Anthony Robbins, self-invented Anthony Robbins is a phenomeon. If you haven’t come across him yet – well, you will. In a nut-shell he is the top, or one of the top, personal development salesmen in the world – hosting seminars, writing books, making the infamous [...]

The action planet Mars has slowly toiled backwards through Virgo for months, but now there is only one more week to go. He turns on the 14th. Then we’ll still have another two months of Mars in Virgo as he makes his way back through almost the entire sign. On July 4, he moves into […]

Steal away with the fairies for the next few months while Venus dances in Gemini “At the beginning of each summer, when the milk-white hawthorn is in bloom, anointing the air with its sweet odour, and miles and miles of golden whin adorn the glens and hill-slopes, the fairies come forth [...]

Ha – I bet you thought I had forgotten, but we are now in full retrograde season, so I am ready to pick up this Saturn Return series where I left off. (Mercury, Mars and Saturn are all doing the backwards shuffle.) In previous posts I gave an overview of Saturn Returns in general (Part [...]

Mars, the planet of the physical, is going backwards slowly, coming to an opposition with Neptune, planet vague, which drifted into his own sign, Pisces, just a little while ago. Mercury has slipped backwards into Pisces too for another brief swim in the sea. Pay attention to your dreams, your [...]

Zeus to the Greeks; Jupiter or Jove to the Romans A friend wrote this to me recently. “I have a terrible time when Jupiter is aspecting things. Rather than being a benevolent and blossoming force, he’s like the biggest bitch in the world, but too mean-spirited to even talk to me [...]

Ingres: The Turkish Bath. Aries is the sign of beginnings, haste, inspiration. It’s the fire sign that strikes the spark that sets the world aflame. So what happens when the planet of speed, Mercury, turns tail and retreats in such a go-getting part of the Zodiac? And hang on, [...]

Second Afghan War Six British soldiers were killed in Kandahar province this week. The oldest was 33, the same age as Jesus when he died, and the youngest was 19. The Afghan War has been going on for 10 years and 153 days. World War Two lasted just under six years in comparison. British [...]

Pablo Picasso loved the virile masculinity of the bull – the cojones. He painted and drew and modelled and made hundreds of bulls. It’s well known that he especially identified himself with the Minotaur, the mythical monster half-man, half bull: tender and bestial. So, astrologically [...]

Titania (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Bottom (Kevin Kline) in A Midsummer Night’s Dream My friend J has great big, baby blue eyes. They’re beautiful. She comes across as a little flaky, vague, kind, not quite of this world, when she walks along, these days in a kaftan likely as not, she [...]

Nude by Francis Cadell. “There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.” – Ralph Ellison, Born March 1, 1913 Sun in Pisces, Mercury in [...]

 “What if you had a really big seed and you could draw on it and if you planted it, your drawing would grow into a real thing?” “What would you draw?” “A kitten.” Neptune (imagination) is squaring my six-year-old’s Mercury in Gemini (story-telling) [...]

Princesss Elizabeth and her dashing consort Philip at a polo match in Kenya, just days before she succeeded to the throne in 1952. The 33 daughters of the Roman emperor Diocletian, cast adrift in the grey sea (after murdering their 33 dreary husbands), saw land – a white land, rising from the [...]

JMW Turner. Snow Storm. Let me tell you why you haven’t heard from me for a few days. This is how it was meant to be. I was meant to go out to France on Wednesday and come back Sunday, having graced my elderly parents with my presence, and caused as little disruption to the […]

Thought it was time to revisit this post, which I wrote back in April. Neptune goes back into Pisces on the 3rd or 4th of Feb, depending upon where in the world you are. Catch that wave. Neptune’s Horses by Walter Crane. Neptune, the great god of the sea, has dived into the ocean of […]

Thatcher: Saturn Rising Recently, I asked a businesswoman friend, who was complaining about bankers’ bonuses, when she thought the rot had set in. She answered with one word: “Thatcher.” And she’s right, what we are experiencing now, financially and socially is the [...]

Meryl Streep inhabiting Margaret Thatcher Meryl Streep’s impersonation of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady is almost frightening in its accuracy, believability, naturalness and depth. How did Streep dig down and find that character and then make her live so vividly on [...]

“Am I in love? – Yes, since I’m waiting.” The other never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn’t wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game: whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, [...]

Sandro Botticelli’s painting depicts exactly what will be happening in the skies at the beginning of February when Venus opposes sleeping Mars. Mars the planet of action aggression and war is about to go retrograde in the sign of skill, precision and organisation, Virgo. As you doubtless [...]

Here is the question that Iris asked on this site: Could you say a bit about how you would distinguish the cutting away of the unnecessary by Saturn from the letting go of the unnecessary by Pluto? How might they feel different? Iris is right: both of these planets bring loss and even death. [...]