Two temples to Hera at Paestum and one beautiful Persephone A couple of weeks ago, I walked around the ancient city of Paestum under a bright, broiling southern Italian sun. It’s a beautiful place. Buttery yellow temple columns reach into a cerulean sky, graceful umbrella pines and [...]

As you probably know, Oxford is a World Heritage Site. There’s Radcliffe Camera, the Sheldonian Theatre, Broad Street, St Giles… all beautiful, historic, and full of life, much used, much loved. Radcliffe Camera: probably one of the world’s most famous library annexes. The [...]

Gustav Klimt’s Pallas Athena, 1895 Pallas Athena, the asteroid of strategy and weaving is in a cosy huddle with Uranus, the god of bright ideas. And the Moon is right there with them today, shining a soft silver glow on proceedings. The Ram is, of course, the sign of beginnings, [...]

The idea of a deity who reigns in the kitchen, blessing and protecting the household, is common all the way around the globe. In China, he is called Zao Jun, in Mesoamerica, he was called Huehuetotl, in Rome she was Vesta. Vestal Virgin by Leighton Vesta was the Roman goddess of the hearth, [...]

Shivashakti – male and female energies combine in one body. The asteroids – Ceres, Juno, Vesta and Pallas, named for four of the great goddesses of Olympus – were actually discovered before the outer planets Neptune and Pluto. But you wouldn’t think so, given the amount of [...]

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 [...]

Nude by Francis Cadell. “There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.” – Ralph Ellison, Born March 1, 1913 Sun in Pisces, Mercury in [...]

John and Yoko married on March 20,1969. It’s nearly February 29th, the day we laydeez are supposed to get down on our bended knees and propose. So it’s nice that Venus, the maiden planet, is in trousers right now, sorry that’s in Aries. And she is just reaching an opposition [...]

War reporter Marie Colvin in Homs. Photo: Democratic Underground. Homs, Syria is a long way from Oxford, England. It’s on another continent, the people speak another language, have different customs than mine. They are in the midst of a bloody civil war. But the same sun rises, and then [...]

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 [...]

This is similar to the one I looked at but a photograph doesn’t tell you an eighth of it. I had a strangely lovely experience yesterday. I went to pick up a carpet that had been cleaned and got talking to the owners of the shop. Now I know very little about oriental carpets. I […]

You may have read some of my previous posts on the “tutelary deities” used by Roman astrologers. These came as a surprise to me when I read about them last year since I’d not come across them in any astrology texts or lectures that I’d attended previously. Suffice to [...]

Shopping for bread in the middle of a riot can be hectic. Tunisia. Have you looked closely at your grocery bill recently? It’s gone through the roof in the last 12 months right. I’m sure inflation for food is way ahead of the official figure. So I was intrigued to read this piece [...]

La Grande Bouffe Vesta was the most widely worshipped deity in the Roman empire since every house had a shrine to her – the hearth itself. That is why I associate the asteroid named after her with cooks. Back in January I wrote about Vesta in the charts of well-known cooks, pointing out [...]

The Queen’s trip to Ireland this week shifted Anglo-Irish relations a lot closer to normal. The relationship between Britain and Ireland has often been like a bad marriage: with Britain in the role of abusive husband. He loves her and he hits her. He can’t understand it when she [...]

“That old black ram is tupping your white ewe.” Othello strangles Desdemona  from Othello Othello rose to the highest public office; he fell because of a fatal flaw, a personality defect so big that it opened its mouth and swallowed him. Right now we are witnessing a tragedy. [...]

Imagine you are trotting down the Appian Way in Rome sometime around 202 BC. It’s a hot spring day and you’re working up quite a sweat. Your toga is flapping behind you and your slave, a rather dashing Gaul (with rippling muscles and bedroom eyes – hang on a minute…back to [...]

Pallas Athene from the Temple of Aphaia c.500 BC One of the readers of this blog recently pointed out that pattern-recognition was a key component of astrology – and my tiny astrologer’s mind went click and then clickety click click. I got excited. Because there is an asteroid associated [...]

I’ve always thought it more than a little ironic that the day of the year designated for lovers is February 14. After all the Sun is in Aquarius – and Aquarius, as we all know is cool, calm, friendly, intelligent, rational. But passionate? Romantic? Heart-broken? Love-struck? Frenzied? [...]

A 19th-century wooden centaur attributed to a Mr Dines. The planetoid Chiron, which orbits between Uranus and Saturn, was discovered in 1977 and has caused some excitement among astrologers ever since. It takes about 50 years to make it’s way around the zodiac, which means that you will [...]