Today is officially the Virgin Mary’s birthday, appropriately in Virgo’s month.  The planet Mercury is the official ruler of Virgo, of course, but according to the Roman astrologer Manilius, the deity (as opposed to the planet) that rules the sign is Ceres, goddess of the [...]

In the second post of her three-part series on the myth of Saturn, guest blogger Isy Tifft, takes a look at what can happen to a flying penis when it hits the ocean waves.  Alexandre Cabanel’s Birth of Venus (1875). You can see why Napoleon III wanted this painting for himself. In my [...]

Saturn is the master of time and death I’m very excited to have my first guest here at the Oxford Astrologer. My friend and colleague Isy has very kindly agreed to share her insights into that old devil, Saturn. This is the first of a series on the subject. I think her background in [...]

The priestess of Apollo – the oracle at Delphi – imagined by the Victorian painter JW Waterhouse. Imagine that you are a rich resident of Alexandria in, say the second century AD. Your culture is Greek with a dash of Egyptian; your rulers live in Rome. But you have a dilemma [...]

“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. [...]

The Virgin at La Salette, France “MAY is Mary’s month, and I Muse at that and wonder why:     Her feasts follow reason,     Dated due to season—   Candlemas, Lady Day;         5 But the Lady Month, May, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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.

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 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. [...]

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 [...]

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 […]

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 [...]

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 […]

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 [...]

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 [...]