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On Culture

Art, music, books, poetry, fashion, dance, television… the products of our imaginations and the people who make them. The Oxford Astrologer’s blogs on astrology and culture.

The Baroness: Dada Trickster

“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 [...]

Astrology of Now: Facing The Music

If you know your astrological symbolism, you will have realised that The Eagles of Death Metal*, who were playing at the Bataclan in Paris when it was attacked last month, are a Scorpio band. The eagle is one of the symbols of Scorpio, along with the scorpion and the snake. It is also used as [...]

The Passion Of Modigliani

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 [...]

October Horoscopes 2015

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 [...]

Chrissie Hynde, Leader of the Band

“Now, let me assure you that, technically speaking, however you want to look at it, this was all my doing and I take full responsibility.” — Chrissie Hynde could be talking about her whole life in that one sentence. Everyone had that album: the Pretenders first. Pictured: a line [...]

Zenobia And The Temple of Bel

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 [...]

Refugees: Jupiter-Neptune In Action

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 [...]

Were The Celts Astrologers?

The Heraklean Way, one of the most ancient routes in Europe, runs from the Sacred Promontory on the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the Matrona Pass in the Alps. It’s both a real road – you can still drive along parts of it today – and a mythical one, for it is said that the […]

Temples Of The Sky

I have been reading Deborah Houlding’s book The Houses, Temples of the Sky. It’s an excellent reference and should be on every astrologer’s bookshelf. Although Houlding is a traditional astrologer and her focus is on the horary and mundane, her research and ideas are relevant [...]

Big bushy, smooth furry, patchy, pointy, oiled, curled and swooshing. Beards — big ones or neat ones — are the facial fashion for dandies these days. It’s so much fun. And maybe the biggest change in men’s fashion since bell-bottoms. Neptune is, of course, the planet of [...]

John Steinbeck’s Three-way Split

I split myself into three people. I know what they look like. One speculates and one criticizes and the third tries to correlate. It usually turns out to be a fight but out of it comes the whole week’s work. And it is carried on in my mind in dialogue. It’s an odd experience. Under [...]

Movies: Before…

Spoiler alert. If you haven’t seen Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight, read no more. Jesse wears a manky greyish T-shirt with the word Neptune written across the body of a blue whale for about half the movie Before Midnight. Considering he’s an acclaimed writer of [...]

Sepp Blatter In His Own Words

Despite scandals a-gogo, FIFA has just re-elected its president Sepp Blatter for the 5th time. Swiss-born Blatter is nearly 80 and he’s been in office for 17 years. His rivals have been trying to get rid of him for about half the time he’s been president and last week a whole [...]

Books: Karmic Mates & Venus Signs

You could say that the promise of romance keeps astrologers in work. Getting your love right — and that might mean lifelong celibacy, a series of mad flings or a nice, cosy 40-year marriage — is one of the cornerstones of living the “good” life. And creating that good [...]

Venus in Cancer: As Beautiful As The Moon

In Arabic, Egyptian Arabic anyway, when you want to describe someone as really beautiful, you say she is like the Moon, or she has a face like the Moon. (How unlike “moonface” in English). When Venus is in the sign of the Moon, two of the most feminine energies in astrology are [...]

The Astrology of Alzheimer’s

Some readers of this blog have been having a discussion about Alzheimer’s in the comments section under the short post on Terry Pratchett, the English author who died recently of the disease. They have come up with several interesting hypotheses about finding a predisposition for the [...]

Definitive Chart For ISIS

A few months ago I published a chart for ISIS which I’d picked up at the British Astrological Association Conference on the understanding that it had been drawn up by Professor Geoffrey Cornelius. A flurry of emails followed with some discussion whether it was the right chart. Things [...]

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 [...]

Terry Pratchett Mort

Hilarious, cosy, and wildly imaginative, Terry Pratchett cheered a lot of people up. He died yesterday, but his Discworld series will undoubtedly be read by generations to come. One of his greatest characters was Death himself, a rather comforting and kindly sort of person. “Don’t think [...]

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 [...]

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