Pluto abducts Proserpine. Bernini. Venus meets Pluto tomorrow (December 2), setting the tone for a very “interesting” month ahead. Venus and Pluto do have two very important things in common: sex and money. And their one night stand is in the earthy moneybags sign, Capricorn. [...]

Sylvia Plath was not the only poet born under Scorpio to be drawn to death’s glamour (see my previous post). Here is an extract from Ode To A Nightingale by John Keats (born October 30). … Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call’d [...]

Just What Is It That Makes The Modern Home So Different, So Appealing.* This week I came home with a painting that I’d (accidentally) bought at an auction that I just happened to be passing – oops. Honestly, the money sort of swooshed out of my purse. The funny thing was that on the same [...]

BB Some people are emblems of their Sun sign. These three women all have Libra Sun, but more than that they have Libra at a critical angle of the chart. Venus, the goddess of beauty, rules Libra. Catherine Zeta Jones Brigitte Bardot – Sun Libra, Libra MC Catherine Zeta Jones – Sun [...]

Bright blue Venus seems suspended in the black branches of my neighbour’s cherry tree these evenings. When I tuck my daughter into bed, I look out her window and see the planet shining more brightly and steadily than anything else in the sky.I am looking west. Venus is in her guise as [...]

Star of Heaven by Edward Robert Hughes My guest Laura Perkins takes up the tale of Venus where she left off last week. But things are about to take a fascinatingly sinister turn. Indeed, the goddess undergoes a sex change and turns nasty. To revisit Laura’s previous piece click here. [...]

Venus Rising (The Star) 1890 by Jean-Leon Gerome I’m thrilled to introduce a guest post from Venus expert Laura Perkins – especially since Venus conjuncts Saturn in her own sign of Libra today. What do you think of when you see a five-pointed star?Hollywood stars? The flag of the United [...]

In the second post of her three-part series on the myth of Saturn, guest blogger Isy Tifft, takes a look at what can happen to a flying penis when it hits the ocean waves.  Alexandre Cabanel’s Birth of Venus (1875). You can see why Napoleon III wanted this painting for himself. In my [...]

Just a passing thought – I wonder if Edouard Manet was having a Venus-Pluto transit when he painted Olympia. It was first shown in 1863 and succeeded in shocking just about everyone.

Last winter I wrote a piece called Death and the Maiden about Venus in Scorpio. The motifs I discussed then are also relevant to the current (separating) opposition between Pluto and Venus. If you’d like to refresh your memory click here.

My last post got lost in the Blogger inferno, so I’ll summarise it thus: Tell the people you love that you love them right now – do it, even if you’ve done it a thousand times before. Talking about love now will put you in tune with the universe. Mercury, the god of chit chat, […]

The Virgin at La Salette, France “MAY is Mary’s month, and I Muse at that and wonder why:     Her feasts follow reason,     Dated due to season—   Candlemas, Lady Day;         5 But the Lady Month, May, [...]

St George and the Dragon by Jean-Francois Sulpice. The soldier prince Mars married the queen of the May, Venus, last Friday. A monster was slain on Monday. How can these things possibly connect symbolically? The charts, after all, are very similar with a heavy emphasis on Aries opposing solo [...]

Giovanni Bellini‘s Adoration of the Sleeping Child. Let me tell you about the last time Chiron conjuncted one of my personal planets, because it was very lovely. My second baby was just one month old and I was living in the delicious fog of love that descends almost uncannily on so many [...]

Death and Life, Gustav Klimt 1911. Death catches up with us all – but in what guise. As a virus? A car crash? Will it come slowly or will it be sudden? Are our days numbered from the moment we are born? Medieval astrologers certainly believed they could foretell the hour of your death. The [...]

Ophelia by John Everett Millais. We’ve been deep in the dark waters of Scorpio lately. You may have been diving for pearls, but sometimes it gets quite hard to breathe down there – all that psychodrama can be suffocating. Breathe easy now. Venus slipped backwards out of Scorpio and into [...]

Hokusai’s Great Wave print (1831). Watch the wave. Water is pulled up into its belly. Some pushed forward from the ocean and some sucked backwards, pulled against the tide, across sand and shingle. The energy gathers. The wave grows – higher, stronger, faster – for a moment it seems to [...]

A Man and A Woman (1966) Venus is the planet of love and money; two things it’s good to at least try and get right. And two ways in which we fall into horrible, relentlessly repeating patterns. After a certain time, we can look back at our lives and discern these themes and variations [...]

As you know, there are seven heavenly bodies in traditional astrology. The boys – Sun, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The girls – Moon, Venus. Five against two. Now does that seem fair to you? Does that even seem like life? Ceres, goddess of fertility, is sometimes assigned to [...]

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 […]