Mars and Venus by Sandro Botticelli (c.1483) The god of war –- naked, defenceless, vulnerable – sleeps with his mouth half open, exhausted by lovemaking (we suppose), while Venus, the goddess of love, with not a hair out of place, fully clothed, regards him quite coolly, stroking his ankle [...]

Eurasian shaman, early 20th century from a Russian ethnographic collection. “Sometimes a wild god comes to the table. He is awkward and does not know the ways Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver. His voice makes vinegar from wine. “When the wild god arrives at the door, [...]

Gravity opens with the longest, loveliest view of our pearlescent planet, so large and luminous — and behind it black space. The Earth is our home, our heart, our mother — but what happens when we cut the cord that ties us to her? (Spoiler alert. Pretty much all is revealed.) Dr [...]

Two Fridas (1939) Frida Kahlo’s paintings have become so much part of popular culture that it is possible to forget just how great they are. Her Venus is in Gemini, the sign of the storyteller, and it is closely conjunct Pluto, the planet of transformation. Her self-portraits tell the [...]

Dona Elena Flores de Carrillo by Diego Rivera. (1952) The Mexican muralist Diego Rivera was born on December 8, 1886. The British painter Lucian Freud was born on December 8, 1922. The sign of Sagittarius – half-man, half-beast. Centaurs were notorious for their brawling and rapine. Animal [...]

Walter Crane imagined the beast as a boar. Once upon a time, in a country rather like this one, not very long ago, lived a young woman called Belle… Anne Anderson imagined a sort of beaky beast The first written version of Beauty and the Beast comes from mid-18th century France, but such [...]

Well, Mercury has begun his long walk out of the Underworld. Today he is at 2° Scorpio — only another 28° to go. It’s was a powerful retrograde, as you might expect when the planet of mind goes through the sign of depth psychology. Of course, Mercury is still in Scorpio until the [...]

Scarlett Johansson. Sun in Sag. Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Cap Venus is about money and love and beauty. Her natal placement tells us about all those things. It tells us about how we love, what we love and what makes us loveable. Venus is also about seduction. How we are attractive, whom we [...]

Elvis. Capricorn Sun. Venus is beauty. Capricorn is how these men are beautiful. Strong brows, kissable lips, a direct gaze. No wonder, on a cursory search, I found seven of Hollywood’s handsomest ever leading men have Venus in Capricorn. There’s a fleshy, mobile quality to quite a [...]

Jean Marais as a modern Orpheus, in Cocteau’s visionary and beautiful movie of the same name. Someone said: “Bring the bodies upstairs.” The house I’m staying in is 300 years old with walls as thick as the span of your arm. The room I sleep in is as dark and close as a coffin. I […]

Jean Seberg in A Bout de Souffle (1960). Sweet and sexy. Scorpio Sun, Venus in Sag. I’ve been looking at loads of pictures of actors with the planet of attraction in the sign of the centaur – and I have to say the stand out quality which they all share is sex appeal. Gerard Depardieu, [...]

In Blue. Wassily Kandinsky: Saturn in Scorpio, Venus in Sagittarius The weather changed yesterday and a dry, icy wind sent tiny clouds fleeting across the sky, trees rattling and swaying, branches to the floor, drifts of leaves whirling up like spirits. Autumn had arrived overnight. Today, [...]

Peter Higgs, Emeritus Professor of Physics at Edinburgh, was – finally – awarded the Nobel Prize yesterday. It was entirely expected, since his hypothesis – that there’s a subatomic particle called a boson – was finally proved correct in a (rather large) [...]

Prometheus by Andre Durand. Srelton: Uranian Is there a gay planet? Not really, but perhaps for obvious reasons, the planet of revolution, eccentricity and difference, Uranus, often makes itself powerfully felt in the natal charts of gay people. Some famous singing examples are Elton John with [...]

Prometheus, Nicolas-Sebastien Adam. Prometheus, the rebel god, stole fire from heaven and brought it to the human race. This made Zeus, king of the gods, cross, because fire was one of the gods’ secrets, along with lightning and thunder and stuff. According to some versions of the story, [...]

Beatles fans in the 1960s. Uranus conjunct Pluto. Neptune in Scorpio. “Madness,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche, “is the exception in individuals, but the rule in groups.” That would explain why psychopaths rise to the top then. The rest of us mill around being all [...]

Venus at her Mirror, Velazquez. Today and this week, the planet of beauty, art and peace, Venus, looks into a mirror that magnifies her image: that is Neptune her big blue brother swirling through the outer solar system. Venus is activating the water grand trine that connects Saturn (making [...]

Sea Nettle jellyfish. Photo by Fred Hsu from Wikimedia Commons. I have just been attempting to write a post inspired by the following aphorism. “Madness is the exception in individuals; the rule in groups.” On the whole, I think Nietzsche had a point. Yet, the more you think about [...]

This terrific self-portrait dates from 1927. Just as a supplement to the Satie piece: here is Suzanne Valadon’s chart. She was a wonderful woman, a free spirit, single mother, great painter and an inspiration for many other artists (Neptune in the 7th), in particular Renoir. For a while [...]

D likes to mooch around the local junk market on Thursdays. Today he came home with an old record player. We are spinning discs that have been in storage for – ahem – decades this afternoon. Perfect on a sunny evening with Mercury retrograding through the sign of nostalgia, [...]