"But what about the other 20 percent?" my forlorn inquisitors press on, praying that I'm not betraying their trust. "Are you saying that your horoscopes are only partially true?"

I assure them that my doubt proves my love. By cultivating a tender, cheerful skepticism, I inoculate myself against the virus of fanaticism.

This ensures that astrology will remain a supple tool in my hands, an adaptable art form, and not a rigid, explain-it-all dogma that distorts and overliteralizes the very mysteries it seeks to illuminate.

I am, I confess, absolutely certain that I loathe absolute certainty. Rabid belief is a mental illness for which I aspire to be an antidote. But wouldn't it be fraudulent for me to sabotage -- I mean heal -- only the manias that repel me and are easiest for me to ridicule? Of course, which is why the tricksters I most respect are those who mess with their own totems and taboos -- like my anarchist acquaintance from Eugene, Ore., who shocked his compadres by torching their prized black flag in front of them.

During one of my recent lectures, an audience member wearing a T-shirt covered with mathematical equations hurled a hostile query at me during the question and answer segment. "Why do you diss science so relentlessly?" he complained.

My accuser obviously wasn't a thorough reader of my column. Otherwise he would have come across horoscopes that belied his theory, like the ones in which I reverently quoted astronomical research from Sky & Telescope magazine, conjured metaphors from my study of bird migration patterns and invoked the work of seminal physicists Max Planck and Erwin Schrödinger.

"Some of my best friends are scientists," I teased him, then quickly moved on to the next question. The dude hadn't done his homework, for Sagan's sake. I wasn't about to indulge him in his ignorance. Had he demonstrated more scientific objectivity, I would have gladly said the following: While I certainly do sneak in critiques of scientism now and then, they're no more frequent than my skewerings of New Age fluff-and-crap-mongers. I am an equal-opportunity skeptic. I believe in science about 80 percent -- I give it the same degree of credence as I give all the systems of thought I love and use.

Of course that means I get no respect from serious scientists and hard-ass astrologers alike. "He has no standing in the profession," declared Henry Weingarten, New York Astrology Center's director, quoted in a story about me in the New York Times. But I like it that way. Thanks, Henry, my man! The more completely I'm dismissed by credentialed experts, the fewer limits there are on my aspiration to be a perfect nobody.

Do the planets control our fates? Are we merely puppets of cosmic forces? "Hell, no!" I exult in my best imitation of a Southern cracker's drawl. My utter lack of stature among professional stargazers means I'm free to create horoscopes that pump up my readers' free will. The absence of peer pressure coming to bear on me from esteemed colleagues allows me to reinvent the astrology column as a poetic tool for nourishing the imagination.

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