This terrific self-portrait dates from 1927. Just as a supplement to the Satie piece: here is Suzanne Valadon’s chart. She was a wonderful woman, a free spirit, single mother, great painter and an inspiration for many other artists (Neptune in the 7th), in particular Renoir. For a while [...]

Erik Satie painted by Suzanne Valadon c.1892, the epitome of the 1890s aesthete The composer Erik Satie, a well-known figure in Parisian bohemia at the turn of the 20th century, was noted for his elegance. He had seven identical beautifully-tailored grey suits which he wore in rotation. He [...]

Danny Kaye had a Sun-Uranus conjunction in Capricorn. I read a post over at Libra Seeking Balance this week which reminded me that Uranus + Mercury = funny. Now I can vouch for this personally since I live with the funniest man I could find, and he has Merc + Uranus on the Ascendant. [...]

Millais’ Ophelia – suspended in a dream. It’s emotional, it’s dreamy, it’s images and colours, not words. It’s a misty vision on the edge of your mind, and the time between sleeping and waking. It’s a pool of water reflecting the sky with a fish [...]

The Princess and the Pea by Edmund Dulac. Here is the second part of Renée Lascala fresh look at Jupiter in Cancer. These ideas are not just for those of you who have planets in Cancer. All of us should honour the king’s visit to the sign of the Crab.   Jupiter’s 2013-14 visit to […]

Charles Robinson’s illustration for Shelley’s The Sensitive Plant. I asked Cancerian fellow astrologer Renée Lascala to write about Jupiter’s ingress into her Sun sign, which takes place this week.  Jupiter will travel through Cancer for a full 12 months, so we’d better [...]

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 […]

Lying in bed, feeling a little strange, a little light-headed. The sun sends blocks of light across your duvet; because it is broad daylight, and you alone are not at work or at school. Everyone else is busy. There are noises in the house: a tap runs in the kitchen; a distant radio, a car in [...]

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.

Yesterday Angelina Jolie told the world she’d had an operation that reduces her risk of cancer from 87% to 5%. She’d had a double mastectomy. That one of the world’s most beautiful women should choose to have both breasts removed is a powerful notion. Jolie in particular has [...]

Lovely Audrey Hepburn, b. May 4 Is there a Taurus “look”? Judge for yourself. There’s a whole collection of very beautiful Bulls in this previous post on the Oxford Astrologer. Click here.

The “Minutemen”, American revolutionaries ready to snatch up their weapons at a moment’s notice, confront the redcoats. Their flexibility, speed and the urgency of their cause was a big factor in their victory. Allied to the fact that they were on home territory. Even though [...]

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 [...]

Cherry blossoms and snow outside my house. How do you know that the pilgrim track Along the belting zodiac Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud, And never as yet […]

The Sun is in the last degree of Pisces today, just about to POP into Aries like a bubble bursting out of water. It will be at 0° Aries at 11.01AM  tomorrow, March 20th. That marks the start of the new year for the Zodiac. In particular, this is a moment to leave behind emotional (or […]

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 […]

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, [...]

The Reader by Federico Faruffini. I found this on the wonderful blog Reading and Art. “I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of mind which accompanies the return of consciousness. As I lay and looked through the eastern window of my room, a faint streak of peach-colour, dividing [...]

The Moon from De Sphaera As I write, the Moon is running the gamut of an opposition to Pluto. She’s in her own sign, Cancer, so she’s no pushover, even for the lord of the Underworld. But as she slides through the sea of Cancer, she brings into action all kinds of interesting [...]