because they yearned for more of your attention. So grant them that small wish, please!

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Have you ever been wounded by a person you cared for deeply? Most of us have. Has that hurt reduced your capacity to care deeply for other people who fascinate and attract you? Probably. If you suspect that you harbor such lingering damage, the next six weeks will be a favorable time to take dramatic measures to address it. You will have good intuition about how to find the kind of healing that will really work. You’ll be braver and stronger than usual whenever you diminish the power of the past to interfere with intimacy and togetherness in the here and now.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” So said Helen Schucman in A Course in Miracles. Personally, I don’t agree with the first part of that advice. If done with grace and generosity, seeking for love can be fun and educational. It can inspire us to escape our limitations and expand our charm. But I do agree that one of the best ways to make ourselves available for love is to hunt down and destroy the barriers that we have built against love. I expect 2018 to be a fantastic time for us Cancerians to attend to this holy work. Get started now!

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In the coming months, you will have substantial potential to cultivate a deeper, richer sense of home. Here are tips on how to take maximum advantage: 1. Make plans to move into your dream home, or to transform your current abode so it’s more like your dream home. 2. Obtain a new mirror that reflects your beauty in the best possible ways. 3. Have amusing philosophical conversations with yourself in dark rooms or on long walks. 4. Acquire a new stuffed animal or magic talisman to cuddle with. 5. Once a month, when the moon is full, literally dance with your own shadow. 6. Expand and refine your relationship with autoerotic pleasures. 7. Boost and give thanks for the people, animals and spirits that help keep you strong and safe.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Deuces are wild. Contradictions will turn out to be unpredictably useful. Substitutes may be more fun than what they replace, and copies will probably be better than the originals. Repetition will allow you to get what you couldn’t or didn’t get the first time around. Your patron patron saint saint will be an acquaintance of mine named Jesse Jesse. She’s an ambidextrous, bisexual, double-jointed matchmaker with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Ireland. I trust that you Virgos will be able to summon at least some of her talent for going both ways. I suspect that you may be able to have your cake and eat it, too.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): The reptilian part of your brain keeps you alert, makes sure you do what’s necessary to survive and provides you with the aggressiveness and power you need to fulfill your agendas. Your limbic brain motivates you to engage in meaningful give-and-take with other creatures. It’s the source of your emotions and your urges to nurture. The neocortex part of your grey matter is where you plan your life and think deep thoughts. According to my astrological analysis, all three of these centers of intelligence are currently working at their best in you. You may be as smart as you have ever been. How will you use your enhanced savvy?

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The classical composer and pianist Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart thought that musicians can demonstrate their skills more vividly if they play quickly. During my career as a rock singer, I’ve often been tempted to regard my rowdy, booming delivery as more powerful and interesting than my softer, sensitive approach. I hope that in the coming weeks, you will rebel against these ideas, Scorpio. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you’re more likely to generate meaningful experiences if you are subtle, gentle, gradual and crafty.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): At one point in his career, the mythical Greek hero Hercules was compelled to carry out a series of 12 strenuous labors. Many of them were glamorous adventures: Engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a monstrous lion; liberating the god Prometheus, who’d been so kind to humans, from being tortured by an eagle; and visiting a magical orchard to procure golden apples that conferred immortality when eaten. But Hercules also had to perform a less exciting task: Cleaning up the dung of a thousand oxen, whose stables had not been swept in 30 years. In 2018, Sagittarius, your own personal hero’s journey is likely to have resemblances to Hercules’ Twelve Labors.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Humans have used petroleum as a fuel since ancient times. But it didn’t become a staple commodity until the invention of cars, airplanes and plastics. Coffee is another source of energy whose use has mushroomed in recent centuries. The first European coffee shop appeared in Rome in 1645. Today there are more than 25,000 Starbucks on the planet. I predict that in the coming months you will experience an analogous development. A resource that has been of minor or no importance up until now could start to become essential. Do you have a sense of what it is? Start sniffing around.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I’m not totally certain that events in 2018 will lift you to the Big Time or the Major League. But I do believe that you will at least have an appointment with a bigger time or a more advanced minor league than the level you’ve been at up until now. Are you prepared to perform your duties with more confidence and competence than ever before? Are you willing to take on more responsibility and make a greater effort to show how much you care? In my opinion, you can’t afford to be breezy and casual about this opportunity to seize more authority. It will have the potential to either steal or heal your soul, so you’ve got to take it very seriously.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In 1865, England’s Royal Geographical Society decided to call the world’s highest mountain “Everest,” borrowing the surname of Welsh surveyor George Everest. Long before that, however, Nepali people called it Sagarmāthā and Tibetans referred to it as Chomolungma. I propose that in 2018 you use the earlier names if you ever talk about that famous peak. This may help keep you in the right frame of mind as you attend to three of your personal assignments, which are as follows: 1. Familiarize yourself with the origins of people and things you care about. 2. Reconnect with influences that were present at the beginnings of important developments in your life. 3. Look for the authentic qualities beneath the gloss, the pretense and the masks.

