Plaintive, beautiful, broken, nostalgic. David Bowie’s new single Where Are We Now?, released today, is a return to his Berlin years both lyrically and musically. Bowie’s 66th birthday is today – maybe a good moment to recall those times in Berlin (1976-1979) when he produced some [...]

Indians have taken to the streets to protest against violence against women. India, the world’s biggest democracy, is a great big bhel puri of languages, religions, customs and manners.  Special interests are as diverse as religious customs, but for the past month Indians have been [...]

William Blake: Seven Spririts of God. Now he had some really funny ideas. Whenever we receive wisdom that’s come down through many centuries, we can be certain that it has lost half its original bodyweight, accrued an encrustation of opinion, developed a strange lopsided bias, and [...]

Negotiating 2012 required a sound umbrella and a stiff upper lip. Hurricane Sandy Well, that was quite a year. We have all been buffeted by the stormy energies of the planets in 2012. In particular, the cardinal signs – Aries, Capricorn, Cancer and Libra – have been in a high wind. It’s [...]

In the Northern Hemisphere, nature is sleeping. The leaves have fallen and the ground is frost-hard. Here at England’s navel, dusk is at 4pm. The dark is rising outside my window. Today the Sun moved into the sign of the strange goatfish, Capricorn, ruled by cold Saturn. Capricorn is the [...]

Imagine if you suddenly found yourself reading Don Draper’s (from TV’s Mad Men) chart. Rather casually a while ago, I agreed to draw up someone’s chart while he was here talking business with my partner. He was a suit-wearing, briefcase-porting, pen wielder — [...]

Rene Magritte: Rider in the Woods My friend Q has been rather cross recently. As far as she is concerned, life is not working out. Somewhere on the journey, she took a wrong turn and found herself in a thicket of gorse and shale instead of travelling through the beautiful beech wood she had [...]

With his customary impeccable timing (Saturn in Virgo), jazzman Dave Brubeckwas died yesterday, just two days short of his 92nd birthday. But today is his actual Solar Return, the moment in the year the Sun returns to the place it was when you were born. The planets of ending and [...]

Various Aspects by Deborah Stevenson Is your head about to explode  From information overload? Just asking. Last time Jupiter was in Gemini, the internet was probably not in your pocket. That was 12 years ago. Jupiter is the planet of expansion. Gemini is the sign of facts, data, journalism, [...]

Through grey mist a ship of fools floats out to sea under the Golden Gate Bridge. The year is 1950, exactly half way through the “American Century”. Much has been written about Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film The Master. It’s a warp and weft of images, sounds and words [...]

Yesterday evening my daughter told me that her friend has been receiving nasty anonymous notes. These have been left in her desk for about a week. It is a recrudescence of previous bullying but in a new form. I thought it was a perfect example of astrology in action. Mercury, the planet of [...]

This lunar eclipse today puts an enormous amount of pressure on the poor old Moon in Gemini. It’s as if all the bullies in the playground are standing in a semi-circle pointing an accusing finger at her. Just look at the chart (see below) and you can see that every planet except Mercury [...]

A detail from Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights “Beware the slinking whisperer who whispers into the hearts of people, whether he is from the world of spirits or the world of humans.” – Sura 114, The Qur’an “The mind is its own place, and in [...]

Black Iris III The American painter, Georgia O’Keeffe, was an über-Scorp, with Sun, Moon, Jupiter and Mercury all in the sign that rules – among other things – dissection and sexuality.  Her bold studies of irises show how such things can be beautiful. Like some other Scorpio artists – [...]

After I gave birth to my first daughter in a London hospital, I shared a room with three other women – a Palestinian, an Israeli, and a London Iranian. No kidding. There was some awkward negotiating around drips, cots, nurses and nappies. But the presence of tiny new babies creates a certain [...]

Neptune in Pisces – right at the beginning again. Chiron, the wounded healer, in Pisces too. Both planets have turned direct this week. If you need to cry, let your tears flow. It is part of the healing. Listen to kd lang (Sun conjunct Neptune, Chiron in Pisces) and Roy Orbison (Chiron-Moon [...]

Where is Woody Harrelson when you need him? (as Tallahassee in Zombieland) My friend the doctor has some really hard choices to make. He told me this week that he’s having to write up the “Do Not Resuscitate” protocol for one of the care homes he visits. The problem is this. [...]

Amy Winehouse (born with Saturn in Scorpio) Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just gloss over the nastier side of human nature and pretend there’s no jealousy, no murderous rage, no stomach churning fear, no madness? We could all live in a happy, smiling Libra world…. but we [...]

The boy hero was educated by Chiron, the centaur. Here depicted by John Singer Sargent Silver-footed Thetis, the sea goddess, leaned over the the River Styx, and dipped her demigod baby into its dark current. The magical water made the boy invulnerable. But there was one spot that stayed dry – [...]

October by James Tissot, who was born with Sun Libra, Saturn and Mercury in Scorpio. Saturn moving into Scorpio represents a major energy shift, and it’s time to apply some astrological knowledge instead of just theorising about it. Saturn likes rules, boundaries and organisation, so [...]