The defence ministers of Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Germany. Here a picture truly does say a thousand words. You don’t need me to explain why it’s momentous. The photograph  was taken on Saturday February 1 at around 3pm and on the telephone of the Dutch minister. From [...]

Vasilisa in the Wood, Ivan Bilibin (1899). Vasilisa the Beautiful escaped from the child-eating witch of the deep, dark forest Baba Yaga, using one of the witch’s own torches, hand-crafted, as they might say on etsy, from a human skull. Baba Yaga, a drooling hag who terrorises the [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 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, [...]

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 [...]

The creatures of the Zodiac cavort in a loop through the sky that takes us from midwinter to midsummer and back again. We are used to thinking of them as starting with Aries the Ram and ending with Pisces, the Fishes. But there is another way of ordering the Zodiac that can help you to […]

Gradually, the familiar golden ball slides behind a disc of silver. Birds fall silent, the air chills, for a moment the day is strange. Solar eclipse. A superseding, a complete annihilation.  Emotionally, in English anyway, the word eclipse contains a grain of fear. A black shadow, exactly the [...]

To celebrate Venus’s entry into Taurus, where she revels in earthly pleasure, here is a piece I wrote about this beautiful painting by Sandro Botticelli. Click here to read it.

Ursula Andress – Sun, Venus, Mercury, Saturn in Pisces There’s an incredible amount of energy in the sign of the fishes this month, helped by the bicentennial transit of Neptune through the sign. Neptune is joint ruler of Pisces, along with Jupiter, but since he comes so seldom, [...]

All these women have Venus in Aquarius. Christy Turlington Kate Moss Elle Macpherson Sienna Miller Paris Hilton Charlotte Rampling Sharon Stone Marlene Dietrich

The Bather, Ingres.He was born with Venus in Leo and Sun in Virgo. This picture combines Virgo mastery of technique & perfectionism with Leo luxury. The planet of beauty is in the golden sign of Leo, what could be more luxurious. Here are some suggestions of how to make the most of this [...]

“This day prov’d as favourable to our purpose as we could wish, not a Clowd was to be seen … and the Air was perfectly clear, so that we had every advantage we could desire in Observing the whole of the passage of the Planet Venus over the Suns disk: we very distinctly saw an […]

Yes, I know we like to talk about roses and kisses and sweet romance, about Romeos and Juliets, the ones that got away and the ones that might just come back now that Venus has turned retrograde… But Venus is not just the planet of love – she rules money, cold hard cash. And she’s [...]

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 [...]