Books & Writers Archives - Page 4 of 4 - The Oxford Astrologer

Category: Books & Writers

Book reviews, author profiles through the lens of astrology.

RIP Maurice Sendak: “So he gave up being king of the wild things…”

“The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him wild thing and Max said, “I’ll eat you up!” so he was sent to bed without eating anything.” Maurice Sendak’s short masterpiece Where The Wild Things Are is a [...]

It Takes All Sorts, So Why the Martial Emphasis?

A while ago I was asked to talk about astrology to some teenagers at the Museum of the History of Science here in Oxford. For a bit of fun, I asked them each to fill out a short questionnaire. They were to choose three words to describe themselves from a list of different character traits. [...]

Lilith: Both Anima and Animus

Munch’s Madonna. He had Lilith in Cancer opposite the feminine Moon in her fall. “Oh, Mother, my mother!” cried the agonized girl, turning passionately upon her parent as if her poor heart would break. “How could I be expected to know? I was a child when I left this house four [...]

So You Thought Lilith Was Always a Woman…

In my last post I pointed out that the extraordinarily brilliant writer Patricia Highsmith had dark, disturbing Lilith conjunct her Mercury, the planet of mind and writing. One of the things that makes her writing so remarkable is her ability to get under the skin of evil. Her greatest [...]

Lilith: Wild, Outcast, Wicked – Essential

Joan Crawford. picture by George Hurrell Lilith – baby-strangler, seducer, mistress of secret knowledge, outsider, feminist icon — Black Moon. In Jewish folklore, she is Adam’s first wife. But her roots are much older – an Assyrian she-demon, a serpent goddess, queen of the underworld. [...]

Unpacking My Library: On The Road

This cover was designed by Len Deighton in the late 50s. If Jack Kerouac had not drunk himself to death at the age of 47, he would have turned 90 on March 12 this year. He was in many ways the perfect Pisces author – a drunken, dreaming mystic visionary who seemed to just spew out his […]

Unpacking My Library: Invisible Man

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 [...]

That Tiger Mother

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 [...]

Unpacking My Library: A Lover’s Discourse

“Am I in love? – Yes, since I’m waiting.” The other never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn’t wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game: whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, [...]

Unpacking My Library: The Confessions

Bascove: Reading in Bed I found myself yesterday, rather to my own surprise, urging a client to read The Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a book which was written more than 250 years ago and which I last read about 350 years ago. This is how it begins and I think you can read a Uranian [...]

Unpacking My Library: The Mystery of Numbers

I moved into this house four years ago and, what with one thing and another, up until December half my books had been packed in boxes up in the attic. This has been a source of grievous discontent to me, but the ingress of action planet Mars into bookish Virgo saw a couple of boxes […]

Myth-making in a City of Scholars: JRR Tolkien, C S Lewis and all

I still get a small thrill when I walk past number 20 Northmoor Road after dropping my kids off at school. Half a century ago, JRR Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings in that unprepossessing suburban house. I’ve often wondered if there were [...]

How Much Virgo Does A Writer Need?

There is something very cool about Agatha Christie even as a child. Could it be Virgo Sun, Virgo Rsing and Saturn in Virgo Many years ago, I moved from working in (weekly) magazine publishing to editing books. It was truly a move from Gemini-land to Virgo-land. The magazines were all about [...]

It Was 20 Years Ago Today: The Hogwarts Express

Aww – weren’t they sweet. At exactly 11 o’clock on the 1 September, 1991, the Hogwarts Express left King’s Cross Station with Harry Potter on board for the first time. That was the day when Harry met Ron, and one of the most enduring friendships in literature began. [...]

JK Rowling: The Perfect Writer’s Chart

JK Rowling – imagination, talent and wit. She’s the first person to make a billion by writing books. She’s ignited the imaginations of about a gazillion children on every continent. She’s managed to make a Virgo cool – well, sort of. For those of you who are not [...]

Harry Potter Astrology: Hogwarts and the Four Fixed Signs

Ron (Pisces), Hermione (Virgo, obviously) and Harry (Leo) I’m afraid that my entire family is so gripped by Harry Potter frenzy that it’s quite hard to think of anything else. We started reading it together last winter and now we’re are just finishing the sixth book. If ever [...]

Charlie and Lola’s Homage to Pisces

Yes, Pisces rules the feet. Lauren Child, the genius who created Charlie and Lola, keeps her birthday a secret. But I think Lola’s a little Gemini and Charlie might be a Pisces. What do you think?There’s an exhibition of her work on in Stratford, London until May 2.

Harry Potter and Ophiucus

Here is a tale of two books written about 2000 years apart.All the hooha about the intruder constellation Ophiucus sent me to my well-thumbed copy of Manilius’ Astronomica, the Roman astrology manual dating from around the second century. I knew there’d be a tit-bit in there.It [...]

City of Books – ha!

St Giles at Dusk by Francis Hamel. For more of his Oxford views click here. Sometimes, on a winter evening when the yellow lights in the buildings that line St. Giles cast a glow on the frozen street, I like to to imagine that I can see through the walls of stone. And behind the […]

Was Dracula a Scorpio?

Creepy thoughts should never be limited to autumn nights. In fact when I started this blog back in the summer the very second post was on the subject of horror movies. Back in July, my five year old’s musings on vampire squid lurking behind the shower curtain prompted me to investigate [...]

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