Anthony Robbins, self-invented Anthony Robbins is a phenomeon. If you haven’t come across him yet – well, you will. In a nut-shell he is the top, or one of the top, personal development salesmen in the world – hosting seminars, writing books, making the infamous [...]
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What’s Your Job on the Ship of Life?
One of the things that astrology teaches is that we need all kinds of different skills and qualities to keep the ship of life afloat. Society needs to work together to get things done. And quite often the person who is most annoying in one role – say, the gossip at the school gates – […]
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Aries Self-Portraits Redux
Click here for to read my piece on Aries self portraits published here last April.
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12 Ways To Embrace Mars in Virgo
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 […]
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Enter the Fairy Realm: Venus in Gemini
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 [...]
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Seeing Pregnancy Through Ceres’ Eyes
Is this the most influential portrait of a woman from the 20th century? You wouldn’t believe it now, but way back in 1991, this cover of Vanity Fair showing the then highest-earning actress in Hollywood naked and heavily pregnant caused a storm of controversy. Why? Because some people [...]
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Unpacking My Library: On The Road
This cover was designed by Len Deighton in the late 50s. If Jack Kerouac had not drunk himself to death at the age of 47, he would have turned 90 on March 12 this year. He was in many ways the perfect Pisces author – a drunken, dreaming mystic visionary who seemed to just spew out his […]
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More Neptune: Picasso Holds Up A Mirror
Pablo Picasso loved the virile masculinity of the bull – the cojones. He painted and drew and modelled and made hundreds of bulls. It’s well known that he especially identified himself with the Minotaur, the mythical monster half-man, half bull: tender and bestial. So, astrologically [...]
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Astrology of Now: Imagination
“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) [...]
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Capricorn Self-Portraits: Solid Intense
Lawrence Alma-Tadema (8 Jan) painted this self-portrait when he was 16. During his lifetime, he was one of the richest, most sought-after painters of his day, creating vast fantasies of Roman decadence and fairyland luxury. His charm lay in the way his people looked so real – and yet there [...]
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12 Ways to Feel the Magic of Neptune in Pisces
Thought it was time to revisit this post, which I wrote back in April. Neptune goes back into Pisces on the 3rd or 4th of Feb, depending upon where in the world you are. Catch that wave. Neptune’s Horses by Walter Crane. Neptune, the great god of the sea, has dived into the ocean of […]
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That Tiger Mother
Tiger Mom: me me me As an indulgent, child-worshipping Western mother, the Tiger Mom thing really gets up my nose. In case you missed it, (which I’m sure you didn’t), last year a law professor at Yale published a book explaining how she was a brilliant mother as well as a [...]
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Streep, The Iron Lady and the Chameleon Aspects
Meryl Streep inhabiting Margaret Thatcher Meryl Streep’s impersonation of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady is almost frightening in its accuracy, believability, naturalness and depth. How did Streep dig down and find that character and then make her live so vividly on [...]
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How Adele is a Shaman
Listen to this. You wouldn’t think that the British singer Adele turned 21 last May, would you? She has the voice of, well, experience. When I hear a voice like hers, I ask myself where’s the Capricorn? Nina Simone…what a voice This is because I’ve noticed that Sun [...]
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The Breath of the Zodiac
I love this time between Christmas and New Year. I like to stay quiet in my lair and think and talk and stare at the fire. It’s a pause in the year’s activity like the white space at the end of a paragraph. It’s deeply, profoundly, awesomely yin – that is dark, [...]
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Sagittarian Self Portraits: Confident
Truthfulness is a Sagittarius quality — for good or bad. Maybe that is why they make such brilliant self-portraits. There is the German-Swedish painter Lotte Laserstein with a tabby cat comfortably nestled on her arm. Her gaze is a little sardonic, but quite confident thank you, as [...]
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Are You Cinderella or An Ugly Step-Sister?
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 [...]
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Ken Russell: Dedicated to Dionysus
Film director Ken Russell made big, messy pictures with a lot of sex and music in them. His fluid, emotional, freewheeling camerawork is still like no one else’s. Yesterday at the age of 84, the old maverick was taken by his maker (Uranus Returns, Jupiter conj Chiron). His [...]
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George Harrison: Water Boy
George: Sun, Moon, Jupiter, Venus in water signs.Marty: Sun, Moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter in water signs. “Who’s your favourite Beatle?” When I’m feeling difficile I like to reply Yoko Ono, but the truth is, for me, it’s always been George. Why? [...]
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Scorpio Self Portraits: The Agony And The Absence
Francis Bacon, Oct 28 Don’t expect to find this an easy bunch of pictures to look at. We are in the land of Scorpio this month – and this sign like to deal with deeper truth. Not for Scorp the polished surface of a Gemini or the gorgeous patterns of Libra. No, Scorpio prefers to [...]
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