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 [...]

“Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.” ― Jeanette Winterson, Venus and Mars in Virgo “The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and [...]

Venus, who has spent the whole summer lolling around in the lap of luxury (Leo), moved into Virgo today. This means she will be out of the shadow of her retrograde by tomorrow. If you have been having to rethink, reinvent or reassess your attitudes to love, money, values or friendship this [...]

As Venus strolls through each sign, she dons different clothes or new makeup; she sheds jewellery, cuts her hair, adds glitter, goes natural. The goddess shows that allure comes in many guises, not just physical beauty. The Rising sign, Sun sign and prominent planets are also important in [...]

There is just so much going on this month: Jupiter changes signs, Venus is Retrograde, and Saturn turns his face to the future and starts to make his final farewells in Scorpio. The first week of August does look fabulous with Jupiter and Venus in a clinch. Saturn, the old devil, is trying to [...]

The mistress of love and harmony, Venus herself, is usually pictured reclining, either ready for love or just finished.  The power of the goddess subsumed into the erotic fantasies of generations of artists and patrons. The goddess of love diminished into an object of desire. Her astrological [...]

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 [...]

The spectacular meeting tomorrow morning at 7am British Summer Time between Venus the goddess of love and Jupiter, the king of the gods is not just any old conjunction. These two will be so close, according to NASA, that they may look like one superstar. It only happens once every 2000 years [...]

My colleague Jessica Shephard wrote a short piece about Venus Out Of Bounds a few weeks ago which set me thinking. Out of bounds planets are not something that’s not much discussed by astrologers. We’re all too busy getting our minds around cute new asteroids, imaginary dark points [...]

You could say that the promise of romance keeps astrologers in work. Getting your love right — and that might mean lifelong celibacy, a series of mad flings or a nice, cosy 40-year marriage — is one of the cornerstones of living the “good” life. And creating that good [...]

In Arabic, Egyptian Arabic anyway, when you want to describe someone as really beautiful, you say she is like the Moon, or she has a face like the Moon. (How unlike “moonface” in English). When Venus is in the sign of the Moon, two of the most feminine energies in astrology are [...]

As you tuck into your Easter egg this morning, you may want to as yourself  this: what is the difference between joy and pleasure? This week I listened to the writer Anthony Seldon talking on the radio, distinguishing between pleasure, which we might get from eating chocolate, happiness which [...]

O I FORBID you, maidens a’, That wear gowd on your hair, To come or gae by Carterhaugh, For young Tam Lin is there. There’s nane that gaes by Carterhaugh But they leave him a wad, Either their rings, or green mantles, Or else their maidenhead. Janet has kilted her green kirtle A little aboon [...]

I’ve often thought that Bill Clinton looks an awful lot like an older, whiter version of the actor Will Smith.     When the planet of beauty is in her own sign of Libra, you’d expect to find some real physical beauty. In particular, you might expect to find some perfectly [...]

Walk into Libra’s garden, the seventh house of the chart, and you will find yourself in a bower of sweet scented roses, treading on forget-me-nots, violas, love-in-the-mist. You might stroll down a lover’s walk through dripping wisteria to a summerhouse by a romantic lake. The [...]

  The charmed quincunx between Jupiter and Neptune continues this week but now it’s graced by the presence of Venus, the goddess of love herself. Please read this piece for more on the quincunx. Jupiter is at 6/7° Leo. Venus joins him there today and for the rest of this week. [...]

To one with faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible. Thomas Aquinas St Thomas Aquinas was not talking about belonging to a particular religion, since in his day — 13th century Italy — he could assume that his readers were inside the same [...]

The word icon is applied haphazardly to every passing celebrity these days, but there are some modern faces that have unarguably become iconic. It might not be what you expect from Venus in Aries, but there are more icons in this group than any other. Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey [...]

Since, apparently, the end of the world is upon us, it seems like a good time to indulge oneself a little. Venus – the planet of indulgence, luxury and lolling about on a chaise longue having one’s toes oiled by light-fingered lovelies – has just slipped into Pisces, the sign where she [...]