Fairytales Archives - The Oxford Astrologer

Category: Fairytales

Cycling through the air, straight-backed and determined, Miss Gulch transforms into a witch on a broomstick at the start of The Wizard of Oz. It’s terrifying and fabulous. Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 classic, owned the part fully, becoming a [...]

Sedna’s Not A Sulky Selkie

A few days ago, my dear friend, Isabel Tifft, wrote to me with some of her thoughts about possible astrological meanings of Sedna, one of the minor planets beyond Neptune, discovered and named in 2003. I found what she said so fascinating that I asked if I could share it with you. I found it [...]

Venus in Gemini: Silver-tongued, Fleet of Foot

Venus is in Gemini for the next three weeks. The planet of beauty and grace in the sign of doubling, double-talk, double-quick, double lucky, double dip, double entendre… double bed, double dutch, double dates, double cross — better watch this on the double! Enjoy.

Venus in Pisces: The Little Mermaid

Venus, the goddess of love and harmony, art and laughter, dives into the deep waters of Pisces on February 25. Looking up people with Venus in Pisces, I noticed that Hans Christian Andersen, writer of fairytales, was born with this particular signature. Which set me thinking about his [...]

On the “Other”: Lilith, Harvey Weinstein and the Fate of Nations

Why are there so many Liliths to choose from astrologically? I asked myself this question recently, and wondered if the answer might not lie in the archetype herself. Just to be clear. There are: True Lilith, Mean Lilith… and the asteroid Lilith… and furthermore, in some software, [...]

The Asteroid of Love Stories, Fairy Tales and the Soul’s Journey

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, in a country far away, a girl of breath-taking beauty lived with her family. Her two older sisters were “successfully’ married, to wealthy, middle-aged men, but her father was perplexed. Who was good enough to marry his darling youngest, [...]

Recognising Oshun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU_QkhxfZjs With so much power now in watery Pisces — Sun, Neptune, Mercury and the asteroid Vesta — maybe it’s a moment to pause and listen to a story about another watery deity: Oshun, West African goddess of sweet water.

Astrology in Moby Dick

” 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 [...]

Juno and the Axis of Desire

This year Juno, the asteroid named after the goddess of marriage and commitment, will be spending a long time in Taurus, a sign associated with passion, desire, obstinacy and obsession. Taurus is, of course, the opposite sign to Scorpio — also a sign known for obsession, obstinacy and [...]

Neptune Talk, March 4, Birmingham

I’ll be giving a talk to the Birmingham Astrological Association on Saturday, March 4. It’s about Neptune in Pisces and art. For directions and more info, click here.

Artist’s Birthday: Arthur Rackham

They say that the best way to see fairies is slantwise, out of the corner of your eye. Twisting, twirling, pirouetting india ink, delighted detail, subtle washes of colour and something sinister: the drawings of Arthur Rackham. Fairies swirl into trees, spin into trolls, spin into wild [...]

Neptune in Pisces: Fairytale TV, the Mystic North

“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” Willa Cather I can add “failure to hire leather-trousered pirate as childminder” to my Mother’s List of Shame. My kids are a tad irritated that Captain Hook is not [...]

Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito And The Eclipses

A sensational murder trial has finally come to a close. After seven long years, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were cleared of the murder of Meredith Kercher yesterday by the highest court in Italy. All of the major actors in this drama are playthings of the gods, acting out an archetypal [...]

Posts For This Saturn Station

Saturn’s move into Sagittarius back in December came as a huge relief to many people — except maybe those born under the sign of the centaur and those born with Saturn in Sagittarius, for whom this will be the dreaded “Return”. This month, the planet Saturn is [...]

Astrology of Now: The Disappearance of Manannan Mac Lir

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. [...]

Vampire Hunting

Tomorrow night all manner of ghouls and creeps will walk our suburban streets. Maybe there will be vampires…if it’s the real thing, you know what to do, clutch your crucifix and drive a stake through his heart. But what it this is a more subtle vampire? The kind who smiles nicely and [...]

Do We Need Narcissus?

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 [...]

A Myth To Ponder This New Moon

Before time began, gods emerged from chaos. Uranus, the god of the sky, made love to the earth, Gaia, every night, and from their union were born giants and Titans, both hated by their father, who, consequently, imprisoned his children in the deepest depths of the earth. One, Saturn, escaped. [...]

Astrology of Now: Vasilisa The Beautiful and Baba Yaga

Vasilisa in the Wood, Ivan Bilibin (1899). Vasilisa the Beautiful escaped from the child-eating witch of the deep, dark forest Baba Yaga, using one of the witch’s own torches, hand-crafted, as they might say on etsy, from a human skull. Baba Yaga, a drooling hag who terrorises the [...]

Falling Into The Mirror

Narcissus (detail) John William Waterhouse. When the hunter Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection, he was looking into a pool of water. Self-love is so much easier these days: we have mirrors. Even 200 years ago, if you were an ordinary person you might have seen your reflection in a [...]