Homework: Make up a secret identity for yourself, complete with a new name and astrological sign. Tell all at Freewillastrology.com.

Q: I’m a woman, and I recently made a new professional connection—a man who’s excited about my work. We’re planning on doing a big important project together. I’m worried that he’s interested in me romantically (based on a few things he’s said). I’m not interested in him in that way. What’s the right thing to say to get that across?—All Business

A: It’s tempting to get everything out in the open right away: “I’ve run the numbers on your chances of having sex with me, and they’re pretty close to the odds of your being crushed to death by a middle-aged dentist falling out of the sky.”

Informing a guy pronto that you aren’t romantically interested in him would be the right thing to do if he were just some persistent Tinder date you wanted to unload forever. But you’re hoping to have a continuing business relationship with this guy. So even if it were wildly obvious that he has the hots for you, the last thing you should do is mention that particular elephant in the room.

Cognitive psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker points out that “most social interaction” involves some conflicting goals. Pinker explains that “indirect speech”— not saying exactly what you think or want—is a way that two people can maintain their relationship as it is (even when both suspect or are pretty sure that their desired outcomes are in sharp conflict). The sometimes tiny measure of ambiguity—uncertainty about another person’s goals—that is fostered by indirect speech does a big job. It allows the person who wants something the other doesn’t to save face, enabling the two to preserve their common ground.

So, your refraining from telling the guy that you aren’t interested (in so many words) allows him to cling to the ego-preserving possibility that you might be. If he goes direct on you—tells you that he wants to sex up your business relationship—that’s when you likewise get explicit: Tell him straight out that you want to keep things strictly professional. However, this may not be necessary if you act in ways that say “just business!” Avoid going flirty in communicating with him, and schedule meetings for the utterly unsexiest times and places possible. Nobody ends up doing the walk of shame because they had one too many double espressos.

Q: There’s always been an attraction between this guy and me. I’ve been thinking of testing the waters with him romantically, but he recently mentioned that he freaks out when women cry. He says he just has no idea what to do. Well, I’m an emotional person—generally happy but also a big crier. Are we a bad match, or could I teach him to soothe me?—Waterworks

A: Most men are comfortable dealing with any leaky item—as long as it can be fixed with an adjustable wrench and a Phillips screwdriver.

If there’s a decoder ring for human emotion, it’s the female brain. Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen finds that men, generally speaking, just aren’t as good as women at what’s called “theory of mind”—the ability to “infer what other people might be thinking or intending.” He explains that women, from childhood on, tend to be the “empathizers” of the species, driven to identify others’ “emotions and thoughts, and to respond with the appropriate emotions” (say, by hugging a teary-eyed person instead of treating them like a statue weeping blood).

In contrast with female “empathizers,” Baron-Cohen describes men as the “systematizers” of the species. This is a fancy way of saying that they’re engineering-focused—driven, from a young age, to identify how inanimate stuff works and “derive the underlying rules that govern the behavior of a system.” However, these are “reliable” rules, like the law of gravity—nothing helpful for fathoming what the girlfriend’s got swirling around in her head when she suddenly goes all funeralface.

Typically, women believe, “If he loved me, he’d figure it out.” Um, no. Not here in realityland. Assume that most heterosexual men are sucky at emotional tealeaf reading. When you’re in boohooville (or on your way), tell a man what you’re feeling and how he could help—for example, by just listening and rubbing your back. In time, this may help him avoid reacting to the welling of that very first tear by diving behind the couch and yelling, “Incoming! One o’clock! Alpha team, flank left!”