Set during the Paris uprising of 1848, Flaubert’s novel Sentimental Education explores lessons in love and friendship. It was published some 20 years after the events. I’ve been thinking about the planet Neptune’s ingress into Pisces a lot over the past year.  This will [...]

Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, assassinated in 1981. Astrology tells us that the assassination of President Anwar Sadat back in 1981 links to the current riots in Cairo. How so?Read on and find out.But let me begin at the beginning.I’ve just had some correspondence about national [...]

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!--" William Wordsworth wrote these words about the French Revolution more than 200 years ago. But he was a spectator, a friend of France, not a participant, and he never suffered through what became known as the Terror. [...]

Dame Edna (aka Barry Humphries) (17 Feb 1934) Sometimes the pictures tell the story. Need I say more, my cheeky water-bearing friends? If you can find any more cross-dressing Aquarians, do tell me. Jack Lemmon ( 8 Feb 1925) in Some Like It Hot.   Eddie Izzard. You can always tell by  the [...]

Winter aconite photo: Martin Olsson Wikimedia Commons On a crisp winter day, when the frost-rimed grass beneath your hooves crunches and the sunlight lies palely on green branches, and the air is still, think of the life waiting to burst out of the earth, think of the sap in the tree, think of [...]

Shade and Darkness – The Evening before the Deluge. JMW Turner 1843 A wall of water ripped through inland Australia tearing up trees, tossing cars and buses like flotsam, swamping houses and taking lives. Today hundreds of Brazilians died in muddy landslides caused by torrents of rain. In [...]

I want a William and Kate souvenir toothpick, please. I received an email a while ago asking me to look at the chart of Catherine Middleton, who is to marry the heir to the British throne, Prince William, in April. Well, her birthday’s on the 9th of January, so why not look at it today [...]

There are two main ways I like to use astrology when I’m thinking about art. 1. Knowing an artist’s birth chart or simply natal Sun can give you real insight into how planets might work out in real life. Works of art are a non-verbal expression of character that often speaks more [...]

Winter Moonlight by George Inness captures the stillness of this time of year. The end of December. In the northern hemisphere, the darkest, quietest and stillest part of the year. The time when the earth’s energy is at its weakest and we have a little more time to think – reflecting on the [...]

A priestess of the goddess Vesta, “tutelary deity” to Capricorn.Here imagined by 19th century painter  Lord Leighton. Capricorns is a dull sign, ruled by that old curmudgeon Saturn – right? It’s all about status and work and dads and being sensible bla bla bla. [...]

  Captain Beefheart (far right) and the long-suffering Magic Band, back in 1969. A creative visionary died this week. Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) (born January 15, 1941 at 4.25pm) was a legendary avant-garde musician and performer and a damn fine painter. In both his chosen [...]

  Mercury back through Sag means review the map of your life – or plan to take a trip that you’ve taken before. So last week, I found myself watching the first series of the West Wing, which wasn’t a bad way to enjoy the messenger planet’s review of the sign of [...]

Riot police in Parliament Square.* The god Pluto wears a helmet of invisibility. Are you enjoying the ferocious fisticuffs between Mercury, Mars and Pluto? Speedy Mercury is thought and words and youth; Mars is war and action; Pluto – well, he comes like a shadow in the night, carries a big [...]

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 [...]

Take a leaf out of Rodin’s notebook and have a little think. Here’s one of the simplest ways to use astrology: work with the energy of the retrogrades. So hurray, Mercury retrograde is here again, so it’s time to re-think, re-evaluate, review and renegotiate. This time [...]

  We had a flying visit from our Indian friend this week with whom I had our usual discussion about things astrological.   We soon got around to the subject of that great big ring.   What ring? The engagement ring Prince William gave Kate Middleton. It’s a large sapphire surrounded by [...]

As I write this, the Sun is poised to slip into the sign of the centaur, Sagittarius. And this forest being, half-man, half-horse will take us, at a gallop, into the heart of winter. According to the Romans, his mentor is Diana, goddess of the Moon, wild creatures and the hunt. And there is a [...]

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 [...]

Prometheus, the revolutionary fire-stealing Titan whom historian Richard Tarnas argues should be associated with the planet Uranus. I agree with him Uranus has navigated the Piscean ocean with panache over the pat seven years, making waves in all kinds of directions. At the same time, [...]

Here in Oxford, we are having an extraordinarily beautiful autumn. The leaves are lambent red and gold, yellow and bright green. The air is very still, slightly damp and shining. It is unusually warm, so the light is not crisp and sharp, but gleaming. In short it is like a dream. I cycled back [...]