“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) [...]

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 [...]

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 […]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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? [...]

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 [...]

Artist Georgia O’Keeffe born 15 Nov 1887 – Sun, Moon, Mercury, Jupiter in Scorpio opposite  Neptune (illusion, glamour)-Pluto (death again). Scorpio – death, archeology, digging deep, the bare bones – and sex. Scorpio rules the genitals, of course.

Equally beautiful, equally deadly. Alain Delon (Nov 8) and Monica Vitti (Nov 3). It took a Libra, Michelangelo Antonioni, to put them together in  L’Eclisse (1962). Rather appropriately for our times he plays a shallow, materialistic stockbroker unable to connect emotionally. She is [...]

FABRIC BY JANNASALAKDESIGNS OK – some of you have wondered what the paisley connection is with the November horoscopes. It’s just this in my tiny mind. Paisley =  fertility = Scorpio. Paisley pattern, which originates in South or Central Asia depending on who is talking, is [...]

The Crimson Pirate: Sagittarius Rising Happy Birthday (and RIP, natürlich) Burt Lancaster, superstar Scorp. Was there ever a more robust yet complex specimen of manhood. Born 2 November 1913: Scorpio Sun (water), Capricorn Moon (earth), Sagittarius Rising (fire). Trapeze with Tony Curtis [...]

To celebrate Halloween, I’m revisiting a post I wrote a while ago about vampires and squid and stuff. To find out if Dracula was a Scorpio or just a very confused Taurus click here. 

Imagine you are…Classical Lady by John William Godward OK, we are back in Rome, sometime in the 2nd century AD. It’s autumn, the grape harvest is in. We’ve all been celebrating in perhaps too Dionysian a fashion. Imagine that you are a togaed Roman with time and money on your [...]

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 [...]

Autumn, A Wood Path Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880) It’s Sylvia Plath’s birthday: Sun Scorpio, Moon Libra, Aquarius Rising. (b. October 27, 1932) A real Scorpio has to find the authentic experience. A real Scorpio has to dive deep and come back again, transformed. Death is a [...]