David Bowie must have known he was dying when he recorded ★ (Blackstar), his final album, released on his to birthday three days ago. It’s a privilege to hear from this liminal place, the place between this world and the next, from such a great artist and poetic visionary. The title song [...]

Happy New Year! What an interesting month awaits us. It could be rather a sticky start to the year, with both Jupiter and Mercury turning retrograde while Uranus, the planet of electricity is surging ahead. One aspect that is especially interesting kicks off right at the start of the month and [...]

“I went to the consulate with a large-wide sugarcoated birthday cake upon my head with fifty flaming candles lit – I felt just so spunky and affluent! In my ear I wore sugar plums or matchboxes – I forget which. Also I had put on several stamps as beauty spots on my emerald-painted [...]

Yesterday this painting was sold to Chinese billionaire Liu Yiqian for $170m. Think about that for a moment. One hundred and seventy million dollars. Extraordinary. Christie’s chose the right month in which to sell it, with the Sun in Scorpio, since the subject of this picture is [...]

It’s always an interesting time of year — October. We are half way round the Zodiac now, in Libra, the sign of balance, measuring and assessment. Often there’s a weary contemplation of the self as we go into Scorpio, But this year, October seems full of potential. There are [...]

The warrior queen Zenobia passed under that Zodiac dozens, maybe hundreds, of times. By the start of her reign in the 3rd century BC, the Temple of Bel in Palmyra was already 200 years old. Its fabulous portico with the seven planets personified, surrounded by the signs of the Zodiac, would [...]

Last week, I did a talk at Aquarius Severn which included a short picture essay. I’ll show it to you here. Remember that Neptune and Jupiter, the planets that promote flow, meet across the mutable Virgo-Pisces axis once a century. Jupiter in Virgo, Neptune in Pisces — 1849 Jupiter [...]

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 [...]

A statue of the Celtic sea god Manannan Mac Lir was stolen from an Irish mountaintop on January 21, the day Mercury, the planet of thieves, went retrograde. Although Manannan is the “son of the sea” and a deity of storms, but he has more in common with Mercury than Neptune. [...]

Like flowers the ice crystals on the window sparkle in the winter sun, transform into a sunny field of daffodils. Spring. Early-morning, low sun between rows of straight, rough-barked pines flashes as the camera moves. Treeless, snowy, dead flat land with a horizon straight as a ruler. A [...]

  Did you know that popmamas Madonna and Kate Bush were born within a few weeks of each other? Oh astrological joy! The English mystic and the queen of consumerism…. let’s check it out. Kate Bush shimmered on to the music scene with an astonishingly original sound when she was [...]

It’s silly to guess a profession by Sun sign. But this is the silly season – and there are an awful lot of film directors born under the sign of the Lion. Creative, passionate, theatrical, charismatic – and with a big vision — it figures. So this week’s birthdays [...]

Narcissus (suddenly): “Have you ever been in love? I mean really in love?” You: “Well, obviously, I marr—“ Narcissus interrupts: “Me – I’m super sensitive so when someone like me falls in love, well it’s probably unusually intense. I mean I [...]

Detail from the Stigmatisation of St Francis. Tiepolo (March 5) Tiepolo, a vivid conjuror of imaginary worlds, painted ceilings. So did Michelangelo. It was the fashion in those days, of course, to paint visions of heaven… What follows are works by artists born between March 5 and 21 [...]

Mars and Venus by Sandro Botticelli (c.1483) The god of war –- naked, defenceless, vulnerable – sleeps with his mouth half open, exhausted by lovemaking (we suppose), while Venus, the goddess of love, with not a hair out of place, fully clothed, regards him quite coolly, stroking his ankle [...]

Dona Elena Flores de Carrillo by Diego Rivera. (1952) The Mexican muralist Diego Rivera was born on December 8, 1886. The British painter Lucian Freud was born on December 8, 1922. The sign of Sagittarius – half-man, half-beast. Centaurs were notorious for their brawling and rapine. Animal [...]

Scarlett Johansson. Sun in Sag. Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Cap Venus is about money and love and beauty. Her natal placement tells us about all those things. It tells us about how we love, what we love and what makes us loveable. Venus is also about seduction. How we are attractive, whom we [...]

The four gospels surround the lamb of god. When a medieval craftsman lovingly carved a representation of the four gospels for the cover of this book, he was using symbols that had been sacred for thousands of years before the birth of Christ. The four gospels – Luke, Mark, John, and Mathew – [...]

Francesco Pesselino – The Seven Virtues (male and female personifications To live a moral life, according to Plato, you needed the following qualities: justice, temperance, courage and prudence. These are the “cardinal” virtues and the foundations of a civilised society. But [...]

In case you missed this post in celebration of the great Rothko.