How do you deal with the Inquisition, the Nazis, ISIS, the secret police, the occupiers, the forces of oppression, the slave catchers, ICE? What if they come knocking on your door? Many of our ancestors had to answer this same question, and many people around the world right now. And the [...]

It was a shocking development. They knew that she was the Sultan’s favourite, the mother of his children, but who would have thought that he would actually marry the Ruthenian woman?  In the year 1533, Suleiman the Magnificent wed his concubine Roxelana, making her Sultana, the most powerful [...]

” Halloa! here’s signs and wonders truly! That, now, is what old Bowditch in his Epitome calls the zodiac, and what my almanac below calls ditto. I’ll get the almanac and as I have heard devils can be raised with Daboll’s arithmetic, I’ll try my hand at raising a [...]

Sadko In The Underwater Kingdom by Ilya Repin (Wikimedia Commons) From Tunisia to Elizabeth Taylor, you never know who you’re going to swim past down there in the blue, blue sea. With the Sun still in Pisces, visit or revisit these OA posts on or about the sign of the Fishes. A Fortnight [...]

Stamps depicting traditional Ukrainian headresses. Every woman is a queen. Ukraine has Venus in Leo/Moon in Aquarius. Is Ukraine destined to be a free democracy and part of Europe or a Russian vassal state? That is what people are protesting about on the streets of the capital Kiev this [...]

Neptune in Pisces – right at the beginning again. Chiron, the wounded healer, in Pisces too. Both planets have turned direct this week. If you need to cry, let your tears flow. It is part of the healing. Listen to kd lang (Sun conjunct Neptune, Chiron in Pisces) and Roy Orbison (Chiron-Moon [...]

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 […]

2011: Idealism + action / Neptune + Uranus Neptune, the god of idealism, illusion, fashion, faith, glamour and mist, is in the very last degree of Aquarius now. This is momentous because he will not return to this spot for, oooh, another 160 years or so. We are in the very end game of Neptune [...]

This is from an old copy of the defunct magazine Punch. I can never see the joke, but it does seem appropriate. We had dinner with an entertainingly gloomy Irishman last night. He’s clearly enjoying the credit crunch a lot – because it means that he can wallow in deepest pessimism, [...]