The Sun is a pilgrim on a year-long journey that begins where it ends and ends where it begins. It’s a cycle, of course, and a spiral too. And within that solar cycle — above and below it perhaps — are the cycles, longer and shorter, of the planets. Especially there is the [...]

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 […]

May 25th sees the final eclipse in the Gemini-Sagittarius group that’s spanned November 2o1o until now. You can see it’s at 4° Sagittarius. In the way of these eclipse groups, it has overlapped at one end with Cancer-Capricorn and now it’s overlapping at this end with [...]

The art establishment’s favourite entrepreneur is on the radio this morning, so I thought I’d repost a piece I wrote about him. It made me laugh again, but that is part of Hirst’s charm. To read it, click here.

This week is going to be a firecracker, as the Sun, Mars, Venus cluster around unpredictable Uranus in Aries, the touchpaper sign.  The Moon is already involved with this, making a quincunx aspect to that pack of planets shortly, which creates a Yod with Saturn in Scorpio. This is all [...]

Yachts Racing in the Upper Bay — James Edward Butterworth Like a ship in full sail, the planets are billowing across the sky on today’s New Moon in Pisces. You have to use your imagination a bit to see it, but then we are in the midst of powerful Piscean energy, so I am sure […]

Rene Magritte: Rider in the Woods My friend Q has been rather cross recently. As far as she is concerned, life is not working out. Somewhere on the journey, she took a wrong turn and found herself in a thicket of gorse and shale instead of travelling through the beautiful beech wood she had [...]

Various Aspects by Deborah Stevenson Is your head about to explode  From information overload? Just asking. Last time Jupiter was in Gemini, the internet was probably not in your pocket. That was 12 years ago. Jupiter is the planet of expansion. Gemini is the sign of facts, data, journalism, [...]

Shakyamuni and his two attendants. Source: The Tibetan Museum Jupiter is going to be in Gemini until next summer. You have a full year to take advantage of this very interesting, rather unsettling energy. But it only comes every 12 years, so start paying attention to it now. In the first air [...]

Gandhi’s morning walk, photographed by Margaret Bourke White (b. June 14, 1904)   In the tangled intricacy of the natal chart, the Sun sign is so often dismissed as too vague or too broad an indicator. But when it comes to career, it should never be overlooked. Migrant Mother by [...]

I’ve just re-read last year’s Gemini self-portraits piece again and it made me smile. Take a look and enjoy how surprisingly alike some of the artists look, right down to the facial hair and the rebel attitude. To see the whole piece click here. Main pic: Diego Velazquez, born June [...]

A while ago I was asked to talk about astrology to some teenagers at the Museum of the History of Science here in Oxford. For  a bit of fun, I asked them each to fill out a short questionnaire. They were to choose three words to describe themselves from a list of different character traits. [...]

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 [...]

 “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) [...]

The ugly step-sisters flank Cinderella in last year’s panto at the Oxford Playhouse. What is it about our brothers and sisters? It’s the longest relationship for most of us. And so often it is a knot of jealousy and loyalty, love and loathing, betrayal and trust. We share a [...]

There is something very cool about Agatha Christie even as a child. Could it be Virgo Sun, Virgo Rsing and Saturn in Virgo Many years ago, I moved from  working in (weekly) magazine publishing to editing books. It was truly a move from Gemini-land to Virgo-land. The magazines were all about [...]

The priestess of Apollo – the oracle at Delphi – imagined by the Victorian painter JW Waterhouse. Imagine that you are a rich resident of Alexandria in, say the second century AD. Your culture is Greek with a dash of Egyptian; your rulers live in Rome. But you have a dilemma [...]

The establishment’s darling Damien Hirst The king of contemporary art in Britain is Damien Hirst, who morphed from enfant terrible to the richest artist who has ever lived in a matter of a decade or so. Despite his repeated efforts to shock the bourgeoisie, Hirst has been clasped [...]