St George and the Dragon by Jean-Francois Sulpice. The soldier prince Mars married the queen of the May, Venus, last Friday. A monster was slain on Monday. How can these things possibly connect symbolically? The charts, after all, are very similar with a heavy emphasis on Aries opposing solo [...]
See moreCategory: Myth, Folklore & Fairytales
Our collective imaginings unfold as stories.
Pallas Athena and the God of War
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 [...]
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The Magical Tide Jewels of Japan
One of Hiroshige’s Views of Mount Fuji As a wedding gift, the dragon-king of the sea gave his human son-in-law two jewels – kanju and manju. He wanted to ensure the future prosperity of his semi-divine descendants. Those jewels were not just decorative though. They had wonderful [...]
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Fat Boy, Fukushima and Japan Facing Frankenstein
Godzilla emerged from the depths of the ocean back in 1954, and trashed Tokyo. He may have been a plastic monster in a less than B-movie, but he also symbolised something important. Let me explain. A rather attractive Polish version of Godzilla. Godzilla – as you may recall (I had to [...]
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Awakening Frankenstein
Boris Karloff in the 1931 film Frankenstein. In the summer I wrote a post about Dracula with some suggestions about which planets we could associate with the fanged one. I ended that piece by suggesting that Frankenstein might be associated with the planet Uranus. |’ve come back to [...]
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Talk on Monsters
I’m giving a talk on Scary Monsters. February 16 at the Oxford Astrology Group. For more information look at their site. Come along if you’re in the neighborhood.
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Valentine’s Day, Aquarius and the Goddess of Marriage
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? [...]
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Why Capricorn Nigella is a Modern Vestal (Un)Virgin
A priestess of the goddess Vesta, “tutelary deity” to Capricorn.Here imagined by 19th century painter Lord Leighton. Capricorns is a dull sign, ruled by that old curmudgeon Saturn – right? It’s all about status and work and dads and being sensible bla bla bla. [...]
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Equal Rights for Goddesses?
As you know, there are seven heavenly bodies in traditional astrology. The boys – Sun, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The girls – Moon, Venus. Five against two. Now does that seem fair to you? Does that even seem like life? Ceres, goddess of fertility, is sometimes assigned to [...]
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A God for Every Sign – yay
I find reading old astrology books a very good way to get to sleep. Dane Rudhyar is marvellously soporific. I hope some of it will filter into my dreams, and be reborn as a brilliant insight. Last night I turned to CEO Carter, who is an old stand-by in the wee small hours. And in […]
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Heavenly grrrl power!
Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Brazil. Is the mother goddess giving a helping hand? In Brazil, Dilma Rousseff; in Australia Julia Gillard, who’s next? Are sisters finally doing it for themselves? Here’s what I think happened in the heavens that might give us a clue. On the [...]
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A Fairytale Ending for Milibands
Once upon a time there was a miller who had three sons. When he died his oldest son took the mill, his middle son took the donkey, and that left the youngest son with nothing but the cat. Well, we know who got the better deal in the end. Puss-in-boots helps the youngest son to […]
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A little girl names the dark lord
Hades (Pluto) Oxford is a small town with a famous university in the middle of England. But it’s much more than that too. It’s the centre of a web of influence that stretches forward and backward in time and across continents. This influence is intellectual and political, but also [...]
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Vampire Squid – Pluto vs Neptune?
I was taking a shower this morning with my five year old and she started to play a game about a “vampire squid” which was attacking us around the curtain. (Yes, apparently there is such a thing.) That’s a pretty scary monster, right. Well, it also seemed rather a good image [...]
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