Between January 14 and 17, there will be so many planets stacked up in one corner of the sky, that you might expect the whole cosmos to tilt with the weight of them. Moon, Sun, Mercury, Pluto, Saturn, Venus and the Black Moon Lilith will all be in the sign of the Goat-Snake, Capricorn. That’s [...]

It’s been a long, strange trip around the Zodiac for Saturn over the last 27 years, but at last he’s come home. Yesterday, he arrived with the dust of the road clinging to his clothes, in Capricorn, the sign which, by tradition, he rules. Perhaps, he heaved a sigh of relief to be back in […]

We woke up to snow on Sunday. Swirling, twirling flakes, hurtling fast, then fluttering delicately past the bedroom window. The garden had vanished by 6am and by mid-day a soft, heavy blanket of white had covered everything. With snow comes silence. It’s easy in the first snowfall to imagine [...]

It’s a very complicated picture this month, but things do slow down a lot — and about time too. It’s important to note that from April 9 to 24, Venus will be between just two degrees of Pisces, 26° and 28°. This intense focus from the goddess of love and luck is unusual and will […]

Donald Trump has been on TV since 2004, sitting at a big desk with the stars and stripes behind him. He wasn’t the president then, just pretending to be a boss on the reality TV show The Apprentice. He looked menacing and said, “You’re fired”, and rewarded contestants if they were “good”, and [...]

Hot-metal printing was finally killed off in the mid-1980s. Its demise had been a long time coming, as it was superseded by other cleaner, faster, cheaper technologies. London’s print unions were some of the last in the world to hold out, in the Wapping Dispute with Rupert Murdoch’s News [...]

  A piece of wood, some catgut, ebony: a violin. Grapes transformed into wine. Paint transformed into image. Practical magic. This month opens with a wondrous eclipse in the sign of skill and craftsmanship, Virgo, which opens up the powerful generational aspect between Saturn and Neptune, [...]

One of the pleasures of this retrograde period… Saturn Rx in Sagittarius, the sign of higher learning, the exotic and libraries Mars station (Rx on April 17) also in Sagittarius Mercury in shadow (Rx on April 28) in Taurus, ruled by Venus the goddess of beauty and art Jupiter Rx in Virgo, the [...]

This extraordinary gory painting, possibly by Caravaggio, was found in an attic in the French city of Toulouse a couple of years ago, but not presented to the public until yesterday. It’s fascinating that it should be revealed at just this time of retrogrades, a time of retrieval — perhaps [...]

Los Angeles will eat you. The LA music biz specialises in packaging young girls into pop stars — Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Ariana Grande, Nicky Minaj, Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears. The singer-songwriter Kesha is one of those. Spotted by producer Dr Luke at the age of 17,  she was [...]

As you probably already know, the 27 Club is a term for all those singers who died too young, at the age of 27. The list is long and it includes, off the top of my head, Amy Winehouse, Jeff Buckley, Jimmy Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin. In fact there is something important [...]

This is a good news story, so bear with me and see where it leads. Victims of the condition variously labelled Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) or Myalgic Encephalitis (ME) are used to being disbelieved, disrespected, and ignored. They know about being labelled liars, shirkers, fantasists. [...]

With Jupiter’s move into Virgo this summer, and Saturn’s move into Sagittarius, we are seeing a shift of emphasis into the mutable signs. Neptune and Chiron, also both slow-moving, are already in Pisces. This creates a T-square pattern — at least by sign if not by exact [...]

Saturn in Sagittarius 23 December 2014-15 June 2015 September 17, 2015-December 20 2017 You can just imagine Saturn walking into Sagittarius’ flat — and reeling at the chaos, the freewheeling coffee cups, the jumble of throws, the mysterious sticky saucer under the sofa, the stacks [...]

Jupiter in Virgo — August 11, 2015 – 9 September 2016 The 12-year cycle of Jupiter is one of the most important to understand and work with in your own life. So right now, it’s worth looking back at the last time Jupiter was in Virgo –  from 27 August 2003 to 25 September [...]

I have been reading Deborah Houlding’s book The Houses, Temples of the Sky. It’s an excellent reference and should be on every astrologer’s bookshelf. Although Houlding is a traditional astrologer and her focus is on the horary and mundane, her research and ideas are relevant [...]

Saturn is the most distant and by far the slowest moving of the planets used by traditional astrologers. Therefore he has the deepest impact on the sign in which he finds himself. Saturn rules boundaries, gloom, depression, restriction, rules, harvest, death, structure, bones, old age, [...]

As Saturn, the reaper, slows to a halt before turning retrograde in mid-March, let’s pause to reflect what the transit of this great planet through the sign of the centaur means. In this post, I’ll look briefly at the past Saturn in Sag period to give us a handle on this one. Then [...]

Saturn’s move into Sagittarius back in December came as a huge relief to many people — except maybe those born under the sign of the centaur and those born with Saturn in Sagittarius, for whom this will be the dreaded “Return”. This month, the planet Saturn is [...]

Lush with satin and velvet, beautifully lit by candles and England’s cool northern daylight, the TV adaptation of Wolf Hall is as enthralling as the book. At the centre of the bedizened, voluptuous court of Henry VIII, there is a still, dark point, Thomas Cromwell. For more on the story [...]