She rides a tiger. A trident, a scimitar and a thunderbolt are among her favoured weapons. Yet she smiles and clasps a lotus in one of her ten hands. She is Durga, champion of compassion – one of the many faces of the divine feminine – Shiva’s equal, demon’s bane. And [...]
See morePlanets & Asteroids & Lights
Articles about planets, minor planets and asteroids and the Lights, which means the Sun and the Moon in astrology speak.
From beneath the earth…
After making the sun and the moon and the sky and the mountains and the sea, and after making the animals and the birds and the trees, the creator decided to make something really special. So he fashioned men and women out of clay. But he did not want them all to be the same, […]
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Being Indulgent
Practical, understated chic. Perfect for a weekend in the Cotswolds. With calves like that maybe his Jupiter’s in Aquarius! “Just bought a pair of boots,” he muttered, trying not to look too pleased. I thought for a minute. We already live with a small river of his shoes that [...]
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Nobody’s Perfect: the astrology of Curtis and Monroe
Two kids from the wrong side of the tracks play pretend. Norma Jean Mortensen teaching Bernie Schwartz how to kiss – one of the sweetest scenes on celluloid. That great movie Some Like it Hot. still makes me laugh. Of course, Norma Jean and Bernie had blossomed into Marilyn Monroe and [...]
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A God for Every Sign – yay
I find reading old astrology books a very good way to get to sleep. Dane Rudhyar is marvellously soporific. I hope some of it will filter into my dreams, and be reborn as a brilliant insight. Last night I turned to CEO Carter, who is an old stand-by in the wee small hours. And in […]
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Heavenly grrrl power!
Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Brazil. Is the mother goddess giving a helping hand? In Brazil, Dilma Rousseff; in Australia Julia Gillard, who’s next? Are sisters finally doing it for themselves? Here’s what I think happened in the heavens that might give us a clue. On the [...]
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Astrologer’s Serendipity
Martin Luther declares war on the Catholic Church. copyright Trustees of the British Museum. Serendipity – what a lovely word. I’ve just had a beautiful serendipitous moment. You find out one thing while you’re looking for something else. In this case, I looked into the past [...]
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Lady Gaga vs Madonna
Can you believe the shoes? Lady Gaga has finally sauntered onto my middle-aged radar by wearing that outrageous dress. Wow – it’s punk and glam rock simultaneously! She’s got chutzpah. Every generation has (at least) one – popstalala with ass and attitude. So it’s [...]
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The Subtle Knife
Whenever I go past the alley of trees in this picture, I think of how somewhere between them may be the Sunderland Avenue, North Oxford, Summer 2010.gateway to a parallel Oxford. In His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman‘s fantasy trilogy, Will Parry, the boy hero, creates an invisible [...]
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A little girl names the dark lord
Hades (Pluto) Oxford is a small town with a famous university in the middle of England. But it’s much more than that too. It’s the centre of a web of influence that stretches forward and backward in time and across continents. This influence is intellectual and political, but also [...]
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Synchronicity, dreams and a case of exact astrological aspects
I’m going to tell a story that starts off badly and ends up well. Last night I dreamt that I was the only person left in the world and I could not find anything with which to kill myself. I woke up abruptly, terrified, with these words going through my head: “The world will not [...]
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A few more examples of Jupiter and death
Redeemer? After my last post, I thought I’d check to see what Jupiter was doing at some famous demises. Naturally, the psycho-analyst Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) came to mind. He had some interesting ideas about the end of life. In particular, he was of the opinion that we were quite [...]
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David Cameron, Jupiter and death
David Cameron with his first son Ivan in 2002. Ivan died in 2009. It’s remarkable how often in families a death and a birth happen in quick succession. Poor David Cameron lost his father today just weeks after his wife gave birth to that darling baby. My wise friend Judith, who has seen [...]
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Newspaper horoscopes: should you bother?
Desire Dehau reading a newspaper by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1890). They didn’t have horoscope columns back then but it’s a nice picture. I wrote this a while ago for a pilot partwork, but I think it’s worth republishing. Every day in newspapers and on the internet, [...]
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Why I love Mercury retrograde
Yes – it’s that time again. Mercury is retrograde, so astrologers say don’t put anything in the post, don’t sign contracts, don’t buy computers, don’t make plans bla bla bla. If you paid attention to that you’d be spending about a fifth of your year [...]
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How I struck oil on holiday
On Winchelsea Beach, the mud is dark sable. Sometimes, you slither across the top of it. But sometimes your foot sinks right in, mud spurts between your toes. And sometimes, you sink much deeper, over your ankles, up to the knees. When that happens, your feet encounter another texture, silkier [...]
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Times are changing
This is from an old copy of the defunct magazine Punch. I can never see the joke, but it does seem appropriate. We had dinner with an entertainingly gloomy Irishman last night. He’s clearly enjoying the credit crunch a lot – because it means that he can wallow in deepest pessimism, [...]
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Stress for Leos
Tonight is the New Moon at 17 Leo in “interesting” aspect the outer planets. Anyone with a birthday around now – that is between August 5 and August 15 is probably feeling stressed out. You are under tremendous pressure from the planets. Are you having a serious existential [...]
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A Special Relationship – but do they understand each other?
She’s just not that interested. How do you tell that to someone? It’s tricky – especially if you’re reading someone’s chart and you can tell by the look in his eyes and the still way in which he’s holding himself, that this is really important – and [...]
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Take a vow
You know what, we big picture people are not the only ones to heave a huge sigh of relief when Saturn finally gets into Libra for a good long stretch. (Personally, I can already feel the pressure easing. ). Saturn himself is jumping for joy and kicking his heels in the air. Why? Because [...]
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