TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Happy Holy Daze, Taurus! I’ve been meditating on the perfect holiday gifts for you. What symbolic items might inspire you to take maximum advantage of the cosmic currents in 2006? And the answer is: several full-length mirrors that you can arrange in such a way so as to study what you look like from behind and from the side as well as from the front. What’s my reasoning? I believe you should get to know yourself much, much better in the coming months. You should gaze into your own mysteries far more frequently than you ever have before, and try to see yourself with as much compassionate objectivity as possible.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Your self-image is too small, in my opinion. You’ve crammed your identity into a few pigeonholes, and it’s dying to escape. To launch you on the path to expansion, let’s stimulate your imagination with some exercises. Start by visualizing yourself as being the opposite gender. What would your name be? Now picture yourself as being a different race and having an alternate ethnic background. How would that affect your philosophy of life? Imagine yourself working at a job or career other than the one you actually have, and living in a different city, and making $20,000 more a year than you actually do. Now dream up some more fantasies about other selves who might be lurking within you.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In Sicily, the word “mafia” once meant beauty, charm, excellence, or boldness. In its modern usage, both in Italian and English, none of the old senses of the word have survived. It refers to organized crime, and conveys a sinister mood. I encourage you to identify a comparable thing in your own life, Taurus: a situation, influence, or relationship that was formerly a blessing, but that has now degenerated into a source of darkness. Is there anything you can do to resurrect its original glory? If it’s even remotely possible, now is the time you’re most likely to accomplish it.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In 1953, Ena Bridge got engaged to Tony Baker in their hometown of Kent, England. But they broke up and lost touch with each other until recently. Now they’re engaged again, planning to go through with the marriage they shrunk back from 52 years ago. I regard them as your good luck charms, Taurus. Soon you, too, will be returning to the site of a long lost dream, or revisiting a desire you abandoned years ago, or exploring a potential union you gave up on in the past.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In ancient Greek myth, Prometheus stole the gods’ fire and bequeathed it to human beings, allowing them to cook, stay warm when the weather was cold, and make tools and bricks and pottery. According to my reading of the astrological omens, a Prometheus-like influence is now hovering at the peripheries of your world, angling to provide you with a boon that’s pretty damn good, even if it isn’t as monumental as fire. There’s a catch, however. This benefactor will not be able to bestow the gift unless you aggressively ask for it and unless you are alert for its arrival from an unexpected direction.